View/Open - Scholarly Commons Home

Chapter Two Part Two – Methodology - Page 70
poetry and creativity. They point out that they open the door to a role of the unconscious
in creativity that is not dependent on the construction of parallels with pathological
processes, and free the unconscious from having to be involved with transferred
traumatic dynamics.
Matte-Blanco notes how Freud’s arguments typically have great respect for bivalent
(that is rational, asymmetrical, true/false) logic. This is true both in their form, (having,
as Strachey notes in his editorial introduction, a head a body and a tail); but also in their
content, involving, for example, frequent oppositions between two incompatibles (such
as satisfaction and blocking of wishes, forgetting and remembering a trauma).
However, in his descriptions of the characteristics of the unconscious, Freud noted
phenomena which do not conform to the rules of bi-valent logic. Matte-Blanco’s
contribution is to take and explore what Freud noticed, and hence to realise more of its
potential.
Matte-Blanco points out that the bi-valent logic of conscious thought depends
principally on asymmetry. Hence, in this mode, if A is on the left of B, B is on the right
of A. Most relationships in this mode are asymmetrical, for example parent and child,
brother and sister, patient and therapist. There are exceptions (eg brother and brother),
but they are just that. In the logic which underpins the working of unconscious
processes, such as in dreams, and in the manifestations of parapraxis (such as slips of
the tongue or pen, or forgetting) that Freud noticed, there is a dominance of what Matte-
Blanco calls the principle of symmetry, and relationships are largely symmetrical. In
this logic, as in a dream, A can be on the left of B and B can also be on the left of A. To
quote Dalal: