King’s College

University Of London

Freud’s Theory of Consciousness:

From Psychoanalysis to Neuro-Psychoanalysis

MSc Dissertation

MSc in Philosophy of Mental Disorder

Manos Tsakiris

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Contents Page

1.Introduction………………………………………………………………….. 3

2.Freud and the Mind-Body Problem……………………………………….. 6

3.The Development of the Freudian Theory of Consciousness……………… 15

4.Consciousness and Affect : Mark Solms’ Model………………………….. 27

5.Consciousness and Affect : From Psychoanalysis to Neurosciences……… 33

6.References……………………………………………………………………. 41

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1. Introduction The topic of this dissertation is the Freudian theory of consciousness and affect:

consciousness is a sense organ for perception of mental processes and affect is

the primary sensory modality of the internal surface of consciousness. At the

same time, this dissertation represents an attempt to examine the

interdependence of two problems in the Freudian thought: the mind-body

relation and the relation of consciousness to mental life. The first chapter

attempts to see the Freudian thesis on the mind-body problem. Dualistic and

materialistic interpretations of the Freudian work will be examined and at the

end of the chapter we will try to clarify the difference between noumenalism

and anomalous monism. These two doctrines stand at the very center of the

present dissertation and they are intimately related to the Freudian theory of

consciousness as an organ of perception. Chapter 2 begins with an exposition of

the development of the Freudian theory of consciousness with respect to four

major Freudian works. At the end of the chapter, the model of consciousness as

perception will be discussed and it will be developed in chapter 4 in relation to

Mark Solms’ reading of the Freudian theory of consciousness. In the same

chapter, the crucial role of affect in this model will be clarified. Chapter 5 is

devoted to the possible relation of the Freudian theory of consciousness as

perception with two promising contemporary neuroscientific programs: Jaak

Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience and Antonio Damasio’s model of

consciousness.

Although the decision to examine Freud’s theory of consciousness may seem

paradoxical, because Freud was the thinker who dethroned consciousness, there

are good reasons that justify our decision. The primary stimuli that led to the

aforementioned choice of subject were given by the simultaneous reading of

Mark Solms’ paper “What is Consciousness” and Antonio Damasio’s book The

Feeling of What Happens : Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.1

1 The possible relevance of these two works is intended to be investigated at the end of the

present essay.

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In 1915 Freud wrote an essay entirely devoted to the subject of consciousness

and it was intended to be one of the twelve chapters of the book, which

according to what Freud wrote to Abraham in May 1915, it would be called

Preparatory Essays for Metapsychology (Gay, 1988, p.363). Unfortunately, this

paper on consciousness was one of six metapsychological essays that were

never published and it is presumed to have been destroyed.

Silverstein (1986) writes :

We know that Freud was not happy with the consciousness essay from the

start. When on 1 August 1915 he told Abraham that he had completed all

twelve essays, and called them “war-time atrocities”, he also told him

“Several, including that on consciousness, still require thorough revision.”

In “The Unconscious” (1915a) Freud repeatedly recognized the need to

answer questions about the nature of consciousness and the mode of

functioning of the system Cs., but always postponed the discussion for a

later time, probably intending to deal with the issues in the

“Consciousness” essay. (p.181)

Smith (1999a), following Silverstein (1986), notes that Freud wrote

comparatively little about consciousness explicitly, although the enigma of

consciousness and the problem of mind-body interaction were topics that

afflicted during his whole life.

Freud’s focus on consciousness is compatible with contemporary philosophy of

mind and neurosciences. Schweiger (1998) notes :

“Freud’s focus on consciousness as an important feature of his

theory, attributing causal role for it as a construct to be explained

within the framework of a scientific theory of the nervous system

and ‘psychic’ life, has its parallels in contemporary philosophy of

mind and neurosciences. Many contemporary writers promoted the

importance of consciousness within a theory of brain behavior (e.g.

Baars, 1988 ; Brown, 1977 ; Searle, 1992 ; Penrose, 1994, Dennett

& Kinsbourne, 1992 ; Churchland, 1988).” (p.109).

Even in the field of the philosophy of mind, a re-reading of the most well-

known aspect of Freud’s work, that is the existence of the unconscious, can be

viewed as grounded in interlacing theories “of mental representation and

consciousness that have a remarkably contemporary hue” (Redding, 2000,

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p.119). Humphrey (1997) and Dennett (1987) advance the view that only in the

post-Freudian period, were philosophers and psychologists ready to begin to ask

the modern question: not, how and why is some of our mental life unconscious,

but how and why is any of it conscious? Humphrey comments that Freud, back

in the 1900, was already ahead of the game because he was asserting that

unconsciousness is the natural state of the things and thus it is consciousness,

and not unconsciousness, in need of explanation.

Finally, the development of a new paradigm within the neurosciences, that may

be called Affective Neuroscience, and its rapid progress contributed to the

genesis of a new hope: psychoanalysis may have found the chance to engage

into a scientific dialogue with a discipline that shares a lot of its fundamental

metapsychological hypotheses.

At the end of this introduction, I would like to thank Dr. Jim Hopkins for his

interest on my dissertation and his helpful comments and Dr. David Snelling for

his tutorials on Freud.

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2. Freud and the Mind-Body Problem

There is much controversy as far as Freud’s position on the mind problem is

concerned. Opinion is divided: there are scholars who claim that Freud was a

dualist, while others hold that he was a materialist. Within these two camps

there are many variations. In this chapter, we will initially describe the status of

dualism and materialism in the 19th century. Afterwards, we will first consider

some arguments provided by the dualist camp and the existing variations among

the supporters of a dualistic interpretation of the Freudian work, and afterwards

we will refer to a series of materialistic interpretations of the Freudian work.

Finally, we will try to clarify the difference between noumenalism and

anomalous monism. These two positions, although they are both committed to

an ontological monism, they do have crucial differences: it is absolutely

essential for the purposes of the present dissertation to discuss the ontological

commitments of each position, their compatibility –or incompatibility- with

Freud’s theory of consciousness and their relation to the efforts made for

reconciling psychoanalysis and neurosciences.

Dualism and Materialism in the 19th Century

Freud lived and worked in an intellectual atmosphere that was deeply confused

about the relationship between mind and body. Substance dualism, in both its

interactionist and parallelist forms, had been the dominant approach to the

mind-body problem for over three centuries and has managed to establish

separate and independent domains for body and mind. However, by the second

half of the 19th century, traditional dualism has been challenged by a series of

scientific events. The discovery of the law of the conservation of energy by

Helmholz, the Darwinian evolution of the species and the flourishing of the new

discipline of neuroscience threatened the coherency of dualism and

demonstrated the intimate relationship between mental and neurophysiological

events.

A philosophical response to these scientific challenges was provided by

epiphenomenalism (Huxley, 1874), according to which mind can be understood

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as ‘the smoke above the factory’ of brain. According to one version of

epiphenomenalism, the brain has causal power to produce mental events, but the

mental events themselves have no causal powers. In that way,

epiphenomenalism succeeded in reconciling, at least provisionally, the dualist

intuitions with the scientific progress.

Other solutions were provided by philosophers such as Spinoza, who

formulated the dual-aspect monism, and Kant, who proposed noumenalism as a

solution to the mind-body problem. These two positions are types of property

dualism that invoked a mysterious underlying substance –noumenon, which

supports both physical and mental properties. It is clear that the thinkers of late

19th century were not in a position to entertain the sophisticated contemporary

physicalist alternatives such as Davidson’s doctrine of anomalous monism,

which sharply distinguish between the concepts of token and type identity. The

same inability to think of the difference between token and type identity marked

Freud’s thoughts on the problem and, as it is intended to be shown, this very

fact causes a lot of confusion in the discussion on Freud’s solution to the mind-

body problem and his theory of consciousness.

Freud and Dualism

Anderson (1962) claims that Freud was an epiphenomenalist in 1888.

According to the epiphenomenalist thesis, there is a strictly one-way causal

relationship: the physical causes the mental, but the mental never causes the

physical. During the period 1892-93, Freud was obliged to accept the existence

of psychical causality, a thesis that conflicts with the epiphenomenalist position.

According to Anderson, Freud probably thought of psychical causality as

provisional models that were necessary due to the inadequate state of

neurological knowledge of his time. Anderson’s argument is based on a passage

from Freud’s text ‘Gehirn’ in which Freud states that whether or not an item

enters consciousness makes no difference in the neural processes giving rise to

the mental item.

Silverstein (1985, 1989) argues that Freud was a psycho-physical interactionist

and he based his argument on some early Freudian passages, such as the

‘Gehirn’, the text ‘On psychical or mental treatment’ (1890) and certain

passages from ‘Hysteria’ (1888c). According to interactionism, physical events

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cause mental events and these mental events, in their own right, cause physical

events. According to Solms and Saling (1990) interactionism is incompatible

with the existence of an independent psychological science because within an

interactionist framework, the broken sequences of conscious mental life are

conceptualized with reference to non-psychological causes and effects (see

Freud, 1940a, p.158). Thus, Freud would not be able to construct an

independent psychological science if he was holding an interactionist thesis.

Solms and Saling (1986, 1990) have argued several times that Freud’s position

on the mind-body problem was that of psycho-physical parallelism (Solms &

Saling, 1986, 1990). In their papers, they quoted a series of passages that dated

from Freud’s pre-psychoanalytic papers, such as his book On Aphasia and his

encyclopedia articles ‘Aphasia’ and ‘Gehirn’. According to psycho-physical

parallelism, the mental and the physical are two independent domains, each with

their own causality. Solms and Saling quote the following passage from Freud’s

essay On Aphasia:

“The relationship between the chain of physiological events in the

nervous system and the mental processes is probably not one of

cause and effect… The psychic is … a process parallel to the

physiological, ‘a dependent concomitant’.” (Freud, (1891)[1953],

On Aphasia, p.57)

Freud’s psycho-physical parallelism must be considered in relation to the work

of John Hughlings Jackson. Freud, in his book On Aphasia, endorsed Jackson’s

views and he enlisted his support against the views of many German-speaking

authorities, such as Meynert and Wernicke. Jackson rejected localizationism on

both neuroscientific and philosophical grounds and he extended his

methodological dualism into ontological dualism, which he called the ‘doctrine

of concomitance’. Moreover, there are many passages in Jackson’s work, which

imply that mental states are what Freud, called ‘dependent concomitants’ of

neural states. Smith (1999a) claims that perhaps Jackson was groping towards

some form of token identity theory, such as Davidson’s anomalous monism. But

at the end, Jackson remained a psycho-physical parallelist and he was never

concerned with the philosophical defects of such a position.

The thesis of psycho-physical parallelism led us to a fundamental problem

related to Freud’s philosophy of mind and his position to the mind-body

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problem. His claim that ‘the psychical is a process parallel to the physiological’

(Freud, On Aphasia, p.57; also Freud, S.E., 14, p. 207) which, if not intended in

a merely methodological context, is compatible with parallelism and

epiphenomenalism, but incompatible with materialism and interactionism.

Psycho-physical parallelism can be either ontological or conceptual. In the first

case it is presented as a variation of epiphenomenalism, and in the latter it is

compatible with non-reductive materialism, because it recognizes the

inescapable necessity of a distinct kind of mental conceptions and descriptions

which are not reducible to the physical.

Paul Redding (1999,2000) argues that by 1915 Freud had to abandon

parallelism as a doctrine of the mind-body relation because of its

incompatibility with his notion of the unconscious :

“With the development of the idea of the unconscious, however,

such a form of parallelism (i.e. psychophysical) had to be

abandoned, seemingly because of the inability of psychophysical

parallelism to provide a place for unconscious mentality. In the

parallelist picture, all that could be “unconscious” is the workings of

the brain, but Freud wanted the gaps in the conscious chain of

psychological causes to be filled with something psychical but

unconscious, not something physiological….For the parallelist

position, unconscious mental processes would be such because they

were less energetic than conscious ones. But in Freud’s picture the

reverse was actually the case. Unconscious mental processes were

typically more energetic than conscious ones.” (1999, pp.64-65)

Freud and Materialism

Within the materialist camp there is a crucial difference which has to be

clarified. Identity theories, which equate the mind with the brain, are of two

kinds: there is the type identity and the token identity theory. According to type

identity theory –which may also be called reductive materialism, mental states

are physical states of the brain. That is, each type of mental state or process is

numerically identical some type of physical state or process within the brain or

the nervous system. Token identity theory, and especially its Davidsonian

formulation under the name of anomalous monism, claims that although each

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mental event is identical with some neurophysiological event, there are no type

identities between mental and physical events: there are only token identities.

Anomalous monism guarantees the irreducibility of psychology to physical

sciences. Concerning Freud, some scholars claimed that he was a type identity

theorist, while others advocated that he was a token identity theorist, that is a

non-reductive materialist. Before examining a crucial theme for the present

dissertation, that is the relation of the Freudian philosophy of mind to the

doctrines of Kantian noumenalism and anomalous monism, we will first refer to

the materialistic interpretations of the Freudian work.

Amacher (1965) believed that Freud was an identity theorist. According to the

identity theory, mental states are identical to certain brain states and Amacher’s

view implies that Freud assumed the workings of the mind and those of the

brain to function according to identical principles. Amacher’s argument was in

large extent based on a certain reading of Freud’s Project and on his view that

Freud was an identitist from the beginning of his career, but this is untrue as

Solms and Saling showed by citing a passage from On Aphasia which is

explicitly parallelist. Moreover, Amacher supported the view that

psychoanalytical metapsychology is tied to the 19th century neurophysiological

theory which is nowadays discredited. Solms and Saling (1990) used certain

passages from ‘Gehirn’ to refute Amacher’s view and they concluded that Freud

was not an identity theorist, at least not a type identity theorist, because he did

not believe that the internal structure of mental processes can be reductively

explained in terms of reflex brain events.

Flanagan (1984) argues that Freud moved from a type identity reductionism to a

methodological dualism, which he calls ‘Thesis of the Autonomy of

Psychological Explanation’. This change happened, according to Flanagan, after

1895, that is after the unsuccessful attempt of the ‘Project’. Regarding Freud’s

ontological thesis, Flanagan offers two plausible solutions: Freud held an

agnostic position, or he supported a non-reductive token identity theory.

Wallace (1992) claims that Freud was never an ontological dualist and that his

dualism had only a purely methodological character. Wallace states that from at

least 1888 onwards Freud was an ontological materialist. However, he

distinguishes two periods: a) 1888-1895 during which Freud was a type identity

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theorist, and b) 1895-1939 during which Freud was dual aspect monist. He

writes:

It is hard to know conclusively whether Freud’s subsequently

untrammeled methodological dualism was held provisionally, in the

hope of eventual neurobiological reduction –or whether it reflected a

token-token identity theory (Flanagan, 1986, p.59) or a dual-aspect

monism, either of which permits a materialistic metaphysic and an

open-ended methodological interactional-dualism (Wallace, 1988a;

1988b; 1989; 1990). Of these three possibilities, I lean toward dual-

aspect monism (Wallace, 1992, p.249)

According to Smith (1999a) we may divide Freud’s views on the mind-body

problem in two periods. From 1888 until 1895, Freud was a dualist. From 1888

to 1890 he was a psychophysical parallelist or epiphenomenalist. In 1890,

according to Smith, Freud explicitly rejected epiphenomenalism in his paper

‘On psychical (or mental) treatment’ and in 1891 in his book On Aphasia, he

was a parallelist. From 1895 until his death, Freud was an identity theorist of an

unspecified type.

Freud and the Question of Ontology

Scholars such as Matthis (2000), Opatow (1999), Redding (1999) and Solms

(1997) have underlined Kant’s influence on the Freudian thought. They have

claimed that Kantian noumenalism provided Freud with the solution he needed

in order to formulate his position on the mind-body problem and his theory of

consciousness. Kantian noumenalism is committed to ontological monism –

reality is one- and methodological dualism –it can be perceived and is known in

two different ways: through the mental and through the physical. Although

reality is one, it is at the same time in itself unknowable, it is noumenal, it is

neither mental nor physical. The crucial difference between noumenalism and

anomalous monism –which is also committed to ontological monism and

methodological dualism- is that anomalous monism is committed to an

ontological monism which recognizes as only existing reality the physical one.

Thus, reality in itself is knowable, it is physical and all mental events are

physical events but mental phenomena can not be given purely physical

explanations. (Davidson, 1970).

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The aforementioned scholars have supported, not without taking their

precautions, the view that Freud was a noumenalist and based the majority of

their arguments on their interpretation of Freud’s last major paper An Outline of

Psychoanalysis. In this paper, which may be considered as Freud’s testament to

the psychoanalytic movement, Freud stated two fundamental hypotheses

concerning the unconscious and consciousness. The first hypothesis dealt with

localization: there is one topos for conscious processes and another for

unconscious processes. “We assume that mental life is the function of an

apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space and

of being made up of several portions –which we imagine, that is, as resembling

a telescope or microscope or something of the kind” (S.E., 23, p.145). The

second hypothesis concerned the nature of the psychical. Freud wrote:

“[Psychoanalysis’ second fundamental hypothesis] explains the supposedly

somatic concomitant phenomena as being what is truly psychical, and thus in

the first instance disregards the quality of consciousness” (S.E., 23, p.158). Irine

Matthis (2000) in her paper ‘Sketch for a metapsychology of affect’ advances

the view that these two fundamental hypotheses found in Freud’s last paper

signify a radical change in the Freudian metapsychology. According to this

‘new’ epistemology, both body and mind are categories established by

consciousness, they are notions and they exist as such only for consciousness:

neither body, nor mind exists as such, beyond consciousness. Matthis’ reading

of An Outline of Psychoanalysis is in accordance with the ideas expressed by

scholars such as Mark Solms and Luis Chiozza who both tried to sketch a

metapsychology of affect, which will permit the integration of mind and body

on the basis of affect. Within this framework, Freud’s following words take

their full meaning:

The unconscious is the true psychical reality; in its innermost nature

it is as much unknown to us the reality of the external world, and it

is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the

external world by the communications of our sense organs (1900,

S.E., 5, p.613).

It is argued (Matthis, 2000; Opatow, 1999; Solms, 1997) that this line of

argument must lead us to the formation of the view that Freud was a

noumenalist. Freud repeatedly warned us not to equate perceptions by means of

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consciousness with the truth of reality (Freud, 1915, 1917). Affect serves to

conceptualize the mind-body connection because it is defined as the psychical

aspect of the ‘somatic concomitant phenomena’ which Freud held to be ‘the

truly psychical’, and consequently research must be directed to the examination

of an embodied agent, not a disembodied consciousness. Thus, the two

questions “What is affect?” and “What is consciousness?” will lead us to a

better understanding of how Freud conceptualized the mind-body problem.

Solms (1996d) writes:

“So the psychical and the somatic manifestations of affect are

simply two ways of representing the same underlying thing. The

unknowable internal happening that we call affect is registered on

both perceptual surfaces simultaneously, it is perceived as an

emotion on the internal surface of consciousness, and as a somatic

state on the external surface of consciousness. This simple fact

explains why affect is both an essential subjective state and

something that is inextricably connected with the body”(p.495).

The dichotomisation of the human being into mind and body is retained insofar

each one is perceived into different modalities of consciousness, pointing in

different directions. The underlying reality that these different modalities

represent is one and the same, although unknowable in itself.

The interesting question for the purposes of this dissertation is whether the

efforts of scientists such as Mark Solms can be established on the basis of

anomalous monism. It can not be easily understood why noumenalism seemed

inescapable to these efforts. In effect it seems that Solms’ model can work

because it guarantees the necessary methodological dualism and at the same

time it avoids the reducibility of the mental to the physical: a danger that is

always present in a materialistic thesis. But, on the other hand, Freud’s work

and Solms’ model are not incompatible with other doctrines such as this of

anomalous monism which is also committed to ontological monism –reality is

one and it is physical- and methodological dualism –the mental is not reducible

to the physical. Richard Wollheim seems to be right when he wrote (1982):

“Freud answered yes to this question, he was a materialist, but there

are shades and shades of materialism…Freud’s materialism was not

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based on linguistic considerations and he rejected reductionism. His

theory requires the mental language” (pp.124-5).

Even Solms and Saling (1990), after exposing their arguments for the case of

psycho-physical parallelism and without understanding their own contradiction,

seem to accept the possibility that Freud was a non-reductive materialist. They

write:

“ It also seems plausible to interpret Freud’s (1888b2) statements to

imply that he was a non-reductive materialist (see Davidson, 1980,

for an account of this position), and numerous comments in Freud’s

later works would tend to support this interpretation” (p.118)

As a conclusion, it may be noted that Freud was, even from the beginning of his

career, a methodological dualist. As far as his ontological thesis is concerned,

there is much ambiguity: he was a noumenalist or a materialist? The relative

bibliography can not provide a definite answer and even Freud himself was

never certain of his ideas on the topic. It seems more reasonable to seek the

answer in the needs of the current efforts of reconciling psychoanalysis with

neurosciences. Obviously, the thesis of noumenalism will not work in the

direction of reconciling these two disciplines because it violates the ontological

commitment of neurosciences. On the other hand, a doctrine such as that of

anomalous monism, can be proved useful and even indispensable for the

program of neuro-psychoanalysis, because at the same time it is committed to

the ontological monism of the physical, and it guarantees the methodological

dualism, which was, after all, Freud’s major priority.

.

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3. The Development of the Freudian Theory of Consciousness

Mackay (1986) writes:

“When Freud discusses the mind-brain issue it is almost always in the context

of another and, for Freud, closely related issue: that of the relationship between

the mental and the conscious”. (p.390)2

In this chapter, reference is made to the development of the Freudian theory of

consciousness with respect to four major Freudian papers: The Project for a

Scientific Psychology, The Interpretation of Dreams, The Ego and the Id and An

Outline of Psychoanalysis. Our intention is to expose the view that

consciousness is a sense organ with two surfaces –one directed towards the

external world and the other towards the internal- for the perception of mental

processes and, that affect is the primary sensory modality of the internal surface

of consciousness. Affect as a sensory modality of consciousness will be

extensively discussed in the next chapter.

Consciousness in the Project for a Scientific Psychology

The physicalist model of the mind presented by Freud in the Project for a

Scientific Psychology posits two fundamental types of element and a principle

of operation. The elements are the units of structure, the ‘material particles’ out

of which the apparatus is constructed, and they are known as neurones, which

form a complex network. Secondly there is energy or quantity, known as Q,

whose flow through the network of neurones obeys to the laws of motion. The

working principle of the model is that of ‘neuronic inertia’ or the Constancy

Principle, according to which the apparatus has a tendency to divest itself of

2 It must be noted that Freud was explicit as far as his view on the mental-conscious relation is

concerned. In his paper “The Unconscious” (1915, S.E., 14), Freud denied the equation of mind

with consciousness for the following reasons: a) the equation of mind with consciousness is

inconsistent with the principle of mental continuity, b) the equation of mind with consciousness

poses problems for the understanding of the interaction between mind and brain, c) this equation

overvalues the causal power of conscious mental states and d) this equation delimits the field

into which psychoanalysis and every psychology can be applied. See also Smith (1999a, p.67).

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energy, or to reduce tension, where tension is identified with the accumulation

of energy.

At the first pages of the ‘Project’ and according to theory of contact barriers,

Freud distinguishes two classes of neurones in order to account for the

differences between perception and memory: (1) those which allow Q to pass

through as though they had no contact-barriers and (2) those whose contact-

barriers make themselves felt, so that they only allow Q to pass through with

difficulty or partially. The neurones belonging to the first class, after each

passage of excitation, are in the same state as before, while the neurones

belonging to the second class, after each excitation are in a different state from

before, and thus, according to Freud, they afford a possibility of representing

memory. In the first class, neurones are permeable and serve for perception, and

in the second class neurones are impermeable and serve for memory and for

psychical processes in general. The former neurones are called φ and the latter

are called ψ, and they constitute respectively the system φ and the system ψ.

The system φ is turned towards the external world and has the task of

discharging as quickly as possible the Q penetrating to the neurones. The

system ψ is out of contact with the external world and it only receives Q from

the φ neurones themselves and from the cellular elements in the interior of the

body.

After discussing the characteristics of each system of neurones, their relation

and the flow of Q into the two systems, Freud poses to himself ‘the problem of

quality’. He wrote:

“Hitherto, nothing whatever has been said of the fact that every

psychological theory, apart from what it achieves from the point of view

of natural science, must fulfill yet another major requirement. It should

explain to us what we are aware of, in the most puzzling fashion, through

our ‘consciousness’; and, since this consciousness knows nothing of what

we have so far been assuming –quantities and neurones- it should explain

this lack of knowledge to us as well.” (S.E., 1, pp.307-308)

In addition, Freud warned us that the postulate of consciousness could not

provide us with complete or trustworthy knowledge of the neuronal processes.

In this sense we must regard these neural processes to their whole extent as

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unconscious, but we still have to find a place for the qualitative content of

consciousness in the quantitative ψ processes.

The problem of quality is the question “where do qualities originate”?

According to Freud’s answer, qualities are “sensations which are different in a

great multiplicity of ways and whose difference is distinguished according to its

relations with the external world” (Ibid.,308) and they do not originate in the

external world, nor in the φ or ψ system. “Thus we summon up courage to

assume that there is a third system of neurones –ω perhaps [we might call it]-

which is excited along with perception, but not along with reproduction, and

whose states of excitation give rise to the various qualities –are, that is to say,

conscious sensations.” (Ibid.,308)

As far as the question “how do qualities originate”, Freud formulated the period

thesis, according to which: “the ω neurones are incapable of receiving Q, but

instead they appropriate the period of the excitation and that this state of theirs

of being affected by period while they are filled with the minimum of Q is the

fundamental basis of consciousness… The filling of ω neurones with Q can no

doubt only proceed from ψ, since we do not wish to admit any direct link

between this third system and φ.” (Ibid.,310-311)

But, besides the series of sensory qualities, consciousness exhibits also the

series of sensation of pleasure and unpleasure. Since, the trend in psychical life

is to avoid unpleasure, Freud identified this trend with the primary trend

towards inertia. Unpleasure is related to a raising of the level of Q or an

increasing quantitative pressure and unpleasure would be the ω sensation when

there is an increase of Q in ψ. Respectively, pleasure would be the sensation of

discharge “Pleasure and unpleasure would be the sensations in ω of its own

cathexis, of its own level; and here ω and ψ would, as it were, represent

intercommunicating vessels. In this manner the quantitative processes in ψ too

would reach consciousness once more as qualities” (Ibid.,312).

In the ‘Project’, Freud tried to account for the phenomena of consciousness

“into the structure of quantitative psychology” and he was aware of the fact that

“no attempt, of course, can be made to explain how it is that excitatory

processes in the ω neurones bring consciousness along with them” (Ibid.,311).

But at the same time he admitted that in his theory, consciousness possess

causal powers : “consciousness is the subjective side of one part of the physical

18

processes in the nervous system, namely of the ω processes; and the omission of

consciousness does not leave the psychical events unaltered but involves the

omission of the contribution from ω.”(Ibid.,311).3

In a letter to Fliess on 1st January 1896, Freud changed his model of

consciousness by putting ω neurones between φ and ψ. He wrote:

“The ω neurones are those ψ neurones which are capable of only very

little quantitative cathexis. The coincidence between these minimal

quantities and the quality faithfully transferred to them from the end –

organ is once more the necessary condition for the generating of

consciousness. I now [in my new scheme] insert these ω neurones

between the φ neurones and the ψ neurones, so that φ transfers its quality

to ω, and ω now transfers neither quality nor quantity to ψ but merely

excites ψ –that is, indicates the pathways to be taken by the free ψ

energy….(There are, so to say, three ways in which the neurones affect

one another : (1) they transfer quantity to one another, (2) they transfer

quality to one another, (3) they have an exciting effect on one another in

accordance with certain rules.)

On this view the perceptual processes would eo ipso (from their very

nature) involve consciousness and would only produce their further

psychical effects after becoming conscious. The ψ processes would in

themselves be unconscious and would only subsequently acquire a

secondary, artificial consciousness through being linked with processes of

discharge and perception (speech-association)” (Ibid.,388-389)

According to Pribram & Gill (1976), Freud placed ω between φ and ψ, rather

than to put ψ between φ and ω, because he was interested in establishing that ω

was moved by quality without any transfer of quantity. But in one instance

3 Freud was aware that the theory of consciousness he was proposing was different from the

ones proposed by two other powerful lines of thought. The first one was a mechanistic theory,

according to which consciousness is a mere appendage to physiologico-psychical processes and

its omission would leave the physical events unaltered (that is consciousness is deprived of any

causal role). The second one postulated that consciousness is the subjective side of all psychical

events and is thus inseparable from the physiological mental processes. In Freud’s own words,

his theory of consciousness lies between these two.

19

Freud was obliged to reconsidered this placement: that was the case of

awareness of pleasure and pain and word images from within. In this case Freud

postulated that consciousness reaches ω through ψ and he accordingly revised

the relationship between φ, ψ and ω.

In a letter of 6 December, Freud returned to his model and he substituted

psychological for neurological terms. The φ neurones are now named

‘Wahrnehmungen’ (‘perceptions’). These perceptual neurones are not modified

by the passage of information which, before reaching consciousness, is analyzed

by three more systems: (1) the ‘Wahrnehmungzeichen’ (‘indications of speech’)

which arranges information in terms of associations by simultaneity, (2) the

‘Unbewusstsein’ (‘unconsciousness’) which arranges information in terms of

causal and conceptual relations and finally (3) the ‘Vorbewusstsein’

(‘preconsciousness’) which corresponds to our official ego. (Smith, 1999,p.91)

In the 6 December 1896 model, episodes of consciousness precede and follow

unconscious mental processing and Freud states explicitly that consciousness

‘attaches’ to ‘perceptions’. Smith (1999a) presumes that Freud understood this

attachment of consciousness to perceptions as consisting of uninterpreted raw

sensations which are afterwards subjected to cognitive processing before their

emergence into ‘preconsciousness’ as interpreted sensory experience. This

hypothesis explains why Freud thought of ‘preconsciousness’ as ‘secondary

thought consciousness’.

A final note concerning the theory of consciousness in the ‘Project’ must be

made: it has been proposed that Crick and Koch’s recently developed theory of

the neurophysiological basis of consciousness as synchronized neural

oscillations was anticipated by Freud in his 1895 ‘Project’. As aforementioned,

Freud attempted to solve the problem of ‘quality’ by hypothesizing that

information concerning conscious sensory qualities is transmitted by means of

neural ‘periods’ (see Smith, 1999b).

20

Consciousness in the Interpretation of Dreams

The draft that is believed to have inspired the chapter VII of the Interpretation

of Dreams was based on Freud’s January 1896 revision of the ‘Project’. (See

Solms & Saling, 1986). Despite the profound similarities between the chapter

VII of the Interpretation of Dreams and The Project for a scientific psychology,

Freud explicitly declares the displacement of his interest:

“ I shall entirely disregard the fact that the mental apparatus with which

we are here concerned is also known to us in the form of an anatomical

preparation, and I shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine

psychical locality in any anatomical fashion. I shall remain upon

psychological ground, and I propose simply to follow the suggestion that

we should picture the instrument which carries out our mental functions as

resembling a compound microscope or a photographic apparatus or

something of the kind…We will picture the mental apparatus as a

compound instrument, to the components of which we will give the name

of ‘agencies’, or ‘systems’.” (S.E., 5,pp.536-537)

According to the model proposed in The Interpretation of Dreams, the mental

apparatus has a sense or a direction: Freud ascribed a sensory and a motor end

to the apparatus. At the sensory end lies the system Pcpt. that receives

perceptions and at the motor end lies the system M. that opens the way to motor

activity. According to the direction prescribed, psychical processes are in

general directed from the perceptual end to the motor end. The system Pcpt.

remains unaltered by the passage of stimuli and its cognitive function is to

transmit the perceived information to an array of memory systems, which are

called Mnem. systems and which are the ψ neurones of the earlier model. In

accord with Freud’s earlier formulations, it is the perceptual system, which

provides consciousness “with the whole multiplicity of sensory qualities”

(Ibid.,539) and the ψ-systems of memory and consciousness are mutually

exclusive.

In the normal case, stimuli go through the apparatus from the perceptual end

and then the memory systems towards discharge through the motor end.

Obviously, information must pass through the system ‘unconscious’ before it

reaches motor discharge. After passing through the unconscious, information

21

enters the system ‘preconscious’ which “holds the key to voluntary movement”

(Ibid.,541) and hence consciousness, provided that certain conditions, such as a

certain degree of intensity, are fulfilled.

A misunderstanding may occur by the comparison of the schematic diagrams

presented in The Interpretation of Dreams and the discussion of Freud’s model

of the mind included in the same text. In the schematic diagrams the Pcpt.

system abuts the Mnem. Systems, rather than feeding directly the system Cs.

But finally, in a footnote in the 1919 edition Freud recognized that “we should

have to reckon with the fact that the system next beyond the Pcs. is the one to

which consciousness must be ascribed – in other words Pcpt.=Cs. (Ibid.,541).”

Thus, Freud seems to have retained his thesis that perceptual stimuli pass

through consciousness in an uninterpreted form before being subjected to

unconscious cognitive processes and prior to their re-emergence into

consciousness in an interpreted form. We must also note that this formulation is

compatible with the condensation of the perceptual and consciousness systems,

as it was expressed in the 1st January 1896 letter in which Freud recognized that

the consciousness-producing system is a functional unit of the perceptual

system.

In effect, when Freud posed the question “what part is there left to be played in

our scheme by consciousness ?” he replied explicitly that consciousness can

only play the role of “a sense organ for the perception of psychical qualities”

(Ibid.,615). Even the mechanical properties of the system Cs. are similar to

those of the system Pcpt., because both systems are susceptible to excitation by

qualities and they are both incapable of retaining traces of alteration. This is not

the first time that Freud stated the incompatibility of memory and consciousness

and of memory and perception. Moreover, just as the psychical apparatus is

turned towards the external world via the sense organs of the Pcpt. system, the

psychical apparatus is itself the external world in relation to the sense organs of

the system Cs.. Thus, the system Cs. receives excitations from two directions:

from the Pcpt. system and from the interior of the apparatus itself, whose

quantitative processes are felt by the Cs. system in a qualitative way in the

pleasure-unpleasure series.

As far as the function of consciousness is concerned, Freud wrote that just as

the system Pcpt. directs a cathexis of attention to the paths along which the

22

sensory excitation is spreading and thus functions as a regulator of the discharge

of the mobile quantity in the psychical apparatus, the system Cs. serves a

similar function: it perceives new qualities, it directs the mobile quantities of

cathexis and it distributes them in an expedient way. Moreover due to the

perception of the pleasure-unpleasure series, system Cs. influences the

discharge of the cathexes by the means of displacement of quantities into the

psychical apparatus which is in its essence unconscious. Freud thought that even

if in the first instance this displacement of cathexes was made automatically by

the unpleasure principle, consciousness of these qualities would introduce a

second and more discriminating form of regulation. This form of regulation

perfected the efficiency of the apparatus because it could now cathect and work

over even the stimuli that were associated with the release of unpleasure.4

4 During the period 1910-1923, Freud published several papers, the following of which are in

some respect of interest to the present discussion of the Freudian theory of consciousness.

In ‘A formulation on the two principles of mental functioning’ (1911), Freud once more

described consciousness as attached to the sense organs and he retained his view that thought is

essentially unconscious and only becomes conscious through connection with verbal residues.

In ‘A note on the Unconscious in psycho-analysis’ (1912),Freud wrote:

Unconsciousness is a regular and inevitable phase in the processes constituting our

psychical activity ; every psychical act begins as an unconscious one, and it may either

remain so or continue developing into consciousness (S.E.,12,p.262)

Thus, since perception is a ‘psychical activity, then perceptual stimuli are transmitted to the

unconscious systems without first passing through consciousness. This view is in

accordance with the innovation introduced in his 1910 paper on the psychogenic

disturbance of vision.

In ‘The Unconscious’ (1915), Freud describes the relationship between unconscious and

conscious processes in the following way: every psychical act passes through two phases; in

the first phase the psychical act is unconscious, and thus it belongs to the system Uncs.;

then it passes through censorship or testing, before becoming part of system Cs.. We must

note that here Freud uses the abbreviation ‘system Cs.’ for the preconscious part of the

mental apparatus and he stated :

For the present let it suffice us to bear in mind that the system Pcs. shares the

characteristics of the system Cs. and that the rigorous censorship exercises its office at

the point of transition from the Ucs. to the Pcs. (or Cs.) (S.E., 14,p.173)

In ‘A metapsychological supplement to the theory of dreams’ (1917b), Freud returns to the

issue of the relationship between the two systems: Pcpt. and Cs. .He wrote :

23

Consciousness in The Ego and the Id and An Outline of Psychoanalysis

In The Ego and the Id (1923), consciousness is described as lying at the surface

of the mental apparatus in both a functional and an anatomical sense. Freud

wrote that consciousness is ‘a system which is spatially the first one reached

from the external world’ (S.E., 19,p.19) and that ‘all perceptions which are

reached from without (sense-perceptions) and from within –what we call

sensations and feelings- are Cs. from the start’ (ibid.), while thinking is in the

first instance unconscious and the unconscious items become preconscious by

becoming linguistically indexed. It must be noted at this point that Freud

probably did not mean that all perceptions are conscious. While all conscious

events are perceptions according to his model, it does not happen the same with

perceptions. In ‘The psychoanalytic view of psychogenic disturbance of

In ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ we were already led to a decision to regard conscious

perception as the function of a special system, to which we ascribed certain curious

properties, and to which we shall now have good grounds for attributing other

characteristics as well. We may regard this system, which is there called Pcpt., as

coinciding with the system Cs., on whose activity becoming conscious usually

depends.(S.E., 14,p.232)

In addition, the system Cs. of 1917 controls motility and has ‘at its disposal a motor enervation

which determines whether the perception can be made to disappear or whether, it proves

resistant [i.e., the mechanism of reality-testing]’(p.233).

In his paper ‘A difficulty in the path of psychoanalysis’ (1917a), Freud described introspective

consciousness as a form of inner perception and thought of the consciousness-producing system

as a component of the ego. In ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ (1920), Freud described consciousness as a function of the

system Cs.. Moreover, because consciousness registers information from within the body and

from the external world, Cs. must be located at the borderline between inner and outer and is

probably identical to some portion of the cerebral cortex. Excitatory processes that impinge

upon consciousness leave no permanent traces in Cs., because consciousness must always be

ready for the reception of new stimuli. The part of consciousness which is directed towards the

external world possess a barrier against the extremely intense external stimuli. At the same time,

Freud held, that Cs. has no such direct stimulus barrier directed towards the endogenous stimuli

because these are not so intense as the exogenous stimuli. In the case of excessive quantities of

internal stimulation (unpleasure), the mind has the tendency to treat endogenous stimuli as if

they were exogenous and in that way it brings the stimulus barrier against them (e.g. projection).

24

vision’ (1910), Freud discussed the phenomena of hysterical and hypnotically

induced blindness and we can find several statements in which the existence of

perceptual stimuli that do not have to cross consciousness is explicitly stated.

Thus, we may conclude that not all perception is conscious, though all

consciousness is perception.

In examining the difference between external and internal perceptions, Freud

acknowledged that the existence of internal perceptions to the ego raised a

fundamental question about his theory of consciousness: ‘is it legitimate to

consider the whole of consciousness as a single superficial system Pcpt.-Cs.?’.

Freud wrote:

Internal perceptions yield sensations of processes arising in the most

diverse and certainly also in the deepest strata of the mental

apparatus. Very little is known about these sensations and feelings;

those belonging to the pleasure-unpleasure series may still be

regarded as the best examples of them. They are more primordial,

more elementary, than perceptions arising externally and they can

come about even when consciousness is clouded. (S.E., 19, p.22)

At this point, it must be noted that in natural setting, neither external nor

internal perception occurs in pure form. In reality, both classes of perception

occur under the constant influence of mental processes arising from the interior

of the ego.

As far as feelings of pleasure and unpleasure are concerned, Freud seems to

repeat his view as expressed in the ‘Project’: sensations of pleasure and

unpleasure seem to possess special properties that are not dependent on any

linkage with memory residues in order to become conscious. According to

Freud they seem to be intrinsically conscious and this suggested him the

following question:

Let us call what becomes conscious as pleasure and unpleasure a

quantitative and qualitative “something” in the course of mental

events; the question then is whether this ‘something’ can become

conscious in the place where it is, or whether it must first be

transmitted to the system Pcpt. (S.E., 19,p.22).

Freud chose the latter option and implied that the neural state with which

unpleasure is identical –that of tension beyond some unspecified threshold- only

25

becomes a conscious experience of unpleasure to the extent that this state

physically impinges upon the system Pcpt.. And he went on to remark that:

We then come to speak, in a condensed and not entirely correct

manner, of “unconscious feelings”, keeping up an analogy with

unconscious ideas which is not altogether justifiable. Actually, the

difference is that, whereas with Ucs. ideas connecting links must be

created before they can be brought into the Cs., with feelings, which

are themselves transmitted directly, this does not occur. In other

words: the distinction between Cs. and Pcs. has no meaning where

feelings are concerned; the Pcs. here drops out -and feelings are

either conscious or unconscious. Even when they are attached to

word-presentations, their becoming conscious is not due to that

circumstance, but they become so directly (S.E., 19, pp.22-23).

Freud, then, went on to clarify the nature of the ego and he noted that the ego is

‘that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the

external world through the medium of the Pcpt.Cs.: in a sense it is an extension

of the surface-differentiation’ (Ibid.,25). Another factor that have played a

crucial role in the formation of the ego and its differentiation from the id, and

thus caused a part of the ego to become conscious, is a person’s own body and

above all its surface. Freud wrote:

A person’s own body and above all its surface, is a place from

which both external and internal perceptions may spring. It is seen

like any other object, but to the touch it yields two kinds of

sensations, one of which may be equivalent to an internal

perception. Psycho-physiology has fully discussed the manner in

which a person’s own body attains its special position among other

objects in the world of perception. Pain, too, seems to play a part in

the process, and the way in which we gain new knowledge of our

organs during painful illnesses is perhaps a model of the way by

which in general we arrive at the idea of our body.

The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface

entity, but is itself the projection of a surface. If we wish to find an

anatomical analogy for it we can best identify it with the ‘cortical

homunculus’ of the anatomists, which stands on its head in the

26

cortex, sticks up its heels, faces backwards and, as we know, has its

speech-area on the left hand side. (ibid., pp.25-26)

In Freud’s last work, An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940), there are no changes

in his model of consciousness. Once more consciousness is viewed as an

internal sense organ, which perceives the subject’s mental processes. Freud

(1940) wrote:

The process of something becoming conscious is above all linked

with the perceptions, which our sense organs receive from the

external world. From the topographical point of view, therefore, it is

a phenomenon that takes place in the outermost cortex of the ego. It

is true that we also receive conscious information from the inside of

the body –the feelings, which actually exercise a more peremptory

influence on our mental life than external perceptions; moreover, in

certain circumstances the sense organs themselves transmit feelings,

sensations of pain, in addition to the perceptions specific to them.

Since, however, these sensations (as we call them in contrast to

conscious perceptions) also emanate from the terminal organs and

since we regard all these as prolongations or offshoots of the

cortical layer, we are still able to maintain the assertion made above

[at the beginning of this paragraph]. The only distinction would be

that, as regards the terminal organs of sensation and feeling, the

body itself would take the place of the external world. (S.E., 23,

pp.161-2)

27

4. Consciousness and Affect: Mark Solms’ Model

Freud understood consciousness as similar to an internal sense organ taking

mental processes as its objects. (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1980; Smith, 1999;

Solms, 1997; Herzog, 1991).

Herzog (1991) writes:

“The close and essential connection between consciousness and

perception is nowhere more evident than in Freud’s evolving view

of the consciousness of instinctual or affective processes –what, for

lack of a better word, I have termed “feeling”.” (p.55).

In the present chapter, we will initially discuss the primary role of affect in

the proposed model of consciousness and the differences between the

consciousness of external and internal stimuli. Next, we will consider Solms’

reading of the Freudian model of consciousness and especially the function

of affect as modality of consciousness and as a bridge of linking the mind

with the body.

On the Primacy of Affect

Ontologically and phylogenetically speaking, consciousness of qualities of

pleasure and unpleasure precede consciousness of the external world. In the

Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning (1911), Freud

wrote:

The increased significance of external reality heightened the

importance, too, of the sense-organs that are directed towards the

external world, and of the consciousness attached to them.

Consciousness now learned to comprehend sensory qualities in

addition to the qualities of pleasure and unpleasure which hitherto

had alone been of interest to it. (S.E., 12, p.216)

Another passage that supports the primary position of the internal stimuli over

the external ones in the ontogenesis and phylogenesis can be found in Beyond

the Pleasure Principle (1920):

The excitations coming from within are, however, in their intensity

and in other, qualitative, respects –in their amplitude, perhaps- more

28

commensurate with the system’s method of working than the stimuli

which stream in from the external world. This state of things

produces two definite results. First, the feelings of pleasure and

unpleasure (which are index to what is happening in the interior of

the apparatus) predominate over all external stimuli. And secondly,

a particular way is adopted of dealing with any internal excitations

which produce too great an increase of unpleasure: there is a

tendency to treat them as though they were acting, not from the

inside, but from the outside, so that it may be possible to bring the

shield against stimuli into operation as a means of defense against

them. (S.E., 18, pp.28-29)

These two passages aptly demonstrate Freud’s view that organisms are born

fundamentally affective, and only with maturation they become ever

increasingly cognitive.

External and Internal Stimuli

There is a crucial difference between external and internal stimuli in the

Freudian model of consciousness. In regard to the operation of the external

senses, Freud noted:

It is characteristic of them that they deal only with very small

quantities of external stimulation and only take in samples of the

external world. They may perhaps be compared with feelers which

are all the time making tentative advances towards the external

world and then drawing back from it’ (S.E., 18, pp. 27-28)

On the other hand, the internal perception of endogenously generated stimuli

lacks any shield against excessive stimuli, as it is the case for the external

stimuli.

[T]he difference between the conditions governing the reception of

excitations in the two cases have a decisive effect on the functioning

of the system and of the whole mental apparatus. Towards the

outside it is shielded against stimuli, and the amounts of excitation

impinging on it have only a reduced effect. Towards the inside there

can be no such shield; the excitations in the deeper layers extend

into the system directly and in undiminished amount, in so far as

29

certain of their characteristic give rise to feelings in the pleasure-

unpleasure series. (S.E., 18, pp.28-29)

Solms’ extension of the Freudian theory of Consciousness

On May 7, 1996, Solms presented his paper ‘What is consciousness?’ as the

Charles Fisher Memorial Lecture at the New York Psychoanalytic Society.

Solms’ reply to the question posed by the title of his lecture was based on a

contemporary reading of the Freudian theory of consciousness in relation to the

neurosciences and the philosophy of mind.

Schematically, Solms (1997) argued that:

1. Consciousness is not caused by neurobiological processes in the brain.

2. The fundamental proposition of psychoanalysis is that all mental

processes are in themselves unconscious.

3. Consciousness is a reflection of mental activity, or a perception of mental

activity which is itself unconscious.

4. Freud followed Kant in believing that we can be aware only of

phenomena: things in themselves can never be known because beyond

every phenomenon is an unknowable ‘noumenon’.5

Based on these primary assumptions, Solms developed his reply in the direction

of considering consciousness as a sense organ for perception of the mental

processes. Consciousness, according to Solms’ reading of the Freudian theory,

5 Solms advances the view that Freud was in great extent influenced by Kant and he quotes the

following passage: “The psycho-analytic assumption of unconscious mental activity appears to

us … as an extension of the corrections undertaken by Kant of our views on external perception.

Just as Kant warned us not to overlook the fact that our perceptions are subjectively conditioned

and must not be regarded as identical with what is perceived though unknowable, so psycho-

analysis warns us not to equate perceptions by means of consciousness with the unconscious

mental processes which are their object. Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in

reality what it appears to be (S.E., 14, p.171). Thus, according to Solms, Freud held the view

that both the internal and the external reality are in themselves unknowable: reality is

ontologically one, though it is knowable to us under distinct attributes of extension (physics)

and thought (psychology). (Opatow, 1999). For a similar line of argument regarding Freud’s

relation to Kant’s philosophy, see Paul Redding (1999), The Logic of Affect, New York : Cornell

University Press and Barry Opatow (1999), Affect and the Integration Problem of Mind and

Brain, Neuro-Psychoanalysis, 1: 97-110.

30

represents a kind of internal sensory modality, which perceives the processes

occurring within us.

Solms (1997) writes:

We are aware of two different aspects of the world simultaneously.

First we are aware of the natural processes occurring in the external

world, which are represented to us in the form of our external

perceptual modalities of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, etc.

Second, we are aware of the natural processes occurring within our

own selves, which are represented to us in the form of our

subjective consciousness. We are aware of nothing else. These are

the only constituents of the envelope of conscious awareness, which

defines the limits of human experience. (p.685)

In developing Freud’s model, Solms states that the envelope of consciousness is

derived from six primary perceptual modalities. On its external surface, we find

quantitative stimuli presented to us in the qualitative modalities of vision,

hearing, somatic sensation, taste and smell. On its internal surface, we find

quantitative stimuli in the qualitative modality that we call affect.6 In Solms’

model, affect is the primary sensory modality of the internal surface of

consciousness.

According to Solms, what is special about Freud’s formulation is that the

natural processes occurring within us are represented consciously by means of a

sensory modality that faces inward and this modality is the sense of affect. “We

construct the images of ourselves by processing constantly conjoined patterns of

stimuli derived from the internal sensory modality of affect, in accordance with

various algorithms, and thereby generating inferred entities experienced as

subjective feelings.”(ibid.p.692).

The space that lies between the two poles of awareness –the internal and

external surfaces of consciousness- is what is described in psychoanalysis as the

“ego”. Thus, Solms goes on to note that the totality of human consciousness

consists in three things: (1) primary external perceptions, (2) primary internal

6 Of course this classification is an oversimplification, because normally every modality

comprises other modalities or submodalities as well.

31

perceptions (affect), and (3) perceptions of activated traces of previous

experiences (memory and cognition).

On examining the primary importance of affect for the Freudian theory, it must

be kept in mind that according to Freud, the mental apparatus as a whole serves

the biological purpose of meeting the internal needs of the subject, which are

imperative, in a changing and usually indifferent external environment. These

needs are expressed through “drives” which are quantitative demands on the

mental apparatus to perform the necessary actions that will satisfy the general

functioning of the mental apparatus. The mental apparatus is regulated by the

“pleasure principle” and thus value is assigned to those mental performances

that they will conclude in the successful meeting of the internal needs. Their

success is felt qualitatively as pleasure and their failure as unpleasure.

According to Solms and Nersessian, Freud’s answer to the question “from

where do affect origin ad what is its purpose?” lies to the fact that “affect

assigns value to the state of the mental apparatus, by registering its biological

consequences in consciousness” (Solms & Nersessian, 1999a, p.5). In Solms’

view, the most crucial point in the Freudian theory of affect is the fact that

Freud considered felt emotions to be the conscious perception of something

which is, in itself, unconscious. Moreover, affects are perceived in a distinctive

modality of consciousness that is not reducible to the other perceptual

modalities: the affective modality of consciousness registers the internal state of

the subject. Even in the case where an affect is triggered by an external

stimulus, this affect registers the reaction of the subject to the external stimulus,

not the stimulus itself: affects register the state of the subject. In other words,

“affects register the personal significance (value or meaning), to the subject, of

a particular external or internal situation” (Solms & Nersessian, 1999,p.12).

This value is calibrated in degrees of pleasure and unpleasure: pleasure equals

to the satisfaction of the subject’s needs and unpleasure equals to the frustration

of the subject’s needs. These needs are reducible to drives which are “the

psychical representative[s] of the stimuli originating from within the organism

and reaching the mind, as a measure of the demand made upon the mind for

work in consequence of its connection with the body” (Freud, 1915a, S.E.14, p.

122). Thus, emotions are perceptions of “oscillations in the tension of

instinctual needs” (Freud, 1940, S.E. 23, p.198).

32

Regarding the effects of these oscillations on consciousness, Solms and

Nersessian (1999a) write:

For this, according to Freud, is what affect is: Feelings of pleasure

and unpleasure are “the psychical quality attaching to transpositions

of energy inside the apparatus” (1915a); they are the qualitative

form in which “oscillations in the tension of instinctual needs”

become conscious (Freud, 1940, p.198). Around this core, all the

other aspects of affect are organized. (pp.7-8)

Solms’ model is constructed around the definition of affect as lying on the

frontier between the mental and the somatic (Freud, 1915a) and the nature of

consciousness as an internal embodied sense organ.

In the next chapter, we will discuss the possibility of building bridges between

Solms’ metapsychological conceptions of affect and consciousness and the

recent progresses made by neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and Jaak

Panksepp.

33

5. Affect and Consciousness: From psychoanalysis to

neurosciences

In the mid-1990s two popular books written by neuroscientists, Descartes’

Error: Emotion, Reason and The Human Brain by Antonio R. Damasio and The

Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life by Joseph

LeDoux, marked a profound change in the way emotions and consciousness

were treated by cognitive scientists. Not only they provided a new framework

for research, but they also criticized severely the cognitive paradigm:

cognitivism had abstracted almost all the phenomenological characteristics of

emotions and feelings from the scientific research of emotions and

consciousness. Paradoxically, many scientists had already concluded that within

the cognitive paradigm emotions had become ‘affectless’ and they criticized it

for its neglect of the phenomenal consciousness of emotions (Tomkins, 1995;

Zajonc, 1984; Armon Jones, 1991). Paul Redding (1999) writes:

A striking feature of these books was the support they offered for

the Jamesian thesis that the felt-center of emotion consists of

informational feedback from states of the body. Another, given their

convergence with accounts such as Zajonc’s, which discussed the

(access) unconscious aspects of emotion, was the indirect support

they provided for some of the basic tenets of another late-

nineteenth-century, early-twentieth-century psychologist, Sigmund

Freud. Curiously, both books have the feel of the late-nineteenth-

century Zeitgeist, a naturalistic outlook strongly based in

evolutionary biology but willing to talk about consciousness and

subjectivity in a way that has been excluded from most of the

twentieth century. (p.17).

In the following years, two other similar books appeared The Feeling of What

Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness by Antonio R.

Damasio and Affective Neuroscience by Jaak Panksepp. In all these efforts it is

made explicitly clear that the mind had to be first about the body and that the

body representation is the brain’s permanent background reference for the

structuring of the self and its relation to the world. Within this new framework

34

affects, emotions and feelings stand at the critical point of integration of mind

and body and they provide the basis for what Panksepp calls ‘affective

consciousness’ or what Damasio calls ‘core consciousness’.

During the twentieth century many attempts of integration of psychoanalysis

and neurosciences have been made.7 Probably, the most striking problem in all

these efforts was the quest of an adequate methodology and the problem of

translatability of the different vocabularies of the two disciplines. In this final

chapter we will try to delineate certain points of agreement between

psychoanalysis and the aforementioned neuroscientific models. This attempt to

reconcile psychoanalysis with neurosciences was inspired by a recent effort,

made under the editorship of Mark Solms and Edward Nersessian, which led to

the publication of the journal Neuro-Psychoanalysis.8 We will examine

consecutively the possible points of agreement between the Freudian

metapsychology of affect and consciousness with the works of Panksepp and

Damasio.

7 E.g., Epstein (1987, 1989, 1995), Erdelyi (1985), Frick (1982), Galin (1974), Hadley (1983,

1992), Harris (1986), Hartmann (1982), Heilbrunn (1979), Hosmins (1936), Joseph (1982,

1992), Kaplan-Solms & Solms (2000) Kokkou & Leuzinger-Bohleber (1992), Levin (1991),

Maclean (1962), McLaughlin (1978), Meyersburg & Post (1979), Miller (1991), Negri (1994),

Olds (1992), Ostow (1954, 1955a, 1955b, 1955c, 1956, 1959), Palombo (1992), Peterfreund

(1971, 1975), Reiser (1984, 1990), Schilder (1935), Schore (1994), Schwartz (1987,

1988),Solms (1996a, 1996b, 1996c, 1997, 1998),Solms & Nersessian (1999), Solms & Saling

(1990), Stone (1977), Winson (1985), Zueler & Maas (1994). 8 The first issue of Neuro-Psychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and

Neurosciences was devoted to the topic of affect.

35

Jaak Panksepp and Affective Consciousness

Affective neuroscience is based on the premise that emotional process and the

subjectively experienced feelings do play a causal role in the chain of events

that control the actions of both humans and animals. The methodology proposed

by Panksepp in order to examine these emotional systems can be summed up to

the following steps: (a) the examination of the major categories of human

affective experience across individuals and cultures, (b) the study of the natural

categories of animal emotive behaviors and (c) the analysis of the brain circuits

from which the tendencies arise (Panksepp, 1998).

At the last chapter of his book Affective Neuroscience, Panksepp defends his

proposal concerning the fundamentally affective nature of primal consciousness.

He writes (1998):

Considering this possibility, I would argue that basic affective

states, which initially arise from the changing neurodynamics of a

SELF-representation mechanism, may provide an essential psychic

scaffolding for all other forms of consciousness. Thus, a primitive

affective awareness may have been an evolutionary prerequisite for

the emergence of perceptual-cognitive awareness. If so,

computational and sensory-perceptual approaches to consciousness

must take affective bodily representations into account if their

higher extrapolations are to be correct. From such a vantage,

Descartes’ faith in his assertion “I think, therefore I am” may be

superseded by a more primitive affirmation that is part of the

genetic makeup of all mammals: “ I feel, therefore I am”. (p.309)

Moreover, Panksepp does not hesitate to acknowledge Feud’s rightness

regarding the central place that affects occupied in psychoanalysis and in his

theory of consciousness. Freud recognized, just as Panksepp tries today to prove

it, that affects register the importance of salient events and thereby permeate

the higher conscious functions of the mental apparatus. Another point of

agreement between Freud and Panksepp can be found on the causal role that

both of them ascribe to affects and their relation to consciousness.

“Freud’s insights on the nature of affects were prescient…Affective

states, arising from a variety of emotional and motivational

36

processes, may constitute the ‘ground’ in the figure-ground

relationships that constitute ordinary conscious experiences. Even

though our conscious mind is not prepared to focus on the ground

processes as readily as on the figurative contents of mind,…, those

affective states may be absolutely essential for any type of

consciousness to have emerged in brain evolution.

In the mammalian brain, all higher forms of consciousness may still

be grounded on the most primitive forms of consciousness, which I

assume were affective in nature. As already mentioned, without the

ground of affective experience, I suspect that individuals would

present themselves as the proverbial ‘zombies’ of philosophical

discourse.”(Panksepp, 1999a, p.20)

As far as the neural substrate that permitted the emergence of affective feelings

in brain evolution is concerned, Panksepp hypothesizes that they provide the

primitive foundation for ego development and he proposes that the ego

germinates from these primitive areas of the brain where the basic emotional

systems interact with the basic neural representations of the body.

In An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Freud posed the following question that

modern neuroscientists, such as Panksepp, try to answer: “by what means and

with the help of what sensory terminal organs these perceptions [affective

feelings] come about” (Freud, S.E., 23, p.198). In their attempt to find the neural

correlates of Freud’s functional topography, neuroscientists faced the dilemma

of whether the perceptual system, which registers primary affective

consciousness, is to be located in deep subcortical structures (principally in the

region of PGA) or in neocortical forebrain structures (principally the prefrontal

lobes). LeDoux proposed that the most crucial role in sustaining every form of

consciousness is played by the core brainstem structures, although he attributes

the generation of conscious quality to working memory. Panksepp, on the other

hand, seems to follow Damasio who distinguishes between animals having

feelings (a function served by subcortical structures) and knowing that they

have feelings (a function which requires forebrain processing.

This distinction between subcortical and cortical consciousness-generating

systems led Panksepp to propose a further distinction between two types of

consciousness, “cognitive” and “affective” consciousness, which are sustained

37

by distinct dorsal/neocortical and ventral/limbic systems respectively. This

conclusion resembles Freud’s own proposal that consciousness is registered by

two perceptual surfaces, one oriented toward the external world, and the other

toward the interior of the body. Freud (1940) wrote:

“The id, cut off from the external world, has a world of perceptions

of its own. It detects with extraordinary acuteness certain changes in

its interior, especially oscillations in the tension of its instinctual

needs, and these changes become conscious as feelings in the

pleasure-unpleasure series” (S.E., 23, p.198)

However, it must be emphasized that Feud’s model of consciousness, and

especially its two perceptual surfaces, is a functional model, like all of his

topography, which can not be mapped onto anatomical structures in a simple

and isomorphic fashion.9

9 Damasio (1999b) warn us: “Likewise, I would caution against the neophrenological slip of

considering selected regions as providers of large-scale functions. The interconnectivity among

regions is of such a degree that, in all likelihood, the relevant neural patterns arise in a cross-

regional and supraregional manner”(p.39).

38

Antonio Damasio and Core Consciousness

Damasio’s first book Descartes’ Error is based on two basic hypotheses: (1)

emotions play a positive role in the adaptive functions of the mind, and (2) they

do so by bringing the current state of the body to conscious awareness. Damasio

(1994) writes:

“Feelings offer us a glimpse of what goes on in our flesh, as a

momentary image of that flesh is juxtaposed to the images of other

objects and situations; in so doing, feelings modify our

comprehensive notion of those other objects and situations. By dint

of juxtaposition, body images give other images a quality of

goodness or badness of pleasure or pain”(p159)

Damasio in his first book constructs a new theory that combines the James-

Lange paradigm with contemporary neuroscientific knowledge and it

incorporates many components of Freud’s metapsychology.

Just like Freud, Damasio conceptualizes the mental apparatus as a

phylogenetically evolved “sympathetic ganglion” that mediates between

compelling demands arising from the internal milieu of the body, on the one

hand, and the practical constraints of external reality on the other.

Moreover, Damasio, like the early Freud, suggests that emotions contribute to

the regulation of this adaptive, self-preservative process by generating signals of

pleasure and unpleasure, which reflect the vicissitudes of the internal milieu

with reference to an underlying economic or homeostatic principle:

“Achieving survival coincides with the ultimate reduction of

unpleasant body states and the attaining homeostatic ones, i.e.,

functionally balanced biological states. The internal preference

system is inherently biased to avoid pain, seek potential pleasure,

and is probably pretuned for achieving these goals in social

situations” (Ibid.,179; see also p.262).

In his second book, The Feeling of What Happens, in a fusion of developmental

biology, clinical neurology and physiological psychology, Damasio argues that

human consciousness emerged out of the development of emotion. According to

Damasio, feeling an emotion is a simple matter, consisting as it does of mental

images arising from the neural patterns that represent the changes in the body

39

that make up an emotion. But having consciousness of that feeling, feeling the

feeling, is the crucial step in the development of human consciousness. Having

feelings is of extraordinary value in the orchestration of survival. But beyond

that, Damasio asserts that the mechanisms that permit consciousness may have

prevailed because it was useful for organisms to know of their emotions.

Emotional processes target both body and brain: the brain nuclei primarily

concerned with managing the life processes –regulating heart function,

mediating pain, controlling breathing- are closely interconnected with those

concerned with attention, arousal, sleep and consciousness. Thus, the fact that

the regulation of life process and of consciousness are so intimately connected

is not due to an anatomical accident, but it is rather a development of real

evolutionary worth.

Central to his theory is the idea that the part of the mind we call self is –

biologically speaking- grounded on a collection of nonconscious neural patterns

standing for the part of the organism we call the body proper. Behind the notion

of self, there is the notion of the singular, stable individual. Consciousness

depends on the internal construction and exhibition of new knowledge

concerning an interaction between the organism and an object. In the same line

of argument, we may say that for Damasio, affect arises out of interaction

between internal milieu and outside world and that the essential context of

affect is defined by the self in relation to the object.

Damasio (1999a) does not hesitate to avow his influences:

“The view of consciousness I adopt here connects historically with

those expressed by thinkers as diverse as Locke, Brentano, Kant,

Freud and William James. They believed as I do that consciousness

is “an inner sense”. Curiously, the “inner sense” view is no longer

mainstream in consciousness studies.” (p.126).

Damasio further distinguishes core consciousness, which is concerned with the

here and now, from extended consciousness, which includes autobiographical

memory and the perception of time. Core consciousness is a second-order state

of the mind/ brain located in some specific regions, and capable of representing

the relation between representations of objects and representations of the soma,

while the latter is almost invariably reacting emotionally to some object or

another: “Core consciousness occurs when the brain’s representation devices

40

generate an imaged, nonverbal account of how the organism’s own state is

affected by the organism’s processing of an object, and when this process

enhances the image of the causative object, thus placing it saliently in a spatial

and temporal context” (Ibid.,169). As far as the connection of core

consciousness to emotions is concerned, Damasio asserts that emotions and core

consciousness tend to go together and that both emotions and core

consciousness require, in part, the same neural substrates.

For the relation of his work to the Freudian metapsychology of affect, Damasio

(1999b) writes:

“ I believe we can say that Freud’s insights on the nature of affect

are consonant with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience

views. Emotion and feeling are operated in the brain, neurally

speaking, in the manner everything else is operated neurally, and

yet, emotion and feeling are distinctive on several counts: Emotions

are genomically preset and largely innate; they have an

indispensable ingredient (pleasure or unpleasure); and there is a

unique within-ness about them. I have proposed (without thinking of

Freud but coincident with him), that the body, real, and as

represented in the brain, is the theater for the emotions, and that

feeling are largely read-outs of body changes “really” enacted in the

body and “really” constructed in an “as-if” mode in body-mapping

brain structures”. (pp.38-39)

To the extent that Damasio’s theory is compatible with Freud’s theory, it

provides as a provisional working model of the neurophysical correlates of the

metapsychology of affect. Correlations of this sort are useful to psychoanalysis

in its present stage of development, for the reason that they create a conceptual

and experimental bridge between psychoanalysis and contemporary

neuroscience.

Solms and Nersessian (1999b) have argued that Freud’s conceptualization of

affect as an internally directed perceptual modality is relatively easy to reconcile

with current neuroscientific views and researches. The aforementioned

perspectives on the Freudian theory of consciousness constitute initial and

cautious steps in the field of neuro-psychoanalysis. Hopefully, these preliminary

efforts will lead to the realization of more detailed and experimental programs.

41

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