From Classical to Contemporary Psychoanalysis

A Critique and Integration

Morris N. Eagle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781135252229
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The landscape of psychoanalysis has changed, at times dramatically, in the hundred or so years since Freud first began to think and write about it. Freudian theory and concepts have risen, fallen, evolved, mutated, and otherwise reworked themselves in the hands and minds of analysts the world over, leaving us with a theoretically pluralistic (yet threateningly multifarious) diffusion of psychoanalytic viewpoints.

To help make sense of it all, Morris Eagle sets out to critically reevaluate fundamental psychoanalytic concepts of theory and practice in a topical manner. Beginning at the beginning, he reintroduces Freud's ideas in chapters on the mind, object relations, psychopathology, and treatment; he then approaches the same topics in terms of more contemporary psychoanalytic schools. In each chapter, however, there is an underlying emphasis on identification and integration of converging themes, which is reemphasized in the final chapter. Relevant empirical research findings are used throughout, thus basic concepts - such as repression - are reexamined in the light of more contemporary developments.

Part I

Freudian theory

Chapter 1

Basic paradigm of
Freudian theory

This chapter is intended to highlight what I believe to be the fundamental ideas of Freudian theory and serve as a foundation for the later discussion of the ways in which contemporary developments in psychoanalysis represent a departure from the essential and core ideas of classical theory. Virtually every major theoretical difference from Freudian theory since Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, and including Fairbairn, Kohut, and relational psychoanalysis takes as its major point of departure the modification or rejection of one or another of these fundamental Freudian ideas.

The following ideas I take to be fundamental in the sense that they constitute the foundation for Freudian conceptions of mind, of psychopathology, and of treatment:

1. The constancy principle
2. The pathogenic effects of the isolation of mental contents
3. Repression, inner conflict, and the “dynamic unconscious”
4. Drive theory

THE CONSTANCY PRINCIPLE

I begin with the constancy principle because, as I will try to show, undergirding drive theory as well as other central Freudian concepts and formulations, such as the pleasure principle and the pathogenic consequences of repression, are a set of fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of the “mental apparatus.” These assumptions, referred to as the principle of constancy or the constancy principle, which Freud never relinquished, were first stated as early as 1893 in the following way: “If a person experiences a psychical impression, something in his nervous system which we will for the moment call the sum of excitation is increased. Now in every individual there exists a tendency to diminish this sum of excitation once more in order to preserve his health” (1893b, p. 36).

As late as 1920, 27 years after the constancy problem was first stated, Freud writes: “The facts which have caused us to believe in the dominance of the pleasure principle in mental life also finds expression in the hypothesis that the mental apparatus endeavors to keep the quantity of excitation present in it as low as possible or at least to keep it constant” (p. 62). According to the constancy principle, a primary function of the nervous system or mental apparatus is to rid the organism of excessive stimulation. The failure to do so has pathogenic consequences, including the development of symptomatology.

Quota of affect

The influence of the basic metapsychological assumption of the constancy principle on Freud’s thinking is seen in a number of ways. Early in his writings, in effect, articulating an implication of the constancy principle, Freud (Breuer & Freud, 1893–1895, p. 166) proposed that every experience is accompanied by a “quota of affect” (p. 9), which normally is discharged through conscious experience, including labeling it and talking about it. The quota of affect accompanying an experience is also worn away through connecting ideas linking the experience with other mental contents. In other words, every experience has an affective component—or, one can say, triggers excitation—that is normally discharged through ordinary means. However, when an experience is accompanied by a large quota of affect, and particularly when, for whatever reasons, the expression of affect is inhibited, the tasks of discharge and of associative connection to other mental contents becomes more difficult. That is to say, the more affectively intense the experience, the more difficult it is for the normal and required processes of discharge of affect and associative connection of ideas to occur. When neither of these tasks is carried out effectively, as is the case in hysteria, the affect remains in a strangulated state, and the memory of the experience is cut off from association connection to other mental contents, that is to the individual’s “great complex of associations” (p. 9). The failure to carry out these tasks contributes to hysterical symptoms, the former through the conversion of strangulated affect to somatic symptoms through a process that Freud acknowledges he did not understand, and the latter through the pathogenic consequence of the isolation of mental contents from the rest of the personality.

One can understand Freud’s formulation as a two-factor theory of hysteria characterized by the interrelated factors of an inability to discharge affect and the failure to connect mental contents to the individual’s dominant mass of ideas, with the result that these mental contents remain isolated from the individual’s personality. As we will see, differences in how this failure is understood—the reasons for it—mark the dividing line between Pierre Janet and Freud and usher in the birth of psychoanalysis. Before turning to that issue, however, I want to devote some discussion to this question of the consequences of the isolation of mental contents.

PATHOGENIC EFFECT OF ISOLATION
OF MENTAL CONTENTS

The single most continuous and central idea running from the prepsychoanalytic formulations of Jean-Martin Charcot, Pierre Janet, and Alfred Binet through the psychoanalytic theorizing of Freud to contemporary psychoanalysis is that mental contents that are isolated and unintegrated into one’s personality or self-organization constitute pathogens that bring about various forms of pathological symptoms. It is clear that when Freud first confronted the phenomena of hysteria, the predominant view of what Ellenberger (1970) refers to as “dynamic psychiatry” was that mental contents isolated from the central personality or the ego functioned as pathogens that produced hysterical symptoms. Charcot refers to “a coherent group of associated ideas, which become lodged in the mind in the manner of a parasite, remaining isolated from all the rest”; he goes on to note that these isolated ideas are “screened from the control of that large collection of personal ideas long accumulated and organized which constitute the conscience properly” so-called, the ego (Macmillan, 1991, pp. 64–65). Janet writes rather dramatically:

One would have to go through all the mental pathology and part of the physical pathology to show the disturbances produced by an idea excluded from personal consciousness…. The idea, like a virus, develops in a corner of the personality inaccessible to the subject, works subconsciously, and brings about all disorders of hysteria and of mental disease. (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 149)

In his early writings on hysteria, Freud’s views were not essentially different from those of Charcot and Janet. In agreement with them, he considered the associative isolation of ideas as the critical element in hysteria. For example, in one of his earliest papers, “Some Points in a Comparative Study of Organic and Hysterical Paralysis,” Freud (1893 [1888–1893]) writes: “Considered psychologically, the [hysterical] paralysis of the arm consists in the fact that the conception of the arm cannot enter into association with the other ideas constituting the ego of which the subject’s body forms an important part” (p. 170). Freud is suggesting here that hysterical paralysis of the arm is attributable to the fact that representations of the arm are cut off from associative connection with ideas that also include psychic representations of the rest of the body. Note that at this point, nothing is said about wishes and motives or even about one set of ideas being at odds or in conflict with another set of ideas. Completely in accord with Janet, he accepts the proposition that mere associative isolation, however it is brought about, is an adequate explanation for hysterical paralysis.

In other respects too, Freud shows that he has no real quarrel with Janet. Along with Janet, Freud believes that trauma is the precipitating cause of hysteria. He refers to the memory of the trauma acting like a “foreign body” or “parasite”; appeals to such concepts as “splitting of consciousness,” “hypnoid states” (undoubtedly reflecting Breuer’s influences), and the “formation of second psychical groups”; and specifically comments that he concurs with Janet’s account of hysteria.

However, as we have seen, even at this point, prior to the introduction of the concept of repression, Freud introduces the new concepts of quota of affect—which is applicable to general mental functioning—and strangulated affect, which, according to him, is central to the development of hysterical somatic symptoms. ¹ Indeed, it is recognition of the role of strangulated affect and isolation of mental contents that leads Freud to propose that hysterical symptoms can be therapeutically removed through abreacting the affect by an adequate response, including a verbal response, and by bringing the memory of the trauma into associative connection with other ideas. As Freud (Breuer & Freud, 1893–1895) puts it, psychotherapy allows “strangulated affect [of the idea] to find a way out through speech,” and also subjects the idea to “associative correction by introducing it into normal consciousness” (p. 17). Note that both are accomplished by bringing the memory and its accompanying affect to conscious experience. The use of hypnosis fits neatly into this formulation. Freud writes that certain memories plus the intense affect that accompanies them emerge only under hypnosis. Thus, we see here that prior to the introduction of the concept of repression and the formulation of his topographic model, Freud is already emphasizing the therapeutic value of bringing isolated neutral contents into conscious experience—a precursor to the later psychoanalytic goal of making the unconscious conscious.

REPRESSION AND THE ISOLATION
OF MENTAL CONTENTS

We have seen that Freud adopted the basic idea, then prevalent, that mental contents “excluded from personal consciousness” have pathogenic potential and put his own personal stamp on it with such concepts as quota of affect and strangulated affect. However, the distinctive psychoanalytic stamp of this basic idea comes with the introduction of the concept of repression, which Freud (1914a, p. 16) understandably referred to as the “cornerstone” of psychoanalysis. In Studies on Hysteria, Breuer and Freud (1893–1895) make clear their disagreement with Janet on one point. They state that “Janet, to whom the theory of hysteria owes so very much and with whom we are in agreement in most respects, has expressed a view on this point which we are unable to accept” (p. 230). The idea they are unable to accept is that “the ‘splitting of a personality’ rests on an innate psychological weakness (‘insuffisance psychologique’)” (p. 230). They also write:

It is not the case that the splitting of consciousness occurs because the patients are weak-minded; they appear to be weak-minded because their mental activity is divided and only a part of its capacities at the disposal of the conscious thought. We cannot regard mental weakness as the typus hystericus, as the essence of the disposition to hysteria. (p. 231)

Rather than attributing hysteria to psychological weakness, in the Neuropsychoses of Defense, Freud (1894) writes that “the splitting of the content of consciousness is the result of an act of will on the part of the patient; that is to say, it is initiated by an effort of will whose motive can be specified” (p. 46). This form of hysteria, which Freud refers to as “defense hysteria,” is triggered

when an occurrence of incompatibility took place in their ideational life … which aroused such a distressing affect that the subject decided to forget about it because he had no confidence in his power to resolve the contradiction between that incompatible idea and his ego by means of thought-activity. (p. 47)

Freud also registers his disagreement with Janet in his case studies. With regard to Frau Emmy von N., he notes that she shows no evidence of “psychical insufficiency.” In the case of Miss Lucy R., Freud (Breuer & Freud, 1893–1895) declares: “Now I already know from the analysis of similar cases that before hysteria can be acquired for the first time an essential condition must be fulfilled: An idea must be intentionally repressed from consciousness and excluded from associative modification” (p. 116). Later, in discussing the same case, he boldly claims, “It turns out to be a sine qua non for the acquisition of hysteria that an incompatibility should develop between the ego and some idea presented to it” (p. 122). He goes on to refer to the “advantage” of conversion symptoms consisting in the fact that “the incompatible idea is repressed from the ego’s consciousness” (p. 122). In the case of Elisabeth von R., after referring to her conflict between her guilt at leaving her sick father for an evening in order to meet a young man and the “blissful feelings she had allowed herself to enjoy” that evening, Freud writes, “The outcome of the conflict was that the erotic idea was repressed …” (p. 146).

In the theoretical section of Studies on Hysteria (Breuer & Freud, 1893–1895) entitled “Psychotherapy of Hysteria,” Freud states, “I have shown how, in the course of our therapeutic work, we have been led to the view that hysteria originates through the repression of an incompatible idea from a motive of defense” (p. 285). Although he seems to refer to all cases of hysteria in the above assertion, Freud goes on to note “Breuer and I have repeatedly spoken of two other kinds of hysteria, for which we have introduced the terms ‘hypnoid hysteria’ and ‘retention hysteria’” (p. 285). With regard to hypnoid hysteria, Freud noted Breuer’s view that “no psychical force … has been required in order to keep an idea apart from the ego and no resistance need be aroused if we introduce it into the ego …” (p. 286). However, despite Freud’s apparent acceptance of the category of hypnoid hysteria (he stated, “I willing adhere to this hypothesis on there being a hypnoid hysteria”), he writes, “any [case of hypnoid hysteria] that I took in hand has turned into a defense hysteria” and finally concludes, “I am unable to suppress a suspicion that somewhere or other the roots of hypnoid and defense hysteria come together and that the primary factor is defense.” Freud then adds the somewhat disingenuous last sentence of the paragraph: “But I can say nothing about this” (p. 286).

As for retention hysteria, here too Freud writes

I … suspect though once again subject to all the reserve which is proper to ignorance, that at the basis of retention hysteria, too, an element of defense is to be found which has forced the whole process in the direction of hysteria. (Breuer & Freud, 1893–1895, p. 286) ²

His final comment on this topic is a seemingly open-minded hope “that fresh observations will soon decide whether I am running the risk of falling into one-sidedness and error in thus favoring an extension of the concept of defense to the whole of hysteria” (p. 286).

At this point in his writings, Freud thinks of repression as voluntary and conscious. For example, he refers to patients’ ability to recall their intention of “pushing things away” (p. 47). Although pushing the thing away succeeds in freeing the ego from a contradiction, “it has burdened itself with a mnemic symbol, ‘lodged in consciousness’ like a sort of parasite, either in the form of an unresolvable motor innervation or a constantly recurring hallucinatory sensation.” The consequence is that “the memory trace of the repressed idea … forms the nucleus of a second psychical group” (p. 49). Freud’s description of the consequences of repression, even the language he uses, is very similar to Janet’s language and conception of the pathogenic effects of mental contents isolated from consciousness and the rest of the personality. Freud’s reference to “a sort of parasite” is paralleled by Janet’s (1889) description of a virus that is “inaccessible to the subject, works subconsciously, and brings about all disorders of hysteria …” (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 149), and Freud’s reference to a “second psychical group” suggests the kind of dissociative process emphasized by Janet. ³

Thus, although Freud and Janet agree regarding the pathogenic potential of isolated mental contents, they disagree regarding the means by which isolation comes about. Moreover, with the introduction of the concept of repression, the emphasis shifts with regard to the kind of mental contents that are isolated from “personal consciousness.” For Janet and for prerepression Freud, the mental contents that are unintegrated into the personality are memories of external traumas. Once repression and the concept of defense hysteria are introduced, the emphasis shifts to “an incompatibility … between the ego and some idea presented to it” (Breuer & Freud, 1893–1895, p. 122)—and the incompatible idea invariably turns out to be linked to erotic desires and fantasies. For Lucy R., it is her desire for her employer’s love; for Elisabeth von R, it is the young man with whom she wants to spend the evening; and so on with the others. In short, the emphasis shifts from an external event to an inner wish, from external trauma to inner conflict.

Why should the isolation of mental contents—in relation to either an external event or an inner wish—from personal consciousness have such pathogenic potential? Janet’s answer seems to be that although the failure to integrate mental contents (e.g., a memory of a trauma) bespeaks constitutional weakness or “psychical insufficiency,” it contributes to further weakness and pathology. Why, though, should failure to integrate mental contents weaken the personality? Why should “an idea excluded from personal consciousness” function like “a virus” that can bring about “all disorders of hysteria” as well as other forms of mental and physical disease?

REPRESSION, STRANGULATED AFFECT,
AND THE CONSTANCY PRINCIPLE

As we have seen, Freud’s early answer to this question is that the undischarged quota of affect that accompanies a trauma ⁴ remains in a strangulated state and, through a process that Freud acknowledged that he did not understand, becomes converted into somatic hysterical symptoms. However, as Strachey asks, in the editor’s introduction to Studies on Hysteria, “why should affect need to be ‘discharged’? And why are the consequences of its not being discharged so formidable?” (Breuer & Freud, 1893–1895, p. xix). The answer to these questions, Strachey notes, is found in Freud’s “principle of constancy.” Freud (1893b) writes: “If, however, there is no reaction...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Front matter
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART I. Freudian theory
• PART II. Contemporary psychoanalytic theories
• PART III. Overview and integration
• References
• Index