Freud - Complete Works (798 page)

Moses And Monotheism

4952

   The further development takes us
beyond Judaism. The remainder of what returned from the tragic
drama of the primal father was no longer reconcilable in any way
with the religion of Moses. The sense of guilt of those days was
very far from being any longer restricted to the Jewish people; it
had caught hold of all the Mediterranean peoples as a dull
malaise
, a premonition of calamity for which no one could
suggest a reason. Historians of our day speak of an ageing of
ancient civilization, but I suspect that they have only grasped
accidental and contributory causes of this depressed mood of the
peoples. The elucidation of this situation of depression sprang
from Jewry. Irrespectively of all the approximations and
preparations in the surrounding world, it was after all a Jewish
man, Saul of Tarsus (who, as a Roman citizen, called himself Paul),
in whose spirit the realization first emerged: ‘the reason we
are so unhappy is that we have killed God the father.’ And it
is entirely understandable that he could only grasp this piece of
truth in the delusional disguise of the glad tidings: ‘we are
freed from all guilt since one of us has sacrificed his life to
absolve us.’ In this formula the killing of God was of course
not mentioned, but a crime that had to be atoned by the sacrifice
of a victim could only have been a murder. And the intermediate
step between the delusion and the historical truth was provided by
the assurance that the victim of the sacrifice had been God’s
son. With the strength which it derived from the source of
historical truth, this new faith overthrew every obstacle. The
blissful sense of being chosen was replaced by the liberating sense
of redemption. But the fact of the parricide, in returning to the
memory of mankind, had to overcome greater resistances than the
other fact, which had constituted the subject-matter of monotheism;
it was also obliged to submit to a more powerful distortion. The
unnameable crime was replaced by the hypothesis of what must be
described as a shadowy ‘original sin’.

Moses And Monotheism

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   Original sin and redemption by
the sacrifice of a victim became the foundation stones of the new
religion founded by Paul. It must remain uncertain whether there
was a ringleader and instigator to the murder among the band of
brothers who rebelled against the primal father, or whether such a
figure was created later by the imagination of creative artists in
order to turn themselves into heroes, and was then introduced into
the tradition. After the Christian doctrine had burst the framework
of Judaism, it took up components from many other sources,
renounced a number of characteristics of pure monotheism and
adapted itself in many details to the rituals of the other
Mediterranean peoples. It was as though Egypt was taking vengeance
once more on the heirs of Akhenaten. It is worth noticing how the
new religion dealt with the ancient ambivalence in the relation to
the father. Its main content was, it is true, reconciliation with
God the Father, atonement for the crime committed against him; but
the other side of the emotional relation showed itself in the fact
that the son, who had taken the atonement on himself, became a god
himself beside the father and, actually, in place of the father.
Christianity, having arisen out of a father-religion, became a
son-religion. It has not escaped the fate of having to get rid of
the father.

   Only a portion of the Jewish
people accepted the new doctrine. Those who refused to are still
called Jews to-day. Owing to this cleavage, they have become even
more sharply divided from other peoples than before. They were
obliged to hear the new religious community (which, besides Jews,
included Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians, Romans and eventually Germans)
reproach them with having murdered God. In full, this reproach
would run as follows: ‘They will not accept it as true that
they murdered God, whereas we admit it and have been cleansed of
that guilt.’ It is easy therefore to see how much truth lies
behind this reproach. A special enquiry would be called for to
discover why it has been impossible for the Jews to join in this
forward step which was implied, in spite of all its distortions, by
the admission of having murdered God. In a certain sense they have
in that way taken a tragic load of guilt on themselves; they have
been made to pay heavy penance for it.

   Our investigation may perhaps
have thrown a little light on the question of how the Jewish people
have acquired the characteristics which distinguish them. Less
light has been thrown on the problem of how it is that they have
been able to retain their individuality till the present day. But
exhaustive answers to such riddles cannot in fairness be either
demanded or expected. A contribution, to be judged in view of the
limitations which I mentioned at the start, is all that I can
offer.

4954

AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

(1940)

4955

Intentionally left blank

4956

AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

The aim of this brief work is to bring
together the tenets of psycho-analysis and to state them, as it
were, dogmatically - in the most concise form and in the most
unequivocal terms. Its intention is naturally not to compel belief
or to arouse conviction.

   The teachings of psycho-analysis
are based on an incalculable number of observations and
experiences, and only someone who has repeated those observations
on himself and on others is in a position to arrive at a judgement
of his own upon it.

PART
I

CHAPTER I

THE
PSYCHICAL APPARATUS

Psycho-analysis makes a basic assumption, the
discussion of which is reserved to philosophical thought but the
justification for which lies in its results. We know two kinds of
things about what we call our psyche (or mental life): firstly, its
bodily organ and scene of action, the brain (or nervous system)
and, on the other hand, our acts of consciousness, which are
immediate data and cannot be further explained by any sort of
description. Everything that lies between is unknown to us, and the
data do not include any direct relation between these two terminal
points of our knowledge. If it existed, it would at the most afford
an exact localization of the processes of consciousness and would
give us no help towards understanding them.

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

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   Our two hypotheses start out from
these ends or beginnings of our knowledge. The first is concerned
with localization. We assume that mental life is the function of an
apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended
in space and of being made up of several portions - which we
imagine, that is, as resembling a telescope or microscope or
something of the kind. Notwithstanding some earlier attempts in the
same direction, the consistent working-out of a conception such as
this is a scientific novelty.

   We have arrived at our knowledge
of this psychical apparatus by studying the individual development
of human beings. To the oldest of these psychical provinces or
agencies we give the name of
id
. It contains everything that
is inherited, that is present at birth, that is laid down in the
constitution - above all, therefore, the instincts, which originate
from the somatic organization and which find a first psychical
expression here in forms unknown to us.¹

   Under the influence of the real
external world around us, one portion of the id has undergone a
special development. From what was originally a cortical layer,
equipped with the organs for receiving stimuli and with
arrangements for acting as a protective shield against stimuli, a
special organization has arisen which henceforward acts as an
intermediary between the id and the external world. To this region
of our mind we have given the name of
ego
.

  
Here are the principal
characteristics of the ego
. In consequence of the
pre-established connection between sense perception and muscular
action, the ego has voluntary movement at its command. It has the
task of self-preservation. As regards
external
events, it
performs that task by becoming aware of stimuli, by storing up
experiences about them (in the memory), by avoiding excessively
strong stimuli (through flight), by dealing with moderate stimuli
(through adaptation) and finally by learning to bring about
expedient changes in the external world to its own advantage
(through activity). As regards
internal
events, in relation
to the id, it performs that task by gaining control over the
demands of the instincts, by deciding whether they are to be
allowed satisfaction, by postponing that satisfaction to times and
circumstances favourable in the external world or by suppressing
their excitations entirely. It is guided in its activity by
consideration of the tensions produced by stimuli, whether these
tensions are present in it or introduced into it. The raising of
these tensions is in general felt as
unpleasure
and their
lowering as
pleasure
. It is probable, however, that what is
felt as pleasure or unpleasure is not the
absolute
height of
this tension but something in the rhythm of the changes in them.
The ego strives after pleasure and seeks to avoid unpleasure. An
increase in unpleasure that is expected and foreseen is met by a
signal of anxiety
; the occasion of such an increase, whether
it threatens from without or within, is known as a
danger
.
From time to time the ego gives up its connection with the external
world and withdraws into the state of sleep, in which it makes
far-reaching changes in its organization. It is to be inferred from
the state of sleep that this organization consists in a particular
distribution of mental energy.

  
¹
This oldest portion of the psychical
apparatus remains the most important throughout life; moreover, the
investigations of psycho-analysis started with it.

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

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   The long period of childhood,
during which the growing human being lives in dependence on his
parents, leaves behind it as a precipitate the formation in his ego
of a special agency in which this parental influence is prolonged.
It has received the name of
super-ego
. In so far as this
super-ego is differentiated from the ego or is opposed to it, it
constitutes a third power which the ego must take into account.

   An action by the ego is as it
should be if it satisfies simultaneously the demands of the id, of
the super-ego and of reality - that is to say, if it is able to
reconcile their demands with one another. The details of the
relation between the ego and the super-ego become completely
intelligible when they are traced back to the child’s
attitude to its parents. This parental influence of course includes
in its operation not only the personalities of the actual parents
but also the family, racial and national traditions handed on
through them, as well as the demands of the immediate social
milieu
which they represent. In the same way, the super-ego,
in the course of an individual’s development, receives
contributions from later successors and substitutes of his parents,
such as teachers and models in public life of admired social
ideals. It will be observed that, for all their fundamental
difference, the id and the super-ego have one thing in common: they
both represent the influences of the past - the id the influence of
heredity, the super-ego the influence, essentially, of what is
taken over from other people - whereas the ego is principally
determined by the individual’s own experience, that is by
accidental and contemporary events.

   This general schematic picture of
a psychical apparatus may be supposed to apply as well to the
higher animals which resemble man mentally. A super-ego must be
presumed to be present wherever, as is the case with man, there is
a long period of dependence in childhood. A distinction between ego
and id is an unavoidable assumption. Animal psychology has not yet
taken in hand the interesting problem which is here presented.

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

4959

CHAPTER II

THE
THEORY OF THE INSTINCTS

The power of the id expresses the true purpose
of the individual organism’s life. This consists in the
satisfaction of its innate needs. No such purpose as that of
keeping itself alive or of protecting itself from dangers by means
of anxiety can be attributed to the id. That is the task of the
ego, whose business it also is to discover the most favourable and
least perilous method of obtaining satisfaction, taking the
external world into account. The super-ego may bring fresh needs to
the fore, but its main function remains the limitation of
satisfactions.

   The forces which we assume to
exist behind the tensions caused by the needs of the id are called
instincts
. They represent the somatic demands upon the mind.
Though they are the ultimate cause of all activity, they are of a
conservative nature; the state, whatever it may be, which an
organism has reached gives rise to a tendency to re-establish that
state so soon as it has been abandoned. It is thus possible to
distinguish an indeterminate number of instincts, and in common
practice this is in fact done. For us, however, the important
question arises whether it may not be possible to trace all these
numerous instincts back to a few basic ones. We have found that
instincts can change their aim (by displacement) and also that they
can replace one another - the energy of one instinct passing over
to another. This latter process is still insufficiently understood.
After long hesitancies and vacillations we have decided to assume
the existence of only two basic instincts,
Eros
and
the
destructive instinct
. (The contrast between the instincts of
self-preservation and the preservation of the species, as well as
the contrast between ego-love and object-love, fall within Eros.)
The aim of the first of these basic instincts is to establish ever
greater unities and to preserve them thus - in short, to bind
together; the aim of the second is, on the contrary, to undo
connections and so to destroy things. In the case of the
destructive instinct we may suppose that its final aim is to lead
what is living into an inorganic state. For this reason we also
call it the
death instinct
. If we assume that living things
came later than inanimate ones and arose from them, then the death
instinct fits in with the formula we have proposed to the effect
that instincts tend towards a return to an earlier state. In the
case of Eros (or the love instinct) we cannot apply this formula.
To do so would presuppose that living substance was once a unity
which had later been torn apart and was now striving towards
re-union.¹

  
¹
Creative writers have imagined something of
the sort, but nothing like it is known to us from the actual
history of living substance.

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

4960

   In biological functions the two
basic instincts operate against each other or combine with each
other. Thus, the act of eating is a destruction of the object with
the final aim of incorporating it, and the sexual act is an act of
aggression with the purpose of the most intimate union. This
concurrent and mutually opposing action of the two basic instincts
gives rise to the whole variegation of the phenomena of life. The
analogy of our two basic instincts extends from the sphere of
living things to the pair of opposing forces - attraction and
repulsion - which rule in the inorganic world.¹

   Modifications in the proportions
of the fusion between the instincts have the most tangible results.
A surplus of sexual aggressiveness will turn a lover into a
sex-murderer, while a sharp diminution in the aggressive factor
will make him bashful or impotent.

   There can be no question of
restricting one or the other of the basic instincts to one of the
provinces of the mind. They must necessarily be met with
everywhere. We may picture an initial state as one in which the
total available energy of Eros, which henceforward we shall speak
of as ‘libido’, is present in the still
undifferentiated ego-id and serves to neutralize the destructive
tendencies which are simultaneously present. (We are without a term
analogous to ‘libido’ for describing the energy of the
destructive instinct.) At a later stage it becomes relatively easy
for us to follow the vicissitudes of the libido, but this is more
difficult with the destructive instinct.

  
¹
This picture of the basic forces or
instincts, which still arouses much opposition among analysts, was
already familiar to the philosopher Empedocles of
Acragas.

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

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   So long as that instinct operates
internally, as a death instinct, it remains silent; it only comes
to our notice when it is diverted outwards as an instinct of
destruction. It seems to be essential for the preservation of the
individual that this diversion should occur; the muscular apparatus
serves this purpose. When the super-ego is established,
considerable amounts of the aggressive instinct are fixated in the
interior of the ego and operate there self-destructively. This is
one of the dangers to health by which human beings are faced on
their path to cultural development. Holding back aggressiveness is
in general unhealthy and leads to illness (to mortification). A
person in a fit of rage will often demonstrate how the transition
from aggressiveness that has been prevented to self-destructiveness
is brought about by diverting the aggressiveness against himself:
he tears his hair or beats his face with his fists, though he would
evidently have preferred to apply this treatment to someone else.
Some portion of self-destructiveness remains within, whatever the
circumstances; till at last it succeeds in killing the individual,
not, perhaps, until his libido has been used up or fixated in a
disadvantageous way. Thus it may in general be suspected that the
individual
dies of his internal conflicts but that the
species
dies of its unsuccessful struggle against the
external world if the latter changes in a fashion which cannot be
adequately dealt with by the adaptations which the species has
acquired.