Chapter 2 The Negative Duality of the Psyche

Classically, the Freudian topographies – Cs., Pcs., Ucs. or ego, superego, id – are thought of as proceeding from the most superficial to the deepest strata and there will be no difficulty in agreeing that the corresponding graph would comprise a vertical axis along which the circulating element does not undergo a transformation – representation remaining representation. It is the topography that qualifies representation sometimes as conscious, sometimes as preconscious or unconscious. These were the foundations of the metapsychology of 1915. While we understand the cardinal role of this axis for Freudian thought, if we want to envisage the study of the oscillations and changes of a qualitative order, notably during the regressive states that do not fail to occur during analytic work, then it is necessary to add to this vertical axis one where the elements constituting it would not be differentiated in terms of their displacement, their greater or lesser distance from consciousness, but in terms of a qualitative order, independent of their topography. The same content will have a different status depending on the quality of the investment (S. E.‘cathexis’):1 representation, perception or hallucination – the qualities of investment depending on the complex dynamic of the modes of intelligibility, in their relations with reality testing.

A theory that favours the vertical axis will lay emphasis on psychic places, resulting in a conception of psychic functioning based on the psychoneurotic model of organisation – a model in which the vision of an essentially autarchic psyche dominates. This is true of the psychical apparatus of the first topography. But, for a theory that is primarily concerned with transformations, a model cannot so easily be found in Freud; for verticality is present even in the second topography. However, in the aftermath of 1920, Freud's thought moved away

from the model of the dream as wish-fulfilment in favour of an openness towards th