Freud: "Neurology" and "Psychoanalysis" Microglial Cells

Since I hadn't studied psychoanalysis very deeply, I am currently going through books on Melanie Klein to learn it thoroughly. I feel once again that this is a field where one must properly understand concepts like transference and paranoid-schizoid positions.

During my student days, while studying mental health and welfare, I wondered why target illnesses in the mental health field—such as hysteria (conversion disorder/dissociative disorder), depression, and schizophrenia—occur and what the mechanisms of the brain are behind them.
Psychiatric textbooks and introductory books did not contain such descriptions, and back then, it was a time when conditions were referred to as dementia (now cognitive impairment), using terminology that is considered quite outdated today.

When "Brain Science" and "Psychoanalysis" met

I arrived at a book by that name.
The brain influences human thought through pulses of neural substances. It was a book that explained what kind of mechanism that was, and it was exactly the field I had been looking for.

Freud (1856-1939) Neuropathologist

He entered the University of Vienna, studied physics and other subjects for two years, and joined the Physiological Institute of the Faculty of Medicine, where he researched the spinal nerve cells of amphibians and agnathans such as frogs and eels.
He also left behind achievements in clinical research on cerebral palsy and aphasia, aiming to elucidate psychological activity as brain neural activity.

Freud 1884 Cocaine Research

Through his research on cocaine, he focused on its use as a local anesthetic and succeeded in surgery, but due to its addictive and toxic nature, the perception of it as a dangerous substance spread, fueling distrust.

Freud 1885 Charcot and Hypnotherapy

He studied abroad in Paris under the neurologist Charcot, who performed hypnotic therapy in hysteria research, which would later lead to Freud's psychoanalysis.
However, because the content was not something that could be accepted as deviating from the academic studies of physiology in Vienna,
Freud began to be told that his research from both medical and psychoanalytic perspectives was far removed from the mainstream.

Freud: The Unconscious (Ego, Id, Superego)

In the process of establishing psychoanalysis, he developed a clinical method called free association and eventually discovered transference. This led to the formation of the famous theory of the Oedipus complex.
Eventually, due to the Nazi persecution of Jews, Freud, who was of Jewish descent, found himself in a critical situation.
Freud's body was being ravaged, and due to his habitual use of cocaine, his jaw had become dislocated, leading to dozens of repeated surgeries.
Whether he was just a junkie or if this was the result of a great study
that would not have been reached without its byproducts,
no one knows.

Freud 1920 "Beyond the Pleasure Principle"

Eros (Sexual Drive)
"Humanity's fundamental sexual energy and impulses"
Also called libido, it is considered the basic energy source that influences human behavior and mental movements.
It carries meanings not just of sexual acts, but also of life force, creativity, and expressions of love, including vital impulses.

Thanatos (Death Drive)
"The counterpart to Eros, an impulse that opposes living, self-destruction"
Freud thought that human behavior could not be explained solely by the desire of soldiers in the World War to live, and it was a concept derived in his later years when he also began to think about his own death.

Freud discovered that while seeking pleasure, destructive impulses also coexist.
・Why do people make destructive choices?
・Why do people dare to choose painful paths?

It is becoming clear that Freud, based on his background as a physiologist and what is now neurology, conducted his research by focusing on the workings of the brain rather than the surface of human behavior.
His letters to Fliess contain evidence that he was trying to unravel human behavior not just through psychological analysis, but from the structure of the brain linked to neurology.

Among his hysteria patients, there was the daughter of a friend who was treated using the free association method, and conversations suggesting past sexual abuse were held. It was content that the friend found hard to believe had actually happened. It turned out that it had not actually occurred, and it was understood that the traumatic experience in the daughter's fantasy was recalled and affected her body as symptoms.

(In fact, according to research by Elizabeth Loftus et al., the lost-in-the-mall experiment)
"False memories where, despite never having been lost in the past, subjects are made to recall the memory of being lost in detail and begin to speak as if it were a fact"

It is known that Freud did not leave these cases as mere false memories, but was elucidating the brain mechanism of why such recall occurs.

In other words, regarding this phenomenon of Eros and Thanatos, the psyche is not just a symbolic mind, but"pathways of excitation quantity"explaining it as neural energy paths.

Rio-Hortega 1919 Discovery of Microglia

Microglia are a type of glial cell, responsible for immune cells, and are called macrophages residing in the central nervous system.

It is a means of regulating physiological functions, and it is suggested that cytokines released from microglia activated by neurological disorders, stress, or intracellular infection cause inflammation in the nervous system, leading to functional impairment in the central nervous system and influencing diseases of the central nervous system (such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease).

Microglia have the function of patrolling the brain, and when they detect abnormalities, they react immediately and possess phagocytic activity to process foreign substances and dead cells.

They adjust and streamline the brain's synaptic networks, perform synaptic pruning that becomes active during childhood and adolescence, and organize emotions and memories to control information retrieval. This includes the function of forgetting unnecessary past situations.

They also support the plasticity (new formation) of neurons, aiming to strengthen learning and memory.

When nerves are excited during periods of overactivity such as stress, they partially destroy and suppress those circuits; however, because excessive action can lead to dissociation and dementia, they play the role of both self-defense and destroyer.

Recent research has shown that they are activated by thermal sensors and function more actively at high temperatures, which is thought to potentially accelerate recovery from damage.

Freud's 'Transference' and 'Microglia'

Microglia play a very important role in the brain.

Freud was in his later years when microglia were discovered. If the discovery of glial cells had occurred earlier and been incorporated into Freud's research, psychoanalysis might have been slightly different. It is unfortunate that neither Melanie nor his daughter Anna mentioned the mechanisms of the brain in their current work, but I think the fact that each branch of psychoanalysis has its own independent perspective is interesting.

The 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' in 1895 was an unfinished manuscript by Freud that modeled the flow and accumulation of energy in emotions and memories, and it is close to the concept of brain networks.

The interaction between neurons and microglia mediates sensations of pleasure/displeasure and the repetitive behavior of traumatic memories; this is microglia pruning, and the Oedipus complex can be interpreted as a release from pain or a transference symptom from the past regarding memories such as aversion or trauma toward a parent of the same sex.

In other words, while excessive stress, defense mechanisms, drives, and repression are interpreted in psychoanalysis as being captured as mechanical energy, the root of that energy is actually involved with microglia.

Summary

I realized that there are various branches of psychoanalysis, and I was at the stage of wondering where to start studying. In the midst of this, the book I found on ChatGPT that answered my long-standing questions about neurology and how the pulses of neurotransmitters function and why symptoms occur was,

'What Happens When Psychoanalysis Meets Brain Science?'
The Dissonance of Pleasure and Displeasure Created by Immune Cells
Author: Takahiro Kato
Publisher: Nippon Hyoron Sha, 2022

I am nothing but grateful for encountering this book. Although there are still many unknown aspects of microglia themselves, the way they work and how they are involved in our emotions and feelings makes the human mechanism truly intriguing.

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