Harold B. Gerard's Paper

Psychic Reality and Unconscious Belief: a Reconsideration

Harold B. Gerard, Ph.D.

Abstract

In a recent paper, Britton attempted to distinguish between a phantasy that has achieved the status of a belief and one that has not, and between a belief and knowledge. I argue that, in light of the Seventeenth Century controversy between Descartes and Spinoza, both of these distinctions are untenable. Descartes argued, as Britton does and as Freud did, that phantasies or ideas are not accepted as beliefs until they check out against reality. Furthermore, Britton maintains that for a belief to acquire the status of knowledge, it must be supported by incontrovertible evidence. Spinoza, on the other hand, proposed the seemingly preposterous notion that a comprehended proposition is automatically believed. Doubt may subsequently be engendered by disconfirming evidence. As it turns out, research in a number of domains suggests that Spinoza was correct and Descartes was wrong. This evidence and clinical implications are discussed. As suggested by Bion, instilling doubt regarding deeply ingrained (Spinozan-formed) phantasies is a principal goal of treatment.

Psychic Reality and Unconscious Belief: a Reconsideration

Britton(1995), arguing in a Freudian and a Kleinian vein, draws a distinction between a phantasy or an idea that has the status of a belief and one that does not have that status. Believing, he contends, is "an ego activity which confers the status of psychic reality on to existing mental productions (phantasies)." (p.20). He further states that unless a phantasy has the status of a belief it will not have consequences. Britton continues that belief achieves the status of knowledge as the result of the person having checked it thoroughly against material reality. What I hope to show in this paper is that the above distinctions are untenable and fly in the face of recent evidence.

My critique of Britton's paper is from the perspective of a more than 300 year-old-controversy between Descartes (1641/1984; 1644/1984) and Spinoza (1677/1982) about how we form the beliefs we hold. (For a thorough review of the controversy see Bennett, 1984; Gilbert, 1991; Lehrer, 1983; Nuchelmans, 1983; Price, 1969; and Russell, 1921.) In a nutshell, Descartes maintained that comprehending and the assessment of what is comprehended are distinct and separate processes whereas Spinoza argued that comprehension and assessment are part and parcel of the same process. In other words, the Cartesian position maintains that believing is a two step process: initially we comprehend some proposition about the world which we then check against other information about the subject matter of the proposition, i.e., against additional new information or against information we already possess. This is much the way a modern computer works. On the basis of this comparison, we then decide to accept or reject the proposition. For example, someone may tell me that "Bill Clinton is a man of high moral principles." My decision to accept or reject the proposition will follow my mental search for information bearing on Bill Clinton's adherence or non-adherence to certain moral principles. The seemingly absurd Spinozan argument maintains, on the other hand, that once exposed to the proposition about Bill Clinton's morals I would ipso facto accept it at face value. Spinoza covers himself by further stating that we believe the proposition until confronted by information that disconfirms it or by further confirming it with information that certifies it. But, initially, believing what we comprehend is automatic.

The Cartesian position not only appears to be so ultra-logical and commonsensical but it also pervades our thinking, including psychoanalytical thinking, about how we think and behave. We would hardly bat an eye if someone attempted to argue us out of our Cartesian sense of security. The only problem is that considerable evidence demonstrates that Descartes was wrong and Spinoza was right.

Before presenting that evidence I will show how Britton's thinking about beliefs and knowledge is inextricably mired in Cartesian quicksand. He happens to be in good company since Freud repeatedly fell prey to the same mistake. As a matter of fact, the basic distinction between primary and secondary process thinking is based on the Cartesian two-step postulate. Primary process is based on one step thinking whereas secondary process is two-step. Britton cites Freud (1897) as equating belief with a "judgment of reality", that "if after the conclusion of the act of thought the indication of reality reaches the perception, then a judgment of reality, belief, has been achieved." (my italics) Freud goes on, as cited by Britton, to argue that indications of reality could be based both on internal or external reality, i.e., what is already known about the subject matter or on additional information gleaned from the external material world (p.20). Such a view of belief formation is as Cartesian as it gets.

Britton continues, following Freud, that "beliefs require sensory confirmation (reality testing) to become knowledge."(p.20) In addition, he makes the enigmatic statement "what is perceived requires belief to become knowledge."(p.20) Yet it is typically true that seeing is believing. More about that later. He is outcartesianing Descartes by proposing a three-step process: percept, step one; leading to belief, step two; in turn, leading to knowledge, step three. Rather than telescoping the process as Spinoza does, he is, by accordianing it, adding unnecessary complexity by maintaining that a belief becomes knowledge when it can be shown to be incontrovertibly true. He cites Flew (1979), a philosopher, who defines belief as holding a proposition to be true if there is some supporting evidence for it, although it could possibly be false. This would be the case in a world where propositions are verifiable, as in some scientific endeavor, but it is patently not reflected in everyday thought processes, both conscious and unconscious. In a recent brief consideration of Britton's paper, Etchegoyen (1996) makes a similar point. By contrast, the Spinozan position maintains that a proposition is accepted as true, as fact, as knowledge, until it is shown by subsequent information to be untenable or is subsequently further certified by additional information.

An unconscious transference phantasy held by a patient is often held with great conviction and tenacity; he or she knows it to be true; doubt is not even entertained. For example, a patient of mine recently remarked in the first session after a two week break, with considerable emotion in her tone, "my husband ignores our baby so that she feels he doesn't love her." Although she was ostensibly and consciously referring to her actual six-month-old baby, subsequent associations and a dream indicated that at the unconscious level of mind she felt abandoned and brutalized by me because of my absence in spite of the fact that the two week break occurred because she had attended a scientific congress in her field of study.

Toward the end of his short contribution, Britton ties his view of knowledge formation into the Kleinian perspective on early mental development by suggesting that equating belief with knowledge characterizes paranoid-schizoid thinking, whereas the ability to separate the two is an achievement of the depressive position, which parallels the Freudian distinction between primary and secondary process thinking. What he says here is tantamount to arguing that the Spinozan one step process is paranoid-schizoid and that the Cartesian one is depressive!

A Review of the Literature on the Controversy

I will highlight the early philosophical underpinnings of the controversy before presenting evidence from the modern era that bears on it. Aristotle (1941)in his Rhetoric was both a Cartesian and a Spinozan. On the one hand he argued, as a good Cartesian, that a speaker, in attempting to persuade his audience of his point of view, should acknowledge arguments supporting the other side; but, as a good Spinozan, he recommended that the speaker should present his side of the issue first. He believed in primacy, which would follow from the Spinozan view. He thus implicitly believed in the audience's basic credulity.

This was also clear in the writings of the early Church fathers. "Give us a child until the age of seven," they maintained. Implicit here is a Spinozan assumption as to the early credulity of the child. The child will automatically believe what you tell him or her.

Gilbert (1991) quotes the poet, John Donne (1635/1930), "Though Truth and Falsehood be neare twins, yet Truth a little elder is." Implicit here is the notion that the ability to doubt, to recognize falsehood, occurs later in the ontogenesis of thought than believing that something is true. Donne was definitely a Spinozan. This view is expressed by Russell (1921) in The Analysis of Mind. He states that, "doubt, suspense of judgment and disbelief all seem later and more complex than a wholly unreflecting assent"(p.249). Bain (1859) contrasts the child's primitive credulity with his later acquired skepticism (p.511). Others such as William James (1890,p.318), G.F. Stout (1909, pp.111-114), and Thomas Reid (1764/1895, p.197) all echoed the same view that the capacity to doubt occurs late in development, that it takes time for the fully mature belief process to grow up. Evidence from the psychological laboratory supports this view (Bloom,1970; Pea, 1980). Young children are prone to accept propositions uncritically (Ceci, Ross, & Toglia, 1987; Loftus & Davies, 1984). The data are thus consistent with the Spinozan position but not with the Cartesian one since the latter position would predict equal facility to affirm or doubt from early on in development. Young children are especially gullible before they have learned to doubt.

Gilbert (1991), in his excellent review of the Descartes-Spinoza controversy, has marshalled considerable research evidence bearing on the controversy, that, in effect, counterposes the Cartesian and Spinozan positions. This evidence comes from various domains. In what follows, I will attempt a brief overview of that evidence.

As I indicated above, in the ontogenesis of the believing process, doubting as a mental operation is late to emerge. It is also prone to weaken first when the mental system is stressed. The effects of so-called "brainwashing" attest to this latter consequence. Lifton's (1961) account of the Maoist "thought-reform" technique traded on the breakdown of the doubting function. As one victim put it, "you are annihilated... the judge is the real master. You accept anything he says." (p.23). This seems to be a common experience under conditions of resource depletion both in real life and in laboratory simulations (see Baron, Baron, & Miller, 1973 for a review of such studies). When a resource-depleted person is exposed to information he or she would normally reject, his or her ability to reject the information is markedly reduced. If, as the Cartesian argument goes, acceptance or rejection follows comprehension, a resource-depleted person should comprehend but should be able to withhold judgment. That this is not the case clearly supports the Spinozan position which predicts that even when assessment is disabled, the person should be left believing the proposition he or she comprehended. The evidence reflects the latter circumstance.

Evidence supporting the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977), which asserts that a person will believe what another person says even if the latter has made the statement under duress, is predicted by the Spinozan but not the Cartesian position. The Spinozan listener might later reject the attribution given available mental resources, but he or she will initially accept it since, as the Spinozan unity hypothesis goes, acceptance automatically follows comprehension.

Evidence from the field of psycholinguistics also strongly supports the Spinozan position. It turns out that the negation of a proposition is a second-order affirmation but not vice-versa. Negative statements are meant to undo corresponding positive ones (Clark & Clark, 1977). Thus, in order for a listener to comprehend a denial, he or she must comprehend the positive assertion implicit in the denial. Thus, in order for a person to comprehend the statement, "Bill Clinton is not a moral person," he or she must initially comprehend the core assertion that "Bill Clinton is a moral person" in order to deny the assertion. A Spinozan, but not a Cartesian, listener should at least momentarily believe the core assertion underlying a denial. Evidence for this is reported in a series of experiments by Wegner et al (1981). For example, subjects who read the statement, "Bob Talbert not linked to Mafia" were left with a more negative impression of Bob Talbert than subjects who read a neutral statement about him. This is a result that Spinoza, but not Descartes, would have clearly predicted. In another study, Gilbert, Krull, and Malone (1990) found that resource-depleted subjects tended to believe that denied propositions were true but they tended not to believe that affirmed propositions were false. This asymmetry is precisely what Spinoza, but not Descartes, would predict. Other Spinoza-supporting evidence shows that even when subjects are told that information they were to be given was false, there was some tendency to believe the false information (Wegner et al, 1985).

Conclusion

Britton begins his paper by suggesting that belief is to psychic reality what perception is to material reality, which essentially undercuts his subsequent argument as to the ontogenesis of knowledge. As Gilbert (1991) so deftly points out, perception is quintessentially Spinozan; a percept is immediately believed. Only in the case of rare illusions are our senses tricked into believing what is not there or in to not believing what is there. Our survival in the physical world depends on an accurate perceptual sensorium that forms percepts rapidly. The Spinozan argument essentially carries over into the realm of cognitive processes what is so successful in the perceptual process of coping with the material world. Why would Mother Nature abandon a process that is so successful in the perceptual realm for a more cumbersome Cartesian one in the cognitive realm? True, the Cartesian process is more fool-proof but the cost in time and mental effort is much greater and in the long run, not worth the cost. Thus, we tend to take at face value what we hear and see as regards the social world; comprehending is believing. We believe what others tell us or what we read, at least initially.

Brewer (1996), arguing from a biological evolutionary perspective, maintains that as hominid species became omnivorous, it was important not to ingest substances that were toxic. Since there is little in the way of built-in aversions to various potential foodstuffs that might be poisonous, individuals were forced to rely on others for guidance. Survival, therefore, came to depend on the lore of the hominid group. Furthermore, since early hominids were physically weak as compared with various powerful predators, dependency by the individual on other members of the band was essential. The long period of childhood dependency also tended to foster believing what others say is true. It is not farfetched to suggest that these factors may be the historical evolutionary root of the Spinozan unitary hypothesis, that what is comprehended is automatically believed. Due to its survival value, over the course of evolution we developed a built-in trust in others.Thus, both belief in percepts and comprehended propositions may have a survival evolutionary basis, the former, of course, having developed earlier.

Rather than relegating the Spinozan postulate to paranoid-schizoid thinking, as Britton in effect does, we must accept as normal and typical, at both the conscious and unconscious level, the immediacy of the connection between a cognition and a belief in it, that it is fact. We do not, in everyday thinking, have the luxury Flew (1979) refers to of withholding a judgment of the reality or veracity of a proposition until all the relevant data are in.

Freud's distinction between primary and secondary process thinking and Klein's between paranoid-schizoid versus depressive thought has to be viewed in the Spinozan light of possible disconfirmation once the belief is formed. As suggested by Bion (1967/1984), one of the goals of treatment- if not the goal - is to encourage and enable our patients to reconsider and doubt their long-held primarily unconscious convictions that go back to an early time (p.157). We, as analysts deal with the child and the infant in the adult. The evidence from the research on the ontogenesis of thought is so clear that especially early on in development we are all quintessentially Spinozan; we accept phantasy as fact.

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