Freud - Complete Works (572 page)

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3451

   (
c
) We make a third
discovery when we come to patients suffering from obsessional
actions, who seem in a remarkable way exempt from anxiety. If we
try to hinder their carrying out of their obsessional action -
their washing or their ceremonial - or if they themselves venture
upon an attempt to give up one of their compulsions, they are
forced by the most terrible anxiety to yield to the compulsion. We
can see that the anxiety was screened by the obsessional action,
and that the latter was only performed in order to avoid the
anxiety. In an obsessional neurosis, therefore, anxiety which would
otherwise inevitably set in is replaced by the formation of a
symptom, and if we turn to hysteria we find a similar relation: the
result of the process of repression is either a generating of
anxiety pure and simple, or anxiety accompanied by the formation of
a symptom, or a more complete formation of a symptom without
anxiety. It would thus seem not to be wrong in an abstract sense to
assert that in general symptoms are only formed to escape an
otherwise unavoidable generating of anxiety. If we adopt this view,
anxiety is placed, as it were, in the very centre of our interest
in the problems of neurosis.

   Our observations on anxiety
neurosis led us to conclude that the deflection of the libido from
its normal employment, which causes the development of anxiety,
takes place in the region of somatic processes. Analyses of
hysteria an obsessional neurosis yield the additional conclusion
that a similar deflection with the same outcome may also be the
result of a refusal on the part of the
psychical
agencies.
This much, therefore, we know about the origin of neurotic anxiety.
It still sounds fairly indefinite; but for the moment I see no path
that would lead us further. The second problem we set ourselves -
of establishing a connection between neurotic anxiety, which is
libido put to an abnormal employment, and realistic anxiety, which
corresponds to a reaction to danger - seems even harder to solve.
One might suppose that these were two quite disparate things; and
yet we have no means of distinguishing in our feelings between
realistic anxiety and neurotic anxiety.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3452

   We finally arrive at the
connection we are in search of, if we take as our starting-point
the opposition we have so often asserted between the ego and the
libido. As we know, the generation of anxiety is the ego’s
reaction to danger and the signal for taking flight. If so, it
seems plausible to suppose that in neurotic anxiety the ego is
making a similar attempt at flight from the demand by its libido,
that it is treating this internal danger as though it were an
external one. This would therefore fulfil our expectation that
where anxiety is shown there is something one is afraid of. But the
analogy could be carried further. Just as the attempt at flight
from an external danger is replaced by standing firm and the
adoption of expedient measures of defence, so too the generation of
neurotic anxiety gives place to the formation of symptoms, which
results in the anxiety being bound.

   The difficulty in understanding
now lies else here. The anxiety which signifies a flight of the ego
from its libido is after all supposed to be derived from that
libido itself. This is obscure and it reminds us not to forget that
after all a person’s libido is fundamentally something of his
and cannot be contrasted with him as something external. It is the
topographical dynamics of the generation of anxiety which are still
obscure to us - the question of what mental energies are produced
in what process and from what mental systems they derive. This is
once more a question which I cannot promise to answer: but there
are two other tracks which we must not fail to follow and in doing
so we shall once more be making use of direct observation and
analytic enquiry as a help to our speculations. We will turn to the
genesis of anxiety in children and to the source of the neurotic
anxiety which is attached to phobias.

   Apprehensiveness in children is
something very usual, and it seems most difficult to distinguish
whether it is neurotic or realistic anxiety. Indeed the value of
making the distinction is put in question by the behaviour of
children. For on the one hand we are not surprised if a child is
frightened of all strangers, or of new situations and things; and
we account for this reaction very easily as being due to his
weakness and ignorance. Thus we attribute to children a strong
inclination to realistic anxiety and we should regard it as quite
an expedient arrangement if this apprehensiveness were an innate
heritage in them. Children would merely be repeating in this the
behaviour of prehistoric men and of modern primitive peoples who as
a result of their ignorance and helplessness are afraid of every
novelty and of many familiar things which no longer cause us any
anxiety to-day. And it would fit in perfectly with our expectation
if children’s phobias, in part at least, were the same as
those which we may attribute to the primaeval periods of human
development.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3453

   On the other hand we cannot
overlook the fact that not all children are anxious to the same
degree, and that precisely children who exhibit a special timidity
towards objects and in situations of every kind turn out later to
be neurotic. Thus the neurotic disposition betrays itself also by
an outspoken tendency to realistic anxiety; apprehensiveness
appears to be the primary thing and we reach the conclusion that
the reason why children and, later, growing youths and girls are
afraid of the height of their libido is because in fact they are
afraid of everything. The genesis of anxiety from libido would in
this way be denied; and if one examined into the determinants of
realistic anxiety, consistency would lead one to the view that
consciousness of one’s own weakness and helplessness -
inferiority according to Adler’s terminology, - if it can be
prolonged from childhood into adult life, is the final basis of
neuroses.

   This sounds so simple and
seductive that it has a claim on our attention. It is true that it
would involve a displacement of the riddle of the neurotic state.
The continued existence of the sense of inferiority - and thus, of
what determine anxiety and the formation of symptoms - seems so
well assured that what calls for an explanation is rather how, as
an exception, what we know as health can come about. But what is
revealed by a careful examination of apprehensiveness in children?
At the very beginning, what children are afraid of is strange
people
; situations only become important because they
include people, and impersonal things do not come into account at
all until later. But a child is not afraid of these strangers
because he attributes evil intentions to them and compares his
weakness with their strength, and accordingly assesses them as
dangers to his existence, safety and freedom from pain. A child who
is mistrustful in this way and terrified of the aggressive instinct
which dominates the world is a theoretical construction that has
quite miscarried. A child is frightened of a strange face because
he is adjusted to the sight of a familiar and beloved figure -
ultimately of his mother. It is his disappointment and longing that
are transformed into anxiety - his libido, in fact, which has
become unemployable, which cannot at that time be held in suspense
and is discharged as anxiety. And it can scarcely be a matter of
chance, either, that in this situation which is the prototype of
the anxiety of children there is a repetition of the determinant of
the first state of anxiety during the act of birth - namely,
separation from the mother.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3454

   In children the first phobias
relating to situations are those of darkness and solitude. The
former of these often persists throughout life; both are involved
when a child feels the absence of some loved person who looks after
it - its mother, that is to say. While I was in the next room, I
heard a child who was afraid of the dark call out: ‘Do speak
to me, Auntie! I’m frightened!’ ‘Why, what good
would that do? You can’t see me.’ To this the child
replied: ‘If someone speaks, it gets lighter.’ Thus a
longing
felt in the dark is transformed into a
fear
of the dark. Far from its being the case that neurotic anxiety is
only secondary and a special case of realistic anxiety, we see on
the contrary that in a small child something that behaves like
realistic anxiety shares its essential feature - origin from
unemployed libido - with neurotic anxiety. Innately, children seem
to have little true realistic anxiety. In all the situations which
can later become determinants of phobias (on heights, on narrow
bridges over water, on railway journeys, on ships) children exhibit
no anxiety; and, to be sure, the greater their ignorance the less
their anxiety. It would have been a very good thing if they had
inherited more of such life-preserving instincts, for that would
have greatly facilitated the task of watching over them to prevent
their running into one danger after another. The fact is that
children, to begin with, over-estimate their strength and behave
fearlessly because they are ignorant of dangers. They will run
along the brink of the water, climb on to the window-sill, play
with sharp objects and with fire - in short, do everything that is
bound to damage them and to worry those in charge of them. When in
the end realistic anxiety is awakened in them, that is wholly the
result of education; for they cannot be allowed to make the
instructive experiences themselves.

   If, then, there are children who
come some way to meet this education in anxiety, and who go on to
find dangers themselves that they have not been warned against,
this is sufficiently explained by the fact that they have a greater
amount of innate libidinal need in their constitution or have been
prematurely spoiled by libidinal satisfaction. It is not to be
wondered at if such children include, too, the later neurotics: as
we know, what most facilitates the development of a neurosis is an
incapacity to tolerate a considerable damming-up of libido over any
great length of time. You will observe that here once more the
constitutional factor comes into its rights - and these, indeed, we
have never sought to dispute. We are only on our guard against
those who in its favour neglect all other claims, and who introduce
the constitutional factor at points at which the combined results
of observation and analysis show that it does not belong or must
take the last place.

   Let me sum up what we have learnt
from our observations of the apprehensiveness of children.
Infantile anxiety has very little to do with realistic anxiety,
but, on the other hand, is closely related to the neurotic anxiety
of adults. Like the latter, it is derived from unemployed libido
and it replaces the missing love-object by an external object or by
a situation.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3455

   You will be glad to hear that the
analysis of phobias has not much more that is new to teach us. For
the same thing happens with them as with children’s anxiety:
unemployable libido is being constantly transformed into an
apparently realistic anxiety and thus a tiny external danger is
introduced to represent the claims of the libido. There is nothing
to be wondered at in this agreement, for the infantile phobias are
not only the prototype of the later ones which we class as
‘anxiety hysteria’ but are actually their precondition
and the prelude to them. Every hysterical phobia goes back to an
infantile anxiety and is a continuation of it, even if it has a
different content and must thus be given another name. The
difference between the two disorders lies in their mechanism. In
order that libido shall be changed into anxiety, it no longer
suffices in the case of adults for the libido to have become
momentarily unemployable in the form of a longing. Adults have long
since learnt how to hold such libido in suspense or to employ it in
some other way. If, however, the libido belongs to a psychical
impulse which has been subjected to repression, then circumstances
are re-established similar to those in the case of a child in whom
there is still no distinction between conscious and unconscious;
and by mean of regression to the infantile phobia a passage is
opened, as it were, through which the transformation of libido into
anxiety can be comfortably accomplished.

   As you will recall, we have dealt
with repression at great length, but in doing so we have always
followed the vicissitudes only of the idea that is to be repressed
- naturally, since this was easier to recognize and describe. We
have always left on one side the question of what happens to the
affect that was attached to the repressed idea; and it is only now
that we learn that the immediate vicissitude of that affect is to
be transformed into anxiety, whatever quality it may have exhibited
apart from this in the normal course of events. This transformation
of affect is, however, by far the most important part of the
process of repression. It is not so easy to speak of this, since we
cannot assert the existence of unconscious affects in the same
sense as that of unconscious ideas. An idea remains the same,
except for the one difference, whether it is conscious or
unconscious; we can state what it is that corresponds to an
unconscious idea. But an affect is a process of discharge and must
be judged quite differently from an idea; what corresponds to it in
the unconscious cannot be declared without deeper reflection and a
clarification of our hypotheses about psychical processes. And that
we cannot undertake here. We will, however, emphasize the
impression we have now gained that the generation of anxiety is
intimately linked to the system of the unconscious.