7 Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and Christoph Koch (Vol. 2, No. 1) Consciousness and Affect: Commentary, By Mortimer Ostow (New York)

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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