Before taking up the various questions about which psycho-analysis
offers so much food for thought, acting as a stepping-stone to goals
formerly unattainable, it is desirable briefly to outline the theory
of our subject. This will enable the elementary student better to
understand the new and sometimes unique terminology that has been
evolved with the progress of the science, and to follow more closely
the logical course of the analytic procedure.
While this treatise will not be based solely on the orthodox Freudian
viewpoint--which would weaken rather than strengthen it--it is
necessary to emphasize the original contributions of Freud. For without
the findings of this great pathfinder, the science of psycho-analysis
might have lain dormant in the background of a slowly evolving
psychology for another century or more.
However, the theories of Jung, Adler and other analytic pioneers will
be duly considered, and the vital contributions of all correlated and
reduced to a workable, harmonious whole.
It was along about 1890 that Prof. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, a pupil of
Breuer and Charcot, made public his theories, developed from psychic
discoveries in the realm of the neuroses.
_The Unconscious._--The seat of operations of psycho-analysis is the
unconscious mind. This is the field upon which it works, and the more
we know of the unconscious mind the more we are awed by its vastness.
To the uninitiated, this may seem paradoxical, basing a highly
intricate science on the unconscious mind--which possibly suggests a
condition of mental passiveness, inaction or an unknowing quantity. But
the Unconscious is the _unknown_ rather than the unknowing.
In reality, there is no such thing as an unknowing part of the mind,
because the mind is essentially that part of the personality that is
knowing. In contradistinction to this fact, the definition of mind
generally accepted before the time of analytic psychology had made mind
co-extensive with consciousness.
But the psycho-analysts have demonstrated not only that thinking takes
place, but that it goes on all the time, whether we are awake or asleep.
The importance and vastness of the Unconscious as a psychic content
may be realized when we use the simile of Dr. G. Stanley Hall, who
compares the mind to an iceberg floating with one-eighth visible above
the water and seven-eighths below--the one-eighth above representing
the Conscious and the seven-eighths below the Unconscious. The
influence and controlling power of the unconscious desires over our
thoughts and actions are in this relative proportion. Thus, the saying,
“he does not know his own mind,” is literally true of all of us.
In the past, people who suffered from disturbances of this unknown
psychic region--and they are among the most common of all human
ailments--were without prospect of relief, unless some happy and
haphazard circumstance should intervene and unwittingly favor them.
Because of the unfathomed depths from which these disorders emanated,
they were beyond the range of our understanding, and consequently not
subject to effective treatment.
These psychic disturbances, which are capable of indelibly affecting
and warping the personality, and causing wounds and conflicts that are
painful to the mind and torturous to the soul, also react in definite
physical ailments and symptoms of the most varied character.
Psycho-analysis brings to the sufferer from psychic hurts and soul
wounds his first opportunity for scientific diagnosis and curative
treatment, and renders to him a similar service that surgery does to
the physical body. That it should always be successful is no more to be
expected than the invariable success of surgery; in fact, less so, as
the analytic treatment requires much more of the individual.
The relation of the unconscious mind to the conscious mind is that the
former is the psychic reservoir which receives all the accumulations of
experiences and impressions of the personality that pass through, often
without notice, the conscious mind.
The Unconscious is that region of the mind where are deposited, and
have been since birth, every sight, or sound that we have perceived,
and every feeling that we have had; in fact, everything that has
happened to us, however trivial.
The first five years of our lives, for instance, are the most fertile
in receiving impressions and gaining new experiences. It is by far the
most impressionable period of life. The new and wonderful things that
we have constantly observed and the sensations, joys and primitive
hates felt, are beyond calculation. And yet, in the lapse of time,
we forget practically all but a few outstanding incidents that we
had experienced during that period. They are lost to the conscious
mind--but not to the Unconscious.
As Dr. E. Hitschmann (_Freud’s Theory of the Neuroses_) has expressed
it:
And still we know that our memory can be fully reviewed and
reproduced at no time of life; on the other hand, psycho-analysis has
shown that the very impressions which we have forgotten leave behind
the deepest traces in our mental life and have become determining for
our whole later development.
The unconscious mental processes are divided into two classes, those
that are “forgotten” on account of their lack of interest, and those
that are “repressed” on account of their painful, or even shocking
nature.
The psychic processes of the first group contain all as yet unsettled
thoughts, or those not yet brought to a conclusion, and while really
“unconscious,” they may often readily be brought into the conscious
mind.
Those of the second class, however, are in the highest degree
unconscious, or, as it has been stated, they are “unavailable for
consciousness.” This characteristic led Freud to divide the Unconscious
into the “Fore-conscious” and the “Absolutely Unconscious.”
The term “unavailable for consciousness,” however, is only a relative
one, as it is the function of psycho-analysis to bring to consciousness
the processes that are normally unavailable for consciousness.
Some of the natural freaks of the Fore-conscious are readily observed
in our own mental operations. How often we “forget” proper names,
dates and general facts that are quite familiar to us! In the Freudian
sense, they simply slip into the upper stratum of the Unconscious, to
be released again when some association of ideas in that region brings
them to the conscious mind, or as we have so often noticed in our own
experiences, when they return to memory spontaneously as it appears.
_The Complexes._--The storm centers around which so many psychic
disturbances fasten themselves, with frequent serious physical
reactions in the form of chronic disorders and pathological symptoms,
are the _complexes_.
A complex is an outstanding idea that dominates in the realm of the
Unconscious, and around which is grouped a phalanx of primitive,
repressed emotions. It may consist of painful memories that have
been banished into the Unconscious. Such complexes invariably assert
themselves in dreams, and form the underlying mechanism of a neurosis.
Some of these, like hysteria and obsessions (“Psycho-neurosis”) are
traced back by Freud to erotic experiences in childhood, hence to the
influence of unconscious or repressed idea-complexes.
Neurasthenia and anxiety-neuroses (“true neuroses”) are referred to the
present abnormal condition of the sexual functions of the individual.
Hysteria is more psychic, and neurasthenia is more toxic--but both have
a sexual basis.
The most devasting of the complexes is the Oedipus-complex. This has
its origin in earliest childhood and consists of an over-attachment
of the son to the mother, which in its true form is accompanied by a
feeling of jealousy toward the father, whose claim upon the mother’s
affections is resented by the young would-be rival.
These tendencies are often noticed by parents, to whom this display
of infantile jealousy is amusing. Of course, they are unaware of the
possibilities of future consequences of a dire nature that are bound up
in the situation if it is not normally outgrown with the approach of
puberty, rather than repressed.
Considering our modern customs which sanction much coddling of the
child by its mother, there is a trace of the Oedipus-complex in all
children, but in normal cases, as they develop into adolescence, there
is a breaking away from these childhood attachments.
Other children, however, never put aside these childish or infantile
feelings and attachments, but carry them throughout life repressed
in the Unconscious. These persons become neurotic, as the repressed
complex furnishes an underlying basis for psycho-neuroses and many
abnormal sexual inversions.
It is always the Oedipus-complex, or a characteristic trace of it,
which in adult life gives rise to dreams of death of one of the parents
usually the opposite parent to that of the infantile attachment.
Freud calls this archaic desire in the soul of the male child the
Oedipus-complex in recognition of its analogy to the tragedy of King
Oedipus of Sophocles, who was led by his fate to kill his father,
Laius, and win his mother, Jocasta, for a wife.
The importance of the Oedipus-complex warrants a brief review of the
early Greek myth, from which Freud has taken the name as a symbolic
term. Laius, son of Labdacus, King of Thebes, was warned by Apollo’s
oracle at Delphi that he would die at the hands of his son. When the
child, Oedipus, was born, the father, to protect himself against the
prophetic fate, fastened the ankles of the infant and gave him to a
faithful herdsman to be exposed on Mount Cithaeron.
The herdsman, ignorant of the oracle, took pity on the child and gave
him to a shepherd of Polybus, King of Corinth, and that ruler, who was
childless, brought him up as his own son.
Oedipus never doubted his Corinthian nativity until the taunt of a
drunken companion aroused his suspicions, and he fled from the man and
woman he had looked to as his actual father and mother. In a narrow
highway he met an old man, Laius, disputed his right of way, and killed
him. Continuing his journey he reached Thebes, which was harassed by
the Sphinx. Oedipus answered the riddle of the Sphinx and thus slew
the monster. Thebes rewarded him by offering him the hand of the
widowed queen, Jocasta, his mother, whom he married, not knowing the
relationship.
Later a terrible pestilence visited the city, and the oracle which was
consulted declared that the murderer of Laius must be expelled to bring
relief. Oedipus, beginning the search in good faith, discovered the
truth, and put out his eyes. Jocasta, the mother wife, hanged herself.
The over-attachment of the daughter to the father, which involves
a more or less latent jealousy toward the mother, is termed the
Electra-complex, from the myth of Electra of Euripides, who took
revenge on her mother for the murder of the husband because she was
in this way deprived of her father. It will be noted that the Electra
complex is for women quite analogous to the Oedipus complex in men--so
much so in fact that the latter term is often used interchangeably for
both situations, it being understood that the sex of the parent is the
opposite to that of the child.
In the theory of psycho-analysis, the dream is the true language and
most natural medium of expression of the Unconscious, although it
should be emphasized that it is not the only means of expression. It is
also the chief means by which the Unconscious may be penetrated. Freud
calls it the royal road to the unconscious.
Among other characteristic manifestations of the Unconscious
are phantasying--or day-dreaming, as it is commonly called;
absent-mindedness, which causes us to forget names, dates and facts
with which we are really thoroughly conversant; mistakes in speech and
writing, and reading words that are not there into sentences.
Wit and laughter are also manifestations of the unconscious mind, and
are recognized by Freud as the medium through which the Unconscious
obtains the greatest amount of pleasure within the shortest space of
time. The psychological structure of a joke, in fact, greatly resembles
the psychological structure of a dream.
As our civilization is based upon the suppression of instincts--which
is, or should be, compensated for by the advantages of cultural and
intellectual development--we find countless numbers of people who have
been unable to successfully transform their accumulations of bound-up
energy from self-centered to social ends.
_The Libido._--The energy or prime mover of human action which Freud
calls the _Libido_, is termed by Henri Bergson the _élan vital_, and
by Dr. Carl Jung, the _horme_. Other names have been proposed, one of
the best English equivalents, suggested by Putnam, being the _Craving_.
It is the Craving for Life, for Love, for Action.
When the _libido_ (to adhere to the terminology of Freud) is not
adequately transformed into channels that are serviceable to society or
_sublimated_, as this process of socialization is called, the result
is a derangement of the nervous system and the psychic structure--a
neurosis in one of its several forms of variations.
The anxiety-neurosis may be the result of sexual repression, or of
some sudden confronting with the facts of sex (a strong argument for
some general common-sense instruction of what the continuance of life
implies), or of impotent husbands, frigid wives, or of diminishing
potency associated with increasing lust, and so on.
The _libido_, or life force, must have an outlet, or play havoc with
the psychic structure, and as the rules of modern society necessarily
forbid as an outlet the natural, crude expressions of sensuousness
which served the purpose of primitive peoples in so many of their
activities, the energy turns within, so to speak, and works on the ego.
As Dr. Hitschmann remarks, a dammed-up _libido_ hunts out a weak
place and breaks through, expressing itself in neurotic “substitute
gratification.”
Primitive man, like the child, is much interested in the sensations
he produces with his own body; he is auto-erotic. He squanders
enormous amounts of vitality in specific sensuality, wasted energy
that results in no benefit to the group. One of the essential objects
of civilization is to convert this dissipated personal power from the
sensual to activities that are useful to the herd.
But by turning wasted energy from the sensual to social uses, we do
not mean to imply that the sex-life of normal adulthood should or can
be ignored. This, as we shall see, frequently leads to unfortunate, or
even disastrous consequences.
As Freud says, “the struggle against sensuality consumes all of a young
man’s available energy at the precise moment when he needs it to win
for himself a place in the social organization.”
And, again, in alluding to the irrational, ascetic tendency of
over-sublimation, he warns:
Experience teaches us that there is for the majority of men, a limit
beyond which their constitution cannot comply any more with the
“cultural” demands. Those who are trying to be better than their
constitution permits them to be succumb to a neurosis; _they would
have been better off if it had been possible for them to be worse._
_Sexuality._--Interpreted in the strictly Freudian sense, nearly
all of our instincts, emotions and actions are motivated primarily
by an unconscious sexual urge. It should be emphasized that Freud
used the word “sexual” in a very broad sense; much broader than the
conventionally educated are capable of comprehending until after
diligent and painstaking study of psycho-analytic literature, they
finally perceive the meaning of this term at its true value.
In a word, _sexuality_ is not the equivalent of _sensuality_, but
_denotes_ the fundamental instinct which is the very root of the
emotional life, called the _libido_.
It thus refers to the yearning for love, for marriage, for children,
for the affection of a parent, etc.--all of a most commendable type,
which have as their unconscious biological aim the perpetuation of the
race.
The child’s sexuality is at first auto-erotic (a term which the
analysts have taken from Havelock Ellis), or turned on itself; then it
transfers or fixes itself to those nearest him, usually the mother or
some member of the family, or the nurse; and finally, in the normal
course of development, as adult life is approached, it transfers it to
a person outside the family group--constituting what is termed falling
in love.
Freud emphasizes the point that the infant enjoys in the taking of
nourishment a sexual pleasure which it frequently seeks to obtain
throughout childhood by sucking, with rhythmic movements, independent
of the taking of food.
This sometimes grows to a fixed childish fault that continues
even up into later years. Often there is associated with the
“pleasure-sucking,” a rubbing of certain sensitive parts of the body,
the breast, the external genitals, etc. In this way many children
proceed automatically from sucking to masturbation.
Jung, in _The Psychology of the Unconscious_, remarks:
Sucking still belongs to the function of nutrition, but passes beyond
it, however, in that it is no longer the function of nutrition, but
rhythmic activity, with pleasure and satisfaction as a goal, without
the taking of nourishment.... In the period of the displaced rhythmic
activity, the hands appear still more clearly as an auxiliary organ;
the gaining of pleasure leaves the mouth zone and turns to the other
regions.... As a rule, other openings of the body become objects of
the libido interest; then the skin and special portions of that.
The activity expressed in these parts, which can appear as rubbing,
boring, picking, and so on, follows a certain rhythm and serves to
produce pleasure. After longer or shorter tarryings of the libido
at these stations, it passes onward until it reaches the sexual
(genital) zone, and there, for the first time, can be occasion for
the beginning of onanistic attempts.
The theory of sucking as a sexual pleasure is strengthened by the fact
that the mouth and lips are known as erogenous (love creating) zones, a
significance they retain through normal life in the kiss.
It is also a natural tendency of the infant, as well as the young
child, to take a keen satisfaction in the sight of its nude body, and
in feeling and playing with many or almost all of the surface parts.
This manifestation is perfectly understandable when it is taken
into consideration that the erogenous zones are very diversified in
childhood; including, besides the more sensitive places, practically
the whole surface of the body. As the child approaches puberty, the
erogenous zones normally tend to concentrate to the regions of the
reproductive organs. The inclination of the child to glory in its
nakedness (termed Narcissism) is nothing to be ashamed of, nor is the
existence of an unconscious sexual motive a matter to be horrified over.
The child should not be scolded for this propensity, as such treatment
leaves an indelible impression on the infant mind, and tends to set
up repressions in the unconscious that may lead to future mental
conflicts. Undue erotic concentration may be prevented by directing
the mind of the child to various constructive activities suitable
to its age and development. This is the beginning of the process of
sublimation.
In regard to sexuality in childhood, Wilfrid Lay (_Man’s Unconscious
Conflict_), states:
The repugnance against seeing anything of the quality or intensity of
adult sexual feeling attributed to children under five years of age
is so strong in most people that they have accused the Freudians of
reading sex into everything. The reply to this accusation is that it
is true that all excitement is primarily sexual, but the word sexual
is to be understood in a very broad sense, and that, viewed from the
purely scientific standpoint, and freed from all ideas of prurience
or prudery, there is no reproach in regarding what is admitted as the
prime mover in human life and activity as an essential characteristic
of all ages of human life, even of infancy.
When looking at it in a rational light, free from prudish notions,
there is nothing about this predominant sexual urge to feel ashamed of
or to apologize for. It has as its basis the one great object of race
preservation, which, biologically speaking, is ALL IMPORTANT.
But as we have evolved beyond the need of using practically all our
instincts and activities toward the reproductive end, it follows that
while the immediate and concrete urge of sex life must normally
find expression and gratification, the numerous _secondary_ impulses
that now have only a vestigial sexual significance, should express
themselves in some other than sensuous ways. These are the qualities of
the libido that can be sublimated, and diverted from erotic to socially
useful fields of activity.
It should not be assumed that because these natural instincts have no
longer a specific sexual function to perform that they are not even now
sensually employed. Indeed, unless weaned into constructive channels by
the process of sublimation, their constant tendency is to seek erotic
satisfaction.
Proof of this can be found on every hand, not only in the records
of serious crimes and petty misdemeanors, but in all sorts of human
impulses that are so common in every-day life, and have such varied
ways of manifesting themselves, that their very universality causes us
to take them for granted as a matter of course, without reflecting on
their real significance.
A very apt elucidation of this principle is given by Dr. William A.
White (_Principles of Mental Hygiene_):
The way in which this bound-up energy is freed is by the process
known as sublimation. Of course, the possible illustrations are
almost infinite, for they include every activity of man. For
example, according to this theory, the curiosity which makes a man
a scientist--let us say microscopist--is traceable to that early
curiosity in looking--peeping, which has its object in seeing
forbidden sexual objects or acts. The immediate sexual element in the
curiosity is sublimated into a socially useful purpose to which the
original pleasure is still attached, and for which it furnishes the
drive. We know, too, the “Peeping Toms,” who still show this same
form of pleasure-seeking, but have been unable to advance their way
of obtaining pleasure to a socially accepted means.
Despite the formidable obstacles that stand in the way of a more normal
sex life for the great masses of people, Freud sounds the hopeful note
of all those who have worked toward an increased control of life,
maintaining that degeneration and nervousness are not in any way
inevitable results of cultural progress, but excrescences that are to
be avoided.