|
Symptom, Cause, Cure: Freud's Topographical Model | |||||
|
§ Note. I am not a Freud scholar. Do not presume this interpretation is correct.
1. Freudian psychoanalysis is an explanatory theory for recognizing symptoms, interpreting their cause, and establishing a cure for the ills of our psychological life. Within our physical life, we judge ourselves ill when our body happens to malfunction in some way or we begin to have bodily sensations we deem uncharacteristic of the way our body usually feels. Within our psychological life, the procedure of recognizing our own "mental illness" is more complex. The dichotomy of subject and object isn't as clearly available as it was in the physical case where we had a mind sensing its body, because now the subject has become its own object. This paper looks at Freud's topographical model of the mind as presented in 1900 and in the metapsychological papers of 1915, and shows how the theory he builds upon that model portrays symptom, cause and cure in mental illness. 2. Freud's first step towards an interpretive theory of mental illness is to posit the existence of an unconscious factor to our mental processes. His initial rationale for this move came from his work in hypnosis and the treatment of hysteria, and from his study of dreams. From the start, Freud gave a determination or purpose to many of our unconscious processes. They are dynamic and move to reach expression in our lives. There is a contrary influence, itself an unconscious process, which functions to prevent these processes from reaching expression. This is the basis of Freud's theory of drives, resistance and repression. The conflict between those contending processes that seek expression and those which act to keep them from expression is ongoing throughout our life. A symptom is a physical or conscious expression, often modified by the ongoing conflict, of such a contending unconscious process. An apparent secondary effect of such an expression, such as emotional or cognitive dissonance, may also be regarded as a symptom. The unconscious processes causing the pathological symptoms are discovered by a procedure called free association, which involves the patient speaking without reservation about all mental processes as they spontaneously occur within awareness, i.e. with a freedom unhampered by shame, fear, guilt or any other emotion or directed act that might otherwise restrain speech. The method of cure through which the expressions and secondary effects of the ongoing, contending, unconscious processes, but never the processes themselves, are removed, involves a rerouting and (re)modification of these processes into less problematic expressions of the same process. The details of the theory offer the possible routing and modifications to be made. 3. In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud presents his first description of a topographical model of the mind, in which the mind, or mental apparatus, is imagined to be "built up of a number of agencies, arranged in a series one behind the other." [1900: 81] Although he conceives of these agencies or systems that comprise the mental apparatus to be non-material and supportive of psychical activity and not, for example, to be electro-chemical events, he immediately states that "in a given psychical process the excitation passes through the systems in a particular temporal sequence" [575] and that "reflex processes remain the model of every psychical function." [576] In saying that the psychical processes are analogous to reflex processes, Freud is claiming that psychical processes operate in a deterministic manner. The metaphor of "excitation passing through the systems" suggests a kind of psychical energy that moves about within the mental apparatus via the psychical processes. These are assumptions of the theory, not extra-theoretical facts, or consequences of it. 4. Freud conceives his model of the mental apparatus as a series, placing perception (of both internal and external stimuli) at one end and motor action at the other. Notice that the endpoints of this mental apparatus are coupled in an unspecified way with the physical body. He silently postpones settling on a system to account for motor action, but posits a perceptual system, abbreviated Pcpt, to account for perception. Perceptions of internal stimuli, i.e. proprioceptive perceptions, will play an important part in this theory of drives and consequently in his theory concerning the cause of mental illness. Elsewhere in the text, Freud speaks offhandedly of "the psychical perceptual system of the visual organ" [585] and so we may assume, though he never explicitly mentions it when discussing Pcpt, that there are psychical perceptual systems corresponding to each physical perceptual system of the body. We will, however, ignore this ambiguity and continue to speak of a single system Pcpt. 5. Freud conjectures that memory-traces are "left in our psychical apparatus of the perceptions that impinge upon it" [576], but he cannot imagine Pcpt retaining these traces, since if they were retained by Pcpt they would be "modifications of its elements" and therefore a change of the perceptual system itself. He therefore posits an unnamed "second system which transforms the momentary excitations of the first system into permanent traces." [577] Pcpt itself, then, retains nothing of the perceptual stimuli it receives. It is, in effect, without memory. 6. Memory (the function relating to a memory-trace) is retained associatively and so each memory-trace is in association with other memory-traces according to categories such as simultaneity, similarity, and other "kinds of coincidence" which Freud does not elaborate upon. [578] The mental apparatus retains these memory-traces and their associative connections within memory systems. Each system within the sequence is dedicated to a single association, the first system being concerned with simultaneity. Because there is a mental development to the individual, with early stages being less oriented to logical interpretation and classification of perceptions, the associations between the first traces lack logical coherence. [582] Freud views association between memory-traces within the apparatus to be a function of the degree of their conductive resistance "to the passage of excitation from those elements." [578] Memories "are in themselves unconscious. They can be made conscious; but there can be no doubt that they can produce all their effects while in an unconscious condition." [578] Note that memory-traces are the raw data of the mental apparatus. What has not entered the apparatus via Pcpt or is not based upon what has entered, cannot be part of the experience of the apparatus. 7. Through his study of dreams, Freud determined that two psychical agencies (besides consciousness itself) were needed that were not yet part of this model. One agency "submitted the activity of the other to a criticism which involved its exclusion from consciousness." [579] This critical agency Freud calls the Preconscious (Pcs) and the agency under criticism he names the Unconscious (Ucs). It is Pcs "which directs our waking life and determines our voluntary, conscious actions." [579] These agencies are then imagined to be systems (the distinction he's making between agency and system is unclear), with Pcs at the motor end of the sequence and Ucs between Pcs and the memory systems that lead back to Pcpt. The sequence can be imagined: Pcpt, mem1, mem2, ..., mem(t), ..., Ucs, Pcs. This is a simplification. For each mem(t) dealing with the association of simultaneity there must be a sequence of associative systems for some relation pertaining to the memories within mem(t). It's even more complicated than that, since memories that have no relation of simultaneity may have other relations. 8. At this point in the construction of the model there is nothing within the mental apparatus that is aware, not of the apparatus itself, nor of any part or system of the apparatus, nor of anything outside the apparatus. Every system and part within the present model is, in the descriptive sense, unconscious. 9. The final psychical system needed for this topographical model is the Conscious (Cs), which Freud says is "the system next beyond Pcs." [580] In a footnote added nineteen years later, he equates Cs with Pcpt, the system which in the linear, temporally ordered diagram is at the other end of the series from Pcs. This equivalence with Pcpt implies that Cs has no memory. Freud later claims that Cs is nothing but "a sense organ for the perception of psychical qualities." [654] The mind is its own object of knowledge. "The psychical apparatus, which is turned towards the external world with its sense organ of the Pcpt systems [sic], is itself the external world in relation to the sense organ of the Cs, whose teleological justification resides in this circumstance. [. . .] Excitatory material flows in to the Cs sense-organ from two directions: from the Pcpt system, whose excitation, determined by qualities, is probably submitted to fresh revision before it becomes a conscious sensation, and from the interior of the apparatus itself, whose quantitative processes are felt qualitatively in the pleasure-unpleasure series when, subject to certain modifications, they make their way to consciousness." [654] 10. This sounds like Cs isn't exactly equivalent to Pcpt. Recall that Pcpt receives both internal and external stimuli, so Pcpt is what perceives bodily sensations of every sort as well as any stimuli from the physical world that our body-based sensory systems pick up. The system Cs perceives psychical qualities situated in the mental apparatus, not, that is, in the external or physically internal world. The quantitative measurement of excitation within the psychical apparatus, however this might occur, is somehow sensed by Cs as some grade of quality of pleasure or unpleasure, according to Freud's theory. Saying all of this in another way: Pcpt is a psychical system perceiving, without awareness or recall, what Freud, thinking on the analogy of the reflex processes, calls "stimuli" from the physical world, both within us and without. These stimuli are physical qualities. Once Pcpt perceives these qualities they exist within the mental apparatus as psychical quantities, if memory-traces, stored within the memory systems are quantities. Freud says that Cs is perceiving psychical qualities, which seems the wrong way to speak. He seems aware of this and mentions "certain modifications" that occur before Cs perceives the psychical, quantitative process as a quality. [See paragraph 26 below for additional comments on Cs.] 11. It certainly looks like Freud has gone back on the equivalence Pcpt=Cs and instead is saying that for any process to be within Cs it must go through the mediation of psychical quantity. Pcpt perceives physical qualities, these are transformed and stored by the mental apparatus as psychical quantities and only available to Cs under a further transformation into psychical qualities. Is he mixing a little neurology into his psychology, or is Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) open in the background? 12. Neurology, at least, indeed lies behind Freud's theorizing about the mental apparatus. In his abandoned Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), he writes: "A psychological theory deserving any consideration must furnish an explanation of 'memory'. Now any such explanation comes up against the difficulty that it must assume on the one hand that neurones are permanently different after an excitation from what they were before, while nevertheless it cannot be disputed that, in general, fresh excitations meet with the same conditions of reception as did the earlier ones. It would seem, therefore, that neurones must be both influenced and also unaltered, unprejudiced. We cannot off-hand imagine an apparatus capable of such complicated functioning; the situation is accordingly saved by attributing the characteristic of being permanently influenced by excitation to one class of neurones, and, on the other hand, the unalterability — the characteristic of being fresh for new excitations — to another class. Thus has arisen the current distinction between 'perceptual cells' and 'mnemic cells' — a distinction, however, which fits into no other context and cannot itself appeal to anything in its support." [1966: 299]This is the precursor to his system (or systems) Pcpt and to his concern about memory-traces being laid down by a system separate from Pcpt. It also seems to be the origin for his hypothesis of excitation occurring in a psychical process. This supposition of a quantitative, psychical excitation within the mental apparatus is the basis of Freud's theory of cathexis. 13. What about Kant? In The Unconscious (1915), Freud writes: "In psycho-analysis there is no choice for us but to assert that mental processes are in themselves unconscious, and to liken the perception of them by means of consciousness to the perception of the external world by means of sense-organs. [. . .] The psycho-analytic assumption of unconscious mental activity appears to us [. . .] as an extension of the corrections undertaken by Kant of our views on external perception. Just as Kant warned us not to overlook the fact that our perceptions are subjectively conditioned and must not be regarded as identical with what is perceived though unknowable, so psycho-analysis warns us not to equate perceptions by means of consciousness with the unconscious mental processes which are their object. Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be." [1989: 577]So it's likely that Freud never meant to say literally that Pcpt=Cs. The mediation of psychical quantities between Pcpt and Cs, the "fresh revision" of the excitation from Pcpt before becoming a "conscious sensation" and the necessary admixture, "subject to certain modifications", from the "interior of the apparatus" of a "felt" quality within the pleasure-unpleasure series are all part of Freud's bow to Kant's theory of the subjective conditioning of perception. 14. Freud designed the topographical model to capture the chronology of our mental development. "Primitive methods of expression and representation" and "older psychical structures" occur earlier in our development and so lie "nearer to the perceptual end" of the topography. [1900: 587] It is significant that Pcs is considered "pre"-conscious. Developmentally, Pcs exists before Cs, and Ucs before Pcs. "There can be no doubt that [the mental] apparatus has only reached its present perfection after a long period of development." [604] We are born unconscious and only later acquire the psychical system Cs. This is reminiscent of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) in which the spirit or mind comes to know itself. 15. Freud elaborates on this idea of mental development and its descriptive correspondence with the theorized model of the mental apparatus. Initially, the apparatus comprises nothing but the systems Pcpt, Ucs, and the intermediating memory systems, which correlate the memory-traces. At this stage there is no causal connection from the apparatus to motor action. Somatic drives, such as hunger and thirst, generate a persistent stimulus which in a later stage of the apparatus will be called the affect of unpleasure. This stimulus of unpleasure activates the most fundamental process of the entire apparatus: to stop the stimulus through the satisfaction of the drive. This fundamental process is called a wish. Technically, unpleasure is a quality and not experienced by non-Cs systems. [See paragraphs 20 and 27 below for further discussion.] The only recourse for wish-fulfillment is to regress along the temporal series of the apparatus through the memory systems, locate the memory-traces of the perception that occurred when the drive was originally satisfied, and "re-evoke the perception." [605] This is, in essence, a hallucination. The memory is "located" through the simultaneity association between the memory of the original experience of satisfaction and the perception(s) that accompanied it. "The reappearance of the perception is the fulfillment of the wish." [605] Hallucination cannot ultimately block the drive stimulus of hunger or thirst and so the apparatus must couple itself with motor action. Thus arises the system Pcs, which "directs our waking life and determines our voluntary conscious actions." [579] With the appearance of Pcs, a stimulus may be stopped either by satisfaction, which removes the need for the stimulus, or recoil, which removes the perception of it. Perceptions of external stimuli may be circumvented through recoil, whereas the perceptions of internal stimuli, which occur as drives with an aim, must be satisfied to be stopped. 16. It's not clear if Freud considers Pcs a necessary factor of wakefulness. He says that it is Pcs that has the need for sleep [614], but is this also then to say that without it one cannot be awake? Presumably, Pcs isn't active in the mind of the newborn infant. Is the infant asleep until Pcs arises or is it that Pcs develops in stages, with wakefulness being an early function, and motor control arising later? 17. Freud speaks of excitation and cathexis in his discussion of mental development. In the episode of the hallucinating apparatus, the drive produces an excitation that is satisfied by a complete cathexis of the perception. This is a carry-over from his abandoned Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895) where neurones are occupied (cathected) with quantitative excitation "in a state of flow" from one neurone to another. [1966: 296] This stimulus of quantity of excitation is discharged and transferred from neurone to neurone until the excitation is finally removed from the nervous system through muscular or glandular action, which uses up the energy. [314] Cathexis is essentially Freud's way of saying which part of the apparatus is active. If a drive or process is cathected, it is "excited" and working to achieve satisfaction, or in the case of a system, e.g. Pcpt, it has become activated or made available for the passage of "excitatory processes." [1900: 582] Anti-cathexis is an activation in one part of the apparatus in oppositional response to the cathexis of another part. Attention-cathexis [632, 653-5] is the focus of Pcpt, Pcs, or Cs (also Ucs?) upon a particular psychical process, which strongly implies that this isn't necessarily, if ever, a condition or intermediary processes of conscious awareness. Cathexis, then, is not a conscious act or a condition of being conscious. It is a psychical, quantitative condition, not a quality, so its occurrence must be inferred from its effects. It is not, itself, perceived by Cs. 18. The question comes to mind of what makes Cs conscious? Attention-cathexis is what Cs assigns, so to speak, to whatever it is focused upon. Pcs can do the same, without being conscious at all. [653] Yet Freud says: "Becoming conscious is connected with the application of a particular psychical function, that of attention [. . .] ." [632] and on the next page he speaks of a train of thought which was occurring in Pcs (unconsciously, of course) and has caught the attention of Cs through a purposive cathexis, "and in that event, through the agency of consciousness, receives a 'hyper-cathexis'." [633] The train of thought was cathected by Pcs and then when held within the attention of Cs, became hyper-cathected. The purposive cathexis was instrumental in bringing the train of thought into the attention of Cs, but it played no active part itself in the procedure. All that this means in everyday language is that the thought was in Pcs and somehow became conscious. Why and how did that occur? Cathexis isn't the explanation. 19. Psychical qualities are what Cs perceives. That's all it perceives, and it's the only system that does it. "[C]onsciousness, which we look upon in the light of a sense organ for the apprehension of psychical qualities, is capable in waking life of receiving excitations from two directions. In the first place, it can receive excitations from the periphery of the whole apparatus, the perceptual system; and in addition to this, it can receive excitations of pleasure and unpleasure, which proves to be almost the only psychical quality attaching to transposition of energy inside of the apparatus. All other processes in the psi-systems, including the Pcs, are lacking in any psychical quality and so cannot be objects of consciousness, except in so far as they bring pleasure or unpleasure to perception. We are thus driven to conclude that these releases of pleasure and unpleasure automatically regulate the course of cathectic processes." [613]What is that last sentence doing there? It's easy to understand that unless something is a quality it can't be perceived by Cs. That's part of the definition of Cs. Why does he move from speaking about Cs to speaking about the regulation of cathectic processes? He also appears to be speaking as if all affect is based upon pleasure-unpleasure, unless, that is, affect isn't a quality, which sounds a little odd. We are conscious of affects, aren't we? Are there unconscious affects? Is affect regulating the course of cathectic processes? 20. In a couple of asides, Freud seems to regard affect as the perceived quality of pleasure-unpleasure resulting from a drive stimulus activating a "motor or secretory function." [505, 621] So affect is indeed a quality and is coordinated with cathexis, but as a consequence, not a cause or regulator; and it's a consequence of excitation of motor or secretory function, which is a very specific sort of excitation; and in addition, it's the result of a drive stimulus, a very specific sort of stimulus. Affect, then, does not occur from any external stimulus. How does an affect regulate the course of cathectic process? Maybe Freud never meant to suggest affect plays that role. Besides, this isn't anything like what he seems to be saying later when he says that Cs receives "excitatory material [. . .] from the interior of the apparatus itself, whose quantitative processes are felt qualitatively in the pleasure-unpleasure series when, subject to certain modifications, they make their way to consciousness." [654] If affects are specific qualities of pleasure-unpleasure related to motor or secretory function then what are those other qualities of pleasure-unpleasure to be called? Or aren't there any others? And how could a quality regulate cathexis anyway? This just obscures the concept of cathexis even more. Isn't cathexis a psychical quantity, an activity of excitation? How could a quality that results from excitation feed back into the apparatus to create further excitation? Is Freud actually trying to say that drive stimuli regulate cathexis? That would mean, in this deterministic mental apparatus, that drive stimuli are the foundation, cause and, in a manner of speaking, the purpose of cathexis. [See also paragraph 28 below.] 21. Stimuli enter the apparatus through Pcpt, and the body itself is registered as a perception or collection of perceptions. Inner and outer is distinguished by the apparatus through the efficacy of motor action in the avoidance of a stimulus. [1989: 565] If it cannot be avoided by motor action it is internal. 22. In his theory of perception, Freud assumes what amounts to the equality stimulus=irritant. He imagines the mental apparatus as an eventually complex, reflex mechanism with various causal connections among its parts. The stimulus is an irritant that the mechanism reflexively acts against. This irritant is (possibly) perceived by Cs as the affect of unpleasure. Moreover, many internal stimuli, but not all, are drives, which in Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) are described as having a pressure, aim, source, and object. [1989: 566] (His argument that not every internal stimulus is a drive, i.e. instinct or need, uses, oddly, the example of an external stimulus of strong light upon the eye. [564]) Pressure is, in effect, the raw existence of the drive. It is "the amount of force or the measure of the demand for work which it represents." [566] It is the excitation itself. It is pressure that is perceived qualitatively by Cs as unpleasure. The aim of the drive is satisfaction. Freud is using psychological terms when speaking of satisfaction. The stimulus itself is simply the impetus to reflex. What that reflex is in relation to any particular stimulus is determined by the complex psycho-physiological assembly within which the stimulus is set. The aim of the drive does not come coded somehow within the stimulus. It is part of the configuration of the stimulus/reflex formation. The aim is represented qualitatively in the mental apparatus by the wish, or in contemporary terms, desire. In other words, Ucs, does not technically have a wish, it has an aim. (Quality is always a Cs representation of a psychical quantity.) What determines that aim is, in large part, the source of the drive, by which is meant the somatic process behind the stimulus. "What distinguishes from one another the mental effects produced by various instincts may be traced to the difference in their sources." [567] The object of the drive "is not originally connected with it, but becomes assigned to it only in consequence of being peculiarly fitted to make satisfaction possible." [567] It is around the object of the drive that the psychotherapeutic complexity of symptoms and their cause arises. But this quotation sounds halfway wrong. He is saying that the object of a drive, that which fulfills the drive's aim, is indeterminate at the inception of the drive. How can this be? If anything goes at the start, then all drives are the same and anything at all functions as the object of their aim, including, it would seem, nothing. Freud classifies all drives into two kinds: ego drives and sexual drives. [1963a: 89] Surely the sexual drives have primary objects, i.e. objects for which the drives exist in the first place? Isn't the "purpose" of a drive to create an action of some sort? How could that action be absolutely indeterminate? Were there two foundational drives from which all others sprang? What is the import of this classification of two drive types? [See also paragraph 37 below.] 23. As far as the apparatus is concerned, a drive is just another perception; at least at first stimulus. Inner perceptions differ from external in that inner stimuli cannot be avoided by recoil like outer stimuli can; they must be satisfied. Is Freud saying that perceptions themselves are a problem for the apparatus, and that every stimulus, every perception, is an impulse the apparatus will react to either avoid or satisfy? Not every stimulus demands some sort of satisfaction. Only drives do that. But as the apparatus develops things get radically more complicated. 24. In the Freudian model of the mind, Ucs is the initial and, ever after, disruptive, operative system. In contrast, Pcpt is nothing but a channel through which perceptions reach the apparatus, and the memory systems function together as a kind of exhaustive, relational database of those perceptions. It is not until Pcs comes into existence that conflict arises within the apparatus. The system Ucs has "no other aim than the fulfillment of wishes" and it "has at its command no other forces than wishful impulses." [1900: 607] Drawing on memory-traces that indicate instances of earlier satisfaction, Ucs seeks to gain control of the motor system in order to satisfy wishes arising from drives within the apparatus. But motor action is managed by Pcs. Psychosis occurs when Ucs gains control of the motor system through some failure in Pcs to halt its progress. [607] Speech and actions are then under the motive power of Ucs and its insane, non-rational desire. Under psychosis Ucs may also regress within the apparatus to Pcpt and engage in a halluncinatory revelry of wish-fulfillment. Neurosis occurs when Ucs is able to subvert Pcs and its gateway to motor action without overpowering it. This subversion entails a compromise with Pcs. "A [psychoneurotic] symptom is not merely the expression of a realized unconscious wish; a wish from the preconscious which is fulfilled by the same symptom must also be present. So the symptom will have at least two determinants, one arising from each of the systems involved in the conflict. [. . .] The determinant which does not arise from the Ucs is invariably, so far as I know, a train of thought reacting against the unconscious wish — a self-punishment, for instance." [608] This raises the question of whether every wish of Ucs is in conflict with Pcs and what creates the conflict in the first place? Ucs, after all, is simply trying to avoid unpleasure? What's wrong with that? 25. Consider the diagram below.
26. A lot is going on in that diagram, and it's all based on implications of Freud's topographical model. Notice there is no arrow from Cs to Motor. Cs isn't much more than a spectator to some of what's going on in the apparatus. Cs doesn't create thoughts, for example, it observes them; and it has no direct access to memory. This seems to be Freud's view. Pcs is the important system. Both thoughts and action arise from its operation. The placement of the module for Thoughts outside of Pcs is needed to show how thoughts can enter memory or Cs. But the thoughts themselves come from Pcs. This means that thoughts need not, if ever, go into Cs during the motor action of speech. Cs would perceive speech, "after the fact", through Pcpt, as the external and internal stimuli of speech-effects entered the apparatus. We could even reinterpret the movements of psychosis using this diagram, and say that Ucs regresses back through the memory systems, then floods into the Thoughts module which allows access to Pcs (entering Pcs through the back door, so to speak) and then out to Motor. All without any conscious awareness. 27. There's a connection specified in the diagram that raises questions. Does the arrow going directly from Pcs to Cs accord with the details of the theory? In paragraph 19 above, there's a quotation from The Interpretation of Dreams where Freud seems to be saying that Cs is only aware of perceptions from Pcpt and "excitations of pleasure and unpleasure, which proves to be almost the only psychical quality attaching to transposition of energy inside of the apparatus." [1900:613] Let's ignore this vague talk about energy transfer and determine how affect reaches Cs according to the diagram. Affect is a psychical quality corresponding to a psychical quantity, which most likely occurs in the apparatus from a physiological source. [See paragraph 20 above.] So affect is probably derived from an interior stimulus. This doesn't mean it is entirely caused by the body with no involvement from the mind. Look at the diagram. Motor has an arrow to Interior. Processes from within the apparatus can, through Pcs, influence the "motor" action of the body (which hypothetically allows for any physiological action including glandular secretion) and could thereby play a part in the generation of affect. So affect comes from Interior and enters the apparatus at Pcpt. The most unmediated pathway from Interior to Cs is directly from the entrance of the apparatus at Pcpt to Cs, but it could go the other way, from Pcpt, through the memory systems, reach Pcs (either directly from memory or indirectly through Ucs), and then move up into Cs. But which path from Pcs into Cs? Does affect travel through the Thoughts module or can it move directly from Pcs into Cs without being involved with thought in any way? Again we wonder, does that arrow going directly from Pcs to Cs belong there, or must every process entering Cs from Pcs enter via the Thoughts module? What would an affect be doing in the Thoughts module? Affects, according to Freud, have to do with the range of qualities of pleasure to unpleasure. It turns out that this question leads us to the concept of repression. 28. Before we look at repression, the relation of thoughts to Pcs and Cs has to be clarified, and there's something to be added to that quotation in paragraph 19, where Freud is saying that "[a]ll other processes in the psi-systems, including the Pcs, are lacking in any psychical quality and so cannot be objects of consciousness, except in so far as they bring pleasure or unpleasure to perception." [1900:613] He had also said that "releases of pleasure and unpleasure automatically regulate the course of cathectic processes," and this comment raised some questions in paragraph 20 above. Looking anew at these remarks and what follows, it seems Freud is saying, unclearly, that cathexis was initially regulated in the apparatus by the simple expedient of satisfying a drive or avoiding a stimulus. (Recall that the apparatus develops over time.) The stimulus itself, in qualitative terms, creates unpleasure until the stimulus is satisfied or avoided, which qualitatively, in Cs, is perceived as pleasure. So what from the point of view of Cs would be viewed as releases of pleasure and unpleasure, were in quantitative terms, movements of excitation, i.e. cathectic processes. So, to review the discussion of affect, it isn't true that affect is governing the cathectic processes, but what causes affect is, according to this interpretation. There's still the question from paragraph 20 of the relation of affect to drives and cathexis. Let's say it one more time, this time more clearly. 29. The issue is this — Assuming pleasure-unpleasure is always an affect, then if affect arises only from the drives, then either all cathexis is generated by drives, which is absurd, or some cathexis doesn't generate pleasure-unpleasure; and, likewise, if affect can arise from cathexes related to processes other than drives, then either pleasure-unpleasure doesn't arise only from drives, or affect isn't always pleasure-unpleasure. [It seems after further study that pleasure-unpleasure does not correspond only to drives, but also to other "excitations". Affect, however, is a quality and can only be perceived by Cs.] 30. Freud wants to move from the simple motivation of "pleasure-unpleasure" (to speak loosely, as he does) to a recognition that thoughts are involved in motivation also. Without this move, thoughts themselves are absolutely controlled and directed by the pleasure-unpleasure compulsion. (He ignores the question of how thoughts arise in the apparatus or how they might be described in the model.) A developmental solution for avoiding this dominance of the drives, or perhaps more broadly, this pleasure-unpleasure compulsion, over thought, and making "more delicately adjusted performances possible" [613] was that quality be attached to preconscious processes in order to "attract" Cs. This was achieved by "linking the preconscious processes with the mnemic system of linguistic symbols, a system which was not without quality." [613] In this way, Cs is able to perceive "a portion of our thought-processes." Not all of them. Just a portion. "Thought-processes are in themselves without quality, except for the pleasurable and unpleasurable excitations which accompany them, and which in view of their possible disturbing effect upon thinking, must be kept within bounds. In order that thought-processes may acquire quality, they are associated in human beings with verbal memories, whose residues of quality are sufficient to draw the attention of consciousness to them and to endow the process of thinking with a new mobile cathexis from consciousness." [656]It follows from this that Ucs has no connection itself with language, and from earlier remarks we know it has no direct connection with thought either, as the diagram shows. 31. We're pursuing the question of those two pathways from Pcs to Cs, and whether affect can enter through the Thoughts module. It sounds like Cs only knows about Pcs via thoughts within Pcs, specifically through the quality attached to thoughts via language. Note that Freud is separating "linguistic symbols" from thought or ideation. In fact, he speaks of "verbal memories", which is even more specific. As far as Cs and Pcs are concerned, then, the connection between them is via the Thoughts module, but specifically through language. Freud explicitly said that this is the way Pcs and Cs are connected. Cs wasn't even aware of thoughts before it was connected with Pcs through language (language is the clothing that thought wears for Cs). It knew only perceptions from Pcpt and the pleasure-unpleasure qualities. So let's rewrite the diagram and take account of the connections between thought, language and Cs. We'll also remove the arrow directly connecting Pcs to Cs. It is to be understood that thoughts and language are actually part of the system Pcs. They are represented in the diagram as modules, not as systems. So the diagram does account for the motor expression of language. 32. The corrected diagram looks like this.
33. There is the important question of mental imagery, which is being ignored here. Is there perhaps another module off from Thoughts that supplies mental imagery to Cs, or can it be accounted for within the Language module? Let's assume that somehow imagery reaches Cs and that it enters via Pcs. Memory is the reservoir and storehouse of imagery, as it is of thoughts and language. Pcs is presumably the only system that is able to innovate, creating memory-trace associations that the apparatus never acquired through Pcpt. 34. Pcs is indeed radically different from Ucs. There is no language or thought in Ucs. The entire objective of Ucs is to circumvent stimuli, either by recoil or satisfaction. We've finally reached the point where we can talk about the cause of mental illness and the meaning of repression. Repression arises from the conflict between this simple objective of Ucs and the more complex configuration of Pcs. 35. Looking at the corrected diagram, we see that affects enter Cs through Pcpt, and thoughts or ideas, in the guise of language, enter via Pcs. This observation about the routes of affect and idea implies that they are separable within the apparatus. Within memory, affect would be associated with the perceptions that played a part in its arousal. [Technically, affect itself would not be stored in memory, but only the corresponding quantitative components. Those components would be associated with the quantitative representatives of the perceptions during which the particular instance of that affect occurred.] Affect, arising from Interior, joins with a perception entering from Exterior. Together, in unison, they travel directly from Pcpt to Cs. This is the non-problematic route, unless Ucs is regressing in the apparatus and overwhelming Pcpt. 36. Prior to the existence of Cs in the development of the apparatus, affect (in its quantitative form) and perception are still experienced within the systems Ucs and Pcs. The memory systems record and associate everything that passes through Pcpt. So experiences, which at the advent of Cs would be called unpleasant, and thus at this earlier stage, before such a qualitative description is possible, cause the apparatus to recoil from the stimulus if unable to satisfy it, are also stored within memory. The memory itself, then, retains this potential affect, i.e. the quantitative correspondent to unpleasure. This means that even the recollection of this memory association renews the act of recoil. The apparatus, therefore, will not revive the memory. Any indication within the apparatus that the memory is being elicited halts the recollection. "This effortless and regular avoidance by the psychical process of the memory of anything that had once been distressing affords us the prototype and first example of psychical repression." [1900: 639] 37. Not only are some memories abandoned and neutralized through this primal repression, but others, because of the temporal development of the apparatus, have always been entirely unknown to Pcs. Only Ucs has access to these earliest memories. "A further result of the belated appearance of the secondary process is that a wide sphere of mnemic material is inaccessible to preconscious cathexis." [643] This mnemic material comprises memories from infancy, and it is these memories, these perceptions and their conjoined affect correspondents, which create the conflict within the apparatus. Although these infantile memories are associated in the memory system with the quantitative correspondents of pleasurable affect (the result of satisfaction), through the development of the apparatus it has come about that they would now be associated with unpleasurable affects (speaking, again, loosely, since affect is only perceived by Cs and we're concerned here with Pcs); "and it is precisely this transformation of affect which constitutes the essence of what we term repression." [643] What is pleasurable for Ucs would be unpleasurable for Pcs. The desires of Ucs are not those of Pcs. As Ucs pushes to revive the perceptual identity of the experience, Pcs moves to avoid what for it would be the thought identity of the experience. [641] Because Pcs has language and Ucs doesn't, this conflict concerns language and idea or memory-trace on one side and an associated affect on the other. 38. One solution to this conflict is substitute-formation. [1963a: 111, 138] Pcs in effect fulfills the motivation behind the Ucs push of the affect/drive pair into Pcs by splitting off the affect from the associated symbol, idea or memory-trace representing the object of the drive [see paragraph 22 above] and attaching the affect to an idea or language-object that is closely associated with the underlying memory, yet not so near in meaning to alarm Pcs (the meaning is for Pcs, not for Ucs, which is motivated simply by the drive and its object), and then sending the affect through Motor, which sends it to Interior and back into the apparatus in union with the new idea. An alternative substitute-formation involves reversing the affect from pleasure to unpleasure for the original memory (this suggests that Pcs is able to initiate affect) then sending the new union through the apparatus. This creates an avoidance of the stimulus. Why this would satisfy Ucs is unclear. A more complex version of this operation is to reverse the affect then split it off and attach it to an associated idea. 39. In each of these cases the affect is now paired with an idea or language-object (which may be pointing to a memory-trace) to which it doesn't technically belong, and the idea or memory-trace to which it does belong is left detached in Ucs. Without a uniquely identifying name, this idea or memory-trace cannot enter into Cs. (The idea itself may be known linguistically in general but the particular instance of this idea in experience, as stored in memory, linked in language to its unique temporal moment, would not be.) This dissonance of affect (an affect once it reaches Cs) and idea, and the complete anonymity of the idea repressed within Ucs may be inconsequential. However, the persistence of Ucs for the satisfaction of its drive motivated "wishes" (frightful for Pcs), and the ongoing transference of affect among the various ideas and thoughts available to Pcs can result in extreme emotional or cognitive dissonance. This pathology of dissonance and mental discomfort defines mental illness. 40. Another response to the conflict between Ucs and Pcs is phantasy-formation. [1963a: 138] This occurs in dreams and is similar to hallucination. Motor action is shut down by Pcs during sleep and phantasies within Ucs are allowed expression within the apparatus under the restraint of substitute-formation, which conceals from Cs the import of the dream. 41. In The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis (1924), Freud distinguishes these two illnesses by saying indirectly that neurosis denies the instinct (drive) while psychosis denies the reality. [1963a: 203] We'll leave further comment about psychosis and finish with a short discussion on the cure of neurosis. In Future Prospects of Psychoanalytic Therapy (1910), Freud says that "the psychoneuroses are substitutive gratifications of instincts the existence of which one is forced to deny to oneself and others. Their capacity to exist depends upon this distortion and disguise. When the riddle they hold is solved and the solution accepted by the suffers these diseases will no longer be able to exist." [1963b: 84] Cure, then is a process of discovering the cause of the repression and attempting to remove the psychological need for it. This requires that the meaning of the repression be found, i.e. what is being repressed and why? Access to Ucs is available through dreams and through a method of speaking during which associations that arise in the mind of the speaker are given expression. When a resistance to expression occurs this indicates a point of repression. The analyst works with the patient on the meaning of such points, hoping to overcome the resistance and release the repressed thoughts. 42. Symptom, cause and cure in mental illness are concepts that must be anchored in theory. Without a theory there is only folk psychology, a happenstance collection of disjointed beliefs built upon habit, hope, superstition, myth, and social influence. Freudian psychoanalysis offers a structured theory. It is there to be examined and tested. If it fails or succeeds, at least it was put forth in the proper spirit. SOURCES
© 1999 Dubnglas
|
