Freud - Complete Works (647 page)

   With these indications of
tenderness for her father, of contact with his genitals, and of
death-wishes against her mother, the outline of the female Oedipus
complex is sketched in. Her long retention of her ignorance of
sexual matters, and her frigidity at a later period bear out these
suppositions. The writer of the letter became potentially - and at
times no doubt actually - a hysterical neurotic. The forces of life
have, for her own happiness, carried her along with them. They have
awakened in her the sexual feelings of a woman and brought her the
joys of motherhood, and the capacity to work. But a portion of her
libido still clings to its points of fixation in childhood; she
still dreams the dream that throws her out of bed and punishes her
for her incestuous object-choice by ‘not inconsiderable
injuries’.

   And now an explanation, given in
writing by a doctor who was a stranger to her, was expected to
effect what all the most important experiences of her later life
had failed to do!  Probably a regular analysis continued for a
considerable time would have succeeded in this. As things were, I
was obliged to content myself with writing to her that I was
convinced she was suffering from the after-effects of a strong
emotional tie binding her to her father and from a corresponding
identification with her mother, but that I did not myself expect
that this explanation would help her. Spontaneous cures of neurosis
usually leave scars behind, and these become painful again from
time to time. We are very proud of our art if we achieve a cure
through psycho-analysis, yet here too we cannot always prevent the
formation of a painful scar as an outcome.

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   The little series of
reminiscences must engage our attention for a while longer. I have
stated elsewhere that such scenes of childhood are 
‘screen memories’ selected at a later period, put
together, and not infrequently falsified in the process. This
subsequent remodelling serves a purpose that is sometimes easy to
guess. In our case one can almost hear the writer’s ego
glorifying or soothing itself by means of this series of
recollections. ‘I was from infancy a particularly noble and
compassionate creature. I learnt quite early that animals have
souls as we have, and could not endure cruelty to animals. The sins
of the flesh were far from me and I preserved my chastity till late
in life.’ With declarations such as these she was loudly
contradicting the inferences that we have to make about her early
childhood on the basis of our analytical experience, namely, that
she had an abundance of premature sexual impulses and violent
feelings of hatred for her mother and her younger brothers and
sisters. (Besides the genital significance I have just assigned to
it, the little bird may also be a symbol of a child, like all small
animals; her recollection thus accentuated very insistently the
fact that this small creature had the same right to exist as she
herself.) Hence the short series of recollections furnishes a very
nice example of a mental structure with a twofold aspect. Viewed
superficially, we may find in it the expression of an abstract
idea, here, as usually, with an ethical reference. In
Silberer’s nomenclature the structure has an
anagogic
content. On deeper investigation it reveals itself as a chain of
phenomena belonging to the region of the repressed life of the
instincts - it displays its
psycho-analytic
content. As you
know, Silberer, who was among the first to issue a warning to us
not to lose sight of the nobler side of the human soul, has put
forward the view that all or nearly all dreams permit such a
twofold interpretation, a purer, anagogic one beside the ignoble,
psycho-analytic one. This is, however, unfortunately not so. On the
contrary, an over-interpretation of this kind is rarely possible.
To my knowledge no valid example of such a dream-analysis with a
double meaning has been published up to the present time. But
observations of this kind can often be made upon the series of
associations that our patients produce during analytic treatment.
On the one hand the successive ideas are linked by a line of
association which is plain to the eye, while on the other hand you
become aware of an underlying theme which is kept secret but which
at the same time plays a part in all these ideas. The contrast
between the two themes that dominate the same series of ideas is
not always one between the lofty anagogic and the low
psycho-analytic, but one rather between offensive and respectable
or indifferent ideas - a fact that easily explains why such a chain
of associations with a twofold determination arises. In our present
example it is of course not accidental that the anagogic and the
psycho-analytic interpretations stood in such a sharp contrast to
each other; both related to the same material, and the later trend
was no other than that of the reaction-formations which had been
erected against the disowned instinctual impulses.

   But why do we look for a
psycho-analytic interpretation at all instead of contenting
ourselves with the more accessible anagogic one? The answer to this
is linked up with many other problems - with the existence in
general of neurosis and the explanations it inevitably demands -
with the fact that virtue does not reward a man with as much joy
and strength in life as one would expect, as though it brought with
it too much of its origin (our dreamer, too, had not been well
rewarded for her virtue), and with other things which I need not
discuss before this audience.

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   So far, however, we have
completely neglected the question of telepathy, the other point of
interest for us in this case; it is time to return to it. In a
sense we have here an easier task than in the case of Herr H. With
a person who so easily and so early in life lost touch with reality
and replaced it by the world of phantasy, the temptation is
irresistible to connect her telepathic experiences and
‘visions’ with her neurosis and to derive them from it,
although here too we should not allow ourselves to be deceived as
to the cogency of our own arguments. We shall merely be replacing
what is unknown and unintelligible by possibilities that are at
least comprehensible.

   On August 22, 1914, at ten
o’clock in the morning, our correspondent experienced a
telepathic impression that her brother, who was at the time on
active service, was calling, ’Mother! Mother!’; the
phenomenon was purely acoustic, it was repeated shortly after, but
nothing was seen. Two days later she saw her mother and found her
much depressed because the boy had announced himself to her with a
repeated call of ’Mother! Mother!’ She immediately
remembered the same telepathic message, which she had experienced
at the same time, and as a matter of fact some weeks later it was
established that the young soldier had died on that day at the hour
in question.

   It cannot be proved, but also
cannot be disproved, that instead of this, what happened was the
following. Her mother told her one day that her son had sent a
telepathic message; whereupon the conviction at once arose in her
mind that she had had the same experience at the same time. Such
illusions of memory arise in the mind with a compelling force which
they draw from real sources; but they turn psychical reality into
material reality. The strength of the illusion lies in its being an
excellent way of expressing the sister’s proneness to
identify herself with her mother. ‘You are anxious about the
boy, but I am really his mother, and his cry was meant for me;
I
had this telepathic message.’ The sister would
naturally firmly reject our attempt at explanation and would hold
to her belief in the authenticity of her experience. But she could
not do otherwise. She would be bound to believe in the reality of
the pathological effect so long as the reality of its unconscious
premises were unknown to her. Every such delusion derives its
strength and its unassailable character from having a source in
unconscious psychical reality. I note in passing that it is not
incumbent on us here to explain the mother’s experience or to
investigate its authenticity.

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   The dead brother, however, was
not only our correspondent’s imaginary child; he also
represented a rival whom she had regarded with hatred from the time
of his birth. By far the greater number of all telepathic
intimations relate to death or the possibility of death; when
patients under analysis keep telling us of the frequency and
infallibility of their gloomy forebodings, we can with equal
regularity show them that they are fostering particularly strong
death-wishes in their unconscious against their nearest relations
and have long been thus suppressing them. The patient whose history
I related in 1909¹ was an example to the point; he was called
a ‘carrion crow’ by his relations. But when this kindly
and highly intelligent man - who has since himself perished in the
war - began to make progress towards recovery, he himself gave me
considerable assistance in clearing up his own psychological
conjuring tricks. In the same way, the account given in our first
correspondent’s letter, of how he and his three brothers had
received the news of their youngest brother’s death as a
thing they had long been inwardly aware of, appears to need no
other explanation. The elder brothers would all have been equally
convinced of the superfluousness of the youngest arrival.

   Here is another of our
dreamer’s ‘visions’ which will probably become
more intelligible in the light of analytic knowledge. Women friends
obviously had a great significance in her emotional life. Only
recently the death of one of them was conveyed to her by a knocking
at night on the bed of a room-mate in the sanatorium. Another
friend had many years before married a widower with several (five)
children. On the occasion of her visits to their house she
regularly saw the apparition of a lady, who she could not help
supposing was the husband’s first wife; this did not at first
permit of confirmation, and only became a matter of certainty with
her seven years later, on the discovery of a fresh photograph of
the dead woman. This achievement in the way of a vision on the part
of our correspondent had the same intimate dependence on the family
complexes familiar to us as had her presentiment of her
brother’s death. By identifying herself with her friend she
could in the person of the latter find the fulfilment of her own
wishes; for every eldest daughter of a numerous family builds up in
her unconscious the phantasy of becoming her father’s second
wife by the death of her mother. If the mother is ill or dies, the
eldest daughter takes her place as a matter of course in relation
to her younger brothers and sisters, and may even take over some
part of the functions of the wife in respect to the father. The
unconscious wish fills in the other part.

 
 
¹
‘Notes
upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis’

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   I am now almost at the end of
what I wish to say. I might, however, add the observation that the
instances of telepathic messages or productions which have been
discussed here are clearly connected with emotions belonging to the
sphere of the Oedipus complex. This may sound startling; I do not
intend to give it out as a great discovery, however. I would rather
revert to the result we arrived at through investigating the dream
I considered first. Telepathy has no relation to the essential
nature of dreams; it cannot deepen in any way what we already
understand of them through analysis. On the other hand,
psycho-analysis may do something to advance the study of telepathy,
in so far as, by the help of its interpretations, many of the
puzzling characteristics of telepathic phenomena may be rendered
more intelligible to us; or other, still doubtful, phenomena may
for the first time definitely be ascertained to be of a telepathic
nature.

   There remains one element of the
apparently intimate connection between telepathy and dreams which
is not affected by any of these considerations: namely, the
incontestable fact that sleep creates favourable conditions for
telepathy. Sleep is not, it is true, indispensable to the
occurrence of telepathic processes - whether they originate in
messages or in unconscious activity. If you are not already aware
of this, you will learn it from the instance given by our second
correspondent, of the young man’s message which came between
nine and ten in the morning. We must add, however, that no one has
a right to take exception to telepathic occurrences if the event
and the intimation (or message) do not exactly coincide in
astronomical time. It is perfectly conceivable that a telepathic
message might arrive contemporaneously with the event and yet only
penetrate to consciousness the following night during sleep (or
even in waking life only after a while, during some pause in the
activity of the mind). We are, as you know, of opinion that
dream-formation itself does not necessarily wait for the onset of
sleep before it begins. Often the latent dream-thoughts may have
been being got ready during the whole day, till at night they find
the contact with the unconscious wish that shapes them into a
dream. But if the phenomenon of telepathy is only an activity of
the unconscious mind, then, of course, no fresh problem lies before
us. The laws of unconscious mental life may then be taken for
granted as applying to telepathy.

   Have I given you the impression
that I am secretly inclined to support the reality of telepathy in
the occult sense? If so, I should very much regret that it is so
difficult to avoid giving such an impression. For in reality I have
been anxious to be strictly impartial. I have every reason to be
so, since I have no opinion on the matter and know nothing about
it.