The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage

Three: Identity Without Precedent

57 The Impossibility of Turning Back Has neurology today undertaken a thinking and writing of destruction more radical than psychoanalysis? As soon as one examines the literature of contemporary neuropathology, the question becomes inevitable. The case histories, in particular, make it possible to contest the Freudian definition of psychic plasticity. the persistence of the primitive in freud As I indicated in the Introduction, plasticity, for Freud, designates the imperishable character of psychic formations. The clearest articulation of this definition of plasticity appears in “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death”: t h r e e Identity Without Precedent I am a kind of newborn creature. — z a s e t s k y / l u r i a , The Man with a Shattered World 58 The Neurological Subordination of Sexuality It is otherwise with the development of the mind. Here one can describe the state of affairs which has nothing to compare with it, only by saying that that in this case every earlier stage of development persists alongside the later stage which has arisen from it; here succession also involves co-existence, although it is to the same materials that the whole series of transformations [Veränderungen] has applied. The earlier mental state may not have manifested itself for years, but none the less it is so far present that it may at any time again become the form of expression of the forces in the mind, and indeed the only one, as though all later development had been annulled or undone.1 A careful reading of these assertions shows that the imperishable nature of psychic life does not apply to all mental developments—every life experience or every event—but only to the fundamental psychic form, the initial form that subsists throughout these developments even as it undergoes transformation. Plasticity must then be understood as a form’s ability to be deformed without dissolving and thereby to persist throughout its various mutations, to resist modification, and to be always liable to emerge anew in its initial state. It is precisely the series of transformations that can always “be annulled” so that this “unique form” can reappear. Precisely and paradoxically , plasticity characterizes both the lability and the permanence of this form. This extraordinary plasticity of mental developments [diese ausserordentliche Plaztizität der seelischen Entwicklungen] is not unrestricted as regards direction; it may be described as a special capacity for involution—for regression—since it may well happen that a later and higher stage of development, once abandoned, cannot be reached again. But the primitive stages can always be re-established; the primitive mind is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable.2 As we can see, this persistent form is the primitive. The notion of primitivity thus gives content to the concept of the initial form of psychic life. The primitive, and not what descends from it, is imperishable. The primitive, for Freud, has two meanings, each rigorously articulated in relation to the other. On one hand, the primitive is the “savage,” also called “prehistoric man,” who subsists within each of us. On the other hand, as in the preceding passage, the primitive designates the “primitive psyche”—that is, both the general psychic form in which the savage survives within us and the particular psychic style of this survival: the constitutively unique character of the individual’s childhood. Psychic plasticity Identity Without Precedent 59 designates the combined persistence within us of prehistoric man and the child, the always open possibility of their imminent return. The shadow of this return most often takes the form of a threat because the revival of the primitive is what defines mental illness. Indeed, Freud affirms that psychic disturbances always bear witness to the possibility of such resurgence: What are called mental diseases inevitably produce an impression in the layman that intellectual and mental life have been destroyed. In reality, the destruction only applies to later acquisitions and developments. The essence of mental disease lies in a return to earlier states of affective life and of functioning [das Wesen der Geisteskrankenheit besteht in der Rückkehr zu früheren Zustanden des Affektlebens und der Funktion]. An excellent example of the plasticity of mental life is afforded by the state of sleep, which is our goal every night. Since we have learnt to interpret even absurd and confused dreams, we know that whenever we go to...