Chapter 8. Learning from Experience

1 I Shall now transfer all that I have said about the establishment of conscious and unconscious and a barrier between them to a supposed entity, that I designate a “contact-barrier”; Freud used this term to describe the neuro-physiological entity subsequently known as a synapse. In conformity with this my statement that the man has to “dream” a current emotional experience whether it occurs in sleep or in waking life is re-formulated thus: The man's alpha-function, whether in sleeping or waking, transforms the sense-impressions related to an emotional experience into alpha-elements, which cohere as they proliferate to form the contact-barrier. This contact-barrier, thus continuously in process of formation, marks the point of contact and separation between conscious and unconscious elements and originates the distinction between them. The nature of the contact-barrier will depend on the nature of the supply of alpha-elements and on the manner of their relationship to each other. They may cohere. They may be agglomerated. They may be ordered sequentially to give the appearance of narrative (at least in the form in which the contact-barrier may reveal itself in a dream). They may be ordered logically. They may be ordered geometrically.

2 The term “contact-barrier” emphasizes the establishment of contact between conscious and unconscious and the selective passage of elements from one to the other. On the nature of the contact-barrier will depend the change of elements from conscious to unconscious and vice versa. In so far as dreams give us direct access to its study they retain the central position in psychoanalysis that Freud assigned to them. The nature of the transition from conscious to unconscious and vice versa, and therefore the nature of the contact-barrier and its

component alpha-elements, affect memory and the characteristics of any given memory.

3 In practice the theory of functions and the theory of an alpha-function make possible interpretations showing