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Notes
Their “falsifiability,” an essential feature of science, according to Popper.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “hypostatize” as “to make into or treat as a real substance.” The word first appears in English in 1829.
Its popularity, notwithstanding, the word “hypostatize” appears in less than two dozen papers in the entire Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP) repertory.
Beginning, in psychoanalysis, with Breuer who noted that ” … not every substantive has a substance behind it … ” (Carveth, 2001).
Rothstein (1985) has collected a useful sampling.
William James (Citation1890, p. 146) didn't think it was such a bad idea. He asserted “evolutionary psychology demands a mind-dust.”.
Some playful scientists liken some of the heurism in hypostatizing to “tooth-fairy” explanations. See, for example, www.skeptic.com/magazine/archives/17.1/.
“… Individual consciousness is built from outside through relationships with others” (Kozulin, Citation1996, p. xxiv).
See Bornstein (Citation1995) and Atwood and Stolorow (Citation1977), among many other examples.
This is reminiscent of Baudelaire's comment about God: “God is the only being who, in order to reign, doesn't even need to exist.”.
Kohut (1982) preferred Odysseus, whose relationship to his son, Telemachus, suggested intergenerational bonding. Orestes is another contender.
The English historian Toynbee, for example, asserted the historical “fact” that a nation's trajectory comes to an end once it becomes like England.
Freud's Zeitgeist selections might have been influenced by his view of himself as a “conquistador” (Freud, Citation1900b) and identification with Hannibal and Napoleon (Freud, Citation1900a, p. 198).
For example, the state of sleep “withdraws cathexis from the system Cs” leaving the system Cs uncathected and consequently vulnerable to regression (Freud, Citation1900a).
A further affirmation: Freud once used a synonym, “Positionen,” which means “military posts,” which Strachey also translated as “cathexis” (Freud, Citation1917b, p. 234, n. 1).
OED, online edition, www.oed.com.
It makes it even more understandable than in letters to Fliess; Freud described himself not as an explorer but as a “conquistador” (Freud, Citation1900a) and identified with both Hannibal and Napoleon (Citation1900b.).
It is an unexamined curiosity that returning warriors who fall ill as a consequence of witnessing and participating in brutal and even murderous encounters are regarded as “ill,” while those who thrive by displaying competence in organized destructiveness are viewed as worthy of leadership positions.
For additional readings on the general and specific influences of Freud's metaphors, see L. R. Berkower (Citation1970), D.K. Carveth (2001), and (S. A. Leavy (Citation1983).
Such ideas are finding their way into medicine. Some cancers prove amenable to a treatment regimen viewed from the perspective of the cooperation and integration of the malignant cells with the body's cellular response to them, rather than radical surgical excision as part of a “war” metaphor (Brody, Citation2014).
Not to mention children. Stay tuned.
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Notes on contributors
Samuel Abrams
Dr. Abrams is Editor of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child; Training and Supervising Analyst, The Institute of Psychoanalytic Education; and Clinical Professor, The New York University Langone School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry.