Freud - Complete Works (338 page)

   We ought in general to consider
whether other character complexes, too, do not exhibit a connection
with the excitations of particular erotogenic zones. At present I
only know of the intense ‘burning’ ambition of people
who earlier suffered from enuresis. We can at any rate lay down a
formula for the way in which character in its final shape is formed
out of the constituent instincts: the permanent character-traits
are either unchanged prolongations of the original instincts, or
sublimations of those instincts, or reaction-formations against
them.

  
¹
[In English in the original.]

1946

‘CIVILIZED’ SEXUAL MORALITY AND MODERN NERVOUS ILLNESS

(1908)

1947

Intentionally left blank

1948

‘CIVILIZED’ SEXUAL MORALITY AND MODERN NERVOUS ILLNESS

In his recently published book,
Sexual
Ethics
, Von Ehrenfels (1907) dwells on the difference between
‘natural’ and ‘civilized’ sexual morality.
By natural sexual morality we are to understand, according to him,
a sexual morality under whose dominance a human stock is able to
remain in lasting possession of health and efficiency, while
civilized sexual morality is a sexual morality obedience to which,
on the other hand, spurs men on to intense and productive cultural
activity. This contrast, he thinks, is best illustrated by
comparing the innate character of a people with their cultural
attainments. I may refer the reader to Von Ehrenfels’s own
work for a more extensive consideration of this significant line of
thought, and I shall extract from it here only as much as I need as
a starting-point for my own contribution to the subject.

   It is not difficult to suppose
that under the domination of a civilized sexual morality the health
and efficiency of single individuals may be liable to impairment
and that ultimately this injury to them, caused by the sacrifices
imposed on them, may reach such a pitch that, by this indirect
path, the cultural aim in view will be endangered as well. And Von
Ehrenfels does in fact attribute a number of ill-effects to the
sexual morality which dominates our Western society to-day,
ill-effects for which he is obliged to make that morality
responsible; and, although he fully acknowledges its high aptitude
for the furtherance of civilization, he is led to convict it of
standing in need of reform. In his view, what is characteristic of
the civilized sexual morality that dominates us is that the demands
made on women are carried over to the sexual life of men and that
all sexual intercourse is prohibited except in monogamous marriage.
Nevertheless, consideration of the natural difference between the
sexes makes it necessary to visit men’s lapses with less
severity and thus in fact to admit a
double
morality for
them. But a society which accepts this double morality cannot carry
‘the love of truth, honesty and humanity’ (Von
Ehrenfels, ibid. 32 ff.) beyond a definite and narrow limit, and is
bound to induce in its members concealment of the truth, false
optimism, self-deception and deception of others. And civilized
sexual morality has still worse effects, for, by glorifying
monogamy, it cripples the factor of
selection by virility
-
the factor whose influence alone can bring about an improvement of
the individual’s innate constitution, since in civilized
peoples
selection by vitality
has been reduced to a minimum
by humanity and hygiene (ibid., 35).

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1949

   Among the damaging effects which
are here laid at the door of civilized sexual morality, the
physician will miss a particular one whose significance will be
discussed in detail in the present paper. I refer to the increase
traceable to it of modern nervous illness - of the nervous illness,
that is, which is rapidly spreading in our present-day society.
Occasionally a nervous patient will himself draw the doctor’s
attention to the part played in the causation of his complaint by
the opposition between his constitution and the demands of
civilization and will say: ‘In our family we’ve all
become neurotic because we wanted to be something better than what,
with our origin, we are capable of being.’ Often, too, the
physician finds food for thought in observing that those who
succumb to nervous illness are precisely the offspring of fathers
who, having been born of rough but vigorous families, living in
simple, healthy, country conditions, had successfully established
themselves in the metropolis, and in a short space of time had
brought their children to a high level of culture. But, above all,
nerve specialists themselves have loudly proclaimed the connection
between ‘increasing nervous illness’ and modern
civilized life. The grounds to which they attribute this connection
will be shown by a few extracts from statements that have been made
by some eminent observers.

   W. Erb (1893): ‘The
original question, then, is whether the causes of nervous illness
that have been put before you are present in modern life to such a
heightened degree as to account for a marked increase in that form
of illness. The question can be answered without hesitation in the
affirmative, as a cursory glance at our present-day existence and
its features will show.

   ‘This is already clearly
demonstrated by a number of general facts. The extraordinary
achievements of modern times, the discoveries and inventions in
every sphere, the maintenance of progress in the face of increasing
competition - these things have only been gained, and can only be
held, by great mental effort. The demands made on the efficiency of
the individual in the struggle for existence have greatly increased
and it is only by putting out all his mental powers that he can
meet them. At the same time, the individual’s needs and his
demands for the enjoyments of life have increased in all classes;
unprecedented luxury has spread to strata of the population who
were formerly quite untouched by it; irreligion, discontent and
covetousness have grown up in wide social spheres. The immense
extension of communications which has been brought about by the
network of telegraphs and telephones that encircle the world has
completely altered the conditions of trade and commerce. All is
hurry and agitation; night is used for travel, day for business,
even ‘holiday trips’ have become a strain on the
nervous system. Important political, industrial and financial
crises carry excitement into far wider circles of people than they
used to do; political life is engaged in quite generally;
political, religious and social struggles, party-politics,
electioneering, and the enormous spread of trade-unionism inflame
tempers, place an ever greater strain on the mind, and encroach
upon the hours for recreation, sleep and rest. City life is
constantly becoming more sophisticated and more restless. The
exhausted nerves seek recuperation in increased stimulation and in
highly-spiced pleasures, only to become more exhausted than before.
Modern literature is predominantly concerned with the most
questionable problems which stir up all the passions, and which
encourage sensuality and a craving for pleasure, and contempt for
every fundamental ethical principle and every ideal. It brings
before the reader’s mind pathological figures and problems
concerned with psychopathic sexuality, and revolutionary and other
subjects. Our ears are excited and overstimulated by large doses of
noisy and insistent music. The theatres captivate all our senses
with their exciting performances. The plastic arts, too, turn by
preference to what is repellent, ugly and suggestive, and do not
hesitate to set before our eyes with revolting fidelity the most
horrible sights that reality has to offer.

   ‘This general description
is already enough to indicate a number of dangers presented by the
evolution of our modern civilization. Let me now fill in the
picture with a few details.’

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1950

   Binswanger (1896):
‘Neurasthenia in particular has been described as an
essentially modern disorder, and Beard, to whom we are indebted for
a first comprehensive account of it believed that he had discovered
a new nervous disease which had developed specifically on American
soil. This supposition was of course a mistaken one; nevertheless,
the fact that it was an
American
physician who was first
able to grasp and describe the peculiar features of this illness,
as the fruit of a wide experience, indicates, no doubt, the close
connections which exist between it and modern life, with its
unbridled pursuit of money and possessions, and its immense
advances in the field of technology which have rendered illusory
every obstacle, whether temporal or spatial, to our means of
intercommunication.’

   Von Krafft-Ebing (1895):
‘The mode of life of countless civilized people exhibits
nowadays an abundance of anti-hygienic factors which make it easy
to understand the fateful increase of nervous illness; for those
injurious factors take effect first and foremost on the brain. In
the course of the last decades changes have taken place in the
political and social - and especially in the mercantile, industrial
and agricultural - conditions of civilized nations which have
brought about great changes in people’s occupations, social
position and property, and this at the cost of the nervous system,
which is called upon to meet the increased social and economic
demands by a greater expenditure of energy, often with quite
inadequate opportunity for recuperation.’

   The fault I have to find with
these and many other similarly-worded opinions is not that they are
mistaken but that they prove insufficient to explain the details in
the picture of nervous disturbances and that they leave out of
account precisely the most important of the aetiological factors
involved. If we disregard the vaguer ways of being
‘nervous’ and consider the specific forms of nervous
illness, we shall find that the injurious influence of civilization
reduces itself in the main to the harmful suppression of the sexual
life of civilized peoples (or classes) through the
‘civilized’ sexual morality prevalent in them.

   I have tried to bring forward the
evidence for this assertion in a number of technical papers.¹
I cannot repeat it here. I will, however, quote the most important
of the arguments arising from my investigations.

   Careful clinical observation
allows us to distinguish two groups of nervous disorders: the
neuroses
proper and the
psychoneuroses
. In the former
the disturbances (the symptoms), whether they show their effects in
somatic or mental functioning, appear to be of a
toxic
nature. They behave exactly like the phenomena accompanying an
excess or a deprivation of certain nerve poisons. These neuroses -
which are commonly grouped together as ‘neurasthenia’ -
can be induced by certain injurious influences in sexual life,
without any hereditary taint being necessarily present; indeed, the
form taken by the disease corresponds to the nature of these noxae,
so that often enough the particular sexual aetiology can at once be
deduced from the clinical picture. There is a total absence, on the
other hand, of any such regular correspondence between the form of
a nervous illness and the other injurious influences of
civilization which are blamed by the authorities. We may,
therefore, regard the sexual factor as the essential one in the
causation of the neuroses proper.

  
¹
See my collection of short papers on the
theory of the neuroses (1906).

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1951

   With the psychoneuroses, the
influence of heredity is more marked and the causation less
transparent. A peculiar method of investigation known as
psycho-analysis has, however, enabled us to recognize that the
symptoms of these disorders (hysteria, obsessional neurosis, etc.)
are
psychogenic
and depend upon the operation of unconscious
(repressed) ideational complexes. This same method has also taught
us what those unconscious complexes are and has shown that, quite
generally speaking, they have a sexual content. They spring from
the sexual needs of people who are unsatisfied and represent for
them a kind of substitutive satisfaction. We must therefore view
all factors which impair sexual life, suppress its activity or
distort its aims as being pathogenic factors in the psychoneuroses
as well.

   The value of a theoretical
distinction between toxic and psychogenic neuroses is, of course,
not diminished by the fact that, in most people suffering from
nervous illness, disturbances arising from both sources are to be
observed.

   The reader who is prepared to
agree with me in looking for the aetiology of nervous illness
pre-eminently in influences which damage sexual life, will also be
ready to follow the further discussion, which is intended to set
the theme of increasing nervous illness in a wider context.

   Generally speaking, our
civilization is built up on the suppression of instincts. Each
individual has surrendered some part of his possessions - some part
of the sense of omnipotence or of the aggressive or vindictive
inclinations in his personality. From these contributions has grown
civilization’s common possession of material and ideal
property. Besides the exigencies of life, no doubt it has been
family feelings, derived from erotism, that have induced the
separate individuals to make this renunciation. The renunciation
has been a progressive one in the course of the evolution of
civilization. The single steps in it were sanctioned by religion;
the piece of instinctual satisfaction which each person had
renounced was offered to the Deity as a sacrifice, and the communal
property thus acquired was declared ‘sacred’. The man
who, in consequence of his unyielding constitution, cannot fall in
with this suppression of instinct, becomes a
‘criminal’, an ‘outlaw’,¹ in the face
of society - unless his social position or his exceptional
capacities enable him to impose himself upon it as a great man, a
‘hero’.