Freud - Complete Works (607 page)

   I look upon the beating-phantasy
in its familiar third phase, which is its final form, as a
substitute of this sort. Here the child who produces the phantasy
appears almost as a spectator, while the father persists in the
shape of a teacher or some other person in authority. The phantasy,
which now resembles that of the first phase, seems to have become
sadistic once more. It appears as though in the phrase, ‘My
father is beating the child, he loves only me’, the stress
has been shifted back on to the first part after the second part
has undergone repression. But only the
form
of this phantasy
is sadistic; the satisfaction which is derived from it is
masochistic. Its significance lies in the fact that it has taken
over the libidinal cathexis of the repressed portion and at the
same time the sense of guilt which is attached to the content of
that portion. All of the many unspecified children who are being
beaten by the teacher are, after all, nothing more than substitutes
for the child itself.

   We find here for the first time,
too, something like a constancy of sex in the persons who play a
part in the phantasy. The children who are being beaten are almost
invariably boys, in the phantasies of boys just as much as in those
of girls. This characteristic is naturally not to be explained by
any rivalry between the sexes, as otherwise of course in the
phantasies of boys it would be girls who would be being beaten; and
it has nothing to do with the sex of the child who was hated in the
first phase. But it points to a complication in the case of girls.
When they turn away from their incestuous love for their father,
with its genital significance, they easily abandon their feminine
role. They spur their ‘masculinity complex’ (Van
Ophuijsen, 1917) into activity, and from that time forward only
want to be boys. For that reason the whipping-boys who represent
them are boys too. In both the cases of day-dreaming - one of which
almost rose to the level of a work of art - the heroes were always
young men; indeed women used not to come into these creations at
all, and only made their first appearance after many years, and
then in minor parts.

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V

   I hope I have brought forward my
analytic observations in sufficient detail, and I should only like
to add that the six cases I have mentioned so often do not exhaust
my material. Like other analysts, I have at my disposal a far
larger number of cases which have been investigated less
thoroughly. These observations can be made use of along various
lines: for elucidating the genesis of the perversions in general
and of masochism in particular, and for estimating the part played
by difference of sex in the dynamics of neurosis.

   The most obvious result of such a
discussion is its application to the origin of the perversions. The
view which brought into the foreground in this connection the
constitutional reinforcement or premature growth of a single sexual
component is not shaken, indeed; but it is seen not to comprise the
whole truth. The perversion is no longer an isolated fact in the
child’s sexual life, but falls into its place among the
typical, not to say normal, processes of development which are
familiar to us. It is brought into relation with the child’s
incestuous love-object, with its Oedipus complex. It first comes
into prominence in the sphere of this complex, and after the
complex has broken down it remains over, often quite by itself, the
inheritor of the charge of libido from that complex and weighed
down by the sense of guilt that was attached to it. The abnormal
sexual constitution, finally, has shown its strength by forcing the
Oedipus complex into a particular direction, and by compelling it
to leave an unusual residue behind.

   A perversion in childhood, as is
well known, may become the basis for the construction of a
perversion having a similar sense and persisting throughout life,
one which consumes the subject’s whole sexual life. On the
other hand the perversion may be broken off and remain in the
background of a normal sexual development, from which, however, it
continues to withdraw a certain amount of energy. The first of
these alternatives was already known before the days of analysis.
Analytic investigation, however, of such fully-developed cases
almost bridges the gulf between the two. For we find often enough
with these perverts that they too made an attempt at developing
normal sexual activity, usually at the age of puberty; but their
attempt had not enough force in it and was abandoned in the face of
the first obstacles which inevitably arise, where upon they fell
back upon their infantile fixation once and for all.

   It would naturally be important
to know whether the origin of infantile perversions from the
Oedipus complex can be asserted as a general principle. While this
cannot be decided without further investigation, it does not seem
impossible. When we recall the anamneses which have been obtained
in adult cases of perversion we cannot fail to notice that the
decisive impression, the ‘first experience’, of all
these perverts, fetishists, etc., is scarcely ever referred back to
a time earlier than the sixth year. At this time, however, the
dominance of the Oedipus complex is already over; the experience
which is recalled, and which has been effective in such a puzzling
way, may very well have represented the legacy of that complex. The
connections between the experience and the complex which is by this
time repressed are bound to remain obscure so long as analysis has
not thrown any light on the time before the first
‘pathogenic’ impression. So it may be imagined how
little value is to be attached, for instance, to an assertion that
a case of homosexuality is congenital, when the ground given for
this belief is that ever since his eighth or sixth year the person
in question has felt inclinations only towards his own sex.

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   If, however, the derivation of
perversions from the Oedipus complex can be generally established,
our estimate of its importance will have gained added strength. For
in our opinion the Oedipus complex is the actual nucleus of
neuroses, and the infantile sexuality which culminates in this
complex is the true determinant of neuroses. What remains of the
complex in the unconscious represents the disposition to the later
development of neuroses in the adult. In this way the
beating-phantasy and other analogous perverse fixations would also
only be precipitates of the Oedipus complex, scars, so to say, left
behind after the process has ended, just as the notorious
‘sense of inferiority’ corresponds to a narcissistic
scar of the same sort. In taking this view of the matter I must
express my unreserved agreement with Marcinowski (1918), who has
recently put it forward most happily. As is well known, this
neurotic delusion of inferiority is only a partial one, and is
completely compatible with the existence of a self-overvaluation
derived from other sources. The origin of the Oedipus complex
itself, and the destiny which compels man, probably alone among all
animals, to begin his sexual life twice over, first like all other
creatures in his early childhood, and then after a long
interruption once more at the age of puberty - all the problems
that are connected with man’s ‘archaic heritage’
- have been discussed by me elsewhere, and I have no intention of
going into them in this place.

   Little light is thrown upon the
genesis of masochism by our discussion of the beating-phantasy. To
begin with, there seems to be a confirmation of the view that
masochism is not the manifestation of a primary instinct, but
originates from sadism which has been turned round upon the self -
that is to say, by means of regression from an object to the
ego.¹ Instincts with a passive aim must be taken for granted
as existing, especially among women. But passivity is not the whole
of masochism. The characteristic of unpleasure belongs to it as
well, - a bewildering accompaniment to the satisfaction of an
instinct. The transformation of sadism into masochism appears to be
due to the influence of the sense of guilt which takes part in the
act of repression. Thus repression is operative here in three ways:
it renders the consequences of the genital organization
unconscious, it compels that organization itself to regress to the
earlier sadistic-anal stage, and it transforms the sadism of this
stage into masochism, which is passive and again in a certain sense
narcissistic. The second of these three effects is made possible by
the weakness of the genital organization, which must be presupposed
in these cases. The third becomes necessary because the sense of
guilt takes as much objection to sadism as to incestuous
object-choice genitally conceived. Again, the analyses do not tell
us the origin of the sense of guilt itself. It seems to be brought
along by the new phase upon which the child is entering, and, if it
afterwards persists, it seems to correspond to a scar-like
formation which is similar to the sense of inferiority. According
to our present orientation in the structure of the ego, which is as
yet uncertain, we should assign it to the agency in the mind which
sets itself up as a critical conscience over against the rest of
the ego, which produces Silberer’s functional phenomenon in
dreams, and which cuts itself loose from the ego in delusions of
being watched.

  
¹
Cf. Instincts and their Vicissitudes’
(1915
c
).

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   We may note too in passing that
the analysis of the infantile perversion dealt with here is also of
help in solving an old riddle - one which, it is true, has always
troubled those who have not accepted psycho-analysis more than
analysts themselves. Yet quite recently even Bleuler regarded it as
a remarkable and inexplicable fact that neurotics make masturbation
the central point of their sense of guilt. We have long assumed
that this sense of guilt relates to the masturbation of early
childhood and not to that of puberty, and that in the main it is to
be connected not with the act of masturbation but with the phantasy
which, although unconscious, lies at its root - that is to say,
with the Oedipus complex.

   As regards the third and
apparently sadistic phase of the beating-phantasy, I have already
discussed the significance that it gains as the vehicle of the
excitation impelling towards masturbation; and I have shown how it
arouses activities of the imagination which on the one hand
continue the phantasy along the same line, and on the other hand
neutralize it through compensation. Nevertheless the second phase,
the unconscious and masochistic one, in which the child itself is
being beaten by its father, is incomparably the more important.
This is not only because it continues to operate through the agency
of the phase that takes its place; we can also detect effects upon
the character, which are directly derived from its unconscious
form. People who harbour phantasies of this kind develop a special
sensitiveness and irritability towards anyone whom they can include
in the class of fathers. They are easily offended by a person of
this kind, and in that way (to their own sorrow and cost) bring
about the realization of the imagined situation of being beaten by
their father. I should not be surprised if it were one day possible
to prove that the same phantasy is the basis of the delusional
litigiousness of paranoia.

VI

   It would have been quite
impossible to give a clear survey of infantile beating-phantasies
if I had not limited it, except in one or two connections, to the
state of things in females. I will briefly recapitulate my
conclusions. The little girl’s beating phantasy passes
through three phases, of which the first and third are consciously
remembered, the middle one remaining unconscious. The two conscious
phases appear to be sadistic, whereas the middle and unconscious
one is undoubtedly of a masochistic nature; its content consists in
the child’s being beaten by her father, and it carries with
it the libidinal charge and the sense of guilt. In the first and
third phantasies the child who is being beaten is always someone
other than the subject; in the middle phase it is always the child
herself; in the third phase it is almost invariably only boys who
are being beaten. The person who does the beating is from the first
her father, replaced later on by a substitute taken from the class
of fathers. The unconscious phantasy of the middle phase had
primarily a genital significance and developed by means of
repression and regression out of an incestuous wish to be loved by
the father. Another fact, though its connection with the rest does
not appear to be close, is that between the second and third phases
the girls change their sex, for in the phantasies of the latter
phase they turn into boys.

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   I have not been able to get so
far in my knowledge of beating-phantasies in boys, perhaps because
my material was unfavourable. I naturally expected to find a
complete analogy between the state of things in the case of boys
and in that of girls, the mother taking the father’s place in
the phantasy. This expectation seemed to be fulfilled; for the
content of the boy’s phantasy which was taken to be the
corresponding one was actually his being beaten by his mother (or
later on by a substitute for her). But this phantasy, in which the
boy’s own self was retained as the person who was being
beaten, differed from the second phase in girls in that it was able
to become conscious. If on this account, however, we attempt to
draw a parallel between it and the
third
phase of the
girl’s phantasy, a new difference is found, for the figure of
the boy himself is not replaced by a number of unknown, and
unspecified children, least of all by a number of girls. Therefore
the expectation of there being a complete parallel was
mistaken.