Freud - Complete Works (333 page)

   In your experiments you do not
directly observe criticisms like these of his spontaneous ideas by
the subject; while we, on the other hand, are able in our
psycho-analyses to observe all the indications of a complex which
come to your notice. When the patient no longer ventures to evade
the rule which has been laid down for him, we nevertheless note
that he stops or hesitates from time to time or pauses in the
reproduction of his ideas. Every hesitation of this kind is, as we
see it, an expression of his resistance and serves as an indication
of a connection with the ‘complex’. Indeed, we regard
it as the most important sign of such a connection, just as is in
your case the analogous prolongation of the
reaction-time
.
We are accustomed to interpret hesitation in this sense even when
the content of the idea that is being held back does not seem to be
at all objectionable and when the patient assures us he cannot
imagine why he should hesitate to tell it to us. The pauses which
occur in psycho-analysis are as a rule many times longer than the
delays that you observe in the reaction experiments.

Psycho-Analysis And The Establishment Of The Facts In Legal Proceedings

1894

   Another of your indications of a
complex - the change in the
content
of the reaction - also
plays its part in the technique of psycho-analysis. We quite
generally regard even slight deviations in our patients from the
ordinary forms of expression as a sign of some hidden meaning, and
we are quite willing to expose ourselves for a while to the
patient’s ridicule by making interpretations in that sense.,
all that we require in order to uncover the complex.

   The third of your indications of
a complex (mistakes - that is, changes - in the
reproduction
) is also employed, though in a more restricted
field, in the technique of psycho-analysis. One task which often
faces us is the interpretation of dreams - that is, the translation
of the remembered content of a dream into its hidden meaning. It
sometimes happens that we are uncertain at which point to set about
the task, and in that case we may make use of a rule, discovered
empirically, which recommends us to get the dreamer to tell us his
dream once more. In doing so, he usually alters his modes of
expression in some parts of it while repeating the rest accurately.
The points at which his reproduction is defective owing to changes,
and often owing to omissions as well, are the points which we
fasten upon, because the inaccuracy guarantees a connection with
the complex and promises the best approach to the secret meaning of
the dream.¹

  
¹
See my
Interpretation of Dreams
(1900
a
).

Psycho-Analysis And The Establishment Of The Facts In Legal Proceedings

1895

   You must not get the impression
that we have come to an end of the points of agreement which I have
been following up, if I admit to you that no phenomenon similar to
perseveration
is manifested in psycho-analysis. This
apparent difference only arises from the special conditions of your
experiments. For you do not allow the effect of the complex time to
develop. Scarcely has it begun to act than you distract the
subject’s attention by a new and probably innocent stimulus
word; and then you may observe that he sometimes continues to be
occupied with the complex in spite of your interference. In
psycho-analysis, on the other hand, we avoid such interferences and
keep the patient occupied with the complex. Since in our procedure
everything
, so to speak, is perseveration, we cannot observe
that phenomenon as an isolated occurrence.

   We may justly claim that, in
principle, techniques of the kind I have described enable us to
make the patient conscious of what is repressed in him - of his
secret - and thus to remove the psychological causation of the
symptoms from which he is suffering. But before you draw any
conclusions from these successful results as to the possibilities
of your own work, we will examine some points of difference between
the psychological situations in the two cases.

   The chief difference has already
been named. In the neurotic the secret is hidden from his own
consciousness; in the criminal it is hidden only from you. In the
former there is a genuine ignorance, though not an ignorance in
every sense, while in the latter there is nothing but a pretence of
ignorance. Connected with this is another difference, which is in
practice of importance. In psycho-analysis the patient assists with
his conscious efforts to combat his resistance, because he expects
to gain something from the investigation, namely, his recovery. The
criminal, on the other hand, does not work with you; if he did, he
would be working against his whole ego. As though to make up for
this, however, all you are endeavouring to arrive at in your
investigation is an objective certainty on your part, whereas our
therapy demands that the patient himself should also arrive at the
same certainty. But it remains to be seen how far your procedure
will be rendered more difficult or be altered by the lack of
co-operation on the part of the subject of your examination. This
is a situation which you can never create in your experiments in
seminars, since the colleague who is playing the part of the
accused man remains a fellow-worker after all, and assists you in
spite of his conscious determination not to betray himself.

Psycho-Analysis And The Establishment Of The Facts In Legal Proceedings

1896

   If you look more deeply into the
comparison between the two situations it will become clear to you
in general that psycho-analysis is concerned with a simpler,
special, form of the task of uncovering what is hidden in the mind;
whereas in your work the task is a more comprehensive one. That the
case of the psychoneurotic is invariably concerned with a repressed
sexual complex (in the widest sense) is a difference which you need
not take into account. But there is something else that you must.
The aim of psycho-analysis is absolutely uniform in every case:
complexes have to be uncovered which have been repressed because of
feelings of unpleasure and which produce signs of resistance if an
attempt is made to bring them into consciousness. This resistance
is as it were localized; it arises at the frontier between
unconscious and conscious. In your cases what is concerned is a
resistance which comes entirely from consciousness. You cannot
dismiss this difference out of hand. You will first have to
determine experimentally whether conscious resistance is betrayed
by exactly the same indications as unconscious resistance. Further,
you cannot yet be certain, in my opinion, whether you may interpret
your objective indications of a complex as a
‘resistance’, as we psycho-therapists do. It may happen
with your experimental subjects - even though not very frequently
with criminals - that the complex you touch on is pleasurably
toned; and the question then arises whether such a complex will
produce the same reaction as a complex that is unpleasurably
toned.

Psycho-Analysis And The Establishment Of The Facts In Legal Proceedings

1897

   I should also like to point out
that your test may possibly be subject to a complication which does
not, by its very nature, arise in psycho-analysis. In your
examination you may be led astray by a neurotic who, although he is
innocent, reacts as if he were guilty, because a lurking sense of
guilt that already exists in him seizes upon the accusation made in
the particular instance. You must not regard this possibility as an
idle fiction; you have only to think of life in the nursery, where
such events can often enough be observed. It some times happens
that a child who has been accused of a misdeed strongly denies the
charge but at the same time weeps like a detected sinner. You may
perhaps think that the child is lying when he asserts his
innocence; but this is not necessarily so. It can be that he has in
fact not committed the particular crime with which you have charged
him but that he has committed one of which you know nothing and of
which you are not accusing him. He therefore quite truthfully
denies being guilty of the one misdeed, while at the same time
betraying his sense of guilt on account of the other. In this
respect - as in so many others - the adult neurotic behaves just
like a child. Many people are like this, and it is still open to
question whether your technique will succeed in distinguishing
self-accusing individuals of this kind from those who are really
guilty. Finally, one more point. You know that, according to the
rules governing criminal proceedings, you may not subject the
accused to any procedure which takes him by surprise. He will
therefore have been made aware that in this experiment it is a
matter for him of not betraying himself. It must then be asked
whether one can expect the same reactions when the subject’s
attention is directed towards the complex as when it is directed
away from it, and how far the intention to conceal something may
affect modes of reaction in different people.

Psycho-Analysis And The Establishment Of The Facts In Legal Proceedings

1898

   It is precisely because the
situations which underlie your investigation are so various that
psychology takes a very lively interest in its results, and I
should like to beg you not to despair of their practical utility
too soon. Although my work is so far removed from the practical
administration of justice, perhaps you will allow me to make one
further suggestion. However indispensable experiments in seminars
may be for preparatory purposes and for the formulation of
problems, you will never be able to reproduce in them the same
psychological situation as in the examination of a defendant in a
criminal case. The experiments remain dummy exercises and they can
never afford a basis for practical application in criminal trials.
If we do not want to abandon such an application of them, the
following expedient suggests itself. You might be allowed - indeed,
it might be made your duty - to undertake such examinations over a
number of years in every actual instance of a criminal prosecution,
without their results being allowed to influence the verdict of
the Court
. It would, indeed, be best if the Court were never
informed of the conclusion which you had drawn from your
examination on the question of the defendant’s guilt. After
years of collecting and comparing the results so obtained, all
doubts about the serviceability of this psychological method of
investigation would surely be resolved. I know, of course, that the
realization of a proposal such as this does not rest only with you
and your valued teachers.

1899

OBSESSIVE ACTIONS AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

(1907)

1900

Intentionally left blank

1901

OBSESSIVE ACTIONS AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

I am certainly not the first person to have
been struck by the resemblance between what are called obsessive
actions in sufferers from nervous affections and the observances by
means of which believers give expression to their piety. The term
‘ceremonial’, which has been applied to some of these
obsessive actions, is evidence of this. The resemblance, however,
seems to me to be more than a superficial one, so that an insight
into the origin of neurotic ceremonials may embolden us to draw
inferences by analogy about the psychological processes of
religious life.

   People who carry out obsessive
actions or ceremonials belong to the same class as those who suffer
from obsessive thinking, obsessive ideas, obsessive impulses and
the like. Taken together, these form a particular clinical entity,
to which the name of ‘obsessional neurosis’
[‘
Zwangsneurose
’] is customarily applied.¹
But one should not attempt to deduce the character of the illness
from its name; for, strictly speaking, other kinds of morbid mental
phenomena have an equal claim to possessing what are spoken of as
‘obsessional’ characteristics. In place of a definition
we must for the time being be content with obtaining a detailed
knowledge of these states, since we have not yet been able to
arrive at a criterion of obsessional neuroses; it probably lies
very deep, although we seem to sense its presence everywhere in the
manifestations of the illness.

  
¹
See Löwenfeld (1904).

Obsessive Actions And Religious Practices

1902

   Neurotic ceremonials consist in
making small adjustments to particular everyday actions, small
additions or restrictions or arrangements, which have always to be
carried out in the same, or in a methodically varied, manner. These
activities give the impression of being mere formalities, and they
seem quite meaningless to us. Nor do they appear otherwise to the
patient himself; yet he is incapable of giving them up, for any
deviation from the ceremonial is visited by intolerable anxiety,
which obliges him at once to make his omission good. Just as
trivial as the ceremonial actions themselves are the occasions and
activities which are embellished, encumbered and in any case
prolonged by the ceremonial - for instance, dressing and
undressing, going to bed or satisfying bodily needs. The
performance of a ceremonial can be described by replacing it, as it
were, by a series of unwritten laws. For instance, to take the case
of the bed ceremonial: the chair must stand in a particular place
beside the bed; the clothes must lie upon it folded in a particular
order; the blanket must be tucked in at the bottom and the sheet
smoothed out; the pillows must be arranged in such and such a
manner, and the subject’s own body must lie in a precisely
defined position. Only after all this may he go to sleep. Thus in
slight cases the ceremonial seems to be no more than an
exaggeration of an orderly procedure that is customary and
justifiable; but the special conscientiousness with which it is
carried out and the anxiety which follows upon its neglect stamp
the ceremonial as a ‘sacred act’. Any interruption of
it is for the most part badly tolerated, and the presence of other
people during its performance is almost always ruled out.

   Any activities whatever may
become obsessive actions in the wider sense of the term if they are
elaborated by small additions or given a rhythmic character by
means of pauses and repetitions. We shall not expect to find a
sharp distinction between ‘ceremonials’ and
‘obsessive actions’. As a rule obsessive actions have
grown out of ceremonials. Besides these two, prohibitions and
hindrances (abulias) make up the content of the disorder; these, in
fact, only continue the work of the obsessive actions, inasmuch as
some things are completely forbidden to the patient and others only
allowed subject to his following a prescribed ceremonial.

Obsessive Actions And Religious Practices

1903

   It is remarkable that both
compulsions and prohibitions (having to do something and having
not
to do something) apply in the first instance only to the
subject’s solitary activities and for a long time leave his
social behaviour unaffected. Sufferers from this illness are
consequently able to treat their affliction as a private matter and
keep it concealed for many years. And, indeed, many more people
suffer from these forms of obsessional neurosis than doctors hear
of. For many sufferers, too, concealment is made easier from the
fact that they are quite well able to fulfil their social duties
during a part of the day, once they have devoted a number of hours
to their secret doings, hidden from view like Mélusine.

   It is easy to see where the
resemblances lie between neurotic ceremonials and the sacred acts
of religious ritual: in the qualms of conscience brought on by
their neglect, in their complete isolation from all other actions
(shown in the prohibition against interruption) and in the
conscientiousness with which they are carried out in every detail.
But the differences are equally obvious, and a few of them are so
glaring that they make the comparison a sacrilege: the greater
individual variability of ceremonial actions in contrast to the
stereotyped character of rituals (prayer, turning to the East,
etc.), their private nature as opposed to the public and communal
character of religious observances, above all, however, the fact
that, while the minutiae of religious ceremonial are full of
significance and have a symbolic meaning, those of neurotics seem
foolish and senseless. In this respect an obsessional neurosis
presents a travesty, half comic and half tragic, of a private
religion. But it is precisely this sharpest difference between
neurotic and religious ceremonial which disappears when, with the
help of the psycho-analytic technique of investigation, one
penetrates to the true meaning of obsessive actions.¹ In the
course of such an investigation the appearance which obsessive
actions afford of being foolish and senseless is completely
effaced, and the reason for their having that appearance is
explained. It is found that the obsessive actions are perfectly
significant in every detail, that they serve important interests of
the personality and that they give expression to experiences that
are still operative and to thoughts that are cathected with affect.
They do this in two ways, either by direct or by symbolic
representation; and they are consequently to be interpreted either
historically or symbolically.

  
¹
See the collection of my shorter papers on
the theory of the neuroses published in 1906.

Obsessive Actions And Religious Practices

1904

   I must give a few examples to
illustrate my point. Those who are familiar with the findings of
psycho-analytic investigation into the psychoneuroses will not be
surprised to learn that what is being represented in obsessive
actions or in ceremonials is derived from the most intimate, and
for the most part from the sexual, experiences of the patient.

   (
a
) A girl whom I was able
to observe was under a compulsion to rinse round her wash-basin
several times after washing. The significance of this ceremonial
action lay in the proverbial saying: ‘Don’t throw away
dirty water till you have clean.’ Her action was intended to
give a warning to her sister, of whom she was very fond, and to
restrain her from getting divorced from her unsatisfactory husband
until she had established a relationship with a better man.

   (
b
) A woman who was living
apart from her husband was subject to a compulsion, whenever she
ate anything, to leave what was the best of it behind: for example,
she would only take the outside of a piece of roast meat. This
renunciation was explained by the date of its origin. It appeared
on the day after she had refused marital relations with her husband
- that is to say, after she had given up what was the best.

   (
c
) The same patient could
only sit on one particular chair and could only get up from it with
difficulty. In regard to certain details of her married life, the
chair symbolized her husband, to whom she remained faithful. She
found an explanation of her compulsion in this sentence: ‘It
is so hard to part from anything (a husband, a chair) upon which
one has once settled.’

Obsessive Actions And Religious Practices

1905

   (
d
) Over a period of time
she used to repeat an especially noticeable and senseless obsessive
action. She would run out of her room into another room in the
middle of which there was a table. She would straighten the
table-cloth on it in a particular manner and ring for the
housemaid. The latter had to come up to the table, and the patient
would then dismiss her on some indifferent errand. In the attempts
to explain this compulsion, it occurred to her that at one place on
the table-cloth there was a stain, and that she always arranged the
cloth in such a way that the housemaid was bound to see the stain.
The whole scene proved to be a reproduction of an experience in her
married life which had later on given her thoughts a problem to
solve. On the wedding-night her husband had met with a not unusual
mishap. He found himself impotent, and ‘many times in the
course of the night he came hurrying from his room into hers’
to try once more whether he could succeed. In the morning he said
he would feel ashamed in front of the hotel housemaid who made the
beds, and he took a bottle of red ink and poured its contents over
the sheet; but he did it so clumsily that the red stain came in a
place that was very unsuitable for his purpose. With her obsessive
action, therefore, she was representing the wedding-night.
‘Bed and board’ between them make up marriage.

   (
e
) Another compulsion
which she started - of writing down the number of every bank-note
before parting with it - had also to be interpreted historically.
At a time when she was still intending to leave her husband if she
could find another more trustworthy man, she allowed herself to
receive advances from a man whom she met at a watering-place, but
she was in doubt as to whether his intentions were serious. One
day, being short of small change, she asked him to change a five
kronen piece for her. He did so, pocketed the large coin and
declared with a gallant air that he would never part with it, since
it had passed through her hands. At their later meetings she was
frequently tempted to challenge him to show her the five-kronen
piece, as though she wanted to convince herself that she could
believe in his intentions. But she refrained, for the good reason
that it is impossible to distinguish between coins of the same
value. Thus her doubt remained unresolved; and it left her with the
compulsion to write down the number of each bank-note, by which it
can
be distinguished from all others of the same value.

Obsessive Actions And Religious Practices

1906

   These few examples, selected from
the great number I have met with, are merely intended to illustrate
my assertion that in obsessive actions everything has its meaning
and can be interpreted. The same is true of ceremonials in the
strict sense, only that the evidence for this would require a more
circumstantial presentation. I am quite aware of how far our
explanations of obsessive actions are apparently taking us from the
sphere of religious thought.

   It is one of the conditions of
the illness that the person who is obeying a compulsion carries it
out without understanding its meaning - or at any rate its chief
meaning. It is only thanks to the efforts of psycho-analytic
treatment that he becomes conscious of the meaning of his obsessive
action and, with it, of the motives that are impelling him to it.
We express this important fact by saying that the obsessive action
serves to express
unconscious
motives and ideas. In this, we
seem to find a further departure from religious practices; but we
must remember that as a rule the ordinary pious individual, too,
performs a ceremonial without concerning himself with its
significance, although priests and scientific investigators may be
familiar with the - mostly symbolic - meaning of the ritual. In all
believers, however, the motives which impel them to religious
practices are unknown to them or are represented in consciousness
by others which are advanced in their place.

   Analysis of obsessive actions has
already given us some sort of an insight into their causes and into
the chain of motives which bring them into effect. We may say that
the sufferer from compulsions and prohibitions behaves as if he
were dominated by a sense of guilt, of which, however, he knows
nothing, so that we must call it an unconscious sense of guilt, in
spite of the apparent contradiction in terms. This sense of guilt
has its source in certain early mental events, but it is constantly
being revived by renewed temptations which arise whenever there is
a contemporary provocation. Moreover, it occasions a lurking sense
of expectant anxiety, an expectation of misfortune, which is
linked, through the idea of punishment, with the internal
perception of the temptation. When the ceremonial is first being
constructed, the patient is still conscious that he must do this or
that lest some ill should befall, and as a rule the nature of the
ill that is to be expected is still known to his consciousness. But
what is already hidden from him is the connection - which is always
demonstrable - between the occasion on which this expectant anxiety
arises and the danger which it conjures up. Thus a ceremonial
starts as an
action for defence
or
insurance
, a
protective measure
.