The Primary Process: Bridges to Interdisciplinary Studies of Mind

ABSTRACT

Psychoanalytic theory is one of the world’s grand theories. Not merely clinical, psychoanalytic general theory introduces two momentous contributions. One, the key role of primary processes, is the subject of this issue and this article. Here I maintain that primary processes are a-rational, not irrational, hence not pathological, but developmental, and prevalent also in nonhuman animals. I review empirical evidence supporting the existence of such primary process mentation. Brief accounts are then given of several interdisciplinary bridges to mind and behavior studies based on this expanded view of a-rational primary processes. Interdisciplinary areas discussed range from the biological (conditioning and evolutionary considerations) to vexing issues in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of action (agency and belief).

Notes

¹ Freud’s positing two modes of mentation makes him the first dual process theorist. Many varieties of system 1 versus system 2 have been proposed by academic psychologists for the last several decades. Daniel Kahneman’s (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow (where system 1 is fast and system 2 slow) recently popularized the notion. Regrettably, Freud’s contribution had not been recognized. We (Brakel and Shevrin, 2003) attempted to set the record straight in a commentary on a Behavioral and Brain Science (2001) target article about dual process theories. In that commentary, we also outlined how and where the psychoanalytic concept of the primary processes fit with the later theories.

² There are exceptions. See, for example, Noy (1979); McLaughlin (1978); much of the work of Robert Holt, particularly his 1989 volume; and Wilma Bucci (1997). However these few examples notwithstanding, it is important to report that whenever I presented empirical and/or philosophical work on the formal structure of primary processes as a type of mental processing to psychoanalytic audiences, I was met with initial, and sometimes unremitting, resistance to thinking about the concept independent of clinical pathology.

³ Pigeons will favor color over every other dimension. Hence, color was held constant in every choice in the experiments designed.

⁴ Evolutionary success is determined by natural selection, which can, itself, be better understood as selective reproductive fitness. Thus, traits that improve fitness success are traits that increase the numbers of successful offspring, as they are passed on to the future generations. Individual survival is evolutionarily important only to the extent that it allows individuals to reach reproductive maturity and have more successful offspring.

⁵ This view is supported by evolutionary biologists. Nesse and Williams (1994, p. 25) stated: “Even when we cannot reconstruct the history of a trait, we can still be confident that it was shaped by natural selection. This can be supported by evidence for its function in other species.”

⁶ The editor of this special edition raised a very pertinent question here: “Given … the further the distance the greater the danger … in that adaptive context wouldn’t the behavior be rational?” This question is shared among some animal researchers, comparative biologists, and psychologists who tend to regard any behavior that has an effective end (including selective fitness success) as rational. In my view, although behaviors such as those described herein are, indeed, efficacious and fitness promoting, it is behavior based on a-rational primary process mentation. Thus, to consider it rational is a type of category mistake. This issue is considered in more depth in Cutler and Brakel (2014).

⁷ Donald Davidson (1980, 1984) is the philosopher most associated with this view, but see Brakel (2009), Chapter 5 for a more complete reference list. Also see Brakel (2002, 2009, Chapter 5) for a much fuller account of the arguments only briefly developed in the text to follow here.

⁸ Again, see Brakel (2002, 2009, Chapter 5) for a much fuller account of the arguments only briefly developed here.

⁹ The editor of this issue helpfully points out the explicit contradictions in the thinking of the young man in this example as follows:

(1) The wish to be big—in order not to be bullied (itself a rational wish)—contradicts his neurotically a-rational belief that he is fat. His “need”  to limit calorie  intake is clearly based on his neurotic-belief.

(2) His belief that being “big” would protect him from being bullied is [made] the equivalent of being fat, [which] contradicts the empirical evidence that many well-built big men are not fat at all. In particular, being big in order to prevent bullying, implies a well-built big man.

¹⁰ Quite independently of my work, I have recently become aware that Tamar S. Gendler (2009), a philosopher, wrote a prize-winning article titled, “Alief and Belief.” She argued for the importance of recognizing aliefs, which she characterizes as “associative, automatic, and arational.” She continues, “as a class, aliefs are states that we share with nonhuman animals; they are developmentally and conceptually antecedent to other cognitive attitudes that the creature may go on to develop. And they are typically also affect-laden and action generating” (p. 641). Clearly, Gendler’s account of aliefs are much like that of neurotic-beliefs, with one important exception. Gendler does not address the problematic consequences arising from subjects frequently mistyping these a-rational belief-like attitudes, experiencing them as actual beliefs-proper, and then treating them accordingly, often with problematic results.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linda A. W. Brakel

Linda A. W. Brakel, M.D., is the author of many interdisciplinary articles and three books—Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and the A-Rational Mind (Oxford, 2009); Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Psycho-Philosophical Analysis (Oxford, 2010); and The Ontology of Psychology (Routledge, 2013). She has also co-authored three other volumes. Brakel is an Associate Professor (adj) of Psychiatry, and a Faculty Research Associate in Philosophy at the University of Michigan. She is also a faculty member of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute.