Metapsychology

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Metapsychology (Greek: meta 'beyond, transcending', and ψυχολογία 'psychology')^[2] is that aspect of a psychological theory that discusses the terms that are essential to it, but leaves aside or transcends the phenomena that the theory deals with. Psychology refers to the concrete conditions of the human psyche, metapsychology to psychology itself. (Cf. also the comparison of metaphysics and physics)

The term is used mostly in discourse about psychoanalysis, the psychology developed by Sigmund Freud. In general, his metapsychology represents a technical elaboration of his structural model of the psyche,^[3] which divides the organism into three instances: the id is considered the germ from which the ego and the superego emerge. Driven by an energy that Freud called libido in direct reference to Plato's Eros,^[4] the instances complement each other through their specific functions in a similar way to the parts of a microscope or organelles of a cell.^[5] More precisely defined, metapsychology describes ‘a way of obversation in which every psychic process is analysed according to the three coordinates of dynamics, topics and economy’.^[6] Topology refers to the arrangement of these processes in space, dynamics to their movements (variability, also in time) and economy to the energetic reservoir (libido) that drives all life processes, is used up during this and therefore needs to be replenished through nutrition.

These precise concepts led Freud to say that their unified presentation would make it possible to achieve the highest goal of psychology, namely the development of a comprehensively founded model of health. Such an idea is crucial for the diagnostic process because illnesses - the treatment and prevention of which is the focus of all medical activity - can only be recognised in contrast to or as deviations from a state of health.

Freud left this central part of his work to future analysts in the unfinished state of a Torso, since - as he stated - the fields of knowledge required to complete metapsychology were barely developed or did not exist in the first half of the 20th century.^[7] This refers above all to ethological primate research and its extension to the field of anthropology. Freud considers findings from these areas of knowledge to be indispensable because without them it is not possible to examine and, where necessary, correct his hypothesis of natural social coexistence in the primordial horde postulated by Darwin (see presented for discussion in Totem and Taboo). The same applies to the hypothetical abolition of horde life through the introduction of monogamy by a corresponding agreement among the sons who killed the primal father of the horde. For the same reasons, Freud's claim also extends to the assumed origin of moral codes of behavior (totemism), the differentiation of sexual from social and intellectual needs (instinctively formed communities versus consciously conceived political superstructures; foundations of belief and knowledge systems^[8]), and much more. In Moses and Monotheism, the author refers one last time to the lack of primate research at the time.^[9]

The empirical foundations of Freudian metapsychology are neurological processes and close relationships to Darwin's theory of evolution. The libidinal energy, which according to this metapsychology drives all biological and mental processes through its inherent desire, represents in a certain sense a teleological thesis.^[10]

More recently it's regarded as a hermeneutics of understanding with relations to Freud's literary sources, especially Sophocles and, to a lesser extent, Goethe and Shakespeare. Interest on the possible scientific status of psychoanalysis has been renewed in the emerging discipline of neuropsychoanalysis, whose major exemplar is Mark Solms. The hermeneutic vision of psychoanalysis is the focus of influential works by Donna Orange.