Wednesday, June 21, 2023

What Is Psyche, by Olavo de Carvalho

In Olavo de Carvalho’s essay What Is Psyche, the concept of psyche is explored within the context of ancient and modern psychology. Olavo highlights the differences between ancient and modern approaches, with ancient psychology focusing on the unified vision of life and soul, while modern psychology seeks to differentiate itself from other scientific disciplines. The essay examines the attribution of psychic causes to behavior and raises questions about how psychologists distinguish psychic causes from other possible causes.

Olavo proposes four causes: physical, logical, chance, and psychic, and defines psyche as a zone of indeterminacy where these causes combine. He argues that psyche acts through these causes rather than directly. The distinction between psyche and chance is discussed, with psyche exhibiting elements of freedom and indeterminacy that serve the individual organism’s interests.

The characteristics of the psyche, including efficiency, freedom, creativity, will to power, and individuality, are outlined. The essay explores the processes of adaptation, expansion, perception, memory, and learning within the operations of psyche. The ego’s formation and its role in self-limitation of the psyche are discussed, along with the various notions of the unconscious. Olavo concludes by emphasizing that the psyche is the principle of human freedom, seeking to manifest itself by adapting to limitations, and psychotherapy aims to address the limitations of the ego and establish a balance with individuality and the external situation.

Introduction

The idea of life and soul was greatly emphasized in ancient psychology, for which human life was one of the manifestations of life in general.

Modern psychology, on the other hand, insists much more on the specific difference of humans compared to other forms of life.

Modern psychology has developed towards independence from its biological roots. The tendency is to increasingly separate psychology from biology, biology from chemistry, and chemistry from physics.

The ancient tendency was exactly the opposite, that is, it insisted on a unified vision, a tendency to bring all of this together into a single line.

Since modern psychology, starting from the 19th century, began to establish its first foundations, it has always done so based on the investigation of some particular phenomenon. The explanation of the nature of the psyche, as well as its definition, is unique and is an analysis conducted by myself since the early days of the formation of the science of Psychology.

1. The Question of Defining the Psyche

It is said that modern, scientific psychology began with Gustav T. Fechner1 and W. Wundt,2 as stated in all histories or textbooks of Psychology.

The fundamental interest of these authors, particularly Fechner, was the study of perception. Fechner, delving deeper into this subject, pursued further investigation. His main interest was to determine where the physiological ends and the psychological begins.

Fechner believed that he could establish this point by studying the relationship between the stimulus of a perception, the intensity of this stimulus, and the retention time of the retinal image. If the stimulus is the same (as in the case of a flashbulb), there is a difference in retention time, and this difference is conditioned by attention.

In his experiments, Fechner acted as both the researcher and the subject, as he believed that if someone else were to inform him of the moment the image disappeared from the retina, a certain amount of time would pass, which would hinder measurement.

Fechner believed that he could establish a mathematical equation that would express the relationship between the physiological and the psychological. According to him, stimuli grow in a geometric progression and sensations in an arithmetic progression. Therefore, the relationship between the two is represented by a logarithmic curve, meaning that sensations are proportional to the logarithm of the stimuli that generate them. The mathematical law, then, is as follows:

S = C log E

Two examples will better illustrate what he wanted to express:

If we light another candle in a room where there is only one other lit candle, the increase in illumination will provoke a more sensitive perception than if we light a candle in a room where there are already ten lit candles.

Or

We perceive a much greater increase in weight when carrying two light packages than when carrying two very heavy suitcases.

In any case, we observe that a particular phenomenon caught Fechner’s attention, just as it did with Wundt, W. James, and Ribot, whose dominant interest was the phenomenon of attention. In other words, all these researchers studied psychology based on certain phenomena or, rather, certain aspects of psychic life such as perception, memory, attention, association of ideas, speech, etc.

With psychoanalysis, a new line of research emerged that would study the temporal development of the individual, proposing an evolutionary psychology of emotions, seeking to explain how the individual’s major emotional frameworks are formed based on their biography. However, all this research is focused around a specific phenomenon, the phenomenon of neurosis, that is, psychology is approached from the perspective of psychopathology.

Therefore, because all these psychologists started from a particular phenomenon to study psychology, the definitions they give us of psychology and psyche are obviously colored by this initial theme of investigation. Moreover, none of them posed questions such as: Does psyche exist? What is psyche?

Currently, we content ourselves with two types of definitions of psyche: classical ones, taken from Aristotle or Scholasticism, which are therefore prior to the development of modern psychology, and definitions by enumeration.

When we ask a modern psychologist what psyche is, they respond by designating psychological facts: memory, attention, speech, desire, intention, etc. They rarely respond with a definition but always with enumerative designations, that is, they enumerate various elements that are part of the psyche, which evidently allows for the distinction of those that are not.

However, we do not know if this enumeration is complete or if, on the other hand, it includes some elements that are of an extrapsychological nature (physiological, physiochemical, neurological, and others).

2. Questions Raised for the Elaboration of the Concept of Psyche

For the elaboration/construction of the concept of psyche, I started from the following inquiries:

When a psychologist uses the term “psychic,” what exactly is he trying to convey? What is the underlying intention, even if obscurely, in his mind? What does he have in mind? How does he know if something is psychic or not? Although stating that he does not know exactly what psyche is or that it is almost impossible to define it clearly, he never errs, never discusses another subject. Although claiming not to know how to define psyche, he somehow always seems to know what it is, not in a reflexive way, but in an empirical, usual, customary way.

What does the psychologist mean when he attributes a psychic cause to a particular behavior? When he says that a certain act is psychic? In other words, what does he mean when he attributes a psychic cause to an act, a behavior, a human response? Where does he locate this psychic cause within a constellation of other possible causes? And what other causes can a human act have?

In summary, I conclude that there is no cause for these acts that cannot be classified within the framework of physical, logical, chance, and psychic (psychological) causes.

3. The Four Causes

3.1. Physical Cause

We say that the cause is physical when, for example, someone touches the tip of their finger with a cigarette ember and the arm recoils. In other words, the person is compelled to do so by a physical need. Even an amoeba would do the same. The cause of this act cannot be considered psychological. Or: when someone pushes you, you lose your balance and fall.

3.2. Logical Cause

When paying the bus fare, a person gives the conductor two R$1.00 bills3 instead of one R$1.00 bill. If we ask the person why they did not give just one R$1.00 bill, they say that the fare is R$1.10 and R$1.00 does not cover it. This act also cannot be considered psychological since it follows a norm that is identical and the same for all human beings. Anyone in the same situation would have to do more or less the same thing unless they are prevented from doing so by some other cause, which we could then classify as psychological.

All actions that are based on logical reasons, evident to any human being, cannot be said to have been caused psychologically, as they are caused by something that is clearly beyond the psyche. When doing the calculation 2+2, the result 4 is obtained, which was not determined by me because it is not a psychological matter but rather the structure of the number itself. Just like the Pythagorean theorem: “the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the two legs.” We do not arrive at this conclusion for psychological reasons; it is imposed on us by the structure of the right-angled triangle.

Logical acts are those that follow a necessity that is not compelling like physical need but is freely accepted by the individual. There is nothing that forces the individual, from within or from outside, to adhere to a logical conclusion.

It is not a matter of being unable to reach a logical conclusion; it is a matter of adhering to it.

St. Albert the Great once said, “People complete the syllogism, but it does not convince them.”

From the moment the logical necessity is accepted, the individual submits to an order of causes that is no longer psychological.

Certainly, there is a psychological element at the root of accepting logical behavior. But the behavior itself is no longer psychological, which is beyond doubt. It is intellectual in the sense that it captures an ontological requirement, something that goes beyond the individual, beyond their psyche.

3.3. Chance

Using the same example above, this third order of causes can occur when the person puts their hand in their pocket and pulls out a random bill that happens to be of higher value than the fare. This does not have a specific physical cause because it happens due to a random combination of countless causes, which we call “chance” because we cannot reconstruct the entire causal chain. It is evident that for the person to pick up this particular bill and not another, that same bill had to be on top of the others, making it easier to pick up because the hand reached there, etc. Some cause exists; however, there is a complex and inexhaustible array of causes. Conducting research in this regard, attempting to reconstruct the entire chain, would be an exhausting task with a relatively irrelevant result, so we say that chance determined this act.

Chance is not exactly something without cause but rather something with a multiplicity of causes, some of which may be physical, others psychological. It is an irretrievable constellation of causes.

4. The Definition of Psyche

Moving away from these three orders of causes, we say that the act had a psychological cause. The most characteristic aspect of a psychological cause is that it always acts through the other three causes and never directly.

Therefore, we define: the psyche is a zone of indeterminacy where a person combines causes of a physical, logical, and chance nature.

5. The Distinction between Psyche and Chance

In this definition, it becomes clear that the psyche encompasses an element of freedom, indeterminacy. From this observation arises the following question: if this is so, in what way does psyche differ from chance? We understand that in psyche, things do not unfold according to an order of necessity, as in the physical and logical spheres (necessity = that which cannot not be), but rather according to a framework of indeterminacy that makes psyche resemble chance. In other words, psyche is a phenomenon that belongs to the realm of freedom and indeterminacy rather than necessity.

The specific difference that allows us to distinguish psyche from chance is that, although both combine physical and logical necessities, psyche combines them in an efficient manner, that is, in the interest of a particular individual organism.

Therefore, psyche is like efficient causality, meaning that it is freedom or indeterminacy within which physical, logical, and chance causes can be combined to some extent in the interest of the individual organism.

6. Psychopathology

At this point in the investigation, the following question arises: If the psyche always operates in the interest of the organism, how is psychopathology explained? Very simply, in the case of psychopathology, the psyche regresses, retreats, relinquishes to the domain of physical necessity, chance, or logic a territory that it would normally have conquered. There are diseases of the psyche, but they are not properly within the sphere of the psyche; rather, they represent a retraction, a diminution of the psychic sphere, something like a surrender, an abdication of the freedom of the psychic field to other causes.

It is very easy to see that in mentally ill individuals, automatic mental processes (which, in this case, will be placed under the label of physical necessity) have a much greater dominion over overall behavior than in a healthy individual. Considering automatism as physical necessity, if it takes the lead, there is a retreat of the psyche.

Similarly, in certain schizophrenic processes, when logical behavior takes the lead, that is, when the individual is dominated by implacable logic, there is a loss of freedom in terms of retreating from a logical chain when it leads to conclusions that violate the integrity of the organism, such as in a state of catatonia, where the individual no longer reacts to logical reasoning. Their psyche becomes closed, withdrawn, to the point that the person is completely unable to react, in a state of paralysis that is of a logical nature. The following representation can be made:

This diagram expresses only the causes when viewed from the outside. However, when observing the behavior of an individual and asking about its cause, looking from within, this diagram would be slightly different because we say that psyche, by its very nature, tends to encroach upon and encompass a part of the domains of the other three causes. Ideally, the new diagram would look like this:

The psyche encompassing the totality of physical, logical, and chance causes, managing to dominate them all in the interest of the individual organism. Ideally, because in reality, an agreement is reached between the two representations, and the new diagram, representing such an agreement, would look like this:

It can be observed that there is an intersection zone: the psyche dominates a part of the logical needs, a part of the physical needs, and a part of chance. It acts, functions, and transforms into behavior only within this intersection zone. Thus, what remains purely psychic remains purely potential.

It is then understood that the psyche, by its very nature, is a potentiality (potentiality = a more or less undefined set of possibilities) and it only becomes actualized through physical, logical, and chance causes.

7. Characteristics of the Psyche

The psyche has the following characteristics:

  1. Efficiency
  2. Freedom
  3. Creativity
  4. Will to Power
  5. Individuality

Regarding the attribute of individuality, it is reiterated that the psyche (under normal conditions) acts in the interest of the individual organism, hence this characteristic that confers the attribute of individuality.

There is no psyche in itself; we only know psyche condemned within an individual organism: the psyche of one man, the psyche of another man, the psyche of a plant, of an animal. Just as we cannot speak of life in itself, for there is no life except in individualized living organisms. Life is not like “energy,” we can conceive of energies disseminated and situated in a space where there is no individual being. For example, we can understand that this room is constantly traversed by currents of energy, but it cannot be traversed by “lives” or “psyches” in the same sense.

This reminds us of Goethe’s phrase: “Nature seems to have bet on individuality.”4

8. Processes of Psyche’s Operation

The process by which the psyche dominates and encompasses the causes external to it, particularly physical causality, is already observed in the most elementary period of learning. For example, when a child begins to learn to walk, a relationship is established between their weight, muscular strength, and gravity, which can easily be reduced to a classical mechanical equation.

As the child learns to walk, they are subjected to an external physical necessity. As they learn and internalize the relationship between their weight, gravity, and muscular strength, they start anticipating the fall and avoiding it. Thus, even though the physical law governing the fall is still present, it no longer operates physically but rather psychologically. The psyche anticipates physical determination and, in a way, circumvents it in the interest of the individual.

Every process of learning any physical activity always occurs through the anticipation of a necessity, a resistance from the world. This resistance is then circumvented through anticipation. The resistance is circumvented but still remains, as if the necessity, which limits the organism’s action, is subsequently used by the organism itself in its own interest.

The same applies to logical necessity. Certain things that are logically impossible for us offer resistance. As we learn the formulas of these logical necessities, we internalize them and start circumventing them. If we cannot do something in a certain way, we do it differently.

Lastly, we attempt to outmaneuver chance itself. A subject whose psyche is functioning optimally can even have luck, as if they had outmaneuvered chance. Luck and misfortune are the two names of chance, so chance is outmaneuvered in the interest of the psyche.

9. Will to Power

Regarding the will to power, lacking a better term, we follow Nietzsche. The more territories the psyche dominates, the more it desires to dominate. The psyche is inherently expansive.

The expansionist characteristic of the psyche is achieved through contraction, as paradoxical as it may seem. The psyche gains power as it conforms to physical, logical, and chance necessity, learning to circumvent them. It achieves this by internalizing the set of determinations (given by the laws and possibilities of those necessities) that surround it, making that set a part of itself by adapting to the forms of the physical world, the logical structures of the world, as well as the determinations of chance. Thus, as it contracts to adapt, the psyche expands and acquires the power to act upon the external and internal world.

10. The Process of Psyche’s Adaptation

This adaptation of the psyche requires, first and foremost, the contribution of perception and memory. When memory comes into play, retaining lived experiences and performing abstractions (the process of generalization) based on them, the collection of these abstractions and generalizations constitutes a kind of deposit that organizes itself according to a logical framework in the individual’s mind, forming their image of the world.

However, the individual not only organizes their experience logically but also chronologically. They recount their own story and know what has happened to them. For example, if a person acts with a certain goal today and fails to achieve it, tomorrow they remember that they tried and failed, and they try again or change knowing that they changed and why. It is as if they are jotting down everything that happens to them, as well as the decisions they make, lining up their historical development. This is called the Ego.

Therefore, the psyche—remembering that it is always an individual psyche—expands to act in the world, to acquire the power to act in the world as it simultaneously restricts its possibilities. We have seen that the psyche is initially an indistinct, loose, and chaotic set of possibilities, and when these undefined possibilities become limited (subjected to certain determinations), possible realizations and acts emerge.

These possibilities are gradually cut off and abandoned as it becomes clear that they are incompatible with logical, physical, and chance necessities (which are the set of present conditions that exist at a given moment and cannot be confined within a delimited framework—the chance is always ongoing). For example, a child gives up on flying or postpones a difficult task, like seeing a pool and thinking they can jump in and start swimming like everyone else. They enter the water, drown, and need to be rescued. They realize that such an act is a bit more complicated than they had imagined and give up swimming through the power of positive thinking or recoil, becoming traumatized and never wanting to swim again, or humbly decide to learn like everyone else. What the child did was close the door to a possibility that, under those present conditions, could not be realized in the realm of physical necessity but only in the realm of the psyche as potentiality (in this case, a future possibility). It can be seen that, as potentiality, the psyche is destined to never be realized.

Regarding these necessities (logical, physical), it matters little whether they reach us through direct experience or through learning. For example, the child who learned that they cannot fly: whether this learning came from a failed attempt or by following the wise advice of their mother, it doesn’t matter. In both cases, it is a limitation imposed upon them. In this case, it is easy to see that learning that was not acquired through personal experience shortens suffering. The more capable one is of learning from the experience of others, the faster they learn, and the less they need to repeat the experience, the lower the yield of learning.

11. The Process of Psyche’s Learning

The process of learning consists of the adaptation of the psyche to logical, physical, and chance necessities. This adaptation occurs through the internalization of impossibilities. The individual realizes that not all things limiting their actions are arbitrary; there are repeated impossibilities. Some are derived from physical necessity itself, while others are abstracted and perceived as logical necessities. Finally, there are those that, not perceiving them as repeated, are attributed to chance, regardless of whether they are or not—philosophically speaking, the existence of chance is not of great importance.

As the psyche adapts to these external conditions, it acquires the power to act. If it were to adapt to the totality of the conditions imposed by physical, logical, and chance necessities, it would acquire universal power. Assuming it knew the entire universe and could freely act in all realms of reality, it would have consumed the cosmos and, in that sense, would cease to be psyche. It would be, so to speak, consciousness but no longer psyche. What exactly that would be, is something best left to theologians. We can imagine that the “psyche” of God would be such a psyche, a psyche where there is no longer potentiality. Thomas Aquinas said that “God is pure act of being,” that is, act without potentiality, where nothing exists as a possibility to be realized—everything that can be realized is already realized. If we were to imagine a psyche where there is no longer potentiality, and above all, it is pure act, that would be the psyche of God.

12. Consciousness

As learning progresses, there begins to be a repetition of experience. However, after the repetition of experience, there is another subtler thing, which is the potential repetition of experience; that is, the recollection of the same sensation, but now experienced in a diminished way and in the absence of the stimulus that previously caused it. For example, the recollection of pain: the recollection of pain is painful, but not as much as the pain itself; furthermore, the pain was accompanied by a real, physical organic alteration, but its recollection is not. What characterizes recollection and distinguishes it from sensation is, first, that it is attenuated, and second, that it occurs in the absence of the stimulus that caused it.

In summary, as learning continues, repeated experience emerges first, followed by the anticipation of repetition, and we call this anticipation recollection. Thus, the more sensations an individual is capable of anticipating, the more easily they will be able to predict situations. Therefore, the more memory, the more skilled the organism becomes because it anticipates situations and prepares for them.

When all past experience is compressed into a specific moment in view of an upcoming situation, the phenomenon we call consciousness occurs.5

Consciousness transforms into ego as the individual recounts their past experiences to themselves and acts in a line of biographical historical continuity; in other words, they reaffirm their desire to continue attempting the same experiences they have already tried. The difference is that this time they are not forced into these experiences by a repetition of the external situation, but they seek them out themselves.

Thus, as this continuity forms, a structure also emerges that limits the psyche.

13. Self-Limitation of the Psyche and the Ego

In addition to being limited by physical, logical, and chance needs (external needs that we recognize), there is a fourth limitation, which is self-limitation, meaning the individual is limited by their own history as they have recounted it to themselves. This self-limitation is precisely what we call ego.

The ego opens up another sphere of action for the individual: the realm of social action. Thus, there is continuity and coherence between past and subsequent actions, which allows the individual to be recognized by others, not only by physical appearance but as a human individuality.

Therefore, from the repertoire of possibilities that the psyche possesses, the individual amputates and cuts out immense parts, partly due to physical needs, partly due to the pattern of logical needs, and partly due to chance, things they learn as they develop. Additionally, the individual voluntarily amputates another part because they want certain things and not others, whether these choices are of their own free will or copied from the outside. What matters is that they persevere in some choices and not in others. These things in which they persevere are their choices, and that is their history.

Dr. Freud said that by the age of five, a child already has a history, meaning the ego is already formed. It can be said that the ego is constituted when the subject’s history begins to form a whole, and they start to repeat the entirety of their history. Certain experiences are so repetitive within a broad cycle that the individual can predict that what happened to them will continue happening eternally and that it is who they are. This moment is particularly crucial, and it is precisely at this point that the selection Arthur Ianov spoke of occurs, where certain needs that are not met are then abandoned. The individual believes that if a certain need has not been met up to that point, it is because it does not exist. For example, in the case of a child who wants a particular toy, asks for it repeatedly, and never receives it. This child eventually gives up on that toy, and at the very moment they give up, they identify not with the desire for the toy but with its absence, which then becomes part of their life, their history. Until that moment, the absence of the toy was like a causality, an external thing, but after a certain point, it becomes part of their personal history. While it is just a toy, it’s fine, but there are much more important and even necessary things than toys, such as the opportunity for expression, affection, and sometimes even food and the most basic human respect. All of these may be lacking, and by the age of five, a deficiency is consolidated as part of this child’s history. And once it becomes part of their history, it no longer matters if the missing need is fulfilled from the external world because there is no longer an organ to receive the missing thing. It is like the case of someone who goes without eating for 40 days (the limit seems to be 44 days), where the individual loses the ability to eat, and giving them food will not help. They need to be given serum to prepare them, to make them able to eat again, to be able to have that need, and from a psychological point of view, the same happens.

The process of forming the neurosis that Ianov speaks of is only possible because this formation of the ego exists, which functions as a limitation of the psyche, as self-limitation, in which the psyche, demanding the greatest sacrifice from itself (that of self-limitation), also acquires the core of its power. Only when the power of the psyche is personalized into an ego does it truly become capable of acting not only in the physical world like a baby but in the human world itself. The ego is important because it provides the possibility of exercising power in the human sphere, a power that the individual did not have before or at least had in such a diffuse way that it was as if the power did not belong to them.

Logical thinking is also present in animals; it is like an extension of the sense of organic self-preservation, and a certain logical anticipation of physical need is present in animals. The animal creates a bridge between logical and physical need, such as in the case of a monkey that, trying to reach a banana, uses a stick to knock it down; in other words, it constructs a logical model in its mind before grabbing the stick, and it does so not out of physical necessity but due to an external force that compels it, and it is not by chance—it is a logical behavior.

What characterizes humans in this sense, then, is not only the logical need with which they deal with physical need and chance but also the fact that humans combine these three forms of need limitation into a personal form of self-limitation called ego. This ego is capable of imposing the most terrible limitations on the psyche and anticipates almost all logical, physical, and chance needs in order to prevent actions that go against the interest of the organism, such as preventing oneself from jumping from the 10th floor. If we ask someone why they didn’t jump from the 10th floor, they respond, “Because I didn’t want to, because I don’t want to.” Of course, there is the physical impossibility of them flying around, but it is not what prevents them from jumping—it is themselves because they know it won’t work. But we can ask: Why do they only have to do what will work? Because it is not in their interest to do something wrong; they would lose their life. In short, they don’t do it because they don’t want to.

In this sense, it is interesting to observe the pleasure a five-year-old child feels when they begin to acquire the ability to limit themselves, to deny certain things because, in doing so, they prove to themselves that they are “grown-up.”

Thus, the first power of the ego is over itself and the psyche. In the animal realm, this is different because animals cannot learn the synthesis of needs.

When the ego is formed, something is left out because the ego is a limitation of the psyche. Firstly, all the psychic contents that are already within the individual, all the impulses, all the possibilities they have, are left out. The individual can repress those impulses they are aware of, but they cannot repress those they are unaware of. Secondly, everything they have tried and been denied (repressed needs in Ianov’s sense) is left out as well. Then, the rejected and blocked contents mentioned by Dr. Freud are also left out, which are the psychic contents that threaten the integrity of that nascent fortress that comes into the world surrounded by enemies on all sides. Finally, everything the individual is unaware of that will happen to them in the future is left out.

Everything they are unaware of pertains to logical, physical, and chance needs and the psyche itself. And from there arise the various senses of the word “unconscious” in psychology and psychoanalysis; in other words, everything that is left out is unconscious in a certain way.

14. Notions of the Unconscious

This approach allows us to deduce, in a single notion, the various concepts of the unconscious. From the perspective of psychological theory, this is no small matter because it enables us to understand the relevance of the concept of the unconscious in Adler, Jung, Freud, Reich, etc.

Reich’s notion of the unconscious, for example, derives from the realm of physical needs and is formed as follows: as mentioned before, the psyche acts through other causes, transforming physical need into logical need and vice versa, as well as transforming chance into logical need, constantly dealing with these three factors. A chance impossibility can be transformed into a physical need for muscular tension, for example, when I want to scream and my father doesn’t allow it. This is a need that comes from outside, of a chance nature, not being logical or physical since my father is not an impersonal law like gravity. So, for me, it has no logic; it is just something that happened to me, a chance impossibility. However, when it repeats, to avoid the painful situation from happening again, I prevent myself from screaming, causing a tension in my throat, tightening the muscles every time I see, seconds before my father will prevent me from doing so. From there, the process of contraction continues to function through conditioned reflex.

The diversity of concepts of the unconscious found in psychology books has arisen from the fact that they were all discovered empirically: the investigator had a certain number of facts and labeled them with a name that gave unity, at least apparent unity, to that group of phenomena. Another investigator observed another group of phenomena and also labeled them with the same name. After using the same word (in this case, unconscious) about six or seven times to designate different things, unrelated to each other, psychologists diverged from each other. However, with this approach, it is easy to understand how various types of unconsciousness can be logically deduced from a single concept because this approach led to a unique principle from which all the related concepts derived. The validity of a theory lies primarily in its potential to group heterogeneous phenomena, attributing them to a common origin. I believe this is the first time this has been done.

15. Summary and Conclusions

The psyche is the principle of human freedom; in other words, it is the biological translation of human freedom, an unlimited set of possibilities. And as such, it seeks to manifest itself in the world by limiting its possibilities, whether through learned experience that prevents it from doing this or that, or by denying the satisfaction of a desire. As it adapts to these limitations, it gains power, and as this power acquired through limitation from logical, physical, and chance needs acquires temporal coherence, a story is formed, giving rise to an ego. The moment of ego formation is quite traumatic because it is the moment when the individual closes their history, assimilating certain limitations as their own, which may have been purely chance occurrences. If, on the other hand, the limitations that an individual imposed on themselves at the age of five coincided exactly with their individual limitations, they would be extremely happy.

The ego is a psychological reflection of individuality; it is an individuality created by the psyche, as if it were a character imitating individuality. Since it is usually composed of limitations copied from the outside, in the vast majority of cases, the result is a deficient ego, a wretch. Thus, in adulthood, it is necessary to dismantle this ego several times in order to construct another one, and if one cannot do it alone, the individual needs to resort to psychoanalysis, which is nothing more than rewriting the history of the ego, reinterpreting it in a different way. Dr. Juan Alfredo César Müller used to say that psychotherapy does not act on the psyche but on the ego; in other words, it is not the psyche that becomes ill, but the ego. Psychotherapy will attempt to create an adjustment of the ego either with the individuality or with the external situation of the moment.

Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy is based on something very simple: what he calls noogenic neuroses (those that arise from intellectual or spiritual causes) stem from a lack of meaning in the individual’s existence. His psychotherapy consists of restoring to the individual a sense of meaning in their own life. The interesting thing is that Frankl does not speak of a meaning of life invented by the individual but rather a meaning of life found by the individual since, as Viktor Frankl admits, the meaning of life exists objectively.

  1. Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887). Born in Ndlausitz, he began his studies in Leipzig at the age of 16 and remained there all his life.↩

  2. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920). Studied Medicine in Tübingen and Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, and Medicine in Heidelberg. He left Medicine to dedicate himself to Physiology. His book “Contributions to the Theory of Sensory Perception” (1858 and 1862) alongside Fechner’s ELEMENTS (1860) is considered the landmark that marks the literary birth of the new science.↩

  3. Translator’s note: “R$” is the typical symbol used within Brazil for Brazilian currency (BRL), known as “reais” (in the plural) or “real” (in the singular).↩

  4. The statement: “Sie scheint alles auf Individualität angelegt zu haben” (appears in the fragment titled “Die Natur”).↩

  5. Cf. Maurice Pradines.↩

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