Core Concepts in Classical Psychoanalysis

Clinical, Research Evidence and Conceptual Critiques

Morris N. Eagle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317552055
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicoanalisi

In Core Concepts in Classical Psychoanalysis, alongside its companion piece Core Concepts in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Morris N. Eagle asks: of the core concepts and formulations of psychoanalytic theory, which ones should be retained, which should be modified and in what ways, and which should be discarded?

The key concepts and issues explored in this book include:

• Unconscious processes and research on them - what evidence is there for a dynamic unconscious?

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• Is there a universal Oedipus complex?

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• The importance of inner conflict.

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• The concept of defense.

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Unlike other previous discussions of these concepts, this book systematically evaluates them in the light of conceptual critique as well as recent research based evidence and empirical data.

Written with Eagle's piercing clarity of voice, Core Concepts in Classical Psychoanalysis challenges previously unquestioned psychoanalytic assumptions and will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and anyone interested in integrating core psychoanalytic concepts, research, and theory with other disciplines including psychiatry, psychology, and social work.

1
Unconscious Processes

Introduction

The concept that appeared with the greatest frequency as a response to my query regarding core psychoanalytic concepts and formulations was unconscious processes. More than any other formulation, the central role of unconscious processes in psychological life has been associated with psychoanalytic theory since its inception. Indeed, until recently, it would have been difficult to imagine psychoanalytic theory without the concept of unconscious processes at its center. (I say “until recently” because the concept of unconscious processes does not appear to be central to the contemporary theories of self psychology and relational psychoanalysis.) Many other core concepts associated with psychoanalytic theory, such as defense, drives, wishes and desires, inner conflict, the distinction between manifest and latent content, and the formation of neurotic symptoms presuppose unconscious processes. Understanding of many aspects of psychological experience and behavior seems to require the assumption of unconscious processes. And from a therapeutic per spective, a central classical psychoanalytic goal of making the unconscious conscious would have no meaning without the assumption of unconscious processes.

Two chapters will be devoted to unconscious processes. Chapter 1 deals with conceptual issues, including the question of in what sense unconscious processes can be understood as mental processes; the ‘debate’ between Freud and William James pitting unconscious mental processes against momentary states of consciousness as alternative explanations of certain phenomena; the explanatory role of appeal to unconscious mental motives; the validation of attributions of unconscious mental states; the problem of homunculi; the limitations of explanation in terms of unconscious motives; different theoretical conceptions of unconscious mental processes and states; the relationship between unconscious mental states and psychopathology; the interpersonalizing of the unconscious; the metaphors of surface and depth in psychoanalytic theorizing; and the question of integration of unconscious material in treatment.

Chapter 2 deals with selective research on unconscious processes, including discrimination and encoding of stimuli without awareness (subliminal stimulus studies); neural correlates of discrimination without awareness; unconscious acquisition of ‘rules’ and algorithms (learning without awareness); encoding and organization of stimuli as a function of degree of awareness and attention; and research on the influence of supraliminal stimuli on behavior without awareness of the influence. The implications of these findings for conceptions of unconscious processes and states are then discussed.

Unconscious processes: theoretical and conceptual issues

Are there unconscious mental processes?

Freud’s answer

Unconscious processes were recognized and discussed before Freud (see Burston, 1986; Ellenberger, 1970; Rand, 2004; Sand, 2014; Whyte, 1960). Indeed, recognition of unconscious processes goes back to antiquity. Plotinus writes: “The absence of a conscious perception is no proof of the absence of mental activity” (as cited in Whyte, 1967, p. 185). And Aquinas’ theory of mind includes “processes in the soul of which we are not immediately aware” (as cited in Whyte, 1967, p. 185). However, at least since Descartes, the concepts of mental and consciousness were generally seen as equivalent. That is, for a phenomenon to be understood as mental meant that it was consciously experienced. Hence, to speak, as Freud did, of unconscious mental processes was viewed as a contradiction in terms. And, indeed, at one time, that was a common philosophical reaction (e.g., Field, Averling, & Laird, 1922).

Freud did not merely propose that unconscious mental processes exist, but one, that the major part of mental life goes on outside awareness; two, that “the unconscious is the true psychical reality” (Freud, 1900, p. 613); and three, that the unconscious is the psychic equivalent of Kant’s Ding-an-sich. He writes that the unconscious “in its innermost nature, is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our sense organs” (Freud, 1900, p. 613). He also proposes that unconscious thought is organized along different dimensions (primary process) than ordinary conscious thought (secondary process).

It has been commonly observed that, based largely on empirical work associated with the cognitive revolution in psychology, the reality of unconscious mental processes is now widely accepted. Indeed, in accord with Freud’s claim, it is also widely accepted that unconscious mental processes are ubiquitous rather than exceptional. For example, Lakoff and Johnson (1999) write that one of three “major findings of cognitive science [is that] thought is mostly unconscious” (p. 3). And Fodor (1983) has asserted that “all psychologically interesting cognitive states are unconscious” (p. 86). This has led some to conclude that Freud’s ideas about unconscious mental processes have been fully vindicated. However, matters are more complicated. Most important, the distinctively psychoanalytic claim is not simply the argument for the existence of what Freud (1915c) referred to as the “descriptive unconscious” and what today is often referred to as the “cognitive unconscious” (e.g., Burston, 1986; Eagle, 1987; Kihlstrom, 1987; Weinberger, 2000). It is, rather, the argument for the “dynamic unconscious”; that is, an unconscious of conflicting forces of impulses pressing for discharge and access to consciousness and ego defenses preventing such access. This claim is far from being universally accepted.

Searle on unconscious mental processes

The idea of unconscious mental processes of any kind, cognitive or dynamic, is fraught with philosophical and terminological complexities, including the question of how one understands the term “mental.” It is not just Descartes, but also some contemporary philosophers who find the concept of unconscious mental processes problematic in certain respects. For example, Searle (1992) asks: “How could we subtract the consciousness from a mental state and still have the mental state left over?” (p. 52). According to Searle, there are only conscious mental states and neurophysiological brain states with a capacity to cause conscious mental states; there is no ontological realm between the two (Searle’s critique is also directed to the positing of unconscious mental processes in cognitive psychology).

Searle acknowledges the explanatory power of positing unconscious mental processes and accepts the need for a psychological ‘vocabulary’ that employs such terms. However, he rejects the idea that these terms refer to ontological entities or processes that refer neither to conscious experience nor neurophysiological events, but something in between. As McLoughlin (2002) argues, this position is essentially similar to Freud’s belief that although the vocabulary of unconscious mental states is necessary for explanation at a psychological level (e.g., to fill in the ‘gaps’ in conscious mental life), it is not intended to point to an ontological realm that is neither conscious phenomenal experience nor a neurophysiological state. As Freud (1940[1938]) writes:

Whereas the psychology of consciousness never went beyond the broken sequences which were obviously dependent on something else, the other view, which held that the psychical is unconscious in itself, enabled psychology to take its place like a natural science like any other. The processes with which it is concerned are in themselves just as unknowable as those dealt with by other sciences, by chemistry and physics, for example; but it is possible to establish the laws which they obey and to follow their mutual relations and independences unbroken over long stretches, in short, to arrive at what is described as an “understanding” of the field of natural phenomena in question.

(p. 158)

Following the Project for a Scientific Psychology, Freud (1950[1895]) turned to a purely psychological language. However, it is clear from Freud’s writings that he was always committed to the neurophysiological as the bedrock for psychological processes. As Freud writes to Fleiss following his relinquishment of the Project:

I am not at all in disagreement with you, not at all inclined to leave the psychology hanging in the air without an organic basis. But apart from this conviction I do not know how to go on, neither theoretically nor therapeutically, and therefore must behave as if the psychological alone were under consideration.

(Masson, 1985, p. 326)

More than 40 years later, Freud (1940a) writes that because “physical or somatic processes” are more complete than conscious experience, it “seems natural to lay stress in psychology upon these somatic processes, to see in them the true essence of what is mental” (p. 34).

There seems to be relatively widespread agreement that at present we cannot adequately explain certain behaviors by appealing to neurophysiological pro cesses and conscious experience alone (see Dennett, 1969, 1978; Fodor, 1983). We need to employ a vocabulary of unconscious mental processes in order to generate reasonably adequate explanations. More specifically, we need to refer to the language and categories of desires, motives, wishes, intentions, and so on that we normally think of as conscious, while recognizing that the mental states referred to are not consciously experienced. We have little choice in the matter. We will certainly not be able to provide an adequate and rich explanation by referring only to neurophysiological processes, even if, from an ontological perspective, what we refer to as unconscious mental processes are neurophysiological processes.

Rubinstein on unconscious mental processes

Rubinstein, a psychoanalyst and a highly sophisticated philosophical thinker, presents a complex and nuanced discussion of the concept of unconscious mental events. The gist of Rubinstein’s (1997) formulation is that “unconscious mental events are neurophysiological events that are classified as mental” on the assumption “that observed phenomena resembling the effects of such phenomenal events as wishing, intending, fantasying, etc. are in fact the effects of these neurophysiological events” (p. 52).

It is important to note that although Rubinstein maintains that unconscious mental events are protoneurophysiological phenomena that point to neurophysiological events, he does not suggest that we rush to translate psychological terms into neurophysiological terms. Different language and different meaning systems underlie these different terms. In our everyday world, including the world of clinical practice, “we are concerned with individuals and with their modes of being-in-the world, not with brains or mental apparatuses” (pp. 64–65). However, we cannot escape the conclusion that “unconscious mental events are neural events by another name” (p. 524), a point of view, as Rubinstein points out, that was held by Freud (See, for example, Freud, 1940[1938], p. 158).

Wakefield on unconscious mental processes

In a sustained and brilliant exposition that is congruent with and further develops Rubinstein’s position, Wakefield (1992) maintains that implicit in Freud’s conception of unconscious processes are the claims (1) that representationality (rather than consciousness) is the essence of the mental; (2) that brains possess the property of representationality; and (3) therefore that nonconscious brain states can be mental. According to Wakefield (2001) Freud’s claim “representationality can be realized in nonconscious brain structures and that, therefore, there can be mental states that are not conscious … might be the foundation stone on which cognitive psychology rests” (p. 81).

Wakefield (1992; 2001) points to the kinds of empirical phenomena Freud adduced to defend what was and is the jarring argument that certain brain states are mental, that is, possess representationality. These phenomena include behavior following post-hypnotic suggestion and most important, unconscious creative problem-solving. If he were writing today, Freud could have added studies demonstrating unconscious encoding at the semantic level that I will discuss in Chapter 2.

As Wakefield (1992; 2001) shows, Freud’s implicit reasoning is that if, like conscious states, nonconscious representational brain states can generate intentionality and intelligent behavior, then one must conclude that it is representational structure, not consciousness, that is the essence of the mental. By this account, consciousness is a contingent, not an essential property of the mental, a startling conclusion arrived at by Freud who writes that “the psychical is unconscious in itself” (Freud, 1940[1938], p. 158).

However jarring this conclusion may be, ultimately, we will likely have little difficulty with the idea that at a particular level of organization, unconscious wishes, motives, etc. are essentially neurophysiological processes. As Chomsky (1965) writes in a different but relevant context:

[T]he very concept of “physical explanation” will no doubt be extended to incorporate whatever is discovered in this [mental] domain, exactly as it was extended to accommodate gravitational and electromagnetic force, massless particles and numerous other entities and processes that would have offended the common sense of earlier generations.

(pp. 83–84)

Apart from the empirical phenomena that Freud cited in defense of the concept of unconscious mental processes, as Wakefield demonstrates, a programmatic and overarching motive for proposing the inessentiality of consciousness and the corresponding primacy of unconscious processes in psychic life was his ambitious goal to make it possible for psychoanalysis and, indeed, psychology, eventually to take its place as a natural science. Freud (1940[1938]) writes that whereas the psychology of consciousness was woefully incomplete and full of unexplained gaps, “the other view, which held that the psychical is unconscious in itself, enabled psychology to take its place as a natural science like any other” (p. 158). In other words, conscious phenomenal experience alone cannot serve as a basis for psychology as a science, a conclusion radically at odds with the reliance on introspection to provide the fundamental data of psychology, a position espoused by Titchener’s (1898, 1909) structuralism.

Implicit in this view is the expectation that, ultimately, we would come to know most of what we need to know about the human mind, not through focusing solely or primarily on phenomenal conscious awareness, but through investigating what Wakefield refers to as “syntactic brain-state causal interactions alone” (1992, p. 92). I would add that this overarching goal began with the Project, which, of course, could not be completed. However, in abandoning the Project, Freud did not abandon his vision. Rather, he developed a psychological and metapsychological language and concepts that were not only heuristic in themselves, but also served as placeholders – what Rubinstein refers to as protoneurophysiological terms – for later filling in through discoveries in neurophysiology.

Freud versus James on unconscious mental processes

As noted, Freud’s arguments for the existence of unconscious mental processes and states were far from universally accepted. Preceding William James’ (1890) ten arguments against admitting the concept of unconscious mental processes into psychology, he expressed the fear that such an admission would open the floodgates to arbitrariness of both explanation and attributions of mental states, unchecked by the individual’s ability to either validate or invalidate those attributions on the basis of his or her conscious experience. In response to the question “can states of mind be unconscious?”, James (1890) writes in relation to those who posit such states of mind: “they will devote themselves to sapping and mining the region roundabout until it is a bag of logical liquefaction, into the midst of which all definite conclusions of any sort may be trusted ere long to sink and disappear” (p. 107). He also writes that the positing of unconscious mental states “is the sovereign means for believing what one likes in psychology, and of turning what might become a science into a tumbling-ground for whimsies” (p. 163).

James’ arguments against admitting the concept of unconscious mental states into psychology are sophisticated and nuanced. The gist of these arguments is to propose momentary and split-off consciousness or brain states as alternatives to unconscious mental states. However, if one pushes the momentary consciousness argument to the extreme, it becomes virtually equivalent to unconscious mental states. That is, if consciousness is so momentary that it cannot be reported, it becomes essentially equivalent to being unconscious. However, this criticism does not apply to James’ proposal that brain states serve as an alternative to unconscious mental states.

The debate between Freudian unconscious mental states and James’ (as well as Janet’s, Binet’s, and Prince’s) momentary consciousness and split-off consciousness needs to be understood in the context of the history of psychology. James’ insistence that mental states need to be linked to consciousness of some sort, even if it is a momentary consciousness or split-off consciousness, was based on his strong belief that the subject matter of psychology must include conscious experience, the “feel” of mental states. This, indeed, was the view of the time. For example, trained introspection of one’s experiences was the primary method of collecting psychological data by Titchener (1898; 1909) and his structuralist followers, at one time a dominant school of American psychology. The goal of psychology was to map out the structure of conscious experience. In contemporary terms, one can say that structuralism attempted to identify the fundamental qualia of conscious experience.

In part, it was the very meager achievements of structualism that paved the way for the behaviorist school of psychology that, of course, essentially replaced consciousness with overt behavior as the subject matter of psychology. And it was this de-emphasis on conscious experience as well as an emphasis on the role of biological drives that led to the seemingly odd bedfellowship of behaviorism and Freudian psychology. In 1950, Dollard and Miller published an influential book Personality and Psychotherapy that translated Freudian formulations into neo-Hullian behaviorist language. One of the factors that made this possible was the convergence of the two perspectives on the downgrading of conscious experience as part of the project of achieving a scientific account of human behavior.

Despite the problems inherent in James’ views, his concern that appeal to unconscious mental states might serve as “the sovereign means of believing what one likes in psychology” was not entirely unfounded as evidenced by the misuses of and arbitrary attributions of unconscious mental states found in some of the psychoanalytic literature. That literature is replete with examples of undisciplined attributions of unconscious motives and meanings that are t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Unconscious processes
• 2 Research on unconscious processes
• 3 The Oedipus complex
• 4 Inner conflict
• 5 The concept of defense
• 6 Some concluding comments
• References
• Index