Freud - Complete Works (676 page)

The Resistances To Psycho-Analysis

4127

   Such a display of unfairness and
lack of logic cries out for an explanation. Its origin is not hard
to find. Human civilization rests upon two pillars, of which one is
the control of natural forces and the other the restriction of our
instincts. The ruler’s throne rests upon fettered slaves.
Among the instinctual components which are thus brought into
service, the sexual instincts, in the narrower sense of the word,
are conspicuous for their strength and savagery. Woe, if they
should be set loose! The throne would be overturned and the ruler
trampled under foot. Society is aware of this - and will not allow
the topic to be mentioned.

   But why not? What harm could the
discussion do? Psycho-analysis has never said a word in favour of
unfettering instincts that would injure our community; on the
contrary it has issued a warning and an exhortation to us to mend
our ways. But society refuses to consent to the ventilation of the
question, because it has a bad conscience in more than one respect.
In the first place it has set up a high ideal of morality -
morality being restriction of the instincts - and insists that all
its members shall fulfil that ideal without troubling itself with
the possibility that obedience may bear heavily upon the
individual. Nor is it sufficiently wealthy or well-organized to be
able to compensate the individual for the amount of his instinctual
renunciation. It is consequently left to the individual to decide
how he can obtain, for the sacrifice he has made, enough
compensation to enable him to preserve his mental balance. On the
whole, however, he is obliged to live psychologically beyond his
means, while the unsatisfied claims of his instincts make him feel
the demands of civilization as a constant pressure upon him. Thus
society maintains a condition of
cultural hypocrisy
which is
bound to be accompanied by a sense of insecurity and a necessity
for guarding what is an undeniably precarious situation by
forbidding criticism and discussion. This line of thought holds
good for all the instinctual impulses, including, therefore, the
egoistic ones. The question whether it applies to all possible
forms of civilization, and not merely to those which have evolved
hitherto, cannot be discussed here. As regards the sexual instincts
in the narrower sense, there is the further point that in most
people they are tamed insufficiently and in a manner which is
psychologically wrong and are therefore readier than the rest to
break loose.

The Resistances To Psycho-Analysis

4128

   Psycho-analysis has revealed the
weaknesses of this system and has recommended that it should be
altered. It proposes that there should be a reduction in the
strictness with which instincts are repressed and that
correspondingly more play should be given to truthfulness. Certain
instinctual impulses, with whose suppression society has gone too
far, should be permitted a greater amount of satisfaction; in the
case of certain others the inefficient method of suppressing them
by means of repression should be replaced by a better and securer
procedure. As a result of these criticisms psycho-analysis is
regarded as ‘inimical to culture’ and has been put
under a ban as a ‘social danger’. This resistance
cannot last for ever. No human institution can in the long run
escape the influence of fair criticism; but men’s attitude to
psycho-analysis is still dominated by this fear, which gives rein
to their passions and diminishes their power of logical
argument.

   By its theory of the instincts
psycho-analysis offended the feelings of individuals in so far as
they regarded themselves as members of the social community;
another branch of its theory was calculated to hurt every single
person at the tenderest point of his own psychical development.
Psycho-analysis disposed once and for all of the fairy tale of an
asexual childhood. It demonstrated the fact that sexual interests
and activities occur in small children from the beginning of their
lives. It showed what transformations those activities pass
through, how at about the age of five they succumb to inhibition
and how from puberty onwards they enter the service of the
reproductive function. It recognized that early infantile sexual
life reaches its peak in what is known as the Oedipus complex (an
emotional attachment of the child to the parent of the opposite sex
accompanied by an attitude of rivalry to the parent of the same
sex) and that at that period of life this impulsion extends
uninhibited into a straightforward sexual desire. This can be
confirmed so easily that only the greatest efforts could make it
possible to overlook it. Every individual has in fact gone through
this phase but has afterwards energetically repressed its purport
and succeeded in forgetting it. A horror of incest and an enormous
sense of guilt are left over from this prehistoric epoch of the
individual’s existence. It may be that something quite
similar occurred in the prehistoric epoch of the human species as a
whole and that the beginnings of morality, religion and social
order were intimately connected with the surmounting of that
primaeval era. To adults their prehistory seems so inglorious that
they refuse to allow themselves to be reminded of it: they were
infuriated when psycho-analysis tried to lift the veil of amnesia
from their years of childhood. There was only one way out: what
psycho-analysis asserted must be false and what posed as a new
science must be a tissue of fancies and distortions.

The Resistances To Psycho-Analysis

4129

   Thus the strongest resistances to
psycho-analysis were not of an intellectual kind but arose from
emotional sources. This explained their passionate character as
well as their poverty in logic. The situation obeyed a simple
formula: men in the mass behaved to psycho-analysis in precisely
the same way as individual neurotics under treatment for their
disorders. It is possible, however, by patient work to convince
these latter individuals that everything happened as we maintained
it did: we had not invented it ourselves but had arrived at it from
a study of other neurotics covering a period of twenty or thirty
years. The position was at once alarming and consoling: alarming
because it was no small thing to have the whole human race as
one’s patient, and consoling because after all everything was
taking place as the hypotheses of psycho-analysis declared that it
was bound to.

   If we cast our eyes once again
over the various resistances to psycho-analysis that have been
enumerated, it is evident that only a minority of them are of the
kind which habitually arise against most scientific innovations of
any considerable importance. The majority of them are due to the
fact that powerful human feelings are hurt by the subject-matter of
the theory. Darwin’s theory of descent met with the same
fate, since it tore down the barrier that had been arrogantly set
up between men and beasts. I drew attention to this analogy in an
earlier paper,¹ in which I showed how the psycho-analytic view
of the relation of the conscious ego to an overpowering unconscious
was a severe blow to human self-love. I described this as the
psychological
blow to men’s narcissism, and compared
it with the
biological
blow delivered by the theory of
descent and the earlier
cosmological
blow aimed at it by the
discovery of Copernicus.

  
¹
‘A Difficulty in the Path of
Psycho-Analysis’ (1917
a
).

The Resistances To Psycho-Analysis

4130

   Purely external difficulties have
also contributed to strengthen the resistance to psycho-analysis.
It is not easy to arrive at an independent judgement upon matters
to do with analysis without having experienced it oneself or
practised it on someone else. Nor can one do the latter without
having acquired a specific and decidedly delicate technique, while
until recently there was no easily accessible means of learning
psycho-analysis and its technique. This position has now been
improved by the foundation (in 1920) of the Berlin Psycho-Analytic
Clinic and Training Institute, and soon afterwards (in 1922) of an
exactly similar institute in Vienna.

   Finally, with all reserve, the
question may be raised whether the personality of the present
writer as a Jew who has never sought to disguise the fact that he
is a Jew may not have had a share in provoking the antipathy of his
environment to psycho-analysis. An argument of this kind is not
often uttered aloud. But we have unfortunately grown so suspicious
that we cannot avoid thinking that this factor may not have been
quite without its effect. Nor is it perhaps entirely a matter of
chance that the first advocate of psycho-analysis was a Jew. To
profess belief in this new theory called for a certain degree of
readiness to accept a situation of solitary opposition - a
situation with which no one is more familiar than a Jew.

4131

A NOTE UPON THE ‘MYSTIC WRITING-PAD’

(1925)

4132

Intentionally left blank

4133

A NOTE UPON THE ‘MYSTIC WRITING-PAD’

If I distrust my memory - neurotics, as we
know, do so to a remarkable extent, but normal people have every
reason for doing so as well - I am able to supplement and guarantee
its working by making a note in writing. In that case the surface
upon which this note is preserved, the pocket-book or sheet of
paper, is as it were a materialized portion of my mnemic apparatus,
which I otherwise carry about with me invisible. I have only to
bear in mind the place where this ‘memory’ has been
deposited and I can then ‘reproduce’ it at any time I
like, with the certainty that it will have remained unaltered and
so have escaped the possible distortions to which it might have
been subjected in my actual memory.

   If I want to make full use of
this technique for improving my mnemic function, I find that there
are two different procedures open to me. On the one hand, I can
choose a writing-surface which will preserve intact any note made
upon it for an indefinite length of time - for instance, a sheet of
paper which I can write upon in ink. I am then in possession of a
‘permanent memory-trace’. The disadvantage of this
procedure is that the receptive capacity of the writing-surface is
soon exhausted. The sheet is filled with writing, there is no room
on it for any more notes, and I find myself obliged to bring
another sheet into use, that has not been written on. Moreover, the
advantage of this procedure, the fact that it provides a
‘permanent trace’, may lose its value for me if after a
time the note ceases to interest me and I no longer want to
‘retain it in my memory’. The alternative procedure
avoids both of these disadvantages. If, for instance, I write with
a piece of chalk on a slate, I have a receptive surface which
retains its receptive capacity for an unlimited time and the notes
upon which can be destroyed as soon as they cease to interest me,
without any need for throwing away the writing-surface itself. Here
the disadvantage is that I cannot preserve a permanent trace. If I
want to put some fresh notes on the slate, I must first wipe out
the ones which cover it. Thus an unlimited receptive capacity and a
retention of permanent traces seem to be mutually exclusive
properties in the apparatus which we use as substitutes for our
memory: either the receptive surface must be renewed or the note
must be destroyed.

A Note Upon The 'Mystic Writing-Pad'

4134

   All the forms of auxiliary
apparatus which we have invented for the improvement or
intensification of our sensory functions are built on the same
model as the sense organs themselves or portions of them: for
instance, spectacles, photographic cameras, ear-trumpets. Measured
by this standard, devices to aid our memory seem particularly
imperfect, since our mental apparatus accomplishes precisely what
they cannot: it has an unlimited receptive capacity for new
perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent - even though not
unalterable - memory-traces of them. As long ago as in 1900 I gave
expression in
The Interpretation of Dreams
to a suspicion
that this unusual capacity was to be divided between two different
systems (or organs of the mental apparatus). According to this
view, we possess a system
Pcpt.-Cs
., which receives
perceptions but retains no permanent trace of them, so that it can
react like a clean sheet to every new perception; while the
permanent traces of the excitations which have been received are
preserved in ‘mnemic systems’ lying behind the
perceptual system. Later, in
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
(1920
g
), I added a remark to the effect that the
inexplicable phenomenon of consciousness arises in the perceptual
system
instead of
the permanent traces.

   Now some time ago there came upon
the market, under the name of the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’,
a small contrivance that promises to perform more than the sheet of
paper or the slate. It claims to be nothing more than a
writing-tablet from which notes can be erased by an easy movement
of the hand. But if it is examined more closely it will be found
that its construction shows a remarkable agreement with my
hypothetical structure of our perceptual apparatus and that it can
in fact provide both an ever-ready receptive surface and permanent
traces of the notes that have been made upon it.

A Note Upon The 'Mystic Writing-Pad'

4135

   The Mystic Pad is a slab of dark
brown resin or wax with a paper edging; over the slab is laid a
thin transparent sheet, the top end of which is firmly secured to
the slab while its bottom end rests on it without being fixed to
it. This transparent sheet is the more interesting part of the
little device. It itself consists of two layers, which can be
detached from each other except at their two ends. The upper layer
is a transparent piece of celluloid; the lower layer is made of
thin translucent waxed paper. When the apparatus is not in use, the
lower surface of the waxed paper adheres lightly to the upper
surface of the wax slab.

   To make use of the Mystic Pad,
one writes upon the celluloid portion of the covering-sheet which
rests on the wax slab. For this purpose no pencil or chalk is
necessary, since the writing does not depend on material being
deposited on the receptive surface. It is a return to the ancient
method of writing on tablets of clay or wax: a pointed stilus
scratches the surface, the depressions upon which constitute the
‘writing’. In the case of the Mystic Pad this
scratching is not effected directly, but through the medium of the
covering-sheet. At the points which the stilus touches, it presses
the lower surface of the waxed paper on to the wax slab, and the
grooves are visible as dark writing upon the otherwise smooth
whitish-grey surface of the celluloid. If one wishes to destroy
what has been written, all that is necessary is to raise the double
covering-sheet from the wax slab by a light pull, starting from the
free lower end. The close contact between the waxed paper and the
wax slab at the places which have been scratched (upon which the
visibility of the writing depended) is thus brought to an end and
it does not recur when the two surfaces come together once more.
The Mystic Pad is now clear of writing and ready to receive fresh
notes.

   The small imperfections of the
contrivance have, of course, no importance for us, since we are
only concerned with its approximation to the structure of the
perceptual apparatus of the mind.

A Note Upon The 'Mystic Writing-Pad'

4136

   If, while the Mystic Pad has
writing on it, we cautiously raise the celluloid from the waxed
paper, we can see the writing just as clearly on the surface of the
latter, and the question may arise why there should be any
necessity for the celluloid portion of the cover. Experiment will
then show that the thin paper would be very easily crumpled or torn
if one were to write directly upon it with the stilus. The layer of
celluloid thus acts as a protective sheath for the waxed paper, to
keep off injurious effects from without. The celluloid is a
‘protective shield against stimuli’; the layer which
actually receives the stimuli is the paper. I may at this point
recall that in
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
I showed that
the perceptual apparatus of our mind consists of two layers, of an
external protective shield against stimuli whose task it is to
diminish the strength of excitations coming in, and of a surface
behind it which receives the stimuli, namely the system
Pcpt.-Cs
.

   The analogy would not be of much
value if it could not be pursued further than this. If we lift the
entire covering-sheet - both the celluloid and the waxed paper -
off the wax slab, the writing vanishes and, as I have already
remarked, does not re-appear again. The surface of the Mystic Pad
is clear of writing and once more capable of receiving impressions.
But it is easy to discover that the permanent trace of what was
written is retained upon the wax slab itself and is legible in
suitable lights. Thus the Pad provides not only a receptive surface
that can be used over and over again, like a slate, but also
permanent traces of what has been written, like an ordinary paper
pad: it solves the problem of combining the two functions
by
dividing them between two separate but interrelated component parts
or systems
. But this is precisely the way in which, according
to the hypothesis which I mentioned just now, our mental apparatus
performs its perceptual function. The layer which receives the
stimuli - the system
Pcpt.-Cs
. - forms no permanent traces;
the foundations of memory come about in other, adjoining,
systems.

   We need not be disturbed by the
fact that in the Mystic Pad no use is made of the permanent traces
of the notes that have been received; it is enough that they are
present. There must come a point at which the analogy between an
auxiliary apparatus of this kind and the organ which is its
prototype will cease to apply. It is true, too, that once the
writing has been erased, the Mystic Pad cannot
‘reproduce’ it from within; it would be a mystic pad
indeed if, like our memory, it could accomplish that. None the
less, I do not think it is too far-fetched to compare the celluloid
and waxed paper cover with the system
Pcpt.-Cs
. and its
protective shield, the wax slab with the unconscious behind them,
and the appearance and disappearance of the writing with the
flickering-up and passing-away of consciousness in the process of
perception.

A Note Upon The 'Mystic Writing-Pad'

4137

   But I must admit that I am
inclined to press the comparison still further. On the Mystic Pad
the writing vanishes every time the close contact is broken between
the paper which receives the stimulus and the wax slab which
preserves the impression. This agrees with a notion which I have
long had about the method by which the perceptual apparatus of our
mind functions, but which I have hitherto kept to myself. My theory
was that cathectic innervations are sent out and withdrawn in rapid
periodic impulses from within into the completely pervious system
Pcpt.-Cs
. So long as that system is cathected in this
manner, it receives perceptions (which are accompanied by
consciousness) and passes the excitation on to the unconscious
mnemic systems; but as soon as the cathexis is withdrawn,
consciousness is extinguished and the functioning of the system
comes to a standstill. It is as though the unconscious stretches
out feelers, through the medium of the system
Pcpt.-Cs
.,
towards the external world and hastily withdraws them as soon as
they have sampled the excitations coming from it. Thus the
interruptions, which in the case of the Mystic Pad have an external
origin, were attributed by my hypothesis to the discontinuity in
the current of innervation; and the actual breaking of contact
which occurs in the Mystic Pad was replaced in my theory by the
periodic non-excitability of the perceptual system. I further had a
suspicion that this discontinuous method of functioning of the
system
Pcpt.-Cs
. lies at the bottom of the origin of the
concept of time.

   If we imagine one hand writing
upon the surface of the Mystic Writing-Pad while another
periodically raises its covering-sheet from the wax slab, we shall
have a concrete representation of the way in which I tried to
picture the functioning of the perceptual apparatus of our
mind.