consciousness, clearly presages his definition in Beyond because, as in the later text, it is in terms of free-flowing quantity (flowing from α to β). Moreover, quantity in free flow arriving from the interior of the body, which is Freud’s theme at this point in the Project, is precisely what, in Beyond, he defines as drives. These two points suggest that Freud’s thinking at this juncture in the Project will yield important clues about the relationship, which came into view in Beyond, between trauma (as the free flow that characterises the drive) and consciousness.
The surprise, though, is that the definition of consciousness, which Freud gives when he introduces association by simultaneity, is a blatant error in terms of the Project‘s official mechanisms. As James Strachey writes in a footnote to the lines just quoted: “It is surprising to find consciousness thus defined, apparently without reference to ω“.
Indeed, consciousness, for Freud everywhere else in the Project, is not free flow of quantity, but depends on a third type of neurones – not ψ or φ, but ω (the last letter in the Greek alphabet and nearly the last I will need to introduce here) – which, he says, are sensitive to a certain “period”, found only in quantities coming from the outside world. Freud gives the ω neurones an extraordinary role in the Project system – they provide what he calls “indications of reality”. This works as follows: excitation of the ω neurones by the special period produces consciousness and “the ω excitation leads to ω discharge and information of this as of every discharge, reaches ψ” (1950: 325). The information of discharge from ω serves as an “indication of reality” for ψ because, as I just said, only quantities coming from the outside world have the period that stimulates ω.
We should be struck by the fact that the “information of discharge” or “indication of reality” is exactly the same kind of thing as a motor image, since Freud says that “the discharge [from ω] will, like all others, go in the direction of motility” (1950: 311),and a motor image is the invariable result of a discharge to motility. This equation between the information of discharge from ω and a motor image is, I believe, crucial. I will try to show why.