Author: Kellerman, Henry
Date: 2020-02-01T08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Psychology; Clinical Psychology; personality; Philosophy; Mind & Body; Applied Psychology; Psychedelic Library; import_covers_marked
Description: This book enumerates the components of the unconscious domain (or realm), and attempts to uncover the proposed communicational network of its operation — a communicational network that is able to link inherent participating components of this realm. It is often the case that theoreticians and clinical practitioners refer to the unconscious or unconscious material in a way that implies the sense of it all rather than a specific definition, broadly describing it as “material which is out of one’s awareness.” This volume therefore examines the complex existence of the entire unconscious realm emb
Publisher: Springer

Henry Kellerman

The Unconscious Domain

Henry Kellerman

Private Practice, New York, NY, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-35008-6e-ISBN 978-3-030-35009-3
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35009-3

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To

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Dr. Inna Rozentsvit, M.D., Ph.D.Editor-in-Chief, ORI/Academic Press

Preface

The title of this book,The Unconscious Domain , refers to the unconscious mental system as a realm, that is, as a field of influence. The noun “domain” is derived from the Latin word “dominus” meaning “master.” And this is precisely what is meant here by separating the unconscious from all other metapsychological connections—including the Freudian preconscious and conscious realms. Yet, the connection between the unconscious field of influence to the formulation of preconscious and conscious realms will herein also be considered.

In addition, the title of this book is actually meant to focus on the unconscious realm as a complete and absolute system—meaning a system composed of several components as well as containing a communicational network. It is the intention here to enumerate the components of this unconscious realm (or “domain”) and to uncover the proposed communicational network in its operation—a communicational network that is able to link the inherent participating components of this realm. Therefore, this putative communicational network is also considered here as subject to an analysis of that which constitutes such a network—that is to say, to see how it all works within this domain, especially with respect to its components.

A domain also contains a function that provides an output or value for each constituent of the domain. This output value is referred to as a “range.” Therefore, the unconscious domain is also seen as a realm that has a range; that is, a beginning, all the way to an end point—an end point that may also be considered a trajectory toward an objective and not necessarily solely defined as an end point as in a solid end-barrier. Further, the function of such a domain also contains input values upon which the entire domain can be defined. In other words, the aggregate of components of a domain defines the domain—along with the idea that as such an aggregate of components combine, the result can be different than solely the simple additional value or simple sum of such an aggregate.

In this sense and in this volume, the unfolding of analyses and discussion of the unconscious domain is seen as containingprimary constituents orissues regarding such variables. These top-tier constituents or variables are identified as the core variables that can be considered as involved in the genesis of it all—that is, in the gradual evolutionary formation of an unconscious arena.

The following four points are here considered to be essential in such a gradual structural unconscious formation; that is, that these four basic theoretical issues of this entire unconscious realm—this unconscious domain—are theoretical benchmarks in the structural development of the unconscious—as such unconscious structurebegan to crystallize throughout its evolutionary development. These theoretical benchmarks are comprised of:

1. 1.

The emotion/evolutionary consideration of survival is a Darwinian focus on survival, and the emotion system in evolution is ultimately designed to protect organisms from a given predator/prey existence. This predator/prey existence is finely characterized in the world as a true characteristic of the world—and by definition as dangerous to one’s survival;

2. 2.

Understanding of the ubiquitous pleasure principle relevant to all organisms—as even applied to the gratification need of simple single-celled organisms;

3. 3.

The critical issue of the inimitablebasic-wish in a person’s overall mentation—as a function of the operation of the psyche; and

4. 4.

The organization of the psyche itself—considered here as the engineering room of the unconscious.

Also included herein are considerations regardingstructure andfunction of such an unconscious domain including the process of uncovering the nature of the unconscious as it is related to a variety of factors of the unconscious realm proper (along with its derivatives), as well as to more complex features of personality. These more complex features of personality are:

1. 1.

The overdetermined phenomenon of acting-out which can touch virtually all concepts in the unconscious dynamic involving the organization of personality—thereby also revealing a psychological understanding of personality;

2. 2.

The formation of emotional/psychological symptoms;

3. 3.

The issue ofinstinct ;

4. 4.

The communicational sequence within the unconscious with a focus on its basic definitional algorithm (the message of the person’s basic-wish); and

5. 5.

Thespandrelian effect of all such interactions (and phenomena) within this unconscious realm—also with the spandrelian effect along with the entire range of the unconscious. Thespandrel operates in a profound logical and simple manner insofar as it is an unintended consequence of other primary conditions. This means that the basic mechanism enabling the unconscious to communicate with consciousness needs to be identified.

Assuming that such a reciprocal communicational language exists between the unconscious and consciousness, then the questions become: What precisely is this language between the unconscious and consciousness, and, exactly how is such language communicated?

Further, the consideration of newly formulated twenty-first century neuroscience generally, and neuropsychoanalysis specifically (Solms, 2003), organized as a body of work, the objective of which is to understand the mind/brain phenomenon as an undertaking in progress, for the most part regarding how emotion and cognition are conflated as a function of the “connectome” and solely as a brain phenomenon is also considered.

This so-called “connectome” is defined as the amalgam of close to 100 billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synapses—not to mention astronomical number of spandrels [1] that naturally exist as a result of the permutations of this neuroscientific syntactical extravaganza. It is in this sense that the connection of the unconscious and brain will, it seems not easily lend itself to painstaking enumerations. (Kellerman 2020b, p. x)

However, the reference to this early twenty-first century theory, and experimental neuroscientific research will be referred to throughout this volume as it relates to the alleged phenomena of the unconscious domain (Damasio, 2000; Solms, 2003; Semenza, 2018).

It is often the case that theoreticians and clinical practitioners refer to the unconscious or unconscious material in a way that implies the sense of it all—meaning an understanding of the unconscious defined as “material which is out of one’s awareness.” This sort of understanding is considered, of course, as common knowledge. Yet, if asked to specifically enumerate the structure and function of the unconscious, one may be met with hesitation, along with much thinking in an attempt to develop a more specific definition of the unconscious—more than one solely related to the “absence of awareness.” This then implies the need leading to an actual attempt to parse that which comprises this unconscious realm, or domain. In other words, it seems that perhaps only in a general sense—but perhaps not specifically—is the unconscious systematically and in detail not really understood.

In this sense, it might be interesting to consider a number of questions regarding how it all started; that is, what is the genesis of this unconscious? Or, considering questions such as

1. 1.

Do animals have an unconscious?

2. 2.

Why do humans ostensibly have an unconscious but perhaps animals might not?

3. 3.

Who or what is at the master control of the unconscious?

4. 4.

Does there actually exist a master of the unconscious?

5. 5.

Thus, is the unconscious operating randomly and therefore is this unconscious “thing” something that cannot be known? Or—

6. 6.

Is the unconscious a cohered system, and if so, can it be described?

It is possible that questions such as these are actually innumerable. However, in the exposition of this volume is an attempt to address these as well as other issues relevant to the entire domain of the unconscious as a construct.

Several issues discussed here and material throughout this volume have been considered in several other of my published works including in the volumes:

Personality: How it Forms (2012);

The Anatomy of Delusion (2015);

Psychotherapeutic Traction: Uncovering the Patient’s

Power-theme andBasic-wish (2018);

The Origin of Language (2020b).

Additional material utilized here has also been cited within the five volume co-edited series by Robert Plutchik and Henry Kellerman (the author of this present volume:The Unconscious Domain ) and includes the volumes co-edited by Plutchik and Kellerman:

Emotion: Theory, Research, and Experience

- Vol. 1.Theories of Emotion (1980);

- Vol. 2.Emotions in Early Development (1983);

- Vol. 3.Biological Foundations of Emotion (1986);

- Vol. 4.The Measurement of Emotion (1989);

- Vol. 5.Emotion, Psychopathology and Psychotherapy (1990).

The analysis and discussion in this present volume,The Unconscious Domain , contain a compilation and integration of concepts in these above-cited volumes (the volumes by Kellerman and the co-edited volumes by Plutchik and Kellerman) along with a new synthesis of this present volume provided by this author (Kellerman, 2020), regarding the unconscious domain with reference also to early twenty-first century neuroscientific findings of brain/mind research.

In the following, Chap. 1 shall begin with a necessary introductory concept designed to lead into and to begin to unfold the body of the unconscious domain. In this sense, Chap. 1 is entitled:Precursors to the Development of the Unconscious .

References

- Damasio, A. (2000).The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness . New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.

- Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. (1979).The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm . New York: Routledge.

- Kellerman, H. (1979).Group psychotherapy and personality: Intersecting structures . New York: Grune & Stratton.

- Kellerman, H. (1980). A structural model of emotion and personality: Psychoanalytic and sociobiological implications. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.),Emotion: Theory, research, and experience. Vol. 1, Theories of emotion . New York: Academic Press.

- Kellerman, H. (1983). An epigenetic theory of emotions in early development. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.),Emotion: Theory, research, and experience. Vol. 2, Emotions in early development . New York: Academic Press.

- Kellerman, H. (1989). Projective measures of emotion. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.),Vol. 4, Emotion: Theory, research, and experience. The measurement of emotion . New York: Academic Press.

- Kellerman, H. (1990). Emotion and the organization of primary process. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.),Vol. 5, Emotion, psychopathology, and psychotherapy . New York: Academic Press.

- Kellerman, H. (2008).The psychoanalysis of symptoms . New York: Springer Science.

- Kellerman, H. (2012).Personality: How it forms . New York: American Mental Health Foundation Books.

- Kellerman, H. (2015).The anatomy of delusion . New York: American Mental Health Foundation Books.

- Kellerman, H. (2018).Psychotherapeutic traction: Uncovering the patient’s power-theme and basic-wish . New York: American Mental Health Foundation Books.

- Kellerman, H. (2020a).On the nature of nature . New York: ORI/Academic Press.

- Kellerman, H. (2020b).The origin of language . New York: American Mental Health Foundation Books.

- Plutchick, R., & Kellerman, H. (1986). Introduction. In R. Plutchik & H. Kellerman (Eds.),Emotion: Theory, research, and experience. Vol. 3, Biological foundations of emotion . New York: Academic Press.

- Semenza, C. (2018). The unconscious in cognitive science: A few suggestions for psychoanalysis. In M. Leuzinger, S. Arnold, & M. Solms (Eds.),The unconscious: A bridge between psychoanalysis and cognitive neuroscience . London: Routledge.

- Solms, M. (2003). Do unconscious phantasies really exist? In R. Steiner (Ed.),Unconscious phantasy . London: Karnac Books.

Henry Kellerman

New York, USA

About the Author

Spanning a 60 year career in the field of mental health, Dr. Henry Kellerman has held professional academic appointments in the psychology doctoral programs at several universities and clinical appointments at several mental hospitals. In addition, Dr. Kellerman was a Training Analyst and Senior Supervisor at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health—Psychoanalytic Institute.

Dr. Kellerman has published scores of papers in professional clinical and scientific journals, published 35 authored and edited books, and presented papers at local, regional, and national conferences. He has been in the private practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis since 1965. He holds Fellow status in the American Psychological Association, the American Group Psychotherapy Association, and the Academy of Psychoanalysis, and is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology and Psychoanalysis of the American Board of Professional Psychology.

Books by the Author

Authored Books

The Psychoanalysis of Symptoms

Dictionary of Psychopathology

Group Psychotherapy and Personality: Intersecting Structures, 1979 (Reissued with the subtitle: A Theoretical Model, 2015) Sleep Disorders: Insomnia and Narcolepsy

Curing Psychological Symptoms, (Reissued edition. 2020.) Originally published 2007, as—The 4 Steps to Peace of Mind: The Simple Effective Way to Cure Our Emotional Symptoms (Romanian edition, 2008; Japanese edition, 2011) Love Is Not Enough: What It Takes to Make It Work

Greedy, Cowardly, and Weak: Hollywood's Jewish Stereotypes

Hollywood Movies on the Couch: A Psychoanalyst Examines 15 Famous Films

Haggadah: A Passover Seder for the Rest of Us

Personality: How it Forms (Korean edition, 2017)

The Discovery of God: A Psycho/Evolutionary Perspective

A Consilience of Natural and Social Sciences: A Memoir of Original Contributions

Anatomy of Delusion

Psychoanalysis of Evil: Perspectives on Destructive Behavior

There’s No Handle on My Door: Stories of Patients in Mental Hospitals

Psychotherapeutic Traction: Uncovering the Patient’s Power-Theme and Basic Wish

On the Nature of Nature

The Origin of Language

The Unconscious Domain

The Ghost Trilogy

The Making of Ghosts: A Novel

Ghosts of Dreams: A Novel

The Ghost: A Novel

Coauthored Books (with Anthony Burry, Ph.D.)

Psychopathology and Differential Diagnosis: A Primer

- Volume 1. History of Psychopathology

- Volume 2. Diagnostic Primer

Handbook of Psychodiagnostic Testing: Analysis of Personality in the

Psychological Report. 1st edition, 1981; 2nd edition, 1991;

3rd edition, 1997; 4th edition, 2007 (Japanese edition, 2011).

Edited Books

Group Cohesion: Theoretical and Clinical Perspectives

The Nightmare: Psychological and Biological Foundations

Coedited Books (with Robert Plutchik, Ph.D.)

Emotion: Theory, Research, and Experience

- Volume 1. Theories of Emotion

- Volume 2. Emotions in Early Development

- Volume 3. Biological Foundations of Emotion

- Volume 4. The Measurement of Emotion

- Volume 5. Emotion, Psychopathology, and Psychotherapy

The Emotions Profile Index: Test and Manual 1974.

Contents

Prefacexvii

1 Precursors to the Development of the Unconscious
1

Survival
1

Adaptational Processes
6

Tension-Reducing Cognitive Tools
8

Survival, the Psyche, and the Unconscious
13

References
16

2 The Unconscious Realm
19

A Brief History of the Unconscious
19

The Wish System
23

A Clinical Examination of Marital Discord with Respect to Wishes
23

The Husband
24

The Wife
24

The Husband
24

The Wife
25

Both of Them
25

Schemas of the Psyche Within the Unconscious Domain
27

Acceptance/Rejection Schemas
27

Joy/Sorrow Schemas
28

Fear/Anger Schemas
29

Expectation/Surprise Schemas
30

The Contribution of Schemas to the Unconscious
30

The Pleasure-Principle and Tension-Reduction
31

References
33

3 The Psyche
37

Tension-Reduction, and Survival
37

The Amorphous Bombardment of Chaotic Stimuli in the Unconscious Domain
38

Instrumentalities of the Psyche
39

The Dream and the Psyche
46

The Psyche and the Mind
48

The Repetition-Compulsion
52

Conclusion
54

References
55

4 Primary Emotions and the Unconscious
57

Language-Meaning and Emotion
57

The Language of Primary Emotions
61

Primacy of the Emotions
64

The Emotion of Anger, and the Defense of Repression: A Reference to the Architecture of Symptom-Formation in the Unconscious
66

The Narrative of Primary Emotions
67

Language Meaning and Personality Characteristics of Anger
70

References
72

5 Basic Behavioral Prototype Categories and Their Emotion/Personality Correlates
75

Organization of Polarities of the Behavioral and Emotion Categories
75

Incorporation-(Acceptance) and Rejection-(Disgust)
76

Acceptance
76

Disgust
77

The Polarity Between Incorporation-(Acceptance) and Rejection-(Disgust)
78

Reproduction-(Joy) and Deprivation-(Sorrow)
78

Joy
78

Sorrow
79

The Polarity of Reproduction-(Joy) and Deprivation-(Sorrow)
80

Exploration-(Expectancy) and Orientation-(Surprise)
81

Expectation
81

Surprise
81

The Polarity of Exploration-(Expectancy) and Orientation-(Surprise)
83

Protection-(Fear) and Destruction-(Anger)
83

Fear
83

Anger
84

The Polarity of Protection-(Fear) and Destruction-(Anger)
85

The Passive-Aggressive Personality Structure
86

Conclusion
86

Reference
87

6 Instinct
89

Instinct as an Instrument of the Psyche
89

Primacy of Emotion or Instinct in the Evolution of the Unconscious Doman
91

Primary Emotions and Their Implementing-Instincts
93

Examination of the Unconscious Communicational Structure as Abstracted in Table 6.1
96

Incorporation
96

Rejection
97

The Polarity of the Incorporation-(Acceptance) and Rejection-(Disgust) Categories
99

Reproduction
99

Deprivation
100

The Polarity of Reproduction-(Joy) and Deprivation-(Sorrow) Categories
101

Exploration
102

Orientation
102

The Polarity of Exploration-(Expectation) and Orientation-(Surprise) Categories
103

Protection
104

Destruction
105

The Polarity of Protection-(Fear) and Destruction-(Anger) Categories
105

Synopsis
106

Conclusion
106

References
108

Bibliography
109

Glossary
111

References
117

Author Index
119

Subject Index
123

List of Tables

Table 5.1 Correlates of the personality structure Incorporation Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, diagnosis, and basic-wish76

Table 5.2 Correlates of the personality structure Rejection Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, diagnosis, and basic-wish77

Table 5.3 Correlates of the personality structure Reproduction Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis78

Table 5.4 Correlates of the personality structure Reintegration Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis80

Table 5.5 Correlates of the personality structure Exploration Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis81

Table 5.6 Correlates of the personality structure Orientation Dimension: emotions, cognitive-correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis82

Table 5.7 Correlates of the personality structure Protection Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis83

Table 5.8 Basic behavioral prototype categories Destruction Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, diagnosis, and basic-wish84

Table 6.1 Communicational structure of the unconscious domain94

Footnotes

1

The spandrel is a space created by a structure that is actually a side-effect of the structure. It may also be embedded in the structure. See: Gould & Lewontin (1979) and discussion of the spandrel in Kellerman (2020b).

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

H. KellermanThe Unconscious Domainhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35009-3_1

1. Precursors to the Development of the Unconscious

Henry Kellerman[1]

(1) Private Practice, New York, NY, USA

Survival

This initial subtitle of Survival is the first in a sequence of facets and necessary underpinnings of the unconscious; that is, the issue of survival leads to the appearance and even the need for an unconscious domain. In this sense, the unfolding of an unconscious domain is essentially understood as an evolutionary adaptation .

Along with “survival” as an example of such a facet in the genesis of an unconscious domain, other aspects comprising such a domain include characterizations that seek to imagine its configuration (the configuration of the unconscious) as well as seeing the development of instrumentalities enabling an understanding of the governance of this domain.

It is proposed that the primary function of such an unconscious domain is to manage the person’s fear and anger (as well as the operation of all the primary emotions)

—all in the service of attenuating the person’s impact of the emotions—primarily regarding the person’s apprehension of the external predatory world.

Essentially, this concern with survival implies that an invariant structure may exist as a given in the very formation at the most primitive birth (the most primitive phase) of the origin of the unconscious domain. This means that the structural essence and intrinsic composition of the primary emotions exists in an invariant formation with respect to the adaptational nature of this structure; that is, that the emotion system is a standard structure within the entire phylogenetic scale disregarding whatever changes may occur in the external world.

Secondarily, the inevitable evolutionary development of an unconscious domain would serve the purpose of organizing the internal amorphous bombardment of possible chaotic stimuli that impinge on the personality. The result of such organization in the unconscious assumes that equilibrium is sought (in the sense of seeking peace of mind by way of tension-reduction)

. Therefore, the road to peace of mind would need to be, perhaps as an adaptational force of evolution, strong enough to defeat any even random attempt by the negative and even nasty vicissitudes of life that do, in fact, often undermine the attainment of such equilibrium.

In this sense, the construction of the unconscious would be in the adaptational sense, strong enough to protect and reassure the need for reasonable peace of mind—the mechanics of such peace of mind thus considered as a predominant variable in the struggle of survival. This invariant presence of the awareness of survival and of the attendant presence of predation in the world at large—and actually at all phylogenetic levels—further implies that some sort of primary emotional function (an emotional meaning) exists at the very beginning appearance of an unconscious domain—again, determined by the affect of the need for survival.

In a concise formulation of this idea regarding the presence of some sort of emotional function with respect to survival (within the context of such a predatory external environment) it can be conceived that there are correspondences between that which exists in the unconscious domain—on one hand between some muscular and profound indication of emotion as a protective device regarding survival, and on the other hand as an amalgam of instrumentalities of the unconscious domain that develop as the definitive infrastructural architecture of this entire unconscious arena. This idea of the architecture of the mind is also considered by Donald (1991) with respect to structural considerations.

Essentially, this means that in the unconscious domain exist parts that are structural and parts that are functional. The structural parts can be represented by the psyche—that they intersect with other structural parts of the unconscious domain—and secondarily, that other parts of the unconscious domain also functionally interact with all other parts of this domain. It is in this sense of the rather complex nature of the unconscious that sheds the notion of the unconscious as a simple definition of generally something that is solely “out one’s awareness.”[1]

Characterizations of the unconscious domain that must be included in any analysis of its development include:

1. 1.

An implicit evolutionary history of issues such as the calibrated tension level of any organism along with its tension-regulation

—that is, that the unconscious is involved as an instrumentality in the regulation of tension;

2. 2.

The Freudian pleasure-principle that asserts its primary need above all other needs; that is, the satisfaction of the pleasure-principle is essentially based upon vicissitudes of tension-regulation

;

3. 3.

One’s basic-wish acting as the chief derivative in the personality of the ubiquitous pleasure-principle. It is the person’s basic-wish that will dominate the personality;

4. 4.

The development of the psyche identified herein as that part of the unconscious domain where needs of the organism are engineered for gratification even if such needs were denied in the real world. Thus the psyche becomes the engineering room of the unconscious domain;

5. 5.

An algorithm that unites all elements of the unconscious in a communicational sequence designed always to gratify the basic-wish
—notwithstanding whether such gratification was gained in reality or translated into a psychological symptom that equally gratified the wish—though only in fantasy;

6. 6.

The results regarding unconscious phenomena as a function of 21st century focus on neuroscientific and neuropsychoanalytic brain research.

The implication of such presence of these factors (or characterizations) as well as a consideration of a communicational sequence of such variables of an unconscious domain, focuses on the ignition or operational necessity, even ability within this unconscious domain to fashion continual gratification of a person’s needs.

The question becomes: How does the organism’s basic need crystallize; that is, on what need or even on what command does the organism’s basic need crystallize as a being-thing, a real thing? The possible answer considered here in this disquisition regarding the unconscious domain is simply that such a need relates universally to the issue of the organism’s basic-wish
. With respect to such gratification, the need to regulate tension carries with it the ultimate aim of eliminating tension entirely or of at least, in the sense of possibility, calibrating this tension to a better level.

Thus, it is proposed that the person’s basic-wish is the salient issue of unconscious functioning.

This salient issue of the unconscious defined as a basic-wish will in this theoretical expositorial proposal appear as the foremost factor determining how the hypothetical construct of psyche (within the unconscious domain) functions as the engineering facet of this domain. This function of the psyche also enables one to see that the unconscious is not in itself solely a domain in which there exists a confusing amalgam of impulses noted as overall psychological material arranged in a disorganized and chaotic array.

In consideration of the function of the psyche and in approaching an analysis of the unconscious domain, the interaction of variables such as the ubiquitous survival-concern, the regulation of tension level

, the primacy of the pleasure-principle, the internal operation of the psyche itself, and the analysis of the basic-wish
, (along with sub-variables within each of these benchmarks of the unconscious domain) comprise an aggregate of variables joined by a communicational sequential network. In total, it is proposed that this amalgam of variables with its communicational organization suggests nothing less than the actual architecture of the unconscious not withstanding early 21st century focus on the unconscious and the neuroscience of the brain.

Yet, there are authors who “get down to brass tacks” and proclaim that “cross fertilization between psychoanalysis and neuroscience has been so far extremely limited (Semenza, 2018, p. 93). This opinion essentially just about rejects the absolute isomorphism of the correlation between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. In fact, this issue becomes a controversy between those who support and value the work of neuroscience and its relation to psychoanalysis (Panksepp, 1998; Panksepp & Solms, 2012; Solms & Turnbull, 2002; Yovell, Solms, & Fotopoulou, 2015), in contrast to those who feel the connection is limited as reported by Boag (2017, p. 2). Boag lists those who feel that neuroscience tends to “rob psychoanalysis of subjectivity and meaning” and cites Barrett (2017), Blass and Carmeli (2007) who emphasize this point.

Nevertheless, in this volume will be considered various results emanating as well as implied from such mind/brain studies

. Thus, the following discussion is a precursor to development of the unconscious. It will be also proposed that such a basic-wish is what gives shape and meaning to the person’s personality—a personality presumably governed by the algorithm of the basic-wish . This algorithm becomes, in a decrypted clinical sense, translated into the communicational circuitry of the entire unconscious domain. It is proposed further that infused in the algorithmic message of the basic-wish is the person’s drive to empower this wish.

If traced at the dawning of the first globule, the first single cell of the evolutionary process (and even perhaps actually by definition), it is again further proposed that an implicit calculus originally existed within such a cell. This presumed calculus, more than perhaps, and arguably, concerned the essential issue of survival. In the Darwinian sense, the fundamental meaning of this calculus of survival implicates the need for this first single cell to have its actual survival validated by its becoming vitalized and thereby potentially sustained, and, of course, then necessarily assured of its continuing existence. It is a prototypic example of the ubiquitous struggle to sustain life.

Therefore, again, by implication, the possible extinction of this globule with respect to the cell’s primitive DNA , was destined to be, at any cost, forestalled; or, with respect to any more persuasive or tropistic implicit instruction within this cell (its tropistic reflex to do this or that), such an issue of implied extinction was to be completely partitioned and therefore avoided with any and all possibility.

It would seem that without any doubt this single cell was arguably an example of the embodiment of a conflation of theory and empiricism regarding the force of a sudden animated existence of life. This means that the astounding phenomenon of the life-force of a brainless organism (brainless, in the non-pejorative sense)—would in some way seek some sort of sustenance, is in itself phenomenal. It even may be more accurate to imagine that this seeking to avoid extinction (even in the case of a single celled organism) is alternatively rather to be seen as this cell’s ability or need (perhaps even in its so-called helpless state), to still be able to attract nourishment. This assumption or claim that such a primitive cell may have had an ability to attract nourishment is again in itself an astonishing assumption because this eukaryotic cell is thought to have appeared during the Precambrian period—two billion years ago (Gould, 1977, p. 130).

It is agreed herein that even if hyperbolic to suggest (or hypothesize) that for this globule, this single eukaryotic cell to contain an inherent ability to attract sustenance, may be alternatively (and perhaps anthropomorphically) considered as this single cell’s ‘hope’ of, or even ‘wish’ of attracting nourishment—and/or for actually seeking and attaining it. The main point is that even a single-celled organism is introduced into this world inherently sensing (or even understanding) the world as an existing predatory surround—thereby surely implicating universal survival concerns.

Therefore, as Lampton (1983, p. 1) references, a “….fragile glob of protoplasmic jelly….representing the first unit of life….” points out that that this first unit of life is fragile implying at least minimally, that life can be threatened. Further, a Darwinian evolutionary process permits the proposal and theory that eventually, eons later, this little cell will ultimately lead to the development and functioning of a brain containing a mind and consciousness, along with an underlying unconscious sphere (including the entire interfacing of properties within this dynamic unconscious sphere), and is identified in this volume again, as a “domain”—as an unconscious domain.

The psychologist/scientist, Plutchik (1980a, 1980b, pp. 7–8) refers to Darwin’s view of natural selection in which Darwin considers almost all characteristics of species as having a survival impulse. Plutchik adds to this Darwinian position by declaring that emotions also function adaptively in all organisms. In addition, Plutchik (1980a), proclaims that with respect to the issue of basic emotions, these emotions contain general functions that are the same for all emotions across species, as well as existing over the life-cycle.

In addition, for the purpose of survival, all organisms must necessarily consider a number of variables including: seeking nourishment, finding ways to eliminate waste, engage in protective behavior (including trying to avoid injury), and becoming familiar with the immediate environment (as in the process of exploring of the environment). Further, Plutchik points out that for all organisms to survive in any environment in which life is engaged, certain functional requirements are necessary: e. g., a distinction must be made between predator and prey, and between a potential mate versus a potential enemy. Plutchik further states (p. 8):

The specific behaviors by which these functions are carried out will vary widely throughout the animal kingdom, but the basic prototype functions [of behavior] will remain invariant.

By prototype functions, Plutchik refers to various basic prototype behaviors including:

Protection behavior as in fleeing whenever necessary;

Destructive behavior that ensures protection by the sheer ability to express aggression in the pursuit of defeating an enemy, especially with respect to the overcoming of an obstacle in pursuit of a goal, or for the simple general end of ensuring survival;

Incorporation behavior that enables the organism to take in whatever seems palatable;

Rejection behavior when necessary in order to eject a noxious or potentially harmful even morsel of presumed nourishment;

Exploration behavior enabling a mapping of the environment;

Orientation behavior insofar as it becomes important not to be disoriented;

Reproduction

(pulsation) behavior or the impulse to procreate; and,

Deprivation behavior which is generally seen as the ability to mourn (as well as containing the attempt to retrieve the lost object).

The connection between primary emotions and issues of survival therefore, becomes invariant with respect to phylogenetic considerations—especially at the developmentally lower end of the scale. In this sense, it is Plutchik’s discovery that demonstrates basic behavioral prototypes and their emotion representatives that become more visible with developmentally more advanced species.

In terms of such categorical conceptions in the service of understanding how survival operations are sustained, Scott (1980, p. 35) also derives a similar set of behavioral categories similarly based upon instrumentalities of survival.

An analysis of survival issues in evolution has also been presented by this author (Kellerman, 2013, p. 14–15) in which survival is seen as the salient variable from the dawn of hominid evolution and human culture to the era of Homo sapiens development; that is to say that the need for protection is seen as being highly selected in evolution and then ultimately wired into one’s DNA . In this sense, Plutchikian behavioral prototype tropistic categories, in addition to the protection category, are also included in this wiring of our DNA , and further include the above identified categories of destruction, reproduction

, deprivation
, incorporation, rejection, exploration, and orientation—each of which has its corresponding emotion representative at higher levels of evolutionary development and which can be seen in the following listing.

Protection = fear Destruction = anger Reproduction = joy Deprivation = sorrow Incorporation = acceptance Rejection

= disgust Exploration = expectation Orientation = surprise

These are the behavioral categories that remain invariant in evolutionary development and that at the higher order of such evolutionary development the primary behavioral categories express their meaning and function through these primary emotions

.

Adaptational Processes

In the sense of a psychoevolutionary process, a journey can be traced with respect to adaptational functioning of organisms aiding essentially in the quest for survival. Alcock (2005), and Buss (2008), suggest that such adaptational processes are consistently seen in nonhuman animals as well as in humans and that they have direct survival implications. With respect to such adaptations , an example is provided by Bracha (2004), who describes fear adaptation of freezing, fighting, and fleeing, as designed during evolutionary development, again, to specifically address threats to survival.

Such adaptive universal categories of behavioral response (as addressed for example by Plutchik, Scott, and others), can be identified at all phylogenetic levels from amoeba to man. What this means is that an organism seeking survival gains increased survival probability through an adaptive quest to exist in a safe environment. Such an adaptive quest for survival is therefore inherent in the organism itself—but only in essence through these basic categories of behavior concerning adaptational categorical impulses or imperatives.[2]

With respect to biological and evolutionary foundations in the study of instinct and emotion, this author (Kellerman, 1983, p, 317) cites McDougall (1921) as among early pioneers that theoretically considered the formulation of biologically determined instincts to be fundamentally related to emotions. According to McDougall, emotion refers to dispositions that are etched in the substrate of instinctive behavior. Such conceptions regarding emotion and behavioral basic categories (of instinct) is also seen in the work of Scott (1958). In addition, Nesse (1990) also sees the entire formulation of emotions, instinct , and behavior in an evolutionary framework mainly in the tradition of Plutchikian evolutionary emotion theory (Plutchik, 1980a, 1980b).

All of it (the pursuit of a safe environment) is according to Wyers et al. (1980), the need that all organisms have to maintain equilibrium. Since the biological process in evolution relates to development governed by survival pressures, then even in the struggle to maintain equilibrium, evolution manages to progress despite continuous intervening stages of evolutionary disequilibrium—perhaps an oblique reference to Gould’s evolutionary “punctuated equilibrium”—progress that is uneven (Gould, 2002).

With respect to the issue of survival, and in an overall view of the vicissitudes of survival, it seems evident that the Freudian pleasure-principle becomes immediately apparent as a salient factor (along with how the concept of tension and tension-regulation becomes the calibrational mechanism) with respect to relative success or failure in achieving the essential aim of such a pleasure-principle.

What this means is that each of the behavioral core categories (as for example those postulated by Plutchik) are essential mechanisms by which tension becomes regulated; that is, these are categorical mechanisms inherent in all organisms and ideally aimed at bringing tension level to zero—or at least in a relative sense, to bringing such tension to some benchmark level whereby the organism can feel, at least, reasonably safe. This quest for safety also necessarily means that the organism is in a steady-state of an uninterrupted and underlying vigilance or alertness or heedfulness. And this consideration of “safety” is the actual end point in any organism’s quest for survival-assurance.

To this point of survival-assurance, and to jump to the developing Homo sapiens brain (with respect to the issue of the evolution of cognition), a sustained progression of survival-needs was developing during evolution in terms of evolving cognitive sophistication exemplified as a shift of correlational thinking to that of a cause-and-effect thinking; that is, that correlation was beginning to be seen as not necessarily congruent with causative thinking—especially to the compelling rational causative thinking of modernity (Kellerman, 2013, p. 32). In a treatise on the history of cognitive and logical development of earliest hominins, this author (Kellerman, 2013, p. 21) discusses the issue of correlational thinking and causative thinking. As stated:

Tracing it to hunter/gatherer societies and even further back in time, we know that the thinking brain developed gradually and that at its dawning, it was in high probability a syncretistic thinking brain — that is, the kind of thinking that conflates correlation with causation and in fact considers correlation and causation convenient to believe as synonyms, even for all intents and purposes to be identical. This sort of primitive thinking is characteristic of a search for meaning as a way to feel better organized, and less fearful. Most of all, such primitive thinking represents the kind of thinking that always generates the wish for empowerment.

With respect to theory of mind

, it was apparently advantageous for individuals to consider correlation as equivalent to causation meaning that whatever the mind could grasp in order to increase the sense of safety/survival was good and advantageous—meaning a way to reduce tension. Again, this discussion and what follows is relevant to precursors of the unconscious.

Tension-Reducing Cognitive Tools

In a sense, tension-reducing cognitive tools are aspects of two theoretical assumptions. First is called the byproduct theory and the second is referred to as the adaptational theory. In byproduct theory belief is based upon what Gould and Lewontin (1979) call a spandrel
. The spandrel is something created either externally in the world as a side-effect of one thing or another, or in the mind or brain, and for which this ‘one thing or another’ was not originally intended. An example of such a spandrel is the building of a staircase and then utilizing the empty space under the staircase as a closet for which it was not originally intended. This same kind of spandrelian phenomenon is essentially a typical formation of endless brain-spandrelian side-effects.

In the adaptational theory, belief is based upon primary benefits to the individual because of possible survival advantages as for example in the case of religious beliefs—whether true or not—that can assuage terrible life-threatening panics.

With these kinds of cognitive tools and spandrels , early hominins as well as early Homo sapiens , increased a sense of safety and actually implemented overarching though not inappropriate measures of validating the world around them: To wit, was there a predator in the distance, or not, causing those leaves to rustle?

Apparently, what eventually surfaced in this irrepressible evolutionary advance was an assortment of cognitive tools (thinking tools). Of these cognitive thinking tools, two major practical thinking options and one metapsychological one became prominent.

The first of these thinking or practical options can be identified as agent-detection. The second is identified as causal reasoning

, and the metapsychological cognitive tool is identified as the overall theory of mind

. These particular cognitive tools enabled the individual to gain greater ascendancy with respect to survival.

In agent-detection, the individual assumes a dangerous presence rather than denying or simply avoiding this possible dangerous presence. Henig’s example (2007) is of the caveman cited above who sees something move. The caveman, because of survival concerns, instinctively and reflexively knows that it is better to assume danger even if in the end it was just a leaf rustling in the wind. This point is also referred to by Hazelton and Nettle (2006) as “error management theory.”

In causal reasoning it is normal and natural for the human brain to be entirely reflexive and even helpless to a compelling cause-and-effect logic. Even in ancient times, effect was always searching for the cause and so as Henig (2007), says: “The ancient Greeks believed thunder was the sound of Zeus’s thunderbolt.”

With respect to a the theory of mind as a metapsychological point within byproduct theory

(Gould, 1991), belief was born out of a spandrel ; that is, that there are accoutrements that naturally occur as a result of some primary objective. These, as defined above, are unintended consequences of some primary motive. The usual example cited with respect to the definition of a spandrel is a reference to a primary consideration or goal in, for example, that of building a staircase whereby the empty space under the staircase is then utilized by transforming this empty space into a closet. Thus, again, as defined above, the spandrel is an unintended consequence of some primary motive. Henig (2007), offers the standard example of byproduct theorists—to wit: blood cells transport oxygen throughout the body but there is no advantage in the blood’s red color. Redness becomes a byproduct of blood containing hemoglobin.

Kellerman (2019, p. 40) also refers to the spandrelian phenomenon and states:

…a distinction may be drawn between Nature on the one hand as a physical phenomenon, and evolution on the other, as a function of Nature’s spandrelian offshoot…this spandrel of Nature begins as a side-effect of Nature’s nature—to actually create life—ultimately emerging as a thinking organism.

This is the spandrel —an unintended consequence of Nature’s physical/chemical origins on the one hand and the process of evolution on the other—leading to the present, to the presence of Homo sapiens ; in this case even to the presence of language suffused innately in the substrate of emotion

—serving one’s consequential and primary survival need.

This idea of “language suffused in the substrate of emotion

” refers to the code of what the emotion actually says (or means): e.g. fear says (or means) “I must flee.” Further, since all organisms must act to increase the chance of survival then it becomes an imperative for the organism to implicitly apprehend something interpersonal. This ‘something interpersonal’ is what has become through the same survival gauntlet regarding innate attributes and needs (including innate virtual language) an interpersonal product. Such an interpersonal product is elaborated with epigenetic developmental phenomena—that is, perhaps as an example, a potential interpersonal response will await its environmental stimulus in order to develop or to be expressed.

Thus, this interpersonal product in the context of an epigenetic phenomenal moment also implies that in the primary emotions exists, as noted, the meaning of what is contained within the emotion—to wit: Fear says: “In the rustling of those leaves in that tree might be a lurking danger, so in that case I’d better get out of here!” It is in this sense that emotion, so-to-speak, ‘talks.’

Evolution, therefore, as dictated by the issue of survival-need, generated adaptations . Such an adaptation is a system of behavior that is universal and ubiquitous to all organisms on the phylogenetic scale . Those organisms that are more neurophysiologically advanced display the appearance of primary emotions along with what these emotions contain (cognition in terms of language-meaning), representing their corresponding basic behavioral patterns. It is hypothesized that such a development in evolution thereby ultimately increased survival probability.

In adaptational theory, belief is also based upon primary benefits to the individual of course because of possible survival advantages as for example in the case of religious beliefs—again, whether true of not—that can assuage life-threatening panics. Plutchik (1980a, p.7) points out that with respect to the issues of adaptation and survival, Darwin’s concept of natural selection implies that:

…almost every feature of each existing species has survival value, and this is as true of an animal’s behavior, including its emotional behavior, as it is of its morphology. From an evolutionary point of view, we should therefore try to identify the ways in which emotions function adaptively in the lives of each organism.

Considering factors of the function of adaptation , the issue of survival, byproduct (appearance of spandrels) and adaptational theory generally, the evolutionary genesis of the use of cognitive tools such as agent-detection (error management theory), causal reasoning

(the irresistibility of cause and effect logic), and theory of mind

—in the evolving understanding of the difference between correlational and causative thinking—are all important factors in the overall adaptive and survival-need.

Plutchik (1980a, p. 7–8) states that along with the obvious necessity of appreciating the survival need of all organisms, that they again, and as noted must be nourished, be able to eliminate waste, be able to distinguish prey from predator, and reproduce its kind. This is germane to all organisms who in order to survive and maintain their populations must, in addition, explore its environment and continue to orient itself to the world in which it finds itself.

Further, Plutchik (1980a, p. 124) states:

The specific behaviors by which these emotion-functions are carried out will vary widely throughout the animal kingdom, but the basic prototype functions will remain invariant.

In this respect, Plutchik’s basic behavioral-categories applicable to all organisms throughout the phylogenetic scale (and displaying emotion derivatives at higher levels), is explained in terms of the purpose of these categories in evolution. Strongman (1973, p. 22), summarizes Plutchik’s model so that implications of this model reveal basic definitions of what emotion means as defined by such basic behavioral categories:

1. 1.

Emotion involves a prototypical adaptation ;

2. 2.

Emotion involves cognition;

3. 3.

Emotion involves evolution.

In essence, Strongman, in reviewing Plutchik’s model points to several important elements of the theory. First, a “prototypical adaptation ” means that each of the basic behavioral-categories serve a universal function with respect to ultimate survival needs. These universal functions of the basic behavioral-categories (seen phylogenetically), are identified in terms of their adaptational function (along with their emotion derivatives displayed at higher forms) as:

Incorporation (taking in). Emotion of acceptance
.

Rejection (expelling). Emotion of disgust
.

Reproduction (pulsation/sexuality). Emotion of joy
.

Deprivation (loss). Emotion of sadness/sorrow .

Protection (fleeing from threat). Emotion of fear
.

Destruction (overcoming an obstacle). Emotion of anger.

Exploration (moving in the environment). Emotion of expectation/anticipation
.

Orientation (stopping to an unexpected stimulus). Emotion of surprise
.

In addition to Plutchik’s view of emotion as prototypically adaptive, this author in the context of a study of group behavior (Kellerman, 1979) and in the volume, The Origin of Language (2020), has also amplified this sense of adaptation by noting that emotion is also focused on the phenomenon of cognition within emotion; that is, also as previously noted, within emotion is contained meaning. In addition emotion also is a vicissitude of evolution insofar as in ongoing evolutionary adaptation , and as noted earlier, basic behavioral categories generate equivalent representative primary emotions at higher phylogenetic levels.

Along with such a synthesis, Emde, Gaensbauer, and Harmon (1976) have also suggested this putative adaptive role of the emotions, and have proposed that affects are primary signals—of course with respect to a variety of instrumentalities regarding tools of survival. Izard (1977, 1978), shares this position and has postulated the existence of genetically determined universal behavioral patterns that represent several of what are referred to as fundamental emotions.

In view of examining the psychoanalytic focus on emotion—along with all of its vicissitudes—it becomes rather evident that Barrett’s (2017) volume: How Emotions are Made, points to a particularized facet of neuropsychologic theory. This particularized focus is not necessarily a point of contention with regard to psychoevolutionary emotion-theory or of the spandrelian effects within the multiple or even exponential interactions of neural circuits and their relation to emotion. In other words because there is no specific neurons in the brain to account for each primary emotion this does not in any way negate psychoevolutionary theories of emotion.

Flaherty (2004), points out that without any neuron responsible for religious experience, nevertheless, brain-functions together can comprise mystical experiences as a result of combination of interactions from various portions of brain locale including temporal lobe structures such as the amygdala , hippocampus, and temporal cortex, as well as with parietal lobe activity. This is a spandrelian event—a synthetic event based upon the operation of primary organic brain structures. In fact, now in the early 21st century, neuroscientists are focused on neural networks and their activating components in contrast to seeking a specific location of a neuron (Damasio, 2000; Johnson & Olson, 2015).

For Gould (1977), the spandrel is a side-effect phenomenon of a phenotypic characteristic rather than a function of an evolutionary adaptation . In other words the spandrel is something that is left over—an “exaptation ”—serving a function other than for what is was originally adapted.

With respect to the psyche, the use of the spandrelian effect as part of the instrumentality of the psyche is understood as the person’s need for protection that presumably became genetically a hard-wired brain function. This hard-wired brain function then enabled the person to be wary and vigilant in a predatory world. Then, it could be imagined anthropomorphically, that the spandrel emerged as an animated embodiment endowed with the properties of the wish for some organizational mastery—of course one such mastery as defined by the engineering prowess of the psyche.

The language of the primary emotion is also contained in tacit form within each of the corresponding primary behavioral prototype categories—whether applied to a person or an amoeba . Thus, also as noted earlier, the primary categories remain invariant across phylogenetic levels. The amoeba therefore is subject to the same survival mechanisms that any organism utilizes in the ubiquitous pursuit of survival. Therefore, the answer is “Yes,” an amoeba can think! The essence of this point is that the amoeba utilizes these behavioral prototype categories for the sustaining of stability and survival, and for the understanding of meaning within each of the prototype categories—here referred to as the so-called ‘ability to think.’

Thus, the idea that an amoeba can think is presumed here and is based on the principle that applies Plutchik’s (1980a) psychoevolutionary theory postulating the meaning of the basic eight primary emotion system within the context of survival.

To summarize, the foundation of this basic system of emotion rests on eight corresponding basic prototype behavioral patterns seen at all phylogenetic levels. In this theory it is only at higher forms on the phylogenetic scale that we see the representative emotions of each of these eight prototype behavioral patterns emerge. This means that the universal application of this basic emotion system to all forms of life does not depend solely on brain structures, such as the hypothalamus , the pineal gland and its relation to the neurotransmitter serotonin , or on the amygdala and limbic systems related for example, to fear and love, or to the relation of adrenaline and nor adrenaline , or to the emotion of anger, or to the function of the cigulate gyrus , or to dependency on right brain function.

Therefore the argument that lower forms on the phylogenetic scale do not have such brain structures and functions does not even eliminate the single celled amoeba (without a brain) from consideration as an organism without any behavioral functioning. Quite to the contrary. Based upon the Plutchikian position, the amoeba as an example, has in its DNA repertoire a given sense of these eight basic tropistic behavioral categories as survival-givens, which at higher forms (as stated earlier) generate corresponding emotions—as in Homo sapiens . In the amoeba however, corresponding emotions reflecting the basic prototype categories do not, of course exist. What does exist are these basic behavioral givens that enable the amoeba to navigate its world just as the later dawning of corresponding emotions enables Homo sapiens to similarly navigate its world.

At the highest point in the phylogenetic scale , emotions, rather than existing in virtual state, are actually now derived from, and represent their prototype behavioral categories. Therefore, in Homo sapiens , emotions and inherent language meaning become integral to the structure of personality; that is, that personality organization may in fact be seen as derivative of the operation of the emotion system (Kellerman, 1987). And all of it, from adaptational theory, theory of mind, agent detection, causal reasoning, emotion, behavioral prototypes, spandrelian effects, byproduct theory, and the phenomenon of prototypical adaptation —are all operative (in the evolutionary sense) by utilizing any of such survival tools in the service of an organism’s survival objective.

Survival, the Psyche, and the Unconscious

Now we arrive at the unconscious. With respect to tension-regulation

, the unconscious domain seeks a peaceful tension-level. In this sense, survival-need is primarily one that is nourished by the pleasure-principle. The pleasure-principle gains its objective by turning chaotic material of thinking and feeling that relentlessly bombards the unconscious domain into logical reference corresponding to the person’s basic-wish . Of course, whatever defines what is ultimately satisfying reflects the extent of a basic-wish .

In order to transform such an amorphous bombardment of stimuli (impulse and feeling) into a more parsimonious state, the need for satisfaction in relation to one’s basic-wish would require some mechanism able to engineer such a transformation.

Enter, the psyche.

The psyche, a metapsychological/psychoanalytic conception is thereby seen as that mechanism enabled to accomplish the miraculous transformation within the unconscious arena from chaos to order. Thus, the psyche becomes the metapsychological manifestation within the unconscious domain—that is to say that the psyche becomes the artful engineering room of the unconscious domain that enables chaos to become transformed into knowledge.

In metaphorical language, it becomes a fact that the most miraculous phenomenon of this engineering psyche is the one that gives to the person gratification of the person’s basic-wish whether or not this gratification satisfies reality-testing or satisfies any even slightest validity of such actual in real-life achievement; that is, the psyche arranges it so that the person attains what is wanted whether or not the wish was actually attained in reality. The psyche does this by engineering (inventing) psychological symptoms .

Therefore, within the unconscious domain exists partitions whereby various factors are categorized. Such categories as personality traits, psychological symptoms , general acting-out impulses, along with specific so-called psychological symptom/traits all have their place in the unconscious arena and it can be imagined that each is for the purpose of parsimony hypothetically partitioned in its own particularized so-called zone.

It is the psychological symptoms of the psyche that are translated by the psyche into wish gratifications so that as Freud (1900) discovered, it is why we love our symptoms. We love our symptoms because they are our wishes fully realized although in disguise—in neurotic guise. In addition, Ross and Abrams (1965) discuss the issue of symptom formation and attribute to Freudian thinking that all psychological symptoms contain a primary element of anger in the birth of any symptom. This proposition of the primary emotion of anger as a necessary variable within the psyche’s construction of a symptom is also explored by this author in his volume, The Psychoanalysis of Symptoms
(Kellerman, 2008).

All of it, that is, all that is comprised within the unconscious domain is formed by the need for survival containing all of the components of disguise (repression) , as well as components that are harbored within the unconscious such as reflexive trait responses, psychological symptoms , as well as other factors contributing to the aim of wish-fulfilment—all with an ultimate goal of survival.

The question becomes: What is it about the unconscious domain that enables all of it to be calibrated so that everything in this unconscious domain can create a communication within itself? In this sense, each and every component of the domain will “know” how to be; that is how to be organized with respect to a united tone (heard in the same key), as well as to knowing the so-called unconscious algorithmic melody that hums throughout this domain. The answer regarding this master key is the development of the algorithm that becomes the metronome of meaning of the unconscious domain thereby uniting all of its elements in a communicational sequence akin to a stream-of-consciousness designed always to gratify the basic-wish of this unconscious domain.

It is proposed that the organism’s basic-wish becomes the salient issue of unconscious functioning. This salient issue of the unconscious defined as a basic-wish will in this present theoretical exposition appear as the foremost factor determining how the hypothetical construct of psyche within the unconscious domain functions as the engineering facet of this domain.

Therefore, as noted, and to quote from the earlier section of this chapter, “….in this consideration of the function of the psyche and in approaching an analysis of the unconscious domain, the interaction of variables such as the ubiquitous survival-concern, the regulation of tension level

, the primacy of the pleasure-principle, the internal operation of the psyche, and the analysis of the basic-wish
, (along with sub-variables within each of these unconscious benchmarks) comprise an aggregate of variables joined by a communicational sequential network within this arena of the unconscious domain.”

Thus, again, it is proposed here that this amalgam of variables along with its communicational organization reflects a kind of topographic as well as dynamical architecture of the unconscious. It is in this unconscious domain that the subject of sequential communication between the various facets of the unconscious (its commands and circuitry)—from basic-wishes to engineering instrumentalities of the psyche—arrange for safe harbors (a kind of envisioned partitioning of categories). Such properties of the psyche also account for housing personality traits (those reflexive and typical response traits), along with a non-trait place for psychological symptoms (referred to as symptom/traits), as well as a place reserved for a host of other emotion-defenses (mechanisms of defense) of the unconscious.

The emotion-personality defenses utilized by the unconscious mind within the psyche’s so-called engineering room, permits the overall transformation of a continual bombardment of chaotic and amorphous material that unabated sinks into this repressive unconscious arena and is correspondingly then put into reasonable order, thereby nullifying all the chaos, and keeping it safe—albeit in a repressed state. The result of this so-called unconscious ‘repressive oven’ creates the opportunity for this subterranean arena to maintain a reasonably calibrated peace of mind; that is, from chaos is delivered order. Finally, this order is organized by the psyche so that basic-wishes do not become automatically as well as potently challenged.

This entire panoply of conditions within the unconscious domain is controlled (actually, conducted) by the aforementioned algorithm, and as stated, this algorithm then acts as the metronome of meaning of this arena—of this unconscious domain. All of it is therefore tuned in, and derived from, the rhythmic syntonic key of the person’s basic-wish .

In all, the unconscious arena seems to have developed to keep people safe both from the issue of a quantified life needing to be aware of predation all around itself (from the outside, externally), but also from within with respect to the quality of life which of course can also be threatened by internal concerns, such as everyday worries, nightmares, frustrations, and defeated actual wishes. It might be said that the development in evolution of a brain along with a system that conjures in the first place a concern with physical survival as a result of surrounding potential external threat, certainly also recognizes concerns regarding the emotional quality of life largely affected by internal concerns generated also as self-imposed pressures.

In this sense, the Freudian position became one that attributes communication from the unconscious mind to consciousness because of the individual’s need for adapting to conditions of external reality; that is, to be able to delay gratification in the service of longer range goals and objectives, and secondarily, to account for past and future tense—a lesson of reality testing . Of course a clear notion of the difference between past and present omits the past tense and therefore, it is the present tense that gestates the overall tension of predatory existential concerns.

According to this Freudian position, this focus on external reality is simple survival as the primary motive that as an intermediate step animates the search for security and peace of mind but is not necessarily concerned with the immediate primary need for pleasure. The need for momentary or even ultimate (or general) pleasure is attained only when survival is at least momentarily guaranteed or achieved.

However, the concern with survival is intuited as never really ever guaranteed—so that the organism’s search for this kind of existential condition of peace of mind , again, animates a never-ending ‘survival’ search.

In the following is presented a number of questions regarding how it all started, also referred to in the preface of this volume; that is:

1. 1.

What is the genesis of this unconscious?

2. 2.

Or, considering questions such as do animals have an unconscious?

3. 3.

Or, can we answer the question as to why do we ostensibly have an unconscious but perhaps animals might not?

4. 4.

Or, who or what is at the master control?

5. 5.

Or, does there actually exist a master of the unconscious?

6. 6.

Or, is there a defined master control of the unconscious or is the unconscious operating randomly?

7. 7.

Or, is this unconscious ‘thing’ something that cannot be known? and, finally:

8. 8.

Is the unconscious a cohered system, and if so can it be described?

As an introduction to the operation of the unconscious, and in the service of considering the above questions, Chap. 2 following, will contain a discussion of a brief history of the unconscious. This history will be embraced by conceptions regarding the evolution of understandings comprising this history.

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Footnotes

1

In this volume, such correspondence between function of emotion as such emotion attaches to the given presence of survival concerns, will be pointed out throughout the first three chapters of this book and formally explicated in Chap. 4 on primary emotions and the unconscious.

2

It should be noted that in the behavioral/emotion theory explicated in this volume, impulses, instincts , and imperatives, are seen as existing in the substrate of the primary emotions

.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

H. KellermanThe Unconscious Domainhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35009-3_2

2. The Unconscious Realm

Henry Kellerman[1]

(1) Private Practice, New York, NY, USA

A Brief History of the Unconscious

Generally and historically, whether from the tradition of psychoanalytic psychology, neurobiology, or cognitive science, unconscious thinking (or process) has been considered with the appellation of “outside of conscious awareness.” In some cases authors have correlated unconscious process (or thought) with intuition (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006). With respect to intuition , Bowers, Regehr, Balthazarde, and Parker (1990) discuss that which is the underlying prompting of intuition . These authors discuss a “guiding phase,” that invokes stored memories , as well as an “integrative stage,” where such memories become in confluence, obviously related.

A reliance on intuition as an aspect of unconscious infrastructural components is also considered by Albrechtsen, Meissner, and Sussa (2009), who postulate that such unconscious intuition can govern even how a person detects extents of sincerity in others. Such understanding of intuition seems to define it as a phenomenon of inherent diagnostic acumen.

Along with explicitly awarding intuition a primary place in the unconscious, other authors have sought to specifically identify the properties of intuition by discerning how intuition and instinct are different. For example, Hogarth (2001), states that intuition is dependent on learning and experience while instinct emanates from a more primitive and ostensibly biological/ancestral heritage—perhaps an echo of the Jungian “collective unconscious

” (Jung, 1959). Further, de Vries, Holland, and Witteman (2009), even posit that happy moods are related to intuitive features within an unconscious domain—a position in essence agreed to by Hicks et al. (2010).

The unconscious as a construct (and unconscious communication as process)

, was in the genesis and unfolding of psychoanalysis (in its theoretical development and treatment technology) the essential and most salient consideration with respect to a picture of “mind.” The psyche, became equivalent to “mind” as well as to a gestating and corresponding therapeutic approach. And of course this explosion of theory and practice was given its elaborate ignition and scope by Freud (1900, 1915a, 1915b, 1920, 1921, 1933).

Although the issue of the unconscious had predated Freud as for example in the work reflected by writers of earlier eras—even in the 16th century (Harms, 1967)—and as noted in the general literature as periods for longer than those predating Freud (Coster, 1934; Haney, 1991; Faber, 1970).

Nevertheless, as stated, it was Sigmund Freud who excavated the unconscious within his psychoanalytic theoretical framework and from which the entire edifice of psychoanalysis was built—especially in tandem with the concept of repression
. Of course it was Freud who gave to the unconscious domain its dynamic mechanism in the form of the general issue of defense and more specifically, designating as crucial, this specific defense of repression . In essence, repression became in metapsychological terms that which animated the process of the unconscious with respect to the repression’s power and facile artistry.

Of course it was Freudian psychology throughout the 20th century [including Ellenberger’s (1970) citation of the work of Mesmer, Janet, Adler, and Jung] that captured the full early to mid 20th century definition of the unconscious. Yet this concept of the unconscious had quite a notable history that again, predated Freud. For example, in the 18th century Ernst Platner, a philosopher considered the unconscious with respect to its relation to thinking (Nicholls and Liebscher, 2010). Also in the 18th century Friedrich Schelling discussed the “unbewustseyn” (the unknowingness or unknown or unconsciousness) as a reference to something that was designed in the mind but not to be known (Schelling, 1800).

Yet, the idea of an unconscious was also referred to in antiquity between 2500 and 600 BC in Hindu texts, the Vedas (Alexander, 1990). In addition, Paracelsus referred to the unconscious in relation to cognition in his treatise on pathology (Von den Krankheiten—in mid 16th century (Harms, 1967). Otherwise there was a plethora of publications regarding the so-called unconscious from Spinoza to Nietzsche (1966). A thorough philosophy of the unconscious up to that time was in 1869 also published by Eduard von Hartmann.

By the end of the 20th century and then into the 21st century the unconscious was considered as a given, unified by psychoanalytic practitioners, cognitive scientists, as well as neuropsychoanalysts, in the sense that it was defined as an implicit construct—essentially seen as something that is predictively, ‘out of one’s awareness.’

Schachter (1987), referred to the unconscious as a repository of implicit memories . With respect to the idea of implicit memories , Carl Jung’s collective unconscious

(1959) is seen as a reference to ancestral memory —one that is also conceptualized as a rather tentative concatenation of what becomes an anthropological fusion with that of evolutionary biology

—that is, a consideration of the “appetites” of creatures who arrived earlier than Homo sapiens .

Whether considered within an information paradigm as in cognitive studies or as a function of repression as in psychodynamic understanding, the implicit nature of the unconscious as an out-of-aware state of the mind (or as a brain process), became generally agreed upon. Josephs (1992) terms it the “unconscious sense of self ” in which material in the unconscious is hidden from the self as well as from others. In total, Brenner (1955), and Arlow and Brenner (1964) state that psychoanalysis was called a “depth psychology” because of the focus on the unconscious and that psychoanalysis itself was identified entirely as a psychology of the unconscious. Along with this issue of a definition of “unconscious” is the one proposed by Bolas (1987) that has become an outstanding concept in the general understanding of repression and how the unconscious is essentially dependent on repressive power. Bolas refers to this phenomenon of the unconscious as the “unthought known ,” which it seems is an assumption of something that is known underneath but not from above, or it is something known at some cognitive level but cannot be thought about consciously or put into words. Therefore, the “unthought known Unthought known” is perhaps tentatively similar to the neuropsychoanlytic notion of a non-repressed unconscious or a creative unconscious or a dynamic unconscious as described by Bohleber et al. (2017).

A survey of the field of the unconscious, especially with respect to its role in cognitive psychological research is given by Augusto (2010), and Weiss (1990) in a discussion of unconscious mental functioning from a psychoanalytic perspective. Additional positions related to the viability of the concept “unconscious,” is also offered by Eagle (1990), by Stolorow, Atwood, and Brandchaft (1992), and by Curtis and Curtis (2011). In a sense, various renditions of the definition of the unconscious or of repression do not really impact the actual clinical practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. What does in fact impact clinical practice is the power of psychoanalytic metapsychology with a derivative practice module; that is to say, that in clinical practice it is understood that the sole function of resistance is to support repression and that the sole purpose of repression is the process by which material remains out of one’s consciousness—period! Thus in clinical practice there is not a smidgeon of evidence that different types of alleged repressions has any clinical relevance in the consulting room.

In this sense, it would be quite impossible to cure a symptom that an eleven year-old boy experienced. This boy began placing bottles under the bed because he somehow knew that doing so would cure the “funny feelings” in his stomach. Thus, this boy was repressing something. And no rendition of any number of repression-concepts can get to what was troubling him except the unraveling of his repression —no matter what definition of repression one derives. Thus, how do we get at it (the symptom); how do we understand it, and how do we cure it? The answer provided in this volume lies in the power of psychoanalytic understanding of repression and of the unconscious arena generally, that enable nothing less than entry into the encrypted secret of the meaning of putting bottles under the bed thereby curing stomach funny feelings. In this sense, it is proposed that virtually nothing in neuroscience nor specifically even in neuropsychoanalysis can make even the slightest difference in curing this boy of his symptom.

This comment is not meant to be an attack on brain neuroscience but it certainly may be considered a statement regarding what clinicians need to work with as repressed material and the unconscious come into view. And what needs to be worked on in order to cure that boy who anesthetized his stomach “funny feelings’ is exemplified in the psychoanalytic understanding of repression and the unconscious process.[1]

Stolorow (1995), expands the dimensions of the unconscious and posits a prereflective unconscious in which a person’s main theme becomes an organizing principle of personality—akin to a developing scheme. In agreement with this notion of “scheme,” Miller (1995) discusses “schemas” that help organize stimuli of the unconscious. This organization of the unconscious also implies that the subject matter of the unconscious domain is able to be translated from one in which the disarray of stimuli is reorganized via such a translation process into understandable material.

In this sense of translation or transformation from chaotic material to ordered material, the idea of scheme (or schemas) is seen as revealing a basic algorithm within the unconscious that creates sense or understanding regarding the amorphous bombardment of stimuli of the unconscious that becomes transformed into logical understanding. Therefore, if not for such transformational power regarding the information of the unconscious, material in the unconscious (emotion, instinct , memory , needs) presumably would remain chaotic as in the traditional psychoanalytic definition of chaotic primary-process material.

This is to say that the psychoanalytic metapsychology of the unconscious arena defines it as essentially an “id ” arena characterized by the presence of ‘symbols’ and ‘drives ’ along with ‘instincts ,’ and, with respect to prosody of content, logic is disregarded. In addition, in reference to the force of the id in the unconscious domain, instant gratification is sought with respect to wishes. In contrast, secondary-process is correlated to “ego ” and reality, and so logic becomes the guardian of a possible testing-mechanism of reality.

What is being referred to here as schemas are actually specific contents so that in this chapter on the unconscious realm, it is proposed that the message of the algorithm (the algorithmic message that helps organize material in the unconscious) has the power of ‘transformation’ within this domain. Such transformation possibly identifies this domain—in function—as a cauldron of the unconscious then transforming into civil governance.

It is this ordered civil governance that can be seen as informing just about everything that a person feels, thinks, says, or does. Of course such a seemingly civil governance is basically autocratic insofar as this governance of the unconscious is only interested in having the person’s basic-wish gratified and is therefore entirely and solely, single-minded regarding the nature of such gratification; that is, the question becomes: Is the gratification actually acquired in reality or is it forfeited in reality so that it becomes gratified in fantasy? If gratified in fantasy it will then achieve satisfaction strictly through the development of a psychological symptom .[2]

In this case, to posit that in the unconscious exist schemas is a basic assumption. Instead, the objective here is to identify and define how to label these schemas—what to call them—and specifically with respect to their content; that is, what are these schemas all about, how are they derived, and even, how many are there?

Along with such issues, the question becomes: Might it be possible to provide clinical illustrations of such schemas as they are portrayed in real life?

The Wish System

So , let’s say schemas exist. So what? What are they? Where do they come from? The particular clinical issue becomes: What might be some specific examples of schemas, or of a schema? The answer proposed here is that the person’s wish as the most derivative agent of the pleasure-principle could prove to be the road leading to a more detailed understanding of what a schema actually means and/or how it performs. Thus, it will be postulated that whatever the person says or does (speaks it or acts it), despite what the conscious content is all about, will actually be a message that wants or needs a wish to be gratified. And yes, the wish is definitely the pleasure principle’s most derivative agent. As an example, it is the wish (especially the thwarted wish) that tracks the schema’s-product as a symptom achieving its objective by the psyche’s engineering—especially through the process of repression (Kellerman, 2008, 2009).

The point here is that the symptom itself is engineered by the psyche to represent a fulfilment of the person’s wish—albeit in a perverse or neurotic form; that is, the symptom then appears as a fully gratified wish achieved in fantasy within the unconscious domain.[3]

Thus it needs to be noted that schemas seem to reflect needs of the individual that are formed by wishes. The schema is what you want, what you are looking for, and singularly wishing for. A clinical example may illustrate this sort of wish-motive more clearly.

A Clinical Examination of Marital Discord with Respect to Wishes

This couple was a very sophisticated and professional unit. He was a college chemistry professor and she a concert violinist. They were both in their late 30’s. These individuals reported in a couple’s session that they were at a dead end because frequently the wife could not grasp what her husband was saying to her especially when he became animated and when his energetic demeanor could be characterized as excitedly enthusiastic, hopeful, and optimistic.

The Husband

Typically, during such discussions the husband tended to expand on his analysis of the situation that caused them to be at loggerheads and he would do so in a way that conveyed knowledge and insight. His hope was that his wife, with some sense of relief, would appreciate his consilience; that is, his hopeful sense of their implicit unity.

However, during such interactions his wife would look at him with consternation. At such times, she apparently never understood his glee. At the end of the husband’s so-called soliloquies he remained with his usual disappointment insofar as he claimed that it would usually turn out that way—that he was always left with the feeling that his wife was entirely separate and didn’t really see his positive, loving, and optimistic feelings toward her.

The husband remained stalled and hurt.

The Wife

From the wife’s point of view, she usually felt that her husband was holding forth and that she was his audience. Apparently, she never got a sense of proper proportion when comparing what he was saying with how he was saying it. In her eyes therefore, he seemed somewhat immature, while in his eyes, she became a person who was insular, cold, unfeeling, and unloving.

This pattern was quite representative of their many arguments as well as the process of their attempts at reuniting. Thus, the pattern they established of ships passing-in-the-night had become the neurotic signature of their relationship.

The issue now is for the schema of this relationship to be identified and named. Such a schema needs to include a reason for their impacted relationship that created the consistent communicational mismatch which they both felt and about which they both suffered. In order to achieve this objective of identifying their schema, it needs to be understood that the underlying respective wish typically expressed by each of these partners constitutes what the underlying message (the unconscious schema message) is all about.

The Husband

As it turned out, in this particular case, it became revealed that the husband was always aiming for his wife to acknowledge his good offices, to give him credit for being especially gifted and bright, and for her to be conscious and as well expressive of her admiration for him. And it is the specific need for admiration that animated the husband’s expressiveness whenever theirs was a conversation colored by a post-angry interaction whereby at a later point they were attempting to cure, to disentangle the mutual hostility and dissatisfaction resulting from such disagreement.

The husband’s specific unconscious schema was to invite admiration from others (not only from his wife). Everything he said or did could at any moment morph into a drive to satisfy this need (this wish). What wish? Well, the wish he always had and that was organized by his psyche (presumably within his unconscious domain) that generated pressure for him to seek acknowledgment along with adoration. This wish as translated by his psyche made sense out of the aforementioned amorphous bombardment of stress or pressure in the form of primary process material swirling around in his deeply out-of-awareness unconscious.

Thus, it was the husband’s fervent desire, his wish, his want, his need, to have his wife (and others) admire him. And so it wasn’t necessarily the manifest descriptive content of what he was saying to his wife that animated him. Rather, it was the latent content, the underlying unconscious schema that was always his true message. And when this was happening, his wife could not understand what was existentially in process because his manifest descriptive content didn’t clearly jibe with his underlying message of need and wish for her to admire him.

The Wife

She, on the other hand simply didn’t get it and was rather only listening to his manifest descriptive content. Therefore, no matter how simple and straightforward, or in contrast, how complicated his explanation would become, nevertheless his emotional coloring apparently did not match the nature of his verbal intent, and so his wife would be listening to him with aforementioned consternation and her obvious expression of doubt left him feeling terribly dissatisfied, not understood, and feeling of course, ultimately defeated.

The underlying schema characterizing the wife’s unconscious message was different. Her schema was of course based upon needs and wishes germane to her subjective experience designed (as all schemas are designed) to make her feel better by achieving the aim of the schema. In the wife’s case, the schema or thematic content that organized her entire unconscious domain concerned her need and wish for autonomy. Her husband’s presence satisfied a companionship need but at the same time she needed to be separate and absorbed in her practicing-the-violin objective.

Both of Them

It could be said that to translate the husband’s schema/thematic strand that marched through everything he said or did (as in governing it all), was for his wife to be attentive to him at all times so that he would feel admired. In contrast, the wife’s wish or need was to focus only on her work of practice in preparing for current or even future violin concerts in which she could and would display her virtuosity. But because her focus was on the self (non-pejorative and not necessarily narcissistic), by default, her husband felt ignored, rejected, and even a bit humiliated.

Therefore, most, if not all of their disagreements were in one way or another based upon these unconscious intersecting and discordant schema dynamics. She needed or wished to be unbothered although not untethered, whereby she also needed him to be there physically. It was not as though they never had fun or never talked. The point is that trouble would be brewing when his unconscious schema (needing to be acknowledged) intersected and thereby contrasted with hers of needing essentially to be left alone. Then, inevitably, the dispiritatious-explosion would occur.

Of course, the wife’s schema was necessarily based upon her need to be secure in whatever she was doing because of tension regarding the possibility of not doing her work well. Hers was a tension of responsibility taken to a very fine or exquisite need for perfection—or as close as she could get. His was again a repeated tension associated with needing to be appreciated. Otherwise, he would be confirmed in his suspicion that perhaps he was not worthy of admiration and certainly not worthy of adulation.

From an objective vantage point the perplexing yet human drama here concerned the incontrovertible fact that these were two exceptionally responsible, talented, highly intelligent individuals who were at rock-bottom, decent, loving, and very warm personalities. Yet, in view of the reality of it all, a more glaring astounding reality would typically occur.

This astounding reality is the reality of underlying unconscious schemas that organize and congeal all tension hopefully down to zero so that each person can feel comfortable with respect to very private concerns regarding such personal tensions. It is an example of Freudian “pleasure principle” precepts along with even a hint of Freud’s “death instinct ” idea; that is, the pleasure principle is one that wants every cell in the body satisfied and all tension down to zero. Freud’s corresponding death instinct position does just that.

The death instinct lurks in the background as a reminder of how wonderful it would be to achieve zero tension. Presumably, in death there is no tension. Of course neither the wife nor the husband seek death as a way out of their dilemma. Their natural psychological solution is an unconscious one; that is, to achieve their schema-aims through the understanding of the other person—in this case, the spouse. And that’s the rub, because everything with respect to schemas is unconscious so then in the absence of necessary insight, neither husband nor wife can be understanding. It is an example of Freud’s wisdom explaining that consciousness is curative.[4]

Lifting repression and thereby surfacing the schemas into consciousness, can vastly improve the likelihood that each spouse could then gain and express greater understanding with respect to the other’s wish, need, and aspiration—provided of course that the issue of anger toward the other person can be also successfully unrepressed and discussed.

Schemas of the Psyche Within the Unconscious Domain

In the above clinical sample were presented examples of two schemas that organized each person’s unconscious material, needs, and wishes. One schema was ‘the hope to be admired and attended to’ while the other was ‘to be left alone in order to be absorbed in self-study.’ The question is: Is there a way to understand that schemas follow certain governances within the unconscious based upon certain corresponding rules that may relate to something even more basic than the denotative aspect of the schema itself?

The answer may lie in the earlier parts of this exposition where underlying Plutchikian derived primary emotions

(Plutchik, 1962, 1980), was suggested to be intricately and basically causative in nothing less that the organization of personality. So too, in the organization of schemas existing in the unconscious domain, it may be useful to speculate on how primary emotions might reveal basic primary schemas; that is, there may be a few primary schemas and then perhaps many more variations based upon these few primaries.

In the following, some of these examples of the relation between primary emotions and primary schemas will be proposed. These are examples that are based upon the theory that basic emotion categories reflecting corresponding basic diagnoses will be related to the genesis of one’s basic-wish system; that is, that personality largely governed by one’s basic-wish is coordinated in the unconscious realm by the psyche whereby organization of the personality (the basic-wish, primary emotions

, psychological defenses, personality traits, and the correspondence of impulses and controls) is all informed and unified by the communicational algorithm of the unconscious. All of it then is created as a schema underpinned in the unconscious domain by particular primary emotions

.

Here are eight basic schemas of the psyche that can be defined with respect also to diagnostic references and correlated to the primary emotions

.

Acceptance/Rejection Schemas

In the clinical illustration given above, the husband’s schema-objective is to have his wife (and others as well) acknowledge him (admire, adore, include, attend to). The source that drives and organizes his unconscious may be a constituent factor of the “acceptance ” emotion insofar as “acceptance” wants or wishes for the other person’s acceptance (wants to be liked, loved, admired, made to feel whole, to feel exceptional). In addition, such a person also desires to have the other similarly needing to be loved and therefore to be seeking the same sort of attention.

In the clinical case given above, the source motive of the wife’s drive that organizes her unconscious need is the wish for undisturbed time—that is, not to be invited in. Such an organizational schema-objective could easily be seen as emanating from the opposite of an ‘acceptance ’ emotion and rather reflects in effect some aspect of a ‘rejection’ phenomenon, which at the lower intensity level generates an uneasiness with intrusion while at a higher intensity level is generated a distaste or even contempt of such intrusion.

In this respect, one schema is based on the wish for acceptance (and even fusion with the other) while the opposing partner wishes for an opposing circumstance; that is, based broadly on the wish for autonomy.

Joy/Sorrow Schemas

There are individuals who are quite hedonistic and utilize denial and other emotion-defense mechanisms designed to sustain their optimism and happiness. The schema-objective in such people could be easily seen as one in which the person screens-in that which feels good, and screens-out that which feels not so good. It’s a matter of selective perception and perceptual defense respectively. The primary emotion that expresses this schema-objective (or from which such an objective gains its traction) is that of joy or happiness. Such individuals are also seen as physically energetic (extra spirited) and they are frequently and typically demon-bent on sustaining such “top-of-the-world” feelings. Although at the low or moderate intensity levels this energy seems to reflect fun-loving activity, nevertheless, at the highest intensity level such individuals are usually seen diagnostically as compensatory manic-like types.

The opposite schema-objective contrasting with this happy type who constantly seeks good feelings and rejoices in them but who defends against contrary input, is the individual who lives with chronic depressive or ‘down’ sorrowful feelings. Whether such individuals are chronically depressed (as in a descriptive depressive character disorder), or whether they are consistently even if only intermittently depressed (as in a reactive dysthymic condition), such people find it difficult to access any strong and persistent compensatory energy to combat this sort of dire sensitivity to stimuli.

Such individuals usually seek to retrieve a lost object (even an imagined one) and behave with the sense that somewhere, somehow, an object (a person) was indeed lost, and therefore that this person must be retrieved. In many cases the sorrow is based on the fateful feeling that the entire enterprise of retrieving the lost object is destined to fail.

In this sense, the schema-objective here is based upon the belief that all is lost because of this predictive failure of retrieving the lost object so that in the unconscious, the latent content is organized almost to validate this failure.

Reflexive crying in such individuals has been hypothesized by this author as the reflexive attempt to retrieve this lost object (Kellerman, 2018).

Fear/Anger Schemas

A usual the schema-objective derived from a self-protection need is characteristic of individuals who fear collisions. Collisions are here defined as any possible interaction with another that could be considered contentious or cause difficulty usually because of conflict in the relationship. Such fearful individuals avoid conflict at any cost, learn to ingratiate themselves with others, and can become exceedingly sacrificial to others.

Descriptively the fear of collision is conscious but whatever anger lurks beneath is not experienced by the subject (is unconscious), so that dynamically it may be the repressed anger that is truly the culprit here in any quest to understand the problem.[5]

As a result of this consciously ingrained fear of confrontation such individuals become minimalists and therefore minimize anything concerning even personal achievement. With any announcement of personal achievement such a person could feel that others would be jealous or envious so that such a prospect is carefully and judiciously avoided.

Thus in labeling this sort of schema-objective it is convenient to call it a protection schema derived and informed by the emotion at lesser intensity levels as apprehension and at higher levels even as terror. The unconscious message within this particular schema-objective that informs everything in the person’s unconscious mind is the instruction to be a typically guarded individual and careful in relationships in order to maintain a non-threatening dyadic equilibrium. The upsurge of anger emerging from the unconscious domain would be in such cases just about impossible to occur and even maximally to be threatening to one’s ego-integrity.

It’s opposite schema-objective also is that of guarding oneself, but in this case the guardedness concerns the idea that the best defense is a good and consistent offense. Individuals who operate this way are aggressive, assertive, oppositional, and generally difficult to manage because they are prone and ready to fight, to protest, and to seek avenues of becoming involved in issues that call forth frequent expressions even of righteous indignation.

It is presumed that in such a person’s unconscious, everything is organized with respect to the schema-objective of such protest, with the primary emotion at lower intensity levels reflecting annoyance or anger, and at the higher intensity levels reflecting, as my be the case, levels of anger such as rage or fury.

This schema-objective is in essence named by Plutchik (1962, 1980) as a Destruction dimension largely because of the reflexive behavior of needing to attack or destroy any obstacle that threatens to deny the person’s goal—the person’s basic-wish .

Expectation/Surprise Schemas

The emotion of expectation is characterized by behavior and motive of moving about in the environment and investigating, exploring, and generally seeking new experiences. The schema-objective of such a person is to seek novelty so that relationships are typically full of surprises . Such an individual is usually interested in traveling, and meeting new people, and this person’s unconscious is organized by the wish for “newness”.

Individuals expressing this schema-objective can become quite bored with the mundane and therefore will most likely seek avenues of experiencing the original and creative. This motive to move in the environment is also a tendency to map the environment as a way of creating a better measure of certainty.

The opposite inclination is referred to as one in which the individual will try to avoid surprises . Surprise acts to disorient such a person so that thinking and behavior are directed by the wish for structure, sameness, ritual, and familiarity.

The schema-objective therefore, can be referred to as an attempt to design a more impermeable boundary around the self in order to reduce the likelihood of experiencing a disorienting moment. It is convenient to label this schema-objective as one that resists change, and such a person is one who values a firm protective so-called exoskeleton which in this kind of schema-objective reveals the person as one who values safety, security, and sameness.

The Contribution of Schemas to the Unconscious

These hypotheses regarding a possible basic paradigm to understand specific schemas as well as the objectives of such schemas has theoretically related primary emotions as the fount that creates and organizes such schemas. In turn, such schemas can then aid in organizing the mass of primary process material (including all repressed memory) into a consolidated unit here defined as a schema with an objective, or as the contribution of schemas with respect to communicational logic of the unconscious arena.

The point of enumerating the objectives of such schemas is to try to reveal the trajectory of each one in terms of how such unconscious schemas inform and govern all that is inevitably conscious. This governance is based upon the person’s basic-wish —one that promises to reduce the person’s tension-level especially provided that the wish becomes satisfied.

To the point that schemas are constructed primarily by the persons basic-wish and then organized in and by the psyche, then it can be seen that schemas are vital in the quest, as stated, to aid in the organization of a person’s unconscious; that is, to translate and transform the bombardment of chaotic material in the unconscious into logical categories. Therefore these schemas are valuable in the sense of supporting unconscious sequential communication as a result of such translation and transformation. In this sense schemas may have a profound affect in helping to organize a person’s entire unconscious experience.

In total, vicissitudes of unconscious communication are exemplified by an algorithm representing the basic-wish of the unconscious with schema-objectives engineered by the psyche. The few schemas derived here (on the basis of emotion theory) generated a tentative listing of each as correlated with emotion as an underpinning of such schemas. As stated, these are unconscious patterns designed to reduce tension.

Here is included a series of schema-polarities reflecting primary polar emotions:

1. 1.

Seeking acceptance
, praise and togetherness versus seeking autonomy;

2. 2.

Possessing the object (the person) versus feeling bereft of loss of an object and fantasizing retrieval of the object;

3. 3.

Avoiding collisions versus protesting and seeking collision; and,

4. 4.

Seeking novelty versus avoiding surprise and novelty.

Therefore the algorithm of schema-objectives contains an infrastructural composition based upon wishes as the most derivative agent of the pleasure principle underpinned by the epigenetic primary emotion system—all of it bundled in the form of an unconscious communicational schema—that is, the algorithm of schema-objectives, again, essentially engineered in the psyche.

The Pleasure-Principle and Tension-Reduction

Once the psyche translates the amorphous bombardment of stimuli into the wish-language reflecting the tropistic need of the pleasure principle, along with the unconscious algorithm—already carrying the communication of the meaning of the wish to the entire unconscious domain—only then is the specific message of the person’s wish permitted to elevate into the conscious mind so that whatever the person feels, thinks, says, and does, will be in response to the need reflecting the person’s wish.

Finally, in review it can be postulated that the wish is the pleasure-principles chief representative. According to Ferenczi (1926), the pleasure-principle in turn is the controller-in-chief of all reactions and thoughts in an endeavor to escape (if possible) from unpleasant situations (meaning any deviations from gratifying the basic-wish ) as well as the desire to obtain the greatest gratification with the smallest possible effort; that is to say with the least effort for maximum benefit—a mini-max solution (least effort for greatest gain).

The meaning of the wish is translated into the basic algorithm of the entire unconscious domain whereby the psyche is crystallized and then becomes that part of the unconscious arena in which chaos of stimuli are transformed by this psyche into an ‘intention.’ It is this intention that begins to be transmitted to the conscious mind. This ‘intention’ consists of the main issue concerning whatever it is that the wish wants. What the wish wants will then be the determiner of what the person will feel, think, say (or not say), and then perhaps do, all in the service of consciously achieving in the real world the objective of this unconscious basic-wish .

The equation and direction of consciousness to unconsciousness is in essence dependent on the circuitry of the sequence of communication in the unconscious domain with impulses obeying only the pleasure-principle’s operative psyche embedded at the deepest level of the unconscious mind. In addition, according to Moore and Fine (1990, p. 151), it is the pleasure-principle that regulates the need to induce, by action or by fantasy, any situation which facilitates greater peace of mind by the reduction of drive tension.

These authors further posit in a simple fashion the decisive motive of the pleasure-principle which is characterized as one that considers the accumulation of psychic energy to be the factor that causes un-pleasure, whereas pleasure is produced by its discharge.

Ultimately, the authors imply that the formation of symptoms is therefore a discharge phenomenon. Thus, the function of the pleasure-principle is to reduce psychic tension because of the existence of drives pressing for discharge. As an example, the psychoanalytic concept of the repetition-compulsion becomes a repetitive attempt to continue to eliminate tension but is caught in a false premise. This false premise means that repeating something, as psychoanalytically understood, is of a failed attempt ultimately to be able to solve anything with simple repetition.

All that the repetition does is to ‘repeat” not solve.[6]

The pleasure-principle wants this tension-reduction to occur successfully and immediately and such an implicit demand of the pleasure-principle leads to the emergence of the most telling trait measuring level of maturity—that is, the ability to postpone immediate needs for gratification in the service of longer range goals. In this sense, this postponement ability demonstrates the ascendancy of the ego as a measure of maturity and as the possible power-challenger of the ego over incessant demands by the psyche.

Interestingly, Hull (1943), a pioneer in the field of drive -reduction learning theory also stated that learning is the alleviation of a drive and that this includes a reward that meets a need. Of course the alleviation of a drive that meets a need is rather equivalent in psychodynamic terms to the alleviation of pain or discomfort—i.e. equivalent of the pleasure-principle’s aim to afford satisfaction through the elimination of drive -tension.

With respect to the pleasure-principle and the need for tension-reduction, response of the psyche reveals that the human psyche is quite phenomenal. The point is that the reality of the predatory world, the need for protection, and the response of the psyche to such a need, then for certain also reveals this phenomenal construct identified as the psyche which apparently will not be denied its wish for protection, because again, it was the need/wish for protection that was phylogenetically derived.

It is proposed that this wish for protection, then synthetically through the psyche, produced a spandrel , universally and mostly identified as reference to this grandiose constituent of the unconscious domain. It is this grandiose constituent that arguably could be the ultimate answer to the ubiquitous tension regarding death. This so-called “ultimate” answer raises the issue of fairness in the person’s sense of right and wrong.

The “fairness” issue is one that forces the person to reach the inevitable conclusion that life does not cooperate (with one’s wishes) so that that ‘life’ is then not particularly concerned with the idea of fairness; that is to say that Nature has no knowledge of corporeal fairness. Thus, the expectation of fairness as a spandrel of genetic givens does not at all correlate to the random vicissitudes of occurrences in Nature.

It is therefore a spandrel of the psyche that presumably with respect to fantasy constructions (including that of the construction of psychological symptoms), is presumably able to nullify tension by eliminating predatory apprehensions—even though perhaps solely in fantasy. It is in that case that the finality of death becomes less of an anxiety.

This sort of construction of the psyche (of creating a defiance of death) is defined as a spandrel because it is only in a secondary sense that such discovery/invention was based upon the primary need to achieve peace of mind . Notably then, it is the psyche that is perhaps able to construct this solution of eliminating at least in fantasy, the finality of death.

A further analysis of the nature of the psyche is continued in the following Chap. 3.

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Footnotes

1

Clinical treatment of the cure of this particular symptom can be seen in the volume, The Psychoanalysis of Symptoms by this author, Kellerman (2008, pp. 31–36).

2

The specific template in the development of psychological symptoms as produced in the unconscious arena (through the work of the psyche), is cited throughout this volume, and explicated by Kellerman (2008, 2009).

3

The components required in the unconscious domain to create a symptom shall be discussed in detail in this chapter under the heading of: Fear/Anger
Schemas.

4

In the volume by this author (Kellerman, 2008) is revealed that consciousness is not in itself curative; that is, what is made conscious regarding “content” is in essence the truly important issue. In this sense the issue of ‘cure’ is according to the mechanics of the psyche only curative when two criteria are satisfied. These criteria for curativeness to be achieved means that first, the repressed anger must be made conscious, and second, that the presence and identity in the unconscious of a specific person toward whom the anger is directed also needs to be made conscious. When these two criteria are satisfied, only then can consciousness be truly curative.

5

Psychoanalytically understood, it is repressed anger residing in the unconscious arena that is at the bottom of the creation of any psychological symptom and is further explicated in Chap. 4, and subheaded: The Emotion of Anger and the Defense of Repression
: A Reference to the Architecture of

Symptom-Formation in the Unconscious.

6

See Chap. 3 for a more detailed view of the repetition-compulsion under the subhead: The Repetition-Compulsion
.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

H. KellermanThe Unconscious Domainhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35009-3_3

3. The Psyche

Henry Kellerman[1]

(1) Private Practice, New York, NY, USA

Tension-Reduction, and Survival

The psyche’s spandrel nullifies tension by eliminating the finality of death. This spandrel of the psyche (referred in the conclusion of Chap. 2) acts as an implantation of a trick. As an example, this spandrel can be appreciated by an examination of the thesis regarding the process of ‘function’ in evolution as this function relates to a foreboding regarding such finality of death.

This particular issue is one of evolutionary process (or psychoevolutionary process) between that of safety and survival on the one hand, and its relation to a psychoevolutionary processes on the other. The entire issue of this so-called trick may be considered by examining the example of the phenomenon of ‘grace.’

In its essence, grace is the most derivative form of belief in an ever present maximum pervasive and permeating abstract presence—a deity. Thus, generated by the psyche, this belief is one that perhaps directly translates into one’s daily life with respect to relationships between people as well as with respect to an implicit mandate regarding one’s personal ethical and moral fiber—and, of course, grace is inevitably grounded in behavior—as in the external representation of belief.

Therefore, the issue of grace is an example of the power inherent in the use of the spandrel with direct reference to the issue of safety and survival—whether by the focus on external all powerful tangible precautions designed to guard one’s safety or by internal formulations that validate (with respect to peace of mind) the quest for indeterminate or eternal survival.

In the psyche, its entire reason for being (in the psychoevolutionary sense) is to ensure that the issues of safety and survival are actually the etymological basis of that which forms the person’s basic-wish . And as stated throughout this volume, it is the basic-wish that constitutes the basis of the entire foundation of the unconscious domain. It is there in the unconscious domain where the psyche manages the language and communication within this domain. In addition, in this unconscious arena is where a continual amorphous bombardment of chaotic stimuli is confronted by forces within this arena and which are then putatively directed to ‘treat’ this array of chaotic stimuli that continue to bombard the unconscious.

The dependence on ‘grace’ for ultimate hope of peace of mind is more understandable as a sustaining need especially due to this amorphous bombardment of chaotic stimuli reflecting a relentless and characteristic imprinting process onto the entire unconscious arena.

The Amorphous Bombardment of Chaotic Stimuli in the Unconscious Domain

Throughout the first two chapters of this volume and further, at various points therein, the phrase “amorphous bombardment of chaotic stimuli ” has, and will continue to be noted. At this point this particular phrase will be analyzed and then how it is treated (translated) in the unconscious and particularly by the psyche is proposed.

1. 1.

The general question becomes: What is an “amorphous bombardment of chaotic stimuli ?”

2. 2.

Another question becomes: Why is the phrase portrayed in the plural sense as “stimuli” and not in the singular as stimulus?

3. 3.

Another issue of this phrase that invites discussion are: Why are such stimuli defined (or actually experienced and treated rather than defined) in or by the unconscious—as “amorphous”?

4. 4.

Similarly: Why is this so-called “amorphous bombardment” referred to as a “bombardment?”

5. 5.

And: Why is the phrase “an amorphous bombardment of chaotic stimuli” now being considered in this chapter entitled—The Psyche? and,

6. 6.

Finally, why is this amorphous bombardment defined as “chaotic?

First, “amorphous bombardment” means that in the unconscious, material that manages to invade this unconscious domain is perhaps best seen as feelings (the material) that is not very ameliorative or pleasant. These are bad feelings comprised of disappointments, thwarted wishes, and so forth, that join in a symphony of an amorphous negative aggregate of formerly conscious feelings—such feelings that are instantly and frequently experienced as a cacophony, and that become specifically to be stressful experiences especially in the apparent absence of ‘grace.’

“Stressful” for Freud was a meaning equivalent to understanding the unconscious domain as one that houses socially unacceptable ideas or traumatic memories , and especially with respect to wishes—actually to the disappointment of not being able to gratify the wish—as well as to an understanding of protecting, in the psyche, of the painful emotions.

The unconscious then becomes not merely an existing institution of the personality containing simple and vague functions. Rather, because of the mechanism of defense specified and exemplified for example as repression
, the unconscious actually becomes an arena that is an institution of the personality operating as a ‘process’ and not necessarily solely as a place where things are noted as discrete ‘events.’

Therefore, in the unconscious realm (the unconscious domain), this aggregate of bad feelings (existing for any number of reasons)—certainly of what can be experienced as negative emotions (whether they may be objectively negative or not), so that these emotions such as fears , and angers, along with any number of even persistent conditioned apprehensions—can affect a person as a bombardment. The phrase, “for any number of reasons” means that when the person is thus affected by such ‘dissatispointedness’ in the contentious threat to one’s conscious reality, what becomes produced is the person’s reflexive impulse to perhaps divest oneself of the combinational effect of such disappointment and dissatisfaction.

This urgent divestment of ‘dissatispointedness’ instantaneously creates an understanding that the quickest solution to this threat to one’s safety is one of deporting the badness (the stress) from consciousness to unconsciousness. Such demotion of the badness is a reflexive non-planning event. Therefore, “amorphous bombardment of chaotic stimuli ” means an aggregate of specific emotional ‘dissatispointednesses’ (plural not singular) that is experienced as a threat-burden, like a bombardment of a lot of material (stimuli) into the person’s unconscious.

In the unconscious this aggregate of emotional ‘badness’ will need to be translated or transformed into some form that negates the badness. Rather, such transformation creates a new form. This new form is one that is identified as turning the reality of the badness derived from the conscious experience of ‘dissatispointednesses’—(essentially meaning thwarted wishes)—into this so-called new form.

It is this new form that will create the way for all of this amorphous badness to transform into something that gratifies the person’s basic-wish within the interior of the personality—and in addition that can make positive sense of it all—meaning in a way, that instead, fundamentally turns everything around so that in the transformed edification, the badness into goodness can then gratify the person’s basic-wish .

Frequently, this new form appears and is expressed as a psychological symptom .

This psychological symptom is then formed as a fantastical way of gratifying the basic-wish albeit it in a so-called perverse or neurotic form, but yet not chaotic.

It is proposed here that specifically, within the unconscious realm, it is the psyche that does the magic of transformation; that is, transforming ‘badness’ into something else—something that can translate such badness into more of a facilitating and more possible achievement of ‘grace’—of “peace of mind ,” even in the face of the presence of a symptom.

Instrumentalities of the Psyche

It is the person’s emerging new psychological symptom that symbolizes gratification of the person’s basic-wish —disregarding that in reality the basic-wish was actually denied by the impossibility in life of always getting what we want, when we want it, and to the fullest measure. Thus, life makes the ‘dissatispointed’ state more like a constant because experience teaches that life, more or less, does not cooperate. In fact, life can’t persistently cooperate because life contains too many variables that cannot in large measure be controlled. Therefore, the person is denied any kind of true omnipotence and so, in a manufactured magical sense, the psyche takes over and in a special way, does indeed make life cooperate—always.

This discovery or postulate was conceived by Freud (1900) in his classic work, The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud’s discovery was that in the unconscious, at least as related to dreams, the psyche is the instrumentality that utilizes symbolization, condensation

, displacement and secondary elaboration to transform the amorphous bombardment of stimuli from the latent chaotic dream into the manifest coherent descriptive dream.

Similarly, the psyche of the unconscious domain also transforms everything according to the instruction of the basic-wish . In these terms for example, the appearance of a psychological symptom becomes the satisfying result of such transformation engineered by the psyche. It is that Freud postulated that we love our symptoms because they represent our wishes fully gratified—albeit in wishful fantasy. It is also in this sense that as noted throughout this volume, the psyche can be understood as the engineering room of the unconscious arena.

In an analogy, it can be seen that a person is always in a relationship with some degree of semblance with reality. Such a relationship is very much like a marriage. In virtually all cultures it is understood that a marriage is never a perfect 10 on a 10-point scale. At best, and over time good marriages top out at about 7.5 with tens occurring as a result of individual events—such as a moment in time as in a leisurely candlelight dinner.

However over the process of marital relationships on a day to day basis and because of the difference in personality of the spouses, 7.5 (to an optimistic event related 8) is what we get when the marriage is a good one. The good relationship actually means continuing to struggle in the relationship, achieving a decent measure of harmony only by a series of successive approximations; that is, that such struggle needs to be understood as powerful and successful only if the psyche is able to suffer inordinately (largely because of these personality differences of a couple in a primary relationship such as a marriage).

This rather bleak or contentious proposition regarding the relative success of marriage is the reason that in marriage-ceremonies of all types the phrase “for better of for worse” is inserted in the declaration of marital commitment. If marriage was always a perfect 10, would the phrase “for better or worse” ever be needed? The point is that marital relationship always get worse because among other factors, one’s needs, feelings, and personality type are never always the same as the needs, feelings, and personality type of the other, the spouse.

An absurd example of such appearance of difficulties with respect to the discord in needs, feelings, and personality occurs between spouses when one finds the cap of the toothpaste tube missing from the toothpaste tube and suddenly feels ‘homicidal’ toward the spouse. That is the moment when the honeymoon is over and when the real work of the relationship begins.

Thus, in an attempt to understand the nature of the psyche, (to understand one’s unconscious life), the marriage, with respect to reality, will contain many ‘dissatispointments.’ What occurs is that the psyche of the unconscious mind begins to process and to treat the disarray of such bombardment of negative stimuli (anger) in order to assuage the disappointment/dissatisfaction (‘dissatispointedness’) experienced by the person—especially with respect to the importance of satisfying one’s basic-wish .

Presumably, this is the psyche’s way of keeping the marriage between the person and reality in reasonable tact. Repression and creation of psychological symptoms becomes one way that the psyche attempts to bridge differences in the person’s relation to reality.

To this point regarding the processing of stimuli that reach the unconscious in a state of disarray, Arlow and Brenner (1964), in their treatise on psychoanalytic concepts—along with Freud’s structural theory (id , ego, superego) —point out that unconscious fantasies are basic organizers of thought. Of course this very well may be a reference to the organizational power of the basic-wish . This organizational power of the psyche is even influential with a wish that can be defined as instinctual; that is to say, a wish that is conveyed in fantasy and consigned by the psyche as the psyche’s characteristic signature reflecting the communicational structure of the entire unconscious realm.

Examples of various studies on affects and the unconscious that focus on such issues include those on the ego and the affects by Pulver (1971) on affects and the unconscious and also by Pulver (1974), and by Fenichel (1954) on the unconscious and potential affects. In a sense, some affects or affective schemas of this unconscious domain that are rather completely formed (becoming more specific) then act to place pressure toward discharging the objective of the affective schema into consciousness. This is the putative reason that invites the psyche to invoke repressive measures in order to prevent the conscious mind from ‘knowing’ what is presumably best, so-to-speak, “not to know.”

Thus, this unconscious domain becomes a conflict arena in which the psyche creates a struggle for dominance between the decision to permit acting-out or the decision to prevent it. It also means that the psyche’s decision to forbid unconscious material to have access to consciousness creates the need (by the psyche) to bring to the fore repressive measures—that is to say, involving repression of material in order for such material to not see the light of day.

To this point of “knowing” or “not knowing” (consciousness versus unconsciousness) lies one of the most salient issues of all of psychoanalysis; that is, that at the bottom of the issue of ‘acting-out ’ lies the profound and simple definition of acting-out —‘doing’ instead of ‘knowing.’ Thus, if a plumb-line were to be dropped at the acting-out point into the entire domain of psychoanalytic metapsychology , each and every element in this cross-section of psychoanalytic psychology would be touched. As examples, this would include from resistance to transference, from displacement to repression , from the management of anger to passive-aggression

, from the ratio of the relative control exerted over impulse, and from primary to secondary process—all of it managed by the psyche. It was Freud (1915) who declared that repression at the core of acting-out is the “corner-stone” on which rests the entire structure of psychoanalysis. However, in early 21st century theoretical positions regarding repression , some authors disavow the traditional meaning of repression (Blum, 2003), and conceive of repression as less important than the preferred concept of “mentalization” defined as a social concept with a focus on introspection of self as well as with an understanding of others.

As far as memories are concerned, acting-out is a way of not remembering such memories —memories that feel noxious (not knowing or eliminating from consciousness such noxious memories) —and instead by supporting repression (the not knowing) of these memories . Therefore, in this sense, psychoanalytic understanding, essence, and definition of acting-out becomes arguably one of the most important (if not the most important) element of psychoanalytic thinking. Again, the definition of acting-out is, to wit:

Unconscious motivation of doing instead of conscious knowing.

In summary and to the point of how the psyche is the engineering facet of the unconscious domain, it can be hypothesized that the unconscious is frequently understood to be a place that houses the usual amorphous bombardment of stimuli which then the psyche digests and so applies the person’s basic-wish to it all. In applying the person’s basic-wish to this amorphous bombardment of stimuli , what is produced is coherence within this unconscious domain. This new coherence is born from the previously un-metabolized (or pre-metabolized) so-called stimuli that exist at first in the unconscious domain as chaotic. Therefore, the psyche may also be understood as a metabolic organ of the mental apparatus located specifically within the unconscious domain.

This metabolic process becomes the miraculous force of the psyche within the entire unconscious arena (because of the power of such presumed metabolic process) that is able to transform amorphous chaotic stimuli into cohered categories. Such transformation is generally related to impulses that are psychoanalytically identified as id , superego, and ego impulses understood also as so-called “occupational” insofar as each has a job to do.

This issue of the structure of the unconscious domain especially of its instrumentalist mechanics of the psyche, is what Freud (1915/1957) obliquely referred to regarding the interaction of epigenetic and evolutionary phenomena. It is in this sense that he defined the content of the unconscious as being phylogenetically determined (Kellerman, 1980). Similarly, Kaywin (1960), considers that the mental system is an expression (an epigenetic expression) reflecting a biological organization.

Again, in considering the role of the psyche along with the idea that a psychoevolutionary template exists in all of biological history, Plutchik (1962) conceptualizes that emotion is relevant to the entire evolutionary scale and that reference to behavioral categories and their emotion representatives correlated to the evolutionary scale necessarily means that these behavioral categories are phylogenetically differentiated and determined.

This conceptualization of the ubiquity regarding primary emotions and the issue of the relation of the basic-wish to the work of the psyche then creates the necessity to identify the issue of survival as the derivational source-meaning of this unconscious repository. Therefore, this survival-need guides evolutionary selection resulting as an example in the selection of a psychological organ—a psychological organ concerned with, and motivated by such a basic survival-need. It is this particular psychological organ, this psychological appendage, that becomes identified as the unconscious.

It is also this evolutionary product (the unconscious psychological organ) that then must possess something that can engineer what the organism needs in order to increase the probability of survival; that is, to even (or actually) increase the organisms basic psychological need for peace of mind . At least from a psychological reality of a “mind” point of view, this quest for peace of mind accompanied by the corresponding and essential quest for tension-reduction

, putatively crystallizes as the organism’s tranquilizing, unrelenting and insistent basic-wish
.

From a psychoevolutionary point of view, this new adaptational acquisition—the psyche—becomes the metapsychological so-called instrumentality within the unconscious mind. As such, the unconscious mind in its quest to support the person’s need for tension- reduction bequeaths to its evolutionary process a sequential communicational structure of the unconscious domain with the basic-wish emerging as the core power-theme of the person’s personality. It is this core power-theme that is the immediate representative of this basic-wish . Therefore, the basic-wish is the concept in greatest proximity to the ubiquitous pleasure-principle, and the power-theme of the personality correspondingly becomes most derivative of the basic-wish.[1]

With respect to a fuller understanding of instrumentalities of the psyche, the Freudian metapsychology of the dream has been, at the tail end of the 20th century and in the early 21st century, challenged by theories of various kinds. Included in these theories are questions as to the relative I.Q. of the unconscious—as in the following:

1. 1.

Asking the question as to whether the unconscious is smart or dumb (Loftus and Klinger, 1992)? The answer is that the unconscious is brilliant. However, in contrast, the unconscious is simultaneously also dumb—an illogical yet explainable contrast addressed at the end of this chapter under the subhead of—The Repetition-Compulsion

2. 2.

To the question as to whether the unconscious is adaptive (Wilson, 2001), the reasonable answer is a resounding Yes. The unconscious is ingeniously adaptive.

3. 3.

The question as to whether the unconscious is a cognitive one (Kihlstrom, (2002), is answered: Yes, it is a cognitive unconscious and an emotionally laddened one as well. Greenwald (1992), declares that unconscious cognition is conclusively anchored in empirical research.

In this sense, Hobson (1988), and Hobson, Pace-Schott, and Stickgold (2000), and in contrast to Freudian psychoanalytic dream theory proposed an activation-synthesis theory pointing out that the dream as an unconscious product may be a side-effect of neural activity. Regarding the relationship of the dream to neural activity, Francis Crick, (the Nobel Laureate who along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins discovered the fundamentals of DNA) , also worked with Graeme Michison on a neural connection theory of dreams while disregarding (even disavowing) the Freudian understanding of latent dream content (Crick and Michison, 1983).[2]

In this respect, Crick and Michison formulated a theory of dream function that considered REM sleep as nothing more than a fortification of the neural interaction of the dream; REM sleep therefore would be identified as a phenomenon designed to remove undesirable modes of interaction in networking cells in the cerebral cortex.[3]

In any event, these few examples of newer thinking contested the essence of Freud’s dream- metapsychology first explicated in his classic work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), where Freud reflected that in life the wishes of people are most frequently denied; that is, there are too many variables that cannot be controlled so that the psyche arranges for the wish to be gratified as the psyche’s constructed symptom—so that, yes, every wish will be gratified and correspondingly, no wish will ever be denied.

Thus, no matter what the wish might be, in the psyche it will be granted. In other words, by implication, the entire unconscious process—especially with respect to the psyche (the engineering room of the unconscious)—is contained a grandiose component designed not to permit wishes to be forlorn. It might be said that: Yes, the psyche is grandiose, and Yes, the psyche ‘feels’ or ‘understands’ itself also as omniscient.

The question becomes in what way will the wish be granted in the psyche? How is that possible? The fantastic answer (the discovery) by Freud was that in the psyche is the oven in which emotion/psychological material is baked—or rather—engineered. And this engineering function of the psyche results in psychological symptoms that symbolically reflect precisely the ultimate gratification of the wish, and to the fullest measure.

In an interesting way it could be said that the psyche is both angry with the world as well as grateful to it. This means that the psyche is angry with the world:

because of the world’s indifference to the wish existing in the unconscious domain.

However,

the psyche could be considered as grateful to the world because the world’s indifference to one’s wishes becomes the reason itself for the psyche’s evolutionary existence.

The psyche within the unconscious domain is an internal representation of reality modified by the profound message from the basic-wish that must be respected (complied with); that is, the psyche must comply with the wish’s algorithm. This compliance with the wish does not at all characterize the unconscious domain as a democratically based unconscious system. This is so because the pleasure-principle’s insistence for tension-reduction does not depend on the issue of fairness as that which governs its pleasure-need. Rather, the basic-wish as the most derivative product of the pleasure-principle is more likely akin to being solely a solipsistically narcissistic and even tyrannical insistence in its incessant quest for gratification of the wish.

In this sense the only governance existing in the psyche is everything and anything that will offer to the ever-present basic-wish its gratification (and as instantly as possible), and therefore, in an engineering sense, this would be continuing to offer to this basic-wish the psyche’s achievement of closure in the quest for such gratification.

Thus, if what is sought by the psyche corresponds to conditions of reality that gives to itself such closure, then the psyche’s achievement of obtaining gratification earns a checkmark for the testing of reality. On the other hand, if the external world does not cooperate in providing such efficiency in the gratification of satisfying the wish, then the psyche will engineer an alternate route (an alternate reality) in order to satisfy whatever adheres to the requirement of this basic-wish —typically in the form of the construction of a psychological symptom . The nature of such a symptom is with respect to reality-testing, an explicit falsehood, but with respect to the self , an implicit triumph. Yes, the appearance of a psychological symptom is a manufactured falsehood but only with respect to its correlation to reality.

Therefore, the psyche does the bidding of the wish, and all of it is processed within the unconscious domain—a domain that tolerates any kind of unbridled primary process material. The psychoanalytic understanding of primary-process is one that defines such material as based in the “id ” and as one that is akin to material of the inchoate latent dream

, or especially resembling the illogic of psychotic delusional or hallucinatory experiences.

In this respect and from a psychiatric point of view, the psyche, although a beautiful creation, nevertheless, in requiring everything it wants (wishes) can be diagnostically characterized as:

Obsessively demanding regarding wish-fulfillment; Hysterically highly suggestible by the message of the wish with the person being in an unrepentant swoon over the wish; Psychopathically motivated purely by need (in the absence of secondary process and reality testing) ; and,

Paranoid in dismissing anything other than what it wants—only attributing perfection to itself and imperfection to external reality. In this paranoid sense the psyche becomes a construction able to adjust ambiguity of the real external world.

With reference to the pleasure-principle, Hendrick and Hendrick (1992), and this author, (Kellerman, 2008), note that the psyche arranges it so that achievement of pleasure as a result of gratification of the wish results in a feeling of mastery which in itself is subjectively experienced as the elimination of tension. Furthermore, as a result of the psyche’s engineering work, the primacy of the templated-behavioral prototype patterns and their expressions as emotions originally operate with the motive of ultimately translating sense out of chaos. This so-called “engineering work” of the psyche concerns the refrain of the algorithm of the basic-wish —which has the affect of delivering the message of this core basic-wish of the personality throughout the unconscious domain.

The Dream and the Psyche

Briefly to summarize, with respect to divisional space of conscious to unconscious, the communicational sequence and specific emotions of the unconscious can relay instruction to the psyche to engineer the process that eventually orients the conscious (thinking) mind to know:

1. 1.

what to feel (reinforcing the tropistic sense of the particular underlying primary emotion)

;

2. 2.

that which will drive the individual to also know what to think; say, and,

3. 3.

The importance of giving to the subject the knowing of what to do—

4. 4.

in order, finally, to then gratify the basic-wish .

Rass (2017, p. 5), continues:

According to the prevalent view in evolutionary biology

, deep within our core resides unconscious natural processes that propel us to think or act in certain ways, often impulsively. Atop these biological predispositions sits a relatively recent layer of rationality defined by conscious or rational processes and modes of thinking.

Such reference to unconscious guidance systems is also referred to by Dawkins (1976), Dennett (1991, 1995), and by Damasio (2000). Freud also saw that the psyche has what may be conceived as mass of space comparing the conscious as well as unconscious ‘space’ division of the ‘entire’ mind. Freud postulated that the space of the conscious mind occupies less mass than that of the unconscious space. In addition, this greater mass of the unconscious arena is the space in which exists all of the so-called “id ” material. To fill out Freud’s conception of the structure of the mind, he also conceived of an ego and superego that evolved from the id . The ego as well as the superego are correlated with consciousness and pre-consciousness although because both evolved either directly or indirectly from the id then each also contained unconscious references.

According to Cambell (1989), this division within the psyche includes the unconscious part in which the psyche organizes its material so that the message to the conscious thinking mind is provided with the knowing ultimately of what to do. More specifically, such knowing of what to do is based upon what in the unconscious is determined and communicated through the ubiquitous unconscious algorithm that as noted, carries the message of the person’s basic-wish .

This means that in the unconscious is a communicational passageway into consciousness provided of course that in the psyche the transformation of primary-process chaotic material was already transformed into what the repression was concealing regarding the meaning of such material—as a primary consideration of what the wish wants. Thus, this communicational system of the psyche utilizes what in psychoanalysis is referred to as dream-work mechanisms; that is, the underlying latent dream is ostensibly disguised and thereby translated into the manifest descriptive dream through the use of these mechanisms identified as: condensation

, displacement, symbolism

, and secondary elaboration

. In this sense:

Condensation refers to the combining of multiple dream thoughts; Displacement refers to choosing a non-threatening figure to fix upon rather than choosing the actual suspect; Symbolism refers to the coherent meaning of the dream’s wish translated into a symbol; and, Secondary elaboration refers to the interstitial material that coheres the manifest dream as an understandable story-line in order to completely disguise the latent true meaning(s) of the dream.

The psyche utilizes such mechanisms as a way to treat the bombardment of stimuli reaching the unconscious domain. The understanding of condensation enables the psyche to partial-out the combination of multiple dream thoughts. Along with this unraveling process, an analysis of displacement enables the psyche to identify the true culprit toward whom the person feels angry. Weiten (2011) thus considers that it is in the latent content of the dream where undisguised material exists that the person’s basic–wish can be more easily seen.

If the mechanisms of condensation

, displacement, and symbolism are unraveled, the psyche then is able to reveal the coherent meaning of the dream-wish in its raw form—which in this case leaves no doubt that the dream-wish reflects a direct translation of the person’s basic personality-wish from the latent to the manifest dream. Finally, it can be seen that the psyche is perfectly attuned to the work of the secondary-elaboration in tying it all together as the manifest story-line of a dream.

An aspect of the work of the psyche is to utilize these mechanisms to code the dream (as well as to decode it) in order to be comply with the internal messaging of the unconscious which always needs to be congruent with the person’s basic-wish . In addition, the fantastic work of the psyche can create diagnostic anomalies regarding those individuals who because of personal pathological traumas become transformed into fractured personalities.

Examples of these personality anomalies include pathological personality phenomena such as those of amnesiacs, conversion hysterics, dissociative identity disordered types (also historically known as demon possession, or alternate personality, or split personality, or multiple personality) along with other more unusual psychiatric disorders (Boyce & Ellis, 2005). Other psychiatric pathological anomalies can include: “the Orchid syndrome ” (meaning super sensitivity to context), or the “Othello syndrome ” (meaning delusional jealousy), or the “Convade” syndrome (meaning the presence of a sympathetic pregnancy).

Still, other such interesting psychiatric anomalies include the enosiophobic reaction defined as fear of having committed a sin (an imagined state), or its allied disorder of pseudomania (meaning the presence of a “shame psychosis”), or hypnagogic states that are hallucinatory, or even the Kundalini syndrome that refers to a so-called primal energy (or Shakti) awakened by the practice of Mantra or simple meditation, and also triggered by near-death experience, or by other intense trauma.

All of these samples of psychiatric anomalies are generally considered to be housed in the unconscious and guarded by the psyche. Further, these anomalies are symptomatically understood to be formed, as stated above, to account for a psychological fracture of the personality—especially with regard to a basic-wish that had been contaminated or fragmented. This possible fragmentation means that the basic-wish was underscored by high-conflict- polarities of primary emotions having the effect of interfering with the meaning of the wish.

Thus, it is the psyche that is responsible to either cleanse this basic-wish or construct some accompanied new construct that enables this wish to be transformed into a symptom that is free of contamination in the sense of organizing emotion, emotion-defenses, cognition, and personality traits able to contribute to a ‘mind’ that can function with less conflict.

The Psyche and the Mind

The psyche is defined as roughly equivalent to “mind,” although also seen as an overarching conception of mind, where organization of emotion, cognition, as well as personality dynamics, are governed (Kellerman, 2009). Along with this (and as cited earlier) the psyche is also grandiose, (will not settle for anything less than what it wants), narcissistic (solipsistically so), and omniscient due to its introjected self) the purpose of which is to approximate the desired sense of persona (Kellerman, 2009).

The success of the psyche in transforming gratification of the wish into a symptom is as earlier referred to based upon a trick. The trick is that such constantly gratified wishes prevail in disguise—in the form of psychological/emotional symptoms that are formed to represent each wish. With respect to wishes then, since in reality wishes are infrequently gratified, then even when a wish might be realized or gratified, it is frequently not realized to the fullest measure. And even when the wish is actually to whatever extent realized, it is not usually realized exactly when the subject would have wanted it realized. This is what is meant by the person’s presumed natural proclivity to feel at least somewhat disappointed or to feel frustrated—or even angry—about the failure of a disappointing wish—to whatever extent. By implication, it may not be far-fetched to posit an underlying low-intensity intermittent ‘dissatispointedness’ as a steady-state ubiquity of the human condition based upon the typical low percentage level of immediately gratified wishes.

In the discussion regarding a psychoanalytic understanding in the curing of a symptom, this author (Kellerman, 2008), provides a personality template in order to enable a peering into the infrastructure of personality itself, perhaps to see what transpires in the so-called engineering room of the psyche. Along with such a formulation of the wish and its vicissitudes (in the non-symbolic reality-sense), experiencing an infrequency of gratification of such wishes understandably generates, as stated, a typical disappointing result. That is to say, that in life, frustration is ubiquitous with respect to wishes and this necessarily means that correspondingly, so is feeling dissatisfied, disappointed, and angry.

It is proposed that in a clinical practice sense (Kellerman, 2018), that in the formation of symptoms, the wish will have been thwarted by some circumstance involving another person. When such thwarting occurs, the subject will then feel disappointed, dissatisfied, disempowered. Parenthetically, if the wish had been in fact realized, then the subject would have felt empowered—and gratified wishes are empowering. The reflexive emotional response to disempowerment is to be angry because:

anger is always experienced as a re-empowerment.

The issue is that no one wants to be disempowered. The anger, because of the feeling of disempowerment—along with the circumstance that prevents the anger from being expressed directly to the other (to the person who thwarted the wish)—is then repressed. When the anger is repressed, it then “takes” the person. This means that the anger does what anger does—it attacks. In this case it attacks the subject—the self! It is then that the psyche begins its transformational work within the unconscious domain of denying the disappointment regarding the abnegation of the wish; that is, that the psyche then transforms the disappointment regarding the abnegation of the wish into a symbolic actual gratification of the wish—the symbolic gratification—the symptom!

The dynamic sequence of the unconscious process and the language that determines this process can be understood as follows: Metapsychologically, the psyche is seen to be the mechanistic part of the thinking process. The psyche becomes the engineering mechanism of unconscious cognition presumably becoming infused with what is mandated by the unconscious ‘mind.’ However, it is within the unconscious domain that such an unconscious mind contains impulses generated by the person’s basic-wish . And it is this basic-wish that is at the core of, and that is embedded in (and defines) the person’s personality algorithm.

Thus, in a metapsychological summary, the algorithmic language of the wish determines the nature of the instruction that the unconscious mechanism of the psyche can inform the conscious mind as to what is necessary to feel, to think, to say, and to do, in order to gratify the person’s self-same core wish.

Paulson (2017, p. 10) quotes the neuropsychoanalyst, Mark Solms, with respect to a further understanding of the unconscious. Solms states that in the brain there exists:

….an intentional agent [the unconscious] that’s part of you; that’s making decisions, driving your volitional activities without your awareness. Most importantly, it resists self-knowledge.

It should be noted that the unconscious resists self-knowledge because the wish wants what the wish wants—period! The wish is not interested in introspection and speculation. Paulson continues to comment indicating that it is therefore necessary to “regard the unconscious as a mind.” To this must be added that the unconscious is perhaps best considered as a solipsistic mind, and as also a delusional one, insofar as the unconscious only creates its own facts based upon, as stated—whatever the wish desires; that is, the person wants what the person wants and even if other variables intervene to minimize or otherwise discount what the person wants, nevertheless in the unconscious realm the person will still want what the person wants!

Because of the psyche’s ability to form psychological symptoms then the person will in one way or another (in reality or in fantasy) always be wishfully gratified. Thus, in basic psychoanalytic terms, powerful psychological forces are always arranged in the psyche as a result of the basic-wish of the personality. In addition, it must be understood that the wish exists as the chief representative of the pervasive evolutionary-based pleasure-principle underpinned and underscored by primary emotions

—always in the service of survival.

As an analogy, in trying to identify what a person’s basic-wish would be, the issue, it seems, inches toward an irrepressible answer embedded in the pleasure-principle; that is, that the pleasure principle is the progenitor of the wish’s ‘wanting’—again, underpinned by the sustained meaning of primary emotions

. The answer therefore to the question as to how the person’s wish becomes defined (along with its logic) seems to be that the objective of the wish (its content and its nature) is presumably not to need to wait. Instant gratification is the issue. In this sense, after receiving instruction from the algorithmic message reverberating throughout the unconscious realm (the unconscious mind), the psyche takes over and instantly begins to microwave the thwarted wish into the symptom. No waiting!

Along with this notion of a psyche, is the further idea of examining so-called laws of the psyche and then of also noting that the psyche is a domain where psychological products are produced. Two such products attributed or ascribed to the psyche are phenomena of the emotion-defense of projection as well as that emphasized earlier, of the emotion-defense of repression
. In psychoanalytic understanding, because of repression , projection becomes a progenitor of acting-out . For example, in the paranoid character, the projection is defined as everything outside of the self is toxic or—bad—so that within, everything that is attributed to the self is—good.

The person’s repression is always standing-by in order to prevent any interference in such a paranoid person’s understanding about who is the one who is really good and who is the one who is really bad; that is, the paranoid person wants nothing to do with the awareness of a sense of personal and actual profound inferiority feelings as well as consequent sustained inadequacy feelings. Were such a person to be able to nullify this repressive force and then correspondingly be able to introspect this issue, the ‘uh-oh’ experience would be the beginning of a sentence that, in the person’s conscious mind would perhaps say:

Uh-oh, I think this means it is I who feels to be the one who is bad and that’s what I really don’t want to feel. So what I do instead is to project my inferiority onto the world and therefore the world is identified as the bad one instead of identifying me as the bad one.

As stated throughout this volume, and also worth repeating, is the psychoanalytic definition of acting-out as simply “doing” something rather than “knowing” it; that is, projecting something (as in identifying with it) but then simultaneously disavowing this something as having anything to do with the self . This disavowal is considered a projective-identification.

It is then that the conscious paranoid-logic proclaims that everything bad or inadequate is on the outside while everything good is on the inside. To this point, and as noted earlier, parenthetically it could be proposed that very likely if one were to drop a plumb-line from acting-out , the line would necessarily touch each and every metapsychological psychoanalytic precept including, as examples, that of the emotion-defense of projection as well as the emotion-defense of projective-identification.

Paulson (p. 10), asserts that Freud distinguished between thinking and feeling insofar as he addressed the cognitive unconscious and considered that just because something is not crystallized in thought doesn’t mean it isn’t felt. As an analogy, this kind of conceptualization relates as much to acting-out as it does to the entire process of symptom formation; that is, that un-crystallized thought is to feeling as acting-out is to symptom-formation. With respect to this metapsychological sequence of communication in the unconscious, it is proposed that the range of the unconscious linkages—even to the extent of ascending into consciousness—exists as follows:

Imperatives such as the tropistic nature of the structure of primary emotions are linked to the pleasure-principle and then derivatively to the wish. Thereby the affect of such primary emotions instantly permeates the entire unconscious domain (especially focused on the psyche). In this sense, the possibility then exists of the power of this unconscious sequential communicational structure, when necessary, to be able to transmit to the conscious mind that which needs to be felt, thought, said, and done — always in the service of the basic- wish.

Based upon the foregoing, the wish emerges as the core power-theme of the personality. The wish composes its personality algorithm and informs the unconscious mind as to what the unconscious mind needs to be concerned with as well as how to manage whatever material is being repressed. In this respect, contents of the unconscious domain (its incubational process and calibrational ability) also contain wish-derivatives in the service of facilitating the coherence of personality as for example in the person’s ego-management and calibration of impulse in relation to control. This management function in turn yields a measure of intrapsychic balance which in psychoanalytic terms consists of the balance between id and superego (impulse and control)

—with the ego as the emulsifier. In other words, with respect to one’s personality, and with respect to mental/emotional balance, the question becomes: Which is in the ascendancy, impulse or control?

Whatever is the answer to this question regarding the impulse/control ratio is then communicated in the unconscious to the psyche—at which point the psyche knows what to do insofar as its communication with the conscious domain then generates the conscious organization as to the feeling, thinking, saying, and doing sequence—the ultimate objective of which is to gratify the basic-wish . Presumably, this sequence, this stream of metapsychological process, then creates the condition out of which tension is thought to recede.

Rass (2017, p. 5) points out that such behavioral regulation

(balance between impulse and control)

does not merely depend on “genes, temperament, or social support,” but instead relies also largely upon “….our capacity to identify and overcome the automatic impulses and emotions that influence every aspect of our waking lives.”

The qualifier here is that Freud’s axiom that “consciousness is curative” seems to be insufficient as a definition of “consciousness.” The point is that consciousness is indeed curative but only if what becomes conscious is that of repressed anger, as well as identifying ‘the who,’ the person toward whom the anger is directed (the identified ‘other’) who originally thwarted the wish.

This issue of the unconscious process that ends up in the formation of a symptom is developed into an axiom regarding emotion and emotion-defense (Kellerman, 2008).

To wit:

Where there is repressed anger, there must be a symptom.

Where there is no repressed anger, not only will there not be a symptom, there cannot be a symptom.

The question becomes: How is it possible that the psyche is thus intellectually gifted and at the same time severely intellectually challenged? The following section entitled The Repetition-Compulsion will attempt to answer this seemingly puzzling issue.

The Repetition-Compulsion

Again, the question becomes: How is it that the psyche can be both brilliant and dumb—simultaneously? This issue was raised in an earlier sub-section of this chapter under the heading: “Instrumentalities of the Psyche.” A clinical example follows that possibly explains this seeming contradiction.

A young woman, 22 years of age, was referred to treatment by a family member because she was apparently heart-broken by the break-up of her relationship with a married man. This man was more than 30 years her senior. At the time of their clandestine relationship this man was a bit over 50 and had already celebrated his 25th wedding anniversary. The patient related that he and his wife originally met on a train station. Apparently this patient and this man had been consistently taking the train at the same time for about a year until one day, independently, they both were running to catch it and out of breath, barely did.

The patient claimed that this man, soon to be her lover, told her he no longer felt the so-called once in a life-time romance with his wife and instead confessed that he had been furtively glancing at this patient for the past year when they were both on the train at the same time—even before they became personally familiar with one another. The patient said she was surprised when realizing the parallel between how these lovers met and how this man and his wife also met—on a train.

Our patient also confessed that while he had been observing her, she had been observing him as well. At that point they continued talking whenever they ran into one another on their morning commute. At one point they agreed to meet at a quiet spot. Soon thereafter their consistent furtive assignations began. These lasted for about half a year. The patient also reported that her lover and his wife were no longer sexually involved but together still focused on their two late adolescent sons and that this focus comprised the basis of their current non-sexual platonic relationship.

Other than her story about their meeting on the train, our patient began her treatment talking more or less about her childhood—a childhood characterized by extreme trauma. Her mother was alcoholic and her father was reported by her to be a sadistic and brutal person who aiming at her head, once swung at her with a hammer but at that precise moment, she moved away in time so the blow only struck her on the side of the head nevertheless causing her to be hospitalized with a serious injury. She stated that in her growing-up years she couldn’t remember any time of her young life where she had felt safe or even had ever been lovingly embraced.

During this time with her, her lover confessed to his wife that he wanted to separate. His wife then retained a private detective to investigate whatever could be found regarding the history of her husband’s girlfriend (our patient) whose name the wife had uncovered.

Much was found. Apparently, this 22 year old young woman (our patient) was somewhat delinquent (just about psychopathic). She had a history of being unable to work at a steady job and finally settled on a life of modeling. She had modeled her hands washing with a specific brand of soap. The soap commercial was seen for some months on TV but her face and full body, her persona, was never visible in the commercial. In addition, despite what she told this man abut her many talents, the truth uncovered by the private detective was that she was a perennial liar and previously, starting when she was sixteen, had two other affairs with married men.

Both men were identified by the detective and interviewed. It was reported by each of these men that this young woman had the insidiously flagrant and triumphant intent on breaking up their marriages. The patient had also at that time begun to report on these affairs and confessed that she had experienced fantasies of breaking-up any relationship she could. She reported this as a palpable pleasurable feeling. She exemplified it by declaring that she was simply neutral about the affect of such a break-up on her first lover’s only child, who in her fantasy would be screaming and terrified hearing that: “Daddy is leaving and he won’t be coming home anymore!”

The same was the case with the second man who had two daughters (one, three years of age and another, three months of age).

Apparently, our patient had assured all three men that their children would love her when they got to know her so that everything will be alright. She also told each of these men that she wanted to have children with them.

Despite our patient’s ability to attract men and to have them do her bidding, nevertheless these relationships always ended because of her inability to sustain a pose of normalcy. In this last case with the man on the train, their break-up ended because he also apparently and eventually felt that although beautiful and sexy, she was not quite normal and instead was somewhat infantile and terribly damaged, ostensibly by the relentless traumas of her childhood.

The therapist quickly grasped the basic dynamic that comprised this woman’s conflict. It was as a perfect illustration of what Freud conceptualized as a repetition-compulsion
. Briefly defined, the function of repeating a trauma was to consciously and ostensibly create the same trauma in the present tense that isomorphically reflected the trauma as the one experienced growing up.

The issue is that to repeat the trauma with surrogate children is the unconscious fantasized objective for the purpose of causing these children pain and then presumably curing her original trauma—the trauma of her severely destabilized childhood.

The sickest unexpected result of this hopeful although unconscious fantasy of curing the abuse of her childhood by causing such abuse in other children, of course, in reality, never happens. All that happens is the continued repetition of causing trauma. And here is the main point of the repetition-compulsion that was pointed out by Freud. It is the psyche’s brilliance in thinking that to repeat the trauma could lead to curing it. The reality however is that not a trace of virtuosity exists in this infantile wish to cure anything. Rather, all that happens is the need to keep repeating the induction of trauma.

In such a case the psyche is intellectually challenged because the wish to cure (in the sense of repetition) only creates the reality of harm. Thus, the puzzle of the psyche being simultaneously both brilliant and dumb is solved insofar as the psyche has brilliant ideas about how to do something in fantasy, but is quite dumb about the vicissitudes of it happening in reality.

In addition, the therapist pointed out that our patient’s TV work as a disembodied person washing her hands could also be understood as an enosiophobic act of ridding herself of her brutalized and sadistic childhood traumatic poison. However, because it was only a TV commercial, the enosiophobic-pseudomania was basically that of a shame-psychosis implemented by the psyche’s effort to create endless repetitions of early traumas underscored by spurious assumptions.

Conclusion

The entire architecture of the psyche (involving all of the above discussion of its properties) is of course understood herein to be texturally composed of the system of basic emotion tropistic categories insofar as the language inherent in emotion is what enables the psyche to engineer certain undertakings especially with respect to unconscious communication dedicated to addressing the pleasure-principle’s basic-wish .

In the following Chap. 4, the understanding of communicational sequence within the unconscious domain will introduce the action of basic emotions to the entire language of the unconscious. Again, it is an issue of a focus on the vicissitudes of the unconscious domain with respect to understanding its communicational system and the emotional basis of that system.

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Footnotes

1

How such a basic-wish is formed will be discussed forthwith in Chap. 4 on: History of the Psycho/Evolutionary Theory of Emotions.

2

On a personal note, this author (Kellerman, 2004), composed a letter to Professor Crick inviting him to do two psychoanalytic sessions in order to reveal the presence of clinical phenomena of Freudian dream theory. This proposal was not designed to foreclose the validity of neural networks as they relate to dreams. The idea was for Crick to report a dream of the previous night in order to trace the elements of the dream, and to attempt to identify dynamics relevant to Crick’s life as well as to discuss it all at both sessions. At the time Crick was living and working in La Jolla, California. The letter to Professor Crick was never mailed. He died the very next day on July 28, 2004.

3

The essential X-ray diffraction image of the DNA was provided by Rozalind Franklin who died several years prior to the Nobel award and whose name was therefore excluded in this first among equals of the Nobel.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

H. KellermanThe Unconscious Domainhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35009-3_4

4. Primary Emotions and the Unconscious

History of the Psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotions

Henry Kellerman[1]

(1) Private Practice, New York, NY, USA

Language-Meaning and Emotion

At the start it can be announced that the realm of the unconscious (as is usual with any realm) is defined as a phenomenon comprised of the constituents of its realm. The variables that comprise this unconscious realm have been identified in the previous chapter with respect to how these variables of this unconscious realm, relate one to the other; that is, describing the functions of such variables within the unconscious. What was revealed displays the actual sequence of the communicational structure of the unconscious. It was pointed out that the importance of understanding such a communicational sequence sheds light on how one’s conscious feelings, thinking, and behavior are essentially governed by this unconscious communicational system.

All of it can be seen as necessarily related to:

fundamental issues of language-meaning within the system of emotion.

which leads us into a deeper facet of this communicational system along with seeing how it all relates to survival and thereby necessarily relates also to implications for the evolutionary appearance of an unconscious domain.

This language-meaning within the system of emotions is, it is proposed, in turn, governed by an algorithm of personality. This algorithm (as referred to earlier) refers to the process that combines various elements that in tandem act, no less, to cohere the personality. Such a cooperative communicational system of the unconscious means that cohesion of the personality is what creates the person’s personality as an identifiable entity. It is further proposed that it all starts (that this communicational sequence starts)—and ends—with the person’s basic source-wish. It is this basic-wish that informs the unconscious mind what it, the wish wants.

Yet, as noted, the possibility of the need for an unconscious domain actually begins with the language of the emotions — all in the service of survival and tension-reduction

— a derivative of the need for peace of mind that in essence refers to an absence of any threat to existence and in contrast, to the assurance of survival.

Based upon this sequence of unconscious sequential communicational structure, and as stated, the content of the wish emerges as the core power-theme of the personality. This elemental wish is what defines the personality algorithm—the ‘key’ in which the personality algorithm is heard. This algorithm of the wish informs the unconscious mind as to what the unconscious mind needs to be concerned with. In addition, the content of the algorithm instructs the unconscious mind as how to manage other sorts of emotion-defense components (such as in how to manage repression) —the key emotion-defense of the unconscious domain.[1]

When invoking emotion-defenses such as that of repression , it can be deduced that just as the unconscious mind is controlled by the basic-wish , so too is the wish informed by what the emotion-language communicates regarding the dictates of its emotion-tropistic nature.

Thus, as a basic principle of what this tropistic nature means is that the algorithm of the personality (meaning essentially of the wish) can be considered to be emanating from instructions issued by the emotions and giving to the basic-wish its impetus, its impulse. This impulse in turn sets off the sequence of communication in the unconscious mind ending in the person’s active pursuit of the goal—the gratification of the wish.

All of this sequential communicational system of the unconscious qualifies as the defined operative working procedure which is proposed as designed in evolution to ultimately (and hopefully) gratify the wish. Of course it is a hopeful gratification of the wish because the subject cannot control all of life’s variables and vicissitudes so that whether the wish ultimately and actually obtains gratification in its interface with the real world is usually an iffy situation.

However, as also postulated throughout this volume, when the psyche is unable to invite cooperation from the world in order to gratify the wish, the psyche will instead then form a psychological symptom that indeed satisfies the basic-wish —albeit in fantasy. Therefore, the result of this process ending in conscious “doing,” (whether in fantasy or in reality) relates to decisions regarding conscious thinking that may or may not lead to actual “doing” (in the service of complying with the wish), always with an eye toward defining and accomplishing what the “doing” means.

And to repeat: What the “doing” means is to ultimately do what needs to be done in order to gratify the basic-wish —again, either in reality or, instead, in fantasy as a psychological symptom
. However, it needs to be remembered that the entire process of trying to gratify the wish is driven by the instruction given by the innately thinking-loaded primary-emotion directed to the unconscious mind—which is then in turn, transmitted by the wish-message permeating this unconscious mind with respect to the sequence of communication ultimately and algorithmically calibrated by the psyche.

At this point in the communicational process the important focus on the psyche implies that the psyche, as mentioned, can be considered the engineering room of the unconscious domain. However, although the psyche receives the message that has ostensibly permeated the entire unconscious arena, nevertheless, basic psychoevolutionary emotion prototypes (in the service of the increase in survival probabilities) are in the metapsychological form actually those elements that are ‘primary emotional givens’ supporting and ultimately configuring the final form of the basic-wish . Therefore, underlying emotional forces support the work of the psyche.

According to the cognitive scientist, Damasio (2000), the presence of emotion is able to contribute estimates of value to any number of interactional circumstances. This understanding of how Damasio sees the value of emotion is very much related to how the basic emotion categories (invariant at all phylogenetic levels) and their derived aggregate of basic primary emotions are profoundly instrumental in evolution:

in the sense of ultimately producing nothing less than the evolutionary incubation and birth of the unconscious domain.

Therefore, in terms of evolutionary survival-implications does this mean that the primary emotions or their basic behavioral prototype categories can be seen as the actual progenitor of the unconscious; or, in addition, are the primary emotions possibly also the signal-variable in the evolution of the Homo sapien personality?

The presumptive answer in both cases could be a resounding Yes. It is in this sense that the psychoevolutionary theory of emotion referred to throughout this volume and conceived by the scientist and experimental psychologist, Plutchik (1958, 1962, 1980a, 1980b), becomes a theoretical verification of the oscillations of evolution as such development relates specifically to the birth of the unconscious domain—especially as such an unconscious arena operates and functions in Homo sapiens .

In an outpouring of publications (scientific papers and books) by Plutchik, this work points to Plutchik’s theory as useful insofar as it can encompass the various and necessary antecedents to an explanation of the theory’s ability to bridge one phylogenetic level to another. In this sense, Plutchik is standing on Darwinian shoulders and offering to Darwin’s theory of evolution specificity with respect to how—and even why—emotion develops, appears, and in essence becomes vital during the process of evolution.

Further, such emotions during evolutionary process appear as derivative of the referred-to primary behavioral categories—first as such behavioral derivatives affect earlier phylogenetic levels, and then later in evolution—ultimately as prototype patterns expressing their intentions as emotions that operate to make sense out of chaos in the birth and full development of the unconscious domain—again, finally seen in Homo sapiens .

Thus, such derivative emotion formations are based on these prototype categories appearing in the form of emotion. In a series of studies and several books this author (Kellerman, 1979, 1980, 1987, 1990, 2008, 2020), (practicing as psychologist/psychoanalyst), has entered the discussion of Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary theory of emotion by proposing that the theory is also of seminal use in understanding the formations and levels of personality. These levels and formations of personality (and specifically of the birth of the unconscious)—lends meaning to how the unconscious becomes correspondingly essential in the birth of personality—as well as to all of the mechanics and vicissitudes of personality structure.

In over a half century, this conception of the emotions and their relations to personality and the unconscious was in the psychological literature connected by Plutchik and by Kellerman in many of the above noted publications specifically covering the emotions and their connection to such levels and formations of personality. To this point Rappaport and Gill (1959) offer the contribution that correlates innate phenomena with other psychological systems.

An example of this postulate correlating an innate system to other psychological systems also can be seen by the work of Kellerman on the various levels of personality based upon this Plutchikian psychoevolutionary theory of emotions. This work that examines the relation of emotion to other levels of personality is cited throughout this volume. It is a treatise correlating the innate system of primary emotions

(underpinned by primary prototype behavioral categories) to these other levels of personality. These other systems or levels of personality have included:

- The relation of emotion to:

- Psychological defenses,

- Personality traits,

- Cognitions,

- Clinical diagnoses,

- Dreams and nightmares,

- Psychosomatic/psychophysiological conditions, and especially to—

- Psychological symptoms as symptoms are constructed in the unconscious domain by the psychological mechanism identified in the unconscious as the ‘psyche’.

In order to examine this theory of psychoevolution , emotion, and personality—especially as it ultimately will be seen as a critical factor in how the unconscious domain is architecturally designed to work—it is necessary to first relate these issues (evolution, prototype behavioral categories, and emotion) to the logical birth of the unconscious domain and its corresponding critical function in the cohesion and coherence of personality.

This critical function of the unconscious domain is possible to exist because of this ostensible absolute congealing regarding the entire unconscious arena—an arena that becomes governed by the fantastical work of the psyche as well as by the untiring work of the entire phenomenon of the unconscious that underpins all of personality formation including for example the above reference to emotions, defenses, traits, cognitions, diagnoses, dreams and nightmares, psychophysiological conditions, and psychological symptoms .

The Language of Primary Emotions

The language of the primary emotions would necessarily need to be based upon the logic as to how each of these emotions (derived from their corresponding prototype behavioral categories) were presumably providing meaning as each of the primary emotions were selected in evolution to accommodate the fundamental need of survival. This means that in order for evolution to continue to fuel its forward movement, putatively, it becomes the variable of adaptation —the core element of such motivation—for evolution to continue to evolve—especially with respect to making sense of such progression—of such ‘evolving’.

To this point, Weinrich (1980), states that every emotion must have an evolutionary history. In a pre-emotion state where virtual language (at lower levels) is essentially part of primary prototype categories, then, in a sense, parthenogenetically-like, ascending with the increasing higher phylogenetic levels will be formed representative emotions. Within these representative emotions of primary prototypes, it is suggested, is contained language-meaning.

With respect to tracing this evolutionary history of emotion, it would become necessary to understand that considering the antecedent history of an emotion, at its most historic antecedent, we would therefore historically reach each primary emotion’s basic corresponding prototype behavioral category.

As referred to earlier in this volume it is Plutchik’s position that these prototype behavioral categories are invariant at all phylogenetic levels although in higher forms—such as in Homo sapiens —such categories are visible and assessed in their representative form as primary emotions

. In essence this issue regarding ‘origins’ is also pointed out by Emde, Gaensbauer, and Harmon (1976) in a biobehavioral study who state that: “…affects are primary signals.” According to Kellerman (2020), the origin of language (the language of language) exists and emerges out of these genetically given primary emotions

.

Weinrich also states that in the Darwinian sense, since evolutionary adaptations are based on natural selection, emotions are all fundamentally “positive” in that they are ways that help individuals increase their reproductive success. Along with this clarifying Weinrichian conception and according to Munphy (1983), the main point is that emotional expression in fact does indeed contribute to survival.

Fundamentally, this also means that it is necessary to translate the language of each of the primary emotions into a narrative of what each of the primary emotions

‘is saying.’ This understanding of what the emotion is saying is important in order to see how it might be possible that specifically the primary emotions

(with respect to what they ‘are saying’), might correspondingly be actually defining in narrative form that which governs a positive outcome in that particular emotion’s function with regard to survival.

Again, according to this author (Kellerman, 2020), in his book, The Origin of Language, it is proposed that ‘meaning’ itself is indeed innate although inherent in the basic composition and instrumentality of the primary emotions

. “Composition” of the primary emotions is identified here as the entire complement of the few emotions that are primary in contrast to all other emotions that develop as personality trait-formations based upon mixtures of these primaries: e.g. sorrow + anger = envy, protest , [disdain] (Plutchik, 1962, p. 118).

“Instrumentality” of the primary emotions refers to the relationship between primary emotions

(those we see in humans and animals) along with corresponding behaviors that also can be identified all along the phylogenetic scale from the single celled amoeba to humans. These ubiquitous behaviors at all phylogenetic levels are referred to by Plutchik (1980a), as basic prototype behaviors

. To this point , MacLean (1986, p. 69), states: “…the investigation of emotions and their inferred underlying subjective states (affects) may be widened to include animals as well as human beings.”

The essence of the matter is that at some point during evolutionary development, particular emotions appear as representative of each of these prototype behaviors . Thus, language is proposed as what indeed can be identified as an innate Chomskyian (1976) state which identifies Noam Chomsky at the helm of considering language to be innate. Yet, the aim here is to identify and demystify the where in such innateness is this suffused so-called language located?

The answer to: ‘Where is this language located,?’ is given in the treatise of this present volume insofar as the demystification of where such innateness exists points to its location as existing suffused within the primary emotion prototype-categories. Further, set forth in the following is a listing of the primary emotions

(how many and which) and how to understand these primary emotions with respect to how they relate one to the other. In addition will be set forth what such an organizational relationship can mean with respect to the unconscious domain?

The first step in answering the where issue, i.e. where language is located, concerns the relationship between emotion proper and what emotion means as it is referred to as in some way equivalent to what herein is defined as prototype behaviors ; that is to say, prototype behavioral-categories (Plutchik, 1962, 1980a, 1980b). The second step is to understand that primary emotions are basic so that each of the primaries is mandated by a tropistic need. The tropistic need is a uni-dimensional instruction in the so-called DNA of each primary emotion

; that is, that each primary emotion carries with it a uni-dimensional tropistic demand.

It needs to be noted that because of the uni-dimensional tropistic nature of each primary emotion

, each of these primaries therefore has no choice but to obey the fundamental instruction of its tropistic (uni-dimensional) nature that is, presumably complying with its DNA instruction. For example, the emotion of fear only wants to flee, that of anger only to attack, disgust only wants to eject, and so forth.

Once it is seen that each emotion’s DNA , (it’s tropism) , has within its nature, its distinct tyrannical instruction—that is, that structurally each primary emotion must behave according to its nature—then the implication can be drawn indicating the presence of a new phenomenon—one seemingly hidden in plain sight. This new phenomenon concerns the very nature of the emotion/behavior prototype-system itself. This is a new phenomenon because it raises the question as to the relationship of each primary emotion to any other of the structural systems inherent in a person’s entire personality response pattern or profile. An example would be to show how, for example, the emotion of fear could relate to the personality levels of: personality traits, emotion-defenses, and clinical diagnosis.

Because it is proposed that primary emotions

(or their corresponding prototype behavioral-categories) adhere only to their own tropistic mandate, then it is a small step to postulate that:

Primary emotions are actually outside of civilization.

This means that primary emotions do not necessarily—or even at all—depend upon social norms of relating. For example, anger as a primary emotion

, wants to attack—period! That is what it wants; that is its wish. Importantly, this also means that:

Each primary emotion contains a basic-wish.

However , it also can be seen that because of social norms, each individual is then able to impose certain dynamic forces against the emotion’s tropistic need—as for example with respect to the anger-emotion and to whatever extent it is possible to tame it, direct it, dilute it, or displace this tropistic anger-emotion onto some other object. This is where culture within civilization has the ability to triumph over this other-worldly force—the primary prototype emotions that do not automatically, or even reflexively respond to the requirements of civilized norms.

The contrast in this internecine struggle between what the emotion wants (what is its wish), is on the one hand a struggle between the nature of how the primary emotions are structured (meaning the emotional system’s sense of irrelevancy with respect on the one hand to what civilization—or reality—wants or needs, and on the other hand, regarding the requirements of civilized living itself. The dynamic force of a person’s personality is thus equipped with methods to potentially control both the nature of a primary emotion along with influencing the intent of such a primary emotion

—its wish—in order then to align this other worldly system of the primary emotion

-system, indeed, to the mores and folkways of culture and the social norms of civilization—to whatever possible extent.

Further, this internecine struggle can almost be framed as a struggle for control and stability between the all powerful adaptational evolutionary force (responsible for this outside-of-civilization emotion-system)

and civilization’s development in the understanding of dynamic psychoanalytic psychologies—especially in the sense of seeing how personality is influenced by civilizational/cultural forces.

The intrinsic dynamic of such psychoanalytic principles offers a more sophisticated understanding of the intersection and interaction of given personality forces and the effect of culture and personality on these personality forces. This kind of dialectic suggests how something so alien (the emotion forces outside of civilization) then become possibly compliant or relatively managed with respect to such civilizational/cultural influence.[2]

Ultimately and in a clinical sense, it all means that psychological understandings were developed regarding the processes and instrumentalities that enabled transformation of abnormal, bizarre, delusional and other such pathological phenomena (that had bombarded the unconscious domain) into more manageable logical forms—into more of a controlled state essentially calibrated by the defense-mechanism of repression
. This use of repression meant that learning to control the emotions possibly would have ameliorative effects on enabling people to struggle better because disturbing or pathological stimuli could be, with respect to consciousness, psychologically temporarily anesthetized.[3]

The “struggling better” is the issue of controlling potentially out-of-control feelings, thinking, and behavior until such time that possible therapeutic intervention can address existing problems within the psyche so that psychological intervention could then possibly have an ameliorative affect on pathological phenomena.

In this sense, the hope is for repression to lift—but in the service of true ameliorative results as testament to therapeutic analysis and the vicissitudes of such discussion (and therapeutic experience), whereby the psychological therapy becomes a bridge to the direction of improved emotional health and functioning—in the real world.

Primacy of the Emotions

With respect to repression , the algorithm of the basic-wish can then inform the unconscious mind as to what the unconscious mind needs in order to be concerned with how to manage other sorts of components of the entire unconscious domain. An example of such management of one of the most important facets of the unconscious arena, is the engineering of integrating the emotion-defense component of repression into a powerful tool that keeps the material of the unconscious arena unconscious—that is to say, out of the person’s awareness.

When invoking emotion-defenses such as the emotion-defense of repression , it can be deduced that just as the unconscious mind is controlled by the basic-wish , so too is the wish informed (and to whatever extent influenced) by what the emotion-language communicates or ‘wants’ with respect to the dictates of its (the emotion’s) tropistic nature.

To summarize, the basic intention of the psyche means that the definition of this entire engineering process with respect to the communicational sequence of the unconscious domain can be traced as follows:

1. 1.

The influence of the basic behavioral category

2. 2.

to its tropistic primary emotion

3. 3.

to the psyche

4. 4.

to the algorithm of the basic-wish

5. 5.

to the communicational sequence within the entire unconscious domain

6. 6.

to utilizing the emotion-defense of repression in order to sustain material of the unconscious as safe and protected thereby creating then an equilibrium in the unconscious domain of peace of mind through tension-reduction

.

This tropistic nature of a primary emotion is a reference to its uni-dimensional emotional DNA ; that is to say that each primary emotion has a single objective. For example: fear , at rock bottom, wants to flee; anger, wants to attack; sorrow , basically wants to bemoan; joy wants to celebrate. These are examples of some of the few primary emotions with respect to their tropisms , their singular DNA instructions.

Thus, as a basic principle of what this tropistic nature means is that the algorithm of the personality (meaning essentially of the wish) can be considered to be emanating from instructions first issued by the emotions; that is, that the language of the emotion (what it feels and what meaning it has), gives to the basic-wish its impetus, its impulse, that in turn sets off the sequence of communication in the unconscious mind—similar to a stream of consciousness—ending in the person’s active pursuit of its primary objective—the gratification of the wish.

In discussing dreams and the unconscious, Rass (2017, p. 6), points out that:

“…mental processes actually structure human experience, including the mechanism by which the unconscious shapes the thoughts and feelings that emerge into our conscious awareness.” Rass, also implies that unconscious impulses and desires can be possibly “…raised to the level of the conscious self in order to provide us with a greater measure of self-control or a deeper level of self-knowledge”.

Based upon the foregoing, of course the content of the wish emerges as the core power-theme of the personality (its personality algorithm representing the subject’s—the individual’s primary emotions)

. Therefore, it is the power of the wish as the master of the unconscious domain that then gives to the psyche its engineering job-instruction—the function of which is to create the language and direction ultimately to get the thinking conscious mind to know: what to feel, what to think, perhaps what to say, and certainly, what to do in order to gratify the self-same wish—arguably the foundational element in all of personality dynamics.

Within the unconscious domain therefore it is the underlying ‘repressed emotion’ that will ultimately determine: the wish, the algorithmic transmission of the message (the language of the wish) to the unconscious, the transmission of the message in the unconscious to the psyche, and then, it is the psyche that transmits the message of the wish to the conscious mind. Thus, the person then can be made to eventually feel, think, more or less talk, and certainly act (behave), in order to hopefully gratify that particular unconscious basic-wish .

This repressed emotion is that of anger, which therefore in the unconscious pervades the psyche with force that arrests much of the psyche’s attention. The admixture of the emotion of anger and the emotion-defense of repression can be possibly referred to as the preternatural phenomenon generated by the psyche; that is, it is in the psyche that psychological symptoms are formed based largely on this admixture of anger and repression
.

The Emotion of Anger, and the Defense of Repression: A Reference to the Architecture of Symptom-Formation in the Unconscious

The algorithm of the unconscious domain raises the question of: How is a psychological symptom formed? The proposed answer concerns psychological axioms that consider:

First, there is thwarting of a wish—usually by a culprit, other-person;

Second, this thwarting of the wish will generate disempowerment feelings;

Third, the universal response to disempowerment gestates instant anger (or if not consciously experienced as anger, then it is experienced synonymously as dissatisfaction, annoyance, or rejection);

Fourth, when such anger cannot be expressed to the person toward whom the anger is directed, then the anger becomes repressed and instead attacks the self —the point being that no primary emotion can exist solely in virtual state, but instead must be attached to a person;

Fifth, it is this repressed anger along with the reflection of this culprit (other-person) that then emerges as a symptom;

Sixth, the symptom becomes the psyche’s equivalent of the wish actually being realized so that then the psyche gains a fabulized gratification (what has become the fantasized gratified wish that is now ostensibly realized).

This arrangement of forces of the psyche validates the psychoanalytic precept postulated by Freud that although in reality many wishes are in fact denied, in the psyche, no wish will ever be denied. And further, since Freud also discovered that we all love our symptoms (even if they are painful), the explanation for loving them is that they represent our realized wishes, albeit in a neurotic or perverse form—as the symptom.

Thus, with respect to the axiom concerning unconscious formation of symptomatology, elements of anger, repression , and the person toward whom the anger is directed comprise elements utilized in the psyche (as stated earlier) to incubate and generate the symptom.

Axioms to wit:

Where there is a symptom, not only will there be repressed anger toward a specific person, there must be repressed anger toward that person.

The corollary axiom is:

Where there is no repressed anger not only will there not be a symptom, there cannot be a symptom.

According to Ross and Abrams (1965), Freud holds that aggression

(anger) is part of all instinctual drives and implicit in symptomatic acts. Further, this author (Kellerman, 2009, p. 245) in his volume Dictionary of Psychopathology discusses other elements of the symptom and its formation, as well as discussing this particular subject-cluster of the crucial role of anger, repression , the object (the role of the “other” person), and the unconscious, in the understanding of symptom formation also further elaborated in his book The Psychoanalysis of Symptoms
(Kellerman, 2008).

The need for equilibrium is also sought as a standard goal of the unconscious; that is, unconscious equilibrium is sustained when repression is supported by the person’s resistance to change. This resistance is calibrated by how well repression and resistance are protected and then fortified by the entire defense system of the personality. Of course, this defense system is a reference to psychological defenses. Such defenses are designed in the psyche to address and manage each of the primary emotions

; that is, certain defenses are designed to manage certain primary emotions while other defenses are designed to manage other primary emotions

.

For example, the defense of displacement is but one illustration of how a particular defense such as ‘displacement’ is utilized in the psyche to manage the emotion of anger (kicking the chair, not the person), or that the emotion of disgust (rejection behavior) is managed by the defense of ‘projection

’ that attributes the disgust (protest behavior) onto another person (or onto the external world). In this sense, feelings of inadequacy or imperfection are then correspondingly attributed to the other person—meaning that the subject remains free of contamination or free of imperfection.

It is in this way that achieving tension-reduction is an example of the successful implicit motive inherent in the chemistry of the pleasure-principle. Therefore it becomes more clearly revealed that emotion-defenses are correspondingly implicitly designed as regulators of tension. The point here also implies that it becomes necessary to amplify the essence of each of the primary emotions with respect to the language inherent in the essential motives of these primary emotions.

The Narrative of Primary Emotions

“What in narrative form does each primary emotion say?” This becomes the question that assumes the origin of language to be suffused in the DNA framework of the emotions. In the following are simple narratives that illustrate this particular issue of hearing language-meaning in emotion.

Joy: “I love you ,” also contains a province of feeling around it that is akin to its meaning. This can include:

We look at one another and it feels good.

I know you love me as I love you.

I am so happy with you.

We’re together—as in meant for each other.

I can count on you to protect and guide me.

I have you—possess you.

Sadness: “Where are you when you’re supposed to be there for me?” This is a mournful lament and can include the following:

You’re not here.

I want you back (meaning to retrieve the lost object).

Where are you?

You cannot leave me!

I cannot survive without you.

You must return!

Acceptance: “I’m always comfortable in your presence and I look forward to your visits.”

This is essentially a non-critical and consistent positive view of the object.

I like it that you feel you have access to me.

We are friends.

I want to see you.

I’m always interested in what you have to say.

You’re always welcome in my house.

We understand one another.

Disgust: “I’ve taken you in and you are noxious.” This is language-meaning that wants to indicate a desire to be rid of the object—to eject the noxious object.

It’s disagreeable.

I want to avoid it (you).

You make me sick.

It’s beyond dislike.

It’s revolting.

I wish never to see you again.

Fear: “I need to run away from you.” This means everything connected to fleeing from a threatening object.

You frighten me.

You’re possibly going to hurt me.

There’s something foreboding about you.

You are dangerous to me.

I am going to avoid you at all cost.

I feel anxious around you.

Anger: “You are blocking my path to my goal and I’m going to attack you.” This is the idea of how anger feels and what it says with respect to overcoming the obstacle to its goal.

I’m mad at you and I have my reasons.

Don’t dare to interfere with me. My goal needs to be achieved.

I’m not going to mince words with you.

I’ll make you suffer.

I’m entitled to attack.

I will not tolerate disempowerment.

Surprise: “I don’t like to be thrown for a loop.” This indicates the difficulty with a moment of disorientation.

I like to be aware of what’s happening at all times.

Don’t fool me.

Don’t ambush me with this or that.

Surprises disorient me and throw me off.

Surprises are irritating.

Surprises stop me in my tracks.

Expectation: I don’t like stopping.” This is the tendency to want to explore.

I need to move around.

I need to explore my surroundings.

I enjoy surprises .

I love to anticipate events.

I would hate to be claustrophobic.

I have a thirst for learning.

As can be noted from the above emotion-narrative descriptions, the basic primary emotions are arranged in four polar pairs. These are:

Acceptance
—to receive, to invite in.

Rejection—to turn away, to eject or reject.

Joy
—to exult, to possess, to feel ecstatic.

Sadness—mournfulness, depression.

Fear—to flee , to feel apprehensive.

Anger—to attack, to be rageful.

Expectation—to investigate your surroundings, to map your environment.

Surprise—disliking being disoriented, to be vigilant of the environment.

These above eight basic language-meanings inherent in the prototype behavioral categories with respect to their corresponding emotions reveal the implicit sensibility of the presumed language contained or suffused in the primary emotions

.

With respect to the issue of innateness of language, Arika Okrent (2009), states that “…theories of language origins have generally been based on hunches.” She also implies that it is basically impossible to identify when language began. To this point, Cambell (2015) states that it can’t be known when language began—a sentiment also expressed by Everett (2017), whose position is that there is not a shred of doubt that language is acquired and certainly not innate. This point that Everett makes bifurcates the argument between those who theorize that language is entirely acquired versus those that understand language to be more or less entirely innate.

The work of Chomsky, Plutchik, Scott, and Kellerman, along with others, propose that language as conceived in this present book, The Unconscious Domain, is innate and can be located as suffused in the primary emotions that in turn are psychoevolutionarily based.

Darwin’s (1872) certainty is that language developed externally by signs and gestures (as semiotic information) as well as by sounds of nature and animals—also along with one’s instinctive cries. This particular “certainty” is contested in the above analysis of the proposed language inherent in primary emotions derived from primary prototype behavioral categories—applicable as innate to all organisms along the phylogenetic scale —again, and as asserted earlier, even to the single-celled amoeba .

In support of the innateness position, Chomsky’s (2005) work of a hard-wired syntax seen at birth, and the work of Fodor (1975), and Grice (1992), has essentially maintained that there is an internal language encoded in the mind as an inherited phenomenon. In a sense, as referred to earlier, emotion, rather than governed by the mores and folkways of civilized living, instead, belongs to evolutionary phenomena that are grounded in the given nature of cognitive tools. These tools developed over eons include respectively:

Adaptational and byproduct considerations (use of man-made reassurance techniques and the consciousness of the presence of spandrels) ;

A highly valuable use of theory of mind

(being conscious that correlation is not necessarily causation, but in certain cases may be); The interest in causal reasoning

(the natural attraction to cause and effect logic); and, The very important, agent-detection method (known also as error-management theory) that assumes danger rather than disregarding it.

As an example of further expanding the conversation within the primary emotions with respect to what the language inherent in the emotion is saying, it is possible to create a personality of each emotion. Taking anger as an example, the question becomes, does anger have a personality and if so how can it be described? In the following is a possible listing of the characteristics of the language of anger with respect to its additional implicit meaning.

Language Meaning and Personality Characteristics of Anger

To understand what anger wants, or wishes, the following expressions in the personality of anger

, and a way to appreciate this uni-dimensional nature of anger, is to imagine how anger feels (what is its wish?) as determined by its prototypic tropistic mandate to attack.

The following offers some sense of the anger-domain that can be identified as the content-infrastructural nature of anger—its meaning—and therefore its implicit language.

Anger represents the Destruction prototype behavioral category that feels the imperative to attack (explode). If anger could talk it is likely that this is what it would say reflecting the conversation primary emotions

‘think’ about. In this case is the example of how anger very well might feel and think also cited in Kellerman (2012, p. 57).

- I have an aggressive drive .

- I feel expansive but want to get even bigger.

- I feel confrontational. I am confrontational.

- I want to attack. My mandate is to attack.

- I feel entitled and therefore have the right to attack.

- I know I have an explosive potential and therefore, need to burst forth.

- I feel empowered and will never tolerate loss and disempowerment

.

In addition, the emotion of anger contains the power to affect the person’s ‘ego integrity’—the person’s emotional and psychological sense of normalcy—reflected by the following vicissitudes or accents of anger as portrayed in this author’s volume, The Psychoanalysis of Symptoms
(Kellerman, 2008, pp. 152–153), in the sense of the magnitude, intensity, depth, and duration of the anger; that is, that at higher and more consistent levels of response, these so-called “accents” of anger can cause undue disruption to the personality. Similar to this tropistic characterization of how anger might feel and think, each of the other primary emotions could also be examined in the same way.

Given this presentation of the primary emotions

(proposed as inherent in this basic emotion system), one of the questions that can be entertained is whether one can think without language? This question can be transformed into more of a proposition (or perhaps more of a proclamation) indicating that as long as there is emotion, there must be language (suffused in these basic prototype emotions) derived from corresponding basic and tropistic prototype behavioral categories.

Another question can be: Can a new-born think? A possible answer is that based upon the assumption that because of the presence of the amalgam of primary emotions

(along with their properties of language-meaning), then if the amoeba can, so-to-speak, think, then why would this not be a possible hypothesis also of a new-born?

A tentative answer to this issue is perhaps implicit because such an imagined implicit dialogue is presented as an example of what a new-born might be saying in its behavior. For example, when needing to be fed, the new born might be fitfully wailing or perhaps in a rage about what it needs. What it would be saying therefore might imply a fully formed language along with an example of what an attachment-need looks or sounds like. Therefore, the implicit dialogue could be imagined as:

We’re attached, you and I. And I need to be fed! Your part of our relationship is to feed me. You’re not doing it—especially expeditiously. Do it now! Feed me—now!

In this fantastical implicit dialogue attributed to the new-born (with a decent vocabulary to boot), it can be suggested that even in the new-born’s fury at feeling needful (in the sense of feeling momentarily deprived), its behavior could be considered meaningful. Along with this kind of language expression through its behavior, the infant also emits gurgling and other sounds that may seem to be random—but perhaps not random. Thus, this so-called language (even pre-verbal language) is contained in each primary emotion

—as in virtual state—insofar as the warp and weave (the story) of any of the primary emotions can contain a logic and a meaning.

In summary, the main point here as it concerns the anatomy of the unconscious domain, and as it concerns as well the gradual appearance of such an unconscious domain (in terms of this domain’s origin), then this domain’s purpose with respect to the issue of survival of the species reveals that in evolutionary terms, such a system was in need of a place to be housed. This housing-need, it is here hypothesized, became the unconscious domain. The primary emotion

-system is also here identified as that which made this unconscious arena an ultimate necessary addition to cognitive consciousness—also integrating with the development of the so-called intrapsychic metapsychological configuration of id , ego , superego—and all of it necessary in the sense of the creation of mechanisms driven by the survival need.

To this point, regarding survival need, Plutchik (1980b) sees emotions as evolutionary behavioral adaptations such as DNA or genes which have succeeded in increasing the probability of survival. Thus, these emotions (in the ultraconservative sense) have been sustained in equivalent forms through all phylogenetic levels.

In Plutchikian formulations, this phylogenetic equivalence essentially refers to the basic behavioral tropistic categories and their ultimate emotion-correlates along with reference to a corresponding and perhaps also ultimate correlational connection of seminal personality constituents to these emotion-correlates. In this sense of the meaning of such a correlation between these basic behavioral categories and their emotion and personality representatives, the following is a further discussion of such correlations.

Essentially, however, such correlations of the basic behavioral tropistic categories and their emotion-representatives is more basically a reflection of the psyche’s infrastructural engineering of its translation efforts within the unconscious domain—of transforming the bombardment of chaotic stimuli entering the unconscious arena into understandable language so that the message of one’s basic-wish can be algorithmically transmitted throughout this domain.

In the following Chap. 5, the basic categories and their emotion representatives will be seen as organized in the psyche as polar dyads.

References

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Footnotes

1

It should be noted that attributing the issue of “defense” as a function of the ego (as it is conceived traditionally in psychoanalytic metapsychology) , is here rather seen as a function of the structure of emotion (as emotion-defense), and has been proposed in such a manner in a number of publications by this author (Kellerman, 1979, 2018, 2020).

2

The essence of reconciling this dialectic is essentially the function of the psyche

, repeatedly identified in this volume as the engineering facet of the unconscious domain.

3

This particular value of repression is not meant in the political sense of considering such a function of repression to be good or bad. Rather, this is simply meant as a descriptive rendering of an aspect of the repressive function.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

H. KellermanThe Unconscious Domainhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35009-3_5

5. Basic Behavioral Prototype Categories and Their Emotion/Personality Correlates

Henry Kellerman[1]

(1) Private Practice, New York, NY, USA

Organization of Polarities of the Behavioral and Emotion Categories

In the following discussion is presented the basic behavioral categories that underpin the unconscious arena. The primary emotion representatives of these basic categories, along with corresponding basic emotion/personality constituents include: emotion-defenses, emotion-cognitive correlates, and derivative clinical diagnostic dispositions. Examples of the behavioral act of each of these basic categories and a sample of personality traits associated with each are also cited. Anchoring it all is a reference to the basic-wish inherent in each category.

These basic behavioral categories are considered in terms of the structure of the entire primary emotion system conceived in terms of its polarity. Therefore, for example, Incorporation and Rejection categories (emotions of Acceptance and Rejection respectively) can be understood structurally as a polar pair of basic categories. It is proposed that such an organization of polar basic categories enables the psyche to more easily and technically proceed with its engineering mandate within the unconscious domain primarily because of the most incisive and convenient arrangement of basic behavioral categories and their emotion representatives in a parsimonious system of polarities that presumably works best as a result of being directed by evolutionary adaptation .

Thus, the following discussion will focus solely on the relationship of primary emotions and their progenitor prototype behavior categories that correlate to constituents of personality formations revealed in the entire system within the unconscious domain as also explored by this author (Kellerman, 2020), in his volume, The origin of language.

Incorporation-(Acceptance) and Rejection-(Disgust)

Acceptance

In Table 5.1 , the basic behavioral category of Incorporation and basic emotion of Acceptance
, is understood in the unconscious arena as the need to attend to the object or to assimilate positive information about the object in order to specifically keep such an subject-object relationship, ‘in mind’ and yet located within the unconscious realm (within the psyche).

Table 5.1

Correlates of the personality structure Incorporation Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, diagnosis, and basic-wish

Prototype pattern or mode: Incorporation

Behavioral act: Assimilation behavior

Basic or core emotion: Acceptance

Personality traits: Trustfulness, suggestibility, gullibility

Diagnostic disposition: Hysteric

Emotion-defense mechanism: Denial

Cognitive orientation: Attention-distraction

Basic-wish: The fusion of subject and object

Thus, in the psyche’s template of how data is translated with respect to its categorical nature—from the amorphous bombardment of chaotic stimuli into its untangled meaning—this emotion of ‘acceptance ’ becomes the basis of the formation of various constituents of the personality as detailed in Table 5.1.

The basic-wish underpinning this acceptance-category is to focus on attracting the object so that what is inherent in the primary emotion of acceptance is expressed and translated into interpersonal terms as the assumption of the fusion of subject and object.

In viewing Table 5.1, it becomes apparent that the prototype pattern of Incorporation (which contains a meaning roughly seen as the need for assimilation), is thus also represented by the emotion of acceptance . This need for assimilation and fusion with the object (the other), also aids the psyche in positing that the personality trait of trustfulness is also a synonym of a cluster of other associated traits and are, in a sense, generated by the basic meaning of the emotion of acceptance . In addition, the emotion-defense of denial acts to screen out other potential trait-inclinations that do not contain the assumption of such fusion between subject and object.

Finally, the cognitive correlation of this acceptance dimension is identified as Attention-Distraction meaning attention to the need for fusion as well as any distraction away from this need. In summary, the basic-wish of this acceptance dimension concerns the need for fusion with the object—a distinct diagnostic implication of an hysteric-like constellation. Such a condition is implied by the high suggestibility and/or gullibility index typically associated with this acceptance dimension.

Disgust

The basic behavioral category of Rejection is the progenitor of the basic emotion of Disgust
. Clinically, the subject’s critical stance assures a subject-object distinction thereby preventing any possible or anticipated fusion between subject and object that the other (the object) may desire. Thus, the basic-wish herein is focused on a continual separation between subject and object so that whatever is inherent in the primary emotion of “disgust ” is expressed and translated into interpersonal terms as the retaining of a critical stance toward the object.

In Table 5.2 can be seen that the psyche’s template of its translation function with respect to the nature of basic categories from the amorphous bombardment of chaotic stimuli into understandable meaning, reveals that the particular emotion of disgust becomes the basis of the formation of various constituents of the personality. A perusal of Table 5.2 will display this so-called Table of Contents of the ‘disgust ’ category that is arranged in the psyche in order to reveal the constituents of personality as a function of the psyche’s basic instrument—the template of the primary emotions

.

Table 5.2

Correlates of the personality structure Rejection Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, diagnosis, and basic-wish

Prototype pattern or mode: Rejection

Behavioral act: Riddance reaction

Basic or core emotion: Disgust, revulsion

Personality traits: Criticalness, suspiciousness, distrustfulness

Diagnostic disposition: Paranoid

Emotion-defense mechanism: Projection

Cognitive orientation: Certainty-uncertainty

Basic-wish: Sustaining separation between subject and object

Therefore, the prototype pattern of Rejection that contains the behavioral act of ‘riddance’ represents the core emotion of disgust or even at a higher intensity level, that of revulsion. This “riddance”-need generates a cluster of similar propensities of personality traits such as criticality, suspiciousness, and distrustfulness. Diagnostically then, the logical instrument of such riddance-need is developed with a strictly paranoid trait and an emotion-defense of projection

. Such a diagnosis and defense means that this kind of person will see a dichotomy of the outside world as poisonous, and in contrast, its inner world as pure.

From a clinical interpretation regarding this paranoid diagnostic orientation, this would perhaps surprisingly mean that the opposite is really what is suppressed or repressed in the unconscious of this ‘disgust ’ response—whereby such a person’s authentic feeling (though unconscious) implies that it is really the outside that is considered pure while it is the interior that is seen as bad.

The cognitive orientation within this emotion dimension of disgust is identified as: Certainty-Uncertainty meaning that this kind of paranoid personality needs absolute certainty of ‘goodness’ on the inside in order to feel tension-relief and therefore attributes to the outside as that which is‘bad,’ again, in order to achieve tension-relief. Of course, in such a case, one’s basic-wish is the sustaining of separation between subject and object.

The Polarity Between Incorporation-(Acceptance) and Rejection-(Disgust)

The polarity between the Incorporation and Rejection categories can be, in most cases seen when comparing constituents of each of these bipolar categories. In the behavioral prototype categories the polarity of Incorporation and Rejection are essentially opposites. This is also true in their respective polarity of the primary emotions of acceptance and disgust
, as it is in the polarity of the hysteric and paranoid diagnoses (where the hysteric demonstrates a high ‘suggestibility’ index while the paranoid demonstrates an absence of suggestibility—replaced by a high index of its opposite, namely ‘criticality’).

Further, in the hysteric the basic wish is fusion of subject and object, while in the paranoid the opposite is seen, namely the wish to keep subject and object entirely separate.

Reproduction-(Joy) and Deprivation-(Sorrow)

Joy

Table 5.3 , relates the basic behavioral category of Reproduction and basic emotion of Joy
. The correspondence between the emotion of Joy and the behavioral category of Reproduction concerns the will not merely to accept the object but then more-so, to possess the object.

Table 5.3

Correlates of the personality structure Reproduction Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis

Prototype pattern or mode: Reproduction

Behavioral act: Non-sexual possession of object

Basic or core emotion: Joy or pleasure

Personality traits: Gregariousness, industriousness, exuberance

Diagnostic disposition: Manic

Emotion-defense mechanism: Reaction-formation, compensation, sublimation

Cognitive orientation: Purposiveness-aimlessness

Basic-wish: To maintain a non-sexual focus On the object

Although joy is a representative pleasure emotion it has its roots in sexuality. In this sense, within the emotion of joy exists the motivation to possess the object. It is the behavioral Reproduction category that is the source of wishing to possess the object—passionately.

Personality traits correlated to the joy dimension are sampled in Table 5.3. These include the traits of gregariousness, industriousness, exuberance. The diagnostic disposition of the manic or energized state is here also noted as the diagnostic correlate of this dimension.

Emotion-defenses of this joy dimension will also include reaction-formation

, compensation , and sublimation

, all designed to protect the tension-relief of the joy experience. The compensatory defense prevents any significant inhibition over the general energized joy experience while the sublimation defense sustains the avenue of generative energy devoted to work and productivity.

In total, and along with compensation and sublimation , the emotion-defense of reaction-formation becomes the calibrational authority that regulates this dimension of an energized normalcy while preventing the avoidance of any out-of-control level of frenzy as is usual the case in a manic exuberance.

The cognitive orientation of Purposiveness-Aimlessness is similarly designed to offer such a person a sense of commitment and validity to the engine of its energized purpose. In addition and in contrast, ‘purposiveness’ acts to nullify any ‘aimlessness’ because such aimlessness could create an avenue or deviation from that of keeping aim on such a person’s industriousness and exuberance, as well as need to posses the object.

Finally the basic-wish here is to maintain a non-sexual focus on the object despite its root in sexuality. Thus, the specific emotion-defense of reaction-formation is not merely a defense of turning one’s feeling into its opposite. Rather, the reaction-formation defense enables a retreat from a sexual attraction and therefore retains the feeling of joy solely as ‘joy ’ and not merely as consistent sexual hunger. In addition, reaction-formation is always in attendance and vigilantly on duty, because this defense is needed to prevent the stimuli of external circumstance to interfere with the ever present need to feel the hoped-for indeterminate life of such joy , but in the absence of a full-blown manic streak-talking frenzy.

The issue of such a hoped for continued condition of joy means that a hypomanic state of behavior is what defines normalcy here. Hypomanic, of course defined as less than manic.

Sorrow

Table 5.4, is a thumbnail sketch of the emotion dimension of Sorrow
. The emotion of sorrow and its wish for Reintegration (regarding the retrieval of the lost object) reflects a continuous focus on the lost object (as in a repetitive attempt to retrieve it) and thereby as stated (and against all odds), to reintegrate this lost object. If successful, then the lost object remains extant and not extinct. This is fundamentally an attempt at such retrieval and also at the same time an attempt not to acknowledge the true and very possible permanent loss of the object

.

Table 5.4

Correlates of the personality structure Reintegration Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis

Prototype pattern or mode: Reintegration

Behavioral act: Reaction to loss

Basic or core emotion: Sorrow, grief

Personality traits: Despondent, gloomy

Diagnostic disposition: Depressed

Emotion-defense mechanism: Compensation

Cognitive orientation: Rumination-relinquishment

Basic-wish: Retrieval and reintegration of the lost object

The sorrow emotion therefore, represents a continuous and very importantly, a compensatory focus ostensibly on the hopeful yet impossible presence—or on the sustained image—of the missing object. Diagnostically, of course, Depression becomes the unfailing companion of such loss. Possessing the object prior to losing it and then again perhaps regaining it concerns the overall issue of dreaded loss and hoped-for retrieval.

With respect to the basic-wish , it is the subject’s will, and with every bit of emotion-defense, to focus in order to keep the object in mind and somehow, and in someway to retrieve this object—or reintegrate it as therefore an object that will remain forever extant.

Thus, the typical behavioral act of the Reintegration dimension concerns the reflexive reaction to loss and this dimension’s basic emotion-defense of compensation utilized to sustain the hope of retrieval. The cognitive orientation here can be identified as Rumination-Relinquishment meaning that the subject retains continual focus on loss of the object while therefore not permitting any final relinquishment of the object.

The Polarity of Reproduction-(Joy) and Deprivation-(Sorrow)

The sorrow dimension reflects a loss of the object

(emotion of sorrow) and a corresponding wish for repossession and retrieval of the object. In contrast, the joy dimension insists on permanent possession of the object—even rejecting any implication of loss. The polarities between other constituents of these respective categories include the trait of gregariousness of the joy dimension) and despondency of the sorrow dimension. These polarities can be seen in Tables 5.3 and 5.4.

Exploration-(Expectancy) and Orientation-(Surprise)

Expectation

Table 5.5 represents the emotion of Expectation and its relation to the behavioral category of Exploration. Scanning and control of the object and how the subject and object can be related is of signal importance here. The behavioral act with respect to the exploration dimension is the impulse to map the environment (to explore it). Personality traits reflecting this dimension include those of the need for control, orderliness, and parsimony.

The basic-wish existing in this expectation dimension concerns exploring the environment so that mapping it can result in knowing it better—always in the service of mastering it—that is, always in the service of familiarity or control of the object. Inspection of Table 5.5 reveals that the obsessive diagnosis becomes the shorthand of assessing this type of person, while the emotion-defenses of intellectualization

, sublimation

, and rationalization are examples of how the aim of control is sustained.

The cognitive organization considered here to be Analysis-Scatteredness is one that utilizes scrutiny to counteract interference by any possible drifting away from the person’s objective rather than permitting such a person’s objective to fail. Personality traits of orderliness and parsimony characterize the essence in the motivation of such a person while the person’s basic-wish concerns needing to control the object.

Table 5.5

Correlates of the personality structure Exploration Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis

Prototype pattern or mode: Exploration

Behavioral act: Mapping

Basic or core emotion: Expectation

Personality traits: Control, orderliness, parsimony

Diagnostic disposition: Obsessive

Emotion-defense mechanism: Intellectualization, sublimation, rationalization

Cognitive orientation: Analysis-scatteredness

Basic-wish: To control the object

Surprise

As expectation is related to analysis and control of the object, surprise is related to a dyscontrol element, impulsivity, or impatience toward the object; that is, that the main point of a state of vigilance by the subject prevents the object from controlling the subject. The behavioral category of Orientation (technically, Disorientation) is labeled as the container of the Surprise emotion.

Table 5.6 offers a summary view of the entire personality matrix of this emotion surprise -dimension. The surprise emotion creates a motive for the subject actually to surprise or disorient the object with unexpected behavior, thereby in contrast neutralizing most attempts by the object to control the basic subject-object relationship. The aim here is for the subject to use offense as the way to defend. Thus with respect to this person’s basic-wish , it is the dreaded worry of possible control by the object over the subject that generates the basic fear of annihilation of the subject’s sense of self , if, heaven forbid, the object would indeed control the subject.

Table 5.6

Correlates of the personality structure Orientation Dimension: emotions, cognitive-correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis

Prototype pattern or mode: Orientation

Behavioral act: To undermine object

Basic or core emotion: Surprise

Personality traits: Dyscontrol, impulsivity, impatience

Diagnostic disposition: Psychopathic

Emotion-defense mechanism: Regression

Cognitive orientation: impatience-paralysis

Basic-wish: Assuring freedom of movement for the subject and full control of the object

Thus, this behavioral category is labeled Orientation although as can be seen, in function the subject responds with a disoriented surprise reaction to any unexpected stimulus. Of course, this means that the effect of the surprise is a disorienting phenomenon, not an orienting one. Generally speaking, however, the overall issue here is one of ‘orientation.’

In Table 5.6, the constituents of personality are also correlated to the basic-wish and emotion of this dimension. This basic-wish assures freedom of movement for the subject, for the most part in the service of full control of the object (the other person).

Therefore, as stated, the simple behavioral act on the part of the subject is to undermine the potential power of the object. Traits of dyscontrol, impulsivity, and impatience reflect the diagnostic result of disorientation to the stimulus of the surprise . Therefore, the entire context of the surprise syndrome, resembles a measure of psychopathic-like planning in the ultimate service of control over the object as well in the service of relieving this sort of impatience regarding the need for control over unguarded moments—and in contrast, for the need of monitoring everything in order to keep oneself in balance. It is in this sense that this cognitive orientation concerns the fight against emotional paralysis in order to regain equilibrium.

For such equilibrium to be reestablished, the emotion-defense of ‘regression’ becomes an essential behavior in order to correspondingly regain the ability to move. Thus, regression as an emotion-defense accounts for the psychopathic tinge of the diagnostic reference here.

The Polarity of Exploration-(Expectancy) and Orientation-(Surprise)

The expectation dimension (reflecting a need to control the object) is opposite to the surprise dimension reflecting, in turn, the subject’s need to prevent the object from controlling the subject.

While expectancy contains the instruction to move, explore, and map the environment, surprise is the emotion that disorients the person so that rather than moving and mapping, this person will need to come to grips with sustaining equilibrium based upon the disorientation of the person’s surprise emotion. The opposition of basic-wishes of these Exploration (expectancy) and Orientation (surprise) dimensions concerns gaining the ascendancy as well as the valence and direction of who should control whom.

In this respect, samples of the polarity of personality traits include the control and orderliness of the expectation dimension versus the dyscontrol and impulsivity of the surprise dimension. In addition, with respect to cognitive style, intellectualization and impatience reflect respectively the polarity of control and steadiness of the obsessive diagnostic type versus the dyscontrol and impulsivity of the psychopathically regressive type.

Protection-(Fear) and Destruction-(Anger)

Fear

Protection is the behavioral category from which the emotion of Fear is derived. Table 5.7 portrays the emotion-personality structure of this protection/fear dimension. The diagnostic correlate to this dimension is considered to be a “passive orientation.”

Table 5.7

Correlates of the personality structure Protection Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, and diagnosis

Prototype pattern or mode: Protection

Behavioral act: Caution, escape

Basic or core emotion: Fear, apprehension

Personality traits: Timidity, obedience, compliance

Diagnostic disposition: Passive

Emotion-defense mechanism: Repression

Cognitive orientation: Recalling-forgetting

Basic-wish: To suppress the memory of the traumatic event

In addition, to recall and to remember the nature of the original subject-object tie is to jog into memory early feelings of apprehension (low intensity level fear) concerning the object’s demand for the subject to maintain a comprehensive attachment and continual focus on the object. It is a demand by the object for adherence, compliance, and obedience.

However, to comply with such a demand implies that the subject remains exceedingly dependent or passive. The conflict is one that crystallizes the subject’s need to maintain some semblance of autonomy in order to meet external demands. In a dependent or passive stance, the subject will resist or reject any assertive behavior in favor of a more anonymous position such as assuming the posture of passivity.

Generally, the relation between fear and recall concerns the idea of remembering a threatening event. In the passive syndrome, repression as a major emotion-defensive orientation facilitates the forgetting of the event. In Table 5.7 may be seen in summary form these correlates of this Protection/Fear dimension.

In addition it is no surprise that the preeminent emotion-defense within the unconscious domain itself is the defense of repression . Personality traits of compliance and timidity are representative of typical behaviors associated with this dimension, and therefore, a corresponding behavioral act reflecting this fear dimension is one of caution and especially one of escape. The cognitive dimension here refers to Recalling-Forgetting and the basic-wish in the personality is to suppress the memory of a possible historical signal traumatic event.

Anger

Destruction is identified as the behavioral category from which the emotion of Anger is derived. In Table 5.8, the entire syndrome of the aggressive personality is summarized. The basic-wish inherent with such a syndrome is either to displace the anger or to attempt to eliminate or overcome the obstacle (the person) who is the one to have thwarted such a basic-wish . In this sense, a typical behavioral act of such a person is to feel hostility and to behave aggressively toward the object. Therefore, personality traits of aggression

, compulsive protest-behavior and general quarrelsomeness is also typical here.

Table 5.8

Basic behavioral prototype categories Destruction Dimension: emotions, cognitive correlates, emotion-defense, diagnosis, and basic-wish

Prototype pattern or mode: Destruction

Behavioral act: Hostility and aggression expressed toward object

Basic or core emotion: Anger, rage

Personality traits: Aggression, protest, quarrelsomeness

Diagnostic disposition: Aggressive

Emotion-defense mechanism: Displacement

Cognitive orientation: Condensing-reconstituting

Basic-wish: Attempting to overcome the obstacle to an already thwarted goal

The aggressive diagnostic assessment is also managed by the psyche with respect to attaching the emotion-defense of displacement to the diagnostic characteristic of aggression so that the reflex of anger toward the object could, if needed, also be displaced onto other surrogate displacement objects.

The cognitive orientation here is identified as Condensing-Reconstituting

. This reflects the person’s need or wish to eliminate substitutes of the subject’s displaced aggression and to therefore reconstitute the direction of such aggression to the original primary target-object.

In addition, it is no surprise that the preeminent emotion-defense within this unconscious domain also is that of repression

. However, it may be noted that an incontrovertible fact remains invariant: that repression of anger is at the deepest level of the unconscious domain. In fact, anger is the only primary emotion in the psyche’s tool-box, that as stated, enables an emotional-psychological symptom to be formed; that is, in the psyche, the development of a symptom depends on the presence of a reservoir of anger toward a specific object (a target person). The identity of this person is also, along with anger, repressed. This person’s identity therefore is hidden.

In summary, such a person’s basic wish would be to overcome the obstacle to an already thwarted goal. This summary can also be seen in Table 5.8.

The Polarity of Protection-(Fear) and Destruction-(Anger)

The passive and aggressive dimensions reflect opposite dispositions. In the passive personality the aim is to forget or repress memories of trauma, presumably with respect to the interaction with the early historical object, thereby sensitizing the subject’s fear of the power and potentially destructive threat of that object (person).

In the aggressive personality, a partial aim is to neutralize potentially destructive behavior toward the object—that is, to be less angry. When the threat from the object is too strong then the subject will in all likelihood directly respond with anger. For the aggressive type power resides in the subject or self , while the object is targeted for attack especially because of providing a thwarting obstacle to the subject’s aim or goal.

On the level of traits, the passive individual expresses caution and oppositional procrastination behavior in order to gain a measure of strength in foiling the plans or frustrating the subject. In contrast, the aggressive individual, rather than indirectly fomenting and expressing anger, can visibly display explosive behavior directly.

With respect to the polar meaning of basic-wishes , in the passive matrix, fusion of subject and object remains in a tentative disguised resolution of contrition. In the aggressive syndrome, the basic-wish is to overcome an already thwarted goal so that a compromise of explicit contrition (through behavior) on the part of the aggressive person, remains certainly aggressive but less than explosive.

The Passive-Aggressive Personality Structure

A typical diagnostic construction is seen as a passive-aggressive conflation—seen in three distinct parts: the passive-aggressive, passive type; the passive-aggressive, aggressive type; and, the passive-aggressive, dependent type.

Passive Aggressive: Passive Type—Here, the subject is typically displacing anger. The objective in doing so is to cause anger in the object (the other) by exhibiting a series of behaviors that induce such anger in the object based upon the subject’s array of annoying behaviors. These behaviors include procrastination, quarrelsomeness, and nuanced protracted protest. Such behavior becomes a study in the psychology of oppositionalism—the aim of which is to make the object (the other)—angry!

Passive-Aggressive: Aggressive Type—Here, the subject is not typically displacing anger. Rather, the anger is directed to the object in the absence of moderation. The motive of the subject to express anger this way is specifically to make the other, the object—angry!

Passive-Aggressive: Dependent Type—Here the subject consistently and with purpose, becomes an ever-present cloying accoutrement to the object. The trait of “cloying” especially in its guise of innocence, is designed to make the object (the other)—angry!

In each of these three variants of the Passive-Aggressive personality the underpinning of the personality structure is seen as profound insecurity and inadequacy feelings that generate and sustain a sense of disempowerment. Therefore such individuals will develop one or another of the passive-aggressive variants in order to feel some sense of re-empowerment through these various ways of causing the other (the object) to feel angry—thereby achieving a compensatory ascendant triumph.

Conclusion

This overview of the relation of various products of the personality—especially with constituents proposed as contained within the primary emotion system—were noted throughout this volume as follows:

To the meaning of the relationship of emotion to its corresponding prototype behavioral pattern;

To the inherent connection between emotion and personality traits;

To corresponding diagnostic references;

To specific emotion-defense mechanisms;

To the basic-wish of each of the primary behavioral/emotion categories; and,

To the cognitive/thinking element also proposed as a constituent within the primary behavioral/emotion categories.

In summary then, with this organizational matrix based upon the generative and engineering work of the psyche, correlations have been made with respect to the psyche’s infrastructural behavioral prototype categories and their primary emotion derivatives. In view of this context this correlational matrix of numerous personality features (or facets of personality) can possibly no longer be reasonably seen as an amalgam of random or even idiosyncratic states. Rather, the system of the behavioral/emotion dimensions that have been here subject to analysis reflects a theoretical view that claims innateness of language structure that is tropistic with respect to each of the primary emotions containing a variety of meanings within each of these primary behavioral/emotion categories including: relation to: traits, emotion-defenses, and diagnostic proclivity. In addition other correlations include the primary emotion as representative of basic behavioral prototypes and the basic-wish underpinning each primary emotion category, as well as the relation of primary emotions to corresponding cognitive/thinking categories.

It is proposed that such a correlational matrix has relevance to the entire issue of cause and effect regarding the communicational structure of the emotions—in contrast to seeing such phenomena (relation of one emotion to another or even one emotion and its relation to the host of personality facets) as random or simply accidental.

In the following Chap. 6, the meaning, place, and relationship to this entire personality system (and unconscious domain) as it applies to ‘instinct ’ will be explored. The point here is that the metapsychological use of instinct in the study of emotions and personality has not been terribly successful or informational insofar as ‘instinct’ has been cited and referred to in the psychological, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic psychologies in a number of ways—although not in any consistent way. However, how instinct figures into the operation of the psyche and its vicissitudes will be the object of such exploration.

Reference

1. Kellerman, H. (2020). The origin of language. New York: American Mental Health Foundation Books.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

H. KellermanThe Unconscious Domainhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35009-3_6

6. Instinct

Henry Kellerman[1]

(1) Private Practice, New York, NY, USA

Instinct as an Instrument of the Psyche

In this chapter, an attempt will be made to understand the role of ‘instinct ’ in the overall configuration and infrastructure of the psyche—especially as this metapsychological concept of instinct pertains to how it is defined or understood. Therefore, questions in this chapter will be considered regarding the definition and function of instinct .

All of it is essentially discussed in an attempt to examine whether the entire unconscious domain is a function of the substrate of instinct , or quite to the contrary, is instinct defined rather as a part of the substrate of the primary emotions

(that are in turn representatives of the basic prototype behavioral categories) seen at all phylogenetic levels—and that are understood as creating the logic for a necessary evolution of an actual unconscious. In fact, Angell (1906), specifically noted that instinct and emotion were intrinsically related and McDougall (1928) echoed this view (in more detail and with more reverberating implications) by stating that specific instincts must be related to specific emotions.

Of course, Sigmund Freud was an essential part of this discussion of instinct—especially in the publication of his book, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)—in which he addressed his conceptualization of the life instinct named as Eros, but also further coined what he called the death instinct referred to as Thanatos . With Freud, the life instincts referred in large measure to survival issues based in sexuality and the instinctive-impulse of this life-force was in turn referred to as “libido”.

Therefore, beginning in the early 20th century and on, the sense of instinct grew into a general phenomenological understanding meaning essentially that instincts were innate and therefore quite likely akin to emotion. The phenomenological sense of it all was in all likelihood a function of Freud’s surprising concept that the goal of all life was death!

Thus, the seminal question to be addressed in this chapter concerns whether in the psyche, the issue becomes: Which is more fundamental—instinct or emotion? That is to say: Which is the basis of the other? Is emotion included in the substrate of instinct or is it that instinct (even the instinct of imprinting) exists in the substrate of emotion?

Since the entire basis of the unconscious domain (especially with respect to its psychological design) is presumably better understood as something outside of civilization (therefore requiring all creatures to respond to the condition of the world as one that is characteristically predatory)

, then the issue of ‘which is more primary’ instinct or tropistic behavioral categories (and their primary emotion representatives)

becomes the essential question of this disquisition regarding also the interaction of both—instinct and emotion.

In the final analysis the question becomes: Is the true progenitor of it all—the basic prototype behavioral patterns and their tropistic emotion representatives that exist in the substrate of instinct , or is it that all of it exists in the substrate of emotion?

To this issue of which is more primary, instinct or emotion?—the following questions will be addressed:

Is instinct basic or derived?

What is the relevance of instinct in the unconscious domain?

Assuming instinct is in fact a facet of the unconscious domain, then how does it operate in the psyche?

Again, assuming instinct is an unconscious phenomenon, does its presence influence consciousness?

Further, is instinct part of the substrate of primary emotions or is it that primary emotions are part of the instinctual substrate?

Are there different instincts and if so, are they at all connectedto specific emotions?

Do specific pathways in the brain contain specific innate circuitries for various functions (including instincts)?

Finally, does the conception of an innate ‘instinct ’ differ from conceptions of impulse, drive , reflex, the basic-wish , id , desire, imprinting, aggression, libido, intuition —even, emotion?

Investigation of the literature on instinct will show that conceptions of instinct , drives , and even emotion have been used interchangeably specifically in the psychoanalytic, psychiatric and psychological literature, as well as more generally in the overall scientific literature. This has been noted by numerous authors and theoreticians as for example by Angell (1906), Freud (1921), Lorenz (1958), Plutchik (1962), Izard (1978), and Blumberg (2006).

A frequency tabulation of which of these definitions and references (as well as others) are used most often as interchangeable would isolate four: emotion, drive , impulse, and instinct . In this discourse, the intent here in this volume is to seek an answer as to which of these four is primary; that is, is it emotion, drive , impulse or instinct that is primary?

In addition, key factors regarding the function of adaptation in the history of evolution that are involved in the discussion of the vicissitudes of emotion and instinct include:

The issue of survival;

The assent of byproduct theory (also meaning the appearance of spandrels) ;

Adaptational theory generally;

The evolutionary genesis of the use of cognitive tools such as agent-detection (or error management theory);

That of causal reasoning

(the irresistibility of cause and effect logic); and,

The theory of mind

(in the evolving understanding of the difference between correlational and causative thinking).

These developments all constitute crucial factors in understanding the overall adaptive and survival-need in the epic phenomenological history of evolution. In addition, the unconscious domain as portrayed in this volume has been understood as a phenomenon that was evolved because of necessity. In this case, “necessity” actually turned out to mean as adaptational to the reality of creatures born into a ubiquitous predatory world.

In a theoretical validity-context, treating emotions such as anger and especially fear as that leading to phylogenetic considerations in the study of the history of evolution seemed to be the one consideration most constructive and efficacious; this means that in higher phylogenetic levels (Homo sapiens and relatively recent ancestral-species) this issue of fear and survival in such a predatory world required various methods leading to a seeking of highest survival-probability.

In Chap. 1, these early developments in the acquisition of such survival mechanisms are here further developed in this chapter. Thus, the basic question emerges as with respect to the unconscious domain and its engineering facet—the psyche—as to which one ‘instinct ’ or emotion, or drive , or impulse regulates the communicational structure of the unconscious—especially including the issue of the role played by emotion and/or instinct .

As stated earlier, ultimately the confusion of which it is—instinct , emotion, drive , or impulse—leads to the need to whittle the four references to two. The basic choice becomes ‘instinct ’ or ‘emotion’; that is, is it emotion that represents tropistic behavioral categories in the quest for survival as the nuclear issue regarding the evolution of the unconscious domain, or is it ‘instinct ’ that regulates it all in the evolution of the unconscious domain?

Primacy of Emotion or Instinct in the Evolution of the Unconscious Doman

The entire issue of the role of instinct as it relates to emotion was referred to by Freud in his discussion in Instincts and their Vicissitudes (1915a), in which Freud stated: “…the opposition between consciousness and the unconscious has no application for the instincts .” Yet he also proclaimed that in the deepest part of the unconscious realm (“…the deepest strata of our minds…”) reside instinctual impulses (1915b).

Two points seem relevant here: First, is that despite personality defenses that are designed to keep the unconscious and consciousness separate, nevertheless, all facets of the unconscious do in fact have ultimate meaning with respect to consciousness. Thus, this unconsciousness in relation to consciousness, of course, has an undeniable connection. More specifically, the personality defenses (such as repression and its partner “resistance” within the functioning of the psyche)

combine in order to keep consciousness apart from the unconscious. This “resistance” is a resistance to personality change and it (the resistance) is presumably designed in the defensive apparatus of the personality primarily to support repression by way of partitioning the unconscious from consciousness.

In the end, regarding the ostensible separation of the unconscious to consciousness, this separation simply depends on the strength of repression and its chief repressive-reinforcer—that of the metapsychological instrumentality of “resistance” that, as stated, functions as a sample of the person’s emotion-defense personality structure. It is this marriage of repression and the person’s resistance to prevent repressed material from threat of its eruption into consciousness (and therefore the threat of disclosure), that becomes the existential bridge with respect to the unconscious domain from leaking its precious secrets into consciousness. This implies that when this marriage of repression to resistance is weak, the marriage will, in all likelihood not be able to sustain the partition of the unconscious to consciousness.

Second, this apposition (relative neighboring between the deepest unconscious realm and instinct) does not at all seem to explain anything referring to what it is that generates an unconscious realm—especially in the sense of hitting upon an insight regarding cause and effect (instinct and the unconscious).

With respect to the motive in evolution regarding any birth of an unconscious, Freud (1933), referred to an “instinctual-impulse. This bit of annexing “impulse” to “instinct ” seems to create an ambiguity into Freud’s examination of the unconscious domain as a reference to its reason for existing. Freud also hypothesized that instinct is that which contains the forces of eros and aggression. These are seen as id related and essentially defines for Freud the entire population of forces within instinct .

It is interesting that Freud understood repression of an ‘instinctual impulse’ to be at the bottom of diagnostic syndromes. In this sense, the unconscious with respect to impulse contains an emotional dimension of the impulse (Freud, 1915a). This emotional dimension of the impulse resides in the psyche and is then presumably in the hands of the psyche’s engineering plans, dictated it would seem by the algorithmic message of the basic-wish of personality.

The seminal insight here is that the essence of what has been considered ‘impulse’ or ‘instinctive-impulse’ is correspondingly equivalent to what in this volume has been correspondingly and consistently referred to as “tropistic behavior.” It all essentially means to react in a definite way.

Therefore, interpreted with respect to the psychoevolutionary basic prototype tropistic behavioral categories, the instinctive-impulse is that which each emotion/behavioral category naturally seeks; that is, as an example, the emotion of fear wants and needs to flee. “To flee” is thus the instinctive-impulse of the protection/fear dimension. The issue of which is more elemental—emotion or instinct —thus acquires an alternate formulation. This alternate formulation erases the issue of ‘primacy’ because it is proposed here that the emotion (the primary emotion)

that contains the instinctive-impulse in the substrate of its DNA (true of each primary emotion reflecting the primary tropistic prototype behavioral category), is necessary to effectuate what is dictated by the DNA of that particular primary emotion

.

Therefore, the correlation of the feeling of fear
(the emotion) and the instinctive –impulse (the behavioral act) of fleeing seems to define more clearly how this ‘instinct ’ or instinctive-impulse’ joins forces with the primary emotion to account for the psyche’s power — thereby enabling the emotion to effectuate its behavioral mandate as an instinctive-impulse/implementing force.

Primary Emotions and Their Implementing-Instincts

The following Table 6.1 displays each primary emotion and its corresponding defining instinct . In addition, the implementing factor of the primary emotion’s

DNA - instruction that ignites the momentum required to pursue the aim of the person’s basic-wish is also noted. Therefore, the transporter of the necessary action within the unconscious (actually within the psyche) that awakens the person to such necessary action (in order to satisfy the basic-wish ), is proposed to be the action of the instinctive-impulse suffused within primary emotions

.

Table 6.1

Communicational structure of the unconscious domain

Prototype categories

Primary emotions

Language of the emotions

Instinctive-Impulse of the emotions

Psyche’s aim

Basic-wish

Defense

Diagnosis

Trait

Incorporation

Acceptance

“I like you to be with me”

Extending the invite

Togetherness

To gratify subject/ object fusion

Denial

Hysteric

Suggestibility

Rejection

Disgust

“You revolt me”

Pushing away

Separation

To achieve partition

Projection

Paranoid

Criticality

Reproduction

Joy

“I love you”

Inviting intimacy

Sexuality

Possession

Reaction-formation

Manic

Hyper-energetic

Deprivation

Sorrow

“I miss you so”

Crying

Retrieval

To reunite

Compensation

Depressed

Moody

Exploration

Expectation

“I need to move around. I’m curious”

Mapping the environment

Discovery

To enjoy novelty

Intellectualization

Obsessive

To control

Orientation

Surprise

“I don’t like surprises”

Monitoring everything

Guardedness

To be wary

Regression

Psychopathic

Acting-out (To not be controlled)

Protection

Fear

“I’ve got to run away”

To flee

To safeguard self

Survival

Repression

Passive

Compliance

Destruction

Anger

“Don’t mess with me!”

To attack

To gain the ascendancy

Dominance

Displacement

Aggressive

Hostility

An examination of Table 6.1 shows the correspondence between the eight prototype behavioral categories and their primary emotion representatives. In addition, the language inherent within each emotion is also noted. The instinctive-impulse of each emotion is also considered to be, as stated above, the necessary action of seeking to gratify in conscious feeling, the thinking, saying, and doing, of the emotion’s DNA-demand . This “action of seeking to gratify in conscious feeling” is a fundamental instrumentality of the psyche—of course targeted to the person’s basic-wish
. As such, Cambell (1989), recognizes the “action of seeking to gratify in conscious feeling” the emotion’s DNA demand, and its relation to reality and sees that gratification of such need is only achieved in a reality contact with the outer world.

However, to expand Cambell’s definition it needs to be remembered that the basic-wish is able to be satisfied also by the construction of psychological symptoms that are translated phenomena of the wish as gratified. Yet, Cambell’s understanding of this instinctual “need,” is precisely the instinctive-impulse of each emotion seeking to gratify the DNA-demand in the real world (not merely in fantasy or in magical wishfulness), the aim of which is to gratify the person’s basic-wish . How the instinctive-impulse becomes instrumental as the psyche’s implementer concerns the psyche’s utilitarian method of emulsifying the basic vicissitudes of the instinct with that of the language of primary emotions

(or in lower phylogenetic levels, with that of the primary tropistic basic behavioral categories).

The emulsifiers of the instinct leading to how the psyche transforms such unconscious material into focused aims (that have a purpose in the internal world leading to objectives of the external world) include the psychological processes of:

Repression (the use of defenses);

Reversal (regulating passive and active calibrations);

Sublimation (transformation of elements into symbolic form); and,

When failing to fulfill the instinctive aim in the substrate of the emotion so that the impulse is turned against the self (the self becomes the object)—the wish will then be satisfied magically through the symptom. (Kellerman, 2009, p. 113)

In this sense instinct has a source, an object, and an aim. The source is internal, the object is to express tension requiring gratification, and the aim is the gratification of the wish.

In the context of this book on the unconscious domain in which it is proposed that a communicational structure exists in the unconscious, Table 6.1 displays the basic correlations of this communicational structure and then quotes what each category is communicating (‘saying’) with respect to its role—as it contributes to the overall relations—to the communicational linkages of this unconscious domain.

As a prelude to undertaking a scrutinizing examination of Table 6.1, it must be remembered that the unconscious domain is crystallized on the basis of the person’s wish (‘basic-wish ’). As such, Table 6.1 begins with a listing of the ‘basic prototype behavioral categories’ and their ‘primary emotion

’ representatives. With respect to these primary emotion representatives, in Table 6.1 is a category that imagines the ‘language’ of each primary emotion as to what each of these primaries is ‘saying.’ Such ‘saying’ will always relate to the ‘basic-wish’ within the person’s particular unconscious.

Then, the ‘instinctive-impulse’ as part of the primary emotion’s substrate is identified with its manner of ‘doing’; that is, that this impulse of the primary emotion’s instinct , displays its role of putting into motion the ‘psyche’s aim’ that ultimately will send to consciousness what the person’s basic-wish wants. In this respect the consciousness of the person will be informed as to what needs to be felt, thought about, said, as well as needing to be accomplished (the doing), in order, again, to satisfy the person’s basic-wish .

Therefore, the communicational circuitry within the unconscious arena begins with the core meaning of the DNA instruction offered by the basic prototype behavioral tropistic categories thereby also represented by their corresponding primary emotions

(of course, along with the imagined language of such primary emotions)

. In addition the psyche’s aim of it all—meaning the ultimate aim of satisfying the person’s basic wish—is then joined in communicational sequence with an entry into consciousness; that is, this communicational process of the unconscious begins to perhaps osmotically include the ‘emotion-defense’ (such as ‘denial’ or ‘projection

’ or any of the other emotion-defenses) that will govern what may gradually occur consciously based upon service to the needful forces of the entire unconscious communicational drama. This means that once emotion-defenses enter this communicational process, part of the function of such defense, is to service that which may potentially occur in consciousness. In this sense of the utilization also of such defenses, the person’s ‘diagnosis’ (diagnostic inclination) becomes apparent along with derivative ‘personality traits’ that are then to be understood as reflecting the forces of the developing personality that have been ultimately crystallized as personality traits.

Thus, in Table 6.1, we begin with the underpinning of the DNA of basic prototype behavioral tropistic categories and through the psyche’s unconscious communicational network, end up with reflexive-like personality traits that characterize issues of the visible personality. Such traits can also be conceived as emotion-mixed forms (Plutchik, 1962).

Examination of the Unconscious Communicational Structure as Abstracted in Table 6.1

Perhaps heading into the perils of attempting to understand and uncover what is here referred to as “the communicational system of the unconscious domain,” Table 6.1 will be scrutinized so that these so-called linkages between properties of the unconscious domain will be traced. For example, the first vertical category listed in Table 6.1 is identified as “Incorporation.” Then, running horizontally across the row of the Incorporation category will continue this first example of the relationship of this Incorporation category to the entire communicational network of the unconscious arena.

Incorporation

The behavioral prototype category of Incorporation with its emotion representative of Acceptance , contains its DNA instruction of needing to be close with another, and in the language of such an emotion this need is stated as: “I like you to be with me.” This statement is located at the core of the person’s basic-wish that in itself emanates from the Darwinian message along with the Plutchikian category of the survival-need—identified and ultimately transformed into a need for others (even as an anthropological need for group support—as in “we can all be together”).

The psyche’s aim here is to engineer with all eagerness, a togetherness impulse. In this sense it is this togetherness impulse that is precisely what the psyche’s intent becomes and what is referred to here as an instinctive-impulse. This instinctive-impulse is, in turn, designed to extend the invitation to the other as in the language of this acceptance primary emotion that says: “I like you to be with me and I like to be with you.”

Extending the invitation to be together is a general example of the instinct of “doing” something. It is the instinctive-impulse that contains the message of “doing.” This instinct is seen as located in the substrate of such a primary emotion

. Therefore, in this case of the Incorporation category, this “doing something” is actually the doing of ‘extending the invitation’ so that the psyche’s aim of ‘togetherness’ gains advantage with respect to gratifying the person’s basic-wish of subject/object fusion. It is the impulse of the instinct that can be considered the psyche’s engine enabling a translation into the realm of actually putting something into motion.

All of it—again, in this case regarding the need for subject-object fusion—begins to form a cluster of explainable phenomena as for example in the utilization of the emotion-defense of denial as a mechanism that serves the person’s unconscious nature as well as having a winking relationship with consciousness. This emotion-defense of denial contains a significant measure of an inclusion-need as in what is known as ‘selective perception’ (to see only what one wants to see as in the need to love someone), along with a ‘perceptual-defense’ (to screen out qualities of the other) that would if accepted vote against the subject’s wish for fusion with the other (Postman, Bruner, & McGinnies, 1952).

In addition, when emotion-defenses enter this communicational structure inherent in the psyche of the unconscious domain, diagnostic implications also emerge. In the case of the need for subject-object fusion, the diagnosis of ‘hysteric

’ becomes tenable because of the high suggestibility quotient of those individuals who desperately need the other (or others) thus inviting the use of selective perception and perceptual defense in supporting the person’s basic-wish .

In the sense of a forming of a so-called ‘trait-catalogue,’ corresponding personality traits appear that are based upon such a suggestibility inclination. Examples of a cluster of such derivative traits based upon the need for fusion along with the person’s high suggestibility index then includes: compliance, consent, amenability, deference, approval, submission, and yielding. In all, and to repeat, the basic-wish of this kind of person is to gratify the need for subject/object fusion.

As a template, Table 6.1 is a listing of the entire communicational network of the unconscious arena as this example of the Incorporation dimension illustrates.

Rejection

The behavioral prototype category of Rejection with its emotion representative of Disgust contains its DNA instruction of not needing, not wanting, and not tolerating anything even resembling fusion with the other. The survival mechanism underpinning this category of Rejection is, in the language of such a Disgust emotion possibly stated as: “You revolt me.” As such, on Table 6.1, the basic-wish reflecting this behavioral category is “to achieve partition from the other” so that the aim of the psyche within the unconscious domain is to engineer and retain mechanisms that can ensure continual separation.

It is in this sense that the instinctive-impulse—the ‘doing’ mechanism of the psyche—is to engage in a “pushing away” impulse; that is, the need here is to implement in behavior the DNA instruction of the Rejection category. In actual behavior, such a person, with respect to derivative trait-behavior, will turn out to be a highly critical person. It is this high-index ‘criticality’ trait that by definition, is designed as the trait representing the personality-need to find everything wrong with the outside—with reality, with others—so that everything is then seen as okay with the self . It is in this fundamental way that the person can continue to filter out any ineffectuality that is felt about the self . The self therefore needs to be free of the dreaded self-critical belief that at bottom, the real reality is that the self is the one actually feeling contaminated.

In other words, in such a Rejection context, the emotion-defense of projection is designed so that presumably the person can continue to project all imperfections to the outside. The diagnostic condition that represents such a need-system is that of an underlying paranoia. Personality traits of such a person can include: dissatisfaction, cynicism, impatience, incitement to seek blame, insistence, and generally, poor frustration-tolerance.

With respect to such a need to push-away, such a person very likely reveals the core reason for this sort of attitude (need to reject). The Darwinian /Plutchikian underpinning here with respect to a survival issue is thereby revealed as what is psychoanalytically defined as a “projective-identification; that is, you project onto the other any negative trait resembling a trait reflecting a characteristic of the self—and then instantly disavow it as representative of the self .

Table 6.1 displays the entire communicational network engineered by the psyche so that four distinct polarities of personality formation can be viewed. These behavioral/emotional polarities can be appreciated from an inspection of any facet within this network.

These four polarities are:

1. Incorporation/Rejection

2. Reproduction/Deprivation

3. Exploration/Orientation

4. Protection/Destruction.

The Polarity of the Incorporation-(Acceptance) and Rejection-(Disgust) Categories

Tracing across rows of Table 6.1 beginning with the Prototype Category, it can be seen that Incorporation and Rejection are opposites along with their respective primary emotion counterparts of Acceptance and Disgust . Further, the language of each emotion (Acceptance or Disgust) translates respectively also as opposites, to wit: “I like you to be with me,” versus “You revolt me.” The relation of one’s basic-wish to such polar opposites on this acceptance/rejection dimension concerns the psyche’s aim of gratifying one’s basic-wish seen on Table 6.1 as the aim of togetherness opposing the need for separation which on the one hand gratifies the need for subject/object fusion, and on the other hand ensures the achievement of subject-object partition.

In addition, the instinctive-impulse governing the need of the Acceptance emotion versus the one governing the Disgust emotion is that of “extending the invitation” in contrast to “pushing the invitation away.” The instinct inherent in the psyche here is moving the person to do something in order to satisfy the DNA of the particular primary emotion in question, while the impulse of the instinct becomes the “doing” element of it.

With respect to emotion-defenses, and diagnosis, the trait of suggestibility of the hysteric diagnosis means that falling in love easily contains the need for fusion with the object with a complete absence of criticality, while within the disgust emotion-context, the person is rather dreading such fusion with the object. This revulsion of fusion with the object is then fueled by a high criticality-index of the personality also then revealing the polarity of high suggestibility of the hysteric (the denial of critical feelings) and the high criticality-index of the paranoid personality (projection of critical feelings onto the world).

Within the ‘Disgust ’ emotion category, the instinct of needing separation with the other is also fueled by the instinct’s impulse; that is, it’s the instinctive-impulse which carries the action-instruction of the psyche that then implements the actual pushing away. Of course this polarity of the Acceptance and Rejection categories is also on display by virtue of identifying the high tolerance-index of ‘suggestibility’ of the hysteric with the high index-need of criticality and cynicism of the paranoid.

Reproduction

The behavioral prototype category of Reproduction and its emotion representative of Joy contains its DNA instruction of not only issuing an invitation to the other to enter, to ‘come in’; more than merely an invitation to enter the relationship, such an invitation becomes a matter of meaning to “possess” the other. Thus, this so-called “invitation” also represents a sexual focus on the other in the sense of defining it as a complete possession of the other. The psyche’s aim here is ultimate physical contact along with emotional ecstasy. In the language of this Joy emotion, the elemental statement of “I love you” (and perhaps at the moment): “and only you,” implies the impelling nature of the initial invitation to enter.

The person’s ability to calibrate this need for possession of the other in order to keep everything from exploding in pure hyper-excitement dictates in the psyche the need of the emotion-defense of reaction-formation

. In a perusal of Table 6.1, it can be imagined that this reaction-formation emotion-defense keeps a presumed manic diagnosis in check insofar as such a person can be, as suggested, somewhat over excited, hyper-energized or manic. The affect of the emotion-defense of reaction-formation concerns checking manic energy so that this defense becomes an instrumentality of implementing an opposite reaction to anything that is attractive to the subject—especially if the attraction is a so-called forbidden pleasure and further dictated as ‘forbidden’ by the superego. In such a case the person’s energy is moderated.

Thus, with respect to achieving the psyche’s aim (especially in the absence of contaminating such an aim with a hyper-energized explosive manifestation), the person’s instinctive-impulse (the urgency and impatience to succeed in its aim) is to contain the impulse part of the instinct’s need to possess. In this sense the invitation to intimacy can be strategically issued in a more civilized way so that gaining and then gratifying the person’s basic-wish of gaining such possession increases the probability of success.

The possible successful end result here that would reflect a reasonable achievement of the psyche’s need to gratify this basic-wish would probably be the transformation of the person’s nature of a hyper-energized highly manic state to one that could be diagnosed as hypomanic; that is, somewhat less energized and yet able to be characterized within the lesser intensity than simply displaying a visible portrait of solid mania.

Personality traits that accompany this diagnostic state of a possible manic individual include: haste, rashness, impatience, frenzied activity, and frenetic behavior.

Deprivation

The behavioral prototype category of Deprivation and its emotion representative of Sorrow contains its DNA instruction of reflecting the basic-wish of ‘reuniting.’ This essentially means reuniting with a lost loved one. This particular personality profile reflects the ubiquitous feeling of people who are depressed and whose language of the depressed emotion of Sorrow is really a sense of being besieged by the loss of a loved one (of someone or something especially valuable). In this respect, crying becomes the response that in its basic motive concerns the extreme attempt to retrieve the lost object (person or thing).

Thus, the language of the emotion of Sorrow or Sadness becomes a repetitive “I miss you so.” Only with elapsed time along with some increased ‘doing’ activity does the repetitive intensity for retrieval begin to subside. The emotion-defense that manages to help such a person retain a reasonable measure of balance (in order to ever so gradually emerge from such sorrow/depression) is identified as the emotion-defense of

‘compensation .’ It is this compensatory emotion-defense that ‘compensates’ for the loss by incessantly continuing to feel the imagined presence of the lost object.

A sample of traits that develop in such a person include: moodiness, gloom, melancholy, despair, sullenness, and, ‘dispiritatiousness’. Yet, everything related to this Deprivation /Sorrow dimension becomes governed by the psych’s incessant focus on the need to retrieve that which was lost. Therefore, in the psyche exists a principle of protecting all material. In this case, the protection of material relates to a conservation of whoever or whatever is valued.

The instinctive-impulse to reunite becomes paramount—especially if the loss is that of a person. A need to retrieve an inanimate object can of course also be valued but the emotional power of the loss of a loved one (a person) is what qualifies as meeting the requirement of an obsessive and repetitive retrieval need.

The Polarity of Reproduction-(Joy) and Deprivation-(Sorrow) Categories

In Table 6.1, it can be seen that Reproduction is opposite to the category of Deprivation . This polarity is more easily understood on the level of primary emotions so that Joy and Sorrow become a distinctive contrast. On the diagnostic level, this contrast is also easily seen as a polarity insofar as Manic and Depressed is also a distinctive contrast.

With respect to the basic-wish of the Joy dimension, possession of the other is paramount, while along the Sorrow dimension, the basic-wish is to reunite with the other who has been lost as for example in death. In addition, with respect to the Joy dimension one encounters a person who is energetic and in a manic sense quite alive, while on the Sorrow dimension one encounters a person who is rather inert, passive, moody, and seemingly defeated as in a depressive state—with the absence of the color of life.

In an overall sense, and in relation to emotion-defenses, it seems that apparently the reaction-formation of the Joy dimension is in polar opposite to the compensatory emotion-defense of the Sorrow dimension. On the level of the instinctive-impulse of the primary emotion

, the Joy dimension invites intimacy while the Sorrow dimension cries for the loss of intimacy.

With respect to basic-wishes , the Joy dimension is satisfied with possession of the other, while for the Depressed dimension, the basic-wish becomes one of the hope of—really of hopeless reunification.

Exploration

The behavioral prototype category of Exploration and its emotion representative of Expectation contains its DNA instruction of the basic-wish which is to seek novelty. Here, the person will be in need of mapping the environment as a means of satisfying an ever present curiosity. Thus, the psyche’s aim here is to discover the ins and outs of where everything is located. This becomes a location operation in the sense of searching for a way to master the environment. In a more or less exaggerated manner it could be seen that such a person could also have an obsessive need to control its environment. Yet such a person is never in fear of the environment. The need to control the environment is essentially a need to understand it but characteristically in the service of a sense of curiosity.

Diagnostically, such a person could be identified as obsessive along with a clear sense of utilizing obsessive emotion-defense instrumentalities such as intellectualization as well as more of a need to generally categorize things. In such a case, the psyche’s need is to expend energy in the service of continual discovery. In this sense the person’s need to map the environment is driven by the person’s corresponding basic-wish which is to love and seek novelty. The instinctive-impulse of the psyche here is to be able to generate activity (the impulse) that continues instinctively to need stimulation and amusement.

Orientation

The specific nomenclature here is actually a focus on disorientation. This means that the basic-wish of this behavioral category will be characterized by a supreme effort (to be made in the psyche) in order for the person not to be disoriented. The Orientation category with its primary emotion representative of Surprise is one in which such a person favors the elimination of novelty and rather wishes for events that are consistently unsurprising. Therefore, such a person is one whose primary emotion says: “I don’t like surprises —they unnerve me.”

Instead, if any surprises are due, the aim of the psyche is to monitor all events in order to feel safe and not ever self-surprised. The monitoring impulse is that which aims to satisfy the instinct of the surprise emotion so that the aim of the psyche is designed to work well in satisfying the person’s basic-wish which is always to be successful in such a person’s wariness. Thus, such a person’s motive is to apply surprising moments to the other in order to feel secure in personal power—nullify any surprising moment that would affect the self . Most importantly surprising the other becomes an acting-out of the person’s central fear ; this is a counterphobic act as well as one that can be defined as a projective-identification by the subject.

This instinctive ‘monitoring’ need is the psyche’s engineering and use of this category’s instinctive-impulse insofar as the impulse inherent is the instinct is to render a full safeguard of oversight so that the person can be reasonably secure in the knowledge that any lurking surprise is essentially of low probability. In addition, the basic-wish of such a person will concern a wariness working in tandem with the psyche’s aim of sustaining an intense guardedness. This guardedness becomes an accompanying paranoid characteristic of the personality.

This kind of vigilance reflects a main occupation of such a person; to seek endless external stimulation in order to defend against any possibility of someone else becoming a usurper of the control of the self . This is the essence of concern; that is, to control the other and not be worried of the other controlling the self . It is in this sense that such a person utilizes the emotion-defense of regression in the personality. This kind of consistent need for movement and for planning is energized by such a person’s emotion-defense of regression. It is the regression—an echo of childhood play and need to move around—that assures the impossibility of ‘prediction’ so that it is the other who is ultimately surprised rather than the self .

Because of such a person’s insistence to monitor everything, the regressive emotion-defense fuels acting-out as a major preoccupation of such a personality. This acting-out then becomes the basis for a diagnostic consideration of psychopathic ordering of the personality characterizing the entire syndrome within this orientation/disorientation category. The emphasis here is on the instinctive-impulse of the defense guarding against disorientation. In fact, the impulse of such a protective instinct (to the monitoring of all things) is designed by the psyche to not doing to the self what such a person may plan to do to others. Therefore, the psyche’s engineering here is basically to avoid stillness but only in the service of creating stimulation that surprises others.

Such characteristics are certainly more relevant to psychopathic acting-out than they are to strictly speaking, paranoid characteristics. The difference lies in the predilection of the psychopathic-like type to need input from the external environment while the paranoid type rejects input from the outside and is also in more detail defined as a solipsistic narcissist.

The Polarity of Exploration-(Expectation) and Orientation-(Surprise) Categories

The psyche’s aim within the Exploration dimension is to search and to explore (in the absence of fearfulness). In contrast, the psyche’s aim within the Orientation dimension is for the person to be guarded. Thus, the basic-wish of the Exploration dimension is to seek novelty while within the Orientation dimension, the basic-wish is to sustain a condition of consistent caution.

On the level of emotion,’ expectation ’ of the Exploration dimension is quite opposite to that of an uninterrupted concern about needing to cancel any potential ‘surprise ’ of the Orientation dimension. Simply stated, the Exploration dimension’s ‘expectancy’s emotion says: “I’m curious and need to move around and discover things.” Its opposite, the Orientation’s ‘surprise ’ emotion simply states: “I don’t like surprises so that I’m not ever searching for anything that will surprise me. Rather, I will carefully plan for some known trajectory that will lead me to whatever I want and in doing so I too will move around, but in my case it will be to support whatever plans I have.

With respect to the instinctive-impulse of each, within the Exploration dimension the person will enjoy mapping the environment in the sense of discovery while within the Orientation dimension, the person will want only to monitor the environment in order to know when or when not to act. In addition, on the level of emotion-defense, for the person operating with expectation , learning things that are new requires confidence in intellectual investigation while for the person operating with concerns regarding surprises , the moving around becomes a function of a regressive attempt at not experiencing an interior loneliness; that is, reflecting an attempt to keep the inner life animated. What this means is that such a person needs to compensate for an absence of stimulation in the inner life by creating planning strategies as a way to animate the inner life. In such a case, the need to animate the inner life is considered psychiatrically as characteristic of a psychopathic organization of personality.

Further, diagnostically, an obsessive need for discovery within the Exploration dimension is quite opposite than what is characteristic for the Orientation dimension where a more psychopathic issue is at stake. In addition, for the obsessive, the motive is typically one of a gradual attempt at controlling the environment as a result of mapping it, while for the so-called psychopathic person the attempt is always a need for the other never to control the subject.

In this sense, for the obsessive, a trait such as a need to control is usually on display while for the psychopathic person, the regression and guardedness generates the need for consistent acting-out behavior in the underlying and ultimate sense of protecting the self and animating the inner life.

Protection

The behavioral prototype category of Protection and its emotion representative of Fear contains its DNA instruction of the basic-wish for pure ‘survival.’ In this sense, Fear states: “I need to run away, to flee, to hide.” In the sense of ‘fleeing,’ the instinctive-impulse of this emotion is in the impulse of the instinct which is the actual behavior of fleeing.

Again, simply said, in Fear is the psyche’s design to safeguard the self and solely the self . The major emotion-defense within this dimension becomes the ubiquitous emotion-defense of a concentrated ‘repression .’ Such a person has no patience for careful examination. Rather, such a person desires, at the first sign of possible danger, the need to flee rather than to carefully analyze the situation. These kinds of alarm moments are urgently experienced.

A person who characteristically expresses the psyche’s aim here is typically and diagnostically seen as one who is passive and of course alarmed so that always playing it safe turns out to mean displaying traits of compliance, and overall risk-averse behavior. Synonymous traits are: yielding, conforming, deference, and agreeableness—along with a sudden stampede of fear or even of terror at the sign of danger—especially imminent danger.

Destruction

The behavioral prototype category of Destruction and its emotion representative of Anger contains its DNA instruction of the basic-wish of ‘dominance’. In this sense, Anger states: “Don’t mess with me. If you thwart the way to my goal I will attack you.” The impulse of the instinctiveness of this category reflects the impulse to action that as an instrumentality justifies the energy for the attack. The psyche’s aim here is to consistently try to gain the ascendancy and then to retain dominance so that the wish to achieve and retain the goal is assured.

Diagnostically, the common trait seen here is the relative inability to tolerate frustration along with a continual ebb and flow of hostility that exists also in the variety of associated traits such as quarrelsomeness, argumentativeness, malice, spite, protest, rancor, hatred, and bitterness.

On the emotion-defense level, the defense of displacement is easily seen as the main defense of this diagnostic syndrome. Therefore, if the aggression cannot be related to the person toward whom it is specifically directed, then the defense of displacement permits a surrogate to receive the aggression

. For example, the chair is kicked instead of the person.

The Polarity of Protection-(Fear) and Destruction-(Anger) Categories

The psyche’s aim within the Protection dimension is to consistently try and safeguard the self while the psyche’s aim within the Destruction dimension is to consistently try to gain and to remain in the ascendancy. In this sense the primary emotion of Fear says: “I’ve got to get away because I can feel the threat” and the primary emotion of anger says: “If there is a threat then I’ll attack it because no one will block my goal!” Of course, instinctively, fleeing at the sign of danger is opposite to attacking the source of the danger.

The basic-wish of the Protection dimension is ‘survival’ even if it means only being relatively safe. In contrast, the basic-wish of the Destruction dimension is to sustain a condition of dominance especially as a triumphant warrior—although with possible risk. The traits of the Destruction dimension do not convey satisfaction unless such traits contain the impulse for major triumph so that satisfaction of the basic-wish can only be maximally gratified with full conquest.

Traits reflecting the Protection-Fear dimension can include: passivity, compliance and overall risk-averse behavior. In contrast, traits reflecting the Destruction-Anger dimension include: malice, protest, rancor, hostility, as well as risk-taking. In addition, the Protection and Destruction dimensions are also diagnostically opposites with Protection-Fear as passive and Destruction-Anger as aggressive.

Synopsis

In this exposition and discussion of Table 6.1 at attempt was made to organize the data of the psyche in order to better understand the proposed infrastructure of this psyche—especially with a focus on instinct , impulse, emotion, emotion-defense, personality traits, and diagnosis; that is, to organize, translate and transform a seemingly tangled compendium of related material into a hopeful semblance (in a systematic schema) intended to enable all of such material to be seen as harmoniously composed in order to present this material in its transformed and logical form.

Along with this attempt at organization of material, this particular chapter was introduced so that instinct and instinctive-impulse could be understood as both infused in the substrate of emotion as well as separated into instinct as defined with intent, and impulse as defined with action that is instructed and given its meaning within the substrate of emotion

.

Conclusion

A perusal of the Table of Contents of this volume will describe the proposed construction in the evolution of the unconscious domain. With respect to the precursors to the development of the unconscious, various processes that could be traced in the development of such an unconscious, along with adaptational processes that contributed to its evolutionary development, is also considered.

Ultimately in understanding the need for an unconscious arena in the personality of individuals, Darwinian and Plutchikian theoretical approaches were outlined that essentially accounted for the need in evolutionary development for an unconscious facet of the mind to appear, especially in concert with the pressures and demands of the predatory world as this predatory world affects adaptation . In addition, early 21st century neuroscientific work related to the unconscious was also introduced as such data was seen as impacting neuropsychoanalytic contributions—led by theoreticians and researchers such as Panksepp (1998), Damasio, (2000), Solms (2003), and Semenza (2018), and to name a few.

For Darwin it was a world that specifically demanded factors in evolution that could manage or engage the various pressures of such a predatory world. For Plutchik it was the need to uncover the emotional tropistic nature that was a given derivative of behavioral instinctive-impulses in the substrate of primary emotions that in time became the basis of all adaptations , again, in response to the pressures of a predatory world. In this sense the question asked by Gazzaniga (1985), is: From where are impulses originated? In the treatise herein, the answer is possibly undeniable; impulses are constituents in the substrate of primary emotions

.

Thus, the Plutchikian primary emotion model was unpacked so that what emerged was also an inherent language of the emotions, a basic-wish system of the unconscious that correlated with the emotion model, and an unconscious mechanism identified as the psyche that contained in its engineering, the facility to devise schemas in pursuit of this adaptation to the world.

Further, it was seen that there is an architecture to symptom formation in the unconscious realm that gives to the individual the ability in fantasy to satisfy each and every wish. This ability to bring to bear the concept of wish-fulfillment added to evolutionary understanding the Darwinian-Plutchikian model, along with Freud’s profound contributions to the infrastructure of personality.

Thus, in the unconscious realm could be attributed the facility of engineering emotion-defense mechanisms that service the basic-wish of the unconscious. In addition in this unconscious realm can be systematized a complete communicational structure so that the uninterrupted and relentless bombardment of chaotic material that is consistently raining down on the unconscious can be categorized and also protected; that is, this amalgam of chaotic material can be protected by the emotion-defense of repression and by the Freudian notion of personality-resistance—the primary function of which is to protect repression from above.

As far as instrumentalities of the psyche are concerned, an algorithm within the unconscious domain is formulated as a communicational circuitry that acts as an interstitial bridge between the various communicational partitions within the unconscious arena.

In total, to see how the Darwinian , Plutchikian, and Freudian intersections (and interactions) proceed within the unconscious arena and to immerse oneself in the pursuit of a further understanding of this evolutionary extravaganza, the entire unconscious domain has been in this volume considered to be one that was fundamentally enabled into existence by the identification of prototype universal tropistic behavioral categories along with their virtual primary emotion representatives.

It was proposed that such tropistic categories affected all creatures from amoeba to man, correlated also to universal primary emotions containing the inherent language of each primary emotion as well as housing in its substrate the instinctive–impulse of each emotion.

Tracing evolution of this unconscious domain also revealed an opportunity into seeing how this unconscious merged into a panoramic affect onto consciousness—especially with reference to the organization of personality. What became revealed was the communicational structure within the unconscious including its aim (the psyche’s aim), and the all important basic-wish . Further, emotion-defense structure of the personality also emerged as essential to the formation of psychological symptoms , cognitive structure

, and diagnostic syndromes.

Thus, to query a colleague for a definition of the unconscious realm and first to be met with hesitation and then finally with a response defining the unconscious as “something that is in the absence of awareness,” is, because of the presentation of material in this volume, considered to be an insufficient response. Therefore, the conceptualization of material presented in this volume—especially as to the organization of the communicational structure of the ‘constituents’ of the unconscious—was an attempt to examine (and to reveal in a metapsychological sense), the more complex existence, presumably (or ostensibly) of the entire unconscious realm embraced in an evolutionary historical context and defined here as: The Unconscious Domain.

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Glossary

Acting-out

A metapsychological psychoanalytic concept defined as ‘doing’ something rather than ‘knowing’ something. Implies the active defense mechanism of repression that supports the not ‘knowing’.

Adaptational theory

Belief is based upon primary benefits to the individual because of possible survival advantages.

Agent-detection

The individual assumes a dangerous presence rather than denying or simply avoiding this possible dangerous presence.

Algorithm

Solving a problem by a procedure of repetitive steps which in this volume is utilized in the example of communicating a message repetitively, or as an analogy by repeating the same melody as a way of communicating a comprehensive core message.

Architecture of the unconscious

The interaction of variables such as the ubiquitous survival-concern, the regulation of tension level

, the primacy of the pleasure-principle, the internal operation of the psyche itself, and the analysis of the basic-wish

, (along with sub-variables within each of these benchmarks of the unconscious domain) comprise an aggregate of variables joined by a communicational sequential network. In total, it is proposed that this amalgam of variables with its communicational organization suggests nothing less than the actual architecture of the unconscious.

Axiom

Self-evident truth.

Basic-wish

The most derivative agent of the pleasure-principle and the major variable determining the basis of personality inclinations incubating in the unconscious domain.

By-product theory

Belief is based upon one thing or another for which the one thing or another was not intended. Therefore, by-product theory is based upon a spandrel

.

Causal reasoning

Focused on cause and effect logic.

Compensatory

Clinically referred to as a defense-mechanism that is utilized in the psyche to elevate the individual’s sense of inferiority or depressive outlook.

Concatenations

Linkages

Consilience

Meaning unity or agreement.

Counterphobic

A flight toward the content of the phobia rather than the flight away from it. Therefore, counterphobia can be defined also as an attempt at mastery through denial and impulsive preemptory behavior. See: Projective-identification.

Dialectic

A discussion with different points of view searching for truth through logic.

Disquisition

A lengthy discussion of a particular subject.

Dream

See: Latent dream

; See: Manifest dream.

Dysthymic

Reference to depressive conditions.

Ego

Part of the structural apparatus of id

, ego

, superego. Mediates between inner urges and the demands of reality and is governed by secondary process. See: Secondary process.

Ego-integrity

One’s acceptance of self

.

Emulsifier

A separate substance that enables other two substances that are not chemically able to blend, to enter their mixture so that the blending can occur.

Enosiophobic

The conviction one has of being guilty of some profoundly immoral act or unlawful act that is always delusional.

Epigenetic

Environmental influence triggering genetic response.

Eros

Freudian life instinct with a focus on libido. See: Libido.

Error-management theory

Staying on the safe side by not denying possible danger. Synonymous with agent-detection.

Exaptation

Serving a function other than for what it was originally adapted. Identified also as a spandrel

(Utilized by Gould and Lewontin, 1979 ). See: Spandrel.

Etymological

Historical development of words and their meanings.

Fabulized

Confusions of meanings whereby logic can be undermined. Also, inserting fantasy in memory lapses or memory distortions.

Hypomanic

Not quite manic yet visibly excited, over-talking, impatient and irrepressible.

Id

An id element of Freud’s structural theory of id

, ego

, superego. The id is of the unconscious mind and is comprised of primary-process material that is unformed and intense. Id is governed by the pleasure-principle.

Imprinting

Especially with respect to animal behavior this means the new-born will instinctively (or by learning) follow the lead of the parent, as for example in following the leader, e.g. ducks following in a row.

Infrastructure

Organizational structure of a system where constituents of the system interface so that the aim of the system can operate successfully.

Instinct

In psychoanalytic thinking, this is considered to be basic mental energy. Instinct has a source, and object and an aim. The source is internal, the object is the expression of tension requiring gratification, and the aim is the gratification of the person’s basic-wish

. Instinct is not based upon learning or experience. It is strictly biologically based presumably to aid in survival. Freud posited life and death instincts

; that is, that the wish to be at zero anxiety-level implies that in death there is no anxiety.

Internecine

A conflict between sides.

Intrapsychic balance

The reasonable balance of ego

, id

, superego.

Introjection

The incorporation into the mental apparatus (or psyche) of an image or object (person) usually idealized (the introjected object)—the purpose of which is to apporoximate the desired sense of persona and to support the ego

.

Isomorphic

In scale a one to one relationship.

Latent dream

Dream from below involving unconscious material.

Libido

A Freudian term for sexual drive

.

Manifest dream

Dream from above involving translated cohered material from below.

Metabolic

Chemical reactions of the body with respect to also capturing nutrients and use of energy to sustain life.

Metapsychological

Abstractions of mental processes in the absence of actual empirical experimentations

Narcissist

Usually defined as self-love and self-interest in the context of an absence of empathy. Omniscience and grandiosity are also characteristics of the personality.

Neuropsychology

The interface between psychology and neuroscience as in the relation of mind to brain. Also refers to neuropsychoanalysis.

Osmosis

Process of passage through a semipermeable membrane from a less intense substance to a more intense one. Also defined as the gradual assimilation of conceptual information.

Parthenogenesis

A form of asexual reproduction; that is, development of embryos in the absence of fertilization.

Perceptual defense

Not seeing that which the subject doesn’t want to see. Supported by the defense of projection and the diagnosis of paranoid orientation. See: Selective perception.

Phenotype

Developmental changes the individual undergoes as a result of external environmental factors. Contrasts with genotype; that is, changes occurring despite environmental experience.

Phylogenetic levels

Referring to evolutionary development of a species or of a subset of a specific factor of this species.

Pleasure-principle

The ubiquitous need to reduce tension.

Prereflective unconscious

A person’s main theme becomes an organizing principle of personality, akin to a developingscheme (Formulated by Stolorow, 1995 ).

Preternatural

Exceptional, rare, unexplainable.

Primary-process

Correlated to “ id

”-related primitive content of the unconscious domain.

Projection

Attributing objectionable qualities to others that you yourself possess. Usually identified with paranoid symptomatology and considered an ego-defense which in this volume is preferably and perhaps more usefully defined as an emotion-defense.

Projective-identification

Seeing qualities of the self in the other that are unconsciously repudiated and then disavowing them in the self

. An example of the “unthought known” (Bolas, 1987 ).

Prosody

Patterns of rhythm, sound, and intonation in language.

Prototype

An original form from which other things are copied.

Prototypical adaptations

For example

, each of the basic behavioral-categories serve a universal function with respect to ultimatesurvival needs.

Pseudomania

Believing something has occurred that has actually never occurred. Referred to as a “shame psychosis.”

Psyche

Psychoanalytically understood as equivalent to “mind” although also seen as an overarching conception of mind where organization of cognitive as well as personality dynamics are governed. Can be also understood as the engineering room of the unconscious domain.

Psychodynamic

The operation and interaction of the various forces of personality including cognitive organization, emotional, psychological, and mental life generally, along with the effects of such phenomena, specifically.

Psychoevolutionary process

Implying the admixture of psychological and evolutionary phenomena.

Psychological symptom

The most representative symbol of psychopathology. Psychoanalytically seen as a substitute for gratification of the person’s basic-wish.

Psyschopathic

Generally considered an antisocial personality characterized with an acting-out predilection. Psychoanalytically understood as containing the atom of the personality as a fear of what is experienced as one’s silent inner life thereby requiring the need to generate endless external stimulation.

Punctuated equilibrium

Progress in evolutionary development that is uneven (Gould, 2002).

Reaction-formation

Does not simply indicate an “opposite reaction.” Rather, this emotion-defense actually means that an aversive opposite reaction to any stimulus that is attractive to the person such as a forbidden pleasure occurs—as dictated by superego judgment.

Reality testing

Observing and understanding the external world and responding in a way that faithfully reflects the realistic requirements of such external conditions.

REM sleep

Rapid Eye Movement

. A phase of sleep associated with increased physiologic activity as well as the presence of dreaming.

Repression

Considered the chief defense mechanism that keeps unacceptable impulses out of consciousness in the psyche’s artful facility within in the unconscious domain.

Schemas

Designed to help organize stimuli of the unconscious.

Secondary elaboration

A Freudian dream mechanism that smoothes out the descriptive story-line of the manifest dream so that this descriptive manifest version of the dream gains greatest possible coherence in contrast to the bewildering underlying latent dream

.

Secondary-process

Correlated to “ ego

” and reality and so logic becomes the guardian of a possible testing-mechanism of reality.

Selective perception

Seeing solely that which one wants to see. Is supported by the defense of denial and diagnosis of hysteric orientation. See: Perceptual defense.

Semiotics

The study of signs and sign-using behavior including gestures and images.

Solipsism

The person’s feeling that all knowledge is only known through the self

. See: Narcissism.

Spandrel

An unintended consequence of another primary condition.

Stream of consciousness

Free associational narrative sequence.

Syncretistic thinking

conflating correlation with causation.

Syntonic

Synonymous with: “In harmony with…”.

Thanatos

Freudian death instinct

.

Tropism

An innate need to react in a definite manner. For example, a photo-tropism is a plant growing toward light while a hydro-tropism is a plant growing toward water.

Unconscious

Absence of consciousness. A place where primary-process material exists in timelessness, and external reality is replaced by psychic reality. Chief defense of the unconscious realm is repression.

Vicissitude

Change or array of circumstances.

References

1. Bolas, C. (1987).The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought known . New York: Columbia University Press.

2. Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. (1979).The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm . New York: Routledge.

3. Stolorow, R. D. (1995). Psychoanalysis: Treatment of conflict or deficit?: Comment.Psychoanalytic Psychology, 12 (4), 583. Crossref

Author Index

A

Abrams, S.

Albrechtsen, J. S.

Alcock, J.

Alexander, C. N.

Angell, J. R.

Arlow, J.

Auestad, L.

Augusto, L. M.

B

Balthazarde, C.

Barrett, L. F.

Blass, R. B.

Blumberg, M. S.

Blum, H. P.

Boag, S.

Bohleber, W.

Bolas, C.

Bowers, K. S.

Boyce, W. T.

Bracha, H. S.

Bragh, J. A.

Brenner, C.

Bruner, J. S.

Burton, C. M.

Buss, D. M.

C

Cambell, B.

Cambell, R. J.

Carmeli, A.

Carmeli, Z.

Chomsky, N.

Cicero, D. C.

Coster, G.

Crick, F.

Curtis, B.

Curtis, C.

Curtis, R.

D

Damasio, A.

Darwin, C.

Dawkins, R.

Dennett, D. C.

de Vries

Dijksterhuis

Donald, M.

E

Eagle, M.

Ellenberger

Ellis, B. J.

Emde, R. N.

Everett, D. L.

F

Faber, M. D.

Fenichel, O.

Ferenzci, S.

Fine, B. D.

Flaherty, A. W.

Fodor, J.

Fotopoulou

Freud, S.

G

Gaensbauer, T. J.

Gazzaniga, M.

Gill, M. M.

Goldenson, R. M.

Goodrick, C.

Gould, S. J.

Greenwald, A. G.

Grice, P.

H

Haney, W. S.

Harmon, R. J.

Harms, E.

Hartley, E. L.

Hazelton, M. G.

Hendrick, C.

Hendrick, I.

Hendrick, J.

Henig, R. M.

Hicks, J. A.

Hobson, J.

Hogarth, R. M.

Holland, R. W.

Hull, C.

I

Izard, C. E.

J

Johnson, E.

Josephs, L.

Jung, C. G.

K

Kaywin, L.

Kellerman, H.

King, L. A.

Klinger, M. R.

L

Lampton

Langer, E. J.

Leo, G.

Lewontin, R.

Liebscher, M.

Loftus, E. F.

Lorenz, K.

M

MacLean, P. D.

McDougall, W.

McGinnies, E.

Meissner, C. A.

Michison, G.

Miller, M.

Moore, B. M.

Morsella, E.

Munphy, L. B.

N

Nesse, R.

Nettle, R.

Newcomb, T. M.

Nicholls, A.

Nietzsche, F.

Nordgren, L. F.

O

Okrent, A.

Olson, L.

P

Pace-Schott, E.

Panksepp, J.

Parker, K. K.

Paulson, S.

Plutchik, R.

Postman, L.

Pulver, S.

R

Rappaport, D.

Rass, R.

Regehr, G.

Ross, N.

S

Schachter, D. L.

Schelling, F.

Scott, J. P.

Semenza, C.

Solms, M.

Stickgold, R.

Stolorow, R. D.

Strongman

Sussa, K. J.

T

Trent, J.

Turnbull, O.

V

Varin, S.

Vulcan, V.

W

Weinrich, J. D.

Weiss, J.

Weiten, W.

West, L.

Wilson, T. D.

Witteman, C. L. M.

Wyers, E.

Y

Yovell, Y.

Subject Index

A

Acceptance

Acting-out

Activation synthesis theory

Adaptation

Adrenaline/nor adrenaline

Amoeba

Amorphous bombardment of stimuli

Amygdala

Anger
and aggression
and empowerment
and personality

Antiquity

B

Basic-wish

Brain
syncretistic

C

Chaotic stimuli

Cigulate gyrus

Cognitive categories
analysis-scatteredness
attention-distraction
certainty-uncertainty
condensing-reconstituting
Recalling-Forgetting
Rumination-Reliquishment

Cognitive tools
agent detection
by-product theory
causal reasoning
error management
theory of mind

Cognitive unconscious

Communication
organization
sequential

Compensation

D

Darwinian

Death instinct

Defense mechanisms
compensation
denial
displacement
emotion-defenses
intellectualization
projection
rationalization
reaction-formation
repression
sublimation

Defiance of death

Deprivation

Diagnosis
depressed
hysteric
manic
obsessive
paranoid
passive-aggressive
psychopathic

Disgust

DNA

Dream
latent

Dream elements
condensation
displacement
secondary elaboration
symbolism

Drives

E

Ego

Emotion
and civilization
and defense
and instinct
and language
and prototype behavior
primary
substrate of

Empowerment
and disempowerment

Epigenetic

Equilibrioum/disequilibrium

Evolution
evolutionary biology

Exaptation

Expectation

F

Fear

H

Homo sapiens

Hypothalamus

I

Id

Impulse
and control

Innateness

Instinct

Intuition

J

Joy

K

Kundalini syndrome

L

Limbic system

M

Memory

Mental process

Metabolic process

Metapsychology

N

Neuropsychoanalytic
mind/brain studies

O

Object
loss of

Orchid syndrome

Othello syndrome

P

Peace of mind

Personality
levels

Phylogenetic scale

Pineal gland

Pleasure principle
predatory

Primary process

Prototype behaviors
deprivation
destruction
exploration
incorporation
protection
rejection
reproduction

Psyche
function of

Psychoevolution

Psychological symptoms

R

Reaction-formation

Reality testing

REM sleep

Repetition-compulsion

Repression

S

Schemas
objectives of

Self

Serotonin

Sorrow

Spandrel

Stress

Subject-object

Sublimation

Surprise

Survival
and emotion
language

Symptoms, psychological

T

Tension
level
reduction
regulation

Thanatos

Tropism

U

Unconscious
algorithm of
architecture of
cognitive
collective
communication
functioning of

Unthought known

W

Wish system