ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Sigmund Freud’s classical metapsychology in the light of developments in cognitive and affective neuroscience. Where Freud cited clinical psychopathological evidence, modern scientists independently postulated unconscious mental processes on the basis of neuropatho-logical and experimental evidence. Nevertheless, Freud had no difficulty in recognising that affectivity is “more primordial, more elementary, than perceptions arising externally”, in other words, that it is a more ancient form of consciousness than perception. The chapter addresses only the most basic implication of the insight that the cognitive systems Pcpt.–Cs. and Pcs. are unconscious in themselves. It considers the implications for the system Ucs. Freud’s secondary process rests on the binding of “free” drive energies. Such binding creates a reserve of tonic activation that can be utilised for the function of thinking, just described, which Freud attributed to the Pcs. ego.
