Freud - Complete Works (760 page)

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4695

   Otto Rank, to whom
psycho-analysis is indebted for many excellent contributions, also
has the merit of having expressly emphasized the significance of
the act of birth and of separation from the mother. Nevertheless we
have all found it impossible to accept the extreme inferences which
he has drawn from this factor as bearing on the theory of the
neuroses and even on analytic therapy. The core of his theory -
that the experience of anxiety at birth is the model of all later
situations of danger - he found already there. If we dwell on these
situations of danger for a moment, we can say that in fact a
particular determinant of anxiety (that is, situation of danger) is
allotted to every age of development as being appropriate to it.
The danger of psychical helplessness fits the stage of the
ego’s early immaturity; the danger of loss of an object (or
loss of love) fits the lack of self-sufficiency in the first years
of childhood; the danger of being castrated fits the phallic phase;
and finally fear of the super-ego, which assumes a special
position, fits the period of latency. In the course of development
the old determinants of anxiety should be dropped, since the
situations of danger corresponding to them have lost their
importance owing to the strengthening of the ego. But this only
occurs most incompletely. Many people are unable to surmount the
fear of loss of love; they never become sufficiently independent of
other people’s love and in this respect carry on their
behaviour as infants. Fear of the super-ego should normally never
cease, since, in the form of moral anxiety, it is indispensable in
social relations, and only in the rarest cases can an individual
become independent of human society. A few of the old situations of
danger, too, succeed in surviving into later periods by making
contemporary modifications in their determinants of anxiety. Thus,
for instance, the danger of castration persists under the mark of
syphilidophobia. It is true that as an adult one knows that
castration is no longer customary as a punishment for the
indulgence of sexual desires, but on the other hand one has learnt
that instinctual liberty of that kind is threatened by serious
diseases. There is no doubt that the people we describe as
neurotics remain infantile in their attitude to danger and have not
surmounted obsolete determinants of anxiety. We may take this as a
factual contribution to the characterization of neurotics; it is
not so easy to say why it should be so.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4696

   I hope you have not lost the
thread of what I am saying and remember that we are investigating
the relations between anxiety and repression. In the course of this
we have learnt two new things: first, that anxiety makes repression
and not, as we used to think, the other way round, and that the
instinctual situation which is feared goes back ultimately to an
external situation of danger. The next question will be: how do we
now picture the process of a repression under the influence of
anxiety? The answer will, I think, be as follows. The ego notices
that the satisfaction of an emerging instinctual demand would
conjure up one of the well-remembered situations of danger. This
instinctual cathexis must therefore be somehow suppressed, stopped,
made powerless. We know that the ego succeeds in this task if it is
strong and has drawn the instinctual impulse concerned into its
organization. But what happens in the case of repression is that
the instinctual impulse still belongs to the id and that the ego
feels weak. The ego thereupon helps itself by a technique which is
at bottom identical with normal thinking. Thinking is an
experimental action carried out with small amounts of energy, in
the same way as a general shifts small figures about on a map
before setting his large bodies of troops in motion. Thus the ego
anticipates the satisfaction of the questionable instinctual
impulse and permits it to bring about the reproduction of the
unpleasurable feelings at the beginning of the feared situation of
danger. With this the automatism of the pleasure-unpleasure
principle is brought into operation and now carries out the
repression of the dangerous instinctual impulse.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4697

   ‘Stop a moment!’ you
will exclaim; ‘we can’t follow you any further
there!’ You are quite right; I must add a little more before
it can seem acceptable to you. First, I must admit that I have
tried to translate into the language of our normal thinking what
must in fact be a process that is neither conscious nor
preconscious, taking place between quotas of energy in some
unimaginable substratum. But that is not a strong objection, for it
cannot be done in any other way. What is more important is that we
should distinguish clearly what happens in the ego and what happens
in the id when there is a repression. We have just said what the
ego does: it makes use of an experimental cathexis and starts up
the pleasure-unpleasure automatism by means of a signal of anxiety.
After that, several reactions are possible or a combination of them
in varying proportions. Either the anxiety attack is fully
generated and the ego withdraws entirely from the objectionable
excitation; or, in place of the experimental cathexis it opposes
the excitation with an anticathexis, and this combines with the
energy of the repressed impulse to form a symptom; or the
anticathexis is taken up into the ego as a reaction-formation, as
an intensification of certain of the ego’s dispositions, as a
permanent alteration of it. The more the generation of anxiety can
be restricted to a mere signal, so much the more does the ego
expend on actions of defence which amount to the psychical binding
of the repressed, and so much the closer, too, does the process
approximate to a normal working-over of it, though no doubt without
attaining to it.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4698

   Incidentally, here is a point on
which we may dwell for a moment. You yourselves have no doubt
assumed that what is known as ‘character’, a thing so
hard to define, is to be ascribed entirely to the ego. We have
already made out a little of what it is that creates character.
First and foremost there is the incorporation of the former
parental agency as a super-ego, which is no doubt its most
important and decisive portion, and, further, identifications with
the two parents of the later period and with other influential
figures, and similar identifications formed as precipitates of
abandoned object-relations. And we may now add as contributions to
the construction of character which are never absent the
reaction-formations which the ego acquires - to begin with in
making its repressions and later, by a more normal method, when it
rejects unwished-for instinctual impulses.

   Now let us go back and turn to
the id. It is not so easy to guess what occurs during repression in
connection with the instinctual impulse that is being fought
against. The main question which our interest raises is as to what
happens to the energy, to the libidinal charge, of that excitation
- how is it employed? You recollect that the earlier hypothesis was
that it is precisely this that is transformed by repression into
anxiety. We no longer feel able to say that. The modest reply will
rather be that what happens to it is probably not always the same
thing. There is probably an intimate correspondence which we ought
to get to know about between what is occurring at the time in the
ego and in the id in connection with the repressed impulse. For
since we have decided that the pleasure-unpleasure principle, which
is set in action by the signal of anxiety, plays a part in
repression, we must alter our expectations. That principle
exercises an entirely unrestricted dominance over what happens in
the id. We can rely on its bringing about quite profound changes in
the instinctual impulse in question. We are prepared to find that
repression will have very various consequences, more or less
far-reaching. In some cases the repressed instinctual impulse may
retain its libidinal cathexis, and may persist in the id unchanged,
although subject to constant pressure from the ego. In other cases
what seems to happen is that it is totally destroyed, while its
libido is permanently diverted along other paths. I expressed the
view that this is what happens when the Oedipus complex is dealt
with normally - in this desirable case, therefore, being not simply
repressed but destroyed in the id. Clinical experience has further
shown us that in many cases, instead of the customary result of
repression, a degradation of the libido takes place - a regression
of the libidinal organization to an earlier stage. This can, of
course, only occur in the id, and if it occurs it will be under the
influence of the same conflict which was introduced by the signal
of anxiety. The most striking example of this kind is provided by
the obsessional neurosis, in which libidinal regression and
repression operate together.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4699

   I fear, Ladies and Gentlemen,
that you will find this exposition hard to follow, and you will
guess that I have not stated it exhaustively. I am sorry to have
had to rouse your displeasure. But I can set myself no other aim
than to give you an impression of the nature of our findings and of
the difficulties involved in working them out. The deeper we
penetrate into the study of mental processes the more we recognize
their abundance and complexity. A number of simple formulas which
to begin with seemed to meet our needs have later turned out to be
inadequate. We do not tire of altering and improving them. In my
lecture on the theory of dreams I introduced you to a region in
which for fifteen years there has scarcely been a new discovery.
Here, where we are dealing with anxiety, you see everything in a
state of flux and change. These novelties, moreover, have not yet
been thoroughly worked through and perhaps this too adds to the
difficulties of demonstrating them. But have patience! We shall
soon be able to take leave of the subject of anxiety. I cannot
promise that it will have been settled to our satisfaction, but it
is to be hoped that we shall have made a little bit of progress.
And in the meantime we have made all sorts of new discoveries. Now,
for instance, our study of anxiety leads us to add a new feature to
our description of the ego. We have said that the ego is weak in
comparison with the id, that it is its loyal servant, eager to
carry out its orders and to fulfil its demands. We have no
intention of withdrawing this statement. But on the other hand this
same ego is the better organized part of the id, with its face
turned towards reality. We must not exaggerate the separation
between the two of them too much, and we must not be surprised if
the ego on its part can bring its influence to bear on the
processes in the id. I believe the ego exercises this influence by
putting into action the almost omnipotent pleasure-unpleasure
principle by means of the signal of anxiety. On the other hand, it
shows its weakness again immediately afterwards, for by the act of
repression it renounces a portion of its organization and has to
allow the repressed instinctual impulse to remain permanently
withdrawn from its influence.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4700

   And now, only one more remark on
the problem of anxiety. Neurotic anxiety has changed in our hands
into realistic anxiety, into fear of particular external situations
of danger. But we cannot stop there, we must take another step -
though it will be a step backward. We ask ourselves what it is that
is actually dangerous and actually feared in a situation of danger
of this kind. It is plainly not the injury to the subject as judged
objectively, for this need be of no significance psychologically,
but something brought about by it in the mind. Birth, for instance,
our model for an anxiety state, can after all scarcely be regarded
on its own account as an injury, although it may involve a danger
of injuries. The essential thing about birth, as about every
situation of danger, is that it calls up in mental experience a
state of highly tense excitation, which is felt as unpleasure and
which one is not able to master by discharging it. Let us call a
state of this kind, before which the efforts of the pleasure
principle break down, a ‘traumatic’ moment. Then, if we
take in succession neurotic anxiety, realistic anxiety and the
situation of danger, we arrive at this simple proposition: what is
feared, what is the object of the anxiety, is invariably the
emergence of a traumatic moment, which cannot be dealt with by the
normal rules of the pleasure principle. We understand at once that
our endowment with the pleasure principle does not guarantee us
against objective injuries but only against a particular injury to
our psychical economics. It is a long step from the pleasure
principle to the self-preservative instinct; the intentions of the
two of them are very far from coinciding from the start. But we see
something else besides; perhaps it is the solution we are in search
of. Namely, that in all this it is a question of relative
quantities. It is only the magnitude of the sum of excitation that
turns an impression into a traumatic moment, paralyses the function
of the pleasure principle and gives the situation of danger its
significance. And if that is how things are, if these puzzles can
be solved so prosaically, why should it not be possible for similar
traumatic moments to arise in mental life without reference to
hypothetical situations of danger - traumatic moments, then, in
which anxiety is not aroused as a signal but is generated anew for
a fresh reason. Clinical experience declares decidedly that such is
in fact the case. It is only the
later
repressions that
exhibit the mechanism we have described, in which anxiety is
awakened as a signal of an earlier situation of danger. The first
and original repressions arise directly from traumatic moments,
when the ego meets with an excessively great libidinal demand; they
construct their anxiety afresh, although, it is true, on the model
of birth. The same may apply to the generation of anxiety in
anxiety neurosis owing to somatic damage to the sexual function. We
shall no longer maintain that it is the libido itself that is
turned into anxiety in such cases. But I can see no objection to
there being a twofold origin of anxiety - one as a direct
consequence of the traumatic moment and the other as a signal
threatening a repetition of such a moment.