Our Symbolic Minds: What Are They Really?

This paper grounds the symbolic mind in the natural history of the human species. After presenting an evolutionary cognitive explication of the distinctions in communicative minds between human and non-human social species, the paper examines the affective basis of animal cognition as argued by neuropsychoanalytic theorists. In the human species, affect not only motivates learning about the world, it also forms the basis of our symbolic minds. It is the unique projection of our animalian affect into shared, external formulations that constitutes the intersubjectivity of our culturally-mediated minds. The import of this argument for psychoanalytic practice is then briefly considered.