The Seba library treats Secondary Process in 6 passages, across 5 authors (including Freud, Sigmund, Bulkeley, Kelly, Alcaro, Antonio; Carta, Stefano).
The secondary process, however, has abandoned this intention on another in its place—the establishment of a ‘thought identity’… All thinking is no more than a circuitous path to a memory of a satisfaction
Freud defines secondary process as the system that replaces pursuit of hallucinatory perceptual identity with ‘thought identity,’ imposing inhibition and bound cathexis upon the free discharge characteristic of primary process.
, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900thesis
the second system, by means of the canating from it, succeeds in inhibiting this discharge and in tr the cathexis into a quiescent one… under the dominion of the second system the discharge of excitation is governed by quite different conditions
Freud details the economic mechanism of secondary process as the inhibition of excitation-discharge and the transformation of free cathexis into quiescent, bound cathexis under the governance of the second psychic system.
, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900thesis
two fundamentally different modes of human mental functioning. Freud calls them the primary process (generally unconscious) and the secondary process (generally preconscious and conscious).
Bulkeley summarizes Freud’s topographical distinction, locating secondary process within the preconscious and conscious systems in contrast to the unconscious primary process.
, An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreaming, 2017supporting
It seems then very plausible that the primary process of thinking permits a ‘psychic rehearsal of possibilities’ that unfolds a prospective adaptive function, helping to anticipate possible future events or to find solutions to unresolved problems
Alcaro and Carta reframe primary process as prospectively adaptive, implicitly repositioning secondary process as the regulatory counterpart that constrains this imaginative rehearsal within experienced reality.
, The ‘Instinct’ of Imagination: A Neuro-Ethological Approach to the Evolution of the Reflective Mind and Its Application to Psychotherapy, 2019supporting
there may not be individuals, or even types, in whom the period of recovery, the secondary function, lasts longer than in others… A short secondary function, clearly, will influence far fewer consecutive associations in a given period of time
Jung deploys ‘secondary function’ in a typological rather than metapsychological sense, describing the auxiliary psychological function’s duration and influence on associative breadth — a usage distinct from Freud’s primary/secondary process distinction.
, Psychological Types, 1921aside
William James concluded in 1890 that memory must have at least two different processes: a short-term process, which he called ‘primary memory,’ and a long-term process, which he called ‘secondary memory.’
Kandel documents William James’s use of ‘secondary memory’ for long-term memory consolidation, a terminological precursor that shares structural logic with Freud’s secondary process without carrying the same metapsychological meaning.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006aside