Dr Leonardo Niro
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Email
l.niro@essex.ac.uk -
Telephone
+44 (0) 1206 872209
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Location
5A.211, Colchester Campus
Profile
Biography
*I am currently on a sabbatical from the University Essex while I work towards the completion of my monographs as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University (USA) and the Remarque Institute, New York University (USA)* I joined the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies in 2013, where I currently serve as the Course Director at the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies. I led the creation of the BA Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, which I also directed from 2016-2018. I am the organiser of the Research Group in History of Psychoanalysis, an Essex-based international network of researchers studying the history of psychoanalysis. My research interests lie in the history and philosophy of the human sciences broadly construed. In June 2024, I was the co-host and programme chair of the 43rd Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Human Sciences (ESHHS), which took place at our Colchester campus. I have extensively written on the history and philosophy of the psychological sciences (experimental psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience and psychoanalysis) from the nineteenth century to today. One question that animates my research is how authors in those disciplines justified the demarcation between the psychological sciences and the natural sciences, reflecting different views on the relation between mind and nature. My work follows a historical epistemology approach where I investigate the conceptual issues emerging from different models, metaphors, and practices employed in the conception and manipulation of the Self. I am currently involved in two research projects. The first, entitled “Freud and the Legacy of Physiology,” explores the personal, social, cultural, and theoretical impact of Freud’s engagement with physiology during his early training as a physician. Recent articles linked to this project include “Freud and the Legacy of Sensory Physiology” (published in Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis), “Evolution in the Brain, evolution in the Mind: The Hierarchical Brain and the Interface between Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience” (published in Psychoanalysis and History), and “‘Freedom within parameters’: Liberalism, (In)determinism, and the Politics of Instinct in Sigmund Exner and Sigmund Freud” (in print, History of Human Sciences). The second project, entitled “Minding Energy”, consists of a trans-national study where I explore how different psychologists, psychiatrists, neurophysiologists and depth psychologists engaged with notions of force and energy as a way of conceptualising mental phenomena – in particular, it explores the function such energetic formulations had in the emergence and constitution of psychology as an autonomous science in different contexts. A preliminary conference on the topic was organised in 2020 with colleagues from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. I spent the first half of 2023 working on the project during a fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Germany), funded by the Institute of Social Research Foundation. Recent articles linked to this project include “The Conservation of Nervous Energy: Neurophysiology and Energy Conservation in the Work of Sigmund Exner and Josef Breuer” (published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science), and “Energetics of the Mind and the Parallelismusstreit: the Assimilation of the Law of Energy Conservation in German Experimental Psychology, 1860-1915” (under review). I welcome enquiries about projects in the history and philosophy of the human sciences, psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis; the interactions of the psy-disciplines with other sciences; psychoanalytic theory; and psychoanalysis and the neurosciences.
Qualifications
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PhD University College London,
Appointments
University of Essex
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Director of Graduate Studies, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex (1/9/2022 - 31/8/2023)
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Course Director - M.A. in Psychoanalytic Studies, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex (1/9/2013 - present)
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Course Director - B.A. in Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex (1/9/2016 - 31/8/2018)
Other academic
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Visiting Scholar, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University (1/5/2024 - 30/4/2026)
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Visiting Scholar, Remarque Institute, New York University (1/5/2024 - 30/4/2026)
Research and professional activities
Research interests
History of Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Psychological Practices
Philosophy of Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Psychological Practices
History of the Human Sciences
Philosophy of Mind
History of Psychiatry
History and Philosophy of Science
Current research
Energising the Mind
This project develops a transnational theoretical-comparative approach to the history of science, exploring the different ways that psychologists, neurophysiologists, and psychiatrists engaged with notions of force and energy as a way of conceptualising mental phenomena. Energetic models were ubiquitous in the psychological sciences of the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Scientists with projects as widely distinct as Gustav Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt, William James, Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud, and Ivan Pavlov, amongst many others, made use of notions of force and/or energy to explain mental phenomena at some point in their work. Although their use of the concept(s) showed marked differences, they all emphasized the need for the psychological sciences (neurophysiology, psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis) to frame the activities of the mind and/or brain around the concept of a quantity – conceived as force or energy – that would at least partially explain some features of our mental functioning. In his in-depth analysis of the impact of thermodynamics in nineteenth-century physiology, Richard Kremer contended that energy conservation at the time took on the status of ‘an all-encompassing natural law, unifying all sciences just at a time when disciplinary and institutional specialization seemed to be permanently fragmenting the scientific enterprise’ – by which he particularly meant the natural sciences. His thesis can also be extended to the emergent human sciences, in disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and political economy. Within the context of “crisis” and fragmentation of science in the late-nineteenth century, the concept of energy allowed for the unification of matter, life, the mind, and society by providing a single common currency capable of being circulated within widely different domains, as well as of being further assimilated together with various local traditions and epistemic practices by formulating energetic concepts specifically adapted to each particular field. Psychologists were therefore compelled to consider the impact of energy conservation – and later, also entropy – in their emergent science. In either trying to make use of the theoretical framework of the organic physics group, or rejecting their mechanistic view of life, the “new” psychologists engaged in broader debates on physiology – and, in particular, on teleology and vital forces. In assimilating conceptual frameworks from physiology to psychology, these psychologists re-enacted models, problems, answers, and disputes analogous to the debate classically described as mechanism vs. vitalism that were at the centre of the life sciences from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. The assimilation of the “global” principles of energy conservation was, however, intrinsically local, and the specific forms energetic concepts took in the psychological sciences reflected the problems and practices for which they were formulated. If in the life sciences the reception of energetic concepts from physics was informed by the specific problems of the field (purposiveness, organisation, generation, evolution, growth), in psychology the mind-body problem, as well as the problem of the origins of qualities of consciousness, of morality, free will, education and psychopathology received particular consideration of authors at the time, and have shaped the reception of these dynamic and energetic concepts in the science.
Freud and the Legacy of Physiology
Psychoanalysis is an inherently interdisciplinary science, and a rich and long tradition of historical scholarship has demonstrated how psychoanalytic ideas were influenced by those stemming from disciplines as disparate as philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, sexology, and neurology. Relatively little attention, however, has been given to physiology’s impact in psychoanalysis – despite the fact that Freud spent some of his most formative years working at the Institute of Physiology of the University of Vienna, then headed by the German physiologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. This book aims to fill that important gap in the literature by providing not only to an assessment of the ideas and theories Freud inherited from his engagement with physiology, but to evaluate the personal, social and cultural impact of the physiology group of Vienna in his formation. The monograph will conduct a broader exploration of the intellectual environment of the physiology institute itself, and historically locate Freud the man and scientist within it. This entails understanding the history of the institute prior to Freud’s arrival, the research programme followed there, the motivation for the lines of investigation and experimentation pursued, as well as exploring the nature of the professional and personal ties maintained amongst its members and the political background which, in way or other, has informed their research programme. As shall be demonstrated, Freud was embedded in an institutional structure that transcended him, and was immersed in a carefully crafted research programme – one that may have represented one of the most marking philosophical and scientific influence in his thinking.
Conferences and presentations
’Freedom within Parameters’: Liberalism, (In)determinism, and the Politics of Instinct in Sigmund Exner and Sigmund Freud
Invited presentation, Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Society Working Group, New York, United States, 12/2/2025
Is Love a Natural Force? Energy Conservation and the Origins of Psychoanalysis
Invited presentation, Richardson Seminar on the History of Psychiatry, New York, United States, 18/12/2024
Unconscious Life under the Microscope: Freud on the Relationship between Methodology and Observation
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, II Congresso Internacional PhilPsych., 12/12/2024
Energetics of the mind and the Parallelismusstreit: the assimilation of the law of Energy Conservation in German Experimental Psychology, 1860-1915
Invited presentation, History of Psychology Forum, Groningen, Netherlands, 18/9/2024
Is love a natural force? On the origins, vicissitudes, and limits of Freud’s economic model
43nd Conference of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences, COLCHESTER, United Kingdom, 22/6/2024
Is the inner psychological? Towards a macro-history of internalisation
Invited presentation, Revising the Internalization Paradigm workshop, COLCHESTER, United Kingdom, 15/1/2024
Is love a natural force? The origins and vicissitudes of Freud’s metapsychology of drives and psychic energy
Invited presentation, Workshop “The Embodied Social Subject: Drive and Affect, Psychoanalysis and Hegel’s thought”, St. John's College, Oxford, United Kingdom, 16/12/2023
Freud and the Legacy of Sensory Physiology
Invited presentation, Guangzhou, China, 13/12/2023
O ‘Projeto de uma Psicologia’ de Freud e a fundação da psicanalise
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, II Congresso Internacional PhilPsych & III Simpósio de História e Filosofia da Psicologia, PhilPsyCh - Rede de pesquisa em história e filosofia dos saberes psy e das ciências humanas, 7/10/2023
Energetics of the mind and the Parallelismusstreit
Invited presentation, 42nd Conference of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences, Rome, Italy, 5/7/2023
From the Forces of Life to the Energies of Mind
Invited presentation, Navigating interdisciplinarity: climate change, disaster, energy, and force, Berlin, Germany, 22/6/2023
A Tale of two Oedipuses: scientific liberalism and the universal knower
55th Annual Meeting of Cheiron – The International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences, New York, United States, 17/6/2023
A Tale of Two Oedipuses: Science, Liberalism, and the Universal Knower in Sigmund Exner and Sigmund Freud
Workshop of the Research Group in History of Psychoanalysis at the University of Essex, 19/4/2023
From the Forces of Life to the Energies of Mind
41st Conference of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences, Berlin, Germany, 6/9/2022
Between Mechanism and Vitalism: Energetic Models in the Scientific Projects of Exner, Breuer and Freud
German Forum for the History of the Human Sciences - International Workshop History of Psychology and the Sciences of the Human Mind, 17/3/2022
Between mechanism and vitalism: energetic models in the scientific projects of Exner, Breuer and Freud
Workshop on the History of Psychology and the Sciences of the Human Mind. German Forum for History of Human Sciences, Germany, 16/3/2022
Freud and the legacy of sensory physiology
Invited presentation, Open Seminar, Colchester, United Kingdom, 9/12/2020
Freud and the legacy of sensory physiology
Open Seminar, University of Essex, 9/12/2020
Entre vitalismo e mecanicismo: usos do conceito de energia em Sigmund Exner e Josef Breuer
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, DA FORÇA VITAL À ENERGIA PSÍQUICA: A MOBILIZAÇÃO DOS CONCEITOS DE FORÇA E ENERGIA NA BIOLOGIA E NA PSICOLOGIA, São Paulo, Brazil, 21/11/2020
The current state of psychoanalysis: A socio-historical account
Public lecture, Cali, Colombia, 25/2/2020
The current state of psychoanalysis: A socio-historical account
Public Lecture, Bogotá, Colombia, 18/2/2020
University of Essex Psychoanalytic Society. Case Study Reading Group.Theme: “One Case, Multiple Personalities”
21/1/2020
Fisiologia e Psicanalise: uma relação inexplorada
Public Lecture, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 18/6/2019
Fisiologia e Psicanalise: uma relação inexplorada
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Simposio de Historia e Filosofia da Psicologia, Universidade de Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil, 11/6/2019
Fisiologia e Psicanalise: uma relacao inexplorada
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Workshop: Fisiologia e Psicanalise: uma relacao inexplorada, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 10/6/2019
Fisiologia e Psicanalise: uma relacao inexplorada
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Simposio de Historia e Filosofia da Psicologia, Simposio de Historia e Filosofia da Psicologia, Juiz de Fora, Brazil, 5/6/2019
Psicanálise e neurociências: O desenvolvimento emocional e o desenvolvimento do cérebro
Invited presentation, Public Lecture, São Paulo, Brazil, 15/5/2018
Psicanálise e neurociências O desenvolvimento emocional e o desenvolvimento do cérebro
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 10/5/2018
PSICANÁLISE NA INGLATERRA: Um Panoranama
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 4/5/2018
Introduction to Neuropsychoanalysis
Invited presentation, Psychoanalysis, History and Political Life Forum, London, United Kingdom, 12/3/2013
Predictive Minds: From Helmholtz to Freud and the Free Energy Principle - Poster presentation at the Summer School on Embodied Inter-subjectivity : the 1st person and the 2nd person perspective (June, 2013), in Aegina, Greece. Organized by the Royal Holloway and the Institute of Advanced Studies, London.
2013
Introduction to Neuropsychoanalysis -Psychoanalysis, History and Political Life Forum (March, 2013), University of London
London, United Kingdom, 2013
From Neurology to Psychoanalysis: The Influence of Hughlings Jackson’s work in Freud's early conception of the mind and brain
25th Symposium de la Sociedad Espanola de Historia de la Psicologia, Santiago Compostela, Spain, 6/6/2012
Freud’s criticism of localizationism in 19th-Century German neurology
Middlesex Postgraduate Conference, London, United Kingdom, 15/5/2012
From Neurology to Psychoanalysis: The Influence of John Hughlings Jackson in the construction of Psychoanalysis
British Psychological Society History and Philosophy of Psychology Section Annual Conference, St. Hilda College, Oxford, UK, Oxford, United Kingdom, 10/4/2012
From Neurology to Psychoanalysis: The Influence of John Hughlings Jackson in the construction of Psychoanalysis -British Psychological Society History and Philosophy of Psychology Section Annual Conference (April, 2012), St. Hilda College, Oxford, UK
Oxford, United Kingdom, 2012
From Neurology to Psychoanalysis: The Influence of Hughlings Jacksons work in Freuds early conception of the mind and brain -XXV Symposium de la Sociedad Espanola de Historia de la Psicologia (2012)
Spain, 2012
Freuds Criticism of Localizationism in XIX Century German Neurology -Middlesex Postgraduate Conference (May, 2012), London, UK
London, United Kingdom, 2012
Teaching and supervision
Current teaching responsibilities
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Freud: Mind, Culture and Society (PA208)
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Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud and Object Relations (PA401)
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Psychoanalytic Theory (PA901)
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Psychoanalytic Epistemology (PA928)
Publications
Journal articles (7)
Niro, L., Energetics of the mind and the Parallelismusstreit: the assimilation of the law of energy conservation in German experimental psychology, 1860-1915
Niro, L., “Freedom within Parameters”: Liberalism, (In)determinism, and the Politics of Instinct in Sigmund Exner and Sigmund Freud. History of the Human Sciences
Niro, L., (2023). The conservation of nervous energy: Neurophysiology and energy conservation in the work of Sigmund Exner and Josef Breuer. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 102, 1-11
Niro, L., (2021). Social Evolution, Progress and Teleology in Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy and Freudian Psychoanalysis. American Imago. 78 (1), 105-130
Niro, L., (2021). Review of Giuseppe Craparo, Francesca Ortu and Onno van der Hart (eds), Rediscovering Pierre Janet: Trauma, Dissociation and a New Context for Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis and History. 23 (3), 376-380
Niro Nascimento, L., (2017). Evolution in the Brain, Evolution in the Mind: The Hierarchical Brain and the Interface between Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience. Psychoanalysis and History. 19 (3), 349-377
Palmer, R., Nascimento, LN. and Fonagy, P., (2013). The State of the Evidence Base for Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America. 22 (2), 149-214
Book chapters (4)
Niro, L., (2022). Freud and the Legacy of Sensory Physiology. In: The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy. Editors: Govrin, A. and Caspi, T., . Routledge. 104- 124. 9780367276454
Niro, L., (2022). Krieg. In: 365 x Freud: Ein Lesebuch für jeden Tag. Editors: Nolte, T. and Rugenstein, K., . Klett-Cotta. 978-3-608-98444-6
Niro, L., (2022). Freud and the legacy of sensory physiology. In: The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy. 105- 125
Nascimento, LN., (2012). From Neurology to Psychoanalysis: The Influence of Hughlings Jackson’s work in Freud’s early conception of the mind and brain. In: XXV Symposium de la Sociedad Espanola de Historia de la Psicologia. Sociedad Espanola de Historia de la Psicologia. 67- 68
Conferences (1)
Niro, L., Book of Abstracts. 43rd Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Human Sciences
Other (1)
Niro, L., (2023).How far would you go?
Grants and funding
2022
NIRO ISRF-MPIWG 220128
Independent Social Research Foundation
