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IntroductionFreud proposed that names of clinically salient objects or situations, such as for example a beetle (Käfer) in Mr. E’s panic attack, refer through their phonological word form, and not through their meaning, to etiologically important events—here, “Que faire?” which summarizes the indecisiveness of Mr. E’s mother concerning her marriage with Mr. E’s father. Lacan formalized these ideas, attributing full-fledged mental effectiveness to the signifier, and summarized this as “the unconscious structured as a language”. We tested one aspect of this theory, namely that there is an influence of the ambiguous phonological translation of the world upon our mental processing without us being aware of this influence.MethodsFor this, we used a rebus priming paradigm, including 14 French rebuses, composed of two images depicting common objects, such as paon /pã/ “peacock” and terre /tεr/ “earth,” together forming the rebus panthère /pãtεr/ “panther.” These images were followed by a target word semantically related to the rebus resolution, e.g., félin “feline,” upon which the participants, unaware of the rebus principle, produced 6 written associations. A total of 1,458 participants were randomly assigned either to Experiment 1 in which they were shown the rebus images in either forward or in reverse order or to Experiment 2, in which they were shown only one of both rebus images, either the first or the last.Results and discussionThe results show that the images induced inadvertent rebus priming in naïve participants. In other words, our results show that people solve rebuses unwittingly independent of stimulus order, thereby constituting empirical evidence for the mental effectiveness of the signifier.

Freud was the first to invite his patients to lie down on a couch, facilitating the closing of the eyes. If the mere fact of closing the eyes favors access to unconscious materials, it should also favor primary process mentation. Primary process is an associative mode of thought based on superficial similarities including phonology, while secondary process mentation in language is primarily concerned with meaning. Fifty-two participants were given French Word Lists with phonological choices (P) corresponding to primary processes, while semantic choices (S) represent secondary processes when they are in mutual competition (PS). For example, participants were given a first word, such as, e.g. cale (to hold), and then had to choose between lac (P; lake) and fixe (S; fix), which alternative was most similar to the first word, cale. Two control lists, SN and PN, where the other choice is unrelated (N for nothing), verify that the subjects are equally capable of recognizing the phonological and semantics similarity. Results show an (near 10% increase in P choices in PS when participants close their eyes, while results on PN and SN were unchanged. The mere fact of closing the eyes induces a modest increase in primary process mentation. Based on the literature, the eyes closed (EC) condition is linked to increased alpha synchronization, which is thought to induce an inward mental shift. This research contributes to validating the psychoanalytic technique consisting on inviting patients to lie down on a couch and invite them to close their eyes.

IntroductionFreud proposed that slips of the tongue, including apparently simple ones, always have a sense and constitute « a half-success and a half-failure » compromise resulting from defensive mechanisms.Material and methodsA total of 55 subjects participated in a French adaptation of the Spoonerisms of Laboratory Induced Predisposition or SLIP-technique including 32 “neutral” and 32 taboo spoonerisms and measures of defensiveness. In accordance with a psychoanalytical and empirically supported distinction, we considered two kinds of defenses: elaborative or primary process and inhibitory or secondary process defenses, which were operationalized with the GeoCat and the Phonological-Nothing (PN) WordList, respectively. The GeoCat is a validated measure of primary process mentation and the PN WordList was shown to measure the defensive avoidance of language ambiguity.ResultsParticipants produced 37 slips, with no significant difference in the number of “neutral” and taboo slips. The GeoCat and the N/PN parameters explained 30% of the variance in the production of parapraxes, confirming the defensive logics of slips. When dividing the population into lowly and highly defensive participants (with the Marlowe Crowne Social Desirability scale), primary process mentation appears as a baseline default defense, but only highly defensive participants mobilize an additional inhibitory secondary process type of defense. Taking into account the a priori difference between taboo and “neutral” parapraxes, highly defensive participants made 2.7 times more taboo parapraxes than lowly defensive participants. However, if “neutral” parapraxes in both subgroups followed the same logic as the total group of parapraxes (significant contribution of primary process mentation in lowly defensives and of primary and secondary process mentation in highly defensives), these measures had no contribution to explain the occurrence of taboo parapraxes.ConclusionWe propose that Motley et al.’s prearticulatory editor, ensuring the censorship over taboo parapraxes, is an external instance of inhibition, proximal to uttering, equivalent to the censorship between the systems Preconscious and Conscious in Freud’s metapsychology. By contrast, the defenses measured in this research are internal, intimate control systems, probing for the censorship between the systems Unconscious and Preconscious, this is, for repression. This study contributes to support a psychodynamic explanatory model for the production of parapraxes.