Freud - Complete Works (507 page)

   One would think that the
resistance was now definitely overcome, that the girl who until now
had been bound to her mother had succeeded in coming to love a man.
But after the second visit a new delusion appeared, which, by
making ingenious use of some accidental circumstances, destroyed
this love and thus successfully carried through the purpose of the
mother-complex. It still seems strange that a woman should protect
herself against loving a man by means of a paranoic delusion; but
before examining this state of things more closely, let us glance
at the accidental circumstances that formed the basis of this
second delusion, the one aimed exclusively against the man.

A Case Of Paranoia Running Counter To The Psycho-Analytic Theory Of The Disease

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   Lying partly undressed on the
sofa beside her lover, she heard a noise like a click or beat. She
did not know its cause, but she arrived at an interpretation of it
after meeting two men on the staircase, one of whom was carrying
something that looked like a covered box. She became convinced that
someone acting on instructions from her lover had watched and
photographed her during their intimate
tête à
tête
. I do not for a moment imagine, of course, that if
the unlucky noise had not occurred the delusion would not have been
formed; on the contrary, something inevitable is to be seen behind
this accidental circumstance, something which was bound to assert
itself compulsively in the patient, just as when she supposed that
there was a
liason
between her lover and the elderly
superior, her mother-substitute. Among the store of unconscious
phantasies of all neurotics, and probably of all human beings,
there is one which is seldom absent and which can be disclosed by
analysis: this is the phantasy of watching sexual intercourse
between the parents. I call such phantasies - of the observation of
sexual intercourse between the parents, of seduction, of
castration, and others - ‘primal phantasies’; and I
shall discuss in detail elsewhere their origin and their relation
to individual experience. The accidental noise was thus merely
playing the part of a provoking factor which activated the typical
phantasy of overhearing which is a component of the parental
complex. Indeed, it is doubtful whether we can rightly call the
noise ‘accidental’. As Otto Rank has remarked to me,
such noises are on the contrary an indispensible part of the
phantasy of listening, and they reproduce either the sounds which
betray parental intercourse or those by which the listening child
fears to betray itself. But now we know at once where we stand. The
patient’s lover was still her father, but she herself had
taken her mother’s place. The part of the listener had then
to be allotted to a third person. We can see by what means the girl
had freed herself from her homosexual dependence on her mother. It
was by means of a small piece of regression: instead of choosing
her mother as a love-object, she identified herself with her - she
herself
became
her mother. The possibility of this
regression points to the narcissistic origin of her homosexual
object-choice and thus to the paranoic disposition in her. One
might sketch a train of thought which would bring about the same
result as this identification: ‘If my mother does it, I may
do it too; I’ve just as good a right as she has.’

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   One can go a step further in
disproving the accidental nature of the noise. We do not, however,
ask our readers to follow us, since the absence of any deeper
analytic investigation makes it impossible in this case to go
beyond a certain degree of probability. The patient mentioned in
her first interview with me that she had immediately demanded an
explanation of the noise, and had been told that it was probably
the ticking of the small clock on the writing-desk. I venture,
however, to explain what she told me as a mistaken memory. It seems
to me much more likely that at first she did not react to the noise
at all, and that it became significant only after she met the two
men on the staircase. Her lover, who had probably not even heard
the noise, may have tried, perhaps on some later occasion when she
assailed him with her suspicions, to account for it in this way:
‘I don’t know what noise you can have heard. Perhaps it
was the small clock; it sometimes ticks like that.’ This
deferred use of impressions and this displacement of recollections
often occur precisely in paranoia and are characteristic of it. But
as I never met the man and could not continue the analysis of the
woman, my hypothesis cannot be proved.

   I might go still further in the
analysis of this ostensibly real ‘accident’. I do not
believe that the clock ever ticked or that there was any noise to
be heard at all. The woman’s situation justified a sensation
of a knock or beat in her clitoris. And it was this that she
subsequently projected as a perception of an external object. Just
the same sort of thing can occur in dreams. A hysterical woman
patient of mine once related to me a short arousal dream to which
she could bring no spontaneous associations. She dreamt simply that
someone knocked and then she awoke. Nobody had knocked at the door,
but during the previous nights she had been awakened by distressing
sensations of pollutions: she thus had a motive for awakening as
soon as she felt the first sign of genital excitation. There had
been a ‘knock’ in her clitoris. In the case of our
paranoic patient, I should substitute for the accidental noise a
similar process of projection. I certainly cannot guarantee that in
the course of our short acquaintance the patient, who was
reluctantly yielding to compulsion, gave me a truthful account of
all that had taken place during the two meetings of the lovers. But
an isolated contraction of the clitoris would be in keeping with
her statement that no contact of the genitals had taken place. In
her subsequent rejection of the man, lack of satisfaction
undoubtedly played a part as well as ‘conscience’.

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   Let us consider again the
outstanding fact that the patient protected herself against her
love for a man by means of a paranoic delusion. The key to the
understanding of this is to be found in the history of the
development of the delusion. As we might have expected, the latter
was at first aimed against the woman. But now,
on this paranoic
basis, the advance from a female to a male object was
accomplished
. Such an advance is unusual in paranoia; as a rule
we find that the victim of persecution remains fixated to the same
persons, and therefore to the same sex to which his love-objects
belonged before the paranoic transformation took place. But
neurotic disorder does not preclude an advance of this kind, and
our observation may be typical of many others. There are many
similar processes occurring outside paranoia which have not yet
been looked at from this point of view, amongst them some which are
very familiar. For instance, the so-called neurasthenic’s
unconscious attachment to incestuous love-objects prevents him from
choosing a strange woman as his object and restricts his sexual
activity to phantasy. But within the limits of phantasy he achieves
the progress which is denied him, and he succeeds in replacing
mother and sister by extraneous objects. Since the veto of the
censorship does not come into action with these objects, he can
become conscious in his phantasies of his choice of these
substitute-figures.

   These then are phenomena of an
attempted advance from the new ground which has as a rule been
regressively acquired; and we may set alongside them the efforts
made in some neuroses to regain a position of the libido which was
once held and subsequently lost. Indeed we can hardly draw any
conceptual distinction between these two classes of phenomena. We
are too apt to think that the conflict underlying a neurosis is
brought to an end when the symptom has been formed. In reality the
struggle can go on in many ways after this. Fresh instinctual
components arise on both sides, and these prolong it. The symptom
itself becomes an object of this struggle; certain trends anxious
to preserve it conflict with others which strive to remove it and
to re-establish the
status quo ante
. Methods are often
sought of rendering the symptom nugatory by trying to regain along
other lines of approach what has been lost and is now withheld by
the symptom. These facts throw much light on a statement made by C.
G. Jung to the effect that a peculiar ‘psychical
inertia’, which opposes change and progress, is the
fundamental precondition of neurosis. This inertia is indeed most
peculiar; it is not a general one, but is highly specialized; it is
not even all-powerful within its own field, but fights against
tendencies towards progress and recovery which remain active even
after the formation of neurotic symptoms. If we search for the
starting-point of this special inertia, we discover that it is the
manifestation of very early linkages - linkages which it is hard to
resolve - between instincts and impressions and the objects
involved in those impressions. These linkages have the effect of
bringing the development of the instincts concerned to a
standstill. Or in other words, this specialized ‘psychical
inertia’ is only a different term, though hardly a better
one, for what in psycho-analysis we are accustomed to call a
‘fixation’.

3065

THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES ON WAR AND DEATH

(1915)

3066

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3067

THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES ON WAR AND DEATH

I

THE
DISILLUSIONMENT OF THE WAR

In the confusion of wartime in which we are
caught up, relying as we must on one-sided information, standing
too close to the great changes that have already taken place or are
beginning to, and without a glimmering of the future that is being
shaped, we ourselves are at a loss as to the significance of the
impressions which press in upon us and as to the value of the
judgements which we form. We cannot but feel that no event has ever
destroyed so much that is precious in the common possessions of
humanity, confused so many of the clearest intelligences, or so
thoroughly debased what is highest. Science herself has lost her
passionless impartiality; her deeply embittered servants seek for
weapons from her with which to contribute towards the struggle with
the enemy. Anthropologists feel driven to declare him inferior and
degenerate, psychiatrists issue a diagnosis of his disease of mind
or spirit. Probably, however, our sense of these immediate evils is
disproportionately strong, and we are not entitled to compare them
with the evils of other times which we have not experienced.

   The individual who is not himself
a combatant - and so a cog in the gigantic machine of war - feels
bewildered in his orientation, and inhibited in his powers and
activities. I believe that he will welcome any indication, however
slight, which will make it easier for him to find his bearings
within himself at least. I propose to pick out two among the
factors which are responsible for the mental distress felt by
non-combatants, against which it is such a heavy task to struggle,
and to treat of them here: the disillusionment which this war has
evoked, and the altered attitude towards death which this - like
every other war - forces upon us.

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3068

   When I speak of disillusionment,
everyone will know at once what I mean. One need not be a
sentimentalist; one may perceive the biological and psychological
necessity for suffering in the economy of human life, and yet
condemn war both in its means and ends and long for the cessation
of all wars. We have told ourselves, no doubt, that wars can never
cease so long as nations live under such widely differing
conditions, so long as the value of individual life is so variously
assessed among them, and so long as the animosities which divide
them represent such powerful motive forces in the mind. We were
prepared to find that wars between the primitive and the civilized
peoples, between the races who are divided by the colour of their
skin - wars, even, against and among the nationalities of Europe
whose civilization is little developed or has been lost - would
occupy mankind for some time to come. But we permitted ourselves to
have other hopes. We had expected the great world-dominating
nations of white race upon whom the leadership of the human species
has fallen, who were known to have world-wide interests as their
concern, to whose creative powers were due not only our technical
advances towards the control of nature but the artistic and
scientific standards of civilization - we had expected these
peoples to succeed in discovering another way of settling
misunderstandings and conflicts of interest. Within each of these
nations high norms of moral conduct were laid down for the
individual, to which his manner of life was bound to conform if he
desired to take part in a civilized community. These ordinances,
often too stringent, demanded a great deal of him - much
self-restraint, much renunciation of instinctual satisfaction. He
was above all forbidden to make use of the immense advantages to be
gained by the practice of lying and deception in the competition
with his fellow-men. The civilized states regarded these moral
standards as the basis of their existence. They took serious steps
if anyone ventured to tamper with them, and often declared it
improper even to subject them to examination by a critical
intelligence. It was to be assumed, therefore, that the state
itself would respect them, and would not think of undertaking
anything against them which would contradict the basis of its own
existence. Observation showed, to be sure, that embedded in these
civilized states there were remnants of certain other peoples,
which were universally unpopular and had therefore been only
reluctantly, and even so not fully, admitted to participation in
the common work of civilization, for which they had shown
themselves suitable enough. But the great nations themselves, it
might have been supposed, would have acquired so much comprehension
of what they had in common, and so much tolerance for their
differences, that ‘foreigner’ and ‘enemy’
could no longer be merged, as they still were in classical
antiquity, into a single concept.

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3069

   Relying on this unity among the
civilized peoples, countless men and women have exchanged their
native home for a foreign one, and made their existence dependent
on the intercommunications between friendly nations. Moreover
anyone who was not by stress of circumstance confined to one spot
could create for himself out of all the advantages and attractions
of these civilized countries a new and wider fatherland, in which
he could move about without hindrance or suspicion. In this way he
enjoyed the blue sea and the grey; the beauty of snow covered
mountains and of green meadow lands; the magic of northern forests
and the splendour of southern vegetation; the mood evoked by
landscapes that recall great historical events, and the silence of
untouched nature. This new fatherland was a museum for him, too,
filled with all the treasures which the artists of civilized
humanity had in the successive centuries created and left behind.
As he wandered from one gallery to another in this museum, he could
recognize with impartial appreciation what varied types of
perfection a mixture of blood, the course of history, and the
special quality of their mother earth had produced among his
compatriots in this wider sense. Here he would find cool,
inflexible energy developed to the highest point; there, the
graceful art of beautifying existence; elsewhere, the feeling for
orderliness and law, or others among the qualities which have made
mankind the lords of the earth.

   Nor must we forget that each of
these citizens of the civilized world had created for himself a
‘Parnassus’ and a ‘School of Athens’ of his
own. From among the great thinkers, writers and artists of all
nations he had chosen those to whom he considered he owed the best
of what he had been able to achieve in enjoyment and understanding
of life, and he had venerated them along with the immortal ancients
as well as with the familiar masters of his own tongue. None of
these great men had seemed to him foreign because they spoke
another language - neither the incomparable explorer of human
passions, nor the intoxicated worshipper of beauty, nor the
powerful and menacing prophet, nor the subtle satirist; and he
never reproached himself on that account for being a renegade
towards his own nation and his beloved mother-tongue.

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3070

   The enjoyment of this common
civilization was disturbed from time to time by warning voices,
which declared that old traditional differences made wars
inevitable, even among the members of a community such as this. We
refused to believe it; but if such a war were to happen, how did we
picture it? We saw it as an opportunity for demonstrating the
progress of comity among men since the era when the Greek
Amphictyonic Council proclaimed that no city of the league might be
destroyed, nor its olive-groves cut down, nor its water-supply
stopped; we pictured it as a chivalrous passage of arms, which
would limit itself to establishing the superiority of one side in
the struggle, while as far as possible avoiding acute suffering
that could contribute nothing to the decision, and granting
complete immunity for the wounded who had to withdraw from the
contest, as well as for the doctors and nurses who devoted
themselves to their recovery. There would, of course, be the utmost
consideration for the non-combatant classes of the population - for
women who take no part in war-work, and for the children who, when
they are grown up, should become on both sides one another’s
friends and helpers. And again, all the international undertakings
and institutions in which the common civilization of peace-time had
been embodied would be maintained.

   Even a war like this would have
produced enough horror and suffering; but it would not have
interrupted the development of ethical relations between the
collective individuals of mankind the peoples and states.

   Then the war in which we had
refused to believe broke out, and it brought - disillusionment. Not
only is it more bloody and more destructive than any war of other
days, because of the enormously increased perfection of weapons of
attack and defence; it is at least as cruel, as embittered, as
implacable as any that has preceded it. It disregards all the
restrictions known as International Law, which in peace-time the
states had bound themselves to observe; it ignores the prerogatives
of the wounded and the medical service, the distinction between
civil and military sections of the population, the claims of
private property. It tramples in blind fury on all that comes in
its way, as though there were to be no future and no peace among
men after it is over. It cuts all the common bonds between the
contending peoples, and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment
that will make any renewal of those bonds impossible for a long
time to come.

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3071

   Moreover, it has brought to light
an almost incredible phenomenon: the civilized nations know and
understand one another so little that one can turn against the
other with hate and loathing. Indeed, one of the great civilized
nations is so universally unpopular that the attempt can actually
be made to exclude it from the civilized community as
‘barbaric’, although it has long proved its fitness by
the magnificent contributions to that community which it has made.
We live in hopes that the pages of an impartial history will prove
that that nation, in whose language we write and for whose victory
our dear ones are fighting, has been precisely the one which has
least transgressed the laws of civilization. But at such a time who
dares to set himself up as judge in his own cause?

   Peoples are more or less
represented by the states which they form, and these states by the
governments which rule them. The individual citizen can with horror
convince himself in this war of what would occasionally cross his
mind in peace-time - that the state has forbidden to the individual
the practice of wrong doing, not because it desires to abolish it,
but because it desires to monopolize it, like salt and tobacco. A
belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act
of violence, as would disgrace the individual. It makes use against
the enemy not only of the accepted
ruses de guerre
, but of
deliberate lying and deception as well - and to a degree which
seems to exceed the usage of former wars. The state exacts the
utmost degree of obedience and sacrifice from its citizens, but at
the same time it treats them like children by an excess of secrecy
and a censorship upon news and expressions of opinion which leaves
the spirits of those whose intellects it thus suppresses
defenceless against every unfavourable turn of events and every
sinister rumour. It absolves itself from the guarantees and
treaties by which it was bound to other states, and confesses
shamelessly to its own rapacity and lust for power, which the
private individual has then to sanction in the name of
patriotism.

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3072

   It should not be objected that
the state cannot refrain from wrong-doing, since that would place
it at a disadvantage. It is no less disadvantageous, as a general
rule, for the individual man to conform to the standards of
morality and refrain from brutal and arbitrary conduct; and the
state seldom proves able to indemnify him for the sacrifices it
exacts. Nor should it be a matter for surprise that this relaxation
of all the moral ties between the collective individuals of mankind
should have had repercussions on the morality of individuals; for
our conscience is not the inflexible judge that ethical teachers
declare it, but in its origin is ‘social anxiety’ and
nothing else. When the community no longer raises objections, there
is an end, too, to the suppression of evil passions, and men
perpetrate deeds of cruelty, fraud, treachery and barbarity so
incompatible with their level of civilization that one would have
thought them impossible.

   Well may the citizen of the
civilized world of whom I have spoken stand helpless in a world
that has grown strange to him - his great fatherland disintegrated,
its common estates laid waste, his fellow-citizens divided and
debased!

   There is something to be said,
however, in criticism of his disappointment. Strictly speaking it
is not justified, for it consists in the destruction of an
illusion. We welcome illusions because they spare us unpleasurable
feelings, and enable us to enjoy satisfactions instead. We must not
complain, then, if now and again they come into collision with some
portion of reality, and are shattered against it.