Project Appendix C The Nature of Q, Appendix C To Project For A Scientific Psychology

PEP Web - The Nature of Q, Appendix C to Project for a Scientific Psychology 5/27/10 1:35 AM
Strachey, J. (1966). The Nature of Q, Appendix C to Project for a Scientific Psychology.
Strachey, J. (1966 ). The Nature of Q, Appendix C to Project for a Scientific Psychology. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
Volume I ( 1886 -1899): Pre -Psycho-Analytic Publications and Unpublished Drafts , 392 -397
The Nature of Q, Appendix C to Project for a Scientific Psychology
James Strachey
Of the two principal ideas with which Freud introduces the Project (p. 295)-the neurone and Q-there is no mystery
about the first. But the second calls for some examination, especially as everything suggests that it was the forerunner of
a concept that was to play a fundamental part in psycho-analysis. We are not concerned here with the special puzzle,
mentioned above in the Editor's Introduction, of the distinction between Q, and Q. What we are dealing with is Q (as
Freud himself explicitly states at the end of his first paragraph)-a Q that has some special connection with the nervous
system.
How, then, did Freud picture this Q, in the autumn of 1895?
Apart from the obvious fact that he wanted to present Q, as something material-subject to the general laws of
motion (p. 295)-we notice at once that Q, appears in two distinguishable forms. The first of these is Q, in flow, passing
through a neurone or from one neurone to another. This is described in various ways: for instance, neuronal excitation in
a state of flow (p. 296), Q, in flow (p. 301), current (p. 298), or passage of excitation (p. 300). The second, more
static, form is shown by a cathected neurone filled with Q (p. 298).1
The importance of this distinction between the two states of Q, only emerges by degrees in the Project, and one is
almost tempted to imagine that Freud himself only became aware of it in the course of his writing the work. The first sign
of this importance is in connection with the discussion of the mechanism for telling the difference between hallucinations
and perceptions, and the part played in this mechanism by inhibitory action arising from the ego (Sections 14 and 15 of
Part I). The details of this inhibitory action (interference by a side-cathexis, directed by a cathexis of attention from the
ego) are given on pp. 323-4, and its outcome is to change the state of Q, which is in flow into a state of Q,which is
static in a neurone. This distinction is presently (pp. 326-7) related to one between the primary (uninhibited) and
secondary (inhibited) processes. Yet another way of describing the same distinction is introduced soon afterwards (p.
335) with the notion that the interfering side-cathexis
1Cf. some remarks on cathexis in the Editor's Appendix to Freud's first paper on the neuro-psychoses of defence (1894a),
Standard Ed., 3, 65.
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has a binding effect on the Q. It is not, however, until in Part III of the Project (p. 368 f.) that the full implications are
displayed of the distinction between a bound and a mobile state of Q. The necessity for the hypothesis of there being
two states of Q arises at that point in connection with Freud's discussion of the mechanism of thinking, which calls for a
state in the neurone which, though there is a high cathexis, permits only a small current (p. 368).
Thus Q would appear to be measurable in two ways: by the height of the level of cathexis within a neurone and by
the amount of flow between cathexes. This has been seized upon sometimes as evidence that Freud really believed that
Q, was simply electricity and that the two ways of measuring it corresponded to amperage and voltage. It is true that
some eighteen months before the composition of the Project, in his first paper on the neuro-psychoses of defence
(1894a), he had made a vague comparison between something that was a precursor of Q, and an electric charge
spread over the surface of a body (Standard Ed., 3, 60). It is also true that Breuer, in his theoretical contribution to
Studies on Hysteria (1895d) (published only a few months before the Project was written) had devoted some space to an
electrical analogy to the excitations in the conductive paths of the brain (Standard Ed., 2, 193-4). Nevertheless,
nowhere in the Project is there a word to suggest that any such idea was present in Freud's mind. On the contrary, he
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repeatedly emphasizes the fact that the nature of neuronal motion is unknown to us. (See, for instance, pp. 372, 379
and 387.)1
There are, it must be admitted, some obscurities in the account given in the Project of the nature of the bound state
and of its mechanism. One of the most puzzling of these relates to the account given of the process of judgement and
the part played in it by a cathexis from the ego. This influence is described in a variety of ways-as a side-cathexis, or
precathexis, or hypercathexis2 -and it is closely involved in the idea of a cathexis of attention. It seems at first (e.g. p.
324) that attention
1The electrical theory may, it is to be feared, have received a rein forcement from an unfortunate mistranslation in the Standard
Edition rendering of Chapter VII (E) of The Interpretation of Dreams, where (Standard Ed., 5, 599, line 4 from the bottom) the
German Niveau was quite unjustifiably translated potential. In later printings of the volume the word has been corrected to level.
2Incidentally, there seems to be little justification for the idea that Freud restricted his use of this last term to cathexes from the
ego. See, for instance, libidinal hypercathexis in Totem and Taboo (1912-13), Standard Ed., 13, 89.
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is only a means of directing the side-cathexes to the place where they are needed. But elsewhere (e.g. p. 368) it seems
as though the hypercathexis of attention is in itself the force which produces the bound state.
Indeed, the whole question of the relation of attention to Q, needs examination. (Free energy Freud seems to call
it in his letter to Fliess of January 1, 1896, Appendix B above.) Attention makes an unostentatious appearance in Section
14 of Part I (p. 324), but soon begins to show its importance (in Section 19 of Part I and Section 6 of Part II), while in
Part III it becomes an almost predominant feature. Nevertheless, in Freud's later writings, attention almost vanishes
apart from a few sporadic mentions. Anonymous traces of it, however, persist to the very last along two rather different
lines, both of which go back ultimately to the Project. The first and more obvious one relates to reality-testing; and the
history of this is fully documented in the Editor's Note to the metapsychological discussion of dreams (1917d), Standard
Ed., 14, 219-21. The other, less noticeable but perhaps more important, concerns precisely the part played by attention
or some similar agency in bringing about the distinction between Q, in its bound and in its free state, and, beyond that,
between the primary and secondary processes. This function of attention is discussed in an Editor's footnote to The
Unconscious (1015e), Standard Ed., 14, 192 n. It is indirectly alluded to in Freud's very last works, Moses and
Monotheism (1939a), Standard Ed., 23, 97, and the Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940a [1938]), Standard Ed., 164.1
Whatever may be the precise details of the mechanism responsible for bringing about the transformation of free into
bound Q,, it is evident that Freud attached the greatest importance to the distinction itself. In my opinion, he wrote in
The Unconscious, this distinction represents the deepest insight we have gained up to the present into the nature of
nervous energy (Standard Ed., 14, 188).2
This quotation might also encourage us to hope that Freud's later writings will throw light on our immediate problem
of the nature of Q). Q itself, under that name, never re-appears, though
1An interesting sidelight on Freud's view of attention is provided by his remarking, in several connections, that attention interferes
with the efficiency of automatic actions, and that these are assisted by its distraction. See p. 29 above and an Editor's footnote to
Lecture XXX of the New Introductory Lectures (1933a), Standard Edition., 22, 40, where full references will be found.
2 Freud's strange and unexplained attribution of this discovery to Breuer is discussed in Standard Ed., 2, xxvii.
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there is no. difficulty in recognizing it under various aliases, most of which are already familiar in the Project. One
particular one of these, psychical energy, demands attention, for it emphasizes what appears to be a vital change which
the concept has undergone. Q is no longer something material; it has become something psychical. Psychical energy
is found nowhere in the Project. 1 ( energy, which occurs in Letter 39, p. 390 etc., merely means energy from the
neuronal system .) But it is already in common use in The Interpretation of Dreams. Nevertheless, the change does
not portend a complete abandonment of a physical basis. Even though Freud declares (Standard Ed., 5, 536) that he
will remain upon psychological ground, careful examination will reveal traces of the old neurological background. Even
the well-known passage in the book on jokes (1905c, Standard Ed., 8, 148), in which he appears to turn his back on
neurones and nerve-fibres, in fact leaves the door wide open for a physiological explanation. Indeed, in the sentence
from the paper on The Unconscious (1915e) quoted above Freud speaks of nervous energy not of psychical energy.
On the other hand in the German collected edition of 1925 he altered two words in the last sentence of the Studies on
Hysteria (1895d) from nervous system to mental life (Standard Ed., 2, 305). But, however great or small this revolution
was, there can be no question that many major characteristics of Q, survived in a transmogrified shape to the very end
of Freud's writings: evidence for this is given by the very numerous footnote references in these pages.
A particularly interesting question arises as to the relation of Q to the instincts. These are scarcely mentioned here
by that name. It is evident, however, that they are the successors to endogenous Q or endogenous excitations. Some
history of Freud's developing views on the instincts is given in the Editor's Note to Instincts and their Vicissitudes,
Standard Ed., 14, 111 ff., and especially of his various classifications of them, first into libidinal and ego-instincts and
later into libidinal and destructive instincts. One point, not mentioned there, which is of special interest in the present
context, is the suggestion, twice thrown out by Freud, of the possibility of an indifferent psychical energy which may
take either of the two instinctual forms: cf. the paper on narcissism (1914c), Standard Ed., 14, 78, and The Ego and the
Id (1923b), Standard Ed., 19, 44.2 This indifferent psychical energy seems very much like a harking back to Q.
1 The term energy occurs very rarely indeed in the Project in the sense of Q. The commonest synonym used is probably
excitation.
2 The German word is indifferent in both these passages. Unfortunately in the second one this is translated (too loosely) neutral
(instead of indifferent), which has incidentally led to the earlier passage being overlooked.
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These later uncertainties about the instincts (entities which, like Q, are on the frontier between the mental and the
physical) and about their classification, remind us that Freud was always quite consistent in emphasizing our ignorance
of the basic nature of Q, or its doublets. This, as we have seen (p. 393), is often insisted on in the Project itself. But the
point recurs again and again in later works: to name only a few, in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), 5, 599, in the
paper on The Unconscious (1915e), Standard Ed., 14, 188 and in Moses and Monotheism (1939a), Standard Ed., 23,
97. This conclusion is stated most plainly ot all in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g), Standard Ed., 18, 30: The
indefiniteness of all our discussions on what we describe as metapsychology is of course due to the fact that we know
nothing of the nature of the excitatory process that takes place in the elements of the psychical systems, and that we do
not feel justified in framing any hypothesis on the subject. We are consequently operating all the time with a large
unknown factor, which we are obliged to carry over into every new formula. It seems, then, that our enquiry must end
here and that we have no choice but to follow Freud in leaving the problem of Q, unsolved.
But though the ultimate nature of Q, was unknown to Freud, some of its essential features were always assumed by
him and insisted upon to the end of his life. If we turn back to one of its very earnest appearances, to which we have
already referred on p. 393, in the first paper on the neuro-psychoses of defence (1894a), Standard Ed., 3, 60, we find
this unknown entity described as something which possesses all the characteristics of a quantity (though we have no
means of measuring it), which is capable of increase, diminution, displacement and discharge. It is, indeed, obvious, that
the mysterious Q was given its name for the very reason that it did possess these characteristics.
Quantitative considerations had to be taken into account from the first at many points in Freud's theories. For
instance, in The Aetiology of Hysteria (1896c) we read that in the aetiology of the neuroses quantitative preconditions
are as important as qualitative ones: there are threshold-values which have to be crossed before the illness can become
manifest (Standard Ed., 3, 210). More important, however, is the fact that quantity is implicit in the whole theory of
conflict as the cause not only of neuroses but of an entire range of mental states. There are a number
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of passages in which this fact becomes explicit: for instance, in Types of Onset of Neurosis (1912c), Standard Ed., 12,
236-7, in Lecture XXIII of the Introductory Lectures (1916-17), Standard Ed., 16, 374, in Some Neurotic Mechanisms
(1922b), Standard Ed., 18, 228 and in Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937c), Standard Ed., 23, 226-7. In this
last case the importance of quantitative factors is related to the therapeutic situation; but so it had been more than forty
years earlier, in Freud's contribution to Studies on Hysteria (1895d), Standard Ed., 2, 270. In his great paper on The
Unconscious (1915e) Freud used the term economic as equivalent to quantitative, Standard Ed., 14, 181, and from
that time onwards he used the words as synonyms. 1 We shall be right therefore in regarding our enigmatic Q, whatever
its ultimate nature, as the progenitor of one of the three fundamental factors in metapsychology.
1This identification was no novelty. It is to be found in a letter to Fliess (quoted above, p. 283) written several months before the
Project.
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Article Citation [Who Cited This?]

Strachey, J. (1966). The Nature of Q, Appendix C to Project for a Scientific Psychology. The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume I ( 1886-1899): Pre-Psycho-Analytic Publications and Unpublished Drafts, 392-
397
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PEP Web - The Nature of Q, Appendix C to Project for a Scientific Psychology 5/27/10 1:35 AM

Strachey, J. (1966). The Nature of Q, Appendix C to Project for a Scientific Psychology.

The Nature of Q, Appendix C to Project for a Scientific Psychology

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