World Within The Word

by William H. Gass

  It aimed to become a science, yet if there was ever a target which the phallic arrow of analysis fell no way near, it was this one. It is even likely that psychoanalysis ended more metaphysically than it began. Freud knew, of course, that the territory was strange. He knew that his theories would meet with irrational resistance. He wanted his work credited with being truly observant, yet what he saw was not a half of what he heard, and the subject of his science soon became the story in the voice, in reported scenes of nightmare and daydream, in what could be inferred from his patients’ feelings about words and their inadvertent play with language, the total history of a case … eros through logos … by the light of the sun to find the entrance to the cave. Since his reports would seem bizarre, his “situations” delicate, the analyst’s behavior had to be severely objective, his aims rigorously professional, his mind tough, his facts hard. He had to say “science” fiercely and firmly, firmly and loudly, loudly and often. And since he was a doctor, he had to cure. And since he was a husband and a householder (so surely a “he”), he had to be paid.

  Nevertheless, the therapeutic success of psychoanalysis has been dubious; its empirical base remains weak; its testability is nearly nil; its openness to quantification, despite Freud’s early predilections, is precisely that of the latched lid. In addition, it has remained suspiciously tied to its founders, and has shattered like a clumsy beaker into faddy camps of every conceivable Californucopial kind, rival schools whose appearance could have been anticipated if Freudianism had been perceived as a philosophical or religious undertaking instead of a scientific one.8

  But no real science cares to remain so culture-bound and value-laden. There’s none which delights in cultist spin-off either. Analysis has felt too national, too personal—too remedial—too racial, even, to its followers, in whom it has provoked a passionate interest in orthodoxy, and from whom we have received volumes of gossip principally about the passage of power and the true chain of leadership. I think one can reasonably doubt the scientific status of a theory it feels too good to believe. Whatever it once was or was meant to be, Freudianism is now no more a psychology than Marxism is an economics.9

  In the midst of the master’s own misdirections, the cries of plagiarism and betrayal, charges of heresy, simony, and lewdness, occasional canonizations and frequent courts of ex-communication, the capture of the theory by literary critics,10 mentalists, and religious mountebanks, the promises of cure and countercure, as though the analyst’s office were Lourdes, the anti-Semitic insinuations, the creamy work of the popularizers … after the parlor games, clever seductions, the jokes … it was difficult indeed to get one’s bearings, hear a single sane word, perceive a great philosopher inside that medicine man, messiah, and mischief-maker, who seemed to some the ultimate Asclepian, a miraculous cathartic in human spoon, a god made of good gritty soap, while to others he seemed equally an arch-defiler, sick Jew, god-poisoner—the thick and sticky dirt itself.

  What It Was

  Matter Quantity Conservation Cause & Reason

  From the first, Freud hoped to place his psychology on a firm scientific footing. If we were not like a waterworks, perhaps we were complex electrical systems or places for the barter and exchange of heat; but he was not really aware of how little or how much the science of his day was truly empirical or to what degree the commitments of Herbart and Helmholtz to materialism were acts of faith, how far the principles of motion or the laws of thermodynamics exceeded the evidence.

  It was distinctly in a cautious speculative spirit that in the fall of 1895 Freud began the “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” because in the area of neurophysiology, at least, he knew very well how little was known; nevertheless, with extraordinary daring and considerable elegance, since caution excludes neither, and with his almost genetic gift for guessing right, he set out to provide us with a purely physical account of the operations of the mind. Except perhaps for Ivan Sechenov’s beautiful little essay Reflexes of the Brain,11 which was written in 1863 and falls short of Freud in numerous ways, there is nothing like it in the entire history of philosophy.

  Although Freud’s own clinical practice defined his problem, it was left to physics to suggest those first fine few general principles (laws of heat and motion) from which a solution might be drawn, and to neurology to provide the pieces (neurones) which would play the game. Freud’s own basic assumptions (that reality is entirely material; that matter is best described in quantitative terms; that it is governed by the principles of conservation; that it operates through causation and can only be understood through reason) are hardly empirical generalizations. Once securely afloat, however, and the consequences of his “laws” derived, Freud descends on the facts from above the way the fisherman descends on his fish, and of course there is always the danger that the theory will seine too efficiently and capture only the kinds it wants. It is at this point that one must ask whether the explanation is satisfactory: whether all the data has been economically, even elegantly, interrelated; whether new material can be correctly anticipated; and whether surprises can be ungrudgingly welcomed and made to feel at home.

  So let us imagine for a moment the simplest organism in the animosities of its environment, and ask ourselves about the value of its sensitivity. Wouldn’t every cell be better off as sand, and isn’t any animal easier in the management of itself than a man? Then why accept messages? Let the dah-dits drone into wirelessed space, send the bellboy away when he knocks, ignore both the frothy tumult of events and the dull settle of sofas on their springs, put out all eyes in order to endure, hold tight—that’s it—hang on, sink out of sight in blank and silent depths—the oyster has the secret—stay, remain, survive … though staying, as Rilke wrote, is nowhere; still, staying is all we want. It is that equilibrium or balance which Spinoza once proposed to us as the innermost law of our nature, even as Leonardo earlier observed, “every body has a weight in the direction of its movement,” and Galileo, too, unsweetened Platonist, by measuring mass with inertia, revoked the ancient privileges of heaven and made the moon a stone; for which no thanks were given to him, or Hobbes, or finally Freud, who worked against the most presidential of our mental friends: Received Opinion.

  The old stories tell us how Matter struggled, pointlessly or not, to become Mind. They weave a wondrous tale, rather reminiscent of the rabbit who tried to tie down the sun with string. Furthermore, these same myths relate how man escaped from his cave to club his skinless way to culture—most moving, most brave; still others describe his history and his fate, a pageant only Providence has so far found the funds for or had the fortitude to watch, while in addition Bergson’s given all of us a Rotarian’s upward fizz. What more could we possibly want?

  In the face of such persistent flattery it is natural for us to think of evolution as a kind of growth, and growth as a kind of groping for sun and air in one direction, food and water in another, an open and honest reaching out, healthy and English as mountain climbing, full of fresh air and German joy, the happy rush of life into every nook and cranny like the scatter of roaches from a sudden light. But suppose that another rule prevails, the one that in logic is called Identity, in physics, Inertia, and among living beings, Self-Preservation; suppose that the instincts invariably seek to reinstate a previous condition, that the essence of things lies in the profoundest reluctance, in Widerstand, resistance; and suppose that in the same way that we go paradoxically to war to preserve the peace, we send out emissaries and take in guests—in order, ultimately, only to be alone. What of the inner impulse, then? the upward strive? the Life Force and the biological hurrah?12

  “I do not believe in the existence of such an inner impulse,” Freud said, “and I see no way of preserving this pleasing illusion.” If Galileo required that the heavens turn on the same cogs as the earth, and Darwin found one law alike for every species, Freud would make a similar demand concerning the mind and consciousness of man. If it is to sustain itself as a discipline, psychology mus
t manage to be but physics and physiology respelled. Freud’s earliest commitment was to a regulative rule for reason which commanded him to seek a uniform order of explanation and a unity in science. It was a faith as Viennese as Sacher torte and strong coffee, and it implied that the concepts of every special area of investigation were logically coherent; that there was, thus, one language for science as well as one set of laws. Psychic processes had to be regarded as quantitatively determined states of specifiable material particles.13

  As his work went on, Freud found it increasingly difficult to retain his quantitative materialism in undiluted form, but I should like to suggest that, although he weaseled and he waffled, although dualisms bent him and mentalisms encouraged another language, at least every other heartbeat was for the work he set aside and never published, the “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” and that his later romance with destruction and death is a disguised return to the old and drier flame. In his resourceful and devious way, Freud was as constant and resistant to change as his central principle.

  The importance of the “Project” is now generally recognized and appropriately stressed.14 One of the best essays in Richard Wollheim’s anthology, Robert Solomon’s “Freud’s Neurological Theory of Mind,” is devoted to it. Solomon quotes Karl Pribram, one of the world’s leading neuropsychologists, to the effect that “the Project contains a detailed neurological model which is, by today’s standards, sophisticated … The Project is very much alive and not just of historical importance.” Solomon also notes that Thomas Kuhn calls the “Project” a paradigm of psychoanalytic theory; reminds us that the editors of the Standard Edition describe it as a ghost which “haunts the whole series of Freud’s theoretical writings to the very end”; and himself concludes that “as in so many other instances, a work of this outstanding genius of our century has been abused for ‘naiveté’ only because it was too radical to be appreciated in its own time.”

  If the first, second, and final act of every constituted system is to maintain itself, as Freud’s “Project” assumed, then it will only be for the sake of such commonplace salvation that some systems will find a use for the sensitivity which genetic chance and circumstance have conferred upon them. Still, every system will seek to limit this sensitivity as far as possible, responding simply to what seems necessary to sustain it in any situation at the lowest possible level of stimulation. The boundary of a body will be built up principally as a barrier, so we shall soon have a hide to hide in, legs to flee, eyes with which we can preserve our blindness. Energies which penetrate the organism must be passed through as harmlessly as possible, conducted like lightning to the ground. “This process of discharge,” Freud wrote, “is the primary function of neuronic systems.” What we cannot shit out in a clear stream, what we cannot harden ourselves to, what we cannot flee from, is our own continuous demand for energy, since all our acts require supplies we must appropriate from somewhere.

  The “Project” treats us as rather callous Cartesians, satisfied we understand things only when we can actually imagine how they might be fabricated, and since we make things of discrete and harmonious units, according to clear directions and specifiable rules, in successive steps through definable stages, the “Project” assumes that we shall feel we understand the human mind when we finally figure out how to manufacture one.

  Freud naturally supposed that the nervous system was composed of a network of neurons through which electrochemical energies rushed at roughly ninety feet per second, although that was only the speed of life through a frog’s leg, as Helmholtz had measured it. The neuron had only recently been established as the basic unit of neurological activity. Freud asks us to imagine them as containers that discharge their contents the very instant they are filled, in an elegant and economical response which uses the occupying energy, just as judo does, to trigger its own release. Nothing leaks or spills, but suddenly the restraining walls unglue. Whereupon, neuronasm over, the cell returns, intact and unaffected, to its normal flaccid state.

  There are occasions when remaining limp requires both will and effort. Out of what is the neuron itself composed? what prevents it from melting like a custard? and isn’t it true that even dissolution takes time and is a bloody nuisance? The system must be able to store up stimulation as well as simply discharge it. Nor is every source of stimulation of the same kind. We can permit a hot plate to fall from our threatened fingers, but hunger can be only momentarily stilled. It persists and recurs and pursues us however we turn, the way Oedipus was pursued by his fate. With the greatest reluctance we are driven to recognize and act upon the world in order to serve the Minotaur within. In fact, our basic sense of out and in, even that of self and other, emerges from these hard conditions.

  We can accumulate energy and prevent embarrassing prematurity (the frog’s reflexive kick, for instance, or our own knee’s jerk) by sharing the incoming flow among a number of neurons so that the initial cell doesn’t immediately flood and spend. In this way the barriers between neurons are gently reduced because excited cells direct the flow of energy toward themselves and the paths between cells are facilitated through use.

  Freud suggests that there are contact barriers between neurons (a conjecture later found to be correct), and these prevent energy from flowing along without resistance; consequently, the entire neuron fills, then fires, a neighboring neuron fills, then fires, and then another, like Chinese crackers on a string. In time, however, the contact barriers between neurons become, either through sudden trauma or repeated trudge, more permeable and less resistant. The sensory system, with one end lying in the outer layer of the skin and in the skull holes and attentive hair, though the neurons are not numerous there, meets regularly with the greatest stimulation, which it fans through deeper layers and into many other cells.

  The stimuli which enter the nervous system from within are far less strong, though more persistent, and these also penetrate continuously into the cortical layers. The three “nervous systems” Freud eventually distinguishes (the physical sensory-motor system, associated with the spinal cord; the memory system, associated with the brain; and the perceptual system, which brings these events into consciousness) differ principally in their distance in, though in is clearly a neurological image of direction, just as depth will be a psychological one.

  Readers of the “Project” can now begin to see how trains of thought and habits of association are established in the nerves. A cell which retains some of the initial excitement of its stimulus remembers; cells through which energy from some source is regularly distributed are associated and light up together; paths down which energy eventually travels without resistance are forgotten for good, as we cannot now recall how we learned to see, and few of us still have any memory of the anger and elation of our earliest toddles. It was Schopenhauer who claimed that to perceive was to experience an effect in the place of its cause, so from these cortical events we distantly infer and sense the nature of their origin in the same way that the feelings in a blind man’s palm are lent to what’s tapped by his cane.

  Energies which are successfully diverted through the system, or converted into action and thus lost, or thinned and un-noticeably spread out the way a large sum is concealed in many banks: such energies are said to be mastered, the system’s constancy is thus maintained, and the happy result is felt as pleasure. When the store of stimulation mounts, it is sensed in a particular locale as pain, and in the general tension of the system as unease or anxiety. It is not difficult to see why genital orgasm is such a dramatic and convenient image of the process in question, or why many might hope to reduce their anxieties by drawing and releasing themselves like bows as compulsive masturbators endeavor to; vainly, of course, since it is principally a magical act and thus as futile in direct effect as spilling out buckets of household water in order to lower the level in the reservoir and save the dam.

  But in a universe of quantity, why should quality appear? It does not wait on mankind like a maiden eager f
or her knight or shopper sullen for the bus. In a fundamental way we are one with our awareness, and a certain kind of consciousness, not featherless bipedity or cleverly opposed thumbs, is the most obvious mark of man.

  … whereas science has set itself the task of tracing back all the qualities of our sensations to external quantity, it is to be suspected from the structure of the neuronic system that that system consists in contrivances for changing external quantity into quality.15

  Plato imagined that the creator composed the material world as a qualitative expression of quantitative law, but brilliant as this suggestion proved to be, Plato granted sounds, scents, and colors, all the smooths and sours, an eternal home in an otherwise featureless space—out there—where the Demiurge, like a croupier at a crooked table, made Change from the relations these qualities entered and left. Instead we might follow Hobbes, who always took the square way round things, and regard consciousness as a kind of discharge of energy out of the system, a gratefully endured entropic loss, but Freud rejects such a solution, even though it has the nice result of making consciousness itself a pleasure.