A psicanálise e as duas dimensões da “realidade”: Psychoanalysis and the two dimensions of “reality”

This article revisits Freud’s 1911 text, “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning,” and shows that they correspond to different psychic realities. The primary and secondary processes each have their own laws and particular modes of functioning. The primary process is immutable from its origins; the secondary process, on the other hand, translates the discursive constructions we use to move within the symbolic order, being governed by the reality principle. The barrier of repression separates them, and myths construct the path linking the primary and secondary processes. For the author, the discursive changes we are witnessing today, which enable the emergence of “new” subjectivities, only concern the representations given by secondary processes to the drives of the primary process. That is, the support offered by culture to secondary processes does not affect the primary process. The question is raised: what kind of social bond is being created inthe new modalities of subjectivation? Keywords: Primary process; secondary process; subjective constructs; social bonds.