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[1] _Beyond the Pleasure Principle_, London, 1922; translated from
_Jenseits des Lustprinzips_, Vienna, 1920.
[2] This may be compared with my ‘Note on the Unconscious in
Psycho-Analysis’ (1912), _Collected Papers_, vol. iv. A new turn
taken by criticisms of the unconscious deserves consideration at
this point. Many investigators, who do not refuse to recognize the
facts of psycho-analysis but who are unwilling to accept the
unconscious, find a way out of the difficulty in the fact, which
no one contests, that in consciousness (regarded as a phenomenon)
it is possible to distinguish a great variety of gradations in
intensity or clarity. Just as there are ideas which are very
vividly, keenly, and definitely conscious, so we also entertain
others which are but faintly, hardly even noticeably conscious;
those that are most faintly conscious are, it is argued, the ones
to which psycho-analysis wishes to apply the unsuitable name
unconscious. These, however (the argument proceeds), are also
conscious or ‘in consciousness’ just as much as the others, and
can be made fully and intensely conscious if sufficient attention
is paid to them.
In so far as it is possible to influence by arguments the decision
of a question of this kind which is based either on a convention
or on emotional factors, we may make the following comments. The
reference to gradations of clarity in consciousness is in no way
conclusive and has no more evidential value than such analogous
statements as: ‘There are so many gradations in illumination—from
the brightest and most dazzling light to the dimmest glimmer—that
we may conclude that there is no such thing as darkness at all’;
or, ‘There are varying degrees of vitality, consequently there is
no such thing as death’. Such statements may in a certain sense
have a meaning, but for practical purposes they are
worthless. This will be seen if one proceeds to draw certain
conclusions from them, such as, ‘it is not necessary, therefore,
to strike a light’, or, ‘therefore all living things are
immortal’. Further, to include ‘what is unnoticeable’ under the
concept of ‘what is conscious’ is simply to play havoc with the
one and only piece of direct and certain knowledge that we have
about the mind. And after all, a consciousness of which one knows
nothing seems to me a good deal more absurd than an unconscious
mind. Finally, this attempt to equate what is unnoticed with what
is unconscious is obviously made without taking into account the
dynamic conditions involved, which were the decisive factors in
formulating the psycho-analytic view. For it ignores two facts:
first, that it is exceedingly difficult and requires very great
effort to concentrate enough attention on something unnoticed of
this kind; and secondly, that when this has been achieved the
thought which was previously unnoticed is not recognized by
consciousness, but often seems utterly alien and opposed to it and
is promptly disavowed by it. Escaping from the unconscious in
this way and taking refuge in what is scarcely noticed or
unnoticed is, therefore, after all only an expression of the
preconceived belief which regards the identity of mental and
conscious as settled once and for all.
[3] Cf. _Beyond the Pleasure Principle_.
[4] _Beyond the Pleasure Principle._
[5] ‘The Unconscious’ (1915), _Collected Papers_, vol. iv.
[6] G. Groddeck, _Das Buch vom Es_, Vienna, 1923.
[7] Groddeck himself no doubt followed the example of Nietzsche, who
habitually used this grammatical term for whatever in our nature
is impersonal and, so to speak, subject to natural law.
[For the German ‘_Es_’, which means literally ‘it’, the
corresponding Latin word ‘id’ has been adopted on the analogy of
‘ego’ which is the accepted rendering of the German ‘_Ich_’
(literally ‘I’).—TRANS.]
[8] [I.e. the ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensations,
chiefly from those springing from the surface of the body. It may
thus be regarded as a mental projection of the surface of the
body, besides, as we have seen above, representing the superficies
of the mental apparatus.—Authorized note by the Translator.]
[9] I was quite recently told an instance of this which was, in fact,
brought up as an objection against my description of the
‘dream-work’.
[10] ‘On Narcissism: an Introduction’ (1914), _Collected Papers_,
vol. iv.; and _Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego_
(1921), London, 1922.
[11] Except that I seem to have been mistaken in ascribing the
function of testing the reality of things to this super-ego—a
point which needs correction. The view that the testing of
reality is rather one of the functions of the ego itself would
fit in perfectly with what we know of the relations of the ego to
the world of perception. Some earlier suggestions about a
‘nucleus of the ego’, never very definitely formulated, also
require to be put right, since the system Pcpt-Cs alone can be
regarded as the nucleus of the ego.
[12] ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917), _Collected Papers_, vol. iv.
[13] An interesting parallel to the replacement of object-choice by
identification is to be found in the belief of primitive peoples,
and in the taboos based upon it, that the attributes of animals
which are assimilated as nourishment survive as part of the
character of the persons who eat them. As is well known, this
belief is one of the roots of cannibalism and its effects can be
traced throughout the series of customs derived from the totem
feast down to the Holy Communion. The consequences ascribed by
this belief to oral mastery of the object do in fact follow in
the case of the later sexual object-choice.
[14] Now that we have distinguished between the ego and the id, we
must recognize the id as the great reservoir of libido mentioned
in my introductory paper on narcissism (_Collected Papers_,
vol. iv.). The libido which flows into the ego owing to the
identifications described above brings about its ‘secondary
narcissism’.
[15] Perhaps it would be safer to say ‘with the parents’; for before a
child has arrived at definite knowledge of the difference between
the sexes, the missing penis, it does not distinguish in value
between its father and its mother. I recently came across the
instance of a young married woman whose story showed that, after
noticing the lack of a penis in herself, she had supposed it to
be absent not in all women, but only in those whom she regarded
as inferior, and had still supposed that her mother possessed
one.
In order to simplify my presentment I shall discuss only
identification with the father.
[16] Cf. _Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego_, chap. vii.
[17] [This sentence represents a slight modification of the original
text in accordance with direct instructions from the
author.—TRANS.]
[18] I am at the moment putting science and art on one side.
[19] Cf. _Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego_; and ‘Certain
Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality’
(1922), _Collected Papers_, vol. ii.
[20] _Beyond the Pleasure Principle._
[21] In fact, according to our view it is through the agency of Eros
that the destructive instincts that are directed towards the
external world have been diverted from the self.
[22] It may be said that the psycho-analytical or metapsychological
ego stands on its head no less than the anatomical ego—the
‘cortical homunculus’.
[23] The battle with the obstacle of an unconscious sense of guilt is
not made easy for the analyst. Nothing can be done against it
directly, and nothing indirectly but the slow procedure of
unmasking its unconscious repressed roots, and of thus gradually
changing it into a conscious sense of guilt. One has a special
opportunity for influencing it when this Ucs sense of guilt is a
‘borrowed’ one, i.e. when it is the product of an identification
with some other person who was once the object of an erotic
cathexis. When the sense of guilt has been adopted in this way it
is often the sole remaining trace of the abandoned love-relation
and not at all easy to recognize as such. (The likeness between
this process and what happens in melancholia is unmistakable.)
If one can unmask this former object-cathexis behind the Ucs
sense of guilt, the therapeutic success is often brilliant, but
otherwise the outcome of one’s efforts is by no means certain. It
depends principally on the intensity of the sense of guilt; there
is often no counteracting force of similar strength which the
treatment can put in motion against it. Perhaps it may depend,
too, on whether the personality of the analyst allows of the
patient’s putting him in the place of his ego-ideal, and this
involves a temptation for the analyst to play the part of
prophet, saviour, and redeemer to the patient. Since the rules of
analysis are diametrically opposed to the physician’s making use
of his personality in any such manner, it must be honestly
confessed that here we have another limitation to the
effectiveness of analysis; after all, analysis does not set out
to abolish the possibility of morbid reactions, but to give the
patient’s ego _freedom_ to choose one way or the other.
[24] This proposition is only apparently a paradox; it simply states
that human nature has a far greater capacity, both for good and
for evil, than it thinks it has, i.e. than it is aware of through
the conscious perceptions of the ego.
[25] [The author’s views upon anxiety as given in the following
paragraphs have been largely revised in his later work,
_Hemmung, Symptom und Angst_.—TRANS.]