Re my previous comments on Erdelyi's claims about Freud's theories of memory, TIPSters may not be interested in the precise exegetical details of my rebuttals, but I think a few general words are in order. What Erdelyi has done is to take a few truncated quotations of Freud's out of the context in which they were written and contend that they demonstrate that "Bartlettian and Freudian reconstructions are essentially the same". This is characteristic of the way Freud has traditionally been said to be insightful or prescient on a variety of subjects generalizations are made which sound impressive. However, almost invariably when you examine the details of his theoretical procedures a very different picture emerges. So, to take another of Erldelyi's quotes from the same paragraph in "The Unified Theory of Repression" (p. 28) purporting to show Freud maintained reconstructive memory theories consistent with Bartlettian processes, he alludes to Freud's writing of "substitute formations" (1915, SE 14, p. 154). The passage in question is in Freud's paper "Repression", and alludes to the supposed repression of an idea that represents an instinct, with the resultant production of affect, such as anxiety (SE 14, p. 153). The example Freud provides immediately afterwards for this "substitute formation" process is "a well-analysed example of an animal phobia," that of the Wolf Man. Here is how the process works as described by Freud:
"The instinctual impulse subjected to repression here is a libidinal attitude towards the father, coupled with a fear of him. After repression, this impulse vanishes out of consciousness: the father does not appear in it as an object of libido. As a substitute for him we find in a corresponding place some animal which is more or less fitted to be an object of anxiety. The formation of the substitute for the ideational portion [of the instinctual representative] has come about by *displacement* along a chain of connections which is determined in a particular way. The quantitative portion has not vanished, but been transformed into anxiety. The result is fear of a wolf, instead of a demand for love from the father." (1915, SE 14, p. 155) Summing up, Freud is saying that the little boy's libidinal desire for his father was repressed into his unconscious, and that the sexual impulse was transformed into an animal phobia. I leave interested TIPSters to decide if Freud's notion of "substitute formation" exemplifies Bartlettian processes of memory construction as Erdelyi contends. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org/ http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 http://www.srmhp.org/0202/review-01.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=18 --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
