a protection against stimuli from the outer world. Before that, we had
decided that the cortical layer next to it must be differentiated as the
organ for reception of external stimuli. But this sensitive layer (what
is later the system Bw.) also receives excitations from within: the
position of the system between outer and inner and the difference in the
conditions under which this receptivity operates on the two sides become
deciding factors for the functioning of the system and of the whole
psychic apparatus. Towards the outer world there is a barrier against
stimuli, and the mass of excitations coming up against it will take
effect only on a reduced scale; towards what is within no protection
against stimuli is possible, the excitations of the deeper layers pursue
their way direct and in undiminished mass into the system, while certain
characteristics of their course produce the series of pleasure-pain
feelings. Naturally the excitations coming from within will, in
conformity with their intensity and other qualitative characteristics
(or possibly their amplitude), be more proportionate to the mode of
operation of the system than the stimuli streaming in from the outer
world. Two things are, however, decisively determined by these
conditions: first the preponderance over all outer stimuli of the
pleasure and ‘pain’ feelings, which are an index for processes within
the mechanism; and secondly a shaping of behaviour towards such inner
excitations as bring with them an overplus of ‘pain’. There will be a
tendency to treat them as though they were acting not from within but
from without, in order for it to be possible to apply against them the
defensive measures of the barrier against stimuli (_Reizschutz_). This
is the origin of projection, for which so important a part is reserved
in the production of pathological states.
I have the impression that by these last considerations we have
approached nearer to a comprehension of the supremacy of the
pleasure-principle, but we have not attained to an explanation of those
cases which are opposed to it. Let us therefore go a step further. Such
external excitations as are strong enough to break through the barrier
against stimuli we call traumatic. In my opinion the concept of trauma
involves such a relationship to an otherwise efficacious barrier. An
occurrence such as an external trauma will undoubtedly provoke a very
extensive disturbance in the workings of the energy of the organism, and
will set in motion every kind of protective measure. But the
pleasure-principle is to begin with put out of action here. The flooding
of the psychic apparatus with large masses of stimuli can no longer be
prevented: on the contrary, another task presents itself—to bring the
stimulus under control, to ‘bind’ in the psyche the stimulus mass that
has broken its way in, so as to bring about a discharge of it.
Probably the specific discomfort of bodily pain is the result of some
local breaking through of the barrier against stimuli. From this point
in the periphery there stream to the central psychic apparatus continual
excitations such as would otherwise come only from within.[13] What are
we to expect as the reaction of the psychic life to this invasion? From
all sides the ‘charging energy’ is called on in order to create all
round the breach correspondingly high ‘charges’ of energy. An immense
‘counter-charge’ is set up, in favour of which all the other psychic
systems are impoverished, so that a wide-spread paralysis or diminution
of other psychic activity follows. We endeavour to learn from examples
such as these to base our metapsychological conjectures on such
prototypes. Thus from this behaviour we draw the conclusion that even a
highly charged system is able to receive new energy streaming in, to
convert it into a ‘quiescent charge’, thus to ‘bind’ it psychically. The
more intense is the intrinsic quiescent charge the greater is its
binding force: and conversely the lower the charge of the system the
less capable is it of receiving the energy that streams in, and so the
more violent are the consequences when the barrier against stimuli is
broken through. It is not a valid objection to this view that the
intensifying of the charges round the place of irruption could be much
more simply explained as the direct action of the oncoming mass of
excitation. If that were so, the psychic apparatus would merely undergo
an increase of its energy charges, and the paralysing character of pain,
with the impoverishment of all the other systems, would remain without
explanation. Nor do the very violent discharge effects of pain
invalidate our explanation, for they happen in a reflex manner, that is
to say, they follow without the interposition of the psychic apparatus.
The indefinite nature of all the discussions that we term
metapsychological naturally comes from the fact that we know nothing
about the nature of the excitation process in the elements of the
psychic systems and do not feel justified in making any assumption about
it. Thus we are all the time operating with a large X, which we carry
over into every new formula. That this process is accomplished with
energies which differ quantitatively is an easily admissible postulate,
that it also has more than one quality (e.g. in the direction of
amplitude) may be regarded as probable: the new consideration we have
brought in is Breuer’s proposition that we have to do with two ways in
which a system may be filled with energy, so that a distinction has to
be made between a ‘charging’ of the psychic systems (or its elements)
that is free-flowing and striving to be discharged and one that is
quiescent. Perhaps we may admit the conjecture that the binding of the
energy streaming into the psychic apparatus consists in a translating of
it from the free-flowing to the quiescent state.
I think one may venture (tentatively) to regard the ordinary traumatic
neurosis as the result of an extensive rupture of the barrier against
stimuli. In this way the old naïve doctrine of ‘shock’ would come into
its own again, apparently in opposition to a later and psychologically
more pretentious view which ascribes aetiological significance not to
the effect of the mechanical force, but to the fright and the menace to
life. But these opposing views are not irreconcilable, and the
psycho-analytic conception of the traumatic neurosis is far from being
identical with the crudest form of the ‘shock’ theory. While the latter
takes the essential nature of the shock as residing in the direct injury
to the molecular structure, or even to the histological structure, of
the nervous elements, we seek to understand the effect of the shock by
considering the breaking through of the barrier with which the psychic
organ is provided against stimuli, and from the tasks with which this is
thereby faced. Fright retains its meaning for us too. What conditions it
is the failure of the mechanism of apprehension to make the proper
preparation, including the over-charging of the systems first receiving
the stimulus. In consequence of this lower degree of charging these
systems are hardly in a position to bind the oncoming masses of
excitation, and the consequences of the breaking through of the
protective barrier appear all the more easily. We thus find that the
apprehensive preparation, together with the over-charging of the
receptive systems, represents the last line of defence against stimuli.
For a great number of traumata the difference between the unprepared
systems and those prepared by over-charging may turn the scale as to the
outcome: with a trauma beyond a certain strength such a difference may
no longer be of any importance. When the dreams of patients suffering
from traumatic neuroses so regularly take them back to the situation of
the disaster they do not thereby, it is true, serve the purpose of
wish-fulfilment, the hallucinatory conjuring up of which has, under the
domination of the pleasure-principle, become the function of dreams. But
we may assume that they thereby subserve another purpose, which must be
fulfilled before the pleasure-principle can begin its sway. These dreams
are attempts at restoring control of the stimuli by developing
apprehension, the pretermission of which caused the traumatic neurosis.
They thus afford us an insight into a function of the psychic apparatus,
which without contradicting the pleasure-principle is nevertheless
independent of it, and appears to be of earlier origin than the aim of
attaining pleasure and avoiding ‘pain’.
This is therefore the moment to concede for the first time an
exception to the principle that the dream is a wish-fulfilment.
Anxiety dreams are no such exception, as I have repeatedly and in
detail shown; nor are the ‘punishment dreams’, for they merely put in
the place of the interdicted wish-fulfilment the punishment
appropriate to it, and are thus the wish-fulfilment of the sense of
guilt reacting on the contemned impulse. But the dreams mentioned
above of patients suffering from traumatic neuroses do not permit of
classification under the category of wish-fulfilment, nor do the
dreams occurring during psycho-analysis that bring back the
recollection of the psychic traumata of childhood. They obey rather
the repetition-compulsion, which in analysis, it is true, is supported
by the (not unconscious) wish to conjure up again what has been
forgotten and repressed. Thus the function of the dream, viz. to do
away with the motives leading to interruption of sleep by presenting
wish-fulfilments of the disturbing excitations, would not be its
original one; the dream could secure control of this function only
after the whole psychic life had accepted the domination of the
pleasure-principle. If there is a ‘beyond the pleasure-principle’ it
is logical to admit a prehistoric past also for the wish-fulfilling
tendency of the dream, though to do so is no contradiction of its
later function. Now, when this tendency is once broken through, there
arises the further question: are such dreams, which in the interests
of the psychical binding of traumatic impressions follow the
repetition-compulsion, not possible apart from analysis? The answer is
certainly in the affirmative.
With regard to the war neuroses, so far as the term has any significance
apart from a reference to the occasion of the appearance of the illness,
I have explained elsewhere that they might very well be traumatic
neuroses which have arisen the more easily on account of an
ego-conflict.[14] The fact mentioned on page 9, viz. that a severe
injury inflicted at the same time by the trauma lessens the chance of a
neurosis arising, is no longer difficult to understand if two
circumstances emphasised by psycho-analytic research are borne in mind.
First that mechanical concussion must be recognised as one of the
sources of sexual excitation (cp. the remarks: ‘The effects of swinging
and railway travelling’ in Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 4.
Auflage 1920); and, secondly, that a painful and feverish illness exerts
for the time it lasts a powerful influence on the distribution of the
libido. Thus the mechanical force of the trauma would set free the quota
of sexual excitation which, in consequence of the lacking preparation by
apprehension, has a traumatic effect: but, on the other hand, the
contemporaneous bodily injury would bind the surplus excitation by the
putting in of a claim to a narcissistic over-charging of the injured
part (see ‘Zur Einführung des Narzissmus’, Sammlung kleiner Schriften
zur Neurosenlehre, IV. Folge, 1918). It is also known, though the idea
has not been sufficiently made use of in the Libido theory, that
disturbances in the distribution of the libido so severe as those of
melancholia may be removed for a time by an intercurrent organic
disease; in fact even the condition of a fully developed dementia
praecox is capable of a transitory improvement in these circumstances.
V
The fact that the sensitive cortical layer has no protective barrier
against excitations emanating from within will have one inevitable
consequence: viz. that these transmissions of stimuli acquire increased
economic significance and frequently give rise to economic disturbances
comparable to the traumatic neuroses. The most prolific sources of such
inner excitations are the so-called instincts of the organism, the
representatives of all forces arising within the body and transmitted to
the psychic apparatus—the most important and most obscure element in
psychological research.
Perhaps we shall not find it too rash an assumption that the excitations
proceeding from the instincts do not conform to the type of the ‘bound’
but of the free-moving nerve processes that are striving for discharge.
The most trustworthy knowledge we have of these processes comes from the
study of dreams. There we found that the processes in the unconscious
systems are fundamentally different from those in the (pre)conscious;
that in the unconscious ‘charges’ may easily be completely transferred,
displaced or condensed, while if this happened with preconscious
material only defective results would be obtained. This is the reason
for the well-known peculiarities of the manifest dream, after the
preconscious residues of the day before have undergone elaboration
according to the laws of the unconscious. I termed this kind of process
in the unconscious the psychic ‘primary process’ in contradistinction to
the secondary process valid in our normal waking life. Since the
excitations of instincts all affect the unconscious systems, it is
scarcely an innovation to say that they follow the lines of the primary
process, and little more so to identify the psychic primary process with
the freely mobile charge, the secondary process with changes in Breuer’s
bound or tonic charge.[15] It would then be the task of the higher
layers of the psychic apparatus to bind the instinct-excitation that
reaches the primary process. The failure to effect this binding would
evoke a disturbance analogous to the traumatic neuroses; it is only
after the binding had been successfully accomplished that the
pleasure-principle (and its modification the reality-principle) would
have an opportunity to assert its sway without hindrance. Till then, the
other task of the psychic apparatus would take precedence, viz. to
obtain control of or to bind the excitation, not in opposition to the
pleasure-principle but independently of it and in part without regard to
it.
The expressions of a repetition-compulsion which we have described,
both in the early activities of infantile psychic life and in the
experiences of psycho-analytic treatment, show in a high degree an
instinctive character, and, where they come into contrast with the
pleasure-principle, a daemonic character. In the play of children we
seem to arrive at the conclusion that the child repeats even the
unpleasant experiences because through his own activity he gains a far
more thorough mastery of the strong impression than was possible by
mere passive experience. Every fresh repetition seems to strengthen
this mastery for which the child strives; even with pleasurable
experiences the child cannot do enough in the way of repetition and
will inexorably insist on the identity of the impression. This
characteristic is destined later to disappear. A witticism heard for
the second time will almost fail of effect; a theatrical performance
will never make the same impression the second time that it did on the
first occasion; indeed it is hard to persuade the adult to read again
at all soon a book he has enjoyed. Novelty is always the necessary
condition of enjoyment. The child, however, never gets tired of
demanding from a grown-up the repetition of a game he has played with
him before or has shown him, till at last the grown-up refuses,
utterly worn out; similarly if he has been told a pretty story, he
wants always to hear the same story instead of a new one, insists
inexorably on exact repetition and corrects each deviation which the
narrator lets slip by mistake, which perhaps he even thought to gain
new merit by inserting. Here there is no contradiction of the
pleasure-principle: it is evident that the repetition, the rediscovery
of the identity, is itself a source of pleasure. In the case of a
patient in analysis, on the other hand, it is plain that the
compulsion to repeat in the transference the occurrences of his
infantile life disregards _in every way_ the pleasure-principle. The
patient behaves in this respect completely like a child, and thus
makes it clear to us that the repressed memory-traces of his primitive
experience are not present in a ‘bound’ form, are indeed, in a sense,
not capable of the secondary process. To this fact of their not being
bound they owe their power to weave a wish-phantasy that will be
represented in a dream, by adhering to the residues from waking
experiences. We frequently encounter the same repetition-compulsion as
a therapeutic obstacle, when at the end of the treatment we wish to
bring about complete detachment from the physician; and it may be
supposed that the vague dread with which those who are unfamiliar with
it view analysis, as though they feared to wake what they think is
better left to sleep, is at root a fear of the appearance of this
daemonic compulsion.
In what way is the instinctive connected with the compulsion to
repetition? At this point the idea is forced upon us that we have
stumbled on the trace of a general and hitherto not clearly
recognised—or at least not expressly emphasised—characteristic of
instinct, perhaps of all organic life. According to this, _an instinct
would be a tendency innate in living organic matter impelling it towards
the reinstatement of an earlier condition_, one which it had to abandon
under the influence of external disturbing forces—a kind of organic
elasticity, or, to put it another way, the manifestation of inertia in
organic life.[16]
This conception of instinct strikes us as strange, since we are
accustomed to see in instinct the factor urging towards change and
development, and now we find ourselves required to recognise in it the
very opposite, viz. the expression of the conservative nature of living
beings. On the other hand, we soon think of those examples in animal
life which appear to confirm the idea of instinct having been
historically conditioned. When certain fish undertake arduous journeys
at spawning-time, in order to deposit the spawn in certain definite
waters far removed from their usual habitats, according to the
interpretation of many biologists they are only seeking the earlier
homes of their kind, which in course of time they have exchanged for
others. The same is said to be true of the migratory flights of birds of
passage, but the search for further examples becomes superfluous when we
remember that in the phenomena of heredity and in the facts of
embryology we have the most imposing proofs of the organic compulsion to
repetition. We see that the germ cell of a living animal is obliged to
repeat in its development—although in a fleeting and curtailed
fashion—the structures of all the forms from which the animal is
descended, instead of hastening along the shortest path to its own final
shape. A mechanical explanation of this except in some trifling
particulars is impossible, and the historical explanation cannot be
disregarded. In the same way we find extending far upwards in the animal
kingdom a power of reproduction whereby a lost organ is replaced by the
growth of a new one exactly like it.
The obvious objection, that it may well be that besides the conservative
instincts compelling repetition there are others which press towards new
formation and progress, should certainly not be left unnoticed; it will
be considered at a later stage of our discussion. But we may first be
tempted to follow to its final consequences the hypothesis that all
instincts have as their aim the reinstatement of an earlier condition.
If what results gives an appearance of ‘profundity’ or bears a
resemblance to mysticism, still we know ourselves to be clear of the
reproach of having striven after anything of the sort. We are in search
of sober results of investigation or of reflections based upon it, and
the only character we wish for in these results is that of certainty.
If then all organic instincts are conservative, historically acquired,
and are directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of something
earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of organic development
to the credit of external, disturbing and distracting influences. The
rudimentary creature would from its very beginning not have wanted to
change, would, if circumstances had remained the same, have always
merely repeated the same course of existence. But in the last resort it
must have been the evolution of our earth, and its relation to the sun,
that has left its imprint on the development of organisms. The
conservative organic instincts have absorbed every one of these enforced
alterations in the course of life and have stored them for repetition;
they thus present the delusive appearance of forces striving after
change and progress, while they are merely endeavouring to reach an old
goal by ways both old and new. This final goal of all organic striving
can be stated too. It would be counter to the conservative nature of
instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached. It
must rather be an ancient starting point, which the living being left
long ago, and to which it harks back again by all the circuitous paths
of development. If we may assume as an experience admitting of no
exception that everything living dies from causes within itself, and
returns to the inorganic, we can only say ‘_The goal of all life is
death_’, and, casting back, ‘_The inanimate was there before the
animate_.’
At one time or another, by some operation of force which still
completely baffles conjecture, the properties of life were awakened in
lifeless matter. Perhaps the process was a prototype resembling that
other one which later in a certain stratum of living matter gave rise to
consciousness. The tension then aroused in the previously inanimate
matter strove to attain an equilibrium; the first instinct was present,
that to return to lifelessness. The living substance at that time had
death within easy reach; there was probably only a short course of life
to run, the direction of which was determined by the chemical structure
of the young organism. So through a long period of time the living
substance may have been constantly created anew, and easily
extinguished, until decisive external influences altered in such a way
as to compel the still surviving substance to ever greater deviations
from the original path of life, and to ever more complicated and
circuitous routes to the attainment of the goal of death. These
circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the conservative
instincts, would be neither more nor less than the phenomena of life as
we now know it. If the exclusively conservative nature of the instincts
is accepted as true, it is impossible to arrive at any other
suppositions with regard to the origin and goal of life.
If these conclusions sound strangely in our ears, equally so will those
we are led to make concerning the great groups of instincts which we
regard as lying behind the vital phenomena of organisms. The postulate
of the self-preservative instincts we ascribe to every living being
stands in remarkable contrast to the supposition that the whole life of
instinct serves the one end of bringing about death. The theoretic
significance of the instincts of self-preservation, power and
self-assertion, shrinks to nothing, seen in this light; they are
part-instincts designed to secure the path to death peculiar to the
organism and to ward off possibilities of return to the inorganic other
than the immanent ones, but the enigmatic struggle of the organism to
maintain itself in spite of all the world, a struggle that cannot be
brought into connection with anything else, disappears. It remains to be
added that the organism is resolved to die only in its own way; even
these watchmen of life were originally the myrmidons of death. Hence the
paradox comes about that the living organism resists with all its energy
influences (dangers) which could help it to reach its life-goal by a
short way (a short circuit, so to speak); but this is just the behaviour
that characterises a pure instinct as contrasted with an intelligent
striving.[17]