system, excited by the period that comes with the object image as perception), as a result of which… the object image, in its role as memory, arouses a motor image (excitation is allowed to flow from the image to the memory of the movement made to obtain satisfaction)! The same thing happens twice over, namely uninhibited transfer of excitation from one item to another (object image to motor image), which is precisely how consciousness was characterised in Freud’s “slip” and how he would characterise it years later in Beyond. So the ω mechanism is just a Heath-Robinson version (going round an extra lap for no apparent reason) of the free-flow account of consciousness, which, therefore, contrary to appearances, is to be taken as Freud’s authentic version of consciousness in the Project.
Then comes the most interesting question: is the extra circuit of the ω-mechanism really there for no reason? Why did Freud choose such a contrived disguise for his account of consciousness as free flow from one element to another? It is striking that the extra lap is really a repetition, i.e., precisely that which, in Beyond, is supposed to bind free flowing (traumatic) excitation. I do not think that this is a coincidence.
Consider now the purpose of the indication of reality (information of discharge from ω). As explained, its purpose is to signal that quantity can be allowed to flow into the motor image in the three-way facilitation, because the satisfying object is, once again, present in reality. But what receives and acts on the signal? And (essentially the same question) what prevents the flow of quantity into the motor image from occurring until such an indication arrives, since, after all, the facilitation is ready-and-waiting and quantity from inside the body is pressing towards discharge before the indication arrives? What binds the free flow of quantity?
This is the job of what Freud calls “inhibition”, which is a special device for preventing the free flow of excitation. Inhibition works by means of what Freud calls “side-cathexes”. So, if a quantity flows into a neurone, then,
If an adjoining neurone is simultaneously cathected, this acts like a temporary facilitation of the contact barrier lying between the two, and modifies the course [of the current], which would otherwise have been directed towards