I now watch from a distance the symptomatic reactions that are
accompanying the introduction of psychoanalysis into the France which
was for so long refractory. It seems like a reproduction of something I
have lived through before, and yet it has peculiarities of its own.
Objections of incredible simplicity are raised, such as that French
sensitiveness is offended by the pedantry and crudity of
psychoanalytical terminology. (One cannot help being reminded of
Lessing’s immortal Chevalier Riccaut de la Marlinière.[22]) Another
comment has a more serious ring (a Professor of Psychology at the
Sorbonne did not think it beneath him): the whole method of thought of
psychoanalysis is inconsistent with the _génie latin_. Here the
Anglo-Saxon allies of France, who count as supporters of analysis, are
explicitly thrown over. Anyone hearing such words would suppose that
psychoanalysis had been the favourite child of the _génie teutonique_
and had been clasped to its heart from the moment of birth.
In France the interest in psychoanalysis began among the men of letters.
To understand this, it must be borne in mind that from the time of the
writing of _The Interpretation of Dreams_, psychoanalysis ceased to be a
purely medical subject. Between its appearance in Germany and in France
lies the history of its numerous applications to departments of
literature and of æsthetics, to the history of religions and to
pre-history, to my theology, to folk-lore, to education, and so on. None
of these things have much to do with medicine; in fact it is only
through psychoanalysis that they are connected with it. I have no
business, therefore, to go into them in detail in these pages.[23] I
cannot pass them over completely in silence, however, for, on the one
hand, they are essential to a correct appreciation of the nature and
value of psychoanalysis, and, on the other hand, I have, after all,
undertaken to give an account of my lifework. The beginnings of the
majority of these applications of psychoanalysis will be found in my
works. Here and there I have gone a little way along the path in order
to gratify my non-medical interests. Later on, others (not only doctors,
but specialists in the various fields as well) have followed in my
tracks and penetrated far into the different subjects. But since my
programme limits me to a mention of my own share in these applications
of psychoanalysis, I can only give a quite inadequate picture of their
extent and importance.
A number of suggestions came to me out of the Œdipus complex, the
ubiquity of which gradually dawned on me. The poet’s choice, or his
invention, of such a terrible subject seemed puzzling; and so, too, did
the overwhelming effect of its dramatic treatment, and the general
nature of such tragedies of destiny. But all of this became intelligible
when one realized that a universal law of mental life had here been
captured in all its emotional significance. Fate and the oracle were no
more than materializations of an internal necessity; and the fact of the
hero sinning without his knowledge and against his intentions was
evidently a right expression of the _unconscious_ nature of his criminal
tendencies. From understanding this tragedy of destiny it was only a
step further to understanding a tragedy of character—_Hamlet_, which had
been admired for 300 years without its meaning being discovered or its
author’s motives guessed. It could scarcely be a chance that this
neurotic creation of the poet should have broken down, like his
numberless fellows in the real world, at the Œdipus complex; for Hamlet
was faced with the task of taking vengeance upon another for the two
deeds which are the subject of the Œdipus desires, and before that task
his arm was paralysed by his own obscure sense of guilt. Shakespeare
wrote _Hamlet_ very soon after his father’s death. The suggestions made
by me for the analysis of this tragedy were fully worked out later on by
Ernest Jones. And the same example was afterwards used by Otto Rank as
the starting-point for his investigation of the choice of material made
by dramatists. In his large volume upon the incest theme[24] he was able
to show how often imaginative writers have taken as their subject the
themes of the Œdipus situation, and traced in the different literatures
of the world the way in which the material has been transformed,
modified and softened.
It was tempting to go on from there to an attempt at an analysis of
poetic and artistic creation in general. The realm of imagination was
evidently a “sanctuary” made during the painful transition from the
pleasure principle to the reality principle in order to provide a
substitute for the gratification of instincts which had to be given up
in real life. The artist, like the neurotic, had withdrawn from an
unsatisfying reality into this world of imagination, but, unlike the
neurotic, he knew how to find a way back from it and once more to get a
firm foothold in reality. His creations, works of art, were the
imaginary gratifications of unconscious wishes, just as dreams are; and
like them, they were in the nature of compromises, since they too were
obliged to avoid any open conflict with the forces of repression. But
they differed from the asocial, narcissistic products of dreaming in
that they were calculated to arouse interest in other people and were
able to evoke and to gratify the same unconscious wishes in them too.
Besides this, they have made use of the perceptual pleasure of formal
beauty as what I have called an “incitement-premium.” What
psychoanalysis was able to do was to take the inter-relations between
the impressions of the artist’s life, his chance experiences and his
works, and from them to construct his constitution and the impulses at
work in it—that is to say, that part of him which he shared with all
men. With this aim in view, for instance, I made Leonardo da Vinci the
subject of a study which is based upon a single memory of childhood
related by him and which aims chiefly at explaining his picture of “St.
Anne with the Virgin and Child.” It does not appear that the enjoyment
of a work of art is spoiled by the knowledge gained from such an
analysis. The layman may perhaps expect too much from analysis in this
field, for it must be admitted that it throws no light upon the two
problems which probably interest him the most. It can do nothing towards
elucidating the nature of the artistic gift, nor can it explain the
means by which the artist works—artistic technique.
I was able to show from a short story by W. Jensen called _Gradiva_,
which has no particular merit in itself, that invented dreams can be
interpreted in the same way as real ones and that the unconscious
mechanisms familiar to us in the “dream-work” are thus also operative in
the processes of imaginative writing.
My book upon _Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious_[25] was a
side-issue, indirectly derived from _The Interpretation of Dreams_. The
only friend of mine who was at that time interested in my work remarked
to me that my interpretations of dreams often impressed him as being
like jokes. In order to throw some light on this impression, I began to
investigate jokes and found that their essence lay in the technical
methods employed in them, and that these were the same as the means used
in the “dream-work”—that is to say, condensation, displacement, the
representation of a thing by its opposite or by a triviality, and so on.
This led to an economic enquiry as to the origin of the high degree of
pleasure obtained from hearing a joke. And to this the answer was that
it was due to the momentary suspension of the energy expended upon
maintaining repression owing to the attraction exercised by the offer of
a premium of pleasure (“fore-pleasure”).
I myself set a higher value upon my contributions to the psychology of
religion, which began in 1907 with the establishment of a remarkable
similarity between obsessive acts and religious practices or ritual.
Without as yet understanding the deeper connections, I described the
obsessional neurosis as a distorted private religion and religion as a
kind of universal obsessional neurosis. Later on, in 1912, the explicit
indications of Jung as to the far-reaching analogies between the mental
products of neurotics and of primitive peoples, led me to turn my
attention to that subject. In four essays, which were collected into a
book with the title of _Totem and Taboo_,[26] I showed that the dread of
incest was even more marked among primitive than among civilized races
and had given rise to very special measures of defence against it; I
examined the relations between taboo prohibitions (the earliest form in
which moral restrictions make their appearance) and emotional
ambivalence; and I discovered under the primitive scheme of the
universe, known as animism, the principle of the over-estimation of the
importance of psychical reality, the principle of “the omnipotence of
thoughts,” which also lies at the root of magic. I developed the
comparison with the obsessional neurosis at every point, and showed how
many of the postulates of primitive mental life are still in force in
that remarkable disorder. Above all, however, I was attracted by
totemism, the first system of organization in primitive tribes, a system
in which the beginnings of social order are united with a rudimentary
religion and the implacable domination of a small number of taboo
prohibitions. The being that is honored is ultimately always an animal,
from which the clan also claims to be descended. Many indications
pointed to the conclusion that every race, even the most highly
developed, had once passed through the stage of totemism.
The chief literary sources of my studies in this field were the well
known works of J. G. Frazer (_Totemism and Exogamy_ and _The Golden
Bough_), a mine of valuable facts and opinions. But Frazer effected
little towards elucidating the problems of totemism; he had more than
once fundamentally altered his views on the subject, and the other
ethnologists and prehistorians seemed in equal uncertainty and
disagreement. My starting-point was the striking correspondence between
the two taboo-injunctions of totemism (not to kill the totem and not to
have sexual relations with any woman of the same totem-clan) and the two
elements of the Œdipus complex (killing the father and taking the mother
to wife). I was therefore tempted to equate the totem animal with the
father; and, in fact, primitive peoples themselves do this explicitly,
by honouring it as the forefather of the clan. There next came to my
help two facts from psychoanalysis, a lucky observation of a child made
by Ferenczi, which made it possible to speak of an “infantile return of
totemism,” and the analysis of early animal-phobias in children, which
so often showed that the animal was a substitute for the father, a
substitute onto which the fear of the father derived from the Œdipus
complex had been displaced. Not much was lacking to enable me to
recognize the killing of the father as the nucleus of totemism and the
starting-point in the formation of religion.
This missing element was supplied when I became acquainted with W.
Robertson Smith’s work, _The Religion of the Semites_. Its author (a man
of genius, who was both a physicist and a biblical expert) introduced
the so-called totem-feast as an essential part of the totemistic
religion. Once a year the totem animal, which was at other times
regarded as sacred, was solemnly killed in the presence of all the
members of the clan, was devoured and was then mourned over. The
mourning was followed by a great festival. When I further took into
account Darwin’s conjecture that men originally lived in hordes, each
under the domination of a single, powerful, violent and jealous male,
there rose before me, out of all these components, the following
hypothesis, or, I would rather say, vision. The father of the primal
horde, since he was an unlimited despot, had seized all the women for
himself; his sons, being dangerous to him as rivals, had been killed or
driven away. One day, however, the sons came together and united to
overwhelm, kill and devour their father, who had been their enemy, but
also their ideal. After the deed, they were unable to take over their
heritage since they stood in one another’s way. Under the influence of
failure and regret, they learned to come to an agreement among
themselves, they banded themselves into a clan of brothers by the help
of the ordinances of totemism, which aimed at preventing a repetition of
such a deed, and they jointly undertook to forego the possession of the
women on whose account they had killed their father. They were then
driven to finding strange women, and this was the origin of the exogamy
which is so closely bound up with totemism. The totem-feast was the
commemoration of the fearful deed, from which sprang man’s sense of
guilt (or “original sin”) and which was the beginning at once of social
organization, of religion, and of ethical restrictions.
Now, whether we suppose that such a possibility was a historical event
or not, it brings the formation of religion within the circle of the
father-complex and bases it upon the ambivalence which dominates that
complex. After the totem animal had ceased to serve as a substitute for
him, the primal father, at once feared and hated, honoured and envied,
became the prototype of God himself. The son’s rebelliousness and his
affection for his father struggled against each other through a constant
succession of compromises, which sought, on the one hand, to atone for
the act of parricide, and, on the other, to consolidate the advantages
it had brought. This view of religion throws a particularly clear light
upon the psychological basis of Christianity, in which, it may be added,
the ceremony of the totem-feast still survives, with but little
distortion, in the form of Communion. I should like explicitly to
mention that this last observation was not made by me, but is to be
found in the works of Robertson Smith and Frazer.
Theodor Reik and G. Róheim, the ethnologist, have taken up the line of
thought which I developed in _Totem and Taboo_, and, in a series of
important works, have extended it, amplified it or corrected it. I
myself have since returned to it more than once in the course of my
investigations into the “unconscious sense of guilt” (which also plays
such an important part among the motives of neurotic suffering) and in
my attempts at forming a closer connection between social psychology and
the psychology of the individual.[27] I have, moreover, made use of the
idea of an archaic inheritance from the “primal horde” epoch of
mankind’s development in explaining susceptibility to hypnosis.
I have taken but little direct part in certain other applications of
psychoanalysis, though they are none the less of general interest. It is
only a step from the phantasies of individual neurotics to the
imaginative creations of groups and peoples as we find them in myths,
legends and fairy tales. Mythology became the special province of Otto
Rank; the interpretation of myths, the tracing of them back to the
familiar unconscious complexes of infancy, the replacing of astral
explanations by a discovery of human motives, all of this is to a large
extent due to his analytic efforts. The subject of symbolism has also
found many students among my followers. Symbolism has brought
psychoanalysis many enemies; many enquirers with unduly prosaic minds
have never been able to forgive it the recognition of symbolism, which
followed from the interpretation of dreams. But analysis is guiltless of
the discovery of symbolism, for it had long been known in other regions
of thought (such as folk-lore, legends and myths) and plays even a
larger part in them than in the “language of dreams.”
I myself have contributed nothing to the application of analysis to
education. It was natural, however, that the analytic discoveries as to
the sexual life and mental development of children should attract the
attention of educators and make them see their problems in a new light.
Dr. Oskar Pfister, a protestant pastor at Zurich, led the way as a
tireless pioneer along these lines, nor did he find the practice of
analysis incompatible with the retention of his religion, though it is
true that this was of a sublimated kind. Among the many others who
worked alongside of him, I may mention Frau Dr. Hug-Hellmuth and Dr. S.
Bernfeld, both of Vienna. The application of analysis to the
prophylactic education of healthy children and to the correcting of
those who, though not actually neurotic, have deviated from the normal
course of development, has led to one consequence which is of practical
importance. It is no longer possible to restrict the practice of
psychoanalysis to physicians and to exclude laymen from it. In fact, a
physician who has not been through a special training is, in spite of
his diploma, a layman in analysis, and a non-physician who has been
suitably trained can, with occasional reference to a physician, even
carry out the analytic treatment of neuroses.
By a process of development against which it would have been useless to
struggle, the word “psychoanalysis” has itself become ambiguous. While
it was originally the name of a particular therapeutic method, it has
now also become the name of a science—the science of unconscious mental
processes. By itself this science is seldom able to deal with a problem
completely, but it seems destined to give important contributory help in
a large number of regions of knowledge. The sphere of application of
psychoanalysis extends as far as that of psychology, to which it forms a
complement of the greatest moment.
Looking back, then, over the patch-work of my life’s labours, I can say
that I have made many beginnings and thrown out many suggestions.
Something will come of them in the future. But I cannot tell myself
whether it will be much or little.
-----
Footnote 1:
These laws are on the statutes of the Austrian Republic.
Footnote 2:
[The present work appeared originally in Volume 4 of _Die Medizin der
Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen_ (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1925), a
collection of autobiographical studies by leaders of the medical
profession.]
Footnote 3:
The lectures were first published (in English) in the _American
Journal of Psychology_ (1910); the original German was issued under
the title of _Ueber Psychoanalyse_, (Vienna, 1910).
Footnote 4:
_These Eventful Years_ (New York, 1924). My essay translated by Dr. A.
A. Brill, forms Chapter LXXIII of the second volume. [The original
German appears in Vol. XI of Freud’s _Gesammelte Schriften_ (Vienna,
1927).]
Footnote 5:
Published in the _Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse_, Vol. VI, 1914. [English
translation in Freud’s _Collected Papers_, Vol. I].
Footnote 6:
[“It is in vain that you range around from science to science: each
man learns only what he can learn.” _Faust_, Part I.]
Footnote 7:
The principal hospital in Vienna.
Footnote 8:
Freud, _Collected Papers_, Vol. I.
Footnote 9:
[The German word _Besetzung_, here translated “charge,” is applied by
Freud to the sum of energy which he supposes to become attached
(somewhat upon the analogy of an electric charge) to mental impulses,
whether conscious or unconscious, when they are in a condition of
activity. The recognized English technical translation of the word is
“cathexis”. Trans.]
Footnote 10:
[First German edition, under the title of _Drei Abhandlungen zur
Sexual theorie_, Vienna, 1905.]
Footnote 11:
_Die Traumdeutung_, Vienna, 1900.
Footnote 12:
_Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens_, Berlin, 1904.
Footnote 13:
[A branch society has since been formed in France.—Trans.]
Footnote 14:
“Die Psychoanalyse Freud’s,” _Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen_, Bd. II, 1910.
Footnote 15:
[The public mental hospital at Zurich.—Trans.]
Footnote 16:
“On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement.”
Footnote 17:
[See foot-note, p. 35.]
Footnote 18:
_Jenseits des Lustprinzips_, Vienna, 1920, _Massenpsychologie und
Ichanalyse_, Vienna, 1921, and _Das Ich und das Es_, Vienna, 1923.
Footnote 19:
_Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen_,
Bd. III, 1911. English translation in Freud’s _Collected Papers_, Vol.
IV.
Footnote 20:
Published in the _Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse_ between 1915 and
1917. English Translation in Freud’s _Collected Papers_, Vol. IV.
Footnote 21:
_The Ego and the Id._
Footnote 22:
[The comic French soldier of fortune in _Minna von Barnhelm_, who is
amazed when his sharp practice at cards is described as cheating:
“Comment, Mademoiselle? Vous appelez cela ‘cheating’? Corriger la
fortune, l’enchaîner sous ses doigts, être sûr de son fait—do the
Germans call that ‘cheating’? Cheating! Oh, what a poor language, what
a crude language German must be!”—_Trans._]
Footnote 23:
[The present work originally formed part of a series of medical
autobiographies.—_Trans._]
Footnote 24:
_Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage_, Vienna, 1912.
Footnote 25:
_Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten_, Vienna, 1905.
Footnote 26:
_Totem und Tabu_, Vienna, 1913.
Footnote 27:
_The Ego and the Id_, and _Group Psychology and the Analysis of the
Ego_.
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