“From this it follows also that there cannot be in nature two individual things which differ in number alone. For it must be possible to give a reason why they are diverse, which must be sought from some difference in them. And so St. Thomas’ recognition of the fact that separate intelligences never differ in number alone must be applied to other things as well; two perfectly similar eggs, or two perfectly similar leaves or blades of grass, will never be found.”

Leibniz

“There is a tape in each of the President’s offices. It is kept by the secret service, and only four other men know about it.”

Alexander Butterfield

“Hombre por hombre, me quedo conmigo, que, al menos, ya me conozco y tengo hecho el lomo a mi carga.” [1]

F. de Sales Perez

“Every damn thing is your fault if you're any good.”

Hemingway

  “Neurosis” is assumed to be a specific condition. It is generally characterized as being a “malady”, a continuous cause of pain as anxiety or of a general malaise, at the very least as an “abnormality”. “Neurotics” therefore need care. They are “patients” of psychoanalysts and even psychiatrists, although the treatment of “neurosis” usually involves only talk and maybe some pills, mostly anxiolythics or sleep-inducers. But is “neurosis” specific enough to be considered a sickness? The Washington Post recently published this lead: “Fifteen years after the end of the 1991 war with Iraq, a Texas researcher is in line to get as much as $75 million is federal funding to press his studies of ‘Gulf War syndrome’ even though most other scientists long ago discounted his theory.” Could this be the case of “neurosis”? Of course, there are evident differences. In mental studies Freud is something of a fallen idol and nobody is financing “neurosis studies”. Most “neurotics” have the means to pay for their own treatment and the money they spend is surely many times what is spent on the few hundred veterans from that war that claim to suffer from unspecific symptoms, which are nowhere near being a syndrome. So how can we determine that “neurosis” too is not a syndrome, in fact, that it is not even an abnormality?

            To get there we have to follow a methodical trajectory. The first fundamental step is to argue for the “specificity of the self”. This means demonstrating that each living human being is unique. This sounds as simple as to be self-evident, but upon close reflection it can be seen that there are certain barriers that have to be overcome. The world is logical in various palpable ways. Objects do not change shape arbitrarily. No two objects can occupy the same space. More importantly, all human beings use logic all of the time. There is not one single cognitive operation that does not require the use of innate “intuitive logic”. No human being has to take a course on logic to use “logical forms”. The axioms and “principles” of intuitive logic are not and cannot be specific. So how can the uniqueness of individuals be squared with a faculty that is the same for every one everywhere? Then there is the issue of “stages of development”. We transit from childhood to adolescence to adulthood and it is impossible for any individual to jump stages. Child prodigies seem to, but even these cannot determine the way libido evolves. When Mozart created his first compositions, he certainly would not also have been capable of having sexual intercourse, which would have made him not only musically precocious but also an unheard of physiological phenomenon. How can our individuality be affirmed against the inevitability and regularity of the physiological constraints of developmental stages?

            Since no two nervous systems are identical, they are also specific and in the aggregate constitute a “pristine specific self”. No newborn experiences sensations exactly like another. Some babies cry a lot and others do not cry at all. The way they move and react to their ambiences are different. The process by which newborns transit from sensation to the recognition of things is not identical. And when they start perceiving they do so in a way that already shows the “germ of personality”. Among objects they clearly demonstrate preferences, as they manifest greater or lesser reluctance to the process of learning, or even of something as basic as eating, which some take to with gusto while others seem almost to accept it as one of the inevitabilities of life. Intuitive logic is specific to each individual without “subverting” its universal and constant configuration. That there are variations that do not contravene the basics of intuitive logic is shown by the existence of different formal deductive systems. Formal logic is the result of the exploration by intuitive logic of itself. Conceivably formal deductive systems could be related to the individuals that develop them. It is possible for intuitive logic as such to inhabit a specific self and not be affected by its specificity, but it is impossible for the specific self not to affect the way intuitive logic functions in itself. Intuitive logic does not contain an infallibility warranty. Two persons can be in possession of the same principles on whatever issue and what they do with them can be different, even contradictory things. Results will be different starting from the same principles. As individual deductive powers do not move at the same speed, the same principles will yield, if their application is correct, the same results but at different moments in time even starting at the same precise instant. The general principle is that there can be infinitely many tokens of a type as long as the variations do not stray crucially from type.

            Memory like intuitive logic has “rules”. If it did not we would have chaos in the mind. In order to survive we remember what we need to remember. We remember in a certain order imposed by logic and the world. We remember certain things better than others. Madness is a disorder of memory more than a failure of logic or of any other faculty. Senility is the breakdown of memory, which partly carries logic down with it. Normally, the “rules of memory”, like the principles of intuitive logic, are tolerant enough for variations to come about without subverting their basic functions and purposes. Individuals have different mnemonic abilities. The imprint of the same event will be proper to each specific observer. Even though intuitive logic is basically invariable, its interaction with memory varies from one specific self to another. Since inference cannot function without memory, our retentive capacity must impinge on our ability to reason. A person with bad memory for numbers will take longer to understand an equation than another for whom numbers come easily to mind. In nature, laws must be consistent. Logic cannot suffer modifications from its subjection to the functioning of natural laws. Since the specific self cannot escape its subjection to the “rules” of logic and memory, then in its development it cannot introduce modifications into the fundamental configuration of its cognitive processes. But since abilities vary from one person to another, the same processes will have different yields. Analogically, the human genome is the same in all individuals but the proteins which carry out its instructions come in many different shapes and sizes, and so the segments of the DNA which determine our physical features will be somewhat like a sculptor who has to work with marble or with sandstone. 

            The use of logic and memory can only be grasped and understood from their linguistic description. If accurate enough, these descriptions are the “rules” whereby these processes take place.  Such is not the case of the liver or the brain. Other than what we can say about “memory” or “perception”, there is no ostensive manner of defining them. Logic is what it is and, though we know it is functioning in our mind/brain, we can only have it in propositions. We can describe the liver in all its details and we know what it is for and how it can go wrong, and we have the actual physical liver to which we can refer constantly. Means could be found to cure it when it becomes sick, but the organ itself is unmistakably there and there is little we can theorize about it beyond what we already know. (DND-genetics could, however, provide leads to the etiology of liver diseases.) The brain is not quite as “dissectible” as the liver. Here again we have the physical organ and we know its anatomy. We also know that it is the brain that makes cognition possible, but, unlike the chemistry of the liver, we do not know exactly how it works. Nowadays, theories proliferate about what parts of the brain have what functions, but so far these propositions are at the hypothetical stage. For instance, the two lobes of the brain are supposed to be specialized, but no matter how different their functions, they couldn’t accomplish them without memory and logic. Both of these faculties have to be everywhere in the brain, but as we do not have the means to see them operating—there are no instruments with the speed to match the brain’s operations—then their propositional description is the best we can do so far. We can call such description “basic cognitive propositions”. Propositions are grammatical and meaningful sequences of words. To the extent that all our mental contents are "grammatical", i.e., subject to rules, they are propositional. They are also propositional in the sense that they could theoretically be described linguistically down to the smallest detail and that it would be possible to say “yes” or “no” to each one of those propositions. The alternative to the propositionality of mind would have to be that we think in images, but we could only do this by reducing images to propositions, which comes to the same thing. Mental images can be compared to paintings and there is so just much that you can squeeze from this metaphor.

            All inputs to our cognitive processes can involve assent or dissent  But we have inputs to which we give neither assent nor dissent but are “processed” and stored and to which our cognitive processes could remain totally oblivious even if we could not find sufficiently strong arguments to say that they disappear entirely from mind. We are constantly processing the propositions of logic and memory and perception. These processes are necessarily interconnected. Recalling that I did such a thing at some time might clash or agree with some external evidence (a diary) or with another memory. Ratiocination will be the arbiter between our conflicting memories. Between two propositions, or many for that matter, mind will assent to one or some and relegate others. We are constantly hierarchizing propositions for the short or the long term. At one time we could prefer to sleep rather than to work, but since it is not likely that our object in life is to sleep it away, then the proposition that we have to stay awake will usually predominate over time. The specific self is constituted by a specific ordering of specific propositions both in reference to our faculties and abilities and in reference to what those faculties and abilities yield. As the specific self commences interacting with its environment, it further promotes its own specificity. The specific self necessarily has specific experiences. Sensations are the first of these experiences. Basically, sensations are the building blocks of perception. They cannot be characterized except in terms of our ability to recognize objects in the world. Since there must be “rules of perception” but there is no “anteceding” propositional explanation of sensation, it is to be presumed that sensations are “rules unto themselves”. And since the “rules of perception” can be described as basic cognitive propositions, then sensations in themselves are basic cognitive propositions. Given that sensations are specific, we would have to conclude that specificity extends to certain basic cognitive propositions. But this cannot be. The rules of perception or the axioms of logic cannot vary from individual to individual the way it is perfectly surmisable that no grasp of redness is identical to another. To get around this problem, we have to make the realistic assumption that there are invariant properties in the world, that we are sensitive to such properties, but that the specificity of our nervous system prevents us from grasping such properties in their invariant state. Each sensation has one source and can only have one source but no two sensations are identical. Alternatively, since we have sensations for only a brief period after birth, then we could surmise that sensations are not durable basic cognitive propositions but transitory propositions that are soon "submerged” by the basic cognitive propositions that constitute perception. After the newborn enters the phase in which it recognizes objects, it will no longer recognize sensations separate from the objects of which they are properties. It is not that sensations cease to exist. We are still receiving them but in the form of perceptions. The painter and his palette of pigments is concrete proof that sensations can be artificially derived from perceptions. Like the newborn, the artist builds percepts from sensations, but he does not do it unconsciously but by deliberate acts of discrimination.

            There is a distinction between perception and the “act of perceiving”. The faculty or ability to perceive, though fundamentally the same in all individuals, varies from individual to individual in the way that our abilities to remember and to reason are specific to each one of us. Specific acts of perception will be determined by the specificity of sensations. Thus, the innate specific self makes possible the specific self that is being formed by experience. Experience builds a specific self on the specificities of our inherited universal faculties and abilities. Specification and specificity are two different things in the same sense as perception and the act of perceiving are different. Specification is the process that produces the specificity condition. It is arguable, however, whether such a distinction is tenable in connection to the specific self, for specificity implies a constant process of specification, so that even though we speak of specificity what we are referring to is a constant process of specification. This continuing process, which never actually strays from the fundamentals that define the species, is a process of reinforcement that goes on endlessly through life.    Evolution could be explained from the premise of this process. The greater the specification of a species, the greater the likelihood of tentative branching off from it. In turn, these branches will tend towards their own specification. The process of the formation of species via specification of traits is certainly more explanatory of change than are mutations. The problem of the heritability of acquired traits is still the obstacle. However, DNA genetics is a much more malleable field than classic chromosome-based genetics. The abstract of a recent work by Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb claims “that the genome is far more responsive to the environment than previously thought, and that not all transmissible variation is underlain by genetic differences…Some of these variations rise in response to developmental conditions, so there are Lamarckian aspects to evolution.” The human species is probably still in the process of its specification and it could conceivably engender another branch. It is a reasonable presumption that for this to happen it must first do away with the vast inequalities and other differences which commonly in the past and frequently today assail the very idea of the essential sameness of mankind.

            Starting with birth, the specificities of faculties and abilities produce specific experiences and these specific experiences in turn contribute to the further specification of our abilities and faculties. “Innate intelligence” naturally grows with experience but its "sharpness" increases or diminishes with the "quality" of experience. It is not the same to attend a prep school as your average neighborhood high school. The same applies to memory and perception. The more demands you make on memory the sharper will be your ability to use logic. All these processes are interconnected so it is not really possible to speak of the specification of one process without involving the specificity of another. Again, intelligence is codependent with memory, and the ability to perceive, which is inseparable from logic, is so inextricable from memory as to seem indistinguishable, not of course in the sense of being similar functions but of being reciprocals: you cannot have one without the other. The development of the specific self is a self-reinforcing process. It builds upon itself and constantly feeds back on itself. The world we initially discover is a world of specific sensations within types. Shortly afterwards we begin to have perceptions, to recognize objects in a specific manner, and as these are the inputs from which we obtain our knowledge of reality, then what we acquire globally is a specific “representation of the world”. Now, a “representation of the world” sounds like a mouthful, or alternatively just words without any precise meaning, but few would dispute that the society around us will not seem the same to the son of a billionaire than to the grizzled “squeegee” who used to wash windshields on a corner going to the Triborough bridge. What the specificity of the world means is that each one of us perceives reality differently from every one else but not in so radically different a manner as to lead to solipsism or to make communication impossible. Not all the windshield washers whom Giuliani swept off the streets of New York had the same attitude towards work. Unlike the street veteran we mentioned, many squeegees did on a need-to-make-buck basis and not as regular employment. Different points of view reinforce self-specificities and as these are enhanced over time there is also a tendency as we develop to singularize our “conception” of the world.

            We inherit the bio-psychological principle of self-preservation. This is the same as what is often called the “survival instinct”. But the concept of “instinct” connotes a physiological root and self-preservation has a powerful propositional component. The fundamentally physical nature of self-preservation is shown in our ability to feel pain or pleasure. The nervous system being specific, the individual's ability to have physical affects must also be specific. Each of us has his own threshold of tolerance for pain. Some claim to be more sensitive to pleasure than others. This is un-provable, but certainly individuals have different drives in the pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure may not always be as unambiguous, but reproduction would not be possible without it. In principle, self-preservation would seem to be specific only in so far as pain and pleasure are felt differently by each individual. This may not be entirely correct though. Besides the survival of the organism, which is the purpose of painful signals, self-preservation encompasses the “propositional specific self”. Self-preservation of the individual is not amenable to hard and fast distinctions. The physical signals that tend to preserve the organism also necessarily contribute to the preservation of the specific self. Since the specific self is propositional, then self-preservation is also the preservation of the specific set of specific propositions that constitute the self. Self-preservation, therefore, is not just a property of organisms but as well a property of our mental propositions. We have a tendency to defend the fact of our uniqueness. We try to protect our specific selves from the forces that would destroy them or even modify them. Just as awareness is but an instant, so specificity is the instant of each self that self-preservation is always endeavoring to maintain. If we are feeling good in general, we want our mood to last. Circumstances can change and we may not feel as well as before. We might not like this untoward situation, but we will certainly struggle against propositions that might make us feel even worse.

            The most spectacular case of self-specification and of the passionate desire to defend it, is one that was actually paraded on headlines and had momentous historical consequences. Without being obliged by law or being prompted by any one else, American President Richard Nixon installed a secret system for recording all his conversations in the White House, except in the privacy of his bedroom. As there were no precedents of any head of state deliberately bugging himself, what conclusion, other than the esteem that Nixon had for himself as a man who was making history as he lived, could have prompted his decision? Nixon knew that he was extremely profane, but male persons who use expletives are probably more common than those who do not. Nixon is accused of being vengeful and paranoid, but from an impassive historical perspective, he was more the rule than the exception. There is about the society that reacted against him a strong reek of hypocrisy. As a politician on the make, Nixon was ruthless, which did not affect people very much when it came to re-electing him for a second term in one of America’s largest landslide elections. Nixon had every reason to believe that he had such a large mandate that he could be allowed certain minor derelictions. History shows that he was right. Bill Clinton converted the Oval Office into a mini-brothel and that certainly seems more morally repugnant than a minor burglary. Although there is no actual proof that Nixon ordered the bugging at Watergate, he was blamed for it from the tapes that he had made of himself shooting off his mouth. In foreign affairs, few American presidents can match the achievements of Richard Nixon, and it was probably as a record of these, which he must have anticipated, that he installed the taping devices, much more cumbersome then than now. In brief, Nixon was proud of himself and it did not cross his mind that he would end his presidency under the accusation of covering up and probably instigating a minor felony. So far, then, we have the specific self of Nixon asserting itself. But there is more.

            It was Nixon himself who had ordered the recordings which were bringing prosecutors and Congress on his head. But Nixon refused to admit that he had committed any impeachable offense even though he had to fire his most trusted advisors because of Watergate and his lawyers were not re-assuring about his legal position. Nixon could have had the tapes destroyed. When they became known and were subpoenaed with the consent of the Supreme Court, he had every legal right to retain them by taking the Fifth and his accusers would have been trampling on a basic legal protection if they had judged him merely on the presumption that the tapes were incriminating. But Nixon did nothing about the tapes. It almost seemed as if they were a physical prolongation of himself, which in a way they were. As Nixon was not a madman and he was a lawyer and he had to know that eventually he would have to hand the tapes over to his pursuers, his refusal to do so, which is usually viewed as a tacit admission of guilt, can also be interpreted as a dogged defense of these palpable extensions of his specific self. He could neither attempt against his own specificity by admitting what his enemies, and towards the end even his supporters, were saying: that he was a felon; and he was also resolutely opposed to surrendering what he saw as being part of the intimacy of his specific self. If this reading of the events leading to Nixon’s resignation does not have a justification, then how else to explain: first, the existence of the tapes themselves; second, Nixon’s refusal to destroy them; and third, his decision to retain them until it was no longer legally possible. It was his inordinate, but understandable, self-love that did him in.     

            Physical affects are crucial for the organism but the self-preservation of propositions must involve propositional affects. This is at least one path to the distinction between physical and propositional affects. A more direct way is that we can "feel" the distinction between physical pain/pleasure and analogous experiences, e.g., anxiety, which are not directly attributable to physical stimulation, although they themselves may function as a form of physical stimulation. The mind/matter distinction is never as fraught as it is in the area of affects. There is also no stronger argument than affects for the essential mind/body identity. This would seem to imply the "blind" physical rootedness of self-preservation. But given the propositionality of the specific self, we can turn the argument around and claim that there would be no point to the self-preservation principle if there were no specific self to preserve. In so far as we can express in normative terms the way that self-preservation operates, we must also conclude that it is propositional. There are propositions that determine and describe the way that self-preservation operates and outside of these propositions self-preservation is as elusive as a ghost. As this is also true of physical affects as means of self-preservation, then self-preservation is propositional even in respect to the effects of physical affects, even though physical affects themselves are "primary" and non-propositional. Physical pain and pleasure provoke reactions. These reactions become part of the specific self which is constituted by propositions. Since these reactions are the “operational contents” of self-preservation, self-preservation, which originates in physical affects, nevertheless is “fundamentally” propositional. Yet the specific self cannot shed the specific nervous system and its self-preservation is rooted in physical affects. How can we justify saying that the specific self and its self-preservation are “propositional”? How can we square the propositional and the physical?

            The most elementary basic formulation of dualism is that matter can be aware. This formulation applies down to an eukaryote cell, even though, as far as we know, it is carried to its apex and understood only at the level of human awareness. To be aware is to have meaning. Awareness can be described propositionally. The description of cognitive processes is tantamount to the expression of their “rules” to the extent that the description is accurate and at an appropriate level of generality. But perceiving and feeling anxiety are in effect partly physiological. The propositional explanation of awareness must have a physical correlate. The temporality of mind, inescapably manifest in the instant of awareness, entails a “mental language” composed, like any language, of meaningful components, and these correspond roughly, but adequately for explanation and research, to the parts of the nervous system. We can only solve the mind/body duality at a level in which we can speak of an analogy between neurons and a hypothesized “mental language” that converts purely physical reactions into meaning, as well as representing intuitive logic and making language-learning possible, and it is with language and language alone that mental functions, such as perception and logic, can be grasped.

            Physical pain arises when the nervous system receives "destructive" signals. Death can make a silent approach. In its early stages cancer is painless. But there is no way that pain initially can be interpreted by the organism as being favorable to it. We can argue by analogy that propositional affects arise from the input to the self of propositions which either contradict or agree with specific propositions in the set that constitutes the specific self at each and every instant of existence. Propositional pain is the result of "propositional clash". Any threat to the specific propositional self induces a propositional clash which produces pain. Conversely, propositions which agree with the specific propositional self satisfy the norm of self-preservation and tend to reinforce the specificity of self. In sum, just as whatever is painful is a threat to the specific self and whatever is pleasurable reinforces the specific self, so whatever agrees with the specific propositional self is pleasurable and whatever disagrees with it is painful. If I am preparing a report which I consider a masterpiece and I get congratulations all around, I will feel good, but if I get dissed I will certainly feel very badly. But just as physical pleasure is not necessarily good for you, nor physical pain always bad, so feeling good about the specific propositional self is not necessarily beneficial to the preservation of the specific self, as if, for instance, I got carried away by the congratulations and started calculating the size of the bonus I was going to be awarded.

            Take the case of sensations. The newborn has a specific ability to have sensations. From birth it wants to be as it is. All inputs are acceptable as long as they do not threaten its specificity. Its specificity in turn gleans from experience what will become part of the specific self. Physical pain and pleasure provoke immediate reactions. The newborn cries when sensations are painful or it may feel good and smile when sensations are emollient. Specificity and physical affects determine what in experience becomes part of the specific self and subject to the principle of self-preservation. The act itself by which the newborn resists unpleasant experiences is worthy of self-preservation, for it is thus that it learns the lessons that physical affects are meant to instill in him. This cannot mean that reactions against painful or uncomfortable experiences are retained as such forever. Bathing can seem unpleasant at first. But the sensations of bathing can and usually do become pleasurable. The newborn's experience of propositional affects is powerfully influenced by the attitudes of those that attend to him. This influence is decisive in what the newborn will want to retain as worthy of self-preservation and what it will discard as not being worthy of self-preservation, just as later the child will learn to put up with discomfort and even pain for the sake of self-preservation not because it spontaneously wants to but because it has learnt that it must do so. In the newborn during the sensation-phase as in the child and in the adult, instants of self-specificity are the object of the principle of self-preservation—not, to be precise, ordinary instants of experience, which may be the object of extreme repugnance—but those instants are only part of the process of specification and it is the constantly changing results of this process that are really the ultimate objective of self-preservation. Speed, scope, and variety of change diminish as the human being develops from newborn to child and on through all stages to adulthood. The greatest speed and variety of change occur during the sensation-phase, which is of very brief duration, like an individual big bang. The human being wants to preserve itself every instant of its being as specific self, but specification is continuous and it incorporates changes at all stages which can become the object of self-preservation. The learning process is an object of resistance but it is also the source of the specific changes to the specific self that become the object of the principle of self-preservation.

            Memory “hierarchizes” propositions. The specific self is constituted by a “hierarchy” of specific propositions. This may mean that memory is the principle that keeps the self together. The premise of propositional clash as the source of self-specification is that it can effect changes in the propositional hierarchy of the specific self. Propositions “collide” with propositions entrenched in the specific self. From these “collisions” there may emerge changes big and small. Propositions may displace or modify other propositions in the hierarchy. They may produce a fundamental change in the hierarchy itself. But big or small, these changes occur from the circumstances that surround propositional inputs. These include at least: (1) the force of impact; (2) the backing of authority; (3) the “frequency of presence” to the specific self; (4) the "Trojan Horse effect", which simply means that propositions that produce propositional clash may find "allies" in the existing hierarchy of propositions that conform the specific self. But propositional clash does not necessarily produce changes in the specific self, which may be quite resistant to propositional inputs even when heavily backed by circumstances. In such cases, propositional clashes remain unresolved and can become the source of anxiety.

            The self-preservation argument implicit in the specificity-of-self thesis raises fully the issue of whether it is compatible with the belief that the human being develops through stages. There is a consensus about human development, particularly in what regards early infancy, infancy, adolescence, and pre-adulthood youth. After that categories become less easy to formalize. How can the concept of universal and inevitable developmental stages be reconciled with a fundamental drive such as the preservation of the specific self? The self-preservation tendency of the individual if strong enough could conceivably block development by incorporating a specific stage of development as a specific form of the self. The concept of development stages in the human being would seem to be inimical to the primacy of its specificities. The self either follows an universal pattern or it evolves according to its own specific traits. Is it possible at all to reconcile these two points of view? The idea that self-preservation could be strong enough to block development does not stand up well to scrutiny. Since the self appears to go through different sorts of developmental phases, can it be said that, besides trying to preserve the specific self, the self-preservation principle or norm must also cover each one of those stages? This would mean that, for example, the newborn resists recognizing things, which is of course absurd. Perception follows sensations and that's all there is to it. Language-learning may not be so cut-and-dried. Some children resist talking. Others appear to resist learning. But is this resistance to stages or resistance to changes in the specific self? The distinction is subtle, but it is real. To say that a child refuses to talk we would have to envision a precise instant in which it is about to utter a word and self-preservation intervenes, so to speak, to prevent it from doing so. It may be that the world impinges on this by making the uttering of the word seem a terrifying thing, for instance, if it is to be accomplished under a menacing external exigency. It is easier to argue that self-preservation does not impede stages than that it tries to obstruct some aspect of them. In the case of a child afraid to utter a word before authority figures, it’s likely not a question of a resistance to change as of the child preferring to play dumb and save itself a lot of grief.

            Jean Piaget seeks to explain human developmental stages and their gradual succession from the learning process. Jerry Fodor contends that Piaget's arguments are merely descriptive and have no explanatory value. To defend his “nativist thesis”—the idea that we are born with all of our faculties precisely configured—Fodor argues that you cannot derive a complex process from an elementary one. Or that a weak deductive system cannot engender a more powerful one. But there is agreement from both ends of a spectrum of opinions that developmental stages exist in the human being. Perhaps the most potent argument for stages of development is the transition from the very brief but eventful sensation-phase in the newborn to the perception-phase. There are rules of perception. These are innate but they are not operational when the child is born. Without benefit of education, shortly after birth the human being starts recognizing objects. It learns that certain groupings of sensations tend to recur. This information enters and stays in memory, where it becomes prototypical. The recognition of a single dog probably suffices for a baby to put all dogs into a type. The baby will not be able to describe what is in his mind, but if, as children, we can describe objects, presumably from a language of mind, it would be inconsistent to assume that the newborn does not have the “propositional dog” in his mind.   

            We must assume that this sensation-to-perception change obeys some “internal mechanism”. If sensations themselves engendered perception, then human beings would be born perceiving. An internal mechanism implies genetics: that there must exist a set of instructions that tell the organism when to activate other sets of instructions. Once these kick in, they determine what these operations do and how they do it. The relation between these instructions could be “type to token”. The “rules of perception” are tokens of genetic instructions. They in turn are types of which acts of perceiving are the tokens. But genetic instructions are themselves tokens of a type which is called the genome. Since tokens are specificities from type, these arguments contain a possible approach to the problem of reconciling “patterns of development” and specificities in the human being. Sensations and acts of perception are specific. We would have reason to doubt this if all nervous systems were identical. But the relation of identity doesn't hold even between identical twins. We can assume that our arguments for the specificity of sensations and perceptions apply equally well to the other developmental stages in the human being and that they all contribute to the formation of the specific self. The specificity of language-acquisition is self-evident from the fact that no two children learn to speak in exactly the same manner. Any parent will claim that his child is already talking when it says “mama”. Wittgenstein, according to Ray Monk, did not speak until he was four. Even more variable are the indicators of a child's intellectual progress. A clever experiment shows that the child accedes to a stage in which he has a clear notion of his mental separateness, something that has been pompously termed a theory of mind. A person X places a coin in a box A in plain view of two children of different ages. Later another person Y changes the coin from box A to box B. X returns and the children are asked where this person will look for the coin. The child who knows that his mind is not the same as that of X will point to the empty box whereas the child who still does not understand that different people have different minds and think differently from itself will indicate the box where the coin actually is. But no one would dare say that such a stage, if stage it is, occurs at a precise time in the child's learning process. The experiment requires an advanced degree of linguistic competence. Beyond this, all is guesswork. How advanced must the child's language ability be? Can it realistically be determined when exactly it acquires knowledge of minds different from his own? In fact, are there stages in language acquisition? Chomsky's argument is that it cannot be explained from an educational process alone and necessarily entails an innate language-learning ability. If such is the case, we are born knowing all we need to know about language in a latent form and the process thereafter is a function of variable external stimulation. Stages would be hard to determine and their temporal frame would seem to be un-specifiable. The significant inference is that human developmental stages occur within such variable time-frames, as in learning to talk from one year to four and more, that they make the case for the specificity of stages irresistible.

            There is one developmental process almost ideally suited to the elaboration of hypothetical stages, which seems also to be especially amenable to the operation of the self-preservation norm. That is the process of “socialization”. The term socialization is itself so unspecific as to appear to have a nearly unlimited reach. When does it start and when does it end? Presumably at birth and surely long before death in an average lifespan. But what can we say of the time in between? How different is socialization from language-learning? And can the development of reasoning power ever be disjoined from the social obligations that gradually devolve on the developing child? Despite these uncertainties and ambiguities, socialization is a fact no matter that it may be concomitant with all the other developmental processes. The principal initial influences on the socialization process are physical affects. The first bonds the human being establishes are soon expanded but as long as language ability remains rudimentary, physical affects are the principal means to encourage the socialization process. This is not to imply that the “propositional self” does not exist at that point. It means that the most effective access to the self is through physical affects, which convert into the mental-language propositions conforming the individual. The child resists being constrained to act in a socially conventional manner. It naturally wants to be as it is, which in effect means that it wants to do as it pleases. This is something allowed the newborn and for some time after that. The absence of language in this process can be exaggerated, for the ability to understand and the capacity for verbal expression are very quickly active in the human being. It is then not just physical pain and pleasure that induce the individual towards social behavior but the verbal prompting of his elders as well. The child is more resistant to the socialization process than to other paradigmatic stages, like the development of reasoning and language-learning, which can seem "mechanical", if we allow for wide transitional windows. That the child seems to be more resistant to socialization means that socialization does not appear to involve priorities or even distinct stages. Bertrand Russell described his childhood as being practically devoid of social contacts outside of his family, yet he grew up to be perhaps the showiest philosopher (barring Sartre) that ever lived. It is difficult to see how self-preservation would apply to the fluidity of the process of socialization.

            A process we have not mentioned because it appears to have but little propositional implications is that of physiological change. Yet it is here that stages are perhaps more visible and more inevitable although equally open to latitudinous transitional phases. It is almost precisely the opposite of the socialization process. If socialization is constantly beset by resistances, physiological development seems to proceed smoothly without them. This is not to say that physiology is totally independent of the propositional nature of socialization, but only that it is basically determined by genetics and secondarily by the environment. Socialization is principally a process of learning from the world and only indirectly oriented by genetics. Bringing the two extremes into touch, we can conclude that self-specification is the ultimate holistic process as it encompasses genetics and environment, innateness and education, the self-preservation of the harmful and the beneficial, instant and totality, and all of these in such complex interactive ways that at the start and through life the specificity of self is as palpable as it is evanescent and as “un-seizable” as it is robustly present. The preservation of the specific self cannot, however, be precisely correlated to the stages of its development. Developmental stages do not constitute a denial of specificity. Neither is specification a denial of development nor development of specification.

            The libido is inseparable from selfhood. In which sense is it specific? And since the specific self is propositional, in which sense if in any is libido propositional? Libido like logic is innate. Intuitive or innate logic consists in a set of invariable, universal instructions from which all formal deductive systems are derived by specific selves but in such a way that they are valid for all humanity. Does the libido follow instructions or is it just there like physical affects? Since the libido at birth is different from the libido in the adolescent and this libido from that of the adult, we are very likely looking here at genetics. The libido appears to be no different from other human functions in certain basic respects, principally in being present from birth and subject to “genetic guidance” about its development. Such being the case, we must conclude that it is also specific from birth and that its specificity grows and feeds upon itself the way all other human processes also do. The libido is not a cognitive process like seeing. But it is inseparable from perception. If perceiving is specific, the libido must be specific. And if our ability to speak and reason are specific, susceptible to the promptings and influences involved in learning from the environment, the libido too must be specific in these senses. Since it is a physiological process and no two human bodies are identical, then it is specific at the most elementary level. If we are specific at birth, endowed with innate abilities, then we are particularly specific in the libido, possibly even more specific than in any of the other processes of human development, and this specificity will if anything become more marked as we grow.

            The propositionality of libido seems problematical only because it is often associated with apparently “unreasoning” urges and deeds, masturbation being perhaps its most common manifestation in adolescence. The issue is complicated also from the fact that libido, like physical affects, seems at times to be purely physiological and we appear to have no control over either. But we also know this to be untrue. The libido is non-cognitive in itself, but like all other processes it is interactive—physical pain, for example, is borne better or worse depending on personality—and it is particularly interactive with processes such as reason and socialization which are or seem to be paradigmatically propositional. It is widely accepted that there is a distinction to be made between libido and desire. Desire is cognitively based. It can be fixed in infancy. We have specific objects of desire. Libido is physiological and seemingly recalcitrant to propositions. There is a strong imbrication between libido and desire, but it can also be said that the distinction between them would be impossible without this relatedness. A possible way to define this relation is that libido is the start of desire, but that afterwards desire has more influence on libido than vice versa. This is not to be taken as an universal rule. Put another way: libido is “subservient” to desire but only under certain conditions. The validity of this often thin distinction constitutes a very strong if not conclusive argument for the propositionality of libidinal urges.

            The most important aspect of libido is that it is about reproduction, hence crucially about self-preservation on the reasonable assumption that offspring are like self-extensions and not about anything to do with the species on which we normally have little concern. But it is also different, for it would be hard to argue that self-preservation "develops" in any remarkable sense, although admittedly it could weaken in certain circumstances or over time. The fact that human development occurs in stages entails not only specificities but also deviations. There are wide marginal tolerances between stages. But there are also cases in which these tolerances are exceeded or even in which "stunting" occurs, as when a young man finds older women attractive or, more commonly, pedophilia in the elderly. This can be due to a misapplication of the norm of self-preservation. In the pedophiliac it could seem like a reversion to infancy. Freudians usually describe the love of older women to the real or perceived deprivation of motherly affection in childhood. Both conditions are abnormities. The non-physical impairment of libidinal development—as opposed to physiological dysfunctions—is often classified as “neurotic”. If self-preservation can be impaired in a non-physical sense—and which other sense could it have in the case of suicide?—then there is no reason not to surmise that the libido too can be impaired, and not just in a self-evident physical or physiological way, but also in a propositional sense. More accurately, perhaps we should speak of the “propositional impairment of desire”. These impairments, and the degrees of impairment, are specificities of selfhood. Freud was undoubtedly right about the innateness of the libido and about its development through stages. He also specified “neurosis”. He took a vague idea about nervous disease and gave it a specific meaning distinct from its purely physiological connotation. In a wide Freudian sense, “neurosis” is: (1) caused behavior (taking thought to be a form of behavior); (2) compulsive behavior including “circular thought”; (3) behavior that causes anxiety; (4) behavior that tends to reinforce itself. But he went out on a weak limb in trying to explain the origin of “neurosis” by superimposing on libido a preordained scenario involving the hypothetical and unlikely situation of the father threatening to castrate the son or seeming to the son to want to do so, which however subjective must still have some semblance to a real threat. This castration-fear originated in the son’s guilt about his rivalry with the after for the his mother’s love. Freud called this the “Oedipus complex”, which if “unresolved”, which people normally did in the course of things, would lead to anxiety, sexual hang-ups, and a host of other possible psychological complications. [2]

            The etiology of sexual dysfunctions are and cannot but be part of the interactive pattern of self-specification. And if this is true of the sexual function, it must be true of all “neuroses”. But what can we say of “neuroses” beyond the fact that they manifest specificities and as such are not different from other specific traits in individuals? One thing that we must at least try to explain is how these “neurotic” specificities come about. Why these and not other less troublesome specificities? Although “neuroses” are not ultimately different from other specificities, they are remarkable because of the strong propositional-affective reactions involved. This would seem also to entail that “neuroses” have to do with the misdirection or misapplication of the self-preservation function. Let us consider libidinal impairments. If we exclude physiological problems, then what we are going to deal with is the impairment of desire or what is usually known as secondary impotence. This is ultimately the propositional or psychological repression of the libido as opposed to the impairment of desire from the weakness or even non-existence of the libido. Since desire and libido are “relatively” reciprocal and libido is reproductive, how can the impairment of such a vital function become part of any specific self? What are the conditions that antecede and possibly cause propositional impotence?

            The libido is both innate and specific, but it cannot be conducive in itself to impotence since that would be as if it contained a self-destructive “program”. Its specificity should not be a cause of impotence either. Therefore, we must assume that the environment and the learning process are necessarily involved in the neurotic impairment of desire. If impotence is generated from the environment, it must be from the interaction between specific innateness and specific environmental inputs. It is this interaction that is responsible for the specificity of self, in which we must now include as a possibility the impairment of desire or secondary impotence. There are at least three "causes" which could lead to secondary sexual dysfunctions: (1) the belief that sex is bad in itself; (2) the specific orientation of desire as opposed to the orientation of the sexual function, for it would or could exclude possible objects of desire and thus cause circumstantial secondary impotence; (3) the inadequacy of desire from some self-derogatory attitude which could be chosen from a wide spectrum ranging from mere transitory self-doubting to intense self-loathing. Concerning desire-orientation, there are well known cases of individuals who could not maintain normal social relations with women and obtained gratification with prostitutes. This is well documented for Vincent van Gogh. Beethoven and Brahms were frequenters of brothels. An extreme case is that of the Swiss writer Henri-Frédéric Amiel, who confided in his diary that he was a life-long masturbator. The fundamental question is: given the importance of reproduction for the species, how can these "causes" become ingrained as they appear to be in “neurosis”?      

            We know that the specific self is the object of self-preservation, but we also know that the specific self is but an instant in the unstoppable process of self-specification. If we use a sequence-of-frames metaphor, specific self in frame A is the object of self-preservation, but the specification of self through any number of influences, perhaps traumatic in nature, gives way to another frame which is that of the specific self AB, which in turn becomes the object of self-preservation, and so on. The specific self in frame AB can be crucially different from or even in rank opposition to the specific self in frame A, yet the self-preservation norm will apply equally to both even if AB is not a “desirable condition”. Self-preservation, which like reproduction should benefit existence, can exert its protective influence on harmful specificities. The specificities of desire, in sum, can be the object of self-preservation even when they involve libidinal impairments. But is this state of affairs possible at all? And if so what would be the “mechanics” involved? The first cause of secondary impotence that we cited was the belief that sex is bad in itself. Sexual guilt is about social and cultural attitudes that are a part of individuation. It cannot originate "spontaneously" from contents of the specific self that are not specifically about sex. Sexual guilt is not innate and it is difficult to see how it can be experienced before the human being has acquired some degree of socialization. But given this, the openings for its instillation are innumerable. A few general indications can help to narrow the issue. Once the opening for guilt is there, it can be but need not be instilled. Once instilled it is often the object of reinforcement. Although difficult, the reversal of the process is not unthinkable. Guilt about sex is usually acquired at early libidinal and physiological stages, but its acquisition by the specific self can occur at any time before the full development of the sexual drive. This proposition is based on the likelihood that sexual guilt probably does not develop much beyond adolescence and that in adolescence itself it is usually already there in one degree or another. Socially, some guilt about sex appears inevitable and the sort of guilt that concerns us is that which would have the force to overpower normal libidinal drives.

            Although specific to the individual, the libido is originally undifferentiated. Its specificity at birth must be purely physiological. But no sooner are we out of the womb than we start having sensations and no sooner are we becoming comfortable in a world of sensations than we start recognizing objects. At this stage whatever impinges on the senses will also impinge on the libido as it impinges on memory and logic and on every other function. As the libido develops, it will be doing so in a specific direction and there will inevitably come a moment when the libido is developed enough to have if only inconstant intimations of desire and these will be inevitably directed towards the specific objects which have entered the field of our perceptual abilities conjoint with emotional traits. Normally, the child’s affects would be oriented towards the mother because it is mainly from her that it derives pleasurable feelings. There seems to be here no reason why the external impact on specific desire should lead to libidinal impairment. The libido is if anything the primer for specific desire. But the possibility of deviations of specific desire could affect the way the libido functions. From previous arguments, we can derive two possible sources of deviation. Guilt can be a powerful influence on desire. Sexual guilt may but need not lead to impotence, and here we have to emphasize that sexual guilt is more about the libido itself than it is about the specific libido. It can orient desire towards "dark areas" in which guilt is compatible with libido. Sex will be a dark matter, darkly aroused. Since libido still functions in this penumbra of desire, what is more likely to happen from guilt-induced libidinal deviations is circumstantial secondary impotence. Already burdened by a sense of guilt, an individual could be led to this situation if, for instance, he is frequently exposed to his mother’s nakedness either accidental or deliberate. In such a person normal arousal could be impeded and it would require circumstances in which sex is unrestrained by conventions to unleash his urges. Or in a certain situation he could experience arousal only if he knew that a woman accepted that sex was the explicit purpose for their being together, which could be implicitly the case, but the inhibited individual might consider any coyness as an outright, “justified” rejection of his guilt-ridden desire. 

            The process of socialization, in so far as it can contribute to the definition of the specific objects of desire, can be a source of sexual deviancy, although, as in the case of guilt, it need not impair the libido as such. Socialization is to a great extent the acquisition of cultural, ethnic, and national identities. These aspects of socialization can have a powerful self-specificatory effect and thus influence the conformation of desire. Although too much is often made of racial differences, there are undoubtedly racial traits and their involvement in the socialization process can also lead to a specification of desire which circumstantially might produce secondary impotence. Miscegenation laws in the American South or in South Africa might have been more a reflection of pre-existing specificities of desire than about the prevention of inter-racial marriages. Specification of can have a circumstantial effect on the libidinal drive. Specific desire is oriented towards other specific selves and is influenced by the social group to which the specific self belongs. This is propositional in a straightforward sense. The sexual function is “equivalent” to the libido and the libido is oriented in a general sense towards reproduction. However, the sexual function can acquire a gender-orientation that has nothing to do with reproduction. The currently favored explanation for this phenomenon is that gender-orientation is determined by “libidinal genetics”, which does not of course exclude specific desire. This thesis seems to leave little room for the propositionality of self-preservation that we attribute to desire. There is also another possible explanation. Libido and desire are complementary. The influence of desire on libido could determine gender-orientation. The problem here is that, although propositional clash can alter the way that desire impinges on the libido, it has frequently been found powerless against the inversion of libidinal gender-orientation. This is the reason for genetics-based theories on homosexuality. At various critical junctures in our considerations on human development, we have been driven to admit the explanatory necessity of genetics. The rules of perception start operating from an internal cue rather than from external prompting. The intellectual development of the individual must be explained in great measure from internal causes, which are not only not incompatible with but are indispensable to the thesis of innate intuitive logic. If logic, which is a prototypical feature of the propositionality of mind, can be the object of genetic programming, it can hardly be argued that the innate orientation of the libido implies a denial of the propositional nature of mind. It could even be said that since homosexuality is virtually a denial of the reproductive function, its innateness requires a particularly potent propositional support.

            Self-derogation is a result of a powerful process of self-specification, as in the frequent situation where a child feels unwanted. This perception of rejection need not have a direct connection to libido, but it could easily turn into ideas of unworthiness, inability to achieve objectives, fear of failure, and so on, and these could, and most likely would, have an effect on the libido. Feelings of sexual inadequacy derived from strong self-derogation are surely a cause of impotence. But we need to look at the “mechanics” of this process. Etiologically, such feelings are not essentially different from sexual guilt and the specific orientation of desire, so it would be flogging a dead horse to do a repetition of previous arguments in relation to self-derogation. But sexual guilt and the orientation of desire do not necessarily involve self-hatred, which is tantamount to a habitual denial of self-love. Self-derogation is not just an ordinary form of individuation, but a very profound manner of self-specification. Assuming that “neurosis” is also a strong form of self-specification, it is possible to argue that it is self-derogation, more than sexual guilt or the specific orientation of desire, that can take us closer to the question of “neurosis” itself. Although it is tempting to argue that certain forms of self-specification must have unique causes, there is really no basis on which to presume that any form of self-specification, however powerful, or even indelible, can originate in any process different from propositional clash. The issue now is that we have been assuming that there is such a thing as neurosis and that libidinal reactions are deeply invested in it. Since it is not likely that “neurotic” behavior is inbred or innate, it can only arise from the effect of environmental influences upon cognitive processes. The “neurotic self” like any specific self is necessarily the object of self-preservation. But it doesn't make any sense for self-preservation to be directed towards “caused behavior” not genetically determined such as the cases we have seen that impair the libido and affect the reproductive function. “Neurosis” appears to go against the grain of common sense. We have seen its libidinal possibility as well as the mechanics that could be involved. But we have not explored why self-derogation should become an intrinsic aspect in self-specification.

            The specific self is not only cognitive processing. It is also the ability to have physical and propositional affects. In this respect, “neurosis” as manifest in anxiety hovers in a middle ground between physical pain and propositional clash. Anxiety itself is an extreme form of propositional clash, which is the basic mechanism whereby the specific self is constantly responsive to the process of self-specification. The specific self wants to go on being as it is and it changes only from the strong impact of propositional clash. A compelling, though not necessarily the only, form of “neurotic” behavior, sexual impairment is a result of propositional clash. Why is the behavior of the specific self sidetracked towards “neurotic” sexual impairment and other forms of “neurotic” behavior? Self-evidently, it must be from propositional input provoking propositional clash and “neurotic” self-specification. Through different related ways the developing specific self can come to attain a pernicious form of self-specification. The norm of self-preservation should prevent such a thing from happening. But it appears not to discriminate between what is beneficial and what is harmful in the process of self-specification. It accepts at its face value the hierarchical ordering of propositions in the specific self. A person who sees his fortune crash will be disposed towards the proposition of failure in life and will be hounded by it whatever propositions can be mustered to mitigate it, but this will not necessarily lead to the proposition that life is at an end and that there’s no use for it anymore. The individual, however “neurotic”, however beset by anxiety, is the object of the protective embrace of the self-preservation norm. “Neurosis” is like a perversion of the scheme that we are proposing about human development and behavior. And this leads to a logical contradiction. The specific self has an innate tendency to self-preservation. The specific self changes from propositional clash. The inter-activeness between the environment and the specific self should serve to enhance the specific self. In the case of “neurosis”, change in the specific self through propositional clash does not enhance but diminish the individual in its own sight (self-derogation) and it is this result which paradoxically is subjected to the influence of the self-preservation norm. But self-preservation should not lead to what amounts to a constant denigration of itself, and this means that the only conceivable explanation for this situation is that the “neurotic” diminution of the individual must result in an inconceivable enhancement of the specific self. This constitutes the extreme paradox of “neurosis”.

            Let us consider “neurosis” as self-derogation from the perspective of guilt in general rather specifically about the libido. How can guilt and its harmful consequences become ingrained as part of the specific self? One reason, perhaps the main reason, has to do with childhood, because it is only in childhood that the specific self is impressionable and vulnerable enough to be affected by propositional clashes and self-specifications that, under a more rational perspective, would seem wholly destructive. Strong propositional clashes that would incline the specific self towards guilt or self-hatred can be dealt with at an advanced stage of the self's rational development. In childhood such threats to the specific self are not easy to shrug off or to analyze. Nevertheless, the strong internalization of guilt that characterizes “neurosis” must at its source be acceptable to the specific self. Self-specification can lead eventually to deleterious, even self-destructive, results, but the process as such cannot be threatening to existence. It would be as if a child got a spanking and decided to put an end to its life. This is of course conceivable, but it is more likely that such experiences are painful but surmountable. The weight of propositions for going on is much heavier than that of physical pain, of whose transitoriness experience is a tireless teacher. The onset of guilt is the result of propositional clash, but propositional clash itself, like the norm of self-preservation, is basically “neutral” (assuming as we are the subconsciousness of cognition), and just as it can instill guilt in the individual, it can also serve to counter or even to extirpate it. In instilling guilt, propositional clash need not be functioning as a destructive mechanism. It could even be contributing to lessening other painful effects of the process of self-specification. Given our premises about the specific self and the self-preservation norm, there is nothing illogical about these claims and countless examples could be mustered to give them empirical backing. In the case of childhood, there is one explanatory scheme that comes to mind. The child knows that it is dependent. Its specific self relishes and wants to maintain its dependence, because it is afraid of what would happen if it were cut off from it. In situations of violent parental conflict, the child's specific self feels the cold breath of destitution and assumes responsibility as guilt for his parents’ behavior in the expectation that in so doing it will put an end to the quarreling and the threat to its stability. To deny its guilt would mean to sever the connection of dependence. The specification of guilt in the child can be a means to exclude that possibility and maintain the situation of dependence, which is vital to its survival. Does the child know this? He certainly has to know that he is not an adult and that without the protection of his parents he would not be able to cope with life by itself.

            But without having to accept this explanation, merely assuming that guilt can be a means of beneficial self-specification, why does guilt and its “neurotic” consequences remain as a feature of the specific self beyond the dependence stage and into a mature rational stage? Why can't reason dissolve the link of the specific self to self-destructive traits such as the causes of sexual impairment, among which guilt is of crucial explanatory value? Here again we must go back to the child's susceptibility to eventually self-destructive specifications. Specific traits, and especially “neurotic” traits, become more easily entrenched in childhood than in later stages. But this is not the whole story. No matter how impressionable the child, the same processes of specification, self-preservation, and propositional clash go on occurring through life. There is therefore no reason not to suppose that propositional clash, just as it instils guilt, could also lead to the uprooting of guilt. Given that it is to be expected that the specific self would seek to shed traits which are harmful to it, it is only reasonable to suppose that propositional clash and the process of self-specification will deal with them in time. The persistence of “neurosis” must then entail one of two things: (1) that the shedding of “neurotic” traits does not enhance the specific self and does not come in for special attention from the principle of self-preservation, prototypically the case of “neurosis” stimulating creativity or self-advancement; or (2) that circumstances were such that there did not come about such propositional clash as would lead to the denial of “neurotic” traits, which is basically to say that most people who could formally be characterized as “neurotics” do not need or, for that matter, can afford psychoanalytic treatment. Freud’s paradigms of “neurotic” behavior usually were taken from people who were middle-class. Even if, as is likely, childhood is the incubator of “neurosis”, at least it cannot be said that the persistence of “neurosis” must also be attributed to childhood. The fact of the matter seems to be that “neurosis” in the adult is either a bearable burden, like any other specific trait, or actually benefits the specific self.

            There is an event in which the paradoxes of “neurosis” cannot be resolved in any way whatsoever, and this is suicide as the ultimate form of self-derogation. In “neurosis” it is arguable that “neurotic” self-specification does not necessarily “diminish” the specific self, and so there is not contradiction in the norm of self-preservation applying to something akin to its own self-castigation. But in the case of suicide the norm of self-preservation appears to cease to operate and this is not something that can be contemplated within our propositional theory of the specific self. In suicide some explanation must be found by which self-preservation not only seems to but actually works against itself. Self-preservation suffuses all the propositions that constitute the specific self. These are organized in a hierarchical order. Among them some are the source of unresolved propositional clash and could represent a denial of the self-preservation norm. In the case of “neurosis” we argued that such a contradiction in fact does the work of self-preservation in a roundabout way. We are making now the sensible assumption there is no mitigation whatever in the propositions that manifest suicidal tendencies in an individual. Such propositions are not normally dominant in the propositional hierarchy of the individual. Most propositions, including those that occupy the highest ranks in a hierarchy, tend on the contrary to reinforce the operation of the self-preservation norm. Suicide is an uncommon occurrence. But it does occur, and when it does, self-destructive propositions, which themselves, like all others in the hierarchy of the specific self, are suffused by the self-preservation norm, manage to take the ascendancy. This seemingly inscrutable paradox can only happen through propositional clash, although usually of a particularly violent nature. A successful individual who sees his assets decline might decide that there is no point in starting again. This sounds trivial, but for the sustaining of extreme discouragement there surely exist a multitude of thoughts and calculations. The suicide note of George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, said simply: “My work is done. Why wait?” His work was so well done that to this day all films are still made with the method that Eastman invented. But the “why wait?” is momentous. He was ailing and 78 years old. He was tired of life but also probably afraid of death, and this is a very complex proposition. A person condemned to die of liver cancer might not yet have symptoms but the idea of their onset and the accompanying pain provoke a long and complicated chain of arguments that could lead to suicide. That suicide does not escape the propositional nature of the self is shown in the near-inevitability with which people who kill themselves leave suicide notes, often to explain the huge paradox that self-preservation should partake of its own destruction. But “neurosis” and suicide are not reciprocals. Not all “neurotics” kill themselves and not all those who kill themselves are necessarily “neurotic”.

            There is a fatal flaw in the concept of “neurosis” in that it contradicts the principle of the specificity of self, which is the basis on which we have tried to grasp it. The same can be said of all other human typologies. Either selfhood is specific and we cannot create a category such a “neurosis”, or typologies such as introversion and extroversion, "Apollonian and Dionysiac", "hedgehog and fox", and so on, or we accept the validity of these categories and find ourselves in trouble about the specificity of self. Most good speakers usually boast that they are really shy, but get carried away by the “momentum” of their oratory, which is about the peak of extroversion. Nietzsche distinguished two tendencies in art: the serenity and measure of Apollo and the frenzy and audacity of Dionysus, but conceived them as complementary. Isaiah Berlin made the distinction between those who are obsessed with one big idea and those who have many and are always sniffing around for more. Plato was a hedgehog and Aristotle a fox. Yet it was Plato who believed, or said he did, in a world of pure forms which could only be reached by emerging from a cave of shadows. Categorizing can be challenging, but it is mostly witty simplification. “Neurosis” could be a set of specific selves, but apart from the difficulty of making valid statements about the properties which would define such a set, there is the problem that self-specificity is created by specific traits. Every “neurosis” must necessarily be specific and this makes it difficult to create the set of specific selves that would define “neurosis”. A possible way out could be the principle of straying from type. Every token recognizably belongs to a type as long as it does not stray crucially from its type. All “neurotics” would then be tokens of a type and we could still create a category with “neurotic” specificities.

            The type-token relation is applicable in cases where a process can be distinguished from its results, as logic from erroneous inferences or perception from acts of perceiving. The problem is that the specificities that characterize “neurosis” are not of so singular a nature as to justify the creation of a type. We cannot argue that secondary impotence or anxiety or guilt, or even all these together, are specific to “neurosis”, because we know this to be quite untrue. All along this analysis we have been carrying on a low-key polemic with Freudianism, yet “neurosis” is a Freudian concept, and we were duty bound to examine the way Freud characterized it, which we did in our own words (perhaps too generalizing) but not in a manner that mischaracterizes his thought.  “Caused behavior” can hardly be said to be a Freudian invention. Compulsions come in many types, one being that of the smoker who feels he must wash his hands and gargle to get rid of the effects of nicotine, but they are seldom pathological in the sense of life-threatening. “Neurosis” does not have a patent on anxiety, which has so many causes that it can safely be said that no one has never experienced it. And the reinforcement of anxiety-producing behavior is a trait that, if you have it, you might as well get used to living with it. If it becomes cumbersome, there are always remedies to calm the nerves or put you to sleep. In the apparent struggle between categorizations and specifications, it is safer to stick to a concept such as the specificity of self, for which we have a solid foundation, than to venture out on a terrain in which nothing is solid beneath our feet, which is the case of Freudian psychoanalytic theory.

            There is one, as we see it, final possibility for specifying “neurosis”. In giving a conventionally Freudian definition of “neurosis” we mentioned that it is characterized by “circular thought”, or persisting in entertaining the same idea or ideas, which is like constantly dredging memory in the search for something more lasting than the instantaneity of awareness. There is a tendency to see in “neurosis” a kind of higher awareness. The myth of Philoctetes, whose wound was said to symbolize “neurosis”, was at one time frequently invoked as an allegory of the artist. The “neurotic” circularity of thought is the notion of thought obsessively chasing thought for various different purposes: to pin it down like a specimen, to remove pain from mind, even to dig in one's heels against time. All these mental events can be anxiety-generating. In literature, some of the works of Samuel Beckett express this obsessive concern of thought with itself. His probable masterpiece, The Unnamable, does not have a plot or even something resembling a protagonist. It is a cataract of words in perfectly grammatical form which keeps feeding itself, as if Niagara were being recycled, to no apparent purpose. A train of thought will last a page or so many lines—Beckett disdains paragraphing—to be interrupted by another train of thought. If sentences can be described as an obsessive search for something beyond themselves, then that is what Beckett’s book is about. All of these ideas point vaguely to “consciousness”. But what exactly is consciousness? If consciousness is anything beyond perception, thought, and the ability to distinguish between both, then it must be something like the awareness of awareness. Given the temporality of existence, the only way to have such a thing is merely to recall past awareness. If consciousness is to have any concrete sense different from awareness, then it must consist in the “present” recall of past perception and past thought as distinct mental events. This is not to say that consciousness entails a theory of mind. Thought on a theory of mind is the result of cognitive processes involving recall, but recall in itself only seems to be at the root of consciousness. What all this means is that consciousness is an epiphenomenon. If “neurosis” is the obsessive “pursuit of thought”, then it must consist in either the exacerbation or the exaltation—whichever seems more fitting is a matter of taste—of the epiphenomenon of consciousness. Even so, it could be claimed that “neurosis” is an involuntary demonstration of the reality of consciousness beyond its epiphenomenal condition. The trouble with such an unlikely claim is that a presumed “neurotic” condition is not the only way in which this consciousness can be observed or recognized and that what “neurosis”, if it existed, would actually be doing is distorting in an anxiety-producing way an ordinary function of mind.

            Every “neurotic” is simply an individual. Assuming self-confessed “neurotics”, the facts are that no “neurotic” is like another, that there can be no set of “neurotics”, and that “neurosis” itself is empty of “logical reference” in the sense of being an “empty value”. The attempt to stuff “neurotics” into one set is reminiscent of the weird but real story of the last two Jews in Kabul who were rivals about an empty synagogue and hated each other more than Osama bin Laden did Bush. None of this can be a denial of anxiety, and “neurosis” as a vague designation for “proneness to anxiety”, perhaps associated with depression, is still an appropriate label for unhappiness. But who would have the gall to define happiness? Or the audacity to lay a claim on it? So instead of “neurosis” what we have are specific ways of being unhappy and specific ways of being perplexed about life. If we wanted to be extremely speculative, we could argue that “neurosis” is a designation for the flaws that history exploits to grind down the losers. But since it will be easily granted that “neurosis” and being a loser are not necessarily synonymous, then even this subjective justificatory use of the term is devoid of sense, and there is no percentage in chasing a beast that cannot be identified properly, that will never be caught, and that if caught cannot be eaten.