Imagining a NeoFreudian Mind Interface: A Normative Model of Medical Humanities Research

This thesis argues for a new theory of medical humanities practice and research, known as Mind Interface Theory. It begins with the claim that Sigmund Freud expanded medical metaphysics considerably in "A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis," and that this expansion affords the possibility of thinking of the mind as a user interface. Capitalizing on this affordance, the work then introduces mind interface theory as one possible imagining of Freud's metaphysical system, separate from his well-known theory, psychoanalysis. More specifically, it uses his discussion of dreamwork to reveal reprocessing as mind interface's mechanism of healing, before utilizing this reprocessing principle to orient the medical humanities' research, providing a theoretical framework for increased collaboration between humanists and physicians and a foundation for two distinct modes of activist scholarship: product-based and process-based.