The psychological characteristics of the human organism

Freud renewed the whole discipline of psychology as he proposed to extend its scope beneath what is conscious, opening up the way for a "depth psychology". Despite his being criticized as unnecessarily obscuring the common understanding of the human mind, Freud is in fact a late figure of the Enlightenment as his whole enterprise is aimed at rationally explaining apparently non-rational human mental activity, such as dreams, parapraxis, straight up to art and religion.

Freud's method to understand mental life is a slow, reflexive and self-critical conceptualization of the empirical material - both normal and pathological. This conceptualization process takes the form of a subtle interplay of questions, hypothesis and self-criticisms. His concepts must always be understood as working assumptions drawn from experience and striving for logical consistency. As regard the empirical material, it derives from two sources. One is the external analysis of the central nervous system (the brain). The second is the subjective experience one has of himself. These sources give rise to two perspectives that simultaneously and permanently run throughout Freud's work : a psychobiological one and a phenomenological one. Freud's concepts must therefore be understood in this dual light.

Freud's basic phenomenological approach to the 'psychical' lays in the subjective facts that consciousness (Cs) is an immediate data that needs no further characterization and is a also highly fugitive state : "what is conscious is conscious only for a moment" (Outline, p.30). Psychical material that is "capable of becoming conscious" constitutes what Freud calls the Preconscious (Pcs). His clinical experience that there are some other psychical materials that cannot easily become conscious, leads him to draw the hypothesis of an Unconscious proper (Ucs). The unconscious in the descriptive sense encompasses whatever is not currently under the focus of consciousness, that is both the Pcs and the Ucs. What Freud refers as Ucs covers two kinds of memories : the earliest ones (not even symbolized and unconscious for this reason) and a set of traumatic memories we have learned to reject systematically from our consciousness, as the only way not be to overwhelmed. Freud sees in this process of repression the "prototype", the constitutive root of the Ucs. This 'dynamic unconscious' is typically made up of infantile memories. Two reasons can be pointed out. One is that we are more likely to be overwhelmed by things when our level of understanding is limited, typically in our early childhood. The second is that, once we have learnt to avoid systematically these traumatic mental constructs, they do not change : they stay in their archaic and infantile state.

On the other hand, the psychobiological approach leads Freud to divide the mental apparatus, into several basic groups of process called 'ñ-systems'. These systems are temporally organized along a reflex like process which links a stimulus to a motor response. The stimulus (external or internal to the body) affects the Perception system (Pcpt.) and goes through the various mnemic systems (Mnem.) that associate it with memories using different rules (contiguity, difference/similarity, logical connection). Before it eventually reaches the Preconscious (Pcs.) and thus becomes available to Cs the stimuli has to go through the Unconscious (Ucs.), where it might undergo all kinds of "vicissitudes", as we shall see later.

As we see, Freud conceptualizes the human mental apparatus in terms of structures that are activated by energies or forces.

This view is paradoxically both passive and dynamic. It is passive insofar as it is based on a mechanistic and inert view of the nervous system relying on Freud's strict materialism. Yet, it is a dynamic view, as it understands mental phenomena as "signs of an interplay of forces in the mind, as a manifestation of purposeful intention working concurrently or in mutual opposition" (Introductory lectures, p.82). Freud's psychology is therefore both a depth and dynamic psychology. This is why he has a methodological preference for analysing pathological cases, as they are typically based on conflicts between these various structures and energies, thus throwing them into relief.

Yet Freud uses a second set of phenomenological terminology. The subjective world is thus divided into id, ego and super-ego . It, I and over-I, are actually more accurate translations. The id is the primitive form of the psychical apparatus. It contains the instincts originating from the somatic organization. From a psycho-biological perspective, it can be understood as the interface between the physiology and the mind, that is the neural sensitivity to internal metabolic processes : the id is the primary psychosomatic system which gives birth to the fundamental drives. Phenomenologically, it is an "unknown and unconscious" part of mental life. It is part of the Ucs.

A portion of the id undergoes a special organization and becomes the ego, which acts as an intermediary between the Id and the external world. This differentiation results from the influence of the latter (through Pcpt and Cs) and the experience of one's own body. From a psychobiological perspective, the ego can be described as fulfilling a wide set of useful functions serving environmental adaptation, coordination and integration. As compared to the primary psychosomatic system, it can be called the secondary system. It is primarily related to the systems Pcs, Cs and Pcpt. Phenomenologically, it is an experience of oneself primarily based the body : the ego is first and foremost a 'body-ego'.

In turn, the ego undergoes a differentiation which gives birth to the super-ego, which is less connected with consciousness. It takes the form of an internalized moral authority that gives permanent expression to the influence of the parents and beyond of the social rules and values the latter carry. Phenomenologically, it is the 'voice of conscience', source of guilt whenever the ego contradicts it. It owes its existence to the long period of dependence of the child towards his parents. Its original function is to repress the Oedipus complex. It does so by eventually taking the father as an internalized model.

It is important not to over emphasize the distinctions between the various agencies. The super ego is one aspect of the ego. The ego is the organized part of the id. It is only in pathological cases, that they truly conflict. Their normal functioning is a harmonious one.

We have now arguably a clear picture of the psychobiological systems and the phenomenological agencies that structure the mental apparatus. It is still to be seen how the latter is energized.

Among these energies, some are motivational and some are merely systemic. System energies do not direct behaviours, but are their condition. The energy of the primary system is subjectively experienced as vitality, that of the secondary system as wakefulness. Motivational energies can take very various forms, but can be ultimately reduced, in Freud's view, down to two basic and irreducible drives, which represent "somatic demands upon the mind". This dual conception simply flows from Freud's conviction that the apparent irrationality of many aspect of mental life can be rationally thought of in terms of conflicts between two opposing motives. Freud changed his mind on the content of these two basic drives. He first distinguished an ego-instinct (self preservation, strive for safety, self-interest) and a sexual instinct. 'Sexual' must be understood in the broader sense, as merely standing for 'quest for pleasure'. Later on he felt that the ego-instinct merely flows from the ego libido (narcissism) whereby we have pleasure from ourselves. He thus altered his conception and opposed a Life instinct (Eros) to a Death instinct (Thanatos). The aim of the first one is pleasure through ego or object libido, producing greater unity. A key characteristic of the libido is its mobility, as it can pass from an object to another. The aim of the second primal drive is mastery, destructiveness, and disunity : aggressiveness is therefore seen as a primary constituent of human motivations. We should mention that through his analysis of anxiety, and the need for security it reveals in the threat of a danger, Freud is sometimes close to bringing back on stage the self-preservative instinct

Motivations are usually a combination of drives. Their aim is a specific activity which satisfies them, their object is what is needed to pursue this activity. What gives pleasure or unpleasure evolves as the human being develops : a specific drive organization characterizes each step of human development. The process of sublimation is one the chief process through which the structure of motivations of a growing human being evolves, as it opens up the way for symbolic transformation of the aims.

After having shed light on the mental structures and the drives which energized them, it remains to be seen how these structures react to these drives.

Freud points out two principles of mental functioning. The primary psychosomatic drive system (also known as the id) obeys the Pleasure-Pain principle which aims at maintaining as low a level as possible the quantity of excitation flowing into it. The id is therefore seen as regularly perturbed by upsurges in the activity of Eros and Thanatos. The Pleasure-Pain principle makes the id, insofar as hallucinatory satisfaction proves insufficient, ask the ego to act in the real world so as to reduce this excitation. The ego in turn, faced with the outer world, has no choice but taking into account its objectives constraints : this is the Reality principle. It is this increased significance of reality that fosters the development of the ego, which ceases to be a pleasure-ego to become a reality-ego, whose secondary system fully develops. Between the id and the ego, stands the super-ego that, just as a watchman, makes sure no 'illicit' drive enters the ego.

What are the general outcomes of drive impulses ?

A satisfied impulse does not raise any problem. A non satisfied drive can undergo the following processes : reversal into its opposite, turning round upon the subject, repression or sublimation.

Sublimation, as we saw, plays a key role in the evolving drive organization of the normal growing human being, as well as in the very possibility of civilization - which must limit Thanatos.

Repression is about keeping something painful out of consciousness. The repression proper only takes place after the initial 'expulsion' - namely the denial of entry into consciousness. The censorship is the ego itself. Freud conceptualized the sense of self as a set of cherished ideals defining what the ego wants to think of itself. When the ego feels that the incoming drive impulse contradicts its ideal self, it pushes it away (anticathect) and maintains it into the Ucs. This repression process gives rise to the dynamic unconscious, which is 'dynamic' in the sense that it contains psychical elements still active and which produce observable effects.

If it is unsuccessful, repression can produce various symptoms, or very frequently anxiety, just as if the ego knew that a danger was approaching. In Freud's view, anxiety is the way the ego manipulate the pleasure/unpleasure principle that governs the id to reinforce the repression by clearly assigning an unpleasant feeling to the repressed.

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