The Content of the Unconscious
The phantasies of adults are, in so far as they are conscious, of great
diversity and strongly individual. It is therefore nearly impossible to
give a general description of them. But it is very different when we
enter by means of analysis into the world of his unconscious phantasies.
The diversities of the phantasies are indeed very great, but we do not
find those individual peculiarities which we find in the conscious self.
We meet here with more typical material which is not infrequently
repeated in a similar form in different people. Constantly recurring,
for instance, are ideas which are variations of the thoughts we
encounter in religion and mythology. This fact is so convincing that we
say we have discovered in these phantasies the same mechanisms which
once created mythological and religious ideas. I should have to enter
very much into detail in order to give you adequate examples. I must
refer you for these problems to my work, “Wandlungen und Symbole der
Libido.” I will only mention that, for instance, the central symbol of
Christianity—self-sacrifice—plays an important part in the phantasies of
the unconscious. The Viennese School describes this phenomenon by the
ambiguous term castration-complex. This paradoxical use of the term
follows from the particular attitude of this school toward the question
of unconscious sexuality. I have given special attention to the problem
in the book I have just mentioned; I must here restrict myself to this
incidental reference and hasten to say something about the origin of the
unconscious phantasy.
In the child’s unconsciousness, the phantasies are considerably
simplified, in relation to the proportions of the infantile
surroundings. Thanks to the united efforts of the psychoanalytic school,
we discovered that the most frequent phantasy of childhood is the
so-called _Œdipus-complex_. This designation also seems as paradoxical
as possible. We know that the tragic fate of Œdipus consisted in his
loving his mother and slaying his father. This conflict of later life
seems to be far remote from the child’s mind. To the uninitiated it
seems inconceivable that the child should have this conflict. After
careful reflection it will become clear that the tertium comparationis
consists just in this narrow limitation of the fate of Œdipus within the
bounds of the family. These limitations are very typical for the child,
for parents are never the boundary for the adult person to the same
extent. The Œdipus-complex represents an infantile conflict, but with
the exaggeration of the adult. The term Œdipus-complex does not mean,
naturally, that this conflict is considered as occurring in the adult
form, but in a corresponding form suitable to childhood. The little son
would like to have the mother all to himself and to be rid of the
father. As you know, little children can sometimes force themselves
between the parents in the most jealous way. The wishes and aims get, in
the unconscious, a more concrete and a more drastic form. Children are
small primitive people and are therefore quickly ready to kill. But as a
child is, in general, harmless, so his apparently dangerous wishes are,
as a rule, also harmless. I say “as a rule,” as you know that children,
too, sometimes give way to their impulses to murder, and this not always
in any indirect fashion. But just as the child, in general, is incapable
of making systematic projects, as little dangerous are his intentions to
murder. The same holds good of an Œdipus-view toward the mother. The
small traces of this phantasy in the conscious can easily be overlooked;
therefore nearly all parents are convinced that their children have no
Œdipus-complex. Parents as well as lovers are generally blind. If I now
say that the Œdipus-complex is in the first place only a formula for the
childish desire towards parents, and for the conflict which this craving
evokes, this statement of the situation will be more readily accepted.
The history of the Œdipus-phantasy is of special interest, as it teaches
us very much about the development of the unconscious phantasies.
Naturally, people think that the problem of Œdipus is the problem of the
son. But this is, astonishingly enough, only an illusion. Under some
circumstances the libido-sexualis reaches that definite differentiation
of puberty corresponding to the sex of the individual relatively late.
The libido sexualis has before this time an undifferentiated sexual
character, which can be also termed bisexual. Therefore it is not
astonishing if little girls possess the Œdipus-complex too. As far as I
can see, the first love of the child belongs to the mother, no matter
which its sex. If the love for the mother at this stage is intense, the
father is jealously kept away as a rival. Of course, for the child
itself, the mother has in this early stage of childhood no sexual
significance of any importance. The term “Œdipus-complex” is in so far
not really suitable. At this stage the mother has still the significance
of a protecting, enveloping, food-providing being, who, on this account,
is a source of delight. I do not identify, as I explained before, the
feeling of delight eo ipso with sexuality. In earliest childhood but a
slight amount of sexuality is connected with this feeling of delight.
But, nevertheless, jealousy can play a great part in it, as jealousy
does not belong entirely to the sphere of sexuality. The desire for food
has much to do with the first impulses of jealousy. Certainly, a
relatively germinating eroticism is also connected with it. This element
gradually increases as the years go on, so that the Œdipus-complex soon
assumes its classical form. In the case of the son, the conflict
develops in a more masculine and therefore more typical form, whilst in
the daughter, the typical affection for the father develops, with a
correspondingly jealous attitude toward the mother. We call this
complex, the _Electra-complex_. As everybody knows, Electra took revenge
on her mother for the murder of her husband, because that mother had
robbed her of her father.
Both phantasy-complexes develop with growing age, and reach a new stage
after puberty, when the emancipation from the parents is more or less
attained. The symbol of this time is the one already previously
mentioned; it is the symbol of self-sacrifice. The more the sexuality
develops the more the individual is forced to leave his family and to
acquire independence and autonomy. By its history, the child is closely
connected with its family and specially with its parents. In
consequence, it is often with the greatest difficulty that the child is
able to free itself from its infantile surroundings. The Œdipus- and
Electra-complex give rise to a conflict, if adults cannot succeed in
spiritually freeing themselves; hence arises the possibility of neurotic
disturbance. The libido, which is already sexually developed, takes
possession of the form given by the complex and produces feelings and
phantasies which unmistakably show the effective existence of the
complex, till then perfectly unconscious. The next consequence is the
formation of intense resistances against the immoral inner impulses
which are derived from the now active complexes. The conscious attitude
arising out of this can be of different kinds. Either the consequences
are direct, and then we notice in the son strong resistances against the
father and a typical affectionate and dependent attitude toward the
mother; or the consequences are indirect, that is to say, compensated,
and we notice, instead of the resistances toward the father, a typical
submissiveness here, and an irritated antagonistic attitude toward the
mother. It is possible that direct and compensated consequences take
place alternately. The same thing is to be said of the Electra-complex.
If the libido-sexualis were to cleave fast to these particular forms of
the conflict, murder and incest would be the consequence of the Œdipus
and Electra conflicts. These consequences are naturally not found among
normal people, and not even among amoral (“moral” here implying the
possession of a rationalized and codified moral system) primitive
persons, or humanity would have become extinct long ago. On the
contrary, it is in the natural order of things that what surrounds us
daily and has surrounded us, loses its compelling charm and thus forces
the libido to search for new objects, an important rule which prevents
parricide and inbreeding.
The further development of the libido toward objects outside the family
is the absolutely normal and right way of proceeding, and it is an
abnormal and morbid phenomenon if the libido remains, as it were, glued
to the family. Some indications of this phenomenon are nevertheless to
be noticed in normal people. A direct outcome of the infantile-complex
is the unconscious phantasy of self-sacrifice, which occurs after
puberty, in the succeeding stage of development. Of this I gave a
detailed example in my work, “Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido.” The
phantasy of self-sacrifice means sacrificing infantile wishes. I have
shown this in the work just mentioned and in the same place I have
referred to the parallels in the history of religions.
The Problems of the Incest-Complex
Freud has a special conception of the incest-complex which has given
rise to heated controversy. He starts from the fact that the
Œdipus-complex is generally unconscious, and conceives this as the
result of a repression of a moral kind. It is possible that I am not
expressing myself quite correctly, when I give you Freud’s view in these
words. At any rate, according to him the Œdipus-complex seems to be
repressed, that is, seems to be removed into the unconscious by a
reaction from the conscious tendencies. It almost looks as if the
Œdipus-complex would develop into consciousness if the development of
the child were to go on without restraint and if no cultural tendencies
influenced it. Freud calls this barrier, which prevents the
Œdipus-complex from ripening, the _incest-barrier_. He seems to believe,
so far as one can gather from his work, that the incest-barrier is the
result of experience, of the selective influence of reality, inasmuch as
the unconscious strives without restraint, and in an immediate way, for
its own satisfaction, without any consideration for others. This
conception is in harmony with the conception of Schopenhauer, who says
of the blind world-will that it is so egoistic that a man could slay his
brother merely to grease his boots with his brother’s fat. Freud
considers that the psychological incest-barrier, as postulated by him,
can be compared with the incest-taboo which we find among inferior
races. He further believes that these prohibitions are a proof of the
fact that men really desired incest, for which reason laws were framed
against it even in very primitive cultural stages. He takes the tendency
towards incest to be an absolute concrete sexual wish, lacking only the
quality of consciousness. He calls this complex the root-complex, or
nucleus, of the neuroses, and is inclined, viewing this as the original
one, to reduce nearly the whole psychology of the neuroses, as well as
many other phenomena in the world of mind, to this complex.