the development of the mind is accompanied and conditioned by mental
conflict. The infant is regarded as being impelled by instinctive
impulses which at first are solely egoistic. From the earliest moments
of its contact with the world resistance to the full indulgence of
these impulses is encountered. With the growth and intensification
of such impulses, the resistance from external interference—the
beginnings of social pressure—becomes more formidable, until at
a quite unexpectedly early age a veritable condition of mental
conflict is established—egoistic impulses fatally pressing for
indulgence regardless of their acceptability to the environment, while
environmental influences bear equally heavily against any indulgence
unwelcome to surrounding standards of discipline, taste, or morality.
Of the two parties in this conflict—the instinctive {73} impulse and
the repressive force—the first, according to Freud, is wholly the
product of the sex instinct. This instinct is conceived of as being
much more active and potent in the infant and child than had been
suspected by any previous investigator. The normal sexual interest and
activity as manifested in the adult are developed out of the sexual
impulse of the child by a regular series of modifications, which appear
to be regarded as due partly to a process of natural development and
partly to the influence of external repressive forces. In the infant
the instinct is egocentric and the object of its interest is the
individual’s own body; with the increase of the mental field consequent
on enlarging experience the instinctive activity is externalized,
and its object of interest changes so that the child acquires a
specific inclination towards other individuals without distinction
of sex; finally, as a last stage of development the instinctive
inclination is localized to members of the opposite sex. This series of
transformations is regarded as normal by Freud, and as essential to the
appearance of the “normal” adult type. The evolution of this series is
sensitive to interference by outside influences, and any disturbance
of it either by way of anticipation or delay will have profound
effects upon the ultimate character and temperament of the subject.
The psychical energy of an instinct so important as that of sex is
very great, and is not dissipated by the forces of repression brought
to bear upon it, but transformed into activities ostensibly quite
different and directed into channels having no obvious connection with
their source. It is a fundamental characteristic of the mind to be able
to accept these substitutes for the actual indulgence of the instinct,
and to enjoy a symbolical gratification in manifestations which have
no overt sexual significance. When development proceeds normally the
{74} surplus energy of the sex instinct finds an outlet in activities
of social value—æsthetic, poetic, altruistic; when development is
interfered with the outflow of energy is apt to result in definite
disease of the mind or in peculiarities of character scarcely to be
distinguished therefrom.
Thus the mind of the adult, according to Freud, in addition to
activities which are conscious and fully accessible to the subject,
carries on activities and holds memories which are unconscious
and totally inaccessible to the subject by any ordinary method of
introspection. Between these two fields there is a barrier sedulously
guarded by certain repressive forces. The unconscious is the realm
of all the experiences, memories, impulses, and inclinations which
during the subject’s life have been condemned by the standards of the
conscious, have proved incompatible with it and have therefore been
outlawed from it. This banishment in no way deprives these excluded
mental processes of their energy, and they constantly influence the
feelings and behaviour of the subject. So strict, however, is the
guard between them and the conscious that they are never allowed to
pass the barrier between one sphere and the other except in disguised
and fantastically distorted forms by which their true meaning is
closely concealed. It has been perhaps Freud’s most remarkable thesis
that dreams are manifestations of this emergence of desires and
memories from the unconscious into the conscious field. During sleep
the repressing force which guards the frontier between conscious and
unconscious is weakened. Even then, however, such ideas as emerge into
the conscious can do so only in a worked up and distorted form, so
that their significance can be disengaged from the grotesque jumble
of the actual dream only by a minute inquiry according to a difficult
and highly technical method. {75} By this method, however, is to be
obtained a deep insight into the otherwise irrecoverable emotional
history of the individual, the structure of his temperament, and, if he
is mentally abnormal, the meaning of his symptoms.
II
The foregoing enumeration of the chief doctrines of the Freudian
psychology is intended to be no more than a mere outline to serve as
a basis for certain comments which seem to be relevant to the general
argument of this essay. The point of view from which this slight sketch
is made, that of an interested but detached observer, is naturally
somewhat different from that of the actual authorities themselves. Here
it is desired to get the broadest possible view in the most general
terms, and as we have no concern with immediate problems of practical
therapeutics—which remain at least the chief preoccupation of writers
of the psycho-analytic school—an effort has been made to avoid the use
of the rich and rather forbidding technical vocabulary in which the
writings of the school abound. It may well be that this generalized
method of description has yielded an ill-proportioned or distorted
picture. The subject has proved to be so much at the mercy of prejudice
that the least impassioned spectator, however completely he may believe
himself to be free from advocacy or detraction, is far from being able
to claim immunity from these influences.
Keeping constantly in mind this general caution, which is at least as
necessary in the field of criticism as in that of mere description, we
may pass on to make certain comments on the psychology of Freud which
are relevant to the general argument being followed out here. {76}
A discussion in any way detailed of this immense subject is very
obviously impossible here, but it is desirable to say a few words as
to the general validity of Freud’s chief thesis. However much one may
be impressed by his power as a psychologist and his almost fierce
resolution to get at the actual facts of mental processes, one can
scarcely fail to experience in reading Freud’s works that there is a
certain harshness in his grasp of facts and even a trace of narrowness
in his outlook which tend to repel the least resistant mind and make
one feel that his guidance in many matters—perhaps chiefly of detail—is
open to suspicion. He seems to have an inclination for the enumeration
of absolute rules, a confidence in his hypotheses which might be
called superb if that were not in science a term of reproach, and a
tendency to state his least acceptable propositions with the heaviest
emphasis as if to force belief upon an unwilling and shrinking mind
were an especial gratification. All these traits of manner—at the worst
mere foibles of a distinguished and successful investigator—appear to
exercise some considerable effect on the acceptance his writings meet
with, and are perhaps indications in which direction, if he is open to
fallacy, such might be looked for.
Nevertheless with regard to the main propositions of his system there
can be little doubt that their _general validity_ will be increasingly
accepted. Among such propositions must be put the conception of the
significance of mental conflict, the importance of the emotional
experiences of infancy and childhood in the determination of character
and the causing of mental disease, and his conception of the general
structure of the mind as comprising conscious and unconscious fields.
The comments which I shall venture to make upon the work of Freud
will be such as are suggested {77} by the biological point of view
of which this essay is intended to be an exposition. The standard of
interest upon which they are based will therefore necessarily differ
to some extent from that which is usually adopted in writings of the
psycho-analytic school.
To the biologist perhaps the most striking characteristic of the
work of this school is its complete acceptance of what one may call
the human point of view. It seems to be satisfied that no useful
contribution to psychology is to be obtained outside the limits of
human feeling and behaviour, and to feel no impatience to expand its
inquiries into a still larger field. It is not that the school has
failed to show an extremely vigorous movement of expansion. Beginning
as a mere province of medicine, and while its foothold there was
still far from general recognition, it invaded the regions of general
psychology, of æsthetics, ethnology, the study of folklore and myth,
and indeed of all matters in which it could find its essential
material—the records of human feeling and conduct. Beyond the human
species it has shown remarkably little of this aggressive spirit, and
it seems to feel no need of bringing its principles into relation with
what little is known of the mental activities of the non-human animals.
The absence of any strong pressure in the direction of establishing a
correlation of all mental phenomena, whether human or not, is not a
matter of merely theoretical interest. The actual practical success to
be obtained to-day in such an attempt might possibly be insignificant
and yet of great value in moulding the whole attitude of mind of the
investigator towards matters lying wholly within the sphere of human
psychology. However much one may be impressed by the greatness of
the edifice which Freud has built up and by the soundness of {78}
his architecture, one can scarcely fail, on coming into it from the
bracing atmosphere of the biological sciences, to be oppressed by the
odour of humanity with which it is pervaded. One finds everywhere a
tendency to the acceptance of human standards and even sometimes of
human pretensions which cannot fail to produce a certain uneasiness
as to the validity, if not of his doctrines, at any rate of the forms
in which they are expounded. The quality I am trying to describe is
extremely difficult to express in concrete terms without exaggeration
or distortion. To those who have approached Freud’s work solely by
the path of medicine the idea that it can give any one the feeling of
a certain conventionality of standard and outlook and of a certain
over-estimation of the objectivity of man’s moral values will seem
perhaps merely absurd. That this is an impression which I have not been
able altogether to escape I record with a good deal of hesitation and
diffidence and without any wish to lay stress upon it.
Psycho-analytic psychology has grown up under conditions which may
very well have encouraged the persistence of the human point of view.
Originally its whole activity was concentrated upon the investigation
and treatment of disease. Many of its early disciples were those who
had received proof of its value in their own persons, those, that is
to say, who had been sufferers from their very susceptibility to the
influence of human standards. The objective standard of validity by
which the system was judged was necessarily that of the physician,
namely the capacity to restore the abnormal mind to the “normal.”
Normal in this sense is of course no more than a statistical expression
implying the condition of the average man. It could scarcely fail,
however, to acquire the significance of “healthy.” If once the
statistically {79} normal mind is accepted as being synonymous with
the psychologically healthy mind (that is, the mind in which the full
capacities are available for use), a standard is set up which has a
most fallacious appearance of objectivity. The statistically normal
mind can be regarded only as a mind which has responded in the usual
way to the moulding and deforming influence of its environment—that
is, to human standards of discipline, taste, and morality. If it is to
be looked upon as typically healthy also, the current human standards
of whose influence it is a product must necessarily be accepted as
qualified to call forth the best in the developing mind they mould.
Writers of the psycho-analytic school seem in general to make some such
assumption as this.
III
The conception of mental conflict is the central feature of the
Freudian system. Of its importance and validity there can be no doubt.
In a general way the idea is familiar and even commonplace, but Freud
had developed it and shown how deeply the principle penetrates the
structure and development of the mind from the earliest period and to
an extent quite unsuspected by earlier psychologists.
From an early period of life the child finds the gratification of
its instinctive impulses checked or even prevented by the pressure
of its environment. Conflict is thus set up between the two forces
of instinctive pressure within and social pressure from without.
Instinctive impulses which thus come into conflict with the repressing
force are not destroyed but are deflected from their natural outlet,
are repressed within the mind and ultimately prevented from rising
into the conscious field at all except in disguised or symbolic forms.
To the adult his childhood seems to have been altogether free from
{80} any kind of sexual activity or interest, not because, as is
generally supposed, such has never existed, but because it proved
incapable of persisting in the conscious field and was suppressed into
the unconscious with the increase of the social repressing forces.
Similarly impulses experienced in adult life which are for the same
reason incompatible with conscious recognition do not become conscious,
but live their life in the unconscious, though they may exercise the
profoundest influence on the happiness and health of the subject.
The work of Freud has been concentrated chiefly upon the one party in
these conflicts—the instinctive impulse of which the only considerable
one according to him is the sexual. To the other party—the repressing
forces—he has given very much less attention, and in them has found
apparently much less interest. By most writers of his school also they
seem to be taken very much as a matter of course.
When we consider, however, what they can accomplish—how they can
take the immensely powerful instinct of sex and mould and deform its
prodigious mental energy—it is clear that the repressing forces are no
less important than the antagonist with which they contend.
It is desirable, perhaps, to discuss a little more closely the nature
of mental conflict, and especially first to define the precise meaning
of the conception.
It may readily be granted that the young child’s mind is wholly
egocentric, though the proposition is not without a certain element of
assumption which it is not wise altogether to ignore. He experiences
certain desires and impulses which he assumes with the blandest
unconsciousness of any other desires but his own are there to be
gratified. The failure to gratify such an impulse may come about
in several ways, not all of which are equally significant in {81}
establishing mental conflict. The gratification may be physically
impossible. Here there is no basis for internal conflict. The
resistance is wholly external; the whole child still desires its
pleasure and its whole resources, mental and physical, are directed
to gain the object. Mere failure may be painful and may lead to an
outburst of rage which possibly even discharges some of the mental
energy of the wish, but the situation psychically is simple and the
incident tends of itself to go no farther.
The gratification may prove to be physically painful in itself. This
seems to promise certain elements of mental conflict in balancing the
pleasure of the gratification against the remembered pain it involves.
We are assuming that the pain is the immediate consequence of the
act, as when, for example, a child makes the immemorial scientific
discovery that fire burns fingers. Such a direct experience without
the interposition of a second person or the pointing of a moral does
not in fact involve any real mental conflict. The source of the
pain is external, its only emotional quality is that of its simple
unpleasantness, and this cannot, as it were, enter into the child’s
mind and divide it against itself.
True conflict, the conflict which moulds and deforms, must be actually
within the mind—must be endopsychic to use a term invented by Freud,
though not used by him in this exact application. In order that
a desire may set up conflict it must be thwarted, not by a plain
impossibility or by a mere physical pain, but by another impulse within
the mind antagonizing it. It seems clear that the counter-impulse to be
strong enough to contend with an impulse having in it the energy of the
sex instinct must itself derive its force from some potent instinctive
mechanism. We cannot suppose that the immense power of the sex impulse
can be {82} controlled, moulded, and directed by any influence except
such as have access to the stores of psychical energy which the
instinctive activities alone possess.
We are thus led to the proposition that the essence of mental conflict
is the antagonism of two impulses which both have instinct behind them,
and are both, as it were, intimate constituents in the personality
of the subject. Thus only can the mind become, in the worn but still
infinitely appropriate metaphor, a house divided against itself. The
counter-impulses to the developing sexual interest and activity of
the child are, as we have seen, the result of social pressure—that is
to say, the result of the influence of the human environment. This
influence is manifested, not merely in direct precept, in warning, in
punishment, in expressions of disapproval or disgust, but in the whole
system of secrecy, of significant silences, of suppressions, of nods
and winks and surreptitious signallings, of sudden causeless snubs and
patently lame explanations amid which such sexual interest as the child
possesses has to find a _modus vivendi_ and an intelligible meaning.
Whence does this environmental pressure obtain the power which
enables it to exercise in the child’s mind the regal functions of
instinct? Clearly it can do so only if the mind possesses a specific
sensitiveness to external opinion and the capacity to confer on
its precepts the sanction of instinctive force. In the two earlier
essays of this book I attempted to show that the essential specific
characteristic of the mind of the gregarious animal is this very
capacity to confer upon herd opinion the psychical energy of instinct.
It is this sensitiveness, then, which lays the child’s mind open to the
influence of his environment and endows for him the mental attitude
of that environment with all the sanction of instinct. Thus do the
repressing forces {83} become actually constituent in the child’s
personality, and as much a part of his being as the egoistic desires
with which they are now able to contend on equal terms.
The specific sensitiveness of the gregarious mind seems, then, to be a
necessary condition for the establishment of true mental conflict, and
a character which must be taken into account if we are to develop a
complete theory of the evolution of the individual mind.
Assuming the validity of the proposition that there are two primary
factors in the development of the mind in each individual—the egoistic
impulses of the child and his specific sensitiveness to environing
influences—it may well be asked why it is that the product, the
“normal” adult mind, is so uniform in its characters. It is true
that this uniformity may very easily be exaggerated, for in a very
considerable number of cases gross “abnormalities” are the result of
the process of development, but, as I pointed out in an earlier essay,
the result on the whole is to produce two broadly distinguishable
types of mind—the unstable and the stable—the latter on account of its
numerical superiority being also dignified as normal. A considerable
uniformity in the final products must therefore be accepted. If,
however, environmental influences are an essential factor in the
production of this result, there seems no little difficulty in
accounting for the uniformity seeing that environments vary so much
from class to class, nation to nation, and race to race. Where, we may
ask, is the constant in the environmental factors which the uniformity
of the outcome leads us to expect? Assuming with Freud that of the
egoistic impulses of the child, the sexual alone seriously counts
in the formation of character, can it be shown that the influences
which surround the child are uniform {84} in their general direction
against this? At first sight it would seem certainly not. Even in the
same country the variations in taste, reticence, modesty, and morality
towards matters of sex interest vary greatly from class to class, and
presumably are accompanied by corresponding variations in the type of
influence exercised by the environment of the child.
Adequately to deal with this difficulty would involve examining in
detail the actual mental attitude of the adult towards the young,
especially in regard to matters directly or indirectly touching
upon interests of sex. The subject is a difficult one, and if we
limit ourselves to the purely human standpoint, ugly and depressing.
The biologist, however, need not confine himself to so cramped an
outlook, and by means of collecting his observations over a much
larger field is able to some extent to escape the distorting effects
of natural human prejudice. Viewed in a broad way, it is neither
surprising nor portentous that there should naturally exist a strong
and persistent jealousy between the adult and the young. Indeed, many
of the superficial consequences of this fact are mere commonplaces.
Throughout most of the lower animals the relation is obvious and
frankly manifested. Indeed, it may be regarded as a more or less
inevitable consequence of any form of social life among animals. As
such, therefore, it may be expected to appear in some form or other in
the human mind. The manifestations of it, however, will by no means
necessarily take easily recognizable forms. The social pressure to
which the mind is subject will tend to exclude such a feeling from at
any rate full consciousness, and such manifestations as are allowed it
will be in disguised and distorted forms.
It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that some dim and unrealized
offshoot of such a jealousy {85} between adult and young is
responsible for the unanimity with which man combines to suppress and
delay the development of any evidence of sexual interest by the young.
The intensity of the dislike which is felt for admitting the young to
share any part of the knowledge of the adult about the physiology of
sex is well illustrated by the difficulty parents feel in communicating
to their children some of the elementary facts which they may feel very
strongly it is their duty to impart. A parent may find himself under
these circumstances trying to quiet his conscience with all sorts of
excuses and subterfuges while he postpones making the explanations
which duty and affection urge upon him as necessary for the health and
happiness of his child. An unwillingness so strong and irrational as
this must have its root in subconscious processes charged with strong
feeling.
The tendency to guard children from sexual knowledge and experience
seems to be truly universal in civilized man and to surpass all
differences of morals, discipline, or taste. Amongst primitive savages
the principle has not acquired the altruistic signification which
civilized man has given it, but operates as a definite exclusion to be
overcome only by solemn ceremonies of initiation and at the price of
submission to painful and sometimes mutilating rites.