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Title: The Theory of Psychoanalysis
Author: Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Language: English
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The Theory of Psychoanalysis
Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph
Series, No. 19
The Theory of Psychoanalysis
BY
DR. C. G. JUNG
of Zurich
NEW YORK
THE JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
PUBLISHING COMPANY
1915
NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
MONOGRAPH SERIES
Edited by
Drs. SMITH ELY JELLIFFE and WM. A. WHITE
Numbers Issued
1. Outlines of Psychiatry. (4th Edition.) $3.00.
By Dr. William A. White.
2. Studies in Paranoia.
By Drs. N. Gierlich and M. Friedman.
3. The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. (Out of Print).
By Dr. C. G Jung.
4. Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses
(2d Edition.) $2.50.
By Prof. Sigmund Freud.
5. The Wassermann Serum Diagnosis in Psychiatry. $2.00.
By Dr. Felix Plaut.
6. Epidemic Poliomyelitis. New York, 1907. (Out of Print).
7. Three Contributions to Sexual Theory. $2.00.
By Prof. Sigmund Freud.
8. Mental Mechanisms. $2.00. By Dr. Wm. A. White.
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New York Psychiatrical Society.
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15. Dreams and Myths. $1.00. By Dr. Karl Abraham.
16. Poliomyelitis. $3.00. Dr. I. Wickmann.
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Copyright, 1915, by
THE JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
PUBLISHING COMPANY, NEW YORK
PRESS OF
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LANCASTER, PA.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I
CONSIDERATION OF EARLY HYPOTHESES 4
CHAPTER II
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 17
CHAPTER III
THE CONCEPTION OF LIBIDO 27
CHAPTER IV
THE ETIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 45
CHAPTER V
THE UNCONSCIOUS 55
CHAPTER VI
THE DREAM 60
CHAPTER VII
THE CONTENT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 67
CHAPTER VIII
THE ETIOLOGY OF THE NEUROSES 72
CHAPTER IX
THE THERAPEUTICAL PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 96
CHAPTER X
SOME GENERAL REMARKS ON PSYCHOANALYSIS 111
INTRODUCTION
In these lectures I have attempted to reconcile my practical experiences
in psychoanalysis with the existing theory, or rather, with the
approaches to such a theory. Here is my attitude towards those
principles which my honored teacher Sigmund Freud has evolved from the
experience of many decades. Since I have long been closely connected
with psychoanalysis, it will perhaps be asked with astonishment how it
is that I am now for the first time defining my theoretical position.
When, some ten years ago, it came home to me what a vast distance Freud
had already travelled beyond the bounds of contemporary knowledge of
psycho-pathological phenomena, especially the psychology of the complex
mental processes, I no longer felt myself in a position to exercise any
real criticism. I did not possess the sorry mandarin-courage of those
people who—upon a basis of ignorance and incapacity—consider themselves
justified in “critical” rejections. I thought one must first work
modestly for years in such a field before one might dare to criticize.
The evil results of premature and superficial criticism have certainly
not been lacking. A preponderating number of critics have attacked with
as much anger as ignorance. Psychoanalysis has flourished undisturbed
and has not troubled itself one jot or tittle about the unscientific
chatter that has buzzed around it. As everyone knows, this tree has
waxed mightily, and not in one world only, but alike in Europe and in
America. Official criticism participates in the pitiable fate of
Proktophantasmist and his lamentation in the Walpurgis-night:
“You still are here? Nay, ’tis a thing unheard!
Vanish at once! We’ve said the enlightening word.”
Such criticism has omitted to take to heart the truth that all that
exists has sufficient right to its existence: no less is it with
psychoanalysis.
We will not fall into the error of our opponents, nor ignore their
existence nor deny their right to exist. But then this enjoins upon
ourselves the duty of applying a proper criticism, grounded upon a
practical knowledge of the facts. To me it seems that psychoanalysis
stands in need of this weighing-up from the inside.
It has been wrongly assumed that my attitude denotes a “split” in the
psychoanalytic movement. Such a schism can only exist where faith is
concerned. But psychoanalysis deals with knowledge and its ever-changing
formulations. I have taken William James’ pragmatic rule as a
plumb-line: “You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value,
set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less a
solution, then, than as a program for more work and more particularly as
an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed.
_Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we
can rest._ We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on
occasion, make nature over again by their aid.”
And so my criticism has not proceeded from academic arguments, but from
experiences which have forced themselves on me during ten years earnest
work in this sphere. I know that my experience in no wise approaches
Freud’s quite extraordinary experience and insight, but none the less it
seems to me that certain of my formulations do present the observed
facts more adequately than is the case in Freud’s method of statement.
At any rate I have found, in my teaching, that the conceptions put
forward in these lectures have afforded peculiar aid in my endeavors to
help my pupils to an understanding of psychoanalysis. With such
experience I am naturally inclined to assent to the view of Mr. Dooley,
that witty humorist of the _New York Times_, when he says, defining
pragmatism: “Truth is truth ‘when it works.’” I am indeed very far from
regarding a modest and moderate criticism as a “falling away” or a
schism; on the contrary, through it I hope to help on the flowering and
fructification of the psychoanalytic movement, and to open a path
towards the scientific treasures of psychoanalysis for those who have
hitherto been unable to possess themselves of psychoanalytic methods,
whether through lack of practical experience or through distaste of the
theoretical hypothesis.
For the opportunity to deliver these lectures I have to thank my friend
Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, of New York, who kindly invited me to take part
in the “Extension Course” at Fordham University. These lectures were
given in September, 1912, in New York.
I must here also express my best thanks to Dr. Gregory, of Bellevue
Hospital, for his ready support of my clinical demonstrations.
For the troublesome work of translation I am greatly indebted to my
assistant, Miss M. Moltzer, and to Mrs. Edith Eder and Dr. Eder of
London.
Only after the preparation of these lectures did Adler’s book, “Ueber
den nervösen Character,” become known to me, in the summer of 1912. I
recognize that he and I have reached similar conclusions on various
points, but here is not the place to go into a more intimate discussion
of the matter; that must take place elsewhere.
CHAPTER I
Consideration of Early Hypotheses
It is not an easy task to speak about psychoanalysis in these days. I am
not thinking, when I say this, of the fact that psychoanalysis in
general—it is my earnest conviction—is among the most difficult
scientific problems of the day. But even when we put this cardinal fact
aside, we find many serious difficulties which interfere with the clear
interpretation of the matter. I am not capable of giving you a complete
doctrine elaborated both from the theoretical and the empirical
standpoint. Psychoanalysis has not yet reached such a point of
development, although a great amount of labor has been expended upon it.
Neither can I give you a description of its growth ab ovo, for you
already have in your country, with its great regard for all the progress
of civilization, a considerable literature on the subject. This
literature has already spread a general knowledge of psychoanalysis
among those who have a scientific interest in it.
You have had the opportunity of listening to Freud, the real explorer
and founder of this method, who has spoken in your own country about
this theory. As for myself, I have already had the honor of speaking
about this work in America. I have discussed the experimental foundation
of the theory of complexes and the application of psychoanalysis to
pedagogy.
It can be easily understood that under these circumstances I fear to
repeat what has already been said, or published in many scientific
journals in this country. A further difficulty lies in the fact that in
very many quarters there are already prevailing quite extraordinary
conceptions of our theory, conceptions which are often absolutely wrong,
and unfortunately wrong just in that which touches the very essence of
psychoanalysis. At times it seems nearly impossible to grasp even the
meaning of these errors, and I am constantly astonished to find any one
with a scientific education ever arriving at ideas so divorced from all
foundations in fact. Obviously it would be of no importance to cite
examples of these curiosities, and it will be more valuable to discuss
here those questions and problems of psychoanalysis which really might
provoke misunderstanding.
A Change in the Theory of Psychoanalysis
Although it has very often been repeated, it seems to be still an
unknown fact to many people, that in these last years the theory of
psychoanalysis has changed considerably. Those, for instance, who have
only read the first book, “Studies in Hysteria,” by Breuer and Freud,
still believe that psychoanalysis essentially consists in the doctrine
that hysteria, as well as other neuroses, has its root in the so-called
“traumata,” or shocks, of earliest childhood. They continue to condemn
this theory, and have no idea that it is fifteen years since this
conception was abandoned and replaced by a totally different one. This
change is of such great importance in the whole development of
psychoanalysis, as well for its technique as for its theory, that I must
give it in some detail. That I may not weary you with the complete
recitation of cases already well known, I will only just refer to those
in Breuer and Freud’s book, which I shall assume are known to you, for
the book has been translated into English.[1] You will there have read
that case of Breuer’s, to which Freud referred in his lectures at Clark
University. You will have found that the hysterical symptom has not some
unknown organic source, but is based on certain highly emotional psychic
events, so-called injuries of the heart, traumata or shocks. I think
that now-a-days every careful observer of hysteria will acknowledge from
his own experience that, at the root of this disease, such painful
events are to be found. This truth was already known to the physicians
of former days.
The Traumatic Theory
So far as I know it was really Charcot who, probably under the influence
of Page’s theory of nervous shock, made this observation of theoretical
value. Charcot knew, by means of hypnotism, at that time not understood,
that hysterical symptoms could be called forth by suggestion as well as
made to disappear through suggestion. Charcot believed that he saw
something like this in those cases of hysteria caused by accident, cases
which became more and more frequent. The shock can be compared with
hypnosis in Charcot’s sense. The emotion provoked by the shock causes a
momentary complete paralysis of will-power, during which the remembrance
of the trauma can be fixed as an auto-suggestion. This conception gives
us the original theory of psychoanalysis. Etiological investigation had
to prove whether this mechanism, or a similar one, was also to be found
in those cases of hysteria which could not be called traumatic. This
lack of knowledge of the etiology of hysteria was supplied by the
discovery of Breuer and Freud. They proved that even in those ordinary
cases of hysteria which cannot be said to be caused by shock the same
trauma-element was to be found, and seemed to have an etiological value.
It is natural that Freud, a pupil of Charcot, was inclined to suppose
that this discovery in itself confirmed the ideas of Charcot.
Accordingly the theory elaborated out of the experience of that period,
mainly by Freud, received the imprint of a traumatic etiology. The name
of trauma-theory is therefore justified; nevertheless this theory had
also a new aspect. I am not here speaking of the truly admirable
profoundness and precision of Freud’s analysis of symptoms, but of the
relinquishing of the conception of auto-suggestion, which was the
dynamic force in the original theory, and its substitution by a detailed
exposure of the psychological and psycho-physical effects caused by the
shock. The shock, the trauma, provokes a certain excitation which, under
normal circumstances, finds a natural outlet (“abreagieren”). In
hysteria it is only to a certain extent that the excitation does find a
natural outlet; a partial retention takes place, the so-called blocking
of the affect (“Affecteinklemmung”). This amount of excitation, which
can be compared with an amount of potential energy, is transmuted by the
mechanism of conversion into “physical” symptoms.
_The Cathartic Method._—According to this conception, therapy had to
find the means by which those retained emotions could be brought to a
mode of expression, thereby setting free from the symptoms that amount
of repressed and converted feeling. Hence this was called the cleansing,
or _cathartic method_; its aim was to discharge the blocked emotions.
From this it follows that analysis was then more or less closely
concerned with the symptoms, that is to say, the symptoms were
analyzed—the work of analysis began with the symptoms, a method
abandoned to-day. The cathartic method, and the theory on which it is
based, are, as you know, accepted by other colleagues, so far as they
are interested at all in psychoanalysis, and you will find some
appreciation and quotation of the theory, as well as of the method, in
several text-books.
The Traumatic Theory Criticized
Although, as a matter of fact, the discovery of Breuer and Freud is
certainly true, as can easily be proved by every case of hysteria,
several objections can be raised to the theory. It must be acknowledged
that their method shows with wonderful clearness the connection between
the actual symptoms and the shock, as well as the psychological
consequences which necessarily follow from the traumatic event, but
nevertheless, a doubt arises as to the etiological significance of the
so-called trauma or shock.
It is extremely difficult for any critical observer of hysteria to admit
that a neurosis, with all its complications, can be based on events in
the past, as it were on one emotional experience long past. It is more
or less fashionable at present to consider all abnormal psychic
conditions, in so far as they are of exogenic growth, as the
consequences of hereditary degeneration, and not as essentially
influenced by the psychology of the patient and the environment. This
conception is too narrow, and not justified by the facts. To use an
analogy, we know perfectly well how to find the right middle course in
dealing with the etiology of tuberculosis. There are, of course, cases
of tuberculosis where in earliest childhood the germ of the disease
falls upon a soil predisposed by heredity, so that even in the most
favorable conditions the patient cannot escape his fate. None the less,
there are also cases where, under favorable conditions, illness can be
prevented, despite a predisposition to the disease. Nor must we forget
that there are still other cases without hereditary disposition or
individual inclination, and, in spite of this, fatal infection occurs.
All this holds equally true of the neuroses, where matters are not
essentially different in their method of procedure than they are in
general pathology. Neither a theory in which the predisposition is
all-important, nor one in which the influence of the environment is
all-important, will ever suffice. It is true the shock-theory can be
said to give predominance to the predisposition, even insisting that
some past trauma is the condition sine qua non of the neurosis. Yet
Freud’s ingenious empiricism presented even in the “Studies in Hysteria”
some views, insufficiently exploited at the time, which contained the
elements of a theory that perhaps more accentuates the value of
environment than inherited or traumatic predisposition.
The Conception of “Repression”
Freud synthesized these observations in a form that was to extend far
beyond the limits of the shock-theory. This conception is the hypothesis
of repression (“Verdrängung”). As you know, by the word “repression” is
understood the psychic mechanism of the re-transportation of a conscious
thought into the unconscious sphere. We call this sphere the
“unconscious” and define it as the psyche of which we are not conscious.
The conception of repression was derived from the numerous observations
made upon neurotic patients who seemed to have the capacity of
forgetting important events or thoughts, and this to such an extent that
one might easily believe nothing had ever happened. These observations
can be constantly made by anyone who comes into close psychological
relations with his patients. As a result of the Breuer and Freud
studies, it was found that a very special method was needed to call
again into consciousness those traumatic events long since forgotten. I
wish to call attention to this fact, since it is decidedly astonishing
for a priori we are not inclined to believe that valuable things can
ever be forgotten. For this reason several critics object that the
reminiscences which have been called into consciousness by certain
hypnotic processes are only suggested ones, and do not correspond with
reality. Even granting this, it would certainly not be justifiable to
regard this in itself as a condemnation of “repression,” since there are
and have been not a few cases where the fact of repressed reminiscences
can be proved by objective demonstration. Even if we exclude this kind
of proof, it is possible to test the phenomena by experiment. The
association-tests provide us with the necessary experiences. Here we
find the extraordinary fact that associations pertaining to complexes
saturated with emotion emerge with much greater difficulty into
consciousness, and are much more easily forgotten.
As my experiments on this subject were never reëxamined, the conclusions
were never adopted, until just lately, when Wilhelm Peters, a disciple
of Kraepelin, proved in general my previous observation, namely, that
painful events are very rarely correctly reproduced (“die unlustbetonten
Erlebnisse werden am seltensten richtig reproduciert”).
As you see, the conception rests upon a firm empirical basis. There is
still another side of the question worth looking at. We might ask if the
repression has its root in a conscious determination of the individual,
or do the reminiscences disappear rather passively without conscious
knowledge on the part of the patient? In Freud’s works you will find a
series of excellent proofs of the existence of a conscious tendency to
repress what is painful. Every psychoanalyst will know more than a dozen
cases showing clearly in their history one particular moment at least in
which the patient knows more or less clearly that he will not allow
himself to think of the repressed reminiscences. A patient once gave
this significant answer: “Je l’ai mis de côté” (I have put it aside).
But, on the other hand, we must not forget that there are a number of
cases where it is impossible for us to show, even with the most careful
examination, the slightest trace of conscious repression; in these cases
it seems as if the mechanism of repression were much more in the nature
of a passive disappearance, or even as if the impressions were dragged
beneath the surface by some force operating from below. From the first
class of cases we get the impression of complete mental development,
accompanied by a kind of cowardice in regard to their own feelings; but
among the second class of cases you may find patients showing a more
serious retardation of development. The mechanism of repression seems
here to be much more an automatic one.
This difference is closely connected with the question I mentioned
before—that is, the question of the relative importance of
predisposition and environment. The first class of cases appears to be
mainly influenced by environment and education; in the other,
predisposition seems to play the chief part. It is pretty clear where
treatment will have more effect. (As I have already said, the conception
of repression contains an element which is in intrinsic contradiction
with the shock-theory.) We find, for instance, in the case of Miss Lucy
R.,[2] described by Freud, that the essential etiological moment is not
to be found in the traumatic scenes, but in the insufficient readiness
of the patient to set store upon the convictions passing through her
mind. But if we think of the later views we find in the “Selected Papers
on Hysteria,”[3] where Freud, forced through further experience,
supposes certain traumatic sexual events in early childhood to be the
source of the neurosis, then we get the impression of an incongruity
between the conception of repression and that of shock. The conception
of “repression” contains the elements of an etiological theory of
environment, while the conception of “shock” is a theory of
predisposition.
But at first the theory of neurosis developed along the lines of the
trauma conception. Pursuing Freud’s later investigations, we see him
coming to the conclusion that no such positive value can be ascribed to
the traumatic events of later life, as their effects could only be
conceivable if the particular predisposition of the patient were taken
into account. Evidently the enigma was to be resolved just at this
point. As the analytical work progressed, the roots of hysterical
symptoms were found in childhood; they reached back from the present far
into the past. The further end of the chain threatened to get lost in
the mists of early childhood. But it was just there that reminiscences
appeared of certain scenes where sexual activities had been manifested
in an active or passive way, and these were unmistakably connected with
the events which provoked the neurosis. (For further details of these
events you must consult the works of Freud, as well as the numerous
analyses which have already been published.)
The Theory of Sexual Trauma in Childhood
Hence arose the theory of sexual trauma in childhood which provoked
bitter opposition, not from theoretical objections against the
shock-theory in general, but against the element of sexuality in
particular. In the first place, the idea that children might be sexual,
and that sexual thoughts might play any part with them, aroused great
antagonism. In the second place, the possibility that hysteria had a
sexual basis was most unwelcome, for the sterile position that hysteria
was either a reflex neurosis of the uterus or arose from lack of sexual
satisfaction had just been given up. Naturally, therefore, the real
value of Freud’s observations was disputed. If critics had limited
themselves to that question, and had not adorned their opposition with
moral indignation, a calm discussion would have been possible. In
Germany, for instance, this method of attack made it impossible to get
any credit for Freud’s theory. As soon as the question of sexuality was
touched general resistance, as well as haughty contempt were awakened.
But in truth there was but one question at issue: were Freud’s
observations true or not? That alone could be of importance to a really
scientific mind. It is possible that these observations do not seem very
probable at first sight, but it is unjustifiable to condemn them a
priori as false. Wherever really sincere and thorough investigations
have been carried out it has been possible to corroborate his
observations. The fact of a psychological chain of consequences has been
absolutely confirmed, although Freud’s original conception, that real
traumatic scenes were always to be found, has not been.
Theory of Sexual Trauma Abandoned
Freud himself abandoned his first presentation of the shock-theory after
further and more thorough investigation. He could no longer retain his
original view as to the reality of the sexual shock. Excessive
sexuality, sexual abuse of children, or very early sexual activity in
childhood, were later on seen to be of secondary importance. You will
perhaps be inclined to share the suspicion of the critics that the
results derived from analytic researches were based on suggestion. There
might be some justification for this view if these assertions had been
published broadcast by some charlatan or ill-qualified person. But
anyone who has carefully read Freud’s works, and has himself similarly
sought to penetrate into the psychology of his patients, will know that
it is unjust to attribute to an intellect like Freud’s the crude
mistakes of a journeyman. Such suggestions only redound to the discredit
of those who make them. Ever since then patients have been examined by
every possible means from which suggestion could be absolutely excluded.
And still the associations described by Freud have been proved to be
true in principle. We are thus obliged in the first place to regard many
of these shocks of early childhood as phantoms, while other traumata
have objective reality. With this knowledge, at first somewhat
confusing, the etiological importance of the sexual trauma in childhood
declines, as it seems now quite irrelevant whether the trauma really
took place or not. Experience teaches us that phantasy can be, so to
speak, of the same traumatic value as real shock. In the face of such
facts, every physician who treats hysteria will recall cases where the
neurosis has indeed been provoked by violent traumatic impressions. This
observation is only in apparent contradiction with our knowledge,
already referred to, of the unreality of traumatic events in childhood.
We know perfectly well that many persons suffer shocks in childhood or
in adult life who nevertheless get no neurosis. Therefore the trauma
has, ceteris paribus, no absolute etiological importance, but owes its
efficacy to the nature of the soil upon which it falls.
The Predisposition for the Trauma
No neurosis will grow on an unprepared soil where no germ of neurosis is
already existing; the trauma will pass by without leaving any permanent
and effective mark. From this simple consideration it is pretty clear
that, to make it really effective, the patient must meet the shock with
a certain internal predisposition. This internal predisposition is not
to be understood as meaning that totally obscure hereditary
predisposition of which we know so little, but as a psychological
development which reaches its apogee and its manifestation at the
moment, and even through, the trauma.
I will show you first of all by a concrete case the nature of the trauma
and its psychological predisposition. A young lady suffered from severe
hysteria after a sudden fright. She had been attending a social
gathering that evening and was on her way home at midnight, accompanied
by several acquaintances, when a carriage came behind her at full speed.
Everyone else drew aside, but she, paralyzed by fright, remained in the
middle of the street and ran just in front of the horses. The coachman
cracked his whip, cursed and swore without any result. She ran down the
whole length of the street, which led to a bridge. There her strength
failed her, and to escape the horses’ feet she thought, in her extreme
despair, of jumping into the water, but was prevented in time by
passers-by. This very same lady happened to be present a little later on
that bloody day, the 22d of January, in St. Petersburg, when a street
was cleared by soldiers’ volleys. Right and left of her she saw people
dying or falling down badly wounded. Remaining perfectly calm and
clear-minded, she caught sight of a gate that gave her escape into
another street.
These terrible moments did not agitate her, either at the time, or later
on. Whence it must follow that the intensity of the trauma is of small
pathogenic importance: the special conditions form the essential
factors. Here, then, we have the key by which we are able to unlock at
least one of the anterooms to the understanding of predisposition. We
must next ask what were the special circumstances in this
carriage-scene. The terror and apprehension began as soon as the lady
heard the horses’ foot-steps. It seemed to her for a moment as if these
betokened some terrible fate, portending her death or something
dreadful. Then she lost consciousness. The real causation is somehow
connected with the horses. The predisposition of the patient, who acts
thus wildly at such a commonplace occurence, could perhaps be found in
the fact that horses had a special significance for her. It might
suffice, for instance, if she had been once concerned in some dangerous
accident with horses. This assumption does hold good here. When she was
seven years old, she was once out on a carriage-drive with the coachman;
the horses shied and approached the steep river-bank at full speed. The
coachman jumped off his seat, and shouted to her to do the same, which
she was barely able to do, as she was frightened to death. Still, she
sprang down at the right moment, whilst the horses and carriage were
dashed down below.
It is unnecessary to prove that such an event must leave a lasting
impression behind. But still it does not offer any explanation for the
exaggerated reaction to an inadequate stimulus. Up till now we only know
that this later symptom had its prologue in childhood, but the
pathological side remains obscure. To solve this enigma we require other
experiences. The amnesia which I will set forth fully later on shows
clearly the disproportion between the so-called shock and the part
played by phantasy. In this case phantasy must predominate to an
extraordinary extent to provoke such an effect. The shock in itself was
too insignificant. We are at first inclined to explain this incident by
the shock that took place in childhood, but it seems to me with little
success. It is difficult to understand why the effect of this infantile
trauma had remained latent so long, and why it only now came to the
surface. The patient must surely have had opportunities enough during
her lifetime of getting out of the way of a carriage going full speed.
The reminiscence of the danger to her life seems to be quite
insufficiently effective: the real danger in which she was at that one
moment in St. Petersburg did not produce the slightest trace of
neurosis, despite her being predisposed by an impressive event in her
childhood. The whole of this traumatic event still lacks explanation;
from the point of view of the shock-theory we are hopelessly in the
dark.
You must excuse me if I return so persistently to the shock-theory. I
consider this necessary, as now-a-days many people, even those who
regard us seriously, still keep to this standpoint. Thus the opponents
to psychoanalysis and those who never read psychoanalytic articles, or
do so quite superficially, get the impression that in psychoanalysis the
old shock-theory is still in force.
The question arises: what are we to understand by this predisposition,
through which an insignificant event produces such a pathological
effect? This is the question of chief significance, and we shall find
that the same question plays an important rôle in the theory of
neurosis, for we have to understand why apparently irrelevant events of
the past are still producing such effects that they are able to
interfere in an impish and capricious way with the normal reactions of
actual life.
The Sexual Element in the Trauma
The early school of psychoanalysis, and its later disciples, did all
they could to find the origin of later effects in the special kind of
early traumatic events. Freud’s research penetrated most deeply. He was
the first, and it was he alone, who discovered that a certain sexual
element was connected with the shock. It is just this sexual element
which, speaking generally, we may consider as unconscious, and it is to
this that the traumatic effect is generally due. The unconsciousness of
sexuality in childhood seems to throw a light upon the problem of the
persistent constellation of the primary traumatic event. The true
emotional meaning of the accident was all along hidden from the patient,
so that in consciousness this emotion was never brought into play, the
emotion never wore itself out, it was never used up. We might perhaps
explain the effect in the following way: this persistent constellation
was a kind of “suggestion à échéance,” for it is unconscious and the
action occurs only at the stipulated moment.
It is hardly necessary to give detailed examples to prove that the true
nature of sexual manifestations during infancy is not understood.
Physicians know, for instance, how often a manifest masturbation
persisting up to adult life, especially in women, is not understood as
such. It is, therefore, easy to realize that to a child the true nature
of certain actions would be far less conscious. And that is the reason
why the real meaning of these events, even in adult life, is still
hidden from our consciousness. In some cases, even, the traumatic events
are themselves forgotten, either because their sexual meaning is quite
unknown to the patient, or because their sexual character is
inacceptable, being too painful. It is what we call “repressed.”
As we have already mentioned, Freud’s observation, that the admixture of
a sexual element with the shock is essential for any pathological
effect, leads on to the theory of the _infantile sexual trauma_.
This hypothesis may be thus expressed: the pathogenic event is a sexual
one. This conception forced its way with difficulty. The general opinion
that children have no sexuality in early life made such an etiology
inadmissible, and at first prevented its acceptance.
The Infantile Sexual Phantasy
The change in the shock-theory already referred to, namely, that in
general the shock is not even real, but is essentially a phantasy, did
not make things better. On the contrary, still worse, since we are
forced to the conclusion that we find in the infantile phantasy at least
one positive sexual manifestation. It is no longer some brutal
accidental impression from the outside, but a positive sexual
manifestation created by the child itself, and this very often with
unmistakable clearness. Even real traumatic events of an outspoken
sexual type do not always happen to a child quite _without its
coöperation_, but are not infrequently apparently _prepared and brought
about by the child itself_. Abraham stated this, proving his statement
with evidence of the greatest interest, and this, in connection with
many other experiences of the same kind, makes it very probable that
even really sexual scenes are frequently called forth and supported by
the peculiar psychological state of the child’s mind. Perfectly
independently from psychoanalytic investigation, medical criminology has
discovered striking parallels to this psychoanalytic statement.
Footnote 1:
“Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other Psychoneuroses,” by Prof.
Sigmund Freud. Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 4.
Footnote 2:
Monograph No. 4, p. 14.
Footnote 3:
_Ibid._
CHAPTER II
The Infantile Sexuality
The precocious manifestations of sexual phantasy as cause of the shock
now seemed to be the source of neurosis. This, logically, attributed to
children a far more developed sexuality than had been hitherto admitted.
Many cases of precocious sexuality had been recorded in literature long
before the time of psychoanalysis. For instance, a girl of two years old
with normal menstruation, or cases of boys of three and four and five
years of age having normal erections, and so far ready for cohabitation.
These were, however, curiosities. Great astonishment was caused when
Freud began to attribute to the child, not only ordinary sexuality, but
even polymorphic perverse sexuality; all this based upon the most
exhaustive investigation. People inclined much too lightly to the
superficial view, that all this was merely suggested to the patients,
and was a highly disputable artificial product. Hence Freud’s[4] “Three
Contributions to the Sexual Theory” not only provoked opposition, but
even violent indignation. It is surely unnecessary to insist upon the
fact that science is not furthered by indignation, and that arguments of
moral resentment may perhaps please the moralist—that is his
business—but not a scientific man, for whom truth must be the guide, and
not moral indignation. If matters are really as Freud describes them,
all indignation is absurd; if they are not so, again indignation will
avail nothing. The conclusion as to what is the truth can only be
arrived at on the field of observation and research, and nowhere else.
The opponents of psychoanalysis with certain honorable exceptions,
display rather ludicrously a somewhat pitifully inadequate realization
of the situation. Although the psychoanalytic school could unfortunately
learn nothing from their critics, as the criticism took no notice of its
investigations, and although it could not get any useful hints, because
the psychoanalytic method of investigation was, and still is unknown to
these critics, it remains a serious duty for our school to explain
thoroughly the contrast between the existing conceptions. It is not our
endeavor to put forward a paradoxical theory contradicting all existing
theories, but rather to introduce a certain category of new observations
into science. Therefore we regard it as a duty to do whatever we can to
promote agreement. It is true, we must renounce all hope of obtaining
the approval of those who blindly oppose us, but we do hope to come to
an understanding with scientific men. This will be my endeavor now in
attempting to sketch the further intellectual development of the
psychoanalytic conception, so far as the so-called sexual theory of the
neuroses is concerned.
Objections to the Sexual Hypothesis
As I said, the finding of precocious sexual phantasies, which seemed the
source of the neurosis, forced Freud to the view of a highly developed
sexuality in infancy. As you know, the reality of this observation has
been contested by many, who maintain that crude error, that
narrow-minded delusion, misled Freud and his whole school, alike in
Europe and in America, so that the Freudians saw things that never
existed. They regarded them as people in the grip of an intellectual
epidemic. I have to admit that I possess no way of defending myself
against criticism of this kind. The only thing I can do is to refer to
my own work, asking thoughtful persons if they discover there any clear
indications of madness. Moreover, I must maintain that science has no
right to start with the idea that certain facts do not exist. At the
most one can say: “This seems very improbable—we want still more proofs
and more research.” This is also our reply to the objection: “It is
impossible to discover anything trustworthy by the psychoanalytic
method, as this method is practically absurd.” No one believed in
Galileo’s telescope, and Columbus discovered America on a false
hypothesis. The psychoanalytic method may be full of errors, but this
should not prevent its use. Many chronological and medical observations
have been made with inadequate instruments. We must regard the
objections to the method as pretexts until our opponents come to grip
with the facts. It is there a decision must be reached—not by wordy
warfare.
Our opponents also call hysteria a psychogenic disease. We believe that
we have discovered the etiological determinants of this disease and we
present, without fear, the results of our investigation to open
criticism. Whoever cannot accept our results should publish his own
analyses of cases. So far as I know, that has never been done, at least
not in European literature. Under these circumstances, critics have no
right to deny our conclusions a priori. Our opponents have likewise
cases of hysteria, and those cases are surely as psychogenic as our own.
There is nothing to prevent their pointing out the psychological
determinants. The method is not the real question. Our opponents content
themselves with disputing and reviling our researches, but they do not
point out any better way.
Many other critics are more careful and more just, and do admit that we
have made many valuable observations, and that the associations of ideas
given by the psychoanalytic method will very probably stand, but they
maintain that our point of view is wrong. The alleged sexual phantasies
of childhood, with which we are here chiefly concerned, must not be
taken, they say, as real sexual functions, being obviously something
quite different, since at the approach of puberty the characteristic
peculiarities of sexuality are acquired.
This objection, being calmly and reasonably made, deserves to be taken
seriously. Such objections must also have occurred to every one who has
taken up analytic work, and there is reason enough for deep reflection.
The Conception of Sexuality
The first difficulty arises with the conception of sexuality. If we
take sexuality as meaning the fully-developed function, we must
confine this phenomenon to maturity, and then, of course, we have no
right to speak of sexuality in childhood. If we so limit our
conception, then we are confronted again with new and much greater
difficulties. The question arises, how then must we denominate all
those correlated biological phenomena pertaining to the sexual
functions sensu strictiori, as, for instance, pregnancy, childbirth,
natural selection, protection of the offspring, etc. It seems to me
that all this belongs to the conception of sexuality as well, although
a very distinguished colleague did once say, “Childbirth is not a
sexual act.” But if these things do pertain to this concept of
sexuality, then there must also belong innumerable psychological
phenomena. For we know that an incredible number of the pure
psychological functions are connected with this sphere. I shall only
mention the extraordinary importance of phantasy in the preparation
for the sexual function. Thus we arrive rather at a biological
conception of sexuality, which includes both a series of psychological
phenomena as well as a series of physiological functions. If we might
be allowed to make use of an old but practical classification, we
might identify sexuality with the so-called instinct of the
preservation of the species, as opposed in some way to the instinct of
self-preservation.
Looking at sexuality from this point of view, we shall not be astonished
to find that the root of the instinct of race-preservation, so
extraordinarily important in nature, goes much deeper than the limited
conception of sexuality would ever allow. Only the more or less grown-up
cat actually catches mice, but the kitten plays at least as if it were
catching mice. The young dog’s playful indications of attempts at
cohabitation begin long before puberty. We have a right to suppose that
mankind is no exception to this rule, although we do not notice similar
things on the surface in our well brought-up children. Investigation of
the children of the lower classes proves that they are no exceptions to
the biological rule. It is of course infinitely more probable that this
most important instinct, that of the preservation of the race, is
already nascent in the earliest childhood, than that it falls at one
swoop from heaven, full-fledged, at the age of puberty. The sexual
organs also develop long before the slightest sign of their future
function can be noticed. Where the psychoanalytic school speaks of
sexuality, this wider conception of its function must be linked to it,
and we do not mean simply that physical sensation and function generally
designated by the term sexual. It might be said that, in order to avoid
any misunderstanding on this point, the term sexuality should not be
given to these preparatory phenomena in childhood. This demand is surely
not justified, since the anatomical nomenclature is taken from the
fully-developed system, and special names are not generally given to
more or less rudimentary formations.
After all, the objections to the terminology do not spring so much from
objective arguments, as from those tendencies which lie at the base of
moral indignation. But then no objection can be made to the
sex-terminology of Freud, as he rightly gives to the whole sexual
development the general name of sexuality. But certain conclusions have
been drawn which, so far as I can see, cannot be maintained.
The “Sexuality” of the Suckling
When we examine how far back in childhood the first traces of sexuality
reach, we have to admit implicitly that sexuality already exists ab ovo,
but only becomes manifest a long time after intrauterine life. Freud is
inclined to see in the function of taking the mother’s breast already a
kind of sexuality. Freud was bitterly reproached for this view, but it
must be admitted that it is very ingenious, if we follow his hypothesis,
that the instinct of the preservation of the race has existed separately
from the instinct of self-preservation ab ovo and has undergone a
separate development. This way of thinking is not, however, a biological
one. It is not possible to separate the two ways of manifestation of the
hypothetical vital process, and to credit each with a different order of
development. If we limit ourselves to judging by what we can actually
observe, we must reckon with the fact that everywhere in nature we see
that the vital processes in an individual consist for a considerable
space of time in the functions of nutrition and growth only. We see this
very clearly in many animals; for instance, in butterflies, which as
caterpillars pass an asexual existence of nutrition and growth. To this
stage of life we may allot both the intrauterine life and the
extrauterine time of suckling in man. This time is marked by the absence
of all sexual function; hence to speak of manifest sexuality in the
suckling would be a contradictio in adjecto.
The most we can do is to ask if, among the life-functions of the
suckling, there are any that have not the character of nutrition, or of
growth, and hence could be termed sexual. Freud points out the
unmistakable emotion and satisfaction of the child while suckling, and
compares this process with that of the sexual act. This similarity leads
him to assume the sexual quality in the act of suckling. This conclusion
is only admissible if it can be proved that the tension of the need, and
its gratification by a release, is a sexual process. That the act of
suckling has this emotional mechanism proves, however, just the
contrary. Therefore we can only say this emotional mechanism is found
both in nutrition and in the sexual function. If Freud by analogy
deduces the sexual quality of sucking from this emotional mechanism,
then his biological empiricism would also justify the terminology
qualifying the sexual act as a function of nutrition. This is
unjustifiably exceeding the bounds in either case. It is evident that
the act of sucking cannot be qualified as sexual.
We are aware, however, of functions in the suckling stage which have
apparently nothing to do with the function of nutrition, such as sucking
the finger, and its many variations. This is perhaps the place to
discuss whether these things belong to the sexual sphere. These acts do
not subserve nutrition, but produce pleasure. Of that there is no doubt,
but nevertheless it is disputable whether this pleasure which comes by
sucking should be called by analogy a sexual satisfaction. It might be
called equally pleasure by nutrition. This latter qualification has even
the further justification that the form and kind of pleasure belong
entirely to the function of nutrition. The hand which is used for
sucking finds in this way preparation for future use in feeding one’s
self. Under these circumstances nobody will be inclined by a petitio
principii to characterize the first manifestation of human life as
sexual. The statement which we make that the act of sucking is attended
by a feeling of satisfaction leaves us in doubt whether the sucking does
contain anything else but the character of nutrition. We notice that the
so-called bad habits shown by a child as it grows up are closely linked
with early infantile sucking, such for instance as putting the finger in
the mouth, biting the nails, picking the nose, ears, etc. We see, too,
how closely these habits are connected with later masturbation. By
analogy, the conclusion that these infantile habits are the first step
to onanism, or to actions similar to onanism, and are therefore of a
well-marked sexual character cannot be denied: it is perfectly
justified. I have seen many cases in which a correlation existed between
these childish habits and later masturbation. If this masturbation takes
place in later childhood, before puberty, it is nothing but an infantile
bad habit. From the fact of the correlation between masturbation and the
other childish bad habits, we conclude that these habits have a sexual
character, in so far as they are used to obtain physical satisfaction
from the child’s own body.
This new standpoint is comprehensible and perhaps necessary. It is only
a few steps from this point of view to regarding the infant’s act of
sucking as of a sexual character. As you know, Freud took the few steps,
but you have just heard me reject them. We have come to a difficulty
which is very hard to solve. It would be relatively easy if we could
accept two instincts side by side, each an entity in itself. Then the
act of sucking the breast would be both an action of nutrition and a
sexual act. This seems to be Freud’s conception. We find in adults the
two instincts separated, yet existing side by side, or rather we find
that there are two manifestations, in hunger, and in the sexual
instinct. But at the sucking age, we find only the function of
nutrition, rewarded by both pleasure and satisfaction. Its sexual
character can only be argued by a petitio principii, for the facts show
that the act of sucking is the first to give pleasure, not the sexual
function. Obtaining pleasure is by no means identical with sexuality. We
deceive ourselves if we think that in the suckling both instincts exist
side by side, for then we project into the psyche of the child the facts
taken from the psychology of adults. The existence of the two instincts
side by side does not occur in suckling, for one of these instincts has
no existence as yet, or, if existing, is quite rudimentary. If we are to
regard the striving for pleasure as something sexual, we might as well
say paradoxically that hunger is a sexual striving, for this instinct
seeks pleasure by satisfaction. If this were true, we should have to
give our opponents permission to apply the terminology of hunger to
sexuality. It would facilitate matters, were it possible to maintain
that both instincts existed side by side, but it contradicts the
observed facts and would lead to untenable consequences.
Before I try to resolve this opposition, I must first say something more
about Freud’s sexual theory, and its transformations.
The Polymorphic Perverse Sexuality of Infancy
We have already reached the conclusion, setting out from the idea of the
shock being apparently due to sexual phantasies, that the child must
have, in contradiction to the views hitherto prevailing, a nearly fully
formed sexuality, and even a _polymorphic perverse sexuality_. Its
sexuality does not seem concentrated on the genital functions or on the
other sex, but is occupied with its own body; whence it is said to be
auto-erotic. If its sexual instinct is directed to another person, no
distinction, or but the very slightest, is made as to sex. It can,
therefore, be very easily homo-sexual. In place of non-existing local
sexual function there exists a series of so-called bad habits, which
from this standpoint look like a series of perversities, since they have
the closest analogy with the later perversities. In consequence of this
way of regarding the subject, sexuality, whose nature is ordinarily
regarded as a unit, becomes decomposed into a multiplicity of isolated
striving forces. Freud then arrived at the conception of the so-called
“erogenous zones,” by which he understood mouth, skin, anus, etc. (It
is, of course, a universal tacit presumption that sexuality has its
origin in the sexual organs.)
The term “erogenous zone” reminds us of “spasmo-genic zones,” and the
underlying image is at all events the same; just as the spasmo-genic
zone is the place whence the spasm arises, so the erogenous zone is the
place whence arises an affluent to sexuality. Based upon the model of
the genital organs as the anatomical origin of sexuality, the erogenous
zones must be conceived as being so many genitals out of which the
streams of sexuality flow together. This is the condition of the
_polymorphic perverse sexuality of childhood_. The expression “perverse”
seems to be justified by the close analogy with the later perversities
which present, so to speak, but a new edition of certain early infantile
perverse habits. They are very often connected with one or other of the
different erogenous zones, and are the cause of those exchanges in sex,
which are so characteristic for childhood.
According to this view, the later normal and monomorphic sexuality is
built up out of several components. The first division is into homo- and
hetero-sexual components, to which is linked an auto-erotic component,
as also there are components of the different erogenous zones. This
conception can be compared with the position of physics before Robert
Mayer, when only isolated forces, having elementary qualities, were
recognized, whose interchanges were little understood. The law of the
conservation of energy brought order into the inter-relationship of the
forces, at the same time abolishing the conception of those forces as
absolute elements, but regarding them as interchangeable manifestations
of one and the same energy.
The Sexual Components as Energic Manifestations
Conceptions of great importance do not arise only in one brain, but are
floating in the air and dip here and there, appearing even under other
forms, and in other regions, where it is often very difficult to
recognize the common fundamental idea. Thus it happened with the
splitting up of sexuality into the polymorphic perverse sexuality of
childhood.
Experience forces us to accept a constant exchange of isolated
components as we notice more and more that, for instance, perversities
exist at the expense of normal sexuality, or that the increase of
certain kinds of sex-manifestations causes corresponding deficiencies of
another kind. To make the matter clearer, let me give you an instance: A
young man had a homo-sexual phase lasting for some years, during which
time women had no interest for him. This abnormal condition changed
gradually toward his twentieth year and his erotic interest became more
and more normal. He began to take great interest in girls, and soon the
last traces of his homo-sexuality were conquered. This condition lasted
several years, and he had some successful love-affairs. Then he wished
to get married; he had here to suffer a great disappointment, as the
girl to whom he proposed refused him. During the ensuing phase he
absolutely abandoned the idea of marriage. After that he experienced a
dislike of all women, and one day he discovered that he was again
perfectly homo-sexual, that is, young men had an unusually irritating
influence upon him. To regard sexuality as composed of a fixed
hetero-sexual component, and a like homo-sexual element, will never
suffice to explain this case, for the conception of the existence of
fixed components excludes any kind of transformation.
To understand the case, we have to admit a great mobility of the sexual
components, which even goes so far that one of the components can
practically disappear completely, whilst the other comes to the front.
If only substitution took place, if for instance the homo-sexual
component entered the unconscious, leaving the field of consciousness to
the hetero-sexual component, modern scientific knowledge would lead us
to conclude that equivalent effects arose from the unconscious sphere.
Those effects would have to be conceived as resistances against the
activity of the hetero-sexual component, as a repugnance towards women.
Experience tells us nothing about this. There have been some small
traces of influences of this kind, but of such slight intensity that
they cannot be compared with the intensity of the former homo-sexual
component. On the conception that has been outlined, it is also
incomprehensible how this homo-sexual component, regarded as so firmly
fixed, can ever disappear without leaving active traces. To explain
things, the process of development is called in, forgetting that this is
only a word and explains nothing. You see, therefore, the urgent
necessity of an adequate explanation of such a change of scene. For this
we must have a dynamic hypothesis. Such commutations are only
conceivable as dynamic or energic processes. I cannot conceive how
manifestations of functions can disappear if I do not accept a change in
the relation of one force to another. Freud’s theory did have regard to
this necessity in the conception of components. The presumption of
isolated functions existing side by side began to be somewhat weakened,
more in practice than theoretically. It was replaced by an energic
conception. The term chosen for this conception is “libido.”
Footnote 4:
No. 7 of this Monograph Series.
CHAPTER III
The Conception of Libido
Freud had already introduced the idea of libido in his[5] “Three
Contributions to the Sexual Theory” in the following words:
“In biology, the fact that both mankind and animals have a sexual want
is expressed by the conception of the sexual desire. This is done by
analogy with the want of nourishment, so-called hunger. Popular speech
has no corresponding characterization for the word ‘hunger,’ and so
science uses the word ‘libido.’”
In Freud’s definition, the term “libido” appears as exclusively a sexual
desire. “Libido” as a medical term is certainly used for sexual desire,
and especially for sexual lust. But the classical definition of this
word as found in Cicero, Sallust, and others, was not so exclusive. The
word is there used in a more general sense for every passionate desire.
I only just mention this definition here, as further on it plays an
important part in our considerations, and as it is important to know
that the term “libido” has really a much wider meaning than is
associated with it through medical language.
The idea of libido (while maintaining its sexual meaning in the author’s
sense as long as possible) offers us the dynamic value which we are
seeking in order to explain the shifting of the psychological scenery.
With this conception it is much simpler to formulate the phenomena in
question, instead of by the incomprehensible substitution of the homo-
by the hetero-sexual component. We may say now that the libido has
gradually withdrawn from its homo-sexual manifestation and is
transferred in the same measure into a hetero-sexual manifestation. Thus
the homo-sexual component practically disappears. It remains only an
empty possibility, signifying nothing in itself. Its very existence,
therefore, is rightly denied by the laity, just as we doubt the
possibility that any man selected at random would turn out to be a
murderer. By the use of this conception of libido many relations between
the isolated sexual functions are now easily explicable.
The early idea of the multiplicity of sexual components must be given
up: it savors too much of the ancient philosophical notion of the
faculties of the mind. Its place is taken by libido which is capable of
manifold applications. The earlier components only represent
possibilities of activities. With this conception of libido, the
original idea of a divided sexuality with different roots is replaced by
a dynamic unity, without which the formerly important components remain
but empty possibilities of activities. This development in our
conception is of great importance. We have here the same process which
Robert Mayer introduced into dynamics. Just as the conception of the
conservation of energy removed their character as elements from the
forces, imparting to them the character of a manifestation of energy, so
the libido theory similarly removes from the sexual components the idea
of the mental “faculties” as elements (“Seelen Vermögen”), and ascribes
to them merely phenomenal value. This conception represents the
impression of reality far more than the theory of components. With a
libido-theory we can easily explain the case of the young man. The
disappointment he met with, just at the time he had definitely decided
on a hetero-sexual life, drove his libido again from the hetero-sexual
manifestation into a homo-sexual form, thus calling forth his entire
homo-sexuality.
The Energic Theory of Libido
I must point out here that the analogy with the law of the conservation
of energy is very close. In both cases the question arises when an
effect of energy disappears, where is this energy meanwhile, and where
will it reemerge? Applying this point of view as a heuristic principle
to the psychology of human conduct, we shall make some astonishing
discoveries. Then we shall see how the most heterogeneous phases of
individual psychological development are connected in an energic
relationship. Every time we see a person who is splenetic or has a
morbid conviction, or some exaggerated mental attitude, we know here is
too much libido, and the excess must have been taken away from somewhere
else where there is too little. From this standpoint, psychoanalysis is
that method which discovers those places or functions where there is too
little or too much libido, and restores the just proportions. Thus the
symptoms of a neurosis must be considered as exaggerated and
correspondingly disturbed functional manifestations overflowing with
libido. The energy which has been used for this purpose has been taken
away from somewhere else, and it is the task of the psychoanalyst, to
restore it whence it was taken, or to bestow it where it was never
before given. Those complexes of symptoms which are mainly characterized
by lack of libido, for instance, the so-called apathetic conditions,
force us to reverse the question. Here we have to ask, where did the
libido go? The patient gives us the impression of having no libido, and
there are occasionally physicians who believe exactly what the patients
tell them. Such physicians have a primitive way of thinking, like the
savage who believes, when he sees an eclipse of the sun, that the sun
has been swallowed up and put to death. But the sun is only hidden, and
so it is with these patients. Although the libido is there, it is not
get-at-able, and is inaccessible to the patient himself. Superficially,
we have here a lack of libido. It is the task of psychoanalysis to
search for that hidden place where the libido dwells, and where it is as
a rule inaccessible to the patient. The hidden place is the
non-conscious, which may also be called the unconscious, without
ascribing to it any mysterious significance.
The Conception of Unconscious Phantasy
Psychoanalytic experience has taught us that there are non-conscious
systems which, by analogy with conscious phantasies, can be described as
phantasy-systems of the unconscious. In cases of neurotic apathy these
phantasy systems of the unconscious are the objects of the libido. We
know well that, when we speak of unconscious phantasy systems, we only
speak figuratively. We do not mean more by this than that we accept as
an indispensable postulate the conception of psychic entities existing
outside consciousness. Experience teaches us, we might say daily, that
there are unconscious psychic processes which influence the disposition
of the libido in a perceptible way. Those cases, known to every
psychiatrist in which complicated symptoms of delusions emerge with
relative great suddenness, show clearly that there must be unconscious
psychic development and preparation, for we cannot regard them as having
been just suddenly formed when they entered consciousness.
The Sexual Terminology
I feel myself justified in making this digression concerning the
unconscious. I have done it to point out that, with regard to shifting
of the manifestations of the libido, we have to deal not only with the
conscious, but also with another factor, the unconscious, whither the
libido sometimes disappears. We have not yet followed up the discussion
of the further consequences which result from the adoption of the
libido-theory.
Freud has taught us, and we see it in the daily practice of
psychoanalysis, that in earlier childhood, instead of the normal later
sexuality, we find many tendencies which in later life are called
perversions. We have to admit that Freud has the right to give to these
tendencies a sexual terminology. Through the introduction of the
conception of the libido, we see that in adults those elementary
components which seemed to be the origin and the source of normal
sexuality, lose their importance, and are reduced to mere
potentialities. The effective power, their life force, is to be found in
the libido. Without libido these components mean nothing. We saw that
Freud gives to the conception of libido an undoubted sexual definition,
somewhat in the sense of sexual desire. The general view is, that libido
in this sense only comes into being at the age of puberty. How are we
then to explain the fact that in Freud’s view a child has a
polymorphic-perverse sexuality, and that therefore, in children, the
libido brings into action not only one, but several possibilities? If
the libido, in Freud’s sense, begins its existence at puberty, it could
not be held accountable for earlier infantile perversions. In that case,
we should have to regard these infantile perversions as “faculties of
the mind,” in the sense of the theory of components. Apart from the
hopeless theoretical confusion which would thus arise, we must not
multiply explanatory principles in accordance with the philosophical
axiom: “principia praeter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda.”
There is no other way but to agree that before and after puberty it is
the same libido. Hence, the perversities of childhood have arisen
exactly in the same way as those of adults. Common sense will object to
this, as obviously the sexual needs of children cannot possibly be the
same as those of adults. We might admit, with Freud, that the libido
before and after puberty is the same, but is different in its intensity.
Instead of the intense post-pubertal sexual desire, there would be first
a slight sexual desire in childhood, with diminishing intensity until,
as we reach back to the first year, it is but a trace. We might admit
that we are biologically in agreement with this formulation. It would
then have to be also agreed that everything that falls into the region
of this enlarged conception of sexuality is already pre-existing but in
miniature; for instance, all those emotional manifestations of
psycho-sexuality: desire for affection, jealousy, and many others, and
by no means least, the neuroses of childhood.
It must, however, be admitted that these emotional manifestations of
childhood by no means make the impression of being in miniature; their
intensity can rival that of an affect among adults. Nor must it be
forgotten that experience has shown that perverse manifestations of
sexuality in childhood are often more glaring, and indeed seem to have a
greater development, than in adults. If an adult under similar
conditions had this apparently excessive form of sexuality, which is
practically normal in children, we could rightly expect a total absence
of normal sexuality, and of many other important biological adaptations.
An adult is rightly called perverse when his libido is not used for
normal functions, and the same could be said of a child: it is
polymorphous perverse since it does not know normal sexual functions.
These considerations suggest the idea that perhaps the amount of libido
is always the same, and that no increase first occur at puberty. This
somewhat audacious conception accords with the example of the law of the
conservation of energy, according to which the quantity of energy
remains always the same. It is possible that the summit of maturity is
reached when the infantile diffuse applications of libido discharge
themselves into the one channel of definite sexuality, and thus lose
themselves therein. For the moment we must content ourselves with these
suggestions, for we must next pay attention to one point of criticism
concerning the quality of the infantile libido.
Many critics do not admit that the infantile libido is simply less
intense or is essentially of the same kind as the libido of adults. The
emotions among adults are correlated with the genital functions. This is
not the case in children, or it is only so in miniature, or
exceptionally, and this gives rise to an important distinction, which
must not be undervalued.
I believe such an objection is justified. There is really a considerable
difference between immature and fully developed functions, as there is a
difference between play and reality, between shooting with blank and
with loaded cartridges. That the childish libido has the harmlessness
demanded by common sense cannot be contested. But of course none can
deny that blank shooting is shooting. We must get accustomed to the idea
that sexuality really exists, even before puberty, right back in early
childhood, and that we have no right to pretend that manifestations of
this immature sexuality are not sexual. This does not indeed refute the
objection, which, while recognizing the existence of infantile sexuality
in the form already described, yet denies Freud’s claim to regard as
sexual early infantile manifestations such as sucking. We have mentioned
already the motives which induced Freud to enlarge the sexual
terminology in such a way. We mentioned, too, how this very act of
sucking, for instance, could be conceived from the standpoint of
pleasure in the function of nutrition, and that, on biological grounds,
there was more justification for this derivation than for Freud’s view.
It might be objected that these and similar activities of the oral zones
are found in later life in an undoubted sexual use. This only means that
these activities can in later life be used for sexual purposes, but that
does not tell us anything concerning the primitive sexual nature of
these forms. I must, therefore, admit that I find no ground for
regarding the activities of the suckling, which provoke pleasure and
satisfaction, from the standpoint of sexuality. Indeed there are many
objections against this conception. It seems to me, in so far as I am
capable of judging these difficult problems, that from the standpoint of
sexuality it is necessary to divide human life into three phases.
The Three Phases of Life
The first phase embraces the first years of life. I call this part of
life the pre-sexual stage. These years correspond to the
caterpillar-stage of butterflies, and are characterized almost
exclusively by the functions of nutrition and growth.
The second phase embraces the later years of childhood up to puberty,
and might be called the pre-pubertal stage.
The third phase is that of riper years, proceeding only from puberty
onwards, and could be called the time of maturity.
You cannot have failed to notice that we become conscious of the
greatest difficulty when we arrive at the question at what age we must
put the limit of the pre-sexual stage. I am ready to confess my
uncertainty with regard to this problem. If I survey the
psychoanalytical experiences with children, as yet insufficiently
numerous, at the same time keeping in mind the observations made by
Freud, it seems to me that the limit of this phase lies between the
third and fifth years. This, of course, with due consideration for the
greatest individual diversities. From various aspects this is an
important age. The child has emancipated itself already from the
helplessness of the baby, and a series of important psychological
functions have acquired a firm hold. From this period on, the obscurity
of the early infantile “amnesia,” or the _discontinuity of the early
infantile consciousness_, begins to clear up through the _sporadic
continuity of memory_. It seems as if, at this age, a considerable step
had been made towards emancipation and the formation of a new and
independent personality. As far as we know, the first signs of interest
and activity which may fairly be called sexual fall into this period,
although these sexual indications have still the infantile
characteristics of harmlessness and naiveté. I think I have sufficiently
demonstrated why a sexual terminology cannot be given to the pre-sexual
stage, and so we may now consider the other problems from the standpoint
we have just reached. You will remember that we dropped the problem of
the libido in childhood, because it seemed impossible to arrive at any
clearness in that way. But now we are obliged to take up the question
again, if only to see whether the energic conception harmonizes with the
principles just advanced. We saw, following Freud’s conception, that the
altered manifestations of the infantile sexuality, if compared with
those of maturity, are to be explained by the diminution of sexuality in
childhood.
The Sexual Definition of Libido Must be Abandoned
The intensity of the libido is said to be diminished relatively to the
early age. But we advanced just now several considerations to show why
it seems doubtful if we can regard the vital functions of a child,
sexuality excepted, as of less intensity than those of adults. We can
really say that, sexuality excepted, the emotional phenomena, and, if
nervous symptoms are present, then these likewise are quite as intense
as those of adults. On the energic conception of the libido all these
things are but manifestations of the libido. But it becomes rather
difficult to conceive that the intensity of the libido can ever
constitute the difference between a mature and an immature sexuality.
The explanation of this difference seems rather to postulate a change in
the localization of the libido (if the expression be allowed). In
contradistinction to the medical definition the libido in children is
occupied far more with certain side-functions of a mental and
physiological nature than with local sexual functions. One is here
already tempted to remove from the term libido the predicate “sexualis,”
and thus to have done with the sexual definition of the term given in
Freud’s “Three Contributions.” This necessity becomes imperative, when
we put it in the form of a question: The child in the first years of its
life is intensely living—suffering and enjoying—the question is, whether
his striving, his suffering, his enjoyment are by reason of his libido
sexualis? Freud has pronounced himself in favor of this supposition.
There is no need to repeat the reasons through which I am compelled to
accept the pre-sexual stage. The larva stage possesses a libido of
nutrition, if I may so express it, but not yet the libido sexualis. It
is thus we must put it, if we wish to keep the energic conception which
the libido theory offers us. I think there is nothing for it but to
abandon the sexual definition of libido, or we shall lose what there is
valuable in the libido theory, that is, the energic conception. For a
long time past the desire to extend the meaning of libido, and to remove
it from its narrow and sexual limitations, has forced itself upon
Freud’s school. One was never weary of insisting that sexuality in the
psychological sense was not to be taken too literally, but in a broader
connotation; but exactly how, that remained obscure, and thus too,
sincere criticism remained unsatisfied.
I do not think I am going astray if I see the real value of the libido
theory in the energic conception, and not in its sexual definition.
Thanks to the former, we are in possession of a most valuable heuristic
principle. We owe to the energic conception the possibility of dynamic
ideas and relationships, which are of inestimable value for us in the
chaos of the psychic world. The Freudians would be wrong not to listen
to the voice of criticism, which reproaches our conception of libido
with mysticism and inaccessibility. We deceived ourselves in believing
that we could ever make the libido sexualis the bearer of the energic
conception of the psychical life, and if many of Freud’s school still
believe they possess a well-defined and almost complete conception of
libido, they are not aware that this conception has been put to use far
beyond the bounds of its sexual definition. The critics are right when
they object to our theory of libido as explaining things which cannot
belong to its sphere. It must be admitted that Freud’s school makes use
of a conception of libido which passes beyond the bounds of its primary
definition. Indeed, this must produce the impression that one is working
with a mystical principle.
The Problem of Libido in Dementia Præcox
I have sought to show these infringements in a special work, “Wandlungen
und Symbole der Libido,” and at the same time the necessity for creating
a new conception of libido, which shall be in harmony with the energic
conception. Freud himself was forced to a discussion of his original
conception of libido when he tried to apply its energic point of view to
a well-known case of dementia præcox—the so-called Schreber case. In
this case, we had to deal, among other things, with that well-known
problem in the psychology of dementia præcox, the loss of adaptation to
reality, the peculiar phenomenon consisting in a special tendency of
these patients to construct an inner world of phantasy of their own,
surrendering for this purpose their adaptation to reality. As a part of
the phenomenon, the lack of sociability or emotional rapport will be
well known to you all, this representing a striking disturbance of the
function of reality. Through considerable psychological study of these
patients we discovered, that this lack of adaptation to reality is
compensated by a progressive increase in the creation of phantasies.
This goes so far that the dream-world is for the patient more real than
external reality. The patient Schreber, described by Freud, found for
this phenomenon an excellent figurative description in his delusion of
the “end of the world.” His loss of reality is thus very concretely
represented. The dynamic conception of this phenomenon is very clear. We
say that the libido withdrew itself more and more from the external
world, consequently entered the inner world, the world of phantasies,
and had there to create, as a compensation for the lost external world,
a so-called equivalent of reality. This compensation is built up piece
by piece, and it is most interesting to observe the psychological
materials of which this inner world is composed. This way of conceiving
the transposition and displacement of the libido has been made by the
every-day use of the term, its original pure sexual meaning being very
rarely recalled. In general, the word “libido” is used practically in so
harmless a sense that Claparède, in a conversation, once remarked that
we could as well use the word “interest.”
The manner in which this expression is generally used has given rise to
a way of using the term that made it possible to explain Schreber’s “end
of the world” by withdrawal of the libido. On this occasion, Freud
recalled his original sexual definition of the libido, and tried to
arrive at an understanding with the change which in the meantime had
taken place. In his article on Schreber, he discusses the question,
whether what the psychoanalytic school calls libido, and conceives of as
“interest from erotic sources” coincides with interest generally
speaking. You see that, putting the problem in this way, Freud asks the
question which Claparède practically answered. Freud discusses the
question here, whether the loss of reality noticed in dementia præcox,
to which I drew attention in my book,[6] “The Psychology of Dementia
Præcox,” is due entirely to the withdrawal of erotic interest, or if
this coincides with the so-called objective interest in general. We can
hardly agree that the normal “fonction du réel” [Janet] is only
maintained through erotic interest. The fact is that, in many cases,
reality vanishes altogether, and not a trace of psychological adaptation
can be found in these cases. Reality is repressed, and replaced by
phantasies created through complexes. We are forced to say that not only
the erotic interests, but interests in general—that is, the whole
adaptation to reality—are lost. I formerly tried, in my “Psychology of
Dementia Præcox,” to get out of this difficulty by using the expression
“psychic energy,” because I could not base the theory of dementia præcox
on the theory of transference of the libido in its sexual definition. My
experience—at that time chiefly psychiatric—did not permit me to
understand this theory. Only later did I learn to understand the
correctness of the theory as regards the neuroses by increased
experience in hysteria and the compulsion neurosis. As a matter of fact,
an abnormal displacement of libido, quite definitely sexual, does play a
great part in the neuroses. But although very characteristic repressions
of sexual libido do take place in certain neuroses, that loss of
reality, so typical for dementia præcox, never occurs. In dementia
præcox, so extreme is the loss of the function of reality that this loss
must also entail a loss of motive power, to which any sexual nature must
be absolutely denied, for it will not seem to anyone that reality is a
sexual function. If this were so, the withdrawal of erotic interests in
the neuroses would lead to a loss of reality—a loss of reality indeed
that could be compared with that in dementia præcox. But, as I said
before, this is not the case. These facts have made it impossible for me
to transfer Freud’s libido theory to dementia præcox. Hence, my view is,
that the attempt made by Abraham, in his article “The Psycho-Sexual
Differences Between Hysteria and Dementia Præcox,” is from the
standpoint of Freud’s conception of libido theoretically untenable.
Abraham’s belief, that the paranoidal system, or the symptomatology of
dementia præcox, arises by the libido withdrawing from the external
world, cannot be justified if we take “libido” according to Freud’s
definition. For, as Freud has clearly shown, a mere introversion or
regression of the libido leads always to a neurosis, and not to dementia
præcox. It is impossible to transfer the libido theory, with its sexual
definition, directly to dementia præcox, as this disease shows a loss of
reality not to be explained by the deficiency in erotic interests.
It gives me particular satisfaction that our master also, when he placed
his hand on the fragile material of paranoiac psychology, felt himself
compelled to doubt the applicability of his conception of libido which
had prevailed hitherto. My position of reserve towards the ubiquity of
sexuality which I allowed myself to adopt in the preface to my
“Psychology of Dementia Præcox”—although with a complete recognition of
the psychological mechanism—was dictated by the conception of the libido
theory of that time. Its sexual definition did not enable me to explain
those disturbances of functions which affect the indefinite sphere of
the instinct of hunger, just as much as they do those of sexuality. For
a long time the libido theory seemed to me inapplicable to dementia
præcox.
The Genetic Conception of Libido
With greater experience in my analytical work, I noticed that a slow
change of my conception of libido had taken place. A genetic conception
of libido gradually took the place of the descriptive definition of
libido contained in Freud’s “Three Contributions.” Thus it became
possible for me to replace, by the expression “psychic energy,” the term
libido. The next step was that I asked myself if now-a-days the function
of reality consists only to a very small extent of sexual libido, and to
a very large extent of other impulses. It is still a very important
question, considered from the phylogenetic standpoint, whether the
function of reality is not, at least very largely, of sexual origin. It
is impossible to answer this question directly, in so far as the
function of reality is concerned. We shall try to come to some
understanding by a side-path.
A superficial glance at the history of evolution suffices to teach us
that innumerable complicated functions, whose sexual character must be
denied, are originally nothing but derivations from the instinct of
propagation. As is well known, there has been an important displacement
in the fundamentals of propagation during the ascent through the animal
scale. The offspring has been reduced in number, and the primitive
uncertainty of impregnation has been replaced by a quite assured
impregnation, and a more effective protection of offspring. The energy
required for the production of eggs and sperma has been transferred into
the creation of mechanisms of attraction, and mechanisms for the
protection of offspring. Here we find the first instincts of art in
animals, used for the instinct of propagation, and limited to the
rutting season. The original sexual character of these biological
institutions became lost with their organic fixation, and their
functional independence. None the less, there can be no doubt as to
their sexual origin, as, for instance, there is no doubt about the
original relation between sexuality and music, but it would be a
generalization as futile, as unesthetic, to include music under the
category of sexuality. Such a terminology would lead to the
consideration of the Cathedral of Cologne under mineralogy, because it
has been built with stones. Those quite ignorant of the problems of
evolution are much astonished to find how few things there are in human
life which cannot finally be reduced to the instinct of propagation. It
embraces nearly everything, I think, that is dear and precious to us.
We have hitherto spoken of the libido as of the instinct of
reproduction, or the instinct of the preservation of the species, and
limited our conception to that libido which is opposed to hunger, just
as the instinct of the preservation of the species is opposed to that of
self-preservation. Of course in nature this artificial distinction does
not exist. Here we find only a continuous instinct of life, a will to
live, which tries to obtain the propagation of the whole race by the
preservation of the individual. To this extent this conception coincides
with that of Schopenhauer’s “will,” as objectively we can only conceive
a movement as a manifestation of an internal desire. As we have already
boldly concluded that the libido, which originally subserved the
creation of eggs and seed, is now firmly organized in the function of
nest-building, and can no longer be employed otherwise, we are similarly
obliged to include in this conception every desire, hunger no less. We
have no warrant whatever for differentiating essentially the desire to
build nests from the desire to eat.
I think you will already understand the position we have reached with
these considerations. We are about to follow up the energic conception
by putting the energic mode of action in place of the purely formal
functioning. Just as reciprocal actions, well known in the old natural
science, have been replaced by the law of the conservation of energy, so
here too, in the sphere of psychology, we seek to replace the reciprocal
activities of coordinated psychical faculties by energy, conceived as
one and homogeneous. Thus we must bow to the criticism which reproaches
the psychoanalytic school for working with a mystical conception of
libido. I have to dispel this illusion that the whole psychoanalytic
school possesses a clearly conceived and obvious conception of libido. I
maintain that the conception of libido with which we are working is not
only not concrete or known, but is an unknown _X_, a conceptual image, a
token, and no more real than the energy in the conceptual world of the
physicist. In this wise only can we escape those arbitrary
transgressions of the proper boundaries, which are always made when we
want to reduce coördinated forces to one another. Certain analogies of
the action of heat with the action of light are not to be explained by
saying that this tertium comparationis proves that the undulations of
heat are the same as the undulations of light; the conceptual image of
energy is the real point of comparison. If we regard libido in this way
we endeavor to simulate the progress which has already been made in
physics. The economy of thought which physics has already obtained we
strive after in our libido theory. We conceive libido now simply as
energy, so that we are in the position to figure the manifold processes
as forms of energy. Thus, we replace the old reciprocal action by
relations of absolute equivalence. We shall not be astonished if we are
met with the cry of vitalism. But we are as far removed from any belief
in a specific vital power, as from any other metaphysical assertion. We
term libido that energy which manifests itself by vital processes, which
is subjectively perceived as aspiration, longing and striving. We see in
the diversity of natural phenomena the desire, the libido, in the most
diverse applications and forms. In early childhood we find libido at
first wholly in the form of the instinct of nutrition, providing for the
development of the body. As the body develops, there open up,
successively, new spheres of influence for the libido. The last, and,
from its functional significance, most overpowering sphere of influence,
is sexuality, which at first seems very closely connected with the
function of nutrition. With that you may compare the well-known
influence on propagation of the conditions of nutrition in the lower
animals and plants.
In the sphere of sexuality, libido does take that form whose enormous
importance justifies us in the choice of the term “libido,” in its
strict sexual sense. Here for the first time libido appears in the form
of an undifferentiated sexual primitive power, as an energy of growth,
clearly forcing the individual towards division, budding, etc. The
clearest separation of the two forms of libido is found among those
animals where the stage of nutrition is separated by the pupa stage from
the stage of sexuality. Out of this sexual primitive power, through
which one small creature produces millions of eggs and sperm,
derivatives have been developed by extraordinary restriction of
fecundity, the functions of which are maintained by a special
differentiated libido. This differentiated libido is henceforth
_desexualized_, for it is dissociated from its original function of
producing eggs and sperm, nor is there any possibility of restoring it
to its original function. The whole process of development consists in
the increasing absorption of the libido which only created, originally,
products of generation in the secondary functions of attraction, and
protection of offspring. This development presupposes a quite different
and much more complicated relationship to reality, a true function of
reality which is functionally inseparable from the needs of
reproduction. Thus the altered mode of reproduction involves a
correspondingly increased adaptation to reality. This, of course, does
not imply that the function of reality is exclusively due to
differentiation in reproduction. I am aware that a large part of the
instinct of nutrition is connected with it. Thus we arrive at an insight
into certain primitive conditions of the function of reality. It would
be fundamentally wrong to pretend that the compelling source is still a
sexual one. It _was_ largely a sexual one originally. The process of
absorption of the primitive libido into secondary functions certainly
always took place in the form of so-called affluxes of sexual libido
(“libidinöse Zuschüsse”).
That is to say, sexuality was diverted from its original destination, a
definite quantity was used up in the mechanisms of mutual attraction and
of protection of offspring. This transference of sexual libido from the
sexual sphere to associated functions is still taking place (_e. g._,
modern neo-Malthusianism is the artificial continuation of the natural
tendency). We call this process _sublimation_, when this operation
occurs without injury to the adaptation of the individual; we call it
_repression_—when the attempt fails. From the descriptive standpoint
psychoanalysis accepts the multiplicity of instincts, and, among them,
the instinct of sexuality as a special phenomenon, moreover, it
recognizes certain affluxes of the libido to asexual instincts.
From the genetic standpoint it is otherwise. It regards the multiplicity
of instincts as issuing out of relative unity, the primitive libido. It
recognizes that definite quantities of the primitive libido are split
off, associated with the recently created functions, and finally merged
in them. From this standpoint we can say, without any difficulty, that
patients with dementia præcox withdraw their “libido” from the external
world and in consequence suffer a loss of reality, which is compensated
by an increase of the phantasy-building activities.
We must now fit the new conception of libido into that theory of
sexuality in childhood which is of such great importance in the theory
of neurosis. Generally speaking, we first find the libido as the energy
of vital activities acting in the zone of the function of nutrition.
Through the rhythmical movements in the act of sucking, nourishment is
taken with all signs of satisfaction. As the individual grows and his
organs develop, the libido creates new ways of desire, new activities
and satisfactions. Now the original model—rhythmic activity, creating
pleasure and satisfaction—must be transferred to other functions which
have their final goal in sexuality.
This transition is not made suddenly at puberty, but it takes place
gradually throughout the course of the greater part of childhood. The
libido can only very slowly and with great difficulty detach itself from
the characteristics of the function of nutrition, in order to pass over
into the characteristics of sexual function. As far as I can see, we
have two epochs during this transition, the epoch of _sucking_ and the
epoch of the _displaced rhythmic activity_. Considered solely from the
point of view of its mode of action, sucking clings entirely to the
domain of the function of nutrition, but it presents also a far wider
aspect, it is no mere function of nutrition, it is a rhythmical
activity, with its goal in a pleasure and satisfaction of its own,
distinct from the obtaining of nourishment. The hand comes into play as
an accessory organ. In the epoch of the displaced rhythmical activity it
stands out still more as an accessory organ, when the oral zone ceases
to give pleasure, which must now be obtained in other directions. The
possibilities are many. As a rule the other openings of the body become
the first objects of interest of the libido; then follow the skin in
general and certain places of predilection upon it.
The actions carried out at these places generally take the form of
rubbing, piercing, tugging, etc., accompanied by a certain rhythm, and
serve to produce pleasure. After a halt of greater or less duration at
these stations, the libido proceeds until it arrives at the sexual zone,
where it may next provoke the first onanistic attempts. During its
“march,” the libido carries over not a little from the function of
nutrition into the sexual zone; this readily explains the numerous close
associations between the function of nutrition and the sexual function.
This “march” of the libido takes place at the time of the pre-sexual
stage, which is characterized by the fact that the libido gradually
relinquishes the special character of the instinct of nutrition, and by
degrees acquires the character of the sexual instinct. At this stage we
cannot yet speak of a true sexual libido. Therefore we are obliged to
qualify the polymorphous perverse sexuality of early infancy
differently. The polymorphism of the tendencies of the libido at this
time is to be explained as the gradual movement of the libido away from
the sphere of the function of nutrition towards the sexual function.
_The Infantile “Perversity.”_—Thus rightly vanishes the term
“perverse”—so strongly contested by our opponents—for it provokes a
false idea.
When a chemical body breaks up into its elements, these elements are the
products of its disintegration, but it is not permissible on that
account to describe elements as entirely products of disintegration.
Perversities are disorders of fully-developed sexuality, but are never
precursors of sexuality, although there is undoubtedly an analogy
between the precursors and the products of disintegration. The childish
rudiments, no longer to be conceived as perverse, but to be regarded as
stages of development, change gradually into normal sexuality, as the
normal sexuality develops.
The more smoothly the libido withdraws from its provisional positions,
the more completely and the more quickly does the formation of normal
sexuality take place. It is proper to the conception of normal sexuality
that all those early infantile inclinations which are not yet sexual
should be given up. The less this is the case, the more is sexuality
threatened with perverse development. The expression “perverse” is here
used in its right place. The fundamental condition of a perversity is an
infantile, imperfectly developed state of sexuality.
Footnote 5:
No. 7 of this Monograph Series.
Footnote 6:
No. 3 of this Monograph Series.
CHAPTER IV
The Etiological Significance of the Infantile Sexuality
Now that we have decided what is to be understood as infantile
sexuality, we can follow up the discussion of the theory of the
neuroses, which we began in the first lecture and then dropped. We
followed the theory of the neuroses up to the point where we ran against
Freud’s statement, that the tendency which brings a traumatic event to a
pathological activity, is a sexual one. From our foregoing
considerations we understand what is meant by a sexual tendency. It is a
standing still, a retardation in that process whereby the libido frees
itself from the manifestations of the pre-sexual stage.
First of all, we must regard this disturbance as a _fixation_. The
libido, in its transition from the function of nutrition to the sexual
function, lingers unduly at certain stages. A disharmony is created,
since provisional and, as it were, worn-out activities, persist at a
period when they should have been overcome. This formula is applicable
to all those infantile characteristics so prevalent among neurotic
people that no attentive observer can have overlooked them. In dementia
præcox it is so obtrusive that a symptom complex, hebephrenia, derives
its name therefrom.
The matter is not ended, however, by saying that the libido lingers in
the preliminary stages, for while the libido thus lingers, time does not
stand still, and the development of the individual is always proceeding
apace. The physical maturation increases the contrast and the disharmony
between the persistent infantile manifestations, and the demands of the
later age, with its changed conditions of life. In this way the
foundation is laid for the dissociation of the personality, and thereby
to that conflict which is the real basis of the neuroses. The more the
libido is in arrears in practice, the more intense will be the conflict.
The traumatic or pathogenic moment is the one which serves best to make
this conflict manifest. As Freud showed in his earlier works, one can
easily imagine a neurosis arising in this way.
This conception fitted in rather well with the views of Janet, who
ascribed neurosis to a certain defect. From this point of view the
neurosis could be regarded as a product of retardation in the
development of affectivity; and I can easily imagine that this
conception must seem selfevident to every one who is inclined to derive
the neuroses more or less directly from heredity or congenital
degeneration.
The Infantile Sexual Etiology Criticized
Unfortunately the reality is much more complicated. Let me facilitate an
insight into these complications by an example of a case of hysteria. It
will, I hope, enable me to demonstrate the characteristic complication,
so important for the theory of neurosis. You will probably remember the
case of the young lady with hysteria, whom I mentioned at the beginning
of my lectures. We noticed the remarkable fact that this patient was
unaffected by situations which one might have expected to make a
profound impression and yet showed an unexpected extreme pathological
reaction to a quite everyday event. We took this occasion to express our
doubt as to the etiological significance of the shock, and to
investigate the so-called predisposition which rendered the trauma
effective. The result of that investigation led us to what has just been
mentioned, that it is by no means improbable that the origin of the
neurosis is due to a retardation of the affective development.
You will now ask me what is to be understood by the retardation of the
affectivity of this hysteric. The patient lives in a world of phantasy,
which can only be regarded as infantile. It is unnecessary to give a
description of these phantasies, for you, as neurologists or
psychiatrists, have the opportunity daily to listen to the childish
prejudices, illusions and emotional pretensions to which neurotic people
give way. The disinclination to face stern reality is the distinguishing
trait of these phantasies—some lack of earnestness, some trifling, which
sometimes hides real difficulties in a light-hearted manner, at others
exaggerates trifles into great troubles. We recognize at once that
inadequate psychic attitude towards reality which characterizes the
child, its wavering opinions and its deficient orientation in matters of
the external world. With such an infantile mental disposition all kinds
of desires, phantasies and illusions can grow luxuriantly, and this we
have to regard as the critical causation. Through such phantasies people
slip into an unreal attitude, preeminently ill-adapted to the world,
which is bound some day to lead to a catastrophe. When we trace back the
infantile phantasy of the patient to her earliest childhood we find, it
is true, many distinct, outstanding scenes which might well serve to
provide fresh food for this or that variation in phantasy, but it would
be vain to search for the so-called traumatic motive, whence something
abnormal might have sprung, such an abnormal activity, let us say, as
day-dreaming itself. There are certainly to be found traumatic scenes,
although not in earliest childhood; the few scenes of earliest childhood
which were remembered seem not to be traumatic, being rather accidental
events, which passed by without leaving any effect on her phantasy worth
mentioning. The earliest phantasies arose out of all sorts of vague and
only partly understood impressions received from her parents. Many
peculiar feelings centered around her father, vacillating between
anxiety, horror, aversion, disgust, love and enthusiasm. The case was
like so many other cases of hysteria, where no traumatic etiology can be
found, but which grows from the roots of a peculiar and premature
activity of phantasy which maintains permanently the character of
infantilism.
You will object that in this case the scene with the shying horses
represents the trauma. It is clearly the model of that night-scene which
happened nineteen years later, where the patient was incapable of
avoiding the trotting horses. That she wanted to plunge into the river
has an analogy in the model scene, where the horses and carriage fell
into the river.
Since the latter traumatic moment she suffered from hysterical fits. As
I tried to show you, we do not find any trace of this apparent etiology
developed in the course of her phantasy life. It seems as if the danger
of losing her life, that first time, when the horses shied, passed
without leaving any emotional trace. None of the events that occurred in
the following years showed any trace of that fright. In parenthesis let
me add, that perhaps it never happened at all. It may have even been a
mere phantasy, for I have only the assertions of the patient. All of a
sudden, some eighteen years later, this event becomes of importance and
is, so to say, reproduced and carried out in all its details. This
assumption is extremely unlikely, and becomes still more inconceivable
if we also bear in mind that the story of the shying horses may not even
be true. Be that as it may, it is and remains almost unthinkable that an
affect should remain buried for years and then suddenly explode. In
other cases there is exactly the same state of affairs. I know, for
instance, of a case in which the shock of an earthquake, long recovered
from, suddenly came back as a lively fear of earthquakes, although this
reminiscence could not be explained by the external circumstances.
The Traumatic Theory—A False Way
It is a very suspicious circumstance that these patients frequently show
a pronounced tendency to account for their illnesses by some long-past
event, ingeniously withdrawing the attention of the physician from the
present moment towards some false track in the past. This false track
was the first one pursued by the psychoanalytic theory. To this false
hypothesis we owe an insight into the understanding of the neurotic
symptoms never before reached, an insight we should not have gained if
the investigation had not chosen this path, really guided thither,
however, by the misleading tendencies of the patient.
I think that only a man who regards world-happenings as a chain of more
or less fortuitous contingencies, and therefore believes that the
guiding hand of the reason-endowed pedagogue is permanently wanted, can
ever imagine that this path, upon which the patient leads the physician,
has been a wrong one, from which one ought to have warned men off with a
sign-board. Besides the deeper insight into psychological determination,
we owe to the so-called error the discovery of questions of immeasurable
importance regarding the basis of psychic processes. It is for us to
rejoice and be thankful that Freud had the courage to let himself be
guided along this path. Not thus is the progress of science hindered,
but rather through blind adherence to a provisional formulation, through
the typical conservatism of authority, the vanity of learned men, their
fear of making mistakes. This lack of the martyr’s courage is far more
injurious to the credit and greatness of scientific knowledge than an
honest error.
Retardation of the Emotional Development
But let us return to our own case. The following question arises: If the
old trauma is not of etiological significance, then the cause of the
manifest neurosis is probably to be found in the retardation of the
emotional development. We must therefore disregard the patient’s
assertion that her hysterical crises date from the fright from the
shying horses, although this fright was in fact the beginning of her
evident illness. This event only seems to be important, although it is
not so in reality. This same formula is valid for all the so-called
shocks. They only seem to be important because they are the
starting-point of the external expression of an abnormal condition. As
explained in detail, this abnormal condition is an anachronistic
continuation of an infantile stage of libido-development. These patients
still retain forms of the libido which they ought to have renounced long
ago. It is impossible to give a list, as it were, of these forms, for
they are of an extraordinary variety. The most common, which is scarcely
ever absent, is the excessive activity of phantasies, characterized by
an unconcerned exaggeration of subjective wishes. This exaggerated
activity is always a sign of want of proper employment of the libido.
The libido sticks fast to its use in phantasies, instead of being
employed in a more rigorous adaptation to the real conditions of life.
Introversion
This state is called the state of _introversion_, the libido is used for
the psychical inner world instead of being applied to the external
world. A regular attendant symptom of this retardation in the emotional
development is the so-called parent-complex. If the libido is not used
entirely for the adaptation to reality, it is always more or less
introverted. The material content of the psychic world is composed of
reminiscences, giving it a vividness of activity which in reality long
since ceased to pertain thereto. The consequence is, that these patients
still live more or less in a world which in truth belongs to the past.
They fight with difficulties which once played a part in their life, but
which ought to have been obliterated long ago. They still grieve over
matters, or rather they are still concerned with matters, which should
have long ago lost their importance for them. They divert themselves, or
distress themselves, with images which were once normally of importance
for them but are of no significance at their later age.
The Complex of the Parents
Amongst those influences most important during childhood, the
personalities of the parents play the most potent part. Even if the
parents have long been dead, and might and should have lost all real
importance, since the life-conditions of the patients are perhaps
totally changed, yet these parents are still somehow present and as
important as if they were still alive. Love and admiration, resistance,
repugnance, hate and revolt, still cling to their figures, transfigured
by affection and very often bearing little resemblance to the past
reality. It was this fact which forced me to talk no longer of father
and mother directly, but to employ instead the term “image” (imago) of
mother or of father for these phantasies no longer deal with the real
father and the real mother, but with the subjective, and very often
completely altered creations of the imagination which prolong an
existence only in the patient’s mind.
The complex of the parents’ images, that is to say, the sum of ideas
connected with the parents, provides an important field of employment
for the introverted libido. I must mention in passing that the complex
has in itself but a shadowy existence in so far as it is not invested
with libido. Following the usage that we arrived at in the
“Diagnostische Associationsstudien,” the word “complex” is used for a
system of ideas already invested with, and actuated by, libido. This
system exists as a mere possibility, ready for application, if not
invested with libido either temporarily or permanently.
_The “Nucleus”-Complex._—At the time when the psychoanalytic theory was
still under the dominance of the trauma conception and, in conformity
with that view, inclined to look for the causa efficiens of the neurosis
in the past, the parent-complex seemed to us to be the so-called
root-complex—to employ Freud’s term—or nucleus-complex (“Kerncomplex”).
The part which the parents played seemed to be so highly determining
that we were inclined to attribute to them all later complications in
the life of the patient. Some years ago I discussed this view in my
article[7] “Die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen.”
(The importance of the father for the fate of the individual.)
Here also we were guided by the patient’s tendency to revert to the
past, in accordance with the direction of his introverted libido. Now
indeed it was no longer the external, accidental event which caused the
pathogenic effect, but a psychological effect which seemed to arise out
of the individual’s difficulties in adapting himself to the conditions
of his familiar surroundings. It was especially the disharmony between
the parents on the one hand and between the child and the parents on the
other which seemed favorable for creating currents in the child little
compatible with his individual course of life. In the article just
alluded to I have described some instances, taken from a wealth of
material, which show these characteristics very distinctly. The
influence of the parents does not come to an end, alas, with their
neurotic descendants’ blame of the family circumstances, or their false
education, as the basis of their illness, but it extends even to certain
actual events in the life and actions of the patient, where such a
determining influence could not have been expected. The lively
imitativeness which we find in savages as well as in children can
produce in certain rather sensitive children a peculiar inner and
unconscious identification with the parents; that is to say, such a
similar mental attitude that effects in real life are sometimes produced
which, even in detail, resemble the personal experiences of the parents.
For the empirical material here, I must refer you to the literature. I
should like to remind you that one of my pupils, Dr. Emma Fürst,
produced valuable experimental proofs for the solution of this problem,
to which I referred in my lecture at Clark University.[8] In applying
association experiments to whole families, Dr. Fürst established the
great resemblance of reaction-type among all the members of one family.
These experiments show that there very often exists an unconscious
parallelism of association between parents and children, to be explained
as an intense imitation or identification.
The results of these investigations show far-reaching psychological
tendencies in parallel directions, which readily explain at times the
astonishing conformity in their destinies. Our destinies are as a rule
the result of our psychological tendencies. These facts allow us to
understand why, not only the patient, but even the theory which has been
built on such investigations, expresses the view, that the neurosis is
the result of the characteristic influence of the parents upon their
children. This view, moreover, is supported by the experiences which lie
at the basis of pedagogy: namely the assumption of the plasticity of the
child’s mind, which is freely compared with soft wax.
We know that the first impressions of childhood accompany us throughout
life, and that certain educational influences may restrain people
undisturbed all their lives within certain limits. It is no miracle,
indeed it is rather a frequent experience, that under these
circumstances a conflict has to break out between the personality which
is formed by the educational and other influences of the infantile
milieu and that one which can be described as the real individual line
of life. With this conflict all people must meet, who are called upon to
live an independent and productive life.
Owing to the enormous influence of childhood on the later development of
character, you can perfectly understand why we are inclined to ascribe
the cause of a neurosis directly to the influences of the infantile
environment. I have to confess that I have known cases in which any
other explanation seemed to be less reasonable. There are indeed parents
whose own contradictory neurotic behavior causes them to treat their
children in such an unreasonable way that the latter’s deterioration and
illness would seem to be unavoidable. Hence it is almost a rule among
nerve-specialists to remove neurotic children, whenever possible, from
the dangerous family atmosphere, and to send them among more healthy
influences, where, without any medical treatment, they thrive much
better than at home. There are many neurotic patients who were clearly
neurotic as children, and who have never been free from illness. For
such cases, the conception which has been sketched holds generally good.
This knowledge, which seems to be provisionally definitive, has been
extended by the studies of Freud and the psychoanalytic school. The
relations between the patients and their parents have been studied in
detail in as much as these relations were regarded as of etiological
significance.
Infantile Mental Attitude
It was soon noticed that such patients lived still partly or wholly in
their childhood-world, although quite unconscious themselves of this
fact. It is a difficult task for psychoanalysis so exactly to
investigate the psychological mode of adaptation of the patients as to
be capable of putting its finger on the infantile misunderstanding. We
find among neurotics many who have been spoiled as children. These cases
give the best and clearest example of the infantilism of their
psychological mode of adaptation. They start out in life expecting the
same friendly reception, tenderness and easy success, obtained with no
trouble, to which they have been accustomed by their parents in their
youth. Even very intelligent patients are not capable of seeing at once
that they owe the complications of their life and their neurosis to the
trail of their infantile emotional attitude. The small world of the
child, the familiar surroundings—these form the model of the big world.
The more intensely the family has stamped the child, the more will it be
inclined, as an adult, instinctively to see again in the great world its
former small world. Of course this must not be taken as a conscious
intellectual process. On the contrary, the patient feels and sees the
difference between now and then, and tries to adapt himself as well as
he can. Perhaps he will even believe himself perfectly adapted, for he
grasps the situation intellectually, but that does not prevent the
emotional from being far behind the intellectual standpoint.
Unconscious Phantasy
It is unnecessary to trouble you with instances of this phenomenon. It
is an every-day experience that our emotions are never at the level of
our reasoning. It is exactly the same with such a patient, only with
greater intensity. He may perhaps believe that, save for his neurosis,
he is a normal person, and hence adapted to the conditions of life. He
does not suspect that he has not relinquished certain childish
pretensions, that he still carries with him, in the background,
expectations and illusions which he has never rendered conscious to
himself. He cultivates all sorts of favorite phantasies, which seldom
become conscious, or at any rate, not very often, so that he himself
does not know that he has them. They very often exist only as emotional
expectations, hopes, prejudices, etc. We call these phantasies,
unconscious phantasies. Sometimes they dip into the peripheral
consciousness as quite fugitive thoughts, which disappear again a moment
later, so that the patient is unable to say whether he had such
phantasies or not. It is only during the psychoanalytic treatment that
most patients learn to observe and retain these fleeting thoughts.
Although most of the phantasies, once at least, have been conscious in
the form of fleeting thoughts and only afterwards became unconscious, we
have no right to call them on that account “conscious,” as they are
practically most of the time unconscious. It is therefore right to
designate them “unconscious phantasies.” Of course there are also
infantile phantasies, which are perfectly conscious and which can be
reproduced at any time.
Footnote 7:
Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologisch Forschungen, Bd.
I.
Footnote 8:
Am. Jour. Psychol., April, 1910.
CHAPTER V
The Unconscious
The sphere of the unconscious infantile phantasies has become the real
object of psychoanalytic investigation. As we have previously pointed
out, this domain seems to retain the key to the etiology of neurosis. In
contradistinction with the trauma theory, we are forced by the reasons
already adduced to seek in the family history for the basis of our
present psychoanalytic attitude. Those phantasy-systems which patients
exhibit on mere questioning are for the most part composed and
elaborated like a novel or a drama. Although they are greatly
elaborated, they are relatively of little value for the investigation of
the unconscious. Just because they are conscious, they have already
deferred over-much to the claims of etiquette and social morality. Hence
they have been purged of all personally painful and ugly details, and
are presentable to society, revealing very little. The valuable, and
much more important phantasies are not conscious in the sense already
defined, but are to be discovered through the technique of
psychoanalysis.
Without wishing to enter fully into the question of technique, I must
here meet an objection that is constantly heard. It is that the
so-called unconscious phantasies are only suggested to the patient and
only exist in the minds of psychoanalysts. This objection belongs to
that common class which ascribes to them the crude mistakes of
beginners. I think only those without psychological experience and
without historical psychological knowledge are capable of making such
criticisms. With a mere glimmering of mythological knowledge, one cannot
fail to notice the striking parallels between the unconscious phantasies
discovered by the psychoanalytic school and mythological images. The
objection that our knowledge of mythology has been suggested to the
patient is groundless, for the psychoanalytic school first discovered
the unconscious phantasies, and only then became acquainted with
mythology. Mythology itself is obviously something outside the path of
the medical man. In so far as these phantasies are unconscious, the
patient of course knows nothing about their existence, and it would be
absurd to make direct inquiries about them. Nevertheless it is often
said, both by patients and by so-called normal persons: “But if I had
such phantasies, surely I would know something about them.” But what is
unconscious is, in fact, something which one does not know. The
opposition too is perfectly convinced that such things as unconscious
phantasies could not exist. This a priori judgment is scholasticism, and
has no sensible grounds. We cannot possibly rest on the dogma that
consciousness only is mind, when we can convince ourselves daily that
our consciousness is only the stage. When the contents of our
consciousness appear they are already in a highly complex form; the
grouping of our thoughts from the elements supplied by our memory is
almost entirely unconscious. Therefore we are obliged, whether we like
it or not, to accept for the moment the conception of an unconscious
psychic sphere, even if only as a mere negative, border-conception, just
as Kant’s “thing in itself.” As we perceive things which do not have
their origin in consciousness, we are obliged to give hypothetic
contents to the sphere of the non-conscious. We must suppose that the
origin of certain effects lies in the unconscious, just because they are
not conscious. The reproach of mysticism can scarcely be made against
this conception of the unconscious. We do not pretend that we know
anything positive, or can affirm anything, about the psychic condition
of the unconscious. Instead, we have substituted symbols by following
the way of designation and abstraction we apply in consciousness.
On the axiom: Principia præter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda, this
kind of ideation is the only possible one. Hence we speak about the
effects of the unconscious, just as we do about the phenomena of the
conscious. Many people have been shocked by Freud’s statement: “The
unconscious can only wish,” and this is regarded as an unheard of
metaphysical assertion, something like the principle of Hartman’s
“Philosophy of the Unconscious,” which apparently administers a rebuff
to the theory of cognition. This indignation only arises from the fact
that the critics, unknown to themselves, evidently start from a
metaphysical conception of the unconscious as being an “end per se,” and
naïvely project on to us their inadequate conception of the unconscious.
For us, the unconscious is no entity, but a term, about whose
metaphysical entity we do not permit ourselves to form any idea. Here we
contrast with those psychologists, who, sitting at their desks, are as
exactly informed about the localization of the mind in the brain as they
are informed about the psychological correlation of the mental
processes. Whence they are able to declare positively that beyond the
consciousness there are but physiological processes of the cortex. Such
naiveté must not be imputed to the psychoanalyst. When Freud says: “We
can only wish,” he describes in symbolic terms effects of which the
origin is not known. From the standpoint of our conscious thinking,
these effects can only be considered as analogous to wishes. The
psychoanalytic school is, moreover, aware that the discussion as to
whether “wishing” is a sound analogy can be re-opened at any time.
Anyone who has more information is welcome. Instead, the opponents
content themselves with denial of the phenomena, or if certain phenomena
are admitted, they abstain from all theoretical speculation. This last
point is readily to be understood, for it is not everyone’s business to
think theoretically. Even the man who has succeeded in freeing himself
from the dogma of the identity of the conscious self and the psyche,
thus admitting the possible existence of psychic processes outside the
conscious, is not justified in disputing or maintaining psychic
possibilities in the unconscious. The objection is raised that the
psychoanalytic school maintains certain views without sufficient
grounds, as if the literature did not contain abundant, perhaps too
abundant, discussion of cases, and more than enough arguments. But they
seem not to be sufficient for the opponents. There must be a good deal
of difference as to the meaning of the term “sufficient” in respect to
the validity of the arguments. The question is: “Why does the
psychoanalytic school apparently set less store on the proof of their
formulas than the critics?” The reason is very simple. An engineer who
has built a bridge, and has worked out its bearing capacity, wants no
other proof for the success of its bearing power. But the ordinary man,
who has no notion how a bridge is built, or what is the strength of the
material used, will demand quite different proofs as to the bearing
capacity of the bridge, for he has no confidence in the business. In the
first place, it is the critics’ complete ignorance of what is being done
which provokes their demand. In the second place, there are the
unanswerable theoretical misunderstandings: impossible for us to know
them all and understand them all. Just as we find, again and again, in
our patients new and astonishing misunderstandings about the ways and
the aim of the psychoanalytic method, so are the critics inexhaustible
in devising misunderstandings. You can see in the discussion of our
conception of the unconscious what kind of false philosophical
assumptions can prevent the understanding of our terminology. It is
comprehensible that those who attribute to the unconscious involuntarily
an absolute entity, require quite different arguments, beyond our power
to give. Had we to prove immortality, we should have to collect many
more important arguments, than if we had merely to demonstrate the
existence of plasmodia in a malaria patient. The metaphysical
expectation still disturbs the scientific way of thinking, so that
problems of psychoanalysis cannot be considered in a simple way. But I
do not wish to be unjust to the critics, and I will admit that the
psychoanalytic school itself very often gives rise to misunderstandings,
although innocently enough. One of the principal sources of these
mistakes is the confusion in the theoretical sphere. It is a pity, but
we have no presentable theory. But you would understand this, if you
could see, in a concrete case, with what difficulties we have to deal.
In contradiction to the opinion of nearly all critics, Freud is by no
means a theorist. He is an empiricist, of which fact anyone can easily
convince himself, if he is willing to busy himself somewhat more deeply
with Freud’s works, and if he tries to go into the cases as Freud has
done. Unfortunately, the critics are not willing. As we have very often
heard, it is too disgusting and too repulsive, to observe cases in the
same way as Freud has done. But who will learn the nature of Freud’s
method, if he allows himself to be hindered by repulsion and disgust?
Because they neglect to apply themselves to the point of view adopted by
Freud, perhaps as a necessary working hypothesis, they come to the
absurd supposition that Freud is a theorist. They then readily agree
that Freud’s “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory” is a priori
invented by a merely speculative brain which afterwards suggests
everything into the patient. That is putting things upside down. This
gives the critics an easy task, and this is just what they want to have.
They pay no attention to the observations of the psychoanalysts,
conscientiously set forth in their histories of diseases, but only to
the theory, and to the formulation of technique. The weak spot of
psychoanalysis, however, is not found here, as psychoanalysis is only
empirical. Here you find but a large and insufficiently cultivated
field, in which the critics can exercise themselves to their full
satisfaction. There are many uncertainties, and as many contradictions,
in the sphere of this theory. We were conscious of this long before the
first critic began to pay attention to our work.
CHAPTER VI
The Dream
After this digression we will return to the question of the unconscious
phantasies which occupied us before. As we have seen, nobody can dispute
their existence, just as nobody can assert their existence and their
qualities forthwith. The question, however, is just this: Can effects be
observed in the consciousness of unconscious origin, which can be
described in conscious symbolic signs or expressions? Can there be
found, in the conscious, effects which correspond with this expectation?
The psychoanalytic school believes it has discovered such effects. Let
me mention at once the principal phenomenon, the dream. Of this it may
be said that it appears in the consciousness as a complex factor
unconsciously constructed out of its elements. The origin of the images
in certain reminiscences of the earlier or of the later past can be
proved through the associations belonging to the single images of the
dream. We ask: “Where did you see this?” or “Where did you hear that?”
And through the usual way of association come the reminiscences that
certain parts of the dream have been consciously experienced, some the
day before, some on former occasions. So far there will be general
agreement, for these things are well known. In so far, the dream
represents in general an incomprehensible composition of certain
elements not at first conscious, which are only recognized later on by
their associations. It is not that all parts of the dream are
recognizable, whence its conscious character could be deduced; on the
contrary, they are often, and indeed mostly, unrecognizable at first.
Only subsequently does it occur to us that we have experienced in
consciousness this or that part of the dream. From this standpoint
alone, we might regard the dream as an effect of unconscious origin.
The Method of Dream Analysis
The technique for the exploration of the unconscious origin is the one I
mentioned before, used before Freud by every scientific man who
attempted to arrive at a psychological understanding of dreams. We try
simply to remember where the parts of the dream arose. The
psychoanalytic technique for the interpretation of dreams is based on
this very simple principle. It is a fact that certain parts of the dream
originate in daily life, that is, in events which, on account of their
slighter importance, would have fallen into oblivion, and indeed were on
the way to become definitely unconscious. It is these parts of the dream
that are the effect of unconscious images and representations. People
have been shocked by this expression also. But we do not conceive these
things so concretely, not to say crudely, as do the critics. Certainly
this expression is nothing but a symbolism taken from conscious
psychology—we were never in any doubt as to that. The expression is
quite clear and answers very well as a symbol of an unknown psychic
fact.
As we mentioned before, we can conceive the unconscious only by analogy
with the conscious. We do not imagine that we understand a thing when we
have discovered a beautiful and rather incomprehensible name. The
principle of the psychoanalytic technique is, as you see,
extraordinarily simple. The further procedure follows on in the same
way. If we occupy ourselves long with a dream, a thing which, apart from
psychoanalysis, naturally never happens, we are apt to find still more
reminiscences to the various different parts of the dream. We are not
however always successful in finding reminiscences to certain portions.
We have to put aside these dreams, or parts of dreams, whether we will
or no.
The collected reminiscences are called the “_dream material_.” We treat
this material by a universally valid scientific method. If you ever have
to work up experimental material, you compare the individual units and
classify them according to similarities. You proceed exactly in the same
way with dream-material; you look for the common traits either of a
formal or a substantial nature.
Certain extremely common prejudices must be got rid of. I have always
noticed that the beginner is looking for one trait or another and tries
to make his material conform to his expectation. This condition I
noticed especially among those colleagues who were formerly more or less
passionate opponents of psychoanalysis, their opposition being based on
well-known prejudices and misunderstandings. When I had the chance of
analyzing them, whereby they obtained at last a real insight into the
method, the first mistake generally made in their own psychoanalytic
work was that they did violence to the material by their own
preconceived opinion. They gave vent to their former prejudice against
psychoanalysis in their attitude towards the material, which they could
not estimate objectively, but only according to their subjective
phantasies.
If one would have the courage to sift dream material, one must not
recoil from any parallel. The dream material generally consists of very
heterogeneous associations, out of which it is sometimes very difficult
to deduce the tertium comparationis. I refrain from giving detailed
examples, as it is quite impossible to handle in a lecture the
voluminous material of a dream. I might call your attention to Rank’s[9]
article in the Jahrbuch, “Ein Traum der sich selber deutet” (A dream
interpreted by itself). There you will see what an extensive material
must be taken into consideration for comparison.
Hence, for the interpretation of the unconscious we proceed in the same
way as is universal when a conclusion is to be drawn by classifying
material. The objection is very often heard: Why does the dream have an
unconscious content at all? In my view, this objection is as
unscientific as possible. Every actual psychological moment has its
special history. Every sentence I pronounce has, beside the intended
meaning known to me another historical meaning, and it is possible that
its second meaning is entirely different from its conscious meaning. I
express myself on purpose somewhat paradoxically. I do not mean that I
could explain every individual sentence in its historical meaning. This
is a thing easier to do in larger and more detailed contributions. It
will be clear to everyone, that a poem is, apart from its manifest
content, especially characteristic of the poet in regard to its form,
its content, and its manner of origin. Although the poet, in his poem,
gave expression to the mood of a moment, the literary historian will
find things in it and behind it which the poet never foresaw. The
analysis which the literary historian draws from the poet’s material is
exactly the method of psychoanalysis.
The psychoanalytic method, generally speaking, can be compared with
historical analysis and synthesis. Suppose, for instance, we did not
understand the meaning of baptism as practised in our churches to-day.
The priest tells us the baptism means the admission of the child into
the Christian community. But this does not satisfy us. Why is the child
sprinkled with water? To understand this ceremony, we must choose out of
the history of rites, those human traditions which pertain to this
subject, and thus we get material for comparison, to be considered from
different standpoints.
I. The baptism means obviously an initiation ceremony, a consecration;
therefore all the traditions containing initiation rites have to be
consulted.
II. The baptism takes place with water. This special form requires
another series of traditions, namely, those rites where water is used.
III. The person to be baptized is sprinkled with water. Here are to be
consulted all those rites where the initiated is sprinkled or submerged,
etc.
IV. All the reminiscences of folklore, the superstitious practices must
be remembered, which in any way run parallel with the symbolism of the
baptismal act.
In this way, we get a comparative scientific study of religion as
regards baptism. We accordingly discover the different elements out of
which the act of baptism has arisen. We ascertain further its original
meaning, and we become at the same time acquainted with the rich world
of myths that have contributed to the foundations of religions, and thus
we are enabled to understand the manifold and profound meanings of
baptism. The analyst proceeds in the same way with the dream. He
collects the historical parallels to every part of the dream, even the
remotest, and he tries to reconstruct the psychological history of the
dream, with its fundamental meaning, exactly as in the analysis of the
act of baptism. Thus, through the monographic treatment of the dream, we
get a profound and beautiful insight into that mysterious, fine and
ingenious network of unconscious determination. We get an insight, which
as I said before, can only be compared with the historical understanding
of any act which we had hitherto regarded in a superficial and one-sided
way.
This digression on the psychoanalytic method has seemed to me to be
unavoidable. I was obliged to give you an account of the method and its
position in methodology, by reason of all the extensive
misunderstandings which are constantly attempting to discredit it. I do
not doubt that there are superficial and improper interpretations of the
method. But an intelligent critic ought never to allow this to be a
reproach to the method itself, any more than a bad surgeon should be
urged as an objection to the common validity of surgery. I do not doubt
that some inaccurate descriptions and conceptions of the psychoanalytic
method have arisen on the part of the psychoanalytic school itself. But
this is due to the fact that, because of their education in natural
science it is difficult for medical men to attain a full grasp of
historical or philological method, although they instinctively handle it
rightly.
The method I have described to you, in this general way, is the method
that I adopt and for which I assume the scientific responsibility.
In my opinion it is absolutely reprehensible and unscientific to
question about dreams, or to try to interpret them directly. This is not
a methodological, but an arbitrary proceeding, which is its own
punishment, for it is as unproductive as every false method.
If I have made the attempt to demonstrate to you the principle of the
psychoanalytic school by dream-analysis, it is because the dream is
one of the clearest instances of those contents of the conscious,
whose basis eludes any plain and direct understanding. When anyone
knocks in a nail with a hammer, to hang something up, we can
understand every detail of the action. But it is otherwise with the
act of baptism, where every phase is problematic. We call these
actions, of which the meaning and the aim is not directly evident,
symbolic actions or symbols. On the basis of this reasoning, we call a
dream symbolic, as a dream is a psychological formation, of which the
origin, meaning and aim are obscure, inasmuch as it represents one of
the purest products of unconscious constellation. As Freud strikingly
says: “The dream is the via regia to the unconscious.” Besides the
dream, we can note many effects of unconscious constellation. We have
in the association-experiments a means for establishing exactly the
influence of the unconscious. We find those effects in the
disturbances of the experiment which I have called the “indicators of
the complex.” The task which the association-experiment gives to the
person experimented upon is so extraordinarily easy and simple that
even children can accomplish it without difficulty. It is, therefore,
very remarkable that so many disturbances of an intentional action
should be noted in this experiment. The only reasons or causes of
these disturbances which can usually be shown, are the partly
conscious, partly not-conscious constellations, caused by the
so-called complexes. In the greater number of these disturbances, we
can without difficulty establish the relation to images of emotional
complexes. We often need the psychoanalytic method to explain these
relations, that is, we have to ask the person experimented upon or the
patient, what associations he can give to the disturbed reactions. We
thus gain the historical matter which serves as a basis for our
judgment. The intelligent objection has already been made that the
person experimented upon could say what he liked, in other words, any
nonsense. This objection is made, I believe, in the unconscious
supposition that the historian who collects the matter for his
monograph is an idiot, incapable of distinguishing real parallels from
apparent ones and true documents from crude falsifications. The
professional man has means at his disposal by which clumsy mistakes
can be avoided with certainty, and the slighter ones very probably.
The mistrust of our opponents is here really delightful. For anyone
who understands psychoanalytic work it is a well-known fact that it is
not so very difficult to see where there is coherence, and where there
is none. Moreover, in the first place these fraudulent declarations
are very significant of the person experimented upon, and secondly, in
general rather easily to be recognized as fraudulent.
In association-experiments, we are able to recognize the very
intense effects produced by the unconscious in what are called
complex-interventions. These mistakes made in the association-experiment
are nothing but the prototypes of the mistakes made in everyday life,
which are for the greater part to be considered as interventions. Freud
brought together such material in his book, “The Psychopathology of
Everyday Life.”
These include the so-called symptomatic actions, which from another
point of view might equally as well be called “symbolic actions,” and
the real failures to carry out actions, such as forgetting, slips of
the tongue, etc. All these phenomena are the effect of unconscious
constellations and therefore so many entrance-gates into the domain of
the unconscious. When such errors are cumulative, they are designated
as neurosis, which, from this aspect, looks like a defective action
and therefore the effect of unconscious constellations or
complex-interventions.
The association-experiment is thus not directly a means to unlock the
unconscious, but rather a technique for obtaining a good selection of
defective reactions, which can then be used by psychoanalysis. At least,
this is its most reliable form of application at the present time. I
may, however, mention that it is possible that it may furnish other
especially valuable facts which would grant us some direct glimpses, but
I do not consider this problem sufficiently ripe to speak about.
Investigations in this direction are going on.
I hope that, through my explanation of our method, you may have gained
somewhat more confidence in its scientific character, so that you will
be by this time more inclined to agree that the phantasies which have
been hitherto discovered by means of psychoanalytic work are not merely
arbitrary suppositions and illusions of psychoanalysts. Perhaps you are
even inclined to listen patiently to what those products of unconscious
phantasies can tell us.
Footnote 9:
Jahrbuch für psychopath. u. psychoanalyt. Forschungen, Bd. II, p. 465.
CHAPTER VII
The Content of the Unconscious
The phantasies of adults are, in so far as they are conscious, of great
diversity and strongly individual. It is therefore nearly impossible to
give a general description of them. But it is very different when we
enter by means of analysis into the world of his unconscious phantasies.
The diversities of the phantasies are indeed very great, but we do not
find those individual peculiarities which we find in the conscious self.
We meet here with more typical material which is not infrequently
repeated in a similar form in different people. Constantly recurring,
for instance, are ideas which are variations of the thoughts we
encounter in religion and mythology. This fact is so convincing that we
say we have discovered in these phantasies the same mechanisms which
once created mythological and religious ideas. I should have to enter
very much into detail in order to give you adequate examples. I must
refer you for these problems to my work, “Wandlungen und Symbole der
Libido.” I will only mention that, for instance, the central symbol of
Christianity—self-sacrifice—plays an important part in the phantasies of
the unconscious. The Viennese School describes this phenomenon by the
ambiguous term castration-complex. This paradoxical use of the term
follows from the particular attitude of this school toward the question
of unconscious sexuality. I have given special attention to the problem
in the book I have just mentioned; I must here restrict myself to this
incidental reference and hasten to say something about the origin of the
unconscious phantasy.
In the child’s unconsciousness, the phantasies are considerably
simplified, in relation to the proportions of the infantile
surroundings. Thanks to the united efforts of the psychoanalytic school,
we discovered that the most frequent phantasy of childhood is the
so-called _Œdipus-complex_. This designation also seems as paradoxical
as possible. We know that the tragic fate of Œdipus consisted in his
loving his mother and slaying his father. This conflict of later life
seems to be far remote from the child’s mind. To the uninitiated it
seems inconceivable that the child should have this conflict. After
careful reflection it will become clear that the tertium comparationis
consists just in this narrow limitation of the fate of Œdipus within the
bounds of the family. These limitations are very typical for the child,
for parents are never the boundary for the adult person to the same
extent. The Œdipus-complex represents an infantile conflict, but with
the exaggeration of the adult. The term Œdipus-complex does not mean,
naturally, that this conflict is considered as occurring in the adult
form, but in a corresponding form suitable to childhood. The little son
would like to have the mother all to himself and to be rid of the
father. As you know, little children can sometimes force themselves
between the parents in the most jealous way. The wishes and aims get, in
the unconscious, a more concrete and a more drastic form. Children are
small primitive people and are therefore quickly ready to kill. But as a
child is, in general, harmless, so his apparently dangerous wishes are,
as a rule, also harmless. I say “as a rule,” as you know that children,
too, sometimes give way to their impulses to murder, and this not always
in any indirect fashion. But just as the child, in general, is incapable
of making systematic projects, as little dangerous are his intentions to
murder. The same holds good of an Œdipus-view toward the mother. The
small traces of this phantasy in the conscious can easily be overlooked;
therefore nearly all parents are convinced that their children have no
Œdipus-complex. Parents as well as lovers are generally blind. If I now
say that the Œdipus-complex is in the first place only a formula for the
childish desire towards parents, and for the conflict which this craving
evokes, this statement of the situation will be more readily accepted.
The history of the Œdipus-phantasy is of special interest, as it teaches
us very much about the development of the unconscious phantasies.
Naturally, people think that the problem of Œdipus is the problem of the
son. But this is, astonishingly enough, only an illusion. Under some
circumstances the libido-sexualis reaches that definite differentiation
of puberty corresponding to the sex of the individual relatively late.
The libido sexualis has before this time an undifferentiated sexual
character, which can be also termed bisexual. Therefore it is not
astonishing if little girls possess the Œdipus-complex too. As far as I
can see, the first love of the child belongs to the mother, no matter
which its sex. If the love for the mother at this stage is intense, the
father is jealously kept away as a rival. Of course, for the child
itself, the mother has in this early stage of childhood no sexual
significance of any importance. The term “Œdipus-complex” is in so far
not really suitable. At this stage the mother has still the significance
of a protecting, enveloping, food-providing being, who, on this account,
is a source of delight. I do not identify, as I explained before, the
feeling of delight eo ipso with sexuality. In earliest childhood but a
slight amount of sexuality is connected with this feeling of delight.
But, nevertheless, jealousy can play a great part in it, as jealousy
does not belong entirely to the sphere of sexuality. The desire for food
has much to do with the first impulses of jealousy. Certainly, a
relatively germinating eroticism is also connected with it. This element
gradually increases as the years go on, so that the Œdipus-complex soon
assumes its classical form. In the case of the son, the conflict
develops in a more masculine and therefore more typical form, whilst in
the daughter, the typical affection for the father develops, with a
correspondingly jealous attitude toward the mother. We call this
complex, the _Electra-complex_. As everybody knows, Electra took revenge
on her mother for the murder of her husband, because that mother had
robbed her of her father.
Both phantasy-complexes develop with growing age, and reach a new stage
after puberty, when the emancipation from the parents is more or less
attained. The symbol of this time is the one already previously
mentioned; it is the symbol of self-sacrifice. The more the sexuality
develops the more the individual is forced to leave his family and to
acquire independence and autonomy. By its history, the child is closely
connected with its family and specially with its parents. In
consequence, it is often with the greatest difficulty that the child is
able to free itself from its infantile surroundings. The Œdipus- and
Electra-complex give rise to a conflict, if adults cannot succeed in
spiritually freeing themselves; hence arises the possibility of neurotic
disturbance. The libido, which is already sexually developed, takes
possession of the form given by the complex and produces feelings and
phantasies which unmistakably show the effective existence of the
complex, till then perfectly unconscious. The next consequence is the
formation of intense resistances against the immoral inner impulses
which are derived from the now active complexes. The conscious attitude
arising out of this can be of different kinds. Either the consequences
are direct, and then we notice in the son strong resistances against the
father and a typical affectionate and dependent attitude toward the
mother; or the consequences are indirect, that is to say, compensated,
and we notice, instead of the resistances toward the father, a typical
submissiveness here, and an irritated antagonistic attitude toward the
mother. It is possible that direct and compensated consequences take
place alternately. The same thing is to be said of the Electra-complex.
If the libido-sexualis were to cleave fast to these particular forms of
the conflict, murder and incest would be the consequence of the Œdipus
and Electra conflicts. These consequences are naturally not found among
normal people, and not even among amoral (“moral” here implying the
possession of a rationalized and codified moral system) primitive
persons, or humanity would have become extinct long ago. On the
contrary, it is in the natural order of things that what surrounds us
daily and has surrounded us, loses its compelling charm and thus forces
the libido to search for new objects, an important rule which prevents
parricide and inbreeding.
The further development of the libido toward objects outside the family
is the absolutely normal and right way of proceeding, and it is an
abnormal and morbid phenomenon if the libido remains, as it were, glued
to the family. Some indications of this phenomenon are nevertheless to
be noticed in normal people. A direct outcome of the infantile-complex
is the unconscious phantasy of self-sacrifice, which occurs after
puberty, in the succeeding stage of development. Of this I gave a
detailed example in my work, “Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido.” The
phantasy of self-sacrifice means sacrificing infantile wishes. I have
shown this in the work just mentioned and in the same place I have
referred to the parallels in the history of religions.
The Problems of the Incest-Complex
Freud has a special conception of the incest-complex which has given
rise to heated controversy. He starts from the fact that the
Œdipus-complex is generally unconscious, and conceives this as the
result of a repression of a moral kind. It is possible that I am not
expressing myself quite correctly, when I give you Freud’s view in these
words. At any rate, according to him the Œdipus-complex seems to be
repressed, that is, seems to be removed into the unconscious by a
reaction from the conscious tendencies. It almost looks as if the
Œdipus-complex would develop into consciousness if the development of
the child were to go on without restraint and if no cultural tendencies
influenced it. Freud calls this barrier, which prevents the
Œdipus-complex from ripening, the _incest-barrier_. He seems to believe,
so far as one can gather from his work, that the incest-barrier is the
result of experience, of the selective influence of reality, inasmuch as
the unconscious strives without restraint, and in an immediate way, for
its own satisfaction, without any consideration for others. This
conception is in harmony with the conception of Schopenhauer, who says
of the blind world-will that it is so egoistic that a man could slay his
brother merely to grease his boots with his brother’s fat. Freud
considers that the psychological incest-barrier, as postulated by him,
can be compared with the incest-taboo which we find among inferior
races. He further believes that these prohibitions are a proof of the
fact that men really desired incest, for which reason laws were framed
against it even in very primitive cultural stages. He takes the tendency
towards incest to be an absolute concrete sexual wish, lacking only the
quality of consciousness. He calls this complex the root-complex, or
nucleus, of the neuroses, and is inclined, viewing this as the original
one, to reduce nearly the whole psychology of the neuroses, as well as
many other phenomena in the world of mind, to this complex.
CHAPTER VIII
The Etiology of the Neuroses
With this conception of Freud’s we have to return to the question of the
etiology of the neuroses. We have seen that the psychoanalytic theory
began with a traumatic event in childhood, which was only later on found
to be a phantasy, at least in many cases. In consequence, the theory
became modified, and tried to find in the development of abnormal
phantasy the main etiological significance. The investigation of the
unconscious, made by the collaboration of many workers, carried on over
a space of ten years, provided an extensive empirical material, which
demonstrated that the incest-complex was the beginning of the morbid
phantasies. But it was no longer thought that the incest-complex was a
special complex of neurotic people. It was demonstrated to be a
constituent of a normal infantile psyche too. We cannot tell, by its
mere existence, if this complex will give rise to a neurosis or not. To
become pathogenic, it must give rise to a conflict; that is, the
complex, which in itself is harmless, has to become dynamic, and thus
give rise to a conflict.
Herewith, we come to a new and important question. The whole etiological
problem is altered, if the infantile “root-complex” is only a general
form, which is not pathogenic in itself, and requires, as we saw in our
previous exposition, to be subsequently set in action. Under these
circumstances, we dig in vain among the reminiscences of earliest
childhood, as they give us only the general forms of the later
conflicts, but not the conflict itself.
I believe the best thing I can do is to describe the further development
of the theory by demonstrating the case of that young lady whose story
you have heard in part in one of the former lectures. You will probably
remember that the shying of the horses, by means of the anamnestic
explanation, brought back the reminiscence of a comparable scene in
childhood. We here discussed the trauma theory. We found that we had to
look for the real pathological element in the exaggerated phantasy,
which took its origin in a certain retardation of the psychic sexual
development. We have now to apply our theoretical standpoint to the
origin of this particular type of illness, so that we may understand
how, just at that moment, this event of her childhood, which seemed to
be of such potency, could come to constellation.
The simplest way to come to an understanding of this important event
would be by making an exact inquiry into the circumstances of the
moment. The first thing I did was to question the patient about the
society in which she had been at that time, and as to what was the
farewell gathering to which she had been just before. She had been at a
farewell supper, given in honor of her best friend, who was going to a
foreign health-resort for a nervous illness. We hear that this friend is
happily married, and is the mother of one child. We have some right to
doubt this assertion of her happiness. If she were really happily
married, she probably would not be nervous and would not need a cure.
When I put my question differently, I learned that my patient had been
brought back into the host’s house as soon as she was overtaken by her
friends, as this house was the nearest place to bring her to in safety.
In her exhausted condition she received his hospitality. As the patient
came to this part of her history she suddenly broke off, was
embarrassed, fidgetted and tried to turn to another subject. Evidently
we had now come upon some disagreeable reminiscences, which suddenly
presented themselves. After the patient had overcome obstinate
resistances, it was admitted that something very remarkable had happened
that night. The host made her a passionate declaration of love, thus
giving rise to a situation that might well be considered difficult and
painful, considering the absence of the hostess. Ostensibly this
declaration came like a flash of lightning from a clear sky. A small
dose of criticism applied to this assertion will teach us that these
things never drop from the clouds, but have always their previous
history. It was the work of the following weeks to dig out piecemeal a
whole, long love-story.
I can thus roughly describe the picture I got at finally. As a child the
patient was thoroughly boyish, loved only turbulent games for boys,
laughed at her own sex, and flung aside all feminine ways and
occupations. After puberty, the time when the sex-question should have
come nearer to her, she began to shun all society; she hated and
despised, as it were, everything which could remind her even remotely of
the biological destination of mankind, and lived in a world of
phantasies which had nothing in common with the rude reality. So she
escaped, up to her twenty-fourth year, all the little adventures, hopes
and expectations which ordinarily move a woman of this age. (In this
respect women are very often remarkably insincere towards themselves and
towards the physician.) But she became acquainted with two men who were
destined to destroy the thorny hedge which had grown all around her. Mr.
A. was the husband of her best friend at the time; Mr. B. was the
bachelor-friend of this family. Both were to her taste. It seemed to her
pretty soon that Mr. B. was much more sympathetic to her, and from this
resulted a more intimate relationship between herself and him, and the
possibility of an engagement was discussed. Through her relations with
Mr. B., and through her friend, she met Mr. A. frequently. In an
inexplicable way his presence very often excited her and made her
nervous. Just at this time our friend went to a big party. All her
friends were there. She became lost in thought, and played as in a dream
with her ring, which suddenly slipped from her hand and rolled under the
table. Both men tried to find it, and Mr. B. managed to get it. With an
expressive smile he put the ring back on her finger and said: “You know
what this means?” At that moment a strange and irresistible feeling came
over her, she tore the ring from her finger and threw it out of the open
window. Evidently a painful moment ensued, and she soon left the
company, feeling deeply depressed. A short time later she found herself,
for her holidays, accidentally in the same health-resort where Mr. A.
and his wife were staying. Mrs. A. now became more and more nervous,
and, as she felt ill, had to stay frequently at home. The patient often
went out with Mr. A. alone. One day they were out in a small boat. She
was boisterously merry, and suddenly fell overboard. Mr. A. saved her
with great difficulty, and lifted her, half unconscious, into the boat.
He then kissed her. With this romantic event the bonds were woven fast.
To defend herself, our patient tried energetically to get herself
engaged to Mr. B., and to imagine that she loved him. Of course this
queer play did not escape the sharp eye of feminine jealousy. Mrs. A.,
her friend, felt the secret, was worried by it, and her nervousness grew
proportionately. It became more and more necessary for her to go to a
foreign health-resort. The farewell-party was a dangerous opportunity.
The patient knew that her friend and rival was going off the same
evening, so Mr. A. would be alone. Certainly she did not see this
opportunity clearly, as women have the notable capacity “to think”
purely emotionally, and not intellectually. For this reason, it seems to
them as if they never thought about certain matters at all, but as a
matter of fact she had a queer feeling all the evening. She felt
extremely nervous, and when Mrs. A. had been accompanied to the station
and had gone, the hysterical attack occurred on her way back. I asked
her of what she had been thinking, or what she felt at the actual moment
when the trotting horses came along. Her answer was, she had only a
frightful feeling, the feeling that something dreadful was very near to
her, which she could not escape. As you know, the consequence was that
the exhausted patient was brought back into the house of the host, Mr.
A. A simple human mind would understand the situation without
difficulty. An uninitiated person would say: “Well, that is clear
enough, she only intended to return by one way or another to Mr. A.’s
house,” but the psychologist would reproach this layman for his
incorrect way of expressing himself, and would tell him that the patient
was not conscious of the motives of her behavior, and that it was,
therefore, not permissible to speak of the patient’s intention to return
to Mr. A.’s house.
There are, of course, learned psychologists who are capable of
furnishing many theoretical reasons for disputing the meaning of this
behavior. They base their reasons on the dogma of the identity of
consciousness and psyche. The psychology inaugurated by Freud recognized
long ago that it is impossible to estimate psychological actions as to
their final meaning by conscious motives, but that the objective
standard of their psychological results has to be applied for their
right evaluation. Now-a-days it cannot be contested any longer that
there are unconscious tendencies too, which have a great influence on
our modes of reaction, and on the effects to which these in turn give
rise. What happened in Mr. A.’s house bears out this observation; our
patient made a sentimental scene, and Mr. A. was induced to answer it
with a declaration of love. Looked at in the light of this last event,
the whole previous history seems to be very ingeniously directed towards
just this end, but throughout the conscience of the patient struggled
consciously against it. Our theoretical profit from this story is the
clear perception that an unconscious purpose or tendency has brought on
to the stage the scene of the fright from the horses, utilizing thus
very possibly that infantile reminiscence, where the shying horses
galloped towards the catastrophe. Reviewing the whole material, the
scene with the horses—the starting point of the illness—seems now to be
the keystone of a planned edifice. The fright, and the apparent
traumatic effect of the event in childhood, are only brought on the
stage in the peculiar way characteristic of hysteria. But what is thus
put on the stage has become almost a reality. We know from hundreds of
experiences that certain hysterical pains are only put on the stage in
order to reap certain advantages from the sufferer’s surroundings. The
patients not only believe that they suffer, but their sufferings are,
from a psychological standpoint, as real as those due to organic causes;
nevertheless, they are but stage-effects.
The Regression of Libido
This utilization of reminiscences to put on the stage any illness, or an
apparent etiology, is called a _regression of the libido_. The libido
goes back to reminiscences, and makes them actual, so that an apparent
etiology is produced. In this case, by the old theory, the fright from
the horses would seem to be based on a former shock. The resemblance
between the two scenes is unmistakable, and in both cases the patient’s
fright is absolutely real. At any rate, we have no reason to doubt her
assertions in this respect, as they are in full harmony with all other
experiences. The nervous asthma, the hysterical anxiety, the psychogenic
depressions and exaltations, the pains, the convulsions—they are all
very real, and that physician who has himself suffered from a
psychogenic symptom knows that it feels absolutely real. Regressively
re-lived reminiscences, even if they were but phantasies, are as real as
remembrances of events that have once been real.
As the term “regression of libido” shows, we understand by this
retrograde mode of application of the libido, a retreat of the libido to
former stages. In our example, we are able to recognize clearly the way
the process of regression is carried on. At that farewell party, which
proved a good opportunity to be alone with the host, the patient shrank
from the idea of turning this opportunity to her advantage, and yet was
overpowered by her desires, which she had never consciously realized up
to that moment. The libido was not used consciously for that definite
purpose, nor was this purpose ever acknowledged. The libido had to carry
it out through the unconscious, and through the pretext of the fright
caused by an apparently terrible danger. Her feeling at the moment when
the horses approached illustrates our formula most clearly; she felt as
if something inevitable had now to happen.
The process of regression is beautifully demonstrated in an illustration
already used by Freud. The libido can be compared with a stream which is
dammed up as soon as its course meets any impediment, whence arises an
inundation. If this stream has previously, in its upper reaches,
excavated other channels, then these channels will be filled up again by
reason of the damming below. To a certain extent they would appear to be
real river beds, filled with water as before, but at the same time, they
only have a temporary existence. It is not that the stream has
permanently chosen the old channels, but only for as long as the
impediment endures in the main stream. The affluents do not always carry
water, because they were from the first, as it were, not independent
streams, but only former stages of development of the main river, or
passing possibilities, to which an inundation has given the opportunity
for fresh existence. This illustration can directly be transferred to
the development of the application of the libido. The definite
direction, the main river, is not yet found during the childish
development of sexuality. The libido goes instead into all possible
by-paths, and only gradually does the definite form develop. But the
more the stream follows out its main channel, the more the affluents
will dry up and lose their importance, leaving only traces of former
activity. Similarly, the importance of the childish precursors of
sexuality disappears completely as a rule, only leaving behind certain
traces.
If in later life an impediment arises, so that the damming of the libido
reanimates the old by-paths, the condition thus excited is properly a
new one, and something abnormal.
The former condition of the child is normal usage of the libido, whilst
the return of the libido towards the childish past is something
abnormal. Therefore, in my opinion, it is an erroneous terminology to
call the infantile sexual manifestations “perversions,” for it is not
permissible to give normal manifestations pathological terms. This
erroneous usage seems to be responsible for the confusion of the
scientific public. The terms employed in neurotic psychology have been
misapplied here, under the assumption that the abnormal by-paths of the
libido discovered in neurotic people are the same phenomena as are to be
found in children.
The Infantile Amnesia Criticized
The so-called _amnesia of childhood_, which plays an important part in
the “Three Contributions,” is a similar illegitimate retrograde
application from pathology. Amnesia is a pathological condition,
consisting in the repression of certain contents of the conscious. This
condition cannot possibly be the same as the antegrade amnesia of
children, which consists in an incapacity for intentional reproduction,
a condition we find also among savages. This incapacity for reproduction
dates from birth, and can be understood on obvious anatomical and
biological grounds. It would be a strange hypothesis were we willing to
regard this totally different quality of early infantile consciousness
as one to be attributed to repression, in analogy with the condition in
neurosis. The amnesia of neurosis is punched out, as it were, from the
continuity of memory, but the remembrances of earlier childhood exist in
separate islands in the continuity of the non-memory. This condition is
the opposite in every sense of the condition of neurosis, so that the
expression “amnesia,” generally used for this condition, is incorrect.
The “amnesia of childhood” is a conclusion _a posteriori_ from the
psychology of neurosis, just as is the “polymorphic perverse”
disposition of the child.
The Latent Sexual Period Criticized
This error in the theoretical conception is shown clearly in the
so-called _latent sexual period of childhood_. Freud has remarked that
the early infantile so-called sexual manifestations, which I now call
the phenomena of the pre-sexual stage, vanish after a while, and only
reappear much later. Everything that Freud has termed the “suckling’s
masturbation,” that is to say, all those sexual-like actions of which we
spoke before, are said to return later as real onanism. Such a process
of development would be biologically unique. In conformity with this
theory one would have to say, for instance, that when a plant forms a
bud, from which a blossom begins to unfold, the blossom is taken back
again before it is fully developed, and is again hidden within the bud,
to reappear later on in the same form. This impossible supposition is a
consequence of the assertion that the early infantile activities of the
pre-sexual stage are sexual phenomena, and that those manifestations,
which resemble masturbation, are genuinely acts of masturbation. In this
way Freud had to assert that there is a disappearance of sexuality, or,
as he calls it, a _latent sexual period_. What he calls a disappearance
of sexuality is nothing but the _real beginning of sexuality_,
everything preceding was but the fore-stage to which no real sexual
character can be imputed. In this way, the impossible phenomenon of the
latent period is very simply explained. This theory of the latent sexual
period is a striking instance of the incorrectness of the conception of
the early infantile sexuality. But there has been no error of
observation. On the contrary, the hypothesis of the latent sexual period
proves how exactly Freud noticed the apparent recommencement of
sexuality. The error lies in the conception. As we saw before, the first
mistake consists in a somewhat old-fashioned conception of the
multiplicity of instincts. If we accept the idea of two or more
instincts existing side by side, we must naturally conclude that, if one
instinct has not yet become manifest, it is present in nuce in
accordance with the theory of pre-formation. In the physical sphere we
should perhaps have to say that, when a piece of iron passes from the
condition of heat to the condition of light, the light was already
existent in nuce (latent) in the heat. Such assumptions are arbitrary
projections of human ideas into transcendental regions, contravening the
prescription of the theory of cognition.
We have thus no right to speak of a sexual instinct existing in nuce, as
we then give an arbitrary explanation of phenomena which can be
explained otherwise, and in a more adequate manner. We can speak of the
manifestations of a nutrition instinct, of the manifestations of a
sexual instinct, etc., but we have only the right to do so when the
function has quite clearly reached the surface. We only speak of light
when the iron is visibly luminous, but not when the iron is merely hot.
Freud, as an observer, sees clearly that the sexuality of neurotic
people is not entirely comparable with infantile sexuality, for there is
a great difference, for instance, between the uncleanliness of a child
of two years old and the uncleanliness of a katatonic patient of forty.
The former is a psychological and normal phenomenon; the latter is
extraordinarily pathological. Freud inserted a short passage in his
“Three Contributions” saying that the infantile form of neurotic
sexuality is either wholly, or at any rate partly, due to a regression.
That is, even in those cases where we might say, these are still the
same by-paths, we find that the function of the by-paths is still
increased by regression. Freud thus recognizes that the infantile
sexuality of neurotic people is _for the greater part_ a regressive
phenomenon. That this must be so is also shown through the further
insight obtained from the investigations of recent years, that the
observations concerning the psychology of the childhood of neurotic
people hold equally good for normal people. At any rate we can say that
the history of the development of infantile sexuality in persons with
neurosis differs but by a hair’s breadth from that of normal beings who
have escaped the attention of the expert appraiser. Striking differences
are exceptional.
Further Remarks on the Etiology of Neurosis
The more we penetrate into the heart of infantile development, the more
we receive the impression that as little can be found there of
etiological significance, as in the infantile shock. Even with the
acutest ferreting into history, we shall never discover why people
living on German soil had just such a fate, and why the Gauls another.
The further we get away, in analytical investigations from the epoch of
the manifest neurosis, the less can we expect to find the real motive of
the neurosis, since the dynamic disproportions grow fainter and fainter
the further we go back into the past. In constructing our theory so as
to deduce the neurosis from causes in the distant past, we are first and
foremost obeying the impulse of our patients to withdraw themselves as
far as possible from the critical present. The pathogenic conflict
exists _only in the present moment_. It is just as if a nation wanted to
regard its miserable political conditions at the actual moment as due to
the past; as if the Germany of the 19th century had attributed its
political dismemberment and incapacity to its suppression by the Romans,
instead of having sought the actual sources of her difficulties in the
present. _Only_ in the _actual present_ are the effective causes, and
only here are the possibilities of removing them.
The Etiological Significance of the Actual Present
A greater part of the psychoanalytic school is under the spell of the
conception that the conflicts of childhood are conditio sine qua non for
the neuroses. It is not only the theorist, who studies the psychology of
childhood from scientific interest, but the practical man also, who
believes that he has to turn the history of infancy inside out to find
there the dynamic source of the actual neurosis—it were a fruitless
enterprise if done under this presumption. In the meantime, the most
important factor escapes the analyst, namely, the conflict and the
claims of the present time. In the case before us, we should not
understand any of the motives which produced the hysterical attacks if
we looked for them in earliest childhood. It is the form alone which
those reminiscences determine to a large extent, but the dynamic
originates from the present time. The insight into the actual meaning of
these motives is real understanding.
We can now understand why that moment was pathogenic, as well as why it
chose those particular symbols. Through the conception of regression,
the theory is freed from the narrow formula of the importance of the
events in childhood, and the actual conflict thus gets that significance
which, from an empirical standpoint, belongs to it implicitly. Freud
himself introduced the conception of regression in his “Three
Contributions,” acknowledging rightly that our observations do not
permit us to seek the cause of neurosis exclusively in the past. If it
is true, then, that reminiscent matter becomes active again as a rule by
regression, we have to consider the following question: Have, perhaps,
the apparent effective results of reminiscences to be referred in
general to a regression of the libido? As I said before, Freud suggested
in his “Three Contributions,” that the infantilism of neurotic sexuality
was, _for the greater part, due to the regression of the libido_. This
statement deserves greater prominence than it there received. Freud did
give it this prominence in his later works to a somewhat greater extent.
The recognition of the regression of the libido very largely reduces the
etiological significance of the events of childhood. It has already
seemed to us rather astonishing that the Œdipus- or the Electra-complex
should have a determining value in regard to the onset of a neurosis,
since these complexes exist in everyone. They exist even with those
persons who have never known their own father and mother, but have been
educated by their step-parents. I have analyzed cases of this kind, and
found that the incest-complex was as well developed as in other
patients. It seems to us that this is good proof that the incest-complex
is much more a purely regressive production of phantasies than a
reality. From this standpoint, the events in childhood are only
significant for the neuroses in so far as they are revived later through
a regression of the libido. That this must be true to a great extent is
also shown by the fact that the infantile sexual shock never causes
hysteria, nor does the incest-complex, which is common to everyone. The
neurosis only begins as soon as the incest-complex becomes actuated by
regression.
So we come to the question, why does the libido make a regression? To
answer it we must study carefully under what circumstances regression
arises. In treating this problem with my patients, I generally give the
following example: While a mountain climber is attempting the ascent of
a certain peak, he happens to meet with an insurmountable obstacle, let
us say, some precipitous rocky wall which cannot be surmounted. After
having vainly sought for another path, he will have to return and
regretfully abandon the climbing of that peak. He will say to himself:
“It is not in my power to surmount this difficulty, so I will climb
another easier mountain.” In this case, we find there is a normal
utilization of the libido. The man returns, when he finds an
insurmountable difficulty, and uses his libido, which could not attain
its original aim, for the ascent of another mountain. Now let us imagine
that this rocky wall was not really unclimbable so far as his physique
was concerned, but that from mere nervousness he withdrew from this
somewhat difficult enterprise. In this case, there are two
possibilities: I. The man will be annoyed by his own cowardice, and will
wish to prove himself less timid on another occasion, or perhaps will
even admit that with his timidity he ought never to undertake such a
difficult ascent. At any rate, he will acknowledge that he has not
sufficient moral capacity for these difficulties. He therefore uses that
libido, which did not attain its original aim, for a useful
self-criticism, and for sketching a plan by which he may be able, with
due regard to his moral capacity, to realize his wish to climb. II. The
possibility is, that the man does not realize his own cowardice, and
declares off-hand that this mountain is physically unattainable,
although he is quite able to see that, with sufficient courage, the
obstacle could have been overcome. But he prefers to deceive himself.
Thus the psychological situation which is of importance for our problem
is created.
The Etiological Significance of Failure of Adaptation
Probably this man knows very well that it would have been physically
possible to overcome the difficulty, that he was only morally incapable
of doing so. He rejects this idea on account of its painful nature. He
is so conceited that he cannot admit to himself his cowardice. He brags
of his courage and prefers to declare things impossible rather than his
own courage inadequate. But through this behavior he comes into
opposition with his own self: on the one hand he has a right view of the
situation, on the other he hides this knowledge from himself, behind the
illusion of his infallible courage. He represses the proper view, and
forcibly tries to impress his subjective, illusive opinion upon reality.
The result of this contradiction is that the libido is divided, and that
the two parts are directed against one another. He opposes his wish to
climb a mountain by his artificial self-created opinion, that its ascent
is impossible. He does not turn to the real impossibility, but to an
artificial one, to a self-given limitation; thus he is in disharmony
with himself, and from this moment has an internal conflict. Now insight
into his cowardice will get the upper hand; now obstinacy and pride. In
either case the libido is engaged in a useless civil war. Thus the man
becomes incapable of any enterprise. He will never realize his wish to
climb a mountain, and he goes perfectly astray as to his moral
qualities. He is therefore less capable of performing his work, he is
not fully adapted, he can be compared to a neurotic patient. The libido
which withdrew from before this difficulty has neither led to honest
self-criticism, nor to a desperate struggle to overcome the obstacle; it
has only been used to maintain his cheap pretence that the ascent was
really impossible, even heroic courage could have availed nothing. Such
a reaction is called an _infantile reaction_. It is very characteristic
of children, and of naïve minds, not to find the fault in their own
shortcomings, but in external circumstances, and to impute to these
their own subjective judgment. This man solves his problem in an
infantile way, that is, he replaces the suitable mode of adaptation of
our former case by a mode of adaptation belonging to the infantile mind.
This is regression. His libido withdraws from an obstacle which cannot
be surmounted, and replaces a real action by an infantile illusion.
These cases are very commonly met with in practice among neurotics. I
will remind you here of those well-known cases in which young girls
become hysterical with curious suddenness just when they are called upon
to decide about their engagements. As an instance, I should like to
describe to you the case of two sisters, separated only by one year in
age. They were similar in capacities and characters; their education was
the same; they grew up in the same surroundings, and under the influence
of their parents. Both were healthy; neither the one nor the other
showed any nervous symptoms. An attentive observer might have discovered
that the elder daughter was the more beloved by the parents. This
affection depended on a certain sensitiveness which this daughter
showed. She asked for more affection than the younger one, was also
somewhat precocious and more serious. Besides, she showed some charming
childish traits, just those things which, through their slightly
capricious and unbalanced character, make a personality especially
charming. No wonder that father and mother had a great joy in their
elder daughter. As both sisters became of marriageable age, almost at
the same time they became intimately acquainted with two young men, and
the possibility of their marriages soon approached. As is generally the
case, certain difficulties existed. Both girls were young and had very
little experience of the world. Both men were relatively young too, and
in positions which might have been better; they were only at the
beginning of a career, but nevertheless, both were capable young men.
Both girls lived in a social atmosphere which gave them the right to
certain social expectations. It was a situation in which a certain doubt
as to the suitability of either marriage was permissible. Moreover, both
girls were insufficiently acquainted with their prospective husbands,
and were therefore not quite sure of their love. There were many
hesitations and doubts. Here it was noticed that the elder girl always
showed greater waverings in her decisions. From these hesitations some
painful moments arose between the girls and the young men, who naturally
longed for more certainty. At such moments the elder sister was much
more excited than the younger one. Several times she went weeping to her
mother, complaining of her own hesitation. The younger one was somewhat
more decided, and put an end to the unsettled situation by accepting her
suitor. She thus got over her difficulty and the further events ran
smoothly. As soon as the admirer of the elder sister became aware that
the younger one had put matters on a surer footing, he rushed to his
lady and begged in a somewhat passionate way for her acceptance. His
passion irritated and frightened her a little, although she was really
inclined to follow her sister’s example. She answered in a somewhat
haughty and offhand way. He replied with sharp reproaches, causing her
to get still more excited. The end was a scene with tears, and he went
away in an angry mood. At home, he told the story to his mother, who
expressed the opinion that this girl was really unsuitable for him, and
that it would be perhaps better to choose some one else. The girl, for
her part, doubted very much if she really loved this man. It suddenly
seemed to her impossible to follow him to an unknown destiny, and to be
obliged to leave her beloved parents. From that moment, she was
depressed; she showed unmistakable signs of the greatest jealousy
towards her sister, but would neither see nor admit that she was
jealous. The former affectionate relations with her parents changed
also. Instead of her earlier childlike affection, she betrayed a
lamentable state of mind, which increased sometimes to pronounced
irritability; weeks of depression ensued. Whilst the younger sister
celebrated her wedding, the elder went to a distant health-resort for a
nervous intestinal trouble. I shall not continue the history of the
disease; it ended in an ordinary hysteria.
In analyzing this case, great resistance to the sexual problem was
found. The resistance depended on many perverse phantasies, the
existence of which would not be admitted by the patient. The question,
whence arose such perverse phantasies, so unexpected in a young girl,
brought us to the discovery that once as a child, eight years old, she
had found herself suddenly confronted in the street by an exhibitionist.
She was rooted to the spot by fright, and even much later ugly images
persecuted her in her dreams. Her younger sister was with her at the
time. The night after the patient told me this, she dreamed of a man in
a gray suit, who seemed about to do in front of her what the
exhibitionist had done. She awoke with a cry of terror. The first
association to the gray suit was a suit of her father’s, which he had
been wearing on an excursion which she made with him when she was about
six years old. This dream connects the father, without any doubt, with
the exhibitionist. This must be done for some reason. Did something
happen with the father, which could possibly call forth this
association? This problem met with great resistance from the patient.
But she could not get rid of it. At the next sitting she reproduced some
early reminiscences, when she had noticed her father undressing himself.
Again, she came one day excited and terribly shaken, and told me that
she had had an abominable vision, absolutely distinct. In bed at night,
she felt herself again a child of two or three years old, and she saw
her father standing by her bed in an obscene attitude. The story was
gasped out piece by piece, obviously with the greatest internal
struggle. This was followed by violent reproaches, of how dreadful it is
that a father should ever behave to his child in such a terrible manner.
Nothing is less probable than that the father really did this. It is
only a phantasy, probably first constructed in the course of the
analysis from that same need of discovering a cause which once induced
the physician to form the theory that hysteria was only caused by such
impressions. This case seemed to me suitable to demonstrate the meaning
of the theory of regression, and to show at the same time the source of
the theoretical mistakes so far. We saw that both sisters were
originally only slightly different. From the moment of the engagement
their ways were totally separated. They seemed now to have quite
different characters. The one, vigorous in health, and enjoying life,
was a good and courageous woman, willing to undertake the natural
demands of life; the other was sad, ill-tempered, full of bitterness and
malice, disinclined to make any effort towards a reasonable life,
egotistical, quibbling, and a nuisance to all about her. This striking
difference was only brought out when the one sister happily passed
through the difficulties of her engagement, whilst the other did not.
For both, it hung to a certain extent only on a hair, whether the affair
would be broken off or not. The younger one, somewhat calmer, was
therefore more deliberate, and able to find the right word at the right
moment. The elder one was more spoiled and more sensitive, consequently
more influenced by her emotions, and could not find the right word, nor
had she the courage to sacrifice her pride to put things straight
afterwards. This little circumstance had a very important effect.
Originally the conditions were much the same for both sisters. The
greater sensitiveness of the elder produced the difference. The question
now is: Whence arose this sensitiveness with its unfortunate results?
The analysis demonstrated the existence of an extraordinarily developed
sexuality of infantile phantastic character; in addition, an incestuous
phantasy towards the father. We have a quick and easy solution of the
problem of this sensitiveness, if we admit that these phantasies had a
lively, and therefore effective existence. We might thus readily
understand why this girl was so sensitive. She was shut up in her own
phantasies and strongly attached to her father. Under these
circumstances, it would have been really a wonder had she been willing
to love and marry another man. The more we pursue our need for a
causation, and pursue the development of these phantasies back to their
beginning, the greater grow the difficulties of the analysis, that is to
say, the resistances as we call them. At the end we should find that
impressive scene, that obscene act, whose improbability has already been
established. This scene has exactly the character of a subsequent
phantastic formation. Therefore, we have to conceive these difficulties,
which we called “resistances,” at least in this part of the analysis, as
an opposition of the patient against the formation of such phantasies,
and not as a resistance against the conscious admittance of a painful
remembrance.
You will ask with astonishment, to what aim the patient contrives such a
phantasy? You will even be inclined to suggest that the physician forced
the patient to invent it, otherwise she would probably never have
produced such an absurd idea. I do not venture to doubt that there have
been cases in which, by dint of the physician’s desire to find a cause,
especially under the influence of the shock-theory, the patient has been
brought to contrive such phantasies. But the physician would never have
come to this theory, had he not followed the patient’s line of thought,
thus taking part in this retrograde movement of the libido which we call
regression. The physician, consequently, only carried right through to
its consequence what the patient was afraid to carry out, namely, a
regression, a falling back of the libido to its former desires. The
analysis, in following the libido-regression, does not always follow the
exact way marked by its historical development, but very often rather a
later phantasy, which only partly depends on former realities. In our
case, only some of the circumstances are real, and it is but much later
that they get their great importance, namely, at the moment when the
libido regresses. Wherever the libido takes hold of a reminiscence, we
may expect that this reminiscence will be elaborated and altered, as
everything that is touched by the libido revives, takes on dramatic
form, and becomes systematized. We have to admit that, in our case,
almost the greater part of these phantasies became significant
subsequently, after the libido had made a regression, after it had taken
hold of everything that could be suitable, and had made out of all this
a phantasy. Then that phantasy, keeping pace with the retrograde
movement of the libido, came back at last to the father and put upon him
all the infantile sexual desires. Even so it was thought in ancient
times that the golden age of Paradise lay in the past! In the case
before us we know that all the phantasies brought out by analysis did
become subsequently of importance. From this standpoint only, we are not
able to explain the beginning of the neurosis; we should constantly move
in a circle. The critical moment for this neurosis was that in which the
girl and man were inclined to love one another, but in which an
inopportune sensitiveness on the part of the patient caused the
opportunity to slip by.
_The Conception of Sensitiveness._—We might say, and the
psychoanalytical conception inclines in this direction, that this
critical sensitiveness arises from some peculiar psychological personal
history, which determined this end. We know that such sensitiveness in a
psychogenic neurosis is always a symptom of a discord within the
subject’s self, a symptom of a struggle between two divergent
tendencies. Both tendencies have their own previous psychological story.
In this case, we are able to show that this special resistance, the
content of that critical sensitiveness, is, as a matter of fact,
connected in the patient’s previous history, with certain infantile
sexual manifestations, and also with that so-called traumatic event—all
things which are capable of casting a shadow on sexuality. This would be
so far plausible if the sister of the patient had not lived more or less
the same life, without experiencing all these consequences. I mean, she
did not develop a neurosis. So we have to agree that the patient
experienced these things in a special way, perhaps more intensely than
the younger one. Perhaps also, the events of her earlier childhood were
to her of a disproportionate importance. But if it had been the case to
such a marked extent, something of it would surely have been noticed
earlier. In later youth, the earlier events of childhood were as much
forgotten by the patient as by her sister. Another supposition is
therefore possible. This critical sensitiveness is not the consequence
of the special previous past history, but springs from something that
had existed all along. A careful observer of small children can notice,
even in early infancy, any unusual sensitiveness. I once analyzed a
hysterical patient who showed me a letter written by her mother when
this patient was two and a half years old. Her mother wrote about her
and her sister. The elder was always good-tempered and enterprising, but
the other was always in difficulties with both people and things. The
first one became in later life hysterical, the other one katatonic.
These far-reaching differences, which go back into earliest childhood,
cannot depend on the more or less accidental events of life, but have to
be considered as being innate differences. From this point of view, we
cannot any longer pretend that her special previous psychological
history caused this sensitiveness at that critical moment; it would be
more correct to say: This innate sensitiveness is manifested most
distinctly in uncommon situations.
This surplus of sensitiveness is found very often as an enrichment of a
personality contributing even more to the charm of the character than to
its detriment. But in difficult and uncommon situations the advantage
very often turns into a disadvantage, as the inopportunely excited
emotion renders calm consideration impossible. Nothing could be more
incorrect than to consider this sensitiveness as eo ipso a morbid
constituent of a character. If it really were so, we should have to
regard at least one third of humanity as pathological. Only if the
consequences of this sensitiveness are destructive to the individual
have we a right to consider this quality as abnormal.
_Primary Sensitiveness and Regression._—We come to this difficulty when
we crudely oppose the two conceptions as to the significance of the
previous psychological history as we have done here; in reality, the two
are not mutually exclusive. A certain innate sensitiveness leads to a
special psychological history, to special reactions to infantile events,
which are not without their own influence on the development of the
childish conception of life. Events bound up with powerful impressions
can never pass without leaving some trace on sensitive people. Some of
these often remain effective throughout life, and such events can exert
an apparently determining influence on the whole mental development.
Dirty and disillusional experiences in the domain of sexuality are
specially apt to frighten a sensitive person for years and years. Under
these conditions, the mere thought of sexuality raises the greatest
resistances. As the creation of the shock-theory proved, we are too much
inclined, in consequence of our knowledge of such cases, to attribute
the emotional development of a person more or less to accidents. The
earlier shock-theory went too far in this respect. We must never forget
that _the world is, in the first place, a subjective phenomenon. The
impressions we receive from these happenings are also our own doing._ It
is not the case that the impressions are forced on us unconditionally,
but our disposition gives the value to the impressions. A man with
stored-up libido will as a rule have quite different impressions, much
more vivid impressions, than one who organizes his libido into a rich
activity. Such a sensitive person will have a more profound impression
from certain events which might harmlessly pass over a less sensitive
subject. Therefore, in conjunction with the accidental impression, we
have to consider seriously the subjective conditions. Our former
considerations, and the observation of the concrete case especially,
show us that the important subjective condition is the regression. It is
shown by experience in practice, that the effect of regression is so
enormous, so important and so impressive, that we might perhaps be
inclined to attribute the effect of accidental events to the mechanism
of regression only. Without any doubt, there are cases in which
everything is dramatized, where even the traumatic events are artefacts
of the imagination, and in which the few real events are subsequently
entirely distorted through phantastic elaboration. We can simply say,
that there is not a single case of neurosis, in which the emotional
value of the preceding event is not considerably aggravated through the
regression of libido, and even where great parts of the infantile
development seem to be of extraordinary importance, they only gain this
through regression.
As is always the case, truth is found in the middle. The previous
history has certainly a determining historic value, which is reinforced
by the regression. Sometimes the traumatic significance of the previous
history comes more into the foreground; sometimes only the regressive
meaning. These observations have naturally to be applied to the
infantile sexual events too. Obviously there are cases in which brutal
sexual accidents justify the shadow thrown on sexuality, and explain
thoroughly the later resistance of the individual towards sexuality.
Dreadful impressions other than sexual can also sometimes leave behind a
permanent feeling of insecurity, which may determine the individual in a
hesitating attitude towards reality. Where real events of undoubted
traumatic potentiality are wanting—as is generally the case with
neurosis—there the mechanism of regression prevails. Of course, you
could object that we have no criterion for the potential effect of the
trauma or shock, as this is a highly relative conception. It is not
quite so; we have in the standard of the average normal a criterion for
the potential effect of a shock. Whatever is capable of making a strong
and persistent impression upon a normal person must be considered as
having a determining influence for neurotics also. But we may not
straightway attribute any importance, even in neurosis, to impressions
which in a normal case would disappear and be forgotten. In most of the
cases where any event has an unexpected traumatic influence, we shall
find in all probability a regression, that is to say, a secondary
phantastic dramatization. The earlier in childhood an impression is said
to have arisen, the more suspicious is its reality. Animals and
primitive people have not that readiness in reproducing memories from a
single impression which we find among civilized people. Very young
children have by no means that impressionability which we find in older
children. A certain higher development of the mental faculties is a
necessary condition for impressionability. Therefore we may agree that
the earlier a patient places some significant event in his childhood,
the more likely it will be a phantastic and regressive one. Important
impressions are only to be expected from later youth. At any rate, we
have generally to attribute to the events of earliest childhood, that
is, from the fifth year backwards, but a regressive importance.
Sometimes the regression does play an overwhelming part in later years,
but even then one must not ascribe too little importance to accidental
experiences. It is well known that, in the later course of a neurosis,
the accidental events and the regression together form a vicious circle.
The withdrawal from the experiences of life leads to regression, and the
regression aggravates the resistances towards life.
In the conception of regression psychoanalysis has made one of the most
important discoveries which have been made in this sphere. Not only has
the earlier exposition of the genesis of neurosis been already
subverted, or at least widely modified, but, at the same time, the
_actual conflict_ has received its proper valuation.
The Significance of the Actual Conflict
In the case I have described, we saw that we could understand the
symptomatological dramatization as soon as it could be conceived as an
expression of the actual conflict. Here the psychoanalytic theory agrees
with the results of the association-experiments, of which I spoke in my
lectures[10] at Clark University. The association-experiment, with a
neurotic person, gives us a series of references to certain conflicts of
the actual life, which we call complexes. These complexes contain those
problems and difficulties which have brought the patient into opposition
with himself. Generally we find a love-conflict of an obvious character.
From the standpoint of the association-experiment, neurosis seems to be
something quite different from what it appeared from the standpoint of
the earlier psychoanalytic theory. Considered from the standpoint of the
latter theory, neurosis seemed to be a growth which had its roots in
earliest childhood, and overgrew the normal structure. Considered from
the standpoint of the association-experiment, neurosis seems to be a
reaction from an actual conflict, which is naturally found also among
normal people, but among them the conflict is solved without too great
difficulty. The neurotic remains in the grip of his conflict, and his
neurosis seems, more or less, to be the consequence of this stagnation.
So we may say that the result of the association-experiments tell in
favor of the theory of regression.
With the former historical conception of neurosis, we thought we
understood clearly why a neurotic person, with his powerful
parent-complex, had such great difficulty in adapting himself to life.
Now that we know that normal persons have the same complex, and in
principle have to pass through just the same psychological development
as a neurotic, we can no longer explain neurosis as a certain
development of phantasy-systems. The really illuminating way to put the
problem is a prospective one. We do not ask any longer if the patient
has a father- or a mother-complex, or unconscious incest-phantasies
which worry him. To-day, we know that every one has such things. The
belief that only neurotics had these complexes was an error. We ask now:
What is the task which the patient does not wish to fulfil? From which
necessary difficulties of life does the patient try to withdraw himself?
When people try always to adapt themselves to the conditions of life,
the libido is employed rightly and adequately. When this is not the
case, the libido is stored up and produces regressive symptoms. The
inadequate adaptation, that is to say, the abnormal indecision of
neurotics in face of difficulties, is easily accounted for by their
strong subjection to their phantasies, in consequence of which reality
seems to them, wholly or partly, more unreal, valueless and
uninteresting than to normal people. These heightened phantasies are the
results of innumerable regressions. The ultimate and deepest root is the
innate sensitiveness, which causes difficulties even to the infant at
the mother’s breast, in the form of unnecessary irritation and
resistances. Call it sensitiveness or whatever you like, this unknown
element of predisposition is in every case of neurosis.
The Etiological Significance of Phantasy Criticized
The apparent etiological development of neurosis, discovered by
psychoanalysis, is in reality only the work of causally connected
phantasies, which the patient has created from that libido which at
times he did not employ in the biological adaptation. Thus, these
apparently etiological phantasies seem to be forms of compensation,
disguises, for an unfulfilled adaptation to reality. The vicious circle
previously mentioned between the withdrawing in the face of difficulties
and the regression into the world of phantasies, is naturally
well-suited to give the illusion of an apparent striking causal
relationship, so that both the patient and the physician believe in it.
In such a development accidental experiences are only “extenuating
circumstances.” I feel I must make allowance for those critics who, on
reading the history of psychoanalytic patients, get the impression of
phantastic elaboration. Only they make the mistake of attributing the
phantastic artefacts and far-fetched arbitrary symbolism to the
suggestion and to the awful phantasy of the physician, instead of to the
unequalled fertility of phantasy on the part of the patient. Of a truth,
there is a good deal of artificial elaboration in the phantasies of a
psychoanalytic case. There are generally significant signs of the
patient’s active imagination. The critics are not so wrong when they say
that their neurotic patients have no such phantasies. I have no doubt
that patients are unconscious of the greater part of their own
phantasies. A phantasy only “really” exists in the unconscious, when it
has some notable effect upon the conscious, _e. g._, in the form of a
dream; otherwise, we may say with a clear conscience that it is not
real. Every one who overlooks the frequently nearly imperceptible
effects of unconscious phantasies upon the conscious, or renounces the
fundamental, and technically incontestable analysis of dreams, can
easily overlook the phantasies of his patients altogether. We are,
therefore, inclined to smile when we hear this repeated objection. But
we must admit that there is some truth in it. The regressive tendency of
the patient is strengthened by the attention bestowed on it, and
directed to the unconscious, that is to say, to the phantasies he
discovers and forms during analysis. We might even perhaps go so far as
to say that, during the time of analysis, this phantasy-production is
greatly increased, as the patient is strengthened in his regressive
tendency, by the interest taken by the physician and originates even
more phantasies than he did before. Hence, our critics have repeatedly
stated that a conscientious therapy of the neurosis should go in exactly
the opposite direction to that taken by psychoanalysis; in other words,
it has been the chief endeavor of therapy, hitherto, to extricate the
patient from his unhealthy phantasies and bring him back again to real
life.
Footnote 10:
Am. Journ. Psych., April, 1910.
CHAPTER IX
The Therapeutical Principles of Psychoanalysis
While the psychoanalyst, of course, knows of this therapeutic tendency
to extricate the patient from his unhealthy phantasies, he also knows
just how far this mere extricating of neurotic patients from their
phantasies goes. As physicians, we should never think of preferring a
difficult and complicated method, assailed by all authorities, to a
simple, clear and easy one without good reason. I am perfectly
well-acquainted with hypnotic suggestion, and with Dubois’ method of
persuasion, but I do not use these methods, on account of their relative
inadequacy. For the same reason, I do not use the direct “ré-éducation
de la volonté” as the psychoanalytic method gives me better results.
In applying psychoanalysis we must grant the regressive phantasies of
the patient, for psychoanalysis has a much broader outlook, as regards
the valuation of symptoms, than have the above psychotherapeutic
methods. These all emanate from the assertion that a neurosis is an
absolute morbid formation.
The reigning school of neurology has never thought of considering
neurosis as a healing process also, and of attributing to the neurotic
formations a quite special teleological meaning. Neurosis, like every
other disease, is a compromise between the morbid tendencies, and the
normal function. Modern medicine no longer considers fever as the
illness itself, but a purposeful reaction of the organism.
Psychoanalysis, likewise, no longer conceives a neurosis as eo ipso
morbid, but as also having a meaning and a purpose. From this there
follows the more reserved and expectant attitude of psychoanalysis
towards neurosis. Psychoanalysis does not judge the value of the
symptoms, but first tries to understand what tendencies lie beneath
these symptoms. If we were able to abolish a neurosis in the same way,
for instance, as a cancer is destroyed, then at the same time there
would be destroyed a great amount of available energy also. We save this
energy, that is, we make it serve the purposes of the instinct for
health, as soon as we can trace the meaning of these symptoms; by taking
part in the regressive movement of the patient. Those unfamiliar with
the essentials of psychoanalysis will have some difficulty in
understanding how a therapeutic effect can come to pass when the
physician takes part in the pernicious phantasies of the patient. Not
only critics, but the patients also, doubt the therapeutic value of such
a method, which concentrates attention upon phantasies which the patient
rejects as worthless and reprehensible. The patients will often tell you
that their former physicians forbade them to occupy themselves with
their phantasies, and told them that they must only consider that it is
well with them, when they are free, if but momentarily, from their awful
torments. So, it seems strange enough that it should be of any use to
them, when the treatment brings them back to the very thing from which
they have tried constantly to escape. The following answer may be made:
all depends upon the position which the patient takes up towards his own
phantasies. These phantasies have been hitherto, for the patient, an
absolutely passive and involuntary manifestation. As we say, he was lost
in his dreams. The patient’s so-called brooding is an involuntary kind
of dreaming too. What psychoanalysis demands from a patient is only
apparently the same. Only a man who has a very superficial knowledge of
psychoanalysis can confuse this passive dreaming with the position taken
up in analysis. What psychoanalysis asks from the patient is just the
contrary of what the patient has always done. The patient can be
compared to a person who, unintentionally, has fallen into the water and
sunk, whilst psychoanalysis wants him to dive in, as it was no mere
chance which led him to fall in at just that spot. There lies a sunken
treasure, and only a diver can raise it.
The patient, judging his phantasies from the standpoint of his reason,
regards them as valueless and senseless; but, in reality, the phantasies
have their great influence on the patient because they are of great
importance. They are old, sunken treasures, which can only be recovered
by a diver, that is, the patients, contrary to their wont, must now pay
an active attention to their inner life. Where they formerly dreamed,
they must now think, consciously and intentionally. This new way of
thinking about himself has about as much resemblance to the patient’s
former mental condition as a diver has to a drowning man. The earlier
joy in indulgence has now become a purpose and an aim—that is, has
become work. The patient, assisted by the physician, occupies himself
with his phantasies, not to lose himself therein, but to uproot them,
piece by piece, and to bring them into daylight. He thus reaches an
objective standpoint towards his inner life, and everything he formerly
loathed and feared is now considered consciously. This contains the
basis of the whole psychoanalytic therapy. In consequence of his
illness, the patient stood, partially or totally, outside of real life.
Consequently he neglected many of his life’s duties, either in regard to
social work or to the ordinary daily tasks. If he wishes to be well, he
must return to the fulfilment of his particular obligations. Let me say,
by way of caution, that we are not to understand by such “duties,” some
general ethical postulates, but duties towards himself. Nor does this
mean that they are eo ipso egoistic interests, since we are social
beings as well, a matter too easily forgotten by individualists. An
ordinary person will feel very much more comfortable sharing a common
virtue than possessing an individual vice, even if the latter is a very
seductive one. They must be already neurotic, or otherwise extraordinary
people who can be deluded by such particular interests. The neurotic
fled from his duties and his libido withdrew, at least partly, from the
tasks imposed by real life. In consequence, the libido became
introverted and directed towards an inner life. The libido followed the
path of regression: to a large extent phantasies replaced reality,
because the patient refused to overcome certain real difficulties.
Unconsciously the neurotic patient prefers—and very often consciously
too—his dreams and phantasies to reality. To bring him back to real life
and to the fulfilment of its necessary duties, the analysis proceeds
along the same false path of regression which has been taken by his
libido; so that the beginning of psychoanalysis looks as if it were
supporting the morbid tendencies of the patient. But psychoanalysis
follows these phantasies, these wrong paths, in order to restore the
libido, which is the valuable part of the phantasies, to the conscious
self and to the duties of the moment. This can only be done by bringing
the phantasies into the light of day, and along with them the libido
bound up with them. We might leave these unconscious phantasies to their
shadowy existence, if no libido were attached to them. It is unavoidable
that the patient, feeling himself at the beginning of analysis confirmed
in his regressive tendencies, leads his analytical interest, amid
increasing resistances, down to the depths of the shadowy world. We can
easily understand that any physician who is a normal person experiences
the greatest resistance towards the thoroughly morbid, regressive
tendency of the patient, since he feels quite certain that this tendency
is pathological. And this all the more because, as physician, he
believes he is right in refusing to give heed to his patient’s
phantasies. It is quite conceivable that the physician feels a repulsion
towards this tendency; it is undoubtedly repugnant to see how a person
is completely given up to such phantasies, finding only himself of any
importance and never ceasing to admire or despise himself. The esthetic
sense of normal people has, as a rule, little pleasure in neurotic
phantasies, even if it does not find them absolutely repulsive. The
psychoanalyst must put aside such esthetic judgment, just as every
physician must, who really tries to help his patients. He may not fear
any dirty work. Of course there are a great many patients physically
ill, who, without undergoing an exact examination or local treatment, do
recover by the use of general physical, dietetic, or suggestive means.
Severe cases can, however, only be helped by a more exact examination
and therapy, based on a profound knowledge of the illness. Our
psychotherapeutic methods hitherto have been like these general
measures. In slight cases they did no harm; on the contrary, they were
often of great service. But for a great many patients these measures
have proved inadequate. If they really can be helped, it will be by
psychoanalysis, which is not to say that psychoanalysis is a universal
panacea. Such a sneer proceeds only from ill-natured criticism. We know
very well that psychoanalysis fails in many cases. As everybody knows,
we shall never be able to cure all illnesses.
This “diving” work of analysis brings dirty matter piecemeal out of the
slime, which must then be cleansed before we can tell its value. The
dirty phantasies are valueless and are thrown aside, but the libido
actuating them is of value and this, after cleansing, becomes
serviceable again. To the psychoanalyst, as to every specialist, it will
sometimes seem that the phantasies have also a value of their own, and
not only by reason of the libido linked with them. But their value is
not, in the first instance, for the patient. For the physician, these
phantasies have a scientific value, just as if is of special interest to
the surgeon to know whether the pus contained staphylococci or
streptococci. To the patient it is all the same, and for him, it is
better that the doctor conceal his scientific interest, in order not to
tempt him to have greater pleasure than necessary in his phantasies. The
etiological importance which is attached to these phantasies,
incorrectly, to my mind, explains why so much room is given up in
psychoanalytic literature to the extensive discussion of the various
sexual phantasies. Once if is known that absolutely nothing is
impossible in the sphere of sexual phantasy, the former estimate of
these phantasies will disappear, and therewith the endeavor to discover
in them an etiological import. Nor will the most extended discussion of
these cases ever be able to exhaust this sphere.
Every case is theoretically inexhaustible. But in general the production
of phantasies ceases after a time. Naturally, we must not conclude from
this that the possibility of creating phantasies is exhausted, but the
cessation in their production only means that there is then no more
libido on the path of regression. The end of the regressive movement is
reached as soon as the libido takes hold of the present real duties of
life, and is used to solve those problems. But there are cases, and
these not a few, where the patient continues longer than usual to
produce endless phantastic manifestations, either from his own pleasure
in them or from certain false expectations on the part of the doctor.
Such a mistake is especially easy for beginners, since, blinded by the
present psychoanalytical discussion, they keep their interest fixed on
these phantasies, because they seem to possess etiological significance.
They are therefore constantly at pains to fish up phantasies of early
childhood, vainly hoping to find thus the solution of the neurotic
difficulties. They do not see that the solution lies in action, and in
the fulfilment of certain necessary duties of life. It will be objected
that the neurosis is entirely due to the incapacity of the patient to
carry out these very demands of life, and that therapy by the analysis
of the unconscious ought to enable him to do so, or at least, give him
means to do so. The objection put in this way is perfectly valid, but we
have to add that it is only so when the patient is really conscious of
the duties he has to fulfil, not only academically, in their general
theoretical outlines but in their most minute details. It is
characteristic for neurotic people to be wanting in this knowledge,
although, because of their intelligence, they are well aware of the
general duties of life, and struggle, perhaps only too hard, to fulfil
the prescriptions of current morality. But the much more important
duties which he ought to fulfil towards himself are to a great extent
unknown to the neurotic; sometimes even they are not known at all. It is
not enough, therefore, to follow the patient blindfold on the path of
regression, and to push him by an inopportune etiological interest back
into his infantile phantasies. I have often heard from patients, with
whom the psychoanalytic treatment has come to a standstill: “The doctor
believes I must have somewhere some infantile trauma, or an infantile
phantasy which I am still repressing.” Apart from the cases where this
supposition was really true, I have seen cases in which the stoppage was
caused by the fact that the libido, hauled up by the analysis, sank back
into the depths again for want of employment. This was due to the
physician’s attention being directed entirely to the infantile
phantasies, and his failing therefore to see what duties of the moment
the patient had to fulfil. The consequence was that the libido brought
forth by analysis always sank back again, as no opportunity for further
activity was found.
There are many patients who, on their own account, discover their
life-tasks and abandon the production of regressive phantasies pretty
soon, because they prefer to live in reality, rather than in their
phantasies. It is a pity that this cannot be said of all patients. A
good many of them forsake for a long time, or even forever, the
fulfilment of their life-tasks, and prefer their idle neurotic dreaming.
I must again emphasize that we do not understand by “dreaming” always a
conscious phenomenon.
In accordance with these facts and these views, the character of
psychoanalysis has changed during the course of time. If the first stage
of psychoanalysis was perhaps a kind of surgery, which would remove from
the mind of the patient the foreign body, the “blocked” affect, the
later form has been a kind of historical method, which tries to
investigate carefully the genesis of the neurosis, down to its smallest
details, and to reduce it to its earliest origins.
The Conception of Transference
This last method has unmistakably been due to strong scientific
interest, the traces of which are clearly seen in the delineations of
cases so far. Thanks to this, Freud was also able to discover wherein
lay the therapeutical effect of psychoanalysis. Whilst formerly this was
sought in the discharge of the traumatic affect, it was now seen that
the phantasies produced were especially associated with the personality
of the physician. Freud calls this process _transference_
(“Uebertragung”), owing to the fact that the images of the parents
(“imagines”) are henceforth transferred to the physician, along with the
infantile attitude of mind adopted towards the parents. The transference
does not arise solely in the intellectual sphere, but the libido bound
up with the phantasy is transferred, together with the phantasy itself,
to the personality of the physician, so that the physician replaces the
parents to a certain extent. All the apparently sexual phantasies which
have been connected with the parents are now connected with the
physician, and the less this is realized by the patient, the more he
will be unconsciously bound to his physician. This recognition is in
many ways of prime importance.
This process has an important biological value for the patient. The less
libido he gives to reality, the more exaggerated will be his phantasies,
and the more he will be cut off from the world. Typical of neurotic
people is their attitude of disharmony towards reality, that is, their
diminished capacity for adaptation. Through the transference to the
physician, a bridge is built, across which the patient can get away from
his family, into reality. In other words, he can emerge from his
infantile environment into the world of grown-up people, for here the
physician stands for a part of the extra-familial world. But on the
other hand, this transference is a powerful hindrance to the progress of
treatment, for the patient assimilates the personality of the physician
as if he did stand for father or mother, and not for a part of the
extra-familial world. If the patient could acquire the image of the
physician as a part of the non-infantile world, he would gain a
considerable advantage. But transference has the opposite effect; hence
the whole advantage of the new acquisition is neutralized. The more the
patient succeeds in regarding his doctor as he does any other
individual, the more he is able to consider himself objectively, the
greater becomes the advantage of transference. The less he is able to
consider his doctor in this way, the more the physician is assimilated
with the father, the less is the advantage of the transference and the
greater will be its harm. The familial environment of the patient has
only become increased by an additional personality assimilated to his
parents. The patient himself is, as before, still in his childish
surroundings, and therefore maintains his infantile attitude of mind. In
this manner, all the advantages of transference can be lost.
There are patients who follow the analysis with the greatest interest
without making the slightest improvement, remaining extraordinarily
productive in phantasies, although the whole development of their
neurosis, even to the smallest details, has been brought to light. A
physician under the influence of the historical view might be thus
easily thrown into confusion, and would have to ask himself: What is
there in this case still to be analyzed? Those are just the cases of
which I spoke before, where it is no longer a matter of the analysis of
the historical material, but we have now to face a practical problem,
the overcoming of the inadequate infantile attitude of mind. Of course,
the historical analysis would show repeatedly that the patient had a
childish attitude towards his physician, but it would not bring us any
solution of the question how that attitude could be changed. To a
certain extent, this serious disadvantage of transference is found in
every case. Gradually it has been proved that this part of
psychoanalysis is, considered from a scientific standpoint,
extraordinarily interesting and of great value, but in its practical
aspect, of less importance than that which has now to follow, namely,
the _analysis of the transference_.
Confession and Psychoanalysis
Before we enter into a more detailed consideration of this practical
part of psychoanalysis, I should like to mention a parallelism between
the first part of psychoanalysis and a historical institution of our
civilization. It is not difficult to guess this parallelism. We find it
in the religious institution called _confession_. By nothing are people
more cut off from fellowship with others than by a secret borne about
within them. It is not that a secret actually cuts off a person from
communicating with his fellows, yet somehow personal secrets which are
zealously guarded do have this effect. “Sinful” deeds and thoughts, for
instance, are the secrets which separate one person from another. Great
relief is therefore gained by confessing them. This relief is due to the
re-admission of the individual to the community. His loneliness, which
was so difficult to bear, ceases. Herein lies the essential value of the
confession. But this confession means at the same time, through the
phenomenon of transference and its unconscious phantasies, that the
individual becomes tied to his confessor. This was probably
instinctively intended by the Church. The fact that perhaps the greater
part of humanity wants to be guided, justifies the moral value
attributed to this institution by the Church. The priest is furnished
with all the attributes of paternal authority, and upon him rests the
obligation to guide his congregation, just as a father guides his
children. Thus the priest replaces the parents and to a certain extent
frees his people from their infantile bonds. In so far as the priest is
a highly moral personality, with a nobility of soul, and an adequate
culture, this institution may be commended as a splendid instance of
social control and education, which served humanity during the space of
two thousand years. So long as the Christian Church of the Middle Ages
was capable of being the guardian of culture and science, in which rôle
her success was, in part, due to her wide toleration of the secular
element, confession was an admirable method for the education of the
people. But confession lost its greatest value, at least for the more
educated, as soon as the Church was unable to maintain her leadership
over the more emancipated portion of the community and became incapable,
through her rigidity, of following the intellectual life of the nations.
The more highly educated men of to-day do not want to be guided by a
belief or a rigid dogma; they want to understand. Therefore, they put
aside everything that they do not understand, and the religious symbol
is very little accessible for general understanding. The sacrificium
intellectus is an act of violence, to which the moral conscience of the
highly developed man is opposed. But in a large number of cases,
transference to, and dependence upon the analyst could be considered as
a sufficient end, with a definite therapeutic effect, if the analyst
were in every respect a great personality, capable and competent to
guide the patients given into his charge and to be a father of his
people. But a modern, mentally-developed person desires to guide
himself, and to stand on his own feet. He wants to take the helm in his
own hands; the steering has too long been done by others. He wants to
understand; in other words, he wants to be a grown-up person. It is much
easier to be guided, but this no longer suits the well-educated of the
present time, for they feel the necessity of the moral independence
demanded by the spirit of our time. _Modern humanity demands moral
autonomy._ Psychoanalysis has to allow this claim, and refuses to guide
and to advise. The psychoanalytic physician knows his own shortcomings
too well, and therefore cannot believe that he can be father and leader.
His highest ambition must only consist in educating his patients to
become independent personalities, and in freeing them from their
unconscious dependency within infantile limitations. Psychoanalysis has
therefore to analyze the transference, a task left untouched by the
priest. In so doing, the unconscious dependence upon the physician is
cut off, and the patient is put upon his own feet; this at least is the
end at which the physician aims.
The Analysis of the Transference
We have already seen that the transference brings about difficulties,
because the personality of the physician is assimilated with the image
of the patient’s parents. The first part of the analysis, the
investigation of the patient’s complexes, is rather easy, chiefly
because a man is relieved by ridding himself of his secrets,
difficulties and pains. In the second place, he experiences a peculiar
satisfaction from at last finding some one who shows interest in all
those things to which nobody hitherto would listen. It is very agreeable
to find a person, who tries to understand him, and does not shrink back.
In the third place, the expressed intention of the physician, to
understand him and to follow him through all his erring ways,
pathetically affects the patient. The feeling of being understood is
especially sweet to the solitary souls who are forever longing for
“understanding.” In this they are insatiable. The beginning of the
analysis is for these reasons fairly easy and simple. The improvement so
easily gained, and the sometimes striking change in the patient’s
condition of health are a great temptation to the psychoanalytic
beginner to slip into a therapeutic optimism and an analytical
superficiality, neither of which would correspond to the seriousness and
the difficulties of the situation. The trumpeting of therapeutic
successes is nowhere more contemptible than in psychoanalysis, for no
one is better able to understand than a psychoanalyst how the so-called
result of the therapy depends on the coöperation of nature and the
patient himself. The psychoanalyst may rest content with possessing an
advanced scientific insight. The prevailing psychoanalytic literature
cannot be spared reproach that some of its works do give a false
impression as to its real nature. There are therapeutical publications
from which the uninitiated receive the impression that psychoanalysis is
more or less a clever trick, with astonishing effects. The first part of
analysis, where we try to understand, and which, as we have seen before,
offers much relief to the patient’s feelings, is responsible for these
illusions. These incidental benefits help the phenomenon of
transference. The patient has long felt the need of help to free him
from his inward isolation and his lack of self-understanding. So he
gives way to his transference, after first struggling against it. For a
neurotic person, the transference is an ideal situation. He himself
makes no effort, and nevertheless another person meets him halfway, with
an apparent affectionate understanding; does not even get annoyed or
leave off his patient endeavors, although he himself is sometimes
stubborn and makes childish resistances. By this means the strongest
resistances are melted away, for the interest of the physician meets the
need of a better adaptation to extra-familial reality. The patient
obtains, through the transference, not only his parents, who used to
bestow great attention upon him, but in addition he gets a relationship
outside the family, and thus fulfils a necessary duty of life. The
therapeutical success so often to be seen at the same time fortifies the
patient’s belief that this new-gained situation is an excellent one.
Here we can easily understand that the patient is not in the least
inclined to abandon this newly-found advantage. If it depended upon him,
he would be forever associated with his physician. In consequence, he
begins to produce all kinds of phantasies, in order to find possible
ways of maintaining the association with his physician. He makes the
greatest resistances towards his physician, when the latter tries to
dissolve the transference. At the same time, we must not forget that for
our patients the acquisition of a relationship outside the family is one
of the most important duties of life, and one, moreover, which up to
this moment they had failed or but very imperfectly succeeded in
accomplishing. I must oppose myself energetically to the view that we
always mean by this relationship outside the family, a sexual relation
in its popular sense. This is the misunderstanding fallen into by so
many neurotic people, who believe that a right attitude toward reality
is only to be found by way of concrete sexuality. There are even
physicians, not psychoanalysts, who are of the same conviction. But this
is the primitive adaptation which we find among uncivilized people under
primitive conditions. If we lend uncritical support to this tendency of
neurotic people to adapt themselves in an infantile way, we just
encourage them in the infantilism from which they are suffering. The
neurotic patient has to learn that higher adaptation which is demanded
by life from civilized and grown-up people. Whoever has a tendency to
sink lower, will proceed to do so; for this end he does not need
psychoanalysis. But we must be careful not to fall into the opposite
extreme and believe that we can create by analysis great personalities.
Psychoanalysis stands above traditional morality. It follows no
arbitrary moral standard. It is only a means to bring to light the
individual trends, and to develop and harmonize them as perfectly as
possible.
Analysis must be a biological method, that is, a method which tries to
connect the highest subjective well-being with the most valuable
biological activity. The best result for a person who passes through
analysis, is that he becomes at the end what he really is, in harmony
with himself, neither bad nor good, but an ordinary human being.
Psychoanalysis cannot be considered a method of education, if by
education is understood the possibility of shaping a tree to a highly
artificial form. But whoever has the higher conception of education will
most prize that educational method which can cultivate a tree so that it
shall fulfil to perfection its own natural conditions of growth. We
yield too much to the ridiculous fear that we are at bottom quite
impossible beings, and that if everyone were to appear as he really is a
dreadful social catastrophe would result. The individualistic thinkers
of our day insist on understanding by “people as they really are,” only
the discontented, anarchistic and egotistic element in humanity; they
quite forget that this same humanity has created those well-established
forms of our civilization which possess greater strength and solidity
than all the anarchistic under-currents.
When we try to dissolve the transference we have to fight against powers
which have not only neurotic value, but also universal normal
significance. When we try to bring the patient to the dissolution of his
transference, we are asking more from him than is generally asked of the
average man; we ask that he should subdue himself wholly. Only certain
religions have made such a claim on humanity, and it is this demand
which makes the second part of analysis so difficult.
The technique that we have to employ for the analysis of the
transference is exactly the same as that before described. Naturally the
problem as to what the patient must do with the libido which is now
withdrawn from the physician comes to the fore. Here again, there is
great danger for the beginner, as he will be inclined to suggest, or to
give suggestive advice. This would be extremely pleasant for the patient
in every respect, and therefore fatal.
The Problem of Self-Analysis
I think here is the place to say something about the indispensable
conditions of the psychology of the psychoanalyst himself.
Psychoanalysis is by no means an instrument applied to the patient only;
it is self-evident that it must be applied to the psychoanalyst first. I
believe that it is not only a moral, but a professional duty also, for
the physician to submit himself to the psychoanalytic process, in order
to clean his mind from his own unconscious interferences. Even if he is
entitled to trust to his own personal honesty, that will not suffice to
save him from the misleading influences of his own unconscious. _The
unconscious is unknown, even to the most frank and honest person._
Without analysis the physician will inevitably be blindfolded in all
those places where he meets his own complexes; this is a situation of
dangerous importance in the analysis of transference. Do not forget that
the complexes of a neurotic are only the complexes of all human beings,
the psychoanalyst included. Through the interference of your own hidden
wishes you will do the greatest harm to your patients. The psychoanalyst
must never forget that _the final aim of psychoanalysis is the personal
freedom and moral independence of the patient_.
The Analysis of Dreams
Here, as everywhere in analysis, we have to follow the patient along the
line of his own impulses, even if the path seems to be a wrong one.
Error is just as important a condition of mental progress as truth. In
this second step of analysis, with all its hidden precipices and
sand-banks, we owe a great deal to _dreams_. At the beginning of
analysis dreams chiefly helped in discovering phantasies; here they
guide us, in a most valuable way, to the application of the libido.
Freud’s work laid the foundation of an immense increase in our knowledge
in regard to the interpretation of the dream’s content, through its
historical material and its tendency to express wishes. He showed us how
dreams open the way to the acquisition of unconscious material. In
accordance with his genius for the purely historical method, he apprises
us chiefly of the analytical relations. Although this method is
incontestably of the greatest importance, we ought not to take up this
standpoint exclusively, as such an historical conception does not
sufficiently take account of the _teleological meaning of dreams_.
Conscious thinking would be quite insufficiently characterized, if we
considered it only from its historical determinants. For its complete
valuation, we have unquestionably to consider its teleological or
prospective meaning as well. If we pursued the history of the English
Parliament back to its first origin, we should certainly arrive at a
perfect understanding of its development, and the determination of its
present form. But we should know nothing about its prospective function,
that is, about the work which it has to accomplish now, and in the
future. The same thing is to be said about dreams. Their prospective
function has been valued only by superstitious peoples and times, but
probably there is much truth in their view. Not that we pretend that
dreams have any prophetic foreboding, but we suggest, that there might
be a possibility of discovering in their unconscious material those
future combinations which are subliminal just because they have not
reached the distinctiveness or the intensity which consciousness
requires. Here I am thinking of those indistinct presentments of the
future which we sometimes have, which are nothing else than subliminal
combinations, the objective value of which we are not able to
apperceive. The future tendencies of the patient are elaborated by this
indirect analysis, and, if this work is successful, the convalescent
passes out of treatment and out of his half-infantile state of
transference into life, which has been inwardly carefully prepared for,
which has been chosen by himself, and to which, after many
deliberations, he has at last made up his mind.
CHAPTER X
Some General Remarks on Psychoanalysis
As may easily be understood, psychoanalysis will never do for polyclinic
work, and will therefore always remain in the hands of those few who,
because of their innate and trained psychological faculties, are
particularly apt and have a special liking for this profession. Just as
not every physician makes a good surgeon, so neither will every one make
a good psychoanalyst. The predominant psychological character of
psychoanalytic work will make it difficult for doctors to monopolize it.
Sooner or later other faculties will master it, either for practical
uses or for its theoretical interest. Of course the treatment must
remain confined entirely to the hands of responsible scientific people.
So long as official science excludes psychoanalysis from general
discussion, as pure nonsense, we cannot be astonished if those belonging
to other faculties master this material even before the medical
profession. And this will occur the more because psychoanalysis is a
general psychological method of investigation, as well as a heuristic
principle of the first rank in all departments of mental science
(“Geisteswissenschaften”). Chiefly through the work of the Zürich
School, the possibility of applying psychoanalysis to the domain of the
mental diseases has been demonstrated. Psychoanalytical investigation of
dementia præcox, for instance, brought us the most valuable insight into
the psychological structure of this remarkable disease. It would lead me
too far were I to demonstrate to you the results of those
investigations. The theory of the psychological determinants of this
disease is already in itself a vast territory. Even if I had to treat
but the symbolic problems of dementia præcox I should be obliged to lay
before you so much material, that I could not possibly master it within
the limits of these lectures, which must give a general survey.
The question of dementia præcox has become so extraordinarily
complicated because of the quite recent incursion on the part of
psychoanalysis into the domains of mythology and comparative religion,
whence we have derived a deeper insight into ethical psychological
symbolism. Those who are well-acquainted with the symbolism of dreams
and of dementia præcox have been greatly impressed by the striking
parallelism between modern individual symbols and those found in
folk-lore. The extraordinary parallelism between ethnic symbolism and
that of dementia præcox is remarkably clear. This fact induced me to
make an extended comparative investigation of individual and ethnic
symbolism, the results of which have been recently published.[11] This
complication of psychology with the problem of mythology makes it
impossible for me to demonstrate to you my conception of dementia
præcox. For the same reasons, I must forego the discussion of the
results of psychoanalytic investigation in the domain of mythology and
comparative religions. It would be impossible to do this without setting
forth all the material belonging to it. The main result of these
investigations is, for the moment, the knowledge of the far-reaching
parallelisms between the ethnical and the individual symbolisms. From
the present position of this work, we can scarcely conceive what a vast
perspective may result from this comparative ethnopsychology. Through
the study of mythology, the psychoanalytical knowledge of the nature of
the unconscious processes we may expect to be enormously enriched and
deepened.
I must limit myself, if I am to give you in the course of my lectures a
more or less general presentation of the psychoanalytic school. A
detailed elaboration of this method and its theory would have demanded
an enormous display of cases, whose delineation would have detracted
from a comprehensive view of the whole. But to give you an insight into
the concrete proceedings of psychoanalytic treatment, I decided to bring
before you a short analysis of a girl of eleven years of age. The case
was analyzed by my assistant, Miss Mary Moltzer. In the first place, I
must mention that this case is by no means typical, either in the length
of its time, or in the course of its general analysis; it is just as
little so as an individual is characteristic for all other people.
Nowhere is the abstraction of universal rules more difficult than in
psychoanalysis, for which reason it is better to abstain from too many
rules. We must never forget that, notwithstanding the great uniformity
of complexes and conflicts, every case is unique. For every individual
is unique. Every case demands from the physician an individual interest,
and in every case you will find the course of analysis different. In
describing this case, I offer you a small section of the vast diverse
psychological world, showing all those apparently bizarre and arbitrary
peculiarities scattered over human life by the whims of so-called
chance. I have no intention of withholding any of the minute
psychoanalytic details, as I do not want to make you believe that
psychoanalysis is a method with rigid laws. The scientific interest of
the investigator inclines him to find rules and categories, in which the
most living of all things alive can be included. But the physician as
well as the observer, free from all formulas, ought to have an open eye
for the whole lawless wealth of living reality. In this way I will
endeavor to present to you this case, and I hope also to succeed in
demonstrating to you how differently an analysis develops from what
might have been expected from purely theoretical considerations.
A Case of Neurosis in a Child
The case in question is that of an intelligent girl of eleven years of
age, of good family. The history of the disease is as follows:
Anamnesis
She had to leave school several times on account of sudden sickness and
headache, and was obliged to go to bed. In the morning she sometimes
refused to get up and go to school. She suffered from bad dreams, was
capricious and not to be counted upon.
I informed the mother, who came to consult me, that these things were
neurotic signs, and that some special circumstance must be hidden there,
necessitating an interrogation of the child. This supposition was not
arbitrary, for every attentive observer knows that if children are
restless or in bad temper, there is always something painful worrying
them. If it were not painful, they would tell it, and they would not be
worried over it. Of course, I am only speaking of those cases having a
psychogenic cause. The child confessed to her mother the following
story: She had a favorite teacher, of whom she was very fond. During
this last term she had fallen back somewhat, through working
insufficiently, and she believed she had rather fallen in the estimation
of her teacher. She then began to feel sick during his lessons. She felt
not only estranged from her teacher, but even somewhat hostile. She
directed all her friendly feelings to a poor boy with whom she usually
shared the bread which she took to school. Later on she gave him money,
so that he could buy bread for himself. In a conversation with this boy
she made fun of her teacher and called him a goat. The boy attached
himself more and more to her, and considered that he had the right to
levy a tax on her occasionally in the form of a little present of money.
She now became greatly alarmed lest the boy might tell her teacher that
she turned him into ridicule and called him a “goat,” and she promised
him two francs if he would give his solemn word never to tell anything
to her teacher. From that moment the boy began to exploit her; he
demanded money with threats and persecuted her with his demands on the
way to school. This made her perfectly miserable. Her attacks of
sickness are closely connected with all this story. But after the affair
had been disposed of by this confession, her peace of mind was not
restored as might have been expected.
We very often see, as I have said, that the mere relation of a painful
affair can have an important therapeutical effect. Generally this does
not last very long, although on occasion such a favorable effect can
maintain itself for a long time. Such a confession is naturally a long
way from being an analysis. But there are nerve-specialists nowadays who
believe that an analysis is only a somewhat more extensive anamnesis or
confession.
A little while later the child had an attack of coughing and missed
school for one day. After that she went to school for one day and felt
perfectly well. On the third day, a renewed attack of coughing came on,
with pains on the left side, fever and vomiting. Her temperature,
accurately taken, showed 39.4° C., about 103° F. The doctor feared
pneumonia. But the next day everything had passed away. She felt quite
well and not the slightest sign of fever or sickness was to be noted.
But still our little patient wept the whole time and did not wish to get
up. From this strange course of events I suspected some serious
neurosis, and I therefore advised treatment by analysis.
Analytic Treatment
First interview: The little girl seemed to be nervous and constrained,
having a disagreeable forced laugh. Miss Moltzer, who analyzed her, gave
her first of all an opportunity of talking about her staying in bed. We
learn that she liked it immensely, as she always had some society.
Everybody came to see her; also her mother read to her out of a book
which contained the story of _a prince who was ill, but who recovered
when his wish was fulfilled, the wish being that his little friend, a
poor boy, might be allowed to stay with him_.
The obvious relation between this story and her own little love-story,
as well as its connection with her own illness, was pointed out to her,
whereupon she began to cry and say she would prefer to go to the other
children and play with them, otherwise they would run off. This was at
once allowed, and away she ran, but came back again, after a short
while, somewhat embarrassed. It was explained to her that she did not
run away because she was afraid her playmates would go, but that she
herself wanted to get off because of resistances.
At the second interview she was less anxious and repressed. They
happened to speak about the teacher, but then she was embarrassed. She
seemed to be ashamed at the end, and she timidly confessed that she
liked her teacher very much. It was then explained to her that she need
not be ashamed of that; on the contrary, her love for him could be a
valuable stimulus to make her do her very best in his lessons. “So I may
love him?” asked the little patient with a happier face.
This explanation justified the child in the choice of the object of her
affection. It seems as if she had been ashamed of admitting her feelings
for her teacher. It is not easy to explain why this should be so. Our
present conception tells us that the libido has great difficulty in
taking hold of a personality outside the family, because it still finds
itself in incestuous bonds,—a very plausible view indeed, from which it
is difficult to withdraw. But we must point out here that her libido was
placed with much intensity upon the poor boy, who was also someone
outside the family; whence we must conclude that the difficulty was not
to be found in the transference of the libido outside the family, but in
some other circumstance. The love of the teacher betokens a difficult
task; it demands much more than her love for the little boy, which does
not require any moral effort on her part. This indication in the
analysis that her love for her teacher would enable her to do her utmost
brings the child back to her real duty, namely, her adaptation to her
teacher.
The libido retires from before such a necessary task, for the very human
reason of indolence, which is highly developed, not only in children,
but also in primitive people. Primitive laziness and indolence are the
first resistances to the efforts towards adaptation. The libido which is
not used for this purpose becomes stagnant and will make the inevitable
regression to former objects or modes of employment. It is thus that the
incest-complex is revived in such a striking way. The libido avoids the
object which is so difficult to attain and demands such great efforts,
and turns towards the easier ones, and finally to the easiest of all,
namely, the infantile phantasies, which thus become real
incest-phantasies. The fact that, wherever there is present a
disturbance of psychological adaptation, one finds an exaggerated
development of incest-phantasies, must be conceived, as I have pointed
out, as a regressive phenomenon. That is to say, the incest-phantasy is
of secondary and not of causal significance, while the primary cause is
the resistance of human nature against any kind of exertion. The drawing
back from certain duties is not to be explained by saying that man
prefers the incestuous condition, but he has to fall back into it,
because he shuns exertion; otherwise it would have to be said that the
aversion from conscious effort must be taken as identical with the
preference for incestuous relations. This would be obvious nonsense, for
not only primitive man, but animals too, have a pronounced dislike for
all intentional efforts, and pay homage to absolute laziness, until
circumstances force them into action. We cannot pretend, either in very
primitive people or in animals, that their preference for incestuous
relations causes aversion towards efforts of adaptation, as in those
cases there can be no question of “incestuous” relations. This would
presuppose a differentiation of parents and non-parents.
Characteristically, the child expressed her joy at being allowed to love
her teacher, but not at being allowed to do her utmost for him. That she
might love her teacher is what she understood at once, because it suited
her best. Her relief was caused by the information that she was right in
loving him, even though she did not especially exert herself before.
The conversation ran on to the story of the extortion, which is now
again told in details. We hear further that she had tried to force open
her savings-bank, and as she could not succeed in doing so, she wanted
to steal the key from her mother. She expressed herself thus about the
whole matter: she ridiculed her teacher because he was much kinder to
the other girls than to her. But it was true that she did not do very
well in his lessons, especially at arithmetic. Once she did not
understand something, was afraid to ask, for fear she might lose his
esteem, and consequently she made many mistakes and did really lose it.
It is pretty clear that her position towards her teacher became
consequently very unsatisfactory. About this time it happened that a
young girl in her class was sent home because she was sick. Soon after,
the same thing happened to herself. In this way, she tried to get away
from the school which had become uncongenial to her. The loss of her
teacher’s respect led her on the one hand to insult him and on the other
into the affair with the little boy, obviously as a compensation for the
lost relationship with the teacher. The explanation which was given here
was a simple hint: she would be rendering a service to her teacher if
she took pains to understand the lessons by sensible questions.
I can add here that this hint, given in the analysis, had a good effect;
from that moment the little girl became one of the best of pupils, and
missed no more arithmetic lessons.
We must call attention to the fact that the story of the boy’s extortion
shows constraint and a lack of freedom. This phenomenon exactly follows
the rule. As soon as anyone permits his libido to draw back from
necessary tasks, it becomes autonomous and chooses, without regard to
the protests of the subject, its own way, and pursues it obstinately. It
is a general fact, that a lazy and inactive life is highly susceptible
to the _coercion of the libido_, that is to say, to all kinds of terrors
and involuntary obligations. The anxieties and superstitions of savages
furnish us with the best illustrations; but our own history of
civilization, especially the civilization and customs of the ancients,
abounds with confirmations. Non-employment of the libido makes it
autonomous, but we must not believe either that we are able to save
ourselves permanently from the coercion of the libido by making forced
efforts. To a certain limited extent we are able to set conscious tasks
to our libido, but other natural tasks are chosen by the libido itself,
and that is what the libido exists for. If we avoid those tasks, the
most active life can become useless, for we have to deal with the whole
of the conditions of our human nature. Innumerable cases of neurasthenia
from overwork can be traced back to this cause, for work done amid
internal conflicts creates nervous exhaustion.
At the third interview the little girl related a dream she had had when
she was five years old, and by which she was greatly impressed. She
says, “I’ll never forget this dream.” The dream runs as follows: “_I am
in a wood with my little brother and we are looking for strawberries.
Then a wolf came and jumped at me. I took to a staircase, the wolf after
me. I fall down and the wolf bites my leg. I awoke in terror._”
Before we go into the associations given by our little patient, I will
try to form an arbitrary opinion about the possible content of the
dream, and then compare our result afterwards with the associations
given by the child. The beginning of the dream reminds us of the
well-known German fairy-tale of Little Red-Ridinghood, which is, of
course, known to the child. The wolf ate the grandmother first, then
took her shape, and afterwards ate Little Red-Ridinghood. But the hunter
killed the wolf, cut open the belly and Little Red-Ridinghood sprang out
safe and sound. This motive is found in a great many fairy-tales,
widespread over the whole world, and it is the motive of the biblical
story of Jonah. The original significance is astro-mythological: the sun
is swallowed up by the sea, and in the morning is born again out of the
water. Of course, the whole of astro-mythology is at the root but
psychology, unconscious psychology, projected on to the heavens, for
myths have never been and are never made consciously, but arise from
man’s unconscious. For this reason, we sometimes find that marvellous,
striking similarity or identity in the forms of myths, even among races
that have been separated from each other since eternity as it were. This
explains the universal dissemination of the symbol of the cross,
perfectly independent of Christianity, of which America, as is well
known, furnishes us especially interesting instances. It is impossible
to agree, that myths have been made to explain meteorological or
astronomical processes. Myths are, first of all, manifestations of
unconscious currents, similar to dreams.[12] These currents are caused
by the libido in its unconscious forms. The material which comes to the
surface is infantile material, hence, phantasies connected with the
incest-complex. Without difficulty we can find in all the so-called
sun-myths infantile theories about generation, childbirth and incestuous
relations. In the fairy-tale of Little Red-Ridinghood, we find the
phantasy that the mother has to eat something which is similar to a
child, and that the child is born by cutting open the mother’s body.
This phantasy is one of the most universal, to be found everywhere.
We can conclude, from these universal psychological observations, that
the child, in its dream, elaborates the problem of generation and
childbirth. As to the wolf, the father probably has to be put in its
place, for the child unconsciously assigns to the father any act of
violence towards the mother. This anticipation can be based on
innumerable myths which deal with the problem of any act of violence
towards the mother. In reference to the mythological parallelism, let me
direct your attention to Boas’s collection, where you will find a
beautiful set of Indian legends; also to the work of Frobenius, “Das
Zeitaltes Sonnengottes”; and, finally, to the works of Abraham, Rank,
Riklin, Jones, Freud, Spielrein, and my own investigations in my
“Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido.”
After having made these general observations for theoretical reasons,
which, of course, were not made in the concrete case, we will go back to
see what the child has to tell in regard to her dream. Of course the
child speaks of her dream just as she likes, without being influenced in
any way whatever. The little girl begins with the bite in her leg, and
relates, that she had once been told by a woman who had had a baby, that
she could still show the place where the stork had bitten her. This mode
of expression is, in Switzerland, a universally known variant of the
symbolism of generation and birth. Here we find a perfect parallelism
between our interpretation and the associations of the child. The first
associations which have been brought by the child, without being
influenced in any way, are connected with the problem which, for
theoretical reasons, was suggested by ourselves. I know well that the
innumerable cases, published in our psychoanalytic literature, where the
patients have certainly not been influenced, have not prevented the
critics’ contention, that we suggest our own interpretations to our
patients. This case will not, therefore, convince anyone who is
determined to find crude mistakes or, much worse still—fabrications.
After our little patient had finished her first association, she was
asked, “What did the wolf suggest?” She answered, “I think of my father,
when he is angry.” This association also coincides with our theoretical
observations. It might be objected that the observation was made just
for this purpose and for nothing else, and has therefore no general
validity. I believe that this objection vanishes of itself as soon as
the corresponding psychoanalytic and mythological knowledge has been
acquired. The validity of an hypothesis can only be confirmed by
positive knowledge; otherwise it is impossible to confirm it. We have
seen by the first association that the wolf has been replaced by the
stork. The associations given to the wolf bring the father. In the
common myth, the stork stands for the father, as the father brings
children. The apparent contradiction, which could be noticed here
between the fairy-tale, where the wolf represents the mother, and the
dream, in which the wolf stands for the father, is of no importance for
the dream. I must renounce here any attempt at a detailed explanation. I
have treated this problem of bisexual symbols in the work already
referred to. You know that in the legend of Romulus and Remus, both
animals were raised to the rank of parents, the bird Picus and the wolf.
The fear of the wolf in the dream is therefore fear of her father. The
little patient explains her fear of her father by his severity towards
her. He had also told her that we only have bad dreams when we have been
doing wrong. Later, she once asked her father, “But what does Mamma do
wrong? She has very often frightful dreams.”
The father once slapped her fingers because she was sucking them. Was
this her naughtiness? Scarcely, because sucking the fingers is an
anachronistic infantile habit, of little interest at her age. It only
seems to annoy her father, for which he will punish and hit her. In this
way, she relieves her conscience of the unconfessed and much more
serious sin. It comes out, that she has induced a number of other girls
to perform mutual masturbation.
These sexual tendencies have caused the fear of the father. Still, we
must not forget that she had this dream in her fifth year. At that time
these sins had not been committed. Hence we must regard this affair with
the other girls as a reason for her present fear of her father; but that
does not explain the earlier fear. But still, we may expect it was
something of a similar nature, some unconscious sexual wish,
corresponding to the psychology of the forbidden action previously
mentioned. The moral value and character of this wish is even more
unconscious with the child than with adults. To understand what had made
an impression on the child, we have to ask what happened in her fifth
year. Her youngest brother was born at that time. Even then her father
had made her nervous. The associations previously referred to give us an
undoubted connection between her sexual inclinations and her anxiety.
The sexual problem, which nature connects with positive feelings of
delight, is in the dream brought to the surface in the form of fear,
apparently on account of the bad father, who represents moral education.
This dream illustrates the first impressive appearance of the sexual
problem, obviously suggested by the recent birth of the little brother,
just such an occasion when experience teaches us that these questions
become vital.
Just because the sexual problem is closely connected with certain
pleasurable physical sensations, which education tries to reduce and
break off, it can apparently only manifest itself hidden under the cloak
of moral anxiety as to sin. This explanation certainly seems rather
plausible, but it is superficial, it is insufficient. It attributes the
difficulties to the moral education, on the unproved assumption that
education can cause such a neurosis. We hereby leave out of
consideration the fact that there are people who have become neurotic
and suffer from morbid fears without having had a trace of moral
education. Moreover, the moral law is not merely an evil, which has to
be resisted, but a necessity, born out of the utmost needs of humanity.
The moral law is only an outward manifestation of the innate human
impulse to dominate and tame oneself. The origin of the impulse towards
domestication or civilization is lost in the unfathomable depths of the
history of evolution, and can never be conceived as the consequence of
certain laws imposed from without. Man himself, obeying his instincts,
created laws. Therefore, we shall never understand the reasons for the
repression of sexuality in the child if we only take into account the
moral influences of education. The main reasons are to be found much
deeper, in human nature itself, in its perhaps tragic contradiction
between civilization and nature, or between individual consciousness and
the general conscience of the community. I cannot enter into these
questions now; in my other work, I have tried to do so. Naturally, it
would be of no value to give a child a notion of the higher
philosophical aspects of the problem; that would probably not have the
slightest effect.
The child wants, first of all, to be relieved from the idea that she is
doing wrong in being interested in the generation of life. By the
analytic explanation of this complex it is made clear to the child how
much pleasure and curiosity she really takes in the problem of
generation, and how her groundless fear is the inversion of her
repressed desire. The affair of her masturbation meets with a tolerant
understanding and the discussion is limited to drawing the child’s
attention to the aimlessness of her action. At the same time it is
explained to her that her sexual actions are mainly the consequences of
her curiosity, which might be satisfied in a better way. Her great fear
of her father corresponds, probably, with as great an expectation,
which, in consequence of the birth of her little brother, is closely
connected with the problem of generation. Through this explanation, the
child is declared to be justified in her curiosity and the greater part
of her moral conflict is eliminated.
Fourth Interview. The little girl is now much nicer and much more
confiding. Her former unnatural and constrained manner has vanished. She
brings a dream which she dreamed after the last sitting. It runs: “_I am
as tall as a church-tower and can see into every house. At my feet are
very small children, as small as flowers are. A policeman comes. I say
to him, ‘If you dare to make any remark, I shall take your sword and cut
off your head.’”_
In the analysis of this dream she makes the following remarks: “I would
like to be taller than my father, for then he will have to obey me.” The
first association with policeman was father. He is a military man and
has, of course, a sword. The dream clearly fulfils her wish. In the form
of a tower, she is much bigger than her father, and if he dares to make
a remark, he will be decapitated. The dream fulfils the natural wish of
the child to be a grown-up person, and to have children playing at her
feet, symbolized in the dream by the small children. With this dream she
overcomes her great fear of her father; that means an important
improvement with regard to her personal freedom, and her certainty of
feeling.
But incidentally there is here also a theoretical gain; we may consider
this dream to be a clear example of the compensating and teleological
function of dreams which was especially pointed out by Maeder. Such a
dream must leave with the dreamer an increased sense of the value of her
own personality, which is of much importance for personal well-being. It
does not matter that the symbols of the dream are not perceived by the
consciousness of the child, as conscious perception is not necessary to
derive from symbols their corresponding emotional effect. We have to do
here with knowledge derived from intuition; in other words, it is that
kind of perception on which at all times the effect produced by
religious symbols has depended. Here no conscious understanding has been
needed; the feelings are affected by means of emotional intuition.
Fifth Interview. In the fifth sitting, the child brings a dream which
she had dreamt meanwhile. “_I am with my whole family on the roof. The
windows of the houses on the other side of the valley radiate like fire.
The rising sun is reflected. Suddenly I notice that the house at the
corner of our street is, as a fact, on fire. The fire comes nearer and
nearer; at last our house is also on fire. I take flight into the street
and my mother throws several things to me. I hold out my apron, and
among other things my doll is thrown to me. I notice that the stones of
our house are burning, but the wood remains untouched._”
The analysis of this dream presents peculiar difficulties and therefore
required two sittings. It would lead me too far to sketch to you all the
material this dream brought forth. I have to limit myself to what is
most necessary. The associations which deal with the real meaning of the
dream belong to the remarkable image which tells us that the stones of
the house are on fire, while the wood remains untouched. It is sometimes
worth while, especially with longer dreams, to take out the most
striking parts and to analyze them first. This proceeding is not the
typical one, but it is justified by the practical desire to shorten
matters. The little patient makes the observation that this part of the
dream is like a fairy-tale. Through examples it was made plain to her
that fairy-tales always have a meaning. She objects: “But not all
fairy-tales have one. For instance, the tale of the Sleeping Beauty.
What could that mean?” The explanation was as follows: “The Sleeping
Beauty had to wait for one hundred years in an enchanted sleep until she
could be freed. Only he who was able to overcome all the difficulties
through love, and had the courage to break through the thorny hedge, was
able to deliver her. So one must often wait a long while to obtain what
one longs for.”
This explanation is as much in harmony with the capacity of childish
understanding, as it is perfectly consonant with the history of the
motive of this fairy-tale. The motive of the Sleeping Beauty shows
clearly its relation to an ancient myth of Spring and fertility, and
contains at the same time a problem which has a remarkably close
affinity to the psychological situation of the precocious girl of
eleven.
This motive of the Sleeping Beauty belongs to a whole cycle of legends
in which a virgin, closely guarded by a dragon, is delivered by a hero.
Without entering into the interpretation of this myth, I want to bring
into prominence the astronomical or meteorological components which are
very clearly demonstrated in the Edda. In the form of a virgin, the
Earth is kept prisoner by the winter, covered in ice and snow. The young
Spring-Sun, in the form of a hero, delivers her out of her frosty
prison, where she has been longing for her deliverer.
The association given by the little girl was chosen by her simply to
give an example of a fairy-tale without a meaning, and was not, in the
first place, conceived as having any relation with the house on fire. To
this part of the dream, she only made the observation: “It is quite
marvellous, just like a fairy-tale.” She meant to say it was impossible,
as the idea of burning stones is to her something impossible, some
nonsense, or something like a fairy-tale. The observation made a propos
of this shows her that an impossibility and a fairy-tale are only partly
identical, since a fairy-tale certainly has much meaning. Although this
particular fairy-tale, from the casual way in which it was mentioned,
seemed to have no apparent relation to the dream, we have to pay special
attention to it, as it was given spontaneously in the course of the
interpretation of the dream. The unconscious suggested this example,
which cannot be accidental, but must be in some way significant for the
present situation. In interpreting dreams we have to pay attention to
such apparent accidents, since in psychology we find no blind chances,
much as we are inclined to think these things accidental. From the
critics, you may hear this objection as often as you like, but for a
really scientific mind there are only causal relationships and no
accidents. From the fact that the little girl chose the example of the
Sleeping Beauty we may conclude that there was some fundamental reason
underlying this in the psychology of the child. This reason is a
comparison, or partial identification, of herself with the Sleeping
Beauty; in other words, there is in the soul of the child a complex,
which manifests itself in the form of the motive of the Sleeping Beauty.
The explanation, which I mentioned before, which was given to the child,
was in harmony with this conclusion.
Notwithstanding she is not quite satisfied, and doubts that all
fairy-tales have a meaning. She brings another instance of a fairy-tale,
that cannot be understood. She brings the story of little Snow-White,
who, in the sleep of death, lies enclosed in a coffin of glass. It is
not difficult to see that this fairy-tale belongs to the same kind of
myths to which the Sleeping Beauty belongs. The story of little
Snow-White in her glass-coffin is at the same time very remarkable in
regard to the myth of the seasons. This mythical material chosen by the
little girl has reference to an intuitive comparison with the earth,
held fast by the winter’s cold, awaiting the liberating sun of spring.
This second example affirms the first one and its explanation. It would
be difficult to pretend here that this second example, which accentuates
the meaning of the first, has been suggested by the explanation given.
The fact that the little girl brought up the story of little Snow-White,
as another example of the senselessness of fairy-tales, proves that she
did not understand her identification with little Snow-White and the
Sleeping Beauty. Therefore we may expect that little Snow-White arose
from the same unconscious sources as the Sleeping Beauty, that is, a
complex consisting of the expectation of coming events, which are
altogether comparable with the deliverance of the earth from the prison
of winter and its fertilization through the sunbeams of spring.
As may, perhaps, be known, the symbol of the bull has been given from
time immemorial to the fertile spring sun, as the bull embodies the
mightiest procreative power. Although without further consideration, it
is not easy to find any relation between the insight indirectly gained
and the dream, we will hold to what we have found and proceed with the
dream. The next part described by the little girl is receiving the doll
in her apron. The first association given tells us that her attitude and
the whole situation in the dream is like a picture very well known to
her, representing a stork flying above a village; children are in the
street, holding their aprons, looking up and shouting to him; the stork
must bring them a little baby. The little patient adds the observation
that several times she wished to have a little brother or sister
herself. This material, given spontaneously by the child, stands in a
clear and valuable relationship to the motive of the myths. We notice
here that the dream is indeed concerned with the problem of the
awakening instinct of generation. Nothing of this has been said to the
little girl. After a little pause, she brings, abruptly, this
association: “Once, when I was five years old, I thought I was in the
street and that a bicyclist passed over my stomach.” This highly
improbable story proved to be, as it might be expected, a phantasy,
which had become a paramnesia. Nothing of this kind had ever happened,
but we came to know that at school the little girls lay cross-wise over
each other’s bodies, and trampled with their legs.
Whoever has read the analyses of children published by Freud and myself
will observe the same “leit-motif” of trampling; to this must be
attributed a sexual undercurrent. This conception demonstrated in our
former work agrees with the next association of our little patient: “I
should prefer a real child to a doll.”
This most remarkable material brought by the child in connection with
the phantasy of the stork, refers to typical childish attempts at the
sexual theory, and betrays where we have to look for the actual
phantasies of the child.
It is of interest to know, that this “motive of trampling” can be
illustrated through mythology. I have brought together the proofs in my
work on the libido theory. The utilization of these early infantile
phantasies in the dream, the existence of the paramnesia of the
bicyclist, and the expectation expressed by the motive of the Sleeping
Beauty show that the interests of the child dwell chiefly on certain
problems which must be solved. Probably the fact that the libido has
been attracted by the problem of generation has been the reason of her
lack of attention at school, through which she fell behind. This problem
is very often seen in girls between the ages of twelve and thirteen. I
could demonstrate this to you by some special cases published under the
title of “Beitrag zur Psychologie des Gerüchtes” in the Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse. The frequent occurrence of the problem at this age is the
cause of the indecent talk among all sorts of children and the attempts
at mutual enlightenment, which are naturally far from beautiful, and
which so very often spoil the child’s imagination. Not the most careful
protection can prevent children from some day discovering the great
secret, and then probably in the dirtiest way. Therefore it would be
much better if children could learn about certain important secrets of
life in a clean way and at suitable times, so that they would not need
to be enlightened by their playmates, too often in very ugly ways.
In the eighth interview the little girl began by remarking that she had
understood perfectly why it was still impossible for her to have a child
and therefore she had renounced all idea of it. But she does not make a
good impression this time. We get to know that she has told her teacher
a falsehood. She had been late to school, and told her teacher that she
was late because she was obliged to accompany her father. But in
reality, she had been lazy, got up too late and was thus late for
school. She told a lie, and was afraid of losing the teacher’s favor by
telling the truth. This sudden moral defect in our little patient
requires an explanation. According to the fundamentals of
psychoanalysis, this sudden and striking weakness can only follow from
the patient’s not drawing the logical consequences from the analysis but
rather looking for other easier possibilities.
In other words, we have to do here with a case in which the analysis
brought the libido apparently to the surface, so that an improvement of
the personality could have occurred. But for some reason or other, the
adaptation was not made, and the libido returned to its former
regressive paths.
The ninth interview proved that this was indeed the case. Our patient
withheld an important piece of evidence in her ideas of sexuality, and
one which contradicted the psychoanalytic explanation of sexual
maturity. She suppressed the rumor current in the school that a girl of
eleven had a baby with a boy of the same age. This rumor was proved to
be based on no facts, but was a phantasy, fulfiling the secret wishes of
this age. Rumors appear often to originate in this kind of way, as I
tried to show in the above-mentioned demonstration of such a case. They
serve to give vent to the unconscious phantasies, and in fulfiling this
function correspond to dreams as well as to myths. This rumor keeps
another way open: she need not wait so long, it is possible to have a
child even at eleven. The contradiction between the accepted rumor and
the analytic explanation creates resistances towards the analysis, so
that it is forthwith depreciated. All the other statements and
information fall to the ground at the same time; for the time being,
doubt and a feeling of uncertainty have taken their place. The libido
has again taken possession of its former ways, it has made a regression.
This is the moment of the relapse.
The tenth sitting added important details to the story of her sexual
problem. First came a remarkable fragment of a dream: “_I am with other
children in an open field in the wood, surrounded by beautiful pine
trees. It begins to rain, to lighten and to thunder. It is growing dark.
Suddenly I see a stork in the air._”
Before I enter into an analysis of this dream, I should like to point
out its beautiful parallel with certain mythological presentations. This
astonishing coincidence of thunderstorm and stork has, of course, to
those acquainted with the works of Adalbert Kuhn and Steinthal nothing
remarkable. The thunderstorm has had, from ancient times, the meaning of
the fertilizing of the earth, the cohabitation of the father Heaven and
the mother Earth, to which Abraham[13] has recently again called
attention, in which the lightning takes the place of the winged phallus.
The stork is just the same thing, a winged phallus, the psychosexual
meaning of which is known to every child. But the psychosexual meaning
of the thunderstorm is not known to everyone. In view of the
psychological situation just described, we must attribute to the stork a
psychosexual meaning. That the thunderstorm is connected with the stork
and has also a psychosexual meaning, seems at first scarcely acceptable.
But when we remember that psychoanalytic observation has shown an
enormous number of mythological associations with the unconscious mental
images, we may suppose that some psychosexual meaning is also present in
this case. We know from other experiences that those unconscious strata
which, in former times, produced mythological forms, are still in action
among modern people and are still incessantly productive. But this
production is limited to the realm of dreams and the symptomatology of
the neuroses and the psychoses, for the correction, through reality, is
so much increased in the modern mind that it prevents their projection
into reality.
We will return to the dream analysis. The associations which lead us to
the heart of this image begin with the idea of rain during the
thunderstorm. Her actual words were: “I think of water. My uncle was
drowned in water—it must be dreadful to be kept under water, so in the
dark. But the child must be also drowned in the water. Does it drink the
water that is in the stomach? It is very strange, when I was ill Mamma
sent my water to the doctor. I thought perhaps he would mix something
with it, perhaps some syrup, out of which children grow. I think one has
to drink it.”
With unquestionable clearness we see from this set of associations that
even the child associates psychosexual, and even typical ideas of
fructification with the rain during the thunderstorm.
Here again, we see that marvellous parallelism between mythology and the
individual phantasies of our own day. This series of associations
contains such an abundance of symbolic relationships, that we could
easily write a whole dissertation about it. The child herself splendidly
interpreted the symbolism of drowning as a pregnancy-phantasy, an
explanation given long ago in psychoanalytic literature.
Eleventh interview. The next sitting was occupied with the spontaneous
infantile theories about fructification and child-birth. The child
thought that the urine of the man went into the body of the woman, and
from this the embryo would grow. Hence the child was in the water from
the beginning, that is to say, in urine. Another version was, the urine
was drunk in the doctor’s syrup, so that the child would grow in the
head. The head had then to be split open, to help the growth of the
child, and one wore hats to cover this up. She illustrated this by a
little drawing, representing a child-birth through the head. The child
again had still a smaller child on the head, and so on. This is an
archaic idea and highly mythological. I would remind you of the birth of
Pallas, who came out of the father’s head.
We find striking mythological proofs of the fertilizing significance of
the urine in the songs of Rudra in the Rigveda. Here should be mentioned
something the mother added, that once the little girl, before analysis,
suggested she saw a puppet on the head of her little brother, a phantasy
with which the origin of this theory of child-birth might be connected.
The little illustration made by the patient has remarkable affinity with
certain pictures found among the Bataks of Dutch India. They are the
so-called magic wands or ancestral statues, on which the members of
families are represented, one standing on the top of the other. The
explanation of these wands, given by the Bataks themselves, and regarded
as nonsense, has a marvellous analogy with the infantile mental
attitude. Schultz, who wrote about these wands, says: “The assertion,
that these figures represent the members of a family who have committed
incest, were bitten by a snake, entwined with another, and met a common
death in their criminal embrace, is widely disseminated and obviously
due to the position of the figures.”
The explanation has a parallel in our presuppositions as to our little
patient. We saw from the first dream that her sexual phantasy centers
round the father; the psychological condition is here the same as with
the Bataks, being found in the idea of incestuous relationship.
Still a third version is the growth of the child in the intestinal
canal. The child tried several times to provoke nausea and vomiting, in
accordance with her phantasy that the child is born through vomiting. In
the closet she had arranged also pressure-exercises, in order to press
out the child. Under these circumstances, we cannot be astonished that
the first and principal symptoms of the manifest neurosis were
nausea-symptoms.
We have come so far with our analysis that we are now able to throw a
glance over the case as a whole.
We found, behind the neurotic symptoms, complicated emotional processes,
which were undoubtedly connected with the symptoms. If it may be allowed
to draw some general conclusions from this limited material, we could
construct the course of the neurosis in the following way.
At the gradual approach of puberty, the libido of the child assumed
rather an emotional than a practical attitude towards reality. She began
to be very much taken with her teacher, but the sentimental
self-indulgence, evinced in her riotous phantasies, played a greater
part than the thought of the increased endeavors which such love ought
really to have demanded of her. For this reason, her attention and her
work left much to be desired. The former pleasant relationship with her
favorite teacher was troubled. The teacher was annoyed, and the little
girl, who had been made somewhat conceited by her home-conditions, was
resentful, instead of trying to improve in her work. In consequence her
libido withdrew from her teacher, as well as from her work, and fell
into the characteristic forced dependence on the little boy, who on his
side made the most of the situation. Then the resistances against school
seized the first opportunity, which was suggested by the case of the
little girl who had to be sent home on account of sickness. Our little
patient followed this child’s example. Once away from school, the way
was open to her phantasies. By the regression of the libido, these
symptom-making phantasies became awakened to a real activity, and were
given an importance they had never had before, for they had never
previously played such an important part. Now they become apparently of
much importance and seemed to be the very reason why the libido
regressed to them. It might be said that the child, in consequence of
its essentially phantasy-building nature, saw her father too much in her
teacher, and thus developed incestuous resistances towards the latter.
As I have already stated, I hold that it is simpler and more probable to
accept the view that, during a certain period, it was convenient for her
to see the teacher as the father. As she preferred to follow the hidden
presentiments of puberty rather than her duties towards the school and
her teacher, she allowed her libido to fall on the little boy, from
whom, as we saw, she awaited some mysterious advantages. Even if
analysis had demonstrated it as a fact that she had had incestuous
resistances against her teacher on account of the transference of the
father-image, those resistances would only have been secondary
phantasies, that had become inflated. At any rate, indolence would still
have been the primum movens. In the analysis she learned about the two
ways of life, the way of phantasy, of regression, and the way of
reality, wherein lay her present child’s duties. In her the two were
dissociated, and consequently she was at strife with herself. As the
analysis was adapted to the regressive tendency of the libido, the
existence of an extreme sexual curiosity, connected with certain very
definite problems, was discovered. The libido, imprisoned in this
phantastical labyrinth, was brought back into useful application by
means of the psychological explanation of the incorrect infantile
phantasies. The child thus got an insight into her own attitude towards
reality with all its possibilities. The result was that she was able to
take an objective-critical attitude towards her immature
puberty-desires, and was able to give up these and all other
impossibilities in favor of the use of her libido in possible
directions, in her work and in obtaining the good-will of her teacher.
In this case, analysis brought great peace of mind, as well as a
pronounced intellectual improvement. After a short time her teacher
himself stated that the little girl was one of the best pupils in her
class.
I hope that by the exposition of this brief instance of the course of an
analysis, I have succeeded in giving you an insight not only into the
concrete procedure of treatment, and into the technical difficulties,
but no less into the beauty of the human mind and its endless problems.
I intentionally brought into prominence the parallelism with mythology,
to indicate the universally possible applications of psychoanalysis. At
the same time, I should like to refer to the further importance of this
position. We may see in the predominance of the mythological in the mind
of a child, a distinct hint of the gradual development of the individual
mind out of the collective knowledge or the collective feeling of
earliest childhood, which gave rise to the old theory of a condition of
perfect knowledge before and after individual existence.
In the same way we might see, in the marvellous analogy between the
phantasies of dementia præcox and mythological symbolisms, a reason for
the widespread superstition that an insane person is possessed of a
demon, and has some divine knowledge.
With these hints, I have reached the present standpoint of
investigation, and I have at least sketched those facts and working
hypotheses which are characteristic for my present and future work.
Footnote 11:
“Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido,” Wien, 1912.
Footnote 12:
Abraham, “Dreams and Myths,” No. 15 of the Monograph Series.
Footnote 13:
“Dreams and Myths,” No. 15 of the Monograph Series.
INDEX
Abreagieren, 5
Actual conflict, 92, 93
Actual present, 81
Adaptation, failure of, 83
Amnesia, infantile, 78
Analysis of dreams, 60, 109
Analysis of transference, 105
Association-experiment, 66
Breuer, 5
Cathartic method, 6
Change in the theory of psychoanalysis, 5
Charcot, 5
Child, neurosis in, 113
Childhood, sexual trauma in, 10
Complex, Electra, 69
Complex, Oedipus, 67
Complex, incest, 70
Complex of the parents, 50
Conception of libido, 27
Conception of sensitiveness, 89
Conception of sexuality, 19
Conception of transference, 102
Confession and psychoanalysis, 103
Conflict, actual, 92, 93
Content of the unconscious, 67
Criticism, 1
Criticized, infantile sexual etiology, 46
Dementia præcox, 111
Dementia præcox, libido in, 35
Dream analysis, 60, 109
Dream, the, 60
Dreams, teleological meaning of, 109
Early hypothesis, 4
Electra-complex, 69
Energic theory of libido, 28
Environment and predisposition, 9
Etiology of the neuroses, 72, 80
Failure of adaptation, 83
Finger, sucking of, 22
Freud, 5
Genetic conception of libido, 38
Hypothesis, early, 4
Incest-complex, 70
Infancy, the polymorphic sexuality of, 24
Infantile amnesia, 78
Infantile mental attitude, 53
Infantile perversity, 43
Infantile reaction, 84
Infantile sexuality, 17
Infantile sexual etiology criticized, 46
Infantile sexual phantasy, 15
Introversion, 49
Latent sexual period, 79
Libido, 26, 27
Libido in dementia præcox, 35
Libido, energic theory of, 28
Libido, genetic conception of, 38
Libido, regression of, 76
Libido, the sexual definition, 34
Life, three phases of, 33
Little Red-Ridinghood, 119
Masturbation, 22
Method, cathartic, 6
Naughtiness, 121
Neurosis in a child, 113
Neuroses, etiology of, 72, 80
Nucleus-complex, 50
Objections to the sexual hypothesis, 18
Oedipus-complex, 67
Perversity, infantile, 43
Phantasy criticized, 94
Phantasy, infantile sexual, 17
Phantasy, unconscious, 29, 53
Polymorphic perverse sexuality of infancy, 24
Pragmatic rule, 2
Predisposition and environment, 9
Predisposition for the trauma, 12
Present, actual, 81
Problem of self-analysis, 108
Psychoanalysis and confession, 103
Psychoanalysis, remarks on, 111
Psychoanalysis, therapeutic principles of, 96
Psychopathology of everyday life, 65
Regression of the libido, 76
Regression and sensitiveness, 90
Remarks on psychoanalysis, 111
Repression, 8
Robert Mayer, 28
Romulus and Remus, 120
Schopenhauer’s will, 39
Self-analysis, problem of, 108
Sensitiveness, conception of, 89
Sensitiveness and regression, 90
Sexual definition of libido, 34
Sexual element in the trauma, 14
Sexual period, latent, 79
Sexual hypothesis, objections to, 18
Sexual trauma in childhood, 10
Sexuality, the conception of, 19
Sexuality, infantile, 17
Sexuality of the suckling, 21
Sexual terminology, 30
Sleeping Beauty, 124
Snow-White, 125
Spring-Sun, 124
Stork, 129
Sucking the finger, 22
Suckling, sexuality of, 21
Symbolism, 112
Teleological meaning of dreams, 109
Terminology, sexual, 30
The dream, 60
Theory, change in, 5
Theory criticized, traumatic, 7
Theory, traumatic, 5, 48
Therapeutic principles of psychoanalysis, 96
Three contributions to the sexual theory, 17
Three phases of life, 33
Thunderstorm, 129
Transference, analysis of, 105
Transference, conception of, 102
Trauma, predisposition for, 12
Trauma, sexual element in, 14
Traumatic theory, 5, 48
Traumatic theory criticized, 7
Unconscious, 55
Unconscious, content of, 67
Unconscious phantasy, 29, 53
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
referenced.
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