Freud - Complete Works (653 page)
The Herd Instinct
. - It
has been maintained in many quarters that there is a special innate
and not further analysable ‘herd instinct’, which
determines the social behaviour of human beings and impels
individuals to come together into larger communities.
Psycho-analysis finds itself in contradiction to this view. Even if
the social instinct is innate, it may without any difficulty be
traced back to what were originally libidinal object-cathexes and
may have developed in the childhood of the individual as a
reaction-formation against hostile attitudes of rivalry. It is
based on a peculiar kind of identification with other people.
Two Encyclopaedia Articles
3934
Aim-inhibited Sexual
Impulses
. - The social instincts belong to a class of
instinctual impulses which need not be described as sublimated,
though they are closely related to these. They have not abandoned
their directly sexual aims, but they are held back by internal
resistances from attaining them; they rest content with certain
approximations to satisfaction and for that very reason lead to
especially firm and permanent attachments between human beings. To
this class belong in particular the affectionate relations between
parents and children, which were originally fully sexual, feelings
of friendship, and the emotional ties in marriage which had their
origin in sexual attraction.
Recognition of Two Classes of
Instincts in Mental Life
. - Though psycho-analysis endeavours
as a rule to develop its theories as independently as possible from
those of other sciences, it is nevertheless obliged to seek a basis
for the theory of the instincts in biology. On the ground of a
far-reaching consideration of the processes which go to make up
life and which lead to death, it becomes probable that we should
recognize the existence of two classes of instincts, corresponding
to the contrary processes of construction and dissolution in the
organism. On this view, the one set of instincts, which work
essentially in silence, would be those which follow the aim of
leading the living creature to death and therefore deserve to be
called the ‘
death instincts
’; these would be
directed outwards as the result of the combination of numbers of
unicellular elementary organisms, and would manifest themselves as
destructiveness
or
aggressive
impulses. The other set
of instincts would be those which are better known to us in
analysis - the libidinal, sexual or life instincts, which are best
comprised under the name of
Eros
; their purpose would be to
form living substance into ever greater unities, so that life may
be prolonged and brought to higher development. The erotic
instincts and the death instincts would be present in living beings
in regular mixtures or fusions; but ‘defusions’ would
also be liable to occur. Life would consist in the manifestations
of the conflict or interaction between the two classes of
instincts; death would mean for the individual the victory of the
destructive instincts, but reproduction would mean for him the
victory of Eros.
The Nature of the
Instincts
. - This view would enable us to characterize
instincts as tendencies inherent in living substance towards
restoring an earlier state of things: that is to say, they would be
historically determined and of a conservative nature and, as it
were, the expression of an inertia or elasticity present in what is
organic. Both classes of instincts, Eros as well as the death
instinct, would, on this view, have been in operation and working
against each other from the first origin of life.
3935
A NOTE ON THE PREHISTORY OF THE TECHNIQUE OF ANALYSIS
(1920)
A recent book by Havelock Ellis (so justly
admired for his researches into sexual science, and an eminent
critic of psycho-analysis), which bears the title of
The
Philosophy of Conflict
(1919), includes an essay on
‘Psycho-Analysis in Relation to Sex.’ The aim of this
essay is to show that the writings of the creator of analysis
should be judged not as a piece of scientific work but as an
artistic production. We cannot but regard this view as a fresh turn
taken by resistance and as a repudiation of analysis, even though
it is disguised in a friendly, indeed in too flattering a manner.
We are inclined to meet it with a most decided contradiction.
It is not, however, with a view
to contradicting him on this point that we are now concerned with
Havelock Ellis’s essay, but for another reason. His wide
reading has enabled him to bring forward an author who practised
and recommended free association as a technique, though for
purposes other than ours, and thus has a claim to be regarded as a
forerunner of psycho-analysis.
‘In 1857, Dr. J. J. Garth
Wilkinson, more noted as a Swedenborgian mystic and poet than as a
physician, published a volume of mystic doggerel verse written by
what he considered "a new method", the method of
"Impression". "A theme is chosen or written
down," he stated; "as soon as this is done the first
impression upon the mind which succeeds the act of writing the
title is the beginning of the evolution of that theme, no matter
how strange or alien the word or phrase may seem." "The
first mental movement, the first word that comes" is "the
response to the mind’s desire for the unfolding of the
subject." It is continued by the same method, and Garth
Wilkinson adds: "I have always found it lead by an infallible
instinct into the subject." The method was, as Garth Wilkinson
viewed it, a kind of exalted
laissez-faire
, a command to the
deepest unconscious instincts to express themselves. Reason and
will, he pointed out, are left aside; you trust to "an
influx", and the faculties of the mind are "directed to
ends they know not of". Garth Wilkinson, it must be clearly
understood, although he was a physician, used this method for
religious and literary, and never for scientific or medical ends;
but it is easy to see that essentially it is the method of
psycho-analysis applied to oneself, and it is further evidence how
much Freud’s method is an artist’s method.’
A Note On The Prehistory Of The Technique Of Analysis
3936
Those who are familiar with
psycho-analytic literature will recall at this point the
interesting passage in Schiller’s correspondence with
Körner¹ in which (1788) the great poet and thinker
recommends anyone who desires to be productive to adopt the method
of free association. It is to be suspected that what is alleged to
be Garth Wilkinson’s new technique had already occurred to
the minds of many others and that its systematic application in
psycho-analysis is not evidence so much of Freud’s artistic
nature as of his conviction, amounting almost to a prejudice, that
all mental events are completely determined. It followed from this
view that the first and most likely possibility was that a free
association would be related to the subject designated; and this
was confirmed by experience in analysis except in so far as too
great resistances made the suspected connection unrecognizable.
Meanwhile it is safe to assume
that neither Schiller nor Garth Wilkinson had in fact any influence
on the choice of psycho-analytic technique. It is from another
direction that there are indications of a personal influence at
work.
¹
Pointed out by Otto Rank and quoted in my
Interpretation of Dreams
(1900
a
)
A Note On The Prehistory Of The Technique Of Analysis
3937
A short time ago in Budapest Dr.
Hugo Dubowitz drew Dr. Ferenczi’s attention to a short essay
covering only four and a half pages, by Ludwig Börne. This was
written in 1823 and was reprinted in the first volume of the 1862
edition of his collected works. It is entitled ‘The Art of
Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days’, and shows the
familiar stylistic features of Jean Paul, of whom Börne was at
that time a great admirer. He ends the essay with the following
sentences:
‘And here follows the
practical application that was promised. Take a few sheets of paper
and for three days on end write down, without fabrication or
hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head. Write down what
you think of yourself, of your wife, of the Turkish War, of Goethe,
of Fonk’s trial, of the Last Judgement, of your superiors -
and when three days have passed you will be quite out of your
senses with astonishment at the new and unheard-of thoughts you
have had. This is the art of becoming an original writer in three
days.’
When Professor Freud came to read
this essay of Börne’s, he brought forward a number of
facts that may have an important bearing on the question that is
under discussion here as to the prehistory of the psycho-analytic
use of free associations. He said that when he was fourteen he had
been given Börne’s works as a present, that he still
possessed the book now, fifty years later, and that it was the only
one that had survived from his boyhood. Börne, he said, had
been the first author into whose writings he had penetrated deeply.
He could not remember the essay in question, but some of the others
that were contained in the same volume - such as ‘A Tribute
to the Memory of Jean Paul,’ ‘The Artist in
Eating’, and ‘The Fool at the White Swan Inn’ -
kept on recurring to his mind for no obvious reason over a long
period of years. He was particularly astonished to find expressed
in the advice to the original writer some opinions which he himself
had always cherished and vindicated. For instance: ‘A
disgraceful cowardliness in regard to thinking holds us all back.
The censorship of governments is less oppressive than the
censorship exercised by public opinion over our intellectual
productions.’ (Moreover there is a reference here to a
‘censorship’, which reappears in psycho-analysis as the
dream-censorship.) ‘It is not lack of intellect but lack of
character that prevents most writers from being better than they
are. . . . Sincerity is the source of all genius, and men would be
cleverer if they were more moral. . . .’
Thus it seems not impossible that
this hint may have brought to light the fragment of cryptomnesia
which in so many cases may be suspected to lie behind apparent
originality.
3938
ASSOCIATIONS OF A FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILD
(1920)
Here is part of a letter from an American
mother: ‘I must tell you what my little girl said yesterday.
I have not yet recovered from my astonishment. Cousin Emily was
talking of how she was going to take an apartment. Whereupon the
child said: "If Emily gets married, she’ll have a
baby." I was very much surprised and asked her: "Why, how
do you know that?" And she replied: "Well, when anyone
gets married, a baby always comes." I repeated: "But how
can you tell that?" And the little girl answered: "Oh, I
know a lot besides. I know that trees grow in the ground."
What a strange association! That is precisely what I intend to say
to her one day by way of enlightening her. Then she went on:
"And I know that God makes the world." When she talks
like this I can scarcely believe that she is not yet four years
old.’
The mother herself seems to have
understood the transition from the child’s first remark to
her second one. What she was trying to say was: ‘I know that
babies grow inside their mother.’ She was not expressing this
knowledge directly, but symbolically, by replacing the mother by
Mother Earth. We have already learnt from numerous incontestable
observations the early age at which children know how to make use
of symbols. But the little girl’s third remark carries on the
same context. We can only suppose that she was trying to convey a
further piece of her knowledge about the origin of babies: ‘I
know that it’s all the work of the father.’ But this
time she was replacing the direct thought by the appropriate
sublimation - that God makes the world.
3939
DR. ANTON VON FREUND
(1920)
DR. ANTON VON FREUND, who has been
General Secretary of the International Psycho-Analytical
Association since the Budapest Congress in September 1918, died on
January 20, 1920, in a Vienna sanatorium, a few days after
completing his fortieth year. He was the most powerful promoter of
our science and one of its brightest hopes. Born in Budapest in
1880, he obtained a doctorate in philosophy. He intended to become
a teacher, but was persuaded to enter his father’s industrial
undertaking. But the great successes he attained as a manufacturer
and organizer failed to satisfy the two needs which were active in
the depths of his nature - for social benefaction and scientific
activity. Seeking nothing for himself, and possessing every gift
which can charm and captivate, he used his material powers to
assist others and to soften the hardness of their destiny as well
as to sharpen in all directions the sense of social justice. In
this way he acquired a wide circle of friends, who will deeply
mourn his loss.
When, during his last years, he
came to know psycho-analysis, it seemed to him to promise the
fulfilment of his two great wishes. He set himself the task of
helping the masses by psycho-analysis and of making use of the
therapeutic effects of that medical technique, which had hitherto
only been at the service of the rich, in order to mitigate the
neurotic suffering of the poor. Since the State took no heed of the
neuroses of the common people, since hospital clinics for the most
part rejected psycho-analytic therapy without being able to offer
any substitute for it, and since the few psycho-analytic
physicians, tied by the necessity for maintaining themselves, were
unequal to such a gigantic task, Anton von Freund sought, by his
private initiative, to open a path for every one towards the
fulfilment of this important social duty. During the years of the
war he had collected what was then the very considerable sum of one
and a half million
kronen
for humanitarian purposes in the
city of Budapest. With the concurrence of Dr Stephan von
Bárczy, the then Burgomaster, he assigned this sum for the
foundation of a psycho-analytic Institute in Budapest, in which
analysis was to be practised, taught and made accessible to the
people. It was intended to train a considerable number of
physicians in this Institute who would then receive an honorarium
from it for the treatment of poor neurotics in an out-patient
clinic. The Institute, furthermore, was to be a centre for further
scientific research in analysis. Dr. Ferenczi was to be the
scientific head of the Institute; von Freund himself was to
undertake its organization and finances. The founder handed over a
relatively smaller sum to Professor Freud for the foundation of an
international psycho-analytic publishing house. But,
Was sind Hoffnungen, was sind Entwürfe,
die der Mensch, der vergängliche, baut?
Von Freund’s premature death has put an
end to these philanthropic schemes, with all their scientific
hopes. Though the fund which he collected is still in existence,
the attitude of those who are now in power in the Hungarian capital
gives no promise that his intentions will be fulfilled. Only the
psycho-analytical publishing house has come to birth in Vienna.
None the less, the example which
von Freund sought to set has already had its effect. A few weeks
after his death, thanks to the energy and liberality of Dr. Max
Eitingon, the first psycho-analytical out-patients’ clinic
has been opened in Berlin. Thus von Freund’s work is carried
on, though he himself can never be replaced or forgotten.