What if the human brain worked in a way that Sigmund Freud began to describe more than 130 years ago? A new scientific analysis suggests that some of his ideas about the mind share surprising similarities with one of the most influential theories in modern neuroscience.
Published in the scientific journal EntropyThe article explores the connections between Freud’s original theories, later developments in psychoanalysis, and a modern approach to brain research known as the prediction paradigm.
This approach describes the brain as a prediction machine. Rather than simply reacting to information from the outside world, the brain is constantly anticipating what will happen next. It then compares these expectations to information from the senses and works to reduce any difference between what it predicted and what actually happened.
Scientists believe that this ongoing process plays a central role in how people perceive their environments, make decisions, behave, and regulate their emotions.
Researchers Erik Stänicke, Bendik Hovet, and Line Indrevoll Stänicke, and their colleagues, argue that this modern understanding of brain functioning has important parallels with ideas that psychoanalysts have been developing for more than a century.
“For over 130 years, psychoanalysis has developed psychological theories about how predictions occur at a subjective level, which cognitive neuropsychology now studies at the physiological level.”
How Freud’s Ideas Connect to the Predictive Brain
Although neuroscience and psychoanalysis approach the mind differently, researchers suggest that the two may describe related processes.
Neuroscience examines the physical mechanisms behind thought and behavior, often using mathematical models to explain how the brain processes information. Psychoanalysis, originating from the work of Freud, focuses more on unconscious mental processes, emotional experiences, and how past relationships influence present behavior.
In other words, one field studies what happens inside the brain, while the other explores how these processes are experienced by the individual.
A particularly interesting connection involves the psychoanalytic concept of projection and the neuroscientific concept of prediction.
In psychoanalysis, projection involves attributing feelings, intentions, or qualities to someone else. Researchers suggest this is similar to how the brain uses previously learned expectations to interpret new experiences.
“When we attribute qualities, intentions or feelings to other people, our brain shapes our experience of the world according to established expectations,” explains Stänicke.
For example, a person who has been repeatedly rejected may become particularly sensitive to signs that other people are rejecting them. Even an ambiguous remark or facial expression can be interpreted negatively, because past experiences have shaped the person’s expectations.
Over time, these expectations can influence how a person approaches unfamiliar situations and forms new relationships.
“This corresponds to the neuroscientific distinction between changing one’s own predictions, perceptual inference, and attempting to make the world conform to them, namely active inference.”
Perceptual inference refers to how the brain interprets sensory information and updates its expectations in response. Active inference, on the other hand, involves taking actions that help align experiments with predictions or reduce uncertainty.
Together, these concepts help explain why people do not always perceive the world as it objectively is. Their expectations can influence what they notice, how they interpret events, and how they respond to them.
Why the brain clings to negative expectations
Researchers believe the similarities between Freud’s ideas and modern neuroscience could offer valuable insights into mental health disorders, particularly those involving deeply established patterns of thought and behavior.
Both approaches describe the mind as constantly seeking stability and predictability. This tendency is linked to homeostasis, the process by which a system maintains a relatively stable internal state.
In the predictive model of the brain, reducing uncertainty is an important part of maintaining this stability. The brain relies on familiar expectations to make the world easier to understand, even when those expectations are inaccurate or no longer useful.
“Psychoanalysts refer to the mind’s tendency to recreate familiar relational patterns, even when these are maladaptive,” explains Stänicke.
This could help explain why people sometimes repeat harmful patterns in their relationships or continue to interpret situations negatively despite evidence that challenges their assumptions.
“Rigid and persistent symptoms, such as paranoid ideas or an internalized critical voice, may constitute stable but inflexible prediction models,” says Stänicke.
“For example, there may be people who automatically expect criticism, rejection or hostility from others and therefore interpret situations through this filter, even if reality does not warrant it.”
Such expectations can become deeply ingrained because they make experiences familiar and predictable. Even when the resulting interpretation is distorted, maintaining an established mental model may seem less uncertain than changing it.
According to Stänicke, this could explain why some psychological symptoms can persist for years and why changing long-standing patterns of thinking and behavior often takes a long time.
The link is particularly interesting because it suggests that some mental health problems may involve more than conscious beliefs. They may also reflect deeply learned expectations that automatically shape emotional responses and interactions with others.
How psychotherapy could help change deep-rooted patterns
Researchers also point out an important distinction between what people consciously believe and what they have learned through experience.
“Furthermore, both models give us insight into how parts of our expectations of the external world are rooted not only cognitively, but also in procedural memory that is expressed in relational ways of being,” he says.
Procedural memory is a type of long-term memory involved in learned habits and skills. This allows people to perform familiar actions without consciously thinking through each step.
In the context of relationships, researchers suggest that a similar form of learning might help explain why certain emotional reactions and interaction patterns become automatic.
For example, someone may understand intellectually that others are not necessarily hostile or critical, but nevertheless react instinctively as if rejection were inevitable.
These expectations are not simply thoughts that can be changed through reasoning. They can also be integrated into habitual ways of responding to people and navigating relationships.
This distinction may help explain why psychotherapy sometimes needs to address personal relationships and emotional experiences rather than focusing solely on conscious thoughts.
“Therefore, psychotherapy must sometimes work in a relational way. For example, new experiences in the relationship between therapist and patient can gradually contribute to changing entrenched relational patterns.”
Through repeated experiences that challenge familiar expectations, patients can gradually develop different ways of interpreting situations and interacting with others.
Bringing together psychoanalysis and Freud’s neuroscience
Researchers argue that linking psychoanalysis to modern predictive brain theory could benefit both fields.
Neuroscience can provide a biological framework for understanding the processes that psychoanalysts have long described through subjective experience. At the same time, psychoanalytic theories can offer more detailed explanations of how expectations are experienced emotionally, interpreted personally, and expressed through relationships.
The proposed similarities do not establish that Freud’s broader theories were correct. Instead, they suggest that two very different traditions of studying the mind might offer complementary ways of understanding some of the same psychological processes.
By examining both the physical mechanisms of the brain and the individual’s inner experience, researchers hope to develop a more complete understanding of human behavior and mental health.
“Bringing these two fields together can pave the way for a more holistic psychology, in which neurological mechanisms and subjective experience are included. In this way, we can understand subjectivity in a more scientific way.”
Gn Health
