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7/25/2019 7 Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and Christoph Koch (Vol. 2, No. 1) Consciousness and Affect: Commentary,
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This article was downloaded by: [Adelphi University]On: 23 August 2014, At: 00:35Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: MortimerHouse, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journalfor Psychoanalysis and the NeurosciencesPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rnpa20
Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and ChristophKoch (Vol. 2, No. 1) Consciousness and Affect:Commentary, by Mortimer Ostow (New York)Mortimer Ostow
a
a4421 Douglas Avenue, Riverdale, NY 10471, e-mail:
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.
To cite this article:Mortimer Ostow (2001) Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and Christoph Koch (Vol. 2, No. 1)Consciousness and Affect: Commentary, by Mortimer Ostow (New York), Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal
for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 3:2, 242-243, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2001.10773358
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7/25/2019 7 Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and Christoph Koch (Vol. 2, No. 1) Consciousness and Affect: Commentary,
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242
Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and Christoph Koch Vol. No.1
Consciousness and Affect: Commentary, by Mortimer Ostow New York
Mortimer Ostow
It
is
generally understood among neuroscientists that
we cannot fully know the world in which we live.
Our
consciousness constructs an image by combining and
organizing reports from our various senses as they
have been processed by the brain. First, even in the
realms that these senses report, they detect only a seg-
ment
of
the full visible and audible spectra; they are
sensitive to only a small number of the ambient chemi-
cals in the air and in the substances introduced into
the mouth; of the physical substances of the environ-
ment they are sensitive only to those that stimulate the
tactile receptors
of
the skin and the tension sensitive
receptors in the muscles. Second, we know, by infer-
ence, that the environment contains things for which
we have no sense organs. There is a clock mechanism
in the brain but we cannot directly perceive time. We
can only infer its passage from observations of
changes in those things that we
can
directly perceive.
Science has made us aware
of
components of the ex-
ternal world that we cannot directly know, and of
many things that we find it impossible even to concep-
tualize, such as the multiple dimensions of the cosmic
strings that cosmologists speak of. The world in
which we live is one that is constructed by our con-
sciousness and all of the perceptive and apperceptive
processes that report to it.
I propose that the conscious image
of
the inner
world
is
constructed in an analogous way. We have
evidence that only a small fraction of those brain pro-
cesses that could, under the right conditions, become
mental contents are actually available to conscious-
ness at
anyone
time. The nonconscious premental
contents include representations of instinctual im-
pulses, inhibiting influences against these impulses,
certain memories, false memories and myths, anticipa-
tions and apprehensions, or rather dispositions that
would be expressed as expectations and fears
if
they
became conscious. Only those impulses that do not
seem to invite danger are permitted to become con-
scious wishes. Expectations
of
danger or injury can
become conscious if they are realist ic, or
if
they are
the consequences of moods, such as depressive moods.
Mortimer Ostow, M.D., is a Charter Member of the Westchester Psy-
choanalytic Society,
and President of
the Psychoanalytic Research
and
Development Fund.
When any mental event becomes conscious, it is ac-
companied by a conscious affect, which may be im-
posed upon or replace a mood. The experience
of
affect accompanies the process of becoming conscious
of
any
of
these premental contents. It is not my inten-
tion here to enumerate the full catalog of these nonre-
porting entities. But it is important to recognize that
this is the domain that psychoanalysis addresses.
Just as what we know of the outside world con-
sists of a construct based upon sensory impressions
and secondary inferences from them, so our knowl-
edge
of
the inner world is constructed upon the basis
of selected reports from an enormous collection
of
literally preconscious potentially mental formations.
As the data from the external world become conscious,
they acquire qualia ; as the information from the
inner world becomes conscious, it acquires affect.
We all reside in the very small space between
the constructed outer world and the constructed inner
world. Living in this space, having the illusion that we
know both worlds whereas we know neither, neverthe-
less we have feelings about these worlds determined
by the qualia in the first instance and the affects in
the second. However, our impulses, read wishes, that
involve the outer world, impose affect upon it. Simi-
larly, the representations
of
the inner world acquire
the qualia of the outer world in which they reside. We
are awed by the intimations of the greater outer world
that we glimpse around the periphery of our narrow
horizons, and we are frightened by the intimations
of
the inner world that penetrate into our consciousness
around its defensive perimeter. We are truly comfort-
able only within the limits of what Hartmann called
the average expectable environment of the outside
world, and
of
the equally average expectable environ-
ment of the inner world. Experiences of awe, spiritual
and mystical experiences create the illusion
of
pene-
trating beyond the combined confining boundaries cre-
ating feelings of
an
uncomfortable, strange kind of
comfort. The various religious mythologies create a
cosmos that purports to be
of
the outer world but is
actually no more than a projection
of
the inner world,
the virtual universe of residence. The phenomena as-
sociated with multiple personality, as well as with
rapid mood cycling, reveal how unfixed, and unsub-
stantial are the conscious constructions of both outer
and inner worlds.
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Ongoing Discussion Vol. 1, No.2
When an object
of
the constructed outer world
becomes of instinctual interest to an impulse wish of
the constructed inner world, the quale of the former
combines with the affect of the latter to create an in
tense experience
of
almost consummatory quality.
Think
of
the experience of falling in love,
of
re
sponding emotionally to a moving piece
of
music, to
laughing heartily
at
a good joke. The last is a particu
larly instructive example. The humor generally has two
parts. One is an intellectual exercise; the violation
of
boundary creates a quale experience. The second com
ponent is the violation
of
a social norm, deriding a
third person, making a prohibited sexual allusion, even
belittling oneself. These experiences and the wishes
they betray generate affect. It is a combination
of
quale
and affect that creates the consummatory laughter. So
4
psychoanalysis consists not only
of
taking cognizance
of
unreporting protomental activity and associated
protoaffect, but also disentangling quale and affect,
distinguishing between inner and outer, between af
fects precipitated by external events and mood gener
ated by inner mood regulatory processes.
It is this synthetic function of the ego and the
need for causality that are responsible for many
of
the
well-known defensive activities
of
the ego and that are
responsible for almost all
of
the il lusions that have to
be undone in analysis.
Mortimer Ostow
4421 Douglas Avenue
Riverdale 10471
e mail: [email protected]
Ongoing Discussion of J. Allan Hobson Vol. 1,
No.2
Commenta ry by
Herbert Stein New York)
As a sidebar to the ongoing discussion of dreams, I
should like to propose an idea concerning the relation
ship
of
dreams to the very early development
of
mental
processes in the hopes that others will find it
of
inter
est. My hypothesis is that the infant develops its first
hallucinatory image, its first image that is not di
rectly related to current perception, s its first dream
during REM sleep. Freud gave us a model
in
chapter
7
of
The Interpretation
of
Dreams
in which the hungry,
unsatisfied infant hallucinates an image, taken from
memory, of taking in milk from the breast.
A hungry baby screams or kicks helplessly. But the
situation remains unaltered, for the excitations arising
from an internal need is not due to a force producing
a
momentary
impact but to one which is in continuous
operation. A change can only come about if
in
some
way or other in the case
of
the baby through outside
help) an experience
of
satisfaction can be achieved
which puts an end to the internal stimulus.
n
essen
tial component
of
this experience of satisfaction is
a particular perception that of nourishment in our
example) the mnemic image of which remains associ
ated thenceforward with the memory trace of the exci-
Herbert Stein is a
member
of the New
York
University Psychoana-
lytic Institute.
tation produced by the need. As a result
of
the link
that has thus been established, next time this need
arises a psychical impulse will at once emerge which
will seek to re-cathect the mnemic image
of
the per
ception and to re-evoke the perception itself, that is
to say, to re-establish the situation
of
the original
satisfaction. An impulse
of
this kind is what we call
a wish; the reappearance of the perception is the ful
fillment
of
the wish; and the shortest path to the ful
filment of the wish is a path leading direct from the
excitation produced by the need to a complete ca
thexis of the perception. Nothing prevents us from
assuming that there was a primitive state of the psy
chical apparatus in which this path was actually tra
versed, that is, in which wishing ended in
hallucinating
[Freud, 1900, pp. 565-566].
This ability to hallucinate is particularly im
portant because we must be able to create images from
memory, independent
of
immediate current perception
in order to engage in what we call thought. Without
it we would be reactive animals unable to remove our
selves from a situation to consider it. Even those who
do not accept
Freud s
model must acknowledge that
a t some point in its early development, the infant ac
quires the ability to create imagery from memory inde
pendent
of
its immediate perceptions. It could be
argued that i t is an inborn ability, but although infants