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Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal

for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences
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Commentary by James H. Schwartz (New York)

James H. Schwartz

Center for Neurobiology & Behavior, 722 West 168th StreetResearch Annex, New York,
NY 10032
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: James H. Schwartz (2000) Commentary by James H. Schwartz (New York), Neuropsychoanalysis: An
Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 2:1, 36-37, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2000.10773280
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James H. Schwartz

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Commentary by James H. Schwartz (New York)

How seriously should we take Crick and Koch's idea

of an unconscious homunculus?
The homunculus was defined by Paracelsus in a
treatise published in 1572 entitled De natura rerum,
which gives the recipe for synthesizing the creature
(Pagel, 1982, p. 117). A homunculus is produced by
incubating sperm in a hermetically sealed vessel for
60 days in horse manure at high temperatures. Then, if
fed properly, the product is an artificial man generated
without the assistance of a woman (paracelsus, p.
124). Like other instances of artificial men (most notably, the Golem), the homunculus was regarded as we
now regard extraterrestrials-with fear, disbelief, and
satire. The concept of the little man, however, was
taken quite seriously by late seventeenth-century biologists to explain the role of sperm in reproduction.
Some early microscopists actually drew a little man
in the sperm. Others, like Antoni van Leeuwenhoek,
who saw only worms in his sperm samples, nevertheless concluded that man with all of his adult parts first
exists as a little animal contained within the sperm.
Still others placed the little man in the egg (PintoCorreia, 1997).
At the beginning of the eighteenth century,
knowledge about how animals develop was primitive.
There were two warring schools. One believed that
the material in the egg was preformed, being arranged
precisely as in the mature animal. For the preformist
school, the sperm simply acts as a trigger. The other
school, the epigenetic, considered the material within
the egg to be formless. A little man fully formed in
miniature in the sperm would grow after entering
the egg.
We now know that neither school was correct and
that postulating a little man either in the sperm or in
the egg does not provide an adequate explanation of
development. Yet, there are aspects of the idea of a
homunculus that are formally correct. Although a little
man does not actually exist in either gamete fully
formed, he is present in the form of information: the
genome provides a complete plan for the developmental program.
Crick and Koch tell us that their unconscious homunculus is not to be confused with Penfield's anthroJames H. Schwartz is professor of Cellular Biophysics & Physiology,
and of Neurology and of Psychiatry, Center for Neurobiology & Behavior,
Columbia University, New York.

poid maps of sensory and motor areas in the cortex

(Penfield and Rasmussen, 1950). Nevertheless, these
maps are in the craniological tradition initiated by
Franz Joseph Gall at the beginning of the nineteenth
century (Spurzheim, 1815) and subsequently elaborated and corrected by Paul Broca, Karl Wernike, John
Hughlings Jackson, and others. Mental functions can
now be mapped by direct recordings of neuronal firing
using microelectrodes (in human patients during surgery for epilepsy, as done by Penfield) or by assessing
the increased blood flow resulting from the metabolic
activity of neurons when they fire using modern techniques of imaging-positron emission tomography
(PET) scan and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRl). Perhaps the most extensive mapping of
brain function has been accomplished for the visual
system, where about 30 distinct functional brain areas
have been delineated. Because it has been so well
charted, Crick and Koch have understandably chosen
to focus their attention on the visual system (Crick
and Koch, 1990, 1995, 1998).
Two fundamental assumptions underlie these
modern methods of mapping mental functions. The
first is obvious: that the functions result from the activity of nerve cells. This assumption, called the "astonishing hypothesis" by Crick (1993), however obvious,
must be made clear. It presumes that consciousness is
an ordinary biological phenomenon emerging out of
the firing behavior of a specific and identifiable subset
of neurons, the neural correlates of consciousness
(NCC).

The other fundamental assumption about mapping a neural function is that the localization of the
increased neural activity will help to explain how the
particular function works. (Thus, it is clear that localizing lesions in the brain can be medically useful,
but this has been appreciated at least since the seventeenth century B.C. [Breasted, 1930].) Understandably,
the usefulness of this second assumption has been
most clearly demonstrated with Penfield-type homunculi and other parts of the brain where function is
organized somatypically. In these regions the structural organization of the brain appears to make mechanistic sense. The arrangements of neurons that follow
the body image in the cortex seem immediately intelligible. The somatypic organization of the primary sensory and motor cortices most likely stems from the

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Commentary on the Unconscious Homunculus

arrangement of neurons and target organs during phylogeny and development. In simpler animals and early
in development, neurons tend to be close to the body
part they innervate. Consequently, neurons that control adjacent body parts continue to be close together
and stay together as the nervous system develops. The
adult organization does not follow the body plan directly, presumably because the arrangement can be
altered during development. Despite the distortion, the
design principle usually is obvious. (As basic a feature
as crossing over still remains to be explained, however.) Without even a clue about the design principle
of consciousness, understanding the relationship between brain structure and consciousness promises to
be very difficult.
Crick and Koch's hypothesis of an unconscious
homunculus does not depend on any anatomical localization. Rather, it has the quality of a psychological
construct involving inferred mental functions only: the
homunculus receives information about the world and
executes voluntary actions. What becomes conscious
is only a representation of some of the activity of the
unconscious homunculus. These representations become conscious only in the form of sensory imagery
and of spoken and unspoken speech. Nothing reaches
consciousness directly: perceptions must be processed
by the homunculus (which, as defined, is unconscious). Consciousness therefore functions as the
mind's inner eye.
Crick and Koch cite Freud (1923) as a precursor
to the idea that consciousness is indirect, but Freud, I
think wisely, puts in a caveat: "It dawns upon us like
a new discovery that only something which has once
been a perception can become conscious, and that anything arising from within (apart from feelings) that
seeks to become conscious must try to transform itself
into external perception" (emphasis added). "Apart
from feelings"-here the brain's activities can be divided into three functions: sensory, motor, and motivational. While it is difficult to picture how motor
activity per se might become conscious, must drives
and feelings first be converted into sensory perceptions to become conscious?
Much of the brain's activity takes place in the unconscious and is either extremely difficult to bring into
consciousness (like Freud's preconscious) or is never
available to consciousness (like the processing of sensory information, the mechanisms that produce qualia,
the motor plans used to maintain posture, ride bicycles,
or play the piano). To some extent, therefore, Crick and
Koch's formulation of consciousness as an extension of
an unconscious homunculus is similar to psychological

formulations like Freud's structural theory of the mind

and his views on the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious (Freud, 1939).
These philosophical psychological formulations
that deal with poorly defined processes and interactions between unidentified parts that potentially should
map onto the brain bear resemblance to the homunculus postulated in the seventeenth century to explain the
magnificent plan by which the human body develops.
What was correct about that homunculus is that it
specified that a precise and complete plan is present
in some form. What is clear and important about Crick
and Koch's idea is the recognition that consciousness,
an extension of a neural entity with an as yet indeterminate anthropoid design, can be approached experimentally with neurobiological methods.

References
Breasted, J. H. (1930), The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus,
2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications.
Crick, F. (1993), The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific
Search for the Soul. New York: Simon & Schuster.
- - - Koch, C. (1990), Some reflections on visual awareness. Cold Spring Harb. Symp. Quant. Bioi., 55:953-962.
- - - - - - (1995), Are we aware of neural activity in
primary visual cortex? Nature, 375:121-123.
- - - - - - (1998), Consciousness and neuroscience.
Cereb. Cortex, 8:97-107.
Freud, S. (1923), The Ego and the Id. Standard Edition,
19:1-59. London: Hogarth Press, 1961.
- - - (1939), An outline of psychoanalysis. Psychical
qualities. Standard Edition, 23:144-147. London: Hogarth Press, 1964.
Pagel, W. (1982), Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance, 2nd
rev. ed. Basel: Karger.
Paracelsus (1572), De natura rerum. The Hermetic and ALchemical Writings of Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus
Bombast, of Hohenheim, called Paracelsus the Great,
Now for the First Time Faithfully Translated into English, Vol. 1, Hermetic Chemistry, ed. A. E. Waite. New
Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1967.
Penfield, W., & Rasmussen, T. (1950), The Cerebral Cortex
of Man: A Clinical Study of Localization of Function.
New York: Macmillan.
Pinto-Correia, C. (1997), The Ovary of Eve. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Spurzheim, J. G. (1815), The Physiognomical System. London: Baldwin, Craddock, and Joy.

James H. Schwartz
Center for Neurobiology & Behavior
722 West 168th Street-Research Annex
New York, NY 10032