The main goal of this book has been to show how the new brain sciences are so affected by neoliberal ideology that we can consider many of them to be political theories masquerading as scientific discoveries. Just as neoliberalism stresses the role of the private individual adapting to an unequal social system, neuroliberalism focuses on how evolution has preprogrammed us to pursue our self-interest by trying to outcompete others. In this context, capitalist markets are seen as natural structures dedicated to sorting out winners and losers in a cultural form of evolutionary selection. Likewise, meritocracy can be viewed as the liberal version of this naturalized competitive order where people are rewarded for their learned or natural talents instead of their inherited wealth.

In my reading of Steven Pinker’s Blank Slate and other works by evolutionary psychologists, I pointed out that much of their publications deal with discrediting the social sciences, psychoanalysis, cultural theory, progressive parenting, and welfare state programs. Not only do these neuroliberal discourses want to show how their approach to understanding human nature is superior to the humanities and traditional social sciences, but they also desire to discredit progressive attempts to intervene in society to make the world more fair and just. From the perspective of these new brain sciences, since we are determined by our genes to act in certain programmed ways, there is no ability to go against universal human nature.

To counter these neuroliberal discourses, I have turned to psychoanalysis to show how the Freudian conceptions of sexuality and the unconscious reveal the limitations of neuroscience , evolutionary psychology , and behavioral economics . As Freud discovered throughout his work, humans often engage in self-destructive behavior that counters the evolutionary focus on self-regulation and survival. Moreover, the ability of individuals to combine pleasure with pain and fiction with reality opens a space for disrupting biological determinism. Starting with his first work with hysterical patients, Freud discovered that not only did their physical symptoms not make anatomical sense, but the patients themselves did not know the origin or causes for their mental illnesses.

As we saw in the last chapter, Freud anticipated what would happen if psychoanalysis was absorbed into the medical world. By repressing the unconscious and committing to a biological explanation for mental processes, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have bought into the Government University Medical Pharmaceutical complex. One of the results of this system is that social discontent is medicalized, and drugs are seen as the main option for mental discomfort. Moreover, as neoliberal society pushes people to compete for scarce resources in an unequal and unfair society, which blames individuals for their failures, people turn to medication to relieve their stress and anxiety. In fact, citizens are told that if they want to succeed in the competitive rat race, they should take performance enhancement drugs that will help them focus and work long hours.

The irony is that as neoliberal culture undermines the welfare state and other public institutions, people are informed that they only have themselves to blame, and yet, they are also told that it is their genes and neurotransmitters that are actually running the show. The ideology of individualism is thus coupled with an anti-individual discourse of biological determinism. Like the premodern belief in predestination, neuroliberalism tells us that we will be rewarded for our individual efforts and talents, but all of our mental processes have been preprogrammed through natural selection. The paradox of this cultural moment, then, is that the celebration of the individual over society is coupled with a belief in the inability of the individual to overcome universal human nature.

Instead of seeing the new brain sciences as being objective, neutral, and unbiased, I have stressed that their vision of human nature is deeply political and historical, and one reason why neuroliberal discourses may be so bent on undermining the social sciences and the humanities is that they want to eliminate any discourse that can call them into question. As Lacan always insisted, in any discourse, we must ask who is really speaking and who are they really speaking to? Although scientists want to believe that they are speaking to everyone from a position of no one, we have seen that the new brain sciences are full of assumptions and partial views that just happen to reinforce the social and economic status quo.