On the occasion of the opening of the Hebrew University 13 страница

That brings us back to one of your earlier questions. Psychology had barred its own access to the region of the id by insisting on a postulate which is plausible enough but untenable: namely, that all mental acts are conscious to us - that being conscious is the criterion of what is mental, and that, if there are processes in our brain which are not conscious, they do not deserve to be called mental acts and are no concern of psychology.

‘But I should have thought that was obvious.’

Yes, and that is what psychologists think. Nevertheless it can easily be shown to be false - that is, to be a quite inexpedient distinction. The idlest self-observation shows that ideas may occur to us which cannot have come about without preparation. But you experience nothing of these preliminaries of your thought, though they too must certainly have been of a mental nature; all that enters your consciousness is the ready-made result. Occasionally you can make these preparatory thought-structures conscious in retrospect, as though in a reconstruction.

‘Probably one’s attention was distracted, so that one failed to notice the preparations.’

Evasions! You cannot in that way get around the fact that acts of a mental nature, and often very complicated ones, can take place in you, of which your consciousness learns nothing and of which you know nothing. Or are you prepared to suppose that a greater or smaller amount of your ‘attention’ is enough to transform a non-mental act into a mental one? But what is the use of disputing? There are hypnotic experiments in which the existence of such non-conscious thoughts are irrefutably demonstrated to anyone who cares to learn.

‘I shall not retract; but I believe I understand you at last. What you call "ego" is consciousness; and your "id" is the so-called subconscious that people talk about so much nowadays. But why the masquerading with the new names?’1

It is not masquerading. The other names are of no use. And do not try to give me literature instead of science. If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically - to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness - or qualitatively - to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious. But it would be a serious mistake to think that this antithesis coincides with the distinction between ego and id. Of course it would be delightful if it were as simple as that: our theory would have a smooth passage. But things are not so simple. All that is true is that everything that happens in the id is and remains unconscious, and that processes in the ego, and they alone, can become conscious. But not all of them are, nor always, nor necessarily; and large portions of the ego can remain permanently unconscious.

The becoming conscious of a mental process is a complicated affair. I cannot resist telling you - once again, dogmatically - our hypotheses about it. The ego, as you will remember, is the external, peripheral layer of the id. Now, we believe that on the outermost surface of this ego there is a special agency directed immediately to the external world, a system, an organ, through the excitation of which alone the phenomenon that we call consciousness comes about. This organ can be equally well excited from outside - thus receiving (with the help of the sense-organs) the stimuli from the external world - and from inside - thus becoming aware, first, of the sensations in the id, and then also of the processes in the ego.

‘This is getting worse and worse and I can understand it less and less. After all, what you invited me to was a discussion of the question whether laymen (= non-doctors) ought to undertake analytic treatments. What is the point, then, of all these disquisitions on daring and obscure theories which you cannot convince me are justified?’2

I know I cannot convince you. That is beyond any possibility and for that reason beyond my purpose. When we give our pupils theoretical instruction in psycho-analysis, we can see how little impression we are making on them to begin with. They take in the theories of analysis as coolly as other abstractions with which they are nourished. A few of them may perhaps wish to be convinced, but there is not a trace of their being so. But we also require that everyone who wants to practise analysis on other people shall first himself submit to an analysis. It is only in the course of this ‘self-analysis’ (as it is misleadingly termed), when they actually experience as affecting their own person - or rather, their own mind - the processes asserted by analysis, that they acquire the convictions by which they are later guided as analysts. How then could I expect to convince you, the Impartial Person, of the correctness of our theories, when I can only put before you an abbreviated and therefore unintelligible account of them, without confirming them from your own experiences?

I am acting with a different purpose. The question at issue between us is not in the least whether analysis is sensible or nonsensical, whether it is right in its hypotheses or has fallen into gross errors. I am unrolling our theories before you since that is the best way of making clear to you what the range of ideas is that analysis embraces, on the basis of what hypotheses it approaches a patient and what it does with him. In this way a quite definite light will be thrown on the question of lay analysis. And do not be alarmed. If you have followed me so far you have got over the worst. Everything that follows will be easier for you. - But now, with your leave, I will pause to take breath.

III

‘I expect you will want to tell me how, on the basis of the theories of psycho-analysis, the origin of a neurotic illness can be pictured.’

I will try to. But for that purpose we must study our ego and our id from a fresh angle, from the dynamic one - that is to say, having regard to the forces at work in them and between them. Hitherto we have been content with a description of the mental apparatus.

‘My only fear is that it may become unintelligible again!’

I hope not. You will soon find your way about in it. Well then, we assume that the forces which drive the mental apparatus into activity are produced in the bodily organs as an expression of the major somatic needs. You will recollect the words of our poet-philosopher: ‘Hunger and love.’ Incidentally, quite a formidable pair of forces! We give these bodily needs, in so far as they represent an instigation to mental activity, the name of ‘

Triebe’, a word for which we are envied by many modern languages. Well, these instincts fill the id: all the energy in the id, as we may put it briefly, originates from them. Nor have the forces in the ego any other origin; they are derived from those in the id. What, then, do these instincts want? Satisfaction - that is, the establishment of situations in which the bodily needs can be extinguished. A lowering of the tension of need is felt by our organ of consciousness as pleasurable; an increase of it is soon felt as unpleasure. From these oscillations arises the series of feelings of pleasure-unpleasure, in accordance with which the whole mental apparatus regulates its activity. In this connection we speak of a ‘dominance of the pleasure principle’.

If the id’s instinctual demands meet with no satisfaction, intolerable conditions arise. Experience soon shows that these situations of satisfaction can only be established with the help of the external world. At that point the portion of the id which is directed towards the external world - the ego - begins to function. If all the driving force that sets the vehicle in motion is derived from the id, the ego, as it were, undertakes the steering, without which no goal can be reached. The instincts in the id press for immediate satisfaction at all costs, and in that way they achieve nothing or even bring about appreciable damage. It is the task of the ego to guard against such mishaps, to mediate between the claims of the id and the objections of the external world. It carries on its activity in two directions. On the one hand, it observes the external world with the help of its sense-organ, the system of consciousness, so as to catch the favourable moment for harmless satisfaction; and on the other hand it influences the id, bridles its ‘passions’, induces its instincts to postpone their satisfaction, and indeed, if the necessity is recognized, to modify its aims, or, in return for some compensation, to give them up. In so far as it tames the id’s impulses in this way, it replaces the pleasure principle, which was formerly alone decisive, by what is known as the ‘reality principle’, which, though it pursues the same ultimate aims, takes into account the conditions imposed by the real external world. Later, the ego learns that there is yet another way of securing satisfaction besides the adaption to the external world which I have described. It is also possible to intervene in the external world by changing it, and to establish in it intentionally the conditions which make satisfaction possible. This activity then becomes the ego’s highest function; decisions as to when it is more expedient to control one’s passions and bow before reality, and when it is more expedient to side with them and to take arms against the external world - such decisions make up the whole essence of worldly wisdom.

‘And does the id put up with being dominated like this by the ego, in spite of being, if I understand you aright, the stronger party?’

Yes, all will be well if the ego is in possession of its whole organization and efficiency, if it has access to all parts of the id and can exercise its influence on them. For there is no natural opposition between ego and id; they belong together, and under healthy conditions cannot in practice be distinguished from each other.5

‘That sounds very pretty; but I cannot see how in such an ideal relation there can be the smallest room for a pathological disturbance.’

You are right. So long as the ego and its relations to the id fulfil these ideal conditions, there will be no neurotic disturbance. The point at which the illness makes its breach is an unexpected one, though no one acquainted with general pathology will be surprised to find a confirmation of the principle that it is precisely the most important developments and differentiations that carry in them the seeds of illness, of failure of function.

‘You are becoming too learned. I cannot follow you.’

I must go back a little bit further. A small living organism is a truly miserable, powerless thing, is it not? compared with the immensely powerful external world, full as it is of destructive influences. A primitive organism, which has not developed any adequate ego-organization, is at the mercy of all these ‘traumas’. It lives by the ‘blind’ satisfaction of its instinctual wishes and often perishes in consequence. The differentiation of an ego is above all a step towards self-preservation. Nothing, it is true, can be learnt from being destroyed; but if one has luckily survived a trauma one takes notice of the approach of similar situations and signalizes the danger by an abbreviated repetition of the impressions one has experienced in connection with the trauma - by an affect of anxiety. This reaction to the perception of the danger now introduces an attempt at flight, which can have a life-saving effect till one has grown strong enough to meet the dangers of the external world in a more active fashion - even aggressively, perhaps.

‘All this is very far away from what you promised to tell me.’6

You have no notion how close I am to fulfilling my promise. Even in organisms which later develop an efficient ego-organization, their ego is feeble and little differentiated from their id to begin with, during their first years of childhood. Imagine now what will happen if this powerless ego experiences an instinctual demand from the id which it would already like to resist (because it senses that to satisfy it is dangerous and would conjure up a traumatic situation, a collision with the external world) but which it cannot control, because it does not yet possess enough strength to do so. In such a case the ego treats the instinctual danger as if it was an external one; it makes an attempt at flight, draws back from this portion of the id and leaves it to its fate, after withholding from it all the contributions which it usually makes to instinctual impulses. The ego, as we put it, institutes a repression of these instinctual impulses. For the moment this has the effect of fending off the danger; but one cannot confuse the inside and the outside with impunity. One cannot run away from oneself. In repression the ego is following the pleasure principle, which it is usually in the habit of correcting; and it is bound to suffer damage in revenge. This lies in the ego’s having permanently narrowed its sphere of influence. The repressed instinctual impulse is now isolated, left to itself, inaccessible, but also uninfluenceable. It goes its own way. Even later, as a rule, when the ego has grown stronger, it still cannot lift the repression; its synthesis is impaired, a part of the id remains forbidden ground to the ego. Nor does the isolated instinctual impulse remain idle; it understands how to make up for being denied normal satisfaction; it produces psychical derivatives which take its place; it links itself to other processes which by its influence it likewise tears away from the ego; and finally it breaks through into the ego and into consciousness in the form of an unrecognizably distorted substitute, and creates what we call a symptom. All at once the nature of a neurotic disorder becomes clear to us: on the one hand an ego which is inhibited in its synthesis, which has no influence on parts of the id, which must renounce some of its activities in order to avoid a fresh collision with what has been repressed, and which exhausts itself in what are for the most part vain acts of defence against the symptoms, the derivatives of the repressed impulses; and on the other hand an id in which individual instincts have made themselves independent, pursue their aims regardless of the interests of the person as a whole and henceforth obey the laws only of the primitive psychology that rules in the depths of the id. If we survey the whole situation we arrive at a simple formula for the origin of a neurosis: the ego has made an attempt to suppress certain portions of the id in an inappropriate manner, this attempt has failed and the id has taken its revenge. A neurosis is thus the result of a conflict between the ego and the id, upon which the ego has embarked because, as careful investigation shows, it wishes at all costs to retain its adaptability in relation to the real external world. The disagreement is between the external world and the id; and it is because the ego, loyal to its inmost nature, takes sides with the external world that it becomes involved in a conflict with its id. But please observe that what creates the determinant for the illness is not the fact of this conflict - for disagreements of this kind between reality and the id are unavoidable and it is one of the ego’s standing tasks to mediate in them - but the circumstance that the ego has made use of the inefficient instrument of repression for dealing with the conflict. But this in turn is due to the fact that the ego, at the time at which it was set the task, was undeveloped and powerless. The decisive repressions all take place in early childhood.

‘What a remarkable business! I shall follow your advice and not make criticisms, since you only want to show me what psycho-analysis believes about the origin of neurosis so that you can go on to say how it sets about combating it. I should have various questions to ask and later on I shall raise some of them. But at the moment I myself feel tempted for once to carry your train of thought further and to venture upon a theory of my own. You have expounded the relation between external world, ego and id, and you have laid it down as the determinant of a neurosis that the ego in its dependence on the external world struggles against the id. Is not the opposite case conceivable of the ego in a conflict of this kind allowing itself to be dragged away by the id and disavowing its regard for the external world? What happens in a case like that? From my lay notions of the nature of insanity I should say that such a decision on the part of the ego might be the determinant of insanity. After all, a turning-away of that kind from reality seems to be the essence of insanity.’

Yes. I myself have thought of that possibility, and indeed I believe it meets the facts - though to prove the suspicion true would call for a discussion of some highly complicated considerations. Neuroses and psychoses are evidently intimately related, but they must nevertheless differ in some decisive respect. That might well be the side taken by the ego in a conflict of this kind. In both cases the id would retain its characteristic of blind inflexibility.8

‘Well, go on! What hints on the treatment of neurotic illnesses does your theory give?’

It is easy now to describe our therapeutic aim. We try to restore the ego, to free it from its restrictions, and to give it back the command over the id which it has lost owing to its early repressions. It is for this one purpose that we carry out analysis, our whole technique is directed to this aim. We have to seek out the repressions which have been set up and to urge the ego to correct them with our help and to deal with conflicts better than by an attempt at flight. Since these repressions belong to the very early years of childhood, the work of analysis leads us, too, back to that period. Our path to these situations of conflict, which have for the most part been forgotten and which we try to revive in the patient’s memory, is pointed out to us by his symptoms, dreams and free associations. These must, however, first be interpreted - translated - for, under the influence of the psychology of the id, they have assumed forms of expression that are strange to our comprehension. We may assume that whatever associations, thoughts and memories the patient is unable to communicate to us without internal struggles are in some way connected with the repressed material or are its derivatives. By encouraging the patient to disregard his resistances to telling us these things, we are educating his ego to overcome its inclination towards attempts at flight and to tolerate an approach to what is repressed. In the end, if the situation of the repression can be successfully reproduced in his memory, his compliance will be brilliantly rewarded. The whole difference between his age then and now works in his favour; and the thing from which his childish ego fled in terror will often seem to his adult and strengthened ego no more than child’s play.

IV

‘Everything you have told me so far has been psychology. It has often sounded strange, difficult, or obscure; but it has always been - if I may put it so - "pure". I have known very little hitherto, no doubt, about your psycho-analysis; but the rumour has nevertheless reached my ears that you are principally occupied with things that have no claim to that predicate. The fact that you have not yet touched on anything of the kind makes me feel that you are deliberately keeping something back. And there is another doubt that I cannot suppress. After all, as you yourself say, neuroses are disturbances of mental life. Is it possible, then, that such important things as our ethics, our conscience, our ideals, play no part at all in these profound disturbances?’

So you feel that a consideration both of what is lowest and of what is highest has been missing from our discussions up till now? The reason for that is that we have not yet considered the contents of mental life at all. But allow me now for once myself to play the part of an interrupter who holds up the progress of the conversation. I have talked so much psychology to you because I wanted you to get the impression that the work of analysis is a part of applied psychology - and, moreover, of a psychology that is unknown outside analysis. An analyst must therefore first and foremost have learnt this psychology, this depth-psychology or psychology of the unconscious, or as much of it at least as is known to-day. We shall need this as a basis for our later conclusions. But now, what was it you meant by your allusion to ‘purity’?

‘Well, it is generally reported that in analyses the most intimate - and the nastiest - events in sexual life come up for discussion in every detail. If that is so - I have not been able to gather from your psychological discussions that it is necessarily so - it would be a strong argument in favour of restricting these treatments to doctors. How could one dream of allowing such dangerous liberties to people of whose discretion one was not sure and of whose character one had no guarantee?’

It is true that doctors enjoy certain privileges in the sphere of sex: they are even allowed to inspect people’s genitals - though they were not allowed to in the East and though some idealistic reformers (you know whom I have in mind) have disputed this privilege. But you want to know in the first place whether it is so in analysis and why it must be so. - Yes, it is so.0

And it must be so, firstly, because analysis is entirely founded on complete candour. Financial circumstances, for instance, are discussed with equal detail and openness: things are said that are kept back from every fellow-citizen, even if he is not a competitor or a tax-collector. I will not dispute - indeed, I will myself insist with energy - that this obligation to candour puts a grave moral responsibility on the analyst as well. And it must be so, secondly, because factors from sexual life play an extremely important, a dominating, perhaps even a specific part among the causes and precipitating factors of neurotic illnesses. What else can analysis do but keep close to its subject-matter, to the material brought up by the patient? The analyst never entices his patient on to the ground of sex. He does not say to him in advance: ‘We shall be dealing with the intimacies of your sexual life!’ He allows him to begin what he has to say whenever he pleases, and quietly waits until the patient himself touches on sexual things. I used always to warn my pupils: ‘Our opponents have told us that we shall come upon cases in which the factor of sex plays no part. Let us be careful not to introduce it into our analyses and so spoil our chance of finding such a case.’ But so far none of us has had that good fortune.

I am aware, of course, that our recognition of sexuality has become - whether admittedly or not - the strongest motive for other people’s hostility to analysis. Can that shake our confidence? It merely shows us how neurotic our whole civilized life is, since ostensibly normal people do not behave very differently from neurotics. At a time when psycho-analysis was solemnly put on its trial before the learned societies of Germany - to-day things have grown altogether quieter - one of the speakers claimed to possess peculiar authority because, so he said, he even allowed his patients to talk: for diagnostic purposes, clearly, and to test the assertions of analysts. ‘But’, he added, ‘if they begin to talk about sexual matters I shut their mouths.’ What do you think of that as a method of demonstration? The learned society applauded the speaker to the echo instead of feeling suitably ashamed on his account. Only the triumphant certainty afforded by the consciousness of prejudices held in common can explain this speaker’s want of logical thought. Years later a few of those who had at that time been my followers gave in to the need to free human society from the yoke of sexuality which psycho-analysis was seeking to impose on it. One of them explained that what is sexual does not mean sexuality at all, but something else, something abstract and mystical. And another actually declared that sexual life is merely one of the spheres in which human beings seek to put in action their driving need for power and domination. They have met with much applause, for the moment at least.

‘I shall venture, for once in a way, to take sides on that point. It strikes me as extremely bold to assert that sexuality is not a natural, primitive need of living organisms, but an expression of something else. One need only take the example of animals.’

That makes no difference. There is no mixture, however absurd, that society will not willingly swallow down if it is advertised as an antidote to the dreaded predominance of sexuality.

I confess, moreover, that the dislike that you yourself have betrayed of assigning to the factor of sexuality so great a part in the causation of neurosis - I confess that this scarcely seems to me consistent with your task as an Impartial Person. Are you not afraid that this antipathy may interfere with your passing a just judgement?

‘I am sorry to hear you say that. Your reliance on me seems to be shaken. But in that case why not have chosen someone else as your Impartial Person?’

Because that someone else would not have thought any differently from you. But if he had been prepared from the first to recognize the importance of sexual life, everyone would have exclaimed: ‘Why, that is no Impartial Person, he is one of your supporters!’ No, I am far from abandoning the expectation of being able to influence your opinions. I must admit, however, that from my point of view this situation is different from the one we dealt with earlier. As regards our psychological discussions it is a matter of indifference to me whether you believe me or not, provided only that you get an impression that what we are concerned with are purely psychological problems. But here, as regards the question of sexuality, I should nevertheless be glad if you were accessible to the realization that your strongest motive for contradiction is precisely the ingrained hostility which you share with so many other people.

‘But after all I am without the experience that has given you your unshakeable certainty.’

Very well. I can now proceed with my exposition. Sexual life is not simply something spicy; it is also a serious scientific problem. There was much that was novel to be learnt about it, many strange things to be explained. I told you just now that analysis has to go back into the early years of the patient’s childhood, because the decisive repressions have taken place then, while his ego was feeble. But surely in childhood there is no sexual life? surely it only starts at puberty? On the contrary. We have to learn that sexual instinctual impulses accompany life from birth onwards, and that it is precisely in order to fend off those instincts that the infantile ego institutes repressions. A remarkable coincidence, is it not? that small children should already be struggling against the power of sexuality, just as the speaker in the learned society was to do later, and later still my followers who have set up their own theories. How does that come about? The most general explanation would be that our civilization is built up entirely at the expense of sexuality; but there is much more to be said on the subject.

The discovery of infantile sexuality is one of those of which we have reason to feel ashamed. A few paediatricians have, it seems, always known about it, and a few children’s nurses. Clever men, who call themselves child psychologists, have thereupon spoken in tones of reproach of a ‘desecration of the innocence of childhood’. Once again, sentiment instead of argument! Events of that kind are of daily occurrence in political bodies. A member of the Opposition rises and denounces some piece of maladministration in the Civil Service, in the Army, in the Judiciary and so on. Upon this another member, preferably one of the Government, declares that such statements are an affront to the sense of honour of the body politic, of the army, of the dynasty, or even of the nation. So they are as good as untrue. Feelings such as these can tolerate no affronts.

The sexual life of children is of course different from that of adults. The sexual function, from its beginnings to the definitive form in which it is so familiar to us, undergoes a complicated process of development. It grows together from numerous component instincts with different aims and passes through several phases of organization till at last it comes into the service of reproduction. Not all the component instincts are equally serviceable for the final outcome; they must be diverted, remodelled and in part suppressed. Such a far-reaching course of development is not always passed through without a flaw; inhibitions in development take place, partial fixations at early stages of development. If obstacles arise later on to the exercise of the sexual function, the sexual urge - the libido, as we call it - is apt to hark back to these earlier points of fixation. The study of the sexuality of children and its transformations up to maturity has also given us the key to an understanding of what are known as the sexual perversions, which people used always to describe with all the requisite indications of disgust but whose origin they were never able to explain. The whole topic is of uncommon interest, but for the purposes of our conversation there is not much sense in telling you more about it. To find one’s way about in it one of course needs anatomical and physiological knowledge, all of which is unfortunately not to be acquired in medical schools. But a familiarity with the history of civilization and with mythology is equally indispensable.

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