DELAY AND LAG IN FREUD’S THOUGHT: FROM PROJECT FOR A SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY TO MOSES AND MONOTHEISM

Abstract

Marx (1966, 1967) regarded Freud’s study on aphasia (1891/1978) as a node between theories developed by linguistics and neuroscience. This article demonstrates that Freud’s model of thought can be reformulated using terminologies from modern neurocognitive science and substantiated by findings from qualitative and quantitative analyses. First, this article reinterprets Freud’s “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895/1950) regarding several theories proposed in cognitive neuroscience. Then, this article analyzes Freud’s important works using text mining techniques (especially structural topic model) to reveal how Freud’s thought has progressed over time. The force of delay and its effect (latency), for Freud, continued to be essential to the origin of memory until his final essay Moses and Monotheism in 1939 (Derrida, 1966/1967). Comparisons of Freud’s concepts with neurocognitive scientific terms proved that “Project” can serve as a significant reference point for recent neuroscientific emotion theories.