Freud - Complete Works (263 page)
¹
[
Footnote added
1920:] It implies no
qualification of the above assertion, but rather an amplification
of it, if I restate it as follows: neurotic symptoms are based on
the one hand on the demands of the libidinal instincts and on the
other hand on those made by the ego by way of reaction to
them.
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1489
The removal of the symptoms of
hysterical patients by psycho-analysis proceeds on the supposition
that those symptoms are substitutes - transcriptions as it were -
for a number of emotionally cathected mental processes, wishes and
desires, which, by the operation of a special psychical procedure
(repression), have been prevented from obtaining discharge in
psychical activity that is admissible to consciousness. These
mental processes, therefore, being held back in a state of
unconsciousness, strive to obtain an expression that shall be
appropriate to their emotional importance - to obtain discharge;
and in the case of hysteria they find such an expression (by means
of the process of ‘conversion’) in somatic phenomena,
that is, in hysterical symptoms. By systematically turning these
symptoms back (with the help of a special technique ) into
emotionally cathected ideas - ideas that will now have become
conscious - it is possible to obtain the most accurate knowledge of
the nature and origin of these formerly unconscious psychical
structures.
FINDINGS OF
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
In this manner the fact has
emerged that symptoms represent
a substitute for impulses the source of whose strength is derived
from the sexual instinct. What we know about the nature of
hysterics before they fall ill - and they may be regarded as
typical of all psychoneurotics - and about the occasions which
precipitate their falling ill, is in complete harmony with this
view. The character of hysterics shows a degree of sexual
repression in excess of the normal quantity, an intensification of
resistance against the sexual instinct (which we have already met
with in the form of shame, disgust and morality), and what seems
like an instinctive aversion on their part to any intellectual
consideration of sexual problems. As a result of this, in
especially marked cases, the patients remain in complete ignorance
of sexual matters right into the period of sexual
maturity.¹
On a cursory view, this trait,
which is so characteristic of hysteria, is not uncommonly screened
by the existence of a second constitutional character present in
hysteria, namely the predominant development of the sexual
instinct. Psycho-analysis, however, can invariably bring the first
of these factors to light and clear up the enigmatic contradiction
which hysteria presents, by revealing the pair of opposites by
which it is characterized - exaggerated sexual craving and
excessive aversion to sexuality.
¹
Breuer writes of the patient in connection
with whom he first adopted the cathartic method: ‘The factor
of sexuality was astonishingly undeveloped in
her.’
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1490
In the case of anyone who is
predisposed to hysteria, the onset of his illness is precipitated
when, either as a result of his own progressive maturity or of the
external circumstances of his life, he finds himself faced by the
demands of a real sexual situation. Between the pressure of the
instinct and his antagonism to sexuality, illness offers him a way
of escape. It does not solve his conflict, but seeks to evade it by
transforming his libidinal impulses into symptoms. The exception is
only an
apparent
one when a hysteric - a male patient it may
be - falls ill as a result of some trivial emotion, some conflict
which does not centre around any sexual interest. In such cases
psycho-analysis is regularly able to show that the illness has been
made possible by the sexual component of the conflict, which has
prevented the mental processes from reaching a normal issue.
NEUROSIS AND
PERVERSION
There is no doubt that a large part
of the opposition to these
views of mine is due to the fact that sexuality, to which I trace
back psycho-neurotic symptoms, is regarded as though it coincided
with the normal sexual instinct. But psycho-analytic teaching goes
further than this. It shows that it is by no means only at the cost
of the so-called
normal
sexual instinct that these symptoms
originate - at any rate such is not exclusively or mainly the case;
they also give expression (by conversion) to instincts which would
be described as
perverse
in the widest sense of the word if
they could be expressed directly in phantasy and action without
being diverted from consciousness. Thus symptoms are formed in part
at the cost of
abnormal
sexuality;
neuroses are, so to
say, the negative of the perversions
.¹
¹
The contents of the clearly conscious
phantasies of perverts (which in favourable circumstances can be
transformed into manifest behaviour), of the delusional fears of
paranoics (which are projected in a hostile sense on to other
people) and of the unconscious phantasies of hysterics (which
psycho-analysis reveals behind their symptoms) - all of these
coincide with one another even down to their details.
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1491
The sexual instinct of
psychoneurotics exhibits all the aberrations which we have studied
as variations of normal, and as manifestations of abnormal, sexual
life.
(
a
) The unconscious mental
life of all neurotics (without exception) shows inverted impulses,
fixation of their libido upon persons of their own sex. It would be
impossible without deep discussion to give any adequate
appreciation of the importance of this factor in determining the
form taken by the symptoms of the illness. I can only insist that
an unconscious tendency to inversion is never absent and is of
particular value in throwing light upon hysteria in men.¹
(
b
) It is possible to
trace in the unconscious of psychoneurotics tendencies to every
kind of anatomical extension of sexual activity and to show that
those tendencies are factors in the formation of symptoms. Among
them we find occurring with particular frequency those in which the
mucous membrane of the mouth and anus are assigned the role of
genitals.
(
c
) An especially
prominent part is played as factors in the formation of symptoms in
psychoneuroses by the component instincts, which emerge for the
most part as pairs of opposites and which we have met with as
introducing new sexual aims - the scopophilic instinct and
exhibitionism and the active and passive forms of the instinct for
cruelty. The contribution made by the last of these is essential to
the understanding of the fact that symptoms involve
suffering
, and it almost invariably dominates a part of the
patient’s social behaviour. It is also through the medium of
this connection between libido and cruelty that the transformation
of love into hate takes place, the transformation of affectionate
into hostile impulses, which is characteristic of a great number of
cases of neurosis, and indeed, it would seem, of paranoia in
general.
The interest of these findings is
still further increased by certain special facts.
(
α
)
Whenever we find in the unconscious an instinct of this sort which
is capable of being paired off with an opposite one, this second
instinct will regularly be found in operation as well. Every active
perversion is thus accompanied by its passive counterpart: anyone
who is an exhibitionist in his unconscious is at the same time a
voyeur
; in anyone who suffers from the consequences of
repressed sadistic impulses there is sure to be another determinant
of his symptoms which has its source in masochistic inclinations.
The complete agreement which is here shown with what we have found
to exist in the corresponding ‘positive’ perversions is
most remarkable, though in the actual symptoms one or other of the
opposing tendencies plays the predominant part.
(
β
)
In any fairly marked case of psychoneurosis it is unusual for only
a single one of these perverse instincts to be developed. We
usually find a considerable number and as a rule traces of them
all. The degree of development of each particular instinct is,
however, independent of that of the others. Here, too, the study of
the ‘positive’ perversions provides an exact
counterpart.
¹
Psychoneuroses are also very often
associated with
manifest
inversion. In such cases the
heterosexual current of feeling has undergone complete suppression.
It is only fair to say that my attention was first drawn to the
necessary universality of the tendency to inversion in
psychoneurotics by Wilhelm Fliess of Berlin, after I had discussed
its presence in individual cases. - [
Added
1920:] This fact,
which has not been sufficiently appreciated, cannot fail to have a
decisive influence on any theory of homosexuality.
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1492
(5) COMPONENT INSTINCTS AND EROTOGENIC ZONES
If we put together what we have
learned from our investigation of positive and negative
perversions, it seems plausible to trace them back to a number of
‘component instincts’, which, however, are not of a
primary nature, but are susceptible to further analysis. By an
‘instinct’ is provisionally to be understood the
psychical representative of an endosomatic, continuously flowing
source of stimulation, as contrasted with a ‘stimulus’,
which is set up by
single
excitations coming from
without
. The concept of instinct is thus one of those lying
on the frontier between the mental and the physical. The simplest
and likeliest assumption as to the nature of instincts would seem
to be that in itself an instinct is without quality, and, so far as
mental life is concerned, is only to be regarded as a measure of
the demand made upon the mind for work. What distinguishes the
instincts from one another and endows them with specific qualities
is their relation to their somatic sources and to their aims. The
source of an instinct is a process of excitation occurring in an
organ and the immediate aim of the instinct lies in the removal of
this organic stimulus.¹
There is a further provisional
assumption that we cannot escape in the theory of the instincts. It
is to the effect that excitations of two kinds arise from the
somatic organs, based upon differences of a chemical nature. One of
these kinds of excitation we describe as being specifically sexual,
and we speak of the organ concerned as the ‘erotogenic
zone’ of the sexual component instinct arising from
it.²
¹
[
Footnote added
1924:] The theory of
the instincts is the most important but at the same time the least
complete portion of psycho-analytic theory. I have made further
contributions to it in my later works
Beyond the Pleasure
Principle
(1920
g
) and
The Ego and the Id
(1923
b
).
²
[
Footnote added
1915:] It is not
easy in the present place to justify these assumptions, derived as
they are from the study of a particular class of neurotic illness.
But on the other hand, if I omitted all mention of them, it would
be impossible to say anything of substance about the
instincts.
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1493
The part played by the erotogenic
zones is immediately obvious in the case of those perversions which
assign a sexual significance to the oral and anal orifices. These
behave in every respect like a portion of the sexual apparatus. In
hysteria these parts of the body and the neighbouring tracts of
mucous membrane become the seat of new sensations and of changes in
innervation - indeed, of processes that can be compared to erection
- in just the same way as do the actual genitalia under the
excitations of the normal sexual processes.
The significance of the
erotogenic zones as apparatuses subordinate to the genitals and as
substitutes for them is, among all the psychoneuroses, most clearly
to be seen in hysteria; but this does not imply that that
significance is any the less in the other forms of illness. It is
only that in them it is less recognizable, because in their case
(obsessional neurosis and paranoia) the formation of the symptoms
takes place in regions of the mental apparatus which are more
remote from the particular centres concerned with somatic control.
In obsessional neurosis what is more striking is the significance
of those impulses which create new sexual aims and seem independent
of erotogenic zones. Nevertheless, in scopophilia and exhibitionism
the eye corresponds to an erotogenic zone; while in the case of
those components of the sexual instinct which involve pain and
cruelty the same role is assumed by the skin - the skin, which in
particular parts of the body has become differentiated into sense
organs or modified into mucous membrane, and is thus the erotogenic
zone
par excellence
.¹