SIlo, Psychology II

Psychology II

This is a summary prepared by attendees at the talks Silo gave in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, in mid-August 1976. Some of the passages preserve the colloquial style of the talks, marking an important difference between this material and Psychology I. On the other hand, this work returns to the themes of Psychology I, reexamining them this time in the light of the theories of the impulse and the space of representation.

1. The Three Pathways of Human Experience: Sensation, Image and Remembrance
Personal experience arises through sensation, imagination and remembrance. Of course, we can also recognize illusory sensations, illusory images and illusory memories. Even the “I” is articulated thanks to sensation, image and remembrance, and when the “I” perceives itself, it also works with these pathways, be they true or illusory. The same pathways are recognized in all the possible operations of the mind. In any of these pathways the existence of error is possible, the existence of illusions, but it is more difficult to admit the illusion of the “I,” though such a thing is also verifiable and demonstrable.
The three pathways of suffering and that which registers suffering are themes of special interest for us. We shall therefore examine sensation, image and remembrance, as well as that which registers and operates with this material, which is called “consciousness: and suffering” (or “coordinator”), and that at times is identified with the “I”. We will study the three pathways through which suffering arrives, and we will also study the consciousness that registers suffering.
Through sensation, imagination and remembrance, pain is experienced. There is “something” that experiences this pain. This “something” that experiences it is identified as an entity that, apparently, has unity. This unity that registers pain is basically given by a kind of memory. The experience of pain is compared to preceding experiences. Without memory there is no comparison; there is no comparison of experiences.
Painful sensations are compared to previous painful sensations. But there is something more: the painful sensations are also projected; they are considered in a time that is not the present; in a future time. If the painful sensations are remembered, or if the painful sensations are imagined, a sensation is also had of this remembering and this imagining. The memory could not provoke pain; the imagination could not provoke pain, if there were no sensation of the memory and of the imagination as well. One has a register, not just through the pathway of direct primary sensation, but also through the pathway of memory one has a register, one has a sensation. And through the pathway of the imagination one has a sensation. Sensation therefore invades the field of memory, invades the field of imagination. Sensation covers all the possibilities of this structure that experiences pain. Everything is working with sensation, and with something that experiences, with something that registers this sensation. Whether it is called, more specifically, ‘sensation’ as such; whether it is called ‘memory,’ or ‘imagination,’ sensation is always at its base—the detection of a stimulus is at its base, and something that registers that stimulus is in the other point, at the other extreme of that relationship.
Between a stimulus and something that registers that stimulus, we will have that initial structure configured. And it seems that that structure will move, trying to avoid the painful stimuli. Stimuli that arrive and are detected; stimuli that are stored; new situations that arise, and the structure’s action to avoid the new stimuli that are related to previous data. Stimulus that arrives at a point that receives the stimulus, and, from that point, response to the stimulus. If the stimulus that reaches that point is painful, the response tends to modify the stimulus. If the stimulus that reaches that point is not painful but is experienced as pleasurable, the response tends to make that stimulus remain. It’s as though pain wanted the instant, and pleasure, eternity. It’s as if—with this issue of pain and pleasure—there were a problem of times for that point that registers it. Whether we are dealing with painful or pleasurable stimuli, these stimuli are stored, they are kept in that time-regulating apparatus that we call ‘memory.’ We call these stimuli that arrive ‘sensations,’ but these arriving stimuli do not just come from what we could call ‘external world’ to the center of register, but they also come from the ‘internal world’ itself, to the apparatus of register. We have already seen that what is painful can be imagined, that what is pleasurable can be imagined. And this matter of recording and of imagining is not linked to the external sensation as closely as are the other direct, primary sensations.
The scheme is simple: a stimulus that arrives; a response that is given. But let’s not simplify so much as to consider the stimuli that arrive as pertaining exclusively to the external world of that structure. If there are also stimuli from the internal world of that structure, there must also be responses in the internal world of that structure. Sensation in general has to do with the register, with what arrives to the structure. Imagination, in contrast, has to do with what that structure does to get closer to the stimulus if it is pleasurable, or to get away from the stimulus if it is painful. In the image, there is already an activity proposed in front of the stimuli that arrive to that structure. We will later take a closer look at the function fulfilled by the image.
The memory, to the extent that it delivers pleasurable or painful stimuli, also mobilizes the imagination; and this imagination mobilizes that structure in one direction or in another. We have a stimulus that arrives, a structure that receives the stimulus, and a response that the structure gives. This is a very simple scheme: stimulus—reception apparatus—center of response.
The center of response makes the structure mobilize in front of the stimulus, not in any direction, but in a more or less precise one; and we recognize different activities to respond to the stimuli, different directions, different possibilities of response. We therefore distinguish between different possible centers to give possible responses to different types of stimulation. Naturally, all these centers of response will be moved at their base by pain and by pleasure; but in their activity they will manifest the responses differently, depending on whether one center acts or another. We will call the world of arriving stimuli, the “world of sensation.” We will call that which is expressed toward the world of sensation, “response” (that which responds to the world of sensation will be called “center of response”). Since the responses are numerous and differentiated and each system of response has its own range, we will distinguish between diverse centers of response.
We shall call this entire structure that encompasses the register of the sensation and the response to the sensations that arrive—this entire structure that manifests itself—we shall call it “behavior.” And we will observe that this behavior does not manifest in a constant way, but that it suffers numerous variations according to the state that structure is in, according to the moment that structure is in. There are moments when the structure perceives a painful stimulus with greater sharpness. There are moments when it does not seem to perceive it at all. There are moments when the structure seems to be disconnected from the sensations, when it seems to have no register of the painful sensations. This point of registering the arriving sensations with greater or lesser intensity, and of launching responses of greater or lesser intensity at the arriving stimuli, will depend on the structure’s general state. We will generically call this state the “level of work” of that structure. This level, according to whether the structure is in one moment or another of its process, will enable it to give more accelerated, more intense responses, or less accelerated, muffled responses.
Let’s review our schema. 1
Not much is explained by the statement that the human being does certain things to satisfy its needs. The human being does certain things to avoid pain. What happens is that, if these needs are not satisfied, they provoke pain. But it isn’t that someone is moved by an abstract idea of satisfying his needs. If someone moves, it is due to the register of pain. People often confuse these matters and it seems that the primary needs, when unmet, are the ones that cause the greatest pain. The sensation of hunger, as well as other types of sensations, is so painful, that if it is not satisfied it provokes an ever greater tension. For example, if violence is done to a human being or some part of his body is burned, he experiences pain and, of course, tries to give responses to the pain for it to stop. This is as great a need as feeding oneself, of eating—this of doing something so as to prevent the painful sensation from intensifying. In this case, this human being will try to flee from that which endangers the structure of his body. Sometimes a person has painful registers of hunger but they aren’t hungry. They think of the hunger they might feel, they think of the hunger that someone else could be feeling, and the hunger that the other person could be feeling gives them a painful register. But what painful register do they have—could it be a physical pain? Not exactly. They can remember hunger, they are talking about the pain of hunger, but they don’t register the pain of hunger—they register a different type of pain. And that register that they have of the pain can mobilize them tremendously.
Through the pathway of the image, through the pathway of memory, that person can also experience a significant range of pains as well as of pleasures. They know that by feeding themselves, satisfying their immediate needs, a particular distension of their structure is produced. And they know that it is interesting to repeat that distension each time that the tension increases. They grow fond of certain forms of alimentation; they become habituated to certain tension-relaxing experiences.
The study of the centers makes it possible to differentiate activities that human beings carry out, primarily trying to satisfy their needs. On the other hand, the levels of consciousness explain the variation of those activities, according to whether the entire structure is acting in vigil, in semisleep or in sleep.
And we will observe a behavior in this structure, which is how it will express itself in front of stimuli, according to whether it is operating in a certain level of consciousness.

2. Specialization of Responses in Front of External and Internal Stimuli: The Centers
With the idea of “center,” the work of various physical points that are sometimes very distant from each other is encompassed. In other words, a center of response results from a relationship among different points of the body. If we speak of the center of movement, we note that it isn’t located in a precise physical place, but rather it corresponds to the action of many corporal points. The same thing will happen in the case of operations that are more complex than the body’s simple operations of response. When we speak of the emotions in the human being, it creates the impression that there is a point from which all the emotions are managed, and it isn’t like this. There are numerous points that work coordinatedly, provoking the response that we will call “emotional.”
Thus, the apparatuses that control the output of impulses of response toward the world are what we know as “centers.” The mechanism of stimulus and reflex response becomes increasingly more complex, until the response becomes deferred and coordination circuits intervene which are capable of channeling the responses, precisely, through different centers. Thus, a deferred response has traveled through numerous circuits before it is effected toward the external world.
We differentiate between a stimulus that can arrive from the senses to the consciousness, from an impulse that can arrive from memory. In this second case, numerous operations are carried out, and, in accordance with the level of the signal elaborated in the consciousness, the output is selected through one or another center. For example: we hit a part of the leg, the knee, and the leg moves without the need for the stimulus to go through the complex mechanisms of consciousness that finally elaborate their signal in the form of an image —an image that seeks the corresponding level in the system of representation—and from there acts over the adequate center to launch the response toward the world. It’s true that in the reflex response, almost simultaneously with it, an image is configured; but the stimulus has traveled neatly from the apparatus of reception to the center. Now taking the signal that unfolded as an image, we can follow its transformation until it arrives to the memory as an impulse, to be filed there and then return to the mechanism of coordination, where a new image is elaborated, and, although the stimulus can have already disappeared (when the reflex response was effected), from the memory information can continue to be sent, maintaining an image that, in turn, reinforces the activity of the output center.
The centers work structurally among themselves and with their own registers (together with the general register that the coordinator has), through the information that arrives from the internal senses at the moment they act in the environment, as well as through the connections between the centers and the coordinator. One also is aware of what is happening with the centers’ activity, given that upon carrying out functions of response, the centers also emit internal signals to the apparatus of sensation. Thus, the centers can continue giving signals of the response; they can stop that signal of response; the signal in question that reaches the centers can move aside and seek another channel, etc., thanks to the fact that in the same output there is a rerouting of the signal toward an inner apparatus that registers what is happening with the response. Thus, if I throw my hand in one direction, my hand could just keep swinging through the air; it could not reach the object; it could commit numerous errors if I don’t also have an inner sensation of its movement, at the same time that I have sensations through the other senses that are registering the diverse operations. Now, if I had to very carefully push this book that is in front of me on top of the table, I would have to regulate the my hand’s momentum, because if I miscalculated, the book could fall to the floor. Moreover, the resistance that this book offers me indicates how much pressure I must bring to bear, and this is something I detect thanks to the response. That is to say, the motor action that I develop over the book meets with a certain resistance, of which I have an internal sensation; thanks to that internal sensation, I calibrate the activity. It is thus that one has a sensation of the activity of the centers of response.
The vegetative center is the base of the psychism, where the instincts of individual preservation and the species are activated, and, excited by the corresponding signals of pain and pleasure, they mobilize for the defense and expansion of the total structure. I have no register of these instincts apart from certain signals. Such instincts are strongly manifested at the moment when a part or the totality of the structure is compromised. The vegetative center is also mobilized by images, but images with a cenesthetic register. And these images are promoted by the state of sleep or of fatigue, for example. One has a cenesthetic register of this state, one has a cenesthetic register of what will later be converted into a sensation of hunger; one has a register of the sexual reflex. The cenesthetic register increases in case of sickness, but also in case of absence of external sensations. This center gives responses that are compensatory, equilibrating, to the cenesthetic impulses that arrive from various parts of the structure. Even when the sensorial signal goes to the vegetative center and gives a response, that signal can also act over the memory, and from the memory arrive at the coordination and have awareness of those signals. However, the consciousness of those signals is not what mobilizes the vegetative center’s response.
The sexual center is the main energy collector and distributor that operates through alternating concentration and diffusion, with the aptitude for mobilizing the energy in a localized way or diffuse way. Its work is voluntary and also involuntary. And somewhat the same thing happens with the sexual center as with the vegetative center, of which the sexual center is, in turn, a specialization—the vegetative center’s most immediate specialization. The tension in this center produces strong cenesthetic register, and from it energy is distributed to the rest of the centers. The decrease of the tension in the sexual center is produced through discharges proper to this center, through discharges, by means of the other centers, and by transmission of a signal to the consciousness, which converts the signal into an image. The sexual center can also collect tensions from the body and from the other centers, since it is strongly connected to the vegetative apparatus, which picks up the signals of all the cenesthetic impulses. The vegetative-sexual structure is the base from which all the centers are organized, and, in consequence, the entire system of responses. And this is so because the centers are linked directly to the instincts of preservation of the individual and of the species. This instinctive basis is that which nourishes the functioning of all the other centers of response. Should this base of responses (which supports the other apparatuses of response) break down, disturbances will be registered throughout the entire chain of responses.
The motor center acts as regulator of the external reflexes and of the habits of movement. It allows the body to displace itself in space, working with tension and relaxations.
The emotional center is the regulator and synthesizer of the situational responses, through its work of adhesion or rejection. From the work of the emotional center, the psychism’s particular aptitude is registered for experiencing sensations of approaching what is pleasurable or of moving away from what is painful, without the body’s necessarily performing an action. And it can happen that no external objectal reference exists, and yet the emotion of repulsion or the state of adhesion is experienced, because it is a matter of objects of one’s own representation which provoke detonations of the emotional center (due to the arising of images ). For example, there would be no need to flee since no objective danger is present, yet one flees from the “danger” from one’s own representation.
The intellectual center responds to impulses of the mechanisms of consciousness known as abstraction, classification, association, etc. It works through selection or confusion of images, in a range that goes from ideas to the different types of imagination, directed or divagational, with the ability to elaborate forms of response such as symbolic, signical and allegorical images. Though these images seem abstract and “immaterial,” one has an internal sensorial register of them and can remember them, follow their transformation in a sequence, and register sensations of correctness or error.
There are differences of speed in the dictation of responses to the environment. Said speed is proportional to the center’s complexity. Whereas the intellect elaborates a slow response, the emotions and the motricity do it with greater speed, the inner velocity of the vegetative and sexual functioning being considerably greater than that of the other centers.
The functioning of the centers is structural. This is registered by the concomitances in the other centers when one is acting as the primary one. Intellectual work is accompanied by an emotional tone, for example, a certain liking for the study that is being carried out, and which helps sustain the work. In this case (i.e., while one is studying), the motricity is reduced to the minimum. It is thus that while the intellectual response center works, the emotional center sustains the charge but to the detriment of the contiguous center, which is the motor center, which tends to be immobilized in the measure that intellectual interest is accentuated. In the case of vegetative recovery after an illness, the subject would experience fatigue or weakness and all the energy would go toward the body’s recovery. The vegetative center would work full time to give equilibrating internal responses, and the other centers’ activity would be reduced to the minimum.
The centers can work dysfunctionally, which also occasions errors of response. The contradictions arise in the work among the centers when the responses are not organized structurally, and the centers trigger activities in directions that oppose each other.
These centers that we separate in order to better understand them are really working in structure, with psychophysical energy circulating between them, or, more simply, nervous energy. In general, when activity increases in some centers, it decreases in others. It is as through we were always working with a set charge; then, with this same quantity of charge, when some work more, the others will have to work less. When someone runs, the motor center works at its maximum, but the vegetative center must regulate internal functions. Emotivity can even be the reason for that race, for that person’s running. And finally, the runner could be carrying out intellectual operations. Let’s give an example: he’s running because someone is chasing him, and as he runs he is trying to figure out where he can go to slip away more easily, he is looking for a mode of escape from that threatening thing that is after him. And thus there are many things he can do while he runs. In this case, the activity that is most ponderable is the motor activity. The energy in the intellect diminishes each time the motor center moves into action. In our example, it’s quite difficult to run away while someone chases you and to perform mathematical calculations at the same time. Something happens in the intellect while the motor center is being mobilized, but it doesn’t mean that its activity disappears completely. The energy is practically annulled in the sex and in the emotions the energy acts, but in a variable way, depending on the incitement that started the race. If a person carries out complicated mathematical operations, him vegetative center will tend to quiet down. Either the vegetative center quiets down, or the intellectual work stops.
All these considerations have practical importance because they explain that hyperactivity in one center decreases the activity of the other centers, particularly of those we call ‘contiguous.’
We have assigned an order to the centers, talking about the intellectual, the emotional, the motor, the sexual and the vegetative. We consider as contiguous those centers that, in this order, are laterally located with respect to any given center. We said that the overactivity of a center diminishes the activity of the others, particularly the activity of the contiguous centers. This last allows us to understand, for example, that emotional blockages or sexual overcharges can be modified from a determined activity of the motor center. This motor center acts ‘cathartically’ (this is the first time we will use this word; later we will use very often), discharging tensions. It also explains that the emotional center’s negative activity, depression for example (which is not an overcharge but the contrary), makes the intellectual charge decrease as well as the motor charge. And a positive charge in the same center, enthusiasm for instance (unlike depression), can cause an overflow of the emotional center and produce an overcharge in the contiguous ones—intellectual overcharge and motor overcharge.
It is clear that when a center overflows and also gives energy to others, it does it to the detriment of some other center, because the energetic economy of the whole is more or less constant. And so, all of a sudden a center spills over, “is filled with enthusiasm,” it begins to hurl energy at its contiguous centers, but someone is losing in all this. In the end the center from which all the energy is being suctioned and that the other centers usufruct, becomes discharged. The center is finally depleted of its charge and the discharge starts invading the other centers, until in the end, all of them are discharged. In this sense, if we had to speak of a center that gives energy to the entire machinery, we would refer to the vegetative center.
The sexual center is an important collector of the psychophysical energy. It will weigh the activity of all the other centers, influencing them in a manifest or a tacit way. Therefore, it will be included even in the superior activities of the consciousness, in its most abstract activities, and will make the consciousness search in one or another abstract direction, experiencing, however, a special like or a special dislike for those directions
Independently of the stimuli that arrive from the external world, the centers work with characteristic cycles. When the stimuli arrive, the normal rhythm that a center has is modified, but later it resumes its level of work with the rhythm proper to it. These cycles and rhythms are different and produce certain characteristic repetitions. We recognize the respiratory cycles, circulatory cycles, digestive cycles. They pertain to the same center but it isn’t that the vegetative center has just one rhythm; rather, in this center a variety of activities take place and each one of them has its own rhythm. These types of rhythms, like the others we have mentioned, are known as short cycles. Likewise, there are daily cycles and others of greater amplitude. There are cycles of biological stage. Daily work, for example, is organized according to ages and it is inappropriate to place a child aged five, or an 80-year-old senior, in activities that are proper to young adults.
Finally, we should add that the activity of the centers is registered in certain points of the body, even though these points are not the centers. The register of the vegetative center, for example, is an internal, diffuse corporal register. When one feels one’s body, one experiences it in a diffuse way and not just in a precise part or area. The register of sex is experienced in the sexual plexus. The register of some emotions is felt in the cardiac plexus and in the respiratory area. Intellectual work is registered in the head (“one thinks with one’s head,” they say). And one should not confuse what mobilizes the activities with the register of those activities. We call what mobilizes the activities –‘center,’ and it has a dispersed neuroendocrinal basis, whereas the register of the centers’ activities is felt mainly in certain localized points of the body.
3. Levels of Work of the Consciousness. Reveries and Reverie Nucleus.
Recalling the scheme we proposed above, there was nothing more than a structure, a system of stimuli and a center that gave a response to those stimuli. That center later specialized in different ranges; these were ranges of activities of response in front of the stimuli. And then we distinguished between different centers, but we also knew that the centers varied in the response, not just due to the variation of stimuli, but because they varied in the response because of the state that they themselves were in. We called the state in which the centers were found at a given moment: ‘level of work.’ The level of work, therefore, modulated the center’s activity in its responses. If the level of work was high, the response toward the world was more effective, more manifest. If the level of work was low, the response toward the world was less effective.
In this structure we find the level of vigil, which favors activity toward the external world. On the other hand, we find sleep as a level that apparently blocks the response to the external world, even when the stimuli seem to fully arrive to the sleeping person. And there is an intermediate level—that of semisleep—which is a corridor that one passes through upon connecting with and disconnecting from the external world.
We speak of the levels of work and refer to them as the internal mobility that the structure of the consciousness has in order to respond to stimuli. These levels have their own dynamic and cannot be considered simple compartments that close or open. In reality, while one is working in a level, in the other levels there continues to be mobility with more reduced energy. That is, if we are, for example, in the vigilic level, the level of sleep continues to work, though with reduced activity. In this way, there are strong pressures from the other levels with respect to the level that is expressed at that moment. Thus there are numerous phenomena proper to vigil that are affected by phenomena of the other levels, and there are numerous phenomena proper to sleep that are affected by the activity of the other levels. This conception of the levels, not as static compartments but rather as a totality of work potentials in simultaneous dynamic is important in order to later understand phenomena that we shall term ‘rebounds’ of contents , of ‘pressure’ from contents, etc.
Just as there are neuroendocrinal localizations that regulate the human being’s activities of response (and which we encompass by designating them as ‘centers’), there also localizations that regulate the levels of work of the consciousness. In effect, certain points send signals for the activity of vigil, semisleep and sleep to be effected. These points that send signals, receive instructions in turn from different parts of the body before they begin triggering their orders, which results in the formation of a closed circuit. In other words, when the body needs night rest, it supplies data to certain points which begin to emit their signals, and then the level of consciousness descends…. We don’t want to get into any of the physiological or psychophysiological complications involved here; rather we are employing very general terms.2 When certain substances start accumulating in the body, or when the day’s work has provoked fatigue in the body, these accumulated substances and fatigue give out signals, they supply signals to a point that collects them. And this point that collects the signals also begins to send out its messages, whereupon the level of consciousness descends. The level goes down until the subject feels sleepy and enters that state of sleep, and the circuit’s reparative stage begins. Of course, it is not a matter of merely repairing the body with this of the ‘lowering’ of the level of consciousness. The drop in level of consciousness will make it possible for numerous complex phenomena to be produced and not just that of reparation. However, in principle, we can look at it in this way. In turn, when the repose has had a restorative effect, those points begin to send signals to the control point, which in turn emits its signals to start provoking the awakening. External stimuli or strong external stimuli can also trigger this phenomenon and produce the ascent of level, even when sleep has not yet completed its reparative effect. This is quite evident. Our subject is recovering, he is resting, but a shot that rings out near his ears will wake him up. And thus the cycles go about manifesting themselves, the rhythms are expressed in these levels and have their own rhythmics, but when a phenomenon intervenes that breaks through the threshold limits, a trigger goes off from that center of internal control, and an awakening begins that is out of rhythm.
In the level of vigil we find the optimal unfolding of human activities. The rational mechanisms work fully and one has direction and control of the mental and corporal activities in the external world.
In the level of sleep, in contrast, the rational mechanisms appear greatly reduced in their work, and their control over the activities of the mind or the body are practically nul.
At some moments, sleep is completely vegetative and without images ; at others sleep seems to be under the total, absolute dominion of the vegetative center, and it seems as though only this structure were working, giving responses to internal stimuli. There are no images there that populate the screen of the consciousness; one is in a state in which internal data arrive and one ‘responds’ to those data also internally, and the vegetative center does all this with its characteristic automatism. But later a cycle of sleep begins with reveries, with images, that later are once again interrupted, and another period of sleep begins without them. This happens every night. Thus, even in the level of sleep, deep sleep, we find a completely vegetative state, without images, and a state in which the images appear. All of this has its cycles and rhythms.
We differentiate, of course, between levels and states. The images of sleep are very fast, they carry a strong affective charge and are powerfully suggestive for the consciousness. The material of these images is taken from daily life, though articulated capriciously. We will later see that “capriciously” is not quite the way it is, since when we get to the theme of the allegorical and other types of conformations in oneiric productions, we shall see that this is all subject to a set of laws that are quite precise. However, for now we’ll say that things are articulated at whim. Sleep serves to restore the body and to put in order the mass of information received in the course of the day, besides serving to discharge numerous physical and psychic tensions.
In semisleep, phenomena from the other two levels are intermixed. One rises to semisleep from sleep, and it is reached before complete awakening. Also in full vigil one descends to semisleep in states of fatigue and the mixtures of levels begins to be verified. The level of semisleep is rich in fantasies and long chains of images that fulfill the function of discharging internal tensions.
Reverie in vigil is not a level but a state in which images proper to the level of sleep or semisleep break through by exerting pressure on the consciousness. These reveries act, they manifest in vigil through pressure from the other levels. This occurs with the objective of alleviating tensions; but reveries in vigil also serve to compensate situational difficulties or necessities experienced by the subject. This is, in its ultimate roots, related to the problem of pain, and pain is the internal indicator and the internal register that is had when the subject cannot express himself in the world, and, therefore, compensatory images appear. When we speak of fantasizing or reverying in vigil, we do not refer to the level of semisleep, since the subject can continue to perform his daily activities mechanically, ‘dreaming awake,’ so to speak. The subject has not descended to semisleep or to deep sleep; the subject continues his daily activities; nonetheless, the reveries begin to hover about him
We observe that the mind shifts from one object to another, moment to moment. That it is very difficult to stay with an idea, a thought, without unrelated elements filtering in; that is, other images, other ideas, other thoughts. We call these erratic contents of consciousness ‘reveries.’ These reveries or divagations depend on the pressures from the other levels, also on external stimuli such as noises, odors, forms, colors, etc., and on corporal stimuli such as tension, heat, hunger, thirst, discomfort, etc. All these internal and external stimuli, all these pressures that are acting in the other levels are manifested by forming images and pressuring over the vigilic level. Reveries are unstable and variable, and constitute impediments for the work of attention.
We call “secondary reveries” those that are triggered daily and that have a situational (i.e., temporary) character. An individual who is in a situation is subjected to a set of external pressures and responses arise of secondary reveries. He changes to another situation and other responses of secondary reveries arise. We consider these reveries as secondary or situational because they are triggered in response, to compensate more-or-less precise situations.
However, there are other reveries of greater fixedness or repetitiveness which, though they vary, denote the same mental climate, the same mental ‘atmosphere.’ The images that emerge just once in a given situation and later disappear are quite different from these other images, which, even if we change situations, appear reiteratively. These reveries, which are not secondary, can change too, in their own way; but they have permanence, even if only in this aspect of mental climate—they have a similar flavor. As a digression, observe that the words we are using are completely sensorial. We speak of ‘climate,’ as though the perception of the phenomenon were tactile. We speak of ‘flavor’ as if one could taste a reverie…we will return to these particularities later on.
Sometimes these same reveries appear in the fantasies of semisleep and also in night sleep. The study of secondary reveries and of reveries in the other levels is useful for determining a certain fixed nucleus of divagation that is a strong orientor of psychic tendencies. In other words, that a person’s vital tendencies, apart from the conditions imposed by the circumstances, are launched toward attaining that image, that fixed reverie that guides them. This fixed nucleus will be manifested as an image ; this image will have the property of orienting the body, of orienting a person’s activities in a direction. The image points in a certain direction and that is where the entire structure goes.
The reverie nucleus orients numerous tendencies of human life in one direction that is not clearly noticed from vigil, and many of the reasons that a person might offer for some of his activities are in reality moved by the nucleus. They are not moved by his ‘reasons’— rather the reasons are a function of the nucleus. In consequence, changes in the nucleus provoke changes in the orientation of certain personal tendencies. The person always continues seeking for ways to satisfy his needs, but always the nucleus continues to weigh over the direction. In other cases the nucleus becomes fixed, it remains stuck to one stage of life, even if the general activities change progressively. This reverie nucleus is not visualized; rather it is experienced as a mental climate. The images guide the mind’s activities and we can register them, but the reverie nucleus is not an image ; the reverie nucleus is what will determine compensatory images. Thus, the reverie nucleus is not an image but rather it is the mental climate that is experienced. The nucleus will motivate the production of certain images that, in consequence, will lead toward an activity.
An example of a negative nucleus is a permanent feeling of guilt, for instance. A man has a permanent feeling of guilt. He hasn’t done anything reproachable; or perhaps he has, but what he experiences is this state of guilt—he feels guilty. He has no image whatsoever, but he experiences that special state of consciousness. Let’s take, in another example, the tragic feeling about the future. Everything that will happen will turn out badly. Why? One doesn’t know. Let’s take the continual feeling of oppression. The subject feels oppressed, he says that ‘he can’t find himself’ and feels that things are about to crash down on him…. However there is no reason to think that all nuclei are negative.
The nuclei remain fixed for years, and the compensatory reveries of such nuclei emerge. For a long time these nuclei operate, and they give rise to the birth of compensatory reveries. Thus, for example, if the nucleus that constantly exerts pressure is similar to the feeling of abandonment, if the subject finds himself abandoned, if they feel unprotected, if they experience the feeling of no protection and abandonment, it is very probable that compensatory reveries of acquisitiveness, of possession will arise, and that these images will guide their activities. Surely this does not just happen in the individual sphere, but also in the social sphere and at certain historical moments. Surely, in eras of historical rupture, these images of rampant possession increase because the climates of abandonment, climates of dispossession, the lack of inner references increase.
The secondary reveries give compensating responses to stimuli, whether the stimuli are linked to a situation or to internal pressures, because their function is to discharge tensions produced by these internal difficulties. Therefore the secondary reveries are very variable but certain constants are observed in them. It can be noticed that these reveries revolve around a particular climate. These reveries vary depending on the situation, they are expressed in different ways, but they have something in common. And that thing in common that they have makes us note the presence of a particular climate that has to do with each one of them. This common climate that the secondary reveries have is what informs us about the nucleus of great fixedness, which is not one that revolves according to the situation, but rather is the one that remains constant in the different situations.
In one of the examples mentioned, the subject is in a situation that is extremely disagreeable and he thinks that everything will turn out badly for him. We put him in a different situation that is very pleasant for him and he keeps on thinking that everything will end badly. And so, even when the situations vary, that climate continues exerting pressure and continues firing off images. When the reverie nucleus begins to manifest itself as a fixed image, said nucleus begins to vary since its basic tension is already oriented in the direction of discharge. We can use an illustrative figure: the sun is invisible when it is at its zenith; the sun is visible on the horizon, when it rises and when it sets. The same thing happens with the reverie nucleus—one doesn’t see it when it is most active, even when its pressure is greatest. One sees it when it is just beginning, or one sees it when it is in decline. The nucleus can last for years or all of one’s life, or it can be modified through an accident. Also, when a vital stage changes, the nucleus can change. If the nucleus, if the fixed climate has arisen, it is because it has to do with certain tensions; and when the vital stage changes, those tensions change considerably. Life’s orientation begins to change and behavior undergoes important modifications. The orientation of life changes because the reveries that give a direction toward objects have changed; and the reveries that give direction have changed because the climate that determines them has changed; and the climates have changed because the internal system of tensions has changed, and the system of tensions has changed because the subject’s physical stage has changed or because an accident has taken place that has also provoked the change in the system of tensions.
The centers that we have examined in some cases issue orders to other centers. Those voluntary centers, such as the intellectual center, give orders to the voluntary parts of the other centers, but not to the involuntary parts of the other centers, and even less to the instinctive centers, particularly to the vegetative center in its internal work. The intellectual center does not give orders, and if it does, no one responds. The blood pressure doesn’t change, nor does the circulation, nor do the deep tones vary because the intellect issues orders. Things are the other way around. The internal pressures that lead to the birth of the reverie nucleus are linked to the functioning of the instinctive centers, and because of this, the nuclei vary with the changes of physiological stage, in the same way that serious physical accidents achieve similar effects. And so these nuclei don’t change, for example, due to orders received from the intellectual center; rather these nuclei change when the vegetative activity changes; for this reason it is very difficult to voluntarily modify these nuclei. Such nuclei vary with the changes of physiological stage. Besides this, we have said that emotional shocks also can form or modify a nucleus of internal pressure, since the involuntary part of the emotional center (as we will explain) sends signals to all the centers, modifying their action. If the emotional shock is intense, it can modify the functioning of the vegetative center for a long time. There are millions of examples. The emotional shock can unleash, from that moment on, a new nucleus of pressure, with the appearance of the consequent compensation. The secondary reveries will also make evident the emergence of a new permanent theme (despite their variability), and the subject’s searches or vital intentions will be oriented in a different way, his behavior in the world varying as well. The subject received a powerful shock, and starting from that shock his life changed. Starting from that shock, his activities and vital searches changed. These emotional shocks can act with such force that they also provoke serious alterations in some points of the vegetative center, since the involuntary part of the emotional center acts over the vegetative center and modifies it. Shocks that reach these levels of emotional depth can provoke serious alterations in some points of the vegetative center, followed by dysfunctions and somatizations—somatizations through emotional action; i.e., physical illnesses caused by emotional accidents.
To sum up: We’ve talked about the levels of consciousness, saying that there are corporal points from which these levels are managed, just as there are other corporal points that manage the centers. These corporal points detect signals and emit signals in turn, to make that structure’s level of work ascend or descend.
We’ve said that in the level of vigil the intellectual activities are vastly deployed. That in the level of sleep these activities diminish considerably, even when the power of the images increases. And that in the level of semisleep, we find these things are mixed.
We have differentiated between levels of consciousness and states that a specific level can be in. We’ve said that the reveries that appear in the level of vigil are products of situational tensions or products of pressures from the other levels. Thus the reveries that appear in the level of vigil are not indicative of levels, but rather they reflect states.
We’ve also said that these situational reveries have some kind of relationship amongst themselves—a relationship that does not go through the image, but through the climate. This relationship of climate that the secondary reveries have with each other allows us to speak of a reverie nucleus. This reverie nucleus has great fixedness and corresponds to deep tensions. The nucleus varies with difficulty throughout time, but there are certain deep emotional shocks that can bombard it, and changes of vital stage also provoke modifications in it.
The reverie nucleus is what orients the tendencies of human life. The secondary reveries give compensatory responses to situational stimuli and they are invaded by the climate of the reverie nucleus. The internal pressures that give rise to the birth of the reverie nucleus are linked to the functioning of the instinctive centers. Thus, these nuclei are strongly linked to the vegetative and sexual centers. In reality, these last are the ones that motivate the emergence of the reverie nucleus.
4. Behavior. Formative Landscape.
The study of the centers, of the levels of consciousness and of the behavior in general, should allow us to articulate an elementary synthesis of how the human psychic structure functions. It should allow us to comprehend, also in an elemental way, these basic mechanisms that guide the human being’s activities according to suffering or pleasure, and should enable us to comprehend not just the real capturing that this human structure does of the surrounding reality, but also the illusory capturing that this structure carries out of the surrounding reality and of its own reality. These are the points that matter to us. Our guiding thread is launched in the direction of comprehending suffering, pleasure and the psychological data that could be real, or illusory.
Let’s get into the theme of behavior.
The study of the centers’ functioning and the discovery of their cycles and rhythms allow us to understand velocities and types of reaction in front of the world in their more machine-like aspects. On the other hand, the examination of the reveries and of the reverie nucleus puts us in contact with inhibitory or mobilizing forces of certain behaviors that are assumed in front of the world. But besides the mechanical psychic and corporal aspect, besides the mechanical aspect of behavior, we recognize factors of a social type, of an environment type, and of accumulation of experience throughout life, that act with equal strength as the mechanical factors in the formation of behavior. And this is so because, apart from the stimulations that can reach the psychic structure (and to which it responds immediately), there are other, non-occasional stimulations that remain within the structure and continue emitting signals with relative fixedness. We refer to the phenomenon of the retention of the instants in which phenomena are produced. These phenomena are not simply produced and then disappear forever. Every phenomenon that is produced which modifies the posture of the structure is, besides, stored in it. And so this memory that the structure is equipped with (a memory, not just of the stimuli, but a memory of the responses to the stimuli, and also memory of the levels that were working at the moment of the stimuli and of the responses) will exert pressure, will decisively influence the new events that take place in the psychism. Therefore, with each phenomenon that is produced, we will not find ourselves before a first situation; instead we will be confronting the phenomenon and confronting everything as well that had happened to it previously. When we speak of behavior, we refer to this factor of temporal retention, which is of extreme importance.
An important factor that is a former of conduct is one’s own biography, which is everything that has been happening to the subject throughout his life. This weighs over the human structure as much as the event that is taking place at that moment. From this perspective, given a specific behavior in front of the world, the stimulus that is received at that moment has equal weight as everything that is a part of the structure’s preceding process. Normally the tendency is to think that this is a simple system of stimulus and response, but if we speak of stimulus, everything that has happened before is also a stimulus of the present. In this sense, the memory is not a simple accumulation of past events. The memory, in this sense, is a system of stimuli acting from the past. The memory is something that has not simply accumulated in that structure, but it is alive, it is in force and is acting with equivalent intensity as the present stimuli. These events can or can not be evoked in a specific level of consciousness, but whether they are evoked or not, their action is inevitable at every instant in which the structure is receiving stimulations from the world and is behaving before the world. It seems important to keep the biography in mind, the historical aspect of human life, and consider it as acting in a present way, not in a merely accumulative way as though it were a question of a reservoir that opens up its locks only when past events are recalled. Whether such events are remembered or not remembered, they were the formers of the behavior.
To speak of biography is the same as to speak of personal history. But that personal history, as we understand it, is a living and acting history. Personal history leads us to consider a second aspect, and it is the one that appears as a code in front of given situations. That is to say, the events coming from an environment draw, not one response, but a structured system of response. And this system of response serves in subsequent moments to effect similar behaviors.
These situational codes (that is, fixed conducts that the human being acquires, probably to save energy and also probably as a protection for its integrity), are the totality of the roles.
The roles are fixed habits of behavior that are progressively configured by the confrontation with different environments that a person is called upon to live in—a role for the job, a role for the family, a role for friends, etc. These roles do not act solely when a confrontation with a given environment arises; they also act at every moment, even if we are not confronted by the given situation. They manifest, they become evident, when the situational stimulus enters a specific zone of human conduct.
We distinguish between the family roles, work roles, different situational roles that a person can have fixed, can have recorded. It then becomes clear that when the person goes to his workplace, his behavior adapts, he assumes a role that is proper to his work that differs from the role he adopts with his family. Within the role he assumes in that given situation, however, there are many components proper to the roles of confrontation with other situations. It is as though numerous roles from other situations filtered into the situation that is recorded for responding to that environment. Sometimes those other roles do not filter in merely through action; they do not manifest with their characteristics through action but through inhibition. For example, a person has recorded his work role, has recorded his family role, and has recorded numerous other roles. But his family role is inhibitory; there is no reason whatsoever for his work role to manifest itself inhibitorily, and it then happens that these filtrations that are proper to the family relationship appear in the work relationship, and inhibitory phenomena arise that have not been recorded in the work role. This is extremely frequent, and a kind of transfer of inhibitory data or role activators that correspond to different zones of confrontation with the world, takes place
Just as we have been speaking of the centers’ work that is of a dynamic and structural type, and we haven’t spoken of those centers as if they were stagnant and isolated compartments; just as we have talked about a work of levels that is extremely dynamic, structural; in which the levels are mutually acting, we are also talking, in reference to behavior, of a structure (in this case of roles) wherein something more happens that goes beyond releasing a computer file card in front of a given stimulus.
One can observe a continual dynamic in the human structure. We try to find a few examples and see that very young people have not yet configured that protective layer of roles. The young find themselves lacking in protection in the confrontation with the world because they haven’t yet recorded certain codes. They can have recorded the basic code of the family relationship and a few more besides. As they grow older and in the measure that the environment starts to demand a number of conducts from them, they gradually expand their layers of roles. This is what should happen. In reality it doesn’t happen completely because there are several phenomena that impede the gaining of confidence in managing the environment. Errors of role are produced. This is the case of a person who behaves in one place using the role for other situations. For example, in their job they behave with family roles; they then relates to their boss the way their relates to their brother, and this logically brings with it numerous problems and clashes. There can also be a role error when the situation is new and the subject does not adapt successfully.
The study of one’s personal history, of one’s biography, and the study of these behavioral codes, these roles of conduct, clear up some aspects and throw light on some inhibitions in other areas. For example, in the centers’ work as well as in the structuring of the reveries. Thus the action of these centers and levels of work is also modified by these codifications that are configured along the way by this personal history, by this biography. .
We can sharpen the focus of our study of behavior a little more by introducing some concepts that will be simple and operative. We call “landscape of formation” the set of recordings that configures the biographical substratum, over which the habits and basic personality features are deposited layer by layer. The formation of this landscape begins at birth.
The basic structured recordings compromise not just a system of memories, but also affective tones, a characteristic form of thought, a typical manner of acting, and finally, a way of experiencing the world and of acting in it.
The structuring of the world around us that we progressively carry out is strongly influenced by that base of memories that encompassed tangible objects, but also intangibles such as values, social motivations and interpersonal relations. We can consider our infancy as the vital stage in which the formative landscape was fully articulated. We remember the family as functioning differently than today; our conception of friendship, of camaraderie and, in general, of interpersonal relations have also been modified. In those times, the social groups had a different definition; what one was supposed to do and not do (the epochal norms), personal and group ideals have also gone through variations. In other words, the intangible objects that constituted our formative landscape have been modified. Nonetheless, the formation landscape continues to be expressed in our conduct as a mode of being and of moving among people and things. That landscape is also a general affective tone and a ‘sensibility’ of the era that is discordant with the present one.
We should consider our own ‘look’ and that of others as important determinants of our formation landscape. The factors that have acted over us in order to produce a personal behavior through time, a codification on the basis of which we give responses and adapt to the environment, are numerous. One’s own look regarding the world and the looks of others regarding oneself therefore acted as readjustments of conduct; and thanks to all of this, a behavior was formed. Today we rely on a vast system of codes that was “minted” in that stage of formation and we experience it as a biographical “background” that our behavior responds to as it applies itself to a world that, nevertheless, has changed.
Numerous conducts make up our current typical behavior. We can understand these conducts as ‘tactics’ that we use for living in the world. Many of these tactics have turned out to be adequate until today, but there are others that we recognize as inoperative, and even as generators of conflict. And all of this is of no little importance when the time comes to make judgments regarding our own lives around the theme of growing adaptation.
At this point in time, we are in a position to comprehend the roots of numerous compulsions associated to conducts that were initiated in the formative landscape. However, the modification of conducts linked to values and a certain sensibility will be difficult to carry out without touching the global relationship structure with the world in which people live today.
5. The System of Detection, Register and Operation. Senses, Imagination, Memory, Consciousness.
The three experiential pathways that we mentioned at the beginning (sensation, image and remembrance), should be studied with greater care.
Without sensation there is no pain, no pleasure. It is necessary that the imagination be registered. Without this register, we cannot speak of imagination. If we register the work of the imagination, it is because it reaches the point of register as sensation. Pain also opens up a pathway through the memory. The register of the pain that opens up its pathway from memory is possible, thanks to the fact that memory is expressed as sensation. Whether we deal with the imagination or with the memory, everything is detected as sensation. Pain is not in the imagination; pain is not in the memory—pain is in the sensation that every impulse is reduced to. One has memory of something because one registers that fact; one imagines about something because one registers that fact. And so it is the register, the sensation that gives us information on what is memorized, about what is imagined. It’s clear that in order not to confuse things we will make a distinction between sensation as such (that which comes from the senses), and other sensations (that do not come from the senses) such as those that come from the memory or that come from the imagination. We won’t call these last two ‘sensation’ in order to avoid confusion in the description.
However, if we are going to reduce things to their final elements, we verify that an image and a mnemic datum arrive to something that registers them as sensation. We say that the activity of these senses is registered; we say that the memory’s activity is registered, that the imagination’s activity is registered. Upon saying “register,” we make distinctions between one that arrived from one pathway and one that arrived from another; and we note that there is “something” that registers. Without that “something” that registers, we cannot speak of what is registered. And what registers must also have its constitution. Surely we shall also have a sensation of it. We are speaking of the register of the entity that registers, and we call this entity “consciousness.”
That apparatus that registers is in motion and the activities it registers are likewise mobile; nonetheless, it has a certain unity. Sometimes this apparatus is identified with the “I”. But the “I,” unlike the consciousness, does not seem to be constituted from the beginning, but rather becomes constituted within the human being. On the other hand, one cannot speak of the “I” if its limits are not defined, and it seems these are given by the sensation of the body. This “I” must go about constituting itself in the human being in the measure that the entirety of the bodily sensations are constituted… naturally, the memory is in the body, the imagination is in the body, the senses are in the body and the apparatus of register of all these is in the body and is linked to the sensations of the body.
Since the body’s sensations operate from birth (and even before), already from the beginning this general sensation of the body that some identify with the “I” already goes about constituting itself; but in reality, we are talking about the consciousness as apparatus of register. Let’s say that in very early infancy, very soon after birth, the “I” does not function. One is not born with an “I”. The identification with one’s own “I” is realized in the measure that the sensations of the body are codified, thanks to the apparatus of memory. There is no “I” without memory, and this memory cannot function if there are no data. These data begin to be articulated to the extent that experience develops. We are saying that a child does not have an “I”. A child can perceive a “we,” but does not know if his body begins or ends in an object. A child does not know if he is “I” or if his mother is “I”. This “I” is gradually articulated through the accumulation of experience.
We said that all psychic phenomena and processes are in the body; but where is the body? The body, for the “I” that has become constituted, is outside of the “I” and is inside it. What are the limits of the body? The body’s limits have to do with sensation. But if the sensation were extended beyond the body, what would the body’s limits be then? This point is of certain importance, because if we distinguish external touch as the body’s limit, for example, then the body ends where external touch ends. The body begins there where sensations are registered on the skin. But it could happen that one didn’t have tactile limits, that the temperature of the skin was at the same thermal level as the environment around the skin, and then one would not know exactly what the limits of the body were, how far that body reached. We know of many sensorial illusions and we know that when a person stretches out in a relaxed state and the ambient temperature is very similar to that of the skin, one feels as though the body were growing bigger, not because any extraordinary phenomenon is taking place—on the contrary, the illusion of the body’s enlargement takes place because the body has no limits, and there are no limits to it because the temperature of the skin and of the environment is the same. Thus it is that, depending on the limits set for the sensations, the sensation of one’s own body is constituted.
We say that one of the pathways of pain is the pathway of sensation, and when we speak of sensation, we are already referring to what is perceived through certain apparatuses that the body is equipped with. Let’s see. I have the sensation of an external object. However, I also have the sensation of an internal pain. The sensation of that internal pain —where is it? Surely, I register it in that apparatus that we spoke of at the beginning. But where is the sensation? The sensation seems to be in the interior of my body. And when I see the external object, where is the sensation? The sensation is also in my body. And what makes me distinguish between the object that is inside and the object that is outside? Not the sensation, certainly, since both the sensation of what happens outside and that of what happens inside is registered inside me. I cannot register a sensation of what there is outside, outside my body. I have to register the sensations (whether it is a matter of external objects or internal ones) inside my body. But I say, nevertheless, that an object that I perceive is outside. And how can I say about an object that I perceive that “it is outside,” and of another one, that “it is inside,” if anyway, the register is always inside? There must be some particular functioning of the structure that makes it possible to establish these distinctions.
I remember a job I was performing. Where do I register the memory of that event? I register it in my interior. I imagine a job that I will carry out immediately or that I will carry out in the future. Where do I register that which I will do? I register it in my interior, of course. But the events that appear on my screen of representation appear as though they were “outside.” I am remembering, perceiving, or imagining activities that seem to occur outside. The internal representation that I have of all that, appears before me as though it were occurring in the external world.
If I now observe where I register these images (whether they are proper to my imagination or to my memory), I see that I register them on a kind of “screen,” a sort of “space” of representation. And this space of representation is inside me. If I close my eyes and remember something, I observe that what I remember arises on a kind of screen, on a space of representation. And what am I doing then with all of this that happens inside, with respect to the objects and events that take place on the outside? Surely I must be doing something different from what happens in the exterior. I will say that I “reflect” it, I’ll say that I “translate” it, I’ll say whatever I want, but in every case I am carrying out operations in my interior that have something to do with phenomena that are not proper to it…. How all of this equipment functions is a matter for careful study.
How might a sensation that I attribute to an object of the external world and a sensation I attribute to an object of the internal world be different from each other? In the sensations in themselves, or in certain limits that the body imposes on these worlds?
We must recognize that a certain relationship exists between the sensations one has of the external world, the memories one has of the external world, and the imagination one has of the external world. We cannot say lightly that all that is illusion. It is not illusion, for the simple reason that if I think of an object and later I mobilize myself toward that object and I have the sensation of that object, there is something that agrees between what I have remembered of the object, between what I have imagined about the object, and what I now perceive of the object. It is evident that I can memorize that object and later open my eyes and find myself in the object’s presence. The forms, colors, distances can be less or more accurately imagined, but I can find myself in the midst of all that. Moreover, I can tell someone else that there is an object over there, and that someone else can imagine or find the object. That is to say, there is something that agrees, whether deformed or not. However, it is also clear that I could be color blind, for instance, and perceive that object, which is of one color, as being of another. And so, even if there is accord among all these functions, there can also be accord between illusions. For us it is important to comprehend how it is possible for such heterogeneous functions to agree, because somehow they agree and they do so, thanks to that coordinating and processing apparatus of all those different data. It’s evident that these signals are coordinated amongst themselves and there is a consciousness that coordinates them. Among the functions of the consciousness there appears the “I” that I register as the point of decision of my activities in the outer world, and of certain activities that I regulate voluntarily in my inner world. The “I” is in the body. But how is that “I” in the body? Is it in the body as a physical localization, or has this “I” been constituted by a mass of experience, a sum total of experience? Or perhaps this “I” is a structure that is articulated by the different signals that reach a specific point? It can be that this “I” that coordinates, begins coordinating once a critical informative mass is acquired; because if this mass has not been formed as yet, the “I” does not appear and the body itself is confused.
We will study part by part how all this works, of the sensations that are registered in the exterior of the body and in the interior of the body.
We have a scheme wherein this structure appears that impulses arrive to and from which responses go out. These arriving impulses reach a specific apparatus that detects them. This impulse-detecting apparatus is the apparatus of the senses. This apparatus carries out a census on data from the external world and also from the internal world. The data reach this apparatus, but besides this I perceive that these data can be updated even if they are not arriving at this moment. I say then that these data that reach the point of register, also simultaneously reach an apparatus that stores them. The data is stored. Whether they are data from the external environment or from the internal environment, the data that arrive are stored. There where I have a register of the data, simultaneously I have undergone the recording of the same and this now puts me in the situation of extracting previous data. All this occurs in front of senses that have different physical localizations and that are in continuous movement, but that have relations among themselves and that are not absolutely compartmentalized. And so, when one detects something, modifications happen to the other senses. If one perceives through or by means of the eyes, it is thanks to the fact that the seeing sense is in motion (not simply in external physical muscular movement to localize the light source), it is in activity. The eye does not enter into activity simply upon perceiving light. The visual sense is in movement, it is in activity and a variation is produced in it when an impulse arrives. All the other senses are also in activity and when the eye perceives a phenomenon that is external to it, a variation is also produced in the movement of the other senses
What happens in the external senses is also happening in the internal senses. The internal senses are also in activity, such that it can very well happen that someone is perceiving an object with the eye and, at the same time, they are internally perceiving a stomach ache. And this perceiving of the object with the eye, simultaneous with perceiving the stomachache with the internal senses, makes the information go to memory simultaneously. An example: I arrive in a city and everything turns out badly for me. Later I remember that city and what do I say about it? I say, “That’s an awful city.” And why do I say it’s an awful city? Because I did badly there. And what is that about ‘it went badly for me’? Is it simply because of the perceptions I’ve had? Or because of a number of situations I was in, a number of registers of another nature that are not external perceptions? No doubt other registers have been at work, other internal sensations. Surely it’s what happens with everything and not just with that unpleasant city. It seems that when I register something, I record it, and if I register it simultaneously with the data from other senses, I also record it in simultaneity with them. It seems that one is continually receiving a stream of information from all the senses and one is continually recording all that information. And it seems that the information from one sense is conditioned by and hooks up with the information from another sense.
Sometimes, upon capturing certain fragrances through the olfactory sense, the memory evokes complete visual situations. And what does the sense of smell have to do with all those visual situations? It’s obvious that the senses are enchained among themselves. Sometimes when one sense is set in motion, the others lower their activity level. When all the senses are being bombarded, there is a problem for the register. But when one pays attention (and we will see later on what this paying “attention: as aptitude of consciousness is about) to one sense, the other senses tend to quiet down. It’s as though all the senses were making noise with their scanning action and were alerting that “I”. As if all the senses were engaged in a search. Then, when a signal reaches a sense, all the others tend to quiet down. The senses, even when they don’t perceive any internal data, are in movement and are producing their noise, are providing information on themselves. There is a background of noise that lowers as the senses specialize in a specific zone of perception.
And the memory, what does it do? It gathers data from the senses and gathers data on the operations of that apparatus of registers too. I remember, for example, the mental operations that I’ve been carrying out. First, I have a sensation of the mental operations themselves, but I can speak of my mental operations because I have a sensation of them. I have a sensation of my operations, they are internal sensations, as much sensations as a stomach ache. We are taking certain precautions and discussing certain postures that are circulating, postures that presuppose that mental operations have nothing to do with the body because the body has to do with the operations of the digestive apparatus, or with what the eyes perceive, and when we talk about matters of the “spirit” such things must not be related to the body (?). We are challenging those who assume that there is a spirit that has nothing whatsoever to do with the body. And if there is a spirit that has nothing to do with the body and it is the one that carries out these operations, then who registers these operations? Where are these operations registered? And how then are these operations evoked? If one speaks of a spirit it will be because I have a register of that spirit; and if I have a register of that spirit, it’s because something can receive an impression from that spirit. And if I don’t have any sensation of that spirit, then I can’t speak about it.
There are others who think that the psychic apparatus is a sum total of sensations, as if there were no other complex and delicate apparatuses coordinating these sensations, making them function in structure. We’ve had discussions with them as well, with those who believed that the activities of the mind were a simple sum total of sensations. It is very different to say: “I have sensations of the work of the senses, the memory and the imagination,” than to say, “They are sensation.” There are distinctions among them and there are very different functions that the apparatuses of sense and the apparatuses of fulfill. And so we do not exactly share that rough, sensualist thinking. Neither do we share that other strange thinking that speaks of the “spirit” as if there were an entity that had nothing to do with the registers or with the sensations. There are those who speak of the mind, of the mind’s pain, because the pain of the body has nothing to do with it. And this pain of the mind—how is it experienced? “It is experienced with the spirit,” they say, in the same way that artistic sensations are experienced in the spirit. And who is that gentleman (“the spirit”) who performs so many operations outside the body, and how is it that I have data about that gentleman?
We understand by “apparatus” the structure of the senses, the structure of the memory and the structure of consciousness with their different levels. These apparatuses work integratedly and the connections between them are effected through impulses that, in turn, undergo distributions, translations and transformations.
Senses
The apparatus of senses finds its origin in a primitive touch that has become progressively specialized. The chemical senses (taste and smell) work with particles that produce certain chemical transformations, and as a result they submit the datum. The mechanical sense (touch) that functions on the basis of pressure and temperature. The internal senses of cenesthesia and kinesthesia function, sometimes chemically, sometimes mechanically. One has the register of what happens in the intrabody also through pressure, through temperature and through chemical transformations and reactions. We know of the senses of hearing and vision as physical senses. Hearing functions by percussion; sight through the physical reception of a vibratory action
In the internal senses, the cenesthetic sense provides the information on the intrabody. We know there are numerous tiny organisms, numerous small organs in the intrabody that collect chemical, thermal, pressure samples. The detection of pain also plays an important role. It could be thought that there is a small, specialized apparatus for detecting pain, but in reality, all the senses, when they reach a certain limit of tolerance, send us painful sensations. These sensations are what immediately set in motion an activity of the structure to provoke the rejection, the elimination of these intolerable sensations. Thus the sensation that is captured in one sense is immediately linked to the activity of rejection of what is painful. The centers’ work is detected cenesthetically, internally, as are the different levels of work of the consciousness. The sensation of sleep, the sensation of tiredness, can also be experienced. The cenesthesia is an extremely important sense which has been paid very scant attention. The internal sense later specializes and differentiates between the kinesthesia and cenesthesia. When vigil drops down in its level of work, when the level of consciousness lowers, this internal sense increases its emission of impulses.
Since the senses work in dynamic and in structure, all of them are in a search, they carry out a sweep and produce a background of noise in the information. However, when a person sleeps and closes his eyelids, his contact with the external world doesn’t disappear totally; rather, the background of noise lowers considerably, and with the decrease of the information on the external world, the information from the internal senses increases relatively. We cannot say with precision whether the internal impulses increase when the level of consciousness drops, or whether when the level of consciousness goes down, the work of the external senses is reduced as well; but the work of the internal senses becomes evident. When the level of consciousness goes down, the impulses from the internal world are manifested with greater intensity.
These internal senses are not localized in the face, as almost all the others are, nor are they located in specific points, nor can they be directed with precision. Their work invades all and they provide their data without any act of the will on our part. One can, for example, close one’s eyes and make the perception that was reaching the eye, disappear. One can train the eye in one direction or another, but one can’t do the same with the internal senses. One can pay better attention to certain internal sensations, but these inner sensory apparatuses do not have that mobility and they cannot be suppressed. Thus their localization is characterized by its non-precision, on one hand, and neither do they have mobility, i.e., they cannot be directed like the other senses. Among the internal senses we distinguish the kinesthetic sense, we had said that it provides data on movements, corporal postures, physical balance and imbalance.
And so we have this sum total of apparatuses in dynamic that supplies us with data on the external and internal worlds. The tracks of this internal and external information, as well as the tracks of the operations of the consciousness themselves in the different levels of work, will be received in the apparatus of memory.
The psychic structure (the consciousness) will coordinate the data from the senses and the memory recordings.
As we have said before, the data does not simply reach an apparatus that perceives it and that is inactive; rather the data reaches an apparatus that is in motion. This datum that arrives to the apparatus that is in movement configures the perception. And so sensation is a theoretical atom; but in what happens in reality is the datum that reaches a sense that is in motion, is configured and structured. This we call “perception,” which is the sensation plus the activity of the sense. The register is therefore a structuring that the sense does with the data, and not simply the data. 

Characteristics Common to All the Senses

a) All of them carry out activities of abstraction and structuring of stimuli according to their aptitudes. We are saying that the sense eliminates many data that reach it and configures other data that do not reach it. Considering some examples about the frog eye’s perception, you will remember that this little creature only had the perception that there was another living being in front of him when a certain form appeared (curved and balloon-shaped), and when the form also showed movement. And if that form did not appear but there was movement, or the inverse, no register was produced in this little fellow’s detection apparatus. If you remember this, you will comprehend what we are referring to when we speak of the abstraction that the sense carries out, and, besides, the structuring that the sense performs. And from this structuring of diverse data, the perception arises.
b) All the senses are in continuous movement. They are like radar stations sweeping different ranges. There is also experimental proof of this.
c) All of them work within a range according to a particular tone that must be altered by the stimulus. In other words, each sense is in motion within a specific tone. When perception arises it is because a variance has been produced in the tone of that sense. You remember the experiments with the frog’s optic nerve that was always cycling at one pulse per second, and when the nervous stimulus arrived, it began to cycle at a greater speed. The sense was in movement. For the perception to be produced, it is necessary for the stimulus to appear between sensory thresholds. The sense is pulsating, but if the arriving stimulus doesn’t have sufficient energy, it is not perceived. If it goes beyond the potential of tolerance, it is not perceived as a sensation or perception proper to that sense, but as pain. These thresholds have mobility. The thresholds also expand or contract. Thus, normally, when certain internal activities such as attention are focused on a sense, its threshold tends to dilate and the thresholds of the other senses tend to contract. When the internal senses work fully, widening their thresholds of perception, the external senses tend to reduce their ranges. When the attention is focused on the external senses, the ranges, the thresholds of internal perception, tend to contract. Thus, for there to be perception, it is necessary that the stimulus appear between sensory thresholds. A minimum threshold below which perception does not take place, and a threshold of maximum tolerance that, when surpassed, produces sensory irritation or saturation, or what we generically term as “pain.” If there is a background of noise that comes from the same sense or from other senses, or there is a background of noise coming from memory that is supplying data while perception is taking place; or there is a background of noise because consciousness in general is supplying data, the stimulus must raise its intensity for it to be registered and without going beyond the maximum threshold so that saturation and sensory blockage will not occur. When a man is divagating, dreaming awake, and his images are occupying his field of consciousness, the stimulus that appears must increase its activity in order to be detected. In any case, when one is divagating or dreaming awake, the internal cenesthetic activity is increasing; therefore, the ranges of external perception are lowering. It is therefore necessary that we increase the activity of the external world and, for example, say: “Hey! Wake up,!” When the maximum threshold is exceeded or there is sensory blockage, it is indispensable to make the background noise disappear for the signal to reach the sense. Another case is that established in the law of reduction of the constant stimulus due to adaptation of the threshold. That is, these clothes we’re wearing now, at first give us a tactile sensation, but time passes and we no longer feel them. Not just because we’ve been distracted away from the problem of the clothes and we are into something else—not just because of this —but because the constant stimulus decreases in intensity. As time passes, the constant stimulus is attenuated for the perception. And so when a stimulus lies within the threshold but becomes constant, the threshold adapts to it to leave it in at its limits and not continue having a register, which would disturb other activities of the apparatus. And so we have numerous stimuli, but when the stimuli become constant, the thresholds of the senses adjust so that the background of noise will disappear. Otherwise, our bombardment with perceptions would be constant and we would have such a background of noise that there could be very little distinction made between the new perceptions that might appear. Thus it is that perception takes place between ranges, minimum and maximum thresholds of tolerance. These thresholds are in continuous motion. When there are constant stimuli that appear within these ranges, the latter adjust in order for the perception of that stimulus to diminish. We call this, law of decrease of the constant stimulus, due to threshold adaptation.
d) All the senses work between thresholds and limits of tolerance that allow variations depending on education and according to metabolic needs (in reality, it is here where the root of sensorial existence lies). The variability characteristics are important to distinguish sensorial errors.
e) All the senses translate perception into one same system of impulses. These impulses are the ones that will be distributed in various ways. We don’t want to get into the physiological question, but let’s note that all the senses translate the perceptions into one same system of impulses, and we will call this “homogeneity of the impulses from the different senses.” Thus on one hand, I see, on the other I hear, on the other I taste, but all this of hearing, tasting, seeing, etc., is translated into one same system of homogeneous impulses. One works with the same type of impulse. Sounds do not go through the inside of one’s head, nor do visual images, nor do gustatory or olfactory sensations.
f) All [the senses] have physical localizations, physical terminal localizations, whether precise or diffuse, connected to a system that coordinates them. All the senses have nervous terminal localizations, whether precise or diffuse, always connected to the central nervous system and to the peripheral or autonomous nervous system, from where the apparatus of coordination operates.
g) All the senses are connected to the organism’s general apparatus of memory.
h) All the senses have their own registers which are given by the variation of the sense’s tone when a stimulus appears.
All the senses can commit errors in the perception of the datum. These errors can originate from a blockage of the sense, for example, due to sensorial irritation. We irritate a sense, we go to the threshold of tolerance and the perception that we have of the datum that irritates the sense is a powerfully modified perception that has nothing to do with the object. Thus, these errors can come from the blockage of the sense because of sensorial irritation, but also because of a failure or deficiency of the sense. You are familiar with cases of myopia, deafness, etc. Also due to the lack of intervention of another or other senses that help to provide parameters, that help provide references regarding the perception. For example, you hear something that is apparently distant, and upon seeing the object in question you begin to hear it in a different way. This is a very frequent case of auditory illusion. One believes that the object is far away, and the perception is adjusted only when one sees it and localizes it visually. Since we know that all the senses work in structure, then normally data is being received, information is being received from the different senses. And with this information perceptions are being configured about the world that surrounds us. Thus, when the parameters fail and we have just one sensory datum, in these cases an illusion in the perception is produced. There are also errors of sensation or of perception, caused by mechanical agents. Such is the case of seeing light due to applying pressure on the eyeballs. In almost all the senses we find examples of illusions produced by mechanical action.
Imagination
It is very difficult to differentiate between the stimulus that, coming from a sense, reaches an apparatus of register, and the image that it summons up, the image that the stimulus awakens. It is quite difficult to distinguish between the impulse of the sense and the image that corresponds to that impulse. We cannot say that the image and the impulse of the sense are the same. Neither can we distinguish, psychologically, the velocities of the internal impulse and the velocity of the image. It’s as though the image and the impulse were one same thing, when in reality they are not.
When considering the image it is necessary to take a few precautions. In the first place, we should recognize that images do not just correspond to sensorial stimuli, but are also called up from memory; and secondly, we must always be alert before the naïve interpretation that makes the image appear as solely corresponding to the visual sense.
For some primitive students of these matters, the image has performed a second-class function in the economy of the psychism. For them, an image is a kind of degraded perception, a second-class perception. In other words, if a gentleman looks at an object and later closes his eyes and evokes that object, he observes that this evocation that he carries out of the object is of inferior quality in comparison to the perception. With the eye he can perceive the object better and more clearly than by evoking it. Besides, this memory is tinted by a number of bizarre elements that contribute to the confusion that results concerning the object. Therefore the representation that is had of the object’s presentation appears to as a degradation, a kind of fall in the perception. From this understanding of things, the scholars referred to left the image filed away in the inventory of secondary phenomena of the psychism. Neither did they have much clarity with respect to the fact that images do not just correspond to the visual sense, but each sense is a producer of images that correspond to it. And finally, it was believed that the image only had to do with the memory, and not that it was closely linked to the sense.
In reality the image fulfills numerous functions. We will need to comprehend the function of the image in order to later understand that, when this image mobilizes itself, it will act over the centers and will carry energy from one point to another, producing transformations of vital importance for the economy of the psychism. For now, if the senses appear in order to give information on the phenomena of the external or internal world, the images that accompany the perceptions of the senses are not simply for repeating the data of the information received, but for mobilizing activities with respect to the arriving stimulus. But let’s observe this in an example from daily life. I’m at home and the doorbell rings. The doorbell is a stimulus for me; I perceive it. I then quickly jump up from my chair and go to open the door. The following day, the doorbell rings and the stimulus is the same one, but instead of jumping up from my chair and going to open the door, I stay in my chair. In the first case, I was waiting for a letter that the postman was supposed to deliver that morning. In the second case, I was expecting a neighbor to knock on my door and ask to borrow a pan. If in my presence or my copresence there was one datum or another, this stimulus in one case or in another, it has been limited to mobilizing a specific image. In the first case, the stimulus mobilized the image of the postman whom I was expecting. Of course, I was occupied with something else and at that moment I wasn’t expecting the postman. Certainly I was into something else, but when the stimulus arrived it mobilized a set of images that I was somehow expecting. When these images were mobilized, I jumped up from my chair and went to the door. However, in the second case I had another system of ideas and when the stimulus arose it didn’t mobilize the image of the postman; rather it mobilized the image of my neighbor, among other reasons, because I had already received the letter I expected the day before. And so when this second image arose, my body was mobilized in a different way, or it wasn’t mobilized
And so the old story that everything works so simply based on matters of stimuli and responses that correspond to those stimuli, isn’t so. Even when in an elementary circuit such as that of the reflex, in a short reactive arc, the stimulus arrives and without any voluntary action the response comes out, besides the setting in motion of a response, an image has been immediately generated that is also producing its effect. And so, a sensation is unfailingly accompanied by the arising of an image. And what in fact mobilizes the activity is not the perception, but the image.
We will see how this image has properties that we have studied when we have spoken about “muscular tonicity,” in which the muscles are placed in a certain tone of activity, following visual images. The visual images go in a specific direction and the muscles are adjusted toward that direction. It is perhaps the stimulus that is moving the muscles? Not at all. It is the image that is moving the muscles. We must recognize that certain images do not just activate our external musculature—they also activate the internal musculature and numerous physiological phenomena are set in motion. The image mobilizes internal phenomena, which produces activity toward the external world, as if the function of the image were to return energy to the external world from which the sensations had arrived.
The internal senses also have to receive information on what is happening in the activities of my consciousness, because if I didn’t have information on what was happening in the activities of my consciousness I would be unable to give continuity to those processes. Thus the internal senses are capturing, not just visceral data, data from the intrabody, but they are also capturing what is happening with my activities and with the operations of my consciousness.
The “apparatus” that is the former of images functions at different levels of work, contributing to the modification of not just the activity of the consciousness, of the coordinator, but also to that of the apparatuses themselves, of information from the memory and from the centers’ activities.
Of course, data arrive on the functioning of the consciousness to the internal senses. In turn, the consciousness also can act to orient the senses in one direction or in another, and make them pay attention to one sensory range and ignore another. These are in reality functions of the consciousness, more than functions of the senses. We should study this when we touch on the topic of the structuring that the consciousness carries out. However, at any rate, it is good to note that the senses are moved by the activity of the phenomena that arrive to them and they are also moved by the direction imprinted on them by the coordinator apparatus. When the senses do not limit themselves to merely receiving impressions from the external or internal world, but they are intentionally directed, then we are in the presence of the phenomenon of reversibility.
It’s quite different to hear a noise, because the noise is produced without the participation of my intention, and to go looking for a specific noise. When I’m looking for something specific using my senses, I am directing the activity of the sense from the mechanisms of the coordinator. And also, apart from directing the senses, it is very different when I simply perceive a data, from when I am conscious of the perception of that data. I hear the doorbell and it doesn’t mean much to me. But when I hear the doorbell and this hearing of the doorbell is something that involves my awareness, in the sense that I isolate it from an undifferentiated mass of stimuli and I pay attention to it, then I’m working, not with perception of an undifferentiated stimulus, but with the apperception of that stimulus. There is work carried out then that is not simple detection followed by perception; rather there is work done in which I pay attention to the perception. I call this ‘apperception’. Moreover, I can predispose all my senses in the direction of apperception. Observe that it is very different to limit oneself to riding atop a mass of perceptions, from being in an apperceptive attitude. In this attitude, all the stimuli that arrive are registered with attention I can be in an attitude of indifference and the stimuli arrive anyway, or I can be in an attitude of attentiveness to the stimuli’s sudden appearance, the way a hunter waits for the hare to leap out. I can be very attentive, waiting for certain stimuli to emerge, and even when the stimuli don’t arise, I am in an apperceptive attitude. Taking the mechanism of reversibility into consideration will be very important in order for comprehending the problem of the levels of work of the consciousness, and to clearly recognize a few illusory phenomena.
We are trying to emphasize, among other things, that the senses are not just bringing in information from the external world, but they are working in a very complex way, directed in some of their parts by the activity of the consciousness. It isn’t simply the phenomena of the external world or the visceral internal phenomena that are influencing the senses, but the activity of the consciousness is influencing the work of the senses. If this were not so, there would be no explanation for why certain perturbations of the consciousness should modify the register one has of the external world. By way of an example: ten different persons can have a different perception of the same object (even though they are the same distance away from it, under the same lighting conditions, etc.), because there are certain objects that lend themselves for the consciousness to project its work over them. In reality, the consciousness does not project its work on the objects; the consciousness projects its work on the senses, and then modifies the system of perception. The consciousness can project its images on the apparatus of reception, the apparatus of reception can return this internal stimulation, and then one can have the register that the phenomenon has arrived from the exterior. If this is so, then certain workings of the consciousness can modify the structuring that the senses perform on the data from the external world.
Memory
Just as the senses and all the other components of the psychism do not work in isolation, neither does the memory work isolatedly. The memory is also working in structure. The memory, as we have said before, has the function of recording and retaining the data that is coming from the senses, data coming from the consciousness; and the memory also has as its function the supplying of data to the consciousness when the consciousness has a need for those data. The memory’s work gives references to the consciousness for its temporal location among phenomena. Without this apparatus of memory, the consciousness would have serious difficulties locating the phenomena in time. It wouldn’t know if a certain phenomenon was produced before or after, and it couldn’t articulate the world in a temporal sequence or succession.
It is thanks to the fact that there are different memory ranges, and it is thanks also to the existence of thresholds of memory that the consciousness can locate itself in time. It is also surely thanks to the memory that the consciousness can locate itself in space, since mental space is by no means disconnected from the times of consciousness—times that are supplied by phenomena that come from memory. Thus, these two categories of time- space function in the consciousness, thanks to the supply of data that the memory provides. We can examine this more slowly.
Just as we speak of a theoretical atom of sensation, we also refer to a theoretical atom of reminiscence. But this is theoretical because they do not exist in the phenomena experienced. What can be registered is that in the memory, data coming from the senses and from the consciousness are received, processed and arranged in order in the form of structured recordings. The memory receives data from the senses, receives data from the operations of the consciousness, but aside from this it arranges the data in a certain order and structures them; it carries out a very complex work of compilation and organization of the data. When the level of consciousness descends, the memory starts putting all the data in order that had been filed away in another level of consciousness. At one level the memory is working, registering, filing away all the daily data, the day’s data that are coming in. And at another level of work, the memory begins to classify and to organize the data that was received in vigil.
In sleep, which is another level of consciousness, we will find that the memory is processing data. And the putting into order that is done in the memory with the data that have been received is not the same classification of that data that is done when they are being received.
Thus, at this moment I am receiving information through the senses, and this information that I receive is being filed away in memory. However it turns out that when my level of consciousness goes down and I go to sleep, I also encounter those data from the daily world, from the world of vigil. All that raw material that I’ve received during the day and that I have recorded appears, but this raw material is not articulated in the same way in my internal system of representation. What had a sequence during the day, follows another order when the level of consciousness falls. And then what happened in the end now happens at the beginning; recent elements are connected to very old elements in my memory, and there an entire internal structuring is carried out with the raw material received during the day and with the previous data from different sectors of memory that correspond to an ancient memory, a more-or-less mediate memory. The memory is an ‘apparatus’ that performs different functions, according to the level of work that the structure of consciousness is in.

The data are recorded by the memory in different ways:

1) A strong stimulus is recorded strongly in the memory.
2) Data is also strongly recorded by means of simultaneous entry through different senses.
3) A recording is also made when the same data on a phenomenon is presented in different ways. If I present it in one way, I record it in one way; if I present it in another way, I record it in another. My consciousness is structuring it, is articulating it; but apart from this, I have received an impression A and an impression B. The recording takes place because there is a repetition and, besides, because the data are being recorded that the consciousness is structuring regarding the object in question.
4) One also records through repetition as such.
5) The data are recorded better in context than individually.
6) They are also recorded better when they stand out or are noticeable because of a lack of context. Something that stands out, something that is impossible predisposes toward greater attention and, therefore, it is also recorded more strongly.
7) The quality of a recording increases when the stimuli are distinguishable and this happens in the absence of background noise, because of the sharpness of the signals.

When there is saturation because of repetition, a blockage is produced. Advertisers have used the law of repetition in a somewhat exaggerated way. Through repetition a datum is incorporated; but repetition also brings about sensory fatigue. Besides this, what is valid for the senses in general is also valid for the memory, i.e., the law of decreasing stimulus the longer the stimulus is sustained. If we keep up a constant dripping of water, the repetitive dripping of the water does not succeed in recording the dripping water. What it achieves is that the recording threshold closes up, just as the threshold of perception also closes up and therefore the data ceases to influence. When an advertising campaign is excessively reiterative and insists on inconsiderate repetition, basing itself on the law of recording through repetition, it produces saturation in the memory and the data no longer enters, it produces sensory irritation and memory saturation. In some animals one works with the reiteration of the stimulus, and instead of recording the stimulus strongly and obtaining an appropriate response, the animal ends up falling asleep.
When there is absence of external stimuli, the first stimulus that appears is recorded strongly. Also when the memory isn’t supplying information to the consciousness, there is a greater predisposition for recording. And the memory releases information, compensatorily, when data are not arriving to the consciousness. Let’s imagine one case. A gentleman is locked up in a cave where no stimuli from the outer world arrive. No light reaches it, no sound, no blasts of wind that impress his tactile sensitivity…there is a more-or-less constant temperature. The external data are diminished. Then memory begins to release its stored data. This is a curious functioning of the memory. A person is locked up in jail, or they are put inside a cave, and then, since there are no external senses working and no external data, in any case the memory supplies data to the coordinator. If we eliminate the external sensory data, memory immediately begins to compensate by supplying information. Memory does this because, in any case, the consciousness needs all these data in order to locate itself in time, in space; and when consciousness does not have references of data that stimulate it, it loses its structurality. And the “I” —which had arisen due to the sum total of stimuli and the sum total of work of the apparatuses—finds that now it doesn’t have stimuli and it doesn’t have data coming from the apparatuses. The “I” loses its structurality and experiences the sensation that it is disintegrating, it is losing inner cohesion. It then calls on the references from data even if they only come from memory, and this sustains the precarious unity of the “I”.
Remembrance—or more precisely, evocation—arises when the memory supplies already-recorded data to the consciousness. This evocation is produced intentionally by the consciousness, which differentiates it from another type of remembrance that is imposed on the consciousness.
Let’s use a simile to make these mechanisms more or less symmetrical with what we had said happens to the senses and the consciousness. Here the stimuli arrive from the memory to the consciousness and we say: “remembrance.” When consciousness went toward the stimuli we spoke of “apperception.” And when consciousness went toward the data of memory, i.e., goes about locating the datum that interests it, then we speak of “evocation.” One evokes when the attention is directed at a specific range of stored memories.
We know that data arrive to consciousness from the external senses and also from the internal senses. This information arrives simultaneously to the consciousness. It means that when I evoke, when I go to the memory to search for the external data, very frequently that data that I am bringing from memory comes mixed with the other data that accompanied the perception. In other words, if I am now receiving external information and it goes to memory, I am also receiving internal information that goes to memory. When I evoke what happened, not just the external data will present itself in my consciousness, but also the internal data that accompanied that moment. This is of vital importance.
Consider what happens when we remember. When I remember, I observe the object, I close my eyelids, I remember the object. Depending on how good, average or bad my visual education is, the reproduction of that impression will be more or less faithful. Do I only remember the object, or are there a few more things that I remember besides? Observe carefully. We are not talking about chains of ideas, about associations roused by the remembering of that object—there are these as well—I remember the object and a few other things come up as well. We go to the memory of the object itself. I observe the object, close my eyelids; the object is reproduced from memory—an image of the object appears. But this image of the object that appears, besides having other visual components since I am working with the eye, has components for me, in my internal register, of muscular tones and a certain flavor, a certain climate that has nothing to do with the perception. And so I am remembering about that object, not just the recording that the object submits to me, but the recording of my state at the moment when it was produced. Of course this has tremendous consequences, because if it was just a matter of the memory being a filing device of sensory data, the matter would be simple. However it turns out that the information that I am receiving from the external world is being associated to the state that the structure was in at the moment of the recording. And we say more: we say that there can be evocation and the data that are stored in memory can reach the consciousness, thanks to that fact that the data of the phenomena are recorded, together with the data of the structure. Because evocation, if you pay close attention, will work, not by searching for images —it will search for states. And the images are identified that correspond to one situation or another, not through the image in and of itself, but based on the state that corresponds to it. Observe what you do when you remember: now you want to remember your house. How do you go about remembering your house? Observe what you do. Don’t you experience a kind of inner sensation? And that sensation, before the image of your house comes up, that internal sensation—is it a sensation of images ? No—it is a cenesthetic sensation. That cenesthetic sensation is searching among different internal states for the general climate that corresponds to the recordings of visual images of your house.
And when you evoke a horrible image, will you search among different monster masks to find the exact one, or will you look for it in the climate that corresponds to that particular level of memory that impresses you as ‘horrible’? You won’t look among images; you’ll search among masses of internal stimuli that accompany the existing recordings. When the image is finally evoked by the consciousness, one is then in readiness for the image to carry out operations, trigger discharges, mobilize muscularly or mobilize an apparatus for it to start working with that image, and then for intellectual operations to appear, or for emotions to be mobilized, etc. When the image has jumped onto the screen of representation then, one is ready to act. But the system of evocation does not work among images; it works by searching among states. Approaching everything that has to do with physiology, it’s as though we were to say that visual images are not recorded in the neurons; small, microscopic images are not left inside the neurons. Rather there are electrochemical currents that are not images, and when the phenomenon of evocation is produced, one doesn’t go looking for those microscopic images until one finds them, but rather one searches for electrochemical levels that give one the register corresponding to that level, wherein the image will be subsequently articulated. One doesn’t evoke, therefore, through images, but through the states that accompanied the sensory perception of that moment.
Let’s give an example that we always use. I come out of a place and realize I’ve forgotten something. What do you register then—an image? Or do you register a curious sensation? Certainly not an image, because in that case you would know what you had forgotten. You have the curious sensation of something that you’ve forgotten. And what do you do immediately? You start searching for images, one appears and you say: “Not this one;” another one appears and you say: “This isn’t the one.” You start working by eliminating images. What guides you in your search? Are you guided by the image ? No, it isn’t an image that guides you; you are guided by a state that makes different images arise, and when an incorrect image appears you say: “No, this isn’t what I forgot because I’ve got it with me.” And so you continue, guiding yourself by the internal states until, finally, you hit on the object and experience the sensation of discovery. And you say: “That’s what I forgot!” Throughout the work of searching you were looking among states, and those states were the ones that triggered the images, and you went on, producing the recognition. The state of the act of searching for an object is very different from the state that corresponds to the act of encountering (of impletion) the object. The registers one has are very different. However, in all cases we are talking about states that are accompanied at high speed by the images.
In an example we gave before, of the “unpleasant city” that I recall, I can say that I recognize it not just because its images appear, but because the state appears that I was in at the moment when I recorded the data of the city. And that city will be disagreeable or it will be pleasant, or it will be a city with such and such characteristics—not due to the evocation of simple images that I can have, but because of the states that were produced at the moment I recorded them. Observe a photograph from another era. A kind of crystallization of past times. You see that photograph and immediately, that photograph that materializes the happy event of that moment awakens in you the nostalgic sensation of something that is present, of course, but that is lost. And there is a comparison, a confrontation between this that is present and that other that was lost; this state that has had to do with the recordings of that moment, and the present state in which I am recording such data.
We had said that remembrance—more precisely, evocation—arises when the memory delivers already-recorded data to the consciousness. This evocation is produced intentionally by the consciousness, which distinguishes it from another type of remembrance that is imposed on the consciousness. An example is when certain memories invade the consciousness, which on occasion can coincide with a search or with psychological contradictions that emerge without any participation from one’s own consciousness. There is a difference between searching for a datum in memory, and the other case in which data arise spontaneously from memory and invade the consciousness with greater or lesser force, depending on how big a charge they carry. There are states of memory that reach the consciousness, release images, and these images impose themselves on the consciousness obsessively. That image that arrives from memory or that the memory releases, that invades the consciousness and obsessively imposes itself—is this due to the image in itself, is it due to the remembrance in itself, or is it because of the statethat accompanies the image? No doubt, it is due to the state that accompanies the image. And that obsessive image that corresponds to a situation I was in a long time ago, this image that imposes itself on me has a powerful charge (we will say afterwards) that is “climatic.” And so it arrives associated to a state, to the state in which that phenomenon was recorded.
There are degrees of evocation, different degrees according to whether the datum has been registered with greater or lesser intensity. When the data lightly brush the threshold of register the evocation will be slight as well. There are even cases when there is no memory of the datum, but when one perceives it again, one re-cognizes it. And there are data that are working in the threshold of perception, which for us in this case is also a threshold of memory. Something that became fashionable at one time, called “subliminal” action, or so-called subliminal advertising, that seemed to be an interesting phenomenon but later turned out a fiasco, was a simple, quite elementary mechanism, in which a stimulus was fired at the perception threshold. The subject didn’t finish registering the datum, but the datum entered anyway. And we know that the datum entered because, for example, it later appeared in the subject’s dreams. And besides, because the subject in a certain state was able to remember what apparently was not perceived at that moment, that he had not seen. Therefore there are a number of data that in any case hit the threshold of perception, they are not registered at that moment by the consciousness, but they go to memory. And those data, if they go to memory, also go there related to the particular statethat accompanies them. Moreover, for the data to exert an influence in advertising, it was necessary to associate the firing off of the subliminal object to a specific emotion. If the idea was to advertise a drink, it wasn’t just a question of putting the drink inside an alternating sequence of 16 frames of a reel of publicity film (we know that if we insert the object in one frame every 16 frames of film, we will see the film but we won’t see the subliminal flash passing that will be working just inside the perceptual range). If we chose certain parts of the film (the ones with the greatest emotional warmth) and in those parts we inserted the product in question, then when the subject evoked the film, the subliminally-recorded phenomenon would act over them with greater intensity. That was the idea; it worked very elementally. And it doesn’t seem that the sales of products featured in this advertising system went up, but there are still people who believe in the “power of that terrible secret weapon.” We are not dealing with the problem of subliminal propaganda here. We are dealing with the problem of the image or the phenomenon that barely touches the threshold and is recorded, but it is being recorded simultaneously with a state. Starting from the minimum thresholds of evocation, there are increasingly more intense gradations until reaching the automatic remembrance that is rapid recognition. Let’s take the case of language. When one is speaking and has deeply incorporated a certain language, one isn’t remembering the words one must articulate in order for the voice to come out. This happens during the learning stage, when one is learning another language, but not at the moment when the linguistic system has been incorporated to the point of becoming automatic. There one is working with ideas, working with emotions, and memory then supplies data according to the states that arise in the person who wants to develop their ideas. How curious it would be if the memory were simply the recording of sensory data! To be able to speak we would have to reproduce everything that was produced when we learned to talk—at the very least we would have to reproduce the entire signage system. But when I am speaking I am not looking for the signical system. What I am looking for are my ideas, my emotions, and the signical articulations are then released, those signical images that I later launch in the language. Automatic remembrance is acting, rapid recognition remembrance. And the recognition of an object is produced when the perception is compared with previously-perceived data.
Without recognition, the psychism would experience a continual being-there-for-the-first-time in front of the phenomena, despite their repetition. It would always be the same phenomenon and there could be no recognition, and thus the psychism would be unable to advance—certain fashionable currents of opinion notwithstanding. They are of the opinion that it is an “interesting psychological breakthrough” for the consciousness to work without memory. If these preachers worked without memory, they couldn’t even explain the system to others.
On the other hand, forgetting is the impossibility of bringing the already-recorded data to the consciousness. Its very curious how sometimes complete ranges of memory are forgotten, of situations, of concepts. In some cases what could be recalled in a certain climate is erased and therefore all the phenomena recorded in memory that have anything to do with that state are erased as well. Entire ranges are erased because they might call forth that image associated to painful climates.
In general, forgetting is the impossibility of bringing already-recorded data to the consciousness. This happens because of a blockage in the reminiscence that impedes the reappearance of the information. However, there also exist “functional” types of forgetting that impede the continual appearance of memories, thanks to the mechanisms of interregulation that operate by inhibiting one apparatus while another is functioning. This means that, fortunately, one isn’t continually remembering everything; that fortunately it is possible to remember by situating objects and phenomena in different moments, in different times. Fortunately we do not continually remember because in this case the reception of data from the external world would be greatly disturbed. With such a background noise from continuous remembering, it’s clear that we would have problems observing new phenomena and naturally our intellectual operations would also be strongly disturbed if we were subjected to continuous bombardment from memory. We will even see how forgetting or amnesia or blockage also operate, not because of a defect, but in order to fulfill an important function in the psychism’s economy. Perhaps it isn’t that the structure is defectively assembled, but that it is fulfillling some function, even when it commits errors.
We can observe different levels of memory. In the acquisition of individual memory, in the first moments when one begins to perceive and already starts to record, a kind of “substratum” is formed (to give it a name), a kind of ancient memory substratum, a profound layer of memory. Over this base of memory, which is the data base that the consciousness will work with, a system of relations becomes structured that the consciousness later implements. It is the most ancient memory from the point of view of the foundations of the operations performed. Over this older memory all the recordings that continue to be registered throughout life go about being “deposited” —this is a second level of memory. And there is a third level of memory, which is the immediate memory, of the immediate data that we work with. Normally the profound memory is filed away with force, without any production in its substratum of significant operations, whereas in the recent memory an entire work of putting in order, of classification and filing of data must be carried out. Also, between these levels (i.e., the most recent level, the immediate level and the mediate level), something like “differences of potential” are established, we could call them, in which the new data enter and also go about modifying the mediate memory. If we were to carry out a simple, schoolbook classification, we would speak of an ancient memory, a mediate memory and an immediate memory, and the biggest job of classification would be given to the immediate memory, more than to the other types. Even if the older data aren’t worked with intensely, they are very deep-rooted. It’s as though they created a field into which the new data falls. For this reason we have serious difficulties in doing work with the ancient memory. We can carry out works with the immediate memory, acting indirectly over the mediate memory, but it is extremely difficult for us to modify the deep imprints of the substratum. This is the background that has remained, strongly recorded; it is the one that is exercising influence over the new potentials that arrive to the archivist. Thus, in reality the internal tensions of the memory are exerting influence—what we could call types of ‘internal climates’ of the memory—over the new data.
In any recording, as well as in the memorization of what is recorded, the work of the emotions has an extremely important role. Thus, painful emotions or painful states that accompany a recording later give us a register that is different from that of the recordings effected in pleasant emotional states. Therefore, when a certain external sensory recording is evoked, the internal states that accompanied it will also arise. If the external data is accompanied by a defensive emotional system, a system of painful emotions, the evocation of what was recorded will come tinted by that entire system of painful ideation that accompanied the recording of the external data. And this has important consequences.
There is also a kind of a situational type of memory. One records a person in a certain situation. Soon one sees that same person but in a situation that has nothing to do with the first one. Then one meets up with that person, registers them as familiar but without fully recognizing them; the images don’t coincide because the image of the person in the new situation doesn’t coincide with the situation in which the person had been first recorded. In reality, all types of recordings are situational and we can speak of a kind of situational memory in which the object is recorded by context. When the context that the object is in is later modified, we detect a certain flavor of familiarity in the object, but we can’t recognize it because the referential parameters have changed. We then have difficulties with the recognition due to the variation of the context, upon confronting the old image with the new one. In the mechanisms of evocation—in remembrance in general—there are problems because sometimes we don’t know how to localize the object if we can’t find everything that accompanied it before. What we have said about evocation (that one doesn’t search for images but rather for certain tones) is also valid for this case.
The entry pathways of the mnemic impulses (i.e., the impulses of memory) are the internal senses, the external senses and the activities of the coordination apparatus. On the other hand, the stimuli that arrive follow a double pathway—one pathway that goes directly to the apparatus of register, and one pathway that goes to the memory apparatus. It is enough for the stimuli to lightly brush the sensory thresholds for them to be registerable. And minimal activity in the different levels of consciousness suffices for the recording to take place. On the other hand, when the memory is updated through the translation from impulse to image and from image to center (since there is in turn a register of the center’s functioning), memory is reinforced. We are saying this: if an impulse of memory arrives to consciousness, and in the consciousness this impulse is converted into an image, this image acts over the centers and these emit the signal toward the outside. Upon effecting the signal outwards, in any case the center’s activity is registered in the internal senses. Therefore, how does one learn, really? Does one really learn through the datum that reaches the senses and is archived in memory, or does one learn when one carries out the action? A little of both.
In school education it has been assumed that a transmitter source emits a signal, a receptor source captures the signal, and this is what learning consists of. It seems that things don’t quite work in this way. It seems that one learns when the data that leaves from memory reaches the consciousness, is translated into an image, mobilizes a center and goes out like a response (whether the response is intellectual or emotional or motor). When this impulse converted into an image mobilizes the center and the center implements, one has a simultaneous internal register of that center’s action. When this entire feedback circuit is established is when the recording is accentuated. In other words: one learns by doing and not simply by registering. If you work with a child by giving him explanations and the child is simply in a receptive attitude, his learning situation will be very different from that of a child who is given data and asked to structure relationships between the data and explain what he learned. Since simultaneously there is a circuit between the one who teaches and the one who learns, the same operations of the one who learns, the asking by the learner about the one who teaches makes the teacher have to carry out works and establish relations that he himself had not thought of. And so, in this relational system, everyone learns. It is a relational system between both interlocutors, in which, of course, the scheme of cause-effect doesn’t work. What works is a continual re-adaptation in structure, in which the datum is being viewed from different points and there is not just the active attitude of the one who supplies data and the passive attitude of the one who receives the data.
In the circuit between senses and coordinator, the memory acts like a kind of connective, like a bridge, on occasion compensating the lack of sensory data, whether through evocation or through involuntary remembrance. And in the case of deep sleep, where there is no entry of external data, cenesthetic data combined with data from memory are reaching the consciousness. In this case, the mnemic data do not appear to be intentionally evoked, but at any rate the coordinator is performing a job – it is putting data in order, it is analyzing, it is carrying out operations with the participation of memory. Even in the state of deep sleep, all these operations are being carried out. Consciousness is doing this. As you know, we don’t identify consciousness with vigil. Consciousness for us is something much vaster, and for this reason we speak of levels of consciousness. Very well, the consciousness, in its level of sleep, is occupied with the mechanical work of classification and ordering of the data. In the level of deep sleep there is reorganization of vigilic raw material, i.e., from recent memory. This is why the dreams of the day have to do preferentially with the raw material that was received in the course of the day. Of course long associative chains are established there and the datum of that day, the day’s raw material in turn hooks up and connects with the previous data; but we are dealing basically with the day’s raw material (the recent memory), which is working on the formation of the reverie nucleus.
The coordinator can address itself to the memory through evocation. We call this evocation “reversibility mechanism.” It requires an activity from the coordinator in the search for sources. There are also numerous errors of memory. The most common memory error is false recognition, which arises when a new datum is related incorrectly to a previous one. This situation I am in now is extremely similar to another situation I was in before, except that I’ve never seen this object before that I have now. Since situational-type recordings exist, I now experience the sensation of already having seen the object; and it’s not that I’ve ever seen it before, but that I recognize similar situations to the one I’m in now and that have already happened at some other time. Then I emplace this new object within that other situational memory, and it appears to me as recognized. Sometimes the opposite happens. An object that I recognize summons up a situation that I have never experienced before, but that I have the impression of having lived through. A variant of this, the variant called “mistaken remembrance,” is that of replacing a datum that does not appear in memory with another one, as if one were filling an information vacuum.
The generic term for a register of a total impossibility of evoking data or complete sequences of data is “amnesia.” There are different classifications of these amnesias, of these forgettings. There can be amnesias that are not just referred to a specific object, or to objects are linked with it contiguously, contradictorily or similarly. Amnesias can also operate wherein what is erased is not a certain object, but a certain situation, and [the erasing] is acting in the different levels of memory. An example: I don’t forget what happened just five days ago, but I forget, in different stages of my life, some situations that are related amongst themselves. The forgetting is therefore not just linear in a temporal range, but sometimes it is selective of a specific situation that is repeated in different vital stages. That entire range is erased—apparently so, because in reality it is very difficult for something to be erased from memory. What normally happens is that the datum cannot be evoked because there is no register of such a sensation, because that sensation of the register corresponding to that range was influenced by other types of sensations—by painful sensations, among others. The painful sensations that accompany the recordings of certain phenomena are the ones that tend to disappear in the evocation. Since these painful sensations are rejected by the entire structure, then everything that accompanies them is rejected. Basically it is the mechanism of pain in the recording of a datum that sooner or later will make the datum vanish; it will make the datum disappear, at least in its evocative aspect. In any case, whatever was recorded with pain is either forgotten or is once again evoked in the consciousness, but the lateral contents that accompany it will have been transformed. There are recordings that are ‘branded’ on one’s memory, as some would say, that are painful recordings. However, if one examines these painful recordings well, it will be apparent that numerous phenomena that accompany them have been drastically transformed. Every recording is associated to other, contiguous ones. There is therefore no such thing as an isolated remembrance; rather the coordinator selects, from among the memories, those that are necessary to it.
Referring to the problem of the recording of something painful and something pleasurable, the following question comes up: What happens when a sensory stimulus is recorded pleasurably, but because of other circumstances it provokes moral pain or intellectual pain? Imagine a person who, because of his moral formation, has problems with certain sensory data of a pleasurable kind. There, pain and pleasure are mixed together. It turns out that this person registers physical pleasure, and that register of physical pleasure at the same time creates a problem of moral valuation for him. How will he evoke that register then? Most probably, in future he won’t even want to remember what happened. But it is equally probable that a kind of obsessive state will arise in him with respect to that situation. Then we will meet this good person who, on one hand, represses the evocation of the pleasurable registers, and, on the other, the pleasurable registers surge up and impose themselves on his consciousness.
Consciousness
We understand the consciousness as the system of coordination and register that is effected by the human psychism. Sometimes we talk about “consciousness” and other times of “coordinator,” and still others of a “registerer.” What happens is that even when the same entity is concerned, it is fulfilling different functions; but we are not dealing with different entities. A very different matter is what we call the “I”. We don’t identify that “I” with the consciousness. We consider the levels of consciousness as different ambits of work of the consciousness, and we identify the “I” with that which observes the psychic processes—not necessarily vigilic ones—that develop. In vigil I go about registering and carrying out numerous operations. If someone asks me, “Who are you?” I will answer: “Me.”—and I will add to that, an ID card, a number, a name or things of this sort. And I have the impression that that “I” will register the same operations from inside, it will observe the operations of the consciousness. For now we already have a distinction between the operations that the consciousness carries out and this observer that refers to those operations of the consciousness. And if I pay attention to how I go about observing things, I see that I observe things “from inside.” And if I observe my own mechanisms, I see that my mechanisms are seen “from outside.” If I now lower the level of consciousness and I go down to sleep, how do I see myself? I walk along the street, in a dream; I see cars that pass by, people that walk by—from where do I see the people who pass, the cars that drive past? From inside myself? (As I see you now, and I know you are outside of me, and therefore I see you from inside me.) Is this how I see myself [in sleep]? No, I see myself from outside. If I observe how I see from the level of sleep, I see myself seeing the passing cars, the passing people, and I observe myself from outside. Do it another way—try it with the memory. Now you remember yourselves in a situation when you were children. Good. What do you see in that scene? Do you (as children) see yourselves from inside, the way you see the things that surround you? You see yourselves from outside. In that sense, where is the “I”? Is the “I” inside the system of structuring that the consciousness carries out, and perceives things, or is the “I” outside? On one hand, one has the impression that in some cases it is inside and in other cases it is outside. And on the other hand, one sees that upon observing the same operations of the consciousness, the observer is separated from these operations. In any case, the “I” appears as separate—be it inside or outside. What we do know is that it isn’t included in the operations.
That I then—how is it that I identify it with the consciousness if all the registers that I have are of separation between the “I” and consciousness? If I observe all the registers that I have of the “I,” I will see that all these registers are of separation between this thing I call “consciousness and operations of the consciousness” and what I call “I”.
How is this “I” constituted; why does this “I” arise and why do I make the mistake of associating the “I” to the consciousness? Firstly, we don’t consider as conscious any phenomenon that is not registered; neither do we consider as conscious any operation of the psychism in which coordination tasks do not participate. When we speak of ‘register,’ we speak of registering at different levels. This is because we do not identify consciousness with vigil. Consciousness is something broader. Usually consciousness is linked to vigilic activity, and everything else is left outside of the consciousness.
As for the fundamental mechanisms of consciousness, we understand as such the mechanisms of reversibility, which are the faculties of the consciousness for directing itself to its information sources through attention. If it addresses itself to the sensory source, we speak of ‘apperception.’ If it directs itself to the memory source, we speak of ‘evocation.’ There can also be ‘apperception in evocation’ when a datum that was recorded in the threshold of register is apperceived. Such is the case of subliminal recording, where one does not realize when it takes place, but nonetheless, later on it can be evoked.
I call ‘perception’ the simple register of the sensory data. Here we are together, a noise is heard; I perceive the noise. My interest then can direct itself to the source of the noise, but the fact is that the datum imposed itself on my register. This I will consider as perception. Naturally it is extremely complex, a structuring has taken place and all that. On the other hand, I call ‘apperception’ the search for the sensory data. Thus I perceive when the datum imposes itself on [the sense]; I apperceive when I look for the datum. I term a ‘remembrance’ this element that does not come from the senses but comes from memory, and arrives to the consciousness. I call ‘evocation’ the activity of the consciousness that directs itself toward searching for the data from memory. But there are also other cases that make things a bit complicated for us: “apperception in the evocation,” for example, in which the acts of the two apparatuses seem to mix together. This is the case in which the datum has been recorded in the sensory threshold and at that moment I don’t have vigilic consciousness of what has happened with that datum, but the datum has been registered in memory. Then, later on, during a work of evocation the datum emerges. Let’s see an example. I see numerous people on the street, I scan them automatically with my gaze and, later, remembering what happened, I say, “But a friend of mine walked in front of me and I didn’t say hello to him!” Here I am working with apperception in the evocation. That is to say, I am focusing on what happened in memory, I am evoking, and upon evoking, something arises that was recorded but without my being properly aware of it, at the moment it was recorded. Then, of all the sensations of register that I now have in the act of evoking, I select and I go to one of them.
The performance of the reversibility mechanisms is directly related to the level of work of the consciousness. And we say that, as the levels of consciousness descend, the work of these mechanisms decreases, and vice versa. This will be of great practical importance for us in subsequent works. In the measure that the level of work of the consciousness diminishes, the mechanisms of reversibility are progressively blocked, its activities begin decreasing. And as we raise the level of work of the consciousness, the work of reversibility (i.e., the consciousness’s direction of its own mechanisms) rises.
There is a minimum structuring, on the basis of which all the mechanisms of consciousness function: that of act-object. Acts-objects function in the consciousness in the same way stimuli-registers work, linked together by this mechanism of structurality of the consciousness, this intentional mechanism of the consciousness. Acts are always referred to objects, whether the objects are tangible, intangible or merely psychic.
Just as the senses and memory are always at work, so the consciousness is continually launching acts, directing itself toward objects. The bond between an act and an object is not permanent since acts exist that are launched in a search for their object, which is precisely the situation that gives dynamic to the consciousness.
Some psychologists thought it was a fundamental characteristic of the consciousness that the act of consciousness should be linked to the object. That there could be no act without an object and no object without an act. Of course they didn’t rule out the possibility that the object to which the consciousness was referred could change. If this were not so, the consciousness would meet with serious difficulties in moving from one object to another, because at the moment of transit the act would find itself without the same object. It is thanks to this act’s ability to work in search of objects that the consciousness can shift from some objects to others. Strictly speaking, those psychologists discovered a great truth and it is that the act of consciousness is referred to an object, and even if the object changes the consciousness directs itself “toward.” The consciousness, therefore, is intentional and behaves like an act-object structure. And so the objects of consciousness—be they perceptions that arrive to the consciousness, representations, abstractions, etc.,—all of them appear as the objects of acts of consciousness. And therefore I can look for a specific memory—this is an object. Now I can search for a specific perception—this is an object. Now I can perform an abstraction —this is an object. But the operations that I carry out are of a varied nature—there are different types of acts.
This intentionality of the consciousness (this directing the acts of consciousness toward determined objects) is always launched toward the future, toward things that must appear. This activity of futurization of the act of consciousness is extremely important. The intentionality is always launched toward the future, which is registered as the tension of searching.
If I am going to remember what happened half an hour ago, I am preparing myself to launch my act of consciousness toward the future. At this moment I “as yet” have not found what happened ten minutes ago, but I’m searching for it. Surely in the future I’ll find what I’m looking for. Now, finally, I’ve found what I was seeking. Inevitably, the consciousness moves in future mode and in this way it works, going back or reverting over past events. Inevitably, the time of consciousness is that of futurization; it goes toward what will happen to the consciousness, even in the case of remembrance. So these people who go toward the past and remain rooted there, fixed on the past, it seems as though their dynamic of consciousness had become crystallized—even for these people the dynamic of consciousness continues to act. In all cases I go about creating registers of past things, but the direction of my consciousness always is in the search, it is always advancing, even if it is trying to bring back events that already took place a long, long time ago. The structuring of the times of consciousness is different according to the variation of the consciousness’s level of work. The data are stored in succession in a particular way and later I can evoke their successive order, but this doesn’t function in the same way in other levels of work of the consciousness. The succession of events is modified depending on the level of consciousness. Things that happened before can appear to happen afterwards, the subsequent events can seem to be previous events, and the peculiar mixture is produced that happens in dreams.
There are two important characteristics in the structuring that the consciousness does according to the level of work that is operating: the ordering of the times [of consciousness], on one hand, and the variation of reversibility, on the other.
The effectiveness of the reversibility mechanisms and the ordering of the objects in the times of consciousness are fully vigilic characteristics. We can speak of another kind of mechanism, or another type of function of the consciousness, such as the attention, which is an aptitude of the consciousness that makes it possible to observe the internal and external phenomena. When a stimulus gets past the threshold, it awakens the interest of the consciousness and occupies a central field toward which the attention is directed. In other words, the attention works according to interests, according to something that in some way makes an impression on the consciousness
A stimulus arises that gets past the threshold, and then, there being no other things to deal with, my attention directs itself toward the stimulus that calls for attention. In other words, the attention is always guided by interests, which are registers. The object can remain within a central field, in which case I am fully focused on it. If I consider that object fully, the objects that surround it lose interest for me in the sense that my attention encompasses the object and, secondarily, its field expands out to include others. But my attention is directed toward an object. I call this, field of presence—i.e., everything that appears in my attention in a sovereign way. And everything that doesn’t appear strictly connected to that object becomes diluted in my attention. It’s as though the other things surrounding the object were of no interest to me. I consider this gradual disinterest in other objects as entering into the field of copresence, though that copresence is also acting and accompanies the central object’s presence. Therefore we should not confuse the field of presence and copresence with the old representation of the “attentional focus,” that supposedly made the object of attention stand out and gradually blurred the other objects, reducing these last to a state of inactivity.
These fields of copresence, though they appear to be phenomena that are strictly circumscribed to the mechanisms of consciousness, have to do with the memory. In a first moment I am observing an object. This object is surrounded by other objects. The object I attend to is the most important one, but there are also others. These operations have to do with the attention and they have to do with perception. If I evoke the central object that I previously observed, it will then enter my field of presence; but I can now also evoke, and place in my field of presence, the objects that were secondary at the moment of perception; such that, in evocation, I can displace my field of presence to the copresences. What was secondary can be converted, in the evocation, into the primary. I can do all this because, in any case, there has been a register of the present object and of the copresent objects.
And these copresences in memory will perform very important functions because they will make it possible for me to link together a number of objects that are not present in one moment of recording, but that have been recorded before. This will enable me to say: “Ah, this looks like something else that I saw before!” “Ah, this is similar to that other thing!” “Aha, this is different from that one!” “Aha, this is related to that!” It is because, as I go about perceiving, the memory is also working and numerous data are working copresently in front of what I am seeing. This work of presences and copresences makes it possible to structure the new data that are arriving, even if by means of the perceptions. If the pressure from those data of copresence didn’t exist, I couldn’t structure the new arriving data.
Thus we say very simply that, when the attention works, there are objects that appear as central and objects that appear in the periphery—objects that appear copresently. This attentional presence and copresence happens in the case of both external objects and internal objects.
When I attend to an object an evident aspect becomes present, and what is not evident operates in a copresent way. This object that I’m seeing is present only in terms of what I am able to perceive of it; the rest of it is “concealed.” But the part that is concealed acts in a copresent way. I do not imagine that what is in front of me is just a line, or merely a plane, or two planes that I simply perceive. I realize that it is a body. All of this is working copresently, and all of it is more than the perception that I have. Every time I perceive, I perceive the object plus what accompanies it. The consciousness does this on top of the perception. And I am always perceiving, I am structuring more than what I perceive. Sometimes I do it well, sometimes not so well. This inferring more about an object than what is perceiveable of it is characteristic of the consciousness. The consciousness works with more than what it needs to attend to—it goes over and beyond the observed object. In the different levels of consciousness, one experiences the same thing. For example, in vigil there is copresence of reverie, and in dreams there can be copresence of vigil. Who hasn’t had the sensation while they were dreaming that they were awake? Who hasn’t had the sensation of knowing, while they slept, that they were dreaming? Who hasn’t had the sensation in vigil of being more-or-less asleep, when they became aware of the force of a sequence of reveries? The levels are working copresently and sometimes one has a register of this fact. Sometimes contents from other levels bloom in vigil, and then I become aware of the pressure exerted by those contents. My vigil is invaded by a state, my vigilic level of consciousness is invaded by a state that does not correspond to the world of perception; by objects that have nothing to do with the objects I perceive in daily life. The states that arise in my vigil make me aware that other levels are operating simultaneously with the level of vigil. This is also copresence of the work of the other levels, simultaneous with the work of a specific level.
In this singular consciousness there are also some abstractive and associative mechanisms The abstractive capacity of the consciousness also increases in the level of vigil. We say in general that reversibility increases in vigil, the management of attention increases, the order of events in time increases, and also the abstractive work of the consciousness increases. In semisleep and sleep, all the mechanisms we’ve described before experience a drop in their level of work, and the capacity for abstraction decreases as well. As the level falls, the capacity for abstraction diminishes; one is less able to think abstractly. Fewer mathematical operations can be done when one is sleepy, and few mathematical operations are done when one is asleep. However, as the level of consciousness lowers, the associative capacity increases. There is also association at the base of vigil, but vigil is specialized in the abstractive mechanisms. Speaking of the imagination, we say that its work is manifested by the activation of the associative mechanisms. We verify that there is a spontaneous imagination, so to speak, a simply associative imagination, and a directed imagination. There’s a big difference between associating things in a disorderly way and establishing relations between different events the way a novelist can, for example. He writes “Chapter 1,” “Chapter 2,” and the imagination creates an order. Spontaneous, chaotic and associative imagination is quite different from an imagination that puts in order everything associative that has been taking place. This last is often called “directed imagination.” Art makes much use of this type of imagination.
There are important distinctions between the abstractive operations and the imaginative operations. The abstractive ones have greater logic; they put in order the world of data, whereas the imagination does not busy itself with putting in order, but with working with images that function based on associations and that go from the identical to the identical, or from the similar to the similar. That is one pathway, which we call “similitude.” Similitude is, for example, the association: “red = blood.” By contiguity or proximity, one can associate: “bridge = river.” And by contrast one can associate “white = black,” “high = low,” and so forth. Divagational imagination is characterized by free association, without a guide, in which the images are turned loose and imposed on the consciousness, above all in dreams and reveries. In directed imagination, on the other hand, there is a certain operative freedom of the consciousness in its vigilic level, which allows for a direction around a plan of inventiveness, in which it is of interest to formalize something as yet nonexistent. Someone follows a plan and says: “I’m going to write on such topic” and they set the imagination loose, but more-or-less according to a plan.
Depending on whether the impulses that arrive to the consciousness are worked on by one or another of the mechanisms pointed out, i.e., by the mechanisms of abstraction or by those of association, different translations will be obtained which will be formalized in different representations. Normally the abstract works have little to do with the image. On the other hand, when the associative mechanisms are activated, the base of the work is the image. This matter of the image leads us to questions of vital importance.
6. Space of Representation 3
Some psychologists believed the image to be a bad “copy” of perception, and, in sum, an error of the consciousness. For us the image fulfills many functions, and one of the most important functions of the image is that of carrying impulses to the response apparatus. Therefore, when an image appears, a response tends to be mobilized. When an abstraction arises, a response is not necessarily mobilized. In this case of the “things I imagine,” what is happening is that I carry impulses from the representation to the response apparatus. We will see this through the example of “muscular tonicity”. If I imagine an object to the right of my body, little by little it will tend to point in that direction. If I imagine it to the left, the same happens in that other direction. The hand moves more easily in the direction of the object thought of; it is more difficult for it to move in the opposite direction. The image is predisposing the work of the motor center in one direction or another.
Let’s expand on this. A person is at home and feels hungry, and immediately goes to the refrigerator. Anyone would say that in front of the stimulus, that response operates. As easy as that! But what is this about, that to the “hunger-stimulus” corresponds the response to “go to the refrigerator”? Why is it, for example, that when someone feels hungry they don’t go to the toilet? How does the person do it so that the refrigerator appears and not the toilet? Surely something very fast has happened that not even they were able to visualize, but it acted. It is of utmost importance to comprehend the function carried out by the image, because it is what prepares the corporal tone and finally moves the body in a particular direction. When we say that “the image carries psychic charges to physical levels,” we are very far from what the psychologists thought who assumed that the image was a degraded perception. Let’s relate the work of images to that of the red blood cells. These red blood cells reach the lungs and load oxygen. From there they travel through the bloodstream to discharge the oxygen in different parts of the body. When they do so, they load themselves up with corrupted gases, then they return to the lungs to unload their charge. So too these connectives of psychic work (the images ) pick up charges from one site, carry them to another, discharge them, once again pick up charges, and so on, carrying out the transfer of psychophysical energy. The images go about moving impulses from place to place, which on occasion are tensions, on occasion irritations, occasionally data of perception, occasionally memory data. These impulses are translated into images, which, when manifested, are launched toward the centers of response. Then the centers move, either defending the body or provoking flight, or approaching things that are pleasurable. And it is thanks to these images that the registers of what is pleasurable and what is painful can be converted into bodily activity. But the same thing also occurs regarding the pleasurable and the painful, in the very activities of the mind. Some images are fulfilling the function of discharging tensions in the representation, through the function of evoking pleasurable objects or situations that serve the economy of the psychism. These images always tend to open up a pathway, and, in doing so, they encounter resistances. There are, precisely, certain images that impose themselves obsessively because they are unable to open up a channel. Certainly there are procedures for allowing the image to find its way and manifest toward the centerin question. And this shows us clearly the cathartic function of the image. The image is later converted into words, for example, and some tensions are discharged through the words or continue being transformed in their displacement toward the centers. Besides this, we will find not only the “cathartic” function (the transporting of the image’s charge), but also the “transferential” function that the image has, when it goes about separating itself from the field of impulses that motivated it.
Let us ask the question: How is it possible that, in the level of sleep, the images that are so powerful do not move the body? They ought to, because of tonicity, move the body more than in vigil. If there are more images as the level drops, then during sleep the body ought to move more. However, what is normal is that in sleep the body does not move behind the images. Here a blockage mechanism operates that can be tracked physiologically—a mechanism that operates when the level of consciousness drops, by cutting off the connection with the work of the motor center. Then the images appear, and the discharge that would mobilize the body doesn’t pass through.
When we speak of images we are not just speaking of visual images. Each sense produces its own type of image, and thanks to this, one can have representations of olfactory phenomena, gustatory, auditory phenomena, etc. Normally, above all in this kind of culture and with this type of education, the images are associated to vision. However, you can verify in yourselves that you can also represent odors or you can remember voices without necessarily depending on visual representation. What you remember in relation to smell or sound, takes place in “some part” of the representation. Naturally you will distinguish, with respect to the location of the phenomena of auditory representation, between the sound that arrives from outside and the sound that you represent. or imagine. This last is not just “inside” (and this already flags for you a space of representation ), but that “inside” is located in some “place.” This place is not necessarily seen, but it is experienced and it is felt. Now you’re at a concert, you have the orchestra in front of you. You close your eyes, you’re very attentive to the sounds of the instruments. You hear an instrument to the left. Then you hear an instrument to the right. If you pay attention to your eyes you will see that when you listen to something from the left, your eyes move to the left, and when you listen to the instrument on the right, your eyes move to the right. In this way you are following, not exactly the music, but the producer-sources of the sounds with your eye movement as well. From this you can infer (in yet another case of tonicity), that wherever the attention to the phenomenon goes, even if it is not visual, the eyes will also follow that source; such that, although the eye can have nothing to do with music, nothing to do with sound, the eye follows in space the stimuli that are arriving to the ear. Moreover, it is said of a sound that it is “high” or “low,” because also (if you observe what happens with the representation of these sounds and observe the register of the eye’s movements), you will verify that, as the sounds become higher pitched, the eye tends to move upward. As the sounds become deeper, the eye tends to move downward. Apparently there is no connection between the eye and the ear. But since all the senses produce their representations, and this representation is given in a mental space, this space sets an ambit where the representations are emplaced that have originated from different perceptual sources. This space is nothing other than the totality of internal representations proper to the cenesthetic system. And so the mental space is a sort of screen that reproduces the impulses of one’s cenesthesia. Thus, every phenomenon of perception that arrives to the apparatus of coordination is emplaced at some point of the representation screen. Whether it is a matter of a sound, a smell, or an object that enters visually, in every case it is emplaced at some point of the space of representation. This space not only has gradation on two planes—it has depth, it has volume, and it approximately replicates one’s own body. It is a “body” of representation, or—if you prefer—a “spatial referential background.”
If you remember the orchestra in our example, perhaps you’ll also remember the music and the “spatial” emplacement of the different instruments and sounds. It will also be verifiable that, in acts of remembering, the eye moves in search of the “sound”-producing source, locating the “places” from where said “sound” originates. When sounds that are “distant and to the front” are remembered, they are emplaced at a depth of the space that is different from that of the memory of sounds located “near and to the front,” and this gradation of internal distances is accompanied by the readjustment of the eye, as though it were perceiving phenomena from the external world. These categories of “near” and “far,” combined with the positions “front” and “back,” “to the right and left,” “up” and “down,” clearly show us the volumetrics of the space of representation. If this space has at least three dimensions, then all phenomena (even tactile, gustatory or olfactory) will have possibilities of emplacement as to height, breadth and depth. This depth of the space of representation is what enables the location of phenomena, whether they have come from the internal world or from the external world.
Here we must establish that the “barrier” separating the “internal” and the “external” is touch, appropriately divided into internal and external touch. One important location of the “tactile barrier” is in the face, where precisely the majority of the external senses are concentrated within a small space.
Therefore, there exists a gradation system in the space of representation that makes it possible to locate the phenomena starting from their source, and besides, to distinguish up to a certain extent between the world of cenesthesia and the world of the external senses. Thanks to the existence of the space of representation, a system of impulses arrives to consciousness and is translated into an image. This image is again translated, firing activity at a center and the latter is activated in the direction of a certain range and depth of the referenced space. On the other hand, there is also perception of the center’s work, the perception generates the corresponding image, and in this way, in a feedback circuit, the general activity goes about adjusting itself.
If the internal representation is emplaced at the level of the cenesthetic phenomena, these images that are converted into responses will mobilize phenomena at cenesthetic levels. If the representation is triggered in the gradations proper to external activities, they will then mobilize centers in an external direction. Of course there can be numerous errors in the emplacement of an image within a level of representation, and therefore it would be of interest to have access to procedures that would allow the displacement of the image (which is the basis of the response) toward the appropriate point of the inner space of representation.
The space of representation adopts different characteristics according to whether one level of consciousness or another is acting. When a phenomenon appears in the space of representation, in vigil, it is different from when it appears in the level of sleep. When you see yourselves in a dream, you emplace yourselves in some point of the space of representation differently than when you remember a phenomenon. In the first case, you see yourselves included as an image inside that space, but you observe yourselves from an external point of sight (i.e., you see yourselves from “outside”). In the second case, you recognize the phenomenon inside the space of representation and you observe it from yourselves (in other words, your point of sight is “outside,” as in the previous case, but you do not see yourselves from an external point of sight; rather you see the object from yourselves as though looking through your eyes, recognizing the object included in the space of representation ). If you have the point of sight “outside,” the internal space appears as a container and one’s self image appears contained within that space. In this case, the consequences of the translation of image into movement will be different than if you are “outside” as a point of sight and as an image (since you look from yourselves and, therefore, you are container and the observed object is content).
The first happens in dreams. You see yourselves within the space of representation. What do you mobilize then? You mobilize the image of yourselves. But this is very different from your not seeing yourselves, but rather seeing the phenomenon as included in that space. Therefore, although there are physiological explanations for the disconnection of motricity that is produced with the lowering of the levels of consciousness, of course there are psychological registers that enable us to comprehend that, precisely in dreams, the mobilization of images toward the world is paralyzed, because the register that the subject has of himself is observed from an external point, and, therefore, he becomes included in the internal space. We must again underline that the registers we are mentioning about one’s own self image and the point of observation should not necessarily be considered as being visual images. In the congenitally blind, according what they explain, no visual representations appear; and yet there is no doubt that they remember auditory, gustatory and other types of phenomena very well. They don’t need visual images. In any case, in the blind the representations of the other senses appear as spatially located.
This is a good time to make a few observations on the structuring of the consciousness and the space of representation, and on some errors that take place in their work. According to whether the impulses that arrive to the consciousness are worked on by one or another of the mechanisms of abstraction, classification, divagation or directed imagination, different translations will be obtained that formalize multiple representations. As for the errors of work of the consciousness, we can consider them as different from the errors that occur in the relationship between the consciousness, senses and memory, which we generically term “dysfunctions.” Hallucination, for example, is not a dysfunction but an error of the coordinator. It is produced when representations appear that are “projected” and perceived “outside” the consciousness, and they are experienced as real objects or situations emplaced in the external world, with the characteristics proper to the phenomena that are perceived with the senses. In this sense, all phenomena produced in the levels of sleep and active semisleep are hallucinatory phenomena, because of the powerfully suggestive register of reality they present to the observer, whose point of sight is “outside” the scene, in a way that is similar to vigil.
Hallucinations (in vigil) are configurations performed by the consciousness over the basis of memory. They usually appear in situations of acute exhaustion; because of lack of stimuli; in certain illness and in situations where there is danger of death. They are frequent in the case of physical debility and in cases of emotioned consciousness (which we will discuss further on), in which the coordinator loses its capacity for displacement in time and space.
As dysfunctions of the consciousness in relation to the senses, we can mention the inability to coherently relate data, when data from one pathway are attributed to another.
There are numerous dysfunctions of the consciousness related to the memory, and they occur in the different levels of consciousness. It can be affirmed that the different levels have the function of compensating the mass of information, occasionally giving structuring responses or, rather, compensatory responses. This makes us think that if a phenomenon falls within the field of one level of consciousness, it immediately tends to be structured, related with others. From this level, a compensatory response is also immediately generated. These are levels that are subjected to successive disequilibria due to the irruption of new phenomena.
In the level of deep sleep, the work of the external senses is minimal. There is no other information from the external environment other than what gets over the threshold imposed by sleep itself. The work of the cenesthetic sense is predominant, contributing impulses that are translated and transformed by the work of associative mechanisms, giving rise to oneiric images, the images of sleep. The characteristics of the images at this level are their great power of suggestion, their great hypnotic capacity. Psychological time and space are modified with respect to vigil. The act-object structuring frequently appears with no correspondence among its elements. A specific object is searched for and another arises that completes the search in an extraordinary way. Likewise, climates and situations tend to become independent of each other, such that the acts of consciousness in the different levels do not coincide with the objects of consciousness, as occurs in vigil. Aside from this, the charges that accompany representations of the level of deep sleep become independent from the objects, that, in vigil, would maintain a closer connection. The disappearance of criticism and self-criticism is typical in sleep, but as the level of consciousness rises, these mechanisms augment their work.
The inertia of the levels and the ambit in which the phenomena are located cause the mobility of the levels and the passage from one level to another to be gradual, more-or- less slow, and have a certain continuity. In this way, the exit from and entry into sleep are done by passing through semisleep, and cases of direct passage from vigil to sleep—without minimal registers of the passage through the intermediary levels—are quite extraordinary. If, starting from the level of sleep, a subject awakes in a state of alteration, the inertia of the previous stage of semisleep will operate in this case of vigil, dragging contents from the preceding moment.
In the level of semisleep, which precedes vigil, the external senses begin sending information to the consciousness—information that is not totally structured, because there is also interference from reveries and the presence of strong cenesthetic register. The contents of sleep lose their suggestive power, though they continue to appear, due to a sort of semi-vigilic perception which already provides new parameters, supplies new references. The suggestibility continues to act, above all in the case of certain very vivid images that we call “hypnogogic images.” On the other hand, the system of intermittent reveries reappears. It is in this level where the reverie nucleus and the secondary reveries can be more easily registered, at least in their climates and basic tensions. The level of semisleep has different characteristics, depending on whether it acts in pre-sleep (dragging contents from vigil), or in post-sleep (dragging oneiric contents). It is also possible to observe the case of an altered state of consciousness that occurs only under certain conditions. The reverie mode that characterizes this level (we continue to speak of semisleep) is usually transferred by the action of inertia to vigil, providing the raw material for divagation although elements of vigilic perception can also be present. Surely, in the transit from one level to another, the space of representation becomes modified as well as the subject’s emplacement of himself in this space. In this ambit the coordinator can already perform some coherent operations. We also mention that this level is highly unstable and therefore easy to disequilibrate and alter. We also find the states of passive and active semisleep. Passive semisleep offers an easy passage to sleep, as though the subject allowed himself to simply “fall” and collaborates with a system of progressive relaxation. On the other hand, we speak of active semisleep, when semisleep is predisposing itself toward vigil. This state can be converted into an “altered” one when one passes to a “false vigil,” because the system of relations with the external world has been connected but without relinquishing the system of ideation of semisleep.
In vigil the external senses contribute a greater flow of information, regulating the internal senses by inhibition and making it possible for the coordinator to orient itself toward the world in the psychism’s compensatory work. Here the mechanisms of abstraction, the mechanisms of criticism and self-criticism operate, attaining high levels of manifestation and intervention in the tasks of coordinating and registering. The reversibility mechanisms, which were manifested minimally in the preceding levels, can function extensively here in vigil. The force of suggestion of the infravigilic contents diminishes with the expansion of the system of references based on external data. There is a tone of active vigil that can be attentive, with maximum management of apperception, and there is also a tone of altered vigil. Passive vigil can also be attentive or altered. In this last case, silent divagation appears, and the more-or-less fixed reveries.
There are numerous relationships between levels that produce reciprocal alterations. One level cannot act over another, nor can a transfer of charge take place from one level to another, without the level being affected. Any level that acts over another ends up being affected in turn. At least four factors can be cited that affect the relationship between levels. We call one of them “inertia,” another “noise,” another “rebound,” and another, “dragging.” Let’s talk a little about inertia. Each level of consciousness tries to maintain its own level of work and sustains its activity until it finalizes its cycle. We already talked before about how, in general, all of this was subject to cycles. And of course, vigil tries to stay in vigil for a cycle, during a more-or-less adequate length of time—the time when people carry out their daily activities. When fatigue increases (not just muscular but deep fatigue), then vigil’s cycle is already declining. But until then, in full vigil this state tries to maintain itself.
The following cited cases are the consequences of each level’s structural inertia, which tends to maintain itself and extend its characteristic type of articulation. The case of “noise” takes place when the previous level’s inertia appears as a background of perturbation in the superior level’s work. The inertia of semisleep appears as a background of perturbation in the state of vigil, which the subject has reached upon waking. As noise, we can distinguish emotional climates, tensions, and contents that do not correspond to the coordinator’s work at a given moment. The “rebound effect” arises as the response of a level into which contents from another level have been introduced, after overcoming the defenses of inertia or upon reaching the defenses of inertia. Thus there can be a content that moves around and when it reaches a certain level it meets with strong resistancesit encounters “the level’s defenses.” We say that the content “rebounds” —it returns to its original field. On occasion, contents, climates and tones that are proper to a level move around and remain in another level as “draggings.” The previous level is no longer there, but what had been visualized in that level is transferred and remains behind in another level as a “dragging.” Persons who wake up altered by a dream that came before are already in full vigil, and they maintain the images of the dream or the climate that the dream happened in—they maintain it as a dragging in vigil, and for quite some time.
There are important cases of climates, tensions or contents that are fixed in the psychism, that are dragged for a long time and appear in the different levels. These are cases of dragging, not from one level over another, but rather of a fixed content that appears in the different levels of consciousness and that can appear with different images but with the same characteristic climate. We are talking of dragging in a very generic sense
We must make some distinctions between tones, climates, tensions and contents. “Tones” are considered in relation to energetic intensity. The operations in each level can be effected with greater or lesser intensity, with greater or lesser tone; and on occasions a tone can be converted into a factor of noise. Too much volume in an activity makes it disproportionate in relation to the context of the other activities. We have always called “climates” (at least in the language we are using here), “mood”.” Because of their variability, climates appear intermittently and can cloak the consciousness for a certain length of time, tinting all its activities. We must differentiate these mood states, which have a strong emotional charge, from the emotional operations that accompany the entire functioning of the psychism. If the mood state, the emotional background is of distaste in general, whatever the object is that falls into that field, it will take on the characteristics of distaste. The climates can be fixed in the psychism and perturb the entire structure, impeding mobility and displacement toward other, more opportune climates. These fixed climates circulate through the different levels, and in this way they can pass from vigil to sleep, continue there, return to vigil, and so on, for a long time. All this is different from the situational climates that appear in precise situations. "Tensions" have a more physical, more "corporal" root. Of course everything is corporal, but these tensions have a more "corporal" root in the register that one has of them, since we perceive them directly in our musculature. Climates, on the other hand, are registered diffusely. The connection of these tensions to the psychism is not always direct, since muscular relaxation is not always accompanied by mental relaxation; rather the consciousness can continue having its tensions and alterations while the body has already obtained a state of relax. This is of some importance when we consider the systems of discharge of tensions. People tend to believe that a physical, muscular discharge is always correlated to mental distension—sometimes this isn’t so. At times a curious contradiction is produced in the subject who physically experiences that discharge of tensions, and yet, continues to undefined tensions.
We should keep in mind how this circuit of senses, memory, coordinator, levels and centers is integrated. The connectives between the senses, memory, consciousness and centers reveal important aspects of the psychism’s functioning. These connective circuits work interregulatedly. They are regulated among themselves, adjusted among themselves in continual dynamic, thus leading the entire psychism toward a complex self-regulation. When the coordinator performs apperception of a perception, for example, evocation is inhibited. The coordinator is now attentive to an object of perception, and, in the meantime, while it is attentive to that object, the data that the memory mechanically supplies are blocked. You will say that, in any case, the memory supplies information so that the datum that is coming from perception can be recognized. But the evidence disappears of the memory’s operations, hence the door is opened for the entry of perception and the attention is directed toward it. Inversely, apperception of the memory inhibits perception. Observe even a subject’s gaze when he is evoking—he tends to shut his eyelids, he tends to lessen the activity of external senses. And on the other hand, observe what happens in disturbed minds when processes that ought to be interregulated and compensated are mixed together. The contrary happens—the subject is immersed in an evocative world and their gaze becomes fixed, glassy and blank, giving one to understand that a kind of hallucinatory activity is taking place, in which what is happening in their evocation is transferred to the objectal world, cloaking it, as if external information were being received.
When the external senses are operating, the entry of internal stimuli is slowed down, and vice versa. The greatest interregulation manifests in the changes of level of work, when, with the fall into sleep, the reversibility mechanisms are blocked. As our level of consciousness goes down, the reversibility mechanisms are progressively blocked and the associative mechanisms are then powerfully released.
There is also automatic interregulation between the senses. When sight expands its mean threshold, touch, smell and hearing diminish, and the same thing occurs among the other senses. The eyes close so that one can hear better, etc.
As for the space of representation, where there are images that come from different senses, very interesting phenomena occur. As the level of consciousness drops, the dimensions of the space of representation expand and it becomes “volumetric.” This is so because, as the level of consciousness descends, the register of the external senses diminishes and the internal cenesthetic register expands. And so, as one descends in level, along with the increased register of the signals from the entire intrabody there is likewise an increased translation of the volumetric configuration of the mental space. The latter acquires greater dimensions and amplitude. As the level of consciousness rises, the signals coming from the cenesthesia are dimmed, they diminish and the confrontations begin with the data from mental operations and the data from the external senses. Therefore, the rise of the level of consciousness signifies the “flattening of the space of representation,” lack of register of the other configurations that are effected in the deeper levels.
Of course the space of representation operates in full vigil, but instead of acquiring volume this space is “flattened,” marking the differences in the representation of internal and external phenomena. Just the same, it also has its depth. When I represent in full vigil a phenomenon that is behind me, I represent it in a sort of mental space, which, in this case, includes the area behind my head, even if there are no eyes there. Since the eyes and the other external senses are emplaced in the external and anterior surface of the body, when a type of representation such as we have mentioned occurs (i.e., seeing what is behind me), I have references so as to mark the differences between the phenomena of external perception and those of internal representation. This doesn’t happen when we descend in level and we can observe the phenomenon in any direction, because the cenesthetic register come from all directions. Then I can see myself, as in dreams, from the outside, as though I was perceiving myself from the registers that I have in different parts of the space of representation. Upon observing the representations in a space that is different from vigilic space (i.e., the space in the level of sleep), such contents appear as if they were outside the observer, since the observer is (as a point of view) emplaced on the periphery of the space of representation, acting as a “container” of the represented objects. But it happens that oneself (as representation) can be placed within that space and be observed from the limits of the container. Of course, that “oneself” can be represented in different ways: as a visual image, or as a sum total of non-visual registers. In the vigilic level the external world is observed as unincluded in the space of representation, and “oneself” is identified with the point of view that appears at the other extreme of the relationship, being excluded from the world whence the perceptions come, except in cases of hallucination while in vigil, in which the space of representation is modified and internal contents are “projected” to the external world, and are consequently taken to be perceptions coming from the external senses. And if this happens it is, in turn, because the reversibility mechanisms have blocked, altering the level of consciousness.
7. Impulses: Translation and Transformation
Morphology of the impulses: Signs, Symbols and Allegories
The impulses that arrive to the coordinator from the senses and the memory are transformed into representations, into images. The consciousness processes these structures of perception and reminiscence to elaborate effective responses in its work of equilibrating the external and internal environments. While a reverie is an image -response to the internal environment of the consciousness, a motor displacement is a movement-response to the psychism’s external environment, and the displacement is also led by images. In the case of intellectual ideation carried to signical levels, we have another type of image -response that will fulfill communication functions, as is the case of language. But we also know there are certain signs and pure, abstract ideas that revert to the interior of the psychism.
On the other hand, any representation that arises in the coordinator’s field of presence calls forth associative chains between the object presented and its copresence. Thus, while the object is captured in precise detail in the field of presence, in the field of copresence there are relationships with objects that are not present but are linked to it, and memory plays a fundamental role.
The theme of impulses is of importance because of the coordinator’s particular way of working with representations, which it does through two pathways. Through the abstractive pathway it operates by reducing phenomenal multiplicity down to its essential characteristics. Whether the phenomena are from the external or internal world, there is abstractive activity, on the one hand, and associative activity on the other. The representations are structured on the basis of similarity, contiguity, contrast and other lesser forms, with different orderings established according to the level in which they operate.
Starting from these two pathways of abstraction and association, the consciousness organizes images within a space of representation. These images are connections between the consciousness that forms them, and the phenomena of the objectal world (internal or external) that they are referred to. There would be no communication between the objectal world and the consciousness if these phenomena did not exist, which have started out as impulses from some of the pathways that produce these images, which are emplaced in the level that corresponds to them on the space of representation, and fire their signal at the corresponding center so that the transformed signal can be manifested to the external or internal world.
The impulses will be powerfully translated and transformed before reaching the consciousness; before arriving to the abstractive. and associative apparatuses, according to the previous sensory conditions, and later, according to the work of the levels of consciousness. We are saying that the impulses that start out from the sensory apparatus and arrive to the consciousness, and in the consciousness open up the abstractive pathway or open up the associative pathway, even before arriving to the consciousness these impulses may be transformed or translated. Upon being transformed or translated, they open up the different pathways with information that does not exactly correspond to the datum that arrived to the sense. The same will occur with data coming from memory; they open up the associative or abstractive pathways in the consciousness, but before reaching it they have undergone translations and transformations.
Let’s point out once more that impulses spring from each sense that are later translated into the corresponding images, although such images are not visual (except, of course, those of sight). All the senses fire off their sensory impulse, which will be translated into an image that corresponds to the sense: auditory images, tactile images, cenesthetic images, etc. In this way, the cenesthetic impulses will produce images, but the phenomena of translation and transformation phenomena will complicate things to the point where images will appear that correspond to one sense, when in reality such images have come from the impulses of another sense. Thus, for example, an internal cenesthetic datum arrives to consciousness and opens up an associative or abstractive pathway, but this datum, on arriving to the consciousness, appears or is configured as a visual image, when in reality its primary source was cenesthetic. Cenesthesia does not inform with visual images ; however there has been a transformation of the impulse and it has arrived to the consciousness. The primary datum was cenesthetic but now a representation appears that is visual, auditory, or of another type. It is very difficult to follow the impulse in question, precisely because of the transformations that take place along the way. This has prevented people who are concerned with these matters from comprehending how it is that the psychic apparatus functions, what the mobility that an impulse has is like, how it is transformed, how it is translated, and how its final expression takes place, that is so distanced from the conditions that originated it.
The problem of pain acquires another valuation when the comprehension is attained that what produces pain in one point can be illusorily transformed, translated, and new deformations experienced in the evocation. As for suffering—this time we do not refer to pain—the same considerations apply, since when the impulses are transformed into images that do not correspond to each other, they will mobilize responses that likewise do not correspond to the initial impulses of suffering. And so the problem of pain and suffering considered simply as sensations has its mechanics, but since the impulses arrive deformed and transformed in their representations, it is necessary to appeal to the work of the imagination in order to comprehend them in their totality. Consequently, it isn’t enough to explain pain simply as sensation. It is necessary to comprehend that this painful or agonizing sensation is transformed and translated by the imagination and also by the data coming from the memory. Pain and suffering end up becoming powerfully deformed, translated and transformed by the imagination in general. And so many sufferings do not exist anywhere, except in the images that are translated and transformed by the mind.
We will speak of the impulses produced in consciousness in a characteristic way, after having taken specific routes known to us as the abstractive. and the associative pathways. These impulses in the consciousness could open up other channels, but we will be concerned with just those two.
When the impulses reach the consciousness, they are structured in a characteristic way, that structuring depending, among other things, on the level of work that the consciousness is in at that moment. The images that will later be produced have been structured in a characteristic way. In general we call these structurings that are carried out with the impulses, “form.” If forms are conceptualized as entities separate from the psychological process, they can finally be considered as having an existence in themselves, and it can be believed that the representations are meant to fill these forms. There a few ancients who thought like this, that such forms existed and that internal processes then arrived to fill up the forms. In reality, forms are mental ambits of internal register that make it possible to structure different phenomena. When we speak of the “form” of an internal phenomenon of consciousness, we are mentioning the particular structure that the phenomenon has. We don’t speak of independent “forms”; rather, we speak of how the phenomena are structured. Common language refers to this in a simple way: People say, “Things are organized in a special way.” Or, “Things are done in such a way, in such a manner.” This is what we refer to when we speak of form. And we can identify forms with images, once these images have left the associative or abstractive pathways.
We can speak of forms as structures of perception, for example. Each sense has its form of structuring the data. The consciousness will later structure the data with characteristic forms that correspond to the different pathways. For example, there can be different forms of one same object, according to the channels of sensation that are used, according to the perspective with respect to the object, and according to the type of structuring that the consciousness effects. All those forms that are had of the same object can make the object appear to us as different from itself, as if different objects were concerned, according to whether that object was perceived by the ear, for example, or by the eye. Apparently two different objects are being dealt with, because the data from the object is structured in different ways.
In learning there is somewhat of a problem, because in the measure that a total image of the object is being obtained, different perceptual forms must be made to agree. And thus, I am surprised upon hearing the sound of an object that does not coincide with its (auditory) image, that seemed to me was the corresponding one. I have held the object in my hands and I have taken note of its weight; I have observed it visually, but the object falls to the ground and emits a sound that it would not have occurred to me to represent. What shall I do then with data that is structured in such different ways—with auditory, tactile, olfactory sensory data, etc.—to make them match in my structure of consciousness? This is possible because this entire diverse system of perception is structured within a form of perception that is linked to internal registers. When I recognize an object, I say that it can use different signals, different signs that are codifications of register. When I have a codified register of an object and the object appears before my perception, I can consider it complete even if I only have one sector of its totality. Signs awaken codified registers in me. The signs of language are not just signs. I hear a word and, after I consider it conceptually, I can say about it that it is an expression with a meaning. But considered from the structure of the consciousness, the word that arrives is an impulse whose register—for me—is codified. And so a word sets diverse activities of my mind in motion because it releases the corresponding register, and another word releases another type of register, and so on. But it happens that these expressions that reach me are structured with a specific form. Many words articulate phrases, they articulate sentences, they articulate a grouping, and these groupings function at times as codified signs. It will no longer be a matter of my considering the word “house” as a sign, because it is codified as a register in me. Now there will be an entire grouping of words that is codified in a structured way, such that these structures, these forms of organizing language, also appear as codified in me.
The different levels of consciousness each provide their own formal ambits. This means that the different levels of consciousness structure the data that arrive to my consciousness in a different manner, a different form. Each level proceeds as the most general structure of ambit, and it (that level) is linked to characteristic forms. The forms that emerge in the consciousness will depend to a great extent on the level that is setting down its structuring ambit. The stimulus becomes converted into form—that is, the stimulus will be converted into an image when the consciousness structures it from its level of work. Thus, one same stimulus will be translated into different forms, into different images. And these images can be moved around in the consciousness.
Since the sign codified in me appears again, I recognize it and it appears in a characteristic form located on my space of representation. My consciousness can perfectly well transfer the image that has come from one sense into images that correspond to other senses, because, for the purposes of recognition, a single characteristic or band of perception can be enough to structure the whole object. Thus it could happen that a datum coming from the eye could be internally transferred to a datum coming from the ear. In other words, translation could operate in the consciousness of a perceptual datum as though that datum had come from another sense. Thus, though the sign may awaken different images, there is correspondence among themselves as to their location in the space of representation, and insofar as the function they will later fulfill as images when they are fired at the corresponding centers. In this case, in which I hear the crackle of fire nearby and I see the fire very close by, I smell the fire very close by—in all these cases, the perceptions that reach me through different channels are structured in a characteristic global representation, and all the perceptions are interchangeable, able to take each other’s places. Replaceable among themselves, and therefore translatable. They are emplaced at the same level of representation, ready to trigger the same type of danger warning. And so if I hear, smell, or see the fire, these initial perceptions can be translated. The displacement of the external perceptual data sets my internal register in motion. If I observe a line in space and my eye follows the line in a direction, I will also note that displacement in my internal register. In this way, what is happening in the eye is happening in my internal space of representation. Therefore it won’t be a matter of indifference what type of images appear outside, since the corresponding image will follow specific movements, it will be emplaced at different points and depths of my inner space. And so it would be enough to study what the eye does as it follows certain phenomena of perception to comprehend what is going on internally in my system of register.
Signs
There is what is conventionally called “symbol” and what is called “allegory,” even though neither of these representations has been defined with much precision. Internally, a symbol is an image that arises from the abstractive channel, and an allegory is an image that arises from the associative channel. The two differ as to their structuring and their general form. The images that have started out from the abstractive pathway are reductive, they are divested of secondary characteristics, they synthesize a number of characteristics or they reduce the most essential of all the characteristics present to an abstraction; whereas the images that correspond to the associative pathway are multiplicative images.
There are also representations that perform the function of encoding registers. We call them “signs.” In this sense, the word, for example, is a sign that is codified, that summons up a type of register in me, and, besides, awakens an array of phenomena and processes. If you say to a person: “fire,” they probably won’t perceive anything more than the word ‘fire,’ but since that register is codified, a complex system of reactions will be activated inside them; and with each word that is launched, with each sign, that encoding and the codifications immediately associated to it are evoked.
Of course the signs come from different pathways. For example, I can establish a signical system of relations with another person by moving my arms, gesticulating in a certain way. If I gesticulate in a certain way in front of a person, the person receives that internally encoded datum. And what happens with that datum’s internal codification? It activates in their interior the same process that has given rise to the image in the other who had launched the sign. Thus, a phenomenon is produced of an unfolding, in which we finally arrive at same register. If the same register were not to arrive, there would be no possibility of communication between the two people. And if someone indicates something to me with a gesture, I must have the same internal register of that gesture as the other person, otherwise I would be unable to comprehend the significance of that operation for them. It is thanks to the codified registers that relationships can be established between people. Whether it is a matter of words, of gestures, of looks, or of general body postures, in every case we are talking about signs that establish communication because the same codification of register is had of them. With one sole gesture, for example, a complex system of codified registers can be triggered. With a single gesture, for example, it is possible to make another person feel very uneasy.
We can speak of signics and study it in the world of human communication. Expression and meaning form a structure and are inseparable. When the meaning of an expression is unknown, it loses its operativity. Expressions that allow for different meanings are understood by context. A sign can be the expression of a meaning, or it may signal through its associative character. Signal codes are implemented using signs that indicate objects, phenomena or activities. It is clear that both symbol and allegory can perform signical functions. In the first case, an inverted triangle on a signpost along a roadside can indicate road work by a public works entity. In the second, a lightning bolt drawn on a sign attached to a fence may indicate “Danger: Electric Hazard.”
Our interest is focused on the internal signs, or such signs as trigger registers codified in oneself. Just as a gesture is launched outwards as a sign that the other interprets, so too, numerous signs, symbols and allegories can be emplaced in the external world and interpreted by others.
Symbols
A point, in external space, will function in the same way as a point in the internal space of representation. We verify that perception of a point without references makes the eye move in all directions, since the eye searches for perceptual parameters in order to frame it. The same will happen to a point of representation. Before an imagined. point, parameters will be searched for, references, even if in reference to the borders of the space of representation. The point will go up, will go down, will go to one side or to the other; an effort can be made to maintain that point, but it will become apparent that the “internal eye” will search for references within the mental space. Hence, a point without references makes the eyes move in all directions.
A horizontal line leads the eye in that direction, in the horizontal direction, without much effort. But a vertical line provokes a certain type of tension. In the space of representation, the displacement of the image through “heights” and “depths” presents greater difficulty than horizontal displacements. Internally, a constant “horizontal” movement could be followed that would end up returning to the original position, whereas it would be more difficult to “go up” and, circularly, arrive from “below” back to the point of origin. So, too, the eye can move with greater ease in a horizontal direction.
Two lines that intersect lead the eye to move toward the center and stay framed.
The curve leads the eye to include space. It provokes the sensation of limit between what is internal and external to it, sliding the eye toward the area included inside the arc.
The intersection of two curves fixes the eye and makes the point arise again.
The intersection of a curve and a straight line fixes the central point and breaks the isolation between the spaces included and excluded in the arc.
A straight broken line breaks the inertia of the eye’s displacement and demands increased tension in looking. The same occurs with discontinued arcs. If a horizontal line is observed in the space of representation and this horizontal line is broken and made to descend, the inertia that the phenomenon has been sustaining is broken, is halted, producing an increase of the tension. If the same thing is done with the horizontal, but it is broken upwards instead of downwards, another type of phenomenon will be produced. However, in any case the inertia will be broken.
The repetition of equal segments of discontinued straight or curved lines once again places the eye movement in a system of inertia; therefore, the tension in the act of looking diminishes and distension is produced. That is, the pleasure of the rhythm registered in the curves that repeat or in the segments of straight lines that are repeated, and that has been so important for decorative aims. Also in the case of the ear, the effect of rhythm is easily verified.
When straight lines and curves end up connecting together in a circuit, the symbol of the frame and the field appears. In the space of representation, the major frame is given by the limits of said internal space; but, of course, it is variable. In any case, its limits are the major frame. What takes place inside that frame is in the field of representation. Taking, for example, a square and placing a point within its field, a different system of tensions will be noted, depending on whether the point is close to a discontinuous straight line (an angle of the square), or is equidistant to all the angles. In the second case, a kind of equilibrium is made evident. That point can be removed from the square and placed outside of it, verifying a tendency on the part of the eye to include it inside the field of the square. Surely this will be repeated in the internal representation.
When straight lines and curves separate from the circuit, a symbol of expansion emerges (if their direction is toward aperture), or a symbol of contraction (if their direction is toward closure).
An elementary geometric figure acts as referential of manifest centers. There is a difference between manifest center (where lines cross) and tacit center (where the eye directs itself without direction from lines). Given a square, the tacit center arises in the crossing of its diagonals (even though the lines are not drawn), but it becomes manifest when a point is placed there. Manifest centers thus appear when curves or straight lines are cut and vision becomes stagnant. Tacit centers are those that appear as though they were placed there, operating as though the phenomenon existed. No such phenomenon exists, but the register of stagnant vision does.
In the circle there are no manifest centers. There is only a tacit center—that which provokes eye movements toward the center.
The point is the manifest center par excellence. Since there is neither frame nor tacit center, this center moves in any direction.
The void is the tacit center par excellence. Since there is neither frame nor manifest center, this center provokes a general movement toward itself.
When a symbol includes another symbol in its field, the second is the manifest center. Manifest centers attract the eye toward themselves. A manifest center placed in the space of representation attracts all of the psychism’s tensions toward itself.
Two centers of tension provoke a void in the tacit center, displacing vision toward both poles, and, later, toward the center of the void, creating intermittent tensions.
Within the field of a frame-symbol, all the symbols are in relationship, and placing one of the symbols outside the frame establishes a tension between it and the set that is included. With the space of representation as the major encompasser, this same thing happens. All the images tend to be included presently in the space, and the copresent images will tend to express themselves in that space. The same thing occurs among levels in their relationship of images. And in the space of representation there could be a certain image (an obsessive image, for example) that prevented the approach of other representations. Moreover, this happens when the attention is actively trained on a content, thus preventing the interference of others. But there could be a great void that would allow deep contents that arrive to its field to easily manifest themselves.
Symbols external to the frame are related among themselves only by their reference to the frame.
Signs, allegories and symbols can mutually serve each other as a frame, or serve as a link between frames.
Curves concentrate vision toward the center, and points disperse the attention to outside the field.
Color does not modify the symbol’s essence, though it gives it weight as psychological phenomenon.
The symbol’s action of form is effected to the extent that said symbol is registered; that is, if someone is placed inside a room and does not know that it is cube shaped, spherical or pyramidal, then the action of form does not take place. But if someone knows or believes (for example, experimentally, with their eyes blindfolded) that they are included inside a pyramidal room, then they will experience very different registers than if they believe they are in a spherical room. The phenomenon of the “action of form” is effected, not by the form itself, but by the representation that corresponds to the form. These symbols that operate as containers will produce numerous tensions in other contents. They will give dynamic to some, they will include others, others will be excluded by them, etc. Summing up, a specific system of relationships will be established among the contents, in accordance with the type of symbolic containers that they configure.
Allegories
Allegories are agglutinations of diverse contents in a single representation. Due to the origins of each component, allegories are usually understood as representations of “imaginary” or fabulous beings—an example is a sphinx. These images, though fixed in one representation, fulfill a “narrative” function. If “Justice” were mentioned to someone, it could be an expression they had no register of, or it could have several meanings that would be presented in associative chains. If this were the case, “Justice” could be represented for that person as a scene where different people performed judicial activities, or perhaps as a blindfolded woman with a balance in one hand and a sword in the other. This allegory would have synthesized the diverse, presenting a sort of narrative in a single image.
In the space of representation, allegories have a curious aptitude for moving, modifying themselves so as to transform themselves. While symbols are fixed images, allegories are images that go about transforming themselves, that carry out a sequence of operations. It is enough for an image of that nature to be released for it to take on a life of its own and start performing operations divagationally, whereas a symbol located in the space of representation goes against the current of the consciousness’s dynamic, and an effort is required to try to sustain it without divagations that would transform it and make it lose its properties.
An allegory can be taken from the interiority and placed outside, for example, like a statue in a square. Allegories are transformed narratives in which the diverse is fixed, or multiplied by allusion; but also where the abstract is concretized. The allegory’s multiplicative character is clearly linked to associative processes.
To comprehend the allegory, it is a good idea to review how ideas are associated to each other. In a first case it is said that similarity guides the mind when it searches for what is similar to a given object; contiguity, when it searches for what is proper to it, or for what is, was, or will be in contact with a given object; contrast, when it searches for what is in opposition or in a dialectical relationship with a given object.
We observe that the allegory is powerfully situational. It is dynamic and relates situations referred to the individual mind as happens in dreams, in some personal divagations, in pathologies and in mysticism. However, this also happens to the collective psychism, as in stories, art, folklore, myths and religion.
Allegories fulfill different functions. Allegories tell of situations, compensating difficulties of total grasp. When a phenomenon appears and is not adequately comprehended, it is allegorized and a story is told instead of making a precise description. If what happens when it thunders is not well understood, it is probable that a story will be told about someone running through the heavens; if it is not understood how the psychism functions, then stories and myths will come in order to explain what is happening in oneself.
By capturing situations allegorically, it is possible to operate over real situations in an indirect way, or at least, so the allegorizer believes.
In allegories the emotional factor does not depend on the representation. In dreams allegories arise which, if they had an exact correspondence with daily life, would trigger typical emotions. However, in dreams emotions are triggered that have nothing to do with the representations that are acting.
One example: the dreamer sees himself tied down over a railroad track. The roaring locomotive rushes toward him, but instead of feeling desperate, the dreamer starts laughing so hard that he even wakes up in surprise.
An internal state can be allegorized and one can say, for example: “It’s as if I could feel myself falling down a tube.” The inner sensation that is experienced and registered is a kind of desperation, an emptiness, etc., but it can be allegorized as “falling down a tube.”
To understand an allegorical system it is necessary to bear in mind the climate accompanying the allegory, because the climate is what will point to the meaning. And when there is no agreement between image and climate, we must be guided by the climate and not by the image to understand the profound meanings. When the climate is perfectly intertwined with the corresponding image, there is no problem with following the image —which is easier to follow. But in case of discord, we would always be inclined in favor of the climate.
Allegorical images tend to displace energy toward the centers so as to effect a response. Of course, there is a system of tension and a system of discharge for these tensions; and the allegory goes about playing the role of “connective red blood cell” that carries charges along the stream—in this case, through the circuit of the consciousness. When there is a translation of these charges, of the allegory that acts over a center an energetic manifestation is produced. Such energetic manifestations can be recognized in intense expressions such as laughter, crying, the sexual act, aggressive confrontation, etc. These are the most adequate means for the alleviation of internal tension, and when allegories arise they normally tend to fulfill the function of discharge.
Considering allegorical composition, one can prepare a type of inventory of the resources one can make use of. Thus we can speak of the “containers,” for example. The containers guard, protect or enclose what is in their interior. The “contents,” on the other hand, are those elements included within an ambit. The “connectives” are entities that facilitate or hinder the connection between contents, between ambits, or between ambits and contents. The “attributes,” which can be manifest or tacit (when they are concealed), refer to the properties of allegorical elements or of the total allegory. We also point out the “levels,” “textures,” “elements,” and “moments of process.” These moments of process are allegorized as ages, for example. Finally, we should mention the “transformisms” and the “inversions.”
On becoming interested in an allegory, upon attempting to comprehend an allegory, we try to establish certain rules of interpretation that can help us comprehend what the allegory means and what function it is fulfilling in the economy of the psychism.
1. When we want to carry out an allegorical interpretation, we reduce the allegory to a symbol in order to comprehend the system of tensions that the allegory is emplaced in. The symbol is the container of an allegory. Thus, if in an allegorical system several people appear who are arguing in a town square (square or oval shaped, for example), the square is the major container (with its special system of tensions, according to its symbolic conformation), and in its interior are the people arguing (contents of that symbol). Symbolic reduction considers the town square as a container that imposes its system of tensions on the situation (for example, bifocal tension if the town square is oval shaped), in which contents are deployed in a conflictive way (people arguing).
2. We try to understand the allegorical raw material; that is, what channels the main impulse comes from. Does it come from the senses (and from which sense or senses?), or from the memory? Does it come from a mix of senses and memory, or does it come from a characteristic state of the consciousness that tends to carry out these selective articulations?
3. We try to interpret on the basis of the associative laws, based on commonly- accepted patterns. Thus, when we interpret these associations, we must first ask ourselves what the allegory means, what it means for us. And if we want to interpret an allegory placed in the external world, such as a picture, for example, we should ask its producer what those allegories mean to him. But we could be separated by many hundreds of years from the allegorizer, and with our epochal or cultural meanings it would be difficult for us to interpret what it meant for the economy of the allegorizer’s psychism. However, we could come to intuit or have information on the meanings that were proper to that era. We therefore say that it is always good to interpret in accordance with associative laws and on the basis of commonly-accepted patterns. And if a social allegory is studied, one must investigate its meaning by consulting persons who are or have been agents of such allegorical system. They will be the ones who will clarify the significance and not us, since we are not, nor have we been, agents of that allegorical system; therefore we would “infiltrate” our contents (personal or cultural), into the meanings, deforming them. An example: Someone tells me about a portrait that an old lady comes out in. If upon my asking him what the old lady in the picture means to him, he replies, “Kindness,” I will have to accept it and it won’t be legitimate for me to provide a different interpretation by introducing my own contents and system of tensions. If I ask someone to tell me about the allegory of the kind old lady, I will have to accept what they tell me; otherwise I would dictatorially and illegitimately be ignoring the other person’s interpretation, preferring to explain everything according to what happens to me. Therefore, if the allegorizer speaks to me of “kindness,” I have no reason to interpret that “kindness” as a repressed and deformed sexual content. My interlocutor isn’t living in a sexually repressed society like nineteenth-century Vienna; he isn’t a participant of the Neoclassical atmosphere of the Preciosists who read the tragedies of Sophocles—he is living in the twentieth century in Rio de Janeiro, a participant, in any case, in a neo-pagan cultural atmosphere. And so the best solution will be for me to accept the interpretation given me by the allegorizer, who lives and breathes the cultural climate of the city of Rio de Janeiro. We are well informed of where the interpretations of certain psychological and anthropological currents have ended up, which substituted the narratives and interpretations of people who were directly involved, with the researcher’s special devotions.
4. We try to comprehend the plot. We differentiate between plot and themes. A plot is the story, but within the story there are specific themes. Sometimes the themes remain and the plot changes; or the themes change but the plot is always the same. This occurs, for example, in a dream or in a sequence of dreams.
5. When the climate and image coincide, one follows the image.
6. When climate and image don’t coincide, the guiding thread is the climate.
7. We consider the reverie nucleus, which appears allegorized as an image or as a constant (fixed) climate, through different allegorizations and through the passage of time.
8. Anything that fulfills a function is the function itself and no other. If in a dream one kills with a word, that word is a weapon. If with a word one revives or cures someone, that word is an instrument for reviving or for curing—not something else.
9. It is a matter of interpreting color, recognizing that in allegorical representations, the space of representation goes from dark to light, such that as the representations climb up, the space itself grows lighter; and as they go down, the space darkens. In all planes of the space of representation, different colors with different gradations can appear.
10. When one comprehends the composition of the different elements that configure an allegorical system, when one understands the relationship between the components and when one can make a synthesis on the function that is fulfilled by the elements and their relationships, then a level of interpretation can be considered to be resolved. Of course one may study new levels of interpretation in greater depth if necessary.
11. To understand an allegorical system’s process and unfolding, various interpretative syntheses must be achieved over time. Thus, a complete interpretation at a given moment cannot suffice if one is unable to glimpse the process or the tendencies toward which the allegorical system in question could proceed. It may be necessary to have access to various interpretations through time.
8. Operative
This mental space, which exactly corresponds to my body, can be registered by me as the sum total of cenesthetic sensations.
This “second body” is a body of sensation, of memory and of imagination. It has no existence in and of itself, though on occasion some have tried to give it a separate existence from that of the body. It is a “body” that is formed by the sum total of sensations from the physical body; but depending on whether the energy of the representation goes to one point or to another, it mobilizes one part of the body or another. And so, if an image is concentrated in a level of the space of representation —more internal or more external, at one height or at another—the relevant centers are set in motion, mobilizing energy toward the corresponding part of the body.
These images that arise do so, for example, because of a specific corporal tension, and then we will look for the tension in the body, in the corresponding point.
But what happens when there isn’t that tension in the body, and yet a phenomenon of allegorization appears on the screen of representation? It may be that no such tension is present in the body. But it could be that a signal starting out from memory and that acts over consciousness, and in the consciousness sparkles as image, reveals that the impulse from memory had an influence over some part of the body. There was a contraction produced at that moment which launched the impulse that, registered in consciousness, appeared on the screen as allegorization; and this gives us to understand that the phenomenon is launching its pulsations from a point of the body. These phenomena [of memory] belong to the past, they are not present, there is no permanent tension acting; nevertheless, this tension (which is not a tension in and of itself, but rather is an impulse recorded in memory), sets a tension in motion with the corresponding cenesthetic register, and later will end up appearing as an image. As a specific “bit” in the system of register is evoked, a specific signal, and this signal is released toward the mechanism of consciousness, concomitant phenomena could appear of bodily contraction or inflammatory bodily phenomena.
I am investigating phenomena that do not exist in the present. Phenomena that I can register in my own body to the extent that they are evoked, but that do not exist constantly in the body—rather they exist in memory, and upon being evoked, are expressed in the body. And so this space of representation has the character of being an intermediary between some mechanisms and others, because it is conformed by the sum total of cenesthetic sensations. In it, transformed phenomena of external or internal sensations are manifested, and in it phenomena are expressed that had been produced a long time ago and that are emplaced in memory. Also in it, there appear phenomena that don’t exist at that moment in the body, but that, as products of the imaginary work of the coordinator itself, they end up acting over the body.
This is a good time to carry out a review of activities that are oriented toward the modification of certain psychic behaviors.
The set of techniques that we call “Operative ” enables us to operate over phenomena, to modify phenomena. Encompassed within Operative are several techniques: techniques we call catharsis, techniques we call transference, and various forms of self-transference.
In recent years the word “catharsis” has come back into use. Once again the gentleman appeared who sat in the presence of someone who had psychic problems, and once again said to him, just like thousands of years ago: “Now then, my friend, let the cat out of the bag and explain the problems that you have.” And then they let the cat out of the bag and explained their problems, and a kind of inner cleansing (or internal “regurgitation”) took place. That technique was called “catharsis.”
Another technique of Operative was also called “transference.” One took a person who’d already produced their catharsis and relieved their tensions, in order to begin a somewhat more complex work. That work consisted of making the person “transit” through different internal states. Upon transiting through these states, the person who no longer was suffering from important tensions could move around in their internal landscape, displacing, “transferring” problems or difficulties. The subject imaginarily transferred oppressive contents toward other images —images that neither had affective charge nor compromised the subject biographically….
We had previously talked about the registers of tensions in the simple act of attending. You recognize this well. You can attend with tension or without it—there is a difference. You can sometimes loosen the tension and attend. Normally you believe that when you let go of the tension in order to attend, you lose interest in the theme. It does not happen like that. However, for a very long time you have associated a certain amount of muscular tension to the act of attending, and you believe that you attend when you are tense. But attention has nothing to do with this.
And, what happens with tensions in general—not just with the tensions of attention? In general we locate tensions in different parts of the body, especially in the muscles. We are talking about external muscular tensions. I voluntarily tense a muscle, and I have a register of that tension. I voluntarily tense my facial muscles; I have a register of that tension. I tense different muscles of my body, and I have a register of that tension. I go about familiarizing myself with this technique of artificial tension. I have great interest in obtaining as many registers as possible, tensing the different muscles of my body. And I am also interested in dissociating the tensions I had previously produced. I have observed that when one point tenses up, other points tense up. Later I try to distense the point, but sometimes the other muscles that accompanied the tension do not distense If you work with certain parts of the body, you verify that, upon wanting to tense one point, that point and other points tense up; and later, upon distensing that point, the point becomes distense, but not the others.
This happens not just with these types of voluntary works—it happens in everyday life as well. In front of a problem of daily confrontation, for example, a muscle system gets tense ; the confrontation with the object disappears, the muscles involved distense—but not the others that accompanied them at the moment of the tensing up. A little more time and everything ends up distensing. Sometimes it happens though that considerably more time passes, but the other points don’t distense.
Who among you doesn’t recognize more-or-less permanent muscle tensions? There are those who register these tensions sometimes in the neck, at times in some other part of their body. Right this minute, if you observe closely, you can discover unnecessary tensions that are operating in different parts of your body. You can register this. And as you can see, what you are registering in different parts of your body is not carrying out any function at all.
Now then, we distinguish between external muscular tensions of a situational type, and continual external muscular tensions. In the case of situational tensions, the subject tenses certain parts of his body, and when the difficulty disappears (in our example, the confrontation), the tension also disappears. These situational tensions surely fulfill very important functions, and it is understood that it isn’t our intention to put an end to them. There are others—the continual ones, not the situational ones—and these continuous tensions involve the aggravating circumstance that, if a certain confrontational phenomenon is produced besides, they increase. Later they go down once more, but the continuous tension level is retained.
Using certain procedures I can distense continuous tensions, but this does not guarantee that different systems of tension won’t remain inside me. I can work on my entire external musculature, do as many exercises as I like, but nevertheless, internally, the tensions will continue acting. What is the nature of these internal tensions? Occasionally, they are of a deep muscular type; and occasionally I register these tensions as deep irritations, as visceral irritations that emit impulses and that go about configuring a system of tensions.
When we refer to these profound tensions, we are talking of tensions that are not very different from the external ones, but that have a very important emotional component. We could consider these two phenomena as being gradations of one same type of operation. We now speak of these emotionally-tinted internal tensions, and we define them as climates—not very different from tensions in general, but having a strong emotional component.
What happens with some phenomena such as depression and tensions? A person feels bored (boredom is a relative of depression); one thing is the same to him as the other, he has no special preference—we would say he has no tensions. Perhaps he registers himself as lacking in vitality, but behind this it’s quite possible that there’s a strong emotional component. In the situation that he is in, we note that there are strong emotional currents of a negative type, and we think that if these emotional currents appear, it is because even without external muscular tensions, there are internal tensions that can be internal muscular tensions; or, on other occasions, phenomena of internal irritation. Sometimes it happens that there is no continuous system of tensions or continuous irritation, but due to the confrontation with a given situation, mnemic phenomena are released, phenomena of memory that effect their internal firings; and then the register of lack of vitality or boredom arises, or internal oppression, or the sensation of enclosure, etc.
Normally we can manage external muscular tensions voluntarily. On the other hand, we cannot manage climates voluntarily because they have a different characteristic: they follow the subject even when he has left the situation that motivated the climate. You will remember the phenomena of dragging, the ones that follow the subject around even though the situation has passed. These climates follow the subject to such an extent that he can change his entire situation, go through different situations over the years, and still continue having that climate that pursues him. These internal tensions are translated in a diffuse and totalizing way. This point also explains the characteristics of emotion in general, which operates by totalizing, synthesizing. It does not operate by referring to a specific point of bodily tension; neither is it referred to a point of pain in the intrabody— which could very well be localized—rather it is referred to a state of invasion that the consciousness is in. We are therefore dealing with non-localized cenesthetic impulses. This is clear.
When the mechanism of translation of impulses contributes images that correspond to that diffuse climate, we speak of correspondence between climate and theme (a theme correctly corresponds to the climate). It is then very probable that the person who experiences a certain climate says that they “feel confined,” for example. This “confinement” is a type of visual representation that coincides with the emotional register, and there are some who are more exaggerated and don’t just talk about “confinement” in general, but they explain that they feel locked inside a specific kind of box with such-and-such characteristics. In vigil this isn’t too clear for them, but as soon as their level of consciousness drops a little, that box that they are in does appear. Of course, when the translation mechanisms operate with force, when the cenesthetic registers are more intense and when the allegorical pathway is set in motion, it is easier to track these phenomena.
Sometimes images appear that do not correspond to the climates. Finally, there are cases in which a climate without images is registered. In reality there is a cenesthetic image acting in all cases, and the emplacement of this general, diffuse image in the space of representation disturbs the activity of all the centers, because it is from that space of representation that the images trigger their activity toward the centers
One lowers the potential of climates through cathartic discharges, through motor abreactions which are manifestations of that energy toward the outside of the body; but although on these occasions there is a reduction of the tension, its displacement, its elimination does not necessarily take place.
The techniques that correspond to the transformation and displacement of climates are the transferential techniques. Their objective is not the lowering of an internal tension’s potential, but rather to transfer the charge of one image to another image.
It is only partial to say that climates are generated solely by the translation of signals of deep, involuntary contractions, and that such contractions, captured by cenesthesia, are transformed into diffuse images that occupy the space of representation. This is an incomplete statement. In the first place, because the register can be non-specific but generalized—as in the case of violent emotions—and these states correspond to discharges that circulate throughout the organism and are not referred to the specificity of a tension.
As for the origin of these phenomena, they may originate in internal senses or act from memory, or act from consciousness. When the impulse corresponds to a purely corporal phenomenon, cenesthesia takes this datum and sends the corresponding signal, which appears as a diffuse image —that is, one that cannot be visualized (i.e., it appears as a cenesthetic image, not as a visual image ). Cenesthesia then sends the corresponding signal and the diffuse image appears, which in any case arises in the space of representation.
There are those who say that when they’re angry they “see red,” or that their space of representation is modified and they see the object that has provoked their anger as “smaller.” Others say that it seems to “stand out more,” and so on. We are not talking about the localized impulse, but about the diffused emotional state, which in any case has begun from the cenesthetic register and has been translated into a cenesthetic image that cannot be visualized. Sometimes it also has translations that can be visualized, but this is not the case here. This image emplacement that is non-visualizable takes place on the space of representation and basically mobilizes the instinctive centers. A register in memory is effected of everything that took place. If, on the other hand, the first impulse comes from external senses and at the end of the impulse circuit the instinctive centers are also mobilized, this is recorded in memory as associated to the external situation. This motivates a recording wherein the external impulse, that impulse that came from the exterior, now remains linked to an internal corporal state.
Returning to the first case, the one where an internal impulse is released due to a vegetative disorder, for example. In this case too there is an associated situational recording, if external senses for their part are working. But if this were to be produced while the external senses were not working or were working very slightly (as in the level of sleep), the situational recording could solely be referred to data from memory, since it would update itself at that moment, and at the end of the circuit a strange association of phenomena from Time 2 (i.e., the cenesthetic register) to phenomena from Time 1 (i.e., the datum from memory) would be left in memory.
We have seen cases where the point of departure of the impulse is the intrabody, and it is associated to situations of external perception; and cases of the same impulse but associated to memory, because at that moment the external senses are not working. We have also seen the case of the impulse that starts out from external senses and ends up mobilizing cenesthetic internal registers, it being possible from that moment on for the external situation and the internal register to be left recorded in memory.
Memory for its part can supply impulses, and upon mobilizing registers, unleash associative chains of images (not just visual images but images from any other sense, including the cenesthesia), which in turn awaken new deliveries of data, configuring a climatic emotional state, but one which is associated this time to a new situation that is being perceived by external senses
Finally, consciousness itself, in its elaboration of images, can set in motion all the above, as well as add its own activity with the final recording in memory of external situations associated to imaginary elements. In any case, the enchainment between senses-memory-consciousness is indissoluble, non-linear and, of course, structural.
And therefore, if the first firing is one of physical pain, the final configuration could be one of moral suffering, and there could be the presence of true cenesthetic registers that are powerfully recorded in memory, but associated simply to the imagination. Physical pain often ends in moral suffering that is articulated with elements that are illusory but that can be registered. This fact teaches us that the illusory, though it may have no “real” existence, can be registered through several concomitances that possess unquestionable psychic reality. Not much is explained by saying that a phenomena is “illusory;” neither does it clarify much more to say that illusions are registered, just as the so-called non-illusory perceptions are registered. Illusory suffering has a register that is real for the consciousness. It is where transference has its best field of work—in illusory suffering. This is different from what happens with the basic painful impulses—whether translated or deformed—which can be divested of other illusory components, without necessarily making physical pain disappear as a result. But this does not lie within the theme of transference as such.
The automatic enchainment of suffering can be dissociated. This is the primary target of transference. We see transference as one of Operative’s many tools, basically aimed at disarticulating suffering, liberating the consciousness of oppressive contents. Just as catharsis liberates charges and produces instances of temporary—though at times necessary—relief, transference aims at the permanent transfer of these charges, at least in reference to a specific, existing problem.
Let’s now examine some aspects of the compensatory functioning of the psychism’s apparatuses. The thresholds of the different senses vary in structure and the thresholds of the internal senses vary compensatorily with respect to the thresholds of the external senses. The phenomena of the cenesthetic threshold, upon the lowering the impulses from external senses, enter into perception and begin emitting signals. We are saying that, when the external impulse diminishes, the other internal phenomena that were operating at the [minimum] level of threshold and that we were not registering, appear in a mode that is possible to register. Therefore, with the lowering of level of consciousness, the arisal of phenomena of the intrabody that was not manifest in vigil becomes possible to perceive. Upon the disappearance of the noise from the external senses, those other phenomena become manifest. With the fall in level, the internal impulses appear that give signals to consciousness, taking the associative channels. When this associative pathway wakes up, the phenomena of translation operate with great force.
Let’s go back to the problems of the phenomena of translation and transformation of impulses. In front of an object that I perceive visually, I can recognize other, non-visual characteristics that I can perceive, depending on the situation. These different perceptions relative to the same object have been associated in my memory throughout my life experience. I have an articulated register of perceptions. We are now considering something more than the structuring of perception that a single sense carries out; we are considering the structuring that is performed in front of an object by the sum total of data from different senses, data which were incorporated to the memory over time. I have at my disposal the articulation of the different characteristics of each object, such that when one of them is captured, the other characteristics associated to it are also released. This is already the basic mechanism of the translation of impulses. And what is it that is translated? Let’s see an example. An auditory impulse awakens mnemic registers, registers in which the visual impulses at that time were associated to auditory impulses. Now only the external auditory impulse arrives, and the visual register appears in my space of representation. This is frequent in vigil, and it is thanks to this mechanism of association of senses, it is thanks to the structuring of the senses, that we can configure important sectors of the external world.
In the same way that the space of representation goes about being articulated from early infancy onwards, so too the objectal world is articulated from early infancy on. At this stage of learning, children do not seem to coherently articulate the different registers that they have of one same object. As we have commented on elsewhere, children do not distinguish well between their own body and their mother’s body. Besides this, they are not so good at capturing the relationship between the type of stimulus reaching a sense and the function that the object performs. They also confuse the apparatus of register to the point that many times one sees a child putting something he wants to eat in his ear, and we observe him carrying out different kinds of substitutions. Children are unable to articulate the entire system of perception; they do not articulate it more-or-less coherently. Neither is their space of representation coherently articulated. A building that is far away is of course perceived as being smaller than when it is close, but they reach for it with their hands to grab a chimney, or perhaps a window, and eat it. There are children who do this with the Moon, which, as you know, is beyond the arm’s reach—or was…. Stereoscopic vision, which gives us depth of field and allows the articulation of different distances in space, is configured gradually in a child. Also, the internal space of representation progressively acquires volume. It is clear that a child is not born with the same objectal articulation that adults have, but that the data that is supplied by the senses later allows the psychic apparatus to carry out its work, always basing itself on memory.
We are studying these first phenomena of translation of impulses. For example, a phenomenon that acts over a sense activates a chain in which images appear that correspond to other senses, but in relation to the same object. What happens in those strange cases of association of an object’s characteristics, in which these are deposited in another object? Here we have a much more interesting translation, because now a gentleman hears the sound of a bell and doesn’t evoke the image of the bell, but that of a relative. Now one is not relating the object that one is hearing, to the object that at another moment one saw, or to an object that at another moment one smelled—now one is associating the first object to other phenomena, to other images that accompanied the recording of a moment, but that are not referred to the object in question, but to another type of object. Primarily one makes associations between the different perceptual characteristics of a given object. But we are talking about something more—about an object to which not just its different characteristics are associated, but all those phenomena that in the past were related to it. And these phenomena compromise other objects, they compromise other people, they compromise entire situations. We then speak of the phenomenon of translation of impulses, which refers not just to the characteristics of one same object, but to those of other objects and situational structures that were associated to that given object. It therefore seems that the structuring is effected by relating different perceptions of one same object, and in accordance with situational contexts.
Something more. It so happens that since there is internal impulse, if that internal impulse has enough signal potential to reach the threshold of register, then upon perceiving the sound of the bell, the subject experiences a curious emotion. He is no longer translating impulses or associating impulses among the different characteristics of that object and other impulses that accompany it, or between structures of complete perception, but something more—he is translating between complete structures of perception and structures of the register that had accompanied him at that moment.
If we see that an impulse that corresponds to a sense can be translated and transferred to another, why shouldn’t we also be able to translate impulses that are registered by external senses and that contiguously evoke impulses that have been recorded from internal senses? It isn’t that difficult. It so happens that the phenomenon is somewhat amazing and takes on bizarre characteristics as the level of consciousness goes down. But its mechanics isn’t that strange.
Let’s remember that memory—studied in layers as ancient memory, mediate memory and recent memory—is in movement. The raw material that is closest is today’s—that’s where we have the newest data. But there are numerous associated phenomena that are referred to ancient memory and they cause us problems, since the register of an object which can be associated to recent phenomena is accompanied by phenomena from ancient memory in a translative way. This is quite extraordinary and happens particularly with a certain type of sense. Due to its structuring, the olfactory sense is the richest in this type of production. The sense of smell usually awakens very great associative chains of a situational type, and many of them very ancient. You know the example: the quality of a certain smell is perceived, and complete images from infancy are released. And how are those images released? Are you reminded of the same smell—simply the same smell—from twenty years ago? No, you remember a complete situation from long ago that has been triggered by the present perception of that smell.
The translation of impulses, which at first appears simple and easy to investigate, ends up becoming complex. Diverse sectors of memory, apparently incoherent structurings of perception, internal registers that are associated to externally perceived phenomena; productions that are imaginary, but that at the same time interfere in the external register and associate themselves to it; operations of memory that, as they are translated, take up, in a level of consciousness, the associative pathways—all of these make it difficult to comprehend the general scheme.
Up until here we have seen the impulses associating and translating themselves from one into the others. But there are also other, very curious phenomena: those of transformation. The image that was structured in one way, shortly after begins to acquire other configurations. This is a process that occurs in the associative pathways, in which the associated impulses that arise in the space of representation take on a life of their own and start to deform, transform themselves, showing us one mobility over another mobility. And with these problems we find ourselves before the techniques of transference. We must give fixedness to all this, we must be able to rely on general laws of some kind that enable us to operate in this moving chaos. We need some Operative laws, something that never fails to respond, under the same conditions, yielding the same results. And this exists because, fortunately, the body possesses a certain permanence that we will be able to operate. However if this were to happen exclusively in the psychic world, there would be no way of operating—there would be no reference.
The corporal objectal reference is what will enable us to say that, even if a pain in an area of the body is translated in different ways, evokes different contiguities of images, creates mixtures of memories and of times—that phenomenon will be detected in a specific zone of the space of representation. And we will be able to comprehend many other curious phenomena and many functions, thanks to the fixedness of the body. This body is an old friend, a good companion that provides us with references for us to move around in the psychism. There is no other way we can do so.
Let’s see what happens with the space of representation and the phenomena that are triggered from it.
I imagine. a horizontal line in front of my eyes. I shut my eyes. Where do I imagine it? Well, I imagine. it ahead and outside. Now I imagine. my stomach. Where do I imagine. it? Below and inside. I now imagine. that line in the place where my stomach is and this creates a problem of location for me. Now I imagine the stomach ahead of me and outside, and this, too, creates a problem of location for me. When I imagine. my stomach below and inside, I don’t just imagine. my stomach, but also I have a cenesthetic register of it, and this is a second component of the representation. Now I can imagine. the stomach in front, above and outside, but I don’t have the same cenesthetic register. And so, when the image is emplaced in the correct place, it has the cenesthetic component of register, which provides us with an important reference. With a little effort, you will also be able to imagine. the stomach above and outside. But how will you imagine. it? Perhaps like a drawing, as you’ve seen it in books. But if instead, you imagine. it below and inside, what do you imagine. it as? As the drawing? No way. Do you have a visual image ? No way. You could have one that was associated, because of the translation phenomenon—but what is that about imagining it in the space of representation, below and inside? It is about working with another type of image —with a cenesthetic image.
So according to whether the image is emplaced on the space of representation in one point or another, and at a level of depth or at another, not only is there the register of the image, but there is also the proper cenesthetic representation at such space and at such depth. When the objects emplaced on the space of representation are observed "from the background" of that space, we say that we are working with vigilic articulation. That is, we see the phenomena that are external to us (or that are termed "external") as outside our head. 
 I now can imagine. faraway objects that are outside my head. From where do I register those images ? From inside my head—this is the sensation that I have. Nevertheless, I wouldn't say that those objects are inside my head. If I now take the object that I imagined. outside, and this time I imaginarily place it inside my head, I'll have a cenesthetic register-aside from the image that I've emplaced in the interior of my head. 
 Depending on the level of depth in the space of representation, we come to have a type of internal register, or a type of cenesthetic register. This is of considerable importance for comprehending the subsequent transferential phenomenon.
I can imagine., from the background of this screen of sorts, the phenomena that are outside my head, and also, upon imagining phenomena that are inside my head, I can have an emplacement inside that mental space. I can make a bigger effort and imagine. that object inside my head as if it were seen at the same time and from different places. It is possible to see the object from different points, as if “the one who represents” was surrounding the object; but normally one represents the object from a certain background.
There are quite a few difficulties with the mental space emplaced from the head backwards, not so from the head forwards. Almost all the external senses are located in the frontal zone of the head, and this is how one perceives the world and how the mental space that corresponds to it is articulated; but from the ears toward the back, perception and representation grow more difficult
Behind you are the curtains of this room, and you can imagine them without seeing them. But when you observe the curtains behind you on the space of representation, you might be asked: “Where do you see the curtains from?” You see them from the same screen—except that, on the screen, an inversion of sorts has been produced. You don’t get behind the curtains—you position yourselves in the same point of internal emplacement. And now it seems to you that the curtains are outside of you, but to the rear. This creates problems for us; but in any case, we continue being emplaced in the background of the space of representation.
The space of representation creates a few problems of “topography.” I imagine. now, phenomena that are far from this room, that are outside this room. I cannot try to place my consciousness outside this room. Nonetheless, I insert those objects inside my space of representation. Those objects are emplaced in the interior of my space of representation. Where then is the space of representation, if it is referred to objects that are outside? This illusory phenomenon is extremely interesting, given the fact that the representation of objects can be extended beyond the space in the immediate proximity of my senses’ perception, but never outside my space of representation. And it turns out that my space of representation is precisely internal and is not external.
If one examines this incorrectly, one believes that the space of representation extends out from the body, toward the outside. In reality, the space of representation extends toward the interior of the body. This “screen” is configured thanks to the sum total of cenesthetic impulses that provide continuous references. This screen is internal, and it isn’t that the phenomena I imagine. outside flash onto this screen; in any case, I go about imagining them inside, but at different levels of that internal screen’s depth.
When we say that the images that appear in different points of the space of representation act over the centers, it becomes clear that they could not act over the centers if the screen were emplaced outward. The images act over the centers because the impulses go inward, even when the subject may believe that the phenomena are emplaced outside. And here it is good to clarify that I am not negating the existence of the external phenomena; rather I am questioning their configuration, given that they (the referenced phenomena) present themselves to me in front of my filters of perception and they are articulated on my screen of representation.
As the level of consciousness drops, the structuring of the space of representation is modified and the phenomena that previously were seen from inside, believing them to be outside, with the fall of the level of consciousness are seen outside, believing them to be inside; or they are seen inside, believing them to be outside. That background of the screen where I was emplaced when I referred to imagined. external phenomena—where is it now in my dreams, when “I” see myself placed outside of “that” which sees? And I see myself from above, from below, from a distance, closer in, etc. It turns out that now the space of representation truly adopts internal characteristics at its limits. The space of representation becomes internal when the level of consciousness falls, because the stimuli from external senses have disappeared and the work of the internal senses has been reinforced. With the reinforcing of the cenesthetic impulses, the internal space of representation has acquired fullness, and now we have these phenomena occurring in the “interior” of the space of representation as such. Images appear in which the space of representation takes on accentuated characteristics, according to the scanning performed by the cenesthetic impulses. In dreams, the space of representation appears as having boundaries that are wall-like, or like containers of all types, and occasionally appears like one’s own head, inside which the remanent oneiric phenomena arise. The largest of containers in the fall of the level of consciousness is, precisely, the space of representation ’s borders.
The instinctive centers (vegetative and sexual) are mobilized powerfully with the fall in level of consciousness, though there may be some concomitances of an emotional type, and also some intellectual and almost no motor concomitances. When the emplacement of the phenomena occurs in the space of representation that corresponds to the low level of consciousness, the greatest firing-off of images goes to the vegetative center and to the sex—which are the most internal centers and the ones that work with the registers of cenesthetic sensations, while the other centers tend to be very closely linked to impulses from the external senses. On the other hand, images that in daily life do not mobilize important charges or discharges in the referenced centers, can turn out to be quite powerful when the level of consciousness falls. In turn, strong internal images are configured from the work of these two centers since a perception is had of the centers’ work that is converted into an image. This phenomenon is reversible, and just as the space of representation is configured by the cenesthetic impulses, so too any image that is emplaced at a certain level of the space of representation in its inner layer, acts over the corporal level that corresponds to it.
Let’s now reconsider what has been said regarding the objectal associations of different senses; regarding the translations of impulses with respect to one same object; objectal associations between objects and situations; and the translation of the impulses of an object with respect to the other objects around it. The objectal associations referred to external and internal situations (i.e., cenesthetic impulses), are complex registers that are recorded in memory. These recordings always exist as a background of each phenomenon of representation (i.e., of an image ) and they are linked to precise zones and depths of the space of representation.
We already have a few elements at our disposal to enable us to comprehend what happens in the transit of images in the space of representation, in the levels of sleep and semisleep. We already comprehend the first steps of what we will call “techniques of transference.” These techniques will be effective, they will fulfill their objectives, if in fact these phenomena that appear on the representation screen in the low levels of consciousness (upon being transformed) mobilize different parts of the body, different tensions in the body, or they displace mnemic phenomena that produce tensions expressed in corresponding images. When we act over these images, we modify the system of associations that have motivated the tensions.
Our problem will lie, in these transferential techniques, in associating or dissociating the climates from the images. In other words, separating the climates from the themes.
At times situations will arise in which we must associate an image to a climate, because without the image we will only find cenesthetic images that cannot be visualized, and because they cannot be visualized, neither can they be moved to different heights and different levels in the space of representation. We will then be obliged, in dealing with certain climates, to associate them to certain images in order to later mobilize these images in the space of representation, and, in so doing, “drag” the climates. If we don’t proceed in this way, the diffuse climate will be distributed in the space of representation in such a way that we will be unable to work with it.
And at times, owing to another peculiar functioning of the phenomena in the levels of sleep, we encounter visual images to which charges that do not exactly correspond to them are adhered; and therefore we will try to dissociate these charges and transfer other, appropriate charges to the images.
And so we will have to resolve numerous problems in the transference of charges, in the transference of images, in the displacement of images and in the transformation of images.

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