Freud - Complete Works (602 page)

A Difficulty In The Path Of Psycho-Analysis

3614

   ‘The whole process,
however, only becomes possible through the single circumstance that
you are mistaken in another important point as well. You feel sure
that you are informed of all that goes on in your mind if it is of
any importance at all, because in that case, you believe, your
consciousness gives you news of it. And if you have had no
information of something in your mind you confidently assume that
it does not exist there. Indeed, you go so far as to regard what is
"mental" as identical with what is "conscious"
- that is, with what is known to you in spite of the most obvious
evidence that a great deal more must constantly be going on in your
mind than can be known to your consciousness. Come, let yourself be
taught something on this one point! What is in your mind does not
coincide with what you are conscious of; whether something is going
on in your mind and whether you hear of it, are two different
things. In the ordinary way, I will admit, the intelligence which
reaches your consciousness is enough for your needs; and you may
cherish the illusion that you learn of all the more important
things. But in some cases, as in that of an instinctual conflict
such as I have described, your intelligence service breaks down and
your will then extends no further than your knowledge. In every
case, however, the news that reaches your consciousness is
incomplete and often not to be relied on. Often enough, too, it
happens that you get news of events only when they are over and
when you can no longer do anything to change them. Even if you are
not ill, who can tell all that is stirring in your mind of which
you know nothing or are falsely informed? You behave like an
absolute ruler who is content with the information supplied him by
his highest officials and never goes among the people to hear their
voice. Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn
first to know yourself! Then you will understand why you were bound
to fall ill; and perhaps, you will avoid falling ill in
future.’

   It is thus that psycho-analysis
has sought to educate the ego. But these two discoveries - that the
life of our sexual instincts cannot be wholly tamed, and that
mental processes are in themselves unconscious and only reach the
ego and come under its control through incomplete and untrustworthy
perceptions - these two discoveries amount to a statement that
the ego is not master in its own house
. Together they
represent the third blow to man’s self-love, what I may call
the
psychological
one. No wonder, then, that the ego does
not look favourably upon psycho-analysis and obstinately refuses to
believe in it.

A Difficulty In The Path Of Psycho-Analysis

3615

   Probably very few people can have
realized the momentous significance for science and life of the
recognition of unconscious mental processes. It was not
psycho-analysis, however, let us hasten to add, which first took
this step. There are famous philosophers who may be cited as
forerunners - above all the great thinker Schopenhauer, whose
unconscious ‘Will’ is equivalent to the mental
instincts of psycho-analysis. It was this same thinker, moreover,
who in words of unforgettable impressiveness admonished mankind of
the importance, still so greatly under-estimated by it, of its
sexual craving. Psycho-analysis has this advantage only, that it
has not affirmed these two propositions which are so distressing to
narcissism - the psychical importance of sexuality and the
unconsciousness of mental life - on an
abstract
basis, but
has demonstrated them in matters that touch every individual
personally and force him to take up some attitude towards these
problems. It is just for this reason, however, that it brings on
itself the aversion and resistances which still hold back in awe
before the great name of the philosopher.

3616

A CHILDHOOD RECOLLECTION FROM
DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT

(1917)

3617

Intentionally left blank

3618

A CHILDHOOD RECOLLECTION FROM
DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT

‘If we try to recollect what happened to
us in the earliest years of childhood, we often find that we
confuse what we have heard from others with what is really a
possession of our own derived from what we ourselves have
witnessed.’ This remark is found on one of the first pages of
Goethe’s account of his life, which he began to write at the
age of sixty. It is preceded only by some information about his
birth, which ‘took place on August 28, 1749, at midday on the
stroke of twelve’. The stars were in a favourable conjunction
and may well have been the cause of his survival, for at his entry
into the world he was ‘as though dead’, and it was only
after great efforts that he was brought to life. There follows on
this a short description of the house and of the place in it where
the children - he and his younger sister - best liked to play.
After this, however, Goethe relates in fact only one single event
which can be assigned to the ‘earliest years of
childhood’ (the years up to four?) and of which he seems to
have preserved a recollection of his own.

   The account of it runs as
follows: ‘And three brothers (von Ochsenstein by name) who
lived over the way became very fond of me; they were orphan sons of
the late magistrate, and they took an interest in me and used to
tease me in all sorts of ways.

   ‘My people used to like to
tell of all kinds of pranks in which these men, otherwise of a
serious and retiring disposition, used to encourage me. I will
quote only one of these exploits. The crockery-fair was just over,
and not only had the kitchen been fitted up from it with what would
be needed for some time to come, but miniature utensils of the same
sort had been bought for us children to play with. One fine
afternoon, when all was quiet in the house, I was playing with my
dishes and pots in the hall’ (a place which had already been
described, opening on to the street) ‘and, since this seemed
to lead to nothing, I threw a plate into the street, and was
overjoyed to see it go to bits so merrily. The von Ochsensteins,
who saw how delighted I was and how joyfully I clapped my little
hands, called out "Do it again!" I did not hesitate to
sling out a pot on to the paving-stones, and then, as they kept
crying "Another!", one after another all my little
dishes, cooking-pots and pans. My neighbours continued to show
their approval and I was highly delighted to be amusing them. But
my stock was all used up, and still they cried "Another!"
So I ran off straight into the kitchen and fetched the earthenware
plates, which made an even finer show as they smashed to bits. And
thus I ran backwards and forwards, bringing one plate after
another, as I could reach them in turn from the dresser; and, as
they were not content with that, I hurled every piece of crockery I
could set hold of to the same destruction. Only later did someone
come and interfere and put a stop to it all. The damage was done,
and to make up for so much broken earthenware there was at least an
amusing story, which the rascals who had been its instigators
enjoyed to the end of their lives.’

A Childhood Recollection From Dichtung Und Wahrheit

3619

   In pre-analytic days it was
possible to read this without finding occasion to pause and without
feeling surprised, but later on the analytic conscience became
active. We had formed definite opinions and expectations about the
memories of earliest childhood, and would have liked to claim
universal validity for them. It should not be a matter of
indifference or entirely without meaning which detail of a
child’s life had escaped the general oblivion. It might on
the contrary be conjectured that what had remained in memory was
the most significant element in that whole period of life, whether
it had possessed such an importance at the time, or whether it had
gained subsequent importance from the influence of later
events.

   The high value of such childish
recollections was, it is true, obvious only in a few cases.
Generally they seemed indifferent, worthless even, and it remained
at first incomprehensible why just these memories should have
resisted amnesia; nor could the person who had preserved them for
long years as part of his own store of memories see more in them
than any stranger to whom he might relate them. Before their
significance could be appreciated, a certain work of interpretation
was necessary. This interpretation either showed that their content
required to be replaced by some other content, or revealed that
they were related to some other unmistakably important experiences
and had appeared in their place as what are known as ‘screen
memories’.

   In every psycho-analytic
investigation of a life-history it is always possible to explain
the meaning of the earliest childhood memories along these lines.
Indeed, it usually happens that the very recollection to which the
patient gives precedence, which he relates first, with which he
introduces the story of his life, proves to be the most important,
the very one that holds the key to the secret pages of his mind.
But the little childish episode related in
Dichtung und
Wahrheit
does not rise to our expectations. The ways and means
that with our patients lead to interpretation are of course not
available to us here; the episode does not seem in itself to admit
of any traceable connection with important impressions at a later
date. A mischievous trick with damaging effects on the household
economy, carried out under the spur of outside encouragement, is
certainly no fitting headpiece for all that Goethe has to tell us
of his richly filled life. An impression of utter innocence and
irrelevance clings to this childish memory, and it might be taken
as a warning not to stretch the claims of psycho-analysis too far
nor to apply it in unsuitable places.

   The little problem, therefore,
had long since slipped out of my mind, when one day chance brought
me a patient in whom a similar childhood memory appeared in a
clearer connection. He was a man of twenty-seven, highly educated
and gifted, whose life at that time was entirely filled with a
conflict with his mother that affected all his interests, and from
the effects of which his capacity for love and his ability to lead
an independent existence bad suffered greatly. This conflict went
far back into his childhood; certainly to his fourth year. Before
that he had been a very weakly child, always ailing, and yet that
sickly period was glorified into a paradise in his memory; for then
he had had exclusive, uninterrupted possession of his
mother’s affection. When he was not yet four, a brother, who
is still living, was born, and in his reaction to that disturbing
event he became transformed into an obstinate, unmanageable boy,
who perpetually provoked his mother’s severity. More over, he
never regained the right path.

A Childhood Recollection From Dichtung Und Wahrheit

3620

   When he came to me for treatment
- by no means the least reason for his coming was that his mother,
a religious bigot, had a horror of psycho-analysis - his jealousy
of the younger brother (which had once actually been manifested as
a murderous attack on the infant in its cradle) had long been
forgotten. He now treated his brother with great consideration; but
certain curious fortuitous actions of his (which involved sudden
and severe injuries to favourite animals, like his sporting dog or
birds which he had carefully reared,) were probably to be
understood as echoes of these hostile impulses against the little
brother.

   Now this patient related that, at
about the time of the attack on the baby he so much hated, he had
thrown all the crockery he could lay hands on out of the window of
their country house into the road-the very same thing that Goethe
relates of his childhood in
Dichtung und Wahrheit
! I may
remark that my patient was of foreign nationality and was not
acquainted with German literature; he had never read Goethe’s
autobiography.

   This communication naturally
suggested to me that an attempt might be made to explain
Goethe’s childish memory on the lines forced upon us by my
patient’s story. But could the necessary conditions for this
explanation be shown to exist in the poet’s childhood? Goethe
himself, it is true, makes the instigation of the von Ochsenstein
brothers responsible for his childish prank. But from his own
narrative it can be seen that these grown-up neighbours merely
encouraged him to go on with what he was doing. The beginning was
on his own initiative, and the reason he gives for this beginning -
‘since this (the game) seemed to lead to nothing’ - is
surely, without any forcing of its meaning, a confession that at
the time of writing it down and probably for many years previously
he was not aware of any adequate motive for his behaviour.

   It is well known that Johann
Wolfgang and his sister Cornelia were the eldest survivors of a
considerable family of very weakly children. Dr. Hanns Sachs has
been so kind as to supply me with the following details concerning
these brothers and sisters of Goethe’s, who died in
childhood:

   (
a
) Hermann Jakob,
baptized Monday, November 27, 1752; reached the age of six years
and six weeks; buried January 13, 1759.

   (
b
) Katharina Elisabetha,
baptized Monday, September 9, 1754; buried Thursday, December 22,
1755. (One year and four months old).

   (
c
) Johanna Maria,
baptized Tuesday, March 29, 1757, and buried Saturday, August 11,
1759. (Two years and four months old)- (This was doubtless the very
pretty and attractive little girl celebrated by her brother.)

   (
d
) Georg Adolph, baptized
Sunday, June 15, 1760; buried, eight months old, Wednesday,
February 18, 1761.

A Childhood Recollection From Dichtung Und Wahrheit

3621

   Goethe’s next youngest
sister, Cornelia Friederica Christiana, was born on December 7,
1750, when he was fifteen months old. This slight difference in age
almost excludes the possibility of her having been an object of
jealousy. It is known that, when their passions awake, children
never develop such violent reactions against the brothers and
sisters they find already in existence, but direct their hostility
against the newcomers. Nor is the scene we are endeavouring to
interpret reconcilable with Goethe’s tender age at the time
of, or shortly after, Cornelia’s birth.

   At the time of the birth of the
first little brother, Hermann Jakob, Johann Wolfgang was three and
a quarter years old. Nearly two years later, when he was about five
years old, the second sister was born. Both ages come under
consideration in dating the episode of the throwing out of the
crockery. The earlier is perhaps to be preferred; and it would best
agree with the case of my patient, who was about three and a
quarter years old at the birth of his brother.

   Moreover, Goethe’s brother
Hermann Jakob, to whom we are thus led in our attempt at
interpretation, did not make so brief a stay in the family nursery
as the children born afterwards. One might feel some surprise that
the autobiography does not contain a word of remembrance of
him.¹ He was over six, and Johann Wolfgang was nearly ten,
when he died. Dr. Hitschmann, who was kind enough to place his
notes on this subject at my disposal, says:

   ‘
Goethe, too, as a
little boy saw a younger brother die without regret
. At least,
according to Bettina Brentano his mother gave the following
account: "It struck her as very extraordinary that he shed no
tears at the death of his younger brother Jakob who was his
playfellow; he seemed on the contrary to feel annoyance at the
grief of his parents and sisters. When, later on, his mother asked
the young rebel if he had not been fond of his brother, he ran into
his room and brought out from under the bed a heap of papers on
which lessons and little stories were written, saying that he had
done all this to teach his brother." So it seems all the same
that the elder brother enjoyed playing father to the younger and
showing him his superiority.’

  
¹
(
Footnote added
1924:) I take this
opportunity of withdrawing an incorrect statement which should not
have been made. In a later passage in this first volume the younger
brother
is
mentioned and described. It occurs in connection
with memories of the serious illnesses of childhood, from which
this brother also suffered ‘not a little’. ‘He
was a delicate child, quiet and self-willed, and we never had much
to do with each other. Besides, he hardly survived the years of
infancy.’

A Childhood Recollection From Dichtung Und Wahrheit

3622

   The opinion might thus be formed
that the throwing of crockery out of the window was a symbolic
action, or, to put it more correctly, a
magic
action, by
which the child (Goethe as well as my patient) gave violent
expression to his wish to get rid of a disturbing intruder. There
is no need to dispute a child’s enjoyment of smashing things;
if an action is pleasurable in itself, that is not a hindrance but
rather an inducement to repeat it in obedience to other purposes as
well. It is unlikely, however, that it could have been the pleasure
in the crash and the breaking which ensured the childish prank a
lasting place in adult memory. Nor is there any objection to
complicating the motivation of the action by adding a further
factor. A child who breaks crockery knows quite well that he is
doing something naughty for which grown-ups will scold him, and if
he is not restrained by that knowledge, he probably has a grudge
against his parents that he wants to satisfy; he wants to show
naughtiness.