Freud - Complete Works (368 page)

  
¹
A more detailed description of the episode,
which the patient gave me later on, made it possible to understand
the effect that it produced on him. His uncle, lamenting the loss
of his wife, had exclaimed: ‘Other men allow themselves every
possible indulgence, but I lived for this woman alone!’ The
patient had assumed that his uncle was alluding to his father and
was casting doubts upon his conjugal fidelity; and although his
uncle had denied this construction of his words most positively, it
was no longer possible to counteract their effect.

Notes Upon A Case Of Obsessional Neurosis

2143

   At the next session the patient
showed great interest in what I had said, but ventured, so he told
me, to bring for ward a few doubts. - How, he asked, could the
information that the self-reproach, the sense of guilt, was
justified have a therapeutic effect? - I explained that it was not
the information that had this effect, but the discovery of the
unknown content to which the self-reproach was really attached. -
Yes, he said, that was the precise point to which his question had
been directed. - I then made some short observations upon
the
psychological differences between the conscious and the
unconscious
, and upon the fact that everything conscious was
subject to a process of wearing-away, while what was unconscious
was relatively unchangeable; and I illustrated my remarks by
pointing to the antiques standing about in my room. They were, in
fact, I said, only objects found in a tomb, and their burial had
been their preservation: the destruction of Pompeii was only
beginning now that it had been dug up. - Was there any guarantee,
he next enquired, of what one’s attitude would be towards
what was discovered? One man, he thought, would no doubt behave in
such a way as to get the better of his self-reproach, but another
would not. - No, I said, it followed from the nature of the
circumstances that in every case the affect would be overcome - for
the most part during the progress of the work itself. Every effort
was made to preserve Pompeii, whereas people were anxious to be rid
of tormenting ideas like his. - He had said to himself, he went on,
that a self-reproach could only arise from a breach of a
person’s own inner moral principles and not from that of any
external ones. - I agreed, and said that the man who merely breaks
an external law often regards himself as a hero. - Such an
occurrence, he continued, was thus only possible where a
disintegration of the personality
was already present. Was
there a possibility of his effecting a reintegration of his
personality? If this could be done, he thought he would be able to
make a success of his life, perhaps more of one than most people. -
I replied that I was in complete agreement with this notion of a
splitting of his personality. He had only to assimilate this new
contrast, between a moral self and an evil one, with the contrast I
had already mentioned, between the conscious and the unconscious.
The moral self was the conscious, the evil self was the
unconscious.¹ - He then said that, though he considered
himself a moral person, he could quite definitely remember having
done things in his
childhood
which came from his other self.
- I remarked that here he had incidentally hit upon one of the
chief characteristics of the unconscious, namely, its relation to
the
infantile
. The unconscious, I explained,
was
the
infantile; it was that part of the self which had become separated
off from it in infancy, which had not shared the later stages of
its development, and which had in consequence become
repressed
. It was the derivatives of this repressed
unconscious that were responsible for the involuntary thoughts
which constituted his illness. He might now, I added, discover yet
another characteristic of the unconscious; it was a discovery which
I should be glad to let him make for himself. - He found nothing
more to say in this immediate connection, but instead he expressed
a doubt whether it was possible to undo modifications of such long
standing. What, in particular, could be done against his idea about
the next world, for it could not be refuted by logic? - I told him
I did not dispute the gravity of his case nor the significance of
his pathological constructions; but at the same time his youth was
very much in his favour as well as the intactness of his
personality. In this connection I said a word or two upon the good
opinion I had formed of him, and this gave him visible
pleasure.

  
¹
All of this is of course only true in the
roughest way, but it serves as a first introduction to the
subject.

Notes Upon A Case Of Obsessional Neurosis

2144

   At the next session he began by
saying that he must tell me an event in his childhood. From the age
of seven, as he had already told me, he had had a fear that his
parents guessed his thoughts, and this fear had in fact persisted
all through his life. When he was twelve years old he had been in
love with a little girl, the sister of a friend of his. (In answer
to a question he said that his love had not been sensual; he had
not wanted to see her naked for she was too small.) But she had not
shown him as much affection as he had desired. And thereupon the
idea had come to him that she would be kind to him if some
misfortune were to befall him; and as an instance of such a
misfortune his father’s death had forced itself upon his
mind. He had at once rejected the idea with energy. And even now he
could not admit the possibility that what had arisen in this way
could have been a ‘wish’; it had clearly been no more
than a ‘train of thought’¹ - By way of objection I
asked him why, if it had not been a wish, he had repudiated it. -
Merely, he replied, on account of the content of the idea, the
notion that his father might die. - I remarked that he was treating
the phrase as though it were one that involved
lèse-majesté
; it was well known, of course,
that it was equally punishable to say ‘The Emperor is an
ass’ or to disguise the forbidden words by saying ‘If
any one says, etc., . . . then he will have me to
reckon with.’ I added that I could easily insert the idea
which he had so energetically repudiated into a context which would
exclude the possibility of any such repudiation: for instance,
‘If my father dies, I shall kill myself upon his
grave.’ - He was shaken, but did not abandon his objection. I
therefore broke off the argument with the remark that I felt sure
this had not been the first occurrence of his idea of his
father’s dying; it had evidently originated at an earlier
date, and some day we should have to trace back its history. - He
then proceeded to tell me that a precisely similar thought had
flashed through his mind a second time, six months before his
father’s death. At that time² he had already been in
love with his lady, but financial obstacles made it impossible to
think of an alliance with her. The idea had then occurred to him
that
his father’s death might make him rich enough to
marry her
. In defending himself against this idea he had gone
to the length of wishing that his father might leave him nothing at
all, so that he might have no compensation for his terrible loss.
The same idea, though in a much milder form, had come to him for a
third time, on the day before his father’s death. He had then
thought: ‘Now I may be going to lose what I love most’;
and then had come the contradiction: ‘No, there is some one
else whose loss would be even more painful to you.’³
These thoughts surprised him very much, for he was quite certain
that his father’s death could never have been an object of
his desire but only of his fear. - After his forcible enunciation
of these words I thought it advisable to bring a fresh piece of
theory to his notice. According to psycho-analytic theory, I told
him, every fear corresponded to a former wish which was now
repressed; we were therefore obliged to believe the exact contrary
of what he had asserted. This would also fit in with another
theoretical requirement, namely, that the unconscious must be the
precise contrary of the conscious. - He was much agitated at this
and very incredulous. He wondered how he could possibly have had
such a wish, considering that he loved his father more than any one
else in the world; there could be no doubt that he would have
renounced all his own prospects of happiness if by so doing he
could have saved his father’s life. - I answered that it was
precisely such intense love as his that was the necessary
precondition of the repressed hatred. In the case of people to whom
he felt indifferent he would certainly have no difficulty in
maintaining side by side inclinations to a moderate liking and to
an equally moderate dislike: supposing, for instance, that he were
an official, he might think that his chief was agreeable as a
superior, but at the same time pettifogging as a lawyer and inhuman
as a judge. (Shakespeare makes Brutus speak in a similar way of
Julius Caesar: ‘As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was
fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but,
as he was ambitious, I slew him.’ But these words already
strike us as rather strange, and for the very reason that we had
imagined Brutus’s feeling for Caesar as something deeper.) In
the case of some one who was closer to him, of his wife for
instance, he would wish his feelings to be unmixed, and
consequently, as was only human, he would overlook her faults,
since they might make him dislike her - he would ignore them as
though he were blind to them. So it was precisely the intensity of
his love that would not allow his hatred - though to give it such a
name was to caricature the feeling - to remain conscious. To be
sure, the hatred must have a source, and to discover that source
was certainly a problem; his own statements pointed to the time
when he was afraid that his parents guessed his thoughts. On the
other hand, too, it might be asked why this intense love of his had
not succeeded in extinguishing his hatred, as usually happened
where there were two opposing impulses. We could only presume that
the hatred must flow from some source, must be connected with some
particular cause, which made it indestructible. On the one hand,
then, some connection of this sort must be keeping his hatred for
his father alive, while on the other hand, his intense love
prevented it from becoming conscious. Therefore nothing remained
for it but to exist in the unconscious, though it was able from
time to time to flash out for a moment into consciousness.

  
¹
Obsessional neurotics are not the only
people who are satisfied with euphemisms of this kind.

  
²
That is, ten years ago.

  
³
There is here an unmistakable indication of
an opposition between the two objects of his love, his father and
the ‘lady’.

Notes Upon A Case Of Obsessional Neurosis

2145

   He admitted that all of this
sounded quite plausible, but he was naturally not in the very least
convinced by it.¹ He would venture to ask, he said, how it was
that an idea of this kind could have remissions, how it could
appear for a moment when he was twelve years old, and again when he
was twenty, and then once more two years later, this time for good.
He could not believe that his hostility had been extinguished in
the intervals, and yet during them there had been no sign of
self-reproaches. - To this I replied that whenever any one asked a
question like that, he was already prepared with an answer; he
needed only to be encouraged to go on talking. - He then proceeded,
somewhat disconnectedly as it seemed, to say that he had been his
father’s best friend, and that his father had been his.
Except on a few subjects, upon which fathers and sons usually hold
aloof from one another - (What could he mean by that?) -, there
had been a greater intimacy between them than there now was between
him and his best friend. As regards the lady for whose sake he had
sacrificed his father in that idea of his, it was true that he had
loved her very much, but he had never felt really sensual wishes
towards her, such as he had constantly had in his childhood.
Altogether, in his childhood his sensual impulses had been much
stronger than during his puberty. - At this I told him I thought he
had now produced the answer we were waiting for, and had at the
same time discovered the third great characteristic of the
unconscious. The source from which his hostility to his father
derived its indestructibility was evidently something in the nature
of
sensual desires
, and in that connection he must have felt
his father as in some way or other an
interference
. A
conflict of this kind, I added, between sensuality and childish
love was entirely typical. The remissions he had spoken of had
occurred because the premature explosion of his sensual feelings
had had as its immediate consequence a considerable diminution of
their violence. It was not until he was once more seized with
intense erotic desires that his hostility reappeared again owing to
the revival of the old situation. I then got him to agree that I
had not led him on to the subject either of childhood or of sex,
but that he had raised them both of his own free will. - He then
went on to ask why he had not simply come to a decision, at the
time he was in love with the lady, that his father’s
interference with that love could not for a moment weigh against
his love of his father. - I replied that it was scarcely possible
to destroy a person
in absentia
. Such a decision would only
have been possible if the wish that he took objection to had made
its first appearance on that occasion; whereas, as a matter of
fact, it was
a long-repressed wish
, towards which he could
not behave otherwise than he had formerly done, and which was
consequently immune from destruction. This wish (to get rid of his
father as being an interference) must have originated at a time
when circumstances had been very different - at a time, perhaps,
when he had not loved his father more than the person whom he
desired sensually, or when he was incapable of making a clear
decision. It must have been in his very early childhood, therefore,
before he had reached the age of six, and before the date at which
his memory became continuous; and things must have remained in the
same state ever since. - With this piece of construction our
discussion was broken off for the time being.