Re: “What we’ve got here is (a) f ailure to communicate”

Post   : “What we’ve got here is (a) failure to communicate” : 4
URL    : http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/11/11/what-weve-got-here-is-a-failure-to-communicate-4/
Posted : November 11, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Author : Jon Awbrey
Tags   : Anthem, Communication, Meditation

Excerpt from Sigmund Freud, “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895)

| The Experience of Satisfaction
|
| The filling of the nuclear neurones in Ψ has as its consequence an effort
| to discharge, an impetus which is released along motor pathways.  Experience
| shows that the first path to be followed is that leading to ''internal change''
| (e.g., emotional expression, screaming, or vascular innervation).  But, as we
| showed at the beginning of the discussion, no discharge of this kind can bring
| about any relief of tension, because endogenous stimuli continue to be received
| in spite of it and the Ψ-tension is re-established.  Here a removal of the stimulus
| can only be effected by an intervention which will temporarily stop the release of
| quantity (Qἠ) in the interior of the body, and an intervention of this kind requires
| an alteration in the external world (e.g., the supply of nourishment or the proximity
| of the sexual object), and this, as a “specific action”, can only be brought about in
| particular ways.  At early stages the human organism is incapable of achieving this
| specific action.  It is brought about by extraneous help, when the attention of an
| experienced person has been drawn to the child's condition by a discharge taking
| place along the path of internal change [e.g., by the child's screaming].  This
| path of discharge thus acquires an extremely important secondary function —
| viz., of bringing about an understanding with other people;  and the original
| helplessness of human beings is thus the primal source of all moral motives.
|
| When the extraneous helper has carried out the specific action in the external world
| on behalf of the helpless subject, the latter is in a position, by means of reflex
| contrivances, immediately to perform what is necessary in the interior of his body
| in order to remove the endogenous stimulus.  This total event then constitutes an
| “experience of satisfaction”, which has the most momentous consequences in the
| functional development of the individual.
|
| ⁂
|
| Thus the experience of satisfaction leads to a facilitation between
| the two memory-images [of the object wished-for and of the reflex
| movement] and the nuclear neurones which had been cathected during
| the state of urgency.  (No doubt, during [the actual course of] the
| discharge brought about by the satisfaction, the quantity (Qἠ) flows
| out of the memory-images as well.)  Now, when the state of urgency or
| wishing re-appears, the cathexis will pass also to the two memories and
| will activate ''them''.  And in all probability the memory-image of the
| object will be the first to experience this wishful activation.
|
| I have no doubt that the wishful activation will in the first instance produce something
| similar to a perception — namely, a hallucination.  And if this leads to the performance
| of the reflex action, disappointment will inevitably follow.  (Freud, 379–381).

Sigmund Freud, “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895), pages 347–445 in
''The Origins of Psycho-Analysis : Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes,
1887–1902'', Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Ernst Kris (eds.), Eric Mosbacher and
James Strachey (trans.), Basic Books, New York, NY, 1954.

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