Freud - Complete Works (499 page)

   The importance of the system
Cs.
(
Pcs.
) as regards access to the release of affect
and to action enables us also to understand the part played by
substitutive ideas in determining the form taken by illness. It is
possible for the development of affect to proceed directly from the
system
Ucs.
; in that case the affect always has the
character of anxiety, for which all ‘repressed’ affects
are exchanged. Often, however, the instinctual impulse has to wait
until it has found a substitutive idea in the system
Cs.
The
development of affect can then proceed from this conscious
substitute, and the nature of that substitute determines the
qualitative character of the affect. We have asserted that in
repression a severance takes place between the affect and the idea
to which it belongs, and that each then undergoes its separate
vicissitudes. Descriptively, this is incontrovertible; in
actuality, however, the affect does not as a rule arise till the
break-through to a new representation in the system
Cs.
has
been successfully achieved.

  
¹
Affectivity manifests itself essentially in
motor (secretory and vasomotor) discharge resulting in an
(internal) alteration of the subject’s own body without
reference to the external world; motility, in actions designed to
effect changes in the external world.

The Unconscious

3003

IV.  TOPOGRAPHY AND DYNAMICS OF
REPRESSION

   We have arrived at the conclusion
that repression is essentially a process affecting ideas on the
border between the systems
Ucs.
and
Pcs.
(
Cs.
), and we can now make a fresh attempt to describe the
process in greater detail.

   It must be a matter of a
withdrawal
of cathexis; but the question is, in which system
does the withdrawal take place and to which system does the
cathexis that is withdrawn belong? The repressed idea remains
capable of action in the
Ucs.
, and it must therefore have
retained its cathexis. What has been withdrawn must be something
else. Let us take the case of repression proper
(‘after-pressure’), as it affects an idea which is
preconscious or even actually conscious. Here repression can only
consist in withdrawing from the idea the (preconscious cathexis
which belongs to the system
Pcs
. The idea then either
remains uncathected, or receives cathexis from the
Ucs.
, or
retains the
Ucs.
cathexis which it already had. Thus there
is a withdrawal of the preconscious cathexis, retention of the
unconscious cathexis, or replacement of the preconscious cathexis
by an unconscious one. We notice, moreover, that we have based
these reflections (as it were, without meaning to) on the
assumption that the transition from the system
Ucs.
to the
system next to it is not effected through the making of a new
registration but through a change in its state, an alteration in
its cathexis. The functional hypothesis has here easily defeated
the topographical one.

   But this process of withdrawal of
libido is not adequate to make another characteristic of repression
comprehensible to us. It is not clear why the idea which has
remained cathected or has received cathexis from the
Ucs.
should not, in virtue of its cathexis, renew the attempt to
penetrate into the system
Pcs
. If it could do so, the
withdrawal of libido from it would have to be repeated, and the
same performance would go on endlessly; but the outcome would not
be repression. So, too, when it comes to describing
primal
repression, the mechanism just discussed of withdrawal of
preconscious cathexis would fail to meet the case; for here we are
dealing with an unconscious idea which has as yet received
no
cathexis from the
Pcs.
and therefore cannot have
that cathexis withdrawn from it.

The Unconscious

3004

   What we require, therefore, is
another process which maintains the repression in the first case
and, in the second, ensures its being established as well as
continued. This other process can only be found in the assumption
of an
anticathexis
, by means of which the system
Pcs.
protects itself from the pressure upon it of the unconscious idea.
We shall see from clinical examples how such an anticathexis,
operating in the system
Pcs.
, manifests itself. It is this
which represents the permanent expenditure of a primal repression,
and which also guarantees the permanence of that repression.
Anticathexis is the sole mechanism of primal repression; in the
case of repression proper (‘after-pressure’) there is
in addition withdrawal of the
Pcs.
cathexis. It is very
possible that it is precisely the cathexis which is withdrawn from
the idea that is used for anticathexis.

    We see how we have
gradually been led into adopting a third point of view in our
account of psychical phenomena. Besides the dynamic and the
topographical points of view, we have adopted the
economic
one. This endeavours to follow out the vicissitudes of amounts of
excitation and to arrive at least at some
relative
estimate
of their magnitude.

   It will not be unreasonable to
give a special name to this whole way of regarding our
subject-matter, for it is the consummation of psycho-analytic
research. I propose that when we have succeeded in describing a
psychical process in its dynamic, topographical and economic
aspects, we should speak of it as a
metapsychological
presentation. We must say at once that in the present state of our
knowledge there are only a few points at which we shall succeed in
this.

The Unconscious

3005

   Let us make a tentative effort to
give a metapsychological description of the process of repression
in the three transference neuroses which are familiar to us. Here
we may replace ‘cathexis’ by ‘libido’,
because, as we know, it is the vicissitudes of
sexual
impulses with which we shall be dealing.

   In anxiety hysteria a first phase
of the process is frequently overlooked, and may perhaps be in fact
missed out; on careful observation, however, it can be clearly
discerned. It consists in anxiety appearing without the subject
knowing what he is afraid of. We must suppose that there was
present in the
Ucs.
some love-impulse demanding to be
transposed into the system
Pcs.
; but the cathexis directed
to it from the latter system has drawn back from the impulse (as
though in an attempt at flight) and the unconscious libidinal
cathexis of the rejected idea has been discharged in the form of
anxiety.

   On the occasion of a repetition
(if there should be one) of this process, a first step is taken in
the direction of mastering the unwelcome development of anxiety.
The cathexis that has taken flight attaches itself to a
substitutive idea which, on the one hand, is connected by
association with the rejected idea, and, on the other, has escaped
repression by reason of its remoteness from that idea. This
substitutive idea - a ‘substitute by displacement’ -
permits the still uninhibitable development of anxiety to be
rationalized. It now plays the part of an anticathexis for the
system
Cs.
(
Pcs.
), by securing it against an
emergence in the
Cs.
of the repressed idea. On the other
hand it is, or acts as if it were, the point of departure for the
release of the anxiety-affect, which has now really become quite
uninhibitable. Clinical observation shows, for instance, that a
child suffering from an animal phobia experiences anxiety under two
kinds of conditions: in the first place, when his repressed
love-impulse becomes intensified, and, in the second, when he
perceives the animal he is afraid of. The substitutive idea acts in
the one instance as a point at which there is a passage across from
the system
Ucs.
to the system
Cs.
, and, in the other
instance, as a self-sufficing source for the release of anxiety.
The extending dominance of the system
Cs.
usually manifests
itself in the fact that the first of these two modes of excitation
of the substitutive idea gives place more and more to the second.
The child may perhaps end by behaving as though he had no
predilection whatever towards his father but had become quite free
from him, and as though his fear of the animal was a real fear -
except that this fear of the animal, fed as such a fear is from an
unconscious instinctual source, proves obdurate and exaggerated in
the face of all influences brought to bear from the system
Cs.
, and thereby betrays its derivation from the system
Ucs.
- In the second phase of anxiety hysteria, therefore,
the anticathexis from the system
Cs.
has led to
substitute-formation.

The Unconscious

3006

   Soon the same mechanism finds a
fresh application. The process of repression, as we know, is not
yet completed, and it finds a further aim in the task of inhibiting
the development of the anxiety which arises from the substitute.
This is achieved by the whole of the associated environment of the
substitutive idea being cathected with special intensity, so that
it can display a high degree of sensibility to excitation.
Excitation of any point in this outer structure must inevitably, on
account of its connection with the substitutive idea, give rise to
a slight development of anxiety; and this is now used as a signal
to inhibit, by means of a fresh flight on the part of the cathexis,
the further progress of the development of anxiety. The further
away the sensitive and vigilant anticathexes are situated from the
feared substitute, the more precisely can the mechanism function
which is designed to isolate the substitutive idea and to protect
it from fresh excitations. These precautions naturally only guard
against excitations which approach the substitutive idea from
outside, through perception; they never guard against instinctual
excitation, which reaches the substitutive idea from the direction
of its link with the repressed idea. Thus the precautions do not
begin to operate till the substitute has satisfactorily taken over
representation of the repressed, and they can never operate with
complete reliability. With each increase of instinctual excitation
the protecting rampart round the substitutive idea must be shifted
a little further outwards. The whole construction, which is set up
in an analogous way in the other neuroses, is termed a
phobia
. The flight from a conscious cathexis of the
substitutive idea is manifested in the avoidances, renunciations
and prohibitions by which we recognize anxiety hysteria.

The Unconscious

3007

   Surveying the whole process, we
may say that the third phase repeats the work of the second on an
ampler scale. The system
Cs.
now protects itself against the
activation of the substitutive idea by an anticathexis of its
environment, just as previously it had secured itself against the
emergence of the repressed idea by a cathexis of the substitutive
idea. In this way the formation of substitutes by displacement has
been further continued. We must also add that the system
Cs.
had earlier only one small area at which the repressed instinctual
impulse could break through, namely, the substitutive idea; but
that ultimately this
enclave
of unconscious influence
extends to the whole phobic outer structure. Further, we may lay
stress on the interesting consideration that by means of the whole
defensive mechanism thus set in action a projection outward of the
instinctual danger has been achieved. The ego behaves as if the
danger of a development of anxiety threatened it not from the
direction of an instinctual impulse but from the direction of a
perception, and it is thus enabled to react against this external
danger with the attempts at flight represented by phobic
avoidances. In this process repression is successful in one
particular: the release of anxiety can to some extent be dammed up,
but only at a heavy sacrifice of personal freedom. Attempts at
flight from the demands of instinct are, however, in general
useless, and, in spite of everything, the result of phobic flight
remains unsatisfactory.

   A great deal of what we have
found in anxiety hysteria also holds good for the other two
neuroses, so that we can confine our discussion to their points of
difference and to the part played by anticathexis. In conversion
hysteria the instinctual cathexis of the repressed idea is changed
into the innervation of the symptom. How far and in what
circumstances the unconscious idea is drained empty by this
discharge into innervation, so that it can relinquish its pressure
upon the system
Cs.
- these and similar questions had better
be reserved for a special investigation of hysteria. In conversion
hysteria the part played by the anticathexis proceeding from the
system
Cs.
(
Pcs.
) is clear and becomes manifest in
the formation of the symptom. It is the anticathexis that decides
upon what portion of the instinctual representative the whole
cathexis of the latter is able to be concentrated. The portion thus
selected to be a symptom fulfils the condition of expressing the
wishful aim of the instinctual impulse no less than the defensive
or punitive efforts of the system
Cs.
; thus it becomes
hypercathected, and it is maintained from both directions like the
substitutive idea in anxiety hysteria. From this circumstance we
may conclude without hesitation that the amount of energy expended
by the system
Cs.
on repression need not be so great as the
cathectic energy of the symptom; for the strength of the repression
is measured by the amount of anticathexis expended, whereas the
symptom is supported not only by this anticathexis but also by the
instinctual cathexis from the system
Ucs.
which is condensed
in the symptom.