Freud - Complete Works (35 page)

   We can find an instructive
example of the same thing in waking life. When the waking brain has
been quiescent for a considerable time without transforming tensile
force into live energy by functioning, there arises a need and an
urge for activity. Long motor quiescence creates a need for
movement (compare the aimless running round of a caged animal) and
if this need cannot be satisfied a distressing feeling sets in.
Lack of sensory stimuli, darkness and complete silence become a
torture; mental repose, lack of perceptions, ideas and associative
activity produce the torment of boredom. These unpleasurable
feelings correspond to an ‘excitement’, to an increase
in normal intracerebral excitation.

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   Thus the cerebral elements, after
being completely restored liberate a certain amount of energy even
when they are at rest and if this energy is not employed
functionally it increases the normal intracerebral excitation. The
result is a feeling of unpleasure. Such feelings are always
generated when one of the organism’s needs fails to find
satisfaction. Since these feelings disappear when the surplus
quantity of energy which has been liberated is employed
functionally, we may conclude that the removal of such surplus
excitation is a need of the organism. And here for the first time
we meet the fact that there exists in the organism a
‘
tendency to keep intracerebral excitation
constant
’ (Freud).

   Such a surplus of intracerebral
excitation is a burden and a nuisance, and an urge to use it up
arises in consequence. If it cannot be used in sensory or
ideational activity, the surplus flows away in purposeless motor
action, in walking up and down, and so on, and this we shall meet
with later as the commonest method of discharging excessive
tensions.

   We are familiar with the great
individual variations which are found in this respect: the great
differences between lively people and inert and lethargic ones,
between those who ‘cannot sit still’ and those who have
an ‘innate gift for lounging on sofas’ and between
mentally agile minds and dull ones which can tolerate intellectual
rest for an unlimited length of time. These differences, which make
up a man’s ‘natural temperament’, are certainly
based on profound differences in his nervous system - on the degree
to which the functionally quiescent cerebral elements liberate
energy.

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   We have spoken of a tendency on
the part of the organism to keep tonic cerebral excitation
constant. A tendency of this kind is, however, only intelligible if
we can see what need it fulfils. We can understand the tendency in
warm-blooded animals that to keep a constant mean temperature,
because our experience has taught us that that temperature is an
optimum for the functioning of their organs. And we make a similar
assumption in regard to the constancy of the water-content of the
blood; and so on. I think that we may also assume that there is an
optimum for the height of the intracerebral tonic excitation. At
that level of tonic excitation the brain is accessible to all
external stimuli, the reflexes are facilitated, though only to the
extent of normal reflex activity, and the store of ideas is capable
of being aroused and open to association in the mutual relation
between individual ideas which corresponds to a clear and
reasonable state of mind. It is in this state that the organism is
best prepared for work.

   The situation is already altered
by the uniform heightening of tonic excitation which constitutes
‘expectation’. This makes the organism hyperaesthetic
towards sensory stimuli, which quickly become distressing, and also
increases its reflex excitability above what is useful (proneness
to fright). No doubt this state is useful for some situations and
purposes; but if it appears spontaneously and not for any such
reasons, it does not improve our efficiency but impairs it. In
ordinary life we call this being ‘nervous’. In the
great majority of forms of increase in excitation, however, the
over-excitation is not uniform, and this is always detrimental to
efficiency. We call this ‘excitement’. That the
organism should tend to maintain the optimum of excitation and to
return to that optimum after it has been exceeded is not
surprising, but quite in keeping with other regulating factors in
the organism.

   I shall venture once more to
recur to my comparison with an electrical lighting system. The
tension in the network of lines of conduction in such a system has
an optimum too. If this is exceeded its functioning may easily be
impaired; for instance, the electric light filaments may be quickly
burned through. I shall speak later of the damage done to the
system itself through a break-down of its insulation or through
‘short-circuiting’.

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(B)

   Our speech, the outcome of the
experience of many generations, distinguishes with admirable
delicacy between those forms and degrees of heightening of
excitation which are still useful for mental activity because they
raise the free energy of all cerebral functions uniformly, and
those forms and degrees which restrict that activity because they
partly increase and partly inhibit these psychical functions in a
manner that is
not
uniform. The first are given the name of
‘incitement’, and the second
‘excitement’.¹ An interesting conversation, or a
cup of tea or coffee has an ‘inciting’ effect; a
dispute or a considerable dose of alcohol has an
‘exciting’ one. While incitement only arouses the urge
to employ the increased excitation functionally, excitement seeks
to discharge itself in more or less violent ways which are almost
or even actually pathological. Excitement constitutes the
psycho-physical basis of the effects, and these will be discussed
below. But I must first touch briefly on some physiological and
endogenous causes of increases of excitation.

   Among these, in the first place,
are the organism’s major physiological needs and instincts:
need for oxygen, craving for food, and thirst. Since the excitement
which they set going is linked to certain sensations and purposive
ideas, it is not such a pure example of increase of excitation as
the one discussed above, which arose solely from the quiescence of
the cerebral elements. The former always has its special colouring.
But it is unmistakable in the anxious agitation which accompanies
dyspnoea and in the restlessness of a starving man.

   The increase of excitation that
comes from these sources is determined by the chemical change in
the cerebral elements themselves, which are short of oxygen, of
tensile force or of water. It flows away along preformed motor
paths, which lead to the satisfaction of the need that set it
going: dyspnoea leads to breathing with effort, and hunger and
thirst to a search for and attainment of food and water. The
principle of the constancy of excitation scarcely comes into
operation as far as this kind of excitation is concerned; for the
interests which are served by the increase in excitation in these
cases are of far greater importance to the organism than the
re-establishment of normal conditions of functioning in the brain.
It is true that we see animals in a zoo running backwards and
forwards excitedly before feeding-time; but this may no doubt be
regarded as a residue of the preformed motor activity of looking
for food, which has now become useless owing to their being in
captivity, and not as a means of freeing the nervous system of
excitement.

   If the chemical structure of the
nervous system has been permanently altered by a persistent
introduction of foreign substances, then a lack of these substances
will cause states of excitation, just as the lack of normal
nutritive substances does in healthy people. We see this in the
excitement occurring in abstinence from narcotics.

  
¹
[In German ‘
Anregung
’ =
‘incitement’, ‘stimulation’;
‘
Aufregung
’ = ‘excitement’,
‘agitation’.]

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   A transition between these
endogenous increases of excitation and the psychical affects in the
narrower sense is provided by sexual excitation and sexual affect.
Sexuality at puberty appears in the first of these forms, as a
vague, indeterminate, purposeless heightening of excitation. As
development proceeds, this endogenous heightening of excitation,
determined by the functioning of the sex-glands, becomes firmly
linked (in the normal course of things) with the perception or idea
of the other sex - and, indeed, with the idea of a particular
individual, where the remarkable phenomenon of falling in love
occurs. This idea takes over the whole quantity of excitation
liberated by the sexual instinct. It becomes an ‘affective
idea’; that is to say, when it is actively present in
consciousness it sets going the increase of excitation which in
point of fact originated from another source, namely the
sex-glands.

   The sexual instinct is
undoubtedly the most powerful source of persisting increases of
excitation (and consequently of neuroses). Such increases are
distributed very unevenly over the nervous system. When they reach
a considerable degree of intensity the train of ideas becomes
disturbed and the relative value of the ideas is changed; and in
orgasm thought is almost completely extinguished.

   Perception too - the psychical
interpretation of sense-impressions - is impaired. An animal which
is normally timid and cautious becomes blind and deaf to danger. On
the other hand, at least in males, there is an intensification of
the aggressive instinct. Peaceable animals become dangerous until
their excitation has been discharged in the motor activities of the
sexual act.

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(C)

   A disturbance like this of the
dynamic equilibrium of the nervous system - a non-uniform
distribution of increased excitation - is what makes up the
psychical side of affects.

   No attempt will be made here to
formulate either a psychology or a physiology of the affects. I
shall only discuss a single point, which is of importance for
pathology, and moreover only for ideogenic affects - those which
are called up by perceptions and ideas. (Lange, 1885, has rightly
pointed out that affects can be caused by toxic substances, or, as
psychiatry teaches us, above all by pathological changes, almost in
the same way as they can by ideas.)

   It may be taken as self-evident
that all the disturbances of mental equilibrium which we call acute
affects go along with an increase of excitation. (In the case of
chronic
affects, such as sorrow and care, that is to say
protracted anxiety, the complication is present of a state of
severe fatigue which, though it maintains the non-uniform
distribution of excitation, nevertheless reduces its height.) But
this increased excitation cannot be employed in psychical activity.
All powerful affects restrict association - the train of ideas.
People become ‘senseless’ with anger or fright. Only
the group of ideas which provoked the affect persists in
consciousness, and it does so with extreme intensity. Thus the
excitement cannot be levelled out by associative activity.

   Affects that are
‘active’ or ‘sthenic’ do, however, level
out the increased excitation by
motor
discharge. Shouting
and jumping for joy, the increased muscular tone of anger, angry
words and retaliatory deeds - all these allow the excitation to
flow away in movements. Mental pain discharges it in difficult
breathing and in an act of secretion: in sobs and tears. It is a
matter of everyday experience that such reactions reduce excitement
and allay it. As we have already remarked, ordinary language
expresses this in such phrases as ‘to cry oneself out’,
‘to blow off steam’, etc. What is being got rid of is
nothing else than the increased cerebral excitation.

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   Only some of these reactions,
such as angry deeds and words, serve a purpose in the sense of
making any change in the actual state of affairs. The rest serve no
purpose whatever, or rather their only purpose is to level out the
increase of excitation and to establish psychical equilibrium. In
so far as they achieve this they serve the ‘tendency to keep
cerebral excitation constant’.

   The ‘asthenic’
affects of fright and anxiety do not bring about this reactive
discharge. Fright paralyses outright the power of movement as well
as of association, and so does anxiety if the single useful
reaction of running away is excluded by the cause of the affect of
anxiety or by circumstances. The excitation of fright disappears
only by a gradual levelling out.

   Anger has adequate reactions
corresponding to its cause. If these are not feasible, or if they
are inhibited, they are replaced by substitutes. Even angry words
are substitutes of this kind. But other, even quite purposeless,
acts may appear as substitutes. When Bismarck had to suppress his
angry feelings in the King’s presence, he relieved himself
afterwards by smashing a valuable vase on the floor. This
deliberate replacement of one motor act by another corresponds
exactly to the replacement of natural pain-reflexes by other
muscular contractions. When a tooth is extracted the preformed
reflex is to push away the dentist and utter a cry; if, instead of
that, we contract the muscles of our arms and press against the
sides of the chair, we are shifting the quantum of excitation that
has been generated by the pain from one group of muscles to
another. In the case of violent spontaneous toothache, where there
is no preformed reflex apart from groaning, the excitation flows
off in aimless pacing up and down. In the same way we transpose the
excitation of anger from the adequate reaction to another one, and
we feel relieved provided it is used up by
any
strong motor
innervation.