Work

Picturing Trauma: Freud, Resilience and Visual Agency in the Neurosciences

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: What if cognitive neuroscience had more to do with psychoanalysis than we think? In the wake of the 13 November 2015 Paris attacks, neuroscientists have conducted a biomedical study of traumatic memory in survivors. The REMEMBER project, standing for ‘ RE silience and M odification of brain control network following nov EMBER 13’, emphasizes resilience and the human brain’s connectivity over the old localization paradigm in neuroanatomy. The resilience paradigm, I contend, has unexpected origins in Freud’s dynamic model of intrusion and repression known as Bahnung , or psychic ‘censorship’. Using an intermedial approach, I read Freud for diagrams and for the interplay of text and image as a source of innovation. At the crossroads of visual studies, history of neuroscience, and philosophy of mind, the article offers a more dynamic view of the history of science – and of the way that newness comes into the world – than the classic split between psychoanalysis and neuroscience allows for.

Source: Theory Culture & Society

DOI: 10.1177/02632764251407891

Author: Hélène Quiniou

Institution: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Language: English

Topic: Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research

Subfield: Clinical Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,650