Brakel On Primary Process

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
http://apa.sagepub.com The Psychoanalytic Assumption of the Primary Process: Extrapsychoanalytic Evidence and Findings
Linda A. W. Brakel J Am Psychoanal Assoc 2004; 52; 1131 DOI: 10.1177/00030651040520040201 The online version of this article can be found at: http://apa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/4/1131
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Linda A. W. Brakel
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THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS: EXTRAPSYCHOANALYTIC EVIDENCE AND FINDINGS
No evidence for an assumption of a theory can be gained by data derived from methods dependent on that theory. Three experiments, using methods independent of psychoanalysis, test the psychoanalytic posit that primary process exists as a formal mental mode distinct from secondary process. The three experiments, using a nonpsychoanalytic index for primary process, test for a preponderance of primary process organization in three areas in which Freud observed primary process: (1) in unconscious mental states and during implicit tasks; (2) in the mental productions of preschool children; and (3) in anxiety states, as these are typically associated with unconscious conflict. All three experiments show significant results in favor of the primary process. Further, the three experiments taken together, because they account for seemingly disparate data, lend further credence to the original assumption. These positive results suggest that primary process may be more important than even Freud suspected. Perhaps it is the basic mental organization in many nonhuman mammals and some birds. Primary process organization may also underlie aspects of such basic psychological operations as generalizations in conditioning and assessments-in-action, as opposed to judgments proper, about how one would act. Finally, primary process may play a key role in drive activity. Three types of experiments are proposed to test these far-reaching applications of the primary process concept.
very major scientific theory has at its core a number of basic assumptions. Initially, for a science to progress, these basic assumptions are taken as true, without test, and serve as the foundation for the observations explained and the research conducted. It is only at a later phase in the sciences development that the assumptions of its major theories must be tested. For such tests to be valid they must use methods
L i n d a A . W. B r a k e l
that do not presuppose the truth of the assumptions. When basic assumptions can gain this sort of independent support, confidence in the validity of the science is greatly enhanced. Work in our laboratory,1 by providing independent evidence for two central psychoanalytic assumptions, has given reason for optimism regarding the status of psychoanalytic theory. The two basic psychoanalytic assumptions we have investigated are (1) that there exist unconscious, as well as conscious, mental processes and contents, and (2) that there exist two distinct formal organizational structures of these conscious and unconscious mental processes and contentsthe primary process form or mode of organizing and the secondary process mode of organizing. When these assumptions are taken as true, cogent explanations can be made for a very large range of observed behavioral phenomenaincluding those, like psychological symptoms, that seem incoherent under other explanations. Here is an example that can be readily explained by taking both of the above psychoanalytic assumptions as true:
1132 Mrs. M was a middle-aged woman with the history of a chronic intermittent psychosis. At the time I first saw her, she was hallucinating, screaming with pain, and shouting, The delivery of the head and shoulders is killing me, as she forcefully pushed a hard plastic bottle of Head and Shoulders shampoo against her pelvis. Mrs. M, who had given birth to three children via normal deliveries decades before, now faced an impending surgery for an advanced and painful gynecological malignancy.
The explanation for Mrs. Ms behavior, with the assumptions taken as true, goes as follows. Mrs. Ms anxiety about her life-threatening dis1 The research referred to in this paper was conducted in the Ormond and Hazel Hunt and Family Memorial Laboratory, directed by Howard Shevrin. The laboratory was founded and supported by gifts from Robert H. Berry, with continuing support from the Smart Family Foundation.
Associate Clinical Professor Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan; faculty, Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. A version of the first sections of the paper was presented at the Austrian Academy of Sciences Conference on Psychoanalysis as an Interdisciplinary Science, Vienna, December 2001, and has been published in German in Psychoanalyse im Dialogen Wissenschaften, ed P. Giampieri-Deutsch (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2004). Versions of this paper were also presented to the American Psychological Association (Division 39), Minneapolis, April 2003; the American Psychoanalytic Association, Boston, June 2003; as the Fisher Lecture, New York, May 2003; and to the Mind, Brain, Culture, and Consciousness Group at Yale University, April 2004. A much briefer version was presented to the Neuro-Psychoanalysis Congress, New York, July 2003, and will be included in those proceedings. Submitted for publication August 14, 2003.
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS
ease and upcoming surgery occasioned a recurrence of her psychosis. This was marked by regression to primary process thinking in which she wished that her pain was caused by the normal delivery of the head and shoulders of babies, rather than the pain of her very abnormal tumor, which would soon cause more pain in the impending surgery. The primary process thinking that underlay thisequating the plastic Head and Shoulders shampoo bottle with the head and shoulders of babieswas unconscious, as was the wish that she be delivering a growing baby again, instead of suffering from a growing cancer. It is striking how easily this otherwise bizarre behavior can be well understood with the assumptions of unconscious content and processes, and of a primary process formal mental organization, taken as true. But although we can make sense of Mrs. Ms material with the assumptions in place, since we have taken these assumptions as true we cannot use Mrs. Ms now sensible material to count as evidence for the assumptions themselves. In fact, we have done nothing to gain evidence for these assumptions . . . yet. But the story does not end here. Using independent methods that do not presuppose the truth of these two assumptions, we have been able to gain evidence for them. Regarding the assumption of unconscious mental contents and processes, I will remark only briefly that Shevrin and his colleagues have had much success. Various studies have demonstrated the following: (1) unconscious perception and cognition (Shevrin and Fisher 1967; Shevrin and Fritzler 1968b; Shevrin, Smith, and Fritzler 1971; Snodgrass, Shevrin, and Kopka 1993; Brakel et al. 2000; Bernat, Shevrin, and Snodgrass 2001); (2) unconscious memory (Bunce et al. 2001); (3) unconscious conditioning (Wong, Shevrin, and Williams 1994; Wong et al. 1997, in press); (4) unconscious learning (Wong et al. 1997; Bunce et al. 1999; Bernat, Shevrin, and Snodgrass 2001); (5) unconscious af fect (Bernat, Bunce, and Shevrin 2001; Shevrin et al. 2004); and (6) unconscious conf lict (Shevrin et al. 1992, 1996). In all of these studies the subliminal method, a method quite independent of any of the assumptions of psychoanalysis, has been employed such that stimuli can be delivered very rapidly at the objective detection thresholdin other words, stimuli are experimentally rendered consciously inaccessible.
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THE PRIMARY PROCESS
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Regarding the second assumption, that of two distinct formal mental organizationsthe primary and secondary processI will not be brief. The remainder of this article concerns this assumption and the independent method we used to test it. I begin with a summary of Freuds description of the primary process (1895, 1900, 1915, 1940). Primary and secondary process were so named for two not unrelated reasons. First, primary process is a developmentally earlier mode of mental organization. Freud noted that much of the behavior and thought of the very young could be understood in terms of primary process organization. Second, primary process organizes unconscious mental processes, and even in adults unconscious processes precede conscious ones. This is clearest in dreams, daydreams, fantasies, and neurotic and psychotic symptoms, but occurs also in most conscious rational thinking. The claims Freud made about these different [primary process] laws (Freud 1940, p. 164) can be summarized: where the so-called primary process prevails, there is no synthesis of ideas, affects are liable to displacement, opposites are not mutually exclusive and may even coincide and condensation occurs as a matter of course. Also the sovereign principle . . . is that of obtaining pleasure (A. Freud 1936, p. 7). In addition, the primary process is regarded as timelessi.e., without past or future, and there are in this system no negation, no doubt, no degrees of certainty (Freud 1915, pp. 186187). So these are the basic primary process characteristics, save for those concerning the nature of the different energy and drive-cathexis. Although interesting (and controversial in some quarters), these matters will not be taken up here. Indeed the work presented here has very little to say about the content aspects of primary process so familiar to psychoanalystscontent reflecting its drive-dominated, preemptive, often primitive, and conflictual qualities. Instead the experimental work presented requires providing more detail about the formal structure of primary process mentationthe cognitive operations of primary process. Throughout his seminal The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud (1900) talks of the two primary process mechanisms of condensation and displacement acting on latent dream material in dream-work so as to produce the manifest dreams we experience. Condensation and displacement are both related to a primary process tendency Freud began discussing in the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), a
compulsion to associate (p. 338). Associations famously became the foundation of the technical method, free association, but Freud early on noted some of their more obscure characteristics. He called them superficial associations (1900, p. 597) and external associations (1901, p. 278), but by 1905, in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, it is clear that for Freud the associations that often get condensed and displaced are those pertaining to small, inessential aspects of a thing (pp. 8889). In accord with this, Rapaport, an important psychoanalytic theorist of the 1940s and 1950s, found that pars pro toto, part-for-whole, is a frequently used primary process substitution (1951a, pp. 395, 398). Further capturing the fluid yet concrete primary process use of parts or attributes of an object to stand for the whole, Rapaport (1951b) added, Where the primary process . . . holds sway . . . everything belongs with everything that shares an attribute of it . . . (p. 708).
SETTING UP THE EXPERIMENTS
With Freuds outline of the primary process assumption in mind, I will in this section describe the method independent of this assumption (and in fact independent of any psychoanalytic assumptions) that was employed to test it. The issue of the independence of testing methods and variables from the assumptions tested is critical, as can be seen from the history of empirical investigation of the primary process. Particularly relevant to the experiments discussed here are three groups of studies in which the primary process mode was studied empirically. In chronological order these were done by Poetzl (1917, translated in Fisher 1960a); Fisher (1954, 1957, 1960a,b; Fisher and Paul 1959); and Shevrin and colleagues (Shevrin and Luborsky 1961; Shevrin and Stross 1962; Stross and Shevrin 1962; Shevrin and Fisher 1967; Shevrin and Fritzler 1968a,b). Poetzl presented visual stimuli in a tachistoscope such that some parts of the stimuli were outside the participants conscious awareness. Poetzl then had them recall what they had been presented, recount their subsequent dreams, and draw pictures of these dreams. He found that the memory images of the unconsciously registered elements . . . often are transformed and distorted in various ways . . . [that] resemble those which Freud described as . . . condensations, displacements, symbolic transformations, etc. [primary process manifestations] (Fisher 1960a,
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pp. 1718). Fishers work (1957; Fisher and Paul 1959) first replicated Poetzls findings, and then went beyond them by showing a contrast in the effects produced by different but simultaneously presented subliminal and supraliminal stimuli. Fisher (1960b) found that only the subliminal stimuli underwent primary process type transformations. The Poetzl and Fisher studies provided much anecdotal evidence for primary process transformations, but they lacked certain features of experimental designnotably, appropriate controls and objective measures. Shevrins studies remedied these problems. With a 1 millisecond duration for subliminal presentations (to essentially rule out conscious perception), a rebus figure (along with an appropriate non-rebus control) was used as a stimulus that could elicit either primary process or secondary process associations depending on the conditions under which the associations were gathered. Shevrin predicted correctly which conditions would favor primary process transformations of content (e.g., when participants were awakened in an REM sleep stage) and which would produce secondary process manifestations (when participants were awakened in a non-REM sleep stage). Further, he specified in advance what would be considered a primary process manifestation (e.g., clang association or association to the rebus.) Each of these groups of studies, while owing much to the previous work, showed advances in independence from psychoanalytic assumptions and conceptualizations. Poetzl found that he could describe his findings using the concepts of primary and secondary processesconcepts he assumed. Fisher too assumed primary and secondary process organizational principles and used these to explain the transformations he observed. Shevrin and colleagues took a major step in that in their studies the primary and secondary process organizational principles were no longer used as explanatory concepts to account for the data; instead, prespecified manifestations of primary process constituted the data to be collected. In the studies to be summarized here we take a further step toward independence. Shevrin determined in advance what would count as a manifestation of primary process organization, but he did so on the basis of the psychoanalytic descriptive theory he assumed. In other words, clang associations are based on lexical displacements (rhymes) and rebus associations predicated on condensationboth psychoanalytic conceptualizations. In the experiments here, by contrast, the data collected are entirely independent of any aspect of psychoanalytic theory. We employed an experimental version of an aspect of primary
process mental organization, and we derived it from a cognitive psychology descriptive theory of categorization. (For a fuller account of the older studies and their relation to the current line of research, see Brakel et al. 2000, pp. 555557.) Recall that in Freuds characterizations of the primary process the mechanisms of displacement and condensation, and the superficial associations that got displaced and condensed, figured prominently. So did operations like part-for-whole. Now recall also Rapaports comment (1951b): Where the primary process . . . holds sway . . . everything belongs with everything that shares an attribute of it . . . (p. 708). In reviewing quotes like these, it occurred to us that we could contrast primary vs. secondary process on the basis of different principles of categorization. Although not addressed much in the psychoanalytic literature, categorization by superf icial association (i.e., by attribute) actually is pivotal among the primary process principles. Take, for example, cigars. Categorized in a secondary process fashion, cigars belong with cigarettes and pipes as smokes. Cigars, cigarettes, and pipes are judged similar on the basis of a fundamental shared relationship among disparate parts: different blends, packed into different forms, made of different materials, each consists of tobacco such that when lit, smoke is produced with various effects when inhaled. A primary process categorization of cigars groups them with phalluses. Whereas from a secondary process view cigars are not body parts and phalluses are not smokes, a primary process organization links cigars and phallus and categorizes them together on the basis of one or more of their similar attributes: cigars and phalluses are similar in that they both have a cylindrical shape, red hot tips, and are capable of providing pleasure when inserted into appropriate orifices. Or, to return to the case of Mrs. M, take shampoo bottles. Categorized in a secondary process fashion, my patients bottle of Head and Shoulders would belong with other hair care items like her roommates bottle of Prell. The Head and Shoulders would be simply a product name and the shape of the bottle a contingent fact. But categorized in a primary process way, her Head and Shoulders bottle, particularly when pressed against her pelvis, was categorized with the heads and shoulders of Mrs. Ms babies as they were passing through the birth canal. This is a primary process categorization. (For a more complete discussion of the nature of primary process categories, see Brakel 2004; Brakel and Velleman 2003.)
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These examples also make clear the vital role of similarity in any capacity to categorize. Whether organized by attribute (primary process) or relationship (secondary process), these categorizations all require that for the categorizer some sort of similarityexplicit or implicit, recognized or impartedexists among the category members. It is in this context that the work of cognitive psychologist Douglas Medin and his colleagues became important for us (Medin, Goldstone, and Gentner 1990, 1993; Gentner 1988, 1989; Gentner and Ratterman 1991; Smith and Medin 1981; Murphy and Medin 1985). They described attributional similarity as categorization based on the matching of concrete, particular, and superficial features, and opposed this to relational similarity, which is categorization based on matching relations among differing attributes (see Figure 1).
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F IGURE 1. Attributional vs. Relational Similarity
Clearly, Medin and his group derived their descriptive theory of these two types of similarity independent of any psychoanalytic assumptions or preconceptions. Recognizing next that attributional similarity and relational similarity as described by Medin et al. could map quite well onto a formal aspect of primary process organization (categorization by attribute) and onto a formal aspect of secondary process organization (categorization by relationship), we reasoned that attributional vs. relational similarity assessments could independently index, and if found where predicted, stand as evidence for categorizations mediated by primary process as opposed to secondary process. Thus we adapted the simple design of Medin et al. (1990) to construct the items (see Figure 2).
F IGURE 2. One of the Items
There are two important things to point out about these items generally (for the entire item set, see Figure 3). First, because the items require little background knowledge, they can be used across age groups (we have used them with participants as young as three and as old as ninety or more). Second, the figures are counterbalanced not only for position, but also for their roles. Thus, a figure that is the attributional match in one item is the relational match in another with a different master figure, and vice versa. (This obviates item bias.)
THE CATEGORIZATION EXPERIMENTS
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There were a few simple hypotheses. Where psychoanalytic theory predicts a shift toward the primary process mode, we predicted a shift toward attributional similarity responses. Freud reported an abundance of primary process mentation in three circumstances: (1) in conditions under which unconscious influences are large, as when persons are not awake and alert, and/or when indirect tasks, like the free-associative one, alter attentional conditions (examples include dreams and dream states, slips of the tongue, fantasies, and free associations); (2) early in development; as seen in much of the mentation observable in young children; and (3) in symptomatic behavior and in the development of symptoms. Consequently, we hypothesized a shift toward attributional responses in these three cases: (1) when items were presented
unconsciously/subliminally vs. consciously/supraliminally, or when participants were asked to perform an indirect task rather than a direct one; (2) when participants were between the ages of three and five; and (3) when participants were anxious, as anxiety is often an indicator of unconscious conflict and impending symptom formation (Freud 1926). In an initial pilot study (Brakel et al. 2000), we simply hypothesized that (1) similarity assessments could be performed unconsciously,
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F IGURE 3. The Entire Item Set: 4 Lists
and (2) that those similarity assessments performed on subliminal (i.e., operationally unconscious) items would be organized in a primary process way. In this pilot experiment, using a tachistoscope, we presented a set of six items (different, and not as well designed as the sets used in the three experiments to be discussed below) to 41 participants. These six items were presented eight times supraliminally in full consciousness at 40 ms for 48 card presentations, and eight times subliminally at the objective threshold at 1 ms for 48 card presentations. We found that for similarity assessments made subliminally the result was significantly in the attributional direction (t (40) = 2.51, p < .016); but we also found that the result was due essentially to two items. After we redesigned the items as per Figure 3, the study we call MereCat was begun (Cat for categorization, Mere for the role that the mere exposure effect plays).
MereCat
The MereCat study (see Brakel and Shevrin 2003a) consisted of two experiments. The first was designed as a straight replication of the pilot experiment with the improved items. We presented 58 participants 48 subliminal and 48 supraliminal card presentations. The 48 presentations consisted of the six items of one of the lists shown (see Figure 3) delivered eight times in individualized random orders. Half of the participants got the subliminal presentations first, and half the supraliminal. In each trial, participants were asked to choose which figure was more similar to the top central oneeven if they saw nothing at all. The results showed the attributional shift we predicted. Using the McNemar testa nonparametric statistical tool well suited to test for significance of differences between classes of responses from single subjectswe compared the number of our participants who supraliminally chose a predominance of relational choices but subliminally showed attributional predominance (13) to their opposites who showed attributional predominance supraliminally but relational predominance subliminally (3). This highly significant result (chi-square = 5.06, p < .03) indicated that an attributional shift was indeed going on unconsciously. The second part of MereCat was designed to bring out the attributional similarity response (tracking a formal quality of primary process mentation) by contrasting supraliminal/subliminal and explicit/implicit similarity assessment. To place the experiment within more traditional cognitive psychology conventions, a basic design change was made.
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No longer were all three figures of an item presented on a single card subliminally. Instead the master figure was now on a separate card and presented either subliminally or supraliminally, and the two choices were on a second card, always presented supraliminally following the presentation of the master figure card. There were four betweenparticipant groups: (1) Ps receiving subliminal master figures and the direct similarity task, Choose which of the two choices is more similar to that not-seen item; (2) Ps receiving subliminal master figures and the indirect similarity task, Note the not-seen-item, then choose which of the two choices you prefer; (3) Ps getting supraliminal master figure and direct similarity choice; (4) Ps getting supraliminal master figure and indirect similarity choice. The rationale for using preference to indicate indirect similarity comes from the mere exposure effect. In the paradigm mere exposure experiment, subliminally presented items are preferred over nonpresented items, even though they are not recognized as having been presented over nonpresented items (see Kunst-Wilson and Zanjonc 1980). Since Gordon and Holyoak (1983) found that the mere exposure preference effect carries over for items that are similar to items merely exposed, we reasoned that when participants were merely exposed to master figures and given two different types of similarity choices, they would prefer the one they implicitly (indirectly) regarded as more similar. We had three hypotheses and three sets of results. First, we hypothesized that both subliminal duration and indirect task would shift responses in an attributional direction. Hence we predicted that an analysis of variance (ANOVA)a statistical measure used to test for significance involving an interaction of more than one factor, as well as for significance of single factorswould reveal a significant interaction between duration (supraliminal vs. subliminal) and task (direct vs. indirect). This was indeed the case, as the interaction between duration and task was significant (F (1,112) = 3.46, p < .033, one-tail). Second, we hypothesized that when looking more specifically within each duration, supraliminally the explicit similarity condition would show significantly more relational responses than the implicit preference condition, while the subliminally implicit preference condition would be significantly more attributional compared with the explicit similarity condition. This prediction was also borne out. The supraliminal mean for the explicit similarity was 15.12. (The positive number indicates relational predominance. If all the subjects chose only
the relational items, the mean would be 24.00.) The supraliminal mean for the implicit preference condition was -1.69. (The negative number indicates attributional predominance.) These are significantly different (F (1,56) = 7.58, p < .008). In the subliminal duration, the mean for explicit similarity was 1.88, while the mean for implicit preference was -2.69. These are also significantly different. (F (1,56) = -3.39, p < .035, one-tail). These within-duration results are summarized below: Supraliminal Duration (F (1,56) = 7.58, p < .008) Explicit Similarity Mean 15.12 Implicit Preference Mean -1.69 Subliminal Duration (F (1,56) = -3.39, p < .035, one-tail) Explicit Similarity Mean 1.88 Implicit Preference Mean -2.69 Finally, for our third hypothesis we made a nonparametric prediction for the four conditions in descending order of number of relational responses. We predicted that supraliminal explicit would be the highest by far, then subliminal explicit, followed by supraliminal implicit, and finally subliminal implicit. And indeed, as the means show, supraliminal explicit similarity shows the greatest relational predominance with a mean of 15.12. Next is subliminal explicit similarity with a mean of 1.88. Both preference conditions show attributional predominance, with the supraliminal mean of -1.69 nonetheless indicating more relational responses than the number made in the subliminal preference condition, whose mean was -2.69, the most attributional and therefore the least relational of the four conditions. (The probability associated with predicting the correct order out of a possible 24 orders [4 x 3 x 2 x 1] is .04 and significant.) Discussion. While alternative hypotheses to account for the various positive findings in the two experiments MereCat comprises would have to be extremely post hoc, makeshift, and therefore unconvincing, these studies do have some problems. For example, some may consider unimpressive our finding in the first experiment: the significant difference favoring the number of participants shifting from supraliminal relational predominance to subliminal attributional superiority over those shifting in the opposite direction. Likewise, in the second experiment the relatively small size of the subliminal means can raise a question in the readers mind: Are these means really different from zero (which in this case would mean 50% of responses attributional and 50% of
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responses relational)? And if these means are not signif icantly different from zero, arent the f indings artifacts? The answer to both questions is no. The statistically significant interaction (between task, explicit and implicit, and duration, subliminal and supraliminal) was found, and the results of the individual mean comparisons within each duration are statistically independent of any individual mean comparisons with zero. Thus, it would have been entirely possible to have a subliminal implicit task mean signif icantly dif ferent from zero in the attributional direction, but not significantly more attributional when compared to the mean for the subliminal explicit task. It is the latter comparison that was significant in our study, and it is the comparison critical to our hypothesis. Thus, the MereCat experiment, although perhaps not in easily obvious ways, does provide evidence for the first of our general hypotheses regarding the existence of primary process: that subliminal presentation and indirect task will favor attributional / primary process responses.
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LifeCat
The LifeCat experiment (see Brakel, Shevrin, and Villa 2002) addressed the second general hypothesis: that even the conscious thinking of the very young (under 7) would be predominantly attributional / primary process in nature, as the secondary process has not yet fully developed. In this simple experiment 559 participants ranging in age from 3 years to 79 years were given a single supraliminal (and nontime-limited) presentation of six items from one of the four lists (see Figure 3). Participants were asked to give a direct similarity judgment on each the six items. It was predicted that the 3-to-5-year-old preschool group would show attributional predominance at a level reaching statistical significance, reflecting the power of primary process organization in that age group, whereas all our other age groups would show strong and statistically significant relational / secondary process predominance. As Figure 4 demonstrates, these predictions were borne out. Table 1 presents the significant levels of either attributional or relational predominance by age group.
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F IGURE 4. Participants Relational Choices by Age Group
Table 1. Relational (REL) vs. Attributional (ATT) Choices: Number of Participants Favoring REL Choices vs. ATT and Percentage of Total REL Responses vs. ATT
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Discussion. Although the findings in the LifeCat experiment are straightforward, puzzling matters remain. For example, both the adult data and the child data show that approximately one-third of participants do not give the predicted predominant mode responses. First, are the reasons the same for both preschoolers and adults? Second, what are the reasons in both cases? Regarding the first question, I think the very youngest children should be considered separately on this matter. Based on their comments as they completed the items, there were likely two populations within the one-third who responded in a relational direction.2 I speculate that one group had already developed sufficiently to show the relational predominance typical of more mature thinkers, and the other group was not yet sufficiently developed to have consolidated attributional predominance, choosing the relational choices because these shared a global resemblance to the master figures (see Figure 3). Gentner (1988, 1989; Gentner and Ratterman 1991) proposes that the earliest mode of categorization is based on global similarity, with attributional categorizations following at around age 3. Regarding adults, we are currently collaborating with researchers (Nnamdi Pole
2 Thanks to Colleen Hastie, who as an undergraduate ran the experiment and recorded these comments.
at the University of Michigan and Steven Hibbard at the University of Windsor) who are running versions of LifeCat along with many other psychological measures (e.g., various personality tests) attempting to find meaningful correlations. The LifeCat experiment, in line with the work of some nonpsychoanalytic developmental researchers, clearly provides evidence for our second general hypothesis, by demonstrating that even the conscious similarity categorizations of preschoolers show attributional / primary process organization predominance.
StressCat
The StressCat experiment (see Brakel and Shevrin 2004) addressed the third general hypothesis toward confirming the existence of the primary process mode of mental organization. The hypothesis here was in two steps. Since psychoanalytic theory predicts that unconscious conflict yields a shift toward primary process formal organization (as well as content), we presumed that increased state anxiety, as a frequent indicator of unconscious conflict would also produce this shift. Then, as in the other category experiments, it was hypothesized that this shift would be demonstrable by a shift toward attributional similarity judgments. The procedure and items were the same as for the adult participants in LifeCat, except for two changes: (1) the participants were 120 adults in waiting rooms at various outpatient facilities at the University of Michigan Hospitals; (2) atop each six-item set (from the same four lists) was the question How anxious are you as you wait, where 1 = calm and 10 = very anxious? Using three different statistical measures, we found evidence for our hypothesis. First, using the 410 adult participants from the LifeCat study as a normative relational vs. attributional sample, the number of participants who would be expected, under nonstressful conditions, to be relationally predominant was computed. This number, 69.9% of participants, when compared with the 55.5 % of individuals who were relationally predominant in the StressCat experiment, yielded a highly significant result (chi-square = 7.14, p < .007). The difference was even more significant when only the participants at anxiety level 2 or above (i.e., participants who rated themselves as having at least minimal anxiety) were considered. For this group only 46.6% showed relational predominance. Comparing the normative sample 69.9% expected to be relationally predominant to this 46.6% yields a chi-square = 10.55,
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p < .001. In contrast, the group that rated themselves calm (anxiety level 1) showed no significant difference from the normative sample, with 69.9% favoring relational choices in both cases. (These calm waiting room participants did differ significantly from those rating themselves 2 or above on anxiety: chi-square = 4.01, p < .04.) The second measure was a correlation of score (relational choices minus attributional ones) with anxiety measure (1 through 10). Controlling for age, education level, gender, handedness, and list, we found that attributional choices correlated positively and significantly with anxiety level (partial correlation coefficient = .228, p < .015). Finally, a linear regression analysis (see Figure 5) showing the fall of relational responses with increase in anxiety was performed. This was highly signif icant ( F = 12.95, signif icance of F < .0005).
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F IGURE 5. S CATTERPLOT
OF
S TRESS C AT R ESULTS
Discussion. The StressCat experiment provides evidence for our third hypothesis, regarding the existence of primary process organization tracked via a predicted shift toward attributional categorization. With even mild state anxiety, there is a significant shift toward attributional responses. An alternative hypothesis for these findings has been raised by Goldstone (personal communication; Goldstone and Medin 1994). Suppose that the anxiety finding was really a speed finding. In other words, what if the anxious participants rushed their responses and/or did not attend well to the stimuli, etc. If that were the case,
then the role of anxiety would be just contingent and not causal, with speed rather than anxiety mediating the shift toward attributional responses. We (Brakel and Shevrin) are currently designing experiments to explore this matter. In the new studies there will be four betweenparticipant conditions: anxiety plus speed constraints, anxiety with no speed constraints, no anxiety but speed constraints, and neither anxiety nor speed constraints. We hypothesize that anxiety independent of speed will tend to shift responses toward the attributional mode, although speed will likely enhance this effect.
Conclusions from the Categorization Experiments
Independent evidence for the primary process assumption has been provided. The three category studies showed a shift toward attributional organizationthe extraanalytic experimental/descriptive mode we used to index a formal aspect of primary process mentationin precisely the three areas indicated by psychoanalytic theory: (1) under unconscious rather than conscious conditions and with indirect rather than direct tasks; (2) in ordinary conscious mental operations of the very young; and (3) when anxiety, often an indicator of unconscious conflict, is present. Each of these three findings itself strengthens the psychoanalytic assumption of primary process. Further, when these three category studies are looked at together, the psychoanalytic theory of which primary and secondary processes are a part gains very valuable support by consiliance. To our knowledge, no other cognitive theory could possibly predict or explain an increase in attributionally organized categorization in just these disparate areas. Even the attributional/relational distinction in categorization, while capable of descriptively accounting for our findings, cannot explain them. These descriptive categorization theories would have no basis on which to investigate the areas that were studied, much less to hypothesize and predict the findings. I will have more to say about evidence gained from a variety of sources at the end of the article.
AN IMPORTANT AREA OF DISAGREEMENT AMONG PSYCHOANALYSTS
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Many psychoanalysts have raised the criticism that the attributional categorization / relational categorization distinction does not at all map onto primary and secondary process. These analysts sharply differ with
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us regarding the essential nature of primary process mentation and hence contest our view that attributional similarity can index an aspect of primary process organization.3 Really there are two groups of analysts who disagree with us. For one group, primary process is primary process content. This content is drive-infused, primitive, and pathological and clearly represents conflictual material. We have no quarrel with this view of primary process content, but we are dealing with the formal aspects of primary process thoughtcondensation and especially displacement, and the sorts of mentation that result. This clarification notwithstanding, another group of analysts holds that we are not dealing with primary process. For these analysts, primary process organization is associated with, perhaps even caused by, pathology and primitive regressive conflictsall quite absent in our experiments. Now, this disagreement is not new. Forty years ago Merton Gill (1963,1967) wondered if primary process mechanisms arise only in response to conflict, to evade the censorship . . . [or if they are] present from the beginning, sui generis, as it were (1967, p. 261). We have held in the past that our positive findings, even with such neutral stimuli, argue in favor of the primary process being ever present, available to be appropriated when there are unconscious conflicts, and against the idea that primary process mentation is caused by unconscious conflicts (Brakel et al. 2000, p. 558). However, this is not a telling argument if there is indeed no validity to the initial mapping of attributional and relational categorizations onto the primary and secondary processes. We have indeed assumed this mapping and then gone on to perform the experiments. But what does strongly favor our view that attributional similarity can index a formal aspect of primary process mentation is that we found signif icant increases in attributional categorization exactly where psychoanalytic theory predicts there would be significant shifts toward the primary process mode. Again, to our knowledge there is nothing in the cognitive psychology understanding of attributional categorization that would even look
3 Robert Holts significant body of work investigating primary process (e.g., Holt 1967, 1989, 2002) is not subject to this criticism. In line with the view presented here, Holt (2002) states, At present, the primary and secondary processes remain hypothetical, inferred happenings, and we have no way to observe them directly; he continues, however, reaching a conclusion very different from ours: We must instead content ourselves with thought products [i.e. contents] . . . (p. 461). Holts work then, unlike that presented here, does not concern the formal organizational aspect of primary process without the simultaneous presence of the conflictual, drive-dominated primary process content more familiar to psychoanalysts.
for the f indings in these various areas, much less predict and explain them. Our view of primary process includes its association with the pathological and primitive in the following way: pathological states allow formal regression to primary process operations; primary process operations are appropriated to the service of pathological/irrational ends; and primary process contents result. However, for us the primary process mode as a form of mental organization is in itself neither pathological nor even irrational. Rather, it is an early process, developmentally and evolutionarily, with primary process mentation often functioning effectively enough in many circumstances. We think it is the major mode of thought operative in young humans. Further, we think it is the predominant form of thought in adults in dream states, during the formation of unconscious fantasies, and in general whenever significant mentation is operative outside of reflective consciousness (e.g., in indirect tasks such as free association). Perhaps it is the major mode of thought organization operative in nonhuman primates, as well as in other higher mammals and some bird species. Perhaps primary process organization underlies such basic psychological operations as assessments-in-action and generalization in conditioning. As I will show in the section to follow, these speculations can be made testable. Less speculatively, just as primary process organization can be put in the service of pathological ends, it can serve creative ones too, as in Kriss regression in the service of the ego (1935).
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
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Much of the work presented here is preliminary. Using the same or very similar stimulus items as those in the three experiments discussed above, there are three directions in which we would like to extend this work in which the attributional and relational modes track primary and secondary process organization: (1) the role of primary process in the formation of psychological symptoms; (2) the role of primary process in nonpathological, very general psychological operations; (3) the role of primary process in certain addict-like pathological behaviors to reveal the suspected role of primary process underlying an entire class of normal behaviors. Concerning primary process and psychopathology, we certainly realize that our study of state anxiety captures only a small portion of
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the pathway from unconscious conflict to symptom formation. Thus, combining the research program discussed here with some of our earlier work, we are constructing a new experiment. In the Shevrin et al. work (1992, 1996), words representing participants unconscious conflicts, presented subliminally and supraliminally, vs. those representing their conscious symptoms, presented subliminally and supraliminally, produced significantly different evoked-response potential (ERP) response patterns. (ERPs are electrical measures of brain wave activity). Using a mathematically sophisticated time-frequency information analysis whereby certain features of the ERPs can be used to test how well the ERPs to a certain class of stimuli can themselves be classified, we found the following. Across participants, subliminally the time-frequency features classified the unconscious conflict words ERPs significantly better than they did the conscious symptom words ERPs, whereas supraliminally the reverse was truethe conscious symptom words ERPs were classified by the time-frequency features significantly more successfully than those to the unconscious conflict words. (This latter part of the finding was corroborated by another task the participants performed. They were each given a list of all of their words unconscious conflict words and conscious symptom wordsand asked to put them in categories. The conscious symptom words were most often put in a single category, while the unconscious conflict words were dispersed over three or more categories.) Following on this evidence, the new study would be designed to assess whether these differences have psychological consequences in terms of primary process vs. secondary process organization. In particular, we propose to answer the following question. Do participants, given a simple supraliminal similarity judgment test (e.g., one of the lists from the LifeCat experiment; see Figure 3) immediately following subliminal (unconscious) exposure to their unconscious conflict words, make more attributional choices than they do either after supraliminal exposure of these unconscious conflict words, or after exposure to conscious symptom words, subliminally and supraliminally? Our hypothesis in all three cases would be yes; if borne out, this would suggest a shift toward primary process organization (indexed by an attributional categorization shift) after subliminal (unconscious) exposure to words representing a participants unconscious conflict. Regarding primary process in nonpathological, very general psychological operations, we speculate that primary process mental organization
is more widespread than even Freud imagined. For example, just as evidence has been found that primary process is the predominant system of categorization in preschoolers, we believe evidence can be sought for primary process organization dominating in other speciesat least in nonhuman primates, and perhaps in other mammals, including dogs, cats, and rats, and some bird species. If such evidence could be gained, this would suggest that primary process organization is not a manifestation of the irrationala pathological, regressive form of rational thoughtbut instead that the primary process mode is arational and sufficient for effective functioning much of the time. I have attempted to make a philosophical case for the arational as truly mental (Brakel 2002), and we have tried observationally to demonstrate examples of the primary process system in nonhuman species (Brakel and Shevrin 2003b). But we need empirical evidence. We have designed two simple experiments involving birds or small mammals and are seeking collaborators with animal labs.4 In these experiments an animal would be classically conditioned such that a master figure (such as those used in the human experiments presented; see Figure 3) would be paired either with a very pleasurable stimulus or with an aversive one. After conditioning was established, we would rely on stimulus generalization in the following way. Animals would make a forced choice between an attributionally similar vs. a relationally similar item. (The choice would be appropriate to the animal for a pigeon, pecking on an attributionally marked key vs. a relationally marked one; for small mammals, entering an arm of a run or pressing a bar with an attributional marking vs. one with relational marking; etc.) In the pleasurable conditioning experiment, the animal conditioned to expect the reward would pick the attributional or relational choice, with this choice indicating that this was the one more readily generalized from the conditioned master figure (i.e., as the one more similar), in order to gain the reward again. In the aversive conditioning experiment, the avoided choice is the one more readily generalizablemore similar. It is avoided to prevent repetition of the aversive stimulus. In both experiments we would hypothesize that the attributional mode is more readily generalizable, and in this experiential sense more similar. Note that even in the manner that I am considering the animal experiments, my speculation about the predominance of primary process
4 One such collaboration is under way in the laboratory of Aaron Blaisdell (UCLA), assisted by Seth Resnick (Mt. Sinai Medical School) with pigeon subjects.
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organization in ubiquitous, nonpathological, general psychological operations is revealed. To develop this line further, it can be noted that in the proposed conditioning experiments similarity judgments proper are not being made; instead, some sort of similarity assessment is being acted on. I am suggesting that perhaps such similarity-in-action assessments are primary process mediated, whereas judgments of similarity are more secondary process mediated operations. And this could be tested empirically. Suppose the experiments above are run on human participants, with master f igure conditioning both to highly pleasurable and to aversive stimuli. Then, in addition, there are two other between-participants groups. These participants would not actually receive conditioning to any master f igures, but would be told the following: In other experiments we have paired this figure we are now showing you [showing participant a master figure] with a very pleasant stimulus. Supposing you wanted to have that pleasant stimulus repeated, which of these two choices [participants would be shown one attributionally similar and one relationally similar figure, of course unlabeled] would you pick? Similarly, the aversive stimuli group would be told of the pairing between the master figure and the aversive stimulus and asked which of two choicesone attributionally and one relationally similarthey would choose so as not to suffer the aversive stimulus again. We would predict that the groups actually conditioned would be performing similarity-in-action assessments and would thereby show a considerable shift toward attributionally mediated responses, compared to the groups asked to make judgments-proper of similarity. It would be of considerable interest if it could be established that the judgment process itself requires secondary process organization (as indexed by increased relational choices). It would be perhaps of even greater moment if, using increased attributional choices as an index, it could be demonstrated that something as basic as the induction of generalized conditioned responses in fact rests on primary process mental organization. Finally, there is the work we would like to undertake concerning the role of primary process in certain pathological, addictive-like behaviorsa role we hypothesize would reveal the underlying function of primary process in a class of important normal behaviors. Shevrin (2003) cites the work of Kent Berridge (Berridge and Robinson 1995) and Jaak Panksepp (1998) in support of maintaining a sharp separation between the concept of drive and that of affect (see also Shevrin et al. 2004).
Berridges distinction between wanting and liking and Panksepps SEEKING systemclearly drive-driven and not necessarily hedonically basedboth provide welcome evidence for psychoanalytic drive theorists. Now suppose we found that pigeons and small mammals could perform the simple category studies discussed just above; and suppose we did find that these animals categorized in a predominantly attributional direction. Then consider Panksepps finding that when the critical dopaminergic brain circuits activated during seeking behavior are electrically stimulated, rats and pigeons engage in two activities that look very much as though they are mediated by the primary process. (The circuits involved are in the extended lateral hypothalamic corridor from the ventral tegmental area/VTA to the nucleus accumbens, or NAan area Panksepp refers to as the nucleus accumbens systems, or NAS.) One activity concerns animals engaging in a variety of consummatory behaviors following electrical stimulation, and not just those matching the physiological need states rewarded, but those that are connected only contingently (i.e., in a primary process fashion) to those states. The second activity concerns autoshaping behavior in which animals treat the conditioned stimulus (the one that has been associated with the physiological reward)the bar press, the key or light to peckas though it were itself the reward (i.e., the representative nature of the stimulus is lost, as is the notion of sequence, much as in primary process mediated hallucinatory wish fulfillment). Our within-subject experiment would consist in using our simple attributional vs. relational categorization task to compare animals before and after electrical stimulation of their nucleus accumbens systems. (Similarly, we could in a between-subject experiment compare the attributional scores for nonstimulated animals with those who had NAS electrical stimulation.) We hypothesize that electrical brain stimulation of this dopaminergic system would produce a significant increase in attributional categorizations. The electrical brain stimulation of the nucleus accumbens system can serve as a model for some behaviors seen in addiction. Cocaine and amphetamines stimulate the NAS and as such have, quite independent of any hedonic pleasure, primary process mediated effects analogous to the two described above. First, drug cravings will follow on a growing number of cues (internal and external) only contiguously related (related in a primary fashion) to the drug. Second, the drug-seeking behavior itself, and not just the drug, will become part of the goal pursued. Now
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this is clearly a pathological role for the primary process mode of thought. But wouldnt a positive result also suggest that it is primary process mediated mentation that accounts for some of the nonpathological phenomena we see under routine drive pressure? Take, for example, using a representative of the satisfying object as the object itself when it is absent. Transitional objects fit this description. Also, when a loved one is absent (temporarily or permanently), some personal tokens of the lost person may be valued over and above their mere material status. Further, despite knowledge of its impossibility, one might be unable to stop anticipating the absent persons appearance in situations where that person had always been presentthe human equivalent of continuing to press the bar associated with the food reward. A grieving friend of mine, for example, for months would awaken in the night sure that his late wife was again in their bed. Then, regarding the even more prevalent phenomenon of the relative interchangeability of objects of satisfaction, this too occurs under normal conditions, with no more than average drive pressures. Psychoanalysts have of course long recognized this interchangeability as a kind of displacement, but empirical work along the lines we propose might go some distance to explaining this very useful, if so far merely descriptive term. That drives in fact do not have univocal, singularly determinate objects, but instead are satisfied by any of a class of objects linked in a primary process fashion, is a subject of philosophical importance (see Brakel 2004; Brakel and Velleman 2003).
CONCLUSIONS
All sciences have assumptions. For a science to progress, these assumptions must be tested using methods independent of those that presuppose the assumptions to be true. Using a method independent of psychoanalytic assumptions to classify modes of thinkingthe attributional vs. relational similarity categorizations described by cognitive psychologistsand recognizing that these map onto aspects of primary and secondary process thought organizations, respectively, we have been able to test one of the core assumptions of psychoanalysis. We have found evidence for a preponderance of attributionally organized categorizations in the very places that Freud observed the predominance of primary process mentation. Freud observed that young children think in a primary process manner, and we found that the
preschoolers in our study made similarity categorizations that were overwhelmingly attributionally organized. Freud noted primary process content in dreams and symptoms, as well as during free association, and posited that it predominates in the unconscious. We found significant shifts toward attributional organization in adults under state anxiety (often reflecting unconscious conflict), as well as under conditions outside of conscious awareness, including situations in which the mental contents were totally unconscious and in which indirect tasks were called for (both laboratory analogs of free association). These results provide independent support for the psychoanalytic assumption of two distinct modes of mental organizationthe primary and secondary processes. Moreover, to our knowledge there is not another theory of mind that would have had grounds to look for, much less predict, the distribution of attributionally vs. relationally organized mentation in such diverse areas over which these three experiments range: child development, state anxiety, and contents and processes outside of awareness. This matter of diverse evidence is of no small importance. As Hellman (1997), a philosopher of science, has noted, One of the most signif icant virtues a good scientif ic theory can possess is a capacity to account for a wide variety of phenomena hitherto regarded as disparate (p. 202). In an attempt to provide even more diverse evidence, we are emboldened (1) to extend the method of indexing primary vs. secondary processes via attributional vs. relational choices to conditioned responses of nonhuman species under normal and NASstimulated conditions, and (2) to explore in humans the very process of judgment vs. assessments-in-action. If, as we hypothesize, attributional organization predominates in animals generally, and more so after NASstimulation, as well as in similarity-in-action assessments, we will have grounds to regard primary process mentation as having a role (1) in the very generalization that is intrinsic to conditioning, and (2) in driveinfluenced (i.e., all) behavior. This would make a very substantial claim for the general importance of primary process. And with this claim would come the acknowledgment of the generativity and robustness of this central aspect of psychoanalytic theory.
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Brakel On Primary Process

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THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

F IGURE 1. Attributional vs. Relational Similarity

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

F IGURE 2. One of the Items

F IGURE 3. The Entire Item Set: 4 Lists

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

F IGURE 4. Participants Relational Choices by Age Group

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSUMPTION OF THE PRIMARY PROCESS

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