**4. The energetics of psychic life**

We now come to the most contested and derogated implication of this way of reading Freud's early writings. Freud's experiments with the processes of free-association led him to posit a special form of psychic energy that is neither identifiable in terms of neurology nor identical with anything mental (which in this context means representational). In 1913, Freud wrote that he could not avoid the notion of *Trieb* (which we can translate as psychic energy, drive, or desire) as a force 'on the frontier between the spheres of psychology and biology' such that 'psychoanalysis operates between psychology and biology' [20]. Yet psychic energy impacts and animates both domains.

This is a simple notion that is nevertheless difficult to grasp for those who adhere to the tenets of hard science and the logical empiricist or analytico-referential master discourse of the modern—eurocentric—era. After 1915 (and with the controversial

exception of Freud's 1920 essay), 'drive' in psychoanalytic thinking increasingly comes to refer to forces that are assumed to be innately endowed and inherently biological (in some 'new' models, it is disregarded entirely). Today many practitioners discard the notion altogether.

Even though in 1900 Freud had presented his conjectures about the energetic 'navel' or wellspring of psychic life, his 1915 writings, which elaborate these suppositions, constitute a highly significant break with the precepts of hard science—as indeed he must, on some level, have known [9, 20]. This perhaps explains why so few of his heirs have taken this notion seriously. However, this particular 'helpful notion' now seems profoundly significant and even prescient.

The rigors of hard science require that the existence of things and forces must be empirically demonstrable or logically inferable based on ostensible evidence. Moreover, throughout the modern era (notably since Descartes), science and mainstream philosophy treat axiomatically the binarism that things and forces are *either* material *or* immaterial-mental. Yet Freud's 'helpful notion' of psychic energy meets neither the requirement nor the axiom.

Even though Freud's 1900 publication included his conjectures about the energetic 'navel' or wellspring of psychic life, it is even more evident in his papers of 1915 how much the 'between but within' operations of psychic energy constituted a highly significant break with the precepts of hard science. There are hints that—to some extent—Freud knew this to be the case [9, 20]. The rigors of hard science require that the existence of things and forces must be empirically demonstrable or logically inferable based on ostensible evidence. Additionally, throughout the modern era (notably since Descartes), science and mainstream philosophy treat axiomatically the binarism that things and forces are *either* material *or* immaterial-mental. Yet Freud's 'helpful notion' of psychic energy, with its 'within yet between' functioning, meets neither the requirement nor the axiom. This perhaps explains why so few of his heirs have taken this notion seriously. However, today this particular 'helpful notion' might be seen as profoundly significant and even prescient.

The idea of a 'helpful notion' should be read as meaning one that facilitates psychoanalytic *praxis* (processes that are to be distinguished from the representational maneuvers of psychotherapeutic *procedures*). In this regard, it is unlike a theoretical concept that directs and is adjudicated by application or action—in the objectivistic mode of hard science. Rather, such a notion might be held to facilitate a mode of awareness that guides lived-experience and cannot necessarily be translated into a conceptual reference or representation [4]. The notion of psychic energy is vital to engaging a psycho-*analytic* awareness of the depths of our being-becoming, without the distraction of a preoccupation with the generation of representational formulations. In Freud's pre-1915 thinking, this helpful notion poses as a lifeforce operating within neuronal and representational events, yet going between them, and yet is identical with neither [21–23].

I have argued in previous writings that, in positing the notion of psychic energy, Freud uncovered and became aware of what indigenous (and non-eurocentric) cultures have always acknowledged as both ancient wisdom and ubiquitously present experience. Namely, that there are subtle energy fields and forces that circulate within us and all around us, interconnecting the universe of all that is (and is not). These venerable teachings are conveyed in terms such as *prāna, ch'i, umoya, rukha, mana, õd,* and *spirit.* This energy—powerful yet so slight or abstruse as to be impossibly difficult to detect, describe, or comprehend—is what some 'western' philosophers have called the *élan vital.* It is a notion that Freud presents somewhat tentatively up to 1915, but
