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Psychology 251
It soon becomes evident, however, that the stages presenting real novelties
are those involving the ego, while cathexis is conceived simply as shifting from
object to object. In other words, a new feeling is not new because of any reelaboration
of values, and so on. It is new only by virtue of its new object, and
there is simply a ‘blossoming forth of all the elements of which the seed existed
in previous stages’ (Gouin).
3) Real constructivism appears, on the other hand, with a third trend, which
is that of ‘culturalist psychoanalysis’, but it is psycho-social constructions that
are involved and not mental development conceived in a general way, i.e., as
common to all individuals in all societies. The great novelty is that the ‘libido’,
as a general instinct in the sense just defined, is no longer the sole principle of
any explanation, not just of the ego and of the cognitive functions because they
have become autonomous since Hartmann, but even of affectivity in its various
stages. Psychoanalysts, such as E. From, K. Horney, Kardiner and Glover
and anthropologists, such as R. Benedict and M. Mead, have shown in this
connexion that Freudian complexes, especially the Oedipus complex, and consequently
the stages in the manifestation of the libido, are not to be found in
every form of society and that, consequently, it is as much a matter of cultural
as of psychological products. This discovery represents a major contribution to
the study of psycho-social interactions, mentioned in the previous section.
4) Although the culturalist approach brings in sociological anthropology
to account for facts hitherto considered to be governed solely by the sexual
instinct, Bowlby on the other hand is inclined towards ethology and its theories
of innate releasing mechanisms (IRM). This is a reasonable comparison if we
think of face indices, and the like. But above all a very useful stimulus is given
to experimental verification, and it wil be recalled that C. G. Jung built up a
whole theory of ‘archetypes’considered as hereditary, whereas the problem that
had first to be solved, assuming this hypothesis, was to distinguish between the
‘general’ (in the sense of the same constant formation ensuring convergence)
and the hereditary.
5) Erikson’s position is a special one, lying between the two mentioned
above, but he introduced into Freudian psychoanalysis an important notion
which was developed moreover in Adler’s work (to whom we owe the famous
notions of ‘inferiority complexes’) and of overcompensation guiding some
careers). This is the hypothesis that we continually assimilate the past to the
present with a view to adaptations in the present, just as much as our present
existence depends on the past in the continuity of behaviour and representations.
In this connexion, Erikson has carried out interesting observations on children’s
games, where we see symbolism reshaping the past as much as extending it.
This tine we are therefore moving towards a real kind of psychological constructivism,
with gradual and retroactive integrations as in mental development.
6) Lastly, we would mention the work done by the Stockbridge school under
the inspiration of the late D. Rapaport and the aim of which was clearly to
bring together affective development and cognitive development. D. Rapaport
published a study on these lines in 1960, entitled Attention Cathexis. Drawing on
his knowledge of physics and mathematics, he criticizes the Freudian energet-