Freud - Complete Works (761 page)

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4701

   I feel sure you are rejoicing,
Ladies and Gentlemen, at not having to listen to any more about
anxiety. But you have gained nothing by it: what follows is no
better. It is my design to introduce you to-day as well to the
field of the libido theory or theory of the instincts, where there
have equally been a number of new developments. I will not claim
that we have made great advances in it, so that it would be worth
your taking any amount of trouble to learn about them. No. This is
a region in which we are struggling laboriously to find our
bearings and make discoveries; you will only be witnesses of our
efforts. Here too I shall have to go back to some of the things I
told you earlier.

   The theory of the instincts is so
to say our mythology. Instincts are mythical entities, magnificent
in their indefiniteness. In our work we cannot for a moment
disregard them, yet we are never sure that we are seeing them
clearly. You know how popular thinking deals with the instincts.
People assume as many and as various instincts as they happen to
need at the moment - a self-assertive instinct, an imitative
instinct, an instinct of play, a gregarious instinct and many
others like them. People take them up, as it were, make each of
them do its particular job, and then drop them again. We have
always been moved by a suspicion that behind all these little
ad
hoc
instincts there lay concealed something serious and
powerful which we should like to approach cautiously. Our first
step was modest enough. We told ourselves we should probably not be
going astray if we began by separating two main instincts or
classes of instincts or groups of instincts in accordance with the
two great needs - hunger and love. However jealously we usually
defend the independence of psychology from every other science,
here we stood in the shadow of the unshakable biological fact that
the living individual organism is at the command of two intentions,
self-preservation and the preservation of the species, which seem
to be independent of each other, which, so far as we know at
present, have no common origin and whose interests are often in
conflict in animal life. Actually what we are talking now is
biological psychology, we are studying the psychical accompaniments
of biological processes. It was as representing this aspect of the
subject that the ‘ego-instincts’ and the ‘sexual
instincts’ were introduced into psycho-analysis. We included
in the former everything that had to do with the preservation,
assertion and magnification of the individual. To the latter we had
to attribute the copiousness called for by infantile and perverse
sexual life. In the course of investigating the neuroses we came to
know the ego as the restricting and repressing power and the sexual
trends as the restricted and repressed one; we therefore believed
that we had clear evidence not only of the difference between the
two groups of instincts but also of the conflict between them. The
first object of our study was only the sexual instincts, whose
energy we named ‘libido’. It was in relation to them
that we sought to clarify our ideas of what an instinct is and what
is to be attributed to it. Here we have the libido theory.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4702

   An instinct, then, is
distinguished from a stimulus by the fact that it arises from
sources of stimulation within the body, that it operates as a
constant force and that the subject cannot avoid it by flight, as
is possible with an external stimulus. We can distinguish an
instinct’s source, object and aim. Its source is a state of
excitation in the body, its aim is the removal of that excitation;
on its path from its source to its aim the instinct becomes
operative psychically. We picture it as a certain quota of energy
which presses in a particular direction. It is from this pressing
that it derives its name of ‘
Trieb
’. People
speak of ‘active’ and ‘passive’ instincts,
but it would be more correct to speak of instincts with active and
passive aims: for an expenditure of activity is needed to achieve a
passive aim as well. The aim can be achieved in the subject’s
own body; as a rule an external object is brought in, in regard to
which the instinct achieves its external aim; its internal aim
invariably remains the bodily change which is felt as satisfaction.
It has not become clear to us whether the relation of the instinct
to its somatic source gives it a specific quality and if so what.
The evidence of analytic experience shows that it is an undoubted
fact that instinctual impulses from one source attach themselves to
those from other sources and share their further vicissitudes and
that in general one instinctual satisfaction can be replaced by
another. But it must be admitted that we do not understand this
very well. The relations of an instinct to its aim and object are
also open to alterations; both can be exchanged for other ones,
though its relation to its object is nevertheless the more easily
loosened. A certain kind of modification of the aim and change of
the object, in which our social valuation is taken into account, is
described by us as ‘sublimation’. Besides this, we have
grounds for distinguishing instincts which are ‘inhibited in
their aim’ - instinctual impulses from sources well known to
us with an unambiguous aim, but which come to a stop on their way
to satisfaction, so that a lasting object-cathexis comes about and
a permanent trend. Such, for instance, is the relation of
tenderness, which undoubtedly originates from the sources of sexual
need and invariably renounces its satisfaction.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4703

   You see how many of the
characteristics and vicissitudes of the instincts still escape our
comprehension. A further distinction should be mentioned here which
is exhibited between the sexual and self-preservative instincts and
which would be of the greatest theoretical importance if it applied
to the groups as a whole. The sexual instincts are noticeable to us
for their plasticity, their capacity for altering their aims, their
replaceability, which admits of one instinctual satisfaction being
replaced by another, and their readiness for being deferred, of
which we have just given a good example in the aim-inhibited
instincts. We should be glad to deny these characteristics to the
self-preservative instincts, and to say of them that they are
inflexible, admit of no delay, are imperative in a very different
sense and have a quite other relation to repression and to anxiety.
But a little reflection tells us that this exceptional position
applies, not to all the ego-instincts, but only to hunger and
thirst, and is evidently based on a peculiar character of the
sources of those instincts. A good part of the confusing impression
made by all this is that we have not given separate consideration
to the alterations which the influence of the organized ego makes
in the instinctual impulses that belonged originally to the id.

   We find ourselves on firmer
ground when we investigate the manner in which the life of the
instincts serves the sexual function. Here we have acquired quite
definite knowledge, with which you too are already familiar. It is
not the case, then, that we recognize a sexual instinct which is
from the first the vehicle of an urge towards the aim of the sexual
function - the union of the two sex-cells. What we see is a great
number of component instincts arising from different areas and
regions of the body, which strive for satisfaction fairly
independently of one another and find that satisfaction in
something that we may call ‘organ-pleasure’. The
genitals are the latest of these ‘erotogenic zones’ and
the name of ‘sexual’ pleasure cannot be withheld from
their organ-pleasure. These impulses which strive for pleasure are
not all taken up into the final organization of the sexual
function. A number of them are set aside as unserviceable, by
repression or some other means; a few of them are diverted from
their aim in the remarkable manner I have mentioned and used to
strengthen other impulses; yet others persist in minor roles, and
serve for the performance of introductory acts, for the production
of fore-pleasure. You have heard how in the course of this
long-drawn-out development several phases of preliminary
organization can be recognized and also how this history of the
sexual function explains its aberrations and atrophies. The first
of these ‘pregenital’ phases is known to us as the
oral
one because, in conformity with the way in which an
infant in arms is nourished, the erotogenic zone of the mouth
dominates what may be called the sexual activity of that period of
life. At a second level the
sadistic
and
anal
impulses come to the fore, undoubtedly in connection with the
appearance of the teeth, the strengthening of the muscular
apparatus and the control of the sphincter functions. We have
learnt a number of interesting details about this remarkable stage
of development in particular. Thirdly comes the
phallic
phase in which in both sexes the male organ (and what corresponds
to it in girls) attains an importance which can no longer be
overlooked. We have reserved the name of
genital
phase for
the definitive sexual organization which is established after
puberty and in which the female genital organ for the first time
meets with the recognition which the male one acquired long
before.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4704

   So far all this is trite
repetition. And you must not suppose that the many things I have
not mentioned this time no longer hold good. This repetition was
necessary so that I might use it as the starting-point for a report
on the advances in our knowledge. We can boast of having learnt
much that is new, particularly about the early organizations of the
libido, and of having obtained a clearer grasp of the significance
of what is old; and I will give you at least a few examples to
demonstrate this. Abraham showed in 1924 that two stages can be
distinguished in the sadistic-anal phase. The earlier of these is
dominated by the destructive trends of destroying and losing, the
later one by trends friendly towards objects - those of keeping and
possessing. It is in the middle of this phase, therefore, that
consideration for the object makes its first appearance as a
precursor of a later erotic cathexis. We are equally justified in
making a similar subdivision in the first, oral phase. In the first
sub-stage what is in question is only oral incorporation, there is
no ambivalence at all in the relation to the object - the
mother’s breast. The second stage, characterized by the
emergence of the biting activity, may be described as the
‘oral-sadistic’ one; it exhibits for the first time the
phenomena of ambivalence, which become so much clearer afterwards,
in the following sadistic-anal phase. The value of these new
distinctions is to be seen especially if we look for the
dispositional points in the development of the libido in the case
of particular neuroses, such as obsessional neurosis or
melancholia. You must here recall to mind what we have learnt about
the connection between fixation of the libido, disposition and
regression.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4705

   Our attitude to the phases of the
organization of the libido has in general shifted a little. Whereas
earlier we chiefly emphasized the way in which each of them passed
away before the next, our attention now is directed to the facts
that show us how much of each earlier phase persists alongside of
and behind the later configurations and obtains a permanent
representation in the libidinal economy and character of the
subject. Still more significant have studies become which have
taught us how frequently under pathological conditions regressions
to earlier phases occur and that particular regressions are
characteristic of particular forms of illness. But I cannot go into
that here, it forms part of the specialized psychology of the
neuroses.

   We have been able to study
transformations of instinct and similar processes particularly in
anal erotism, the excitations arising from the sources of the
erotogenic anal zone, and we were surprised at the multiplicity of
uses to which these instinctual impulses are put. It may not be
easy, perhaps, to get free from the contempt into which this
particular zone has fallen in the course of evolution. Let us
therefore allow ourselves to be reminded by Abraham that
embryologically the anus corresponds to the primitive mouth, which
has migrated down to the end of the bowel. We have learnt, then,
that after a person’s own faeces, his excrement, has lost its
value for him, this instinctual interest derived from the anal
source passes over on to objects that can be presented as
gifts
. And this is rightly so, for faeces were the first
gift that an infant could make, something he could part with out of
love for whoever was looking after him. After this, corresponding
exactly to analogous changes of meaning that occur in linguistic
development, this ancient interest in faeces is transformed into
the high valuation of
gold
and
money
but also makes a
contribution to the affective cathexis of
baby
and
penis
. It is a universal conviction among children, who long
retain the cloaca theory, that babies are born from the bowel like
a piece of faeces: defaecation is the model of the act of birth.
But the penis too has its fore-runner in the column of faeces which
fills and stimulates the mucous membrane of the bowel. When a
child, unwillingly enough, comes to realize that there are human
creatures who do not possess a penis, that organ appears to him as
something detachable from the body and becomes unmistakably
analogous to the excrement, which was the first piece of bodily
material that had to be renounced. A great part of anal erotism is
thus carried over into a cathexis of the penis. But the interest in
that part of the body has, in addition to its anal-erotic root, an
oral one which is perhaps more powerful still: for when sucking has
come to an end, the penis also becomes heir of the mother’s
nipple.