Freud - Complete Works (652 page)

  
Its Relation to
Psychiatry
. - Psychiatry is at present essentially a
descriptive and classificatory science whose orientation is still
towards the somatic rather than the psychological and which is
without the possibility of giving explanations of the phenomena
which it observes. Psycho-analysis does not, however, stand in
opposition to it, as the almost unanimous behaviour of the
psychiatrists might lead one to believe. On the contrary, as a
depth-psychology
, a psychology of those processes in mental
life which are withdrawn from consciousness, it is called upon to
provide psychiatry with an indispensable groundwork and to free it
from its present limitations. We can foresee that the future will
give birth to a scientific psychiatry, to which psycho-analysis has
served as an introduction.

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Criticisms and
Misunderstandings of Psycho-Analysis
. - Most of what is brought
up against psycho-analysis, even in scientific works, is based upon
insufficient information which in its turn seems to be determined
by emotional resistances. Thus it is a mistake to accuse
psycho-analysis of ‘pan-sexualism’ and to allege that
it derives all mental occurrences from sexuality and traces them
all back to it. On the contrary, psycho-analysis has from the very
first distinguished the sexual instincts from others which it has
provisionally termed ‘ego instincts’. It has never
dreamt of trying to explain ‘everything’, and even the
neuroses it has traced back not to sexuality alone but to the
conflict between the sexual impulses and the ego. In
psycho-analysis (unlike the works of C. G. Jung) the term
‘
libido
’ does not mean psychical energy in
general but the motive force of the sexual instincts. Some
assertions, such as that every dream is the fulfilment of a sexual
wish, have never been maintained by it at all. The charge of
one-sidedness made against psycho-analysis, which, as
the
science of the unconscious mind
, has its own definite and
restricted field of work, is as inapplicable as it would be if it
were made against chemistry. To believe that psycho-analysis seeks
a cure for neurotic disorders by giving a free rein to sexuality is
a serious misunderstanding which can only be excused by ignorance.
The making conscious of repressed sexual desires in analysis makes
it possible, on the contrary, to obtain a mastery over them which
the previous repression had been unable to achieve. It can more
truly be said that analysis sets the neurotic free from the chains
of his sexuality. Moreover, it is quite unscientific to judge
analysis by whether it is calculated to undermine religion,
authority and morals; for, like all sciences, it is entirely
non-tendentious and has only a single aim - namely to arrive at a
consistent view of one portion of reality. Finally, one can only
characterize as simple-minded the fear which is sometimes expressed
that all the highest goods of humanity, as they are called -
research, art, love, ethical and social sense - will lose their
value or their dignity because psycho-analysis is in a position to
demonstrate their origin in elementary and animal instinctual
impulses.

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The Non-Medical Applications
and Correlations of Psycho-analysis
. - Any estimate of
psycho-analysis would be incomplete if it failed to make clear
that, alone among the medical disciplines, it has the most
extensive relations with the mental sciences, and that it is in a
position to play a part of the same importance in the studies of
religious and cultural history and in the sciences of mythology and
literature as it is in psychiatry. This may seem strange when we
reflect that originally its only object was the understanding and
improvement of neurotic symptoms. But it is easy to indicate the
starting-point of the bridge that leads over to the mental
sciences. The analysis of dreams gave us an insight into the
unconscious processes of the mind and showed us that the mechanisms
which produce pathological symptoms are also operative in the
normal mind. Thus psychoanalysis became a
depth-psychology
and capable as such of being applied to the mental sciences, and it
was able to answer a good number of questions with which the
academic psychology of consciousness was helpless to deal. At quite
an early stage problems of human
phyllogenesis
arose. It
became clear that pathological function was often nothing more than
a
regression
to an earlier stage in the development of
normal function. C. G. Jung was the first to draw explicit
attention to the striking similarity between the disordered
phantasies of sufferers from dementia praecox and the myths of
primitive peoples; while the present writer pointed out that the
two wishes which combine to form the Oedipus complex coincide
precisely with the two principal prohibitions imposed by
totemism
(not to kill the tribal ancestor and not to marry
any woman belonging to one’s own clan) and drew far-reaching
conclusions from this fact. The significance of the Oedipus complex
began to grow to gigantic proportions and it looked as though
social order, morals, justice and religion had arisen together in
the primaeval ages of mankind as reaction-formations against the
Oedipus complex. Otto Rank threw a brilliant light upon mythology
and the history of literature by the application of psycho-analytic
views, as did Theodor Reik upon the history of morals and
religions, while Dr. Pfister, of Zurich, aroused the interest of
religious and secular teachers and demonstrated the importance of
the psycho-analytic standpoint for education. Further discussion of
these applications of psycho-analysis would be out of place here,
and it is enough to say that the limits of their influence are not
yet in sight.

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Psycho-analysis an Empirical
Science
. - Psycho-analysis is not, like philosophies, a system
starting out from a few sharply defined basic concepts, seeking to
grasp the whole universe with the help of these and, once it is
completed, having no room for fresh discoveries or better
understanding. On the contrary, it keeps close to the facts in its
field of study, seeks to solve the immediate problems of
observation, gropes its way forward by the help of experience, is
always incomplete and always ready to correct or modify its
theories. There is no incongruity (any more than in the case of
physics or chemistry) if its most general concepts lack clarity and
if its postulates are provisional; it leaves their more precise
definition to the results of future work.

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(B)
THE LIBIDO THEORY

Libido is a term used in the theory of the
instincts for describing the dynamic manifestation of sexuality. It
was already used in this sense by Moll (1898) and was introduced
into psycho-analysis by the present writer. What follows is limited
to a description of the developments which the theory of the
instincts has passed through in psycho-analysis - developments
which are still proceeding.

  
Contrast between Sexual and
Ego Instincts
. - Psycho-analysis early became aware that all
mental occurrences must be regarded as built on the basis of an
interplay of the forces of the elementary instincts. This, however,
led to a difficult predicament, since psychology included no theory
of the instincts. No one could say what an instinct really was, the
question was left entirely to individual caprice, and every
psychologist was in the habit of postulating any instincts in any
number that he chose. The first sphere of phenomena to be studied
by psycho-analysis comprised what are known as the transference
neuroses (hysteria and obsessional neurosis). It was found that
their symptoms came about by sexual instinctual impulses being
rejected (repressed) by the subject’s personality (his ego)
and then finding expression by circuitous paths through the
unconscious. These facts could be met by drawing a contrast between
the sexual instincts and ego instincts (
instincts of
self-preservation
), which was in line with the popular saying
that hunger and love are what make the world go round: libido was
the manifestation of the force of love in the same sense as was
hunger of the self-preservative instinct. The nature of the ego
instincts remained for the time being undefined and, like all the
other characteristics of the ego, inaccessible to analysis. There
was no means of deciding whether, and if so what, qualitative
differences were to be assumed to exist between the two classes of
instincts.

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Primal Libido.
- C. G.
Jung attempted to resolve this obscurity along speculative lines by
assuming that there was only a single primal libido which could be
either sexualized or desexualized and which therefore coincided in
its essence with mental energy in general. This innovation was
methodologically disputable, caused a great deal of confusion,
reduced the term ‘libido’ to the level of a superfluous
synonym and was still in practice confronted with the necessity for
distinguishing between sexual and asexual libido. The difference
between the sexual instincts and instincts with other aims was not
to be got rid of by means of a new definition.

  
Sublimation
. - An
attentive examination of the sexual trends, which alone were
accessible to psycho-analysis, had meanwhile led to some remarkable
detailed findings. What is described as the sexual instinct turns
out to be of a highly composite nature and is liable to
disintegrate once more into its component instincts. Each component
instinct is unalterably characterized by its source, that is, by
the region or zone of the body from which its excitation is
derived. Each has furthermore as distinguishable features an
object
and an
aim
. The aim is always discharge
accompanied by satisfaction, but it is capable of being changed
from activity to passivity. The object is less closely attached to
the instinct than was at first supposed; it is easily exchanged for
another one, and, moreover, an instinct which had an external
object can be turned round upon the subject’s own self. The
separate instincts can either remain independent of one another or
- in what is still an inexplicable manner - can be combined and
merged into one another to perform work in common. They are also
able to replace one another and to transfer their libidinal
cathexis to one another, so that the satisfaction of one instinct
can take the place of the satisfaction of others. The most
important vicissitude which an instinct can undergo seems to be
sublimation
; here both object and aim are changed, so that
what was originally a sexual instinct finds satisfaction in some
achievement which is no longer sexual but has a higher social or
ethical valuation. These different features do not as yet combine
to form an integral picture.

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Narcissism
. - A decisive
advance was made when the analysis of dementia praecox and other
psychotic disorders was ventured upon and thus the examination was
begun of the ego itself, which had so far been known only as the
agency of repression and opposition. It was found that the
pathogenic process in dementia praecox is the withdrawal of the
libido from objects and its introduction into the ego, while the
clamorous symptoms of the disease arise from the vain struggles of
the libido to find a pathway back to objects. It thus turned out to
be possible for object-libido to change into cathexis of the ego
and
vice versa
. Further reflection showed that this process
must be presumed to occur on the largest scale and that the ego is
to be regarded as a great reservoir of libido from which libido is
sent out
to
objects and which is always ready to absorb
libido flowing back
from
objects. Thus the instincts of
self-preservation were also of a libidinal nature: they were sexual
instincts which, instead of external objects, had taken the
subject’s own ego as an object. Clinical experience had made
us familiar with people who behaved in a striking fashion as though
they were in love with themselves and this perversion had been
given the name of
narcissism
. The libido of the
self-preservative instincts was now described as
narcissistic
libido
and it was recognized that a high degree of this
self-love constituted the primary and normal state of things. The
earlier formula laid down for the transference neuroses
consequently required to be modified, though not corrected. It was
better, instead of speaking of a conflict between sexual instincts
and ego instincts, to speak of a conflict between object-libido and
ego-libido, or, since the nature of these instincts was the same,
between the object-cathexes and the ego.

  
Apparent Approach to
Jung’s Views
. - It thus seemed on the face of it as
though the slow process of psycho-analytic research was following
in the steps of Jung’s speculation about a primal libido,
especially because the transformation of object-libido into
narcissism necessarily carried along with it a certain degree of
desexualization, or abandonment of the specifically sexual aims.
Nevertheless, it has to be borne in mind that the fact that the
self-preservative instincts of the ego are recognized as libidinal
does not necessarily prove that there are no other instincts
operating in the ego.