Emotionally marked link and meaning
10.4081/rp.2022.672
Al venir meno del modello economico-dinamico la psicoanalisi non ha saputo rispondere con una profonda riformulazione della teoria generale e ha preferito promuovere a teoria le generalizzazioni psico-evolutive, psicodinamiche e cliniche, rinunciando a una teoria processuale che, giustificando la pratica clinica e il metodo, ne promuovesse la ricerca e lo sviluppo. In controtendenza e in vista di una tale necessaria teoria generale, l’Autore introduce il concetto di vincolo a indicare un nesso fisso, stabile e persistente nel tempo tra un elemento somatico-valoriale e un elemento simbolico-rappresentazionale che, in forza della marcatura emozionale, limita, indirizza o prescrive le azioni possibili del soggetto. Caratteristica cruciale del vincolo è la sua continua attività attrattiva, che tende a modellare secondo lo schema fissato e marcato, gli elementi del flusso del vissuto, che in modo logico, analogico o metaforico si lasciano ricondurre allo schema. La marcatura emozionale attiva un’anticipazione dell’emozione e avvia la risposta di avvicinamento, allontanamento o cautela in qualunque ambito motivazionale, ponendosi come il meccanismo elementare di formazione delle motivazioni e, dunque, delle intenzioni. Il concetto di vincolo consente anche di fare chiarezza nella problematica del significato, indicando nel significato vincolato all’emozione, l’unico ‘significato’ che possa essere considerato causativo dal punto di vista degli effettivi processi. La congettura sottostante la definizione del concetto di vincolo è che ciò che la psicoanalisi ha sempre inteso come l’‘inconscio’ debba e possa essere tradotto nell’azione continua, sistematica e generalizzata della rete gerarchica dei vincoli. Tale rete guida silenziosamente il comportamento non attraverso insondabili intenzionalità mentalistiche, ma con il semplice esercizio di regole (relativamente o radicalmente) vincolanti, che costruiscono significati, intenzioni e moventi, secondo una grammatica e una sintassi, che istruiscono significati e contesti sulla spinta dei nessi marcati piuttosto che tramite l’intervento causativo di un contenuto mentale o la proiezione di un’immagine riesumata da un lontano, non verificabile passato.
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Ricerca Psicoanalitica
significato.
Vincolo e significato
TEXT
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2022-06-11
2023-01-31
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Ricerca Psicoanal
Gian Paolo Scano
2022/12/30
10.4081/rp.2022.672
Psicologo clinico, psicoterapista, Roma
2037-7851
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significato.
it
Wallerstein, R. S. (1990). Psychoanalysis: the common ground. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 71, 3-19.
Vincolo e significato
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                                                                             doi:10.4081/rp.2022.672


                                                                                         WRITINGS



Emotionally marked link and meaning1

Gian Paolo Scano*




ABSTRACT. – With the fading use of the economic-dynamic model, psychoanalysis failed to




                                                               ly
respond with a profound reformulation of the general theory and it preferred to promote
psycho-evolutionary, psychodynamic and clinical generalizations to theory, renouncing a




                                                             on
procedural theory which, in justifying clinical practice and the method, would promote
psychoanalysis’s research and development. Against the trend and in view of such a necessary

                                                 e
general theory, the Author introduces the concept of emotionally marked link to indicate a
                                              us
fixed, stable and persistent bond in time between a somatic-value-based element and a
symbolic-representative element which, by virtue of emotional markings, limits, directs or
                                           al

prescribes the possible actions of the subject. A crucial feature of the emotionally marked link
is its continuous attractive activity, which according to a fixed and marked framework tends
                                       ci


to model the elements of the flow of experienced life, which logically, analogically or
                                  er



metaphorically allow it to be traced back to the framework. Emotional marking triggers an
anticipation of emotion and initiates the approach response, moving away or caution in any
                             m




motivational field, placing itself as the elementary mechanism for the formation of
                      om




motivations, and therefore, intentions. The concept of emotionally marked link also makes it
possible to clarify the problem of meaning, by indicating the meaning bound to emotion, the
only “meaning” that can be considered causative from the point of view of actual processes.
                 -c




The conjecture behind the definition of the concept of emotionally marked link is that which
           on




psychoanalysis has always understood as the “unconscious” and must and can be translated
into the continuous, systematic, and generalized action of the hierarchical network of
      N




emotionally marked links. This network silently guides behaviour not through unfathomable
mentalist intentions, but through the simple exercise of (relatively or radically) binding rules,
which construct meanings, intentions and motives, according to a grammar and syntax, that
instruct meanings and contexts driven by marked emotionally marked links rather than by
causative intervention of a mental content or projection of an image exhumed from a distant,
unverifiable past.

Key words: General theory, emotions, emotionally marked link, attractor, meaning.




     *Psicologo clinico, psicoterapista, Roma. E-mail: blog@gianpaoloscano.it
     1  The Author would like to point out that he believes there is no “adequate” translation
from the Italian word “vincolo” ( or “vinculo” in Spanish) and has therefore opted to translate
this concept as “emotionally marked link” in English, as the word “link” alone is somewhat
confusing.
170                              Gian Paolo Scano



    In order to assess the current state of the art of so-called “relational” psy-
choanalysis, we must go back to forgotten circumstances that happened
almost half a century ago. It was still a time when most analysts neglected the
sinister creaking of theoretical construction and were deaf to the calls of sci-
entific philosophers; they cultivated the quiet certainty that psychoanalysis
had the status of a normal science. The Veil of Maya abruptly dissolved, dis-
covering the unexpected and unforeseen reality: in order to function accord-
ing to its energy processes, the Freudian adamantine “apparatus” foresaw a
brain that was different from that of Homo Sapiens, which neuroscience was
steadily revealing, day by day, always more intently and accurately. It was an
upset. Emptiness. Then mourning. It took time to absorb the blow. It took
even more time to resign itself to the need for a radical theoretical reformula-
tion, which would enable a rich and profound heritage to be safeguarded. To




                                                              ly
those who, in those difficult circumstances, chose to go beyond the Pillars of




                                                        on
Hercules of the analysis of the “observed object” and face the open sea of an
unknown point of view, which placed at the centre of the theoretical and clin-

                                                e
ical investigation the relationship/action between two “observed and obser-
                                             us
vant interacting subjects”, the glass of the contemporary psychoanalytic land-
scape, in Italy and beyond, may have appeared, if not completely empty, at
                                          al

least half empty.
                                       ci


    At the time, the replacement of the formal object and of that point of view
                                  er



was not simple or obvious. To the difficulty and novelty of the problem and
                              m




to the shock at the enormity of the work that was to come, there were added
side obstacles that were not easily predictable. It was only slowly and painful-
                        om




ly, for example, that we could realize that being brought up in the conceptual
network of classical theory and using its constructive logic, “metapsycholog-
                    -c




ical thinking” continued automatically and on its own to model reconsidera-
              on




tion attempts in accordance with its patterns and models. It is now easy to
understand that it was the very idea of “psychic apparatus” that was the stum-
           N




bling block, which projected improbable paths and illusory scenarios.
Theories are a beautiful thing, but they are also strange animals with a life of
their own and strange habits. We think that we think them up, but it is also
true that theories … think us up! There was an even subtler obstacle that was
not at all easy to overcome. The Freudian model - (apart from the timid and
in many ways compromised and confusing “object relationship”) - lacked a
theoretical space in which to place the action/relationship between observed
and observant subjects. Freud was unfamiliar with the concept of “subject”
which, therefore, was completely absent from the toolbox. This radical aporia
hindered turning to an organismic point of view, which was capable of justi-
fying from the bottom the bio-physio-psychological unity of the subject,
which was still thought to have to be guaranteed in psychological terms and,
therefore, from the top, delegating to the psychological, and therefore to one
side, a function that logically has to be attributed to the totality. There were
                         Emotionally marked link and meaning                   171



also, of course, more immediate and concrete difficulties. It was not easy to
venture perilously and with contempt for diplomacy into unexplored virgin
territory, driven by enthusiasm for the endeavour’s nobility, but oppressed by
the anguish of being able to respond to the sufferings of patients with the only
resource being a falsified theory. Once in a while, some lifelines surfaced.
Gill’s essay on transference analysis took form in 1982 (Gill, 1982) and in
1984 his essay on psychoanalytic psychotherapy came to light, which coura-
geously reviewed an array of metapsychological work in the previous 30
years (Gill, 1984). They were greeted with enthusiasm by those who timidly
began to think in terms of interaction. Much later came his last book (Gill,
1994), which was almost like a will, although it did not dictate a precise the-
oretical design, it drew a line indicating a direction. Meanwhile, Greenberg
and Mitchell’s essay (1983) on object relations came to light. They, as is




                                                               ly
known, saw the history of psychoanalysis as a slow, tortuous attempt to over-




                                                      on
come the pulsional model in order to achieve a relational model. A basic point
of view, but in many ways encouraging. According to this interpretation, in

                                            e
the formulations of object relations theorists, a direct drive to broaden (and
                                         us
overcome) the hiatus between the pulsional and relational models is clearly
visible, up until the end of the century until the decisive affirmation of the sec-
                                      al

ond of these models.
                                  ci


    Tough and exciting times! Not very rewarding. Then suddenly, everything
                             er



changed. It was only a decade or so later. They say it happened like for the
                         m




Father of the Church Athanius of Alexandria, who waking up in the morning
and looking around, found himself in disbelief that suddenly the whole world
                  om




had become Aryan heresy, and in short, the whole world seemed to become
unpredictably “relational”. “That’s great!” You may think. It was, in fact, but
              -c




not as good as it appeared on the surface. The tidal wave, impetuous and over-
         on




whelming, arrived thanks to the “arrival of our troops” with their American
inter-subjectivism flags which, like everything that comes from there, is great,
     N




strong, rich, powerful, intrusive, bulky and large enough to occupy all the
space in bookstores, magazines and the minds of experts. On the wave of
those gusting winds, thinking “relationally” became less inconvenient and
risky. In the face of the gaze and the indignation of the strict guardians of the
doctrine, you continued to feel like an insignificant pariah, but at least for
now, a polished pariah. It even became easier to find publishing spaces. Not
everything that shone and sparkled was gold, however. Perhaps it seemed like
the retaliation of poorly dressed peasants at the disdain of their lords, the first
call of the longed-for revolution. It was this in part. Only in part though!
Today, with the distance that time allows, it can be said that the new theoret-
ical relational and intersubjective tendencies have done as Odysseus did when
he blinded Polyphemus, he found himself a prisoner of the boulder, which
obstructed the exit of the cave. The hero found the solution. Come morning,
with his companions he tied himself to the underside of the Cyclop’s sheep
172                                    Gian Paolo Scano



and, protected by the wool of the animals, escaped the giant and returned to
his ship. Even modern psychoanalysis was a prisoner of the naturalist cavern,
unarmed with any instrument other than clinical-technical theory, and it aban-
doned the cave, using Polyphemus’ sheep. Having blinded the eye of the pul-
sion towards naturalist theory, it clung to a number of concepts capable of
conveying intersubjective perspectives. “Polyphemus’ sheep” were transfer-
ence, countertransference, projective identification, unconscious intent,
unconscious fantasy, and enactment. In this way, analysts, like Odysseus,
clung to the sheep of the Cyclops to escape the cavern in which Freud had
been held captive. Odysseus, however, fooled the Cyclops, left the sheep and
ran to the ship; contrastingly, inter-subjectivists found it convenient to hold
onto the wool and did not leave the… sheep, who, as is their custom, return
every evening to the sheep pen, bringing back the fugitives to the naturalist




                                                                        ly
cave, which they naively believe to have escaped! These are the traps of the-




                                                                  on
ories! Traps in which the inertial tendency of psychoanalysis easily falls into
by bypassing theoretical problems rather than grabbing them by the horns.

                                                        e
After all there is repetitive inertia in the history of psychoanalysis2.
                                                     us
                                                  al

1. The theory that does not exist
                                             ci
                                        er



    Ever since the times of the ‘metapsychology crisis’, which are long gone
                                    m




- a crisis which, in fact, was death - it was not so difficult to realize that the
metapsychological sorceress, built on the principle of constancy, on the con-
                            om




cept of psychic energy and on the rudimentary neurons of the end of the 19th
century, proved to be obsolete, that it had the merit of initiating scientific clin-
                       -c




ical psychology, but could not support and promote its development. This
                 on




awareness, which was certainly painful and difficult for those who had the
destiny and development of psychoanalysis at heart, imposed a pressing,
             N




inevitable hic Rhodus, hic salta [“Here is Rhodes, jump here!”]: one had to
bravely dip one’s hand in a deep, radical reformulation of the formal theory,
leaving to history the glorious energy-drive model. This necessity, which
seemed logical and obvious, was never accepted by most of the psychoana-
lytic world, and indeed the very idea of general theory has gradually been
eclipsed over the last three decades, in parallel with the silent, stealthy and


     2   Unfortunately, throughout the history of psychoanalysis, because of the centralized
organization of the psychoanalytic movement, which since the Freudian “fellowship of the
ring” has stood, with almost theological methods, in the defensive face of orthodoxy, theoret-
ical problems have always found solutions in ostracisms, secessions or school differentiations,
promoting, instead of effectively overcoming, assessments of merit and of content, organiza-
tional fragmentation and identification characterizations that have crystallized problems rather
than solved them.
                            Emotionally marked link and meaning                         173



undeclared apophasis of drive theory. Not only has there not been a trace of a
more solid and acceptable general theory, but there has never been a hint of
the concern of setting up the construction site where it can be built. It is this
embarrassing and, in many ways, short-sighted renunciation that makes the
glass more than half empty.
    Classical theory, in its energy-drive system, had a network of concepts
(cathexis, anti-cathexis, fixation, condensation, displacement, removal,
regression, isolation…) which were sufficiently neutral, hidden and far from
the colourful, but singular and unrepeatable, lived experience. They made it
possible to look at and conjecture the processes, to explain and account for
experience relatively independently of content3. On the other hand, as has
already been mentioned, there was no modern concept of subject that was
capable of varying the processes within a single framework and of safe-




                                                                  ly
guarding the organizational unit. This aporia, which had forced Freud to




                                                         on
reintroduce the concept of Ego (originally expelled) and later, to draw the
three Ego-Id-Superego macrostructures, rests on a more essential and under-

                                               e
lying fracture. The original procedural theory (“metapsychology”) was born
                                            us
in the womb of positivism (and indeed physicalism), at the very moment
when the crisis of classical mechanics began to take shape, but because of its
                                         al

very object, it was a candidate to build itself as a science of subjectivity, it
                                     ci


showed in its epistemological DNA, alongside the positivist and mechanic
                                er



matrix imposed by history, the instances that pushed in the direction of over-
                            m




coming the constructive and reductive naturalist form. These were expressed
essentially in the perceived need to take due account of history, culture, the
                    om




flow of events, and the role of subjective variables in the construction of
meanings and, therefore, motivations and actions. This complex articulation,
                -c




which was largely unexplained and inexplicable in that cultural context, can
          on




also be interpreted in the profound storyline of the numerous “crises” that
characterized Freud, who was still living and later, the history of the emerg-
       N




ing discipline (Freud/Jung, Ferenczi, Rank, Anna Freud/M. Klein, the story
of American culturalism…) until the explosion manifested, between the late
1960s and 70s of the 20th century, as an unexpected result of Rapaport’s
courageous formalization attempt. Psychoanalysis did not know how to
respond to the sudden disappearance of formal theory, courageously trying
its hand in formulating a new general theory capable of merging the object
instances of the original physicalist foundations with the subjective ones of
the antithetical “psychological” needs via a new articulation of the relation-
ship between biology and culture and between physiology and history4. In


   3    With the exception of the link with sexuality, which was to ensure quantitative ref-
erences.
    4   It was not by chance that the Rapaport school contrasted Rubinstein’s “neo-metapsy-
cology” (1965, 1967, 1976) and Gill’s (1976) and Klein’s (1976) “psychology”.
174                                     Gian Paolo Scano



the name of a misunderstood fidelity to its founder5 it found no alternative to
the fearful abandonment of the field of general theory except in the self-con-
servative clinging to the supposed safety of the method and the reassuring
concreteness of the session, promoting to general theory the psycho-evolu-
tionary, psychodynamic and clinical generalizations in a horizon fragmented
by school divergences. The psychodynamic theorizations, following the
“death of metapsychology,” due to the inevitable obsolescence of drive the-
ory and, therefore, the explanatory energy framework of Freudian theory,
had to leave to their fate the procedural concepts, which constituted their
backbone and foundation, and found themselves:
1. no longer possessing concepts that were hierarchically quite low and neu-
   tral enough compared to the phenomenology of experiences;
2. maintaining however the clinical backbone of the traditional theory, by




                                                                           ly
   continuing to rely on concepts such as identification, projection, psychic




                                                                    on
   reality, transference, and unconscious fantasy but which owed their proce-
   dural value to their dependence on energy-drive concepts;

                                                         e
3. finding itself prioritizing content, often exchanging it for processes, as is
                                                      us
   the case in a transparent way with abnormal concepts such as projective
   identification (Scano, 2016) or with the essentialist use of defense mech-
                                                   al

   anisms and, more generally, with not even such a hidden entitative use of
                                               ci


   the unconscious.
                                          er



   The result of these inertial processes, which are at the very least not very
                                     m




courageous, is that today psychoanalysis risks being a clinical practice with-
out a theory that justifies it and promotes and guides research and develop-
                             om




ment. The psychoanalytic world relies, unfortunately, on a theoretical neb-
ula inherited from a noble past, but that is composite, fragmented and dis-
                        -c




organic, in that it is difficult to distinguish between beliefs justified by
                  on




habit, more or less plausible generalizations and assumptions that are sim-
ply unjustified. The unconscious, transference, resistance and defense, pro-
             N




      5   Falsifying a theory is neither defeat nor failure, but merely acknowledging its erro-
neous assumptions (psychic energy), of its failure to account for new data that became avail-
able – one only has to think of the difference, which had already become apparent in the 1960s,
between the “analytical child” and the “real” one! - or of the exhaustion of its heuristic poten-
tial. A theory is a net for catching “fish-truths” (Popper), but especially in the early and form-
ative stages of a scientific discipline, it easily reaches a point where it can only catch by-prod-
ucts of itself. It is time to hand it over to history and to work to produce a new one, one that
explains the old data while agreeing with new. From this point of view, the “death” of a theory
is as important and creative as its construction. Theories are not dogmas. They do not assert
“truth.” They are instruments for conjecturally understanding something that is not known and
not immediately knowable. Unlike theologies, they are based on ignorance, not truth, and, in
the process of understanding, they are born to die. The glorious end of a good theory is to die
giving birth to a new, more powerful theory. Freudian theory has been forbidden from having
this glorious end.
                         Emotionally marked link and meaning                 175



moted to general theory by decree and popular will (Wallerstein, 1988,
1990) have roots, trunk and branches in the now unproductive flesh and
blood of the noble Freudian sorceress who, unfortunately, has been resting
in a tomb for 40 years.


2. The concept of emotionally marked link

    There is no lack of data or knowledge to formulate neutral procedural con-
cepts without compromising them with metapsychology. In a relatively recent
book (Scano, 2015), that summarized the 20 years of research of the
Theoretical-Clinical Laboratory that I conducted until 2013, I analysed the
state of the art of theory after the collapse of metapsychology and explored a




                                                               ly
conceptual territory in which a general theory can be constructed. This text is




                                                      on
not intended to propose a packaged theory, but it tried to explain unconscious
intent without resorting to traditional dynamic-economic explanatory models,

                                            e
by avoiding and overcoming, above all, the slippery concepts of “unconscious
                                         us
fantasy” and “psychic reality”. The analysis of these concepts, which are the
foundation for both the concept of transference and the faded, but certainly
                                      al

not abandoned, concept of defense, can easily highlight, on the one hand, their
                                  ci


substantial dependence on economic-dynamic substratum, and, on the other,
                             er



their not so hidden, reliance on problematic psychological mentalism. Such a
                         m




reference and such a dependence seem to make the presumption of the pro-
claimed autonomy of clinical theory highly doubtful and voluntarist and
                  om




rather suggest the need and urgency for a reformulation of general theory,
which would overcome both the obstacle of neuro-physiological reduction-
              -c




ism and the no less dangerous psychological mentalism, which unconscious
         on




fantasy necessarily seems to implicate. In this work, on the basis not only of
epistemological perspectives that are very different from the naturalistic point
     N




of view, but above all on the basis of the acquisitions of nature and the role of
emotions, enormously enriched and laid out in recent decades, I explored the
territory of a possible new theory, that would need new and flexible concepts
to be used as “bricks”, far from experienced life and independent of content,
in the reconstruction of the genesis of every subjective self-organization, that
is rooted both in the physical nature of the organism and in the indispensable
cultural, interactive and relational scene from which it emerges and in which
every “Ego” develops. In that context, not only was it an opportunity, but a
need and urgency to “... describe the notion of emotionally marked link and
describe the various levels of links, formulating controllable predictions
about the processes which underlie their formation, maintenance and
change”, (Scano, 2015, p. 295). I have since devoted myself to this and the
related problem of meaning in an attempt to define, conceptualize and specify
the concept of emotionally marked link.
176                                     Gian Paolo Scano



    The term “link” translated as “vincolo” in Italian, which originates from
the Latin “vinculum” (vincire = to link) denotes what binds or serves to bind
something or someone. It therefore indicates a link, bond, and by extension,
bonding condition or bonded condition. In its semantic horizon, two focal loci
of significance can be distinguished: the first indicates the very action of bind-
ing and, therefore, the stopping, fixing, chaining, immobilizing of someone or
something with some kind of impediment or connection. The second refers
rather to the consequences of the bond for the something or someone that was
linked and is, therefore, an impediment, a limit, a blockade, some kind of con-
straint. Figuratively, emotionally marked link extends to affective, moral, and
social ties, which set limits, prescriptions, and expectations about the sub-
ject’s action, but also duties and rights for those linked by the bond. In a more
figurative and broad sense “emotionally marked link” implies an element of




                                                                         ly
constraint up to dependence or moral slavery. In law, it refers to the limits to




                                                                  on
which a person is subject to as the holder of a situation, state or possession
and which are reflected in a subjective right of another person or even the

                                                        e
simple limitation of the right to property. In town planning and architecture,
                                                     us
it concerns provisions, which regulate and restrict the freedom of action with
regard to interventions on property of historical and artistic or landscape inter-
                                                  al

est. In mechanics, it denotes any limitation to the freedom of movement of a
                                              ci


body; common examples are: the plane on which a body rests which blocks
                                         er



its downward fall, a non-extendable wire that prevents a body from moving
                                     m




away from its suspension point, the cylindrical hinges around which a door is
forced to rotate, thereby securing its axis of rotation. Each emotionally
                             om




marked link exerts on the restrained body a force, called a support reaction,
which impedes its displacement and is directed in the opposite direction to
                         -c




that in which it is prevented from moving.
                  on




    The concept of “emotionally marked link” is completely foreign to the tra-
ditional psychoanalytic dictionary, although the term, in its linguistic variants
               N




(vinculo, lien/liaison, bindung, vincolo), has always been widely used in its
current meaning. However, it has not been operationally defined and concep-
tualized except by authors who acted and act predominantly within group,
family and couple contexts and, therefore, from the emotionally marked link
intended as a bond between two interacting entities. In this sense, it was
Pichon-Riviere who introduced it as early as the 1950s with a large following:
“The analytic investigation of that internal world led me to broaden the con-
cept of “object relationship,” formulating the notion of vínculo, which I
define as a complex structure, which includes a subject, an object, their mutu-
al interrelationship, with processes of communication and learning.”6 Then,
because of the connections that the emotionally marked link understood in


      6   Pichon-Rivière E. (1985), Il processo gruppale, Lauretana, Loreto, p. 25.
                              Emotionally marked link and meaning                            177



this way necessarily weaves into debated topics within the wider psychoana-
lytic horizon, such as the object relationship, analytical relationship, transfer-
ence, counter-transference, interaction, intersubjectivity, the concept has
taken up no small space in the literature.7 In this attempt at formalization,
however, the concept of emotionally marked link is viewed in a very different
way and on a more abstract and basic level, which finds, if anything, a distant
formal affiliation with the concepts of fixation and false connection of the
oldest psychoanalysis and with the Rapaportian one of structure, especially in
the micro-structure sense.
    Starting from an initial description or generic definition, the term “emo-
tionally marked link” can be used to indicate a fixed, stable, persistent con-
nection over time between a somatic-value-based element and a symbolic-
representative element. Such a link, once established and fixed, by virtue of




                                                                    ly
the emotional marking and therefore of a conscious or unconscious motiva-




                                                            on
tional “meaning”, limits and directs the range of possible actions of the sub-
ject but may also prescribe or inhibit a specific action of the subject. In order

                                                 e
to clarify this generic definition and to envision a more precise description,
                                              us
we must analyse the two elements that bind in the emotionally marked link
more accurately, correctly indicating and defining the two elements “somat-
                                           al

ic-value-based” and “symbolic-representative” that establish themselves
                                       ci


firmly in the bond described.
                                  er



1. “Somatic-value-based element” stands for an essentially bodily event that,
                              m




    because of its positive or negative hedonic value, acts as a qualifying mark-
    ing capable, therefore, of moving a motivation and eliciting an action or
                      om




    inhibiting it. These are essentially sensations in the pleasure-pain dyad and
    primary emotions, from which, with development, we will specify second-
                 -c




    ary ones up to feelings. Such events with substantial body resonance play
           on




    an essential role in the organismic regulation and the process of attributing
    meaning. As neuro-scientific research has shown in recent decades, emo-
        N




    tion is, in fact, the driving force behind the process of attributing meaning
    and, indeed, the process by which the brain computes and determines the
    value of a stimulus (Le Doux, 2002). Using the qualitative and tonal key-
    board of primary emotions and the pleasure-pain range, the brain deciphers
    from the body, the meaning of a pattern of brain activity, which overlaps
    during development and in the specification of secondary emotions and
    feelings, with the cultural and social paths of emotion, until it regulates the
    totality of the body’s mind in the complex network of scenes, situations and
    stories. Thanks to this hedonic-value-based marking, what happens in the
    body works as news for the brain, which will classify situations as danger-


    7    On this use and debate see Fischetti R., Il concetto di vincolo nella psicoanalisi oper-
ativa, (2013), in Cavicchioli G., (edited by) , Io-Tu-Noi, FrancoAngeli, Milan.
178                              Gian Paolo Scano



    ous, alluring, or neutral. The brain has evolved, by studying and building
    the world through its own modifications, and from this point of view, emo-
    tions and feelings are an essential part of cognition, operating as a basic
    system of regulation. In this view, together with pleasure/pain, the “prima-
    ry” emotions (anger, fear, sadness, joy, surprise, disgust) and subsequently
    secondary emotions or emotions derived from these (anxiety, shame, jeal-
    ousy, envy, sympathy, dislike, trust, mistrust, remorse, guilt, resignation,
    offense, disappointment, contempt...) and feelings are the parameters by
    which the body ascribes meaning. Establishing how this meaning forms,
    describing its basic and typical configurations, and explaining how the
    rules that govern the constrained selection of inputs and responses are built
    should be the fundamental task of a clinical theory.
2. Symbol/representation. It is less simple to describe the second element




                                                              ly
    involved in the nexus, indicated a little hurriedly as symbolic-representa-




                                                        on
    tive, which is supposed to be firmly bound to the somatic-value-based ele-
    ment. Perhaps the most immediate, albeit generic, way to describe this is

                                                e
    to use the simple term “remembrance,” understood not in the current
                                             us
    sense, but in the narrowest and most precise event of experience that left
    a conscious or unconscious memory and can be reactivated by an “exter-
                                          al

    nal” or “internal” stimulus. The reviving stimulus can be perceptual, (an
                                       ci


    object, its graphical photographic or imaginary image, an odour, a colour,
                                  er



    a word, a phrase that is heard or read, the timbre or the tone of a voice...).
                              m




    It can also be symbolic, (the perceived symbol of something, which was
    previously experienced), dreamlike (and thus a dream, the memory or the
                        om




    retelling of a dream), thought or imagined. It can be as simple and straight-
    forward as in all previous cases or complex and articulated as a scene, a
                    -c




    situation, an environment, a task, a duty, an order, an expectation or a pre-
              on




    diction. It may be something that is happening here and now, something
    that will happen, something that may happen, something that will certainly
           N




    happen, something that I fear may happen. In any case it is an event which
    intervenes in the flow of experiences and which, directly or indirectly, has
    or can find an antecedent (real, analogical or metaphoric) in the emotion-
    ally marked experienced history.
    Each of these events, which intervene in the flow of experiences, can have,
and generally have their own value-based quality, positive or negative, in a
variable scale that is not generalizable in absolute terms: a pin prick is painful
in itself, and it will be painful for everyone, but we will all have a different
threshold and scale of assessment of that pain. After all positive patterns must
be given more relativity than painful and negative patterns. The taste of a fruit
or food or hot and cold are more likely to have subjective aspects in the level
and value of pleasantness or unpleasantness. Beyond the value-based quality
in itself, however, each event is part of a story, in which previous experiences
contribute to determining the value-based quality that we will attribute.
                         Emotionally marked link and meaning                 179



    To frame the meaning of the emotionally marked link, you need to take a
historical-evolutionary perspective to consider a relatively fixed basic tonal
keyboard, that is however susceptible to significant individual differences –
think of the differences between two babies that have a steep or gradual glu-
cose curve – and a sequence of events that may or may not happen. In this
sequence, however, we will also have to consider another essential element
which will need to be discussed at length later. Every human organism, every
new-born of the Homo species, is born and can only survive in a relational
context, whereby the sequence of events always takes place in an intersubjec-
tive context and also the calibration of the keyboard and, therefore, the attri-
bution of value will take place in an intersubjective and cultural context.
    Within the framework of such a delimited space, the notion of emotion-
ally marked link can be described more precisely. The emotion system,




                                                               ly
moment by moment, based on the scanning of objects, events and relational




                                                      on
configurations and based on feedback from the action patterns (inbound and
outbound), ascribes meaning, based on its coded encyclopaedia, both to

                                            e
incoming perceptual patterns and the results of the action, the outgoing
                                         us
ones. This processing in evaluation-prediction sequences, due to a marked
bodily significance, can only be described reductively as unconscious. In
                                      al

fact, it constitutes, our organismic and procedural mechanism for guiding
                                  ci


the construction of the world and of the me in the world and the matrix from
                             er



which actual intentions emerge both those that are knowingly spoken or
                         m




speakable, and those that are unspoken or unspeakable, that silently inner-
vate behaviour and actions.
                  om




    Emotional marking triggers an anticipation of emotion, - (or maybe an as-
if emotion, but that has to be verified experimentally), - and in this way initi-
              -c




ates either the approachment response, the moving away from or practicing
         on




caution in any motivational field, making itself the elementary mechanism for
the formation of motivations and, therefore, intentions. Such a system extends
     N




the usability of the biological mechanisms of emotion, from the original scope
of survival to the human, cultural, social, and relational environment. The cru-
cial point in the structure of the concept of an emotionally marked link is that
the experience of emotions, pain and pleasure leads to the construction of
somatically marked early emotion-action frameworks, which have unverbal-
ized, non-verbalizeable scene-narrative structures and tend to fixate as silent
attractors. This is, therefore, more precisely what we mean by “emotionally
marked link”: a fixed anticipatory pattern of emotion-action, which by virtue
of emotional marking, limits the range of possible actions and indeed, often
prescribes a response or inhibits it. Such patterns have a profound effect on
the sentiment of the me and tend to shape, through the force of emotional pre-
diction, ranges of limited possibility in the organization of the experience and
the subject’s intentional, relational and behavioural competence. In this sense,
what we are accustomed to thinking as Subject X’s personality profile, as her
180                              Gian Paolo Scano



character structure or as her internal organization, could be considered the
result and the fruit of a complex and multifaceted hierarchical network of
emotionally marked links and different link networks. From this point of
view, for example, defense could be understood as one aspect of the function-
ing of this general regulatory mechanism, which operates largely regardless
of awareness, ultimately consisting of progressive structuring, based on expe-
rience (real, fantasized or transferred), of specific perception-emotion-predic-
tion-action frameworks in relation to subjects, objects, situations and relation-
al configurations. An emotionally marked link, ultimately, is precisely a stable
pattern between perception, emotion, and action.
    In a general and wider sense, the concept of an emotionally marked link
may indicate any marking of a positive or negative pattern in view of the role
of the marked connection in initiating an approach, departure or caution




                                                              ly
response. However, not all markings are strictly binding, especially not in the




                                                        on
case of positive hedonic markings. The question is, therefore, whether it
would not be more appropriate to reserve the term to indicate, even in the

                                                e
more general context described, not just a negative or positive hedonic assess-
                                             us
ment, but a much stronger connection between a stimulus (external and/or
internal), an emotional marking and a prescription or prohibition of action to
                                          al

form a firmly or relatively fixed and sometimes even cohesive repetitive pat-
                                       ci


tern. From this point of view, the constant scanning of objects, events and
                                  er



relational configurations, and the marking of feedback from action patterns,
                              m




could account for X’s overall landscape of actions, her preferences, attitudes
and habits in the range of her choices, the situations she experiences as pleas-
                        om




ant and those she sees as unpleasant and possibly to avoid. More strictly
speaking, X’s links would actually be real prohibited senses or one-way sens-
                    -c




es that are also characterized by a higher or lower level of co-action, that limit
              on




action beyond the varied range of her preferences, in which she maintains rel-
ative freedom of choice or control.
           N




3. The emotionally marked link as an attractor

    The concept of an emotionally marked link is not, in itself and for itself, a
descriptive concept, in the sense that it does not refer exclusively and neces-
sarily to phenomenologically appreciable links that can be easily identified in
the explicit, implicit or deducible narrative of a subject. Of course, even in the
initial self-presentation of a patient candidate, it may be possible to identify
and isolate one or more emotionally marked links, which are imposed on
observation because of their phenomenic value. An immediately obvious
emotionally marked link may, for example, be a well-defined symptom that
occurs in one or more classes of situations in a repetitive and automatic man-
ner. In one case, which was studied systematically for more than three years,
                         Emotionally marked link and meaning                 181



the emotionally marked link was an outbreak of unbridled anger that appeared
in four types of situations that could be identified, analysed and described. In
most cases, similar emotionally marked links can be found in many sympto-
matic behaviours, repetitive idiosyncratic behaviours (of which the patient
may or may not be aware), assertive behaviours (sometimes fully aware,
sometimes less), personal theory of mind or be related the theory of other
minds, as in the case of symptomatic pictures characterized by explicitly
avoidant behaviours or widespread inhibitions. These more superficial emo-
tionally marked links, which have a more obvious descriptive value, are actu-
ally to be considered the emerging tip of a chain of underlying emotionally
marked links and, as such, are also a door and Ariadne thread that analysis
could use to identify deeper layers of that network.
    However, it must be clearly stated that, despite this sometimes-tangible




                                                               ly
phenomenic observability, there are no links such as “things” in the “head” of




                                                      on
the analysand in the same way as there are no removals, projections or trans-
ference. “Emotionally marked link” (like removal or transfer, even if it is

                                            e
often forgotten!) is a concept and it “stays”, therefore, in the observer’s theo-
                                         us
ry, not in the observer’s “head”. Like any concept, it can have phenomenic
referents, but its task is not to describe a phenomenon, but to account for and
                                      al

explain the effects and results of processes that are not directly observable,
                                  ci


which take place, so to speak, in the belly of the subject.
                             er



    Once established that emotionally marked link does not refer to a phenom-
                         m




enon in itself but is a concept belonging to the observer’s arsenal and that a
superficial link is to be considered as the emerging tip of a hierarchical and
                  om




underlying network of links, you need to consider how this linked organiza-
tion translates into experience and behaviour. One might think that the organ-
              -c




ized network of emotionally marked links functions, in fact, like a satellite
         on




navigation system, which, based on the information contained in its database,
tells you in every instance whether you have to go straight, right or left, or
     N




which exit you have to take at a roundabout. The database of the satellite nav-
igation system is fully explicit, written in digital language in the memory of
the device and can be changed as the territory changes, for example, when a
one-way street is introduced, or a new road is opened. The network of emo-
tionally marked links of the analysand, on the other hand, does not have a
known database nor, in its deep layers, is it knowable and can be changed by
simply directly modifying information (for example, via an interpretation as
we are traditionally used to thinking). Its database is the result of the flow of
events and experiences that, as they happened over time, established the links
between perception, emotional assessment, action and/or inhibition, waiting,
approach and escape. The superficial part of the database is that of the directly
observable emotionally marked links and those that are susceptible to being
described, but which are, as has been said, the emerging tip of the network,
determined by the lower strata of emotionally marked links that are much
182                              Gian Paolo Scano



more difficult to identify and describe. In general, however, the single emo-
tionally marked link and the network of emotionally marked links work auto-
matically and mostly unconsciously for the observing Ego so that a subject
may choose to “go right” without even realizing that his/her “mental naviga-
tor” has forced him/her to go right (the alternative, in fact, can simply not be
perceived, or simply “does not exist”!); or he/she can only realize afterwards
- and this is usually what happens in therapy - that in situation x he/she went
“right” and maybe in all situations x can’t not go “right” and, in this case,
he/she will probably give any justifying explanation for this.
    In the case referred to above, the linked behaviour was easily observable
and the subject simply considered it a negative and unpleasant aspect of
his/her character, faced with much more general problems affecting self-
esteem, relational and affective areas, and a suspected underlying depression.




                                                            ly
The overall result of this linked network was “life at a minimum,” persistent




                                                       on
dissatisfaction, and a subjective and objective self-realization that was com-
pletely inadequate in terms of possibilities. These more general symptoms

                                                e
were certainly not related to a single emotionally marked link, but rather
                                             us
seemed to be the result of the overall system of its networks of emotionally
marked links, which constituted a kind of global characteristic (both relating
                                          al

to behaviour and character), resulting not from individual directions imposed
                                       ci


by its “navigator”, but rather, it was to be seen as the overall result of many
                                  er



turns, at many levels and at many different junctions.
                              m




    The kind of theories we’re used to leads us to think of these complex prob-
lems - (but also any action of a subject, which appears unreasonable, not
                       om




egosyntonic, or simply strange) - as the result of an “unconscious intention”
explained in terms of classical theory, the object relationship, or generally in
                   -c




the terms of a pervasive “unconscious”, which directs choices in a way that is
              on




not aware but intentionally sought. These theories sway dangerously between
reductionism and mentalism. The conjecture behind the definition of the con-
           N




cept of emotionally marked link is that which psychoanalysis has always
understood as the “unconscious” and must and can be translated into the con-
tinuous, systematic, and generalized action of the hierarchical network of
emotionally marked links. This network silently guides behaviour not through
unfathomable mentalist intentions, but through the simple exercise of linking
rules, which construct meanings, intentions and motives, according to a gram-
mar and syntax based on emotional regulation (Scano, 2015, p.262-269) and
the exercising of linking rules (relatively or radically), that construct mean-
ings and contexts rather than by causative intervention of a mental content or
the projection of an image exhumed from a distant, unverifiable past. In this
context, an intriguing question is whether the analysis of superficial emotion-
ally marked links (in search of the underlying networks) can also serve as a
fossil-guide to illuminate the processes that then determine the true deeper
and underground “symptoms” of the analysand.
                         Emotionally marked link and meaning                   183



     A emotionally marked link is ultimately learning strongly marked by an
emotional experience, which limits the range of possible actions or can pre-
scribe action in a direct or even forced manner. That is, it is a learning within
the subject’s relationship with his/her environment based on the responses
that the emotional syntax of the environment (in the essentially maternal and
parental childhood) has on the basic emotional keyboard (primary emotions)
and later on the subject’s derived emotions. This learning draws the intersub-
jective space of the subject and the range of his/her possible actions with
regard to the environment. It is not, of course, a single learning, but rather
strongly marked groups of iconic/representative/ideational elements, which
necessarily structure themselves hierarchically in the sense that the lowest
emotionally marked links, by narrowing the range of choices or prescribing a
choice, determine, with the limitation of possible actions, the higher ones.




                                                               ly
This means that any superficial link could or should be understood and




                                                      on
explained as determined by the network of lower links, in the sense that it
becomes, in a way, a “consequence of”. It is likely that the really low emo-

                                            e
tionally marked links are completely inaccessible to both the subject and the
                                         us
therapist. The accessible ones are those that have somehow entered into the
narratives of the subject in the then or now.
                                      al

    This hierarchical structure of the networks of emotionally marked links can
                                  ci


explain in a vertical sense - from bottom to top, from general to detail, from
                             er



then to now - the behaviour of a subject, but an additional essential feature of
                         m




the emotionally marked link can also explain it in a lateral sense, so to speak.
    The most general feature of the emotionally marked link is in fact its func-
                  om




tion as an attractor. Put as simply as possible, a emotionally marked link is
ultimately a stable pattern between ideational-representative content, an emo-
              -c




tion, and an action. As a stable emotionally marked link, it is fixed, but this
         on




fixedness is to be read in terms of a continuous attractive activity, which tends
to model the elements of the flow of the experience according to a fixed and
     N




marked pattern, which in some way let themselves be traced back to the pat-
tern or understood in the pattern. If a smiling and happy child approaches a
medium-sized black dog, and perhaps this dog sees or hears another dog
approaching behind the child, and suddenly barks menacingly, this can trigger
a strong fear reaction in the child, which, we assume, marks the “black dog”
image. The black dog/fear link can then spread to non-black and large dogs
and then to all dogs also to the lady’s poodle next door and maybe to cats that
still have four legs, a mouth and teeth. In this sense the emotionally marked
link is stable, but it floats or flows on a liquid surface or in a fluid territory.
    This attractive attitude is exercised in the simplest and most immediate way
on the perceptual/representational side via a process of simple transfer from a
perception A to a perception B by logic (for example by a similarity in some
relevant element), by analogy (for example, for an equivalence in ways of
functioning, such as a photocell and a switch that are “similar” because both
184                              Gian Paolo Scano



light up a lamp) or by metaphor (a metaphorizer for a distressing metaphoriza-
tion A, can in turn be metaphorized for another metaphorizer B, which can thus
become a metaphorizer of A). A child who had an angry and heavily punitive
father could establish a link between an emotional experience of paralyzing
fear/terror and the image of the father. Such an image could have perceptual
aspects such as being tall and large, having thick eyebrows, a baritone voice,
large hands… the “paralyzing fear/terror” marking (and, therefore, the expec-
tation of) could be logically transferred to a non-father individual who was tall
and large, had thick eyebrows, large hands etc. However, this could be trans-
ferred by analogy to a teacher or any “authority figure”, which somehow “is
above” and metaphorically to any element capable of metaphorizing, because
for example it is experienced as “above” or “big” (like a big animal or perhaps
a … lorry!), and it may induce a “paralyzing fear/terror”!




                                                              ly
    However, the marked connection of the emotionally marked link can also




                                                        on
be transferred in another two ways. First, the link between emotion/anticipa-
tion/action could be transferred as an “everything”, as a sort of pre-packaged

                                                e
module like a hammer or a screwdriver that is always ready and suitable for
                                             us
use. The subject, for example, may have experienced an advantage of the
emotional disorder/anger/explosion of rage connection and uses it in different
                                          al

situations that are not necessarily related from an ideative content point of
                                       ci


view, for example, in a discussion during a philosophy class, in a football dia-
                                  er



tribe at the bar, in a political fight over dinner with friends. In this case, the
                              m




emotionally marked link would work just like an exportable format in a vari-
ety of contexts. The marking could be predominantly exercised this time by
                        om




the emotional assessment of the output action (and not the input stimulus), for
example, by experiencing the rage outburst as a solving element of the grow-
                    -c




ing experience of emotional pressure or as a sort of evacuation, which restores
              on




a peaceful “normality”. In this case the emotionally marked link would be
more specifically the effect of the marking of the result.
           N




    A further way of exercising the function of attractor is that the emotionally
marked link can also obtain it from the marked emotional experience. In one
case I supervised, the subject described the emotional-bodily element of the
emotionally marked link as anguish, closure, despair, frequently experienced
in the house in which he lived as a child. It is not a discrete emotion, but a
global emotional configuration, as it were, amoeboid, that could “encompass”
emotional experiences that were also quite differentiated and otherwise moti-
vated. A particularly heightened anxiety about a feared event could lead to an
experience in some respects resembling closure, anguish, and impotence
caused by not knowing how to overcome the problem, trigger an experience
similar to despair, and, therefore, the emotionally marked link and action.
    A further element on which the attractive function of the emotionally
marked link rests is a more general feature of the mind. We try to compre-
hend and master the unknown by starting from what we know: with regard
                          Emotionally marked link and meaning                   185



to an object, an image, a new problem we tend to trace it back to what we
already know and experience. It is a general feature of the mind and, indeed,
also of science.
    It is not at present possible to determine whether the fluidity resulting from
the attractive function described in this way is sufficient to explain the con-
struction of the networks simply because of the three different modes of
attraction corresponding to the three types of transfer mechanisms referred to
as logical, analogical or metaphoric routes. It may be possible to also think
that the three types of transfers characterize different classes of links, or that
different types of emotionally marked links have to be hypothesized on the
basis of different criteria, but that they can each use the three different transfer
mechanisms.
    These conjectures on the emotionally marked link are intended to explain




                                                                ly
the behaviours that psychoanalysis traditionally includes in the class “uncon-




                                                       on
scious intent.” Alongside this unconscious one, however, and in a more evi-
dent manner, there is a conscious and realistic intention. A subject can,

                                             e
beyond his or her linked behaviours, safely shop, go to school if he or she is
                                          us
a teacher, prepare lessons, plan a trip or day off, rationally follow the route to
get to a friend’s house or to the delicatessen where he/she buys ham. These
                                       al

choices would appear to be governed, therefore, by different rules and freer
                                   ci


rules than those governing linked behaviour. Here, too, there are repetitive
                              er



patterns, which we refer to as “habits”. Habits may also be more or less appro-
                         m




priate, but generally, due to their possible dysfunction, the use of the adjective
“unrealistic” seems exaggerated. Perhaps, however, we are being driven too
                   om




far to widen the gap between the two areas of intention, and it is probably
more appropriate to think of a continuum, where the net difference is between
               -c




the two end points while the intermediate points are more reasonably to be
         on




understood as characterized by a mixture of adequacy/inadequacy and real-
ism/unrealism depending on the relative distance from the two ends.
      N




    Indeed, the two areas of behaviour do not seem to be as irretrievably
opposed as the opposition between the primary and secondary processes
would seem to demand, but in that case, too, they were mostly mixtures or
compromises between the two types of process. In fact, all our intentions and
actions are driven by “how tos.” The ‘how tos’ of our most realistic and rea-
sonable actions are taught by explicit or explainable knowledge, convictions
and theories, based on experience, skills and, sometimes, even scientific the-
ories or knowledge. Those that regulate the broadest part of our subjective
and intersubjective behaviour instead rely on “how tos” built on the assess-
ment of our successes and failures and experiences of well-being, fear, pain
and anguish, often implicit or even inexplicable. The modulation of action in
the two territories, and therefore also of realistic intention, seems, however, to
be dependent on the same control system and therefore on the emotional sys-
tem. There are good reasons to believe that even realistic and planning behav-
186                                     Gian Paolo Scano



iour is governed by the same system of rules that governs the emotionally
marked links responsible for unaware intent. Establishing how the two
domains connect is essential, but at the moment it is complicated and prema-
ture. But perhaps we can generally assume:
1. that realistic and appropriate planning action is freer from emotionally
   marked links in the strict sense, the more it is unlinked to connections and
   relationships with people, the more directly targeted to instrumental tar-
   gets and objectives, and the more closely related it is to the mechanisms
   of unconscious intent, the more related it is to the relationship;
2. that the possible cannibalization of realistic behaviour and planning by
   unrealistic behaviour is mainly and more directly due to derived emo-
   tions (modesty, shame, jealousy, envy, guilt, etc.) rather than to primary
   emotions;




                                                                         ly
3. that at a conscious level motivational strength is expressed, limiting the




                                                                   on
   range of choice, via assertions and beliefs relating to (in terms borrowed
   from cognitivism) what we can refer to as the theory of one’s own mind
   and of another’s mind;
                                                        e
                                                     us
4. that successes, failures, setbacks, and limitations that inhibit action are an
   important channel for the regulation of positive or negative self-esteem.
                                                  al
                                              ci
                                         er



4. Emotionally marked link and Meaning
                                    m




    The concept of emotionally marked link would not have been conceivable
                            om




until the extraordinary acceleration of data and knowledge about the emotion-
al system in recent decades and without the illuminating summaries of Le
                        -c




Doux (1996, 2002) and Damasio (1994, 1999, 2010)8. Its explanatory strength
                 on
             N




      8  This research tends to credit three assertions as a contrast to traditional concepts: 1)
emotions are essentially bodily events; 2) they function as mostly unconscious processes of
evaluation and attribution of meaning; 3) they are closely related to cognitive and motiva-
tional processes. The concept of emotionally marked link is directly based on this innovative
concept of emotional regulation, which, however, is located in an overall landscape, which
since the 1980s, has been progressively enriched, thanks to molecular biology and the devel-
opment of cognitive neuroscience, especially in the field of memory and learning, to the
point of allowing a much more flexible and verifiable view of unconscious processes than
rigid metapsychological schematism. In this context it is at least necessary to recall Kandel’s
precise contributions to memory (procedural, declarative, associative), which also seem to
be able to allow a balanced view of the relationship between nature first and nature second
thanks to the changes that learning causes in gene expression (Kandel, 1999, 2001, 2007). In
the field of learning, on the other hand, the distinction between “delayed conditioning” and
“trace conditioning”, which can transform implicit conditioning into explicit memory, and
acquisition, known since the 1970s, of the ability of the conditional stimulus to “predict” the
appearance of the significant unconditional stimulus, is of particular significance for the con-
cept of emotionally marked link (Rescorla, 1988).
                         Emotionally marked link and meaning                  187



rests essentially on the organismic regulation of the emotional system, which
the sum of these studies has described and justified. That is why it is not, per-
haps, entirely out of place to point out that in the Freudian conceptual uni-
verse emotions - but Freud called them “affections” - represent, apart from
anguish, the less understood, understandable and unexplored area of experi-
ence. This is a shortcoming - an innocent one given the lack of knowledge
available at the time - but recognized and denounced by Rapaport (1953) in
unsuspected times, which also played a no less important role in the construc-
tion of the economic and dynamic system itself. Freud, in fact, especially in
the first three decades of his theoretical parable, “con-fused” affection with
energy and conceived affect as a pure discharge process, which also made
problematic the justification of “unconscious affect”, for which clinical expe-
rience seemed to impose the necessity for, nevertheless.




                                                               ly
    The concept of emotionally marked link allows us to fulfil, by broadening




                                                      on
it to all the emotional system and intent in general, the logical operation car-
ried out by Freud in 1925 with the revision of the theory of anguish (Freud,

                                            e
1925), which was finally recognized, through the notion of “signal”, as a
                                         us
causative role in the activation of defense, where previously it was considered
to be a simple effect and consequence of repression. In a broader perspective
                                      al

and free from the limits of the economic-dynamic model, the emotional sys-
                                  ci


tem, via the construction of networks of emotionally marked links, can be
                             er



seen to activate not only the defense, but the intention and action of the sub-
                         m




ject in general. Introduced and defined in order to solve the problem of
“unconscious intent” in a way that is free from mental impairment, the con-
                  om




cept seems to be able, thanks to the attractive function described above, to
present itself as a flexible instrument capable of illuminating and explaining
              -c




in a unified way also the traditional territories of defense, transference and
         on




resistance. This simplified power of explanation competes with the emotion-
ally marked link, not only because of its role as an attractor, but also because
     N




it allows logical and consequential clarification of the problem of meaning. It
allows the construction of meaning to be placed in a procedural horizon and
to describe it in operational terms as a trigger that activates motivation, intent
and action even in those contexts that psychoanalysis has always expressed in
terms of conflict, defense, transference, and countertransference.
    The issue of meaning, which we now have to deal with briefly, is in fact
confused and confusing. Both in literature and in the concrete flow of a ther-
apeutic interaction “meaning” stands for very heterogeneous things: the
meaning of a symptom, of a behaviour, of a dream, of a memory, of a story,
of an event, of a reflection, of a reconstruction, of a reprimand, of an experi-
ence, of an interaction, of an accident, of a failure, of a Freudian slip, of
action, of a choice, of a lapse or even of a period of one’s life. In this hetero-
geneous population it is easy to identify the constant presence of a lowest
common denominator: in all these cases the meaning is understood, on the
188                              Gian Paolo Scano



one hand, as an explanatory motive and, on the other, as something that is
there, that must be discovered and can be communicated.
    It is not a sin to ask oneself or ask someone, about a dream, a symptom
or a narrative: “what does it mean?”. We’re used to doing this not only in a
therapeutic interaction, but also in everyday life when we try to explain to
ourselves an unexpected, abnormal or surprising action of a subject. It is a
habit which, from a general and superficial point of view, could also be con-
sidered useful and justified, but which, in the technical and strictly theoret-
ical field, lends itself to perpetuating not only a confusing notion of mean-
ing, but also, in an underlying surreptitious way, an uncomfortable legacy
that comes inertially and directly from Freudian naturalistic objectualism.
In fact, in the current general concept, the idea of meaning expressed in the
clearest way by the archaeological model of work “by means of slowly




                                                            ly
chipping away at” continues to have a significant weight. The archaeologist




                                                       on
at work at a site, (especially the type of archaeologist, referred to by Freud),
uses the “chipping” technique to “discover” the artifacts that “are there”:

                                                e
walls, basements, columns, ruins, fragments of vessels, of statues and paint-
                                             us
ings and, perhaps, Priam’s treasure or the gold of the Atreides. In the hill-
sides of Hissarlik, of Tell-el-Amarna or Cholula there is nothing to suggest
                                          al

that, under the pebbles, shrubs or sand, the memories of Troy are hidden, or
                                       ci


the city of Amenofis or of the immense pyramid of the Toltecs, just like in
                                  er



the tell of the symptom, there is nothing to suggest what has been repressed,
                              m




but artifacts and repressed objects “stand there” waiting to be discovered.
The meaning is preserved and enclosed in the matrix, which preserves and
                       om




hides it. The archaeologist finds fragments and ruins that he/she will ques-
tion, classify, connect, compose, and recompose as Freud will do with the
                   -c




thoughts of dreams and vestiges of the repressed that really lie there,
              on




defined and determined. The archaeologist and Freud must both study what
to look for and where to look, distinguish a hill from a tell, know the type
           N




of artifacts, know how to recover fragments, how to dig, clean and recom-
pose them to their pre-existing form, but the fundamental point in the
Freudian view of “meaning” is that meaning exists and persists, unchanged
and immutable and, therefore, can be understood. The emphasis does not
fall on meaning, but on the rules of identification, understanding and trans-
lation. This concept defines the ground in which both the Deutung, the
interpretation, and the Bedeutung, the meaning, germinate. In this perspec-
tive, the “unconscious meaning” is to be understood and is understood as
the causative meaning of action, behaviour and symptom, which, although
apparently illogical, unrealistic and irrational, regain intelligibility and
rationality when connected to their unconscious motives. This concept of
meaning is based not only on the overall view of the structure of the psychic
apparatus and its topical, dynamic and economic functioning, but also on
the naturalist and objectualism assumption, which presupposes, a world out
                               Emotionally marked link and meaning                             189



there “as is” regardless of the observer and the interaction between the
observer and the observed.
    The short space of this article does not allow for a precise epistemological
analysis of the world of the meaning, the limits of this naturalist pre-assump-
tion, and the complex issue of the relationship between the then and the now9.
It should therefore be stressed that the fact that a narrative can show a final-
istic and reasonable meaning of the action does not mean that it has been
explained. It is reasonable and likely that the neck of the giraffe has grown
enormously long to reach the leaves that are out of reach for almost all com-
petitors, but that doesn’t mean that its very long neck can be explained by the
intention to win the battle for grazing over zebras and antelopes, nor, of
course, that it can be referred to as an unconscious fantasy of the giraffe’s
mind, that motivated millennia of stretching exercises to lengthen its neck!




                                                                     ly
What is true of the giraffe, though perhaps less conspicuously, is also true for




                                                             on
John who, unwittingly falling off his bicycle, smashed his knee within a few
days of his wedding, inducing, (in Joseph and his therapist), the belief that he

                                                  e
has, unknowingly but intentionally, chosen to avoid the upcoming marriage.
                                               us
    Regardless of the likelihood of the conviction (of John and the therapist),
by which this and similar emerging meanings can be formulated, it should be
                                            al

clear that a meaning also reasonably inferred by a narrative cannot be consid-
                                        ci


ered to be explanatory and causative of action. The concept of emotionally
                                   er



marked link allows for clarity on what is meant by “causative meaning” and
                              m




allows for a precise line to be drawn in the issue of meaning between a
process plan and a narrative plan.
                      om




     The process plan is the effectively causative plan in which the value-
based marked action is placed in, which by activating the constrained emo-
                 -c




tionally marked link, determines the meaning of the stimulus, perception or
           on




situation and prescribes, directs or precludes action, intention and choice.
This meaning bound by activated emotion, is the only “meaning” that can be
        N




considered causative on a strictly theoretical level from the point of view of


    9    Classical theory was based on the assumption of “psychic continuity”, which, when
faced with the observational evidence of discontinuity of consciousness, became the true lit-
mus test justifying the existence of unconscious psychic processes. On this assumption the psy-
chic apparatus was built, whose first and general principle of operation was that any excitement
passing through the apparatus in both progressive and regressive directions would leave an
indelible and, therefore, at least in theory, recoverable trace. Logically, this approach also
implies a fixed and determined conception of meaning, because the meaning of any element of
life will be recorded as an indelible trace and must be established and defined on the basis of
psychic continuity. Today, things have changed a lot, and we cannot expect to look for and find
a “then” preserved, unchanged and immutable in some corner of the mind or brain. The “then”
is not in a hidden shrine, but in the “now”, in the consequences it has determined and which
act in the “now”. The “then” exists concretely in the constraints that it generated and that deter-
mine the “now”.
190                              Gian Paolo Scano



the actual processes, which should correspond to the analysis of the individual
patient by the formulation of concrete (always conjectural) hypotheses relat-
ing to the actual emotionally marked links of that particular patient. The plan
of narratives, in which certain meanings emerge, which reveal themselves
and, generally, are built in interaction, responds to much less controllable
rules of inference, which preclude any possibility of attributing to narrational
meanings a certain causative nature, even when they were fully aware for the
subject. Again, in fact, the causal meaning lies in the hierarchical network of
underlying emotionally marked links, which procedurally determine the con-
scious tip of the iceberg.
    The habit of considering meaning, even causative, as emerging from a nar-
rative, (of a dream, event, failure, or period of one’s life) hides another trap
into which it is easy to automatically fall. The trap is to believe that the prob-




                                                              ly
lem of meaning is essentially a linguistic problem, as in colloquial conversa-




                                                        on
tion we are referring to the meaning of a word, a phrase, a fantasy or a desire,
by implying that the construction and intersubjective exchange of meanings
is an area governed by language.
                                                e
                                             us
    The concept of a bond, on the other hand, leads us to believe that meaning
is built and exchanged in much more complex ground that is deeply rooted in
                                          al

the body, it grows and is challenged in interactions, it is linked to language. It
                                       ci


is not linguistic in itself and has to do with the Ego, but essentially pursues
                                  er



the “me”. In order to be able to talk about it and describe it in a more concrete
                              m




way, it can actually be treated as a language, as a primordial bodily language,
which, in its elementary traits, is known by every non-speaking infant as, pre-
                        om




sumably, it was known by our ancestors before the advent of language.
Looking more closely, it can be seen that such language diverges at an essen-
                    -c




tial point from all languages spoken by humans, in which the relationship
              on




between significance and meaning is completely extrinsic, arbitrary, and
instrumental; in this language, on the other hand, the relationship between
           N




significance and meaning is not extrinsic or arbitrary, but determined by the
body and, indeed, more precisely, by the changes in the body state, which we
refer to as emotions. The connection, for example, between the meaning
“pain” or “disgust”, as a response to a painful or disgusting stimulus, is not
arbitrary, but established by the body’s biological rules, which shape a precise
body response as a state of the body experienced in the past and anticipated
by the recurrence of the stimulus. The link between signifier and significance
in this emotional language is, therefore, essentially biological, and rests on the
automatic attribution of an elementary bodily significance consisting of pri-
mary emotions, which according to rules set by evolution are the primary val-
ues of pleasure, pain, fear, anger and disgust. Meaning therefore goes beyond
the language field, because its modulation and construction does not take
place in discourse and is not, therefore, subject to language’s own rules of
construction; it is not delimited and constructed by language rules, but mod-
                         Emotionally marked link and meaning                  191



elled by a different set of rules, upon which, rather, the linguistic meaning is
attached. This set of rules does not combine sounds or images in relation to a
referent, symbolically represented by a language sign, but combines emotions
and feelings with events and adjusts the combination of emotions and feelings
with events, predictions and evaluations with the attribution of a weight and
a marking to even relational patterns, which have self-organized throughout
the history of every subject’s interaction and configure themselves as emo-
tionally marked links.
    The system of emotions therefore stands as a kind of generative grammar,
which allows identifying, building and exchanging – with itself and with oth-
ers – of these kinds of meanings, teaching semantics and elementary pragmat-
ics. A cry or a smile from a little child causes the activation of meaning in the
mother, acting as a trigger for finalized actions. This grammar is also progres-




                                                               ly
sively specified in a syntax, which regulates and governs the correctness of




                                                      on
actions and inter-individual exchanges in the same way that grammatical and
syntactic rules regulate the correctness of sentences.

                                            e
    This basic, subjective, and intersubjective regulation system was built dur-
                                         us
ing evolution, developing from the oldest regulation systems, which in
amphibians, reptiles, birds governed and govern intra-specific exchanges, as
                                      al

in mating and breeding procedures, and extra-specific as in predation and
                                  ci


defense against predation. Especially in mammals and primates in particular,
                             er



however, this grammar has increasingly developed and specified its syntax in
                         m




the context of the regulation of interactions between conspecifics, as can also
be seen from an occasional observation of a baboon clan in an African park.
                  om




Even in the baboon clan, it is possible to observe most of the composite geog-
raphy of scenes and typical situations that characterize human relations and
              -c




which, with their configuration, also seem to determine the course and out-
         on




come of psychotherapy.
    One could explain this unpredictable continuity if we assume that the
     N




grammar of emotions has specified its syntax in a sort of basic bio-sociology,
reflecting the emotionally marked links and the possibilities of
encounters/clashes between individuals of each species. This syntax began to
be organized already in the clan of the primates, then in that of the hominids,
gradually determining the figures, scenes, and obligatory passages of each
existing together of every human group. This elementary bio-sociology pre-
orders typical situations and repetitive and recursive modules, marking out
the elementary scenarios of the narrative of interactions. In fact, it consists of
all the essential occurrences of approach, proximity, contact, encounter, con-
frontation and distancing in relation to gender, age, roles and figures, which
being together as a human group necessarily implies, specifying what is right
or not right, correct or incorrect, for each individual in the clan, by virtue of
gender, age, role and situation. These anthropological categories could be
considered the essential scenarios of the narratives of every experience
192                              Gian Paolo Scano



together, which our ancestors: mammals, primates and hominids necessarily
began to relay, even before homo learned to express using language.
    The syntax, which governs the construction of the phrases of this emotion-
al language, was built, in fact, from the elementary grammar of emotions,
with the specification of rules, which govern the declination of emotional lan-
guage in the context of the relationship between the individual and the other
members of the species close to him/her. These rules coordinate the emotional
and bodily significance of the subject with the corresponding emotional
dynamics of other subjects in the context and exercise of relational scenes and
scenarios, determined by the elementary structure of human sociality, pre-
formed by the social biology of the species, but formatted in the overall cul-
ture, where the specific interactions of that subject take place. While the two
systems of rules overlap, they act differently: the first system – let’s say gram-




                                                              ly
mar – is body-marked and self-centred and determines links in the anticipa-




                                                        on
tion of meaning in terms of the weight and value of a stimulus or relational
pattern, determined by direct and simple body marking; the second, however

                                                e
– let’s call it syntax – takes form from comparing the weight and value attrib-
                                             us
uted by one subject with that attributed by other subjects, with whom it is in
contact and in which, therefore, the attribution of the body meaning must fit
                                          al

into accepted scenarios and scenes, in order to prevent that the phrase, that we
                                       ci


build – the action we propose – be considered wrong by the other and pun-
                                  er



ished with negative weight and value, which could contradict the simple
                              m




direct emotional marking. One could say that, in the first system of rules,
these are narratives, in which the subject, predicate and the complements con-
                        om




cern the organism exclusively (on the basis of the primary emotions), while
in the second, the organism’s action is part of stories, in which the other is
                    -c




always present as the subject (active or passive), or as a complement in con-
              on




texts governed essentially by derived emotions. The two systems, which are
deeply overlapped, form the cornerstone of the me (self-regulation) in the reg-
           N




ulation of the us (interpersonal-regulation).


5. Conclusion

    Due to a more than a hundred-year-old habit, the psychoanalytic world
fails to use the term unconscious as a simple adjective to designate to the con-
scious or unconscious quality of a psychological process or a given of expe-
rience. It does not resist the temptation (and shortcut) to use it instead as a
noun, which inexorably refers to a preformed and structured entity. In doing
so, it forgets, moreover, that Freud prohibited himself from using it as a noun
(1915) without being able to obey this rule. By developing the concept of
emotionally marked link and redefining the problem of meaning, we can try
to build a tool that allows us to replace an “essential” concept of unconscious,
                              Emotionally marked link and meaning                            193



a strictly procedural vision that can express in terms of links, link connections
and construction of meanings, intentions and actions that psychoanalysis has
always understood in terms of conflict, defense, transference, countertransfer-
ence. Russel (1921) noted a long time ago in his illuminating essay on the
mind that, rather than saying “I think”, one should say: “it is thought in me”.
Even with regard to the term unconscious one could come to think of it not as
a noun, certainly as an adjective, but above all as a verb, an unheard of and
impossible verb: to unconsciate, reflective and active, but impersonal as to
rain or to snow. On the basis of what Russel says, should we not be able to
say: “it unconsciates in us”?




                                                                    ly
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Received for publication: 11 June 2022.
Accepted for publication: 28 September 2022.

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Ricerca Psicoanalitica 2022; XXXIII(s1):672
doi:10.4081/rp.2022.672

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