Freud - Complete Works (695 page)

   The two techniques I refer to are
undoing what has been done
and
isolating
. The first
of these has a wide range of application and goes back very far. It
is, as it were, negative magic, and endeavours, by means of motor
symbolism, to ‘blow away’ not merely the
consequences
of some event (or experience or impression) but
the event itself. I choose the term ‘blow away’
advisedly, so as to remind the reader of the part played by this
technique not only in neuroses but in magical acts, popular customs
and religious ceremonies as well. In obsessional neurosis the
technique of undoing what has been done is first met with in the
‘diphasic’ symptoms, in which one action is cancelled
out by a second, so that it is as though neither action had taken
place, whereas, in reality, both have. This aim of undoing is the
second underlying motive of obsessional ceremonials, the first
being to take precautions in order to prevent the occurrence or
recurrence of some particular event. The difference between the two
is easily seen: the precautionary measures are rational, while
trying to get rid of something by ‘making it not to have
happened’ is irrational and in the nature of magic. It is of
course to be suspected that the latter is the earlier motive of the
two and proceeds from the animistic attitude towards the
environment. This endeavour to undo shades off into normal
behaviour in the case in which a person decides to regard an event
as not having happened. But whereas he will take no direct steps
against the event, and will simply pay no further attention to it
or its consequences, the neurotic person will try to make the past
itself non-existent. He will try to repress it by motor means. The
same purpose may perhaps account for the obsession for
repeating
which is so frequently met with in this neurosis
and the carrying out of which serves a number of contradictory
intentions at once. When anything has not happened in the desired
way it is undone by being repeated in a different way; and
thereupon all the motives that exist for lingering over such
repetitions come into play as well. As the neurosis proceeds, we
often find that the endeavour to undo a traumatic experience is a
motive of first-rate importance in the formation of symptoms. We
thus unexpectedly discover a new, motor technique of defence, or
(as we may say in this case with less inaccuracy) of
repression.

Inhibitions, Symptoms And Anxiety

4279

   The second of these techniques
which we are setting out to describe for the first time, that of
isolation, is peculiar to obsessional neurosis. It, too, takes
place in the motor sphere. When something unpleasant has happened
to the subject or when he himself has done something which has a
significance for his neurosis, he interpolates an interval during
which nothing further must happen - during which he must perceive
nothing and do nothing. This behaviour, which seems strange at
first sight, is soon seen to have a relation to repression. We know
that in hysteria it is possible to cause a traumatic experience to
be overtaken by amnesia. In obsessional neurosis this can often not
be achieved: the experience is not forgotten, but, instead, it is
deprived of its affect, and its associative connections are
suppressed or interrupted so that it remains as though isolated and
is not reproduced in the ordinary processes of thought. The effect
of this isolation is the same as the effect of repression with
amnesia. This technique, then, is reproduced in the isolations of
obsessional neurosis; and it is at the same time given motor
reinforcement for magical purposes. The elements that are held
apart in this way are precisely those which belong together
associatively. The motor isolation is meant to ensure an
interruption of the connection in thought. The normal phenomenon of
concentration provides a pretext for this kind of neurotic
procedure: what seems to us important in the way of an impression
or a piece of work must not be interfered with by the simultaneous
claims of any other mental processes or activities. But even a
normal person uses concentration to keep away not only what is
irrelevant or unimportant, but, above all, what is unsuitable
because it is contradictory. He is most disturbed by those elements
which once belonged together but which have been torn apart in the
course of his development - as, for instance, by manifestations of
the ambivalence of his father-complex in his relation to God, or by
impulses attached to his excretory organs in his emotions of love.
Thus, in the normal course of things, the ego has a great deal of
isolating work to do in its function of directing the current of
thought. And, as we know, we are obliged, in carrying out our
analytic technique, to train it to relinquish that function for the
time being, eminently justified as it usually is.

Inhibitions, Symptoms And Anxiety

4280

   We have all found by experience
that it is especially difficult for an obsessional neurotic to
carry out the fundamental rule of psycho-analysis. His ego is more
watchful and makes sharper isolations, probably because of the high
degree of tension due to conflict that exists between his super-ego
and his id. While he is engaged in thinking, his ego has to keep
off too much - the intrusion of unconscious phantasies and the
manifestation of ambivalent trends. It must not relax, but is
constantly prepared for a struggle. It fortifies this compulsion to
concentrate and to isolate by the help of the magical acts of
isolation which, in the form of symptoms, grow to be so noticeable
and to have so much practical importance for the patient, but which
are, of course, useless in themselves and are in the nature of
ceremonials.

   But in thus endeavouring to
prevent associations and connections of thought, the ego is obeying
one of the oldest and most fundamental commands of obsessional
neurosis, the taboo on touching. If we ask ourselves why the
avoidance of touching, contact or contagion should play such a
large part in this neurosis and should become the subject-matter of
complicated systems, the answer is that touching and physical
contact are the immediate aim of the aggressive as well as the
loving object- cathexes. Eros desires contact because it strives to
make the ego and the loved object one, to abolish all spatial
barriers between them. But destructiveness, too, which (before the
invention of long-range weapons) could only take effect at close
quarters, must presuppose physical contact, a coming to grips. To
‘touch’ a woman has become a euphemism for using her as
a sexual object. Not to ‘touch’ one’s genitals is
the phrase employed for forbidding auto-erotic satisfaction. Since
obsessional neurosis begins by persecuting erotic touching and
then, after regression has taken place, goes on to persecute
touching in the guise of aggressiveness, it follows that nothing is
so strongly proscribed in that illness as touching nor so well
suited to become the central point of a system of prohibitions. But
isolating is removing the possibility of contact; it is a method of
withdrawing a thing from being touched in any way. And when a
neurotic isolates an impression or an activity by interpolating an
interval, he is letting it be understood symbolically that he will
not allow his thoughts about that impression or activity to come
into associative contact with other thoughts.

Inhibitions, Symptoms And Anxiety

4281

   This is as far as our
investigations into the formation of symptoms take us. It is hardly
worth while summing them up, for the results they have yielded are
scanty and incomplete and tell us scarcely anything that we do not
already know. It would be fruitless to turn our attention to
symptom-formation in other disorders besides phobias, conversion
hysteria and obsessional neurosis, for too little is known about
them. But in reviewing those three neuroses together we are brought
up against a very serious problem the consideration of which can no
longer be put off. All three have as their outcome the destruction
of the Oedipus complex; and in all three the motive force of the
ego’s opposition is, we believe, the fear of castration. Yet
it is only in the phobias that this fear comes to the surface and
is acknowledged. What has become of it in the other two neuroses?
How has the ego spared itself this fear? The problem becomes
accentuated when we recall the possibility, already referred to,
that anxiety arises directly, by a kind of fermentation, from a
libidinal cathexis whose processes have been disturbed.
Furthermore, is it absolutely certain that fear of castration is
the only motive force of repression (or defence)? If we think of
neuroses in women we are bound to doubt it. For though we can with
certainty establish in them the presence of a castration
complex
, we can hardly speak with propriety of castration
anxiety
where castration has already taken place.

Inhibitions, Symptoms And Anxiety

 
4282

VII

   Let us go back again to infantile
phobias of animals; for, when all is said and done, we understand
them better than any other cases. In animal phobias, then, the ego
has to oppose a libidinal object-cathexis coming from the id - a
cathexis that belongs either to the positive or the negative
Oedipus complex - because it believes that to give way to it would
entail the danger of castration. This question has already been
discussed, but there still remains a doubtful point to clear up. In
‘Little Hans’s’ case - that is, in the case of a
positive Oedipus complex - was it his fondness for his mother or
was it his aggressiveness towards his father which called out the
defence by the ego? In practice it seems to make no difference,
especially as each set of feelings implies the other; but the
question has a theoretical interest, since it is only the feeling
of affection for the mother which can count as a purely erotic one.
The aggressive impulse flows mainly from the destructive instinct;
and we have always believed that in a neurosis it is against the
demands of the libido and not against those of any other instinct
that the ego is defending itself. In point of fact we know that
after ‘Hans’s’ phobia had been formed, his tender
attachment to his mother seemed to disappear, having been
completely disposed of by repression, while the formation of the
symptom (the substitutive formation) took place in relation to his
aggressive impulses. In the ‘Wolf Man’ the situation
was simpler. The impulse that was repressed - his feminine attitude
towards his father - was a genuinely erotic one; and it was in
relation to that impulse that the formation of his symptoms took
place.

   It is almost humiliating that,
after working so long, we should still be having difficulty in
understanding the most fundamental facts. But we have made up our
minds to simplify nothing and to hide nothing. If we cannot see
things clearly we will at least see clearly what the obscurities
are. What is hampering us here is evidently some hitch in the
development of our theory of the instincts. We began by tracing the
organization of the libido through its successive stages - from the
oral through the sadistic-anal to the genital - and in doing so
placed all the components of the sexual instinct on the same
footing. Later it appeared that sadism was the representative of
another instinct, which was opposed to Eros. This new view, that
the instincts fall into two groups, seems to explode the earlier
construction of the successive stages of libidinal organization.
But we do not have to break fresh ground in order to find a way out
of the difficulty. The solution has been at hand for a long time
and lies in the fact that what we are concerned with are scarcely
ever pure instinctual impulses but mixtures in various proportions
of the two groups of instincts. If this is so, there is no need to
revise our view of the organizations of the libido. A sadistic
cathexis of an object may also legitimately claim to be treated as
a libidinal one; and an aggressive impulse against the father can
just as well be subjected to repression as a tender impulse towards
the mother. Nevertheless we shall bear in mind for future
consideration the possibility that repression is a process which
has a special relation to the
genital
organization of the
libido and that the ego resorts to other methods of defence when it
has to secure itself against the libido on other levels of
organization. To continue: a case like ‘Little
Hans’s’ does not enable us to come to any clear
conclusion. It is true that in him an aggressive impulse was
disposed of by repression, but this happened after the genital
organization had been reached.

   This time we will not lose sight
of the part played by anxiety. We have said that as soon as the ego
recognizes the danger of castration it gives the signal of anxiety
and inhibits through the pleasure-unpleasure agency (in a way which
we cannot as yet understand) the impending cathectic process in the
id. At the same time the phobia is formed. And now the castration
anxiety is directed to a different object and expressed in a
distorted form, so that the patient is afraid, not of being
castrated by his father, but of being bitten by a horse or devoured
by a wolf. This substitutive formation has two obvious advantages.
In the first place it avoids a conflict due to ambivalence (for the
father was a loved object, too), and in the second place it enables
the ego to cease generating anxiety. For the anxiety belonging to a
phobia is conditional; it only emerges when the object of it is
perceived - and rightly so, since it is only then that the
danger-situation is present. There is no need to be afraid of being
castrated by a father who is not there. On the other hand one
cannot get rid of a father; he can appear whenever he chooses. But
if he is replaced by an animal, all one has to do is to avoid the
sight of it - that is, its presence - in order to be free from
danger and anxiety. ‘Little Hans’, therefore, imposed a
restriction upon his ego. He produced the inhibition of not leaving
the house, so as not to come across any horses. The young Russian
had an even easier time of it, for it was hardly a privation for
him not to look at a particular picture-book any more. If his
naughty sister had not kept on showing him the book with the
picture of the wolf standing upright in it, he would have been able
to feel safe from his fear.