Freud - Complete Works (508 page)

   Two things in this war have
aroused our sense of disillusionment: the low morality shown
externally by states which in their internal relations pose as the
guardians of moral standards, and the brutality shown by
individuals whom, as participants in the highest human
civilization, one would not have thought capable of such
behaviour.

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   Let us begin with the second
point and try to formulate, in a few brief words, the point of view
that we wish to criticize. How, in point of fact, do we imagine the
process by which an individual rises to a comparatively high plane
of morality? The first answer will no doubt simply be that he is
virtuous and noble from birth - from the very start. We shall not
consider this view any further here. A second answer will suggest
that we are concerned with a developmental process, and will
probably assume that the development consists in eradicating his
evil human tendencies and, under the influence of education and a
civilized environment, replacing them by good ones. If so, it is
nevertheless surprising that evil should re-emerge with such force
in anyone who has been brought up in this way.

   But this answer also contains the
thesis which we propose to contradict. In reality, there is no such
thing as ‘eradicating’ evil. Psychological - or, more
strictly speaking, psycho-analytic - investigation shows instead
that the deepest essence of human nature consists of instinctual
impulses which are of an elementary nature, which are similar in
all men and which aim at the satisfaction of certain primal needs.
These impulses in themselves are neither good nor bad. We classify
them and their expressions in that way, according to their relation
to the needs and demands of the human community. It must be granted
that all the impulses which society condemns as evil - let us take
as representative the selfish and the cruel ones - are of this
primitive kind.

   These primitive impulses undergo
a lengthy process of development before they are allowed to become
active in the adult. They are inhibited, directed towards other
aims and fields, become commingled, alter their objects, and are to
some extent turned back upon their possessor. Reaction-formations
against certain instincts take the deceptive form of a change in
their content, as though egoism had changed into altruism, or
cruelty into pity. These reaction-formations are facilitated by the
circumstance that some instinctual impulses make their appearance
almost from the first in pairs of opposites - a very remarkable
phenomenon, and one strange to the lay public, which is termed
‘ambivalence of feeling’. The most easily observed and
comprehensible instance of this is the fact that intense love and
intense hatred are so often to be found together in the same
person. Psycho-analysis adds that the two opposed feelings not
infrequently have the same person for their object.

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   It is not until all these
‘instinctual vicissitudes’ have been surmounted that
what we call a person’s character is formed, and this, as we
know, can only very inadequately be classified as
‘good’ or ‘bad’. A human being is seldom
altogether good or bad; he is usually ‘good’ in one
relation and ‘bad’ in another, or ‘good’ in
certain external circumstances and in others decidedly
‘bad’. It is interesting to find that the pre-existence
of strong ‘bad’ impulses in infancy is often the actual
condition for an unmistakable inclination towards
‘good’ in the adult. Those who as children have been
the most pronounced egoists may well become the most helpful and
self-sacrificing members of the community; most of our
sentimentalists, friends of humanity and protectors of animals have
been evolved from little sadists and animal-tormentors.

   The transformation of
‘bad’ instincts is brought about by two factors working
in the same direction, an internal and an external one. The
internal factor consists in the influence exercised on the bad (let
us say, the egoistic) instincts by erotism - that is, by the human
need for love, taken in its widest sense. By the admixture of
erotic
components the egoistic instincts are transformed
into
social
ones. We learn to value being loved as an
advantage for which we are willing to sacrifice other advantages.
The external factor is the force exercised by upbringing, which
represents the claims of our cultural environment, and this is
continued later by the direct pressure of that environment.
Civilization has been attained through the renunciation of
instinctual satisfaction, and it demands the same renunciation from
each newcomer in turn. Throughout an individual’s life there
is a constant replacement of external by internal compulsion. The
influences of civilization cause an ever-increasing transformation
of egoistic trends into altruistic and social ones by an admixture
of erotic elements. In the last resort it may be assumed that every
internal compulsion which makes itself felt in the development of
human beings was originally - that is, in the
history of
mankind
- only an external one. Those who are born to-day bring
with them as an inherited organization some degree of tendency
(disposition) towards the transformation of egoistic into social
instincts, and this disposition is easily stimulated into bringing
about that result. A further portion of this instinctual
transformation has to be accomplished during the life of the
individual himself. So the human being is subject not only to the
pressure of his immediate cultural environment, but also to the
influence of the cultural history of his ancestors.

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   If we give the name of
‘susceptibility to culture’ to a man’s personal
capacity for the transformation of the egoistic impulses under the
influence of erotism, we may further affirm that this
susceptibility is made up of two parts, one innate and the other
acquired in the course of life, and that the relation of the two to
each other and to that portion of the instinctual life which
remains untransformed is a very variable one.

   Generally speaking, we are apt to
attach too much importance to the innate part, and in addition to
this we run the risk of over-estimating the total susceptibility to
culture in comparison with the portion of instinctual life which
has remained primitive - that is, we are misled into regarding men
as ‘ better’ than they actually are. For there is yet
another element which obscures our judgement and falsifies the
issue in a favourable sense.

   The instinctual impulses of other
people are of course hidden from our observation. We infer them
from their actions and behaviour, which we trace back to
motives
arising from their instinctual life. Such an
inference is bound to be erroneous in many cases. This or that
action which is ‘good’ from the cultural point of view
may in one instance originate from a ‘noble’ motive, in
another not. Ethical theorists class as ‘good’ actions
only those which are the outcome of good impulses; to the others
they refuse recognition. But society, which is practical in its
aims, is not on the whole troubled by this distinction; it is
content if a man regulates his behaviour and actions by the
precepts of civilization, and is little concerned with his
motives.

   We have learned that the
external compulsion
exercised on a human being by his
upbringing and environment produces a further transformation
towards good in his instinctual life - a further turning from
egoism towards altruism. But this is not the regular or necessary
effect of the external compulsion. Upbringing and environment not
only offer benefits in the way of love, but also employ other kinds
of incentive, namely, rewards and punishments. In this way their
effect may turn out to be that a person who is subjected to their
influence will choose to behave well in the cultural sense of the
phrase, although no ennoblement of instinct, no transformation of
egoistic into altruistic inclinations, has taken place in him. The
result will, roughly speaking, be the same; only a particular
concatenation of circumstances will reveal that one man always acts
in a good way because his instinctual inclinations compel him to,
and the other is good only in so far and for so long as such
cultural behaviour is advantageous for his own selfish purposes.
But superficial acquaintance with an individual will not enable us
to distinguish between the two cases, and we are certainly misled
by our optimism into grossly exaggerating the number of human
beings who have been transformed in a cultural sense.

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   Civilized society, which demands
good conduct and does not trouble itself about the instinctual
basis of this conduct, has thus won over to obedience a great many
people who are not in this following their own natures. Encouraged
by this success, society has allowed itself to be misled into
tightening the moral standard to the greatest possible degree, and
it has thus forced its members into a yet greater estrangement from
their instinctual disposition. They are consequently subject to an
unceasing suppression of instinct, and the resulting tension
betrays itself in the most remarkable phenomena of reaction and
compensation. In the domain of sexuality, where such suppression is
most difficult to carry out, the result is seen in the reactive
phenomena of neurotic disorders. Elsewhere the pressure of
civilization brings in its train no pathological results, it is
true, but is shown in malformations of character, and in the
perpetual readiness of the inhibited instincts to break through to
satisfaction at any suitable opportunity. Anyone thus compelled to
act continually in accordance with precepts which are not the
expression of his instinctual inclinations, is living,
psychologically speaking, beyond his means, and may objectively be
described as a hypocrite, whether he is clearly aware of the
incongruity or not. It is undeniable that our contemporary
civilization favours the production of this form of hypocrisy to an
extraordinary extent. One might venture to say that it is built up
on such hypocrisy, and that it would have to submit to far-reaching
modifications if people were to undertake to live in accordance
with psychological truth. Thus there are very many more cultural
hypocrites than truly civilized men - indeed, it is a debatable
point whether a certain degree of cultural hypocrisy is not
indispensable for the maintenance of civilization, because the
susceptibility to culture which has hitherto been organized in the
minds of present-day men would perhaps not prove sufficient for the
task. On the other hand, the maintenance of civilization even on so
dubious a basis offers the prospect of paving the way in each new
generation for a more far-reaching transformation of instinct which
shall be the vehicle of a better civilization.

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   We may already derive one
consolation from this discussion: our mortification and our painful
disillusionment on account of the uncivilized behaviour of our
fellow-citizens of the world during this war were unjustified. They
were based on an illusion to which we had given way. In reality our
fellow-citizens have not sunk so low as we feared, because they had
never risen so high as we believed. The fact that the collective
individuals of mankind, the peoples and states, mutually abrogated
their moral restraints naturally prompted these individual citizens
to withdraw for a while from the constant pressure of civilization
and to grant a temporary satisfaction to the instincts which they
had been holding in check. This probably involved no breach in
their relative morality within their own nations.

   We may, however, obtain a deeper
insight than this into the change brought about by the war in our
former compatriots, and at the same time receive a warning against
doing them an injustice. For the development of the mind shows a
peculiarity which is present in no other developmental process.
When a village grows into a town or a child into a man, the village
and the child become lost in the town and the man. Memory alone can
trace the old features in the new picture; and in fact the old
materials or forms have been got rid of and replaced by new ones.
It is otherwise with the development of the mind. Here one can
describe the state of affairs, which has nothing to compare with
it, only by saying that in this case every earlier stage of
development persists alongside the later stage which has arisen
from it; here succession also involves co-existence, although it is
to the same materials that the whole series of transformations has
applied. The earlier mental state may not have manifested itself
for years, but none the less it is so far present that it may at
any time again become the mode of expression of the forces in the
mind, and indeed the only one, as though all later developments had
been annulled or undone. This extraordinary plasticity of mental
developments is not unrestricted as regards direction; it may be
described as a special capacity for involution - for regression -
since it may well happen that a later and higher stage of
development, once abandoned, cannot be reached again. But the
primitive stages can always be re-established; the primitive mind
is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable.

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   What are called mental diseases
inevitably produce an impression in the layman that intellectual
and mental life have been destroyed. In reality, the destruction
only applies to later acquisitions and developments. The essence of
mental disease lies in a return to earlier states of affective life
and of functioning. An excellent example of the plasticity of
mental life is afforded by the state of sleep, which is our goal
every night. Since we have learnt to interpret even absurd and
confused dreams, we know that whenever we go to sleep we throw off
our hard-won morality like a garment, and put it on again next
morning. This stripping of ourselves is not, of course, dangerous,
because we are paralysed, condemned to inactivity, by the state of
sleep. It is only dreams that can tell us about the regression of
our emotional life to one of the earliest stages of development.
For instance, it is noteworthy that all our dreams are governed by
purely egoistic motives. One of my English friends put forward this
thesis at a scientific meeting in America, whereupon a lady who was
present remarked that that might be the case in Austria, but she
could assert as regards herself and her friends that
they
were altruistic even in their dreams. My friend, although himself
of English race, was obliged to contradict the lady emphatically on
the ground of his personal experience in dream-analysis, and to
declare that in their dreams high-minded American ladies were quite
as egoistic as the Austrians.