Freud - Complete Works (399 page)

   Abel tries to explain the
phenomenon of reversal of sound as a doubling or reduplication of
the root. Here we should find some difficulty in following the
philologist. We remember in this connection how fond children are
of playing at reversing the sound of words and how frequently the
dream-work makes use of a reversal of the representational material
for various purposes. (Here it is no longer letters but images
whose order is reversed.) We should therefore be more inclined to
derive reversal of sound from a factor of deeper origin.¹

   In the correspondence between the
peculiarity of the dream-work mentioned at the beginning of the
paper and the practice discovered by philology in the oldest
languages, we may see a confirmation of the view we have formed
about the regressive, archaic character of the expression of
thoughts in dreams. And we psychiatrists cannot escape the
suspicion that we should be better at understanding and translating
the language of dreams if we knew more about the development of
language.²

  
¹
For the phenomenon of reversal of sound
(metathesis), which it perhaps even more intimately related to the
dream-work than are contradictory meanings (antithesis), compare
also Meyer-Rinteln (1909).

  
²
It is plausible to suppose, too, that the
original antithetical meaning of words exhibits the ready-made
mechanism which is exploited for various purposes by slips of the
tongue that result in the opposite being said.

2324

A SPECIAL TYPE OF CHOICE OF OBJECT MADE BY MEN

(CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE I)

(1910)

2325

Intentionally left blank

2326

A SPECIAL TYPE OF CHOICE OF OBJECT MADE BY MEN

(CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE I)

Up till now we have left it to the creative
writer to depict for us the ‘necessary conditions for
loving’ which govern people’s choice of an object, and
the way in which they bring the demands of their imagination into
harmony with reality. The writer can indeed draw on certain
qualities which fit him to carry out such a task: above all, on a
sensitivity that enables him to perceive the hidden impulses in the
minds of other people, and the courage to let his own unconscious
speak. But there is one circumstance which lessens the evidential
value of what he has to say. Writers are under the necessity to
produce intellectual and aesthetic pleasure, as well as certain
emotional effects. For this reason they cannot reproduce the stuff
of reality unchanged, but must isolate portions of it, remove
disturbing associations, tone down the whole and fill in what is
missing. These are the privileges of what is known as ‘poetic
licence’. Moreover they can show only slight interest in the
origin and development of the mental states which they portray in
their completed form. In consequence it becomes inevitable that
science should concern herself with the same materials whose
treatment by artists has given enjoyment to mankind for thousands
of years, though her touch must be clumsier and the yield of
pleasure less. These observations will, it may be hoped, serve to
justify us in extending a strictly scientific treatment to the
field of human love. Science is, after all, the most complete
renunciation of the pleasure principle of which our mental activity
is capable.

A Special Type Of Choice Of Object Made By Men

2327

   In the course of psycho-analytic
treatment there are ample opportunities for collecting impressions
of the way in which neurotics behave in love; while at the same
time we can recall having observed or heard of similar behaviour in
people of average health or even in those with outstanding
qualities. When the material happens to be favourable and thus
leads to an accumulation of such impressions, distinct types emerge
more clearly. I will begin here with a description of one such type
of object-choice - which occurs in men - since it is characterized
by a number of ‘necessary conditions for loving’ whose
combination is unintelligible, and indeed bewildering, and since it
admits of a simple explanation on psycho-analytic lines.

   (1) The first of these
preconditions for loving can be described as positively specific:
wherever it is found, the presence of the other characteristics of
this type may be looked for. It may be termed the precondition that
there should be ‘an injured third party’; it stipulates
that the person in question shall never choose as his love-object a
woman who is disengaged - that is, an unmarried girl or an
unattached married woman - but only one to whom another man can
claim right of possession as her husband, fiancé or friend.
In some cases this precondition proves so cogent that a woman can
be ignored, or even rejected, so long as she does not belong to any
man, but becomes the object of passionate feelings immediately she
comes into one of these relationships with another man.

   (2) The second precondition is
perhaps a less constant one, but it is no less striking. It has to
be found in conjunction with the first for the type to be realized,
whereas the first precondition seems very often to occur
independently as well. This second precondition is to the effect
that a woman who is chaste and whose reputation is irreproachable
never exercises an attraction that might raise her to the status of
a love-object, but only a woman who is in some way or other of bad
repute sexually, whose fidelity and reliability are open to some
doubt. This latter characteristic may vary within substantial
limits, from the faint breath of scandal attaching to a married
woman who is not averse to a flirtation up to the openly
promiscuous way of life of a
cocotte
or of an adept in the
art of love; but the men who belong to our type will not be
satisfied without something of the kind. This second necessary
condition may be termed, rather crudely, ‘love for a
prostitute’.

A Special Type Of Choice Of Object Made By Men

2328

   While the first precondition
provides an opportunity for gratifying impulses of rivalry and
hostility directed at the man from whom the loved woman is wrested,
the second one, that of the woman’s being like a prostitute,
is connected with the experiencing of
jealousy
which appears
to be a necessity for lovers of this type. It is only when they are
able to be jealous that their passion reaches its height and the
woman acquires her full value, and they never fail to seize on an
occasion that allows them to experience these most powerful
emotions. What is strange is that it is not the lawful possessor of
the loved one who becomes the target of this jealousy, but
strangers, making their appearance for the first time, in relation
to whom the loved one can be brought under suspicion. In glaring
instances the lover shows no wish for exclusive possession of the
woman and seems to be perfectly comfortable in the triangular
situation. One of my patients, who had been made to suffer terribly
by his lady’s escapades, had no objection to her getting
married, and did all he could to bring it about; in the years that
followed he never showed a trace of jealousy towards her husband.
Another typical patient had, it is true, been very jealous of the
husband in his first love affair, and had forced the lady to stop
having marital relations; but in his numerous subsequent affairs he
behaved like the other members of this type and no longer regarded
the lawful husband as an interference.

   So much for the conditions
required in the love-object. The following points describe the
lover’s behaviour towards the object he has chosen.

   (3) In normal love the
woman’s value is measured by her sexual integrity, and is
reduced by any approach to the characteristic of being like a
prostitute [German
Dirne
]. Hence the fact that women with
this characteristic are considered by men of our type to be
love-objects of the highest value
seems to be a striking
departure from the normal. Their love-relationships with these
women are carried on with the highest expenditure of mental energy,
to the exclusion of all other interests; they are felt as the only
people whom it is possible to love, and the demand for fidelity
which the lover makes upon himself is repeated again and again,
however often it may be broken in reality. These features of the
love-relationships which I am here describing show their
compulsive
nature very clearly, though that is something
which is found up to a certain degree whenever anyone falls in
love. But the fidelity and intensity that mark the attachment must
not lead one to expect that a single love-relationship of this kind
will make up the whole erotic life of the person in question or
occur only once in it. On the contrary, passionate attachments of
this sort are repeated with the same peculiarities - each an exact
replica of the others - again and again in the lives of men of this
type; in fact, owing to external events such as changes of
residence and environment, the love-objects may replace one another
so frequently that a
long series of them is formed
.

A Special Type Of Choice Of Object Made By Men

2329

   (4) What is most startling of all
to the observer in lovers of this type is the urge they show to
‘
rescue
’ the woman they love. The man is
convinced that she is in need of him, that without him she would
lose all moral control and rapidly sink to a lamentable level. He
rescues her, therefore, by not giving her up. In some individual
cases the idea of having to rescue her can be justified by
reference to her sexual unreliability and the dangers of her social
position: but it is no less conspicuous where there is no such
basis in reality. One man of the type I am describing, who knew how
to win his ladies by clever methods of seduction and subtle
arguments, spared no efforts in the subsequent course of these
affairs to keep the woman he was for the time being in love with on
the path of ‘virtue’ by presenting her with tracts of
his own composition.

   If we survey the different
features of the picture presented here - the conditions imposed on
the man that his loved one should not be unattached and should be
like a prostitute, the high value he sets on her, his need for
feeling jealousy, his fidelity, which is nevertheless compatible
with being broken down into a long series of instances, and the
urge to rescue the woman - it will seem scarcely probable that they
should all be derived from a single source. Yet psycho-analytic
exploration into the life-histories of men of this type has no
difficulty in showing that there is such a single source. The
object-choice which is so strangely conditioned, and this very
singular way of behaving in love, have the same psychical origin as
we find in the loves of normal people. They are derived from the
infantile fixation of tender feelings on the mother, and represent
one of the consequences of that fixation. In normal love only a few
characteristics survive which reveal unmistakably the maternal
prototype of the object-choice, as, for instance, the preference
shown by young men for maturer women; the detachment of libido
from the mother has been effected relatively swiftly. In our type,
on the other hand, the libido has remained attached to the mother
for so long, even after the onset of puberty, that the maternal
characteristics remain stamped on the love-objects that are chosen
later, and all these turn into easily recognizable
mother-surrogates. The comparison with the way in which the skull
of a newly born child is shaped springs to mind at this point:
after a protracted labour it always takes the form of a cast of the
narrow part of the mother’s pelvis.

A Special Type Of Choice Of Object Made By Men

2330

   We have now to show the
plausibility of our assertion that the characteristic features of
our type - its conditions for loving and its behaviour in love - do
in fact arise from the psychical constellation connected with the
mother. This would seem to be easiest where the first precondition
is concerned - the condition that the woman should not be
unattached, or that there should be an injured third party. It is
at once clear that for the child who is growing up in the family
circle the fact of the mother belonging to the father becomes an
inseparable part of the mother’s essence, and that the
injured third party is none other than the father himself. The
trait of overvaluing the loved one, and regarding her as unique and
irreplaceable, can be seen to fall just as naturally into the
context of the child’s experience, for no one possesses more
than one mother, and the relation to her is based on an event that
is not open to any doubt and cannot be repeated.

   If we are to understand the
love-objects chosen by our type as being above all
mother-surrogates, then the formation of a series of them, which
seems so flatly to contradict the condition of being faithful to
one, can now also be understood. We have learnt from
psycho-analysis in other examples that the notion of something
irreplaceable, when it is active in the unconscious, frequently
appears as broken up into an endless series: endless for the reason
that every surrogate nevertheless fails to provide the desired
satisfaction. This is the explanation of the insatiable urge to ask
questions shown by children at a certain age: they have one single
question to ask, but it never crosses their lips. It explains, too,
the garrulity of some people affected by neurosis; they are under
the pressure of a secret which is burning to be disclosed but
which, despite all temptation, they never reveal.

A Special Type Of Choice Of Object Made By Men

2331

   On the other hand the second
precondition for loving - the condition that the object chosen
should be like a prostitute - seems energetically to oppose a
derivation from the mother complex. The adult’s conscious
thought likes to regard his mother as a person of unimpeachable
moral purity; and there are few ideas which he finds so offensive
when they come from others, or feels as so tormenting when they
spring from his own mind, as one which calls this aspect of his
mother in question. This very relation of the sharpest contrast
between ‘mother’ and ‘prostitute’ will
however encourage us to enquire into the history of the development
of these two complexes and the unconscious relation between them,
since we long ago discovered that what, in the conscious, is found
split into a pair of opposites often occurs in the unconscious as a
unity. Investigation then leads us back to the time in a
boy’s life at which he first gains a more or less complete
knowledge of the sexual relations between adults, somewhere about
the years of pre-puberty. Brutal pieces of information, which are
undisguisedly intended to arouse contempt and rebelliousness, now
acquaint him with the secret of sexual life and destroy the
authority of adults, which appears incompatible with the revelation
of their sexual activities. The aspect of these disclosures which
affects the newly initiated child most strongly is the way in which
they apply to his own parents. This application is often flatly
rejected by him, in some such words as these: ‘
Your
parents and other people may do something like that with one
another, but
my
parents can’t possibly do it.