The psychoanalytic assumption of the primary process: extrapsychoanalytic evidence and findings

The ego in psychedelic drug action - ego defenses, ego boundaries, and the therapeutic role of regression

The ego is one of the most central psychological constructs in psychedelic research and a key factor in psychotherapy, including psychedelic-assisted forms of psychotherapy. Despite its centrality, the ego-construct remains ambiguous in the psychedelic literature. Therefore, we here review the theoretical background of the ego-construct with focus on its psychodynamic conceptualization. We discuss major functions of the ego including ego boundaries, defenses, and synthesis, and evaluate the role of the ego in psychedelic drug action. According to the psycholytic paradigm, psychedelics are capable of inducing regressed states of the ego that are less protected by the ego's usual defensive apparatus. In such states, core early life conflicts may emerge that have led to maladaptive ego patterns. We use the psychodynamic term character in this paper as a potential site of change and rearrangement; character being the chronic and habitual patterns the ego utilizes to adapt to the everyday challenges of life, including a preferred set of defenses. We argue that in order for psychedelic-assisted therapy to successfully induce lasting changes to the ego's habitual patterns, it must psycholytically permeate the characterological core of the habits. The primary working principle of psycholytic therapy therefore is not the state of transient ego regression alone, but rather the regressively favored emotional integration of those early life events that have shaped the foundation, development, and/or rigidification of a person's character - including his or her defense apparatus. Aiming for increased flexibility of habitual ego patterns, the psycholytic approach is generally compatible with other forms of psychedelic-assisted therapy, such as third wave cognitive behavioral approaches.

Is Primary-Process Cognition a Feature of Hypnosis?

The division of cognition into primary and secondary processes is an important part of contemporary psychoanalytic metapsychology. Whereas primary processes are most characteristic of unconscious thought and loose associations, secondary processes generally govern conscious thought and logical reasoning. It has been theorized that an induction into hypnosis is accompanied by a predomination of primary-process cognition over secondary-process cognition. The authors hypothesized that highly hypnotizable individuals would demonstrate more primary-process cognition as measured by a recently developed cognitive-perceptual task. This hypothesis was not supported. In fact, low hypnotizable participants demonstrated higher levels of primary-process cognition. Exploratory analyses suggested a more specific effect: felt connectedness to the hypnotist seemed to promote secondary-process cognition among low hypnotizable participants.

The Operationalization of the Unconscious

This paper presents a brief review of some formal approaches to the modeling of unconscious phenomena. These models allow for the operationalization of the concept of psychodynamic unconscious towards a possible inclusion in the fields of Cognitive Informatics and Cognitive Computing. In particular this paper presents the conceptualization proposed by Ignacio Matte Blanco of the functioning of conscious and unconscious thinking. In his original view the two ways of thinking are conceived as two distinct logics, “symmetrical” and “asymmetrical” logics. In this study the fundamentals of his concepts are identified and re-elaborated in a more formal way, with the aim of developing an operational and dynamic functional structure that evolves over time and that includes the affective value of objects. On this basis a computational implementation of the conscious–unconscious interaction that employs Learning Classifier Systems (LCS) is put forward.

The four postulates of freudian unconscious neurocognitive convergences

In the 1980s, the terms “cognitive unconscious” were invented to denominate a perspective on unconscious mental processes independent from the psychoanalytical views. For several reasons, the two approaches to unconscious are generally conceived as irreducible. Nowadays, we are witnessing a certain convergence between both fields. The aim of this paper consists in examining the four basic postulates of Freudian unconscious at the light of neurocognitive sciences. They posit: (1) that some psychological processes are unconsciously performed and causally determine conscious processes, (2) that they are governed by their own cognitive rules, (3) that they set out their own intentions, (4) and that they lead to a conflicting organization of psyche. We show that each of these postulates is the subject of empirical and theoretical works. If the two fields refer to more or less similar mechanisms, we propose that their opposition rests on an epistemological misunderstanding. As a conclusion, we promote a conservative reunification of the two perspectives.

Primary mental expression: freud, klein, and beyond

Freud formulated the primary process model, describing mental activity that creates the illusion of an actual experience in lieu of reflective thought, at the very start of his career. In this, his initial formulation of unconscious mental activity, he was attempting to account for the nature of dreaming, by inference for the mind of infancy and, more speculatively, for adult psychosis. He never revised the model in light of his later formulations of the structural model and the death instinct, nor did he elaborate on his speculation that it could serve as a model for psychosis, and there has been little subsequent effort to employ the model outside the context of dreaming. A small number of analysts, including Klein, Bion, and Matte-Blanco, have constructed theories of psychosis in idiosyncratic conceptual languages that seem to be describing phenomena similar to those from which Freud constructed his model. Although Klein's model of positions, which has become the most widely accepted theory of psychosis, is generally considered a fundamental departure from Freud, both accounts have remarkable similarity and both tend to confuse primary mental expression with mature thought and normal infancy with psychosis. Contributions by cognitive-developmental psychologists including Werner and Piaget suggest ways to clarify some of the confusion and to supplement and amplify Freud's and Klein's description of some of the salient features of primary mental expression. Findings from neuroimaging studies of dreaming and of schizophrenia support the proposition that primary mental activity is a qualitatively distinctive form of mental expression.

Unconscious fantasy: a once and future concept

The concept of unconscious fantasy should be retained as fundamental to any psychoanalytic approach. The concept is reexamined in the face of two challenges: today's theoretical pluralism and the recent integration of findings from academic research. The first section reviews post-Freudian theoretical contributions to Freud's original concept, concluding that in its evolved form it is flexible enough to serve multiple perspectives. The second section examines four features identified with primary process thinking, demonstrating that a model of early mentation based on adult dream work cannot be supported by research on early development. However, the contemporary concept of unconscious fantasy is compatible with research findings from child development studies and cognitive neuroscience, permitting psychoanalysts to enter dialogue with those fields. Our contribution is not the posit of a new form of thinking (primary process) but an understanding of how general cognitive processes are enlisted for motivated purposes.

The anatomy of a symptom: concept development and symptom formation in a four-year-old boy

The case of a four-year-old boy with a postural symptom that resolved rapidly in the course of play therapy is presented. Various unconscious fantasies appeared to underlie the symptom. In particular, this case illustrates a young child's sophisticated capacity to abstract a complex relational feature from a set of unconscious fantasies that then became the basis of his symptom. The structure of the boy's symptom is relevant to (1) the question of what constitutes a symptom, (2) the relationship between concept development and symptom formation, and (3) the status of certain primary process mechanisms as they relate to concept development. Proposals are presented to help situate the contributions of psychoanalytic theory with respect to the domain of cognitive psychology, and to illustrate the unique contributions of each domain toward their mutual enrichment.

Anxiety, attributional thinking,and the primary process

In earlier publications, experimental evidence was provided for the existence of the primary vs. secondary process mental organization posited by Freud. A well-established cognitive categorization test based on attributional and relational similarity was found to map on to primary and secondary principles of mental organization respectively, thus offering the opportunity to test hypotheses drawn from psychoanalytic theory independent of the clinical situation. In prior work, primary process shifts occurred under three different conditions--all predicted by psychoanalytic theory: (1) when stimuli were (subliminal) unconscious; (2) when participants were 3-5 years of age; and (3) when tasks were implicit. In the current study, a fourth condition is examined dealing with the relationship of conscious anxiety to primary and secondary processes. In a naturalistic study, 120 patients waiting in medical center waiting rooms rated how anxious they felt on a 10-point scale and then completed a version of the categorization test alluded to above. Those who reported any anxiety at all showed a significant shift toward primary process categorization over those participants who rated themselves as calm. The implications of this fourth finding are discussed with respect to signal anxiety and symptom formation.