View/Open - Scholarly Commons Home

Chapter Two Part Two – Methodology - Page 69
bi-valent (either/or, asymmetrical) logic. However, Freud also added descriptions of
unconscious processes which contribute very new and different understandings,
although Matte-Blanco argues strongly that the full potential of these has tended to be
ignored by many psychoanalytic writers since Freud.
The five features of the operation of the unconscious which Freud identified in his paper
‘The Unconscious’ (1915) include:
(1) The absence of mutual contradiction and negation
(2) Displacement 6
(3) Condensation 7
(4) Timelessness
(5) The replacement of external by internal reality
To these, Matte-Blanco added the following eight, which are largely varieties of blends
of the previous five, to make thirteen altogether:
(6) The co-presence of contradictories
(7) The alternation between the absence and presence of temporal succession
(8) Logical connection reproduced as simultaneity in time
(9) Causality as succession
(10) Equivalence-identity and conjunction of alternatives
(11) Similarity
(12) The co-presence in dreams of thinking and not-thinking
(13) The profound disorganisation of the structure of thinking
What Matte-Blanco has done is to extend Freud’s awareness and understanding of the
principles of the workings of the mind, and then to bring this enhanced awareness and
understanding back into contact with both everyday experience, as well as with the
experience of patient and therapist in the clinical setting. The application of these ideas
outside the consulting room is particularly important for this project. Canham and
Satyamurti (2003) demonstrate the value of Matte-Blanco’s ideas in the consideration of
6 Displacement is an unconscious mechanism whereby the mind redirects affects from an object felt to be
dangerous or unacceptable to an object felt to be safe or acceptable.
7 Condensation is an unconscious mechanism where one object can stand for several associations and
ideas. Hence, “dreams are brief, meagre and laconic in comparison with the range and wealth of the
dream-thoughts” (Freud, 1915)