1895-1995

A reading of Freud's Outline of a Scientific Psychology - Part.1 

 

Note à l'adresse des lecteurs français:

   Les pages ci-dessous et suivante rendent compte du décodage du texte sans doute le plus obscur de Freud; écrit par ce dernier au moment où il découvre et pratique la Cocaïne. C'est le premier écrit de Freud, pratiquement un brouillon, en quelque sorte inachevé car il précède la psychanalyse. Lorsqu'on l'étudie en détail, on constate que Freud s'enfonce et s'épuise dans les profondeurs de sa première théorie, jusqu'à ce qu'à la fin, en l'appliquant à l'observation pratique d'un cas de névrose, il y définisse deux degrés de mensonge. Or au moment où il arrive au mensonge secondaire, au moment où il doit déplacer le rendez-vous qu'il a pris avec le cas clinique qu'il emploie comme modèle, il oublie qu'on vient d'installer le téléphone à son cabinet, rate son rendez-vous, et interrompt, inachevé son étude pour une Psychologie Scientifique. Le moment suivant, il délaisse son observation thermodynamique et biochimique (décrite ci-dessous) et invente sa méta-psychologie: la psychanalyse.
   Le texte qu'il laissa donc est séminal et en même temps refoulé, il constitue la preuve que la psychanalyse est une intuition de la chimie du cerveau, secondairement exprimée selon le refoulement de l'outil cybernétique (téléphone à l'époque, qui allait vite devenir l'électronique numérique qui aujourd'hui indique ouvertement ses fins en terme de technologie des codes biologiques, c.a.d la cybernétique).

Commentators of Sigmund Freud's Outline make notice that, at the very opening of its introduction, Freud seems to allude to another Outline (Outline for a Psychology of Psychic Phenomena) by a Sigmund Exner who wrote : "All quantity and quality of conscious phenomena as sensation, perception and representation, can be reduced to quantitative stimulations varying on a variety of places." (Exner expressed that there were no need to theorize the existence of special neurons for various brain phenomena but a system of quantity - e.g, Thermodynamics)

One knows what this does also mean :
"mobile data at various places" defines the Art of Memory.

So Freud begins (as far as the Outline is really the beginning of his career) in mentioning the principle of the Art of Memory (though, as we know, Freud never referred definitely to an ancient Art of Memory, nor Trismegistus and all that corpus of knowledge which he seems to have ignored, yet re-enacted intuitively).
It is especially interesting, since further in his text, he represses and contradicts Exner's reduction idea (as if, mirroring Sigmund's title - Outline - Sigmund casts his assent in the negative).
It is this repression that I shall first examine herein.




Before manifesting this symptom, Freud completes his introduction with a very clear and major principle of inertia. According to this principle of inertia, a living system would try to avoid incoming Energy from the outside

Incoming Energy from Exterior : :Life escaping perturbation

Life shows also that, in order to escape damaging influx of Energy [E], it develops internal needs (soma - respiration, feeding, muscular activity etc...), so that the organism itself will store and emit within itself, an influx that can be called Force [F] (i.e., internal source of Energy or life storage of Energy - that Freud writes Qn).


Here is the static graph of Freud's Primary System


It can be imagined as Cosmic Energy [red] surrounding
Earth [blue] which develops an internal industrial
Force


At that point, we can begin to evoke what repressed by S.Freud.




Following this introductive Thermodynamics, Freud writes, in Chapter 7 : " lets have courage to admit that a certain type of neurons supports consciousness and perception " - that is in absolute contradiction with Exner's introductive quote (re:above). Freud calls these neurons of his invention, "" neurons - and later he will invent another so-called 'key' neurons.

Looking twice to this blatant contradiction, we can find in Chapter 3, the premise of the repression of Exner's notion - but at that point, I must give more explicit details/comments :



A third schema illustrates the effects of this secondary energy called Force, that the nervous system tries again to avoid (as it primarly managed to avoid the Energy from the exterior). Freud makes two notations there : first, with an internal differentiation, a system of membranes must now separate cells - second, the nervous system will now resist (instead of escape), building its membranes as barriers (whom we call today 'synapses').
Therefore Freud initially described two types of neurons ( & ) - one of them , , being specially defended by barriers, while is permeable (as allowing Force for evacuating, in a reflex action).

which differentiates from somatic cells. builds on a system of
barriers (resistance) that allows storage and organization of Force

As stimulations persist and/or smash down the barriers,
one can see
neurons gradually becoming permeable,
(so creating a "path" which clears way to the Force)
.
So can we model as a variable state of cell which oscillates
between a somatic state of cell, unable to transmit anything,
and
a pure conductive cell for bioenergetic quanta.

Yet, if we take a close look at Freud's description of the barriers (the intercellular/chemical space which is called today 'synapse') we make a remarkable observation : as freud 'invents' (in 1895) the notion of 'membrane, - in order to avoid a notion of 'resistant,' i.e. charged, neuron - the barrier he describes simply matches the definition of... a charged neuron! As if simply giving another name to it.

If Freud displaces the name of a 'neuron' to call a 'membrane' (chap.3) before inventing a neuron (chap.7) where, according to Exner, there is none, one can ask: what is he hiding?
It is not difficult to bring forth the hypothesis that what is repressed there, is the data regarding cocaine (that Freud uses at the time he writes his Outline), for this drug calls for the notion of chemical mediator that characterize today's synapses.




To find the place of his drug in the text of a psychologist who invents a scientific psychology under its influence is not a shocking discovery (since the significand of this drug is expected in the text) - what is more shocking is to realize how many - from pious to dubious - commentators did not even evoke such a necessited presence. It suggests that Freud's repression was due to a deeper structural motive that the simple mundane censorship.

So it may be relevant to mention here, the current advanced linguistics that theorize or depict impossibilities in naming a certain contact zone in between two similar life units (for example the existential relation/reflection between me and me, that would form a 'meme').

Freud, like Aaron, like Dawkins, slip on the name to which their discovery points. It is at this point that we ourselves try to stand; as I claim that an ecological - global - reference will bring us the support to ground an elucidation of the fading meme... To tackle this challenge a schema to sum up the situation will probably be useful.

One can illustrate Freud's idea with a schema which shows
a first type of neuron
- which simply leaves the Energy passing,
plus a second type, he calls
, which intervenes as a barrier
within a somatic reserve which process the energy as a Force

(this opposes a barrier to the Force until
pressure may break it down as a
- re:above)

This graph may appears similar with Freud's ulterior graph (of the Crowd).
Should we be surprised ? Certainly not; it is, on the contrary,
most probable that a schematization of one's early thinking
would match a later schema of a researcher.


We shall be especially comforted in this illustration if, continuing to read Freud, we find even more of the 1895 Outline to match the later Model of the Crowd (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego). After this interpretation of chap.3 (the premise of the repression), let us thus examine the chap.7 (the repression), where Freud covers, with a neuron, Exner's idea that there is none. Then after we shall continue with further chapters:




"Since the quality of influx (of 'E') cannot be discriminated, either by nor by (which deal both with quantity), there must be" - Freud say - "a third type of neuron" [we know that, in saying so, he contradicts the opening of his own essay - re: Exner sus] - and he insists with his deny, saying that these neurons must be sensible to the period which makes the quality [that is just giving another name for the same problem].

At that point, it is very easy for me to suggest something instead of this intellectual catastrophe - for I have been studying for a long time a notion of Code - aka seriality (J.P.Sartre-R.D.Laing) - which tallies Exner's notion of a variety of places (that suffices to represent the quality).
I suggest that the system of perception (system of consciousness) - that Freud invents as - can be identified by the sole arrangement of regular neurons in a Code Series [that is a improve version of Exner's conception].

 

In all my modelization, over the years, I have designated this
code domain,
'', at a certain location in Freud's Crowd Model
that fits with the present illustration of the Outline ideas.

'' is not a neuron, but the specific serial relation which
organizes the series of somatic receptors  in a Code arrangement

(while either opposes resistance or opens paths
towards 
that represents life's permeable principle)

En cliquant sur l'image on trouve
l'assimilation des à la localisation
du moi freudien, alias Semblant

 





I pause in my presentation at this point. Again I  will build it gradually - leaving for the following chapters to prove or contradict, confirm or dismiss the illustration I am composing step by step. For the moment, Chap.7 has also shown how it fits to the ulterior model of the Crowd.

I shall continue the matching test in the
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