Psychic apparatus

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PSYCHIC APPARATUS AND ITS FUNCTION

As the architectural principle of the psychic apparatus, we may conjecture a certain stratification or structure of instances deposited in strata.[1]


Certain inadequacies of our, psychic functions and certain performances which are apparantly unintentional prove to be well motivated when subjected to psychoanalytic investigation, and are determined through the consciousness of unknown motives.

In order to belong to the class of phenomena which can thus be explained, a faultly psychic action must satisfy the following conditions:

  1. It must not exceed a certain measure, which is firmly established through our estimation, and is designated by the expression "within normal limits."
  2. It must evince the character of the momentary and temporary disturbance. The same action must have been previously performed more correctly or we must always rely on ourselves to perform it more correctly; if we are corrected by others, we must immediately recognize the truth of the correction and the incorrectness of our psychic action.
  3. If we at all perceive a faulty action, we must not perceive in ourselves any motivation of the same, but must attempt to explain it through "inattention" or attribute it to an "accident."

Thus, there remain in this group the cases of forgetting, the errors, the lapses in speaking, reading, writing, the erroneously carried-out actions and the so-called chance actions.[2]