COMMENTS ON THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF CLINICAL FACTS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

Perception is an active process involving a complex system of perceptu al and cognitive structures. Facts reflect the ways in which we organi se the data received by our senses, and this organisation is highly se lective. The private theories of psychoanalysts play a major role in t he organisation of facts and in their conceptualisation. It is importa nt that there should be more attention to clinical theories and techni cal frames of reference, and as an illustration of this a clinico-tech nical conceptualisation which has been found useful is presented in so me derail. This makes use of the concepts of the present and past unco nsciouses, in this way emphasising the topographical dimension which h ad come to be under-stressed in Freud's structural theory and in subse quent ego psychology. The past unconscious can be regarded as a sort o f 'template' (structures, rubs, schemata, etc.) developed in the child in the first few years of life. This contributes to the form of fanta sies and behaviour arising in the depths of the present unconscious, i n which system such representational content is acted on by defences a nd other mechanisms to prevent 'child-like' content from disrupting th e older individual's equilibrium. The censorship between the present u nconscious and consciousness is considered, and the view taken that th e primary focus of the analytic work is in relation to this censorship . The links between the analytical aim of making previously unacceptab le mental content acceptable to the individual, on the one hand, and t he roles of construction and reconstruction, on the other, are discuss ed in relation to psychoanalytic technique.