Extending the theory of premature automatization: The fantasy as an abstract rule in hierarchical cognitive control

ABSTRACT

The neuropsychoanalytic theory of repression as premature automatization is a major clinical contribution of neuropsychoanalysis. One of its clinical implications is that psychoanalysis works with (declarative) derivatives of the repressed to gradually automatize new non-declarative action plans that better meet one’s needs. This supposes a certain link between the repressed and its derivatives. However, the way derivatives are linked to the repressed has not been elaborated. Here, I propose a consilience between hierarchical cognitive control (instantiated in basal ganglia-prefrontal cortex loops) and the fantasy (as developed in Lacanian psychoanalysis). I claim that this structure provides the link between the premature automatized repressed and derivatives. Specifically, higher-order, abstract (non-declarative) rule systems govern the contextual selection of actions to achieve a goal-state. For premature automatized action plans, which have a generalized status and confidence, the abstract rule system in which they are nested is commensurately generalized, even though it does not work. This approach emphasizes how prematurely automatized motor plans are nested within a structuring hierarchy that effects their instantiations across various interpersonal and fantasmatic scenes.

KEYWORDS:

• Repression
• fantasy
• basal ganglia
• prefrontal cortex
• derivatives
• cognitive control

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Here I describe the “mainstream” (Solmsian, Pankseppian) neuropsychoanalytic approach to affect and predictive coding. It is beyond my scope here to detail how a Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis differs here (although I will indicate places throughout). See Dall’Aglio (forthcoming).

2 Capitalization follows Panksepp’s convention for describing specific neural circuits, not simply emotional semantics.

3 Such rules and actions could have been “gated in” to WM, but not “gated out” and executed. See below.

4 I thank a reviewer for highlighting the complexity in this scenario.

5 The proposal of an abstract rule indexed to premature automatization may be understood as the inference of what high-confidence rule is contingently formed, due to the impossibility of predetermined affective resolution. Put simply, there are other rules that take priority in the lived world besides Pankseppian hyperpriors (Dall’Aglio, 2022).

6 The Other refers to the social order, the symbolic. In infancy, parental figures typically occupy the position of the Other, but this may change throughout development (Verhaeghe, 2004).

7 I thank a reviewer for highlighting this point.

8 More precisely, the fantasy is a knotting of the real, imaginary, and symbolic registers (Azeen Khan, personal communication). There is the symbolic element of a signifier cut off from other signifiers, a “master signifier” or S1. Importantly, this highlights how the fantasy operates first and foremost as a motoric form (Bazan, 2011), not in a declarative-semantic formulation. There is the imaginary element of the fantasmatic scene. And there is the real element of the alluded beyond, the repressed enjoyment caught up in the fantasy. Insofar as the fantasy may be connected to BG-PFC loops and hierarchical cognitive control, this paper is elaborating the Borromean knotting of the registers in the brain (Dall'Aglio, 2019).

9 In Lacanian terms, this is the difference between fantasy and symptom.

10 In Lacanian terms, the “traversal” of the fantasy.

11 That is, the mode of jouissance (the real) and the symbolic in Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis (Dall'Aglio, 2019).

12 One might speculate that, in cases of frontal lobe patients, rehabilitation strategies for executive dysfunction should be considered within the context of the patient’s particular fantasy (see Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2002), insofar as cognitive control hierarchies are deeply motivated by Pankseppian systems.