Michael Kahn - Primary process

"Primary process operates without regard for reality. This implies a strange kind of logic. There is no concept of mutual contradiction or mutual exclusion. 'I expect you to love me after I've insulted you.' The laws of reality and logic being so loose, strange association's can exist: I love and fear my father. I am conscious of the love but the fear is unconscious. A horse is a large, intimidating figure like my father. I'm not consciously afraid of my father but rather of the horse. Primary process is timeless. It recognizes no past and no future. If something was dangerous 20 years ago, it is still dangerous. If I am suffering now, I will always suffer. If, long ago, I was afraid my parents would punish me for bad thoughts and bad acts, the fear of that punishment remains in full force even after my parents are long dead. In the realm of primary process there is no distinction between fantasy and reality, between wish and action. If I want my father dead I might be as guilty as if I had killed him. Should he actually die from some totally unrelated cause, I am convinced I killed him, and the guilt is severe."


The mind is just... baffling. The primary process is apart of the unconscious mind. A person should take the steps to push it into their conscious mind where it may become part of the secondary process. The secondary process describes the familiar world of logic. Events occur in an orderly sequence. What's past is past and what's future has not yet come. It is the world of cause and effect.

The primary process isn't necessarily bad. The realm of primary process contains the raw material for our poetry, our creativity, and our playfulness. A world of pure secondary process most like a sterile world. Freud taught that the artist is one who can explore the realm of the primary process and then make an artistic unity out of what is found there. He might have added that the same applies to the passionate lover and the imaginative companion.