Freud - Complete Works (566 page)

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3416

   The transition from the pleasure
principle to the reality principle is one of the most important
steps forward in the ego’s development. We know already that
it is only late and unwillingly that the sexual instincts join in
this piece of development, and we shall hear later the consequences
for human beings of the fact that their sexuality is content with
such a loose connection with external reality. And now in
conclusion one last remark on this subject. If man’s ego has
its process of development like the libido, you will not be
surprised to hear that there are also ‘regressions of the
ego’, and you will be anxious to know too what part may be
played in neurotic illnesses by this return of the ego to earlier
phases of its development.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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LECTURE XXIII

THE
PATHS TO THE FORMATION OF SYMPTOMS

LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN
, - For laymen the symptoms constitute the essence
of a disease and its cure consists in the removal of the symptoms.
Physicians attach importance to distinguishing the symptoms from
the disease and declare that getting rid of the symptoms does not
amount to curing the disease. But the only tangible thing left of
the disease after the symptoms have been got rid of is the capacity
to form new symptoms. For that reason we will for the moment adopt
the layman’s position and assume that to unravel the symptoms
means the same thing as to understand the disease.

   Symptoms - and of course we are
dealing now with psychical (or psychogenic) symptoms and psychical
illness - are acts detrimental, or at least useless, to the
subject’s life as a whole, often complained of by him as
unwelcome and bringing unpleasure or suffering to him. The main
damage they do resides in the mental expenditure which they
themselves involve and in the further expenditure that becomes
necessary for fighting against them. Where there is an extensive
formation of symptoms, these two sorts of expenditure can result in
an extraordinary impoverishment of the subject in regard to the
mental energy available to him and so in paralysing him for all the
important tasks of life. Since this outcome depends mainly on the
quantity
of the energy which is thus absorbed, you will
easily see that ‘being ill’ is in its essence a
practical concept. But if you take up a theoretical point of view
and disregard this matter of quantity, you may quite well say that
we are
all
ill - that is, neurotic - since the preconditions
for the formation of symptoms can also be observed in normal
people.

   We already know that neurotic
symptoms are the outcome of a conflict which arises over a new
method of satisfying the libido. The two forces which have fallen
out meet once again in the symptom and are reconciled, as it were,
by the compromise of the symptom that has been constructed. It is
for that reason, too, that the symptom is so resistant: it is
supported from both sides. We also know that one of the two
partners to the conflict is the unsatisfied libido which has been
repulsed by reality and must now seek for other paths to its
satisfaction. If reality remains relentless even though the libido
is ready to take another object in place of the one that has been
refused to it, then it will finally be compelled to take the path
of regression and strive to find satisfaction either in one of the
organizations which it has already outgrown or from one of the
objects which it has earlier abandoned. The libido is lured into
the path of regression by the fixation which it has left behind it
at these points in its development.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   The path to perversion branches
off sharply from that to neurosis. If these regressions rouse no
objection from the ego, no neurosis will come about either; and the
libido will arrive at some real, even though no longer normal,
satisfaction. But if the ego, which has under its control not only
consciousness but also the approaches to motor innervation and
accordingly to the realization of mental desires, does not agree
with these regressions, conflict will follow. The libido is, as it
were, cut off and must try to escape in some direction where, in
accordance with the requirements of the pleasure principle, it can
find a discharge for its cathexis of energy. It must withdraw from
the ego. An escape of this kind is offered it by the fixations on
the path of its development which it has now entered on
regressively - fixations from which the ego had protected itself in
the past by repressions. By cathecting these repressed positions as
it flows backward, the libido has withdrawn from the ego and its
laws, and has at the same time renounced all the education it has
acquired under the ego’s influence. It was docile so long as
satisfaction beckoned to it; but under the double pressure of
external and internal frustration it becomes refractory, and
recalls earlier and better times. Such is the libido’s
fundamentally unchangeable character. The ideas to which it now
transfers its energy as a cathexis belong to the system of the
unconscious and are subject to the processes which are possible
there, particularly to condensation and displacement. In this way
conditions are established which completely resemble those in
dream-construction. The dream proper, which has been completed in
the unconscious and is the fulfilment of an unconscious wishful
phantasy, is brought up against a portion of (pre)conscious
activity which exercises the office of censorship and which, when
it has been indemnified, permits the formation of the manifest
dream as a compromise. In the same way, what represents the libido
in the unconscious has to reckon with the power of the preconscious
ego. The opposition which had been raised against it in the ego
pursues it as an ‘anticathexis’ and compels it to
choose a form of expression which can at the same time become an
expression of the opposition itself. Thus the symptom emerges as a
many-times-distorted derivative of the unconscious libidinal
wish-fulfilment, an ingeniously chosen piece of ambiguity with two
meanings in complete mutual contradiction. In this last respect,
however, there is a distinction between the construction of a dream
and of a symptom. For in dream-formation the preconscious purpose
is merely concerned to preserve sleep, to allow nothing that would
disturb it to make its way into consciousness; it does not insist
upon calling out sharply ‘No! on the contrary!’ to the
unconscious wishful impulse. It can afford to be more tolerant
because the situation of someone sleeping is less perilous. The
state of sleep in itself bars any outlet into reality.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   You see, then, that the
libido’s escape under conditions of conflict is made possible
by the presence of fixations. The regressive cathexis of these
fixations leads to the circumvention of the repression and to a
discharge (or satisfaction) of the libido, subject to the
conditions of a compromise being observed. By the roundabout path
viâ
the unconscious and the old fixations, the libido
finally succeeds in forcing its way through to real satisfaction -
though to one which is extremely restricted and scarcely
recognizable as such. Let me add two comments to this conclusion.
First, I should like you to notice how closely here the libido and
the unconscious on one side and the ego, consciousness and reality
on the other are shown to be interlinked, although to begin with
they did not belong together at all. And secondly, I must ask you
to bear in mind that everything I have said about this and what is
still to follow relates only to the formation of symptoms in the
neurosis of hysteria.

   Where, then, does the libido find
the fixations which it requires in order to break through the
repressions? In the activities and experiences of infantile
sexuality, in the abandoned component trends, in the objects of
childhood which have been given up. It is to them, accordingly,
that the libido returns. The significance of this period of
childhood is twofold: on the one hand, during it the instinctual
trends which the child has inherited with his innate disposition
first become manifest, and secondly, others of his instincts are
for the first time awakened and made active by external impressions
and accidental experiences. There is no doubt, I think, that we are
justified in making this twofold division. The manifestation of the
innate disposition is indeed not open to any critical doubts, but
analytic experience actually compels us to assume that purely
chance experiences in childhood are able to leave fixations of the
libido behind them. Nor do I see any theoretical difficulty in
this. Constitutional dispositions are also undoubtedly
after-effects of experiences by ancestors in the past; they too
were once acquired. Without such acquisition there would be no
heredity. And is it conceivable that acquisition such as this,
leading to inheritance, would come to an end precisely with the
generation we are considering? The significance of infantile
experiences should not be totally neglected, as people like doing,
in comparison with the experiences of the subject’s ancestors
and of his own maturity; on the contrary, they call for particular
consideration. They are all the more momentous because they occur
in times of incomplete development and are for that very reason
liable to have traumatic effects. The studies on developmental
mechanics by Roux and others have shown that the prick of a needle
into an embryonic germinal layer in the act of cell-division
results in a severe disturbance of development. The same injury
inflicted on a larval or fully grown animal would do no damage.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   Thus fixation of the libido in
the adult, which we introduced into the aetiological equation of
neurosis as representing the constitutional factor, now falls, for
our purposes, into two further parts: the inherited constitution
and the disposition acquired in early childhood. As we all know, a
diagram is certain of a sympathetic reception from students. So I
will summarize the position diagrammatically:

 
 Causation of neurosis =
Disposition due to Fixation of Libido + Accidental Experience
(Traumatic)

               
   Sexual
Constitution                                         
Infantile Experience

               
   (Prehistoric Experience)

The hereditary sexual constitution presents us
with a great variety of dispositions, according as one component
instinct or another, alone or in combination with others, is
inherited in particular strength. The sexual constitution forms
once again, together with the factor of infantile experience, a
‘complemental series’ exactly similar to the one we
first came to know between disposition and the accidental
experience of the adult. In both of them we find the same extreme
cases and the same relations between the two factors concerned. And
here the question suggests itself of whether the most striking
kinds of libidinal regressions - those to earlier stages of the
sexual organization - may not be predominantly determined by the
hereditary constitutional factor. But it is best to postpone
answering this question till we have been able to take a wider
range of forms of neurotic illness into account.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   Let us dwell now on the fact that
analytic research shows the libido of neurotics tied to their
infantile sexual experiences. It thus lends these the appearance of
an enormous importance for the life and illness of human beings.
They retain this importance undiminished so far as the work of
therapeutics is concerned. But if we turn away from that task we
can nevertheless easily see that there is a danger here of a
misunderstanding which might mislead us into basing our view of
life too one-sidedly on the neurotic situation. We must after all
subtract from the importance of infantile experiences the fact that
the libido has returned to them
regressively
, after being
driven out of its later positions. In that case the contrary
conclusion becomes very tempting - that these libidinal experiences
had no importance at all at the time they occurred but only
acquired it regressively. You will recall that we have already
considered a similar alternative in our discussion of the Oedipus
complex.