Technological
Grammatization and psychic apparatus
On
Sigmund Freud‘ s « Note on the ‘magic block’ » (1925)
Hidetaka
Ishida (the University of Tokyo)
Today we use more and more the computer
tablet as macintosh i-Pad, which has a strange similarity to the writing tool
described by Sigmund Freud in his famous small text of 1925 "Note on the
magic block '' ('Notiz über den' Wunderblock '") : the English name
of Wunderblock is the "Magic Pad". This parallel between i Pad and Magic
Pad, seems particularly interesting, because if the i-Pad has become our
everyday tool - our "mental prosthesis" in some way - Freud had
elected the Magic Pad as a model to illustrate his conception of the psychic
apparatus (psychic) (seelischer Apparat).
I'll deliver my reflexions on the
implication of informatics apparatus in today's psychic life by tracing the
evolution of the theoretical conception of the psychic apparatus - so is his theory of topography - in Freud throughout his work.
I consider Freud not as abstract thinker; he
is more engineer of the human soul. The reflection that I bring today is part
of a work that tries to show that contrary to what said Dr. Jacques Lacan, the
Unconscious is not structured like a language, but it is structured like
a cinematograph: it is graphic - grammatologic
- and technologic.
1 « Note on the ‘magic block’ » (1925)
First,
let's see what Freud says on the magic bloc. I assume you have already read the
small text and we all understood what is magic block.
For economy of time, I will not read all the
passages I mention; I refer to
quotations by number.
Freud compares this memory-making tool
called the magical blog or Magic Pad to his conception of the psychic apparatus
("if it is examined more closely it
will be found that its construction shows a remarkable agreement with my
hypothetical structure of our perceptual apparatus.").
He says. On note paper we can write but can
not erase the surface for new writing. On the slate tablet, writing can be erased but you cannot keep
traces. There is an incompatibility between renewable inscription and indefinite
registration: between Perception (or Consciousness) and Memory. Freud recalls
his distinction of "Perception-Consciousness (Pc-Cs)" and "Memory
traces" in his Interpretation of
Dreams (Die Traumdeutung 1900),
we will return to this work further.
It is precisely a system making both
possible that Freud discovered in this "little instrument" called
"Magic block" :
But if it is examined more
closely it will be found that its construction shows a remarkable agreement
with my hypothetical structure of our perceptual apparatus and that it can in
fact provide both an ever-ready receptive surface and permanent traces
of the notes that have been made upon it. (SE 209)
The magic
block is provided with a "transparent celluloid plate" which serves
as a "protective shield against stimuli"; real
"stimulus-receiving layer" is located just below the celluloid, which
is the "thin translucent wax paper " :
The celluloid is a
"protective shield against stimuli"; the layer which actually receives
the stimuli is the paper. I may at this point recall that in Beyond the Pleasure
Principle [trans., 1922, 22 ff.; new trans., 1950, 30 ff.]. I showed that the
perceptive apparatus of our mind consists of two layers, of an external protective
shield against stimuli whose task is to diminish the strength of excitations
coming in, and of a surface behind it which receives the stimuli,namely the
system Pcpt.-Cs.(SE 210)
These two
layers of surfaces are, Freud believed, just like the system
"Perception-Consciousness"; since his Project for a psychology (Entwurf einer Psychology 1895), the human
psyche (the system Ψ) for Freud is
defined as discharging the energy Q of the outside world; it is only the
reduced amount of energy Qη that can be invested in the psyche; the Perception is
through the φ neurones, the Consciousness by ω, both permeable, while the
Memory Traces are formed of impermeable ψ neurons (we'll talk just now
"contact barrier" and "facilitation "). This is the
apparatus φψω, the first draft of the psychic apparatus.
The wax tablet constituting the bottom of
the magic block which will settle the traces of writing is compared to the
"Unconscious" :
It is true, too, that, once the writing has been erased, the Mystic Pad
cannot "reproduce" it from within; it would be a mystic pad indeed if,
like our memory, it could accomplish that. None the less, I do not think it is
too far-fetched to compare the celluloid and waxed paper cover with the system
Pcpt.-Cs. and its protective shield, the wax slab with the Unconscious behind
them, and the appearance and disappearance of the writing with the flickering-up
and passing-away of Consciousness in the process of Perception. (SE 211)
Freud wrote that "The magic
block can not, anyway," reproduce "from within writing, once it
cleared: it would indeed be a magic block if he could accomplish this as our
memory. ". But precisely if it was i Pad, it would be possible to update
the memory; so that i Pad would actually be the achieved form of magic block as
a model of the Freudian psychic apparatus.
And
Freud added that the timing of gestures of detachment of the cover sheet could
be compared with the discontinuity of the stream of innervation from within the
body of the organism. This final remark shows that he also sees a dimension to
illustrate the instance Id he had introduced in his second topography with The Ego and the Id (Das Ich und das Es 1923):
If we imagine one hand writing upon the surface of the Mystic
Writing-Pad while another periodically raises its covering sheet from the wax
slab, we shall have a concrete representation of the way in which I tried to
picture the functioning of the perceptual apparatus of our mind. (SE
I do not so much talk about the iPad at this
stage. I only say that i Pad while constantly renewing our
Perception-Consciousness, in permanent liaison with the networks, records and
keeps all traces; it is also able to recall them all. This means that our
mental apparatus interfaces with the real magic block. Our Pr-Cs - our
retention - interfaces with the communicative surface that is renewable at any
time (our prosthesis of presence); our memory is assisted by the third memory
machine; our Unconscious is traversed right through by this Technical Unconscious,
let alone about energy.
２ The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Traumdeutung 1900)
In the "Note on the 'magic
block,'" quoted Freud the psychic apparatus of the Traumdeutung. Indeed, Freud had presented his first psychic
apparatus (psychic device) - the "first topography" in chapter VII
"On the psychology of the dream process" of the book. The diagram is
not actually fundamentally different from that of magic block. Freud apparently
adopts the optical metaphor - the systems of the telescope lenses - to explain
the diagrams:
Accordingly, we conceive the psychic
apparatus as a compound instrument, the component parts of which we shall call
instances, or, for the sake of clearness, systems. We shall then anticipate
that these systems may perhaps maintain a constant spatial orientation to one
another, very much as do the different and successive systems of lenses of a
telescope. (SE 536-537)
This first Freudian topography is well known:
it illustrates in the three diagrams how the psyche called "Ψ
Systems" was formed from the Perception (W / Pr), forming the "Memory
traces" (Er, Er, ... / S , S ', ...).
Freud
has just abandoned his recently neurological project, that's why he uses the
optical and spatial metaphor, but it still remains behind the neurological
hypothesis and so there must be read neurological implications.
1
The
diagram of « reflex apparatus » :
The psychic process runs usually from the perceptive end to motor end (SE 537)
2
The
diagram showing the formation of "memory traces" or
"memory".
We now have reason to admit a first differentiation
at the sensory end. The percepts that come to us leave in our psychic apparatus
a trace, which we may call a “memory-trace”. The function related to this
memory-trace we call the “memory”.
….
The fact of association, then, consists in this -
that in consequence of a lessening of resistance and a smoothing of the ways
from one of the Er(Memory)-elements, the excitation transmits itself to a
second rather than to a third Er(Memory)-element. (SE 538)
We know that behind this representation
according to an optical model, there is a neurological account as he tried to
formulate in his Project of Psychology
(Entwurf einer Psychology 1895).
Freud introduced the neuron theory of contact barriers and facilitations which
is a synapse theory in today's terms. These facilitations (Bahnung) are shown in the diagrams through approximation of memory
traces in the stimulus current, while smoothed ψ neurons are invested of Qη energy, if we
reinvested the theoretical concepts that had been developed in the Project of 1895.
Note in passing that the various editions of
the Traumdeutung not all faithfully
reproduced Freud's diagrams.
Er 1 simultaneity
Er2 resemblance etc.
3
The
"Perception-Consciousness W-Bw" / "the Unconscious Vbw" /
"the Preconscious Vbw"
At the motor-end of the
process is assigned the system Pcs. In the letter to Fliess in 1896, Freud wrote:
"The Preconscious is the third transcription related to verbal
representations corresponding to our official ego. Investments arising from
this Preconscious become conscious according to certain laws. This secondary
cogitative consciousness, which appears later, is probably linked to the
hallucinatory reactivation of verbal representations; and neurons in the
conscious state would be again perception neurons and in themselves foreign to
memory. "(Letter No. 52 of 6-12-1806).
In Freud, language is
conceptualized as word representation (Wort Vorstellung) which is essentially
acoustic, whose articulation is active and almost of motor activity. It's
articulation give movement to the sound image, to which is associated the thing representation (Ding Vorstellung or
object-representation in the terminology of his Study on aphasia, 1891).
Thus verbalization becomes a
moment of awareness by joining at the second degree the
Perception-Consciousness . Thus the system Pcs reached and invested energy of attention
and associated with words, Memory trace elements can access to the
"cogitative consciousness." The Ψ process is completed, the
verbalization will be a reflexive return to the Pr-Cs.
The last of the systems at the motor end we
call the preconscious (Pcs.) to denote that the exciting processes in this
system can reach Consciousness without any further detention, provided certain
other conditions are fulfilled, e.g., the attainment of a definite degree of
intensity, a certain apportionment of that function which we must call
attention, etc. This is at the same time the system which holds the keys of
voluntary motility. The system behind it we call the unconscious (Ucs), because
it has no access to consciousness except through the Preconscious, in the
passage through which the excitation-process must submit to certain changes.
(Note added in 1919) The
further elaboration of this linear diagram will have to reckon with the
assumption that the system following the Pcs represents the one to which we
must attribute consciousness (Cs), so that P = Cs. (SE 541)
Freud said that until the
system Unconscious is the primary process
prevailing in associations, and from the Preconscious the secondary process. This means that until Unconscious system, that
is the thing representation, which "consists of an investment, if not
direct, of mnemonic images of the thing, at least of the more distant memory
traces derived thereof "(" the Unconscious, "1915), with the
Preconscious the thing representation is combined with the word representation
(that is to say, verbal language in Freud's terms).
We may note here that contrary
to Lacan, for Freud, the Unconscious is not structured like a language.
The thing representation is rather polyvalent assembly of sensory and visual images.
For facilitations of mnemonic traces of the process Ψ, Freud writes: :
On further investigation we find it necessary to assume not one but
many such mem-systems, in which the same excitation transmitted by the Perception-
elements undergoes a diversified fixation. The first of these mem-systems will
in any case contain the fixation of the association through simultaneity, while
in those systmes lying further away, the
same material of excitation will be arranged according to other forms of
combination; so that relationships of similarity, etc., might perhaps be
represented by these later systems. It would, of course, be idle to attempt to
express in words the psychic significance of such a system. Its characteristic
would lie in the intimacy of its relations to elements of raw material of
memory - that is (if we wish to hint at a more comprehensive theory) in the
gradations of the conductive resistance on the way to these elements.
(SE 539)
The first memory traces system
is defined by the elements of simultaneous perception. ; the second and
following are defined by the similarities, etc. And then by "the intimacy
of relationships with elements of mnemonic raw material", etc.
In the theoretical metaphor
explaining the stratification of memory traces, Freud likened them to "the
various telescope lens systems": it is as if this device - metaphorically
optical, métapsychologically psychic and secretly "neural" -
proceeded to successive shots of the thing representation in the Unconscious,
before the process is doubled by the word representation at the terminal of
Preconscious. The process is - one might say - cinematographic. These
successions of shots - and multiple conjunctions in latence. And with the
Preconscious, this thing representation
will be doubled by word representation
of language, a scenario will articulate cinematographic narratives
rationalizing but always already leaving
unspoken elements under censorship and repressions. The Unconscious is structured as a cinema. This is the very
meaning of the Return to Freud.
This is also why, when in
sleep, the junction with the motility is unplugged and the machine is running
in reverse, the psychic apparatus begins to make the "regressing"
process - this is the "dream process" according to Freud - and to
make hallucinatory projection of "images" on the dream screen.
What
takes place in the hallucinatory dream we can describe it in no other way than
by saying that the excitation follows a retrogressive course. It communicates
itself not to the motor end of the apparatus, but to the sensory end, and
finally reaches the system of perception. If we call the direction which the
psychic process follows from the unconscious into the progressive waking state,
we may then speak of the dream as having a regressive character. (SE 542)
During
the day there is a continuous stream flowing from the Ψ-system of the Perceptio toward the
motility end; this current ceases at night, and can no longer block the flow of
the current of excitation in the opposite direction. (SE 544)
3. The Ego and the Id (Das Ich und das Es
1923)
As we know, it is in the Ego and the Id (Das Ich und Das Es) that
Freud introduced his second Topography with the system "the Ego, the
Id and the Superego." I consider relative the break with the first
topography of the Traumdeutung.
Moreover, this article is contemporary of the
Note on the magic block (1925).
The diagram of the psychic
apparatus maintained the Pc-Cs function; he added the Pcs in continuity with
the "hearing cap" to the left hemisphere. The memory traces are drawn
without being named in the Ego, that is to say the system Ψ; the repression is
figured while the Incs is not named, while the Id is introduced to mark the
internal excitation source. This instance as a psychic force in fact had existed
since the era of the Project(Entwurf).
What interests me in this
drawing which loosely contains the human brain with cortical outline is the
"hearing cap", the famous hat of Freud :
We at once realize that almost all the lines of
demarcation we have drawn at the instigation of pathology relate only to the
superficial strata of the mental apparatus—the only ones known to us. The state
of things which we have been describing can be represented diagrammatically
(Fig. 1); though it must be remarked that the form chosen has no pretensions to
any special applicability, but is merely intended to serve for purposes of
exposition. We might add, perhaps, that the ego wears a ‘cap of hearing’ —on
one side only, as we learn from cerebral anatomy. It might be said to wear it
awry. (SE 24-25)
That this "cap of hearing" (which would refer to the Wernicke
area) is drawn on the line of continuity of Pcs shows that it is the function
of language (word representation) that can bring memory traces to Pc-Cs. The
model of the magic block had not inscription of this instance Pcs we could
possibly add to the diagram of Freud (it is for this reason that the magic
block could not recall the memories).
It is also interesting to note that Freud mentions the "cortical
homunculus", of which I give the famous drawing by Wilder Penfield :
The
ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but
is itself the projection of a surface. If we wish to find an anatomical analogy
for it we can best identify it with the ‘cortical homunculus’ of the
anatomists, which stands on its head in the cortex, sticks up its heels, faces
backwards and, as we know, has its speech-area on the left-hand side. (SE 25)
From the Perception to the motility through the language, the sensory,
memorial and language functions are thus modelled on the cortical surface as a
place of projection of the proper body.
The place of the Super-ego is
not marked in the drawing. But in the advanced variant of the second topography
in New introductory lectures on
psychoanalysis (Neue Folge der
Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, 1933), we find it is well
designed, while the famous "cap of hearing" disappears.
Why this disappearance, and the
emergence of the Super-ego in the place of auditory function? We find part of
the answer in the following passage of the The Ego and the Id :
…it is as impossible for the super-ego as for the ego to disclaim its
origin from things heard: for it is a part of the ego and remains accessible to
consciousness by way of these word-presentations (concepts, abstractions). But
the cathectic energy does not reach these contents of the super-ego from auditory perception (instruction or reading) but from sources in the Id. (SE
51-52)
From there we must probably think that the voice was heard - by
telephone - by the "cap of hearing," but the cap has been
internalized undergoing energy investments of Id.
The Ψ systems can communicate by telephone from the "speech
circuit" of Saussure, while our perception continues to be initialized and
our memories to accumulate cinematically on our Magic or i Pads.
4 Provisional Conclusion
Freud formulated the analytic
aim: "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden" (where Id was, the Ego should
happen." Since Freud, our situation has been fundamentally transformed by
our technological environment. Our mental apparatus is connected to the immense
quantity of energy Q of machines. Our internal motility is imbued with
tremendous excitements. Our Perception-Consciousness is constantly in interface
so to the electro-computer interfaces of type i Pad. The contact barriers and
synaptic facilitations of our systems Ψ are directly in sync with neuronal
pulses machines.
It is precisely this situation
that the psychic apparatus of Freudian model makes possible to think, for where
it was, in this technological environment, also our psyche should happen.
How can this future be emerging
..?
That is our question.
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