possible from this point of view, thus resuming the discussion of a
problem which I was obliged to leave unsolved elsewhere.[61] Each of the
mental differentiations that we have become acquainted with represents a
fresh aggravation of the difficulties of mental functioning, increases
its instability, and may become the starting-point for its breakdown,
that is, for the onset of a disease. Thus, by being born we have made
the step from an absolutely self-sufficient narcissism to the perception
of a changing outer world and to the beginnings of the discovery of
objects. And with this is associated the fact that we cannot endure the
new state of things for long, that we periodically revert from it, in
our sleep, to our former condition of absence of stimulation and
avoidance of objects. It is true, however, that in this we are following
a hint from the outer world, which, by means of the periodical change of
day and night, temporarily withdraws the greater part of the stimuli
that affect us. The second example, which is pathologically more
important, is not subject to any such qualification. In the course of
our development we have effected a separation of our mental existence
into a coherent ego and into an unconscious and repressed portion which
is left outside it; and we know that the stability of this new
acquisition is exposed to constant shocks. In dreams and in neuroses
what is thus excluded knocks for admission at the gates, guarded though
they are by resistances; and in our waking health we make use of special
artifices for allowing what is repressed to circumvent the resistances
and for receiving it temporarily into our ego to the increase of our
pleasure. Wit and humour, and to some extent the comic in general, may
be regarded in this light. Everyone acquainted with the psychology of
the neuroses will think of similar examples of less importance; but I
hasten on to the application I have in view.
It is quite conceivable that the separation of the ego ideal from the
ego cannot be borne for long either, and has to be temporarily undone.
In all renunciations and limitations imposed upon the ego a periodical
infringement of the prohibition is the rule; this indeed is shown by the
institution of festivals, which in origin are nothing more nor less than
excesses provided by law and which owe their cheerful character to the
release which they bring.[62] The Saturnalia of the Romans and our
modern carnival agree in this essential feature with the festivals of
primitive people, which usually end in debaucheries of every kind and
the transgression of what are at other times the most sacred
commandments. But the ego ideal comprises the sum of all the limitations
in which the ego has to acquiesce, and for that reason the abrogation of
the ideal would necessarily be a magnificent festival for the ego, which
might then once again feel satisfied with itself.[63]
There is always a feeling of triumph when something in the ego coincides
with the ego ideal. And the sense of guilt (as well as the sense of
inferiority) can also be understood as an expression of tension between
the ego and the ego ideal.
It is well known that there are people the general colour of whose mood
oscillates periodically from an excessive depression through some kind
of intermediate state to an exalted sense of well-being. These
oscillations appear in very different degrees of amplitude, from what is
just noticeable to those extreme instances which, in the shape of
melancholia and mania, make the most painful or disturbing inroads upon
the life of the person concerned. In typical cases of this cyclical
depression outer exciting causes do not seem to play any decisive part;
as regards inner motives, nothing more (or nothing different) is to be
found in these patients than in all others. It has consequently become
the custom to consider these cases as not being psychogenic. We shall
refer later on to those other exactly similar cases of cyclical
depression which can nevertheless easily be traced back to mental
traumata.
Thus the foundation of these spontaneous oscillations of mood is
unknown; we are without insight into the mechanism of the displacement
of a melancholia by a mania. So we are free to suppose that these
patients are people in whom our conjecture might find an actual
application--their ego ideal might be temporarily resolved into their
ego after having previously ruled it with especial strictness.
Let us keep to what is clear: On the basis of our analysis of the ego it
cannot be doubted that in cases of mania the ego and the ego ideal have
fused together, so that the person, in a mood of triumph and
self-satisfaction, disturbed by no self-criticism, can enjoy the
abolition of his inhibitions, his feelings of consideration for others,
and his self-reproaches. It is not so obvious, but nevertheless very
probable, that the misery of the melancholiac is the expression of a
sharp conflict between the two faculties of his ego, a conflict in which
the ideal, in an excess of sensitiveness, relentlessly exhibits its
condemnation of the ego in delusions of inferiority and in
self-depreciation. The only question is whether we are to look for the
causes of these altered relations between the ego and the ego ideal in
the periodic rebellions, which we have postulated above, against the new
institution, or whether we are to make other circumstances responsible
for them.
A change into mania is not an indispensable feature of the
symptomatology of melancholic depression. There are simple melancholias,
some in single and some in recurring attacks, which never show this
development. On the other hand there are melancholias in which the
exciting cause clearly plays an aetiological part. They are those which
occur after the loss of a loved object, whether by death or as a result
of circumstances which have necessitated the withdrawal of the libido
from the object. A psychogenic melancholia of this sort can end in
mania, and this cycle can be repeated several times, just as easily as
in a case which appears to be spontaneous. Thus the state of things is
somewhat obscure, especially as only a few forms and cases of
melancholia have been submitted to psycho-analytical investigation.[64]
So far we only understand those cases in which the object is given up
because it has shown itself unworthy of love. It is then set up again
inside the ego, by means of identification, and severely condemned by
the ego ideal. The reproaches and attacks directed towards the object
come to light in the shape of melancholic self-reproaches.[65]
A melancholia of this kind may also end in a change to mania; so that
the possibility of this happening represents a feature which is
independent of the other characteristics in the symptomatology.
Nevertheless I see no difficulty in assigning to the factor of the
periodical rebellion of the ego against the ego ideal a share in both
kinds of melancholia, the psychogenic as well as the spontaneous. In the
spontaneous kind it may be supposed that the ego ideal is inclined to
display a peculiar strictness, which then results automatically in its
temporary suspension. In the psychogenic kind the ego would be incited
to rebellion by ill-treatment on the part of its ideal--an ill-treatment
which it encounters when there has been identification with a rejected
object.
XII
POSTSCRIPT
In the course of the enquiry which has just been brought to a
provisional end we came across a number of side-paths which we avoided
pursuing in the first instance but in which there was much that offered
us promises of insight. We propose now to take up a few of the points
that have been left on one side in this way.
A. The distinction between identification of the ego with an object and
replacement of the ego ideal by an object finds an interesting
illustration in the two great artificial groups which we began by
studying, the army and the Christian church.
It is obvious that a soldier takes his superior, that is, really, the
leader of the army, as his ideal, while he identifies himself with his
equals, and derives from this community of their egos the obligations
for giving mutual help and for sharing possessions which comradeship
implies. But he becomes ridiculous if he tries to identify himself with
the general. The soldier in _Wallensteins Lager_ laughs at the sergeant
for this very reason:
Wie er räuspert und wie er spuckt,
Das habt ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt![66]
It is otherwise in the Catholic Church. Every Christian loves Christ as
his ideal and feels himself united with all other Christians by the tie
of identification. But the Church requires more of him. He has also to
identify himself with Christ and love all other Christians as Christ
loved them. At both points, therefore, the Church requires that the
position of the libido which is given by a group formation should be
supplemented. Identification has to be added where object-choice has
taken place, and object love where there is identification. This
addition evidently goes beyond the constitution of the group. One can be
a good Christian and yet be far from the idea of putting oneself in
Christ's place and of having like him an all-embracing love for mankind.
One need not think oneself capable, weak mortal that one is, of the
Saviour's largeness of soul and strength of love. But this further
development in the distribution of libido in the group is probably the
factor upon which Christianity bases its claim to have reached a higher
ethical level.
B. We have said that it would be possible to specify the point in the
mental development of man at which the advance from group to individual
psychology was also achieved by the individual members of the group.[67]
For this purpose we must return for a moment to the scientific myth of
the father of the primal horde. He was later on exalted into the creator
of the world, and with justice, for he had produced all the sons who
composed the first group. He was the ideal of each one of them, at once
feared and honoured, a fact which led later to the idea of taboo. These
many individuals eventually banded themselves together, killed him and
cut him in pieces. None of the group of victors could take his place,
or, if one of them did, the battles began afresh, until they understood
that they must all renounce their father's heritage. They then formed
the totemistic community of brothers, all with equal rights and united
by the totem prohibitions which were to preserve and to expiate the
memory of the murder. But the dissatisfaction with what had been
achieved still remained, and it became the source of new developments.
The persons who were united in this group of brothers gradually came
towards a revival of the old state of things at a new level. Man became
once more the chief of a family, and broke down the prerogatives of the
gynaecocracy which had become established during the fatherless period.
As a compensation for this he may at that time have acknowledged the
mother deities, whose priests were castrated for the mother's
protection, after the example that had been given by the father of the
primal horde. And yet the new family was only a shadow of the old one;
there were numbers of fathers and each one was limited by the rights of
the others.
It was then, perhaps, that some individual, in the exigency of his
longing, may have been moved to free himself from the group and take
over the father's part. He who did this was the first epic poet; and the
advance was achieved in his imagination. This poet disguised the truth
with lies in accordance with his longing. He invented the heroic myth.
The hero was a man who by himself had slain the father--the father who
still appeared in the myth as a totemistic monster. Just as the father
had been the boy's first ideal, so in the hero who aspires to the
father's place the poet now created the first ego ideal. The transition
to the hero was probably afforded by the youngest son, the mother's
favourite, whom she had protected from paternal jealousy, and who, in
the era of the primal horde, had been the father's successor. In the
lying poetic fancies of prehistoric times the woman, who had been the
prize of battle and the allurement to murder, was probably turned into
the seducer and instigator to the crime.
The hero claims to have acted alone in accomplishing the deed, which
certainly only the horde as a whole would have ventured upon. But, as
Rank has observed, fairy tales have preserved clear traces of the facts
which were disavowed. For we often find in them that the hero who has to
carry out some difficult task (usually a youngest son, and not
infrequently one who has represented himself to the father surrogate as
being stupid, that is to say, harmless)--we often find, then, that this
hero can carry out his task only by the help of a crowd of small
animals, such as bees or ants. These would be the brothers in the primal
horde, just as in the same way in dream symbolism insects or vermin
signify brothers and sisters (contemptuously, considered as babies).
Moreover every one of the tasks in myths and fairy tales is easily
recognisable as a substitute for the heroic deed.
The myth, then, is the step by which the individual emerges from group
psychology. The first myth was certainly the psychological, the hero
myth; the explanatory nature myth must have followed much later. The
poet who had taken this step and had in this way set himself free from
the group in his imagination, is nevertheless able (as Rank has further
observed) to find his way back to it in reality. For he goes and relates
to the group his hero's deeds which he has invented. At bottom this hero
is no one but himself. Thus he lowers himself to the level of reality,
and raises his hearers to the level of imagination. But his hearers
understand the poet, and, in virtue of their having the same relation of
longing towards the primal father, they can identify themselves with the
hero.[68]
The lie of the heroic myth culminates in the deification of the hero.
Perhaps the deified hero may have been earlier than the Father God and
may have been a precursor to the return of the primal father as a deity.
The series of gods, then, would run chronologically: Mother
Goddess--Hero--Father God. But it is only with the elevation of the
never forgotten primal father that the deity acquires the features that
we still recognise in him to-day.[69]
C. A great deal has been said in this paper about directly sexual
instincts and those that are inhibited in their aims, and it may be
hoped that this distinction will not meet with too much resistance. But
a detailed discussion of the question will not be out of place, even if
it only repeats what has to a great extent already been said before.
The development of the libido in children has made us acquainted with
the first but also the best example of sexual instincts which are
inhibited in their aims. All the feelings which a child has towards its
parents and those who look after it pass by an easy transition into the
wishes which give expression to the child's sexual tendencies. The child
claims from these objects of its love all the signs of affection which
it knows of; it wants to kiss them, touch them, and look at them; it is
curious to see their genitals, and to be with them when they perform
their intimate excremental functions; it promises to marry its mother or
nurse--whatever it may understand by that; it proposes to itself to bear
its father a child, etc. Direct observation, as well as the subsequent
analytic investigation of the residue of childhood, leave no doubt as to
the complete fusion of tender and jealous feelings and of sexual
intentions, and show us in what a fundamental way the child makes the
person it loves into the object of all its incompletely centred sexual
tendencies.[70]
This first configuration of the child's love, which in typical cases is
co-ordinated with the Oedipus complex, succumbs, as we know, from the
beginning of the period of latency onwards to a wave of repression. Such
of it as is left over shows itself as a purely tender emotional tie,
which relates to the same people, but is no longer to be described as
'sexual'. Psycho-analysis, which illuminates the depths of mental life,
has no difficulty in showing that the sexual ties of the earliest years
of childhood also persist, though repressed and unconscious. It gives us
courage to assert that wherever we come across a tender feeling it is
the successor to a completely 'sensual' object tie with the person in
question or rather with that person's prototype (or _imago_). It cannot
indeed disclose to us without a special investigation whether in a given
case this former complete sexual current still exists under repression
or whether it has already been exhausted. To put it still more
precisely: it is quite certain that it is still there as a form and
possibility, and can always be charged with cathectic energy and put
into activity again by means of regression; the only question is (and it
cannot always be answered) what degree of cathexis and operative force
it still has at the present moment. Equal care must be taken in this
connection to avoid two sources of error--the Scylla of under-estimating
the importance of the repressed unconscious, and the Charybdis of
judging the normal entirely by the standards of the pathological.
A psychology which will not or cannot penetrate the depths of what is
repressed regards tender emotional ties as being invariably the
expression of tendencies which have no sexual aim, even though they are
derived from tendencies which have such an aim.[71]
We are justified in saying that they have been diverted from these
sexual aims, even though there is some difficulty in giving a
representation of such a diversion of aim which will conform to the
requirements of metapsychology. Moreover, those instincts which are
inhibited in their aims always preserve some few of their original
sexual aims; even an affectionate devotee, even a friend or an admirer,
desires the physical proximity and the sight of the person who is now
loved only in the 'Pauline' sense. If we choose, we may recognise in
this diversion of aim a beginning of the _sublimation_ of the sexual
instincts, or on the other hand we may fix the limits of sublimation at
some more distant point. Those sexual instincts which are inhibited in
their aims have a great functional advantage over those which are
uninhibited. Since they are not capable of really complete
satisfaction, they are especially adapted to create permanent ties;
while those instincts which are directly sexual incur a loss of energy
each time they are satisfied, and must wait to be renewed by a fresh
accumulation of sexual libido, so that meanwhile the object may have
been changed. The inhibited instincts are capable of any degree of
admixture with the uninhibited; they can be transformed back into them,
just as they arose out of them. It is well known how easily erotic
wishes develop out of emotional relations of a friendly character, based
upon appreciation and admiration, (compare Molière's 'Embrassez-moi pour
l'amour du grec'), between a master and a pupil, between a performer and
a delighted listener, and especially in the case of women. In fact the
growth of emotional ties of this kind, with their purposeless
beginnings, provides a much frequented pathway to sexual object-choice.
Pfister, in his _Frömmigkeit des Grafen von Zinzendorf_,[72] has given
an extremely clear and certainly not an isolated example of how easily
even an intense religious tie can revert to ardent sexual excitement. On
the other hand it is also very usual for directly sexual tendencies,
short-lived in themselves, to be transformed into a lasting and purely
tender tie; and the consolidation of a passionate love marriage rests
to a large extent upon this process.
We shall naturally not be surprised to hear that the sexual tendencies
that are inhibited in their aims arise out of the directly sexual ones
when inner or outer obstacles make the sexual aims unattainable. The
repression during the period of latency is an inner obstacle of this
kind--or rather one which has become inner. We have assumed that the
father of the primal horde owing to his sexual intolerance compelled all
his sons to be abstinent, and thus forced them into ties that were
inhibited in their aims, while he reserved for himself freedom of sexual
enjoyment and in this way remained without ties. All the ties upon which
a group depends are of the character of instincts that are inhibited in
their aims. But here we have approached the discussion of a new subject,
which deals with the relation between directly sexual instincts and the
formation of groups.
D. The last two remarks will have prepared us for finding that directly
sexual tendencies are unfavourable to the formation of groups. In the
history of the development of the family there have also, it is true,
been group relations of sexual love (group marriages); but the more
important sexual love became for the ego, and the more it developed the
characteristics of being in love, the more urgently it required to be
limited to two people--_una cum uno_--as is prescribed by the nature of
the genital aim. Polygamous inclinations had to be content to find
satisfaction in a succession of changing objects.
Two people coming together for the purpose of sexual satisfaction, in so
far as they seek for solitude, are making a demonstration against the
herd instinct, the group feeling. The more they are in love, the more
completely they suffice for each other. The rejection of the group's
influence is manifested in the shape of a sense of shame. The extremely
violent feelings of jealousy are summoned up in order to protect the
sexual object-choice from being encroached upon by a group tie. It is
only when the tender, that is, the personal, factor of a love relation
gives place entirely to the sensual one, that it is possible for two
people to have sexual intercourse in the presence of others or for there
to be simultaneous sexual acts in a group as occurs at an orgy. But at
that point a regression has taken place to an early stage in sexual
relations, at which being in love as yet played no part, and all sexual
objects were judged to be of equal value, somewhat in the sense of
Bernard Shaw's malicious aphorism to the effect that being in love means
greatly exaggerating the difference between one woman and another.
There are abundant indications that being in love only made its
appearance late on in the sexual relations between men and women; so
that the opposition between sexual love and group ties is also a late
development. Now it may seem as though this assumption were incompatible
with our myth of the primal family. For it was after all by their love
for their mothers and sisters that the troop of brothers was, as we have
supposed, driven to parricide; and it is difficult to imagine this love
as being anything but unbroken and primitive--that is, as an intimate
union of the tender and the sensual. But further consideration resolves
this objection into a confirmation. One of the reactions to the
parricide was after all the institution of totemistic exogamy; the
prohibition of any sexual relation with those women of the family who
had been tenderly loved since childhood. In this way a wedge was driven
in between a man's tender and sensual feelings, one still firmly fixed
in his erotic life to-day.[73] As a result of this exogamy the sensual
needs of men had to be satisfied with strange and unloved women.
In the great artificial groups, the church and the army, there is no
room for woman as a sexual object. The love relation between men and
women remains outside these organisations. Even where groups are formed
which are composed of both men and women the distinction between the
sexes plays no part. There is scarcely any sense in asking whether the
libido which keeps groups together is of a homosexual or of a
heterosexual nature, for it is not differentiated according to the
sexes, and particularly shows a complete disregard for the aims of the
genital organisation of the libido.