Beyond the Pleasure Principle (27 page)

Other inhibitions clearly serve the purposes of self-punishment, as is not infrequently the case with those affecting work activities. These are things that the ego is not allowed to do because they would bring advantage and success, something that the stern super-ego has forbidden. The ego therefore refrains from these activities too –
in order not to enter into conflict with the super-ego
.

The more generalized inhibitions of the ego are subject to a different, very straightforward mechanism. If the ego is put under strain by particularly severe demands on the psyche, such as sorrow
⁴
for example, or a major suppression of emotion, or the need to stifle a constant welling of sexual fantasies, then it is left with so little spare energy that it has to stop expending it at numerous places all at once, like a speculator who is short of cash because he has tied it all up in his various projects. I was able to observe an instructive instance of such generalized inhibition, brief but intense, in the case
of a patient suffering from obsessional neurosis, who fell into a paralysing torpor lasting anything from a day to several days in circumstances that clearly
ought
to have given rise to an explosion of rage. This must surely open the way to an understanding of the kind of generalized inhibition that characterizes depressive states, notably the most severe of these: melancholia.

By way of conclusion, therefore, we can say of inhibitions that they constitute a restriction of ego function, occurring either as a precautionary measure, or because so much energy has already been used up elsewhere. It is now easy to see in what way an inhibition differs from a symptom; and a symptom can clearly no longer be described as a process operating within, or acting upon, the ego.

We long ago made a study of the essential elements of symptom-formation, and offered a description of them that we hope is incontestable. On this view, a symptom is both sign and surrogate of a drive that has remained ungratified; it is a product of the repression process. The latter emanates from the ego, which – perhaps at the behest of the super-ego – refuses to go along with a drive-cathexis instigated within the id.
⁵
Repression enables the ego to prevent the notion serving as the vehicle of the disagreeable
⁶
impulse from entering consciousness – though psychoanalysis often shows it to have survived as an unconscious formation.
⁷
Everything seems clear enough up to this point; but as soon as we venture beyond it we encounter unresolved difficulties.

In our earlier descriptions of the repression process we emphatically stressed its success in keeping things from consciousness, but left various other matters open to doubt. One question that arose was this: what happens to drive-impulses activated within the id that seek gratification as their goal? Our answer was an indirect one, to the effect that the process of repression transforms the expected
pleasure
of gratification into
un
pleasure; and this left us facing the problematic question as to how the gratifying of a drive can possibly result in unpleasure. In the hope that this will clarify matters, we wish to argue in no
un
certain terms that as a result of repression the excitatory process originally intended within the id does not in fact take place at all; the ego succeeds in inhibiting or deflecting it. If this is so, then we need no longer be puzzled by the ‘transformation of affect’
⁸
brought about by repression. But at the same time we have conceded that the ego can exert a very considerable influence
on events in the id, and we must accordingly learn to understand the means by which the ego is able to achieve this surprising degree of power.

I believe that the ego derives this influence from its very close links to the perceptual system, which indeed constitute its essence, and the grounds for its differentiation from the id. The function of this
Pcpt-Cs
system,
⁹
as we have termed it, is connected to the phenomenon of consciousness. The system receives excitations from within, as well as from without, and on the basis of the sensations of pleasure/unpleasure reaching it from that quarter it attempts to control the evolution of
all
psychic events in accordance with the pleasure principle. We so readily imagine the ego as being powerless against the id, but whenever it wants to resist a drive process within the id it need only give out a signal of
unpleasure
in order to achieve its ends, thanks to the assistance of the almost all-powerful agency of the pleasure principle. To consider this circumstance in isolation for a moment, we can illustrate it with an example borrowed from a different sphere. Let us suppose that in some state or other a certain clique is opposed to a measure which, if passed, would perfectly accord with the desires of the masses. This minority grouping therefore takes control of the press, uses it to manipulate ‘public opinion’ as the supreme political force, and thereby succeeds in ensuring that the proposed measure is not brought in.

This answer, however, raises further questions. Where does the energy come from that is used to generate the signal of unpleasure? We are offered a pointer by the notion that an unwanted process
within
is probably blocked in much the same way as a stimulus from
without
; that the ego takes the same course in defending itself against inner dangers as it does against external ones. In the case of external danger, living organisms do whatever they can to escape from the threat. First of all, they withdraw cathexis from their physical perception of the danger; then later they realize that a more effective remedy is to activate their muscles in such a way that perception of the danger, even supposing they choose not to shut it out, is no longer possible – in other words they retreat from the danger area. Repression, too, amounts to a similar attempt to escape
from danger. The ego withdraws (pre-conscious) cathexis from the drive-representamen
¹⁰
that it wants to repress, and uses it to release unpleasure (fear). The question as to how fear arises in repression is doubtless not a simple one; none the less we can justifiably adhere to the notion that the
ego
is the true locus of fear, and reject the earlier view that it is the cathectic energy of the repressed impulse that is automatically transformed into fear. If I have expressed this view myself in the past, it is because I was offering a phenomenological rather than a metapsychological description.

On the basis of what has been said so far, a new question immediately presents itself: how is it possible, in terms of economy, for a mere withdrawal or release process such as that involved in the retracting of pre-conscious ego-cathexis to produce unpleasure or fear, which – according to all our assumptions - can only result from an
increase
in cathexis? My answer is that the explanation for this cause–effect relationship is not to be found in the economic realm at all; in repression, fear is not produced anew, but is
re
produced as a state of affect on the basis of a pre-existing memory-image. However, with the further question as to the
origin
of this fear – and of affects in general – we leave the realm that incontestably pertains to psychology, and enter the neighbouring terrain of physiology. States of affect are innate in the human psyche as the residue of primal traumatic experiences, and in analogous circumstances they are reawakened as memory-symbols. I believe that I was not mistaken when I equated them to attacks of hysteria, which arise at a later stage and on an individual basis, and when I described them as the normal paradigms for such attacks. In the case of humans and related species it appears to be the birth process which, as each individual's first experience of fear, gives the actual
expression
of the affect of fear its characteristic form. We must not attach undue importance to this nexus, however, and in acknowledging it we must not overlook the fact that an affect-symbol is a biological imperative for danger situations, and would have been created in any event. I also believe that there is no justification for supposing that in the case of every single attack of fear something occurs in the psyche amounting to a reproduction of the birth experience. It is not
even certain whether attacks of hysteria, which start as traumatic reproductions of this kind, permanently retain this characteristic.

I have argued elsewhere that most repressions that we encounter in our therapeutic work are cases of
secondary
repression. They presuppose
primal
repressions that have taken place at an earlier stage and which exert a magnetic influence on the subsequent process. As yet far too little is known about these background factors and preliminary stages in respect of repression. One all too readily runs the risk of over-estimating the role of the super-ego in repression. It is currently impossible to judge whether it is not perhaps the emergence of the super-ego that marks the dividing line between primal and secondary suppression. One thing that is clear is that the first attacks of fear – which are extremely intense – occur
before
the super-ego differentiates. It is altogether plausible that
quantitative
factors, such as the excessive strength of an excitation and a sudden breaching of the protective barrier, constitute the most immediate cause of primal repressions.

Mention of the protective barrier serves as a cue reminding us that repressions occur in two different situations: when a disagreeable drive-impulse is aroused by perception of something
external
; and when it emerges
internally
without any such provocation from without. We shall return to this difference later on. Let us note, however, that the barrier gives protection only against external stimuli, not against internal pressures exerted by drives.

If we continue to focus our attention on the ego's attempts to escape from danger, we shall not get very far with respect to symptom-formation. A symptom arises out of a drive-impulse that has been obstructed by a repression. If by use of the unpleasure signal the ego achieves its goal of suppressing the drive-impulse completely, then we learn nothing about how this process happens. We can learn only from cases where the repression can be said to have
failed
to some greater or lesser degree.

In such cases it generally transpires that, despite the repression, the drive-impulse contrived to come through in surrogate form – but a severely stunted, displaced, inhibited one. Furthermore there is no hint of gratification about this surrogate. No sensation of
pleasure is produced when it is carried into effect; instead, this latter event exhibits the character of a compulsion. In the course of thus debasing the gratification process to the level of a mere symptom, however, repression demonstrates its power in another respect as well. Wherever possible, the surrogation process is prevented from achieving release through motor activity; and even where it is not so prevented, it is forced to use up all its energy procuring changes within the body, and is not permitted to extend its activities to the world outside; it is denied any opportunity to convert itself into action. As we know, in repression the workings of the ego are subject to the influence of external reality, and it therefore ensures that any successes of the surrogation process do not obtrude upon that reality.

It is the ego that determines what enters consciousness, and likewise determines what makes the transition into action
vis-à-vis
the external world – and in repression it deploys its power in
both
directions. This exercise of its power is felt on the one hand by the drive-representamen, on the other by the drive-impulse itself. This being so, it is apposite for us to ask how this acknowledgement of the might of the ego can possibly accord with the description of the ego's status that we adumbrated in our study
The Ego and the Id.
In that work we depicted the ego's dependence on both the id and the super-ego; we exposed its impotence and its apprehensiveness
vis-á-vis
both, and its travails in maintaining its air of superiority. This view has since met with a highly positive response in psychoanalytical literature. Numerous voices have emphatically stressed the weakness of the ego
vis-á-vis
the id, of rationality
vis-á-vis
the daemonic element within us, and are busily turning this theory into one of the central pillars of a psychoanalytical ‘world view’. Shouldn't their sheer awareness of how repression actually works deter psychoanalysts in particular from so enthusiastically embracing such an extreme and partisan position?

I am not at all in favour of concocting world views.
¹¹
This is a preoccupation best left to philosophers, who avowedly find it impossible to accomplish life's journey without a Baedeker
¹²
of this sort to guide them at every turn. Let us humbly accept the scorn with which philosophers look down upon us from their vantage point
of superior exigence.
¹³
Since we too can no more deny our narcissistic pride than anyone else, we shall seek consolation in the thought that all these grand ‘Guides to Life’ rapidly go out of date; that it is precisely our own myopically narrow focus on small details that makes it necessary for them to be rewritten; and that even the most modern of these Baedekers are merely attempts at filling the shoes of the old, so comfortable, so all-embracing catechism. As we well know, science has so far managed to shed precious little light on the riddles of the world, and philosophers for all their sound and fury will change this not one jot; the only thing that can slowly, steadily procure change is patient perseverance in the kind of work that subordinates everything to the single imperative of certainty. When the traveller sings in the night he may well close his eyes to his anxiety
¹⁴
– but it certainly doesn't help him to see things more clearly.