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Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for


Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences
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Commentary by Ronald Britton


Ronald Britton
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Ronald Britton (2002) Commentary by Ronald Britton, Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary
Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 4:1, 26-27, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2002.10773374
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26

Ronald Britton

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Commentary by Ronald Britton


I would rst like to say that I think David
Milrod's paper is an excellent piece for your
journal. It is an exceptionally clear account of the
psychoanalytic metapsychology and developmental
schema espoused by the author and of how he
locates the concept of self and self-representation
within it. I wholeheartedly agree with him that
``the self'' as an entity is central to both psychoanalysis and to any neuroscientic attempt to
explain mental life. His point that the development of object representation is parallel to selfrepresentation and that understanding identication is essential to any approach to explaining
mental development is very well taken. I agree
with him that we should continue to use both the
term ``self'' and ego'' as they have acquired
dierent senses if only through usage. The self
is, in the ontological sense of the word, subjective
and as such includes qualities of identity, experience, and location. In Bion's terminology this is
``O'' (being), as distinct from K (knowing), as the
self is also known by itself. Self-consciousness (K)
is often the starting point of philosophical and
neuroscientic speculations on mind. The ego, in
contrast to the self, has become a useful psychoanalytic concept as an objective description of
some sort of psychic organizer whose characteristics can be studied. We can ascribe functions to
it: I for example hold that belief is an ego function
in the sense that Freud spoke of judgement. It is
the ego then that has the power and authority of
deciding on truth and reality. The fact that some
individuals, and perhaps all individuals sometimes, allow this function to be taken over by the
``super-ego'' is a way of saying that the ``reality
principle'' has been subverted by the ``morality
principle'' which is an elevated version of the
``pleasure principle''. Our inside knowledge of
pathological deviations in mental life is probably
our biggest contribution to the science of mind in
a not dissimilar way to the enormous contribution
neurology has made to understanding the normal
central nervous system.
The self therefore (unlike the ego which is a
valuable psychoanalytic concept) is a living entity
that cannot ever be superseded by a neuronic
model, only explained by it. There are many other
phenomena discovered by psychoanalysis that are
facts of life that will need to be taken account of
in any comprehensive explanation of mental life. I
agree with David Milrod that we are ``not yet
ready for an integration of neuroscientic and
psychoanalytic points of view on the self'', or

indeed on many other things. But I also think that


we should be getting ready by re-examining the
status of our discoveries and theories. One such
task is dierentiating those things we know to exist
from our psychoanalytic experience from those we
bring into existence by our theorizing. Another,
not dissimilar task, is to distinguish between
disagreements that arise through the use of the
same terms for dierent processes from substantial disagreements about the nature of mental
phenomena and our theories about there origins.
None of this is anything like as easy as it sounds.
I could not engage in discussing all my
dierences with David Milrod in an attempt
delineate which of these categories applies in this
commentary as it would cover just about the
whole of psychoanalytic theory. If I may I would
like to do so in relation to just one set of concepts
central to his thesis, object, object-representation
and object-relations. He distinguishes between the
term ``object'' as that which ``refers to a tangible
external person'' from ``the psychic representation
of the object . . . which an individual carries in his
mind''. This in Kleinian and post-Kleinian
language is the distinction between an ``external
object'' and an ``internal object''. In both schools
there would be agreement that the perception of
an external object is likely to be confused with or
coloured by the existence of an internal object. So
far so good, maybe, but what is meant by an
``object'' by these dierent schools of thought.
Melanie Klein's concept of a mental object
owes a good deal to the philosopher Brentano's
thinking. He introduced ``phenomenalism'' which
dened mental events as the direction of the mind
to an object in 1) perception 2) judgement or
belief and 3) approval or disapproval. This is of
course the same Brentano who was Freud's
philosophy teacher in Vienna and it is not dicult
to see the inuence those categories had on
Freud's thinking. However it is what Brentano
said on the status of mental objects that is relevant
to my point. ``The intentional in-existence is
characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena.
No physical phenomena exhibits anything like it.
We can, therefore, dene mental phenomena by
saying that they are those phenomena which
contain an object intentionally within themselves
. . . we say: that pleases me, that hurts me, that
makes me feel sorry, etc. Joy and sorrow, like
armation and negation, love and hate, desire
and aversion, clearly follow upon a presentation
and are related to that which is presented.'' (Ayer

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Commentary on The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation


and O'Grady, p. 68). He went further to clarify
his use of the term immanent object as distinct
from object of thought. Both are mental but
whereas what he meant by object of thought was
what it is that the thought is about, what he
meant by immanent object was more basic:
``What we think about is the object or thing,
and not the ``object of thought''. If, in our
thought, we contemplate a horse, our thought has
as its immanent objectnot a contemplated horse
but a horse, and strictly speaking only the horse
not the ``contemplated horsecan be called an
object'' (ibid., p. 69).
It is in that sense that I would use the term
object, which is not the same as the term ``object
representation'', the latter I regard as more
developed. What Brentano called the primary
objects are not the objects of introspection they
are the content of mental experience including
thought itself. As I read Damasio the ``proto-self''
is a thoughtless state of being that should become
the core self when further development brings
awareness and experience into play. It is presumably at this latter stage that mental life begins
and it is at that stage that internal objects, which

27

we might regard as quanta of experience, also


begin. I suspect that David Milrod would not
regard these as ``object relations'' reserving that
term for much more mature phenomena. Is this
dierence just semantic or does it imply some
dierence in how we view the end productthe
mature man. Is ``New York man'' a less primitive
creature than ``London man''? Does the dierent
emphasis that is reected in the use of terms
betoken a dierence of opinion about the
relevance of infantile mentation in the mature
adult.
I would like to reiterate that I think David
Milrod's paper is extremely clear and stimulates
the discussion we should be having not only with
the Neuroscientists but amongst ourselves.
References
Ayer, A. J., & O'Grady, J. (1992), A Dictionary of
Philosophical Quotations. London: Blackwell.

Ronald Britton
30 December 2001

Commentary by Jorge Canestri (Rome)

In his introduction to the section ``A Psychoanalytic Concept of the Self'' of his paper, David
Milrod underlines how in psychoanalytic literature there is a great deal of confusion around the
meaning of terms such as ``the ego'', ``the self''
and ``the self representation''. Does the term
``self'' refer toI quotethe individual or
person, his ego as a psychic structure, to both of
these equally, or to something else? I agree with
the author on the fact that there is confusion, and
I think that his theory, based on a careful
examination of the concept within the framework
of ego psychology, is a step forward in the right
direction, i.e., of clarication within a psychoanalytic model. It represents the rst stage of the
theoretical analysis of a discipline. ``This stage
(internal or intragural analysis) requires the
model or theory to be coherent, with a solid
conceptual system; it should not be contradictory
but, rather, should be able to take into account a
certain number of factors. Every intragural
analysis can improve the internal consistency of
a theory . . . The second stage calls for a
confrontation between two or more theories by

means of an intergural analysis'' (Canestri,


1999). This second step is missing from the text
and the author declares so explicitly when he
speaks of Kohut's ideas. Moreover, Milrod's
paper proposes the creation of an intersection
between the concept of self in psychoanalysis and
the concept of self in the neurosciences, specically through a review of the ideas of Jaak
Pankseep and Antonio Damasio. In Milrod's
work, this intersection seems to me to be the least
successful part and I will subsequently try to
explain why.
But rst of all I would like to clarify that
among the theoretical queries that today's psychoanalysis should explore, probably the main
one is that of building a psychoanalytic theory of
the ``subject'' that takes into due consideration
the precariousness of the conceptualizations that,
through the use of the concept of ``self'', have
attempted to solve the impasse deriving from the
diculties of using only the ego concept. I have
put the word ``subject'' between inverted commas
because this word used in this sense is not usual in
English, and also because I distinguish it from

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