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Objective

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between psychoanalytic metapsychology and the somatic background of lived experience, in order to explore the question of the place of creation in the current psychic process. It is based on the hypothesis that the work of integrating subjective experience recorded at the somatic level presupposes the creation of a form compatible with psychic functioning.

Methodology

It is therefore based on a specific methodology for research into metapsychological modeling, the main thrust of which consists in trying to identify not just one particular statement, but above all the process of theorization that can be identified throughout Freud's texts. In this sense, it is presented as a “clinical theory.” The analysis of the process of theorization, while of course focusing on the propositions that Freud spells out in his texts, is above all centered on an analysis of their sequence, and hence of a certain form of associativity. This method of reading, based on a consideration of the associativity of the texts, assumes the hypothesis of a “transference” from Freud to the “metapsychological witch,” a transference that testifies to the fact that Freud is continuing the self-analytical work begun in the Interpretation of Dreams. For our purposes here, this methodology is epistemologically supported by both work and research from developmental psychology and in certain statements from the neurosciences.

Results

In order to articulate psychoanalytic metapsychology more closely to the somatic background of subjective experience, it is necessary to deconstruct the hypothesis of a perception-consciousness system – a hypothesis born of an illusion of the ego in relation to the speed of cerebral processes – in order to emphasize that perception is a somatic process that is highly organized by the complexity of the cerebral operations that determine its form. Giving perception back its place in the soma also requires us to change our conception of the drive, the thrust of which cannot be separated from the impact of subjective experience on the subject's life. Finally, this paradigmatic inflection allows us to delve deeper into the role and function of the ego's core-envelopes, highlighting their dialectic role in the creation of forms compatible with psychic functioning.

Discussion

The challenge of the paradigmatic evolution thus implied is to open the way to a new consideration of the archaic processes that are very active in a whole series of narcissistic suffering. It should thus open the way to a type of construction-reconstruction work on early experiences and their impact on the rest of psychic development, but also on traumatic experiences that have many points in common with them.

Conclusion

Metapsychology is alive and evolving under the pressure of both clinical and neuroscientific developments, as well as the evolution of our knowledge in early developmental psychology (and in fetal psychology). Thanks to this evolution, it seems increasingly necessary and heuristic to perfect its articulation with the biological basis of human functioning.