Full text unavailable

You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.

IJP 26:58-62 (1945)

'Notes on Metapsychology as Process Theory': Some Comments1

Author: Susan Isaacs

Abstract

Dr. Brierley's valuable paper (1944) carries us several steps forward in the ordering and linking up of different parts of the theory of psycho-analysis. The width of ground it covers and the wealth of psychological detail which it embraces might easily be overlooked because of its highly condensed content and abstract style. I am in agreement with its general point of view and most of its detail. Some points, however, seem to call for further expansion, whilst from others I wish to dissent, at least in part.

1On p. 100, Dr. Brierley gives her view that memory-traces, the registrations of experience in the psyche, are better thought of as experience-traces, not as simply 'sensory'. 'Traces need not be thought of as literal imprints stamped in the mind but as functional predispositions', she says. They include impulse and affect, and are predisposing patterns of response.
In this connection, Dr. Brierley points out that it was under the influence of the old associationist terminology that Freud called the registration of experiences in the psyche 'memory-traces'. The earlier associationists (Wundt in particular—his influence being paramount on the Continent when Freud first formulated his general theories of mental life) tended to overlook what impulse and affect contribute to the processes of perception and of memory. Under this influence, Freud's earliest formulations were not yet fully equal to his clinical work, to his own discovery of the fundamental significance of conative and affective elements, of wishes and drives and emotions in the cognitive work of the mind; although, as Dr. Brierley says, his 'Psychology of the Dream-Processes', (Freud, 1000; 470–570), taken as a whole, leaves us with little doubt that for him the theoretical unit of psychic life was always a complete, dynamic process. In his later studies, such as the essay on negation (Freud, 1925), however, his theoretical formulations are far more adequate to express those essential qualities

IJP 26:58-62 (1945)

'Notes on Metapsychology as Process Theory': Some Comments1

Author: Susan Isaacs

Abstract

1On p. 100, Dr. Brierley gives her view that memory-traces, the registrations of experience in the psyche, are better thought of as experience-traces, not as simply 'sensory'. 'Traces need not be thought of as literal imprints stamped in the mind but as functional predispositions', she says. They include impulse and affect, and are predisposing patterns of response.
In this connection, Dr. Brierley points out that it was under the influence of the old associationist terminology that Freud called the registration of experiences in the psyche 'memory-traces'. The earlier associationists (Wundt in particular—his influence being paramount on the Continent when Freud first formulated his general theories of mental life) tended to overlook what impulse and affect contribute to the processes of perception and of memory. Under this influence, Freud's earliest formulations were not yet fully equal to his clinical work, to his own discovery of the fundamental significance of conative and affective elements, of wishes and drives and emotions in the cognitive work of the mind; although, as Dr. Brierley says, his 'Psychology of the Dream-Processes', (Freud, 1000; 470–570), taken as a whole, leaves us with little doubt that for him the theoretical unit of psychic life was always a complete, dynamic process. In his later studies, such as the essay on negation (Freud, 1925), however, his theoretical formulations are far more adequate to express those essential qualities