Constructing a mind: a new base for psychoanalytic theory

Can the Protomental System provide a new foundation for psychoanalytic theory?

Constructing a Mind draws on psychoanalytic theories of mind and recent developments in cognitive science to present the Protomental System, a new and original explanatory theory of the development of the human mind.

This book aims to move psychoanalytic theory away from its origins in Freud's theory, towards a model which gives priority to cognition and memory. This, Antonio Imbasciati argues, will make possible a successful and productive integration of psychoanalysis with other areas of psychology. Subjects covered include:

• The mind as an information-processing system
• Constructing the system: from fetus to baby, child, and finally adult
• The caregiver relationship as a decoding system for information processing
• The paranoid-schizoid metabolism of information
• Memory of functions and memory traces of affects
• Internal information generated by the system
• The depressive position and learning to know
• Reparation and thought.

This thoughtful and thorough account of cognitive development provides a conceptual framework that succeeds in making some of the more complex areas of psychoanalytic theory more intelligible.

Constructing a Mind will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and cognitive psychologists, especially those with an interest in neuropsychology and neonatal development.