Psychic apparatus

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Part of a series of articles on Psychoanalysis

Constructs Psychosexual development Psychosocial development Conscious • Preconscious • Unconscious Psychic Apparatus Id, ego, and super-ego Libido • Drive Transference • Sublimation • Resistance Important figures Sigmund Freud • Carl Jung Alfred Adler • Otto Rank Anna Freud • Margaret Mahler Karen Horney • Jacques Lacan Ronald Fairbairn • Melanie Klein Harry Stack Sullivan Erik Erikson • Nancy Chodorow Susan Sutherland Isaacs Ernest Jones • Heinz Kohut Important works The Interpretation of Dreams Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" Civilization and Its Discontents Schools of thought Self psychology • Lacanian Analytical psychology • Object relations Interpersonal • Relational Ego psychology

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The term psychic apparatus (sometimes translated as psychical apparatus or mental apparatus) is a central concept of Freudian metapsychology. (Freud himself used the German terms psychischer Apparat and seelischer Apparat).

"We assume that mental life is the function of an apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space and of being made up of several portions [i.e. the Id, ego, and super-ego]" [Freud, 'An Outline of Pshychoanalysis (1940)]

As Freud explained:

"[W]e picture the unknown apparatus which serves the activities of the mind as being really like an instrument constructed of several parts (which we speak of as 'agencies'), each of which performs a particular function and which have a fixed spatial relation to one another: it being understood that by 'spatial relation' -- 'in front of' and 'behind', 'superficial' and 'deep' -- we merely mean in the first instance a representation of the regular succession of the functions" [Freud, 'The Question of Lay Analysis' (1926)]

It ought to be stressed that Freud himself was consistently clear that the idea is a fictive construct -- a hypothesis designed to explain functioning, not a 'part of the brain' to be located or observed:

"It is a hypothesis like so many others in the sciences: the very earliest ones have always been rather rough. 'Open to revision' we can say in such cases [. . .] the value of a 'fiction' of this kind [. . .] depends on how much one can achieve with its help" [Freud, 'The Question of Lay Analysis' (1926)]

Nor did Freud feel it a priority to consider the question of what material the psychic apparatus is constructed of:

"That is not a subject of psychological interest. Psychology can be as indifferent to it as, for instance, optics can be to the question of whether the walls of a telescope are made of metal or cardboard. We shall leave entirely to one side the material line of approach." [Freud, 'The Question of Lay Analysis' (1926)]