Medication and Mental Structure

Abstract

Freud wondered if brain mechanisms were involved in psychotic illness. Now we have powerful medications that act on the brain to affect the ability of the mind to interact with reality. It is clear, then, that the brain and its physiology are important in mental functioning, at least in the area of the intersection between mind and reality. Psychoanalysis has, in Hartmann’s ego psychology, a description of the areas of mental functioning that engage reality. Medication affects the same areas of mental structure that are affected by psychotic and near psychotic illnesses. These areas have their own developmental lines and autonomies from emotional dynamics, and therefore it is tempting to say descriptively that a known intersection between neurological functioning, reality, and mental functioning is through the area of the autonomous ego apparatuses and functionings.