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Volume 10, Number 2
July-December 2006

The Quantitative Factor in the Transformations observed during the Psychoanalytic Process
Stavroula Beratis


SUMMARY

Since the 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' Freud developed the idea of a psychical apparatus associated with quantitative and qualitative transformations of energy. With the revision of the theory of drives and the new picture of the psychic organization, the ego, the super- ego and the id become the three regions of the mind responsible for its manifest and latent workings. However, the quantitative energic factor retained its importance being associated with ongoing energic transformations in the functioning of these three regions. The centrality of the object in the transformations of energy and in promoting the ego's regulating function is already mentioned by Freud in the Three Essays on Sexuality. Later in his writings the object contributes to the formation of the ego, in the process of identification, through the modification of cathectic energy. In psychoanalysis, the relationship to the object finds its main expression in the transference, central transformational tool in analytic work. Freud compares the analyst to the catalytic ferment of chemical reactions, which mobilizes and binds excitations at the same time. The analyst's holding function, the containing, the optimal seduction in the analyst/analysand relationship, and the analyst's tolerating and interpreting primitive drive derivatives linked with object and self representations are concepts, which show the importance of the analyst/object in promoting the ego's representational ability. The quantitative factor retains its importance in the psychoanalytic process. As a mobilizing force it contributes to the necessary destabilization, but also to reorganization, under better ego regulations.