Psychic apparatus for Freud, Winnicott and Melanie Klein

Distances and approximations of the concept of Psychic Apparatus

1. SIGMUND FREUD

Freud referred to the term psychic apparatus to a psychic organization divided into psychic instances (or systems), with specific functions and which are interconnected. In this sense, Freud described two models, the topographical and the structural.

According to (LAPLANCHE, 2001) the psychic apparatus would be: Expression that emphasizes certain characteristics that the Freudian theory attributes to the psyche: its ability to transmit and transform a certain energy and its differentiation into systems or instances.

When talking about the psychic apparatus, Freud suggests the idea of ​​a certain organization, of an internal disposition, but he does more than link different functions to specific psychic places, he attributes to these a given order that entails a determined temporal succession. The coexistence of the different systems that make up the psychic apparatus should not be taken in the anatomical sense that would be attributed to it by a theory of brain locations. It only implies that the excitations must follow an order and the place of the various systems. (LAPLANCHE, 2001)

According to PERVIN (2004) The concept of the unconscious suggests that there are aspects of our functioning that we are not aware of, and that a large part of our behavior is determined by it. In this sense psychic life can be described in terms of the degree to which we are conscious of phenomena: the conscious which relates to phenomena of which we are conscious at a given moment, the preconscious which we can be conscious of if we pay attention to them, and the unconscious which we are not aware and of which we cannot be aware.

According to Hall, Lindzey and Campbell (2000) personality is made up of three major systems: id, ego and superego. The id is the original system of the personality, the matrix from which the ego and superego arise. Freud called it true psychic reality because it represents the inner world of subjective experience and has no knowledge of objective reality. It operates on the pleasure principle which would be a reduction in tension. The ego is, according to Pervin (2004), expressing and satisfying the desires of the ide according to reality and the demands of the superego. While the id operates on the pleasure principle, the ego operates on the reality principle. And lastly the superego, which represents the moral branch of our functioning, ideals we strive for and the guilt we expect when we violate our morals.

“In the id, we find not only unconscious representations of things engraved in the psyche under the impact of the desire of others, but also innate representations, proper to the human species, inscribed and transmitted phylogenetically.” (NASIO, 1999, pg. 75)

“In the text “The ego and the Id”, Freud considers that the I comes from the Id, through a process of differentiation, for example, when he says that “an individual is, therefore, for us, a psychic it (Id), not known and unconscious, on its surface is placed on its surface the self (Ego), developed from the Pc-system as a nucleus” and continues further on,

“It is easy to see that the I (Ego) is the modified part of the Id (Id) under the direct influence of the outside world through the Pc-Cs, in a way it is a continuation of surface differentiation” and 3., still , in this same text, he synthetically expresses his position stating that the self arises from this differentiation, marking a limit between an inside and an outside, a limit that is ultimately identifiable with the limits that the body gives marking an inside and an outside, to the say that “the I (ego) is above all a corporeal I, it is not only a surface being, but itself the projection of a surface” (FULGENCIO, 2012, p. 105-106)

The superego will be conceived as an instance responsible, at the same time, for several functions and it is within its bosom that Freud will try to integrate the various dimensions that he outlined earlier. He will end up attributing three functions to the superego: self-observation, moral conscience and the “support base” of ideals. (FREUD, apud CARDOSO, 2000).

The persecutory dimension of the superego, a dimension that seems central to the functioning of this instance, is clearly indicated by Freud. In the formal presentation of the superego, it will be conceived as an instance of observation, as a separate part of the ego that exercises surveillance over the other. (CARDOSO, 2000).

For Laplanche, it would be the “sexual drive of death” (disengagement), which is opposed to the “sexual drive of life” (bonding): “It is, however, a distinction in the economic regime of instincts, in his way of working; only from there is it possible to conceive of one and the same libido in action in both types of drives” (Laplanche, 2001; p. 259).

2. MELANIE KLEIN

The theories of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein are part of the structural-drive model. The established fundamental differentiation is made between the structural-drive model and the alternative perspective of a structural-relational model. The fundamental premises of the structural-drive model can be summarized as follows: 1. by a conception of the individual as a fundamental unit, thought of as divorced from the relational context since the beginning of the constitution of his psyche; 2. by the absence of presupposition of pre-ordained bonds with the human environment, making the other a creation of the drive; 3. by the conception of drive as the origin of all human action, determining the contours of its original and current relationship with the external world. (SIGLER, 2011)

Melanie Klein’s theory, which decisively insisted on the destructive aspects of the superego, did not leave Freud indifferent and he will take her contributions into account. However, we cannot leave aside the observation that in Freud himself, well before Melanie Klein, there are very interesting indications regarding the instinctual face of the superego. In a way, Kleinian theory is a development of the openings pointed out by Freud. (CARDOSO, 2000).

For Klein, the archaic superego begins its formation at a time when the pre-Oedipal oral-sadistic and anal-sadistic tendencies are at their peak. The child equates penis, breast, mouth, vagina, belly, baby, since his first reality is a corporeal reality. (OLIVEIRA, 2004)

In Melanie Klein, the superego becomes distinctly archaic, instinctual and ferocious. The author effectively brings a new perspective of analysis: the instinctual attack will finally assume a crucial status there. The Kleinian conception of the superego results precisely from the privilege attributed to the uniqueness of the inner world. Realizing the opposition or contrast between the severity that the superego can develop, and the parents’ tolerance, this conception assumes that the formation of the superego would not be based on parental prohibitions. It is not a question here of real parents, but of an imago that is constituted within the psyche (Klein, apud CARDOSO, 2000).

Klein elucidates how the archaic superego would be formed, saying that “the ego has yet another means of controlling those destructive impulses that still remain in the organism. It can mobilize one part of them as a defense against the other part. In this way, the id will undergo a split that is, I believe, the first step in the formation of instinctual inhibitions and the superego” (OLIVEIRA, 2004)

According to Klein, the superego derives its strength entirely from the sadism of the id, a force that she considers “biological”. Since the attacking and ferocious character of the superego comes from the strength of the instincts, the instinctual roots of the superego interdictions are therefore recognized by it. The issue of moral interdiction is, finally, clearly secondary, which only becomes possible here because alterity is not central in this theoretical system. (OLIVEIRA, 2004)

We see that in the Kleinian theory the superego therefore ends up achieving, albeit secondarily, an ethical and moral character. It is the transformation of the “persecuting superego” into a “legislator superego”, a passage that comes to evoke guilt and the idea of ​​a synthesis (KLEIN, apud OLIVEIRA, 2004). The “legislating superego” would thus have to be placed in a secondary register, an interesting formulation, no doubt, but one that does not solve the problem of the “paradox” of the superego.

In the Kleinian system, the superego will tend, therefore, to present a double character – “bad” superego and “good” superego –, the latter being directly linked to reparative guilt. The relationship between instinctual attack and guilt thus maintains a very ambiguous character, despite Klein’s indications that guide us towards the idea of ​​a complex articulation. (OLIVEIRA, 2004)

3. DONALD WINNICOTT

Winnicott conserves tradition in a curious way, largely by distorting it. His interpretation of Freudian and Kleinian concepts is so idiosyncratic and so unrepresentative of their original formulation and intent as to be at times unrecognizable. He retells the history of psychoanalytic ideas not so much as it developed but as he would have liked it to have been, rewriting Freud to make him a clearer and easier predecessor to Freud’s own view.

For Winnicott, it is in the first six months of life, approximately, that the human baby is in a state of total dependence on the environment, represented, at that time, by the hand or a substitute for it. The baby depends entirely on what is offered to him by the mother, but the most important thing, and which constitutes the basis of the theory, is the baby’s lack of knowledge of his state of dependence. In the baby’s mind, he and the environment are one. Now, ideally, it would be a perfect adaptation to the needs of the baby that the mother would allow the free development of the maintenance processes. (NASIO, 1995)

Winnicott says that the unconscious (Id) can only exist after there is an I (ego) that can constitute it as repressed, for him in the earliest stages of child development, therefore, the functioning of the ego must be considered an inseparable concept that of the child’s existence as a person. There is no id before ego. (FULGENCIO, 2000)

4. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

CAMPBELL, JB; HALL, CS; LINDZEY, G. Theories of personality. 4. ed. Porto Alegre: Artmed, 2000. 591p.

CARDOSO, Marta Rezende. The superego: in search of a new approach. Trans.: Pedro Henrique Bernardes Rondon (SPCRJ). Rev. Latinoam. Psychopath. Fund., III, 2, 26-41, 2000.

NASIO, JD Oedipus: the complex from which no child escapes. Rio de Janeiro. Ed. Zahar, 2007.

NASIO, JD The pleasure of reading Freud. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar. Ed., 1999

NASIO, JD Introduction to the works of Freud, Ferenczi, Groddeck, Klein, Winnicott, Dolto, Lacan. Rio de Janeiro: Jorger Zahar Ed., 1995.

OLIVEIRA, Thais Utsch Vieira; AMARAL Thaisa Vilela Fonseca. The Oedipus Complex: a comparison between Melanie Klein and Sigmund Freud. Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences, UFMG, Belo Horizonte – MG, 2009, Vol. III, nº 1, 1-8.

FULGENCIO, Leopold. Playing as a model of the psychoanalytic treatment method. Rev. bras. psychoanalysis . 2008,…