Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on Metapsychology, Conflicts, Anxiety and Other Subjects

Humberto Nagera

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138987708
• eBook ISBN: 9781317670414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1970 and in contrast to the previous three volumes, which each dealt with a single subject, this volume is a miscellaneous one.

Seventeen subjects were selected on the basis of their relevance for the understanding both of psychoanalytic theory and of human behaviour in general. In this volume the reader can follow the development of Freud's theories regarding important subjects such as Fixation, Regression, Cathexis, Conflicts, Anxiety, Ambivalence, Reality Testing, Transference and Counter- Transference. Some of these subjects were chosen because of the many misconceptions and misunderstandings that surrounded them. As in previous volumes, the development of each concept is described from its conception to Freud's final formulation and detailed references are given for the guidance of the student, the psychoanalyst, the psychiatrist, the social worker, the psychologist and the general reader.

METAPSYCHOLOGY

Metapsychology is defined by Freud as an approach ‘according to which every mental process is considered in relation to three coordinates’, namely the ‘dynamic, topographical, and economic respectively’.¹ Freud considered this as ‘the consummation of psychoanalytic research’ and it seemed to him ‘to represent the furthest goal that psychology could attain’.² The purpose of a metapsychological approach to mental phenomena was described as an endeavour ‘to clarify and carry deeper the theoretical assumptions on which a psychoanalytic system could be founded’.³ Furthermore Freud thought it ‘impossible to define health except in metapsychological terms’.⁴

As to the genetic point of view it may be assumed with considerable certainty that it was never explicitly mentioned as a metapsychological criterion because genetic assumptions and propositions are inherent in most psychoanalytic formulations. This is stated clearly in the following passage:

‘Not every analysis of psychological phenomena deserves the name of psychoanalysis. The latter implies more than the mere analysis of composite phenomena into simpler ones. It consists in tracing back one psychical structure to another which preceded it in time and out of which it developed. Medical psychoanalytic procedure was not able to eliminate a symptom until it had traced that symptom’s origin and development. Thus from the very first psychoanalysis was directed towards tracing developmental processes. It began by discovering the genesis of neurotic symptoms, and was led, as time went on, to turn its attention to other psychical structures and to construct a genetic psychology which would apply to them too.’⁵

Dynamic, economic, genetic and even topographic considerations and assumptions are to be found in Freud’s psychoanalytic formulations since the beginning of his work. Thus, we think it essential to emphasize that the essence of the metapsychological approach which he proposed in 1915 is based on the simultaneous study and description of the phenomena from all these different angles (dynamic, economic, genetic and topographic).

A more detailed exposition of the three essential metapsychological points of view is to be found in the paper on ‘Psycho-Analysis’ where we read:

‘Psychoanalysis, in its character of depth-psychology, considers mental life from three points of view: the dynamic, the economic and the topographical.

From the first of these standpoints, the dynamic one, psychoanalysis derives all mental processes (apart from the reception of external stimuli) from the interplay of forces, which assist or inhibit one another, combine with one another, enter into compromises with one another, etc. All of these forces are originally in the nature of instincts; thus they have an organic origin. They are characterized by possessing an immense (somatic) persistence and reserve of power (‘repetition-compulsion’); and they are represented mentally as images or ideas with an affective charge (‘cathexis’)….

From the economic standpoint psychoanalysis supposes that the mental representations of the instincts have a cathexis of definite quantities of energy, and 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 to which it is subject. The course of mental processes is automatically regulated by the ‘pleasure-pain principle’; and pain is thus in some way related to an increase of excitation and pleasure to a decrease. In the course of development the original pleasure principle undergoes a modification with reference to the external world, giving place to the ‘reality principle’, whereby the mental apparatus learns to postpone the pleasure of satisfaction and to tolerate temporarily feelings of pain.

Topographically, psychoanalysis regards the mental apparatus as a composite instrument, and endeavours to determine at what points in it the various mental processes take place. According to the most recent psychoanalytic views, the mental apparatus is composed of an ‘id’ which is the reservoir of the instinctive impulses, of an ‘ego’, which is the most superficial portion of the id and one which is modified by the influence of the external world, and of a ‘super-ego’, which develops out of the id, dominates the ego and represents the inhibitions of instinct characteristic of man. Further, the property of consciousness has a topographical reference; for processes in the id are entirely unconscious, while consciousness is the function of the ego’s outermost layer, which is concerned with the perception of the external world.’¹

Freud’s reply (1915) to Abraham’s comments on the paper on ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ contains an important reference to metapsychology:

‘You do not emphasize enough the essential part of my hypothesis, i.e. the topographical consideration in it, the regression of the libido and the abandoning of the unconscious cathexis … instead you put sadism and anal-erotism in the foreground as the final explanation. Although you are correct in that, you pass by the real explanation. Anal-erotism, castration complexes, etc. are ubiquitous sources of excitation which must have their share in every clinical picture. One time this is made from them, another time that. Naturally we have the task of ascertaining what is made from them, but the explanation of the disorder can only be found in the mechanism—considered dynamically, topographically and economically.’²

His paper on ‘The Unconscious’ contains one of the clearest and most concise expositions of his metapsychology. He proposes in this paper that ‘when we have succeeded in describing a psychical process in its dynamic, topographical and economic aspects, we should speak of it as a metapsychological presentation. We must say at once that in the present state of our knowledge there are only a few points at which we shall succeed in this’.³ In the same paper he proceeds to ‘make a tentative effort to give a metapsychological description of the process of repression in the three transference neuroses which are familiar to us’, i.e. anxiety hysteria, conversion hysteria, and obsessional neurosis. We restrict ourselves here to Freud’s description of the first phase of a phobia, with some comments on what is implicit in it: ‘It consists in anxiety appearing without the subject knowing what he is afraid of.’ This statement implies the existence of forces in conflict (dynamic point of view) which, due perhaps to an increase in their magnitude, has led to the development of anxiety (economic point of view.)

Freud continues: ‘We must suppose that there was present in the Ucs some love-impulses demanding to be transposed into the system Pcs.’ This sentence contains both the dynamic and the topographical points of view. The postulation of an unconscious love-impulse states the existence of a dynamic force and its direction, i.e. the demand for transposition into a different system. From the topographical point of view we see that the systems Ucs and Pcs are involved in the conflict.

Freud’s metapsychological description continues: ‘but the cathexis directed to it from the latter system (Pcs) had drawn back from the impulse (as though in an attempt at flight) and the unconscious libidinal cathexis of the rejected idea has been discharged in the form of anxiety’.¹ This statement is concerned mainly with the economic point of view, i.e. an economic principle is involved in the withdrawal of the preconscious cathexis which bars the progression of the unconscious love-impulse to preconsciousness and possibly to consciousness and motility. Instead the affect of anxiety appears which also serves an economic function.

The above illustration not only shows the application of the metapsychological approach to clinical phenomena but also highlights the basic assumption of an existing conflict between different mental forces which can only be better understood by this type of description.

The concept of ‘metapsychology’ appears as early as 1896, in Freud’s correspondence with Fliess² and it recurs frequently in this correspondence and is there simply defined as the ‘psychology which leads behind consciousness’.¹ The term made its first published appearance in 1901 in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life where Freud uses it to exemplify the attempt of psychoanalysis “to transform metaphysics into metapsychology”.²

The metapsychological approach to mental phenomena has enabled psychoanalysts to depart ‘from the descriptive “psychology of consciousness” and has raised new problems and acquired a new content. Up till now it has differed from that psychology mainly by reason of its dynamic view of mental processes; now in addition it seems to take account of psychical topography as well, and to indicate in respect of any given mental act within what system or between what systems it takes place. On account of this attempt, too, it has been given the name of “depth psychology”. We shall hear that it can be further enriched by taking yet another point of view into account’.³ The reference in the last sentence of the above quotation is obviously to the economic point of view which, historically, was the last which Freud explicitly added as an essential part of a complete metapsychological presentation of mental phenomena, in particular of conflictual situations.

Attention must be drawn to the fact that in all of Freud’s explicit definitions of metapsychology he makes reference only to the dynamic, topographical and economic points of view. Neither the structural nor the genetic point of view was explicitly included in his definitions. With regard to the structural point of view, it is clear that the structural superseded the topographical theory. It is nevertheless to be noted that Freud kept referring to the ‘topographical point of view’ even after the introduction of the structural theory.

From a passage in The Ego and the Id (1923)—the paper which introduced the structural concepts—we can infer that descriptions in structural terms were largely to supersede topographical ones in view of the latter’s shortcomings in explaining clinical phenomena:

‘We have come upon something in the ego itself which is also unconscious … the consequence of this discovery is 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. We shall have to substitute for this antithesis another, taken from our insight into the structural conditions of the mind—the antithesis between the coherent ego and the repressed which is split off from it.’¹

We have already pointed out that although it was not until 1915 that Freud stated that a complete metapsychological description has to take account simultaneously of the dynamic, the topographical, and the economic points of view,² he applied them separately on many previous occasions. The fac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND COPYRIGHT NOTICES
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. Metapsychology
• 2. The Dynamic Point of View
• 3. The Economic Point of View
• 4. The Topographical Point of View
• 5. The Genetic Point of View
• 6. Principles of Mental Functioning
• 7. Cathexis
• 8. Freud’s Theory of Conflict
• 9. Fixation
• 10. Regression
• 11. Anxiety
• 12. Ambivalence
• 13. Different Uses of the Term ‘Object’
• 14. A Historical Revision of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
• 15. Reality Testing
• 16. Transference
• 17. Counter-Transference
• 18. Masturbation
• INDEX