Freud - Complete Works (565 page)

   Nor is it a fact that
psycho-analysis has paid no attention whatever to the non-sexual
part of the personality. It is precisely the distinction between
the ego and sexuality which has enabled us to recognize with
special clarity that the ego instincts pass through an important
process of development a development which is neither completely
independent of the libido nor without a counter-effect upon it.
Nevertheless, we are far less well acquainted with the development
of the ego than of the libido, since it is only the study of the
narcissistic neuroses that promises to give us an insight into the
structure of the ego. We already have before us, however, a notable
attempt by Ferenczi to make a theoretical construction of the
stages of development of the ego, and there are at least two points
at which we have a solid basis for judging that development. It is
not our belief that a person’s libidinal interests are from
the first in opposition to his self-preservative interests; on the
contrary, the ego endeavours at every stage to remain in harmony
with its sexual organization as it is at the time and to fit itself
into it. The succession of the different phases of libidinal
development probably follows a prescribed programme. But the
possibility cannot be rejected that this course of events can be
influenced by the ego, and we may expect equally to find a certain
parallelism, a certain correspondence, between the developmental
phases of the ego and the libido; indeed a disturbance of that
correspondence might provide a pathogenic factor. We are now faced
by the important consideration of how the ego behaves if its libido
leaves a strong fixation behind at some point in its (the
libido’s) development. The ego may accept this and
consequently become to that extent perverse or, what is the same
thing, infantile. It may, however, adopt a non compliant attitude
to the libido’s settling down in this position, in which case
the ego experiences a
repression
where the libido has
experienced a
fixation
.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3413

   Thus we discover that the third
factor in the aetiology of the neuroses, the
tendency to
conflict
, is as much dependent on the development of the ego as
on that of the libido. Our insight into the causation of the
neuroses is thus made more complete. First there is the most
general precondition - frustration; next, fixation of the libido
which forces it into particular directions; and thirdly, the
tendency to conflict, arising from the development of the ego,
which rejects these libidinal impulses. The situation, then, is not
so very confused and hard to penetrate as it probably seemed to you
during the course of my remarks. It is true, however, that we shall
find we have not yet finished with it. There is something new to be
added and something already familiar to be further examined.

   In order to demonstrate to you
the influence which the development of the ego has upon the
construction of conflicts and upon the causation of neuroses, I
should like to put an example before you - one which, it is true,
is a complete invention but which is nowhere divorced from
probability. I shall describe it (on the basis of the title of one
of Nestroy’s farces) as ‘In the Basement and on the
First Floor’. The care taker of the house inhabits the
basement and its landlord, a wealthy and respectable gentleman, the
first floor. Both have children, and we may suppose that the
landlord’s little daughter is allowed to play, without any
supervision, with the proletarian girl. It might very easily
happen, then, that the children’s games would take on a
‘naughty’ - that is to say, a sexual - character, that
they would play at ‘father and mother’, that they would
watch each other at their most private business and excite each
other’s genitals. The caretaker’s girl, though only
five or six years old, would have had an opportunity of observing a
good deal of adult sexuality, and she might well play the part of
seductress in all this. These experiences, even If they were not
continued over a long period, would be enough to set certain sexual
impulses to work in the two children; and, after their games
together had ceased, these impulses would for several years-
afterwards find expression in masturbation. So much for their
experiences in common; the final outcome in the two children will
be very different. The caretaker’s daughter will continue her
masturbation, perhaps, till her menstrual periods begin and she
will then give it up with no difficulty. A few years later she will
find a lover and perhaps have a baby. She will take up some
occupation or other, possibly become a popular figure on the stage
and end up as an aristocrat. Her career is more likely to be less
brilliant, but in any case she will go through her life undamaged
by the early exercise of her sexuality and free from neurosis. With
the landlord’s little girl things will be different. At an
early stage and while she is still a child she will get an idea
that she has done something wrong; after a short time, but perhaps
only after a severe struggle, she will give up her masturbatory
satisfaction, but she will nevertheless still have some sense of
oppression about her. When in her later girlhood she is in a
position to learn something of human sexual intercourse, she will
turn away from it with unexplained disgust and prefer to remain in
ignorance. And now she will probably be subject to a fresh
emergence of an irresistible pressure to masturbate of which she
will not dare to complain. During the years in which she should
exercise a feminine attraction upon some man, a neurosis breaks out
in her which cheats her of marriage and her hopes in life. If after
this an analysis succeeds in gaining an insight into her neurosis,
it will turn out that the well-brought-up, intelligent and
high-minded girl has completely repressed her sexual impulses, but
that these, unconscious to her, are still attached to her petty
experiences with her childhood friend.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3414

  The difference between the lives of
these two, in spite of their having had the same experience, rests
on the fact that the ego of one of them underwent a development
with which the other never met. Sexual activity seemed to the
caretaker’s daughter just as natural and harmless in later
life as it had in childhood. The landlord’s daughter came
under the influence of education and accepted its demands. From the
suggestions offered to it, her ego constructed ideals of feminine
purity and abstinence which are incompatible with sexual activity;
her intellectual education reduced her interest in the feminine
part which she was destined to play. Owing to this higher moral and
intellectual development of her ego she came into conflict with the
demands of her sexuality.

  I will dwell for a little to-day on yet
another point in ego development, partly because I have some
remoter aims in view, but also because what follows is precisely
calculated to justify the sharp separation between the
ego-instincts and the sexual instincts which we favour but which is
not self-evident. In forming our judgement of the two courses of
development both of the ego and of the libido - we must lay
emphasis on a consideration which has not often hitherto been taken
into account. For both of them are at bottom heritages, abbreviated
recapitulations of the development which all mankind has passed
through from its primaeval days over long periods of time. In the
case of the development of the libido, this
phylogenetic
origin is, I venture to think, immediately obvious. Consider how in
one class of animals the genital apparatus is brought into the
closest relation to the mouth, while in another it cannot be
distinguished from the excretory apparatus, and in yet others it is
linked to the motor organs - all of which you will find
attractively set out in W. Bölsche’s valuable book.
Among animals one can find, so to speak in petrified form, every
species of perversion of the sexual organization. In the case of
human beings, however, this phylogenetic point of view is partly
veiled by the fact that what is at bottom inherited is nevertheless
freshly acquired in the development of the individual, probably
because the same conditions which originally necessitated its
acquisition persist and continue to operate upon each individual. I
should like to add that origin ally the operation of these
conditions was creative but that it is now evocative. Besides this,
there is no doubt that the prescribed course of development can be
disturbed and altered in each individual by recent external
influences. But we know the power which forced a development of
this kind upon humanity and maintains its pressure in the same
direction to-day. It is, once again, frustration by reality, or, if
we are to give it its true, grand name, the pressure of vital needs
- Necessity (
Άνάγκη
).
She has been a strict educator and has made much out of us. The
neurotics are among those of her children to whom her strictness
has brought evil results; but that is a risk with all education.
This appreciation of the necessities of life heed not,
incidentally, weigh against the importance, of `internal
developmental trends’, if such can be shown to be
present.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3415

   Now it is a very noteworthy fact
that the sexual instincts and the self-preservative instincts do
not behave in the same way towards real necessity. The
self-preservative instincts, and everything to do with them, are
much easier to educate: they learn early to comply with necessity
and to arrange their developments in accordance with the
instructions of reality. This is intelligible, since they could not
obtain the objects they need in any other way; and without those
objects the individual would inevitably perish. The sexual
instincts are harder to educate, for at first they have no need of
an object. Since they are attached like parasites, as it were, to
the other bodily functions, and find their satisfaction
auto-erotically on the subject’s own body, they are to begin
with withdrawn from the educative influence of real necessity, and
they retain this characteristic of being self-willed and
inaccessible to influence (what we describe as being
‘unreasonable’) in most people in some respect all
through their lives. Moreover, as a rule the educability of a
youthful individual is at an end when his sexual needs arise in
their full strength. Educators are aware of this and act
accordingly; but the findings of psycho-analysis may perhaps also
induce them to shift the main impact of education on to the
earliest years of childhood, from infancy onwards. The little
creature is often completed by the fourth or fifth year of life,
and after that merely brings gradually to light what is already
within him.

   In order to appreciate the full
significance of the difference which I have pointed out between the
two groups of instincts, we shall have to go back a long way and
introduce one of those considerations which deserve to be described
as
economic
. This leads us to one of the most important, but
unluckily also one of the most obscure, regions of psycho-analysis.
We may ask whether in the operation of our mental apparatus a main
purpose can be detected, and we may reply as a first approximation
that that purpose is directed to obtaining pleasure. It seems as
though our total mental activity is directed towards achieving
pleasure and avoiding unpleasure - that it is automatically
regulated by the
pleasure principle
. We should of all things
like to know, then, what determines the generation of pleasure and
unpleasure; but that is just what we are ignorant of. We can only
venture to say this much: that pleasure is
in some way
connected with the diminution, reduction or extinction of the
amounts of stimulus prevailing in the mental apparatus, and that
similarly unpleasure is connected with their increase. An
examination of the most intense pleasure which is accessible to
human beings, the pleasure of accomplishing the sexual act, leaves
little doubt on this point. Since in such processes related to
pleasure it is a question of what happens to
quantities
of
mental excitation or energy, we call considerations of this kind
economic. It will be noticed that we can describe the tasks and
achievements of the mental apparatus in another and more general
way than by stressing the acquisition of pleasure. We can say that
the mental apparatus serves the purpose of mastering and disposing
of the amounts of stimulus and sums of excitation that impinge on
it from outside and inside. It is immediately obvious that the
sexual instincts, from beginning to end of their development, work
towards obtaining pleasure; they retain their original function
unaltered. The other instincts, the ego-instincts, have the same
aim to start with. But under the influence of the instructress
Necessity, they soon learn to replace the pleasure principle by a
modification of it. For them the task of avoiding unpleasure turns
out to be almost as important as that of obtaining pleasure. The
ego discovers that it is inevitable for it to renounce immediate
satisfaction, to postpone the obtaining of pleasure, to put up with
a little unpleasure and to abandon certain sources of pleasure
altogether. An ego thus educated has become
‘reasonable’; it no longer lets itself be governed by
the pleasure principle, but obeys the
reality principle
,
which also at bottom seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which
is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is
pleasure postponed and diminished.