of its object, before the latent period, show us concerning the
Oedipus-complex? One may easily see that the little man would like to
have the mother all to himself, that he finds the presence of his
father disturbing, he becomes irritated when the latter permits himself
to show tenderness towards the mother, and expresses his satisfaction
when the father is away or on a journey. Frequently he expresses his
feelings directly in words, promises the mother he will marry her. One
may think this is very little in comparison with the deeds of Oedipus,
but it is actually enough, for it is essentially the same thing. The
observation is frequently clouded by the circumstance that the same
child at the same time, on other occasions, gives evidence of great
tenderness towards its father; it is only that such contradictory, or
rather, _ambivalent_ emotional attitudes as would lead to a conflict in
the case of an adult readily take their place side by side in a child,
just as later on they permanently exist in the unconscious. You might
wish to interpose that the behavior of the child springs from egoistic
motives and does not justify the setting up of an erotic complex. The
mother provides for all the necessities of the child, and it is
therefore to the child's advantage that she troubles herself for no one
else. This, too, is correct, but it will soon be clear that in this, as
in similar situations, the egoistic interest offers only the opportunity
upon which the erotic impulse seizes. If the little one shows the most
undisguised sexual curiosity about his mother, if he wants to sleep with
her at night, insists upon being present while she is dressing, or
attempts to caress her, as the mother can so often ascertain and
laughingly relates, it is undoubtedly due to the erotic nature of the
attachment to his mother. We must not forget that the mother shows the
same care for her little daughter without achieving the same effect, and
that the father often vies with her in caring for the boy without being
able to win the same importance in his eyes as the mother. In short, it
is clear that the factor of sex-preference cannot be eliminated from the
situation by any kind of criticism. From the standpoint of egoistic
interest it would merely be stupid of the little fellow not to tolerate
two persons in his services rather than only one.
I have, as you will have noticed, described only the relation of the boy
to his father and mother. As far as the little girl is concerned, the
process is the same with the necessary modifications. The affectionate
devotion to the father, the desire to set aside the mother as
superfluous and to take her place, a coquetry which already works with
all the arts of later womanhood, give such a charming picture,
especially in the baby girl, that we are apt to forget its seriousness,
and the grave consequences which may result from this infantile
situation. Let us not fail to add that frequently the parents themselves
exert a decisive influence over the child in the wakening of the Oedipus
attitude, in that they themselves follow a sex preference when there are
a number of children. The father in the most unmistakable manner shows
preference for the daughter, while the mother is most affectionate
toward the son. But even this factor cannot seriously undermine the
spontaneous character of the childish Oedipus-complex. The
Oedipus-complex expands and becomes a family-complex when other children
appear. It becomes the motive force, revived by the sense of personal
injury, which causes the child to receive its brothers and sisters with
aversion and to wish to remove them without more ado. It is much more
frequent for the children to express these feelings of hatred than those
arising from the parent-complex. If such a wish is fulfilled, and death
takes away the undesired increase in the family, after a short while we
may discover through analysis what an important experience this death
was for the child, even though he had not remembered it. The child
forced into second place by the birth of a little brother or sister, and
for the first time practically isolated from his mother, is loathe to
forgive her for this; feelings which we would call extreme bitterness in
an adult are aroused in him and often become the basis of a lasting
estrangement. We have already mentioned that sexual curiosity with all
its consequences usually grows out of these experiences of the child.
With the growing up of these brothers and sisters the relation to them
undergoes the most significant changes. The boy may take his sister as
the object for his love, to replace his faithless mother; situations of
dangerous rivalry, which are of vast importance for later life, arise
even in the nursery among numerous brothers who court the affection of a
younger sister. A little girl finds in her older brother a substitute
for her father, who no longer acts towards her with the same affection
as in former years, or she takes a younger sister as a substitute for
the child that she vainly wished of her father.
Such things, and many more of a similar character, are shown by the
direct observation of children and the consideration of their vivid
childish recollections, which are not influenced by the analysis. You
will conclude, among other things, that the position of a child in the
sequence of his brothers and sisters is of utmost importance for the
entire course of his later life, a factor which should be considered in
every biography. In the face of these explanations that are found with
so little effort, you will hardly recall without smiling the scientific
explanations for the prohibition of incest. What inventions! By living
together from early childhood the sexual attraction must have been
diverted from these members of the family who are of opposite sex, or a
biological tendency against in-breeding finds its psychic equivalent in
an innate dread of incest! In this no account is taken of the fact that
there would be no need of so unrelenting a prohibition by law and
morality if there were any natural reliable guards against the
temptation of incest. Just the opposite is true. The first choice of an
object among human beings is regularly an incestuous one, in the man
directed toward the mother and sister, and the most stringent laws are
necessary to prevent this persisting infantile tendency from becoming
active. Among the primitive races the prohibitions against incest are
much more stringent than ours, and recently Th. Reik showed in a
brilliant paper that the puberty-rites of the savages, which represent a
rebirth, have the significance of loosing the incestuous bonds of the
boy to his mother, and of establishing the reconciliation with the
father.
Mythology teaches that incest, apparently so abhorred by men, is
permitted to the gods without further thought, and you may learn from
ancient history that incestuous marriage with his sister was holy
prescript for the person of the ruler (among the ancient Pharaohs and
the Incas of Peru). We have here a privilege denied the common herd.
Incest with his mother is one of the sins of Oedipus, patricide the
other. It might also be mentioned that these are the two great sins
which the first social-religious institution of mankind, totemism,
abhors. Let us turn from the direct observation of the child to analytic
investigation of the adult neurotic. What does analysis yield to the
further knowledge of the Oedipus-complex? This is easily told. It shows
the patient up in the light of the myth; it shows that each of these
neurotics was himself an Oedipus or, what amounts to the same thing,
became a Hamlet in the reaction to the complex. To be sure, the analytic
representation of the Oedipus-complex enlarges upon and is a coarser
edition of the infantile sketch. The hatred of the father, the
death-wish with regard to him, are no longer timidly suggested, the
affection for the mother recognizes the goal of possessing her for a
wife. Dare we really accredit these horrible and extreme feelings to
those tender childhood years, or does analysis deceive us by bringing in
some new element? It is not difficult to discover this. Whenever an
account of past events is given, be it written even by a historian, we
must take into account the fact that inadvertently something has been
interpolated from the present and from intervening times into the past;
so that the entire picture is falsified. In the case of the neurotic it
is questionable whether this interpolation is entirely unintentional or
not; we shall later come to learn its motives and must justify the fact
of "imagining back" into the remote past. We also easily discover that
hatred of the father is fortified by numerous motives which originate in
later times and circumstances, since the sexual wishes for the mother
are cast in forms which are necessarily foreign to the child. But it
would be a vain endeavor to explain the whole of the Oedipus-complex by
"imagining back," and as related to later times. The infantile nucleus
and more or less of what has been added to it continues to exist and may
be verified by the direct observation of the child.
The clinical fact which we meet with in penetrating the form of the
Oedipus-complex as established by analysis, is of the greatest practical
importance. We learn that at the period of puberty, when the sexual
instinct first asserts its demands in full strength, the old incestuous
and familiar objects are again taken up and seized anew by the libido.
The infant's choice of an object was feeble, but it nevertheless set the
direction for the choice of an object in puberty. At that time very
intense emotional experiences are brought into play and directed towards
the Oedipus-complex, or utilized in the reaction to it. However, since
their presuppositions have become unsupportable, they must in large part
remain outside of consciousness. From this time on the human individual
must devote himself to the great task of freeing himself from his
parents, and only after he has freed himself can he cease to be a child,
and become a member of the social community. The task confronting the
son consists of freeing himself from his libidinous wishes towards his
mother and utilizing them in the quest for a really foreign object for
his love. He must also effect a reconciliation with his father, if he
has stayed hostile to him, or if in the reaction to his infantile
opposition he has become subject to his domination, he must now free
himself from this pressure. These tasks are set for every man; it is
noteworthy how seldom their solution is ideally achieved, i.e., how
seldom the solution is psychologically as well as socially correct.
Neurotics, however, find no solution whatever; the son remains during
his whole life subject to the authority of his father, and is not able
to transfer his libido to a foreign sexual object. Barring the
difference in the specific relation, the same fate may befall the
daughter. In this sense the Oedipus-complex is correctly designated as
the nucleus of the neurosis.
You can imagine how rapidly I am reviewing a great number of conditions
which are associated with the Oedipus-complex, of practical as well as
of theoretical importance. I cannot enter upon their variations or
possible inversions. Of its less immediate relations I only wish to
indicate the influence which the Oedipus-complex has been found to exert
on literary production. In a valuable book, Otto Rank has shown that the
dramatists of all times have taken their materials principally from the
Oedipus-and incest-complexes, with their variations and disguises.
Moreover, we will not forget to mention that the two guilty wishes of
Oedipus were recognized long before the time of psychoanalysis as the
true representatives of the unrestrained life of impulses. Among the
writings of the encyclopedist Diderot we find a famous dialogue, _The
Nephew of Ramau_, which no less a person than Goethe has translated into
German. In this you may read the remarkable sentence: "_If the little
savage were left to himself he would preserve all his imbecility, he
would unite the passions of a man of thirty to the unreasonableness of
the child in the cradle; he would twist his father's neck and bed with
his mother_."
There is also one other thing of which I must needs speak. The
mother-wife of Oedipus shall not have reminded us of the dream in vain.
Do you still remember the result of our dream analysis, that the wishes
out of which the dream is constructed so frequently are of a perverse,
incestuous nature, or disclose an enmity toward near and beloved
relatives the existence of which had never been suspected? At the time
we did not trace the sources of these evil impulses. Now you may see
them for yourselves. They represent the disposition made in early
infancy of the libidinous energy, with the objects, long since given up
in conscious life, to which it had once clung, which are now shown at
night to be still present and in a certain sense capable of activity.
But since all people have such perverse, incestuous and murderous
dreams, and not the neurotics alone, we may conclude that even those who
are normal have passed through the same evolutionary development,
through the perversions and the direction of the libidio toward the
objects of the Oedipus-complex. This, then, is the way of normal
development, upon which the neurotics merely enlarge. They show in
cruder form what dream analysis exposes in the healthy dreamer as well.
Accordingly here is one of the motives which led us to deal with the
study of the dream before we considered the neurotic symptom.
TWENTY-SECOND LECTURE
GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES
_Theories of Development and Regression--Etiology_
We have learned that the libidio goes through an extensive development
before it can enter the service of reproduction in a way which may be
regarded as normal. Now I wish to present to you what importance this
fact possesses for the causation of neuroses.
I believe we are in harmony with the teachings of general pathology in
assuming that this development involves two dangers, inhibition and
regression. In other words, with the universal tendency of biological
processes toward variation, it must necessarily happen that not all
preparatory phases of a given function are equally well passed through
or accomplished with comparable thoroughness. Certain components of a
function may be permanently held back in an early stage of development
and the complete development is therefore retarded to a certain extent.
Let us seek analogies for these processes from other fields. If a whole
people leaves its dwellings to seek a new home, as frequently happened
in the early periods of the history of mankind, their entire number will
certainly not reach the new destination. Setting aside other losses,
small groups or associations of these wandering peoples would stop on
the way, and, while the majority passes on, they would settle down at
these way-stations. Or, to seek a more appropriate comparison: You know
that in the most highly evolved mammals, the male seminal glands, which
originally are located in the far depths of the abdominal cavity, begin
to wander during a certain period of intra-uterine life until they reach
a position almost immediately under the skin of the pelvic extremity. In
the case of a number of male individuals, one of the paired glands may
as a result of this wandering remain in the pelvic cavity, or may be
permanently located in the canal through which both glands must pass in
their journey, or finally the canal itself may stay open permanently
instead of growing together with the seminal glands after the change of
position has taken place normally. When, as a young student, I was doing
my first piece of scientific research under the direction of von Bruecke,
I was working on the dorsal nerve-roots in the spinal cord of a small
fish very archaic in form. I discovered that the nerve ganglia of these
roots grow out from large cells which lie in the grey matter of the
dorsal column, a condition no longer true of other vertebrates. But I
soon discovered that such nerve cells are found outside the grey matter
all the way to the so-called spinal ganglion of the dorsal root. From
this I concluded that the cells of this group of ganglia had traveled
from the spinal cord to the roots of the nerves. This same result is
attested by embryology. In this little fish, however, the entire path of
the journey was traceable by the cells that had remained behind. Closer
observation will easily reveal to you the weak points of these
comparisons. Therefore let me simply say that with reference to every
single sexual impulse, I consider it possible for several of its
components to be held back in the earlier stages of development while
other components have worked themselves out to completion. You will
realize that we think of every such impulse as a current continuously
driving on from the very beginning of life, and that our resolving it
into individual movements which follow separately one upon the other is
to a certain extent artificial. Your impression that these concepts
require further clarification is correct, but an attempt would lead to
too great digression. Before we pass on, however, let us agree to call
this arrest of a partial impulse in an early stage of development, a
_fixation_ of the instinct.
_Regression_ is the second danger of this development by stages. Even
those components which have achieved a degree of progress may readily
turn backward to these earlier stages. Having attained to this later and
more highly developed form, the impulse is forced to a regression when
it encounters great external difficulties in the exercise of its
function, and accordingly cannot reach the goal which will satisfy its
strivings. We can obviously assume that fixation and regression are not
independent of each other. The stronger the fixations in the process of
development prove to be, the more readily will the function evade
external difficulties by a regression back to those fixations, and the
less capable will the fully developed function be to withstand the
hindrances that stand in the way of its exercise. Remember that if a
people in its wandering has left large groups at certain way-stations,
it is natural for those who have gone on to return to these stations if
they are beaten or encounter a mighty foe. The more they have left on
the way, however, the greater is their chance of defeat.
For your comprehension of the neuroses it is necessary to keep in mind
this connection between fixation and regression. This will give you a
secure hold upon the question of the cause of neuroses--of the etiology
of neuroses--which we shall soon consider.
For the present we have still to discuss various aspects of regression.
With the knowledge you have gained concerning the development of the
function of libido, you must expect two kinds of regression: incestuous
return to the first libidinous objects and return of the entire sexual
organization to an earlier stage of development. Both occur in the
transference neuroses and play an important part in its mechanism.
Especially is the return to the first incestuous objects of libido a
feature that the neurotic exhibits with positively tiresome regularity.
We could say far more about regression of libido if we took into
consideration another group of neuroses: neurotic narcism. But we cannot
do this now. These conditions give us a clue to other stages of
development of the function of libido, which have not been mentioned
previously, and correspondingly show new kinds of regression. But I
think the most important task before me at this point is to warn you not
to confuse _regression_ and _suppression_, and aid you to see clearly
the connection between the two processes. Suppression, as you know, is
the process by which an act capable of becoming conscious, in other
words, an act that belongs to the fore-conscious system, is rendered
unconscious and accordingly is thrust back into the unconscious system.
Similarly we speak of suppression when the unconscious psychic act never
has been admitted into the adjoining fore-conscious system but is
arrested by the censor at the threshold. Kindly observe that the
conception of suppression has nothing to do with sexuality. It describes
a purely psychological process, which could better be characterized by
terming it _localized_. By that we mean that it is concerned with the
spatial relationships within the psyche, or if we drop this crude
metaphor, with building up the psychological apparatus out of separate,
psychic systems.
Through these comparisons we observe that up to this point we have not
used the word regression in its general, but in a very special sense. If
you accord it the general meaning of return from a higher to a lower
stage of development you must include suppression as a form of
regression, for suppression may also be described as the reversion to an
earlier and lower stage in the development of a psychic act. Only in
regard to suppression, this tendency to revert is not necessarily
involved, for when a psychic act is held back in the early unconscious
stage we also term it suppression in a dynamic sense. Suppression is a
localized and dynamic conception, regression purely descriptive. What up
this point we have called regression and considered in its relation to
fixation, was only the return of libido to former stages of its
development. The nature of this latter conception is entirely distinct
and independent of suppression. We cannot call the libido regressions
purely psychical processes and do not know what localization in the
psychological apparatus we should assign to them. Even though the libido
exerts a most powerful influence on psychic life, its organic
significance is still the most conspicuous.
Discussions of this sort, gentlemen, are bound to be somewhat dry. To
render them more vivid and impressive, let us return to clinical
illustrations. You know that hysteria and compulsion-neurosis are the
two chief factors in the group of transference neuroses. In hysteria,
libidinous return to primary, incestuous sexual objects is quite
regular, but regression to a former stage of sexual organization very
rare. In the mechanism of hysteria suppression plays the chief part. If
you will permit me to supplement our previous positive knowledge of this
neurosis by a constructive suggestion, I could describe the state of
affairs in this manner: the union of the partial instincts under the
domination of the genitals is accomplished, but its results encounter
the opposition of the fore-conscious system which, of course, is bound
up with consciousness. Genital organization, therefore, may stand for
the unconscious but not for the fore-conscious. Through this rejection
on the part of the fore-conscious, a situation arises which in certain
aspects is similar to the condition existing before the genitals had
attained their primacy. Of the two libido regressions, the regression to
a former stage of sexual organization is by far the more conspicuous.
Since it is lacking in hysteria and our entire conception of the
neuroses is still too much dominated by the study of hysteria which
preceded it in point of time, the meaning of libido regression became
clearer to us much later than that of repression. Let us be prepared to
widen and change our attitude still more when we consider other
narcistic neuroses besides compulsion-neurosis and hysteria in our
discussion.
In contrast to this, regression of libido in compulsion-neurosis turns
back most conspicuously to the earlier sadistico-anal organization,
which accordingly becomes the most significant factor expressed by the
symptoms. Under these conditions the love impulse must mask itself as a
sadistic impulse. The compulsion idea must therefore be reinterpreted.
Isolated from other superimposed factors, which though they are not
accidental are also indispensable, it no longer reads: "I want to murder
you"; rather it says "I want to enjoy you in love." Add to this, that
simultaneously regression of the object has also set in, so that this
impulse is invariably directed toward the nearest and dearest persons,
and you can imagine with what horror the patient thinks of these
compulsion ideas and how alien they appear to his conscious perception.
In the mechanism of these neuroses, suppression, too, assumes an
important part, which it is not easy to explain in a superficial
discussion of this sort. Regression of the libido without suppression
would never result in neurosis but would finally end in perversion. This
makes it obvious that suppression is the process most characteristic of
neurosis, and typifies it most perfectly. Perhaps I shall at some future
time have the opportunity of presenting to you our knowledge of the
mechanism of perversions and then you will see that here also things do
not work themselves out as simply as we should best like to construe
them.
You will most readily reconcile yourself with these elucidations of
fixation and regression, when you consider them as a preface to the
investigation of the etiology of neuroses. Towards this I have only
advanced a single fact: that people become neurotically ill when the
possibility of satisfying their libido is removed, ill with "denial," as
I expressed myself, and that their symptoms are the substitutes for the
denied gratification. Of course, that does not mean that every denial of
libidinous satisfaction makes every person neurotic, but merely that in
all cases known of neurosis, the factor of denial was traceable. The
syllogism therefore cannot be reversed. You also understand, I trust,
that this statement is not supposed to reveal the entire secret of the
etiology of neurosis, but only emphasizes an important and indispensable
condition.