Phantasies, neurotic-beliefs, and beliefs-proper.

This paper presents a philosophical analysis of three cognitive states familiar and important to psychoanalysts--phantasy, neurotic-belief, and belief-proper. It explores the differences among these three propositional attitudes and finds that the development of secondary process capacities of reality testing and truth directness out of earlier primary process operations (themselves prior to considerations of truth or falsity) plays a crucial role. Difficulties in the proper typing of cognitive states are discussed, as are the consequences of such confounds. This use of a philosophical method serves to sharpen the familiar psychoanalytic clinical concepts of phantasy and neurotic-belief. In addition, these same clinical concepts, once properly specified, have much to offer the philosophy of mind, where current understanding of representational cognitive states is restricted to those that are largely conscious and rational. When psychoanalytic concepts such as phantasy and neurotic-belief can be better integrated within the discipline of philosophy of mind, both philosophers and psychoanalysts will have a more complete and adequate theory of mind.

The primary process and the unconscious: experimental evidence supporting two psychoanalytic presuppositions.

The authors report on two experiments designed to test an important feature of the primary process: unconscious categorisation by attributes rather than by relations. These experiments were designed to provide support, independently of the clinical situation, for the presupposition of a psychological unconscious and for the presupposition that unconscious mentation is organised along primary-process lines. Their results were encouraging. They found that (1) unconscious similarity judgements could be made; and (2) these judgements were based on attributes (a primary-process mechanism) rather than relationships (a secondary-process mechanism). This independent evidence, obtained in controlled experimental studies supporting two fundamental psychoanalytic presuppositions, should be welcome news to psychoanalysts, given the continuing criticism from many quarters that basic psychoanalytic ideas lack independent validation. This paper begins with an overview of the primary processes with a special focus on the role of categorisation by attribute, the particular aspect of primary process explored in this study. Next a brief history of previous empirical investigations of primary process is given, following which the current experiments are presented.

On knowing the unconscious: lessons from the epistemology of geometry and space.

Concepts involving unconscious processes and contents are central to any understanding of psychoanalysis. Indeed, the dynamic unconscious is familiar as a necessary assumption of the psychoanalytic method. Using the manner of knowing the geometry of space, including non-ordinary sized space, this paper attempts to demonstrate by analogy the possibility of knowing (and knowing the nature of) unconscious mentation-that of which by definition we cannot be aware; and yet that which constitutes a basic assumption of psychoanalysis. As an assumption of the psychoanalytic method, no amount of data from within the psychoanalytic method can ever provide evidence for the existence of the unconscious, nor for knowing its nature; hence the need for this sort of illustration by analogy. Along the way, three claims are made: (1) Freudian 'secondary process' operating during everyday adult, normal, logical thought can be considered a modernised version of the Kantian categories. (2) Use of models facilitates a generation of outside-the-Kantian-categories possibilities, and also provides a conserving function, as outside-the-categories possibilities can be assimilated. (3) Transformations are different from translations; knowledge of transformations can provide non-trivial knowledge about various substrates, otherwise difficult to know.

Shall drawing become part of free association?: Proposal for a modification in psychoanalytic technique.

Three psychoanalytic case vignettes are presented where drawing is used beneficially as part of the free-associative process. The history of the psychoanalytic use of drawing is briefly reviewed, together with a new technical proposal regarding the role of drawing in free association. Justification for testing this modification leads to a consideration of methodological issues and the nature of free association. Possible advantages of this modification, including enhanced clinical understanding through integration of pictorial and verbal modes, and greater potential for access to the period of life where experience is more visually dominated, are considered and also discussed in relation to dual hemispheric mental organization.

Understanding negative hallucination: toward a developmental classification of disturbances in reality awareness.

Negative hallucinations are explored from a psychodynamic viewpoint in four cases of neurosis. Next, shifting to the level of clinical theory, negative hallucinations are contrasted with five better-studied disturbances in reality awareness. It is noted that all six function as screen phenomena, and all occur in everyday contexts. These and other phenomenological issues lead to an assertion that negative hallucinations are regressive perceptual phenomena, similar in form to both preconscious perceptions and infantile amnesia. Finally, developmental considerations are used to derive a coherent hierarchy of disturbances in reality awareness.