It is something really surprising and confusing. You know that by
analysis of the symptoms we arrive at a knowledge of the infantile
experiences upon which the libido is fixated and out of which the
symptoms are formed. Well, the surprising thing is this, that these
infantile scenes are not always true. Indeed, in the majority of cases
they are untrue, and in some instances they are directly contrary to
historical truth. You see that this discovery, as no other, serves
either to discredit the analysis which has led to such a result, or to
discredit the patients upon whose testimony the analysis, as well as the
whole understanding of neuroses, is built up. In addition there is
something else utterly confusing about it. If the infantile experiences,
revealed by analysis, were in every case real, we should have the
feeling of walking on sure ground; if they were regularly falsified,
disclosed themselves as inventions or phantasies of the patients, we
should have to leave this uncertain ground and find a surer footing
elsewhere. But it is neither the one nor the other, for when we look
into the matter we find that the childhood experiences which are
recalled or reconstructed in the course of the analysis may in some in
some instances be false, in others undeniably true, and in the majority
of cases a mixture of truth and fiction. The symptoms then are either
the representation of actual experiences to which we may ascribe an
influence in the fixation of the libido, or the representation of
phantasies of the patient which, of course, can be of no etiological
significance. It is hard to find one's way here. The first foothold is
given perhaps by an analogous discovery, namely, that the same scattered
childhood memories that individuals always have had and have been
conscious of prior to an analysis may be falsified as well, or at least
may contain a generous mixture of true and false. Evidence of error very
seldom offers difficulties, and we at least gain the satisfaction of
knowing that the blame for this unexpected disappointment is not to be
laid at the door of analysis, but in some way upon the patients.
After reflecting a bit we can easily understand what is so confusing in
this matter. It is the slight regard for reality, the neglect to keep
fact distinct from phantasy. We are apt to feel insulted that the
patient has wasted our time with invented tales. There is an enormous
gap in our thinking between reality and invention and we accord an
entirely different valuation to reality. The patient, too, takes this
same viewpoint in his normal thinking. When he offers the material
which, by way of the symptom, leads back to the wish situations which
are modeled upon the childhood experiences, we are at first, to be sure,
in doubt whether we are dealing with reality or with phantasy. Later
certain traits determine this decision; we are confronted with the task
of acquainting the patient with them. This can never be accomplished
without difficulty. If at the outset we tell him that he is going to
reveal phantasies with which he has veiled his childhood history, just
as every people weaves myths around its antiquity, we notice (to our
comfort) that his interest in the further pursuit of the subject
suddenly diminishes. He, too, wants to discover realities, and despises
all "notions." But if until this is accomplished we allow him to believe
that we are investigating the actual occurrences of his childhood, we
run the risk of later being charged with error and with our apparent
gullibility. For a long time he is unable to reconcile himself to the
idea of considering phantasy and reality on equal terms and he tends,
with reference to the childish experiences to be explained, to neglect
for the time being the difference between the real and the imaginary.
And yet this is obviously the only correct attitude toward these
psychological products because they are, in a sense, real. It is a fact
that the patient is able to create such phantasies for himself, and this
is of scarcely less importance for his neurosis than if he had really
undergone the experience which he imagines. These phantasies possess
_psychological_ reality in contrast to _physical_ reality, and so we
gradually come to understand that _in the realm of neuroses the
psychological reality is the determining factor_.
Among the experiences which recur continually in the early history of
neurotics and, in fact, are never lacking, some are of particular
significance and accordingly I consider them worthy of special
treatment. I shall enumerate a few examples of this species: observation
of the parental intercourse, seduction by an adult, and the threat of
castration. It would be a grievous error to assume that physical reality
can never be accorded them; this may often be proved beyond doubt by the
testimony of adult relatives. So, for example, it is not at all unusual
if the little boy who begins to play with his penis, and does not yet
know that one must conceal this, is threatened by his parents or nurse
with the cutting off of the organ or the guilty hand. Parents often
admit upon questioning that they thought they had done the right thing
by this intimidation; many individuals retain a correct, conscious
memory of these threats, especially if it has occurred in later
childhood. When the mother or some other woman makes the threat she
usually delegates the responsibility of executing it to the father or to
the doctor. In the famous _Struwelpeter_ by the pediatrist Hoffman, of
Frankfort, rhymes which owe their popularity to his very fine
understanding of the sexual and other complexes of childhood, you find a
milder substitute for castration in the cutting off of the thumbs as a
punishment for insistent sucking. But it is highly improbable that the
threat of castration is actually made as often as it occurs in the
analyses of neurotics. We are content to understand that the child
imaginatively constructs this threat for himself from suggestions, from
the knowledge that auto-erotic satisfaction is forbidden, and from the
impression of castration he has received in discovering the female
genital. It is, moreover, in no way impossible that the little child, so
long as he is not credited with any understanding or memory, will, even
in families outside the proletariat, become a witness to the sexual act
between his parents or some other group-ups, and it cannot be disproved
that the child _subsequently_ understands this impression, and may react
upon it. But when this intercourse is described with minute details
which could hardly have been observed, or if it turns out to be, as it
so frequently does, an intercourse which was not face to face, _more
ferarum_, there is no longer any doubt that this phantasy is derived
from the observation of the intercourse of animals (dogs) and the
unsatisfied curiosity of the child in his period of puberty. The
greatest feat of the imagination is the phantasy of having witnessed the
coitus of the parents while still unborn in the mother's womb. Of
especial interest is the phantasy of having been seduced, because so
often it is not a phantasy at all, but a real memory. But luckily it is
not real so often as first appears from the results of analysis.
Seduction by older children, or children of the same age, is much more
frequent than seduction by adults, and if, in the case of little girls,
the father quite regularly appears as the seducer in the occurrences
which they relate, neither the fantastic nature of this accusation nor
its motive can be doubted. The child as a rule covers the autoerotic
period of his sexual activity, where there has been no actual seduction,
with the seduction-phantasy. He spares himself the shame of onanism by
imagining the presence of an object for his desires in that early
period. As a matter of fact, you must not be misled in attributing
sexual misuse of the child by its nearest male relatives solely and
always to phantasy. Most analysts have probably treated cases in which
such relations were real and could be proved beyond doubt, with the
qualification that in such cases they belong to the later years of
childhood and were transposed to an earlier time.
We cannot avoid the impression that such experiences of childhood are in
some way necessary to the neurosis, that they are claimed by its iron
rule. If they exist in reality, then well and good, but if reality has
withheld them they are constructed from suggestions and supplemented by
the imagination. The result is the same, and to this day we have been
unable to trace any difference in the results, whether fancy or fact
played the larger part in these childish occurrences. Here again we
encounter one of the complementary relationships so frequently met with;
it is, to be sure, the most estranging of all those we have become
acquainted with. Whence comes the need for these phantasies, and the
material for them? There can be no doubt as to the sources of the
impulse, but we must explain why the same phantasies are always created
with the same content. I have an answer in readiness which I know you
will think very far-fetched. I am of the opinion that these _primal
phantasies_--so I should like to term these, and certainly some others
also--are a phylogenetic possession. In them the individual reaches out
beyond his own life, into the experiences of antiquity, where his own
experience has become all too rudimentary. It seems very possible to me
that everything which is obtained during an analysis in the guise of
phantasy, the seduction of children, the release of sexual excitement by
watching parental intercourse, the threat of castration--or rather
castration itself--were once realities in the primeval existence of
mankind and that the imaginative child is merely filling in the gaps of
individual truth with prehistoric truth. We have again and again
suspected that the psychology of neuroses stores up more of the
antiquities of human development than all other sources.
What we have just discussed makes it necessary for us to enter further
into the origin and significance of that mental activity that is called
imagination. As you well know, it enjoys universal esteem, although we
have never clearly understood its place in the psychic life. I have this
much to say about it. As you know, the ego of man is slowly educated by
the influence of external necessity to an appreciation of reality and a
pursuit of the principle of reality, and must therefore renounce
temporarily or permanently various objects and goals of its strivings
for satisfaction, sexual and otherwise. But renunciation of
gratification has always been difficult for man. He cannot accomplish it
without something in the nature of compensation. Accordingly he has
reserved for himself a psychological activity wherein all these
abandoned sources of pleasures and means of pleasurable gratification
are granted a further existence, a form of existence in which they are
freed from the requirements of reality and what we like to call the test
of reality. Every impulse is soon transformed into the form of its own
fulfillment. There is no doubt that dwelling on the imagined fulfillment
of a given wish affords some satisfaction, although the realization that
it is unreal is unobscured. In the activity of the imagination, man
enjoys that freedom from external compulsion that he has long since
renounced. He has made it possible to be alternately a pleasure-seeking
animal and a reasoning human being. He finds that the scant satisfaction
that he can force out of reality is not enough. "There is no getting
along without auxiliary-constructions," Th. Fontaine once said. The
creation of the psychic realm of fancy has its complete counterpart in
the establishment of "preserves" and "conservation projects" in those
places where the demands of husbandry, traffic and industry threaten
quickly to change the original face of the earth into something
unrecognizable. The national reserves maintain this old condition of
things, which otherwise has everywhere been regretfully sacrificed to
necessity. Everything may grow and spread there as it will, even that
which is useless and harmful. The psychic realm of phantasy is such a
reservation withdrawn from the principles of reality.
The best known productions of phantasy are the so-called "day dreams,"
which we already know, pictured satisfactions of ambitious, of covetous
and erotic wishes, which flourish the more grandly the more reality
admonishes them to modesty and patience. There is unmistakably shown in
them the nature of imaginative happiness, the restoration of the
independence of pleasurable gratification from the acquiescence of
reality. We know such day dreams are nuclei and models for the dreams of
night. The night dream is essentially nothing but a day dream, distorted
by the nocturnal forms of psychological activity, and made available by
the freedom which the night gives to instinctive impulses. We have
already become acquainted with the idea that a day dream is not
necessarily conscious, that there are also unconscious day dreams. Such
unconscious day dreams are as much the source of night dreams as of
neurotic symptoms.
The significance of phantasy for the development of symptoms will become
clear to you by the following: We have said that in a case of
renunciation, the libido occupies regressively the positions once
abandoned by it, to which, nevertheless, it has clung in certain ways.
We shall neither retract this statement nor correct it, but we shall
insert a missing link. How does the libido find its way to these points
of fixation? Well, every object and tendency of the libido that has been
abandoned, is not abandoned in every sense of the word. They, or their
derivatives, are still held in presentations of the phantasy, with a
certain degree of intensity. The libido need only retire to the
imagination in order to find from them the open road to all suppressed
fixations. These phantasies were happy under a sort of tolerance, there
was no conflict between them and the ego, no matter how acute the
contrast, so long as a certain condition was observed--a condition
_quantitative_ in nature that is now disturbed by the flowing back of
the libido to the phantasies. By this addition the accumulation of
energy in the phantasies is heightened to such a degree that they become
assertive and develop a pressure in the direction of realization. But
that makes a conflict between them and the ego inevitable. Whether
formerly conscious or unconscious, they now are subject to suppression
by the ego and are victims to the attraction of the unconscious. The
libido wanders from phantasies now unconscious to their sources in
unconsciousness, and back to its own points of fixation.
The return of the libido to phantasy is an intermediate step on the road
to symptom development and well deserves a special designation. C. G.
Jung coined for it the very appropriate name of _introversion_, but
inappropriately he also lets it stand for other things. Let us therefore
retain the idea that introversion signifies the turning aside of the
libido from the possibilities of actual satisfaction and the excessive
accumulation of the phantasies hitherto tolerated as harmless. An
introvert is not yet a neurotic, but he finds himself in a labile
situation; he must develop symptoms at the next dislocation of forces,
if he does not find other outlets for his pent-up libido. The intangible
nature of neurotic satisfaction and the neglect of the difference
between imagination and reality are already determined by arrest in the
phase of introversion.
You have certainly noticed that in the last discussions I have
introduced a new factor into the structure of the etiological chain,
namely, the quantity, the amount of energy that comes under
consideration. We must always take this factor into account. Purely
qualitative analysis of the etiological conditions is not sufficient.
Or, to put it in another way, a _dynamic_ conception alone of these
psychic processes is not enough; there is need of an _economic_
viewpoint. We must say to ourselves that the conflict between two
impulses is not released before certain occupation-intensities have been
reached, even though the qualitative conditions have long been potent.
Similarly, the pathogenic significance of the constitutional factors is
guided by how much _more_ of a given component impulse is present in the
predisposition over and above that of another; one can even conceive the
predispositions of all men to be qualitatively the same and to be
differentiated only by these quantitative conditions. The quantitative
factor is no less important for the power of resistance against neurotic
ailments. It depends upon _what amount_ of unused libido a person can
hold freely suspended, and upon _how large a fraction_ of the libido he
is able to direct from the sexual path to the goal of sublimation. The
final goal of psychological activity, which may be described
qualitatively as striving towards pleasure-acquisition and avoidance of
unpleasantness, presents itself in the light of economic considerations
as the task of overcoming the gigantic stimuli at work in the
psychological apparatus, and to prevent those obstructions which cause
unpleasantness.
So much I wanted to tell you about symptom development in the neuroses.
Yes, but do not let me neglect to emphasize this especially: everything
I have said here relates to the symptom development in hysteria. Even in
compulsion neuroses, which retain the same fundamentals, much is found
that is different. The counter-siege directed against the claims of the
instincts, of which we have spoken in connection with hysteria, press to
the fore in compulsion neuroses, and control the clinical picture by
means of so-called "reaction-formations." The same kind and more
far-reaching variations are discoverable among the other neuroses, where
the investigations as to the mechanism of symptom development have in no
way been completed.
Before I leave you today I should like to have your attention for a
while for an aspect of imaginative life which is worthy of the most
general interest. For there is a way back from imagination to reality
and that is--art. The artist is an incipient introvert who is not far
from being a neurotic. He is impelled by too powerful instinctive needs.
He wants to achieve honor, power, riches, fame and the love of women.
But he lacks the means of achieving these satisfactions. So like any
other unsatisfied person, he turns away from reality, and transfers all
his interests, his libido, too, to the elaboration of his imaginary
wishes, all of which might easily point the way to neurosis. A great
many factors must combine to present this termination of his
development; it is well known how often artists especially suffer from a
partial inhibition of their capacities through neurosis. Apparently
their constitutions are strongly endowed with an ability to sublimize
and to shift the suppression determining their conflicts. The artist
finds the way back to reality in this way. He is not the only one who
has a life of imagination. The twilight-realm of phantasy is upheld by
the sanction of humanity and every hungry soul looks here for help and
sympathy. But for those who are not artists, the ability to obtain
satisfaction from imaginative sources is very restricted. Their
relentless suppressions force them to be satisfied with the sparse day
dreams which may become conscious. If one is a real artist he has more
at his disposal. In the first place, he understands how to elaborate his
day dreams so that they lose their essentially personal element, which
would repel strangers, and yield satisfaction to others as well. He also
knows how to disguise them so that they do not easily disclose their
origin in their despised sources. He further possesses the puzzling
ability of molding a specific material into a faithful image of the
creatures of his imagination, and then he is able to attach to this
representation of his unconscious phantasies so much pleasurable
gratification that, for a time at least, it is able to outweigh and
release the suppressions. If he is able to accomplish all this, he makes
it possible for others, in their return, to obtain solace and
consolation from their own unconscious sources of gratification which
had become inaccessible. He wins gratitude and admiration for himself
and so, by means of his imagination, achieves the very things which had
at first only an imaginary existence for him: honor, power, and the love
of women.
TWENTY-FOURTH LECTURE
GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES
_Ordinary Nervousness_
In our last discussion we accomplish a difficult task. Now I shall
temporarily leave our subject and address myself to you.
For I know quite well that you are dissatisfied. You thought that an
introduction to psychoanalysis would be quite a different matter. You
expected to hear vivid illustrations instead of theories. You will tell
me that when I gave you the illustration of "on the ground floor in the
first story," you had grasped something of the causation of neurosis,
only of course this should have been a real observation and not an
imaginary story. Or, when in the beginning I described two symptoms (not
imaginary also, let us hope) whose analysis revealed a close connection
with the life of the patient, you first came to grasp the meaning of the
symptoms and you hoped that I would proceed in the same way. Instead I
have given you theories--lengthy, difficult to see in perspective and
incomplete, to which something new was constantly being added. I worked
with conceptions that I had not previously presented to you, abandoned
descriptive for dynamic conceptions, and these in turn for economic
ones. I made it hard for you to understand how many of the artificial
terms I made use of still carry the same meaning and are used
interchangeably only for the sake of euphony. Finally, I allowed broad
conceptions to pass in review before you: the principles of pleasure and
of fact and their phylogenetically inherited possession; and then,
instead of introducing you to definite facts, I allowed them to become
increasingly vague till they seemed to fade into dim distances.
Why did I not begin my introduction to the theory of neurosis with the
facts that you yourselves know about nervousness, with something that
has always aroused your interest, with the peculiar temperament of
nervous people, their incomprehensible reactions to external influences,
to human intercourse, their irritability, their uselessness? Why did I
not lead you step by step from the understanding of simple, everyday
forms to the problems of mysterious and extreme manifestations of
nervousness?
I cannot even say that you are wrong. I am not so infatuated with my art
of representation as to see some special attraction in every blemish. I
myself believe that I could have proceeded differently, to your better
advantage, and this indeed had been my intention. But one cannot always
carry out one's sensible intentions. The nature of the subject matter
issues its own commands, and easily modifies our plans. Even so usual a
performance as the organization of well-known material is not entirely
subject to the particular purposes of the author. It forms itself as it
will and later one wonders why it turned out so and not otherwise.
Probably one of the reasons is that the title, _A General Introduction
to Psychoanalysis_, no longer applies to this part, which deals with the
neuroses. The introduction to psychoanalysis is found in the study of
errors and the dream; the theory of neurosis is psychoanalysis itself. I
do not think that in so short a time I could have given you a knowledge
of the theory of neurosis other than in concentrated form. It was
necessary to present to you connectedly the meaning and interpretation
of the symptoms, their external and internal conditions and their
bearing on the mechanism of symptom formation. This I have attempted to
do; it is practically the nucleus of the material that modern
psychoanalysis is able to offer. We had to say quite a good deal
concerning the libido and its development, and something as well
concerning the development of the ego. The introduction had already
prepared you for the presuppositions of our technique, for the large
aspects of the unconscious and of suppression (resistance). In a
subsequent lecture you will learn from what points psychoanalysis
proceeds organically. For the present I have not sought to hide from you
the fact that all our results are based on the study of a single group
of nervous affections, the so-called transference neuroses. Though you
have gained no positive knowledge and have not retained every detail,
still I hope that you have a fair picture of the methods, the problems
and the results of psychoanalysis.