concerning these two systems and their relation to consciousness. The
watchman between the unconscious and the fore-conscious is none other
than the censor under whose control we found the manifest dream to
obtain its form. The residue of the day's experiences, which we found
were the stimuli which set off the dream, are fore-conscious materials
which at night, during sleep, had come under the influence of
unconscious and suppressed wishes. Borne along by the energy of the
wish, these stimuli were able to build the latent dream. Under the
control of the unconscious system this material was worked over, went
through an elaboration and displacement such as the normal psychic life
or, better said, the fore-conscious system, either does not know at all
or tolerates only exceptionally. In our eyes the characteristics of each
of the two systems were betrayed by this difference in their
functioning. The dependent relation between the fore-conscious and the
conscious was to us only an indication that it must belong to one of the
two systems. The dream is by no means a pathological phenomenon; it may
appear in every healthy person under the conditions of sleep. Any
assumption as to the structure of the psychic apparatus which covers the
development of both the dream and the neurotic symptom has also an
undeniable claim to be taken into consideration in any theory of normal
psychic life.
So much, then, for suppression. It is, however, only a prerequisite for
the evolution of the symptom. We know that the symptom serves as a
substitute for a process kept back by suppression. Yet it is no simple
matter to bridge this gap between the suppression and the evolution of
the substitute. We have first to answer several questions on other
aspects of the problem concerning the suppression and its
substantiation: What kind of psychological stimuli are at the basis of
the suppression; by what forces is it achieved; for what motives? On
these matters we have only one insight that we can go by. We learned in
the investigation of resistance that it grows out of the forces of the
"I," in other words from obvious and latent traits of character. It must
be from the same traits also that suppression derived support; at least
they played a part in its development. All further knowledge is still
withheld from us.
A second observation, for which I have already prepared, will help us
further at this point. By means of analysis we can assign one very
general purpose to the neurotic symptom. This is of course nothing new
to you. I have already shown it to you in the two cases of neuroses.
But, to be sure, what is the significance of two cases! You have the
right to demand that it be shown to you innumerable times. But I am
unable to do this. Here again your own experience must step in, or your
belief, which may in this matter rely upon the unanimous account of all
psychoanalysts.
You will remember that in these two cases, whose symptoms we subjected
to searching investigation, the analysis introduced us to the most
intimate sexual life of these patients. In the first case, moreover, we
could identify with unusual clearness the purpose or tendency of the
symptoms under investigation. Perhaps in the second case it was
slightly covered by another factor--one we will consider later. Now, the
same thing that we saw in these two examples we would see in all other
cases that we subjected to analysis. Each time, through analysis, we
would be introduced to the sexual wishes and experiences of the patient,
and every time we would have to conclude that their symptoms served the
same purpose. This purpose shows itself to be the satisfaction of sexual
wishes; the symptoms serve as a sexual satisfaction for the patient,
they are a substitute for such satisfactions as they miss in reality.
Recall the compulsive act of our first patient. The woman longs for her
intensely beloved husband, with whom she cannot share her life because
of his shortcoming and weaknesses. She feels she must remain true to
him, she can give his place to no one else. Her compulsive symptom
affords her that for which she pines, ennobles her husband, denies and
corrects his weaknesses,--above all, his impotence. This symptom is
fundamentally a wish-fulfillment, exactly as is a dream; moreover, it is
what a dream not always is, an erotic wish-fulfillment. In the case of
our second patient you can see that one of the component purposes of her
ceremonial was the prevention of the intercourse of her parents or the
hindrance of the creation of a new child thereby. You have perhaps also
guessed that essentially she strove to put herself in the place of her
mother. Here again we find the removal of disturbances to sexual
satisfaction and the fulfillment of personal sexual wishes. We shall
soon turn to the complications of whose existence we have given you
several indications.
I do not want to make reservations as to the universal applicability of
these declarations later on, and therefore I wish to call to your
attention the fact that everything that I say here about suppression,
symptom-development and symptom-interpretation has been learned from
three types of neuroses--anxiety-hysteria, conversion-hysteria, and
compulsion-neuroses--and for the time being is relevant to these forms
only. These three conditions, which we are in the habit of combining
into one group under the name of "_transference neuroses_," also limit
the field open to psychoanalytic therapy. The other neuroses have not
been nearly so well studied by psychoanalysis,--in one group, in fact,
the impossibility of therapeutic influence has been the reason for the
neglect. But you must not forget that psychoanalysis is still a very
young science, that it demands much time and care in preparation for it,
that not long ago it was still in the cradle, so to speak. Yet at all
points we are about to penetrate into the understanding of those other
conditions which are not transference neuroses. I hope I shall still be
able to speak to you of the developments that our assumptions and
results have undergone by being correlated with this new material, and
to show you that these further studies have not led to contradictions
but rather to the production of still greater uniformity. Granted that
everything, then, that has been said here, holds good for the three
transference neuroses, allow me to add a new bit of information to the
evaluation of its symptoms. A comparative investigation into the causes
of the disease discloses a result that may be confined into the formula:
in some way or other these patients fell ill through _self-denial_ when
reality withheld from them the satisfaction of their sexual wishes. You
recognize how excellently well these two results are found to agree. The
symptoms must be understood, then, as a substitute satisfaction for that
which is missed in life.
To be sure, there are all kinds of objections possible to the
declaration that neurotic symptoms are substitutes for sexual
satisfaction. I shall still go into two of them today. If you yourself
have analytically examined a fairly large number of neurotics you will
perhaps gravely inform me that in one class of cases this is not at all
applicable, the symptoms appear rather to have the opposite purpose, to
exclude sexual satisfaction, or discontinue it. I shall not deny the
correctness of your interpretation. The psychoanalytic content has a
habit of being more complicated than we should like to have it. Had it
been so simple, perhaps we should have had no need for psychoanalysis to
bring it to light. As a matter of fact, some of the traits of the
ceremonial of our second patient may be recognized as of this ascetic
nature, inimical to sexual satisfaction; for example, the fact that she
removes the clocks, which have the magic qualities of preventing nightly
erections, or that she tries to prevent the falling and breaking of
vessels, which symbolizes a protection of her virginity. In other cases
of bed-ceremonials which I was able to analyze, this negative character
was far more evident; the ceremonial might consist throughout of
protective regulations against sexual recollections and temptations. On
the other hand, we have often discovered in psychoanalysis that
opposites do not mean contradictions. We might extend our assertion and
say the symptoms purpose either a sexual satisfaction or a guard against
it; that in hysteria the positive wish-fulfillment takes precedence,
while in the compulsion neuroses the negative, ascetic characteristics
have the ascendancy. We have not yet been able to speak of that aspect
of the mechanism of the symptoms, their two-sidedness, or polarity,
which enables them to serve this double purpose, both the sexual
satisfaction and its opposite. The symptoms are, as we shall see,
compromise results, arising from the integration of two opposed
tendencies; they represent not only the suppressed force but also the
suppressing factor, which was originally potent in bringing about the
negation. The result may then favor either one side or the other, but
seldom is one of the influences entirely lacking. In cases of hysteria,
the meeting of the two purposes in the same symptom is most often
achieved. In compulsion-neuroses, the two parts often become distinct;
the symptom then has a double meaning, it consists of two actions, one
following the other, one releasing the other. It will not be so easy to
put aside a further misgiving. If you should look over a large number of
symptom-interpretations, you would probably judge offhand that the
conception of a sexual substitute-satisfaction has been stretched to its
utmost limits in these cases. You will not hesitate to emphasize that
these symptoms offer nothing in the way of actual satisfaction, that
often enough they are limited to giving fresh life to sensations or
phantasies from some sexual complex. Further, you will declare that the
apparent sexual satisfaction so often shows a childish and unworthy
character, perhaps approximates an act of onanism, or is reminiscent of
filthy naughtiness, habits that are already forbidden and broken in
childhood. Finally, you will express your surprise that one should
designate as a sexual satisfaction appetites which can only be described
as horrible or ghastly, even unnatural. As to these last points, we
shall come to no agreement until we have submitted man's sexual life to
a thorough investigation, and thus ascertained what one is justified in
calling sexual.
TWENTIETH LECTURE
GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES
_The Sexual Life of Man_
One might think we could take for granted what we are to understand by
the term "sexual." Of course, the sexual is the indecent, which we must
not talk about. I have been told that the pupils of a famous
psychiatrist once took the trouble to convince their teacher that the
symptoms of hysteria very frequently represent sexual matters. With this
intention they took him to the bedside of a woman suffering from
hysteria, whose attacks were unmistakable imitations of the act of
delivery. He, however, threw aside their suggestion with the remark, "a
delivery is nothing sexual." Assuredly, a delivery need not under all
circumstances be indecent.
I see that you take it amiss that I jest about such serious matters. But
this is not altogether a jest. In all seriousness, it is not altogether
easy to define the concept "sexual." Perhaps the only accurate
definition would be everything that is connected with the difference
between the two sexes; but this you may find too general and too
colorless. If you emphasize the sexual act as the central factor, you
might say that everything is sexual which seeks to obtain sensual
excitement from the body and especially from the sexual organs of the
opposite sex, and which aims toward the union of the genitals and the
performance of the sexual act. But then you are really very close to the
comparison of sexual and indecent, and the act of delivery is not
sexual. But if you think of the function of reproduction as the nucleus
of sexuality you are in danger of excluding a number of things that do
not aim at reproduction but are certainly sexual, such as onanism or
even kissing. But we are prepared to realize that attempts at definition
always lead to difficulties; let us give up the attempt to achieve the
unusual in our particular case. We may suspect that in the development
of the concept "sexual" something occurred which resulted in a false
disguise. On the whole, we are quite well oriented as to what people
call sexual.
The inclusion of the following factors in our concept "sexual" amply
suffices for all practical purposes in ordinary life: the contrast
between the sexes, the attainment of sexual excitement, the function of
reproduction, the characteristic of an indecency that must be kept
concealed. But this is no longer satisfactory to science. For through
careful examinations, rendered possible only by the sacrifices and the
unselfishness of the subjects, we have come in contact with groups of
human beings whose sexual life deviates strikingly from the average. One
group among them, the "perverse," have, as it were, crossed off the
difference between the sexes from their program. Only the same sex can
arouse their sexual desires; the other sex, even the sexual parts, no
longer serve as objects for their sexual desires, and in extreme cases,
become a subject for disgust. They have to that extent, of course,
foregone any participation in reproduction. We call such persons
homosexual or inverted. Often, though not always, they are men and women
of high physical, intellectual and ethical development, who are affected
only with this one portentous abnormality. Through their scientific
leaders they proclaim themselves to be a special species of mankind, "a
third sex," which shares equal rights with the two other sexes. Perhaps
we shall have occasion to examine their claims critically. Of course
they are not, as they would like to claim, the "elect" of humanity, but
comprise just as many worthless second-rate individuals as those who
possess a different sexual organization.
At any rate, this type among the perverse seek to achieve the same ends
with the object of their desires as do normal people. But in the same
group there exists a long succession of abnormal individuals whose
sexual activities are more and more alien to what seems desirable to the
sensible person. In their manifold strangeness they seem comparable only
to the grotesque freaks that P. Breughel painted as the temptation of
Saint Anthony, or the forgotten gods and believers that G. Flaubert
pictures in the long procession that passes before his pious penitent.
This ill-assorted array fairly clamors for orderly classification if it
is not to bewilder our senses. We first divide them, on the one hand,
into those whose sexual object has changed, as is the case with
homosexualists, and, on the other, those whose sexual aim has changed.
Those of the first group have dispensed with the mutual union of the
genital organs, and have, as one of the partners of the act, replaced
the genitals by another organ or part of the body; they have thus
overcome both the short-comings of organic structure and the usual
disgust involved. There are others of this group who still retain the
genitals as their object, but not by virtue of their sexual function;
they participate for anatomic reasons or rather by reason of their
proximity. By means of these individuals we realize that the functions
of excretion, which in the education of the child are hushed away as
indecent, still remain capable of drawing complete sexual interest on
themselves. There are still others who have relinquished the genitals
entirely as an objective, have raised another part of the body to serve
as the goal of their desire; the woman's breast, the foot, the tress of
hair. There are also the fetishists, to whom the body part means
nothing, who are gratified by a garment, a piece of white linen, a shoe.
And finally there are persons who seek the whole object but with certain
peculiar or horrible demands: even those who covet a defenseless corpse
for instance, which they themselves must criminally compel to satisfy
their desire. But enough of these horrors.
Foremost in the second grouping are those perverted ones who have placed
as the end of their sexual desire performances normally introductory or
preparatory to it. They satisfy their desire by their eyes and hands.
They watch or attempt to watch the other individual in his most intimate
doings, or uncover those portions of their own bodies which they should
conceal in the vague expectation of being rewarded by a similar
procedure on the other person's part. Here also belong the enigmatic
sadists, whose affectionate strivings know no other goal than to cause
their object pain and agony, varying all the way from humiliating
suggestions to the harshest physical ill-treatment. As if to balance the
scale, we have on the other hand the masochists, whose sole satisfaction
consists in suffering every variety of humiliation and torture, symbolic
and real, at the hands of the beloved one. There are still others who
combine and confuse a number of these abnormal conditions. Moreover, in
both these groups there are those who seek sexual satisfaction in
reality, and others who are content merely to imagine such
gratification, who need no actual object at all, but can supplant it by
their own fantastic creations.
There can be not the least doubt that the sexual activities of these
individuals are actually found in the absurdities, caprices and horrors
that we have examined. Not only do they themselves conceive them as
adequate substitutes, but we must recognize that they take the same
place in their lives that normal sex gratification occupies in ours, and
for which they bring the same sacrifices, often incommensurate with
their ends. It is perfectly possible to trace along broad lines as well
as in detail in what way these abnormalities follow the normal procedure
and how they diverge from it. You will also find the characteristic of
indecency which belongs to the sexual act in these vagaries, only that
it is therein magnified to the disreputable.
Ladies and gentlemen, what attitude are we to assume to these unusual
varieties of sex gratification? Nothing at all is achieved by the mere
expression of indignation and personal disgust and by the assurance that
we do not share these lusts. That is not our concern. We have here a
field of observation like any other. Moreover, the evasion that these
persons are merely rarities, curiosities, is easily refuted. On the
contrary, we are dealing with very frequent and widespread phenomena.
If, however, we are told that we must not permit them to influence our
views on sexual life, since they are all aberrations of the sexual
instinct, we must meet this with a serious answer. If we fail to
understand these abnormal manifestations of sexuality and are unable to
relate them to the normal sexual life, then we cannot understand normal
sexuality. It is, in short, our unavoidable task to account
theoretically for all the potentialities of the perversions we have gone
over and to explain their relation to the so-called normal sexuality.
A penetrating insight due to Ivan Bloch and two new experimental results
will help us in this task. Bloch takes exception to the point of view
which sees in a perversion a "sign of degeneration"; he proves that such
deviations from the aim of the sexual instinct, such loose relations to
the object of sexuality, have occurred at all times, among the most
primitive and the most highly civilized peoples, and have occasionally
achieved toleration and general recognition. The two experimental
results were obtained in the course of psychoanalytic investigations of
neurotics; they will undoubtedly exert a decided influence on our
conceptions of sexual perversion.
We have stated that the neurotic symptoms are substitutions for sexual
satisfactions, and I have given you to understand that the proof of this
assertion by means of the analysis of symptoms encounters many
difficulties. For this statement is only justifiable if, under the term
"sexual satisfactions," we include the so-called perverse sexual ends,
since with surprising frequency we find symptoms which can be
interpreted only in the light of their activity. The claim of rareness
made by the homosexualists or the inverted immediately collapses when we
learn that in the case of no single neurotic do we fail to obtain
evidence of homosexual tendencies, and that in a considerable number of
symptoms we find the expression of this latent inversion. Those who call
themselves homosexualists are the conscious and manifest inverts, but
their number is as nothing before the latent homosexualists. We are
forced to regard the desire for an object of one's own sex as a
universal aberration of erotic life and to cede increasing importance to
it. Of course the differences between manifest homosexuality and the
normal attitude are not thus erased; their practical importance
persists, but their theoretic value is greatly decreased. Paranoia, a
disturbance which cannot be counted among the transference-neuroses,
must in fact be assumed as arising regularly from the attempt to ward
off powerful homosexual tendencies. Perhaps you will recall that one of
our patients under her compulsive symptoms acted the part of a man,
namely that of her own estranged husband; the production of such
symptoms, impersonating the actions of men, is very common to neurotic
women. Though this cannot be ascribed directly to homosexuality, it is
certainly concerned with its prerequisites.
You are probably acquainted with the fact that the neurosis of hysteria
may manifest its symptoms in all organic systems and may therefore
disturb all functions. Analysis shows that in these symptoms there are
expressed all those tendencies termed perverse, which seek to represent
the genitals through other organs. These organs behave as substitute
genitals; through the study of hysteric symptoms we have come to the
conclusion that aside from their functional activities, the organs of
the body have a sexual significance, and that the performance of their
functions is disturbed if the sexual factor claims too much attention.
Countless sensations and innervations, which appear as symptoms of
hysteria, in organs apparently not concerned with sexuality, are thus
discovered as bound up with the fulfillment of perverse sexual desires
through the transference of sex instincts to other organs. These
symptoms bring home to us the extent to which the organs used in the
consumption of food and in excretion may become the bearers of sexual
excitement. We see repeated here the same picture which the perversions
have openly and unmistakably lain before us; in hysteria, however, we
must make the detour of interpreting symptoms, and in this case the
perverse sexual tendencies must be ascribed not to the conscious but to
the unconscious life of the individual.
Among the many symptoms manifested in compulsion neurosis, the most
important are those produced by too powerful sadistic tendencies, i.e.,
sexual tendencies with perverted aim. These symptoms, in accordance with
the structure of compulsion neurosis, serve primarily as a rejection of
these desires, or they express a struggle between satisfaction and
rejection. In this struggle, the satisfaction is never excessively
curtailed; it achieves its results in the patient's behavior in a
roundabout way, by preference turning against his own person in
self-inflicted torture. Other forms of neurosis, characterized by
intensive worry, are the expression of an exaggerated sexualization of
acts that are ordinarily only preparatory to sexual satisfactions; such
are the desires to see, to touch, to investigate. Here is thus explained
the great importance of the fear of contact and also of the compulsion
to wash. An unbelievably large portion of compulsion acts may, in the
form of disguised repetitions and modifications, be traced back to
onanism, admittedly the only uniform action which accompanies the most
varied flights of the sexual imagination.