METATEXT: EXPLAINING CONSCIOUSNESS
Harvie Ferguson
Routledge eBooks August 4, 2005 DOI: 10.4324/9780203991312-10 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the ego is a precarious, temporary unity generated by experiential forces rather than by rational intention or a self-generating Romantic soul, and that these forces also tend to deform and dissolve it. Contends that Freud's account of fantasy reveals that every search for an 'originating cause' of inner self-development merely projects a fantasy backward onto an inconceivable point of indifference. |
Abstract
The various elements of experience, spread out across the surface of life, generate a field of forces through which the interconnected ego becomes aware of itself, and represents itself, as a distinctive form. At the same time these energetic flows tend to deform and dissolve the ego, breaking into its precarious inner unity and returning its constituent parts to an elemental primary process. The temporary morphological unity of the ego is not itself the outcome of rational or intentional actions, nor is it the product of reflection and intellectual operations, which, in fact, become possible only as aspects of its emergence. Equally, however, the ego cannot be conceived in terms of a self-generating dynamism; as a Romantic soul. Freud’s understanding of the characteristic deformations of the ego, observable in neurotic symptoms and more commonly in dreams, led him towards a general view of psychical functioning in which fantasy played a central role. However, every effort to uncover an ‘originating cause’ from which sprang the entire process of inner self-development succeeded only in revealing a fantasy which had been carried back to this inconceivable point of indifference as a ready-made explanation of its own subsequent metamorphoses.