FREUD'S MODELS OF THE MIND
Monograph Series of The Psychoanalysis Unit of University College London and The Anna Freud Centre Series Editors
Joseph Sandler & Peter Fonagy
PSYCHOANALYTIC MONOGRAPHS
No. 1
FREUD'S MODELS OF THE MIND An Introduction Joseph Sandler Alex Holder Christopher Dare Anna Ursula Dreher
Foreword by
Robert S. Wallerstein
London
KARNAC BOOKS
First published in 1997 by H. Karnac (Books) Ltd. Karnac Books Ltd. 6 Pembroke Buildings 118 Finchley Road London NW 10 6RE London NW3 5HT
Reprinted 2005 Copyright 8 1997 Joseph Sandler and Peter Fonagy Foreword Copyright O Robert S Wallerstein The rights of Christopher Dare, Anna Ursula Dreher, Alex Holder, and Joseph Sandler to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Sandler, Joseph Freud's Models of the Mind 1. Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 I. Title 11. Dreher, Anna Ursula 150.1'952 1 85575 ISBN: 978 1 85575 167 4167 5 www.karnacbooks.com
Edited, designed, and produced by Communication Crab Printed & bound by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne
THE
PSYCHOANALYSIS
UNIT
AT
UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE L O N D O N was founded by JosephSandler in
1984, when he was appointed to the Freud Memorial Chair of Psychoanalysis in the University of London (which replaced the annual Freud Memorial Visiting Professorship at UCL). The Unit is based in the Psychology Department, arguably the strongest, and certainly the broadest, department of psychology in the United Kingdom. The Unit quickly became a thriving centre for academic psychoanalysis and established a busy doctoral programme in psychoanalytic research. A weekly programme of lectures was organized, and several highly successful psychoanalytic conferences have been held each year. Through the Unit psychoanalysis began to occupy a central place in the intellectual life of University College London. The Unit initiated close collaboration with the International Psychoanalytical Association. Major scientific meetings of the Association were held in conjunction with the Unit, including the annual IPA Conference in Psychoanalytic Research and an IPA Conference on Psychoanalysis and Literature. In addition to fostering these important links between international psychoanalysis and the British university, the Unit maintains close ties with the British Psycho-Analytical Society. It collaborates regularly with the major theoretical groups within the Society in offering an academic platform for presenting and discussing their views. In 1992 Peter Fonagy succeeded Joseph Sandler in the Freud Chair, with Professor Sandler remainingas a Co-director of the Unit. The Unit's focus on post-graduate education has continued, with now over a dozen Ph.D. students at any one time. In collaboration with tlie British Psycho-Analytical Society, the Unit has created a Mastcr oi Science
degree in Theoretical Psychoanalytic Studies (non-clinical). Over the years, the strength of the link between the Unit and other psychoanalytic organizations has increased, with academic members of the staff of The Anna Freud Centre becoming affiliated to the University via the Psychoanalysis Unit. The Unit's original links to the Psychology Department have been maintained and developed, with Professor Fonagy assuming the headship of the Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology on its inception in 1994. The international influence of the Unit continues to increase, and in 1995 it organized and hosted the first research training programme for psychoanalysts sponsored by the International Psycho-AnalyticalAssociation. As part of this development, leading psychoanalytic researchers became visiting professors of the Unit; these have included Professors Robert Emde, Horst Kachele, Wilma Bucci, Otto Kernberg, and Peter Hobson. The mission of the Unit remains the integration of psychoanalytic ideas with academic pursuits across a range of disciplines-literature, medicine, the social sciences, the arts. The Unit frequently consults with leading academics from those disciplines who seek advice on psychoanalytic aspects of their work. It has become a national and international centre for psychoanalytic research and scholarship.
THE ANNA FREUD CENTRE was founded by Anna
Freud in 1940 as the Hampstead War Nurseries, which provided a home for children who had lost their own homes or were separated from their parents in some other way in the Blitz. After the war, Anna Freud responded to the urgent demand for greater expertise in child mental health and the childhood disorders by founding The Hampstead Child Therapy Course and the Clinic, which, after Anna Freud's death, was renamed in 1984 as The Anna Freud Centre. Since its inception, The Hampstead Child Therapy Course has provided high-level, intensive training in all aspects of child psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Training at the Centre has received formal accreditation from the International Association for Child Psychoanalysis, and many of the child psychoanalysts and psychotherapists trained at the Centre are currently practicing in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
After the untimely death in 1992 of the Director, George Moran, Rose Edgcumbe functioned as Acting Director until 1993, when Anne-Marie Sandler was appointed to the Directorship. After her retirement in 1996, Julia Fabricius was appointed to the post. In addition to combining therapy, training, and research, the Centre provides a psychiatric assessment and advisory service for children and young adults, longterm therapy and young adults' consultation and preventive services, and an internationally recognized and highly esteemed programme of research. In an important collaboration with University College London, the Centre offers a Master of Science degree in Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology. This unique course reflects the extension and accreditation of the Centre's well-established teaching programme.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
FOREWORD by Robert S. Wallerstein
Introduction
I FOUNDATIONS
1
The development of Freud's theory
2
Basic assumptions
I1 FIRST PHASE: THE AFFECT-TRAUMA FRAME OF REFERENCE
3
The affect-trauma model
41
I11 SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME OF REFERENCE
4
The organization of the mental apparatus
57
5
The system Unconscious
72
6
The system Preconscious
82
CONTENTS
X
7
The system Conscious
8
Transference
9
Dream processes
IV FURTHER ASPECTS
10
Narcissism and object-love
141
11
Limitations and transition to the structural model
153
v THIRD PHASE: THE STRUCTURAL FRAME OF REFERENCE
12
Characteristics
165
13
The three agencies
172
A final word
REFERENCES
INDEX
185
PREFACE
T
his book has been long in the making. It began as a series of lectures given at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London (Maudsley Hospital), on Freud's theories by one of us (J.S.) and was substantially revised and elaborated into papers by Joseph Sandler, Alex Holder, and Christopher Dare. The project was carried out in collaboration with the Index Project of the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London (now The Anna Freud Centre) and was supported by a research grant from The Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis, Beverly Hills, California. Eleven papers were published in the British Journal of Medical Psychology during the period from 1970 to 1978. Unfortunately, the project came to a halt because the three authors became preoccupied with what seemed at the time to be more important tasks. A final, twelfth, paper was published in 1982 after a long latent period.' It became clear that the series had, regretfully, come to an end. The published papers proved extremely popular with teachers of psychoanalytic theory and their students, particularly in Britain, Israel, and the United States, and photocopies were widely circulated. They have been used extensively in teaching at the Anna Freud Centre and the Psychoanalysis Unit of University College London. The success of the original series of papers, in spite of it not having been completed, stimulated the wish to see the project finished and published as a book. Accordingly, with the agree-
'
Sandler, Dare, & Holder, 1972a, 1972b, 1972c, 1974,1978,1982; Sandler, Holder, &Dare,1972,1973a, 1973b, 1973c, 1975,1976.
xii
PREFACE
ment of Christopher Dare and Alex Holder, a careful further revision and expansion of the published papers was carried out (by A.U.D. and J.S.). The material necessary for the completion of the work was added, together with notes and comments referring to later developments in psychoanalysis. This required much time and effort, and as a consequence the book, unlike the papers, now has four authors. It was supported in part by a grant to one of us (A.U.D.) by the Edith Ludowyk-Gyomroi Trust. Acknowledgments are due to Alex Holder and Mary Target for their careful reading of the manuscript and suggestions for its improvement. Anne-Marie Sandler and Joachim Wutke deserve our grateful thanks for their help and encouragement. Rosine Perelberg read the manuscript and made useful suggestionsbased on her experience as a teacher of Freud's frames of reference. Thanks are also due to the many colleagues and others who used the basic material of this book for teaching, and who suggested improvements. Araminta Whitley, Cesare Sacerdoti, and Klara and Eric King all contributed to the passage of the manuscript into print. Finally, we owe a debt to those students who asked penetrating questions, some of which we have attempted to answer. Last, but not least, we are grateful to Paula Barkay for her exceptional organizational and secretarial help. Joseph Sandler and Anna Ursula Dreher, London and Frankfurt, February 1997
Note: In nonspecific case accounts we have used the feminiue pronoun for analysts and the masculine pronoun for patients nl~dother persons in general.
FOREWORD
Robert S. Wallersfein
T
he psychoanalysis created over a lifetime of prodigious labour by its founding genius, Sigmund Freud, was subsequently further developed by a host of gifted (and charismatic) followers. Unfortunately it has never achieved the coherent and seamless unitary-and unifying-theoretical structure that Freud and his close colleagues in the original secret committee of the seven ring holders envisaged and aspired to. In fact, David Rapaport, the great systematizer of the epoch of hegemonic sway (at least in America) of ego psychology, declared psychoanalysis to be rather an assortment of theories. He saw it as a theory of mind and normal mental functioning, a theory of mental development, a theory of psychopathology, and, among other things, a theory of therapy. This last was, however, stated by Rapaport to be only a collection of "rules of thumb", all loosely articulated with one another. There was overlapping, of course, but there were cleavage lines and awkward fits: and all of this was usually glossed over by what Joseph Sandler has felicitously called the "elasticity" of our concepts. As a consequence, words and conceptions could be employed with altered meanings as they were deployed as bridges between one psychoanalytic conceptual framework and another. Of course, this has never made for tidy theory formation and growth, and the inherent theoretical slippage and potential confusion have only deepened as time has passed since Freud's era. In Freud's lifetime there was at least the effort to maintain a unified theoretical structure for psychoanalysis, but now we have a multiplication of theoretical perspectives, or "movements", within the house of worldwide organized psychoanalysis. We have the ego psychological-and now the post-ego psychological-the
xiv
FOREWORD
Kleinian (and the Bionian), the multiply parented object-relational (Fairbairn,Guntrip, Winnicott, Balint, Bowlby, et al.), the Lacanian, the Kohutian self-psychological, and all the varieties of the interpersonal. There are also the intersubjective and the constructivist perspectives, as well as all the varying regional and national conventions and linguistic preferences (francophone vis-8-vis anglophone psychoanalysis,for example).Added to this is, of course, the whole spectrum of differing conceptions of the very nature of our psychoanalytic discipline. These range from the natural science model propounded so vigorously by Freud, through the declared differing social and/or behavioural science model (in the extreme, the model of psychoanalysis as "our peculiar science"), all the way to the espousal of psychoanalysis as no natural science at all but, rather, a hermeneutical discipline like history or literary criticism, or the Biblical interpretation from which the conception of hermeneutics derived in the first instance. In the current state of our theoretical affairs, and almost uniquely among scholarly disciplines, at least those claiming the status of some sort of science, progressive developments in psychoanalysis can only be fully comprehended in the light of a close knowledge of their psychoanalytic conceptual forebears; that is, of the past in its formative (and deformative) shaping role in the present. This is, incidentally, a familiar enough psychoanalytic conception. Given this state of affairs, there is a surprising paucity of efforts to portray the scope and structure of Freud's original psychoanalytic intellectual edifice as it evolved in his work and thought and as he altered it very significantly, and often very radically, with his accumulating clinical (and personal) experiences and the theoretical revisions to which they propelled him over his lifetime. All this provided a vital conceptual base for understanding the myriad post-Freudian psychoanalytic developments, and direct or convoluted evolution out of Freud's original corpus. Freud himself, even in his posthumous An Outline of Psychoanalysis, never attempted a comprehensive and methodical overview of his own work and thought as it had developed and altered over his lifetime. He did not systematically reconceptualize and recontextualize earlier positions in the light of later conceptual revisions; and this necessary labour has also been avoided by
FOREWORD
XV
almost all major theoretical contributors after Freud. This has perhaps been because of the extreme and very rigorous intellectual effort that would be required in order to match the daunting complexity of the task. And yet, as Sandler and his co-authors remind us in their "Final Word", on the very last page of this text, a detailed and systematic exegesis of Freud's work and thought as he elaborated and emended it over his lifetime is indeed, as they say, a necessary "basis for understanding and working with later psychoanalytic formulations. . . . For example, current views on object relations and narcissistic pathology cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of Freud's views on such basic concepts as narcissism and transference." It is indeed this task that Sandler and his original co-authors, added to so ably by the participation now of Anna Ursula Dreher, have so successfully accomplished in this book. As the authors indicate in their Preface, the book began as a series of lectures given many years ago to students in the mental health professions at the Maudsley Hospital (The Institute of Psychiatry of the University of London) and then, elaborated into a sequence of papers by the first three authors, published as a series in the early 1970s in the British Journal of Medical Psychology. However successful this was as a project, the authors nonetheless felt it to be incomplete, and now, two decades later, Sandler and Dreher have undertaken to revise and expand, and essentially to complete, the whole project in book form. Though updated with appropriate referential linkages to subsequent developments in psychoanalysis, the authors have held firm to their original intent to present the structure of Freud's own work and thought as systematically as possible, given all the twists and even contradictions in Freud's developmental progression. This can serve as a conceptual springboard for both neophyte and seasoned analyst better to navigate our burgeoning literature. At the same time they can keep in mind the transformed derivations from and elaborations upon Freud, as well as the clear departures from-and even repudiations ofother tenets of his overall body of work. They set their book within the seemingly very obvious and familiar delineation of three major "frames of reference" by which Freud's work can be marked. These are: (1)the period of the seduction (external trauma) causation theory of neurosis, which they call
xvi
FOREWORD
"the affect-trauma frame of reference" (from the beginning in the mid-1880s until 1897); (2) the period of emphasis upon the vicissitudes of the instinctual drives and the defences against them (the period of so-called drive psychology), which they call "the topographical frame of reference" (the quarter-century from 1897 to 1923); and (3) the period of emphasis upon the conflicts and compromises among the psychic agencies of the tripartite mind (the period of of dominance of so-called ego psychology), which they call "the structural frame of reference" (lasting from 1923 to well after Freud's death in 1939). The careful reading that this book so fully warrank will reveal all of the elegance and daring of Freud's theorizing, along with the careful logic of sequential development and experientially induced revision--even fundamental revision. It will show as well all the complexity of the developing lines of thought that make Freud's lifetime work an almost unparalleled human achievement. What Freud created almost single-handedly was an entire therapeutic discipline and the science of the mind in which it is embedded. As I have stated elsewhere (1988): "Perhaps more than any other branch of human knowledge psychoanalysis has been uniquely the singular product of the creative genius of one man, Sigmund Freud. His lifetime of productive work was extraordinarily prodigious and if the totality of psychoanalysis consisted of nothing more than the corpus of Freud's work, the Gesammelte Werke, I think we could readily agree that all the fundamental principles and the essential fabric of a fully operating scientific and professional activity would be available to us as students and practitioners." Though psychoanalysis today, building from and upon Freud's legacy, has extended very far beyond his original reach, I am convinced that the reader of this book by Sandler and his colleagues will appreciate it and profit from it, both as a masterfully synthesized exposition of just what Freud's intellectual accomplishmentwas, and as a very congenial and comprehensive knowledge base against which to measure all the different developments in psychoanalysis since.
FREUD'S MODELS OF THE MIND
Introduction
P
sychoanalytic theory is difficult to teach. It aspires to be not only a general theory of normal and pathological mental functioning, but also a theory of therapy.' In Freud's words,
Psycho-Analysis is the name (1) of a procedure for the investigation of mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way, (2) of a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders and (3)of a collection of psychological information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated into a new scientific discipline. [1923a (1922), p. 2351 additional difficulty is posed by the fact that psychoanalysis has developed in a somewhat uneven fashion over more than a Freud called his overall theory of the mind his "metapsychology" (1900a, 1901b, 1915e)-that is, something beyond psychology--but the term may be misleading, because Freud wanted to contrast his psychology (whichinvolved unconscious processes) with the psychology of consciousness current a t that time. In view of the developments that have taken place in psychology since then, it is not inappropriate to speak now of psychoanalytic psychology.
2
INTRODUCTION
century. As the distinguished psychoanalyst Ernst Kris remarked, when the "new scientific discipline" was only a few decades old: Current psychoanalytic terminology is, by and large, that used by Freud. Freud's language bears the imprint of the physiology, neurology, psychiatry, and the classical education of his age. It is colored by its use in the therapeutic procedure, hence the richness of metaphors. . . . Throughout fifty years, psychoanalytic hypotheses have frequently been revised and reformulated. Rarely, however, have all previous findings been integrated with new insight. . . . At present, hypotheses in psychoanalysis are formulated in various terminologies according to the various stages of the development of psychoanalysis in which they were suggested. [1947, p. 251 Indeed, since these words were written, the difficulties referred to have become even greater. In addition, the problem of understanding psychoanalytic theory may at times be intensified because of deficiencies of presentation, for not every accomplished psychoanalytic clinician is a good exponent of theory, and some may be excessively dogmatic, while others are too inhibited by the complexities and ambiguities of the subject. Teachers of psychoanalysis have often attributed the difficulties that exist in comprehending psychoanalytic theory entirely to the emotionally based resistance of the student (whether he be a student in a psychoanalytic training course or a psychiatrist, psychologist, or caseworker). Such resistances were especially common in the early days of psychoanalysis, when, for example, the idea of childhood sexuality and its persisting influence on mental functioning was particularly unacceptable. There can be little doubt that the emphasis placed by psychoanalysts on such things as unconscious incestuous, sadistic, "perverse" impulses and the like may evoke responses of antagonism and rejection of psychoanalysis as a whole. Certain unfortunate consequences follow if the view that difficulties in understanding psychoanalytic ideas are due to resistances is maintained. Foremost among these consequences is a tendency for some psychoanalysts to reject legitimate and reasonable critical evaluation of psychoanalytic ideas as being intrinsically irrational and tendentious. Such psychoanalysts throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. While there is no doubt that emotional resistances to the acceptance of psychoanalysis occur, they form
INTRODUCTION
3
only a part of those difficulties that arise as obstacles to communication. There are other difficulties, equally linked with psychoanalytic theories, that are not predominantly emotional in origin, but are essentially intellectual problems relating to the complex structure and organization of psychoanalytic concepts. The more we know of the way in which psychoanalytic theory is organized within itself and how it has developed, the more readily will we be able to distinguish between the two areas of difficulty. It is not often realized that certain problems are inherent in psychoanalytic theory because of the very nature of its development (quite apart from its subject matter). Even within Freud's own writings we can observe that theoretical developments did not take place along a single broad front, and earlier formulations were not always integrated into those made later. Thus the theory of dreams is still most explicitly formulated in terms of the so-called topographical model (with its division into the Unconscious, the Preconscious, and Conscious systems, abbreviated by Freud to Ucs., Pcs., and Cs.), even though for many purposes, as will be seen later, the topographical model has been superseded by the structural one (with its three major agencies, id, ego, and superego). Moreover, the same term was used by Freud to mean different things at different times, and this has persisted in subsequent psychoanalytic writings. In the course of studying a number of clinical psychoanalytic concepts (Sandler, Dare, & Holder, 1992) it became clear that the understanding of all the concepts investigated (e.g. transference, resistance, and acting out) was bedeviled by the fact that the same term was often used with different meanings at different times in the developing literature of psychoanalysis. As a consequence, a psychoanalytic term may currently be given a variety of meanings (some of them even contradictory) derived from different epochs. The same is true of the more abstract theoretical concepts and the words used to encompass them. The changes in meaning of the term "unconscious" are an important example of this. Among the many meanings covered by this term are (1) a "quality" of experience and (2) a mental "system", the "dynamic" Unconscious. Attempts to provide an ex cathedra and comparatively arbitrary set of definitions fail to solve the problem, for such definitions are relatively static, do not integrate perfectly with one another, and lead to an omission of important aspects of psychoanalytic think-
4
INTRODUCTION
ing. In our view what should be aimed for is an understanding of psychoanalytic concepts and theories in their appropriate historical contexts, and the best place to start is with an examination of Freud's own theoretical models. In general, attempts to deal with the problem of teaching Freud's concepts have taken different directions. One attempt is, for example, to present Freud's ideas as if they could be encompassed within a single unified framework. The problem with this is that teachers adopting such an approach d o not do justice to the complexity of Freud's theories. Another approach is that in which the student of psychoanalysis is expected to learn by going through Freud's works in chronological order, retracing the path of development of his concepts. While this procedure may appeal to some, to many it is a source of irritation and confusion, for the student does not pursue his or her studies in vacuo. The student may concurrently be engaged in clinical practice and be grappling with contemporary ways of thinking in psychoanalysis. Small wonder that a number are attracted to "new" and apparently all-encompassing theoretical systems, which are relatively easy to grasp. Others are tempted to reject all psychoanalytic theories or to pronounce them irrelevant to their practical work. The net result is often that students of psychoanalysis do not acquire a basic knowledge of Freud's ideas, and they rationalize this by taking the view that Freud is "out of date". We take the view that it is necessary to have an overall grasp of Freud's concepts in order to understand modern developments in psychoanalysis; at the same time, we are fully aware of the difficulties in the path of acquiring a knowledge of Freud's views. The ambiguities we have mentioned, the coexistence of different theoretical models, and even the contradictions within psychoanalytic theory, are intrinsic to and an inevitable aspect ofpsychoanalysis as a developing and changing body of knowledge. Freud expressed this in "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes": We have often heard it maintained that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basic concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them. Even at the stage of de-
INTRODUCTION
5
scription it is not possible to avoid applying certain abstract ideas to the material in hand, ideas derived from somewhere or other but certainly not from the new observations alone. Such ideas-which will later become the basic concepts of the science-are still more indispensable as the material is further worked over. They must at first necessarily possess some degree of indefiniteness; there can be no question of any clear delimitation of their content. So long as they remain in this condition, we come to an understanding about their meaning by making repeated references to the material of observation from which they appear to have been derived, but upon which, in fact, they have been imposed. Thus, strictly speaking, they are in the nature of conventions-although everything depends on their not being arbitrarily chosen but determined by their having significant relations to the empirical material, relations that we seem to sense before we can clearly recognize and demonstrate them. It is only after more thorough investigation of the field of observation that we are able to formulate its basic scientific concepts with increased precision, and progressively so to modify them that they become serviceable and consistent over a wide area. Then, indeed, the time may have come to confine them in definitions. The advance of knowledge, however, does not tolerate any rigidity even in definitions. Physics furnishes an excellent illustration of the way in which even "basic concepts" that have been established in the form of definitions are constantly being altered in their content. [1915c, p. 1171 It thus becomes essential for those who wish to master the subject, even at a relatively elementary level, to tolerate certain ambiguities involved in the theory, rather than to try to eliminate them, for ambiguity need not constitute confusion? Nevertheless, attempts to clar* concepts will always be necessary.
'Even those who disdain explicit and formal theorizing develop, of necessity, their own personal (and to some extent idiosyncratic) inner sets of theories. They may be unaware of the existence of such theories or frames of reference, or be unable to verbalize them. They may also be unaware of contradictions between them, and of their shifts from one to another as appropriate. Even the "purest" clinician has her theories about her patients (Sandler, 1983; Sandler & Dreher, 1996).
6
INTRODUCTION
Formal training in psychoanalysis is complicated by the fact that it has a dual aim-to train people to be scholars and to be clinicians. While we believe thzt a thorough theoretical background is vital for every psychoanalyst, we do not believe that it is essential for every psychoanalytic practitioner to be burdened with a mammoth history of psychoanalysis in all its minute detail. Nor do we believe that a detailed tracing of the vicissitudes of Freud's theory is appropriate for the student in his early years. This can be illustrated by an example of the sort of detailed examination of psychoanalytic chronology-the work of a distinguished psychoanalytic scholar-with which the student may be confronted. In his attempt to distinguish Cs. and Pcs., Freud finally, though only momentarily, exalted Cs. to a position similar to that of the ego in present-day theory, for he ascribed reality testing and the control of motility to it, and this is not one of those instances in which he used Cs. interchangeably for Pcs., but on the contrary an explicit attempt to distinguish between the two systems. This distinction appeared in "A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams", the paper following "The Unconscious." But the attribution of this role to the Cs. was short-lived, for a moment later Freud attributed both reality testing and the censorship to the ego-an undefined term at this point4learly foreshadowing the explicit formulation of The Ego and the Id. And then Freud described Cs. as an "organ" of the ego. In this last formulation Cs. becomes a sense organ of the ego (as it was of the Pcs. in the original topographic theory of 1900) instead of a system which was itself in effect the present-day ego. [Gill, 1963, pp. 31-32] This formulation by a lucid psychoanalytic commentatorj is difficult to grasp unless one has had an intensive previous acquaintance with psychoanalytic theory. Such examples, which share the characteristic of being incomprehensible to all but the most sophisticated theoreticians, can be multiplied a thousandfold. It is our view that the presentation of material at this level is quite inappropriate to the initial teaching of psychoanalysis. It is better
'Gill later expressed his own dissatisfaction with this sort of metapsychology (personal communication to J.S.)
INTRODUCTION
7
to have a simplified account presented initially, even though the special difficulties inherent in the communication of psychoanalytic theory make it necessary to preserve the broad lines of historical change. In line with this, the approach we are taking is essentially a historical rather than a chronological one, for a historical approach involves schematization and the extraction of essentials, even though this may do injustice to the complexity and detailed development of the subject. In the fields of general psychology and in medicine, as in other subjects, the student is presented with a relatively simplified "rounded-out" view during the first part of his training. Theoretical contradictions are, for the most part, left until later. What he is first taught acts as frames of reference, tools with which he can assess his experience. Similarly, we propose to present a historically ordered sequence of three Freudian frames of reference: the affect-trauma, the topographical, and the structural. By presenting what we regard as the basic coexisting conceptual frameworks in his writings, we hope to facilitate comprehensibility and comrnunication. Although the frames of reference are located in relation to phases of development in the history of psychoanalysis, they represent present-day constructions on our part. They are schematic and eliminate, in the interest of simplification, some of the inconsistencies and variations found in the original writings. We have paid particular attention to what we have called the topographical frame of reference because it was the basis for the development of most subsequent psychoanalytic ideas and because of its profound clinical relevance. It is by now well known that the construction of history is never an exact reflection of "what really happenedw-it is always a distortion of the past, reflecting the particular interest of the individual historian. This is always true, of course, for the writing of a history of ideas. While the historian may not be aware of how specific the approach adopted may be, our schematization of Freud's theories in the form of frames of reference for teaching purposes is wholly intentional. Our approach may horrify some of our fundamentalist analytic colleagues, or even disturb some serious Freud scholars, but we are persuaded that it is helpful to provide frames of reference as "organizers", making the comprehension and utilization of Freud and post-Freud writings some-
8
INTRODUCTION
what easier. As a reinforcement of this aim, there is a great deal of repetition in the chapters that follow. These frames of reference are, of course, not independent from one another. They show a developmental progression, and there is considerable overlap in the ideas involved, although these may be obscured by changes in the terminology used. The relations of the frames of reference to one another are considered in Chapter 1and further discussed throughout.
PART
I
Foundations
CHAPTER ONE
The development of Freud's theory
T
he history of psychoanalysis has been discussed by Freud (1914d, 1925d [1924]), by his main biographer, Jones (1953-57), and by a variety of authors from one point of view or another (e.g. Ellenberger, 1970; Gay, 1988; Sulloway, 1979; Zilboorg, 1941). There are also brief accounts of the history of psychoanalysis written for relatively specific purposes, and many authors have considered particular psychoanalytic concepts. Rapaport (1959), in discussing what has come to be known as psychoanalytic "ego psychology",' divides its development into a number of phases, and we have found it useful to adapt his phases to the consideration of Freud's theory. In this chapter we present a short and selective historical account in order to provide a background to what follows. In it we place emphasis on the interaction between observed clinical data
Ego psychology is a post-Freudian development and, for many years after the Second World War, dominated psychoanalysis in the United States. It placed emphasis on the role of the ego's functions and development in normality and pathology.
12
FOUNDATIONS
and treatment methods on the one hand, and the theoretical constructs devised to account for them on the other. Clinical experience certainly shaped the theories that Freud and his followers put forward, and the theoretical formulations, especially in the early years, were affected by prevailing modes of conceptualization and notions modelled on concepts from other fields (e.g. the physical sciences and the neurology of the time); and, of course, the sociocultural context offin de sie'cle Vienna played its part. In tum, each theoretical formulation influenced the perception, evaluation, and understanding of the clinical data, until a point was reached at which the theoretical strain was such that a (somewhat radical) change in theory had to be made in order to encompass the new observations. It is quite striking how the development of psychoanalytic theory parallels in its form the changes that have been observed and described in other fields (see Kuhn, 1962).2
The first phase: the affect-trauma theory
It is not possible to date the exact beginning of the first phase, except to place it in the mid-1880s. However, we can regard it as ending in 1897. Freud graduated in medicine in Vienna in 1881, and he engaged in some pharmacological and comparative anatomical research before qualification as a physician. He then spent some time in Meynert's laboratory, where the neurological causes of psychiatric disturbances were being sought. In 1885, at the age of 29, Freud obtained a travelling scholarship that enabled him to make a crucial visit to France. There he was profoundly impressed by Charcot, the famous psychiatrist and medical hypnotist, whose demonstrations at the SalptStrihre he attended for a few months in 1885-56. Charcot was showing patients who, even though they were thought of as having neurological defects (in particular, Clearly an effective theoretical framework acts like other cognitive and perceptual structures,which will be made use of until they have to give way in the face of overwhelming contradictionsor a mass of unexplained information. The process of scientific development is very much like the way in which the young child's concepts of the world evolve (Piaget, 1950).
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREUD'S THEORY
13
products of "degeneracy"), could be made to lose their physical symptoms (primarily paralyses, anaesthesias, and "fits") by psychological interventions, especially suggestion and hypnosis. Freud also noted Charcot's belief that these patients (both men and women) had decisive sexual problems in their lives. He reports having heard Charcot say, "in this sort of case it's always a question of the genitals-always, always, always" (Freud, 1914d,p. 14). Freud was impressed by the parallel that such French physicians as Charcot and Bemheim had drawn between the phenomenon of mental "dissociation" that could be induced by hypnosis and the dissociation between a conscious and unconscious part of the mind that appeared to occur in patients with hysterical symptoms. This dissociation was regarded by Charcot, and by the French school in general (notably the psychiatrist Janet),as being due to some fault in the nervous system, an intrinsic weakness, so that the mind could not be held together in one piece, so to speak. Freud (1914d) recounted his indebtedness to the "master" Charcot for his clinical methods and also for certain hints concerning the origin of hysteria-for example, the role of traumatic experiences as precipitating agents, as well as the possible sexual elements in the illness. There seems little doubt that Freud was highly selective in what he took from Charcot. Zilboorg has pointed out that although Charcot gave evidence that he was fully aware of deeply seated psychological currents and countercurrents in hysteria, he seems nevertheless to have been fully convinced that these were by-products of a physical, organic, morbid cause combined with heredity (Zilboorg, 1941). The impact of Freud's brief experience with Charcot can be thought of as having two major consequences. The first was that Freud was led towards the conviction that mental disturbances could have psychological origins. The second was his further development of the notion of dissociation of different aspects of mental functioning, a concept that, in one form or another, has remained central to psychoanalytic thinking. On his return to Vienna Freud found himself committed to fulltime private practice as a neurologist. At that time this meant that he was dealing with patients suffering from "nervous diseases" in the widest sense of the term, and in his work he attempted to use
14
FOUNDATIONS
hypnosis with patients suffering from what we would now call neurotic disorders. During this time he was impressed by the Viennese physician and physiologistJosef Breuer, with whom he began a significant collaboration in pursuit of an understanding of hysteria and related disturbances. Freud began his collaboration with Breuer in 1885, and they worked together for a number of years. A jointly written book appeared in 1895-Breuer and Freud's famous Studies on Hysteria (Freud, 1895d).Breuer had found that a patient (Anna O.), if allowed to talk about her symptoms in a particular "hypnoid" state of mind, could recall events that seemed to be related to the origin of the symptoms, with subsequent relief. The patient herself referred to this experience as her "talking cure". In Freud's joint work with Breuer a consideration of the greatest importance was introduced in which the patient's symptoms could be regarded as the breakthrough, in disguised form, of emotional forces that had been dammed up and kept back by some form of pressure. Freud emphasized, more than Breuer, the active aspect of the process of dissociation, seeing it as a process of defence (in contrast to the French school, which tended to regard the dissociation of the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind as an outcome of an organic weakness, a failure of integration). Freud's two papers on the "neuropsychoses of defence" (1894a, 1896b) bring this point out very clearly. In addition, Freud became convinced that the division between conscious and unconscious parts of the mind occurred in everyone, not only in neurotic patients. In his view symptoms arose when a quantity of affective energy too great to be assimilated in the normal way was forced away from consciousness (repressed)and had to find a means of indirect expression. The pent-up unconscious forces leading to the symptom were thought of as affects or emotions that had been aroused by real traumatic experiences. The memories associated with these emotions were, in neurotic patients, unacceptable to their normal standards of morality and conduct and could therefore not be absorbed or discharged in a normal way (see Chapter 3). As a consequence the revived but unacceptable affects were thought of as having been "constricted" or in some way "strangulated". Treatment was based on the idea that such emotions could be released through bringing them and
the memories associated with them into consciousness, with subsequent release of affect through abreaction (or catharsis) and assimilation of the previously rejected mental content by the conscious part of the mind. Breuer had withdrawn from his collaboration with Freud after some years, and Freud attributed this in part to the reaction of distaste that Breuer had towards the patient's erotic transference to him, and Freud's putting forward more and more forcibly the importance of sexuality in the genesis of the neuroses. Freud became rather disenchanted with the use of hypnosis, as not all patients were hypnotizable and he did not regard himself as a very good hypnotist. Moreover, the therapeutic results were not all that might be wished for, even in those cases that could be hypnotized. He then attempted methods using suggestion, in order to force thoughts into the patient's consciousness. For a time Freud followed Bernheim's procedure of laying his hand on the subject's forehead (the so-called "pressure" technique), insisting that the subject remember. Later he gave up these techniques of suggestion, replacing them with the method of "free association", in which the patient was asked to report his thoughts as they passed through his mind. Looking back on the development of his psychoanalytic technique, Freud commented: My patients, I reflected, must in fact "know" all the things which had hitherto only been made accessible to them in hypnosis; and assurances and encouragement on my part, assisted perhaps by the touch of my hand, would, I thought, have the power of forcing the forgotten facts and connections into consciousness. No doubt this seemed a more laborious process than putting the patients into hypnosis, but it might prove highly instructive. So I abandoned hypnotism, only retaining my practice of requiring the patient to lie upon a sofa while I sat behind him, seeing him, but not seen myself. [Freud, 1925d [1924],p. 28) The first phase of psychoanalysis can be thought of as ending in 1897, when a radical change in Freud's orientation (to be described later) was initiated. During the first phase he had been confronted and stimulated by problems posed by numbers of hysterical, obses-
16
FOUNDATIONS
sional, phobic, and some ambulatory psychotic patients, as well as patients with other forms of "nervous disorder". His formulations during this phase by now included conflict and defence, resistance, and transference. He stressed the importance of sexual development in the aetiology of the neuroses, and he related psychopathology to the effect of psychic traumas, in particular those related to experiences of sexual seduction in childhood. Freud also suggested that certain disturbances were a consequence of specific sexual frustrations and an abnormal sexual life (e.g. the practice of coitus interruptus, sexual abstinence, masturbation). These he called the actual neuroses? in contradistinction to the psychoneuroses proper--such as hysteria and obsessional neurosis. It is necessary to comment on the concept of "actual neurosis". In this context the word "actual" is an unfortunate translation of the German aktual, which refers to something that is current, topical, or happening in the present. The actual neuroses were seen as arising from the subject's current life, his current "faulty" sexual practices, rather than his earlier experiences. The clinical picture was thought to have more of a somatic basis than the psychoneuroses and showed itself in the form of "neurasthenia", anxiety neurosis, and hypochondriasis. The actual neuroses were not thought to be responsive to psychoanalytic treatment. During this time Freud's productions included a very lengthy encyclopaedia article on childhood cerebral palsies and a manuscript that represented a monumental attempt to produce a general psychology in neurophysiological terms-the "Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1950 [1895]).This work has thrown a great deal of light on the development of Freud's scientific thought. The theoretical frame of reference associated with the first phase is discussed in Chapter 3. At this point, it is perhaps appropriate to mention some of the ways of thinking that Freud brought to his first psychological theories. These were inevitably affected by the then current
In this context it is worth reflecting on the degree to which the general taboo on open sexuality, and even on the discussion of sexual matters, influenced the direction of Freud's thinking and the reactions of his contemporaries.
scientific and philosophical influences, which included the ideas of natural causality, determinism, and adaptation inherent in Darwin's biology and theory of natural selection. Freud was also strongly influenced by the physiology of the Helmholtz school, particularly by his teacher, Ernst Briicke. At the time, physiologists were intent upon introducing the principles of contemporary physics into their subject. These principles were physico-chemical and mechanistic, in line with the optimism of nineteenth-century scientists that such principles would provide explanationsfor all natural phenomena. By analogy, Freud formulated his psychologicalviews in terms of energy: its conservation, displacement, and discharge. He (with Breuer) placed great importance on the tendency for the "mental apparatus" to keep the energies in it as low as possible or constant. The principle of constancy called for the discharge of quantities of energy if they became too large-as in the case of the accumulated excitation brought about by the traumatic experiences regarded as being causative factors in the production of neurotic symptoms. In line with the dominant scientificideas of the time, Freud systematically attempted to eliminate teleological explanations in his theories; that is, he saw mental functioning as being a form of adaptation to natural causes rather than having an ultimate and final "purpose". The mental apparatus was conceived of as operating according to the principles of physics, with emphasis on the ways in which energy that had been generated could be discharged or expended. Freud also brought to his thinking the general idea of an "unconscious mind", a concept that he was to sharpen considerably in his theories of unconscious mental functioning. The notion of "unconscious mind" was generally current in the rich intellectual climate of the Vienna of Freud's student days, in the form propounded, for example, by von Hartmann, Herbart, and von Brentano4(see Chapter 2 for an account of Freud's basic assumptions).
Another philosophical predisposition, ascribed to Freud's general education (cf.Bibring, 1941),was a tendency to conceptualize in a dualistic manner-in terms of bipolarities, antitheses, and oppositional forces-throughout his scientific life.
18
FOUNDATIONS
The second phase: the topographical theory The second phase lasted from 1897 to 1923 and was a period of rapid and substantial development in psychoanalytic theory and practice. Although the third phase, which can be thought of as commencing with the publication of The Ego and the Id (Freud, 1923b), brought considerable changes, many general accounts of psychoanalytic theory focus on the discoveries and formulations of the second phase. It is extremely difficult to do justice to the developments during this second phase in a short account, and in what follows we have had, of necessity, to be highly selective. The experiences that led Freud to make the changes that initiated this phase were documented in his letters to an old friend, the nose and throat specialist Wilhelm Fliess (Freud, 1950a [1887-19021). These experiences related, on the one hand, to his clinical work with his patients, and, on the other, to his selfanalysis. Towards the end of the first phase Freud had been studying his patients' dreams and current daydreams. He came to the view that he could reconstruct (and at times recover in the patients' memories) childhood events that showed themselves in later behaviour, dreams, and symptoms. It is clear from his correspondence with Fliess that Freud was heading towards a decisive change in his views during 1897. His work with his patients and the revelations of his self-analysis led him finally to the conclusion that many of the memories of sexual seduction recalled by his patients, or reconstructed by him, were not in fact memories of real events at all. Rather, they were phantasies that the patient had created in his childhood, daydreams that had been pushed out of consciousness and subsequently seemed to operate as if they were indeed memories of real events. Probably the most powerful force in this realization came from the findings derived from his self-analysis, which consisted largely of the systematic recording of his associations to his dreams. In a letter to Fliess of 21 September 1897 he wrote: Let me tell you straight away the great secret which has been slowly dawning on me in recent months. I no longer believe in my neurotics and the theory that neurosis was caused by childhood sexual seduction. That is hardly intelligible without an
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREUD'S THEORY
19
.
explanation. . . So I shall start at the beginning and tell you the whole story of how the reasons for rejecting it arose. The first group of factors were the continual disappointment of my attempts to bring my analyses to a real conclusion, the running away of people who for a time had seemed my most favourably inclined patients, the lack of the complete success on which I had counted, and the possibility of explaining my partial successes in other, familiar, ways. Then there was the astonishing thing that in every case . . . blame was laid on perverse ads by the father, and realisation of the unexpected frequency of hysteria, in every case of which the same thing applied, though it was hardly credible that perverted acts against children were so general. [Freud 1950a (1887-1902), pp. 2152161 Freud later commente:
I must mention an error into which I fell for a while and which might well have had fatal consequences for the whole of my work. Under the influence of the technical procedure which I used at that time, the majority of my patients reproduced from their childhood scenes in which they were sexually seduced by some grown-up person. . . .I believed these stories, and consequently supposed that I had discovered the roots of the subsequent neurosis in these experiences of sexual seduction in childhood. . . . however, I was at last obliged to recognize that these scenes of seduction had never taken place, and that they were only phantasies which my patients had made up or which I myself had perhaps forced on them. . . . When I had pulled myself together, I was able to draw the right conclusions from my discovery; namely, that the neurotic symptoms were not related directly to actual events but to wishful phantasies. [Freud, 1925d (1924), pp. 33-34] The incestuous incidents recalled by his patients, which he previously had taken at face value, were now seen as representing wishes on the part of his patients gratified by fulfilment in phantasy? It is important to note that Freud did not deny the occurrence of pathogenic real traumatic events in childhood. For example, in the lntroduct o y Lectures (as in many other of his writings) he said, "Phantasies of being seduced are of particular interest, because so often they are not phantasies
20
FOUNDATIONS
Freud was at first puzzled by the direction in which his observations were to take his theories, but he soon realized that in these observations lay a basic ingredient of mental functioning in general, and of mental conflict in particular. Thus a repressed early wish-fulfilling daydream may find new expression at a later date in a different form, as a symptom, slip (parapraxis),dream, or creative work of art. With this we see the abandonment of the theory of the traumatic origins of the psychoneuroses and a shift of emphasis instead to the history and vicissitudes of the patient's inner strivings, and of the struggle to deal with them. The change in Freud's ideas allowed him to make a major distinction between "historical" (objective) and "psychical" truth as well as to formulate key concepts of psychoanalytic theory, such as repression, conflict, repetition compulsion, and projection. Moreover, all reality was seen as, to varying degrees, invested with phantasy, so that memories are not only of events but of thoughts and phantasies as well. In this context the analysis of dreams became extremely important in studying the way in which these psychological impulses found surface expression. Freud had found dream analysis the most useful way of conducting his self-analysis and applied this method more and more to his patients, who were asked to associate to the individual elements of the dream as they related them (i.e. to the "manifest content" of the dream). The interpretation of dreams became "the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the m i n d (Freud, 1900a, p. 608). Freud's intense interest in dream analysis culminated in the publication of his most detailed and worked-out psychoanalytic contribution-the monumental The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a). In this work he elaborated a new framework, which was to form the basis for the theories of the second phase. Because the psychological model that but real memories" (1916-17, p. 370).However, in the excitement following his realization that many recalled memories were of phantasies rather than what had really occurred, and the implication of this for the theory of neurosis in adulthood, he neglected at that time to give sufficient emphasis to the reality of actual childhood traumatic experiences. The profound effects of childhood traumas on development only came to be understood through the work of later psychoanalysts.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREUD'S THEORY
21
he proposed contains the notion of psychological systems related spatially in depth, it has come to be known as the topographical model of the mental apparatus. In the first phase Freud had distinguished between conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind, and this distinction is elaborated in the topographical model, with its three systemsConscious, Preconscious, and Unconscious. The Unconscious was regarded as containing instinctual drives and wishes which, if they were allowed to emerge into consciousness, would constitute a danger, a threat, and would give rise to the most unpleasant feelings. The strivings in the Unconscious were thought of as being constantly propelled towards discharge, but if they are expressed in consciousness, i.e. manage to reach the system Conscious, or are expressed in behaviour-they can commonly only achieve this in a distorted or censored form. A further system was called the Preconscious, conceived of as containing knowledge, thoughts, and memories of all sorts that were not defended against, could enter consciousness freely at the appropriate time, and were utilized by the individual not only for rational tasks, but could also be seized upon by wishes from the Unconscious system in their path from the depths to the surface. The topographical frame of reference is discussed in later chapters. The system Unconscious can be regarded as being characterized by a very primitive mode of functioning, which Freud designated as the primay process. Logical and formal relations between the elements in the Unconscious are absent, and simple rules of primitive association apply. Drives and wishes in the Unconscious function only according to what Freud termed the pleasure principle, i.e. they seek discharge, gratification, and relief of painful tension at all cost. The systems Preconscious and Conscious could in a sense be considered to be in opposition to this. Here the secondary process-i.e. logic, reason, and the knowledge of external reality and of our conscious ideals and standards of conduct-predominates. Unlike the Unconscious, the Preconscious and Conscious systems follow, or attempt to follow, what Freud called the reality principle (1911b), and it seems obvious that situations of conflictfor example, between sexual wishes of a primitive sort and the person's moral and ethical standards-must inevitably and con-
22
FOUNDATIONS
stantly arise, and that some sort of solution would be sought that would take opposing forces into account. In 1901Freud published The Psychopathology if ~ v a y d L@, a ~ in which a variety of phenomena, such as slips of the tongue and symbolic actions ("symptomatic acts"), were investigated as expressions of unconscious impulses. A crucial work in the early part of the second phase was Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d). In this the so-called "instin~t"~ theory of psychoanalysis had its first elaboration. Instinctual drives were seen as the basis for the whole variety of sexual wishes of childhood and adult life. Their manifold expression, ranging from normal sexuality to the perversions, was studied. Indeed, the basis for the "Essays" was the clinical study of the perversions, leading to the conclusion that so-called perverse tendencies were present in everyone, although they might be strenuously fought against and denied. This work established a link between conscious or unconscious perverse tendencies in adults with normal infantile and childhood sexuality in its various forms. Psychoanalytic theory now became unequivocally a drive-psychology. The "psychosexual" phases of childhood (oral, anal, phallic-oedipal) assumed great significance, not only for later neurotic conflict, but also because they have been used to provide psychoanalysis with a basic developmental framework7. %s many have pointed out, much confusion has been generated by the faulty translation of the German Tneb as "instinct" rather than "drive". An attempt was subsequently made to remedy this by making use of the compromise term "instinctual drive", to be distinguished from "instinctive" tendencies and behaviour studied by ethologists. Throughout the text of this book the terms "instinct", "drive", "instinctual impulse", and "instinctual drives" are used synonymously. However, wishes in the system Unconscious of the topographical model, or of the id of the structural theory, are referred to as "instinctual wishes". For many years the psychoanalytic theory of development emphasized the centrality of Freud's theory of psychosexual development. It has to be remembered, however, that this theory was put forward during the second phase to provide a basis for Freud's theory of neurosis. In later years other developmental frameworks were devised on the basis of specific clinical problems and systematic child observation. Thus we have the developmental theories of Margaret Mahler (see Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975),stimulated
'
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREUD'S THEORY
23
Because of the historical importance of Freud's theory of psychosexual development, it is appropriate to spell it out in a little more detail. The so-called libidinal phases were conceived of on the basis of the heightened libidinal investment, or cathexis,' of different bodily erotogenic zones. In the oral phase, occurring more or less throughout the first year of life, the mouth and lips are the major sources of sensual pleasure, because of their importance in feeding. Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) add, "The activity of nutrition is the source of the particular meanings through which the object-relationship is expressed and organised: the love-relationship to the mother, for example, is marked by the meanings of eating and being eaten" (p. 287). From some time in the second year to about 3% or 4, the libidinal dominance of the anal zone is reflected in the child's preoccupation with the expulsion and retention of faeces. Simultaneously there is a pleasure in a whole variety of activities that are regarded as derivatives of anal erotism. The child relates to his objects in ways that indirectly reflect the child's concerns with defecation. He gains pleasure in controlling his environment, aspects of which acquire anal symbolic value (e.g. gifts = faeces). In the succeeding phallic phase, lasting till about the age of 5, both boys and girls are preoccupied with the genital organs (for Freud the presence or absence of the penis was seen as the central concern
through her work with psychotic children. We have the "epigenetic" theory of
Erikson, based on his interest in the progressive and life-long interaction between the individual and society. Melanie Klein based her theory of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions on developmental parallels with psychotic states; and more recently we have theories of development based on observations of very young infants (e.g. Daniel Stem's book on The Interpersonal World of the Infint, 1985). It is clear that there is no (perhaps there can ever be) one single comprehensive psychoanalytic theory of development. "The word cathexis was coined by Freud's translators to provide an English version of the German word Besetzung. However, Besetzung is normally translated as investment, which is, in our view, a more appropriate translation;but because cathexis has been in common use, we have used the two words interhngeably.
24
FOUNDATIONS
of both sexes). In the phallic phase there is the development of the Oedipus complex, in which there is an organized body of loving and hostile wishes which the child experiences towards its parents. In its so-called positive form the complex appears as in the story of Oedipus Rex: a desire for the death of the rival-the parent of the same sex--and a sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex. In its negative form, we find the reverse picture: love for the parent of the same sex, and jealous hatred for the parent of the opposite sex. [Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973, pp. 282-2831 As Freud saw it, he existence of castration anxiety and the castration complex during the oedipal phase results in the "dissolution" of the Oedipus complex, the consolidation of the superego through internalization of the parents, and entry into the latency phase. Latency, which was regarded as lasting till puberty, was regarded by Freud as characterized by a lessening of sexual interest and activity, an increased interest in non-sexual activities, accompanied by a desexualization of relationships. In effect, latency was conIt is followed by ceived of as a "pause" in sexual devel~pment.~ what Freud referred to as "genital primacy" in puberty, a period in which the erotogenic zones, so important in the early psychosexual phases, now become subordinated to the genitals in both men and women. Whereas in the first phase of psychoanalysis Freud had concentrated on adaptation to events in the external world, his orientation now shifted to the way in which the individual adapts to internal forces. While the impact of external forces and occurrences was not neglected, the theory of the second phase was directly influenced by the clinical procedure employed by Freud and his by now growing number of colleagues. The theory reflected the situation in which the patient lay on the couch, following the so-called "basic rule" of freeassociation, producing his dreams and his associations Thie is now regarded as a somewhat idealized view. We know that children of so-called latency-age are often extremely preoccupied with sexual fantasies and masturbatory activities, although there is clearly an upsurge of sexual interest in pre-adolescenceand adolescence.For the most part the term "latency"is used nowadays to designate the age range from 5 to 9 or 10 yean, followed by a period of pre-adolescence, and adolescence proper at about 12 or 13.
to the various dream elements. The analyst was not seen, told the patient little or nothing of himself, and concealed his own beliefs and attitudes as far as possible. This highlighted what came from within the patient, and the theory reflects the preoccupation with this. A full description of the clinical situation and the relevant clinical concepts can be found in Sandler, Dare, and Holder (1992), where the development of such concepts as transference, resistance, acting out, and working through is discussed. The instinctual wishes characteristic of the system Unconscious representing infantile bisexual impulses were seen as being derived from the various stages of psychosexual development of the child, including those intense and ambivalent feelings of sexual longing, jealousy, and rivalry towards the parents, a constellation that constitutes the well-known Oedipus complex. It is important in understanding the formulations of this period to take into account the fact that Freud initially saw the instinctual wishes as being predominantly sexual in nature-and gave the energy of these drives the name "libido". Later in the second phase he added aggressive wishes to the contents of the Unconscious, but he did not specify any comparable term for the energy behind aggressive drives. Freud made a number of changes in his "instinct" theory during the second phase. It was during this phase that Freud developed the view that even the highest and most refined interests in our lives can be traced in part to transformations of infantile sexual and aggressive urges that have remained in the Unconscious. He believed that the cultural pressure that resulted in the transformation of crude instinctual wishes into more refined and apparently non-sexual forms was attained by a process to which he attached great importance-that of sublimation. In 1914 Freud introduced the concept of narcissism, attempting to clarify the complicated problem of the person's relation to his love-objects and himself in both normal and pathological states. In this paper (1914c), Freud was also concerned with the child's formation of ideals on the basis of his parents as models, and he introduced the concept of the ego ideal, foreshadowing at this time the later (third-phase)concept of the superego. Towards the end of the second phase Freud b e c e e interested in problems relating to aggression (in all likelihood stimulated by
26
FOUNDATIONS
the savagery of the First World War), and this led him to explore problems of masochism and aggression turned against the person's own self, as well as the pathology of severe melancholic depression. In 1920 he made a speculative biological excursion in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, introducing there the well-known and controversial idea of the "death instinct" or "death drive". From the point of view of psychoanalytic psychology, a number of formulations were put forward during the second phase which remained relatively unchanged in his later work, and many of these are touched on in later chapters. It is noteworthy that Freud's writings during the second phase extend through fifteen of the twenty-four volumes of the Standard Edition.
The third phase: the structural theory
The third phase can be considered to have begun with the publication of The Ego and the Id in 1923. Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety was published in 1926, and these two works together introduce substantial changes in Freud's psychoanalytic psychology. They form the basis of the structural theory, in contradistinction to the "topographical" theory of the previous phase.1° Towards the end of the second phase certain inconsistencies began to be apparent in Freud's view of the mental apparatus and its functioning. Problems arose because of confusion between the term "unconscious" used as an adjective to describe all unconscious mental content, including the contents of the system Preconscious on the one hand, and of the system Unconscious (the "dynamic" Unconscious), which was distinct from the Preconscious in the topographical theory, on the other. Problems also arose because the adjective "preconscious", used by Freud to refer to material that was freely accessible to consciousness, became confused with the idea of the Preconscious (originally regarded as a system), with a barrier or censorship existing between it and the 1"
Freud did not in fact refer to this theory as "structural"but spoke of a
"new topography".
system Conscious. In addition to this, Freud had earlier used the term ego to denote an organization of ideas largely linked with consciousness, but he gradually moved towards a concept of an ego in which the relation to consciousness became less crucial than in the past. During the long second phase, the topographical model came more and more to be regarded as consisting of organized functional systems, rather than being based on different qualities of subjective experience. Freud introduced the structural theory in 1923 with a discussion of the existence of an unconscious sense of guilt, and he found it necessary to attribute this to the workings of an organized part of the mind (the superego) which was not adequately encompassed by the topographical model. We w add that Freud's formulations during the second phase in regard to narcissism and the clinical conditions of melancholia, paranoia, and hypochondriasis all contributed to the strain imposed on the explanatory potential of the topographical model. In the structural theory, Freud put forward a model that represented a tripartite division of the mental apparatus into three major structures or agencies, which he called id, ego, and superego. The id corresponds roughly to much of what had previously been encompassed by the concept of the Unconscious. It can be regarded as the area containing the primitive instinctual drives, with all their hereditary and constitutional elements. It is dominated by the pleasure principle and functions according to the primary process. During development a portion of the id undergoes modification, under the influence of the child's interaction with the external world, to become the ego. The primary function of this latter agency is seen as the task of self-preservationand the acquisition of means whereby a simultaneous adaptation to the pressures of the id, the superego, and the demands of reality can be brought about. The ego gains the function of delaying instinctual discharge and of controlling it by means of a variety of mechanisms, including the mechanisms of defence. The third agency, the superego, was seen as developing as a sort of internal precipitate or residue of the child's early conflicts in relation to his parents, caretakers, or other figures of authority. It is the vehicle of the conscience, of parental and cultural values, and of the child's own ideals. A large part of the
28
FOUNDATIONS
superego, as well as of the ego, and all of the id were seen as functioning outside consciousness. Consciousness was now seen as a "sense organ" of the ego. The ego was portrayed as an organization trying to serve three masters at once--the id, the superego, and the demands of the external world. Anxiety could be aroused by threats from any one of these three sources. Instead of anxiety being regarded simply as the way in which a threatening instinctual wish showed itself in consciousness (via a "transformation" of libidoll), it was now seen quite differently, i.e. as a specific response of the ego. Inlnhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926d [1925])this was spelled out in detail, with the ego's anxiety being seen as a signal of danger-ultimately the danger of being traumatically overwhelmed. The signal of anxiety prompted the ego to take appropriate adaptive and defensive measures so that its own integrity and security could be preserved. Aggression was now given a place in the id as a drive equal to sexuality, developing a view put forward in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g). The concern with the way in which the ego adapted to the various and often conflicting demands made upon it was reflected in changes in psychoanalytic technique. The real world, whose significance had been diminished in the second phase, was now endowed with some of the importance that had been taken from it. The ego's mechanisms of defence came to be more intensely studied and interpreted in the treatment situation. The third phase in the development of Freud's theories can be considered as ending with the publication of Freud's final work, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940a [1938]).Of course, during the second and third phases, distinguished contributions were being made by Freud's colleagues, notably Karl Abraham, Sandor Ferenczi, Ernest Jones, C. G. Jung, and Otto Rank (both the two last-named were to break with Freud). Although their work l1 The transformation of libido into anxiety during the second phase was described by Freud as follows: "One of the most important results of psychoanalytic research is [the] discovery that neurotic anxiety arises out of libido, that it is the product of a transformation of it, and that it is thus related to it in the same kind of way as vinegar is to wine" (1905d,p. 224). This was the view that he later decisively rejected.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FREUD'S THEORY
29
undoubtedly influenced Freud's thinking to a certain degree, our presentation of Freud's frames of reference makes no explicit acknowledgement of contributions from Freud's contemporaries; nor can any brief account do justice to the contributions of psy-choanalytic writers other than Freud after his death in 1939. Nevertheless, we should mention two contributions that, although written towards the end of Freud's life, had a significant impact on later developments. Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936)and Hartmann's Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation (1939)were relatively immediate outcomes of the innovations with regard to the theory of the ego made in the third phase, and they initiated an important line of development in psychoanalytic thinking in the area of what came to be known in the post-war period as "ego psychology". Psychoanalytic theory has been greatly elaborated after Freud, including a variety of approaches, among these being the Kleinian school, the self-psychologists, the object relations theorists, and the intersubjectivists.
CHAPTER TWO
Basic assumptions
n the previous chapter the development of Freud's theory was divided, for our purposes, into three "phases". We regarded a 1886 after the first as starting from Freud's return to V i e ~ in his visit to Charcot, ending in 1897 with his "discovery" that the traumas produced by his hysterical patients had not necessarily occurred in reality, but were very often childhood daydreams that had been expelled from conscious memory (repressed). This realization (arising in large part from Freud's self-analysis) led to a crucial reorientation towards the working of the mind and initiated the long second phase, which lasted until 1923. The quarter of a century of the second phase saw extensivedevelopmentsin Freud's psychoanalytic theory, and his psychoanalytic psychology had its main emphasis on the instinctual drives and their vicissitudes, which had not been the case in the first phase. The third phase, from 1923to 1940, began with the introduction of the "structural" theory, with the ego seen as a central agency adapting to demands from id, superego, and the external world. This phase was also characterized by a revision of the theory of anxiety and further considerations of the theory of psychoanalytic technique.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
31
The division into phases is, to some extent, arbitrary and artificial, but it is useful for our purposes, for it enables us to construct, in the chapters that follow, a series offrames of reference corresponding to the different phases as we have described them. It seems appropriate to supplement the description of the historical context and phases given in the previous chapter with a short account of what have been called "basic hypotheses", "fundamental concepts", and so forth and which we will refer to as basic assumptions. We do not propose to discuss the semantic, philosophical, and scientific issues involved, but rather to present the basic psychoanalytic tenets from the point of view of their being indispensable cornerstones,without any one of which the whole of Freud's theoretical structure would collapse (see Rapaport, 1967). Underlying Freud's theory of mind are his "metapsychological points of view". He described three: the dynamic, the economic, and the topographical or structural. The dynamic point of view considers mental processes as being the outcome of the interplay of forces (originating in instinctual drives), often in conflict with one another. The economic viewpoint underlines the importance of variations in the quantity of mental forces and of the relative strength of such forces (conceived of as mental "energies"). Freud remarked that "it is the purpose of the mental apparatus to hinder any damming-up of these energies and to keep as low as possible the total amount of the excitations with which it is loaded" (1926d [1925], p. 266). The topographical or structural standpoint "regards the mental apparatus as a compound instrument, and endeavours to determine at what points in it the various mental processes take place" (1926d [1925], p. 266). After Freud, two important further metapsychological viewpoints were added (see Rapaport & Gill, 1959).The genetic point of view, which could also be referred to as a developmental one, is that the adult's mental processes are a product of processes that have occurred since earliest childhood and can only be understood in terms of the individual's past.' The adaptive viewpoint takes into account the fact that people live in "Genetic" in psychoanalysis refers to the "genesis"or origins of some aspect of psychological functioning, and not to inheritance (although inheritance does, naturally, play a part in the individual's development).
32
FOUNDATIONS
certain social and cultural contexts, with which they interact and which they adapt and adapt to. Before presenting our own list of basic assumptions (which is not necessarily complete), it may be of interest to examine what some early authors regarded as "fundamental" or "basic". Freud, in writing of the "cornerstones of psychoanalytic theory", described them as follows: The assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of resistance and repression, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex-these constitute the principal subject-matter of psycho-analysis and the foundations of its theory. No one who cannot accept them all should count himself a psychoanalyst. [Freud, 1923a [1922],p. 2471 In 1949 Alexander spoke of "two fundamental postulates". These were, first, that "minds can study minds" and, secondly, that "The functions of the mind are as truly biological as locomotion and breathing and are adaptive mechanisms. . . . In the present state of our knowledge . . . the psychological approach gives a . . . detailed insight into these complex biological functions" (pp. 33-35). Bremer writes of "two fundamental hypotheses" that "have received so much confirmation and appear to be so fundamentalin their significance that we are inclined to view them as established laws of the-mind.Two such fundamental hypotheses, which have been abundantly confirmed, are the principle of psychic determinism,or causality, and the proposition that consciousness is an exceptional rather than a regular attribute of psychic processes" (1973, pp. 1-2). In the psychoanalytic literature reference is also made to psychological determinism, the role of the unconscious2,the concept of motivation (the "goal-directed quality of human behaviour"), and the genetic approach (current events depend upon the past The we of the term "theuncansdous" i a one of the sources of confusion in presentations of psychoanalytic theory. The reference in the text may be to the system Unconscious, or it may be ueed descriptively for unconscious processes in general; this ir diecussed further in Chapter 4.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
33
"in creative interaction with the present"). In this context it is appropriate to stress the importance of Freud's clinically relevant concept of the "compulsion to repeat" (the repetition compulsion). In Freud's paper "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through" (1914g), he pointed out that patients tend to repeat, in their transference relationship to the analyst, patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving of their early life. The repetition compulsion occurs outside analysis, in normal as well as in pathological relationships. Moreover, experiences of the past repeated in the present are not simply those that were pleasant-they could be painful and distressing. In regard to traumas of the past, the patient may attempt to master actively what had been passively experienced. The repetition compulsion was linked to the death instinct by Freud in his later writings. In a series of lectures given in 1944, Rapaport (1967) discusses the tenets or axioms of Freudian psychoanalytic psychology. He refers to the postulates of continuity, meaning, determinism, instinct (instinctual drive), and the unconscious. Others (e.g. Holzman, 1970; Waelder, 1960) have considered the general assumptions of psychoanalytic theory from the point of view of the understanding of clinical phenomena. On the whole, later authors have simply repeated earlier statements about the basic assumptions. In the following sections we present our own list of basic assumptions, in which we take a broader view of Freud's psychoanalytic theory (as evident from the first hypothesis discussed).To some extent the assumptions overlap with one another, and all are interrelated.
Psychoanalysis as a general psychology
While for Freud the term "psychoanalysis" referred to a specific treatment method, to a body of data collected by the psychoanalytic method, he also saw it as a basis for understanding and explaining normal as well as abnormal psychological phenomena. Pathological manifestations could be understood by means of the more general psychology of psychoanalysis.If we take the parallel
34
FOUNDATIONS
with organic medicine, this would be equivalent to saying that the field of somatic pathology, although possessing certain specific features of its own, is embedded in the more general theory of somatic functioning, which includes the consideration of normal bodily processes and their interaction. Indeed, one may go further and take the general view that the pathological can only be fully understood in terms of the n ~ r m a l . ~
Unconscious mental functioning The idea of unconscious mental functioning is central to all psychoanalytic theories of normal as well as of abnormal mental processes. This basic hypothesis is one that Freud derived from his previous scientific and philosophical education, rather than being a new "discovery". Nevertheless, it is absolutely fundamental to psychoanalytic psychology, and Freud's systematic use and elaboration of the concept, as well as the psychoanalytic method he devised to explore unconscious processes, has raised it to a special status. For psychoanalysis, it is a basic tenet that behaviour and subjective experience can have unconscious determinants. The hypothesis includes the view that a large part of the mental apparatus, indeed by far the largest part of it, functions outside conscious experience; it also includes the view that psychological adaptation occurs for the most part unconsciously, and that the principle of psychological determinism applies as equally to unconscious as to co.@cious processes and events. It is of some importance to note that it is not only psychological structures and organizations that are assumed to be capable of existing outside consciousness. Ideas and other subjective experiences (including feelings) can also be regarded as existing unconsciously in one form or another, i.e. below the threshold of conscious awareness. As Freud commented: "Mental processes are in themselves unconscious and . of all mental life it is only cer-
..
One of the distinguishing featuresof Freud's general psychoanalyticpsychology is its emphasis, in both normal and abnonnal mental functioning, on the role of instinctual drives and of mental conflict.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
35
tain individual acts and portions that are conscious. . . . [Psychoanalysis] is obliged to maintain that there is unconscious thinking and unapprehended willing" (Freud, 1916-17, pp. 21-22).
The mental apparatus Freud's assumption of the existence of a mental apparatus implies the existence of a stable, or relatively stable, organization in the individual. While it may be argued validly that psychological processes are a function of the nervous system, psychoanalysis assumed that psychological phenomena can be conceptualized as involving a psychological "apparatus"'. In effect, the concept of a mental apparatus here too parallels the physiologist's concepts of the cardiovascular, nervous, digestive, genitourinary, and other systems. It is an added system, which is psychological rather than organic, although it is influenced by and has effects on the other systems. From the Freudian point of view, psychology can be regarded as the study of the mind and its functioning, just as disciplines such as physiology, anatomy, and biochemistry study the somatic apparatuses and their functions. The notion of a mental apparatus implies the idea of processes involving psychological "structures"-psychological or@zations with a slow rate of change (l7apaport)-but psychoanalytic psychology includes the study of behaviour not only in terms of psychological structures and functions, but also in terms of subjective experience. The mental apparatus has been regarded as relatively simple in early life, increasing in complexity in the course of development. Thus it is capable of modification, and its development is a function both of maturation and of the forces entering into psychological adaptation (in the sense in which adaptation is discussed below). The term "mental apparatus" sounds clumsy and mechanistic, as we are more distant from Freud's scientific background. Nowadays there is a tendency to speak rather of "mind"or to use such terms as "psychic organization".
36
FOUNDATIONS
Psychological adaptation
Psychological adaptation is the assumption that the apparatus functions (among other things) to maintain a "steady state" (it can be compared with the physiological notion of homeostasis), in the face of constant disturbances of inner equilibrium. It should be emphasized that such disturbances may arise from outside the individual, as well as from within. In the first phase, emphasis was placed on the experience of trauma as a source of disequilibrium. In the second phase, such disequilibrium is predominantly related to the "demand for work" placed on the mental apparatus by the drives. In the third phase, weight was given to the demands of the external world as well as to those of the id and the superego as sources of disequilibrium? Indeed, from the point of view of psychoanalytic psychology, all behaviour and experiences can be related to processes of psychological adaptation6to disturbances of the "steady state". The processes of adaptation in turn may bring about changes in the structure and mode of functioning of the mental apparatus. Closely involved with the idea of adaptation are the concepts of conflict as a source of disequilibrium and of defences as particular adaptive manoeuvres of the mental apparatus.
Psychological determinism
In the first phase Freud took the idea of determinism from the physical sciences of the time and applied it to the psychological sphere. Briefly, it was the belief that every aspect of behaviour or subjective experience, and every aspect of the functioning of the Disturbances of the equilibrium of the mental apparatus arising from within the body can be regarded as originating outside the mental apparatus and impinging on it. "is approach to adaptation is radically different from that which emphasizes adaptation to the social environment only. From the psychoanalytic point of view, even the grossest pathology may be considered to be the outcome of attempts at psychological adaptation.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
37
mental apparatus, can be seen as the outcome of the events (psychological as well as non-psychological) that precede it. The term implied that theoretically it should be possible to predict and to explain a psychological "event" in terms of all the forces operative at the time and which have operated in the past. While Freud adhered to this theoretical view, he was aware that in practice such precision is impossible, although he made the assumption that every psychological manifestation or experience stands in a definite and theoretically explicable relationship to the whole of the person's psychological life. Psychological determinism was sometimes referred to as the principle of causality. The importance of this assumption for psychoanalysis is that it led Freud to look for causes. This does not mean that the causes will always be found. If we allow a stone to roll down a hill, we can assume that the position in which it finally comes to rest is determined by such factors as its shape, weight, consistency, and the whole sequence of forces acting on it. This does not mean that all the factors that caused the stone to end up where it did can readily be discovered, nor indeed that it would be useful to amass such a wealth of information regarding such an event. What is important in regard to Freud's assumption of psychological determinism is the point of view that reasons for mental events can be found, that mental events do not occur entirely at random or at the caprice of some supernatural force. Thus the "free associations" of a patient are not regarded as random thoughts; it is assumed, rather, that there is some underlying connection, however complicated, between the different associations produced by the patient. Drawing on the model of the physical sciences of the time, Freud attempted to simplify matters by the construction of laws and principles (such as the pleasure principle and the reality principle). As these are simplifications and generalizations, their "truth lies in their usefulness in particular circumstances. On the whole, in spite of Freud's belief in determinism, the "laws" relating to mental functioning can be considered as laws of probability. However, the practicing psychoanalyst takes the view that the more one knows of specific features of the individual's behaviour and of his mental processes and experience, the more certain one can be of the conclusions drawn. Generally speaking, no single cause was regarded by Freud as being a sufficient explanation for
38
FOUNDATIONS
a phenomenon, and the further assumption of multiple causes (overdetermination) was made? Psychological determinism has sometimes been seen as being in conflict with the idea of "free will". In our view this conflict has, on the whole, been exaggerated. An individual may possess a high degree of internal security and be in a position to exercise his judgement consciously in regard to which one of a number of courses he will decide to pursue. Nevertheless, the individual's final decision or action can be regarded as the outcome of the operation of many factors, incliding those entering into his assessment and judgement of the situation. However, because of the assumption of the existence of unconscious mental functioning (see below), Freud took the view that many actions that appear on the surface to be a consequence of free acts of will are inevitably determined by the influence of unconscious psychological forces acting on the individual. There are a number of misconceptions arising from the hypothesis of psychological determinism. One of these is that the psychoanalyst can "explain" every psychological event. Another is that all psychological events are the consequence of purely psychological "causes". And a further misconception is that the psychoanalyst believes that evey act or piece of conscious experience is entirely the outcome of unconscious forces operating in the present (particularly unconscious instinctual wishes)? It is perhaps more appropriate that psychoanalysts, like most workers in the social sciences, think in terms of reasons, which are tied to rules, rather than causes linked to laws and explanations. Reasons have to be understood, rather than explained, and have to be contextualized, i.e. understood and integrated into the appropriate context. Vt is certainly true that some psychoanalysts believe that it is possible to "explain" everything the patient brings to analysis. This is particularly true of those who believe that all later behaviour is determined by the events and experiences occurring in the first months and years of life. However, it should be said that most psychoanalysts subscribe to the view that early experiences are signijbnt factors in determining later mental functioning, particularly in relation to the appearance of psychological illness. We would again emphasize that the importance placed by psychoanalysts on early experiences and reactions does not mean that everything that occurs later has been predetermined by them.
PART
II
First phase: the affect-trauma frame o f reference
CHAPTER THREE
The affect-trauma model
I
n the opening chapters, which introduced this series of frames of reference, we began an attempt to provide an overview of Freudian psychoanalytic psychology. This was regarded as necessary both because of the complexity of Freud's ideas and because no integrated theory exists. It was felt by us that the subject could be approached by dividing the history of the development of Freud's theories into phases, proceeding next to sketch the outlines of what we have referred to asframes of reference appropriate to each phase. Three historical phases were delineated, together with corresponding frames of reference: First phase (up to 1897):the affect-trauma frame of reference Second phase (1897-1923): the topographical frame of reference Third phase (1923-1940): the structural frame of reference The present chapter is concerned with the affect-trauma frame of reference, derived from Freud's thinking up to 1897. Its essence lies in the emphasis on external events as instigators of pathology,
42
FIRST PHASE: THE AFFECT-TRAUMA FRAME
and on the role played by trauma and "charges of affect" in normal and abnormal mental functioning.' This first phase is not only of historical significance.Many of the concepts introduced during it remained, in one form or another, in Freud's later thinking (and also in subsequent psychoanalytic theory). For example, the concept of trauma persisted more or less unchanged in Freud's work. The idea that a repressed traumatic experience may lie behind the patient's psychopathology, and the hope that this can be recovered, together with the abreaction (catharsis) of the associated emotions, still affects the psychoanalytic treatment of the neuroses. The notion of quantities of affect, held back in a "pent-up" state, endures (with a certain clinical validity), and enters into descriptions of psychoanalytic treatment ("The patient was at last able to release the hostile feelings he had kept back for so long", etc.). The concept of mental energy and its discharge played a crucial role in later formulations in psychoanalytic psychology. After the first phase, energy became more specifically linked with the instinctual drives (as in the idea of "libidinal energy"), and affect or emotion was no longer equated with mental energy. The concept of defence, introduced in the first phase, has remained. Initially, defence was seen as directed only against unwelcome affects, but in later phases ideas about what is defended against have changed. Distinctions between defences against drives, ideas, and affects came to be made. Other concepts--such as that of the ego-were radically altered in later phases. Each of the first two phases left a legacy of ideas that have been, where it has proved possible, incorporated into Freud's later conceptualizations.It is our contention that an understanding of the essential concepts of each phase is necessary for the comprehension of what has developed later, and for the under-
"Chargeof affect" refers to the investment of memory, thought, wish, or phantasy with emotion. Abreaction refers to the release of pent-up emotions, with consequent relief. In the first phase, abreaction was regarded as therapeutic, although later Freud became aware that its "curative" effect was only temporary.
THE AFFECT-TRAUMA MODEL
43
standing of the many inconsistencies that still exist in psychoanalytic psychology.
The mental apparatus in the affect-trauma frame of reference In common with the other Freudian frames of reference, the existence of a mental (or psychic) "apparatus" is assumed in the first phase. In the affect-trauma frame of reference, as in others, it is regarded as a psychological organization, within which psychological processes occur, and is conceived of as being relatively rudimentary in early childhood, increasing in complexity during the course of development. It functions as a vehicle for adaptation to demands from both internal and external sources, althoughand this is of the greatest importance--in this first frame of reference adaptation to experiences derivingfrom external reality (trau-
mas) is emphasi~ed.~ Among the other functions of the mental apparatus are the control and discharge of excitation, as well as the function of defence against distressing affects and "incompatible" ideas. The latter ideas are those that are rejected as being unacceptable to the conscious standards, ideals, beliefs, and wishes of the individual. A further function of the apparatus is to lay down memory traces. Associative links between such traces are created, these links being
While Freud acknowledged, in the first phase, the influence of internal biological and psychological needs and pressures and their influence on the mental apparatus, these were considered to be of secondary importance. The fuller appreciation of the role of internal forces was to come later, indeed rather dramatically (1950a [1887-19021, pp. 220-228). During the first phase, due to the weight of the clinical evidence pertaining to the crucial significance of real events in the person's life, the emphasis on the quantity of stimulationimpinging on the apparatus from the side of the external world was very much greater in that phase than that given to the amount of stimulation arising from internal sunUce8.
44
FIRST PHASE: THE AFFECT-TRAUMA
FRAME
based on such factors as contemporaneity and similarity of the content of the events recorded. Attention, perception, and the transformation of mental energy (see below) from one state to another are regarded as further functions of the apparatus. Development brings about a differentiation within the apparatus. One of these differentiated aspects is referred to as the ego3, a term that is used in this frame of reference to designate both consciousness and a capacity to perform the function of defence. The ego is thought of as coming into existence on the basis of the interaction between biological needs (which create sums of excitation in the apparatus) and the external world (which produces substantially larger amounts of excitation).A constitutional disposition (Anlage)for the development of the ego is assumed. Hand in hand with the appearance of the ego in the sense of conscious awareness there develops the capacity for splitting off memories and ideas that are incompatible with consciousness,and which are relegated to an unconscious part of the mind. This dissociation of certain contents and associated emotions is brought about by processes of defence, initiated by the ego (see Figure 3.1).
Mental energy
In this first phase, the mental apparatus is regarded as deploying and regulating mental energy, which can exist in a number of different states. It can be quiescent, in which case a state of equilibrium exists, in accordance with Fechner's well-known "principle of constancy". Alternatively, mental energy can exert a force, associated with disequilibrium in the mental apparatus, creating a "pressure towards discharge", i.e. a so-called "demand" for the restoration of the constant state (energic homeostasis). The apparatus thus functions in the direction of maintaining a certain equilibrium, The meaning of the term "ego"was to change radically with the development of psychoanalytic theory. In the first phase, it was more or less synonymous with consciousness and "conscious self", whereas in the third phase it was no longer equated with consciousness, but was seen as a highly complex structure, essentially unconscious,with consciousness being regarded as a "sense-organ"of the ego.
THE AFFECT-TRAUMA MODEL
45
Active dissociation from consciousness by the ego
Pathway of discharge bypassing consciousness
/
conscious
Ego = conscious awareness and source of defence
I
)r
unconscious
lncompatlble ideas and distressing affects, now unconscious
FIC;URE 3.1: A schematic representation of the affect-trauma frame of reference showing dissociation (repression) of mental content unacceptable to the ego.
i.e. towards operating at a relatively constant and low level of excitation. Mental energy is regarded as a quantity that may be augmented or diminished by stimulation or discharge, respectively. Affect or emotion is equated with energic excitation? Freud used the "working hypothesis" that "in mental functions something is to be distinguished-a quota of affect or sum of excitation-which possesses all the characteristics of a quantity (though we have no means of measuring it), which is capable of increase, diminution, displacement and diecharge, and which is spread over the memory-traces of ideas somewhat as an electric charge is spread over the surface of a body" (Freud, 1894a, p. 60).
46
FIRST PHASE: THE AFFECT-TRAUMA
FRAME
Defences
If there is an arousal of emotional excitation associated with an idea, it can be dealt with in a number of ways. Normal processes such as motor action and the conscious expression of emotions may suffice for "discharge" if the amount of energy involved is not too great.5 However, if the energy and associated ideas are treated as threatening and potentially overwhelming to the ego (i.e. "incompatible"), they may be dealt with by a special psychological mechanism (defence) that serves to protect consciousness by producing a form of dissociation of emotion and ideas from consciousness. This process may or may not lead to pathology. The basic defence is regarded as being repression. It is a "pushing away" (Verdrangung) of unacceptable ideas and associated emotions, so that these are relegated to the unconscious part of the apparatus. If repression is successful, no trace of the distressing idea or feeling remains in consciousness, but a quantity of emotional excitation remains "dammed up" or "strangulated" outside consciousness. Repression is also the simplest of the defences. An instance of its operation (given by Freud) is the case of a person having forgotten and being unable to recall something that he or she had read (and which could normally have been remembered) because the content of the particular passage aroused unpalatable memories of past sexual events. These memories and associated emotions then gave rise to an affective reaction of repugnance, and the mernories, affects, and also the associated content of what had been recently read, were "pushed away" from consciousness, i.e. repressed. The defence of substitution is concerned with the transferring of a certain affect from an "incompatible idea" to one that can be tolerated in consciousness. Freud (1895c [1894]) gives an example, typical of obsessional pathology, in a description of a girl who reproached herself for things that she knew were absurd-for having stolen, made counterfeit money, and so on. Originally she had Freud also wrote, in the first phase, of other processes involved in the reduction of energic (emotional) tension-a normal "wearing away" along associative pathways and "absorption"of relatively small quantities of energy over a period of time.
THE AFFECT-TRAUMA MODEL
47
reproached herself for her secret masturbation. The feelings of selfreproach and guilt could be permitted to emerge in association with the "absurd" compulsive thoughts that replaced the memory of the masturbation. Finally, the defence of transformation of affect is concerned with the replacement of one affect by another. This accounts for the appearance of anxiety as a consequence of the transformation of some other "strangulated affect"! While the defensive efforts on the part of the mental apparatus are regarded as fundamental and necessary for normal mental functioning, their excessive use may lead to pathology. It should be remembered that in the first phase, and in this frame of reference, the predominant emphasis is placed on processes of defence against quantities of affect. These may (a) threaten to overwhelm the conscious ego in a painful fashion, or (b) cause a painful state because they are associated with ideas (particularly those based on memories) that consciousness finds repugnant.
Pathogenic processes
In the affect-trauma frame of reference, pathological processes are seen as particular processes of adaptation to a disequilibrium in the mental apparatus resulting from an intense charge of affective energy associated with certain memories. If the energy cannot be dealt with normally, then it may find expression in one or other form of psychological disturbance. A major cause of the disequilibrium is a trauma, although there are other causes as well (as in the so-called "actual" neuroses). Special emphasis is placed
Freud described this when he remarked that "The affect of the selfreproach may be transformed by various psychical processes into other affects, which then enter consciousnessmore clearly than the affect itself: for instance, into anxiety (fear of the consequences of the action to which the self-reproach applies), hypochondria (fearof its bodily effects), delusions of persecution (fear of its social effects), shame (fear of other people knowing about it), and so on" (Freud, 1950a [1887-19021, p. 224).
48
FIRST PHASE: THE AFFECT-TRAUMA
FRAME
on the occurrence of events-particularly sexual experiences-in the patient's life that may, as a consequence of repression, lead to a state of "dammed-up" affect that, because of the need of the conscious ego to defend itself against being overwhelmed by painful feelings, can only find a psychopathological expression. As a result the dammed-up affectmay find a disguised and distorted expression in the neurotic symptom. It is worth mentioning that the formulations of the first phase represented a major attempt to explain the occurrence of pathological conditions (such as conversion hysteria) in terms of mental processes-psychological conflict, the effect of distressing or threatening affects, mental traumas, and the psychological effect of sexual factors such as seductions, frustrations, and so forth. However, the possible contributions from the side of hereditary and constitutional predispositions are given a place as well. Indeed, such factors, inherent in the make-up of the individual, are considered to play a part in explaining why a person may develop one type of pathology rather than another, or none at all. It is the interaction of constitutional factors with the specific experiences of the individual that is regarded as important in determining the way in which the mental apparatus adapts to the forces acting on it, and whether or not pathological processes will ensue. If these do develop, then both sets of relevant factors interact to determine the form of the pathological adaptation?
Mental trauma
The mental apparatus can only cope with a certain amount of stimulation or excitation at any one time. This depends to some extent on the degree of maturity of the apparatus. If it is exposed to Freud put it as follows: "Since there is no such thing as chance in neurotic pathogenesis any more than anywhere else, it must be allowed that it is not heredity that presides over the choice of the particular nervous disorder which is to develop in the predisposed member of a family, but that there are grounds for suspecting the existence of other aetiological influences, of a less incomprehensible nature, which would then deserve to be called the specific aetiology of such and such a nervous affection. Without the existence of this special aetio-
THE AFFECT-TRAUMA MODEL
49
too great a quantity of affective energy it can be overwhelmed, i.e. the normal stimulus barrier can be breached. In childhood the immature apparatus is more prone to be overcome by a sudden influx of stimulation (i.e. energy that the child is unable to regulate by appropriate and controlled discharge along normal channels). The state of being helplessly overwhelmed by unmanageable excitation is that of mental ("psychic", "psychical", or "psychological") trauman.Although trauma is defined unambiguously in this way, it is necessary to distinguish (because of the relevance to pathological processes as understood in this frame of reference) between the follo~ing:~ 1 . Current traumas, i.e. those that represent an overwhelming of the mental apparatus by energy as an immediate or relatively immediate response to a real situation or event. Such traumas occur, for example, as a consequence of accidents or assaults, which may be followed by the appearance of neurotic symptoms. 2 . Retroactive traumas. While these are not in essence different from current traumas, in that they represent a state of being overwhelmed by uncontrollable energy, they differ from current traumas in their time relation to the significant environmental event. In the case of these traumas, the memory traces of the
logical factor, heredity could have done nothing; it would have lent itself to the production of another nervous disorder if the specific aetiology in question had been replaced by some other influence" (Freud, 1896a,p. 145).It is interesting to note that this is still a major field of investigation in the human sciences. "ere has always been some confusion and ambiguity about the term "trauma" in psychoanalytic writings. The term is used in relation to a specific subjective experience, to the event bringing such an experience about, and to the long-term consequences that may follow such an experience. (For a discussion of the conceptual problems involved see Sandler, 1967;Sandler, Dreher, br Drews, 1991.) Because the emphasis in the first phase was placed so much on the pathogenic effect of external events, the distinction between the different types of trauma is important.With the shift of emphasis to the role of the drives and assodated phantasies in the second phase, the distinction between categories of trauma became less significant.
50
FIRST PHASE: THE AFFECT-TRAUMA
FRAME
event (usually in childhood) have been registered in the apparatus often long before the trauma actually occurs. The retroactive traumas are linked with certain events that, though exciting, were not experienced as traumatic at the time of their occurrence (e.g. some experiences, particularly sexual seductions, in which the individual played a passive role, occurring in childhood). However, the memories of these events, which had been repressed because they were unacceptable, give rise to a trauma when they become revived and reinforced by an experience in later life. The trauma that then occurs is a result of the apparatus being overcome by a combination of the revived excitement of the past, together with strong affective reactions on the part of the ego, reactions such as shame, disgust, self-reproach, and anxiety. A state of conflict arises because what had been repressed in childhood (and consequently had not overwhelmed the ego) represents something that is unacceptable to the person's current standards of morality and conduct; this now threatens to overwhelm the ego and to bring about a powerful affective reaction on the ego's part to the revived memory and to the excitement associated with it.lo
Concepts of neurosis In the first phase the symptoms of "nervous" disorder were thought of as being the consequence of pent-up or "strangulated" affect that could not be dealt with by normal processes of "discharge". While a certain quantity of affective energy can normally be contained by repression, if it is beyond a certain amount the affect charge may find an alternative expression in some form of involuntary symptom. The symptom thus represents a manifestalo In speaking of the aetiology of hysteria, Freud says: "The event of which the subject has retained an unconscious memory is a precocious experience of sexual relations with actual excitement of the genitals, resultingfrom sexual abuse committed by another person; and the period of life at which this fatal event takes place is earliest youth-the years up to the age of eight to ten, before the child has reached sexual maturity. . . . The memory will operate as though it were a contemporary event" (Freud, 1896a, pp. 152-154).
THE AFFECT-TRAUMA MODEL
51
tion, in disguised form, of the repressed affect and the ideas attached to it. It is not our intention to go into the various forms of pathology considered in the first phase in any great detail in this chapter. However, it is appropriate to point out that Freud distinguished between the psychoneuroses (or neuro-psychoses) and the actual neuroses. We pointed out in Chapter 1 that the word "actual" is a misleading translation of the German prefix aktual, which refers to something current, in the present. The psychoneuroses take two main forms: hysteria and obsessional neurosis. The actual neuroses were also thought to take two main forms, representing the third and fourth of the "major neuroses".ll These are neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis. The difference between the actual neuroses and the psychoneuroses is that in the former the symptoms are regarded as manifestations of current physical sexual factors rather than psychological ones. 1. Hysteria. Whereas this condition had traditionally been regarded by psychiatrists as the result of degeneracy, it was seen by Freud to be a specific reaction of the mental apparatus to a mental trauma. Hysteria is regarded as having been determined by the real traumatic experiences which are reproduced in asymbolicfashion in somatic symptoms.It is this that gives the condition its special character. But, as Freud put it (1896a), "no
hysterical symptom can arisefrom a real experience alone, but that in evey case the memoy of earlier experiences awakened in association to it plays a part in causing the symptom" (Freud, 1896c, p. 197). In hysteria the charge of affect is transformed by being "discharged" along a path of motor or sensory innervation. "In hysteria, the incompatible idea is rendered innocuous by its l1 Freud also distinguished the "traumatic neurosis" proper, in which the symptoms are regarded as a consequence of a physical rather than mental trauma. This was particularly important towards the end of the century because of the introductionof the railways and the many accidents that followed. It was important for neurologists to make the differential diagnosis between the consequences of actuel lesions of the nervous system and psychogenic traumatic neuroses with psychogenic symptoms which might give rise to daimsfor compensation.
52
FIRST PHASE: THE AFFECT-TRAUMA FRAME
sum of excitation being transformed into something somatic. For this I should like to propose the name of conversion" (Freud, 1894a, p. 49).12Thus in hysteria, mechanisms of dissociation and conversion could bring about motor paralyses, fits, anaesthesia, pains, and even certain hallucinations. Obsessional neurosis. Whereas in hysteria the sum of excitation that finds pathological discharge was "transformed into something somatic", in the second of the major neuroses (which includes a number of phobias that have an obsessional quality) the individual concerned lacks "the capacity for conversion" (1894a). The affect, now separated from the "incompatible idea", is obliged to remain in the psychical sphere. The idea, now weakened, is still left in consciousness, separated from all association.But its affect, which has become free, attaches itself to other ideas that are not in themselves incompatible and, thanks to this "false connection", turn into obsessional ideas (1894a). As in hysteria, the distressingaffect is thought to have arisen from the subject's sexual life, and the main mechanism of defence involved is repression. However, a mechanism also involved in obsessional neurosis is "substitution". Whereas in obsessions we may get a whole range of affective states (such as doubt, remorse, shame, self-reproaches, anger, etc.), in those phobias that come under the heading of obsessional neurosis the distressing affect is always that of anxiety. 3. Neurasthenia. A variety of physical symptoms, including fatigue, dyspepsia with flatulence, and indications of intracranial pressure and spinal irritation are included by Freud in this category. The condition, Freud thought, is acquired "by excessive masturbation or arises spontaneously from frequent emissions" (Freud, 1898a, p. 268).
12 The concept of conversion, although deriving from the first phase of psychoanalysis, and at that time thought to involve a transformation of energy, is still in current use, although it is not now regarded as involving a transformation of energy.
THE AFFECT-TRAUMA M O D E L
53
Originally Freud included the symptoms of anxiety neurosis in the category of neurasthenia, but these were separated from neurasthenia "proper" (1895b [1894]).However, throughout the first phase he emphasized the existence of clinically "mixed" pictures, and neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis were thought to coexist in many cases, even though they were regarded as separate conditions. Hereditary factors were seen as being of minimal importance in neurasthenia. Greater importance is given to the strains imposed by civilization, with the factors of overwork, fatigue, and exhaustion combining with "sexual noxae" to produce the illness. 4. Anxiety neurosis. The specific cause of an anxiety neurosis "is the accumulation of sexual tension, produced by abstinence or by unconsummated sexual excitation" (1895c [1894], p. 81). While the essential causes of the anxiety neurosis are regarded as physical, it produces psychological symptoms, including phobias (although some phobias are regarded as being more closely related to obsessional neurosis). The clinical picture included the following symptoms: general irritability, anxious expectation (this is regarded as the nuclear symptom of the anxiety neurosis, being a quantity of anxiety that is "free-floating" and can link itself to any suitable idea), anxiety attacks, pavor nocturnus (night terrors), and vertigo. While anxiety neurosis may either be "acquired" or a consequence of hereditary factors, the "acquired" aspects are due to the effect of sexual "noxae" resulting (in men) from abstinence, states of unconsummated excitation, the practice of coitus interruptus, and senescence. In women, predisposing factors were regarded by Freud as "virginal anxiety" ("first-night nerves"), abstinence, the effects of the climacterium, as well as marriage to a husband suffering from premature ejaculation or impotence or who practices coitus interruptus. In both sexes, masturbation and overwork were thought to be contributing factors. The emphasis in all of this is on the accumulation of undischarged somatic tensions, which are then transformed into anxiety. The anxiety thus has a physical rather than a psychological origin. Freud remarked: "The mechanism of
54
FIRST PHASE: THE AFFECT-TRAUMA
FRAME
anxiety neurosis is to be looked for in a deflection of somatic sexual excitation . . . and in a consequent abnormal employment of that excitation" (1895b [1894], p. 108).It is worth noting that Freud explicitly distinguishes these somatic sexual tensions from the energy represented by sexual affect, already referred to in the first phase as "libido", even though this term was to undergo a significant change of meaning in the second phase. While the descriptions of these syndromes, written a century ago, may sound relatively archaic, they are of importance in providing some indication of the sort of clinical conditions that Freud had concerned himself with, and which provided the basis for his psychological theories at that time. We have attempted in this chapter to encompass the essentials of these theoretical formulations within the "affect-trauma': frame of reference. It will be seen in Parts I11 and IV, when the "topographical" frame of reference is discussed, that Freud's theoretical viewpoint underwent a radical change, even though the influence of the first phase on those that succeeded it was profound.
PART
11 1
Second phase: the topographical frame of reference
CHAPTER FOUR
The organization of the mental apparatus
s we have seen, the first phase of psychoanalysis was comparatively short, ending in 1897, and Freud's psychological theories during that phase can be encompassed within what we have termed the "affect-trauma" frame of reference. The psychoanalytic psychology of the second phase was developed by Freud (together with a small number of colleagues) over a much longer period of time, spanning the quarter of a century from 1897to 1923.We pointed in Chapter 1to the tremendous developments that took place during this phase. A wealth of important theoretical formulations emerged, along with a number of case-reports, clinical observations and studies on psychoanalytic technique. Freud's essential clinical constructs have been considered elsewhere (Sandler, Dare, & Holder, 1992); although we are concerned here with Freud's general psychological theories, we would emphasize the constant interaction in this phase, as had occurred in the first phase, between Freud's clinical formulations and his theoretical constructions. This interaction led to continual theoretical modifications, and in providing a frame of reference for
58
SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
the second phase we have ventured on a task that we have found far from easy. In this presentation, we undoubtedly do violence to a great many details of Freud's formulations. However, we are convinced that the provision of a relatively simplified frame of reference for the complicated developmentsof the second phase is essential. This is all the more so because the concepts specific to the second-phase "topographical" model were not entirely discarded after the introduction of the structural model (Freud, 1923b) and are still very much in current use. For this reason, this chapter and the next five are devoted to the topographical frame of reference. These are followed in Part IV by a discussion of further aspects and the limitations of Freud's topographical theory and then in Part V by the way in which psychoanalysis developed during the third phase. The main theoretical propositions of the second phase were first put forward by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), in particular in the famous seventh chapter, which spelled out the first full formulation of the "topography of the mind".' Of special relevance to the theories of the second phase are Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d);"Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning" (1911b); "A Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis" (1912g); the article "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (1914~);the whole series of papers on metapsychologyZ (1915~)1915d, 1915e, 1917d [1915], 1917e [1915]); certain of the
The detailed study of "Chapter Seven" frequently finds a place early in psychoanalytic training courses. In our view this chapter is not only difficult to comprehend, but includes a number of propositions that are over-complicated and superfluous in the light of later developments. This important chapter can, we believe, be studied with most profit after the essentials of psychoanalytic psychology have been mastered. We would remind the reader that what we refer to as "psychoanalytic psychology" has traditionally been called "metapsychology" (i.e. the theories "beyond" psychology). The term metapsychology was coined by Freud in the first phase when "psychology" referred to the study of conscious phenomena only. It continues to be used in psychoanalytic writings, but as modem nonpsychoanalytic psychology is so much more than the study of conscious mental experiences, the term "metapsychology" adds a somewhat archaic flavour to psychoanalytic writings.
THE MENTAL APPARATUS
59
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916-17); and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g). We have previously mentioned the importance of Freud's selfanalysis and the analysis of his patients' dreams and his own in fostering decisive changes in his views. These changes crystallized towards the end of the century, leading to a shift of focus in psychoanalytic thinking from the influence of external reality (especially traumatic events) to the way in which the mental apparatus deals with spontaneous inner urges and demands and their manifold representatives. In the first phase, the patients' "memories" of childhood seductions were, on the whole, thought to be of real events, memories charged with the "energy" of affects that were, in their turn, mainly seen as emotional responses to the external events. With the introduction of the idea that many of such "memories" of real events were in fact wish-fulfilments, the second phase could be regarded as having begun. From the clinical viewpoint the initiation of the second phase involved the abandonment in 1897 of the hypothesis that adult neuroses could be traced back to experiences of early sexual seduction; this resulted in a massive shift of interest to the clinical and theoretical importance of sexual wishes and wish-fulfilling daydreams, which might or might not be within the patient's conscious awareness. Throughout the second phase the fundamental function of the mental apparatus was seen as that of harnessing the instinctual drives and the wishes that represented them (the instinctual wishes). This "harnessing" normally took account of external reality, gratification of the drives being allowed in disguised form whenever possible. A good example of this is found in the way Freud viewed sublimation, a process manifested in such activities as public speaking or theatrical performances, which could be regarded as expressions (and sources of gratification) of unconscious exhibitionistic w i ~ h e s . ~
Freud took the term "sublimation"from chemistry, referring to a process of purification. Freud's concept of sublimation involved the idea that the instinctual energy powering the crude sexual wish was purified and expressed in a socially acceptable and valued form.
60
S E C O N D PHASE: T H E T O P O G R A P H I C A L FRAME
All this represented a significant change. Emphasis now came to be placed on the role of insinctual forces in the individual's development and subsequent adaptation4.The forces of external reality, although not entirely neglected, came to play a minor role in this phase when compared to those arising from within? The individual was seen to be, to a large degree, at the mercy of instinctual impulses, at first thought to be largely libidinal (i.e. sexual). These impulses, arising from the depths of the mental apparatus, could not always be allowed direct expression after early childhood but, to a large extent, could only show themselves indirectly in one or other surface manifestation. Freud's concept of the instinctual drive is not easy to understand. Freud himself referred to it as "somewhat obscure", but "indispensable to us in psychology" (1915~~ p. 118).He commented that the drive can be regarded "as a concept on the frontier between the mental and the somatic, as the psychical representative of the stimuli originating from within the organism and reaching the mind, as a measure of the demand made upon the individual for work in consequence of its connection with the body" (1915~~ pp. 121-122, italics added). According to Freud (1915~)~ the instinctual drive is characterized by its pressure, its aim, its object, and its source. These are best described in Freud's own words:
By the pressure [Drang]of an instinct we understand its motor factor," the amount of force or the measure of the demand for work which it represents. . . . The aim [Ziel) of an instinct is in
The concept of adaptation is used here in a broad sense, i.e. as adaptation to external reality as well as what might be called "intrapsychic" adaptation. It is this latter aspect that was given particular importance during the second phase, a period during which the individual's problems in coping with instinctual drives were the major concern of psychoanalysts. However, in "Formulationson the Two Principles of Mental Functioning" (1911b) Freud made a formal distinction between the "pleasure principle", which regulated the functioning of the instinctual drives, on the one hand, and the "reality principle", on the other. *Freud also saw the drives as quantities of "energy" that pressed for "discharge".
every instance satisfaction, which can only be obtained by removing the state of stimulation at the source of the instinct. . . . The object [Objekt] of an instinct is the thing in regard to which or through which the instinct is able to achieve its aim. It is what is most variable about an instinct and is not originally connected with it, but becomes assigned to it only in consequence of being peculiarly fitted to make satisfaction possible. The object is not necessarily something extraneous: it may equally well be a part of the subject's own body. It may be changed any number of times in the course of the vicissitudes which the instinct undergoes during its existence. . . . By the source [Quelle] of an instinct is meant the somatic process which occurs in an organ or part of the body and whose stimulus is represented in mental life by an instinct. . . . Although instincts are wholly determined by their origin in a somatic source, in mental life we know them only by their aims. [1915c, pp. 122-1231 The nature and development of the instinctual drives received a great deal of attention during the second phase, in particular the idea of phases of development in regard to childhood sexuality, as well as the special problems relating to the role of aggression. All of this deserves separate discussion, but the psychoanalytic models of the mental apparatus can for our present purposes be considered separately from the specific character of the individual instinctual drive components. Conflict was seen as coming about because of the existence of a special set of drives that functioned in the interest of self-preservation (so-called "ego instincts" or "self-preservative drives"): Opposition between ideas is only an expression of struggles between the various instincts. From the point of view of our attempted explanation, a quite specially important part is played by the undeniable opposition between the instincts which subserve sexuality, the attainment of sexual pleasure, and those other instincts, which have as their aim the selfpreservation of the individual-the ego-instincts. [1910i, pp. 213-2141
Thus drives could arouse conflict, and the attempted solutions to such conflicts could bring about compromise-formations. Throughout the second phase such phenomena as dreams, daydreams,
62
SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
symptoms, character traits, works of art, and other forms of behaviour and experience are regarded as compromises between the instinctual wish and all the forces that opposed instinctual gratification. A compromise-formation was regarded as representing a disguised form of gratification of the instinctual wish, but at the same time it also reflected the defence that had been mobilized against the underlying instinctual wish. This conception was regarded as central to the development of certain forms of pathology. For example, a fear of open places (agoraphobia) might be due to unconscious sexual or aggressive wishes that have aroused conflict and have been defended against by an unconsciously imposed selfrestriction. In the agoraphobic symptom the preoccupation with, for instance, the fear of sexual assault may represent both a disguised repetition of the unconscious wish and the defence against it. Here the symptom is "ego-alien" or "ego-dystonic" (Freud, 1914d), in that it is consciously felt by the sufferer to be an unwanted and distressing affliction. Character traits, on the other hand, were also understood as the outcome of conflict, but were seen as "egosyntonic" (Freud, 1911c [1910])-i.e. they are not felt by their possessor as alien, and certainly not as pathological. A character trait reflecting a preoccupation with cleanliness may be the product of a conflict over an instinctual wish to mess and smear. The very preoccupation with the possibility of oneself or others being messy and untidy provides an unconscious instinctual gratification, while the defence against the instinctual wish is satisfied by the way the wish is characteristically dealt with. While a tendency to cleanliness and orderliness is not at all pathological, it can become a compulsion, in which case it would have to be considered to be a neurotic symptom. Trauma was now seen in terms of the danger of being hurt, rejected, or punished to an intolerable degree (in particular the threat of castration or of loss of the parents' love) or in terms of the individual being overwhelmed by instinctual drive excitation, rather than by externally aroused excitation as in the first phase. In the second phase both normal and pathological processes came to be described in terms of internal psychological ("intrapsychic") adaptations to the pressure and "demands" of the drives. Processes such as defence against the expression of crude instinctual wishes, their
THE MENTAL APPARATUS
63
"censorship", transformation, and disguised gratification were highhghted. In presenting the topographicalframe of reference we shall attempt to provide a schematic basis for comprehending the various hypothetical systems and processes involved. The long second phase was the time during which the many ways in which unconscious instinctual wishes controlled behaviour were studied in extenso. The translation of surface expressions back into unconscious meanings and the detailed study of symbols and of the repetition of the childhood past (especially the sexual life of the child) all preoccupied psychoanalysts, both in the consulting-room and in psychoanalytic studies outside it.
Topography During the long second phase the mental apparatus was seen in terms of one or other variant of the "topographical" model. This model derives its name from Freud's attempts to describe the "topography" of the mind, with emphasis on the psychological interrelationships and the interaction of qualitatively different strata of the apparatus. Freud put it as follows when he introduced the notion of mental topography or "psychical locality" in The Interpretation of Dreams: I shall entirely disregard the fact that the mental apparatus with which we are here concerned is also known to us in the form of an anatomical preparation, and I shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine psychical locality in any anatomical fashion. I shall remain upon psychological ground, and I propose simply to follow the suggestion that we should picture the instrument which carries out our mental functions as resembling a compound microscope or a photographic apparatus, or something of the kind. On that basis, psychical locality will correspond to a point inside the apparatus at which one of the preliminary stages of an image comes into being. In the microscope and telescope, as we know, these occur in part at ideal points, regions in which no tangible
64
SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
component of the apparatus is situated. [1900a, p. 536, italics added] The principal reference point for the "topography" is the psychological quality of consciousness. The names chosen for the various parts of the mental apparatus indicate their relationship to the surface, i.e. to consciousness. The three systems that are involved are designated as the Conscious, Preconscious, and Unconscious systems (see Figure 4.1). Boundaries are thought to exist between these systems, and before discussing the topographical frame of reference it is worth commenting that the boundaries are presented here as concepts useful for the sake of exposition (indeed, Freud regarded them in this light), and that they should not be thought of as clear-cut at all times. At periods of relative mental harmony or of "psychic equilibrium", the dividing lines must be regarded as being blurred; it is only during periods of conflict that the various systems can be thought of as acting as if they were sharply defined and separate entities. For example, a wish to see a rival killed may be tolerated by all three systems as long as the rival is fit and well, but conflict may be aroused if the rival falls ill (especially if he is also a loved member of the family), and the wish may be relegated to the system Unconscious. For certain purposes it may also be useful to consider the mental systems as being to some extent on a continuum, the boundaries in the schematic presentations serving the same purpose as the contour lines on a map. The individual systems are discussed in detail in Chapters 5, 6, and 7.'
The need for simplificationis exemplified by the fact that in the model of the mind put forward by Freud in 1900 he wrote of a system that receives perceptions (the system Pcpt.). At a later point he introduced the notion of a separate system in which consciousness arises (the system Cs.).It was only in 1915 that these two separate systems were regarded as one (the system Pcpt.Cs.).Freud also occasionallywrote of the Conscious and Preconscious as if they were one system (e.g. in 1915e),but we will maintain a consistent distinction between the two. Moreover, we will regard perceptual input as impinging on the apparatus either through consciousness or outside it, and that it can affect, directly or indirectly, any or all of the three major systems.
The mental apparatus
I
I I I I I
I
I
I I I I I I
Sy~tem
Preconscious
I I I 1 I I I
sy~tml
Conscious
I
I EXTERNAL I I I I I I
I
F I G U R E 4.1. The "systems" of the mental apparatus in topographical relation to one another.
A comment on the use of the term "Unconscious"
At this point we would like to re-emphasize the fact that confusion often arises because of the attribution of different meanings to the term "unconscious". In this book, "Unconscious" (spelled with a capital "U") is used to denote a system that is part of the mental apparatus in the topographical frame of reference, and which is thought of as functioning according to certain specific laws. Its contents, as long as they remain in this system, always have the quality of unconsciousness (or lack the quality of consciousness). The system Preconscious has contents that also have the quality of unconsciousness (i.e. they are, descriptively speaking, unconscious); but these contents are, by definition, not at that particular moment contents of the system Unconscious. The distinction between what is, from the point of view of description, unconscious, and the use of the term to refer to a specific system should always be kept in mind. In general, the term "unconscious" used as a descrip-
66
SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
The mental apparatus
I
SOMA
System
I Unconscious I I I I Contents are dynemlcelly I unconscious I
I
I
1 system I Preconscious I I I I Contents are preconscious I I
I system I Conscious I I I I Contents are conscious I I I I I
I
I
I
EXTERNAL WORLD
Descriptively unconscious mental content FIGURE 4.2. The relation of the three systems in the topographical frame of reference to the qualities of consciousness and unconsciousness.
tive adjective includes the contents of both the Unconscious a n d Preconscious systems." This is indicated in Figure 4.2. An inordinate amount of muddle has been introduced into psychoanalytic writings and discussions by the failure to indicate (or even, in some cases, t o appreciate) the sense in which the term is being used. --
-
Part (but only part) of the confusion surrounding the term "unconsdous" comes from the fact that German nouns are always written with the first letter capitalized. In translation the nouns referring to the Unconscious and Preconscious systems have sometimes been written as "the Unconscious" and "the Preconsdous" and sometimes as "the unconsdous" and "the preconsaous". We have adhered to the practice of using the capital letter when referring to the system and not when the word is intended in a descriptive sense. Unfortunately, the Standard Edition of Freud's works often uses "the unconscious" when the system is being discussed. IJ
A comment on the use of the term "Preconscious" The term "preconscious" may give the impression that the contents of the system Preconscious are somewhat less unconscious from the point of view of their quality. This is incorrect. Descriptively speaking, they are quite outside consciousness. However, the term was introduced in the second phase to refer to contents that are, descriptively speaking, unconscious, but were capable of becoming conscious if attention was directed towards them. Thus, if one is asked what one had for breakfast or where one was born, these pieces of information were unconscious in the sense that one was not thinking of them at the time, but they can normally be readily recalled. In this sense they differ enormously from childhood memories that had been subjected to repression and, because of that, formed part of the Unconscious system and could not normally be recalled. Early in the second phase (see Freud, 1900a) censorship was thought to exist between the Unconscious and the Preconscious, but the contents of the Preconscious were thought to be freely accessible to consciousness. However, Freud simultaneously took the view that there was a censorship between the Preconscious and Conscious system^.^ The workings of the Unconscious and the Preconscious can be regarded as vastly different. So, for example, preconscious functioning may make use of formal modes of thinkFreud wrote of the excitations of the Preconscious being able to reach consciousness after "observing certain rules . . .and perhaps only after passing a fresh censorship" (1900a, p. 615). Earlier in the same work he had commented on "the privilege enjoyed by the second agency [the Preconscious] . . . of permitting thoughts to enter consciousness". He said, "Nothing, it would seem, can reach consciousness from the first system [the Unconscious] without passing the second agency; and the-second agency allows nothing to pass without exercising its rights and making such modifications as it thinks fit in the thought which is seeking admission to consciousness" (1900a, p. 144).This presents an interesting contradiction in Freud's view of the Preconscious system, because he also regarded the contents of that system as being freely accessible to consciousness; and this contradiction was not resolved during the second phase. In our exposition of the topographical frame of reference it will be seen that we take account of the censorship between the Preconscious and the Conscious, and regard it as of the highest importance, both theoretically and dinically.
68
SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
ing (secondary process), while the Unconscious, by definition, cannot. Although contents that can be allowed into consciousness without hindrance if attention is directed to them can be referred to as being "preconscious", not all preconscious contents are fieely accessible to consciousness; some may only be permitted to pass to consciousness in a disguised form. Equally, they may be repressed into the Unconscious before they gain entry into consciousness.In this frame of reference we shall adhere to Freud's other formulation (see 1916-17) that a "censor" exists between the Preconscious and Conscious systems.
The interrelation of the mental systems In presenting the topographical frame of reference we are primarily concerned with the vicissitudes of the instinctual wish as it makes its way (or attempts to do so) from the system Unconscious to surface expression. A considerable degree of dynamic interaction between and within the different systems is involved in this movement. This dynamic interaction is illustrated later by means of examples, but its importance has made it necessary to emphasize the boundaries between the different systems.
Boundaries between sys terns
The notion of defence against "incompatible ideas" was put forward in the first phase, and greatly elaborated in the second. This development was intimately linked up with a view of the boundaries between the different systems as having the function of censorship. Essentially, the censorship is seen as operating to protect consciousness from the awareness of those instinctual wishes that, in direct or indirect form, would represent a threat if they were permitted surface expression.1° This censoring takes place completely lo The topographical viewpoint evolved in relation to the clinical method of the second phase of psychoanalysis, and it is not difficult to see how this way of considering mental functioning came into being. The patient's relatively unguided "free associations" were assumed to reflect the emergence and
THE MENTAL APPARATUS
69
outside consciousness. The scanning and scrutiny of instinctual wishes and their derivatives involved in the censorship necessarily presumes the existence of a form of "unconscious awareness" in the Preconscious. It is appropriate to make use of Freud's metaphorical description of the censoring processes:
.
Let us . . compare the system of the unconscious to a large entrance hall, in which the mental impulses jostle one another like separate individuals. Adjoining this entrance hall there is a second, narrower, room-a kind of drawing-room--in which consciousness . . . [also] resides. But on the threshold between these two rooms a watchman performs his function: he examines the different mental impulses, ads as a censor, and will not admit them into the drawing-room if they displease him. . . . It does not make much difference if the watchman turns away a particular impulse at the threshold itself or if he pushes it back across the threshold after it has entered the drawing-room. . . . If they have already pushed their way forward to the threshold and have been turned back by the watchman, then they are inadmissible to consciousness; we speak of them as repressed. But even the impulses which the watchman has allowed to cross the threshold are not on that account necessarily conscious as well; they can only become so if they succeed in catching the eye of consciousness. We are therefore justified in calling this second room the system of the preconscious. [191617, pp. 295-2961 It is necessary to add that contents in the Preconscious not only have to "catch the eye of consciousness" but also have to overcome the second censorship operating between the Preconscious and Conscious systems. Freud's metaphor brings in a most important, but often forgotten, notion, developed during the second phase: that repression not only occurs at the transition from the Unconscious to the Preconscious system, but may equally well affect transformation of inner instinctual urges in the passage from the depths to the surface, and this assumption was then generalized to other aspects of behaviour and mental functioningvia the study of dreams, slips of the tongue, faulty acts, symptom formation, artistic productions, etc. In the second phase, behaviour is in general regarded as predominantly motivated by instinctual wishes, as modified by the censorship, and regarded as attempts at wish-fulfilment.
70
SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
contents of the Preconscious itself, including derivatives of the system Unconscious at some point in their development towards surface expression. This point is of crucial importance for the understanding of the way in which Freud came to see the functioning of the mental apparatus in the second phase. It is a point that has been obscured and neglected in much of the relevant psychoanalytic literature, and it is partly because of this that we want to emphasize it as strongly as possible here. Its implication is that repression and the other mechanisms of defence do not constitute a static boundary or dam at the border between the Unconscious and Preconscious systems. Wishes arising in the Unconscious are regarded as passing through the Preconscious on their way to surface expression, being transformed in the process of becoming "derivatives" of the Unconscious. Such derivatives bear the stamp of preconscious mental functioning (which we discuss in detail later), but may be defended against at any point in their journey to the system Conscious (or even after they have entered that system, as when a conscious wish-fulfilling daydream is repressed) and may be relegated to the deeper layers of the apparatus. In order to attain the system Conscious (i.e. to achieve "discharge"), the derivative of the wish from the Unconscious must be sufficiently disguised so as to evade the censorships: we may thus assume the creation of successive derivatives of the instinctual wish until one is formed that appears to be sufficiently innocuous to be allowed to proceed. The point at which censorship actually occurs depends not only on the content of the unconscious instinctual wish in question, but also on the state of the various systems at any one time. Thus the "level of censorship" may be less during states of sleep, inattention, or intoxication than when the person is fully alert. Furthermore, we should add that although a derivative of an instinctual wish may be perfectly acceptable at some particular time in a person's life, at other times or in other circumstances it may for one reason or another have become less acceptable to the censor. During the second phase the clinical manifestation of the functioning of defence was seen as resistance during the course of psychoanalytic treatment. (In the next phase resistance was regarded as having several additional sources.) Using the topographical frame of reference, interpretation of resistance was seen as a fundamental psychoanalytic method for bringing into consciousness
THE MENTAL APPARATUS
71
preconscious derivatives of the Unconscious, which were active but were being prevented from entering the system Conscious. These processes, involving a dynamic interaction between the systems, will, we hope, become clearer after the individual systems have been described in Chapters 5 , 6 , and 7. We would reiteratefor the point cannot be made too oftenthat the descriptive term "unconscious" applies to both the Unconscious system and the Preconscious system in the topographical frame of reference.
CHAPTER FIVE
The system Unconscious
I
n our discussion of the topographical frame of reference we considered Freud's division of the mental apparatus into three systems, which varied in their "depth" within the mental apparatus. While the interaction between the systems and the function of the "censorship" have been discussed, more detailed consideration of the individual systems has been left to this and subsequent chapters.
The system Unconscious The contents of the Unconscious can be regarded as being composed of unsatisfied instinctual wishes, which are the mental representations of the drives. Broadly speaking, a differentiation can be made between sexual and aggressive drives, although there is a further subdivision in terms of so-called "component" or "partial" drives, which have their origin at different stages of the individual's development.
Although the drives are regarded as having sources, pressures, aims, and objects, it is necessary to make a distinction between their biological and psychological aspects. As we have indicated, the instinctual drives are psychological constructs, even though they are regarded as being closely related to biological processes. In Freud's descriptions throughout the second phase, these two aspects are not clearly distinguished. Thus he postulated biological sources, aims, and objects for the component instincts, although the hypothetical pressure of the drive was essentially a psychological construct. It is also essential to point out that although,from the point of view of the observer, the infant may be satisfying its instinctual drives in relation to an object (e.g. pleasurably sucking at its mother's breast), it may have no psychological knowledge or mental representation of the object from which its satisfaction is derived. Indeed, it may, early in life, know little more than the experience of the sequence of unpleasurable tension and pleasurable satiation. We mention this because of the widespread influence in psychoanalytic writings of the "psychologist's fallacy", which results in the presumption that what the observer sees the infant knows. William James put it: "The great snare of the psychologist is the confusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact about which he is making his report" (1890, p. 196). Nevertheless, we can assume that from early in its development the infant receives and retains impressions connected with drive tension and gratification, and these impressions are regarded as being laid down in the mental apparatus in the form of memoy traces. The instinctual drive is conceptualized, from a quantitative point of view, as a fluctuating quantity of energy that, having reached a certain level of intensity, "seeks discharge".' In this context the drive is spoken of as "satisfied" or "discharged" when it is at a low level, and as "unsatisfied", in a state of "drive tension", when its pressure is high. It is of some interest that Freud trans-
' Freud's idea of "psychicenergy"was consistent with nineteenth-century energic concepts, especially those of the physical sciences and the neurophysiology of the time. The idea of the "discharge"of psychological energies paralleled the notion of the "discharge"of nervous energy along the nervous pathways. Although the concept of "discharge"subsequentlychanged in biology, it has endured in psychoanalytic theory. It is certainly central to the way
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SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
ferred from the affect-trauma model of mental functioning the concept of a "quantity of energy" pressing forward for "discharge". Freud first considered the sexual drives almost exclusively, and referred to their energy as "libido", but he never coined a corresponding term for the energy of the aggressive drives (now usually referred to as "aggressive energy"). Although Freud often used the term "libido" to refer to instinctual energies in general, our usage of "instinctual energy" includes both sexual and aggressive energies as conceived in this frame of referen~e.~ A drive can be thought of as being "aroused" by stimuli from within the individual or by stimulation from without. In this frame of reference allowance must be made for both these sources of increase in the pressure of a drive. With the arousal of a quantity of drive energy, memory traces of previously satisfying experiences are stimulated and are cathected3with drive energy. in which the contents of the system Unconscious are seen as functioning in the topographical frame of reference. In our view the notion of drive satisfaction through a discharge of energy is now outdated and confuses many important issues. How, for instance, can one obtain instinctual discharge through indulging in a wishful daydream, which involves a minimum of physical activity? It is also evident that there are a number of other problems C O M W ~ with these formulations. These arise in part from the historical fact that Freud only gave aggression the status of an independent instinctual drive relatively late in the second phase (Freud, 1920g). While the sexual component instincts were linked by Freud (from 1905onwards) with erotogenic zones, links cannot be made in the same way for the aggressive drives, although attempts have been made to associate aggressive impulses with the use of certain body parts and functions. The development of Freud's drive theories has been discussed by a number of authors (e.g. Bibring, 1941; Compton, 1983a, 1983b). The term cathexis is an unfortunate rendering of the original German Besetzung, which means, and in our view should have been translated as, "investment". However, it would appear that "cathexis" is here to stay. In psychoanalytic writings the term "libidha1 cathexis" is often used to indicate the investment of an object or an idea with any instinctual charge, but the term "aggressive cathexis" is perfectly appropriate, although not found in Preud's writings. The term "cathexis" is also used in psychoanalytic psychology in relation to attention, although here the phrase "investment with attention cathexis" is the appropriate one (in a model that assumes that the making of something conscious implies investing it with a form of non-instinctual energy). The phrase "to cathect a love-object" may simply mean "to invest the
'
~ ~
Instinctual wishes
The instinctual drives are hypothetical constructs and are regarded as being represented in the Unconscious by instinctual wishes. Indeed, the instinctual wish can be viewed as the basic unit in the Unconscious. It has two components. The first is the instinctual energic charge and the second the revived m m o y derived from the memory trace or traces that have been cathected. If an experience has previously provided instinctual gratification (drive discharge), then the arousal of the instinctual drive is regarded as activating the memory of the previous gratification. The revived memory is referred to as the ideational content (the "idea" component) of the wish. In the first instance, the wish arouses unpleasurable tension in the apparatus and "presses forward" towards activity and consciousness, so that the previously satisfying experiences can be repeated and the satisfaction re-experienced. If the wish were to be fulfilled, the unpleasure4of instinctual tension would be replaced by pleasurable gratification. In the Unconscious the instinctual wishes have a peremptory quality-they seek pleasurable discharge and the reduction of unpleasurable tension at all costs (i.e. they function according to the pleasure principle or the pleasure-unpleasure principle). As we have noted, the pressure for such direct and immediate gratification, characteristic of the Unconscious, may (and very often will) arouse conflict during the passage of the wish through the other systems, and as a consequence the instinctual wish becomes subjected to censorship and transformation. In the previous chapter we have alluded to the way in which instinctual wishes can, as a consequence, become transformed into derivatives ("derivatives of the Unconscious") that may manage to pass the censorships and provide instinctual gratification in a disguised form. The Unconmental representationof the object with libido", but the phrase is often used to denote a combination of instinctual cathexis and attention cathexis, i.e. meaning "to be lovingly interested in" the person concerned. In the second phase, "tolove" is identical with "to invest with libido".This subject will be dealt with in greater detail in subsequent chapters. 'The German Lust is usually translated as "pleasure",and its opposite, Unlust, as "unpleasure".Early translations rendered Unlust as "pain",but this should be reserved for the translation of Schmerz, which Freud distinguished
from Unlust.
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scious contains a central core of instinctual wishes related to the most primitive forms of instinctual gratification. Linked with these are further repressed derivatives of the basic infantile instinctual wishes which, though acceptable to the censorship at one time in the individual's life, were later subjected to repression because they aroused unpleasurable conflict. So, to sum up: from the point of view of the topographical frame of reference, the contents of the Unconscious can be regarded as consisting essentially of infantile sexual and aggressive wishes and their repressed derivatives, which may be prevented by the censorship from finding direct expression and discharge. In the older child or adult, instinctual wishes containing primitive sexual and aggressive content, as well as the constellation of wishes involved in the well-known Oedipus complex, are normally repressed and can only emerge in disguised form. In the course of psychoanalytic treatment the development of various forms of transference is regarded as representing derivatives of the Unconscious. The same can be considered to be true for the dream, the analysis of which was regarded, particularly in the early days of psychoanalysis, as the "royal road to the Unconscious". We have commented on the fact that, in the second phase of psychoanalysis, the focus of the psychoanalyst's attention was on "the language of the Unconscious", i.e. the forms in which the instinctual wishes of the Unconscious found their expression in preconscious derivatives or in surface behaviour and experience. After a certain point in development has been reached, repression of an instinctual wish or its derivative (or even of innocuous content unconsciously associated with an instinctual wish, as in the temporary forgetting of a friend's name) can occur at any time. Freud's book on The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901b) gives many examples of this process. The motive for repression is the unpleasure aroused by conflict, or the anxiety associated with the threat of an unpleasant experience of any sort. Thus, at all times, the contents of the Unconscious are augmented by fresh repressions. At the same time, the instinctual wishes of the Unconscious constantly stimulate the formation of derivatives, which find their way into the Preconscious and-if unacceptable aspects are sufficiently disguised to escape the censorship--to consciousness and motility.
Earlier it was pointed out that in this frame of reference memories of earlier satisfying experiences are cathected by instinctual drives in the formation of instinctual wishes. These satisfyingexperiences need not have been real events, but can also have been wish-fulfilling daydreams. Once these have been repressed they are treated in the Unconscious as if they were memories of real events, and when cathected by an instinctual drive become the content of an instinctual wish. From the point of view of the topographical frame of reference, we would say that in the first phase of psychoanalysis Freud did not differentiate between the recall of a past wish-fulfillingphantasy and the recovery of a repressed traumatic memory. It was, of course, the realization by Freud of the irnportance of this distinction which led to the clinical and theoretical developments of the second phase. In this context the concepts of instinctual regression and fixation are of importance. Freud put it very aptly when he said that "we propose to describe the lagging behind of a [sexual]part trend at an earlier stage [of development] as afixation-a fixation, that is, of the instinct . . . the portions which have proceeded further may also easily return retrogressively to one of these earlier stageswhat we describe as a regression. . . . The stronger the fixations on the path of development, the more readily will the function evade external difficulties by regressing to the fixations. . . . Consider that, if a people which is in movement has left strong detachments behind at the stopping-places on its migration, it is likely that the more advanced parties will be inclined to retreat to these stopping places if they have been defeated or have come up against a superior enemy. But they will also be in the greater danger of being defeated the more of their number they have left behind on their migration" (1916-17, pp. 340-41)P What we have described here is temporal regression, a "harkingback to older psychical structures" (Freud, 1900a, p. 548). Freud also spoke of other forms of regression, viz., topographical and formal. Topographical regression relates, for example, to Freud's idea that revived memories can find their way to the surface, as in dreams. Formal regression refers to the way in which earlier form of expression may replace later ones. In practice we can use a global concept of regression in the sense of a return to earlier modes of functioning.
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Mental functioning within the Unconscious
A number of processes were postulated by Freud as occurring within this system. These "characteristic" modes of functioning include the concept of primary process (which stands in marked opposition to the secondary process, which we discuss in Chapter 6 in connection with the two other systems). In order to present the concept of primary process it is necessary to point out that Freud considered the energic cathexes of the Unconscious to be "freely mobile". This meant that the instinctual energy that invested memory traces (with the corresponding revival of memories as part of the instinctual wish) was regarded as "fluid" and could move from one idea or image to another. It was regarded as being able to shift from the whole of an idea to one of its parts; or the energy could be transferred from an idea to any other ideational element that had been associated with it in any way. Different ideational elements (e.g. two memories) could become compounded, so that a composite entity is temporarily formed. One might conceive of this as the instinctual energy cathecting whole networks of ideas that are linked together by the most primitive of associational ties. It could be said that the arousal of drive tensions in the Unconscious (as a consequence either of internal stimuli or of perception of the external world) causes a cathexis of memory traces associated with past drive gratification. While it is the most important memories of satisfaction that are initially cathected by drive energy to give content to the instinctual wish, the energic element in the wish can be regarded as relatively mobile and capable of being transferred to other elements if obstacles exist in the path of direct wish-fulfilment.This, in turn, can produce a whole host of alternative forms of the particular wish. In other words, if one could hypothetically view the process from the side of the Unconscious, derivatives are initially formed by means of the transferring of mobile instinctual cathexis. (The processes involved in the formation of derivatives in the Preconscious are very different.) The characteristics of primary process are therefore: 1. Displacement. The transferring of instinctual cathexis from one mental content (idea, memory image, etc.) to another. This can
result in a part substitutingfor the whole in the instinctual wish, or vice versa. There is no logic in this displacement; no formal rules are followed. One idea can stand for another in the Unconscious if they share an associative link of any sort. Moreover, instinctual cathexis may be transferred from element A to an element C simply because A and C each have something in common with B; and so on. Condensation. The amalgamation of two or more ideational elements cathected by the same charge of instinctual energy. In a sense, the instinctual drive, if it has been linked with two separate ideas or memories, can get "two for the price of one" by the superimposition of one idea upon another. Freud was of the view that the primary process mechanisms can be discerned in the content of dreams and of slips of the tongue. By getting the patient's associations to such material, it was hoped that the analyst and patient would be able to trace the overt material back to the underlying instinctual wish and to early memories and conflicts. Symbolization is sometimes included as a primary process mechanism, but because symbolization and symbol formation involve a highly complex process, we can refer to that aspect of symbolization which is primary process in nature as being a special case of displacement in which the part stands for the whole. The instinctual wishes in the Unconscious derive largely from the first few years of life, and the characteristics of mental functioning within the Unconscious more or less follow from the concepts of freely mobile cathexis and primary process. These characteristics can be listed as follows:
Timelessness. As Freud put it: "The processes [in the Unconscious] . . . are not ordered temporally, are not altered by the passage of time; they have no reference to time at all" (1915e, p. 187).As the concept of time is one that develops in the mind of the child only after a period of time and is an aspect of the whole of his cognitive development, it is linked, as we shall see, with the more formal secondary-process functioning characteristic of the Preconscious and Conscious systems.
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3.
4.
5.
6.
SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
Disregard of reality. Instinctual wishes are considered by Freud to follow the pleasure principle. Here again, we see a sharp difference in mode of functioning between the Unconscious on the one hand and the Preconscious and Conscious on the other. In the latter systems the "reality principle" obtains, whereas in the Unconscious the pleasure principle and the pressure towards the satisfaction of infantile instinctual wishes, however unreasonable in the present, still persist. Psychic reality. As far as the Unconscious is concerned, memories of real events and of imagined experiences are not distinguished. Abstract symbols are not recognized as abstract but are treated as if they represented concrete reality." Absence of contradiction. Inasmuch as the awareness of contradictions involves a degree of formal thinking and judgement, as far as the Unconscious is concerned, contradictory elements are quite compatible and exist side by side. Freud cdmmented: "When two wishful impulses whose aims must appear to us incompatible become simultaneously active, the two impulses do not diminish each other or cancel each other out" (1915e, p. 186).Absence of contradiction in the Unconscious also exists in the form of so-called identity of opposites. "Big" and "small" are the same as far as the Unconscious is concerned, because of the absence of negation (see below). Absence of negation. Because the attachment of a "not" to an idea reflects a formal thought process, acquired during the course of development, negation does not exist in the Unconscious. Negation is added in the other systems and usually points to the opposite in the Unconscious (e.g. a patient having the association "I remember being beaten by a man who was not at all like my father" may be referring to a repressed memory of being beaten by the father). Words as "things". Whereas in the other two systems symbolic and abstract representations (par excellence through words) are extensively used, and the connection of the symbol with the
Vt has been pointed out (Sandler & Nagera, 1963) that the more-organized part of the personality has to develop the capacity to disbelieve in order for imaginative productions to be distinguished from real experiences.
class of events to which it refers is retained, this is not so in the Unconscious. With repression, the symbol is treated as if it were a representation of a concrete thing. It has no abstract quality at all. Thus the memory of something that was abstract might appear in a concrete form in one or other derivative of the Unconscious.This phenomenon has been thought to be particularly evident in dreams and in some forms of schizophrenic thought-disorder, Abstract words or sayings may be treated absolutely literally and concretely. These "properties" of the functioning of the Unconscious (not of unconscious mental functioning in general) are reconstructions from Freud's experiences in his analytic work, from his experiences in searching for what lay beneath the surface communications and behaviour of his patients. The analysis of dreams, in particular, indicated to Freud that, in the formation of the dream, primary process functioning could be discerned. In Freud's work on dreams (1900a, 1917d [1915]), in what he called the psychopathology of and in many other works, everyday life (1901b), on jokes (1905~)~ the influence of the modes of functioning of the Unconscious discussed above on "derivatives of the Unconscious" has been elaborated.Their effect can also be reconstructed in "normal" phenomena other than dreams. It could be said that the very modes of functioning characteristic of the Unconscious are of tremendous value to the instinctual wish in its movement through the Preconscious in search of gratification. They provide means whereby the original content of the wish can be changed (e.g. through displacement, equality of opposites, etc.) in such a way that the censorship can be passed and the derivative of the wish can find overt expression. The characteristics of the Preconscious and Conscious systems stand in marked contrast to those of the Unconscious, and these are discussed in Chapters 6 and 7.
CHAPTER SIX
The system Preconscious
T
he origin of instinctual wishes and their primary process transformations within the Unconscious were considered in the previous chapter, and it was pointed out that the wishes in the Unconscious can be regarded as thrusting forward "blindly" towards overt expression in consciousness and behaviour, i.e. towards the Conscious. The so-called seething cauldron of the Unconscious contains those sexual and aggressive wishes that have been dominant in the first years of life and have subsequently become unacceptable to the more organized parts of the apparatus, i.e. to the systems Preconscious and Conscious. The instinctual wishes of the Unconscious are constantly augmented through repression of experiential contents connected with later derivatives of childhood instinctual wishes, consigned to the Unconscious because they were also, for one reason or another, judged to be unacceptable. In the topographical frame of reference the Preconscious lies between the Unconscious and Conscious systems. While its major functionsare to protect consciousness from being overwhelmed by the forces of the Unconscious and to deal with these forces in such
THE SYSTEM PRECONSCIOUS
83
a way that they can find expression so as to be acceptable to the Conscious, it performs many other functions as well; some of these are discussed in this chapter, together with certain important attributes of the system. It is worth recalling that the three systems can be regarded as being separated by hypothetical boundaries, which have been compared to the contour lines on a map. Moreover, the instinctual wish,which can be regarded as the basic unit in the Unconscious, is composed of hypothetical instinctual drive energy and images that include ideational content representing the "wished-for" situation.' The latter includes what many analysts would now see as some form of mental representation of the person's own self, as well as of another person (or persons) who is the gratifying "object" of the wish. In addition, there is an ideational representation of some act that would yield the type of instinctual gratification sought. Thus a repressed sexual wish in the Unconscious would involve content representing both the object of the wish and the activity involved in relation to that object. Before proceeding further, the notion of an "instinctual derivative" should be considered again. In general, a derivative of an instinctual wish may be conscious or unconscious (in the descriptive sense), depending on its topographical location in the apparatus. It is not the original instinctual wish, but a substitute for it, one that can indirectly provide some degree of satisfaction of the instinctual wish from which it has been derived and which, in a sense, it conceals. Instinctual derivatives can take many forms, including dreams, sublimatory activities, daydreams, neurotic symptoms, hallucinations, parapraxes, forms of "acting out", creative productions, play activities, transference manifestations, and the like. All the types of derivative listed above are given form in the Preconscious and Conscious and should be distinguished from primary process derivatives occurring within the Unconscious. In the previous chapter we considered the way in which contents of The images that form part of the instinctual wish were thought to arise in the Unconscious as a consequence of the reinvestment of specific memory traces by instinctual drive energy.
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SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
the Unconscious impinge on the Preconscious in the course of their search for "discharge", i.e. for surface expression. The primary process functioning characteristic of the Unconscious was seen as entirely governed by the pleasure principle without regard to the demands of reality. As has been mentioned, derivatives created in the Preconscious and Conscious can be relegated to the Unconscious by the process of repression. Once this has occurred, these derivatives enter into the content of the instinctual wishes in the Unconscious and are subject to primary process.
Characteristics and functions of the Preconscious
The Preconscious is thought to develop gradually as a consequence of the psychological interaction between instinctual wishes and impulses, on the one hand, and the external world, on the other. Although the system only comes into existence in the course of the child's development, constitutional maturational elements are thought to contribute to the mode of its evolution within a single individual. Its functions and contents increase in number and complexity as this development takes place, and it can be considered to become increasingly differentiated from the Unconscious and Conscious. As we have pointed out, the contents of the Unconscious consist of inactive or quiescent elements as well as repressed unsatisfied instinctual wishes and their derivatives which are active (i.e. "cathected" by instinctual drive energy). Any of these elements may at any moment be stimulated by the internal pressures of drive demands or by the impingement of the external world. Thus, for example, primitive sexual wishes may be aroused by sexual tension or by the sight of an attractive sexual object in the external world. Even though wishes in the Unconscious may be extremely active, the subject is not aware of them unless they gain access to consciousness. If the wishes succeed in becoming conscious, this is usually in a modified form. The area of the mental apparatus in which instinctual wishes are examined, modified,
permitted to proceed, or turned back is that of the Preconscious, a system that is, descriptively speaking, unconscious.2 In contrast to the contents of the Unconscious, preconscious contents include many diverse elements. In the first place there are those primary process derivatives of the instinctual wishes which are pressing forward for discharge and, by reason of their primary process transformation, have evaded the first level of censorship and have entered the Preconscious. It will be remembered that primary processes in the Unconscious, particularly displacement and condensation, allow constant and fluid changes in the form of the instinctual wish, and if an appropriate primary process transformation of the original instinctual wish happens to occur, the wish, in its new form, is allowed by the censorship to enter the Preconscious, although it may later be subjected to further modification or repression. Secondly, the contents of the Preconscious include mental representations that have been formed as a result of present and past interaction with the external world (as perceptually experienced via the various sensory modalities). Thirdly, we must include the products of preconscious imaginative (i.e. phantasy) and cognitive activity. In other words, the Preconscious and its contents arise as a consequence of influences from two sides: from the depths of .~ the mental apparatus (the Unconscious) and from its s u r f a ~ eIn It is remarkable how often, even when specifically utilizing the topographical model, psychoanalysts underestimate or even ignore the major role of the Preconscious, and speak or write as if there were only two systems-i.e. the Unconscious and the Conscious. This is a consequence of the historical confusion between the system Unconscious and the descriptiveuse of "unconscious". Although the Preconscious is regarded as being located between the Unconscious and Conscious, work on subliminal perception has suggested that conscious awareness of a stimulus from the external world is not a necessary precondition for mental registration. Freud seems to have been aware of this problem during the second phase, as can be judged by his indecision about whether to postulate a perceptual system as distinct from the Conscious or whether to regard them as one and the same system (thePerceptual-Conscious). Problems of this sort contributed to the growing need, towards the end of the second phase, to develop a different model of the mental apparatus, i.e. the structuralmodel.
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addition, new ideational contents are constantly being formed within the Preconscious itself. These include newly constructed thoughts, wishes, and unconscious wish-fulfilling daydreams. New derivatives of the instinctual drives, or further modifications and elaborations of previous derivatives (not considered acceptable to consciousness), are elaborated in the Preconscious. In the construction of these "new products" the mode of functioning and the "rules" followed are vastly different from those that can be regarded as operating in the Unconscious. We discuss these later in the chapter in reference to secondary process functioning: In the work of the Preconscious, a great deal of integration and synthesis occurs. There is a continuous interaction between the instinctual wishes and their derivatives on the one hand, and mental contents (in the form of present percepts and ideas and memories of past experiences and thoughts) that are located in the Preconscious, on the other. The "necessities", "demands", and "limitations" imposed by the real external world (as it has been perceived by the person) are taken into account. In doing this, the Preconscious may make use of its capacity to delay and control the peremptory instinctual wishes arising from the Unconscious that have penetrated into the Preconscious. This implies that the Preconscious has the capacity to examine and scrutinize its own contents without these having to enter the Conscious. Much of the activity of the Preconscious can be subsumed under the heading of thinking, and a substantial amount of problemsolving and decision-making is accomplished within the system. Such decision-makingcan range from the "automatic" adjustments while driving a motor-car (in response to traffic signals and to the behaviour of other drivers) to highly sophisticated creative work; Henri Poincare commented on the latter a long time ago:
' It should be understood that in relation to "mental content", "ideas", "images","memories",and the "content of imagination and perception",we are referring to products of the activity of the perceptual apparatus and the nervous system and not to ideas that have a separate and autonomous existence in themselves; and amongst "ideas" we include forms of experiential content arising from any of the sensory modalities. We take the view that "mind" is a function of the brain.
Most striking at first is this appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long, unconscious prior work. The role of this unconscious work in mathematical invention appears to me incontestable, and traces of it would be found in other cases. . . . Often when one works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one takes a rest . . . it is more probable that this rest has been filled out with unconscious work and that the result of this work has afterwards revealed itself. [Poincar6,1908, p. 381 The Preconscious can function as it does because it has available to it a mass of memories of past experiences, memories that have remained relatively independent of the influence of instinctual wishes and their derivatives. This is not to say that artistic or scientific productions are always free of the influence of unconscious instinctual wishes; indeed, they often represent concealed satisfactions of such impulses. It must be emphasized that even the most reality-orientated habits and skills, normally functioning smoothly under the control of the Preconscious, can be disturbed by the influence of drive derivatives. If, for one reason or another, they become involved with a drive derivative, they may in turn be defended against in their role as new drive representatives. The result may be a pathological disturbance or inhibition of an otherwise perfectly normal function. From being conflict-free they become drawn into conflict through their connection with unwanted or threatening instinctual wishes. Many of the preconscious elaborations of relatively crude instinctual wishes are represented in the Preconscious by thoughts (regarded by Freud as "trial actions"). They include both realityorientated and logical thoughts and the special variety of wish-fulfilling thought-constructions referred to as unconscious phantasies, and combinations of both of these. (Freud, 1921b, distinguished in this connection between "freely wandering phantastic thinking" and thoughts as "intentionally directed reflection".) Like dreams, phantasies are considered to be attempts to imagine situations that would indirectly fulfil the instinctual wishes. Again, like dreams, these phantasies draw upon memories of real events and knowledge of the external world to clothe and elaborate the underlying
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instinctual It is important to note that the Preconscious is regarded as being able to make use of verbal symbolism. If the unconscious phantasy formed in the Preconscious is permitted to reach the Conscious (either directly or in a disguised form), the result may be a conscious phantasy (daydream). However, it may (and frequently does) also take the form of other derivative activities (artistic works, symptoms, delusions, sublimations, etc.). Even when phantasies remain active in the Preconscious without reaching awareness, they can influence perception, action, and attitudes profoundly. Whereas the Unconscious is regarded as following the pleasure principle, the Preconscious is influenced by what is known as the reality principle. This refers to the taking into account the realities of the external world (as it is known to the person) in assessing the consequences of his actions. Freud referred to the reality principle as a "modification" of the pleasure principle (1911b). Immediate gratification of instinctual wishes or their derivatives is delayed or The concept of unconscious phantasy is one with a long history in psychoanalytic thinking, in the course of which a number of different meanings have accrued to the term. It may refer to wish-fulfilling daydreams in the Preconscious, but it may equally refer to phantasies that were once either conscious or preconscious but were subsequently repressed into the Unconscious. Such phantasies in the Unconscious become, following repression, the content of instinctual wishes, as they are, strictly speaking, no longer phantasies (Sandier & Nagera, 1963). In Kleinian usage, all unconscious mental content can be regarded as unconscious phantasy. In regard to this latter usage, Susan Isaacs wrote: "Phantasy is (in the first instance) the mental corollary, the psychic representative, of instinct. There is no impulse, no instindual urge or response which is not experienced as unconscious phantasy. . . . A phantasy represents the particular content of the urges or feelings (for example, wishes, fears, anxieties, triumphs, love or sorrow) dominating the mind at the moment" (1948, pp. 81-82). This radical extension of the notion of phantasy is quite different from Freud's formulation, which distinguishes, for example, between wishes and wish-fulfilling phantasies. Although the spelling "phantasy" was introduced in order to distinguish unconscious phantasy from daydreaming ("fantasy"), "phantasy" is now generally used in Britain to include both conscious and unconscious forms. In the United States the spelling "fantasy" tends to be used for both forms. We have used the " p h spelling throughout, indicating when we refer to conscious daydreams and when to (descriptively)unconscious phantasy.
THE SYSTEM
PRECONSCIOUS
89
abandoned if this threatens the self-preservativeneeds of the individual or his moral and ethical princip1es.l The reality principle plays a major part in the operation of the "second censorship" between the Preconscious and the Conscious, but it can be considered to be a dominant "principle" in the functioning of the Preconscious as a whole; however, the pleasure principle (which is entirely dominant in the Unconscious) also enters into preconscious functioning,although in a relatively subordinate role. It should be emphasized that although the Preconscious can be regarded, in one sense,as "set against" the Unconscious, it also functions to permit instinctual wishes to gain access to consciousness and to motility whenever possible, provided that consciousness is protected from too great a quantity of pain or unpleasure. Some instinctual wishes are permitted to pass the censorship and to find "discharge" without any hindrance, while others are modified so that they are acceptab1ei.e. as far as consciousness is concerned their gratification does not cause conflict with the individual's self-preservative interests, with his moral and ethical standards, or with his concern for the important persons in his life (present or past). These modifications can be considered to be compromise-formations.
Secondary process functioning
We earlier characterized the mental processes occurring in the Unconscious as being subject to primary process functioning. Ideas, memories, images, and repressed phantasy content are treated as if they were the same. Primary process was described as being a consequence of the free mobility of instinctual energies and the absence, in the Unconscious, of logic, of notions of time, of opposites, of contradictions and negation; furthermore, there is a disregard of reality, and words are treated as concrete "things" rather than as symbols. In contrast to this, the Preconscious is said to function predominantly according to the secondary process, which is, developmentally m e inadequacy of the reality principle as an explanatoryconcept for such a variety of functions constituted a severe limitation on the topographical model (see Chapter 11 for a discussion of the limitations of the model).
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speaking, the outcome of the influence of the external world on the mental apparatus. This impingement brings about such characteristics as the notion of causality, logic, a sense of time, and an intolerance of ambiguity and contradictory elements. Most important, in the course of development, the Preconscious becomes, together with the Conscious, that part of the mental apparatus in which language can be used as an efficient tool for the manipulation of mental content. The acquisition of verbal symbols for things and for abstract ideas goes parallel with the differentiation between the Unconscious and Preconscious. Words can be used to harness and to attenuate the force of instinctual wishes. These processes were considered by Freud in terms of the hypothetical energies involved. In the Unconscious, instinctual energy is regarded as "freeJ' and "mobile", and in primary process functioning the whole quota of energy with which an ideational element is cathected may be displaced to some other element. In the Preconscious, however, the harnessing of the instinctual energy occurs by means of what Freud called the binding of energy, and secondary processes (such as logical and reasonable thinking) are characterized by the displacement of only small quantities of energy from one mental content to another, in a "formal" fashion. In Freud's words: I therefore postulate that for the sake of efficiency the second system [the Preconscious] succeeds in retaining the major part of its cathexes of energy in a state of quiescence and in employing only a small part on displacement. . . . the activity of . . . [the system Unconscious] is directed towards securing the free discharge of the quantities of excitation, while the . . . [Preconscious] system, by means of the cathexes emanating from it, succeeds in inhibiting this discharge and in transforming the cathexis into a quiescent one, no doubt with a simultaneous raising of its level. . . . When once the second system has concluded its exploratory thought-activity, it releases the inhibition and damming-up of the excitations and allows them to discharge themselves in movement. [1900a, pp. 599-6001
Some of the functions and capacities of the Preconscious can be summarized briefly as follows (not necessarily in order of importance):
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1. The unconscious scanning of ideational input and of feeling states. Preconscious (descriptively speaking, unconscious) scanning is vital for the process of "censorship" and occurs in regard to mental content arising from any source-be it the ideational content of instinctual wishes, revived memories of the past, or current perceptual content-before it is allowed access to con~ciousness.~ 2. The censoring of instinctual wishes and their derivatives. While this was described as occurring either at the hypothetical frontier between the Preconscious and the Unconscious on the one hand, and the Preconscious and the Conscious on the other, censorship should be regarded as a function of the Preconscious as a whole. Moreover, it would seem reasonable to take the view, in this frame of reference, that it can occur at any point on the continuum from the depths to the surface of the Preconscious. Derivatives of the Unconscious may be censored (defended against) at any point at which they produce conflict above a certain intensity in the Preconscious. It should be understood that "censoring" is not only a process of blotting out, debarring, or deleting from the Preconscious; from the point of view of this system, it may also involve the active modification of threatening content, so that it can be given a new and more acceptable form. It involves "rewriting" as well as "blue-pencilling". 3. The laying down of organized memory systems. "Memory" in regard to the Unconscious can be regarded as being based on memory traces that can be cathected by instinctual energy, giving rise to the ideational content of instinctual wishes. The "memories" of the Unconscious are linked together by simple association and have no formal organization. In contrast, the The latter point raises a difficult issue in this frame of reference. While, on the one hand, perceptual content can be regarded as being directly aroused in the Conscious, on the other there is no doubt that it is affected by the Preconscious before conscious awareness occurs. Freud made several attempts to deal with this problem, which could only be solved with the introduction of the structural theory, in which the concepts of unconscious ego functioning and of consciousness as a "sense-organ of the ego" are employed.
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organized memory system of the Preconscious is constructed in such a way that memories of the past can, within certain limits, be sought for, recognized, retrieved, and orientated. This would imply a sort of "filing system" that allows for the recognition and recall of "appropriate" memories for such processes as thinking, problem-solving, phantasying, orientation of self in time and space, and so forth.
4. The testing of reality. This capacity, developing under the dominance of the reality principle, enables a distinction to be made between what is "unreal" (e.g. phantasies) and perceptual representations of something real in the external world. (The term "external world", in its relation to the mental apparatus includes the person's own body.) The capacity to distinguish between what is "real" and what is "unreal" ("conjured up" in imagination, memory or thought, etc.) is a function of development and was thought by Freud to be non-existent very early in life, when real wish-fulfilment and hallucinated wishfulfilment are not distinguished. The content of nocturnal dreams is not normally subjected to reality testing during dreaming, but daydreaming, on the other hand, carries with it the stamp of unreality (Sandler & Nagera, 1963).Although all these activities are described as if they involve consciousness, it is assumed that they can occur in the Preconscious as well (i.e.can be descriptively unconscious). 5. The binding of psychic energyewThe binding of mental energy is regarded as a precondition for secondary process functioning in that the latter involves the manipulation of small quantities of energy. It implies the capacity in the Preconscious to inhibit and control large quantities of instinctual energy. By means of such binding of energy, contents from the Unconscious can be handled in the Preconscious, and the result of the energic binding processes is that the imperative quality of the wishes derived from the instinctual drives is diminished. This diminution may be temporary, representing a "holding" of the drive enThe psychoanalytic psychology of energic "binding"is complicated, abstract, and, in our view, theoretically relatively unnecessary (see Gill, 1963; Holt, 1962). We give what we believe to be the minimum account for presenting this frame of reference.
ergy cathecting the instinctual wishes or their derivatives, while the Preconscious attempts to find a solution to the conflict that the peremptory instinctual wishes may arouse. This conflict-solving functioninvolves secondary process, i.e. the manipulation of small "sample" quantities of energy in thought or phantasy. Of course, if no other solution can be found, repression of the instinctual wish may be the outcome. Bound energy is also used in the construction of enduring mental organizations (such as those related to the organization of memory and thought) within the Preconscious. 6. Control of access to consciousness and action. Such access is dependent on the assessment and modification of any mental content pressing forward through the Preconscious towards "discharge" (in particular those contents that have come to represent instinctual wishes or their derivatives). In this sense the Preconscious functions to protect consciousnessfrom being overwhelmed by unpleasant experiences and to prevent the individual from acting in a way that is a potential source of danger to his life, his reputation, his self-esteem, his moral value system, and so forth. 7. Control over the development of afects. While the generation of affects is regarded as a consequence of repression (the energy of the repressed instinctual wish being capable of being transformed into an affect), the Preconscious can prevent the development of affects and their access to consciousness.By means of so-called successful repression, which includes the repression of the instinctual energy in the wish, the Preconscious is thought to be able to prevent the generation of affect, although its powers in this respect are less secure than in regard to the control of access to motility. This is in part due to the assumption, in this frame of reference, that instinctual drive energy connected with repressed ideas may be converted into an~iety.~ In the second phase, affects were seen more or less entirely as drive dmmolltives.Freud's well-known "first theory of anxiety" postulated that anxiety represented a transformation of the instinctual drive energy of repressed contents. The second theory of anxiety was put forward inlnhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926d (19251) and is radically different in nature. This
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8. The use of defence mechanisms. Apart from repression, the Preconscious may make use of other defences (e.g. projection, rationalization) in order to deal with conflict by modifying the content of the instinctual wish. In contrast to repression proper, which relegates the instinctual wish or its derivative to the Unconscious, there are certain other defence mechanisms that allow instinctual derivatives to proceed on their path to consciousness in an altered form.1° Thus, for example, an unconscious aggressive wish to attack someone may be transformed by projection into a belief or anxiety that one may be attacked by another person. 9. The construction of imaginative products. The Preconscious may permit otherwise unacceptable derivatives of the Unconscious to reach consciousness by constructing wish-fulfilling phantasies in the form of "imaginative" or "creative" productions. When such products reach the Conscious they have an appropriate "label" (e.g. of "daydream") attached to them, so that they are not confused with the perception of reality. Similarly,
introduced the concept of "signal" anxiety, arising within the ego, where it was seen as the main motive for defensive action. Thus in the first theory the view was that defence leads to anxiety, while in the second theory it was that anxiety leads to defence. It follows from Freud's second theory of anxiety that affects can be regarded as responses of the (structural) ego rather than being drive derivatives. The role of affects as regulators of interaction between the baby and the caretaker has been intensively discussed in recent years (see Stem, 1985,1995). lU The role of rationalization as a preconscious process has been underestimated in the psychoanalytic literature. While rationalizations may be conscious attempts at self-justification (for a previous, current, or contemplated act or attitude), rationalization occurs actively in the Preconscious as a means of dealing with conflict by the formation of a further derivative in which the individual feels righteous and justified. A striking example of the way in which this occurs is when a subject is given a post-hypnotic suggestion to perform an irrational act and, after emerging from the hypnotic state, produces a justification for the performance of that act. That such rationalization occurs preconsciously is shown by his own conscious belief in the validity of the rationalization he has constructed. To paraphrase Freud, it is as if the rider may believe that he is in charge of the horse, but is actually being taken where the horse wants to go.
instinctual wish-fulfilments may be permitted in the production of works of art, storytelling,and so on, whereas they would not otherwisebe allowed access to motility or to consciousness. 10. Symptom-formation. If repression of an instinctual wish or its derivativecannot successfully be carried out, and if it cannot be permitted expression in any other form, the Preconscious may construct a compromise formation in the form of a neurotic symptom. Such symptoms are felt by the Conscious to be alien intrusions over which the individual feels he has no control.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The system Conscious
I
n the topographical frame of reference the Conscious is regarded as the system on the surface of the mental apparatus. Nevertheless, it has depth and is bounded by the relatively deeper Preconscious, with which it shares a great number of characteristics (e.g. secondary process, reality-testing, etc.). For the purpose of-this presentation the perceptual apparatuses can be regarded as representing the surface boundary of the Conscious, open to the reception of impressions arising from sources external to the mental apparatus, i.e. from stimuli from both the external world and one's own body (kinaesthetic, proprioceptive, visceral, etc.).' We have stressed the point that the Unconscious and Preconscious are descriptively unconscious.The conscious, on the other hand, is that part of the mental apparatus within which the quality
In Chapter 6 (fn.3), reference was made to the difficulty inherent in this frame of reference in regard to subliminal perception.There can be little doubt that the process of "perception-work" (Sandler, 1960) which precedes conscious awareness must be allocated to the Preconscious. However, for our
of consciousness becomes attached to mental contents. Descriptively speaking, all its contents (ideas, feelings, etc.) are conscious. However, it is clear that at any one time only a very limited range of contents in the Conscious can be the focus of conscious attention. There are also different qualities of consciousness, ranging from that of vivid perception of external events to fleeting daydream thoughts "at the back of one's mind". Normally, the greatest degree of vividness is attached to perceptions arising from sources external to the mental apparatus (i.e. experienced by the most superficial part of the Conscious), but this is not always the case, as for example in hallucinations and nocturnal dreams. Similarly, contents arising from within the apparatus are thought of as entering the Conscious at its deeper boundary (e.g. daydream thoughts and other ideas). It is assumed that stimuli external to the apparatus have to overcome a certain threshold (the stimulus barrier) before giving rise to conscious experience (see Figure 7.1). The notion of attention is a very important one in considering the functioning of this system. In brief, the Conscious contains those contents entering from the side of the Preconscious or those experiences from the external world or the body that are receiving some degree of attention at any one time. When conscious attention is completely removed from such contents, they can be regarded as becoming preconscious, i.e. have become part of the contents of the Preconscio~s.~ present purposes-i.e. an exposition of the topographical frame of referenceit will be assumed, except where otherwise indicated, that the most superficial surface of the system Conscious is that which receives perceptual content from the sense-organs. The notion, held by Freud at one time during the second phase, of the system Conscious as being separate from the perceptual system will not be pursued, nor will the vicissitudes of the relationship between the two and their eventual amalgamation into the one system, the PerceptualConscious, be taken into account. Investment with attention is not the same as consciousness. Preconscious attention can be paid to certain types of experience without the person being aware of this at the time. In addition, the exercise of repression may force conscious content out of consciousness.This statement illustrates a major problem in regard to Freud's view of the Preconscious. On the one hand, those contents of consciousness from which attention has been withdrawn can be regarded as receding into the Preconscious. When needed they can readily
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The mental apparatus
I
SOMA
I I I I I I I I I I I
I system Unconscious
I I
I
I
I I
Contents deriving from the Unconscious system and the Preconscious system >
I I I
I I I .P1 c KJ0 l " I !I $1 I I
system Preconscious
system Conscious
FIGURE 7.1. Diagram illustrating, in the topographical frame of reference, the way in which contents arising from the external world have to overcome the stimulus barrier to enter consciousness. Those contents arising from within the mental apparatus have to pass the second censorship and enter the Conscious from its "deeper" end.
The contents of the Conscious have something of a "fleeting" quality about them, despite the considerable intensity with which they may be experienced. In order to survive, the individual, whilst awake, has to pay constant attention to new perceptual experiences, or to changes inperceptual input, although the quality
be recalled. On the other hand, Freud postulated a censorship, a barrier created by repression, that prevented contents of the Preconscious from having ready access to the Conscious. The paradox can be resolved by postulating that the censorship between the Conscious and Preconsciousallows certain contents to enter consciousnessreadily but exerts a repressive force against others that, for one reason or another, have become linked with conflict. It functions from the side of the Preconscious somewhat like a semipermeable membrane guarding consciousness.
THE SYSTEM
CONSCIOUS
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and intensity of the attention may vary. He may be carefully scrutinizing his environment, or be "lost in thought". In line with the importance given to ideas of mental "energy", attention is considered to be "an investment with attention cathexis", i.e. an investment of an experiential content with a charge of energy. This is not the freely mobile instinctual energy of the Unconscious, nor the "bound" energy described in regard to the Preconscious, but a special "mobile" and "neutral" energy, normally free from sexual and aggressive qualities, which is at the disposal of the Preconscious and Conscious. In Freud's words: "The system [Preconscious] not merely bars access to consciousness, it also controls access to the power of voluntary movement and has at its disposal for distribution a mobile cathectic energy, a part of which is familiar to us in the form of attention"(1900a1 p. 605). In describing the differences between conscious and unconscious processes, Freud (1925a [1924]) characterized the nature of the processes involved by drawing an analogy with a particular type of toy for children, known at that time as the mystic writingpad. This exists in a similar form today. It is a pad covered with a clear celluloid or plastic surface backed by a block of wax (or a piece of board coated with wax or similar substance). Using a stylus, the pad can be drawn or written upon. The drawing or writing can be made to disappear by separating the clear surface from the underlying wax, and the pad immediately becomes clear and ready to be used again. Freud commented: "But it is easy to discover that the permanent trace of what was written is retained upon the wax slab itself and is legible in suitable lights" (1925a [1924], p. 230). The wax slab is likened to that part of the apparatus which retains impressions outside consciousness, while the clear surface corresponds to the Conscious. It is clear from so-called "automatic" actions-i.e. slips of the tongue and other "faulty acts" (parapraxes)-that there can be motor expression of instinctual wishes (or their derivatives) that bypass the Conscious system. We have noted previously that many well-learnt skills achieve a high degree of autonomy and can be performed without the need for conscious attention, even though such attention is necessary while the skill is being acquired. Normally, however, the Conscious is directly involved in pur-
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posive action, including the obtaining of direct or indirect instinctual drive satisfaction. Imaginative contents can be fully conscious alongside a knowledge that they are not real, and, in this way, quite unbridled instinctual wish derivatives can enter the Conscious in the form of daydreams; however, because of the reality principle such derivatives may not be permitted to find discharge in motor action. The tendency of instinctual wish derivatives to be allowed into the Conscious as phantasies or daydreams is intensified by the prolonged absence of actual gratification. We have not dwelt on the Conscious in detail, because, apart from a few qualities (notably the existence of consciousness), in Freud's view it shares many of the characteristics of the Preconscious (but not all--e.g. the mechanisms of defence function preconsciously). As in the Preconscious, the reality principle and reality-testing operate in the Conscious, where they are more influential than in the Preconscious. Similarly, we find secondary process functioning and occasional primary process manifestations. In describing the topographical frame of reference, we have presented the mental apparatus as if it were composed of three separate compartments-the Unconscious, the Preconscious, and the Conscious. While this is useful for purposes of exposition and presentation, it is valuable to regard the topographical schema as being, to a certain degree, a continuum. We can see the division between what is conscious and what is unconscious as being a matter of degree. Furthermore, the censorship can be regarded as operating over the whole range of the Preconscious, more stringent at its superficies and relatively lax at its depths. Similarly, there would appear to be a case for regarding the relative dominance of secondary process over primary process functioning as being greatest towards the surface of the apparatus, least in the deep stratum of the Preconscious, and absent in the Unconscious.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Transference
w
e have attempted to describe in some detail the way in which Freud's theories during the second phase of psychoanalysis can be organized into a topographical frame of reference. In view of its complexity we are supplementing the essentially theoretical accounts by more detailed descriptions of the way the apparatus functions. This chapter considers some aspects of the clinical phenomenon of transference as it can be understood within the topographical frame of reference. The concept of transference was introduced by Freud during the first phase, in Studies on Hysteria (Freud, 1895d),but it received its most extensive and coherent formulation in the second phase of psychoanalysis, 1897-1923. There is an intimate lin!~between the important clinical concept of transference and the topographical model as it was elaborated and modified during this phase. Transference is a concept whose range of use and span of meaning continues to represent a central aspect of the psychoanalytic theory of the therapeutic process in particular, and of the psychoanalytic psychology of interpersonal relationships in general.
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It is useful to take as our starting point the relatively simple formulation of transference put forward by Freud early in the second phase: What are transferences?They are new editions or facsimiles of the impulses and phantasies which are aroused and made conscious during the progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiarity, which is characteristic for their species, that they replace some earlier person by the person of the physician. To put it another way: a whole series of psychological experiences are revived, not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the person of the physician at the present moment. Some of these transferences have a content which differs from that of their model in no respect whatever except for the substitution. These then-to keep to the same metaphorare merely new impressions or reprints. Others are more ingeniously constructed; their content has been subjected to a moderating influence . . .by cleverly taking advantage of some real peculiarity in the physician's person or circumstances and attaching themselves to that. These, then, will no longer be new impressions, but revised editions. [1905e [1901],p. 1161 Originally Freud saw transference as an obstacle to the psychoanalytic work, but later, in the second phase, he came to view analysis of the transference as an indispensable technical tool. In this chapter the term is taken to refer to the development of feelings, attitudes, wishes, and responses towards another person (in the treatment situation, the therapist) that are derived, unbeknown to the subject, from earlier (often infantile) experiences and relationships with significant figures in the environment. Characteristically, transference is a phenomenon that was, from early in this phase, most clearly seen in the psychoanalytic treatment situation, in which the analyst reveals as little of his own habits and interests as possible. The analyst's personality is, to a certain degree, hidden by a "professional" stance towards the patient. Under such circumstances the patient develops beliefs, attitudes, phantasies, feelings, and responses to the psychoanalyst, many of which are regarded as being derived from the patient's own past experiences, impulses, and wishes. Because the analytic situation allows, for a time, the development of transferences in a form relatively "uncorrected" by
reality, they are felt by the patient to be real and appropriate to the present. Transference makes use of and incorporates elements of the patient's perceptions by "cleverly taking advantage of some real peculiarity in the physician's person or circumstances", as Freud remarked in the quotation above. The topographical frame of reference can be utilized in the following way for an understanding of the processes involved in transference.' Infantile instinctual wishes directed towards the objects of childhood (parents, siblings, and other emotionally significant figures)are assumed to persist in the Unconscious in crude and undisguised form. They may be relatively dormant, or they may be revived by being invested with further quantities of sexual and aggressive drive energies. The arousal of particular instinctual wishes in these circumstances may come about from sources within the individual, or as a result of specific stimulation from the external world. The instinctual wish can be understood in this context as consisting of the mental representation of a previously gratifying situation or situations, now invested with drive energy. The latter provides the force impelling the wish towards expression and gratification. The mental representations involved include a childhood image of the gratifying object and of the object-directed aim, i.e. of the activity involving the past object which would yield the wished-for instinctual gratification. In addition to those childhood memories particularly significant to the individual concerned, repressed memories of all kinds referring to later experiences may enter into the content of instinctual wishes in the Unconscious.
We would emphasize that the description of transference processes and phenomena given in this chapter is rooted in a phase in which the role of instinctual wishes and impulses was seen as dominant in mental functioning. Transference was regarded as being exclusively a relatively "surface"manifestation of deep instinctual wishes. Later, the views of transference held by psychoanalysts underwent some change (see Sandler, Dare, 6r Holder, 1992).
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Transference derivatives in the Preconscious
In the second phase, transference processes were thought to develop only as treatment progressed, induced and facilitated by the regression-inducing properties of the psychoanalytic situation. With the arousal, in therapy, of earlier instinctual wishes directed towards significant objects, these wishes enter the deeper layers of the Preconscious, where, still outside consciousness, they are scrutinized and "censored". If, at this point, they are not too threatening to the individual (i.e. do not arouse too great a degree of conflict), they may be permitted to proceed some distance into the Preconscious without modification. However, in the non-psychotic person, those wishes that lie behind transference manifestations invariably arouse conflict and are then considered by the Preconscious as representing a threat to the individual were they to be permitted direct access to consciousness and action (i.e. access to the Conscious)in relatively unmodified form. Thus they tend to be rejected by the Preconscious. In discussing the mode of functioning of the Preconscious, we have described how instinctual wishes may, having been turned back by the censorship, undergo transformation within the Unconscious by such primary process mechanisms as condensation and displacement. Following this, they may be permitted to enter the Preconscious more readily than previously, inasmuch as they are now more removed in their ideational content from the content of the underlying instinctual wish. Alternatively, the strength of the instinctual drive component of the wish may mount to such a degree that the barrier between the Unconscious and the Preconscious fails, and the instinctual wish, in its more direct form, enters the Preconscious. However, once in the Preconscious, the form the wish has thus far assumed will undergo further modification by the secondary process, with the formation of preconscious derivatives of the original highly cathected wish. Such preconscious derivatives may take many forms, one of these being the transference wish. In the formation of transference thoughts or wishes the infantile wish is modified and "up-dated" in the Preconscious. The images representing the childhood aim and object of the wish are replaced by or integrated with thoughts, observations, and other material relating to the analyst, as well as
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105
being subjected to the reality principle. The content of the wish will be made more rational, its threatening elements disguised, conflict reduced, and the energic investment of the original object representation transferred to the image of the analyst. In addition to what might be called "preconscious rationalization", defence mechanisms (such as projection) may be employed in order to render the content of the transference wish more free from conflict and acceptable to consciousness. In addition, the Preconscious may, as the wish proceeds in its new form in the direction of the surface, elaborate tentative preconscious phantasies that represent forms of disguised fulfilment of the instinctual wish. Preconscious phantasies include the large class of preconscious transference phantasies, i.e. products of the imagination that involve a wishfulfilling interaction with the analyst. But, of course, not all preconscious wishes and phantasies that arise in the course of an analysis have "transference" content. It follows that the preconscious transference wish is different from the unconscious infantile instinctual wish, although it is derived from and represents the latter. Gratification of such a preconscious derivative is regarded, in this frame of reference, as permitting the "discharge" of the instinctual energies with which the unconscious wish had been cathected, these energies having been transferred or deflected to the preconscious derivative.' Preconscious transference derivatives may, at any point in their formation, be turned back and repressed into the Unconscious, particularly if, for any reason, conflict over them is intensified (as a consequence, for example, of some remark of the analyst that is felt to be threatening, or as a result of some upsetting occurrence in the external world). Moreover, the preconscious derivative may become in itself increasingly threatening as it approaches conscious awareness. In such cases the derivatives may be tolerated within the Preconscious, but kept back at the border between the PreconIn the second phase, thoughts about the analyst, and wishes towards him, were not regarded as being "transference"unless the intensity of the preconscious wish towards the analyst approached that of the original wish towards the childhood object. Wishes towards significant people in the patient's earlier life, which become the basis for transferences, could be derived from any stage of the individual's psychosexual development.
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scious and the Conscious, i.e. at what has been described as the "second censorship". The dynamic to-and-fro within the Preconscious, and between the Preconscious and the Unconscious, should be stressed in connection with the whole process of derivative f~rmation.~
Transference derivatives in the Conscious It has been pointed out that the Conscious is that part of the mental apparatus within which consciousness becomes attached to mental contents. The preconscious transference derivative described in the preceding section of this chapter may proceed directly into consciousness, so that the patient is aware of its content. This awareness may be dim and fleeting, or extremely intense. The patient may report it in his free associations in analysis, or he may consciously withhold it. Commonly, the wish, phantasy, or thought may be suppressed, so that the patient forgets it; he may, however, recall it later, particularly if this is facilitated by the analytic process and the analyst's interventions. When the preconscious transference derivative is allowed to become conscious it is regarded as having gained the attention of the Conscious, which is conceived of as an investment of the relevant mental content with an additional form of energy, noninstinctual in nature, and referred to as at tention cathexis. We have considered the transference derivative formed and tolerated in the Preconscious as if it were sufficiently disguised in order to be permitted to enter the Conscious if attention were paid to it. This is by no means always the case. The preconscious trans-
'
The interpretation of preconscious transference wishes, fantasies, and thoughts is extremely important in clinical psychoanalytic work. These transferences relate to the "here-and-now"of the analytic situation. Being in the Preconscious, they are outside consciousness, but are more easily made accessible through interpretation than wishes (and associated memories) in the Unconscious. The interpretation of preconscious transference derivatives provides a route towards the later recall or reconstructionof repressed childhood wishes and memories.
ference impulse or thought may be turned back on the threshold of consciousness for reasons described earlier, and a seconday transference derivative, one that may now be permitted into consciousness, may have to be formed within the Preconscious. This will appear in the patient's associations, may be discerned through acting out, or may be discovered through the analyst's countertransference. In this there is often no direct representation of the analyst, or the thought or phantky may have been rendered innocuous in other ways in order to protect the patient from uncomfortable feelings of embarrassment, anxiety, guilt, and the like. It is one of the analyst's tasks to detect allusions to underlying unconscious transference ideas. An illustration of what has been described may serve to clarify the processes involved, though in a simplified and schematic form. Example A 1. During the course of analysis a male patient's hostile, angry, and murderous feelings towards his father, deriving from his childhood, may be aroused in the Unconscious, resulting in an instinctual wish to attack his father.
2. A transference derivative may be formed in the Preconscious, consisting of a wish to humiliate and harm the analyst. This can be regarded as a primary transference derivative of the revived childhood wish, "up-dated" in regard to the object, and slightly changed in aim. This derivative remains preconscious, as it could only be tolerated in consciousness if it were further changed. 3. Under the pressure of the preconscious wish the patient becomes aware of and reports hostile feelings towards his employer and speaks of his wish to take revenge on him for some supposed (or actual but trifling) humiliation. Naturally such material brought by a patient need not be a reflection of transference, but if there is evidence from the context of other material and indications that it relates to a preconscious transference wish, this will normally be interpreted to the patient by indicating that feelings of a similar sort may be present towards the analyst. This, if it is accepted by the patient, may, in turn, be
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linked in the subsequent analytic work with the patient's hostile wishes towards his father. From the point of view of psychoanalytic technique, the distinction between revived childhood impulses in the Unconscious and primary derivatives (including transference derivatives) in the Preconscious, and secondary transference derivatives or allusions (which can be in the Preconscious or in the Conscious), is important. This is because interpretation of contents in the Unconscious before an understanding of the mental derivatives (especially the transference derivatives) has been gained may lead to intellectualization on the part of the patient as a way of covertly resisting the analytic work. In order not to complicate matters, the all-important clinical observations understood as representing so-called transference-resistance have not been commented on. Unacceptable preconscious transference wishes pressing forward for expression may prompt the patient to struggle against them, and as a result he may show resistance to the analysis. Thus, he may, for example, substitute hostile attitudes in order to disguise emerging loving feelings towards the analyst, or may attempt to placate and appease the analyst because of the fear of a developing hostile transference. This type of resistance has the special quality that it reflects the struggle against infantile impulses that have emerged, in direct or modified form in relation to the analyst. The analytic situation reanimates, in the form of a current distortion of reality, material that had been repressed or had been dealt with in some other way (e.g. by being channelled into the neurotic symptom itself). This revival of the past in the psychoanalytic relationship can lead to the transference-resistance . . . [which includes] the conscious withholding by the patient of thoughts about the analyst, as well as reflecting unconscious transference thoughts which are defended against. [Sandler, Dare, & Holder, 1992, p. 1031
Example B A male patient in his twenties attended for an analytic session shortly before a holiday, the discussion of which had been part of the analytic work of the previous few days. He was late for
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his session for no valid reason, and began by speaking of a friend's holiday plan to travel to a certain town abroad. He commented that the friend had mentioned, in passing, that his (the friend's) college tutor was also planning to visit the same town. The analyst remarked that perhaps the patient had the thought of going to the place where he believed the analyst would be spending her own holiday. The patient accepted this interpretation with relief and proceeded to talk of where, in his imagination, he thought the analyst might indeed be going for her holiday. He went on to speak of yet another friend whose mother had a cottage in the place he imagined to be the analyst's holiday location. There followed a reverie by the patient about pleasurable sunbathing and swimming connected in turn with childhood memories of holidays and long, sunny summers spent with his family. Without going into details of the analytic work that ensued, it became clear to the analyst that the mental events leading to the patient's associations could be described in the following way (using the topographical frame of reference): 1. In the Unconscious there existed childhood memories of an intensely satisfying relationship to his mother, including close bodily contact with her, reinforced by the fact that he had spent many nights in bed with her until the age of 5 or 6 years. With the development of unconscious affectionate feelings towards the analyst, the infantile memories were invested with sexual drive energy, so that the wish to have an experience identical with that which was so satisfactory in childhood arose as an impulse in the Unconscious. This included the revival of childhood wishes that had aims that could be understood as the desire of a 4- or 5-year-old child for some form of sexual intercourse with his mother. 2. The wish, in its naked form, had been defended against in childhood, but was manifested, in disguised form, as a wish to cuddle the mother and to share her bed. This was linked with memories of romping in bed with the mother and playing with her on the beach, where they jointly built sandcastles, tunnelling in the sand. All of this had been repressed into the
1 10
SECOND PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
Unconscious, but with the re-arousal of his sexual wishes towards his mother in the analysis, a derivative in the Preconscious which contained the less directly sexual elements of his childhood memories and wishes was created in the form of a transference wish to be close to the analyst during the holidays, to spend time on the beach with her, and so on.' 3, However, even the preconscious wish, disguised as it was, was not permitted to reach consciousness, and the patient brought secondary derivatives referring to his friend who would visit the same town as his college tutor. His unconscious discomfort about the preconscious transference wish had caused him to develop the resistance to coming to the session, evidenced by his lateness.
In this case the verbalization of the preconscious transference wishful phantasy, and the patient's awareness of its acceptance by the analyst, brought about a feeling of relief and allowed the patient to elaborate on the previously preconscious thoughts. These were now in the Conscious, and they led to the subsequent discovery of the childhood wishes that had been revived in the analysis and had resulted in the transference manifestations. The processes that have been considered in this example are illustrated diagrammatically in Figure 8.1.
Example C A middle-aged male patient was in psychoanalytic treatment because of his and his wife's concern about the gradual "failure" of their marriage. After some preliminary analytic work
For schematic purposes there is a certain amount of oversimplification here. It would seem likely that, within this frame of reference, a direct sexual wish towards the analyst was also formed as a concurrent transference wish, which could only be tolerated in the deeper strata of the Preconscious. Moreover, the image of the analyst forming part of the ideational content of the transference wish of the sort described in this example would certainly contain attributes of the instinctually charged memory of the mother, deriving from the Unconscious.
11 1
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system
system
system
Unconscious
Preconscious
Conscious
I
I
1
I
I
I surface
depth
A simplified diagram of the development of free associations in the patient that relate to a transference wish towards the analyst, as conceived within the topographical frame of reference. (a) The memory of the sexual relationship with the mother. (b) Instinctual drive energy. (c) The combination of (a) and (b) into the instinctual wish to reexperience the close childhood relationship with the mother, with the re-gratification of childhood sexual wishes (this is not yet transference). (dl The wish to cuddle the mother and to share her bed, based on relatively non-sexual elements in the memory of the relationship to the mother. (el The transference wish to be close to the analyst during the holidays and to spend time on the beach with her, derived from (d). (fl A secondary derivative of the transference wish (and of the infantile sexual wish) that was permitted entry to the system Conscious, in the form of thoughts displaced away from the analyst and relating to the patient's friend visiting a holiday town at the same time as his tutor. FIGURE8.1.
'
he came to realize that over the years he had withdrawn from emotional contact w i t h his wife. The awareness of this helped him to develop a heightened motivation for changing himself. In the session following one in which he had felt that he had understood something of his difficulties, h e began to speak of his very first love affair, which had occurred at the age of 30,
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and of his fond recollection of the woman "who understood him". The patient then began to talk of rather inconsequential business matters, and the analyst commented that the patient seemed to have "switched off" emotionally, and that it would seem that he had to do this in order to push away friendly and warm feelings towards the analyst that had arisen during the previous session. The patient agreed that he felt "switched off" but denied any change in his feelings towards the analyst. He spoke of these as "friendly but professional". He went on to talk of a colleague who had, in his opinion, been too easily influenced by his business partner's suggestions, which, he thought, might land his friend "in deep water". The analyst again pointed out that the patient seemed to be afraid of the idea that he might be feeling warmth towards the analyst; if he allowed this, he would certainly feel that he would be "in deep water". The patient denied this, but then hesitantly remarked that he had experienced a flash of pleasure as he entered the analyst's house that day and had then thought of the danger of treatment becoming "a habit". This latter thought had worried him. He then appeared to change the subject and launched into a description of the analyst's house. The analyst commented that he had previously used almost exactly the same terms to describe his mother's house. The patient said that this was "interesting" and proceeded to speak of how well he managed to get on with his mother after his father had died (when the patient was ll), but be recalled that he "had to keep his distance" even when he was with her. At this point the analyst interpreted that he, the patient, had "switched off" that day because of his fear of not being able to continue in the treatment if he became aware of close and warm feelings for the analyst. The patient agreed with this and said, as if in confirmation, that if he had given in to his mother's emotional demands on him, he "would never have got out of her clutches". The psychoanalyst then interpreted that, as he saw it, it was the upsurge of the patient's own affectionate feelings and wishes towards the analyst that had caused him to "switch off". Furthermore, this was a repetition of what he had done to protect himself from similar feelings towards his mother for much of his life. Likewise, he had "switched off" emotionally in his marriage as his fear of a close
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emotional relationship with his wife increased. At this point the patient began to speak of those situations in which he withdrew from his wife, displaying a great deal of emotion for the first time in his analysis. His subsequent material related to his fear of being "hurt", "betrayed", and "wounded" if he exposed his feelings too much. The ramifications of this fragment of analysis are extensive. However, it demonstrates how a patient brought a marital symptom, essentially of his own unconscious construction, into the analytic process. In the topographical frame of reference the essential steps in the development of this transference material can be reconstructed as follows: 1. In the Unconscious, early memories of oedipal longings for the mother (together with other memories of childhood experiences of, and adolescent wishes for, closeness with the mother) had been activated by the development of a close relationship with a person exciting fondness and affection. The investment of these memories by instinctual drive excitation led to the revival of strong instinctual wishes towards the mother.
2. As these wishes intensified, and could not be contained by repression, they entered the deeper reaches of the Preconscious, becoming attached to the figure of the analyst, at the same time producing conflict and anxiety for a variety of reasons, including the expectation of physical hurt. The transference towards the analyst was stimulated by the "good" preceding analytic sessions and, in turn, revived the earlier conflict. This was dealt with in the Preconscious by modifying the transference derivative of the incestuous wish. Thus the sexual feelings and feelings of affection towards the analyst had in turn been altered in the Preconscious, by the use of habitual defences, so that the patient remembered (i.e. permitted into the Conscious) his first love affair with the woman "who understood him". Even though this was conscious and reported by the patient, he was only able to bring this material in his analysis by speaking in an abstracted, non-emotional way ("switching off'). Here he used the same defensive operation that he had used to deal with and contain his longings towards his mother when he lived with
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S E C O N D PHASE: THE TOPOGRAPHICAL FRAME
her in the same house. His reference to his "friendly but professional" relationship to the analyst duplicated the relationship that he had evolved with his mother and subsequently his wife. 3. After having been confronted by the analyst with his defensive "switching off", a further indication of his preconscious conflict and sources of anxiety emerged, displaced onto the friend and colleague who might be too easily influenced by his business partner's suggestions. This reflected his own fear of being "in deep water" if he admitted his warm feelings towards the analyst into consciousness. Here one may say that the "second censorship" (between the Preconscious and Conscious) intervened. 4. This fear was interpreted, and in spite of an initial rejection by the patient of the analyst's comment, the patient could permit into consciousness a recollection of momentary pleasure at seeing the analyst. He was also able to be aware of, and to describe, his awareness of the unease that was linked with this thought, in the shape of his "worry that treatment might become a habit".
5. Derivatives of the preconscious link between the transference derivative and the original incestuous wish towards the mother (which had arisen in the Unconscious) could now enter the Conscious. This took the form of a description of the analyst's house in terms that had previously been used to describe the mother's and the thought that the patient could get on well with his mother after his father's death, but "had to keep his distance from her." 6. The analyst now interpreted that the patient was frightened
of his affectionate feelings towards the analyst, which he had dealt with by "switching off". This allowed the current preconscious fear of the analyst's demands on him to emerge into consciousness in the form of a memory of the patient's fear of what he thought of as his mother's dangerous demandingness. He could also now verbalize (allow into the Conscious) the thought that emotional "switching off" protected him from such dangerous demands in the present by referring them back
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to the past, i.e. to his relationship to his mother. The knowledge that he had used this manoeuvre in relation to his feelings towards the analyst remained preconscious. 7. The analyst could now interpret, and successfully bring into the Conscious, the way in which the patient had dealt with his transference feelings and had used similar means to protect himself against exactly the same feelings towards his wife in the more recent past, and towards his mother in childhood. This allowed further material into consciousness, the patient's thoughts being substantially less separated from the feelings that accompanied them. We have given examples of transference phenomena to illustrate aspects of the formation of derivatives in the Preconscious and Conscious within the topographical frame of reference? and similar processes can be ascribed to the formation of other "derivatives of the Unconscious". We refer here to slips of the tongue, works of art and other forms of creativity, jokes, phantasies, neurotic symptoms, nochunal dreams, and so forth. The latter are considered in the next chapter, again with the aim of describing the application of the topographical frame of reference.
'
These examples have, of course, been grossly simplified for expository purposes. For instance, the role of projected aggression in the transference of the patient in Example C. has not been mentioned, although it was an important element in his fear of being in his mother's (and, in the transference, the analyst's)"clutches".
CHAPTER NINE
Dream processes
F
or Freud, analysis at the end of the nineteenth century was very different from analysis as we understand it now. The aim of the analytic work was to make what was unconscious conscious, and for that purpose the method of free association was used (Sandler & Dreher, 1996).However, in spite of the fact that the phenomenon of transference had been noted previously by Freud (Breuer & Freud, 1895d), interpretation of the transference was not used as a tool of psychoanalytic technique in the early part of the second phase of psychoanalysis. Instead, Freud encouraged the patient to bring thoughts, free associations, and particularly dreams to the analysis. As far as dreams were concerned, he asked the patient to associate to the various elements in the dream. The meaning of the dream was thenexplained in the light of the analyst's understanding of the unconscious content behind the dream. Emphasis was placed on the retrieval and reconstruction of infantile experiences and phantasies, particularly those of a sexual nature. It was believed that the neuroses were an outcome of conflict aroused by the revival of childhood sexual wishes, whereas the influence of environmental factors in the patient's current life was relatively
D R E A M PROCESSES
1 17
understressed. In the early years of the second phase the analyst was like the scientist who peered through a microscope, reconstructing the childhood elements in the current material brought by the patient. As a consequence, because derivatives of primary process functioning and infantile sexual material were more apparent in the dream than in waking thoughts and phantasies, the interpretation of dreams was regarded as the "royal road" to the unconscious workings of the mind. Later developmentsin psychoanalytic technique, particularly the analysis of transference manifestations, opened up other roads to the Unconscious. The theory of dreams was put forward, together with the first version of the topographical model, in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a). The theory as presented there must be viewed in the context of Freud's conception at that time that the remembered traumas of hysterical patients were frequently memories of childhood sexual phantasies recalled as "facts". There was a new emphasis by the analyst on the effect of the patient's infantile sexual drives and wishes on his current life. Because of the bigger role played by the analysis of dreams in analytic work at the beginning of this century, several analytic sessions could be spent on the analysis of a single dream or even on a single dream fragment. Patients usually understood the methods and aims of the analytic work and collaborated with the analyst in his particular technique, accepting the emphasis on their childhood past.' The psychoanalytic theory of dreams is extremely rich and complicated, and in this chapter we cannot give a full account of the theory. We restrict ourselves instead to an outline of the way in which dreams can be conceptualized in the topographical frame of reference, and even then we shall simplify greatly. We concentrate here only on giving enough detail in order to demonstrate the application and use of this frame of reference, complementing the previous chapter, in which the clinical phenomena of transference were considered (Chapter 8). As in that chapter, we are concerned here with a "derivative of the Unconscious" that has special signifiCuriously, if a patient were to concentrate as much on dreams and childhood memories nowadays, this would be seen by the psychoanalyst as a resistance to the expression of thoughts about the present-a view also taken by Freud in later years.
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cance in the history of psychoanalysis in general and for the second phase in particular. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a) is the first of Freud's works to contain a detailed and systematic account of the innovations in his thinking, and of the conceptualizations that characterize the second phase. Freud's book on dreams contains the initial version of the topographical model, specifically elaborated in order to explain dream processes, although the model was regarded as being of wider application in the understanding of the whole variety of phenomena considered to be derivatives of the Unconscious. As we have seen, the topographical model underwent significant elaboration during the second phase, but the seventh chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams is still considered as the most important exposition of the topographical model. We pointed out previously that the study of the chapter presents certain problems in that it is difficult to comprehend and includes a number of propositions that are over-complicated and superfluous in the light of later developments. However, dream analysis remains an indispensable tool in psychoanalytic treatment, and the topographical frame of reference is our version of the model which has been most widely used for the psychoanalytic understanding of drearn~.~
The function of dreaming The chief function of dreams and dreaming is taken to be that of the preservation of sleep.3This aim is achieved by presenting the Conscious with a hallucinatory experience, containing an amalgama-
It is of interest and significance :hat the topographical model has remained, for many psychoanalysts, the model of choice in the consideration of dreams, although it was followed by the structural model of Freud's third phase and by further post-Freudian developments. Research into the psychophysiology of dreaming throws considerable light on the functions of both sleep and dreaming. REM-phase sleep (characterized by rapid eye movements), in which most dreaming occurs, appears to be necessary for the maintenance of psychological health and well-being. Dreaming is more of a regular and necessary function of the mental apparatus
D R E A M PROCESSES
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tion of elements deriving from the Preconscious and Unconscious, and representing the disguised fulfilment of a repressed instinctual wish. Bodily sensations and perceptual (mainly auditory and tactile) stimuli during sleep may contribute to the formation of dreams and, in part, determine their content. However, the instinctual wishes of the Unconscious are regarded as the chief motivating forces for the formation of dreams. Even during sleep these wishes have a peremptory quality, conceived of as a consequence of the pressure of psychic energy seeking discharge. Processes within the Preconscious modify and disguise the instinctual wishes in such a way that they may ultimately receive attention within the Conscious as hallucinatory wish-fulfilments, without sleep being disrupted.' In this sense, dreams are comparable to certain neurotic symptoms, in that they may be regarded as representing compromises between repressed wishes striving for gratification on the one hand, and the opposing influence of the "censoring" processes on the other.
The process of dream formation
Dreams are considered to be instigated predominantly by instinctual wishes. However, it is not only instinctual wishes that provide material for the formation of dreams, but other sources of dream
than Freud could know in 1900, when his knowledge of the frequency of dreams was based on subjective reports. It could perhaps be said that REM sleep provides necessary opportunities for dreaming. Dreams have also been viewed as having a problem-solving function or as a way of processing information. A major cause of waking with an anxiety dream is a failure on the part of the Preconscious to create sufficient distortion of the drives. The anxiety is a manifestation of the breakthrough of the insufficiently censored and modified instinctual wish. The affect of anxiety was regarded as derived from a transformation of the instinctual "energy" with which the wish was "charged". This conception of anxiety (the so-called "first theory of anxiety") was totally modified in the third phase. Some anxiety dreams can be understood as gratifications of a "need for punishment" resulting from severe guilt feelings or masochistic tendencies (often from a combination of the two).
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content as well. All these "instigatcrs" are known as dream sources. Predominant among the non-instinctual sources are the more recently formed mental contents that have reached preconscious or conscious representation during waking life, and which can be considered to be contents of the Preconscious during the state of sleep. Conscious or preconscious "unsolved problems" arising during the day, representing major current preoccupations, as well as memories belonging to the preceding day or two (day's residues), may come into the general category of non-instinctual sources. In addition, stimuli impinging on the individual from somatic or external sources may also provide material for the dream, or even play a part in instigating it. Examples of the latter are feelings of pain or discomfort arising from the body during sleep, and such external stimuli as the ringing of an alarm clock. Day's residues are preconscious contents that were active (possibly even as previously conscious thoughts) during the days preceding a dream and have, for one reason or another, retained some investment of preconscious attention after the onset of sleep. Impressions of the previous day or two, not directly involved in conflict, may be drawn into the process of dream construction. They then function to disguise an instinctual wish or its preconscious derivative, thus facilitating the evasion of the various censorships. In summary, day's residues include visual impressions, memories of thoughts, phantasies, and all sorts of other sensory impressions. Indeed, they include experiences of any kind--even those that may have seemed relatively trivial at the t i m e t h a t occurred during the previous few days. In the analysis of a dream, elements that are undoubtedly day's residues may be recalled during free association as unimportant impressions. They were incorporated into the dream in some form either because of a connection between such impressions and unconscious thoughts and wishes, or because their content rendered them suitable for the purposes of symbolic representation. In addition, they are accessible because they are recent. Even in those instances where the overt content of the dream appears to be dominated by residues from the previous day, it is always assumed, in this frame of reference, that the dream ultimately represents the fulfilment of an unconscious instinctual wish. Freud remarked that the day's residues are only psychical material for the dream-work,
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just as sensory and somatic stimuli constitute the somatic material for the dream-work: "The essential factor in the construction of dreams is an unconscious wish-as a rule an infantile wish, now repressed-which can come to expression in this somatic or psychical material. . . . The dream is in every case a fulfilment of this unconscious wish, whatever else it may contain" (Freud, 1913a, p. 274)."
We should distinguish the repressed instinctual wish in the Unconscious from the broader category of "unconscious wish" in which the term "unconscious" is used in its descriptive sense, i.e. to include contents of the Preconscious as well as of the Unconscious. It should also be noted that the instinctual wish in the Unconscious is not simply the same as instinctual drive energy but has ideational content. In the previous chapter we pointed out that the instinctual wish can be regarded as consisting of the mental representation of a gratifying situation arising from a memory trace that has been reinvested with drive energy. The latter impels the wish forcefully towards expression. A childhood image of the person
On the whole, more importance is ascribed for the understanding of the psychology of dreams to internal psychological sources than to stimuli arising from the body or the external world. Only in exceptional circumstances are the latter considered to be instigators (or "prime movers") of a dream on their own, as in so-called dreams of convenience. Freud gives an example of such a dream. He wrote: "Having made it a practice as far back as I can remember to work late into the night, I always found it difficult to wake early. I used then to have a dream of being out of bed and standing by the washing-stand; after a while I was no longer able to disguise from myself the fact that I was really still in bed, but in the meantime I had had a little more sleep" (Freud, 1900a, p. 125). Here the external instigator is the perception, during the awakening phase of sleep, of physical weariness (as opposed to an infantile instinctual wish), which, it was thought, could, in these circumstances, lead to the production of a dream. Some (highly unpleasant) dreams or nightmares can occur as a consequence of a traumatic experience, which is relived over and over again in the dream. This has been regarded as an attempt to work through and master the anxiety associated with the memory of the traumatic experience and is frequently seen in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).It would certainly not be an instance of the dream as an instinctual wish-fulfilment. It should be said that the mechanisms involved in such dreams have not yet been clearly understood.
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himself is represented in the wish, as well as an image of the gratifying object of the past and of that interaction with the object which would provide the desired gratification. In addition, repressed memories of subsequent experiences may be drawn into the content of the instinctual wish. The instinctual wishes may have been pressing towards gratification for some time, or have been relatively dormant until aroused by the influence of recent experiences, particularly those that occurred during the day or two preceding the dream. Any increase in the pressure of an instinctual wish in the Unconscious is regarded, in the present framework, as the investment of particular mental contents by instinctual drive energies. The heightened investment of the contents of the wish increases its peremptory quality and impels it more strongly towards "discharge" (or "satisfaction") in relevant physical activity. However, motor activity is considerably restricted by the state of sleep, being limited to such phenomena as groaning, grinding of teeth, slight body movements ("restless sleep"), talking or mumbling, and occasionally sleepwalking. On the other hand, the activation of perceptual representations is not inhibited in sleep in the same way as motor discharge." Because the censorship between the Unconscious and Preconscious is relatively diminished in sleep, the wish passes more readily into
% The Interpretation of Dreams Freud considered the activation of the perceptual apparatus during sleep to be the result of a reversal of the direction of a nonnal waking process: "The only way in which we can describe what happens in hallucinatory dreams is by saying that the excitation moves in a backward direction. Instead of being transmitted towards the motor end of the apparatus it moves towards the sensory end and finally reaches the perceptual [perceptual-conscious] system. If we describe as 'progressive' the direction taken by psychical processes arising from the unconscious during waking life, then we may speak of dreams as having a 'regressive' character" (1900a, p. 542). It should be noted that this concept is more appropriate to the first version of the topographicalmodel, which was heavily influenced by the neurological notion of the "reflex arc". The use of the term "regression" in this context is quite different from Freud's other uses of the term. This is extremely confusing, all the more because "regression" is also used in reference to the re-emergence of infantile wishes and memories in dreams, and the reappearance of developmentally earlier modes of functioning and expression.
the Preconscious, where it undergoes a number of transformations.
This means that, in spite of the partial relaxation of the censoring function, the instinctual wish in its crude form will usually be rejected by the censorship. Nonetheless, the wish is able to obtain access to the Preconscious relatively easily, particularly when modified by such primary processes as condensation, displacement, and symbolization, as described previously. All the transformations of the instinctual wish in its passage from the Unconscious to its final representation in consciousness in the form of a dream are known as the dream-work. This includes the formation of representations of relatively organized wish-fulfilments, largely visual and auditory in form, which are propelled by their instinctual drive cathexis further towards the boundary between the Preconscious and the Conscious. The two most essential aspects of the dream-work are the formation of a modified dream wish and the representation of the fulfilment or gratification of this wish in such a way that it is capable of becoming conscious as a perception, i.e. as a hallucination of a disguised fulfilment of the dream wish. In order to achieve this end, the dream-work makes use of displacement and condensation (characteristic of primary process functioning in the Unconscious), processes that are further governed by considerations of visual and auditory representability. It is important that since the dream is a hallucinatory experience, the modification of dream thoughts, dream wishes, and wish-fulfilments into some pictorial form is thought to be one of the main functions of the dream-work: A thing that is pictorial is, from the point of view of a dream, a thing that is capable of being represented: it can be introduced into a situation in which abstract expressions offer the same kind of difficulties to representation in dreams as a political leading article in a newspaper would offer to an illustrator. [Freud, 1900a, pp. 339-3401'
'It is of historical interest that in the consideration of the dream-work during the first part of the second phase, most emphasis was given to the primary process elements contained in it, and the unconscious secondary process was relatively neglected. This reflected Freud's particular interest in the
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Dream-work is necessitated by the continuing activity of the censorship during sleep. As we have said, the censorship functions to protect consciousness from becoming aware of wishes that are, in one form or another, threatening. Because we need to assume an unconscious awareness of instinctual wishes and their derivatives as they approach consciousness, it is necessary to postulate the existence of an unconscious scanning and scrutinizing function at the service of the Preconscious and its censorship. The functioning of the censors during sleep is known as dream censorship. It is assumed that the dream censorship is less strict than the censorship that operates during waking life. This accounts for the common occurrence of quite flagrant expressions of instinctual drive wishes during sleep in the form of a dream. Nonetheless, even though the apparent nature of a dream about, for instance, a homosexual act may seem to represent an undisguised instinctual wish, analysis of the dream will reveal the censoring function in certain crucial modifications of the original wish. As we pointed out in Chapter 4 in our general discussion of the organization of the mental apparatus within this frame of reference, the censorship is considered to function at two levels: between the Unconscious and Preconscious on the one hand, and between the Preconscious and Conscious on the other. In dreams the activity of the first censorship modifies the original instinctual
mode of working of the Unconscious, and in the clinical work that he actually did with his patients when analysing their dreams, i.e. looking behind the secondary process phenomena for the manifestationsof the primary process. It should also be remembered that the notion of the "second censorship", although referred to in The Interpretation of Dreams, was only fully introduced in 1915. In 1900 Freud remarked: "The dream-work is not simply more careless, more irrational, more forgetful and more incomplete than waking thought; it is completely different from it qualitatively and for that reason not immediately comparable with it. It does not think, calculate or judge in any way at all; it restricts itself to giving things a new form"(1900a, p. 507). However, in our view, the concept of the dream-work has to include secondary process functioning, outside consciousness, in the system Preconscious. In this frame of reference, therefore, we include within the concept of the dream-work the preconscious processes by which the dream is transformed and "prepared" for consciousness.
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drive wish and incorporates it into what is known as the latent dream content. As we have stressed, this first effort at forming a modified representation of the original dream wish is unlikely to be permitted to pass freely through the second censorship and attain conscious representation as a dream. Further preconscious modifications of the latent dream and the production of more derivatives become necessary, and the resultant contents present themselves to the second censorship, the demands of which result in secondary revision in the course of producing the manifest dream. The term "latent dream content" is an important one for the understanding of the formation of dreams within the topographical frame of reference. In a broad sense, the latent dream content comprises unconscious contents involved in the process of dream formation up to the production of the manifest (i.e. consciously recalled) dream. The latent dream content encompasses the derivatives of the instinctual wish in the Preconscious, the day's residues and the dream thoughts that are within that system. The latent dream content thus includes preliminary or trial efforts, representing attempts to provide hallucinatory fulfilment of unconscious urges that have not been able to pass the second censorship to become a manifest dream. The latent dream thoughts, mentioned above, are best regarded as contents in the Preconscious that are drawn into the formation of the dream during the course of the dream-work. Such thoughts may be rational and logical and are organized according to secondary process functioning. They may relate to unsolved problems (including reality-based preoccupations), but may also include other thoughts and conclusions reached prior to the onset of sleep. They are absorbed into the process of dream formation because of their associative link with other dream elements, more directly connected with the latent dream wish. If the latent dream thoughts are in the form of verbal representations, they may be given a pictorial character during the dream-work. As Freud put it, the process of dream formation leads "from thoughts to perceptual images . . . from the region of thought-structures to that of sensory perceptions. On this path . . . the dream thoughts are given a pictorial character" (1905c, p. 162). The latent dream, which has to pass inspection by the second censorship, is a mental content with many similarities to the pre-
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conscious transference derivatives that we described in Chapter 8. It differs from transference derivatives in that the censorships are more lax during sleep in comparison with their activity in waking life, and because of the inaccessibility of the motor functions to the mental apparatus during sleep. Dreams reported during the course of analysis are, of course, likely to contain elements of transference wishes and attitudes. It must be emphasized that the formation of a dream is not considered to be the result of a smooth flow of mental contents through the mental apparatus from the depths to the surface. As modifications and transformations of the instinctual drive wishes occur, these derivatives may be subject to considerable censoring and once more become contents of relatively deep layers of the apparatus, until they have been further modified and sufficiently disguised to approach the second censorship. The process of dream formation is therefore considered to be one in which there is a prolonged dynamic movement to and fro across the layers of the Unconscious and Preconscious. Freud's notion of these processes was originally derived from hydrodynamic analogies, in which the idea of a fluid energy under pressure seeking outlets and meeting obstructions emphasized this notion of a to-and-fro process. An important factor that facilitates the representation of instinctual drive derivatives through evasion of the censorship is that of symbolization. Symbolization constitutes a disguise of the instinctual wish, and is relatively strongly influenced by primary processes. The simplest form of symbolic representation usually involves the representation of a part of the body or a body function by means of an image that is closely related to it in form, but sufficiently modified to evade the censorship. For example, the well-known "phallic symbol" may succeed in reaching the Conscious because its representation of the unacceptable image of an erect penis is not immediately apparent to the dreamer. We may also find symbols that owe their selection for representing unacceptable unconscious content to a whole set of complicated connections. These can be traced during the course of the analysis of the dream but are often difficult to reconstruct. Although there are some recurrent symbolizations of a general kind, common to the dreams of most people in our culture, it must be stressed that a
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symbol appearing in a dream will always have an intensely personal and idiosyncratic meaning. A dream can only be understood to a significant degree if that personal aspect of the symbol is fully and successfully investigated by means of free association. Symbols are particularly useful in the course of dream formation on account of their ambiguity and their multiplicity of possible meanings. Visual symbolizations are especially suitable because of their pictorial character, which facilitates perceptual representation. Considerations ofrepresentability are generally important in determining the transformationof the latent into the manifest dream. The final version of the dream must be capable not only of passing the second censorship, but also of being representable as a hallucination in the form of verbal, visual, or auditory images. Therefore, one important aspect of the final stages of dream formation consists in the unconscious (preconscious) choice of appropriate imagery for the representation of underlying latent dream content. During sleep, at times when dreaming is not taking place, the Conscious is said to be "emptied" of attention cathexis. Conscious awareness is more or less absent. However, during periods of dreaming, the perceptual vividness of certain dream elements is sufficiently intense to succeed in arousing and attracting attention cathexis in the Conscious. By this means the dream attains the quality of a "reality" in the form of a hallucination. The hallucinatory quality of the dream is reflected in the familiar phenomenon of momentary uncertainty, at the time of waking, as to whether the events in the dream have actually happened or not. During and after the process of dreaming, further modifications of dream contents occur; these are referred to as secondary revision or secondary elaboration. This process is a sort of further "editing" of the dream under the influence of the second censorship and in the interests of rationality and intelligibility. It happens when the dream approaches a waking state, as well as when the dreamer recounts the dream, and will continue to operate when the dream is recounted again. Secondary revision makes use of secondary process functioning and provides the manifest content of the dream with a faqade of logic, causality, coherence, and temporal sequentiality. Much of secondary revision occurs unconsciously and can be considered to be an aspect of the dream-work.
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However, it not only provides intelligibility, but also amounts to a further distortion of the unconscious meaning and sigruficanceof a dream. Freud wrote that the purpose of secondary revision is "to get rid of the disconnectedness and unintelligibility produced by the dream-work and replace it by a new 'meaning'. But this new meaning, arrived at by secondary revision, is no longer the meaning of the dream-thoughts" (1912-1913, p. 95). The end product of dream formation-the dream as it is consciously remembered after waking up-is known as the manifest content of the dream, whether this is in the form of a coherent whole ("dream faqade") or as something relatively disconnected, confused, and apparently meaningless. In the clinical interpretation of dreams the manifest content serves as a starting point for the understanding and interpretation of the thoughts, phantasies, and wishes that lie hidden behind it. The analysis of the manifest content may lead to the reconstruction or recall of those latent dream thoughts that are thought to contain a clue to the underlying meaning of the dream-that is to say, to the infantile wish represented as fulfilled in a disguised way in the dream. What is consciously remembered as a dream is a substitute for this wish, one that is acceptable to the ~ensorship.~ In clinical practice the emotional content of dreams is of great importance. Within the topographical frame of reference it is assumed that affects that are experienced in dreams represent feelings present in the dreamer at the time of the construction of the dream. Furthermore, they are regarded as being the dreamer's own affects, irrespective of whether or not they are attributed to
"I'here are some exceptions to this. For example, in some children's dreams and in "dreams of convenience" in adults, manifest and latent dream contents may coincide. There may be fairly straightforward instances of relatively undisguised wish-fulfilment of hunger and thirst in dreams. Children's dreams may be very explicit fulfilments of wishes that are immediately apparent to adults even though the child may not be as conscious as the adult of the wishful nature of the dream. In the few special cases where the manifest and latent dream-contents seem to be largely identical, it can be assumed that the underlying wish is non-conflictual.
someone else in the manifest content. It should be emphasized that feeling states have to be regarded as contents of the Preconscious and that we do not conceive of affects in the Unconscious (although they were considered by Freud to be drive derivatives). Affects are considered to be changed least by the dream-work. The manifest content of dreams often reveals the operation of defence mechanisms such as negation. For example, if a patient comments, in relation to a dream, "it is strange, but I felt no anxiety whatsoever", it is likely that anxiety represents an important ingredient of the latent dream content. In summary, the dream represents a conscious experience during sleep, one in which an instinctual wish-fulfilment is represented, so that "discharge" by way of hallucinatory gratification is achieved. The wish-fulfilment is experienced in disguised form, and so the dreamer is normally unaware of the meaning of his dream. It is only this lack of conscious awareness of the sigruficance of the wish involved that permits the dream to occur at all-it has passed the censorships, and no uncomfortable secrets have been revealed to the dreamer's consciousness. The dream can be considered to be an end-product of a process of transfonnation-the dream-work-applied to the infantile instinctual wish. In the passage of the dream from its origins in the Unconscious through the Preconscious to the relatively superficial Conscious, a number of processes occur: 1. The ideational content of the original instinctual wish undergoes primary process transformation, as described in Chapter 8. 2. A derivative of the instinctual wish is elaborated in the Preconscious. This derivative amalgamates current and past preoccupations, thoughts, and memories. Present conscious or preconscious concerns and day's residues play an especially important role. At the same time, an attempt is made, in the Preconscious, to construct a fulfilment of the instinctual wish derivative, but this tentative wish-fulfilment may not yet be acceptable to the "second censorship" between the Preconscious and Conscious. Several "trials" may have to be made before a suitably disguised wish-fulfilment is constructed. In the elaboration of the wish-fulfilment, "considerations of
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representability" apply-i.e. the ideational content involved needs to find a suitable perceptual representati~n.~ 3. The process of secondary revision or secondary elaboration occurs at the point of transition of the developing dream from the Preconscious to the Conscious and is continued after the dream has been consciously experienced. Two examples are given below to illustrate the formation of dreams, using the topographical frame of reference. In Example A, the process of dream formation is described, commencing with the "instigating" drive impulses arising within the Unconscious, tracing the modifications brought about by the dream-work, and ending with the remembered dream. Example B starts with a description of a manifest dream, of the sort recounted in clinical practice, which is then traced back to its latent sources and contents. It should be stressed that alternative formulations are possible, and that the examples are given only for the purpose of illustrating the application of the topographical frame of reference to the understanding of dream formation. It should also be noted that it is highly likely that the same wishes in the Unconscious that find expression in the dream at night may have been active during the preceding day, leading to the formation of preconscious (or even conscious) ideas, thoughts, or phantasies (including transference thoughts). However, these may not have been able to provide a sufficient degree of drive discharge during the day. The daytime derivatives may then be drawn into the dream. The hallucinatory experience of the dream provides a much greater degree of concealed wish-fulfilment-and therefore of instinctual drive dis-
Thus,for example, relatively abstract preconscious thoughts, which have become connected with an infantile instinctual wish, may find perceptual representationin their literal or concrete rather than in their abstract forms. An instance of this is the thought "he is a pain in the neck' finding experiential representation in a dream experience of "my neck hurts". This also illustrates the similarity between the process of dream formation and the unconscious construction of certain neurotic symptoms, such as a hysterical pain in the neck.
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13 1
chargethan is possible in preconscious or conscious phantasies. Finally, attention is drawn again to the central role attributed to the instinctual wish in the Unconscious in this frame of reference. This emphasis dominated the whole of the second phase of psychoanalYsis.'O
Example A 1. At a certain point in the analysis of a young man,repressed incestuous wishes towards his mother were mobilized in the Unconscious. In theoretical terms, these wishes can be considered to have received an increased cathexis of instinctual drive energy. This heightened investment gave the wish momentum towards surface expression and gratification (discharge).In this case the sexual wish towards the mother was revived by increasing unconscious tender and sexual feelings towards the analyst.
2. The passage of the unmodified incestuous wish through the mental apparatus was impeded by the first censorship, between the Unconscious and Preconscious. As a consequence, a first derivative of the original instinctual wish was formed in a primary process fashion, involving the displacement of instinctual cathexis onto memories that were associatively linked with the repressed sexual impulse. In this example, the revived wish for sexual intercourse with the mother was transformed by displacement onto memories of a past activity in which the patient and a friend of his had "wrestled" with the patient's
lo Despite the fact that present-day clinical psychoanalytic work makes use of many of the concepts of later phases, the topographical frame of reference remains useful for many purposes. This is true in regard to the clinical utilization of dreams despite the fact that many psychoanalysts are now more concerned than in the past with the use of dreams as a way of understanding what is currently happening in the patient. In particular, emphasis is put on the way in which unconscious transference thoughts show themselves in dreams. It can be said that today the dream is used for its value as a "royal road" to the Preconscious at least as much as to the Unconscious.
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older adolescent sister for the possession of a "pin-up" magazine.
3. The wish now took the form of a desire to re-experience the exciting wrestling with the sister, and it was permitted entry into the Preconscious. It would be unlikely that a wish for such scarcely disguised physical activity, so close to the incestuous instinctual wish, would have been allowed to pass readily through the first censorship during waking life. However, during sleep the censoring activity is considered to be relatively diminished. In this patient the wish towards the sister imrnediately became amalgamated with preconscious transference thoughts and feelings about the analyst.
4. Further passage of this particular derivative through the mental apparatus was opposed by the second censorship between the Preconscious and Conscious. This led to a great deal of mental activity within the Preconscious, in which a wide variety of mental contents (e.g. day's residues, distant memories, recent thoughts, and daydreams) were drawn upon by the dream-work in the attempt to form a derivative that would pass the second censorship, while some elements that represented the original instinctual wish, as well as transference elements, were included. In the formation of this patient's dream, the dream-work made use of the associative link with a memory of a discussion that the patient had recently had with his sister. This had been about a suggestion she had made that she and he take a holiday together, and it included some talk of the difficulty in obtaining two single rooms, and the possibility that they might have to share a bedroom. The memory of this now became incorporated into the latent dream wish, together with a thought that the patient had previously reported to his analyst about going on holiday with her. 5. In order to safeguard sleep and yet achieve a disguised satisfaction of the instinctual wish, further dream-work occurred. Its task was to modify the latent dream content in the Preconscious, to disguise it sufficiently, and to give it pictorial quality so that it could pass the second censorship and be acceptable to the Conscious. As a consequence, the representa-
tions of the sister and the analyst were condensed and replaced by that of a woman known to the patient, whom he did not find attractive. With this change in object the feeling of sexual desire and attraction (first to the mother, then to the sister, and currently to the analyst) was replaced by its opposite, a feeling of revulsion. 6. The modified dream wish and dream thoughts were now essentially concerned with the patient's mixed feelings about spending a holiday with an unattractive woman by whom he felt repelled. In this form, the latent dream content was sufficiently disguised to be allowed to proceed past the second censorship, to gain the attention of the Conscious, and to find hallucinatory expression there as a dream. The nature of the transformation of latent into manifest content is such that the manifest dream always contains at least a partial, albeit hidden, representation of satisfaction of the underlying instinctual wish."
7. The outcome of the dream-work was, in this example, a series of images of sufficient sensory vividness to be able to attract attention cathexis from the Conscious and, in the absence of opposing preconscious censoring processes, to be experienced as a dream. These images included the perception of an unattractive woman and of looking at brochures in a travel agency. This was accompanied by a sense of repugnance coloured by slight feelings of tension. 8. During the process of this content becoming conscious, and continuing after it, the next stage in the formation of the dream occurs (i.e. the work of secondary revision or secondary elaboration),beginning in the most superficial strata of the Prel1 We would remind the reader that we are giving a simplified account of the modifications brought about through the agency of the dream-work. The work represents a mental activity that we could call the "dream struggle", in which both primary and secondary processes are involved. The modification of the latent dream wish is brought about by rapid back-and-forth movements across the first censorship into the Preconscious, not only in order to achieve a greater degree of disguise but also to draw upon images that lend themselves to pictorial representation.
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conscious. Through this process the separate hallucinatory images and feeling states were joined together into a coherent sequence in keeping with the requirements of reality and of secondary process functioning. The dream reported by the young man in his psychoanalytic session was as follows: "I was at a travel agency, looking at brightly coloured brochures. I knew I was talking to the woman who was with me, and I was excited about the prospect of going on holiday with her. When I turned to her I was filled with a feeling of surprise and repugnance, for she suddenly struck me as so unattractive. She was fat and ugly and her face was full of pimples." 9. In the special conditions of the partial disinhibition that develops in the psychoanalytic treatment situation, some of the preconscious material involved in the formation of the dream could be recovered in consciousness through the process of free association. In this way certain day's residues were recalled. After his previous session the patient had noticed a travel agency and had experienced a momentary wish to go on holiday (this was later seen to be c o ~ e c t e dwith wishes to escape from the analysis of his sexual wishes towards his analyst). Someone at the patient's office.hadbeen talking about holiday plans. This led the patient to ;ecall that, a few days previously, he had a discussion with his sister about their spending a holiday together. In reporting this discussion, he also added that they had joked about the possibility of their having to share a room at one stop-over point on the journey. As he paused and mused over this discussion with his sister, he reported a memory from adolescence of the tussle and teasing between his sister and himself in the presence of his friend. He had previously spoken of an occasion when he had seen his sister's growing breasts and had thought that her nipples looked like pimples. The patient went on to comment that the woman in the dream could not be his sister, for she looked so different and was so unattractive (an example of the defence mechanism of negation). In the dream, the pin-up magazine over which he had wrestled with his sister had been transformed into the more neutral holiday brochure. When it was pointed out that there might be some thoughts about the analyst involved in the
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patient's dream, the patient was able to confirm that he had wondered about where the analyst was going on holiday, and had indeed had the fleeting thought that they might choose the same place and meet accidentally. Later material confirmed the existence of the patient's conflictual wish to have a close sexual relationship with the analyst,'Z and this was further understood by both analyst and patient as a transference onto the analyst of feelings originally experienced towards the sister and the mother.
Example B A young married man was in analysis because of worries about his potency and occasional panic attacks when travelling on crowded underground trains. After a few months of treatment, on the day after the analyst had presented him with the monthly bill, he began the session by reporting a dream in which he saw two men fighting. He said that he remembered nothing else about the dream except a sense of pity for the man who seemed to be losing. He pondered on the dream, saying that perhaps it had something to do with a boxing match that he had seen on television the previous evening. He had felt sorry for the man who had lost the bout. He then talked of the only time in his life when he had actually gone to watch a boxing match. This was in his childhood,when he had been taken there by his father. He recalled enjoying the occasion very much, but wondered how he could have been so callous as a child as to watch something brutal. At this point the analyst realized that this usually punctilious patient had, for the first time, failed to bring the cheque for his fees the day after the bill had been presented. The patient, meanwhile, had moved on to talk about aggression in a rather intellectual way, which appeared to the analyst as an attempt to get away from the dream and its sigl2 It is of some interest that, when the analyst first interpreted the patient's transference wish, the patient's response was, "but I am not attracted to you at all-you are not my type". The analyst was then able to show the patient the defensive aspect of his reaction and the underlying unconscious transference wish.
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nificance. However, the patient then spoke of an angry dispute between two colleagues which, once more, reminded him of the dream. At this point the analyst interpolated the comment that the patient had looked rather annoyed when presented with the bill the day before, and that this, together with the fact that he had not brought the cheque as he usually did, might indicate that the sort of anger that his quarrelling colleagues showed paralleled feelings of his own towards the analyst for giving him the bill. The patient acknowledged that he had thought the day before that the analyst was undoubtedly richer than he, and he recalled that he had felt "unreasonably" irritable at the time. He now realized that he had indeed felt angry with the analyst, and still did. From his knowledge of the patient, and from the material brought in that session, the analyst was able to arrive at a partial understanding of the dream, which appeared to have been occasioned by the patient's need to ward off the feelings of anger and resentment about the bill he had been given. This appeared, in turn, to be related to much earlier feelings of anger towards his father, feelings that accompanied phantasies of fighting and beating the father, fostered and stimulated by his attendance at the boxing-match as a child. At the same time the patient had strong affectionate feelings towards his father (as he now did towards the analyst),and this had caused him conflict. The existenceof these conflicting feelings, together with the fear of father's retaliatory capacity, had led to the repression of the wish to attack and triumph over father. The wish was stimulated by the resentment of the wealthier analyst, but the dreamwork must have involved the replacement of the aggressive wish by the pleasurable memory of watching the boxing match with father, a memory in which the patient's aggressive wish towards his father was displaced. The feelings of triumph that would accompany the fulfilment of the wish to overcome father were replaced by pity for the loser. It is, of course, highly likely that the patient's actual dream experience contained far more content than was reported in the session, for the ongoing secondary revision frequently causes a forgetting of all or parts of a dream.
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Using the topographical frame of reference, the dream can be understood schematically, as follows: 1. In the Unconscious the infantile wishes to attack and beat the father, to remove him from his position as possessor of the mother, remained repressed, but were still cathected and sought some form of representation, discharge, and gratification. Alongside these hostile and even murderous wishes were longings for closeness with the father. We can conjecture that, earlier in the life of the patient (e.g. at the time of the visit to the boxing-match with father), phantasies representing the fulfilment of both types of wish had been permitted representation in some form within the Preconscious or in the Conscious. These phantasies would subsequently have been firmly repressed as they came into conflict with the developing social and moral values of the child. We can assume within this frame of reference that the patient's anger with the analyst over the bill heightened the level of instinctual drive cathexis of the aggressive wishes. 2. During the dream phase of sleep the lowered censorship between the Unconscious and Preconscious allowed the repressed wishes to impinge on preconscious contents with which they could be associatively linked and interwoven. In our example these included day's residues as well as childhood memories. Significant among the day's residues were the boxing-match seen on television the previous evening, the analyst's presentation of the bill, and the accompanying but unexpressed emotional reaction to it. The significant childhood thoughts were of the acceptablepleasure and excitement associated with the visit to the prize-fight. 3. The amalgam of contents from the Unconscious and Precon-
scious, cathected by instinctual drive energy, had an impetus to move through the mental apparatus towards consciousness. In general, the contents of the wish derivatives have the potential for perceptual representation. There are three possible vicissitudes that such latent dream contents can undergo during sleep. First, they may be sufficiently vivid and adequately disguised that they can pass the second censorship and arouse the
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attention of the Conscious, so that a dream is experienced. (It would be unusual in an adult for a first wish derivative to find direct expression in a dream.) Second, the contents may not yet be sufficiently disguised and thus will be rejected by the second censorship. Third, the disguise may be sufficient but the contents do not have enough sensory vividness to be able to be experienced as a dream hallucination in the Conscious. In the case of the second and third alternatives, the dream-work continues to operate on the latent dream content in order to achieve a sufficiently disguised wish-fulfilment and to increase the degree of its representability. This involves a continuous movement of amalgamated and transformed contents back and forth across the boundary between the Unconscious and Preconscious, the censorship being diminished during sleep. Thus both primary and secondary process functioning are involved. Ultimately this leads to images-representative of the original instinctual wish-that can gain access to conscious registration while carrying sufficient of the original drive cathexis to provide gratification through the dream. In the present example, the dream, prior to its secondary elaboration, seemed to have consisted of the sight of two men (other than the dreamer) fighting, with one man losing, i.e. being knocked down. The dream images seem to have been accompanied by a number of feelings, of which the patient could only report pity for the loser. 4. The hallucinated dream images are affected by secondary revision, involving secondary process thinking, both during the experiencing of the dream and afterwards, as well as before and during the process of recall. The defensive processes that enter into secondary revision show themselves as resistances in the treatment session-in this case, the patient's resistance to full awareness of his own anger and hostility. Some of the feelings and ideas entering into the dream could be recovered in the analytic session with the aid of appropriate interpretations, even though a rather fragmentary manifest dream had been reported.
PART
Iv
Further aspects
CHAPTER TEN
Narcissism and object-love
he second phase of psychoanalysis lasted from 1897 to the publication of The Ego and the Id (Freud, 1923b).In this phase the topographical model of the mental apparatus, first put forward by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), underwent considerable modification, forced on Freud by his clinical experience. Consequently a radical change in his theoretical model became inevitable. The factors prompting the change from the topographical to the structural model in 1923 are discussed in the next chapter. Certain significant psychoanalytic concepts were introduced during the course of the second phase, and these were not adequately encompassed by the different forms of the topographical model as presented by Freud, nor have they been appropriately taken into account in the composite topographical frame of reference as we have presented it. Perhaps the most important of these are the concepts of narcissism and of object-love.This chapter gives a schematic account of these two concepts as they were seen in the second phase of psychoanalysis. It is important to note that after the second phase the concept of narcissism was more fully incorporated into Freud's model of mental functioning, although it also I
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became much more complex. From the late 1960s there has been an increase of interest in the topic of narcissism, from the point of view of both psychopathology and treatment (e.g. see Grunberger, 1989; Kernberg, 1975; Kohut, 1971; Rosenfeld, 1987)' Some of the issues given prominence in the psychoanalytic literature, following Freud's paper, are the so-called object relationship theories and the modern conceptualization of borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. In addition, Freud's paper "On Narcissism" (1914~) opened up the way for further considerations of the important topic of identification. However, we believe that it is of value to distinguish clearly the relevant formulations of the second phase from those that came later. During this phase Freud developed the theory of the instinctual drives, first seen as the pressure of a sexual (libidinal) energy which sought "discharge" in some form of physical or mental activity. The concepts of drive-energic source, aim, object, and pressure were discussed in Part 111, as was the concept of energic investment or cathexis. To love someone was conceived of theoretically as to cathect the "object" with libidinal energy. In this context the term "object" included the perceptual "representation" ("presentation") that arose from experience with the real external object (perception was regarded as normally being, after a certain age, a much more veridical reflection of "external reality" than it would be regarded today). Even though Freud spoke of the "cathexis of the object" (e.g. the mother), he always took the view that the investment of energy was in the percept, image, memories of the object. In what follows, it is assumed that the idea of cathexis of an object implies the cathexis of some form of mental representation of the object. The idea of the energic cathexis of the object with libido had existed from the beginning of the second phase. However, the idea of the subject being similarly cathected with his own libido was not put forward explicitly as "narcissism" until Freud's famous paper "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (1914~)~ although it was adumbrated as early as 1910in a footnote added to a later edition of Three Freud's theory of narcissism, as well as the contributions of later writers, are comprehensively discussed in a monograph published by the International PsychoanalyticalAssociation (Sandier, Person, dr Fonagy, 1991).
Essays on the Theory of Sewlily (1905d, p. 145).While the "Narcissism" paper is rich and rewarding to read, we make use of only certain aspects of it for our purposes, as well as drawing on other writings of Freud and, again, we attempt to simplify matters as much as possible. Early in the second phase the instinctual drives were regarded as entirely sexual in nature, being composed of drive components that were developmentally linked with different erotogenic areas of the body (so-called part instincts, partial drives, component instincts, etc.). Aggression was seen as an ego-drive ("ego instinct") functioning in the service of self-preservation. It is of particular interest that the term "ego" was not used in the sense in which it was to be employed in the structural model of the third phase, but had a variety of meanings, including consciousness, as well as being a reference to the subject himself. In this chapter we use the term "self' rather than "ego" in those contexts where Freud used the tern "ego" to contrast the subject, on the one hand, with the object, on the other. At this point we can put forward the following simple formulation. Libidinal cathexis of the object is object-love, and libidinal cathexis of the self is narcissism. Here the self is regarded as paralleling the object in the individual's mind. According to the formulations of the second phase, love of another is object-love, while love of oneself is narcissism. Freud often appeared to make the assumption that the individual had a fixed quantity of libido at his disposal. The more libido invested in the object, the less in the self, and vice versa. Libidinal cathexis could be transferred from self to object and from object to self: "The more of the one is employed, the more the other becomes depleted" (Freud, 1914c, p. 76). This is seen in its most extreme form in the state of being in love, in which it was postulated that there is an almost complete investment of libido in the object, with a corresponding depletion of libidinal cathexis of the self.2In contrast, certain pathological states (e.g. melancholia and Being loved by the object was thought to restore the individual's narcissism. However, the contradictionbetween this formulation and the idea of the distribution of a fixed quantify of libido between self and object was never satisfactorily resolved Uoffe & Sandler, 1967).
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paranoia) were regarded as involving a far-reaching withdrawal of libido from (a decathexis of) objects and a heightened investment (a hypercathexis) of the self. In addition, in sleep or illness an increased libidinal cathexis of the self and a withdrawal of libido from objects is postulated. The distinction between object-cathexis and self-cathexis (or "narcissistic" cathexis) did not imply that the libido involved in either was qualitatively different, but rather that its location differed? Freud distinguished between prima ry and secondary narcissism, and an understanding of this distinction is important. In our view the delineation of the differences between primary and secondary narcissism, and between narcissism and object-love, can best be understood from a developmental point of view.
The earliest state: primary narcissism For the purpose of this theoretical outline we can assume that narcissism exists from the moment that the infant has a rudimentary awareness of himself, even though he or she may not have differentiated the primitive perception of the object from himself. It is legitimate to assume that the confusion of perceptual aspects of the self and the object represents a primitive undifferentiated experiential self, and that the libidinal investment of the pleasurable aspects of this primitive self-experience can be regarded as the beginnings of primary narcissism4. However, even in 1914, Freud was moving towards the idea that the transformation of object-libido into narcissistic libido was normally accompanied by a change in the aim of the drive, a change in the direction of desexualization. The state of primary narcissism was regarded as existing well before object-love comes into being. The gaining of sensual pleasure through instinctual activity was first viewed as occurring via autoerotic activities (by which Freud did not mean self-stirnulationbut, rather, all direct sensual gratification via the erotogenic zones-in the beginning, predominantly the mouth and lips). He remarked that "Originally, at the very beginning of mental life, the ego [self]is cathected with instincts and is to some extent capable of satisfying them on itself. We call this condition 'narcissism' and this way of obtaining satisfaction'auto-erotic'. At this time the external world is not cathected with
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FIGURE 10.1. The "primary undifferentiated pleasure-self" or undifferentiated selflobject. The dotted lines indicate the beginnings of a self boundary in the mind of the infant. The shading represents libidinal cathexis. This is the state of "primary narcissism".
With the child's development, boundaries between "self" and "non-selfffbegin to be constructed (so-called ego boundaries), but even when this process is well advanced, the infant, according to Freud, attempts to maintain all that is pleasurable as part of the self (or, more precisely, the representation of the self) and to allocate all that is unpleasurable or painful to the "non-self" or "not-me". During the phase of primary narcissism the object is delineated as part of the "non-self" and distinguished from the self. But at first the object is not cathected with libido, all libidinal energy being invested in the self (Freud referred to this as the "purified pleasureego", but "pleasure-self" would be more appropriate). Figure 10.1 represents the state of affairs when the boundary between self and "not-self" has not yet been f i d y constructed and interest (in a general sense) and is indifferent for purposes of satisfaction. During this period, therefore, the ego-subject [self] coincides with what is pleasurable and the external world with what is indifferent (or possibly unpleasurable)" (1915c,pp. 134-135). However, it is clear that Freud was often confused about the relation between narcissism and autoerotism, having also postulated a "phase" of autoerotism preceding that of primary narcissism (1914~). This latter statement occupied psychoanalytic scholars for many years, but the problem is not important for our present purposes. Indeed, we can now assume, in the light of the findings of psychoanalytic developmental research, that the concept of primary narcissism and the problem of distinguishing narcissism from autoerotism is more or less redundant.
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FIGURE10.2. The boundary between the mental representations of "self" and "not-self" has been established. The "not-self" includes the object, but only the "self" is cathected with libido (shaded area). The object is only of interest in its function as a vehicle for need-satisfaction.
what can be called the state of "primary identification" obtains. Figure 10.2 indicates the continuation of the state of primary narcissism after the boundary between self and object has been constructed. In this state the self can be viewed as the first "loveobject", but the object as such is regarded as having little or no investment with libido.
Object-love and residual narcissism Object-love is conceived of as the investment of the object with libido. The libidinal cathexis of the object is regarded as coming about as a consequence of a displacement of some of the libidinal investment of the self, now extended to include the object (see Figure 10.3).Freud likened this process to an extension of a pseudopodium by an amoeba: "We form the idea of there being an original libidinal cathexis of the ego [self],from which some is later given off to objects, but which fundamentally persists and is related to the object-cathexes much as the body of an amoeba is related to the p. 75). pseudopodia which it puts out" (1914~~ With the development of object-love, a state of residual narcissistic cathexis of the self persists and coexists with object-love. This is
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FIGURE 10.3. The extension of libidinal investment from self to object. The arrow indicates the movement of libido from self to object. A state of libidinal cathexis of the object now coexists with the residual narcissistic cathexis of the self.
seen as the normal state of affairs, in which a "hydraulic balance" between residual narcissism and object-love occurs. In certain states (such as falling in love), the object is hypercathected with libido and the self depleted. In other conditions (e.g. paranoia) the greater part of the libido is regarded as having been withdrawn from the objects and reinvested in the self.5 Object-love is seen as gradually following on the discovery by the child that the object is found to be a source of pleasure and that the infant is dependent on the object for the satisfaction of its needs.The "cupboard-love" that creates the path to object-love is referred to as theanaclitic or "attachment" type of relationship. Freud summed up his view of the processes involved as follows:
It is recognized by many nowadays that the situation described here, involving a relatively simple notion of the distribution of libido between self and object, is inadequate and clinically misleading. For example, the schizophrenic may give the impression to the observer of having withdrawn libido from the objects in the external world, but they may in fact be intensely cathected in fantasy life. Similarly, the theory as presented here does not answer the question of why it is that when one is in love, and feels loved in rehun, the self does not at all appear to be depleted of libidinal cathexis.
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A child's first erotic object is the mother's breast that nourishes it; love has its origin in attachment to the satisfied need for nourishment. There is no doubt that, to begin with, the child does not distinguish between the breast and its own body; when the breast has to be separated from the body and shifted to the "outside" because the child so often finds it absent, it carries with it as an "object" a part of the original narcissistic libidinal cathexis. This first object is later completed into the person of the child's mother, who not only nourishes it, but also looks after it and thus arouses in it a number of other physical sensations, pleasurable and unpleasurable. By her care of the child's body she becomes its first seducer. In these two relations lies the root of a mother's importance, unique, without parallel, established unalterably for a whole lifetime as the first and strongest love-object and as the prototype of all later love-relations-for both sexes. [1940a (1938), p. 1881
Secondary narcissism Secondary narcissism refers to that quantity of libidinal cathexis of the self which results from the withdrawal of a certain amount of libido from the object. It is secondary only in that it is a reinvestment of libido in the self, as opposed to primary narcissism and the narcissism that remains even after object-love has been established. Secondary narcissism augments the existing residual libidinal cathexis of the self, just as further deposits into a bank account increase the total balance in the account. It should be noted that libido invested in an object is never completely withdrawn; some libidinal object-cathexis always remains.l Freud saw secondary narcissism as occurring in the following circumstances: 1. In certain pathological conditions, in which there is a withdrawal of love from the objects (Figure 10.4). W s applies after so-called "libidinalobject-constancy"has been reached (Burgner & Edgcumbe, 1972). In the very young infant the image of the object may be cathected only when the appropriate instinctual drive (associated with a bodily need) is aroused.
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FIGURE 10.4. Secondary narcissism deriving from withdrawal of libido from the object, augmenting the residual narcissistic cathexis of the self. The arrow shows the hypothetical direction of flow of libido.
2. In certain normal states such as sleep, physical illness, etc. (Figure 10.4). 3. In states of disappointment with the object, as a consequence of mourning for a "lost" object, etc. (Figure 10.4). 4. As a normal developmental process, occurring via identification with an object (Figure 10.5).This identification occurs as a consequence of the modification of the self so that it resembles the object in some important characteristic. Some of the libidinal cathexis of the admired or loved characteristic of the object is then transferred to the self as a consequence of this identification. 6. When the person lives up to his ideals (as embodied in his ideal seIf--see the next section).
A note on the ego ideal
The concept of the ego ideal (a precursor of the superego concept of the structural model of the later third phase) was put forward by Freud in his "On Narcissism" paper (1914~).It should perhaps more properly be called the "self ideal" or "ideal self", in that it
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via secondary identification ___+
10.5. An illustration of the means by which the individual's narcissism (self-cathexis)is increased by the mechanism of secondary identification. An admired, valued, or esteemed aspect of the representation of the object is intensely cathected with libido, but this libido can be transferred to the self-representation by copying the "valued" attribute of the object via identification. As a consequence, a part of the self is then regarded as being identical with the "valued" aspect of the object, and the libidinal cathexis of the self is increased, while the cathexis of the object is lessened. This is a common method of obtaining secondary narcissism. It should be noted that there is no "loss" of the image of the object (or an aspect of it) in this case but, rather, a withdrawal of libido from object to self because the self has been altered by identification so that it is now admired and valued as the object was. FIGURE
can be regarded as a mental representation of an "ideal" state of the self, as taken over from the parents. The development of the individual's ideal was seen to be connected with the disruption of the early primary narcissistic state. Freud remarked that: "The development of the ego [self]consists in a departure from primary narcissism and gives rise to a vigorous attempt to recover that state. This departure is brought about by means of the displacement of libido on to an ego ideal [ideal self] imposed from without; and satisfaction is brought about from fulfilling this ideal" (1914~~ p. 100). He also commented: "The subject's narcissism makes its appearance displaced on to this new ideal ego, which, like the infantile ego, finds itself possessed of every perfection there is of
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151
.
value. . .What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal" (1914c, p. 94). In the narcissism paper Freud distinguished between the ideal and the conscience, the "self-criticizing faculty", although the two concepts were later to be amalgamated into the superego (Freud, 1923b)?The model created by the child for its ideal is based, in the first instance, on the parents and their standards and expectations and can be regarded as a way of transmitting societal and cultural values. It is clear that although Freud first contrasted narcissism with object-love, he also conceived of libido as being capable of being invested in an "ego ideal" ("ideal self") as opposed to the child's own current self-representation.Presumably the cathexis of the ideal was thought to follow a path of development somewhat similar to that followed by object-love. Living up to a libidinally cathected ideal would then produce the same replenishment of narcissism as would identifying with an admired or loved object.
Types of object choice Based on his formulations on narcissism and object-love, Freud put forward the idea of two main paths towards the ultimate choice of an object, paths that also influence the type of object-relationship reached by the individual (1914~). 1. The narcissistic path. One may love according to (a) the image of oneself, (b) the image of what one was, (c)the image of what one would like to be, or (d) the image of someone who was once felt to be an extension of oneself (e.g. one's child). 2. The anaclitic (attachment) path. One may love (a) the woman who has fed one or (b) the man who has protected one. Although the superego was intended to incorporate and replace the concept of the ego ideal, this was never completelyachieved, and the two concepts never overlapped completely (Sandier, Holder, & Meers, 1963).
1 52
FURTHER ASPECTS
Freud has pointed out that these pathways also apply to the "succession of substitutes" who take the place of the original objects, and also indicated that narcissistic object-choice is important in the development of such conditions as homosexuality. Naturally, "mixed" types are more frequently found than the "pure" types listed above. The theory of narcissism and object-love formulated during the second phase was later to undergo profound changes, but subsequent formulations have their essential roots in the relatively simplistic energic concepts of the second phase as described in this chapter. In our view, later work on the concept of narcissism and on such conditions as "narcissistic character disorder" cannot be fully understood without taking Freud's first exposition of narcissism and object-love into account.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Limitations and transition to the structural model
'e remarked earlier that certain inconsistencies began to be apparent towards the end of the second phase in Freud's view of the mental apparatus and its functioning. These inconsistencies, which rendered the use of the topographical model difficult and limited in its clinical application, are discussed below, under several different headings. They have been devised with the advantages of the hindsight afforded by the development of psychoanalysis since the structural model was introduced in 1923. While limitations of the topographical model are pointed out in this chapter, we would like to underline the fact that the model was not completely replaced by the structural model of the third phase of psychoanalysis. It has continued to be applied where appropriate or convenient.
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Difficulties in the use and meaning of the term "Unconscious" During the second phase the different meanings attached to the term "unconscious" had become an increasing source of confusion and imprecision. In a descriptive sense the term referred to a quality of a mental state or a mental content, indicating nothing more than that a particular mental "event" or process existed or occurred outside conscious awareness. Used in the sense of a system, the "Unconscious" indicated a specific topographical location within the hypothetical mental apparatus, with events, contents, and processes being assigned to it. The tenn was also used in a dynamic sense to refer to mental contents that were being forcefully prevented from reaching consciousness or motor expression, i.e. were actively held in check by counterforces.Initially, the contents of the Unconscious were taken to include everything that was dynamically unconscious. The active "censorship" was located only between the Preconscious and Unconscious. However, with the introduction of the concept of a "second censorship" (Freud, 1900a)between the Preconscious and Conscious, it became evident that many preconscious derivatives of the Unconscious could also be regarded as being dynamically unconscious, while not being located in the Unconscious. The dynamic quality of contents of the Preconscious is evident in the examples relating to transference and dreams in Chapters 8 and 9. Freud's clinical experience had led him inevitably to the notion of the second censorship, and to the attribution of dynamically unconscious properties to some of the contents of the Preconscious. But this was not consistent with the view that the chief characteristic of the contents of the Preconscious was that, although descriptively unconscious, they were "latent" and capable of reaching consciousness by the process of turning attention towards them (investing with "attention cathexis"). Freud became increasingly aware that the criteria of consciousness and unconsciousness alone were unsatisfactory as a basis for a psychoanalytic theory of mental functioning, for the differentiation of distinct systems and organizations within the mental apparatus, and for differentiating pathological states.The systems of the topo-
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155
graphical model were originally formulated in accordance with their hypothetical relation to consciousness, with the Preconscious being closer to consciousness than the Unconscious. The distinction between the Unconscious and the Preconscious was regarded as being correlated with differences in their organization and modes of finctioning, the Unconscious being characterized by primary process functioning, the Preconscious by secondary process. In the latter part of the second phase Freud was moving towards a greater degree of "structuralization" of mental systems and processes. Certain functional aspects of the mental apparatus that would previously have been attributed to the Unconscious were coming to be regarded as being "deeply unconscious", and this played havoc with the idea of the orderly layering of the mental systems according to their relation to consciousness. Thus, with the introduction of the structural model in the third phase, Freud commented that "we land in endless obscurities and difficulties if we keep to our habitual forms of expression and try, for instance, to derive neuroses from a conflict between the conscious and the unconscious" (1923b, p. 17).
The problem of locating the repressive forces From a clinical and technical point of view the phenomenon of resistance as an expression of defensive forces operating within the mental apparatus became increasingly important during the second phase. Surface manifestations .of psychological processes were understood as compromise formations between instinctual forces (in the form of drive-cathected wishes) originating within the Unconscious on one side, and opposing forces on the other. It was clear that these opposing forces operated outside conscious knowledge and had thus to be included in the general category of dynamically unconscious contents. But such forces were clearly very different in nature from, and operating in a direction opposite to, the instinctual forces in the Unconscious. There seemed to be no alternativebut to allocate the repressive forces to the Preconscious,
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FURTHER ASPECTS
but this led to the paradox that preconscious content included forces that were not simply "latent" but were, in fact, accessible to consciousness should attention be directed to them. An attempt to solve this difficulty is evident in Freud's introduction of the concept of the "second censorship", and we have included this concept in previous chapters. But although we have referred to the second censorship, as well as the first, as functions of the Preconscious, in the topographical frame of reference the issue of the precise location of the two censorships was never clarified by Freud. What is clear is that, as the second phase progressed, the problem of seeing the Preconscious as a highly organized system, with some contents inaccessible to consciousness, led to major theoretical difficulties. This was particularly so as the term "preconscious" was also being used to refer to contents that were capable of entering consciousness freely. As the range, complexity, and specificity of the defensive forces described during the second phase increased, the need to change the way in which they were understood became urgent.
The problem of moral values, conscience, and ideals Freud's clinical experiences during the second phase led him to realize the need for the recognition of what he said could only be described as an "unconscious sense of guilt" (1923b). This was especially manifest in the context of the forceful operation of the individual's ideals, values, and conscience. There was no place within the topographical model to accommodate such phenomena in a satisfactory way. Ideals, values, and conscience always bear the mark of the person's development in relation to external reality and are organized under the influence of secondary process. However, aspects of these phenomena are often deeply unconscious in a dynamic sense, whereas other aspects are readily available to consciousness. Thus they have qualities of organization, have the power to harness instinctual drive impulses, are only partly related to instinctual drives, and cannot be assigned to any of the topo-
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157
graphical systems. It became clear that they had to be regarded as an expression of a way of functioning which could not be accommodated within the topographical theory.
The problem o f "internalization"
During the second phase the main clinical and theoretical emphasis was on the vicissitudes of instinctual drive wishes and their derivatives. It was, of course, recognized that some of the contents of the Preconscious and Conscious reflected the interaction of the developing individual with the real ("external") world, but the influence of the external world was not explored in a systematic way. However, Freud did examine some of the issues in a number of papers in the second phase, in particular in his discussion of the reality principle (1911b), which referred to the need to take reality into account in order to m o d e the pleasure principle, to avoid danger, and to postpone instinctual gratification in the light of the actual possibilities of gratification (as known to the individual). Furthermore, as we have seen (Chapter I), he explored the role of the child's ideals (1914~)~ which he saw as being profoundly influenced by parental values and moral standards. The way in which the external world was "taken into" the mind ("internalization") was discussed with particular reference to the processes of (and following) bereavement, normal mourning, and pathological depression (1917e [1915]). Freud pointed out that, in the process of mourning, the bereaved person may deal with the loss of a libidinally cathected love object by a process of internalization, taking on some of the characteristics of the lost love object by the process of identification. Furthermore, in the state of melancholia, the bereaved person may cope with coexisting ambivalent feelings of love and (unconscious)hate towards the lost object by identifying with the object and consequently directing the reproaches (unconsciously felt towards the object) towards the self in the form of pathological self-reproaches. Even earlier, in the second phase, Freud had described the process of identification and had shown that the use of this mechanism could cause an absorption into the
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ego (self) of aspects of important people in the individual's life, and that this was of substantial clinical significance.It is clear that the cathected image of the (presentor past) love object can be regarded as being activated in one or more of all three of the "systems" of the topographical model.
The problem of narcissism and the self When Freud came to attempt to formulate his understanding of psychotic phenomena (partly following the clinical interests of Karl Abraham, Eugen Bleuler, and Carl Gustav Jung),he leaned heavily on his second-phaseformulations of the libido theory. As described in Chapter 10, he made use of the idea of a "hydraulic" balance of libidinal investment between the ego (self) and object (other) in postulating that, in "autistic" states that develop in the course of a psychosis, there is a complete withdrawal of any libidinal investment in other people. (Bleuler had introduced the term "autistic" in order to describe the withdrawn state of some adult psychotic patients. It is not used here to refer to the condition later described as "infantile autism".) The libido withdrawn from the (representations of) objects was considered to be reinvested in the representation of the person himself or, as Freud put it, in the person's own ego. As we have shown in the previous chapter, this was conceptualized as self-love, or narcissism (hence Freud's description of psychoses as "narcissistic neuroses"). Phenomena such as megalomania and delusions of grandeur were seen to be a consequence of an excessive narcissistic libidinal investment. Conversely, the selflessness and self-depreciation of some lovers was thought to be due to the bulk of the person's libido being invested in the representation of the loved person. (This view of the libidinal basis of the unhappy feeling of unrequited love seems to have been based on a highly simplified and peculiarly Victorian version of romantic love.) When Freud first formulated these ideas in a relatively systematic way (1914~)~ he did not deal with the problems of accommodating such phenomena within the second-phase model. The fact
that the integration of his views on narcissism and object-love greatly strained the topographical theory contributed to the need to formulate a revised model of the mind. In retrospect it seems inevitable that Freud was forced to move to a theory that allowed for an organized structure within the mental apparatus which could contain a "reservoir of libido" together with representations of the person himself and of his objects.
The problem of anxiety During the first two phases of psychoanalysis, anxiety was conceptualized as a "derivative" of repressed libidinal wishes and represented-particularly in the case of neurotic anxiety-the way in which the repressed libidinal energy became manifest. It was thought that this energy underwent a "transformation" so that it was experienced not as a sexual wish, but as the unpleasant feeling of anxiety, often without any ideational content being attached to it ("free-floating anxiety"). This so-called first theory of anxiety was developed during the first phase of psychoanalysis and was originally expressed in terms of the transformation of affects rather than of libidinal energy. In the first phase it was possible to contrast neurotic anxiety with "realistic" anxiety (fear). Fear was seen as a response to "external" danger situations (especially of being overwhelmed or attacked), whereas neurotic anxiety was seen as a response to a high level of internal affective excitation connected with unacceptable sexual emotions that threatened to overwhelm the individual. This first-phase theory of anxiety was retained during the second phase, with the difference that it was repressed libidinal energy-rather than quantities of affect-that was regarded as being transformed into anxiety. The first theory of anxiety gave rise to problems about the topographical location of, and conditions for, such transformation and its relation to the three topographical systems. In particular, it is difficult to conceive of why such transformed libido should be experienced in ways that are so similar to the perception of external danger. Towards the end of the second phase it became clear
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that the idea of anxiety as the transformation of a libidinal drive impulse fitted very uneasily into the topographical model. With the introduction of the structural theory (1923) it became possible to conceive of an agency that could respond with anxiety to both external and internal danger situations (1926). These responses might or might not reach consciousness. Just as an unconscious sense of guilt was difficult to conceive of in terms of the topographical model, so was the phenomenon of unconscious anxiety. In Freud's "second theory of anxiety", anxiety was regarded as having the function of a signal.It is sufficient to point out here that the problem of conceptualizing anxiety was one of the factors that contributed to the increasing unwieldiness of the topographical model (see Chapter 1 for a description of Freud's two theories of anxiety).
The problem of aggression a n d the self-preservative drives In the first part of the second phase Freud regarded the drive components of the Unconscious as sexual in nature. Although he recognized the existence of aggressive impulses, these were initially thought to be part of the sexual drive, manifested, for example, in sadism. Indeed, sexuality in general was thought to contain elements of aggressiveness. Slightly later Freud postulated the existence of "self-preservative drives" which could be in conflict with libidinal wishes? Freud had difficulty in placing the concept of aggression within the topographical theory, and this prompted him to allocate it to the self-preservativeor "ego" drives, and to regard it as being nonlibidinal in nature (1915~).The problem of the degree to which aggression could be considered as ''rea~tive'~ to frustration or irri-
' The self-preservative drives were also referred to as "egodrives"or "ego instincts".The term "ego"referred to "consciousness"and "self"(in contrast to "object")and included the repressive forces that protected consciousness from being overwhelmed; it should not be confused with the "ego"of the structural model of the third phase.
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161
tation on the one hand, and as a "drive" on the other, together with further difficulties posed by the drive theory, then led Freud to give aggression equal status with libido. In 1920 he placed the sexual and self-preservative drives under the heading of "life instinct", and aggression was now no longer regarded as stemming from the self-preservative drives. Freud's clinical observation that people tend unconsciously to repeat patterns of behaviour and experience that may be painful or self-damaging led him to formulate (1920g)his concept of a "death instinct" ("death drive", or Thanatos). He contrasted this with the "life instinct" (Eros). In his final work Freud put it as follows: After long hesitancies and vacillations we have decided to assume the existence of only two basic instincts, Eros and the destructive instinct. . . . The aim of the first of these basic instincts is to establish ever greater unities and to preserve them thus-in short, to bind together; the aim of the second is, on the contrary, to undo connections and so to destroy things. In the case of the destructive instinct we may suppose that its final aim is to lead what is living into an inorganic state. For this reason we also call it the death instinct. [Freud, 1940a [1938],p. 1481 Laplanche and Pontalis comment that the death instinct is initially directed inwards and tends towards self-destruction but is "subsequently turned towards the outside world in the form of the aggressive or destructive instinct" (1973, p. 97): Clearly, the role of aggression in mental life was never satisfactorily dealt with within the topographical model. Nor could the part played by the self-preservative drives be comfortably placed within it. All of this added to the problems faced by Freud in regard to his model of the mental apparatus, culminating in its drastic revision in 1923. While most psychoanalysts accepted the "dual-drive"theory, fewer were convinced of the value of what Freud regarded as a speculative excursion into the theory of the death instinct, most analysts taking the view that the notion of an aggressive drive was sufficient for clinical purposes. It seems clear that Freud's ideas about the death instinct, expressed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g), were to some degree a consequence of his experiences of the First World War.
PART
v
Third phase: the structural frame of reference
CHAPTER TWELVE
Characteristics
e have seen that the influence of clinical psychoanalytic findings on Freud's thinking during the second phase, 1897-1923, was profound, and the need to make appropriate theoretical adjustments, particularly during the latter half of the phase, placed an increasing degree of strain on the topographical model. In Part IV we described some of the problems that led Freud, in The Ego and the Id (1923b), to propose the structural theory, with its division of the mind into id, ego, and superego. The present chapter introduces the structural frame of reference by way of a discussion of the changes in theory represented in Freud's structural model. Chapter 13 deals with the major third-phase "structures" or "agencies", and with the interaction between them. One of the most important changes embodied in the structural theory was a shift away from the emphasis on the "movement from the depths to the surface" perspective characteristic of the second phase. Freud had always been very aware of the importance of current and past adaptations to external reality (increasingly so
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THIRD PHASE: THE STRUCTURAL FRAME
after the introduction of the reality principle in "Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning" in 1911b).Nevertheless, psychoanalysis in the second phase saw behaviour and subjective experience as being predominantly surfacederivatives of instinctual wishes arising from the Unconscious, wishes that were modified on their way through the Preconscious as they moved towards overt expression. In the second phase, partly as a response to Freud's "discovery" that the traumatic memories of his hysterical patients were frequently none other than wish-fulfilling sexual daydreams, psychoanalysis placed much greater emphasis on adaptation to impulses arising from within the individual than on stimuli impinging from the external world. The mental apparatus tended to be seen as an instrument that had developed primarily to harness the drives. This perspective was amended in the third phase with the introduction of the structural theory, and the relative weight given to external reality was much increased. Moreover, while the structural model of the mind was equally concerned with the vicissitudes of sexual and aggressive drives, it placed more emphasis than before on the functions and structures that delay and alter drive expression. However, in spite of the major changes introduced by the structural model, the basic psychoanalytic assumptions remained unchanged. Freud was again concerned with the organization of a mental apparatus, although its new structural entities were not primarily based upon the relationship of mental processes and contents to the quality of consciousness or unconsciousness. The assumption of unconscious mental functioning remained basic to psychoanalytic thinking, and the distinction between conscious and unconscious processes was as crucial as ever. The same held true of the assumptions of psychological determinism, psychological adaptation, and of psychoanalysis as a general psychology.' Freud probably intended the structural model to replace the topographical, but in later years often he formulated his thoughts in t e r n of the topographical theory. Gill states "that in their basic conception these two sets of systems are not as different as is sometimes assumed" (1963, p. 3), although Arlow and Brenner have maintained that "the topographical and the structural theories are neither compatible nor interchangeable".They go on to say that "it is actually disadvantageous to use the terms of the two theories interchange-
CHARACTERISTICS
167
Although the third phase, formally initiated by the introduction of the structural theory, dates from 1923, it is clear that the idea of the structural organization of the mental apparatus was implicit in Freud's previous writings. The concept of "ego", in spite of several changes of meaning, had always implied some sort of organization, and in the latter part of the second phase Freud had begun to speak of "the structure of the ego" (1914~~ 1916-17)) while in the two monographs, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g) and Group Psychology (1921~)~ Freud certainly perceived the ego as a complicated structure within the mental apparatus. The concept of the superego is foreshadowed in the description of that part of the ego "which rages against itself" in melancholia (1917e [1915]).The id concept follows from some of the radical revisions (referred to in the previous chapter) made towards the end of the second phase, particularly in relation to the theory of aggression (see 1917e [1915], 1920g). After The Ego and the Id, further additions to the structural theory were made, particularly in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiefy (1926d [1925]), in which Freud proposed his completely revised theory of anxiety. We want to emphasize that in what follows we present a schematic and simplified account of the structural model in the form of a structural frame of reference, as was done for the affect-trauma theory of the first phase and the various versions of the topographical model of the second phase. In our structural frame of reference, inconsistencies and variations are eliminated in order to present a "rounded-out" picture. It should be noted that the removal of certain contradictions and ambiguities will not do justice to some of the subtleties of the model as used by Freud at various points between 1923 and the end of his life in 1939; however, we believe that the approach presented here is of value in comprehending the writings and contributions of the third phase.
ably and to speak of the id, the ego and the superego in one breath and of the Unconscious, the Preconscious, and the Conscious in the next" (1964, p. 3). It is our view that the topographical and the structural models overlap in many respects, and that one cannot entirely replace the other. However, in the present state of knowledge and theory formation, there is no single all-embracing psychoanalytic model of the mind.
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T H I R D PHASE: THE STRUCTURAL FRAME
An overview of the structural frame of reference
The mental apparatus is regarded as being entirely composed of the three structures id, ego, and superego, each having very special properties and functions, "Structures" in this context refers to large-scale enduring (but to some extent modifiable) organizations-what Gill (1963) has called macrostructures. For our present purposes we can take a view of the relation between the structural and topographical frames of reference as given in Figure 12.1. The The mental apparatus
descriptively unconscious
I I I I I I I
I I I I I
I EXTERNAL
system Preconscious
I I I 1
I
I I I I V)
I c
s -*
a Structure Id
Structure Ego and Structure Superego
2 r? a S a $
FIGURE 12.1. A representation (more-or-less)of the relation between the topographical and structural frames of reference (see text).
CHARACTERISTICS
169
Superego
unconsciousness
FIGURE 12.2. The relationship between the ego and the three "agencies" with which it has to deal (consciousness is regarded as a sense-organ of the ego). The external world is 'unconscious' in that it is only known via the ego's conscious or unconscious perception.
relationship between id, ego, superego, and the external world is shown schematically in Figure 12.2. Some of the characteristics of the structural frame of reference are listed below. 1. The id is regarded as the reservoir of the instinctual drives and wishes (particularly childhood sexual and aggressive wishes) as well as of repressed contents held back by the ego through the application of counter-forces. Id contents are entirely un-
170
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
THIRD PHASE: THE STRUCTURAL FRAME
conscious, and they are knowable only through their surface derivatives (dreams, slips of the tongue, transference manifestations, etc.). The superego is the organized psychic representative of the parental authority figures of childhood, distorted in particular by the child's early phantasies. This mental agency functionsas the individual's conscience and is also the vehicle for ideals derived from the parents and, through them, from society. It is regarded as a mental agency equal in status to the other two psychic institutions, and it is responsible for the unconscious sense of guilt that is regarded as playing an extremely important role in both normal and pathological mental functioning. While a great part of the superego is profoundly unconscious, aspects of it are represented in the form of conscious standards and ideals. The ego is seen as a structure that develops largely to cope with the demands and restrictions of external reality and to mediate between the drives, reality, and, later, the superego. Faced with conflicting demands from the id, external world, and superego, the ego makes use of its problem-solving and synthetic capacities-+~ well as of the mechanisms of defence-to deal with these demands and conflicts. The interaction with the external world is given greater status than before. In a way the external world can be regarded as being like one of the "agencies" of the structural model, with the same status as the superego and the id. In this sense it equally makes "demands" on the ego and can be a profound source of intrapsychic conflict. Conflict is now seen as occurring between all the pairs of agencies: between id and ego, id and superego, id and external world, superego and ego, superego and external world, and ego and external world. "Censorship" is no longer seen as the erection of a barrier on the border between two systems, but as a function of the ego. The parts played by anxiety, guilt, and the pain of loss gain very much more emphasis in this new frame of reference. The revised theory of anxiety no longer treats anxiety as a transforma-
tion of libidinal drive energy, but sees it rather as a signal of
danger arising within the ego. It is appropriate to end this brief introduction to the structural frame of reference with one of Freud's comments in the New Zntro-
ductoy Lectures: And here is another warning. . . . In thinking of this division of the personality into an ego, a superego and an id, you will not, of course, have pictured sharp frontiers like the artificial ones drawn in political geography. We cannot do justice to the characteristics of the mind by linear outlines like those in a drawing or in primitive painting, but rather by areas of colour melting into one another as they are presented by modem artists. After making the separation we must allow what we have separated to merge together once more. [1933a, p. 791 The following chapter deals in greater detail with the three major "agencies" of the structural frame of reference.
CHAPTER THlRTEEN
The three agencies
The superego hen Freud introduced his theory of narcissism in 1914, he formulated the idea of an ego ideal, which represented internalized parental standards and expectations, including culturally determined ideals conveyed through the parents. If the child could live up to the ideal, it would re-experience the early narcissistic gratification of being at one with the parents. The conscience was seen as a separate but related self-critical organization which functioned to motivate the child to conform to the standards and precepts of the ego ideal. At this time Freud distinguished clearly between the "ego ideal" and the "institution of conscience", which he saw as "an embodiment, first of parental criticism, and subsequently of that of society" (1914c, p. 96). Impulses that come into conflict with the person's cultural, ethical, and moral values are defended against by repression, which "proceeds from the self-respect of the ego . . . [the person] has set up an ideal in himself by which he measures his actual ego
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[self]. . . . For the ego the formation of an ideal would be the condipp. 93-94). tioning factor of repression" (1914~~ In "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917e [1915]), Freud stated that in melancholia the ego "rages against itself" (p. 257) and indicated that the critical part of the ego is the conscience. While he did not explicitly refer to the ego ideal in that paper, he made it that the clear, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921~)~ conscience had been absorbed into the term "ego ideal". Now the ego ideal was seen as a critical and punitive organization within the ego; and in 1923, in Freud's presentation of his structural theory, the ego ideal is unambiguously referred to as the superego, with a much increased emphasis on the critical and self-punitive aspects of this agency. Although the term "ego ideal" was replaced by "superego" in The Ego and the Id, Freud occasionally reverted to the use of the term (e.g. in "The Economic Problem of Masochism" in 1924, and New Introductory Lectures in 1933). Doubtless this reflected some unease in Freud's mind about the absorption of the ego-ideal concept into the superego.' The superego can be regarded as a mental "agency" (lnstanz)or "structure" that has, during the course of the individual's development, been differentiated off from the ego and the id. In relation to the ego it functions like an internal judge and critic, observing the ego, creating and presenting ideals to it. The superego is thought to have developmental precursors in the ego functioning of the pre-oedipal child, and is therefore initially part of the egop.~ "a differentiating grade in the ego", as Freud called it ( 1 9 2 1 ~ 130). These precursors in the ego are eventually formed into a discrete structure that influences mental functioning in interaction with the ego and the id. It consequently affects many processes within the mental apparatus and, in turn, puts its imprint on the This is borne out by the fact that a number of subsequent authors suggested a clear differentiation between the ego ideal as a structure and the superego be made, with ego ideal being regarded as more benign than the superego. Later the pressure for differentiating the ego ideal as a separate structure lessened, with the conceptualization of the superego as having friendly, supporting, and loving aspects in addition to critical ones. The view that the superego is more than a critical agency has thrown new light on socalled superegoconflict.
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behaviour of the individual. The superego in this frame of reference should be considered as a relatively rigid structure, in contrast to the ego and the id, both of which have a higher degree of flexibility. The introduction of the superego concept marked a substantial move away from a predominant interest in drive psychology and added a new dimension to the understanding of intrapsychic conflict. Conflict had been seen, within the topographical frame of reference, essentially in terms of the vicissitudes of instinctual drives, and insufficient weight had been given to internalized parental wishes and expectations. With the introduction of the superego, this situation changed? A portion of the external world has, at least partially, been abandoned as an object and has instead, by identification, been taken into the ego and thus become an integral part of the internal world. This new psychical agency continues to carry on the functions which have hitherto been performed by the people [the abandoned objects] in the external world: it observes the ego, gives it orders, judges it and threatens it with punishments, exactly like the parents whose place it has taken. We call this agency the superego and are aware of it in its judicial functions as our conscience. [1940a [1938],p. 20513
Freud saw the formation of the superego as a consequence of the resolution of the Oedipus complex-he called it the heir to the In Chapter 3 we described Freud's view of the opposition between moral values on the one hand, and unacceptable wishes and feelings on the other. At that time Freud did not consider the role of moral values as having a constant regulating function in the internal world. With the advent of the structural theory the regulatory function of the superego was all-important. ' Although the superego is thought of as the agency of conscience and ideals, prescribing rules, regulations, aims for mental activity, and modes of behaviour, its contents are not thought to be abstract codes. On the contrary, superego contents can be envisaged as representations of the interaction between oneself and others, i.e. internalized object relationships. It is thought that the contents, therefore, are based on memories of other people making demands or requirements or imposing prohibitions on certain of the person's activities or wishes. For example, breaking the law may be associated, consciously or unconsciously, with the image of a policeman or judge representing the law.
Oedipus complex-but, as we have just indicated, there are preoedipal precursors to the crystallization of the superego. We know that the little child has to learn to obey rules and injunctions, but at first the child only follows these in the actual presence of the parents or those who represent parental authority. Gradually the child begins to comply with the rules out of love for the parents and fear of their disapproval or punishment. This developmental step is conceptualized in terms of internalization. The need for the presence of the external authority figures fades, and compliance appears to be at the behest of what we think of as an intrapsychic personification of those figures. Although processes of internalization occur from early on and come to exist as contents of the ego and the id, the formation of the superego as a structure is classically thought to occur at a time when the child is attempting to master the conflicts and anxieties of the Oedipus complex. The child, realizing its longings for the exclusive possession of each parent, finds itself in an intolerable conflict of loyalty, love, and hate. This confusion of feelings requires the development of a strong controlling mental agency, which in effect mutes or brings about repression of the urges towards the parents. In other words, as a consequence of the child's intense feelings resulting from prohibited oedipal wishes, the painful conflict over hostile and loving feelings towards the parents is resolved by the child by identifying with them, i.e. their prohibitions are internalized.' The structural theory provided further scope for the integration of a developmental point of view into the psychoanalytic conception of the mental apparatus, which was not now restricted to systems linked to qualities of consciousness or unconsciousness. With the introduction of the superego concept came the differentiation of the idea of an unconscious sense of guilt.Guilt feelings in the form of self-reproaches had previously been seen by Freud as of importance in the pathology of obsessional neurosis (190%) and in Freud pointed out that "a child's superego is in fact constructed on the model not of its parents but of its parents' superego; the contents which fill it are the same and it becomes the vehicle of tradition and of all the time-resisting judgements of value which have propagated themselves in this manner from generation to generation" (1933a, p. 67).
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the genesis of melancholia. Now Freud drew attention to what he called a "negative therapeutic reactiono--a clinical phenomenon in which a deteriorationin the patient's condition occurs following an encouraging experience in which the analyst remarked on an improvement in the patient's condition and the patient's realization that there had in fact been a step forward. Freud saw this as the outcome of an unconscious sense of guilt at the progress made. Improvement is experienced as a threat and arouses guilt because the move forward gratifies an unconscious repressed infantile wish that is felt by the patient to be forbidden-for example, symbolically overthrowing father by succeeding where he had failed, thus gratifying an oedipal wish about which the patient feels guilty. The negative therapeutic reaction represents an attempt to undo the fulfilment of the guilt-arousing wish.5 The structural theory established unconscious guilt feelings as a central aspect of superego functioning and as a major motive for defence on the part of the ego. Freud asks the question: "How is it that the superego manifests itself essentially as a sense of guilt (or rather, as criticism-for the sense of guilt is the perception in the ego answering to this criticism) and moreover develops such extraordinary harshness and severity towards the ego?" (1923b, p. 53). Freud answers by suggesting that the harshness that can be shown by the superego is a result of the channelling of part of the id's destructiveness through the superego. He comments: The dangerous death instincts are dealt with in the individual in various ways: in part they are rendered harmless by being fused with erotic components, in part they are diverted towards the external world in the form of aggression, while to a large extent they undoubtedly continue their internal work unhindered. [1923b,p. 541 Nowadays, however, we would understand the severity of the superego as being in substantial part a consequence of the projection of the child's aggression onto the parental representations that
Subsequently there has been a substantialliterature on the negative therapeutic reaction, in which factors other than an unconscious sense of guilt are regarded as operative (seeSandler, Dare, & Holder, 1992,pp.121-132).
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enter into the formation of the superego. The role of unconscious guilt feelings is now generally recognized as being of great importance in the development of psychopathology. Although we have emphasized the unconscious aspects of the superego, there are other aspects-ideals, morality, personal standards, and valuesthat can be quite conscious. Indeed, like the ego, the superego functions along the whole continuum from profoundly unconscious to readily conscious awareness.
The id From the point of view of the structural frame of reference the contents of the id can be regarded as more-or-less identical with those of the Unconscious (the dynamic Unconscious) of the topographical frame of reference (although large parts of the ego and superego are descriptively unconscious). However, the context in which the id is placed in the mental apparatus is different from the place of the Unconscious in the topographical frame of reference, mainly in the id's specific dynamic relations to ego, superego, and reality. Freud described the relation between the Unconscious and the id as follows: You will not expect me to have much to tell you that is new about the id apart from its new name. It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality; what little we know of it we have learnt from our study of the dream work and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. We picture it as being open at its end to somatic influences. . . . It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts [drives], but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle. The logical laws of thought do not apply in the id, and this is true above all of the law of contradiction. Contrary impulses exist side by side, without
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cancelling each other out or diminishing each other: at the most they may converge to form compromises under the dominating economic pressure towards the discharge of energy. There is nothing in the id that could be compared with negation. . . .There is nothing in the id that corresponds to the idea of time; there is no recognition of the passage of time, and . . . no alteration in its mental processes is produced by the passage of time. [Freud, 1933a, pp. 73-74] Freud went on to say that Wishful impulses which have never passed beyond the id: but impressions, too, which have been sunk into the id by repression, are virtually immortal; after the passage of decades they behave as though they had just occurred. [1933a, p. 741. The id shows no evidence of ego-like functioning and is thus incapable of controlling and accepting delay of immediate satisfaction of needs; nor does the "seething cauldron" of the id show any superego-like qualities. It does not involve any value judgements-as Freud put it, "no good and evil, no morality"(l933a, p. 74). The id functions to give drives psychological representation. This occurs via the investment of freely mobile instinctual energy in memory traces, and at any one time the psychological content of the
id can be regarded as consisting of unsatisfied instinctual wishes seeking satisfaction or gratification. Freud saw the id as undergoing increasing restriction of its tendency to direct gratification of instinctual wishes during the course of development, as ego and superego become organized, effective structures. The wishes of the id are more and more pressed into expressing themselves in sufficiently disguised, altered, and more acceptable form. Nonetheless, the id, like the Unconscious of the topographical theory, continues to function solely under the dominance of the pleasure principle. In Chapter 5 we described in some detail the nature of the instinctual wishes regarded as making up the contents of the UnVreud refers here to the controversial concept of so-called primal repression. (For a detailed discussion of the functioning of the id, see Max Schur, 1966.)
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conscious. Everything described there can be included in the description of the id? We also described at some length how the processes in the Unconscious are characterized by primary process functioning, and this applies equally to the characteristics and functioning of the id. One way or another the wishes that arise in the id find expression within the ego in (descriptively) unconscious and conscious instinctual derivatives (e.g. daydreams), and in action. The drives themselves are regarded as intrinsically unknowable. An instinct can never become an object of consciousness--only the idea that represents the instinct can. Even in the unconsciouss,moreover, an instinct cannot be represented otherwise than by an idea. If the instinct did not attach itself to an idea or manifest itself as an affective state, we could know nothing about it. When we nevertheless speak of an unconscious instinctual impulse or of a repressed instinctual impulse, the looseness of phraseology is a harmless one. We can only mean an instinctual impulse the ideational representative of which is unconscious, for nothing else comes into consideration. [Freud, 1915c, p. 1771
Any one impulse can give rise to a variety of derivatives, and conversely, a number of different instinctual wishes may express themselves in one and the same derivative. An enormous number of different drive derivatives is possible, so that the person has available in principle a large repertoire of potential forms of drive expression and gratification. The fate of the derivatives of the id is not determined by the id itself but by the ego and the superego. From the point of view of the id its ultimate aim is the gaining of satisfaction of instinctual drive demands, but it has no direct access 'In Chapter 5 we included, for didactic purposes, aggression alongside libido as an instinctual drive in the topographical frame of reference.We noted then, however, that aggression was only given the status of an independent instinctual drive when Freud postulated that the aggressive drive was a derivative of a biologically based death instinct (Thanatos).The death instinct was said to exist alongside the life instinct (Eros).Many analysts disagree with this formulation, which Freud himself recognized as being entirely speculative. Freud here makes use of the noun "the unconscious"to refer to "all that is, descriptively speaking, unconscious".
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to executive apparatuses. We can say that the id has no control over which of its contents press forward for satisfaction. Whichever instinctual wish may be involved, in its path towards gratification it presents itself to the ego, where in its unmitigated form it will cause conflict (e.g. because of superego standards and demands). As a consequence it will either be rejected or modified by the ego into a derivative acceptable to both ego and supereg~.~ With the evolution of the structural theory, developmental notions became much more intrinsic to Freud's vision of the mental apparatus. The ego and the superego, in particular, were conceived of as structures appearing and evolving in the course of development. The id, too, is subject to developmental and maturational changes. From the maturational side there are the biological changes that give rise to the unfolding sequence of instinctual development from orality to adult genitality (see Chapter 1).On the other hand, the variety of experiences in the course of life, together with repressed ideational content, introduce ever-changing objects and modes of satisfaction of the drive impulses (i.e. instinctual wishes) into the id. As development proceeds, the balance between the ego and id shifts as the ego becomes more and more capable of controlling and delaying instinctual drive demands. The structural theory retains the energic concepts introduced during the first phase of psychoanalysis, and amplified during the second phase. This is shown by the notion of the id as the source of power for the mental apparatus; that is, it is thought of as the structure in which instinctual demands and needs find a first psychic representation and serve to activate the rest of the mental apparatus. In this way, the id, as well as functioning as a source of a wide range of instinctual wishes, is also seen as the source of the dynamic power that is controlled by the ego and the superego.
The terms "derivative"or "instinctual derivative"refer to any modified form of the original instinctual wish, whether or not it is allowed to proceed without change to consciousness or motor expression.
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The ego The ego as an agency is central to the structural frame of reference. Unlike the terms id and superego, the term ego was in use by Freud from the earliest days of psychoanalysis. Its meaning underwent changes over the years before the publication of The Ego and the Id in 1923, and the change at that point was, in major ways, a radical one. Nevertheless, Freud (as with many other of his concepts) maintained earlier meanings of the term at various points in his subsequent writings. Accordingly, it is useful to refer to aspects of the development of the concept in order to understand its usage adequately.1° The early meaning of ego, as exemplified in the Studies on Hysteria (Freud, 1895d) and in Freud's book on dreams (1900a),was a rather diffuse one. It represented a group of ideas present in consciousness.On the other hand, the ego was also regarded as having the capacity to exclude some of these ideas from conscious awareness because they were unacceptable. Thus the ego at that time had certain defensive functions attributed to it." Furthermore, in other contexts the term referred to the person as a whole. During the second phase tremendous theoretical advances were made, but to a significant degree Freud de-emphasized the ego as a concept during that phase. Exceptions were Freud's In the studies on narcissism and on mourning and melan~holia.~~ paper "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (1914~)~ Freud stressed lo For a systematic overview of the development of the ego concept, see Hartrnann (1950)and Rapaport (1959). l1 In the first phase, Freud's notion of defence was that it was directed against the reexperiencingof specific memories and, equally, against the experiencing of some aspects of reality. In the early idea of defence, Freud referred to quantities of affect that were dammed up, rather than, as later, to drive energies. The function of defence in this phase was that it prevented the recollection and re-encountering of some emotionally charged reality experience, thereby avoiding the arousal of an unpleasant conscious experience. The dammed-up affect was regarded as being transformed into anxiety if it forced its way into consciousness. l2 During the first part of the second phase, Freud also emphasized the role of the "ego instincts" ("ego drives") that had a self-preservativefunction. They were seen as being responsible for the ego's protection.
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the notion of the ego as an object (self) that, just as other persons, could be loved or have love (libido) withdrawn. Following this personification of the ego we see an increasing "structuralization" of the concept, as in "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917e [1915]), where Freud writes of a "splitting" of the ego into two parts, in which one part of the ego is conceived of as a self-critical part, i.e. as the individual's conscience (as described earlier in this chapter in the discussion of the superego). In the third phase the concept of the ego was extended as part of the new structural theory, and Freud now spoke of the ego as an active agency of the mental apparatus, an active participant in conflict with the other agencies and the external world. As Freud later put it: We are warned by a proverb against serving two masters at the same time. The poor ego has things even worse: it serves three severe masters and does what it can to bring their claims and demands into harmony with one another. . . . Its three tyrannical masters are the external world, the superego and the id. [1933a, p. 771 In this frame of reference the ego is seen as a coherent organization of mental processes, powered by "neutral" energies employed and which is distinguished by in the carrying out of its a~tivities,'~ being able to organize and to integrate different aspects of the person's experience and capacities. Consciousness is no longer regarded as the property of a surface system, as in the topographical model, but rather as a sense-organ of the ego. The ego is no longer to be equated with consciousness, as it once was. The id and superego have access to consciousness only via the ego." Freud saw the energies belonging to the ego as being "neutral" and derived from the drives during the course of development. In this context Freud spoke of "desexualization" of libido (1923b, p. 30).Freud's formulation was extended by Hartmann (1950),who introduced the concept of "neutralization" to cover both the desexualization and "deaggressivization" of instinctual energies. From the point of view of the structural frame of reference we can also conceive of energies intrinsic to the ego from the outset. This theoretical issue is now not as important as it once was. l 4 The concept of the Unconscious is not part of the structural model. However, the term "the unconscious" has continued to be used either in the sense of the Unconscious of the topographical model (i.e. with more or less
The structural ego is now defined mainly through its functions. These are primarily control over perception and activity, on the one hand, and control over drive impulses and wishes, on the other. Because the ego serves "three mastersu-id, superego, and the external world-it follows that a superordinate function is the achievement of adaptation to the demands placed upon it, demands that are often conflicting. Such adaptation can take many forms, and it frequently involves the use of mechanisms of defence against unacceptable wishes and impulses and the creation of what have been called compromise-formationsbetween conflicting demands. "Censorship" is no longer seen as the erection of a barrier on the border between two mental systems, but as a function of the ego which evaluates mental contents, especially unconscious wishes and their derivatives, in terms of criteria of acceptability to consciousness, or in terms of the threats of danger they arouse. The ego employs the mechanisms of defence not only to repress but also to modify unacceptable unconscious wishes or demands from any source (including the external world). In a sense, we can say that a major function of the ego is to protect consciousness from unpleasant experiences. For this purpose it makes use of the anxiety signal, which is an indication to the ego that the unconscious wish or impulse heralds a threat (seen by Freud as being in the same meaning as the id of the structuralmodel) or, more commonly, to refer to everything that is, in the descriptive sense, unconscious (i.e. the id and major aspects of the superego and the ego, and it embraces, for example, preconscious contents and mental mechanisms such as defences).One source of the confusion is Freud's statement, when he introduced the structural theory in The Ego and the Id, that "We recognize that the Ucs. does not coincide with the repressed; it is still true that all that is repressed is Ucs., but not all that is Ucs. is repressed. A part of the ego, too-and Heaven knows how important a partmay be Ucs., undoubtedly is Ucs. . . . And this Ucs. belonging to the ego is not latent like thePcs.; for if it were, it could not be activated without becomingcs., and the process of making it conscious would not encounter such great difficulties" (1923b, p. 18).SubsequentlyFreud wrote of "the unconscious" rather than using the abbreviation Ucs., which referred to the system Unconscious of the topographical theory. He also continues to use the term "preconscious", as in his statement that "The inside of the ego, which comprises above all the thought-processes, has the quality of being preconscious" (1940a (19381,p. 162).
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particular the threat of castration or loss of love), ultimately a threat to the ego of being traumatically overwhelmed, of being helpless in the face of overpowering and uncontrollable excitation (for a discussion of the theory of anxiety see Chapters 1and 10).15 Another important function of the ego is reality testing-without which, survival would be impossible. It is the capacity to distinguish sufficiently between experiences aroused by stimuli coming from the internal and external worlds (e.g. between imagination and perception).I6
The structural model of the third phase provided the basis for so-called classical psychoanalytic thinking for many years after Freud's death in 1939, as reflected in the works of the ego psychologists hart ma^, Kris, and Loewenstein, and in the developmental psychoanalysis of Anna Freud. To a significant extent it is still a major influence on psychoanalytic conceptualizations, although there are indications that nowadays its suitability as the psychoanalytic theory of the mind is being increasingly questioned (see, for r example, B r e ~ e 1994).
l5 It is interesting to note that affect, which had been so important in the first phase, again became of importance in the third phase, although the roles of affect are vastly different in the affect-trauma and structural frames of reference. Freud, as well as many subsequent psychoanalytic authors, have had much difficulty with the notion of unconscious affect and feelings, but the introduction of the idea of an unconscious sense of guilt (Freud, 1923b)and of anxiety as a signal to the ego (1926d [1925])opens the way for psychoanalysis to accept the concept of unconscious feelings. l6 The subsequent psychoanalytic literature contains references to a variety of ego functions. Among these we can list imagination, memory, cognition, synthesis and integration, control of motility and perception, and the capacity to anticipate actions-in general, adaptation to external reality and to the inner world.
A final word
I
t would not be unexpected if the reader of this book had experienced a certain amount of frustration because relatively little has been said about developments in psychoanalysis since Freud; and indeed the reader may well ask why this was so. We can only respond by saying that the raison d'2tre of the work has been to provide a basis for understanding and working with later psychoanalytic formulations. The contents of this book do not represent psychoanalytic theory as it is today. Nevertheless, we are convinced that it is necessary to return to the roots of the psychoanalytic theory of mental functioning, and that a historical approach is vital for putting into perspective the continuously changing post-Freud psychoanalytic approaches. For example, current views on object relations and narcissistic pathology cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of Freud's views on such basic concepts as narcissism and transference. In essence, our aim has been to contribute towards a developmental approach to the understanding of the labyrinth of present-day theoretical viewpoints.
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Alexander, F. (1949). Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis. London: M e n & Unwin. Arlow, J. A., & Brenner, C. (1964). Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory. New York: International Universities Press. Bibring, E. (1941).The development and problems of the theory of the instincts.Int. 1.Psycho-Anal., 22: 102-131. Bremer, C. (1973).An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. New York: Anchor Press. Brenner, C. (1994).The mind as conflict and compromise formation. 1. Clin. Psychoanal., 3: 473-488. Burgner, M., & Edgcurnbe, R. (1972). Some problems in the conceptualisation of early object relationships: the concept of object constancy. Psychoanal. Study Child, 27: 315-333. Compton, A. (1983a). The current status of psychoanalytic theory of instinctual drives: I. Drive concept, classification and development. Psa. Quart., 52: 364-401. Compton, A. (1983b). The current status of psychoanalytic theory of instinctual drives: 11. The relation of the drive concept to structures, regulatory principles, and objects. Psa. Quart., 52: 402426. Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. London: Allen Lane. Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London: Hogarth Press [reprinted London: Kamac Books, 19891. Freud, S. (1894a).The neuro-psychoses of defence. Standard Edition, 3. Freud, S. (1895b [1894]). On the grounds for detaching a particular syndrome from neurasthenia under the description "anxiety neurosis". Standard Edition, 3. Freud, S. (1895c [1894]). Obsessions and phobias. Standard Edition, 3. Freud, S. (1895d) (with Breuer, J.). Studies on Hysteria. Standard Edition, 2.
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INDEX
Abraham, K., 28,158 abreaction (catharsis), 15,42 acting out, 3,25,83,107 actual neurosis, 16 adaptation(& 62 concept of, 60 to external world, 24 to internal forces, 24 psychological, 36,166 adolescence, 24,134 affect(s) charge of, 42 development of, in Preconscious, 93-94 affect-trauma frame of reference, xvi, 7,4134 and concepts of neurosis, 50-54 and defences, 46-47,68 development of, 12-17 external events, as instigators of pathology 41 mental apparatus in, 43-47 and mental energy, 44-45,180, 181 and mental trauma, 48-50 and pathogenic processes, 47-48 and progression to second phase, 57-59,62,74 schematic representation of, 45 aggression, 25,61 and death instincts, 176,179 as ego-drive, 143 as instinctual drive, 74, 179 projected: child's, 176 in transference, 115
and self-preservative drives, 16&161 and sexuality 28,160 theory of, revisions to, 167 agoraphobia, 62 Alexander, E,32 ambiguity intolerance of, 90 anaditic (attachment) path of object love, 151 anaclitic relationship, 147 anal erotism, 23 anal phase, 22,23 Anna Freud Centre, xi Anna O.,14 anxiety: attacks, 53 castration, 24 free-floating, 159 Freud's theory of: first, 93,94,119,159,160 second, 93,94,160 neurosis, 16,51,53,54,159 problem of, 159-160 realistic, 159 signal, 94,160 unconscious, 160 attachment, 147,148,151 attention, cathexis, 74,75,99,106,127, 133,154 autism: infantile, 158 meaning of term, 158 Balint, M., xiv basic assumptions, of Freud's theoretical structure, 31-38
194
INDEX
basic rule, free association as, 24 Bergman, A., 22 Bernheim, H., 13,15 Bibring, E., 17,74 Bionian school, xiv bisexual impulses, infantile, 25 Blwler, E., 158 borderline personality disorders, 142 Bowlby, J., xiv Brenner, C., 32,184 Brentano, C. von, 17 Breuer, J., 14,15, 17, 116 Briicke, E., 17 Burgner, M., 148 castration anxiety, 24 catharsis, 15,42 cathexis, 90,144 aggressive, meaning of term, 74 attention, 75,106,127,133 investment with, 74,99,154 de-, of objects, 144 drive, 138 energic investment, 142 hyper-, of self, 144 of ideal, 151 instinctual, 75 drive, 123,131,137 mobile, 78,79 libidinal: meaning of term, 74 narcissistic, 148 of object, 142,143, 146-148,149 of self, 143,144,146, 148 libidinal investment, 23 meaning of term, 23,74 of memory traces, 78 narcissistic, 144 residual, 146,147 of object, 142 causality, 17,32,90, 127 principle of, 37 censorship, 81,183 as barrier between Pcs. and Cs.,26, 67,68,98 dream, 120,122,124, 126,128,129, 137,138 first, 85,124,131-133
as function of ego, 6,170 of instinctual wishes, 63,68-70,75, 76,85,104 and preconscious scanning, 91 preconscious, 91,100 second, 69,89,98,106,114, 123-127,129,132,133,137, 138,154,156 Charcot, J. B., 12, 13,30 charge of affect, 42 childhood, 121,151 events: effect of, 50 phantasies about, 18,19 recovery of, 18 memories: recovery of, 103-117,137 as wish-fulfilments, 82 and object-love, 148 objects of, instinctual wishes towards, 103 psychological organization in, 43, 49 psychosexual phases of, 22 role of in development of adult mental processes, 31 sexuality, 22,61 concept of, resistance to, 2 sexual seduction in, 16,59 as cause of neurosis, 18,50 phantasies about, 19,117 sexual wishes, revival of, role of in neuroses, 116 trawna in: pathogenic, 19 phantasies about, 30 clinical experience, role of in creation of theory, 12 coitus interruptus, 16,53 compromise-formation, 61, 62,89,183 Compton, A., 74 condensation, 85,104,123 meaning of term, 79 conflict: mental, 34 psychological, 48 and self-preservation,61 as source of disequilibrium, 36
INDEX
conscience, 27,151,156-157,172-174, 182 superego as, 170,172 3,21,27, Conscious system (Cs.), 64-71,96100, 111 see also Preconscious; Unconscious conscious and unconscious parts of mind division between, 14 consciousness: vs. attention, 97 control of access to, in Preconscious, 93 and dream-work, 123,124,129 ego as,44,143,160, 182 and free association, 134 psychological quality of, 64 psychology of, 1 qualities of, 97,166,175 as sense-organ of ego, 28,44,91, 182 vs. unconsciousness, 14, 154 constancy: libidinal object-, 148 principle of, l7,44 continuity 33 contradiction, absence of, in mental functioning,80 conversion, 52 Cs.: See Conscious system
Dam, C., xi, xii, 3,25,57,103,108, 176 dayd.eam(s),18,30,61,70, 83,92,94, 97,100,132,179 consdous, 88 wish-fulfilhg, 20,59,74,77,86,88 sexual, 166 day's residues, 120,125,129,132,134, 137 death instinct (Thanatos), 26,33,161, 176,179 decathexis, of objects, 144 defence(s), 16,36,42,43,44,52,100, 105,113, 129,134, 176, 181, 183 mechanisms, 27,28 against instinctual drives, xvi
195
use of, in Preconscious, 94 process of dissociation as, 14 against quantities of affect, 47 repression as, 46 substitution as, 46 transformation of affect as, 47 delusions: of grandeur, 158 of persecution, 47 depressive position, 23 derivative(s),131 activities, 88 of anal erotism, 23 of Conscious, 83,115 daytime, in dream, 130 of death instinct, 179 drive, 87,93,94 of id contents, 170,179 of instinctual wishes, 69,70,83-88, 93,99,100,129,157,166,183 aggressive, 76 censoring of, 91,124,126,132 childhood, 82 meaning of term, 83,180 and neurotic symptoms, 95 perceptual repmentation of, 137,179 preconscious, 76,78,104,105, 120,125 repression of, 94,159 transformation of, 94,180 meaning of term, 180 of Preconsdous, 83,86,115 pl'hlary pl'OIXSS, 83,117 transference, 126 in Conscious, 106115 in Preconscious, 104-106 of the Unconscious, 70,71,75,76, 81,115,117,118 censoring of, 91 preconscious, 154 determinism, psychological, 17, 32-38,166 meaning of term, 36 disequilibrium, 44,47 displacement, 17,45,81,85,90, 104, 123,131,146,150 meaning of term, 78-79
196
INDEX
dissociation: as defence, 13,14,44,45,46,52 as organic weakness, 14 process of, active aspect of, 14 dream(s): analysis of, 18,20,59,76,81,117, 118 and Freud's self-analysis, 18 content, latent, meaning of term, 125 facade, 128 formation of, process of, 119138 and free association, 24 Freud's study of, 18 function of, 118-119 manifest, 125 processes, 116-138 source, 120 theory of, in terms of topographical model, 3 -work, 120-138,177 Dreher, A. U.,xv, 5,49,116 Drews, S.,49 drive(s) [see also instinct(s)]: component, 72 death (Thanatos),161 instinctual, role of, 22 meaning of term, 22 partial, 72,143 -psychology, xvi psychoanalysis as, 22 self-preservative, 16Cb161 sexual vs. aggressive, 72 theory, 161 dynamic viewpoint, 31,154 economic viewpoint, 31 Edgcumbe, R., 148 Edith Ludowyk-Gyomroi Trust, xii ego, passim as agency in structural frame, 181-184 boundaries, 145 development of, 150 development of theory of, 6 -drive, 143,160,181 ideal, 25,149-151,172,173
meaning of term, 149,173 instinct(s),61,143,160,181 meaning of term, 27,44,143,160, 167,170,181 psychology, xiii, xvi, 11,29 psychoanalytic, development of, 11 role of in Freud's structural theories, 27-28 structure of, 167 Ellenberger, H. ', 11 energy: binding of, 90 bound, 99 Freud's psychological views formulated in terms of, 17 instinctual drive as, 73 mental, 44-45 mobile, neutral, 99 psychic, 99 binding of, in Preconscious, 92-93 discharge of, 119 Freud's concept of, 73 Erikson, E., "epigenetic" theory of, 23 Eros, 161, 179 external world: internalization of, 157 meaning of term, 92 Fairbairn, W. R. D., xiv father, perverted acts towards child by, 19 Ferenczi, S., 28 first theory of anxiety, 93,119,159 fixation, instinctual, meaning of term, 77 Fliess, W., 18 Fonagy, P.,142 Foundation for Research in Psychoanalysis (Beverly Hills, CA), xi free association, 15,24,37,68,106, 111,116,120,127,134 Freud, A., 29 developmental psychoanalysis of, 184
Freud, S., passim on aggression, 25 concepts of, 4 terminology of, 3 on dreams, 116-118 early history of, 12-16 early influences on, 16-17 metapsychology of, 1,31 on neuropsychoses of defence, 14 on psychoanalysis: as discipline, 1 as science, 4-5 psychoanalytic psychology of, 1, 26,30,33-36,41-43,57,58, 74,92,101 on psychosexual development, 23-26 theoretical models of, 4-8 theories of: development of, 3,ll-29,30-31, 41 first phase: affect-trauma, 12-17,30,41-54,57-59,62,
68,167,180,181,184 second phase: topographical, 3, 18-30,36,49,54,57-138, 141-143,152,153,158,160, 165,166,167,180,181 third phase: structural, 18,25, 26-30,36,44,58,143,149, 165-184 writings: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 26, 28,59,161,167 "The Economic Problem of Masochism", 173 The Ego and the Id, 6,18,26, 141, 167,173,181,183 "Formulations on the ?kro Principles of Mental Functioning", 58,60,166 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, 167,173 Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, 26,28,93,167 "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes", 4 Thc Interpretation of Dreams, 20,
58,63,117,118,122,124,141
Introductory Lectures on PsychoAnalysis, 19,58 "Mourning and Melancholia", 173 "On Narcissism: An Introduction", 58,142,149 New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Annlysis, 171, 173 "A Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis", 58 An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, 28 "Project for a Scientific Psychology", 16 The Psychopathology of Euerydny Life, 22,76 "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through", 33 Studies on Hysteria, 14, 101, 181 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 22,58,142 Gay, P.,11 genetic approach, 31,32 genital primacy in puberty 24 Gill, M. M., 6,31,92,168 Grunberger, B., 142 guilt, 47,107, 119, 170,176 unconscious sense of, 27,156,160, 170,175,176,177,184 Guntrip, H., xiv hallucination, 52,83,97,127,138 of fulfilment of dream wish, 119, 123,130 Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic (now The Anna Freud Centre), Index Project, xi Hartmann, H., 29,181,182,184 Helmholtz, H. L. E von, 17 Herbart, J. F., 17 heredity, 13,48,49 Holder, A., xi, xii, 3,25,57, 103, 108, 151,176 Holt, R. R., 92 Holzman, l? S., 33 homosexuality, 152 hypercathexis of self, 144
198
INDEX
hypnosis, 13, 14,15 hypochondriasis, 16,27,47 hysteria, 14,16,19,50,51,52 conversion, 48 origin of, 13 id, passim role of in structural frame, 27-28, 169,177-180 as source of disequilibrium, 36 ideal ego, 150 ideals, 156-157 ideal self, 149, 151 ideational content, 75 ideational input, scanning of, in Preconscious, 91 identification, 157 imaginative products, construction of, in Preconscious, 94 incest, memories of, as phantasies, 19 instinct(s)[see also drive(s): instinctual, role ofj: component, 73,74,143 death (Thanatos),26,33, 161,176, 179 ego, 61,181 life (Eros), 161,179 meaning of term, 22, 60-61 part, 143 theory, 22,25 instinctual derivative(s),179 meaning of term, 180 instinctual drive(& passim [see also drive(s);instinct(s)] concept of, 60-61 energy, 83,84,93,111,121,131, 137 Freud's theory of, 142 meaning of term, 22/73 instinctual energy, 59,74,75,78,79, 89-93,99,105,178,182 meaning of term, 74 instinctual fixation, 77 instinctual gratification, 62,75, 76,83, 103,157 (drive discharge), 75 instinctual impulse(s), 60 [see also drive@);instinct(s)]
meaning of term, 22 repressed, 179 unconscious, 179 instinctual needs, 177 instinctual regression, 77 instinctual wish(es), passim censoring of, in Preconscious, 91 derivatives of, 69,70,83-88,93,99, 100,129,157,166,183 aggressive, 76 censoring of, 91,124,126,132 childhood, 82 meaning of term, 83,180 and neurotic symptoms, 95 perceptual representation of, 137, 179 preconscious, 76,78,104,105, 120,125 repression of, 94,159 transformation of, 94,180 infantile, 76, 80,103,105, 121,129, 130 meaning of term, 22 primary process transformation of, 82 unsatisfied, 72 integration, failure of, dissociation as, 14 internalization: of external world, 157 of parental values, 175 and ego ideal, 172,174 and superego, 175 problem of, 157-158 Isaacs, S., 88 James, W., 73 Janet, I?, 13 Joffe,W.G., 143 Jones, E., 11,28 Jung, C. G., 28,158 Kemberg, O., 142 Klein, M., 23 Kleinian school, xiv Kohut, H., 142 Kohutian school, xiv Kris, E., 2, 184
Kuhn, T., 12 Lacanian school, xiv Laplanche, J., 23,24,161 latency: meaning of term, 24 phase, 24 latent dream content, meaning of term, 125 libido, 75,142-151,158-161,182 meaning of term, 25,54,74 and neurotic anxiety, 28 life instinct (Ems), 161, 179 macrostructures, 168 Mahler, M. S., 22 manifest content of dream, 128 masochism, 26 masturbation, 16,24,47,52,53 Maudsley Hospital, xi, xv meaning, 33 Meers, D., 151 megalomania, 158 melancholia, 27, 143, 157,167, 173, 176,181 memory(-ies): systems, organization of, in Preconscious, 91-92 traces, 43,45,49,73,74,78,83,91, 178 traumatic, recovery of repressed, 77 wish-fulfilments as, 59 mental apparatus. in affect-trauma frame of reference, 43-47 disequilibrium in, 44 existence of, 43 meaning of term, 35 organization of, 57-71 structures or agencies of, 27-28 mental energy, 44-45 mental functioning: characteristics of, 79-81 unc~ll~cious, 34-35 mental systems, interrelation of, 68-71 mental trauma, 48-50
metapsychology, 6 meaning of term, 1,58 Meynert, T., 12 moral values, 156-157 mother: as child's first erotic object, 148 relationship with, 23 motivation, concept of, 32 mystic writing-pad, 99 Nagera, H., 80,88,92 narcissism, xv, 25,27,172,181, 185 concept of, 141 primary, 144-146 problem of, 158-159 residual, 146-148 secondary, 144,148 narcissistic path of object love, 151 narcissistic pathology, 185 narcissistic personality disorders, 142, 152 negation, 80,89,134, 178 absence of, in mental functioning, 80 defence mechanism of, 129 negative therapeutic reaction, meaning of term, 176 neurasthenia, 16,51,52,53 neurosis(-es), 22,53, 116 actual, 16,47,51 aetiology of, 16,155 anxiety, 16,51,53,54 concept of, 50-54 genesis of: role of childhood trauma in, 20 role of sexuality in, 15,18,19 major, 51,52 narcissistic, 158 obsessional, 16,51,52,53,175 psycho-, 16,20,51 psychoanalytic treatment of, 42 traumatic, 51 psychogenic, 51 object: choice, types of, 151-152 -love, 141-148,151,152,159 meaning of term, 142
200
INDEX
object (continued): relations, 185 and nutrition, 23 theory, 29,142 obsessional neurosis, 16,51,52,53, 175 oedipal phase, 24 Oedipus complex, 25,32,76,175 dissolution of, 24 resolution of, 174 oral phase, 22,23 paranoia, 27, 144, 147 paranoid-schizoid position, 23 parapraxis, 83,99 parents, internalization of, 24 pathogenic processes, 47-50 pathology, role of external events in, 41 pavor noctumus (night terrors), 53 Pcs. See Preconscious system Perelberg, R., xii Person, E. S., 142 perversion, 22 phallic-oedipal phase, 22 phallic phase, 23 phantasy(-ies),42,92,93, 106, 107, 115,120,131 in analysis, 102 childhood, 18,170 sexual, 117 of childhood sexual seduction, 18-20 conscious (daydream), 88 vs. fantasy(ies), 88 infantile, 116 interpretation of, 128 preconscious, 85,105,130 transference, 105, 110 repressed, 88,89 of seduction, 19 unconscious, 87,88 meaning of term, 88 wish-fulfilling, 77, 88, 94, 100 phobia(s), 52,53,62 Piaget, J., 12 Pine, P., 22 pleasure principle, 27,37,60,80,84,
88,89,157,177,178 meaning of term, 21 -unpleasure principle, 75 PoincarC, H., 86,87 Pontalis, J. B., 23,24, 161 pre-adolescence, 24 preconscious, meaning of term, 156, 183 Preconscious system (Pcs.), 3, 21, 26, 64-71,82-95,98,124 characteristics and functions of, 84-95 meaning of term, 67-68 role of, 82 see also Unconscious system preconscious thoughts, 130 "pressure" technique, 15 primary narcissism, 145 primary process, 21,27,78-85,89,90, 100,104,117,123-124,126, 129,131,155,179 primary undifferentiated pleasureself, 145 principle of constancy, 17,44 processes, pathogenic, 47-50 projection, 20,94,105,176 preconscious, 94 psychic equilibrium, 64 psychic organization, meaning of term, 35 psychoanalysis: as general psychology 33-34 meaning of term for Freud, 33 training in, aims of, 6 psychoanalytic psychology, Freudian, 1,26,30,33-36,41-43,57,58, 74,92,101 psychoanalytic theory: cornerstones of, 32-33 emotionally based resistance to, 2 historical approach to, importance of, 185 as theory of therapy 1 psychological adaptation, 36 psychological determinism, 36-38 psychoneuroses, 16,20,51 psychosexual development, Freud's theory of, 22.23
INDEX
psychosis, 158 puberty, genital primacy in, 24
201
functioning, 89-96 secondary revision, 125,127,128, 130 Rank,O., 28 second theory of anxiety 160 Rapaport, D.A., xiii, 11,31,33,35,181 self: rationalization, 94 -analysis, Freud's, 18,20,30,59 preconscious, 94,105 ideal, 149 reality: meaning of term, 143 disregard of, in mental -preservative drives, 61 functioning, 80 problem of, 158-159 external, adaptation to, 165 sexual abstinence, 16 "historical" (objective) vs. sexuality: "psychical", 20 and aggression, 28,160 principle, 21,37,60,80,88,89,92, childhood, 22,61 100,105,157 concept of, resistance to, 2 psychic, in mental functioning, 80 importance of, 32 testing, 6,96 role of, in neurosis, 15,18,19 in Preconscious, 92 sexual seduction, in childhood, 16 regression: memories of, as phantasies, in analytic setting, 104 18 formal, 77 shame, 47 meaning of term, 77,122 slip of tongue (parapraxis),22,69, temporal, 77 79,99,115,170 topographical, 77 Stem, D.,23,94 repetition compulsion, 20,33 structural frame of reference, xvi, 3, repression, 14,20,30,32,46-48,50, 7,41,143 52,67,69,70,76,81-85,88, characteristics of, 165-171 93,98,113,136,172-175 development of, 26-31,85,91, as defence, 46 118,155,160 primal, 178 and external world, 36,169 repressive forces, problem of locating, overview, 168-171 155-156 three agencies of, 172-184 resistance, 3,16,25,26,27,32,108, see also ego; id; superego 110,117,138,155 and topographical frame, relation interpretation of, 70 between, 168 to psychoanalysis, 2 transition to, 15b161 Rosenfeld, H., 142 sublimation, 25,59,88 meaning of term, 59 sadism, 160 subliminal perception, 85 Sandler, A.-M., xii substitution, 52,102 Sandler, J., xi, xiii, xv, xvi, 3,5,25,49, as defence, 46 57,80,88,92,96,103,108, Sulloway, F,J., 11 116,142,143,151,176 superego, passim Schur, M., 178 role of in structural theory, 27-28, secondary elaboration, 127,130 170,172-177 secondary process, 21,78,86,100, as source of disequilibrium,36 104,123-127,133,134,138, symbol formation, 79 155,156 symbolism, verbal, 88
202
INDEX
symbolization, 79,123,126 meaning of term, 79 visual, 127 symptom(s),neurotic, construction of, in Preconscious, 95 symptomatic acts, 22 systems, boundaries between, 68-71, 83 talking cure, 14 Target, M., xii terminology: current psychoanalytic, 2,3,8 Freudian, 3 historical basis of, 2,3 Thanatos, 26,33,161,176,179 thought(s), 86, 87,99 time, sense of, 90 timelessness, of mental functioning, 79 topographical frame of reference [see also ego; id; narcissism; object-love; superego], xvi, 3, 7,36,41,49 and Conscious system, 65,66, 68-71,96-100 stimulus barrier to, diagram of, 98 see also Conscious system development of, 1&25,54 dream formation, process of, 119-138 dreaming, function of, 118-119 and dream processes, 116-138 limitations of, 26,153-161, 165166,174 mental apparatus, organization of, 57-71 mental systems, interrelation of, 68-71 mind, "topography" of, 63-64 and Preconscious system, 67-68, 82-95 characteristics and functions of, 84-89 and secondary process functioning, 89-95 see also Preonscious system
schematic representations: relation to consciousness/ unconsciousness, 66 of "systems" of the mental apparatus, 65 and transference, 101-115 derivatives of, in Conscious, 106-107 derivatives of, in Preconscious, 104-106 wish towards therapist, development of, 111 and Unconscious system, 65-66, 7241,177-183 and instinctual wishes, 75-77 mental functioning (primary process) within, 78-81 see also Unconscious system transference, xv, 3, 15, 16,25,33,76, 83,116,117,126,130-132, 135,154,185 as clinical phenomenon, 101-115 derivatives: in Conscious, 106-115 in Preconscious, 10P106 meaning of term, 101-103 preconsaous, interpretation of, 106 transformation of affect, 159 as defence, 47 trauma, 19,20,30,33,42,43,48-51, 62,117,121 current, 49 external, as cause of psychopathology, xv, 13,17 meaning of term, 49 mental, 48-50 retroactive, 49 role of in origin of psychopathology, 14,16 as source of disequilibrium, 36,47 traumatic neurosis, 51 Ucs. See Unconscious system unconscious meaning of term, 3,26,32,66,154, 182 changes in, 3 role of, 32
INDEX
unconscious and conscious parts of mind, division between, 14 unconscious mental content, vs. system Unconscious, 26 unconscious mental functioning, 34-35 unconscious mind, Freud's concept of, 17 unconscious phantasy, meaning of term, 88 unconscious wish(es), meaning of term, 121 unconsciousness, 65,66,154,175 deep, 155 quality of, 65 Unconscious system (Ucs.), 21,22,25, 26,32,64-71,72-81 dynamic, 3,177 meaning of term, 65-68,154-155 mental functioning within, 78-81 vs. unconscious mental content, 26 see also Preconscious system
203
University College London, Psychoanalysis Unit, xi University of London Institute of Psychiatry, xi, xv vertigo, 53 Vienna, socio-cultural context of and origins of psychoanalysis, 12 Waelder, R., 33 Wallerstein, R. S., xiii-xvi Winnicott, xiv wish(es): instinctual, passim censorship of, see censorship: of instinctual wishes derivatives of, see derivatives: of instinctual wishes unconscious, meaning of term, 121 working through, 25 Wutke, J., xii Zilboorg, G., 11,13
