The Reticular System in Freud’s and Lacan’s Theories: A Founding Concept in the Service of a Therapeutic Ambition and a Scientific Ideal

All things are chained, entangled, lovingly bound

—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The aim of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of the history and the significance of psychoanalytical theories. Our hypothesis[1] is that the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, two major figures in psychoanalysis, are based on structural foundations that can be interpreted through systems theory. We will show how this idea translates precisely into the theories of Freud and then Lacan, and how it allows them to think in an original way about determinism in the psychic field, as well as the effectiveness of analytic therapy. The theoretical systems developed by Freud and then Lacan to account for the psyche consist of a structure, a fluid and a regulatory function, forming what we call a “reticular system.” This concept, although not explicitly named by Freud, is evident in his descriptions of psychic processes as networks of interconnected representations. Lacan, for his part, takes up and develops this idea, integrating elements of Saussurean linguistics, elevating the network of signifiers to a central concept in the analysis of the subject and its desire. This article explores how the reticular system, as a theoretical model, supports the therapeutic and scientific ambitions of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, highlighting the technical and scientific influences that shaped these elaborations. By comparing Freudian and Lacanian theories, we can see how the reticular system is an invariant that supports theories from two very different epistemic configurations. The first is based on cybernetics and fluid mechanics derived from neurology, while the second draws on philosophy, structural linguistics and mathematics. Despite these differences, Freud and Lacan share more than a conceptual battery. In fact, despite major upheavals in the concepts they evoked (for example, between libido and desire), their reliance on the same reticular system to think about psychic functioning offers a solution of continuity between these two theorizations and contributes to the unity of psychoanalysis.

1. Freud’s and Lacan’s theoretical elaborations are part of the same system

Both Freud’s and Lacan’s theoretical elaborations are based on a structural foundation which, in the final analysis, comes under the heading of systems theory.[2] A system corresponds to the association of a structure, understood in its simplest form as linked elements, and a function. To this structure and function, we add, inspired by Alain Gras’s (1993) theory of technical macro-systems, a third element in the form of a regulatory function. We propose to call the combination of these three elements a “reticular system.” For example, the circulatory system associates a structure (blood vessels), a fluid (blood), and a regulatory function (the heart).

1.1. Freud’s psychoanalysis is based on a “reticular system”

Similarly, throughout Freud’s work, we can identify such a reticular system based on three elements: a structure, a fluid, and a regulatory function.

Although Freud does not claim the network as a proper psychoanalytical theoretical concept, psychic representations are nevertheless systematically presented as associated in a reticular manner. This network-like presentation of psychic representations is a legacy of the late nineteenth century, when thinking in terms of the network became a doxa (Musso, 2003).[3] The theories of psychoanalysis, and in particular those of Freud and then Lacan, were to base their operation on such a reticular system, which associates elements linked in a network and a fluid that circulates over these elements, themselves regulated by a function.

Jean Laplanche identifies these linked elements as theoretical atoms[4] that vary from period to period. He identifies them successively as three “unbreakable” (Laplanche, 1987, p. 44) in Freudian thought: first the neuron in the pre-psychoanalytic period (that of Entwurf einer Psychologie, Freud, 1895/1956), then the psychic trace, and finally representation.

In Freudian metapsychology, the fluid of the reticular system takes the form of libido and affect. Indeed, both are destined to circulate on the network of psychic representations as a fluid would. Freud (1894/1989) is explicit on the matter:

In psychic functions, something is to be differentiated (amount of affect, sum of excitation) which has all the properties of a quantity—although we possess no means of measuring it—, something which is capable of enlargement, diminution, displacement and reconduction, and which extends over the memory traces of representations, rather like an electric charge over the surface of bodies. We can use this hypothesis, which incidentally is already at the foundation of our theory of the “abreagir” (Preliminary Communication, 1893), in the same sense that physicists use the hypothesis of the current of an electric fluid. (p. 18; my translation)[5]

The idea of a fluid circulating in the psyche in a similar way to electricity is a common one.

Finally, in Freudian theorizing, the pleasure-displeasure principle, followed by the primary and secondary processes, plays the role of a veritable regulatory function for libido and affect, giving shape to the third term of the reticular system. The pleasure-displeasure principle directs the paths of affect on psychic representations, determining what will enhance pleasure and avoid displeasure.

This reticular system became a veritable doxa for Freudian psychoanalysts. For, even if it wasn’t explained as such, the network offered a model of thought, taken up by psychoanalysts from the first Freudian circle, such as Wilhelm Reich. Reich takes up the idea, derived from metapsychology, of a field in which psychic forces, regulated by the pleasure-displeasure principle, clash. Still for Reich, this network of forces takes the form of a “psychic breastplate” that he draws: “In short, we have painted the picture of a breastplate of complicated structures in which repressed and repressive forces are not clearly discernible but intertwine in a complex and seemingly disordered networḱ” (Reich, 1933/1971, p. 271; my translation). Reich’s image of the psychic carapace draws on the ambivalence of the imaginary network: it is both a net that allows for containment and at the same time a place of passage in the manner of a sieve. Reich’s use of the image of the carapace also enables him to illustrate more precisely the idea that an individual’s character, in what is proper and fixed, is the result of multiple balances negotiated over the course of the subject’s history between repressive and repressed psychic forces. The result of these successive compromises is a kind of psychic shell that enables the individual to face the demands of life at the cost of certain psychic limitations.

1.2. Neurology, with the diagram makers, and technical imaginaries provided a “graphic reason” for the way psychoanalysis understands the psyche

For Freud, thinking of the psyche as a networked structure is a legacy of neurology. The influence of Freud’s training and practice as a neurologist on psychoanalysis has been widely documented. While some have called Freud a precursor of the neurosciences (Magistretti & Ansermet, 2010), for us it’s more a question of pointing out the influence of a logical form on metapsychological theorizing. This legacy is that of the network and, more specifically, of what we identify as a “graphic reason” (Goody, 1979) for the network. As a “graphic reason,” the network is in fact a graphic form equivalent to a mode of reasoning (as can be a table or a list). Drawings of networks support a scientific argument based on the idea of over-determination and multiple determinations, which are impossible to evoke simultaneously. The drawings themselves constitute a “graphic reason.” So, the transition from a single, linear, diachronic sound chain to a plural, synchronic graphic device, in the form of network drawings, opens up the possibility of new forms of reasoning.

The network thus becomes a common form for thinking about relationships, particularly with the “diagram makers” typical of late nineteenth-century neurology (that “era of diagrams”) such as Kussmaul in 1877, Charcot in 1884, Wernicke in 1885, and Grashey in 1898 (Gasser, 1995). In each case, brain areas, nerve centers or mental representations are pictured in the form of circles and lines, systematically accompanied by arrows to illustrate nerve circulation. Symptoms are then explained by impediments to the circulation of nerve impulses. The idea here is to think of psychic or neuronal disorders as disturbances in the circulation of a material fluid.

Freud first followed this physicalist approach, with Ernst Wilhem von Brücke, aiming to explain psychic phenomena by the movements of material particles, following Emil du Bois-Reymond’s oath. Freud was a pathologist, and drew these neural networks, for example, when studying crayfish. The diagrams of psychoanalysis are thus the result of a graphic conquest that has a heritage: from the rete mirabile of Antiquity drawn by Vesalius and Leonardo da Vinci, to the diagrams of Wernicke’s aphasia, to Freud’s witticism and Lacan’s Borromean knots (Forest, 2010).

The “Emma” case in Entwurf einer Psychologie (Freud, 1895/1956) is both an emblematic example and a model of Freud’s understanding of psychic functioning. The “graphic reason” for the network is at work here in the manner of “diagram makers.” The case history is depicted in the form of interconnected circles, each corresponding to a psychic representation. Either the circle is full, and the representation is conscious, or it is empty, and the representation is unconscious. The movement of the charge of affect from one representation to another is represented by arrows, indicating its circulation on the psychic network. Here, Freud takes up Fechner’s idea of psychic energy being channeled through pathways.

During the same period, Freud’s earlier illustration of the “sexual schema” in his correspondence with Fliess, in manuscript G (Freud, 1895/1956, p. 94), is prototypical of Freud’s network thinking (Figure 1). This diagram illustrates how the organism and psyche process the excitation provoked by a “sexual object in a favorable position,” (my translation) first received by the senses before provoking a sexual tension processed by the psyche, represented here by “a psychic group,” (my translation) before leading to an eventual action, either reflexive or specific. We propose to see this psychic group as the most minimal representation of a network, pictured here in the form of four interconnected psychic representations forming a rhombus.

Figure 1: Freud’s Illustration of the “Sexual Schema” and Detail of the “Psychic Group”

In manuscript G, correspondence with W. Fliess (Freud, 1895/1956, p. 94)

This rhombus is the minimal figure for thinking about the capture of excitation in the clutches of a properly psychic order. This rhombus illustrates the idea of the circulation of excitation within the psyche, whether it can be processed and lead to motor action, or whether it remains invested within the psychic group. Indeed, drawing a rhombus opens up the possibility of an indefinite circulation outside any motor outlet, a wait or delay in response that opposes the immediacy of the reflex. Note that Freud theorizes here the opposition between reflex action, which short-circuits the psyche, and specific action, which has been elaborated by the psychic group. The “psychic group” is therefore a network that can either let things through or hold them back, in line with the opposition between circulating and controlling that is inherent in the very concept of network as theorized by Pierre Musso (2003).

Thinking of healing through the idea of circulating a fluid on a network is an ancient heritage, particularly since Franz Mesmer’s animal magnetism (Mesmer, 1784/1971; Rausky, 1977). Mesmer, eighteenth-century German physician, theorized that healing could be achieved by circulating a material fluid between the participants in a session, linked by a rope around a tub containing metals. Healing would then occur thanks to a “magnetic tide” when Mesmer recirculated the blocked fluid.[6] Renée Roussillon (1992) saw the Freudian device as an analytical tub.

At the time of the birth of psychoanalysis, the reticular system developed by Freud in his metapsychology drew on technical imaginaries (weaving, the train, electricity, the telephone, hydraulics) and on related sciences (neurology, linguistics, crystallography, associationism; see Bollas, 2002). In fact, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries offered psychoanalysis a wealth of technical imagery that influenced the theory of Freud, who was himself very technically inclined; he was one of the first to equip himself with a telephone (Jones, 1958, p. 361). Freud was also a man of technical metaphors, which are all those of the network: weaving, which features prominently in his work, the train, electricity, hydraulics, crystallography, linguistics, and so on.

1.3. Aphasia is a “theoretical Rosetta Stone” for linking the three registers of subjectivity: Body, image, and word

Aphasia is a particularly interesting object for reading the evolution of analytic thinking in the apprehension of psychic functioning in relation with the network concept. It presents a privileged site for examining the evolution of psychoanalytic theory, marking a conceptual juncture between neurological models and metapsychological formulations.

Aphasia, as a communication disorder, manifests itself in written or spoken language through the partial or complete loss of the ability to express oneself or to understand language (Postel, 2011). For Ernst Kris (1950), Freud’s study of aphasia represents a mediating position, drawing a dividing line between theories that explain it in terms of topical factors (areas, centers, connections) and those that explain it in terms of functional factors (see Roman Jakobson, 1963/2003). Aphasia is a dividing line between neurology and metapsychology. This mediating position of aphasia studies also constitutes a veritable tipping point, where elements of earlier theories are retained while the approach is radically renewed. Anzieu has precisely identified this tipping point in the Freudian text, and in particular in the way Freud rewrites his early texts, taking into account his latest theories. Emblematically, as Anzieu (1981, p. 1171) points out, the nervous system (Nervensystem) becomes a psychic system (Seelenleben) with the re-edition of Studies on Hysteria in 1925 (Freud, 1891/1983). As Laplanche (1987) puts it, “indivisible” (p. 44; my translation) theorical atoms follow one another: first the neuron, then the trace, then the representation, and finally the signifier for Lacan. In Freud’s Entwurf (1895/1956), the notion of psychic “trace” (p. 352; my translation) serves as a bridge between a conceptualization in terms of neurons, which is anchored in an assumed material dimension, and then in terms of psychic representations, where the rock of biology recedes and a metapsychology is assumed. But if biology is thanked, at least temporarily, its patterns are preserved, as demonstrated by Anzieu’s observation. The reticular system evolves when Freud links it not to neurons, but to representations. The pieces of the game are changed, but the reticulated imaginary of medical research endures. Freud then conceived of an affect circulating on the networks of representations, and of a technique of exploration based on it: free association.

Freud’s bartering between a first theoretical atom in the form of the neuron and a second in the form of representation enabled him to distance himself from the medical and biological field. And yet, even when he was far removed from medical or neurological theorizing, Freud maintained a rational, scientific approach to phenomena. Indeed, the reticular system would enable him to think not in terms of a physical, linear determination (like the reflex), but in terms of a reticular, i.e. over-determined, characteristic of psychic phenomena. Freud addressed aphasia first in terms of neurons, then in terms of psychic representations. In this way, the study of aphasia becomes a paradigmatic locus where shifts in Freud’s theoretical framework can be traced, from biological determinism to the complex networks of psychic life.

Lacan, meanwhile, returns to aphasia via Jakobson’s theorization, this time in terms of the signifier. Aphasia thus emerges as a key threshold, where Freud’s neurological roots give way to metapsychology and Lacan’s logic of the signifier. Aphasia thus constitutes what we propose to call a “theoretical Rosetta Stone,” as it enables interpretations under the three registers of subjectivity as identified by Pierre Legendre: the body, the image, and the word, which, knotted together, are constitutive of the subject (Legendre, 1994, p. 109). Lacan condensed those three registers into a single brilliant formula simultaneously evoking the register of language, the imaginary, and the brain: “The language apparatus is there, somewhere on the brain, like a spider” (Lacan, 1967/2005a, p. 46; my translation).

1.4. Lacan claims the network and makes the Freudian reticular system his own

Whereas the network was implicit in Freudian theory, identified by its images, metaphors and technical imaginaries, it is clearly claimed in Lacan’s re-reading. While Freud’s theorizing was rooted in his training as a neurologist, Lacan draws on Saussurean linguistics to elevate the network of signifiers to the status of a major concept.

The network becomes a scientific tool for understanding the subject and its desire. Lacan (1967/2005a) refers to it explicitly when discussing the interpretation of dreams:

A dream in Freud is not a dreaming nature, a restless archetype, a matrix of the world, a divine dream, the heart of the soul. Freud speaks of it as a certain knot, an associative network of verbal forms analyzed and intersecting as such … It’s when the same word meets at three crossroads of ideas that come to the subject that you’ll realize that what’s important is that word and nothing else. It’s when you’ve found the word that concentrates around it the greatest number of threads of this mycelium that you know that this is the hidden center of gravity of the desire in question. (p. 40; my translation)

The network is therefore explicit and useful in Lacan’s work, whether in what constitutes the first classicism, i.e. the period that Jean-Claude Milner (1995) identifies as running from 1953 to 1970, from signifier to hyperstructuralism, or in the second classicism, that of mathematics and topology. Indeed, from a mathematical point of view, knot theories are also reducible to networks.

First of all, Lacan’s structure is that of a network of signifiers, the cornerstone of his theory, the doxa and leitmotif of early classicism. This network of signifiers is the key to the first theorizations, as the technical metaphors of weaving indicate: “The unconscious is, at its core, structured, patterned, chained, woven of language” (Lacan, 1955/1981, p. 135; my translation). More precisely, this network of signifiers is a useful concept for the psychoanalyst, enabling him to identify the subject of desire in his listening, by identifying the signifiers that keep coming back, those that are the real nodal points of the discourse:

Where it was, the Ich – the subject, not psychology – the subject must emerge. And to know that we’re there, there’s only one method, and that’s to spot the network, and how do you spot a network? You find it, you come back to it, you cross its path, it always intersects in the same way. (Lacan, 1964/1973, p. 46; my translation).

References to the network of signifiers are innumerable (Forest, 2015), so much so that the Saussurean reprise is at the foundation of the Lacanian topic.

With Lacan, we also find a fluid circulating through this network of signifiers, identified as “desire.” Abandoning the economic dimension of metapsychology at first glance, Lacan no longer emphasizes the destinies of the libido or psychic investments, but theorizes the circulation of the subject’s desire through the network of signifiers. Although the driving force here is language, giving pre-eminence to signifiers, it’s by thinking of them as circulating on a network that it’s possible to think of a real psychic dynamic. Thus, for example, in his analysis of the graph of desire, Lacan (1957/1998) points out that “a whole part of desire continues to circulate in the form of signifier waste in the unconscious” (p. 96; my translation). The psychoanalyst’s task is to locate this desire at its nodal points, and also through singular signifiers such as the phallus, itself conceived as a signifier, which enables us to think of a circulation in the form of the displacement of objects of desire.

As for the regulatory function that completes the first two terms of the reticular system, it takes the form of Lacan’s signifier of the Name-of-the-Father. It is the institution of this fundamental metaphor that holds together the psychic economy of a subject, and its foreclosure that marks psychosis. Lacan’s theory is replete with images and metaphors to illustrate the role of this metaphor, and in particular those that refer to fixation, i.e. the regulation of circulation: knotting, nailing, a capiton point, and so on. In the absence of such anchor points, delirium proliferates, as in the case of President Schreber (1975), analyzed by Freud (1911/2006b) and then Lacan (1966/2001a). Schreber’s images of rays directly connected to God are reminiscent of other images, such as the classical Christian mysticism of St. Francis, linked to the Holy Spirit by rays. In his seminar on psychoses, Lacan (1955/1981) returns at length to the illustration of delirium by means of communication routes, contrasting the main road and the secondary roads, drawing on the imaginary of the road network, another technical macro-system, to detail the workings of psychosis.

We have briefly recalled the coordinates of the reticular system that enabled Freud and then Lacan to think about the subject’s psychic space. Elsewhere (Forest, 2010, 2015), we have extensively developed the origin and importance of the terms that form the backbone of such a system—the network, the fluid, and the regulatory function—as well as its function as a solution of continuity between Freud’s and Lacan’s theories. Indeed, these theories sometimes appear incommensurable: for example, between the psychic economy of metapsychology, which is a veritable hydraulic system, and the language engine of Saussurean semantics. For the representations of word and thing are not the signifier, libido is not the phallus, and the pleasure-pleasure principle is not the metaphor of the Name-of-the-Father. And yet, these elements exchange positions to maintain the articulation of a complete reticular system, the workings of which enable us to think about the functioning of the psyche (see Table 1). Freud and Lacan therefore share a scientific heritage and technical imaginaries. The basis of their theories on a reticular system outlines a structural continuity between their visions of the functioning of the psyche, at least between Freudian metapsychology and early Lacanian classicism.

Table 1: Comparison of the Elements of the Reticular System in Metapsychology and Lacanian Theory

Whereas Freud understood the psyche as a reticular system based on the association of psychic representations, libido and a pleasure-displeasure principle, Lacan substitutes the terms of this system but retains its general economy. Thus, in a first move, Freud abandoned biology to base his clinic on the concept of psychic reality. The reticular system—in the form of an initial epistemic configuration—nevertheless enabled him to keep a way of thinking, a particular graphic reason, and a claim to scientificity. In a second move, Lacan rereads Freud in the light of philosophy and linguistics, and offers a new topic. Biologism and vitalism are replaced—in this second epistemic configuration—by structuralism. But Lacan’s apprehension of the psyche through a reticular system once again enables us to converse with a vision of psychic functioning that reconciles overdetermination and scientificity. The preservation of a theoretical architecture common to Freud and Lacan in the form of a reticular system enables the latter to account for psychic dynamics in different terms, but without betraying the first Freudian epistemological configuration. In this respect, the concept of the network is both a silent bridge and a causal form that guarantees the non-reductionism of the theories advocated by Freud and Lacan.

Beyond this identification, we’d now like to emphasize a point and evoke the new perspectives offered by this theorization. The point relates to the psychoanalyst’s ambition in the exercise of his art, which we shall describe as therapeutic. As for the prospects, they involve making full use of the reticular system, not only to understand psychic functioning in Freud and Lacan, but also as a tool or even a compass to circumscribe the “reductionist demon” (Dor, 1988, p. 248; my translation).

2. The reticular system accounts for the therapeutic effectiveness of psychoanalysis and its inclusion in the scientific field

Psychoanalysis is a theory and a practice. As a practice, it is founded on a therapeutic ambition. In Freud’s case, as in Lacan’s, this ambition takes the form of setting things in motion, whether in language through the revelation of meaning, or in energy through the recirculation of energy. In fact, when it comes to therapy, psychoanalytic theorizing focuses on two images: communication and circulation.

2.1. A therapeutic ambition based on two symbolic images: Communication and circulation

Communication and circulation are solutions that present themselves as genuine operators of psychic health, carrying with them an entire imaginary.[7] And the imaginary of the network is ambivalent: like a net, it can hold back but also let through. This opposition between “control” and “circulation” is also found in analytic therapy.

In Freud’s view, interpretation puts affect back into circulation between previously cleaved psychic representations. It is this re-established circulation that allows the affect to move and find its original representation, restoring meaning at the very moment when the effect of repression disappears. As early as the Studies on Hysteria, this was Freud and Breuer’s conception: “Therapeutics does not consist in extirpation, which even today it cannot achieve, but strives to put an end to resistance, thus permitting free circulation in a path hitherto blocked” (Freud & Breuer, 1895/1956, p. 235; my translation). In the metapsychology that followed the Studies on Hysteria, hydraulics came to the fore, illustrating all states of the libido: “They [the sexual tendencies] represent like a network of fluid-filled and communicating channels” (Freud, 1915/1961, p. 325; my translation). The circulation of fluids offered Freud a suitable image to represent the very psychic processes that seemed unrepresentable.

Similarly, scansion, theorized by Lacan in his analysis of the Dora case (Lacan, 1951/1966a), is an action based on the idea of re-establishing psychic circulation. These images of circulation and communication would be taken up and developed by Lacan: circulation of desire, and more specifically the phallus, and communication of meaning. The invention of scansion stems from this imaginary. This pause in the session, at a signifying moment in the discourse of analysis, is paradoxically supposed to put meaning back into circulation. Here, it’s the subject’s position that is modified, and thus their relationship to objects, which involves a transmutation of truth for the subject (Lacan, 1951/1966a, p. 218). We return to the Freudian position of a cure founded on the love of truth. With the talking cure, restoring psychic health involves also, and more specifically, the circulation of meaning, i.e. revelation. On this occasion, let’s recall Freud’s statement, which sounds like a scientific and practical imperative: “We must not forget that the analytic relationship is founded on the love of truth, that is, on the recognition of reality, and that it excludes all pretence and all deception” (Freud, 1937/1985, p. 263; my translation). Communication in analysis refers to a revelation of the truth of desire for the subject, synonymous with the recirculation of psychic energy. In metapsychological terms, “bound” energy becomes “free” energy for new psychic investments. The structure of the network is conducive to thinking about this opposition between circulation and control (Musso, 2003). The invisible (unconscious) becomes visible (audible during the session) in a reversal mechanism that makes Freud a kind of “anatomo-psychoanalyst.”

The opposition between health as free movement and illness as a blockage is a long-standing one. As early as the end of Antiquity, the stone of madness illustrated the idea that simply extracting it would suffice to cure madness, a notion mocked in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch circa 1494.[8] Before Claude Bernard, medieval medical techniques were seen as ways of regulating fluid, whether through bloodletting, vomiting, purgatives, tremulants, etc. Mesmer’s magnetism is also based on the idea that healing is achieved by re-establishing the circulation of a fluid. The magnetizer, with the help of the tub, acts as an operator to provoke a magnetic tide. The expulsion of a black bird at the end of an exorcism, or a magnetic tide at the end of an animal magnetism session, marks the end of disorders by restoring circulation. In the same vein, the therapeutic arsenal of the early twentieth-century neurologist—diet, rest, electric shocks, baths, etc.—was also aimed at generating energy and restoring circulation (Hale, 1995, p. 74).

In the 1950s, Wilhelm Reich developed a theory of psychic and sexual energy, known as orgone, which would be materialized by bions, a kind of small blue balls visible under a microscope (Reich, 1933/1971, p. 255). Once again, the therapy consists of putting this sexual energy back into circulation with the help of a strange device (an “orgone accumulator”). What these mystifying fantasies have in common is that they associate pathology with a state of stasis, whereas the therapeutic approach is one of recirculation. It’s true that, following Harvey, the principle of circulation became “the framework of all biology for the next two centuries” and the organism was conceived as a “hydraulic machine” (Pichot, 1993, p. 303; my translation).

Here, the principle is extended to the psyche. But where Freudian and Lacanian theories strictly belong to the realm of the psyche, those of the mad stone, magnetism or orgone are reifications. Materiality is a sign of the reductionism of such theories, which apply in a literal sense what should remain in the realm of the immaterial. The equality of health and circulation derives from an anatomical logic in which the image of circulation is prevalent, inherited from medicine, distant with Galen, close with animal magnetism and, in the field of psychiatry, with Meynert and Charcot. In this sense, psychoanalysis is based on the idea that interpretation puts affect back into circulation, enabling it to circulate between psychic representations previously divided between consciousness and the unconscious. This proposal represents a kind of continuity between the medical doctrines of the corporeal register and the metapsychological doctrine, which has moved away from it, without however severing its ties; the concept of drive constitutes another solution of continuity between the corporeal and the psychic. And yet, just like the psyche, drives are rooted in the body, as Freud already pointed out in his “sexual schema” (Freud, 1895/1956, p. 94). Rather, our aim here is to highlight the reductionism at work when metaphors are taken at face value (the magnetic tide materializing as vomiting), or when purely contingent relationships are interpreted as necessary (as in Gall’s phrenology, which links moral qualities, observable in context, with biological dispositions, in other words, incommensurable terms; Gall, 1825; Lanteri-Laura, 1970[9]).

Let’s note that the reticular system, in its ambition to account for psychic health by recirculating a fluid, is historically situated in the sense that it accounts for a theoretical elaboration that is that of metapsychology for Freud and the signifier network for Lacan. The Freudian and Lacanian reticular systems recycle a heritage (theoretical, historical as well as technical and medical imaginary) while opening up the possibility of ruptures and new epistemological configurations. For Freud, it’s a question of being able to think of psychic reality as distinct from material reality, and for Lacan of explaining a psychogenic determinism based on the history of the subject and language. But such systems remain historically situated. For Freud, for example, the reticular system corresponds to a relatively mechanistic (on the model of hydraulics and electricity) and cybernetic version. This is why it wouldn’t appear adequate, for example, to account for a concept such as the death drive, which thwarts the pleasure principle (Freud, 1920/2013). Indeed, while the reticular system can account for drive oppositions, cleavages and libidinal stasis, it is not a hegemonic concept that can account for all analytic theorizations. Despite these limitations, however, the reticular system can be used to capture new configurations and in particular to bolster their scientific credentials.

2.2. Freud and Lacan: The same scientific ideal founded on overdetermination

Both Freud and Lacan share a scientific ideal of the absolute determinism of psychic phenomena. In his bestseller, Freud (1901/2001) is categorical: “There is nothing arbitrary or indeterminate in psychic life” (p. 305; my translation). This proposition has overtones of a Laplacian ideal, according to which all the phenomena of the world would be calculable if we were simultaneously able to know all the components of the universe at a given moment.

Similarly, in Lacanian language, this determinism is at the heart of the work, from the signifier to the theory of knots. As early as his thesis, Lacan (1932/1975) posits that the relationship between the subjective meaning of a phenomenon of consciousness and the objective phenomenon is always determined:

This hypothesis is that a determinism exists which is specific to the order defined in phenomena by the relations of human comprehensibility. We have called this determinism psychogenic. This hypothesis deserves the title of postulate; unprovable in fact, and requiring arbitrary assent, it is in every respect homologous to the postulates that form the legal basis of all science, and define for each at once its object, its method and its autonomy. (p. 314; my translation)

“Psychogenic determinism” is therefore as much a founding postulate as psychoanalysis’ claim to be scientific.

Through the network of signifiers, Lacan explores the implications of a non-linear determinism, illustrated by the networks he draws in Le Séminaire sur la Lettre Volée (Lacan, 1955/1966b), to the point of proposing what he calls a logic of “bags and ropes”: “What I’m trying to introduce with the writing of the knot is nothing less than what I’ll call a logic of bags and ropes” (Lacan, 1976/2005b, p. 146; my translation). These networks enable us to think about a crucial element in analytic hermeneutics, that of overdetermination: “In short, what was the essential thing he [Freud] brought? He brought the dimension of overdetermination” (Lacan, 1971/2011, p. 225; my translation). Freud and Lacan thus share the same scientific ideal, Freud’s starting point being a naturalist and physicalist platform through to a metapsychology backed by a psychic economy, and Lacan’s starting point being a theory of the subject based on the signifier through to a mathematical formalism synonymous with integral transmission. This absolute determinism of psychic phenomena—which would therefore all have a meaning—stems from what Bouveresse refers to as a principle of interpretability: “It is certain that before Freud no one suspected the possibility of establishing such a complicated and coherent network of logical connections between facts that are at first sight unrelated to one another” (Bouveresse, 2015, p. 256; my translation). In the realm of the psyche, physical causality is replaced by structural causality.

This scientific ideal is also conveyed by technical imaginaries, the traces of which can be seen in the metaphors used by Freud and Lacan. For Freud, who makes abundant use of metaphors, weaving and hydraulics are very much in evidence, as are communication routes for Lacan. Both also use the image of the crystal to illustrate the invisible determinisms illustrated by the crystal’s “cleavage planes”: “If we throw a crystal on the ground, it shatters, but not arbitrarily; it then breaks according to its cleavage planes into pieces whose delimitation, though invisible, was nevertheless determined in advance by the structure of the crystal” (Freud, 1932/1995, p. 142; my translation). Lacan also refers to the “linguistic crystal” (Lacan, 1970/2001b, p. 412; my translation).

This scientific ideal finds its place in a way of thinking that involves reversal and unveiling. It is a reticular structure, that of networked representations or signifiers, that explains the patent text of the dream or the discourse of the analysand on the couch. Jean Laplanche (1980) illustrates this unconscious determinism by referring the linear, surface text of the dream to an unconscious line running through a network of representations. The diagram drawn by Laplanche (p. 79) is an excellent example of this graphic reason for the dream, where desire makes its way through networked representations, where it is the warp thread in the weft of representations.

In this way, the scientific idealism shared by Freud and Lacan is based on the reticular system and allows them to express a shared conviction: that the unconscious, far from being left to chance, obeys a determined structure that underpins the very scientificity of psychoanalysis.

2.3. The anti-network reflex: The pitfall of a generalized Babinski sign

But network thinking has its opposite: linearity. While the network makes it possible to conceptualize a rational yet complex psychic causality, it also reveals an ever-present temptation to think of psychic causality in linear terms. Not that it doesn’t exist, but its scope is more restricted, if not absent, in the realm of psychic phenomena. To possess a universal and direct explanation, which would have the force of the laws of physics, is a wish of the researcher, as it is of every human being. As Freud (1904/2006a) reminds us: “Men always have this desire: to open all mysteries with one key” (p. 37; my translation).

Historically, the concept of reflex has been a representative of this linear thinking, univocally linking a stimulus to an action or symptom. Yet it is precisely one of the functions of the network to remedy the impasses of linear causality, to remedy this “billiard ball” model, to use an expression coined by Lucien Sfez (1990) in reference to Descartes.

This opposition between network and linearity permeated the scientific imagination of the late nineteenth century. A painting by André Brouillet, Une Leçon Clinique à la Salpêtrière in 1887,[10] depicting Charcot delivering a clinical lecture, serves as an illustration of the opposition between these two forms of causality (Figure 2). On the one hand, that of the reflex, on the other, that of the network. Commentators on the famous painting have dwelt on the parterre of psychiatrists or the quasi-theatrical stage and Blanche Whittman, a hysterical patient in opisthotonos. She is supported by Joseph Babinski, who gave his name to the “Babinski reflex” (Babinski, 1896). This reflex is used to identify a lesion in the central nervous system by rubbing the sole of the foot, the extension of the big toe and toes being the reverse of the normal reflex. For us, the key lies in the center of the picture, paradoxically hidden at its heart. While scanning the painting, the viewer’s eye falls on a small table, near the master, which supports a glass and examination instruments: precisely, a reflex hammer, and an electric battery powering an induction coil. The hammer comes into its own with the Babinski reflex. As for the coil, a battery and a galvanometer were frequently used in experiments on contractures as early as the French Revolution (Caire, 2019). These instruments were used to identify an organic lesion. In fact, the passage of current had to be modified in the event of organic lesion, which made it possible to verify whether the phenomenon was properly hysterical. So, by literally connecting the hysteric to the circuit, the power measured by the galvanometer is modified as a function of body resistance. Stimulation of hysterical areas then produces the same galvanometric oscillations as healthy parts. These instruments are as much at the center of the picture as they are at the center of therapeutic practice. They represent two opposing paradigms: the reflex hammer refers to the response stimulus, while the coil refers to the fluid circulating in the network. Two ways of apprehending causality: linear, like the billiard ball, which applies to simple physical ailments, and reticular, like Freud’s psyche and sexual schema.

Figure 2: General View and Detail (a Reflex Hammer and an Electric Coil) of

André Brouillet’s Painting Une Leçon Clinique à la Salpêtrière, 1887

Image of painting adapted from Wikimedia Commons(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Une_le%C3% A7on_clinique_%C3%A0_la_Salp%C3%AAtri%C3%A8re.jpg). In the public domain.

Yet psychoanalysis, whether Freud’s or Lacan’s, theorizes the complexity of the psyche, irreducible to the logic of a billiard ball. With Freud, the notion of overdetermination is opposed to the notion of reflex and symbolism as the key to dreams. As for Lacan, the “relations of understanding” he puts forward in his thesis are opposed to Janet’s concept of “automatism” (Janet, 1910; Lacan, 1932/1975).

2.4. The reticular system: A tool for spotting reductionist theories and temptations

In addition to providing a behind-the-scenes description of the psychological machinery of Freud and Lacan, the reticular system also enables us to identify the scientific reductionism of excessive theories, which are so many temptations for psychologists. Two in particular: causal linearity and reification. These reductionisms can be applied to any of the elements of the reticular system: theoretical atoms, the fluid, or the regulatory function.

This system doesn’t just apply to psychoanalysis as theorized by Freud or Lacan. It can also be used to identify the dead-ends of past psychological or psychiatric theories. Franz Joseph Gall’s phrenology, for example, is an example of linear reduction, in which the development of specific brain zones is said to influence the shape of the skull (Gall, 1825). A linear relationship is established between the zone, and therefore the shape of the skull, and a psychic quality, a relationship that is in fact arbitrary. Later, the hysterogenic zones theorized by Charcot could be used like a switch to trigger a hysterical attack by simply pressing the ovaries. In the twentieth century, Egas Moniz’s lobotomy became a remedy for all kinds of pathologies, including homosexuality, considered by the Portuguese neurologist to be a disease (Parada, 2016). For these theories of a linear link between a physical and a psychic aspect have their share of therapeutics: why not act directly on areas of the brain with a “cephalic corset”? Or on the ovaries with an “ovarian belt”? Or by extracting the stone of madness (without forgetting that it was probably a myth)?

Conceiving theories of the psyche as reticular systems allows us, at the same time, to identify their reductionist temptations, whether reification or linearity: be it the stone of madness, the fluid of animal magnetism, or orgonology. With reification, we witness the test of a “generalized biologization of the psychic fact” (Ansermet, 2009, p. 171; my translation). This was Charcot’s temptation, for example, when he postulated a so-called “functional” (Charcot, 1971, p. 93) lesion of the brain to explain hysteria, even though no organic lesion could be identified.

Psychoanalysis is no exception to these reductionist temptations, whether when Otto Rank (2019) ends up referring all traumas to the birth trauma (linearity) or when Wilhelm Reich (1933/1971) sees the libido through a microscope (reification). In On Dreams, Freud (1901/1988) also flirts with the idea of a dream key, i.e., a dictionary that would provide an unambiguous interpretation of dream images. The “key to dreams” is always a temptation. In the same way, we may well ask whether Lacan’s theory of knots does not also constitute a temptation to reify, as he ties his threads together in the course of his analyses, just as Anna Freud wove. Indeed, the second Lacanian classicism (from 1970 onwards, in the sense of Milner, 1995) is based on much more speculative theorizing, founded on the reading of mathematicians (Frege, Cantor, Gödel, etc.). The interpretation and reading of clinical cases took a back seat to the development of topological speculations.

And, beyond the scientific debate that seeks to account for the complexity of the subject, reifying theories of psychic functioning also has political implications and consequences. In March 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy, the future President of the French Republic, debated Michel Onfray in Philosophie Magazine (Lacroix & Truong, 2007), supporting the idea that homosexuality is genetic. This is a political position which, based on the idea of a linear link between a physical aspect and a psychic construct, has consequences in terms of therapeutics and the perception of the subject in society. In another way, Tissot, at the end of the eighteenth century, linked young girls’ attacks of nerves at twenty to the reading of novels at fifteen (Boon, 2015), in a kind of generalized Babinski sign.

In contrast to linear thinking, the network is a “technology of the mind” (Sfez, 1999) that remedies the impasses of causality envisaged on the model of a billiard ball.

Conclusion: The “reticular system” as a tool for a new analytic epistemology

Psychoanalysis is based on a reticular system, conceived as an association of networked elements through which flows a fluid whose circulation is regulated. Freud’s entire metapsychology can be analyzed from this angle: psychic representations are traversed by the libido and governed by the pleasure-displeasure principle. Similarly, Lacan, although his concepts differ, theorizes the unconscious as a network of signifiers traversed by desire, regulated by the metaphor of the Name-of-the-Father. This vision has historical roots and is influenced by nineteenth-century science and its imaginary techniques.

This system is a useful and valuable conceptual tool for both explaining the workings of the psyche and establishing a therapeutic ambition, which is therefore synonymous with putting things back into circulation. Such a system may also constitute elements of a negative heuristic, in the sense of Lakatos (1994), i.e. one that defines the limits of a research program. We have every right to exchange elements of such a system (Freud’s libido, Lacan’s desire), but to leave it is to cross the boundaries of psychoanalysis. Thinking of the psyche as a reticular system constitutes the foundations bequeathed by Freud to Lacan, a minimal, ternary form that enables us to account for the transformations of the psyche and a therapy; in fine, the possibilities of psychic change. So, while Freud and Lacan developed two distinct epistemological configurations, one derived from neurology, the other from linguistics, they shared the same system for accounting for psychic dynamics. The contribution of the reticular system to their theorizations is that of a “theoretical calque.” It makes it possible to think about psychic overdetermination and the efficacy of therapy, while adopting a theorization far removed from biology, Freud by elaborating a metapsychology and Lacan by proposing a new topic anchored in structural linguistics. Explaining such a system also enables us to understand how Freud and then Lacan account for psychic functioning while claiming a scientific approach.

Beyond the boundaries of psychoanalysis, such an approach also makes it possible to identify and criticize reductionist theories. Indeed, when one of the elements of the system (the atom, the flow, or the regulatory function) is reified or linearized, then the complexity of the link between soma and psyche is undermined, not without political consequences.