Freud - Complete Works (674 page)

IV

   The noisy rejection of
psycho-analysis by the medical world could not deter its supporters
from developing it, to begin with, along its original lines into a
specialized pathology and treatment of the neuroses - a task which
has not been completely accomplished even to-day. Its undeniable
therapeutic success, which far exceeded any that had previously
been achieved, constantly spurred them on to fresh efforts; while
the difficulties which came to light as the material was examined
more deeply led to profound alterations in the technique of
analysis and to important corrections in its theoretical hypotheses
and postulates.

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   In the course of this
development, the technique of psycho-analysis has become as
definite and as delicate as that of any other specialized branch of
medicine. A failure to understand this fact has led to many abuses
(particularly in England and America) because people who have
acquired only a literary knowledge of psycho-analysis from reading
consider themselves capable of undertaking analytic treatments
without having received any special training. The consequences of
such behaviour are damaging both to the science and to the patients
and have brought much discredit upon psycho-analysis. The
foundation of a first psycho-analytic out-patient clinic (by Max
Eitingon in Berlin in 1920) has therefore become a step of high
practical importance. This institute seeks on the one hand to make
analytic treatment accessible to wide circles of the population and
on the other hand undertakes the education of doctors to be
practical analysts by a course of training which includes as a
condition that the learner shall agree to be analysed himself.

   Among the hypothetical concepts
which enable the doctor to deal with the analytic material, the
first to be mentioned is that of ‘libido’. Libido means
in psycho-analysis in the first instance the force (thought of as
quantitatively variable and measurable) of the sexual instincts
directed towards an object - ‘sexual’ in the extended
sense required by analytic theory. Further study showed that it was
necessary to set alongside this ‘object-libido’ a
‘narcissistic’ or ‘ego-libido’, directed to
the subject’s own ego; and the interaction of these two
forces has enabled us to account for a great number of normal and
abnormal processes in mental life. A rough distinction was soon
made between what are known as the ‘transference
neuroses’ and the narcissistic disorders. The former
(hysteria and obsessional neurosis) are the objects proper of
psycho-analytic treatment, while the others, the narcissistic
neuroses, though they can, it is true, be examined by the help of
analysis, offer fundamental difficulties to therapeutic influence.
It is true that the libido theory of psycho-analysis is by no means
complete and that its relation to a general theory of the instincts
is not yet clear, for psycho-analysis is a young science, quite
unfinished and in a stage of rapid development. Here, however, it
should be emphatically pointed out how erroneous the charge of
pan-sexualism is which is so often levelled at psycho-analysis. It
seeks to show that psycho-analytic theory knows of no mental motive
forces other than purely sexual ones and in doing so exploits
popular prejudices by using the word ‘sexual’ not in
its analytic but in its vulgar sense.

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   The psycho-analytic view would
also have to include in narcissistic disorders all the ailments
described in psychiatry as ‘functional psychoses’. It
could not be doubted that neuroses and psychoses are not separated
by a hard and fast line, any more than health and neurosis; and it
was plausible to explain the mysterious psychotic phenomena by the
discoveries achieved on the neuroses, which had hitherto been
equally incomprehensible. The present writer had himself, during
the period of his isolation, made a case of paranoid illness partly
intelligible by an analytic investigation and had pointed out in
this unquestionable psychosis the same contents (complexes) and a
similar interplay of forces as in the simple neuroses. Bleuler
followed out the indications of what he called ‘Freudian
mechanisms’ in a whole number of psychoses, and Jung won high
opinions as an analyst at a single blow when, in 1907, he explained
the most eccentric symptoms in the end-stages of dementia praecox
from the individual life-histories of the patients. The
comprehensive study of schizophrenia by Bleuler (1911) probably
demonstrated once and for all the justification of a
psycho-analytic angle of approach for the understanding of these
psychoses.

   In this way psychiatry became the
first field to which psycho-analysis was applied and it has
remained so ever since. The same research workers who have done
most to deepen analytic knowledge of the neuroses, such as Karl
Abraham in Berlin and Sándor Ferenczi in Budapest (to name
only the most prominent), have also played a leading part in
throwing analytic light on the psychoses. The conviction of the
unity and intimate connection of all the disorders that present
themselves as neurotic and psychotic phenomena is becoming more and
more firmly established despite all the efforts of the
psychiatrists. People are beginning to understand - best of all,
perhaps, in America - that the psycho-analytic study of the
neuroses is the only preparation for an understanding of the
psychoses, and that psycho-analysis is destined to make possible a
scientific psychiatry of the future which will not need to content
itself with describing curious clinical pictures and unintelligible
sequences of events and with tracing the influence of gross
anatomical and toxic traumas upon a mental apparatus which is
inaccessible to our knowledge.

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V

   But the importance of
psycho-analysis for psychiatry would never have drawn the attention
of the intellectual world to it or won it a place in
The History
of our Times
. This result was brought about by the relation of
psycho-analysis to normal, not to pathological, mental life.
Originally, analytic research had indeed no other aim than to
establish the determinants of the onset (the genesis) of a few
morbid mental states. In the course of its efforts, however, it
succeeded in bringing to light facts of fundamental importance, in
actually creating a new psychology, so that it became obvious that
the validity of such findings could not possibly be restricted to
the sphere of pathology. We have seen already when it was that the
decisive proof was produced of the correctness of this conclusion.
It was when dreams were successfully interpreted by analytic
technique - dreams, which are a part of the mental life of normal
people and which yet may in fact be regarded as pathological
products that can regularly appear under healthy conditions.

   If the psychological discoveries
gained from the study of dreams were firmly kept in view, only one
further step was needed before psycho-analysis could be proclaimed
as the theory of the deeper mental processes not directly
accessible to consciousness - as a ‘depth-psychology’ -
and before it could be applied to almost all the mental sciences.
This step lay in the transition from the mental activity of
individual men to the psychical functions of human communities and
peoples - that is, from individual to group psychology; and many
surprising analogies forced this transition upon us. It had been
found, for instance, that in the deep strata of unconscious mental
activity contraries are not distinguished from each other but are
expressed by the same element. But already in 1884 Karl Abel the
philologist had put forward the view (in his ‘Über den
Gegensinn der Urworte’) that the oldest languages known to us
treat contraries in the same way. Thus Ancient Egyptian, for
example, had in the first instance only one word for
‘strong’ and ‘weak’, and not till later
were the two sides of the antithesis distinguished by slight
modifications. Even in the most modern languages clear relics of
such antithetical meanings are to be found. So in German
‘
Boden
’ means the highest as well as the lowest
thing in the house; similarly in Latin ‘
altus
’
means ‘high’ and ‘deep’. Thus the
equivalence of contraries in dreams is a universal archaic trait in
human thinking.

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   To take an instance from another
field. It is impossible to escape the impression of the perfect
correspondence which can be discovered between the obsessive
actions of certain obsessional patients and the religious
observances of believers all over the world. Some cases of
obsessional neurosis actually behave like a caricature of a private
religion, so that it is tempting to liken the official religions to
an obsessional neurosis that has been mitigated by becoming
universalized. This comparison, which is no doubt highly
objectionable to all believers, has nevertheless proved most
fruitful psychologically. For psycho-analysis soon discovered in
the case of obsessional neurosis what the forces are that struggle
with one another in it till their conflicts find a remarkable
expression in the ceremonial of obsessive actions. Nothing similar
was suspected in the case of religious ceremonial until, by tracing
back religious feeling to the relation with the father as its
deepest root, it became possible to point to an analogous dynamic
situation in that case too. This instance, moreover, may warn the
reader that even in its application to non-medical fields
psycho-analysis cannot avoid wounding cherished prejudices,
touching upon deeply-rooted sensibilities and thus provoking
enmities which have an essentially emotional basis.

   If we may assume that the most
general features of unconscious mental life (conflicts between
instinctual impulses, repressions and substitutive satisfactions)
are present everywhere, and if there is a depth-psychology which
leads to a knowledge of those features, then we may reasonably
expect that the application of psycho-analysis to the most varied
spheres of human mental activity will everywhere bring to light
important and hitherto unattainable results. In an exceedingly
valuable study, Otto Rank and Hanns Sachs (1913) have tried to
bring together what the work of psycho-analysts had been able to
achieve up to that time towards fulfilling these expectations. Lack
of space prevents me from attempting to complete their enumeration
here. I can only select for mention the most important findings
with the addition of a few details.

   If we leave little-known internal
urges out of account, we may say that the main motive force towards
the cultural development of man has been real external exigency,
which has withheld from him the easy satisfaction of his natural
needs and exposed him to immense dangers. This external frustration
drove him into a struggle with reality, which ended partly in
adaptation to it and partly in control over it; but it also drove
him into working and living in common with those of his kind, and
this already involved a renunciation of a number of instinctual
impulses which could not be satisfied socially. With the further
advances of civilization the demands of repression also grew.
Civilization is after all built entirely on renunciation of
instinct, and every individual on his journey from childhood to
maturity has in his own person to recapitulate this development of
humanity to a state of judicious resignation. Psycho-analysis has
shown that it is predominantly, though not exclusively, sexual
instinctual impulses that have succumbed to this cultural
suppression. One portion of them, however, exhibit the valuable
characteristic of allowing themselves to be diverted from their
immediate aims and of thus placing their energy at the disposal of
cultural development in the form of ‘sublimated’
trends. But another portion persist in the unconscious as
unsatisfied wishes and press for some, even if it is distorted,
satisfaction.

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   We have seen that one part of
human mental activity is directed towards obtaining control over
the real external world. Psycho-analysis now tells us further that
another, particularly highly-prized, part of creative mental work
serves for the fulfilment of wishes - for the substitutive
satisfaction of the repressed wishes which, from the days of
childhood, live in the spirit of each of us, unsatisfied. Among
these creations, whose connection with an incomprehensible
unconscious was always suspected, are myths and works of
imaginative writing and of art, and the researches of
psycho-analysts have in fact thrown a flood of light on the fields
of mythology, the science of literature, and the psychology of
artists. It is enough to mention Otto Rank’s work as an
example. We have shown that myths and fairy tales can be
interpreted like dreams, we have traced the convoluted paths that
lead from the urge of the unconscious wish to its realization in a
work of art, we have learnt to understand the emotional effect of a
work of art on the observer, and in the case of the artist himself
we have made clear his internal kinship with the neurotic as well
as his distinction from him, and we have pointed out the connection
between his innate disposition, his chance experiences and his
achievements. The aesthetic appreciation of works of art and the
elucidation of the artistic gift are, it is true, not among the
tasks set to psycho-analysis. But it seems that psycho-analysis is
in a position to speak the decisive word in all questions that
touch upon the imaginative life of man.