Kings College

University Of London





Freuds Theory of Consciousness:
From Psychoanalysis to Neuro-Psychoanalysis

MSc Dissertation
MSc in Philosophy of Mental Disorder
Manos Tsakiris











2






Contents
Page
1.Introduction.. 3
2.Freud and the Mind-Body Problem.. 6
3.The Development of the Freudian Theory of Consciousness 15
4.Consciousness and Affect : Mark Solms Model.. 27
5.Consciousness and Affect : From Psychoanalysis to Neurosciences 33
6.References. 41


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1. Introduction
The topic of this dissertation is the Freudian theory of consciousness and affect:
consciousness is a sense organ for perception of mental processes and affect is
the primary sensory modality of the internal surface of consciousness. At the
same time, this dissertation represents an attempt to examine the
interdependence of two problems in the Freudian thought: the mind-body
relation and the relation of consciousness to mental life. The first chapter
attempts to see the Freudian thesis on the mind-body problem. Dualistic and
materialistic interpretations of the Freudian work will be examined and at the
end of the chapter we will try to clarify the difference between noumenalism
and anomalous monism. These two doctrines stand at the very center of the
present dissertation and they are intimately related to the Freudian theory of
consciousness as an organ of perception. Chapter 2 begins with an exposition of
the development of the Freudian theory of consciousness with respect to four
major Freudian works. At the end of the chapter, the model of consciousness as
perception will be discussed and it will be developed in chapter 4 in relation to
Mark Solms reading of the Freudian theory of consciousness. In the same
chapter, the crucial role of affect in this model will be clarified. Chapter 5 is
devoted to the possible relation of the Freudian theory of consciousness as
perception with two promising contemporary neuroscientific programs: Jaak
Panksepps Affective Neuroscience and Antonio Damasios model of
consciousness.
Although the decision to examine Freuds theory of consciousness may seem
paradoxical, because Freud was the thinker who dethroned consciousness, there
are good reasons that justify our decision. The primary stimuli that led to the
aforementioned choice of subject were given by the simultaneous reading of
Mark Solms paper What is Consciousness and Antonio Damasios book The
Feeling of What Happens : Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.
1



1
The possible relevance of these two works is intended to be investigated at the end of the
present essay.

4
In 1915 Freud wrote an essay entirely devoted to the subject of consciousness
and it was intended to be one of the twelve chapters of the book, which
according to what Freud wrote to Abraham in May 1915, it would be called
Preparatory Essays for Metapsychology (Gay, 1988, p.363). Unfortunately, this
paper on consciousness was one of six metapsychological essays that were
never published and it is presumed to have been destroyed.
Silverstein (1986) writes :
We know that Freud was not happy with the consciousness essay from the
start. When on 1 August 1915 he told Abraham that he had completed all
twelve essays, and called them war-time atrocities, he also told him
Several, including that on consciousness, still require thorough revision.
In The Unconscious (1915a) Freud repeatedly recognized the need to
answer questions about the nature of consciousness and the mode of
functioning of the system Cs., but always postponed the discussion for a
later time, probably intending to deal with the issues in the
Consciousness essay. (p.181)
Smith (1999a), following Silverstein (1986), notes that Freud wrote
comparatively little about consciousness explicitly, although the enigma of
consciousness and the problem of mind-body interaction were topics that
afflicted during his whole life.
Freuds focus on consciousness is compatible with contemporary philosophy of
mind and neurosciences. Schweiger (1998) notes :
Freuds focus on consciousness as an important feature of his
theory, attributing causal role for it as a construct to be explained
within the framework of a scientific theory of the nervous system
and psychic life, has its parallels in contemporary philosophy of
mind and neurosciences. Many contemporary writers promoted the
importance of consciousness within a theory of brain behavior (e.g.
Baars, 1988 ; Brown, 1977 ; Searle, 1992 ; Penrose, 1994, Dennett
& Kinsbourne, 1992 ; Churchland, 1988). (p.109).
Even in the field of the philosophy of mind, a re-reading of the most well-
known aspect of Freuds work, that is the existence of the unconscious, can be
viewed as grounded in interlacing theories of mental representation and
consciousness that have a remarkably contemporary hue (Redding, 2000,
5
p.119). Humphrey (1997) and Dennett (1987) advance the view that only in the
post-Freudian period, were philosophers and psychologists ready to begin to ask
the modern question: not, how and why is some of our mental life unconscious,
but how and why is any of it conscious? Humphrey comments that Freud, back
in the 1900, was already ahead of the game because he was asserting that
unconsciousness is the natural state of the things and thus it is consciousness,
and not unconsciousness, in need of explanation.
Finally, the development of a new paradigm within the neurosciences, that may
be called Affective Neuroscience, and its rapid progress contributed to the
genesis of a new hope: psychoanalysis may have found the chance to engage
into a scientific dialogue with a discipline that shares a lot of its fundamental
metapsychological hypotheses.
At the end of this introduction, I would like to thank Dr. Jim Hopkins for his
interest on my dissertation and his helpful comments and Dr. David Snelling for
his tutorials on Freud.
6

2. Freud and the Mind-Body Problem

There is much controversy as far as Freuds position on the mind problem is
concerned. Opinion is divided: there are scholars who claim that Freud was a
dualist, while others hold that he was a materialist. Within these two camps
there are many variations. In this chapter, we will initially describe the status of
dualism and materialism in the 19
th
century. Afterwards, we will first consider
some arguments provided by the dualist camp and the existing variations among
the supporters of a dualistic interpretation of the Freudian work, and afterwards
we will refer to a series of materialistic interpretations of the Freudian work.
Finally, we will try to clarify the difference between noumenalism and
anomalous monism. These two positions, although they are both committed to
an ontological monism, they do have crucial differences: it is absolutely
essential for the purposes of the present dissertation to discuss the ontological
commitments of each position, their compatibility or incompatibility- with
Freuds theory of consciousness and their relation to the efforts made for
reconciling psychoanalysis and neurosciences.

Dualism and Materialism in the 19
th
Century
Freud lived and worked in an intellectual atmosphere that was deeply confused
about the relationship between mind and body. Substance dualism, in both its
interactionist and parallelist forms, had been the dominant approach to the
mind-body problem for over three centuries and has managed to establish
separate and independent domains for body and mind. However, by the second
half of the 19
th
century, traditional dualism has been challenged by a series of
scientific events. The discovery of the law of the conservation of energy by
Helmholz, the Darwinian evolution of the species and the flourishing of the new
discipline of neuroscience threatened the coherency of dualism and
demonstrated the intimate relationship between mental and neurophysiological
events.
A philosophical response to these scientific challenges was provided by
epiphenomenalism (Huxley, 1874), according to which mind can be understood
7
as the smoke above the factory of brain. According to one version of
epiphenomenalism, the brain has causal power to produce mental events, but the
mental events themselves have no causal powers. In that way,
epiphenomenalism succeeded in reconciling, at least provisionally, the dualist
intuitions with the scientific progress.
Other solutions were provided by philosophers such as Spinoza, who
formulated the dual-aspect monism, and Kant, who proposed noumenalism as a
solution to the mind-body problem. These two positions are types of property
dualism that invoked a mysterious underlying substance noumenon, which
supports both physical and mental properties. It is clear that the thinkers of late
19
th
century were not in a position to entertain the sophisticated contemporary
physicalist alternatives such as Davidsons doctrine of anomalous monism,
which sharply distinguish between the concepts of token and type identity. The
same inability to think of the difference between token and type identity marked
Freuds thoughts on the problem and, as it is intended to be shown, this very
fact causes a lot of confusion in the discussion on Freuds solution to the mind-
body problem and his theory of consciousness.

Freud and Dualism
Anderson (1962) claims that Freud was an epiphenomenalist in 1888.
According to the epiphenomenalist thesis, there is a strictly one-way causal
relationship: the physical causes the mental, but the mental never causes the
physical. During the period 1892-93, Freud was obliged to accept the existence
of psychical causality, a thesis that conflicts with the epiphenomenalist position.
According to Anderson, Freud probably thought of psychical causality as
provisional models that were necessary due to the inadequate state of
neurological knowledge of his time. Andersons argument is based on a passage
from Freuds text Gehirn in which Freud states that whether or not an item
enters consciousness makes no difference in the neural processes giving rise to
the mental item.
Silverstein (1985, 1989) argues that Freud was a psycho-physical interactionist
and he based his argument on some early Freudian passages, such as the
Gehirn, the text On psychical or mental treatment (1890) and certain
passages from Hysteria (1888c). According to interactionism, physical events
8
cause mental events and these mental events, in their own right, cause physical
events. According to Solms and Saling (1990) interactionism is incompatible
with the existence of an independent psychological science because within an
interactionist framework, the broken sequences of conscious mental life are
conceptualized with reference to non-psychological causes and effects (see
Freud, 1940a, p.158). Thus, Freud would not be able to construct an
independent psychological science if he was holding an interactionist thesis.
Solms and Saling (1986, 1990) have argued several times that Freuds position
on the mind-body problem was that of psycho-physical parallelism (Solms &
Saling, 1986, 1990). In their papers, they quoted a series of passages that dated
from Freuds pre-psychoanalytic papers, such as his book On Aphasia and his
encyclopedia articles Aphasia and Gehirn. According to psycho-physical
parallelism, the mental and the physical are two independent domains, each with
their own causality. Solms and Saling quote the following passage from Freuds
essay On Aphasia:
The relationship between the chain of physiological events in the
nervous system and the mental processes is probably not one of
cause and effect The psychic is a process parallel to the
physiological, a dependent concomitant. (Freud, (1891)[1953],
On Aphasia, p.57)
Freuds psycho-physical parallelism must be considered in relation to the work
of John Hughlings Jackson. Freud, in his book On Aphasia, endorsed Jacksons
views and he enlisted his support against the views of many German-speaking
authorities, such as Meynert and Wernicke. Jackson rejected localizationism on
both neuroscientific and philosophical grounds and he extended his
methodological dualism into ontological dualism, which he called the doctrine
of concomitance. Moreover, there are many passages in Jacksons work, which
imply that mental states are what Freud, called dependent concomitants of
neural states. Smith (1999a) claims that perhaps Jackson was groping towards
some form of token identity theory, such as Davidsons anomalous monism. But
at the end, Jackson remained a psycho-physical parallelist and he was never
concerned with the philosophical defects of such a position.
The thesis of psycho-physical parallelism led us to a fundamental problem
related to Freuds philosophy of mind and his position to the mind-body
9
problem. His claim that the psychical is a process parallel to the physiological
(Freud, On Aphasia, p.57; also Freud, S.E., 14, p. 207) which, if not intended in
a merely methodological context, is compatible with parallelism and
epiphenomenalism, but incompatible with materialism and interactionism.
Psycho-physical parallelism can be either ontological or conceptual. In the first
case it is presented as a variation of epiphenomenalism, and in the latter it is
compatible with non-reductive materialism, because it recognizes the
inescapable necessity of a distinct kind of mental conceptions and descriptions
which are not reducible to the physical.
Paul Redding (1999,2000) argues that by 1915 Freud had to abandon
parallelism as a doctrine of the mind-body relation because of its
incompatibility with his notion of the unconscious :
With the development of the idea of the unconscious, however,
such a form of parallelism (i.e. psychophysical) had to be
abandoned, seemingly because of the inability of psychophysical
parallelism to provide a place for unconscious mentality. In the
parallelist picture, all that could be unconscious is the workings of
the brain, but Freud wanted the gaps in the conscious chain of
psychological causes to be filled with something psychical but
unconscious, not something physiological.For the parallelist
position, unconscious mental processes would be such because they
were less energetic than conscious ones. But in Freuds picture the
reverse was actually the case. Unconscious mental processes were
typically more energetic than conscious ones. (1999, pp.64-65)

Freud and Materialism
Within the materialist camp there is a crucial difference which has to be
clarified. Identity theories, which equate the mind with the brain, are of two
kinds: there is the type identity and the token identity theory. According to type
identity theory which may also be called reductive materialism, mental states
are physical states of the brain. That is, each type of mental state or process is
numerically identical some type of physical state or process within the brain or
the nervous system. Token identity theory, and especially its Davidsonian
formulation under the name of anomalous monism, claims that although each
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mental event is identical with some neurophysiological event, there are no type
identities between mental and physical events: there are only token identities.
Anomalous monism guarantees the irreducibility of psychology to physical
sciences. Concerning Freud, some scholars claimed that he was a type identity
theorist, while others advocated that he was a token identity theorist, that is a
non-reductive materialist. Before examining a crucial theme for the present
dissertation, that is the relation of the Freudian philosophy of mind to the
doctrines of Kantian noumenalism and anomalous monism, we will first refer to
the materialistic interpretations of the Freudian work.
Amacher (1965) believed that Freud was an identity theorist. According to the
identity theory, mental states are identical to certain brain states and Amachers
view implies that Freud assumed the workings of the mind and those of the
brain to function according to identical principles. Amachers argument was in
large extent based on a certain reading of Freuds Project and on his view that
Freud was an identitist from the beginning of his career, but this is untrue as
Solms and Saling showed by citing a passage from On Aphasia which is
explicitly parallelist. Moreover, Amacher supported the view that
psychoanalytical metapsychology is tied to the 19
th
century neurophysiological
theory which is nowadays discredited. Solms and Saling (1990) used certain
passages from Gehirn to refute Amachers view and they concluded that Freud
was not an identity theorist, at least not a type identity theorist, because he did
not believe that the internal structure of mental processes can be reductively
explained in terms of reflex brain events.
Flanagan (1984) argues that Freud moved from a type identity reductionism to a
methodological dualism, which he calls Thesis of the Autonomy of
Psychological Explanation. This change happened, according to Flanagan, after
1895, that is after the unsuccessful attempt of the Project. Regarding Freuds
ontological thesis, Flanagan offers two plausible solutions: Freud held an
agnostic position, or he supported a non-reductive token identity theory.
Wallace (1992) claims that Freud was never an ontological dualist and that his
dualism had only a purely methodological character. Wallace states that from at
least 1888 onwards Freud was an ontological materialist. However, he
distinguishes two periods: a) 1888-1895 during which Freud was a type identity
11
theorist, and b) 1895-1939 during which Freud was dual aspect monist. He
writes:
It is hard to know conclusively whether Freuds subsequently
untrammeled methodological dualism was held provisionally, in the
hope of eventual neurobiological reduction or whether it reflected a
token-token identity theory (Flanagan, 1986, p.59) or a dual-aspect
monism, either of which permits a materialistic metaphysic and an
open-ended methodological interactional-dualism (Wallace, 1988a;
1988b; 1989; 1990). Of these three possibilities, I lean toward dual-
aspect monism (Wallace, 1992, p.249)
According to Smith (1999a) we may divide Freuds views on the mind-body
problem in two periods. From 1888 until 1895, Freud was a dualist. From 1888
to 1890 he was a psychophysical parallelist or epiphenomenalist. In 1890,
according to Smith, Freud explicitly rejected epiphenomenalism in his paper
On psychical (or mental) treatment and in 1891 in his book On Aphasia, he
was a parallelist. From 1895 until his death, Freud was an identity theorist of an
unspecified type.

Freud and the Question of Ontology
Scholars such as Matthis (2000), Opatow (1999), Redding (1999) and Solms
(1997) have underlined Kants influence on the Freudian thought. They have
claimed that Kantian noumenalism provided Freud with the solution he needed
in order to formulate his position on the mind-body problem and his theory of
consciousness. Kantian noumenalism is committed to ontological monism
reality is one- and methodological dualism it can be perceived and is known in
two different ways: through the mental and through the physical. Although
reality is one, it is at the same time in itself unknowable, it is noumenal, it is
neither mental nor physical. The crucial difference between noumenalism and
anomalous monism which is also committed to ontological monism and
methodological dualism- is that anomalous monism is committed to an
ontological monism which recognizes as only existing reality the physical one.
Thus, reality in itself is knowable, it is physical and all mental events are
physical events but mental phenomena can not be given purely physical
explanations. (Davidson, 1970).
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The aforementioned scholars have supported, not without taking their
precautions, the view that Freud was a noumenalist and based the majority of
their arguments on their interpretation of Freuds last major paper An Outline of
Psychoanalysis. In this paper, which may be considered as Freuds testament to
the psychoanalytic movement, Freud stated two fundamental hypotheses
concerning the unconscious and consciousness. The first hypothesis dealt with
localization: there is one topos for conscious processes and another for
unconscious processes. We assume that mental life is the function of an
apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space and
of being made up of several portions which we imagine, that is, as resembling
a telescope or microscope or something of the kind (S.E., 23, p.145). The
second hypothesis concerned the nature of the psychical. Freud wrote:
[Psychoanalysis second fundamental hypothesis] explains the supposedly
somatic concomitant phenomena as being what is truly psychical, and thus in
the first instance disregards the quality of consciousness (S.E., 23, p.158). Irine
Matthis (2000) in her paper Sketch for a metapsychology of affect advances
the view that these two fundamental hypotheses found in Freuds last paper
signify a radical change in the Freudian metapsychology. According to this
new epistemology, both body and mind are categories established by
consciousness, they are notions and they exist as such only for consciousness:
neither body, nor mind exists as such, beyond consciousness. Matthis reading
of An Outline of Psychoanalysis is in accordance with the ideas expressed by
scholars such as Mark Solms and Luis Chiozza who both tried to sketch a
metapsychology of affect, which will permit the integration of mind and body
on the basis of affect. Within this framework, Freuds following words take
their full meaning:
The unconscious is the true psychical reality; in its innermost nature
it is as much unknown to us the reality of the external world, and it
is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the
external world by the communications of our sense organs (1900,
S.E., 5, p.613).
It is argued (Matthis, 2000; Opatow, 1999; Solms, 1997) that this line of
argument must lead us to the formation of the view that Freud was a
noumenalist. Freud repeatedly warned us not to equate perceptions by means of
13
consciousness with the truth of reality (Freud, 1915, 1917). Affect serves to
conceptualize the mind-body connection because it is defined as the psychical
aspect of the somatic concomitant phenomena which Freud held to be the
truly psychical, and consequently research must be directed to the examination
of an embodied agent, not a disembodied consciousness. Thus, the two
questions What is affect? and What is consciousness? will lead us to a
better understanding of how Freud conceptualized the mind-body problem.
Solms (1996d) writes:
So the psychical and the somatic manifestations of affect are
simply two ways of representing the same underlying thing. The
unknowable internal happening that we call affect is registered on
both perceptual surfaces simultaneously, it is perceived as an
emotion on the internal surface of consciousness, and as a somatic
state on the external surface of consciousness. This simple fact
explains why affect is both an essential subjective state and
something that is inextricably connected with the body(p.495).
The dichotomisation of the human being into mind and body is retained insofar
each one is perceived into different modalities of consciousness, pointing in
different directions. The underlying reality that these different modalities
represent is one and the same, although unknowable in itself.
The interesting question for the purposes of this dissertation is whether the
efforts of scientists such as Mark Solms can be established on the basis of
anomalous monism. It can not be easily understood why noumenalism seemed
inescapable to these efforts. In effect it seems that Solms model can work
because it guarantees the necessary methodological dualism and at the same
time it avoids the reducibility of the mental to the physical: a danger that is
always present in a materialistic thesis. But, on the other hand, Freuds work
and Solms model are not incompatible with other doctrines such as this of
anomalous monism which is also committed to ontological monism reality is
one and it is physical- and methodological dualism the mental is not reducible
to the physical. Richard Wollheim seems to be right when he wrote (1982):
Freud answered yes to this question, he was a materialist, but there
are shades and shades of materialismFreuds materialism was not
14
based on linguistic considerations and he rejected reductionism. His
theory requires the mental language (pp.124-5).
Even Solms and Saling (1990), after exposing their arguments for the case of
psycho-physical parallelism and without understanding their own contradiction,
seem to accept the possibility that Freud was a non-reductive materialist. They
write:
It also seems plausible to interpret Freuds (1888b2) statements to
imply that he was a non-reductive materialist (see Davidson, 1980,
for an account of this position), and numerous comments in Freuds
later works would tend to support this interpretation (p.118)
As a conclusion, it may be noted that Freud was, even from the beginning of his
career, a methodological dualist. As far as his ontological thesis is concerned,
there is much ambiguity: he was a noumenalist or a materialist? The relative
bibliography can not provide a definite answer and even Freud himself was
never certain of his ideas on the topic. It seems more reasonable to seek the
answer in the needs of the current efforts of reconciling psychoanalysis with
neurosciences. Obviously, the thesis of noumenalism will not work in the
direction of reconciling these two disciplines because it violates the ontological
commitment of neurosciences. On the other hand, a doctrine such as that of
anomalous monism, can be proved useful and even indispensable for the
program of neuro-psychoanalysis, because at the same time it is committed to
the ontological monism of the physical, and it guarantees the methodological
dualism, which was, after all, Freuds major priority.
.
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3. The Development of the Freudian Theory of Consciousness

Mackay (1986) writes:
When Freud discusses the mind-brain issue it is almost always in the context
of another and, for Freud, closely related issue: that of the relationship between
the mental and the conscious. (p.390)
2

In this chapter, reference is made to the development of the Freudian theory of
consciousness with respect to four major Freudian papers: The Project for a
Scientific Psychology, The Interpretation of Dreams, The Ego and the Id and An
Outline of Psychoanalysis. Our intention is to expose the view that
consciousness is a sense organ with two surfaces one directed towards the
external world and the other towards the internal- for the perception of mental
processes and, that affect is the primary sensory modality of the internal surface
of consciousness. Affect as a sensory modality of consciousness will be
extensively discussed in the next chapter.

Consciousness in the Project for a Scientific Psychology
The physicalist model of the mind presented by Freud in the Project for a
Scientific Psychology posits two fundamental types of element and a principle
of operation. The elements are the units of structure, the material particles out
of which the apparatus is constructed, and they are known as neurones, which
form a complex network. Secondly there is energy or quantity, known as Q,
whose flow through the network of neurones obeys to the laws of motion. The
working principle of the model is that of neuronic inertia or the Constancy
Principle, according to which the apparatus has a tendency to divest itself of

2
It must be noted that Freud was explicit as far as his view on the mental-conscious relation is
concerned. In his paper The Unconscious (1915, S.E., 14), Freud denied the equation of mind
with consciousness for the following reasons: a) the equation of mind with consciousness is
inconsistent with the principle of mental continuity, b) the equation of mind with consciousness
poses problems for the understanding of the interaction between mind and brain, c) this equation
overvalues the causal power of conscious mental states and d) this equation delimits the field
into which psychoanalysis and every psychology can be applied. See also Smith (1999a, p.67).

16
energy, or to reduce tension, where tension is identified with the accumulation
of energy.
At the first pages of the Project and according to theory of contact barriers,
Freud distinguishes two classes of neurones in order to account for the
differences between perception and memory: (1) those which allow Q to pass
through as though they had no contact-barriers and (2) those whose contact-
barriers make themselves felt, so that they only allow Q to pass through with
difficulty or partially. The neurones belonging to the first class, after each
passage of excitation, are in the same state as before, while the neurones
belonging to the second class, after each excitation are in a different state from
before, and thus, according to Freud, they afford a possibility of representing
memory. In the first class, neurones are permeable and serve for perception, and
in the second class neurones are impermeable and serve for memory and for
psychical processes in general. The former neurones are called and the latter
are called , and they constitute respectively the system and the system .
The system is turned towards the external world and has the task of
discharging as quickly as possible the Q penetrating to the neurones. The
system is out of contact with the external world and it only receives Q from
the neurones themselves and from the cellular elements in the interior of the
body.
After discussing the characteristics of each system of neurones, their relation
and the flow of Q into the two systems, Freud poses to himself the problem of
quality. He wrote:
Hitherto, nothing whatever has been said of the fact that every
psychological theory, apart from what it achieves from the point of view
of natural science, must fulfill yet another major requirement. It should
explain to us what we are aware of, in the most puzzling fashion, through
our consciousness; and, since this consciousness knows nothing of what
we have so far been assuming quantities and neurones- it should explain
this lack of knowledge to us as well. (S.E., 1, pp.307-308)
In addition, Freud warned us that the postulate of consciousness could not
provide us with complete or trustworthy knowledge of the neuronal processes.
In this sense we must regard these neural processes to their whole extent as
17
unconscious, but we still have to find a place for the qualitative content of
consciousness in the quantitative processes.
The problem of quality is the question where do qualities originate?
According to Freuds answer, qualities are sensations which are different in a
great multiplicity of ways and whose difference is distinguished according to its
relations with the external world (Ibid.,308) and they do not originate in the
external world, nor in the or system. Thus we summon up courage to
assume that there is a third system of neurones perhaps [we might call it]-
which is excited along with perception, but not along with reproduction, and
whose states of excitation give rise to the various qualities are, that is to say,
conscious sensations. (Ibid.,308)
As far as the question how do qualities originate, Freud formulated the period
thesis, according to which: the neurones are incapable of receiving Q, but
instead they appropriate the period of the excitation and that this state of theirs
of being affected by period while they are filled with the minimum of Q is the
fundamental basis of consciousness The filling of neurones with Q can no
doubt only proceed from , since we do not wish to admit any direct link
between this third system and . (Ibid.,310-311)
But, besides the series of sensory qualities, consciousness exhibits also the
series of sensation of pleasure and unpleasure. Since, the trend in psychical life
is to avoid unpleasure, Freud identified this trend with the primary trend
towards inertia. Unpleasure is related to a raising of the level of Q or an
increasing quantitative pressure and unpleasure would be the sensation when
there is an increase of Q in . Respectively, pleasure would be the sensation of
discharge Pleasure and unpleasure would be the sensations in of its own
cathexis, of its own level; and here and would, as it were, represent
intercommunicating vessels. In this manner the quantitative processes in too
would reach consciousness once more as qualities (Ibid.,312).
In the Project, Freud tried to account for the phenomena of consciousness
into the structure of quantitative psychology and he was aware of the fact that
no attempt, of course, can be made to explain how it is that excitatory
processes in the neurones bring consciousness along with them (Ibid.,311).
But at the same time he admitted that in his theory, consciousness possess
causal powers : consciousness is the subjective side of one part of the physical
18
processes in the nervous system, namely of the processes; and the omission of
consciousness does not leave the psychical events unaltered but involves the
omission of the contribution from .(Ibid.,311).
3

In a letter to Fliess on 1
st
January 1896, Freud changed his model of
consciousness by putting neurones between and . He wrote:
The neurones are those neurones which are capable of only very
little quantitative cathexis. The coincidence between these minimal
quantities and the quality faithfully transferred to them from the end
organ is once more the necessary condition for the generating of
consciousness. I now [in my new scheme] insert these neurones
between the neurones and the neurones, so that transfers its quality
to , and now transfers neither quality nor quantity to but merely
excites that is, indicates the pathways to be taken by the free
energy.(There are, so to say, three ways in which the neurones affect
one another : (1) they transfer quantity to one another, (2) they transfer
quality to one another, (3) they have an exciting effect on one another in
accordance with certain rules.)
On this view the perceptual processes would eo ipso (from their very
nature) involve consciousness and would only produce their further
psychical effects after becoming conscious. The processes would in
themselves be unconscious and would only subsequently acquire a
secondary, artificial consciousness through being linked with processes of
discharge and perception (speech-association) (Ibid.,388-389)
According to Pribram & Gill (1976), Freud placed between and , rather
than to put between and , because he was interested in establishing that
was moved by quality without any transfer of quantity. But in one instance

3
Freud was aware that the theory of consciousness he was proposing was different from the
ones proposed by two other powerful lines of thought. The first one was a mechanistic theory,
according to which consciousness is a mere appendage to physiologico-psychical processes and
its omission would leave the physical events unaltered (that is consciousness is deprived of any
causal role). The second one postulated that consciousness is the subjective side of all psychical
events and is thus inseparable from the physiological mental processes. In Freuds own words,
his theory of consciousness lies between these two.

19
Freud was obliged to reconsidered this placement: that was the case of
awareness of pleasure and pain and word images from within. In this case Freud
postulated that consciousness reaches through and he accordingly revised
the relationship between , and .
In a letter of 6 December, Freud returned to his model and he substituted
psychological for neurological terms. The neurones are now named
Wahrnehmungen (perceptions). These perceptual neurones are not modified
by the passage of information which, before reaching consciousness, is analyzed
by three more systems: (1) the Wahrnehmungzeichen (indications of speech)
which arranges information in terms of associations by simultaneity, (2) the
Unbewusstsein (unconsciousness) which arranges information in terms of
causal and conceptual relations and finally (3) the Vorbewusstsein
(preconsciousness) which corresponds to our official ego. (Smith, 1999,p.91)
In the 6 December 1896 model, episodes of consciousness precede and follow
unconscious mental processing and Freud states explicitly that consciousness
attaches to perceptions. Smith (1999a) presumes that Freud understood this
attachment of consciousness to perceptions as consisting of uninterpreted raw
sensations which are afterwards subjected to cognitive processing before their
emergence into preconsciousness as interpreted sensory experience. This
hypothesis explains why Freud thought of preconsciousness as secondary
thought consciousness.
A final note concerning the theory of consciousness in the Project must be
made: it has been proposed that Crick and Kochs recently developed theory of
the neurophysiological basis of consciousness as synchronized neural
oscillations was anticipated by Freud in his 1895 Project. As aforementioned,
Freud attempted to solve the problem of quality by hypothesizing that
information concerning conscious sensory qualities is transmitted by means of
neural periods (see Smith, 1999b).

20
Consciousness in the Interpretation of Dreams

The draft that is believed to have inspired the chapter VII of the Interpretation
of Dreams was based on Freuds January 1896 revision of the Project. (See
Solms & Saling, 1986). Despite the profound similarities between the chapter
VII of the Interpretation of Dreams and The Project for a scientific psychology,
Freud explicitly declares the displacement of his interest:
I shall entirely disregard the fact that the mental apparatus with which
we are here concerned is also known to us in the form of an anatomical
preparation, and I shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine
psychical locality in any anatomical fashion. I shall remain upon
psychological ground, and I propose simply to follow the suggestion that
we should picture the instrument which carries out our mental functions as
resembling a compound microscope or a photographic apparatus or
something of the kindWe will picture the mental apparatus as a
compound instrument, to the components of which we will give the name
of agencies, or systems. (S.E., 5,pp.536-537)
According to the model proposed in The Interpretation of Dreams, the mental
apparatus has a sense or a direction: Freud ascribed a sensory and a motor end
to the apparatus. At the sensory end lies the system Pcpt. that receives
perceptions and at the motor end lies the system M. that opens the way to motor
activity. According to the direction prescribed, psychical processes are in
general directed from the perceptual end to the motor end. The system Pcpt.
remains unaltered by the passage of stimuli and its cognitive function is to
transmit the perceived information to an array of memory systems, which are
called Mnem. systems and which are the neurones of the earlier model. In
accord with Freuds earlier formulations, it is the perceptual system, which
provides consciousness with the whole multiplicity of sensory qualities
(Ibid.,539) and the -systems of memory and consciousness are mutually
exclusive.
In the normal case, stimuli go through the apparatus from the perceptual end
and then the memory systems towards discharge through the motor end.
Obviously, information must pass through the system unconscious before it
reaches motor discharge. After passing through the unconscious, information
21
enters the system preconscious which holds the key to voluntary movement
(Ibid.,541) and hence consciousness, provided that certain conditions, such as a
certain degree of intensity, are fulfilled.
A misunderstanding may occur by the comparison of the schematic diagrams
presented in The Interpretation of Dreams and the discussion of Freuds model
of the mind included in the same text. In the schematic diagrams the Pcpt.
system abuts the Mnem. Systems, rather than feeding directly the system Cs.
But finally, in a footnote in the 1919 edition Freud recognized that we should
have to reckon with the fact that the system next beyond the Pcs. is the one to
which consciousness must be ascribed in other words Pcpt.=Cs. (Ibid.,541).
Thus, Freud seems to have retained his thesis that perceptual stimuli pass
through consciousness in an uninterpreted form before being subjected to
unconscious cognitive processes and prior to their re-emergence into
consciousness in an interpreted form. We must also note that this formulation is
compatible with the condensation of the perceptual and consciousness systems,
as it was expressed in the 1
st
January 1896 letter in which Freud recognized that
the consciousness-producing system is a functional unit of the perceptual
system.
In effect, when Freud posed the question what part is there left to be played in
our scheme by consciousness ? he replied explicitly that consciousness can
only play the role of a sense organ for the perception of psychical qualities
(Ibid.,615). Even the mechanical properties of the system Cs. are similar to
those of the system Pcpt., because both systems are susceptible to excitation by
qualities and they are both incapable of retaining traces of alteration. This is not
the first time that Freud stated the incompatibility of memory and consciousness
and of memory and perception. Moreover, just as the psychical apparatus is
turned towards the external world via the sense organs of the Pcpt. system, the
psychical apparatus is itself the external world in relation to the sense organs of
the system Cs.. Thus, the system Cs. receives excitations from two directions:
from the Pcpt. system and from the interior of the apparatus itself, whose
quantitative processes are felt by the Cs. system in a qualitative way in the
pleasure-unpleasure series.
As far as the function of consciousness is concerned, Freud wrote that just as
the system Pcpt. directs a cathexis of attention to the paths along which the
22
sensory excitation is spreading and thus functions as a regulator of the discharge
of the mobile quantity in the psychical apparatus, the system Cs. serves a
similar function: it perceives new qualities, it directs the mobile quantities of
cathexis and it distributes them in an expedient way. Moreover due to the
perception of the pleasure-unpleasure series, system Cs. influences the
discharge of the cathexes by the means of displacement of quantities into the
psychical apparatus which is in its essence unconscious. Freud thought that even
if in the first instance this displacement of cathexes was made automatically by
the unpleasure principle, consciousness of these qualities would introduce a
second and more discriminating form of regulation. This form of regulation
perfected the efficiency of the apparatus because it could now cathect and work
over even the stimuli that were associated with the release of unpleasure.
4


4
During the period 1910-1923, Freud published several papers, the following of which are in
some respect of interest to the present discussion of the Freudian theory of consciousness.
In A formulation on the two principles of mental functioning (1911), Freud once more
described consciousness as attached to the sense organs and he retained his view that thought is
essentially unconscious and only becomes conscious through connection with verbal residues.
In A note on the Unconscious in psycho-analysis (1912),Freud wrote:
Unconsciousness is a regular and inevitable phase in the processes constituting our
psychical activity ; every psychical act begins as an unconscious one, and it may either
remain so or continue developing into consciousness (S.E.,12,p.262)
Thus, since perception is a psychical activity, then perceptual stimuli are transmitted to the
unconscious systems without first passing through consciousness. This view is in
accordance with the innovation introduced in his 1910 paper on the psychogenic
disturbance of vision.
In The Unconscious (1915), Freud describes the relationship between unconscious and
conscious processes in the following way: every psychical act passes through two phases; in
the first phase the psychical act is unconscious, and thus it belongs to the system Uncs.;
then it passes through censorship or testing, before becoming part of system Cs.. We must
note that here Freud uses the abbreviation system Cs. for the preconscious part of the
mental apparatus and he stated :
For the present let it suffice us to bear in mind that the system Pcs. shares the
characteristics of the system Cs. and that the rigorous censorship exercises its office at
the point of transition from the Ucs. to the Pcs. (or Cs.) (S.E., 14,p.173)
In A metapsychological supplement to the theory of dreams (1917b), Freud returns to the
issue of the relationship between the two systems: Pcpt. and Cs. .He wrote :
23
Consciousness in The Ego and the Id and An Outline of Psychoanalysis

In The Ego and the Id (1923), consciousness is described as lying at the surface
of the mental apparatus in both a functional and an anatomical sense. Freud
wrote that consciousness is a system which is spatially the first one reached
from the external world (S.E., 19,p.19) and that all perceptions which are
reached from without (sense-perceptions) and from within what we call
sensations and feelings- are Cs. from the start (ibid.), while thinking is in the
first instance unconscious and the unconscious items become preconscious by
becoming linguistically indexed. It must be noted at this point that Freud
probably did not mean that all perceptions are conscious. While all conscious
events are perceptions according to his model, it does not happen the same with
perceptions. In The psychoanalytic view of psychogenic disturbance of

In The Interpretation of Dreams we were already led to a decision to regard conscious
perception as the function of a special system, to which we ascribed certain curious
properties, and to which we shall now have good grounds for attributing other
characteristics as well. We may regard this system, which is there called Pcpt., as
coinciding with the system Cs., on whose activity becoming conscious usually
depends.(S.E., 14,p.232)
In addition, the system Cs. of 1917 controls motility and has at its disposal a motor enervation
which determines whether the perception can be made to disappear or whether, it proves
resistant [i.e., the mechanism of reality-testing](p.233).
In his paper A difficulty in the path of psychoanalysis (1917a), Freud described introspective
consciousness as a form of inner perception and thought of the consciousness-producing system
as a component of the ego.
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud described consciousness as a function of the
system Cs.. Moreover, because consciousness registers information from within the body and
from the external world, Cs. must be located at the borderline between inner and outer and is
probably identical to some portion of the cerebral cortex. Excitatory processes that impinge
upon consciousness leave no permanent traces in Cs., because consciousness must always be
ready for the reception of new stimuli. The part of consciousness which is directed towards the
external world possess a barrier against the extremely intense external stimuli. At the same time,
Freud held, that Cs. has no such direct stimulus barrier directed towards the endogenous stimuli
because these are not so intense as the exogenous stimuli. In the case of excessive quantities of
internal stimulation (unpleasure), the mind has the tendency to treat endogenous stimuli as if
they were exogenous and in that way it brings the stimulus barrier against them (e.g. projection).
24
vision (1910), Freud discussed the phenomena of hysterical and hypnotically
induced blindness and we can find several statements in which the existence of
perceptual stimuli that do not have to cross consciousness is explicitly stated.
Thus, we may conclude that not all perception is conscious, though all
consciousness is perception.
In examining the difference between external and internal perceptions, Freud
acknowledged that the existence of internal perceptions to the ego raised a
fundamental question about his theory of consciousness: is it legitimate to
consider the whole of consciousness as a single superficial system Pcpt.-Cs.?.
Freud wrote:
Internal perceptions yield sensations of processes arising in the most
diverse and certainly also in the deepest strata of the mental
apparatus. Very little is known about these sensations and feelings;
those belonging to the pleasure-unpleasure series may still be
regarded as the best examples of them. They are more primordial,
more elementary, than perceptions arising externally and they can
come about even when consciousness is clouded. (S.E., 19, p.22)
At this point, it must be noted that in natural setting, neither external nor
internal perception occurs in pure form. In reality, both classes of perception
occur under the constant influence of mental processes arising from the interior
of the ego.
As far as feelings of pleasure and unpleasure are concerned, Freud seems to
repeat his view as expressed in the Project: sensations of pleasure and
unpleasure seem to possess special properties that are not dependent on any
linkage with memory residues in order to become conscious. According to
Freud they seem to be intrinsically conscious and this suggested him the
following question:
Let us call what becomes conscious as pleasure and unpleasure a
quantitative and qualitative something in the course of mental
events; the question then is whether this something can become
conscious in the place where it is, or whether it must first be
transmitted to the system Pcpt. (S.E., 19,p.22).
Freud chose the latter option and implied that the neural state with which
unpleasure is identical that of tension beyond some unspecified threshold- only
25
becomes a conscious experience of unpleasure to the extent that this state
physically impinges upon the system Pcpt.. And he went on to remark that:
We then come to speak, in a condensed and not entirely correct
manner, of unconscious feelings, keeping up an analogy with
unconscious ideas which is not altogether justifiable. Actually, the
difference is that, whereas with Ucs. ideas connecting links must be
created before they can be brought into the Cs., with feelings, which
are themselves transmitted directly, this does not occur. In other
words: the distinction between Cs. and Pcs. has no meaning where
feelings are concerned; the Pcs. here drops out -and feelings are
either conscious or unconscious. Even when they are attached to
word-presentations, their becoming conscious is not due to that
circumstance, but they become so directly (S.E., 19, pp.22-23).
Freud, then, went on to clarify the nature of the ego and he noted that the ego is
that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the
external world through the medium of the Pcpt.Cs.: in a sense it is an extension
of the surface-differentiation (Ibid.,25). Another factor that have played a
crucial role in the formation of the ego and its differentiation from the id, and
thus caused a part of the ego to become conscious, is a persons own body and
above all its surface. Freud wrote:
A persons own body and above all its surface, is a place from
which both external and internal perceptions may spring. It is seen
like any other object, but to the touch it yields two kinds of
sensations, one of which may be equivalent to an internal
perception. Psycho-physiology has fully discussed the manner in
which a persons own body attains its special position among other
objects in the world of perception. Pain, too, seems to play a part in
the process, and the way in which we gain new knowledge of our
organs during painful illnesses is perhaps a model of the way by
which in general we arrive at the idea of our body.
The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface
entity, but is itself the projection of a surface. If we wish to find an
anatomical analogy for it we can best identify it with the cortical
homunculus of the anatomists, which stands on its head in the
26
cortex, sticks up its heels, faces backwards and, as we know, has its
speech-area on the left hand side. (ibid., pp.25-26)
In Freuds last work, An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940), there are no changes
in his model of consciousness. Once more consciousness is viewed as an
internal sense organ, which perceives the subjects mental processes. Freud
(1940) wrote:
The process of something becoming conscious is above all linked
with the perceptions, which our sense organs receive from the
external world. From the topographical point of view, therefore, it is
a phenomenon that takes place in the outermost cortex of the ego. It
is true that we also receive conscious information from the inside of
the body the feelings, which actually exercise a more peremptory
influence on our mental life than external perceptions; moreover, in
certain circumstances the sense organs themselves transmit feelings,
sensations of pain, in addition to the perceptions specific to them.
Since, however, these sensations (as we call them in contrast to
conscious perceptions) also emanate from the terminal organs and
since we regard all these as prolongations or offshoots of the
cortical layer, we are still able to maintain the assertion made above
[at the beginning of this paragraph]. The only distinction would be
that, as regards the terminal organs of sensation and feeling, the
body itself would take the place of the external world. (S.E., 23,
pp.161-2)

27
4. Consciousness and Affect: Mark Solms Model

Freud understood consciousness as similar to an internal sense organ taking
mental processes as its objects. (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1980; Smith, 1999;
Solms, 1997; Herzog, 1991).
Herzog (1991) writes:
The close and essential connection between consciousness and
perception is nowhere more evident than in Freuds evolving view
of the consciousness of instinctual or affective processes what, for
lack of a better word, I have termed feeling. (p.55).
In the present chapter, we will initially discuss the primary role of affect in
the proposed model of consciousness and the differences between the
consciousness of external and internal stimuli. Next, we will consider Solms
reading of the Freudian model of consciousness and especially the function
of affect as modality of consciousness and as a bridge of linking the mind
with the body.

On the Primacy of Affect
Ontologically and phylogenetically speaking, consciousness of qualities of
pleasure and unpleasure precede consciousness of the external world. In the
Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning (1911), Freud
wrote:
The increased significance of external reality heightened the
importance, too, of the sense-organs that are directed towards the
external world, and of the consciousness attached to them.
Consciousness now learned to comprehend sensory qualities in
addition to the qualities of pleasure and unpleasure which hitherto
had alone been of interest to it. (S.E., 12, p.216)
Another passage that supports the primary position of the internal stimuli over
the external ones in the ontogenesis and phylogenesis can be found in Beyond
the Pleasure Principle (1920):
The excitations coming from within are, however, in their intensity
and in other, qualitative, respects in their amplitude, perhaps- more
28
commensurate with the systems method of working than the stimuli
which stream in from the external world. This state of things
produces two definite results. First, the feelings of pleasure and
unpleasure (which are index to what is happening in the interior of
the apparatus) predominate over all external stimuli. And secondly,
a particular way is adopted of dealing with any internal excitations
which produce too great an increase of unpleasure: there is a
tendency to treat them as though they were acting, not from the
inside, but from the outside, so that it may be possible to bring the
shield against stimuli into operation as a means of defense against
them. (S.E., 18, pp.28-29)
These two passages aptly demonstrate Freuds view that organisms are born
fundamentally affective, and only with maturation they become ever
increasingly cognitive.

External and Internal Stimuli
There is a crucial difference between external and internal stimuli in the
Freudian model of consciousness. In regard to the operation of the external
senses, Freud noted:
It is characteristic of them that they deal only with very small
quantities of external stimulation and only take in samples of the
external world. They may perhaps be compared with feelers which
are all the time making tentative advances towards the external
world and then drawing back from it (S.E., 18, pp. 27-28)
On the other hand, the internal perception of endogenously generated stimuli
lacks any shield against excessive stimuli, as it is the case for the external
stimuli.
[T]he difference between the conditions governing the reception of
excitations in the two cases have a decisive effect on the functioning
of the system and of the whole mental apparatus. Towards the
outside it is shielded against stimuli, and the amounts of excitation
impinging on it have only a reduced effect. Towards the inside there
can be no such shield; the excitations in the deeper layers extend
into the system directly and in undiminished amount, in so far as
29
certain of their characteristic give rise to feelings in the pleasure-
unpleasure series. (S.E., 18, pp.28-29)

Solms extension of the Freudian theory of Consciousness
On May 7, 1996, Solms presented his paper What is consciousness? as the
Charles Fisher Memorial Lecture at the New York Psychoanalytic Society.
Solms reply to the question posed by the title of his lecture was based on a
contemporary reading of the Freudian theory of consciousness in relation to the
neurosciences and the philosophy of mind.
Schematically, Solms (1997) argued that:
1. Consciousness is not caused by neurobiological processes in the brain.
2. The fundamental proposition of psychoanalysis is that all mental
processes are in themselves unconscious.
3. Consciousness is a reflection of mental activity, or a perception of mental
activity which is itself unconscious.
4. Freud followed Kant in believing that we can be aware only of
phenomena: things in themselves can never be known because beyond
every phenomenon is an unknowable noumenon.
5

Based on these primary assumptions, Solms developed his reply in the direction
of considering consciousness as a sense organ for perception of the mental
processes. Consciousness, according to Solms reading of the Freudian theory,

5
Solms advances the view that Freud was in great extent influenced by Kant and he quotes the
following passage: The psycho-analytic assumption of unconscious mental activity appears to
us as an extension of the corrections undertaken by Kant of our views on external perception.
Just as Kant warned us not to overlook the fact that our perceptions are subjectively conditioned
and must not be regarded as identical with what is perceived though unknowable, so psycho-
analysis warns us not to equate perceptions by means of consciousness with the unconscious
mental processes which are their object. Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in
reality what it appears to be (S.E., 14, p.171). Thus, according to Solms, Freud held the view
that both the internal and the external reality are in themselves unknowable: reality is
ontologically one, though it is knowable to us under distinct attributes of extension (physics)
and thought (psychology). (Opatow, 1999). For a similar line of argument regarding Freuds
relation to Kants philosophy, see Paul Redding (1999), The Logic of Affect, New York : Cornell
University Press and Barry Opatow (1999), Affect and the Integration Problem of Mind and
Brain, Neuro-Psychoanalysis, 1: 97-110.
30
represents a kind of internal sensory modality, which perceives the processes
occurring within us.
Solms (1997) writes:
We are aware of two different aspects of the world simultaneously.
First we are aware of the natural processes occurring in the external
world, which are represented to us in the form of our external
perceptual modalities of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, etc.
Second, we are aware of the natural processes occurring within our
own selves, which are represented to us in the form of our
subjective consciousness. We are aware of nothing else. These are
the only constituents of the envelope of conscious awareness, which
defines the limits of human experience. (p.685)
In developing Freuds model, Solms states that the envelope of consciousness is
derived from six primary perceptual modalities. On its external surface, we find
quantitative stimuli presented to us in the qualitative modalities of vision,
hearing, somatic sensation, taste and smell. On its internal surface, we find
quantitative stimuli in the qualitative modality that we call affect.
6
In Solms
model, affect is the primary sensory modality of the internal surface of
consciousness.
According to Solms, what is special about Freuds formulation is that the
natural processes occurring within us are represented consciously by means of a
sensory modality that faces inward and this modality is the sense of affect. We
construct the images of ourselves by processing constantly conjoined patterns of
stimuli derived from the internal sensory modality of affect, in accordance with
various algorithms, and thereby generating inferred entities experienced as
subjective feelings.(ibid.p.692).
The space that lies between the two poles of awareness the internal and
external surfaces of consciousness- is what is described in psychoanalysis as the
ego. Thus, Solms goes on to note that the totality of human consciousness
consists in three things: (1) primary external perceptions, (2) primary internal

6
Of course this classification is an oversimplification, because normally every modality
comprises other modalities or submodalities as well.
31
perceptions (affect), and (3) perceptions of activated traces of previous
experiences (memory and cognition).
On examining the primary importance of affect for the Freudian theory, it must
be kept in mind that according to Freud, the mental apparatus as a whole serves
the biological purpose of meeting the internal needs of the subject, which are
imperative, in a changing and usually indifferent external environment. These
needs are expressed through drives which are quantitative demands on the
mental apparatus to perform the necessary actions that will satisfy the general
functioning of the mental apparatus. The mental apparatus is regulated by the
pleasure principle and thus value is assigned to those mental performances
that they will conclude in the successful meeting of the internal needs. Their
success is felt qualitatively as pleasure and their failure as unpleasure.
According to Solms and Nersessian, Freuds answer to the question from
where do affect origin ad what is its purpose? lies to the fact that affect
assigns value to the state of the mental apparatus, by registering its biological
consequences in consciousness (Solms & Nersessian, 1999a, p.5). In Solms
view, the most crucial point in the Freudian theory of affect is the fact that
Freud considered felt emotions to be the conscious perception of something
which is, in itself, unconscious. Moreover, affects are perceived in a distinctive
modality of consciousness that is not reducible to the other perceptual
modalities: the affective modality of consciousness registers the internal state of
the subject. Even in the case where an affect is triggered by an external
stimulus, this affect registers the reaction of the subject to the external stimulus,
not the stimulus itself: affects register the state of the subject. In other words,
affects register the personal significance (value or meaning), to the subject, of
a particular external or internal situation (Solms & Nersessian, 1999,p.12).
This value is calibrated in degrees of pleasure and unpleasure: pleasure equals
to the satisfaction of the subjects needs and unpleasure equals to the frustration
of the subjects needs. These needs are reducible to drives which are the
psychical representative[s] of the stimuli originating from within the organism
and reaching the mind, as a measure of the demand made upon the mind for
work in consequence of its connection with the body (Freud, 1915a, S.E.14, p.
122). Thus, emotions are perceptions of oscillations in the tension of
instinctual needs (Freud, 1940, S.E. 23, p.198).
32
Regarding the effects of these oscillations on consciousness, Solms and
Nersessian (1999a) write:
For this, according to Freud, is what affect is: Feelings of pleasure
and unpleasure are the psychical quality attaching to transpositions
of energy inside the apparatus (1915a); they are the qualitative
form in which oscillations in the tension of instinctual needs
become conscious (Freud, 1940, p.198). Around this core, all the
other aspects of affect are organized. (pp.7-8)
Solms model is constructed around the definition of affect as lying on the
frontier between the mental and the somatic (Freud, 1915a) and the nature of
consciousness as an internal embodied sense organ.
In the next chapter, we will discuss the possibility of building bridges between
Solms metapsychological conceptions of affect and consciousness and the
recent progresses made by neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and Jaak
Panksepp.
33
5. Affect and Consciousness: From psychoanalysis to
neurosciences

In the mid-1990s two popular books written by neuroscientists, Descartes
Error: Emotion, Reason and The Human Brain by Antonio R. Damasio and The
Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life by Joseph
LeDoux, marked a profound change in the way emotions and consciousness
were treated by cognitive scientists. Not only they provided a new framework
for research, but they also criticized severely the cognitive paradigm:
cognitivism had abstracted almost all the phenomenological characteristics of
emotions and feelings from the scientific research of emotions and
consciousness. Paradoxically, many scientists had already concluded that within
the cognitive paradigm emotions had become affectless and they criticized it
for its neglect of the phenomenal consciousness of emotions (Tomkins, 1995;
Zajonc, 1984; Armon Jones, 1991). Paul Redding (1999) writes:
A striking feature of these books was the support they offered for
the Jamesian thesis that the felt-center of emotion consists of
informational feedback from states of the body. Another, given their
convergence with accounts such as Zajoncs, which discussed the
(access) unconscious aspects of emotion, was the indirect support
they provided for some of the basic tenets of another late-
nineteenth-century, early-twentieth-century psychologist, Sigmund
Freud. Curiously, both books have the feel of the late-nineteenth-
century Zeitgeist, a naturalistic outlook strongly based in
evolutionary biology but willing to talk about consciousness and
subjectivity in a way that has been excluded from most of the
twentieth century. (p.17).
In the following years, two other similar books appeared The Feeling of What
Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness by Antonio R.
Damasio and Affective Neuroscience by Jaak Panksepp. In all these efforts it is
made explicitly clear that the mind had to be first about the body and that the
body representation is the brains permanent background reference for the
structuring of the self and its relation to the world. Within this new framework
34
affects, emotions and feelings stand at the critical point of integration of mind
and body and they provide the basis for what Panksepp calls affective
consciousness or what Damasio calls core consciousness.
During the twentieth century many attempts of integration of psychoanalysis
and neurosciences have been made.
7
Probably, the most striking problem in all
these efforts was the quest of an adequate methodology and the problem of
translatability of the different vocabularies of the two disciplines. In this final
chapter we will try to delineate certain points of agreement between
psychoanalysis and the aforementioned neuroscientific models. This attempt to
reconcile psychoanalysis with neurosciences was inspired by a recent effort,
made under the editorship of Mark Solms and Edward Nersessian, which led to
the publication of the journal Neuro-Psychoanalysis.
8
We will examine
consecutively the possible points of agreement between the Freudian
metapsychology of affect and consciousness with the works of Panksepp and
Damasio.


7
E.g., Epstein (1987, 1989, 1995), Erdelyi (1985), Frick (1982), Galin (1974), Hadley (1983,
1992), Harris (1986), Hartmann (1982), Heilbrunn (1979), Hosmins (1936), Joseph (1982,
1992), Kaplan-Solms & Solms (2000) Kokkou & Leuzinger-Bohleber (1992), Levin (1991),
Maclean (1962), McLaughlin (1978), Meyersburg & Post (1979), Miller (1991), Negri (1994),
Olds (1992), Ostow (1954, 1955a, 1955b, 1955c, 1956, 1959), Palombo (1992), Peterfreund
(1971, 1975), Reiser (1984, 1990), Schilder (1935), Schore (1994), Schwartz (1987,
1988),Solms (1996a, 1996b, 1996c, 1997, 1998),Solms & Nersessian (1999), Solms & Saling
(1990), Stone (1977), Winson (1985), Zueler & Maas (1994).
8
The first issue of Neuro-Psychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and
Neurosciences was devoted to the topic of affect.
35
Jaak Panksepp and Affective Consciousness

Affective neuroscience is based on the premise that emotional process and the
subjectively experienced feelings do play a causal role in the chain of events
that control the actions of both humans and animals. The methodology proposed
by Panksepp in order to examine these emotional systems can be summed up to
the following steps: (a) the examination of the major categories of human
affective experience across individuals and cultures, (b) the study of the natural
categories of animal emotive behaviors and (c) the analysis of the brain circuits
from which the tendencies arise (Panksepp, 1998).
At the last chapter of his book Affective Neuroscience, Panksepp defends his
proposal concerning the fundamentally affective nature of primal consciousness.
He writes (1998):
Considering this possibility, I would argue that basic affective
states, which initially arise from the changing neurodynamics of a
SELF-representation mechanism, may provide an essential psychic
scaffolding for all other forms of consciousness. Thus, a primitive
affective awareness may have been an evolutionary prerequisite for
the emergence of perceptual-cognitive awareness. If so,
computational and sensory-perceptual approaches to consciousness
must take affective bodily representations into account if their
higher extrapolations are to be correct. From such a vantage,
Descartes faith in his assertion I think, therefore I am may be
superseded by a more primitive affirmation that is part of the
genetic makeup of all mammals: I feel, therefore I am. (p.309)
Moreover, Panksepp does not hesitate to acknowledge Feuds rightness
regarding the central place that affects occupied in psychoanalysis and in his
theory of consciousness. Freud recognized, just as Panksepp tries today to prove
it, that affects register the importance of salient events and thereby permeate
the higher conscious functions of the mental apparatus. Another point of
agreement between Freud and Panksepp can be found on the causal role that
both of them ascribe to affects and their relation to consciousness.
Freuds insights on the nature of affects were prescientAffective
states, arising from a variety of emotional and motivational
36
processes, may constitute the ground in the figure-ground
relationships that constitute ordinary conscious experiences. Even
though our conscious mind is not prepared to focus on the ground
processes as readily as on the figurative contents of mind,, those
affective states may be absolutely essential for any type of
consciousness to have emerged in brain evolution.
In the mammalian brain, all higher forms of consciousness may still
be grounded on the most primitive forms of consciousness, which I
assume were affective in nature. As already mentioned, without the
ground of affective experience, I suspect that individuals would
present themselves as the proverbial zombies of philosophical
discourse.(Panksepp, 1999a, p.20)
As far as the neural substrate that permitted the emergence of affective feelings
in brain evolution is concerned, Panksepp hypothesizes that they provide the
primitive foundation for ego development and he proposes that the ego
germinates from these primitive areas of the brain where the basic emotional
systems interact with the basic neural representations of the body.
In An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Freud posed the following question that
modern neuroscientists, such as Panksepp, try to answer: by what means and
with the help of what sensory terminal organs these perceptions [affective
feelings] come about (Freud, S.E., 23, p.198). In their attempt to find the neural
correlates of Freuds functional topography, neuroscientists faced the dilemma
of whether the perceptual system, which registers primary affective
consciousness, is to be located in deep subcortical structures (principally in the
region of PGA) or in neocortical forebrain structures (principally the prefrontal
lobes). LeDoux proposed that the most crucial role in sustaining every form of
consciousness is played by the core brainstem structures, although he attributes
the generation of conscious quality to working memory. Panksepp, on the other
hand, seems to follow Damasio who distinguishes between animals having
feelings (a function served by subcortical structures) and knowing that they
have feelings (a function which requires forebrain processing.
This distinction between subcortical and cortical consciousness-generating
systems led Panksepp to propose a further distinction between two types of
consciousness, cognitive and affective consciousness, which are sustained
37
by distinct dorsal/neocortical and ventral/limbic systems respectively. This
conclusion resembles Freuds own proposal that consciousness is registered by
two perceptual surfaces, one oriented toward the external world, and the other
toward the interior of the body. Freud (1940) wrote:
The id, cut off from the external world, has a world of perceptions
of its own. It detects with extraordinary acuteness certain changes in
its interior, especially oscillations in the tension of its instinctual
needs, and these changes become conscious as feelings in the
pleasure-unpleasure series (S.E., 23, p.198)
However, it must be emphasized that Feuds model of consciousness, and
especially its two perceptual surfaces, is a functional model, like all of his
topography, which can not be mapped onto anatomical structures in a simple
and isomorphic fashion.
9



9
Damasio (1999b) warn us: Likewise, I would caution against the neophrenological slip of
considering selected regions as providers of large-scale functions. The interconnectivity among
regions is of such a degree that, in all likelihood, the relevant neural patterns arise in a cross-
regional and supraregional manner(p.39).
38
Antonio Damasio and Core Consciousness

Damasios first book Descartes Error is based on two basic hypotheses: (1)
emotions play a positive role in the adaptive functions of the mind, and (2) they
do so by bringing the current state of the body to conscious awareness. Damasio
(1994) writes:
Feelings offer us a glimpse of what goes on in our flesh, as a
momentary image of that flesh is juxtaposed to the images of other
objects and situations; in so doing, feelings modify our
comprehensive notion of those other objects and situations. By dint
of juxtaposition, body images give other images a quality of
goodness or badness of pleasure or pain(p159)
Damasio in his first book constructs a new theory that combines the James-
Lange paradigm with contemporary neuroscientific knowledge and it
incorporates many components of Freuds metapsychology.
Just like Freud, Damasio conceptualizes the mental apparatus as a
phylogenetically evolved sympathetic ganglion that mediates between
compelling demands arising from the internal milieu of the body, on the one
hand, and the practical constraints of external reality on the other.
Moreover, Damasio, like the early Freud, suggests that emotions contribute to
the regulation of this adaptive, self-preservative process by generating signals of
pleasure and unpleasure, which reflect the vicissitudes of the internal milieu
with reference to an underlying economic or homeostatic principle:
Achieving survival coincides with the ultimate reduction of
unpleasant body states and the attaining homeostatic ones, i.e.,
functionally balanced biological states. The internal preference
system is inherently biased to avoid pain, seek potential pleasure,
and is probably pretuned for achieving these goals in social
situations (Ibid.,179; see also p.262).
In his second book, The Feeling of What Happens, in a fusion of developmental
biology, clinical neurology and physiological psychology, Damasio argues that
human consciousness emerged out of the development of emotion. According to
Damasio, feeling an emotion is a simple matter, consisting as it does of mental
images arising from the neural patterns that represent the changes in the body
39
that make up an emotion. But having consciousness of that feeling, feeling the
feeling, is the crucial step in the development of human consciousness. Having
feelings is of extraordinary value in the orchestration of survival. But beyond
that, Damasio asserts that the mechanisms that permit consciousness may have
prevailed because it was useful for organisms to know of their emotions.
Emotional processes target both body and brain: the brain nuclei primarily
concerned with managing the life processes regulating heart function,
mediating pain, controlling breathing- are closely interconnected with those
concerned with attention, arousal, sleep and consciousness. Thus, the fact that
the regulation of life process and of consciousness are so intimately connected
is not due to an anatomical accident, but it is rather a development of real
evolutionary worth.
Central to his theory is the idea that the part of the mind we call self is
biologically speaking- grounded on a collection of nonconscious neural patterns
standing for the part of the organism we call the body proper. Behind the notion
of self, there is the notion of the singular, stable individual. Consciousness
depends on the internal construction and exhibition of new knowledge
concerning an interaction between the organism and an object. In the same line
of argument, we may say that for Damasio, affect arises out of interaction
between internal milieu and outside world and that the essential context of
affect is defined by the self in relation to the object.
Damasio (1999a) does not hesitate to avow his influences:
The view of consciousness I adopt here connects historically with
those expressed by thinkers as diverse as Locke, Brentano, Kant,
Freud and William James. They believed as I do that consciousness
is an inner sense. Curiously, the inner sense view is no longer
mainstream in consciousness studies. (p.126).
Damasio further distinguishes core consciousness, which is concerned with the
here and now, from extended consciousness, which includes autobiographical
memory and the perception of time. Core consciousness is a second-order state
of the mind/ brain located in some specific regions, and capable of representing
the relation between representations of objects and representations of the soma,
while the latter is almost invariably reacting emotionally to some object or
another: Core consciousness occurs when the brains representation devices
40
generate an imaged, nonverbal account of how the organisms own state is
affected by the organisms processing of an object, and when this process
enhances the image of the causative object, thus placing it saliently in a spatial
and temporal context (Ibid.,169). As far as the connection of core
consciousness to emotions is concerned, Damasio asserts that emotions and core
consciousness tend to go together and that both emotions and core
consciousness require, in part, the same neural substrates.
For the relation of his work to the Freudian metapsychology of affect, Damasio
(1999b) writes:
I believe we can say that Freuds insights on the nature of affect
are consonant with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience
views. Emotion and feeling are operated in the brain, neurally
speaking, in the manner everything else is operated neurally, and
yet, emotion and feeling are distinctive on several counts: Emotions
are genomically preset and largely innate; they have an
indispensable ingredient (pleasure or unpleasure); and there is a
unique within-ness about them. I have proposed (without thinking of
Freud but coincident with him), that the body, real, and as
represented in the brain, is the theater for the emotions, and that
feeling are largely read-outs of body changes really enacted in the
body and really constructed in an as-if mode in body-mapping
brain structures. (pp.38-39)
To the extent that Damasios theory is compatible with Freuds theory, it
provides as a provisional working model of the neurophysical correlates of the
metapsychology of affect. Correlations of this sort are useful to psychoanalysis
in its present stage of development, for the reason that they create a conceptual
and experimental bridge between psychoanalysis and contemporary
neuroscience.
Solms and Nersessian (1999b) have argued that Freuds conceptualization of
affect as an internally directed perceptual modality is relatively easy to reconcile
with current neuroscientific views and researches. The aforementioned
perspectives on the Freudian theory of consciousness constitute initial and
cautious steps in the field of neuro-psychoanalysis. Hopefully, these preliminary
efforts will lead to the realization of more detailed and experimental programs.
41
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