THE INTERNATIONAL
PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL
LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST JONES
No. 4
BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
BY
SIGM. FREUD, M.D., LL.D.
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION
BY C. J. M. HUBBACK
[Illustration: [Logo]]
THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL PRESS
LONDON MCMXXII VIENNA
COPYRIGHT 1911
EDITORIAL PREFACE
I have revised this translation, so carefully made by Miss Hubback,
several times, but I feel that it calls for special indulgence on the
part of the reader. On account, doubtless, of the extreme complexity and
remarkable novelty of the ideas which Professor Freud here expounds,
comprising as they do his thoughts on the ultimate problems of life, the
style is one of exceptional difficulty. As it is more important to
render his ideas precisely than to clothe them in another garb, we
decided to adhere faithfully to the original even at the expense of some
uncouthness as regards the English.
The word _Unlust_, as in the phrase pleasure-pain principle, has been
translated as ‘pain’; pain without inverted commas signifies _Schmerz_
in the original. The word _Besetzung_ (literally: state of being
occupied), as in the expressions _Besetzungsenergie_ and
_Energiebesetzung_ has been rendered by the words ‘investment’ or
‘charge’, the latter being taken from the analogy of electricity. These
and other technical terms will be discussed in a Glossary which it is
intended to publish as a supplement to the _International Journal of
Psycho-Analysis_.
BEYOND THE
PLEASURE
PRINCIPLE
I
In the psycho-analytical theory of the mind we take it for granted
that the course of mental processes is automatically regulated by ‘the
pleasure-principle’: that is to say, we believe that any given process
originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon determines
for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides with a
relaxation of this tension, i. e. with avoidance of ‘pain’ or with
production of pleasure. When we consider the psychic processes under
observation in reference to such a sequence we are introducing into
our work the _economic_ point of view. In our opinion a presentation
which seeks to estimate, not only the _topographical_ and _dynamic_,
but also the economic element is the most complete that we can at
present imagine, and deserves to be distinguished by the term
_metapsychological_.
We are not interested in examining how far in our assertion of the
pleasure-principle we have approached to or adopted any given
philosophical system historically established. Our approach to such
speculative hypotheses is by way of our endeavour to describe and
account for the facts falling within our daily sphere of observation.
Priority and originality are not among the aims which psycho-analysis
sets itself, and the impressions on which the statement of this
principle is founded are of so unmistakable a kind that it is scarcely
possible to overlook them. On the other hand, we should willingly
acknowledge our indebtedness to any philosophical or psychological
theory that could tell us the meaning of these feelings of pleasure and
‘pain’ which affect us so powerfully. Unfortunately no theory of any
value is forthcoming. It is the obscurest and least penetrable region of
psychic life and, while it is impossible for us to avoid touching on it,
the most elastic hypothesis will be, to my mind, the best. We have
decided to consider pleasure and ‘pain’ in relation to the quantity of
excitation present in the psychic life—and not confined in any way—along
such lines that ‘pain’ corresponds with an increase and pleasure with a
decrease in this quantity. We do not thereby commit ourselves to a
simple relationship between the strength of the feelings and the changes
corresponding with them, least of all, judging from psycho-physiological
experiences, to any view of a direct proportion existing between them;
probably the amount of diminution or increase in a given time is the
decisive factor for feeling. Possibly there is room here for
experimental work, but it is inadvisable for us analysts to go further
into these problems until we can be guided by quite definite
observations.
We cannot however profess the like indifference when we find that an
investigator of such penetration as G. Th. Fechner has advocated a
conception of pleasure and ‘pain’ which in essentials coincides with
that forced upon us by psycho-analytic work. Fechner’s pronouncement is
to be found in his short work ‘Einige Ideen zur Schöpfungs- und
Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen’, 1873 (Section XI, Note p. 94)
and reads as follows: ‘In so far as conscious impulses always bear a
relation to pleasure or “pain”, pleasure or “pain” may be thought of in
psycho-physical relationship to conditions of stability and instability,
and upon this may be based the hypothesis I intend to develop elsewhere,
viz.: that every psycho-physical movement rising above the threshold of
consciousness is charged with pleasure in proportion as it
approximates—beyond a certain limit—to complete equilibrium, and with
“pain” in proportion as it departs from it beyond a certain limit; while
between the two limits which may be described as the qualitative
thresholds of “pain” or pleasure, there is a certain area of aesthetic
indifference.’
The facts that have led us to believe in the supremacy of the
pleasure-principle in psychic life also find expression in the
hypothesis that there is an attempt on the part of the psychic apparatus
to keep the quantity of excitation present as low as possible, or at
least constant. This is the same supposition only put into another form,
for, if the psychic apparatus operates in the direction of keeping down
the quantity of excitation, all that tends to increase it must be felt
to be contrary to function, that is to say painful. The
pleasure-principle is deduced from the principle of constancy; in
reality the principle of constancy was inferred from the facts that
necessitated our assumption of the pleasure-principle. On more detailed
discussion we shall find further that this tendency on the part of the
psychic apparatus postulated by us may be classified as a special case
of Fechner’s principle of the _tendency towards stability_ to which he
has related the pleasure-pain feelings.
In that event, however, it must be affirmed that it is not strictly
correct to speak of a supremacy of the pleasure-principle over the
course of psychic processes. If such existed, then the vast majority of
our psychic processes would necessarily be accompanied by pleasure or
would conduce to it, while the most ordinary experience emphatically
contradicts any such conclusion. One can only say that a strong tendency
towards the pleasure-principle exists in the psyche, to which, however,
certain other forces or conditions are opposed, so that the ultimate
issue cannot always be in accordance with the pleasure-tendency. Compare
the comment of Fechner in a similar connection.[1] ‘Therewithal it is to
be noted that the tendency towards the goal does not imply the
attainment of it and that in general the goal is only approximately
attainable....’ If we now address ourselves to the question of what
circumstances have the power to frustrate the successful carrying out of
the pleasure-principle we shall be treading on safer and better-known
ground, and we can draw in abundant measure on our analytical
experiences for the answer.
The first case of such a check on the pleasure-principle is perfectly
familiar to us in the regularity of its occurrence. We know that the
pleasure-principle is adjusted to a primary mode of operation on the
part of the psychic apparatus, and that for the preservation of the
organism amid the difficulties of the external world it is ab initio
useless and indeed extremely dangerous. Under the influence of the
instinct of the ego for self-preservation it is replaced by the
‘reality-principle’, which without giving up the intention of ultimately
attaining pleasure yet demands and enforces the postponement of
satisfaction, the renunciation of manifold possibilities of it, and the
temporary endurance of ‘pain’ on the long and circuitous road to
pleasure. The pleasure-principle however remains for a long time the
method of operation of the sex-impulses, which are not so easily
educable, and it happens over and over again that whether acting through
these impulses or operating in the ego itself it prevails over the
reality-principle to the detriment of the whole organism.
It is at the same time indubitable that the replacement of the
pleasure-principle by the reality-principle can account only for a small
part, and that not the most intense, of painful experiences. Another and
no less regular source of ‘pain’ proceeds from the conflicts and
dissociations in the psychic apparatus during the development of the ego
towards a more highly co-ordinated organisation. Nearly all the energy
with which the apparatus is charged comes from the inborn instincts, but
not all of these are allowed to develop to the same stage. On the way it
over and again happens that particular instincts, or portions of them,
prove irreconcilable in their aims or demands with others which can be
welded into the comprehensive unity of the ego. They are thereupon split
off from this unity by the process of repression, retained on lower
stages of psychic development, and for the time being cut off from all
possibility of gratification. If they then succeed, as so easily happens
with the repressed sex-impulses, in fighting their way through—along
circuitous routes—to a direct or a substitutive gratification, this
success, which might otherwise have brought pleasure, is experienced by
the ego as ‘pain’. In consequence of the old conflict which ended in
repression the pleasure-principle has been violated anew, just at the
moment when certain impulses were at work on the achievement of fresh
pleasure in pursuance of the principle. The details of the process by
which repression changes a possibility of pleasure into a source of
‘pain’ are not yet fully understood, or are not yet capable of clear
presentation, but it is certain that all neurotic ‘pain’ is of this
kind, is pleasure which cannot be experienced as such.
The two sources of ‘pain’ here indicated still do not nearly cover the
majority of our painful experiences, but as to the rest one may say with
a fair show of reason that their presence does not impugn the supremacy
of the pleasure-principle. Most of the ‘pain’ we experience is of a
perceptual order, perception either of the urge of unsatisfied instincts
or of something in the external world which may be painful in itself or
may arouse painful anticipations in the psychic apparatus and is
recognised by it as ‘danger’. The reaction to these claims of impulse
and these threats of danger, a reaction in which the real activity of
the psychic apparatus is manifested, may be guided correctly by the
pleasure-principle or by the reality-principle which modifies this. It
seems thus unnecessary to recognise a still more far-reaching limitation
of the pleasure-principle, and nevertheless it is precisely the
investigation of the psychic reaction to external danger that may supply
new material and new questions in regard to the problem here treated.
II
After severe shock of a mechanical nature, railway collision or other
accident in which danger to life is involved, a condition may arise
which has long been recognised and to which the name ‘traumatic
neurosis’ is attached. The terrible war that is just over has been
responsible for an immense number of such maladies and at least has put
an end to the inclination to explain them on the basis of organic injury
to the nervous system due to the operation of mechanical force.[2] The
clinical picture of traumatic neurosis approaches that of hysteria in
its wealth of similar motor symptoms, but usually surpasses it in its
strongly marked signs of subjective suffering—in this resembling rather
hypochondria or melancholia—and in the evidences of a far more
comprehensive general weakening and shattering of the mental functions.
Neither the war neuroses nor the traumatic neuroses of peace are as yet
fully understood. With the war neuroses some light was contributed, but
also on the other hand a certain confusion introduced, by the fact that
the same type of malady could occasionally occur without the
interposition of gross mechanical force. In the traumatic neuroses there
are two outstanding features which might serve as clues for further
reflection: first that the chief causal factor seemed to lie in the
element of surprise, in the fright; and secondly that an injury or wound
sustained at the same time generally tended to prevent the occurrence of
the neurosis. Fright, fear, apprehension are incorrectly used as
synonymous expressions: in their relation to danger they admit of quite
clear distinction. Apprehension (_Angst_) denotes a certain condition as
of expectation of danger and preparation for it, even though it be an
unknown one; fear (_Furcht_) requires a definite object of which one is
afraid; fright (_Schreck_) is the name of the condition to which one is
reduced if one encounters a danger without being prepared for it; it
lays stress on the element of surprise. In my opinion apprehension
cannot produce a traumatic neurosis; in apprehension there is something
which protects against fright and therefore against the fright-neurosis.
We shall return later to this dictum.
The study of dreams may be regarded as the most trustworthy approach to
the exploration of the deeper psychic processes. Now in the traumatic
neuroses the dream life has this peculiarity: it continually takes the
patient back to the situation of his disaster, from which he awakens in
renewed terror. This fact has caused less surprise than it merits. The
obtrusion on the patient over and again, even in sleep, of the
impression made by the traumatic experience is taken as being merely a
proof of its strength. The patient has so to speak undergone a psychical
fixation as to the trauma. Fixations of this kind on the experience
which has brought about the malady have long been known to us in
connection with hysteria. Breuer and Freud stated in 1893 that hysterics
suffer for the most part from reminiscences. In the war neuroses,
observers, such as Ferenczi and Simmel, have been able to explain a
number of motor symptoms as fixation on the factor of the trauma.
But I am not aware that the patients suffering from traumatic neuroses
are much occupied in waking life with the recollection of what happened
to them. They perhaps strive rather not to think of it. To regard it as
self-evident that the dream at night takes them back to the situation
which has caused the trouble is to misunderstand the nature of dreams.
It would be more in correspondence with that nature if the patient were
presented (in sleep) with images from the time of his normal health or
of his hoped-for recovery. If we are not to go thoroughly astray as to
the wish-fulfilment tendency of the dream in consequence of these dreams
of the shock neuroses, perhaps the expedient is left us of supposing
that in this condition the dream function suffers dislocation along with
the others and is diverted from its usual ends, or else we should have
to think of the enigmatic masochistic tendencies of the ego.
I propose now to leave the obscure and gloomy theme of the traumatic
neuroses and to study the way in which the psychic apparatus works in
one of its earliest normal activities. I refer to the play of children.
The different theories of child-play have recently been collated by S.
Pfeifer in _Imago_[3] and their analytical value estimated; I may here
refer the reader to this work. These theories endeavour to conjecture
the motives of children’s play, though without placing any special
stress on the ‘economic’ point of view, i. e. consideration of the
attainment of pleasure. Without the intention of making a comprehensive
study of these phenomena I availed myself of an opportunity which
offered of elucidating the first game invented by himself of a boy
eighteen months old. It was more than a casual observation, for I lived
for some weeks under the same roof as the child and his parents, and it
was a considerable time before the meaning of his puzzling and
continually repeated performance became clear to me.
The child was in no respect forward in his intellectual development; at
eighteen months he spoke only a few intelligible words, making besides
sundry significant sounds which were understood by those about him. But
he made himself understood by his parents and the maid-servant, and had
a good reputation for behaving ‘properly’. He did not disturb his
parents at night; he scrupulously obeyed orders about not touching
various objects and not going into certain rooms; and above all he never
cried when his mother went out and left him for hours together, although
the tie to his mother was a very close one: she had not only nourished
him herself, but had cared for him and brought him up without any
outside help. Occasionally, however, this well-behaved child evinced the
troublesome habit of flinging into the corner of the room or under the
bed all the little things he could lay his hands on, so that to gather
up his toys was often no light task. He accompanied this by an
expression of interest and gratification, emitting a loud long-drawn-out
‘o-o-o-oh’ which in the judgement of the mother (one that coincided with
my own) was not an interjection but meant ‘go away’ (_fort_). I saw at
last that this was a game, and that the child used all his toys only to
play ‘being gone’ (_fortsein_) with them. One day I made an observation
that confirmed my view. The child had a wooden reel with a piece of
string wound round it. It never occurred to him, for example, to drag
this after him on the floor and so play horse and cart with it, but he
kept throwing it with considerable skill, held by the string, over the
side of his little draped cot, so that the reel disappeared into it,
then said his significant ‘o-o-o-oh’ and drew the reel by the string out
of the cot again, greeting its reappearance with a joyful ‘_Da_’
(there). This was therefore the complete game, disappearance and return,
the first act being the only one generally observed by the onlookers,
and the one untiringly repeated by the child as a game for its own sake,
although the greater pleasure unquestionably attached to the second
act.[4]
The meaning of the game was then not far to seek. It was connected with
the child’s remarkable cultural achievement—the foregoing of the
satisfaction of an instinct—as the result of which he could let his
mother go away without making any fuss. He made it right with himself,
so to speak, by dramatising the same disappearance and return with the
objects he had at hand. It is of course of no importance for the
affective value of this game whether the child invented it himself or
adopted it from a suggestion from outside. Our interest will attach
itself to another point. The departure of the mother cannot possibly
have been pleasant for the child, nor merely a matter of indifference.
How then does it accord with the pleasure-principle that he repeats this
painful experience as a game? The answer will perhaps be forthcoming
that the departure must be played as the necessary prelude to the joyful
return, and that in this latter lay the true purpose of the game. As
against this, however, there is the observation that the first act, the
going away, was played by itself as a game and far more frequently than
the whole drama with its joyful conclusion.
The analysis of a single case of this kind yields no sure conclusion: on
impartial consideration one gains the impression that it is from another
motive that the child has turned the experience into a game. He was in
the first place passive, was overtaken by the experience, but now brings
himself in as playing an active part, by repeating the experience as a
game in spite of its unpleasing nature. This effort might be ascribed to
the impulse to obtain the mastery of a situation (the ‘power’ instinct),
which remains independent of any question of whether the recollection
was a pleasant one or not. But another interpretation may be attempted.
The flinging away of the object so that it is gone might be the
gratification of an impulse of revenge suppressed in real life but
directed against the mother for going away, and would then have the
defiant meaning: ‘Yes, you can go, I don’t want you, I am sending you
away myself.’ The same child a year later than my observations used to
throw on the floor a toy which displeased him, and to say ‘Go to the
war!’ He had been told that his absent father was at the war, and he did
not miss him at all, giving the clearest indications that he did not
wish to be disturbed in the sole possession of his mother.[5] It is
known of other children also that they can give vent to similar hostile
feelings by throwing objects away in place of people.[6] Thus one is
left in doubt whether the compulsion to work over in psychic life what
has made a deep impression, to make oneself fully master of it, can
express itself primarily and independently of the pleasure-principle. In
the case discussed here, however, the child might have repeated a
disagreeable impression in play only because with the repetition was
bound up a pleasure gain of a different kind but more direct.
Nor does the further pursuit of the question of play resolve our
hesitations between two conceptions. We see that children repeat in
their play everything that has made a great impression on them in actual
life, that they thereby abreact the strength of the impression and so to
speak make themselves masters of the situation. But on the other hand it
is clear enough that all their play is influenced by the dominant wish
of their time of life: viz. to be grown-up and to be able to do what
grown-up people do. It is also observable that the unpleasing character
of the experience does not always prevent its being utilised as a game.
If a doctor examines a child’s throat, or performs a small operation on
him, the alarming experience will quite certainly be made the subject of
the next game, but in this the pleasure gain from another source is not
to be overlooked. In passing from the passivity of experience to the
activity of play the child applies to his playfellow the unpleasant
occurrence that befell himself and so avenges himself on the person of
this proxy.
From this discussion it is at all events evident that it is unnecessary
to assume a particular imitation impulse as the motive of play. We may
add the reminder that the dramatic and imitative art of adults, which
differs from the behaviour of children in being directed towards the
spectator, does not however spare the latter the most painful
impressions, e. g. in tragedy, and yet can be felt by him as highly
enjoyable. This convinces us that even under the domination of the
pleasure-principle there are ways and means enough of making what is in
itself disagreeable the object of memory and of psychic pre-occupation.
A theory of aesthetics with an economic point of view should deal with
these cases and situations ending in final pleasure gain: for our
purposes they are of no help, since they presuppose the existence and
supremacy of the pleasure-principle and bear no witness to the operation
of tendencies beyond the pleasure-principle, that is to say, tendencies
which might be of earlier origin and independent of this.
III
Five-and-twenty years of intensive work have brought about a complete
change in the more immediate aims of psycho-analytic technique. At first
the endeavours of the analytic physician were confined to divining the
unconscious of which his patient was unaware, effecting a synthesis of
its various components and communicating it at the right time.
Psychoanalysis was above all an art of interpretation. Since the
therapeutic task was not thereby accomplished, the next aim was to
compel the patient to confirm the reconstruction through his own memory.
In this endeavour the chief emphasis was on the resistances of the
patient; the art now lay in unveiling these as soon as possible, in
calling the patient’s attention to them, and by human influence—here
came in suggestion acting as ‘transference’—teaching him to abandon the
resistances.
It then became increasingly clear, however, that the aim in view, the
bringing into consciousness of the unconscious, was not fully attainable
by this method either. The patient cannot recall all of what lies
repressed, perhaps not even the essential part of it, and so gains no
conviction that the conclusion presented to him is correct. He is
obliged rather to _repeat_ as a current experience what is repressed,
instead of, as the physician would prefer to see him do, _recollecting_
it as a fragment of the past.[7] This reproduction appearing with
unwelcome fidelity always contains a fragment of the infantile sex-life,
therefore of the Oedipus complex and its off-shoots, and is played
regularly in the sphere of transference, i. e. the relationship to the
physician. When this point in the treatment is reached, it may be said
that the earlier neurosis is now replaced by a fresh one, viz. the
transference-neurosis. The physician makes it his concern to limit the
scope of this transference-neurosis as much as he can, to force into
memory as much as possible, and to leave as little as possible to
repetition. The relation established between memory and reproduction is
different for every case. As a rule the physician cannot spare the
patient this phase of the cure; he must let him live through a certain
fragment of his forgotten life, and has to see to it that some measure
of ascendency remains, in the light of which the apparent reality is
always recognised as a reflection of a forgotten past. If this is
successfully accomplished then conviction on the part of the patient is
attained, and with it the therapeutic result that depends on it.
In order to render more comprehensible this ‘repetition-compulsion’
which appears in the psycho-analytic treatment of neurotics, we must
above all get entirely rid of the erroneous idea that in this struggle
with resistances we are concerned with any resistance on the part of the
unconscious. The unconscious, i. e. the ‘repressed’ material, offers no
resistance whatever to the curative efforts; indeed it has no other aim
than to force its way through the pressure weighing on it, either to
consciousness or to discharge by means of some real action. The
resistance in the treatment proceeds from the same higher levels and
systems in the psychic life that in their time brought about the
repression. But since the motives of the resistances, and indeed the
resistances themselves, are found in the process of the treatment to be
unconscious, we are well advised to amend an inadequacy in our mode of
expression. We escape ambiguity if we contrast not the conscious and the
unconscious, but the coherent ego and the repressed. Much in the ego is
certainly unconscious itself, just what may be called the kernel of the
ego; only a part of it comes under the category of preconscious. After
thus replacing a purely descriptive method of expression by a systematic
or dynamic one, we may say that the resistance on the part of the
analysed person proceeds from his ego, and then we at once see that the
‘repetition-compulsion’ must be ascribed to the repressed element in the
unconscious. It probably could not find expression till the work of the
treatment coming to meet it had loosened the repression.
There is no doubt that the resistance of the conscious and preconscious
ego subserves the pleasure-principle; it is trying to avoid the ‘pain’
that would be aroused by the release of the repressed material, and our
efforts are directed to effecting an entry for such painful feeling by
an appeal to the reality-principle. In what relation to the
pleasure-principle then does the repetition-compulsion stand, that which
expresses the force of what is repressed? It is plain that most of what
is revived by the repetition-compulsion cannot but bring discomfort to
the ego, for it promotes the bringing to light of the activities of
repressed impulses; but that is a discomfort we have already taken into
account and without subversion of the pleasure-principle, since it is
‘pain’ in respect of one system and at the same time satisfaction for
the other. The new and remarkable fact, however, that we have now to
describe is that the repetition-compulsion also revives experiences of
the past that contain no potentiality of pleasure, and which could at no
time have been satisfactions, even of impulses since repressed.
The efflorescence of infantile sex-life was, by reason of the
irreconcilability of its wishes with reality and the inadequacy of the
childhood stage of development reached, destined to pass away. It
perished in most painful circumstances and with feelings of a deeply
distressing nature. Loss and failure in the sphere of the affections
left behind on the ego-feeling marks of injury comparable to a
narcissistic scar, which, according to my experience and the exposition
given by Marcinowski,[8] yields the most important contribution to the
‘inferiority complex’ common among neurotics. The sex-quest to which the
physical development of the child set limits could be brought to no
satisfying conclusion; hence the plaint in later life: ‘I can’t do
anything, I am never successful.’ The bonds of tenderness linking the
child more especially to the parent of the opposite sex succumbed to
disappointment, to the vain expectation of satisfaction, and to the
jealousy aroused by the birth of a new child, unmistakable proof as it
is of the faithlessness of the loved parent; the child’s attempt,
undertaken with tragic seriousness, to produce another such child
himself met with humiliating failure; while the partial withdrawal of
the tenderness lavished on the little one, the more exacting demands of
discipline and education, severe words and an occasional punishment
finally revealed to him the whole extent of the disdain which is his
portion. Some few regularly recurring types are to be found, according
to the way in which the typical love of this period was brought to an
end.
All these undesired happenings and painful affective situations are
repeated by neurotics in the ‘transference’ stage and re-animated with
much ingenuity. They struggle to break off the unfinished treatment,
they know how to re-create the feeling of being disdained, how to force
the physician to adopt brusque speech and a chilling manner towards
them, they find suitable objects for their jealousy, they substitute for
the ardently desired child of early days the promise of some great gift
which becomes as little real as that was. Nothing of all this could ever
have afforded any pleasure; one would suppose it ought to bring somewhat
less ‘pain’ if revealed as memory rather than if lived through as a new
experience. It is a question naturally of the action of impulses that
should lead to satisfaction, but the experience that instead of this
they even then brought ‘pain’ has borne no result. The act is repeated
in spite of everything; a powerful compulsion insists on it.
That which psycho-analysis reveals in the transference phenomena with
neurotics can also be observed in the life of normal persons. It here
gives the impression of a pursuing fate, a daemonic trait in their
destiny, and psycho-analysis has from the outset regarded such a life
history as in a large measure self-imposed and determined by infantile
influences. The compulsion which thereby finds expression is in no way
different from the repetition-compulsion of neurotics, even though such
persons have never shown signs of a neurotic conflict resulting in
symptoms. Thus one knows people with whom every human relationship ends
in the same way: benefactors whose protégés, however different they may
otherwise have been, invariably after a time desert them in ill-will, so
that they are apparently condemned to drain to the dregs all the
bitterness of ingratitude; men with whom every friendship ends in the
friend’s treachery; others who indefinitely often in their lives invest
some other person with authority either in their own eyes or generally,
and themselves overthrow such authority after a given time, only to
replace it by a new one; lovers whose tender relationships with women
each and all run through the same phases and come to the same end, and
so on. We are less astonished at this ‘endless repetition of the same’
if there is involved a question of active behaviour on the part of the
person concerned, and if we detect in his character an unalterable trait
which must always manifest itself in the repetition of identical
experiences. Far more striking are those cases where the person seems to
be experiencing something passively, without exerting any influence of
his own, and yet always meets with the same fate over and over again.
One may recall, for example, the story of the woman who married three
men in succession, each of whom fell ill after a short time and whom she
had to nurse till their death.[9] Tasso gives a singularly affecting
poetical portrayal of such a trend of fate in the romantic epic:
‘Gerusalemme liberata.’ The hero, Tancred, has unwittingly slain
Clorinda, the maiden he loved, who fought with him disguised in the
armour of an enemy knight. After her burial he penetrates into the
mysterious enchanted wood, the bane of the army of the crusaders. Here
he hews down a tall tree with his sword, but from the gash in the trunk
blood streams forth and the voice of Clorinda whose soul is imprisoned
in the tree cries out to him in reproach that he has once more wrought a
baleful deed on his beloved.
In the light of such observations as these, drawn from the behaviour
during transference and from the fate of human beings, we may venture
to make the assumption that there really exists in psychic life a
repetition-compulsion, which goes beyond the pleasure-principle. We
shall now also feel disposed to relate to this compelling force the
dreams of shock-patients and the play-impulse in children. We must of
course remind ourselves that only in rare cases can we recognise the
workings of this repetition-compulsion in a pure form, without the
co-operation of other motives. As regards children’s play we have
already pointed out what other interpretations its origin permits. The
repetition-compulsion and direct pleasurable satisfaction of impulse
seem there to be inextricably intertwined. The transference phenomena
obviously subserve the purpose of the resistance made by the ego
persisting in its repression: the repetition-compulsion is, as it
were, called to the aid of the ego, which is resolved to hold fast to
the pleasure-principle. In what one might call the destiny compulsion
much appears capable of rational explanation, so that no need is felt
to establish a new and mysterious impulse. The least suspicious case
is perhaps that of the shock-dream, but on closer examination it must
be admitted that in the other examples too the state of affairs is not
completely explained by the operation of the motives known to us.
There remains enough over to justify the assumption of a
repetition-compulsion, and this seems to us more primitive, more
elementary, more instinctive than the pleasure-principle which is
displaced by it. But if there is such a repetition-compulsion in
psychic life, we should naturally like to know with what function it
corresponds, under what conditions it may appear, and in what relation
it stands to the pleasure-principle, to which we have heretofore
ascribed the domination over the course of the processes of excitation
in the psychic life.
IV
What follows now is speculation, speculation often far-fetched, which
each will according to his particular attitude acknowledge or neglect.
Or one may call it the exploitation of an idea out of curiosity to see
whither it will lead.
Psycho-analytic speculation starts from the impression gained on
investigating unconscious processes that consciousness cannot be the
most general characteristic of psychic processes, but merely a special
function of them. Metapsychologically expressed, it asserts that
consciousness is the functioning of a particular system which may be
called Bw. Since consciousness essentially yields perceptions of
excitations coming from without and feelings (_Empfindungen_) of
pleasure and ‘pain’ which can only be derived from within the psychic
apparatus, we may allot the system W-Bw.[10] (= perceptual
consciousness) a position in space. It must lie on the boundary between
outer and inner, must face towards the outer world, and must envelop the
other psychic systems. We then note that in this assumption we have
ventured nothing new, but are in agreement with the localising
tendencies of cerebral anatomy, which places the ‘seat’ of consciousness
in the cortical layer, the outermost enveloping layer of the central
organ. Cerebral anatomy does not need to wonder why—anatomically
speaking—consciousness should be accomodated on the surface of the
brain, instead of being safely lodged somewhere in the deepest recesses
of it. Perhaps we may carry matters a little further than this in our
deduction of such a position for our system W-Bw.
Consciousness is not the only peculiar feature that we ascribe to the
processes in this system. Our impressions gained by psycho-analytic
experience lead us to the supposition that all excitation processes in
the other systems leave in them permanent traces forming the foundations
of memory-records which have nothing to do with the question of becoming
conscious. They are often strongest and most enduring when the process
that left them behind never reached consciousness at all. But we find it
difficult to believe that such lasting traces of excitation are formed
also in the system W-Bw. itself. If they remained permanently in
consciousness they would very soon limit the fitness of the system for
registration of new excitations;[11] on the other hand, if they became
unconscious we should be confronted with the task of explaining the
existence of unconscious processes in a system whose functioning is
otherwise accompanied by the phenomenon of consciousness. We should, so
to speak, have gained nothing and altered nothing by our supposition
which relegates to a special system the process of becoming conscious.
Though this may not be an absolutely binding consideration, it may at
any rate lead us to conjecture that becoming conscious and leaving
behind a memory-trace are processes incompatible with each other in the
same system. We should thus be able to say: in the system Bw. the
process of excitation becomes conscious but it leaves behind no lasting
trace; all the traces of it on which memory relies would come about in
the next systems inwards from the propagation of the excitation on to
them. It is on these lines that the scheme is sketched which I inserted
into the speculative section of my ‘Traumdeutung’ in 1900. If one
reflects how little we know from other sources about the origin of
consciousness the pronouncement that _consciousness arises in the place
of the memory-trace_ must be conceded at least the importance of a
statement which is to some extent definite.
The system Bw. would thus be characterised by the peculiarity that the
excitation process does not leave in it, as it does in all other psychic
systems, a permanent alteration of its elements, but is as it were
discharged in the phenomenon of becoming conscious and vanishes. Such a
departure from the general rule requires an explanation on the ground of
a factor which comes into account in this one system only: this factor
which is absent from all other systems might well be the exposed
situation of the Bw. system—its immediate contact with the outer world.
Let us imagine the living organism in the simplest possible form as an
undifferentiated vesicle of sensitive substance: then its surface,
exposed as it is to the outer world, is by its very position
differentiated and serves as an organ for receiving stimuli. Embryology,
repeating as it does the history of evolution, does in fact show that
the central nervous system arises from the ectoderm; the grey cortex of
the brain remains a derivative of the primitive superficial layer and
may have inherited essential properties from this. It would then be
easily conceivable that, owing to the constant impact of external
stimuli on the superficies of the vesicle, its substance would undergo
lasting alteration to a certain depth, so that its excitation process
takes a different course from that taken in the deeper layers. Thus a
rind would be formed which would finally have been so burned through by
the effects of stimulation that it presents the most favourable
conditions for the reception of stimuli and is incapable of any further
modification. Applying this idea to the system Bw., this would mean that
its elements are not susceptible of any further lasting alteration from
the passage of the excitation, because they are already modified to the
uttermost in that respect. But they are then capable of giving rise to
consciousness. In what exactly these modifications of the substance and
of the excitation process in it consist many views may be held which as
yet cannot be tested. It may be assumed that the excitation has, in its
transmission from one element to another, to overcome a resistance, and
that this diminution of the resistance itself lays down the permanent
trace of the excitation (a path): in system Bw. there would no longer
exist any such resistance to transmission from one element to another.
We may associate with this conception Breuer’s distinction between
quiescent (bound) and free-moving ‘investment-energy’ in the elements of
the psychic systems;[12] the elements of the system Bw. would then
convey no ‘bound’ energy, only free energy capable of discharge. In my
opinion, however, it is better for the present to express oneself as to
these conditions in the least committal way. At any rate by these
speculations we should have brought the origin of consciousness into a
certain connection with the position of the system Bw. and with the
peculiarities of the excitation process to be ascribed to this.
We have more to say about the living vesicle with its receptive outer
layer. This morsel of living substance floats about in an outer world
which is charged with the most potent energies, and it would be
destroyed by the operation of the stimuli proceeding from this world if
it were not furnished with a protection against stimulation
(_Reizschutz_). It acquires this through its outermost layer—which gives
the structure that belongs to living matter—becoming in a measure
inorganic, and this now operates as a special integument or membrane
that keeps off the stimuli, i. e. makes it impossible for the energies
of the outer world to act with more than a fragment of their intensity
on the layers immediately below which have preserved their vitality.
These are now able under cover of the protecting layer to devote
themselves to the reception of those stimulus masses that have been let
through. But the outer layer has by its own death secured all the deeper
layers from a like fate—at least so long as no stimuli present
themselves of such a strength as to break through the protective
barrier. For the living organism protection against stimuli is almost a
more important task than reception of stimuli; the protective barrier is
equipped with its own store of energy and must above all endeavour to
protect the special forms of energy-transformations going on within
itself from the equalising and therefore destructive influence of the
enormous energies at work in the outer world. The reception of stimuli
serves above all the purpose of collecting information about the
direction and nature of the external stimuli, and for that it must
suffice to take little samples of the outer world, to taste it, so to
speak, in small quantities. In highly developed organisms the receptive
external layer of what was once a vesicle has long been withdrawn into
the depths of the body, but portions of it have been left on the surface
immediately beneath the common protective barrier. These portions form
the sense organs, which essentially comprise arrangements for the
reception of specific stimuli, but also possess special arrangements
adapted for a fresh protection against an overwhelming amount of
stimulus, and for warding off unsuitable kinds of stimuli. It is
characteristic of them that they assimilate only very small quantities
of the outer stimulus, and take in only samples of the outer world; one
might compare them to antennae which touch at the outer world and then
constantly withdraw from it again.
At this point I shall permit myself to touch cursorily upon a theme
which would deserve the most thorough treatment. The Kantian proposition
that time and space are necessary modes of thought may be submitted to
discussion to-day in the light of certain knowledge reached through
psycho-analysis. We have found by experience that unconscious mental
processes are in themselves ‘timeless’. That is to say to begin with:
they are not arranged chronologically, time alters nothing in them, nor
can the idea of time be applied to them. These are negative
characteristics, which can be made plain only by instituting a
comparison with conscious psychic processes. Our abstract conception of
time seems rather to be derived wholly from the mode of functioning of
the system W-Bw., and to correspond with a self-perception of it. In
this mode of functioning of the system another form of protection
against stimulation probably comes into play. I know that these
statements sound very obscure, but I must confine myself to these few
hints.