whether to emphasize the nature of denial or the individuality of the
person affected by it. Denial is very rarely complete and absolute; to
cause a pathological condition, the specific gratification desired by
the particular person in question must be withheld, the certain
satisfaction of which he alone is capable. On the whole there are many
ways of enduring abstinence from libidinous gratification without
succumbing to a neurosis by reason thereof. Above all we know of people
who are able to endure abstinence without doing themselves injury; they
are not happy under the circumstances, they are filled with yearning,
but they do not become ill. Furthermore, we must take into consideration
that the impulses of the sex instinct are extraordinarily _plastic_, if
I may use that term in this connection. One thing may take the place of
the other; one may assume the other's intensity; if reality refuses the
one gratification, the satisfaction of another may offer full
compensation. The sexual impulses are like a network of communicating
channels filled with fluids; they are this in spite of their subjugation
to the primacy of the genitals, though I realize it is difficult to
unite these two ideas in one conception. The component impulses of
sexuality as well as the total sexual desire, which represents their
aggregate, show a marked ability to change their object, to exchange it,
for instance, for one more easily attainable. This displacement and the
readiness to accept substitutes must exert powerful influences in
opposition to the pathological effect of abstinence. Among these
processes which resist the ill effects of abstinence, one in particular
has won cultural significance. Sexual desire relinquishes either its
goal of partial gratification of desire, or the goal of desire toward
reproduction, and adopts another aim, genetically related to the
abandoned one, save that it is no longer sexual but must be termed
social. This process is called "sublimation," and in adopting this
process we subscribe to the general standard which places social aims
above selfish sexual desires. Sublimation is, as a matter of fact, only
a special case of the relation of sexual to non-sexual desires. We shall
have occasion to talk more about this later in another connection.
Now your impression will be that abstinence has become an insignificant
factor, since there are so many methods of enduring it. Yet this is not
the case, for its pathological power is unimpaired. The remedies are
generally not sufficient. The measure of unsatisfied libido which the
average human being can stand is limited. The plasticity and freedom of
movement of libido is by no means retained to the same extent by all
individuals; sublimation can, moreover, never account for more than a
certain small fraction of the libido, and finally most people possess
the capacity for sublimation only to a very slight degree. The most
important of these limitations clearly lies in the adaptability of the
libido, as it renders the gratification of the individual dependent upon
the attainment of only a very few aims and objects. Kindly recall that
incomplete development of the libido leaves extensive and possibly even
numerous libido fixations in earlier developmental phases of the
processes of sexual organization and object-finding, and that these
phases are usually not capable of affording a real gratification. You
will then recognize libido fixation as the second powerful factor which
together with abstinence constitutes the causative factors of the
illness. We may abbreviate schematically and say that libido fixation
represents the internal disposing factor, abstinence the accidental
external factor of the etiology of neurosis.
I seize the opportunity to warn you of taking sides in a most
unnecessary conflict. In scientific affairs it is a popular proceeding
to emphasize a part of the truth in place of the whole truth and to
combat all the rest, which has lost none of its verity, in the name of
that fraction. In this way various factions have already separated out
from the movement of psychoanalysis; one faction recognizes only the
egoistic impulses and denies the sexual, another appreciates the
influence of objective tasks in life, but ignores the part played by the
individual past, and so on. Here is occasion for a similar antithesis
and subject for dispute: are neuroses _exogenous_ or _endogenous_
diseases, are they the inevitable results of a special constitution or
the product of certain harmful (traumatic) impressions; in particular,
are they called forth by libido fixation (and the sexual constitution
which goes with this) or through the pressure of forbearance? This
dilemma seems to me no whit wiser than another I could present to you:
is the child created through the generation of the father or the
conception of the mother? Both factors are equally essential, you will
answer very properly. The conditions which cause neuroses are very
similar if not precisely the same. For the consideration of the causes
of neuroses, we may arrange neurotic diseases in a series, in which two
factors, sexual constitution and experience, or, if you wish,
libido-fixation and self-denial, are represented in such a way that one
increases as the other decreases. At one end of the series are the
extreme cases, of which you can say with full conviction: These persons
would have become ill because of the peculiar development of their
libido, no matter what they might have experienced, no matter how gently
life might have treated them. At the other end are cases which would
call forth the reversed judgment, that the patients would undoubtedly
have escaped illness if life had not thrust certain conditions upon
them. But in the intermediate cases of the series, predisposing sexual
constitution and subversive demands of life combine. Their sexual
constitution would not have given rise to neurosis if the victims had
not had such experiences, and their experiences would not have acted
upon them traumatically if the conditions of the libido had been
otherwise. Within this series I may grant a certain preponderance to the
weight carried by the predisposing factors, but this admission, too,
depends upon the boundaries within which you wish to delimit
nervousness.
Allow me to suggest that you call such series _complementary series_. We
shall have occasion to establish other series of this sort.
The tenacity with which the libido clings to certain tendencies and
objects, the so-called _adhesiveness_ of the libido, appears to us as an
independent factor, individually variable, the determining conditions of
which are completely unknown to us, but the importance of which for the
etiology of the neuroses we can no longer underestimate. At the same
time we must not overestimate the closeness of this interrelation. A
similar adhesiveness of the libido occurs--for unknown reasons--in
normal persons under various conditions, and is a determining factor in
the perverse, who are in a certain sense the opposite of nervous. Before
the period of psychoanalysis, it was known (Binet) that the anamnesia of
the perverse is often traced back to an early impression--an abnormality
in the tendency of the instinct or its choice of object--and it is to
this that the libido of the individual has clung for life. Frequently it
is hard to say how such an impression becomes capable of attracting the
libido so intensively. I shall give you a case of this kind which I
observed myself. A man, to whom the genital and all other sex stimuli of
woman now mean nothing, who in fact can only be thrown into an
irresistible sexual excitation by the sight of a shoe on a foot of a
certain form, is able to recall an experience he had in his sixth year,
which proved decisive for the fixation of his libido. One day he sat on
a stool beside his governess, who was to give him an English lesson. She
was an old, shriveled, unbeautiful girl with washed-out blue eyes and a
pug nose, who on this day, because of some injury, had put a velvet
slipper on her foot and stretched it out on a footstool; the leg itself
she had most decorously covered. After a diffident attempt at normal
sexual activity, undertaken during puberty, such a thin sinewy foot as
his governess' had become the sole object of his sexuality; and the man
was irresistibly carried away if other features, reminiscent of the
English governess, appeared in conjunction with the foot. Through this
fixation of the libido the man did not become neurotic but perverse, a
foot fetishist, as we say. So you see that, although exaggerated and
premature fixation of the libido is indispensable for the causation of
neuroses, its sphere of action exceeds the limits of neuroses
immeasurably. This condition also, taken by itself, is no more decisive
than abstinence.
And so the problem of the cause of neuroses seems to become more
complicated. Psychoanalytic investigation does, in fact, acquaint us
with a new factor, not considered in our etiological series, which is
recognized most easily in those cases where permanent well-being is
suddenly disturbed by an attack of neurosis. These individuals regularly
show signs of contradiction between their wishes, or, as we are wont to
say, indication of psychic _conflict_. A part of their personality
represents certain wishes, another rebels against them and resists
them. A neurosis cannot come into existence without such conflict. This
may seem to be of small significance. You know that our psychic life is
continually agitated by conflicts for which we must find a solution.
Certain conditions, therefore, must exist to make such a conflict
pathological. We want to know what these conditions are, what psychic
powers form the background for these pathological conflicts, what
relation the conflict bears to the causative factors.
I hope I shall be able to give you satisfactory answers to these
questions even if I must make them schematically brief. Self-denial
gives rise to conflict, for libido deprived of its gratification is
forced to seek other means and ends. A pathogenic conflict arises when
these other means and ends arouse the disfavor of one part of the
personality, and a veto ensues which makes the new mode of gratification
impossible for the time being. This is the point of departure for the
development of the symptoms, a process which we shall consider later.
The rejected libidinous desires manage to have their own way, through
circuitous byways, but not without catering to the objections through
the observance of certain symptom-formation; the symptoms are the new or
substitute satisfaction which the condition of self-denial has made
necessary.
We can express the significance of the psychic conflict in another way,
by saying: the _outer_ self-denial, in order to become pathological,
must be supplemented by an _inner_ self-denial. Outer denial removes one
possibility of gratification, inner denial would like to exclude another
possibility, and it is this second possibility which becomes the center
of the ensuing conflict. I prefer this form of presentation because it
possesses secret content. It implies the probability that the inner
impediment found its origin in the prehistoric stage of human
development in real external hindrances.
What powers are these which interpose objections to libidinous desire,
who are the other parties to the pathological conflict? They are, in the
widest sense, the non-sexual impulses. We call them comprehensively the
"ego impulses"; psychoanalysis of transference neuroses does not grant
us ready access to their further investigation, but we learn to know
them, in a measure, through the resistance they offer to analysis. The
pathological struggle is waged between ego-impulses and sexual impulses.
In a series of cases it appears as though conflict could exist between
various purely sexual desires; but that is really the same thing, for of
the two sexual desires involved in the conflict, one is always
considerate of the ego, while the other demands that the ego be denied,
and so it remains a conflict between the ego and sexuality.
Again and again when psychoanalysis claimed that psychological event was
the result of sexual impulses, indignant protest was raised that in
psychic life there were other impulses and interests besides the sexual,
that everything could not be derived from sexuality, etc. Well, it is a
great pleasure to share for once the opinion of one's opponents.
Psychoanalysis never forgot that non-sexual impulses exist. It insisted
on the decided distinction between sexual and ego-impulses and
maintained in the face of every objection not that neuroses arise from
sexuality, but that they owe their origin to the conflict between
sexuality and the ego. Psychoanalysis can have no reasonable motive for
denying the existence or significance of ego-impulses, even though it
investigates the influence sexual impulses play in illness and in life.
Only it has been destined to deal primarily with sexual impulses,
because transference neuroses have furnished the readiest access to
their investigation, and because it had become obligatory to study what
others had neglected.
It does not follow, either, that psychoanalysis has never occupied
itself at all with the non-sexual side of personality. The very
distinction of the ego from sexuality has shown most clearly that the
ego-impulses also pass through a significant development, which is by no
means entirely independent of the development of the libido, nor does it
fail to exert a reaction upon it. To be sure, we know much less about
the evolution of the ego than about libido development, for so far only
the study of narcistic neuroses has promised to throw light on the
structure of the ego. There is extant the notable attempt of Ferenczi to
construct theoretically the stages of ego development, and furthermore
we already possess two fixed points from which to proceed in our
evolution of this development. We do not dream of asserting that the
libidinous interests of a person are from the outset opposed to the
interests of self-preservation; in every stage, rather, the ego will
strive to remain in harmony with its sexual organization at that time,
and accommodate itself thereto. The succession of the separate phases
of development of libido probably follows a prescribed program; but we
cannot deny that this sequence can be influenced by the ego, and that a
certain parallelism of the phases of development of the ego and the
libido may also be assumed. Indeed, the disturbance of this parallelism
could become a pathological factor. One of the most important insights
we have to gain is the nature of the attitude which the ego exhibits
when an intensive fixation of its libido is left behind in one stage of
its development. It may countenance the fixation and accordingly become
perverse or, what amounts to the same thing, become infantile. Or it may
be averse to this attachment of the libido, the result of which is that
wherever the libido is subject to _fixation_, there the ego undergoes
_suppression_.
In this way we reach the conclusion that the third factor of the
etiology of neuroses is the tendency to _conflict_, upon which the
development both of the ego and libido are dependent. Our insight into
the causation of the neuroses has therefore been amplified. First, the
most generalized factor, self-denial, then the fixation of the libido,
by which it is forced into certain directions, and thirdly, the tendency
to conflict in the development of the ego, which has rejected libidinous
impulses of this kind. The state of affairs is therefore not so confused
and difficult to see through, as you may have imagined it to be in the
course of my explanation. But of course we are to discover that we have
not, as yet, reached the end. We must add still a new factor and further
analyze one we already know.
To show you the influence of ego development in the formation of a
conflict, and so to give an illustration of the causation of neuroses, I
should like to cite an example which, although it is entirely imaginary,
is not far removed from probability in any respect. Drawing upon the
title of a farce by Nestroy, I shall label this example "On the ground
floor and in the first story." The janitor lives on the ground floor,
while the owner of the house, a rich, distinguished man, occupies the
first story. Both have children, and we shall assume that the owner
permits his little daughter to play unwatched with the child of the
people. Then it may easily happen that the games of the children become
"naughty," that is, they assume a sexual character; they play "father
and mother," watch each other in the performance of intimate
performances and mutually stimulate their genitals. The janitor's
daughter, who, in spite of her five or six years of age, has had
occasion to make observations on the sexuality of adults, probably
played the part of the seducer. These experiences, even though they be
of short duration, are sufficient to set in motion certain sexual
impulses in both children, which continue in the form of onanism for
several years after the common games have ceased. So far the
consequences are similar; the final result will be very different. The
janitor's daughter will continue onanism possibly to the commencement of
her periods, abandon it then without difficulty, not many years later
find a lover, perhaps bear a child, choose this or that path of life,
which may likely enough make of her a popular artist who ends as an
aristocrat. Perhaps the outcome will be less brilliant, but at any rate
she will work out her life, free from neurosis, unharmed by her
premature sexual activity. Very different is the effect on the other
child. Even while she is very young she will realize vaguely that she
has done wrong. In a short while, perhaps only after a violent struggle,
she will renounce the gratification of onanism, yet still retain an
undercurrent of depression in her attitude. If, during her early
childhood, she chances to learn something about sexual intercourse, she
will turn away in explicable disgust and seek to remain innocent.
Probably she is at the time subjected anew to an irresistible impulse to
onanism, of which she does not dare to complain. When the time arrives
for her to find favor in the eyes of a man, a neurosis will suddenly
develop and cheat her out of marriage and the joy of life. When analysis
succeeds in gaining insight into this neurosis, it will reveal that this
well-bred, intelligent girl of high ideals, has completely suppressed
her sexual desires, but that unconsciously they cling to the meager
experiences she had with the friend of her childhood.
The difference of these two destinies, arising from the same experience,
is due to the fact that one ego has experienced development while the
other has not. The janitor's daughter in later years looks upon sexual
intercourse as the same natural and harmless thing it had seemed in her
childhood. The owner's daughter had experienced the influence of
education and had recognized its claims. Thus stimulated, her ego had
forged its ideals of womanly purity and lack of desire which, however,
could not agree with any sexual activity; her intellectual development
had made unworthy her interest in the woman's part she was to play. This
higher moral and intellectual evolution of her ego was in conflict with
the claims of her sexuality.
I should like to consider today one more point in the development of the
ego, partly because it opens wide vistas, partly because it will justify
the sharp, perhaps unnatural line of division we are wont to draw
between sexual and ego impulses. In estimating the several developments
of ego and of libido, we must emphasize an aspect which has not
frequently been appreciated heretofore. Both the ego and the libido are
fundamentally heritages, abbreviated repetitions of an evolution which
mankind has, in the course of long periods of time, traversed from
primeval ages. The libido shows its phylogenetic origin most readily, I
should say. Recall, if you please, that in one class of animals the
genital apparatus is closely connected with the mouth, that in another
it cannot be separated from the excretory apparatus, and in others it is
attached to organs of locomotion. Of all these things you will find a
most fascinating description in the valuable book of W. Boelsche. Animals
portray, so to speak, all kinds of perversions which have become set as
their permanent sexual organizations. In man this phylogenetic aspect is
partly clouded by the circumstance that these activities, although
fundamentally inherited, are achieved anew in individual development,
presumably because the same conditions still prevail and still continue
to exert their influence on each personality. I should say that
originally they served to call forth an activity, where they now serve
only as a stimulus for recollection. There is no doubt that in addition
the course of development in each individual, which has been innately
determined, may be disturbed or altered from without by recent
influences. That power which has forced this development upon mankind,
and which today maintains the identical pressure, is indeed known to us:
it is the same self-denial enforced by the realities--or, given its big
and actual name, _Necessity_, the struggle for existence, the [Greek]
'Ananche. This has been a severe teacher, but under him we have become
potent. The neurotics are those children upon whom this severity has had
a bad effect--but there is risk in all education. This appreciation of
the struggle of life as the moving force of development need not
prejudice us against the importance of "innate tendencies in evolution"
if their existence can be proved.
It is worth noting that sexual instincts and instincts of
self-preservation do not behave similarly when they are confronted with
the necessities of actuality. It is easier to educate the instincts of
self-preservation and everything that is connected with them; they
speedily learn to adapt themselves to necessity and to arrange their
development in accordance with the mandates of fact. That is easy to
understand, for they cannot procure the objects they require in any
other way; without these objects the individual must perish. The sex
instincts are more difficult to educate because at the outset they do
not suffer from the need of an object. As they are related almost
parasitically to the other functions of the body and gratify themselves
auto-erotically by way of their own body, they are at first withdrawn
from the educational influence of real necessity. In most people, they
maintain themselves in some way or other during the entire course of
life as those characteristics of obstinacy and inaccessibility to
influence which are generally collectively called unreasonableness. The
education of youth generally comes to an end when the sexual demands are
aroused to their full strength. Educators know this and act accordingly;
but perhaps the results of psychoanalysis will influence them to
transfer the greatest emphasis to the education of the early years, of
childhood, beginning with the suckling. The little human being is
frequently a finished product in his fourth or fifth year, and only
reveals gradually in later years what has long been ready within him.