Freud - Complete Works (334 page)

   The sense of guilt of obsessional
neurotics finds its counterpart in the protestations of pious
people that they know that at heart they are miserable sinners; and
the pious observances (such as prayers, invocations, etc.) with
which such people preface every daily act, and in especial every
unusual undertaking, seem to have the value of defensive or
protective measures.

Obsessive Actions And Religious Practices

1907

   A deeper insight into the
mechanism of obsessional neurosis is gained if we take into account
the primary fact which lies at the bottom of it. This is always
the repression of an instinctual impulse
(a component of the
sexual instinct) which was present in the subject’s
constitution and which was allowed to find expression for a while
during his childhood but later succumbed to suppression. In the
course of the repression of this instinct a special
conscientiousness
is created which is directed against the
instinct’s aims; but this psychical reaction-formation feels
insecure and constantly threatened by the instinct which is lurking
in the unconscious. The influence of the repressed instinct is felt
as a temptation, and during the process of repression itself
anxiety is generated, which gains control over the future in the
form of
expectant
anxiety. The process of repression which
leads to obsessional neurosis must be considered as one which is
only partly successful and which increasingly threatens to fail. It
may thus be compared to an unending conflict; fresh psychical
efforts are continually required to counterbalance the forward
pressure of the instinct. Thus the ceremonial and obsessive actions
arise partly as a defence against the temptation and partly as a
protection against the ill which is expected. Against the
temptation the protective measures seem soon to become inadequate;
then the prohibitions come into play, with the purpose of keeping
at a distance situations that give rise to temptation. Prohibitions
take the place of obsessive actions, it will be seen, just as a
phobia is designed to avert a hysterical attack. Again, a
ceremonial represents the sum of the conditions subject to which
something that is not yet absolutely forbidden is permitted, just
as the Church’s marriage ceremony signifies for the believer
a sanctioning of sexual enjoyment which would otherwise be sinful.
A further characteristic of obsessional neurosis, as of all similar
affections, is that its manifestations (its symptoms, including the
obsessive actions)  fulfil the condition of being a compromise
between the warring forces of the mind. They thus always reproduce
something of the pleasure which they are designed to prevent; they
serve the repressed instinct no less than the agencies which are
repressing it. As the illness progresses, indeed, actions which
were originally mostly concerned with maintaining the defence come
to approximate more and more to the proscribed actions through
which the instinct was able to find expression in childhood.

Obsessive Actions And Religious Practices

1908

   Some features of this state of
affairs may be seen in the sphere of religious life as well. The
formation of a religion, too, seems to be based on the suppression,
the renunciation, of certain instinctual impulses. These impulses,
however, are not, as in the neuroses, exclusively components of the
sexual instinct; they are self-seeking, socially harmful instincts,
though, even so, they are usually not without a sexual component. A
sense of guilt following upon continual temptation and an expectant
anxiety in the form of fear of divine punishment have, after all,
been familiar to us in the field of religion longer than in that of
neurosis. Perhaps because of the admixture of sexual components,
perhaps because of some general characteristics of the instincts,
the suppression of instinct proves to be an inadequate and
interminable process in religious life also. Indeed, complete
backslidings into sin are more common among pious people than among
neurotics and these give rise to a new form of religious activity,
namely acts of penance, which have their counterpart in obsessional
neurosis.

   We have noted as a curious and
derogatory characteristic of obsessional neurosis that its
ceremonials are concerned with the small actions of daily life and
are expressed in foolish regulations and restrictions in connection
with them. We cannot understand this remarkable feature of the
clinical picture until we have realized that the mechanism of
psychical
displacement
, which was first discovered by me in
the construction of dreams,¹ dominates the mental processes of
obsessional neurosis. It is already clear from the few examples of
obsessive actions given above that their symbolism and the detail
of their execution are brought about by a displacement from the
actual, important thing on to a small one which takes its place -
for instance, from a husband on to a chair. It is this tendency to
displacement which progressively changes the clinical picture and
eventually succeeds in turning what is apparently the most trivial
matter into something of the utmost importance and urgency. It
cannot be denied that in the religious field as well there is a
similar tendency to a displacement of psychical values, and in the
same direction, so that the petty ceremonials of religious practice
gradually become the essential thing and push aside the underlying
thoughts. That is why religions are subject to reforms which work
retroactively and aim at a re-establishment of the original balance
of values.

  
¹
See
The Interpretation of Dreams
(1900
a
), Chapter VI, Section B.

Obsessive Actions And Religious Practices

1909

   The character of compromise which
obsessive actions possess in their capacity as neurotic symptoms is
the character least easily detected in corresponding religious
observances. Yet here, too, one is reminded of this feature of
neuroses when one remembers how commonly all the acts which
religion forbids - the expressions of the instincts it has
suppressed - are committed precisely in the name of, and ostensibly
for the sake of, religion.

   In view of these similarities and
analogies one might venture to regard obsessional neurosis as a
pathological counterpart of the formation of a religion, and to
describe that neurosis as an individual religiosity and religion as
a universal obsessional neurosis. The most essential similarity
would reside in the underlying renunciation of the activation of
instincts that are constitutionally present; and the chief
difference would lie in the nature of those instincts, which in the
neurosis are exclusively sexual in their origin, while in religion
they spring from egoistic sources.

   A progressive renunciation of
constitutional instincts, whose activation might afford the ego
primary pleasure, appears to be one of the foundations of the
development of human civilization. Some part of this instinctual
repression is effected by its religions, in that they require the
individual to sacrifice his instinctual pleasure to the Deity:
‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ In the development
of the ancient religions one seems to discern that many things
which man kind had renounced as ‘iniquities’ had been
surrendered to the Deity and were still permitted in his name, so
that the handing over to him of bad and socially harmful instincts
was the means by which man freed himself from their domination. For
this reason, it is surely no accident that all the attributes of
man, along with the misdeeds that follow from them, were to an
unlimited amount ascribed to the ancient gods. Nor is it a
contradiction of this that nevertheless man was not permitted to
justify his own iniquities by appealing to divine example.

VIENNA,
February
1907

1910

THE SEXUAL ENLIGHTENMENT OF CHILDREN

(AN OPEN LETTER TO DR. M. FÜRST)

(1907)

1911

Intentionally left blank

1912

THE SEXUAL ENLIGHTENMENT OF CHILDREN

(AN OPEN LETTER TO DR. M. FÜRST)

Dear Dr. Fürst,

   When you ask me for an expression
of opinion on ‘the sexual enlightenment of children’, I
assume that what you want is not a regular, formal treatise on the
subject which shall take into account the excessive mass of
literature that has grown up around it, but the independent
judgement of an individual doctor whose professional activities
have offered him special opportunities for concerning himself with
sexual problems. I know that you have followed my scientific
efforts with interest and that, unlike many of our colleagues, you
do not dismiss my ideas without examining them because I regard the
psychosexual constitution and certain noxae of sexual life as the
most important causes of the neurotic disorders that are so common.
My
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
, too, where I
have described the way in which the sexual instinct is compounded
and the disturbances which may occur in its development into the
function of sexuality, have recently had a friendly reception in
your journal.

   I am expected, therefore, to
answer questions on the following points: whether children ought to
be given any enlightenment at all about the facts of sexual life,
at what age this ought to happen and in what manner it should be
carried out. Let me admit to you at once that I find a discussion
of the second and third points perfectly reasonable, but that to my
mind it is quite incomprehensible how there could be a difference
of opinion on the first point. What can be the purpose of
withholding from children - or, let us say, from young people -
enlightenment of this kind about the sexual life of human beings?
Is it from a fear of arousing their interest in these matters
prematurely, before it awakens in them spontaneously? Is it from a
hope that a concealment of this kind may retard the sexual instinct
altogether until such time as it can find its way into the only
channels open to it in our middle-class social order? Is it
supposed that children would show no interest or understanding for
the facts and riddles of sexual life if they were not prompted to
do so by outside influences? Is it thought possible that the
knowledge which is withheld from them will not reach them in other
ways?  Or is it genuinely and seriously intended that later on
they should regard everything to do with sex as something degraded
and detestable from which their parents and teachers wished to keep
them away as long as possible?

The Sexual Enlightenment Of Children (An Open Letter To Dr. M. Furst)

1913

   I really do not know in which of
these purposes to look for the motive for the concealment of what
is sexual from children that is in fact carried out. I only know
that they are all equally absurd and that I find it difficult to
honour them with a serious refutation. I remember, however, that in
the family letters of that great thinker and humanitarian
Multatuli, I once found a few lines which are a more than adequate
answer:

   ‘To my mind, certain things
are in general too much wrapped in a veil. It is right to keep a
child’s imagination pure, but this purity will not be
preserved by ignorance. On the contrary, I think that concealment
leads a boy or girl to suspect the truth more than ever. Curiosity
leads us to pry into things which, if they had been told us without
any great to do, would have aroused little or no interest in us. If
this ignorance could be maintained even, I might become reconciled
to it, but that is impossible. The child comes into contact with
other children, books come his way which lead him to reflect, and
the mystery-making with which his parents treat what he has
nevertheless discovered actually increases his desire to know more.
This desire, which is only partly satisfied and only in secret,
excites his feeling and corrupts his imagination, so that the child
already sins while his parents still believe that he does not know
what sin is.’¹

  
¹
Multatuli, 1906,
1
, 26.

The Sexual Enlightenment Of Children (An Open Letter To Dr. M. Furst)

1914

   I do not know how the case could
be better stated, but perhaps I may add a few remarks. It is
undoubtedly nothing else but the customary prudishness and their
own bad conscience over sexual matters that causes adults to adopt
this attitude of ‘mystery-making’ in front of children;
but possibly a part is also played by a piece of theoretical
ignorance on their part, which we can counteract by giving the
adults some enlightenment. It is commonly believed that the sexual
instinct is absent in children and only begins to emerge in them at
puberty when the sexual organs mature. This is a gross error,
equally serious in its effects both on knowledge and on practice;
and it is so easily corrected by observation that one wonders how
it could ever have been made. As a matter of fact, the new-born
baby brings sexuality with it into the world, certain sexual
sensations accompany its development as a suckling and during early
childhood, and only very few children would seem to escape sexual
activities and sensations before puberty. Anyone who would like to
find a detailed exposition of these statements can do so in my
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
, to which I have
referred above. There he will learn that the organs of reproduction
proper are not the only parts of the body which provide sexual
sensations of pleasure, and that nature has even so ordered matters
that actual stimulations of the genitals are unavoidable during
early childhood. This period of life, during which a certain quota
of what is undoubtedly sexual pleasure is produced by the
excitation of various parts of the skin (erotogenic zones), by the
activity of certain biological instincts and as an accompanying
excitation in many affective states, is called the period of
auto-erotism
, to use a term introduced by Havelock Ellis.
All that puberty does is to give the genitals primacy among all the
other zones and sources which produce pleasure, and thus to force
erotism into the service of the function of reproduction. This
process can naturally undergo certain inhibitions, and in many
people (those who later become perverts and neurotics) it is only
incompletely accomplished. On the other hand, the child is capable
long before puberty of most of the psychical manifestations of
love-tenderness, for example, devotion and jealousy. Often enough,
too, an irruption of these mental states is associated with the
physical sensations of sexual excitation, so that the child cannot
remain in doubt as to the connection between the two. In short,
except for his reproductive power, a child has a fully-developed
capacity for love long before puberty; and it may be asserted that
the ‘mystery-making’ merely prevents him from
being able to gain an intellectual grasp of activities for which he
is psychically prepared and physically adjusted.

The Sexual Enlightenment Of Children (An Open Letter To Dr. M. Furst)

1915

   A child’s intellectual
interest in the riddles of sex, his desire for sexual knowledge,
shows itself accordingly at an unexpectedly early age. If it has
not been possible to make observations such as I am now going to
put before you more frequently, that can only be because parents
are either afflicted with blindness in regard to this interest on
the part of their children, or, because, if they cannot overlook
it, they at once take steps to stifle it. I know a delightful
little boy, now four years old, whose understanding parents abstain
from forcibly suppressing one part of the child’s
development. Little Hans has certainly not been exposed to anything
in the nature of seduction by a nurse, yet he has already for some
time shown the liveliest interest in the part of the body which he
calls his ‘widdler’. When he was only three he asked
his mother: ‘ Mummy, have you got a widdler too?’ His
mother answered: ‘Of course. What did you think?’ He
also asked his father the same question repeatedly. At the same age
he was taken to a cow-shed for the first time and saw a cow being
milked. ‘Oh look!’ he said, in surprise,
‘there’s milk coming out of its widdler!’ At the
age of three and three quarters he was on the way to making an
independent discovery of correct categories by means of his
observations. He saw some water being let out of an engine and
said, ‘Oh, look, the engine’s widdling. Where’s
it got its widdler?’ He added afterwards in reflective tones:
‘A dog and a horse have widdlers; a table and a chair
haven’t.’ Recently he was watching his seven-day-old
little sister being given a bath. ‘But her widdler’s
still quite small’, he remarked; ‘when she grows up
it’ll get bigger all right.’ (I have been told of this
same attitude towards the problem of sex distinction in other boys
of similar age.) I should like to say explicitly that little Hans
is not a sensual child or at all pathologically disposed. The fact
is simply, I think, that, not having been intimidated or oppressed
with a sense of guilt, he gives expression quite ingenuously to
what he thinks.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1924:] The history
of little Hans’s later illness and recovery is described in
my ‘Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy’
(1909
b
).

The Sexual Enlightenment Of Children (An Open Letter To Dr. M. Furst)

1916

   The second great problem which
exercises a child’s mind - only at a somewhat later age, no
doubt - is the question of the origin of babies. This is usually
started by the unwelcome arrival of a small brother or sister. It
is the oldest and most burning question that confronts immature
humanity. Those who understand how to interpret myths and legends
can detect it in the riddle which the Theban Sphinx set to Oedipus.
The customary answers given to the child in the nursery damage his
genuine instinct of research and as a rule deal the first blow,
too, at his confidence in his parents. From that time on he usually
begins to mistrust grown-up people, and to keep his most intimate
interests secret from them. The following little document shows how
tormenting this curiosity can become in older children. It is a
letter written by a motherless girl of eleven and a half who had
been speculating on the problem with her younger sister.

‘Dear Aunt Mali,

   ‘Will you please be so kind
as to tell me how you got Christel and Paul. You must know because
you are married. We were arguing about it yesterday evening and we
want to know the truth. We have nobody else to ask. When are you
coming to Salzburg? You know, Aunt Mali, we simply can’t
understand how the stork brings babies. Trudel thought the stork
brings them in a shirt. Then we want to know as well if the stork
gets them out of the pond and why one never sees babies in ponds.
And will you please tell me, too, how one knows beforehand when one
is going to have one. Write and tell me everything about it.

      ‘With
thousands of greetings and kisses from us all,

                                               
‘Your inquisitive niece,

                                                           
Lili.’

   I do not believe that this
touching letter brought the two sisters the enlightenment they
wanted. Later on the writer of it fell ill of the neurosis that
arises from unanswered unconscious questions - of obsessional
brooding.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1924:] After some
years, however, her obsessional brooding gave way to a dementia
praecox.

The Sexual Enlightenment Of Children (An Open Letter To Dr. M. Furst)

1917

   There does not seem to me to be a
single good reason for denying children the enlightenment which
their thirst for knowledge demands. To be sure, if it is the
purpose of educators to stifle the child’s power of
independent thought as early as possible, in favour of the
‘goodness’ which they think so much of, they cannot set
about this better than by deceiving him in sexual matters and
intimidating him in matters of religion. The stronger natures will,
it is true, withstand these influences and become rebels against
the authority of their parents and later against every other
authority. If children are not given the explanations for which
they turn to their elders, they go on tormenting themselves with
the problem in secret and produce attempts at solution in which the
truth they have guessed is mingled in the most extraordinary way
with grotesque untruths; or they whisper information to one another
in which, because of the young enquirers’ sense of guilt,
everything sexual is stamped as being horrible and disgusting.
These infantile sexual theories would be well worth collecting and
examining. From this time on, children usually lose the only proper
attitude to sexual questions, and many of them never regain it.

   It seems that the large majority
of authors, both men and women, who have written about the sexual
enlightenment of youth have concluded in favour of it. But the
clumsiness of most of their proposals as to when and how this
enlightenment is to take place tempts one to think that they have
not found it easy to arrive at this conclusion. So far as my
knowledge of the literature goes, a single outstanding exception is
provided by the charming letter of explanation which a certain Frau
Emma Eckstein quotes as having been written by her to her son when
he was about ten years old.¹ The customary method is obviously
not quite the right one: all sexual knowledge is kept from children
as long as possible, and then on one single occasion a disclosure
is made to them in solemn and turgid language, and even so is only
half the truth and generally comes too late. Most of the answers to
the question ‘How am I to tell my children?’ make such
a miserable impression, on me at least, that I should prefer
parents not to embark on the business of enlightenment at all. What
is really important is that children should never get the idea that
one wants to make more of a secret of the facts of sexual life than
of any other matter which is not yet accessible to their
understanding; and to ensure this it is necessary that from the
very first what has to do with sexuality should be treated like
anything else that is worth knowing about. Above all, it is the
duty of schools not to evade the mention of sexual matters. The
main facts of reproduction and their significance should be
included in lessons about the animal kingdom, and at the same time
stress should be laid on the fact that man shares every essential
in his organization with the higher animals. Then, provided that
the child’s home environment does not aim directly at
frightening him off thinking, something that I once overheard in a
nursery will probably happen more often. I heard a boy saying to
his little sister: ‘How can you think babies are brought by
the stork! You know man’s a mammal; d’you think storks
bring other mammals their babies too?’