A note upon the ‘Mystic
Writing Pad’
From Freud, General
Psychological Theory,
Chapter X111 1925
A
metaphorical space, to contain condensed form, a data bank, a sea of
information, a bottomless well filled with layers of text. He seems to describe
a process of finding and losing, safeguarding and destroying. Deciding what is
holy and what is not, significance and value of self-extinguishing, incomplete,
vanishing or erased texts. the rescue and protection of sacred/important texts,
how do we decide on to what certain texts and information and notes to rescue.
What is being opened in a concealed compartment? a
momentary lack of fullness. What is being compressed, What is
shifying into the foreground,
Freud represents the functioning of the psychic
apparatus via an external technical mode.
The mind
collects data from the outside world in partnership with the ‘sense organs’ and
consciousness and function together on a basic primitive pain or pleasure
quality (Freud coined the Pleasure principle and the pain principle as the two
Principles our mental apparatus functions mentally).
We are
programmed to search the outer world in order to find the familiar. Memory
functions as a note taker and deposits the results of the familiar and
unfamiliar.
The ‘Mystic
Writing Pad’ is a metaphor for the human mind, a mental apparatus. Also known
as the ‘Wunderblock’.
Feud says
that the supplements, materializes and preserves the working of his ‘Mystic
Writing Pad’ in a notebook ( a permanent memory trace) with a pen to paper,
where the surface of the paper and ink in the pen preserve his thoughts. This
prevents the memory from being distorted when held in the actual memory of the
brain.
He compares
the process of memory with the 1960’s Etch A Sketch apparatus.
An Etch A Sketch has a thick, flat gray
screen in a red plastic frame. There are two knobs on the front of the frame in
the lower corners. Twisting the knobs moves a stylus that displaces aluminum powder on the back of the screen, leaving a
solid line. The knobs create lineographic images. The left control moves the stylus horizontally,
and the right one moves it vertically.
Ironically
this toy turns out to be one of the most memorable and creative toys of the 20th
Century.
surface of
celluloid and its 2 layers of waxed paper with the ‘protective shiled’
against stimuli on the paper. The apparatus of the mind has two layers also –
an external protective shield against stimuli and the ( perseptual
consciousness) surface behind it which receives stimuli.
Freud
compares the etchasketch aparatus…
“A faculty
of memory to a child's toy known as a "Wunderblock" (referred to in
the English translation as the "mystic writing pad"), one presumably
familiar to all of you. It consists of a wax slab stretched with foil, upon
which a text can be inscribed, and just as readily erased by lifting the
cellophane layer up and away from the wax slab. … Since this constant
inscription and erasure digs scratch marks ever deeper into the protective
layer, Freud perceived in this process an analogy to human consciousness. Freud's
symbolic model of our inner "storage mechanism" resonates with my own
interest in the dynamics of external data storage. Assisted by the
psychoanalytic method, we search through and review the internal storage of our
own consciousness for buried meanings; roughly the way a historian in an
archive reconstructs the past and attempts to interpret it based on the wealth
of documents”.
The desk
emerges as a mini-archive, a text storage unit for these fragments of a double
life. Insofar as it ejects the concealed papers virtually as their
non-conscious, it anticipates in formal terms what subsequent rea- dings would
repeatedly make clear to the editor-narrator… Marginalia on Arnold Dreyblatt's
The Wunder- block Thomas Fechner-Smarslyhttp://wissenschaft-als-kunst.de/multimedia/Dreyblatt-Fechner-SmarslyEn.pdf
Derrida
continues, do these new machines really change anything? Do they effect the
Freudian discourse in any essential way? Derrida responds with a self-
citation, a lengthy passage from an earlier text "Freud and the Scene of
Writing." In Archive Fever.
"The
Memory Work", he writes: "Just as our collective memories have become
externalized by society, so has our individual memory become internalized as we
became preoccupied with problems of personal identity and history. It is as if
we have lost the mediators bet- ween the external and the internal. The
'internal' memory of self and mind, explored through psychological reflections
by the analytical method, mirrors but seems discontinuous from the external
one. We search and scan both our 'mind-self' and the physical and virtual
archives for buried meanings that may hold some sort of 'key' to connect with
what has been lost to us." Arnold Dreyblatt Marginalia: On the
theater of memory as chamber play http://wissenschaft-als-kunst.de/multimedia/Dreyblatt-Fechner-SmarslyEn.pdf
“celluloid
and waxed paper cover with the system perception consciousness and its
protective shield, the wax slab with the unconscious behind them, and the
appearance and disappearance of the writing with the flickering-up and passing
of consciousness in the process of perception. On the Mystic pad the writing
vanishes every time the close contact is broken between the paper which the
stimulus and the wax slab which preserves the impression”. ..(p211)
My Problem
with this is:
· Archiving endless pieces of paper
and note books.
· Not being able to access them at any
particular time.
· Only accessing them in the studio.
· The physical space it takes up over
long periods of time.
· They can be lost.
· They can be burned and destroyed.
· They can deteriorate.
My
solution: Toplogy of key tropes blog
· Can be accessed anywhere where there
is wifi or internet.
· Can be accessed on a phone or
ipad/laptop of computer.
· No need to carry note books around
with me all the time.
· Very little space is needed to back
them up.
· These notes can be shared.
· No need to buy paper or notebooks.
· I can disregard notes no longer
needed if I wish, without burning or creating waste.
· Other people could contribute to my
notes.
· It performs more than a sheet of
paper or slate.
· Typing notes up is an easy movement
of the hand.
· Reading through the pages is a just
a swipe of a finger.
· Is a permanent receptive surface for
permanent traces of notes.
· I can print out sections of any part
of the blog. Photocopy/email link/
· The notes on the blog can be
separated/divided/ altered/updated reprinted/reproduced. at any time.
Metaphorically
the blog can pull up/recollect one grain of sand and propel it into the field
of vision until it isn’t needed and can be sent back into the sea of memory.
Revealing/excavating isolated fragments of information as when it is needed.
Transported via the internet.
Freud’s
Problem with note taking:
He may no
longer wish to retain particular memory traces (notes on paper)
Freud’s
solution:
To write
with chalk on a slate which he can wipe away what he doesn’t feel is needed
anymore, without throwing anything away.
How would
Freud describe external aids to memory: the computer/Dictaphone/digital
archive/digital camera/ipad/?
Would he
say that these devices are invented to for the improvement of intensification
of our sensory functions and are built on the same model as the sense organs
themselves only these digital devices have a potentially unlimited capacity.
Cathected :
emotional energy that is invested.
Mnemic
apparatus: trace of unconscious memory. The mnemic trace, usually sensory, can also be the
trace of a thought, especially when it is verbal and lying behind the
perceptual system. a metapsychological construct, http://www.answers.com/topic/mnemic-trace-memory-trace
Perception
consciousness: receives perceptions but retains no permanent trace of what was
remembered.
