Flux — Genesis

“The new-born child does not at first separate his ego from an outside world that is the source of the feelings flowing towards him.” (Civilization and Its Discontents, 2002, p.6)

Imagine an undifferentiated flux. All things given together and at once in fragmentary form. This is It. Cells dividing, photons colliding, nerves firing, airborne particles permeating, a digestive system absorbing and expelling, here a pain, there a warmth, there a mass of undulating pressure born on air particles causing an ear drum to undulate in time. Thwoomp-tick-Szsz. In this flux there are perceptions, but they are not perceptions of something by someone. There are memories, but they are nobody’s memories, and are not differentiated from perceptions. There are needs, but they are nobody’s needs, and they are not differentiated from perceptions and memories. There are movements, but they are nobody’s movements, and they are not differentiated from perceptions and memories and needs, and so on and so forth.

We know the infant, and its tiny body, its needs, its cries. But does it know any of these things? Most probably not; it is a purely reflexive system in the beginning. This goes to this, goes to this, goes to this. A pain becomes a scream, a shaking object becomes a sound, a warmth becomes a dulling of colors that is sleep, a dog becomes a movement, disappears, becomes a fear, reappears, becomes a plant, becomes an itch, becomes a bark, becomes a memory of a light, becomes a face. In this endless concatenation of beings there is no initial order, no necessary coordination between the registers of sense, and no necessary coordination between these registers of sense and the whole gamut of “goings-on” within the organism, heartbeats and odors alike. There is, therefore, in all this reflexivity, no distinction between subject and object. The apparatus/system of the organism is fully and indistinguishably integrated into the field of its immediate environment. That it perceives is just another capability or fact of the system, and is equivalent to saying that ice perceives heat insofar as it “reacts” (exhibits state changes) to it, which is to not say much at all.

The Complex

But, here, the concept of an object begins to form through the contractions of repetitions. The perception of the shaking object and the perception of the rattling sound share a synchrony. They always happen together. The hunger, the scream and the presence of the mother link up in the same way. That is to say the flux begins to arrange itself. One simple arrangement would be the connection of a sound perception with a visual perception — two areas of the brain synchronizing: an “object” thus is born.

The key philosophical point to keep in mind is that the idea of an object is always something above and beyond what is given in perception alone, and is what coordinates disparate perceptions together in the first place. An object is always an inference. Whether the capacity for making this inference is hard wired from the outset or developed gradually from habit through repetition is a question for neurologists, or for a dialogue between Kant and Hume.

The infant’s hunger pains, vibrating vocal cords, the sound of the scream, and the presence of the mother, can become entangled into a single object/complex just as easily as the rattle’s color and sound: what need is there, in the beginning, to recognize that the scream and the food of the mother belong to two separate bodies? They are always given together initially. It hungers, it screams, it comes, it feeds, it goes, it sleeps.

Keep in mind we are not yet at an “ego”, a subject, there is merely a flux, that appears to hang together in certain ways (sounds and sights and actions and sensations linking, for example) forming into complexes. The mind at this phase is merely a reflexive apparatus, that knows nothing of the self as self, and therefore nothing of the world as world, it just is the world (It). Accordingly, the infant at this stage is purely omnipotent and narcissistic (in the technical sense). All before it is it; there are no “others”.

We will emphasize here that what gets included within a particular complex is always up for revision. The food of Pavlov’s dogs had added to it the resonate sound of a bell, just as delicious to them eventually as the aroma.

Traditionally, concerning Pavlov, we would say that one object has been associated with the other, however the genius of the Freud lies in precisely his dealing with complexes as primary. No object given in perception is free of this “association”, conceptual implication or some affective dimension. The most persistent of these associations would be the coordination of the different registers of sense, fundamental to our sense of reality (imagine a sound and perception “falling out of sync” and the sense of dizzyness that would accompany this) The “object” is first and foremost a multi-modal complex. The move is the phenomenologist’s one: putting aside the question of the metaphysical import of the object and beginning with how the object appears, what would be called its “representation”. On this level the object appears as a diverse complex of different things: a shoe can be an object of erotic interest, and a horse falling down the site of an interminable dread. From this vantage, as we work back to the object, we are given a new view: the object as stable, objective, sensory representation emerges from the complex. The “objective” view of the object, its “primary qualities”, is a special rather than originary case. The genius of this move is that it does not presuppose the “objectivity” of objects in the genesis of the object. In this way the move is strictly correlative to Heidegger’s placing as fundamental the “readiness-to-hand”.

“The opposition between subjective and objective does not exist from the start.” (The Unconscious, 2005, p.91)

It’s important at this stage to return to our problematic: how does an I emerge from an It? It seems that we are saying now the opposite, that the It (stable objects) emerge from the I (psychic flux) via the medium of complexes formed through repetition. We should tread carefully here. There is no “I” yet, we are still in the domain of the It (mindless, perspectiveless processes). It is a property of this It that a part of it remembers (thus allowing repetitions as repetitions), it is also a property of this It that certain fragments hang together in what we have termed complexes formed by this very repetition. This field is homogeneous, and has not yet divided itself into subjective and objective dimensions. Accordingly, it does not really behoove us to think of the flux as purely objective, or subjective. The memory and the repetition are of the order of water dripping onto a stone, creating an indentation. Though the path of actual water is determined by past water (as the indentation gets bigger it captures more water, thus gets bigger again) we don’t need to posit anything like subjective memory in the stone or water, even though the system composed of the stone and the path of the water is developing a tendency owing to past stages of their interrelation. Memory in the It as flux is just this developing tendency, an indentation that as it deepens from being repetitively traversed, is only traversed more and more, and it’s these “well-worn” traversals that form complexes.

Projection

So, how do we get from this flux+complex state, to a clear subjective/objective divide, which is to say, how do objects and subjects as we know them arise? We will jump now, to the end of the process and work back to the middle, taking as our starting point a discussion of how the complex is not merely a preparatory phase for the rise of the object and subject, but persists in its role of being the ground of the objects before us.

The name of the process whereby the separation into objective and subjective dimensions within this flux begins is termed by Freud projection.

Pancreas Supervisor — “I’m a Collage” (2012)

Our standard view of objects is brought about through a process whereby we take some perceptions and project them “outwards”. The perceptions themselves don’t move, obviously, it is just that we take them as being self-evidently “out there”, external to us. So, this process of “projection” can also be thought of as a labeling or attribution of certain mental events to a hypothetical external world beyond them.

Close your eyes, the world disappears, open them again, it returns. This is a simple demonstration of the simple fact that the entire world as we experience it, in all of its colors and forms, is “in our heads”. Those forms and colors are easily removable with a gesture of the eyelids. Therefore, in our normal everyday dealing with the world, we are taking these perceptions in our heads and “projecting” them, which is to say, we take them as a part of the public, external world. The act of projection marks visual perceptions, as well as tactile, aural and olfactory, etc, perceptions as being “those things in our heads that should be taken as not being in our heads”, as those things in our heads that immediately pertain to the outside world.

Accordingly, it is not merely the perceptions that “pertain to the outside world” that are thereby projected, as this is circular (projection creates the category of perceptions that “pertain to the outside world”), but rather other things can be “projected” as well:

“Internal perceptions of emotional and intellectual processes can be projected outwards in the same way as sense perceptions; they are thus employed for building up the external world” (Totem and Taboo, 1950, p.81)

There is no absurdity here. A memory rests in the branches of a tree just as well as the perceived greenness of a leaf. A sense of self-reproach can lie coiled within the garish color of a frivolous purchase. They are all mental events, and their division is the product of a pseudo-theoretical and pragmatic distinction that is, in a way, always up for revision.

The distinction is purely pragmatic in the sense that the only reason it is made is that we have discovered, at some stage or another, that we needn’t climb the tree to pursue the memory further, needn’t eat the leaves, and defacing the frivolous purchase with a black marker won’t silence the sense of self-reproach. However, we can “transubstantiate” or “exorcise” the sense of self-reproach by finding a “redeemable” use for the frivolously purchased object: a gift, a door stop. This act of placing the object somewhere (in the hands of another, by the door, etc), being able to banish the ill feeling it gives us, Freud thinks is the origins of belief in sorcery (see Totem & Taboo). In this way, when we manipulate objects to make ourselves feel better (cleaning a room, for example) we are all taking part in a long tradition of sorcery…