René Descartes, in his epoch-making Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), had argued that minds and bodies are two distinct kinds of being or substance with two distinct kinds of attributes or modes: bodies are characterized by spatiotemporal physical properties, while minds are characterized by properties of thinking (including seeing, feeling, etc.). Centuries later, phenomenology would find, with Brentano and Husserl, that mental acts are characterized by consciousness and intentionality, while natural science would find that physical systems are characterized by mass and force, ultimately by gravitational, electromagnetic, and quantum fields. Where do we find consciousness and intentionality in the quantum-electromagnetic-gravitational field that, by hypothesis, orders everything in the natural world in which we humans and our minds exist? That is the mind-body problem today. In short, phenomenology by any other name lies at the heart of the contemporary, mind-body problem.
After Ryle, philosophers sought a more explicit and generally naturalistic ontology of mind. In the 1950s materialism was argued anew, urging that mental states are identical with states of the central nervous system. The classical identity theory holds that each token mental state (in a particular person's mind at a particular time) is identical with a token brain state (in that person's brain at that time). A weaker materialism holds, instead, that each type of mental state is identical with a type of brain state. But materialism does not fit comfortably with phenomenology. For it is not obvious how conscious mental states as we experience them-sensations, thoughts, emotions-can simply be the complex neural states that somehow subserve or implement them. If mental states and neural states are simply identical, in token or in type, where in our scientific theory of mind does the phenomenology occur-is it not simply replaced by neuroscience? And yet experience is part of what is to be explained by neuroscience.
In the late 1960s and 1970s the computer model of mind set it, and functionalism became the dominant model of mind. On this model, mind is not what the brain consists in (electrochemical transactions in neurons in vast complexes). Instead, mind is what brains do: They are function of mediating between information coming into the organism and behaviour proceeding from the organism. Thus, a mental state is a functional state of the brain or of the human or an animal organism. More specifically, on a favourite variation of functionalism, the mind is a computing system: Mind is to brain as software is to hardware; Thoughts are just programs running on the brain's "NetWare.” Since the 1970s the cognitive sciences-from experimental studies of cognition to neuroscience-have tended toward a mix of materialism and functionalism. Gradually, however, philosophers found that Phenomenological aspects of the mind pose problems for the functionalist paradigm too.
In the early 1970s Thomas Nagel argued in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974) that consciousness itself-especially the subjective character of what it is like to have a certain type of experience-escapes physical theory. Many philosophers pressed the case that sensory qualia-what it is like to feel pain, to see red, etc.-are not addressed or explained by a physical account of either brain structure or brain function. Consciousness has properties of its own. And yet, we know, it is closely tied to the brain. And, at some level of description, neural activities implement computation.
In the 1980s John Searle argued in Intentionality (1983) (and further in The Rediscovery of the Mind (1991)) that intentionality and consciousness are essential properties of mental states. For Searle, our brains produce mental states with properties of consciousness and intentionality, and this is all part of our biology, yet consciousness and intentionality require the "first-person" ontology. Searle also argued that computers simulate but do not have mental states characterized by intentionality. As Searle argued, a computer system has of the syntax (processing symbols of certain shapes) but has no semantics (the symbols lack meaning: We interpret the symbols). In this way Searle rejected both materialism and functionalism, while insisting that mind is a biological property of organisms like us: Our brains "secrete" consciousness.
The analysis of consciousness and intentionality is central to phenomenology as appraised above, and Searle's theory of intentionality reads like a modernized version of Husserl's. (Contemporary logical theory takes the form of stating truth conditions for propositions, and Searle characterizes a mental state's intentionality by specifying its "satisfaction conditions"). However, there is an important difference in background theory. For Searle explicitly assumes the basic worldview of natural science, holding that consciousness is part of nature. But Husserl explicitly brackets that assumption, and later phenomenologists-including Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty-seem to seek a certain sanctuary for phenomenology beyond the natural sciences. And yet phenomenology itself should be largely neutral about further theories of how experience arises, notably from brain activity.
The philosophy or theory of mind overall may be factored into the following disciplines or ranges of theory relevant to mind: Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced, analysing the structure-the types, intentional forms and meanings, dynamics, and (certain) enabling conditions-of perception, thought, imagination, emotion, and volition and action.
Neuroscience studies the neural activities that serve as biological substrate to the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Neuroscience will be framed by evolutionary biology (explaining how neural phenomena evolved) and ultimately by basic physics (explaining how biological phenomena are grounded in physical phenomena). Here lie the intricacies of the natural sciences. Part of what the sciences are accountable for is the structure of experience, analysed by phenomenology.
Cultural analysis studies the social practices that help to shape or serve as cultural substrate of the various types of mental activity, including conscious experience. Here we study the import of language and other social practices. Ontology of mind studies the ontological type of mental activity in general, ranging from perception (which involves causal input from environment to experience) to volitional action (which involves causal output from volition to bodily movement).
This division of labour in the theory of mind can be seen as an extension of Brentano's original distinction between descriptive and genetic psychology. Phenomenology offers descriptive analyses of mental phenomena, while neuroscience (and wider biology and ultimately physics) offers models of explanation of what causes or gives rise to mental phenomena. Cultural theory offers analyses of social activities and their impact on experience, including ways language shapes our thought, emotion, and motivation. And ontology frames all these results within a basic scheme of the structure of the world, including our own minds.
Meanwhile, from an epistemological standpoint, all these ranges of theory about mind begin with how we observe and reason about and seek to explain phenomena we encounter in the world. And that is where phenomenology begins. Moreover, how we understand each piece of theory, including theory about mind, is central to the theory of intentionality, as it were, the semantics of thought and experience in general. And that is the heart of phenomenology.
There is potentially a rich and productive interface between neuroscience/cognitive science. The two traditions, however, have evolved largely independent, based on differing sets of observations and objectives, and tend to use different conceptual frameworks and vocabulary representations. The distributive contributions to each their dynamic functions of finding a useful common reference to further exploration of the relations between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy.
Forthwith, is the existence of a historical gap between neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy is being productively closed by, among other things, the suggestion that recent understandings of the nervous system as a modeler and predictor bear a close and useful similarity to the concepts of projection and transference. The gap could perhaps be valuably narrowed still further by a comparison in the two traditions of the concepts of the "unconscious" and the "conscious" and the relations between the two. It is suggested that these be understood as two independent "story generators"-each with different styles of function and both operating optimally as reciprocal contributors to each others' ongoing story evolution. A parallel and comparably optimal relation might be imagined for neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy.
For the sake of argument, imagine that human behaviour and all that it entails (including the experience of being a human and interacting with a world that includes other humans) is a function of the nervous system. If this were so, then there would be lots of different people who are making observations of (perhaps different) aspects of the same thing, and telling (perhaps different) stories to make sense of their observations. The list would include neuroscientists and cognitive scientists and psychologists. It would include as well psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and social workers. If we were not too fussy about credentials, it should probably include as well educators, and parents and . . . babies? Arguably, all humans, from the time they are born, spend significant measures of their time making observations of how people (others and themselves) behave and why, and telling stories to make sense of those observations.
The stories, of course, all differ from one another to greater or lesser degrees. In fact, the notion that "human behaviour and all that it entails . . . is a function of the nervous system" is itself a story used to make sense of observations by some people and not by others. It is not my intent here to try to defend this particular story, or any other story for that matter. Very much to the contrary, is to explore the implications and significance of the fact that there ARE different stories and that they might be about the same (some)thing
In so doing, I want to try to create a new story that helps to facilitate an enhanced dialogue between neuroscience/cognitive science, on the one hand, and psychotherapy, on the other. That new story is itself is a story of conflicting stories within . . . what is called the "nervous system" but others are free to call the "self," "mind," "soul," or whatever best fits their own stories. What is important is the idea that multiple things, evident by their conflicts, may not in fact be disconnected and adversarial entities but could rather be fundamentally, understandably, and valuably interconnected parts of the same thing.
Many practising psychoanalysts (and psychotherapists too, I suspect) feel that the observations/stories of neuroscience/cognitive science are for their own activities, least of mention, are at primes of irrelevance, and at worst destructive, and the same probable holds for many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists. Pally clearly feels otherwise, and it is worth exploring a bit why this is so in her case. A general key, I think, is in her line "In current paradigms, the brain has intrinsic activity, is highly integrated, is interactive with the environment, and is goal-oriented, with predictions operating at every level, from lower systems to . . . the highest functions of abstract thought." Contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science has indeed uncovered an enormous complexity and richness in the nervous system, "making it not so different from how psychoanalysts (or most other people) would characterize the self, at least not in terms of complexity, potential, and vagary." Given this complexity and richness, there is substantially less reason than there once was to believe psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are dealing with two fundamentally different thing’s ally suspects, more aware of this than many psychotherapists because she has been working closely with contemporary neuroscientists who are excited about the complexity to be found in the nervous system. And that has an important lesson, but there is an additional one at least as important in the immediate context. In 1950, two neuroscientists wrote: "The sooner we realize that not to expect of expectation itself, which we would recognize the fact that the complex and higher functional Gestalts that leave the reflex physiologist dumfounded in fact send roots down to the simplest basal functions of the CNS, the sooner we will see that the previously terminologically insurmountable barrier between the lower levels of neurophysiology and higher behavioural theory simply dissolves away."
And in 1951 another said, "I am becoming subsequently forwarded by the conviction that the rudiments of every behavioural mechanism will be found far down in the evolutionary scale and represented in primitive activities of the nervous system."
Neuroscience (and what came to be cognitive science) was engaged from very early on in an enterprise committed to the same kind of understanding sought by psychotherapists, but passed through a phase (roughly from the 1950's to the 1980's) when its own observations and stories were less rich in those terms. It was a period that gave rise to the notion that the nervous system was "simple" and "mechanistic," which in turn made neuroscience/cognitive science seem less relevant to those with broader concerns, perhaps even threatening and apparently adversarial if one equated the nervous system with "mind," or "self," or "soul," since mechanics seemed degrading to those ideas. Arguably, though, the period was an essential part of the evolution of the contemporary neuroscience/cognitive science story, one that laid needed groundwork for rediscovery and productive exploration of the richness of the nervous system. Psychoanalysis/psychotherapy of course went through its own story evolution over this time. That the two stories seemed remote from one another during this period was never adequate evidence that they were not about the same thing but only an expression of their needed independent evolutions.
An additional reason that Pally is comfortable with the likelihood that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are talking about the same thing is her recognition of isomorphisms (or congruities, Pulver 2003) between the two sets of stories, places where different vocabularies in fact seem to be representing the same (or quite similar) things. I am not sure I am comfortable calling these "shared assumptions" (as Pally does) since they are actually more interesting and probably more significant if they are instead instances of coming to the same ideas from different directions (as I think they are). In this case, the isomorphisms tend to imply that, rephrasing Gertrude Stein, "that there exists an actual there.” Regardless, Pally has entirely appropriately and, I think, usefully called attention to an important similarity between the psychotherapeutic concept of "transference" and an emerging recognition within neuroscience/cognitive science that the nervous system does not so much collect information about the world as generate a model of it, act in relation to that model, and then check incoming information against the predictions of that model. Pally's suggestion that this model reflects in part early interpersonal experiences, can be largely "unconscious," and so may cause inappropriate and troubling behaviour in current time seems entirely reasonable. So too is she to think of thoughts that there is an interaction with the analyst, and this can be of some help by bringing the model to "consciousness" through the intermediary of recognizing the transference onto the analyst.
The increasing recognition of substantial complexity in the nervous system together with the presence of identifiable isomorphisms provides a solid foundation for suspecting that psychotherapists and neuroscientists/cognitive scientists are indeed talking about the same thing. But the significance of different stories for better understanding a single thing lies as much in the differences between the stories as it does in their similarities/isomorphisms, in the potential for differing and not obviously isomorphic stories productively to modify each other, yielding a new story in the process. With this thought in mind, I want to call attention to some places where the psychotherapeutic and the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific stories have edges that rub against one another rather than smoothly fitting together. And perhaps to ways each could be usefully further evolved in response to those non-isomorphisms.
Unconscious stories and "reality.” Though her primary concern is with interpersonal relations, Pally clearly recognizes that transference and related psychotherapeutic phenomena are one (actually relatively small) facet of a much more general phenomenon, the creation, largely unconsciously, of stories that are understood to be that of what are not necessarily reflective of the "real world.” Ambiguous figures illustrate the same general phenomenon in a much simpler case, that of visual perception. Such figures may be seen in either of two ways; They represent two "stories" with the choice between them being, at any given time, largely unconscious. More generally, a serious consideration of a wide array of neurobiological/cognitive phenomena clearly implies that, as Pally said, that if we could ever see "reality," but only have stories to describe it that result from processes of which we are not consciously aware.
All of this raises some quite serious philosophical questions about the meaning and usefulness of the concept of "reality." In the present context, what is important is that it is a set of questions that sometimes seem to provide an insurmountable barrier between the stories of neuroscientists/cognitive scientists, who by and large think they are dealing with reality, and psychotherapists, who feel more comfortable in more idiosyncratic and fluid spaces. In fact, neuroscience and cognitive science can proceed perfectly well in the absence of a well-defined concept of "reality" and, without being fully conscious of it, does in fact do so. And psychotherapists actually make more use of the idea of "reality" than is entirely appropriate. There is, for example, a tendency within the psychotherapeutic community to presume that unconscious stories reflect "traumas" and other historically verifiable events, while the neurobiological/cognitive science story says quite clearly that they may equally reflect predispositions whose origins reflect genetic information and hence bear little or no relation to "reality" in the sense usually meant. They may, in addition, reflect random "play" (Grobstein, 1994), putting them even further out of reach of easy historical interpretation. In short, with regard to the relation between "story" and "reality," each set of stories could usefully be modified by greater attention to the other. Differing concepts of "reality" (perhaps the very concept itself) gets in the way of usefully sharing stories. The neurobiologists and/or/cognitive scientists' preoccupation with "reality" as an essential touchstone could valuably be lessened, and the therapist's sense of the validation of story in terms of personal and historical idiosyncracies could be helpfully adjusted to include a sense of actual material underpinnings.
The Unconscious and the Conscious. Pally appropriately makes a distinction between the unconscious and the conscious, one that has always been fundamental to psychotherapy. Neuroscience/cognitive science has been slower to make a comparable distinction but is now rapidly beginning to catch up. Clearly some neural processes generate behaviour in the absence of awareness and intent and others yield awareness and intent with or without accompanying behaviour. An interesting question however, raised at a recent open discussion of the relations between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, is whether the "neurobiological unconscious" is the same thing as the "psychotherapeutic unconscious," and whether the perceived relations between the "unconscious" and the"conscious" are the same in the two sets of stories. Is this a case of an isomorphism or, perhaps more usefully, a masked difference?
An oddity of Pally's article is that she herself acknowledges that the unconscious has mechanisms for monitoring prediction errors and yet implies, both in the title of the paper, and in much of its argument, that there is something special or distinctive about consciousness (or conscious processing) in its ability to correct prediction errors. And here, I think, there is evidence of a potentially useful "rubbing of edges" between the neuroscientific/cognitive scientific tradition and the psychotherapeutic one. The issue is whether one regards consciousness (or conscious processing) as somehow "superior" to the unconscious (or unconscious processing). There is a sense in Pally of an old psychotherapeutic perspective of the conscious as a mechanism for overcoming the deficiencies of the unconscious, of the conscious as the wise father/mother and the unconscious as the willful child. Actually, Pally does not quite go this far, but there is enough of a trend to illustrate the point and, without more elaboration, I do not think many neuroscientists/cognitive scientists will catch Pally's more insightful lesson. I think Pally is almost certainly correct that the interplay of the conscious and the unconscious can achieve results unachievable by the unconscious alone, but think also that neither psychotherapy nor neuroscience/cognitive science are yet in a position to say exactly why this is so. So let me take a crack here at a new, perhaps bi-dimensional story that could help with that common problem and perhaps both traditions as well.
A major and surprising lesson of comparative neuroscience, supported more recently by neuropsychology (Weiskrantz, 1986) and, more recently still, by artificial intelligence is that an extraordinarily rich repertoire of adaptive behaviour can occur unconsciously, in the absence of awareness of intent (be supported by unconscious neural processes). It is not only modelling of the world and prediction and error correction that can occur this way but virtually (and perhaps literally) the entire spectrum of behaviour externally observed, including fleeing from threat, approaching good things, generating novel outputs, learning from doing so, and so on.
This extraordinary terrain, discovered by neuroanatomists, electrophysiologists, neurologists, behavioural biologists, and recently extended by others using more modern techniques, is the unconscious of which the neuroscientist/cognitive scientist speaks. It is a terrain so surprisingly rich that it creates, for some people, the inpuzzlement about whether there is anything else at all. Moreover, it seems, at first glance, to be a totally different terrain from that of the psychotherapist, whose clinical experience reveals a territory occupied by drives, unfulfilled needs, and the detritus with which the conscious would prefer not to deal.
As indicated earlier, it is one of the great strengths of Pally's article to suggest that the two terrains may in fact turns out to be the same in many ways, but if they are of the same line, it then becomes the question of whether or not it feels in what way nature resembles the "unconscious" and the "conscious" different? Where now are the "two stories?” Pally touches briefly on this point, suggesting that the two systems differ not so much (or at all?) in what they do, but rather in how they do it. This notion of two systems with different styles seems to me worth emphasizing and expanding. Unconscious processing is faster and handles many more variables simultaneously. Conscious processing is slower and handles several variables at one time. It is likely that there appear to a host of other differences in style as well, in the handling of number for example, and of time.
In the present context, however, perhaps the most important difference in style is one that Lacan called attention to from a clinical/philosophical perspective-the conscious (conscious processing) that has in resemblance to some objective "coherence," that is, it attempts to create a story that makes sense simultaneously of all its parts. The unconscious, on the other hand, is much more comfortable with bits and pieces lying around with no global order. To a neurobiologist/cognitive scientist, this makes perfectly good sense. The circuitry includes the unconscious (sub-cortical circuitry?) assembly of different parts organized for a large number of different specific purposes, and only secondarily linked together to try to assure some coordination? The circuitry preserves the conscious processings (neo-cortical circuitry?), that, on the other hand, seems to both be more uniform and integrated and to have an objective for which coherence is central.
That central coherence is well-illustrated by the phenomena of "positive illusions,” exemplified by patients who receive a hypnotic suggestion that there is an object in a room and subsequently walk in ways that avoid the object while providing a variety of unrelated explanations for their behaviour. Similar "rationalization" is, of course, seen in schizophrenic patients and in a variety of fewer dramatic forms in psychotherapeutic settings. The "coherent" objective is to make a globally organized story out of the disorganized jumble, a story of (and constituting) the "self."
What this thoroughly suggests is that the mind/brain be actually organized to be constantly generating at least two different stories in two different styles. One, written by conscious processes in simpler terms, is a story of/about the "self" and experienced as such, for developing insights into how such a story can be constructed using neural circuitry. The other is an unconscious "story" about interactions with the world, perhaps better thought of as a series of different "models" about how various actions relate to various consequences. In many ways, the latter is the grist for the former.
In this sense, we are safely back to the two story ideas that has been central to psychotherapy, but perhaps with some added sophistication deriving from neuroscience/cognitive science. In particular, there is no reason to believe that one story is "better" than the other in any definitive sense. They are different stories based on different styles of story telling, with one having advantages in certain sorts of situations (quick responses, large numbers of variables, more direct relation to immediate experiences of pain and pleasure) and the other in other sorts of situations (time for more deliberate responses, challenges amenable to handling using smaller numbers of variables, more coherent, more able to defer immediate gratification/judgment.
In the clinical/psychotherapeutic context, an important implication of the more neutral view of two story-tellers outlined above is that one ought not to over-value the conscious, nor to expect miracles of the process of making conscious what is unconscious. In the immediate context, the issue is if the unconscious is capable of "correcting prediction errors,” then why appeal to the conscious to achieve this function? More generally, what is the function of that persistent aspect of psychotherapy that aspires to make the unconscious conscious? And why is it therapeutically effective when it is? Here, it is worth calling special attention to an aspect of Pally's argument that might otherwise get a bit lost in the details of her article: . . . the therapist encourages the wife to stop consciously and consider her assumption that her husband does not properly care about her, and to effort fully consider an alternative view and inhibit her impulse to reject him back. This, in turn, creates a new type of experience, one in which he is indeed more loving, such that she can develop new predictions."
It is not, as Pally describes it, the simple act of making something conscious that is therapeutically effective. What is necessary is too consciously recompose the story (something that is made possible by its being a story with a small number of variables) and, even more important, to see if the story generates a new "type of experience" that in turn causes the development of "new predictions." The latter, I suggest, is an effect of the conscious on the unconscious, an alteration of the unconscious brought about by hearing, entertaining, and hence acting on a new story developed by the conscious. It is not "making things conscious" that is therapeutically effective; it is the exchange of stories that encourages the creation of a new story in the unconscious.
For quite different reasons, Grey (1995) earlier made a suggestion not dissimilar to Pally's, proposing that consciousness was activated when an internal model detected a prediction failure, but acknowledged he could see no reason "why the brain should generate conscious experience of any kind at all." It seems to me that, despite her title, it is not the detection of prediction errors that is important in Pally's story. Instead, it is the detection of mismatches between two stories, one unconscious and the other conscious, and the resulting opportunity for both to shape a less trouble-making new story. That, in brief, is it to why the brain "should generate conscious experience,” and reap the benefits of having a second story teller with which a different style of paraphrasing Descartes, one might know of another in what one might say "I am, and I can think, therefore I can change who I am.” It is not only the neurobiological "conscious" that can undergo change; it is the neurobiological "unconscious" as well.
More generally, the most effective psychotherapy requires the recognitions that assume their responsibility is rapidly emerging from neuroscience/cognitive science, that the brain/mind has evolved with two (or more) independent story tellers and has done so precisely because there are advantages to having independent story tellers that generate and exchange different stories. The advantage is that each can learn from the other, and the mechanisms to convey the stories and forth and for each story teller to learn from the stories of the other are a part of our evolutionary endowment as well. The problems that bring patients into a therapist's office are problems in the breakdown of story exchange, for any of a variety of reasons, and the challenge for the therapist is to reinstate the confidence of each story teller in the value of the stories created by the other. Neither the conscious nor the unconscious is primary; they function best as an interdependent loop with each developing its own story facilitated by the semi-independent story of the other. In such an organization, there is not only no "real,” and no primacy for consciousness, there is only the ongoing development and, ideally, effective sharing of different stories.
There are, in the story I am outlining, implications for neuroscience/cognitive science as well. The obvious key questions are what does one mean (in terms of neurons and neuronal assemblies) by "stories," and in what ways are their construction and representation different in unconscious and conscious neural processing. But even more important, if the story I have outlined makes sense, what are the neural mechanisms by which unconscious and conscious stories are exchanged and by which each kind of story impacts on the other? And why (again in neural terms) does the exchange sometimes break down and fail in a way that requires a psychotherapist-an additional story teller-to be repaired?
Just as the unconscious and the conscious are engaged in a process of evolving stories for separate reasons and using separate styles, so too have been and will continue to be neuroscience/cognitive science and psychotherapy. And it is valuable that both communities continue to do so. But there is every reason to believe that the different stories are indeed about the same thing, not only because of isomorphisms between the differing stories but equally because the stories of each can, if listened to, be demonstrably of value to the stories of the other. When breakdowns in story sharing occur, they require people in each community who are daring enough to listen and be affected by the stories of the other community. Pally has done us all a service as such a person. I hope my reactions to her article will help further to construct the bridge she has helped to lay, and that others will feel inclined to join in an act of collective story telling that has enormous intellectual potential and relates as well very directly to a serious social need in the mental health arena. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that an enhanced skill at hearing, respecting, and learning from differing stories about similar things would be useful in a wide array of contexts.
There is now a more satisfactory range of ideas available [in the field of consciousness studies] . . . They involve mostly quantum objects called Bose-Einstein condensates that may be capable of forming ephemeral but extended structures in the brain (Pessa). Marshall's original idea (based on the work of Frölich) was that the condensates that comprise the physical basis of mind, form from activity of vibrating molecules (dipoles) in nerve cell membranes. One of us (Clarke) has found theoretical evidence that the distribution of energy levels for such arrays of molecules prevents this happening in the way that Marshall first thought. However, the occurrence of similar condensates centring around the microtubules that are an important part of the structure of every cell, including nerve cells, remains a theoretical possibility (del Giudice et al.). Hameroff has pointed out that single-cell organisms such as 'paramecium' can perform quite complicated actions normally thought to need a brain. He suggests that their 'brain' be in their microtubules. Shape changes in the constituent proteins (tubulin) could subserve computational functions and would involve quantum phenomena of the sort envisaged by del Giudice. This raises the intriguing possibility that the most basic cognitive unit is provided, not by the nerve cell synapse as is usually supposed, but by the microtubular structure within cells. The underlying intuition is that the structures formed by Bose-Einstein condensates are the building Forms of mental life; in relation to perception they are models of the world, transforming a pleasant view, say, into a mental structure that represents some of the inherent qualities of that view.
We thought that, if there is anything to ideas of this sort, the quantum nature of awareness should be detectable experimentally. Holism and non-locality are features of the quantum world with no precise classical equivalents. The former presupposes that the interacting systems have to be considered as wholes-you cannot deal with one part in isolation from the rest. Non-locality means, among other things, that spatial separation between its parts does not alter the requirement to deal with an interacting system holistically. If we could detect these in relation to awareness, we would show that consciousness cannot be understood solely in terms of classical concepts.
Generative thought and words are the attempts to discover the relation between thought and speech at the earliest stages of phylogenetic and ontogenetic development. We found no specific interdependence between the genetic roots of thought and of word. It became plain that the inner relationship we were looking for was not a prerequisite for, but rather a product of, the historical development of human consciousness.
In animals, even in anthropoids whose speech is phonetically like human speech and whose intellect is akin to man’s, speech and thinking are not interrelated. A prelinguistic epoché through which times interval in thought and a preintellectual period in speech undoubtedly exist also in the development of the child. Thought and word are not connected by a primary bond. A connection originates, changes, and grows in the course of the evolution of thinking and speech.
It would be wrong, however, to regard thought and speech as two unrelated processes either parallel or crossing at certain points and mechanically influencing each other. The absence of a primary bond does not mean that a connection between them can be formed only in a mechanical way. The futility of most of the earlier investigations was largely due to the assumption that thought and word were isolated, independent elements, and verbal thought the fruit of their external union.
The method of analysis based on this conception was bound to fail. It sought to explain the properties of verbal thought by breaking it up into its component elements, thought and word, neither of which, taken separately, possessed the properties of the whole. This method is not true analysis helpful in solving concrete problems. It leads, rather, to generalisation. We compared it with the analysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen-which can result only in findings applicable to all water existing in nature, from the Pacific Ocean to a raindrop. Similarly, the statement that verbal thought is composed of intellectual processes and speech is functionally proper applications to all verbal thought and all its manifestations and explains none of the specific problems facing the student of verbal thought.
We tried a new approach to the subject and replaced analysis into elements by analysis into units, each of which retains in simple form all the properties of the whole. We found this unit of verbal thought in word meaning.
The meaning of a word represents such a close amalgam of thought and language that it is hard to tell whether it is a phenomenon of speech or a phenomenon of thought. A word without meaning is an empty sound; meaning, therefore, is a criterion of “word,” its indispensable component. It would seem, then, that it may be regarded as a phenomenon of speech. But from the point of view of psychology, the meaning of every word is a generalisation or a concept. And since generalisations and concepts are undeniably acts of thought, but we may regard meaning as a phenomenon of thinking. It does not follow, however, that meaning formally belongs in two different spheres of psychic life. Word meaning is a phenomenon of thought only insofar as thought is embodied in speech, and of speech only insofar as speech is connected with thought and illumined by it. It is a phenomenon of verbal thought, or meaningful speech-a union of word and thought.
Our experimental investigations fully confirm this basic thesis. They not only proved that concrete study of the development of verbal thought is made possible by the use of word meaning as the analytical unit but they also led to a further thesis, which we consider the major result of our study and which issues directly from the further thesis that word meanings develop. This insight must replace the postulate of the immutability of word meanings.
From the point of view of the old schools of psychology, the bond between word and meaning is an associative bond, established through the repeated simultaneous perception of a certain sound and a certain object. A word calls to mind its content as the overcoat of a friend reminds us of that friend, or a house of its inhabitants. The association between word and meaning may grow stronger or weaker, be enriched by linkage with other objects of a similar kind, spread over a wider field, or become more limited, i.e., it may undergo quantitative and external changes, but it cannot change its psychological nature. To do that, it would have to cease being an association. From that point of view, any development in word meanings is inexplicable and impossible-an implication that impeded linguistics as well as psychology. Once having committed itself to the association theory, semantics persisted in treating word meaning as an association between a word’s sound and its content. All words, from the most concrete to the most abstract, appeared to be formed in the same manner in regard to meaning, and to contain nothing peculiar to speech as such; a word made us think of its meaning just as any object might remind us of another. It is hardly surprising that semantics did not even pose the larger question of the development of word meanings. Development was reduced to changes in the associative connections between single words and single objects: A word brawn to denote at first one object and then become associated with another, just as an overcoat, having changed owners, might remind us first of one person and later of another. Linguistics did not realize that in the historical evolution of language the very structure of meaning and its psychological nature also change. From primitive generalisations, verbal thought rises to the most abstract concepts. It is not merely the content of a word that changes, but the way in which reality is generalised and reflected in a word.
Equally inadequate is the association theory in explaining the development of word meanings in childhood. Here, too, it can account only for the pure external, quantitative changes in the bonds uniting word and meaning, for their enrichment and strengthening, but not for the fundamental structural and psychological changes that can and do occur in the development of language in children.
Oddly enough, the fact that associationism in general had been abandoned for some time did not seem to affect the interpretation of word and meaning. The Wuerzburg school, whose main object was to prove the impossibility of reducing thinking to a mere play of associations and to demonstrate the existence of specific laws governing the flow of thought, did not revise the association theory of word and meaning, or even recognise the need for such a revision. It freed thought from the fetters of sensation and imagery and from the laws of association, and turned it into a purely spiritual act. By so doing, it went back to the prescientific concepts of St. Augustine and Descartes and finally reached extreme subjective idealism. The psychology of thought was moving toward the ideas of Plato. Speech, at the same time, was left at the mercy of association. Even after the work of the Wuerzburg school, the connection between a word and its meaning was still considered a simple associative bond. The word was seen as the external concomitant of thought, its attire only, having no influence on its inner life. Thought and speech had never been as widely separated as during the Wuerzburg period. The overthrow of the association theory in the field of thought actually increased its sway in the field of speech.
The work of other psychologists further reinforced this trend. Selz continued to investigate thought without considering its relation to speech and came to the conclusion that man’s productive thinking and the mental operations of chimpanzees were identical in nature – so completely did he ignore the influence of words on thought.
Even Ach, who made a special studies in phraseology, by the meaning of who tried to overcome the correlation in his theory of concepts, did not go beyond assuming the presence of “determining tendencies” operative, along with associations, in the process of concept formation. Hence, the conclusions he reached did not change the old understanding of word meaning. By identifying concept with meaning, he did not allow for development and changes in concepts. Once established, the meaning of a word was set forever; Its development was completed. The same principles were taught by the very psychologists Ach attacked. To both sides, the starting point was also the end of the development of a concept; the disagreement concerned only the way in which the formation of word meanings began.
In Gestalt psychology, the situation was not very different. This school was more consistent than others in trying to surmount the general principle of a collective associationism. Not satisfied with a partial solution of the problem, it tried to liberate thinking and speech from the rule of association and to put both under the laws of structure formation. Surprisingly, even this most progressive of modern psychological schools made no progress in the theory of thought and speech.
For one thing, it retained the complete separation of these two functions. In the light of Gestalt psychology, the relationship between thought and word appears as a simple analogy, a reduction of both to a common structural denominator. The formation of the first meaningful words of a child is seen as similar to the intellectual operations of chimpanzees in Koehler’s experiments. Words that filter through the structure of things and acquire a certain functional meaning, in much the same way as the stick, to the chimpanzee, becomes part of the structure of obtaining the fruit and acquires the functional meaning of tool, that the connection between word and meaning is no longer regarded as a matter of simple association but as a matter of structure. That seems like a step forward. But if we look more closely at the new approach, it is easy to see that the step forward is an illusion and that we are still standing in the same place. The principle of structure is applied to all relations between things in the same sweeping, undifferentiated way as the principle of association was before it. It remains impossible to deal with the specific relations between word and meaning.
They are from the outset accepted as identical in principle with any and all other relations between things. All cats are as grey in the dusk of Gestalt psychology as in the earlier plexuities that assemble in universal associationism.
While Ach sought to overcome the associationism with “determining tendencies,” Gestalt psychology combatted it with the principle of structure-retaining, however, the two fundamental errors of the older theory: the assumption of the identical nature of all connections and the assumption that word meanings do not change. The old and the new psychology both assume that the development of a word’s meaning is finished as soon as it emerges. The new trends in psychology brought progress in all branches except in the study of thought and speech. Here the new principles resemble the old ones like twins.
If Gestalt psychology is at a standstill in the field of speech, it has made a big step backward in the field of thought. The Wuerzburg school at least recognised that thought had laws of its own. Gestalt psychology denies their existence. By reducing to a common structural denominator the perceptions of domestic fowl, the mental operations of chimpanzees, the first meaningful words of the child, and the conceptual thinking of the adult, it obliterates every distinction between the most elementary perception and the highest forms of thought.
This may be summed up as follows: All the psychological schools and trends overlook the cardinal point that every thought is a generalisation. They all study word and meaning without any reference to development. As long as these two conditions persist in the successive trends, there cannot be much difference in the treatment of the problem.
The discovery that word meanings evolve leads the study of thought and speech out of a blind alley. Word meanings are dynamic rather than static formations. They change as the child develops; they change also with the various ways in which thought functions.
If word meanings change in their inner nature, then the relation of thought to word also changes. To understand the dynamics of that relationship, we must supplement the genetic approach of our main study by functional analysis and examine the role of word meaning in the process of thought.
Let us consider the process of verbal thinking from the first dim stirring of a thought to its formulation. What we want to show now is not how meanings develop over long periods of time but the way they function in the live process of verbal thought. On the basis of such a functional analysis, we will be able to show also that each stage in the development of word meaning has its own particular relationship between thought and speech. Since functional problems are most readily solved by examining the highest form of a given activity, we will, for a while, put aside the problem of development and consider the relations between thought and word in the mature mind.
The leading idea in the following discussion can be reduced to this formula: The relation of thought to word is not a thing but a process, a continual movement back and forth from thought to word and from word to thought. In that process the relation of thought to word undergoes changes that they may be regarded as development in the functional sense. Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them. Every thought tends to connect something with something else, to establish a relationship between things. Every thought moves, grows and develops, fulfils a function, solves a problem. This flow of thought occurs as an inner movement through a series of planes. An analysis of the interaction of thought and word must begin with an investigation of the different phases and planes a thought traverses before it is embodied in words.
The first thing such a study reveals is the need to distinguish between two planes of speech. Both the inner, meaningful, semantic aspect of speech and the external, phonetic aspects, though forming a true unity, have their own laws of movement. The unity of speech is a complex, not a homogeneous, unity. A number of facts in the linguistic development of the child indicate independent movement in the phonetic and the semantic spheres. We will point out two of the most important of these facts.
In mastering external speech, the child starts from one word, then connects two or three words; a little later, he advances from simple sentences to more complicated ones, and finally to coherent speech made up of series of such sentences; in other words, he proceeds from a part to the whole. In regard to meaning on the other hand, the first word of the child is a whole sentence. Semantically, the child starts from the whole, from a meaningful complex, and only later begins to master the separate semantic units, the meanings of words, and to divide his formerly undifferentiated thought into those units. The external and the semantic aspects of speech develop in opposite directions – one from the particular to the whole, from word to sentence, and the other from the whole to the particular, from sentence to word.
This in itself suffices to show how important it is to distinguish between the vocal and the semantic aspects of speech. Since they move in reverse directions, their development does not coincide, but that does not mean that they are independent of each other. On the contrary, their difference is the first stage of a close union. In fact, our example reveals their inner relatedness as clearly as it does their distinction. A child’s thought, precisely because it is born as a dim, amorphous whole, must find expression in a single word. As his thought becomes more differentiated, the child is less apt to express it in single words but constructs a composite whole. Conversely, progress in speech to the differentiated whole of a sentence helps the child’s thoughts to progress from a homogeneous whole to well-defined parts. Thought and word are not cut from one pattern. In a sense, there are more differences than likenesses between them. The structure of speech does not simply mirror the structure of thought that is why words cannot be put on by thought like a ready-made garment. Thought undergoes many changes as it turns into speech. It does not merely find expression in speech; It finds its reality and form. The semantic and the phonetic developmental processes are essentially one, precisely because of their reverse directions.
The second, equally important fact emerges at a later period of development. Piaget demonstrated that the child uses subordinate clauses with because, although, etc., long before he grasps the structures of meaning corresponding to these syntactic forms. Grammar precedes logic. Here, too, as in our previous example, the discrepancy does not exclude union but is, in fact, necessary for union.
In adults the divergence between the semantic and the phonetic aspects of speech is even more striking. Modern, psychologically oriented linguistics is familiar with this phenomenon, especially in regard too grammatical and psychological subject and predicate. For example, in the sentence “The clock fell,” emphasis and meaning may change in different situations. Suppose I notice that the clock has stopped and ask how this happened. The answer is, “The clock fell.” Grammatical and psychological subject coincide: “The clock” is the first idea in my consciousness; “fell” is what is said about the clock. But if I hear a crash in the next room and inquire what happened, and get the same answer, subject and predicate are psychologically reversed. I knew something had fallen – that is what we are talking about. “The clock” completes the idea. The sentence could be changed to: “What has fallen is the clock”; Then the grammatical and the psychological subject would coincide. In the prologue to his play Duke Ernst von Schwaben, Uhland says: “Grim scenes will pass before you.” Psychologically, “will pass” is the subject. The spectator knows he will see events unfold the additional idea, the predicate, remains in “grim scenes.” Uhland meant, “What will pass before your eyes are a tragedy.” Any part of a sentence may become the psychological predicate, the carrier of topical emphasis: on the other hand, entirely different meanings may lie hidden behind one grammatical structure. Accord between syntactical and psychological organisation is not as prevalent as we tend to assume – rather, it is a requirement that is seldom met. Not only subject and predicate, but grammatical gender, number, case, tense, degree, etc. has their psychological doubles. A spontaneous utterance wrong from the point of view of grammar, may have charm and aesthetic value. Absolute correctness is achieved only beyond natural language, in mathematics. Our daily speech continually fluctuates between the ideals of mathematical and of imaginative harmony.
We will illustrate the interdependence of the semantic and the grammatical aspects of language by citing two examples that show that changes in formal structure can entail far-reaching changes in meaning.
In translating the fable “La Cigale et la Fourmi,” Krylov substituted a dragonfly for La Fontaine’s grasshopper. In French Grasshopper is feminine and therefore well suited to symbolise a light-hearted, carefree attitude. The nuance would be lost in a literal translation, since in Russian Grasshopper is masculine. When he settled for dragonflies, which is feminine in Russian, Krylov disregarded the literal meaning in favour of the grammatical form required to render La Fontaine’s thought.
Tjutchev did the same in his translation of Heine’s poem about a fir and a palm. In German fir is masculine and palm feminine, and the poem suggests the love of a man for a woman. In Russian, both trees are feminine. To retain the implication, Tjutchev replaced the fir by a masculine cedar. Lermontov, in his more literal translation of the same poem, deprived it of these poetic overtones and gave it an essentially different meaning, more abstract and generalised. One grammatical detail may, on occasion, change the whole of which is to purport of what is said.
Behind words, there is the independent grammar of thought, the syntax of word meanings. The simplest utterance, far from reflecting a constant, rigid correspondence between sound and meaning, is really a process. Verbal expressions cannot emerge fully formed but must develop gradually. This complex process of transition from meaning to sound must itself be developed and perfected. The child must learn to distinguish between semantics and phonetics and understand the nature of the difference. At first he uses verbal forms and meanings without being conscious of them as separate. The word, to the child, is an integral part of the object it denotes. Such a conception seems to be characteristic of primitive linguistic consciousness. We all know the old story about the rustic who said he wasn’t surprised that savants with all their instruments could figure out the size of stars and their course – what baffled him was how they found out their names. Simple experiments show that preschool children “explain” the names of objects by their attributes. According to them, an animal is called “cow” because it has horns, “calves” because its horns are still small, “dog” because it is small and has no horns; an object is called “car” because it is not an animal. When asked whether one could interchange the names of objects, for instance call a cow “ink,” and ink “cow,” children will answer no, “because ink is used for writing, and the cow gives milk.” An exchange of names would mean an exchange of characteristic features, so inseparable is the connection between them in the child’s mind. In one experiment, the children were told that in a game a dog would be called “cow.” Here is a typical sample of questions and answers: Does a cow have horns? “Yes.” “But do you not remember that the cow is really a dog? Come now, does a dog have horns? “Sure, if it is a cow, if it is called cow, it has horns. That kind of dog has to have little horns.
We can see how difficult it is for children to separate the name of an object from its attributes, which cling to the name when it is transferred like possessions following their owner.
The fusion of the two planes of speech, semantic and vocal begins to break down as the child grows older, and the distance between them gradually increases. Each stage in the development of word meanings has its own specific interrelation of the two planes. A child’s ability to communicate through language is directly related to the differentiation of word meanings in his speech and consciousness.
To understand this, we must remember a basic characteristic of the structure of word meanings. In the semantic structure of a word, we distinguish between referent and meaning correspondingly, we distinguish a word’s nominative from its significative function. When we compare these structural and functional relations at the earliest, middle, and advanced stages of development, we find the following genetic regularity: In the beginning, only the nominative functions exist, and semantically, only the unbiased objective becomes the reference, and independent of naming, and meaning independent of reference, appear later and develop along the paths we have attempted to trace and describe.
Only when this development is completed does the child become fully able to formulate his own thought and to understand the speech of others. Until then, his usage of words coincides with that of adults in its objective reference but not in its meaning.
We must probe still deeper and explore the plane of inner speech lying beyond the semantic plane. We will discuss here some of the data of the special investigation we have made of it. The relationship of thought and word cannot be understood in all its complexity without a clear understanding of the psychological nature of inner speech. Yet, of all the problems connected with thought and language, this is perhaps the most complicated, beset as it is with terminological and other misunderstandings.
The term inner speech, or endophasy, has been applied to various phenomena, and authors argue about different things that they call by the same name. Originally, inner speech seems to have been understood as verbal memory. An example would be the silent recital of a poem known by heart. In that case, inner speech differs from vocal speech only as the idea or image of an object differs from the real object. It was in this sense that inner speech was understood by the French authors who tried to find out how words were reproduced in memory – whether as auditory, visual, motor, or synthetic images. We will see that word memory is indeed one of the constituent elements of inner speech but not all of it.
In a second interpretation, inner speech is seen as truncated external speech-as “speech minus sound” (Mueller) or “sub-vocal speech” (Watson). Bekhterev defined it as a speech reflex inhibited in its motor part. Such an explanation is by no measure of sufficiency. Silent “pronouncing” of words is not equivalent to the total process of inner speech.
The third definition is, on the contrary, too broad. To Goldstein, the term covers everything that precedes the motor act of speaking, including Wundt’s “motives of speech” and the indefinable, non-sensory and non-motor specific speech experience -, i.e., the whole interior aspect of any speech activity. It is hard to accept the equation of inner speech with an inarticulate inner experience in which the separate identifiable structural planes are dissolved without trace. This central experience is common to all linguistic activity, and for this reason alone Goldstein’s interpretation does not fit that specific, unique function that alone deserves the name of inner speech. Logically developed, Goldstein’s view must lead to the thesis that inner speech is not speech at all but rather an intellectual and affective-volitional activity, since it includes the motives of speech and the thought that is expressed in words.
To get a true picture of inner speech, one must embark upon that which is a specific formation, with its own laws and complex relations to the other forms of speech activity. Before we can study its relation to thought, on the one hand, and to speech, on the other, we must determine its special characteristics and function.
Inner speech allows one to speak for one’s external oration, for which of the others would be surprising, if such a difference in function did not affect the structure of the two kinds of speech. Absence of vocalisation per se is only a consequence of the specific nature of inner speech, which is neither an antecedent of external speech nor its reproduction in memory but is, in a sense, the opposite of external speech. The latter is the turning of thought into words, its materialisation and objectification. With inner speech, the process is reversed: Speech turns into inward thought. Consequently, their structures must differ.
The area of inner speech is one of the most difficult to investigate. It remained almost inaccessible to experiments until ways were found to apply the genetic method of experimentation. Piaget was the first to pay attention to the child’s egocentric speech and to see its theoretical significance, but he remained blind to the most important trait of egocentric speech-its genetic connection with inner speech – and this warped his interpretation of its function and structure. We made that relationship the central problem of our study and thus were able to investigate the nature of inner speech with unusual completeness. A number of considerations and observations led us to conclude that egocentric speech is a stage of development preceding inner speech: Both fulfil intellectual functions; Their structures are similar; egocentric speech disappears at school age, when inner speech begins to develop. From all this we infer that one change into the other.
If this transformation does take place, then egocentric speech provides the key to the study of inner speech. One advantage of approaching inner speech through egocentric speech is its accessibility to experimentation and observation. It is still vocalised, audible speech, i.e., external in its mode of expression, but at the same time inner speech in function and structure. To study an internal process, in that it is necessary to externalise it experimentally, by connecting it with some outer activity; barely then is objective functional analysis possible. Egocentric speech is, in fact, a natural experiment of this type.
This method has another great advantage: Since egocentric speech can be studied at the time when some of its characteristics are waning and new ones forming, we are able to judge which traits are essential to inner speech and which are only temporary, and thus to determine the goal of this movement from egocentric to inner speech -, i.e., the nature of inner speech.
Before we go on to the results obtained by this method, we will briefly discuss the nature of egocentric speech, stressing the differences between our theory and Piaget’s. Piaget contends that the child’s egocentric speech is a direct expression of the egocentrism of his thought, which in turn is a compromise between the primary autism of his thinking and its gradual socialisation. As the child grows older, and as autism overturns the associative remembers affiliated to socialisation progresses, leading to the waning of egocentrism in his thinking and speech.
In Piaget’s conception, the child in his egocentric speech does not adapt himself to the thinking of adults. His thought remains entirely egocentric; This makes his talk incomprehensibly to others. Egocentric speech has no function in the child’s realistic thinking or activity, but it merely accompanies them. And since it is an expression of egocentric thought, it disappears together with the child’s egocentrism. From its climax at the beginning of the child’s development, egocentric speech drops to zero on the threshold of school age. Its history is one of involution rather than evolution. It has no future.
In our conception, egocentric speech is a phenomenon of the transition from interpsychic to intrapsychic functioning, i.e., from the social, collective activity of the child to his more individualised activity-a pattern of development common to all the higher psychological functions. Speech for oneself originates through differentiation from speech for others. Since the main course of the child’s development is one of gradual individualisation, this tendency is reflected in the function and structure of his speech.
The function of egocentric speech is similar to that of inner speech: It does not merely accompany the child’s activity; it serves mental orientation, conscious understanding; it helps in overcoming difficulties; it is speech for oneself, intimately and usefully connected with the child’s thinking. Its fate is very different from that described by Piaget. Egocentric speech develops along a rising not a declining, curve; it goes through an evolution, not an involution. In the end, it becomes inner speech.
Our hypothesis has several advantages over Piaget’s: It explains the function and development of egocentric speech and, in particular, its sudden increase when the child’s face’s difficulties that demand consciousness and reflection – a fact uncovered by our experiments and which Piaget’s theory cannot explain. But the greatest advantage of our theory is that it supplies a satisfying answer to a paradoxical situation described by Piaget himself. To Piaget, the quantitative drop in egocentric speech as the child grows older means the withering of that form of speech. If that were so, its structural peculiarities might also be expected to decline; it is hard to believe that the process would affect only its quantity, and not its inner structure. The child’s thought becomes infinitely less egocentric between the ages of three and seven. If the characteristics of egocentric speech that make it incomprehensible to others are indeed rooted in egocentrism, they should become less apparent as that form of speech becomes less frequent; Egocentric speech should approach social speech and become ever more intelligible. Yet what are the facts? Is the talk of a three-year-old harder to follow than that of a seven-year-old? Our investigation established that the traits of egocentric speech that makes for inscrutability are at their lowest point at three and at their peak at seven. They develop in a reverse direction to the frequency of egocentric speech. While the latter keeps declining and reaches the point of zero at school age, the structural characteristics become more pronounced.
This throws a new light on the quantitative decrease in egocentric speech, which is the cornerstone of Piaget’s thesis.
What does this decrease mean? The structural peculiarities of speech for oneself and its differentiation from external speech increase with age. What is it that diminishes? Only one of its aspects verbalizes. Does this mean that egocentric speech as a whole is dying out? We believe that it does not, for how then could we explain the growth of the functional and structural traits of egocentric speech? On the other hand, their growth is perfectly compatible with the decrease of vocalisation-indeed, clarifies its meaning. Its rapid dwindling and the equally rapid growth of the other characteristics are contradictory in appearance only.
To explain this, let us start from an undeniable, experimentally established fact. The structural and functional qualities of egocentric speech become more marked as the child develops. At three, the difference between egocentric and social speech matches that to zero; At seven, we have speech that in structure and function is totally unlike social speech. A differentiation of the two speech functions has taken place. This is a fact-and facts are notoriously hard to refute.
Once we accept this, everything else falls into place. If the developing structural and functional peculiarities of egocentric speech progressively isolate it from external speech, then its vocal aspect must fade away. This is exactly what happens between three and seven years. With the progressive isolation of speech for oneself, its vocalisation becomes unnecessary and meaningless and, because of its growing structural peculiarities, also impossible. Speech for oneself cannot find expression in external speech. The more independent and autonomous egocentric speech becomes, the poorer it grows in its external manifestations. In the end it separates itself entirely from speech for others, ceases to be vocalised, and thus appears to die out.
But this is only an illusion. To interpret the sinking coefficient of egocentric speech as a sign that this kind of speech is dying out is like saying that the child stops counting when he ceases to use his fingers and starts adding in his head. In reality, behind the symptoms of dissolution lies a progressive development, the birth of a new speech form.
The decreasing vocalisation of egocentric speech denotes a developing abstraction from sound, the child’s new faculty to “think words” instead of pronouncing them. This is the positive meaning of the sinking coefficient of egocentric speech. The downward curve indicates development toward inner speech.
We can see that all the known facts about the functional, structural, and genetic characteristics of self-indulgent or egocentric speech points to one thing: It develops in the direction of inner speech. Its developmental history can be understood only as a gradual unfolding of the traits of inner speech.
We believe that this corroborates our hypothesis about the origin and nature of egocentric speech. To turn our hypothesis into a certainty, we must devise an experiment capable of showing which of the two interpretations is correct. What are the data for this critical experiment?
Let us restate the theories between which we must decide as for Piaget believes, that egocentric speech stems from the insufficient socialisation of speech and that its only development is decrease and eventual death. Its culmination lies in the past. Inner speech is something new brought in from the outside along with socialisation. We demonstrated that in egocentric speech stems from the insufficient individualisation of primary social speech. Its culmination lies in the future. It develops into inner speech.
To obtain evidence for one or the other view, we must place the child alternately in experimental situations encouraging social speech and in situations discouraging it, and see how these changes affect egocentric speech. We consider this an experimentum crucis for the following reasons.
If the child’s egocentric talk results from the egocentrism of his thinking and its insufficient socialisation, then any weakening of the social elements in the experimental setup, any factor contributing to the child’s isolation from the group, must lead to a sudden increase in egocentric speech. But if the latter results from an insufficient differentiation of speech for oneself from speech for others, then the same changes must cause it to decrease.
We took as the starting point of our experiment three of Piaget’s own observations: (1) Egocentric speech occurs only in the presence of other children engaged in the same activity, and not when the child is alone; i.e., it is a collective monologue. (2) The child is under the illusion that his egocentric talk, directed to nobody, is understood by those who surround him. (3) Egocentric speech has the character of external speech: It is audible or whispered. These are certainly not chance peculiarities. From the child’s own point of view, egocentric speech is not yet separated from social speech. It occurs under the subjective and objective conditions of social speech and may be considered a correlate of the insufficient isolation of the child’s individual consciousness from the social whole.
In our first series of experiments, we tried to destroy the illusion of being understood. After measuring the child’s coefficient of egocentric speech in a situation similar to that of Piaget’s experiments, we put him into a new situation: Either with deaf-mute children or with children speaking a foreign language. In all other respects the setup remained the same. The coefficient of egocentric speech dropped to zero in the majority of cases, and in the rest to one-eighth of the previous figure, on the average. This proves that the illusion of being understood is not a mere epiphenomenon of egocentric speech but is functionally connected with it. Our results must seem paradoxical from the point of view of Piaget’s theory: The weaker the child’s contact is with the group – amounting to less of the social situation forces’ him to adjust his thoughts to others and to use social speech – that there is more as freely should be the egocentrism of his thinking and speech manifest itself. But from the point of view of our hypothesis, the meaning of these findings is clear: Egocentric speech, springing from the lack of differentiation of speech for oneself from speech for others, disappears when the feeling of being understood, essential for social speech, is absent.
In the second series of experiments, the variable factor was the possibility of some collective monologue. Having measured the child’s coefficient of egocentric speech in a situation permitting collective monologue, we put him into a situation excluding it-in a group of children who were strangers to him, or by his being of self, at which point, a separate table in a corner of the room, for which he worked entirely alone, even the experimenter leaving the room. The results of this series agreed with the first results. The exclusion of the group monologue caused a drop in the coefficient of egocentric speech, though not such a striking one as in the first case-seldom to zero and, on the average, to one-sixth of the original figure. The different methods of precluding a collective characterize monologues that were not equally effective in reducing the coefficient of egocentric speech. The trend, however, was obvious in all the variations of the experiment. The exclusion of the collective factor, instead of giving full freedom to egocentric speech, depressed it. Our hypothesis was once more confirmed.
In the third series of experiments, the variable factor was the vocal quality of egocentric speech. Just outside the laboratory where the experiment was in progress, an orchestra played so loudly, or so much noise was made, that it drowned out not only the voices of others but the child’s own; in a variant of the experiment, the child was expressly forbidden to talk loudly and allowed to talk only in whispers. Once again the coefficient of egocentric speech went down, the relation to the original unit being the different methods were not equally effective, but the basic trend was invariably present.
The purpose of all three series of experiments was to eliminate those characteristics of egocentric speech that bring it close to social speech. We found that this always led to the dwindling of egocentric speech. It is logical, then, to assume that egocentric speech is a form developing out of social speech and not yet separated from it in its manifestation, though already distinct in function and structure.
The disagreement between us and Piaget on this point will be made quite clear by the following example: I am sitting at my desk talking to a person who is behind me and whom I cannot see; he leaves the room without my noticing it, and I continue to talk, under the illusion that he listens and understands. Outwardly, I am talking with myself and for myself, but psychologically my speech is social. From the point of view of Piaget’s theory, the opposite happens in the case of the child: His egocentric talk is for and with himself; it only has the appearance of social speech, just as my speech gave the false impression of being egocentric. From our point of view, the whole situation is much more complicated than that: Subjectively, the child’s egocentric speech already has its own peculiar function-to that extent, it is independent from social speech; Yet its independence is not complete because it is not felt as inner speech and is not distinguished by the child from speech for others. Objectively, also, it is different from social speech but again not entirely, because it functions only within social situations. Both subjectively and objectively, egocentric speech represents a transition from speech for others to speech for oneself. It already has the function of inner speech but remains similar to social speech in its expression.
The investigation of egocentric speech has paved the way to the understanding of inner speech, while our experiments convinced us that inner speech must be regarded, not as speech minus sound, but as an entirely separate speech function. Its main distinguishing trait is its peculiar syntax. Compared with external speech, inner speech appears disconnected and incomplete.
This is not a new observation. All the students of inner speech, even those who approached it from the behaviouristic standpoint, noted this trait. The method of genetic analysis permits us to go beyond a mere description of it. We applied this method and found that as egocentric speech transforms by its showing tendencies toward an altogether specific form of abbreviation: Namely, omitting the subject of a sentence and all words connected with it, while preserving the predicate. This tendency toward predication appears in all our experiments with such regularity that we must assume it to be the basic syntactic form of inner speech.
It may help us to understand this tendency if we recall certain situations in which external speech shows a similar structure. Pure predication occurs in external speech in two cases: Either as an answer or when the subject of the sentence is known beforehand to all concerned. The answer to “Would you like a cup of tea?” is never “No, I do not want a cup of tea “ but a simple “No.?” Obviously, such a sentence is possible only because its subject is tacitly understood by both parties. To “Has your brother read this book?” No one ever replies, “Yes, my brother has read this book.” The answer is a short “Yes,” or “Yes, he has.” Now let us imagine that several people are waiting for a bus. No one will say, on seeing the bus approach, “The bus for which we are waiting is coming.” The sentence is likely to be an abbreviated “Coming,” or some such expression, because the subject is plain from the situation. Exceptionally hold to a frequent shortened sentence causing confusion. The listener may relate the sentence to a subject foremost in his own mind, not the one meant by the speaker. If the thoughts of two people coincide, perfect understanding can be achieved through the use of mere predicates, but if they are thinking about different things they are bound to misunderstand each other.
Having examined abbreviation in external speech, we can now return enriched to the same phenomenon in inner speech, where it is not an exception but the rule. It will be instructive to compare abbreviation in oral, inner, and written speech. Communication in writing relies on the formal meanings of words and requires a much greater number of words than oral speech to convey the same idea. It is addressed to an absent person who rarely has in mind the same subject as the writer. Therefore, it must be fully deployed; Syntactic differentiation is at a maximum, and expressions are used that would seem unnatural in conversation. Griboedov’s “He talks like writing” refers to the droll effect of elaborate constructions in daily speech.
The multifunctional nature of language, which has recently attracted the close attention of linguists, had already been pointed out by Humboldt in relation to poetry and prose – two forms very different in function and in the means they use. Poetry, according to Humboldt, is inseparable from music, while prose depends entirely on language and is dominated by thought. Consequently, each has its own diction, grammar, and syntax. This is a conception of primary importance, although neither Humboldt nor those who encourage in developing his thought fully realised its implications. They distinguished only between poetry and prose, and within the latter between the exchange of ideas and ordinary conversation, i.e., the mere exchange of news or conventional chatter. There are other important functional distinctions in speech. One of them is the distinction between dialogue and monologue, as if written through the avenue of inner speech representation whereby it seems profoundly definitely strung by the monologue; The totalities of expression are uttered of some oral fashion as their linguistic manner as to be inferred by the spoken exchange that might be correlated by speech, in that in most cases, are contained through dialogue.
Dialogue always presupposes that in accordance with the collaborator’s formality that holds within the forming of knowledge, which it is maintained by its subject and is likely to be approved by an abbreviated speech and, under certain conditions, purely predicative sentences. It also presupposes that each person can see his partners, their facial expressions and gestures, and hear the tone of their voices. We have already discussed abbreviation and will consider here only its auditory aspect, using a classical example from Dostoevski’s, The Diary of a Writer, to show how much intonation helps the subtly differentiated understanding of a word’s meaning.
Dostoevski relates a conversation of drunks that entirely consisted of one unprintable word: “One Sunday night I happened to walk for some fifteen paces next to a group of six drunken young labourers, and I suddenly realised that all thoughts, feelings and even a whole chain of reasoning could be expressed by that one noun, which is moreover extremely short. One young fellow said it harshly and forcefully, to express his utter contempt for whatever it was they had all been talking about. Another answered with the same noun but in a quite different tone and sense-doubting that the negative attitude of the first one was warranted. A third suddenly became incensed against the first and roughly intruded on the conversation, excitedly shouting the same noun, this time as a curse and obscenity. Here the second fellow interfered again, angry with the third, the aggressor, and restraining him, in the sense of “Presently, as to implicate the now in question why to do you have to butt in, we were discussing things quietly and here you come and start swearing. And he told this whole thought in one word, the same venerable word, except that he also raised his hand and put it on the third fellow’s shoulder. All at once a fourth, the youngest of the group, who had kept silent till then, probably having suddenly found a solution to the original difficulty that had started the argument, raised his hand in a transport of joy and shouted . . . Eureka, do you think? I have it? No, not eureka and not I have it; he repeated the unprintable noun, one word, merely one word, but with ecstasy, in a shriek of delight-which was apparently too strong, because the sixth and the oldest, a glum-looking fellow, did not like it and cut the infantile joy of the other one short, addressing him in a sullen, exhortative bass and repeating . . . yes, still the same noun, forbidden in the presence of ladies but which this time clearly meant “What are you yelling yourself hoarse for? So, without uttering a single other word, they repeated that one beloved word is six times in a row, and only one after another, and understood one another completely.” [The Diary of a Writer]
Inflection reveals the psychological context within which a word is to be understood. In Dostoevski’s story, it was contemptuous negation in one case, doubt in another, anger in the third. When the context is as clear as in this example, it really becomes possible to convey all thoughts, feelings, and even a whole chain of reasoning by one word.
In written speech, as tone of voice and knowledge of subject are excluded, we are obliged to use many more words, and to use them more exactly. Written speech is the most elaborate form of speech.
Some linguists consider dialogue the natural form of oral speech, the one in which language fully reveals its nature, and monologue to a greater degree for being artificial. Psychological investigation leaves no doubt that monologue is indeed the higher, more complicated form, and of later historical development. At present, however, we are interested in comparing them only in regard with the tendency toward abbreviation.
The speed of oral speech is unfavourable to a complicated process of formulation, but it does not leave time for deliberation and choice. Dialogue implies immediate unpremeditated utterance. It consists of replies, repartee; it is a chain of reactions. Monologue, by comparison, is a complex formation; the linguistic elaboration can be attended too leisurely and consciously.
In written speech, lacking situational and expressive supports, communication must be achieved only through words and their combinations; this requires the speech activity to take complicated forms-hence the use of first drafts. The evolution from the draft to the final copy reflects our mental process. Planning has an important part in written speech, even when we do not actually write out a draft. Usually we say to ourselves what we are going to write; This is also a draft, though in thought only. As we tried to show in the preceding chapter, this mental draft is inner speech. Since inner speech functions as a draft not only in written but also in oral speech, we will now compare both these forms with inner speech in respect to the tendency toward abbreviation and predication.
This tendency, never found in written speech and only some times in oral speech, arises in inner speech always. Predication is the natural form of inner speech, psychologically as it consists of predicates only. It is as much a law of inner speech to omit subjects as it is a law of written speech to contain both subjects and predicates.
The key to this experimentally established fact is the invariable, inevitable presence in inner speech of the factors that facilitate pure predication: We know what we are thinking about -, i.e., we always know the subject and the situation. Psychological contact between partners in a conversation may establish a mutual perception leading to the understanding of abbreviated speech. In inner speech, the “mutual” perception is always there, in absolute form; Therefore, a practically wordless “communisation” of even the most complicated thoughts is the rule. The predominance of predication is a product of development. In the beginning, egocentric speech is identical in structure with social speech, but in the process of its transformation into inner speech it gradually becomes less thorough and coherent as it becomes governed by the entire predicative syntax. Experiments show clearly how and why the new syntax takes hold. The child talks about the things he sees or hears or does at a given moment. As a result, he tends to leave out the subject and all words connected with it, condensing his speech frequently until only predicates are left. The more differentiated the specific function of egocentric speech becomes, the more pronounced are its syntactic peculiarities-simplification and predication. Hand in hand with this change goes decreasing vocalisation. When we converse with ourselves, we need even fewer words than Kitty and Levin did. Inner speech is speech almost without words.
With syntax and sound reduced to a minimum, meaning is more than ever in the forefront. Inner speech works with semantics, not phonetics. The specific semantic structure of inner speech also contributes to abbreviation. The syntax of meanings in inner speech is no less original than its grammatical syntax. Our investigation established three main semantic peculiarities of inner speech.
The first and basic one is the preponderance of the sense of a word over its meaning, and a distinction we accredit to Paulhan. The sense of a word, according to him, is the sum of all the psychological events aroused in our consciousness by the word. It is a dynamic, fluid, complex whole, which has several zones of unequal stability. Means is only one of the zones of sense, are the most stable and precise area. A word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears; in different contexts, it changes its sense. Meaning remains stable throughout the changes of sense. The dictionary meaning of a word is no more than a stone in the edifice of sense, no more than a potentiality that finds diversified realisation in speech.
The last words of the previously mentioned fable by Krylov, “The Dragonfly and the Ant,” is a good illustration of the difference between sense and meaning. The words “Go and dances” comprise of a definite and constant meaning, but in the context of the fable they acquire a much broader intellectual and affective sense. They mean both to “Enjoy yourself” and “Perish.” This enrichment of words by the sense they gain from the context is the fundamental law of the dynamics of word meanings. A frame in the circumstance of having to a context, it means both are more and fewer than the same word in isolation: More, because it acquires new content; less, because its meaning is limited and narrowed by the context. The sense of a word, says Paulhan, is a complex, mobile, protean phenomenon; it changes in different minds and situations and is almost unlimited. A word derives its sense from the sentence, which in turn gets its sense from the paragraph, the paragraph from the book, the book from all the works of the author.
Paulhan rendered a further service to psychology by analysing the relation between word and sense and showing that they are much more independent of each other than word and meaning. It has long been known that words can change their sense. Recently it was pointed out that sense can change words or, better, that ideas often change their names. Just as the sense of a word is connected with the whole word, and not with its single sounds, the sense of a sentence is connected with the whole sentence, and not with its individual words. Therefore, a word may sometimes be replaced by another without any change in sense. Words and sense are relatively independent of each other.
In inner speech, the predominance of sense over meaning, of the sentences over communicative words as their formalities and of context over sentences that are the rule.
This leads us to the other semantic peculiarities of inner speech. Both concern word combination. One of them is rather like agglutination, and a way of combining words fairly frequents in some languages and comparatively rare in others. German often forms one noun out of several words or phrases. In some primitive languages, such adhesion of words is a general rule. When several words are merged into one word, the new word not only expresses a rather complex idea but designates all the separate elements contained in that idea. Because the stress is always on the main root or idea, such languages are easy to understand. The egocentric speech of the child displays some analogous phenomena. As egocentric speech approaches inner speech, the child uses agglutination frequently as a way of forming compound words to express complex ideas.
The third basic semantic peculiarity of inner speech is the way in which senses of words combine and unite-a process governed by different laws from those governing combinations of meanings. When we observed this singular way of uniting words in egocentric speech, we called it “influx of sense.” The senses of different words flow into one another-literally “influence” one and another-so that the earlier ones are contained in, and modify, the later ones. Thus, a word that keeps recurring in a book or a poem sometimes absorbs all the variety of sense contained in it and becomes, in a way, equivalent to the work itself. The title of literary works expresses its content and completes its sense to a much greater degree than does the name of a painting or of a piece of music. Titles like Don Quixote, Hamlet, and Anna Karenina illustrate this very clearly-the whole sense of its operative word is contained in one name. Another excellent example is Gogol’s Dead Souls. Originally, the title referred to dead serfs whose names had not yet been removed from the official lists and who could still be bought and sold as if they were alive. It is in this sense that the words are used throughout the book, which is built up around this traffic in the dead. But through their intimate relationship with which the work as a whole, as these two words acquire the diversity of new and changing significance, an infinitely broader sense. When we reach the end of the book, “Dead Souls” means to us not so much the defunct serfs as all the characters in the story, who are alive physically but dead spiritually.
In inner speech, the phenomenon reaches its peak. A single word is so saturated with sense that many words would be required to explain it in external speech. No wonder about why egocentric speech is incomprehensible to others. Watson says that inner speech would be incomprehensible even if it could be recorded. Its opaqueness is further increased by a related phenomenon that, incidentally, Tolstoy noted in external speech: In Childhood, Adolescence, and Youth, he describes how between people in close psychological contact words acquire special meanings understood only by the initiated. In inner speech, the same kind of idiom develops – the kind that is difficult to translate into the language of external speech.
With this we will conclude our survey of the peculiarities of inner speech, which we first observed in our investigation of egocentric speech. In looking for comparisons in external speech, we found that the latter already contain, potentially at least, the traits typical of inner speech; Predication, decreases the vocalisation, and preponderance of sense over meaning, agglutinations, etc., appear under certain conditions also in external speech. This, we believe, is the best confirmation of our hypothesis that inner speech originates through the differentiation of egocentric speech from the child’s primary social speech.
All our observations indicate that inner speech is an autonomous speech function. We can confidently regard it as a distinct plane of verbal thought. It is evident that the transition from inner to external speech is not a simple translation from one language into another. It cannot be achieved by merely vocalising silent speech. It is a complex, dynamic process involving the transformation of the predicative, idiomatic structure of inner speech into syntactically articulated speech intelligible to others.
We can now return to the definition of inner speech that we proposed before presenting our analysis. Inner speech is not the interior aspect of external speech, but it is a function in itself. It remains speech, i.e., thought connected with words. But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words die as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings. It is a dynamic, shifting, unstable thing, fluttering between word and thought, as two more or less sensible stables that are more or less firmly delineated components of verbal thought. Its true nature and place can be understood only after examining the next plane of verbal thought the one still more inward than inner speech.
That plane is thought itself. As we have said, every thought creates a connection, fulfils a function, solves a problem. The flow of thought is not accompanied by a simultaneous unfolding of speech. The two processes are not identical, and there is no rigid correspondence between the units of thought and speech. This is especially obvious when a thought process miscarries-when, as Dostoevski put it, a thought “will not enter words.” Thought has its own structure, and the transition from it to speech is no easy matter. The theatre faced the problem of the thought behind the words before psychology did. In teaching his system of acting, Stanislavsky required the actors to uncover the “subtext” of their lines in a play. In Griboedov’s comedy Woe from Wit, the hero, Chatsky, says to the hero, who maintains that she has never stopped thinking of him, “Thrice blessed who believes. Believing warms the heart.” Stanislavsky interpreted this as “Let us stop this mutter”; However, to stop, it could just as well be interpreted as “I do not believe you. You say it to comfort me,” or as “Don’t you see how you torment me? I wish I could believe you. That would be bliss.” Every sentence that we say in real life has some kind of subtext, a thought hidden behind it. In the examples we gave earlier of the lack of coincidence between grammatical and psychological subject and predicate, we did not pursue our analysis to the end. Just as one sentence may express different thoughts, one thought may be expressed in different sentences. For instance, “The clock fell,” in answer to the question “Why did the clock stop?” Could mean? “It is not my fault that the clock is out of order; it fell.” The same thought, for determining the self justification, could take the form of “It is not my habit to touch other people’s things. I was just dusting here,” or a number of others.
Though, unlike speech, does not consist of separate units. When I wish to communicate the thought that today I saw a barefoot boy in a blue shirt running down the street, I do not see every item separately: the boy, the shirt, its blue colour, his running, the absence of shoes. I conceive of all this in one thought, but I put it into separate words. A speaker often takes several minutes to disclose one thought. In his mind the whole thought is present at once, but in speech it has to be developed successively. A thought may be compared with a cloud shedding a shower of words. Precisely because thought does not have its automatic counterpart in words, the transition from thought to word leads through meaning. In our speech, there is always the hidden thought, the subtext. Because a direct transition from thought to word is impossible, there have always been laments about the inexpressibility of thought: “How shall the heart express itself? How shall another understand?”
Direct communication between minds is impossible, not only physically but psychologically. Communication can be achieved only in a roundabout way. Thought must pass first through meanings and then through words.
We come now to the last step in our analysis of verbal thought. Though to be itself is too engendered by motivation, i.e., by our desires and needs, our interests and emotions. Behind every thought there is an affective-volitional tendency, which holds the answer to the last “why” in the analysis of thinking. A true and full understanding of another’s thought is possible only when we understand its affective-volitional basis. We will illustrate this by an example already used: The interpretation of parts in a play. Stanislavsky, in his instructions to actors, listed the motives behind the words of their parts.
To understand another’s speech, it is not sufficient to understand his words, but we must understand his thought. But even that is not enough-we must also know its motivation. No psychological analysis of an utterance is complete until that plane is reached.
In the end, the verbal thought appeared as a complex, dynamic entity, and the relation of thought and word within it as a movement through a series of planes. Our analysis followed the process from the outermost to the innermost plane. In reality, the development of verbal thought takes the opposite course: From the motive that engenders a thought to the shaping of the thought, first in inner speech, then in meanings of words, and finally in words. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that this is the only road from thought to word. The development may stop at any point in its complicated course; An infinite variety of movements back and forth, of ways still unknown to us, is possible. A study of these manifold variations lies beyond the scope of our present task.
Here we have wished to study the inner workings of thought and speech, hidden from direct observation. Meaning and the whole inward aspects of language, the position of which its turning toward the person, is not toward the outer world, have been so far an almost unknown territory. No matter how they were interpreted, the relations between thought and word were always considered constant, established forever. Our investigation has shown that they are, on the contrary, delicate, changeable relations between processes, which arise during the development of verbal thought. We did not intend to, and could not, exhaust the subject of verbal thought. We tried only to give a general conception of the infinite complexity of this dynamic structure-a conception starting from experimentally documented facts.
To association psychology, thought and its inscription of words was united by external bonds, similar to the bonds between two nonsense syllables. Gestalt psychology introduced the concept of structural bonds but, like the older theory, did not account for the specific relations between thought and word. All the other theories grouped themselves around two poles-either the behaviourist concept of thought as speech minus sound or the idealistic view, held by the Wuerzburg school and Bergson, that thought could be “pure,” unrelated to language, and that it was distorted by words. Tjutchev’s “A thought once uttered is a lie” could well serve as an epigraph for the latter group. Whether inclining toward pure naturalism or extreme idealism, all these theories have one trait in common-their antihistorical bias. They study thought and speech without any reference to their developmental history.
A historical theory of inner speech can deal with this immense and complex problem. The relation between thought and word is a living process; Thought is born through words. A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow. The connection between them, however, is not a preformed and constant one. It emerges in the course of development, and it evolves. To the Biblical “In the beginning was the Word,” Goethe makes Faust reply, “In the beginning was the deed.” The intent here is to detract from the value of the word, but we can accept this version if we emphasise it differently: In the beginning was the deed. The word was not the beginning, and action was there first; it is the end of development, crowning the deed.
We cannot, without mentioning the perspectives that our investigation opens. We studied the inward aspects of speech, which were as unknown to science as the other side of the moon. We showed that a generalised reflection of reality is the basic characteristic of words. This aspect of the word brings us to the threshold of a wider and deeper subject-the general problem of consciousness. Though and language, for which reflect reality in a way different from that of perception, that which is the key to the nature of human consciousness. Words play a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of consciousness as a whole. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness
The hermetic tradition has long been concerned with the relationship between the inner world of our consciousness and the outer world of nature, between the microcosm and the macrocosm, below and the above, the material and the spiritual, the centric and the peripheral. The hermetic world view held by such as Robert Fludd, having conceived by some great chain of being linking our inner spark of consciousness with all the facets of the Great World. There were grands to see the platonic metaphysical clockwork, as it were, through which our inner world was linked by means of a hierarchy of beings and planes to the highest unity of the Divine.
This view though comforting is philosophically unsound, and the developments in thought since the early 17th century have made such a hermetic world view seems as untenable and still philosophically naive. It is impossible to try to argue the case for such an hermetic metaphysic with anyone who has had philosophical training, for they will quickly and mercilessly reveal deep philosophical contradictions in this world view.
So do we now have to abandon such a beautiful and spiritual world view and adopt the prevailing reductionist materialist conception of the world that has become accepted in the intellectual tradition of the West?
I am not so sure. There still remains the problem of our consciousness and its relationship to our material form-the Mind / Brain problem. Behavioural psychologists such as Skinner tried to reduce this to one level-the material brain-by viewing the mental or consciousness events from the outside for being merely, stimulus-response loops. This simplistic view works well for basic reflex actions-"I itch therefore I scratch"-but dissolves into absurdity when applied to any real act of the creative intellect or artistic imagination. Skinners’ determinism collapses when confronted with trying to explain the creative source of our consciousness revealing itself in an artist at work or a mathematician discovering through his thinking a new property of an abstract mathematical system. The psychologists' attempts to reduce the mind/brain problem to a merely material one of neurophysiology obviously failed. The idea that consciousness is merely a secretion or manifestation of a complex net of electrical impulses working within the mass of cells in our brain, is now discredited. The advocates of this view are strongly motivated by a desire to reduce the world to one level, to get rid of the necessity for "consciousness,” "mind" or "spirit" as a real facet of the world.
This materialistic determinism in which everything in the world (including the phenomenon of consciousness) can be reduced to simple interactions on a physical/chemical level, belongs really to the nineteenth century scientific landscape. Nineteenth century science was founded upon a "Newtonian Absolute Physics" which provided a description of the world as an interplay of forces obeying immutable laws and following a predetermined pattern. This is the "billiard ball" view of the world-one in which, provided we are given the initial state of the system (the layout of the balls on the table, and the exact trajectory, momentum and other parameters of the cue ball, etc.) then theoretically the exact layout after each interaction can be precisely calculated to absolute precision. All could be reduced to the determinate interplay of matter obeying the immutable laws of physics. The concept of the "spiritual" was unnecessary, even "mind" was dispensable, and "God" of course had no place in this scheme of things.
This comfortably solid "Newtonian" world view of the materialists has however been entirely undermined by the new physics of the twentieth century, and in particular through Quantum Theory. Physicists investigating the properties of sub-atomic matter, found that the deterministic Newtonian absolutism broke down at the foundation level of matter. An element of probability had to be introduced into the physicists' calculations, and each sub-atomic event was itself inherently unpredictably-one could only ascribe a probability to the outcome. The simple billiard ball model collapsed at the sub-atomic level. For if the billiard table was intended as a picture of a small region of space on the atomic scale and each ball was to be a particle (an electron, proton, or neutron, etc.), then physicists came to realise that this model could not represent reality on that level. For in Quantum theory one could not define the position and momentum of a particle both at the same moment. As soon as we establish the parameters of motion of a body, its position is uncertain and can only be described mathematically as a wave of probability. Our billiard table dissolved into a fluid ever-moving undulating surface, with each ball at one moment focussed to a point then at another dissolving and spreading itself out over an area of the space of the table. Trying to play billiards at this sub-atomic level was rather difficult.
In the Quantum picture of the world, each individual event cannot be determined exactly, but has to be described by a wave of probability. There is a kind of polarity between the position and energy of any particle in which they cannot be simultaneously determined. This was not a failing of experimental method but a property of the kinds of mathematical structures that physicists have to use to describe this realm of the world. The famous equation of Quantum theory embodying Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is: Planck's constant = (uncertainty in energy) x (uncertainty in position)
Thus if we try to fix the position of the particle (i.e., reduce the uncertainty in its position to a small factor) then as a consequence of this equation the uncertainty in the energy must increase to balance this, and therefore we cannot find a value for the energy of the particle simultaneous with fixing its position. Planck's constant being very small means that these infractions as based of the factors only become dominant on the extremely small scale, which are within the realm of the atom.
So we see that the Quantum picture of reality has at its foundation a non-deterministic view of the fundamental building Forms of matter. Of course, when dealing with large masses of particles these quantum indeterminacies effectively cancel each other out, and physicists can determine and predict the state of large systems. Obviously planets, suns, galaxies being composed of large numbers of particles do not exhibit any uncertainty in their position and energies, for when we look at such large aggregates as some of its totality, the total quantum uncertainty is a systems reduction as placed by zero, and in respect to their large scale properties can effectively be treated as deterministic systems.
Thus on the large scale we can effectively apply a deterministic physics, but when we wish to look in detail at the properties of the sub-atomic realm, lying at the root and foundation of our world, we must enter a domain of quantum uncertainties and find the neat ordered picture dissolving into a sea of ever flowing forces that we cannot tie down or set into fixed patterns.
Some people when faced with this picture of reality find comfort in dismissing the quantum world as having little to do with the "real world" of appearances. We do not live within the sub-atomic level after all. However, it does spill out into our outer world. Most of the various electronic devices of the past decades rely on the quantum tunnelling effect in transistors and silicon chips. The revolution in quantum physics has begun to influence the life sciences, and biologists and botanists are beginning to come up against quantum events as the basis of living systems, in the structure of complex molecules in the living tissues and membranes of cells for example. When we look at the blue of the sky, we are looking at a phenomenon only recently understood through quantum theory.
Although the Quantum picture of reality might seem strange indeed, I believe the picture it presents of the foundations of the material world, the ever flowing sea of forces metamorphosing and interacting through the medium of "virtual" or quantum messenger particles, has certain parallels with nature of our consciousness.
I believe that if we try to examine the nature of our consciousness we will find at its basis it exhibits "quantum" like qualities. Seen from a distant, large scale and external perspective, we seem to be able to structure our consciousness in an exact and precise way, articulating thoughts and linking them together into long chains of arguments and intricate structures. Our consciousness can build complex images through its activity and seems to have all the qualities of predictability and solidity. The consciousness of a talented architect is capable of designing and holding within itself an image of large solid structures such as great cathedrals or public buildings. A mathematician is capable of inwardly picturing an abstract mathematical system, deriving its properties from a set of axioms.
In this sense our consciousness might appear as an ordered and deterministic structure, capable of behaving like and being explicable in the same terms as other large scale structures in the world. However, this is not so. For if we through introspection try to examine the way in which we are conscious, in a sense to look at the atoms of our consciousness, this regular structure disappears. Our consciousness does not actually work in such an ordered way. We only nurture an illusion if we try to hold to the view that our consciousness is fixed by an ordered deterministic structure. True, we can create the large scale designs of the architect, the abstract mathematical systems, a cello concerto, but anyone who has built such structures within their consciousness knows that this is not achieved by a linear deterministic route.
Our consciousness is at its root a maverick, ever moving, increasing by its accommodating perception, feeling, thought, to another. We can never hold it still or focus it at a point for long. Like the quantum nature of matter, the more we try to hold our consciousness to a fixed point, the greater the uncertainty in its energy will become. So when we focus and narrow our consciousness to a fixed centre, it is all the more likely to jump with a great rush of energy to some seemingly unrelated aspect of our inner life suddenly. We all have such experiences each moment of the day. As in our daily work we try to focus our mind upon some problem only to experience a shift to another domain in ourselves suddenly, another image or emotional current intrudes then vanishes again, like an ephemeral virtual particle in quantum theory.
Those who begin to work upon their consciousness through some kinds of meditative exercises will experience these quantum uncertainties in the field of consciousness in a strong way.
In treating our consciousness as if it were a digital computer or deterministic machine after the model of 19th century science, I believe we foster a limited and false view of our inner world. We must now take the step toward a quantum view of consciousness, recognising that at its base and root our consciousness behaves like the ever flowing sea of the sub-atomic world. The ancient hermeticists foresaw consciousness as the "Inner Mercury.” Those who have experienced the paradoxical way in which the metal Mercury is both dense and metallic and yet so elusive, flowing and breaking up into small globules, and just as easily coming together again, will see how perceptive the alchemists were of the inner nature of consciousness, in choosing this analogy. Educators who treat the consciousness of children as if it were a filing cabinet to be filled with ordered arrays of knowledge are hopelessly wrong.
We can believe of the stepping stones whereby the formidable combinations await to the presence of the future, yet the nature of consciousness, and the look upon of what we see is justly to how this overlays links’ us with the mind/brain problem. The great difficulty in developing a theory of the way in which consciousness/mind is embodied in the activity of the brain, has I believe arisen out of the erroneous attempt to press a deterministic view onto our brain activity. Skinner and the behaviourist psychologists attempted to picture the activity of the brain as a computer where each cell behaved as an input/output device or a complex flip/flop. They saw nerve cells with their axons (output fibres) and dendrites (input fibres) being linked together into complex networks. An electrical impulse travelling onto a dendrite made a cell ‘fire’ and sent an impulse out along its axon so setting another nerve cell into action. The resulting patterns of nerve impulses constituted a reflex action, an impulse to move a muscle, a thought, a feeling, an intuitive experience. All could be reduced to the behaviour of this web of axons and dendrites of the nerve cells.
This simplistic picture, of course, was insufficient to explain even the behaviour of creatures like worms with primitive nervous systems, and in recent years this approach has largely been abandoned as it is becoming recognised that these events on the membranes of nerve cells are often triggered by shifts in the energy levels of sub-atomic particles such as electrons. In fact, at the root of such interactions lie quantum events, and the activity of the brain must now be seen as reflecting these quantum events.
The brain can no longer be seen as a vast piece of organic clockwork, but as a subtle device amplifying quantum events. If we trace a nerve impulse down to its root, there lies a quantum uncertainty, a sea of probability. So just how is it that this sea of probability can cast up such ordered structures and systems as the conception of a cello concerto or abstract mathematical entities? Perhaps here we may glimpse a way in which "spirit" can return into our physics.
The inner sea of quantum effects in our brain is in some way coupled to our ever flowing consciousness. When our consciousness focusses to a point, and we concentrate on some abstract problem or outer phenomenon, the physical events in our brain, the pattern of impulses, shifts in some ordered way. In a sense, the probability waves of a number of quantum systems in different parts of the brain, are brought into resonance, and our consciousness is able momentarily to create an ordered pattern that manifests physically through the brain. The thought, feeling, perception is momentarily earthed in physical reality, brought from the realm of the spiritual potential into outer actuality. This focussed ordering of the probability waves of many quantum systems requires an enormous amount of energy, but this can be borrowed in the quantum sense for a short instant of time. Thus we have through this quantum borrowing a virtual quantum state that is the physical embodiment of a thought, feeling, etc. However, as this can only be held for a short time, the quantum debt must be paid and the point of our consciousness is forced to jump to another quantum state, perhaps in another region of the brain. Thus our thoughts are jumbled up with emotions, perceptions, fantasy images.
The central point within our consciousness, our "spirit" in the hermetic sense, can now be seen as an entity that can work to control quantum probabilities. To our "spirits" our brain is a quantum sea providing a rich realm in which it can incarnate and manifest patterns down into the electrical/chemical impulses of the nervous system. (It has been calculated that the number of interconnections existing in our brains far exceeds the number of atoms in the whole universe-so in this sense the microcosm truly mirrors the macrocosm!). Our "spirit" allows the unswerving quantum, of which it borrows momentarily to press of a certain order into this sea that manifests the containment of a thought, emotion, etc. Such an ordered state can only exist momentarily, before our spirit or point of consciousness is forced to jump and move to other regions of the brain, where at that moment the pattern of probability waves for the particles in these nerve cells, can reflect the form that our spirit is trying with which to work.
This quantum borrowing to create regular patterns of probability waves is bought for a high price in that a degree of disorder must inevitably arise whenever the spirit tries to focus and reflect a linked sequential chain of patterns into the brain (such as we would experience as a logical adaption of our thought or some inward picture of some elaborate structure). Thus, it is not surprising that our consciousness sometimes brings to adrift and jumps about in a seemingly chaotic way. The quantum borrowing might also be behind our need for sleep and dream, allowing the physical brain to rid itself of the shadowy echos of these patterns pressed into it during waking consciousness. Dreaming may be that point in a cycle where consciousness and its vehicle interpenetrate and flow together, allowing the patterns and waves of probability to appear without any attempt to focus them to a point. In dream and sleep we experience our point of consciousness dissolving, decoupling and defocussing.
The central point of our consciousness, when actively thinking or feeling, must jump around the sea of patterns in our brain. (It is well known through neurophysiology that function cannot be located at a certain point in the brain, but that different areas and groups of nerve cells can take on a variety of different functions.) We all experience this when in meditation we merely let our consciousness move as it will. Then we come to sense the elusive mercurial eternal movement of the point of our consciousness within our inner space. You will find it to be a powerful and convincing experience if you try in meditation to follow the point of your consciousness moving within the space of your skull. Many religious traditions teach methods for experiencing this inner point of spirit.
I believe the movement of this point of consciousness, which appears as a pattern of probability waves in the quantum sea, must occur in extremely short segments of time, of necessity shorter than the time an electron takes to move from one state to another within the molecular structure of the nerve cell membranes. We are thus dealing in time scales significantly less than 10 to the power -16 of a second and possibly down to 10 to the power -43 of a second. During such short periods of time, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that lies at the basis of quantum theory, means that this central spark of consciousness can borrow a large amount of energy, which explains how it can bring a large degree of ordering into a pattern. Although our point of consciousness lives at this enormously fast speed, our brain, which transforms this into a pattern of electro/chemical activity runs at a much slower rate. Between creating each pattern our spark of consciousness must wait almost an eternity for this to be manifested on the physical level. Perhaps this may account for the sense we all have sometimes of taking an enormous leap in consciousness, or travelling though vast realms of ideas, or flashes of images, in what is only a fleeting moment.
At around 10 to the power -43 of a second, time itself becomes quantized, that is it appears as discontinuous particles of time, for there is no way in which time can manifest in quantities less than 10 to the power -43 (the so-called Planck time). For here the borrowed quantum energies distort the fabric of space turning it back upon themselves. Their time must have a stop. At such short intervals the energies available are enormous enough to create virtual black holes and wormhole in space-time, and at this level we have only a sea of quantum probabilities-the so-called Quantum Foam. Contemporary physics suggests that through these virtual wormhole in space-time there are links with all time past and future, and through the virtual black holes even with parallel universes.
It must be somewhat above this level that our consciousness works, weaving probability waves into patterns and incarnating them in the receptive structure of our brains. Our being or spirit lives in this Quantum Foam, which is thus the Eternal Now, infinite in extent and a plenum of all possibilities. The patterns of everything that has been, that is now, and will come to be, exists latently in this quantum foam. Perhaps this is the realm though which the mystics stepped into timelessness, the eternal present, and sensed the omnipotence and omniscience of the spirit.
I believe that these exciting discoveries of modern physics could be the basis for a new view of consciousness and the way it is coupled to our physical nature in the brain. (Indeed, one of the fascinating aspects of Quantum theory which puzzles’ and mystifies contemporary physicists is the way in which their quantum description of matter requires that they recognise the consciousness of the observer as a factor in certain experiments. This enigma has caused not a few physicists to take an interest in spirituality especially inclining them to eastern traditions like Taoism or Buddhism, and in time I hope that perhaps even the hermetic traditions might prove worthy of their interest).
An important experiment carried out as recently as summer 1982 by the French physicist, Aspect, has unequivocally demonstrated the fact that physicists cannot get round the Uncertainty Principle and simultaneously determine the quantum states of particles, and confirmed that physicists cannot divorce the consciousness of the observer from the events observed. This experiment (in disproving the separability of quantum measurements) has confirmed what Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg were only able to debate over philosophically-that with quantum theory we have to leave behind our naive picture of reality under which there happens as some unvaryingly compound structure if only to support its pictured clockwork. We are challenged by quantum theory to build new ways in which to picture reality, a physics, moreover, in which consciousness plays a central role, in which the observer is inextricably interwoven in the fabric of reality.
In a sense it may now be possible to build a new model of quantum consciousness, compatible with contemporary physics and which allows a space for the inclusion of the hermetic idea of the spirit. It may be that science has taken a long roundabout route through the reductionist determinism of the 19th century and returned to a more hermetic conception of our inner world.
In this short essay, incompletely argued though it may be, I hope I have at least presented some of the challenging ideas that lie behind the seeming negativity of our present age. For behind the hopelessness and despair of our times we stand on the brink of a great breakthrough to a new recognition of the vast spiritual depths that live within us all as human beings.
The idea that people may create devices that are conscious is known as artificial consciousness (AC). This is an ancient idea, perhaps dating back to the ancient Greek Promethean myth in which conscious people were supposedly manufactured from clay, pottery being an advanced technology in those days. In modern science fiction artificial people or conscious beings are described for being manufactured from electronic components. The idea of artificial consciousness (which is also known as machine consciousness (MC) or synthetic consciousness) is an interesting philosophical problem in the twenty first century because, with increased understanding of genetics, neuroscience and information processing it may soon be possible to create an entity that is conscious. It may be possible biologically to create a being by manufacturing a genome that had the genes necessary for a human brain, and to inject this into a suitable host germ cell. Such a creature, when implanted and born from a suitable womb, would very possibly be conscious and artificial. But what properties of this organism would be responsible for its consciousness? Could such a being be made from non-biological components? Can, technological technique be used in the design of computers and be to adapt and create a conscious entity? Would it ever be ethical to do such a thing? Neuroscience hypothesizes that consciousness is the synergy generated with the inter-operation of various parts of our brain, what have come to be called the neuronal correlates of consciousness, or NCC. The brain seems to do this while avoiding the problem described in the Homunculus fallacy and overcoming the problems described below in the section on the nature of consciousness. A quest for proponents of artificial consciousness is therefore to manufacture a machine to emulate this inter-operation, which no one yet claims fully to understand.
Consciousness is described at length in the consciousness article in Wikipedia. Wherefore, some informal type of naivete has to the structural foundation of realism and the direct of realism are that we perceive things in the world directly and our brains perform processing. On the other hand, according to indirect realism and dualism our brains contain data about the world that is obtained by processing but what we perceive is some sort of mental model or state that appears to overlay physical things as a result of projective geometry (such as the point observation in Rene Descartes dualism). Which of these general approaches to consciousness is correct has not been resolved and is the subject of fierce debate. The theory of direct perception is problematical because it would seem to require some new physical theory that allows conscious experience to supervene directly on the world outside the brain. On the other hand, if we perceive things indirectly, via a model of the world in our brains, then some new physical phenomenon, other than the endless further flow of data, would be needed to explain how the model becomes experience. If we perceive things directly self-awareness is difficult to explain because one of the principal reasons for proposing direct perception is to avoid Ryle's regress where internal processing becomes an infinite loop or recursion. The belief in direct perception also demands that we cannot 'really' be aware of dreams, imagination, mental images or any inner life because these would involve recursion. Self awareness is less problematic for entities that perceive indirectly because, by definition, they are perceiving their own state. However, as mentioned above, proponents of indirect perception must suggest some phenomenon, either physical or dialyzed to prevent Ryle's regress. If we perceive things indirectly then self awareness might result from the extension of experience in time described by Immanuel Kant, William James and Descartes. Unfortunately this extension in time may not be consistent with our current understanding of physics.
Information processing consists of encoding a state, such as the geometry of an image, on a carrier such as a stream of electrons, and then submitting this encoded state to a series of transformations specified by a set of instructions called a program. In principle the carrier could be anything, even steel balls or onions, and the machine that implement the instructions need not be electronic, it could be mechanical or fluids. Digital computers implement information processing. From the earliest days of digital computers people have suggested that these devices may one day be conscious. One of the earliest workers to consider this idea seriously was Alan Turing. The Wikipedia article on Artificial Intelligence (AI) considers this problem in depth. If technologists were limited to the use of the principles of digital computing when creating a conscious entity, they would have the problems associated with the philosophy of strong AI. The most serious problem is John Searle's Chinese room argument in which it is demonstrated that the contents of an information processor have no intrinsic meaning-at any moment they are just a set of electrons or steel balls etc. Searle's objection does not convince those who believe in direct perception because they would maintain that 'meaning' is only to be found in the objects of perception, which they believe is the world itself. The objection is also countered by the concept of emergence in which it is proposed that some unspecified new physical phenomenon arise in very complex processors as a result of their complexity. It is interesting that the misnomer digital sentience is sometimes used in the context of artificial intelligence research. Sentience means the ability to feel or perceive in the absence of thoughts, especially inner speech. It draws attention to the way that conscious experience is a state rather than a process that might occur in processors.
The debate about whether a machine could be conscious under any circumstances is usually described as the conflict between physicalism and dualism. Dualities believe that there is something nonphysical about consciousness while physicalist hold that all things are physical. Those who believe that consciousness is physical are not limited to those who hold that consciousness is a property of encoded information on carrier signals. Several indirect realist philosophers and scientists have proposed that, although information processing might deliver the content of consciousness, the state that is consciousness be due to another physical phenomenon. The eminent neurologist Wilder Penfield was of this opinion and scientists such as Arthur Stanley Eddington, Roger Penrose, Herman Weyl, Karl Pribram and Henry Stapp among many others, have also proposed that consciousness involve physical phenomena that are more subtle than simple information processing. Even some of the most ardent supporters of consciousness in information processors such as Dennett suggests that some new, emergent, scientific theory may be required to account for consciousness. As was mentioned above, neither the ideas that involve direct perception nor those that involve models of the world in the brain seem to be compatible with current physical theory. It seems that new physical theory may be required and the possibility of dualism is not, as yet, ruled out.
Some technologists working in the field of artificial consciousness are trying to create devices that appear conscious. These devices might simulate consciousness or actually be conscious but provided are those that appear conscious in the desired result that has been achieved. In computer science, the term digital sentience is used to describe the concept of digital numeration could someday be capable of independent thought. Digital sentience, if it ever comes to exist, is likely to be a form of artificial intelligence. A generally accepted criterion for sentience is self-awareness and this is also one of the definitions of consciousness. To support the concept of self-awareness, a definition of conscious can be cited: "having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts.” In more general terms, an AC system should be theoretically capable of achieving various or by a more strict view all verifiable, known, objective, and observable aspects of consciousness so that the device appears conscious. Another, but less to agree about, that its responsible and corresponding definition as extracted in the word of “conscious,” slowly emerges as to be inferred through the avenue in being of, "Possessing knowledge by the seismical provisions that allow whether are by means through which ane existently internal and/or externally is given to its observable property, whereas of becoming labelled for reasons that posit in themselves to any assemblage that has forwarded by ways of the conscious experience. Although, the observably existing provinces are those that are by their own nature the given properties from each that occasion to natural properties of a properly ordered approving for which knowledgeable entities must somehow endure to exist in the awarenesses of sensibility.
There are various aspects and/or abilities that are generally considered necessary for an AC system, or an AC system should be able to learn them; These are very useful as criteria to determine whether a certain machine is artificially conscious. These are only the most cited, however, there are many others that are not covered. The ability to predict (or anticipate) foreseeable events is considered a highly desirable attribute of AC by Igor Aleksander: He writes in Artificial Neuro-consciousness: An Update: "Prediction is one of the key functions of consciousness. An organism that cannot predict would have itself its own serious hamper of consciousness." The emergent’s multiple draft’s principle proposed by Daniel Dennett in Consciousness Explained may be useful for prediction: It involves the evaluation and selection of the most appropriate "draft" to fit the current environment. Consciousness is sometimes defined as self-awareness. While self-awareness is very important, it may be subjective and is generally difficult to test. Another test of AC, in the opinion of some, should include a demonstration that machines can learn the ability to filter out certain stimuli in its environment, to focus on certain stimuli, and to show attention toward its environment in general. The mechanisms that govern how human attention is driven are not yet fully understood by scientists. This absence of knowledge could be exploited by engineers of AC; Since we don't understand attentiveness in humans, we do not have specific and known criteria to measure it in machines. Since unconsciousness in humans equates to total inattentiveness, the AC should have outputs that indicate where its attention is focussed at anyone time, at least during the aforementioned test. By Antonio Chella from University of Palermo "The mapping between the conceptual and the linguistic areas gives the interpretation of linguistic symbols in terms of conceptual structures. It is achieved through a focus of attentive mechanistic implementation, by means of suitable recurrent neural networks with internal states. A sequential attentive mechanism is hypothesized that suitably scans the conceptual representation and, according to the hypotheses generated on the basis of previous knowledge, it predicts and detects the interesting events occurring in the scene. Hence, starting from the incoming information, such a mechanism generates expectations and it makes contexts in which hypotheses may be verified and, if necessary, adjusted. "Awareness could be another required aspect. However, again, there are some problems with the exact definition of awareness. To illustrate this point is the philosopher David Chalmers (1996) controversially puts forward the panpsychist argument that a thermostat could be considered conscious: it has states corresponding too hot, too cold, or at the correct temperature. The results of the experiments of neuro-scanning on monkeys suggest that a process, not a state or object activate neurons. For such reaction there must be created a model of the process based on the information received through the senses, creating models in such that its way demands a lot of flexibility, and is also useful for making predictions. Personality is another characteristic that is generally considered vital for a machine to appear conscious. In the area of behavioural psychology, there is a somewhat popular theory that personality is an illusion created by the brain in order to interact with other people. It is argued that without other people to interact with, humans (and possibly other animals) would have no need of personalities, and human personality would never have evolved. An artificially conscious machine may need to have a personality capable of expression such that human observers can interact with it in a meaningful way. However, this is often questioned by computer scientists; The Turing test, which measures by a machine's personality, is not considered generally useful anymore. Learning is also considered necessary for AC. By engineering consciousness, a summary by Ron Chrisley, studying at the University of Sussex, says that of consciousness is and involves self, transparency, learning (of dynamics), planning, heterophenomenology, split of attentional signal, action selection, attention and timing management. Daniel Dennett said in his article "Consciousness in Human and Robotic Minds" are said that, "It might be vastly easier to make an initial unconscious or nonconscious "infant, as a, robot and let it "grow up" into consciousness, is more or less the way we all do. Chrisley explained that the robot Cog, is easily described, "Will did not bring about the adult at first, in spite of its adult size. But it is being designed to pass through an extended period of artificial infancy, during which it will have to learn from experience, experience it will gain in the rough-and-tumble environment of the real world, and in addition, ‘nobody doubts that any agent capable of interacting intelligently with a human being on human terms must have access too literally millions if not billions of logically independent items of world knowledge. In that of either of these must be hand-coded individually by human programmers-a tactic being pursued, notoriously, by Douglas Lenat and his CYC team in Dallas-or some way must be found for the artificial agent to learn its world knowledge from (real) interactions with the (real) world. An interesting article about learning is Implicit learning and consciousness by Axel Cleeremans, University of Brussels and Luis Jiménez, University of Santiago, where learning is defined as “a set of phylogenetically advanced adaptation processes that critically depend on an evolved sensitivity to subjective experience so as to enable agents to afford flexible control over their actions in complex, unpredictable environments. Anticipation is the final characteristic that could possibly be used to make a machine appear conscious. An artificially conscious machine should be able to anticipate events correctly in order to be ready to respond to them when they occur. The implication here is that the machine needs real-time components, making it possible to demonstrate that it possesses artificial consciousness in the present and not just in the past. In order to do this, the machine being tested must operate coherently in an unpredictable environment, to simulate the real world.
Newborn babies have been trying for centuries to convince us they are, like the rest of us, sensing, feeling, thinking human beings. Struggling by implies of its position, but now seems as contrary to thousands of years of ignorant supposition that newborns are partly human, sub-human, or not-yet human, the vast majority of babies arrive in hospitals today, greeted by medical specialists who are still sceptical as to whether they can actually see, feel pain, learn, and remember what happens to them. Physicians, immersed in protocol, employ painful procedures, confident no permanent impression, certainly no lasting damage, will result from the manner in which babies are received into this world.
The way "standard medicine" sees infants-by no means universally shared by women or by the midwives who used to assist them at birth-has taken on increasing importance in a country where more than 95% are hospitals born and a quarter of these surgically delivered. While this radical change was occurring, the psychological aspects of birth were little considered. In fact, for most of the century, medical beliefs about the infants nervous system prevailed in psychology as well. However, in the last three decades, research psychology has invested heavily in infant studies and uncovered many previously hidden talents of both the fetus and the newborn baby. The findings are surprising: Babies are more sensitive, more emotional, and more cognitive than we used to believe. They are not what we thought. Babies are so different that we must create new paradigms to describe accurately who they are and what they can do.
Not long ago, experts in pediatrics and psychology were teaching that babies were virtually blind, had no sense of colour, could not recognize their mothers, and heard in "echoes.” They believed babies cared little about sharp changes in temperature at birth and had only a crude sense of smell and taste. Their pain was "not like our pain" yet, their cries not meaningful, their smiles were "gas," and their emotion’s undeveloped. Worst of all, most professionals believed babies were not equipped with enough brain matter to permit them to remember, learn, or find meaning in their experiences.
These false and unflattering views are still widely spread between both professionals and the public. No wonder people find it hard to believe that a traumatic birth, whether it is by cesarean section or vaginal, has significant, on-going effects.
Unfortunately, today these unfounded prejudices still have the weight of "science" behind them, but the harmful results to babies are hardly better than the rank superstitions of the past. The resistance of "experts" who continue to see infants in terms of their traditional incapacities may be the last great obstacle for babies to leap over before being embraced for whom they really are. Old ideas are bound to die under the sheer weight of new evidence, but not before millions of babies suffer unnecessarily because their parents and their doctors do not know they are fully human.
As the light of research reaches into the dark corners of prejudice, we may thank those in the emerging field of prenatal/perinatal psychology. Since this field is often an enter professional collaboration and does not fit conveniently to accepted academic departments, the field is not yet recognized in the academic world by endowed chairs or even by formal courses. At present only a few courses exist throughout the world. Yet research teams have achieved a succession of breakthroughs that challenge standard "scientific" ideas of human development.
Scholars in this field respect the full range of evidence of infant capabilities, whether from personal reports contributed by parents, revelations arising from therapeutic work, or from formal experiments. Putting together all the bits and pieces of information gathered from around the globe yields a fundamentally different picture of a baby.
The main way information about sentient, conscious babies has reached the public, especially pregnant parents, has been via popular media: books, movies, magazine features, and television. Among the most outstanding have been The Secret Life of the Unborn Child by Canadian psychiatrist Thomas Verny (now in 25 languages), movies like Look Who's Talking, and several talk shows, including Oprah Winfrey, where a program on therapeutic treatment of womb and birth traumas probably reached 25 million viewers in 25 countries. Two scholarly journals are devoted entirely to prenatal/perinatal psychology, one in North America that began in 1986, and one in Europe beginning in 1989. The Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) is a gathering place for people interested in this field and who keep informed through newsletters, journals, and conferences.
Evidence that babies are sensitive, cognitive, and are affected by their birth experiences may come from various sources. The oldest evidence is anecdotal and intuitive. Mothers are the principal contributors to the idea of baby as a person, one you can talk to, and one who can talk back as well. This process, potentially available to any mother, is better explained in psychic terms than in word-based language. This exchange of thoughts is probably telepathic rather than linguistic.
Mothers who communicate with their infants know that the baby is a person, mind and soul, with understanding, wisdom, and purpose. This phenomenon is cross-cultural, probably universal, although all mothers do not necessarily engage in this dialogue. In an age of "science," a mother's intuitive knowledge is too often dismissed. What mothers know has not been considered as valid data. What mothers say about their infants must be venal, self-serving, or imaginary, and can never be equal to what is known by "experts" or "scientists."
This prejudice extends into a second category of information about babies, and the evidence derived from clinical work. Although the work of psychotherapy is usually done by formally educated, scientifically trained, licensed persons who are considered expert in their field, the information they listen to is anecdotal and their methods are the blending of science and art.
Their testimony of infant intelligence, based on the recollections of clients, is often compelling. Therapists are privy to clients' surprising revelations, many of which show a direct connection between traumas surrounding birth and later disabilities of heart and mind. Although it is possible for these connections to be purely imaginary, we know they are not when hospital records and eyewitness reports confirm the validity of the memories. Obstetrician David Cheek, using hypnosis with a series of subjects, discovered that they could accurately report the full set of left and right turns and sequences involved in their own deliveries. This is technical information that no ordinary person would have unless his memories are accurate.
Psychologists using hypnosis, have found it necessary to test the reliability of memories people gave me about their traumas during the birth process, memories that had not previously been conscious. I hypnotized mother and child pairs who said they had never spoken in any detail about that child's birth. I received a detailed report of what happened from the now-adult child that I compared with the mother's report, given also in hypnosis.
The reports dovetailed at many points and were clearly reports of the same birth. By comparing one story with the other, I could see when the adult child was fantasizing, rather than having accurate recall, but fantasy was rare. It is to conclude that these birth memories were real memories, and were a reliable guide to what had happened.
Some of the first indications that babies are sentient came from the practice of psychoanalysis, stretching back to the beginning of the century to the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud. Although Freud himself was sceptical about the operation of the infant mind, his clients kept bringing him information that seemed to link their anxieties and fears to events surrounding their births. He theorized that birth might be the original trauma upon which later anxiety was constructed.
Otto Rank, Freud's associate, was more certain that birth traumas underlay many later neuroses, so he reorganized psychoanalysis around the assumption of birth trauma. He was rewarded by the rapid recovery of his clients who were "cured" in far less time than was required for a customary psychoanalysis. In the second half of the century, important advances have been made in resolving early trauma and memories of trauma.
Hypnotherapy, primal therapy, psychedelic therapies, various combinations of body work with breathing and sound stimulation, sand tray therapy, and art effects have all proved useful in accessing important imprints, decisions, and memories stored by the infant mind. If there had been no working mind in infancy, of course there would be no need to return to it to heal bad impressions, change decisions, and otherwise resolve mental and emotional problems.
A third burgeoning source of information about the conscious nature of babies comes from scientific experiments and systematic observations utilizing breakthrough technologies. In our culture, with its preference for refined measurement and strict protocols, these are the studies that get funding. And the results are surprising from this contemporary line of empirical research.
We have learned so much about babies in the last twenty years that most of what we thought we knew before is suspect, and much of it is obsolete. I will highlight the new knowledge in three sections: development of the physical senses, beginnings of self-expression, and evidence of active mental life.
First, we have a much better idea of our physical development, the process of the embodiment from conception to birth. Our focus here is on the senses and when they become available during gestation. Touch is our first sense and perhaps our last. Sensitivity to touch begins in our faces about seven weeks gestational age. Tactile sensitivity expands steadily to include most parts of the fetal body by 17 weeks. In the normal womb, touch is never rough, and temperature is relatively constant. At birth, this placid environment ends with dramatic new experiences of touch that no baby can overlook.
By only 14 weeks gestational age, the taste buds are formed, and ultrasound shows both sucking and swallowing. A fetus controls the frequency of swallowing amniotic fluid, and will speed up or slow in reaction to sweet and bitter tastes. Studies show babies have a definite preference for sweet tastes. Hearing begins earlier than anyone thought possible at 16 weeks. The ear is not complete until about 24 weeks, a fact revealing the complex nature of listening, which includes reception of vibes through our skin, skeleton, and vestibular system as well as the ear. Babies in the womb are listening to maternal sounds and to the immediate environment for almost six months. By birth, their hearing is about as good as ours.
Our sense of sight also develops before birth, although our eyelids remain fused from week 10 through 26. Nevertheless, babies in the womb will react to light flashed on the mother's abdomen. By the time of birth, vision is well-advanced, though not yet perfect. Babies have no trouble focussing at the intimate 16-inch distance where the faces of mothers and fathers are usually found.
Mechanisms for pain perception like those for touch, develop early. By about three month, if babies are accidentally struck by a needle inserted into the womb to withdraw fluid during amniocentesis, they quickly twist away and try to escape from the needle. Intrauterine surgery, a new aspect of fetal medicine made possibly in part by our new ability to see inside the womb, means new opportunities for fetal pain.
Although surgeons have long denied prenates experience pain, a recent experiment in London proved unborn babies feel pain. Babies who were needled for intrauterine transfusions showed a 600% increase in beta-endorphins, hormones generated to deal with stress. In just ten minutes of needling, even 23 week old fetuses were mounting a full-scale stress response. Needling at the intrahapatic vein provokes vigorous body and breathing movements.
Finally, our muscle systems develop under buoyant conditions in the fluid environment of the womb and are regularly used in navigating the area. However, after birth, in the dry world of normal gravity, our muscle systems look feeble. As everyone knows, babies cannot walk, and they struggle, usually in vain, to hold up their own heads. Because the muscles are still relatively undeveloped, babies give a misleading appearance of incompetence. In truth, babies have remarkably useful sensory equipment very much like our own.
A second category of evidence for baby consciousness comes from empirical research on bodily movement in utero. Except for the movement a mother and father could sometimes feel, we have had almost no knowledge of the extent and variety of movement inside the womb. This changed with the advent of real-time ultrasound imaging, giving us moment by moment pictures of fetal activity.
One of the surprises is that movement commences between eight and ten weeks gestational age. This has been determined with the aid of the latest round of ultrasound improvements. Fetal movement is voluntary, spontaneous, and graceful, not jerky and reflexive as previously reported. By ten weeks, babies move their hands to their heads, face, and mouth; they flex and extend their arms and legs; They open and close their mouths and rotate longitudinally. From 10 to 12 weeks onward, the repertoire of body language is largely complete and continues throughout gestation. Periodic exercise alternates with rest periods on a voluntary basis reflecting individual needs and interests. Movement is self-expression and expressional personalities.
Twins viewed periodically via ultrasound during gestation often show highly independent motor profiles, and, over time continue to distinguish themselves through movement both inside and outside the womb. They are expressing their individuality.
Close observation has brought many unexpected behaviours to light. By 16 weeks, male babies are having their first erections. As soon as they have hands, they are busy exploring everywhere and everything, feet, toes, mouth, and the umbilical cord: these are their first toys.
By 30 weeks, babies have an intense dream life, spending more time in the dream state of sleep than they ever do after they are born. This is significant because dreaming is definitely a cognitive activity, a creative exercise of the mind, and because it is a spontaneous and personal activity.
Observations of the fetus also reveal a number of reactions to conditions in the womb. Such are the reactions to provocative circumstances is a further sign of selfhood. Consciousness of danger and manoeuver of the self-defence are visible in fetal reactions to amniocentesis. Even when things go normally and babies are not struck by needles, they react with wild variations of normal heart activity, alter their breathing movements, may "hide" from the needle, and often remain motionless for a time-suggesting fear and shock.
Babies react with alarm to loud noises, car accidents, earthquakes, and even to their mother's watching terrifying scenes on television. They swallow less when they do not like the taste of amniotic fluid, and they stop their usual breathing movements when their mothers drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
In a documented report of work via ultrasound, a baby struck accidentally by a needle not only twisted away, but located the needle barrel and collide repeatedly-surely an aggressive and angry behaviours. Similarly, ultrasound experts have reported seeing twins hitting each other, while others have seen twins playing together, gently awakening one-another, rendering cheek-to-cheek, and even kissing. Such scenes, some at only 20 weeks, were never anticipated in developmental psychology. No one anticipated sociable behaviour nor emotional behaviour until months after a baby's birth.
We can see emotion expressed in crying and smiling long before 40 weeks, the usual time of birth. We see first smiles on the faces of premature infants who are dreaming. Smiles and pleasant looks, along with a variety of unhappy facial expressions, tell us dreams have pleasant or unpleasant contents to which babies are reacting. Mental activity is causing emotional activity. Audible crying has been reported by 23 weeks, in cases of abortion, revealing that babies are experiencing very appropriate emotion by that time. Close to the time of birth, medical personnel have documented crying from within the womb, in association with obstetrical procedures that have allowed air to enter the space around the fetal larynx.
Finally, a third source of evidence for infant consciousness is the research that confirms various forms of learning and memory both in the fetus and the newborn. Since infant consciousness was considered impossible until recently, experts have had to accept a growing body of experimental findings illustrating that babies learn from their experiences. In studies that began in Europe in 1925 and America in 1938, babies have demonstrated all the types of learning formally recognized in psychology at the time: classical conditioning, habituation, and reinforcement conditioning, both inside and outside the womb.
In modern times, as learning has been understood more broadly, experiments have shown a range of learning abilities. Immediately after birth, babies show recognition of musical passages, which they have heard repeatedly before birth, whether it is the bassoon passage in Peter and the Wolf, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," or the theme music of a popular soap opera.
Language acquisition begins in the womb as babies listen repeatedly to their mothers' intonations and learn their mother tongue. As early as 25 weeks, the recording of a baby's first cry contains so many rhythms, intonations, and other features common to their mother's speech that their spectrographs can be matched. In experiments shortly after birth, babies recognize their mother's voice and prefer her voice to other female voices. In the delivery room, babies recognize their father's voice and recognize specific sentences their fathers have spoken, especially if the babies have heard these sentences frequently while they were in the womb. After birth, babies show special regard for their native language, preferring it to a foreign language.
Fetal learning and memory also consist of stories that are read aloud to them repeatedly before birth. At birth, babies will alter their sucking behaviour to obtain recordings of the familiar stories. In a recent experiment, a French and American team had mothers repeat a particular children's rhyme each day from week 33 to week 37. After four weeks of exposure, babies reacted to the target rhymes and not to other rhymes, proving they recognize specific language patterns while they are in the womb.
Newborn babies quickly learn to distinguish their mother's face from other female faces, their mother's breast pads from other breast pads, their mother's distinctive underarm odour, and their mother's perfume if she has worn the same perfume consistently.
Premature babies learn from their unfortunate experiences in neonatal intensive care units. One boy, who endured surgery parlayed with curare, but was given no pain-killing anaesthetics, of developed and pervading fear of doctors and hospitals that remains undiminished in his teens. He also learned to fear the sound and sight of adhesive bandages. This was in reaction to having some of his skin pulled off with adhesive tape during his stay in the premature nursery.
Confirmation that early experiences of pain have serious consequences later has come from recent studies of babies at the time of first vaccinations. Researchers who studied infants being vaccinated four to six months after birth discovered that babies who had experienced the pain of circumcision had higher pain scores and cried longer. The painful ordeal of circumcision had apparently conditioned them to pain and set their pain threshold lower. This is an example of learning from experience: Perinatal pain.
Happily, there are other things to learn besides pain and torture. The Prenatal Classroom is a popular program of prenatal stimulation for parents who want to establish strong bonds of communication with a baby in the womb. One of the many exercises is the "Kick Game," which you play by responding to the child's kick by touching the spot your baby just kicked, and saying "kick, baby kick." Babies quickly learn to respond to this kind of attention: They do kick again and they learn to kick anywhere their parents touch. One father taught his baby to kick in a complete circle.
Babies also remember consciously the big event of birth itself, at least during the first years of their lives. Proof of this comes from little children just learning to talk. Usually around two or three years of age, when children are first able to speak about their experiences, some spontaneously recall what their birth was like. They tell what happened in plain language, sometimes accompanied by pantomime, pointing and sound effects. They describe water, black and red colours, the coming light, or dazzling light, and the squeezing sensations. Cesarean babies tell about a door or window suddenly opening, or a zipper that zipped open and let them out. Some babies remember fear and danger. They also remember and can reveal secrets.
One of my favourite stories of a secret birth memory came from Cathy, a midwife's assistant. With the birth completed, she found herself alone with a hungry, restless baby after her mother had gone to bathe and the chief midwife was busy in another room. Instinctively, Cathy offered the baby her own breast for a short time: then she wondered if this were appropriate and stopped feeding the infant without telling anyone what had happened. Years later, when the little young woman was almost four, Cathy was babysitting her. In a quiet moment, she asked the child if she remembered her birth. The child did, and volunteered various accurate details. Then, moving closer to whisper a secret, she said "You held me and gave me titty when I cried, and Mommy wasn't there." Cathy said to herself, "Nobody can tell me babies don't remember their births"
Is a baby a conscious and real person? To me it is no longer appropriate to speculate. It is too late to speculate when so much is known. The range of evidence now available in the form of knowledge of the fetal sensory system, observations of fetal behaviour in the womb, and experimental proof of learning and memory-all of this evidence-amply verifies what some mothers and fathers have sensed from time immemorial, that a baby is a real person. The baby is real in having a sense of self that can be seen in creative efforts to adjust or to influence its environment. Babies show self-regulation (as in restricting swallowing and breathing), the self-defence (as in retreating from invasive needles and strong light), self-assertion, combat with a needle, or striking out at a bothersome twin.
Babies are like us in having clearly manifested feelings in their reactions to assaults, injuries, irritations, or medically inflicted pain. They smile, cry, and kick in protest, manifest fear, anger, grief, pleasure, or displeasure in ways that seem entirely appropriate in relation to their circumstances. Babies are cognitive beings, thinking their own thoughts, dreaming their own dreams, learning from their own experiences, and remembering their own experiences.
An iceberg can serve as a useful metaphor to understand the unconscious mind, its relationship to the conscious mind and how the two parts of our mind can better work together. As an iceberg floats in the water, the huge mass of it remains below the surface.
Only a small percentage of the whole iceberg is visible above the surface. In this way, the iceberg is like the mind. The conscious mind is what we notice above the surface while the unconscious mind, the largest and most powerful part, remains unseen below the surface.
In our metaphor that regards of the small amount of icebergs, far and above the surface represents the conscious mind; The huge mass below the surface, the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind holds all awareness that is not presently in the conscious mind. All memories, feelings and thoughts that are out of conscious awareness are by definition "unconscious." It is also called the subconscious and is known as the dreaming mind or deep mind.
Knowledgeable and powerful in a different way than the conscious mind, the unconscious mind handles the responsibility of keeping the body running well. It has memory of every event we've ever experienced; it is the source and storehouse of our emotions; and it is often considered our connection with Spirit and with each other.
No model of how the mind works disputes, the tremendous power, which is in constant action below the tip of the iceberg. The conscious mind is constantly supported by unconscious resources. Just think of all the things you know how to do without conscious awareness. If you drive, you use more than 30 specific skills . . . without being aware of them. These are skills, not facts; they are processes, requiring intelligence, decision-making and training.
Besides these learned resources that operate below the surface of consciousness there are important natural resources. For instance, the unconscious mind regulates all the systems of the body and keeps them in harmony with each other. It controls heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, the endocrine system and the nervous system, just to name a few of its natural, automatic duties.
The conscious mind, like the part of the iceberg above the surface, is a small portion of the whole being. The conscious mind is what we ordinarily think of when we say "my mind." It's associated with thinking, analysing and making judgments and decisions. The conscious mind is actively sorting and filtering its perceptions because only so much information can reside in consciousness at once. Everything else falls back below the water line, into unconsciousness.
Only seven bits of information, and/or minus two can be held consciously at one time. Everything else we are thinking, feeling or perceiving now . . . along with all our memories remains unconscious, until called into consciousness or until rising spontaneously.
The imagination is the medium of communication between the two parts of the mind. In the iceberg metaphor, the imagination is at the surface of the water. It functions as a medium through which content from the unconscious mind can come into conscious awareness.
Communication through the imagination is two-way. The conscious mind can also use the medium of the imagination to communicate with the unconscious mind. The conscious mind sends suggestions about what it wants through the imagination to the unconscious. It imagines things, and the subconscious intelligencer work to make them happen.
The suggestions can be words, feelings or images. Athletes commonly use images mentally to rehearse how they want to perform by picturing themselves successfully completing their competition. A tennis player may see a tennis ball striking the racket at just the right spot, at just the perfect moment in the swing. Studies show that this form of imaging improves performance.
However, the unconscious mind uses the imagination to communicate with the conscious mind far more often than the other way around. New ideas, hunches, daydreams and intuitions come from the unconscious to the conscious mind through the medium of the imagination.
An undeniable example of the power in the lower part of the iceberg is dreaming. Dream images, visions, sounds and feelings come from the unconscious. Those who are aware of their dreams know how rich and real they can be. Even filtered, as they are when remembered later by the conscious mind, dreams can be quite powerful experiences.
Many people have received workable new ideas and insights, relaxing daydreams, accurate hunches, and unexpected intuitive understandings by replaying their dreams in a waking state. These are everyday examples of what happens when unconscious intelligencer and processes communicate through the imagination with the conscious mind.
Unfortunately, the culture has discouraged us from giving this information credibility. "It's just, but your imagination" is a commonly heard dismissal of information coming from the deep mind. This kind of conditioning has served to keep us disconnected from the deep richness of our vast unconscious resources.
In the self-healing work we'll be using the faculty of the imagination in several ways. In regression processes to access previously unconscious material from childhood, perinatal experiences and past lives, and even deeper realms of the "universal unconscious." Inner dialogue is another essential tool that makes use of the imagination in process work.
To shoulder atop the iceberg metaphor forward, each of us can be represented an iceberg, with the larger part of ourselves remain deeply submerged. And there's a place in the depths where all of our icebergs come together, a place in the unconscious where we connect with each other
The psychologist Carl Jung has named this realm the "Collective Unconscious." This is the area of mind where all humanity shares experience, and from where we draw on the archetypal energies and symbols that are common to us all. "Past life" memories are drawn from this level of the unconscious.
Another, even deeper level can be termed the "Universal Unconscious" where experiences beyond just humanity's can also be accessed with regression process. It is at this level that many "core issues" begin, and where their healing needs to be accomplished.
The unconscious connection "under the iceberg" between people is often more potent than the conscious level connection, and important consideration in doing the healing work. Relationship is an area rich with triggers to deeply buried material needing healing. And some parts of us cannot be triggered in any way other than "under the iceberg."
Although the conscious mind, steeped in cognition and thought, is able to deceive another . . . the unconscious mind, based in feeling, will often give us information from under the iceberg that contradicts what is being communicated consciously.
"Sounds right but feels wrong," is an example of information from under the iceberg surfacing in the conscious mind, but conflicting with what the conscious mind was ably to attain of its own. This kind of awareness is also called "intuition."
Intuitive information comes without a searching of the conscious memory or a formulation to be filled by imagination. When we access the intuition, we seem to arrive at an insight by a path from unknown sources directly to the conscious awareness. Wham! Out of nowhere, in no time.
No matter what the precise neurological process, the ability to access and use information from the intuition is extremely valuable in the effective and creative use of the tools of self healing. In relating with others, it's important to realize that your intuition will bring you information about the other and your relationship from under the iceberg.
When your intuition is the source of your words and actions, they are usually much more appropriate and helpful than what thinking or other functions of the conscious mind could muster. What you do and say from the intuition in earnest communication will be meaningful to the other, even though it may not make sense to you.
The most skilful and comprehending way to nurture and develop your intuition is to trust all of your intuitive insights. Trust encourages the intuition to be more present. Its information is then more accessible and the conscious mind finds less reason to question, analyse or judge intuitive insights.
The primary skills needed for easy access and trust of intuitive information are: (1) The ability to get out of the way. (2) The ability to accept the information without judgment.
Two easy ways to access intuition and help the conscious mind get out of the way occur: (3) Focus your attention in your abdominal area and imagine you have a "belly brain.” As you feel into and sense this area, "listen" to what your belly brain has to say. This is often referred to as listening to our "gut feelings." (4) With your eyes looking down and to your left and slightly de focussed, simply feel into what to say next.
Once the intuition is flowing, it will continue easily, unless it is Formed. The most usual Formage is for which we may become of, and only because the conscious mind's finds within to all judgments of the intuitive information. The best way to avoid this is to get the cooperation of the conscious mind so it will step aside and become the observer when intuition is being accessed. Cosmic Consciousness is an ultra high state of illumination in the human Mind that is beyond that of "self-awareness," and "ego-awareness." In the attainment of Cosmic Consciousness, the human Mind has entered a state of Knowledge instead of mere beliefs, a state of "I know," instead of "I believe." This state of Mind is beyond that of the sense reasoning in that it has attained an awareness of the Universe and its relation to being and a recognition of the Oneness in all things that is not easily shared with others who have not personally experienced this state of Mind. The attainment of Cosmic illumination will cause an individual to seek solitude from the multitude, and isolation from the noisy world of mental pollution.
Carl Jung was a student and follower of Freud. He was born in a small town in Switzerland in 1875 and all his life was fascinated by folk tales, myths and religious stories. Nonetheless, he had a close friendship with Freud early in their relationship, his independent and questioning mind soon caused a break.
Jung did not accept Freud’s contention that the primary motivations behind behaviour was sexual urges. Instead of Freud’s instinctual drives of sex and aggression, Jung believed that people are motivated by a more general psychological energy that pushes them to achieve psychological growth, self-realization, psychic wholeness and harmony. Also, unlike Freud, he believed that personality continues to develop throughout the lifespan.
It is for his ideas of the collective unconscious that students of literature and mythology are indebted to Jung. In studying different cultures, he was struck by the universality of many themes, patterns, stories and images. These same images, he found, frequently appeared in the dreams of his patients. From these observations, Jung developed his theory of the collective unconscious and the archetypes.
Like Freud, Jung posited the existence of a conscious and an unconscious mind. A model that psychologists frequently use here is an iceberg. The part of the iceberg that is above the surface of the water is seen as the conscious mind. Consciousness is the part of the mind we know directly. It is where we think, feel, sense and intuit. It is through conscious activity that the person becomes an individual. It’s the part of the mind that we “live in” most of the time, and contains information that is in our immediate awareness, the level of the conscious mind, and the bulk of the ice berg, is what Freud would call the unconscious, and what Jung would call the “personal unconscious.” Here we will find thoughts, feelings, urges and other information that is difficult to bring to consciousness. Experiences that do not reach consciousness, experiences that are not congruent with whom we think we are, and things that have become “repressed” would make up the material at this level. The contents of the personal unconscious are available through hypnosis, guided imagery, and especially dreams. Although not directly accessible, material in the personal unconscious has gotten there sometime during our lifetime. For example, the reason you are going to school now, why you picked a particular shirt to wear or your choice of a career may be a choice you reached consciously. But it is also possible that education, career, or clothing style has been influenced by a great deal of unconscious material: Parents’ preferences, childhood experiences, even movies you have seen but about which you do not think when you make choices or decisions. Thus, the depth psychologist would say that many decisions, indeed some of the most important ones that have to do with choosing a mate or a career, are determined by unconscious factors. But still, material in the personal unconscious has been environmentally determined.
The collective unconscious is different. It’s like eye colour. If someone were to ask you, “How did you get your eye colour,” you would have to say that there was no choice involved – conscious or unconscious. You inherited it. Material in the collective unconscious is like a dramatization for this as self bequeathed. It never came from our current environment. It is the part of the mind that is determined by heredity. So we inherit, as part of our humanity, a collective unconscious; the mind is pre-figured by evolution just as is the body. The individual is linked to the past of the whole species and the long stretch of evolution of the organism. Jung thus placed the psyche within the evolutionary process.
What’s in the collective unconscious? Psychological archetypes. This idea of psychological archetypes is among Jung’s most important contributions to Western thought. An ancient idea somewhat like Plato’s idea of Forms or “patterns” in the divine mind that determine the form material objects will take, and the archetype is in all of us. The word “archetype” comes from the Greek “Arche” meaning first, and type meant to “imprinting or patterns.” Psychological archetypes are thus first prints, or patterns that form the basic blueprint for major dynamic counterparts of the human personality. For Jung, archetypes pre-exist in the collective unconscious of humanity. They repeat themselves eternally in the psyches of human beings and they determine how we both perceive and behave. These patterns are inborn within us. They are part of our inheritance as human beings. They reside as energy within the collective unconscious and are part the psychological life of all peoples everywhere at all times. They are inside us and they are outside us. We can meet them by going inward to our dreams or fantasies. We can meet them by going outward to our myths, legends, literature and religions. The archetype can be a pattern, such as a kind of story. Or it can be a figure, such as a kind of character.
In her book Awakening the Heroes Within, Carolyn Pearson identifies twelve archetypes that are fairly easy to understand. These are the Innocent, the Orphan, the Warrior, the Caregiver, the Seeker, the Destroyer, the Lover, the Creator, the Ruler, the Magician, the Sage, and the Fool. If we look at art, literature, mythology and the media, we can easily identify some of these patterns. One familiarized is the contemporary western culture is the Warrior. We find the warrior myth encoded in all the great heroes whoever took on the dragon, stood up to the tyrant, fought the sorcerer, or did battle with the monster: And in so doing rescued himself and others. The true Warrior is not just overbearing. The aggressive man (or women) fights to feel superior to others, to keep them down. The warrior fights to protect and ennoble others. The warrior protects the perimeters of the castle or the family or the psyche. The warrior’s myth is active in each of us any time we stand up against unfair authority, be it a boss, teacher or parent. The highest level warrior has at some time confronted his or her own inner dragons. We see the Warrior’s archetype in the form of pagan deities, for example the Greek god of war, Mars. David, who fights Goliath, or Michael, who casts Satan out of Heaven is familiar Biblical warrior. Hercules, Xena (warrior princess) and Conan the Barbarian are more contemporary media forms the warrior takes. And it is in this widely historical variety that we can find an important point about the archetype. It really is unconscious. The archetype is like the invisible man in famous story. In the story, a man invents a potion that, when ingested, renders him invisible. He becomes visible only when he puts on clothes. The archetype is like this. It remains invisible until it unfolds within the Dawn of its particular culture: in the Middle Ages this was King Arthur; in modern America, it may be Luke Skywalker. But if the archetype were not a universal pattern imprinted on our collective psyche, we would not be able to continue to recognize it over and over. The love goddess is another familiar archetypal pattern. Aphrodite to the Greeks, Venus to the Romans, she now appears in the form of familiar models in magazines like “Elle” and “Vanity Fair.” And whereas in ancient Greece her place of worship was the temple, today is it the movie theatre and the cosmetics counter at Nordstrom’s. The archetype remains; the garments it dawns are those of its particular time and place.
This brings us to our discussion of the Shadow as archetype. The clearest and most articulate discussion of this subject is contained in Johnson’s book Owning Your Own Shadow. The Shadow is not a difficult concept. It is merely the “dark side” of the psyche. It’s everything that doesn’t fit into the Persona. The word “persona” comes from the theatre. In the Roman theatre, characters would put on a mask that represented who the character was in the drama. The word “persona” literally means “mask.” Johnson says that the persona is how we would like to be seen by the world, a kind of psychological clothing that “mediates between our true elves and our environment” in much the same way that clothing gives an image. The Shadow is what doesn’t fit into this Persona. These “refused and unacceptable” characteristics don’t go away; They are stuffed or repressed and can, if unattended to, begin to take on a life of their own. One Jungian likens the process to that of filling a bag. We learn at a very young age that there are certain ways of thinking, being and relating that are not acceptable in our culture, and so we stuff them into the shadow bag. In our Western culture, particularly in the United States, thoughts about sex are among the most prevalent that are unacceptable and so sex gets stuffed into the bag. The shadow side of sexuality is quite evident in our culture in the form of pornography, prostitution, and topless bars. Psychic energy that is not dealt within a healthy way takes a dark or shadow form and begins to take on a life of its own. As children our bag is fairly small, but as we get older, it becomes larger and more difficult to drag.
Therefore, it is not difficult to see that there is a shadow side to the Archetypes discussed earlier. The shadow side to the warrior is the tyrant, the villain, the Darth Vader, who uses his or her skills for power and ego enhancement. And whereas the Seeker Archetype quests after truth and purity, the shadow Seeker is controlled by pride, ambition, and addictions. If the Lover follows his/her bliss, commits and bonds, the shadow lover signifies a seducer a sex addict or interestingly enough, a puritan.
But we can use the term “shadow” in a more general sense. It is not merely the dark side of a particular archetypal pattern or form. Wherever Persona is, Shadow is also. Wherever good is, is evil. We first know the shadow as the personal unconsciousness, for in all that we abhor, deny and repressing power, greed, cruel and murderous thoughts, unacceptable impulses, morally and ethically wrong actions. All the demonic things by which human beings betray their inhumanity to other beings are shadow. Shadow is unconscious. This is a very important idea. Since it is unconscious, we know it only indirectly, projection, just as we know the other Archetypes of Warrior, Seeker and Lover. We encounter the shadow in other people, things, and places where we project it. The scape goat is a perfect example of shadow projection. The Nazi’s projection of shadow onto the Jews gives us some insight into how powerful and horrific the archetype is. Jung says that when you are in the grips of the archetype, you don’t have it, it has you.
This idea of projection raises an interesting point. It means that the shadow stuff isn’t “out there” at all; it is really “in here”; that is inside us. We only know it is inside us because we see it outside. Shadow projections have a fateful attraction to us. It seems that we have discovered where the bad stuff really is: in him, in her, in that place, there! There it is! We have found the beast, the demon, the bad guy. But does Obscenity really exist, or is what we see as evil all merely projection of our own shadow side? Jung would say that there really is such a thing as evil, but that most of what we see as evil, particularly collectively, is shadow projection. The difficulty is separating the two. And we can only do that when we discover where the projection ends. Hence, Johnson’s book title “Owning Your own Shadow.”
Amid all the talk about the "Collective Unconscious" and other sexy issues, most readers are likely to miss the fact that C.G. Jung was a good Kantian. His famous theory of Synchronicity, "an accusal connecting principle," is based on Kant's distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves and on Kant's theory that causality will not operate among thing-in-themselves the way it does in phenomena. Thus, Kant could allow for free will (unconditioned causes) among things-in-themselves, as Jung allows for synchronicity ("meaningful coincidences"). Next to Kant, Jung is close to Schopenhauer, praising him as the first philosopher he had read, "who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundamentalists of the universe" [Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 69]. Jung was probably unaware of the Friesian background of Otto's term "numinosity" when he began to use it for his Archetypes, but it is unlikely that he would object to the way in which Otto's theory, through Fries, fits into Kantian epistemology and metaphysics.
Jung's place in the Kant-Friesian tradition is on a side that would have been distasteful to Kant, Fries, and Nelson, whose systems were basically rationalistic. Thus Kant saw religion as properly a rational expression of morality, and Fries and Nelson, although allowing an aesthetic content to religion different from morality, nevertheless did not expect religion to embody much more than good morality and good art. Schopenhauer, Otto, and Jung all represent an awareness that more exists to religion and to human psychological life than this. The terrifying, uncanny, and fascinating elements of religion and ordinary life are beneath the notice of Kant, Fries, and Nelson, while they are indisputable and irreducible elements of life, for which there must be an account, with Schopenhauer, Otto, and Jung. As Jung once, again said of Schopenhauer: "He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, passion, evil-all those things that the others hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensibility." It is an awareness of this aspect of the world that renders the religious ideas of "salvation" meaningful; yet "salvation" as such is always missing from moralistic or aesthetic renderings of religion. Only Jung could have written his Answer to Job.
Jung's great Answer to Job, indeed, represents an approach to religion that is all but unique. Placing God in the Unconscious might strike most people as reducing him to a mere psychological object; Nevertheless, that is to overlook Jung's Kantianism. The unconscious, and especially the Collective Unconscious, belongs to Kantian things-in-themselves, or to the transcendent Will of Schopenhauer. Jung was often at pains not to complicate his theory of the Archetypes by committing himself to a metaphysical theory-he wanted the theory to work whether he was talking about the brain or about the Transcendent-but that was merely a concession to the materialistic bias of contemporary science. He had no materialistic commitment himself and, when it came down to it, was not going to accept such naive reductionism. Instead, he was willing to rethink how the Transcendent might operate. Thus, he says about Schopenhauer: I felt sure that by "Will" he really meant God, the Creator, and that he was saying that God was blind. Since I knew from experience that God was not offended by any blasphemy, which on the contrary, he could even encourages it on the account that He wished to evoke not only man's bright and positive side but also his darkness and ungodliness, Schopenhauer's view did not distress me.
The Problem of Evil, which for so many people simply dehumanizes religion, and which Schopenhauer used to reject the value of the world, became a challenge for Jung in the psychoanalysis of God. The God of the Bible is indeed a personality, and seemingly not always the same one. God as a morally evolving personality is the extraordinary conception of Answer to Job. What Otto saw as the evolution of human moral consciousness, Jung turns right around on the basis of the principle that the human unconscious, expressed spontaneously in religious practice and literature, transcends mere human subjectivity. But the transcendent reality in the unconscious is different in kind from consciousness. As Jung said in Memories, Dreams, Reflections again: If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures; nor is it probable that the extremely indirect methods of creation, which squander millions of years upon the development of countless species and creatures, are the outcome of purposeful intention. Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured. The biological and political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the same thing. But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes-the second cosmogony [ed. note: what Teilhard de Chardin called the origin of the "oosphere," the layer of "mind"]. The importance of consciousness is so great that one cannot help suspecting the element of meaning to be concealed somewhere within all the monstrous, apparently senseless biological turmoil, and that the road to its manifestation was ultimately found on the level of warm-blooded vertebrates possessed of a differentiated brain-found as if by chance, unintended and unforeseen, and yet somehow sensed, felt and groped for out of some dark urge.
In other words, a "meaningful coincidence." Jung also says, As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious.
However, Jung has missed something there. If consciousness is "the light in the darkness of mere being," consciousness alone cannot be the "sole purpose of human existence," since consciousness as such could appear as just a place of "mere being" and so would easily become an empty, absurd, and meaningless Existentialist existence. Instead, consciousness allows for the meaningful instantiation of existence, both through Jung's process of Individuation, by which the Archetypes are given unique expression in a specific human life, and from the historic process that Jung examines in Answer to Job, by which interaction with the unconscious alters in turn the Archetypes that come to be instantiated. While Otto could understand Job's reaction to God, as the incomprehensible Numen, Jung thinks of God's reaction to Job, as an innocent and righteous man jerked around by God's unconsciousness. Jung's idea that the Incarnation then is the means by which God redeems Himself from His morally false position in Job is an extraordinary reversal (I hesitate to say "deconstruction") of the consciously expressed dogma that the Incarnation is to redeem humanity.
It is not too difficult to see this turn in other religions. The compassion of the Buddhas in Mahâyâna Buddhism, especially when the Buddha Shakyamuni comes to be seen as the expression of a cosmic and eternal Dharma Body, is a hand of salvation stretched out from the Transcendent, without, however, the complication that the Buddha is ever thought responsible for the nature of the world and its evils as their Creator. That complication, however, does occur with Hindu views of the divine Incarnations of Vishnu. Closer to a Jungian synthesis, on the other hand, is the Bahá'í theory that divine contact is though "Manifestations," which are neither wholly human nor wholly divine: merely human in relation to God, but entirely divine in relation to other humans. Such a theory must appear Christianizing in comparison to Islam, but it avoids the uniqueness of Christ as the only Incarnation in Christianity itself. This is conformable to the Jungian proposition that the unconscious is both a side of the human mind and a door into the Transcendent. When that door opens, the expression of the Transcendent is then conditioned by the person through which it is expressed, possessing that person, but it is also genuinely Transcendent and reflecting the ongoing interaction that the person historically embodies. The possible "mere being" even of consciousness then becomes the place of meaning and value.
Whether "psychoanalysis” as practised by Freud or Jung is to be taken seriously and no less than questions asked; however both men will survive as philosophers long after their claims to science or medicine may be discounted. Jung's Kantianism enables him to avoid the materialism and reductionism of Freud ("all of the civilization is a substitute for incest") and, with a great breadth of learning, employs principles from Kant, Schopenhauer, and Otto that are easily conformable to the Kant-Friesian tradition. The Answer to Job, indeed, represents a considerable advance beyond Otto, into the real paradoxes that are the only way we can conceive transcendent reality.
In the state of Cosmic Consciousness has an individual developed a keen awareness of his own mental states and activities and that of others around him or her. This individual is aware of a very distinct "I" personality that empowers the individual with a powerful expression of the "I am" that is not swayed or moved by the external impressions of the trifling mental states of others. This individual stands on a "rock solid" foundation that is not easily understood by the common mind. Cosmic Consciousness is void of the "superficial" ego.
The existence of the conscious "I" and the "Subconscious Mind" on the Mental Plane is a manifestation of the seventh Hermetic principle, the Principle of Gender. Every human, male and female, is composed of the Masculine and Feminine aspect of Mind on the Mental Plane. Each male has its female element, and each female has its male element of Mental Gender from which the creation of all thoughts proceed. The "I" being the masculine aspect of Mind, and the Subconscious Mind being the feminine. The Principle of Gender manifests itself as male and female in all species of Life and Being that makes the sexual reproduction and multiplication of the species possible on the Great Physical Plane. The phenomena of this principle can be found in all three great groups of life manifestations, as questionably answered to those that are duly respected thereof, that in the Spiritual, Mental, and Physical plane of Life and Being.
On the Physical Plane, its role is recognized as sexual reproduction, while on the higher planes it takes on higher, more subtler functions of Mental and Spiritual Gender. Its role is always in the direction of reproduction, generation and regeneration. The Masculine and Feminine principles are always present and active in all phases of phenomena and every plane of Life. An understanding in the manifesting power of this Principle, will give us a greater understanding of ourselves and an awareness of the enormous latent power awaiting to be tapped.
In the Spiritual developed individual, the person who becomes aware of, and recognizes the conscious "I," or "I am" within, will be able to exert its will upon the subconscious mind with definite causation and purpose. The recognition and awareness of the "I," will enable a person to expand his or her mind into regions of consciousness that is unthinkable to the societal conditioned thinking process of the world community.
True Spiritual, or Mental development, enables the sharpening of the five bodily senses, enhancing the richness of Life as our minds are allowed to expand into advanced Spiritual knowledge. Knowledge that will enable the proper use of the five wonderful bodily senses as they report to us the external world from which we derive information to store in the memory banks of the brain to create a knowledge base of experience. The greater the Conscious awareness, the more acute the bodily senses become. At the same time, the lesser the Conscious awareness (nonmaterial sixth sense), the minor acutely of the five bodily senses become and considerably of our external world would not even be acknowledged. This difference of mental states is most likely the cause of debate between religious and scientific circles.
The "I" Consciousness in each human is the true "Higher Self." The "Higher Self" of each human exists as a constant moving whirlpool of Cosmic Consciousness, or an eddy in the Infinite Spirit of "The all," which manifest’s LIFE in all of us and all living entities of the lower and higher planes. The "I" within all of us for being apart of the Mind but not separated exists in all of us and is the instrument of the conscious "I." It is Eternal and indestructible and mortality and Immortality is not an issue in existence. There is no force in existence capable of destroying the "I." This "I" or "Higher Self" is the SOUL of the Soul and is holographically connected to The all, giving the powerful "I" the Image of its Creator. All of us are created in the image of GOD without any exceptions or exclusions and none can escape its Omnipresent Infinite Living Mind. The all, of being the Ruler of all fate, or destiny, in all peoples, nations, governments, religious institutions, suns, worlds, galaxies, planes, dimensions, and Universes. All are subject to its Wills and Efforts, and is the Law that keeps all things in relationship to their Source. There is no "existence" outside of The all.
When the particular "I" is consciously recognized within ourselves, the "Will" of "I" is powerfully exerted upon the Subconscious Mind, giving the Subconscious Mind purpose and a sense of direction in Life. The Mind is the instrument by which the conscious "I" pries open the many deep, and hidden secrets of Nature.
To cause advancement, each individual would have to initiate the effort in learning the deep secrets of their nature, setting aside all the trifling efforts of self-condemnation, low self esteem, and hurts in their daily living that is caused by allowing the ignorant brainwashing of societal conditioning and self inflicted wounds. All the brainwashing, and imagined hurts that we experience in our lives are lessons to overcome these obstacles and to learn, and recognize the powerful "I."
Only the person who created the negative state of Mind can eliminate this by making a fundamental change in the way they think and what is held in their thoughts and to allow them the Spiritual education that is needed in for advancement. There is no red carpet treatment or royal road in accomplishing this. It takes a will, a desire, diligent effort, and perseverance in cultivating this knowledge. The resulting rewards of this attainment will far exceed the greatest worldly rewards known to humanity.
Most people fail to recognize this reality and they will unconsciously and painfully race through Life from cradle to grave and not even experience a momentary glimpse of this great Truth.
The "I," when recognized in a conscious and deliberate manner, will enable a person to accomplish things in Life that is limited only to his or her own imagination. The accomplishments of educators, scientists, engineers, and leaders, who make up the smaller percentage of the world population, have to a degree recognized this "I" within themselves, mostly in an unconscious manner, nevertheless, many have accomplished successful professional careers. They have accomplished a mental focus on a subject (or object), that escaped the ability of most people, giving them a sense of direction and a meaningful purpose in society. Every human is capable of accomplishing this, if they will only learn to focus and concentrate on one subject at a time.
When the will of "I" is utilized and exerted in an unrecognized and unconscious manner, it becomes misused and abused, bringing misery to the individual and others around him or her. Often, is this reality seen in the work place between people and where persons are in a position of authority, such as supervisors, managers, directors, etc., who bring misery to themselves and to their workers because of the powerful will of the unrecognized "I" or "I am." This aspect will cause a lack of harmony in an individual corporate, or company structure and at times bring chaos to the organization when enough of these types of individuals are employed in one place. Teamwork becomes a very labouring effort as competition between employees becomes its theme causing discontent and thus reducing the efficiency of a corporate environment. There is strength in number, either positive or negative. The realm of Spirit affects all levels of our society.
When the human Mind learns to become focussed on a single object or subject at a time, without wandering, excluding all other objects/subjects waiting in line, the Mind is capable of gathering previously unknown energy and information about a given subject or object. The entire world of that person seems to revolve in such a manner that it would bring them information from the unknown regions of the Mind. This is true meditation, to gather information about the unknown while being in a focussed meditative state of Mind. Each true meditation should bring a person information that will cause his or her Mind to expand with Knowledge, especially, when the focal point of concentration is that of Spirit. A person who learns to master this mental art will find that the proper books will manifest into their Life and bring to them the missing puzzles of Life. Books that will draw the attention of an individual on a given subject, and when the new knowledge is applied to the individual's Mind, it is allowed to expand further upon the subject by allowing the Mind to gather additional information and increasing the knowledge base, causing further advancement for others as well.
The mental art of concentration by employing the exertion of the will and creating desire upon a given subject or object is very rare because the lazy human mind is content with wandering twirlingly through Life. The untrained average human Mind is constantly rapidly wandering from one subject/object to another and is unable to focus on a single subject because of the constant carousel of external impressions of objects from the surrounding material world. The untrained mind is constantly jumping from one subject/object to another, like the jumping around of a wild monkey, never able to pause for a moment, to concentrate, and focalize long enough to allow the Mind to gather information about a given subject or object. This is what thinking is. To allow the Mind to gather information about the unknown. When this is disallowed, a person will wander aimlessly through Life and maintaining an ignorant state of Mind.
Wandering aimlessly through Life is a dangerous mental state to maintain because of the possible danger of other minds with stronger wills and efforts to manipulate the person who has not taken responsibility in the discipline and control of their own mind. A person having no control of their own responsibilities are more to wander of mind, having no control in Life's destiny because of the lack of focus and direction in Life. It can be compared with a rudderless ship that is constantly tossed by the rise and fall of the waves from the powerful ocean.
When the Mind becomes trained and learns to concentrate and focalize on a single object or subject at a time, that state of Mind will bring the individual Universal Knowledge and Wisdom. This is how genius is created by applying the mental art of concentration and focalizing on any worthwhile subject. The famous theories and hypothesis come into being such as Einstein's theory of relativity, man's ability to fly through the air, space travel, etc., by applying the mental art of concentration. It is an unbending mental aspect of the human mind as it continues to expand and gathers ever more information about all known and unknown subjects and objects, constantly causing change and advancement in Spirituality and technology. Unbiased, Spiritual Wisdom enables the proper use of technology and is the catalyst for its increasingly rapid advancement. It may be difficult, however, to conceive that Spirituality and technology go hand in hand, but are nonetheless, the lack of Spiritual Wisdom will dampen the infinite possibilities because of a limited, diminutive belief system.
Technology ends where the mortal barrier begins, then, it becomes a necessity to look into the realm of Spirit in order to continue human evolution. Without the continuous advancement of evolution, this civilization will become dissolved and perish off the face of the earth, like the many previous civilizations before us. The mortal barrier begins when science and technology will reach the limitation of the atomic and sub-atomic particles and a quantum leap into the realm of the Waveform (Spirit) becomes a necessity in order to continue upward progress
When a person learns to find a quiet moment in their lives to be able to become mentally focussed and entered on their profession, job, Spirituality, whatever the endeavour, they will find the answers and renewed energy to solve problems and create new knowledge and ideas.
When a person (no matter who) learns to focus and concentrate on Spirit, their Mind will gather from their Cosmic Consciousness, the deepest secrets of the Universe, as to how it is composed, by what means, and to what end. But, the enigma of the deepest inner secret Nature of The all, or God will always remain unknowable to us by reason of its Infinite stature to which no human qualities can, or should, ever be ascribed.
There is more on the subject of the powerful "I" consciousness the "I Am," the "Higher Self," which is, each one of us.
In what could turn out to be one of the most important discoveries in cognitive studies of our decade, it has been found that there are five million magnetite crystals per gram in the human brain. Interestingly, The meninges, (the membrane that envelops the brain), has twenty times that number. These ‘bio magnetite' crystals demonstrate two interesting features. The first is that their shapes do not occur in nature, suggesting that they were formed in the tissue, rather than being absorbed from outside. The other is that these crystals appear to be oriented so as to maximize their magnetic moment, which tends to give groups of these crystals the capacity to act as a system. The brain has also been found to emit very low intensity magnetic fields, a phenomenon that forms the basis of a whole diagnostic field, Magnetoencephalography.
Unfortunately for the present discussion, there is no way to ‘read' any signals that might be carried by the brain’s magnetic emissions at present. We expect that subtle enough means of detecting such signals will eventually appear, as there is compelling evidence that they do exist, and constitute a means whereby communication happens between various parts of the brain. This system, we speculate, is what makes the selection of which neural areas to recruit, so that States (of consciousness) can elicit the appropriate Phenomenological, behavioural, and affective responses.
While there have been many studies that have examined the effects of magnetic fields on human consciousness, none have yielded findings more germane to understanding the role of neuromagnetic signalling than the work of the Laurentian University Behavioural Neuroscience group. They have pursued a course of experiments that rely on stimulating the brain, especially the temporal lobes, with complex low intensity magnetic signals. It turns out that different signal’s produce different phenomena.
One example of such phenomenons is vestibular sensation, in which one's normal sense of balance is replaced by illusions of motion similar to the feelings of levitation reported in spiritual literature as well as the sensation of vertigo. Transient ‘visions', whose content includes motifs that also appear in near-death experiences and alien abduction scenarios have also appeared. Positive effectual parasthesias (electric-like buzzes in the body) have occurred. Another experiences that has been elicited neuromagnetically is bursts of emotion, most commonly of fear and joy. Although the content of these experiences can be quite striking, the way they present themselves is much more ordinary. It approximates the ‘twilight state' between waking and sleep called hypnogogia. This can produce brief, fleeting visions, feelings that the bed is moving, rocking, floating or sinking. Electric-buzz like somatic sensations and hearing an inner voice call one's name can also occur in hypnogogia. The range of experiences it can produce is quite broad. If all signals produced the same phenomena, then it would be difficult to conclude that these magnetic signals approximate the postulated endogenous neuromagnetic signals that create alterations in State. In fact, the former produces a wide variety of phenomena. One such signal makes some women apprehensive, but another doesn't. One signal creates such strong vestibular sensations that one can't stand up. Another doesn't.
The temporal lobes are the parts of the brain that mediate states of consciousness. EEG readouts from the temporal lobes are markedly different when a person is asleep, having a hallucinogenic seizure, or on LSD. Siezural disorders confined to the temporal lobes (complex partial seizures) have been characterized as impairments of consciousness. There was also a study done in which monkeys were given LSD after having various parts of their brains removed. The monkeys continued to ‘trip' no matter what part or parts of their brains were missing until both temporal lobes were taken out. In these cases, the substance did not seem to affect the monkeys at all. The conclusion seems unavoidable. In addition to all their other functions (aspects of memory, language, music, etc.), the temporal lobes mediate states of consciousness.
If exposing the temporal lobes to magnetic signals can induce alterations in States, then it seems reasonable to suppose that States find part of their neural basis in our postulated neuromagnetic signals, arising out of the temporal lobes.
Hallucinations are known to be the Phenomenological correlates of altered States. Alterations in state of consciousness leads, following input, and phenomena, whether hallucinatory or not, follows in response. We can offer two reasons for drawing this conclusion.
The first is one of the results obtained by a study of hallucinations caused by electrical stimulation deep in the brain. In this study, the content of the hallucinations was found to be related to the circumstances in which they occurred, so that the same stimulations could produce different hallucinations. The conclusion was that the stimulation induced altered states, and the states facilitated the hallucinations.
The second has to do with the relative speeds of the operant neural processes.
Neurochemical response times are limited by the time required for their transmission across the synaptic gap, .5 to 2msec.
By comparison, the propagation of action potentials is much faster. For example, an action potential can travel a full centimetre (a couple of orders of magnitude larger than a synaptic gap) in about 1.3 msec. The brain's electrical responses, therefore, happen orders of magnitude more quickly than do its chemical ones.
Magnetic signals are propagated with greater speeds than those of action potentials moving through neurons. Contemporary physics requires that magnetic signals be propagated at a significant fraction of the velocity of light, so that the entire brain could be exposed to a neuromagnetic signal in vanishingly small amounts of time.
It seems possible that neuromagnetic signals arise from structures that mediate our various sensory and cognitive modalities. These signals then recruit those functions (primarily in the limbic system) that adjust the changes in state. These temporal lobe signals, we speculate, then initiate signals to structures that mediate modalities that are enhanced or suppressed as the state changes.
The problem of defining the phrase ‘state of consciousness' has plagued the field of cognitive studies for some time. Without going into the history of studies in the area, we would like to outline a hypothesis concerning states of consciousness in which the management of states gives rise to the phenomenon of consciousness
There are theories that suggest that cognitive modalities (such as memory, affect, ideation and attention) may be seen as analogs to sensory modalities.
We hypothesize that the entire set of modalities, cognitive and sensory, may be heuristically compared with a sound mixing board. In this metaphor, all the various modalities are represented as vertical rheostats with enhanced functioning increasing towards the top, and suppressed function increasing toward the bottom. Further, the act of becoming conscious of phenomena in any given modality involves the adjustment of that modality's ‘rheostat'
Sensory input from any modality can alter one's state. The sight of a sexy person, the smell of fire, the unexpected sensation of movement against one's skin (there's a bug on me!), a sudden bitter taste experienced while eating ice cream, or the sound of one's child screaming in pain; all of these phenomena can induce alterations in State. Although the phrase ‘altered states' has come to be associated with dramatic, otherworldly experiences, alterations in state, as we will be using the phrase, refer primarily to those alterations that take us from one normal state to another.
Alterations in state can create changes within the various sensory and cognitive modalities. An increase in arousal following the sight of a predator will typically suppress the sense of smell (very few are able to stop and ‘smell the roses' while a jaguar is chasing them), suppressive introspection (nobody wants to know ‘who I really am?' Nonetheless, an anaconda breeds for wrapping itself around them, suppresses sexual arousal, and alters vision so that the centre of the visual field is better attended then one's peripheral vision allowing one to see the predator's movement better? The sight of a predator will also introduce a host of other changes, all of which reflect the State.
In the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, there is a dialogue between the legendary warrior, Arjuna, and his archery teacher. Arjuna was told by his teacher to train his bow on a straw bird used as a target. Arjuna was asked to describe the bird. He answered ‘I can't'. ‘Why not?', Asked his teacher. ‘I can only see its eye', he answered. ‘Release your arrow', commanded the teacher. Arjuna did, and hit the target in the eye. ‘I'll make you the finest archer in the world', said his teacher.
In this story, attention to peripheral vision had ceased so completely that only the very centre of his visual field received any. Our model of states would be constrained to interpret Arjuna's (mythical) feat as a behaviour specific to a state. The unique combination of sensory enhancement, heightened attention, and sufficient suppression of emotion, ideation, and introspection that support such an act suggests specific settings for our metaphorical rheostats.
Changes in state make changes in sensory and cognitive modalities, and they in turn, trigger changes in state. We can reasonably conclude that there is a feedback mechanism whereby each modality is connected to the others.
States also create tendencies to behave in specific ways in specific circumstances, maximizing the adaptivity of behaviour in those circumstances; behaviour that tends to meet our needs and respond to threats to our ability to meet those needs.
Each circumstance adjusts each modality’s setting, tending to maximize that modality's contribution to adaptive behaviour in that circumstance. The mechanism may function by using both learned and inherited default settings for each circumstance and then repeating those settings in similar circumstances later on. Sadly, this often makes states maladaptive. Habitually to alteration in State, in response to threats from an abusive parent, for example, can make for self-defeating responses to stress in other circumstances, where theses same responses are no longer advantageous.
Because different States are going to be dominated by specific combinations of modalities, it makes sense that a possible strategy for aligning the rheostats (making alterations in state) is to move them in tandem, so that after a person associates the sound of a scream to the concept of a threat, that sound, with its unique auditory signature, will cause all the affected modalities (most likely most of them in most cases) to take the positions they had at the time the association was made.
hen we say changing states, we are referring to much more than the dramatic states created by LSD, isolation tanks, REM. sleep, etc. We are also including normal states of consciousness, which we can imagine as kindled ‘default settings' of our various modalities. When any one of these settings returns to one of its default settings, it will, we conjecture, tend to entrain all the other modalities to the settings they habitually take in that state.
To accomplish this, we must suggest that each modality be connected to every other one. A sight, a smell, a sound, or a tactile feeling can all inspire fear. Fear can motivate ideation. Ideation can inspire arousal. Changes in effect can initiate alterations in introspection. Introspection alters affect. State specific settings of individual modalities could initiate settings for other modalities.
Our main hypothesis here is that all these intermodal connections, as operating as a single system, have a single Phenomenological correlate. The phenomena of subjective awareness.
The structures associated with that modality then broadcasts are neuromagnetic signals to the temporal lobes, which then produces signals that then recruits various structures throughout the brain. Specifically, those structures whose associated modalities' values must be changed in order to accomplish the appropriate alteration in state. In the second section, we found the possibility that states are settings for the variable aspects of cognitive and sensory modalities. We also offered the suggestion that consciousness is the Phenomenological correlate of the feedback between the management of states on the one hand, and the various cognitive and sensory modalities, on the other. If all of these conclusions were to stand up to testing, we could conclude that the content of the brain's hypothesized endogenous magnetic signals might consist of a set of values for adjusting each sensory and cognitive rheostat. We might also conclude that neuromagnetic signalling is the context in which consciousness occurs.
The specific mechanism whereby subjectivity is generated is out of the reach of this work. Nevertheless, we can say that the fact that multiple modalities are experienced simultaneously, together with our model's implication that they are ‘reset,' all at once, with each alteration in state suggests that our postulated neuromagnetic signals may come in pairs, with the two signals running slightly out of condition with one another. In this way, neuromagnetic signals, like the two laser beams used to produce a hologram, might be able to store information in a similar way, as has already been explored by Karl Pibhram. The speed at which neuromagnetic signals continue to propagate, and together with their capacity to recruit/alter multiple modalities suggests that the underlying mechanism have been selected to make instant choices on which specific portions to recruit in order to facilitate the behaviours acted out of the State, and to do so quickly.
In this way, the onset time for the initiation of States is kept to a minimum, and with it, the times needed to make the initial, cognitive response to stimuli. When it comes to response to threats, or sighting prey, the evolutionary advantages are obvious.
Higher-order theories of consciousness try to explain the distinctive properties of consciousness in terms of some relation obtaining between the conscious state in question and a higher-order representation of some sort (either a higher-order experience of that state, or a higher-order thought or belief about it). The most challenging properties to explain are those involved in phenomenal consciousness-the sort of state that has a subjective dimension, which has ‘feel’, or which it is like something to undergo.
One of the advances made in recent years has been in distinguishing between different questions concerning consciousness. Not everyone agrees on quite which distinctions need to be drawn. But all are agreeing that we should distinguish creature consciousness from mental-state consciousness. It is one thing to say of an individual or organism that it is conscious (either in general or of something in particular). It is quite another thing to say of one of the mental states of a creature that it is conscious.
It is also agreed that within creature-consciousness itself we should distinguish between intransitive and transitive variants. To say of an organism that it is conscious, and finds of its own sorted simplicities (intransitive) is to say just that it is awake, as opposing to an ever vanquishing state of unconsciousness, only to premises the fact, that the unconscious is literally resting, not of an awakening state. There do not appear to be any deep philosophical difficulties lurking here (or at least, they are not difficulties specific to the topic of consciousness, as opposed to mentality in general). But to say of an organism that it is conscious of such-and-such (transitive) is normally to say at least that it is perceiving such-and-such, or aware of such-and-such. So we say of the mouse that it is conscious of the cat outside its hole, in explaining why it does not come out is, perhaps, to mean that it perceives the cat's presence. To provide an account of transitive creature-consciousness would thus be to attempt a theory of perception.
There is a choice to be made concerning transitive creature-consciousness, failure to notice which may be a potential source of confusion. For we have to decide whether the perceptual state in virtue of which an organism may be said to be transitively-conscious of something must itself be a conscious one (state-conscious). If we say ‘Yes’ then we will need to know more about the mouse than merely that it perceives the cat if we are to be assured that it is conscious of the cat-we will need to establish that its percept of the cat is itself conscious. If we say ‘No’, on the other hand, then the mouse's perception of the cat will be sufficient for the mouse to count as conscious of the cat, but we may have to say that although it is conscious of the cat, the mental state in virtue of which it is so conscious is not itself a conscious one! It may be best to by-pass any danger of confusion here by avoiding the language of transitive-creature-consciousness altogether. Nothing of importance would be lost to us by doing this. We can say simply that organism O observes or perceives x. We can then assert, explicitly, that if we wish, that its percept be or is not conscious.
Turning now to the notion of mental-state consciousness, the major distinction here is between phenomenal consciousness, on the one hand-which is a property of states that it is like something to be in, which have a distinctive ‘feel’ (Nagel, 1974)-and various functionally-definable forms of access consciousness, on the other. Most theorists believe that there are mental states-such as occurrent thoughts or judgments-which are access-conscious (in whatever is the correct functionally-definable sense), but which are not phenomenally conscious. In contrast, there is considerable dispute as to whether mental states can be phenomenally-conscious without also being conscious in the functionally-definable sense-and even more dispute about whether phenomenal consciousness can be reductively explained in functional and/or representational terms.
It seems plain that there is nothing deeply problematic about functionally-definable notions of mental-state consciousness, from a naturalistic perspective. For mental functions and mental representations are the staple fares of naturalistic accounts of the mind. But this leaves plenty of room for dispute about the form that the correct functional account should take. Some claim that for a state to be conscious in the relevant sense is for it to be poised to have an impact on the organism's decision-making processes, perhaps also with the additional requirement that those processes should be distinctively rational ones. Others think that the relevant requirement for access-consciousness is that the state should be suitably related to higher-order representations-experiences and/or beliefs-of that very state.
What is often thought to be naturalistically problematic, in contrast, is phenomenal consciousness. And what is really and deeply controversial is whether phenomenal consciousness can be explained in terms of some or other functionally-definable notion. Cognitive (or representational) theories maintain that it can. Higher-order cognitive theories maintain that phenomenal consciousness can be reductively explained in terms of representations (either experiences or beliefs) which are higher-order. Such theories concern us here.
Higher-order theories, like cognitive/representational theories in general, assume that the right level at which to seek an explanation of phenomenal consciousness is a cognitive one, providing an explanation in terms of some combination of causal role and intentional content. All such theories claim that phenomenal consciousness consists in a certain kind of intentional or representational content (analog or ‘fine-grained’ in comparison with any concepts we may possess) figuring in a certain distinctive position in the causal architecture of the mind. They must therefore maintain that these latter sorts of mental property do not already implicate or presuppose phenomenal consciousness. In fact, all cognitive accounts are united in rejecting the thesis that the very properties of mind or mentality already presuppose phenomenal consciousness, as proposed by Searle (1992, 1997) for example.
The major divides among representational theories of phenomenal consciousness in general, is between accounts that are provided in purely first-order terms and those that implicate higher-order representations of one sort or another (see below). These higher-order theorists will allow that first-order accounts-of the sort defended by Dretske (1995) and Tye (1995), for example-can already make some progress with the problem of consciousness. According to first-order views, phenomenal consciousness consists in analog or fine-grained contents that are available to the first-order processes that guide thought and action. So a phenomenally-conscious percept of red, for example, consisting in a state, with which the parallel contentual representations are red under which are betokened in such a way as to take food into thoughts about red, or into actions that are in one way or another guide by way of redness. Now, the point to note in favour of such an account is that it can explain the natural temptation to think that phenomenal consciousness is in some sense ineffable, or indescribable. This will be because such states have fine-grained contents that can slip through the mesh of any conceptual net. We can always distinguish many more shades of red than we have concepts for, or could describe in language (other than indexically -, e.g., ‘That shade’)
The main motivation behind higher-order theories of consciousness, in contrast, derives from the belief that all (or at least most) mental-state types admit of both conscious and non-conscious varieties. Almost everyone now accepts, for example, (post-Freud) that beliefs and desires can be activated non-consciously. (Think, here, of the way in which problems can apparently become resolved during sleep, or while one's attention is directed to other tasks. Notice, that appearance to non-conscious intentional states is now routine in cognitive science.) And then if we ask what makes the difference between a conscious and a non-conscious mental state, one natural answer is that consciously states are states we are aware of them but not as to their actualization as based upon its nature. And if awareness is thought to be a form of creature-consciousness, then this will translate into the view that conscious states are states of which the subject is aware, or states of which the subject is creature-conscious. That is to say, these are states that are the objects of some sort of higher-order representation-whether to some higher-order of perception or experience, or a higher-order of belief or thought.
One crucial question, then, is whether perceptual states as well as beliefs admit of both conscious and non-conscious varieties. Can there be, for example, such a thing as a non-conscious visual perceptual state? Higher-order theorists are united in thinking that there can. Armstrong (1968) uses the example of absent-minded driving to make the point. Most of us at some time have had the rather unnerving experience of ‘coming to’ after having been driving on ‘automatic pilot’ while our attention was directed elsewhere-perhaps having been day-dreaming or engaged in intense conversation with a passenger. We were apparently not consciously aware of any of the route we have recently taken, nor of any of the obstacles we avoided on the way. Yet we must surely have been seeing, or we would have crashed the car. Others have used the example of blind-sight. This is a condition in which subjects have had a portion of their primary visual cortex destroyed, and apparently become blind in a region of their visual field as a result. But it has now been known for some time that if subjects are asked to guess at the properties of their ‘blind’ field (e.g., whether it contains a horizontal or vertical grating, or whether it contains an ‘X’ or an ‘O’), they prove remarkably accurate. Subjects can also reach out and grasp objects in their ‘blind’ field with something like 80% or more of normal accuracy, and can catch a ball thrown from their ‘blind’ side, all without conscious awareness.
More recently, a powerful case for the existence of non-conscious visual experience has been generated by the two-systems theory of vision proposed and defended by Milner and Goodale (1995). They review a wide variety of kinds of neurological and neuro-psychological evidence for the substantial independence of two distinct visual systems, instantiated in the temporal and parietal lobes respectively. They conclude that the parietal lobes provide a set of specialized semi-independent modules for the on-line visual control of action; Though the temporal lobes are primarily concerned with subsequent off-line functioning, such as visual learning and object recognition. And only the experiences generated by the temporal-lobe system are phenomenally conscious, on their account.
(Note that this is not the familiar distinction between what and where visual systems, but is rather a successor to it. For the temporal-lobe system is supposed to have access both to property information and to spatial information. Instead, it is a distinction between a combined what-where system located in the temporal lobes and a how-to or action-guiding system located in the parietal lobes.)
To get the flavour of Milner and Goodale's hypothesis, consider just one strand from the wealth of evidence they provide. This is a neurological syndrome called visual form agnosia, which results from damage localized to both temporal lobes, leaving primary visual cortex and the parietal lobes composed. (Visual form agnosia is normally caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, for reasons that are little understood.) Such patients cannot recognize objects or shapes, and may be capable of little conscious visual experience; still, their sensorimotor abilities remain largely intact
One particular patient has now been examined in considerable detail. While D.F. is severely agnosia, she is not completely lacking in conscious visual experience. Her capacities to perceive colours and textures are almost completely preserved. (Why just these sub-modules in her temporal cortex should have been spared is not known.) As a result, she can sometimes guess the identity of a presented object-recognizing a banana, say, from its yellow Collor and the distinctive texture of its surface. Nevertheless, she is unable to perceive the shape of the banana (whether straight or curved, say); Nor its orientation (upright or horizontal), nor of many of her sensorimotor abilities are close too normal-she would be able to reach out and grasp the banana, orienting her hand and wrist appropriately for its position and orientation, and using a normal and appropriate finger grip. Under experimental conditions it turns out that although D.F. is at chance in identifying the orientation of a broad line or letter box, she is almost normal when posting a letter through a similarly-shaped slot oriented at random angles. In the same way, although she is at chance when trying to choose as between the rectangular Forms of very different sizes, her reaching and grasping behaviours when asked to pick up such a Form are virtually indistinguishable from those of normal controls. It is very hard to make sense of this data without supposing that the sensorimotor perceptual system is functionally and anatomically distinct from the object-recognition/conscious system.
There is a powerful case, then, for thinking that there are non-conscious as well as conscious visual percepts. While the perceptions that ground your thoughts when you plan in relation to the perceived environment (‘I'll pick up that one’) may be conscious, and while you will continue to enjoy conscious perceptions of what you are doing while you act, the perceptual states that actually guide the details of your movements when you reach out and grab the object will not be conscious ones, if Milner and Goodale (1995) are correct
But what implication does this have for phenomenal consciousness? Must these non-conscious percepts also be lacking in phenomenal properties? Most people think so. While it may be possible to get oneself to believe that the perceptions of the absent-minded car driver can remain phenomenally conscious (perhaps lying outside of the focus of attention, or being instantly forgotten), it is very hard to believe that either blind-sight percepts or D.F.'s sensorimotor perceptual states might be phenomenally conscious ones. For these perceptions are ones to which the subjects of those states are blind, and of which they cannot be aware. And the question, then, is what makes the relevant difference? What is it about a conscious perception that renders it phenomenal, which a blind-sight perceptual state would correspondingly lack? Higher-order theorists are united in thinking that the relevant difference consists in the presence of something higher-order in the first case that is absent in the second. The core intuition is that a phenomenally conscious state will be a state of which the subject is aware.
What options does a first-order theorist have to resist this conclusion? One is to deny the data, it can be said that the non-conscious states in question lack the kind of fineness of grain and richness of content necessary to count as genuinely perceptual states. On this view, the contrast discussed above isn't really a difference between conscious and non-conscious perceptions, but rather between conscious perceptions, on the one hand, and non-conscious belief-like states, on the other. Another option is to accept the distinction between conscious and non-conscious perceptions, and then to explain that distinction in first-order terms. It might be said, for example, that conscious perceptions are those that are available to belief and thought, whereas non-conscious ones are those that are available to guide movement. A final option is to bite the bullet, and insist that blind-sight and sensorimotor perceptual states are indeed phenomenally conscious while not being access-conscious. On this account, blind-sight percepts are phenomenally conscious states to which the subjects of those states are blind. Higher-order theorists will argue, of course, that none of these alternatives is acceptable.
In general, then, higher-order theories of phenomenal consciousness claim the following: A phenomenally conscious mental state is a mental state (of a certain sort-see below) which either is, or is disposed to be, the object of a higher-order representation of a certain sort. Higher-order theorists will allow, of course, that mental states can be targets of higher-order representation without being phenomenally conscious. For example, a belief can give rise to a higher-order belief without thereby being phenomenally conscious. What is distinctive of phenomenal consciousness is that the states in question should be perceptual or quasi-perceptual ones (e.g., visual images as well as visual percepts). Moreover, most cognitive/representational theorists will maintain that these states must possess a certain kind of analog (fine-grained) or non-conceptual intentional content. What makes perceptual states, mental images, bodily sensations, and emotions phenomenally conscious, on this approach, is that they are conscious states with analog or non-conceptual contents. So putting these points together, we get the view that phenomenally conscious states are those states that possess fine-grained intentional contents of which the subject is aware, being the target or potential target of some sort of higher-order representation.
There are then two main dimensions along which higher-order theorists disagree among themselves. One relate to whether the higher-order states in question are belief-like or perception-like. That taking to the former option is higher-order thought theorists, and those taking the latter are higher-order experience or ‘inner-sense’ theorists. The other disagreement is internal to higher-order thought approaches, and concerns whether the relevant relation between the first-order state and the higher-order thought is one of availability or not. That is, the question is whether a state is conscious by virtue of being disposed to give rise to a higher-order thought, or rather by virtue of being the actual target of such a thought. These are the options that will now concern us.
According to this view, humans not only have first-order non-conceptual and/or analog perceptions of states of their environments and bodies, they also have second-order non-conceptual and/or analog perceptions of their first-order states of perception. Humans (and perhaps other animals) not only have sense-organs that scan the environment/body to produce fine-grained representations that can then serve to ground thoughts and action-planning, but they also have inner senses, charged with scanning the outputs of the first-order senses (i.e., perceptual experiences) to produce equally fine-grained, but higher-order, representations of those outputs (i.e., to produce higher-order experiences). A version of this view was first proposed by the British Empiricist philosopher John Locke (1690). In our own time it has been defended especially by Armstrong.
(A terminological point: this view is sometimes called a ‘higher-order experience (HOE) theory’ of phenomenal consciousness; But the term ‘inner-sense theory’ is more accurate. For as we will see in section 5, there are versions of a higher-order thought (HOT) approaches that also implicate higher-order perceptions, but without needing to appeal to any organs of inner sense.
(Another terminological point: ‘Inner-sense theory’ should more strictly be called ‘higher-order-sense theory’, since we of course have senses that are physically ‘inner’, such as pain-perception and internal touch-perception, which are not intended to fall under its scope. For these are first-order senses on a par with vision and hearing, differing only in that their purpose is to detect properties of the body rather than of the external world. According to the sort of higher-order theory under discussion in this section, these senses, too, determine what needs have their outputs scanned to produce higher-order analog contents in order for them to become phenomenally conscious. In what follows, however, the term ‘inner sense’ will be used to mean, more strictly, ‘higher-order sense’, since this terminology is now pretty firmly established.)
A phenomenally conscious mental state is a state with analog/non-conceptual intentional content, which is in turn the target of a higher-order analog/non-conceptual intentional state, via the operations of a faculty of ‘inner sense’.
On this account, the difference between a phenomenally conscious percept of red and the sort of non-conscious percepts of red that guide the guesses of a blind-sighter and the activity of sensorimotor system, is as follows. The former is scanned by our inner senses to produce a higher-order analog state with the content experience of red or seems red, whereas the latter states are not-they remain merely first-order states with the analog content red. In so remaining, they lack any dimension of seeming or subjectivity. According to inner-sense theory, it is our higher-order experiential themes produced by the operations of our inner-senses which make some mental states with analog contents, but not others, available to their subjects. And these same higher-order contents constitute the subjective dimension or ‘feel’ of the former set of states, thus rendering them phenomenally conscious.
One of the main advantages of inner-sense theory is that it can explain how it is possible for us to acquire purely recognisable concepts of experience. For if we possess higher-order perceptual contents, then it should be possible for us to learn to recognize the occurrence of our own perceptual states immediately-or ‘straight off’-grounded in those higher-order analog contents. And this should be possible without those recognizable concepts thereby having any conceptual connections with our beliefs about the nature or content of the states recognized, nor with any of our surrounding mental concepts. This is then how inner-sense theory will claim to explain the familiar philosophical thought-experiments concerning one's own experiences, which are supposed to cause such problems for physicalist/naturalistic accounts of the mind.
For example, I can think, ‘This type of experience [as of red] might have occurred in me, or might normally occur in others, in the absence of any of its actual causes and effects.’ So on any view of intentional content that sees content as tied to normal causes (i.e., to information carried) and/or to normal effects (i.e., teleological or an inferential role), this type of experience might occur without representing red. In the same sort of way, I will be able to think, ‘This type of experience [pain] might have occurred in me, or might occur in others, in the absence of any of the usual causes and effects of pains. There could be someone in whom these experiences occur but who isn't bothered by them, and where those experiences are never caused by tissue damage or other forms of a bodily insult. And conversely, there could be someone who behaves and acts just as I do when in pain, and in response to the same physical causes, but who is never subject to this type of experience.’ If we possess purely recognitional concepts of experience, grounded in higher-order percepts of those experiences, then the thinkability of such thoughts is both readily explicable, and apparently unthreatening to a naturalistic approach to the mind.
Inner-sense theory does face a number of difficulties, however. If inner-sense theory were true, then how is it that there is no phenomenology distinctive of inner sense, in the way that there is a phenomenology associated with each outer sense? Since each of the outer senses gives rise to a distinctive set of Phenomenological properties, you might expect that if there were such a thing as inner sense, then there would also be a phenomenology distinctive of its operation. But there doesn't appear to be any.
This point turns on the so-called ‘transparency’ of our perceptual experience (Harman, 1990). Concentrate as hard as you like on your ‘outer’ (first-order) experiences-you will not find any further Phenomenological properties arising out of the attention you pay to them, beyond those already belonging to the contents of the experiences themselves. Paying close attention to your experience of the Collor of the red rose, for example, just produces attention to the redness-a property of the rose. But put like this, however, the objection just seems to beg the question in favour of first-order theories of phenomenal consciousness. It assumes that first-order-‘outer’-perceptions already have a phenomenology independently of their targeting by inner sense. But this is just what an inner-sense theorist will deny. And then in order to explain the absence of any kind of higher-order phenomenology, an inner-sense theorist only needs to maintain that our higher-order experiences are never themselves targeted by an inner-sense-organ that might produce third-order analog representations of them in turn.
Another objection to inner-sense theory is as follows if there really were an organ of inner sense, then it ought to be possible for it to malfunction, just as our first-order senses sometimes do. And in that case, it ought to be possible for someone to have a first-order percept with the analog content red causing a higher-order percept with the analog content seems-orange. Someone in this situation would be disposed to judge, ‘It is rouge red, but, till, it immediately stands as non-inferential (i.e., not influenced by beliefs about the object's normal Collor or their own physical state). But at the same time they would be disposed to judge, ‘It seems orange’. Not only does this sort of thing never apparently occur, but the idea that it might do so conflicts with a powerful intuition. This is that our awareness of our own experiences is immediate, in such a way that to believe that you are undergoing an experience of a certain sort is to be undergoing an experience of that sort. But if inner-sense theory is correct, then it ought to be possible for someone to believe that they are in a state of seeming-orange when they are actually in a state of seeming-red.
A different sort of objection to inner-sense theory is developed by Carruthers (2000). It starts from the fact that the internal monitors postulated by such theories would need to have considerable computational complexity in order to generate the requisite higher-order experiences. In order to perceive an experience, the organism would need to have mechanisms to generate a set of internal representations with an analog or non-conceptual content representing the content of that experience, in all its richness and fine-grained detail. And notice that any inner scanner would have to be a physical device (just as the visual system of itself is) which depends upon the detection of those physical events in the brain that is the output of the various sensory systems (just as the visual system is a physical device that depends upon detection of physical properties of surfaces via the reflection of light). For it is hard to see how any inner scanner could detect the presence of an experience as experience. Rather, it would have to detect the physical realizations of experiences in the brain, and construct the requisite higher-order representation of the experiences that those physical events realize, on the basis of that physical-information input. This makes is seem inevitable that the scanning device that supposedly generates higher-order experiences of our first-order visual experience would have to be almost as sophisticated and complex as the visual system itself
Now the problem that arises here is this. Given this complexity in the operations of our organs of inner sense, there had better be some plausible story to tell about the evolutionary pressures that led to their construction. For natural selection is the only theory that can explain the existence of organized functional complexity in nature. But there would seem to be no such stories on the market. The most plausible suggestion is that inner-sense might have evolved to subserve our capacity to think about the mental states of conspecific, thus enabling us to predict their actions and manipulate their responses. (This is the so-called ‘Machiavellian hypothesis’ to explain the evolution of intelligence in the great-ape lineage. But this suggestion presupposes that the organism must already have some capacity for higher-order thought, since such thoughts in which an inner sense is supposed to subserve. And yet, some higher-order thought theories can claim all of the advantages of inner-sense theory as an explanation of phenomenal consciousness, but without the need to postulate any ‘inner scanners’. At any rate, the ‘computational complexity objection’ to inner-sense theories remains as a challenge to be answered.
Non-dispositionalist higher-order thought (HOT) theory is a proposal about the nature of state-consciousness in general, of which phenomenal consciousness is but one species. Its main proponent has been Rosenthal. The proposal is this: a conscious mental state M, of mine, is a state that is actually causing an activated belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M, and causing it non-inferentially. (The qualification concerning non-inferential causation is included to avoid one having to say that my non-conscious motives become conscious when I learn of them under psychoanalysis, or that my jealousy is conscious when I learn of it by interpreting my own behaviour.) An account of phenomenal consciousness can then be generated by stipulating that the mental state M should have an analog content in order to count as an experience, and that when M is an experience (or a mental image, bodily sensation, or emotion), it will be phenomenally conscious when (and only when) suitably targeted.
A phenomenally conscious mental state is a state with analog/non-conceptual intentional content, which is the object of a higher-order thought, and which causes that thought non-inferentially.
This account avoids some of the difficulties inherent in inner-sense theory, while retaining the latter's ability to explain the distinction between conscious and non-conscious perceptions. (Conscious perceptions will be analog states that are targeted by a higher-order thought, whereas perceptions such as those involved in blind-sight will be non-conscious by virtue of not being so targeted.) In particular, it is easy to see a function for higher-order thoughts, in general, and to tell a story about their likely evolution. A capacity to entertain higher-order thoughts about experiences would enable a creature to negotiate the is and seems distinction, perhaps learning not to trust its own experiences in certain circumstances, and to induce appearances in others, by deceit. And a capacity to entertain higher-order thoughts about thoughts (beliefs and desires) would enable a creature to reflect on, and to alter, its own beliefs and patterns of reasoning, as well as to predict and manipulate the thoughts and behaviours of others. Indeed, it can plausibly be claimed that it is our capacity to target higher-order thoughts on our own mental state in which underlies our status as rational agents. One well-known objection to this sort of higher-order thought theory is due to Dretske (1993). We are asked to imagine a case in which we carefully examine two line-drawings, say (or in Dretske's example, two patterns of differently-sized spots). These drawings are similar in almost all respects, but differ in just one aspect-in Dretske's example, one of the pictures contains a black spot that the other lacks. It is surely plausible that, in the course of examining these two pictures, one will have enjoyed a conscious visual experience of the respect in which they differ -, e.g., of the offending spot. But, as is familiar, one can be in this position while not knowing that the two pictures are different, or in what way they are different. In which case, since one can have a conscious experience (e.g., of the spot) without being aware that one is having it, consciousness cannot require higher-order awareness.
Replies to this objection have been made by Seager (1994) and by Byrne (1997). They point out that it is one thing to have a conscious experience of the aspect that differentiates the two pictures, and quite another to experience consciously that the two pictures are differentiated by that aspect. That is, seeing the extra spot in one picture needn't mean seeing that this is the difference between the two pictures. So while scanning the two pictures one will enjoy conscious experience of the extra spot. A higher-order thought theorist will say that this means undergoing a percept with the content spot here which forms the target of a higher-order belief that one is undergoing a perception with that content. But this can perfectly well be true without undergoing a percept with the content spot here in this picture but absent here in that one. And it can also be true without forming any higher-order belief to the effect that one is undergoing a perception with the content spot here when looking at a given picture but not when looking at the other. In which case the purported counter-example isn't really a counter-example.
A different sort of problem with the Non-dispositionalist version of higher-order thought theory relates to the huge number of beliefs that would have to be caused by any given phenomenally conscious experience. (This is the analogue of the ‘computational complexity’ objection to inner-sense theory, Consider just how rich and detailed a conscious experience can be. It would seem that there can be an immense amount of which we can be consciously aware at any-one time. Imagine looking down on a city from a window high up in a tower-Form, for example. In such a case you can have phenomenally conscious percepts of a complex distribution of trees, roads, and buildings, colours on the ground and in the sky above, moving cars and pedestrians, . . . and so on. And you can-it seems-be conscious of all of this simultaneously. According to Non-dispositionalist higher-order thought theory, then, you would need to have a distinct activated higher-order belief for each distinct aspect of your experience is that, of just a few such beliefs with immensely complex contents. By contrast, the objection is the same, for which it seems implausible that all of this higher-order activity should be taking place, even if non-consciously, in every time someone is the subject of a complex conscious experience. For what would be the point? And think of the amount of cognitive space that these beliefs would take up,
This objection to Non-dispositionalist forms of higher-order thought theory is considered at some length in Carruthers (2000), where a variety of possible replies are discussed and evaluated. Perhaps the most plausible and challenging such replies would be to deny the main premise lying behind the objection, concerning the rich and integrated nature of phenomenally conscious experience. Rather, the theory could align itself with Dennett's (1991) conception of consciousness as highly fragmented, with multiple streams of perceptual content being processed in parallel in different regions of the brain, and with no stage at which all of these contents are routinely integrated into a phenomenally conscious perceptual manifold. Rather, contents become conscious on a piecemeal basis, as a result of internal or external probing that gives rise to a higher-order belief about the content in question. (Dennett himself sees this process as essentially linguistic, with both probes and higher-order thoughts being formulated in natural language. This variant of the view, although important in its own right, is not relevant to our present concerns.) This serves to convey to us the mere illusion of riches, because wherever we direct our attention, there we find a conscious perceptual content. It is doubtful whether this sort of ‘fragmental’ account can really explain the phenomenology of our experience, however. For it still faces the objection that the objects of attention can be immensely rich and varied at any given moment, hence requiring there to be an equally rich and varied repertoire of higher-order thoughts tokened at the same time. Think of immersing yourself in the colours and textures of a Van Gogh painting, for example, or the scene as your look out at your garden-it would seem that one can be phenomenally conscious of a highly complex set of properties, which one could not even begin to describe or conceptualize in any detail. However, since the issues here are large and controversial, it cannot yet be concluded that Non-dispositionalist forms of higher-order thought theory have been decisively refuted.
According to all forms of dispositionalist higher-order thought theory, the conscious status of an experience consists in its availability to higher-order thought (Dennett, 1978). As with the Non-dispositionalist version of the theory, in its simplest form we have here a quite general proposal concerning the conscious status of any type of occurrent mental state, which becomes an account of phenomenal consciousness when the states in question are experiences (or images, emotions, etc.) with analog content. The proposal is this: a conscious mental event M, of mine, is one that is disposed to cause an activated belief (generally a non-conscious one) that I have M, and to cause it non-inferentially.
A phenomenally conscious mental state is a state with analog/non-conceptual intentional content, which is held in a special-purpose short-term memory store in such a way as to be available to cause (non-inferentially) higher-order thoughts about any of the contents of that store.
In contrast with the Non-dispositionalist form of theory, the higher-order thoughts that render a percept conscious are not necessarily actual, but potential, on this account. So the objection now disappears, that an unbelievable amount of cognitive space would have to be taken up with every conscious experience. (There need not actually be any higher-order thought occurring, in order for a given perceptual state to count as phenomenally conscious, on this view.) So we can retain our belief in the rich and integrated nature of phenomenally conscious experience-we just have to suppose that all of the contents in question are simultaneously available to higher-order thought. Nor will there be any problem in explaining why our faculty of higher-order thought should have evolved, nor why it should have access to perceptual contents in the first place-this can be the standard sort of story in terms of Machiavellian intelligence.
It might be wondered how their mere availability to higher-order thoughts could confer on our perceptual states the positive properties distinctive of phenomenal consciousness-that is, of states having a subjective dimension, or a distinctive subjective feel. The answer may lie in the theory of content. Suppose that one agrees with Millikan (1984) that the representational content of a state depends, in part, upon the powers of the systems that consume that state. That is, suppose one thinks that what a state represents will depend, in part, on the kinds of inferences that the cognitive system is prepared to make in the presence of that state, or on the kinds of behavioural control that it can exert. In which case the presence of first-order perceptual representations to a consumer-system that can deploy a ‘theory of mind’, and which is capable of recognitizable applications of theoretically-embedded concepts of experience, may be sufficient to render those representations at the same time as higher-order ones. This would be what confers on our phenomenally conscious experiences the dimension of subjectivity. Each experience would at the same time (while also representing some state of the world, or of our own bodies) be a representation that we are undergoing just such an experience, by virtue of the powers of the ‘theory of mind’ consumer-system. Each percept of green, for example, would at one and the same time be an analog representation of green and an analog representation of seems green or experience of green. In fact, the attachment of a ‘theory of mind’ faculty to our perceptual systems may completely transform the contents of the latter's outputs.
This account might seem to achieve all of the benefits of inner-sense theory, but without the associated costs. (Some potential drawbacks will be noted in a moment.) In particular, we can endorse the claim that phenomenal consciousness consists in a set of higher-order perceptions. This enables us to explain, not only the difference between conscious and non-conscious perception, but also how analog states come to acquire a subjective dimension or ‘feel’. And we can also explain how it can be possible for us to acquire some purely recognitizable concepts of experience (thus explaining the standard philosophical thought-experiments). But we don't have to appeal to the existence of any ‘inner scanners’ or organs of inner sense (together with their associated problems) in order to do this. Moreover, it should also be obvious why there can be no question of our higher-order contents getting out of line with their first-order counterparts, in such a way that one might be disposed to make recognitizable judgments of red and seems orange at the same time. This is because the content of the higher-order experience is parasitic on the content of the first-order one, being formed from it by virtue of the latter's availability to a ‘theory of mind’ system.
On the downside, for which the account is not neutral on questions of semantic theory. On the contrary, it requires us to reject any form of pure input-semantics, in favour of some sort of consumer-semantics. We cannot then accept that intentional content reduces to informational content, nor that it can be explicated purely in terms of causal covariance relations to the environment. So anyone who finds such views attractive will think that the account is a hard one to swallow.
What will no doubt be seen by most people as the biggest difficulty with dispositionalist higher-order thought theory, however, is that it may have to deny phenomenal consciousness to most species of non-human animals. This objection will be discussed, among others, in the section following, since it can arguably also be raised against any form of higher-order theory.
There has been the whole host of objections raised against higher-order theories of phenomenal consciousness. Unfortunately, many of these objections, although perhaps intended as objections to higher-order theories as such, are often framed in terms of one or another particular version of such a theory. One general moral to be taken away from the present discussion should then be this: the different versions of a higher-order theory of phenomenal consciousness need to be kept distinct from one another, and critics should take care to state which version of the approach is under attack, or to frame objections that turn merely on the higher-order character of all of these approaches.
One generic objection is that higher-order theory, when combined with plausible empirical claims about the representational powers of non-human animals, will conflict with our commonsense intuition that such animals enjoy phenomenally conscious experience. This objection can be pressed most forcefully against higher-order thought theories, of either variety; However it is also faced by inner-sense theory (depending on what account can be offered of the evolutionary function of organs of inner sense). Since there is considerable dispute as to whether even chimpanzees have the kind of sophisticated ‘theory of mind’ which would enable them to entertain thoughts about experiential states as such (Byrne and Whiten, 1988, 1998; Povinelli, 2000), it seems most implausible that many other species of a mammal (let alone reptiles, birds and fish) would qualify as phenomenally conscious, on these accounts. Yet the intuition that such creatures enjoy phenomenally conscious experiences is a powerful and deep-seated one, for many people.
The grounds for this commonsense intuition can be challenged, however. (How, after all, are we supposed to know whether it is like something to be a bat?) And that intuition can perhaps be explained away as a mere by-product of imaginative identification with the animal. (Since our images of their experiences are phenomenally conscious, that the experience’s imageable is similarly conscious. But there is no doubt that one crux of resistance to higher-order theories will lie here, for many people.
Another generic objection is that higher-order approaches cannot really explain the distinctive properties of phenomenal consciousness. Whereas the argument from animals is that higher-order representations aren't necessary for phenomenal consciousness, the argument here is that such representations aren't sufficient. It is claimed, for example, that we can easily conceive of creatures who enjoy the postulated kinds of higher-order representation, related in the right sort of way to their first-order perceptual states, but where those creatures are wholly lacking in phenomenal consciousness.
In response to this objection, higher-order theorists will join forces with first-order theorists and others in claiming that these objectors pitch the standards for explaining phenomenal consciousness too high. We will insist that a reductive explanation of something-and of phenomenal consciousness in particular-don’t have to be such that we cannot conceive of the explanandum (that which is being explained) in the absence of the explanans (that which does the explaining). Rather, we just need to have good reason to think that the explained properties are constituted by the explaining ones, in such a way that nothing else needed to be added to the world once the explaining properties were present, in order for the world to contain the target phenomenon. But this is disputed territory. And it is on this ground that the battle for phenomenal consciousness may ultimately be won or lost
While orthodox medical research adheres to a linear, deterministic physical model, alternative therapist typically theorize upon that which is indeterminately nonphysical and nonlinear relationships are significant to outcome and patient satisfaction. The concept of nonlocal reality as nuocontinuum helps resolve the differences in therapeutic approach, and lets us frame a worldview that recognizes the great value of both reductive science and holistic integration. It helps distinguish the levels of description appropriate to the discussion of each, and helps in examining the relationships among consciousness, nonlocal reality, and healing.
Most recently addressed is to some informal discussion for which the problems of evaluating alternative therapies, but Dossey highlighted the stark philosophic division between orthodox and alternative health care models. While orthodox medical research adheres to a linear, deterministic physical model, alternative therapist typically postulates that indeterminate nonphysical and nonlinear relationships are significant to outcome and patient satisfaction. As Dossey summarizes that position, "Everything that counts cannot be counted."
The problems, of course, go beyond the research issues. The respective models bring different attitudes and approaches to the therapeutic encounter. Further, their different philosophic languages limit discussions among practitioners. Rapproachment becomes all the more unlikely when each camp considers the other, "wrong." It is believed to be helpful if we were to visualize the conflict as deriving from different frames of reference. Our collective task then becomes the finding of a common frame of reference a "cosmos in common," to echo Heraclitus sufficiently broad and deep to encompass both linear and nonlinear, local and nonlocal therapeutic points of view.
If we are to remain true to science, we must integrate the data that science provides us, and be willing to follow where the process leads. It is increasingly apparent that physics requires us to acknowledge meta considerations, that is, considerations that lie above and beyond physics. Those of us biomedical practitioners who base our work on physics cannot disparage as "merely metaphysics" a meta physics to which physics itself points.
As a point of departure, I would like to "frame" in general outlines a worldview that recognizes the great value of both reductive science and holistic integration, and which helps distinguish the levels of description appropriate to the discussion of each. In doing so, I will suggest a new and unweighted ecumenical term for discussing the relationships among consciousness, nonlocal reality, and healing.
The cosmos is the general descriptive term for all-that-is, which we have come to understand as an organic system of interrelated nested subsystems. Yet its most ancient representation in art is a circle. In our ordinary positivist view of things conditioned by science, the term denotes only the material nature of the universe, governed by the laws of physics. In the ordinary local cause-effect world, time-distance relationships apply, and the speed limit is that of light. Actions are mediated through a field, and forces are dissipated over distance.
However, Bell's Theorem in quantum physics establishes that "underneath" ordinary space-time phenomena there lies a deep nonlocal reality in which none of these limitations applies. To diagram cosmos one must find an appropriate way to divide the one circle. We might add an inner concentric circle, but the cosmos, as the term is currently used, would identify only the outer material "shell" of our experience of physical things. We have no agreed technical term for that which is "more" than matter, or beyond or outside it, or inside it. Syche has scientific validity as a psychological term. It denotes an inner personal dimension representing that aspect of experience that is normally unconscious to us, but which nevertheless influences individual human behaviour. However, in ordinary usage, the term psyche (soul, spirits) has no meaning apart from the individual human personality. To speak of the soul or spirit of matter (one hardly dare do so publicly) does not compute. Yet, now physics says there is a nonlocal more to the matter-work of the cosmos, and that domain is somehow related to the existence of consciousness.
But there needs to be still another inner concentric circle, or at least a centre-point. Cosmologists are beginning to speak more openly about a purposeful cosmos. For example, Hawking has asked, "Why does the universe go to the integral of the bother of existing?" If science is to ask "Why" as Hawking does, it must seek the "meaning" of matter. But Meaning ordinarily has no significance in science. To speak of meaning is to speak of significance or order beyond superficial appearances. To speak of meaning in relation to the cosmos is to speak of metaphysics, the realm of religion and philosophy.
Yet, such meaning is implicit in the anthropic principle of physics, and in the strange attractors by which order emerges from chaotic chemical and nonlinear mathematical systems. Though such meaning is an idea new to modern science, religion and philosophy have variously described it as logos, to Way, and Word. In that of residing in "lure" of an orienting change, as mentioned by Whitehead, and in the function of the radial energy of which Teilhard spoke.
Now, on scientific grounds alone, we must devise a "cosmorama" of at least three compartments, if it is to encompass the phenomena of the universe. Resolving and explaining these relationships may be quite complex; or it may be surprisingly simple. In any case, there are a number of questions to be answered, and a number of problems in physics and psychology that invite us to frame a unification theory.
One principal problems in quantum physics is the question of observer effect. What is the role of consciousness in resolving the uncertainties of actions at the quantum level? Before an observation, the question of whether a quantum event has occurred can be resolved only by calculating a probability. The unconscious reality of the event is that it is a mix of the probabilities that it has happened and that it has not. That "wave function" of probabilities is said to "collapse" only at the point of observation, that is, only in the interaction of unconsciousness with consciousness.
Schrödinger illustrated the problem by describing a thought experiment involving a cat in a sealed box: If the quantum event happened, the cat would be poisoned; if not, when the box was opened, the cat would be found alive. Until then, we could know the result only as a calculation of probabilities. Under the condition’s Schrödinger described, we may think of the cat's condition only mathematically: the cat is both dead and alive, with equal probability. Only by the interaction of event with observer is the "wave function collapsed."
If a tree falls in the forest when there is no one present to hear it, has there been a sound? That question can be resolved by adjusting the definition of sound. In the question of the quantum "event in the box" we are dealing with something much more fundamental. Can creation occur without an observer? Without consciousness? Or without at least the prospect of consciousness emerging from the act of creation? That may be the most basic question that begs resolving.
Another of our unification problems is the virtual particle phenomenon. Some particles appear unpredictably, exist for extremely short periods of time, then disappear. Why does a particle appear in the force field suddenly, without apparent cause? What distinguishes stable particles from the temporary ones? Something in the force field? Something related to the act of observation?
Another major concern of physics is the unification of the elemental physical forces. Study of the "several" forces has progressively merged them. Electricity and magnetism came to be understood as one force, not two. More recently, effects associated with the weak nuclear force were reconciled with electromagnetism, so that now we recognize one electroweak force. Further, there have been mathematical demonstrations that unify the electroweak and the strong nuclear force.
If it could be demonstrated that the "electronuclear" force and the force of gravity are one super force (as has been widely expected), energy effects at the largest and the smallest scales of the universe would be explained. That unification process has led to a theory of a multidimensional universe, in which there are at least seven "extra" dimensions that account for the forces and the conservation laws (symmetries) of physics. They are not extra dimensions of space-time, for which one could devise bizarre travel itineraries, but abstract mathematical dimensions that in some sense constitute the nonlocal (non-space time) reality within which cosmos resides.
However, the search for a unified theory has led to an apparent impasse, for theories of unification seem also to require a continuing proliferation of particles. A new messenger particle (or class of particles) called the Higgs boson, seems to be needed to explain how particles acquire mass, and to avoid having infinity terms (the result of a division by zero) crop up in the formulas that unify the forces. Leon Lederman, experimental physicist and Nobelist, calls it "The God Particle." He writes, "The Higgs field, the standard model, and our picture of how God made the universe depend on finding the Higgs boson."
Still, major questions remain. To some others, particle physics has seemed to reach its limit, theoretically as well as experimentally. Oxford physicist Roger Penrose has written: If there is to be a final theory, it could only be a scheme of a very different nature. Rather than being a physical theory in the ordinary sense, it would have to remain a principle, as a mathematical principle of whose implementation might have itself involve nonmechanical subtlety.
Perhaps the time has come for us to accept that cosmos has "infinity terms" after all.
Psychology is conventionally defined as the study of behaviour, but for our purposes, it must be returned to the meaning implied in the roots of the word: the study of soul and spirit. Of course, the most obvious phenomenon of psychology is the emergence of consciousness. In the light of the anthropic principle of physics, we now must ask, as a distinctively psychological question, what purpose for the cosmos does consciousness serve?
Another question: Jung has presented the evidence for an archetypal collective unconscious that, on the basis of current understandings, must certainly be inherited as the base-content of human nature. Archetypal genetics has yet to be defined. Symbol processing certainly does have its "local" physical aspect, in the function of the brain and the whole-body physiology that supports it. Nonetheless, that there is a nonlocal reality undergirding psyche is readily evident.
The reality of the dream experience is nonlocal, unconfined by rules of time and space and normal effect. Further, it is nonlocal in that the reality extends beyond the individual, consistently following patterns evident throughout the recorded history of dream and myth. The psyche functions as though the brain, or at least its mechanisms of consciousness, is "observer" for the dream "event in the box" of an unconscious nonlocal collective reality. The archetypal unconscious suggests that there be a psychological substrate from which consciousness and its content have emerged.
In the emergence of consciousness primally, and in the extension of consciousness in modern people through the dreaming process, the collective unconscious (self) seems to serve a nonlocal integrating function, yielding images that the conscious (ego) must differentiate from its "local" observations of the external space-time world. Thus, is consciousness extended.
In that process, however, the ego must self-reflectively also "keep in mind" that our perception of the external physical world is not the reality of the physical world, but an interpretation of it; Nor is the external phenomenal world the only reality. To keep our interpretations of the physical world "honest," we must subject observation to tests of consistency and reason, but the calculus of consciousness is the calculus of whole process, both differential and integral. Consciousness cannot be extended, but is diminished, when it denies the reality of the unconscious.
Jung has also pointed to certain meaningful associations between events in psyche and events in the physical world, but which are not related causally. He called such an association a synchronicity, which he defines as "an accusal connecting principle." These are simultaneous or closely associated conversions that not have connected physically, in any ordinary cause-effect way. However, they are connected meaningfully, that is, psychically. They may have very powerful impact on a person's psychic state and on the subsequent unfolding of personality. Jung studied them with Wolfgang Pauli, a quantum physicists in whose life such phenomena were overly frequent.
A synchronicity seems to suggest that a nonlocal psychological reality either communicate with or is identical to the nonlocal reality known in physics. Since it is inconceivable to have two nonlocal realities coexisting separately from one, another, we can confidently assert that there is indeed, only one nonlocal reality.
Another set of phenomena inviting consideration is that which includes group hysteria and mob action. A classic example is that of a high school band on a bus trip, on which all members get "food poisoning" simultaneously before a big game. After exhaustive epidemiological work, no evidence of infection or toxins is found, and the "cause" is attributed to significant amounts where stress and the power of suggestion lay. The mechanisms are entirely unconscious to the band members; it is as though their psyches have "communicated" in a way that makes them act together. Similarly, in mob action, though the members may be conscious of the anger that moves them, generally the event seems to be loaded with an unconscious dynamic within the group that prepares the way for the event itself.
Physicist Paul Davy has written that one of the basic problems is constructing an adequate definition of the dimensionality. The ordinary dictionary definition describes a dimension in terms of magnitude or direction (height, depth, width), and we ordinarily think of the dimensions as perpendicular to each other. But that works only for the familiar spatial dimensions and the actions of ordinary objects. Imagine compressing all three-dimensional space toward a single point; As it comes close to a point, the concept of being perpendicular loses all meaning. Another problem is that it does not really make sense to think of time (which is a dimension, too) as perpendicular to anything.
A dimension is one of the domains of action permitted to or on an object. By domain I mean something like a field of influence or action. Verticality is not a thing that acts on an object, but is rather than which permits and influences a movement in space, and which influences our description of the movement. For example, verticality is one particular aspect of abstract reality that determines the behaviour of an object. But the abstract is real! Take verticality away from three-dimensional space, and an object is permitted to move only in a way that we can analyse as a mix of horizontal and forward-backward motions. Take the horizontal away, and the object may move only along a straight line (one-dimensional space). "String" theories, which approach a "Grand Unification" of all of the physical forces, posit dimensions beyond the four of the space-time. There is no theoretical limit to the number of dimensions, for external to space-time there is no concept of "container" or limit.
Since all of the non-space time dimensions, by definition, are not extended in space or time, we must conceive of them as represented by points. Since they act together of o space-time, they must "intersect" or somehow communicate with the primal space-time point. For that reason (and because in the absence of space-time no point can be offset from another), we must imagine the dimensions as many points superimposed into one. Let's call it the SuperPaint. We may in fact imagine as many superimposed points (dimensions) as past and future experiments might require to explain the phenomena of creation.
The initial conditions of our space-time universe are defined in that one SuperPaint; the Big Bang represents the explosive expansion of four of those dimensions, space-time. The creation-energy (super force) responsible for that expansion is concentrated in and at the multidimensional SuperPaint. Yet we must also think of other changes at the SuperPaint, for as energy levels dissipate immediately after the Big Bang, the super force quickly "evolves" into the four physical forces conventionally known.
We have said that only the space-time dimensions are expanding, because the force dimensions ("contained" in the SuperPaint) are not spatial. By definition, we may not imagine non-space time points as extended in space. However, all points in expanding space-time must still "communicate" with the force dimensions (and the symmetry dimensions, but we are neglecting them for the moment). All points in space-time must intersect the force dimensions.
It is as if the force dimensions too have been expanded to the size of space-time, for they are acting on each particle of energy/matter in the universe. One might imagine that one point has been stretched as a featureless elastic sheet, a continuum in which the point is everywhere the same.
However, quantum theory deals with these forces as discrete waves/particles. For example, the force of gravity is communicated by gravitons; The strong nuclear force by gluons is the electromagnetic force by photons. If we conceive the stretched points of the dimensions as "sheets," the sheets must have waves in them. These "stretched sheets" which constitute the field in which energy interacts with particles to sustain (and indeed, to continue the creation of) the universe. As I have expressed it in a poem, it is the field "where the forces play pinball / with gravitons and gluons / and modulate / the all."
Let us imagine again that space-time (four dimensions) is compressed toward a point. It is futile to ask what is outside that small pellet of space-time, for the concept of "outside ness" has no meaning but within space-time. As the pellet becomes smaller still, it shrinks toward nothingness, for a point is an abstract concept of zero dimensions, not extended in space or time, and thus it cannot "contain" anything. At that point, nothing exists except the thinker who is trying to imagine nothingness.
If we could model thought as only an epiphenomenon of matter, reached at a certain degree of complexity, it has no fundamental reality of its own. In that case, our thought experiment to shrink the cosmos reaches a point at which thought is extinguished, and the experiment must stop, if it is to follow the "rules" that it is modelling. However, by accepting that thought might have a reality of its own, and by considering the problem from a whole-system perspective, we were able to continue the thought experiment to the point at which only the thought remains. The epiphenomenon idea is not an adequate model of reality, since we can indeed continue the experiment under the conditions outlined.
This "negative proof" is indirect, serving only to eliminate the epiphenomenon model. It does not prove that there is an independent and fundamental reality beyond space-time and matter; the experiments supporting Bell's Theorem do that. This line of thinking, however, does lead us to suggest that thought be a primary aspect of reality. It seems that the cosmos itself is saying with Descartes, "I think, therefore I am."
Because of this inescapable "relativistic" connection between cosmos and thought, I cannot imagine creation ex nihilo (from nothing), for the concept of nothing always collides with the existence of the one who is the thinker. Nothing has any meaning apart from something. The dimension of thinking is required to imagine a zero-dimensional space-time.
The epiphenomenon model posits that nothing is defined as the absence of matter. If that is so, thought is nothing; However, if it were nothing, I could not be thinking that thought, so thought must be of something. There can be no nothingness, for even if all that exists is reduced to nothingness, a dimension of reality remains. Reality requires at least one dimension in addition to space-time and that reality seems inseparable from the dimension of thought.
What is missing from our existing scheme of dimensions is a description of that dimension that we could not eliminate by playing the videotape of creation in reverse: that reality at the SuperPaint from which the dimension of thought cannot be separated. That leads to a rather extravagant and intuitive proposal, following Anaxagoras: Thought is the missing particle, the missing dimension.
Quantum physics already acknowledges the importance of consciousness as "observer." Consciousness is the substrate of thought. Thought is consciousness dimensionally extended, whether in time or some other dimension. Thought is process. Any unification of the laws of physics must necessarily take into account the thought/consciousness dimension, and thus must unify physics with psyche as well.
In his book. The self-aware Universe, Admit Goswami uses the term consciousness to mean transcendental consciousness, which forms (or is) the nonlocal reality. Other physicists seem to define the term of cautiously, and one often wonders whether a given text about observer effect is referring to ordinary individual awareness, or to some more general property of psyche.
It is useful to preserve the important distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. Psychologically, ordinary human consciousness is the realm of ego and the cognitive functions called mind. Neurologically it refers to a patient's observed state of awareness. The clinical unconscious is the realm of psyche, with both personal and collective aspects. Perhaps a better language will come along in time. Until then, let me suggest an interim language for discussing, and perhaps a framework for someday testing, the relationship between matter and psyche. Its proposal is that there is a unit of psyche, which I designate the neon, from the Greek word nous, for mind. Nuons represent the dimensions of thought that exist in (at, as) the SuperPaint defining the initial conditions of the Big Bang. As the domain of the force dimensions, those Nuons must be imagined to expand as a field or continuum (the nuocontinuum) as the space-time continuum expands, a "stretched sheet" with "waves" which are also Nuons. The Nuons of the SuperPaint are extended in space-time in a way conceptually analogous to the action of the forces.
Yet Nuons must also be construed as the domain of the symmetries, such as the principle of conservation of energy, which are nonlocal. That is, they are everywhere in effect, without being constrained by the speed-limit of light. The nuocontinuum thus represents a multidimensional bridge between forces, symmetries, and space-time. Nuons collectively contain all potentialities, but the collective (nuocontinuum) is the unit, itself the symmetry that unifies the forces and symmetries. The Nuons is the "infinity particle" which solves the formulas.
Does the nuocontinuum represent a fractal (fractional dimensions) such as those that give the mathematical order to the "chaos" images? Does it provide the prime tone of which the symmetries and the forces are harmonics? Whether construed mathematically or poetically, the nuocontinuum contains the information necessary to create a universe, but a universe that is organically creating itself.
Human awareness, which occurs at a level of extraordinary complexity in the organization of space-time particles, would involve, not a "creation" of consciousness as an epiphenomenon, but a sensing of a quality that is already there, as the reality dimension of the cosmos. The observer effect at the quantum level (and the health of Schr”dinger's cat) is then to be understood as an interaction, not with a particle of concrete matter, but with the reality substrate from which matter arises.
If we construe the whole nuocontinuum (rather than the experimenter) to be the "observer" of the quantum event in the box, we avoid much of the confusion and exasperation that Schroedinger's thought experiment evokes. Hawking wrote, "When I hear of Schroedinger's cat, and I reach for my gun." Even Einstein was repelled by quantum uncertainty. DeBroglie especially held out for an interpretation of quantum physics which supported concreteness. We rebel against the idea of a universe based on uncertainty, and we seek to assure ourselves that what we experience is a concrete reality.
However, if the nuocontinuum is the observer that resolves the quantum uncertainty, our own individual sense of uncertainty is also resolved. The collapse of the particle wave function (the coming into being of the particle at a particular point in space-time) would be a function of the nuocontinuum acting as a whole, rather than as a local observer. The nuocontinuum is the observer who actualized creation the cosmic event in the box prior to the development of human consciousness. It is that cosmic observer who unifies the quantum effects of the electronuclear forces and the cosmic effects of gravity.
The Nuocontinuum, then, designates an unlimited, infinite connecting principle that binds all that is. Because it accounts for the material characteristics of the cosmos, it is "Creator." Because it presents itself through the agency of human consciousness, it may be sensed as Person and named Holy Spirit or Great Mystery. It is the source of that compelling "passion" of which Teilhard spoke, "to become one with the world that envelops us." Thus, though well beyond the scope of this article, the concept has implications for depth psychology and for theology. It has potential to help humans globally recapture a sense of meaning to human life, and to understand the experiences of those whose terminologies differ. Unless we do so, or at least critical masses of us do, we remain at great risk for destroying ourselves.
But its implications for the healing arts are also profound, for it makes us look at familiar concepts in quite a different light. In its affirmation of meaningful order in the cosmos as a whole, the nuocontinuum concept gives further definition and import to homeostasis as a healing, balancing principle that has more than physiological significance. When we invoke the term "placebo effect" we (usually unwittingly) are invoking a principle of the connectedness between an intervention and an effect, which now can be named and conceptualized. "Spontaneous remissions" of disease would be seen as something less than miracles but clearly more than merely chemical. After all, if physics can reach a limit to its powers of description, so too must be psychoneuroimmunology.
Practitioners, have become aware of the connectedness principle, we will become more aware that our own attitudes and approaches are significant to treatment outcomes and patient satisfaction. We will then realize that even though an experiment may be "doubly-blind" to some experimenters and to some persons being tested, there may be other influences outside the cause-effect "loop" and connections of which other persons may be conscious. Further, we will better understand that there are different levels of connectivity at work in every action, which require different levels of description to explain. And we might become more sensitive to patient's hopes and expectations that so are often stated in religious terms.
At this point in our harvest of knowledge, this synthesis is quite intuitive and speculative. However, even highly abstract drawings are often helpful in organizing thought. I hope that through some such synthesis as this, couched in whatever language, we will be given that courage to which Dossey eludes, to enter the "doorway through which we may encounter a radically new understanding of the physical world and our place in it." And, ones hope, assure the continued development of our abilities, together, to offer help to all in need of healing.
We collectively glorify our ability to think as the distinguishing characteristic of humanity; we personally and mistakenly glorify our thoughts as the distinguishing pattern of whom we are. From the inner voice of thought-as-words to the wordless images within our minds, thoughts create and limit our personal world. Through thinking we abstract and define reality, reason about it, react to it, recall past events and plan for the future. Yet thinking remains both woefully underdeveloped in most of us, as well as grossly overvalued. We can best gain some perspective on thinking in terms of energies.
We are hanging in language. We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down, Niels Bohr lamented in the 1920s when confronted with the paradoxes, absurdities, and seeming impossibilities encountered in the then newly discovered quantum domain. The problem, he insisted, was not the quantum wonderland itself, but our language, our ways of thinking and talking about it. His colleague, Werner Heisenberg, went a step further and proclaimed that events in the quantum wonderland are not only unspeakable, they are unimaginable.
The same situation confronts today us when we try to talk about consciousness and how it relates to matter-energy. Go fishing for consciousness using the net of language and it always, inevitably, slips through the holes in our net. The limits of language-and imagination in talk about consciousness have been recently underlined, yet again, by the exchanges between philosopher Mark Woodhouse and physician Larry Dossey in the pages of Network.
Essentially, both men take opposing positions regarding the appropriateness of "energy talk" as a way of describing or explaining consciousness or mental phenomena. Woodhouse defends the use of energy talk (and proposes what he seems to think is a novel solution); Dossey denies the appropriateness of talking about consciousness in terms of energy. In for Woodhouse, consciousness is energy ("each is the other"); for Dossey, consciousness is not energy. As a philosopher passionately committed to exploring the relationship between consciousness and matter, between mind and body, and, specifically, the question "Can we have a science of consciousness?" I think the dialogue between Woodhouse and Dossey opens up a crucially important issue for philosophy of mind and for a science of consciousness. I believe the "energy question" is central to any significant advance we may make into understanding consciousness and how it relates to the physical world.
This relationship, is nevertheless, accredited by a double-aspect perspective: "Energy is the 'outside' of consciousness and consciousness is the 'inside' of energy throughout the universe." But making or that we have fallen into a fundamental philosophical error. As of urging to entice us for which we hold to bind of a particularly atypical sensibility for engaging the encounter with the narratives that belong to some "energy talk" about consciousness. But this study as at times happens to be of something to mention as a double-prospective that foregoes the most important point, and thereby fails to acknowledge what it is of true philosophically and by virtue of its existing character whose value we model.
A major challenge facing philosophers and scientists of consciousness (and anybody else who wishes to talk about it) is finding appropriate concepts, words and metaphors. So much of our language is derived from our two most dominant senses: vision and touch. Vision feeds language with spatial metaphors, while touch-or rather, kinesthetics-feeds language with muscular push-pull metaphors. The visuo-muscular senses dominate our perception and interaction with the world, and consequently metaphors derived from these senses dominate our ways of conceiving and talking about the world. It is no accident that spatial and mechanical descriptions and explanations predominate in physics-the paradigm science (and our culture's paradigm for all knowledge). Given our evolutionary heritage, with its selective bias toward vision and kinesthetics, we live predominantly in a spatial-push-pull world-the world of classical mechanics, a "billiard-ball" universe of moving, colliding, and recoiling massive bodies. Ours is a world of matter in motion, of things in space acted on by physical forces.
It should not be surprising, then, that when we come to talk about consciousness, our grooves of thinking channels us toward physics-talk-expressed today as "energy talk." Forces are felt-experienced in the body and we are tempted to think that the experience of force is identical to the energy exchanges between bodies described by physics. But this is to confuse the feeler's feeling (the subject) with what is felt (the object). More on this later.
Previously mentioned, was that the Woodhouse-Dossey debate highlights yet again the limits of language when we try to talk about consciousness. This problem is at least as old as Descartes' mind-body dualism (though, as we will see, it is not confined to Cartesian dualism-it is there, too, in forms of idealism known as the "Perennial Philosophy"). When Descartes made his famous distinction between mind and matter, he found himself "suspended in the language" of physics. He could find no better way to define mind than negatively in the terminology of physics. He defined matter as that which occupies space"res’ extensa," extended things. He defined the mental world as "res comitans," thinking things-and thinking things differ from physical things in that they do not occupy space. The problem was how could material, physical, things interact with nonphysical things? What conceivably could be the nature of their point of contact-material or mental? Centuries later, Freud, too, resorted to physics-energy talk when to specify the "mechanisms" and dynamics of the psyche-e.g. his concept of the libido. Today, the same tendency to use energy technologically to converse in talking, as Dossey points out, is rife in much new age talk about consciousness, soul, and spirit, exemplified in Woodhouse's article and his book Paradigm Wars.
Because of our reliance on the senses of vision and kinesthetics, we have an evolutionary predisposition, it seems, to talk in the language of physics or mechanics-and by that I mean "matter talk," or "energy talk." Yet all such talk seems to miss something essential when we come to speak of phenomena in the domain of the mind-for example, emotions, desires, beliefs, pains, and other felt qualities of consciousness. The inappropriate chunkiness of mechanistic metaphors borrowed from classical physics seems obvious enough. The mind just isn't at all like matter or machines, as Descartes was keenly aware. But then came Einstein's relativity, and the quantum revolution. First, Einstein's E = mc2 showed that matter was a form of energy, and so, with the advent of quantum theory, the material world began to dissolve into unimaginable, paradoxical bundles of energy or action. Matter itself was now understood to be a ghostly swirl of energy, and began to take on qualities formerly associated with mind. A great physicist, Sir James Jeans, even declared that "universe begins to look more like a great thought." Quantum events were so tiny, so undetermined, so un-mechanical in the classical sense, they seemed just the sort of thing that could respond to the influence of the mind.
The quantum-consciousness connection was boosted further by the need (at least in one interpretation of quantum theory) to include the observer (and his/her consciousness) in any complete description of the collapse of the quantum wave function. According to this view, the quantum system must include the consciousness of the observer. Ghostly energy fields from relativity and the quantum-consciousness connection triggered the imaginations of pop-science writers and dabblers in new age pseudo-science: Quantum theory, many believe, has finally opened the way for science to explore and talk about the mind. But the excitement was-and is-premature. It involves the linguistic and conceptual sleight-of-hand, whereas the clucky mechanical language that is in fact a matter that was obviously at best in metaphoric principles, just when applied to consciousness, it now seemed more reasonable to use the language of energy literally-particularly if cloaked in the "spooky" garb of quantum physics. But this shift from "metaphorical matter" to "literal energy" was unwarranted, unfounded, and deceptive.
Dissolving matter into energy makes neither of them are less conceptual. And the mark of the physical, as Descartes had pointed out, is that it is extended in space. Despite the insuperable problems with his dualism, Descartes' key insight remains valid: What distinguishes mind from matter is precisely that it does not occupy space. And this distinction holds just as fast between mind and energy-even so-called subtle energy (hypothetical "subtle energy" bodies are described as having extension, and other spatial attributes such as waves, vibrations, frequencies). Energy, even in the form of infinitesimal quanta or "subtle vibrations," still occupies space. And any theory of energy as a field clearly makes it spatial. Notions of "quantum consciousness" or "field consciousness"-and Woodhouse's "vibrations," "ripples," or "waves" of consciousness-therefore, are no more than vacuous jargon because they continue to fail to address the very distinction that Descartes formulated nearly four hundred years ago.
But that's not even the most troublesome deficiency of energy talk. It is equitably to suppose that physicists were proficient to show that quanta of energy did not occupy space; Suppose the behaviour of quanta was so bizarre that they could do all sorts of "non-physical" things-such as transcend space and time; Suppose that even if it could be shown that quanta were not "physical" in Descartes' sense . . . even supposing all of this, any proposed identity between energy and consciousness would still be invalid.
Energies talk fails to account for what is fundamentally most characteristic about consciousness, namely its subjectivity. No matter how fine-grained, or "subtle," energy could become, as an objective phenomenon it could never account for the fact of subjectivity-the "what-it-feels-like-from-within-experience." Ontologically, subjectivity cannot just emerge from wholly objective reality. Unless energy, at its ontologically most fundamental level, already came with some form of proto-consciousness, proto-experience, or proto-subjectivity, consciousness, experience, or subjectivity would never emerge or evolve in the universe.
Which brings us to Woodhouse's "energy monism" model, and the notion that "consciousness is the 'inside' of energy throughout the universe." Despite Dossey's criticism of this position, I think Woodhouse is here proposing a version of the only ontology that can account for a universe where both matter-energy and consciousness are real. He briefly summarizes why dualism, idealism, and materialism cannot adequately account for a universe consisting of both matter/energy and consciousness. (He adds "Epiphenomenalism" to these three as though it were distinctly ontological. It is not. Epiphenomenalism is a form of property dualism, which in turn is a form of materialism.) He then proceeds to outline a "fifth" alternative: "Energy monism." And although I believe his fundamental insight is correct, his discussion of this model in terms of double-aspectism falls victim to a common error in metaphysics: He confuses epistemology with ontology.
Woodhouse proposes that the weaknesses of the other ontologies-dualism, idealism, and materialism-can be avoided by adopting a "double-aspect theory that does not attempt to reduce either energy or consciousness to the other." And he goes on to build his alternative ontology on a double-aspect foundation. Now, I happen to be highly sympathetic with double-aspectism: It is a coherent and comprehensive (even "holistic") epistemology. As a way of knowing the world, double-aspectism opens up the possibility of a complementarity of subjective and objective perspectives.
But a perspective on the world yields epistemology-it reveals’ something about how we know what we know about the world. It does not reveal the nature of the world, which is the aim of ontology. Woodhouse makes an illegitimate leap from epistemology to ontology when he says, "This [energy monism] is a dualism of perspective, not of fundamental stuff," and concludes that "each is the other." Given his epistemological double-aspectism, the best Woodhouse can claim to be an ontological agnostic (as, in fact, Dossey does). He can talk about viewing the world from two complementary perspectives, but he cannot talk about the nature of the world in itself. Certainly, he cannot legitimately conclude from talk about aspects or perspectives that the ultimate nature of the world is "energy monism" or that "consciousness is energy." Epistemology talk cannot yield ontology talk-as Kant, and later Bohr, were well aware. Kant said we cannot know the thing-in-itself. The best we can hope for is to know some details about the instrument of knowing. Bohr said that the task of quantum physics is not to describe reality as it is in itself, but to describe what we can say about reality.
The issue of whether energy talk is appropriate for consciousness is to resolve ontologically not epistemological ly. At issue is whether consciousness is or is not a form of energy-not whether it can be known from different perspectives. If it is a form of energy, then energy talk is legitimate. If not, energy talk is illegitimate. But the nature of consciousness is not to be "determined by perspective," as Woodhouse states: "insides and outsides are determined by perspectives." If "insides" (or "outsides") were merely a matter of perspective, then any ontology would do, as long as we allowed for epistemological dualism or complementarity (though, of course, the meaning of "inside" and "outside" would differ according to each ontology). What Woodhouse doesn't do (which he needs to do to make his epistemology grow ontological legs) has established an ontology compatible with his epistemology of "inside" and "outside." In short, he needs to establish an ontological distinction between consciousness and energy. But this is precisely what Woodhouse aim to avoid with his model of energy monism. Dossey is right, I think, to describe energy talk about consciousness as a legacy of Newtonian physics (i.e., of visuo-kinesthetic mechanics). This applies equally to "classical energy talk," "quantum-energy talk," "subtle-energy talk," and Woodhouse's "dual-aspect energy talk." In an effort to defend energy talk about consciousness, Woodhouse substitutes epistemology for ontology, and leaves the crucial issue unresolved.
Unless Woodhouse is willing to ground his double-aspect epistemology in an ontological complementarity that distinguishes mind from matter, but does not separate them, he runs the risk of unwittingly committing "reductionism all over again"-despite his best intentions. In fact, Woodhouse comes very close to proposing just the kind of complementary ontology his model needs: "Consciousness isn't just a different level or wave form of vibrating energy; it is the 'inside' of energy-the pole of interiority perfectly understandable to every person who has had a subjective experience of any kind" (emphasis added). This is ontology talk, not epistemology talk. Woodhouse's error is to claim that the distinction "inside" (consciousness) and "outside" (energy) is merely a matter of perspective.
In order to defend his thesis of "energy monism," Woodhouse seems to want it both ways. On the one hand, he talks of being conscious and energy being ontologically identical"each is the other"; on the other, he makes a distinction between consciousness and energy: Energy is the 'outside' of consciousness and consciousness is the 'inside' of energy. He attempts to avoid the looming contradiction of consciousness and energy being both "identical yet distinct" by claiming that the identity is ontological while the distinction is epistemological. But the distinction cannot be merely epistemological-otherwise, as already pointed out, any ontology would do. But this is clearly not Woodhouse's position. Energy monism, as proposed by Woodhouse, is an ontological claim. Woodhouse admits as much when he calls energy monism "a fifth alternative" to the ontologism of dualism, idealism, materialism (and Epiphenomenalism [sic]) which he previously dismissed.
Furthermore, Woodhouse "inside" and "outside" are not merely epistemological when he means them to be synonyms for "subjectivity" and "objectivity" respectively. Although subjectivity and objectivity are epistemological perspectives, they are not only that. Subjectivity and objectivity can have epistemological meaning only if they refer to some implications of a primary ontological distinction-between what Sartre (1956) called the "for-itself" and the "in-itself," between that which feels and that which is felt. Despite his claims to the contrary, Woodhouse's distinction between "inside" and "outside" is ontological-not mere epistemological. And as an ontological distinction between consciousness and energy, it is illegitimate to conclude from his double-aspect epistemology the identity claim that "consciousness is energy." Woodhouse's consciousness-energy monism confusion, it seems to me, is a result of: (1) a failure to distinguish between non-identity and separation, and (2) a desire to avoid the pitfalls of Cartesian dualism. The first is a mistake, the second is not-but he conflates the two. He seems to think that if he allows for a non-identity between consciousness and energy this is tantamount to their being ontologically separate (as in Cartesian dualism). But (1) does not encompass that of (2): Ontological distinction does not entail separation. It is possible to distinguish two phenomena (such as the form and substance of a thing), yet recognize them as inseparable elements of a unity. Unity does not mean identity, and distinction does not mean separation. (I will return to this point shortly.) This muddle between epistemology and ontology is my major criticism of Woodhouse's position. Though if he had the courage or foresight to follow through on his epistemological convictions, and recognize that his position is compatible with (and would be grounded by) an ontological complementarity of consciousness and energy.
The ontological level of understanding (though explicitly denied) in Woodhouse's double-aspect model-where consciousness ("inside") and energy (“outside”) is actual throughout the universe is none other than panpsychism, or what has been variously called pan experientialism (Griffin, 1997) and radical materialism (de Quincey, 1997). It is the fourth alternative to the major ontologism of dualism, idealism, and materialism, and has a very long lineage in the Western philosophical tradition-going all the way back to Aristotle and beyond to the Presocratics. Woodhouse does not acknowledge any of this lineage, as if his double-aspect model was a novel contribution to the mind-matter debate. Besides Aristotle's hylemorphism, he could have referred to Leibniz' monads, Whitehead "actual occasion," and de Chardin's "tangential energy" and the "within" as precursors to the distinction he makes between "inside" and "outside." This oversight weakens the presentation of his case. Of course, to have introduced any or all of these mind-body theories would have made Woodhouse's ontological omission all the more noticeable.
One other weakness in Woodhouse's article is his reference to the Perennial Philosophy and the Great Chain of Being as supportive of energy talk that unites spiritual and physical realities. "The non-dual Source of some spiritual traditions . . . is said to express itself energetically (outwardly) on different levels in the Great Chain of Being (matter being the densest form of energy) . . ." Woodhouse is here referring to the many variations of idealist emanationism, where spirit is said to pour itself forth through a sequence of ontological levels and condense into matter. But just as I would say Woodhouse's energy monism unwittingly ultimately entails physicalist reductionism, my criticism of emanationism is that it, too, ultimately "physicalizes" spirit-which no idealist worth his or her salt would want to claim. Energy monism runs the same risk of "physicalizing" spirit as emanationism. So I see no support for Woodhouse's position as an alternative to dualism or materialism coming from the Perennial Philosophy. Both run the risk of covert dualism or covert materialism.
Dossey's critique of Woodhouse's energy monism and energy talk, particularly his caution not to assume that the "nonlocal" phenomena of quantum physics are related to the "nonlocal" phenomena of consciousness and distant healing other than a commonalty of terminology is sound. The caution is wise. However, his critique of Woodhouse's "inside" and "outside" fails to address Woodhouse's confusing epistemology and ontology. If Dossey saw that Woodhouse's intent was to confine the "inside/outside" distinction to epistemology, he might not have couched his critique in ontological terms. Dossey says, "By emphasizing inside and outside, interior and exterior, we merely create new boundaries and interfaces that require their own explanations." The "boundaries and interfaces" Dossey is talking about being ontological, not epistemological. And to this extent, Dossey's critique misses the fact that Woodhouse is explicitly engaged in epistemology talk. On the other hand, Dossey is correct to assume that Woodhouse's epistemological distinction between "inside and outside" necessarily implies an ontological distinction-between "inside" (consciousness) and "outside" energy.
Dossey's criticism of Woodhouse's energy monism, thus, rests on an ontological objection: Even if we do not yet have any idea of how to talk ontologically about consciousness, we at least know that (despite Woodhouse's contrary claim) consciousness and energy are not ontologically identical. There is an ontological distinction between "inside/consciousness" and "outside/energy." Thus, Dossey concludes, energy talk (which is ontological talk) is inappropriate for consciousness. On this, I agree with Dossey, and disagree with Woodhouse. However, Dossey goes on to take issue with Woodhouse's "inside/outside" distinction as a solution to the mind-body relation. If taken literally, Dossey's criticism is valid: "Instead of grappling with the nature of the connection between energy and consciousness, we are now obliged to clarify the nature of the boundary between 'inside' and 'outside' . . ." But I suspect that Woodhouse uses the spatial concepts "inside/outside" metaphorically because like the rest of us he finds our language short on nonphysical metaphors (though, as we will see, nonspatial metaphors are available).
It may be, of course, that Woodhouse has not carefully thought through the implications of this spatial metaphor, and how it leaves him open to just the sort of critique that Dossey levels. Dossey, I presume, is as much concerned with Woodhouse's claim that "consciousness is energy," meaning it is the "inside" of energy, as he is about the difficulties in taking the spatial metaphor of "inside/outside" literally. On the first point, I share Dossey's concern. I am less concerned about the second. As long as we remember that talk of "interiority" and "exteriority" are metaphors, I believe they can be very useful ways of pointing toward a crucial distinction between consciousness and energy.
The metaphor becomes a problem if we slip into thinking that it points to a literal distinction between two kinds of "stuff" (as Descartes did), or indeed to a distinction revealing two aspects of a single kind of "stuff." This latter slip seems to be precisely the mistake that Woodhouse makes with his energy monism. By claiming that consciousness is energy, Woodhouse in effect-despite his best intentions to the contrary-succeeds in equating (and this means "reducing") consciousness to physical "stuff." His mistake-and one that Dossey may be buying into-is to use "stuff-talk" for consciousness. It is a logical error to conclude from (1) there is only one kind of fundamental "stuff" (call it energy), and (2) this "stuff" has an interiority (call it consciousness), that (3) the interiority is also composed of that same "stuff” -, i.e., that consciousness is energy. It could be that "interiority/consciousness" is not "stuff" but something more collectively distinct ontologically-for examples, feeling or process-something which is intrinsic to, and therefore inseparable from, the "stuff." It could be that the world is made up of stuff that feels, where there is an ontological distinction between the feeling (subjectivity, experience, consciousness) and what is felt (objectivity, matter-energy).
Dossey's rejection of the "inside/outside" metaphor seems to presume (à la Woodhouse) that "inside" means the interior of some "stuff" and is that "stuff"-in this case, energy-stuff. But that is not the position of panpsychist and process philosophers from Leibniz down through Bergson, James, and Whitehead, to Hartshorns and Griffin. If we make the switch from a "stuff-oriented" to a process oriented ontology, then the kind of distinction between consciousness and energy dimly implicit in Woodhouse's model avoids the kind of criticism that Dossey levels at the "inside/outside" metaphor. Process philosophers prefer to use "time-talk" over "space-talk." Instead of talking about consciousness in terms of "insides," they talk about "moments of experience" or "duration." Thus, if we view the relationship between consciousness and energy in terms of temporal processes rather than spatial stuff, we can arrive at an ontology similar to Whiteheads relationship between consciousness and energy is understood as temporal. It is the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity, where the subject is the present state of an experiential process, and the object is its prior state. Substitute "present" for "interior" and "past" or "prior" for "exterior" and we have a process ontology that avoids the "boundary" difficulties raised by Dossey. (There is no boundary between past and present-the one flows into the other; the present incorporates the past.) From the perspective of panpsychism or radical materialism, consciousness and energy, mind and matter, subject and object always go together. All matter-energy is intrinsically sentient and experiential. Sentience-consciousness and matter-energy are inseparable, but nevertheless distinct. On this view, consciousness is the process of matter-energy informing itself.
Although our language is biassed toward physics-energy talk, full of mechanistic metaphors, this is clearly not the whole story. The vernacular of the marketplace, as well as the language of science itself, is also rich with non-mechanistic metaphors, metaphors that flow direct from experience itself. Ironically, not only do we apply these consciousness metaphors to the mind and mental events, but also to the world of matter in our attempts to understand its deeper complexities and dynamics. For example, systems theory and evolutionary biology-even at the reductionist level of molecular genetics-are replete with words such as "codes," "information," "meaning," "self-organizing," and the p-word: "purpose." So we are not limited to mechanistic metaphors when describing either the world of matter or the world of mind. But-and this is the important point-because of our bias toward visuo-muscular images, we tend to forget that metaphors of the mind are sui generis, and, because of our scientific and philosophical bias in favour of a mechanism, we often attempt to reduce metaphors of the mind to metaphors of matter. My proposal for consciousness talk is this: Recognize the limitations of mechanistic metaphors, and the inappropriateness of literal energy talk, when discussing consciousness. Instead, acknowledge the richness and appropriateness of metaphors of meaning when talking about the mind. In short: Drop mechanistic metaphors (energy talk) and take up meaning metaphors (consciousness talk) when talking about consciousness.
One of the thorniest issues in "energy" and "consciousness" work is the tendency to confuse the two. Consciousness does not equal energy, yet the two are inseparable. Consciousness is the "witness" which experiences the flow of energy, but it is not the flow of energy. We might say consciousness is the felt interiority of energy/matter-but it is not energy.
If we say that consciousness is a form of energy, then we have two options. Either It is a physical form of energy (even if it is very subtle energy), or It is not a physical form of energy. If we say that consciousness is a form of energy that is physical, then we are reducing consciousness (and spirit) to physics. And few of us, unless we are materialists, want to do that. If we say that consciousness is a form of energy that is not physical, then we need to say in what way psychic energy differs from physical energy. If we cannot explain what we mean by "psychic energy" and how it is different from physical energy, in that then we should ask ourselves why use the term "energy" at all? Our third alternative is to say that consciousness is not a form of energy (physical or nonphysical). This is not to imply that consciousness has nothing to do with energy. In fact, the position I emphasize in my graduate classes is that consciousness and energy always go together. They cannot ever be separated. But this is not to say they are not distinct. They are distinct-energy is energy, consciousness is consciousness-but they are inseparable (like two sides of a coin, or, better, like the shape and substance of a tennis ball. You can't separate the shape from the substance of the ball, but shape and substance are definitely distinct).
So, for example, if someone has a kundalini experience, they may feel a rush of energy up the chakra system . . . but to say that the energy flow is consciousness is to mistake the object (energy flow) for the subject, for what perceives (consciousness) the object. Note the two importantly distinct words in the phrase "feel the rush of energy . . . " On the one hand there is the "feeling" (or the "feeler"), on the other, there is what is being felt or experienced (the energy). Even our way of talking about it reveals that we detect a distinction between feeling (consciousness) and what we feel (energy). Yes, the two go together, but they are not the same. Unity, or unification, or holism, does not equal identity. To say that one aspect of reality (say, consciousness) cannot be separated from another aspect of reality (say, matter-energy) is not to say both aspects of reality (consciousness and matter-energy) are identical.
Consciousness, is neither identical to energy (monism) nor it a separate substance or energy in addition to physical matter or energy (dualism)-it is the "interiority," the what-it-feels-like-from-within, the subjectivity that is intrinsic to the reality of all matter and energy (panpsychism or radical materialism). If you take a moment to pay attention to what's going on in your own body right now, you'll see-or feel-what I mean: The physical matter of your body, including the flow of whatever energies are pulsing through you, is the "stuff" of your organism. But there is also a part of you that is aware of, or feels, the pumping of your blood (and other energy streams). That aspect of you that feels the matter-energy in your body is your consciousness. We could express it this way: "Consciousness is the process of matter-energy informing itself." Consciousness is the ability that matter-energy has to feel, to know, and to direct itself. The universe could be (and probably is) full of energy flows, vortices, and vibrations, but without consciousness, all this activity would be completely unfelt and unknown. Only because there is consciousness can the flow of energy be felt, known, and purposefully directed.
Over the past three decades, philosophy of science has grown increasingly "local." Concerns have switched from general features of scientific practice to concepts, issues, and puzzles specific to particular disciplines. Philosophy of neuroscience is a natural result. This emerging area was also spurred by remarkable recent growth in the neuroscience. Cognitive and computational neuroscience continues to encroach upon issues traditionally addressed within the humanities, including the nature of consciousness, action, knowledge, and normativity. Empirical discoveries about brain structure and function suggest ways that "naturalistic" programs might develop in detail, beyond the abstract philosophical considerations in their favour
The literature distinguishes "philosophy of neuroscience" and "neurophilosophy." The former concern foundational issues within the neuroscience. The latter concerns application of neuroscientific concepts to traditional philosophical questions. Exploring various concepts of representation employed in neuroscientific theories is an example of the former. Examining implications of neurological syndromes for the concept of a unified self is an example of the latter. In this entry, we will assume this distinction and discuss examples of both.
Contrary to some opinion, actual neuroscientific discoveries have exerted little influence on the details of materialist philosophies of mind. The "neuroscientific milieu" of the past four decades has made it harder for philosophers to adopt dualism. But even the "type-type" or "central state" identity theories that rose to brief prominence in the late 1950s drew upon few actual details of the emerging neuroscience. Recall the favourite early example of a psychoneural identity claim: pain is identical to C-fibre firing. The "C fibres" turned out to be related to only a single aspect of pain transmission. Early identity theorists did not emphasize psychoneural identity hypotheses, admitting that their "neuro" terms were placeholder for concepts from future neuroscience. Their arguments and motivations were philosophical, even if the ultimate justification of the program was held to be empirical.
The apology for this lacuna by early identity theorists was that neuroscience at that time was too nascent to provide any plausible identities. But potential identities were afoot. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel's (1962) electro physiological demonstrations of the receptive field properties of visual neurons had been reported with great fanfare. Using their techniques, neuro physiologists began discovering neurons throughout visual cortex responsive to increasingly abstract features of visual stimuli: from edges to motion direction to colours to properties of faces and hands. More notably, Donald Hebb had published The Organization of Behaviour (1949) a decade earlier. Therein he offered detailed explanations of psychological phenomena in terms of known neural mechanisms and anatomical circuits. His psychological explananda included features of perception, learning, memory, and even emotional disorders. He offered these explanations as potential identities. One philosopher did take note of some available neuroscientific detail was Barbara Von Eckardt-Klein (1975). She discussed the identity theory with respect to sensations of touch and pressure, and incorporated then-current hypotheses about neural coding of sensation modality, intensity, duration, and location as theorized by Mountcastle, Libet, and Jasper. Yet she was a glaring exception. Largely, available neuroscience at the time was ignored by both philosophical friends and foes of early identity theories.
Philosophical indifference to neuroscientific detail became "principled" with the rise and prominence of functionalism in the 1970s. The functionalists' favourite argument was based on multiple reliability: a given mental state or event can be realized in a wide variety of physical types (Putnam, 1967 and Fodor, 1974). So a detailed understanding of one type of realizing physical system (e.g., brains) will not shed light on the fundamental nature of mind. A psychological state-type is autonomous from any single type of its possible realizing physical mechanisms. Instead of neuroscience, scientifically-minded philosophers influenced by functionalism sought evidence and inspiration from cognitive psychology and "program-writing" artificial intelligence. These disciplines résumé being of themselves away from underlying physical mechanisms and emphasize the "information-bearing" properties and capacities of representations (Haugeland, 1985). At this same time neuroscience was delving directly into cognition, especially learning and memory. For example, Eric Kandel (1976) proposed parasynaptic mechanisms governing transmitter release rates as a cell-biological explanation of simple forms of associative learning. With Robert Hawkins (1984) he demonstrated how cognitivist aspects of associative learning (e.g., Forming, second-order conditioning, overshadowing) could be explained cell-biologically by sequences and combinations of these basic forms implemented in higher neural anatomies. Working on the postsynaptic side, neuroscientists began unravelling the cellular mechanisms of long term potentiation (LTP). Physiological psychologists quickly noted its explanatory potential for various forms of learning and memory. Yet few "materialist" philosophers paid any attention. Why should they? Most were convinced functionalists, who believed that the "engineering level" details might be important to the clinician, but were irrelevant to the theorist of mind.
A major turning point in philosophers' interest in neuroscience came with the publication of Patricia Churchland's Neurophilosophy (1986). The Churchlands (Pat and husband Paul) were already notorious for advocating eliminative materialism. In her (1986) book, Churchland distilled eliminativist arguments of the past decade, unified the pieces of the philosophy of science underlying them, and sandwiched the philosophy between a five-chapter introduction and neuroscience and a 70-page chapter on three then-current theories of brain function. She was unapologetic about her intent. She was introducing philosophy of science to neuroscientists and neuroscience to philosophers. Nothing could be more obvious, she insisted, than the relevance of empirical facts about how the brain works to concerns in the philosophy of mind. Her term for this interdisciplinary method was "co-evolution" (borrowed from biology). This method seeks resources and ideas from anywhere on the theory hierarchy above or below the question at issue. Standing on the shoulders of philosophers like Quine and Sellars, Churchland insisted that specifying some point where neuroscience ends and philosophy of science begins is hopeless because the boundaries are poorly defined. neuro philosophers would carefully choose resources from both disciplines as they saw fit.
Three themes predominate Churchlands philosophical discussion: Developing an alternative to the logical empiricist theory of intertheoretic cause to be connected to property-dualistic arguments based on subjectivity and sensory qualia, and responding to anti-reductionist multiple reliability arguments. These projects have remained central to neurophilosophy over the past decade. John Bickle (1998) extends the principal insight of Clifford Hooker's (1981) post-empiricist theory of intertheoretic reduction. He quantifies key notions using a model-theoretic account of theory structure adapted from the structuralist program in philosophy of science. He also makes explicit the form of argument scientist’s employ to draw ontological conclusions (cross-theoretic identities, revisions, or eliminations) based on the nature of the intertheoretic reduction relations obtaining in specific cases. For example, physicists concluded that visible light, a theoretical posit of optics, is electromagnetic radiation within specified wavelengths, a theoretical posit of electromagnetism: a cross-theoretic ontological identity. In another case, however, chemists concluded that phlogiston did not exist: an elimination of a kind from our scientific ontology. Bickle explicates the nature of the reduction relation in a specific case using a semi-formal account of ‘an interior theoretic approximation’ inspired by structuralist results. Paul Churchland (1996) has carried on the attack on property-dualistic arguments for the ir reducibility of conscious experience and sensory qualia. He argues that acquiring some knowledge of existing sensory neuroscience increases one's ability to ‘imagine’ or ‘conceive of’ a comprehensive neurobiological explanation of consciousness. He defends this conclusion using a thought-experiment based on the history of optics and electromagnetism. Finally, the literature critical of the multiple reliability argument has begun to flourish. Although the multiple reliability argument remains influential among nonreductive physicalists, it no longer commanded the universal acceptance it once did. Replies to the multiple reliability argument based on neuroscientific details have appeared. For example, William Bechtel and Jennifer Mundale (1997, in press) argue that neuroscientists use psychological criteria in brain mapping studies. This fact undercuts the likelihood that psychological kinds are multiplying realized.
Eliminative materialism (EM) is the conjunction of two claims. First, our common sense ‘belief-desire’ conception of mental events and processes, our ‘folk psychology,’ is a false and misleading account of the causes of human behaviour. Second, like other false conceptual frameworks from both folk theory and the history of science, it will be replaced by, rather than smoothly reduced or incorporated into, a future neuroscience. Folk psychology is the collection of common homilies about the causes of human behaviour. You ask me why Marica is not accompanying me this evening. I reply that her grant deadline is looming. You nod sympathetically. You understand my explanation because you share with me a generalization that relates beliefs about looming deadlines, desires about meeting professionally and financially significant ones, and ensuing free-time behaviour. It is the collection of these kinds of homilies that EM claims to be flawed beyond significant revision. Although this example involves only beliefs and desires, folk psychology contains an extensive repertoire of propositional attitudes in its explanatory nexus: hopes, intentions, fears, imaginings, and more. To the extent that scientific psychology (and neuroscience) retains folk concepts, EM applies to it as well.
EM is physicalist in the classical sense, postulating some future brain science as the ultimately correct account of (human) behaviour. It is eliminative in predicting the future removal of folk psychological kinds from our post-neuroscientific ontology. EM proponents often employ scientific analogies. Oxidative reactions as characterized within elemental chemistry bear no resemblance to phlogiston release. Even the "direction" of the two processes differ. Oxygen is gained when an object burns (or rusts), phlogiston was said to be lost. The result of this theoretical change was the elimination of phlogiston from our scientific ontology. There is no such thing. For the same reasons, according to EM, continuing development in neuroscience will reveal that there are no such things as beliefs and desires as characterized by common sense.
Here we focus only on the way that neuroscientific results have shaped the arguments for EM. Surprisingly, only one argument has been strongly influenced. (Most arguments for EM stress the failures of folk psychology as an explanatory theory of behaviour.) This argument is based on a development in cognitive and computational neuroscience that might provide a genuine alternative to the representations and computations implicit in folk psychological generalizations. Many eliminative materialists assume that folk psychology is committed to propositional representations and computations over their contents that mimic logical inferences. Even though discovering such an alternative has been an eliminativist goal for some time, neuroscience only began delivering on this goal over the past fifteen years. Points in and trajectories through vector spaces, as an interpretation of synaptic events and neural activity patterns in biological neural networks are key feature of this development. This argument for EM hinges on the differences between these notions of cognitive representation and the propositional attitudes of folk psychology (Churchland, 1987). However, this argument will be opaque to those with no background in contemporary cognitive and computational neuroscience, so we need to present a few scientific details. With these details in place, we will return to this argument for EM.
At one level of analysis the basic computational element of a neural network (biological or artificial) is the neuron. This analysis treats neurons as simple computational devices, transforming inputs into output. Both neuronal inputs and outputs reflect biological variables. For the remainder of this discussion, we will assume that neuronal inputs are frequencies of action potentials (neuronal "spikes") in the axons whose terminal branches synapse onto the neuron in question. Neuronal output is the frequency of action potentials in the axon of the neuron in question. A neuron computes its total input (usually treated mathematically as the sum of the products of the signal strength along each input line times the synaptic weight on that line). It then computes a new activation state based on its total input and current activation state, and a new output state based on its new activation value. The neuron's output state is transmitted as a signal strength to whatever neurons on which its axon synapses. The output state reflects systematically the neuron's new activation state.
Analysed at this level, both biological and artificial neural networks are interpreted naturally as vector-to-vector transformers. The input vector consists of values reflecting activity patterns in axons synapsing on the network's neurons from outside (e.g., from sensory transducers or other neural networks). The output vector consists of values reflecting the activity patterns generated in the network's neurons that project beyond the net (e.g., to motor effectors or other neural networks). Given that neurons' activity depends partly upon their total input, and total input depends partly on synaptic weights (e.g., parasynaptic neurotransmitter release rate, number and efficacy of postsynaptic receptors, availability of enzymes in synaptic cleft), the capacity of biological networks to change their synaptic pressures to initiate a plastic vector-to-vector transformer. In principle, a biological network with plastic synapses can come to implement any vector-to-vector transformation that its composition permits (number of input units, output units, processing layers, recurrence, cross-connections, etc.)
The anatomical organization of the cerebellum provides a clear example of a network amendable to this computational interpretation. The cerebellum is the bulbous convoluted structure dorsal to the brainstem. A variety of studies (behavioural, neuropsychological, single-cell electros), implicate this structure in motor integration and fine motor coordination. Mossy fibres (axons) from neurons outside the cerebellum synapse on cerebellular granule cells, which in turn project to parallel fibres. Activity patterns’ across the collection of mossy fibres (frequency of action potentials per time unit in each fibre projecting into the cerebellum) provide values for the input vector. Parallel fibres make multiple synapses on the dendritic trees and cell bodies of cerebellular Purkinje neurons. Each Purkinje neuron "sums" its post-synaptic potentials (PSPs) and emits a train of action potentials down its axon based (partly) on its total input and previous activation state. Purkinje axons project outside the cerebellum. The network's output vectors is thus the ordered values representing the pattern of activity generated in each Purkinje axon. Changes to the efficacy of individual synapses on the parallel fibres and the Purkinje neurons alter the resulting PSPs in Purkinje axons, generating different axonal spiking frequencies. Computationally, this amounts to a different output vector to the same input activity pattern (plasticity).
This interpretation puts the useful mathematical resources of dynamical systems into the hands of computational neuroscientists. Vector spaces are an example. For example, learning can be characterized fruitfully in terms of changes in synaptic weights in the network and subsequent reduction of error in network output. (This approach goes back to Hebb, 1949, although within the vector-space interpretation that follows.) A useful representation of this account is on a synaptic weight-error space, where one dimension represents the global error in the network's output to a given task, and all other dimensions represent the weight values of individual synapses in the network. Points in this multidimensional state space represent the global performance error correlated with each possible collection of synaptic weights in the network. As the weights change with each performance (in accordance with a biologically-implemented learning algorithm), the global error of network performance continually decreases. Learning is represented as synaptic weight changes correlated with a descent along the error dimension in the space (Churchland and Sejnowski, 1992). Representations (concepts) can be portrayed as partitions in multidimensional vector spaces. An example is a neuron activation vector space. A graph of such a space contains one dimension for the activation value of each neuron in the network (or some subset). A point in this space represents one possible pattern of activity in all neurons in the network. Activity patterns generated by input vectors that the network has learned to group together will cluster around a (hyper-) point or sub volume in the activity vector space. Any input pattern sufficiently similar to this group will produce an activity pattern lying in geometrical proximity to this point or sub volume. Paul Churchland (1989) has argued that this interpretation of network activity provides a quantitative, neurally-inspired basis for prototype theories of concepts developed recently in cognitive psychology.
Using this theoretical development, has offered a novel argument for EM. According to this approach, activity vectors are the central kind of representation and vector-to-vector transformations are the central kind of computation in the brain. This contrasts sharply with the propositional representations and logical/semantic computations postulated by folk psychology. Vectorial content is unfamiliar and alien to common sense. This cross-theoretic difference is at least as great as that between oxidative and phlogiston concepts, or kinetic-corpuscular and caloric fluid heat concepts. Phlogiston and caloric fluid are two "parade" examples of kinds eliminated from our scientific ontology due to the nature of the intertheoretic relation obtaining between the theories with which they are affiliated and the theories that replaced these. The structural and dynamic differences between the folk psychological and emerging cognitive neuroscientific kinds suggest that the theories affiliated with the latter will also correct significantly the theory affiliated with the former. This is the key premise of an eliminativist argument based on predicted intertheoretic relations. And these intertheoretic contrasts are no longer just an eliminativist's goal. Computational and cognitive neuroscience has begun to deliver an alternative kinematics for cognition, one that provides no structural analogue for the propositional attitudes.
Certainly the replacement of propositional contents by vectorial alternatives implies significant correction to folk psychology. But does it justifies EM? Even though this central feature of folk-psychologically posits in the finding of no analogues in one hot theoretical development in recent cognitive and computational neuroscience, there might be other aspects of cognition that folk psychology gets right. Within neurophilosophy, concluding that a cross-theoretic identity claim is true (e.g., folk psychological state F is identical to neural state N) or that an eliminativist claim is true (there is no such thing as folk psychological state F) depends on the nature of the intertheoretic reduction obtaining between the theories affiliated with the posits in question. But the underlying account of intertheoretic reduction recognizes a spectrum of possible reductions, ranging from relatively "smooth" through "significantly revisionary" to "extremely bumpy." Might the reduction of folk psychology and a "vectorial" neurobiology occupy the middle ground between "smooth" and "bumpy" intertheoretic reductions, and hence suggest a "revisionary" conclusion? The reduction of classical equilibrium thermodynamics to statistical mechanics to microphysics provides a potential analogy. John Bickle argues on empirical grounds that such a outcome is likely. He specifies conditions on "revisionary" reductions from historical examples and suggests that these conditions are obtaining between folk psychology and cognitive neuroscience as the latter develops. In particular, folk psychology appears to have gotten right the grossly-specified functional profile of many cognitive states, especially those closely related to sensory input and behavioural output. It also appears to get right the "intentionality" of many cognitive states-the object that the state is of or about-even though cognitive neuroscience eschews its implicit linguistic explanation of this feature. Revisionary physicalism predicts significant conceptual change to folk psychological concepts, but denies total elimination of the caloric fluid-phlogiston variety.
The philosophy of science is another area where vector space interpretations of neural network activity patterns have impacted philosophy. In the Introduction to his (1989) book, Paul Churchland asserts that it will soon be impossible to do serious work in the philosophy of science without drawing on empirical work in the brain and behavioural sciences. To justify this claim, he suggests neurocomputational reformulation of key concepts from this area. At the heart is a neurocomputational account of the structure of scientific theories. Problems with the orthodox "sets-of-sentences" view have been known for more than three decades. Churchland advocates replacing the orthodox view with one inspired by the "vectorial" interpretation of neural network activity. Representations implemented in neural networks (as discussed above) compose a system that corresponds to important distinctions in the external environment, are not explicitly represented as such within the input corpus, and allow the trained network to respond to inputs in a fashion that continually reduces error. These are exactly the functions of theories. Churchland is bold in his assertion: an individual's theory-of-the-world is a specific point in that individual's error-synaptic weight vector space. It is a configuration of synaptic weights that partitions the individual's activation vector space into subdivisions that reduce future error messages to both familiar and novel inputs.
This reformulation invites an objection, however. Churchland boasts that his theory of theories is preferable to existing alternatives to the orthodox "sets-of-sentences" account-for example, the semantic view (Suppe, 1974; van Fraassen, 1980)-because his is closer to the "buzzing brains" that use theories. But as Bickle notes, neurocomputational models based on the mathematical resources described above are a long way into the realm of abstractia. Even now, they remain little more than novel (and suggestive) applications of the mathematics of quasi-linear dynamical system to simplified schemata of brain circuitries. neuro philosophers owe some account of identifications across ontological categories before the philosophy of science community will accept the claim that theories are points in high-dimensional state spaces implemented in biological neural networks. (There is an important methodological assumption lurking in this objection.
Churchlands neurocomputational reformulation of scientific and epistemological concepts build on this account of theories. He sketches "neutralized" accounts of the theory-ladenness of perception, the nature of concept unification, the virtues of theoretical simplicity, the nature of Kuhnian paradigms, the kinematics of conceptual change, the character of abduction, the nature of explanation, and even moral knowledge and epistemological normativity. Conceptual redeployment, for example, is the activation of an already-existing prototype representation-a counterpoint or region of a partition of a high-dimensional vector space in a trained neural network-a novel type of input pattern. Obviously, we can't here do justice to Churchlands various attempts at reformulation. We urge the intrigued reader to examine his suggestions in their original form. But a word about philosophical methodology is in order. Churchland is not attempting "conceptual analysis" in anything resembling its traditional philosophical sense and neither, typically, are neuro philosophers. (This is why a discussion of neuro philosophical reformulation fits with a discussion of EM.) There are philosophers who take the discipline's ideal to be a relatively simple set of necessary and sufficient conditions, expressed in non-technical natural language, governing the application of important concepts (like justice, knowledge, theory, or explanation). These analyses should square, to the extent possible, with pre-theoretical usage. Ideally, they should preserve synonymy. Other philosophers view this ideal as sterile, misguided, and perhaps deeply mistaken about the underlying structure of human knowledge. neuro philosophers tend to reside in the latter camp. Those who dislike philosophical speculation about the promise and potential of nascent science in an effort to reformulate ("reform-ulate") traditional philosophical concepts have probably already discovered that neurophilosophy is not for them. But the charge that neurocomputational reformulation of the sort Churchland attempts are "philosophically uninteresting" or "irrelevant" because they fail to provide "adequate analyses" of theory, explanation, and the like will get ignored among many contemporary philosophers, as well as their cognitive-scientific and neuroscientific friends. Before we leave the neuro philosophical applications of this theoretical development from recent cognitive/computational neuroscience, one more point of scientific detail is in order. The popularity of treating the neuron as the basic computational unit among neural modelers, as opposed to cognitive modelers, is declining rapidly. Compartmental modelling enables computational neuroscientists to mimic activity in and interactions between patches of neuronal membrane. This endorses modelers to control and manipulate a variety of subcellular factors that determine action potentials per time unit (including the topology of membrane structure in individual neurons, variations in ion channels across membrane patches, field properties of post-synaptic potentials depending on the location of the synapse on the dendrite or soma). Modelers can "custom-build" the neurons in their target circuitry without sacrificing the ability to study circuit properties of networks. For these reasons, few serious computational neuroscientists continue to work at a level that treats neurons as unstructured computational devices. But the above interpretative points still stand. With compartmental modelling, not only are simulated neural networks interpretable as vector-to-vector transformers. The neurons composing them are, too.
The Philosophy of science, and scientific epistemology are not the only area where philosophers have lately urged the relevance of neuroscientific discoveries. Kathleen Akins argues that a "traditional" view of the senses underlies the variety of sophisticated "naturalistic" programs about intentionality. Current neuroscientific understanding of the mechanisms and coding strategies implemented by sensory receptors shows that this traditional view is mistaken. The traditional view holds that sensory systems are "veridical" in at least three ways. (1) Each signal in the system correlates with a small range of properties in the external (to the body) environment. (2) The structure in the relevant relations between the external properties the receptors are sensitive to is preserved in the structure of the relations between the resulting sensory states. And (3) the sensory system reconstructively in faithfully, without fictive additions or embellishments, the external events. Using recent neurobiological discoveries about response properties of thermal receptors in the skin as an illustration, Akins shows that sensory systems are "narcissistic" rather than "veridical." All three traditional assumptions are violated. These neurobiological details and their philosophical implications open novel questions for the philosophy of perception and for the appropriate foundations for naturalistic projects about intentionality. Armed with the known neurophysiology of sensory receptors, for example, our "philosophy of perception" or of "perceptual intentionality" will no longer focus on the search for correlations between states of sensory systems and "veridically detected" external properties. This traditional philosophical (and scientific) project rests upon a mistaken "veridical" view of the senses. Neuroscientific knowledge of sensory receptor activity also shows that sensory experience does not serve the naturalist well as a "simple paradigm case" of an intentional relation between representation and world. Once again, available scientific detail shows the naivety of some traditional philosophical projects.
Focussing on the anatomy and physiology of the pain transmission system, Valerie Hardcastle (1997) urges a similar negative implication for a popular methodological assumption. Pain experiences have long been philosophers' favourite cases for analysis and theorizing about conscious experience generally. Nevertheless, every position about pain experiences has been defended recently: eliminativist, a variety of objectivists view, relational views, and subjectivist views. Why so little agreement, despite agreement that pain experience is the place to start an analysis or theory of consciousness? Hardcastle urges two answers. First, philosophers tend to be uninformed about the neuronal complexity of our pain transmission systems, and build their analyses or theories on the outcome of a single component of a multi-component system. Second, even those who understand some of the underlying neurobiology of pain tends to advocate gate-control theories. But the best existing gate-control theories are vague about the neural mechanisms of the gates. Hardcastle instead proposes a dissociable dual system of pain transmission, consisting of a pain sensory system closely analogous in its neurobiological implementation to other sensory systems, and a descending pain inhibitory system. She argues that this dual system is consistent with recent neuroscientific discoveries and accounts for all the pain phenomena that have tempted philosophers toward particular (but limited) theories of pain experience. The neurobiological uniqueness of the pain inhibitory system, contrasted with the mechanisms of other sensory modalities, renders pain processing atypical. In particular, the pain inhibitory system dissociates pains sensation from stimulation of nociceptors (pain receptors). Hardcastle concludes from the neurobiological uniqueness of pain transmission that pain experiences are atypical conscious events, and hence not a good place to start theorizing about or analysing the general type.
Developing and defending theories of content is a central topic in current philosophy of mind. A common desideratum in this debate is a theory of cognitive representation consistent with a physical or naturalistic ontology. We'll here describe a few contributions neuro philosophers have made to this literature.
When one perceives or remembers that he is out of coffee, his brain state possesses intentionality or "aboutness." The percept or memory is about one's being out of coffee, and it represents one for being out of coffee. The representational state has content. A psychosemantics seeks to explain what it is for a representational state to be about something: to provide an account of how states and events can have specific representational content. A physicalist psychosemantics seeks to do this using resources of the physical sciences exclusively. neuro philosophers have contributed to two types of physicalist psychosemantics: the Functional Role approach and the Informational approach.
The core claim of functional roles of semantics holds that a representation has its content in virtue of relations it bears to other representations. Its paradigm application is to concepts of truth-functional logic, like the conjunctive ‘and’ or disjunctive ‘or.’ A physical event instantiates the ‘and’ function just in case it maps two true inputs onto a single true output. Thus an expression bears the relations to others that give it the semantic content of ‘and.’ Proponents of functional role semantics propose similar analyses for the content of all representations (Form 1986). A physical event represents birds, for example, if it bears the right relations to events representing feathers and others representing beaks. By contrast, informational semantics associates content to a state depending upon the causal relations obtaining between the state and the object it represents. A physical state represents birds, for example, just in case an appropriate causal relation obtains between it and birds. At the heart of informational semantics is a causal account of information. Red spots on a face carry the information that one has measles because the red spots are caused by the measles virus. A common criticism of informational semantics holds that mere causal covariation is insufficient for representation, since information (in the causal sense) is by definition, always veridical while representations can misrepresent. A popular solution to this challenge invokes a teleological analysis of ‘function.’ A brain state represents X by virtue of having the function of carrying information about being caused by X (Dretske 1988). These two approaches do not exhaust the popular options for a psychosemantics, but are the ones to which neuro philosophers have contributed.
Paul Churchlands allegiance to functional role semantics goes back to his earliest views about the semantics of terms in a language. In his (1979) book, he insists that the semantic identity (content) of a term derive from its place in the network of sentences of the entire language. The functional economies envisioned by early functional role semanticists were networks with nodes corresponding to the objects and properties denoted by expressions in a language. Thus one node, appropriately connected, might represent birds, another feathers, and another beaks. Activation of one of these would tend to spread to the others. As ‘connectionist’ network modelling developed, alternatives arose to this one-representation-per-node ‘localist’ approach. By the time Churchland provided a neuroscientific elaboration of functional role semantics for cognitive representations generally, he too had abandoned the ‘localist’ interpretation. Instead, he offered a ‘state-space semantics’.
We saw in the section just above how (vector) state spaces provide a natural interpretation for activity patterns in neural networks (biological and artificial). A state-space semantics for cognitive representations is a species of functional role semantics because the individuation of a particular state depends upon the relations obtaining between it and other states. A representation is a point in an appropriate state space, and points (or sub volumes) in a space are individuated by their relations to other points (locations, geometrical proximity). Churchland illustrates a state-space semantics for neural states by appealing to sensory systems. One popular theory in sensory neuroscience of how the brain codes for sensory qualities (like Collor) are the opponent process account. Churchland describes a three-dimensional activation vector state-space in which all Collor perceivable by humans is represented as a point (or sub value). Each dimension corresponds to activity rates in one of three classes of photoreceptors present in the human retina and their efferent paths: The red-green opponent pathway, yellow-blue opponent pathway, and black-white (contrast) opponent pathway. Photons striking the retina are transduced by the receptors, producing an activity rate in each of the segregated pathways. The characterized Cellos have a triplet of activation frequency rates. Each dimension in that three-dimensional space will represent average frequency of action potentials in the axons of one class of ganglion cells projecting out of the retina. Face-to-face, the Collor perceivable by humans will be a region of that space. For example, an orange stimulus produces a relatively low level of activity in both the red-green and yellow-blue opponent pathways (x-axis and y-axis, respectively), and middle-range activity in the black-white (contrast) opponent pathways (z-axis). Pink stimuli, on the other hand, produce low activity in the red-green opponent pathway, middle-range activity in the yellow-blue opponent pathway, and high activity in the black-white (contrast) an opponent pathway. The location of each colour in the space generates a ‘colour solid.’ Location on the solid and geometrical proximity between regions reflect structural similarities between the perceived colours. Human gustatory representations are points in a four-dimensional state space, with each dimension coding for activity rates generated by gustatory stimuli in each type of taste receptor (sweet, salty, sour, bitter) and their segregated efferent pathways. When implemented in a neural network with structural and hence computational resources as vast as the human brain, the state space approach to psychosemantics generates a theory of content for a huge number of cognitive states.
Jerry Fodor and Ernest LePore raise an important challenge to Churchlands psychosemantics. Location in a state space alone seems insufficient to fix a state's representational content. Churchland never explains why a point in a three-dimensional state space represents the Collor, as opposed to any other quality, object, or event that varies along three dimensions. Churchlands account achieves its explanatory power by the interpretation imposed on the dimensions. Fodor and LePore allege that Churchland never specifies how a dimension comes to represent, e.g., degree of saltiness, as opposed to yellow-blue wavelength opposition. One obvious answer appeals to the stimuli that form the ‘external’ inputs to the neural network in question. Then, for example, the individuating conditions on neural representations of colours are that opponent processing neurons receive input from a specific class of photoreceptors. The latter in turn have electromagnetic radiation (of a specific portion of the visible spectrum) as their activating stimuli. However, this appeal to ‘external’ stimuli as the ultimate individuating conditions for representational content makes the resulting approach a version of informational semantics. Is this approach consonant with other neurobiological details?
The neurobiological paradigm for informational semantics is the feature detector: One or more neurons that are (i) maximally responsive to a particular type of stimulus, and (ii) have the function of indicating the presence of that stimulus type. Examples of such stimulus-types for visual feature detectors include high-contrast edges, motion direction, and colours. A favourite feature detector among philosophers is the alleged fly detector in the frog. Lettvin et al. (1959) identified cells in the frog retina that responded maximally to small shapes moving across the visual field. The idea that these cells' activity functioned to detect flies rested upon knowledge of the frogs' diet. Using experimental techniques ranging from single-cell recording to sophisticated functional imaging, neuroscientists have recently discovered a host of neurons that are maximally responsive to a variety of stimuli. However, establishing condition (ii) on a feature detector is much more difficult. Even some paradigm examples have been called into question. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel's (1962) Nobel Prize winning work establishing the receptive fields of neurons in striate cortices are often interpreted as revealing cells whose function is edge detection. However, Lehky and Sejnowski (1988) have challenged this interpretation. They trained an artificial neural network to distinguish the three-dimensional shape and orientation of an object from its two-dimensional shading pattern. Their network incorporates many features of visual neurophysiology. Nodes in the trained network turned out to be maximally responsive to edge contrasts, but did not appear to have the function of edge detection.
Kathleen Akins (1996) offers a different neuro philosophical challenge to informational semantics and its affiliated feature-detection view of sensory representation. We saw in the previous section how Akins argues that the physiology of thermoreceptor violates three necessary conditions on ‘veridical’ representation. From this fact she draws doubts about looking for feature detecting neurons to ground a psychosemantics generally, including thought contents. Human thoughts about flies, for example, are sensitive to numerical distinctions between particular flies and the particular locations they can occupy. But the ends of frog nutrition are well served without a representational system sensitive to such ontological refinements. Whether a fly seen now is numerically identical to one seen a moment ago, need not, and perhaps cannot, figure into the frog's feature detection repertoire. Akins' critique casts doubt on whether details of sensory transduction will scale up to encompass of some adequately unified psychosemantics. It also raises new questions for human intentionality. How do we get from activity patterns in "narcissistic" sensory receptors, keyed not to "objective" environmental features but rather only to effects of the stimuli on the patch of tissue innervated, to the human ontology replete with enduring objects with stable configurations of properties and relations, types and their tokens (as the "fly-thought" example presented above reveals), and the rest? And how did the development of a stable, and rich ontology confer survival advantages to human ancestors?
Consciousness has reemerged as a topic in philosophy of mind and the cognitive and brain sciences over the past three decades. Instead of ignoring it, many physicalists now seek to explain it (Dennett, 1991). Here we focus exclusively on ways those neuroscientific discoveries have impacted philosophical debates about the nature of consciousness and its relation to physical mechanisms. Thomas Nagel argues that conscious experience is subjective, and thus permanently recalcitrant to objective scientific understanding. He invites us to ponder ‘what it is like to be a bat’ and urges the intuition that no amount of physical-scientific knowledge (including neuroscientific) supplies a complete answer. Nagel's intuition pump has generated extensive philosophical discussion. At least two well-known replies make direct appeal to neurophysiology. John Biro suggests that part of the intuition pumped by Nagel, that bat experience is substantially different from human experience, presupposes systematic relations between physiology and phenomenology. Kathleen Akins (1993a) delves deeper into existing knowledge of bat physiology and reports much that is pertinent to Nagel's question. She argues that many of the questions about bat subjectivity that we still consider open hinge on questions that remain unanswered about neuroscientific details. One example of the latter is the function of various cortical activity profiles in the active bat.
More recently philosopher David Chalmers (1996) has argued that any possible brain-process account of consciousness will leave open an ‘explanatory gap’ between the brain process and properties of the conscious experience. This is because no brain-process theory can answer the "hard" question: Why should that particular brain process give rise to conscious experience? We can always imagine ("conceive of") a universe populated by creatures having those brain processes but completely lacking conscious experience. A theory of consciousness requires an explanation of how and why some brain process causes consciousness replete with all the features we commonly experience. The fact that the hard question remains unanswered shows that we will probably never get a complete explanation of consciousness at the level of neural mechanisms. Paul and Patricia Churchland have recently offered the following diagnosis and reply. Chalmers offer a conceptual argument, based on our ability to imagine creatures possessing brains like ours but wholly lacking in conscious experience. But the more one learns about how the brain produces conscious experience-and literature is beginning to emerge (e.g., Gazzaniga, 1995)-the harder it becomes to imagine a universe consisting of creatures with brain processes like ours but lacking consciousness. This is not just to bare assertions. The Churchlands appeal to some neurobiological detail. For example, Paul Churchland (1995) develops a neuroscientific account of consciousness based on recurrent connections between thalamic nuclei (particularly "diffusely projecting" nuclei like the intralaminar nuclei) and the cortex. Churchland argues that the thalamocortical recurrency accounts for the selective features of consciousness, for the effects of short-term memory on conscious experience, for vivid dreaming during REM. (rapid-eye movement) sleep, and other "core" features of conscious experience. In other words, the Churchlands are claiming that when one learns about activity patterns in these recurrent circuits, one can't "imagine" or "conceive of" this activity occurring without these core features of conscious experience. (Other than just mouthing the words, "I am now imagining activity in these circuits without selective attention/the effects of short-term memory/vivid dreaming . . . ")
A second focus of sceptical arguments about a complete neuroscientific explanation of consciousness is sensory qualia: the introspectable qualitative aspects of sensory experience, the features by which subjects discern similarities and differences among their experiences. The colours of visual sensations are a philosopher's favourite example. One famous puzzle about colour qualia is the alleged conceivability of spectral inversions. Many philosophers claim that it is conceptually possible (if perhaps physically impossible) for two humans not to differ neurophysiological, while the Collor that fire engines and tomatoes appear to have to one subject is the Collor that grass and frogs appear to have to the other (and vice versa). A large amount of neuroscientifically-informed philosophy has addressed this question. A related area where neurophilosophical considerations have emerged concerns the metaphysics of colours themselves (rather than Collor experiences). A longstanding philosophical dispute is whether colours are objective property’s Existing external to perceiver or rather identifiable as or dependent upon minds or nervous systems. Some recent work on this problem begins with characteristics of Collor experiences: For example that Collor similarity judgments produce Collor orderings that align on a circle. With this resource, one can seek mappings of phenomenology onto environmental or physiological regularities. Identifying colours with particular frequencies of electromagnetic radiation does not preserve the structure of the hue circle, whereas identifying colours with activity in opponent processing neurons does. Such a tidbit is not decisive for the Collor objectivist-subjectivist debate, but it does convey the type of neurophilosophical work being done on traditional metaphysical issues beyond the philosophy of mind.
We saw in the discussion of Hardcastle (1997) two sections above that Neurophilosophers have entered disputes about the nature and methodological import of pain experiences. Two decades earlier, Dan Dennett (1978) took up the question of whether it is possible to build a computer that feels pain. He compares and notes pressure between neurophysiological discoveries and common sense intuitions about pain experience. He suspects that the incommensurability between scientific and common sense views is due to incoherence in the latter. His attitude is wait-and-see. But foreshadowing Churchland's reply to Chalmers, Dennett favours scientific investigations over conceivability-based philosophical arguments.
Neurological deficits have attracted philosophical interest. For thirty years philosophers have found implications for the unity of the self in experiments with commissurotomy patients. In carefully controlled experiments, commissurotomy patients display two dissociable seats of consciousness. Patricia Churchland scouts philosophical implications of a variety of neurological deficits. One deficit is blind-sight. Some patients with lesions to primary visual cortex report being unable to see items in regions of their visual fields, yet perform far better than chance in forced guess trials about stimuli in those regions. A variety of scientific and philosophical interpretations have been offered. Ned Form (1988) worries that many of these conflate distinct notions of consciousness. He labels these notions ‘phenomenal consciousness’ (‘P-consciousness’) and ‘access consciousness’ (‘A-consciousness’). The former is that which, ‘what it is like-ness of experience. The latter is the availability of representational content to self-initiated action and speech. Form argues that P-consciousness is not always representational whereas A-consciousness is. Dennett and Michael Tye are sceptical of non-representational analyses of consciousness in general. They provide accounts of blind-sight that do not depend on Form's distinction.
Many other topics are worth neurophilosophical pursuit. We mentioned commissurotomy and the unity of consciousness and the self, which continues to generate discussion. Qualia beyond those of Collor and pain have begun to attract neurophilosophical attention has self-consciousness. The first issues to arise in the ‘philosophy of neuroscience’ (before there was a recognized area) was the localization of cognitive functions to specific neural regions. Although the ‘localization’ approach had dubious origins in the phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim, and was challenged severely by Flourens throughout the early nineteenth century, it reemerged in the study of aphasia by Bouillaud, Auburtin, Broca, and Wernicke. These neurologists made careful studies (where possible) of linguistic deficits in their aphasic patients followed by brain autopsies postmortem. Broca's initial study of twenty-two patients in the mid-nineteenth century confirmed that damage to the left cortical hemisphere was predominant, and that damage to the second and third frontal convolutions was necessary to produce speech production deficits. Although the anatomical coordinates’ Broca postulates for the ‘speech production centres do not correlate exactly with damage producing production deficits, both are that in this area of frontal cortex and speech production deficits still bear his name (‘Broca's area’ and ‘Broca's aphasia’). Less than two decades later Carl Wernicke published evidence for a second language centre. This area is anatomically distinct from Broca's area, and damage to it produced a very different set of aphasic symptoms. The cortical area that still bears his name (‘Wernicke's area’) is located around the first and second convolutions in temporal cortex, and the aphasia that bears his name (‘Wernicke's aphasia’) involves deficits in language comprehension. Wernicke's method, like Broca's, was based on lesion studies: a careful evaluation of the behavioural deficits followed by post mortem examination to find the sites of tissue damage and atrophy. Lesion studies suggesting more precise localization of specific linguistic functions remain a cornerstone to this day in aphasic research
Lesion studies have also produced evidence for the localization of other cognitive functions: for example, sensory processing and certain types of learning and memory. However, localization arguments for these other functions invariably include studies using animal models. With an animal model, one can perform careful behavioural measures in highly controlled settings, then ablate specific areas of neural tissue (or use a variety of other techniques to Form or enhance activity in these areas) and remeasure performance on the same behavioural tests. But since we lack an animal model for (human) language production and comprehension, this additional evidence isn't available to the neurologist or neurolinguist. This fact makes the study of language a paradigm case for evaluating the logic of the lesion/deficit method of inferring functional localization. Philosopher Barbara Von Eckardt (1978) attempts to make explicit the steps of reasoning involved in this common and historically important method. Her analysis begins with Robert Cummins' early analysis of functional explanation, but she extends it into a notion of structurally adequate functional analysis. These analyses break down a complex capacity C into its constituent capacity’s c1, c2, . . . cn, where the constituent capacities are consistent with the underlying structural details of the system. For example, human speech production (complex capacity C) results from formulating a speech intention, then selecting appropriate linguistic representations to capture the content of the speech intention, then formulating the motor commands to produce the appropriate sounds, then communicating these motor commands to the appropriate motor pathways (constituent capacity’s c1, c2, . . . , cn). A functional-localization hypothesis has the form: Brain structure S in an organism (type) O has constituent capacity ci, where ci is a function of some part of O. An example, Brains Broca's area (S) in humans (O) formulates motor commands to produce the appropriate sounds (one of the constituent capacities ci). Such hypotheses specify aspects of the structural realization of a functional-component model. They are part of the theory of the neural realization of the functional model.
Armed with these characterizations, Von Eckardt argues that inference to a functional-localization hypothesis proceeds in two steps. First, a functional deficit in a patient is hypothesized based on the abnormal behaviour the patient exhibits. Second, localization of function in normal brains is inferred on the basis of the functional deficit hypothesis plus the evidence about the site of brain damage. The structurally-adequate functional analysis of the capacity connects the pathological behaviour to the hypothesized functional deficit. This connection suggests four adequacy conditions on a functional deficit hypothesis. First, the pathological behaviour P (e.g., the speech deficits characteristic of Broca's aphasia) must result from failing to exercise some complex capacity C (human speech production). Second, there must be a structurally-adequate functional analysis of how people exercise capacity C that involves some constituent capacity ci (formulating motor commands to produce the appropriate sounds). Third, the operation of the steps described by the structurally-adequate functional analysis minus the operation of the component performing ci (Broca's area) must result in pathological behaviour P. Fourth, there must not be a better available explanation for why the patient does P. Arguments to a functional deficit hypothesis on the basis of pathological behaviour is thus an instance of argument to the best available explanation. When postulating a deficit in a normal functional component provides the best available explanation of the pathological data, we are justified in drawing the inference.
Von Eckardt applies this analysis to a neurological case study involving a controversial reinterpretation of agnosia. Her philosophical explication of this important neurological method reveals that most challenges to localization arguments of whether to argue only against the localization of a particular type of functional capacity or against generalizing from localization of function in one individual to all normal individuals. (She presents examples of each from the neurological literature.) Such challenges do not impugn the validity of standard arguments for functional localization from deficits. It does not follow that such arguments are unproblematic. But they face difficult factual and methodological problems, not logical ones. Furthermore, the analysis of these arguments as involving a type of functional analysis and inference to the best available explanation carries an important implication for the biological study of cognitive function. Functional analyses require functional theories, and structurally adequate functional analyses require checks imposed by the lower level sciences investigating the underlying physical mechanisms. Arguments to best available explanation are often hampered by a lack of theoretical imagination: the available explanations are often severely limited. We must seek theoretical inspiration from any level of theory and explanation. Hence making explicit the ‘logic’ of this common and historically important form of neurological explanation reveals the necessity of joint participation from all scientific levels, from cognitive psychology down to molecular neuroscience. Von Eckardt anticipated what came to be heralded as the ‘co-evolutionary research methodology,’ which remains a centerpiece of neurophilosophy to the present day.
Over the last two decades, evidence for localization of cognitive function has come increasingly from a new source: the development and refinement of neuroimaging techniques. The form of localization-of-function argument appears not to have changed from that employing lesion studies (as analysed by Von Eckardt). Instead, these imaging technologies resolve some of the methodological problems that plage lesion studies. For example, researchers do not need to wait until the patient dies, and in the meantime probably acquires additional brain damage, to find the lesion sites. Two functional imaging techniques are prominent: Positron emission tomography, or PET, and functional magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. Although these measure different biological markers of functional activity, both now have a resolution down to around 1mm. As these techniques increase spatial and temporal resolution of functional markers and continue to be used with sophisticated behavioural methodologies, the possibility of localizing specific psychological functions to increasingly specific neural regions continues to grow
What we now know about the cellular and molecular mechanisms of neural conductance and transmission is spectacular. The same evaluation holds for all levels of explanation and theory about the mind/brain: maps, networks, systems, and behaviour. This is a natural outcome of increasing scientific specialization. We develop the technology, the experimental techniques, and the theoretical frameworks within specific disciplines to push forward our understanding. Still, a crucial aspect of the total picture gets neglected: the relationship between the levels, the ‘glue’ that binds knowledge of neuron activity to subcellular and molecular mechanisms, network activity patterns to the activity of and connectivity between single neurons, and behaviour to network activity. This problem is especially glaring when we focus on the relationship between ‘cognitivist’ psychological theories, postulating information-bearing representations and processes operating over their contents, and the activity patterns in networks of neurons. Co-evolution between explanatory levels still seems more like a distant dream rather than an operative methodology.
It is here that some neuroscientists appeal to ‘computational’ methods. If we examine the way that computational models function in more developed sciences (like physics), we find the resources of dynamical systems constantly employed. Global effects (such as large-scale meteorological patterns) are explained in terms of the interaction of ‘local’ lower-level physical phenomena, but only by dynamical, nonlinear, and often chaotic sequences and combinations. Addressing the interlocking levels of theory and explanation in the mind/brain using computational resources that have worked to bridge levels in more mature sciences might yield comparable results. This methodology is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on resources and researchers from a variety of levels, including higher levels like experimental psychology, ‘program-writing’ and ‘connectionist’ artificial intelligence, and philosophy of science.
However, the use of computational methods in neuroscience is not new. Hodgkin, Huxley, and Katz incorporated values of voltage-dependent potassium conductance they had measured experimentally in the squid giant axon into an equation from physics describing the time evolution of a first-order kinetic process. This equation enabled them to calculate best-fit curves for modelled conductance versus time data that reproduced the S-shaped (sigmoidal) function suggested by their experimental data. Using equations borrowed from physics, Rall (1959) developed the cable model of dendrites. This theory provided an account of how the various inputs from across the dendritic tree interact temporally and spatially to determine the input-output properties of single neurons. It remains influential today, and has been incorporated into the genesis software for programming neurally realistic networks. More recently, David Sparks and his colleagues have shown that a vector-averaging model of activity in neurons of superior colliculi correctly predicts experimental results about the amplitude and direction of saccadic eye movements. Working with a more sophisticated mathematical model, Apostolos Georgopoulos and his colleagues have predicted direction and amplitude of hand and arm movements based on averaged activity of 224 cells in motor cortices. Their predictions have borne out under a variety of experimental tests. We mention these particular studies only because we are familiar with them. We could multiply examples of the fruitful interaction of computational and experimental methods in neuroscience easily by one-hundred-fold. Many of these extend back before ‘computational neuroscience’ was a recognized research endeavour.
We've already seen one example, the vector transformation account, of neural representation and computation, under active development in cognitive neuroscience. Other approaches using ‘cognitivist’ resources are also being pursued. Many of these projects draw upon ‘cognitivist’ characterizations of the phenomena to be explained. Many exploit ‘cognitivist’ experimental techniques and methodologies. Some even attempt to derive ‘cognitivist’ explanations from cell-biological processes (e.g., Hawkins and Kandel 1984). As Stephen Kosslyn puts it, cognitive neuroscientists employ the ‘information processing’ view of the mind characteristic of cognitivism without trying to separate it from theories of brain mechanisms. Such an endeavour calls for an interdisciplinary community willing to communicate the relevant portions of the mountain of detail gathered in individual disciplines with interested nonspecialists: not just people willing to confer with those working at related levels, but researchers trained in the methods and factual details of a variety of levels. This is a daunting requirement, but it does offer some hope for philosophers wishing to contribute to future neuroscience. Thinkers trained in both the ‘synoptic vision’ afforded by philosophy and the factual and experimental basis of genuine graduate-level science would be ideally equipped for this task. Recognition of this potential niche has been slow among graduate programs in philosophy, but there is some hope that a few programs are taking steps to fill it.
In the final analysis there will be philosophers unprepared to accept that, if a given cognitive capacity is psychologically real, then there must be an explanation of how it is possible for an individual in the course of human development to acquire that cognitive capacity, or anything like it, can have a role to play in philosophical accounts of concepts and conceptual abilities. The most obvious basis for such a view would be a Frégean distrust of “psychology” that leads to a rigid division of labour between philosophy and psychology. The operative thought is that the task of a philosophical theory of concepts is to explain what a given concept is or what a given conceptual ability consist in. This, it is frequently maintained, is something that can be done in complete independence of explaining how such a concept or ability might be acquired. The underlying distinction is one between philosophical questions centring around concept possession and psychological questions centring around concept possibilities for an individual to acquire that ability, then it cannot be psychologically real. Nevertheless, this distinction is, however, strictly one does adhere to the distinction, it provides no support for a rejection of any given cognitive capacity for which is psychologically real. The neo-Frégean distinction is directly against the view that facts about how concepts are acquired have a role to play in explaining and individualizing concepts. But this view does not have to be disputed by a supporter as such, nonetheless, all that the supporter is to commit is that the principle that no satisfactory account of what a concept is should make it impossible to provide explanation of how that concept can be acquired. That is, that this principle has nothing to say about the further question of whether the psychological explanation has a role to play in a constitutive explanation of the concept, and hence is not in conflict with the neo-Frégean distinction.
A full account of the structure of consciousness, will need to illustrate those higher, conceptual forms of consciousness to which little attention on such an account will take and about how it might emerge from given points of value, is the thought that an explanation of everything that is distinctive about consciousness will emerge out of an account of what it is for a subject to be capable of thinking about himself. But, to a proper understanding of the complex phenomenon of consciousness. There are no facts about linguistic mastery that will determine or explain what might be termed the cognitive dynamics that are individual processes that have found their way forward for a theory of consciousness, it sees, to chart the characteristic features individualizing the various distinct conceptual forms of consciousness in a way that will provide a taxonomy of unconsciousness and they, to show how these manifest the characterlogical functions a can to determine at the level of content. What is hoped is now clear is that these forms of higher forms of consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of non-conceptual representations of thought, which can only expose and clarify their conviction that these forms of conscious thought hold the key, not just to an eventful account of how mastery of the conscious paradigms, but to a proper understanding of the plexuity of self-consciousness and/or the overall conjecture of consciousness that stands alone as to an everlasting vanquishment into the ever unchangeless state of unconsciousness, and its abysses are only held by incestuousness.
EVOLVING PRINCIPLES OF THOUGHT
BOOK FOUR
The Plexuity Of Transference
Despite radical implications for theory of psychoanalytic techniques and others in a dialectical way, is often without awareness. Where these psychoanalysts disagree in their conceptual frame, create the recognition that analyst and patient cannot simply avoid having an impact on each other. Even so, we cannot be to remove obstructions from whether we have related this to our deliberate technical interventions or intentional aspects drawn upon the conceptual interactions. As for reasons that are useful and necessary to distinguish between theory of techniques, which the interconnectivity established through the conjunctive relationships have in relation of what seemed allowable for us to expand our knowledge of the complex and subtle factors that account for therapeutic action. This, however, can ultimately become the most effective basis for refining and developing our understanding of how best to serve of ourselves to advance the analytic situation and too aculeate more profound and very acute satisfactory depictions in the psychoanalytic engagements, no matter whatever our accountable resultants may be of our theoretical orientation.
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.
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