I have, as you will have noticed, described only the relation of the boy to his father and mother. As far as the little girl is concerned, the process is the same with the necessary modifications. The affectionate devotion to the father, the desire to set aside the mother as superfluous and to take her place, a coquetrywhich already works with all the arts of later womanhood, give such a charming picture, especially in the baby girl, that we are apt to forget its seriousness, and the grave consequences which may result from this infantile situation. Let us not fail to add that frequently the parents themselves exert a decisive influence over the child in the wakening of the Oedipus attitude, in that they themselves follow a sex preference when there are a number of children. The father in the most unmistakable manner shows preference for the daughter, while the mother is most affectionate toward the son. But even this factor cannot seriously undermine the spontaneous character of the childish Oedipus-complex. The Oedipus-complex expands and becomes a family-complex when other children appear. It becomes the motive force, revived by the sense of personal injury, which causes the child to receive its brothers and sisters with aversion and to wish to remove them without more ado. It is much more frequent for the children to express these feelings of hatred than those arising from the parent-complex. If such a wish is fulfilled, and death takes away the undesired increase in the family, after a short while we may discover through analysis what an important experience this death was for the child, even though he had not remembered it. The child forced into second place by the birth of a little brother or sister, and for the first time practically isolated from his mother, is loathe to forgive her for this; feelings which we would call extreme bitterness in an adult are aroused in him and often become the basis of a lasting estrangement. We have already mentioned that sexual curiosity with all its consequences usually grows out of these experiences of the child. With the growing up of these brothers and sisters the relation to them undergoes the most significant changes. The boy may take his sister as the object for his love, to replace his faithless mother; situations of dangerous rivalry, which are of vast importance for later life, arise even in the nursery among numerous brothers who court the affection of a younger sister. A little girl finds in her older brother a substitute for her father, who no longer acts towards her with the same affection as in former years, or she takes a younger sister as a substitute for the child that she vainly wished of her father.
Such things, and many more of a similar character, are shown by the direct observation of children and the consideration oftheir vivid childish recollections, which are not influenced by the analysis. You will conclude, among other things, that the position of a child in the sequence of his brothers and sisters is of utmost importance for the entire course of his later life, a factor which should be considered in every biography. In the face of these explanations that are found with so little effort, you will hardly recall without smiling the scientific explanations for the prohibition of incest. What inventions! By living together from early childhood the sexual attraction must have been diverted from these members of the family who are of opposite sex, or a biological tendency against in-breeding finds its psychic equivalent in an innate dread of incest! In this no account is taken of the fact that there would be no need of so unrelenting a prohibition by law and morality if there were any natural reliable guards against the temptation of incest. Just the opposite is true. The first choice of an object among human beings is regularly an incestuous one, in the man directed toward the mother and sister, and the most stringent laws are necessary to prevent this persisting infantile tendency from becoming active. Among the primitive races the prohibitions against incest are much more stringent than ours, and recently Th. Reik showed in a brilliant paper that the puberty-rites of the savages, which represent a rebirth, have the significance of loosing the incestuous bonds of the boy to his mother, and of establishing the reconciliation with the father.
Mythology teaches that incest, apparently so abhorred by men, is permitted to the gods without further thought, and you may learn from ancient history that incestuous marriage with his sister was holy prescript for the person of the ruler (among the ancient Pharaohs and the Incas of Peru). We have here a privilege denied the common herd.
Incest with his mother is one of the sins of Oedipus, patricide the other. It might also be mentioned that these are the two great sins which the first social-religious institution of mankind, totemism, abhors. Let us turn from the direct observation of the child to analytic investigation of the adult neurotic. What does analysis yield to the further knowledge of the Oedipus-complex? This is easily told. It shows the patient up in the light of the myth; it shows that each of these neurotics was himself an Oedipus or, what amounts to the same thing,became a Hamlet in the reaction to the complex. To be sure, the analytic representation of the Oedipus-complex enlarges upon and is a coarser edition of the infantile sketch. The hatred of the father, the death-wish with regard to him, are no longer timidly suggested, the affection for the mother recognizes the goal of possessing her for a wife. Dare we really accredit these horrible and extreme feelings to those tender childhood years, or does analysis deceive us by bringing in some new element? It is not difficult to discover this. Whenever an account of past events is given, be it written even by a historian, we must take into account the fact that inadvertently something has been interpolated from the present and from intervening times into the past; so that the entire picture is falsified. In the case of the neurotic it is questionable whether this interpolation is entirely unintentional or not; we shall later come to learn its motives and must justify the fact of "imagining back" into the remote past. We also easily discover that hatred of the father is fortified by numerous motives which originate in later times and circumstances, since the sexual wishes for the mother are cast in forms which are necessarily foreign to the child. But it would be a vain endeavor to explain the whole of the Oedipus-complex by "imagining back," and as related to later times. The infantile nucleus and more or less of what has been added to it continues to exist and may be verified by the direct observation of the child.
The clinical fact which we meet with in penetrating the form of the Oedipus-complex as established by analysis, is of the greatest practical importance. We learn that at the period of puberty, when the sexual instinct first asserts its demands in full strength, the old incestuous and familiar objects are again taken up and seized anew by the libido. The infant's choice of an object was feeble, but it nevertheless set the direction for the choice of an object in puberty. At that time very intense emotional experiences are brought into play and directed towards the Oedipus-complex, or utilized in the reaction to it. However, since their presuppositions have become unsupportable, they must in large part remain outside of consciousness. From this time on the human individual must devote himself to the great task of freeing himself from his parents, and only after he has freed himself can he cease to be a child, and become a memberof the social community. The task confronting the son consists of freeing himself from his libidinous wishes towards his mother and utilizing them in the quest for a really foreign object for his love. He must also effect a reconciliation with his father, if he has stayed hostile to him, or if in the reaction to his infantile opposition he has become subject to his domination, he must now free himself from this pressure. These tasks are set for every man; it is noteworthy how seldom their solution is ideally achieved, i.e., how seldom the solution is psychologically as well as socially correct. Neurotics, however, find no solution whatever; the son remains during his whole life subject to the authority of his father, and is not able to transfer his libido to a foreign sexual object. Barring the difference in the specific relation, the same fate may befall the daughter. In this sense the Oedipus-complex is correctly designated as the nucleus of the neurosis.
You can imagine how rapidly I am reviewing a great number of conditions which are associated with the Oedipus-complex, of practical as well as of theoretical importance. I cannot enter upon their variations or possible inversions. Of its less immediate relations I only wish to indicate the influence which the Oedipus-complex has been found to exert on literary production. In a valuable book, Otto Rank has shown that the dramatists of all times have taken their materials principally from the Oedipus-and incest-complexes, with their variations and disguises. Moreover, we will not forget to mention that the two guilty wishes of Oedipus were recognized long before the time of psychoanalysis as the true representatives of the unrestrained life of impulses. Among the writings of the encyclopedist Diderot we find a famous dialogue,The Nephew of Ramau, which no less a person than Goethe has translated into German. In this you may read the remarkable sentence: "If the little savage were left to himself he would preserve all his imbecility, he would unite the passions of a man of thirty to the unreasonableness of the child in the cradle; he would twist his father's neck and bed with his mother."
There is also one other thing of which I must needs speak. The mother-wife of Oedipus shall not have reminded us of the dream in vain. Do you still remember the result of our dream analysis, that the wishes out of which the dream is constructedso frequently are of a perverse, incestuous nature, or disclose an enmity toward near and beloved relatives the existence of which had never been suspected? At the time we did not trace the sources of these evil impulses. Now you may see them for yourselves. They represent the disposition made in early infancy of the libidinous energy, with the objects, long since given up in conscious life, to which it had once clung, which are now shown at night to be still present and in a certain sense capable of activity. But since all people have such perverse, incestuous and murderous dreams, and not the neurotics alone, we may conclude that even those who are normal have passed through the same evolutionary development, through the perversions and the direction of the libidio toward the objects of the Oedipus-complex. This, then, is the way of normal development, upon which the neurotics merely enlarge. They show in cruder form what dream analysis exposes in the healthy dreamer as well. Accordingly here is one of the motives which led us to deal with the study of the dream before we considered the neurotic symptom.
Theories of Development and Regression—Etiology
WE have learned that the libidio goes through an extensive development before it can enter the service of reproduction in a way which may be regarded as normal. Now I wish to present to you what importance this fact possesses for the causation of neuroses.
I believe we are in harmony with the teachings of general pathology in assuming that this development involves two dangers, inhibition and regression. In other words, with the universal tendency of biological processes toward variation, it must necessarily happen that not all preparatory phases of a given function are equally well passed through or accomplished with comparable thoroughness. Certain components of a function may be permanently held back in an early stage of development and the complete development is therefore retarded to a certain extent.
Let us seek analogies for these processes from other fields. If a whole people leaves its dwellings to seek a new home, as frequently happened in the early periods of the history of mankind, their entire number will certainly not reach the new destination. Setting aside other losses, small groups or associations of these wandering peoples would stop on the way, and, while the majority passes on, they would settle down at these way-stations. Or, to seek a more appropriate comparison: You know that in the most highly evolved mammals, the male seminal glands, which originally are located in the far depths of the abdominal cavity, begin to wander during a certain period of intra-uterine life until they reach a position almost immediately under the skin of the pelvic extremity. In the case of a number of male individuals, one of the paired glands may as a result of this wandering remain in the pelvic cavity, or may be permanently located in the canal through which both glands must pass in their journey, or finally the canal itself may stay openpermanently instead of growing together with the seminal glands after the change of position has taken place normally. When, as a young student, I was doing my first piece of scientific research under the direction of von Brücke, I was working on the dorsal nerve-roots in the spinal cord of a small fish very archaic in form. I discovered that the nerve ganglia of these roots grow out from large cells which lie in the grey matter of the dorsal column, a condition no longer true of other vertebrates. But I soon discovered that such nerve cells are found outside the grey matter all the way to the so-called spinal ganglion of the dorsal root. From this I concluded that the cells of this group of ganglia had traveled from the spinal cord to the roots of the nerves. This same result is attested by embryology. In this little fish, however, the entire path of the journey was traceable by the cells that had remained behind. Closer observation will easily reveal to you the weak points of these comparisons. Therefore let me simply say that with reference to every single sexual impulse, I consider it possible for several of its components to be held back in the earlier stages of development while other components have worked themselves out to completion. You will realize that we think of every such impulse as a current continuously driving on from the very beginning of life, and that our resolving it into individual movements which follow separately one upon the other is to a certain extent artificial. Your impression that these concepts require further clarification is correct, but an attempt would lead to too great digression. Before we pass on, however, let us agree to call this arrest of a partial impulse in an early stage of development, afixationof the instinct.
Regressionis the second danger of this development by stages. Even those components which have achieved a degree of progress may readily turn backward to these earlier stages. Having attained to this later and more highly developed form, the impulse is forced to a regression when it encounters great external difficulties in the exercise of its function, and accordingly cannot reach the goal which will satisfy its strivings. We can obviously assume that fixation and regression are not independent of each other. The stronger the fixations in the process of development prove to be, the more readily will the function evade external difficulties by a regression back to those fixations, and the lesscapable will the fully developed function be to withstand the hindrances that stand in the way of its exercise. Remember that if a people in its wandering has left large groups at certain way-stations, it is natural for those who have gone on to return to these stations if they are beaten or encounter a mighty foe. The more they have left on the way, however, the greater is their chance of defeat.
For your comprehension of the neuroses it is necessary to keep in mind this connection between fixation and regression. This will give you a secure hold upon the question of the cause of neuroses—of the etiology of neuroses—which we shall soon consider.
For the present we have still to discuss various aspects of regression. With the knowledge you have gained concerning the development of the function of libido, you must expect two kinds of regression: incestuous return to the first libidinous objects and return of the entire sexual organization to an earlier stage of development. Both occur in the transference neuroses and play an important part in its mechanism. Especially is the return to the first incestuous objects of libido a feature that the neurotic exhibits with positively tiresome regularity. We could say far more about regression of libido if we took into consideration another group of neuroses: neurotic narcism. But we cannot do this now. These conditions give us a clue to other stages of development of the function of libido, which have not been mentioned previously, and correspondingly show new kinds of regression. But I think the most important task before me at this point is to warn you not to confuseregressionandsuppression, and aid you to see clearly the connection between the two processes. Suppression, as you know, is the process by which an act capable of becoming conscious, in other words, an act that belongs to the fore-conscious system, is rendered unconscious and accordingly is thrust back into the unconscious system. Similarly we speak of suppression when the unconscious psychic act never has been admitted into the adjoining fore-conscious system but is arrested by the censor at the threshold. Kindly observe that the conception of suppression has nothing to do with sexuality. It describes a purely psychological process, which could better be characterized by terming itlocalized. By that we mean that it is concerned with thespatial relationships within the psyche, or if we drop this crude metaphor, with building up the psychological apparatus out of separate, psychic systems.
Through these comparisons we observe that up to this point we have not used the word regression in its general, but in a very special sense. If you accord it the general meaning of return from a higher to a lower stage of development you must include suppression as a form of regression, for suppression may also be described as the reversion to an earlier and lower stage in the development of a psychic act. Only in regard to suppression, this tendency to revert is not necessarily involved, for when a psychic act is held back in the early unconscious stage we also term it suppression in a dynamic sense. Suppression is a localized and dynamic conception, regression purely descriptive. What up this point we have called regression and considered in its relation to fixation, was only the return of libido to former stages of its development. The nature of this latter conception is entirely distinct and independent of suppression. We cannot call the libido regressions purely psychical processes and do not know what localization in the psychological apparatus we should assign to them. Even though the libido exerts a most powerful influence on psychic life, its organic significance is still the most conspicuous.
Discussions of this sort, gentlemen, are bound to be somewhat dry. To render them more vivid and impressive, let us return to clinical illustrations. You know that hysteria and compulsion-neurosis are the two chief factors in the group of transference neuroses. In hysteria, libidinous return to primary, incestuous sexual objects is quite regular, but regression to a former stage of sexual organization very rare. In the mechanism of hysteria suppression plays the chief part. If you will permit me to supplement our previous positive knowledge of this neurosis by a constructive suggestion, I could describe the state of affairs in this manner: the union of the partial instincts under the domination of the genitals is accomplished, but its results encounter the opposition of the fore-conscious system which, of course, is bound up with consciousness. Genital organization, therefore, may stand for the unconscious but not for the fore-conscious. Through this rejection on the part of the fore-conscious, a situation arises which in certain aspects is similar tothe condition existing before the genitals had attained their primacy. Of the two libido regressions, the regression to a former stage of sexual organization is by far the more conspicuous. Since it is lacking in hysteria and our entire conception of the neuroses is still too much dominated by the study of hysteria which preceded it in point of time, the meaning of libido regression became clearer to us much later than that of repression. Let us be prepared to widen and change our attitude still more when we consider other narcistic neuroses besides compulsion-neurosis and hysteria in our discussion.
In contrast to this, regression of libido in compulsion-neurosis turns back most conspicuously to the earlier sadistico-anal organization, which accordingly becomes the most significant factor expressed by the symptoms. Under these conditions the love impulse must mask itself as a sadistic impulse. The compulsion idea must therefore be reinterpreted. Isolated from other superimposed factors, which though they are not accidental are also indispensable, it no longer reads: "I want to murder you"; rather it says "I want to enjoy you in love." Add to this, that simultaneously regression of the object has also set in, so that this impulse is invariably directed toward the nearest and dearest persons, and you can imagine with what horror the patient thinks of these compulsion ideas and how alien they appear to his conscious perception. In the mechanism of these neuroses, suppression, too, assumes an important part, which it is not easy to explain in a superficial discussion of this sort. Regression of the libido without suppression would never result in neurosis but would finally end in perversion. This makes it obvious that suppression is the process most characteristic of neurosis, and typifies it most perfectly. Perhaps I shall at some future time have the opportunity of presenting to you our knowledge of the mechanism of perversions and then you will see that here also things do not work themselves out as simply as we should best like to construe them.
You will most readily reconcile yourself with these elucidations of fixation and regression, when you consider them as a preface to the investigation of the etiology of neuroses. Towards this I have only advanced a single fact: that people become neurotically ill when the possibility of satisfying their libido is removed, ill with "denial," as I expressed myself, and thattheir symptoms are the substitutes for the denied gratification. Of course, that does not mean that every denial of libidinous satisfaction makes every person neurotic, but merely that in all cases known of neurosis, the factor of denial was traceable. The syllogism therefore cannot be reversed. You also understand, I trust, that this statement is not supposed to reveal the entire secret of the etiology of neurosis, but only emphasizes an important and indispensable condition.
Now, we do not know, in the further discussion of this statement, whether to emphasize the nature of denial or the individuality of the person affected by it. Denial is very rarely complete and absolute; to cause a pathological condition, the specific gratification desired by the particular person in question must be withheld, the certain satisfaction of which he alone is capable. On the whole there are many ways of enduring abstinence from libidinous gratification without succumbing to a neurosis by reason thereof. Above all we know of people who are able to endure abstinence without doing themselves injury; they are not happy under the circumstances, they are filled with yearning, but they do not become ill. Furthermore, we must take into consideration that the impulses of the sex instinct are extraordinarilyplastic, if I may use that term in this connection. One thing may take the place of the other; one may assume the other's intensity; if reality refuses the one gratification, the satisfaction of another may offer full compensation. The sexual impulses are like a network of communicating channels filled with fluids; they are this in spite of their subjugation to the primacy of the genitals, though I realize it is difficult to unite these two ideas in one conception. The component impulses of sexuality as well as the total sexual desire, which represents their aggregate, show a marked ability to change their object, to exchange it, for instance, for one more easily attainable. This displacement and the readiness to accept substitutes must exert powerful influences in opposition to the pathological effect of abstinence. Among these processes which resist the ill effects of abstinence, one in particular has won cultural significance. Sexual desire relinquishes either its goal of partial gratification of desire, or the goal of desire toward reproduction, and adopts another aim, genetically related to the abandoned one, save that it is no longer sexual but must betermed social. This process is called "sublimation," and in adopting this process we subscribe to the general standard which places social aims above selfish sexual desires. Sublimation is, as a matter of fact, only a special case of the relation of sexual to non-sexual desires. We shall have occasion to talk more about this later in another connection.
Now your impression will be that abstinence has become an insignificant factor, since there are so many methods of enduring it. Yet this is not the case, for its pathological power is unimpaired. The remedies are generally not sufficient. The measure of unsatisfied libido which the average human being can stand is limited. The plasticity and freedom of movement of libido is by no means retained to the same extent by all individuals; sublimation can, moreover, never account for more than a certain small fraction of the libido, and finally most people possess the capacity for sublimation only to a very slight degree. The most important of these limitations clearly lies in the adaptability of the libido, as it renders the gratification of the individual dependent upon the attainment of only a very few aims and objects. Kindly recall that incomplete development of the libido leaves extensive and possibly even numerous libido fixations in earlier developmental phases of the processes of sexual organization and object-finding, and that these phases are usually not capable of affording a real gratification. You will then recognize libido fixation as the second powerful factor which together with abstinence constitutes the causative factors of the illness. We may abbreviate schematically and say that libido fixation represents the internal disposing factor, abstinence the accidental external factor of the etiology of neurosis.
I seize the opportunity to warn you of taking sides in a most unnecessary conflict. In scientific affairs it is a popular proceeding to emphasize a part of the truth in place of the whole truth and to combat all the rest, which has lost none of its verity, in the name of that fraction. In this way various factions have already separated out from the movement of psychoanalysis; one faction recognizes only the egoistic impulses and denies the sexual, another appreciates the influence of objective tasks in life, but ignores the part played by the individual past, and so on. Here is occasion for a similar antithesis and subject for dispute: are neurosesexogenousorendogenousdiseases, arethey the inevitable results of a special constitution or the product of certain harmful (traumatic) impressions; in particular, are they called forth by libido fixation (and the sexual constitution which goes with this) or through the pressure of forbearance? This dilemma seems to me no whit wiser than another I could present to you: is the child created through the generation of the father or the conception of the mother? Both factors are equally essential, you will answer very properly. The conditions which cause neuroses are very similar if not precisely the same. For the consideration of the causes of neuroses, we may arrange neurotic diseases in a series, in which two factors, sexual constitution and experience, or, if you wish, libido-fixation and self-denial, are represented in such a way that one increases as the other decreases. At one end of the series are the extreme cases, of which you can say with full conviction: These persons would have become ill because of the peculiar development of their libido, no matter what they might have experienced, no matter how gently life might have treated them. At the other end are cases which would call forth the reversed judgment, that the patients would undoubtedly have escaped illness if life had not thrust certain conditions upon them. But in the intermediate cases of the series, predisposing sexual constitution and subversive demands of life combine. Their sexual constitution would not have given rise to neurosis if the victims had not had such experiences, and their experiences would not have acted upon them traumatically if the conditions of the libido had been otherwise. Within this series I may grant a certain preponderance to the weight carried by the predisposing factors, but this admission, too, depends upon the boundaries within which you wish to delimit nervousness.
Allow me to suggest that you call such seriescomplementary series. We shall have occasion to establish other series of this sort.
The tenacity with which the libido clings to certain tendencies and objects, the so-calledadhesivenessof the libido, appears to us as an independent factor, individually variable, the determining conditions of which are completely unknown to us, but the importance of which for the etiology of the neuroses we can no longer underestimate. At the same time we must not overestimate the closeness of this interrelation. A similar adhesivenessof the libido occurs—for unknown reasons—in normal persons under various conditions, and is a determining factor in the perverse, who are in a certain sense the opposite of nervous. Before the period of psychoanalysis, it was known (Binet) that the anamnesia of the perverse is often traced back to an early impression—an abnormality in the tendency of the instinct or its choice of object—and it is to this that the libido of the individual has clung for life. Frequently it is hard to say how such an impression becomes capable of attracting the libido so intensively. I shall give you a case of this kind which I observed myself. A man, to whom the genital and all other sex stimuli of woman now mean nothing, who in fact can only be thrown into an irresistible sexual excitation by the sight of a shoe on a foot of a certain form, is able to recall an experience he had in his sixth year, which proved decisive for the fixation of his libido. One day he sat on a stool beside his governess, who was to give him an English lesson. She was an old, shriveled, unbeautiful girl with washed-out blue eyes and a pug nose, who on this day, because of some injury, had put a velvet slipper on her foot and stretched it out on a footstool; the leg itself she had most decorously covered. After a diffident attempt at normal sexual activity, undertaken during puberty, such a thin sinewy foot as his governess' had become the sole object of his sexuality; and the man was irresistibly carried away if other features, reminiscent of the English governess, appeared in conjunction with the foot. Through this fixation of the libido the man did not become neurotic but perverse, a foot fetishist, as we say. So you see that, although exaggerated and premature fixation of the libido is indispensable for the causation of neuroses, its sphere of action exceeds the limits of neuroses immeasurably. This condition also, taken by itself, is no more decisive than abstinence.
And so the problem of the cause of neuroses seems to become more complicated. Psychoanalytic investigation does, in fact, acquaint us with a new factor, not considered in our etiological series, which is recognized most easily in those cases where permanent well-being is suddenly disturbed by an attack of neurosis. These individuals regularly show signs of contradiction between their wishes, or, as we are wont to say, indication of psychicconflict. A part of their personality represents certain wishes,another rebels against them and resists them. A neurosis cannot come into existence without such conflict. This may seem to be of small significance. You know that our psychic life is continually agitated by conflicts for which we must find a solution. Certain conditions, therefore, must exist to make such a conflict pathological. We want to know what these conditions are, what psychic powers form the background for these pathological conflicts, what relation the conflict bears to the causative factors.
I hope I shall be able to give you satisfactory answers to these questions even if I must make them schematically brief. Self-denial gives rise to conflict, for libido deprived of its gratification is forced to seek other means and ends. A pathogenic conflict arises when these other means and ends arouse the disfavor of one part of the personality, and a veto ensues which makes the new mode of gratification impossible for the time being. This is the point of departure for the development of the symptoms, a process which we shall consider later. The rejected libidinous desires manage to have their own way, through circuitous byways, but not without catering to the objections through the observance of certain symptom-formation; the symptoms are the new or substitute satisfaction which the condition of self-denial has made necessary.
We can express the significance of the psychic conflict in another way, by saying: theouterself-denial, in order to become pathological, must be supplemented by aninnerself-denial. Outer denial removes one possibility of gratification, inner denial would like to exclude another possibility, and it is this second possibility which becomes the center of the ensuing conflict. I prefer this form of presentation because it possesses secret content. It implies the probability that the inner impediment found its origin in the prehistoric stage of human development in real external hindrances.
What powers are these which interpose objections to libidinous desire, who are the other parties to the pathological conflict? They are, in the widest sense, the non-sexual impulses. We call them comprehensively the "ego impulses"; psychoanalysis of transference neuroses does not grant us ready access to their further investigation, but we learn to know them, in a measure, through the resistance they offer to analysis. The pathological struggle is waged between ego-impulses and sexual impulses. Ina series of cases it appears as though conflict could exist between various purely sexual desires; but that is really the same thing, for of the two sexual desires involved in the conflict, one is always considerate of the ego, while the other demands that the ego be denied, and so it remains a conflict between the ego and sexuality.
Again and again when psychoanalysis claimed that psychological event was the result of sexual impulses, indignant protest was raised that in psychic life there were other impulses and interests besides the sexual, that everything could not be derived from sexuality, etc. Well, it is a great pleasure to share for once the opinion of one's opponents. Psychoanalysis never forgot that non-sexual impulses exist. It insisted on the decided distinction between sexual and ego-impulses and maintained in the face of every objection not that neuroses arise from sexuality, but that they owe their origin to the conflict between sexuality and the ego. Psychoanalysis can have no reasonable motive for denying the existence or significance of ego-impulses, even though it investigates the influence sexual impulses play in illness and in life. Only it has been destined to deal primarily with sexual impulses, because transference neuroses have furnished the readiest access to their investigation, and because it had become obligatory to study what others had neglected.
It does not follow, either, that psychoanalysis has never occupied itself at all with the non-sexual side of personality. The very distinction of the ego from sexuality has shown most clearly that the ego-impulses also pass through a significant development, which is by no means entirely independent of the development of the libido, nor does it fail to exert a reaction upon it. To be sure, we know much less about the evolution of the ego than about libido development, for so far only the study of narcistic neuroses has promised to throw light on the structure of the ego. There is extant the notable attempt of Ferenczi to construct theoretically the stages of ego development, and furthermore we already possess two fixed points from which to proceed in our evolution of this development. We do not dream of asserting that the libidinous interests of a person are from the outset opposed to the interests of self-preservation; in every stage, rather, the ego will strive to remain in harmony with its sexual organization at that time, and accommodate itself thereto.The succession of the separate phases of development of libido probably follows a prescribed program; but we cannot deny that this sequence can be influenced by the ego, and that a certain parallelism of the phases of development of the ego and the libido may also be assumed. Indeed, the disturbance of this parallelism could become a pathological factor. One of the most important insights we have to gain is the nature of the attitude which the ego exhibits when an intensive fixation of its libido is left behind in one stage of its development. It may countenance the fixation and accordingly become perverse or, what amounts to the same thing, become infantile. Or it may be averse to this attachment of the libido, the result of which is that wherever the libido is subject tofixation, there the ego undergoessuppression.
In this way we reach the conclusion that the third factor of the etiology of neuroses is the tendency toconflict, upon which the development both of the ego and libido are dependent. Our insight into the causation of the neuroses has therefore been amplified. First, the most generalized factor, self-denial, then the fixation of the libido, by which it is forced into certain directions, and thirdly, the tendency to conflict in the development of the ego, which has rejected libidinous impulses of this kind. The state of affairs is therefore not so confused and difficult to see through, as you may have imagined it to be in the course of my explanation. But of course we are to discover that we have not, as yet, reached the end. We must add still a new factor and further analyze one we already know.
To show you the influence of ego development in the formation of a conflict, and so to give an illustration of the causation of neuroses, I should like to cite an example which, although it is entirely imaginary, is not far removed from probability in any respect. Drawing upon the title of a farce by Nestroy, I shall label this example "On the ground floor and in the first story." The janitor lives on the ground floor, while the owner of the house, a rich, distinguished man, occupies the first story. Both have children, and we shall assume that the owner permits his little daughter to play unwatched with the child of the people. Then it may easily happen that the games of the children become "naughty," that is, they assume a sexual character; they play "father and mother," watch each other in the performance ofintimate performances and mutually stimulate their genitals. The janitor's daughter, who, in spite of her five or six years of age, has had occasion to make observations on the sexuality of adults, probably played the part of the seducer. These experiences, even though they be of short duration, are sufficient to set in motion certain sexual impulses in both children, which continue in the form of onanism for several years after the common games have ceased. So far the consequences are similar; the final result will be very different. The janitor's daughter will continue onanism possibly to the commencement of her periods, abandon it then without difficulty, not many years later find a lover, perhaps bear a child, choose this or that path of life, which may likely enough make of her a popular artist who ends as an aristocrat. Perhaps the outcome will be less brilliant, but at any rate she will work out her life, free from neurosis, unharmed by her premature sexual activity. Very different is the effect on the other child. Even while she is very young she will realize vaguely that she has done wrong. In a short while, perhaps only after a violent struggle, she will renounce the gratification of onanism, yet still retain an undercurrent of depression in her attitude. If, during her early childhood, she chances to learn something about sexual intercourse, she will turn away in explicable disgust and seek to remain innocent. Probably she is at the time subjected anew to an irresistible impulse to onanism, of which she does not dare to complain. When the time arrives for her to find favor in the eyes of a man, a neurosis will suddenly develop and cheat her out of marriage and the joy of life. When analysis succeeds in gaining insight into this neurosis, it will reveal that this well-bred, intelligent girl of high ideals, has completely suppressed her sexual desires, but that unconsciously they cling to the meager experiences she had with the friend of her childhood.
The difference of these two destinies, arising from the same experience, is due to the fact that one ego has experienced development while the other has not. The janitor's daughter in later years looks upon sexual intercourse as the same natural and harmless thing it had seemed in her childhood. The owner's daughter had experienced the influence of education and had recognized its claims. Thus stimulated, her ego had forged its ideals of womanly purity and lack of desire which, however,could not agree with any sexual activity; her intellectual development had made unworthy her interest in the woman's part she was to play. This higher moral and intellectual evolution of her ego was in conflict with the claims of her sexuality.
I should like to consider today one more point in the development of the ego, partly because it opens wide vistas, partly because it will justify the sharp, perhaps unnatural line of division we are wont to draw between sexual and ego impulses. In estimating the several developments of ego and of libido, we must emphasize an aspect which has not frequently been appreciated heretofore. Both the ego and the libido are fundamentally heritages, abbreviated repetitions of an evolution which mankind has, in the course of long periods of time, traversed from primeval ages. The libido shows its phylogenetic origin most readily, I should say. Recall, if you please, that in one class of animals the genital apparatus is closely connected with the mouth, that in another it cannot be separated from the excretory apparatus, and in others it is attached to organs of locomotion. Of all these things you will find a most fascinating description in the valuable book of W. Bölsche. Animals portray, so to speak, all kinds of perversions which have become set as their permanent sexual organizations. In man this phylogenetic aspect is partly clouded by the circumstance that these activities, although fundamentally inherited, are achieved anew in individual development, presumably because the same conditions still prevail and still continue to exert their influence on each personality. I should say that originally they served to call forth an activity, where they now serve only as a stimulus for recollection. There is no doubt that in addition the course of development in each individual, which has been innately determined, may be disturbed or altered from without by recent influences. That power which has forced this development upon mankind, and which today maintains the identical pressure, is indeed known to us: it is the same self-denial enforced by the realities—or, given its big and actual name,Necessity, the struggle for existence, the’Ανἁγχη. This has been a severe teacher, but under him we have become potent. The neurotics are those children upon whom this severity has had a bad effect—but there is risk in all education. This appreciation of the struggle of life asthe moving force of development need not prejudice us against the importance of "innate tendencies in evolution" if their existence can be proved.
It is worth noting that sexual instincts and instincts of self-preservation do not behave similarly when they are confronted with the necessities of actuality. It is easier to educate the instincts of self-preservation and everything that is connected with them; they speedily learn to adapt themselves to necessity and to arrange their development in accordance with the mandates of fact. That is easy to understand, for they cannot procure the objects they require in any other way; without these objects the individual must perish. The sex instincts are more difficult to educate because at the outset they do not suffer from the need of an object. As they are related almost parasitically to the other functions of the body and gratify themselves auto-erotically by way of their own body, they are at first withdrawn from the educational influence of real necessity. In most people, they maintain themselves in some way or other during the entire course of life as those characteristics of obstinacy and inaccessibility to influence which are generally collectively called unreasonableness. The education of youth generally comes to an end when the sexual demands are aroused to their full strength. Educators know this and act accordingly; but perhaps the results of psychoanalysis will influence them to transfer the greatest emphasis to the education of the early years, of childhood, beginning with the suckling. The little human being is frequently a finished product in his fourth or fifth year, and only reveals gradually in later years what has long been ready within him.
To appreciate the full significance of the aforementioned difference between the two groups of instincts, we must digress considerably and introduce a consideration which we must needs calleconomic. Thereby we enter upon one of the most important but unfortunately one of the most obscure domains of psychoanalysis. We ask ourselves whether a fundamental purpose is recognizable in the workings of our psychological apparatus, and answer immediately that this purpose is the pursuit of pleasurable excitement. It seems as if our entire psychological activity were directed toward gaining pleasurable stimulation,toward avoiding painful ones; that it is regulated automatically by theprinciple of pleasure. Now we should like to know, above all, what conditions cause the creation of pleasure and pain, but here we fall short. We may only venture to say that pleasurable excitationin some wayinvolves lessening, lowering or obliterating the amount of stimuli present in the psychic apparatus. This amount, on the other hand, is increased by pain. Examination of the most intense pleasurable excitement accessible to man, the pleasure which accompanies the performance of the sexual act, leaves small doubt on this point. Since such processes of pleasure are concerned with the destinies of quantities of psychic excitation or energy, we call considerations of this sort economic. It thus appears that we can describe the tasks and performances of the psychic apparatus in different and more generalized terms than by the emphasis of the pursuit of pleasure. We may say that the psychic apparatus serves the purpose of mastering and bringing to rest the mass of stimuli and the stimulating forces which approach it. The sexual instincts obviously show their aim of pleasurable excitement from the beginning to the end of their development; they retain this original function without much change. The ego instincts strive at first for the same thing. But through the influence of their teacher, necessity, the ego instincts soon learn to adduce some qualification to the principle of pleasure. The task of avoiding pain becomes an objective almost comparable to the gain of pleasure; the ego learns that its direct gratification is unavoidably withheld, the gain of pleasurable excitement postponed, that always a certain amount of pain must be borne and certain sources of pleasure entirely relinquished. This educated ego has become "reasonable." It is no longer controlled by the principle of pleasure, but by theprinciple of fact, which at bottom also aims at pleasure, but pleasure which is postponed and lessened by considerations of fact.
The transition from the pleasure principle to that of fact is the most important advance in the development of the ego. We already know that the sexual instincts pass through this stage unwillingly and late. We shall presently learn the consequence to man of the fact that his sexuality admits of such a loose relation to the external realities of his life. Yet one moreobservation belongs here. Since the ego of man has, like the libido, its history of evolution, you will not be surprised to hear that there are "ego-regressions," and you will want to know what role this return of the ego to former phases of development plays in neurotic disease.
The Development of the Symptoms
IN the layman's eyes the symptom shows the nature of the disease, and cure means removal of symptoms. The physician, however, finds it important to distinguish the symptoms from the disease and recognizes that doing away with the symptoms is not necessarily curing the disease. Of course, the only tangible thing left over after the removal of the symptoms is the capacity to build new symptoms. Accordingly, for the time being, let us accept the layman's viewpoint and consider the understanding of the symptoms as equivalent to the understanding of the sickness.
The symptoms,—of course, we are dealing here with psychic (or psychogenic) symptoms, and psychic illness—are acts which are detrimental to life as a whole, or which are at least useless; frequently they are obnoxious to the individual who performs them and are accompanied by distaste and suffering. The principal injury lies in the psychic exertion which they cost, and in the further exertion needed to combat them. The price these efforts exact may, when there is an extensive development of the symptoms, bring about an extraordinary impoverishment of the personality of the patient with respect to his available psychic energy, and consequently cripple him in all the important tasks of life. Since such an outcome is dependent on the amount of energy so utilized, you will readily understand that "being sick" is essentially a practical concept. But if you take a theoretical standpoint and disregard these quantitative relations, you can readily say that we are all sick, or rather neurotic, since the conditions favorable to the development of symptoms are demonstrable also among normal persons.
As to the neurotic symptoms, we already know that they are the result of a conflict aroused by a new form of gratifying the libido. The two forces that have contended against each other meet once more in the symptom; they become reconciled throughthe compromise of a symptom development. That is why the symptom is capable of such resistance; it is sustained from both sides. We also know that one of the two partners to the conflict is the unsatisfied libido, frustrated by reality, which must now seek other means for its satisfaction. If reality remains inflexible even where the libido is prepared to take another object in place of the one denied it, the libido will then finally be compelled to resort to regression and to seek gratification in one of the earlier stages in its organizations already out-lived, or by means of one of the objects given up in the past. Along the path of regression the libido is enticed by fixations which it has left behind at these stages in its development.
Here the development toward perversion branches off sharply from that of the neuroses. If the regressions do not awaken the resistance of the ego, then a neurosis does not follow and the libido arrives at some actual, even if abnormal, satisfaction. The ego, however, controls not alone consciousness, but also the approaches to motor innervation, and hence the realization of psychic impulses. If the ego then does not approve this regression, the conflict takes place. The libido is locked out, as it were, and must seek refuge in some place where it can find an outlet for its fund of energy, in accordance with the controlling demands for pleasurable gratification. It must withdraw from the ego. Such an evasion is offered by the fixations established in the course of its evolution and now traversed regressively, against which the ego had, at the time, protected itself by suppressions. The libido, streaming back, occupies these suppressed positions and thus withdraws from before the ego and its laws. At the same time, however, it throws off all the influences acquired under its tutelage. The libido could be guided so long as there was a possibility of its being satisfied; under the double pressure of external and internal denial it becomes unruly and harks back to former and more happy times. Such is its character, fundamentally unchangeable. The ideas which the libido now takes over in order to hold its energy belong to the system of the unconscious, and are therefore subject to its peculiar processes, especially elaboration and displacement. Conditions are set up here which are entirely comparable to those of dream formation. Just as the latent dream, the fulfillment of awish-phantasy, is first built up in the unconsciousness, but must then pass through conscious processes before, censored and approved, it can enter into the compromise construction of the manifest dream, so the ideas representing the libido in the unconscious must still contend against the power of the fore-conscious ego. The opposition that has arisen against it in the ego follows it down by a "counter-siege" and forces it to choose such an expression as will serve at the same time to express itself. Thus, then, the symptom comes into being as a much distorted offshoot from the unconscious libidinous wish-fulfillment, an artificially selected ambiguity—with two entirely contradictory meanings. In this last point alone do we realize a difference between dream and symptom development, for the only fore-conscious purpose in dream formation is the maintenance of sleep, the exclusion from consciousness of anything which may disturb sleep; but it does not necessarily oppose the unconscious wish impulse with an insistent "No." Quite the contrary; the purpose of the dream may be more tolerant, because the situation of the sleeper is a less dangerous one. The exit to reality is closed only through the condition of sleep.
You see, this evasion which the libido finds under the conditions of the conflict is possible only by virtue of the existing fixations. When these fixations are taken in hand by the regression, the suppression is side-tracked and the libido, which must maintain itself under the conditions of the compromise, is led off or gratified. By means of such a detour by way of the unconscious and the old fixations, the libido has at last succeeded in breaking its way through to some sort of gratification, however extraordinarily limited this may seem and however unrecognizable any longer as a genuine satisfaction. Now allow me to add two further remarks concerning this final result. In the first place, I should like you to take note of the intimate connection between the libido and the unconscious on the one hand, and on the other of the ego, consciousness, and reality. The connection that is evidenced here, however, does not indicate that originally they in any way belong together. I should like you to bear continually in mind that everything I have said here, and all that will follow, pertains only to the symptom development of hysterical neurosis.
Where, now, can the libido find the fixations which it must have in order to force its way through the suppressions? In theactivities and experiences of infantile sexuality, in its abandoned component-impulses, its childish objects which have been given up. The libido again returns to them. The significance of this period of childhood is a double one; on the one hand, the instinctive tendencies which were congenital in the child first showed themselves at this time; secondly, at the same time, environmental influences and chance experiences were first awakening his other instincts. I believe our right to establish this bipartite division cannot be questioned. The assertion that the innate disposition plays a part is hardly open to criticism, but analytic experience actually makes it necessary for us to assume that purely accidental experiences of childhood are capable of leaving fixations of the libido. I do not see any theoretical difficulties here. Congenital tendencies undoubtedly represent the after-effects of the experiences of an earlier ancestry; they must also have once been acquired; without such acquired characters there could be no heredity. And is it conceivable that the inheritance of such acquired characters comes to a standstill in the very generation that we have under observation? The significance of infantile experience, however, should not, as is so often done, be completely ignored as compared with ancestral experiences or those of our adult years; on the contrary, they should meet with an especial appreciation. They have such important results because they occur in the period of uncompleted development, and because of this very fact are in a position to cause a traumatic effect. The researches on the mechanics of development by Roux and others have shown us that a needle prick into an embryonic cell mass which is undergoing division results in most serious developmental disturbances. The same injury to a larva or a completed animal can be borne without injury.
The libido fixation of adults, which we have referred to as representative of the constitutional factor in the etiological comparison of the neuroses, can be thought of, so far as we are concerned, as divisible into two separate factors, the inherited disposition and the tendency acquired in early childhood. We know that a schematic representation is most acceptable to the student. Let us combine these relations as follows:
The hereditary sexual constitution provides us with manifold tendencies, varying with the special emphasis given one or the other component of the instinct, either individually or in combination. With the factor of infantile experience, there is again built up a complementary series within the sexual constitution which is perfectly comparable with our first series, namely, the gradations between disposition and the chance experiences of the adult. Here again we find the same extreme cases and similar relations in the matter of substitution. At this point the question becomes pertinent as to whether the most striking regressions of the libido, those which hark back to very early stages in sexual organization, are not essentially conditioned by the hereditary constitutional factor. The answer to this question, however, may best be put off until we are in a position to consider a wider range in the forms of neurotic disease.
Let us devote a little time to the consideration of the fact that analytic investigation of neurotics shows the libido to be bound up with the infantile sexual experiences of these persons. In this light they seem of enormous importance for both the life and health of mankind. With respect to therapeutic work their importance remains undiminished. But when we do not take this into account we can herein readily recognize the danger of being misled by the situation as it exists in neurotics into adopting a mistaken and one-sided orientation toward life. In figuring the importance of the infantile experiences we must also subtract the influences arising from the fact that the libido has returned to them by regression, after having been forced out of its later positions. Thus we approach the opposite conclusion, that experiences of the libido had no importance whatever in their own time, but rather acquired it at the time of regression. You will remember that we were led to a similar alternative in the discussion of the Oedipus-complex.
A decision on this matter will hardly be difficult for us. The statement is undoubtedly correct that the hold which the infantile experiences have on the libido—with the pathogenic influences this involves—is greatly augmented by the regression; still, to allow them to become definitive would nevertheless be misleading. Other considerations must be taken into account as well. In the first place, observation shows, in a way that leaves no room for doubt, that infantile experiences have their particular significance which is evidenced already during childhood. There are, furthermore, neuroses in children in which the factor of displacement in time is necessarily greatly minimized or is entirely lacking, since the illness follows as an immediate consequence of the traumatic experience. The study of these infantile neuroses keeps us from many dangerous misunderstandings of adult neuroses, just as the dreams of children similarly serve as the key to the understanding of the dreams of adults. As a matter of fact, the neuroses of children are very frequent, far more frequent than is generally believed. They are often overlooked, dismissed as signs of badness or naughtiness, and often suppressed by the authority of the nursery; in retrospect, however, they may be easily recognized later. They occur most frequently in the form ofanxiety hysteria. What this implies we shall learn upon another occasion. When a neurosis breaks out in later life, analysis regularly shows that it is a direct continuation of that infantile malady which had perhaps developed only obscurely and incipiently. However, there are cases, as already stated, in which this childish nervousness continues, without any interruption, as a lifelong affliction. We have been able to analyze a very few examples of such neuroses during childhood, while they were actually going on; much more often we had to be satisfied with obtaining our insight into the childhood neurosis subsequently, when the patient is already well along in life, under conditions in which we are forced to work with certain corrections and under definite precautions.
Secondly, we must admit that the universal regression of the libido to the period of childhood would be inexplicable if there were nothing there which could exert an attraction for it. The fixation which we assume to exist towards specific developmental phases, conveys a meaning only if we think of it as stabilizinga definite amount of libidinous energy. Finally, I am able to remind you that here there exists a complementary relationship between the intensity and the pathogenic significance of the infantile experiences to the later ones which is similar to that studied in previous series. There are cases in which the entire causal emphasis falls upon the sexual experiences of childhood, in which these impressions take on an effect which is unmistakably traumatic and in which no other basis exists for them beyond what the average sexual constitution and its immaturity can offer. Side by side with these there are others in which the whole stress is brought to bear by the later conflicts, and the emphasis the analysis places on childhood impressions appears entirely as the work of regression. There are also extremes of "retarded development" and "regression," and between them every combination in the interaction of the two factors.
These relations have a certain interest for that pedagogy which assumes as its object the prevention of neuroses by an early interference in the sexual development of the child. So long as we keep our attention fixed essentially on the infantile sexual experiences, we readily come to believe we have done everything for the prophylaxis of nervous afflictions when we have seen to it that this development is retarded, and that the child is spared this type of experience. Yet we already know that the conditions for the causation of neuroses are more complicated and cannot in general be influenced through one single factor. The strict protection in childhood loses its value because it is powerless against the constitutional factor; furthermore, it is more difficult to carry out than the educators imagine, and it brings with it two new dangers that cannot be lightly dismissed. It accomplishes too much, for it favors a degree of sexual suppression which is harmful for later years, and it sends the child into life without the power to resist the violent onset of sexual demands that must be expected during puberty. The profit, therefore, which childhood prophylaxis can yield is most dubious; it seems, indeed, that better success in the prevention of neuroses can be gained by attacking the problem through a changed attitude toward facts.
Let us return to the consideration of the symptoms. They serve as substitutes for the gratification which has been forborne, by a regression of the libido to earlier days, with a return toformer development phases in their choice of object and in their organization. We learned some time ago that the neurotic is held fast somewhere in his past; we now know that it is a period of his past in which his libido did not miss the satisfaction which made him happy. He looks for such a time in his life until he has found it, even though he must hark back to his suckling days as he retains them in his memory or as he reconstructs them in the light of later influences. The symptom in some way again yields the old infantile form of satisfaction, distorted by the censoring work of the conflict. As a rule it is converted into a sensation of suffering and fused with other causal elements of the disease. The form of gratification which the symptom yields has much about it that alienates one's sympathy. In this we omit to take into account, however, the fact that the patients do not recognize the gratification as such and experience the apparent satisfaction rather as suffering, and complain of it. This transformation is part of the psychic conflict under the pressure of which the symptom must be developed. What was at one time a satisfaction for the individual must now awaken his antipathy or disgust. We know a simple but instructive example for such a change of feeling. The same child that sucked the milk with such voracity from its mother's breast is apt to show a strong antipathy for milk a few years later, which is often difficult to overcome. This antipathy increases to the point of disgust when the milk, or any substituted drink, has a little skin over it. It is rather hard to throw out the suggestion that this skin calls up the memory of the mother's breast, which was once so intensely coveted. In the meantime, to be sure, the traumatic experience of weaning has intervened.
There is something else that makes the symptoms appear remarkable and inexplicable as a means of libidinous satisfaction. They in no way recall anything from which we normally are in the habit of expecting satisfaction. They usually require no object, and thereby give up all connection with external reality. We understand this to be a result of turning away from fact and of returning to the predominance of pleasurable gratification. But it is also a return to a sort of amplified autoeroticism, such as was yielded the sex impulse in its earliest satisfactions. In the place of a modification in the outside world, we have a physical change, in other words, an internalreaction in place of an external one, an adjustment instead of an activity. Viewed from a phylogenetic standpoint, this expresses a very significant regression. We will grasp this better when we consider it in connection with a new factor which we are still to discover from the analytic investigation of symptom development. Further, we recall that in symptom formation the same processes of the unconscious have been at work as in dream formation—elaboration and displacement. Similarly to the dream, the symptom represents a fulfillment, a satisfaction after the manner of the infantile; by the utmost elaboration this satisfaction can be compressed into a single sensation or innervation, or by extreme displacement it may be restricted to a tiny element of the entire libidinous complex. It is no wonder that we often have difficulties in recognizing in the symptom the libidinous satisfaction which we anticipate and always find verified.
I have indicated that we must still become familiar with a new factor. It is something really surprising and confusing. You know that by analysis of the symptoms we arrive at a knowledge of the infantile experiences upon which the libido is fixated and out of which the symptoms are formed. Well, the surprising thing is this, that these infantile scenes are not always true. Indeed, in the majority of cases they are untrue, and in some instances they are directly contrary to historical truth. You see that this discovery, as no other, serves either to discredit the analysis which has led to such a result, or to discredit the patients upon whose testimony the analysis, as well as the whole understanding of neuroses, is built up. In addition there is something else utterly confusing about it. If the infantile experiences, revealed by analysis, were in every case real, we should have the feeling of walking on sure ground; if they were regularly falsified, disclosed themselves as inventions or phantasies of the patients, we should have to leave this uncertain ground and find a surer footing elsewhere. But it is neither the one nor the other, for when we look into the matter we find that the childhood experiences which are recalled or reconstructed in the course of the analysis may in some in some instances be false, in others undeniably true, and in the majority of cases a mixture of truth and fiction. The symptoms then are either the representation of actual experiences to which we may ascribean influence in the fixation of the libido, or the representation of phantasies of the patient which, of course, can be of no etiological significance. It is hard to find one's way here. The first foothold is given perhaps by an analogous discovery, namely, that the same scattered childhood memories that individuals always have had and have been conscious of prior to an analysis may be falsified as well, or at least may contain a generous mixture of true and false. Evidence of error very seldom offers difficulties, and we at least gain the satisfaction of knowing that the blame for this unexpected disappointment is not to be laid at the door of analysis, but in some way upon the patients.
After reflecting a bit we can easily understand what is so confusing in this matter. It is the slight regard for reality, the neglect to keep fact distinct from phantasy. We are apt to feel insulted that the patient has wasted our time with invented tales. There is an enormous gap in our thinking between reality and invention and we accord an entirely different valuation to reality. The patient, too, takes this same viewpoint in his normal thinking. When he offers the material which, by way of the symptom, leads back to the wish situations which are modeled upon the childhood experiences, we are at first, to be sure, in doubt whether we are dealing with reality or with phantasy. Later certain traits determine this decision; we are confronted with the task of acquainting the patient with them. This can never be accomplished without difficulty. If at the outset we tell him that he is going to reveal phantasies with which he has veiled his childhood history, just as every people weaves myths around its antiquity, we notice (to our comfort) that his interest in the further pursuit of the subject suddenly diminishes. He, too, wants to discover realities, and despises all "notions." But if until this is accomplished we allow him to believe that we are investigating the actual occurrences of his childhood, we run the risk of later being charged with error and with our apparent gullibility. For a long time he is unable to reconcile himself to the idea of considering phantasy and reality on equal terms and he tends, with reference to the childish experiences to be explained, to neglect for the time being the difference between the real and the imaginary. And yet this is obviously the only correct attitude toward these psychological products because they are, in a sense, real. It isa fact that the patient is able to create such phantasies for himself, and this is of scarcely less importance for his neurosis than if he had really undergone the experience which he imagines. These phantasies possesspsychologicalreality in contrast tophysicalreality, and so we gradually come to understand thatin the realm of neuroses the psychological reality is the determining factor.
Among the experiences which recur continually in the early history of neurotics and, in fact, are never lacking, some are of particular significance and accordingly I consider them worthy of special treatment. I shall enumerate a few examples of this species: observation of the parental intercourse, seduction by an adult, and the threat of castration. It would be a grievous error to assume that physical reality can never be accorded them; this may often be proved beyond doubt by the testimony of adult relatives. So, for example, it is not at all unusual if the little boy who begins to play with his penis, and does not yet know that one must conceal this, is threatened by his parents or nurse with the cutting off of the organ or the guilty hand. Parents often admit upon questioning that they thought they had done the right thing by this intimidation; many individuals retain a correct, conscious memory of these threats, especially if it has occurred in later childhood. When the mother or some other woman makes the threat she usually delegates the responsibility of executing it to the father or to the doctor. In the famousStruwelpeterby the pediatrist Hoffman, of Frankfort, rhymes which owe their popularity to his very fine understanding of the sexual and other complexes of childhood, you find a milder substitute for castration in the cutting off of the thumbs as a punishment for insistent sucking. But it is highly improbable that the threat of castration is actually made as often as it occurs in the analyses of neurotics. We are content to understand that the child imaginatively constructs this threat for himself from suggestions, from the knowledge that auto-erotic satisfaction is forbidden, and from the impression of castration he has received in discovering the female genital. It is, moreover, in no way impossible that the little child, so long as he is not credited with any understanding or memory, will, even in families outside the proletariat, become a witness to the sexual act between his parents or some othergroup-ups, and it cannot be disproved that the childsubsequentlyunderstands this impression, and may react upon it. But when this intercourse is described with minute details which could hardly have been observed, or if it turns out to be, as it so frequently does, an intercourse which was not face to face,more ferarum, there is no longer any doubt that this phantasy is derived from the observation of the intercourse of animals (dogs) and the unsatisfied curiosity of the child in his period of puberty. The greatest feat of the imagination is the phantasy of having witnessed the coitus of the parents while still unborn in the mother's womb. Of especial interest is the phantasy of having been seduced, because so often it is not a phantasy at all, but a real memory. But luckily it is not real so often as first appears from the results of analysis. Seduction by older children, or children of the same age, is much more frequent than seduction by adults, and if, in the case of little girls, the father quite regularly appears as the seducer in the occurrences which they relate, neither the fantastic nature of this accusation nor its motive can be doubted. The child as a rule covers the autoerotic period of his sexual activity, where there has been no actual seduction, with the seduction-phantasy. He spares himself the shame of onanism by imagining the presence of an object for his desires in that early period. As a matter of fact, you must not be misled in attributing sexual misuse of the child by its nearest male relatives solely and always to phantasy. Most analysts have probably treated cases in which such relations were real and could be proved beyond doubt, with the qualification that in such cases they belong to the later years of childhood and were transposed to an earlier time.