The Psychoanalytic Method

Oskar Pfister

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415211031
• eBook ISBN: 9781136343605
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This is Volume XXII of twenty-eight on a series on Psychoanalysis. First published in 1935, this study looks the Psychoanalytic method with an introduction by Sigmund Freud.

PART I
THE THEORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

CHAPTER II
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPTION OF AN
UNCONSCIOUS

WE may now approach the question: what are we to think of subliminal mental processes ? Are there in general subconscious psychic facts? Does an unconscious exist and is it scientifically conceivable?

The prevailing psychology is not very kindly disposed toward the unconscious. True, its existence is seldom disputed. At the most, some representatives of the psychophysical materialism, as for example, Ziehen, deny its existence. The psychiatrist named considers it in all seriousness as doubtful whether all the very complicated acts of hypnotised persons are not without parallel psychical processes and thereby readily leads us to the standpoint of old Cartesius who denied animals all mental experiences and considered them “creaking machines.” * It cannot surprise us that this hypothesis of psychoanalysis receives little favor and is explained without trial as “nonsense.” † The other psychologists allow the validity of the unconscious. Indeed, Th. Lipps considers consciousness as such, as a passive, indifferent, in itself unimportant byproduct of unconscious processes. ‡ This appreciation, however, is made of less value by the fact that Lipps does not know how to render the unconscious accessible to scientific observation. We poor psychologists stand before the screen of unconsciousness without any hope of learning to know the picture-making machinery. Wundt uses us a little less roughly. He does not lift the subliminal, at least at first, to so high a rank before establishing our helplessness in comprehending it. “Our knowledge of the elements which have become unconscious has to do with nothing more than the possibility of memory."*

Besides denying the existence of the unconscious or scientific recognition of it, psychology presents a considerable confusion of terms which we must consider in order not to increase it.

In order to fix the concept of the unconscious, we proceed from that of the conscious and consciousness. But does not the same confusion prevail here ?

The psychologists make it easy by explaining: one can only experience consciousness, not describe † or define it.‡ Against these opinions, Dürr maintains with justice that everything which science discusses must permit of a definition.|| Wundt also saw himself forced later to the formulation of a definition.

“Consciousness” is derived from “conscious” which word is used in reference to an object or to the objectivated subject, for example: the “conscious” matter; “an idea becomes clearly conscious,” “I am conscious.”

Both meanings occur in derivatives. Whoever is “conscious” exercises a function, for example, a perception, an idea. In reference to the subject, the expression “conscious” always has an active meaning, to an object, a passive one.

In the mental experience, as also in “knowing,” we are accustomed to distinguish subject, object and function. The psychologic reflection has elaborated the concept of consciousness in each of these three directions:

1. As subject concept, it denotes the subject of the mental life.* As, for example, in the phrase, “the man or the mind is consciousness." † This latter can therefore appear as acting. I mention the expression which has become old-style, because from it, in the expression “the unconscious” or “the unconsciousness,” important counterparts have developed.

2. As function concept, the term “consciousness” has very many meanings. Some of these meanings are: (a) as “connection of the mental images. ” According to Wundt, the meaning of the term would be that it expressed that general union of mental processes from which the individual images arise as narrower combinations.‡ According to this definition there prevails in deep sleep or in a fainting spell, a state of unconsciousness, something which Wundt admits. Nevertheless, an isolated sensation in sleep, for example thirst, or a simple dream-picture not connected with other psychic images, would be unconscious, while a dream scene would be conscious. This use of language will therefore not enlighten us.

(b) Consciousness = “the totality of mental affairs belonging to an individual” (Witasek).||

(c) Consciousness = the inner outcropping of our sensations, ideas and emotions (Höffding).¶

(d) Consciousness = “All actual ideas” (Herbart) § or “the comprehension of objects” (Dürr).**

(e) Consciousness = “the knowledge concerning the existence of all or a part of psychic affairs belonging to an individual; in general, the knowledge about all the psychic and also physical objects of which the individual thinks, of which he is accordingly conscious.” * According to this condition, a knowledge about mental experiences or content would be necessary, a self-observation, an “inner sense.’’

We add the description of Lotze:

(f) Consciousness = Waking state.† Therewith all dreams would be unconscious, no matter how vividly I may experience them in myself nor how exactly I know them, nor how powerfully the selfconsciousness appeared in them. In favor of Lotze’s statement speaks the fact that one is not accustomed to attribute consciousness to persons overcome with sleep.

In contradiction to this, one speaks of a lowering of consciousness, indeed of a suspension of consciousness, where a passionate excitement prevents our knowing what we are doing (Ul-rici).‡ From this, follows,

(g) Consciousness = Waking state in every relation free from extreme passion.

(h) Consciousness = Waking state in normal mental activity. The last description leads us already to the third kind of elaboration of concept.

3. As object concept, consciousness is differentiated from the process of knowing in the following expressions:

(a) Consciousness = Content of knowledge or what is known. In this sense, we speak of a moral or religious consciousness, in which of course, we think not of a mere fund of knowledge but of an affectful experience and inner reaction.

(b) Consciousness = Existence in the self perception or in the self consciousness. (Similarly Leibniz ).|| Against this limitation, Dürr justly remarks: “A child which sees houses, trees, animals and people, also has consciousness, although it cannot yet state psychological considerations concerning his perceptions and his other mental life.” ¶

Thus the terminologies intersect one another in a confusing whirl. For etymological and practical reasons, I define consciousness as the existence of any kind of psychic phenomena. Thus I assign the dream and the delirium in which there is often so strong self consciousness and perception to the conscious activities as well as incoherent dream fragments.

It is now not hard for us to mark off the different concepts of the unconscious against those of the conscious.

For our purpose, we distinguish the philosophical definitions, thus the metaphysical of a Schelling, Schopenhauer, v. Hartmann, the theological of an I. H. Fichte and Ulrici, the epis-temological construction of an Ed. v. Hartmann.*

Here, we have only to deal with the unconscious as a psychological concept, that is, such an one as results from a scientific elaboration of psychic phenomena. Its logical foundations are to be sought in psychophysics and pure psychology.

The psychophysical parallelism assumes that psychic processes correspond to excitations of the central nervous system. It denies the view “that the phenomena of consciousness may be derived from objective events or inversely, the objective results from states of consciousness.” † Since among conscious phenomena, connections are missing, that principle can be carried through only under the presupposition of unconscious phenomena. This is especially strikingly the case in the recollection of memories. What has become of the conscious content in the moment of forgetting ? Does it remain in existence as Herbart ‡ assumes or does it only leave behind a disposition to its recurrence? || In any case, however, there existed a complex of conditions beyond consciousness to recall a conscious content.

Or when a minimal stimulus in the central nervous system slowly increases, goes beyond the threshold of consciousness, grows strong and slowly diminishes, should then only the strongest stimuli produce a psychic accompaniment ?

Unconscious processes or those which have become unconscious accompany all perception and cognition, thought and volition. We do not know, for example, without psychological instruction why and in what way we have attained to an idea of space and location in space. We think in concepts, the full extent of which is not present with us.* We decide according to values, the foundation and coacting motives of which in great part escape us. The same is the case with instinct, time, many habits, actions which have become mechanical, mysterious feelings, dreams, etc.†

Experimentally, an unconscious was first proven by the hypnotic investigation. Forel, for example, argued: “Often we are unable to recall a familiar name and just so much the less, the more we seek it. . . . In hypnosis, such interpolations and omissions are intentionally brought about by suggestion and the conscious part of the brain activity is constantly displaced by the temporary results of suggestion executed in unconscious ways. ” ‡ By well conceived hypnotic procedure, the first psychologist outside the Freudian school to demonstrate unconscious functions in normal mental life was Narziss Ach and this in reaction experiments. He formulated the statement : “It is the rule that the effective goal-idea, upon the appearance of the concrete idea of reference, does not appear in consciousness as such but nevertheless exercises a determining influence. . . . These peculiar activities proceeding from the goal-idea, related to the idea of reference, we designate as the determining tendencies. ” || Perhaps many will take ex ception to calling an activity, a tendency. Then he will prefer the definition: “These mental attitudes acting in the unconscious (= non-conscious), proceeding from the significance of the goal-ideas, directed toward the approaching idea of reference, which actuate a spontaneous appearance of the determining idea, we designate as determining tendencies.” * Another pupil of Külpe, K. Koffka, speaks of non-conscious reproduction, and determining tendencies which have an influence on the course of ideas.† Concerning the latter, he remarks: “On one side, determining tendencies may call forth conscious ideas, on the other side, thoughts liberated termining tendencies. If we think of the existence of a tendency before its realization: it is then a thought and this would have to occasion the like tendency to which it owed its origin. This becoming conscious of the tendency thus retroacts on its force, the tendency is thereby strengthened.” ‡ Max Offner, who collects in his study of the memory the results of the experimental psychology, arrives at the same conclusion: “The assumption of these subliminal psychic processes, this unconscious but similar to conscious mental activity, is not to be avoided if we would not consider the conscious psychic events as a mere succession and juxtaposition of experiences but would bring them into an inner relationship as we inwardly associate the strokes of the clock with the hours by the knowledge that they are caused by the action of a mechanism built and acting according to fixed laws which is separated from our perception. Liebmann points out an excellent analogy: “There are dramas, ” he says, “which would remain absolutely unintelligible without what goes on behind the scenes. To these dramas, belongs the human mental life. What takes place on the stage of clear consciousness are only broken fragments and shreds of the personal mental life. It would be incomprehensible, indeed impossible, without what transpires behind the curtain, that is, without unconscious processes. ” “For considering these unconscious processes as something not really unconscious but only as conscious in a limited degree, as carrying a ‘differential’ from consciousness, observation affords us no justification. Only the unjustified presupposition that psychic and conscious are interchangeable terms is the occasion of that empirically unsubstantiated assertion.”* Thus with Ach, the unconscious has obtained entrance to the experimental psychology, and indeed not only as a general explanatory principle but as an empirically demonstrated fact. To this state of affairs, I expressly call the attention of those who still continue to deny the unconscious as an unscientific concept.

The concept of the unconscious limited to the causal relationship of psychic phenomena now receives different interpretations. Many conceive of it as purely physiological (Jodl, Külpe). Proceeding from the supposition that sensations, ideas and emotions are conceivable only as having happened, thus as consciously experienced, they explain the condition of the unconsciousness of these phenomena as a contradiction and consider “conscious” and “psychic” simply as identical. So far then as they admit that this physiological unconscious influences the conscious, they destroy the psychophysical parallelism and thereby saw off the bough on which they are sitting. They deliver themselves over to materialism which they consider as long abandoned and no longer tenable. Moreover, they do not explain the pretended difference between brain processes with and without consciousness and likewise leave the constant interaction between conscious and unconscious incomprehensible (Höffding).†

Again, many consider the unconscious as a “psychic disposition of unknown kind.” This is especially true of Wundt who considers it probable “that the psychological condition of the ideas in the unconscious stand in a similar relation to their conscious purpose as the accompanying physiological processes or conditions hold to one another.” * Höffding speaks cautiously and conservatively of psychic analogues which constitute the unconscious, the nature of which he leaves entirely undetermined, and of which he demands only that they render possible both the origin of conscious phenomena and the relationship between conscious and unconscious activity. He leaves it undecided whether one may speak of an unconscious mental life.† Theodor Lipps, who has broken so many lances in defence of the reality of the unconscious, says: “Since unconscious sensations and ideas are the same regarding real processes as the conscious, so they are subject to the same rule of law. They use a similar mode of action. On the other hand, we may only speak of unconscious sensations and ideas, where psychic activities, that is ultimately where purpose, coming and going of conscious experiences and the constitution of the same, force us to it. Or rather, the maintaining of unconscious sensations and ideas ultimately proves nothing else than that in the psychic life-connection, activities may be encountered and formulated which are similar to the activities of conscious sensations and ideas, without possessing the corresponding conscious content.” ‡ The unconscious, in itself, is an entirely undefined affair ; by an overstepping of the threshold of consciousness and a lowering of the same, a process is not changed from an unconscious into a conscious one, as it were, inverted, but to it, the conscious content comes or from it, disappears (38). There are no unconscious or unnoticed contents. Thus, unconscious sensations and ideas are psychic realities without content (37). Who can conceive of such a thing ? Is not something psychic without content as inconceivable as color without extent ?

Only a few philosophical authors of to-day speak of a psychic existence of the unconscious elements of the mental life which carry and determine all conscious processes. To this number, belong, besides Th. Lipps, Friedrich Paulsen || and Max Offner.

The former explains unconscious ideas as “potential inner perceptions” or better, as not absolutely non-conscious but rather a less-conscious, a conscious perhaps lowered to complete imperceptibility.* In these statements, I miss definitive clearness. Less conscious and completely imperceptibly conscious are as different concepts as conscious and unconscious, for to consciousness belongs, as one may also comprehend the term, perceptibility, existence. Less conscious is no longer purely potential. Thus this defender of unconscious psychic phenomena loses himself in unfathomable contradictions. Only Max Offner, so far as I know, speaks candidly of unconscious psychic phenomena.

Thus, we arrive at this result: modern psychology cannot get along without an unconscious. It frequently attributes to this function the greatest significance for the conscious mental life but it can devel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• Preface
• Translator's Notes
• Contents
• List of Illustration
• I Definition and History of Psychoanalysis
• Part I The Theory of Psychoanalysis
• Part II. Technique of Psychoanalysis
• Index