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In Sigmund [[Freud]]'s [[work]], the term "[[psychic ]] [[causality]]" designates a group of [[unconscious ]] psychic [[processes ]] (conflicting [[drives]], [[structural ]] conflicts, [[narcissistic ]] and [[object ]] investments) and defensive mechanisms ([[repression]], [[denial]], [[splitting]], [[rejection]]) that are assumed to be the origin of the phenomena of day-today [[life ]] ([[dreams]], slips, failed [[acts]], creative acts) as well as of [[neurotic ]] and [[psychotic ]] [[symptoms]]. Operating according to the [[logic ]] of psychic [[conflict ]] and primary processes, psychic causality is said to be dissociated from the [[concept ]] of "psychic [[reality]]," and from Freud's ongoing attempt to discover the etiology of [[neuroses]], [[psychoses]], and perversions.

The concept appears indirectly throughout Freud's work but he never examined it at any length. It is known that Freud came upon the [[idea ]] at the Salpêtrière, [[working ]] with Jean Martin Charcot in 1885-1886. As he subsequently wrote, "[Charcot] succeeded in proving, by an unbroken [[chain ]] of argument, that these paralyses were the result of [[ideas ]] which had dominated the [[patient]]'s brain at moments of a special disposition" (1893f, p. 22). By 1890 Freud had extended this to all neuroses. In an article entitled "[[Psychical ]] (or [[Mental]]) [[Treatment]]," he claimed that "in some at least of these [neurotic] [[patients ]] the [[signs ]] of their [[illness ]] originate from [[nothing ]] [[other ]] than a [[change ]] in the [[action ]] of their minds upon their bodies and that the immediate [[cause ]] of their disorder is to be looked for in their minds" (1890a, p. 286). Based on the article, psychic causality is not yet explicitly linked to the unconscious mechanisms he would subsequently describe. However, very early in his work he postulated a "[[sexual ]] etiology in all cases of [[neurosis ]] but in neurasthenia the neurosis is actual; in [[psycho]]-neuroses factors of an [[infantile ]] [[nature ]] are at work" (1896c). In 1898, in "[[Sexuality ]] in the Etiology of the Neuroses" (1898a), he referred to "unconscious psychic traces."

Psychic causality implies the ability to [[substitute ]] for a set of apparently unrelated facts an explanatory [[system ]] based on assumptions that provide [[them ]] with consistency and can be used to describe the laws governing their interrelations. All of Freud's work revolves around "two opposed conceptions of causal [[necessity]]" (Dayan, Maurice, 1985), one of which was [[responsible ]] for integrating [[individual ]] differences in a coherent [[structure]], the other tending to emphasize the [[subject]]'s singularity and originality. There is a gradual complication of the [[notion ]] of psychic causality in Freud. In 1895 he proposed two models simultaneously: a causality of psychic facts conceived as part of a system that we would now call cognitivist and neurobiological (see, "[[Project ]] for a [[Scientific ]] [[Psychology]]," 1950c [1895]) and an "[[event]]-driven" [[traumatic ]] conception of neurosis. His "neurotica" is supposed to comprise [[hysteria ]] and [[obsessional ]] neurosis based on the psychic traces of sexual [[aggression ]] experienced during [[childhood ]] and reactivated later on.

The (relative) abandonment of this etiology ([[letter ]] to Wilhelm [[Fliess ]] on September 21, 1897) would confirm the effectiveness of the unconscious [[fantasy ]] as a psychic act. The [[Interpretation ]] of Dreams (1900a) and the first [[topographical ]] subsystem enabled him to describe the laws underlying the operation of unconscious processes for which [[time ]] and [[contradiction ]] have no [[meaning]], which shift and condense to produce not only dreams but the lapses and [[parapraxes ]] of the "[[psychopathology ]] of everyday life" (1901b), together with neurotic symptoms and [[delusions]]. Freud thus established the [[absence ]] of a [[barrier ]] or discontinuity between the normal and the pathological, a key idea in [[psychoanalysis]]. The same unconscious psychic mechanisms are responsible for both modes of [[existence]].

From the first to the second topographical subsystem (1923), the [[Freudian ]] notion of psychic causality was radically modified. The description of the mental [[apparatus ]] became increasingly [[complex]]. Mental and psychopathological facts are now the result of relations of force between id, ego, and [[superego ]] [[agencies]], and the [[dualism ]] between the [[libido ]] and the [[death ]] [[drive]]. [[Metapsychology]], which combines [[topological]], [[dynamic]], and [[economic ]] points of view is the final version of this new way of [[thinking ]] [[about ]] psychic causality. At the same time, the [[role ]] of [[object relations ]] and the weight of [[civilization ]] on possible subject pathologies were substantiated. The [[Versagung ]] ([[refusal]]) that [[social ]] reality forces [[desire ]] to confront, the [[privation ]] (Entbehrungen) that someone like Judge [[Schreber]], unable to have a [[child]], experienced, or the [[disappearance ]] of the [[love ]] object are considered as helping to trigger neuroses and psychoses.

In 1933, in the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933a), Freud proposes a general [[theory ]] of neurosis based on the combination of [[three ]] factors: a refusal of a reality that is unsatisfactory for the id, [[fixation ]] at a [[stage ]] prior to [[libidinal ]] [[development]], and idiosyncratic disposition to the conflict that characterizes the potentially neurotic subject. The neurosis is triggered by [[regression ]] to the points of attachment; in the [[case ]] of [[psychosis ]] and [[perversion ]] specific [[defense ]] mechanisms—splitting, denial, rejection ("[[Fetishism]]," 1927e, "Splitting of the Ego in the [[Process ]] of [[Defence]]," 1940e [1938])—are also involved. In his last writings, [[Moses ]] and [[Monotheism ]] (1939a) and An [[Outline ]] of Psycho-[[Analysis ]] (1940a), published after his death, Freud insists on the [[particular ]] causal [[value ]] of the superego that is associated with phylogenesis and the [[threat ]] of [[castration]], which "[the boy] experiences [as] the greatest [[trauma ]] of his life and introduces the period of [[latency ]] with all its consequences" (1940a, p. 155). Whatever the case, Freud reaffirms the continuity of the normal and the pathological: "[T]he neuroses do not differ in any essential respect from the normal" (1940a, p. 184). The normal, neurotic, or psychotic individual will die "of his [[internal ]] conflicts" (p. 150). Freud also again insists on the central importance of conflict between the [[body ]] and the [[mind]], and their interrelations, in his conception of psychic causality, which as we have seen had a [[number ]] of "avatars."

It could be said that, since Freud, all writers on psychoanalysis have tried to enrich the notion of psychic causality with their own theories, which are inspired by archaic [[fantasies ]] and the individual's traumas and personal [[history]]. Jacques [[Lacan]]'s work represents an original attempt to define psychic causality on a [[structuralist ]] basis by [[identifying ]] the unconscious with the chain of [[signifiers]]. "The only causality the [[analyst ]] [[knows ]] is always that of the cause," he wrote in [[Seminar ]] XI. At the end of his life, he attempted to systematize intrapsychic [[activity ]] using [[mathemes]]. The contributions of psychosomatic [[analysts ]] (Georg Groddeck, Franz Alexander) and those of the [[French ]] [[school ]] who followed the work of Michel Fain and Pierre Marty reopened the question of psychic causality by focusing on Freud's initial question: the [[relationship ]] between [[physical ]] and mental disturbances.

For André Green "the term psychic causality is used by Freud rather loosely, without any genuine [[theoretical ]] support" (1995). In spite of the lapidary nature of this [[claim]], it must be acknowledged that disagreement over the nature of the concept was the origin of the [[split ]] in the [[psychoanalytic ]] movement. For example, Otto Rank believed he had discovered the cause of neurosis in the traumatism of [[birth]]. Wilhelm [[Reich ]] focused on the idea of the sexual [[frustration ]] imposed by civilization (The Function of the [[Orgasm]], 1927). Sándor Ferenczi, after attempting to illustrate Freud's phylogenetic theory and the concept of regression (Thalassa, 1924), reaffirmed the reality of sexual trauma experienced by the [[infant]], and did so against Freud's advice ("Confusion de langues entre les adultes et l'[[enfant]]. Le [[langage ]] de la tendresse et de la [[passion]]," 1933).

Epistemologists, making use of the criticisms that quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity had formulated concerning causality in [[physics]], have contested the causal ambitions of psychoanalysis. Attacking Freud's system of causal interpretation, [[Ludwig Wittgenstein ]] referred to purely "aesthetic" relationships (Cambridge Lectures, 1932-1934). [[Karl Popper ]] contested the scientific status of psychoanalysis, which was, according to him, a [[self]]-validating theory (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1934).

André Green, in his La Causalité psychique (1995), supplied a masterful criticism of the attempts of [[biology]], neuroscience, and [[anthropology ]] to invalidate the concept of Freudian causality. Nonetheless, in the realm of physics, measurement can be used to provide uniform descriptions of the [[natural ]] [[universe]]. As far as we [[know]], the relative force of mental drives does not lend itself to any precise [[form ]] of measurement. [[Psychoanalysts ]] are [[content ]] to [[state ]] that "it works. . . ." As Piera Aulagnier wrote, we are [[forced ]] to recognize that psychoanalysis can lay claim to "necessary" but never "sufficient [[conditions]]" as these are [[understood ]] by [[philosophy ]] and [[mathematics]].

# Dayan, Maurice. (1985). [[Inconscient ]] et Réalité. [[Paris]]: Presses Universitaires de [[France]].# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1890a). Psychical (or mental) treatment. SE, 7: 281-302.

# ——. (1900a). The [[interpretation of dreams]]. Part I, SE,4: 1-338]]