The Etiological Significance of the Infantile Sexuality
Now that we have decided what is to be understood as infantile
sexuality, we can follow up the discussion of the theory of the
neuroses, which we began in the first lecture and then dropped. We
followed the theory of the neuroses up to the point where we ran against
Freud’s statement, that the tendency which brings a traumatic event to a
pathological activity, is a sexual one. From our foregoing
considerations we understand what is meant by a sexual tendency. It is a
standing still, a retardation in that process whereby the libido frees
itself from the manifestations of the pre-sexual stage.
First of all, we must regard this disturbance as a _fixation_. The
libido, in its transition from the function of nutrition to the sexual
function, lingers unduly at certain stages. A disharmony is created,
since provisional and, as it were, worn-out activities, persist at a
period when they should have been overcome. This formula is applicable
to all those infantile characteristics so prevalent among neurotic
people that no attentive observer can have overlooked them. In dementia
præcox it is so obtrusive that a symptom complex, hebephrenia, derives
its name therefrom.
The matter is not ended, however, by saying that the libido lingers in
the preliminary stages, for while the libido thus lingers, time does not
stand still, and the development of the individual is always proceeding
apace. The physical maturation increases the contrast and the disharmony
between the persistent infantile manifestations, and the demands of the
later age, with its changed conditions of life. In this way the
foundation is laid for the dissociation of the personality, and thereby
to that conflict which is the real basis of the neuroses. The more the
libido is in arrears in practice, the more intense will be the conflict.
The traumatic or pathogenic moment is the one which serves best to make
this conflict manifest. As Freud showed in his earlier works, one can
easily imagine a neurosis arising in this way.
This conception fitted in rather well with the views of Janet, who
ascribed neurosis to a certain defect. From this point of view the
neurosis could be regarded as a product of retardation in the
development of affectivity; and I can easily imagine that this
conception must seem selfevident to every one who is inclined to derive
the neuroses more or less directly from heredity or congenital
degeneration.
The Infantile Sexual Etiology Criticized
Unfortunately the reality is much more complicated. Let me facilitate an
insight into these complications by an example of a case of hysteria. It
will, I hope, enable me to demonstrate the characteristic complication,
so important for the theory of neurosis. You will probably remember the
case of the young lady with hysteria, whom I mentioned at the beginning
of my lectures. We noticed the remarkable fact that this patient was
unaffected by situations which one might have expected to make a
profound impression and yet showed an unexpected extreme pathological
reaction to a quite everyday event. We took this occasion to express our
doubt as to the etiological significance of the shock, and to
investigate the so-called predisposition which rendered the trauma
effective. The result of that investigation led us to what has just been
mentioned, that it is by no means improbable that the origin of the
neurosis is due to a retardation of the affective development.
You will now ask me what is to be understood by the retardation of the
affectivity of this hysteric. The patient lives in a world of phantasy,
which can only be regarded as infantile. It is unnecessary to give a
description of these phantasies, for you, as neurologists or
psychiatrists, have the opportunity daily to listen to the childish
prejudices, illusions and emotional pretensions to which neurotic people
give way. The disinclination to face stern reality is the distinguishing
trait of these phantasies—some lack of earnestness, some trifling, which
sometimes hides real difficulties in a light-hearted manner, at others
exaggerates trifles into great troubles. We recognize at once that
inadequate psychic attitude towards reality which characterizes the
child, its wavering opinions and its deficient orientation in matters of
the external world. With such an infantile mental disposition all kinds
of desires, phantasies and illusions can grow luxuriantly, and this we
have to regard as the critical causation. Through such phantasies people
slip into an unreal attitude, preeminently ill-adapted to the world,
which is bound some day to lead to a catastrophe. When we trace back the
infantile phantasy of the patient to her earliest childhood we find, it
is true, many distinct, outstanding scenes which might well serve to
provide fresh food for this or that variation in phantasy, but it would
be vain to search for the so-called traumatic motive, whence something
abnormal might have sprung, such an abnormal activity, let us say, as
day-dreaming itself. There are certainly to be found traumatic scenes,
although not in earliest childhood; the few scenes of earliest childhood
which were remembered seem not to be traumatic, being rather accidental
events, which passed by without leaving any effect on her phantasy worth
mentioning. The earliest phantasies arose out of all sorts of vague and
only partly understood impressions received from her parents. Many
peculiar feelings centered around her father, vacillating between
anxiety, horror, aversion, disgust, love and enthusiasm. The case was
like so many other cases of hysteria, where no traumatic etiology can be
found, but which grows from the roots of a peculiar and premature
activity of phantasy which maintains permanently the character of
infantilism.
You will object that in this case the scene with the shying horses
represents the trauma. It is clearly the model of that night-scene which
happened nineteen years later, where the patient was incapable of
avoiding the trotting horses. That she wanted to plunge into the river
has an analogy in the model scene, where the horses and carriage fell
into the river.
Since the latter traumatic moment she suffered from hysterical fits. As
I tried to show you, we do not find any trace of this apparent etiology
developed in the course of her phantasy life. It seems as if the danger
of losing her life, that first time, when the horses shied, passed
without leaving any emotional trace. None of the events that occurred in
the following years showed any trace of that fright. In parenthesis let
me add, that perhaps it never happened at all. It may have even been a
mere phantasy, for I have only the assertions of the patient. All of a
sudden, some eighteen years later, this event becomes of importance and
is, so to say, reproduced and carried out in all its details. This
assumption is extremely unlikely, and becomes still more inconceivable
if we also bear in mind that the story of the shying horses may not even
be true. Be that as it may, it is and remains almost unthinkable that an
affect should remain buried for years and then suddenly explode. In
other cases there is exactly the same state of affairs. I know, for
instance, of a case in which the shock of an earthquake, long recovered
from, suddenly came back as a lively fear of earthquakes, although this
reminiscence could not be explained by the external circumstances.
The Traumatic Theory—A False Way
It is a very suspicious circumstance that these patients frequently show
a pronounced tendency to account for their illnesses by some long-past
event, ingeniously withdrawing the attention of the physician from the
present moment towards some false track in the past. This false track
was the first one pursued by the psychoanalytic theory. To this false
hypothesis we owe an insight into the understanding of the neurotic
symptoms never before reached, an insight we should not have gained if
the investigation had not chosen this path, really guided thither,
however, by the misleading tendencies of the patient.
I think that only a man who regards world-happenings as a chain of more
or less fortuitous contingencies, and therefore believes that the
guiding hand of the reason-endowed pedagogue is permanently wanted, can
ever imagine that this path, upon which the patient leads the physician,
has been a wrong one, from which one ought to have warned men off with a
sign-board. Besides the deeper insight into psychological determination,
we owe to the so-called error the discovery of questions of immeasurable
importance regarding the basis of psychic processes. It is for us to
rejoice and be thankful that Freud had the courage to let himself be
guided along this path. Not thus is the progress of science hindered,
but rather through blind adherence to a provisional formulation, through
the typical conservatism of authority, the vanity of learned men, their
fear of making mistakes. This lack of the martyr’s courage is far more
injurious to the credit and greatness of scientific knowledge than an
honest error.
Retardation of the Emotional Development
But let us return to our own case. The following question arises: If the
old trauma is not of etiological significance, then the cause of the
manifest neurosis is probably to be found in the retardation of the
emotional development. We must therefore disregard the patient’s
assertion that her hysterical crises date from the fright from the
shying horses, although this fright was in fact the beginning of her
evident illness. This event only seems to be important, although it is
not so in reality. This same formula is valid for all the so-called
shocks. They only seem to be important because they are the
starting-point of the external expression of an abnormal condition. As
explained in detail, this abnormal condition is an anachronistic
continuation of an infantile stage of libido-development. These patients
still retain forms of the libido which they ought to have renounced long
ago. It is impossible to give a list, as it were, of these forms, for
they are of an extraordinary variety. The most common, which is scarcely
ever absent, is the excessive activity of phantasies, characterized by
an unconcerned exaggeration of subjective wishes. This exaggerated
activity is always a sign of want of proper employment of the libido.
The libido sticks fast to its use in phantasies, instead of being
employed in a more rigorous adaptation to the real conditions of life.
Introversion
This state is called the state of _introversion_, the libido is used for
the psychical inner world instead of being applied to the external
world. A regular attendant symptom of this retardation in the emotional
development is the so-called parent-complex. If the libido is not used
entirely for the adaptation to reality, it is always more or less
introverted. The material content of the psychic world is composed of
reminiscences, giving it a vividness of activity which in reality long
since ceased to pertain thereto. The consequence is, that these patients
still live more or less in a world which in truth belongs to the past.
They fight with difficulties which once played a part in their life, but
which ought to have been obliterated long ago. They still grieve over
matters, or rather they are still concerned with matters, which should
have long ago lost their importance for them. They divert themselves, or
distress themselves, with images which were once normally of importance
for them but are of no significance at their later age.
The Complex of the Parents
Amongst those influences most important during childhood, the
personalities of the parents play the most potent part. Even if the
parents have long been dead, and might and should have lost all real
importance, since the life-conditions of the patients are perhaps
totally changed, yet these parents are still somehow present and as
important as if they were still alive. Love and admiration, resistance,
repugnance, hate and revolt, still cling to their figures, transfigured
by affection and very often bearing little resemblance to the past
reality. It was this fact which forced me to talk no longer of father
and mother directly, but to employ instead the term “image” (imago) of
mother or of father for these phantasies no longer deal with the real
father and the real mother, but with the subjective, and very often
completely altered creations of the imagination which prolong an
existence only in the patient’s mind.
The complex of the parents’ images, that is to say, the sum of ideas
connected with the parents, provides an important field of employment
for the introverted libido. I must mention in passing that the complex
has in itself but a shadowy existence in so far as it is not invested
with libido. Following the usage that we arrived at in the
“Diagnostische Associationsstudien,” the word “complex” is used for a
system of ideas already invested with, and actuated by, libido. This
system exists as a mere possibility, ready for application, if not
invested with libido either temporarily or permanently.
_The “Nucleus”-Complex._—At the time when the psychoanalytic theory was
still under the dominance of the trauma conception and, in conformity
with that view, inclined to look for the causa efficiens of the neurosis
in the past, the parent-complex seemed to us to be the so-called
root-complex—to employ Freud’s term—or nucleus-complex (“Kerncomplex”).
The part which the parents played seemed to be so highly determining
that we were inclined to attribute to them all later complications in
the life of the patient. Some years ago I discussed this view in my
article[7] “Die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen.”
(The importance of the father for the fate of the individual.)
Here also we were guided by the patient’s tendency to revert to the
past, in accordance with the direction of his introverted libido. Now
indeed it was no longer the external, accidental event which caused the
pathogenic effect, but a psychological effect which seemed to arise out
of the individual’s difficulties in adapting himself to the conditions
of his familiar surroundings. It was especially the disharmony between
the parents on the one hand and between the child and the parents on the
other which seemed favorable for creating currents in the child little
compatible with his individual course of life. In the article just
alluded to I have described some instances, taken from a wealth of
material, which show these characteristics very distinctly. The
influence of the parents does not come to an end, alas, with their
neurotic descendants’ blame of the family circumstances, or their false
education, as the basis of their illness, but it extends even to certain
actual events in the life and actions of the patient, where such a
determining influence could not have been expected. The lively
imitativeness which we find in savages as well as in children can
produce in certain rather sensitive children a peculiar inner and
unconscious identification with the parents; that is to say, such a
similar mental attitude that effects in real life are sometimes produced
which, even in detail, resemble the personal experiences of the parents.
For the empirical material here, I must refer you to the literature. I
should like to remind you that one of my pupils, Dr. Emma Fürst,
produced valuable experimental proofs for the solution of this problem,
to which I referred in my lecture at Clark University.[8] In applying
association experiments to whole families, Dr. Fürst established the
great resemblance of reaction-type among all the members of one family.
These experiments show that there very often exists an unconscious
parallelism of association between parents and children, to be explained
as an intense imitation or identification.
The results of these investigations show far-reaching psychological
tendencies in parallel directions, which readily explain at times the
astonishing conformity in their destinies. Our destinies are as a rule
the result of our psychological tendencies. These facts allow us to
understand why, not only the patient, but even the theory which has been
built on such investigations, expresses the view, that the neurosis is
the result of the characteristic influence of the parents upon their
children. This view, moreover, is supported by the experiences which lie
at the basis of pedagogy: namely the assumption of the plasticity of the
child’s mind, which is freely compared with soft wax.
We know that the first impressions of childhood accompany us throughout
life, and that certain educational influences may restrain people
undisturbed all their lives within certain limits. It is no miracle,
indeed it is rather a frequent experience, that under these
circumstances a conflict has to break out between the personality which
is formed by the educational and other influences of the infantile
milieu and that one which can be described as the real individual line
of life. With this conflict all people must meet, who are called upon to
live an independent and productive life.
Owing to the enormous influence of childhood on the later development of
character, you can perfectly understand why we are inclined to ascribe
the cause of a neurosis directly to the influences of the infantile
environment. I have to confess that I have known cases in which any
other explanation seemed to be less reasonable. There are indeed parents
whose own contradictory neurotic behavior causes them to treat their
children in such an unreasonable way that the latter’s deterioration and
illness would seem to be unavoidable. Hence it is almost a rule among
nerve-specialists to remove neurotic children, whenever possible, from
the dangerous family atmosphere, and to send them among more healthy
influences, where, without any medical treatment, they thrive much
better than at home. There are many neurotic patients who were clearly
neurotic as children, and who have never been free from illness. For
such cases, the conception which has been sketched holds generally good.
This knowledge, which seems to be provisionally definitive, has been
extended by the studies of Freud and the psychoanalytic school. The
relations between the patients and their parents have been studied in
detail in as much as these relations were regarded as of etiological
significance.
Infantile Mental Attitude
It was soon noticed that such patients lived still partly or wholly in
their childhood-world, although quite unconscious themselves of this
fact. It is a difficult task for psychoanalysis so exactly to
investigate the psychological mode of adaptation of the patients as to
be capable of putting its finger on the infantile misunderstanding. We
find among neurotics many who have been spoiled as children. These cases
give the best and clearest example of the infantilism of their
psychological mode of adaptation. They start out in life expecting the
same friendly reception, tenderness and easy success, obtained with no
trouble, to which they have been accustomed by their parents in their
youth. Even very intelligent patients are not capable of seeing at once
that they owe the complications of their life and their neurosis to the
trail of their infantile emotional attitude. The small world of the
child, the familiar surroundings—these form the model of the big world.
The more intensely the family has stamped the child, the more will it be
inclined, as an adult, instinctively to see again in the great world its
former small world. Of course this must not be taken as a conscious
intellectual process. On the contrary, the patient feels and sees the
difference between now and then, and tries to adapt himself as well as
he can. Perhaps he will even believe himself perfectly adapted, for he
grasps the situation intellectually, but that does not prevent the
emotional from being far behind the intellectual standpoint.
Unconscious Phantasy
It is unnecessary to trouble you with instances of this phenomenon. It
is an every-day experience that our emotions are never at the level of
our reasoning. It is exactly the same with such a patient, only with
greater intensity. He may perhaps believe that, save for his neurosis,
he is a normal person, and hence adapted to the conditions of life. He
does not suspect that he has not relinquished certain childish
pretensions, that he still carries with him, in the background,
expectations and illusions which he has never rendered conscious to
himself. He cultivates all sorts of favorite phantasies, which seldom
become conscious, or at any rate, not very often, so that he himself
does not know that he has them. They very often exist only as emotional
expectations, hopes, prejudices, etc. We call these phantasies,
unconscious phantasies. Sometimes they dip into the peripheral
consciousness as quite fugitive thoughts, which disappear again a moment
later, so that the patient is unable to say whether he had such
phantasies or not. It is only during the psychoanalytic treatment that
most patients learn to observe and retain these fleeting thoughts.
Although most of the phantasies, once at least, have been conscious in
the form of fleeting thoughts and only afterwards became unconscious, we
have no right to call them on that account “conscious,” as they are
practically most of the time unconscious. It is therefore right to
designate them “unconscious phantasies.” Of course there are also
infantile phantasies, which are perfectly conscious and which can be
reproduced at any time.
Footnote 7:
Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologisch Forschungen, Bd.
I.
Footnote 8:
Am. Jour. Psychol., April, 1910.