“traumatic neuroses,” the so-called “accident or compulsion hysterias”
in which the so-called “hunger for damages” plays the most important
role. Since labourers have acquired the right to recover damages for
accidental injuries, the number of traumatic neuroses has increased so
tremendously that insurance companies can scarcely meet the claims.
This is also true of the neuroses following railway and street car
accidents. Only seldom can objective injuries be demonstrated in these
cases. But notwithstanding this, the injured person becomes depressed,
moody, sleepless, and utterly unfit for any work. Yet it would be
very unjust to consider them simulators. They are really sick. Their
psychic make-up has suffered a bad shaking-up. The pleasure in work
has suffered a rude shock because of the unconscious prospect of
pecuniary “damages,” _i.e._ of an opportunity for laziness. Repressed
desires from childhood are re-animated. Why should you work, says the
alluring voice of the unconscious, when you can lounge about and live
on an income? Don’t be a fool! Get sick like the others who loll about
idly and need not work! And consciousness, in its weakness, takes no
note of the conflict in the unconscious, is frightened by the unknown
restlessness and sleeplessness and gets sick.... It is an obstinate
conflict between laziness and industry from which only too often the
former emerges triumphant....
Finally, the need for laziness becomes overpowering in all of us from
time to time. We long for a vacation. We want to recuperate from
work. Well, there are a few sensible people. These go off into a
corner somewhere and are as lazy as they can be. They lie in the grass
and gaze at the heavens for hours; or they go fishing in some clear
stream,--one of the best ways of wasting time; they sit in a rowboat,
letting someone else do the rowing or just keeping the boat in motion
with an occasional stroke. In this way day after day is spent in _dolce
far niente_ until one wearies of laziness and an intense longing for
work fills one’s whole being. Variety is the spice of life. Without
idleness work loses its charm and value.
Others employ their vacation for new work. These are the eternally
restless, industrious, indefatigable ones for whom idleness does not
exist. The impulse to laziness which was once so strong, is suppressed
and converted into its opposite. These are usually persons who had
their fill of laziness in childhood and who thoroughly enjoyed their
youth. (We may refer briefly to a few well-known instances of this:
there was Charles Darwin who began to work only after he left college;
Bismarck, whose student days were a period of riot and idleness; John
Hunter was another striking example.)
These continue with their work even while they are on their vacation.
They make work even of their visits to art galleries, museums,
show-places, and of their breathless flying trips hither and thither.
This is really not the kind of idleness that means a relaxation of
tension. It’s only a variation in the kind of impressions. A sea-voyage
would be a compromise between the two antagonistic tendencies. That is
why Englishmen prefer a sea-voyage to other forms of rest. On board
ship a person must be lazy. He sits on deck and stares at the waves.
The vastness of the sea stands between him and his work. He must be
idle. Impressions fly by him; he does not have to go in search of them.
The right to laziness is one of the rights that sensible humanity will
learn to consider as something self-evident. For the time being we
are still in conflict with ourselves. We shun the truth. We look upon
laziness as something degrading. We still stand in too much awe of
ourselves to be able to find the right measure. Our mothers’ voices
still ring in our ears: “Have you done your lessons?”
THOSE WHO STAND OUTSIDE
I am at the Circus with my children. They are laughing and clapping
their hands in glee. They are delighted with the grotesque antics of
the stupid clown. In vain I try to kindle my own enthusiasm at theirs
as a means of banishing the unpleasant feeling of being bored. The
peculiar odour of a menagerie pervades the great building and brings
back to me, by way of the obscure paths that connect our thoughts,
memories of days long since dead. I am myself a child again, my cheeks
hot and flushed, sitting in the topmost gallery at the Circus, as
excited as if I were beholding the greatest of all earthly wonders.
It is just when one of the star attractions is being given. A skilled
athlete is vaulting over very great obstacles. He leaps over ten men
in a row, five horses, a little garden. His faultless dress-suit shows
scarcely a wrinkle after this feat. This too must be counted among
the advances made by modern art. In my boyhood days athletes still
wore a gay uniform and “worked” in costume. To-day every juggler and
prestidigitator is a pattern of a drawing-room gentleman. Some may be
making a virtue of necessity and gladly escape the exhibiting of their
none too handsome bodies.
These reflections are suddenly interrupted by a blare of noisy music.
Everybody is excited, for this seems to indicate that the athlete’s
most wonderful trick is coming. True; something out of the ordinary is
happening. Through a wide gate an old-fashioned comfortable, drawn by
a weary nag, is brought into the arena and our valiant athlete leaps
over horse and rider amidst the thunderous applause of the enthusiastic
youngsters and of those of their elders who have remained children in
spirit.
The easy-going driver turns his vehicle towards the exit. Again the
portals open wide. Bands of bright daylight pour into the half-darkened
amphitheatre. In the glare one catches sight, for a moment, of a little
section of the life that swarms round about the fringe of the Circus.
There is the soda-water vendor with his gay-coloured cart, a labourer,
a few servant girls, and some twenty little children staring with big
eyes eagerly into the darkness of the arena in the hope of catching a
glimpse of all this magnificence.
I shall never forget the sight. Those children’s eyes, opened so
tremendously wide, longing to catch a bit of happiness! How they envy
the fortunate ones sitting in here and beholding real fairy-tale
wonders!
I lapse into a day-dream again. I too am one of those little ones
standing out there; I count the richly-caparisoned horses that
are being led in; for the twentieth time I read the large placard
announcing an “élite performance”; I am so happy as the beautiful
equestrienne passes right by me; the muffled sounds of the music
penetrate to my ears; I hear the animated applause and the bravos. One
thought possesses me: I must get in! Cost what it may, I must go in!
Oh, I could have committed a theft to enable myself to get in there
and share in the applause! And I thought to myself, if I am ever a
rich man I shall go to the Circus every day. How excitedly I go home
then, talking about all the wonderful things I have seen, and how in my
dreams all my wishes are realized--all these things take on a tangible
shape before my mind’s eye.
I note that it was the most beautiful period of my life, the time when
I used to stand outside. In those days I still had a sense of the
wonderful. There was a touch of secret magic about everything. Even
dead things had a message for me. Before me was an endless wealth of
possibilities; and there stretched before me kingdoms of the future
over which my childish wishes flew like migratory birds.
Verily--happiness is only anticipating possibilities, denying
impossibilities. Life is filled up with dreams of the future. What
we know seems trivial when measured by the knowledge we would like
to acquire. Possession kills desire; realization slays fantasy and
transforms the wonderful into the commonplace.
All the beauty of this world lies only in the fantasies which reality
can never approximate. The marvels of the present are seen only by
those who stand outside.
Every time that one of the portals that had been locked from our
youthful eyes opened, every time longing became fulfilment, we became
one pleasure poorer and one disappointment richer. Only with the aid of
the stilts supplied us by philosophy can we rise above the depressing
disillusionment of experience. Or, in playing our part in the great
drama of life, we cling to the one role we have studied and keep on
repeating it to ourselves until we, too, almost believe it. Then we
succeed again in seizing a fringe of the magnificent purple mantle with
which we aspired to adorn our life.
Those outside see everything on a much larger scale, finer, and
grander. That is why we envy others their possessions, their
realities, their calling. Because we project the inevitable
disappointments of life upon the thing that is readiest at hand--and
that is unquestionably our vocation. Our wishes circle around others’
possibilities.
Involuntarily an experience from my youth occurs to me. I had for
the first time in my life made the acquaintance of a poet. He was a
well-known lyrist of that day and his delightful verses had charmed
me for years. He did not in any way come up to the ideal that I had
conceived of what a poet ought to be. The edges of his eyelids were
red, his face was commonplace, and he had a large paunch. The manner in
which he drank his coffee disgusted me. A little coffee dripped down on
his dirty grey beard and with the movements of his big upper jaw some
cake crumbs danced up and down on his moustache.
And that was the poet who wrote those passionate little lyrics!
Overcoming my disappointment, I entered into conversation with him and
let him perceive something of my admiration. He was to be envied for
possessing the gift of transforming his moods and experiences into
works of art!
To my astonishment the poet began to describe with palpable resentment
the shortcomings of his calling. If he had only become an honest
craftsman ere he had devoted himself to writing! He was sick of the
hard struggle. To be ever at loggerheads with the public, the critics,
the publishers, and editors--those were the compensations of his
calling. He envied me for being a physician. That’s a great, a noble,
an ideal calling. A physician can do something for humanity! If he
were not too old he would at once take up the study of medicine. To
mitigate the pains of an invalid is worth more than writing a hundred
good lyrics!
In those days I was not a little proud of the profession I had chosen.
The poet was only saying openly what I thought in secret. “The
physician is mankind’s minister.” How often later on have I heard these
and similar words which were calculated to add fuel to the flame of
idealism.
Ye gods! In real life how sad is the physician’s lot! Those outside
cannot conceive it. The first thing to realize is the rarity of the
instances in which the physician really snatches the victim from the
clutches of Death; how rarely he eliminates suffering; how frequently,
discouraged and bewildered, he fails to halt the ravages of disease.
How his idealism makes him suffer! He is painfully aware that the
craftsman comes nearer to his ideals than the artist. He becomes
familiar with man’s limitless ingratitude and realizes that unless he
is to go into bankruptcy he must adopt the “practical” methods of the
business man. He is the slave of his patients, has no holidays, not
a free minute in which he is not reminded of his dependance. He sees
former colleagues and friends who have accumulated fortunes in business
or in the practice of the law, whereas he has to worry about his future
and, with but few exceptions, live from hand to mouth. But he must
continue to play the role of the “idealistic benefactor” unless he is
to lose the esteem of those who--stand outside.
Not long ago I read a fascinating description of a “sanatorium.” How
within its walls fear blanches the cheeks of the inmates, how Death
lurks behind the doors, how even the physicians avoid speaking above
a whisper and glide with solemn and noiseless steps through the house
of pain! Very pretty and sentimental; but utterly false,--as false
as the observations of a littérateur who stands outside can make it.
From within the thing looks quite different! While the surgeon is
scrubbing and sterilising his hands someone is telling the latest
joke, the assistants converse lightly and merrily, not at all as if a
matter of life and death were going to be decided in a few minutes.
And it is well for the patient that it is so. The surgeon and the
assistants need their poise; they must not be moved by timidity, fear,
or sympathy--emotions which cloud the judgment. Where one needs all
one’s senses, there the heart must be silent. The public feels this
instinctively. I have found that those physicians who practised their
profession in a plain matter of fact way, as a business, were the
most popular and the busiest. And, on the other hand, I know learned
physicians who are all soul, whom everybody praises, esteems, heeds,
but whom no one calls. The more highly the physician values his
services, from a material point of view, the more highly he is regarded
as an idealist, and vice versa.
That is how the idealism of the medical profession looks in real
life. For many physicians their ideals are superfluous ballast. It
often takes years before they find the golden mean between theory and
practice, between ethics and hard facts.
And how is it with other vocations? In every case in which it is
possible to look behind the curtains it will appear that the envious
natures of those who stand outside magnify the advantages and overlook
the unpleasant aspects.
All life is a continual game between hope and fulfilment, between
expectation and disappointment. And therein lies our good fortune--that
we can still be deceived. Were we in possession of all truth and all
knowledge, life would lose its value and its charm. Only because, in
a certain sense, we all stand outside, because the fullness of life
and “the thing itself” will continue to be a riddle, are we capable of
continuing on our journey and approaching erectly the valley of death
in which the shades dwell.
“Father, the show is over!” A child’s sweet voice wakes me from my
revery. Outside I again look at the children still standing there and
staring with large, hungry eyes into the Circus....
WHAT CHILDREN ASPIRE TO
Who can say when the first wish opens its pious eyes in the child’s
soul? The child probably sleeps away the first few weeks of its
existence without a single wish, all its behaviour being probably only
manifestations of its inherited instincts. Suddenly the first wish
awakens and the humanization of the little animal has begun. And with
it begins the wild succession of desires, mounting ever higher and
higher and finally aspiring even to the stars. How few of the things
we have been dreaming of does life fulfil! Wish after wish, stripped
of its purple mantle, sinks to the ground in a state of “looped and
windowed raggedness,” till the last wish of all--the longing for peace,
eternal peace--puts an end to the play.
Our childhood wishes determine our destiny. They die only with our
bodies. They go whirling through our dreams, are the masters of our
unconscious emotions, and determine the resonance of the most delicate
oscillations of our souls. It certainly seems worth while taking a
closer look at these wishes. Unfortunately we are deprived of the best
source of such knowledge: the observation of ourselves. For we forget
so easily, and our earliest desires lie far behind us, hidden in thick
mist. Only the dream pierces the thick veil and brings us greetings
from a long forgotten era.
From the study of our children we can learn of only one kind of desire.
A desire that can be easily observed, that the child betrays most
easily in the games it plays.
“And what are you going to be?” That is the question one most often
puts to children and which they very seldom allow to go unanswered.
Right here we must draw a distinction between boys and girls. The
girl’s first wish almost invariably betrays the influence of the sexual
instinct. All little girls want to be “mothers”; some would be content
with being “nurses.” The phylogenetic law of the biologist applies
also to desires. The desires of individual human beings reproduce the
evolution of mankind in this regard. Just as, according to recent
researches (Ament), the first speech attempts of children depict the
primitive speech of man, so the first wishes of human beings depict the
primitive wishes of humanity. Children’s wishes may therefore be said
to be the childhood wishes of humanity and to manifest unmistakeably
the primitive instincts of the sexes.
The little girls want to become “mothers.” They play with dolls,
rocking, fondling, and petting them as if they were children. In this
way they betray their most elemental qualification. My little daughter
once said: “Mother! I want to be a mother, too, some day and have
babies.” “I would be so unhappy if I could not have any babies!” Being
asked whether she would not like to be a doctor, she replied: “Yes! I
would love to be a doctor[1]! But only like mamma.” That is, only the
wife of a doctor.
[1] To understand what follows, the English reader should know that
the German word for a female physician (“Doktorin”) is also the title
whereby a physician’s wife is addressed.
In marked contrast with this is the fact that boys never wish to be
fathers. That is: their fathers are often enough their ideals and they
would like to be like them, to follow the same profession or vocation.
But it’s only a matter of vocation, not of family. I have never yet
heard a boy express a wish for children. There is no doubt however,
that there are boys who like to play with dolls and whose whole being
has something of the feminine about it. They have feminine instincts.
They love to cook and prefer to play with little girls. In the same way
one also encounters girls who are described as “tomboys.” These girls
are wild, unruly, disobedient, boisterous, and like to play at soldiers
and robbers. One cannot go wrong in concluding that a strong, perhaps
even an excessive homosexual element enters into their psychic make-up.
At any rate the biographies of homosexuals invariably make mention of
these remarkable infantile traits. They are boys with female souls
and girls with a masculine soul. Such boys may even manifest various
disguised indications of the instinct for race preservation.
The first stage of girlish wishes does not last long. Usually the
process of repression begins rather early. The little girls notice
that their desires are a source of mirth to their elders, and that
their remarks evoke a kind of amused though embarrassed smirking in the
people about them. So they begin to conceal and to repress the nature
of their desires and to disclose only what is perfectly innocent. And
they tell us they want to become “maids of all work,” housewives.
That does not sound as bad as wanting to be “mother.” One can be a
housewife without having children. As such they go marketing, manage
the home, cook, order the servants about, etc. Then they are attracted
by the splendours of being a cook. A cook is the goddess of sweets
and delicacies and can cook anything she likes. On the same egoistic
principle they then want to be store-keepers, proprietresses of candy
stores, pastry shops, and ice cream parlours. As such they would have
at their sole disposal all the sweets and delicious things a child’s
palate craves for. To possess a store in which one can sell these
wonderful delicatessens and weigh them out to customers is one of the
most ardent wishes of little girls.
Of course as soon as they go to school a new ideal begins to take
possession of the childish soul. Up there in her tribunal sits the
teacher, omniscient and omnipotent, invested with such authority that
the parental authority pales into insignificance in comparison with it.
Parental authority extends only to their children. But the teacher’s!
She has command over so many children! With sovereign munificence she
distributes her gracious favours. She designates one child to act as
“monitor” (oh, what exalted pre-eminence!); another may carry her
books home; the third is permitted to restore the stuffed owl into the
teacher’s cabinet, or to clean the blackboard; the fourth has the rare
privilege of being sent out to purchase the teacher’s ham sandwich! And
then there are the various punishments the teacher can inflict upon the
children entrusted to her. Oh, it’s just grand to be a teacher!
But, above all, the desire is to rule over many. Have I omitted to
mention the “princess”? Incredible! Only few children are so naive
as to betray this wish. But all would love to become “queens,”--ay,
with all their hearts. The fairy tales are full of them. How the proud
prince came and helped the poor girl mount his steed, saying: “Now
you’ll sit by me and be my Queen!” Innumerable Cinderellas in the north
and in the south, in the east and in the west, sit at their compulsory
tasks and dream of the prince who is to free them.
All have one secret dread: To be lost in the vast multitude. They want
to accomplish something, want to stand out over the others. Vanity
causes more suffering than ambition. Soon, too soon, they learn that,
these sober days princes do not go roaming about promiscuously as in
the golden days of fairydom. But hope finds a way and soars on the
wings of fantasy into the realm of the possible and yet wonderful.
Are there not queens in the world of arts? Do they not rule like real
queens their willingly humble subjects? Haven’t they everything that
a queen has: Gold, fame, honour, recognition, admiration, envy? Almost
every girl goes through this stage. She wants to become a great artist.
A prima donna such as the world has never yet known; a danseuse, who
shall have the tumultuous applause of houses filled to the last seat;
a celebrated actress whose finger-tips princes shall be permitted to
kiss; a violinist whose bow shall sway the hearts of men more than the
golden sceptre of a queen ever could.
This dream runs through the souls of all girls. It yearly furnishes
the art dragon with thousands and thousands of victims. The happy
parents believe it is the voice of talent crying imperatively to be
heard. In reality it is only the beginning of a harassing struggle
to get into the lime-light, a struggle that all women wage with in
exhaustible patience as long as they live. And thus numberless amateur
female dilettanti vainly contend for the laurel because they are so
presumptuous as to try to transform a childish dream into a waking
reality.
It is even more interesting to make a survey of what girls just past
puberty do not wish to become. Not one wants to marry. (Reasons can
always be found.) Not one wants to be an ordinary merchant’s wife. And
life then takes delight in bringing that to pass which seemingly they
did not wish....
In boys the matter is more complicated. The sex-urge is not manifested
so clearly in them as in girls. It requires great skill in the
understanding of human conduct to discover in the games that boys play
the symbolic connection with the natural impulses. It is remarkable
that boys’ earliest ideals are employments that are in some way or
other related to locomotion. All little boys first want to be drivers,
conductors, chauffeurs, and the like. Motion seems to fascinate the boy
and to give him more pleasure than anything else. A ride in a street
car or a bus which seems to us elders so obviously wearisome is such
a wonderful thing for a child. Just look at the solemn faces of the
little boys as they sit astride the brave wooden steed in the carousal!
“Sonny, don’t you like it? Why aren’t you laughing?” exclaims the
astonished mother.
A child is still at that stage of development when motion seems
something wonderful. Is it possible that in this a secret (unconscious)
sex-motive, such as is often felt by one when being rocked or swung
in a swinging boat, does not play a part? Many adults admit this
well-known effect of riding. This is in all probability one of the
most potent and most hidden roots of the passion for travelling. Freud
very frankly asserts in his “Contributions to a sexual theory” that
rhythmical motion gives rise to pleasurable sensations in children.
“The jolting in a travelling wagon and subsequently in a railway train
has such a fascination for older children that all children, at least
all boys, sometimes in their life want to be conductors and drivers.
They show a curious interest in everything connected with trains and
make these the nucleus of an exquisite system of sexual symbolism.”
Be this as it may. The fact is that all the little ones want to become
drivers of some vehicle, that they can play driver, rider, chauffeur,
car, train, etc., for hours at a time, that in the first years of
their lives their fantasies are fixed only on objects possessing the
power of motion, beginning with the baby-carriage and ending with the
aeroplane.