The infantile genital organization 4 страница

In order to reach even half way to an understanding of how, in a hysterical girl, a forbidden sexual wish can change into a painful symptom, it had been necessary to make far-reaching and complicated hypotheses about the structure and functioning of the mental apparatus. There was an evident contradiction here between expenditure of effort and result. If the conditions postulated by psycho-analysis really existed, they were of a fundamental nature and must be able to find expression in other phenomena besides hysterical ones. But if this inference were correct, psycho-analysis would have ceased to be of interest only to neurologists; it could claim the attention of everyone to whom psychological research was of any importance. Its findings would not only have to be taken into account in the field of pathological mental life but could not be overlooked either in coming to an understanding of normal functioning.

Evidence of its being of use for throwing light on other than pathological mental activity was early forthcoming in connection with two kinds of phenomena: with the very frequent parapraxes that occur in everyday life - such as forgetting things, slips of the tongue, and mislaying objects - and with the dreams dreamt by healthy and psychically normal people. Small failures of functioning, like the temporary forgetting of normally familiar proper names, slips of the tongue and of the pen, and so on, had hitherto not been considered worthy of any explanation at all or were supposed to be accounted for by conditions of fatigue, by distraction of the attention, etc. The present writer then showed from many examples, in his book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901b), that events of this kind have a meaning, and arise owing to a conscious intention being interfered with by another, suppressed or actually unconscious one. As a rule, quick reflection or a short analysis is enough to reveal the interfering influence. Owing to the frequency of such parapraxes as slips of the tongue, it became easy for anyone to convince himself from his own experience of the existence of mental processes which are not conscious, but which are nevertheless operative and which at least find expression as inhibitions and modifications of other, intended acts.

The analysis of dreams led further: it was brought to public notice by the present writer as early as in 1900 in The Interpretation of Dreams. This showed that dreams are constructed in just the same way as neurotic symptoms. Like them, they may appear strange and senseless; but, if we examine them by a technique which differs little from the free association used in psycho-analysis, we are led from their manifest content to a secret meaning, to the latent dream-thoughts. This latent meaning is always a wishful impulse which is represented as fulfilled at the moment of the dream. But, except in young children and under the pressure of imperative physical needs, this secret wish can never be expressed recognizably. It has first to submit to a distortion, which is the work of restrictive, censoring forces in the dreamer’s ego. In this way the manifest dream, as it is remembered in waking life, comes about. It is distorted, to the pitch of being unrecognizable, by concessions made to the dream-censorship; but it can be revealed once more by analysis as an expression of a situation of satisfaction or as the fulfilment of a wish. It is a compromise between two conflicting groups of mental trends, just as we have found to be the case with hysterical symptoms. The formula which, at bottom, best meets the essence of the dream is this: a dream is a (disguised) fulfilment of a (repressed) wish. The study of the process which transforms the latent dream-wish into the manifest content of the dream -a process known as the ‘dream-work’ - has taught us the best part of what we know of unconscious mental life.

Now a dream is not a morbid symptom but a product of the normal mind. The wishes which it represents as fulfilled are the same as those which are repressed in neuroses. Dreams owe the possibility of their genesis merely to the favourable circumstance that during the state of sleep, which paralyses man’s power of movement, repression is mitigated into the dream-censorship. If, however, the process of dream-formation oversteps certain limits, the dreamer brings it to a stop and wakes up in a fright. Thus it is proved that the same forces and the same processes taking place between them operate in normal as in pathological mental life. From the date of The Interpretation of Dreams psycho-analysis had a twofold significance. It was not only a new method of treating the neuroses but it was also a new psychology; it claimed the attention not only of nerve-specialists but also of all those who were students of a mental science.

The reception given it in the scientific world was, however, no friendly one. For some ten years no one took any notice of Freud’s works. About the year 1907 attention was drawn to psycho-analysis by a group of Swiss psychiatrists (Bleuler and Jung, in Zurich), and a storm of indignation, which was not precisely fastidious in its methods and arguments, thereupon broke out, particularly in Germany. In this, psycho-analysis was sharing the fate of many novelties which, after a certain lapse of time, have found general recognition. Nevertheless it lay in its nature that it should inevitably arouse particularly violent opposition. It wounded the prejudices of civilized humanity at some specially sensitive spots. It subjected every individual, as it were, to the analytic reaction, by uncovering what had by universal agreement been repressed into the unconscious; and in this way it forced its contemporaries to behave like patients who, under analytic treatment, above all else bring their resistances to the fore. It must also be admitted that it was no easy thing to become convinced of the correctness of the psycho-analytic theories, nor to obtain instruction in the practice of analysis.

The general hostility, however, did not succeed in preventing psycho-analysis from continuous expansion during the next decade in two directions: on the map, for interest in it was constantly cropping up in new countries, and in the field of the mental sciences, for it was constantly finding applications in new branches of knowledge. In 1909 President G. Stanley Hall invited Freud and Jung to give a series of lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., of which he was the head and where they were given a friendly reception. Since then psycho-analysis has remained popular in America, although precisely in that country its name has been coupled with much superficiality and some abuses. As early as in 1911, Havelock Ellis was able to report that analysis was studied and practised, not only in Austria and Switzerland, but also in the United States, in England, India, Canada, and, no doubt, in Australia too.

It was in this period of struggle and of first blossoming, moreover, that the periodicals devoted exclusively to psycho-analysis were inaugurated. These were the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen (1909-1914), directed by Bleuler and Freud and edited by Jung, which ceased publication at the outbreak of the World War, the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse (1911), edited by Adler and Stekel, which was soon replaced by the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalse (1913, to-day in its tenth volume); further, since 1912, Imago, founded by Rank and Sachs, a periodical for the application of psycho-analysis to the mental sciences. The great interest taken in the subject by Anglo-American doctors was shown in 1913 by the founding of the still active Psycho-Analytic Revue by White and Jelliffe. Later, in 1920, The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, intended specially for readers in England, made its appearance under the editorship of Ernest Jones. The Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag and the corresponding English undertaking, The International Psycho-Analytical Press, brought out a continuous series of analytic publications under the name of the Internationale Psychoanalytische Bibliothek (International Psycho-Analytical Library). The literature of psycho-analysis is, of course, not to be found only in these periodicals, which are for the most part supported by psycho-analytic societies; it appears far and wide in a great number of places, in scientific and in literary publications. Among the periodicals of the Latin world which pay special attention to psycho-analysis the Rivista de Psiquiatria, edited by H. Delgado in Lima (Peru), may be specially mentioned.

An essential difference between this second decade of psycho-analysis and the first lay in the fact that the present writer was no longer its sole representative. A constantly growing circle of pupils and followers had collected around him, who devoted themselves first to the diffusion of the theories of psycho-analysis and then extended them, supplemented them and carried them deeper. In the course of years, several of these supporters, as was inevitable, seceded, took their own paths, or turned themselves into an opposition which seemed to threaten the continuity of the development of psycho-analysis. Between 1911 and 1913 C. G. Jung in Zurich and Alfred Adler in Vienna produced some stir by their attempts at giving new interpretations to the facts of analysis and their efforts at a diversion from the analytic standpoint. But it soon appeared that these secessions had effected no lasting damage. What temporary success they achieved was easily accounted for by the readiness of the mass of people to have themselves set free from the pressure of the demands of psycho-analysis by whatever path might be opened to them. The great majority of co-workers remained firm and continued their work along the lines indicated to them. We shall come on their names repeatedly in the short account below of the findings of psycho-analysis in the many and various fields of its application.IV

The noisy rejection of psycho-analysis by the medical world could not deter its supporters from developing it, to begin with, along its original lines into a specialized pathology and treatment of the neuroses - a task which has not been completely accomplished even to-day. Its undeniable therapeutic success, which far exceeded any that had previously been achieved, constantly spurred them on to fresh efforts; while the difficulties which came to light as the material was examined more deeply led to profound alterations in the technique of analysis and to important corrections in its theoretical hypotheses and postulates.

In the course of this development, the technique of psycho-analysis has become as definite and as delicate as that of any other specialized branch of medicine. A failure to understand this fact has led to many abuses (particularly in England and America) because people who have acquired only a literary knowledge of psycho-analysis from reading consider themselves capable of undertaking analytic treatments without having received any special training. The consequences of such behaviour are damaging both to the science and to the patients and have brought much discredit upon psycho-analysis. The foundation of a first psycho-analytic out-patient clinic (by Max Eitingon in Berlin in 1920) has therefore become a step of high practical importance. This institute seeks on the one hand to make analytic treatment accessible to wide circles of the population and on the other hand undertakes the education of doctors to be practical analysts by a course of training which includes as a condition that the learner shall agree to be analysed himself.

Among the hypothetical concepts which enable the doctor to deal with the analytic material, the first to be mentioned is that of ‘libido’. Libido means in psycho-analysis in the first instance the force (thought of as quantitatively variable and measurable) of the sexual instincts directed towards an object - ‘sexual’ in the extended sense required by analytic theory. Further study showed that it was necessary to set alongside this ‘object-libido’ a ‘narcissistic’ or ‘ego-libido’, directed to the subject’s own ego; and the interaction of these two forces has enabled us to account for a great number of normal and abnormal processes in mental life. A rough distinction was soon made between what are known as the ‘transference neuroses’ and the narcissistic disorders. The former (hysteria and obsessional neurosis) are the objects proper of psycho-analytic treatment, while the others, the narcissistic neuroses, though they can, it is true, be examined by the help of analysis, offer fundamental difficulties to therapeutic influence. It is true that the libido theory of psycho-analysis is by no means complete and that its relation to a general theory of the instincts is not yet clear, for psycho-analysis is a young science, quite unfinished and in a stage of rapid development. Here, however, it should be emphatically pointed out how erroneous the charge of pan-sexualism is which is so often levelled at psycho-analysis. It seeks to show that psycho-analytic theory knows of no mental motive forces other than purely sexual ones and in doing so exploits popular prejudices by using the word ‘sexual’ not in its analytic but in its vulgar sense.

The psycho-analytic view would also have to include in narcissistic disorders all the ailments described in psychiatry as ‘functional psychoses’. It could not be doubted that neuroses and psychoses are not separated by a hard and fast line, any more than health and neurosis; and it was plausible to explain the mysterious psychotic phenomena by the discoveries achieved on the neuroses, which had hitherto been equally incomprehensible. The present writer had himself, during the period of his isolation, made a case of paranoid illness partly intelligible by an analytic investigation and had pointed out in this unquestionable psychosis the same contents (complexes) and a similar interplay of forces as in the simple neuroses. Bleuler followed out the indications of what he called ‘Freudian mechanisms’ in a whole number of psychoses, and Jung won high opinions as an analyst at a single blow when, in 1907, he explained the most eccentric symptoms in the end-stages of dementia praecox from the individual life-histories of the patients. The comprehensive study of schizophrenia by Bleuler (1911) probably demonstrated once and for all the justification of a psycho-analytic angle of approach for the understanding of these psychoses.

In this way psychiatry became the first field to which psycho-analysis was applied and it has remained so ever since. The same research workers who have done most to deepen analytic knowledge of the neuroses, such as Karl Abraham in Berlin and Sándor Ferenczi in Budapest (to name only the most prominent), have also played a leading part in throwing analytic light on the psychoses. The conviction of the unity and intimate connection of all the disorders that present themselves as neurotic and psychotic phenomena is becoming more and more firmly established despite all the efforts of the psychiatrists. People are beginning to understand - best of all, perhaps, in America - that the psycho-analytic study of the neuroses is the only preparation for an understanding of the psychoses, and that psycho-analysis is destined to make possible a scientific psychiatry of the future which will not need to content itself with describing curious clinical pictures and unintelligible sequences of events and with tracing the influence of gross anatomical and toxic traumas upon a mental apparatus which is inaccessible to our knowledge.

V

But the importance of psycho-analysis for psychiatry would never have drawn the attention of the intellectual world to it or won it a place in The History of our Times. This result was brought about by the relation of psycho-analysis to normal, not to pathological, mental life. Originally, analytic research had indeed no other aim than to establish the determinants of the onset (the genesis) of a few morbid mental states. In the course of its efforts, however, it succeeded in bringing to light facts of fundamental importance, in actually creating a new psychology, so that it became obvious that the validity of such findings could not possibly be restricted to the sphere of pathology. We have seen already when it was that the decisive proof was produced of the correctness of this conclusion. It was when dreams were successfully interpreted by analytic technique - dreams, which are a part of the mental life of normal people and which yet may in fact be regarded as pathological products that can regularly appear under healthy conditions.

If the psychological discoveries gained from the study of dreams were firmly kept in view, only one further step was needed before psycho-analysis could be proclaimed as the theory of the deeper mental processes not directly accessible to consciousness - as a ‘depth-psychology’ - and before it could be applied to almost all the mental sciences. This step lay in the transition from the mental activity of individual men to the psychical functions of human communities and peoples - that is, from individual to group psychology; and many surprising analogies forced this transition upon us. It had been found, for instance, that in the deep strata of unconscious mental activity contraries are not distinguished from each other but are expressed by the same element. But already in 1884 Karl Abel the philologist had put forward the view (in his ‘Über den Gegensinn der Urworte’) that the oldest languages known to us treat contraries in the same way. Thus Ancient Egyptian, for example, had in the first instance only one word for ‘strong’ and ‘weak’, and not till later were the two sides of the antithesis distinguished by slight modifications. Even in the most modern languages clear relics of such antithetical meanings are to be found. So in German ‘Boden’ means the highest as well as the lowest thing in the house; similarly in Latin ‘altus’ means ‘high’ and ‘deep’. Thus the equivalence of contraries in dreams is a universal archaic trait in human thinking.

To take an instance from another field. It is impossible to escape the impression of the perfect correspondence which can be discovered between the obsessive actions of certain obsessional patients and the religious observances of believers all over the world. Some cases of obsessional neurosis actually behave like a caricature of a private religion, so that it is tempting to liken the official religions to an obsessional neurosis that has been mitigated by becoming universalized. This comparison, which is no doubt highly objectionable to all believers, has nevertheless proved most fruitful psychologically. For psycho-analysis soon discovered in the case of obsessional neurosis what the forces are that struggle with one another in it till their conflicts find a remarkable expression in the ceremonial of obsessive actions. Nothing similar was suspected in the case of religious ceremonial until, by tracing back religious feeling to the relation with the father as its deepest root, it became possible to point to an analogous dynamic situation in that case too. This instance, moreover, may warn the reader that even in its application to non-medical fields psycho-analysis cannot avoid wounding cherished prejudices, touching upon deeply-rooted sensibilities and thus provoking enmities which have an essentially emotional basis.

If we may assume that the most general features of unconscious mental life (conflicts between instinctual impulses, repressions and substitutive satisfactions) are present everywhere, and if there is a depth-psychology which leads to a knowledge of those features, then we may reasonably expect that the application of psycho-analysis to the most varied spheres of human mental activity will everywhere bring to light important and hitherto unattainable results. In an exceedingly valuable study, Otto Rank and Hanns Sachs (1913) have tried to bring together what the work of psycho-analysts had been able to achieve up to that time towards fulfilling these expectations. Lack of space prevents me from attempting to complete their enumeration here. I can only select for mention the most important findings with the addition of a few details.

If we leave little-known internal urges out of account, we may say that the main motive force towards the cultural development of man has been real external exigency, which has withheld from him the easy satisfaction of his natural needs and exposed him to immense dangers. This external frustration drove him into a struggle with reality, which ended partly in adaptation to it and partly in control over it; but it also drove him into working and living in common with those of his kind, and this already involved a renunciation of a number of instinctual impulses which could not be satisfied socially. With the further advances of civilization the demands of repression also grew. Civilization is after all built entirely on renunciation of instinct, and every individual on his journey from childhood to maturity has in his own person to recapitulate this development of humanity to a state of judicious resignation. Psycho-analysis has shown that it is predominantly, though not exclusively, sexual instinctual impulses that have succumbed to this cultural suppression. One portion of them, however, exhibit the valuable characteristic of allowing themselves to be diverted from their immediate aims and of thus placing their energy at the disposal of cultural development in the form of ‘sublimated’ trends. But another portion persist in the unconscious as unsatisfied wishes and press for some, even if it is distorted, satisfaction.

We have seen that one part of human mental activity is directed towards obtaining control over the real external world. Psycho-analysis now tells us further that another, particularly highly-prized, part of creative mental work serves for the fulfilment of wishes - for the substitutive satisfaction of the repressed wishes which, from the days of childhood, live in the spirit of each of us, unsatisfied. Among these creations, whose connection with an incomprehensible unconscious was always suspected, are myths and works of imaginative writing and of art, and the researches of psycho-analysts have in fact thrown a flood of light on the fields of mythology, the science of literature, and the psychology of artists. It is enough to mention Otto Rank’s work as an example. We have shown that myths and fairy tales can be interpreted like dreams, we have traced the convoluted paths that lead from the urge of the unconscious wish to its realization in a work of art, we have learnt to understand the emotional effect of a work of art on the observer, and in the case of the artist himself we have made clear his internal kinship with the neurotic as well as his distinction from him, and we have pointed out the connection between his innate disposition, his chance experiences and his achievements. The aesthetic appreciation of works of art and the elucidation of the artistic gift are, it is true, not among the tasks set to psycho-analysis. But it seems that psycho-analysis is in a position to speak the decisive word in all questions that touch upon the imaginative life of man.

And now, as a third point, psycho-analysis has shown us, to our growing astonishment, the enormously important part played by what is known as the ‘Oedipus complex’ - that is, the emotional relation of a child to its two parents - in the mental life of human beings. Our astonishment diminishes when we realize that the Oedipus complex is the psychical correlate of two fundamental biological facts: the long period of the human child’s dependence, and the remarkable way in which its sexual life reaches a first climax in the third to fifth years of life, and then, after a period of inhibition, sets in again at puberty. And here, the discovery was made that a third and extremely serious part of human intellectual activity, the part which has created the great institutions of religion, law, ethics, and all forms of civic life, has as its fundamental aim the enabling of the individual to master his Oedipus complex and to divert his libido from its infantile attachments into the social ones that are ultimately desired. The applications of psycho-analysis to the science of religion and sociology (e. g. by the present writer, Theodor Reik and Oskar Pfister), which have led to these findings, are still young and insufficiently appreciated; but it cannot be doubted that further studies will only confirm the certainty of these important conclusions.

By way, as it were, of postscript, I must also mention that educationists, too, cannot avoid making use of the hints which they have received from the analytic exploration of the mental life of children; and further that voices have been raised among therapists (e.g. Groddeck and Jelliffe), maintaining that the psycho-analytic treatment of serious organic complaints shows promising results, since in many of these affections some part is played by a psychical factor on which it is possible to bring influence to bear.

Thus we may express our expectation that psycho-analysis, whose development and achievements hitherto have been briefly and inadequately related in these pages, will enter into the cultural development of the next decades as a significant ferment, and will help to deepen our understanding of the world and to fight against some things in life which are recognized as injurious. It must not be forgotten, however, that psycho-analysis alone cannot offer a complete picture of the world. If we accept the distinction which I have recently proposed of dividing the mental apparatus into an ego, turned towards the external world and equipped with consciousness, and an unconscious id, dominated by its instinctual needs, then psycho-analysis is to be described as a psychology of the id (and of its effects upon the ego). In each field of knowledge, therefore, it can make only contributions, which require to be completed from the psychology of the ego. If these contributions often contain the essence of the facts, this only corresponds to the important part which, it may be claimed, is played in our lives by the mental unconscious that has so long remained unknown.

THE RESISTANCES TO PSYCHO-ANALYSIS (1925)

A child in his nurse’s arms will turn away screaming at the sight of a strange face; a pious man will begin the new season with a prayer and he will also greet the first fruits of the year with a blessing; a peasant will refuse to buy a scythe unless it bears the trade-mark that was familiar to his parents. The distinction between these situations is obvious and would seem to justify one in looking for a different motive in each of them.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to overlook what they have in common. In each case we are dealing with unpleasure of the same kind. The child expresses it in an elementary fashion, the pious man lulls it by an artifice, while the peasant uses it as the motive for a decision. The source of this unpleasure is the demand made upon the mind by anything that is new, the psychical expenditure that it requires, the uncertainty, mounting up to anxious expectancy, which it bring along with it. It would be interesting to devote a whole study to mental reactions to novelty; for under certain, no longer primary, conditions we can observe behaviour of the contrary kind - a thirst for stimulation which flings itself upon anything that is new merely because it is new.

In scientific affairs there should be no place for recoiling from novelty. Science, in her perpetual incompleteness and insufficiency, is driven to hope for her salvation in new discoveries and new ways of regarding things. She does well, in order not to be deceived, to arm herself with scepticism and to accept nothing new unless it has withstood the strictest examination. Sometimes, however, this scepticism shows two unexpected features; it may be sharply directed against what is new while it spares what is familiar and accepted, and it may be content to reject things before it has examined them. But in behaving thus it reveals itself as a prolongation of the primitive reaction against what is new and as a cloak for the retention of that reaction. It is a matter of common knowledge how often in the history of scientific research it has happened that innovations have met with intense and stubborn resistance, while subsequent events have shown that the resistance was unjustified and that the novelty was valuable and important. What provoked the resistance was, as a rule, certain factors in the subject-matter of the novelty, while, on the other side, several factors must have combined to make the irruption of the primitive reaction possible.

A particularly bad reception was accorded to psycho-analysis, which the present writer began to develop nearly thirty years ago from the discoveries of Josef Breuer (of Vienna) on the origin of neurotic symptoms. It cannot be disputed that it possessed the quality of novelty, even though it made use of plenty of material which was well known from other sources (quite apart from Breuer’s discoveries), such as the lessons from the teachings of Charcot, the great neuropathologist, and impressions derived from the sphere of hypnotic phenomena. Its original significance was purely therapeutic: it aimed at creating a new and efficient method for treating neurotic illnesses. But connections which could not be foreseen in the beginning caused psycho-analysis to reach out far beyond its original aim. It ended by claiming to have set our whole view of mental life upon a new basis and therefore to be of importance for every field of knowledge that is founded on psychology. After a decade of complete neglect it suddenly became a subject of general interest - and set loose a storm of indignant opposition.

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