Séparation entre perception et conscience : proposition d’un modèle psychologique de l’appareil psychique

Abstract

PurposesThis paper aims to progressively build a psychological model of the psychic apparatus. MethodThe starting point for our model is a theoretical option validated earlier: the separation between perception and consciousness. By studying the action of an external stimulus inside the psychic apparatus – the conditions, the results and the trajectory of this action – we consider the appropriateness of defining and locating two distinct systems, an unconscious followed by a preconscious in the psychic space consequently appearing between body and consciousness. Finally, once all relationships between the different parts of the model are established, we provide the latter with defence processes, including a repressive process. ResultsThe psychic apparatus is made of two similar blocs, each with its own memory system: at first, the unconscious records the sensory activity of the body and associates an affective value to it; the preconscious then records the figurative activity of the consciousness and replicates the perceptive and affective content of the unconscious in a new type of material that enables remembrance. The unconscious is the dynamic centre of the psychic apparatus and allows communication between body and consciousness. It can animate its own material (the unconscious representations) through perceptive associations and generate processes that have to be recognised as true unconscious thoughts, full of affects and possibly subject to repression. The preconscious has no momentum or affective dimension of its own; it is only the psychic bridge that enables consciousness to receive the associative work of the unconscious. DiscussionBy considering the psychic apparatus in its adaptive function – a system to encounter the world perceptively and react to this experience affectively – we lean towards cognitive psychology, but without losing sight of Freud's theory. Unconscious, preconscious and repression, as we see them, are not exactly Freudian, but are no stranger to metapsychology. Our model stands between cognitive psychology and metapsychology, it does not validate the primacy of consciousness over the unconscious, or that of the unconscious over consciousness. Instead, it considers the entanglement between them: consciousness is in the end an extension of the unconscious and does not function without it. ConclusionEach theoretical proposal along our work attempts to account for many clinical and experimental facts. We hope to bring a different light and new answers to phenomena such as infantile amnesia, dreams, remembrance, and “double consciousness” well known by Binet and his contemporaries.