Formal Approaches in Computational Psychoanalysis and the Embodiment Issue

Abstract

In the last decades in the domain of cognitive sciences benefitted from the integration of contributions coming from different disciplines, such as neurosciences, cognitive neuropsychology, I.T., linguistics and so on. The functional architectures approach, either implemented with hard or soft computation, or with mixed models, has been a relevant conceptual tool that has provided a unifying framework for many research attempts in the field. The advancement of new conceptualizations based on embodied cognition, the research paradigm emerging from the discovery of mirroring systems in the animal and human brain, is questioning this unitary approach. In fact, mirroring systems seems to provide an explanation for human behaviour that cannot be easily reduced to a computational description. Here then author will present and discuss some formal approaches to the psychoanalytic theory, which could favour a better integration of disembodied and embodied cognition. These models are based on a topological implementation of the classical Freudian Conscious/Unconscious distinctions and on the theory of Bi-Logic mental functioning proposed by Matte Blanco.