Hyperconnection
Abstract
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (1984) 18: 3-6 Editorial Comment HYPERCONNECTION SUSANLUTTON In his âProject for a Scientific Psychologyâ Freud sought to explain some psychic phenomena in neurological terms. It was here that he introduced the term âbesetzungâ, the German word for occupation which Strachey was to translate as âcathexisâ.â Freud used the word to describe an emotional investment in an idea or object. He thought of it as a process in which a neuron became loaded with a quantity of energy. He eventually abandoned these organic concepts and recast his ideas entirely in psychological term^.^'^ Nevertheless, strains of his original idea persisted in his later writings. For example, in describing the process of paranoia he wrote, âOne need only assume that an increase in resistance in the course taken by the psychical current in one direction results in a hypercathexis of another path and thus causes the flow to be switched into that path.â Today the desire to understand psychic events in neurological terms is as strong as ever. For example, there is a slowly growing body of evidence that persons with an abnormal EEG behave in an abnormal In particular, the epileptic is said