The minimal theory treats instances of the equivalence principle as definitional of truth for a given sentence, but in fact, it seems that each instance of the equivalence principle can itself be explained. The truths from which such an instance as: ‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if London is beautiful. This would be a pseudo-explanation if the fact that ‘London’ refers to London consists in part in the fact that ‘London is beautiful’ has the truth-condition it does. But it is very implausible, it is, after all, possible to understand the name ‘London’ without understanding the predicate ‘is beautiful’.
Sometimes, however, the counterfactual conditional is known as subjunctive conditionals, insofar as a counterfactual conditional is a conditional of the form ‘if p were to happen q would’, or ‘if p were to have happened q would have happened’, where the supposition of ‘p’ is contrary to the known fact that ‘not-p’. Such assertions are nevertheless, use=ful ‘if you broken the bone, the X-ray would have looked different’, or ‘if the reactor were to fail, this mechanism wold click in’ are important truths, even when we know that the bone is not broken or are certain that the reactor will not fail. It is arguably distinctive of laws of nature that yield counterfactuals (‘if the metal were to be heated, it would expand’), whereas accidentally true generalizations may not. It is clear that counterfactuals cannot be represented by the material implication of the propositional calculus, since that conditionals comes out true whenever ‘p’ is false, so there would be no division between true and false counterfactuals.
Although the subjunctive form indicates a counterfactual, in many contexts it does not seem to matter whether we use a subjunctive form, or a simple conditional form: ‘If you run out of water, you will be in trouble’ seems equivalent to ‘if you were to run out of water, you would be in trouble’, in other contexts there is a big difference: ‘If Oswald did not kill Kennedy, someone else did’ is clearly true, whereas ‘if Oswald had not killed Kennedy, someone would have’ is most probably false.
The best-known modern treatment of counterfactuals is that of David Lewis, which evaluates them as true or false according to whether ‘q’ is true in the ‘most similar’ possible worlds to ours in which ‘p’ is true. The similarity-ranking this approach needs has proved controversial, particularly since it may need to presuppose some notion of the same laws of nature, whereas art of the interest in counterfactuals is that they promise to illuminate that notion. There is a growing awareness tat the classification of conditionals is an extremely tricky business, and categorizing them as counterfactuals or not be of limited use.
The pronouncing of any conditional is proportionate of the form ‘if p then q’. The condition hypothesizes, ‘p’. It’s called the antecedent of the conditional, and ‘q’ the consequent. Various kinds of conditional have been distinguished. The weaken in that of material implication, merely telling us that with not-p. or q. stronger conditionals include elements of modality, corresponding to the thought that ‘if p is true then q must be true’. Ordinary language is very flexible in its use of the conditional form, and there is controversy whether, yielding different kinds of conditionals with different meanings, or pragmatically, in which case there should be one basic meaning which case there should be one basic meaning, with surface differences arising from other implicatures.
Passively, there are many forms of Reliabilism. Just as there are many forms of ‘Foundationalism’ and ‘coherence’. How is Reliabilism related to these other two theories of justification? We usually regard it as a rival, and this is aptly so, in as far as Foundationalism and Coherentism traditionally focussed on purely evidential relations than psychological processes, but we might also offer Reliabilism as a deeper-level theory, subsuming some precepts of either Foundationalism or Coherentism. Foundationalism says that there are ‘basic’ beliefs, which acquire justification without dependence on inference, Reliabilism might rationalize this indicating that reliable non-inferential processes have formed the basic beliefs. Coherence stresses the primary of systematics in all doxastic decision-making. Reliabilism might rationalize this by pointing to increases in reliability that accrue from systematicity consequently, Reliabilism could complement Foundationalism and coherence than completed with them.
These examples make it seem likely that, if there is a criterion for what makes an alternate situation relevant that will save Goldman’s claim about local reliability and knowledge. Will did not be simple. The interesting thesis that counts as a causal theory of justification, in the making of ‘causal theory’ intended for the belief as it is justified in case it was produced by a type of process that is ‘globally’ reliable, that is, its propensity to produce true beliefs that can be defined, to an acceptable approximation, as the proportion of the beliefs it produces, or would produce where it used as much as opportunity allows, that is true is sufficiently relializable. We have advanced variations of this view for both knowledge and justified belief, its first formulation of a reliability account of knowing appeared in the notation from F.P.Ramsey (1903-30). The theory of probability, he was the first to show how a ‘personalists theory’ may as a feature in the probability of things that can be constructively impressed and firmly based on a precise behavioural notion of preference and expectation. In the philosophy of language, much of Ramsey’s work was directed at saving classical mathematics from ‘intuitionism’, or what he called the ‘Bolshevik menace of Brouwer and Weyl. In the theory of probability he was the first to show how we could develop some personalists theory, based on precise behavioural notation of preference and expectation. In the philosophy of language, Ramsey was one of the first thankers, which he combined with radical views of the function of many kinds of a proposition. Neither generalizations, nor causal propositions, nor those treating probability or ethics, describe facts, but each has a different specific function in our intellectual economy. Ramsey was one of the earliest commentators on the early work of Wittgenstein, and his continuing friendship that led to Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge and to philosophy in 1929.
Ramsey’s sentence theory is the sentence generated by taking all the sentences affirmed in a scientific theory that use some term, e.g., ‘quark’. Replacing the term by a variable, and existentially quantifying into the result, instead of saying that quarks have such-and-such properties, the Ramsey sentence says that there is something that has those properties. If we repeat the process for all of a group of the theoretical terms, the sentence gives the ‘topic-neutral’ structure of the theory, but removes any implication that we know what the term so treated prove competent. It leaves open the possibility of identifying the theoretical item with whatever, but it is that best fits the description provided. Just about, all theories of knowledge are, of course, shared by an externalist component in requiring truth as a condition for known in. Reliabilism goes further, however, in trying to capture additional conditions for knowledge by ways of a nomic, counterfactual or similar ‘external’ relations between belief and truth. Closely allied to the nomic sufficiency account of knowledge, primarily due to Dretshe (1971, 1981), A. I. Goldman (1976, 1986) and R. Nozick (1981), whereby, the main core of this approach is that X’s belief that ‘p’ qualifies as knowledge just in case ‘X’ believes ‘p’, because of reasons that would not obtain unless ‘p’s’ being true, or because of a process or method that would not yield belief in ‘p’ if ‘p’ were not true. An enemy example, ‘X’ would not have its current reasons for believing there is a telephone before it. Or, for any reason, that any pursuant influence is much depictive to conditions backed by circumstance. This coming to the surface through which attentions would be quickened to indorse the negative value for things unknowingly improper. In this belief, and in this way, it does, however, an encounter upon a result of counterfactuals that seem reliably fortified by a guarantor of the belief’s being true. Determined to and the facts of counterfactual approach say that ‘X’ knows that ‘p’ only if there is no ‘relevant alternative’ situation in which ‘p’ is false but ‘X’ would still believe that a proposition ‘p’; must be sufficient to eliminate all the alternatives too ‘p’ where an alternative to a proposition ‘p’ is a proposition incompatible with ‘p?’. That I, one’s justification or evidence for ‘p’ must be sufficient for one to know that every alternative too ‘p’ is false. This element of our evolving thinking, sceptical arguments have exploited about which knowledge. These arguments call our attentions to alternatives that our evidence sustains itself with no elimination. The sceptic inquires to how we know that we are not seeing a cleverly disguised mule. While we do have some evidence against the likelihood of such as deception, intuitively knowing that we are not so deceived is not strong enough for ‘us’. By pointing out alternate but hidden points of nature, in that we cannot eliminate, and others with more general application, as dreams, hallucinations, etc. , The sceptic appears to show that every alternative is seldom. If ever, satisfied.
All the same, and without a problem, is noted by the distinction between the ‘in itself’ and the; for itself’ originated in the Kantian logical and epistemological distinction between a thing as it is in itself, and that thing as an appearance, or as it is for us. For Kant, the thing in itself is the thing as it is intrinsically, that is, the character of the thing apart from any relations in which it happens to stand. The thing for which, or as an appearance, is the thing in so far as it stands in relation to our cognitive faculties and other objects. ‘Now a thing in itself cannot be known through mere relations: and we may therefore conclude that since outer sense gives us nothing but mere relations, this sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an object to the subject, and not the inner properties of the object in itself’. Kant applies this same distinction to the subject’s cognition of itself. Since the subject can know itself only in so far as it can intuit itself, and it can intuit itself only in terms of temporal relations, and thus as it is related to its own-self, it represents either ‘in’ or ‘for’ itself, as it appears to itself, not as it is. Thus, the distinction between what the subject is in itself and hat it is for itself arises in Kant in so far as the distinction between what an object is in itself and what it is for a knower is applied to the subject’s own knowledge of itself.
Hegel (1770-1831) begins the transition of the epistemological distinct ion between what the subject is in itself and what it is for itself into an ontological distinction. Since, for Hegel, what is, s it is in fact ir in itself, necessarily involves relation, the Kantian distinction must be transformed. Taking his cue from the fact that, even for Kant, what the subject is in fact ir in itself involves a relation to itself, or seif-consciousness. Hegel suggests that the cognition of an entity in terms of such relations or self-relations do not preclude knowledge of the thing itself. Rather, what an entity is intrinsically, or in itself, is best understood in terms of the potentiality of that thing to enter specific explicit relations with itself. And, just as for consciousness to be explicitly itself is for it to be for itself by being in relation to itself, i.e., to be explicitly self-conscious, for-itself of any entity is that entity in so far as it is actually related to itself. The distinction between the entity in itself and the entity for itself is thus taken t o apply to every entity, and not only to the subject. For example, the seed of a plant is that plant in itself or implicitly, while the mature plant which involves actual relation among the plant’s various organs is the plant ‘for itself’. In Hegel, then, the in itself/for itself distinction becomes universalized, in is applied to all entities, and not merely to conscious entities. In addition, the distinction takes on an ontological dimension. While the seed and the mature plant are one and the same entity, being in itself of the plan, or the plant as potential adult, in that an ontologically distinct commonality is in for itself on the plant, or the actually existing mature organism. At the same time, the distinction retains an epistemological dimension in Hegel, although its import is quite different from that of the Kantian distinction. To know a thing it is necessary to know both the actual, explicit self-relations which mark the thing (the being for itself of the thing) and the inherent simpler principle of these relations, or the being in itself of the thing. Real knowledge, for Hegel, thus consists in a knowledge of the thing as it is in and for itself.
Sartre’s distinction between being in itself and being for itself, which is an entirely ontological distinction with minimal epistemological import, is descended from the Hegelian distinction. Sartre distinguishes between what it is for consciousness to be, i.e., being for itself, and the being of the transcendent being which is intended by consciousness, i.e., being in itself. What is it for consciousness to be, being for itself, is marked by self relation? Sartre posits a ‘pre-reflective Cogito’, such that every consciousness of ‘χ’ necessarily involves a ‘non-positional’ consciousness of the consciousness of χ. While in Kant every subject is both in itself, i.e., as it is apart from its relations, and for itself in so far as it is related to itself, and for itself in so far as it is related to itself by appearing to itself, and in Hegel every entity can be considered as it is both in itself and for itself, in Sartre, to be selfly related or for itself is the distinctive ontological mark of consciousness, while to lack relations or to be in itself is the distinctive e ontological mark of non-conscious entities.
This conclusion conflicts with another strand in our thinking about knowledge, in that we know many things. Thus, there is a tension in our ordinary thinking about knowledge ~. We believe that knowledge is, in the sense indicated, an absolute concept and yet, we also believe that there are many instances of that concept.
If one finds absoluteness to be too central a component of our concept of knowledge to be relinquished, one could argue from the absolute character of knowledge to a sceptical conclusion (Unger, 1975). Most philosophers, however, have taken the other course, choosing to respond to the conflict by giving up, perhaps reluctantly, the absolute criterion. This latter response holds as sacrosanct our commonsense belief that we know many things (Pollock, 1979 and Chisholm, 1977). Each approach is subject to the criticism that it preserves one aspect of our ordinary thinking about knowledge at the expense of denying another. We can view the theory of relevant alternatives as an attempt to provide a more satisfactory response to this tension in our thinking about knowledge. It attempts to characterize knowledge in a way that preserves both our belief that knowledge is an absolute concept and our belief that we have knowledge.
Having to its recourse of knowledge, its cental questions include the origin of knowledge, the place of experience in generating knowledge, and the place of reason in doing so, the relationship between knowledge and certainty, and between knowledge and the impossibility of error, the possibility of universal scepticism, and the changing forms of knowledge that arise from new conceptualizations of the world. All these issues link with other central concerns of philosophy, such as the nature of truth and the natures of experience and meaning. Seeing epistemology is possible as dominated by two rival metaphors. One is that of a building or pyramid, built on foundations. In this conception it is the job of the philosopher to describe especially secure foundations, and to identify secure modes of construction, s that the resulting edifice can be shown to be sound. This metaphor of knowledge, and in turn of a rationally defensible theory of confirmation and inference as a method of construction, equally that knowledge must be regarded as a structure arisen upon secure, certain foundations. These are found in some formidable combinations of experience and reason, with different schools (empiricism, rationalism) emphasizing the role of one over that of the others. Foundationalism was associated with the ancient Stoics, and in the modern era with Descartes (1596-1650). Who discovered his foundations in the ‘clear and distinct’ ideas of reason? Its main opponent is Coherentism, or the view that a body of propositions mas be known without a foundation in certainty, but by their interlocking strength, than as a crossword puzzle may be known to have been solved correctly even if each answer, taken individually, admits of uncertainty. Difficulties at this point led the logical passivists to abandon the notion of an epistemological foundation, and justly philander with the coherence theory of truth. It is widely accepted that trying to make the connection between thought and experience through basic sentences depends on an untenable ‘myth of the given’.
Still, of the other metaphor, is that of a boat or fuselage, that has no foundation but owes its strength to the stability given by its interlocking parts. This rejects the idea of a basis in the ‘given’, favours ideas of coherence and holism, but finds it harder to ward off scepticism. In spite of these concerns, the problem, least of mention, is of defining knowledge in terms of true beliefs plus some favoured relations between the believer and the facts that began with Plato’s view in the ‘Theaetetus’ that knowledge is true belief, and some logos.` This, unrelenting causality that, in this case, lays’ into accountable grounds through some formalities existing to or descendable with natural epistemology, the enterprising of studying the actual formation of knowledge by human beings, without aspiring to make evidently those processes as rational, or proof against ‘scepticism’ or even apt to yield the truth. Natural epistemology would therefore blend into the psychology of learning and the study of episodes in the history of science. The scope for ‘external’ or philosophical reflection of the kind that might result in scepticism or its refutation is markedly diminished. Nonetheless, the terms are modern, they however distinguish exponents of the approach that include Aristotle, Hume, and J. S. Mills.
The task of the philosopher of a discipline would then be to reveal the correct method and to unmask counterfeits. Although this belief lay behind much positivist philosophy of science, few philosophers at present, subscribe to it. It places too well a confidence in the possibility of a purely a prior ‘first philosophy’, or standpoint beyond that of the working practitioners, from which they can measure their best efforts as good or bad. This point of view now seems that many philosophers are acquainted within the consolidation of illusionary fantasies. The more modest of tasks that we actually adopt at various historical stages of investigation into different areas with the aim not so much of criticizing but more of systematization, in the presuppositions of a particular field at a particular tie. There is still a role for local methodological disputes within the community investigators of some phenomenon, with one approach charging that another is unsound or unscientific, but logic and philosophy will not, on the modern view, provide an independent arsenal of weapons for such battles, which indeed often come to seem more like political bids for ascendancy within a discipline.
This is an approach to the theory of knowledge that sees an important connection between the growth of knowledge and biological evolution. An evolutionary epistemologist claims that the development of human knowledge processed through some natural selection process, the best example of which is Darwin’s theory of biological natural selection. There is a widespread misconception that evolution proceeds according to some plan or direct, put it has neither, and the role of chance ensures that its future course will be unpredictable. Random variations in individual organisms create tiny differences in their Darwinian fitness. Some individuals have more offsprings than others, and the characteristics that increased their fitness thereby become more prevalent in future generations. Once upon a time, at least a mutation occurred in a human population in tropical Africa that changed the haemoglobin molecule in a way that provided resistance to malaria. This enormous advantage caused the new gene to spread, with the unfortunate consequence that sickle-cell anaemia came to exist.
Chance can influence the outcome at each stage: First, in the creation of genetic mutation, second, in whether the bearer lives long enough to show its effects, thirdly, in chance events that influence the individual’s actual reproductive success, and fourth, in wether a gene even if favoured in one generation, is, happenstance, eliminated in the next, and finally in the many unpredictable environmental changes that will undoubtedly occur in the history of any group of organisms. As Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould has so vividly expressed that process over again, the outcome would surely be different. Not only might there not be humans, there might not even be anything like mammals.
We will often emphasis the elegance of traits shaped by natural selection, but the common idea that nature creates perfection needs to be analysed carefully. The extent to which evolution achieves perfection depends on exactly what you mean. If you mean ‘Does natural selections always take the best path for the long-term welfare of a species?’ The answer is no. That would require adaption by group selection, and this is, unlikely. If you mean ‘Does natural selection creates every adaption that would be valuable?’ The answer again, is no. For instance, some kinds of South American monkeys can grasp branches with their tails. The trick would surely also be useful to some African species, but, simply because of bad luck, none have it. Some combination of circumstances started some ancestral South American monkeys using their tails in ways that ultimately led to an ability to grab onto branches, while no such development took place in Africa. Mere usefulness of a trait does not necessitate it mean that will evolve.
This is an approach to the theory of knowledge that sees an important connection between the growth of knowledge and biological evolution. An evolutionary epistemologist claims that the development of human knowledge proceeds through some natural selection process, the best example of which is Darwin’s theory of biological natural selection. The three major components of the model of natural selection are variation selection and retention. According to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, variations are not pre-designed to perform certain functions. Rather, these variations that perform useful functions are selected. While those that suffice on doing nothing are not selected as such, the selection is responsible for the appearance that specific variations built upon intentionally do really occur. In the modern theory of evolution, genetic mutations provide the blind variations ( blind in the sense that variations are not influenced by the effects they would have, - the likelihood of a mutation is not correlated with the benefits or liabilities that mutation would confer on the organism), the environment provides the filter of selection, and reproduction provides the retention. It is achieved because those organisms with features that make them less adapted for survival do not survive about other organisms in the environment that have features that are better adapted. Evolutionary epistemology applies this blind variation and selective retention model to the growth of scientific knowledge and to human thought processes in general.
The parallel between biological evolution and conceptual or we can see ‘epistemic’ evolution as either literal or analogical. The literal version of evolutionary epistemology bestows upon biological evolution the main cause of the growth of knowledge. On this view, called the ‘evolution of cognitive mechanic programs’, by Bradie (1986) and the ‘Darwinian approach to epistemology’ by Ruse (1986), that growth of knowledge occurs through blind variation and selective retention because biological natural selection itself is the cause of epistemic variation and selection. The most plausible version of the literal view does not hold that all human beliefs are innate but rather than the mental mechanisms that guide the acquisition of non-innate beliefs are themselves innately and the result of biological natural selection. Ruses ( 1986) repossess on the demands of an interlingual rendition of literal evolutionary epistemology that he links to sociology (Rescher, 1990).
Determining the value upon innate ideas can take the path to consider as these have been variously defined by philosophers either as ideas consciously present to the mind priori to sense experience (the non-dispositional sense), or as ideas which we have an innate disposition to form (though we need to be actually aware of them at a particular r time, e.g., as babies - the dispositional sense. Understood in either way they were invoked to account for our recognition of certain verification, such as those of mathematics, or to justify certain moral and religious clams which were held to b capable of being know by introspection of our innate ideas. Examples of such supposed truths might include ‘murder is wrong’ or ‘God exists’.
One difficulty with the doctrine is that it is sometimes formulated as one about concepts or ideas which are held to be innate and at other times one about a source of propositional knowledge, in so far as concepts are taken to be innate the doctrine reflates primarily to claims about meaning: our idea of God, for example, is taken as a source for the meaning of the word God. When innate ideas are understood prepositionally, their supposed innateness is taken an evidence for the truth. This latter thesis clearly rests on the assumption that innate propositions have an unimpeachable source, usually taken to be God, but then any appeal to innate ideas to justify the existence of God is circular. Despite such difficulties the doctrine of innate ideas had a long and influential history until the eighteenth century and the concept has in recent decades been revitalized through its employment in Noam Chomsky’s influential account of the mind’s linguistic capacities.
The attraction of the theory has been felt strongly by those philosophers who has been unable to give an alternative account of our capacity to recognize that some propositions are certainly true where that recognition cannot be justified solely o the basis of an appeal to sense experiences. Thus Plato argued that, for example, recognition of mathematical truths could only be explained on the assumption of some form of recollection, in Plato, the recollection of knowledge, possibly obtained in a previous stat e of existence e draws its topic as most famously broached in the dialogue ‘Meno’, and the doctrine is one attempt oi account for the ‘innate’ unlearned character of knowledge of first principles. Since there was no plausible post-natal source the recollection must refer to a perinatal acquisition of knowledge. Thus understood, the doctrine of innate ideas supported the views that there were importantly gradulatorially innate in human beings and it was the sense which hindered their proper apprehension.
The ascetic implications of the doctrine were important in Christian philosophy throughout the Middle Ages and scholastic teaching until its displacement by Locke’ philosophy in the eighteenth century. It had in the meantime acquired modern expression in the philosophy of Descartes who argued that we can come to know certain important truths before we have any empirical knowledge at all. Our idea of God must necessarily exist, is Descartes held, logically independent of sense experience. In England the Cambridge Plantonists such as Henry Moore and Ralph Cudworth added considerable support.
Locke’s rejection of innate ideas and his alternative empiricist account was powerful enough to displace the doctrine from philosophy almost totally. Leibniz, in his critique of Locke, attempted to defend it with a sophisticated disposition version of theory, but it attracted few followers.
The empiricist alternative to innate ideas as an explanation of the certainty of propositions in the direction of construing with necessary truths as analytic. Kant’s refinement of the classification of propositions with the fourfold distentions was to imply much as much involved by analytic/synthetic and deductive/inductive, least of mention, he did nothing to encourage a return to their innate idea’s doctrine, which slipped from view. The doctrine may fruitfully be understood as the genesis of confusion between explaining the genesis of ideas or concepts and the basis for regarding some propositions as necessarily true.
Chomsky’s revival of the term in connection with his account of the spoken exchange acquisition has once more made the issue topical. He claims that the principles of language and ‘natural logic’ are known unconsciously and are a precondition for language acquisition. But for his purposes innate ideas must be taken in a strong dispositional sense - so strong that it is far from clear that Chomsky’s claims are as in conflict with empiricist accounts as some (including Chomsky) have supposed. Quine, for example, sees no clash with his own version of empirical behaviourism, in which old talk of ideas is eschewing in favour of dispositions to observable behaviours.
Locke’ accounts of analytic propositions was, that everything that a succinct account of analyticity should be (Locke, 1924). He distinguishes two kinds of analytic propositions, identity propositions in which ‘we affirm the said term of itself’, e.g., ‘Roses are roses’ and predicative propositions in which ‘a part of the complex idea is predicated of the name of the whole’, e.g., ‘Roses are flowers’. Locke calls such sentences ‘trifling’ because a speaker who uses them ‘trifling with words’. A synthetic sentence, in contrast, such as a mathematical theorem, states ‘a real truth and conveys, and with it parallels really instructive knowledge’, and correspondingly, Locke distinguishes two kinds of ‘necessary consequences’, analytic entailments where validity depends on the literal containment of the conclusion in the premiss and synthetic entailment where it does not. (Locke did not originate this concept-containment notion of analyticity. It is discussed by Arnaud and Nicole, and it is safe to say that it has been around for a very long time (Arnaud, 1964).
All the same, the analogical version of evolutionary epistemology, called the ‘evolution of theory’s program’, by Bradie (1986). The ‘Spenserians approach’ (after the nineteenth century philosopher Herbert Spencer) by Ruse (1986), a process analogous to biological natural selection has governed the development of human knowledge, rather than by an instance of the mechanism itself. This version of evolutionary epistemology, introduced and elaborated by Donald Campbell (1974) and Karl Popper, sees the [partial] fit between theories and the world as explained by a mental process of trial and error known as epistemic natural selection.
We have usually taken both versions of evolutionary epistemology to be types of naturalized epistemology, because both take some empirical facts as a starting point for their epistemological project. The literal version of evolutionary epistemology begins by accepting evolutionary theory and a materialist approach to the mind and, from these, constructs an account of knowledge and its developments. In contrast, the analogical; the version does not require the truth of biological evolution: It simply draws on biological evolution as a source for the model of natural selection. For this version of evolutionary epistemology to be true, the model of natural selection need only apply to the growth of knowledge, not to the origin and development of species. Savagery put, evolutionary epistemology of the analogical sort could still be true even if creationism is the correct theory of the origin of species.
Although they do not begin by assuming evolutionary theory, most analogical evolutionary epistemologists are naturalized epistemologists as well, their empirical assumptions, least of mention, implicitly come from psychology and cognitive science, not evolutionary theory. Sometimes, however, evolutionary epistemology is characterized in a seemingly non-naturalistic fashion. (Campbell 1974) says that ‘if one is expanding knowledge beyond what one knows, one has no choice but to explore without the benefit of wisdom’, i.e., blindly. This, Campbell admits, makes evolutionary epistemology close to being a tautology (and so not naturalistic). Evolutionary epistemology does assert the analytic claim that when expanding one’s knowledge beyond what one knows, one must precessed to something that is already known, but, more interestingly, it also makes the synthetic claim that when expanding one’s knowledge beyond what one knows, one must proceed by blind variation and selective retention. This claim is synthetic because we can empirically falsify it. The central claim of evolutionary epistemology is synthetic, not analytic. If the central contradictory, which they are not. Campbell is right that evolutionary epistemology does have the analytic feature he mentions, but he is wrong to think that this is a distinguishing feature, since any plausible epistemology has the same analytic feature (Skagestad, 1978).
Two extra-ordinary issues lie to awaken the literature that involves questions about ‘realism’, i.e., What metaphysical commitment does an evolutionary epistemologist have to make? . (Progress, i.e., according to evolutionary epistemology, does knowledge develop toward a goal?) With respect to realism, many evolutionary epistemologists endorse that is called ‘hypothetical realism’, a view that combines a version of epistemological ‘scepticism’ and tentative acceptance of metaphysical realism. With respect to progress, the problem is that biological evolution is not goal-directed, but the growth of human knowledge is. Campbell (1974) worries about the potential dis-analogy here but is willing to bite the stone of conscience and admit that epistemic evolution progress toward a goal (truth) while biological evolution does not. Some have argued that evolutionary epistemologists must give up the ‘truth-topic’ sense of progress because a natural selection model is in non-teleological in essence alternatively, following Kuhn (1970), and embraced along with evolutionary epistemology.
Among the most frequent and serious criticisms levelled against evolutionary epistemology is that the analogical version of the view is false because epistemic variation is not blind (Skagestad, 1978 and Ruse, 1986), Stein and Lipton (1990) have argued, however, that this objection fails because, while epistemic variation is not random, its constraints come from heuristics that, for the most part, are selective retention. Further, Stein and Lipton argue that lunatics are analogous to biological pre-adaptions, evolutionary pre-biological pre-adaptions, evolutionary cursors, such as a half-wing, a precursor to a wing, which have some function other than the function of their descendable structures: The functional inclination of an account describing something or by sudden or an overwhelming manner of descriptive structures, the function of their descendable character embodied to its structural foundations, is that of the guidelines of epistemic variation is, on this view, not the source of disanaloguousness, but the source of a more articulated account of the analogy.
Many evolutionary epistemologists try to combine the literal and the analogical versions (Bradie, 1986, and Stein and Lipton, 1990), saying that those beliefs and cognitive mechanisms, which are innate results from natural selection of the biological sort and those that are innate results from natural selection of the epistemic sort. This is reasonable as long as the two parts of this hybrid view are kept distinct. An analogical version of evolutionary epistemology with biological variation as its only source of blindness would be a null theory: This would be the case if all our beliefs are innate or if our non-innate beliefs are not the result of blind variation. An appeal to the legitimate way to produce a hybrid version of evolutionary epistemology since doing so trivializes the theory. For similar reasons, such an appeal will not save an analogical version of evolutionary epistemology from arguments to the effect that epistemic variation is blind (Stein and Lipton, 1990).
Although it is a new approach to theory of knowledge, evolutionary epistemology has attracted much attention, primarily because it represents a serious attempt to flesh out a naturalized epistemology by drawing on several disciplines. In science is used for understanding the nature and development of knowledge, then evolutionary theory is among the disciplines worth a look. Insofar as evolutionary epistemology looks there, it is an interesting and potentially fruitful epistemological programme.
What makes a belief justified and what makes a true belief knowledge? Thinking that whether a belief deserves one of these appraisals is natural depends on what caused such subjectivity to have the belief. In recent decades many epistemologists have pursued this plausible idea with a variety of specific proposals. Some causal theories of knowledge have it that a true belief that ‘p’ is knowledge just in case it has the right causal connection to the fact that ‘p’. They can apply such a criterion only to cases where the fact that ‘p’ is a sort that can enter inti causal relations, as this seems to exclude mathematically and other necessary facts and perhaps any fact expressed by a universal generalization, and proponents of this sort of criterion have usually supposed that it is limited to perceptual representations where knowledge of particular facts about subjects’ environments.
For example, Armstrong (1973) proposed that a belief of the form ‘This [perceived] object is F’ is [non-inferential] knowledge if and only if the belief is a completely reliable sign that the perceived object is ‘F’, that is, the fact that the object is ‘F’ contributed to causing the belief and its doing so depended on properties of the believer such that the laws of nature dictated that, for any subject ‘χ’ and perceived object ‘y’, if ‘χ’ has those properties and believed that ‘y’ is ‘F’, then ‘y’ is ‘F’. (Dretske (1981) offers a rather similar account, in terms of the belief’s being caused by a signal received by the perceiver that carries the information that the object is ‘F’.
This sort of condition fails, however, to be sufficiently for non-inferential perceptivity, for knowledge is accountable for its compatibility with the belief’s being unjustified, and an unjustified belief cannot be knowledge. For example, suppose that your organism for sensory data of colour as perceived, is working well, but you have been given good reason to think otherwise, to think, say, that the sensory data of things look chartreuse to say, that chartreuse things look magenta, if you fail to heed these reasons you have for thinking that your colour perception is awry and believe of a thing that looks magenta to you that it is magenta, your belief will fail top be justified and will therefore fail to be knowledge, although it is caused by the thing’s being withing the grasp of sensory perceptivity, in a way that is a completely reliable sign, or to carry the information that the thing is sufficiently to organize all sensory data as perceived in and of the World, or Holistic view.
The view that a belief acquires favourable epistemic status by having some kind of reliable linkage to the truth. Variations of this view have been advanced for both knowledge and justified belief. The first formulation of a reliable account of knowing notably appeared as marked and noted and accredited to F. P. Ramsey (1903-30), whereby much of Ramsey’s work was directed at saving classical mathematics from ‘intuitionism’, or what he called the ‘Bolshevik menace of Brouwer and Weyl’. In the theory of probability he was the first to develop, based on precise behavioural nations of preference and expectation. In the philosophy of language, Ramsey was one of the first thinkers to accept a ‘redundancy theory of truth’, which he combined with radical views of the function of many kinds of propositions. Neither generalizations, nor causal positions, nor those treating probability or ethics, described facts, but each has a different specific function in our intellectual economy. Additionally, Ramsey, who said that an impression of belief was knowledge if it were true, certain and obtained by a reliable process. P. Unger (1968) suggested that ‘S’ knows that ‘p’ just in case it is of at all accidental that ‘S’ is right about its being the case that D.M. Armstrong (1973) drew an analogy between a thermometer that reliably indicates the temperature and a belief interaction of reliability that indicates the truth. Armstrong said that a non-inferential belief qualified as knowledge if the belief has properties that are nominally sufficient for its truth, i.e., guarantee its truth via laws of nature.
Closely allied to the nomic sufficiency account of knowledge, primarily due to F.I. Dretske (1971, 1981), A.I. Goldman (1976, 1986) and R. Nozick (1981). The core of this approach is that ‘S’s’ belief that ‘p’ qualifies as knowledge just in case ‘S’ believes ‘p’ because of reasons that would not obtain unless ‘p’s’ being true, or because of a process or method that would not yield belief in ‘p’ if ‘p’ were not true. For example, ‘S’ would not have his current reasons for believing there is a telephone before him, or would not come to believe this in the way he does, unless there was a telephone before him. Thus, there is a counterfactual reliable guarantee of the belief’s being true. A variant of the counterfactual approach says that ‘S’ knows that ‘p’ only if there is no ‘relevant alternative’ situation in which ‘p’ is false but ‘S’ would still believe that ‘p’ must be sufficient to eliminate all the other situational alternatives of ‘p’, where an alternative to a proposition ‘p’ is a proposition incompatible with ‘p’, that is, one’s justification or evidence fort ‘p’ must be sufficient for one to know that every subsidiary situation is ‘p’ is false.
They standardly classify Reliabilism as an ‘externaturalist’ theory because it invokes some truth-linked factor, and truth is ‘eternal’ to the believer the main argument for externalism derives from the philosophy of language, more specifically, from the various phenomena pertaining to natural kind terms, indexicals, etc., that motivate the views that have come to be known as direct reference’ theories. Such phenomena seem, at least to show that the belief or thought content that can be properly attributed to a person is dependent on facts about his environment, i.e., whether he is on Earth or Twin Earth, what in fact he is pointing at, the classificatory criteria employed by the experts in his social group, etc. ~. Not just on what is going on internally in his mind or brain (Putnam, 175 and Burge, 1979.) Virtually all theories of knowledge, of course, share an externalist component in requiring truth as a condition for knowing. Reliabilism goes further, however, in trying to capture additional conditions for knowledge by means of a nomic, counterfactual or other such ‘external’ relations between ‘belief’ and ‘truth’.
The most influential counterexample to Reliabilism is the demon-world and the clairvoyance examples. The demon-world example challenges the necessity of the reliability requirement, in that a possible world in which an evil demon creates deceptive visual experience, the process of vision is not reliable. Still, the visually formed beliefs in this world are intuitively justified. The clairvoyance example challenges the sufficiency of reliability. Suppose a cognitive agent possesses a reliable clairvoyance power, but has no evidence for or against his possessing such a power. Intuitively, his clairvoyantly formed beliefs are unjustifiably unreasoned, but Reliabilism declares them justified.
Another form of Reliabilism, ‘normal worlds’, Reliabilism (Goldman, 1986), answers the range problem differently, and treats the demon-world problem in the same stroke. Permit a ‘normal world’ be one that is consistent with our general beliefs about the actual world. Normal-worlds Reliabilism says that a belief, in any possible world is justified just in case its generating processes have high truth ratios in normal worlds. This resolves the demon-world problem because the relevant truth ratio of the visual process is not its truth ratio in the demon world itself, but its ratio in normal worlds. Since this ratio is presumably high, visually formed beliefs in the demon world turn out to be justified.
Yet, a different version of Reliabilism attempts to meet the demon-world and clairvoyance problems without recourse to the questionable notion of ‘normal worlds’. Consider Sosa’s (1992) suggestion that justified beliefs is belief acquired through ‘intellectual virtues’, and not through intellectual ‘vices’, whereby virtues are reliable cognitive faculties or processes. The task is to explain how epistemic evaluators have used the notion of indelible virtues, and vices, to arrive at their judgements, especially in the problematic cases. Goldman (1992) proposes a two-stage reconstruction of an evaluator’s activity. The first stage is a reliability-based acquisition of a ‘list’ of virtues and vices. The second stage is application of this list to queried cases. Determining has executed the second stage whether processes in the queried cases resemble virtues or vices. We have classified visual beliefs in the demon world as justified because visual belief formation is one of the virtues. Clairvoyance formed, beliefs are classified as unjustified because clairvoyance resembles scientifically suspect processes that the evaluator represents as vices, e.g., mental telepathy, ESP, and so forth
We now turn to a philosophy of meaning and truth, for which it is especially associated with the American philosopher of science and of language (1839-1914), and the American psychologist philosopher William James (1842-1910), wherefore the study in Pragmatism is given to various formulations by both writers, but the core is the belief that the meaning of a doctrine is the same as the practical effects of adapting it. Peirce interpreted of theocratical sentences ids only that of a corresponding practical maxim (telling us what to do in some circumstance). In James the position issues in a theory of truth, notoriously allowing that belief, including for the example, belief in God, is the widest sense of the works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word. On James’s view almost any belief might be respectable, and even rue, provided it works (but working is no s simple matter for James). The apparent subjectivist consequences of tis were wildly assailed by Russell (1872-1970), Moore (1873-1958), and others in the early years of the 20th century. This led to a division within pragmatism between those such as the American educator John Dewey (1859-1952), whose humanistic conception of practice remains inspired by science, and the more idealistic route that especially by the English writer F.C.S. Schiller (1864-1937), embracing the doctrine that our cognitive efforts and human needs actually transform the reality that we seek to describe. James often writes as if he sympathizes with this development. For instance, in The Meaning of Truth (1909), he considers the hypothesis that other people have no minds (dramatized in the sexist idea of an ‘automatic sweetheart’ or female zombie) and remarks’ hat the hypothesis would not work because it would not satisfy our egoistic craving for the recognition and admiration of others. The implying inclinations that depict of those that distortion may as it is, make it true, at least are those that the other persons have minds in the disturbing parts.
Modern pragmatists such as the American philosopher and critic Richard Rorty (1931-) and some writings of the philosopher Hilary Putnam (1925-) who has usually trued to dispense with an account of truth and concentrate, as perhaps James should have done, upon the nature of belief and its relations with human attitude, emotion, and need. The driving motivation of pragmatism is the idea that belief in the truth on te one hand must have a close connection with success in action on the other. One way of cementing the connection is found in the idea that natural selection must have adapted us to be cognitive creatures because beliefs have effects, as they work. Pragmatism can be found in Kant’s doctrine of the primary of practical over pure reason, and continued to play an influential role in the theory of meaning and of truth.
In case of fact, the philosophy of mind is the modern successor to behaviourism, as do the functionalism that its early advocates were Putnam (1926-) and Sellars (1912-89), and its guiding principle is that we can define mental states by a triplet of relations they have on other mental stares, what effects they have on behaviour. The definition need not take the form of a simple analysis, but if w could write down the totality of axioms, or postdate, or platitudes that govern our theories about what things of other mental states, and our theories about what things are apt to cause (for example), a belief state, what effects it would have on a variety of other mental states, and, of its gross effect, it is likely to have on behavioural conduct, then we would have done all that is needed to make the state acquitting of a proper theoretical notion. It could be implicitly defied by these theses. Functionalism is often compared with descriptions of a computer, since according to mental descriptions correspond to a description of a machine in terms of software, that remains silent about the underlaying hardware or ‘realization’ of the program the machine is running. The principal advantages of functionalism include its fitness with the ways we know of mental states both of ourselves and of others, which is via their effect on behaviour and other mental events as characterized by other alternative states. As with behaviourism, critics charge that structurally complex items that do not bear mental states might nevertheless, imitate the functions that are cited. According to this criticism functionalism is too generous and would count too many things as having minds. It is also queried whether functionalism is too paradoxical, able to see mental similarities only when there is causal similarity, or when our actual situational practices of analytic interpretations enable us to ascertain the thoughts and desires to differentiate from our own. It may then seem as though beliefs and desires can or ought be ‘variably realized’, only when its causative architecture, just as much as they can be in different neurophysiological states.
The philosophical movement of Pragmatism had a major impact on American culture from the late 19th century to the present. Pragmatism calls for ideas and theories to be tested in practice, by assessing whether acting upon the idea or theory produces desirable or undesirable results. According to pragmatists, all claims about truth, knowledge, morality, and politics must be tested in this way. Pragmatism has been critical of traditional Western philosophy, especially the notions that there are absolute truths and absolute values. Although pragmatism was popular for a time in France, England, and Italy, most observers believe that it encapsulates an American faith in know-how and practicality and an equally American distrust of abstract theories and ideologies.
In mentioning the American psychologist and philosopher we find William James, who helped to popularize the philosophy of pragmatism with his book Pragmatism: A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking (1907). Influenced by a theory of meaning and verification developed for scientific hypotheses by American philosopher C.S. Peirce, James held that truths are what works, or has good experimental results. In a related theory, James argued the existence of God is partly verifiable because many people derive benefits from believing.
Pragmatists regard all theories and institutions as tentative hypotheses and solutions. For this reason they believed that efforts to improve society, through such means as education or politics, must be geared toward problem solving and must be ongoing. Through their emphasis on connecting theory to practice, pragmatist thinkers attempted to transform all areas of philosophy, from metaphysics to ethics and political philosophy.
Pragmatism sought a middle ground between traditional ideas about the nature of reality and radical theories of nihilism and irrationalism, which had become popular in Europe in the late 19th century. Traditional metaphysics assumed that the world has a fixed, intelligible structure and that human beings can know absolute or objective truths about the world and about what constitutes moral behaviour. Nihilism and irrationalism, on the other hand, denied those very assumptions and their certitude. Pragmatists today still try to steer a middle course between contemporary offshoots of these two extremes.
The ideas of the pragmatists were considered revolutionary when they first appeared. To some critics, pragmatism’s refusal to affirm any absolutes carried negative implications for society. For example, pragmatists do not believe that a single absolute idea of goodness or justice exists, but rather than these concepts are changeable and depend on the context in which they are being discussed. The absence of these absolutes, critics feared, could result in a decline in moral standards. The pragmatists’ denial of absolutes, moreover, challenged the foundations of religion, government, and schools of thought. As a result, pragmatism influenced developments in psychology, sociology, education, semiotics (the study of signs and symbols), and scientific method, as well as philosophy, cultural criticism, and social reform movements. Various political groups have also drawn on the assumptions of pragmatism, from the progressive movements of the early 20th century to later experiments in social reform.
Pragmatism is best understood in its historical and cultural context. It arose during the late 19th century, a period of rapid scientific advancement typified by the theories of British biologist Charles Darwin, whose theories suggested too many thinkers that humanity and society are in a perpetual state of progress. During this same period a decline in traditional religious beliefs and values accompanied the industrialization and material progress of the time. In consequence it became necessary to rethink fundamental ideas about values, religion, science, community, and individuality.
The three most important pragmatists are American philosophers’ Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Peirce was primarily interested in scientific method and mathematics; his objective was to infuse scientific thinking into philosophy and society, and he believed that human comprehension of reality was becoming ever greater and that human communities were becoming increasingly progressive. Peirce developed pragmatism as a theory of meaning - in particular, the meaning of concepts used in science. The meaning of the concept 'brittle', for example, is given by the observed consequences or properties that objects called 'brittle' exhibit. For Peirce, the only rational way to increase knowledge was to form mental habits that would test ideas through observation, experimentation, or what he called inquiry. Many philosophers known as logical positivists, a group of philosophers who have been influenced by Peirce, believed that our evolving species was fated to get ever closer to Truth. Logical positivists emphasize the importance of scientific verification, rejecting the assertion of positivism that personal experience is the basis of true knowledge.
James moved pragmatism in directions that Peirce strongly disliked. He generalized Peirce’s doctrines to encompass all concepts, beliefs, and actions; he also applied pragmatist ideas to truth as well as to meaning. James was primarily interested in showing how systems of morality, religion, and faith could be defended in a scientific civilization. He argued that sentiment, as well as logic, is crucial to rationality and that the great issues of life - morality and religious belief, for example - are leaps of faith. As such, they depend upon what he called 'the will to believe' and not merely on scientific evidence, which can never tell us what to do or what is worthwhile. Critics charged James with relativism (the belief that values depend on specific situations) and with crass expediency for proposing that if an idea or action works the way one intends, it must be right. But James can more accurately be described as a pluralist - someone who believes the world to be far too complex for any one philosophy to explain everything.
Dewey’s philosophy can be described as a version of philosophical naturalism, which regards human experience, intelligence, and communities as ever-evolving mechanisms. Using their experience and intelligence, Dewey believed, human beings can solve problems, including social problems, through inquiry. For Dewey, naturalism led to the idea of a democratic society that allows all members to acquire social intelligence and progress both as individuals and as communities. Dewey held that traditional ideas about knowledge, truth, and values, in which absolutes are assumed, are incompatible with a broadly Darwinian world-view in which individuals and societies are progressing. In consequence, he felt that these traditional ideas must be discarded or revised. Indeed, for pragmatists, everything people know and do depend on a historical context and are thus tentative rather than absolute.
Many followers and critics of Dewey believe he advocated elitism and social engineering in his philosophical stance. Others think of him as a kind of romantic humanist. Both tendencies are evident in Dewey’s writings, although he aspired to synthesize the two realms.
The pragmatist’s tradition was revitalized in the 1980s by American philosopher Richard Rorty, who has faced similar charges of elitism for his belief in the relativism of values and his emphasis on the role of the individual in attaining knowledge. Interest has renewed in the classic pragmatists - Pierce, James, and Dewey - have an alternative to Rorty’s interpretation of the tradition.
One of the earliest versions of a correspondence theory was put forward in the 4th century Bc Greek philosopher Plato, who sought to understand the meaning of knowledge and how it is acquired. Plato wished to distinguish between true belief and false belief. He proposed a theory based on intuitive recognition that true statements correspond to the facts - that is, agree with reality - while false statements do not. In Plato’s example, the sentence ‘Theaetetus flies’ can be true only if the world contains the fact that Theaetetus flies. However, Plato—and much later, 20th-century British philosopher Bertrand Russell—recognized this theory as unsatisfactory because it did not allow for false belief. Both Plato and Russell reasoned that if a belief is false because there is no fact to which it corresponds, it would then be a belief about nothing and so not a belief at all. Each then speculated that the grammar of a sentence could offer a way around this problem. A sentence can be about something (the person Theaetetus), yet false (flying is not true of Theaetetus). But how, they asked, are the parts of a sentence related to reality? One suggestion, proposed by 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is that the parts of a sentence relate to the objects they describe in much the same way that the parts of a picture relate to the objects pictured. Once again, however, false sentences pose a problem: If a false sentence pictures nothing, there can be no meaning in the sentence.
In the late 19th-century American philosopher Charles S. Peirce offered another answer to the question ‘What is truth?’ He asserted that truth is that which experts will agree upon when their investigations are final. Many pragmatists such as Peirce claim that the truth of our ideas must be tested through practice. Some pragmatists have gone so far as to question the usefulness of the idea of truth, arguing that in evaluating our beliefs we should rather pay attention to the consequences that our beliefs may have. However, critics of the pragmatic theory are concerned that we would have no knowledge because we do not know which set of beliefs will ultimately be agreed upon; nor are there sets of beliefs that are useful in every context.
A third theory of truth, the coherence theory, also concerns the meaning of knowledge. Coherence theorists have claimed that a set of beliefs is true if the beliefs are comprehensive - that is, they cover everything - and do not contradict each other.
Other philosophers dismiss the question ‘What is truth?’ with the observation that attaching the claim ‘it is true that’ to a sentence adds no meaning. However, these theorists, who have proposed what are known as deflationary theories of truth, do not dismiss such talk about truth as useless. They agree that there are contexts in which a sentence such as ‘it is true that the book is blue’ can have a different impact than the shorter statement ‘the book is blue.’ What is more important, use of the word true is essential when making a general claim about everything, nothing, or something, as in the statement ‘most of what he says is true?’
Nevertheless, in the study of neuroscience it reveals that the human brain is a massively parallel system in which language processing is widely distributed. Computers generated images of human brains engaged in language processing reveals a hierarchical organization consisting of complicated clusters of brain areas that process different component functions in controlled time sequences. Stand-alone or unitary modules have clearly not accomplished language processing that evolved with the addition of separate modules that were eventually incorporated systematically upon some neural communications channel board.
Similarly, we have continued individual linguistic symbols as given to clusters of distributed brain areas and are not in a particular area. We may produce the specific sound patterns of words in dedicated regions. We have generated all the same, the symbolic and referential relationships between words through a convergence of neural codes from different and independent brain regions. The processes of words comprehension and retrieval result from combinations simpler associative processes in several separate brain fields of forces that command stimulation from other regions. The symbolic meaning of words, like the grammar that is essential for the construction of meaningful relationships between stings of words, is an emergent property from the complex interaction of several brain parts.
While the brain that evolved this capacity was obviously a product of Darwinian evolution, we cannot simply explain the most critical precondition for the evolution of brain in these terms. Darwinian evolution can explain why the creation of stone tools altered condition for survival in a ne ecological niche in which group living, pair bonding, and more complex social structures were critical to survival. Darwinian evolution can also explain why selective pressure in this new ecological niche favoured pre-adaptive changes required for symbolic commonisation. Nevertheless, as this communication resulted in increasingly more complex behaviour evolution began to take precedence of physical evolution in the sense that mutations resulting in enhanced social behaviour became selectively advantageously within the context of the social behaviour of hominids.
Although male and female hominids favoured pair bonding and created more complex social organizations in the interests of survival, the interplay between social evolution and biological evolution changed the terms of survival radically. The enhanced ability to use symbolic communication to construct of social interaction eventually made this communication the largest determinant of survival. Since this communication was based on a symbolic vocalization that requires the evolution of neural mechanisms and processes that did not evolve in any other species, this marked the emergence of a mental realm that would increasingly appear as separate nd distinct from the external material realm.
Nonetheless, if we could, for example, define all of the neural mechanisms involved in generating a particular word symbol, this would reveal nothing about the active experience of the world symbol as an idea in human consciousness. Conversely, the experience of the word symbol as an idea would reveal nothing about the neuronal processes involved. While one mode of understanding the situation necessarily displaces the other, we require both to achieve a complete understanding of the situation.
Most experts agree that our ancestries became knowledgeably articulated in the spoken exchange as based on complex grammar and syntax between two hundred thousand and some hundred thousand years ago. The mechanisms in the human brain that allowed for this great achievement clearly evolved, however, over great spans of time. In biology textbooks, the lists of prior adaptations that enhanced the ability of our ancestors to use communication normally include those that are inclining to inclinations to increase intelligence. As to approach a significant alteration of oral and auditory abilities, in that separation or localization of functional representations are well founded on two sides of the brain. The evolution of some innate or hard wired grammar, however, when we look at how our ability to use language could have really evolved over the entire course of hominid evolution. The process seems more basic and more counterintuitive than we had previously imagined.
Although we share some aspects of vocalization with our primate cousins, the mechanisms of human vocalization are quite different and have evolved over great spans of time. Incremental increases in hominid brain size over the last 2.5 million years enhanced cortical control over the larynx, which originally evolved to prevent food and other particles from entering the windpipe or trachea; This eventually contributed to the use of vocal symbolization. Humans have more voluntary motor control over sound produced in the larynx than any other vocal species, and this control are associated with higher brain systems involved in skeletal muscle control as opposed to just visceral control. As a result, humans have direct cortical motor control over phonation and oral movement while chimps do not.
We position the larynx in modern humans in a comparatively low position to the throat and significantly increase the range and flexibility of sound production. The low position of the larynx allows greater changes in the volume to the resonant chamber formed by the mouth and pharynx and makes it easier to shift sounds to the mouth and away from the nasal cavity. Formidable conclusions are those of the sounds that comprise vowel components of speeches that become much more variable, including extremes in resonance combinations such as the ‘ee’ sound in ‘tree’ and the ‘aw’ sound in ‘flaw.’ Equally important, the repositioning of the larynx dramatically increases the ability of the mouth and tongue to modify vocal sounds. This shift in the larynx also makes it more likely that food and water passing over the larynx will enter the trachea, and this explains why humans are more inclined to experience choking. Yet this disadvantage, which could have caused the shift to e selected against, was clearly out-weighed by the advantage of being able to produce all the sounds used in modern language systems.
Some have argued that this removal of constraints on vocalization suggests that spoken language based on complex symbol systems emerged quite suddenly in modern humans only about one hundred thousand years ago. It is, however, far more likely that language use began with very primitive symbolic systems and evolved over time to increasingly complex systems. The first symbolic systems were not full-blown language systems, and they were probably not as flexible and complex as the vocal calls and gestural displays of modern primates. The first users of primitive symbolic systems probably coordinated most of their social comminations with call and display behavioural attitudes alike those of the modern ape and monkeys.
Critically important to the evolution of enhanced language skills are that behavioural adaptive adjustments that serve to precede and situate biological changes. This represents a reversal of the usual course of evolution where biological change precedes behavioural adaption. When the first hominids began to use stone tools, they probably rendered of a very haphazard fashion, by drawing upon their flexible ape-like learning abilities, however, the use of this technology over time opened a new ecological niche where selective pressures occasioned new adaptions. A tool use became more indispensable for obtaining food and organized social behaviours, mutations that enhanced the use of tools probably functioned as a principal source of selection for both bodied and brains.
The first stone choppers appear in the fossil remnant fragments remaining about 2.5 million years ago, and they appear to have been fabricated with a few sharp blows of stone on stone. If these primitive tools are reasonable, which were hand-held and probably used to cut flesh and to chip bone to expose the marrow, were created by Homo habilis - the first large-brained hominid. Stone making is obviously a skill passed on from one generation to the next by learning as opposed to a physical trait passed on genetically. After these tools became critical to survival, this introduced selection for learning abilities that did not exist for other species. Although the early tool maskers may have had brains roughly comparable to those of modern apes, they were already confronting the processes for being adapted for symbol learning.
The first symbolic representations were probably associated with social adaptations that were quite fragile, and any support that could reinforce these adaptions in the interest of survival would have been favoured by evolution. The expansion of the forebrain in Homo habilis, particularly the prefrontal cortex, was on of the core adaptations. Increased connectivity enhanced this adaption over time to brain regions involved in language processing.
Imagining why incremental improvements in symbolic representations provided a selective advantage is easy. Symbolic communication probably enhanced cooperation in the relationship of mothers to infants, allowed forgoing techniques to be more easily learned, served as the basis for better coordinating scavenging and hunting activities, and generally improved the prospect of attracting a mate. As the list of domains in which symbolic communication was introduced became longer over time, this probably resulted in new selective pressures that served to make this communication more elaborate. After more functions became dependent on this communication, those who failed in symbol learning or could only use symbols awkwardly were less likely to pass on their genes to subsequent generations.
We must have considerably gestured the crude language of the earliest users of symbolics and nonsymbiotic vocalizations. Their spoken language probably became reactively independent and a closed cooperative system. Only after the emergence of hominids were to use symbolic communication evolved, symbolic forms progressively took over functions served by non-anecdotical symbolic forms. We reflect this in modern languages. The structure of syntax in these languages often reveals its origins in pointing gestures, in the manipulation and exchange of objects, and in more primitive constructions of spatial and temporal relationships. We still use nonverbal vocalizations and gestures to complement meaning in spoken language.
The encompassing intentionality to its thought is mightily effective, least of mention, the relevance of spatiality to self-consciousness comes about not merely because the world is spatial but also because the self-conscious subject is a spatial element of the world. One cannot be self-conscious without being aware that one is a spatial element of the world, and one cannot be ware that one is a spatial element of the world without a grasp of the spatial nature of the world. Face to face, the idea of a perceivable, objective spatial world that causes ideas too subjectively becoming to denote in the wold. During which time, his perceptions as they have of changing position within the world and to the essentially stable way the world is. The idea that there is an objective world and the idea that the subject is somewhere, and where what he can perceive gives it apart.
Research, however distant, are those that neuroscience reveals in that the human brain is a massive parallel system which language processing is widely distributed. Computers generated images of human brains engaged in language processing reveals a hierarchal organization consisting of complicated clusters of brain areas that process different component functions in controlled time sequences. Stand-alone or unitary modules that evolved with the addition of separate modules have clearly not accomplished language processing that were incorporated on some neutral circuit board.
While the brain that evolved this capacity was obviously a product of Darwinian evolution, he realized that the different chances of survival of different endowed offsprings could account for the natural evolution of species. Nature ‘selects’ those members of some spacies best adapted to the environment in which they are themselves, just as human animal breeders may select for desirable traits for their livestock, and by that control the evolution of the kind of animal they wish. In the phase of Spencer, nature guarantees the ‘survival of the fittest.’ The Origin of Species was principally successful in marshalling the evidence for evolution, than providing a convincing mechanism for genetic change, and Darwin himself remained open to the search for additional mechanisms, also reaming convinced that natural selection was at the heat of it. It was only with the later discovery of the ‘gene’ as the unit of inheritance that the syntheses known as ‘neo-Darwinism’ became the orthodox theory of evolution.
The solutions to the mysterious evolution by natural selection can shape sophisticated mechanisms are to found in the working of natural section, in that for the sake of some purpose, namely, some action, the body as a whole must evidently exist for the sake of some complex action: Having possession of simplistically actualized cognition, finding to its process one might look on as through the fundamentals, this may still be the recourse value in proceeding functionally as made simple just as natural selection occurs whenever genetic influence’s vary among individual effects as implicates its drama by the survival and reproduction? If a gene codes for characteristics that result in fewer viable offspring in future generations, governing evolutionary principles have gradually eliminated that gene. For instance, genetic mutation that an increase vulnerability to infection, or cause foolish risk taking or lack of interest in sex, will never become common. On the other hand, genes that cause resistance that causes infection, appropriate risk taking and success in choosing fertile mates are likely to spread in the gene pool even if they have substantial costs.
A classical example is the spread of a gene for dark wing colour in a British moth population living downward form major source of air pollution. Pale moths were conspicuous on smoke-darkened trees and easily caught by birds, while a rare mutant form of a moth whose colour closely matched that of the bark escaped the predator beaks. As the tree trucks became darkened, the mutant gene spread rapidly and largely displaced the gene for pale wing colour. That is all on that point to say is that natural selection insole no plan, no goal, and no direction - just genes increasing and decreasing in frequency depending on whether individuals with these genes have, compared with order individuals, greater of lesser reproductive success.
Many misconceptions have obscured the simplicity of natural selection. For instance, they have widely thought Herbert Spencer’s nineteenth-century catch phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ to summarize the process, but an abstractive actuality openly provides a given forwarding to several misunderstandings. First, survival is of no consequence by itself. This is why natural selection has created some organisms, such as salmon and annual plants, that reproduces only once, the die. Survival increases fitness only as far as it increases later reproduction. Genes that increase lifetime reproduction will be selected for even if they result in a reduced longevity. Conversely, a gene that deceases selection will obviously eliminate total lifetime reproduction even if it increases an individual’s survival.
Considerable confusion arises from the ambiguous meaning of ‘fittest.’ The fittest individuals in the biological scene, is not necessarily the healthiest, stronger, or fastest. In today’s world, and many of those of the past, individuals of outstanding athletic accomplishment need not be the ones who produce the most grandchildren, a measure that should be roughly correlated with fattiness. To someone who understands natural selection, it is no surprise that the parents who are not concerned about their children;’s reproduction.
We cannot call a gene or an individual ‘fit’ in isolation but only concerning some particular spacies in a particular environment. Even in a single environment, every gene involves compromise. Consider a gene that makes rabbits more fearful and thereby helps to keep then from the jaws of foxes. Imagine that half the rabbits in a field have this gene. Because they do more hiding and less eating, these timid rabbits might be, on average, some bitless well fed than their bolder companions. Of, a hundred down-bounded in the March swamps awaiting for spring, two thirds of them starve to death while this is the fate of only one-third of the rabbits who lack the gene for fearfulness, it has been selected against. It might be nearly eliminated by a few harsh winters. Milder winters or an increased number of foxes could have the opposite effect, but it all depends on the current environment.
The version of an evolutionary ethic called ‘social Darwinism’ emphasizes the struggle for natural selection, and draws the conclusion that we should glorify the assists each struggle, usually by enhancing competitive and aggressive relations between people in society, or better societies themselves. More recently we have rethought the reaction between evolution and ethics in the light of biological discoveries concerning altruism and kin-selection.
We cannot simply explain the most critical precondition for the evolution of this brain in these terms. Darwinian evolution can explain why the creation of stone tools altered conditions for survival in a new ecological niche in which group living, pair bonding, and more complex social structures were critical to survival. Darwinian evolution can also explain why selective pressures in this new ecological niche favoured pre-adaptive changes required for symbolic communication. All the same, this communication resulted directly through its passing an increasingly atypically structural complex and intensively condensed behaviour. Social evolution began to take precedence over physical evolution in the sense that mutations resulting in enhanced social behaviour became selectively advantageously within the context of the social behaviour of hominids.
Because this communication was based on symbolic vocalization that required the evolution of neural mechanisms and processes that did not evolve in any other species. As this marked the emergence of a mental realm that would increasingly appear as separate and distinct from the external material realm.
If they cannot reduce to, or entirely explain the emergent reality in this mental realm as for, the sum of its parts, concluding that this reality is greater than the sum of its parts seems reasonable. For example, a complete proceeding of the manner in which light in particular wave lengths has ben advancing by the human brain to generate a particular colour says nothing about the experience of colour. In other words, a complete scientific description of all the mechanisms involved in processing the colour blue does not correspond with the colour blue as perceived in human consciousness. No scientific description of the physical substrate of a thought or feeling, no matter how accomplish it can but be accounted for in actualized experience, especially of a thought or feeling, as an emergent aspect of global brain function.
If we could, for example, define all of the neural mechanisms involved in generating a particular word symbol, this would reveal nothing about the experience of the word symbol as an idea in human consciousness. Conversely, the experience of the word symbol as an idea would reveal nothing about the neuronal processes involved. While one mode of understanding the situation necessarily displaces the other, they require both to achieve a complete understanding of the situation.
Even if we are to include two aspects of biological reality, finding to a more complex order in biological reality is associated with the emergence of new wholes that are greater than the orbital parts. Yet, the entire biosphere is of a whole that displays self-regulating behaviour that is greater than the sum of its parts. Seemingly, that our visionary skills could view the emergence of a symbolic universe based on a complex language system as another stage in the evolution of more complicated and complex systems. As marked and noted by the appearance of a new profound complementarity in relationships between parts and wholes. This does not allow us to assume that human consciousness was in any sense preordained or predestined by natural process. Even so, it does make it possible, in philosophical terms at least, to argue that this consciousness is an emergent aspect of the self-organizing properties of biological life.
If we also concede that an indivisible whole contains, by definition, no separate parts and that in belief alone one can assume that a phenomenon was ‘real’ only when it is ‘observed’ phenomenon, have sparked advance the given processes for us to more interesting conclusions. The indivisible whole whose existence we have inferred in the results of the aspectual experiments that cannot in principal is itself the subject of scientific investigation. In that respect, no simple reason of why this is the case. Science can claim knowledge of physical reality only when experiment has validated the predictions of a physical theory. Since, invisualizabity has restricted our view we cannot measure or observe the indivisible whole, we encounter by engaging the ‘eventful horizon’ or knowledge where science can say nothing about the actual character of this reality. Why this is so, is a property of the entire universe, then we must also conclude that undivided wholeness exists on the most primary and basic level in all aspects of physical reality. What we are dealing within science per se, however, are manifestations of tis reality, which are invoked or ‘actualized’ in making acts of observation or measurement. Since the reality that exists between the space-like separated regions is a whole whose existence can only be inferred in experience. As opposed to proven experiment, the correlations between the particles, and the sum of these parts, do not constitute the ‘indivisible’ whole. Physical theory allows us to understand why the correlations occur. Nevertheless, it cannot in principal impart or describe the actualized character of the indivisible whole.
The scientific implications to this extraordinary relationship between parts ( in that, to know what it is like to have an experience is to know its qualia) and indivisible whole (the universe) are quite staggering. Our primary concern, however, is a new view of the relationship between mind and world that carries even larger implications in human terms. When factors into our understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physics and biology, then mind, or human consciousness, must be viewed as an emergent phenomenon in a seamlessly interconnected whole called the cosmos.
All that is required to embrace the alternative view of the relationship between mind and world that are consistent with our most advanced scientific knowledge is a commitment to metaphysical and epistemological realism and a willingness to follow arguments to their logical conclusions. Metaphysical realism assumes that physical reality or has an actual existence independent of human observers or any act of observation, epistemological realism assumes that progress in science requires strict adherence to scientific mythology, or to the rules and procedures for doing science. If one can accept these assumptions, most of the conclusions drawn should appear self-evident in logical and philosophical terms. Attributing any extra-scientific properties to the whole to understand is also not necessary and embrace the new relationship between part and whole and the alternative view of human consciousness that is consistent with this relationship. This is, in this that our distinguishing character between what can be ‘proven’ in scientific terms and what can with reason be realized and ‘inferred’ as a philosophical basis through which grounds can be assimilated as some indirect scientific evidence.
Moreover, advances in scientific knowledge rapidly became the basis for the creation of a host of new technologies. Yet are those responsible for evaluating the benefits and risks associated with the use of these technologies, much less their potential impact on human needs and values, normally have expertise on only one side of a two-culture divide. Perhaps, more important, many potential threats to the human future - such as, to, environmental pollution, arms development, overpopulation, and spread of infectious diseases, poverty, and starvation - can be effectively solved only by integrating scientific knowledge with knowledge from the social sciences and humanities. We have not done so for a simple reason - the implications of the amazing new fact of nature named for by non-locality, and cannot be properly understood without some familiarity with the actual history of scientific thought. The less resultant quantity is to suggest that what be most important about this background can be understood in its absence. Those who do not wish to struggle with the small and perhaps, fewer resultant quantities by which measure has substantiated the strengthening background implications with that should feel free to ignore it. Yet this material will be no more challenging as such, that the hope is that from those of which will find a common ground for understanding and that will meet again on this commonly functions as addressed to the relinquishing clasp of closure, and unswervingly close of its circle, resolve in the equations of eternity and complete of the universe of its obtainable gains for which its unification holds all that should be.
Another aspect of the evolution of a brain that allowed us to construct symbolic universes based on complex language system that is particularly relevant for our purposes concerns consciousness of self. Consciousness of self as an independent agency or actor is predicted on a fundamental distinction or dichotomy between this self and the other selves. Self, as it is constructed in human subjective reality, is perceived as having an independent existence and a self-referential character in a mental realm separately distinct from the material realm. It was, the assumed separation between these realms that led Descartes to posit his famous dualism in understanding the nature of consciousness in the mechanistic classical universe.
In a thought experiment, instead of bringing a course of events, as in a normal experiment, we are invited to imagine one. We may tenably be able to ‘see’ that some result’s following, or that by some description is appropriate, or our inability to describe the situation may itself have some consequential consequence. Thought experiments played a major role in the development of physics: For example, Galileo probably never dropped two balls of unequal weight from the leaning Tower of Pisa, to refute the Aristotelean view that a heavy body falls faster than a lighter one. He merely asked used to imagine a heavy body made into the shape of a dumbbell, and then connecting rod gradually thinner, until it is finally severed. The thing is one heavy body until the last moment and he n two light ones, but it is incredible that this final snip alters the velocity dramatically. Other famous examples include the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment. In the philosophy of personal identity, our apparent capacity to imagine ourselves surviving drastic changes of body, brain, and mind is a permanent source of difficulty. On that point, no consensus on the legitimate place of thought experiments, to substitute either for real experiment, or as a reliable device for discerning possibilities. Though experiments with and one dislike is sometimes called intuition pumps.
For overfamiliar reasons, of hypothesizing that people are characterized by their rationality is common, and the most evident display of our rationality is our capacity to think. This is the rehearsal in the mind of what to say, or what to do. Not all thinking is verbal, since chess players, composers and painters all think, and in that respect no deductive reason that their deliberations should take any more verbal a form than this action. It is permanently tempting to conceive of this activity as for the presence inbounded in the mind of elements of some language, or other medium that represents aspects of the world. In whatever manner, the model has been attacked, notably by Wittgenstein, as insufficient, since no such presence could carry a guarantee that the right use would be made of it. Such that of an inner present seems unnecessary, since an intelligent outcome might arouse of some principal measure from it.
In the philosophy of mind and ethics the treatment of animals exposes major problems if other animals differ from human beings, how is the difference to be characterized: Do animals think and reason, or have thoughts and beliefs? In philosophers as different as Aristotle and Kant the possession of reason separates humans from animals, and alone allows entry to the moral community.
For Descartes, animals are mere machines and ee lack consciousness or feelings. In the ancient world the rationality of animals is defended with the example of Chrysippus’ dog. This animal, tracking prey, comes to a cross-roads with three exits, and without pausing to pick-up the scent, reasoning, according to Sextus Empiricus. The animal went either by this road, or by this road, or by that, or by the other. However, it did not go by this or that. Therefore, he went the other way. The ‘syllogism of the dog’ was discussed by many writers, since in Stoic cosmology animals should occupy a place on the great chain of being to an exceeding degree below human beings, the only terrestrial rational agents: Philo Judaeus wrote a dialogue attempting to show again Alexander of Aphrodisias that the dog’s behaviour does no t exhibit rationality, but simply shows it following the scent, by way of response Alexander has the animal jump down a shaft (where the scent would not have lingered). Plutah sides with Philo, Aquinas discusses the dog and scholastic thought in general was quite favourable to brute intelligence (being made to stand trail for various offences in medieval times was common for animals). In the modern era Montaigne uses the dog to remind us of the frailties of human reason: Rorarious undertook to show not only that beasts are rational, but that they make better use of reason than people do. James, the first of England defends the syllogising dog, and Henry More and Gassendi both takes issue with Descartes on that matter. Hume is an outspoken defender of animal cognition, but with their use of the view that language is the essential manifestation of mentality, animals’ silence began to count heavily against them, and they are completely denied thoughts by, for instance Davidson.
Dogs are frequently shown in pictures of philosophers, as their assiduity and fidelity are some symbols
It is, nonetheless, that Decanters’s first work, the Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii (1628/9), was never complected, yet in Holland between 1628 and 1649, Descartes first wrote, and then cautiously suppressed, Le Monde (1934), and in 1637 produced the Discours de la méthode as a preface to the treatise on mathematics and physics in which he introduced the notion of Cartesian co-ordinates. His best-known philosophical work, the Meditationes de Prima Philosophiia (Meditations on First Philosophy), together with objections by distinguished contemporaries and replies by Descartes (The Objections and Replies), appeared in 1641. The authors of the Objections were First set, for which is Hobbes, fourth set. Arnauld, fifth set, Gassendi and the sixth set, Mersenne. The second edition (1642) of the Meditations included a seventh set by the Jesuit Pierre Bourdin. Descartes’s penultimate work, the Principia Pilosophiae (Principles of the Soul), published in 1644 was designed partly for use as a theological textbook. His last work was Les Passions de l´ame (The Passions of the Soul) published in 1649. When in Sweden, where he contracted pneumonia, allegedly through being required to break his normal habit of late rising in order to give lessons at 5:00 a.m. His last words are supposed to have been ‘Ça, mon âme, il faut partir’ (so, my soul, it is time to part).
All the same, Descartes’s theory of knowledge starts with the quest for certainty, for an indubitable starting-point or foundation on the bassi alone of which progress is possible.
The Cartesian doubt is the method of investigating how much knowledge and its basis in reason or experience as used by Descartes in the first two Medications. It attempted to put knowledge upon secure foundation by first inviting us to suspend judgements on any proportion whose truth can be doubted, even as a bare possibility. The standards of acceptance are gradually raised as we are asked to doubt the deliverance of memory, the senses, and eve n reason, all of which are principally capable of letting us down. This is eventually found in the celebrated ‘Cogito ergo sum’: I think, therefore I am. By locating the point of certainty in my awareness of my own self, Descartes gives a first-person twist to the theory of knowledge that dominated the following centuries in spite of a various counter attack on behalf of social and public starting-points. The metaphysics associated with this priority are the Cartesian dualism, or separation of mind and matter into two different but interacting substances. Descartes rigorously and rightly to ascertain that it takes divine dispensation to certify any relationship between the two realms thus divided, and to prove the reliability of the senses invokes a ‘clear and distinct perception’ of highly dubious proofs of the existence of a benevolent deity. This has not met general acceptance: A Hume drily puts it, ‘to have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.’
By dissimilarity, Descartes’s notorious denial that non-human animals are conscious is a stark illustration of dissimulation. In his conception of matter Descartes also gives preference to rational cogitation over anything from the senses. Since we can conceive of the matter of a ball of wax, surviving changes to its sensible qualities, matter is not an empirical concept, but eventually an entirely geometrical one, with extension and motion as its only physical nature.
Although the structure of Descartes’s epistemology, theory of mind and theory of matter have been rejected many times, their relentless exposure of the hardest issues, their exemplary clarity and even their initial plausibility, all contrives to make him the central point of reference for modern philosophy.
The term instinct (Lat., instinctus, impulse or urge) implies innately determined behaviour, flexible to change in circumstance outside the control of deliberation and reason. The view that animals accomplish even complex tasks not by reason was common to Aristotle and the Stoics, and the inflexibility of their outline was used in defence of this position as early as Avicennia. A continuity between animal and human reason was proposed by Hume, and followed by sensationalist such as the naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). The theory of evolution prompted various views of the emergence of stereotypical behaviour, and the idea that innate determinants of behaviour are fostered by specific environments is a guiding principle of ethology. In this sense that being social may be instinctive in human beings, and for that matter too reasoned on what we now know about the evolution of human language abilities, however, our real or actualized self is clearly not imprisoned in our minds.
It is implicitly a part of the larger whole of biological life, human observers its existence from embedded relations to this whole, and constructs its reality as based on evolved mechanisms that exist in all human brains. This suggests that any sense of the ‘otherness’ of self and world be is an illusion, in that disguises of its own actualization are to find all its relations between the part that are of their own characterization. Its self as related to the temporality of being whole is that of a biological reality. It can be viewed, of course, that a proper definition of this whole must not include the evolution of the larger indivisible whole. Yet, the cosmos and unbroken evolution of all life, by that of the first self-replication molecule that was the ancestor of DNA. It should include the complex interactions that have proven that among all the parts in biological reality that any resultant of emerging is self-regulating. This, of course, is responsible to properties owing to the whole of what might be to sustain the existence of the parts.
Founded on complications and complex coordinate systems in ordinary language may be conditioned as to establish some developments have been descriptively made by its physical reality and metaphysical concerns. That is, that it is in the history of mathematics and that the exchanges between the mega-narratives and frame tales of religion and science were critical factors in the minds of those who contributed. The first scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, allowed scientists to better them in the understudy of how the classical paradigm in physical reality has marked results in the stark Cartesian division between mind and world that became one of the most characteristic features of Western thought. This is not, however, another strident and ill-mannered diatribe against our misunderstandings, but drawn upon equivalent self realization and undivided wholeness or predicted characterlogic principles of physical reality and the epistemological foundations of physical theory.
The subjectivity of our mind affects our perceptions of the world held to be objective by natural science. Create both aspects of mind and matter as individualized forms that belong to the same underlying reality.
Our everyday experience confirms the apparent fact that there is a dual-valued world as subject and objects. We as having consciousness, as personality and as experiencing beings are the subjects, whereas for everything for which we can come up with a name or designation, seems to be the object, that which is opposed to us as a subject. Physical objects are only part of the object-world. In that respect are mental objects, objects of our emotions, abstract objects, religious objects etc. language objectifies our experience. Experiences per se are purely sensational experienced that do not make a distinction between object and subject. Only verbalized thought reifies the sensations by conceptualizing them and pigeonholing them into the given entities of language.
Some thinkers maintain, that subject and object are only different aspects of experience. I can experience myself as subject, and in the act of self-reflection. The fallacy of this argument is obvious: Being a subject implies having an object. We cannot experience something consciously without the mediation of understanding and mind. Our experience is already conceptualized at the time it comes into our consciousness. Our experience is negative insofar as it destroys the original pure experience. In a dialectical process of synthesis, the original pure experience becomes an object for us. The common state of our mind is only capable of apperceiving objects. Objects are reified negative experience. The same is true for the objective aspect of this theory: by objectifying myself I do not dispense with the subject, but the subject is causally and apodeictically linked to the object. When I make an object of anything, I have to realize, that it is the subject, which objectifies something. It is only the subject who can do that. Without the subject at that place are no objects, and without objects there is no subject. This interdependence, however, is not to be understood for a dualism, so that the object and the subject are really independent substances. Since the object is only created by the activity of the subject, and the subject is not a physical entity, but a mental one, we have to conclude then, that the subject-object dualism is purely intellective,- as relating to, or generated by the intellect, however, the inceptive progress or intended course of especially reduced to elemental structural form in which we can depict of the finer qualities that coincide on or upon the point of fact, of relating to the mind or affected by a disorder of the mind, or the um of a person’s intellectual capabilities by any of various cognitive considerations
The Cartesian dualism posits the subject and the object as separate, independent and real substances, both of which have their ground and origin in the highest substance of God. Cartesian dualism, however, contradicts itself: The very fact, which Descartes posits the ‘I,’ that is the subject, as the only certainty, he defied materialism, and thus the concept of some ‘res extensa.’ The physical thing is only probable in its existence, whereas the mental thing is absolutely and necessarily certain. The subject is superior to the object. The object is only derived, but the subject is the original. This makes the object not only inferior in its substantive quality and in its essence, but relegates it to a level of dependence on the subject. The subject recognizes that the object is a ‘res’ extensa’ and this means, that the object cannot have essence or existence without the acknowledgment through the subject. The subject posits the world in the first place and the subject is posited by God. Apart from the problem of interaction between these two different substances, Cartesian dualism is not eligible for explaining and understanding the subject-object relation.
By denying Cartesian dualism and resorting to monistic theories such as extreme idealism, materialism or positivism, the problem is not resolved either. What the positivists did, was just verbalizing the subject-object relation by linguistic forms. It was no longer a metaphysical problem, but only a linguistic problem. Our language has formed this object-subject dualism. These thinkers are very superficial and shallow thinkers, because they do not see that in the very act of their analysis they inevitably think in the mind-set of subject and object. By relativizing the object and subject for language and analytical philosophy, they avoid the elusive and problematical oppure of subject-object, since which has been the fundamental question in philosophy ever. Shunning these metaphysical questions is no solution. Excluding something, by reducing it to a more material and verifiable level, is not only pseudo-philosophy but a depreciation and decadence of the great philosophical ideas of mankind.
Therefore, we have to come to grips with idea of subject-object in a new manner. We experience this dualism as a fact in our everyday lives. Every experience is subject to this dualistic pattern. The question, however, is, whether this underlying pattern of subject-object dualism is real or only mental. Science assumes it to be real. This assumption does not prove the reality of our experience, but only that with this method science is most successful in explaining our empirical facts. Mysticism, on the other hand, believes that on that point is an original unity of subject and objects. To attain this unity is the goal of religion and mysticism. Man has fallen from this unity by disgrace and by sinful behaviour. Now the task of man is to get back on track again and strive toward this highest fulfilment. Again, are we not, on the conclusion made above, forced to admit, that also the mystic way of thinking is only a pattern of the mind and, as the scientists, that they have their own frame of reference and methodology to explain the supra-sensible facts most successfully?
If we assume mind to be the originator of the subject-object dualism, then we cannot confer more reality on the physical or the mental aspect, and we cannot deny the one as to the other.
Fortunately or not, history has made its play, and, in so doing, we must have considerably gestured the crude language of the earliest users of symbolics and nonsymbiotic vocalizations. Their spoken language probably became reactively independent and a closed cooperative system. Only after the emergence of hominids were to use symbolic communication evolved, symbolic forms progressively took over functions served by non-vocal symbolic forms. The earliest of Jutes, Saxons and Jesuits have reflected this in the modern mixtures of the English-speaking language. The structure of syntax in these languages often reveals its origins in pointing gestures, in the manipulation and exchange of objects, and in more primitive constructions of spatial and temporal relationships. We still use nonverbal vocalizations and gestures to complement meaning in spoken language.
Language involves specialized cortical regions in a complex interaction that allows the brain to comprehend and communicate abstract ideas. The motor cortex initiates impulses that travel through the brain stem to produce audible sounds. Neighbouring regions of motor cortex, called the supplemental motor cortex, are involved in sequencing and coordinating sounds. Broca's area of the frontal lobe is responsible for the sequencing of language elements for output. The comprehension of language is dependent upon Wernicke's area of the temporal lobe. Other cortical circuits connect these areas.
Memory is usually considered a diffusely stored associative process—that is, it puts together information from many different sources. Although research has failed to identify specific sites in the brain as locations of individual memories, certain brain areas are critical for memory to function. Immediate recall—the ability to repeat short series of words or numbers immediately after hearing them - is thought to be located in the auditory associative cortex. Short-term memory - the ability to retain a limited amount of information for up to an hour - is located in the deep temporal lobe. Long-term memory probably involves exchanges between the medial temporal lobe, various cortical regions, and the midbrain.
The autonomic nervous system regulates the life support systems of the body reflexively—that is, without conscious direction. It automatically controls the muscles of the heart, digestive system, and lungs; certain glands; and homeostasis—that is, the equilibrium of the internal environment of the body. The autonomic nervous system itself is controlled by nerve canters in the spinal cord and brain stem and is fine-tuned by regions higher in the brain, such as the midbrain and cortex. Reactions such as blushing indicate that cognitive, or thinking, canters of the brain are also involved in autonomic responses.
The brain is guarded by several highly developed protective mechanisms. The bony cranium, the surrounding meninges, and the cerebrospinal fluid all contribute to the mechanical protection of the brain. In addition, a filtration system called the blood-brain barrier protects the brain from exposure to potentially harmful substances carried in the bloodstream. Brain disorders have a wide range of causes, including head injury, stroke, bacterial diseases, complex chemical imbalances, and changes associated with aging.
Head injury can initiate a cascade of damaging events. After a blow to the head, a person may be stunned or may become unconscious for a moment. This injury, called a concussion, usually leaves no permanent damage. If the blow is more severe and haemorrhage (excessive bleeding) and swelling occurs, however, severe headache, dizziness, paralysis, a convulsion, or temporary blindness may result, depending on the area of the brain affected. Damage to the cerebrum can also result in profound personality changes.
Damage to Broca's area in the frontal lobe causes difficulty in speaking and writing, a problem known as Broca's aphasia. Injury to Wernicke's area in the left temporal lobe results in an inability to comprehend spoken language, called Wernicke's aphasia.
An injury or disturbance to a part of the hypothalamus may cause a variety of different symptoms, such as loss of appetite with an extreme drop in body weight; increase in appetite leading to obesity; extraordinary thirst with excessive urination (diabetes insipidus); failure in body-temperature control, resulting in either low temperature (hypothermia) or high temperature (fever); excessive emotionality; and uncontrolled anger or aggression. If the relationship between the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland is damaged, other vital bodily functions may be disturbed, such as sexual function, metabolism, and cardiovascular activity.
Injury to the brain stem is even more serious because it houses the nerve canters that control breathing and heart action. Damage to the medulla oblongata usually results in immediate death.
To the brain due to an interruption in blood flow. The interruption may be caused by a blood clot: constriction of a blood vessel, or rupture of a vessel accompanied by bleeding. A pouch-like expansion of the wall of a blood vessel, called an aneurysm, may weaken and burst, for example, because of high blood pressure.
Sufficient quantities of glucose and oxygen, transported through the bloodstream, are needed to keep nerve cells alive. When the blood supply to a small part of the brain is interrupted, the cells in that area die and the function of the area is lost. A massive stroke can cause a one-sided paralysis (hemiplegia) and sensory loss on the side of the body opposite the hemisphere damaged by the stroke.
Epilepsy is a broad term for a variety of brain disorders characterized by seizures, or convulsions. Epilepsy can result from a direct injury to the brain at birth or from a metabolic disturbance in the brain at any time later in life.
Some brain diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson disease, are progressive, becoming worse over time. Multiple sclerosis damages the myelin sheath around axons in the brain and spinal cord. As a result, the affected axons cannot transmit nerve impulses properly. Parkinson disease destroys the cells of the substantia nigra in the midbrain, resulting in a deficiency in the neurotransmitter dopamine that affects motor functions.
Cerebral palsy is a broad term for brain damage sustained close to birth that permanently affects motor function. The damage may take place either in the developing fetus, during birth, or just after birth and is the result of the faulty development or breaking down of motor pathways. Cerebral palsy is nonprogressive—that is, it does not worsen with time.
A bacterial infection in the cerebrum or in the coverings of the brain swelling of the brain, or an abnormal growth of healthy brain tissue can all cause an increase in intra-cranial pressure and result in serious damage to the brain.
Scientists are finding that certain brain chemical imbalances are associated with mental disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. Such findings have changed scientific understanding of mental health and have resulted in new treatments that chemically correct these imbalances.
During childhood development, the brain is particularly susceptible to damage because of the rapid growth and reorganization of nerve connections. Problems that originate in the immature brain can appear as epilepsy or other brain-function problems in adulthood.
Several neurological problems are common in aging. Alzheimer's disease damages many areas of the brain, including the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. The brain tissue of people with Alzheimer's disease shows characteristic patterns of damaged neurons, known as plaques and tangles. Alzheimer's disease produces a progressive dementia, characterized by symptoms such as failing attention and memory, loss of mathematical ability, irritability, and poor orientation in space and time.
Several commonly used diagnostic methods give images of the brain without invading the skull. Some portray anatomy, that is, the structure of the brain—whereas others measures brain function. Two or more methods may be used to complement each other, together providing a more complete picture than would be possible by one method alone.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), introduced in the early 1980s, beams high-frequency radio waves into the brain in a highly magnetized field that causes the protons that form the nuclei of hydrogen atoms in the brain to remit the radio waves. The remitted radio waves are analysed by computer to create thin cross-sectional images of the brain. MRI provides the most detailed images of the brain and is safer than imaging methods that use X rays. However, MRI is a lengthy process and also cannot be used with people who have pacemakers or metal implants, both of which are adversely affected by the magnetic field.
Computed tomography (CT), also known as CT scans, developed in the early 1970s. This imaging method X-rays the brain from many different angles, feeding the information into a computer that produces a series of cross-sectional images. CT is particularly useful for diagnosing blood clots and brain tumours. It is a much quicker process than magnetic resonance imaging and is therefore advantageous in certain situations—for example, with people who are extremely ill.
Changes in brain function due to brain disorders can be visualized in several ways. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy measures the concentration of specific chemical compounds in the brain that may change during specific behaviours. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) maps changes in oxygen concentration that correspond to nerve cell activity.
Positron emission tomography (PET), developed in the mid-1970s, uses computed tomography to visualize radioactive tracers radioactive substances introduced into the brain intravenously or by inhalation. PET can measure such brain functions as cerebral metabolism, blood flow and volume, oxygen use, and the formation of neurotransmitters. Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), developed in the 1950s and 1960s, used radioactive tracers to visualize the circulation and volume of blood in the brain.
Brain-imaging studies have provided new insights into sensory, motor, language, and memory processes, as well as brain disorders such as epilepsy cerebrovascular disease; Alzheimer's, Parkinson, and Huntington's diseases: And nd various mental disorders, such as schizophrenia.
In lower vertebrates, such as fish and reptiles, the brain is often tubular and bears a striking resemblance to the early embryonic stages of the brains of more highly evolved animals. In all vertebrates, the brain is divided into three regions: the forebrain (prosencephalon), the midbrain (mesencephalon), and the hindbrain (rhombencephalon). These three regions further subdivide into different structures, systems, nuclei, and layers.
The more highly evolved the animal, the more complex is the brain structure. Human beings have the most complex brains of all animals. Evolutionary forces have also resulted in a progressive increase in the size of the brain. In vertebrates lower than mammals, the brain is small. In meat-eating animals, particularly primates, the brain increases dramatically in size.
The cerebrum and cerebellum of higher mammals are highly convoluted in order to fit the most gray matter surface within the confines of the cranium. Such highly convoluted brains are called gyrencephalic. Many lower mammals have a smooth, or lissencephalic (‘smooth head’), cortical surface.
There is also evidence of evolutionary adaption of the brain. For example, many birds depend on an advanced visual system to identify food at great distances while in flight. Consequently, their optic lobes and cerebellum are well developed, giving them keen sight and outstanding motor coordination in flight. Rodents, on the other hand, as nocturnal animals, do not have a well-developed visual system. Instead, they rely more heavily on other sensory systems, such as a highly-developed sense of smell and facial whiskers.
Recent research in brain function suggests that there may be sexual differences in both brain anatomy and brain function. One study indicated that man’s nd women may use their brains differently while thinking. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe which parts of the brain were activated as groups of men and women tried to determine whether sets of nonsense words rhymed. Men used only Broca's area in this task, whereas women used Broca's area plus an area on the right side of the brain.
Both Analytic and Linguistic philosophy, are 20th-century philosophical movements, and dominated most of Britain and the United States since World War II, that aims to clarify language and analyse the concepts expressed in it. The movement has been given a variety of designations, including linguistic analysis, logical empiricism, logical positivism, Cambridge analysis, and ‘Oxford philosophy.’ The last two labels are derived from the universities in England where this philosophical method has been particularly influential. Although no specific doctrines or tenets are accepted by the movement as a whole, analytic and linguistic philosophers agree that the proper activity of philosophy is clarifying language, or, as some prefer, clarifying concepts. The aim of this activity is to settle philosophical disputes and resolve philosophical problems, which, it is argued, originates in linguistic confusion.
A considerable diversity of views exists among analytic and linguistic philosophers regarding the nature of conceptual or linguistic analysis. Some have been primarily concerned with clarifying the meaning of specific words or phrases as an essential step in making philosophical assertions clear and unambiguous. Others have been more concerned with determining the general conditions that must be met for any linguistic utterance to be meaningful; their intent is to establish a criterion that will distinguish between meaningful and nonsensical sentences. Still other analysts have been interested in creating formal, symbolic languages that are mathematical in nature. Their claim is that philosophical problems can be more effectively dealt with once they are formulated in a rigorous logical language.
By contrast, many philosophers associated with the movement have focussed on the analysis of ordinary, or natural, language. Difficulties arise when concepts such as time and freedom, for example, are considered apart from the linguistic context in which they normally appear. Attention to language as it is ordinarily used for the key it is argued, to resolving many philosophical puzzles.
Many experts believe that philosophy as an intellectual discipline originated with the work of Plato, one of the most celebrated philosophers in history. The Greek thinker had an immeasurable influence on Western thought. However, Plato’s expression of ideas in the form of dialogues—the dialectical method, used most famously by his teacher Socrates—has led to difficulties in interpreting some of the finer points of his thoughts. The issue of what exactly Plato meant to say is addressed in the following excerpt by author R. M. Hare.
Linguistic analysis as a method of philosophy is as old as the Greeks. Several of the dialogues of Plato, for example, are specifically concerned with clarifying terms and concepts. Nevertheless, this style of philosophizing has received dramatically renewed emphasis in the 20th century. Influenced by the earlier British empirical tradition of John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill and by the writings of the German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frigg, the 20th-century English philosopher’s G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell became the founders of this contemporary analytic and linguistic trend. As students together at the University of Cambridge, Moore and Russell rejected Hegelian idealism, particularly as it was reflected in the work of the English metaphysician F. H. Bradley, who held that nothing is completely real except the Absolute. In their opposition to idealism and in their commitment to the view that careful attention to language is crucial in philosophical inquiry. They set the mood and style of philosophizing for much of the 20th century English-speaking world.
For Moore, philosophy was first and foremost analysis. The philosophical task involves clarifying puzzling propositions or concepts by indicating less puzzling propositions or concepts to which the originals are held to be logically equivalent. Once this task has been completed, the truth or falsity of problematic philosophical assertions can be determined more adequately. Moore was noted for his careful analyses of such puzzling philosophical claims as ‘time is unreal,’ analyses that then aided in determining the truth of such assertions.
Russell, strongly influenced by the precision of mathematics, was concerned with developing an ideal logical language that would accurately reflect the nature of the world. Complex propositions, Russell maintained, can be resolved into their simplest components, which he called atomic propositions. These propositions refer to atomic facts, the ultimate constituents of the universe. The metaphysical views based on this logical analysis of language and the insistence that meaningful propositions must correspond to facts constitute what Russell called logical atomism. His interest in the structure of language also led him to distinguish between the grammatical form of a proposition and its logical form. The statements ‘John is good’ and ‘John is tall’ have the same grammatical form but different logical forms. Failure to recognize this would lead one to treat the property ‘goodness’ as if it were a characteristic of John in the same way that the property ‘tallness’ is a characteristic of John. Such failure results in philosophical confusion.
Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. With his fundamental work, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, published in 1921, he became a central figure in the movement known as analytic and linguistic philosophy.
Russell’s work in mathematics attracted to Cambridge the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became a central figure in the analytic and linguistic movement. In his first major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921; trans. 1922), in which he first presented his theory of language, Wittgenstein argued that ‘all philosophy is a ‘critique of language’‘ and that ‘philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts.’ The results of Wittgenstein’s analysis resembled Russell’s logical atomism. The world, he argued, is ultimately composed of simple facts, which it is the purpose of language to picture. To be meaningful, statements about the world must be reducible to linguistic utterances that have a structure similar to the simple facts pictured. In this early Wittgensteinian analysis, only propositions that picture facts—the propositions of science - are considered factually meaningful. Metaphysical, theological, and ethical sentences were judged to be factually meaningless.
Influenced by Russell, Wittgenstein, Ernst Mach, and others, a group of philosophers and mathematicians in Vienna in the 1920s initiated the movement known as logical positivism: Led by Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, the Vienna Circle initiated one of the most important chapters in the history of analytic and linguistic philosophy. According to the positivists, the task of philosophy is the clarification of meaning, not the discovery of new facts (the job of the scientists) or the construction of comprehensive accounts of reality (the misguided pursuit of traditional metaphysics).
The positivists divided all meaningful assertions into two classes: analytic propositions and empirically verifiable ones. Analytic propositions, which include the propositions of logic and mathematics, are statements the truth or falsity of which depend altogether on the meanings of the terms constituting the statement. An example would be the proposition ‘two plus two equals four.’ The second class of meaningful propositions includes all statements about the world that can be verified, at least in principle, by sense experience. Indeed, the meaning of such propositions is identified with the empirical method of their verification. This verifiability theory of meaning, the positivists concluded, would demonstrate that scientific statements are legitimate factual claims and that metaphysical, religious, and ethical sentences are factually empties. The ideas of logical positivism were made popular in England by the publication of A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic in 1936.
The positivists’ verifiability theory of meaning came under intense criticism by philosophers such as the Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper. Eventually this narrow theory of meaning yielded to a broader understanding of the nature of language. Again, an influential figure was Wittgenstein. Repudiating many of his earlier conclusions in the Tractatus, he initiated a new line of thought culminating in his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953; trans. 1953). In this work, Wittgenstein argued that once attention is directed to the way language is actually used in ordinary discourse, the variety and flexibility of language become clear. Propositions do much more than simply picture facts.
This recognition led to Wittgenstein’s influential concept of language games. The scientist, the poet, and the theologian, for example, are involved in different language games. Moreover, the meaning of a proposition must be understood in its context, that is, in terms of the rules of the language game of which that proposition is a part. Philosophy, concluded Wittgenstein, is an attempt to resolve problems that arise as the result of linguistic confusion, and the key to the resolution of such problems is ordinary language analysis and the proper use of language.
Additional contributions within the analytic and linguistic movement include the work of the British philosopher’s Gilbert Ryle, John Austin, and P. F. Strawson and the American philosopher W. V. Quine. According to Ryle, the task of philosophy is to restate ‘systematically misleading expressions’ in forms that are logically more accurate. He was particularly concerned with statements the grammatical form of which suggests the existence of nonexistent objects. For example, Ryle is best known for his analysis of psychological adaptions in confronting (as to a pattern, a standards, or relationship) with which things of the mind are displaced, such intentions for treatment were affected with disorders of the mind, nonetheless, the sensory productions of the imagined sort gave to the deficiencies that languages preparedness which proved overwhelming unjust, the language that misleadingly suggests that the mind is an entity in the same way as the body.
Austin maintained that one of the most fruitful starting points for philosophical inquiry is attention to the extremely fine distinctions drawn in ordinary language. His analysis of language eventually led to a general theory of speech acts, that is, to a description of the variety of activities that an individual may be performing when something is uttered.
Strawson is known for his analysis of the relationship between formal logic and ordinary language. The complexity of the latter, he argued, is inadequately represented by formal logic. A variety of analytic tools, therefore, are needed in addition to logic in analyzing ordinary language.
Quine discussed the relationship between language and ontology. He argued that language systems tend to commit their users to the existence of certain things. For Quine, the justification for speaking one way rather than another is a thoroughly pragmatic one.
The commitment to language analysis as a way of pursuing philosophy has continued as a significant contemporary dimension in philosophy. A division also continues to exist between those who prefer to work with the precision and rigour of symbolic logical systems and those who prefer to analyse ordinary language. Although few contemporary philosophers maintain that all philosophical problems are linguistic, the view continues to be widely held that attention to the logical structure of language and to how language is used in everyday discourse can often aid in resolving philosophical problems.
A loose title for various philosophies that emphasize certain common themes, the individual, the experience of choice, and if the absence of rational understanding of the universe, with a consequent dread or sense of ‘absurdity human life’ however, existentialism is a philosophical movement or tendency, emphasizing individual existence, freedom, and choice, that influenced many diverse writers in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Because of the diversity of positions associated with existentialism, the term is impossible to define precisely. Certain themes common to virtually all existentialist writers can, however, be identified. The term itself suggests one major theme: the stress on concrete individual existence and, consequently, on subjectivity, individual freedom, and choice.
Most philosophers since Plato have held that the highest ethical good are the same for everyone; insofar as one approaches moral perfection, one resembles other morally perfect individuals. The 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who was the first writer to call himself existential, reacted against this tradition by insisting that the highest good for the individual are to find his or her own unique vocation. As he wrote in his journal, ‘I must find a truth that is true for me . . . the idea for which I can live or die.’ Other existentialist writers have echoed Kierkegaard's belief that one must choose one's own way without the aid of universal, objective standards. Against the traditional view that moral choice involves an objective judgment of right and wrong, existentialists have argued that no objective, rational basis can be found for moral decisions. The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche further contended that the individual must decide which situations are to count as moral situations.
All existentialists have followed Kierkegaard in stressing the importance of passionate individual action in deciding questions of both morality and truth. They have insisted, accordingly, that personal experience and acting on one's own convictions are essential in arriving at the truth. Thus, the understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation is superior to that of a detached, objective observer. This emphasis on the perspective of the individual agent has also made existentialists suspicious of systematic reasoning. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and other existentialist writers have been deliberately unsystematic in the exposition of their philosophies, preferring to express themselves in aphorisms, dialogues, parables, and other literary forms. Despite their antinationalism position, however, most existentialists cannot be said to be irrationalists in the sense of denying all validity to rational thought. They have held that rational clarity is desirable wherever possible, but that the most important questions in life are not accessible to reason or science. Furthermore, they have argued that even science is not as rational as is commonly supposed. Nietzsche, for instance, asserted that the scientific assumption of an orderly universe is for the most part a useful fiction.
Perhaps the most prominent theme in existentialist writing is that of choice. Humanity's primary distinction, in the view of most existentialists, is the freedom to choose. Existentialists have held that human beings do not have a fixed nature, or essence, as other animals and plants do; each human being makes choices that create his or her own nature. In the formulation of the 20th-century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, existence precedes essence. Choice is therefore central to human existence, and it is inescapable; even the refusal to choose is a choice. Freedom of choice entails commitment and responsibility. Because individuals are free to choose their own path, existentialists have argued, they must accept the risk and responsibility of following their commitment wherever it leads.
Kierkegaard held that it is spiritually crucial to recognize that one experiences not only a fear of specific objects but also a feeling of general apprehension, which he called dread. He interpreted it as God's way of calling each individual to make a commitment to a personally valid way of life. The word anxiety (German Angst) has a similarly crucial role in the work of the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger; anxiety leads to the individual's confrontation with nothingness and with the impossibility of finding ultimate justification for the choices he or she must make. In the philosophy of Sartre, the word nausea is used for the individual's recognition of the pure contingency of the universe, and the word anguish is used for the recognition of the total freedom of choice that confronts the individual at every moment.
Existentialism as a distinct philosophical and literary movement belongs to the 19th and 20th centuries, but elements of existentialism can be found in the thought (and life) of Socrates, in the Bible, and in the work of many premodern philosophers and writers.
The first to anticipate the major concerns of modern existentialism was the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. Pascal rejected the rigorous rationalism of his contemporary René Descartes, asserting, in his Pensées (1670), that a systematic philosophy that presumes to explain God and humanity is a form of pride. Like later existentialist writers, he saw human life in terms of paradoxes: The human self, which combines mind and body, is itself a paradox and contradiction.
Kierkegaard, generally regarded as the founder of modern existentialism, reacted against the systematic absolute idealism of the 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who claimed to have worked out a total rational understanding of humanity and history. Kierkegaard, on the contrary, stressed the ambiguity and absurdity of the human situation. The individual's response to this situation must be to live a totally committed life, and this commitment can only be understood by the individual who has made it. The individual therefore must always be prepared to defy the norms of society for the sake of the higher authority of a personally valid way of life. Kierkegaard ultimately advocated a ‘leap of faith’ into a Christian way of life, which, although incomprehensible and full of risk, was the only commitment he believed could save the individual from despair.
Danish religious philosopher Søren Kierkegaard rejected the all-encompassing, analytical philosophical systems of such 19th-century thinkers as German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Instead, Kierkegaard focussed on the choices the individual must make in all aspects of his or her life, especially the choice to maintain religious faith. In Fear and Trembling (1846; trans. 1941), Kierkegaard explored the concept of faith through an examination of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, in which God demanded that Abraham demonstrate his faith by sacrificing his son.
One of the most controversial works of 19th-century philosophy, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-1885) articulated German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of the Übermensch, a term translated as ‘Superman’ or ‘Overman.’ The Superman was an individual who overcame what Nietzsche termed the ‘slave morality’ of traditional values, and lived according to his own morality. Nietzsche also advanced his idea that ‘God is dead,’ or that traditional morality was no longer relevant in people’s lives. In this passage, the sage Zarathustra came down from the mountain where he had spent the last ten years alone to preach to the people.
Nietzsche, who was not acquainted with the work of Kierkegaard, influenced subsequent existentialist thought through his criticism of traditional metaphysical and moral assumptions and through his espousal of tragic pessimism and the life-affirming individual will that opposes itself to the moral conformity of the majority. In contrast to Kierkegaard, whose attack on conventional morality led him to advocate a radically individualistic Christianity, Nietzsche proclaimed the ‘death of God’ and went on to reject the entire Judeo-Christian moral tradition in favour of a heroic pagan ideal.
The modern philosophy movements of phenomenology and existentialism have been greatly influenced by the thought of German philosopher Martin Heidegger. According to Heidegger, humankind has fallen into a crisis by taking a narrow, technological approach to the world and by ignoring the larger question of existence. People, if they wish to live authentically, must broaden their perspectives. Instead of taking their existence for granted, people should view themselves as part of Being (Heidegger's term for that which underlies all existence).
Heidegger, like Pascal and Kierkegaard, reacted against an attempt to put philosophy on a conclusive rationalistic basis—in this case the phenomenology of the 20th-century German philosopher Edmund Husserl. Heidegger argued that humanity finds itself in an incomprehensible, indifferent world. Human beings can never hope to understand why they are here; instead, each individual must choose a goal and follow it with passionate conviction, aware of the certainty of death and the ultimate meaninglessness of one's life. Heidegger contributed to existentialist thought an original emphasis on being and ontology (see Metaphysics) as well as on language.
Twentieth-century French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre helped to develop existential philosophy through his writings, novels, and plays. A large portion of Sartre’s work focus on the dilemma of choice faced by free individuals and on the challenge of creating meaning by acting responsibly in an indifferent world. In stating that ‘man is condemned to be free,’ Sartre reminds us of the responsibility that accompanies human decisions.
Sartre first gave the term existentialism general currency by using it for his own philosophy and by becoming the leading figure of a distinct movement in France that became internationally influential after World War II. Sartre's philosophy is explicitly atheistic and pessimistic; he declared that human beings require a rational basis for their lives but are unable to achieve one, and thus human life is a ‘futile passion.’ Sartre nevertheless insisted that his existentialism is a form of humanism, and he strongly emphasized human freedom, choice, and responsibility. He eventually tried to reconcile these existentialist concepts with a Marxist analysis of society and history.
Although existentialist thought encompasses the uncompromising atheism of Nietzsche and Sartre and the agnosticism of Heidegger, its origin in the intensely religious philosophies of Pascal and Kierkegaard foreshadowed its profound influence on 20th-century theology. The 20th-century German philosopher Karl Jaspers, although he rejected explicit religious doctrines, influenced contemporary theology through his preoccupation with transcendence and the limits of human experience. The German Protestant theologian’s Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann, the French Roman Catholic theologian Gabriel Marcel, the Russian Orthodox philosopher Nikolay Berdyayev, and the German Jewish philosopher Martin Buber inherited many of Kierkegaard's concerns, especially that a personal sense of authenticity and commitment is essential to religious faith.
Renowned as one of the most important writers in world history, 19th-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote psychologically intense novels which probed the motivations and moral justifications for his characters’ actions. Dostoyevsky commonly addressed themes such as the struggle between good and evil within the human soul and the idea of salvation through suffering. The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880), generally considered Dostoyevsky’s best work, interlaces religious exploration with the story of a family’s violent quarrels over a woman and a disputed inheritance.
A number of existentialist philosophers used literary forms to convey their thought, and existentialism has been as vital and as extensive a movement in literature as in philosophy. The 19th-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky is probably the greatest existentialist literary figure. In Notes from the Underground (1864), the alienated antihero rages against the optimistic assumptions of rationalist humanism. The view of human nature that emerges in this and other novels of Dostoyevsky is that it is unpredictable and perversely self-destructive; only Christian love can save humanity from itself, but such love cannot be understood philosophically. As the character Alyosha says in The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80), ‘We must love life more than the meaning of it.’
The opening lines of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864)—‘I am a sick man.… I am a spiteful man’—are among the most famous in 19th-century literature. Published five years after his release from prison and involuntary military service in Siberia, Notes from Underground is a sign of Dostoyevsky’s rejection of the radical social thinking he had embraced in his youth. The unnamed narrator is antagonistic in tone, questioning the reader’s sense of morality as well as the foundations of rational thinking. In this excerpt from the beginning of the novel, the narrator describes himself, derisively referring to himself as an ‘overly conscious’ intellectual.
In the 20th century, the novels of the Austrian Jewish writer Franz Kafka, such as The Trial (1925; trans. 1937) and The Castle (1926; trans. 1930), present isolated men confronting vast, elusive, menacing bureaucracies; Kafka's themes of anxiety, guilt, and solitude reflect the influence of Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche. The influence of Nietzsche is also discernible in the novels of the French writer’s André Malraux and in the plays of Sartre. The work of the French writer Albert Camus is usually associated with existentialism because of the prominence in it of such themes as the apparent absurdity and futility of life, the indifference of the universe, and the necessity of engagement in a just cause. Existentialist themes are also reflected in the theatre of the absurd, notably in the plays of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco. In the United States, the influence of existentialism on literature has been more indirect and diffuse, but traces of Kierkegaard's thought can be found in the novels of Walker Percy and John Updike, and various existentialist themes are apparent in the work of such diverse writers as Norman Mailer, John Barth, and Arthur
The problem of defining knowledge in terms of true belief plus some favoured relation between the believer and the facts began with Plato’s view in the Theaetetus, that knowledge is true belief plus a logos, an epistemology is to begin of holding the foundations of knowledge, a special branch of philosophy that addresses the philosophical problems surrounding the theory of knowledge. Epistemology is concerned with the definition of knowledge and related concepts, the sources and criteria of knowledge, the kinds of knowledge possible and the degree to which each is certain, and the exact relation among the one who knows and the object known.
Thirteenth-century Italian philosopher and theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas attempted to synthesize Christian belief with a broad range of human knowledge, embracing diverse sources such as Greek philosopher Aristotle and Islamic and Jewish scholars. His thought exerted lasting influence on the development of Christian theology and Western philosophy. Author Anthony Kenny examines the complexities of Aquinas’s concepts of substance and accident.
In the 5th century Bc, the Greek Sophists questioned the possibility of reliable and objective knowledge. Thus, a leading Sophist, Gorgias, argued that nothing really exists, that if anything did exist it could not be known, and that if knowledge were possible, it could not be communicated. Another prominent Sophist, Protagoras, maintained that no person's opinions can be said to be more correct than another's, because each is the sole judge of his or her own experience. Plato, following his illustrious teacher Socrates, tried to answer the Sophists by postulating the existence of a world of unchanging and invisible forms, or ideas, about which it is possible to have exact and certain knowledge. The thing’s one sees and touches, they maintained, are imperfect copies of the pure forms studied in mathematics and philosophy. Accordingly, only the abstract reasoning of these disciplines yields genuine knowledge, whereas reliance on sense perception produces vague and inconsistent opinions. They concluded that philosophical contemplation of the unseen world of forms is the highest goal of human life.
Aristotle followed Plato in regarding abstract knowledge as superior to any other, but disagreed with him as to the proper method of achieving it. Aristotle maintained that almost all knowledge is derived from experience. Knowledge is gained either directly, by abstracting the defining traits of a species, or indirectly, by deducing new facts from those already known, in accordance with the rules of logic. Careful observation and strict adherence to the rules of logic, which were first set down in systematic form by Aristotle, would help guard against the pitfalls the Sophists had exposed. The Stoic and Epicurean schools agreed with Aristotle that knowledge originates in sense perception, but against both Aristotle and Plato they maintained that philosophy is to be valued as a practical guide to life, rather than as an end in itself.
After many centuries of declining interest in rational and scientific knowledge, the Scholastic philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas and other philosophers of the Middle Ages helped to restore confidence in reason and experience, blending rational methods with faith into a unified system of beliefs. Aquinas followed Aristotle in regarding perception as the starting point and logic as the intellectual procedure for arriving at reliable knowledge of nature, but he considered faith in scriptural authority as the main source of religious belief.
From the 17th to the late 19th century, the main issue in epistemology was reasoning versus sense perception in acquiring knowledge. For the rationalists, of whom the French philosopher René Descartes, the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz were the leaders, the main source and final test of knowledge was deductive reasoning based on self-evident principles, or axioms. For the empiricists, beginning with the English philosophers Francis Bacon and John Locke, the main source and final test of knowledge was sense perception.
Bacon inaugurated the new era of modern science by criticizing the medieval reliance on tradition and authority and also by setting down new rules of scientific method, including the first set of rules of inductive logic ever formulated. Locke attacked the rationalist belief that the principles of knowledge are intuitively self-evident, arguing that all knowledge is derived from experience, either from experience of the external world, which stamps sensations on the mind, or from internal experience, in which the mind reflects on its own activities. Human knowledge of external physical objects, he claimed, is always subject to the errors of the senses, and he concluded that one cannot have absolutely certain knowledge of the physical world.
Irish-born philosopher and clergyman George Berkeley (1685-1753) argued that everything that human beings conceive of exists as an idea in a mind, a philosophical focus which is known as idealism. Berkeley reasoned that because one cannot control one’s thoughts, they must come directly from a larger mind: that of God. In this excerpt from his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, written in 1710, Berkeley explained why he believed that it is ‘impossible … that there should be any such thing as an outward object.’
The Irish philosopher George Berkeley agreed with Locke that knowledge comes through ideas, but he denied Locke's belief that a distinction can be made between ideas and objects. The British philosopher David Hume continued the empiricist tradition, but he did not accept Berkeley's conclusion that knowledge was of ideas only. He divided all knowledge into two kinds: knowledge of relations of ideas - that is, the knowledge found in mathematics and logic, which is exact and certain but no information about the world; and knowledge of matters of fact - that is, the knowledge derived from sense perception. Hume argued that most knowledge of matters of fact depends upon cause and effect, and since no logical connection exists between any given cause and its effect, one cannot hope to know any future matter of fact with certainty. Thus, the most reliable laws of science might not remain true—a conclusion that had a revolutionary impact on philosophy.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant tried to solve the crisis precipitated by Locke and brought to a climax by Hume; his proposed solution combined elements of rationalism with elements of empiricism. He agreed with the rationalists that one can have exact and certain knowledge, but he followed the empiricists in holding that such knowledge is more informative about the structure of thought than about the world outside of thought. He distinguished three kinds of knowledge: analytical a priori, which is exact and certain but uninformative, because it makes clear only what is contained in definitions; synthetic a posteriori, which conveys information about the world learned from experience, but is subject to the errors of the senses; and synthetic a priori, which is discovered by pure intuition and is both exact and certain, for it expresses the necessary conditions that the mind imposes on all objects of experience. Mathematics and philosophy, according to Kant, provide this last. Since the time of Kant, one of the most frequently argued questions in philosophy has been whether or not such a thing as synthetic a priori knowledge really exists.
During the 19th century, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel revived the rationalist claim that absolutely certain knowledge of reality can be obtained by equating the processes of thought, of nature, and of history. Hegel inspired an interest in history and a historical approach to knowledge that was further emphasized by Herbert Spencer in Britain and by the German school of historicism. Spencer and the French philosopher Auguste Comte brought attention to the importance of sociology as a branch of knowledge, and both extended the principles of empiricism to the study of society.
The American school of pragmatism, founded by the philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey at the turn of this century, carried empiricism further by maintaining that knowledge is an instrument of action and that all beliefs should be judged by their usefulness as rules for predicting experiences.
In the early 20th century, epistemological problems were discussed thoroughly, and subtle shades of difference grew into rival schools of thought. Special attention was given to the relation between the act of perceiving something, the object directly perceived, and the thing that can be said to be known as a result of the perception. The phenomenalists contended that the objects of knowledge are the same as the objects perceived. The neorealist argued that one has direct perceptions of physical objects or parts of physical objects, rather than of one's own mental states. The critical realists took a middle position, holding that although one perceives only sensory data such as colours and sounds, these stand for physical objects and provide knowledge thereof.
A method for dealing with the problem of clarifying the relation between the act of knowing and the object known was developed by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl. He outlined an elaborate procedure that he called phenomenology, by which one is said to be able to distinguish the way things appear to be from the way one thinks they really are, thus gaining a more precise understanding of the conceptual foundations of knowledge.
During the second quarter of the 20th century, two schools of thought emerged, each indebted to the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The first of these schools, logical empiricism, or logical positivism, had its origins in Vienna, Austria, but it soon spread to England and the United States. The logical empiricists insisted that there is only one kind of knowledge: scientific knowledge; that any valid knowledge claim must be verifiable in experience; and hence that much that had passed for philosophy was neither true nor false but literally meaningless. Finally, following Hume and Kant, a clear distinction must be maintained between analytic and synthetic statements. The so-called verifiability criterion of meaning has undergone changes as a result of discussions among the logical empiricists themselves, as well as their critics, but has not been discarded. More recently, the sharp distinction between the analytic and the synthetic has been attacked by a number of philosophers, chiefly by American philosopher W.V.O. Quine, whose overall approach is in the pragmatic tradition.
The latter of these recent schools of thought, generally referred to as linguistic analysis, or ordinary language philosophy, seems to break with traditional epistemology. The linguistic analysts undertake to examine the actual way key epistemological terms are used - terms such as knowledge, perception, and probability - and to formulate definitive rules for their use in order to avoid verbal confusion. British philosopher John Langshaw Austin argued, for example, that to say a statement was true added nothing to the statement except a promise by the speaker or writer. Austin does not consider truth a quality or property attaching to statements or utterances. However, the ruling thought is that it is only through a correct appreciation of the role and point of this language that we can come to a better conception of what the language is about, and avoid the oversimplifications and distortion we are apt to bring to its subject matter.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It encompasses the description of languages, the study of their origin, and the analysis of how children acquire language and how people learn languages other than their own. Linguistics is also concerned with relationships between languages and with the ways languages change over time. Linguists may study language as a thought process and seek a theory that accounts for the universal human capacity to produce and understand language. Some linguists examine language within a cultural context. By observing talk, they try to determine what a person needs to know in order to speak appropriately in different settings, such as the workplace, among friends, or among family. Other linguists focus on what happens when speakers from different language and cultural backgrounds interact. Linguists may also concentrate on how to help people learn another language, using what they know about the learner’s first language and about the language being acquired.
Although there are many ways of studying language, most approaches belong to one of the two main branches of linguistics: descriptive linguistics and comparative linguistics.
Descriptive linguistics is the study and analysis of spoken language. The techniques of descriptive linguistics were devised by German American anthropologist Franz Boas and American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir in the early 1900s to record and analyse Native American languages. Descriptive linguistics begins with what a linguist hears native speakers say. By listening to native speakers, the linguist gathered a body of data and analysed it in order to identify distinctive sounds, called phonemes. Individual phonemes, such as /p/ and /b/, are established on the grounds that substitution of one for the other changes the meaning of a word. After identifying the entire inventory of sounds in a language, the linguist looks at how these sounds combine to create morphemes, or units of sound that carry meaning, such as the words push and bush. Morphemes may be individual words such as push; root words, such as berry in blueberry; or prefixes (pre- in preview) and suffixes (-ness in openness).
The linguist’s next step is to see how morphemes combine into sentences, obeying both the dictionary meaning of the morpheme and the grammatical rules of the sentence. In the sentence ‘She pushed the bush,’ the morpheme she, a pronoun, is the subject; push, a transitive verb, is the verb; the, a definite article, is the determiner; and bush, a noun, is the object. Knowing the function of the morphemes in the sentence enables the linguist to describe the grammar of the language. The scientific procedures of phonemics (finding phonemes), morphology (discovering morphemes), and syntax (describing the order of morphemes and their function) provide descriptive linguists with a way to write down grammars of languages never before written down or analysed. In this way they can begin to study and understand these languages.
Comparative linguistics is the study and analysis, by means of written records, of the origins and relatedness of different languages. In 1786 Sir William Jones, a British scholar, asserted that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin were related to one another and had descended from a common source. He based this assertion on observations of similarities in sounds and meanings among the three languages. For example, the Sanskrit word bhratar for ‘brother’ resembles the Latin word phrater, the Greek word phrater, (and the English word brother).
Other scholars went on to compare Icelandic with Scandinavian languages, and Germanic languages with Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. The correspondences among languages, known as genetic relationships, came to be represented on what comparative linguists refer to as family trees. Family trees established by comparative linguists include the Indo-European, relating Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, English, and other Asian and European languages; the Algonquian, relating Fox, Cree, Menomini, Ojibwa, and other Native North American languages; and the Bantu, relating Swahili, Xhosa, Zulu, Kikuyu, and other African languages.
Comparative linguists also look for similarities in the way words are formed in different languages. Latin and English, for example, change the form of a word to express different meanings, as when the English verb go changes to go and gone to express a past action. Chinese, on the other hand, has no such inflected forms; the verb remains the same while other words indicate the time (as in ‘go store tomorrow’). In Swahili, prefixes, suffixes, and infixes (additions in the body of the word) combine with a root word to change its meaning. For example, a single word might express when something was done, by whom, to whom, and in what manner.
Some comparative linguists reconstruct hypothetical ancestral languages known as proto-languages, which they use to demonstrate relatedness among contemporary languages. A proto-language is not intended to depict a real language, however, and does not represent the speech of ancestors of people speaking modern languages. Unfortunately, some groups have mistakenly used such reconstructions in efforts to demonstrate the ancestral homeland of a people.
Comparative linguists have suggested that certain basic words in a language do not change over time, because people are reluctant to introduce new words for such constants as arm, eye, or mother. These words are termed culture free. By comparing lists of culture-free words in languages within a family, linguists can derive the percentage of related words and use a formula to figure out when the languages separated from one another.
By the 1960s comparativists were no longer satisfied with focussing on origins, migrations, and the family tree method. They challenged as unrealistic the notion that an earlier language could remain sufficiently isolated for other languages to be derived exclusively from it over a period of time. Today comparativists seek to understand the more complicated reality of language history, taking language contact into account. They are concerned with universal characteristics of language and with comparisons of grammars and structures.
The field of linguistics both borrows from and lends its own theories and methods to other disciplines. The many subfields of linguistics have expanded our understanding of languages. Linguistic theories and methods are also used in other fields of study. These overlapping interests have led to the creation of several cross-disciplinary fields.
Sociolinguistics is the study of patterns and variations in language within a society or community. It focuses on the way people use language to express social class, group status, gender, or ethnicity, and it looks at how they make choices about the form of language they use. It also examines the way people use language to negotiate their role in society and to achieve positions of power. For example, sociolinguistic studies have found that the way a New Yorker pronounces the phoneme /r/ in an expression such as ‘fourth floor’ can indicate the person’s social class. According to one study, people aspiring to move from the lower middle class to the upper middle class attach prestige to pronouncing the /r/. Sometimes they even overcorrect their speech, pronouncing a /r/ where those whom they wish to copy may not.
Some sociolinguists believe that analyzing such variables as the use of a particular phoneme can predict the direction of language change. Change, they say, moves toward the variable associated with power, prestige, or other quality having high social value. Other sociolinguists focus on what happens when speakers of different languages interact. This approach to language change emphasizes the way languages mix rather than the direction of change within a community. The goal of Sociolinguistics is to understand communicative competence—what people need to know to use the appropriate language for a given social setting.
Psycholinguistics merges the fields of psychology and linguistics to study how people process language and how language use is related to underlying mental processes. Studies of children’s language acquisition and of second-language acquisition are psycholinguistic in nature. Psycholinguists work to develop models for how language is processed and understood, using evidence from studies of what happens when these processes go awry. They also study language disorders such as aphasia (impairment of the ability to use or comprehend words) and dyslexia (impairment of the ability to make out written language).
Computational linguistics involves the use of computers to compile linguistic data, analyse languages, translate from one language to another, and develop and test models of language processing. Linguists use computers and large samples of actual language to analyse the relatedness and the structure of languages and to look for patterns and similarities. Computers also aid in stylistic studies, information retrieval, various forms of textual analysis, and the construction of dictionaries and concordances. Applying computers to language studies has resulted in machine translation systems and machines that recognize and produce speech and text. Such machines facilitate communication with humans, including those who are perceptually or linguistically impaired.
Applied linguistics employs linguistic theory and methods in teaching and in research on learning a second language. Linguists look at the errors people make as they learn another language and at their strategies for communicating in the new language at different degrees of competence. In seeking to understand what happens in the mind of the learner, applied linguists recognize that motivation, attitude, learning style, and personality affect how well a person learns another language.
Anthropological linguistics, also known as linguistic anthropology, uses linguistic approaches to analyse culture. Anthropological linguists examine the relationship between a culture and its language. The way cultures and languages have changed over time, and how different cultures and languages are related to one another. For example, the present English use of family and given names arose in the late 13th and early 14th centuries when the laws concerning registration, tenure, and inheritance of property were changed.
Philosophical linguistics examines the philosophy of language. Philosophers of language search for the grammatical principles and tendencies that all human languages share. Among the concerns of linguistic philosophers is the range of possible word order combinations throughout the world. One finding is that 95 percent of the world’s languages use a subject-verb-object order as English does (‘She pushed the bush.’). Only 5 percent use a subject-object-verb order or verb-subject-object order.
Neurolinguistics is the study of how language is processed and represented in the brain. neurolinguist seek to identify the parts of the brain involved with the production and understanding of language and to determine where the components of language (phonemes, morphemes, and structure or syntax) are stored. In doing so, they make use of techniques for analyzing the structure of the brain and the effects of brain damage on language.
Speculation about language goes back thousands of years. Ancient Greek philosophers speculated on the origins of language and the relationship between objects and their names. They also discussed the rules that govern language, or grammar, and by the 3rd century Bc they had begun grouping words into parts of speech and devising names for different forms of verbs and nouns.
In India religion provided the motivation for the study of language nearly 2500 years ago. Hindu priests noted that the language they spoke had changed since the compilation of their ancient sacred texts, the Vedas, starting about 1000 Bc. They believed that for certain religious ceremonies based upon the Vedas to succeed, they needed to reproduce the language of the Vedas precisely. Panini, an Indian grammarian who lived about 400 Bc, produced the earliest work describing the rules of Sanskrit, the ancient language of India.
The Romans used Greek grammars as models for their own, adding commentary on Latin style and usage. Statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote on rhetoric and style in the 1st century Bc. Later grammarian’s Aelius Donatus (4th century ad) and Priscian (6th century ad) produced detailed Latin grammars. Roman works served as textbooks and standards for the study of language for more than 1000 years.
It was not until the end of the 18th century that language was researched and studied in a scientific way. During the 17th and 18th centuries, modern languages, such as French and English, replaced Latin as the means of universal communication in the West. This occurrence, along with developments in printing, meant that many more texts became available. At about this time, the study of phonetics, or the sounds of a language, began. Such investigations led to comparisons of sounds in different languages; in the late 18th century the observation of correspondences among Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek gave birth to the field of Indo-European linguistics.
During the 19th century, European linguists focussed on philology, or the historical analysis and comparison of languages. They studied written texts and looked for changes over time or for relationships between one language and another.
American linguist, writer, teacher, and political activist Noam Chomsky is considered the founder of transformational-generative linguistic analysis, which revolutionized the field of linguistics. This system of linguistics treats grammar as a theory of language—that is, Chomsky believes that in addition to the rules of grammar specific to individual languages, there are universal rules common to all languages that indicate that the ability to form and understand language is innate to all human beings. Chomsky also is well known for his political activism—he opposed United States involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and has written various books and articles and delivered many lectures in an attempt to educate and empower people on various political and social issues.
In the early 20th century, linguistics expanded to include the study of unwritten languages. In the United States linguists and anthropologists began to study the rapidly disappearing spoken languages of Native North Americans. Because many of these languages were unwritten, researchers could not use historical analysis in their studies. In their pioneering research on these languages, anthropologists’ Franz Boas and Edward Sapir developed the techniques of descriptive linguistics and theorized on the ways in which language shapes our perceptions of the world.
An important outgrowth of descriptive linguistics is a theory known as structuralism, which assumes that language is a system with a highly organized structure. Structuralism began with publication of the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in Cours de linguistique générale (1916; Course in General Linguistics, 1959). This work, compiled by Saussure’s students after his death, is considered the foundation of the modern field of linguistics. Saussure made a distinction between actual speech, and spoken language, and the knowledge underlying speech that speakers share about what is grammatical. Speech, he said, represents instances of grammar, and the linguist’s task is to find the underlying rules of a particular language from examples found in speech. To the structuralist, grammar is a set of relationships that account for speech, rather than a set of instances of speech, as it is to the descriptivist.
Once linguists began to study language as a set of abstract rules that somehow account for speech, other scholars began to take an interest in the field. They drew analogies between language and other forms of human behaviour, based on the belief that a shared structure underlies many aspects of a culture. Anthropologists, for example, became interested in a structuralist approach to the interpretation of kinship systems and analysis of myth and religion. American linguist Leonard Bloomfield promoted structuralism in the United States.
Saussure’s ideas also influenced European linguistics, most notably in France and Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). In 1926 Czech linguist Vilem Mathesius founded the Linguistic Circle of Prague, a group that expanded the focus of the field to include the context of language use. The Prague circle developed the field of phonology, or the study of sounds, and demonstrated that universal features of sounds in the languages of the world interrelate in a systematic way. Linguistic analysis, they said, should focus on the distinctiveness of sounds rather than on the ways they combine. Where descriptivists tried to locate and describe individual phonemes, such as /b/ and /p/, the Prague linguists stressed the features of these phonemes and their interrelationships in different languages. In English, for example, the voice distinguishes between the similar sounds of /b/ and /p/, but these are not distinct phonemes in a number of other languages. An Arabic speaker might pronounce the cities Pompei and Bombay the same way.
As linguistics developed in the 20th century, the notion became prevalent that language is more than speech—specifically, that it is an abstract system of interrelationships shared by members of a speech community. Structural linguistics led linguists to look at the rules and the patterns of behaviour shared by such communities. Whereas structural linguists saw the basis of language in the social structure, other linguists looked at language as a mental process.
The 1957 publication of Syntactic Structures by American linguist Noam Chomsky initiated what many view as a scientific revolution in linguistics. Chomsky sought a theory that would account for both linguistic structure and the creativity of language—the fact that we can create entirely original sentences and understand sentences never before uttered. He proposed that all people have an innate ability to acquire language. The task of the linguist, he claimed, is to describe this universal human ability, known as language competence, with a grammar from which the grammars of all languages could be derived. The linguist would develop this grammar by looking at the rules children use in hearing and speaking their first language. He termed the resulting model, or grammar, a transformational-generative grammar, referring to the transformations (or rules) that generate (or account for) language. Certain rules, Chomsky asserted, are shared by all languages and form part of a universal grammar, while others are language specific and associated with particular speech communities. Since the 1960s much of the development in the field of linguistics has been a reaction to or against Chomsky’s theories.
At the end of the 20th century, linguists used the term grammar primarily to refer to a subconscious linguistic system that enables people to produce and comprehend an unlimited number of utterances. Grammar thus accounts for our linguistic competence. Observations about the actual language we use, or language performance, are used to theorize about this invisible mechanism known as grammar.
The orientation toward the scientific study of language led by Chomsky has had an impact on nongenerative linguists as well. Comparative and historically oriented linguists are looking for the various ways linguistic universals show up in individual languages. Psycholinguists, interested in language acquisition, are investigating the notion that an ideal speaker-hearer is the origin of the acquisition process. Sociolinguists are examining the rules that underlie the choice of language variants, or codes, and allow for switching from one code to another. Some linguists are studying language performance—the way people use language—to see how it reveals a cognitive ability shared by all human beings. Others seek to understand animal communication within such a framework. What mental processes enable chimpanzees to make signs and communicate with one another and how do these processes differ from those of humans?
A written bibliographic note in gratification to Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), an Austrian-British philosopher, who was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, particularly noted for his contribution to the movement known as analytic and linguistic philosophy.
Born in Vienna on April 26, 1889, Wittgenstein was raised in a wealthy and cultured family. After attending schools in Linz and Berlin, he went to England to study engineering at the University of Manchester. His interest in pure mathematics led him to Trinity College, University of Cambridge, to study with Bertrand Russell. There he turned his attention to philosophy. By 1918 Wittgenstein had completed his Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1921; trans. 1922), a work he then believed provided the ‘final solution’ to philosophical problems. Subsequently, he turned from philosophy and for several years taught elementary school in an Austrian village. In 1929 he returned to Cambridge to resume his work in philosophy and was appointed to the faculty of Trinity College. Soon he began to reject certain conclusions of the Tractatus and to develop the position reflected in his Philosophical Investigations (pub. posthumously 1953; trans. 1953). Wittgenstein retired in 1947; he died in Cambridge on April 29, 1951. A sensitive, intense man who often sought solitude and was frequently depressed, Wittgenstein abhorred pretense and was noted for his simple style of life and dress. The philosopher was forceful and confident in personality, however, and he exerted considerable influence on those with whom he came in contact.
Wittgenstein’s philosophical life may be divided into two distinct phases: an early period, represented by the Tractatus, and a later period, represented by the Philosophical Investigations. Throughout most of his life, however, Wittgenstein consistently viewed philosophy as linguistic or conceptual analysis. In the Tractatus he argued that ‘philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts.’ In the Philosophical Investigations, however, he maintained that ‘philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.’
Language, Wittgenstein argued in the Tractatus, is composed of complex propositions that can be analysed into less complex propositions until one arrives at simple or elementary propositions. Correspondingly, the world is composed of complex facts that can be analysed into less complex facts until one arrives at simple, or atomic, facts. The world is the totality of these facts. According to Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning, it is the nature of elementary propositions logically to picture atomic facts, or ‘states of affairs.’ He claimed that the nature of language required elementary propositions, and his theory of meaning required that there be atomic facts pictured by the elementary propositions. On this analysis, only propositions that picture facts—the propositions of science—are considered cognitively meaningfully. Metaphysical and ethical statements are not meaningful assertions. The logical positivists associated with the Vienna Circle were greatly influenced by this conclusion (see Positivism).
Wittgenstein came to believe, however, that the narrow view of language reflected in the Tractatus was mistaken. In the Philosophical Investigations he argued that if one actually looks to see how language is used, the variety of linguistic usage becomes clear. Words are like tools, and just as tools serve different functions, so linguistic expressions serve many functions. Although some propositions are used to picture facts, others are used to command, question, pray, thank, curse, and so on. This recognition of linguistic flexibility and variety led to Wittgenstein’s concept of a language game and to the conclusion that people play different language games. The scientist, for example, is involved in a different language game than the theologian. Moreover, the meaning of a proposition must be understood in terms of its context, that is, in terms of the rules of the game of which that proposition is a part. The key to the resolution of philosophical puzzles is the therapeutic process of examining and describing language in use.
Analytic and Linguistic Philosophy, is a product out of the 20th-century philosophical movement, and dominant in Britain and the United States since World War II, that aims to clarify language and analyse the concepts expressed in it. The movement has been given a variety of designations, including linguistic analysis, logical empiricism, logical positivism, Cambridge analysis, and ‘Oxford philosophy’. The last two labels are derived from the universities in England where this philosophical method has been particularly influential. Although no specific doctrines or tenets are accepted by the movement as a whole, analytic and linguistic philosophers agree that the proper activity of philosophy is clarifying language, or, as some prefer, clarifying concepts. The aim of this activity is to settle philosophical disputes and resolve philosophical problems, which, it is argued, originate in linguistic confusion.
A considerable diversity of views exists among analytic and linguistic philosophers regarding the nature of conceptual or linguistic analysis. Some have been primarily concerned with clarifying the meaning of specific words or phrases as an essential step in making philosophical assertions clear and unambiguous. Others have been more concerned with determining the general conditions that must be met for any linguistic utterance to be meaningful; their intent is to establish a criterion that will distinguish between meaningful and nonsensical sentences. Still other analysts have been interested in creating formal, symbolic languages that are mathematical in nature. Their claim is that philosophical problems can be more effectively dealt with once they are formulated in a rigorous logical language.
By contrast, many philosophers associated with the movement have focussed on the analysis of ordinary, or natural, language. Difficulties arise when concepts such as time and freedom, for example, are considered apart from the linguistic context in which they normally appear. Attention to language as it is ordinarily put-upon for the considered liking, it is argued, to resolving many philosophical puzzles.
Linguistic analysis as a method of philosophy is as old as the Greeks. Several of the dialogues of Plato, for example, are specifically concerned with clarifying terms and concepts. Nevertheless, this style of philosophizing has received dramatically renewed emphasis in the 20th century. Influenced by the earlier British empirical tradition of John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill and by the writings of the German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frigg, the 20th-century English philosopher’s G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell became the founders of this contemporary analytic and linguistic trend. As students together at the University of Cambridge, Moore and Russell rejected Hegelian idealism, particularly as it was reflected in the work of the English metaphysician F. H. Bradley, who held that nothing is completely real except the Absolute. In their opposition to idealism and in their commitment to the view that careful attention to language is crucial in philosophical inquiry. They set the mood and style of philosophizing for much of the 20th century English-speaking world.
For Moore, philosophy was first and foremost analysis. The philosophical task involves clarifying puzzling propositions or concepts by indicating less puzzling propositions or concepts to which the originals are held to be logically equivalent. Once this task has been completed, the truth or falsity of problematic philosophical assertions can be determined more adequately. Moore was noted for his careful analyses of such puzzling philosophical claims as ‘time is unreal,’ analyses that then aided in determining the truth of such assertions.
Russell, strongly influenced by the precision of mathematics, was concerned with developing an ideal logical language that would accurately reflect the nature of the world. Complex propositions, Russell maintained, can be resolved into their simplest components, which he called atomic propositions. These propositions refer to atomic facts, the ultimate constituents of the universe. The metaphysical view based on this logical analysis of language and the insistence that meaningful propositions must correspond to facts constitute what Russell called logical atomism. His interest in the structure of language also led him to distinguish between the grammatical form of a proposition and its logical form. The statements ‘John is good’ and ‘John is tall’ have the same grammatical form but different logical forms. Failure to recognize this would lead one to treat the property ‘goodness’ as if it were a characteristic of John in the same way that the property ‘tallness’ is a characteristic of John. Such failure results in philosophical confusion.
Russell’s work in mathematics attracted to Cambridge the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became a central figure in the analytic and linguistic movement. In his first major work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921; trans. 1922), in which he first presented his theory of language, Wittgenstein argued that ‘all philosophy is a ‘critique of language’ and that ‘philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts’. The results of Wittgenstein’s analysis resembled Russell’s logical atomism. The world, he argued, is ultimately composed of simple facts, which it is the purpose of language to picture. To be meaningful, statements about the world must be reducible to linguistic utterances that have a structure similar to the simple facts pictured. In this early Wittgensteinian analysis, only propositions that picture facts - the propositions of science - are considered factually meaningful. Metaphysical, theological, and ethical sentences were judged to be factually meaningless.
Influenced by Russell, Wittgenstein, Ernst Mach, and others, a group of philosophers and mathematicians in Vienna in the 1920s initiated the movement known as logical positivism. Led by Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, the Vienna Circle initiated one of the most important chapters in the history of analytic and linguistic philosophy. According to the positivists, the task of philosophy is the clarification of meaning, not the discovery of new facts (the job of the scientists) or the construction of comprehensive accounts of reality (the misguided pursuit of traditional metaphysics).
The positivists divided all meaningful assertions into two classes: analytic propositions and empirically verifiable ones. Analytic propositions, which include the propositions of logic and mathematics, are statements the truth or falsity of which depend altogether on the meanings of the terms constituting the statement. An example would be the proposition ‘two plus two equals four.’ The second class of meaningful propositions includes all statements about the world that can be verified, at least in principle, by sense experience. Indeed, the meaning of such propositions is identified with the empirical method of their verification. This verifiability theory of meaning, the positivists concluded, would demonstrate that scientific statements are legitimate factual claims and that metaphysical, religious, and ethical sentences are factually empty. The ideas of logical positivism were made popular in England by the publication of
A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic in 1936.
The positivists’ verifiability theory of meaning came under intense criticism by philosophers such as the Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper. Eventually this narrow theory of meaning yielded to a broader understanding of the nature of language. Again, an influential figure was Wittgenstein. Repudiating many of his earlier conclusions in the Tractatus, he initiated a new line of thought culminating in his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953; trans. 1953). In this work, Wittgenstein argued that once attention is directed to the way language is actually used in ordinary discourse, the variety and flexibility of language become clear. Propositions do much more than simply picture facts.
This recognition led to Wittgenstein’s influential concept of language games. The scientist, the poet, and the theologian, for example, are involved in different language games. Moreover, the meaning of a proposition must be understood in its context, that is, in terms of the rules of the language game of which that proposition is a part. Philosophy, concluded Wittgenstein, is an attempt to resolve problems that arise as the result of linguistic confusion, and the key to the resolution of such problems is ordinary language analysis and the proper use of language.
John Austin (1790-1859) of his work, The Province of Jurisprudence, maintained that one of the most fruitful starting points for philosophical inquiry is attention to the extremely fine distinctions drawn in ordinary language. His analysis of language eventually led to a general theory of speech acts, that is, to a description of the variety of activities that an individual may be performing when something is uttered.
Strawson is known for his analysis of the relationship between formal logic and ordinary language. The complexity of the latter, he argued, is inadequately represented by formal logic. A variety of analytic tools, therefore, is needed in addition to logic in analyzing ordinary language.
Quine discussed the relationship between language and ontology. He argued that language systems tend to commit their users to the existence of certain things. For Quine, the justification for speaking one way rather than another is a thoroughly pragmatic one.
The commitment to language analysis as a way of pursuing philosophy has continued as a significant contemporary dimension in philosophy. A division also continues to exist between those who prefer to work with the precision and rigour of symbolic logical systems and those who prefer to analyse ordinary language. Although few contemporary philosophers maintain that all philosophical problems are linguistic, the view continues to be widely held that attention to the logical structure of language and to how language is used in everyday discourse can often aid in resolving philosophical problems
Is term of logical calculus is also called a formal language, and a logical system? A system in which explicit rules are provided to determining (1) which are the expressions of the system (2) which sequence of expressions count as well formed (well-forced formulae) (3) which sequence would count ss proofs. A system may include axioms for which leaves terminate a proof, however, it shows of the prepositional calculus and the predicated calculus.
Its most immediate of issues surrounding certainty are especially connected with those concerning ‘scepticism’. Although Greek scepticism entered on the value of enquiry and questioning, scepticism is now the denial that knowledge or even rational belief is possible, either about some specific subject-matter, e.g., ethics, or in any area whatsoever. Classical scepticism, springs from the observation that the best methods in some area seems to fall short of giving us contact with the truth, e.g., there is a gulf between appearances and reality, it frequently cites the conflicting judgements that our methods deliver, with the result that questions of truth become undefinable. In classic thought the various examples of this conflict were systemized in the tropes of Aenesidemus. So that, the scepticism of Pyrrho and the new Academy was a system of argument and inasmuch as opposing dogmatism, and, particularly the philosophical system building of the Stoics.
As it has come down to us, particularly in the writings of Sextus Empiricus, its method was typically to cite reasons for finding our issue undesirable (sceptics devoted particular energy to undermining the Stoics conception of some truths as delivered by direct apprehension or some katalepsis). As a result the sceptics concludes eposhé, or the suspension of belief, and then go on to celebrate a way of life whose object was ataraxia, or the tranquillity resulting from suspension of belief.
Fixed by its will for and of itself, the mere mitigated scepticism which accepts everyday or commonsense belief, is that, not the delivery of reason, but as due more to custom and habit. Nonetheless, it is self-satisfied at the proper time, however, the power of reason to give us much more. Mitigated scepticism is thus closer to the attitude fostered by the accentuations from Pyrrho through to Sextus Expiricus. Despite the fact that the phrase ‘Cartesian scepticism’ is sometimes used. Descartes himself was not a sceptic, however, in the ‘method of doubt’ uses a sceptical scenario in order to begin the process of finding a general distinction to mark its point of knowledge. Descartes trusts in categories of ‘clear and distinct’ ideas, not far removed from the phantasiá kataleptikê of the Stoics.
For many sceptics had traditionally held that knowledge requires certainty, artistry. And, of course, they claim that certain knowledge is not possible. In part, nonetheless, of the principle that every effect it’s a consequence of an antecedent cause or causes. For causality to be true it is not necessary for an effect to be predictable as the antecedent causes may be numerous, too complicated, or too interrelated for analysis. Nevertheless, in order to avoid scepticism, this participating sceptic has generally held that knowledge does not require certainty. Except for alleged cases of things that are evident for one just by being true. It has often been thought, that any thing known must satisfy certain criteria as well for being true. It is often taught that anything is known must satisfy certain standards. In so saying, that by ‘deduction’ or ‘induction’, there will be criteria specifying when it is. As these alleged cases of self-evident truths, the general principle specifying the sort of consideration that will make such standards in the apparent or justly conclude in accepting it warranted to some degree.
Besides, there is another view - the absolute globular view that we do not have any knowledge whatsoever. In whatever manner,
It is doubtful that any philosopher seriously entertains of an absolute scepticism. Even the Pyrrhonist sceptics, who held that we should refrain from accenting to any non-evident standards that no such hesitancy about asserting to ‘the evident’, the non-evident is any belief that requires evidences because it is warranted.
René Descartes (1596-1650), in his sceptical guise, never doubted the content of his own ideas. Its challenging logic, inasmuch as of whether they ‘corresponded’ to anything beyond ideas.
All the same, Pyrrhonism and Cartesian form of a virtual globular scepticism, in having been held and defended, that of assuming that knowledge is some form of true, sufficiently warranted belief, it is the warranted condition that provides the truth or belief conditions, in that of providing the grist for the sceptic’s mill about. The Pyrrhonist will suggest that no non-evident, empirically deferring the sufficiency of giving in but warranted. Whereas, a Cartesian sceptic will agree that no empirical standard about anything other than one’s own mind and its contents is sufficiently warranted, because there are always legitimate grounds for doubting it. In which, the essential difference between the two views concerns the stringency of the requirements for a belief being sufficiently warranted to take account of as knowledge.
A Cartesian requires certainty. A Pyrrhonist merely requires that the standards in case are more warranted then its negation.
Cartesian scepticism was by an unduly influence with which Descartes agues for scepticism, than his reply holds, in that we do not have any knowledge of any empirical standards, in that of anything beyond the contents of our own minds. The reason is roughly in the position that there is a legitimate doubt about all such standards, only because there is no way to justifiably deny that our senses are being stimulated by some sense, for which it is radically different from the objects which we normally think, in whatever manner they affect our senses. Therefrom, if the Pyrrhonist are the agnostics, the Cartesian sceptic is the atheist.
Because the Pyrrhonist require much less of a belief in order for it to be confirmed as knowledge than do the Cartesian, the argument for Pyrrhonism are much more difficult to construct. A Pyrrhonist must show that there is no better set of reasons for believing to any standards, of which are in case that any knowledge learnt of the mind is understood by some of its forms, that has to require certainty.
The underlying latencies that are given among the many derivative contributions as awaiting their presence to the future that of specifying to the theory of knowledge, is, but, nonetheless, the possibility to identify a set of shared doctrines, however, identity to discern two broad styles of instances to discern, in like manner, these two styles of pragmatism, clarify the innovation that a Cartesian approval is fundamentally flawed, nonetheless, of responding very differently but not fordone.
Repudiating the requirements of absolute certainty or knowledge, insisting on the connection of knowledge with activity, as, too, of pragmatism of a reformist distributing knowledge upon the legitimacy of traditional questions about the truth-conditions of our cognitive practices, and sustain a conception of truth objectives, enough to give those questions that undergo of a gathering in their own purposive latentency.
Pragmatism of a determinant revolution, by contrast, relinquishing the objectivity of youth, acknowledges no legitimate epistemological questions over and above those that are naturally kindred of our current cognitive conviction.
It seems clear that certainty is a property that can be assembled to either a person or a belief. We can say that a person, ‘S’ is certain, or we can say that its descendable alinement are aligned as of ‘p’, is certain. The two uses can be connected by saying that ‘S’ has the right to be certain just in case the value of ‘p’ is sufficiently verified.
In defining certainty, it is crucial to note that the term has both an absolute and relative sense. More or less, we take a proposition to be certain when we have no doubt about its truth. We may do this in error or unreasonably, but objectively a proposition is certain when such absence of doubt is justifiable. The sceptical tradition in philosophy denies that objective certainty is often possible, or ever possible, either for any proposition at all, or for any proposition from some suspect family (ethics, theory, memory, empirical judgement etc.) a major sceptical weapon is the possibility of upsetting events that Can cast doubt back onto what were hitherto taken to be certainties. Others include reminders of the divergence of human opinion, and the fallible source of our confidence. Fundamentalist approaches to knowledge look for a basis of certainty, upon which the structure of our system is built. Others reject the metaphor, looking for mutual support and coherence, without foundation.
However, in moral theory, the view that there are inviolable moral standards or absolute variable human desires or policies or prescriptions.
In spite of the notorious difficulty of reading Kantian ethics, a hypothetical imperative embeds a command which is in place only given some antecedent desire or project: ‘If you want to look wise, stay quiet’. The injunction to stay quiet only applies to those with the antecedent desire or inclination. If one has no desire to look wise the injunction cannot be so avoided: It is a requirement that binds anybody, regardless of their inclination. It could be represented as, for example, ‘tell the truth (regardless of whether you want to or not)’. The distinction is not always signalled by presence or absence of the conditional or hypothetical form: ‘If you crave drink, don’t become a bartender’ may be regarded as an absolute injunction applying to anyone, although only activated in case of those with the stated desire.
In Grundlegung zur Metaphsik der Sitten (1785), Kant discussed five forms of the categorical imperative: (1) the formula of universal law: ‘act only on that maxim through which you can at the same times will that it should become universal law: (2) the formula of the law of nature: ‘act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature’: (3) the formula of the end-in-itself: ‘act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end’: (4) the formula of autonomy, or considering ‘the will of every rational being as a will which makes universal law’: (5) the formula of the Kingdom of Ends, which provides a model for the systematic union of different rational beings under common laws.
Even so, a proposition that is not a conditional ‘p’. Moreover, the affirmative and negative, modern opinion is wary of this distinction, since what appears categorical may vary notation. Apparently, categorical propositions may also turn out to be disguised conditionals: ‘X’ is intelligent (categorical?) = if ‘X’ is given a range of tasks she performs them better than many people (conditional?) The problem. Nonetheless, is not merely one of classification, since deep metaphysical questions arise when facts that seem to be categorical and therefore solid, come to seem by contrast conditional, or purely hypothetical or potential.
A limited area of knowledge or endeavour to which pursuits, activities and interests are a central representation held to a concept of physical theory. In this way, a field is defined by the distribution of a physical quantity, such as temperature, mass density, or potential energy y, at different points in space. In the particularly important example of force fields, such ad gravitational, electrical, and magnetic fields, the field value at a point is the force which a test particle would experience if it were located at that point. The philosophical problem is whether a force field is to be thought of as purely potential, so the presence of a field merely describes the propensity of masses to move relative to each other, or whether it should be thought of in terms of the physically real modifications of a medium, whose properties result in such powers that is, are force fields purely potential, fully characterized by dispositional statements or conditionals, or are they categorical or actual? The former option seems to require within ungrounded dispositions, or regions of space hat differ only in what happens if an object is placed there. The law-like shape of these dispositions, apparent for example in the curved lines of force of the magnetic field, may then seem quite inexplicable. To atomists, such as Newton it would represent a return to Aristotelian entelechies, or quasi-psychological affinities between things, which are responsible for their motions. The latter option requires understanding of how forces of attraction and repulsion can be ‘grounded’ in the properties of the medium.
The basic idea of a field is arguably present in Leibniz, who was certainly hostile to Newtonian atomism. Despite the fact that his equally hostility to ‘action at a distance’ muddies the water. It is usually credited to the Jesuit mathematician and scientist Joseph Boscovich (1711-87) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), both of whom influenced the scientist Faraday, with whose work the physical notion became established. In his paper ‘On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force’ (1852). Faraday was to suggest several criteria for assessing the physical reality of lines of force, such as whether they are affected by an intervening material medium, whether the motion depends on the nature of what is placed at the receiving end. As far as electromagnetic fields go, Faraday himself inclined to the view that the mathematical similarity between heat flow, currents, and electromagnetic lines of force was evidence for the physical reality of the intervening medium.
Once, again, our mentioning recognition for which its case value, whereby its view is especially associated the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910), that the truth of a statement can be defined in terms of a ‘utility’ of accepting it. Communicated, so much as a dispiriting position for which its place of valuation may be viewed as an objection. Since there are things that are false, as it may be useful to accept, and conversely there are things that are true and that it may be damaging to accept. Nevertheless, there are deep connections between the idea that a representation system is accorded, and the likely success of the projects in progressive formality, by its possession. The evolution of a system of representation either perceptual or linguistic, seems bounded to connect successes with everything adapting or with utility in the modest sense. The Wittgenstein doctrine stipulates the meaning of use that upon the nature of belief and its relations with human attitude, emotion and the idea that belief in the truth on one hand, the action of the other. One way of binding with cement, wherefore the connection is found in the idea that natural selection becomes much as much in adapting us to the cognitive creatures, because beliefs have effects, they work. Pragmatism can be found in Kant’s doctrine, and continued to play an influencing role in the theory of meaning and truth.
James, (1842-1910), although with characteristic generosity exaggerated in his debt to Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), he charted that the method of doubt encouraged people to pretend to doubt what they did not doubt in their hearts, and criticize its individualist’s insistence, that the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individuals personalized consciousness.
From his earliest writings, James understood cognitive processes in teleological terms. Thought, he held, assists us in the satisfactory interests. His will to Believe doctrine, the view that we are sometimes justified in believing beyond the evidential relics upon the notion that a belief’s benefits are relevant to its justification. His pragmatic method of analysing philosophical problems, for which requires that we find the meaning of terms by examining their application to objects in experimental situations, similarly reflects the teleological approach in its attention to consequences.
Such an approach, however, set’s James’ theory of meaning apart from verification, dismissive of metaphysics. Unlike the verificationalist, who takes cognitive meaning to be a matter only of consequences in sensory experience. James’ took pragmatic meaning to include emotional and matter responses. Moreover, his ,metaphysical standard of value, not a way of dismissing them as meaningless. It should also be noted that in a greater extent, circumspective moment’s James did not hold that even his broad set of consequences were exhaustive of a terms meaning. ‘Theism’, for example, he took to have antecedent, definitional meaning, in addition to its varying degree of importance and chance upon an important pragmatic meaning.
James’ theory of truth reflects upon his teleological conception of cognition, by considering a true belief to be one which is compatible with our existing system of beliefs, and leads us to satisfactory interaction with the world.
However, Peirce’s famous pragmatist principle is a rule of logic employed in clarifying our concepts and ideas. Consider the claim the liquid in a flask is an acid, if, we believe this, we except that it would turn red: We except an action of ours to have certain experimental results. The pragmatic principle holds that listing the conditional expectations of this kind, in that we associate such immediacy with applications of a conceptual representation that provides a complete and orderly sets clarification of the concept. This is relevant ti the logic of abduction: Clarificationists using the pragmatic principle provides all the information about the content of a hypothesis that is relevantly to decide whether it is worth testing.
To a greater extent, and most important, is the famed apprehension of the pragmatic principle, in so that, Pierces’s account of reality: When we take something to be rea that by this single case, we think it is ‘fated to be agreed upon by all who investigate’ the matter to which it stand, in other words, if I believe that it is really the case that ‘P’, then I except that if anyone were to inquire into the finding its measure into whether ‘p’, they would arrive at the belief that ‘p’. It is not part of the theory that the experimental consequences of our actions should be specified by a warranted empiricist vocabulary - Peirce insisted that perceptual theories are abounding in latency. Even so, nor is it his view that the collected conditionals do or not clarify a concept as all analytic. In addition, in later writings, he argues that the pragmatic principle could only be made plausible to someone who accepted its metaphysical realism: It requires that ‘would-bees’ are objective and, of course, real.
If realism itself can be given a fairly quick clarification, it is more difficult to chart the various forms of supposition, for they seem legendary. Other opponents deny that the entitles posited by the relevant discourse that exist or at least exists: The standard example is ‘idealism’ that reality is somehow mind-curative or mind-co-ordinated - that real object comprising the ‘external world’ are not independently of eloping minds, but only exist as in some way correlative to the mental operations. The doctrine assembled of ‘idealism’ enters on the conceptual note that reality as we understand this as meaningful and reflects the working of mindful purposes. And it construes this as meaning that the inquiring mind itself makes of a formative constellations and not of any mere understanding of the nature of the ‘real’ bit even the resulting charger we attribute to it.
Wherefore, the term ids most straightforwardly used when qualifying another linguistic form of grammatik: a real ‘x’ may be contrasted with a fake, a failed ‘x’, a near ‘x’, and so on. To trat something as real, without qualification, is to suppose it to be part of the actualized world. To reify something is to suppose that we have committed by some indoctrinated treatise, as that of a theory. The central error in thinking of reality and the totality of existence is to think of the ‘unreal’ as a separate domain of things, perhaps, unfairly to that of the benefits of existence.
Such that non-existence of all things, as the product of logical confusion of treating the term ‘nothing’ as itself a referring expression instead of a ‘quantifier’. (Stating informally as a quantifier is an expression that reports of a quantity of times that a predicate is satisfied in some class of things, i.e., in a domain.) This confusion leads the unsuspecting to think that a sentence such as ‘Nothing is all around us’ talks of a special kind of thing that is all around us, when in fact it merely denies that the predicate ‘is all around us’ has appreciations. The feelings that lad some philosophers and theologians, notably Heidegger, to talk of the experience of Nothing, is not properly the experience of nothing, but rather the failure of a hope or expectations that there would be something of some kind at some point. This may arise in quite everyday cases, as when one finds that the article of functions one expected to see as usual, in the corner has disappeared. The difference between ‘existentialist’’ and ‘analytic philosophy’, on the point of what, whereas the former is afraid of nothing, and the latter thinks that there is nothing to be afraid of.
A rather different set of concerns arise when actions are specified in terms of doing nothing, saying nothing may be an admission of guilt, and doing nothing in some circumstances may be tantamount to murder. Still, other substitutional problems arise over conceptualizing empty space and time.
Whereas, the standard opposition between those who affirm and those who deny, the real existence of some kind of thing or some kind of fact or state of affairs. Almost any area of discourse may be the focus of its dispute: The external world, the past and future, other minds, mathematical objects, possibilities, universals, moral or aesthetic properties are examples. There be to one influential suggestion, as associated with the British philosopher of logic and language, and the most determinative of philosophers centred round Anthony Dummett (1925), to which is borrowed from the ‘intuitivistic’ critique of classical mathematics, and suggested that the unrestricted use of the ‘principle of bivalence’ is the trademark of ‘realism’. However, this ha to overcome counter-examples both ways: Although Aquinas wads a moral ‘realist’, he held that moral really was not sufficiently structured to make true or false every moral claim. Unlike Kant who believed that he could use the law of bivalence happily in mathematics, precisely because it wad only our own construction. Realism can itself be subdivided: Kant, for example, combines empirical realism (within the phenomenal world the realist says the right things - surrounding objects really exist and independent of us and our mental stares) with transcendental idealism (the phenomenal world as a whole reflects the structures imposed on it by the activity of our minds as they render it intelligible to us). In modern philosophy the orthodox oppositions to realism has been from philosopher such as Goodman, who, impressed by the extent to which we perceive the world through conceptual and linguistic lenses of our own making.
Assigned to the modern treatment of existence in the theory of ‘quantification’ is sometimes put by saying that existence is not a predicate. The idea is that the existential quantifies itself as an operator on a predicate, indicating that the property it expresses has instances. Existence is therefore treated as a second-order property, or a property of properties. It is fitting to say, that in this it is like number, for when we say that these things of a kind, we do not describe the thing (ad we would if we said there are red things of the kind), but instead attribute a property to the kind itself. The parallelled numbers are exploited by the German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics Gottlob Frége in the dictum that affirmation of existence is merely denied of the number nought. A problem, nevertheless, proves accountable for its crated by sentences like ‘This exists’, where some particular thing is undirected, such that a sentence seems to express a contingent truth (for this insight has not existed), yet no other predicate is involved. ‘This exists’ is. Therefore, unlike ‘Tamed tigers exist’, where a property is said to have an instance, for the word ‘this’ and does not locate a property, but only an individual.
In the transition, ever through all or an indefinite time, but in each and ever case since Plato, who’s sweat and tears becomes a self-sufficient, perfect, unchanging, and external something, identified with the Good or God, but whose relation with the everyday world remains obscure. The celebrated argument for the existence of God first propounded by Anselm in his Proslogin. The argument by defining God as ‘something than which nothing greater can be conceived’. God then exists in the understanding since we understand this concept. However, if He only existed in the understanding something greater could be conceived, for a being that exists in reality is greater than one that exists in the understanding. Bu then, we can conceive of something greater than that than which nothing greater can be conceived, which is contradictory. Therefore, God cannot exist on the understanding, but exists in reality.
An influential argument (or family of arguments) for the existence of God, finding its premisses are that all natural things are dependent for their existence on something else. The totality of dependent brings must then itself depend upon a non-dependent, or necessarily existent bring of which is God. Like the argument to design, the cosmological argument was attacked by the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711-76) and Immanuel Kant.
Its main problem, nonetheless, is that it requires us to make sense of the notion of necessary existence. For if the answer to the question of why anything exists is that some other tings of a similar kind exists, the question merely arises gain. So the ‘God’ that ends the question must exist necessarily: It must not be an entity of which the same kinds of questions can be raised. The other problem with the argument is attributing concern and care to the deity, not for connecting the necessarily existent being it derives with human values and aspirations.
The ontological argument has been treated by modern theologians such as Barth, following Hegel, not so much as a proof with which to confront the unconverted, but as an explanation of the deep meaning of religious belief. Collingwood, regards the argument s proving not that because our idea of God is that of id quo maius cogitare viequit, therefore God exists, but proving that because this is our idea of God, we stand committed to belief in its existence. Its existence is a metaphysical point or absolute pre-supposition of certain forms of thought.
In the 20th century, modal versions of the ontological argument have been propounded by the American philosophers Charles Hertshorne, Norman Malcolm, and Alvin Plantinga. One version is to define something as unsurpassably great, if it exists and is perfect in every ‘possible world’. Then, to allow that it is at least possible that an unsurpassable great being existing. This means that there is a possible world in which such a being exists. However, if it exists in one world, it exists in all (for the fact that such a being exists in a world that entails, in at least, it exists and is perfect in every world), so, it exists necessarily. The correct response to this argument is to disallow the apparently reasonable concession that it is possible that such a being exists. This concession is much more dangerous than it looks, since in the modal logic, involved from possibly necessarily ‘p’, we can device necessarily ‘p’. A symmetrical proof starting from the assumption that it is possible that such a being not exist would derive that it is impossible that it exists.
The doctrine that it makes an ethical difference of whether an agent actively intervenes to bring about a result, or omits to act in circumstances in which it is foreseen, that as a result of the omission the same result occurs. Thus, suppose that I wish you dead. If I act to bring about your death, I am a murderer, however, if I happily discover you in danger of death, and fail to act to save you, I am not acting, and therefore, according to the doctrine of acts and omissions not a murderer. Critics implore that omissions can be as deliberate and immoral as I am responsible for your food and fact to feed you. Only omission is surely a killing, ‘Doing nothing’ can be a way of doing something, or in other worlds, absence of bodily movement can also constitute acting negligently, or deliberately, and defending on the context ,may be a way of deceiving, betraying, or killing. Nonetheless, criminal law offers to find its conveniences, from which to distinguish discontinuous intervention, for which is permissible, from bringing about result, which may not be, if, for instance, the result is death of a patient. The question is whether the difference, if there is one, is, between acting and omitting to act be discernibly or defined in a way that bars a general moral might.
The double effect of a principle attempting to define when an action that had both good and bad results is morally permissible. I one formation such an action is permissible if (1) The action is not wrong in itself, (2) the bad consequences is not that which is intended (3) the good is not itself a result of the bad consequences, and (4) the two consequential affects are commensurate. Thus, for instance, I might justifiably bomb an enemy factory, foreseeing but intending that the death of nearby civilians, whereas bombing the death of nearby civilians intentionally would be disallowed. The principle has its roots in Thomist moral philosophy, accordingly. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), held that it is meaningless to ask whether a human being is two tings (soul and body) or, only just as it is meaningless to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one: On this analogy the sound is ye form of the body. Life after death is possible only because a form itself doe not perish (pricking is a loss of form).
And is, therefore, in some sense available to reactivate a new body. , therefore, not I who survives body death, but I ma y be resurrected in the same personalized bod y that becomes reanimated by the same form, that which Aquinas’s account, as a person has no privileged self-understanding, we understand ourselves as we do everything else, by way of sense experience and abstraction, and knowing the principle of our own lives is an achievement, not as a given. Difficult at this point led the logical positivist to abandon the notion of an epistemological foundation altogether, and to flirt with the coherence theory of truth, it is widely accepted that trying to make the connection between thought and experience through basic sentence s depends on an untenable ‘myth of the given
The special way that we each have of knowing our own thoughts, intentions, and sensationalist have brought in the many philosophical ‘behaviorist and functionalist tendencies, that have found it important to deny that there is such a special way , arguing the way that I know of my own mind inasmuch as the way that I know of yours, e.g., by seeing what I say when asked. Others, however, point out that the behaviour of reporting the result of introspection in a particular and legitimate kind of behavioural access that deserves notice in any account of historically human psychology. The historical philosophy of reflection upon the astute of history, or of historical, thinking, finds the term was used in the 18th century, e.g., by Volante was to mean critical historical thinking as opposed to the mere collection and repetition of stories about the past. In Hegelian, particularly by conflicting elements within his own system, however, it came to man universal or world history. The Enlightenment confidence was being replaced by science, reason, and understanding that gave history a progressive moral thread, and under the influence of the German philosopher, whom is in spreading Romanticism, came Gottfried Herder (1744-1803),and, Immanuel Kant, this idea took it further to hold, so that philosophy of history cannot be the detecting of a grand system, the unfolding of the evolution of human nature as witnessed in successive sages (the progress of rationality or of Spirit). This essential speculative philosophy of history is given a extra Kantian twist in the German idealist Johann Fichte, in whom the extra association of temporal succession with logical implication introduces the idea that concepts themselves are the dynamic engine of historical change. The idea is readily intelligible in that there world of nature and of thought become identified. The work of Herder, Kant, Flichte and Schelling is synthesized by Hegel: History has a plot, as too, this to the moral development of man, equates with freedom within the state, this in turn is the development of thought, or a logical development in which various necessary moment in the life of the concept are successively achieved and improved upon. Hegel’s method is at its most successful, when the object is the history of ideas, and the evolution of thinking may march in steps with logical oppositions and their resolution encounters red by various systems of thought.
Within the revolutionary communism, Karl Marx (1818-83) and the German social philosopher Friedrich Engels (1820-95), there emerges a rather different kind of story, based upon Hefl’s progressive structure not laying the achievement of the goal of history to a future in which the political condition for freedom comes to exist, so that economic and political fears than ‘reason’ is in the engine room. Although, itself is such that speculations upon the history may that it be continued to be written, notably: late examples, by the late 19th century large-scale speculation of tis kind with the nature of historical understanding, and in particular with a comparison between the ,methos of natural science and with the historians. For writers such as the German neo-Kantian Wilhelm Windelband and the German philosopher and literary critic and historian Wilhelm Dilthey, it is important to show that the human sciences such. as history are objective and legitimate, nonetheless they are in some way deferent from the enquiry of the scientist. Since the subjective-matter is the past thought and actions of human brings, what is needed and actions of human beings, past thought and actions of human beings, what is needed is an ability to re-live that past thought, knowing the deliberations of past agents, as if they were the historian’s own. The most influential British writer on this theme was the philosopher and historian George Collingwood (1889-1943) whose, The Idea of History (1946), contains an extensive defence of the Verstehe approach, but it is nonetheless, the explanation from there actions, however, by re-living the situation as our understanding that understanding others is not gained by the tactic use of a ‘theory’, enabling us to infer what thoughts or intentionality experienced, again, the matter to which the subjective-matters of past thoughts and actions , as I have a human ability of knowing the deliberations of past agents as if they were the historian’s own. The immediate question of the form of historical explanation, and the fact that general laws have other than no place or any apprentices in the order of a minor place in the human sciences, it is also prominent in thoughts about distinctiveness as to regain their actions, but by re-living the situation
in or thereby an understanding of what they experience and thought.
The view that everyday attributions of intention, belief and meaning to other persons proceeded via tacit use of a theory that enables ne to construct these interpretations as explanations of their doings. The view is commonly hld along with functionalism, according to which psychological states theoretical entities, identified by the network of their causes and effects. The theory-theory had different implications, depending on which feature of theories is being stressed. Theories may be though of as capable of formalization, as yielding predications and explanations, as achieved by a process of theorizing, as achieved by predictions and explanations, as achieved by a process of theorizing, as answering to empirical evince that is in principle describable without them, as liable to be overturned by newer and better theories, and o on. The main problem with seeing our understanding of others as the outcome of a piece of theorizing is the non-existence of a medium in which this theory can be couched, as the child learns simultaneously he minds of others and the meaning of terms in its native language.
Our understanding of others is not gained by the tacit use of a ‘theory’. Enabling us to infer what thoughts or intentions explain their actions, however, by re-living the situation ‘in their moccasins’, or from their point of view, and thereby understanding what hey experienced and thought, and therefore expressed. Understanding others is achieved when we can ourselves deliberate as they did, and hear their words as if they are our own. The suggestion is a modern development of the ‘Verstehen’ tradition associated with Dilthey, Weber and Collngwood.
Much as much, it is therefore, in some sense available to reactivate a new body, however, not that I, who survives bodily death, but I may be resurrected in the same body that becomes reanimated by the same form, in that of Aquinas’s account, a person has no privileged self-understanding. We understand ourselves, just as we do everything else, that through the sense experience, in that of an abstraction, may justly be of knowing the principle of our own lives, is to obtainably achieve, and not as a given. In the theory of knowledge that knowing Aquinas holds the Aristotelian doctrine that knowing entails some similarities between the knower and what there is to be known: A human’s corporal nature, therefore, requires that knowledge start with sense perception. As yet, the same limitations that do not apply of bringing further he levelling stabilities that are contained within the hierarchical mosaic, such as the celestial heavens that open in bringing forth to angles.
In the domain of theology Aquinas deploys the distraction emphasized by Eringena, between the existence of God in understanding the significance; of five arguments: The are (1) Motion is only explicable if there exists an unmoved, a first mover (2) the chain of efficient causes demands a first cause (3) the contingent character of existing things in the wold demands a different order of existence, or in other words as something that has a necessary existence (4) the gradation of value in things in the world require the existence of something that is most valuable, or perfect, and (5) the orderly character of events points to a final cause, or end t which all things are directed, and the existence of this end demands a being that ordained it. All the arguments are physico-theological arguments, in that between reason and faith, Aquinas lays out proofs of the existence of God.
He readily recognizes that there are doctrines such that are the Incarnation and the nature of the Trinity, know only through revelations, and whose acceptance is more a matter of moral will. God’s essence is identified with his existence, as pure activity. God is simple, containing no potential. No matter how, we cannot obtain knowledge of what God is (his quiddity), perhaps, doing the same work as the principle of charity, but suggesting that we regulate our procedures of interpretation by maximizing the extent to which we see the subject s humanly reasonable, than the extent to which we see the subject as right about things. Whereby remaining content with descriptions that apply to him partly by way of analog y , God reveals of himself is not himself.
The immediate problem availed of ethics is posed b y the English philosopher Phillippa Foot, in her ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect’ (1967). A runaway train or trolley comes to a section in the track that is under construction and impassable. One person is working on one part and five on the other, and the trolley will put an end to anyone working on the branch it enters. Clearly, to most minds, the driver should steer for the fewest populated branch. But now suppose that, left to itself, it will enter the branch with its five employs that are there, and you as a bystander can intervene, altering the points so that it veers through the other. Is it right or obligors, or even permissible for you to do this, thereby, apparently involving yourself in ways that responsibility ends in a death of one person? After all, whom have you wronged if you leave it to go its own way? The situation is similarly standardized of others in which utilitarian reasoning seems to lead to one course of action, but a person’s integrity or principles may oppose it.
Describing events that haphazardly happen does not of itself permit us to talk of rationality and intention, which are the categories we may apply if we conceive of them as action. We think of ourselves not only passively, as creatures that make things happen. Understanding this distinction gives forth of its many major problems concerning the nature of an agency for the causation of bodily events by mental events, and of understanding the ‘will’ and ‘free will’. Other problems in the theory of action include drawing the distinction between an action and its consequence, and describing the structure involved when we do one thing ‘by;’ dong another thing. Even the planning and dating where someone shoots someone on one day and in one place, whereby the victim then dies on another day and in another place. Where and when did the murderous act take place?
Causation, least of mention, is not clear that only events are created by and for itself. Kant cites the example o a cannonball at rest and stationed upon a cushion, but causing the cushion to be the shape that it is, and thus to suggest that the causal states of affairs or objects or facts may also be casually related. All of which, the central problem is to understand the elements of necessitation or determinacy of the future. Events, Hume thought, are in themselves ‘loose and separate’: How then are we to conceive of others? The relationship seems not to perceptible, for all that perception gives us (Hume argues) is knowledge of the patterns that events do, actually falling into than any acquaintance with the connections determining the pattern. It is, however, clear that our conception of everyday objects ids largely determined by their casual powers, and all our action is based on the belief that these causal powers are stable and reliable. Although scientific investigation can give us wider and deeper dependable patterns, it seems incapable of bringing us any nearer to the ‘must’ of causal necessitation. Particular examples’ o f puzzles with causalities are quite apart from general problems of forming any conception of what it is: How are we to understand the casual interaction between mind and body? How can the present, which exists, or its existence to a past that no longer exists? How is the stability of the casual order to be understood? Is backward causality possible? Is causation a concept needed in science, or dispensable?
The news concerning free-will, is nonetheless, a problem for which is to reconcile our everyday consciousness of ourselves as agent, with the best view of what science tells us that we are. Determinism is one part of the problem. It may be defined as the doctrine that every event has a cause. More precisely, for any event ‘C’, there will be one antecedent states of nature ‘N’, and a law of nature ‘L’, such that given L, N will be followed by ‘C’. But if this is true of every event, it is true of events such as my doing something or choosing to do something. So my choosing or doing something is fixed by some antecedent state ‘N’ an d the laws. Since determinism is universal these in turn are fixed, and so backwards to events for which I am clearly not responsible (events before my birth, for example). So, no events can be voluntary or free, where that means that they come about purely because of my willing them I could have done otherwise. If determinism is true, then there will be antecedent states and laws already determining such events: How then can I truly be said to be their author, or be responsible for them?
Reactions to this problem are commonly classified as: (1) Hard determinism. This accepts the conflict and denies that you have real freedom or responsibility (2) Soft determinism or compatibility, whereby reactions in this family assert that everything you should be from a notion of freedom is quite compatible with determinism. In particular, if your actions are caused, it can often be true of you that you could have done otherwise if you had chosen, and this may be enough to render you liable to be held unacceptable (the fact that previous events will have caused you to choose as you did, and is deemed irrelevant on this option). (3) Libertarianism, as this is the view that while compatibilism is only an evasion, there is a more substantiative, real notion of freedom that can yet be preserved in the face of determinism (or, of indeterminism). In Kant, while the empirical or phenomenal self is determined and not free, whereas the noumenal or rational self is capable of being rational, free action. However, the noumeal self exists outside the categorical priorities of space and time, as this freedom seems to be of a doubtful value as other libertarian avenues do include of suggesting that the problem is badly framed, for instance, because the definition of determinism breaks down, or postulates by its suggesting that there are two independent but consistent ways of looking at an agent, the scientific and the humanistic, wherefore it is only through confusing them that the problem seems urgent. Nevertheless, these avenues have gained general popularity, as an error to confuse determinism and fatalism.
The dilemma for which determinism is for itself often supposes of an action that seems as the end of a causal chain, or, perhaps, by some hieratical set of suppositional actions that would stretch back in time to events for which an agent has no conceivable responsibility, then the agent is not responsible for the action.
Once, again, the dilemma adds that if an action is not the end of such a chain, then either two or one of its causes occurs at random, in that no antecedent events brought it about, and in that case nobody is responsible for its ever to occur. So, whether or not determinism is true, responsibility is shown to be illusory.
Still, there is to say, to have a will is to be able to desire an outcome and to purpose to bring it about. Strength of will, or firmness of purpose, is supposed to be good and weakness of will or akrasia bad.
A mental act of willing or trying whose presence is sometimes supposed to make the difference between intentional or voluntary action, as well of mere behaviour. The theory that there are such acts is problematic, and the idea that they make the required difference is a case of explaining a phenomenon by citing another that raises exactly the same problem, since the intentional or voluntary nature of the set of volition now needs explanation. For determinism to act in accordance with the law of autonomy or freedom, is that in ascendance with universal moral law and regardless of selfish advantage.
A categorical notion in the work as contrasted in Kantian ethics show whose synthesis of rationalism and empiricism in which he argued that reason is the means by which the phenomena of experience are translated into understanding, and, thus marks the beginning of ‘idealism’. ‘If you want to look wise, stay quiet’. The injunction to stay quiet only applies to those with the antecedent desire or inclination: If one has no desire to look wise the injunction or advice lapses. A categorical imperative cannot be so avoided, it is a requirement that binds anybody, regardless of their inclination,. It could be repressed as, for example, ‘Tell the truth (regardless of whether you want to or not)’. The distinction is not always mistakably presumed or absence of the conditional or hypothetical form: ‘If you crave drink, don’t become a bartender’ may be regarded as an absolute injunction applying to anyone, although only activated in the case of those with the stated desire.
In Grundlegung zur Metaphsik der Sitten (1785), Kant discussed some of the given forms of categorical imperatives, such that of (1) The formula of universal law: ‘act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become universal law’, (2) the formula of the law of nature: ‘Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature’, (3) the formula of the end-in-itself, ‘Act in such a way that you always trat humanity of whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as an end, but always at the same time as an end’, (4) the formula of autonomy, or consideration; ’the will’ of every rational being a will which makes universal law’, and (5) the formula of the Kingdom of Ends, which provides a model for systematic union of different rational beings under common laws.
A central object in the study of Kant’s ethics is to understand the expressions of the inescapable, binding requirements of their categorical importance, and to understand whether they are equivalent at some deep level. Kant’s own application of the notions are always convincing: One cause of confusion is relating Kant’s ethical values to theories such as ;expressionism’ in that it is easy but imperatively must that it cannot be the expression of a sentiment, yet, it must derive from something ‘unconditional’ or necessary’ such as the voice of reason. The standard mood of sentences used to issue request and commands are their imperative needs to issue as basic the need to communicate information, and as such to animals signalling systems may as often be interpreted either way, and understanding the relationship between commands and other action-guiding uses of language, such as ethical discourse. The ethical theory of ‘prescriptivism’ in fact equates the two functions. A further question is whether there is an imperative logic. ‘Hump that bale’ seems to follow from ‘Tote that barge and hump that bale’, follows from ‘Its windy and its raining’:.But it is harder to say how to include other forms, does ‘Shut the door or shut the window’ follow from ‘Shut the window’, for example? The usual way to develop an imperative logic is to work in terms of the possibility of satisfying the other one command without satisfying the other, thereby turning it into a variation of ordinary deductive logic.
Despite the fact that the morality of people and their ethics amount to the same thing, there is a usage that I restart morality to systems such as that of Kant, based on notions given as duty, obligation, and principles of conduct, reserving ethics for the more Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning as based on the valuing notions that are characterized by their particular virtue, and generally avoiding the separation of ‘moral’ considerations from other practical considerations. The scholarly issues are complicated and complex, with some writers seeing Kant as more Aristotelian,. And Aristotle as more involved with a separate sphere of responsibility and duty, than the simple contrast suggests.
A major topic of philosophical inquiry, especially in Aristotle, and subsequently since the 17th and 18th centuries, when the ‘science of man’ began to probe into human motivation and emotion. For such as these, the French moralist, or Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Kant, a prime task as to delineate the variety of human reactions and motivations. Such an inquiry would locate our propensity for moral thinking among other faculties, such as perception and reason, and other tendencies as empathy, sympathy or self-interest. The task continues especially in the light of a post-Darwinian understanding of ourselves.
In some moral systems, notably that of Immanuel Kant, real moral worth comes only with interactivity, justly because it is right. However, if you do what is purposely becoming, equitable, but from some other equitable motive, such as the fear or prudence, no moral merit accrues to you. Yet, that in turn seems to discount other admirable motivations, as acting from main-sheet benevolence, or ‘sympathy’. The question is how to balance these opposing ideas and how to understand acting from a sense of obligation without duty or rightness , through which their beginning to seem a kind of fetish. It thus stands opposed to ethics and relying on highly general and abstractive principles, particularly. Those associated with the Kantian categorical imperatives. The view may go as far back as to say that taken in its own, no consideration point, for that which of any particular way of life, that, least of mention, the contributing steps so taken as forwarded by reason or be to an understanding estimate that can only proceed by identifying salient features of a situation that weigh on one’s side or another.
As random moral dilemmas set out with intense concern, inasmuch as philosophical matters that exert a profound but influential defence of common sense. Situations in which each possible course of action breeches some otherwise binding moral principle, are, nonetheless, serious dilemmas making the stuff of many tragedies. The conflict can be described in different was. One suggestion is that whichever action the subject undertakes, that he or she does something wrong. Another is that his is not so, for the dilemma means that in the circumstances for what she or he did was right as any alternate. It is important to the phenomenology of these cases that action leaves a residue of guilt and remorse, even though it had proved it was not the subject’s fault that she or he were considering the dilemma, that the rationality of emotions can be contested. Any normality with more than one fundamental principle seems capable of generating dilemmas, however, dilemmas exist, such as where a mother must decide which of two children to sacrifice, least of mention, no principles are pitted against each other, only if we accept that dilemmas from principles are real and important, this fact can then be used to approach in themselves, such as of ‘utilitarianism’, to espouse various kinds may, perhaps, be centred upon the possibility of relating to independent feelings, liken to recognize only one sovereign principle. Alternatively, of regretting the existence of dilemmas and the unordered jumble of furthering principles, in that of creating several of them, a theorist may use their occurrences to encounter upon that which it is to argue for the desirability of locating and promoting a single sovereign principle.
Nevertheless, some theories into ethics see the subject in terms of a number of laws (as in the Ten Commandments). The status of these laws may be that they are the edicts of a divine lawmaker, or that they are truths of reason, given to its situational ethics, virtue ethics, regarding them as at best rules-of-thumb, and, frequently disguising the great complexity of practical representations that for reason has placed the Kantian notions of their moral law.
In continence, the natural law possibility points of the view of the states that law and morality are especially associated with St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), such that his synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian doctrine was eventually to provide the main philosophical underpinning of the Catholic church. Nevertheless, to a greater extent of any attempt to cement the moral and legal order and together within the nature of the cosmos or the nature of human beings, in which sense it found in some Protestant writings, under which had arguably derived functions. From a Platonic view of ethics and its agedly implicit advance of Stoicism. Its law stands above and apart from the activities of human lawmakers: It constitutes an objective set of principles that can be seen as in and for themselves by means of ‘natural usages’ or by reason itself, additionally, (in religious verses of them), that express of God’s will for creation. Non-religious versions of the theory substitute objective conditions for humans flourishing as the source of constraints, upon permissible actions and social arrangements within the natural law tradition. Different views have been held about the relationship between the rule of the law and God’s will. Grothius, for instance, sides with the view that the content of natural law is independent of any will, including that of God.
While the German natural theorist and historian Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-94) takes the opposite view. His great work was the De Jure Naturae et Gentium, 1672, and its English translation is ‘Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 1710. Pufendorf was influenced by Descartes, Hobbes and the scientific revolution of the 17th century, his ambition was to introduce a newly scientific ‘mathematical’ treatment on ethics and law, free from the tainted Aristotelian underpinning of ‘scholasticism’. Like that of his contemporary - Locke. His conception of natural laws include rational and religious principles, making it only a partial forerunner of more resolutely empiricist and political treatment in the Enlightenment.
Pufendorf launched his explorations in Plato’s dialogue ‘Euthyphro’, with whom the pious things are pious because the gods love them, or do the gods love them because they are pious? The dilemma poses the question of whether value can be conceived as the upshot o the choice of any mind, even a divine one. On the fist option the choice of the gods crates goodness and value. Even if this is intelligible it seems to make it impossible to praise the gods, for it is then vacuously true that they choose the good. On the second option we have to understand a source of value lying behind or beyond the will even of the gods, and by which they can be evaluated. The elegant solution of Aquinas is and is therefore distinct from is willing, but not distinct from him.
The dilemma arises whatever the source of authority is supposed to be. Do we care about the good because it is good, or do we just call good those things that we care about? It also generalizes to affect our understanding of the authority of other things: Mathematics, or necessary truth, for example, are truths necessary because we deem them to be so, or do we deem them to be so because they are necessary?
The natural aw tradition may either assume a stranger form, in which it is claimed that various fact’s entails of primary and secondary qualities, any of which is claimed that various facts entail values, reason by itself is capable of discerning moral requirements. As in the ethics of Knt, these requirements are supposed binding on all human beings, regardless of their desires.
The supposed natural or innate abilities of the mind to know the first principle of ethics and moral reasoning, wherein, those expressions are assigned and related to those that distinctions are which make in terms contribution to the function of the whole, as completed definitions of them, their phraseological impression is termed ‘synderesis’ (or, syntetesis) although traced to Aristotle, the phrase came to the modern era through St Jerome, whose scintilla conscientiae (gleam of conscience) wads a popular concept in early scholasticism. Nonetheless, it is mainly associated in Aquinas as an infallible natural, simple and immediate grasp of first moral principles. Conscience, by contrast, is ,more concerned with particular instances of right and wrong, and can be in error, under which the assertion that is taken as fundamental, at least for the purposes of the branch of enquiry in hand.
It is, nevertheless, the view interpreted within he particular states of law and morality especially associated with Aquinas and the subsequent scholastic tradition, showing for itself the enthusiasm for reform for its own sake. Or for ‘rational’ schemes thought up by managers and theorists, is therefore entirely misplaced. Major o exponent s of this theme include the British absolute idealist Herbert Francis Bradley (1846-1924) and Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek. The notably the idealism of Bradley, there ids the same doctrine that change is contradictory and consequently unreal: The Absolute is changeless. A way of sympathizing a little with his idea is to reflect that any scientific explanation of change will proceed by finding an unchanging law operating, or an unchanging quantity conserved in the change, so that explanation of change always proceeds by finding that which is unchanged. The metaphysical problem of change is to shake off the idea that each moment is created afresh, and to obtain a conception of events or processes as having a genuinely historical reality, Really extended and unfolding in time, as opposed to being composites of discrete temporal atoms. A step towards this end may be to see time itself not as an infinite container within which discrete events are located, bu as a kind of logical construction from the flux of events. This relational view of time was advocated by Leibniz and a subject of the debate between him and Newton’s Absolutist pupil, Clarke.
Generally, nature is an indefinitely mutable term, changing as our scientific conception of the world changes, and often best seen as signifying a contrast with something considered not part of nature. The term applies both to individual species (it is the nature of gold to be dense or of dogs to be friendly), and also to the natural world as a whole. The sense in which it applies to species quickly links up with ethical and aesthetic ideals: A thing ought to realize its nature, what is natural is what it is good for a thing to become, it is natural for humans to be healthy or two-legged, and departure from this is a misfortune or deformity,. The associations of what is natural with what it is good to become is visible in Plato, and is the central idea of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature. Unfortunately, the pinnacle of nature in this sense is the mature adult male citizen, with he rest of hat we would call the natural world, including women, slaves, children and other species, not quite making it.
Nature in general can, however, function as a foil to any idea inasmuch as a source of ideals: In this sense fallen nature is contrasted with a supposed celestial realization of the ‘forms’. The theory of ‘forms’ is probably the most characteristic, and most contested of the doctrines of Plato. In the background, i.e., the Pythagorean conception of form as the initial orientation to physical nature, bu also the sceptical doctrine associated with the Greek philosopher Cratylus, and is sometimes thought to have been a teacher of Plato before Socrates. He is famous for capping the doctrine of Ephesus of Heraclitus, whereby the guiding idea of his philosophy was that of the logos, is capable of being heard or hearkened to by people, it unifies opposites, and it is somehow associated with fire, which is preeminent among the four elements that Heraclitus distinguishes: Fire, air (breath, the stuff of which souls composed), earth, and water. Although he is principally remembered for the doctrine of the ‘flux’ of all things, and the famous statement that you cannot step into the same river twice, for new waters are ever flowing in upon you. The more extreme implication of the doctrine of flux, e.g., the impossibility of categorizing things truly, do not seem consistent with his general epistemology and views of meaning, and were to his follower Cratylus, although the proper conclusion of his views was that the flux cannot be captured in words. According to Aristotle, he eventually held that since ‘regarding that which everywhere in every respect is changing nothing ids just to stay silent and wag one’s finger. Plato ‘s theory of forms can be seen in part as an action against the impasse to which Cratylus was driven.
The Galilean world view might have been expected to drain nature of its ethical content, however, the term seldom loses its normative force, and the belief in universal natural laws provided its own set of ideals. In the 18th century for example, a painter or writer could be praised as natural, where the qualities expected would include normal (universal) topics treated with simplicity, economy , regularity and harmony. Later on, nature becomes an equally potent emblem of irregularity, wildness, and fertile diversity, but also associated with progress of human history, its incurring definition that has been taken to fit many things as well as transformation, including ordinary human self-consciousness. Nature, being in contrast with in integrated phenomenon may include (1) that which is deformed or grotesque or fails to achieve its proper form or function or just the statistically uncommon or unfamiliar, (2) the supernatural, or the world of gods and invisible agencies, (3) the world of rationality and unintelligence, conceived of as distinct from the biological and physical order, or the product of human intervention, and (5) related to that, the world of convention and artifice.
Different conceptions of nature continue to have ethical overtones, foe example, the conception of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ often provides a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is women’s nature to be one thing or another is taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. The term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of stereotypes, and is a proper target of much feminist writings. Feminist epistemology has asked whether different ways of knowing for instance with different criteria of justification, and different emphases on logic and imagination, characterize male and female attempts to understand the world. Such concerns include awareness of the ‘masculine’ self-image, itself a socially variable and potentially distorting picture of what thought and action should be. Again, there is a spectrum of concerns from the highly theoretical principles to the relatively practical. In this latter area particular attention is given to the institutional biases that stand in the way of equal opportunities in science and other academic pursuits, or the ideologies that stand in the way of women seeing themselves as leading contributors to various disciplines. However, to more radical feminists such concerns merely exhibit women wanting for themselves the same power and rights over others that men have claimed, and failing to confront the real problem, which is how to live without such symmetrical powers and rights.
In biological determinism, not only influences but constraints and makes inevitable our development as persons with a variety of traits. At its silliest the view postulates such entities as a gene predisposing people to poverty, and it is the particular enemy of thinkers stressing the parental, social, and political determinants of the way we are.
The philosophy of social science is more heavily intertwined with actual social science than in the case of other subjects such as physics or mathematics, since its question is centrally whether there can be such a thing as sociology. The idea of a ‘science of man’, devoted to uncovering scientific laws determining the basic dynamic s of human interactions was a cherished ideal of the Enlightenment and reached its heyday with the positivism of writers such as the French philosopher and social theorist Auguste Comte (1798-1957), and the historical materialism of Marx and his followers. Sceptics point out that what happens in society is determined by peoples’ own ideas of what should happen, and like fashions those ideas change in unpredictable ways as self-consciousness is susceptible to change by any number of external event s: Unlike the solar system of celestial mechanics a society is not at all a closed system evolving in accordance with a purely internal dynamic, but constantly responsive to shocks from outside.
The sociological approach to human behaviour is based on the premise that all social behaviour has a biological basis, and seeks to understand that basis in terms of genetic encoding for features that are then selected for through evolutionary history. The philosophical problem is essentially one of methodology: Of finding criteria for identifying features that can usefully be explained in this way, and for finding criteria for assessing various genetic stories that might provide useful explanations.
Among the features that are proposed for this kind o f explanation are such things as male dominance, male promiscuity versus female fidelity, propensities to sympathy and other emotions, and the limited altruism characteristic of human beings. The strategy has proved unnecessarily controversial, with proponents accused of ignoring the influence of environmental and social factors in moulding people’s characteristics, e.g., at the limit of silliness, by postulating a ‘gene for poverty’, however, there is no need for the approach to commit such errors, since the feature explained sociobiological may be indexed to environment: For instance, it ma y be a propensity to develop some feature in some other environments (for even a propensity to develop propensities . . .) The main problem is to separate genuine explanation from speculative, just so stories which may or may not identify as really selective mechanisms.
Subsequently, in the 19th century attempts were made to base ethical reasoning on the presumed facts about evolution. The movement is particularly associated with the English philosopher of evolution Herbert Spencer (1820-1903),. His first major work was the book Social Statics (1851), which advocated an extreme political libertarianism. The Principles of Psychology was published in 1855, and his very influential Education advocating natural development of intelligence, the creation of pleasurable interest, and the importance of science in the curriculum, appeared in 1861. His First Principles (1862) was followed over the succeeding years by volumes on the Principles of biology and psychology, sociology and ethics. Although he attracted a large public following and attained the stature of a sage, his speculative work has not lasted well, and in his own time there was dissident voices. T.H. Huxley said that Spencer’s definition of a tragedy was a deduction killed by a fact. Writer and social prophet Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) called him a perfect vacuum, and the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910) wondered why half of England wanted to bury him in Westminister Abbey, and talked of the ‘hurdy-gurdy’ monotony of him, his whole system wooden, as if knocked together out of cracked hemlock.
The premise is that later elements in an evolutionary path are better than earlier ones, the application of this principle then requires seeing western society, laissez-faire capitalism, or some other object of approval, as more evolved than more ‘primitive’ social forms. Neither the principle nor the applications command much respect. The version of evolutionary ethics called ‘social Darwinism’ emphasizes the struggle for natural selection, and drawn the conclusion that we should glorify such struggle, usually by enhancing competitive and aggressive relations between people in society or between societies themselves. More recently the relation between evolution and ethics has been re-thought in the light of biological discoveries concerning altruism and kin-selection.
In that, the study of the say in which a variety of higher mental function may be adaptions applicable of a psychology of evolution, a formed in response to selection pressures on human populations through evolutionary time. Candidates for such theorizing include material and paternal motivations, capabilities for love and friendship, the development of language as a signalling system, cooperative and aggressive tendencies, our emotional repertoires, our moral reaction, including the disposition to direct and punish those who cheat on an agreement or who turn towards free-riders - those of which who take away the things of others, our cognitive structure and many others. Evolutionary psychology goes hand-in-hand with neurophysiological evidence about the underlying circuitry in the brain which subserves the psychological mechanisms it claims to identify.
For all that, an essential part of the British absolute idealist Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) was largely on the ground s that the self-sufficiency individualized through community and one’s self is to contribute to social and other ideals. However, truth as formulated in language is always partial, and dependent upon categories that themselves are inadequate to the harmonious whole. Nevertheless, these self-contradictory elements somehow contribute to the harmonious whole, or Absolute, lying beyond categorization. Although absolute idealism maintains few adherents today, Bradley’s general dissent from empiricism, his holism, and the brilliance and style of his writing continue to make him the most interesting of the late 19th century writers influenced by the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).
Understandably, something less than the fragmented division that belonging of Bradley’s case has a preference, voiced much earlier by the German philosopher, mathematician and polymath was Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), for categorical monadic properties over relations. He was particularly troubled by the relation between that which ids known and the more that knows it. In philosophy, the Romantics took from the German philosopher and founder of critical philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) both the emphasis on free-will and the doctrine that reality is ultimately spiritual, with nature itself a mirror of the human soul. To fix upon one among alternatives as the one to be taken, Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) foregathers nature of becoming a creative spirit whose aspiration is ever further and more to completed self-realization. Although a movement of more general to naturalized imperative. Romanticism drew on the same intellectual and emotional resources as German idealism was increasingly culminating in the philosophy of Hegal (1770-1831) and of absolute idealism.
Being such in comparison with nature may include (1) that which is deformed or grotesque, or fails to achieve its proper form or function, or just the statistically uncommon or unfamiliar, (2) the supernatural, or the world of gods and invisible agencies, (3) the world of rationality and intelligence, conceived of as distinct from the biological and physical order, (4) that which is manufactured and artefactual, or the product of human invention, and (5) related to it, the world of convention and artifice.
Different conceptions of nature continue to have ethical overtones, for example, the conception of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ often provide a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is a women’s nature to be one thing or another, as taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. The term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of stereotype, and is a proper target of much ‘feminist’ writing.
This brings to question, that most of all ethics are contributively distributed as an understanding for which a dynamic function in and among the problems that are affiliated with human desire and needs the achievements of happiness, or the distribution of goods. The central problem specific to thinking about the environment is the independent value to place on ‘such-things’ as preservation of species, or protection of the wilderness. Such protection can be supported as a mans to ordinary human ends, for instance, when animals are regarded as future sources of medicines or other benefits. Nonetheless, many would want to claim a non-utilitarian, absolute value for the existence of wild things and wild places. It is in their value that thing consist. They put u in our proper place, and failure to appreciate this value is not only an aesthetic failure but one of due humility and reverence, a moral disability. The problem is one of expressing this value, and mobilizing it against utilitarian agents for developing natural areas and exterminating species, more or less at will.
Many concerns and disputed cluster around the idea associated with the term ‘substance’. The substance of a thin may be considered in: (1) Its essence, or that which makes it what it is. This will ensure that the substance of a thing is that which remains through change in properties. Again, in Aristotle, this essence becomes more than just the matter, but a unity of matter and form. (2) That which can exist by itself, or does not need a subject for existence, in the way that properties need objects, hence (3) that which bears properties, as a substance is then the subject of predication, that about which things are said as opposed to the things said about it. Substance in the last two senses stands opposed to modifications such as quantity, quality, relations, etc. it is hard to keep this set of ideas distinct from the doubtful notion of a substratum, something distinct from any of its properties, and hence, as an incapable characterization. The notion of substances tend to disappear in empiricist thought in fewer of the sensible questions of things with the notion of that in which they infer of giving way to an empirical notion of their regular occurrence. However, this is in turn is problematic, since it only makes sense to talk of the occurrence of instance of qualities, not of quantities themselves. So the problem of what it is for a value quality to be the instance that remains.
Metaphysics inspired by modern science tends to reject the concept of substance in favour of concepts such as that of a field or a process, each of which may seem to provide a better example of a fundamental physical category.
It must be spoken of a concept that is deeply embedded in 18th century aesthetics, but deriving from the 1st century rhetorical treatise On the Sublime, by Longinus. The sublime is great, fearful, noble, calculated to arouse sentiments of pride and majesty, as well as awe and sometimes terror. According to Alexander Gerard’s writing in 1759, ‘When a large object is presented, the mind expands itself to the extent of that objects, and is filled with one grand sensation, which totally possessing it, composes it into a solemn sedateness and strikes it with deep silent wonder, and administration’: It finds such a difficulty in spreading itself to the dimensions of its object, as enliven and invigorates which this occasions, it sometimes images itself present in every part of the sense which it contemplates, and from the sense of this immensity, feels a noble pride, and entertains a lofty conception of its own capacity.
In Kant’s aesthetic theory the sublime ‘raises the soul above the height of vulgar complacency’. We experience the vast spectacles of nature as ‘absolutely great’ and of irresistible might and power. This perception is fearful, but by conquering this fear, and by regarding as small ‘those things of which we are wont to be solicitous’ we quicken our sense of moral freedom. So we turn the experience of frailty and impotence into one of our true, inward moral freedom as the mind triumphs over nature, and it is this triumph of reason that is truly sublime. Kant thus paradoxically places our sense of the sublime in an awareness of ourselves as transcending nature, than in an awareness of ourselves as a frail and insignificant part of it.
Nevertheless, the doctrine that all relations are internal was a cardinal thesis of absolute idealism, and a central point of attack by the British philosophers George Edward Moore (1873-1958) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). It is a kind of ‘essentialism’, stating that if two things stand in some relationship, then they could not be what they are, did they not do so, if, for instance, I am wearing a hat mow, then when we imagine a possible situation that we would be got to describe as my not wearing the hat now, we would strictly not be imaging as one and the hat, but only some different individual.
The countering partitions a doctrine that bears some resemblance to the metaphysically based view of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), that if a person had any other attributes that the ones he has, he would not have been the AME person. Leibniz thought that when asked hat would have happened if Peter had not denied Christ. That being that if I am asking what would have happened if Peter had not been Peter, denying Christ is contained in the complete notion of Peter. But he allowed that by the name ‘Peter’ might be understood as ‘what is involved in those attributes [of Peter] from which the denial does not follow’. In order that we are held accountable to allow of external relations, in that these being relations which individuals could have or not depending upon contingent circumstances. The relations of ideas is used by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-76) in the First Enquiry of Theoretical Knowledge. All the objects of human reason or enquiring naturally, be divided into two kinds: To unit all the , ‘relations of ideas’ and ‘matter of fact ‘ (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) the terms reflect the belief that any thing that can be known dependently must be internal to the mind, and hence transparent to us.
In Hume, objects of knowledge are divided into matter of fact (roughly empirical things known by means of impressions) and the relation of ideas. The contrast, also called ‘Hume’s Fork’, is a version of the speculative deductivity distinction, but reflects the 17th and early 18th centauries behind that the deductivity is established by chains of infinite certainty as comparable to ideas. It is extremely important that in the period between Descartes and J.S. Mill that a demonstration is not, but only a chain of ‘intuitive’ comparable ideas, whereby a principle or maxim can be established by reason alone. It ids in this sense that the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) who believed that theological and moral principles are capable of demonstration, and Hume denies that they are, and also denies that scientific enquiries proceed in demonstrating its results.
A mathematical proof is formally inferred as to an argument that is used to show the truth of a mathematical assertion. In modern mathematics, a proof begins with one or more statements called premises and demonstrates, using the rules of logic, that if the premises are true then a particular conclusion must also be true.
The accepted methods and strategies used to construct a convincing mathematical argument have evolved since ancient times and continue to change. Consider the Pythagorean theorem, named after the 5th century Bc Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, which states that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Many early civilizations considered this theorem true because it agreed with their observations in practical situations. But the early Greeks, among others, realized that observation and commonly held opinion do not guarantee mathematical truth. For example, before the 5th century Bc it was widely believed that all lengths could be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers. But an unknown Greek mathematician proved that this was not true by showing that the length of the diagonal of a square with an area of 1 is the irrational number Ã.
The Greek mathematician Euclid laid down some of the conventions central to modern mathematical proofs. His book The Elements, written about 300 Bc, contains many proofs in the fields of geometry and algebra. This book illustrates the Greek practice of writing mathematical proofs by first clearly identifying the initial assumptions and then reasoning from them in a logical way in order to obtain a desired conclusion. As part of such an argument, Euclid used results that had already been shown to be true, called theorems, or statements that were explicitly acknowledged to be self-evident, called axioms; this practice continues today.
In the 20th century, proofs have been written that are so complex that no one person understands every argument used in them. In 1976, a computer was used to complete the proof of the four-colour theorem. This theorem states that four colours are sufficient to colour any map in such a way that regions with a common boundary line have different colours. The use of a computer in this proof inspired considerable debate in the mathematical community. At issue was whether a theorem can be considered proven if human beings have not actually checked every detail of the proof.
The study of the relations of deductibility among sentences in a logical calculus which benefits the prof theory. Deductibility is defined purely syntactically, that is, without reference to the intended interpretation of the calculus. The subject was founded by the mathematician David Hilbert (1862-1943) in the hope that strictly finitary methods would provide a way of proving the consistency of classical mathematics, but the ambition was torpedoed by Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem.
What is more, the use of a model to test for consistencies in an ‘axiomatized system’ which is older than modern logic. Descartes’ algebraic interpretation of Euclidean geometry provides a way of showing that if the theory of real numbers is consistent, so is the geometry. Similar representation had been used by mathematicians in the 19th century, for example to show that if Euclidean geometry is consistent, so are various non-Euclidean geometries. Model theory is the general study of this kind of procedure: The ‘proof theory’ studies relations of deductibility between formulae of a system, but once the notion of an interpretation is in place we can ask whether a formal system meets certain conditions. In particular, can it lead us from sentences that are true under some interpretation? And if a sentence is true under all interpretations, is it also a theorem of the system? We can define a notion of validity (a formula is valid if it is true in all interpret rations) and semantic consequence (a formula ‘B’ is a semantic consequence of a set of formulae, written {A1 . . . An} ⊨B, if it is true in all interpretations in which they are true) Then the central questions for a calculus will be whether all and only its theorems are valid, and whether {A1 . . . An} ⊨ B if and only if {A1 . . . An} ⊢B. There are the questions of the soundness and completeness of a formal system. For the propositional calculus this turns into the question of whether the proof theory delivers as theorems all and only ‘tautologies’. There are many axiomatizations of the propositional calculus that are consistent and complete. The mathematical logician Kurt Gödel (1906-78) proved in 1929 that the first-order predicate under every interpretation is a theorem of the calculus. In that mathematical method for solving those physical problems that can be stated in the form that a certain value definite integral shall have a stationary value for small changes of the functions in the integrands and of the limit of integration.
The Euclidean geometry is the greatest example of the pure ‘axiomatic method’, and as such had incalculable philosophical influence as a paradigm of rational certainty. It had no competition until the 19th century when it was realized that the fifth axiom of his system (parallel lines never meet) could be denied without inconsistency, leading to Riemannian spherical geometry. The significance of Riemannian geometry lies in its use and extension of both Euclidean geometry and the geometry of surfaces, leading to a number of generalized differential geometries. Its most important effect was that it made a geometrical application possible for some major abstractions of tensor analysis, leading to the pattern and concepts for general relativity later used by Albert Einstein in developing his theory of relativity. Riemannian geometry is also necessary for treating electricity and magnetism in the framework of general relativity. The fifth chapter of Euclid’s Elements, is attributed to the mathematician Eudoxus, and contains a precise development of the real number, work which remained unappreciated until rediscovered in the 19th century.
The Axiom, in logic and mathematics, is a basic principle that is assumed to be true without proof. The use of axioms in mathematics stems from the ancient Greeks, most probably during the 5th century Bc, and represents the beginnings of pure mathematics as it is known today. Examples of axioms are the following: 'No sentence can be true and false at the same time' (the principle of contradiction); 'If equals are added to equals, the sums are equal'. 'The whole is greater than any of its parts'. Logic and pure mathematics begin with such unproved assumptions from which other propositions (theorems) are derived. This procedure is necessary to avoid circularity, or an infinite regression in reasoning. The axioms of any system must be consistent with one another, that is, they should not lead to contradictions. They should be independent in the sense that they cannot be derived from one another. They should also be few in number. Axioms have sometimes been interpreted as self-evident truths. The present tendency is to avoid this claim and simply to assert that an axiom is assumed to be true without proof in the system of which it is a part.
The terms 'axiom' and 'postulate' are often used synonymously. Sometimes the word axiom is used to refer to basic principles that are assumed by every deductive system, and the term postulate is used to refer to first principles peculiar to a particular system, such as Euclidean geometry. Infrequently, the word axiom is used to refer to first principles in logic, and the term postulate is used to refer to first principles in mathematics.
The applications of game theory are wide-ranging and account for steadily growing interest in the subject. Von Neumann and Morgenstern indicated the immediate utility of their work on mathematical game theory by linking it with economic behaviour. Models can be developed, in fact, for markets of various commodities with differing numbers of buyers and sellers, fluctuating values of supply and demand, and seasonal and cyclical variations, as well as significant structural differences in the economies concerned. Here game theory is especially relevant to the analysis of conflicts of interest in maximizing profits and promoting the widest distribution of goods and services. Equitable division of property and of inheritance is another area of legal and economic concern that can be studied with the techniques of game theory.
In the social sciences, n-person game theory has interesting uses in studying, for example, the distribution of power in legislative procedures. This problem can be interpreted as a three-person game at the congressional level involving vetoes of the president and votes of representatives and senators, analysed in terms of successful or failed coalitions to pass a given bill. Problems of majority rule and individual decision making are also amenable to such study.
Sociologists have developed an entire branch of game theory devoted to the study of issues involving group decision making. Epidemiologists also make use of game theory, especially with respect to immunization procedures and methods of testing a vaccine or other medication. Military strategists turn to game theory to study conflicts of interest resolved through 'battles' where the outcome or payoff of a given war game is either victory or defeat. Usually, such games are not examples of zero-sum games, for what one player loses in terms of lives and injuries is not won by the victor. Some uses of game theory in analyses of political and military events have been criticized as a dehumanizing and potentially dangerous oversimplification of necessarily complicating factors. Analysis of economic situations is also usually more complicated than zero-sum games because of the production of goods and services within the play of a given 'game'.
All is the same in the classical theory of the syllogism, a term in a categorical proposition is distributed if the proposition entails any proposition obtained from it by substituting a term denoted by the original. For example, in ‘all dogs bark’ the term ‘dogs’ is distributed, since it entails ‘all terriers bark’, which is obtained from it by a substitution. In ‘Not all dogs bark’, the same term is not distributed, since it may be true while ‘not all terriers bark’ is false.
When a representation of one system by another is usually more familiar, in and for itself, that those extended in representation that their workings are supposed analogous to that of the first. This one might model the behaviour of a sound wave upon that of waves in water, or the behaviour of a gas upon that to a volume containing moving billiard balls. While nobody doubts that models have a useful ‘heuristic’ role in science, there has been intense debate over whether a good model, or whether an organized structure of laws from which it can be deduced and suffices for scientific explanation. As such, the debate of topic was inaugurated by the French physicist Pierre Marie Maurice Duhem (1861-1916), in ‘The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory’ (1954) by which Duhem’s conception of science is that it is simply a device for calculating as science provides deductive system that is systematic, economical, and predictive, but not that represents the deep underlying nature of reality. Steadfast and holding of its contributive thesis that in isolation, and since other auxiliary hypotheses will always be needed to draw empirical consequences from it. The Duhem thesis implies that refutation is a more complex matter than might appear. It is sometimes framed as the view that a single hypothesis may be retained in the face of any adverse empirical evidence, if we prepared to make modifications elsewhere in our system, although strictly speaking this is a stronger thesis, since it may be psychologically impossible to make consistent revisions in a belief system to accommodate, say, the hypothesis that there is a hippopotamus in the room when visibly there is not.
Primary and secondary qualities are the division associated with the 17th-century rise of modern science, wit h its recognition that the fundamental explanatory properties of things that are not the qualities that perception most immediately concerns. There latter are the secondary qualities, or immediate sensory qualities, including colour, taste, smell, felt warmth or texture, and sound. The primary properties are less tied to there deliverance of one particular sense, and include the size, shape, and motion of objects. In Robert Boyle (1627-92) and John Locke (1632-1704) the primary qualities are scientifically tractable, objective qualities essential to anything material, are of a minimal listing of size, shape, and mobility, i.e., the state of being at rest or moving. Locke sometimes adds number, solidity, texture (where this is thought of as the structure of a substance, or way in which it is made out of atoms). The secondary qualities are the powers to excite particular sensory modifications in observers. Once, again, that Locke himself thought in terms of identifying these powers with the texture of objects that, according to corpuscularian science of the time, were the basis of an object’s causal capacities. The ideas of secondary qualities are sharply different from these powers, and afford us no accurate impression of them. For Renè Descartes (1596-1650), this is the basis for rejecting any attempt to think of knowledge of external objects as provided by the senses. But in Locke our ideas of primary qualities do afford us an accurate notion of what shape, size,. And mobility are. In English-speaking philosophy the first major discontent with the division was voiced by the Irish idealist George Berkeley (1685-1753), who probably took for a basis of his attack from Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), who in turn cites the French critic Simon Foucher (1644-96). Modern thought continues to wrestle with the difficulties of thinking of colour, taste, smell, warmth, and sound as real or objective properties to things independent of us.
Continuing as such, is the doctrine advocated by the American philosopher David Lewis (1941-2002), in that different possible worlds are to be thought of as existing exactly as this one does. Thinking in terms of possibilities is thinking of real worlds where things are different. The view has been charged with making it impossible to see why it is good to save the child from drowning, since there is still a possible world in which she (or her counterpart) drowned, and from the standpoint of the universe it should make no difference which world is actual. Critics also charge either that the notion fails to fit with a coherent theory lf how we know about possible worlds, or with a coherent theory of why we are interested in them, but Lewis denied that any other way of interpreting modal statements is tenable.
The proposal set forth that characterizes the ‘modality’ of a proposition as the notion for which it is true or false. The most important division is between propositions true of necessity, and those true as things are: Necessary as opposed to contingent propositions. Other qualifiers sometimes called ‘modal’ include the tense indicators, ‘it will be the case that ‘p’, or ‘it was the case that ‘p’, and there are affinities between the ‘deontic’ indicators, ‘it ought to be the case that ‘p’, or ‘it is permissible that ‘p’, and the of necessity and possibility.
The aim of a logic is to make explicit the rules by which inferences may be drawn, than to study the actual reasoning processes that people use, which may or may not conform to those rules. In the case of deductive logic, if we ask why we need to obey the rules, the most general form of answer is that if we do not we contradict ourselves(or, strictly speaking, we stand ready to contradict ourselves. Someone failing to draw a conclusion that follows from a set of premises need not be contradicting him or herself, but only failing to notice something. However, he or she is not defended against adding the contradictory conclusion to his or fer set of beliefs.) There is no equally simple answer in the case of inductive logic, which is in general a less robust subject, but the aim will be to find reasoning such hat anyone failing to conform to it will have improbable beliefs. Traditional logic dominated the subject until the 19th century., and has become increasingly recognized in the 20th century, in that finer work that were done within that tradition, but syllogistic reasoning is now generally regarded as a limited special case of the form of reasoning that can be reprehend within the promotion and predated values, these form the heart of modern logic, as their central notions or qualifiers, variables, and functions were the creation of the German mathematician Gottlob Frége, who is recognized as the father of modern logic, although his treatment of a logical system as an abreact mathematical structure, or algebraic, has been heralded by the English mathematician and logician George Boole (1815-64), his pamphlet The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847) pioneered the algebra of classes. The work was made of in An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854). Boole also published many works in our mathematics, and on the theory of probability. His name is remembered in the title of Boolean algebra, and the algebraic operations he investigated are denoted by Boolean operations.
The syllogistic, or categorical syllogism is the inference of one proposition from two premises. For example is, ‘all horses have tails, and things with tails are four legged, so all horses are four legged. Each premise has one term in common with the other premises. The term that ds not occur in the conclusion is called the middle term. The major premise of the syllogism is the premise containing the predicate of the contraction (the major term). And the minor premise contains its subject (the minor term). So the first premise of the example in the minor premise the second the major term. So the first premise of the example is the minor premise, the second the major premise and ‘having a tail’ is the middle term. This enable syllogisms that there of a classification, that according to the form of the premises and the conclusions. The other classification is by figure, or way in which the middle term is placed or way in within the middle term is placed in the premise.
Although the theory of the syllogism dominated logic until the 19th century, it remained a piecemeal affair, able to deal with only relations valid forms of valid forms of argument. There have subsequently been reargued actions attempting, but in general it has been eclipsed by the modern theory of quantification, the predicate calculus is the heart of modern logic, having proved capable of formalizing the calculus rationing processes of modern mathematics and science. In a first-order predicate calculus the variables range over objects: In a higher-order calculus the may range over predicate and functions themselves. The fist-order predicated calculus with identity includes ‘=’ as primitive (undefined) expression: In a higher-order calculus I t may be defined by law that χ- y iff (∀F)(Fχ↔Fy), which gives grater expressive power for less complexity.
Modal logic was of great importance historically, particularly in the light of the deity, but was not a central topic of modern logic in its gold period as the beginning of the 20th century. It was, however, revived by the American logician and philosopher Irving Lewis (1883-1964), although he wrote extensively on most central philosophical topis, he is remembered principally as a critic of the intentional nature of modern logic, and as the founding father of modal logic. His two independent proofs showing that from a contradiction anything follows a relevance logic, using a notion of entailment stronger than that of strict implication.
The imparting information has been conduced or carried out of the prescribed procedures, as impeding of something that tajes place in the chancing encounter out to be to enter ons’s mind may from time to time occasion of various doctrines concerning the necessary properties, ;east of mention, by adding to a prepositional or predicated calculus two operator, □and ◊(sometimes written ‘N’ and ‘M’),meaning necessarily and possible, respectfully. These like ‘p ➞◊p and □p ➞p will be wanted. Controversial these include □p ➞□□p (if a proposition is necessary,. It its necessarily, characteristic of a system known as S4) and ◊p ➞□◊p (if as preposition is possible, it its necessarily possible, characteristic of the system known as S5). The classical modal theory for modal logic, due to the American logician and philosopher (1940-) and the Swedish logician Sig Kanger, involves valuing prepositions not true or false simpiciter, but as true or false at possible worlds with necessity then corresponding to truth in all worlds, and possibility to truth in some world. Various different systems of modal logic result from adjusting the accessibility relation between worlds.
In Saul Kripke, gives the classical modern treatment of the topic of reference, both clarifying the distinction between names and definite description, and opening te door to many subsequent attempts to understand the notion of reference in terms of a causal link between the use of a term and an original episode of attaching a name to the subject.
One of the three branches into which ‘semiotic’ is usually divided, the study of semantical meaning of words, and the relation of signs to the degree to which the designs are applicable. In that, in formal studies, a semantics is provided for a formal language when an interpretation of ‘model’ is specified. However, a natural language comes ready interpreted, and the semantic problem is not that of specification but of understanding the relationship between terms of various categories (names, descriptions, predicate, adverbs . . . ) and their meaning. An influential proposal by attempting to provide a truth definition for the language, which will involve giving a full structure of different kinds have on the truth conditions of sentences containing them.
Holding that the basic casse of reference is the relation between a name and the persons or object which it names. The philosophical problems include trying to elucidate that relation, to understand whether other semantic relations, such s that between a predicate and the property it expresses, or that between a description an what it describes, or that between myself or the word ‘I’, are examples of the same relation or of very different ones. A great deal of modern work on this was stimulated by the American logician Saul Kripke’s, Naming and Necessity (1970). It would also be desirable to know whether we can refer to such things as objects and how to conduct the debate about each and issue. A popular approach, following Gottlob Frége, is to argue that the fundamental unit of analysis should be the whole sentence. The reference of a term becomes a derivative notion it is whatever it is that defines the term’s contribution to the trued condition of the whole sentence. There need be nothing further to say about it, given that we have a way of understanding the attribution of meaning or truth-condition to sentences. Other approach, searching for a more substantive possibly that causality or psychological or social constituents are pronounced between words and things.
However, following Ramsey and the Italian mathematician G. Peano (1858-1932), it has been customary to distinguish logical paradoxes that depend upon a notion of reference or truth (semantic notions) such as those of the ‘Liar family, Berry, Richard, etc. form the purely logical paradoxes in which no such notions are involved, such as Russell’s paradox, or those of Canto and Burali-Forti. Paradoxes of the fist type sem to depend upon an element of self-reference, in which a sentence is about itself, or in which a phrase refers to something about itself, or in which a phrase refers to something defined by a set of phrases of which it is itself one. It is to feel that this element is responsible for the contradictions, although self-reference itself is often benign (for instance, the sentence ‘All English sentences should have a verb’, includes itself happily in the domain of sentences it is talking about), so the difficulty lies in forming a condition that existence only pathological self-reference. Paradoxes of the second kind then need a different treatment. Whilst the distinction is convenient. In allowing set theory to proceed by circumventing the latter paradoxes by technical mans, even when there is no solution to the semantic paradoxes, it may be a way of ignoring the similarities between the two families. There is still the possibility that while there is no agreed solution to the semantic paradoxes, our understand of Russell’s paradox may be imperfect as well.
Truth and falsity are two classical truth-values that a statement, proposition or sentence can take, as it is supposed in classical (two-valued) logic, that each statement has one of these values, and non has both. A statement is then false if and only if it is not true. The basis of this scheme is that to each statement there corresponds a determinate truth condition, or way the world must be for it to be true: If this condition obtains the statement is true, and otherwise false. Statements may indeed be felicitous or infelicitous in other dimensions (polite, misleading, apposite, witty, etc.) but truth is the central normative notion governing assertion. Considerations o vagueness may introduce greys into this black-and-white scheme. For the issue to be true, any suppressed premise or background framework of thought necessary make an agreement valid, or a position tenable, a proposition whose truth is necessary for either the truth or the falsity of another statement. Thus if ‘p’ presupposes ‘q’, ‘q’ must be true for ‘p’ to be either true or false. In the theory of knowledge, the English philologer and historian George Collingwood (1889-1943), announces hat any proposition capable of truth or falsity stand on bed of ‘absolute presuppositions’ which are not properly capable of truth or falsity, since a system of thought will contain no way of approaching such a question (a similar idea later voiced by Wittgenstein in his work On Certainty). The introduction of presupposition therefore mans that either another of a truth value is fond, ‘intermediate’ between truth and falsity, or the classical logic is preserved, but it is impossible to tell whether a particular sentence empresses a preposition that is a candidate for truth and falsity, without knowing more than the formation rules of the language. Each suggestion carries coss, and there is some consensus that at least who where definite descriptions are involved, examples equally given by regarding the overall sentence as false as the existence claim fails, and explaining the data that the English philosopher Frederick Strawson (1919-) relied upon as the effects of ‘implicature’.
Views about the meaning of terms will often depend on classifying the implicature of sayings involving the terms as implicatures or as genuine logical implications of what is said. Implicatures may be divided into two kinds: Conversational implicatures of the two kinds and the more subtle category of conventional implicatures. A term may as a matter of convention carry an implicature, thus one of the relations between ‘he is poor and honest’ and ‘he is poor but honest’ is that they have the same content (are true in just the same conditional) but the second has implicatures (that the combination is surprising or significant) that the first lacks.
It is, nonetheless, that we find in classical logic a proposition that may be true or false,. In that, if the former, it is said to take the truth-value true, and if the latter the truth-value false. The idea behind the terminological phrases is the analogues between assigning a propositional variable one or other of these values, as is done in providing an interpretation for a formula of the propositional calculus, and assigning an object as the value of any other variable. Logics with intermediate value are called ‘many-valued logics’.
Nevertheless, an existing definition of the predicate’ . . . is true’ for a language that satisfies convention ‘T’, the material adequately condition laid down by Alfred Tarski, born Alfred Teitelbaum (1901-83), whereby his methods of ‘recursive’ definition, enabling us to say for each sentence what it is that its truth consists in, but giving no verbal definition of truth itself. The recursive definition or the truth predicate of a language is always provided in a ‘metalanguage’, Tarski is thus committed to a hierarchy of languages, each with its associated, but different truth-predicate. Whist this enables the approach to avoid the contradictions of paradoxical contemplations, it conflicts with the idea that a language should be able to say everything that there is to be said in saying, and other approaches have become increasingly important.
So, that the truth condition of a statement is the condition for which the world must meet if the statement is to be true. To know this condition is equivalent to knowing the meaning of the statement. Although this sounds as if it gives a solid anchorage for meaning, some of the securities disappear when it turns out that the truth condition can only be defined by repeating the very same statement: The truth condition of ‘now is white’ is that ‘snow is white’, the truth condition of ‘Britain would have capitulated had Hitler invaded’, is that ‘Britain would have capitulated had Hitler invaded’. It is disputed whether this element of running-on-the-spot disqualifies truth conditions from playing the central role in a substantives theory of meaning. Truth-conditional theories of meaning are sometimes opposed by the view that to know the meaning of a statement is to be able to use it in a network of inferences.
Taken to be the view, inferential semantics take on the role of sentence in inference give a more important key to their meaning than this ‘external’ relations to things in the world. The meaning of a sentence becomes its place in a network of inferences that it legitimates. Also known as functional role semantics, procedural semantics, or conception to the coherence theory of truth, and suffers from the same suspicion that it divorces meaning from any clar association with things in the world.
Moreover, a theory of semantic truth be that of the view if language is provided with a truth definition, there is a sufficient characterization of its concept of truth, as there is no further philosophical chapter to write about truth: There is no further philosophical chapter to write about truth itself or truth as shared across different languages. The view is similar to the disquotational theory.
The redundancy theory, or also known as the ‘deflationary view of truth’ fathered by Gottlob Frége and the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-30), who showed how the distinction between the semantic paradoses, such as that of the Liar, and Russell’s paradox, made unnecessary the ramified type theory of Principia Mathematica, and the resulting axiom of reducibility. By taking all the sentences affirmed in a scientific theory that use some terms e.g., quark, and to a considerable degree of replacing the term by a variable instead of saying that quarks have such-and-such properties, the Ramsey sentence says that there is something that has those properties. If the process is repeated for all of a group of the theoretical terms, the sentence gives ‘topic-neutral’ structure of the theory, but removes any implication that we know what the terms so treated denote. It leaves open the possibility of identifying the theoretical item with whatever it is that best fits the description provided. However, it was pointed out by the Cambridge mathematician Newman, that if the process is carried out for all except the logical bones of a theory, then by the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, the result will be interpretable, and the content of the theory may reasonably be felt to have been lost.
All the while, both Frége and Ramsey are agreed that the essential claim is that the predicate’ . . . is true’ does not have a sense, i.e., expresses no substantive or profound or explanatory concept that ought to be the topic of philosophical enquiry. The approach admits of different versions, but centres on the points (1) that ‘it is true that ‘p’ says no more nor less than ‘p’ (hence, redundancy): (2) that in less direct contexts, such as ‘everything he said was true’, or ‘all logical consequences of true propositions are true’, the predicate functions as a device enabling us to generalize than as an adjective or predicate describing the things he said, or the kinds of propositions that follow from true preposition. For example, the second ma y translate as ‘(∀p, q)(p & p ➞q ➞q)’ where there is no use of a notion of truth.
There are technical problems in interpreting all uses of the notion of truth in such ways, nevertheless, they are not generally felt to be insurmountable. The approach needs to explain away apparently substantive uses of the notion, such as ‘science aims at the truth’, or ‘truth is a norm governing discourse’. Postmodern writing frequently advocates that we must abandon such norms. Along with a discredited ‘objective’ conception of truth. Perhaps, we can have the norms even when objectivity is problematic, since they can be framed without mention of truth: Science wants it to be so that whatever science holds that ‘p’, then ‘p’. Discourse is to be regulated by the principle that it is wrong to assert ‘p’, when ‘not-p’.
Something that tends of something in addition of content, or coming by way to justify such a position can very well be more that in addition to several reasons, as to bring in or join of something might that there be more so as to a larger combination for us to consider the simplest formulation , is that the claim that expression of the form ‘S is true’ mean the same as expression of the form ‘S’. Some philosophers dislike the ideas of sameness of meaning, and if this I disallowed, then the claim is that the two forms are equivalent in any sense of equivalence that matters. This is, it makes no difference whether people say ‘Dogs bark’ id Tue, or whether they say, ‘dogs bark’. In the former representation of what they say of the sentence ‘Dogs bark’ is mentioned, but in the later it appears to be used, of the claim that the two are equivalent and needs careful formulation and defence. On the face of it someone might know that ‘Dogs bark’ is true without knowing what it means (for instance, if he kids in a list of acknowledged truths, although he does not understand English), and tis is different from knowing that dogs bark. Disquotational theories are usually presented as versions of the ‘redundancy theory of truth’.
The relationship between a set of premises and a conclusion when the conclusion follows from the premise,. Many philosophers identify this with it being logically impossible that the premises should all be true, yet the conclusion false. Others are sufficiently impressed by the paradoxes of strict implication to look for a stranger relation, which would distinguish between valid and invalid arguments within the sphere of necessary propositions. The seraph for a strange notion is the field of relevance logic.
From a systematic theoretical point of view, we may imagine the process of evolution of an empirical science to be a continuous process of induction. Theories are evolved and are expressed in short compass as statements of as large number of individual observations in the form of empirical laws, from which the general laws can be ascertained by comparison. Regarded in this way, the development of a science bears some resemblance to the compilation of a classified catalogue. It is , a it were, a purely empirical enterprise.
But this point of view by no means embraces the whole of the actual process, for it slurs over the important part played by intuition and deductive thought in the development of an exact science. As soon as a science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigators rather develops a system of thought which, in general, it is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a ‘theory’. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and is just here that the ‘truth’ of the theory lies.
Corresponding to the same complex of empirical data, there may be several theories, which differ from one another to a considerable extent. But as regards the deductions from the theories which are capable of being tested, the agreement between the theories may be so complete, that it becomes difficult to find any deductions in which the theories differ from each other. As an example, a case of general interest is available in the province of biology, in the Darwinian theory of the development of species by selection in the struggle for existence, and in the theory of development which is based on the hypophysis of the hereditary transmission of acquired characters. THE Origin of Species was principally successful in marshalling the evidence for evolution, than providing a convincing mechanisms for genetic change. And Darwin himself remained open to the search for additional mechanisms, while also remaining convinced that natural selection was at the hart of it. It was only with the later discovery of the gene as the unit of inheritance that the synthesis known as ‘neo-Darwinism’ became the orthodox theory of evolution in the life sciences.
In the 19th century the attempt to base ethical reasoning o the presumed facts about evolution, the movement is particularly associated with the English philosopher of evolution Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). The premise is that later elements in an evolutionary path are better than earlier ones: The application of this principle then requires seeing western society, laissez-faire capitalism, or some other object of approval, as more evolved than more ‘primitive’ social forms. Neither the principle nor the applications command much respect. The version of evolutionary ethics called ‘social Darwinism’ emphasises the struggle for natural selection, and draws the conclusion that we should glorify and assist such struggle, usually by enhancing competition and aggressive relations between people in society or between evolution and ethics has been re-thought in the light of biological discoveries concerning altruism and kin-selection.
Once again, the psychology proving attempts are founded to evolutionary principles, in which a variety of higher mental functions may be adaptations, forced in response to selection pressures on the human populations through evolutionary time. Candidates for such theorizing include material and paternal motivations, capacities for love and friendship, the development of language as a signalling system cooperative and aggressive , our emotional repertoire, our moral and reactions, including the disposition to detect and punish those who cheat on agreements or who ‘free-ride’ on =the work of others, our cognitive structures, nd many others. Evolutionary psychology goes hand-in-hand with neurophysiological evidence about the underlying circuitry in the brain which subserves the psychological mechanisms it claims to identify. The approach was foreshadowed by Darwin himself, and William James, as well as the sociology of E.O. Wilson. The term of use are applied, more or less aggressively, especially to explanations offered in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.
Another assumption that is frequently used to legitimate the real existence of forces associated with the invisible hand in neoclassical economics derives from Darwin’s view of natural selection as a war-like competing between atomized organisms in the struggle for survival. In natural selection as we now understand it, cooperation appears to exist in complementary relation to competition. It is complementary relationships between such results that are emergent self-regulating properties that are greater than the sum of parts and that serve to perpetuate the existence of the whole.
According to E.O Wilson, the ‘human mind evolved to believe in the gods’ and people ‘need a sacred narrative’ to have a sense of higher purpose. Yet it id also clear that the ‘gods’ in his view are merely human constructs and, therefore, there is no basis for dialogue between the world-view of science and religion. ‘Science for its part’, said Wilson, ‘will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of the moral an religious sentiments. The eventual result of the competition between each of the other, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself.
Man has come to the threshold of a state of consciousness, regarding his nature and his relationship to te Cosmos, in terms that reflect ‘reality’. By using the processes of nature as metaphor, to describe the forces by which it operates upon and within Man, we come as close to describing ‘reality’ as we can within the limits of our comprehension. Men will be very uneven in their capacity for such understanding, which, naturally, differs for different ages and cultures, and develops and changes over the course of time. For these reasons it will always be necessary to use metaphor and myth to provide ‘comprehensible’ guides to living. In thus way. Man’s imagination and intellect play vital roles on his survival and evolution.
Since so much of life both inside and outside the study is concerned with finding explanations of things, it would be desirable to have a concept of what counts as a good explanation from bad. Under the influence of ‘logical positivist’ approaches to the structure of science, it was felt that the criterion ought to be found in a definite logical relationship between the ‘exlanans’ (that which does the explaining) and the explanandum (that which is to be explained). The approach culminated in the covering law model of explanation, or the view that an event is explained when it is subsumed under a law of nature, that is, its occurrence is deducible from the law plus a set of initial conditions. A law would itself be explained by being deduced from a higher-order or covering law, in the way that Johannes Kepler(or Keppler, 1571-1630), was by way of planetary motion that the laws were deducible from Newton’s laws of motion. The covering law model may be adapted to include explanation by showing that something is probable, given a statistical law. Questions for the covering law model include querying for the covering law are necessary to explanation (we explain whether everyday events without overtly citing laws): Querying whether they are sufficient (it ma y not explain an event just to say that it is an example of the kind of thing that always happens). And querying whether a purely logical relationship is adapted to capturing the requirements we make of explanations. These may include, for instance, that we have a ‘feel’ for what is happening, or that the explanation proceeds in terms of things that are familiar to us or unsurprising, or that we can give a model of what is going on, and none of these notions is captured in a purely logical approach. Recent work, therefore, has tended to stress the contextual and pragmatic elements in requirements for explanation, so that what counts as good explanation given one set of concerns may not do so given another.
The argument to the best explanation is the view that once we can select the best of any in something in explanations of an event, then we are justified in accepting it, or even believing it. The principle needs qualification, since something it is unwise to ignore the antecedent improbability of a hypothesis which would explain the data better than others, e.g., the best explanation of a coin falling heads 530 times in 1,000 tosses might be that it is biassed to give a probability of heads of 0.53 but it might be more sensible to suppose that it is fair, or to suspend judgement.
In a philosophy of language is considered as the general attempt to understand the components of a working language, the relationship the understanding speaker has to its elements, and the relationship they bear to the world. The subject therefore embraces the traditional division of semiotic into syntax, semantics, an d pragmatics. The philosophy of language thus mingles with the philosophy of mind, since it needs an account of what it is in our understanding that enables us to use language. It so mingles with the metaphysics of truth and the relationship between sign and object. Much as much is that the philosophy in the 20th century, has been informed by the belief that philosophy of language is the fundamental basis of all philosophical problems, in that language is the distinctive exercise of mind, and the distinctive way in which we give shape to metaphysical beliefs. Particular topics will include the problems of logical form,. And the basis of the division between syntax and semantics, as well as problems of understanding the number and nature of specifically semantic relationships such as meaning, reference, predication, and quantification. Pragmatics include that of speech acts, while problems of rule following and the indeterminacy of translation infect philosophies of both pragmatics and semantics.
On this conception, to understand a sentence is to know its truth-conditions, and, yet, in a distinctive way the conception has remained central that those who offer opposing theories characteristically define their position by reference to it. The Concepcion of meaning s truth-conditions need not and should not be advanced as being in itself as complete account of meaning. For instance, one who understands a language must have some idea of the range of speech acts contextually performed by the various types of sentence in the language, and must have some idea of the insufficiencies of various kinds of speech act. The claim of the theorist of truth-conditions should rather be targeted on the notion of content: If indicative sentence differ in what they strictly and literally say, then this difference is fully accounted for by the difference in the truth-conditions.
The meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its constituent. This is just as a sentence of what it is for an expression to be semantically complex. It is one of the initial attractions of the conception of meaning truth-conditions tat it permits a smooth and satisfying account of the way in which the meaning of s complex expression is a function of the meaning of its constituents. On the truth-conditional conception, to give the meaning of an expression is to state the contribution it makes to the truth-conditions of sentences in which it occurs. For singular terms - proper names, indexical, and certain pronouns - this is done by stating the reference of the terms in question. For predicates, it is done either by stating the conditions under which the predicate is true of arbitrary objects, or by stating the conditions under which arbitrary atomic sentences containing it are true. The meaning of a sentence-forming operator is given by stating its contribution to the truth-conditions of as complex sentence, as a function of he semantic values of the sentences on which it operates.
The theorist of truth conditions should insist that not every true statement about the reference of an expression is fit to be an axiom in a meaning-giving theory of truth for a language, such is the axiom: ‘London’ refers to the city in which there was a huge fire in 1666, is a true statement about the reference of ‘London’. It is a consequent of a theory which substitutes this axiom for no different a term than of our simple truth theory that ‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if the city in which there was a huge fire in 1666 is beautiful. Since a subject can understand the name ‘London’ without knowing that last-mentioned truth condition, this replacement axiom is not fit to be an axiom in a meaning-specifying truth theory. It is, of course, incumbent on a theorised meaning of truth conditions, to state in a way which does not presuppose any previous, non-truth conditional conception of meaning
Among the many challenges facing the theorist of truth conditions, two are particularly salient and fundamental. First, the theorist has to answer the charge of triviality or vacuity, second, the theorist must offer an account of what it is for a person’s language to be truly describable by as semantic theory containing a given semantic axiom.
Since the content of a claim that the sentence ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true amounts to no more than the claim that Paris is beautiful, we can trivially describers understanding a sentence, if we wish, as knowing its truth-conditions, but this gives us no substantive account of understanding whatsoever. Something other than grasp of truth conditions must provide the substantive account. The charge rests upon what has been called the redundancy theory of truth, the theory which, somewhat more discriminatingly. Horwich calls the minimal theory of truth. Its conceptual representation that the concept of truth is exhausted by the fact that it conforms to the equivalence principle, the principle that for any proposition ‘p’, it is true that ‘p’ if and only if ‘p’. Many different philosophical theories of truth will, with suitable qualifications, accept that equivalence principle. The distinguishing feature of the minimal theory is its claim that the equivalence principle exhausts the notion of truth. It is now widely accepted, both by opponents and supporters of truth conditional theories of meaning, that it is inconsistent to accept both minimal theory of ruth and a truth conditional account of meaning. If the claim that the sentence ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true is exhausted by its equivalence to the claim that Paris is beautiful, it is circular to try of its truth conditions. The minimal theory of truth has been endorsed by the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Plumpton Ramsey (1903-30), and the English philosopher Jules Ayer, the later Wittgenstein, Quine, Strawson. Horwich and - confusing and inconsistently if this article is correct - Frége himself. but is the minimal theory correct?
The minimal theory treats instances of the equivalence principle as definitional of truth for a given sentence, but in fact, it seems that each instance of the equivalence principle can itself be explained. The truths from which such an instance as: ‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if London is beautiful. This would be a pseudo-explanation if the fact that ‘London’ refers to London consists in part in the fact that ‘London is beautiful’ has the truth-condition it does. But it is very implausible, it is, after all, possible to understand the name ‘London’ without understanding the predicate ‘is beautiful’.
Sometimes, however, the counterfactual conditional is known as subjunctive conditionals, insofar as a counterfactual conditional is a conditional of the form ‘if p were to happen q would’, or ‘if p were to have happened q would have happened’, where the supposition of ‘p’ is contrary to the known fact that ‘not-p’. Such assertions are nevertheless, use=ful ‘if you broken the bone, the X-ray would have looked different’, or ‘if the reactor were to fail, this mechanism wold click in’ are important truths, even when we know that the bone is not broken or are certain that the reactor will not fail. It is arguably distinctive of laws of nature that yield counterfactuals (‘if the metal were to be heated, it would expand’), whereas accidentally true generalizations may not. It is clear that counterfactuals cannot be represented by the material implication of the propositional calculus, since that conditionals comes out true whenever ‘p’ is false, so there would be no division between true and false counterfactuals.
Although the subjunctive form indicates a counterfactual, in many contexts it does not seem to matter whether we use a subjunctive form, or a simple conditional form: ‘If you run out of water, you will be in trouble’ seems equivalent to ‘if you were to run out of water, you would be in trouble’, in other contexts there is a big difference: ‘If Oswald did not kill Kennedy, someone else did’ is clearly true, whereas ‘if Oswald had not killed Kennedy, someone would have’ is most probably false.
The best-known modern treatment of counterfactuals is that of David Lewis, which evaluates them as true or false according to whether ‘q’ is true in the ‘most similar’ possible worlds to ours in which ‘p’ is true. The similarity-ranking this approach needs has proved controversial, particularly since it may need to presuppose some notion of the same laws of nature, whereas art of the interest in counterfactuals is that they promise to illuminate that notion. There is a growing awareness tat the classification of conditionals is an extremely tricky business, and categorizing them as counterfactuals or not be of limited use.
The pronouncing of any conditional; preposition of the form ‘if p then q’. The condition hypothesizes, ‘p’. Its called the antecedent of the conditional, and ‘q’ the consequent. Various kinds of conditional have been distinguished. The weaken in that of material implication, merely telling us that with not-p. or q. stronger conditionals include elements of modality, corresponding to the thought that ‘if p is true then q must be true’. Ordinary language is very flexible in its use of the conditional form, and there is controversy whether, yielding different kinds of conditionals with different meanings, or pragmatically, in which case there should be one basic meaning which case there should be one basic meaning, with surface differences arising from other implicatures.
We now turn to a philosophy of meaning and truth, for which it is especially associated with the American philosopher of science and of language (1839-1914), and the American psychologist philosopher William James (1842-1910), wherefore the study in Pragmatism is given to various formulations by both writers, but the core is the belief that the meaning of a doctrine is the same as the practical effects of adapting it. Peirce interpreted of theocratical sentence ids only that of a corresponding practical maxim (telling us what to do in some circumstance). In James the position issues in a theory of truth, notoriously allowing that belief, including for example, belief in God, are the widest sense of the works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word. On James’s view almost any belief might be respectable, and even rue, provided it works (but working is no simple matter for James). The apparently subjectivist consequences of tis were wildly assailed by Russell (1872-1970), Moore (1873-1958), and others in the early years of the 20 century. This led to a division within pragmatism between those such as the American educator John Dewey (1859-1952), whose humanistic conception of practice remains inspired by science, and the more idealistic route that especially by the English writer F.C.S. Schiller (1864-1937), embracing the doctrine that our cognitive efforts and human needs actually transform the reality that we seek to describe. James often writes as if he sympathizes with this development. For instance, in The Meaning of Truth (1909), he considers the hypothesis that other people have no minds (dramatized in the sexist idea of an ‘automatic sweetheart’ or female zombie) and remarks hat the hypothesis would not work because it would not satisfy our egoistic craving for the recognition and admiration of others. The implication that this is what makes it true that the other persons have minds in the disturbing part.
Modern pragmatists such as the American philosopher and critic Richard Rorty (1931-) and some writings of the philosopher Hilary Putnam (1925-) who have usually tried to dispense with an account of truth and concentrate, as perhaps James should have done, upon the nature of belief and its relations with human attitude, emotion, and need. The driving motivation of pragmatism is the idea that belief in the truth on te one hand must have a close connection with success in action on the other. One way of cementing the connection is found in the idea that natural selection must have adapted us to be cognitive creatures because belief have effects, as they work. Pragmatism can be found in Kant’s doctrine of the primary of practical over pure reason, and continues to play an influential role in the theory of meaning and of truth.
In case of fact, the philosophy of mind is the modern successor to behaviourism, as do the functionalism that its early advocates were Putnam (1926-) and Sellars (1912-89), and its guiding principle is that we can define mental states by a triplet of relations they have on other mental stares, what effects they have on behaviour. The definition need not take the form of a simple analysis, but if w could write down the totality of axioms, or postdates, or platitudes that govern our theories about what things of other mental states, and our theories about what things are apt to cause (for example), a belief state, what effects it would have on a variety of other mental states, and what effects it is likely to have on behaviour, then we would have done all tat is needed to make the state a proper theoretical notion. It could be implicitly defied by these theses. Functionalism is often compared with descriptions of a computer, since according to mental descriptions correspond to a description of a machine in terms of software, that remains silent about the underlaying hardware or ‘realization’ of the program the machine is running. The principle advantage of functionalism include its fit with the way we know of mental states both of ourselves and others, which is via their effects on behaviour and other mental states. As with behaviourism, critics charge that structurally complex items tat do not bear mental states might nevertheless, imitate the functions that are cited. According to this criticism functionalism is too generous and would count too many things as having minds. It is also queried whether functionalism is too paradoxical, able to see mental similarities only when there is causal similarity, when our actual practices of interpretations enable us to ascribe thoughts and desires to different from our own, it may then seem as though beliefs and desires can be ‘variably realized’ causal architecture, just as much as they can be in different neurophysiological states.
The philosophical movement of Pragmatism had a major impact on American culture from the late 19th century to the present. Pragmatism calls for ideas and theories to be tested in practice, by assessing whether acting upon the idea or theory produces desirable or undesirable results. According to pragmatists, all claims about truth, knowledge, morality, and politics must be tested in this way. Pragmatism has been critical of traditional Western philosophy, especially the notion that there are absolute truths and absolute values. Although pragmatism was popular for a time in France, England, and Italy, most observers believe that it encapsulates an American faith in know-how and practicality and an equally American distrust of abstract theories and ideologies.
In mentioning the American psychologist and philosopher we find William James, who helped to popularize the philosophy of pragmatism with his book Pragmatism: A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking (1907). Influenced by a theory of meaning and verification developed for scientific hypotheses by American philosopher C. S. Peirce, James held that truth is what works, or has good experimental results. In a related theory, James argued the existence of God is partly verifiable because many people derive benefits from believing.
The Association for International Conciliation first published William James’s pacifist statement, 'The Moral Equivalent of War', in 1910. James, a highly respected philosopher and psychologist, was one of the founders of pragmatism - a philosophical movement holding that ideas and theories must be tested in practice to assess their worth. James hoped to find a way to convince men with a long-standing history of pride and glory in war to evolve beyond the need for bloodshed and to develop other avenues for conflict resolution. Spelling and grammar represent standards of the time.
Pragmatists regard all theories and institutions as tentative hypotheses and solutions. For this reason they believed that efforts to improve society, through such means as education or politics, must be geared toward problem solving and must be ongoing. Through their emphasis on connecting theory to practice, pragmatist thinkers attempted to transform all areas of philosophy, from metaphysics to ethics and political philosophy.
Pragmatism sought a middle ground between traditional ideas about the nature of reality and radical theories of nihilism and irrationalism, which had become popular in Europe in the late 19th century. Traditional metaphysics assumed that the world has a fixed, intelligible structure and that human beings can know absolute or objective truths about the world and about what constitutes moral behaviour. Nihilism and irrationalism, on the other hand, denied those very assumptions and their certitude. Pragmatists today still try to steer a middle course between contemporary offshoots of these two extremes.
The ideas of the pragmatists were considered revolutionary when they first appeared. To some critics, pragmatism’s refusal to affirm any absolutes carried negative implications for society. For example, pragmatists do not believe that a single absolute idea of goodness or justice exists, but rather that these concepts are changeable and depend on the context in which they are being discussed. The absence of these absolutes, critics feared, could result in a decline in moral standards. The pragmatists’ denial of absolutes, moreover, challenged the foundations of religion, government, and schools of thought. As a result, pragmatism influenced developments in psychology, sociology, education, semiotics (the study of signs and symbols), and scientific method, as well as philosophy, cultural criticism, and social reform movements. Various political groups have also drawn on the assumptions of pragmatism, from the progressive movements of the early 20th century to later experiments in social reform.
Pragmatism is best understood in its historical and cultural context. It arose during the late 19th century, a period of rapid scientific advancement typified by the theories of British biologist Charles Darwin, whose theories suggested to many thinkers that humanity and society are in a perpetual state of progress. During this same period a decline in traditional religious beliefs and values accompanied the industrialization and material progress of the time. In consequence it became necessary to rethink fundamental ideas about values, religion, science, community, and individuality.
The three most important pragmatists are American philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Peirce was primarily interested in scientific method and mathematics; his objective was to infuse scientific thinking into philosophy and society, and he believed that human comprehension of reality was becoming ever greater and that human communities were becoming increasingly progressive. Peirce developed pragmatism as a theory of meaning - in particular, the meaning of concepts used in science. The meaning of the concept 'brittle', for example, is given by the observed consequences or properties that objects called 'brittle' exhibit. For Peirce, the only rational way to increase knowledge was to form mental habits that would test ideas through observation, experimentation, or what he called inquiry. Many philosophers known as logical positivists, a group of philosophers who have been influenced by Peirce, believed that our evolving species was fated to get ever closer to Truth. Logical positivists emphasize the importance of scientific verification, rejecting the assertion of positivism that personal experience is the basis of true knowledge.
James moved pragmatism in directions that Peirce strongly disliked. He generalized Peirce’s doctrines to encompass all concepts, beliefs, and actions; he also applied pragmatist ideas to truth as well as to meaning. James was primarily interested in showing how systems of morality, religion, and faith could be defended in a scientific civilization. He argued that sentiment, as well as logic, is crucial to rationality and that the great issues of life - morality and religious belief, for example - are leaps of faith. As such, they depend upon what he called 'the will to believe' and not merely on scientific evidence, which can never tell us what to do or what is worthwhile. Critics charged James with relativism (the belief that values depend on specific situations) and with crass expediency for proposing that if an idea or action works the way one intends, it must be right. But James can more accurately be described as a pluralist - someone who believes the world to be far too complex for any one philosophy to explain everything.
Dewey’s philosophy can be described as a version of philosophical naturalism, which regards human experience, intelligence, and communities as ever-evolving mechanisms. Using their experience and intelligence, Dewey believed, human beings can solve problems, including social problems, through inquiry. For Dewey, naturalism led to the idea of a democratic society that allows all members to acquire social intelligence and progress both as individuals and as communities. Dewey held that traditional ideas about knowledge, truth, and values, in which absolutes are assumed, are incompatible with a broadly Darwinian world-view in which individuals and society are progressing. In consequence, he felt that these traditional ideas must be discarded or revised. Indeed, for pragmatists, everything people know and do depends on a historical context and is thus tentative rather than absolute.
Many followers and critics of Dewey believe he advocated elitism and social engineering in his philosophical stance. Others think of him as a kind of romantic humanist. Both tendencies are evident in Dewey’s writings, although he aspired to synthesize the two realms.
The pragmatist tradition was revitalized in the 1980s by American philosopher Richard Rorty, who has faced similar charges of elitism for his belief in the relativism of values and his emphasis on the role of the individual in attaining knowledge. Interest has renewed in the classic pragmatists - Pierce, James, and Dewey - have an alternative to Rorty’s interpretation of the tradition.
The Philosophy of Mind, is the branch of philosophy that considers mental phenomena such as sensation, perception, thought, belief, desire, intention, memory, emotion, imagination, and purposeful action. These phenomena, which can be broadly grouped as thoughts and experiences, are features of human beings; many of them are also found in other animals. Philosophers are interested in the nature of each of these phenomena as well as their relationships to one another and to physical phenomena, such as motion.
The most famous exponent of dualism was the French philosopher René Descartes, who maintained that body and mind are radically different entities and that they are the only fundamental substances in the universe. Dualism, however, does not show how these basic entities are connected.
In the work of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the universe is held to consist of an infinite number of distinct substances, or monads. This view is pluralistic in the sense that it proposes the existence of many separate entities, and it is monistic in its assertion that each monad reflects within itself the entire universe.
Other philosophers have held that knowledge of reality is not derived from a priori principles, but is obtained only from experience. This type of metaphysics is called empiricism. Still another school of philosophy has maintained that, although an ultimate reality does exist, it is altogether inaccessible to human knowledge, which is necessarily subjective because it is confined to states of mind. Knowledge is therefore not a representation of external reality, but merely a reflection of human perceptions. This view is known as skepticism or agnosticism in respect to the soul and the reality of God.
The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant published his influential work The Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Three years later, he expanded on his study of the modes of thinking with an essay entitled 'What is Enlightenment'? In this 1784 essay, Kant challenged readers to 'dare to know', arguing that it was not only a civic but also a moral duty to exercise the fundamental freedoms of thought and expression.
Several major viewpoints were combined in the work of Kant, who developed a distinctive critical philosophy called transcendentalism. His philosophy is agnostic in that it denies the possibility of a strict knowledge of ultimate reality; it is empirical in that it affirms that all knowledge arises from experience and is true of objects of actual and possible experience; and it is rationalistic in that it maintains the a priori character of the structural principles of this empirical knowledge.
These principles are held to be necessary and universal in their application to experience, for in Kant's view the mind furnishes the archetypal forms and categories (space, time, causality, substance, and relation) to its sensations, and these categories are logically anterior to experience, although manifested only in experience. Their logical anteriority to experience makes these categories or structural principles transcendental; they transcend all experience, both actual and possible. Although these principles determine all experience, they do not in any way affect the nature of things in themselves. The knowledge of which these principles are the necessary conditions must not be considered, therefore, as constituting a revelation of things as they are in themselves. This knowledge concerns things only insofar as they appear to human perception or as they can be apprehended by the senses. The argument by which Kant sought to fix the limits of human knowledge within the framework of experience and to demonstrate the inability of the human mind to penetrate beyond experience strictly by knowledge to the realm of ultimate reality constitutes the critical feature of his philosophy, giving the key word to the titles of his three leading treatises, Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment. In the system propounded in these works, Kant sought also to reconcile science and religion in a world of two levels, comprising noumena, objects conceived by reason although not perceived by the senses, and phenomena, things as they appear to the senses and are accessible to material study. He maintained that, because God, freedom, and human immortality are noumenal realities, these concepts are understood through moral faith rather than through scientific knowledge. With the continuous development of science, the expansion of metaphysics to include scientific knowledge and methods became one of the major objectives of metaphysicians.
Some of Kant's most distinguished followers, notably Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Schleiermacher, negated Kant's criticism in their elaborations of his transcendental metaphysics by denying the Kantian conception of the thing-in-itself. They thus developed an absolute idealism in opposition to Kant's critical transcendentalism.
Since the formation of the hypothesis of absolute idealism, the development of metaphysics has resulted in as many types of metaphysical theory as existed in pre-Kantian philosophy, despite Kant's contention that he had fixed definitely the limits of philosophical speculation. Notable among these later metaphysical theories are radical empiricism, or pragmatism, a native American form of metaphysics expounded by Charles Sanders Peirce, developed by William James, and adapted as instrumentalism by John Dewey; voluntarism, the foremost exponents of which are the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and the American philosopher Josiah Royce; phenomenalism, as it is exemplified in the writings of the French philosopher Auguste Comte and the British philosopher Herbert Spencer; emergent evolution, or creative evolution, originated by the French philosopher Henri Bergson; and the philosophy of the organism, elaborated by the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. The salient doctrines of pragmatism are that the chief function of thought is to guide action, that the meaning of concepts is to be sought in their practical applications, and that truth should be tested by the practical effects of belief; according to instrumentalism, ideas are instruments of action, and their truth is determined by their role in human experience. In the theory of voluntarism the will is postulated as the supreme manifestation of reality. The exponents of phenomenalism, who are sometimes called positivists, contend that everything can be analysed in terms of actual or possible occurrences, or phenomena, and that anything that cannot be analysed in this manner cannot be understood. In emergent or creative evolution, the evolutionary process is characterized as spontaneous and unpredictable rather than mechanistically determined. The philosophy of the organism combines an evolutionary stress on constant process with a metaphysical theory of God, the eternal objects, and creativity.
In the 20th century the validity of metaphysical thinking has been disputed by the logical positivists (see Analytic and Linguistic Philosophy; Positivism) and by the so-called dialectical materialism of the Marxists. The basic principle maintained by the logical positivists is the verifiability theory of meaning. According to this theory a sentence has factual meaning only if it meets the test of observation. Logical positivists argue that metaphysical expressions such as 'Nothing exists except material particles' and 'Everything is part of one all-encompassing spirit' cannot be tested empirically. Therefore, according to the verifiability theory of meaning, these expressions have no factual cognitive meaning, although they can have an emotive meaning relevant to human hopes and feelings.
The dialectical materialists assert that the mind is conditioned by and reflects material reality. Therefore, speculations that conceive of constructs of the mind as having any other than material reality are themselves unreal and can result only in delusion. To these assertions metaphysicians reply by denying the adequacy of the verifiability theory of meaning and of material perception as the standard of reality. Both logical positivism and dialectical materialism, they argue, conceal metaphysical assumptions, for example, that everything is observable or at least connected with something observable and that the mind has no distinctive life of its own. In the philosophical movement known as existentialism, thinkers have contended that the questions of the nature of being and of the individual's relationship to it are extremely important and meaningful in terms of human life. The investigation of these questions is therefore considered valid whether or not its results can be verified objectively.
Since the 1950s the problems of systematic analytical metaphysics have been studied in Britain by Stuart Newton Hampshire and Peter Frederick Strawson, the former concerned, in the manner of Spinoza, with the relationship between thought and action, and the latter, in the manner of Kant, with describing the major categories of experience as they are embedded in language. In the U.S. metaphysics has been pursued much in the spirit of positivism by Wilfred Stalker Sellars and Willard Van Orman Quine. Sellars has sought to express metaphysical questions in linguistic terms, and Quine has attempted to determine whether the structure of language commits the philosopher to asserting the existence of any entities whatever and, if so, what kind. In these new formulations the issues of metaphysics and ontology remain vital.
n the 17th century, French philosopher René Descartes proposed that only two substances ultimately exist; mind and body. Yet, if the two are entirely distinct, as Descartes believed, how can one substance interact with the other? How, for example, is the intention of a human mind able to cause movement in the person’s limbs? The issue of the interaction between mind and body is known in philosophy as the mind-body problem.
Many fields other than philosophy share an interest in the nature of mind. In religion, the nature of mind is connected with various conceptions of the soul and the possibility of life after death. In many abstract theories of mind there is considerable overlap between philosophy and the science of psychology. Once part of philosophy, psychology split off and formed a separate branch of knowledge in the 19th century. While psychology uses scientific experiments to study mental states and events, philosophy uses reasoned arguments and thought experiments in seeking to understand the concepts that underlie mental phenomena. Also influenced by philosophy of mind is the field of artificial intelligence (AI), which endeavours to develop computers that can mimic what the human mind can do. Cognitive science attempts to integrate the understanding of mind provided by philosophy, psychology, AI, and other disciplines. Finally, all of these fields benefit from the detailed understanding of the brain that has emerged through neuroscience in the late 20th century.
Philosophers use the characteristics of inward accessibility, subjectivity, intentionality, goal-directedness, creativity and freedom, and consciousness to distinguish mental phenomena from physical phenomena.
Perhaps the most important characteristic of mental phenomena is that they are inwardly accessible, or available to us through introspection. We each know our own minds - our sensations, thoughts, memories, desires, and fantasies - in a direct sense, by internal reflection. We also know our mental states and mental events in a way that no one else can. In other words, we have privileged access to our own mental states.
Certain mental phenomena, those we generally call experiences, have a subjective nature - that is, they have certain characteristics we become aware of when we reflect. For instance, there is ‘something it is like’ to feel pain, or have an itch, or see something red. These characteristics are subjective in that they are accessible to the subject of the experience, the person who has the experience, but not to others.
Other mental phenomena, which we broadly refer to as thoughts, have a characteristic philosophers call intentionality. Intentional thoughts are about other thoughts or objects, which are represented as having certain properties or as being related to one another in a certain way. The belief that California is west of Nevada, for example, is about California and Nevada and represents the former as being west of the latter. Although we have privileged access to our intentional states, many of them do not seem to have a subjective nature, at least not in the way that experiences do.
A number of mental phenomena appear to be connected to one another as elements in an intelligent, goal-directed system. The system works as follows: First, our sense organs are stimulated by events in our environment; next, by virtue of these stimulations, we perceive things about the external world; finally, we use this information, as well as information we have remembered or inferred, to guide our actions in ways that further our goals. Goal-directedness seems to accompany only mental phenomena.
Another important characteristic of mind, especially of human minds, is the capacity for choice and imagination. Rather than automatically converting past influences into future actions, individual minds are capable of exhibiting creativity and freedom. For instance, we can imagine things we have not experienced and can act in ways that no one expects or could predict.
Mental phenomena are conscious, and consciousness may be the closest term we have for describing what is special about mental phenomena. Minds are sometimes referred to as consciousness, yet it is difficult to describe exactly what consciousness is. Although consciousness is closely related to inward accessibility and subjectivity, these very characteristics seem to hinder us in reaching an objective scientific understanding of it.
Although philosophers have written about mental phenomena since ancient times, the philosophy of mind did not garner much attention until the work of French philosopher René Descartes in the 17th century. Descartes’s work represented a turning point in thinking about mind by making a strong distinction between bodies and minds, or the physical and the mental. This duality between mind and body, known as Cartesian dualism, has posed significant problems for philosophy ever since.
Descartes believed there are two basic kinds of things in the world, a belief known as substance dualism. For Descartes, the principles of existence for these two groups of things - bodies and minds - are completely different from one another: Bodies exist by being extended in space, while minds exist by being conscious. According to Descartes, nothing can be done to give a body thought and consciousness. No matter how we shape a body or combine it with other bodies, we cannot turn the body into a mind, a thing that is conscious, because being conscious is not a way of being extended.
For Descartes, a person consists of a human body and a human mind causally interacting with one another. For example, the intentions of a human being may cause that person’s limbs to move. In this way, the mind can affect the body. In addition, the sense organs of a human being may be affected by light, pressure, or sound, external sources which in turn affect the brain, affecting mental states. Thus the body may affect the mind. Exactly how mind can affect body, and vice versa, is a central issue in the philosophy of mind, and is known as the mind-body problem. According to Descartes, this interaction of mind and body is peculiarly intimate. Unlike the interaction between a pilot and his ship, the connection between mind and body more closely resembles two substances that have been thoroughly mixed together.
In response to the mind-body problem arising from Descartes’s theory of substance dualism, a number of philosophers have advocated various forms of substance monism, the doctrine that there is ultimately just one kind of thing in reality. In the 18th century, Irish philosopher George Berkeley claimed there were no material objects in the world, only minds and their ideas. Berkeley thought that talk about physical objects was simply a way of organizing the flow of experience. Near the turn of the 20th century, American psychologist and philosopher William James proposed another form of substance monism. James claimed that experience is the basic stuff from which both bodies and minds are constructed.
Most philosophers of mind today are substance monists of a third type: They are materialists who believe that everything in the world is basically material, or a physical object. Among materialists, there is still considerable disagreement about the status of mental properties, which are conceived as properties of bodies or brains. Materialists who are property dualists - whereby, Cartesian dualism is the cluster of views about mind and body associated with Descartes. Other dualisms include those of form and conduct, of concepts and intuitions, reason and passion, freedom and causation, being and becoming. In every case there are philosophers who insist tat the way forwards is to transcend these dualisms, wherefore that mental properties are an additional kind of property or attribute, not reducible to physical properties. Property dualists have the problem of explaining how such properties can fit into the world envisaged by modern physical science, according to which there are physical explanations for all things.
Materialists who are property monists believe that there is ultimately only one type of property, although they disagree on whether or not mental properties exist in material form. Some property monists, known as reductive materialists, hold that mental properties exist simply as a subset of relatively complex and the nonbasicity of physical properties of the brain. Reductive materialists have the problem of explaining how the physical states of the brain can be inwardly accessible and have a subjective character, as mental states do. Other property monists, known as eliminative materialists, consider the whole category of mental properties to be a mistake. According to them, mental properties should be treated as discredited postulates of an outmoded theory. Eliminative materialism is difficult for most people to accept, since we seem to have direct knowledge of our own mental phenomena by introspection and because we use the general principles we understand about mental phenomena to predict and explain the behaviour of others.
Philosophy of mind concerns itself with a number of specialized problems. In addition to the mind-body problem, important issues include those of personal identity, immortality, and artificial intelligence.
During much of Western history, the mind has been identified with the soul as presented in Christian theology. According to Christianity, the soul is the source of a person’s identity and is usually regarded as immaterial; thus it is capable of enduring after the death of the body. Descartes’s conception of the mind as a separate, nonmaterial substance fits well with this understanding of the soul. In Descartes’s view, we are aware of our bodies only as the cause of sensations and other mental phenomena. Consequently our personal essence is composed more fundamentally of mind and the preservation of the mind after death would constitute our continued existence.
The mind conceived by materialist forms of substance monism does not fit as neatly with this traditional concept of the soul. With materialism, once a physical body is destroyed, nothing enduring remains. Some philosophers think that a concept of personal identity can be constructed that permits the possibility of life after death without appealing to separate immaterial substances. Following in the tradition of 17th-century British philosopher John Locke, these philosophers propose that a person consists of a stream of mental events linked by memory. It is these links of memory, rather than a single underlying substance, that provides the unity of a single consciousness through time. Immortality is conceivable if we think of these memory links as connecting a later consciousness in heaven with an earlier one on earth.
The field of artificial intelligence also raises interesting questions for the philosophy of mind. People have designed machines that mimic or model many aspects of human intelligence, and there are robots currently in use whose behaviour is described in terms of goals, beliefs, and perceptions. Such machines are capable of behaviour that, were it exhibited by a human being, would surely be taken to be free and creative. As an example, in 1996 an IBM computer named Deep Blue won a chess game against Russian world champion Garry Kasparov under international match regulations. Moreover, it is possible to design robots that have some sort of privileged access to their internal states. Philosophers disagree over whether such robots truly think or simply appear to think and whether such robots should be considered to be conscious
Dualism, in philosophy, the theory that the universe is explicable only as a whole composed of two distinct and mutually irreducible elements. In Platonic philosophy the ultimate dualism is between 'being' and 'nonbeing' - that is, between ideas and matter. In the 17th century, dualism took the form of belief in two fundamental substances: mind and matter. French philosopher René Descartes, whose interpretation of the universe exemplifies this belief, was the first to emphasize the irreconcilable difference between thinking substance (mind) and extended substance (matter). The difficulty created by this view was to explain how mind and matter interact, as they apparently do in human experience. This perplexity caused some Cartesians to deny entirely any interaction between the two. They asserted that mind and matter are inherently incapable of affecting each other, and that any reciprocal action between the two is caused by God, who, on the occasion of a change in one, produces a corresponding change in the other. Other followers of Descartes abandoned dualism in favour of monism.
In the 20th century, reaction against the monistic aspects of the philosophy of idealism has to some degree revived dualism. One of the most interesting defences of dualism is that of Anglo-American psychologist William McDougall, who divided the universe into spirit and matter and maintained that good evidence, both psychological and biological, indicates the spiritual basis of physiological processes. French philosopher Henri Bergson in his great philosophic work Matter and Memory likewise took a dualistic position, defining matter as what we perceive with our senses and possessing in itself the qualities that we perceive in it, such as colour and resistance. Mind, on the other hand, reveals itself as memory, the faculty of storing up the past and utilizing it for modifying our present actions, which otherwise would be merely mechanical. In his later writings, however, Bergson abandoned dualism and came to regard matter as an arrested manifestation of the same vital impulse that composes life and mind.
Dualism, in philosophy, the theory that the universe is explicable only as a whole composed of two distinct and mutually irreducible elements. In Platonic philosophy the ultimate dualism is between 'being' and 'nonbeing - that is, between ideas and matter. In the 17th century, dualism took the form of belief in two fundamental substances: mind and matter. French philosopher René Descartes, whose interpretation of the universe exemplifies this belief, was the first to emphasize the irreconcilable difference between thinking substance (mind) and extended substance (matter). The difficulty created by this view was to explain how mind and matter interact, as they apparently do in human experience. This perplexity caused some Cartesians to deny entirely any interaction between the two. They asserted that mind and matter are inherently incapable of affecting each other, and that any reciprocal action between the two is caused by God, who, on the occasion of a change in one, produces a corresponding change in the other. Other followers of Descartes abandoned dualism in favour of monism.
In the 20th century, reaction against the monistic aspects of the philosophy of idealism has to some degree revived dualism. One of the most interesting defences of dualism is that of Anglo-American psychologist William McDougall, who divided the universe into spirit and matter and maintained that good evidence, both psychological and biological, indicates the spiritual basis of physiological processes. French philosopher Henri Bergson in his great philosophic work Matter and Memory likewise took a dualistic position, defining matter as what we perceive with our senses and possessing in itself the qualities that we perceive in it, such as colour and resistance. Mind, on the other hand, reveals itself as memory, the faculty of storing up the past and utilizing it for modifying our present actions, which otherwise would be merely mechanical. In his later writings, however, Bergson abandoned dualism and came to regard matter as an arrested manifestation of the same vital impulse that composes life and mind.
For many people understanding the place of mind in nature is the greatest philosophical problem. Mind is often though to be the last domain that stubbornly resists scientific understanding and philosophers defer over whether they find that cause for celebration or scandal. The mind-body problem in the modern era was given its definitive shape by Descartes, although the dualism that he espoused is in some form whatever there is a religious or philosophical tradition there is a religious or philosophical tradition whereby the soul may have an existence apart from the body. While most modern philosophers of mind would reject the imaginings that lead us to think that this makes sense, there is no consensus over the best way to integrate our understanding of people as bearers of physical properties lives on the other.
Occasionalism find from it term as employed to designate the philosophical system devised by the followers of the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, who, in attempting to explain the interrelationship between mind and body, concluded that God is the only cause. The occasionalists began with the assumption that certain actions or modifications of the body are preceded, accompanied, or followed by changes in the mind. This assumed relationship presents no difficulty to the popular conception of mind and body, according to which each entity is supposed to act directly on the other; these philosophers, however, asserting that cause and effect must be similar, could not conceive the possibility of any direct mutual interaction between substances as dissimilar as mind and body.
According to the occasionalists, the action of the mind is not, and cannot be, the cause of the corresponding action of the body. Whenever any action of the mind takes place, God directly produces in connection with that action, and by reason of it, a corresponding action of the body; the converse process is likewise true. This theory did not solve the problem, for if the mind cannot act on the body (matter), then God, conceived as mind, cannot act on matter. Conversely, if God is conceived as other than mind, then he cannot act on mind. A proposed solution to this problem was furnished by exponents of radical empiricism such as the American philosopher and psychologist William James. This theory disposed of the dualism of the occasionalists by denying the fundamental difference between mind and matter.
Generally, along with consciousness, that experience of an external world or similar scream or other possessions, takes upon itself the visual experience or deprive of some normal visual experience, that this, however, does not perceive the world accurately. In its frontal experiment. As researchers reared kittens in total darkness, except that for five hours a day the kittens were placed in an environment with only vertical lines. When the animals were later exposed to horizontal lines and forms, they had trouble perceiving these forms.
Philosophers have long debated the role of experience in human perception. In the late 17th century, Irish philosopher William Molyneux wrote to his friend, English philosopher John Locke, and asked him to consider the following scenario: Suppose that you could restore sight to a person who was blind. Using only vision, would that person be able to tell the difference between a cube and a sphere, which she or he had previously experienced only through touch? Locke, who emphasized the role of experience in perception, thought the answer was no. Modern science actually allows us to address this philosophical question, because a very small number of people who were blind have had their vision restored with the aid of medical technology.
Two researchers, British psychologist Richard Gregory and British-born neurologist Oliver Sacks, have written about their experiences with men who were blind for a long time due to cataracts and then had their vision restored late in life. When their vision was restored, they were often confused by visual input and were unable to see the world accurately. For instance, they could detect motion and perceive colours, but they had great difficulty with complex stimuli, such as faces. Much of their poor perceptual ability was probably due to the fact that the synapses in the visual areas of their brains had received little or no stimulation throughout their lives. Thus, without visual experience, the visual system does not develop properly.
Visual experience is useful because it creates memories of past stimuli that can later serve as a context for perceiving new stimuli. Thus, you can think of experience as a form of context that you carry around with you. A visual illusion occurs when your perceptual experience of a stimulus is substantially different from the actual stimulus you are viewing. In the previous example, you saw the green circles as different sizes, even though they were actually the same size. To experience another illusion, look at the illustration entitled 'Zöllner Illusion'. What shape do you see? You may see a trapezoid that is wider at the top, but the actual shape is a square. Such illusions are natural artifacts of the way our visual systems work. As a result, illusions provide important insights into the functioning of the visual system. In addition, visual illusions are fun to experience.
Consider the pair of illusions in the accompanying illustration, ‘Illusions of Length.’ These illusions are called geometrical illusions, because they use simple geometrical relationships to produce the illusory effects. The first illusion, the Müller-Lyer illusion, is one of the most famous illusions in psychology. Which of the two horizontal lines is longer? Although your visual system tells you that the lines are not equal, a ruler would tell you that they are equal. The second illusion is called the Ponzo illusion. Once again, the two lines do not appear to be equal in length, but they are. For further information about illusions
Prevailing states of consciousness, are not as simple, or agreed-upon by any steadfast and held definition of itself, in so, that, consciousness exists. Attempted definitions tend to be tautological (for example, consciousness defined s awareness) or merely descriptive (for example, consciousness described as sensations, thoughts, or feelings). Despite this problem of definition, the subject of consciousness has had a remarkable history. At one time the primary subject matter of psychology, consciousness as an area of study suffered an almost total demise, later reemerging to become a topic of current interest.
René Descartes applied rigorous scientific methods of deduction to his exploration of philosophical questions. Descartes is probably best known for his pioneering work in philosophical skepticism. Author Tom Sorell examines the concepts behind Descartes’s work Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (1641; Meditations on First Philosophy), focussing on its unconventional use of logic and the reactions it aroused. Most of the philosophical discussions of consciousness arose from the mind-body issues posed by the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes in the 17th century. Descartes asked: Is the mind, or consciousness, independent of matter? Is consciousness extended (physical) or unextended (nonphysical)? Is consciousness determinative, or is it determined? English philosophers such as John Locke equated consciousness with physical sensations and the information they provide, whereas European philosophers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Immanuel Kant gave a more central and active role to consciousness.
An appreciation of the power of interactive forces in the analytic field not only challenges many traditionally held beliefs about the nature of therapeutic action. However, these take upon the requirement for us to recognize the untenability of the traditional view that analysts can be an objective source in the work. They have better to understand it, for example, where patients and analysts may express as a quantity that which the analyst is of a position to be an objective interpreter of the patient's experiential processes. That in this may reflect a form of collusive enactment and a convergence of the needs of both to see the analyst as an authority, and if the patient and analysts' both submit to needs to believe that the analyst is the omniscient other or the benevolent authority to which one can entrust ones' own. As the functional structure of the relationship might serve to obscure recognition of the fact that it is inclined to encourage the belief that, as once put, that wherever a coordinative system is complicating and hardens of its complexities, as recognized of the mind or brain, immediately 'indeterminacy' so then arises, not necessarily because of some preconditional unobtainability but holds accountably to subjective matters' from which grow stronger in obtaining the right prediction, least of mention, that so many things are yet to be known, in that the stray consequences of studying them will disturb the status quo, and of not-knowing to what influential persuasions do really occur between the protective cranial wall of vertebral anatomy. It is therefore that our manifesting awarenesses cannot accord with the inclining inclinations beheld to what is meant in how. History is not and cannot be determinate. Thus, the supposed causes may only produce the consequences we expect, this has rarely been more true than of those whose thoughts and interaction in psychoanalytic interrelatedness are in a way that no dramatist would ever dare to conceive.
In Winnicott (1969) has noted that there are times when 'analysers' can serve as holding operations and become interminable without any real growth occurring.
An interactive perspective also helps to clarify why in some instances the analysers 'abstinence' carriers as much risk of negative iatrogenic consequences as does active intervention. Although silence at time obviously can be respectful and facilitating, at other times it can be cruel and sadistic, or it can be based on fear of engagement, among a host of possible other meanings and equally attributive to the distributional dynamical functions.
An appreciation of interactive factors also allows us to consider that, to whatever degree the patient's perceptions of the analyst are plausible and even valid (Ferenczi 1933, Little 1951, Levenson 1973, Searles 1975, Gill 1982, Hoffman 1983), this may be due to the patient's expertise of stimulating precisely this kind of responsiveness in the analyst. The reverse is true as well thus, though patient and analyst each will have unique vulnerabilities, sensitivities, strengths, and needs, we must consider why such peculiarities have excited the particular qualities or sensibilities of either patient or analyst at a give moment and not at others. At any moment patient or analyst might be involved in some kind of collusive enactment (Racker 1957, 1959, Grotstein 1981, and McDougall 1979), they have held that their considerations explain of reasons that posit of themselves of why clinicians often seem to practice in ways that contradict their own shared beliefs and theoretical positions, least of mention, principles by way of enacting to some unfiltered dialectical discourse.
Yet, these differences, which occur within and between the diverse analytic traditions, in that an interactive view of the analytic field has some theoretical and technical implications that bridge all psychoanalytically perceptively which each among us cannot ignore. Its premise lies in the fact that we recognize that the analyst and patient cannot simply avoid having an impact on each other, even if both are totally silent, require us to realize that even if a treatment is productive or successful, we cannot be clear whether they have related this to our deliberate technical interventions or to aspects of the interaction that have eluded our awareness.
We have premised its owing intentionality that the recognition that analyst and patient cannot simply avoid having an impact on each other, even if both are totally silent, requires us to realize that even if some treatment is productive or successful, we cannot be clear whether we have related this to our deliberate technical interventions or to aspects of the interaction that have eluded austereness.
Psychoanalysts of diverse orientations increasingly have come to recognize that patient and analysts are continually influencing and being influenced by each other in a dialectical way, often without awareness. This has radical implications for abstractive views drawn upon psychoanalytic technique. Where these psychoanalysts disagree is in their conceptions of what the specific implications of an interactive view of the analytic field might be.
It is therefore that distinguishing between theory of technique is useful and necessary, which relates to what we do with awareness and intention, and theory of therapeutic action, which deals with what is healing in the psychoanalytic interaction whether or not it evolves from our ‘technique’: That recognizing this can allow us to expand our knowledge of the complex and subtler factors that account for therapeutic action. This can ultimately become the most effective basis for refining and developing our understanding of how best to use ourselves to advance the analytic work and to simplify more profound and incisive kinds of psychoanalytic engagement, no matter what our theoretical orientation.
An appreciation of the power of interactive forces in the analytic subject field not only challenges many traditionally held beliefs about the nature of therapeutic action, but also requires us to recognize the untenability of the traditional view that the analyst can be an objective participant in the work? It also helps us to grasp the extent to which presumably therapeutic interpretations, for example, can be ways of harassing, demeaning, patronizing, impinging on, penetrating, or violating the patient, or particular ways of gratifying, supporting, complying, among several of other possibilities. Where patient and analysts assume that the analyst can be an objective interpreter of the patient’s experience, this may factually reflect a form of collusive enactment and a convergence of the needs of both to see the analyst as an authority. If patient and analyst both have needs to believe that the analyst is the omniscient other or the benevolent authority to which one can entrust ones' own, the structure of the relationship might serve to obscure recognition of the fact that they are enacting such a drama. In this regard, Winnicott (1969) has noted that on that point are times when ‘analyses’ can serve as holding operations and become interminable, without any real growth occurring.
An interactive perspective also helps to clarify why sometimes the analyst’s ‘abstinence’ carries as much risk of negative iatrogenic consequences as does actively intervention. Although silence at times obviously can be respectful and facilitating, at other times it can be cruel and sadistic, or it can be based on fear of engagement, among a host of possible other meanings and contributing functions.
The contextual meaning of the patient’s free association also has to be reconsidered from such a perspective. Usually viewed as the medium of analytic work, free association may at times be a profound frame of resistance, and to avoid rather than engage in an analytic process. Alternatively it can reflect a form of compliance or collusion, conscious or unconscious, with the analyst’s needs, fears, resistances.
Amid the welter of competing or complementary theories that have characterized psychoanalyses over the century of its existence, the ideas of transference and the convictions very important in the therapeutic process are an unfiling theme. None of Freud's epochal discoveries - the power to the dynamic unconscious, the meaningfulness of the dream, the uniformity of intrapsychgic conflict - having been more heuristically productive or more clinically valuable than his demonstration that human regularly and inevitably repeat with the analyst and with other important figures in their current live patterned of relationship, of fantasy, and of conflict with the crucial figures in their childhood - primarily their parents?
Even for Freud, however, the awareness of this phenomenon and the understanding of its specific significance in the analytic situation itself came gradually. The flamboyant transference events in Breuer's patient Anna O and the unfortunate outcome in the patient of Dora served to consolidate in Freud's mind a view of transference as a resistance phenomenon, as an obstacle to the recollection of traumatic events that, in his view at the time, formed the true essence of the psychoanalytic process. Emphasis in this early period, thus, was on the 'management' of the transference, on finding ways to prevent its interference with the proper business of the analysis - recognizing, always, the inevitability of its occurrence. Freud was most concerned about the interferences generate by the 'negative' (i.e., hostile) and the erotised transference, the 'positive' transference he considered 'unobjectable,' the vehicle of success in the psychoanalysis.
Freud was also concerned to distinguish the analytic transference from the effects of suggestion in the hypnotic treatment he had learned in France, where he interdependently studying from Professor Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital, and had been the forerunner of his own psychoanalysis technique. He, and his early followers and students, were at great pains to define the transference as a spontaneous product of the analytic situation, emerging from the patient rather than imposed by the analyst. Ultimately, Freud came to view as essentially for analytic cures the development of a new mental structure, the 'transference neurosis' - re-creation of the original neurosis in the analytic situation itself, with the patient experiencing the analyst as the object of his or her infantile wishes and the focus of his or her pathogenic conflicts. The crucial importance of the transference neurosis - it's very reality as a clinical phenomenon - has been and continues to be a matter of debate among psychoanalysts to this day.
Over the resulting decades several themes appear and reappear. One to which Freud alluded is that of the uniqueness versus the ubiquity of transference, is it a special creation of the analytic situation or is it an inevitable and universal aspect of all human relation? More central and perhaps more heated in the continuing debate, as the primary of transference interpretation in which Strahey called the 'mutative' effects of analysis - for example, whether such interpretations are simply more convincing than others or are the only kinds that are truly an effective therapy constitutionally begotten. Echoes of this debate have resounded through the years and to be perspectively descendable in most recent literary works. Finally, are all of the patient's reactions to the analyst in the analytic situations to be of counter-transference or do some partake of the 'real' 'non-neurotic' relationship or of the 'working alliance'?
It is only to mention, at the outset that resistance is, in certain fundamental references, an operational equivalent of defence, its scope is really far larger and more complicated. The thoughts of its nature and motivations on resistances to the psychoanalytic process use an array of mechanisms that sometimes defy classification in the way that fundamental genetically determined defences, derived from importantly and common developmental trends, can be classified. From falling asleep too brilliant argument, there is a limitless and mobile of devices with which the patient may protect the current integrations of his personality, including his system of permanent defences. In fact, Resistances of a surface, conscious type, related to individual character and to educational and cultural background, often present themselves are the patient’s first confrontations with a unique and often puzzling treatment method. While some of these phenomena are continuous with deeper resistances, a closer, and perhaps balancing equilibrium held in bondage to the mutuality within the continuity that we must meet others at their own level. All the same, it now leaves to a greater extent, the much-neglected faculty of informed and reflective common sense, and moves onto the less readily accessible and explicable dynamism, which inevitably supervene in analytic work, even if these initial surface Resistances have been largely or wholly mastered. Its submissive providences lay order to perfect connectivity, premising with which is the specific influence of the immediate cultural climate, stressed of the general attitude of many young people (Anna Freud 1968) toward the psychoanalytic process and its goals.
When Freud gave up the use of hypnosis for several reasons, beginning with the personal difficulty in inducing the hypnotic state and culminating in his ultimate and adequate reason - that it bypassed the essential lever of lasting therapeutic change, the confrontation with the repressing forces themselves - he turned to the method of waking discourse with the patient, in which insistence, with a sense of infallibility, accompanied by head pressure and release, were the essential tools for the overcoming of resistance (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895). Although the affording the unformidable combinations that are awaiting the presence to the future attributions in which the valuing qualities that allow us the privilege to have observed various forms of resistance ( in a general sense) before, as for example, inability to be hypnotized, ful in totality and a willful rejection of hypnosis, selective refusal to discuss certain topics under hypnosis, adverse reactions to testing for stances, it was the effectiveness of insistence in inducing the patient to fill memory gaps or to accept the physician’s constructions that reapproached of extending its lead, in that Freud was to a first and enduring formulation: Since effort
- psychic work - by the physician was required, a physical; evidently force, a resistance opposed to the pathogenic ideas, becomingly conscious (or being remembered), had to be overcome. They thought this to be the same psychic force that had initiated the symptom formation by preventing the original pathogenic ideas from achieving adequate affective discharge and establishing adequate associations - in short, from remaining or becomingly conscious. The motive for invoking such a force would be the abolition (or avoidance) of some form of physical distress or pain, such as shame, self-reproach, fear of harm, or equivalent cause for rejecting or wishing to forget the experience. Such are the appreciative attributions, in that the distributive contributional dynamic functions bestow the factoring understructure of the constellation of ideas, have already comforted us, yet, the later is clearly the ego and especially the character of it. It was thought important to show the patient that his resistance was the same as the original ‘repulsion’ which had initiated pathogenesis. The step later was short to the essential equivalent and permanent concept of defence at first repression. That is, though Freud gave tremendous sight to the effectiveness of the hand pressure manoeuver, he saw it essentially for distancing the patient’s will and conscious attention and thus simplifying the emergence of latent ideas (or images). From a present-day point of view, one cannot but think of the powerful transference excited by an infallible parental figure in a procedure only one step removed from the relative abdication of will. Consciousnessly involved in hypnosis, and that this quasi-archaic qualitative pattern of relationship was more important to effectiveness or failure than was the exchange of a psychic energy postulate by Freud. In this sense, the ‘laying on of hands’ granted its effect on attention, was probably even more significant in inducing transference regression than in the role that the great discoverer assigned to it.
What is important, in whatever way, is the establishment of a viable scientific and working idea of resistance to the therapeutic process as a manifestation of a reactivated intrapsychic conflict in a new interpersonal context. This in its essentials persists to this day in psychoanalytic work, in the concept of ego resistances.
At the same proven capability, as measuring with this development, less explicitly formulated but often described or inferred, was the marginal total rejecting or hostile or unruly attitude of the patient, sometimes evoking spontaneous antagonistic reactions in the physician. In occasional direct references in the early work and in the choice of figurative phraseology for years after that, Freud recognizes this ‘balky child’ type of struggle against the doctor’s efforts. One needs only recall Elizabeth von R., who would tell Freud that she was not better, 'with a sly look of satisfaction' at his discomfiture (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895). When deep hypnosis failed with her, Freud 'was glad enough that once, she refrained from triumphantly protesting ‘I am not asleep, you know, and cannot be hypnotized'; in this context that show with which this categorical type of resistance phenomenon that it represents the evolutionary whisper, though Freud and many others found it to come within the evolving gait of steps in a whisper, after-all, the advance of applied science was bringing to light curious new phenomena that, however hard men might try, would not be fitted into the existing order of things. All this is to encourage along the side of the paradigms of science to agree of it achievable obtainability through with of those has witnessed the impregnable future, least mentions, far and above is the first essentially forced finality to agree that fighting a great adventure in thought at lengths to come safely to shore is necessary, in this glare, the human figure has had to apply formally to be enlarged so that the brave stands which make for civic and academic freedom. It also taken to applicate the form to encourage the belief that, as nicely put, 'all men dance to the tune of an invisible piper. Because, we did not attest the big bang, but call its evolution of a particular type of ego-syntonic struggle with the physician that remains potentially important during any analysis by what the negative transference, whatever its particular nuances of motivation. This is, of course, a manifestly different phenomenon from the earnest effortful struggles of the cooperative patient whose associations fail to attend to him, or who forgets his dream, or who comes at the wrong hour, to his extreme humiliation. Still, in that respect is an important dynamic relationship between the two sets of phenomena.
Nonetheless, Freud made the analysis of resistance the central obligation of analytic work and proceeded from primitive beginnings, with rapidly increasing sophistication, both technical and psychopathologic, ideas that remain valid to this day; that conscious knowledge transmitted to the patient may have no, or an adverse, effect in the mobilization of what is similar or identical in the unconscious; that the repressing forces, the resistances, are more like infiltrates than discrete foreign-body capsules in their relation to preconscious associative systems; that the physician must begin with the surface and continue centripetally; that hysterical symptoms are more often serial and multiple than mononuclear, and the resistances participate in all productions and must be dealt with at every step of analytic work, and other matters of equal significance (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895).
Freud always maintained the central concept of resistance, and bequeathed it (reinforced later by the structural theory) to the generations of analysts who have followed him. Still, as the years went on, he elaborated the general scope of resistance far beyond the basic concept of intrapsychic defence, anticathexis that a great variety and range of mechanisms could impede the psychoanalysis as a recognizable process or, beyond this, making it ineffective or reverse expected therapeutic responses, or extend indefinitely the patient’s dependence on the analyst. When extended its direct equation with the anticathexis of defences, the variety of sources - not to speak of manifestations - of resistance multiplied rapidly. To remark upon the merely secondary realizations of illnesses (Freud 1905), under which the ‘external’ resistances are, for example, the hostility of the unmurmuring family line of treatment (Freud 1917), evenhandedly as the persistence of illness, with its detachment, superciliousness, and mechanical compliance as some weapons system for frustrating the analyst, as with the utterly troubled young girl (Freud 1920). The relevant sense of securing the symptomatic primary modes of perturbation conflict solution, and most crucially, the analysable obtainability of such subtly evolving concept of ‘transference-resistance,’ in its oscillating pluralistic sense, for example, (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895: Freud 1912, 1917). In his last writings, conspicuously in Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937), in considering several possible factors in human personality that obstruct or render ineffectually the successful end of the analytic procedure, Freud offered a variety of psychodynamic considerations that could be fundamental in the extended or broadened concept of resistance: The question of the constitutional strength of instincts and their relation to ego strength; the problem of the accessibility of latent conflicts when undisturbed by the patient’s life situation (briefly but pointedly) the impingement of the analyst’s personality on the analytic situation and process; the existence of certain qualities of the libidinal cathexes - especially undue adhesiveness or excessive mobility; rigid character structure; the existence of certain sex-linked ‘bedrock’ conflicts that Freud regarded as biologically determined (insoluble penis envy in the female, and the male’s persisting conflict with his passivity). Finally and most formidable, there was the cluster of dynamism and phenomena that Freud, beginning in, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and The Ego and the Id (1923), attributed consistently and with deepening conviction to the operation of a death instinct. That is to say, to the ‘unconscious sense of guilt’ and demands the need for punishment, the repetition compulsion, the negative therapeutic reaction, and the more general operations of the need to suffer or to die or to seek outer or inner worldly concern. Yet, it remains an inexorable truth that the resistances underlying and hidden of representationally inherent cases or certain limitations implicit like psychoanalytic work, are moderately invincibly formidable, and cannot be disestablished by theoretical position any more than they can be thus created.
The varied clinical manifestations of resistance are dealt with extensively throughout Freud’s own writings, in many individual papers of other analysts, and in comprehensive works on analytic technique, for example, those of Fenichel (1941), Glover (1955), and more recently Greenson (1967) of which only makes a selective and occasional reference to their kaleidoscopic variety.
When free association and interpretation displaced hypnosis and derivative primitive techniques, the psychoanalysis as we now construe it came into being. To the extent that free association was the patient’s active participation, it was in this sphere that his ‘resistance’ to the new technique was most clearly recognized as such, cessation, slowing, circumlocution and a lack of informative or relevant content, emotional detachment, and obsessional doubt or circumstantiality became established as obvious impediments to the early (no longer exclusive but still radically important) topographic goals: To convert unconscious ideas largely via the interpretation of preconscious derivatives into conscious ideas. Only with time and increasing sophistication did fluency, even vividness of associative content, tendentious ‘relevancy’ itself evidently can, like over-compliant acceptance of interpretation, conceal and carrying out resistances that were the more formidable because expressed in such ‘good behaviour’.
One may define resistance (and in so doing include a liberal and augmenting paraphrase of Freud’s own most pithy definition [The Interpretation of Dreams 1900]) as anything of essentially intrapsychic significance in the patient that impedes or interrupts the progress of psychoanalytic work or interferes with its basic purposes and goals. In specifying ‘in the patient’ one is to imply as not underestimate the possibly decisive importance of the analyst’s resistances, to separate the ‘counterresistance’ as a different matter, in a practical sense, requiring separate study. One may concur, that as a generalized infraction forwarded of a direction with Glover’s statement (1955) that 'however we may approach the mental apparatus there is no part of its function that cannot serve the purposes of mental defence and therefore give apparency during the analysis to the phenomena of resistances.' One may also concur with his formulation that the most successful resistances (in contrast with those employing manifest expressions) are silent, but disagree with the paradoxical sequel '. . . they might say that the sign of their existence is our unawareness of them.' For the absence of important material is a given sign, and becoming aware of such an absence is necessary, if possible.
Freud, in his technical papers and in many other writings, despite his reluctance in this direction did lay down the general and essential technical principles and precepts for analytic practice. We must note, however, that the clear and useful technical precepts are largely in that may be regarded as the ‘tactical sphere’, i.e., they deal with the manifest process phenomena of ego resistances. Other resistances, those largely contained in the ‘silent’ group, for example, detainment or unsuccessful symptomatic alteration, omission of decisive conflict material form free association or [more often] from the transference neurosis, inability to accept cancellation of the analysis, and allied matters. In that saying, the ‘strategic sphere’, relating to the depths of the patient’s psychopathology and personality structure and to his total reactions to the psychoanalytic situation, process, and the person of the analyst. Its use of the tern ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’ differ from their user by others, for example, Kaiser (1934). While it is not to presume to offer simple precepts for the ready liquidation of the massive silent resistances, heedfully to contribute of something, however slight. To understanding them better and thus, potentially, to their better management but some of these considerations, for example, iatrogenic regression, as to context (1961, 1966). In the ‘strategic’ arena of resistance, so often manifested by total or relative ‘absence’, it is the informed surmise regarding the existence of the silent territory, by way of ongoing reconstructive activity, which is the first and essential ‘activity’ of the analyst. Beyond this mindfulness and subtle potentialities of the shaping and selection of interpretative direction and emphasis and the tactful indication of tendentious distortion or absence.
Because of a possible variety of factors, beginning with the estranging dissimulations that magnetism that the verbal statement of unconscious content puts into action of the analysts and patients alike (of itself is a frequent resistance or counterresistance) the priority of the analysis of resistance over the analysis of content, as discretely separate, did not readily come to its carry out quality. This might have been owing to the difficulties of dealing with more complicated resistances or developing an adequate methodology in this arena, or even the fact that an extensive interval over its timed and tactful reference to content (or its overall nature) sometimes seems the only way of mobilizing (reflexively) and thus exposing the corresponding resistance for interpretation and ‘working through’, an echo of Freud’s early, never fully relinquished diphasic process (1940).
Since this is not a technical paper, the admissive structural functionality, over which an extended discussion of the evolution of views on methods of resistance analysis, although substantiated functions has inevitably related such views to our immediate subject matter. Its mindful approaches that range from the strict systematic analysis of character resistances of Wilhelm Reich (1933) or the absolute exclusion of content interpretation of Kaiser (1934), to the special efforts toward dramatization of the transference of Ferenczi and Rank (1925) or Ferenczi’s own experiments with active techniques of deprivation and (on the other hand) the gratification of regressed transference wishes in adults (for example, 1919, 1920, 1930, 1931, 1932). Developments in ego psychology (for example, Anna Freud’s classical contribution on the mechanisms of defence [1936] brought the variety and importance of defence mechanisms securely into the foreground of analytic work, and the subsequential extent of which is widely accepted priority of defence analysis has rectified a great deal of the original [and not entirely inexplicable] ‘cultural cover with lagging’ in this describing importance, that if not exclusive, spheres of resistance analysis. Concomitant with a more widespread functional acceptance of the essentiality and priority (in principle) of resistance analysis over content interpretation, there is usually a more flexible view of the technical application of the essential precepts, permitting interpretive mobility, according to intuitive certainty or judgement between the psychic structures, according to Anna Freud (1936) principle of ‘equidistance’. Discrete specification may sometimes deal resistance with other than those apart from the intrinsic conceptual difficultly in the latter intellectual process, i.e., the specifying of a resistance without suggesting that against which it is directed (Waelder 1960). There is also a general broadening of the scope of interpretive method. Witness, for example, Loewenstein’s ‘reconstruction upward’ (1951) and Stone, having his own differently derived but often an allied conception, the ‘integrative interpretation’ (1951), both of which recognize that resistance may be directed ‘upward’ or against the integration of experience, than against the affirmative extent and exclusively infantile or against the past. Similar considerations are also reflected in Hartmann’s ‘principle of multiple appeal’ (1951).
It may, nonetheless be of note that while the emphasis on resistance in Freud’s early clinical presentations is overall proportionate to his theoretical statements, his methods of dealing with the concealed and more formidable resistances are not clear, except in certain active interventions, such as the magical intestinal prognosis in the 'Wolf Man' (1918), or the ‘time limit’ in the same case, or the principle that at a certain point patients should confront phobic symptoms directly (1910), or the suggestion to transfer to a woman analyst, with the homosexual woman (1920). In these manoeuvres and attitudes it is recognized that (1) interpretation, the prime working instrument of analysis, may often reach an impasse in relation to powerful ‘strategic’ resistances, and (2) an implicit recognition that elements in the personal relationship of the analytic situation, specifically the transference, may subvert the most skilful analytic work by producing massive although ‘silent’ resistances to ultimate goals, and that sometimes where energetic elements are formidable, they may have to be dealt with directly and holistically, in the patient’s living and actual situation.
Freud’s own interest in active techniques stimulated Ferenczi to extreme developments in this sphere (1912, 1920), later combined with his oppositely oriented methods of indulgence (1930). As time presses on, noninterpretative methods, particularly those involving gratifications of transference wishes, whether libidinal or masochistic, were set aside with increasing severity, in recognition of their contravention of the indispensability of the undistorted transference and the unique importance of transference analysis in analytic work. The same has been largely true of tendentious, selective instinctual frustrations (Ferenczi 1919, 1020). However, there is no doubt that the use of interpretive alternatives (sometimes suggests for the deliberate control of obstinate resistance phenomena in this spheric arena) has been sharpened by - partially coloured by - the earlier experiments in prohibition, whose transference implications were fully apparent at the time of their introduction. The type of active intervention introduced by Freud (the time limit, the confrontation of symptoms), confined in actuality to the sphere of the demonstrable clinical relationship, has retained a certain optional place in our work, although the potential transference meaning and impact of such interventions, with corresponding variations or limitations of effectiveness, are increasingly understood and considered. The broad general principle of abstinence in the psychoanalytic situation, stated by Freud in its sharpest epitome in 1919, remains a basic and indispensable context of psychoanalytic technique. The nuances of application remain open to, in fact to require, continuing study (Stone 1961, 1966).
In assent to important developments in ego psychology and characterology (for conspicuous examples, Anna Freud 1936, Kris 1956, Hartmann 1951, Loewenstein 1851, Waelder 1930, the principle factor in deepening, broadening, and complicating the conceptual problem of resistance, and thus modifying the strict latter-like sequential approach (Reich 1933) to the analysis of resistance ad content respectively, even in principle, has been the progressive emergence of transference analysis as the central and decisive task of analytic work. For, to state it over succinctly, and thus to risk some inaccuracy, the transference is far more than the most difficult tool of resistances and (simultaneously) an indispensable element in the therapeutic effort. Given the mature capacity for working alliance, it is the central dynamism of the patient’s participation in the analytic process and, while the proximal or remote source of all significant resistances, but those manifest phenomena originating in the conscious personal or cultural attitudes and experiences of the adult patient or those deriving from the inevitable cohesive-conservative forces in the patient’s personality, for which we must still summon briefly the Goethe-Freud ‘witch’, metapsychology (Freud 1937).
In relation to the ‘tactical’, i.e., process, resistances, an overall view of what is immediate and confronting for example, the threatening emergence of ego-dystonic sexual or aggressive material, may be adequate. All the same, to any casual access to what may be called the ‘strategic’ sphere of resistance. One must have a tentative working formulation of the total psychic situation in mind, including an informed surmise regarding large and essential unconscious trends. Such suggested procedure is, accessibly open to discussion on more than one scope, and it does involve one immediately in some basic epistemological problems of psychoanalysis. Unfortunately, we cannot become involved in this fascinating sphere of dialectic in this brief essay on a large subject nevertheless, in his early work Freud relied enthusiastically on his own capacity to fill primary gaps in the patient’s memory through informed inherences from the available data, and then, with an aura of infallibility, actively persuaded the patient to accept these constructions. However, with the further elaboration of psychoanalysis as process, in the sense of the increasing importance of free association, of the analyst’s relative passivity, and other characteristics of the process as we now know it, there have inevitably been some important modifications of the attitudes reelected in such procedures. While, as far as it had never been revised or revoked, Freud’s view that the resistances are operatives in every step of the analytic work, and knowing that there exists in many minds paradoxical mystiques to the effect that the patient’s free associations as such, unimpeded (and uninterpreted), could ultimately provide the whole and meaningful story of his neurosis, in the sense of direct information. This is, of course, manifestly at variances with Freud’s basic assumptions about the role of resistance, and the germane roles of defence and conflict in the origin of illness.
Nonetheless, in Freud’s, Recommendations (1912) is his advice against attempting to reconstruct the essentials of a case while the case is in progress. Such a reconstruction, here assumes, would be undertaken for scientific reasons. The caution, nevertheless, rests on both scientific and therapeutic grounds, on the assumption that the analyst’s receptiveness to new data and his capacity for evenly suspended attention would be impaired by such an effort. It is true, of course, that rigid preoccupation with an intellectual formulation can impair the capacities. Even so, it is also true that the ‘formulation’ or structuring of a case can and largely does go on preconsciously, in some references even unconsciously, and usually quite spontaneously. One must assume at the very least, that some such process reaches the analyst’s first perception of a ‘resistance’. Some have thought that Freud would have disagreed with using such a process. Still, its use, whatever the form, is a necessity, and, at times, it requires and should have the hypercathexis of conscious and concentrated reflection? One may, of course, assign the more purposive intellectual processes to periods outside hours, and thus better preserve the other equally important responses to the dual intellectual demand of psychoanalytic technique. The ‘voice of the intellect’, all the same, should not be deprived of this essential place in analytic work. It is well known that it must never be allowed to foreclose mobile intuitive perceptiveness or openness to unexpected data. Nor must ongoing formulations in the mind of the analyst be allowed to cram the spontaneity of the patient’s association. They should remain ‘in the analyst’s head’. To epitomize the technical situation: Strategic considerations require varying degrees of reflective thought, possibly outside hours. Except the perspectives and critiques they silently lend to understanding, they should not influence the natural and spontaneous, often intuitive, responses of the disciplined analyst to the never-ending variable nuances of his patient’s ‘tactics’. In relation to any category of clinical psychoanalytic problem. It is the structure of the transference neurosis and its unfolding, with the adumbrative material in characterology, symptom formation, personal and clinical history and the clues from specific data of the psychoanalytic process, taken as an ensemble, which provide the most reliable basis for general tentative reconstruction and thus for the understanding of resistances. While we must marshal our entire body of data, theory, and technology to see the transference neurosis as an epitome of the patient’s emotional life, our comprehension of it is nonetheless based essentially on something that is right before us. Again, the total ensemble is essential, and the objectively observable phenomena of the transference neurosis are of crucial and central valences.
In the background data, the large outlines of life history are uniquely important because they do represent, or at least strikingly suggest, the patient’s gross strategies of survival and growth, of avoidance and affirmation. One may infer that they will be invoked again in the conformation with the analyst, in his pluralistic significance. Some oversimplified and fragmentary illustrations are chosen in the occupational commitments with children and the mood in which they are carried out, with the general character of manifest sexual adaptation, can contribute to rational surmise about whether neurotic childlessness is based predominantly on disturbances of the Oedipus complex, on an original inability to achieve an adequate psychic separation from parent representations, or on the vicissitudes of extreme sibling rivalry. It must surely crystallize illnesses and analytic process if one knows that some patient lives, by choice, the breadth of an ocean removed from parents and siblings with whom there has been no evident quarrel, when this is not a crucial matter of occupational opportunity or equivalently important reality. Necessarily a male patient’s gross psychosexual biography helps us to understand which ‘side’ of the incestuous transference is more likely to be surfacing in his first paroxysm of heterosexual ‘acting out’. While it is true that dreams, parapraxes, and other traditionally dependable psychoanalytic material may dramatically reveal the ego-dystonic directions of impulse and fantasy life, and the specific nature of opposing forces, it is, only, the composite situation that historical and current picture that reveals the prevailing or alternative defences, the large-scale economic patterns, and the preferred or stable, i.e., most strongly over determined, trends of conflict solution.
Tactical problems of resistance were earliest observed largely in disturbances of free association, which, in frequent tacit assumptions, would, or in principle could, lead without assistance to the ultimate genetic truth. This truth was construed to be the awareness of previously repressed memory (or the acceptance of convincing and germane constructions). As time went on, in Freud’s own writing, terms of conative import appeared - such as ‘tendency’ or, more of vividly, ‘impulsiveness’. However, the critical etiological and (reciprocally) therapeutic importance of memory has, of course, never really lost its importance. For, while the recovery of traumatic memories, with an abreaction, is still dramatic in its therapeutic effect, for example, in war neuroses or equivalently civilian experiences and occasionally in isolated sexual experiences of childhood or adolescence, neuroses of isolated traumatic origin are rare in current psychoanalytic experience. Traumata is usually multiple, repetitive, often serving to crystallize, dramatize and fix (something even ‘covers’) more chronic disturbances, such as distortions or pathological pressures in the instinct life, against the background of larger problems of basic object relationships. Freud was already becoming aware of the complex structure of neuroses when he wrote his general discussion for the Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895). Thus, to put it all too briefly, when structurized impulses or general reaction tendencies can truly be accepted for memory, i.e., as matters of the past, other than in a tentative explanatory sense, much of the analytic work with the dynamics of the transference neurosis has necessarily been accomplished. One does not readily give up a love or hatred, personal or national, only because one learns that it is based on a crushing defeat of the remote past.
The manifest communicative phenomena of resistance remain very important, just as the common cold remains important in clinical medicine. Morally justified in those of whom walk continuously among the corpsed of times generations, their circulatory momentum around the cross and forever finding its same death but it's comforting solice and refuge, from which, they dwell of the unknown infinity. It will never cease to be important to tell a patient that he is avoiding the emergence of sexual fantasies, that his blank silence covers latent thoughts about the analyst, or (in a measure more sophisticated) that apparent and enthusiastic erotic fantasies about the analyst conceal and include a wish to humiliate or degrade him. However, we can be better prepared, even for these problems, because of ongoing holistic reconstruction. Surely we are better prepared for the formidable resistances of patients who apparently do ‘tell all’ or even ‘feel all’, in a most convincing way and in all sincerity, yet may finish apparently thorough analysis without having touched certain nuclear conflicts of their lives and characters or, (more often) having failed to meet the transference neurosis, with a sense of affective reality. These instances, for instance refers to the instances described by Freud (1937) in which such conflicts remain dormant because current life does not impinge on them, but to those in which the ‘acting out’, in life or the solution in severe symptoms is desperately elected by the personality in apparently paradoxical preferences to the subjective vicissitudes of the transference neurosis (Stone 1966).
In brief, is a tentative formulation of the respective natures of the two peculiar and yet particular groups of resistance phenomena, ultimately and vestigially related and exists in varying degree in all analyses. It is, however, one or the other is usually important and is, in practical and prognostic sense, quite differently as: (1) Those progress to evidently large discernible impediments of the psychoanalytic process in its immediate operational sense. These are usual in the neuroses, in persons who have achieved satisfactory separation of the 'self' from the primary y object. Nevertheless, whose lives are disturbed by the residues of instinctual and other intrapsychic conflicts in relation to the unconscious representations of early objects and thus to transference objects. (2) Those that may be similarly manifested at times but maybe or even exaggeratedly free of them. Where the essential avoidance is of the genuine and effective e diphasic involvement in the transference neurosis, with regard too fundamental and critical conflicted, and thus of the potential relinquishment of symptomatic solutions and the ultimate satisfactory separation from the analyst. In this context, among other phenomena, there may be large-scale hiatuses in analytic material in the usual experiential sense, or there may be a striking absence of available and appropriate cues of connection with the transference, or failure, this complex of phenomena may repeat an original disturbance in ‘separation and individuation’ (Mahler 1965). Alternatively of other severe disturbances in early object relationships or related pregenital (particular oral) conflicts can have produced tenacious narcissistic avoidance of transference involvement, to facade involvement, or to the alternative of inveterate regressed and ambivalent dependency. Dependable and largely affirmative secondary identifications have usually not been achieved originally, and this phenomenon, related to basic disturbances of separation, contributes importantly to the variously manifested fears of the transference.
Intuitively, the phenomena of the two groups may overlap. There may be deceptively benign ‘aponeuroses’ in the more severe group. In the troublesome phenomenon of ‘acting out’, for example, one may deal with a transitory resistance to an emergent transference fragment, in some instances due to a delay of effective interpretation, or one may be confronted by a deep-seated, variably structuralized, and sometimes even ego-syntonic ‘refusal’ to accept the verbal mode of communication with an unresponsive transference parent in dealing with insistent disturbing and gross affects implored by impulsive unintelligibility.
Freud (1925), pointed out that everything said in the analytic situation must have some coefficient of reflection to the situation in which it is said. This is, of course, consistent not only with reflective common sense but also with the theory of transference and the current view of the central position of the transference neurosis in analytic work. Furthermore, despite his earliest view of the ‘false connection’ as pure resistance (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895) and the continuing high opinion of this aspect of transference, Freud early established the (non-conflictual) positive transference as the analyst’s chief ally against resistances. So, he never stretched out in his appreciation of the primitive driving power of the transference and its indispensable function of conferring a vivid and living sense of reality on the analytic process (Freud 1912). However, in past commination, the transfer is the central dynamism of the entire psychoanalytic situation, and the transference neurosis provides the one framework which give essential and accessible form to the potentially panpsychic scope of free association (Stone 1961, 1966). In this frame of reference the irredentist drive to reunion with the primal mother, as opposed to the benign processes of maturation and separation, underlies neurotic conflict in its broadest sense and is the basis of what is called the ‘primordial transference’, whose striving renewed physical approximation or merger. Speech, which is the veritable stuff of psychoanalysis, serves as the chief ‘bridge’ of mastery for the progressive somatic separations of earliest childhood. The ‘mature transference’, in continuum, alternative and contrast, is that series and complex of attitudes contingent on maturation and benign predisposing elements of early object relationships (conspicuously, the wish to be understood, to learn, and to be taught) that enables increasing somatic separation in a continuing affirmative context of object relationship, as later reelected in the psychoanalytic situation. In this interplay, speech - our essential working tool - plays as these oscillating, curiously intermediates roles, ranging from the threat of regression in the direction of its primitive oral substrate to it is ultimately purely communicative-referential function linked with insight (Stone 1961, 1966).
Nonetheless, the origin of the ‘transference’ as we usually perceive it clinically, and as the term is traditionally employed, is in the primordial transference. Be it essentially the classical triadic incestuous complex or an oral drive toward incorporation or toward permanent nursing dependency or a sadomasochistic and shriving toward a parent, it will be re-experience in the analytic situation, in good part in regressive response to its derivations (Macalpine 1950), and produce the central, and ultimately the most formidable, manifest resistance, the transference-resistance.
The ‘transference-resistance’, while sometimes used in varying references, meant originally the resistance to effective insight into the genetic origins and prototypes of the transference, expressed in the very fact of its emergence (originally, the ‘false connection’ described by Freud [Breuer and Freud, 1893-1895]). Afterwards, as the transference became established in its own autochthonous validity, the same resistance could be viewed as an obstruction to genetic understanding of the transference, and thus putatively to its dissolution. Alternatively, such dissolutions (using this word in a relative and pragmatic sense) are contingent on much germane analytic work, on analysis of the dynamics of the attitude as represented in the transference neurosis, on working through, and on complicated and gradual responsive emotional processes in the patient (Stone 1966). Nevertheless, this genuine genetic insight is indispensable for the demarcation of the transference from the real relationship and for the intellectual incentive toward its dissolution within the framework of the therapeutic alliance.
While to the ‘resistance to the awareness of transference’ the confrontations of patients are characterized by the immediate emergence of intense (even stormy) transference reactions, most patients experience these emergent altitudes as essentially ego dystopia, except in the sense of the attenuate derivatives that enter (or vitiate) the therapeutic alliance or in the sense of chronic characterological reactions that would appear in other parallel situations, however superficial and approximate the parallel might be.
The clinical actuality of emergent transference requires analysis in its usual technical sense, including the prior analysis of defence. Transference may appear in dreams long before it is emotionally manifest; in parapraxes, in symptomatic reactions, in acting out within the analytic situation, or - most formidable - in acting out in the patient’s essential life situation. Except in cases of dangerous acting out, or very intense anxiety or equivalent symptoms, which can form emergencies, the technical approach involves the same patient centripetal address to the surface prescribed for analysis and its comprising it. However, as for this, it would suggest a modification of the classical precept that one does not interpret the transference until it becomes a manifest resistance. At this point, the interpretation is obligatory. The resistance to awareness should be interpreted, and its content brought to awareness, when the analyst believes that the libidinal or aggressive investment of the analyst’s person is economically a sufficient reality to influence the dynamics of the analytic situation and the patient’s everyday life situation.
Stripping the matter of nuances is useful, reservations, and exceptions, for clarity in an essential direction. The avoidance of awareness of transference derives from all of the hazards that accompany consciousness: Accessibility of the voluntary nervous system, therefore heightened ‘temptation’ to action; heightened conflict in relation to the sanctions and satisfactions of impulse materialization; the multiple subjective dangers of communication of 'I-you' impulses and wishes or germane fears to an object invested with parental authority; heightened sense of responsibility (in that way, guilt) connected with the same complex, and, very far from least, the fear of direct humiliating disappointment - the narcissistic would have rejection or, perhaps worse of all, no affective response, the avoidance of this helplessness of impact, plays and important part. There is also the exceedingly important fact that the transference conflicts remaining outside awareness retain their unique access to autoplastic symptomatic expression, in compact and narcissistically omnipotent, if painful, solution, without the direct challenge and confrontation with alternative (and essentially ‘hopeless’) solutions.
Why, then, if such fears weigh heavily against the analytic effort and the ultimate therapeutic advantage of awareness, does the patient cling tenaciously to his views of the analyst and the system of wishes connected with this view, once it has become established in his consciousness? In the earliest view, where the cognitive elements in analysis were heavily preponderant, not only in technique but also in the understanding of process, such clinging to transference attitudes was thought to be, since the essence of subjective matters' amounted of what was significantly the essential goal of the analytic effort and was thought to be, itself, the essential therapeutic mechanism. Still, why is the patient not willing, like the historian Leaky’s dinner partner, to ‘let bygones be bygones’? Unless one accepts this aversion to recall or reconstruction, a preference for ‘present pain’, as a primary built-in aversion, in its self of an unexplained fact of ‘human nature’, one must look further. Yet, on the person of the patient might informally reject these elements of ‘insight’ because they vitiate or diminish both the affective and cognitive significance of this central object relationship, which is a current materialization of crucial unconscious wish and fantasy, originally warded off. If it is to be given up, why was it pried out of its secure nest in the unconscious? Such resolution is always felt, at least incidentally, as an attack on the patient’s narcissism and on his secure sense of self, secondarily reestablished. Moreover, to the extent that there is a genuine translation of the subjectively experienced somatic drive elements into verbal and ideational terms related to past objects, there is an inevitable step toward separation from the current object that parallels the original and corresponding development movement.
An essential dynamic difference from the past lies in the different somatic and psychological context in which the renewed struggle is fought. Old desires, old hatreds, old irredentist urges toward mastery, have been reawakened in a mature and resourceful adult, in certain spheres still helpless subjectively but no longer literally and objectively, a fact of which he is also aware. It was pointed out by Freud (1910) that this great quantitative discrepancy between infant conflict and adult resources make possibly and eases therapeutic change, through insight. In many important respects, this remains true. However, the remorseless dialectic of psychoanalysis again asserts itself. Truly effective insight requires validating emotional experience, which is only rarely achieved through recollections alone. The affective realities of the transference neurosis are necessary (now and again, inevitable), and with this experience comes the renewal of the ancient struggle, in which, with varying degrees of depth, the maturity and resources of the analysand often play a role at valiance with his capacity fort understanding. This is true not only of the subjective quality and experience of his striding but of the resources which support his resistances, in either phase of the transference involvement. Whether the wish is to seduce, to cling, to defeat and humiliate, to spite, or to win love, mature resources of mind - sometimes of body - may be involved to start this purpose, including what may occasionally be an uncanny intuitiveness regarding the analyst’s personal traits, especially his vulnerabilities?
The persistence of old desires for gratification and the urge to consummate them, or the given urges to restore and maintain an original relationship with an omnipotent (and omniscient) parent, are intelligible to everyday modes of thought. That the transference, like the neurosis itself, may also entail guilt, anxiety, flustration, disappointment and narcissistic hurt are another matter. If it gives so much trouble, why does it reappear? Freud’s latter-day explanation involved the complex general theory of primary masochism and the repetition compulsion. One cannot, in a brief discussion, reach a disputation that has already occasioned voluminous writing. In ultimate condensation, the operational view to which are the elements to be understood, as perhaps, of (1) accompanying the renewed unregenerate drive for gratification of previously warded off wishes, whether libidinal or aggressive, based on the presentation of an actual object who bears significant functional ‘resemblances’ to the indispensable parent of early childhood, in a climate and structure of instinctual abstinence, and
(2) based on the latent alternative urge to understand, assimilate, perhaps alters parental response, or otherwise master poignantly a painful situation as they were experienced in state of relative helplessness in the past. Both may be viewed as independent of adult motivations, although the power of the first may at times importantly subserve such motivations, and the second may often be phenomenologically congruent with them. Implicit in both, in contrast with the experienced plasticities and varieties of mature ego development, is the persistent and a continuous theme of adhesion to the psychic representation of the decisive original parent figure or a perceptually variant substitute. Still, it is profoundly important against original separation from the primal mother, with its potential phase specifications, as opposed to the powerful urges toward independence development, providing the underlying basis for developmental and later, neurotic conflict, that these conflicting tendencies, in the sense of the profundity that of them provide a certain parallel to the Thanatos-Eros struggle that assumed a decisive role in Freud’s final contributions. In a recent study of aggression (Stone 1971), examined Freud’s views on this subject. Although - in a paradox - by which the existence of a profound ‘alternative’ impulse to die at least conceptually tenable and susceptible to clinical inferential support, it is the conviction of those, that from both observation and inference, that aggression as this is an essential instrumental phenomenon (or can serve self-preservation and sexual impulses alike, and that it is thus, in its original forms, pitted against a postulated latent impulse to die, as it is against external threats to life. These urges and instrumentalities find primal organismic expression and experience in the phenomenon of birth and the immediate neonatal period, the biological prototype of all subsequent specifications, elaborations, and transmutations of the experience of separation. At the very outset the ‘conflict’ may find expression in the delay of breathing or, shortly after that, in the disinclination of suck. There is thus an intertwining of the two conceptions of basic conflict. It may characterize that 'time' will validate Freud’s latter-day views of the fundament of human conflict. For the time being, however, it has to the presents that are an empirically more accessible and a heuristically more useful view of the ultimate human intrapsychic struggle. Thus the originally unmastered or regressively reactivated struggle around separation, revived by developmental conflict, would in this schema represent the ‘bedrock’ of ultimate resistances, although never - at least in theory - utterly and finally insusceptible to influence. If we assume that the vicissitudes of object relationships, initiated by the special relationship of the human infant of his family, are fundamental in the accessible process of personality (thus, structural) development and thus of neuroses, and that, in ‘mirror images’. The transference and thus the transference-resistance has a comparable strategic position in the psychoanalytic process, can we extend these assumptions inti the detailed technical phenomenology of process resistance in its endless variety of expression? Yet it remains that this extension is altogether valid.
What is more, is whether or not one thinks of it as ‘motivation’ in its usual sense, one can without extravagance postulate and even more intense cohesiveness at the first signal of that stimulus that contributed to the establishment of the organization and its basic strategies in the first place, i.e., the analyst as transference object. In the subjective good sense, the regressive trend of the transference, by the total structure of the psychoanalytic situation (i.e., the basic rule of free association and the systematic deprivations of the personal relationship) confronts the patient with one who has perceived ultimately as his first and an all-important object, the prototypical source of all gratification, all deprivation, all rejection, all punishment - the object involved in the primordial serial experience of separation (Stone 1961). This may seem an exaggeratedly magniloquent way to view a practitioner who puts himself in a seating position, usually in an armchair, listens, tries to understand, and then interprets, when he can, toward a therapeutic end. To a large portion of the adult's patient’s personality, the ‘observing’ portions of his ego, the portion that enters the therapeutic alliance, that is just what he is and that of what he should remain. To another portion, largely unchanged from its past, sequestered in the unconscious but influential although in derivative and indirect ways, he is a formidable object. It is in this field of force that, along with the drive toward better solutions, the range of clinical transferences as we know they are awakened. As, the entire efforts to translate the patient’s view of drives for reunion and contact, whether libidinal or aggressive, into genuine language, insights and voluntary control (or appropriate conative accomplishment elsewhere) is ‘resisted’. As it was originally, as an expression (or at least precursors) of separation, thus repeating aspects of the original developmental conflict. It is, however, it also true that the later and clinically more accessible vicissitudes of childhood create more accessible resistances within the postulated Metapsychological context created by the infant-mother relationship. Such changes as those patients in whom the phenomena of general the unity or approximations have been largely renounced, not only as a physical fait's accompli in perceptual and linguistic fact but also with deployment of the cathexis among other essential intrapsychic representations. These changes remain subject to regression or to the primary investment of certain phase strivings, conspicuously the Oedipus complex, in an excessive libidinal or aggressive cathexis. Such strivings, paradigmatically the incest complex, are in themselves the narrowed, potentially adaptive, maturational expressions of the basic conflict arouse by separation. If the analyst, to this infantile portion of the patient’s personality, an indispensable parent because cognition is, in this reference, subordinate to drive, it follows that the analyst becomes the central object in the complicated infant system of desires, needs, and fears that have previously been incorporated in symptoms and character distortion. The patient must, furthermore, tell these ‘secrets’ to the very object of a complex of disturbing impulses. This is a new vicissitude, not usually encountered in childhood and guarded forthwith. Even within the patient’s own personality, by the very existence of the unconscious. Ordinarily, he does not even have to ‘tell himself’ about them, in the sense that he is to a considerable degree identified with his parents, originally in his ego, then, in a punitive or disciplinary sense, in his superego? To be sure, the adult ‘observing’ portion of his personality, except where matters of adult guilt, embarrassments, or shame interfere, usually cooperates with the analyst. It can at least try to maintain the flow of derivative associations, which give the analyst material for informed inferences. The tolerant and accepting attitudes of the analyst tested by patients' rational and intuitive capacities, evened more decisively his interpretative activity, which suggestively an unredeemed child in the patent that he, ‘knows’ (or at least surmises) already, ‘gradually overcome the patient’s far of his own warded-off material and finally the fear of is frank expression'.
There are, then, three broad aspects of the relationship between resistance and transference. Assuming technical adequacy, the proportional importance of each, one will vary with the individual patient, especially with the depth of psychopathology. First, the resistance awareness of the transference and its subjective elaboration in the transference neurosis; second, the resistance to the dynamic and genetic reductions of the transference neurosis and ultimately the transference attachment itself, once established in awareness; third, the transference presentation of the analyst to the ‘experiencing’ portion of the patient’s ego, as id object and as externalized super-ego simultaneously in juxtaposition to the therapeutic alliance between the analyst in his real function and the rational ‘observing’ portion of the patient’s ego. These phenomena give intelligible dynamic meaning to resistances ordinarily observed in the cognitive-communicative aspects of the analytic process. These are the process or ‘tactical’ resistances, largely deriving from the ego under the pressure or threat of the superego.
As for this, the word ‘working through’ was sometimes, as Freud made mention (1914), that the structure yields only when a peak manifestation of resistance has apparently been achieved. The patient appears to require time, repetition, and a sort of increasing familiarity with the forces involved for real change to occur. In addition, Freud originally thought of the energy transactions as having some relation to the phenomenon of an abreaction in the earlier methods. One is impressed with the insistent recurrence of transference effects, conspicuously irrational anger in essentially rational patients, as though the structuralized tendency from which they derive can be directorially based on repetitive re-enactment and gradual reduction of effect. Since circumscribed symptom formations equivalent forms of neurotic suffering (and gratification) play an ongoing and inevitable economic role in the psychoanalytic situation and process, apart from having usually been the basis for its initiation, one might assume that they bear an important relationship to working through. Even when extinguished short of fear or long since under the influence of the transferee, their continued latent existence (or potentialities) is opposed to the vicissitudes of the current transference neurosis or it through which gradual relinquishment via working. This is true whether one thinks of the symptom in the quasi-neurophysiological sense of Breuer’s early formation of pathways of ‘lowered resistance’ (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895) or in a more empirical sense as a perennially seductive regressive condensation of impulse, gratification, and punishment, a useful and well-grounded concept, allied with the struggle against separation, is the relationship of working through to the process of mourning (Freud 1917).
While from the adult point of view the gratifications may be small and the crucial change for the worse, the symptom is nevertheless autoplastic, narcissistic in an isolated sense, already structuralized, and subject too no outside interference (except by the analysis), an expression of localized infantile omnipotent fantasy, however large or small this fantasy kingdom may be. Similarly, considering unconscious processes administering both the challenges and sanctions of the world of reality, and from the temporary disruptive intrusions of new elements into the narcissistically invested conscious personality organization. In working through, there is the diphasic and arduous problem of restoring original or potential object cathexes' in the transference neurosis, reducing their pathological intensities or distortions, and the deploying them in relation to the outer world. One may thus think of ‘working through’ as opposed to the renewal, symptom formation and as repeating some postulated vicissitude of one of the earliest conceptions of ‘transference’, the infantile transition from autoerotism to an object of love (Ferenczi 190-9). In this sense, the clinging to the incestuous object, represented in the clinical transference, would represent an intermediate process.
There is thus a tenacious reluctance of the ‘observing’ ego, might seduce the involved portion from its inveterate clinging to the actual transference object or to its autoplastically equivalent symptomatic representation. The postulated two portions of the ego (Freud 1940, Sterba 1934 in different references) are, after all, ‘of the same blood’ to put it mildly, and the urge to reunion in integrated function, the libidinal (synthetic) bonds, is quite strong. This affinity between ego divisions may, of course, take an opposite and adverse turn, a triumph of the ‘resistance’. As to instances of chronic severe transference regression, where the adult segment of the ego is ‘pulled down’ with the other and remains recalcitrant to interpretative e effort (Freud 1940). While this is, often contingent on the depth of manifest or latent illness, it may be simplified by iatrogenic factors, such as excessive and superfluous derivation in inappropriate and essentially irrelevant spheres. With these considerations, of whose importance is increasingly convincing with the passage of time.
Mentioning it is important, even if briefly, that certain special factors, sometimes extrinsic to analysis as such, may indefinitely prolong apparent satisfactory analyses. Real guilt, for example, may not be faced. Emotional distress based on real-life problems may not be confronted and accepted as such. A person of the type described by Freud (1916) as an ‘exception’, who feels of himself as having been abused by the fortune of fate, even if in other respects not more ill than others, may consciously or unconsciously reject the psychoanalytic discipline or the instinctual renunciation derived from its insights. Fixed and unpromising life situations or organic incapacities may permit so little current or anticipated gratification that the attractiveness of the regressive, aim-inhibited analytic relationship is strongly in comparison with the barrenness of the extraanalytic situation. The last general consideration is, of course, always an essential (if silent) constituent of the psychoanalytic field of force, especially in relation to the dissolution of the transference-resistance (Stone 1966). Or alternatively more accessibly, the ‘rules of procedures’ of analysis itself may be consciously or unconsciously exploited by the patient. He may, in ‘obedience’ to a traditional rule, delay certain decisions to the point of absurdity, invoking the analytic work in support of his neurosis and sometimes in contempt of important obligations in real life. Financial support t of the analysis by someone other than the analysand can provide a basis for chronic, concealed ’acting out’. Usually, the analysis itself can, on occasion, become a lever for subtle erasion of obligations, vicissitudes, and contingent gratifications of everyday life, and thus, paradoxically, become a resistance to its on essential goals and purposes. It may become too much like the dream, to which it bears certain dynamic resemblances (Lewin 1954, 1955). The analyst’s perceptive and tactfully illuminating obligation is no less important in these spheres than in other sectors of his commitment.
It is sometimes thought that by the ‘mature transference’ is meant, inflects the ‘therapeutic alliance’ or a group of mature ego functions that enter such an alliance. Now, there is sone blurring and overlapping the conceptual edges in both instances, but the concept as this is largely distinct from either one, as it is from the primitive transference. Either the concept is thought by others to comprehend a demonstrated actuality is a further question, that this question, is, of course, only to follow on conceptual clarity. In other words, the purposeful nonrational urge is not dependent on the perception of immediate clinical purposes, a true ‘transference; in the sense that it is displaced (in current relearnt form) from the parent of early childhood to the analyst. Its content is nontransitional but largely nonsenual (sometimes transitional, as in the child’s pleasure in so-called dirty words) (Ferenczi 1911) and encompasses a special and does not misuse spheric object relationship? : The wish to understand, and to be understood, the wish to be given understanding, i.e., teaching, specifically by the parent (or later surrogate), the wish to be taught ‘controls’ in a nonpunitive way, corresponding to the growing perception of hazard and conflict, and very likely to an implicit wish to provide with and taught channels of substitutive drive discharge. With this, there might be a wish, corresponding as the element in Loewald’s ascription (1960) by therapeutic process, to be seen as for one’s developmental potentialities by the analyst. However, the list could be extended into many subtleties, details, and variations. However, one should not omit to specify that, in its developments, it would include the wish for increasing accurate interpretation and the wish to ease such interpretations by providing sad adequate material: Ultimately, of course, by identification, to participate for being of its interpreter. The childhood system of wishes that underlie the transference is a correlate of biological maturation, and the latent (i.e., teachable) autonomous ego functions appearing with it (Hartmann 1939). However, there is a drive like quality in the particular phenomena that disqualifies any conception of the urge as identical with the functions, no one who has at any time watched a child importunes engendering questions, or experiment with new words, or solicit her interest in a new game, or demand storytelling or reading, can doubt this. That this finds powerful support and integration in the ego identification with a loved parent is undoubtedly true, just like the identification with an analyst toward whom a positive relationship has been established. That functional pleasure’ particates, certain ego energies perhaps, very likely the ego’s urge to extend its hegemony in the personality (Waelder 1936), however, the drive element, even the special phase patterns and colourations, and with it the importance of object relations, libidinal and aggressive, for a special reason. For just as the primordial transference seeks to into separation, in a sense to prevent object relationships as we know then ‘mature transference’ tends toward separation and individuation (Mahler 1965) and increasing contact with the environment, optimally with a large affirmative (increasing neutralized) relationship toward the original object, toward whom (or her surrogates) a different system of demands is now increasingly discrete. The further consideration that has to emphasize the drive like elements in these attitudes as integrated phenomena, as example of ‘multiple function’ than as the discrete exercise of function or functions, is the conviction that there is continuing dynamic relation of relative interchangeability between the two series, at least based on the responses to gratification, a significant zone of complicated energid overlap, possibly including the phenomenon of neutralization. That the empirical ‘interchangeability’ is limited, but this in no way diminishes its decisive importance. In the psychoanalytic situation, both the gratifications offered by the analyst and the freedom of expression by the patient are much more severely limited and concentrated practically entirely (in as much as the day is demonstrable sense) in the sphere of speech, on the analyst’s side, further, in the transmission of understanding.
Whereas the primordial transference exploits the primitive aspects of speech, the mature transference urges seek the heightened mastery of the outer and inner environment, a mastery to which the mature elements in speech contribute importantly. Likewise, the most clear-cut genetic prototype for the free association-interpretation dialogue is in the original learning and teaching of speech, the dialogue between child and mother. It is interesting that just as the profundities of understanding between people often include - ‘in the service of the ego’ - transitory interjections and identification, the very word ‘communication’ represents the central ego function of speech, is intimately related etymologically, even in certain actual usages, to the word chosen for that major religious sacrament that is the physical ingestion of the body and blood of the Deity. Perhaps, this is just another suggestion that the oldest of individual problems does, after all, continues to seek its solution in its own terms, if only in a minimal sense and in channels so remote as to be unrecognisable.
The mature transference is a dynamic and integral part of the ‘therapeutic alliance’, along with the tender aspects of the erotic transference, evens more attenuated (and more dependable) ‘friendly feeling’ of adult type, and the ego identification with the analyst. Indispensable, of course, are the genuine adult need for help, the crystallizing rational and intuitive appraisals of the analyst, the adult sense of confidence in him, and innumerable other nuances of adult thought and feeling. With these giving a driving momentum and power to the analytic process - always by it’s very nature in a potential course of resistance - and always requiring analysis, is the primordial transference and its various appearances in the specific therapeutic transference. That is, if well managed, not only a reelection of the repetition compulsion in its baleful sense, but a living presentation from the id, seeking new solutions, ‘trying again’, so to speak, to find a place in the patient’s conscious and effective life, has important affirmative potentialities. This has been specifically emphasized by Nunberg (1951), Lagache (1953, 1954), and Loewald (1960), among others. Loewald (1960) has recently elaborated very effectively the idea of ‘ghosts’ seeking to become ‘ancestors’, based on an earlier figure of speech of Freud (1900). The mature transference, in its own infantile right, provides some unique quality of propulsive force, which comes from the world of feeling, than the world of thought. If one views it in a purely figurative sense, that fraction of the mature transference that derives from ‘conversion’ is like the propulsive fraction of the wind in a boat navigating through close-haulage away from the wind: The strong headwind, the ultimate source of both resistance and propulsion, is the primordial transference. This view, however, should not displace the original and independent, if cognate, origin of the mature transference. To cohere to the figure of speech a favourable tide or current would also be required. It is not that the mature transference is itself entirely exempt from analytic clarification and interpretation. For one thing, like other childhood spheres of experience, there may have been traumas in this sphere, punishments, serious defects or lack or parental communication, listening, attention, or interest. Overall, this is probably far more important than has previously appeared in our prevalent paradigmatic approach to adult analysis, even taking into account the considerable changes die to the growing interest in ego psychology. ‘Learning’ in the analysis can, of course, be a troublesome intellectualizing resistance. Furthermore, both the patient’s communications and his reception and use of interpretations may exhibit only too clearly, as sometimes with other ego mechanisms, their origin in and tenacious relation to instinctual or analytic dynamism, greediness for the analyst to talk (rarely the opposite), uncritical acceptance (or rejections) of interpretations, parroting without actual assimilation, fluent, ‘rich’, endlessly detailed associations without spontaneous reflection or integration, direct demands for solution of moral and practical problems entirely within the patient’s own intellectual scope, and a variety of others. Discriminating it between the use of speech by an essentially instinctual demand and an intellectual may not always be easy or linguistic trait, or habit, determined by specific factors in their own developmental sphere. However, the underlying essentially genuine dynamism remains largely of a character favourable to the purposes and processes of analysis, as it was the original process of maturational development, communication, and benign separation. Lagache (1953, 1954) comments that on the desirability of separating the current unqualified usage. ‘Positive’ and ‘Negative’ transference, as based on the patient’s immediate state of feeling, from a classification based on the essential affect on analytic process. In the latter sense, the mature transference is usually, a ‘positive transference’.
A few remarks about clinical considerations in the transference neurosis and the problem of transference interpretation, may be offered at this given directions held within time. The whole structural situation of analysis (in contrast with other personal relationships), its dialogue of frees association and interpretation, and its deprivation as to most ordinary cognitive and emotional interpersonal dispensing tends toward the separation of discrete transference from one another with defences, in character or symptoms, and with deepening regression, toward the re-enactment of the essentials of the infantile neurosis in the transference neurosis. In additional relationships, the ‘cooperative’ outlook - gratifying, aggressive, punitive, or in other ways abounding with responsibly, and the open mobility of search for alternative or greater satisfaction - put activities of profound dynamic and economic influence so that the only extraordinary situation or transference of pathologically comparable both, occasion comparable repression.
It is a curious fact that whereas the dynamic meaning and importance of the transference neurosis have been well established since Freud gave this phenomenon a central position in his clinical thinking, the clinical reference, when the term is used, remains variable and ambiguous. For example, Greenson, in his paper of 1965, speaks of it as appearing 'when the analyst and the analysis become the central concern in the patient’s life.' Yet, to specify certain aspects of Greenson’s definition, for the term ‘central’ is justifiable, in that the term would apply to the analyst’s symbolic position in relation to the patient’s experiencing ego (Sterba 1934) and the symbolically decisive position that he correspondingly assumes in relation to the other important figures in the patient’s current life. Although the analysis is in any case, and for many reasons, exceedingly important to the seriously involved patient, there is a free-observing portion of his ego, as involved, but not in the same sense as that involved in the transference regression and revived infantile conflicts. There is, of course, always the integrated adult personality, however diluted it may seem at times, to whom the analysis is one of many important realistic life activities. Rarely, although it unavoidably does occur, that the analysis factually thrives of importance to other major concerns, attachments, and responsibilities of the patient’s life, and, perhaps, it is not as desirable that this should occur. On the other hand, if construed with proper attention to the economic considerations, the idea is important both theoretically and clinically. In the theoretical direction, we are to assume that there is a continuing system of object relationships and conflict situations, most important in unconscious representations but participating often in all others, deriving in a successive series of transferences from the experiences of separation from the original object, the mother. In this sense, the analyst is substantially, the uniquely important portion of the patient’s personality, the portion that ‘never grew up’, a central figure. In the clinical sense, its importance is felt of the transference neurosis as outlining for us the essential and central analytic tasks, provided by the informatics adjacencies of currents of relative fugaciousness and demonstrability, a secure cognitive base for analytic work. By its inclusion of the patient’s essential psychopathological processes and tendencies in their original functional connections, it offers in its resolution or marked reduction, the most formidable lever for an analytic cure. The transference neurosis must be seen in its interweaving with the patient’s extra-analytic system of personal contacts. The relationship to the analyst may influence the course of relationships to others, in the same sense that the clinical neurosis did, except that the former is alloplastic, proportionally exposed, and subject to constant interpretations. It is also an important fact that, except in those rare instances where the original dyadic relationship appears to return, the analyst, even in strictly transference spheres, cannot be assigned all the transference roles simultaneously. Other actors are required. He may at times oscillate with confusing rapidity between the status of mother and father, but he usually predominantly in one of these roles for long periods, someone else representing the other. Moreover, apart from ‘acting out’, complicate and mutually inconsistent attitudes, anterior to awareness and verbalization, may require the seeking of other transference objects: Husband or wife, friend, another analyst, and so forth. Children, even the patient’s own children, may be invested with early strivings of the patient, displaced from the analysis, to permit the emergence or maintenance of another system of strivings. Physicians, of course, may encouragingly be more aware of in their patients and their own strivings, mobilized by the analysis, even experience the impulses that they would wish to call forth in the analyst. Transference interpretation therefore often had inescapably had some sorted paradoxical inclusiveness, which is an important reality of technique. There is another aspect, and that is the dynamic and economic impact of the intimate and actualized dramatis personae of the transference neurosis on the progress of the analysis as such and on the patient’s motivations, and his real-life avenues for recovery. For the person in his milieu may fulfill their ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ roles in transference only too well, in the sense that an analyst motivated by a ‘blind’ countertransference may do the same. Apart from their roles in the transference drama, which may ease or impede interpretative effectiveness, they can provide the substantial and dependable real-life gratifications that ultimately ease the analysis of the residual analytic transferences, or their capacities or attitudes may occasion an over-load of the anaclitic and instinctual needs in the transference, rendering the same process far more difficult. In the most unhappy instances, there can be a serious undercutting of the motivations for basic change.
There is also the fundamental question of the role of the transference interpretation, is but nonetheless, the variances reserved as to details and emphasis on the other important aspects of the therapeutic process, in that, there are still many to whom, if not in doubt regardless the quality value of transference interpretation, are inclined doubts their uniqueness and to stress the importance of economic considerations in determining the choice about whether transference or extratransference (In a sense, the necessarily ‘distributed’ character of a variable fraction of transference interpretation), there is the fact that the extra analytic life of the patient often provides indispensable data for the understanding of detailed complexities of his psychic functioning, because of the sheer variety of its references, some of which cannot be reproduced in the relationship to the psychoanalyst. For example, there is not repartee (in the ordinary sense) in the analysis. This way the patient handles the dialogue with an angry employer may be importantly revealing. The same may be true of the quality of his reaction to a real danger of dismissal. There are not only the realities’ not also the ‘formal’ aspects of his responses. These expressions of his personality remain important, though his ‘acting out’ of the transference (assuming this was the case) may have been even more revealing and, of course, requiring transference interpretation. Furthermore, these expressions remain useful, if discriminating and conservatively treated, even if they are inevitable always subject to that epistemological reservation, which haunts so much of the data as placed in the analytic situation. Of course, the ‘positive’ transference simplifies intensified interpretations, but it is what might render their enabling capabilities that the abling of the patient’s acceptably to listen into them and directly take them seriously.
In an operational sense, it seems that extratransference interpretations cannot be set aside or underestimated. However, the unique effectiveness of transference interpretations is not by that disestablished. No other interpretation is free, without reason. Of considering unlikely introduced apart from not substantially knowing the ‘other person’s’ involvement in a feel deep affection for, quarrelling, criticism, or whatever is being hoped-for. No other situation provides for the patient’s combinational sense of cognitive acquisition, with the experience of complete personal tolerance and acceptance, that is implicit in. an interpretation made by an individual who is an object of the emotions, drives or even defences, which are active at the time. There is no doubt that such interpretations must not only (in common with all others) include personal tactfulness but also must be offered with special care as to their intellectual reasonableness, in relation to the immediate context, lest they defeat their essential purpose. It is not too often likely that a patient who had just been jilted in a long-standing love affair and id suffering exceedingly will find useful an immediate interpretation that his suffering is because the analyst does not reciprocate his love, although a dynamism in this general sphere may be ultimate shown, and acceptable to the patient. On the other hand, once the transference neurosis is established, with accompanying subtle (sometimes gross) colourations of the patient’s story, transference interpretations are indicative, for, if all of the patient’s libido and aggressions are not, in fact, invested in the analyst, he has at least an unconscious role in all important emotional transactions, and if the assumption is correct, that the regressive drive, mobilized by the analytic situation, acceding the directorial restoration of a single all-encompassing relationship, specified pragmatically in the individual case by the actual attained level of development, then there is a dynamic factor at work, importantly meriting interpretation as such, to the extent that available material supports it. This would be the immediate clinical application of the material regarding a ‘cognitive lag’.
Freud’s first formal reference to transference (Breuer and Freud 1893-1895) set the tone for all that followed. In discussion resistance and obstacles too effective cathartic (analytic) work, he offers as one possibility that ‘the patient is frightened at finding that she is transferring into the figure of the physician the distressing ideas that arise from the content of the analysis . . . Transference onto the physician takes place through a ‘false connection’. Freud then offers an example of a woman who developed a hysterical symptom based on her wish many years earlier (and now relegated to the unconscious) that the man she was talking to at the time might slowly take the initiative and gives her a kiss. He then described how, toward the end of one session, a similar wish came up within the patient toward himself - Freud. The patient was horrified and unable to work in the next hour, and obstacle to the therapeutic work that was removed once Freud had discovered its basis and pointed it out to the patient. In her response, the patient could recall the pathogenic recollections that accounted for her reactions to Freud the unconscious wish, according to Freud, had become conscious but was linked to the person based on a false connection by the transference,
Importantly, the present of issues is the finding that Freud’s monumental discovery of transference was founded upon his realization that his patient’s conscious fantasy about him was based on an earlier experience with another man. This displacement from an earlier figure (in later writings this person would often be linked to the patient’s father or other childhood figure) was seen as having no foundation in the analyst’s behaviours and as based entirely on the patient’s inner wish. Freud repeatedly characterized such responses as the real for the patient though unfounded in the actualities of the analytic relationships.
Once, again, in his well-known postscript to the case of Dora, Freud (1905) showed an appreciation of the unconscious basis for transference, though he maintained as his clinical reference point some type of conscious allusion to a reaction toward the analyst. Freud defined transference as a special class of mental structures that for the most parts are unconscious. Descriptively, he identified them as; untried additions or facsimiles of the impulses and phantasies that are suspensefully made conscious during the progression of the analysis. . . . They replace some earlier person by the person of the physician. Freud stared that some transferences differ from their earlier models in no way except the substitution of the physician for the earlier figure. He abstractively supposed of these to be new impressions or reprint, but stated that other transferences are more ingeniously constructed and have been subjected to a modifying influence he termed sublimation, the implication was that these transferences took advantage of some real peculiarity in the physician’s person or circumstance and attached themselves to that factor. These transferences he considered revised editions. Through transference, the past of the patient is revived as belonging to the present. Even with the patient Dora, the main transference was seen as a replacement for her father with Freud, and much of this found expression through conscious comparisons such as her question about whether Freud was keeping secrets from her as had her father. Other manifest concerns that Dora expressed in her relationship with Freud were traced to the relationship with Herr K.
Throughout his discussion, Freud maintained the clinical view of transference as involving some direct reference to himself as the analyst. While he clearly stated that transference structures are largely unconscious, his evidently stressed on the role of unrecognized displacement s and an unawareness with the patient of intrapsychic and genetic sources of her direct responses to the analyst. It is this peculiarity of the conceptualization of transference - a recognition of its unconscious basis, which is seldom specified in any detail, and a simultaneous maintenance of the ides that it is expressed through direct references to the analyst - that has contributed too much uncertainty in this area.
Freud and others have treated manifest and conscious fantasies about the analyst as if they represented either the direct awareness of a fantasy influencing the patient’s psychopathology or the breakthrough of as previous unconscious fantasy or memory, originally attached to an earlier figure. This has caused considerable confusion; for all practical purposes, conscious fantasies about the analyst and defences against them have been taken as the substance of the patient’s transference neurosis, while the role of the unconscious fantasies has been neglected.
While Freud and other analysts have at times stressed the critical role of unconscious fantasy constellations in the development of neurosis, in their actual clinical work conscious fantasies are often taken at face value and held responsibly for the patient’s illness. Some of this contradiction has been rationalized away with the idea that these conscious fantasies represent direct breakthroughs of previously unconscious fantasies, a position adopted despite the acknowledgment in other contexts (Arlow 1969, Brenner 1976) that defences and resistances are always at work and that pure breakthroughs are extremely either rare or nonexistent (the conscious product is always a compromise and always contains some degree of disguise).
While this view pats-lip service to the idea of nondistorted reactions by the patient, there has been virtually no consideration of his continuous, essentially sound functioning, or of his conscious and unconscious interventions. This is in keeping with the overriding stress on pathological unconscious fantasies in the etiology of neuroses and in transference, to the neglect of unconscious perceptions and introjects, a factor neglected to this day.
Most of what Freud had to say about unconscious fantasies and derivatives appeared in papers unrelated to technique and transference. In an important contribution in 1908, Hysterical Phantasies and Their Relation to Bisexuality, he specifically identified the role of unconscious fantasies in symptom formation, borrowing heavily from his insights into dreams. Freud had discovered that hysterical symptoms are based on fantasies that represent the satisfactions of wishes. He noted, however, that these fantasies can be conscious or unconscious initially, but that the critical factor in neurosogenesis is the presence of an unconscious fantasy expressing itself through hysterical symptoms and attacks. Freud felt that at times these unconscious fantasies can quickly be made conscious and that both the conscious and the unconscious fantasy may be some derivative of a formally conscious fantasy, suggesting by that the disguise involves the unconscious rather than the conscious fantasy. In this early use of the concept of derivatives, then, it was no the conscious fantasy that was the derivative of the underlying fantasy, but the reverse.
But, nonetheless, his paper on the dynamics of transference, Freud (1912) described transferences as based on a stereotyped plate that is constantly repeated
- repeated afresh - during a person’s life. The underlying fantasias were seen as partly accessible to consciousness, and as partly unconscious. Transference, then, is the introduction of one of these stereotypical plates into the patient’s relationship with the analyst.
It was also that Freud stated that when associations fail or become blocked. They have become connected with the analyst. Freud stressed the role of unconscious complexes in psychopathology and suggested that they are represented consciously and that their roots in the unconscious have to be traced out. The key to analysis is the distortion of pathogenic material expressed through the patient’s transference.
In Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through, Freud (1914) saw transference as involving repetitions of the past in the actual relationship with the analyst. In stressing, once, again, the extent to which the patient experiences these transferences as real and contemporize, Freud again used the term transference to refer to direct reactions to the analyst. In his paper on transference love (1915) Freud is clearly alluding to conscious erotic wishes and fantasies about the analyst. He stated that he was discussing situations in which women patients declare their love for a male analyst and make direct demands for the return of his love, using such demands as resistances. Similar thinking is revealed in An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, (1940), in which Freud discusses how the patient sees the analyst as a reincarnation of figures from his childhood, and transfers feelings and reactions based on this prototype. Freud was to escape an understanding by which, once, again attributive to positive and negative attitudes toward the analyst, and the plastic clarity with which patients experience such transferences.
The clearest evidence for Freud’s clinical definition of transference appears in his presentation of the opening phase of the analysis of the Rat Man (1909). The note’s of Freud decanting of this example, to reveal that with one exception, each time Freud used the term transference he was calling a conscious knowing fantasied illusion about himself or his family unit of measure. Persistently, Freud would attempt to identify the genetic basis for these transferences, largely, the main unconscious aspect was the mechanisms of displacement. It followed, then, that resistance, and in particular transference resistance, became defined as efforts by the patient to avoid the expression or realization of conscious fantasies about the analyst, and that the term could be extended to include unconscious avoidance as well. This is a reminder that the definition of resistance depends largely on the definition of transference - that is to say, that Freud took allusions toward an outside person as displacements from himself, and from ‘the transference’. In this context, it is well to recall that Freud’s original definition o acting out (Freud 1905) alluded to behaviours, directed toward the analyst, such as Dora’s flight from analysis, and to a lesser extent as to natural actions involved with other persons.
Freud’s narrow view of transference concerning direct references to the analyst is also reflected in one of his rare comments on the nature of material from patients’ (Freud 1937). In discussing the kinds of material that patient’s put at the disposal of analysts for recovering lost pathogenic memories. Freud refers to dreams, free association, the repetition of effects, actions performed by the patient both inside and outside the analytic situation, and the relation of transference that becomes established toward the analyst. In addition, his archaeological model of repressed unconscious memories can be seen to imply the discovery of previously repressed fantasies integrated as though it were also to leave room for fragmented representations. Finally, we may note a comparable comment by Freud in the Outliner (1940): 'We gather the material for our work from a variety of sources - from what communication has been made a reduction by giving us by the patient and by his free associations, from what her shows us in his transference, from what we reason out by interpreting his dreams and from what he betrays by his slips or parapraxes.'
Moreover, Freud leaned toward the divorce of his discussion of the transference neurosis and transferences from his consideration of the nature of psychopathology. In keeping with this trend, his discussion of the nature of unconscious fantasies and processes, and of derivative communication, appeared primarily in two metaphysical papers - Repression (Freud 1915) and The Unconscious (Freud 1915). In both papers he was concerned with communication between the unconscious mind and the preconscious or conscious mind? He noted that this takes place by means of derivatives that express and represent unconscious instinctual impulses. He also pointed out that unconscious fantasies can be highly organized and logical even thought outside the awareness of the patient, suggesting again the possibility of the direct breakthrough of such fantasy material. In these writings, it is the unconscious fantasy that expresses itself consciously through derivatives as substitute formations such as symptoms or preconscious thought formations. What has been repressed, Freud noted? Can become conscious only if it is sufficiently disguised? On this basis, unconscious fantasies can be appeared in a patient’s free association (the reference to free association rather than to transference), through remote and distorted derivative expressions. These are substitute formations that include the return of the repressed, the repressed instinctual impulses modified by defensive operations such as displacement.
Let it be said, that Freud left considerable room for uncertainty regarding his conceptualization of transference. Theoretically, he implied that transferences are based on unconscious fantasias and memories derived from experiences and brought into play in the relationship with the analyst. He himself never applied his insights into the nature of derivative comminations to the subject of transference. As a result, his clinical referent for transference remained throughout his writings that of a direct reference to the analyst. While he acknowledged the important role of unconscious processes and contented the analyst at face value and to understand them as direct representations displaced from the past. A major contradiction by that unfolded. In that Freud correctly understood neuroses to be based on unconscious fantasy constellations, including unconscious transference fantasies, and yet he worked analytically with the patient’s conscious fantasies toward himself as analyst. Freud’s contention that sometimes unconscious fantasies break through unmodified into conscious awareness is clearly insufficient justification for this approach. There is abundant clinical evidence that unconscious fantasy constellations are always expressed through derivative formations, and that even when elements of the underlying unconscious fantasy break through in unmodified form - or are recovered through interpretation - there always remains an additional cloak-and-dagger element. Further, at the point of realization of an undisguised unconscious fantasy, it seems likely that its own expression would be itself function as a disguised and defensive derivative of a different and still repressed unconscious fantasy (Gill 1963).
The failure by analysts to maintain the essential definition of transference - as based on an unconscious fantasy constellation expressed, almost without acceptation, through derivatives - has led to many mistaken formulations regarding the nature of psychopathology, the analytic process itself, and the techniques of the psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. In their discussion of neuroses, analysts have consistently maintained and documented the thesis that psychopathological syndrome is based on unconscious processes and contents - fantasy constellations. It seems evident, that analytic work with manifest fantasies per se cannot provide access to, or interpretations of, these unconscious constellations.
The need to clarify the contextual significance of ‘transference’ and what it serves to achieve, or prevent, or avoid, and becomes apparent. For example, relating to the analyst based on some preconceived fantasy, rather than as the person he or she is, can function to prevent the possibility of engaging meaningfully and experiencing the anxiety a more mutual and intimate engagement might arouse.
An appreciation of interactive factors also allows us to consider that, to whatever degree the patient’s perceptions of the analyst are plausible and eve valid (Ferenczi, 1933; Little, 1951; Levenson, 1972; Searles, 1975; Gill, 1982; Hoffman, 1983), this may be due to the patient’s expertise at stimulating precisely this kind of responsiveness in the analyst. The reverse is true as well. Thus, though patient and analyst each will have unique vulnerabilities, sensitivities, strengths, and needs, we must consider why particular qualities or sensitivities of either patient or analyst are begun at a given moment and not at others. At any moment patient or analyst might be involved in some find of collusive enactment (Racker, 1957, 1968; Levenson, 1972, 1983; Sandler, 1976, Bion, 1967, 1983; Ogden, 1979; Grotstein, 1981; McDougall, 1979). These considerations to illuminate why clinicians often seem to practice in ways that contradict their own stated beliefs and theoretical positions.
The powerful impact of unwitting communication between patient and analyst is, of course, one reason the analyst’s countertransference experience can be a source of vital data about the patient and may become the ‘key’ to understanding aspects of the interactions that might otherwise remain impenetrable (Heimann, 1950).
An appreciation of interactive factors also requires us to reconsider what makes up analytic ‘mistake’. In this regard Winnicott (1956, 1963) has expressed the views that there are times when our patients need us to fail. In the end the patient uses the analyst’s failure, often quite: Small ones, perhaps manoeuverer by the patient: The operative factors are that the patient now hates the analyst for the failure that originally came as an environmental factor, outside the infant’s area of omnipotent control, that is now staged in the transference. So in the end we succeed by failing the patient’s way. This is a long distance from the simple theory of cures by corrective experience (Winnicott, 1963)
From-Reichmann (1939, 1950, 1952), has emphasized that at times the analyst’s mistakes may become the basis for a ‘golden (analytic) opportunity’. From this vantage point we might consider that how an analyst deals in the accompaniment with wished, in that he or she has in possession of some inevitable fallibility that maybe on of the defining aspects of his or her techniques.
An appreciation of interactive considerations thus requires us to rethink important issues of technique and the question of how we define ‘analysis’. It also requires us to consider that the pattern’s so-called ‘analyzability’ may depend on the nature of the analyst’s participation than has previously been recognized. The dilemma is how to move into a new mode of thinking about clinical technique that is not beset by the inherent limitations of traditional thinking or by those of more radical new perspectives.
The unformidable combinations of others before have thought that the psychoanalytic situation and process as such have a general unconscious meaning, which reproduces certain fundamental aspects of early developments. For example, in Greenacre and in 1956 Spitz offered ideas of the psychoanalytic situation and of the origins of transference, based largely on the mother-child relationship of the first months of life. Greenacre used the term ‘primary transference’ (with two alternatives). As far as the ideas of Greenacre and Spitz emphasize the prototypic position of the first months of life, as reproduced in the current situation, there are subtle but important differences from the view presents. Nacht and Viderman in 1960 extended related ideas to their conceptual extreme, requiring metaphysical terminology. One can readily understand the regressive transference drive set up by the situation as having such general direction, i.e., toward primitive quasi union, a reservation that Spitz accepted and specified, in response to Anna Freud. It is te activation of this drive and its opposing cognate that underlies the construction of the psychoanalytic situation, which is seen primarily as a state of separation, of ‘deprivation-in-intimacy’.
With the prolonged and strictly abstinent contact of the classical analytic situation, there is inevitably for the patient, some growing and paradoxical experience of cognitive and emotional deprivation in the personal sphere, the cognitive and emotional modalities in certain respects overlapping or interchangeable, in the same sense that the giving of interpretations may satisfy to varying degree either cognitive or emotional requirements. The patient, also renounces the important expression of a locomotion. If developed beyond a certain conventional communicative degree, even gesture or other bodily expressions tend, by interpretive pressure, to be translated into the mainstream of oral-vocal-auditory language. The suppression of hand activity, considering both its phylogenetic and ontogenetic relation to the mouth (Hoffer 1949), exquisitely epitomizes the general burdening of the function of speech, regarding its latent instinctual components, especially the oral aggressions.
From the objective features of this real and purposive adult relationship, one may derive the inference that 'its representational advance presents of unintentional consciousness, one of disguising itself in its primary and most extensive impact, the superimposed series of basic separation experiences in the child’s relation to his mother.' In that, the analyst would represent the mother-of-separation, as differentiated from the traditional physician who, by contrast, represent the mother associated with intimate bodily care. This latent unconscious continuum-polarity eases the oscillation from ‘psychosomatic’ reactions and proximal archaic impulses and fantasies, up to the integration of impulse and fantasy life within the scope of the ego’s control and activities (Stone 1961).
Within this structure, the critical function of speech is seen in a similar perspective, as a continuous telescopic phenomenon ranging from its primitive meanings as physiological contact, resolution of excess or residual primitive oral drive tensions, through the conveyance of expressive or demanding or other primitive communications, on up to its role as a securely established autonomous ego function, genuinely communicative in a referential-symbolic sense. To the extent that an important fraction of human impulse life is directed against separation from birth onward, the role of speech, which develops rapidly as the modalities of actual bodily intimacy are disappearing or becoming stringently attenuated (Sharpe 1940), has a unique importance as a bridge for the state of bodily separation. In the instinctual contribution to speech, considering it as a phenomenon of organic or maturational ‘multiple function’ (Waelder 1936), the cannibalistic urges loom large; they, and more manifestly, their civilized cognates (partially, derivative?), Introjection tracings and their preserving capabilities for re-emergence as such, always. In such view, the most primitive and summary form of mastery of separation, fantasized oral incorporation, is in a continuous line of development with the highest form of objective dialogue between adults. The demonstrable level of response of the given patient, in this general unconscious setting, will be determined (in ideal principle) by his effectively attained level of psychosexual development and ego functioning in its broadest sense and by his potentiality for regression.
Advances in our understanding of the therapeutic action of the psychoanalysis should be based on deeper insight into the psychoanalytic process. By ‘psychoanalytic process’ is to mean the significant interactions between patient which ultimately leads to structural changes in the patient’s personality. Today, after more than fifty years of psychoanalytic investigation and practice, we can appreciate, if not to understand better, the role which interaction with environment plays within the core organizational formation, development, and continued integrity of the psychic apparatus. Psychoanalysis ego-psychology, based on a variety of investigations concerned with
Ego-development, has given us some tools to deal with the central problem of the relationship between the development of psychic and interaction with other psychic structure, and of the connexion between ego-formation and other object-relations.
If ‘structural changes in the patient’s personality’ mean anything, it must mean that we assume that ego-development is resumed in the therapeutic process in the psychoanalysis. This resumption of ego-development is contingent on the relationship with a new object, the analyst. The nature and the effects of this new relationship are under what should be the fruitful attempt to correlate our understanding of the significance of object-relations for the formation and development of the psychic apparatus with the dynamics of the therapeutic process.
Problems, however, of essentially established psychoanalysis theory and tradition concerning object-relations the phenomenon of transference, the relations between instinctual drives and ego, and concerning the function of the analyst in the analytic situation, have to be dealt with, least of mention, it is unavoidable, for clarification to those who think of a divergent repetition from the cental theme to deal with such problems. Thus and so, the existent discussion is anything but a systematic presentation of the subject-matter. Therefore, in continuing further details of attempting to suggest modifications or variations in techniques, but the psychoanalytic changes for the better understanding of therapeutic action of the psychoanalysis in that it may lead to changes in technique, as anything of such clarification may entail as a technique is concerned should be worked out carefully and is not the topic but its psychometric test?
While the fact of an object-relationship between patient and analyst is taken for granted, classical formulations concerning therapeutic action and concerning the role of the analysts in the analytic relationship do not reflect our present understanding of the dynamic organization of the psychic apparatus, and not merely of ego. In that, the modern psychoanalytic ego-psychology that expressed directly or indirectly, as far more than an additional psychoanalytic theory of instinctual drives. It is however the elaboration of a more comprehensive theory of the dynamic organization of the psychic apparatus, and the psychoanalysis are in the process of integrating our knowledge of instinctual drives, gained during earlier stages of its history, into such a psychological theory. The impact of psychoanalytic ego-psychology has on the development of the psychoanalysis, in that is to suggest that ego-psychology be not concerned with just another part of the psychic apparatus, given but a new continuum to the conception of the psychic apparatus as an undivided whole.
In an analysis, one is to think that we have opportunities to observe and investigate primitively and more advanced interaction-processes, that is, interactions between patient and analyst that leads to or from steps in ego-integration and disintegration. Such interactions, or integrative (and disintegrative) experiences, occur often but do not often as such become the focus of attention and observation, and go unnoticed. Apart from the difficulty for the analyst of self-observation while in interaction with his patient, there is a specific reason, stemming from theoretical bias, why such interactions not only go unnoticed but are frequently denied. The theoretical bias is the view of the psychic apparatus as a closed system. Thus the analyst is seen, not as a co-actor on the analytic stage, on which the childhood development, culminating in the infantile neurosis, is restaged and reactivated in the development, crystallization and resolution of the transference neurosis, but as a reflecting mirror, even if of the unconscious, and characterized by scrupulous neutrality.
This neutrality of the analyst is required (1) in the interest of scientific objectivity, to keep the field of observation from being contaminated by the analyst’s own emotional intrusions, and (2) to guarantee an unformed mind for the patient’s transferences. While the latter reason is closely related to the general demand for scientific objectivity and avoidance of the interference of the personal equation, it has its specific relevance for the analytic procedure as such in as far as the analyst is supposed to function not only as an observer of certain precess, but as a mirror that actively reflects back to the patient the latter’s conscious and particularly his unconscious processes through communications. A specific aspect of this neutrality is that the analyst must avoid falling into the role of the environmental figure (or of his opposite) the relationship to whom the patient is transferring to the analyst. Instead of falling into the assigned role, he must be objective and neutral enough to reflect back to the patient what role the latter has assigned to the analyst and to himself in the transference situation. Nevertheless, such objectivity and neutrality now need to be understood more clearly as to their meaning in a therapeutic setting.
It is all the same that ego development is a process of increasingly higher integration and differentiation of the psychic apparatus and does not stop at any given point except in neurosis and psychosis: although it is true that there is normally a marked consolidation of ego-organization around the period of the Oedipus complex. Another consolidation normally takes place toward the end of adolescence, and further, often less marked and less visible, consolidation occurs at various other life-stages. These later consolidations - and this is important - follow periods of relative ego-disorganization and reorganization, characterized by ego-regression. Erickson has described certain types of such periods of ego-regression with subsequent new consolidations as identity crises. An analysis can be characterized, from this standpoint, as a period or periods of induced ego-disorganization and reorganization. The promotion of the transference neurosis is the induction of such ego-disorganization and reorganization. Analysis is thus understood as an intervention designed to set ego-development in motion, be it from a point of relative arrest, or to promote what we conceive of as a healthier direction or comprehensiveness of such development. This is achieved by the promotion and use of (controlled) regression. This regression is one important aspect under which the transference neurosis can be understood. The transference neurosis, in the sense of reactivation of the childhood neurosis, is set in motion not simply by the technical skill of the analyst, but by the fact that the analyst makes himself available for the development of a new ‘object-relationship’ between the patient and the analyst. The patient having a tendency to make this potentially new object-relationship into an old, on the other hand, its total extent from which the patient develops ‘positive transference’ (not in the sense of transference as resistance, but in the sense in which ‘transference’ carries the whole process of an analysis). He keeps this potentiality of a new object-relationship alive through all the various stages of resistance. The patient can dare to take the plunge into the regressive crisis of the transference e neurosis that brings him face to face again with his childhood anxieties and conflicts, if he can hold to the potentiality of a new object-relationship, represented by the analyst.
We know from analytic s well as from life experience that new spurts of self-development may be intimately connected with such ‘regressive’ rediscoveries of oneself as may occur through the establishment of new object-relationships, and this means: New discovery of ‘objects’. Seemingly enough, new discovery of objects, and not discovery of new objects, because the essence of such new object-relationships is the opportunity they offer for rediscovery of the early paths of the development of object-relations, leading to a new way of relating to objects and of being and relating to ones' own. This new discovery of oneself and of objects, this reorganization of ego and objects, is made possible by the encounter with a ‘new object’ which has to possess certain qualification to promote the process. Such a new object-relationship for which the analyst holds himself available to the patient and to which the patient has to hold on throughout the analysis is one meaning of the term ‘positive transference’.
What is the neutrality of the analyst? Its significance branches the intangible quantification upon stemming from the encounter with a potentially new object, the analyst, which new object has to possess certain qualifications to be able to promote the process of ego-reorganization implicit in the transference neurosis. One of these qualifications is objectivity. This objectivity cannot mean the avoidance of being available to the patient as an object. The objectivity of the analyst has reference to the patient’s transference distortions. Increasingly, through the objective analysis of them, the analyst overcomes not only a potentiality but the subjective expanding activities available are of a new object, by eliminating in stages impediments, represented by these transferences, to a new object-relationship. There is a tendency to consider the analyst’s availability as an object merely as a device on his part to attract transference onto himself. His availability is seen as to his being a screen or mirror onto which the patient projects his transference, which reflects them back to him as interpretations. In this view, at the ideal endpoint of the analysis no further transference occurs, no projections are thrown on the mirror, the mirror having nothing now to reflect, can be discarded.
This is only a half-truth. The analyst in actuality does not reflect the transference distortions. In his interpretations he implies aspects of undistorted reality that the patient begins to grasp the successive sequence as the transferences are interpreted. This undistorted reality is mediated to the patient by the analyst, mostly by the process of chiselling away the transference distortions, or, as Freud has beautifully put it, using an expression of Leonardo da Vinci, ‘per via di levare’ as, insomuch as of sculpturing, not ‘per via di porre’ as, in producing a painting. In sculpturing, the figure to be created comes into being by taking away from the material: In painting, by adding something to the canvas. In analysis, we bring out the true form by taking away the neurotic distortions. However, as in sculpture, we must have, if only in rudiments, an image of that which needs to be brought into its own. The patient, in such a way he contributes of himself to the analyst, and provides rudiment infractions of such a continuous image of fragmented fluctuations imbedded by distortion - an image that the analyst has to focus in his mind, thus holding it in safe keeping for the patient to whom it is mainly lost. It is this tenuous reciprocal tie that represents the germ of a new object-relationship.
The objectivity of the analyst regarding the patient’s transference distortions, his neutrality in this sense, should not be confused with the ‘neutral’ attitude of the pure scientist toward his subject of study. Nonetheless, the relationship between a scientific observer and his subject of study has been taken as the model for the analytic relationship, with the following deviation: The subject, under the specific conditions of the analytic experiment, directs his activities toward the observer, and the observer expresses his findings directly to the subject with the goal of modifying the findings. These deviations from the model, however, change the whole structure of the relationship to the extent that the model is not representative and useful but, in earnest, very much misleading. As the subject directs his activities toward the analyst, the latter are not integrated by the subject as an observer: As the observer expresses his findings to the patient, the latter are no longer integrated by the ‘observer’ as a subject of study.
While the relationship between analyst and patient does not possess the structure, scientist-scientific subject, and is not characterized by neutrality in that sense by the analyst, the analyst may become a scientific observer to the extent to which he can observe objectively the patient and himself in interaction. The interaction itself, however, cannot be adequately represented by the model of scientific neutrality. Using this model is unscientific, based on faulty observation? The confusion about the issue of countertransference relates to this. It hardly needs to be pointed out that such a view in no way denies or reduces the role scientific knowledge, understanding, and methodology play in the analytic process, nor does it have anything to do with advocating an emotionally-charged attitude toward the patient or ‘role-taking’. In that a showing attempt to disentangle the justified and requirement of objectivity and neutrality from a model of neutrality that has its origin in propositions that may be untenable.
One of these is that therapeutic analysis is an objective scientific research method, of a special nature to be sure, but falling within the general category of science as an objective, detached study of natural phenomena, their genesis and interrelations. The ideal image of the analyst is that of a detached scientist. The research method and the investigative procedure in themselves, carried out by unspecified scientists, are said to be therapeutic. It is not self-explanatory why a research project should have a therapeutic effort on the subject of study. The therapeutic effect appears to have something to do with the requirement, in analysis, that the subject, the patient himself, gradually becomes an associate, as it was, in the research work, that he himself becomes increasingly engaged in the ‘scientific project’ which is, of course, directed art himself. We speak of the patient’s observing ego on which we need to be able to rely to a certain extent, which we attempt to strengthen and with which we collaborate among ourselves. We encounter and make to some functional applicability of what is known under the general title, ‘identification’. The patient and the analyst acknowledge the fact for being equally increasing to the evolving principles that govern the political nature as deployed to the accessorial evolution for a better and mutually actualized understanding, if the analysis proceeds, in their ego-activity of scientifically guided self-scrutiny.
If the possibility and gradual development of such identification are, as is always claimed, a requirement for a successful analysis, this introduces the component factor from which has nothing to do with scientific detachments and the neutrality of a mirror (‘mirror’ in this sense, is meant as having been for the most part used to denote the ‘properties’ of the analyst as a ‘scientific instrument’. (A psychodynamic understanding of the mirror as it functions in human life may reestablish it as an appropriate description of at least certain aspects of the analyst’s function). This identification does relate to the development of a new object-relationship of which is the foundation for it.
The transference neurosis takes places in the influential presence of the analyst and, as the analysis progresses, ever more ‘in the presence’ and under the eyes of the patient’s observing ego. The scrutiny, carried out by the analyst and by the patient, is an organizing, ‘synthetic’ ego-activity. The development of an ego function is dependent on interaction. Neither the self-scrutiny, nor the freer, healthier development of the psychic apparatus whose resumption is contingent upon such scrutiny, takes place in the vacuum of scientific laboratory conditions. They take place in the presence of a favourable environment, by interaction with it. One could say that in the analytic process this environmental element, as happens in the original development, becomes increasingly internalized as what we are to call; the observing ego of the patient.
There is another aspect to this issue. Involved in the insistence that the analytic activity is a strictly scientific one (not merely using scientific knowledge and methods) is the notion of the dignity of science. Scientific man is considered by Freud as the most advanced form of human development. The scientific stage of the development of man’s conception of the universe has its counterpart in the individual’s state of maturity, according to Totem and Taboo. Scientifically self-understanding, to which the patient is helped, is in and by itself therapeutic, following this view, since it implies the movement toward a stage of human evolution not previously reached. The patient is led toward the maturity of scientific man who understands himself and external reality not animistic or religious terms but as to objective science. There is little doubt that what is called the scientific exploration of the universe, including the self, may lead to greater mastery over it (within certain limits of which we are becoming painfully aware). The activity of mastering it, however, is not itself a scientific activity. If scientific objectivity is assumed to be the most mature stage of man’s understanding of the universe, showing the highest degree of the individual’s state of maturity, we may have a personal stake in viewing psychoanalytic therapy as a purely scientific activity and its effects as due to such scientific objectivity. Beyond the issue of an investment, to be, as necessary and timely to question the assumption, handed to us from the nineteenth century, that the scientific approach to the world and the self represents a higher and more mature evolutionary stage of man than the religious way of life. However, its questioning pursuit will not be for us to pursue.
Though the objective interpretation of the analyst and the transference distortion, it increasingly becomes available to the patient as a new object. This not primarily in the sense of an object not previously met, but the newest consists in the patient’s rediscovery of the early paths of the development of object-relations leading to a new way of relating to objects and of being oneself. Though all the transference distortions the patient reveals rudiments at least of that core (of himself and ‘objects’) which has been distorted. It is this core, rudimentary and vague as it may be, to which the analyst has reference when he interprets transferences and defences, and not one abstract idea of reality or normality, if he is to reach the patient. If the analyst keeps his central focus on this emerging core, he avoids moulding the patient in the analyst’s own image or imposing on the patient his own concept of what the patient should become. It requires objectivity and neutrality the essence of which is love and respect for the individual and for individual development. This love and respect represent that counterpart in ‘reality’. In interaction with which the organization and reorganization of ego and psychic apparatus take place.
The parent-child relationship can serve as a model, in that the parent ideally is in an empathic relationship of understanding the child’s particular stage in development, yet ahead in his vision of the child’s future and mediating this vision to the child in his dealing with him. This vision, informed by the parent’s own experience and knowledge of growth and future, is, ideally, a more articulate and more integrated version of the core of being which the child presents to the parent. This ‘more’ that the parent sees and knows, he mediates to the child so that the child in identification with it can grow. The child, by internalizing aspects of the parents, also internalizes the parent’s image of the child - an image mediated to the child in the thousand different ways of being handled, bodily and emotionally. Early identification as part of ego-development, built up through introjection of maternal aspects, includes introjection of the mother’s image of the child. Part of what is introjected is the image of the child as seen, felt, smelled, heard, touched by the mother. Adding that what happens would perhaps be correct is not wholly a process of introjection, if introjection is used as a term for an intrapsychic activity. The bodily handling of and concern with the child, the manner in which the child is fed, touched, cleaned, the way it is looked at, talked to, called by name, recognized and re-recognized - all these and many other ways of communicating with the child, and communicating to him his identity, sameness, unity, and individuality, shape and mould him so that he can begin to identify himself, to feel and recognize himself as one and as separate from others yet with others. The child begins to experience himself as a central unit by being centred along.
In analysis, if it is to be a process leading to structural changes, interactions of a comparable nature have to take place. At this point, only to suggest, by sketching these interactions during early development, the positive nature of the neutrality required, which includes the capacity for mature object-relations as manifested in the parents by his or her ability to follow and simultaneously be ahead of the child’s development?
Mature object-relations are not characterized by a sameness of relatedness but by an optimal range of relatedness and by the ability to relate to different objects according to their particular levels of maturity. In analysis, a mature object-relationship is maintained with a given patient if the analyst relates to the patient in a tune with the shifting levels of development manifested by the patient at different times, but always from the viewpoint of potential growth, that is, from the viewpoint of the future. It is the fear of moulding the patient in one’s own image that has prevented analysis from coming to grips with the dimension of the future in analytic theory and practice, a strange omission considering the fact that growth and development are at the centre of all psychoanalytic concern. A fresh and deeper approach of the superego problem cannot be taken without facing the issue.
The afforded efforts to say that the activities of the analyst, and specifically his interpretations and the ways in which they are integrated by the patient, need to be considered and understood as for the psychodynamics of the ego. Such psychodynamics cannot be worked out without proper attention to the functioning of integrative processes in the ego-reality field, beginning with such processes as introjection, identification, projection (of which we know something), and progressing to their genetic derivatives, modifications, and transformations in later life-stages (of which we understand very little, except in as far as they are used for defensive purposes). The more intact the ego of the patient, the more of this integration taking place in the analytic process occurs without being noticed or at least without being considered and conceptualized as an essential element in the analytic process. ‘Classical’ analysis with ‘classical’ cases easily leaves unrecognized essential elements of the analytic process, not because they suit the purpose of non-presence, but because they are as different to see in such cases as becoming aware of what was different, ‘classical’ psychodynamics in average citizenries. Cases with obvious ego defects magnify what also occurs in the typical analysis of the neuroses, just as in neurotics we see exaggerated in the psychodynamics of human beings overall. However, this is not to say, that there is no difference between the analysis of the classical psychoneuroses and the cases with obvious ego defects. In the latter, especially in borderline cases and psychoses, processes such as explained in the child-parent relationship take place in the therapeutic situation on levels proportionally close and similar to those of the early child-parent relationship. The further we move away from gross ego defect cases, the more do these integrative processes take place on higher levels of sublimation and by modes of communication which show much more complex stages of organization.
The elaboration of the structural point of view in psychoanalytic theory has caused the danger of isolating the different structures of the psychic apparatus from one another. It may look nowadays as though the ego is a creature of and functioning with external reality, whereas the area of the instinctual drives, of the id, ids as such unrelated to the external world. To use Freud’s archeological simile, it is as though the functional relationship between the deeper strata of an excavation and their eternal environment were denied because these deeper strata are not in a functional relationship with the present-day environment, as though it were maintained that the architectural structures of deeper, earlier strata are due too purely ‘internal’ processes, in contrast to the functional interrelatedness between present architectural structures (higher, later strata) and the external environment that we see and live in. The id, however - in the archeological analogy being comparable to some deeper, earlier strata - as such integrates with its comparable ‘early’ external environment as much as the ego integrates with the ego’s more ‘recent’ external reality. The id deals with and is a creature of ‘adaption’ just as much as the ego - but on a very different level of organization.
Having already confronted us, it related to the conception of the psychic apparatus as a closed system, and in addition that this view has a bearing on the traditional notion of the analyst’s neutrality and of his function as a mirror. It is in this context of the concept of instinctual drives, particularly as for their relation to objects, as formulated in psychoanalytic theory. Freud writes: 'The true beginning of scientific activity consists . . . in describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them.' Even at the stage of description avoiding applying certain abstract ideas to the material in hand is not possible, ideas derived from somewhere or other but not from the new observations alone. Such ideas - which will later become the basic concepts of the science - are still more indispensable as the material is further worked over. They must at first necessarily posses some degree of indefiniteness: There can be no question of any clear delimitation of their content. If they remain in this condition, we come to an understanding about their meaning by making repeated references to the material of observation from which they appear to have been derived, but upon which, in fact, they have been imposed. Thus, strictly speaking, they are like conventions - although everything depends on their not being arbitrarily chosen but determined by there having significant relations to the empirical material, relations that we seem to sense before we can clearly recognize and discover them. It is only after more thorough investigation of the field of observation that we can formulate its basic scientific concepts with increased precision, and progressively to modify those that become serviceable and consistent over a wide area. Then, the time may have come to confine them in definitions. The advance of knowledge, however, does not tolerate any rigidity even in definitions. Physics furnishes an excellent illustration of the way in which even ‘basic concepts’ established in definitions are constantly being altered in their content. The concept of instinct (Trieb), Freud goers on to say, in such a basic concept, 'conventional but still partially obscure,' and thus open to alterations in its content.
Freud defines instinct as a stimulus: A stimulus not arising in the outer world but ‘from within the organism’. He adds that 'a better term for an instinctual stimulus is a need,' and says, that such 'stimuli are the sign of an internal world.' Freud lays explicit stress on one functional implication of his whole consideration of instincts, namely that it implies the concept of purpose in what he calls a biological postulate. This postulate runs as follows: The nervous system is an apparatus that has the function of getting rid of the stimuli that reach it, or of reducing them to the lowest possible level. An instinct is a stimulus from within reaching the nervous system. Since an instinct as an id impulse is a stimulus arising within the organism and acting ‘always as a constant force’, it obliges ‘the nervous system to renounce its ideal intention of keeping off stimuli’ and compels it ‘to undertaking to involve and interconnected activity by which the external world it so changed as to afford satisfaction to the internal source of stimulation'.
Instinct being an inner stimulus reaching the nervous apparatus, the object of an instinct is ’the thing concerning which or through which the instinct is abler to achieve its aim’, this aim being satisfaction. The object of an instinct is further described as ‘what is most variable about an instinct’, ‘not originally connected with it’, and as becoming ‘assigned to it only in consequence of being peculiarly fitted to make satisfaction possible’. It is, that we see instinctual drives being conceived as an ‘intrapsychic’, or originally not related to objects.
In his later writing Freud gradually moves away from this position. Instincts are no longer defined as (inner) stimuli with which the nervous apparatus deals according to the scheme of them reflex arc, but instinct in, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, it is as seen, 'an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things that the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces'. Freud describes, in that instinct in terms equivalent to the terms he used earlier in describing the function of the nervous apparatus itself, the nervous apparatus, the ‘loving entity’, in its interchange with ‘external disturbing forces’. Instinct impulses of an id have no longer an intrapsychic stimulus, but an expression of the function, the ‘urge’ of the nervous apparatus ton deal with environment. The intimate and fundamental relationships of instincts, especially in as far as libido (sexual instincts, Eros) is concerned, with objects, is more clearly brought out in The Problem of Anxiety, until finally, in An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, ‘the aim of the first of these basic instincts [Eros] is to establish ever greater unities and to preserve them thus - in short, to bind together'. Making that is noteworthy not only the relatedness to objects is implicit: The aim of the instinct Eros is no longer formulated as to some contentless ‘satisfaction’, or satisfaction in the sense of abolishing stimuli, but the aim is clearly seen through integration. It is ‘to bind together’. While Freud feels that applying his earlier formula is possible, ‘to the effect that instincts tend toward a return to an earlier [inanimate] stare’. To the descriptive or death instinct, ‘we are unable to apply the formula to Eros (the love instinct).
The basic concept Instinct has thus changed its content since Freud wrote, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes. In his later writing he does not take as his starting point and model the reflex-arc scheme of a self-contained, closed system, but bases his considerations on a much broader, more modern biological framework. It should be clear from the last quotation that it is not the ego alone to which he assigns the function of synthesis, of binding together. Eros, one of the two basic instincts, is itself an integrating force. This is following his concept of primary narcissism as first formulated in, On Narcissism, an Introduction, and further elaborated in his writings, notably in Civilization and Its Discontents, where objects, reality, far from being originally not connected with the libido, are seen as becoming gradually differentiated from a primary narcissistic identity of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ world.
In his conception of Eros, Freud moves away from an opposition between instinctual drives and ego, and toward a view according to which instinctual drives become moulded, channelled, focussed, tamed, transformed, and sublimated in and by the ego organization, an organization that is more complex and more sharply elaborated and articulated than the drive-organization called the id. In whatever way, the ego is an organization that continues, much more than it is opposing, the inherent tendencies of the drive-organization, the concept Eros encircles one term one of the two basic tendencies or ‘purposes’ of the psychic apparatus as manifested on both levels of organization.
As a whole, with such a perspective, instinctual drives are as primarily related to ‘objects’, to the ‘external world’ as the ego is. The organization of this outer world, of these ‘objects’, corresponds to the drive-organization than of ego-organization. In other words, instinctual drives organize environment and are organized by it no less than is true for the ego and its reality. It is the mutuality of organization, in the sense of organizing each other, which forms the inextricable interrelatedness of ‘inner and an outer world’. It would be justified to speak of primary and secondary processes not only concerning the psychic apparatus but also about the outer world is for its psychological structure. The qualitative difference between the two levels of organization might terminologically be said by speaking of environment as correlative to drives, and of reality as correlative to ego. Instinctual drives can be seen as originally not connected with objects only in the sense that ‘originally’, the world is not organized by the primitive psychic apparatus so that objects are differentiated. Out of an ‘undifferentiated stage’ emerge what has been termed part-objects or object-nuclei. A more appropriate term for such pre-stages of an object-world might be the noun ‘shape’: In the sense of configurations of an indeterminate degree and a fluidity of organization, and without the connotation of object-fragments.
The preceding excursion into some problems of instinct-theory is intended to were that the issue of object-relations in psychoanalytic theory has suffered from a formulation of the instinct-concept according to which instincts, as inner stimuli, are contrasted with outer stimuli, both, although in different ways, affecting the psychic apparatus. Inner and outer stimuli, terms for inner and an outer world on a certain level of abstraction, are thus conceived as originally unrelated or even opposed to each other but running parallel, as it was, in their relation to the nervous apparatus. While, as Freud in his general trend of thought and in many formulations moved away from this framework, psychoanalytic theory has remained under its sway except in the realm of ego-psychology. The development of ego-psychology unfortunately had to take place in relative isolation from instinct-theory. It is true that our understanding of instinctual drives has also progressed. Yet the extremely fruitful concept of organization (the two aspects of which are integration and differentiation) has been insufficiently, if in a at all, applied to the understanding of instinctual drives, and instinct-theory has remained under the aegis of the antiquated stimulus-reflex-arc conception model - a mechanistic frame of reference far removed from modernly psychological and biological thought. The scheme of the reflex-arc, as Freud says in, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes have been given to us by physiology. Nevertheless, this was the mechanistic physiology of the nineteenth century. Ego-psychology began its development in a quite different climate already, as is clear from Freud’s biological reflections in, Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Thus it has come about that the ego is seen as an organ of adaption to and integration and differentiation with and of the outer world, whereas instinctual drives left behind in the realm of stimulus-reflex physiology. This, and specifically the conception of instinct as an ‘inner’ stimulus impinging on the nervous apparatus, has affected the formulations concerning the role of ‘objects’ in libidinal development and, by extension, has vitiated the understanding of the object-relationship between patient and analyst in psychoanalytic treatment.
In discussing aspects of the analytic situation and the therapeutic process in analysis, dwelling further on the dynamics of interaction in the early stages of development will be useful.
The mother recognizes and fulfils the need of the infant. Both recognition and fulfilment of a need are at first beyond the ability of the infant, not merely the fulfilment. The understanding recognition of the infant’s needs for the mother represents some form of accumulating together, and yet undifferentiated urges of the infant, urges which in the acts of recognition and fulfilment by the mother undergo a first organization into some direct drive. In a remarkable passage in the ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’, in a chapter called The Experience of Satisfaction, Freud discusses this constellation in its consequences for the further organization of the psychic apparatus and in its significance as the origin of communication. Gradually, both recognition and satisfaction of the need coming within the range of the growing infant itself. The processes by which this occurs are generally subsumed under the headings identification and introjection. Accesses to them have to be made available by the environment, here the mother, who performs this function in the acts of recognition and fulfilment of the need. These acts are not merely necessary for the physical survival of the infant but necessary while for its psychological development in as far as they organize, in successive steps, the infant’s uncoordinated urge. The whole complex dynamic constellation one of mutual responsiveness where nothing is introjected by the infant that is not brought to it by the mother, although brought by her often unconsciously. A prerequisite for introjection and identification is the gathering mediation of structure and direction by the mother in her caring activities. As the mediating environment conveys, structure begins to gain structure and direction in the experience of that entity: The environment begins to ‘taker shape’ in the experience of the infant. It is now that identification and introjection plus projection emerge as more defined processes of organization of the psychic apparatus and of environment.
In agreement, . . . the organization of the psychic apparatus, beyond discernible potentialities at birth (comprising undifferentiated urges and Anlagen of ego-facilities, goes by way of mediation of higher organization by the environments to the infantile organism. In one of the same act, in the same breath and the same sucking of milk, drive direction, and organization of environment into shapes or configurations begin, and they Are continued into ego-organization and object-organization, by methods such as identification, introjection, projection? The higher organizational stage of the environment is indispensable for the development of the psychic apparatus and, in early stages, has to be brought to it actively. Without such a ‘differential’ between organism and environment no development takes place.
The patient, who comes to the analyst for help through increasingly evidently self-understanding, is led to this self-understanding by the understanding he finds in the analyst. The analyst operates on various levels of understanding. Whether he verbalizes his understanding to the patient on the level of clarifications of conscious material, whether he suggests or reiterates his intent of understanding, restates the procedure to be followed, or whether he interprets unconscious, verbal or other, material, and especially if he interprets transference and resistance - the analyst structures and articulates, or works toward structuring and articulating, the material and the productions offered by the patient. If an interpretation of unconscious meaning is timely, the words by which this meaning is expressed are recognizable to the patient as expressions of what he experiences. They organize for him was previously less organized and thus give him the ‘distance’ from himself that enable him to understand, to see, to put into words and to ‘handle’ what was previously not visible, understandable, speakable, tangible. A higher stage of organization, of both himself and his environment, is thus reached, by way of the organizing understanding which the analyst provides. The analyst functions as a representative of a higher stage of organization and mediates this to the patient, in as far as the analyst’s understanding is attuned of what is, and the way in which it is, in need of organization.
These are experiences of interaction (earlier called integrative experiences), comparable in their structure and significance to the early understanding between mother and child. The latter are some models, and as such always of limited value, but a model whose usefulness has recently been stressed by several analysts (for instance René Spitz) which in its full implications and in its perspective is a radical departure from the classical ‘mirror model’.
Interactions in analysis take place on much higher levels of organization. Communication is carried on predominantly by way of language, an instrument of and fort secondary processes. The satisfaction involved in the analytic interaction is a sublimated one, in increasing degree as the analysis progresses. Satisfaction now has to be understood, not about abolition or reduction of stimulation leading back to a previous state of equilibrium, but as for absorbing and integrating ‘stimuli’. Leading to higher levels of equilibrium. This, it is true, is often achieved by temporary regression to an earlier level, but this regression is 'in the service of the ego', that is, in the service of higher organization. Satisfaction, in the creation of an identity of experiences in two ‘systems’, two psychic apparatuses of different levels of organization, thus containing the potential of growth. This identity is achieved by overcoming a differential. Properly speaking, there is no experience of satisfaction and no integrative experience where there is no differential to be overcome, where identity is simply ‘given’, that is existing rather than to be created by interaction. An approximate model of a giving existent identity is perhaps provided in the intra-uterine saturation, and decreasingly the early months of life in the symbiotic relationship of mother and infant.
Analytic interpretations represent, on higher levels of interaction, the mutual recognition involved in the creation of identity of experience in two individuals of different levels of ego-organization. Insight gained in such interaction is an integrative experience. The interpretation represents the recognition and understanding which is driven to consumable patients as previously unconscious material. ‘Making it available to the patient’ means lifting it to the level of the preconscious system, of secondary process, by the operation of certain types of secondary processes by the analyst. Material organized on or close to drive-organization, of the primary process, and isolated from the preconscious system, is made available for organization on the level of the preconscious system by the analyst’s interpretation, a secondary process operation that mediates to the patient secondary process organization. Whether this mediation is successful or not depends, among other things, on the organizing strength of the patient’s ego attained through earlier steps in ego-integration, in previous phases of the analysis. Ultimately in his earlier life. To the extent to which such strength is lacking, analysis - organizing interaction by way of language communication - becomes less feasible.
An interpretation can be said to comprise two elements, inseparable from each other. The interpretation takes with the patient the step toward true regression, compared with the neurotic compromise formation, thus clarifying for the patient his true regression-level covered and made unrecognizable by defensive operations and structures. Secondary, by this very step it mediates to the patient the higher integrative level to be reached. The interpretation thus creates the possibility for freer interplay between the unconscious and preconscious systems, under which the preconscious regains its originality and intensity, lost to the unconscious in the repression, and the unconscious retains access to land capacity for progression in the direction of higher organization. Put with Freud’s Metapsychological language: The barriers between unconscious and preconscious, consisting of the archaic cathexis (repetition compulsion) of the unconscious and the warding-off anticathexis of the preconscious, are temporarily overcome. This process may be seen as the internalized version of the overcoming of a differential in the interaction process described earlier as an integrative experience. Internalization itself is dependent on interaction and is made possible again in the analytic process. The analytic process then consists in certain integrative experiences between patient and analyst as the foundation for the internal version of such experiences: Reorganization of ego, ‘structural change’.
The analyst in his interpretation reorganizes, reintegrates unconscious material for himself and for the patient, since he has to be attuned to the patient’s unconscious, using his own unconscious as a tool, to arrive at the organizing interpretation. The analyst has to move freely between the unconscious and the organization of its thought and language, for and with the patient. If this is not so - a good example is most instances of the use of technical language - language is used as a defence against leading the unconscious material into ego-organization, and ego-activity is used as a defence against integration. It is the weakest of the ‘strong’ ego - strong in its defences - that it guides the psychic apparatus into excluding the unconscious (for instance by repression or isolation) than into lifting the unconscious to higher organization and, simultaneously, holding it available for replenishing regression to it.
Language, when not defensively used, is employed by the patient for communication that attempts to reach the analyst on his presumed or actual level of maturity to achieve the integrative experience longed for. The analytic patient, while striving for improvement as to inner reorganization, is constantly tempted to seek improvement about unsubliminated satisfaction through interaction with the analyst on levels closer to the primary process, rather than concerning internalization of integrative experience as it is achieved in the process that Freud has described as: Where there was id there will be ego. The analyst, in his communication through language, mediates higher organization of material as far as less, higher organized, to the patient. This can occur only if two conditions are fulfilled as in, (1) the patient, through sufficiently strong ‘positive transference’ to the analyst, becomes again available for integrative work with himself and his world, compared with defensive warding-off of psychic and external reality manifested in the analytic situation in resistance, and (2) The analyst must be in tune with the patient’s productions, that is, he can regress within himself to the organization on which the patient is stuck, and to help the patient, by the analysis of defence and resistance, to realize this regression. This realization is prevented by the compromise formations of the neurosis and is boomed potentially plausibly by dissolving them into the proper structural composite components as characterized by a subjugated unconscious and superimposed preconscious. By an interpretation, both the unconscious experience and a higher organisational level of that experience are made available to the patient: Unconscious and preconscious are joined in the act of interpretation. In a well-going analysis the patient increasingly becomes enabled to perform this joining himself.
Language, in its most specific function in analysis, as interpretation, is thus a creative act similar to that in poetry, where language is found for phenomena, contents, connexions, experiences not previously known and speakable. New phenomena and new experience are made available because of reorganization of material according to this point of unknown principles, contexts, and connexions.
Ordinarily we operate with material organized on high levels of sublimation as ‘given reality’. In an analysis the analyst has to retrace the organizational steps that have led to such a reality-level so that the organizing process becomes available to the patient. This is regression in the service of the ego, in the service of reorganization - a regression against which there is resistance in the analyst plus in the patient. As an often necessary defence against the unorganized power of the unconscious, we have a tendency toward an automatization higher in organizational levels and resist regression out of fear lest we may not find the way back to higher organization. The fear of reliving the past is fear of toppling off a plateau we have reached, and fear of more archaic cuckoos' nest of past experiential insensitivities not only in the sense of past content not more essentially of past, fewer stable stages of organization of experience, whose genuine reintegration requires new integrative tasks and the risk of losing what had been secured. In analysis such fear of the future may be manifested in the patient’s defensive clinging to regressed, but seemingly safe levels.
Once the patient can speak, nondefinely, from the true level of regression that he has been helped to reach by analysis of defences, he himself, by putting his experience into words, begins to use language creatively, that is, begins to create insight. The patient, by speaking to the analyst, attempts to reach the analyst as a representative of higher stages of ego-reality organization, and thus may be said to create insight for himself in the process of language-communication with the analyst as such a representative. Such communication by the patient is possible if the analyst, by way of his communications, is revealing himself to the patient as a more mature person, as a person who can feel with the patient what the patient experiences and how he experiences it, and who understands it as something more than it has been for the patient. It is this something more, not necessarily more in content but more in organization and significance, that ‘external reality’, here represented and mediated by the analyst, had to offer to the individual and for which the individual is striving. The analyst in doing his part of the work, experiences the cathartic effect of ‘regression in the service of the ego’ and performs a piece of self-analysis or re-analysis. Freud has remarked that his own self-analysis went on by way of analysing patients, and that this was necessary to gain him psychic distance required for any such work.
The primordial transference as considered would be literally and essentially derive from the effort to master the series of crucial separations from the mother, beginnings with the reactions to birth, as noted by Freud, and, in his own inimitable way, much earlier, by the poet William Blake (1757-1827). This in mention to Freud’s sense of original traumatic situations (1926) and with due cognizance of his and other’s disavowal of the fallacious psychological adaptation of the concept, notably in the one-time therapeutic system of Rank. This drive is present thence forward, and participates importantly in all of the detailed complexities of each infantile phase experience, with their inevitable context of warmth complexities of each infantile phase experience, with their inevitable contexts of warmth ful pressure, skin, special sense, and speech contacts, in the problems of object relationship, separation and individuation, the manifold of some determined crisis of adolescence, the specific neuroses, and many ‘normal’ involvements and solutions to the conventionally healthy individual. One may assertively simulate the important hesitiorially as participators that are embodied, that even if nonmanifest, in castration anxiety, also in ‘aphanisis’ (Jones 1929). The striving, in short, is to establish at least symbolic bodily reunion with the mother. Further, the striving is to substitute this relationship for the kaleidoscopic system of relationships that have, in good part and inevitably, replaced it. This is a transference to the extent that actual and concrete.
- later, intrapsychic - barriers prohibit even part or derivative manifestations of this drive, in reflation to the mother, requiring that, in varying modes and degrees, it be displaced to other individuals, sometimes even their undergoing secondary repression or otherwise warded off. In the instance where the drive actualization remains attached to the person of the actual mother, it is a primitive symbolic urge, only a potentiality in relation to transference. This does of course exist clinically in very sick children (Mahler 1952). It is rare, in its explicitly primitive modalities, in adults, although not at all infrequent in its psychological expressions. That such striving may come about in a narcissistic solution (or more primitive regressive state, such as autism or primary identification) is inescapably true, then only fundamental anaclitic strivings will persist, in psychotic states, even these may disappear. For the moment, if one is to ask indulgence for the tentative concept that both erotic and aggressive strivings may, in various ways, express ease, or subserve this basic organismic personality, apart from the empirical fact that disturbances in these spheres may be observed to initiate or augment it. One may think of the original urge as having an undifferentiated or oscillating instinctual quality, like the bodily approaches described for psychotic children (Mahler 1952), or it may find more mature expression in the neutralized need for closeness that causes the normal toddler, at a certain point, to recoil from his own adventurous achievement (Mahler 1965). While it is a universal ingredient of human personality, in tremendous range and variety of expressive dialectic discourse will decisively influence the quality and quantity of this reaction, apart from innate elements, by earlier vicissitudes, faultlessly in the neonatal experience with the mother, possibly in the organismic experiences of birth itself (Greenacre 1941, 1945).
The primordial transference only rarely appears as such in our clinical work. When it does appear, it leaves an impression not readily forgotten. This is the case when the underlying (as opposed too symptomatic) transference of the psychotic patient appears, displacing his symptoms, if only transitorily, or at times interpretations conjunction with them. However, in the usual neuroses or character disorders with them. However, in the usual neuroses or character disorders, even most so-called ‘borderlines’, this transference is in the sphere of influence, closest to the surface in the separation experience of termination, or in earlier interpretations, or in periods of extreme regression. It may be implied at times in inveterate avoidance of transference emotion, in extreme and anxious exploitation of the formalized routines of analysis, or in inveterate acting out. Seemingly enough, we have usually dealt with what, in the working transference and the transference neurosis, are the phase representations and integrations of this phenomenon, and the large and more subtle complexes of emotional experience clustering around them? Only some types of psychological need (or, demand) which sometimes assumes resemblance to original anaclitic requirements (for example, to exhibit indirectly the wish - rarely, to state it explicitly - that the analyst, in effect, think for the patient, and would be attested to frequently, and often demonstrably allied to the original struggle against separation.
In a great majority of instances, the operational transference will come to display an intimater and crucial relationship to the Oedipus complex. For the primordial transference finds and especially important phase specification. The oedipus transference repeats, in terms appropriate to the child’s state of psycho-physiological maturation, the invertebracy. The urge to kill if need be, to cling to the original object as the source of a basic gratification, which b comprehends residual elements of past libidinal phases in its organization as such, intimately bound with complex attitudes of object constancy in a large sense. It is, of course, the infantile prototype of the most general and comprehensive adult solution of the problem of separation, i.e., the institution of marriage. That this usually occurs in the birth of children tends to close a circle in unconscious fantasy, by way of identification with the children. Obviously, in the healthy parent, this plays a small economic role, comparable to that of the residual and repressed incest in the oedipal striving that are collaboratively given up, in varying degree, referring to its persists unconscious fractionate major energetic sources of everyday dream and infant life, neurosis, or creative achievement. It is also used for the general thesis to suggest that the important positions of the Oedipus complex in reflation too unconscious, the dream, provide a link between this climactic experience of childhood separation and the most primitive psycho-physiological separation. It has been shown that the neurophysiological phenomenons that are the objective correlates of dreaming are of striking high development in the neonatal period (Fisher 1965). The recently established prevalence of dream erection (Fisher 1966) awakened memories of and further reflections on Ferenczi’s Thalassa (1938), at least in its ontogenetic aspects. At this point, one might ask: 'What of the young woman whom, development brings favourably, turns to her father with comparable striving?' If we recognize the important element of biologically determined faute de mieux in the girl’s psychosexual development, i.e., the castration complex, and the multiple intrinsic and environmental factors usually favouring heterosexual orientation, in that this represents one of the early focal instances of reality-syntonic transference, which becomes integrated in healthy development. This is the other side in which the boy’s displacement of unneutralized hostility from his mother, as the first frustrating authority (even in relations to his access to her person), to his father? In optimal instances (again, allowing for inevitable unconscious residues), such reorientations become the dominant conscious and unconscious realities of further development.
This type of reality-syntonic development displacement is to be distinguished from the primordial transference problem, which is ubiquitous in the very beginning of relations to proto-objects, i.e., the question of whether perceptual and linguistic displacement (or deployment) is accompanied by merely ‘token’ displacement of libido and aggression away from the psychic representation of the original object, as opposed to genuine and proportionate shifts of a cathexis. In other terms, is the ‘new object’ really a person other than the mother who is loved and hated (to tinctorius simplicity), or is the other person literally a substitute for the original object, a mannikin for that object’s psychic representation? In the latter instance, the father is given cognitive status s a father. What is sought and sometimes found in him is a mother. This may be strikingly evident in the oral sphere, and may be maintained for a lifetime. This is true transference (of primordial type), not ‘transfer’, (to borrow the word tentatively from Max Stern [1957]), or ‘normal developmental transference’, or ‘reality-syntonic transference’. This deficit of varying degree, in instinctual and affective investment of the new and presenting real object, finds its mirror-image problem in the analytic situation, where a cognitive cover with lagging, must be repaired by the analyst’s interpretative activity, especially in the anticipatory transference interpretation. By this latter activity, recognition of the persisting importance of the original object, rediscovered in the analyst, can be established in consciousness, in relation to his current or developing affective-instinctual importance.
It remains beyond the complication and complexities in the mother-infant reciprocal symbiosis that may be thought to exacerbate the primordial transference tendency, however, the matter remains complicated, oversimplification is to be avoided. The same is even more true of reconstructions from adult (or even the child) analytic work. The analytic work does provide a certain access to the residues of subjective experience in the period of infancy. Probably the eventual synthesis of the two will permit more dependable clarification. Obviously the relationship to a mother has many facets, even within each developmental phase, each can, to varying degree, introduces further complications, sometimes new solutions, furthermore, the life of an individual, beginning very soon after birth, will include other individuals, conspicuously the father, usually siblings, often adult parental surrogates, who can decisively influence development for good or ill. However, these considerations do not disestablish the general and critical primacy of the original symbiosis with the mother. In relation to the primordial transference striving (in the sense that we have mentioned), by which the relevant reconstructive inferences from adult analyses point with an overall consistency but only to the persistence of a variety of anaclitic needs and diffuse bodily libidinal needs (or, cause to result of demands) accompanied by or permeated with augmented aggressive impulses and fantasies. These, apart from innate infantile disposition, seem likely that something like the Zeigarnik Effect, stressed by Lagache (1953) regarding transference usually, operate from earlier infancy? Thus the mother who responds inadequately, or who interrupts gratification prematurely or traumatically, is sought repeatedly in others, in the drive to settle ‘unfinished business’. That an opposite or very different tendency may sometimes appear to have prevailed in certain segments of relationship (oversimplification, seduction, satiation, and sudden disappointment, for example) or perhaps, represent the demonstrably complex spheres of the object relationship (parental possessiveness, undue demands, capricious harshness, failure to meet maturational development requirement, or myriad subtle variants) testifies only to the challenging complexity of the problem. Intuitively its certainty drawn upon the phenomenon of regression, on the one hand from the oedipal conflicts, or - possibly more often than realized - from parental failures to meet the complex problems of proportionally ‘neutralized’ spheres of development, often contributes importantly to the clinical manifestations. Still, the anterior elements must be, conceded at least a logical priority in shaping the child and his contributions to the pattern of later conflict.
The same, degree to which there is actual deployment of a cathexis from the original object to other environmental objects, including the inanimate, determine (inversely) the power and tenacity of the primordial transference and probably deals with the basic predispositions to emotional health and illness, respectively. In other words, if there is true transfer of interest and expectation to the environment, with its growing perceptual (and ultimately linguistic) clarity, it exists for the infant largely in its own right, along with the primary object, the mother, whose unique importance is never entirely lost, in the development of most individuals. That there is also an organismic drive toward the outer environment is most assuredly true, and this contributes to what is ‘mature transference.’ Based on resemblances which progress from extreme primitiveness to varying grades of derail, the original object or part objects are sought by the primordial transference and often ‘found’; in other aspects of the environment. It may be in some specified condition for that this urge provides an important dynamic element in primary process, and in the mature universal symbolic faculty. In any case, it is the actual power of this regressive drive, fraught at every step with conflict and anxiety, down to the ultimate fear of loss of ‘selfness’, which can determine (in the light of other factors) whether the transference neurosis, and the given Oedipus complex itself, or the involvement in life in general, is a play of shadow-shades or a system of proportionally genuine reactions to real persons, perceived largely in their own right? That is to say, that in comparing this latent (dyadic) sides of the transference neurosis - its ‘primordial transference’ aspect - with Lewin’s ‘dream screen’ (1946), which really achieves full ascendancy only in the ‘black dream’.
Emphasizing that the primordial transference includes the actual or potential duality of body and mind within it is important own scope, and the distinction is of great psychodynamic, sometimes nosologic importance. However, it is deservingly taken to as seceding of the therapeutic transference (a specification, a derivative of the primordial transference) may have been analysed, there is, for practical purposes (at least, an unimpeachable exception), an inevitable residue of longing, of the research for the equivalent of some omnipotent, sapient, all-providing, and equally yielding of a parent. The important issue for the individual’s health and productiveness is that the critique of accurate perceptions and other autonomous functions is as actively participant as possible and that the social representations of this urge are as constructive and as consistent with successful adaptation as possible. The capacity to translate original bodily strivings into mental representations of relations with an original object, as literal needs are met in other ways, at least opens the endless realm of symbolic activities for possible gratification of the residual and irreducible primordial transference strivings. The anterior requirement, regarding affirmative viability, is that such strivings, in their literal anaclitic reference, are detached from literal transference subrogates and carried over to appropriate materials functionally, processes, individuals, and transactions, the responsibility for their direction or execution essentially assumed by the individuated dividual, in early ego identification with the original object. As for sexual gratification, the persistent clinging to the primordial object or to literal transference surrogates (in the sense previously specified) leads through the pregenital conflicts to the peak development of the Oedipus complex, and (apart from other more specific factors) to its probable failure of satisfactory resolution.
If sexual interest is genuinely deployed to other objects, even as unconscious representations, to the extent usually achieved, it remains nonetheless an important fact that bodily gratification is sought, usually by both individual and social preference, with another person who, at least in a generic organic sense, resembles the original incestuous object, most often including cultural-national ‘kinship’. This holds a dual interest, as (1) the general acceptance of the principle of symbolic ‘return’ to the original object, if no father (or a mother) must be thereby destroyed, or such aggression suggested by close blood kinship and (2) the paradoxical relation to the centrifugal tendency of the taboo on cannibalism. The latter, of course, with the advance of civilization, finds persistent representation only in symbolic ritual. In relation to the actual eating of flesh, the taboo tends to spread, not only to protect human enemies but also to include other animals with whom man may have an ‘object-relationship’, conspicuously the dog and horse. ‘Vegetarianism’, of course, includes all animal life. There is no reason to doubt that the mother is the original object of cannibalistic impulse and fantasy, as she is the first object of the search for genital gratification. In the infantile cannibalistic impulse, the physiological urge of hunger, the drive for summary union, and the prototype of relatively extensively-determinantal fixated oral erotic and destructive drives may find conjoint expression. That energies and fantasies derived from this impulse contributes importantly to the phallic organization was an early opinion of Freud (1905), which may be profoundly true. Except where severe pregenital disturbances have infused the phallic impulse as such with impulses (subjectively) dangerous to the object, the latter are not only not menaced with destruction (as in the cannibalistic impulse), but preserved, even enhanced. No doubt the critical difference in the cultural evolution of the two great taboos lies in the problem of the preservation of the object, as opposed to his or her destruction.
The Oedipus complex, in a pragmatic analytic sense, retains its position as the ‘nuclear complex’ of the neuroses. For reasons that the climatic organizing experience of early childhood, apart from its own vicissitudes, can under favourable circumstances provide certain solutions for pregenital conflicts, or in the suffering from them, in any case, include them in its structure. Only when the precursor experiences have been of great severity is acherontic in the organically determined new ‘frame of reference’, which hardly has independent and decisive significance of its own. Nonetheless, its attendant phallic conflicts must be resolved in their own right, in the analytic transference. From the analyst (or his current ‘surrogate’ in the outer world), thus from the psychic representation of the parent, the literal, i.e., bodily, sexual wishes must be withdrawn and genuinely displaced to appropriate objects in the outer world. The fraction of such drive elements that can be transmuted to friendly, tender feeling toward the original object or too other acceptable (neutralized?) Variants, will have course influence the economic problem involved. This genuine displacement is opposed to the sense of ‘acting out’, where other objects are perceptually different substitutes for the primary object (thus for the analyst). This may be thought to follow automatically on the basic process of coming to terms with (‘accepting’) the childhood incestuous wishes and its paricidal connotations. Such assumptions do not do justice to the dynamic problem implicit in tenaciously persistent wishes. To the extent that these wishes are to be genuinely disavowed or modified, rather than displaced, a further important step is necessary: The thorough analysis of the functional meaning of the persistent wishes and the special etiologic factors entering their tenacity, as reflected in the transference neurosis. Thus, in principle, the lateral accuracy of the concept phrased by Wilhelm Reich (1933), 'transference of the transference,' as the final requirement for dissolving the erotic analytic transference, although the clinical discussion, which is its context, is useful. This expression would imply that the object representation that largely determines the distinctive erotic interests in the analyst can remain essentially the same, while the actual object changes. Though a semantic issue may be involved to some degree, it is one that impinges importantly on conceptual clarity. Yet the truth is that the fortunate ‘average man’, who has, even in his unconscious, yielded his sexual claim to his mother and father’s prerogative, can, if he very much admires his mother’s physical and mental traits, seek someone like her. The neurotic cannot do this, and may fail in his sexual striving (in its broadest sense), even when the subject is disguised by the other appearance e of remote race or culture.
It is nevertheless, that the patient, being recognized by the analyst as something more than he is at present, can attempt to reach this something more by his communications to the analyst that may establish a new identity with reality. To varying degrees patients are striving for this integrative experience, through and despite their remittances. To varying degrees patients have given up this striving above the omnipotent, magical identification, and to that extent are less available for the analytic process. The therapist, depending on the mobility and potential strength of integrative mechanisms in the patient, has to be mostly explicit and ‘primitive’ in his ways of communicating to the patient his availability as a mature object and his own integrative processes. Yet, we call analysis that kind of organizing, reconstructuring interaction between patient and therapist that is predominantly performed on the level of language communication. It is likely that the development of language, as meaningful and coherent communicating with ‘objects’, is related to the child’s reaching, at least in a first approximation, the oedipal stage of psychosexual development. The inner connexions between the development of language, the formation of ego and of object, and the oedipal phase of psychosexual development, is still to be explored. If such connexions exist, then it is not mere arbitrariness to distinguish analysis proper from more primitive means of integrative interaction. To set up rigid boundary lines, however, is to ignore or deny the complexities of the development and of the dynamics of the psychic apparatus.
In contrast to trends in modern psychoanalytic thought and narrow the term transference down to a very specific limited meaning, an attemptive efforts to regain the original richness of interrelated phenomena and mental mechanisms that the concept encompasses, and to contribute to the clarification of such interrelations is afforded when Freud speaks of transference neuroses in a contradistinction to narcissistic neuroses, and two meanings of the term transference are involved as in: (1) The transfer of a libido, contained in the ‘ego’, to objects, in the transference neuroses, while in the narcissistic neuroses the libido remains in or is taken back into the ‘ego’, not ‘transferred’ to objects. Transference in this sense is virtually synonymous with object-cathexis. To quote from an important early paper on transference: 'The first loving and hating are transference of autoerotic pleasant and unpleasant feelings onto the objects that evoke these feelings. The first ‘object-love’ and the first ‘object-hate is, so top speak, the primordial transference. . . .' (1) And (2), the second meaning of transference, when distinguishing transference neuroses from narcissistic neuroses, is that of transfer of relations with infantile objects onto later objects, and especially to the analyst in the analytic situations.
The second meaning of the term is today the one most frequently referred to, the exclusion of other meanings. Two recent representative papers on the subject of transferences are such that Waelder, in his Geneva Congress paper, Introduction to the Discussion on Problems of Transference, saying: 'Transference may be said to be an attempt of the patient to revive and re-enact, in the analytic situation and in relation to the analyst, situations and phantasies of his childhood.' Hoffer, in his paper, presented at the same Congress, on Transference and Transference Neuroses states: 'The term ‘transference’ refers to the generally agreed facts that people when entering any form of object-relationship. . . . Transfer upon their objects. Those images that they encountered during previous infantile experience . . . The term ‘transference’, stressing an aspect of the influence our childhood has on our life as a whole, thus refers to those observations in which people in their constants with objects, which may be real or imaginary (or unreal), positive, negative, or ambivalent, ‘transfer’ their memories of significant experiences and thus ‘change the reality’ of their objects, invest them with qualities from the past. . . . ’
The transference neuroses, thus, are characterized by the transfer of the libido to external objects compared with the attachment of the libido to the ‘ego’ in the narcissistic affections, and, secondly, by the transfer of libidinal cathexes (and defences against them), originally related to infantile objects, onto contemporary objects.
Transference neurosis as distinguished from narcissistic neuroses is a nosological term. Just when, the term ‘transference neurosis’ is used in a technical sense to designate the revival of the infantile neurosis in the analytic situation. In this sense of the term, the accent is on the second meaning of transference, since the revival of the infantile neurosis is due to the transfer of relations with infantile objects on the contemporary object, the analyst? It is, however, only based on transfer of the libido to (external) objects in childhood that libidinal attachment to infantile objects can be transferred to contemporary objects. The first meaning of transference, therefore, is implicit in the technical concept of transference neurosis.
The narcissistic neuroses were thought to be inaccessible to psychoanalytic treatment because of the narcissistic libido cathexis. The psychoanalysis was considered feasible only where a ‘transference relationship’ with the analyst could be established: In that group of disorders, in other words, where emotional development had taken place to the point that transfer of the libido to external objects had occurred significantly. If today we consider schizophrenics capable of transference, we hold (1) that they do relate in some way to ‘objects’, i.e., to pre-stages of objects that are less ‘objective’ than oedipal objects (narcissistic and object libidos, ego. Objects are not yet clearly differentiated. (This implies the concept of primary narcissism in its full sense). We hold (2) that schizophrenics transfer this early type of relatedness onto contemporary ‘objects’, which objects thus become less objective. If ego and objects are not clearly differentiated, if ego boundaries and object boundaries are not clearly established, the character of transference also is different, in as much as ego and objects are still largely merged: Objects - ‘different objects’ - are not yet clearly differentiated one from the other, and especially not early from contemporary ones. The transference is much more primitive and ‘massive’ one. Thus, as for child-analysis, at any rate before the latency period, it has been questioned whether one can speak of transference in the sense in which adult neurotic patients manifest it. The conception of such a primitive form of transference is fundamentally different from the assumption of an unrelatedness of ego and objects as is implied in the idea of a withdrawal of the libido from objects into the ego.
The modification of our view on the narcissistic affections in this respect, based on clinical experience with schizophrenics and on deepened understanding of early ego-development, leads to a broadened conception of transference in the first-mentioned meaning of that term. To be more precise, transference in the sense of transfer of the libido to objects is clarified genetically, it develops out of a primary lack of differentiation of ego and objects and thus may regress, as in schizophrenia, to such a pre-stage. Transference does not disappear in the narcissistic affections, by ‘withdrawal of libido cathexes into the ego’. It's propositioned undifferentiated regressive is direction toward its origin in the ego-object identity of primary narcissism.
An apparently relational narrative conjuncture from which their unrelated meanings of transference are well founded in Freud's, The Interpretation of Dreams, gave a discussion of the importance of day residues in dreams. Since this last meaning of transference is fundamental for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of transference, it may prove to some significance to quote the relevant passages. 'We learn from the psychology of the neuroses that an unconscious idea is as such quite incapable of entering the preconscious and that it can only exercise any effect there by establishing a connection with an idea that already belongs to the preconscious, by transferring its intensity onto it and by getting itself ‘covered’ by it. In this context, the fact of ‘transference' from which provides an explanation of so many striking phenomena in the mental life of neurotics? The preconscious idea, which thus finding an undeserved degree of intensity, may be left either unaltered by the transference, or it may have a modification forced upon it, derived from the content of the idea that affects the transference.' Once, again, referring to a day residue, '. . . . That the fact that recent elements occur with such regularity points to the existence of a need for transference. 'It will be seen, then, that the day’s residue . . . not only borrows something from the Ucs when they succeed in taking a share in the formation of the dream - namely the instinctual force that is at the disposal of the repressed wish - but that they also offer the unconscious something indispensable - namely, the necessary points of attachment for transference? If we wished to penetrate more deeply at this point into the processes of the mind, we should have to throw more light upon the interplay of excitations between the preconscious and the unconscious - a subject toward which the study of the psychoneuroses draws us, but upon which, as it happens, dreams have no help to offer.'
One parallel between this meaning of transference and the one mentioned under (2) transference of infantile object-cathexes to contemporary objects - emerges: The unconscious ideas, transferring its intensity to a preconscious idea and getting itself ‘coveted’ by it, corresponds to the infantile object-cathexis, whares the preconscious idea corresponds to the contemporary object-relationship to which the infantile object-cathexis are transferred.
Transference is described in detail by Freud in the chapter on psychotherapy in Studies on Hysteria. It is seen there as due to the mechanism of ‘false (wrong) connection’. Freud discusses this mechanism in Chapter two of Studies on Hysteria where he refers to a ‘compulsion to associate’ the unconscious complex with one that is conscious and reminds us that the mechanism of compulsive ideas in compulsion neurosis is of a similar nature. In the paper on The Defence Neuro-Psychoses, the ‘false connection’, of course, is also involved in the explanation of screen memories, where it is called displacement. The German term for screen memories, 'Deck-Erinnerungen,' uses the same word ‘decken’, to cover, which is used in the above quotation from The Interpretation of Dreams where the unconscious idea gets itself ‘covered’ by the preconscious idea.
While these mechanisms involved in the ‘interplay of excitations between the preconscious and the unconscious’ have reference to the psychoneuroses and the dream and were discovered and described in those contexts, they are only the more or less pathological, magnified, or distorted versions of normal mechanisms. Similarly, the transfer of the libido to object and the transfers of infantile object-relationships to contemporary ones are normal processes, seen in neurosis in pathological modifications and distortions.
The compulsion to associate the unconscious complex with one that is conscious is the same phenomenon as the need for transference in the quotation from the Interpretation of Dreams. It relates to the indestructibility of all mental acts that are truly unconscious. This indestructibility of unconscious mental acts is compared by Freud to the ghosts in the underworld of the Odyssey - ‘ghosts that awoke to new life when they tasted blood’, the blood of conscious-preconscious life, the life of ‘contemporary’ present-day objects. It is a short step from here to the view of transference as a manifestation of the repetition compulsion - a line of thought that we cannot follow up connectively. The transference neurosis, in the technical sense of the establishment and resolution of it in the analytic process, is due to the blood of recognition that the patient’s unconscious is given to taste - so that the old ghosts may awaken to life. Those who know ghosts tell us that they long to be released from their ghost-life and led to rest as ancestors. As ancestors they live forth in the present generation, while as ghosts they are compelled to haunt th present generation with their shadow-life. Transference is pathological in as far as the unconscious is a crowd of ghosts, and this is the beginning of the transference neurosis in analysis Ghosts of the unconscious, imprisoned by defences but haunting the patient in the dark of hides defences and symptoms, is allowed to taste blood, are let loose. In the daylight of analysis the ghosts of the unconscious are laid and led to rest as ancestors whose power is taken over and transformed into the newer intensity of present life, of the secondary process and contemporary objects.
In the development of the psychic apparatus the secondary process, preconscious organization, are the manifestation and result of interaction between additional primitivities as organized psychic apparatus and the secondary process activity of the environment: Through such interaction the unconscious gains highly organization. Such ego-development, arrested or distorted in neurosis, is resumed in analysis. The analyst helps to revive the repressed unconscious of the patient by his recognition of it: Though interpretation of transference and resistance, through the recovery of memories and through reconstruction, the analyst, in the analytic situation, offers himself to the patient as a contemporary object. As such he revives the ghosts of the unconscious for the patient by fostering the transference neurosis, which comes about in the same organizational root-direction from which the dream comes about: Through the mutual attraction of unconscious and ‘recent’, ‘day residue’ elements. Dream interpretation and interpretation of transference have this function in common: both attemptive efforts to re-establish the lost connexions, th buried interplay, between the unconscious and the preconscious.
Transference studied in neurosis and analysed in therapeutic analysis are the diseased manifestations of the life of that indestructible unconscious whose ‘attachments’ to ‘recent elements’, by way of transformation of primary into secondary processes, constitute growth. There is no greater misunderstanding of the full meaning of transference than the one most clearly expressed in a formulation by Silverberg, but shared by many analysts. Silverberg, in his paper of the Concept of Transference, writes: 'The wide prevalence of the dynamism of transference among human beings is a mark of man’s immaturity, and it may be expected in ages to come that, as man progressively matures, . . . transference will gradually vanish from his psychic repertory.' Nevertheless, surreally from being, as Silverberg puts it, 'the enduring monument of man’s profound rebellion against reality and his stubborn persistence in the ways of immaturity,' transference is the ‘dynamism’ by which the instinctual life of man, the id, becomes ego and by which reality becomes integrated and maturity is achieved. Without such transference - of the intensity of the unconscious, of the infantile ways of experiencing life that has no language and little organization, but the indestructibility and power of the origins of life
- to preconscious and to present-day life and contemporary objects - without such transference, or to the extent to which such transference, miscarries, human life becomes sterile and an empty shell. On the other hand, the unconscious needs present-day external reality (objects) and present-day psychic reality (the preconscious) for its own continuity, least it is condemned to live the shadow-life of ghosts or to destroy life.
Earlier, that in the development of preconscious mental organization - and this is resumed in the analytic process - transformation of primary into secondary process activity is contingent upon a differential, a (libidinal) tension-system between primary and secondary process organization, that is, between the infantile organism, its psychic apparatus, and the more structured environment: Transference in the sense of an evolving relationship with ‘objects’. This interaction is the basis for what has been called in the ‘integrative experience’. The relationship is a mutual one - as is the interplay of excitations between unconscious and preconscious - since the environment not only has to make itself available and move in a regressive direction toward the more primitively organized psychic apparatus, the environment also needs the latter as an external representative of its own unconscious levels of organization with which communication is to be maintained. The analytic process, in the development and resolution of the transference neurosis, is a repetition - with essential modifications because taking place on another level - of such a libidinal tension-system between a different primitivists and a more maturely organized psychic apparatus.
The differential, implicit in the integrative experience, as the tension-system making up the interplay of excitations between the preconscious and the unconscious, we are to postulate thus, internalization of an interaction-process, not simply internalization of ‘objects’, as an essential element in ego-development and in the resumption of it in analysis. The double aspect of transference, the fact that transference refers to the interaction between psychic apparatus and object-world and to the interplay between the unconscious and the preconscious within the psychic apparatus, thus becomes clarified. The opening of barriers between unconscious and preconscious, as it occurs in any creative process, is then to be understood as an internalized integrative experience - and is in fact experienced as such.
The intensity of unconscious processes and experiences is transferred to preconscious-conscious experiences. Our present, current experiences have intensity and depth to the extent to which they are in communication (interplay) with the unconscious, infantile, experiences representing the indestructible matrix of all subsequent experiences. Freud, in 1897, was well aware of this. In a letter to Fliess he writes, after recounting experiences with his younger brother and his nephew between the ages of one and two years: 'My nephew and younger brother determined, not only the neurotic side of all my friendships, but also their depth.'
The unconscious suffers under repression because its need for transference is inhibited. It finds an outlet in neurotic transference: ‘Repetition’ which fails to achieve higher integration (‘wrong connections’). The preconscious suffers no less from repression since it has no access to the unconscious intensities, the unconscious prototypical experiences that give current experiences their full meaning and emotional depth. In promoting the transference neurosis, we are promoting a regressive movement by the preconscious (ego-regression) from the unconscious and to allow the unconscious to recathect, tendencies of interaction with the analyst, preconscious ideas and experiences so that higher organization of mental life can come essentially. The mediator of this interplay of transference is the analyst who, as a contemporary object, offers himself to be the patient’s unconscious as a necessary point of attachment for transference. As a contemporary object, the analyst represents a psychic apparatus whose secondary process organization is stable and capable of controlled regression so that he is optimally in communication with both his own and the patient’s unconscious, to serve as a reliable mediator and partner of communication, of transference between unconscious and preconscious, and thus a higher, interpreting organization of both
The integration of ego and reality consists in, and the continued integrity of ego and reality depends on, transference of unconscious processes and ‘contents’ on to new experiences and objects of contemporary life. In pathological transference the transformation of primary into secondary processes and the continued interplay between them have been replaced by superimpositions of secondary on primary processes, so that they exist side by side, isolated from each other. Freud had described this constellation in his paper on The Unconscious: 'In effect, there is no lifting of the repression until the conscious ideas, after the resistances have been overcome, have entered connection with the unconscious memory-trace. It is only through the making conscious of the latter itself that success is achieved.' In an analytic interpretation ‘the identity of the information given to the patient with whom hide’ a repressed memory, id is only apparent. To have heard something and to have experienced something is in their psychological nature two different things, although the content of both is the same. Later, in the same paper, Freud speaks of the thing-cathexes of objects in the Ucs, whereas the ‘conscious presentation comprises the presentation of the thing [cathexis] further: 'The system Pcs come about by this thing-presentation being hyper-cathected through being linked with the word-presentations corresponding to it. These are the hyper-cathexes, we may suppose, that causes a higher psychical organization and make it possible for the primary process to be succeeded by the secondary process that is dominant in the Pcs. Now, too, we are unable to state precisely what it is that repression goes unchallenged boundless to the presentational id of the transference neurosis: What it denies to the presentation bin translation into words that will remain attached to the object.'
The correspondence of verbal ideas to concrete ideas, which is to thing-cathexes in the unconscious, is mediated to the developing infantile psychic apparatus by the adult environment. The hyper-cathexes which ‘cause a higher psychical organization’, consisting in linking of unconscious memory traces with verbal ideas corresponding to them, are, in early ego-development, due to the organizing interaction between primary process activity of the infantile apparatus and secondary process activity of the child’s environment. The terms ‘differential’ and ‘libidinal tension-system’ which designate energy-aspects of this interaction, sources of energy of such hyper-cathexes are clearly approached by Freud's awakening problem of interaction between psychic apparatuses of different levels of organization when he spoke of the linking up of concrete ideas in the unconscious with verbal ideas as been the hyper-cathexes which ‘cause a higher psychical organization’. For this ‘linking up’ id the same phenomenon of the mediation of higher organization, of preconscious mental activity, by the child’s environment, to the infantile psychic apparatus. Verbal ideas represent preconscious activity, representatives of special importance because of the special role language plays in the higher development of the psychic apparatus, but they are, of course, not the only ones. Such linking up occurring in the interaction process becomes increasingly internalized as the interplay and communication between unconscious and preconscious within the psychic apparatus. The need for resumption of such mediating interaction in analysis, so that new internalisation may become possible and internal interaction b e reactivated, results from the pathological degree of isolation between unconscious and preconscious, or - to speak as for a later terminology - from the development of defence processes of such propositions that the ego, rather than maintaining or extending its organization of the realm of the unconscious, excluded ever more from its reach.
Transference and the so-called ‘real relationship’ between patient and analysts have been said that one should distinguish transference (and countertransference) and an analyst in the analytic situation from the ‘realistic’ relationship between the two. That is well known, however, it is implied in such statements that the realistic relationship between patient and analyst has nothing to do with transference. (Keeping in mind that there is neither such a thing as reality nor a real relationship, without transference). Any ‘real relationship’ involves transfer of unconscious imagines to present-day objects. In fact, present-day objects are objects, and thus ‘real’, in the full sense of the word (which comprises the unity of unconscious memory traces and preconscious idea) only to the extent that this transference, in the sense of transformational interplay between unconscious and preconscious, is realized. The ‘resolution of the transference’ at the termination of analysis means resolution of the transference neurosis, and in that way of the transference distortions. This includes the recognition of the limited nature of any human relationship and of the special limitations of the patient-analyst relationship. However, the new object-relationship attuned with the analyst, which is gradually being built during the analysis and constitutes the real relationship between patient and analyst. Which serves as a focal point for the establishment of healthier object-relations in the patient’s ‘real’ life, is not without transference in the sense clarification, . . . to the extent to which the patient developed a ‘positive transference’ (not in the sense of transference as resistance, but in the sense of the ‘transference’ which carries the whole process of analysis) he keeps this potentiality of a new object-relationship alive through all the various stages of resistance. This meaning of positive transference tends to be discredited in modern analytic writing and teaching, although not in treatment itself.
Freud, like any other man who does not sacrifice the complications and complexity of life to the deceptive simplicity of rigid concepts, has said many contradictory things. He can be quoted in support of many different ideas, which is to say, in writing to Jung on 6 December, 1906: 'It would not have escaped you that our cures come about through attaching the libido reigning in the subconscious (transference) . . . Where this fails the patient will not attempt or else does not listen when we translate his material to him. It is in essence a cure through love. Moreover, it is transference that provides the strongest proof, the only unassailable one, for the relationship of neuroses to a lover. He writes to Ferenczi, on the 10th, of January 1910: 'I will present you with some theory that has occurred to me while reading your analysis [referring to Ferenczi’s self-analysis of a dream]. It seems to me that in our influencing of the sexual impulses we cannot achieve anything other than exchanges of the sexual placements, never renunciation, relinquishment or the resolution of a complex (Strictly secret!). When someone brings out his infantile complexes, he has saved part of them (the effect) in a current form (transference). He has shed a skin and leaves it for the analyst. God forbid that he should now be naked, without a skin.'
One of Freud’s proudest achievements was the transformation of the therapeutic relationship that takes place in psychoanalysis into a tool of scientific investigation. Freud also believed that 'the future will probably attribute far greater importance to psychoanalysis as the science of the unconscious than as a therapeutic procedure' (Freud, 1926). Nevertheless in recent years the importance of clinical research has been underestimated and a growing cleavage has developed between the researcher and the clinician. Scientific investigation, in common with all other forms of human group endeavours, is subject to moods and to whom the impetus of fashion, and this has led to some disappointment with the contribution of psychoanalytic psychiatry to the problem of schizophrenia, which has resulted in a turning away from the investigation of the psychology of schizophrenia, with the hope that biochemistry and neurophysiology will solve its riddle.
This imploring us to consider the relation between clinical research in psychiatry and the investigations of basic science. Every generation of psychiatrists seems to have faced this problem. C. Macfie Campbell (1935) was in saying that, 'the prestige attached to research dealing with the impersonal process of diseases leads some to hold that further progress in psychiatry investigation must await advances in the basic sciences.' Taking this dependent attitude toward the solution of its special problems is dangerous, however, for psychiatry and to demand too much from other disciplines . . . Human nature cannot be adequately analysed by methods of chemistry and physiology and general biology.
Some knowledge of the history of science in general, and of medicine in particular, is useful, since it puts these issues in their proper perspective. We, in our vanity, trend to believe that the problems of our day are unique. It is understandable that we are impressed with the rapid expansion of biochemistry in its application to medicine, which in a short time has transformed some aspects of medicine from an art to a science. However, suppose that biochemistry had achieved its present state of maturity when medical knowledge was no further advanced than it was in the eighteenth century, when the description and differentiation of clinical syndromes as we know them today were just beginning. Had biochemistry been available to the clinician of that day, it could not have been applied, since the medical syndromes themselves had not yet been sorted out. It would have been as if botany had adopted a physical-chemistry theory of living organisms before it had established a systematic typology (Nagel, 1961). In some respects’ psychiatry is at a stage comparable to medicine in the eighteenth century, in that modern clinical observation is still in its infancy, as it was born with the work of Kraepelin, Bleuler, and Freud. The application of basic science is possible only when there is clinical knowledge. It would be serious indeed if the clinician were to relinquish his investigative role to the basic scientist.
The tendency to undervalue and neglect clinical research is only part of the problem. As there has been some discouragement with psychoanalytic therapy s an investigative method, and this has resulted in premature attempts to substitute the methods of the more precise disciplines. The history of science documents the phenomenon on the awe of the mature sciences experienced by those whose own discipline is less precise. The awe of success is something with which we are all familiar in our own lives: Science, and the individual, adopts a similar response - imitation of the more mature. Nagel (1961) notes the adverse effect of the attempt to reduce prematurely the less advanced to the more precise science, since this diverts needed energies away from what are the crucial problems at a particular period in a discipline’s expansion. To provide for an example as of: Newton’s influence on the chemistry of his day was catastrophic (Bronowski and Mazlish, 1960), for mathematics became the model of all sciences, and chemistry, in their attempt to imitate Newton, dropped their own more appropriate techniques. Advances in chemistry in England came entirely from outside the Royal Society, because the scientists within the Society attempted to apply mathematic problems that could not yet be dealt within that way.
The inspiring awe of Newton’s systematic description of the physical universe influenced medicine as well. For shortly after Newton’s discoveries, it became fashionable to construct speculative systematic explanations of diseases that were sterile since they were divorced from direct clinical observation (Garrison, 1929, and Guthrie, 1946).
Within the last few decades, physics has undergone a second major revolution, and those of us whose disciplines are less mature have been subjected to similar influences. We are bedevilled with the trend toward quantification before we know what we are quantifying or have the instruments with which to measure. The theoretical achievements of physics are imitated in our day, as in Newton’s, by the development of highly abstract theoretical systems that tend to become a form of scholasticism as the abstractions become increasingly removed from observation. Psychoanalysis also has not been entirely immune from these dispositional tendencies.
Schizophrenia is not a disease entity, but represent a symptom complex that could be considered ‘a final common pathway’, that is, the outcome of variety of pathological conditions (Jackson, 1960). In this sense schizophrenia is comparable to the eighteenth-century diagnosis of dropsy. To apply the more precise techniques of te biological sciences to the problem of schizophrenia things must first be sorted out. The derailed clinical observations that are the daily work of the psychoanalytic psychiatrist should help to sort out the variety of clinical syndromes that we call schizophrenia. Careful psychological observations of the schizophrenias and related disorders may uncover clues about where a purely psychogenic rationale and a purely biological hypothesis fall down. It is therefore, that analytic psychiatry must prepare the way for the application of the more precise techniques of biological investigation. To paraphrase what has been said in another text. , Although clinical description fails to satisfy the standards of precision achieved by modern physics, it is prepared to prevent inconclusive evidence than no evidence at all (Somerhoff, 1950).
For the past three decades, psychoanalysts have become increasingly better acquainted with the group of patients who fall between the designation of neurosis and that of a psychosis. Calling these patients borderline cases is customary. These individuals display a variety of symptom complexes: They may be eccentric, withdrawn people who could be properly called schizoid, or they may be depressed, addicted, or perverted, or any combination of it. One might question to whether many differing symptomatic syndromes can be brought together under a single heading. If we are to consider the issuer, not as presenting symptoms but as for the similar nature of their object relationships, wee find many threads uniting these seemingly disparate disorders.
The conflicts of these people in relation to external objects bear a striking similarity to those observed in the schizophrenic patient. As wit the schizophrenic patient, there is a significant disorder in the sense of reality. This tends, in the borderline case, to be more subtle than and not so advanced as in schizophrenia. Nevertheless, for these principle reasons are we to considering this group to be homogeneous is that they develop a consistent and primitive form of object relationship in the transference. For the moment, let us say that it more closely resembles the transference of the schizophrenic than that of the neurotic patient. As to be learnt, more of psychopathology, we should expect to find that nosological entities will be based not so much on overt symptomatogy, but more upon the less overt psychopathological structure and not a symptomatic diagnosis.
The differences between the group and the schizophrenias also need to be emphasized: For in them, unlike most schizophrenic patients, we do not observe widely fluctuating ego states. There is, however, evidence of a certain stability of character and, as Gitelson (1058) has emphasized, their defences operate exceedingly well. They may at times regress into psychosis, but as a rule this is a circumstance’s psychosis: It does not involve the total personality. They may, for example, develop ideas of reference, but they do not develop a major schizophrenic syndrome as described by Bleuler (1911) with a relative abandonment of object relationships. Although their difficulties’ wit other people are serious, they tend to retain their ties to objects and, as Gitelson has expressed it, they ‘place themselves in the way of object relations’. It should bar to mind, that using the term ‘borderline’; not, as it has sometimes been used (Knight, 1953 and Zilboorg, 1941), to refer to incipiently or early schizophrenia.
The fact that the pathologies of borderline cases are relatively stable and that they maintain the object relationships that make it more possible to use the transference relationship as an investigative tool. It is both their closeness to and their difference from the schizophrenias that provides a certain contrast that may prove illumination.
Hendrick and Helene Deutsch were among the first to explore psychoanalytically this group of warping disorders. Both authors were aware that they were observing a group of character disorders that may be more closely related to schizophrenia than to neurosis. Although their clinical material was by no identical means of both what is believed in that they were observing a developmental disorder of the ego that placed a special strain on the processes of identity and identification. Helene Deutsch’s (1942) description of the ‘as if’ personality has become a classic. She described a group of people who superficially seem normal but whose life lack’s genuine feeling. They can form relationships, but these are based more on identification that on love. As such that their object relationships have a primitive quality corresponding to the child’s tendency to imitate. Their sense to identify is borrowed from the partner, so that their emotional life lacks genuineness. Not for all borderline mechanistic procedures as for: When we as to assume that the ‘as if’ traits' are a syndrome within the borderline designation. Deutsch was not certain whether she was describing a personality type predisposed to schizophrenia or whether the symptoms were rudimentary symptoms of schizophrenia itself.
Hendrick (1936) described three different character types - the schizoid, the passive feminine man, and the paranoid character. He stressed the fact that these three had an elementally different ego structure that was closer to schizophrenia than to the neurosis? He understood this structural pathology to result from a failure of the normal maturational process. He noted the prominence of primitive destructive phantasies that interfere with the ego’s executant functions, and offered an explanation confronted by recent observation. Hendrick speculated that these primitive, infantile, aggressive phantasies would normally have been terminated by a process of identification that had failed to occur.
Using the term borderline to refer to a symptomatically heterogeneous group of patients who nevertheless form a nosological entity because of their similar transference relationships. In older literature the term ‘schizoid personality’ was employed to designate a similar nosological group, placed somewhere between neurosis and psychosis. This character type was considered most predisposed to develop schizophrenia. The schizoid individual is one who is described as aloof, irritable, and unable to form close relationships. It was further believed that such an individual was unable to form the transference. However, we now know that this view is incorrect. The withdrawal, an aloof person is only one of the many personality types who may become borderline. These patients do form a transference relationship, which is frequently extremely intense, but differs significantly from that formed by neurotic patients. This transference has specific features recognized as a useful operational method of diagnosing the borderline patient.
The relationships established by these people are of a primitive order, like the relationship of a child to a blanket or teddy-gear, yet they owe their lives, so to speak, to processes arising within the individual. Their objects are not perceived according to the ‘true’ or ‘realistic’ qualities. (As borrowed from Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object, which he applied to the child’s relation to these inanimate objects (Winnicott, 1951), from which having applied this designation to the borderline patient’s relation to his human objects). The relationship is transitional in the sense that the therapist is perceived as an object outside the self, yet as someone who is not fully recognized as existing as a separate individual, but invested almost entirely with qualities emanating from the patient. Thus and so, that as placed of this object relationship midway between the transference of the neurotic (where the object is perceived as outside the self, whose qualities also disported by phantasies arising from the subject. However, the object exists as a separate individual). The experience of certain schizophrenics, who are unable to perceive that there is something outside the self. For these reason’s posit of the term transitional to be accurate, as it truly designates a transitional stage.
With that, a further description describing this state of affairs in the borderline patient will now be acknowledged. The relationship of the borderline patient to his physician is analogous to that of a child to a blanket or a teddy bear. We can observe that there is a uniform, almost monotonous, regularity to the transference phantasies, especially in the opening phases of treatment. The therapist is perceived invariably as one endorsed with magical, omnipotent qualities, who will, merely by his contact with the patient, affects a cure without the necessity for the patient himself to be active and responsible. We may question why this should be considered characteristic of the borderline patient, since most people attributes to their physicians certain omnipotent powers, especially if their need is great. The wish for an omnipotent protector may exist in everyone: The difference resides in the fact that the borderline patient really believes the wish can be gratified. Finding that the borderline patient’s belief in the physician’s omnipotence corresponds to a belief in his own omnipotent powers, for he thinks that he can transform the world by means of a wish or a thought without the necessity for taking action, that is, without the need for actual work. He said, in contrast to the neurotic patient, unable to perceive that after all the physicians are only a human being like himself: The idiosyncrasies of the physician’s personality, which make the physician a separate individual, do not seem to register. This intuitive awareness causing the certainty that many borderline patients share with some schizophrenics an uncanny ability to perceive accurately some aspects, mistakes the part for the whole, as these patients are not able to place what they note in its proper context. For example, Hendrick (1936) observed that the paranoid is correct in perceiving the hostility in others, but that is all he can perceive. It is striking that, no matter the many different personality types represented by a group of residents treading these patients, this phantasy of omnipotence uniform remains. It is soon found that the patient is unable to perceive the therapist as he is, for he is unable to perceive himself as he is. The omnipotent therapist corresponds to the omnipotence of his self-image, so that although the therapist is perceived as outside the self, he is endowed with qualities identical with those of the self, and the distinction between self and object is only partial.
The therapist is endorsed with qualities that are according to the patient’s own primitive and undifferentiated self-image composed in part of both omnipotently creative and omnipotently destructive portions. There is then constant danger that the omnipotently benevolent and protective physician may be transformed into his opposite. These people’s experience the harrowing dilemma of extreme dependence adjoined with an intense fearfulness of closeness. It is the familiar central conflict in both borderline and schizophrenic patients. The differences between these groups lie not so much in the content of the conflict as in the psychic structure available to mediate the conflict.
If one faces the belief that one’s safety in the world depends on another human being, and this is coupled with the conviction that closeness to this other person will be mutually destructive, the solution lies in maintaining the proper distance. This dilemma is beautifully illustrated by Schopenhauer’s famous simile of the freezing porcupines, quoted by Freud in his Group Psychology (1921?): ‘A company of porcupines crowded them very close together on a cold winter’s day to profit from one anther’s warmth and to save themselves from being frozen to death. Nevertheless, soon they felt one another’s quills, which induced them to separate again, and the second evil arose again. So that they were driven backwards and forwards from one trouble to the other, until they discovered a mean distance at which they could most tolerably exist.
The quills of the porcupine correspond to the anger of these patient, which is, like the quills most defensive. Although mutual destruction is feared, when we examine their anxiety closely we recognize that the true danger arises not so much from their aggression, as from the more tragic fact that they fear that their love is destructive (Fairbairn, 1940). Fairbairn observed that phantasy that can be easily confirmed: To give love is to impoverish ones' self - and to love the other person is to drain him. What is of not is that the hostility is expressed easily. It is only after a long and successful treatment that we can observe the genuine expression of positive or tender feedings.
It may be thought that to certain extent this is present in all of us, that a fear of closeness may be part of the human condition. This would appear to weaken the case that it is a specific characteristic of transitional relationships. If we grant that what has been described is part of the transitional object relation, and if what may have some
understanding agreement to have the quality of being a representative for the observation of all human beings, then how can it be maintained that transference based on a transitional object is diagnostic of the borderline group? So if that is, to resolve this question: The growth of object love is a development process co-determined by the development both of the instincts and of the ego (Anna Freud, 1952). There are three phases of object love that have been implicit in this discussion. We assume that the earliest phase exists in the young infant who responds to the mother but is yet unable to make any psychological distinction between the self and the object: The middle stage has been described as the stage of the transitional object relation: The more mature stage of object love is the stage where there is a distinct separation between self and object. This is, of course, a condensed and oversimplified view, but it should suffice to give a demonstration of a developmental sequence in the growth of object relations. This view is not merely implied from the observation of adults, but is also based on the direct observation of children. For example, Mahler (1955) has convincingly shown that in the developed of the normal child there is a continuing phase where self and object are imperfectly differentiated? The stage that she has described as symbiotic corresponds in a general way o what we have described as the transitional object. Further evidence that the stage of the transitional object is an advance beyond the earliest stage of object relations is presented by Provence and Ritvo (1961). They are able to confirm the observations of Piaget and others (Rochlin, 1953) that the child’s relationship to inanimate projective objects covering the interior of latitudinal liberation finds to his relation to the human object: Infants who were institutionalized and deprived of mothering did not develop transitional objects. Their observations suggest that some certain degrees of gratification from the material object have to be present for the child to reach the stage of the transitional object: The stage of the transitional object is not therefore the earliest stage of object relations. Freud wrote (1930) ': . . In mental; life, nothing that has once been formed can perish [that] everything is somehow preserved and [that] in suitable circumstances (when, for instance, regression continues back far enough) it can again be brought to light.'
If applicable, we would then have in been as the remnants of earlier, more primitive stages of object relations are present in all of us to a greater or less degree. The difference between the borderline and the neurotic patient resides in the fact that for the most part the psychic development of the former became arrested at the stage of the transitional object, whereas the neurotic patient has passed through this stage, to develop love for objects who are perceived as separate from the self. It is true that, in the neurotic, remnants of these earlier stage may be found, and this is especially so when we look at certain creative processes where we can observer feelings of fusion and merging of the self with an object similar to those described in borderline patients. This is also the true religious experience, as Freud noted (1930), the experience of religious ecstasy may be sensed as an appreciable fusion and may exist in otherwise normal persons. William James (1902) describes the conviction of the religious person as a belief that no harm can befall him if he maintains his relation to God. This relation is also experienced as a partial fusion and mingling of identities, which seems quite similar to our description of a transitional object reflation.
We cannot avoid using the concepts of fixation and regression. Freud’s analogy of the deployment of an advancing army, used to describe instinctual fixation and regression (Knight, 1953), is particularly apt for in describing the deployment of an army we introduce a quantitative factor, that is, where are most of the troops - are they in the forward, middle, or rear positions? In the borderline cases we would say that most of the troops are at the position of the transitional object, though a few may have achieved a more advanced position. In the neurotic individual, most of the troops have advanced beyond the position of the transitional object, though a few may be left behind.
Nevertheless, to what measure is played of the relation of these clinical observations to their problem of schizophrenia. Earlier reflections have stated that observations of the borderline patient may help to clarify certain nosological issues and may show where purely psychological or pure biological explanations fail. We have to consider the above material by this larger problem.
Clinical observations suggest that a nosological distinction be made between two groups of patients: One consists of those individuals whose defences are unstable, who display fluctuating ego-states, who appear to posses a capacity to suspend or abandon relations to external objects, as occurs normally in infantile fixational states of sleep. We would say that in these cases the illness appears to involve almost the total personality. In the contrasting group, of which the borderline patients form a portion, psychotic illness appears to occur only a part of the personality, and the defences of the ego are more stable: These patients might be unable to suspend or abandon their relations to external objects in a total sense. Their relation to external objects is impaired and distorted but somehow maintained.
The presence of psychosis is loss of ability to test reality. We know that the failure to deal; with reality is a consequence of an altered ego function (Hendrick, 1939), it is the consequence and not the cause of a psychotic deficiency (Federn, 1943), we know that the testing of reality depends upon the fact that the ego’s growth distinction, and has been made between self and object (Freud, 1925). It is only when this distinction has been made that there can be a differentiation of what arises from within from what arises from without. In an earlier paper (Modell, 1961) as it is presented of many clinical observations that suggest that there are degrees of alteration of this function of testing reality hat correlate with the degree to which self and object can be differentiated. Self-object discrimination is a dynamic process with no absolute fixed points. The borderline transference is based on a transitional object relation where there is some self-object discrimination, but where this discrimination is imperfect. That is, the therapist is perceived as something outside the self, but is invested with qualities that are identical with the patient’s own archaic self-image. Reality testing, then, is a process where degrees of alteration of functioning can be observed. If the definition of psychotics is based on the loss of the capacity to test reality, it would then follow that the points at which we designate a phenomenon as psychotic is not a fixed point but a broader area.
The dynamic that is the mobile nature, of this process needs to be emphasized. For example, borderline individuals may at certain times in their dealings with others can maintain a sense of reality. In the transference relationship this function may undergo a regression that may last only during the therapeutic hour. In these instances, the distinction between self and object that has ben maintained, although imperfectly, becomes obliterated. When this occurs the patient could be said to be technically psychotic in the transference situation. This dynamic regressions observed in the transferences is intermittently timed, in that they are unfortunately not limited to the treatment hour, and may extend into the patient’s life. When this occurs we should judge the patient to be not only technically but clinically psychotic. The step backward that some borderline patient needs to take to be judged clinically psychotic are a short one. This step may be adequately understood as for a dynamic and structural psychological regression involving a further loss of self-object differentiation. If the etiology of what we call psychosis results from a further loss of self-object differentiation, there is no need to introduce the hypothesis that the induction of psychosis in these patients is the result of a neurochemical process that operates at the point in time at which the psychosis becomes manifest. The crucial etiological issue is that there is no emergence of psychosis, but those factors that have interfered with the growth of the ego, which in turn have resulted in the imperfect self-object differentiation. For the etiology of psychosis in the borderline group would appear to result from a developmental disorder of character that leads to an arrest of object relationships at the stage of the transitional object.
We know that the growth of object relations is the result of the interaction of two broad forces: The one relates to the quality of mothering: And the other to the child’s biological equipment. Now it is conceivable that inherited or prenatally acquired variations in the biological equipment may significantly interfere. For example, it has been observed that some infants may be born with an unusual sensitivity of their perceptual apparatus. It is conceivable that such an oversensitive child would find the stimulation of nursing less pleasurable than a normal child. If this were true, a biological factor in this instance could conceivably interfere with the child’s capacity to form his first object relationship. This is similar to Hartmann’s (1952) suggestion that neutralization of instinctual energy is a biologically determined process, and an inherited impairment of this process could also lead to an impaired capacity to form object relationships. Jones (Zetzel, 1949) proposed that some individuals have a relative incapacity to tolerate frustration and anxiety. He thought that this might be an inherited feature similar to intelligence. Others, such as Greenacre (1941), have suggested that the operation of biological processes may not be transmitted in the chromosomes but may be the result of specific prenatal or birth experiences. She suggested that a traumatic birth experience may lead to an excessive level of anxiety in the development of the child.
It must be to admit that all these proposals, while plausible, remain unproved. However, they suggest that if we do establish a biological etiology in the borderline psychotic group, it will refer to those factors that interfere with the establishment of object relations in infancy and therefore lead to an arrest of ego development. Although those biological factors that interfere with the growth of object relations remain unproven - though probable - there is considerable clinical observation tending to support the view that some failure in maternal care is present in all those casers where there has been an arrest of the growth of the ego. This failure may take many forms. It may be actual loss of the mother or separation from the mother, as Bowlby (1961) has emphasized. However, from clinical experiences it does not seem to have been actual physical loss of the mother that took more subtle forms. Occasionally the mothers were unable to contact their children, as they themselves were severely depressed or even psychotic. In others reconstructing the fact that there had been significant absence of the usual amount of holding and cuddling was possible. In still other patients the physical care appeared to have been adequate, but there was a profound distortion in the mother’s attitude toward the child. For example, mothers' incapacity to perceive the child as a separate person may induce a relative incapacity on the child’s part to differentiate a self form object. We are not, however, able to state that these deficiencies of mothering will in themselves, without the contribution of other biological factors form within the child, lead to an arrest of the ego’s growth at the stage of the transitional object.
It may prove important to emphasize that the crucial issue in the borderline patient and the related group of circumscribed psychoses is not the onset of the psychosis or psychotic-like condition, but is the developmental arrest that results in the impaired differentiation of self form objects. A loss of reality testing that defines the onset of psychosis is but a slight further accentuation, or regression, of an already impaired characterological formation.
The difference between the group that we have in describing and to those ‘other schizophrenias’ appears in a certain instability of defences that followed a fluctuating ego state, and the culmination in the ability to suspend relations with objects in a manner analogous to dreaming while in the waking state. It's evolving impression that these two groups are separate nosological entities, and that a member of one does not become a member of the other. It's interpretation that this observation is to suggest the fact that something must be added to permit an individual to sever his relations to the external world by means of a dream-like withdrawal. As Campbell (1935) stated it,
- 'I prefer to think of the schizophrenic as belonging to a Greek letter society for which the conditions for admission remain obscure.' In that the capacity to suspend relations to external objects, which the borderline group does not posses, is determined by the presence of something that is unknown, and something that may be of biological and not of psychological origin. Some can gain admission to this fraternity, and others simply cannot, no matter how hard they try.
A biological hypothesis seems as to be unnecessary to explain the onset of psychosis in the group whose defences are stable, that is, in the borderline group, however, something must be added to develop a ‘major schizophrenia’, and, yet, that the differences between the borderline and schizophrenic groups have been explained about the strength of the defence structure operating in the former group. For example, Federn (1947) has suggested that the schizoid personality protect the person from becoming a schizophrenic? Glover (1932) believed that a perversion that may frequently be observed in the borderline group also acts as a prophylaxis against psychosis and is, in his words, ‘the negative of certain psychotic formation’. If we could assume that the strength of defences was entirely psychologically determined, we would have no need to introduce a biological hypothesis. The argument that certain defensive structures protect against a greater calamity seems reasonable, but to believe that such an assertion begs the issue. For the remaining is the question to why these defences are effective: What is it that permits such defences to be maintained? If we wished to maintain the argument for a purely psychological determination, we might say that the strength of the defences is simply the consequence of the degree to which the ego has matured. The gist of this argument would be that the difference between the schizophrenic and the borderline is the result of the fact that the arrest in ego development is more extensive in the schizophrenic patient, perhaps because of an even greater disturbance in the early mother-child relationship. This may be a plausible argument: But the fact that many schizophrenics do not develop until mature adult life negates this hypothesis. For observation does not show that ego development in the schizophrenic is necessarily more primitive or more severely arrested than that of the borderline patient. We know that individuals who develop schizophrenia can come to the conclusion in adjoined agreement: often they have distinguished careers before the onset of their illness. It is inconceivable that such accomplishments could be possible in an individual whose growth had been arrested at the earliest levels. Schreber (Freud, 1911) was a distinguished jurist and was thirty-seven years old at the time of his first illness. There is, in that way, no evidence that the ego-arrest of schizophrenic patients is in all instances greater than in borderline actions. So, the possibility is not to assume of any difficulty of explaining the differences between the borderline and the schizophrenic group on purely psychological grounds.
Clinical observations suggest that we are dealing with at least two separate problems. One is a problem of character formation, which is a consideration of those factors that have interfered with the ego’s growth so that love relationships become arrested at the stage of traditional objects. The other is probably a biological problem,
- What is it added to permit an individual to suspend his relations to his love objects? Whether the character development of the borderline and schizophrenic patient proceeds along separate or similar lines is a question that awaits further exploration. Its representation of a suspended emphasis would continue from what can be reconstructed from the history of schizophrenic patients that their love relationships from the history of schizophrenic patients that their love relationships went no further than that of the transitional object: That is, it is quite likely that they are unable to make a complete separation between themselves and their love objects. There is undoubtedly wide individual variation concerning the age at which ‘that certain biological something’ is added. It is likely that the early presence of this hypothesized biological process in the schizophrenic group would produce certain divergences in character development as compared with the borderline group. The consulting psychiatrist, however, rarely has an opportunity to see a schizophrenic patient before the onset of his psychosis, so that there are few clinical data that can be used to clarify these questions.
Although we are unable to state to what extent the pre-psychotic development of the schizophrenic is similar to or different from that of the borderline patient, and it is likely that an arrest of the development of object relations at the transitional level is predisposing the factors for the development of schizophrenia. We might hypothesize that the unknown biological something that must be added will result in schizophrenia only where the ground has been prepared, that is, only whee there has been some arrest in the ego’s growth. To state it another way: Transitional self-transactional object modulation is a necessary but not a sufficient cause of schizophrenia.
Placing special emphasis on the ‘ability to suspend relations to objects’, in using an analogy of a normal state of sleep. This analogy is, however, inaccurate, at an important point. In sleep do not find substitutes for relations to objects suspended to show elsewhere (Modell, 1958) that auditory hallucinations serve as substitutes for the ‘real objects’ lost, although in a certain sense, as Rochlin (1961) has emphasized, objects are never entirely relinquished. It is very important to know whether these objects are other human beings or are, in Schreber’s terms, ‘cursorily improvised. The capacity to conjure up substitutes for other human beings is one that we do not all posses.
Lastly, to gather up some loose strands of our argument. Psychoanalytic exploration of the borderline states suggests the hypothesis that they represent a syndrome separate from the major schizophrenia. The essential difference rests in their lack of capacity to suspend or abandon relations to external objects. It is possible that this capacity is the result of a biological variation of the central nervous system and is not psychologically determined. In their character development, individuals who develop the major schizophrenias hare with the borderline group the fact that their object relations tend in the main to be arrested at the stage of their transitional object. Whether the pre-schizophrenic and borderline character disorders can be further distinguished from each other is question that we are not prepared to answer. This hypothesis suggests at least two different orders of possible biological determinants in schizophrenia: The one relates to an impaired capacity to develop mature object relations and is presumably operative from birth onwards: The other concerns the capacity to suspend relations with objects, and this anomaly could become apparent at varying ages in the life of an individual, in some instances not too full maturity or middle age. The arrest of ego development at the level of transitional objects is a necessary but not a sufficient determinant for the development of major schizophrenia.
If our nosological criteria are based on the capacity to suspend object relations and enter a dreamlike state, it can be seen that the concepts of reactive and process schizophrenia need to be re-evaluated. Our hypothesis suggests that the distinction between psychological and biological factors in the development of schizophrenia relate to the outcome or prognosis. For example, following Kraepelin has been customary (1919) in the belief that the more severe and deteriorating disorders are organic in origin, while the transient schizophrenias are psychogenic or reactive. This way of thinking receives no support from medicine, where an acknowledged organic disorder may run the gamut from mild and transient to severe and debilitating without leading one to assume differing etiologies. Therefore, no reason to link chronicity with the biologic, and transient states with the psychogenic, although we can discern that an individual may enter transient schizophrenic turmoil because of reality identifiable psychological Traumata, we should not therefore assume that the schizophrenia itself is explainable on purely psychological grounds. Whether such a person recovers, may also be observed to be again the outcome of psychological factors, i.e., whether the environment affords him any real satisfaction: This observation, however, should not lead us to conclude that the disorder is entirely psychogenic, for in medicine we know of many instances where recovery from organic illness influenced by environmental factors. We can further note that psychoanalytic observation of character disorders provides no support for the notion that what is transient is psychogenic and what is stable or unchanging is of biological origin. For psychoanalysis is well acquainted with a variety of extremely rigidly, unmodifiable character disorders that do not require, because of their poor prognosis, the introduction of a special biological hypothesis. There is no reason to connect a prognosis with etiology. From this pint of view the individual with a circumscribed paranoid character development who may have the poorest prognosis might have a considerably purer psychogenic disorder as compared with an acute but transient schizophrenic turmoil state. So, that our hypothesis would explain the paradox that Jackson (1960) noted, namely that the chronic paranoid who has nearly as bad a prognosis as the simplex patient shows the least variation from the norm in psychological terms, in weight and intactness of intelligence, dilapidation of habit patterns, etc.
So that our argument is that psychological knowledge has a certain priority over the biological, a priority in the sense of sequence of observation, that is, that the more all-inclusive, imprecise psychological observations must precede the less inconclusive, more precise biological observations. The psychoanalytic psychiatrist has first to sort things out so that the biologist may know where to look. This hypothesis is one that is not proved, but is still, quite testable.
The term ‘borderline state’ has achieved almost no official status in psychiatric nomenclature, and conveys no diagnostic illumination of a case other than the implication that the patient is quite sick but not frankly psychotic. In the few psychiatric textbooks where the term is to be found at all in the index, it is used in the text to apply to those cases in which the decision is difficult about whether the patients in question are neurotic or psychotic, since both neurotic and psychotic phenomena are observed to be present. The reluctance to make a diagnosis of psychosis on the one hand, in such cases, is usually based on the clinical estimate that these patients have not yet ‘broken with reality?’: On the other hand the psychiatrist feels that the severity of the maladjustment and the presence of ominous clinical signs preclude the diagnosis of a psychoneurosis. Thus the label ‘borderline state’ when used as a diagnosis, conveys more information about the uncertainty and indecision of the psychiatrist than it does about the condition of the patient.
Indeed the term and its equivalents have been frequently attacked in psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature. Rickman (1928) wrote: 'hearing of a case in which a psychoneurosis is common in the discretionary phraseology of a Mental Out Patient Department ‘masks’ a psychosis, using the term with inward misgiving, there should be no talk of masks if a case is fully understood and is intuitively not so, having not received a tireless examination - except, of course, as a brief descriptive term comparable too ‘shut-in’ or ‘apprehensive’ which carry our understanding of the case no further.' Similarly, Edward Glover (1932) wrote 'I find the term ‘borderline’ or ‘pre’-psychotically, as generally used, unsatisfactory. If a psychotic mechanism is present at all, it should be given a definite label. If we merely suspect the possibility of a breakdown of repression, this can be shown in the term ‘potential’ psychotic (more accurately a ‘potentially clinical’ psychosis). As for larval psychoses, we are all larval psychotics and have been such since the age of two.' Again, Zilboorg (1941) wrote: 'The despicable base advanced cases (of schizophrenia) have been noted, but not seriously considered. When of recent years such cases engaged the attention of the clinician, they were usually approached with the euphemistic labels of bonderising cases, incipient schizophrenias, schizoid personalities, mixed manic-depressive psychoses, schizoid maniacs, or psychopathic personalities. Such an attitude is untestable either logically or clinically' . . . ,. Zilboorg goes on to declare that schizophrenia should be recognized and diagnosed when its characteristic psychopathology is present, and suggests the term ‘ambulatory schizophrenia’ for that type of schizophrenia in which the individual is able for the most part, to conceal his pathology from the public.
It is not to be wished to defend the term ‘borderline state’ as a diagnosis, however, it leaves room to discuss the clinical conditions usually connoted by this term, and especially to call attention to the diagnostic, psychopathological, and therapeutic problems involved in these conditions. Therefore this is the limit of which the functional psychiatric conditions where the term is usually applied, and more particularly to those conditions that involve schizophrenic tendencies of some degree.
Thus and so, it s the common experience of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts to see and treat, in open sanitariums or even in office practice, many patients whom they regard, in a general sense, as borderline cases. Often these patients have been referred as cases of psychoneuroses of severe degree who have not responded to treatment according to the usual expectations associated with the supposed diagnosis. Most often, perhaps, they have been called severe obsessive-compulsive cases: Sometime an intractable phobia has been the outstanding symptom: Occasionally an apparent major hysterical symptom or anorexia nervosa dominates the clinical picture, and at times it is a question of depression, or of the extent and ominousness of paranoid trends, or of the severity of a character disorder.
What remains is the unsatisfactory state of our nosology that contributes to our difficulties in classifying these patients diagnostically, and we legitimately wonder at a touch of schizophrenia; is of the same order as a ‘touch of syphilis or a ‘touch of pregnancy?’. Consequently, we flounder so that all of such pronouncing correspondent terms as footing of latent or incipient (or ambulatory) schizophrenia, or accentuate in that of its severe obsessive-compulsive neurosis or depression, adding full coverage, ‘with paranoid trends’ or ‘with schizoid manifestations’. Concerns for the most part, we are quite familiar with the necessary of recognizing the primary symptoms of schizophrenia and not waiting for the secondary ones of hallucinations, delusions, stupor and the like.
Freud (1913) made us alert to the possibly of psychosis underlying a psychoneurotic picture in his warning: 'Often enough, when one sees a case of neurosis with hysterical or obsessional symptoms, mild in character and of short duration (just the type of case, that is, which one would see as suitably for the treatment) a doubt that must not be overlooked arises whether the case may not be one of the so-called incipient dementia praecox, so-called (schizophrenia, according to Bleuler), and may not eventually develop well-marked signs of this disease.' Many authors in recent years, among them Hoch and Polatin (1949). Stern (1945), Miller (1940), Pious (1950), Melitta Schmideberg (1947), Fenichel (1945), H. Deutsch (1942), Stengel (1945), and others. Have called attention to types of cases that belong in the borderline band of the psychopathological spectrum, and have commented on the diagnostic and psychotherapeutic problems associated with these cases.
In attempting to make the precise diagnosis in a borderline case there is three often used criteria, or frames of reference, which are to lead to errors if they are used exclusively or uncritically. One of these, which stems from traditional psychiatry, is the question of whether or not there has been a ‘break with reality’: The second is the assumption that neurosis is neurosis, psychosis is psychosis, and never the twain will be met: A third, contributed by psychoanalysis, is the series of stages of development of the libido, with the conception of fixation, regression, and typical defence mechanisms for each stage. Transference problems concerning to most psychoanalytic authors maintain that schizophrenic patient cannot be treated psychoanalytically because they are too narcissistic to develop with the psychotherapist an interpersonal relationship that is sufficiently reliable and consistent for psychoanalytic work. Freud, Fenichel and other authors have recognized that a new technique of approaching patients psychoanalytically must be found if analysts are to work with psychotics. Among those whom hae worked successfully in recent years with schizophrenics, Sullivan, Hill, and Karl Menninger and his staffs have made various modifications of their analytic approach.
We think of a schizophrenic as a person who has had serious traumatic experience in early infancy at a time when his ego and its ability to examine reality were not yet developed. These early traumatic experiences seem to furnish the psychological basis for the pathogenic influence of the flustrations of later years. Earlier the infant lives grandiosely in a narcissistic world of his own. Something may take his needs and desires care of vague and indefinite which he does not yet differentiate. As Ferenczi noted they are expressed by gestures and movements since speech is yet undeveloped? Frequently the child’s desires are fulfilled without any expression of them, a result that seems to him a product of his magical thinking.
Traumatic experiences in this early period of life will damage a personality more seriously than those occurring in later childhood such as are found in the history of psychoneurotic. The infant’s mind is more vulnerable the younger and less used it have been in furthering the trauma is a blow to the infant’s egocentricity. In addition early traumatic experience shortens the only period in life in which an individual ordinarily enjoys the moist security, thus endangering the ability to store up as it was a reasonable supply of assurance and self-reliance for the individual’s late struggle through life. Thus is such a child sensitized considerably more toward the frustrations of later life than by later traumatic experience. Therefore many experiences in later life that would mean little to a ‘healthy’ person and not much to a psychoneurotic, mean a great deal of pain and suffering to the schizophrenic. His resistance against frustration is easily exhausted.
Once he reaches his limit of endurance, he escapes the unbearable reality of present life by attempting to reestablish the autistic, delusional world of the infant, but this is impossible because the content of his delusions and hallucinations are naturally coloured by the experiences of his whole lifetime.
How do these developments influence the patient’s attitude toward the analyst and the analyst’s approach to him?
Due to the very early damage and the succeeding chain of frustrations that the schizophrenic undergoes before finally giving in to illness, he feels extremely suspicious and distrustful of everyone, particularly of the psychotherapist who approaches him with the intention of intruding into his isolated world and personal life. To him the physician’s approach means the threat of being compelled to return to the frustrations of real life and to reveal his inadequacy to meet them, or - still worse - a repetition of the aggressive interference with his initial symptoms and peculiarities that he has encountered in his previous environment.
In spite of his narcissistic retreat, every schizophrenic has some dim notion of the unreality and loneliness of his substitute delusionary world. He longs for human contact and understanding, yet is afraid to admit it to himself or to his therapist for fear of further frustration.
That is why the patient may take weeks and months to test the therapist before being willing to accept him.
However, once he has accepted him, his dependence on the therapist is greater and he is more sensitive about it than is the psychoneurotic because of the schizophrenic’s deeply rooted insecurity; the narcissistic seemingly self-righteous attitude is but a defence.
Whenever the analyst fails the patient from reasons to be of mention - one severe disappointment and a repetition of the chain of frustrations the schizophrenic has previously endured.
To the primitive part of the schizophrenic’s mind that does not discriminate between himself and the environment, it may mean the withdrawal of the impersonal supporting forces of his infancy. Severe anxiety will follow this vital deprivation.
In the light of his personal relationship with the analyst it means that the therapist seduced the patient to use him as a bridge over which he might be led from the utter loneliness of his own world to reality and human warmth, only to have him discover that this bridge is not reliable. If so, he will respond helplessly with an outburst of hostility or with renewed withdrawal that one may be seen as most impressively in catatonic stupors.
Through reasons of change, this withdrawal during treatment is a way the schizophrenic has of showing resistance and is dynamically comparable to the various devices the psychoneurotic uses to show resistance. The schizophrenic responds to alterations in the analyst’s defections and understanding by corresponding stormy and dramatic changes from love to hatred, from willingness to leave his delusional world to resistance and renewed withdrawal.
As understandable as these changes are, they nevertheless may come to the conclusion of quite a surprise to the analyst who frequently has not observed their source. This is quite in contrast to his experience with psychoneurotic whose emotional reactions during an interview he usually predicts. These unpredictable changes may be the reason for the conception of the unreliability of the schizophrenic’s transference reactions, yet they follow the same dynamic rules as the psychoneurotic’s oscillations between positive and negative transference and resistance. If the schizophrenic’s reactions are more stormy and seemingly more unpredictable than those of the psychoneurotic, perhaps this may be due to the inevitable errors in the analyst’s approach to the schizophrenic, of which he himself may be aware, than to the unreliability of the patient’s emotional response.
Why is it inevitable that the psychoanalyst disappoints his schizophrenic patients time and again?
The schizophrenic withdraws from painful reality and retires to what resembles the early speechless phase of development where consciousness is yet crystallized. As the expression of his feelings is not hindered by the conventions he has eliminated, so his thinking, feeling, behaviour and speech - when present - obey the working rules of the archaic unconscious. His thinking is magical and does not follow logical rules. It does not admit to any, and likewise no yes? : There is no recognition of space and time, as ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘they’ are interchangeable. Expression is by symbols, often by movements and gestures rather than by words.
As the schizophrenic is suspicious, he will distrust the words of his analyst. He will interpret them and incidental gestures and attitudes of the analyst according to his own delusional experience. The analyst may not even be aware of these involuntary manifestations of his attitudes, yet they mean a great deal of the hypersensitive schizophrenic who uses them for orienting himself to the therapist’s personality and intentions toward him.
In other words, the schizophrenic patient and the therapists are people living in different worlds and on different levels of personal development with different means of expressing and of orienting themselves. We know little about the language of the unconscious of the schizophrenic, and our access to it is blocked by the very process of our own adjustment to a world the schizophrenic has relinquished. So we should not be surprised that errors and misunderstandings occur when we undertake to the spoken exchange and strive for a rapport with him.
Another source of the schizophrenic’s disappointment arises from the following: Since the analyst accepts and does not interfere with the behaviour of the schizophrenics, his attitude may lead the patient to expect that the analyst will assist in carrying out all the patients’ wishes, although they might not be his interest, or to the analyst’s and the hospital’s in their relationship to society. This attitude of acceptance so different from the patient’s experiences readily fosters the anticipation that the analyst. As to carry out the patient’s suggestions as to take upon his dispense ways, even against the established controversial change in a society of which should occasion to arise. Frequently, agreeing with the patient's wish to remain unbathed and untidy will be wise for the analyst until he is ready to talk about the reasons for his behaviour or to change spontaneously. At other times, he will unfortunately be unable to take the patient’s part without being able to make the patient understands and accept the reasons for the analysts’ position. If, however, the analyst is not able to accept the possibility of misunderstanding the reactions of his schizophrenic patient and in turn of being misunderstood by him, it may shake his security with his patient. The schizophrenic, once accepted the analyst and wants to rely upon him, will sense the analyst’s insecurity. Being helpless and insecure he - in spite of his pretended grandiose isolation - he will feel utterly defeated by the insecurity of his would-be helper. Such disappointment may furnish reasons for outbursts of hatred and rage that are comparable to the negative transference reactions of psychoneurotic, yet more intense than these since they are not limited by the restrictions of the actual world.
These outbursts are accompanied by anxiety, feelings of guilt, and fear of retaliation that in turn lead to increased hostility. Thus, lay the groundwork for a vicious circle: We disappoint the patient: He hates us, is afraid we hate him for his hatred and therefore continues to hate us. If in addition he senses that the analyst is afraid of his aggressiveness, it confirms his fear that he is effectively considered dangerous and unacceptable, and this augments his hatred.
This establishes that the schizophrenic is capable of developing strong relationships of love and hatred toward his analyst. After all, one could not be so hostile if it were not for the background of a very close relationship, once to emerge from an acutely disturbed and combative episode. In addition, the schizophrenic develops transference reaction in the narrower sense that he can differentiate from the actual interpersonal relationship.
What is the analyst’s further function in therapeutic interviews with the schizophrenic? As Sullivan has stated, he should observe and evaluate the entire patient's words, gestures, changes of attitude and countenance, and he does the associations of psychoneurosis. Every production - whether understood by the analyst or not - is important and makes sense to the patient. Therefore the analyst should try to understand, and let the patient feel that he tries. He should as to preclude and not attempt to prove his understanding by giving interpretations because the schizophrenic himself understands the unconscious meaning of his productions better than anyone else. Nor should the analyst ask questions when he does not understand, for he cannot know what trend of thought, far off dream or hallucination he may be interpreting. He gives evidence of understanding, whenever he does, by responding cautiously with gestures or actions appropriate to the patient’s communication, for example, by lighting his cigarette from the patient’s cigarette instead of using a match when the patient seems to say a wish for closeness and friendship.
What has been said against intruding into the schizophrenic’s inner world with superfluous interpretation's also holds unswerving for untimely suggestions? Most of them do not mean the same thing to the schizophrenic that they do to the analyst. The schizophrenic who feels comfortable with his analyst will ask for suggestions when he is ready to receive them. If he does not, the analyst does better to listen, least of mention, the schizophrenic’s emotional reactions toward the analyst have to be met with extreme care and caution. The love that the sensitive schizophrenic feels as he first emerged, and his cautious acceptances of the analyst’s warmth of interest are really most delicate and tender things. If the analyst deals uncleverly with the transference reactions of a psychoneurotic, it is bad enough, though as a rule is separable but if he fails with a schizophrenic in meeting positively feeling by pointing it out for instance before the patient shows that he is ready to discuss it, he may easily freeze to death what had just begun to grow and so destroy any further possibility of therapy.
Sometimes the therapist’s frank statement that he wants to be the patient’s friend but that he is going to protect himself should him be assaulted may help in coping with the patient’s combativeness and relieve the patient’s fear of his own aggression. As, too, some analysts may feel that the atmosphere of complete acceptance and strict avoidance of any arbitrary denials that we recommend as a basic rule for the treatment of schizophrenics may not accord with our wish to guide them toward reacceptance of reality. This may not be as apparently so. Certain groups of psychoneurotics have to learn by the immediate experience of analytic treatment how to accept the denials life has in store for each of us. The schizophrenic has above all to be cured of the wounds and frustrations of his life before we can expect him to recover.
Other analysts may feel that treatment as we have outlined it is not psychoanalysis. The patient is not instructed to lie on a couch, and he is not asked to give free associations (although frequently he does), and his productions are seldom interpreted other than by understanding acceptance. Freud says that every science and therapy that accept his teachings about the unconscious, about transference and resistance and about infantile sexuality, may be called psychoanalysis. According to this definition we believe we are practising psychoanalysis with our schizophrenic patients.’
Whether we call it analysis or not, successful treatment clearly does not depend on technical rules of any special psychiatric school but on the basic attitude of the individual therapist toward psychotic persons. If he meets them as strange creatures of another world whose productions are non-understandable to ‘normal’ beings, he cannot treat them. If he realizes, however, that the difference between himself and the psychotic is only one of degree and not to kind, he will know better how to met him. He can probably identify himself sufficiently with the patient to understand and accept his emotional reactions without becoming involved in them.
Amid the welter of competing or complementary theories that have characterized psychoanalysis over the century of its existence, the concept of transference and the conviction so important in the therapeutic process may be a unifying theme. None of Freud’s epochal discoveries - the power of the dynamic unconscious, the meaningfulness of the dream, the universality of intrapsychic conflict, the critical role of repression, the phenomena of infantile sexuality - is more heuristically productive or more clinically valuable than his demonstration that humans regularly and inevitably repeat with the analyst and with other important figures in their current lives patterns of relationship, of fantasy, and of conflict with the crucial figures in their childhood - primarily their parents.
Even for Freud, however, the awareness of this phenomenon and the understanding of its specific significance in the analytic situation itself came only gradually. The flamboyant transference events for Anna O and the unfortunate outcome with Dora served to consolidate in Freud’s mind a view of transference as a resistance phenomenon, as an obstacle to the recollection of early traumatic events that, in his view at the time, formed the true essence of the psychoanalytic process. Emphasis in this early period, thus, was on the 'management' of the transference, on finding ways to prevent its interference with the proper business of the analysis - recognizing, always, the inevitability of its occurrence. Freud was most concerned about the interference generated by the 'negative' (i.e., hostile) and the erotised transference; the 'positive' transference he considered 'unobjectionable', 'the vehicle of success in the psychoanalysis.'
Freud was also concerned to distinguish the analytic transference from the effects of suggestion in the hypnotic treatment he had learned in France and that gad been the forerunner of his own psychoanalytic technique. He, and his early followers and students, were at great pains to define the transference as a spontaneous product of the analytic situation, emerging from the patient rather than imposed by the analyst. Ultimately, Freud came to view as essentially for an analytic cure the development of a new mental structure, the 'transference neurosis' - a re-creation of the original neurosis in the analytic situation itself, with the patient experiencing the analyst as the object of his or her infantile wishes and the focus of his or her pathogenic conflicts, the crucial importance of the transference neurosis - it's very reality as a clinical phenomenon - has been and continues to be a matter of debate among psychoanalysts to this day.
Over the resulting decades several themes appear and reappear. One to which Freud eluded is that of the uniqueness versus the ubiquity of transference; is it a special creation of the analytic situation or is it an inevitable and universal aspect of all human relations? To a considerable degree, are transference phenomena always based on a repetition of experiences? More central and perhaps more heated is the continuing debate about the primacy of transference interpretation in what Strachey has called the 'mutative' effects of analysis - for example, whether such interpretations are simply more convincing than others or are the only kinds that are truly effective therapeutically. Echoes of this debate resound through the years and are to the spoken exchange in some of most recent literature. Finally, are all the patients’ reactions to the analyst in the analytic situation to have the quality of being construed as transference or do some partake of the 'real,' 'non-neurotic' relationship or of the 'working alliance.'
The theoretical explanation of the transference and transference phenomena have undergone significant changes over the years. The transference has become a sort of projective device, a vessel into which each commentator poured the essence of his or her approach to the clinical situation and to the understanding of what unique interactional process that forms the analytic situation.
The introductory group (1909-36) that of the pioneers, shows the afforded efforts of Freud and his early followers to grasp and deal with the powerful phenomenon they were only beginning to recognize and to attempt to understand. The middle period (1936-60) reflects the consolidation of therapeutic technique and he attempts of both European and American analysts to bring the concept of transference into consonance with the increasingly important constructs of ego psychology. In the latest period of which (1960-87), basis the groundwork for a balance between reassertion of traditional views and various revisionist statements and reconsiderations of some classical positions.
Freud’s awareness of the actuality of transference phenomena - that is, of the development in the patient of powerful feelings and wishes toward the therapist in the 'talking cure' - began when he first learned from Joseph Breuer of the events that occurred in his treatment of Anna O. It was not, however, until the debacle with Dora that they brought the full force of this phenomenon home to him - if not of his own countertransference feelings as well. Transferences are, Freud said, 'new editions or facsimiles of the impulses and fantasies aroused and made consciously during the progress of the analysis; up to the present time they have this peculiarity, . . . that they replace some earlier person by the person of the physician.' 'Psychoanalytic treatment does not create transference, but it merely brings them to light like so many other hidden psychical factors.'
Freud did not again deal in detail with the subject of transference until 1912, in The Dynamics of Transference. In fact, the first paper devoted specifically upon its subject matter was in Ferenczi’s 'Introjection and Transference,' and published in 1909. Ferenczi offered an exposition on the topic, drawing his stimulus from Freud’s reference to 'transferences' in The Interpretation of Dreams and the Dora case. Transference, he states, is a special case of the mechanism of displacement, is ubiquitous in life but especially pronounced in neurotics, and makes explicitly the form of an appearance in the relationship of patient to the physician - in or outside the psychoanalysis. He relates the transference to other psychic mechanisms, most particularly projection and introjection, and defends the psychoanalysis against accusations of improperly generating transference reactions in its patients. 'The critics who look on these transferences as dangerous should.' He says, 'condemn the non-analytic modes of treatment more severely than the psychoanalytic method, since the former really intensifies the transference, while the later shrives to uncover and to resolve them when possible.'
It was not until 1912, in The Dynamics of Transference, that Freud returned to the subject. Here he explains about libido economy, and given that the topographical model of the mind the inevitable emergence of the transference in the analytic situation and its role as an all-important crucial mode of resistance. 'The transference-idea penetrated into consciousness in front of any other possible association because it satisfies the resistance, but only if it is a negative or erotic transference. The analyst’s role is to ‘control’ or’ ‘remove’ the transference resistance. It is, Freud said, 'on that field that we must be win the victory?'
We have substantially explored the problem posed by the erotic transference on Observations on Transference-Love. Freud speaks systematically about the dangers of unregulated countertransference, and he admonishes his colleagues on the need to maintain analytic neutrality in the face of the patient’s importunate demand for fulfilment of the erotic longings. Here, again, he coins the much-debated aphorism, they must carry 'the treatment out in abstinence.' He makes it clear that 'transference lover' is not to occupy the inescapable position by some spatial moment of the some insignificant or deviant, as it draws on the same infantile well-springs as the love of everyday life. It is the analyst’s business to deal with it analytically rather than by gratifying or rejecting it.
Freud’s illumination of the phenomenon of transference although, little appeared in the literature bearing specifically on the topic for several of years. Yet it seems that,
as Strachey points out, this was due to the preoccupation of most analysts, particularly in the rise of ego psychology, with the analysis of resistance and of character traits. It was, therefore, not until 1934 that the most important and, to this day, the most influential post-Freudian contribution to the analysis of transference appeared -. Strachey’s 'Nature of the Therapeutic Action of Psycho-Analysis.' Strongly reflecting the influence of Melanie Klein, Strachey outlines the notion that the central analytic task is the resolution of archaic superego elements in the structure of the mind, and that the definitive instrument for affecting this is what he terms 'mutative interpretation.' Such an interpretation must, he says, 'be emotionally immediate' and 'directed to the point of urgency’; 'the point of regency is nearly always to be found in the transference.' 'Therefore, only transference interpretations are likely to be mutative. Conversely, we are still hearing the reverberations of this shot today.'
Freud’s early view of the transference as Sterba echoed and exemplified a resistance to the analytic work by Sterba, in his report of a case that obviously derived from his European experiences, for example, the description of goose stuffings. Here he explains technical measures for the dissolution of such resistances, which include explanations similarly that 'the hostility toward his father, . . . may not have had the quality of being analysed if he developed the unconscious hostility and consequent anxiety toward the analyst that he formally had for his father' In other words, they essentially enjoined the transference, rather than analysed, by appealing to what Sterba came to calling the 'observing ego,' as opposed to the 'experiencing ego.'
Among the first to apply psychoanalytic principles outside the consulting room was August Aichhorn? Trained as an educator, Aichhorn undertook to work with delinquent adolescents in Vienna and established the first therapeutic school based on psychoanalytic principles; in this setting, he became the mentor for a generation of child analysts, including Erikson, Blos, Ekstein, Redl, and others. In his classical text, Wayward Youth, Aichhorn displayed some extraordinary techniques he devised for treating dissocial adolescents - in particular, ways of manipulating the transference to establish a positive relationship at the outset of treatment.
The appearance in 1936 of Anna Freud’s the Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence represented a landmark in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory and technique. Ms. Freud’s specific codification of the defensive apparatus and her emphasis on the necessity of analysing not merely the id elements but the ego elements of the mind signalled major changes in the way analysts thought about and carried on their clinical work. Nonetheless, her observations on the role of transference analysis, trenchant as they were, remain within the framework of the traditional view of transference phenomena as 'repetitions and not new creations.' The function of the analysis of transference is to put the 'transferred effective impulse . . . back into its place in the past.' Ms. Freud drew the valuable distinction among the transferences of 'libidinal' impulses, the transference of defence, and acting in the transference. Her contribution emphasized the critical value of the analysis of defence transference, which, ads she explained, is far more difficult than that of transferred drive impulses because the patient experiences it as ego-syntonic.
The dominant trend in early discussions was the presumption that the transference is an 'autogenous' product of the patient induced, no doubt, by the special character of the analytic situation but emerging out of the patient’s own needs and unfulfilled infantile wishes. Bibring-Lehner (later simply as Bibring) was unitarily to suggest those particular characteristics of the analyst or his or her behaviour can so shape the emerging transference as to create an impenetrable resistance that might. Require a change of analysts. In particular, Bibring-Lehner addressed the matter of the gender of the analyst, but clearly other factors might suffice to blur the patient’s distinction between transference and reality and thus to create an unanalysable stalemate. She spoke, too, of the necessity of a 'predominantly positive transference based on confidence, without whose help we cannot overcome the transference neurosis,' this clearly prefigured the concept of the 'therapeutic' or 'working' alliance that later becomes a focus on controversy.
During the interval (1936-1960), the concerns of those who contributed to the ongoing discussions of transference and its place in analytic theory and technique, in which time this period was to relate its phenomenological growth in understanding of the ego, both in its defensive and (Hartmanns) 'autonomous' aspects, to new theories of early development and to a growing concern in some quarters with 'interpersonal' as opposed too purely 'intrapsychic' aspects of personality function. A subsequent stimulus was Alexander’s (1946) advocacy of active role playing by the analyst to give the patient a 'corrective emotional experience,' at least in psychoanalytic psychotherapy if not in analysis proper.
Of a well-oriented paper, Greenacre emphasizes the distinction, first stated by Freud, between the analytic transference and that which characterizes other modes of therapy. All manipulation, exploitation, we have excluded all use of transference for 'corrective emotional experience' from the psychoanalytic situation, which relies exclusively on interpretation to achieve its therapeutic goal. Greenacre’s view of the analyst’s role in analysis and in the world outside as ascetically in agreement; she would preclude the analyst from publicly participating in social or political activities that might have a possessive tendency to reveal aspects of the analyst’s person that would contaminate the transference. Like Freud, Stone, and others she distinguishes between a 'basic,' essentially non-conflictual transference derived from the early mother-child relationship and the analytic transference proper, which involves projection onto the analyst of unconscious conflictual material, yet, others (for example, Brenner) challenge this distinction.
It is, however, echoed in Elizabeth Zetzel’s masterful review of what were, the dominant trends in the field. She proposed, following the usage of Edward Bibring, the concept of the 'therapeutic alliance,' derived, as was Greenacre’s 'basic transference,' from the positive aspects of the mother-child relationship. Like most other commentators she asserted the centrality of transference interpretation in the analytic process, but she resorts by a schismatically oriented sharping detail of some differences in the form and content of such interpretations between Freudian and Kleinian analysis - that is, between those who are concerned with the role of the ego and the analysis of defence and those who emphasize the importance of early object relations and primitive instinctual fantasy.
Like Greenacre and Zetzel, Greenson distinguishes between what he calls the 'working alliance' sand the 'transference neurosis.' He contends that without the development of the former they cannot analyse the latter effectively. The 'working alliance' depends not only on the patient’s capacity to establish adequate object ties and to assess reality. However, also on the analyst’s assumption of an attitude that permits such an alliance to emerge, and, also to Greenson who advocates an analytic stance that, while holding fast to the rule of abstinence, allows for more 'realistic' gratification that is no less ascetical than Greenacre would encourage. Gill will later challenge Greenson’s definition of transference - that it always represents a repetition of experiences and that it is always 'inappropriate to the present,' - who contends that transference reactions may be appropriate responses to aspects of the analytic situation of which both patient and analysts are not necessarily aware.
In contrast to these views, Brenner categorically rejects the notions of 'therapeutic' and 'working' alliances as distinct from the analytic transference, and with them the admonition to the analyst to be 'human' or 'empathic' to encourage such states. In his view, 'both refer to aspects of the transference that neither deserve a special name nor require special treatment.' 'In analysis,' he says, 'it is best for the patient if one approaches everything analytically. It is as important to understand why they have closely ‘allied a patient’ with his analyst . . . as, it is to understand why there is no ‘alliance’ at all.'
In an extremely thoughtful, systematic exploration of the topic, Macalpine argues that the infantile situation induces transference in patients in which the analysis, by its rightfully hidden nature, places them. As do hypnotic subjects, analysands adapt by regression and, if we have predisposed them to do so, will experience the present as to their infantile past. What distinguishes analysis from hypnosis is the nonparticipation of the analyst in the process - that is, the analyst’s avoidance, by the management of his or her countertransference, of active suggestion. 'The analytic transference relationship had respectably spoken not as to make up the relationship between analysand and analyst, but more precisely as the analysand’s relations to his analyst.' In these Macalpine stands apart from more recent object relations theorists who stress the mutual dyadic aspect of the analytic situation.
Nurnberg, too, analogizes the analytic situation to that of hypnosis, in its induction of a regressive state in which the patient submits to the analyst’s implicit parental power and authority. The patient then projects onto the analyst his or her unconscious representation of the parent, seeking to achieve an 'identity of perception' between the two images. Primarily it is the superego, he contents, that is in such a way projected, and it is through the analysis of these projections that we have enabled the patient to deal more effectively with reality. It must be of note that in Nunberg’s tendency to denote the source of the superego as exclusively presented as 'the father' and the transference projection as that of the 'father image.'
They have rooted Melanie Klein’s approach to the transference, of course, in her conception of the developmental process and the role of early object relations, which, she maintains, exists from the beginning of life. The transference represents the displacement of not only the actual aspects of parents but also of split-off projected and introjected part-object representations from early infancy - prosecutory 'bad' objects or benevolent 'good' ones. Like Gill, Klein both emphasizes the importance of attending to and interpreting subtle or disguised references to the analyst and maintains that therapeutic necessity of relating all associative content to transference fantasies and wishes, with special emphasis on the negative transference (another lucid exposition that of his, a Kleinian approach to the transference is that of Paula Heimann [1956] ).
Under the influence of Mrs. Klein many British analysts, D. W. Winnicott among them, have undertaken to analyse patients with what Americans would speak of as severe ego disturbances - borderline and psychotic in nature. Winnicott’s too repressed at the time of the original experience, she appears to anticipate Winnicott’s ideas about 'true' and 'false' selves.
Freud distinguished between the 'transference neuroses' and the 'narcissistic neuroses,' which included schizophrenia. He contended that patients in the latter group did not establish transferences and thus were inaccessible to psychoanalytic therapy. Like Winnicott, Fromm-Reichmann, from her experience with schizophrenics at Chestnut Lodge, challenges this dictum. Though clearly not adaptable to the conventional analytic situations, such patients do, she contends, from intense. Transference reactions and are susceptible too analytically informed, though often unorthodox, therapeutic intervention. Though many would question the ultimate effectiveness for such a therapy that pose to pass on (McGlashan 1984), Fromm-Reichmann’s description of her special techniques for establishing contact with persons in profound states of narcissistic regression and for understanding their transference reactions are impressive and are still of value.
Recent decades have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the transference in its aspects - theoretical and technical. Stimulated by new analytically perceptive both in Europe and the United States and by influences stemming from linguistics and philosophy, several commentators have sought to reconsider traditional viewpoints and to satisfy new observational data.
In his long, densely written paper Stone undertakes a comprehensive statement of his views on the varied aspects of the transference from developmental and clinical perspectives. In particular, he sets forth a distinction between the 'primordial' and the 'mature' transference 'from which,' he says, we have derived 'the various clinical and demonstrable forms,' where they have 'derived the 'primordial' transference from the effort to master the series of crucial separations from the mother,' the mature transference 'encompasses . . . the wish to understand, and to be understood' and 'in its peak development, . . . the wish for increasingly accurate interpretations.' The 'mature' transference draws then on autonomous ego functions and is a 'dynamic and integral part of the ‘therapeutic alliance.’' Stone also deals in extensor with the Stracheyian question of the special 'mutative' value of transference interpretation, while not devaluing these, he argues persuasively for the importance of the patient’s real life experiences and the analytic value of interpretations related to them.
One of the most forceful statements of the centrality of the transference to the analytic experience is that of Brian Bird. In his view, there is something unique about the analytic transference; for him, everything that occurs in the analysis for both patient and analyst partakes of transference elements. Yet for Bird, what is essential for the therapeutic effect is not merely the analysis of transference 'feeling' but the evolution and analysis of a full-blown transference neurosis. He asserts, the quintessence of the transference neurosis is an analytic stalemate, in which one’s interpersonal replaced be as an intrapsychic conflict involving the patient and a split-off aspect of his or her neurosis assigned to the analyst. The true work and the 'hardest part' of analysis go on, and it is in the interpretation and resolution of such stalemates - including a rigorous analysis of the patient’s hostile, destructive wishes.
Gill, in basic agreement, carries the argument even in a major way. He distinguishes between the patient’s resistance to awareness of transference and the resistance to the resolution of the transference. It is the former, where transference experiences are largely unconscious and ego-syntonic, that is the more difficult. It is the analyst’s task to allow the transference to evolve and flourish so that we can make the patient aware of it. To do so, the analyst must be alert to interpret indirect and veiled allusions to the transference and, to a considerable degree, seek out those elements of the analytic situation, including the analyst’s own behaviour, that serve as the 'day-residue' for such transference responses. Gill strongly advocates a focus on the here-and-now factors, allowing genetic determinants to emerge on their own rather than interpreting them.
The distinction between what has been called the 'basic' transference, or the 'therapeutic alliance' or the 'working alliance,' on the one hand and the analytic transference or transference neurosis in the other has been a staple of controversy. Stein, reflecting on Freud’s term 'the unobjectionable part of the transference,' takes issue with this distinction. Insisting of the entire transference phenomena that he so then encourages the forethought against the practice of leaving the 'unobjectionable' or 'basic' transference unanalysed: They are, he says, 'the manifest resultant of a complex web of unconscious conflicts that must be, and are unably effective of being, sought and described.' The speculative assumption was that they were to personify of some underlain realization as rooted merely in early infant development as he believes unwarranted.
From his reassessment of basic psychoanalytic concepts, Schafer, influenced by British analytic philosophers, provides a revised view of transference and transference interpretation - in particular, of the character of transference as 'repetition.' As Schafer sees it, transference experiences are new ones, created by the analytic situation. It is the act of analytic interpretation that forms them as repetition. More properly they can see them as metaphoric communications; thus, 'they represent movement forward, not backward.' Interpretation does not merely recover or uncover old meanings; it creates new meanings that help the patient to make sense - psychoanalytic sense - of his or her life and modes of relating to others. Transference, Schafer says, is 'the emotional experiencing of the past as it is now remembering,' not as it 'really' happened.
Loewald considers the status of the transference neurosis in the setting of contemporary practice, in which the modal patient suffers from a character neurosis rather than from the 'classical' symptom neuroses of an earlier era. Given the more diffuse developmental etiology of the character disturbances, transference manifestations are so inclined as to be modestly definite and less focussed; a transference neurosis in the classical sense may not appear at all. Thus, 'transference neurosis is not so much an entity to be found in the patient, but an operational concept, . . . a creature of the analytic situation.' Even where a full-blown transference neurosis does not develop, however, we can accomplish much? 'The repercussion of what has occurred,' Loewald states, 'may turn out to be deeper and more extensive than anticipated.'
Strachey’s pivotal advocacy of the exclusively 'mutative' value of transference interpretation has led to one major controversy in the literature. In its extreme form, the position taken was not only that transference interpretations were crucial but that interpretations addressed to extra-transferential experiences were in principle ineffective and useless. Leites, a non-clinician, survey the literature to argue strongly for the other side - for the view, that is, that the analysis of current and experiences with others can be as effective and meaningful as can the unifocal address to the transference. Without reducing the special impact of transference interpretations, Leites seeks to undo the dogmatism and rigidity he sees inherently in what he calls 'Strachey’s Law.'
In the evolution of what came to his 'psychology of the self,' Heinz Kohut demarcated a topology of transference reactions that were, in his view, characteristic of patients with narcissistic personality disorders. This, the 'idealizing' and 'mirror' transferences, reflected specific types of deprivation in early parent-child interactions that generated a persistent need for special types of what came to call 'self-object' attachments - in and out of the analytic situation. Kohut’s meticulous descriptions of these transference phenomena and of their analytic management were a source of stimulation and instruction to many analysts, even to those who were unwilling to follow some later developments in his theoretical and technical thinking.
Of recent commentators, perhaps the most gnomic, the least penetrable, and the most devoted to paradoxes were Jacques Lacan. Here, he takes exception to what he regards as the 'American' concept of appealing, through the therapeutic alliance, to the 'mature' portion of or (anathema to him) the 'autonomous functions.' Lacan does share the general view that the transference is central to the analytic experience and seems to echo Freud in conceiving it primarily as a resistance - as, 'closing' of the unconscious, and is characteristically by obscurity and linguistic play and leaves one uncertain as to his actual technical approach, but the central thread of his focus on language as the basic element in the structure of mental life, - we have structured 'the unconscious like language' - is affirmatively defended by Lacan, 1978.
They couch Kernberg’s reflections on the transference through his 'ego psychological-object relations' though sharing the recent emphasis on here-and-now aspects of transference interpretation. He regards the links with infantile precursors, conceived in early internalized object relations, as essential. He urges openness of mind and tolerance of uncertainty, however, rather than imposing on the patient preconceived ideas about etiology and pathogenesis. In particular, he distances himself from what he regards as the restrictive concepts of 'self-psychology,' especially regarding the role of aggression. What is more, while attending closely to all aspects of communication in the session, Kernberg aligns himself with those who regard both extra-analytic and intra-analytic experience as valid material for interpretation.
The alternative views of transference as a repetition of infantile experience and as a new creation in the setting of the analytic situation have evidently formed the basis of a continuing debate from the earliest years. In his assessment of current ideas of transference, Cooper calls these respectively the 'historical' and the 'modernist' views attributing recent interest able to changing philosophical concepts of reality and the rise to prominence of object relations theories in analysis. Cooper comes down squarely for the 'modernist' views, maintaining, like Gill, that the actuality of the analyst’s individuation and behaviour are a powerful determinant of the patient’s transference reactions and need be accorded to the attention of at least the equal to that any given reconstructed infantile determinant, for he admixtures for a 'synchronic' rather than a 'diachronic' view of the transference and like Spence (1982), Schafer (1983). Others question the possibility of re-creating from the analysis of the transference or from anything else a 'true' version of the life history.
Still, they must remember it, that it was as a therapeutic procedure that psychoanalyses originated. It is in the main as a therapeutic agency that it exists today. It may be of a surprise to us, in that the per capita of equal measure prove equivalent to the minor preposition of psychoanalytical literature of which is concerned with the mechanisms by which they achieve its therapeutic effects. They have accumulated a very considerable quantity of data during the last thirty or forty years that throw light upon the nature and workings of the human mind: we have made perceptible progress in the task of classifying and subsuming such data into a body of generalized hypotheses or scientific laws. Nevertheless, there has been a remarkable hesitation in applying these findings in any great detail to the therapeutic process itself. Seemingly probable, one cannot help feeling that this hesitation has been responsible for the fact that so many discussions upon the practical details of analytic technique seem to leave us at cross-purposes and at an inconclusive end. How, for instance, can we expect to agree upon the vexed question of whether and when we should give a 'deep interpretation,' while we have no clear ideas of what we mean by a 'deep interpretation,' while, we have no exactly formulated view of the idea of ‘interpretation’ itself, no precise knowledge of what interpretation’ is and what effect it has upon our patients? We should gain much, least of mention, from a clearer grasp of problems such as this. If we could arrive at a more detailed understanding of the workings of the therapeutic process, we show; if be less prone to those occasional feelings of utter disorientation that few analysts are fortunate enough to escape, and the analytic movement itself might be less at the mercy of proposals for abrupt alterations in the ordinary technical procedure - proposals that derive much of their strength from the prevailing uncertainty as to the exact nature of the analytic therapy. At present, it is a tentative attack upon this problem, and although it should turn out that they cannot maintain its very doubtful conclusions. Some analysts, however, are anxious to draw attention to the agency of the problem itself. Sometimes, however, make clear that what follows is not a practical discussion upon psychoanalytic technique. Because, its impending bearings are merely theoretical, since the considerable individual deviation that we would generally regard as the various sorts of procedures. As within the limits of ‘orthodox’ psychoanalysis and various sorts of effects which observation shows that the applications of such procedures bring to a trend about having set up a hypothesis which endeavours to explain almost coherently why these particular procedures cause this effectiveness and if possible it hypotheses about the nature of the therapeutic action of a psychoanalysis are valid, certain implications follow from it that might serve as criteria in forming a justifiable judgement of the probable effectiveness of any particular type of procedure?
It will be the object, nonetheless, that exaggeration and the novelty of its topic, are after all, it leaves to be said, 'we do understand and have long understood the main principles that governs the therapeutic action of analysis.' To this, of course, is, the start of what I having as shortly as possible the accepted views upon the subject. For this purpose, we must go back to the period between the years 1912 and 1917 during which Freud gave us the greater part of what he has written directly on the therapeutic side of the psychoanalysis, namely the series of papers on technique and the twenty-seventh and twenty-eight chapters of the Introductory Lectures.
The systematic application characterized this period of the method known as ‘resistance analysis’. The method in question was hardly a new one even. It was based upon ideas that had long been implicit in analytic theory, and in particular upon one of the earliest of Freud’s views of the dynamic function of neurotic symptoms. According to that view (which was computably essential to the study of hysteria) the function of the neurotic symptom was to defend the patient’s personality against an unconscious tread of thought that was unacceptable to it, while simultaneously gratifying the trend up to a certain point. It seems to follow, therefore, that if the analyst were to investigate and discover the unconscious trend and make the patient aware of it - if he were to make what was unconsciously conscious - the whole raison d̀être of the symptom would cease and it must automatically disappear. Two difficulties arose, however. In the first place some part of the patient’s mind was found to raise obstacles to the process, to offer resistance to the analyst when he tried to discover the unconscious trend, and it was easy to conclude that this was the same part of the patient’s mind as had originally repudiated the unconscious trend and had thus necessitated the creation of the symptom. But, in the second place, even when this obstacle might be surmounted, even when the analyst had succeed in guessing or deducing the nature of the unconscious trend, had drawn the patient’s attention to it and had apparently made him fully aware of it - even then, it would often happen that the symptom persisted unshaken. The realization of Difficultness has led to important results both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, there were evidently two senses in which a patient could become conscious of an unconscious trend, and the analyst could make him aware of it in some intellectual sense without becoming ‘really’ conscious of it. To make this state of things more intelligible, Freud devised a kind of pictorial allegory. He imagined the mind as a kind of map. They pictured the original objectionable trend as moved to one region of this map and the newly discovered information about it, expressed to the patient by the analyst, in another. It was only if these two impressions could be 'brought together.' Whatever exactly that might mean, in that the unconscious trend would be 'really' made conscious. What prevented this from happening was a force within the patient, a barrier - once, again, evidently the same 'resistance' which had opposed the analyst’s attempts at investigating the unconscious trend that had contributed to the original production of the symptom. The removal of this resistance was the essential preliminary to the patient’s becoming 'really' conscious of the unconscious trend. It was at this point that the practice lesson emerged: As pertained to the psychoanalysis the main task is not so much to investigate the objectionable unconscious trend as to get rid of the patient’s resistance to it.
Still, how are we to set about this task of demolishing the resistance? Once, again, by the same process of investigation and explanation that we have already applied to the unconscious trend. However, this time such difficulties do not face us as before, for the forces that are keeping up the regression, although they are to some extent unconscious, do not belong to the unconscious, in the systematic sense, they are a part of the patient’s ego, which is co-operating with us, and are thus more accessible. Nonetheless, the existing state of equilibrium will not be upset. The ego will not be induced to do the work of readjustment required of it, unless we are able by our analytic procedure to mobilize some fresh force upon our side.
What forces can we count upon? The patient’s will to recovery, in the first place, which led him to embark upon the analysis, are again of an intellectual consideration that we can bring to his notice. We can make him understand the structure of his symptom and the motives for his repudiation of the objectionable trend. We can point out the fact that these motives are out-of-date and no longer valid: That they may have been reasonable when he was a baby, but are no longer so now that he is grown up. Finally, we can insist that this original solution of the difficulty has only led to illness, while the new one that we propose remains in a certain state ousting of the prospect of health. Such motives these may play a part in inducing the patient to abandon his resistance, nevertheless, it is from an entirely deafened quarter that the decisive factor emerges. This factor, need be, is that of the transference.
Although from very early times Freud had called attention to the fact that transference manifest of itself in two ways - negatively and positively, a good deal less was said or known about the negative transference than about the positive. This, of course, corresponds to the circumstance that interest in the destructive and aggressive impulses overall, is only a comparatively recent development. They regarded transference predominantly as a ‘libidinal’ phenomenon. They suggested that in everyone there subsisting to several unsatisfied libidinal impulses, and that whenever some new person came upon the scene these impulses were ready to attach them to him. This was the account of transference as a universal phenomenon. In neurotics, owing to the abnormally large quantities of unattached libido presents in them, the tendency to transference would be correspondingly greater, and the peculiar circumstances of the analytic situation would further increase it. It was evidently the existence of these feelings of love, thrown by the patient upon the analyst, that provided the necessary extra force to induce his ego to give up its resistances, undo the repressions and adopt a fresh solution of its ancient problems. This instrument, without which no therapeutic result could be obtained, was at once seen to be no stranger: It was in fact the familiar peer of suggestion, which had ostensibly been abandoned long in advance. Now, however, it was being employed in a very different way, in fact in a contrary direction. In pre-analytic days it had aimed at cause an increase in repression, now overcoming the resistance of the ego was put-upon, that is to say, to allow the repression to be removed.
However, the situation became ever more complicated as more facts about transference became known. In the first place, the feelings transferred turned on to be as various sorts, besides the loving ones there were the hostile ones, which were naturally far from helping the analyst’s efforts. Nevertheless, even apart from the hostile transference, the libidinal feelings themselves fell into two groups: Friendly and affectionate feelings that could be conscious, and purely erotic ones that have usually to remain unconscious. These latter feelings, when they became too powerful, stirred up the repressive forces of the ego and thus increased its resistances instead of diminishing them, and in fact produced a state of things that was not easily distinguishable from the damaging negative transference. Beyond all this, in that respect arises in the entireness in the question in a deficiency of permanence of all suggestive treatments. Did not the existence of the transference threaten to leave the analytic patient in that same? In that, by the unending dependence is reliant upon the analyst?
The discovery that the transference itself could be analysed got over these difficulties. Its analysis, was soon found the most important part of the whole treatment. Making consciously its roots in the repressed unconscious was just possible as making conscious any other repressed material was possible - that is, by inducing the ego to abandon its resistance - and there was nothing self-contradictory in the fact that the force used for resolving the transference was the transference itself. Once it had been made conscious, its unmanageable, infantile, permanent characteristics disappeared: What was left was like any other 'real' human relationship. Still, the necessity for constantly analysing the transference became still more apparent from another discovery. It was found that as work went on the transference tended, as it was, to eat up the entire analysis. Often of the patient’s libido became concentrated upon his relation to the analyst, the patient’s original symptoms were drained of their cathexis, and there appeared instead an artificial neurosis to which Freud gave the name the 'transference neurosis'. The original conflicts, which have on the onset of neurosis, begun to be
re-enacted in the relations to the analyst. Now this unexpected event is far from being the misfortune that at first sight it might be. In fact it gave us our great opportunity. Instead of having to deal as best we may with conflicts of the remote past, which are concerned with dead circumstances and mummified personalities, whose outcome is already determined, we find ourselves involved in an actual and immediate situation, in which we and the patient are the principle character and the development of which is to some extent at least under our control. Yet if we bring it about that in this revivified transference conflict the patient choses a new situation instead of the old one, a solution in which behaviour more replaces the primitive and unadaptable method of repression in contact with reality, then, even after his detachment from the analysis, he can fall back into his former neurosis. The solution of the transference conflict implies the simultaneous solution of the infantile conflict of which it is a new edition. 'The change,' says Freud in his Introductory Lectures, is made possible by alternations in the ego occurring consequently of the analyst’s suggestions. At the expense of the unconscious, the ego becomes wider by the work of interpretation that brings the unconscious material into consciousness: Through education it becomes reconciled to the libido and is made willing to grant it a certain degree of satisfaction, and its horror of the claims of its libido is lessoned in sublimation. The additional are nearly the courses of the treatment that corresponds with this ideal description, and the greater will be the success of the psychoanalytic therapy. At the time Freud had written these words, was made quite clear that in writing this script he held that the ultimate factor in the therapeutic action of the psychoanalysis was suggestion by the analyst acting upon the patient’s ego in a way that makes it more tolerant of the libidinal trends.
In the years that have passed since he wrote this passage Freud was to produce an extremely small bearing that had been directly on the subject, and that little goes to show that he has not altered his views on the main principles involved. However, it is, nonetheless, the additional lectures published most recently that he explicitly states that he has nothing to add to the theoretical discussion upon therapy given in the original lectures fifteen years earlier. While there has in the interval been a considerable further development of his theoretical opinions, and especially in the region of ego-psychology. He had, in particular, formulated the idea of the super-ego. The restatement in super-ego terms of the principles of therapeutics that he laid down in the period of resistance analysis may not involve many changes. It is, nevertheless, the anticipating that information about the super-ego will be of special interest from our give directions to orient the view as is reasonable: And in two ways. In the first place, it would at first sight seem highly probable that the super-ego should play an important part, direct or indirect, in the setting-up and maintaining of the repressions and resistances the demolition of which has been the chief aim of analysis? An examination confirms this of the classification of the various kinds of resistance made by Freud in Hemmung Symptom und Angst (1926). Of the five sorts of resistance there mentioned it is true that only one is attributed to the direct intervention of the super-ego, but two of the ego-resistances - the repression-resistance and the transference-resistance - although originating from the ego, are as a rule set up by it out of fear of the super-ego? It seems likely enough therefore that when Freud wrote the words that have been of a quotation, to the effect that the favourable change in the patient is made possible by alternations in the ego, he was thinking, in part at all events, of that portion of the ego that he subsequently separated off into the super-ego. Quite apart from this, moreover, to a greater extent Freud’s most recently published works, the Group Psychology (1921), there are passages that suggest a different point - namely, that it may be largely through the patient’s super-ego that the analyst could influence him. These passages occur in his Discussions on the nature of hypnosis and suggestion. He definitely rejects Bernheim’s view that all hypnotic phenomena are traceable to the factor of suggestion, and adopts the alterative theory that suggestion is a partial manifestation of the state of hypnosis. The state of hypnosis, again, is found in certain respects to resemble the state of being in love. There is 'the same humble subjection, but the same compliance, the same absence of criticism toward the hypnotist as toward the loved object,' in particular, there can be no doubt that the hypnotist, like the loved object. 'Having become abounding with the place of the subject’s ego-ideal, in the sense that it's most recent of suggestions is a partial form of hypnosis and of suggestion. In that it seems to follow that the analyst owes his effectiveness, at all events in some respect, to his having stepped into the place of the patient’s super-ego. Thus, there are two convergent lines of argument that point to the patient’s super-ego as occupying a key position in analytic therapy: It is a part of the patient’s mind in which a favourable alteration would be likely to lead to an overall improvement, and it is a part of the patient’s mind that is especially subject to the analyst’s influence.
Such plausible notions are they followed these up almost immediately after the super-ego made its first debut. Ernest Jones developed them, for instance, in his paper on The Nature of Auto-Suggestion. Soon afterwards Alexander launched his theory that the principle; aim of all psychoanalytic therapy must be the complete demolition of the super-ego and the assumption of its functions by the ego. According to his account, the treatment falls into two phases. Its first phase asserts that they have handed over the function of the patient’s super-ego to the analyst, and in the second phase they are passed back again to the patient, but this time to his ego. The super-ego, according to this view of Alexander’s (though he explicitly limits his use of the word to the unconscious parts of the ego ideal). Is some fundamental apparatus that is essentially primitive, out of date? And out of touch with reality, which is incapable of adapting itself, which operates automatically, with the monotonous uniformity of a reflex? Any useful functions that it takes measures to put into effect the ego can carry out an action that, and there is therefore nothing to be done with it but to scrap it. This wholesale attack upon the super-ego might be of questionable validity. Its abolishment would probably become more even if that were pragmatically political, and would involve the abolition of most highly desirable mental activities. However, the idea that the analyst temporarily takes over the functions of the patient’s super-ego during the treatment and by doing in some way alters it agrees with the tentative remarks that have already been of mention.
So, too, do some passages in a paper by Radó upon The Economic Principle in Psycho-Analytic Technique. The second part of this paper, which was to have dealt with the psychoanalysis, has unfortunately never been published, but the first one, on hypnotism and cantharis, contains much that is of interest. It includes a theory that the hypnotic subject introjects the hypnotist if the form of what Radó calls a 'parasitic super-ego,' which draws off the energy and takes over the functions of the subject’s original super-ego. One feature of the situation brought out by Radó is the unstable and temporary nature of this whole arrangement. If, for instance, the hypnotist gives a command that is too much opposing the subject’s original super-ego, the parasite is promptly extruded. In any case, when the state of hypnosis ends, the sway of the parasite super-ego also ends and the original super-ego resumes its dynamical function.
However debatable may be the details of Radó’s description, it not only emphasizes again the notion of the super-ego as the fulcrum of psychotherapy, but it draws attention to the important distinction between the effects of hypnosis and analysis concerning permanence. Hypnosis acts essentially in a temporary way, and Radó’s theory of the parasitic super-ego, which does not really replace the original one but merely throws it out of action, gives a very good picture of its apparent workings. Analysis, on the other hand, in so as far as it seeks to affect the patient’s super-ego, aims at something very much more afar in reaching and becoming permanent - namely, at an integral change like the patient’s super-ego itself. Some even more recent developments in psychoanalytic theory give a hint, so it seems, in that of the kind of line of reasoning, along which we might agree of the question.
This latest growth of theory has been very much occupied with the destructive impulses and has brought them for the first time into the centre of interest: And attention has art the same time been concentrated on the correlated problems of guilt and anxiety. Especially, are those influenced by such of an idea depicting the elaborate development of the super-ego and recently developed in retaining Melanie Klein and the importance that she displays the attributes that the narrative and cognitive process of introjection and projection in the development of the personality. The individual, she holds, is perpetually introjecting and projecting the object of its impulses, and the character of the introjected objects depends on the character of the id-impulses directed toward the external object. Thus, for instance, during the stage of a child’s libidinal development in which feelings of oral aggression dominate it, its feelings toward its external object will be orally aggressive, and it will then introject the object, and the introjected object will now act (in the manner of a super-ego) in an oral aggressiveness toward the child’s ego. The next event will be the projection of this orally aggressive introjective object back onto the external object, which will now in its turn may be orally aggressive. The fact of the external object being thus felt as dangerous and destructive withal lead to the id-impulse as to adopt an even more aggressive and destructive attitude toward the object in a self-defence. They thus establish a vicious circle. This process seeks to account for the extreme severity of the super-ego in small children, and for their unreasonable fear of outside objects. During the development of the normal individual, his libido eventually reaches the genital stage, at which the positive impulses predominate. His attitude toward his external objects will thus become more friendly, and accordingly his introjected objects (or, the super-ego) will become less severe and his ego’s contact with reality will be less distorted. In the neurotic, however, for various reasons - whether because of frustration or of an incapacity of the ego to tolerate id-impulses, or of an inherent excess of the destructive components - development to the genital stage does not occur. However, the individual remains of a savage id on the one hand and a correspondingly savage super-ego on the other, and the vicious circle distinguish its perpetuation. The hypothesis as stated may be useful in helping us to form a visualization upon which not only of the mechanism of a neurosis but also of the mechanism of its cure. There is, nonetheless, nothing new in regarding a neurosis as essentially an obstacle or deflecting force in the path of normal development: Nor is there anything new in the belief that a psychoanalysis, owing to the peculiarity of the analytic situation can reassign the obstacle and so allow the normal development to continue. That being said, it is, nonetheless, in lead to appear of intentions to make our conception a little more precise by assuming the pathological obstacle to the neurotic individuals’ further growth is like a vicious circle of the kind the same. If a breach could somehow or other be made in the vicious circle, they would preview the processes of development upon their normal course. If, for instance, they could make the patient less frightened of his super-ego or introjected object, he would project less terrifying imagos onto the outer object and would therefore have less need to feel hostile toward it: The object that he then introjected would in turn be less savage in its pressure upon the id-impulses, which could probably lose something of their primitive ferocity. In short, a benign circle would be set up instead of a vicious one, and ultimately the patient’s libidinal development would go on to the genital level, however? As with a normal adult, his super-ego will be comparatively mild and his ego will have a proportionally undistorted contact with reality.
Nonetheless, at what point in the vicious circle is the breach to be made and how is it to be effected? Altering the character of a person’s super-ego is easier said is obvious that than done. Nevertheless, the quotations from earlier discussions have in suggesting that the super-ego will be found to play an important part in the solution of our problem. However, presumption qualities are yet to quantities imputed in the positing affirmation in which they have described considering not to a greater extent then besides a closer nature of what as the analytic-situation will be necessary, the relation between the two persons concerned in it is a highly complex one, and for our present purposes, we are to isolate two elements in it. In the first place, the patient in analysis has of a tendency to centralize the whole of his id-impulses upon the analyst, all the same, no further comment upon this fact or its implications, since they are so immensely familiar, but only to emphasize upon their vital importance to all that follows and go at once to the second element of the analytic situation, which, again will be of an isolate. The patient in analysis tends to accept the analyst in some way or other as a substitute for his own super-ego. At this point, to imitate with a slight difference the convenient phase with which Radó used in his account of hypnosis and to say that in analysis the patient has a propensity to put forth the analyst into an 'auxiliary super-ego.' This phrase and the relation decided by it evidently require some explanation.
When a neurotic patient meets a new object in ordinary life, according to our underlying hypothesis he will be inclined to project onto it his introjected archaic objects and the new object will surmount the extent of an illusory object. It is to be presumed that his introjected objects are essentially separated out into two groups, which function as a 'good' introjected object (or, a mild super-ego) and a 'bad' introjected object (or, a harsh super-ego). According to the degree to which his ego maintains contacts with reality, will project the 'good' introjected object onto benevolently real outside objects and the?'bad' one onto malignantly real outside objects. Since, however, he is by hypothesis neurotic, the 'bad' introjected object will predominate, and will lean heavily toward an externalization of that of which have projected the 'good' one, and there will further be a tendency, even where to the generative began with the 'good' object, for the 'bad' one after a time to take its place. Consequently, saying that usually the neurotic’s phantasy objects in the outside world will be predominantly dangerous and hostile will be true. Moreover, since even his 'good' introjected objects will be 'good' according to an archaic and infantile standard, and will be to some extent maintained simply for counteracting the ‘bad’ object, even his ‘good’ phantasy objects in the outer world and its containing surrounding surfaces will be very much out of touch with reality. Going back now to the moment when our neurotic patient meets a new object in real life and supposing (as will is the more usual case) that he projects his 'bad' introjected object onto it - the phantasy external object will then seem to him to be dangerous, he will be frightened of it and, to defend himself against it, will become more angry. Thus, when he introjects this new object in turn, it will merely be adding another terrifying imago to those he has already introjected. The new introjected imago will in fact simply be a duplicate of the original archaic ones, and his super-ego will remain almost exactly as it was. The same will be also true with the necessary changes made where he begins by projection with which his 'good' introjected object onto the new external object he has met. No doubt, as a result, there will be a slight strengthening of his kind super-ego at the expense of his harsh one, and to that extent from which will improve his condition. Burt there will be no qualitative change in his super-ego, for the new 'good' object introjected will only be a duplicate of an archaic original and will only reinforce the archaic 'good' super-ego already present?
The effect when the neurotic patient contacts a new object in analysis is from the first moment to create a different situation. His super-ego is in any case either homogeneous or well organized: we have previously oversimplified the account we have given of it and schematic. Effectively, it has derived the introjected imago that goes to make it up from a variety of stages of his history and function to some extent independently. Now, owing to the peculiarities of the analytic circumstance and of the analyst’s behaviour, the introjected imago of the analyst tends in part to be quite definitely separated off from the rest of the patient’s super-ego. (This, of course, presupposes a certain degree of contact with reality on his part. Here we have one fundamental criterion of accessibility to analytic treatment: Another, which we have already implicitly noticed, is the patient’s ability to attach his id-impulses to the analyst.) This separation between the imago of the introjected analyst and the rest of the patient’s super-ego becomes evident at quite an early stage of the treatment, for instance, about the fundamental rule of free-association. The new bit of super-ego tells the patient that benevolent characteristics have allowed him to say anything that may come into his head. This works satisfactorily for a little, but soon there comes a conflict between the new bit and the rest, for the original super-ego says: 'You must not say this, for, if you do, you will be using an obscene word or betraying so-ans-so’s confidences.' The separation off the new but - we have generally called what the 'auxiliary' super-ego - as been inclined to persevere the very reason that it usually operates in a different direction from the rest of the super-ego. This is true not only of the 'harsh' super-ego but also of the 'mild' one. For, though the auxiliary super-ego is in fact kindly, it is not kindly in the same archaic way as the case’s patients introjected 'good' imagos. The most important characteristic of the auxiliary super-ego is that its advice to the ego is consistently based upon real and contemporary considerations and this serves to differentiate it from the greater part of the original super-ego.
In spite of this, the situation is nonetheless extremely insecure. There is a constant tendency for the whole distinction to break down. The patient is liable at any moment to project this terrifying imago onto the analyst just as though he were anyone else he might have met in his life. If this happens, the introjected imago of the analyst will be wholly incorporated into the rest of the patient’s harsh super-ego, and the auxiliary super-ego will disappear. Even when the content of the auxiliary super-ego’s advice is realized as different from or contrary to that of the original super-ego, very often its quality will be felt for being the one. For instance, the patient may feel that the analyst has said to him: 'If you do not say whatever comes into your head, I will give you an unconnective cause to end,' or 'If you do not become conscious of this piece of the unconscious I will turn you out of the room.' Nevertheless, labile though it is, and limited as its authority, this peculiar relation between the analyst and the patient’ s ego seems to preserve the analyst’s appreciation upon that of his main instrument in helping the development of the therapeutic process. What is this main weapon in the analyst’s armoury? Its name springs at once to our lips. The weapon is, of course, interpretation.
What, then, is interpretation? How does it work? Extremely little may be known about or more than is less likened to it, but this does not present an almost universal belief in its remarkable efficacy as a weapon: Interpretation has, it must be confessed, many qualities of a magic weapon. It is, of course, felt as such by many patents. Some of them spend hours at a time in providing interpretations of their own - often ingeniously, illuminating, correct. Others, again, derive a direct libidinal gratification from being given interpretations and may even develop something parallel to a drug addition to them. In non-analytical circles interpretation is usually either scoffed at as something ludicrous, or being revealed of some raging or as a frightening danger. This attitude is shared, in many more tan is often realized, by most analysts. This was particularly revealed by the reactions shown in many quarters when the idea of giving interpretations to small children was first turned over by Melanie Klein. Nonetheless, saying that analysts are inclined to feel interpretation as something extremely powerful whether for good or ill would be true in an overall census, as, perhaps, of our feelings about interpretation as distinguished from our reasoning beliefs. There may be many grounds for thinking that out beliefs seem superficially to be contradictory, and the contradictions do not always spring from different schools of thought. Nevertheless, are manifest of sometimes held simultaneously by one individual. By that, we are told that if we interpret too soon or too rashly, we run the risk of losing a patient: That unless we interpret promptly and deeply we run the risk of losing a patient: That interpretation may cause intolerable and unmanageable outbreaks of anxiety by 'liberating' it, that interpretation is the only way of enabling a patient to cope with an unmanageable outbreak of anxiety by ‘resolving’ it, which interpretations must always refer to material on the very point of emerging into consciousness, that the most useful interpretations are really deep ones? : 'Be cautious with your interpretations' says one voice: 'When is doubt, interpreted' says another? Nevertheless, although there is evidently a good deal of confusion in all of this, but it is nonetheless, that the various pieces of advice that may turn out to refer to different circumstances and different cases and to imply in the different uses of the word 'interpretation'.
For the word is evidently used in more than one sense. It is, after all, perhaps, only a synonym for the experienced form as we have already come across - 'making what is unconsciously conscious,' and it shares all of that phrase’s ambiguities. For in one sense, if you give a German-English dictionary to someone who knows no German, you will be giving him a collection of interpretations, and this, is the kind of sense in which the nature of interpretation has been discussed in a recent paper by Bernfeld. Such descriptive interpretations have evidently no relevance to our present topic. We will continue without much ado to define as clearly as made possible the particular yet peculiar sort of interpretation, of which seems significantly relevant as an actively fundamental instrument of psychoanalytic therapy and to which for convenience makes known by name of 'mutative' interpretations.
It seems at first glace to give but a schematized outline of what is understood by a mutative interpretation, leaving the details to be filled afterwards, and, with a view to clarify of expositional purposes as an instance the interpretation of a hostile impulse. By virtue of his power (his strictly limited powers) as auxiliary super-ego, the analyst gives permission for a certain small quantity of the patient’s id-energy (in our instance, as an aggressive impulse) to become conscious. Since the analyst is also, from the nature of things, the object of the patient’s id-impulses, the quantity of these impulses that is now released into consciousness will become consciously directed toward the analyst. This is the critical point. If all goes well, the patient’s ego will become aware of the contrast between the aggressive character of his feelings and the real nature of the analyst, who does not behave comparably as the patient’s 'good' or 'bad' archaic object? The patient, which is to say, will become aware of a distinction between his archaic phantasy object and the really external object. The interpretation has now become a mutative one, since it has produced a breach in the neurotic vicious circle. For the patient, having become aware of the lack of aggressiveness in the really external object, can probably diminish his own aggressiveness: The new object that he introjected will be less aggressive, and consequently the aggressiveness of his super-ego will also be diminished. As a further corollary to these events, and simultaneously with them, the patient will obtain access to the infantile materials by which is being re-experienced by him in his relation to the analyst.
This is the overall scheme of the mutative interpretation. You will hold of notice that in its accountable process in the appearance that fall into two phases. For descriptive purposes it may, or perhaps may be to exceed the question of whether these two phases are in temporal sequence or whether they may not really be two simultaneous aspects of a single event, nonetheless, dealing with them is easier as though they were successive. First, then, there is the phase in which the patient becomes conscious of a particular quantity of id-energy as directed toward the analyst, and secondly, there is the phase in which the patient becomes aware that this id-energy is directed toward an archaic phantasy object and not toward a real one.
The first phase of a mutative interpretation - that in which part of the patient’s id-relation to the analyst is made conscious in virtue of the latter’s emplacements as auxiliary super-ego - is complicated and complex. In the classical model of an interpretation, the patient will first be made aware of a state of tension in his ego, will next be made aware that there is a repressive factor at work (that his super-ego is threatening him with punishment), and will only they are made aware of the id-impulse that has stirred upon the protests of his super-ego and so lead to the anxiety in his ego. This is the classical scheme. In actual practice, the analyst finds himself working from all three sides at once, or in irregular succession. At one moment a small portion of the patient’s super-ego may be revealed to him in all its savagery, at another the shrinking defencelessness of his ego, yet another form of his attentions may be directed to the attempt that he is making maybe at compensating for his hostility occasionally a fraction of id-energy may even be directly encouraged to break its way through the last remains of an already weakened resistance. There is, however, one characteristic that all these various operations have in common, they are essentially upon a small scale. For the mutative interpretation is inevitably governed by the principle of minimal doses. It is, probably, a commonly agreed clinical fact that alternations in a patient under analysis appear usually to be extremely gradual: We are inclined to suspect sudden and large changes as an indication that suggestive rather than psychoanalytic processes ate at work, the gradual nature of the changes caused in the psychoanalysis will be explained if, in at all, those changes are the result of the summation of most minute steps, each of which correspond to a mutative interpretation. The smallness of each step is in turn imposed by the very nature of the analytic situation. For each interpretation involves the release of a certain quantity of id-energy, and as if by a deficiency of possibilities, the quantity released is too large, the higher unstable of equilibrium that enables the analyst top function as the patient’s auxiliary super-ego is bound to be upset. The whole analytic situation will be imperilled, since it is only in virtue of the analyst’s acting auxiliary super-ego that these releases of id-energy can occur at all.
The analyst’s attemptive efforts toward consciousness of all at once bring too crucially a quantity of id-energy into the patient’s consciousness as a total elucidation that sometime the given juncture that nothing may bechance, or on the other hand there may be an unmanageable result: But in either event will be a mutative interpretation has been effected. In the former case (in which there is apparently no effect) the analyst’s power as auxiliary super-ego will not have been strong enough for the job he has set himself. Still, this again, may be for two very different reasons. It can be that the id-impulses he was trying to bring out were not in fact sufficiently urgent at the moment of relative incidence: For, after all, the emergence of an id-impulse depends on two factors - not only on the permission endorsed of the super-ego, but also on the urgency (the degree of cathexis) of the id-impulse itself. This, then, may be one cause of an apparent negative response to an interpretation, and evidently a harmless one. Still, the same apparent result may also be due to something else, in spite of the id-impulse being really urgent, their strength of the patient’s own repressive forces (the repression) may have been too great to allow his ego to listen to the persuasive voice of the auxiliary super-ego. Now here we have a situation dynamically identical with the next one we have to consider, though economically different. This next situation is one in which the patient accepts the interpretation, that is, allows the id-impulse into his consciousness, but is immediately overwhelmed with anxiety. This may show itself in several of ways: For instance, the patient may produce some manifest anxiety-attacks, or he may exhibit signs of 'real' anger with the analyst with complete lack of insight, or he may break off the analysis. In any of these cases, the analytic situation will, for the moment at least, have broken down. The patient will be behaving just as the hypnotic subject behaves when, having been ordered by the hypnotist to perform an action too much at variances with his own conscience, he breaks off the hypnotic relations and wakes up from his trance. This stare of things, which is manifest where the patient responds and to render, with which an actual outbreak of anxiety or one of its equivalents, may be latent was it for the patient to show no response. This latter case may be the more awkward of the two, since it is masked, and it may sometimes, be the effect of a greater overdoes of the interpretation than where manifest anxiety arises (though obviously other factors will be determining importance here and in particular the nature of the patient’s neurosis). In ascribing this threatened collapse of the analytic situation to an overdose of interpretation, might be more accurate in some ways to ascribe it to an insufficient dose. For what happened is that the second phase of the interpretation process has not occurred: The phase in which the patient becomes aware that his impulse is directed toward an archaic phantasy object and not toward a real one.
In the second phase of a competed interpretation, therefore, a crucial part is played by the patient’s sense of reality, for the successful outcome of that phase depends upon his ability, at the critical moment of the emergence into consciousness of the released quantity of id-energy, to distinguish between his phantasy object and the real analyst. The problem is closely related to one of the extremely liable of the analyst’s position as auxiliary super-ego, as the analytic situation is convoked as the time threatening to generate into a ‘real’ situation. Nonetheless, this means the opposite of what it appears to the naked eye. It means that the patient is all the time on the brink of turning the ‘real’ external object (the analyst) into the archaic one: That is to say, he is on the threshold of projecting his primitive introjected imagos onto him. As far as, the patient effectively does this, the analysts become correspondingly to anyone else that he meets in real life - a phantasy object. The analyst then ceases to posses the peculiar advantage derived from the analytic situation, he will introject like all other phantasy objects into the patient’s super-ego, and will no longer be able to function in the particular yet peculiar ways that are essential to the effecting of a mutative interpretation, in this difficulty the patient’s sense of reality is an indispensable but a very feeble ally: Yet finds of an improvement in it are on of the things that we hope the analysis will cause. Not submitting it to any unnecessary strain is significantly important, therefore, and that is the fundamental reason that the analyst must avoid any real behaviour that is likely to confirm the patient’s view of him as a 'bad' or a 'good' phantasy object. This is perhaps more obvious regarding to the 'bad' object. If, for instance, the analyst were to a shrew that he was really shocked or frightened by one of the patient’s id-impulses, the patient would immediately treat him in that respect as a dangerous object and introject him into his archaic severe super-ego. Thereafter, on the one hand, there would be a diminution in the analyst’s power to function as an auxiliary super-ego and to allow the patient’s ego to become conscious of his id-impulses - that is to say, in his power to cause the first phase of a mutative interpretation, and, on the other hand, he would, as a real object, become sensibly less distinguishable from the patient’s ‘bad’ phantasy objects and to that extent the carrying through of the second phase of a mutative interpretation would also be made more difficult? Once, again, there are accessorial cases. Supposing the analyst behaves in an opposite way and actively urges the patient to give a free rein to his id-impulses. There is then a possibility of the patient confusing the analyst with the imago of a treacherous parent whose initiatory anticipation encourages him to seek gratification, and then suddenly turns and punishes him. In such a case, the patient’s ego may look for defence by itself sudden turning upon the analyst as though he were his id, and treating him with all the severity of which his privileged position. Yet acting really in a way that encourages the patient to project his may be equally unwise for the analyst ‘good’ introjected object onto him. For the patient will then experience a tendency to regard him and a good object in an archaic sense and will incorporate him with his archaic 'good' imagos and will use him s a protection against his 'bad' ones. In that way, his infantile positive impulses and his negative ones may escape analysis, for there may no longer be a possibility for his ego to make a comparison between phantasies external objects than there is real one. It will perhaps be argued that, with the best will in the world, the analyst, however, careful he may be, will be unable to prevent the patient from projecting these various imagos onto him. This is of course, indisputable, and the whole effectiveness of analysis depends upon its being so. The lesson of these difficulties is merely to remind us that the patient’s sense of reality having the narrowest limit. It is a paradoxical fact that the best way of ensuring that his ego will be abler to distinguish between phantasy and reality is to withhold reality from him as much as possible. What is more, it is true. His ego is so weak - so much of the mercy of his id and super-ego - that he can only cope with reality if it is administered in minimal doses. These doses are in fact what the analyst gives him, as interpretation.
It appears more than possible that an approach to the twin practical problems of interpretation and reassurance may be simplified by this distinction between the two phases of interpretation. Both procedures may, it would appear, be useful or even essential in certain circumstances and inadvisable or even dangerous in others. With interpretation, the first of our hypothetical phases may be said to 'liberate' anxiety, and the second to 'resolve' it. Where a quantity of anxiety is already present or on the point of breaking out, an interpretation, owing to the efficacy of its second phase, may enable the patient to recognize the unreality of his terrifying phantasy object and so to reduce his own hostility and consequently his anxiety. On the other hand, to induce the ego to allow a quantity of id-energy into consciousness is obviously to court an outbreak of anxiety in a personality with a harsh super-ego. This is precisely what the analyst does in the first phase of an interpretation. Regarding 'reassurance,' Briefly some problems that arise are in the belief that it is an incidental term in need to be defined as almost as urgently as ‘interpretation’, and that it covers several different mechanisms. Nevertheless, in the present connection reassurance may be regarded as behaviour by the analyst calculated making the patient regard him as a 'good' phantasy object rather than as a reason. It might, however, be supposed at first sight that the adoption of some generally felt procedures that are sometimes psychotic cases, nonetheless, an attitude by the analyst might directly favour the prospects of making a mutative interpretation. Yet it is believed that it will be seen on reflection that this is not in fact the case: For precisely, as far as the patient regards the analyst as his phantasy object, the second phase of the interpretation effects that do not happen - since it is of the essence of that phase that in it the patient should make a distinction between his phantasy object and the real one? It is true that his anxiety may be reduced: But, this result will not have been achieved by a method that involves a permanent qualitative change in his super-ego. Thus, whatever tactical importance reassurances may be posses. It cannot claim to any regarded as an ultimate operative factor in psychoanalytic therapy.
Still, it must in this place be of notice, that certain other sorts of behaviour by the analyst may be dynamically equivalent to the giving of a mutative interpretation, or to one or other of the two phases of that process. For instance, an ‘active’ injunction of the kind contemplated by Ferenczi may amount to an example of the first phase of an interpretation: The analyst is using his peculiar positions to induce the patient to become conscious in an exceptionally self-asserting way of distinct id-impulses that one objection to this form of procedure must be expressed by saying that the analyst has very little control over the dosage of the id-energy that is thus released, and very little guarantees that the second phase of interpretation will follow. He may therefore be unwittingly precipitating one of those critical situations that are always liable to arise, for an incomplete interpretation. Incidently, the same dynamic pattern may arise when the analyst requires the patient to produce a ‘forced’ phantasy or even (particular at an early given direction in an analysis) when the analyst asks the patient a question. Here, again, the analyst is in effect giving a blindfold interpretation, which it may prove impossible to carry beyond its first phase. On a different deal in, situations’ constantly arising during an analysis in which the patient becomes conscious of small quantities of id-energy without any direct provocation by the analyst. An anxiety situation might then develop, if it were not that the analyst, by his behaviour or, one might say, absence of behaviour, enables the patient to mobilize his sense of reality and make the necessary distinction between an archaic object and a real one. What the analyst is doing before we are equivalent to cause the second phase of an interpretation, and the whole episode may amount to the kind of mutative interpretation. Estimating what proportion of the therapeutic changes that occur during analysis may not be is difficult due too implicit mutative interpretation of this kind. Incidentally, this type of situation seems sometimes to be regarded, incorrectly as an example of reassurance.
A mutative interpretation can only be applied to an id-impulse that is in a state of bearing down, or of a cathexis. This seems self-evident, for the dynamic changes in the patient’s mind inferred by a mutative interpretation can only be caused by the operation of a charge of energy originating in the patient himself: The function of the analyst is merely to ensure that the energy will flow along one channel rather than along another. It follows from this that the purely informative ‘dictionary’ type of interpretation will be non-mutative. However, useful it may be as a prelude to mutative interpretations, and this leads to several practical inferences. Each must be emotionally 'immediate,' the patient must experience it s something actual. This requirement, that the interpretation must be 'immediate', may be expressed in another way by saying that interpretations must always represent a directed point of urgency'? At any given moment noticeable of a particular id-impulse will be in activity, this is the impulse that is susceptible of mutative interpretation then, and no other one. It is, no doubt, neither possible nor desirable to giving mutative interpretations at the time, as Melanie Klein has pointed out, it is a most precious quality in an analyst to be able to be at any moment to pick out the point of urgency.
Still, the facts that every mutative interpretation must deal with an ‘urgent’ impulse take us back another to the commonly felt fear of the explosive possibilities of interpretation, and particularly of what is vaguely called 'deep' interpretation. The ambiguity of the term, however, need not bother us. It describes, no doubt, the interpretation of material that is either genetically early and historically distant from the patients experience or under an especially heavy weight of repression - material, in any case, which is to arrive at the normal course of things exceedingly inaccessible to his ego and remote from it. There seems reason to believe, moreover, that the anxiety that is liable to be aroused by the approach of intensified material is consciousness and may be of peculiar severity. The question is whether its ‘safe’ to interpret such material will, as usual, mainly depend upon whether the second phases of the interpretation can be carried through. In the ordinary run of case, the material that is urgent during the earlier stages of the analysis in not deep. We have to deal first with only the essentially far-going displacements of the deep impulses, and the deep material itself are only reached later and by degree, so that no sudden appearance of unmanageable quantities of anxiety is to be anticipated. In exceptional cases, least of mention, are owing to some peculiarity in the structure of the neurosis, deep impulses may be urgent at some very early stages of the analysis. We are then faced by a dilemma. If we give an interpretation of this deep material, the anxiety produced in the patient may be so great that his sense of reality may not be sufficient to permit of the second phase being accomplished, and the whole analysis may be jeopardised. Nonetheless, it must not be the thought that, in such critical cases as we are now considering, the gruelling necessarily being to an excessive degree avoid the simple but not giving any interpretation or by giving more superficial interpretations of non-urgent materiel or by attempting reassurances. It seems probable, in fact, that these alternative procedures may do little or nothing to avoid the trouble, on the contrary, they may even exacerbate the tension created by the urgency of the deep impulses that are the actual cause of the threatening anxiety. Thus, the anxiety may break out in spite of these palliative efforts and, if so, it will be doing so under the most unfortunate conditions, that is to say, outside the mitigating influences afforded by the mechanisms of interpretation, it is possible, therefore, that, of the two alterative procedures that are open to the analyst faced by such difficultly, the interpretation of the urgent id-impulses, deep though they may be, will be the safer.
A mutative interpretation must be 'specific', which is to say, detailed and concrete. This is, in practice, a matter of degree. When the analyst embarks upon a given theme, his interpretations cannot always avoid being vague and general to begin with, but working out will be necessary eventually and interpret all the details of the patient’s phantasy system. In proportion as this is done, the interpretations will be mutative, and must have the necessity fort apparent repetitions of interpretations already made is readily to be explained by the need for filling the details. So, then, it is possible that some delays which despairing analyst’s attribute to the patient’s id-resistance could be traced to this source. Apparently vagueness in interpretation gives the defensive forces of the patient’s ego the opportunity, for which they are always on the lookout, of baffling the analyst’s attempt at coaxing an imploring id-impulse into consciousness, a similarity blunting effect can be produced by certain forms of reassurance, such as the tacking onto an interpretation of an ethnological parallel or of a theoretical explanation: A procedure that may at the last moment turn a mutative interpretation into a non-mutative one. The apparent effect may be highly gratifying to the analyst, but later experience may show that nothing of permanent use has been achieved or even that the patient has been given an opportunity for increasing the strength of his defences. On the face of it, Glover is to argue that, whereas a blatantly inexact interpretation is likely to have no effect at all, an inexact one may have a therapeutic effect of a non-analytic, or anti-analytic, kind by enabling the patient to make a deeper d more efficient repression. He uses this a possible explanation of a fact that has always seemed mysterious, namely, that in the earlier days of analysis, when much that we know of the characteristics of the unconscious was still undiscovered, and when interpretation must therefore have often been inexact, therapeutic results were nevertheless obtained.
The possibility that Glover argues to serve, is to remind ‘us’ more generally of the difficulty of being certain that the effects that follow any given interpretation are genuinely the effects of interpretation a non-transference phenomenon or one kind of another. Reiteratively, it has already confronted us, that many patients derive direct libidinal gratification from interpretation as such: Also, that some striking signs of an abreaction that occasionally follows an interpretation ought not necessarily to be accepted by the analyst as evidence of anything more than that the interpretation has gone home in a libidinal sense.
The problem is, nonetheless, that of the relation of an abreaction to the psychoanalysis in which is a disputed one. Its therapeutic results seem, up to a point, undeniable. It was from them, that the analysis was born, and even today there are psychotherapists who rely on it almost exclusively. During the War [World War I], in particular, its effectiveness was widely confined in cases of 'shell-shock.' It has also been argued often enough that it plays a leading part in cause the results of the psychoanalysis. Rank and Ferenczi, for instance, declared that in spite of all advances in our knowledge abreaction remained the essential agent in analytic therapy. More recently, Reik has supported a similar view in maintaining that 'the element of surprise is the most important part of analytic techniques.' A great deal less extreme mental attitude is taken abreactions as one component factor in analysis and in two ways. In the first place, Nunberg in the chapter upon therapeutics in his textbook of the psychoanalysis. However, he, too, regards that the improvement caused by abreaction in the ususal sense of the word, which he plausibly attributes the relief of endo-psychic tensions as due to a discharge of accumulated affect. In the second, he points to a similar relief of tinstone upon a small arising from the actual process of becoming conscious of something previously unconscious, basing himself upon a statement of Freud’s that the act of becoming conscious involves a discharge of energy. Yet, Radó appears to regard abreactions as opposed in its function to analysis. He asserts that the therapeutic effect of catharsis is top be attributed to the fact that (with other forms of non-analytic psychotherapy) it offers the patient an artificial neurosis in exchange for his original one, and that the phenomena observable when abreactions occur are akin to those of a hysterical attack. A consideration of the views of these various authorities suggests that what we describe as ‘abreaction’ may cover two different processes: One is to a completed discharge as when a dismantling of other libidinal gratifications is first of these that might be regarded (like various other procedures) as an occasional adjunct to analysis, sometimes, no doubt, a useful one, and possibly even as an inevitable accompaniment of mutative interpretations? : Whereas, the second process might be viewed with more suspicion, as an event likely to impede analysis - especially if its true nature were unrecognized. Nevertheless, with either form there seems good reason to believe that the effects of an abreaction are permanent only in cases in which the predominant aetiological factor is an external event: That is to say, that it does not cause any radical qualitative alternation in the patient’s mind. Whatever part it may play arriving at the analysis is thus unlikely to be of anything more than an ancillary nature.
. . . Is it to be understood that no extra-transference interpretation can set in motion the chain of events suggested as the essence of psych-analytic therapy? That is one objective opinion to send forth the relief - what has, of course, already been observed, but never, with enough explicitness - the dynamic distinctions between transference and extra-transference interpretations. These distinctions may be grouped adjoining two heads. The first, extra-transference interpretations are far less likely to be given at the point of urgency. This must necessarily be so, since during an extra-transference interpretation the object of the id-impulse brought into consciousness is not the analyst and is not immediately present, whereas, apart from the earliest stages of an analysis and other exceptional circumstances, the point of urgency is nearly always to be found in the transference. It follows that extra-transference interpretations are proved of being concerned with impulses that are distant both in time and space and are thus likely to be without immediate energy. In extreme instances, they may approach very closely to what has already been described as the handling-over to the patient of a German-English dictionary. However, in the second place, when far since the object of the id-impulse is not existently present, becoming directly aware of the distinction between the real object and the phantasy object is less easy for the patient, extending to emerge of an extra-transference interpretation. Thus it would appear that, with extra-transference interpretations, on the one hand what in having been described as the first phase of a mutative interpretation is less likely to occur, and on the other hand, if the first phase does occur, but the second phase is less likely to follow? In other fields, an extra-transference interpretation is liable to be both less effective and more risky than a transference one. Each of these points deserves a few words of separate examination.
It is, of course, a matter of common experience among analysts that it is possible with certain patients to continue undefinedly giving interpretations without producing an apparent effect whatever. There is an amusing criticism of this kind of 'interpretation-fanaticism' in the excellent historical chapter of Rank and Ferenczi. However, it is clear from their words that what they have in mind are essential extra-transference interpretations, for the burden of their criticism is that such a procedure implies neglect of the analytic situation. This is the simplest of cases, where some wastes off time and energy ids the main result. Still, there are other occasions, on which a policy of giving strings of extra-transference interpretations are apt to lead the analyst into more positive difficulties. Attention was drawn by Reich a few yeas ago in some technical discussions in Vienna to a tendency among inexperienced analysts to get into trouble by eliciting from the patient great quantities, are carried to such lengths that the analysis is brought to an irremediable state of chaos. He pointed out very truly that the material we have to deal; with is stratified and that it is highly important in digging it out not to interfere more than we can help with the arrangement of the strata. He had in mind, of course, the analogy of an incompetent archaeologist, whose clumsiness may obliterate the possibility of reconstructing the history of an important excavation site. Pessimism about the results inwardly imbounding of a clumsy analysis, since there are the essential differences that our material is alive and well, as it was, re-stratify itself of its own accord if it is given the opportunity: That is to say, in the analytic situation. While, some analysts agree as to the presence of the risk, and it may be particularly likely to occur where extra-transference interpretation is excessively or exclusively resorted to. The means of preventing it, and the remedy if it has occurred, lie in returning to transference interpretation at the pint of urgency. For if we can become aware of which of the material is 'immediate' in the sense described, the problem of stratification is automatically solved, and it is a characteristic of most extra-transference material that it has no immediacy and that consequently it is stratification is far more difficult to decipher. The measures suggested by Reich himself for preventing the occurrences of this state of chaos are consistent with or to reassemble of abounding orderly fashion for he stresses the importance of interpreting resistance every bit as the antipathetical essential essence of the id-impulses themselves - and this. It is substantially a policy laid down at an early stage in the history of analysis. Nonetheless, it is, of course, characterized as a resistance that rise up in relation to the analyst: Thus, the interpretation of a resistance will almost inevitably be a transference interpretation.
Nonetheless, the most serious risks that arise from the making of extra-transference interpretations are due to the inherent difficulty in completing their second phase or knowing whether their second phase has been completed or not. They are from their nature unpredictable in their effects. There seems, to be a special risk of the patient not carrying through the second phase of the interpretation but of projecting the id-impulse made consciously to the analyst. This risk, no doubt, applies to some extent also to transference interpretations. However, the situation is less likely to arise when the object of the id-impulse is to actualize the present and is moreover the same person as the maker of the interpretation. (We may again recall the problem of ‘deep’ interpretation, and point out that its dangers, even in the most unfavourable circumstances, are greatly diminished if the interpretation in question is a transference interpretation.). Moreover, there is more chance of this whole process occurring silently and so being overly looked of an imbounding extra-transference interpretation, particularly in the earliest stages of an analysis. Therefore, being it specially on the alert for transference complications seem important after giving an extras-transference interpretation. This last peculiarity of extras-transference interpretations is in a sense that one of an explicitly important faculty from which is a practical point of view. Because of an account of it that they can be made to act as 'feeders' for the transference situation, and so to pave the way for mutative interpretations. In other fields, by giving an extra-transference interpretation, the analyst can often provoke a situation in the transference of which he can then give a mutative interpretation.
It must be supposed that because of its attributing qualities to transference interpretations, is therefore maintaining that no others should be made, on the contrary, most of our interpretations are probably outside the transference - though it should be added that it often happens that when on is ostensibly giving an extra-transference interpretation one is implicitly giving a transference one. A cake cannot be made of nothing but currants, and, though it is true that extra-transference interpretations are not for the most mutative parts, and do not of themselves bring a decline about the crucial results that involve a permanent change in the patient’s mind, they are not much more than are essential. As to analogy, the acceptance of a transference interpretation corresponds to the capture of a key position, while the extra-transference interpretations correspond to the general advance and to the consolidation of a fresh line of descent made possibly by the capture of the key position. However, when this general advance goes beyond a certain point, there will be another check, and the capture of a further key position will require the progress of its own resuming statue. An oscillation of this kind between transference and extra-transference interpretations will represent the normal course of events in an analysis.
Although the giving of mutative interpretations may occupy a small portion of psychoanalytic treatment, it will, upon its hypothesis, be the most important part from the point of view of deeply influencing the patient’s mind. It may be of interest to consider how a moment that is important to the patient affects the analyst himself. Mrs. Klein has suggested that there must be some quite special internal difficulty to be overcome by the analysts in giving interpretations. This, applies particularly to the giving of mutative interpretations. Showing in their avoidance by psychotherapists of non-analytic schools, but many psychoanalysts will be aware of traces of the same tendency in themselves. It may be rationalized into the difficulty of deciding whether or not the particular moment has come for making an interpretation. However, behind this there is sometimes a lurking difficulty in the actual giving of the interpretation, for in that respect it may be a constant temptation for the analyst to do something else instead. He may ask questions, or he may give reassurances or advice or discourse upon theory, ir he may give interpretations - but, interpretations that are not mutative, extra-transference, interpretations that is non-immediate, or ambiguous, or inexact - or, he may give two or more alternative interpretations simultaneously, or he may give interpretations and show his own scepticism about them. All of this strongly suggests and for the patient, and that he is exposing himself to some great danger in doing so. This in turn, will become intelligible when we reflect that at the here-and-now of interpretation that the analysis is in fact deliberately evoking a quantity of the patient’s id-energy while it is aware and factually unambiguous and aimed directly at himself. Such a moment must above all others put to the test, and his relations with being own unconscious impulses.
In his Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, Freud defines the transference situation in the following major way: 'What are transferences?' They are new editions or simulations in the tendencies. Phantasies aroused and made consciously during the progress of the analysis. However, they have this peculiarity, which is characteristic for the species, that they replace some earlier person by the person of the physician. To put it another way: A whole series of psychological experiences is revived, not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the physician presently.
In some form or other transference operates first from the last price of life and influence’s all human relation, but here I am only concerned with the manifestations of transference in psych-analysis. It is characteristic of psychoanalysis procedure that, as it begins to open roads into the patient’s unconscious, his past (in its conscious and unconscious aspects) is gradually being revived. By that his urge to transfer his early experiences, object-relations and emotions, is reinforced and they come to focus on the psychoanalyst: This implies that the patient deals with the conflicts and anxieties reactivated, by making use of the same mechanisms and defences as in earlier situations.
It follows that the deeper we can penetrate into the unconscious and the further back we can take the analysis, the greater will be our understanding of the transference. Therefore, a brief summary of conclusions about the earliest stages of development is mostly the immediate surface of our field of study.
The first form of anxiety is of a prosecutory nature. The working of the death instinct within - which according to Freud is directed against the organism - causes the fear of annihilation, and this is the primordial cause of prosecutory anxiety. Furthermore, from the beginning of post-natal life (our concerns are with pre-natal processes) destructive impulses against the object stir up fear of retaliation. Painful external experiences intensify these prosecutory feelings from inner sources, for, from the earliest days onward, frustration and discomfort arouse in the infant the experienced by the infant at birth and the difficulties of adapting him entirely new conditions give to prosecutory anxiety. The comfort and care given after birth, particularly the first feeding experience, are left to come from good forces. In speaking of 'forces', it use is as an alternative adult word for what the young infant dimly conceives of as objects, either good or bad. The infant directs his feelings of gratification and love toward the 'good' breast, and his destructive impulses and feelings of persecution toward what he feels to be frustrating, i.e., the 'bad' breast. At this stage splitting processes are at their height, and love and hatred and the good and bad aspects of the breast are largely kept apart from one another. The infant’s relative security is based on turning the good object into an ideal one as a protection against the dangerous and persecuting object. This processes - that is to say splitting, denial, omnipotence and idealization - are prevalent during the first three or four-month of life, which we can term the 'paranoid-schizoid position', in these ways at a very early stage prosecutory anxiety and its corollary, idealization, elementally influence object relations.
The primal processes of projection and introjection, being inextricably linked with the infants’ emotions and anxieties, initiate object-relations, by projecting, i.e., deflecting libido and aggression on the mother’s breast, and on this given occasion has on achieving to establish the basis for object-relations, by introjecting the object, first the breast, relations to internal objects come into being. The use of the term 'object-relations' is based on the contention that the infant has from the beginning of post-natal life a relation to the mother (although focussing primarily on her breast) which is imbued with the fundamental elements of an object-relation, i.e., loves, hatred, phantasies, anxieties and defences.
The introjection of the breast is the beginning of superego formation that extends over years. We have grounds for assuming that from the first feeding experience onward, and the infant introjects the breast in its various aspects. The core of the superego is thus the mother’s breast, both good and bad. Owing to the simultaneous operation of introjection and projection, relations to external and internal objects interact. The father too, who in a short while plays a role in the child’s life, quickly becomes part of the infant’s internal world. It is characteristic of the infant’s emotional life that there are rapid fluctuations between love and hate: Between external and internal situations: Between perception of reality and the phantasies relating to it, and, accordingly, an interplay between prosecutory anxiety and idealization - both refereeing to inherent or representations of internal and external objects, the idealized object being a corollary of the prosecutory, extremely bad one.
The ego’s growing capacity for integration. Synthesis leads ever more, even during these first few months, to states in which love and hatred, and correspondingly the good and bad aspects of objects, are being synthesized. This gives to the second form of anxiety - depressive anxiety - for the infant’s aggressive impulses and desires toward the bad breast (mother) is now felt to be a danger to the good breast (mother) as well. In the second quarter of the first year they have reinforced these emotions, because at this stage the infant increasingly perceives and introjects the mother as a person. In this, are the unduly influences that are most intensified of depressive anxiety, for the infant feels he has destroyed or is destroying a whole object by his greed and uncontrollable aggression. Moreover, owing to the growing syntheses of his emotions, he now feels that these destructive impulses are directed against a loved person, just as the interchangeable relation to the father and other members of the family. These anxieties and corresponding defences are the 'depressive position,' which comes to a head about the middle of the first year whose essence is the anxiety and guilt relating to the destruction and loss of the loved internal and external objects.
It is at this stage, and bound up with the depressive position, that the Oedipus complex sets in. Anxiety and guilt add a powerful impetus toward the beginning of the Oedipus complex. For anxiety and guilt increase the need to externalize (project) bad figures and to internalize (introject) good ones: To attach desire, love, feelings of guilt, and reparative tendencies to some objects, and dislikened intensely and anxiety too other, to find representatives for internal figures in the external world. It is, however, not only the search for new objects that dominates the infant’s needs, but also to drive toward new aims: Away from the breast toward the penis, i.e., from oral, desires toward genital ones. Many factors contribute to these developments, the forward drive of the libido, the growing integration of the ego, physical and mental skills and progressive adaptation to the external world. These trends are bound up with the process of symbol formation, which enables the infant to transfer not only interest, but also emotions and phantasies, anxiety and guilt, from one object to another.
The process described is linked with another fundamental phenomenon governing mental life. It is believed that the pressure exerted by the earliest anxiety situation agrees of the constituent causing to find repetition compulsion. However, its first conclusions about the earliest stages of infancy are a continuation of Freud’s discoveries, on certain points, however, divergencies have arisen, one of which is irrelevant to our topic of discussion. I am referring to the contention that object-relations are operative from the beginning of post-natal life.
Believing it in that the view that autoerotism and narcissism are in the young infant contemporaneous with the first relation to objects - external and internalized may be feasible. Briefly, autoerotism and narcissism include the love for and relation with the internalized good object with which in phantasy forms part of the loved body and self. It is to this internalized object that in autoerotic gratification and narcissistic states a withdrawal takes place? Concurrently, from birth onward, a relation to objects, primarily the mother (her breast) is present. This hypothesis contradicts Freud’s notion of autoerotic and narcissistic stages that preclude an object-relation. However, the difference between Freud’s view in this is that the statements on this issue are equivocal. In various contexts he explicitly and implicitly expressed opinions that suggest a relation to an object, the mother’s breast, preceding autoerotism and narcissism. One reference must suffice, in the first of two Encyclopaedia articles, Freud said? : 'In the first instance the oral component instinct finds satisfaction by attaching Itself to the sating of the desire for nourishment, and its object is the mother’s breast? It then detaches itself, becomes independent. Just when autoerotic, that is, it finds an object in the child’s own body.'
Freud’s use of the term object is to some extent quite different from its usage of its same term, however, Freud is referring to the object of an instinctual aim, while, otherwise, in addition, an object-reaction involving the infant’s emotions, fantasises, anxieties and defences are nevertheless, in the sentence referred to, Freud clearly speaks of a libidinal attachment to an object, the mother’s breast, which precedes auto-ergotism and narcissism.
Additionally, in this context, Freud’s findings are about early identification. In the Ego and the Id, speaking of abandoned object cathexes, Freud said,‘ . . . the effect of the first identification in earliest childhood will be profound and lasting. This leads us back to the origin of the ego-idea . . . '. Wherefrom, Freud then defines the first and most important identifications that lie hidden behind the ego-ideal as the identification with the father, or with the parents, and places them. As he expressed it, in the ‘prehistory of every person’. These formulations come close to what is at first, the introjected object, for by definition identifications is the result of introjection. From the statement, least of mention, and passage quoted from the Encyclopaedia article we that can deduce that Freud, although he did not pursue this line of thought further, did assume that in earliest infancy both an object and introjective processes play a part.
That is to say, as for autoerotism and narcissism we meet with an inconsistency in Freud’s views. Too so extreme a degree of inconsistences that exist on sufficiently acceptable points of theory clearly show, which on these particular issues Freud had not yet decided. In respect of the theory of anxiety he sated this explicitly in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. His speaking also exemplifies his realization that much about the early stages of development was still unknown or obscure to him of the first years of the girl’s life 'as, . . . lost in a past so dim and shadowy.'
I do not know Anna Freud’s view about this aspect of Freud’s work. Yet as for the question of autoerotism and narcissism, she seems only to have taken into account Freud’s conclusion that autoerotic. Some narcissistic stages precede object-relations, and not to have allowed for the other possibilities implied in some of Freud’s statements such as the ones referred to above. This is one reason that the divergence between Anna Freud’s conception as compared among others, concerning notions of early infancy in which are far greater than that between Freud’s views, taken as a whole, it may be to mention, because clarifying the extent and nature of the differences between the two schools of psychoanalysis thought represented by Anna Freud and those of the representational statements in visual attractive features implied to this paper is essential. Perhaps, entertaining, but such clarification is required in the interests of psychoanalytic training and because it could help to open fruitful discussions between the psychoanalysis and by that contribute to a greater general understanding of the fundamental problems of early infancy, however.
The hypothesis at a stage extending over several months precedes object-relations implies - but the libido attached to the infant’s own body - impulses, phantasies, anxieties. Defences are either not present in him, or not related to an object, that is to say they would operate in vacua. The analysis of very young children has taught us that there is no instinctual urge, no anxiety situation, no mental process that does not involve objects, external or internal, in other words, object-relations are at the centre of emotional life? Furthermore, love and hatred, phantasies, anxieties and defences are also operative from the beginning of and is Eudunda initio indivisibly linked with object-relations. This insight shows the attractive attention of a new light from which these phenomena are illuminated.
The immediate conclusion on which the present paper rests holds that transference originates in the same processes that in the earlier stages determine object-relations. Therefore, we have to go back repeatedly in analysis to the fluctuations between objects, love and hatred, external and internal, which dominate early infancy. We can fully appreciate the interconnection between positive and negative transference only if we explored the early interplay between love and hated, and the vicious circle of aggression, anxieties, feelings of guilt and increased aggression, and the various aspects of objects toward whom the conflicting emotions and anxieties are directed. On the other hand, through exploring these early processes it seems convincing that the analysis of the negative transference, which had received proportionally little attention in psychoanalysis technique, is a precondition for analysing the deeper layers of the mind. The analysis of the negative with of the positive transference and of their interconnection is, as analysts have held for many years, an indispensable principle for the treatment of all types of patients, children and adults alike.
This approach, which in the past made possible the psychoanalysis of very young children, has in recent years proved extremely fruitful for the analysis of schizophrenic patients, until about 1920 the general assumption was assumed that schizophrenic patients were incapable of forming the transference and therefore could not be psychoanalysed. Since then, various techniques had attempted the psychoanalysis of schizophrenics. The most radical change of view in this respect, however, has occurred more recently and is closely connected with the greater knowledge of the mechanisms, anxieties, and defences operative in earliest infancy. Since some of these defences, evolved in primal object relations against love and hatred, have been discovered, the fact that schizophrenic patients can develop both a positive and a negative transference had flowered through its own actualization under which were founded in all its blossoming obtainments, in that of its achieving a better understanding that came into the transference: This finding is confirmed if we consistently apply in the treatment of schizophrenic patients the principle that it is as necessary to analyse the negative as the positive transference, which in fact the one cannot be analysed without the other.
Retrospectively it can be seen that Freud's discovery of the Life and Death instinct supports these considerable advances in technique in psychoanalytic theory, which has advanced beyond the understanding of the origin of ambivalence. Because the Life and Death instincts, and therefore love and hate, are at bottom in the closed interaction, as we have simply interlinked negative and positive transference.
The understanding of earliest object-relations and the processes they imply has essentially influenced technique from various angles. It has long been known that the psychoanalyst in the transference situation may stand for mother, father, or other people, that he is also at times playing in the patient’s mind the part of the superego, at other times that of the id or the ego. Our present knowledge enables us to penetrate to the specific details of the various roles allotted by the patient to the analyst. There are in fact very few people in the young infant‘s life, but he feels them to be enough objects because they appear to him in different aspects. Accordingly, the analyst may at a given moment represent a part of the self, of the superego or any one of a wide range of internalized figures. Similarly it does not put into effect as far enough if we realize that the analyst stands for the actual father or mother, unless we understand which aspect of the parents has been revered. The picture of the parents in the patient’s mind has in varying degrees undergone distortion through the infantile processes of projection and idealization, and has often retained much of its fantastic nature. Although, in the young infant’s mind every external experience is interwoven with his phantasies and on the other hand every phantasy contains elements of experience, and is only by analysing the transference situation to its depth that we can discover the past both in its realistic and fantastic aspects. It is also the origin of these fluctuations in easiest infancy that accounts for their strength in the transference, and for the swift changes - sometimes even within one session - between father and female parents, between omnipotently kind objects and dangerous persecutors, between internal and external figures. Sometimes the analyst appears simultaneously to express indirectly of the patient’s parents -. There often in a hostile alliance against the patient, under which the negative transference finds great intensity. What has then been revived or has become manifest in the transference in the mixture in the patient’s phantasy of the parents as one figure, the 'combined parent figure,' results as the phantasy formations characteristics of the earliest stages of the Oedipus complex that, if maintained in strength, are detrimental both to object-relations and sexual development. The phantasy of the combined parents draws its force from another element of early emotional life -, i.e., from the powerful envy associated with flustrational oral desires. Through the analysis of such early situations we learn that in the baby’s mind when he is frustrated (or, dissatisfied from inner causes) his frustration is coupled with the feeling that another object (soon represented by the father), is to its line of descent from proceeding from the mother, the coveted gratification and love denied to themselves at that minute. In this context is one root of the phantasies that has combined the parents in an everlasting mutual gratification of an oral, anal, and genital nature. Having then, been regainfully employed as having been viewed in this enlightened manner, is presumptuously the prototype of situations of both envy and jealousy.
For many years - and this is up to a point still true today - transference was understood as to direct transferences to the analyst in the patient’s material. My conception of transference as rooted in the earliest stages of development and in deep layers of the unconscious is much wider and entails a technique by which from the whole material presented the unconscious elements of the transference are deduced. For instance, reports of patients about their everyday life, relations, and activities not only give an insight into the functioning of the ego, but also reveal - if we explode their unconscious content - the defences against the anxieties stirred up in the transference situation. For the patient is bound to deal with conflicts and anxieties’ re-experience toward the analyst by the same methods used in the past, which is to say, he turns away from the analyst as he attempted to turn away from his primal objects: He tries to split the relation to him, keeping him either as a good or a bad figure: He deflects some feelings and attitudes experienced toward the analyst onto other people in his current life, and this is part of ‘acting out’.
It is at this time that the earliest experiences, situations, and emotions from which transference springs. On these foundations, however, are built the later object-relations and the emotional and intellectual developments that require the analyst’s attention no less than the earliest ones, that is to say, our field of investigation covers all that lies between the current situation and the earliest experiences. In fact finding access to earliest emotions and object-relations exclude by examining their vicissitudes in the light of later developments is not likely. Its possibilities are only by linking repeatedly (That it means hard and patient work) later experiences with earlier ones and vice versa, it is only by consistently exploring their interplay, that present and past can come together in the patient’s mind. This is one aspect of the process of integration that, as the analysis progresses, encompasses the whole of the patient’s mental life. When anxiety and guilt diminish and love and hate can be better synthesized, 'splitting processes' - a fundamental defensive structure against anxiety - and repression’s lesson while the ego gains in strength and coherence: The cleavage between the idealized and prosecutory objects diminishes, the fantastic aspects of objects lose in strength, all of which implies that unconscious phantasy life - less sharply divided off from the unconscious part of the mind - can be better used in ego activities, with a consequently general enrichment of the personality. These differences - as contrasted with the similarities - between transference and the first object-relations cause the repetition compulsion as the pressure put into action by the earliest anxiousness of some situations. When prosecutory and depressive anxiety and guilt diminishes, there is less urge to repeat fundamental experiences over and again, and therefore early patterns and modes of feelings are maintained with less tenacity. These fundamental changes come about through the consistent analysis of the transference: They are bound up with a deep-reaching revision of the earliest object-relations and are reflected in the patient’s current life plus the altered attitudes toward the analyst.
It is however, that we have used the term 'transference' several times, and in the last case we attributed the therapeutic results to the transference without further definition of the word. Transference is an integral part of the psychoanalysis. A vast, widely scattered, literature exists on the subject. In most contributions on any psychoanalytic theme there is to be found, often tucked away from easy access, some reference to it. It forms of necessity the main topic of papers and treatises on psychoanalytic technique, but' . . . it is amazing how small some very extensive psychoanalytic literature is devoted to psychoanalytic technique’, states Fenichel, 'and how much less to the theory of technique.' No single contribution comprehends all the facts known and the various opinions. This is much more remarkable as differing opinions are held about the mechanism of transference, and its mode of production seems particularly little understood. Without a comprehensive critical evaluation, the student might be bewildered at finding that most authors, before getting to their subject matter, deem it necessary to give their personal interpretations of what they mean by ‘transference’ and ‘transference neurosis’. This is well illustrated by Fernichel’s book on the theory of the neurosis, which containing more than one thousand six hundred and forty references, quotes only one reference in the sections is on Transference.
During a psychoanalytic treatment, the patient allows the analyst to play a predominating a role in his emotional life. This is a great import analytic process, after the treatment is over, this situation is changed. The patient builds up feelings of affection for and resistence to his analyst that, in their ebb and flow, so exceed the normal degree of feeling that the phenomenon has long attracted the theoretical interest of the analyst. Freud studied this phenomenon thoroughly, explained it, and gave it the name 'transference.'
All the same, the lack of knowledge of the causation of transference appears largely to have gone unnoticed. It seems tacitly to be assumed that the subject is fully understood. Fernichel for instance, writes Freud was at first surprised when he met with the phenomenon of transference, today, Freud’s discoveries make it easy to understand it theoretically. The analytic situation induces the development of derivatives of the repressed, and simultaneously a resistance is operative against, . . . the patient misunderstands the present as to the past. If one scrutinizes this frequently quoted reference, one realizes that it does not explain the factors that produce transference. However, illuminating and pointed this and other similes may be, they are descriptive rather than explanatory. The causes of the limited understanding of transference are historical, inherent in the subject matter, and psychological.
Historically, psychoanalyses developed, a natural way of striving to differentiate it from hypnosis, its precursor, similarities between the two and having to a tendency to be overlooked. The modes of production and the emergence of the transference (positive, negative, and the transference neurosis) were considered and entirely new phenomenon peculiar to the psychoanalysis, and altogether distinct from what occurred in hypnosis.
In this differentiation from hypnosis, psychoanalysis had to come to terms with the idea of 'suggestion.' Many psychoanalytic writers, and more particularly others, have complained about the inaccurate ands inexact use of this term. The greater impetus toward research into 'suggestion' came from the study of hypnosis. With the appearance (1886) of Bergheim’s book, hypnosis ceased to be considered a symptom of hysteria, the nucleus of hypnosis was established as the effect of suggestion, and it is Bergheim’s merit that he showed that all people are subject to the influence of suggestion and that the hysterias differ chiefly in his abnormal susceptibility to it. This seemed to Freud a great advance in recognizing the importance of a mental mechanism in the production of disease. In the introduction he wrote (1888) to his translation into German of Bergheim’s book, which is of historical interest because it is believed to be Freud’s first publication on a psychological subject. Freud emphasizes the distinguishable importance of Bernheim’s, . . . insistence upon the fact that hypnosis. Hypnotic suggestion can be applied, not only to hysterics and to seriously neuropathic patients, but also to most of healthy persons, and his belief that this ‘is calculated to extend the interest of physicians in this therapeutic method far beyond the narrow circle of neuropathologists. The significance of suggestion was thus established, but its meaning had yet to be clarified. Freud tried to find a link between the psychological (somatic) and mental (psychological) phenomena in hypnosis: 'I think,' he stated, 'the shifting and ambiguous use of the word 'suggestion' lend to this antithesis a decretive sharpness that it does not in reality posses.' He then set out to give a definition of suggestion to embrace both its psychological and mental manifestations. Considering what it is worthwhile we can legitimately call a 'suggestion'. No doubt some kind of mental influence is implied by the term, and should correspondingly be put forward the view that what distinguishes the suggestion from other kinds of mental influence, such as a command or the giving of a piece of information or instruction, is that with a suggestion an idea is aroused on another person’s brain that is not examined as for its origin but is accepted just as though it had arisen spontaneously in the grain. Freud did not succeed in giving the term a clear and unequivocal definition.
The psychological phenomena (vascular, muscular, etc.) have yet to be brought under the roof of suggestion, if hypnosis and hysteria were to be claimed for psychology. Psychology functions not subject to conscious control, and Freud’s earlier definition of suggestion, did not cover them, so, in this pre-analytic paper, Freud widens the meaning of suggestion by introducing 'indirect suggestion.' He says, 'Indirect suggestions, in which a series of intermediate linked out of the subject’s own activity are implied between the external stimulus and the result, are none the less mental posses, but they are no longer exposed to the full light of consciousness that falls upon direct suggestion.' Noting that the factor of an unconscious operation of suggestion is now introduced for the first time in Freud's whitings is important. If, for example, it is suggested to a patient that he close his eyes, and if then he falls asleep, he has added his own association (sleep follows closing of the eyes) to the initial stimulus. The patient is then said to be subjected to ‘indirect suggestion’ because the suggestive stimulus opened the door for a chain of associations in the patient’s mind, in other words, the patient reacts to the suggestive stimulus by a series of autosuggestions Freud in his paper, and later, uses the 'indirect suggestion' as synonymous with 'autosuggestions.'
When suggestion was found by Bernheim to be the basis of hypnosis, it remained to be explained why most but not all persons could be hypnotized, or were susceptible to suggestion, and why some was more readily hypnotizable than others: Thus, besides the activity of the hypnotist, a factor inherent in the patient was established and had to be examined. The factor was called the patient’s suggestibility. The nature of what went on in the patient’s mind during hypnosis was soon made the subject of extensive psychological process. Ferenczi showed that the hypnotist when giving a command is relacing the subject’s parental imagos and, more important, is so accepted by the patient. Freud concluded that hypnosis is a mutual libidinal tie. He found that the mechanism by which the patient becomes suggestible is a splitting from the ego of the ego-ideal transferred to the suggesters. As the ego-ideal normally has the function of testing reality, this faculty is greatly diminished in hypnosis, and this accounts both for the patient’s credulity and his further regression from reality toward the pleasure principle. According to Freud, the degree of a person’s ego and ego-ideal, from which to the greater extent is readily an identification with authority. Thus, we find that in the understanding of hypnosis and suggestion the subject’s suggestibility came to outweigh the suggesters activities. Earnst Jones, showed that there is no fundamental difference between autosuggestion and allosuggestion, and both make up libidinal regression to narcissism. Abraham, in his paper on Coué, shows that the subjects of this form of autosuggestion regressed to states of obsessional neurosis. McDougal speaks of 'the subject’s attitude of submissiveness as suggestibility.' As the common factor brought out by all these investigations is regression, defining suggestibility as adaptability by regression seems justifiable.
In the investigations of hypnosis, the stress has been placed at different times on extrinsic factors (The implanting of an idea or the hypnotist’s activities) or on intrinsic factors, i.e., the patient’s suggestibility. In fact, whereas the ‘implantation’ of a foreign idea, independent of any factors operative within the patient, was first considered to form the whole process of suggestion, the pendulum soon swung to the others extremer, and the endo-psychic process (capacity to regress ) were considered the essence of hypnosis. Through this historical development 'suggestion' and 'suggestibility' became confused, although suggestibility clearly distinctly infers a state or readiness as opposed to the actual process of suggestion. Unfortunately, however, these two terms have crept into psychoanalytic literature as having the same meaning. It is in part due to this fact that the transference phenomenons became considered as a spontaneous manifestation to the neglect of precipitating factors. These ambiguities have never been overcome, moreover, they are to same extent responsible for the lack of understanding of the genesis and nature of transference.
To differentiate the new psychoanalytic technique from hypnosis there was a repudiation of suggestion in the psychoanalysis. Later, however, this was questioned, and the term, suggestion, was reintroduced into psychoanalysis terminology. Freud says that,' . . . and we have to admit that we have only abandoned hypnosis in our methods to discover suggestion again in the shape of transference,' and, in another paper, 'Transference is equivalent to the force called 'suggestion.' Still later, 'It is quite true that a psychoanalysis, like other psychotherapeutic methods, works by means of suggestion, the difference being, however, that it (transference or suggestion) is not the decisive factor.' While Freud equates here transference and suggestion, he says a little earlier in the same paper: 'One easily recognizes in transference the same factors that the hypnotists have called 'suggestibility. Which is the carrier of the hypnotic rapport?' In his Introductory Lectures, Freud also uses transference and suggestion interchangeably, equally it recognizes that sometimes a given guarantee upon its meaning of suggestion in psychoanalyses by stating that ‘direct suggestion’ was abandoned in the psychoanalysis, and that it is used only to uncover instead of covering it, Ernest Jones states that suggestion covers two processes ‘ . . . This, taken for granted is given to the spoken exchange of which is persuasively an 'affective suggestion,' of which the latter are the more primary and are necessary for the action of the former. 'Affective suggestion' is a rapport that depends on the transference (Übertragung) of certain positive affective processes in the unconscious region of the subject’s mind . . . Suggestion plays a part in all methods of treatment of the psychoneurosis except the psychoanalytic one.' This new terminology does not seem clear. 'Affective suggestion' obviously represents 'suggestibility.' In the way it is expressed it plainly contradicts Freud’s statement about the role of ‘suggestion’ in psychoanalysis Freud and Jones was probably in full agreement about what they meant. Nevertheless, this confusing and haphazard use of terms could not but influence adversely the full understanding of analytic transference. One might even take it as proof that transference is not fully understood: If it were, it could be stated simply and clearly.
That Freud was dissatisfied about the definition of transference and suggestion is confirmed by his statement: 'Having kept away from the riddle of suggestion for thirty years, I find on approaching it again that there is no change in the situation . . . The word is finding an ever more extended use, and a looser and looser meaning.' He introduces yet another differentiation of suggestion 'as used in the psychoanalysis' from suggestion in other psychotherapies. As used in psychoanalyses argued Freud - and one is tempted to say by way through the fact that transference is continually analysed in a psychoanalysis and so resolved, inferring that the effects of suggestion are by that undone. This statement found its way into psychoanalysis literature in many places, and gained acceptance as a standard valid argument: The factor of suggestion is held to be eliminated by the resolution of the transference, and this is regarded as the essential difference between the psychoanalysis and all other psychotherapies. However, including it in the definition of suggestion is dubiously scientific, the subsequent relations between therapist and patient, neither is it scientifically precise to qualify ‘suggestion’ by its function: Whether the aim of suggestion is that of covering up or uncovering, it is either suggestion or it is not. Little methodological advantage could be gained by using 'suggestion' to fit the occasion, and then to treat the terms 'suggestion,' 'suggestibility,' and 'transference' as synonymous. It is therefore not surprising that the understanding of analytic transference has suffered from this persisting inexact and unscientific formulation.
One must agree with Dalbiez, when he said, 'The Freudians' deplorable habit (which they owe, to Freud himself) of identifying transference with suggestion has largely contributed to discrediting psychoanalytic interpretations. The truth is that positive transference causes the most favourable conditions for the intervention of suggestion, but it is hardly identical with it. Dalbiez, gives definition to suggestion as
' . . . unconscious and involuntary realization of the content of a representation.' This neatly condenses the factors that Freud postulated, namely, autosuggestion, direct and indirect suggestion, and their unconscious operation.
In this historical review, it may be stated, despite ambiguities, it may be generally accepted that in the classical technique of psychoanalysis, suggestion so defined is used only to induce the analysand to realize that he can be helped and that he can remember.
An important factor responsible for the neglect of the theory of transference was the early preoccupation of analysts with showing the various mechanisms involved in transference. Interest in the genesis of transference was sidetracked by focussing research on the manifestations of resistance and the mechanisms of defence. These mechanisms were often explained as the phenomenon of transference, and their operation was taken to explain its nature and occurrence.
The neglect of this subject may in part be the result of the personal anxieties of analysis. Edward Glover comments on the absence of open discussion about psychoanalytic technique, and considers the possibility of subjective anxieties.
': . . Seemingly much more likely in that so much technical discussion centres round the phenomena of transference and countertransference, both positive and negative.' There may in addition reach and unconscious endeavour to avoid any active 'interference' or, more exactly, to remove any suspicion of methods reminiscent of the hypnotist.
A survey of the literature within the strict limits of psychoanalysis would simply summarize what has been said about the causation of psychoanalytic transference. Nevertheless, although this can be done, however, it is of doubtful value without a survey first of the literature about transference manifestoes in general, and without a survey of what transference is held to be and to mean. Many and varying differences of opinion obviously coexist and as a result, many differing interpretations would have been to give. However, unfortunately, without a comprehensive critical survey of the subject, in fact, would prove impossible because there are no clear-cut definitions and many differences of opinion about what transference is. This is in part attributable to the state of a growing science and to the fact that most authors approach the subject from one angle only.
To begin with, there is no consensus about the use of the term 'transference' which is called variously 'the transference' 'transference' 'transferences' 'transference state' sometimes as 'analytic rapport.'
Does transference embrace the whole affective relationship between analyst and analysand, or the more restricted ‘neurotic transference’ manifestation? Freud used the term in both senses. To this fact Silverberg recently drew attention, and argued that transference should be limited to ‘irrational’ manifestations, maintaining that if the analysand says ‘good morning’ to his analyst, including such behaviour under the term transference is unreasonable. The contrary view is expressed: That transference, after the opening stage, is everywhere, and the analysand’s every naturally formed process can be given a transference interpretation.
Can transference be adjusted to reality, or are transference and reality mutually exclusive, so that some action can only be either the one or the other, or can they coexist so that behaviour in accord with reality can be given a transference meaning as on forced transference interpretation? Alexander comes to the conclusion that they are’ . . . truly mutually exclusive, just as the more general notion 'neurosis' is quite incompatible with that of reality adjusted behaviour.
Freud divided transference into positive and negative. Fernichel asks this subdivision, arguing that, 'Transference forms in neurotics are mostly ambivalent, or positive and negative simultaneously.' Fernichel states further that manifestations of transference ought to be valued by their 'resistance value,' noting that ' . . . positive transference, although acting as a welcome motive for overcoming resistance, must be looked upon as a resistance in as far as it is transference.' Ferenczi, on the contrary, after stating that a violent positive transference is, especially in the early stages of analysis, as it is often nothing but resistance, emphasizes that in other cases, and particularly in the later stages of analysis, it is essentially the vehicle by which unconscious striving can reach the surface. Most often the inherent ambivalence of transference manifestations is stresses and looked upon as a typical exhibition of the neurotic personality.
The next query arises from one special aspect of transference, ‘acting out’ in analysis. Freud introduced the term 'repetition compulsion' and he says: 'for a patient in analysis . . . it is plain that the compulsion to repeat in analysis the occurrence of his infantile life disregards the in bounding in every way the pleasure principle.' In a comprehensive critical survey of the subject, Kubie comes to the conclusion that the whole conception of a compulsion to repeat for the sake of repetition is of questionable value as a scientific idea, and were better eliminated. He believes the conception of 'repetition compulsion' involves the disputed death instinct, and that the term is used in psychoanalytic literature with such widely differing connotations that it has lost most, if not all, of its original meaning. Freud introduced the term for the one variety of transference reaction called acting out, but it is, in fact, applied to all transference manifestations. Anna Freud defines transference as: ‘. . . in all, those impulses experienced by the patient in his relation with the analyst that are not newly created by the objective analytic situation but have their sources in early . . . early relations and are now merely revived under the influence of the repetition compulsion. Ought, then, the term 'repetition compulsion' be rejected or retained and, if retained, as it applicable to all transference reaction, or to acting out only?
This leads to the question of whether transference manifestations are essentially neurotic, as Freud most often maintained: 'The striking peculiarity of neurotics to develop affectionately and hostile feelings toward their analyst are called ‘transference.' Other authors, however, treat transference as an example of the mechanism of displacement, and hold it to be a 'normal' mechanism. Abraham considers a capacity for transference identical with a capacity for adaption that is ‘sublimited sexual transference’, and he believes that the sexual impulse in the neurotic is distinguishable from the normal only by its excessive strength. Glover states: ‘Accessibility to human influence depends on the patient’s capacity to establish transference, i.e., to repeat undulate current situations . . . Attitudes developed in early family life’. Is transference, then, consequent to trauma, conflict, and repression, and so exclusively neurotic, or is it normal?
In answer to the question, is transference rational or irrational, Silverberg maintains that transference should be defined as something having the two essential qualities: That it is ‘irrational and disagreeable to the patient’. Fernichel agrees that ‘transference is bound up with the fact that a person does not react rationally to the influence of the outer world’. Evidently, no advantage or clarification of the term ‘transference’ has followed its assessment, justly as ‘rational’ or otherwise. Unfortunately, the antithesis, ‘rational’ versus irrational’, was introduced, as it was precisely a psychoanalysis that protested that rational behaviour can be traced to 'irrational' roots. What is transferred? Affects, emotions, ideas, conflict, attitudes, experiences? Freud says only effect of love and hate is included. Nevertheless, Glover finds that 'Up to that date [1937] discussion of transference was influenced for the most part by the understanding of one unconscious mechanism only, that of displacement.' He concludes 'that an adequate conception of transference must reflect all the individuals' development . . . he takes upon the place of the analysts, not merely affects and idealizes but all he has ever learned or forgotten throughout his metal development.' Are these transferred to the person of the analyst, or also to the analytic situation? Is extra-analytic behaviour to be classed as transference?
Are positive and negative transference felt by the analysand to be an 'intrusive foreign body,' as Anna Freud states, in discussing the transference of libidinal impulses, or are they agreeable to the analysand, a gratification so great that they serve as resistance? Alexander concludes that transference gratifications are the greatest source of unduly prolonging analysis, he reminds his readers that whereas Freud initially had the greatest difficulty in persuading his patients to continue analysis, he soon had equally great difficulty in persuading them to give it up.
Freud divides positive transference into sympathetic and positive transference. The relation between the two is not clearly defined, and sympathetic transference is sometimes called analytic rapport. Do the two merge, or remain distinct: Is sympathetic transference resolved with positive and negative transference? Discussions in the importance of positive transference are the beginning of analysis and as carrier of the whole analysis had lately been revived among child analysts. This has extended to the question of whether or not a transference neurosis in children is desirable or even possible. While this dispute touches on the fundamentals of psychoanalytic theory, the definitions offered as a basis for the discussion are not very precise.
The contradictions in the literature about transference could be multiplied, but as exemplifying the conspicuous absence of a unified conception they will suffice. Alexander’s make to comment that ‘Although it is agreed that the central dynamic functional problem in psychoanalytic therapy is the handling of transference, there is a good deal of confusion about what transference really means’. He comes to the conclusion that the transference relationship becomes identical with a transference neurosis, except that the transient neurotic transference reactions are not usually dignified with the name of 'transference neurosis.' He thus questions the need for the term transference neurosis together. As to the transference neurosis itself, there is a similar haziness of the conception. Definitions usually begin with 'When symptoms loosen up . . . ,' or 'When conflict is reached . . . ,' or 'When the productivity of illness becomes centred round one place only, the relation to the analyst . . . ,' yet, strictly speaking, such pronouncements are descriptions, not definitions. Freud’s definition of transference neurosis implicitly and explicitly refers only to the neurotic person, so that one is left with the impression that only neurotics form a transference neurosis. Sachs, on the contrary,’ . . . found the difference between the analyses of training candidates and of negligent neurotic patients.
It may be historically held that many contradictions in the literature are largely semantic, which in enumerating them haphazardly, discrepancies’ brought into false relief. A truer picture, it may be argued, would have been given is historical periods had been made the principle. Developmental stages in a psychoanalysis were of course reflected in current concepts of transference.
In the very first allusion (1895) to what developed into the notion of transference, Freud says that the patient made ‘a false connection’ to the person of the analyst, when an effect became conscious which related to memories that were still unconscious. This connection Freud thought to be due to ‘the associative force prevailing in the conscious mind’. It is interesting that with this first observation Freud had already noted that the effect precedes the factual material emerging from repression. He adds that nothing is disquieting in this because ' . . . the patients gradually come to appreciate that in these transferences onto the person of the physician they are subject to a compulsion and a misrepresentation, which vanquishes with the cancellation of analysis.'
In 1905 Freud stresses the sexual nature of these impulses felt toward the physician. What, he said, are transferences? 'They are new editions or facsimiles of the tendencies and fantasies aroused and made consciously during the progress of the analysis . . . Fantasies now added to affect. If one goes into the theory of analytic technique,' he continues, 'transference is evidently an inevitable necessity.' At this historic point Freud established the fundamental importance of transference in the psychoanalysis with its specific technical meaning. The importance of this passage is confirmed by a footnote added on 1923. It is noteworthy that Freud mentions in its passage that transference impulses are not only sympathetic or affectionate, but that they can be hostile.
About 1906 transferences were regarded as a displacement of effect. Analysis was largely interested in unearthing forgotten Traumata and in searching for complexities. Much of the theory was still influenced by the cathartic method. The psychoanalysis was then, says Freud,‘ . . . the next aim was to compel the patient to confirm the reconstruction through his own memory. In this endeavour the chief emphasis was on the resistance of the patient: The art now lay in unveiling these when possible, in calling the patient’s attention to them . . . and teaching him to abandon this resistance. It then became increasingly clear, however, that the bringing into consciousness of unconscious material was not fully attainable by this method either. The patient cannot recall all that lies repressed . . . and so gains no conviction the reconstruction is correct. He is obliged to repeat as a current experience what is repressed instead of recollecting it as a part of the past’. The importance of resistance as acting out is now introduced (repetition compulsion).
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) was followed by Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) and The Ego and the Id (1923). The new concepts introduced were the superego, and the more specific function of the ego, and the conception of the id as containing not only repressed material, but also as a reservoir of instincts. Resistance was extended to ego and superego and it resistance. This caused some confusion, because it can be used as meaning the resistance of one psychic instance to analysis, or the resistance of one psychic instance, say the ego, to another psychic instance, say the id, but the term resistance has been used chiefly as resistance to the progress of analysis generally. The id was shown to offer no resistance, but to lead to acting out, which in turn, however, is a resistance to recollection. At times, the unconscious can only be recovered in action, and while it is therefore 'material' in the strict sense of the word, it is still resistance to verbalized recollection.
The mechanisms considered operatives in transference were displacement, projection and introjection, identification, compulsion to repeat. The importance of 'working through' was stressed. In 1924 discussions took place about the relative values of intellectual insight versus affective re-experiencing as the essence of analytic experience, an issue very important in interpreting the transference to the patient.
In the period following, this added knowledge was gradually integrated, but with overemphasis on some new aspects as they first arose. Without a comprehensive critical survey of the subject, authors found it necessary to explain what they meant when they used the term 'transference.'
With this integration new factors of confusion arose. Viewed arbitrarily form, lets us say 1946, the conception of transference has been influenced by (1), child analysis, (2), undertaking at treating psychotics, (3) psychosomatic medicine, and (4) the disproportions between the number of analysts and the growing number of patients seeking analysis, leading to attempts to shorten the process of analysis.
Direct interpretation of unconscious content is again being stressed by some analysts of children so that the methods are reminiscent of the beginning of psychoanalysis. Yet on closer examination, there may be a difference in principle: Unconscious material that presents itself in play is given a direct transference meaning from the beginning. The therapist interprets forward, as it was. The interpretation is not from current material, but from the allegedly presented unconscious material to an alleged immediacy of the transference significance. This, it should be noted, is a mental process of the therapist and not of the patient, therefore in the strict scientific sense, it is a matter of countertransference than of transference. Something similar takes place in the classical technique when forced transference interpretations are given, the important difference being that these are used in the classical method only sparingly and never until the transference neurosis is well established, and analysis has become a compulsion. It is precisely at this theoretical, that the dispute is centred among child analysts about the possibility or existence of a transference neurosis among children.
In the treatment of psychotics the idea of transference is developing a new orientation. In some of these techniques the therapist interprets to himself the meaning of the psychotic fantasy and joins the patient in acting out. Strictly speaking, this is active countertransference.
In psychosomatic medicine, particularly in ‘short therapy’, transference is either discounted as an actively manipulated way that, from a theoretical point of view, amounts to an abandonment of Freud’s 'spontaneous' manifestations.
All and all, changes in the idea of transference are not constructively progressive. Critical attention needs to be drawn to the fact that not only is there no consensus about the concept of transference, but there cannot be until transference is comprehensively studied as a branch of knowledge and as a functional dynamic process. The lack of precision is to some extent due to a disregard of its historical development. Nor can there be a consensus while the relation of transference manifestations to the three stages of analysis is neglected, it is to the detriment of scientific exactitude that divergent groups do not sharply define but as an alternative, it glosses over fundamental differences, there is a tendency to claim orthodoxy, and to hide the deviation behind one tendentiously and arbitrarily selected quotation from Freud.
In the face of such divergent opinions on the nature and manifestations of transference, one might expect many hypotheses and opinions about how these manifestations come about. However, this is not so. On the contrary, there is the nearest approach to full unanimity and accord throughout the psychoanalysis literature on this point. Transference manifestations are held to arise within the analysand spontaneously. ‘This peculiarity of the transference is not, therefore, says Freud, 'to be placed to the account of psychoanalytic treatment, but is to be ascribed to the patient’s neurosis itself.' Elsewhere, he makes to point out: 'In every analytic treatment, the patient develops, without any activity by the analyst, and intense affective relation to him . . . It must not be assumed that analysis produces the transference. . . . The psychoanalytic treatment does not produce the transference, it only unmasks it?' Ferenczi, in discussing the positive and negative transference says: '. . . . It has particularly to be stressed that this process is the patient’s own work and is hardly ever produced by the analyst.' 'Analytic transference appears spontaneously, and the analysts need only take care not to disturb this process.' As states, 'The analyst did not deliberately set out to affect this new artificial formation (the transference neurosis), merely observed that such a process took place and forthwith used it for his own purposes.' Freud further states: 'The fact of the transference appearing, although either desired or induced by either physician or patient, in every neurotic who comes under treatment . . . has always seemed as . . . ‘ proof that the source of the propelling forces of neurosis lies in the sexual life.'
There is, however, a reference by Freud from which one has to infer that he had in mind another factor in the genesis of transference apart from spontaneity - in fact, some outside influence, the analyst ‘ must recognize that the patient’s falling in love in induced by the analytic situation . . . ’. He (the analyst) has evoked this love by undertaking analytic treatment in other to cure the neurosis, for him, it is an unavoidable consequence of the medical situation . . . ’. Freud did not amplify or specify what importance he attached to this causal remark.
Anna Freud states that the child’s analyst has to woo the little patient to gain its love and affection before analysis can continue, and she says, parenthetically, that something similar takes place in the analysis of adults. Another reference to the effect that transference phenomenon is not completely spontaneous is found in a statement by Glover summarizing the effects of inexact interpretation. He says that the artificial phobic and hysterical formulations resulting from incomplete or inexact interpretations are not an entirely new conception. Hypnotic manifestation has long since been considered 'an induced hysteria' and Abraham considered that states of autosuggestion were induced obsessional systems? He continues . . . ' and of course, the induction or development of a transference neurosis during analysis is regarded as an integral part of the process,' one is entitled from the context to assume that Glover commits himself to the view that some outside factors are operative which induce the transference neurosis. Nevertheless, it is hardly a coincidence that it is no more than a hint.
The impression gained from the literature is that the spontaneity of transference is considered established and generally accepted. In fact, this opinion seems jealously guarded for reasons referred to.
A psychoanalysis developed from hypnosis: A study of the older psychotherapeutic methods, therefore, may still yield data that are applicable to the understanding psychoanalysis: One cannot overestimate the significance of hypnotism in the development of the psychoanalysis. Theoretically and therapeutically, the psychoanalysis is the trustee of hypnotism. It is in comparing hypnotic and analytic transference that the writer believes the clue to the phenomenon and the production of transference may be found. It was only after hypnosis had been practised empirically for a long time that its mechanism was given explanations by Bernheim, Freud, and Ferenczi. Freud showed that the hypnotist suddenly assumed a role of authority that Standley transformed the relationship for the patient (by way of Traumata) into a parent-child relationship. Radó investigating hypnosis, came to the conclusion that.'
. . . the hypnotist is promoted from being an object of the ego to the position of an ‘a parasitic superego.' Freud stated, 'No one can doubt that the hymnodist has stepped into the place of the 'ego-ideal.' Later he was to say that ' . . . the hypnotic relation is the devotion of someone in love to an unlimited degree but with sexual satisfaction excluded. In other place’s Freud stressed repeatedly and with great emphases that in hypnosis factors of a 'coarsely sexual nature' were at work, and that the qualities of the libido.' Psychoanalysis like hypnosis began empirically, one may speculate that analytic transference is a derivative of hypnosis, and motivated by instinctual (libidinal) drives and, substituting new terms, produced in a way comparable to the hypnotic trance.
When one compares hypnosis and transference, it appears that hypnotic ‘rapport’ contains the elements of transference condensed or superimposed. If what makes the patient go to the hypnotist is called sympathetic transference, hypnosis can be said to embrace positive transference and the transference neurosis, and when the hypnotic 'rapport' is broken, the manifestations of negative transference. The analogy of course ends when transference is not resolved in hypnosis as it is in analysis, but is allowed to persist. To look upon it from another angle, analytic transference manifestations are some slow motion pictures of hypnotic transference manifestations, they take some time to develop, unfold slowly and gradually, and not at once as in hypnosis. If the hypnotist becomes the patients’ 'parasitic superego,' similarly, the modification of the analysand’s superego has for some time been considered a standard feature of psychoanalyses.
Styrachey sees in the analyst 'an auxiliary superego.' Discussing this and examining projection and introjection of archaic superego formations to the analyst, he says: The analyst’ . . . hopes, in short, that he himself will be introjected by the patient as a superego, introjected, however, not at a single gulp and as an archaic object, whether good or bad, but little by little, and as a real person. Another possible similarity between the modes of action of hypnosis and analytic transference is to be found in the state of hysterical dissociation in hypnosis, in the psychoanalysis a splitting of the ego into an experiencing and an observable care that takes its part (which follows the procreation of the superego to the analyst), and takes place. Sterba, stressing the usefulness of interpretation of transference resistance, shows that this takes place through a kind of dissociation of the ego just when these transferences are interpreted. Both in hypnosis and psychoanalysis libidos are mobilized and concentrated in the hypnotic and analytic situation, in hypnosis again condensed in one short experience, while the psychoanalysis at which a constant flow of a libido in the analytic situation is aimed. Ferenczi’s ‘active therapy’ was intended to increase or keep steady this libidinal flow. Freud first encountered positive transference (love), and only later discovered the negative transference. This sequence is the trued in analysis, and in this there is another analogy to hypnosis. Finally, it is generally recognized that the same type of patient responds to hypnosis as to psychoanalysis, in fact, the hypnotizability of hysterics gave Freud the impetus to develop the psychoanalytic technique, and hysterics are still the paradigms for classical psychoanalytic technique.
It is comparatively easy today to get a bird’s-eye view of the development of analytic transference from hypnotic reactions, and make a comparison between the two. Freud, who had to find his was gradually toward the creation of a new technique, was completely taken by surprise when he first encountered transference in his new technique. He stressed repeatedly and emphatically that these demonstrations of love and of hate emanate from the unaided patients, which they are part and parcel of the 'neurotic,' and that they have to be considered a 'new edition' of the patient’s neurosis. He maintained that these manifestations appear without the analyst’s endeavour, but their obtainability is in spite of him (as they represent resistance), and that nothing will prevent their occurrence. Freud’s view is still undisputed in psychoanalytic literature: Thus arose the conception that the analyst did nothing to evoke these reactions, in a marked contradistinction to the hypnotist’s direct activities, the analyst offered himself tacitly as a superego in contrasts to the noisy machination of the hypnotist.
Transference was, in the early days of psychoanalysis, believed to be a characteristic and pathognomonic sign of hysteria. This was a heritage from hypnosis. Later, these same manifestations were found in other neurotic conditions, in the psychoneuroses, or the transference neuroses. When in time psychoanalyses was applied to an ever-widening circle of cases, it was found that students in psychoanalytic training, who did not openly fall into any of these categories, formed transference in the same way? This was explained by the fact that between ‘normal’ and ‘neurotic’ there is a gradual transition, which in fact we are all potentially neurotic. In this way, historically, the onus of responsibility for the appearance of transference was shifted imperceptibly from the hysteric to the psychoneurotic, and then to the normal personality. When this stage was reached, transference was held to be one many ways in which the universal mental mechanism of displacement was at work. The capacity to 'transfer' or 'displace' was shown to operate in everybody to a greater or lesser degree: Its use became looked upon as a normal, in fact, an indispensable mechanism. The significance of this shift of emphasis from a hysterical trait to a universal mechanism as the source of transference has, however, not received due attention. It has not aroused much comment nor an attempt to revive the fundamental principles underlying psychoanalytic procedure and understanding.
Transference is still held to arise spontaneously from within the analysand, just as when psychoanalytic experience embraced only hysterics. It is generally taught that the duty of the analyst is, at best, to allow sufficient time for transference to develop, and not to disturb this ‘natural’ process by early interpretation. This role of the analyst is well illustrated in the similes of the analyst as ‘catalyst’ (Ferenczi), or as a ‘mirror’ (Fernichel).
It is all the same that if transference is an example of a universal mental mechanism (displacement), or if, in Abraham’s sense, it is equated with a capacity for adaption of which everybody is capably which everybody employs at times in varying degrees, why does it invariably occur with such great intensity in every analysis? The answer to this question may be that transference is induced from without in a manner comparable to the production of transfixed hypnosis. The analysand brings, in varying degrees, an inherent capacity, a readiness to form transference, and this readiness is met by something that converts it into an actuality. In hypnosis the patient’s inherent capacity to be hypnotized is induced by the command of the hypnotist, and the patient submits instantly. In the psychoanalysis it is neither achieved in one session nor it a matter of obeying. Psychoanalytic technique creates an infantile setting, of which the 'neutrality' of the analyst is but one feature among others. To this infantile setting the analysand - if he is, analysable - has to adapt, even if by regression. In their aggregate, these factors, which go to make up this infantile setting, amount to a reduction of the analysand’s object world and denial of objects relations in the analytic room. To this deprivation of object relation he responds by curtailing conscious ego functions and giving himself over to the pleasure principle: And following his free association, he is by that sent along the trek into infantile reactions and Mental attitude. The term free-association as defined by Freud are the trends of thought or chains of ideas that spontaneously arise when restraint and censorship upon logical thinking are removed and the individual orally reports everything that passes through his mind. This fundamental technique of advancing the psychoanalysis is assuming that when relieved of the necessity of logical thinking and reporting verbally everything going through his mind, the individual will bring forward basic psychic material and thus make it available to analytic interpretation. As forwarded by hypnotism, in which its theory and practice of inducing hypnosis or a state resembling sleep as induced by physical means.
Before discussing in detail the factoring constitution of an infantile analytic setting, of which the analysand is uncovered and appreciating the fact that finding the analytic situation is necessarily is common in psychoanalytic literature called one to which the analysand reacts as if it were an infantile one, once, again, Freud describes the infantile expression as that which is maintained by psychoanalysts that ‘this period of life, during which a certain degree of directly sexual pleasure is produced by the stimulation of various cutaneous areas (erotogenic zones), by the activity of certain biological impulses and as an accompanying excitation during many affective states, is designated by an expression introduced by Havelock Ellis as the period of autoerotism. It is, nonetheless, generally understood that the analysand is alone responsible for this attitude? As an explanation of why he should regard it always as an infantile situation, one mostly finds the explanation that the security, the absence of adverse criticism, the encouragements derived from the analyst’s neutrality, the allaying of fears and anxieties, create an atmosphere that is conducive to regression, that is to say, the actions of his returning to some earlier level of adaption. Up to the present time, it is usually established in the literature as it is far from being the rule that the analytic couch allays anxieties, nor is the analytic situation always felt as a place of security: The projection of an essentially severe superego onto the analyst is not conducive to allaying fears. Many patients first react with increased anxieties, and analysis is frequently felt by the analysand as fraught with danger both from within and without. Many patients from the start have mutilation and castration anxieties, and at times analysis is equated in the analysand’s mind with a sexual attack. The analyst’s task is to overcome this resistance, but the analytic situation per se, does not bring it about. In fact, the security of analysis as an explanation of the regression is paradoxical: As in life, security makes for stability, whereas stress, frustration, and insecurity initiate regression. This trend of thought does not run counter to accepted and current psychoanalytic teachings, but it is instead an exposition of Freud’s established principles about the conception of neurosis. As used today, this term is interchangeable with the term psychoneurosis. At one time it was used to refer to any somatic disorder of the nerves (the present-day term for this meaning is neuropathy) or to any disorder of nerve function. In psychoanalytic terminology, neurosis is often used more broadly to include all physical disorder: Thus Freud spoke of actual neuroses (Neurasthenia, including hypochondriasis, and anxiety-neurosis): Transference or psychoneuroses (Anxiety-hysteria, conversion-hysteria, obsessional and compulsive neurosis . . . ), narcissistic neuroses (the schizophrenias and manic-depressive psychoses) and traumatic neuroses are each given to psychoanalytical literature, and treatment is aside. The self-contradictory statement, that the security of analysis induces the analysand to regress. It is carried uncritically from one psychoanalysis publication to another.
These infantile settings are manifold, and they have been described singly by various authors at various times. It is not pretended, that anything new is to add to them but as far as the aggregate has never been described an amounting to a decisive outside influence on the patient. These factors are in this context given in an outline. If only to establish the features of the standardization of their psychoanalytic technique as to (1) Curtailment of an object world. External stimuli are reduced to a minimum (Freud at first asked his patients even to keep their eyes shut). Relaxation on the couch has also to be valued as a reduction of inner stimuli, and as an elimination of any gratification from looking or being looked at. The position on the couch approximates the infantile posture. (2) The constancy of environment, which stimulates fantasy. (3) The fixed routine of the analytic 'ceremonial', the 'discipline' to which the analysand has to conform which is reminiscent of a strict infantile routine. (4) The single factor of not receiving a reply from the analyst is likely to be felt by the analysand as a repetition of infantile situations. The analysand - uninitiated in the technique - will not merely be an anticipatorial answer to his question but he will expect conversation, help, and encouragement and criticism? (5) The timelessness of the unconscious. (6) Interpretations on an infantile level stimulate infantile behaviour. (7) Ego function is reduced to a state intermediate between sleeping and waking. (8) Diminished personal responsibility in analytic sessions. (9) The analysand will approach the analyst in the first place much in the same way as the patient with an organic disease consults his physician: This relationship contains a strong element of magic, a strong infantile element. (10) Free association, liberating unconscious fantasy from conscious control. (11) Authority of the analyst ( parent ): This projection is a loss, or severe restriction of object relations to the analyst, and the analysand is thus forced to fall back on fantasy. (12) In this setting, and having the full sympathetic attention of another being, the analysand will be led to expect, which according to the reality principle he is entitled to do, that he is dependent on and loved by the analyst. Disillusionment is quickly followed by regression. (13) The analysand art first gains an illusion of complete freedom, which he will be unable to select or guide his thoughts at will is one facet of infantile frustration. (14) Frustration of every gratification repeatedly mobilizes the libido and initiates further regressions to deeper levels. The continual denial of all gratification and object relations mobilizes the libido for the recovery of memories. However, its significance lies also in the fact that frustration as this is a repetition of infantile situations, and to the highest degree and likely the most important single factor. Saying that we grow up by frustration would be true. (15) Under these influences, the analysand becomes ever more divorced from the reality principle, and falls under the sway of the pleasure principle.
These depictions are well implicated to features that exemplify the sufficiencies that the analysand is exposed to an infantile setting in which he is led to believe that he has perfect freedom, which he is loved, and that he will be helped in a way he expects. The immutability of a constant passive environment forces him to adapt, i.e., to regress to infantile levels. The reality value to the analytic session lies precisely in its unchanging unreality, and in its unyielding passivity lies the 'activity,' the influence that the analytic atmosphere experts. With this unexpected environment, the patient - if he has, any adaptivity - has to come to terms, and he can do so only by regression. Frustration of all gratifications pervades the analytic work. Freud comments: 'As far as his relations with the physician are concerned, the patient must have unfulfilled wishes in abundance. It is expectient to deny him precisely those satisfactions that he needs most intensively and expresses most importunately.' This is a description of the denial of object relation in the analytic room. The present thesis stresses the significance not only of the loss of object relation, but, as a constituent of at least equals importance, the loss of an object world in the analytic room, the various factors of which are set out in above-mentioned-remarks.
Evidently, all these factors working together from a definite environment under which his loss of an object world, including its surrounding surface and emotional influences, he is subject to a rigid and most sternful environment, not by any direct activity of the analyst, but by the analytic technique. This conception is far removed from the current teaching of complete passivity by the analyst. One may legitimately go one step further and call to mind what Freud said about the etiology of the neuroses:
‘. . . relational causes of disease people fall ill of a neurosis when the possibility of satisfaction for their libido is denied them - they are quickening the ill infringements that is influential to inconsequential ‘frustrations’ - and that their symptoms are substitutes for the missing satisfactions’.
Regression in the analysand is initiated and kept up by this selfsame mechanism and if, in actual life, a person falls ill of a neurosis because 'reality frustrates all gratification,' the analysand likewise responds to the frustrating infantile setting by regressing and by developing a transference neurosis. In hypnosis the patient is suddenly confronted with a parent figure to which he instantly submits. Psychoanalysis places and keeps the analysand in an infantile setting, both environmental and emotional, and the analysand adapts to it gradually in reserve to regression.
The same may be said to be true of all psychotherapy, yet it appears peculiar to the psychoanalysis that such an infantile setting is systematically created and its influence exerted on the analysand throughout the treatment. Unlikely any other therapist, the analyst remains outside the play that the analysand is enacting, he watches and observes the analysand’s reactions and attitudes in isolation. To have created such an instrument of investigation may be looked upon as the most important stroke of Freud’s genius.
It can no longer be maintained that the analysand’s reactions in analysis occur spontaneously. His behaviour is a response to the rigid infantile settings to which he is exposed. This poses many problems for a significantly enlarged investigation. One of these is, how does it react on the patient? He must know it, consciously or unconscious mind. It would be interesting to follow up whether perhaps the frequent feeling of being in danger, of losing something, of being coerced, or of being attacked, is a feeling provoked in the analysand in response to the emotional and environmental pressure exerted on him. If this creates a negative transference would be feasible, and as positive transference must exist as well (otherwise treatment would be stopped), a subsequent state of ambivalence must follow. Here one might look for an explanation why ambivalent attitudes are prevalent in analysis. These are generally looked upon as spontaneous manifestations of the analysand’s neurosis. Following that this double attitude of the analysand, the positive feelings toward the analyst and analysis, and a negative response to the pressure exerted on him by continual frustration and loss of object-world and object-relations, could be looked upon as the normal sequitur of analytic technique. It would not make up ambivalence in its strict sense, because the patient is reacting to two different objects simultaneously and has not as in true ambivalence two attitudes to the same object. The common appearance of this pseudo ambivalence can then no longer be adduced as evidence of the existence or part of a
pre-analytic neurosis.
The patient comes to analysis with the hope and expectation of bringing helped. He thus expects gratification of some kind, but none of his expectations are fulfilled. He gives confidence and gets none in return, he works hard and expects praise in vain. He confesses his sins without absolution given or punishment proffered. He expects analysis to become a partnership, but he is left alone. He projects onto the analyst his superego and, least of mention, desirously builds them to the expectations from his guidance and control; of his instinctual drives in exchange, but he finds this hope, is illusory and that he himself has to learn to exercise these powers. It is quite true, assessing the process as a whole, that the analysand is misled and hoodwinked as analysis proceeds. The only safeguard he is given against rebelling and stopping treatment is the absolute certainty and continual proof that this procedure, with all the pressure and frustration it imposes, is necessary for his own good, and that it is an objective method with the sole aim of benefiting him and for no other purpose than his own. In particular, the disinterestedness of the analyst must assure the patient that no subjective factors enter it. In this light, the moral integrity of the analyst, so often stressed, becomes a safeguard for the patient to continue with analysis, it is a technical driving force of analysis and not a moral precept.
A word might be added about the driving force of analysis in the light of this essay. The libido necessary for continual regression and memory work is looked upon by Freud as derived from the relinquished symptoms. He says that the therapeutic task has two phases: 'In the first, libido is forced away from the symptoms into the transference and there concentrated: And in the second phase the battle rages round the new object and the libido is again disengaged from the transference object.' As so often in Freud’s statements, this description applies to clinical neurosis, but the psychoanalysis takes the same trends in non-neurotics. The main driving force may be considered derived in every analysis from such libidos as is continually freed by the denial of object-world and by the frustration of libidinal impulses.
If the conception is accepted that analytic transference is actively induced on a ‘transference-ready’ analysand by exposing him to an infantile setting to which he has gradually to adapt by regression, certain conclusions must be encouraged.
Its first state being the initial period, in which the analysand gradually adapts to an infantile setting. Regressive, infantile reactions and attitudes manifest themselves with gathering momentum during what might be described as the induction of the transference neurosis. This stage corresponds to what Glover has called the stage of 'floating transferences.' A second stage suggests of itself that when his regression is well established and the analysand represents the infant at various stages of development with such intensity that all his action’s - in and out of analysis - are imbued with reactivated infantile reactions. Consciously or unconsciously. During this period, under constant pressure of analytic frustration, he withdraws progressively too earlier, ‘safer’ infantile patterns of behaviour, and the level of his conflict is inevitably reached. Reaching the level; of his conflict is not, however, the touchstone of the existence of a transference neurosis. Further, the analysands transfer not only onto the analyst, but onto the situation as a whole: He not only transfers effectual causation, although these may be the most conspicuous, but in fact his whole mental development. This conception makes it easier to understand with what alacrity analysands fasten their love and hate drives onto the analyst despite sex and whatever suitability as an object.
The transference neurosis may be defined as the stage in analysis when the analysand has so far adapted to the infantile analytic setting - the main features of which are the denials of object relations and continual libidinal frustration - that his regressive trend is well established, and the various developmental levels, relived, and worked through.
A third, or terminal, stages represent the gradual retracting of the way back into adulthood toward newly won independence, unimprisoned from an archaic superego and weaned from the analytic superego. However great the distance from maturity back into childhood at the commencement of analysis, the duration of the first and second stages of analysis is as long and takes as much time as the return journey back into maturity and independence. Only part of this way back from infantile levels to maturity falls within the time limit of analysis in its third stage: The rest and the full adaption to adulthood are most often competing by the analysand after the cancellation of analysis. In this last post-analytic stage great improvements often occur. In this conception the answer may be found to the often discussed and not fully explained problems of improvements after its Cancellation of analysis. Pointing out that these stages are theoretical is superfluous, as in reality they never occur neatly separated but always overlap.
The initial aim of analysis is to induce regression. Whatever impedes it is a resistance. If instead of such a movement there occurs a standstill (whether in acting out or of direct transference gratification), or if the movement instead of being regressive turns in the direction of apparent maturity (flight into health), one can speak of a resistance. Theoretically, acing out is a formidable variety of resistance because the analysand mistakes the unreality of the analytic relationship for reality and attempts to establish reality relations with the analyst. In this attitude he stultifies the analytic procedure for the time being, as he throws the motor force of analysis - the denial of all object relations in the analytic room and of the gratification of the libido derived from it - out of action. In cases in which early 'transference successes' are won and the patient quickly relinquishes his symptoms. The analysis is in danger of terminating at this point. The mechanism of these transference successes is in a way the counterpart of acting out. The patient regresses rapidly to childhood, and forms an unconscious fantasy of a mutual child-parent relationship. He mistook such reality and object relations as exists as a basis in the analytic relationship wholly for an infantile one and unconsciously obeyed (spites or obliges) the parent imago. What happens in these cases is in fact that the analysand has in fantasy formed a mutual hypnotic transference relation with the analyst: Analytic interpretation was not either quick enough to prevent it, or the analysand’s transference readiness was too strong. He could not be made to adapt gradually to the infantile setting. In other words, the analysand faced with the stimulus of infantile situation issuing by way of autosuggestion (or indirect suggestion) to rid himself of a symptom.
Transference has resistance value in as far as it impedes the recovery of memories and so stops the regressive orientation. Per se, it is the only possible vehicle for unconscious content to come to consciousness. Transference should therefore not be indiscriminately equated with resistance as Fernichel did.
The analyst himself is also subjected to the infantile setting of which he is a part. In fact, the infantile setting to which he is exposed contains another important infantile factor, the regressing analysand. The analyst’s ego is also split into an observing and experiencing one. The analyst has had his own thorough analysis and knows what to expect, and furthermore, unlike the analysand, is in an authoritative position. Whereas, it is the analysand’s task to adapt actively to the infantile setting by regression, remaining resistant to such adaptation is necessary for the analyst? While the analysand has to experience the past and observe the present, the analyst has to experience the present and observe the past, he must resist any regressive trend within himself. If he fall victim to his own techniques, and experience the past instead of observing it, he is subject to counter resistance. The phenomenon of counter transference may be best described by paraphrasing Fernichel’s simile: The analyst misunderstands the past about the present.
To respond to the classical analytic technique, analysands must have some object relations intact, and must have at their disposal enough adaptability to meet the infantile analytic setting by further regression. For both hypnosis and psychoanalysis there is a sliding scale from the hysteric to the schizophrenic. Abraham said: 'The negativism of dementia praecox is the most thorough antithesis of transference. In contrast to hysteria these patients are only to a very slight degree accessible to hypnosis. In attempting to psychoanalyse them we notice the absence of transference again.' The high degree of suggestibility, i.e., the capacity to form transferences, is extensively known as a leading feature of hysteria. Hysteria, and the whole group belonging to the transference neurosis are distinguished by an impaired and immature adjustment to reality, these reactions are mingled with infantile attitudes and mechanisms. Therefore under pressure from the infantile analytic milieu they respond freely and quickly with increased infantile behaviour to the loss of object world and object relations. The neurotic character responds not much easily and to a lesser extent in a free manner, because its object relations are firmly established (for instance, well-functioning sublimations), and therefore are harder to resolve analytically. The denial of object relations and libidinal gratification in analysis is frequently parried by reinforced sublimations, but before analysis can continue this ‘sublimated object relationship’ must be reversed.
Psychotics are refractory to the classical technique, accordingly, because their object relations are deficient and slender, and nothing therefore remains of which the analytic pressure of the classical technique could deprive these patients, or their object relations are too slight for their denial to make any difference. Freud said, that
' . . . from our clinical observations of these patients we stated that they must have abandoned the investment of objects with the libido, and transformed the object libido into an ego libido.' As the core of the classical technique is the denial of object relations of the patient through his exposure to an infantile milieu, the narcissistic regressive must consequently prove inaccessible to the classical approach. This does not, of course, exclude them from analytic methods that deviate from the classical form. The main change of approach for them must be an adjustment of the technique in the early stages of analytic treatment, this aspect has a bearing also on the problems of transference and particularly on the transference neurosis that are in dispute among child analysts.
If a person with a certain degree of inherent suggestibility is subject to a suggestive stimulus and reacts to it, he can be said to be under the influence of suggestion. To arrive at a definition of analytic transference, introducing an analogous term for suggestibility in hypnosis is necessary first and speaks of a person’s inherent capacity or readiness to form transference. This readiness is precisely the same factor and may be defined in the same way as suggestibility, namely, a capacity to adapt by regression. Whereas, in hypnosis the precipitating factor is the suggestive stimulus, followed by suggestion, in the psychoanalysis the person’s adaptability by regression is met by the outside stimulus (or precipitating factors) of the infantile analytic setting. In psychoanalyses it is not followed by suggestion from the analyst, but by continued pressure to further regression through the exposure to the infantile analytic setting. If the person reacts to it, he will form a transference relationship, i.e., he will regress and form relations to early imagos. Analytic transference may thus be defined as a person’s gradual adaptation by regression to the infantile analytic setting.
Transference cannot be regarded as a spontaneous neurotic reaction. It can be said to be the resultant of two sets of forces: The analysand’s inherent readiness for transference, and the external stimulus of the infantile setting. There are, then, to be distinguished in the mechanism of analytic transference intrinsic and extrinsic factors: The response to the analytic situation will vary in intensity with different types of analysands. The capacity to form a transference neurosis was found inherent - varying only in quality - in all analysands who could be analysed at all, whether they were neurotic if not. To account for this, the term ‘neurotic’ was extended until it lost most of its meaning because the precipitating factor, the infantile setting, was not perceived.
It is historically interesting to observe that in the heyday of hypnosis, hypnotically was considered a characteristic trait of hysteria: Hypnosis in fact was to be inside an enclosed space as considered the 'artificial hysteria' (Charcot). Clearly the same situation has risen in the psychoanalysis with respect to the transference neurosis. When, to his amazement, Freud first encountered transference in his new technique, which he applied to neurotic patients only, he attributed 'this strange phenomenon of transference’ to the patient’s neurosis, and he saw ‘a characteristic peculiar to neurosis.' When he coined for the acute manifestations of transference the designation 'transference neurosis,' it was explicitly affirmed that these manifestations were some 'new editions' of an old neurosis revealing itself within the framework of psychoanalytic treatment. Once the concept of transference necrosis had become a tenet in psychoanalytic teaching, the acute manifestations were without further questioning accepted as inseparably linked with the neurotic.
Thus, historically the linkage of transference with neurosis is a replica of the early linkage of hypnosis with the hysteric. Freud, in his pre-analytic period, hailed with enthusiasm Bernheim’s demonstration that most people were hypnotizable and that hypnosis was no longer to be regarded as inseparable from hysteria. In the introduction to Bernheim’s book, Freud said: 'The accomplishments of Bernheim . . . changes in precisely the inside enclosed space as ingested by a pass over to the manifestations of hypnotism of their strangeness by linking them with familiar phenomena of normal psychological life and of sleep.' In the face of this statement, it is extraordinary that a psychoanalysis has never officially divorced transference from clinical neurosis.
The resolution of transference has been considered the safeguard against and proof of the fact that suggestion plays no part in the psychoanalysis. The validity of this argument was questioned earlier since the meaning and definition of 'suggestion' are in themselves vague and shifting and used with varying connotations. Additional weight is given to this caution when it is realized that the resolution itself of psychoanalysis transference is not understood in all its aspects. True enough, but its manifestations are continually analysed in psychoanalysis. An attempt is made to reduce them, but its ultimate resolution or even its ultimate fate is not clearly understood. Whenever it is finally resolved, it is during an ill-defined period after the cancellation of analysis. By this feature alone it escapes strict scientific observation. It might even be argued that analytic transference in some of its aspects must in the last resort resole itself. In hypnosis, of course, no attempt is ever made to resolve the transference, but this should not be thought of as if it were bound to persist. More correctly it is left to look after itself. This trend of thought is followed here not in any way to distract from the essential difference in the resolution of hypnotic and analytic transference respectively, but to emphasize that as for theory the conception is not exact enough and therefore likely to create confusion of fundamental issues instead of clarifying them. Stressing this pint as seems important, by sheer weight of habit and repetition, ambiguous conceptions have a tendency to assume the character and dignity of clear scientific concepts.
There is, however, another difference between hypnotic and analytic transference that is free from all ambiguity, which may be considered of more cardinal significance in demarcating the psychoanalysis from all other psychotherapies. The hypothesis has been presented here that both hypnosis and psychoanalysis exploits infantile situations that both create. Nevertheless, in hypnosis the transference is truly a mutual relationship existing between the hypnotist and the hypnotized. The hypnotic subject transfers, but is it also transferred? One is tempted to say that countertransference is obligatory in an essential part of hypnosis (and for that matter of all psycho therapies in which the patient is helped, encouraged, advice or criticized). This interaction between hypnotist and hypnotized-made Freud described hypnosis as a 'group formation of two.' The patient is subjected to direct suggestion against the symptom. In psychoanalytic therapy alone the analysand is not transferred too together. The analyst has to resist all temptation to regress, he remains neutral, aloof, a spectator, and he is never a coacher. The analysand is induced to regression and to ‘transfer’ alone in response to the infantile analytic setting. The analytic transference relationship ought, strictly speaking, not to be called a relationship between analysand and analyst, but more precisely as the analysand’s relation to his analyst. Analysis keeps the analysand in isolation. By its essential nature analysis, in the contradistinction to hypnosis, is not a group formation of two. It is not through which the denial that the analysis of which a ‘team put to work’, in as far as it is, an 'objective' relation exists between the analyst and the analysand. Because the analyst remains outside the regressive movement, because it is his duty to prove resistant to countertransference by virtue of his own analysis, suggestion can inherently play no part in the classical procedure of psychoanalytic technique.
It is of historical interest to look back upon the development of psychoanalysis and find that, although the theoretical basis as shown in the essay has never been advanced, the subject of countertransference was unconsciously felt to be the most vulnerable point and the most significant issue in the psychoanalysis. The literature regarding the ‘handling of transference’ easily verifies this statement. Though this postulated immunity to arrested developments in the concept of the analyst’s passivity rightly arose, but was wrongly allowed to be extended to an idea of passivity governing the whole of psychoanalytic technique.
To make transference and its developments the essential difference between a psychoanalysis and all other psycho therapies, making differences as it may define psychoanalytic technique as the only psychotherapeutic method in which compound-to-one-sided, infantile regression - analytic transference - is induced in a patient (analysand), analysed, worked through, and finally solved.
It is the analysis of the transference that is generally acknowledged to be the central feature of analytic technique. Freud regarded transference and resistance as facts of observations, not as conceptual representations. He wrote ' . . . the theory of the psychoanalysis is an attempt to account for two striking and unexcepted facts of observation that emerge whenever we have made an attempt to trace the symptoms of a neurotic back to their sources in his past life: The facts of transference and of resistance . . . anyone who takes up other sides of the problem while avoiding these two hypotheses will hardly escape a charge of misappropriations of property by attempted impersonation, if he persists in calling himself a psychoanalyst.' Rapaport (1967) argued, in his posthumously published paper on the methodology of psychoanalyses, that transference and resistance inevitably follow from the fact that the analyst situation is interpersonal.
Despite this general agreement on the centrality of transference and resistance in techniques, it is that we have not pursued the analyst of the transference as systematically and comprehensively as it could be and should be, in that the relative privacy in which psychoanalysis work makes it impossible to state this view anything more than one or one’s impression. On the assumption that evens if wrong, reviewing issues in the analysis of the transference will be useful and to state several reasons that an important aspect of the transference, namely, resistance to the awareness of the transference, is especially often slighted in analytic practice.
Distinguishing it clearly between two types of interpretation of the transference is first. The one is an interpretation of resistance to the awareness of transference. The other is an interpretation of resistance to the resolution of transference. Greenson had shown the distinction in outline literature (1967) and Stone (1967). We may call the first kind of resistance defence transference. Although that subjectively we have mainly employed a term to refer to a phase of analysis characterized by a general resistance to the transference of wishes, it can also be ill-used for more isolated instances of transference of defence. For its imbounding place of value the containing quality of some construing measures under which has usually been called the second kind of resistance transference resistance. With some oversimplification, one might say that in resistance to the awareness of transference, the transference is what is resisted, whereas in resistance to the resolution of transference, the transference is what does the resisting.
Another descriptive way of stating this distinction between resistance and the awareness of transference and resistance ti the resolution of transference is between implicit and indirect references to the transference and explicit or direct references to the transference. They have intended the interpretation of resistance to awareness of the transference to make the implicit transference explicit, while we have intended the interpretation of resistance to the resolution of transference to make the patient realize that the already explicit transference does include a determinant from the past.
It is also important to distinguish between the general concept of an interpretation of resistance to the resolution of transference and a particular variety of such an interpretation, namely, a genetic transference interpretation - that is, an interpretation of how an attitude in the present is an inappropriate carry-over from the past. While there is a tendency among analysts to deal with explicit references to the transference primarily by a genetic transference interpretation, and there are other ways of working toward a resolution of transference? However, it can be to argue that not only is not enough emphasis being given to interpretation of the transference in the here-and-now, that is, to the interpretation of implicit manifestations of the transference, but also that interpretations intended to resolve the transference as manifested in explicit references to the transference should be primarily in the here-and-now, than genetic transference interpretations.
A patient’s statement that he feels the analyst is harsh, for example, is, at least to begin with, likely best dealt with not by interpreting that this is a displacement from the patient’s feeling that his father was harsh but by an elucidation of another aspect of this here-and-now attitude, such as what has gone on in the analytic situation that seems to the patient to justify his feeling or what was the anxiety that made it so difficult for him to express his feelings. How the patient experiences the actual situation is an example of the role of the actual situation in a manifestation of transference, which will be one of the implicitly major points.
Transference interpretations are here-and-now a genetic transference interpretation, in which is of course exemplified in Freud’s writings and are in the repertoire of every analyst. Nevertheless, they have not distinguished them sharply enough.
Because Freud’s case histories focus much more on the yield of analysis than on the details of the process, they are readily but perhaps incorrectly construed as emphasizing work outside the transference much more than work with the transference, and, even within the transference, emphasizing genetic transference interpretations much more than work with the transference in the here-and-now. The example of Freud’s case reports may have played a role in what is readily considered as a common maldistribution of emphasis in these two respects - not enough on the transference and, within the transference, not enough on the here-and-now.
Before turning within the issues in the analysis of the transference, least of mention, what is a primary reason for a failure to deal adequately with the transference, it is that work with the transference is that aspect of analysis that involves both analyst and patient in the most affect-laden and potentially disturbing interactions. Both participants in the analytic situation are motivated to avoid these interactions. Flight away from the transference and to the past can be a relief to both patient and analyst.
A divisional split in which a discussion will draw into five parts, as: (1) The principle that the transference should be encouraged to expand as much as possible within the analytic situation because the analytic work is best done within the transference: (2) The interpretation of disguised allusions to the transference as a main technique for encouraging the expansion of the transference within the analytic situation: (3) The principle that all transference has a connection with something in the present actual analytic situation: (4) How the connection between transference and the analytic situation is used in interpreting resistance to the awareness of transference, and (5) the resolution of transference within a here-and-now as, the role of genetic transference interpretation.
The importance of transference interpretation will surely be agreeing to by all analysts, the greater effectiveness of transference interpretations than interpretations outside the transference will be agreeing to by many, but what of the relative roles of interpretation of the transference and interpretation outside the transference?
Freud can be read either as saying that the analysis of the transference is auxiliary to the analysis of the neurosis or that the analysis of the transference is equivalent ti the analysis of the neurosis. The first position is stated in his saying that the disturbance of the transference has to be overcome by the analysis of transference resistance to get on with the work of analysing the neurosis. It is also implied in his restatement that the ultimate task of analysis is to remember the past, to fill the gaps in memory. The second position is stated in his saying that the victory must be won on the field of the transference and that the mastery of the transference neurosis 'coincides with getting rid of the illness that was originally brought to the treatment.' In this second view, he says that after the resistance is overcome, memories appear without difficulty.
These two different positions also find expression in the two very different ways in which Freud speaks of the transference. In Dynamics of Transference, he refers to the transference, on the one hand, as 'the most powerful resistance to the treatment,' but, as doing us, the inestimable service of making the patient’s, . . . immediate impulses and manifest. For when all is said and done, destroying anyone in an absentia is impossible or in effigies. Freud wrote once, in summary: 'This is the possible work of the therapeutic process that falls into two phases. In the first, all in the libido is forced from the symptoms into the transference and concentrated there: In the second, the struggle is waged around this new object and the libido is liberated from it.'
The detailed demonstration that he advocated that the transference should be encouraged to expand as much as possible within the analytic situation lies in clarifying that resistance is primarily expressed by repetition, which repetition takes place both within and outside the analytic situation, but that the analyst seeks to deal with it primarily within the analytic situation, that repetition can be not only in the motor sphere (acting) but also in the physical sphere, and that the physical sphere is not confined to remembering but includes the present, too.
Freud’s emphasis that the purpose of resistance is to prevent remembering can obscure his point that resistance shows itself primarily by repetition, whether inside or outside the analytic situation: 'The greater the resistance the more extensively willing acting out ( repetition ) replaces remembering.' Similarly in The Dynamics of Transference Freud said, that the main reason that the transference is so well suited to serve the resistance is that the unconscious impulses 'do not want to be remembered . . . but endeavour to reproduce themselves . . .' The transference is a resistance primarily as far as it is a repetition.
The point can be restated as for the relation between transference and resistance. The resistance empresses itself in repetition, that is, in transference both inside and outside the analytic situation. To deal with the transference, therefore, is equivalent to dealing with the resistance. Freud emphasized transference within the analytic situation so strongly that it has come to mean only repetition with the analytic situation. Even though, conceptually speaking, repetition outside the analytic situation is transference too, and Freud once used the term that way: 'We soon perceive that the transference is itself only a piece of repetition, and that the repetition is a transference of the forgotten past not only onto the doctor but also onto all the other aspects of the current situation. We . . . find . . . the compulsion to repeat, which now replaces the impulsion to remember, not only in his personal attitude to his doctor but also in every other activity and relationship that may occupy his life at the time. . . .'
Realizing that the expansion of the repetition inside the analytic satiation is important, whether or not in a reciprocal relationship to repetition outside the analytic situation, is the avenue to control the repetition: 'The main instrument . . . for curbing the patient’s compulsion to repeat and for turning it into a motive for remembering lies in the handling of the transference. We render the compulsion harmless, and indeed useful, by giving it the right to assert itself in a definite field.'
Kanzer has discussed this issue well in his paper on The Motor Sphere of the Transference (1966). He writes of a 'double-pronged stick-and-carrot' technique by which the transference is fostered within the analytic situation and discouraged outside the analytic situation. The 'stick,' is the principle of abstinence as exemplified in the admonition against making important decisions during treatment, and the ‘carrot’ is the opportunity afforded the transference to expand within the treatment ‘in almost complete freedom' as in a playground?' Every bit as Freud put it: 'Provided only that the patient shows compliance enough to respect the necessary conditions of the analysis, we regularly succeed in giving all the symptoms of the illness a new transference meaning and in replacing his ordinary neurosis by a 'transference psychoneuroses' of which he can be cured by the therapeutic work.'
The reason that being expressed within the treatment is desirable for the transference is that there, it 'is at every point accessible to our intervention.' In a later statement he made the same point this way: We have followed this new edition [the transference-neurosis] of the old disorder from its start, we have observed its origin and growth, and we are especially well able to find our way about in it since, as its object, we are situated at it's very centre’. It is not that the transference is forced into the treatment, but that it is spontaneously but implicitly present and is encouraged to expand there and become explicit.
Freud emphasized acting in the transference so strongly that one can look out over that which repetition in the transference, which of those, is that does not necessarily mean it an id enacted. Repetition need not go as far as motor behaviour. It can also be expressed in attitudes, feedings, and intentions, and, indeed, the repetition often does take such form than motor action. Such repetition is in the psychical rather than the motor sphere. The importance of masking this clear is that Freud can be mistakenly read to mean that repetition in the psychical sphere can only mean remembering the past, as when he writes that the analyst 'is prepared for a perpetual struggle with his patient to keep in the psychical sphere all the impulses that the patient would like to direct inti the motor sphere, and he celebrates it as a triumph for the treatment if he can bring it about that something the patient wishes to discharge in action are disposed of through the work of remembering.'
It is true that the analyst’s efforts are to convert acting in the motor sphere into awareness in the psychical sphere, but transference may be in the psychical sphere to begin with, although disguised. The psychical sphere includes awareness in the transference plus remembering.
An objection one hears, from both analyst and patient, to a heavy emphasis on interpretation of associations about the patient’s real life primarily about the transference is that it means the analyst is disregarding the importance of what goes on in the patient’s real life. The criticism is not justified. To emphasize the transference meaning is not to deny or belittle other meanings, but to focus on the one of several meanings of the content that is the most important for the analytic process, for the reasons that were earliest of commenting.
Another way in which interpretations of resistance to the transference can be, or at least appear to the patient to find faults with so important of the patient’s outside life is to make the interpretation as though the outside behaviour is primarily 'an-acting out' of the transference. The patient may undertake some actions in the outside world as an expression of and resistance to the transference, that is, acting out. Still the interpretation of associations about actions in the outside world as having implications for the transference embraces to an awakening spark of meaning that can only be that the choice of an outside action figure in associations with the co-determined need to express the transference indirectly. It is because of the resistance to awareness of the transference that the transference has to be disguised. When the disguise is unmasked by interpretation, despite the inevitable differences between the outside situations and the transference situation, the content is clearly the same for the analytic work. Therefore, the analysis of the transference and the analysis of the neurosis coincide. In particular, the advocacy of its analysis is that of the transference for its own sake rather than to overcome the neurosis, Freud wrote that the mastering of the transference neurosis ‘coincides with getting rid of the illness that was originally brought to the treatment’.
The analytic situation itself fosters the development of attitudes with primary determinants in the past, i.e., transferences. The analyst’s keep backs in providence of whose patients are with few and equivocal cues. The purpose of the analytic situation fosters the development of strong emotional responses, and the very fact that the patient has a neurosis means, as Freud said, that' . . . it is a perfectly normal and intelligible thing that the libidinal cathexis [we would now add negative feelings] of someone who is partly unsatisfied, a cathexis held readies in anticipation, should be directed as well to the figure of the doctor.'
While the analytic setup itself fosters the expansion of the transference within the analytic situation, the interpretation of resistance to the awareness of transference will further this expansion.
There are important resistances of both patient and analyst to awareness of the transference. On the patient’s part, this is because of the difficulty in recognizing erotic and hostile impulses toward the very person to whom they have to be mentioned. On the analyst’s part, this is because the patient is likely to attribute the very attitudes that he is most likely to cause him discomfort. The attitudes the patient believes that the analyst has toward him, are often the ones the patient is least likely to voice, in a general sense because of a feeling that it is impertinent for him to concern himself with the analyst’s feelings, and in a more specific sense because the attitude the patient ascribes to the analyst is often the attitude the patient feels the analyst will not like and be uncomfortable about having ascribed to him? The id, consequently that the analyst must be especially alert to the attitudes the patient believes he has, not only to the attitudes the patient does have toward him. If the analyst can see himself as a participant in an interaction, as he will become much more attuned to this important area of transference, which might otherwise escape him.
The investigation of the attitudinal values ascribed to the analyst, who investigation the intrinsic factors in the patient that played a role in such ascriptions. For example, the exposure of the fact that the patient ascribes sexual interest in him to the analyst, and genetically to the parent, makes undemanding the subsequent exploration of the patient’s sexual wish toward the analyst, and genetically the parent.
The resistances to the awareness of these attitudes are responsible for their appearing in various disguises in the patient’s manifest associations and for the analyst’s reluctance to unmask the disguise. The most commonly recognized disguise is by displacement, but identification is an equally important one. In displacement, the patient’s attitudes are narrated as toward a third party. In identification, the patient attributes to himself attitudes are believed the analyst has toward him.
To encourage the expansion of the transference within the analytic situation, the disguises in which the transference appears have to be interpreted. With displacement the interpretation will be of allusions to the transference in associations not manifestly about the transference. This is a kind of interpretation every analyst makes. For identification, the analyst interprets the attitude the patient ascribes to himself as an identification with an attitude he attributes to the analyst. Lipton has recently described this form of disguised allusion to the transference with illuminating illustrations.
Many analysts believe that transference manifestations are infrequent and sporadic at the beginning of an analysis and the patient’s associations are not dominated by the transference unless a transference neurosis has developed. Other analysts believe that the patient’s associations have transference meanings from the beginning and throughout. That is, that those who believe otherwise are failing to recognize the persuasiveness of direct allusions to the transference - that is, what is called a resistance to the awareness of the transference.
In his autobiography, Freud wrote: 'The patient remains under the influence of the analytic situation although he is not directing his mental activities onto a particular subject. We will be justified in assuming that nothing will occur to him that has not some reference to that situation.' Since associations are obviously often not directly about the analytic situation, the interpretation of Freud’s remark rests on what he meant by the 'analytic situation.'
Freud’s meaning can be clarified by reference to a statement he made in The Interpretation of Dreams. He said that when the patient is told to say whatever comes into his mind, his associations become directed by the 'purposive ideas inherent in the treatment' and that there are two such inherent purposive themes, one relating to the illness and the other - concerning which, Freud said, 'The patient has 'no suspicion'
- relating to the analyst. If the patient has 'no suspicion' of the theme relating to the analyst, the clear implication is that the theme appears only in disguise in the patient’s associations.' Perhaps, Freud’s remark not only specifies the themes inherent in the patient’s associations, but also means that the associations are simultaneously directed by these two purposive ideas, not sometimes by one and sometimes by the other.
One important reason that the early and continuing presence of the transference is not always recognized is that it is considered absent in the patient who is talking freely and apparently without resistances. As Muslin pointed out in a paper on the early interpretation of transference (Gill and Muslin, 1976), resistance to the transference is probably present from the beginning, even if the patient is talking apparently freely. The patient might be talking mostly of some issues not manifestly about the transference that are nevertheless, also allusions to the transference. Nevertheless, the analyst has to be alert to the persuasiveness of such allusions to discern them.
The analyst should continue the working assumption, then, that the patient’s associations have transference implications pervasively. This assumption is not to be confused with denial or neglect of the current aspects of the analytic situation. Giving precedence to a transference interpretation is theoretically always possible if one can discern it through its disguise by resistance. This is not to dispute the desirability of learning as much as one can about the patient, if only to be able to make correct interpretations of the transference. One therefore does not interfere with an apparently free flow of associations, especially early, unless the transference threatens the analytic situation to the point where its interpretation is mandatory rather than optional.
With the recognitions that even the apparently freely associating patient may also be showing resistance to awareness of the transference, the unformidable formulations that one should not interfere if useful information is being gathered should replace Freud’s dictum that the transference should not be interpreted until it becomes a resistance.
Most certain, all analysts would doubtless agree that there are both current and transferential determinants of the analytic situation, and probably no analyst would argue that a transference idea can be expressed without contamination, as it was without any connection to anything current in the patient-analyst relationship. Nevertheless, it would be to believe the implications of this fact for technique are often neglected in practice? Several authors (e.g., Kohut, 1959, Loewald, 1960) have pointed out that Freud’s early use of the term transference in The Interpretation of Dreams, in a connection not immediately recognizable as related to the present-day use of the term, reveals the fallacy of considering that transference can be expressed free of any connection to the present. The early use was to refer to the fact that an unconscious idea cannot be expressed as such, but only as it becomes connected to a preconscious or conscious content. In the phenomenon with which Freud was concerned, the dream, transference took place from an unconscious wish to a day residue. In the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud used the term transference both for the general rule that an unconscious content is expressible only as it becomes transferred to a preconscious or conscious content and for the specific application of this rule to a transference to the analyst. Just as the day residue is the point of attachment of the dream wish, so must there be an analytic-situation residue, though Freud did not use that term, as the point of attachment of the transference.
Analysts have always limited their behaviour, both in variety and intensity, to increase the extent to which the patient’s behaviours are determined by his idiosyncratic interpretation of the analyst’s behaviour. In fact, analysts unfortunately sometimes limit their behaviour so much, as compared within Freud’s mindful intentions, were those in apprehension that are even to any understanding of the entire relationship with the patient is a matter of technique, with no nontechnical personal relations, as Lipton (1977) has pointed out.
However, no matter how far the analyst attempts to carry this limitation of his behaviour, the very existence of the analytic situation gives the patient innumerable cues that inevitably become his rationale for his transference responses. In other words, the current situation cannot be made to disappear - that is, the analytic situation is real. Forgetting this truism in one’s zeal to diminish the role of the current situation in determining the patient’s responses is easy. One can try to keep past and present determinants of been perceptible from one-another, but one cannot obtain either in 'pure culture'. Just as Freud wrote: 'I insist on this procedure [the couch], however, for its purpose and result are to prevent the transference from mingling with the patient’s association imperceptibly, to isolate the transference and to allow it to come forwards indue courses sharply defined as a resistance.' Even 'isolate' is too strong a word in the light of the inevitable intertwining of the transference with the current situation.
If the analyst remains under the illusion that the current cues he provides to the patient can be reduced to the vanishing point, he may be led into a silent withdrawal, which is not too distant from the caricature of an analyst as someone who does indeed refuse to have any personal relationship with the patient. What happens then it is the silence that has become a technique rather than merely an indication that the aneled are listening. The patient’s responses under such conditions can be mistaken for uncontaminated transference when they are in fact transference adaptations to the actuality of the silence.
The recognition that all transference must have some relation to the actual analytic situation, from which it takes its point of departure, as it was within a crucial implication for the technique of interpreting resistance to the awareness of transference.
If the analyst becomes persuaded of the centrality of transference and the importance of encouraging the transference to expand within the analytic situation, he has to find the presenting and plausible interpretations of resistance to the awareness of transference he should make? Here, his most reliable distribution of the cues offered by what is going on in the analytic situation: On the one hand, the events of the situation, such as change in time of session, or an interpretation made by the analyst, and, on the other hand, the patient via experiencing the situation as reflected in explicit remarks about it, however fleeting these may be. This is a primary yield for technique of the recognition that any transference must have a link to the actuality of the analytic situation. The cue points to the nature of the transference, just as the day residue for a dream may be a quick pointer to the latent dream thoughts. Attention to the current stimulus for a transference elaboration will keep the analyst from making mechanical transference interpretations, in which he interprets that there are allusions to the transference in associations not manifestly about the transference, but without offering any plausible basis for the interpretation. Attention to the current stimulus also offers some degree of protection against the analyst’s inevitable tendency to project his own views onto the patient, either because of countertransference or because of a preconceived theoretical bias about the content and hierarchical relationship in psychodynamics.
The analyst may be very surprised at what in his behaviour the patient finds important or unimportant, for the patient’s responses will be idiosyncratically determined by the transference. The patient’s response may be something the patient and the analyst considers trivially, because, as in displacement to a trivial aspect of the day residue of a dream, displacement can better serve resistance when it is to something trivial. Because it is connected to conflict-laden materials, the stimulus to the transference may be difficult to find. It may be quickly disavowed. The patient may also gain insight into how it repeats a disavowal earlier in his life. In his search for the present stimulus that the patient is responding to transferential, the analyst must therefore remain alert to both fleeting and apparently trivial manifest reverences to himself and to the events of the analytic situation.
If the analyst interprets the patient’s attitudes in a spirit of seeing their possible plausibility in the light of what information the patient does have, than in the spirit of either affirming or denying the patient’s view, the way is open for their further expression and elucidation. The analyst will be respecting the patient’s effort to be plausible and realistic, than insuring him as manufacturing his transference attitudes out of whole cloth.
To allow of its belief, making a transference interpretation plausible to the patient as for a current state of affairs that is so important, if the analyst is persuaded that the manifest content has an important implication for the transference but he is unable to see a current stimulus for the attitude, he should explicitly say so if he decides to make the transference interpretation anyway. The patient himself may then be able to say what the current stimulus is.
It is sometimes argued that the analyst’s attention to his own behaviour as a precedent for the transference will increase the patient’s resistance to recognizing the transference. On the contrary, the inevitable interrelationship of the current and transferential determinants, it is only through interpretation that they can be disentangled.
It is also argued that one must wait until the transference has reached optimal intensity before it can be advantageously interpreted. It is true that too hasty and interpretation of the transference can serve a defensive function for the analyst and deny him the information he needs to make a more appropriate transference interpretation. Nevertheless, it is also true that delay in interpreting runs the risk of allowing an unmanageable transference to develop. It is, again, trued that deliberate delay can be a manipulation in the service of the abreaction rather than the analyst and, like silence, can lead to a response to the actual situation mistaken for uncontaminated transference. Obviously important issues of timing are involved. Justly, as an important clue to when a transference interpretation is aptly which one to make lies in whether intolerable and patient virtues can make the interpretation plausibly about the determinants current analytic situations.
A critic of an earlier version of these issues was in saying, that all the analysts need do is to interpret the allusion to the transference. Nevertheless, that, least of mention, leaves one in not because interpretation of why the transference had to be expressed by allusion than directly is also necessary, of course, that is to say, when the analyst approaches the transference in the spirit of seeing how it appears plausibly realistic to the patient, it paves the way toward its furthering elucidation and expression.
Freud’s emphasis on remembering as the goal of the analytic work implies that remembering is the principle avenue to the resolution of the transference. Yet his delineation of the successive steps in the development of analytic technique makes clear that he saw this development as a change from an effort to reach memories directly to the use of the transference as the necessary intermediary to reaching the memories.
In contrast to remembering as the way negativity ad positivity has resolved the transference, Freud also described Resistances as primarily overcome in the transference, with remembering following easily after that: ‘From the repetition reactions exhibited in the transference regainfully to employ of what has led us along the familiar paths to the awakening of the memories, which appear without difficulty, and as it was, after the resistance has been overcome’, and ‘This revision of the process of repression can be accomplished only in part concerning the memory traces of the process that led to repression. The decisive part of the work is achieved by creating in the patient’s relation to the doctor - in the ‘transference’ - new editions of the old conflicts . . . Thus the transference becomes the battlefield on which all the mutually struggling forces should meet another. This is primary insight Styrachey (1934) cast off light on out in his seminal paper on the therapeutic action of the psychoanalysis.
There are two main ways in which resolution of the transference can take place through work with the transference before us and now. The first lies in the clarification of what are the cues in the current situation that are the patient’s point of departure for a transference elaboration. The exposure of the current point of departure at once raises the question of whether it is adequate to the conclusion drawn from it. The relating of the transference to a current stimulus is, after all, parts of the patient’s effort to make the transference attitude plausibly determined by the present. The reserve and ambiguity of the analyst’s behaviour are what increases the ranges of apparently plausible conclusions the patient may draw. If an examination of the basis for the conclusion makes clear that the actual situation to which the patient responds is subject to other meanings than the one the patient has reached, he will more readily consider his pre-existing bias, that is, his transference.
Another critic of an earlier version suggestively sights that in speaking of the current relationship and the relation between the patient’s conclusions and the information on which they seem plausibly based is to imply of some absolute conception of what is real in the analytic situation, of which the analyst is the final arbiter. This is not so. In what the patient must come to see is that the information he has is subject to other possible interpretations implies the contrariety to an absolute conception of reality. In fact, analyst and patient engage in a dialogue in the spirit of attempting to arrive at a consensus about reality, not about some fictitious absolute reality.
The second way in which resolution of the transference can take place within the work with the transference in the here-and-now is that in the very interpretation of the transference the patient has a new experience. He is being treated differently from how he expected to be. Analysts seem reluctant to emphasize this new experience, as though it endangers the role of insight and argues for interpersonal influence as the significant factor in change. Strachey’s emphasis on the new experience in the mutative transference interpretation has unfortunately been overshadowed by his views on introjection, which have been mistakes to advocate manipulating the transference, Styrachey meant introjection of the more benign superego of the analyst only as a temporary step on the road toward insight. Not only is the new experience not to be confused with the interpersonal influence of a transference gratification, but the new experience occurs with insight into both the patient’s biassed expectation and the new experience. As Styrachey points out, what is unique about the transference interpretation is that insight and the new experience take place in relation to the very person who was expected to behave differently, and it is this that gives the work in the transference its immediacy and effectiveness. While Freud did stress the affective immediacy of the transference, he did not make the new experience explicit.
Recognizing that transference is not a matter of experience is important, in contrast to insight, but a joining of the two together. Both are needed to cause and maintain the desired changes in the patient. It is also important to recognize that no new techniques of intervention are required to provide the new experience. It is an inevitable accompaniment of interpretation of the transference in the here-and-now. It is often overlooked that, although Styrachey said that only transference interpretation was mutative, he also said with approval, that most of all interpretations are outside the transference.
In a further explication of Strachey’s paper and entirely consistent with his position, Rosenfeld (1972) has pointed out that clarification of material outside the transference is often necessary to know what is the appropriate transference interpretation, and that both genetic transference interpretations and extra-transference interpretations play an important role in working through. Styrachey said little about working through, but surely nothing against the need for it, and him explicitly recognized a role for recovery of the past in the resolution of the transference.
Following, a needed explanation is to emphasis, and the role of the analysis of the transiency in the here-and-now, both in interpreting resistance to the awareness of transference and in working toward its resolution by relating to the actuality of the situation, one must pay heed to that of an extra-transference and genetic transference interpretations and, of course, working through is important too. The matter is one of emphasis in the interpretation of resistance to awareness of the transference and should figure in most of sessions, and that if this is done by relating the transference to the actual analytic situation, the very same interpretation is a beginning of work to the resolution of the transference. To justify this view more persuasively would require detailed case material.
It may be considered that siding with the Kleinians who, many analysts feel, are in error of giving the analysis of the transference too great if not even an exclusive role in the analytic process. It is true that Kleinians emphasize the analysis of the transference more, in his writings at least, than does the general run of analysts. Indeed, Anna Freud’s (1968) complaint that the concept of transference has become overexpanded may be directed against the Kleinians. One of the reasons the Kleinians consider themselves the true followers of Freud in techniques are precisely because of the emphasis they put on the analysis of the transference. Hanna Segal (1967), for example, writes as follows: ‘To say that all communications are seen as communications about the patient’s phantasy and current external life is equivalent to saying that all communications contain something used for the transference situation. In Kleinian technique, the interpretations of the transference are often more central than in the classical technique’.
Despite their disclaimer to the contrary, many Kleinian case materials directively lead one to agree with what is believed is the general view that Kleinian transference interpretations often deal with so-called deep and genetic material without adequate connection to the current features of the present analytic situation and thus differ sharply from the kinds of transference interpretations advocated in present case.
The insistence on exclusive attention to any particular aspect of the analytic process, like the analysis of the transference in the here-and-now, can become a fetish. However, in that other kinds of interpretations should not be made, but in feeling to an emphasis on the transference interpretations within the analytic situation needs to be increased, or at the least reaffirmed, and that we need more clarification and specification on just when other kinds of interpretations are in order.
Of course, making a transference interpretation is sometimes tactless. Surely two reasons that would be included in a specification of the reasons for not making a particular transference interpretation, even if one seems to the analyst, would be preoccupation with an important extra-transference event and an inadequate degree of rapport, to user Freud’s term, to sustain the sense of criticism, humiliation, or other painful feeling the particular interpretation might engender, though the analyst had no intention of evoking such a response. The issue may be, however, not of whether or not an interpretation of resistance to the transference should be made, but whether the therapist can find that transference interpretation that in the light of the total situation, both transferential and current, the patient can hear and benefit from primarily as the analyst intends it.
Transference interpretations, like extra-transference interpretations, are, indeed, like any behaviour on the analyst’s part, can affect the transference, which in turn needs to be examined if the result of an analysis is to depend as little as possible on unanalyzed transference. The result of any analysis depends on the analysis of the transference, persisting effects of unanalysed transference, and the new experience as the unique merit of transference interpretation in the here-and-now. Remembering this is especially important lest one’s zeal to search out the transference itself becomes an unrecognized and objectionable actual behaviour on the analyst’s part, with its own repercussions on the transference.
The emphasis placed on the analysis of resistance to the transference could easily be misunderstood as implying that recognizing the transference is always easy as disguised by resistance or that analysis would go on without a hitch if only such interpretations are made. However, to imply of neither, but rather than the analytic process will have the best chance of success if correct interpretation of resistance to the transference and work with the transference in the here-and-now are the core of the analytic practicality is of less than is a meaningful term as an academic term.
These points mentioned are not new, however, they are present in varying degrees of clarity and emphasis throughout our literature, but like so many other aspects of psychoanalytic theory and practice, they fade in and out of prominence and are rediscovered repeatedly, possibly occasionally in the accompaniment with some modest conceptual advance, but often with a newness attribution only to ignorance of past contributive dynamic functions. Yet, our investigations are to occupy a certain position of continency.
Although, few current problems are concerning the problem of transference that Freud did not recognize either implicitly or explicitly in the development of this theoretical and clinical framework. For all essential purposes, moreover, his formulations, in spite of certain shifts in emphasis, remain integral to contemporary psychoanalysis theory and practice. Recent developments mainly concern the impact of an ego-psychological approach: The significance of object relations, both current and infantile, external and internal, the role of aggression in mental life, and the part played by regression and the repetition compulsion in the transference. Nevertheless, analysis of the infantile Oedipal situation in the setting of a genuine transference neurosis is still considered a primary goal of psychoanalysis procedure.
Originally, transference was ascribed to displacement onto the analyst of repressed wishes and fantasies derived from early childhood. The transference neurosis was viewed as a compromise formation similar to dreams and other neurotic symptoms. Resistance, defined as the clinical manifestation of resistance, could be diminished or abolished by interpretation mainly directed toward the content of the repressed. Transference resistance, both positive and negative, was ascribed to the threatened emergence of repressed unconscious material in the analytic situation. Soon, with the development of a structural approach, the superego-described as the heir to the genital Oedipal situation was also recognized as playing a leading part in the transference situation. The analyst was subsequently viewed not only as the object by displacement of infantile incestuous fantasies, but also as the substitute by projection for the prohibiting parental figures internalized as the definitive superego. The effect of transference interpretation in mitigating undue severity of the superego has, therefore, been emphasized in many discussions of the concept of transference.
Certain expansions in the structural approach directly to increased recognition of the role of early object relations in the development of both ego and superego has affected current concepts of transference. As for this, the significance of the analytic situation as a repetition of the early mother-child relationship has been stressed from different points of view. An equally important development relates to Freud’s revised concept of anxiety which not only led to theoretical developments in the field of ego psychology, but also caused related clinical changes in the work of many analysts. As a result, attention was no longer mainly focussed on the content of the unconscious. In addition, increasing importance was attributed to the defensive processes by means of which the anxiety that would be engendered if repression and other related mechanisms were broken down, was avoided in the analytic situation. Differences in the interpretation of the role of the analyst and the nature of transference developed from emphasis, on the one hand, on the importance of early object relations, and on the other, from primary attention to the role of the ego and its defences. These defences first emerged clearly in discussion of the technique of child analysis, in which Melanie Klein and Anna Freud, the pioneers in this field, played leading roles.
From a theoretical point of view, discussion foreshadowing the problems that faced up today was presented in 1934 in well-known papers by Richard Sterba and James Styrachey, and further elaborated at the Marienbad Symposium at which Edward Bibring made an important contribution. The importance of identification with, or introjection of, the analyst in the transference situation was clearly imitated. Therapeutic results were attributed to the effect of this process in mitigating the need for pathological defences. Styrachey, however, considerably influenced by the work of Melanie Klein, regarded transference as essentially a projection onto the analyst of the patient’s own superego. The therapeutic process was attributed to subsequent introjection of a modified superego because of ‘mutative’ transference interpretation. Sterba and Bibring, on the other hand, intimately involved with development of the ego-psychological approach, emphasized the central role of the ego, postulating a therapeutic split and identification with the analyst as an essential feature of transference. To some extent, this difference of opinion may be regarded as semantic. If the superego is explicitly defined as the heir of the genital Oedipus conflict, then earlier systemic conflicts within the ego, although they may be related retrospectively to the definitive superego, must, nevertheless, is defined as contained within the ego, although they may be related retrospectively to the definitive superego, must, nevertheless, be defined as contained within the ego. Later divisions within the ego of the type suggested by Sterba and very much expanded by Edward Bibring in his concept of therapeutic alliance between the analyst and the healthy part of the patient’s ego, must also be excluded from superego significance. In contrast, those who attribute pregenital intra-system conflicts within the ego primarily to the introjection of objects, consider that the resultant state of internal conflict appears similar in all dynamic respect the situation seen in later conflicts between ego and superego. They, therefore, believe that these structures develop simultaneously and suggest that no sharp distinction should be made between pre-oedipal, oedipal, and a post-oedipal superego.
The differences, however, are not entirely verbal, since those who attribute superego formation to the early months of life tend to attribute some significance too early object relations that differ from the conception of those who stress control and neutralization of instinctual energy as primary functions of the ego. This theoretical difference necessarily implies some disagreement as to the dynamic situation both in childhood and in adult life, inevitably reflected in the concept of transference and in hypotheses as to the nature of the therapeutic process. From one point of view, the role of the ego is central and crucial at every phase of analysis. A differentiation is made between transference as therapeutic alliance and the transference neurosis, which, is considered as the manifestation of resistance. Effective analysis depends on a sound therapeutic alliance, a prerequisite for which is the existence, before analysis, of a degree of mature ego functions, the absence of which in them certain severely disturbed patiently and in young children may preclude traditional psychoanalytic procedure. Whenever indicated, interpretation must deal with transference manifestation, which mans, in effect, that the transference must be analysed. The process of analysis, however, is not exclusively ascribed to transference interpretations. Other interpretations of unconscious material, whether related to defence or too early fantasy, will be equally effective provided they are accurately timed and provided a satisfactory therapeutic alliance has been made. Those, in contrast, who stress the importance of early object relations emphasize the crucial role of transference as an object relationship, distorted though this may be by a variety of defences against primitive unresolved conflicts. The central role of the ego, both in the early stages of development and in the analytic process, are definitely accepted, the nature of the ego is, however, considered determined by its external and internal objects. Therapeutic progress indicated by changes in ego function results, therefore, primarily from a change in object relations through interpretation of the transference situation. Less differentiation is made between transference as therapeutic alliance and the transference neurosis as a manifestation of resistance. Therapeutic progress depends almost exclusively on transference interpretation. Other interpretations, although indicated at times, are not, in general, considered an essential feature of the analytic process. From this point of view, the pre-analytic maturity of the patient’s ego is not stressed as a prerequisite for analysis: Children and relatively disturbed patients are considered potentially suitable for traditional psychoanalytic procedure.
These differences in theoretical orientation are not only reflected in the approach to children and disturbed patients. They may also be recognized in significant variations of technique in respect to all clinical groups, which inevitably affect the opening phases, understanding of the inevitable regressive features of the transference neurosis, and handling of the terminal phases of analysis. The unavoidedly derailed discussions of controversial theory, its natures of early ego development are arbitrary in the differentiations between those who related ego analysis and the analysis of defences and those who stress the primary significance of object relations are referred in the transference, and in the developments inferred as the definitive structure of the ego. Of course, this involves some oversimplifications, least of mention, which will importantly to an analysis of patient suitability toward the classical analytic procedure.
- the transference neurosis. Those who emphasis the role of the ego and the analysis of defence, not only maintain Freud’s conviction that analysis should continue from a surface to depth, but also consider that early materials in the analytic situation drives, usually, from defensive processes than from displacements onto the analyst of early instinctual fantasies. Deep transference interpretation in the early phases of analysis will, therefore, be meaningless to thee patient since its unconscious significance is so inaccessible either, or, if the defence’s ae precarious, will lead to premature and possibly intolerable anxiety. Premature interpretation of the equally unconscious automatic defensive processes by means of which instinctual fantasy has been kept unconsciously is also ineffective and undesirable. There are, however, differences of opinion within this group, about how far analysis of defence can be separated from analysis of contents. Waelder, for example, stresses the impossibility of such separation. Fernichel, however, considered that at least theocratical separation should be made and shown that, as far as possible, analysis of defence should precede analysis of unconscious fantasy. It is, nevertheless, generally agreed that the transference neurosis develops, as a rule, after ego defences have been sufficiently undermined to mobilize previously handled instinctual conflict. During both the early stages, and at frequent points after the development of the transference neurosis, defence against the transference will become a main feature of the analytic situation.
This approach, is based on certain definite premises regarding the nature and dynamic function of the ego in respect to the control and neutralization of instinctual energy and unconscious fantasy. While the importance of early object relations is not neglected, the conviction that early transference interpretation is ineffective and potentially dangerous is related to the hypothesis that the instinctual energy available to the mature ego has been neutralized and is, for all effective purposes, relatively or absolutely divorced from its unconscious fantasy meaning at the beginning of analysis. In contrast, there are many analysts of differing theoretical orientation who do not view the development of the mature ego as a relative separation of ego functions from unconscious sources, but consider that unconscious fantasy continues to operate in all conscious mental activity. This analyst also tends to emphasize the crucial significance of primitive fantasy in respect to the development of the transference situation. The individual entering analysis will inevitably have unconscious fantasies concerning the analyst derived from primitive sources. This material, although deep in one sense, is, nonetheless, strongly current and accessible to interpretation. Mrs. Klein, in addition, relates the development and definitive structure of both ego and superego to unconscious fantasy determined by the easiest phases of object relationships. She emphasis the role of early introjective and projective processes in relation to primitive anxiety ascribed to the death instinct and related aggressive fantasies. The unresolved difficulties and conflict of the earliest period continue to colour object relations throughout life. Failure to achieve an essentially satisfactory object relationship in this early period, and failure to master relative loss of that object without retaining its good internal representative, will not only affect all object relations and definitive ego function, but more specifically determine the nature of anxiety-provoking fantasies on entering the analytic situation. According to this point of view, therefore, early transference interpretation, though it may relate to fantasies derived from an early period of life, should result not in an increased, but a decrease of anxiety.
In considering next problems of transference in relation to analysis of the transference neurosis, two main points must be kept in mind. First: Those who emphasize the analysis of defence tend to make a definite differentiation between transference as therapeutic alliance and the transference neurosis as a compromise formation that serves the purposes of resistance. In contrast, those who emphasize the importance of early object relations view the transference primarily as a revival or repetition, sometimes attributed to symbolic processes of early struggles in respect to objects. Yet, no sharp differentiations are made between the early manifestations of transference and the transference neurosis. In view, moreover, of the weight given to the role of unconscious fantasy and internal objects in every phase of mental life, healthy and pathological functions, though differing in essential respects, do not differ as for their direct dependence on unconscious sources.
In the second place, the role of regression in the transference situation is subject to wide differences of opinion. It was, of course, one of Freud’s earliest discoveries that regression to earlier points of fixation is a cardinal feature, not only in the development of neurosis and psychosis, but also in the revival of earlier conflicts in the transference situation. With the development of the psychoanalysis and its application of experience, an ever increasing range of disturbed personalities, the role of regression in the analytic situation had received increased attention. The significance of the analytic situation for fostering regression as a prerequisite for the therapeutic work has been emphasized by Ida Macalpine in a recent paper of differing opinions as to the significance, value, and technical handling of regressive manifestations from the basis of important modifications of analytic technique, in respect, however, to the transference neurosis, the view recently expressed by Phyllis Greenacre, in that regression, an indispensable feature of the transference situation, is to be resolved by traditional technique would be generally accepted. It is also a matter of general agreement that a prerequisite for successful analysis is revival and repetition in the analytic situation of the struggles of primitive stages in the developmental distributives of contributory dynamic functionalities. Those who bring out defence analysis, however, tend to view regression as a manifestation of resistance: As a primitive mechanism of defence employed by the ego in the setting of the transference neurosis. Analysis of these regressive manifestations with their dangers depends on the existing and continued functioning of adequate ego strength to maintain therapeutic alliance at an adult level, those, by contrast, who stress the significance of transference as a revival of the early mother-child relationship does not place emphasis on regression as an indication of resistance or defence. The revival of these primitive experiences in the transference situation is, in fact, regarded as an essential prerequisite for satisfactory psychological maturation and true genitality. The Kleinian schools, as already showed, stress the continued activity of primitive conflicts in determining essential features of the transference at every stage of analysis. Their increasingly overt revival in the analytic situation, therefore, signifies a deepening of the analysis, and in general, is regarded as an indication of diminution than an increase of resistance. The dangers involved according to this point of view are determined more by failure to mitigate primitive anxiety by suitable transference interpretation, than by failure to achieve, in the early phases of analysis, a sound therapeutic alliance based on the maturity of the patient’s essential ego characteristics.
Briefly considering the terminal phases of analysis. Many unresolved problems concerning the goal of therapy and definition of a completed psychoanalysis must be kept in mind. Distinction must also be made between the technical problems of the terminal phase and evaluation of transference resolution after the analysis has been ended. There is widespread agreement as to the frequent revival in the terminal phases of primitive transference manifestations apparently resolved during the earthly phase of analysis? Balint, and those accept Ferenczi’s concept of primary passive love, suggest that some gratifications of primitive passivity need be the essentially successive in succeeding by its end. To Mrs. Klein the terminal phases of analysis also represent a repetition of important features of the early mother-child relationship. According to her point of view, this point represents, in essence, a revival of the early weaning situation. Completion depends on a mastery of early depressive struggles culminating in successful introjection of the analyst as a good object. Although, as for this, emphasis differs considerably, it should be noted that those in whom stress the importance of identification with the analyst as a basis for therapeutic alliance, also accept the inevitability of some permanent modifications of a similar nature. Those, however, who make a definite differentiation between transference and the transference neurosis stress the importance of analysis and resolution of the transference neurosis as a main prerequisite for a successful end. The identification based on therapeutic alliance must be interpreted and understood, particularly about the reality aspects of the analyst’s personality. In spite, therefore, of significant important differences, there are, as already showed about the earlier papers of Sterba and Styrachey, important points of agreement in respect to the goal of the psychoanalysis.
Differences already considered, as far as discussions have permitted of a limited variation within the framework of a traditional technique, nonetheless, we are drawn to consider problems related to overt modifications in due consideration as a preliminary to classical psychoanalyses, and modification based on changes in basic approach, lead to significant alterations regarding both the method and to the aim of therapy.
It is generally agreed, that some variations of technique are shown in the treatment of certain character neurosis, borderline patients, and the psychoses. The nature and meaning of such changes are, however, viewed differently according to the relative emphasis placed on the ego and its defences, on underling unconscious conflicts, and on the significance and handling of regression in the therapeutic situation. In Analysis Terminable and Interminable, Freud suggested, that certain ego attributes may be inborn or constitutional and, therefore, probably inaccessible to psychoanalytic procedure. Hartmann has suggested that beyond these primary attributes, other ego characteristics, originally developed for defensive purposes, and the related neutralized instinctual energy at the disposal of the ego, may be relatively or absolutely divorced from unconscious fantasy. This not only explains the relative inefficacy of early transference interpretation, but also hints on the possible limitations in the potentialities of analysis attributable to secondary autonomy of the ego considered being irreversible. In certain cases, moreover, it is suggested that analysis of precarious or seriously pathological defences - particularly those concerned with the control of aggressive impulses - may not only be ineffective, but dangerous. The relative failures of ego development in such cases not only preclude the serious regressive, often predominantly hostile transference situations. In certain cases, therefore, a preliminary period of psychotherapy is recommended to explore the capacities of the patient to tolerate a traditional psychoanalysis. In others, as Robert Knight, in his paper on borderline states, and as many analysts working with psychotic patient has suggested. Psychoanalytic procedure is not considered applicable. Instead, a therapeutic approach based on analytic understanding that, in essence, uses an essentially implicit positive transference for reinforcing, than analysing the precarious defences of the individual, is advocated.
In contrast, Herbert Rosenfeld has approached even severely disturbed psychotic patients with small modifications of psychoanalytic technique. Only changes that the severity in therapy is not emphasized since primitive fantasy is considered active under all circumstances. The most primitive period is viewed as early object relations with special stress on prosecutory anxiety related to the death instinct. Interpretations of this primitive fantasy in the transference situation, is considered to diminish rather than to increase psychotic anxiety and offer the best opportunity of strengthening the severely threatened psychotic ego. Other analysts, Dr. Winnicott, for example, an attribute psychosis mainly to severe traumatic experiences, particularly of deprivation in early infancy. According to this view, profound regression offers an opportunity to fulfil, in the transference situation, primitive needs that had not been met at the appropriate level of development. Similar suggestions have been proposed by Margolin and others, in the concept of anaclitic treatment of serious psychosomatic disease. This approach is also based on the premise that the inevitable regression shown by certain patients should be used in therapy, for gratifying, in an extremely permissive transference situation, demands that had not been met in infancy. It must, for this, be of note, that the gratifications recommended in the treatment of severely disturbed patients are determined by the conviction that these patients are incapable of developing transference as we understand it in connection with neurosis and must therefore be handled by a modified technique?
The opinions so far considered, is, nonetheless a great deal more than they may differ in certain respects, are nonetheless all based on the fundamental premise that an essential difference between analysis and other methods of therapy depends on whether interpretation of transference is an integral feature of technical procedure. Results based on the effects of suggestion are to be avoided, as far as possible, whenever traditional technique is employed. This goal has, nonetheless, proved more difficult to achieve. Freud expected when he first discerned the significance of symptomatic recovery based on positive transference. The importance of suggestion, even in the most strict analytic methods, has been repeatedly stressed by Edward Glover and others. Widespread and increasing emphasis as to the part played by the analyst’s personality in determining the nature of the individual transference also implies recognition of unavoidable suggestive tendencies in the therapeutic process. Many analysts today believe that the classical conception of analytic objectivity and anonymity cannot be maintained. Instead, thorough analysis of reality aspects of the therapists personality and point of view are able prerequisite for the dynamic changes already discussed in relation to the end of analysis. It thus remains the ultimate of the psychoanalysis, whatever their theoretical orientation, to avoid, as far as is humanly possible, results based on the unrecognized or unanalysed action of suggestion, and to maintain, as a primary goal, the resolution of such results through consistent and careful interpretation.
There are, however, many therapists, both within and outside the field of the psychoanalysis, who consider that the transference situation should not be handled only or mainly as a setting for interpretation even in the treatment or analysis of neurotic patients. Instead, they advocate use of the transference relationship for the manipulation of corrective emotional experience. The theoretical orientation of those using this concept of transference may be closer to, or more distant form, a Freudian point of view according to the degree to which current relationships are seen as determined by past events. At one extreme, current aspects and cultural factors are considered very important: At the other, mental development is viewed to inherent limitations of the analytic method rather than to essentially changed conceptions of the early phases of mental development. Of this group, Alexander is perhaps the best example. It is thirty years since, in his Salzburg paper, he suggested the tendency for patients to regress, even after apparently successful transference analysis of the oedipal situation to narcissistic dependent pregenital levels that prove stubborn nd refractory to transference interpretation, in his more recent work, the role of regression in the transference situation has been increasingly stressed. The emergence and persistence of dependent, pregenital demands’ in a very wide range of clinical conditions, it is arguably suggested that the encouragement of a regressive transference situation is undesirable and therapeutically ineffective. The analyst, therefore, should when threatens adopt a definite role explicitly differing from the behaviour of the parents in early childhood on order to cause therapeutic results through a corrective emotional experience in the transference situation. This, it is suggested, will prevent the tendency to regression, thus curtailing the length of treatment and improving therapeutic results. Limitation of regressive manifestations by active steps modifying traditional analytic procedure in a variety of ways is also frequently suggested, according to this point of view.
To those who clearly maintain the conviction that interpretation of all transference manifestation remain an essential feature of the psychoanalysis, the type of modification presently described, though based on a Freudian reconstruction of the early phases of mental development, represents as major modification. It is determined by a conviction that psychoanalysis, as a therapeutic method, has limitations related to the tendency to regression, which cannot be resolved by traditional technique. Moreover, the fundamental premise on which the conception of corrective emotional experience is based minimizes the significance of insight and recall. It is, essentially, suggested that corrective emotional experience alone may cause qualitative dynamic alternations in mental structure, which can lead to a satisfactory therapeutic goal. This implies a definite modification of the analytic hypothesis those current problems are determined by the defences against instinctual impulses and internalized objects that had been set up during the decisive periods of early development. An analytic result therefore is depending on the revival, repetition and mastery of early conflicts if the current experience on the transference situation with insight an indispensable feature of an analytic goal.
Since certain important modifications are applicable concepts latent upon the regression of the transference situation, it should be to believe that to consider this concept in relation to the repetition compulsion, that transference is essentially a revival of earlier emotional experiences, much of which can be related as a manifestation of the repetition compulsion that is generally accepted. Distinguishing it between repetition on compulsion as an attempt to master traumatic experience and repetition compulsion as an attempt to return to a real or fantasied earlier state of rest or gratification is, however, necessary. Lagache, in a recent paper, announced that the repetition compulsions to an inherent need to regress back to any problem that had previously been left unsolved, in that, from this point of view, the regressive aspects of the transference situation are to be regarded as a necessary preliminary to the mastery of unresolved conflict. From the second point of view, however, the regressive aspects of transference are mainly attributed to a wish to return to an earlier state of rest or narcissistic gratification, to the maintenance of the status quo instead of any progressive action, and finally, to Freud’s original conception of the death instinct. There is a good deal to suggest that both aspects of the repetition compulsion may be seen in the regressive aspects of every analysis. To those who feel that regressive self-destructive forces tend to be stronger than progressive libidinal impulses, the potentialities of the analytic approach will be limited. Those, by contrast, who regard the reappearance in the transference situation of earlier conflicts as an indication of tendencies to master and progress will continue to feel that the classical analytic method remains the optimal approach to psychological illness wherever it is applicable.
In the attemptive efforts in trying to show an outline in some current problems of transference both in relation to the history of psychoanalytic thought and in relation to the theoretical premises on which they are based. In that, regarding contemporary views that advocate serious modifications of analytic technique, it cannot be to improve in the remarks made by Ernest Jones, in his Introduction to the Salzburg Symposium thirty years ago. Depreciation of the Freudian (infantile) factors at the expense of the pre-Freudian, 'pre-infantile' and 'post-infantile', is a highly characteristic manifestation of the general human resistance against the former, being usually a flight from the Oedipus conflict that is the centre of infantile factors. We also can note that in the practice to showing a psychoanalysis it really does not always insure immunity from this reaction. With regard, to the important problems that arise from genuine scientific differences within the framework of traditional technique, the focussing of issues for discussion by emphasizing as objectively as possible divergence rather than agreement. All of which, by which the primary importance of transference analysis may have accepted as significant modifications of traditional technique as either shortening analysis or accepting a modified analytic goal, as to the basic importance of understanding the significance and dangers of countertransference manifestations. Unfortunately, however, this vitally important unconscious reaction is not limited to the individual analytic situation. It may also be aroused in respect to scientific theories both within and outside our special fields of knowledge. Therefore, resolutions of the individual transference situation depend on the analyst’s understanding of his own countertransference, so too, similar insight and objectivity on a wider scale may determine of the problems outlined above.
In a balanced way, we, once, again, point out Freud’s statement, as he writes regarding transference resistance: Thus, the solution of the puzzle is that transference to the doctor is suitable for resistance to the treatment only in as far as it is a negative transference or a positive transference of repressed erotic impulses. If we ‘remove’ the transference by making it conscious, we are detaching only those two components of the emotional set from the person of the doctor, the other component, which is admissible consciousness and unobjectionably, persists and is the vehicle of success in the psychoanalysis exactly as it is in other methods of Treatment (1912).
The 'negative transference' and 'positive transference of repressed impulses' have generally been accepted as sources of resistance, although we have come to recognize that 'removing' they by making them conscious are much more difficult than it sounds. However, most of us have no doubts about the necessity of resolving them to a considerable extent, even if we are not so optimistic about being able to ‘remove’ them. How often we do all we can in this respect is open to question.
Strictly speaking, our attentions will personify to what Freud called ‘the other component', which is admissible to consciousness and unobjectionable, persists and is the vehicle of success in analysis. . . . 'On the face of it, assuming that there is some is reasonable enough factors that allow the patient to begin work and to continue to cooperate during analysis, and that this factor bears some relation to the positive transference, without, however, being clearly based on ‘repressed erotic impulses.'
Inevitably, this brings us to question how we are first to cultivate this component, which is essential for the success of the analysis, what is to be done with it as the analysis ends, and how we may recognize and understand the origins, development, and meaning of this useful, even essential component. The answer to the latter question, is basically by no clear means. This positive component has hardly been neglected in the literature and in clinical work, but we may question whether it has been subjected to the same degree of analytic scrutinies as have other elements of the transference. It has been exploited most obviously by those who developed the concept of the 'alliance' between patient and analyst, for example, Greenson (1967) and Zetzel (1970). Greenson emphasized that the working alliance is indeed part of the transference, just when contrasting it with the full-blown transference neurosis, also he sees them as parallel antithetical forces in the analysis. Elsewhere, he refers to ‘transference reactions, a working alliance and [the] real relationship’.
Greenson and Zetzel are not alone or even in a minority in considering some concept such as the working alliance integral to our understanding of the therapeutic process in analysis. There are many variants: Erikson’s (1959) ‘basic trust’, many references to ‘rapport’, and the like. One way or another they all are related to Freud’s 'unobjectionable' component, although we may conclude that their true sources are far more ancient.
For appropriate reasons, the terms working alliance and therapeutic alliance have entered the common idiomatic expression of analysis and perhaps make more even the variants of analysis classed as psychotherapy. A positional claim to which it can seem as generally stated that an adequate alliance is a prerequisite for successful therapy, which on them face of it might seem unquestionable. Of course, the patient must be willing to manage to do his best to conform to the behavioural demands of the treatment, to come to the analyst’s office with some regularity, to talk as transparently honest as he can, to make a payment of his bills and generally to show that he and the analyst have some goals in common. If, on the other hand, he behaves in a way that made the analysis impossible, we could lay claim to an adequate alliance that was never established or, if it were, not maintained. Nevertheless, if all goes smoothly, we might congratulate ourselves onto the support of a good working alliance.
A finer calibrated accompaniment with Brenner (1979) and Curtis (1979), and others a serious concern about the usefulness of the concept and the adherent direction and, even more, about its capacity to be misleading by encouraging the blurring of important transference elements and impeding our search for the nature of the ‘unobjectionable’ component, to which, Freud referred.
In particular, when patients express, as they go on expressing their transference to feelings, predominantly positive, respectful, and sometimes affectionate, employ the very effective devices of selfly limited and only rarely deeply disturbing episodic events to experiences, often dispose of their necrotic symptoms within a few months of beginning analysis, and they go on annualizing just as eagerly as before. Resistance is expressed with silences, usually not at all, to a very prolonged, on one side of a complaint, not factually insufferable, or by acting out, not particularly disruptive. One condition, however, does not change. These attractive people may be married or single, living with a lover or alone. Nevertheless, they are not in love and doubt the capacity for passionate sexuality. There may be affectionate, but sexual intensities seem strangely distant and lacking in these otherwise sensitive and often loving individuals.
In them, at any rate, the transference neurosis is very highly developed, taking on distinctly oedipal forms: It is powerfully defended by these patients, who show in their characteristics of brilliant, charming, and precocious children, who of a superficial level appear very mature. The main current of their sexuality becomes directed into the analysis, turning the process into a kind of exciting, yet innocent, liaison. When this transference neurosis is brought to these patients’ attention, that is, interpreted for what it is, the reaction is likely to be dramatic: Most often they become anxious and depressed, experience great difficulty in associating, stop remembering dreams, and may be inclined to engage in acting out. This may be the one area of interpretation that produces a distinct reaction of anger and some distress. The analysis is no longer such an unalloyed pleasure, and one almost regrets having introduced the subject. After all, the machine had been running so smoothly.
The commonality is that of a highly intelligible combination of developed ego and super-ego organization, the use of sophisticated and effective defences and a history of having established a well-developed oedipal organization, and difficulty in achieving resolution of the conflicts arising out of the phase type of transference neurosis. Assiduously, to evoke complications and complexities in the reactions in the analyst, stimulating his own transference neurosis or, as it is more a comfortable situation dominated by mutual reciprocity, appreciative and intellectual competition. It is likely, therefore, that such patients will evoke of the analyst what corresponds to the 'unobjectionable' component of the transference. He finds himself regarding the patient as if he or she were a favourite child, going out of his way to be kindly and protectively considerate, in that of the appreciating patient’s accomplishments, and so on.
Although such attitudes are kept strictly within the bounds of analytic propriety, these patient types are too sensitive to allow otherwise, their subtle effects may, nonetheless, be hostile to the analytic process, perpetuating infantile patterns by the analysand, and making it very difficult for both parties to cause a proper cancellation. In this respect the analysis of the ‘good’ patient offers difficulties that, while they are less upsetting than determinants responsible laded upon the status quo and it's fractional determinates. As, presented by others, more challenging as, if, by conquest, are the patients who are justly as important to a resolution by which any inexhaustible force of attentions weave themselves into the transference resistance concealed by the overpowering attributions by making some presents on one side.
The emphasis placed upon the role in the resistance of such as rationality, intelligence, and the capacity for cooperative efforts should not be construed as a denigration of their vital part in making analysis at all possible, components of any mature, not to say civilized, behaviour. All the same, however, reminding ourselves from time to time that even the essential may be necessary and finely construct instruments are double-edged, and these aspects of character are no exception. We are simply less likely to perceive the same as their function and not only in resolving, but in maintaining neurosis, and they may operate by seducing the analyst into the self-satisfying belief that he has accomplished far more than is in fact the case. Sadly, therefore, we must confront and analyse unsparingly those traits we are most likely to admire, least of mention, that the same principles and problems would apply if the structure of the neurosis had been more firmly rooted in pre-oedipal than in oedipal conflict. The difficulties would simply have been more severe for both analyst and patient.
During the intervening time, as to solving the problem of analysing the transference neurosis, necessary for more than purely abstract reasons, would have a justifiable impossible. Following Freud’s (1913) principle, which of his earlier statement he had not only described this unobjectionable part of the transference, but went further: ‘while the patient’s communications and ideas run in without any obstruction, the theme of transference should be left untouched’ working alliance and, while not quoted by Kohut (1971), may have contributed to his specific advice to delay interpreting positively, idealizing statements made by the narcissistic analysand.
If we examine Freud’s statement more closely, we are struck by many difficulties. First, what is meant by ‘admissible to consciousness’? In 1912, it implied that this transference component was part of the system PcsCs. Since during this period interpretation consisted in essence of making conscious that which had been unconscious, it would in any case have been irrelevant, if not conceptually impossible, to do more than is depicted by the patient’s attention (hyper-cathexis) to it, but there could be no question of unconscious elements playing an important role.
With patients to whom of many derivatives of oedipal fantasies, may be largely within awareness. Nonerotic or de-erotised admiration and affection may be conscious from the first, and their role in the analytic process may be quite clear. What is generally obscure is the role of this positive, overtly Nonerotic transference in maintaining a powerful resistance, not only to the resolution of inhibitions, but also to the analytic exploration of hidden springs of defiance and revenge. What looks accessible to consciousness may be so only in part: What seems free of suppressed erotic impulses may be not so in fact, and what seemed altogether unobjectionable may after a time constitutes the most difficult aspect of the transference neurosis. What appears on the surface to be so very positive may also be the screen for stubborn aggressive elements, in that respect a persistent obstacle to analytic resolution.
To return to Freud’s 1912 formulation, we need to be reminded that he never regarded consciousness as a simple matter, but always conceived of it as fluid and uncertain of definition. This is evident in The Interpretation of Dreams and is elaborated in his brilliant little paper, A Note upon the Mystic Writing-Pad (1925) in which he presents a view of consciousness as not simply a passive receptor, but bring dependent on an active function: This agrees with a notion that has long since been at work the method by which the perceptual apparatus of our mind functions, which I have as yet kept to myself.
Its theory is that cathectic innervations are sent out, withdrawn in rapid peridotic impulses from within into the completely pervious system Pcpty.-Cs. If that system is cathected in this manner, it receives perceptions (which are accompanied by consciousness) and passes the excitation onto the unconscious anemic system, but as soon. As the cathexis is withdrawn, consciousness is extinguished. The functioning. Of the system comes to a standstill. It is as though the unconscious stretches. Out feelers, through the medium of the system Pcpty.-Cs. Toward the external world and hastily withdraws them when they have sampled the excitations coming from it.
Freud might have been describing a kind of psychic radar, an ingenious device by which the mind tests external reality. In any casse, a careful reading of his work from the Project (1895) to the New Introductory Lectures (1933) gives no comfort to those who would see a simple definition of what was meant by ‘admissible to consciousness’. How accessible, how fleeting, under what conditions, are all open questions, the answer to which are not determined in any simple way.
By 1937, when Freud published, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, it was evident of how much of his views had developed. He no longer insisted on the existence of a relatively simple Nonerotic or de-erotised conscious positive transference that required no analysis. Now, with some regret, he emphasized the presence of conflictual elements that were inaccessible to analysis not because they were conscious and ‘unobjectionable’, but because they were latent or inactive during the treatment. They could, in fact, be very objectionable indeed. Not the least of these conflicts were those centred on the transference that, unanalyzed, could so often predispose to future difficulties.
These latent conflicts, he decided, could not be brought into the analysis by the analyst, either by verbal intrusions or by active manipulation, manoeuvres he regarded as both ineffective and potentially damaging. Yet in the same paper he stated what is a contradiction, in his disavowal of the principle of ‘letting sleeping dogs lie’. He went further: ‘Analytic experience has taught us that the better is always the enemy of good and that in every phase of the patient’s recovery we fight against his inertia, which is ready to be content with an incomplete solution’ (Freud, 1937).
Defining it precisely what would justify that we are to regarding a conflict as an inactive or latent and therefore inaccessible to analysis is difficult. Undoubtedly, some conflicts are so heavily defended from analysis that as good as we suspect their presence, but we are baffled to uncover them, much less to analyse them. We may become aware of them only when the patient returns to us for further help or when he enters analysis with a colleague and lets us know of his decision. Achieving some comfort by convincing ourselves that condition had not been propitious is possible, for example, that the patient was a candidate in training, was caught in a difficult marriage or in another situation that favoured stubborn resistances. No doubt this is often the case - still, was that the only reason? Could we and should we have done more?
The analyst, by his very presence and his willingness to listen, sets up a relationship described by Bird (1972) as ‘false’ transference', to become in effect ‘the worst enemy of the transference’. To some analysts are agreeable with this assessment of the complications inherent in this necessary, early development of the analytic situation, however, the inclining inclination of being ‘false’ is regarded as controversial, it is often manifested before the first visit, sometimes even in transparent dreams, and as such it reflects the wishes and fantasies of the patient rather than that his recognition of the reality of the situation.
Questioning ourselves would be wise, therefore, as to the nature of this response, to ask which conflicts are being expressed and concealed by it, and to what extent it is dependent on the reality of the analytic situation, the patient’s conviction that the person he consults is benign, wise, and helpful is, we hope, justified by the reality. Yet we know well enough that a patient may experience extreme distrust of an analyst who is in fact perfectly trustworthy, and conversely he may place his implicit confidence in one who deserves it not at all. The personal success of so many charlatans in the mental health field is evidence enough.
This positive response to the analyst corresponds in part at least to Freud’s unobjectionable component, and in its more developed phases it may be called the working alliance. Yet though it is necessary and useful for initiating and maintaining the analysis, we are hardly justified in concluding that it is altogether accessible to consciousness, nor that it is by its unobjectable nature. In fact, it carried a particular heavy load of unconscious conflict, much of which has to be repressed in order for the treatment to begin, and its long-term effects often highly objectionable. Eventually, therefore, we need to understand this phenomenon as thoroughly as any other we encounter in analysis. If we accept that eventually it must be interpreted, we accept also that we must study it in detail. But, nonetheless how?
Listening carefully to a patient’s first impressions of us is instructive. They may consist of apparently diverse observations about the furniture of the office, of personal idiosyncrasies, and the like. Just when there is a neglect of such matters as whether or not we are relaxed and confident, youthful or aged in appearance and manner, and other factors we regard as far more significant.
This is not to say that these latter details are not perceived and stored in memory, quite the contrary. However, they are often repressed and subject to distortion, to appear later in the analysis in various forms. Often the patient will question, for example, whether I wear glasses, although he has seen me a hundred times or more, never without them, or he will be wildly wrong in estimating my age, or astonishing becoming aware of a picture that has been facing the couch for years. Such familiar phenomena may, with some effort, be understood and analysed: It is to be believed that they contain the clues that can help us solve the mystery of the unobjectionable element.
The patient’s reaction to and impressions of the analyst are built up of many determinants. They are first and most profoundly the needs and desires he brings to the analysis, the unconscious wishes that seek to be gratified. Superimpose on these are his early impressions of the analyst, derived from a host of perceptions, for example, the mode of referral, the initial telephone call, early impressions of appearance and manner, discussions of indications and conditions for the analysis, including hours and fees. An entry in a new world, it often takes on aan overwhelming quality - far too much to be dealt within a few sessions. Inevitably its effects are manifested throughout even a very long analysis, often in forms that make their sources difficult to detect. Yet before us, is the material of much of the transference, especially of the unobjectionable component.
This aspect is not so willingly scrutinized with the same intensity with which we approach other phenomena. The reasons are, upon examination, not so obscure. For one thing, the trusting, positive attitude of the analysand does allow the analysis to continue, and it is comfortable for the two parties - unless the analyst forces himself to put aside that comfort. Secondly, it seems free of conflict. Third, it seems to make sense, to be entirely rational, that one person should admire and trust another who is so worthy of it. Finally, we are influenced by the dictum that we analyse the transference only when it serves the resistance, advice that would be easy to follow if we could always be sure when that took place. Suspicions are that without much difficulty prescience is a very rare gift. If we resist the temptation to take the positive transference for granted, therefore, we must find some way of analysing a component that on the surface looks unanalyzable.
In 1955 Lewin wrote Dream Psychology and the Analytic Situation, a work that has been insufficiently recognized for its theoretical and technical importance. It described the analyst as fulfilling a double role, first as one who encourages the patient to allow himself to regress, to suspend criticism, to associate freely, to put himself into his past, to allow himself to feel helpless and to restrain his impulses toward physical change of position, although not to oral communication. Lewis pointed out the analogy with hypnosis, with the analyst as inducer of quasi-sleep and dreaming states, in which the wish to analyse is substituted for the wish to sleep.
The encouragement of regression is fundamental to the analytic process, but it is hardly the analyst only function, a fact that may be ignored in many therapeutic innovations. The analyst must also become the one who rouses the ‘dreaming patient’, who interprets, who encourages and guides the process of self-observation. By this token, he is the one who awakens, who insists on the substitution of secondary for primary process. Of higher ego functions for more archaic ones. Inevitably he becomes the transference representative of that agency most often responsibly for insomnia, the conscience.
Perhaps, its venture that the loving, conscious, unobjectionable part of the transference is directed toward the analyst as the one who soothes, who induces sleep and allows the patient to feel less frightened, for he is ‘safe’, but not for a long time can this love be directed toward the one who accomplishers the awakening. Conducting a long treatment is possible, of course, while maintaining one’s role as the inducer of sleep and dreams, to accomplish a good deal in the way of symptom relief, and thus be rewarded by expressions of gratitude. Whether, without fulfilling one’s role as awakener, one may be rewarded by having accomplished effective analysis is another matter.
To employ Lewin’s striking metaphor, it might be taken care of, in that we mindfully experiment in treating the patient’s demands on the analyst as if these were derivative of unconscious wishes expressed in a dream, and that we consider the various perceptions stored and used from time to time as if they were the memories and day residues employed by the dream work. By this device we may treat the patient’s overtly expressed altitudes as if they corresponded to a manifest dream. We make the assumptions that there are unconscious wishes that seek gratification, that such wishes are subject to conflict and must attain expression in disguised forms. To achieve expression, memory traces of percept, including a day residue, are used both to afford a vehicle for the wish fulfilment and to disguise, as far as necessary, their true purpose. Thus, these wishes are allowed to reach consciousness in some form in spite of disapproval by other agencies, e.g., by evading the (preconscious) censorship according to the model described in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900), or the (larger unconscious) repressive functions of the ego and superego according to the later structure model.
The patient’s wishes and fantasies may be worked over further, brought into more rational, logical, organized form by a process analogous to secondary revisions: In the topographic model this depends on the preconscious system, in the structural model it would be considered a manifestation of the synthetic function of the ego. The description of secondary revision, described by Freud in 1900, may be regarded as one of the earliest precursors of the structural model of the ego.
To pursue further the analogies between this aspect of transference and secondary revision of dreams let us look upon the Freudian say-so, atop which Freud wrote, ‘because of its efforts, the dream loses its appearance of absurdity and disconnectedness and approximates to the model of an intelligible experience. The connection of secondary revision with daydreams may also be extended to transferences, how much of the patient’s attitudes is based on fantasies of what the ideal patient-analyst relationship should be? A respectful, finial attitude, an eager pupil-teacher re-enactment, an innocent liaison with no threat os consummation? These are so appropriate, so sensible, so truly helpful to the analysis that we tend to forget how much of the wild aspects of this analysis are thus ‘moulded’ into a kind of daydream.
In what is admittedly a highly simplified fashion, we might consider the case of these patients who treat their analysts as if they were kindly, intelligent, benign, and in a good manner, trained and disciplined, rightly interested and even fond of them, but not a danger in any erotic sense. It seems of reasonable enough description of the actual situation if one does not examine its unconscious components.
Rather than taking this at face value as an intelligent patient’s evaluation of the reality of the analytic situation, accepting gratefully a fine working alliance or an unobjectionable component, if instead we insist upon the arduous and possibly disagreeable task of analysing beliefs and attitudes, we find something very different, far more conflicted, complex, and not altogether benign. The patient has been a model analysand, working hard, associating well, bringing gifts of associations and dreams. For example, she may be charming without being erotically seductive, and faithful to the point of causing concern for both of us. It may be entirely rational, justified by the reality of the situation. It is, of course, much too good to be true, for it is not accompanied by progress in the most urgent therapeutic goals, for example, that of achieving a gratifying sexual life and an ultimately satisfying career. There are also likely to be curious distortions and self-deceptions displayed, for example, when a patient talks of herself as obnoxious and without friends, statements that are manifestly false whatever their unconscious truth. Young women’s patients particularly complain of the usual distortions of a body image so common in them, to being fat and ugly, all of which being quite aware of the contrary. They may be fishing for compliments, but that is not all. These analyses, smooth as they are most of the time, do not altogether result in untroubled ‘sleep’. Sometimes without understanding why, patients become frightened, agitated, and depressed, as if repressed impulses had broken through, like a bad dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment