Origins Of The Psychic Termporality In Freud's

The Freudian research about childhood sexuality caused a change in the temporal conception of childhood experiences in their relationships with adult life. These experiences give rise to a mnemic material that only later in a retrospective way it will create a place and function defined within the individual: the unconscious. Thus, the postulate of psychic causality governing mental processes means, among other things, questioning the classical model of time. However, one can see that from his early research, Freud is confronted with issues in which articulated sexuality and time.

The objective of the study is to analyze the academic links between the student and Sigmund Freud and also the figure of his master Carl Claus, this way being able to determine the value of the first anatomic-histologic investigations in the latest and the original Freudian conceptualization of psychic temporality.

Freud’s interest in biology is present since his youth, where he learns the theory of evolution through the spread of Darwin’s work through the German world. This labor was assumed by the biologist and philosopher Ernst Heackel. Interest which will extend throughout his years in college where he will receive the influence of another defender of Darwinism: Carl Claus.

In which way does Claus influence Freud’s work, in respect to our investigation about the influence of the first scientific influences in his previous conception of psychic temporality? Claus’ work was characterized by a rigorous discipline and a tedious and slow daily practice of the investigation. His Darwinian concept meant to recognize that the evolution of species occurred by slow and gradual variations, going from the simple to the complex. The prudent characteristic and his research methodology led Claus to face Haeckel who becomes a great divulger, excessively even, of Darwin’s theories; there was a moment in which most of German thinkers preferred to keep distance from the new theories. In several aspects, Haeckel takes his researches beyond the postulates of the theory, he even accused Claus of being an anti-Darwinist because of his excessive prudence at the moment of reaching new conclusions.

The characteristics of Claus’ work which left no space for speculation and innovation, produced without a doubt, Freud’s restless spirit, a disappointment in regards to his master and his first histologic works. This disappointment is expressed in Freud’s almost non-existent mentioning of his master in his own first works. In the contrary, Claus showed himself pleased with the work of the young researcher.

In regards to the latter, it is in 1876 when Freud redacts his first scientific work: “Observations of the morphology and fine structure of the lobulated organs of the eel, described as testicles”, dedicated to study the tissue composition of these organs in such animals. The research was led by Claus, despite the efforts of the period, sexual organs of the male had not been able to be observed with certainty. In 1874, Syrski discovered a little lobulated organ which in his opinion, it was supposed to be the representation of testicles of the male eel (despite the fact of not having sperm in it). While Claus had the thesis of androgyny, Syrski proposed the existence of different reproductive organs in male and female eels.

Freud dissects more than 400 specimen of the animal, finding in some them the so called organ, reaching a conclusion that the histologic structure of the studied piece allowed to suppose, but not prove, the existence of a testicular organ which would have not reached maturity. In Freud’s work is notable in at least two aspects: a) it allows appreciating the tenacity and self-discipline with which since then will have, and b) Freud is the first one to conceive the idea of intersexuality, considering the possibility that sexual differentiation of the eel was not determined genetically.

Then, what is the factor that determines sexual maturity of the malee el? Considering Sysrski’s theory as correct, Freud is who, describing the organ in question as a testicle which had not achieved maturity (conclusion that does not leaves him satisfied) leaves the door open to the influence of a not constitutional factor in the definitive formation of the eel’s sex.

Later investigations confirmed Syrski’s observations allowing to explain why either Syrski nor Freud could prove in their time that the organ was indeed the testicles of the animal. The eel is an undifferentiated gonad characterized by a young intersexual state with a bi-potential gonad, which it develops at first with the aspect of a female gonad. The organ of Syrski only allows a male sexual differentiation under specific environmental conditions, such as high density such as oceanic depths. Hence the relative accessibility to observe the eel’s ovaries, which were discovered a 100 years ago.

Despite of Freud’s dissapointment, his not conclusive results could not be explained by a lack of rigor but by the biological paradigm that was adopted in that period, that it only considered the hereditary factor as explanatory in the difinitive sexual determination of living beings.

In this sense, it is relevant the etiological displacement hinted by Freud, revealing as an antecedent to his previous theories. Once Freud consolidates his research on mental disorders, and under the influence of Charcot (still not agreeing completely with him) shows one more time the non-constitutional etiologic factor, under the name of psychic trauma.

Claus and Haeckel contributions of comprehension and promotion of the theory of evolution allowed Freud to extend his perspective towards a unitary and complexing conception of organic matter. At the same time, and in relation to inorganic matter, Hutton and Lyell works had contributed an interesting reflection about the deep time or geological. That way, from the temporality perspective, the evolution (not only in the species), implies for the science of the period:

a) The overcoming of a final cause, starting from the conceptualization of an efficient cause, with which, in present time takes a significance that physical determinism of Newton did not have, nor the jewish-christian teology had.

b) The chaining of diverse expressions (simple and complex) of the organic matter, realizing a temporal evolutive continuity of the living (allowing the conceptualization of a biologic memory of phylogenetic order), but at the same time, a temporal continuity even more original that of the inorganic matter to the organic matter and its return to the inorganic. Thus, the history of a man, a society, and of mankind are just a slab on a much broader and complex chain of temporal events, but it is because of that, the past and its vestiges acquire a new value for the explanation of the present.

Just like in the period of Newtonian physics, the evolutive period of Darwin overcomes all human measures, but in difference to that, this allows to think, back tracking his prints, a temporal continuity combined of the living that had not been proposed by Aristotle nor Cuvier, nor Lamarck.

Through the examination of the temporal rhythms of this continuity, the theory of evolution opens the possibility of launching reconstruction and thus an explanation of the various developments of the living. The work of Hughlings-Jackson in the area of the brain and its notions of fixation, regression and hierarchical organization consolidate this temporal perspective in the explanation of human behavior in Freud. A task that only later, once discovered the place of the word it takes real analytic value. The representations and affections operating under a temporary logical association that resist physiological time, imposing another: psychic temporality of Nachtraglickeit.

Through psychic reconstruction cornerstone of the analytical work, Freud in his attempt to show that the mental processes of the subject far exceed not only their own individual conscious experience, but the limits of internal and external, of the constitutional and accidental, in an unconscious psychic intricate core rooted in a material that is both individual and species once organic and inorganic, articulating a set of temporal phenomena that only make sense in light of this subject.

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