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Originally the mere existence of a presentation was a guarantee of the reality of what was presented.
This book sets out to test a model of the psychical apparatus that privileges the analysis of one of its specific tasks: the activity of representation.
This model does not escape the inconvenience that occurs whenever one gives precedence to one aspect of psychical activity; namely, leaving to one side other equally important aspects. One may regret the price to be paid, but accept it, admitting that, with few exceptions, one of whom was Freud, most of us find it difficult to avoid it. I now have to show what may be expected from the approach chosen and what contribution may be made by the theoretical approach and its application in the clinical field.
I shall devote this first chapter to general considerations concerning psychical activity in order to show the factors that, in every system, despite the specificity of their mode of operation, obey laws that are common to psychical functioning as a whole.
By the activity of representation, I mean the psychical equivalent of the work of metabolisation proper to organic activity. The latter may be defined as the function by which an element heterogeneous to the cellular structure is rejected or, on the other hand, transformed into a raw mater ial that becomes homogeneous with it. This definition may be applied at every point to the work carried out by the psyche, except that, in this case, the ‘element’ absorbed and metabolised is not a physical body but an element of information.