Subjetividade e afeto em Zizek e Johnston: controvérsias em torno da relação psicanálise-neurociências

Abstract

This article starts from the idea that understanding the subject constitution process has undergone profound changes in recent decades. These changes were produced by descriptions that come from various fields, in particular the articulation of neurosciences and cognitive psychology, seeking to establish the brain processes as crucial in the formation of subjectivity. Thus we observe that many authors of the psychoanalytic field expanded their investigative scope to establish a productive intellectual dialogue between psychoanalysis and these two fields of knowledge. The aim of this review article is to discuss and contrast the theoretical approaches of Slavoj Zizek and Adrian Johnston, two philosophers with Lacanian orientation that aimed this approach, but reached different conclusions with respect to the meaning and theoretical possibilities of this dialogue. For Zizek neuroscience approach fails in not recognizing the radically negative dimension of the subject of psychoanalysis, this subject that radically breaks with its previous biological basis. Johnston, on the contrary, doing a careful reading of the emotional aspects of subjectivity, seeks to articulate critically, but productive, these different fields of research. The conclusion is that psychoanalysis-neuroscience dialogue, although problematic, is indispensable if we are to enrich the theoretical descriptions of the genesis of subjectivity.