Soziales Netzwerk Psyche

In six steps I attempt to show how modernized psychoanalysis contributes to a ??social theory of mind?? (Mitchell, pp.?17?f.). First of all, the pluralism of schools is reflecting the lack of a psychoanalytic core theory, a shortcoming which is merely concealed by its conceptional oversupply and can only be overcome by scientific research. Secondly, I suggest to give up the inclination towards deep thinking, typical of our profession always on the lookout for new metaphors of the psyche, and to replace this inclination by the precise observation of interactions. Thirdly, I discuss the suggestion to understand the unconscious as a hidden link between self and the real world, as a relational tendency of the psyche to connect??a legacy of symbiotic experience??the inside with the outside not only in dreams but in reality. This is, fourthly, my understanding of the unconscious drive of human mind to express itself in a social world whose interactive platforms only allow that building of mental structures we call mentalization, according to Fonagy. Fifthly I point out that the monadic theory of mind implicated in classical drive theory is obsolete in a scientific sense in order to plead, sixthly, for a modernization of psychoanalysis replacing its central metaphor of the mental apparatus by that of a mental network: The modernized psyche is nowadays less in charge of managing intrapsychic drive-economy; its main duty in the age of modern reflexivity seems to be the skilful management of self-relation in the broadly stretched network of interpersonal relationships.