‘The Unconscious and Psychosis: Some Considerations on the Psychoanalytic Theory Of Psychosis’ By Franco De Masi

This is a densely argued paper. De Masi's subject is the unconscious and his argument is that although it is treated as if it were a unitary, unambiguous concept, this is not the case. He argues that there are different definitions of the unconscious in various psychoanalytic theories; that they are separate and reflect different clinical situations, describe different functions of the mind and determine different clinical techniques. He is particularly concerned to look at the specific question of the unconscious as it applies in psychosis. De Masi looks at the developments in Freud's understanding of the unconscious as a system of the psychic apparatus made up of contents that are barred from access to the preconscious—conscious system by repression: ‘The characteristics of the unconscious system are those of the primary system, involving the absence of negation and doubt, indifference to reality and regulation by the pleasure—unpleasure principle’ (p. 4).

De Masi points out that Freud understood that psychosis involved a different level of disturbance of the unconscious. For example, he wrote to Abraham in 1914

Repression in the transference neurosis consists in the withdrawal of libido from the system Cs., that is, in the dissociation of the thing and word presentations, while repression in the narcissistic neuroses consists in the withdrawal of libido from the unconscious thing presentation, which is of course a far deeper disturbance (1965, p. 206fn.; my italics).

Two significant contributions made by Klein were her understanding of the splitting of the object and of projective identification. In particular he describes her delineation of unconscious fantasy. In one of her last contributions, Klein (1958) describes an unconscious that is inaccessible and incapable of elaboration; she postulates the existence of separate, split-off areas of the unconscious that are not amenable to normal transformations—namely, cruel and primitive aspects of the mind, thrust down