The Primary Process and the Unconscious: Experimental Evidence Supporting Two Psychoanalytic Presuppositions

Abstract

The authors report on two experiments designed to test an important feature of the primary process: unconscious categorisation by attributes rather than by relations. These experiments were designed to provide support, independently of the clinical situation, for the presupposition of a psychological unconscious and for the presupposition that unconscious mentation is organised along primary-process lines. Their results were encouraging. They found that (1) unconscious similarity judgements could be made; and (2) these judgements were based on attributes (a primary-process mechanism) rather than relationships (a secondary-process mechanism). This independent evidence, obtained in controlled experimental studies supporting two fundamental psychoanalytic presuppositions, should be welcome news to psychoanalysts, given the continuing criticism from many quarters that basic psychoanalytic ideas lack independent validation. This paper begins with an overview of the primary processes with a special focus on the role of categorisation by attribute, the particular aspect of primary process explored in this study. Next a brief history of previous empirical investigations of primary process is given, following which the current experiments are presented.

The Psychoanalytic Assumption of the Primary Process: Extrapsychoanalytic Evidence and Findings

“…In an initial pilot study (Brakel et al 2000), we simply hypothesized that (1) similarity assessments could be performed unconsciously, (2) that those similarity assessments performed on subliminal (i.e., operationally unconscious) items would be organized in a primary process way. In this pilot experiment, using a tachistoscope, we presented a set of six items (different, and not as well designed as the sets used in the three experiments to be discussed below) to 41 participants.…”

“…The StressCat experiment (see Brakel and Shevrin 2004) addressed the third general hypothesis toward confirming the existence of the primary process mode of mental organization. The hypothesis here was in two steps.…”

“…Regarding the assumption of unconscious mental contents and processes, I will remark only briefly that Shevrin and his colleagues have had much success. Various studies have demonstrated the following: (1) unconscious perception and cognition (Shevrin and Fisher 1967;Shevrin and Fritzler 1968b;Shevrin, Smith, and Fritzler 1971;Snodgrass, Shevrin, and Kopka 1993;Brakel et al 2000;Bernat, Shevrin, and Snodgrass 2001); (2) unconscious memory ; (3) unconscious conditioning (Wong, Shevrin, and Williams 1994;Wong et al 1997, in press); (4) unconscious learning (Wong et al 1997;Bunce et al 1999;Bernat, Shevrin, and Snodgrass 2001); (5) unconscious af fect ; and (6) unconscious conf lict (Shevrin et al 1992(Shevrin et al , 1996. In all of these studies the subliminal method, a method quite independent of any of the assumptions of psychoanalysis, has been employed such that stimuli can be delivered very rapidly at the objective detection threshold-in other words, stimuli are experimentally rendered consciously inaccessible.…”

Empirical evidence for Freud's theory of primary process mentation in acute psychosis.

“…Building on previous work (Brakel, 2009;Brakel, Shevrin, & Villa, 2002;Brakel, 2004;Brakel & Shevrin, 2005;Vanheule, Roelstraete, Geerardyn, Murphy, Bazan, & Brakel, 2011), this empirical study proposes to test if there is predominance of primary process mentation in psychosis as was proposed by Freud by applying a new method that has shown promise in mapping primary and secondary processes, called the GeoCat, an abbreviation of "Geometric Categorisaton" (Brakel, Kleinsorge, Snodgrass, & Shevrin, 2000; see further) in a population of psychiatric patients.…”

Questões e tensões entre psicanálise e ciência: considerações sobre validação

“…(Shevrin et al, 2013, p. 2;tradução nossa) Além disso, o estudo também leva em consideração outras vertentes de investigação, que têm como método justamente o entrecruzamento da psicanálise com ciências cognitivas e neurociências. Nesse campo, é notória a trajetória de Shevrin, que já realizou importantes estudos no cruzamento da psicanálise com as ciências cognitivas, sobre a identificação de possíveis marcadores de eventos relacionados a processos inconscientes subliminares (Shevrin e Fritzler, 1968), sobre inibição inconsciente Kopka, 1993a/b), assim como sobre diferenças no pensamento relacionadas à teoria freudiana dos processos primários e secundários -Shevrin e Luborsky (1961), Brakel et al (2000). No entanto, segundo os autores, eles tinham em comum um déficit de material clínico para o reconhecimento dos processos inconscientes, fato que foi corrigido no presente estudo, a partir de entrevistas realizadas por psicanalistas com os sujeitos do experimento.…”