Hello and welcome to our fourth session, Today in the Sea, Fragmented Legacy of Freud, The Dawn of Psycho-Inventiveness by Reza Negarstani. I'm going to pass the mic to Professor Reza. Hello everyone, thank you. So this is the fourth session, yes? I think we are very, very behind. Probably, I mean, I would try to talk to the new center to see if we can have, you know, kind of like a one hour, 30 minute session extra at the end, but I'm not guaranteeing it. I mean, that depends on whether Icaro is, you know, free or, you know, can do it.
But yes, I mean, anyway, we are very behind the schedule. So today I'm going to talk about a little bit, I know that last session I talked about, you know, some of the kind of early, fairly Freud's energetic in relation to the kind of discovery of neuroscientific basis of psychological psychic activities that Phi Psi Omega system. I will today I will actually go talk about these a little bit more and also give you
a little bit of a background on some of the discoveries particularly with regard to neuron theory by Waldir Hartz and Ramon Ikakhal and other people. We know where Freud is coming and how the whole new science of brain or nervous system had a fundamental impact on Freud from early on to his late career.
And yes, that's going to be today's adventure. So first presentation, do we have presentations? Yes, yes, we have. Okay, let's go with the presentations. Do you want to start? Yes, I will start. I'm sharing my screen here. See, so today's text was Freud's Beyond Pleasure Principle, but we thought that it could be a little bit interesting. uh, to talk about one of the Freud, um, background.
So we decided to present, uh, this text from Sabine Spielwein named destruction as the cause of coming into being as one of the texts that will influence Freud's approach to the death drive. Um, so to begin with, I would like to say that, sorry, I have to close something here. The Sabine Spielrein anticipated Freud's hypothesis of death drive in her 1912 text, Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being. And in fact, the problem was first addressed by Spielrein in a lecture entitled On Transformation Given in 1911 to the Psychoanadictive Society.
In any case, the article was published 12 years before Freud's 1920s beyond the pleasure principle. Despite the difference between Spielrein's and Freud's approach, Spielrein's text postulates the existence of a psychic function prior to the principle of pleasure. She starts questioning the reproductive drive or Ford Flensungstrip, the most determinant drive since it not only carries positive but also negative feelings such as pain, anxiety, or disgust. According to Spielreich, quote, negative feelings are related to the destructive component of sexual instinct. Hence, there is a death instinct within the sexual instinct.
Okay. Okay, she will give or she will sustain this idea from some biological, some kind of biological foundation that she will illustrate through three different cases. The third one is that in reproduction, unit cells are destroyed in the process of giving birth to new life. The second is that in lower animals, such as some flies, the animal die after reproduction. And in multicellular beings, a part of the organism is destroyed when the male component merges with the female component, suffering reorganization and transformation and so on.
So I will read this quote. uh destruction and reconstruction which under usual circumstances always accompany each other occur rapidly the organism discharges its sexual products as if it were one of his of its excretions it will be highly unlikely if the individual did not at least surmise through corresponding feelings these internal destructive reconstructive events the joyful feeling of coming to being that is present within the reproductive drive is accompanied by a feeling of resistance, of anxiety or disgust. This does not result from spatial proximity to the ex-secrata or from the
negativity of our realization of sexual activity. The feeling directly corresponds to the destructive components of the sexual instinct. Now let's talk about the relationship between death instinct and the sexual instinct in the psyche. According to Spielrein, the death instinct within the sexual instinct serves to explain some psychological phenomena like neurosis in wartime, sadism, and masochism. But very especially the most or one of the most interesting cases or phenomena is the intense parental fixation. We love the parental resemblance because
of the chance to return to the origin. A state of fusion, what is the origin? A kind of state of fusion with the parents. A state of total indetermination where there is no distinction or difference between I and them or I and the others. When unsatisfied, this parental libido results in incestuous fantasies, the dissolution in the cosmos, the nature, in the air, or nirvana, why not? In any case, there is a negative dimension in sexual instinct, a desire to return to the state of fusion with the parents a desire to destruct oneself to become one with nature there is a desire for self-destruction with it within their sexual instinct so saints sexual
instinct is not monolithic but complex it possesses productive and destructive dimension this means that there is no coming into being or no birth without destruction and death However, Spielreich's approach to that instinct does not necessarily lead to the annihilation of the individual as a whole, or as a whole living being, or organism. Her understanding of the death drive concerns especially the destruction of the self. So let's clarify what is the relationship between the preservation of the species and self-preservation.
When self-preservation means not the preservation of the organism, but the preservation of the ego psyche. So, sexual instinct or the drive to preserve the species, in German, will express itself psychologically in a tendency toward dissolution and assimilation of the psyche or the individual psyche. To be an individual is to be individual, which means that a being can be divided or is actually divided. Following Ernst Mack and Carl Jung, Spielrein's beliefs that the self is merely a momentary grouping of mental sensations, or a combination of many individual parts grouping and fighting each other.
Javier B.A. What we experience so what means this means that what we experience is not precisely our experience, nor even a present experience, but unknown and primitive experience of the species that connects with our present and. So there is an on the one hand, there is an ego psyche, the self, and on the other hand, there is the species psyche or a art psyche. So there is not just an individual unconscious, but a species unconscious too, the unconscious of countless generations. The more we go deeper into our own unconsciousness, the more general and non-individual will it be.
In Spielrein words, our deep psyche is as strange to the self, knowing only its own, the us. In masochism, the species psyche in us considers the self psyche as an object, for example. Hence the pleasure that we, or the we within us, experience. This means that there are two opposite tendencies in us. the species psyche wants to reduce the representation of the self into a typical impersonal representation and the ego psyche defense itself from this dissolution. There is a tendency towards dissolution and assimilation, expressing the drive for the preservation of the species, and a tendency towards differentiation expressed as self-preservation or self-haltung strength.
So the sexual instinct and the dab instinct of the psyche work together to preserve the species and give rise to a tendency towards dissolution and assimilation. as opposite to the tendency towards differentiation, which will be the expression of the self-preservation drive. While the preservation of the species implies destruction and creation, self-preservation aims to inertia, keeping the self on change. So the self-preservation drive in us corresponds to the tendency towards differentiation and to our ability to preserve an externally crystallized particle
of the self or the whole personality of the self. The preservation drive of the species is a drive to procreate and it also express psychically in the dissolution or the tendency towards assimilation, transforming self into us with a new differentiation of the original matter where the love reigns, the ego, the ominous despot dies. So it is impossible or this means that it is impossible to create new life and to evolve if we seek to maintain and preserve the inertia of what is already existing. So the preservation of the species leads to the destruction, dissolution and assimilation of the individual and the self.
because the self-preservation drive is a simple drive, which only consists of a positive side. Whereas the drive for- I'm sorry, I have to ask you to conclude your presentation. Well, the drive for the preservation of the species, which must dissolve all to create the new has both a positive and a negative component. I would like to finish my presentation just pointing, let's see, here. So she basically defends that the ego psyche, including the unconscious is guided by emotions
that are deeper and not part of our emotional reaction to the demands shaped by them. So the eco-psyche can only desire pleasure, but the species psyche reveals our more primitive desires for destruction and death. Eco-psyche is ruled by pleasure principle. The species psyche is beyond it. The species psyche can feel pleasure and desire pain and suffering. We experience joy in the soul, in the dissolution and the assimilation we experience when we are dissolving into the otherness. So there is a deeper psyche within me that operates without taking into account the principle of pleasure.
And I just would like to finish reading this phrase, or this quote, pleasure is simply the affirmative reaction of the self to these original demands of the core. And we can achieve pleasure directly from the unpleasant and pleasure from pain, which taking in itself is heavily loaded with displeasure. Our pain harms the individual against which our self-preservation instinct opposes. Therefore, at our core, there is something that however paradoxical it may see, a priori seeks this self-harming since the self reacts to it with pleasure. The desire for self-harm, the elation of the pain is however completely incomprehensible
if we only consider the life of the soul. So thank you. And Benito is going to continue with the presentation. Thank you very much, Diego. Thank you very much. Okay, let's, and then I will, then we'll open it to the question and answers. Let's go with the next presentation. Okay. Just one minute. jesus christ uh diego can you can you share the screen for me i'm having some problems
Thank you very much. So my presentation is about... My apologies, would you be able to put it on? Yes, because the fonts are a little bit small, full screen. Yes, that's better. Thank you. Okay, so my presentation is about the sort of depersonalization which I encountered in the in sabina's text um so some things overlap with diego's presentation but we come to different conclusions so i opened it with this quote which is in the first few pages and it's why does this most powerful drive the reproductive drive in addition to the expected
positive feelings harbors negative feelings such as anxiety and disgust so next slide thank you so sabina spierrein describes libido as a double as a double bind mechanism on one hand it's a power that beautifies everything but on the other has the tendency to destroy everything spierrein quotes this passage from new transformation and and symbols of libido which is a to be fruitful equal self-destruction for with the rise of the next generation the previous one has passed in its high point in this way our descendants become our most dangerous enemies whom we cannot overcome since they will not leave us and take the power from our
unfiebled hands the fear of one's heroic destiny is completely comprehensible since there is something unpredictable in it. So this relates with the things that were saying Diego before, with there's no creation without destruction, that it's a double-blind machine which relates to each other and implies one another. So there's only one force that results in two different consequences which don't seem to be opposite in Speer-Rein's work. The destruction of the integrity of the object produces novelty and pleasure. And she says, during the act of conception, a union of the female and the male cell takes place.
In this process, the unity of each cell is destroyed and from the product of this destruction, new life originates. Some primitive organisms, e.g. mayfly, lose their own lives and die off after they produce a new generation. For these organisms, the act of creation simultaneously means that they are destroying themselves. This destruction in and of itself is most devastating for the living being. However, if this self-destruction is placed in the service of the new creation, then the individual yearns for it in higher organisms which do not do not only consist of one cell obviously not the whole individual is destroyed during the sexual act yet the sex cells
which disappear in their union are not just in different elements to the organisms rather they are intimately connected with the entire life of the individual they contain in the concentrate in the concentrate inform the entire um procreator who continuously influences the development and vice versa whose development um they continuously influence um these most important substances are destroyed during fertilization so um this is the mechanism i was talking about is the um a force with two different consequences and it's a little bit different with um what freud says about death drive and compassion to to repeat uh wait i'm
gonna read it uh freud on the other hand describes a different scenario in which there are two types of impulses in an eternal fight to prevail. One constantly trying to bring everything to the degree zero of energy, to the state of inertia, the other trying to resist and renovate life. This impulse works through a fundamental mechanism, the compulsion to repeat unpleasurable events that essentially contradicts the organism's tendency to seek pleasure. This compulsion is something that seems more primitive, more elementary, more instinctual than the pleasure principle, which it overrides. It's a demonic compulsion that tries to restore the earliest state of things
that is non-existent. We can see this with a few examples that Freud makes in Beyond Pleasure principle like the dreams in which the patient is brought back to its traumatic traumatic memory instead of its healthy past or also another hypothesis Freud makes is the one with the fourth da game of his grandson in this movement of fourth and da here meant the the training the the grandson's training to master the the exp the traumatic experience of loss
Freud talks about the loss of his mother. In Inshpiran's destruction as the cause of coming into being, she describes Jung's autonomous complex. We do not have an unbided ego, but rather several complexes that fight for supremacy. These complexes are no less objects than those outside of our psyche. A patient was trippant and during anesthesia gradually lost ego consciousness and therefore the sensation of pain. Yet he still perceived impressions from the external world to such a degree that he exclaimed common and chaseling of his call.
This shows that he was aware of his call, but as an object, apparently a room separate from the ego. Thus the individual parts of the personality are objectified. So this desire for destruction that Spielreich talks about is a desire for destruction and to objectify one's own psyche. And he talks about also the whole body, like in this example. My patient reports that during anesthesia, when she no longer felt the pain caused by surgery,
she saw instead of herself wounded soldiers from whom she felt pity. We also find this in the soothing effects of the children's rhyme, where the dog or the cat, etc., but not the child herself experiences the pain. Instead of seeing her own injured little finger, the child sees it at someone else's. Instead of my finger, we see the more general image of any finger. So in a depersonalization, which we can see a destruction of a shattering of the ego, which um yeah thank you um a shutter of one's own body uh is i need to start to but you have
to try to conclude the topic yeah yeah it's uh i think the last line um so these inputs to shutter one's own bodies the focus right here uh to abandon everything is slowly seeking connections with external objects that bear some sort of resemblance with the initial complex. We seek that which resembles us, parents, ancestors, and in which a small part of our ego, a particle, can dissolve because the solution in the similar is not abruptly destructive, but happens unnoticed. Yet what does this solution mean to the ego particle, if not death? of course it reappears in a new and perhaps more beautiful form however it is not the same ego particle but something different that has come about at the expense of this particle similarly
a tree sprouting from seed is the same as as but not identical with every other tree with respect to these pieces in fact it is a matter of preference whether we want to see emphasized in the new product created at the expense of the old its continued existence or the disappearance of his former life the same applies to pleasure and displeasure in the context of the dissolution of the whole ego complex and i want to end with this this quotation which is however the death image associated with the incest which the instance which does not want to say i am dying because i do not want to commit the sin but rather i am dead which means i have attained the regression
to the parent with whom I become one. The rather pronounced wish of destruction corresponds to the rather strong wish of becoming in the case of incestuous love, which is less differentiated. Thank you. Thank you very much, Benito. Thank you. I will go very briefly and some background on this and then I will open it to you guys ask questions or discuss it and then for like 10 minutes and then we're going to start our seminar for today. So it's actually quite interesting that Freud when... I think we have one more. Oh another one? Yes.
Oh okay. Let's go. I'll be very quick. Don't worry. don't worry thank you okay i will share my screen wait no i guess i have to read it just like that it's okay sure okay in 1932 12 years after under Freud's publication of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Wilhelm Reich wrote in his text Character Analysis, specifically in the Masochist Character chapter, an argumentation against the dead-drive concept and the differentiation made by Freud between eros and thanatos instincts.
He doesn't take too much of these terms into account, but for Reich, the desire to suffer comes from the exterior world, the frustrant society. But it is about sex and libido. What he's trying to expose is that this is a matter of life, not death. To him, the masochist is a neurotic who seeks love and affection as a way to get rid of the anguish and displeasure, not a way to get more of it. Regarding the erogenous physical pain in the masochist's character, Wright says it is a way of looking for contact, to feel the skin warm and not pain itself. The pain is an additional property in this process, but not a central part. The important thing is to feel the contact with another human which is related, as yours right, with the pleasure caused by the heat in the blood vessels. In this sense, the displeasure is not the pain, but the lack of human contact,
companionship, punishment is equal to protection. The real displeasure and the real fear in that is the abandonment of the object of love or lust. As the popular phrase says in Spanish, pégame pero no me dejes, hit me but don't leave me. Although these hypotheses are based on the personal history and a specific case of a masochist patient, what Reich is trying to demonstrate is that the origin of this neurosis is located in the patriarchy structure of the whole society. Of course, this more political perception was taken by Freud and the rest of the psychoanalytic elite those days more as a propaganda text for the communist party. That's why the publication of character analysis in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis was accompanied by an extensive
texts excusing the political notions expressing therein as not being part of the association, as well as a counter-arguing what Wright say. Going back to Freud, his text, the pressure principle, that text arcs against Fechner's principle of the tendency towards stability, saying that it's not as natural as Fechner says because he wants to introduce us to the thanatos instinct but if one's paying attention to a masochist person an emotional masochist person or a physical one we will see that feeling humiliated and being under pain is their stability the well-known as Reich says in his essay the punishment is a relief because what the masochist is really fearing in their imagination is even worse for them than the actual masochist
ritual then they can feel stable and secure while experiencing a real situation which is which is not as bad as the deepest fear. Masochist, this is a quote from Reich, masochist self-punishment is not execution of the feared punishment, but a more benign substitute. It represents a specific mode of defense against punishment and anguish. So in the same essay, but in another chapter, The Emotional Plague, Reich talks about an epidemic of troubled minds, troubled minds as a symptom in the whole society, which leads us to the criminality and fascist. It's important to remark that the character analysis was written before his work, The Mass Ecology of Fascists. Nowadays, this diagnosis is more necessary than ever.
And for him, it's not about our inner and the drive. It's not about a tendency to the thanatos, but a poorly expressed eros that also impedes our desires of freedom and revolution. And that's it. Very brief. Superb, superb. Excellent. Excellent, Edna. Thank you very much. So, yes, so with regard to Spielrein and Freud, when, I mean, probably some of you know that already,
that Freud was somehow adamant, wasn't adamant really, was kind of hesitant about Spielrein pursuing psychoanalysis or psychology, and then he was hesitant about the publication of her work because he, on two grounds, one that her account of destruction was, he thought
that it's rather crude and is more on the Freudian side, where basically the ideas of drive and instinct are being conflated. And two, on the ground, on a more personal level, insofar as Spielrein was a chronic patient with signs of hysteria and self-harm, he thought that a person like that, just really coming fresh out of the hospital, doesn't have enough detachment,
sufficient detachment, to investigate such a topic. So Freud was very hesitant about these kinds of notions. From the Freud side, I would say that for Freud, As I have mentioned this, even though in translation, sometimes these two terms are conflated, instinct, which of erotic nature, of eros, and drive, or all drives, which are of a death drive nature, are two different sorts of concepts. And that drive does not actually manifest in its pure form, or even consciousness,
unconsciousness doesn't manifest in its pure form in what you might call to be life-preserving activities in the guise of self-harm or self-mutilation of the self. Freud makes this quite clear from get-go that death drive is mute. By all accounts, it's a mute. It's something does not register on anything. It is when death drive or drives, subcategories of death drive,
parasitize and become constituents of eros or instinct, then we can talk about self-harm. But self-harm itself is not a register of death drive. it is essentially as i said that drive by itself is mute it doesn't have any sort of expression it is for it to be expressible it ought to be plugged into the basically uh instinct right to eros. And then, yes, so self-harm for Freud is not a register of death drive, but
essentially an instinct, an eros, a life force that has been parasitized by constituents of the unconscious and that drive. And for Freud, the unconscious comes in the passive sense. You know, when we are talking like Edward von Hartmann talks about unconscious as a kind of pure unconscious, that's a passive. But also the unconscious has its own dynamic processes. And these dynamic processes are capable of, you know, penetrating uh you know uh basically life instincts uh and these are basically what we are when we
are talking about self-arm we are talking about these dynamic manifestation dynamic manifestations of of the unconscious and death drive that find an expression uh by way of being smuggled through life instincts. So that's one. Another one is the idea of, I mean, there are actually very good points in Spirling's idea of the self-dissolution. You can think about the dissolution of self
in a retroactive manner and a forward manner. The retro movement would be, you know, like what she calls, you know, kind of like incest or this source of stuff, that basically you become one with the parents and dissolution into the previous state of affairs or dissolution into the posterior state of affairs, which would be the lineage, children and progenies. But to the extent that, and she of course made it clear that this sort of dissolution
is already not, you don't need to always refer it either retroactively to the family or in forward manner to the progenies, but you can actually see that in so far as ego is a kind of like a network, an assemblage of complexes, you can see this also within the structure of ego itself. This is I think a very excellent point. But yes, Freud, for Freud, these sort of dissolutions of self do not
signify death drive directly. In fact, they don't signify death drive in any sort of significant way, but rather the parasitization of life instincts. And that's basically the root of what you might call to be maladies of the psyche. Maladies of the psyche are about endangerment and deterioration of life instincts. the re another way that freud also talks about this he talks about abnormal psychic behaviors
in terms of qualities they are qualitative in nature right so any sort of so essentially the psychoanalyst works only with qualities because qualities are perceptual right and they can be analyzed, it can be interpreted. So qualities, that is the most important thing. And Freud thinks that all abnormal behaviors are qualitative by nature. Why? Precisely because only life instincts have qualities, have perceptual qualities, and psychic qualities, or sexual qualities, right? Death drive is not a quality for Freud. Death drive can only be talked about
in quantitative terms. That's actually an important distinction that Freud makes, that anything that we attach the adjective qualitative to it is an expression of life instincts and not of death drive. So, opening to questions and answers. And yes, Erdnacht, I mean, I didn't want to bring Wilhelm Reich into the fold, but yes, that was a very great, I mean, what was it? I mean, those of you who are not familiar with Wilhelm Reich,
you know, all of his books are very great, actually. Listen, Little Man, and the Psychology of fascism. Of course, if you don't want to want to skip the whole idea of revolution, masochism, fascism, just skip reading the book, watch a sweet movie by Duzal Makabev, which is influenced by Reich's idea of fascism, that revolution cannibalizes its own children, and that sort of stuff in this sort of highly Freudian, Reikian kind of atmosphere of thinking. There's a Maccabi of sweet movie. I mean, I know that some of you probably have seen it,
but that's, yes, but that's just like, you know, that this kind of connection between a revolution revolution and fascism and kind of discharge of psychic energies. Okay, so yes, questions for the presentations. So we have Robby. Oh, yeah. Hi, I'm on a bus right now. So let me know if you can't hear me. But yeah, I was just going to ask. It seems like when I was, it's been a long time since I've read the Spielrand paper,
but I remember thinking that she bases a lot of her thinking in these kinds of like vitalistic or metaphysical sort of reasoning is about like the nature of destruction and creation in general. Yes, very true. I was wondering, did you speak on that? Also, do you think there's any significance to the fact that her formulation of the death drive in contrast to Freud's was as a unitary thing, like something that's unified with reproductive drive as opposed to a separate entity? Like, is there some significance to the fact that she situated them together?
I think, yes. As you implied, the reason that she sees them as a kind of a unified whole is precisely because she is still, you know, she hasn't gone through Freud's maturation by way of energetics. to see, to basically kind of dissociate life instincts and drives from one another, but also giving drives a dynamic expression that can impinge upon life instincts, right? But nevertheless, keeping them as two separate categories. not having gone through that energetic process of thinking, she's obviously more in tune
with early influences of Freud, which is Schopenhauer and the natural philosophy of the 19th century. And that's, yes, within that sort of framework, whether I wouldn't call it a vitalist, but definitely natural philosophy and the Chopin-Hawarian, you know, will and representation sort of stuff, which is the classic ideas of the unconscious and the will to live is already the will to dissolve, the will to murder. Within that framework, yes, it naturally comes that they are coming as a the unified hope. But that's precisely what Freud wanted to avoid
after the projects of scientific psychology, because that would render psychology as a category of pure metaphysics of life. That wouldn't give it a kind of same level of science. So you have to kind of decant those natural philosophy and kind of Schopenhauerian views through, you know, discoveries of energetics and stuff, which makes it impossible for them to be on the same, basically, completely unified.
Yeah, I was going to say, I actually enjoyed this paper a lot. her ideas, but it definitely seemed like she was attempting something different than what Freud was trying to do, and maybe more, like you said, more in the line of like natural philosophy. I think that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Yes. I mean, definitely, I highly suggest that this sort of ideas were not actually, you know, self-preservation as a kind of, you know, as another, as basically self-dissolution or in the guise of self-dissolution, in the guise of self-preservation,
was not actually Spielrein's, you know, innovation. It was already there, particularly in the pessimistic brand of psychology that extended from Schopenhauer to von Hartmann, Eduardo von Hartmann. Von Hartmann is very famous for this. I just had a really basic question. I think you've kind of maybe just answered it in a certain way, but I was just really curious. I mean, so if the unconscious and the death drive are only expressible or only made manifest through this kind of parasite behavior on the instinct, in what way is Freud, I guess, going to account for them
as something that has a latent existence independently of this expression? But I guess maybe that's what you were just talking about. I mean, for him, this is something that, again, when Hartman talks about that any reference, in fact, to the unconscious, by definition is a metaphysical thesis. So Freud has to basically kind of entertain this sort of metaphysical idea, even though he's trying to do the scientific work. So for him, the passive side of the unconscious, which is pure unconscious, would be completely a metaphysical thesis.
that he actually Freud, in some of his letters to Frenzy, and I think Flies as well, he mentions this that all sciences work with metaphysical assumptions, right? But it is actually important to take account of this metaphysical assumption rather than just simply working off of it. So it is that consciousness of the assumption, the metaphysical assumption of the unconscious is actually for him is part of the scientific project. Just like when a scientist works and not aware of the metaphysical assumptions that are in a,
you know uh constraining uh a certain scientific theory so for for it it's important to take that into account but the dynamic expressions of the unconscious which are being expressed within and through life instincts those are they can be studied by way of what you might call to be the energetic, interpretive sides of psychoanalysis, according to Freud, at least. But doesn't Freud go a step beyond just acknowledging that? And the dynamics are qualitative, precisely because they are channeled through life instincts.
See, and this is fine, the qualitative part of it is fine, but then, you know, I mean, even if Freud is going to sort of acknowledge the necessity of having certain metaphysical presuppositions at the point where he names them the death drive, isn't that like going beyond just admitting the kind of necessity and actually giving it a kind of semantification? Yes, he does. Yes, of course he does. Of course he does. But again, death drive for him is not merely, as I said at the end of last session to Armand, that a death drive for him is no longer this sort of, at least after Beyond Pleasure Principle, is no longer this sort of vague idea of dissolution, self-dissolution, will to dissolve, but rather is being expressed specifically
by way of, you know, laws of thermodynamics in terms of quantities, essentially. So, yes, I mean, then we can say that whether laws of thermodynamics are metaphysics or not, that would be a different sort of discussion. But he doesn't really that, as I said, he mitigates the metaphysical baggage of the unconscious and death drive by describing them in energetic sense, by way of thermodynamics. That is not exactly the Schopenhauerian metaphysics of the unconscious or the will.
Okay, thanks. That clarifies what I have to ask. Yes, John. Maybe in this question already got up at this, but can you talk more about the distinction between qualitative and quantitative here. I've been thinking a lot about your argument in the first session that part of what thermodynamics did and energetics did for Freud is allow him to think about the relationship between organic and inorganic and conscious and unconscious as a continuum. But once we introduce qualitative elements into play, that represents some kind of break in the continuum, right?
So how do we think about, so is that an example of what Inda's talking about as semantification, or can you maintain the continuum but also give some kind of ontological status to these qualitative expressions? Yes, I think so. I mean, look, the idea of the distinction, at least in Freud, the distinction between qualitative and quantitative is not very clear. your best bet is his theory of sublimation and his theory of his book on ego and id where qualitative
for Freud at least in the most basic sense is that which is registerable by perceptual systems essentially being of the conscious, sensory conscious nature, sensory perceptual conscious nature. Whereas quantities are not being registered by, you know, perceptual sensory consciousness. They are kind of, you know, at the backdrop. They are undergirding these qualitative changes, right? but for example in the theories of sublimation you know when we are talking about a change of
qualities in the sense that libido is being sublimated in some sort of cultural you know essentially endeavors. So sublimation for Freud is the pinnacle of qualitative nature of psychic activities, instincts, so to speak. Not general instincts, because you see here, there is another sort of nitty-gritty bit of details that needs to be accounted for. Libido or sexual energy for Freud is a special sort of energy, qualitative energy, right?
And it cannot be reduced to generalized essentially neuropsychological energies. This is what Jung does. Jung essentially understand libido in terms of generalized psychological energies, right, instincts, and for it is quite critical about that, and he actually says something that Jung, one of the greatest you know, flaws of Jung is that he has watered down my idea of libido to this sort of generalized, vague understanding. No, libido is being distinguished by its specific qualitative nature,
precisely because it works not only with the omega systems, omega systems, remember, they were part of the perceptual systems, but also it has an inward, so perceptual systems, when we are talking about general perceptual systems or those sort of qualitative energies, some of them can come from outside, right? objective world but freud for freud sexual energies or libido is not actually coming from the outside so it is different from the certain sort of uh you know uh life energies that are basically uh
within the ambit of generalized perceptual systems omega systems uh precisely because libido has an internal structure. It's not being received from the outside, but it's essentially generated within the organism itself. So it's kind of like an inward energy. It's both endogenous, meaning that its source is inside and also is inward, rather than the regular perceptual qualitative energies, which are exogenous and inward.
So, and then this libido, precisely because that gives it this qualitative, that endogenous inwardness gives it this specific quality, which Freud is quite vague about how he detects that and where it's actually coming from. And Freud actually talks about it later in his life that he's not convinced that much about his earlier thesis about the nature of libido. But yes, precisely because of this specific qualitative nature, it can be sublimated. It can be sublimated to different qualitative sort of energies. So it's just like, you know, it's very much like the idea of complexification that, you know,
when complexity usually arises when constraints have been internalized, and then it's internalization and entrenchment of constraints leads to canalization of certain sorts of qualitative energy from there. And this internalization of constraints and their entrenchment in a dynamic way is in fact libido. And libido is, Freud thinks, the source of higher cultural activities, but in a sublimated form. meaning that in a different qualitative register.
And yes, that also, so to answer your question, that also creates what you might call to be in a very vulgar sense, nature, culture continuum. but with not gaps, but with what you might call to be networks of transitions. right it kind of like freud has this kind of metaphor uh early on uh that he compares uh the sort of uh transition from one qualitative register to another qualitative register to uh
essentially the structure of the nervous system uh neuron theory which i'm going to talk about where basically cells or neurons are distinct from one another, right? There is no continuity in the nervous system, but there is contiguity because of the nature of the neurons and how they work. And he kind of thinks about this sort of of nature-nurture continuity in terms of kind of like as a metaphor of the Ramon Kakhalyan idea of neurons, how neurons interact with one another without actually being truly fused
together. Continuity does not require complete fusion of its constituents, but rather contiguity between connections. And to go back then to Inde's question, that makes the temptation of a kind of formalism or semanticization really apparent. Because since the continuum is so difficult, if not impossible, to conceptually think and map entirely, but the continuum only expresses through the complexification produced through the internalization of external constraint, i.e. social law, then if you can figure out social law, the temptation then is to abstract that and treat that as a domain of its own. And then that goes in one
direction that goes to Lacan and the other direction that goes to like Jung. Yes, yes, absolutely. And also from even from the basic methodological perspective, this sort of reformulating continuity in terms of contiguity, right, allows Freud to be able to understand this sort of transitions from quantity to quality and qualitative register to another qualitative register in terms of, you know, kind of a multi-level dynamics that at each level, a psychoanalyst or a psychologist can cut at the joints and make a clear-cut formalization about this domain in connection
with other domains. As you said, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to point to a specific region or domain of whether of ontological nature or of behavior activity nature within the continuum within a kind of purely fused continuum and when we're talking about this internalization of constraints or social law Is this just Freud's reality principle? Yes, yes. It's an expression of it. Yes, yes. So more questions or we are going to have a small brief break and then come back.
Thank you. any questions before we start can i make a just brief follow-up comment absolutely and so in the therapeutic context once you've formalized or semanticized psychoanalysis it means the therapist always
knows the answer in advance it's going to be oedipus or it's going to be whatever the dominant social law is that's internalized but by insisting on the primary of energetics what Freud is doing in the therapeutic context is continuously leaving the door open for surprise in the encounter between the therapist and the patient. In the transference writings, Freud says it is not enough to know the map that energies follow. We also have to know what energies are traveling along that map. And those energies are ultimately about the patient's history and are located in a specific domain and experience of the continuum. So the semantic
versus the energetic formulation of the project of psychoanalysis also comes back to a fundamentally different understanding of what the efficacy of the relational work between the therapist and and patient is. Yes, yes, definitely. So, and there is another way to formulate this, that the relevance, I mean, I'm still, so from my perspective, I'm not still convinced how much Freud in, at least in the psychoanalytic practice, telepathic practice, managed to integrate the
energetic doctrine with the actual practice, right? But nevertheless, as a matter of theoretical framework, I think it's actually, as you said, it's very quite, you know, commendable. And another way to think about this is that later on, I think, I can't remember which text It is, there is this, so for, so essentially we want to know how the energetic can be interpreted as I've said, by the psychoanalyst, right?
During the interaction, the psychoanalytic procedure. And Freud thinks that, that's the only way that you can actually talk about this is by way of understanding a speech and word as in terms of the energetic side of it, right? So this is what Freud says in 1923. He says, all perceptions which received from without sense perceptions and from within sensations and feelings
are sees from the start sees means that they are part of consciousness for something to be consciousness it ought to be experienced as qualitative as i said now furthermore he So word and thing presentations, this dyad of word and thing that is being presented later on in Freud's work are directly compared and actually being used in lieu of quality and quantity.
So word essentially have a qualitative nature in terms of the energetics. whereas the thing that is being represented is quantitative and the only access of the psychoanalyst the quantitative undergirding of these qualitative changes is through speech the interactions um this is where comparing transference to to your analysis of the dream is really useful. So you talked about the dream is putting the ego on kind of sleep mode to allow the dynamic elements, underlying dynamic elements to become visual. Yes. That's what transference
does in a way. Yes. Transferring the super ego or a section of the ego onto the therapist. It allows elements of the, the energetics to emerge through disruption of speech that otherwise would remain hidden. So to the extent that there is an integration of energetics into therapeutic practice, I do think it's around one transference and two, the belief that it's precisely in the disruption of the semantic registers of speech, either through slips or failing to remember or all of the different disruptions that Freud catalogs, that those gaps are in where we see the...
Yes. Another, you know that I will talk about this dream for Freud is essentially a hallucination, nothing but a hallucination. Dream is hallucination. So there is a reason that the book is called the interpretation of dreams, right? Not dreams. it's not interested about dreams it's about interested about interpretation of dreams the first interpretation takes place by the by the patient itself him or her uh recounting the dream right and that gives that brings it from the status of the hallucin pure hallucination to the realm of as you said by way of slips and all sorts of other things the realm of
interpretation and then psychoanalysis sees you know combines the interpretive mode and the hallucinatory mode together to see essentially to kind of bridge uh the various qualitative fluctuations together but also interpret a certain sort of quantitative uh you know things underneath what is actually happening. But of course, this quantitative already have been categorized, this quantitative realm have been categorized in terms of pathologies, right? Because of the science, we saw the hysteria, hallucination, delusion, they all have, they are all related to certain sort of
quantitative disturbances at their base. It's just that, so the psychologist doesn't need to give an account of these quantitative disturbances because they have already been categorized in terms of qualitative psychic events for certain sort of quantitative excitations of this or certain sort of quantitative tensions that would be this and so on and so forth. And that's why the anomalous status of psychosis is so important, because psychosis doesn't fit within that typology. And Freud famously says the psychotic is unpsychoanalytical or unpsychoanalyzable.
So, yes, yes, of course, yes. So, let me start with, give me a kind of, we want to essentially introduce this new science of brains and neuron theory, which is upon which Freud constructs his project, first in the project of scientific psychology and then later on in Ego and Id and Interpretation of Dreams and his later works as well, to see why Freud is actually
interested in this and what are his contributions and how certain sort of what you might call to be parts of this new science of brain become key theoretical frameworks for developments of theories of trauma, learning, sublimation, so on and so forth. I don't know how to start with this, but I'll just try to kind of like make it
a better background story. There are a couple of things that we need to, terms that we need to know. One, I mean, probably all of you know what a neuron is, what an axon is, what a synapse is, or what other sorts of basic vocabularies of neuroscience not today's neuroscience, all neuroscience was. I assume basic familiarity here. Another concept
that most probably you don't know and something that is a new concept, but nevertheless Freud actually introduces an equivalence of this concept based on early findings in neuroscience or neuropsychology and becomes a foundation for Freud's ideas of trauma and psychic pathologies. This concept is called LTP in today's vocabulary.
it's called long-term potentiation so what is long-term potentiation long-term potentiation is increase in the efficacy of basically synoptic connections following high frequency stimulation of afferent fibers. So when we are talking about neuron fibers, we have two terms efferent efferent means that signals are being sent from nervous system
to locomotory you know parts of the body like muscles so it's outwards and afferent is the reverse afferent as in contrast to efferent, efferent meaning that signals are coming, registered by the sensory organs and are being sent to the nervous system. So they are inward. So long-term potentiation is defined by its operation as a long-lasting increase in synoptic efficacy, namely connections,
following high frequency stimulation of aferent fibers. A good example of this would be the basic canonical experiment that has been done with mice, where they put a mouse in a murky water. And there is a slope that comes, it's hidden though, it's because it's murky. there's a slope that extends from the basically the solid surface to the pool, the bottom of the pool. And the mouse eventually navigates in this murky pool of water and finds the surface, the slope, and gets out of the water.
and then you repeat this with the mouse uh frequently so high frequency repetition and then it starts to learn it learn it and uh it can instantly even if you change the you know the position of the slope that goes into the water it takes the mouse far shorter time to find it and you know that's a certain process of learning so l ltp is the idea of long-term potentiation was already beginning to form in the 50s. I mean the basis of these concepts began to,
in the canon of neuroscience, began to form in the 50s by way of Hebbian learning, you know, the idea of connectionism and neuroplasticity of the nervous system. And you know that it's actually quite interesting that Hebb also was a reader of Freud. And in the 50s, actually, the project for scientific psychoanalysis was published for the first time. So, and so LTP is a central concept to neuropsychological theory, which is the development of
Waldir-Hart's neuron theory. I'm going to introduce a little bit about this neuropsychological theory and go to the background and then after going to the background kind of discussing a little bit of this kind of technical stuff then we get back again to Freud and see what Freud is up to early on with similar concepts. So a neuropsychological theory is the idea that a neural substrate of some psychological functions lies on a durable increase in the effectiveness of synaptic communication between
neurons. This contemporary concept was expressed when the plastic properties of certain synopsis were far from being satisfactory, elucidated. Hebb or Hebb's learning, Hebb connectionist model of synopsis or Hebb's learning rule are currently the terms used to refer to such properties. But the work of Hebb was directly a development, an enhancement of works done in the 19th century
by Ramon Icahal and Camilo Golgi. Freud also was completely aware of both Cajal's work and Golgi's work on these. He actually refers to them in projects of scientific psychology. So Golgi, in 1873, he invented a method of coloring nervous tissue that allowed for a
microscopic visualization of single neurons, you know, individual neurons, with its principal processes which are dendrites and axon. Cajal was a neuroscientist and a histologist, became interested in this method of coloring nervous tissues that Golgi had already conducted and came up with a new discovery that is the
foundation of neuroscience as we speak. Cahal, using the coloring method, demonstrated for the first time that neurons of the central nervous systems were not actually fused together. But rather, they were constituted a complex network of separate individual cells or neurons, were only connected with one another at the level of specific zones called synapses. These
are the points of connections. So in a sense, Cajal was also responsible for giving rise to the connectionist image or theory of brain. Cajal showed that at the level of these regions of interactions, a cleft kept the different neurons separated. Then, through studying the structure of the nerve cells and their contacts with other
cells, he succeeded in determining two important principles which kind of proved essential for the elaboration of this theory of neurons. the word theory of neurons, concept of or the name theory of neurons, in fact the idea of neuron, name neuron, wasn't actually available at the time of Cahal. It was, the word was coined by Wilhelm von Waldreier-Hartz was a German scientist.
And he used, you know, these findings of Cahal into what he might call to be neuron theory, which then transferred by Sigmund Exner, who was teacher of Freud to Freud. So this is the kind of like a lineage of the transference of this ideas to Freud directly from Cajal to Waldir-Hartz to Freud's teacher and then Freud.
So the first principle of neuron theory as was formulated first by Cajal and then by Waldir-Hartz Let me spell his name. Kahal is this, and then Aldair. The first principle of this was dynamic polarization, which says that nervous messages follow a mandatory direction in every neuron,
one that goes from the receiving zone, cell body and dendrites, to that of transmission, axon, and terminates at the level of the synoptic button. The synoptic button is an anatomical continuity with the axon, even though it may lie far from the cell body. And it terminates at the receiving zone of another neuron. The second principle of this neuron theory was the specificity of connections, which says that nerve cells do not connect randomly, but that they establish quite precise
specialized synoptic contacts only with certain target cells and not with others. Now, Freud, in Project of Scientific Psychology, makes a clear reference to these, as I said, to these theories. And the second chapter of that is actually called Theory of Neurons, after Waldir Hertz principle.
He says, an essential element of this new knowledge is that the nervous system consists of distinct neurons, which are in contact among themselves by means of an extraneous substance, and one terminates in the other as in parts of extraneous tissue, in which certain lines of conduction are predetermined in as much as they receive excitation through the continuation of the cells or dendrites and replace it through the axon.
He furthermore says, and this is by the way, back then, this was called the hypothesis of a current. of a current, which states that quantity that is directed from the cellular ramifications or prolongations, dendrites, toward the axon. However, precisely because of the rudimentary nature of this theory, Freud couldn't know
how the current essentially moves around and reaching pre-synoptic button was able to transfer the excitation to the post-synoptic neuron. It was necessary, in fact, for the work of Paul Ehrlich and John Langley to appear during the early decades of the 20th century in order to understand that synoptic transmission occurred chemically. which is kind of like the channels on neurons that allow for this sort of selective transmission
of currents. These are essentially these channels are proteins on the membrane of neurons, which selectively transferred the currents from one neuron to another new one, sort of, you know, ionic principles, you know, positive, negative. But nevertheless, as we are going to talk about, his Phi Psi Omega systems already refer to something called
permeable and impermeable neurons. In the sense that permeable neurons have a selective capacity to connect with other specific neurons. By way of summation, then they add to the quantity of the current or the signal being sent. So this essentially meant that the action potential of the presynoptic neuron, once it was propagated to the synoptic button stimulated the release in the extracellular space of particular chemical
substances, which are today called neurotransmitters, that by spreading and binding to specific receptors caused excitement on the post-synoptic neuron. So excitation here is what you might call to be the results of summation of permeable neural activities. Recurrence are reinforcing one another being canalized, and then being received at the other end in terms of excitation.
So the idea of excitation in Freud is fundamentally very different from excitation in earlier works of Feschner and other people, precisely because it is based on a synaptic connectivity. it's a connection is based on a connectionist model of the nervous system because only in connections in connectivity not random connectivity in a specialized connectivity that the receiving neuron would be or synoptic neurons would be able to be excited by the summation of currents coming from semi-permeable or selective neurons.
So In the third chapter of the project of scientific psychology, Freud makes two distinct, make a distinction between two different neural populations in the nervous system on the base of the characteristics of the synopsis. And synopsis, he calls them contact barriers, by means of which they connect. So preamble neurons, the first population, which he calls phi neurons, designated by
Greek letter phi, phi neurons behave, in Freud's own words, as if they have no contact barriers, so that the excitation of the presynoptic neuron is transferred to the postsynoptic neuron without any resistance. In contrast to permeable neurons or phi, there are also impermeable neurons, which he calls them psi neurons or psi systems designated by the letter Greek letter psi, which again
in his own words, act in such a way as to permit only a difficult or partial passage of QN, Q subscript N. Q means quantity, quantity N. So it's kind of well known that this functional dichotomy between neurons has been confirmed at this point. In the central nervous system, the synoptic efficacy is not equal for all cell types, but on the contrary varies from a maximum efficacy as if they had no contact barrier
to an almost nullity and require temporal and or a spatial summation of excitatory post-synoptic potentials to lead the post-synoptic neuron to firing an action potential. And these sort of, you know, nullity that requires, you know, temporal or a spatial summation of excitory post-synoptic potentials in order to lead the post-synoptic neurons to fire an action potential are the class of neurons that Freud would have called
impermeable neurons in his phi-psi-omega systems. Freud again says, and this is basically they require summation, he says that the side paths of conduction are filled by means of summation until they become permeable. It is obviously the smallness of the single stimulus that allows for this summation. So what we need to understand here is that the whole idea of preamble, permeable, impermeable
impermeable neurons, namely phi psi in the phi psi omega system of Freud in a project of scientific psychology, is a model for Freud to understand transitions between quantity and quality in the nervous system and also in the consciousness so as I mentioned last session we have various different scenarios in five psi omega systems
one scenario would be quantities simply being transmitted one that quantities become qualitative in a kind of like a sharp transition one is that quantities is being intensified through summation, and then they become qualitative. And then we have also the perceptual system, or the omega system, which is not really about the transition of quantity to quality again, but rather quality, the impression of quality
or qualitative changes on qualitative changes. That creates further sort of excitations. Think about this in terms of, you know, some sort of feelings or sensations about a hot red object. It becomes memorized. And every time that you interact with something of that sort of quality, it excites you internally, not externally.
The source of excitation that comes with the perceptual system is internal for Freud. You learn to always, for example, kind of react with this amount of heat and this amount of redness in a particular way. Even if it might completely be an illusion of a red hot dog or a piece of iron that had been heated to redness. And Freud is very specific about this, and he doesn't want to talk about where the source
of this sort of quality excites quality in the perceptual system coming from. He thinks that it's biologically determined. He really thinks that these can only be thought about in terms of evolutionary determination. Thoughts before I move forward?
So, as I understood, the phi and psi neurons are not distinguishable by different types of neurons but are better distinguishable by the type of connections, synaptic connections, and capacity to transmit currents. if they have different capacities to transmit that means that they actually have some internal
qualities that's uh allow allow one type of transition or another just like chemical elements They basically, as I mentioned, these are coming back to the idea of the channels. They have different in the membrane, they have different proteins, and these proteins open or close differently based on the different proteins in the membrane. And these are the channels that open the currents, basically allow the release of the current, of the currents and these are quite selective yes so you see preamp permeable and i don't know why
it's in preamble permeable uh neurons uh what he calls probably calls permeable neurons which are phi neurons um as i said he pretends as if there is no contact barrier but in reality they are semi-permeable meaning that they are selective semi-permeable whereas the impermeable ones are you know completely you know not uh permeable and this when we are talking about the five neurons uh yes there are actually even within that sort
of class of population of neurons there are different categories of again neurons having different sort of capacities precisely because of the certain channels they have which are the sort of proteins that are in their cell membranes but what is important is that they are all individual you know they are not connected with one another they are only connected by way of the outgrowth of the cells and these outgrowth of the cells you know dendrites
are the ones that connect with one another but this connection as i said it's not a continuity it's contiguity so they can actually shift some of these connections And that's the basis of, you know, kind of like a big rudimentary account of neuroplasticity and Hebbian learning. Shifting connections means changing the initial neurons? No, no, no, not changing initial neurons. the efficacy of transmission and changing essentially what sort of neurons they are
connecting to by way of the dendrites, by way of the synoptic connections. changing the potential for neurons so yeah yes yeah kind of like that yes so it's as i mentioned the idea is that they are not randomly connected for the semi-permeable neurons they are not randomly connected they they find only a special uh you know connections to a special terminals, special neurons. And these can be switched by way of, as I said, by way of high frequency, you know, stimulation of afferent fibers. So then the question is that,
then what does it actually guarantee that once these connections are being remodified they stay like that for a long term without any in the let's imagine let's assume that there is no a specific disturbance once these connections are being established uh what does guarantee that they uh for a long time they stay like that they hold the connections like that right well that comes back to the idea of ltp long-term
potentiation memory. That is that memory, that model of memory based on long-term potentiation is at the base of what you might call Freud's idea of memory and learning and also essentially transmission of traumatic events. from childhood to adulthood. So, Freud also theorized
to an astonishingly precise picture, the possibility of representing memory in the brain as being cited from projects of scientific psychology, psychology as a permanent alteration following an event. So, memories represented in Freud's work as a permanent alteration following an event. So this is something that was confirmed, you know, only in the 1970s.
that for the first time, it was experimentally verified that there is an irreversible increase in the efficacy of the synoptic transmission in the hippocampus, a cerebral structure known to be involved in learning and memory. So this phenomenon was then subsequently termed long-term potentiation. It primarily consisted in an enduring facilitation. And facilitation actually is a Freudian word. We will talk about this in a little bit.
In long, so yes, essentially in an enduring facilitation of synoptic communication from the presynoptic neuron to postsynoptic one. So then LTP, long-term potentiation, was inducible in the hippocampal synapses in relation to their use, in the sense that the more they were stimulated by presynoptic action potentials, the more efficiently they responded to a successive stimulation. And that's what you might call to be the principle of long-term potentiation
and its relation to memory and learning. And of course, also you know don't want to make that reference but nevertheless we have no choice Catherine Malabu's idea of plasticity always coming in two different guises right the destructive ossificatory tendency and then basically the the non ossificatory the thawing tendency of these connections
which are always in tension with one another so coming back to freud again in a project of scientific psychology he he says we assume that fine neurons are permanently altered by the flux of excitation. Or rather, if we introduce the contact barrier theory, which is the theory of synoptic connections, that their contact barriers are in a state of permanent alteration.
This alteration must depend on the fact that the contact barriers become more capable of conduction and less impermeable, that is, more similar to those of side system or permeable neurons. he continues we shall describe this situation of the contact barriers as their degree of facilitation we may therefore state that memory is represented by facilitations that exist between the sine neurons and other sine neurons
so this is really the kind of like a pre-modern neuroscience definition of LTPs you know long-term potentiation and its relation to memory that's long-term potentiation is defined as persistent increase in the size of the synoptic potential registered by single cells or by a population of neurons. But then you might ask, what factors or what factor makes the induction of, you know,
synoptic facilitation possible? Well, Freud Freud distinguished that factor in a quantity that defined as Q, capital Q, subscript N, which according to Freud, passes through the neuron during the process of excitation and depends on the number of repetitions of the process. He says, the higher the QN during the course of excitation, the greater the facilitation.
In other words, two factors determine the induction of long-term potentiation. the amplitude induced in the post-synoptic neuron by the pre-synoptic action potentials and the frequency of these action potentials. Now, and then this, of course, coming back to the idea of memory that we were talking
about why memory not as a as an archival store but as this sort of dynamic process of modification and alteration um kind of creation and conservation uh uh and uh becomes a central uh you know keyword for essentially the entire of Freud's theories. Let me read another citation by Freud. It says that the application of the exigency of memory to the theory of the contact barriers postulates something else.
Generally speaking, it is necessary for every neuron to have several connection paths with other neurons. that is various contact barriers. It is therefore clear that the facilitation situation of every contact barrier must be independent from that of all the others that are part of the same sinew one. So this, you know, if you are going to explain in terms of long-term characteristics of long-term potentiation, we can say that it is the so-called input specificity
in the connectionist model. Input specificity describes the fact that the facilitation of the synoptic transmission is only established on that synapse that is activated by the conditioning stimulus and not on other synopsis of the same neuron. It's very important. Facilitation of the synoptic transmission is only established on that synapse that is activated by the conditioning stimulus and not on other synopsis of the same neuron.
So, in terms of neural network, composed of three neurons, A, B, C, where A and B signups on C, the possible induction of long-term potentiation on the pathway A to C doesn't modify the characteristics of the transmission of the signal on pathway B to C. Input specificity then, you know, kind of was in fact postulated and verified a few years after, you know,
the discovery of long-term potentiation in relation to memory. So now that we have this kind of a background of neuron theory, and I highly recommend if you can actually just go over and familiarize yourself with Waldir Hart's theory of neurons, us a kind of a background about how Freud has taken the task of psychophysics very seriously, translated psychophysics into neurophysics now. And this neurophysics now becomes the foundation
of a new psychology, which he is determined to work within its ambit. Now, let me now go through the, you know, a little bit of Freud uh owns uh work and uh you know as i mentioned in relation particularly to his teacher uh sigmund exner um talk about this and then we open it to questions uh and then i will try to continue a little bit again on the idea of the brain and particularly on the murky side of transition between quantity and quality, not in the,
you know, early works of Freud, such as projects of scientific psychoanalysis, but in later work of Freud where, you know, as we were talking about, we have different sort of qualities of energies within the psychic structure and then how they are being essentially terms talked in terms of qualities and what sort of qualities are talking about and what what is their relation to quantity then what sort of quantities we are talking about uh in Freud's theories of sublimation, sexual energy, anality, so on and so forth. We get to the anus, don't worry about this, hopefully next couple of sessions. Actually,
we are talking about mommy and daddy next session, right? I think that's the case. So we are going to talk about that, yes. Give me two minutes, I will come back. Thank you.
Sorry. Okay. Oh, another thing that I was actually forgot to mention is that now, so excitation then, so, in so far as Freud is basing his quantitative qualitative transitions and basically unconscious consciousness uh if we as i said consciousness being qualitative always um based on the neuron theory and so far as neuron theory is a pro to connectionist model
then we see that terms like excitation for freud should be as strictly as speaking thought and talked about in terms of input specificity. So excitation is no longer some sort of like a brewer's kind of like about the amount of energy capable of exciting, but rather input specificity plus the amount of energy, the amount of current, the strength of the current.
As I said, I think it was first session, it would be quite wrong to think about excitation in Freud's psychology in terms of like, you know, switching a electric, flipping an electric switch, then you see that the bulb is being, you know, lights up. That's not what we are talking about excitation. If you are going to talk about excitation, you need to think about the whole grid the grid is important here the electrical grid uh and the electrical grid then all of these are connections and there are specific uh you know connections that allow for this to happen
any any small questions or anything before i continue i take it as no so So, as I mentioned, there's this book that I have ordered it, I haven't actually ordered it, I forgot to order it, but I have been looking at it, and maybe those of you can
actually or or i can actually get it and try to scan it it's called uh freud on sublimation i've been reading parts of it and it looks like genuinely a very good book for you know continuing this sort of energetics that we have been talking about and see how They kind of essentially led to the development of Freud's more mature theories. It's by...
Actually, I saw it on Amazon. It's not expensive. Freud and Sublimation. Can't find it now. If someone can actually find it on Amazon. Oh yes, I saw it, I found it. It's called Freud and Sublimation Reconsiderations by Voulnie Piguet. It has a couple of chapters which are quite relevant
to what we have been talking about. I won't get the book and scan the specific chapter so we can kind of incorporate it to reading for people who are interested, that would be great. So back to the thing. So as I mentioned, Freud's teacher, Zygmunt Exner, he wrote a book called A Sketch. Unfortunately, Aaron is not here to pronounce the German title. In English, it's called A Sketch of a Physiological Explanation of Psychical Phenomena.
In that work, Exner had attempted to deal with the problems of perception, judgment, memory, ideation, so on and so forth through purely quantitative physicalist constructs. His model started from the notion of intracerebral excitation. Right? Such excitation, he considered, undergoes continual summations of energy within each
neuron. the energized neurons are discharged only after attaining critical firing thresholds. At a more general level, this neural model of mind was regulated by the physiological dictates of the pleasure on pleasure principle, law of constancy and stability, right? But, Exner intracerebral excitation possessed the further capacity for what he had called facilitation of the pattern of energy flow based on the previous passage of energy through a given neural pathway.
So, facilitation is, this is the German word for it. that we have been using and Freud is using it. This is a concept that of course is very, as I mentioned, very crucial to both Exner's whole scheme and of course to Freud's project of scientific psychology. In fact, Freud's concept of catexis, which is Bitzong, Bessitzong, also attached to essentially
to the concept of facilitation. The occupying of a neuron by a quantity of energy is at the base of the idea of catexis. Occupying of a neuron by a quantity of energy, by a specific quantity of energy. But catexis, and as we move forward, we see that catexis, as I mentioned, that every quantitative concept in Freud's early work, which is still under the spell of neurophysics, also finds an interpretive counterpart concept in psychoanalysis.
So when Freud talked about catexis in later works, He refers to catexis in the sense of the occupation of neuron by a certain amount of quantity, but also he's referring to the qualitative register of catexis. in terms of, for example, showing a little bit of obsessive interest to some topic or someone, you know, kind of like needs or desires as, you know, forms can be forms of catexis. so let's get back to Freud again and particularly the project of scientific psychology
the entire project consists of three parts a general scheme which sets out the various introductory premises of the undertaking, which is a section on psychopathology and an attempt to represent normal psychical processes and abnormal psychical processes under one banner. The project's fundamental physicalist orientation to mind is spelled out in the first, you know, sentence of the general scheme, where Freud says, the intention is to furnish a psychology that
shall be a natural science. That is, to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determinate states of a specifiable material particles, thus making those processes perspicuous and free from contradiction. No, Freud was ultimately comforted himself to this idea that that while this is possible,
but that it's not really this idea of, you know, putting it on kind of a quantitatively determined states of a specifiable material particles. While this is how psychology should move forward but that is not really, I mean, should be based on, but that is not really the goal of psychology. This is kind of, you know, becomes a basis for his transition from the project of scientific psychology to later, more appropriated version of energetics in psychology that he presents in Ego and Id
in Interpretation of Dreams and his work on Sublimation. furthermore freud availed himself of two fundamental assumptions at the outset of this general undertaking that what differentiates activity from rest is to be designated as a quantity so right now we have we have kind of got the the morsel idea about what counts as quality in freud but what is actually quantity for freud right so quantity or q in the phi psi omega system
quantity essentially an expression of something be subject to the general laws of motion that's quantity what differentiates activity from rest in its own terms the specifiable material particles are none other than the neurons themselves presumed to be psychologically distinct cellular entities interconnected by numerous contact barriers.
Freud, accordingly, most fundamental law of neural activity is introduced, as introduced in the Project of Scientific Psychology, is the principle of neural inertia, according to which it is the natural tendency of all neurons to divest themselves by reflex movements of all Q subscript N, or psychical quantity. So you see that quantity for him now being described in terms of principles or laws of motion,
inertia, rest or movement, right? But now becomes neural inertia is a natural tendency of every and all neurons to divest themselves by reflex movement of all psychical quantities. Wenz also comes in Freud's overall project and scheme, the biological basis of the sensory reception motor discharge. And that's a dichotomy that is in Freud borrowed from, you know, psychophysics. In the nervous functioning, you know, the dichotomy between sensory and motor, between reception and discharge.
in nervous function, neural function. This normal inertial pattern of neural discharge, which Freud equates with an experience of satisfaction, is further termed the primary function of the nervous system. So discharge, divesting themselves, of psychical quantity is now being, you know, described in terms of or defined in terms of,
you know, experience of satisfaction, namely the primary function of the nervous system. In contrast to that, the secondary function is said to be that which governs the organism's attempts to flee from all forms of excessive, undischargeable stimulus. These excessive stimuli represent the source of all pain in Freud's model. He actually reasons about this in terms of the simplest forms of organisms,
that the energy required for the secondary function or flight would be proportional to the cue of the painful outside stimulus, therefore allowing primary and secondary functions to obey the general law of neural inertia. Even though first and second functions can be described in this sort of rudimentary way for simplest forms of organisms, they cannot be actually described as such for, you know, organism of higher complexity, according to Freud.
And these are the sort of organisms where one has to take into account totally endogenous somatic sources of a stimulus, principally those triggered by the needs of hunger, respiration, and sexuality. As I mentioned, what really complicates the matter for Freud is libido, precisely because it's an endogenous inward sort of energy that complicates simply that sponge model of the
that absorbs simply the influx from the outside and merely reflects, creates, you know, reflects to it, reacts to it. In the presence of an endogenous inward energy, the sort of kind of bipolar image of the organism and the environment is being compromised, and hence it needs a new understanding of quantities and qualities. So this advanced capacity for generating endogenous sources
of a stimulus which present presumably have evolved under external biological pressures for the exigency according to Freud or the exigencies of life therefore is biological compromise between the ideal form of the law of neural inertia which can be attributed to to an extend to the simplest form of organisms and its expression in the higher organic nature. Such endogenous cravings, hunger, respiration, sexuality, compel the organism to maintain within itself a constant source of reserve of quantity or psychic quantity, the biological
source for all spontaneous mobility in order to cope with the moments of periodic need. The law of neural inertia, therefore, becomes the law of constancy of Qn in higher organisms. And still, we haven't talked about the law of constancy, but I think we should reserve it for beyond pleasure principle and how that, you know, this need to have a constant reserve of QN as a source of, you know,
all the spontaneous mobility in order to cope with periodic needs leads, which is also formulated under the law of constancy, rather than the law of neural inertia, leads to Freud's discovery of a shadowy zone called uh you know the uh or process uh which is called uh you know death drive or drives
the realm of drives now in order to account for perception memory and consciousness you know in the project of scientific psychology uh freud somehow uh found it it essential to postulate three separate systems or mechanisms, neural mechanisms, neural systems, which, as we have mentioned, are phi, psi, and omega systems. Each of these systems, uh uh to each of these systems uh uh freud uh you know attributed uh certain neurophysiological
properties for example permeability impermeability uh that accord with uh their assigned uh you know psychological functions. Monemic neurons, you know, psi, being initially impermeable at their contact barriers are said to become increasingly permeable with each passage of QN. And that was, you know, the whole idea that how is it possible? Well, by way of long-term potentiation, HEP learning. learning. This capacity for contact barrier modification or synoptic reconnection, synoptic reconnection, supplies Freud's physical model with the
psychological foundations of memory and higher cognition. Therefore, by matching pleasurable and unpleasurable memories against current perceptions, Freud phi omega model, phi psi omega model, is said to be capable of reality testing and primitive judgment. So this was a very basic introduction to something that I mentioned last session, the importance
of understanding a basic background against which Freud has devised this repertoire of psychological concepts, which as time passes in the work of Freud become highly specific and technical and sometimes rather dissociated from their use in the technical neuroscientific lexicon of his time
insofar as they have been subsumed within the projects of scientific psychology, rather than neurophysics proper. So questions? Yes, Enda? Yeah, my question is quite glib, but basically I'm just curious, I mean, but there's a serious aspect to it, which is that I'm just curious about like how the long term potentiation actually relates to the kind of practice of psychoanalytic therapy, because I'm kind of curious, like how, you know, if this is the sort of like conceptual armature for what Freud goes on to do, how does he not arrive at something like cognitive behavioral therapy rather than, you know,
Because it just seems like brute force repetition is the kind of key to, you know, the excitation of impermeable neurons through, you know, contact rooms. Yes, brute force. Freud completely is against that sort of cognitive behavioral sort of therapy, precisely because, you see, as we talked about that, you know, the thing is that it's patients. are not wholesome systems, right? That they cannot be conditioned simply by brute force attacks, right? Because they have, you know, psychopathologies. And psychopathologies completely dampen any attempt for brute force conditioning.
and the entire point of theoriopathic you know leg of psychoanalysis for Freud is to understand the mechanisms that dampen any sort of attempt at conditioning because if you could condition it by brute force you do not need to you know go through all these procedures the procedure is necessary precisely because they are no longer like the simplest organisms that can be simply through brute force, can be conditioned like a mouse, that can, through this sort of test, can find that, you know, a slope to come to the surface.
That Freud thinks that the psychic structure, given its high complexity and how it can carry with itself dynamic expressions of the unconscious makes any attempt at, you know, this sort of conditioning highly risky business, if not impossible. So rather he's interested, as we will later see, that this LTP model, which is not for him LTP, but kind of like an equivalence of LTP model, that it is at the base of, in fact,
in its most negative expression, it's at the base of psychopathology such as hysteria, neurosis, and expressions of trauma. Freud, in fact, is not really interested in the positive side of plasticity. He's interested in the negative side of plasticity, where basically, you know, during the developmental phase, these sort of synoptic connections or contact barriers have shifted towards certain sort of
negative catexes. Negative catexes. Now how can they be actually, and then when these sort of negative catexes have been formed and ossified, rigidified into some sort of psychic sclerosis, how are you going to thaw this? First of all, before even thawing it, how do you know that because with these sorts of rigidifications of, you know, kind of behaviors, pathological behaviors, then other sorts of things might be also factors might be coming arrive. This is actually, Freud says something that when he actually used, when sadistic constituents
impinge on a psychic event, a life instinct, it's a psychoanalyst's duty to presume the presence of other sadistic constituents impinging on the psychic activities. Meaning that if there is one sort of abnormality, abnormal behavior, then there is a whole lot of it. It's just like a tip of the iceberg, you know, that's because, because the give, I mean, that whole means of, you know, ego being this tip of the iceberg and the it being. So this is the whole point that the given the structure of the psychic, you know, a sphere, psychoanalysis, job of the psychoanalysis is to
assume that abnormalities just don't come one by one. They always come in connection with other sorts of abnormalities, traced back to, you know, this kind of, you know, rigidification of synoptic connections, particularly for, in terms of, you know, friends' child abuse, Freud's, you know, early traumas, so on and so forth. And before even attempting at correcting some of these, you need to first, you know, kind of reveal what is at stake here. because as I said it's really important that he really wants to
conduct the practical side of psychology as if it only pertained to higher complex sapient organisms and not other sorts of organisms. We only talk about them precisely because they are part of the continuum of life that connects us to the simplest organisms. And we can talk about some of these, you know, the system of quantities in those terms. But when it comes to the idea of, you know, higher complex organisms, the system of quantities, as I said, is compromised already because of the nature of, you know, the various sort of energies and connections are being made.
And these systems, according to Freud, cannot be, you know, simply addressed or approached by way of behavioral therapy. I think that there is actually, Grunbaum has written an article that he actually really praises Freud. There is a reason that Freud has stayed away from two things. One, behavioral psychotherapy and also clinical psychotherapy in the canonical sense of clinical psychotherapy of his time. Raza, we are with our deadline. Let's hear Lika and Koukhan.
We have four minutes, I think. Or no, actually, until one. My God. We have... Okay, okay. No more questions. Sorry, my apologies, Ikaro. I thought that it's 1.30. Okay, Lika, save your question for next session. So, presentations next time. And hopefully if I get the book next few days, I will scan the parts of it. and then we will go and we continue this whole idea of quantity quality in a more new territory
which is like kind of like you know that vulgar freudianism you know mommy and daddy oedipus annality those sorts of stuff that you know usually when people think of freud think of those sorts of stuff but of course they can be traced back to these sorts of you know findings and constructions in the realm of neurophysiology and energetics. Okay, thank you everyone. Thank you Ikoro and I see you next week. Bye bye. Bye bye.