Reading the Freudian theory of sexual drives from a functional neuroimaging perspective

• Main Author: Serge eStoléru
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-03-01
• Series: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
• Subjects: Functional Neuroimaging; Motivation; Psychoanalysis; positron emission tomography (PET); functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); Neuropsychoanalysis
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00157/full

One of the essential tasks of neuropsychoanalysis is to investigate the neural correlates of sexual drives. Here, we consider the four defining characteristics of sexual drives as delineated by Freud: their pressure, aim, object, and source. We systematically examine the relations between these characteristics and the four-component neurophenomenological model that we have proposed based on functional neuroimaging studies, which comprises a cognitive, a motivational, an emotional and an autonomic/neuroendocrine component. Functional neuroimaging studies of sexual arousal have thrown a new light on the four fundamental characteristics of sexual drives by identifying their potential neural correlates. While these studies are essentally consistent with the Freudian model of drives, the main difference emerging between the functional neuroimaging perspective on sexual drives and the Freudian theory relates to the source of drives. From a functional neuroimaging perspective sources of sexual drives, conceived by psychoanalysis as processes of excitation occurring in a peripheral organ, do not seem, at least in adult subjects, to be an essential part of the determinants of sexual arousal. It is rather the central processing of visual or genital stimuli that gives to these stimuli their sexually arousing and sexually pleasurable character.