Article
Negation
Die Verneinung
Negation (1925) is a short paper of four pages in Imago. It starts from a clinical observation and ends with a theory of the origin of judgement. When a patient says that a figure in his dream is not his mother, the analyst may set the negation aside and keep the content: the idea has occurred to the patient, but he disowns it. In the same way, what a patient calls the least likely possibility is nearly always the truth. Freud concludes that a repressed idea can reach consciousness on condition that it is negated. Negation is a way of taking cognisance of the repressed. It is already a kind of lifting of the repression, but not an acceptance of what is repressed. Here the intellectual function separates from the affective process, and an intellectual acceptance can be reached while the essence of the repression persists. To deny something in a judgement is the intellectual substitute for repression, and its 'no' is a mark of where it comes from. The function of judgement makes two decisions. The judgement of attribution goes back to the oral language of the earliest drives, to take something in or spit it out; for the original pleasure-ego, the bad, the alien and the external are at first identical. The judgement of existence belongs to the later reality-ego. Reality-testing seeks to find again in perception an object that was once present and satisfying, which presupposes that such objects have been lost. Thinking is a trial action carried out with small expenditures of energy. Affirmation, as a substitute for uniting, belongs to Eros; negation, the successor of expulsion, belongs to the destructive drive. The symbol of negation gives thinking a first independence from the consequences of repression and from the compulsion of the pleasure principle. This fits the finding that analysis never discovers a 'no' in the unconscious, and that the strongest confirmation of an uncovered unconscious content is the patient's reply that he had not, or never, thought of it.
Main ideas
- When a patient negates an association ('it is not my mother'), the analyst may set the negation aside and keep the content. Similarly, what the patient names as the least likely possibility is nearly always the truth.
- A repressed idea can reach consciousness on condition that it is negated. Negation lifts one consequence of repression, that the idea does not become conscious, but it is not an acceptance of the repressed. The intellectual function separates from the affective process, and repression persists alongside an intellectual acceptance.
- A negative judgement is the intellectual substitute for repression, and its 'no' is a mark of that origin. The symbol of negation frees thinking from the restrictions of repression and gives it access to material it needs.
- The judgement of attribution goes back to the oral impulse to swallow something or spit it out, to take it in or keep it out. For the original pleasure-ego, what is bad, what is alien and what is external are at first the same.
- The judgement of existence belongs to the later reality-ego. Reality-testing seeks to refind in perception an object corresponding to a presentation, since the opposition between subjective and objective does not exist from the start. Its precondition is that objects which once brought real satisfaction have been lost.
- Judgement ends the postponement of thinking and leads from thought to action. Thinking is a trial action with small expenditures of energy, learned at the sensory end of the apparatus, where the ego periodically sends small cathexes into the perceptual system.
- Affirmation, as a substitute for uniting, belongs to Eros, and negation, the successor of expulsion, belongs to the destructive drive. The compulsive negativism of some psychotics is probably a sign of drive defusion through the withdrawal of libidinal components.
- Analysis never finds a 'no' in the unconscious. The ego recognises the unconscious in a negative formula, and the strongest confirmation that something unconscious has been uncovered is the patient's reply that he did not, or never, think of it.
What it shows
- 1925
Sigmund Freud introduced Negation
In Die Verneinung Freud shows that a repressed content can enter consciousness on condition that it is negated ('it is not my mother'): negation is a way of taking cognisance of the repressed, a lifting of repression though not an acceptance of it. He goes on to derive the function of judgement from the drives.