If these regressions do not call forth a prohibition on the part of
the Ego, no neurosis results; the Libido succeeds in obtaining a real,
although not a normal, satisfaction. But if the Ego, which controls
not merely consciousness but also the approaches to motor innervation
and hence the realization in actuality of mental impulses, is not in
agreement with these regressions, conflict ensues. The Libido is
turned off, blocked, as it were, and must seek an escape by which it
can find an outlet for its ‘_charge of energy_’ in conformity with the
demands of the pleasure-principle: it must elude, eschew the Ego. The
fixations upon the path of development now regressively
traversed—fixations against which the Ego had previously guarded
itself by repressions—offer just such an escape. In streaming backward
and re-‘investing’ these repressed ‘positions,’ the Libido withdraws
itself from the Ego and its laws; but it also abandons all the
training acquired under the influence of the Ego. It was docile as
long as satisfaction was in sight; under the double pressure of
external and internal privation it becomes intractable and harks back
to former happier days. That is its essential unchangeable character.
The ideas to which the Libido now transfers its ‘charge of energy’
belong to the unconscious system and are subject to the special
processes characteristic of that system—namely, condensation and
displacement. Conditions are thus set up which correspond exactly with
those of dream-formation. Just as the latent dream, first formed in
the Unconscious out of the thoughts proper, and constituting the
fulfilment of an unconscious wish-phantasy, meets with some
(pre)conscious activity which exerts a censorship upon it and permits,
according to its verdict, the formation of a compromise in the
manifest dream, so the ideas to which the Libido is attached
(‘libido-representatives’) in the Unconscious have still to contend
with the power of the preconscious Ego. The opposition that has arisen
against it in the Ego follows it as a ‘_counter__charge_’ and forces
it to adopt a form of expression by which the opposing forces also can
at the same time express themselves. In this way the symptom then
comes into being, as a derivative, distorted in manifold ways, of the
unconscious libidinal wish-fulfilment, as a cleverly chosen ambiguity
with two completely contradictory significations. In this last point
alone is there a difference between dream-formation and
symptom-formation; for the preconscious purpose in dream-formation is
merely to preserve sleep and to allow nothing that would disturb it to
penetrate consciousness; it does not insist upon confronting the
unconscious wish-impulse with a sharp prohibiting “No, on the
contrary.” It can be more tolerant because a sleeping person is in a
less dangerous position; the condition of sleep is enough in itself to
prevent the wish from being realized in actuality.
You see that this escape of the Libido under the conditions of conflict
is rendered possible by the existence of fixations. The regressive
investment (with Libido) of these fixations leads to a circumventing of
the repressions and to a discharge—or a satisfaction—of the Libido, in
which the conditions of a compromise have nevertheless to be maintained.
By this détour through the Unconscious and the old fixations the Libido
finally succeeds in attaining to a real satisfaction, though the
satisfaction is certainly of an exceedingly restricted kind and hardly
recognizable as such. Let me add two remarks on this outcome. First,
will you notice how closely connected the Libido and the Unconscious, on
the one hand, and the Ego, consciousness, and reality, on the other,
show themselves to be, although there were no such connections between
them originally; and secondly, let me tell you that all I have said and
have still to say on this point concerns the neurosis of hysteria only.
Where does the Libido find the fixations it needs in order to break
through the repressions? In the activities and experiences of infantile
sexuality, in the component-tendencies and the objects of childhood
which have been relinquished and abandoned. It is to them, therefore,
that the Libido turns back. The significance of childhood is a double
one; on the one hand the congenitally-determined instinct-dispositions
are first shown at that time, and secondly, other instincts are then
first awakened and activated by external influences and accidental
events experienced. In my opinion we are quite justified in laying down
this dichotomy. That the innate predisposition comes to expression will
certainly not be disputed; but analytic observation even requires us to
assume that purely accidental experiences in childhood are capable of
inducing fixations of Libido. Nor do I see any theoretical difficulty in
this. Constitutional predispositions are undoubtedly the after-effects
of the experiences of an earlier ancestry; they also have been at one
time acquired; without such acquired characters there would be no
heredity. And is it conceivable that the acquisition of characters which
will be transmitted further should suddenly cease in the generation
which is being observed to-day? The importance of the infantile
experiences should not, however, be entirely overlooked, as so often
happens, in favour of ancestral experiences or of experiences in adult
life; but on the contrary they should be particularly appreciated. They
are all the more pregnant with consequences because they occur at a time
of uncompleted development, and for this very reason are likely to have
a traumatic effect. The work done by Roux and others on the mechanism of
development has shown that a needle pricked into an embryonic cell-mass
undergoing division results in serious disturbances of the development;
the same injury to a larva or a full-grown animal would be innocuous.
The Libido-fixation of an adult, which we have referred to as
representing the constitutional factor in the ætiology of the neuroses,
may therefore now be divided into two further elements: the inherited
predisposition and the predisposition acquired in early childhood. Since
a schematic mode of presentation is always acceptable to a student, let
us formulate these relations as follows:
_Causation of Predisposition + Accidental
Neurosis_ = resulting from (_traumatic_)
Libido-fixation Experiences
↙ ↘
———————————— ————————————
↓ ↓
Sexual Infantile
Constitution Experiences
(_Ancestral
experiences_)
The hereditary sexual constitution provides a great variety of
predispositions, according as this or that component-impulse, alone or
in combination with others, is specially strongly accentuated. Together
with the infantile experiences the sexual constitution forms another
‘complemental series,’ quite similar to that already described as being
formed out of the predisposition and accidental experiences of an adult.
In each series similar extreme cases are met with, and also similar
degrees and relationships between the factors concerned. It would be
appropriate at this point to consider whether the most striking of the
two kinds of Libido-regression (that which reverts to earlier stages of
sexual organization) is not predominantly conditioned by the hereditary
constitutional factor; but the answer to this question is best postponed
until a wider range of forms of neurotic disease can be considered.
Now let us devote attention to the fact that analytic investigation
shows the Libido of neurotics to be attached to their infantile sexual
experiences. In this light these experiences seem to be of enormous
importance in the lives and illnesses of mankind. This importance
remains undiminished in so far as the therapeutic work of analysis is
concerned; but regarded from another point of view it is easy to see
that there is a danger of a misunderstanding here, one which might
delude us into regarding life too exclusively from the angle of the
situation in neurotics. The importance of the infantile experiences is
after all diminished by the reflection that the Libido reverts
regressively to them _after_ it has been driven from its later
positions. This would lead us towards the opposite conclusion, that the
Libido-experiences had no importance at the time of their occurrence,
but only acquired it later by regression. You will remember that we
discussed a similar alternative before, in dealing with the Oedipus
complex.
To decide this point is again not difficult. The statement is
undoubtedly correct that regression greatly augments the investment of
the infantile experiences with Libido—and with that their pathogenic
significance; but it would be misleading to allow this alone to become
decisive. Other considerations must be taken into account as well. To
begin with, observation shows in a manner excluding all doubt that
infantile experiences have their own importance which is demonstrated
already during childhood. There are, indeed, neuroses in children too;
in their neuroses the factor of displacement backwards in time is
necessarily much diminished, or quite absent, the outbreak of illness
following immediately upon a traumatic experience. The study of
infantile neuroses guards us from many risks of misunderstanding the
neuroses of adults, just as children’s dreams gave us the key to
comprehension of the dreams of adults. Neurosis in children is very
common, far more common than is usually supposed. It is often
overlooked, regarded as a manifestation of bad behaviour or naughtiness,
and often subdued by the authorities in the nursery; but in retrospect
it is always easily recognizable. It appears most often in the form of
anxiety-hysteria; we shall learn what that means on another occasion.
When a neurosis breaks out in later life analysis invariably reveals it
to be a direct continuation of that infantile neurosis, which had
perhaps been expressed in a veiled and incipient form only; as has been
said, however, there are cases in which the childish nervousness is
carried on into lifelong illness without a break. In a few instances we
have been able to analyse a child actually in a condition of neurosis;
far more often we have had to be satisfied with the retrospective
insight into a childhood-neurosis that can be gained through someone who
has fallen ill in mature years, a situation in which due corrections and
precautions must not be neglected.
In the second place, it would certainly be inexplicable that the Libido
should regress so regularly to the time of childhood if there had been
nothing there which could exert an attraction upon it. The fixation upon
certain stages of development, which we assume, only has meaning if we
regard it as attaching to itself a definite amount of libidinal energy.
Finally, I may point out that a complemental relationship exists here
between the intensity and pathogenic importance of the _infantile_ and
of the _later_ experiences, again a similar relationship to that found
in the other two series we have already studied. There are cases in
which the whole accent of causation falls on the sexual experiences in
childhood; cases in which these impressions undoubtedly had a traumatic
effect, nothing more than the average sexual constitution and its
immaturity being required to supplement them. Then there are others in
which all the accent lies on the later conflicts, and the analytic
emphasis upon the childhood-impressions seems to be the effect of
regression alone. There exist, therefore, the two extremes—‘inhibited
development’ and ‘regression’—and between them every degree of
combination of the two factors.
This state of things has a certain interest for those looking to
pedagogy for the prevention of neuroses by early intervention in the
matter of the child’s sexual development. As long as attention is
directed mainly to the infantile sexual experiences one would think
everything in the way of prophylaxis of later neurosis could be done by
ensuring that this development should be retarded and the child secured
against this kind of experience. But we know that the conditions causing
neurosis are more complicated than this and that they cannot be
influenced in a general way by attending to one factor only. Strict
supervision in childhood loses value because it is helpless against the
constitutional factor; more than this, it is less easy to carry out than
specialists in education imagine; and it entails two new risks, which
are not to be lightly disregarded. It may accomplish too much; in that
it favours an exaggerated degree of sexual repression which is harmful
in its effects, and it sends the child into life without power to resist
the urgent demands of his sexuality that must be expected at puberty. It
therefore remains most doubtful how far prophylaxis in childhood can go
with advantage, and whether a changed attitude to actuality would not
constitute a better point of departure for attempts to forestall the
neuroses.
Let us return to consideration of the symptoms. They yield a
satisfaction in place of one lacking in reality; they achieve this by
means of a regression of the Libido to a previous time of life, with
which regression is indissolubly connected, a reversion to earlier
phases in the object-choice or in the organization. We learned some time
ago that the neurotic is in some way _tied_ to a period in his past
life; we know now that this period in the past is one in which his
Libido could attain satisfaction, one in which he was happy. He looks
back on his life-story, seeking some such period, and goes on seeking
it, even if he must go back to the time when he was a suckling infant to
find it according to his recollection or his imagination of it under
later influences. In some way the symptom reproduces that early
infantile way of satisfaction, disguised though it is by the censorship
implicit in the conflict, converted as it usually is into a sensation of
suffering, and mingled with elements drawn from the experiences leading
up to the outbreak of the illness. The kind of satisfaction which the
symptom brings has much about it which estranges us, quite apart from
the fact that the person concerned is unaware of the satisfaction and
perceives this that we call satisfaction much more as suffering, and
complains of it. This transformation belongs to the mental conflict, by
the pressure of which the symptom had to be formed; what was at one time
a satisfaction must to-day arouse resistance or horror in him. We are
familiar with a simple but instructive instance of such a change of
feeling: the same child that sucked milk with voracity from its mother’s
breast often shows, some years later, a strong dislike of milk which can
with difficulty be overcome by training; this dislike is intensified to
the point of horror if the milk or any other kind of liquid containing
it has a skin formed upon it. It is possible that this skin calls up
reverberations of a memory of the mother’s breast, once so ardently
desired; it is true that the traumatic experience of weaning has
intervened meanwhile.
There is still something else which makes the symptoms seem remarkable
and inexplicable as a means of libidinal satisfaction. They so entirely
fail to remind us of all that we are accustomed normally to connect with
satisfaction. They are mostly quite independent of an object and thus
have given up a relation to external reality. We understand this as a
consequence of the rejection of the reality-principle and the return to
the pleasure-principle; it is also, however, a return to a kind of
amplified auto-erotism, the kind which offered the sexual instinct its
first gratifications. In the place of effecting a change in the outer
world they set up a change in the body itself; that is, an internal
action instead of an external one, an adaptation instead of an
activity—from a phylogenetic point of view again a very significant
regression. We shall understand this better when we consider it in
connection with a new factor yet to be learnt from among those which
analytic research has yielded in regard to symptom-formation. Further,
we remember that in symptom-formation the same unconscious processes are
at work as in dream-formation, namely, condensation and displacement.
Like the dream, the symptom represents something as fulfilled, a
satisfaction infantile in character; but by the utmost condensation this
satisfaction can be compressed into a single sensation or innervation,
or by farthest displacement can be whittled away to a tiny detail out of
the entire libidinal complex. It is no wonder that we often find it
difficult to recognize in the symptom the libidinal satisfaction which
we suspect and can always verify in it.
I have indicated that we have still to learn of a new element; it is
really something most surprising and bewildering. You know that from
analysis of symptoms we arrive at a knowledge of the infantile
experiences to which the Libido is fixated and out of which the symptoms
are made up. Now the astonishing thing is that these scenes of infancy
are not always true. Indeed, in the majority of cases they are untrue,
and in some cases they are in direct opposition to historical truth. You
will see that this discovery is more likely than any other to discredit
either the analysis which leads to such results, or the patient, upon
whose testimony the analysis and comprehension of the neuroses as a
whole is built up. There is besides this still something utterly
bewildering about it. If the infantile experiences brought to light by
the analysis were in every case real we should have the feeling that we
were on firm ground; if they were invariably falsified and found to be
inventions and phantasies of the patient’s we should have to forsake
this insecure foothold and save ourselves some other way. But it is
neither one thing nor the other; for what we find is that the
childhood-experiences reconstructed or recollected in analysis are on
some occasions undeniably false, while others are just as certainly
quite true, and that in most cases truth and falsehood are mixed up. So
the symptoms are thus at one minute reproductions of experiences which
actually took place and which one can credit with an influence on the
fixation of the Libido; and at the next a reproduction of phantasies of
the patient’s to which, of course, it is difficult to ascribe any
ætiological significance. It is hard to find one’s way here. We may
perhaps find our first clue in a discovery of a similar kind, namely,
that the meagre childish recollections which people have always, long
before analysis, consciously preserved can be falsified in the same way,
or at least can contain a generous admixture of truth and falsehood;
evidence of error in them is nearly always plainly visible, and so we
have at least the reassurance that not the analysis, but the patient in
some way, must bear the responsibility for this unexpected
disappointment.
After a little reflection we can easily understand what it is that is so
bewildering in this matter. It is the depreciation of reality, the
neglect of the difference between reality and phantasy; we are tempted
to be offended with the patient for taking up our time with invented
stories. According to our way of thinking heaven and earth are not
farther apart than fiction from reality, and we value the two quite
differently. The patient himself, incidentally, takes the same attitude
when he is thinking normally. When he brings forward the material that
leads us to the wished-for situations (which underlie the symptoms and
are formed upon the childhood-experiences), we are certainly in doubt at
first whether we have to deal with reality or with phantasies. Decision
on this point becomes possible later by means of certain indications,
and we are then confronted with the task of making this result known to
the patient. This is never accomplished without difficulty. If we tell
him at the outset that he is now about to bring to light the phantasies
in which he has shrouded the history of his childhood, just as every
race weaves myths about its forgotten early history, we observe to our
dissatisfaction that his interest in pursuing the subject further
suddenly declines—he also wishes to find out facts and despises what is
called “imagination.” But if we leave him to believe until this part of
the work has been carried through that we are investigating the real
events of his early years, we run the risk of being charged with the
mistake later and of being laughed at for our apparent gullibility. It
takes him a long time to understand the proposal that phantasy and
reality are to be treated alike and that it is to begin with of no
account whether the childhood-experiences under consideration belong to
the one class or to the other. And yet this is obviously the only
correct attitude towards these products of his mind. They have indeed
also a kind of reality; it is a fact that the patient has created these
phantasies, and for the neurosis this fact is hardly less important than
the other—if he had really experienced what they contain. In contrast to
_material_ reality these phantasies possess _psychical_ reality, and we
gradually come to understand that _in the world of neurosis_ PSYCHICAL
REALITY _is the determining factor_.
Among the occurrences which continually recur in the story of a
neurotic’s childhood, and seem hardly ever absent, are some of
particular significance which I therefore consider worthy of special
attention. As models of this type I will enumerate: observation of
parental intercourse, seduction by an adult, and the threat of
castration. It would be a great mistake to suppose that they never occur
in reality; on the contrary, they are often confirmed beyond doubt by
the testimony of older relatives. Thus, for example, it is not at all
uncommon for a little boy, who is beginning to play with his penis and
has not yet learnt that he must conceal such activities, to be
threatened by parents or nurses that his member or his offending hand
will be cut off. Parents will often admit the fact on being questioned,
since they imagine that such intimidation was the right course to take;
many people have a clear conscious recollection of this threat,
especially if it took place in later childhood. If the mother or some
other woman makes the threat she usually shifts the execution of it to
someone else, indicating that the father or the doctor will perform the
deed. In the famous _Struwelpeter_ by the Frankfort physician for
children, Hoffmann, which owes its popularity precisely to his
understanding of the sexual and other complexes of children, you will
find the castration idea modified and replaced by cutting off the thumbs
as a punishment for stubborn sucking of them. It is, however, highly
improbable that the threat of castration has been delivered as often as
would appear from the analysis of a neurotic. We are content to
understand that the child concocts a threat of this kind out of its
knowledge that auto-erotic satisfactions are forbidden, on the basis of
hints and allusions, and influenced by the impression received on
discovering the female genital organ. Similarly, it is not at all
impossible that a small child, credited as he is with no understanding
and no memory, may be witness of the sexual act on the part of his
parents or other adults in other families besides those of the
proletariat; and there is reason to think that the child can
_subsequently_ understand the impression received and react to it. But
when this act of intercourse is described with minute details which can
hardly have been observed, or when it appears, as it most frequently
does, to have been performed from behind, _more ferarum_, there can be
little doubt that this phantasy has grown out of the observation of
copulating animals (dogs) and that its motive force lies in the
unsatisfied skoptophilia (gazing-impulse) of the child during puberty.
The greatest feat achieved by this kind of phantasy is that of observing
parental intercourse while still unborn in the mother’s womb.