Freud - Complete Works (811 page)

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V

   We started from the question of
how we can shorten the inconveniently long duration of analytic
treatment, and, still with this question of time in mind, we went
on to consider whether it is possible to achieve a permanent cure
or even to prevent future illness by prophylactic treatment. In
doing so, we found that the factors which were decisive for the
success of our therapeutic efforts were the influence of traumatic
aetiology, the relative strength of the instincts which have to be
controlled, and something which we have called an alteration of the
ego. Only the second of these factors has been discussed by us in
any detail, and in connection with it we have had occasion to
recognize the paramount importance of the quantitative factor and
to stress the claim of the metapsychological line of approach to be
taken into account in any attempt at explanation.

   Concerning the third factor, the
alteration of the ego, we have as yet said nothing. When we turn
our attention to it, the first impression we receive is that there
is much to ask and much to answer here, and that what we have to
say about it will prove to be very inadequate. This first
impression is confirmed when we go further into the problem. As is
well known, the analytic situation consists in our allying
ourselves with the ego of the person under treatment, in order to
subdue portions of his id which are uncontrolled - that is to say
to include them in the synthesis of his ego. The fact that a
co-operation of this kind habitually fails in the case of
psychotics affords us a first solid footing for our judgement. The
ego, if we are to be able to make such a pact with it, must be a
normal one. But a normal ego of this sort is, like normality in
general, an ideal fiction. The abnormal ego, which is unserviceable
for our purposes, is unfortunately no fiction. Every normal person,
in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to
that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or
lesser extent; and the degree of its remoteness from one end of the
series and of its proximity to the other will furnish us with a
provisional measure of what we have so indefinitely termed an
‘alteration of the ego’.

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   If we ask what is the source of
the great variety of kinds and degrees of alteration of the ego, we
cannot escape the first obvious alternative, that such alterations
are either congenital or acquired. Of these, the second sort will
be the easier to treat. If they are acquired, it will certainly
have been in the course of development, starting from the first
years of life. For the ego has to try from the very outset to
fulfil its task of mediating between its id and the external world
in the service of the pleasure principle, and to protect the id
from the dangers of the external world. If, in the course of these
efforts, the ego learns to adopt a defensive attitude towards its
own id as well and to treat the latter’s instinctual demands
as external dangers, this happens, at any rate in part, because it
understands that a satisfaction of instinct would lead to conflicts
with the external world. Thereafter, under the influence of
education, the ego grows accustomed to removing the scene of the
fight from outside to within and to mastering the
internal
danger before it has become an
external
one; and probably it
is most often right in doing so. During this fight on two fronts -
later there will be a third front as well - the ego makes use of
various procedures for fulfilling its task, which, to put it in
general terms, is to avoid danger, anxiety and unpleasure. We call
these procedures ‘
mechanisms of defence
’. Our
knowledge of them is not yet sufficiently complete. Anna
Freud’s book (1936) has given us a first insight into their
multiplicity and many-sided significance.

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   It was from one of those
mechanisms, repression, that the study of neurotic processes took
its whole start. There was never any doubt that repression was not
the only procedure which the ego could employ for its purposes.
Nevertheless, repression is something quite peculiar and is more
sharply differentiated from the other mechanisms than they are from
one another. I should like to make this relation to the other
mechanisms clear by an analogy, though I know that in these matters
analogies never carry us very far. Let us imagine what might have
happened to a book, at a time when books were not printed in
editions but were written out individually. We will suppose that a
book of this kind contained statements which in later times were
regarded as undesirable - as, for instance, according to Robert
Eisler (1929), the writings of Flavius Josephus must have contained
passages about Jesus Christ which were offensive to later
Christendom. At the present day, the only defensive mechanism to
which the official censorship could resort would be to confiscate
and destroy every copy of the whole edition. At that time, however,
various methods were used for making the book innocuous. One way
would be for the offending passages to be thickly crossed through
so that they were illegible. In that case they could not be
transcribed, and the next copyist of the book would produce a text
which was unexceptionable but which had gaps in certain passages,
and so might be unintelligible in them. Another way, however, if
the authorities were not satisfied with this, but wanted also to
conceal any indication that the text had been mutilated, would be
for them to proceed to distort the text. Single words would be left
out or replaced by others, and new sentences interpolated. Best of
all, the whole passage would be erased and a new one which said
exactly the opposite put in its place. The next transcriber could
then produce a text that aroused no suspicion but which was
falsified. It no longer contained what the author wanted to say;
and it is highly probable that the corrections had not been made in
the direction of truth.

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   If the analogy is not pursued too
strictly, we may say that repression has the same relation to the
other methods of defence as omission has to distortion of the text,
and we may discover in the different forms of this falsification
parallels to the variety of ways in which the ego is altered. An
attempt may be made to raise the objection that the analogy goes
wrong in an essential point, for the distortion of a text is the
work of a tendentious censorship, no counterpart to which is to be
found in the development of the ego. But this is not so; for a
tendentious purpose of this kind is to a great extent represented
by the compelling force of the pleasure principle. The psychical
apparatus is intolerant of unpleasure; it has to fend it off at all
costs, and if the perception of reality entails unpleasure, that
perception - that is, the truth - must be sacrificed. Where
external dangers are concerned, the individual can help himself for
some time by flight and by avoiding the situation of danger, until
he is strong enough later on to remove the threat by actively
altering reality. But one cannot flee from oneself; flight is no
help against internal dangers. And for that reason the defensive
mechanisms of the ego are condemned to falsify one’s internal
perception and to give one only an imperfect and distorted picture
of one’s id. In its relations to the id, therefore, the ego
is paralysed by its restrictions or blinded by its errors; and the
result of this in the sphere of psychical events can only be
compared to being out walking in a country one does not know and
without having a good pair of legs.

   The mechanisms of defence serve
the purpose of keeping off dangers. It cannot be disputed that they
are successful in this; and it is doubtful whether the ego could do
without them altogether during its development. But it is also
certain that they may become dangers themselves. It sometimes turns
out that the ego has paid too high a price for the services they
render it. The dynamic expenditure necessary for maintaining them,
and the restrictions of the ego which they almost invariably
entail, prove a heavy burden on the psychical economy. Moreover,
these mechanisms are not relinquished after they have assisted the
ego during the difficult years of its development. No one
individual, of course, makes use of all the possible mechanisms of
defence. Each person uses no more than a selection of them. But
these become fixated in his ego. They become regular modes of
reaction of his character, which are repeated throughout his life
whenever a situation occurs that is similar to the original one.
This turns them into infantilisms, and they share the fate of so
many institutions which attempt to keep themselves in existence
after the time of their usefulness has passed. ‘Vernunft wird
Unsinn, Wohltat Plage’¹ as the poet complains. The
adult’s ego, with its increased strength, continues to defend
itself against dangers which no longer exist in reality; indeed, it
finds itself compelled to seek out those situations in reality
which can serve as an approximate substitute for the original
danger, so as to be able to justify, in relation to them, its
maintaining its habitual modes of reaction. Thus we can easily
understand how the defensive mechanisms, by bringing about an ever
more extensive alienation from the external world and a permanent
weakening of the ego, pave the way for, and encourage, the outbreak
of neurosis.

  
¹
[‘Reason becomes unreason, kindness
torment.’]

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   At the moment, however, we are
not concerned with the pathogenic role of the defensive mechanisms.
What we are trying to discover is what influence the alteration of
the ego which corresponds to them has upon our therapeutic efforts.
The material for an answer to this question is given in the volume
by Anna Freud to which I have already referred. The essential point
is that the patient repeats these modes of reaction during the work
of analysis as well, that he produces them before our eyes, as it
were. In fact, it is only in this way that we get to know them.
This does not mean that they make analysis impossible. On the
contrary, they constitute half of our analytic task. The other
half, the one which was first tackled by analysis in its early
days, is the uncovering of what is hidden in the id. During the
treatment our therapeutic work is constantly swinging backwards and
forwards like a pendulum between a piece of id-analysis and a piece
of ego-analysis. In the one case we want to make something from the
id conscious, in the other we want to correct something in the ego.
The crux of the matter is that the defensive mechanisms directed
against former danger recur in the treatment as
resistances
against recovery. It follows from this that the ego treats recovery
itself as a new danger.

   The therapeutic effect depends on
making conscious what is repressed, in the widest sense of the
word, in the id. We prepare the way for this making conscious by
interpretations and constructions, but we have interpreted only for
ourselves not for the patient so long as the ego holds on to its
earlier defences and does not give up its resistances. Now these
resistances, although they belong to the ego, are nevertheless
unconscious and in some sense separated off within the ego. The
analyst recognizes them more easily than he does the hidden
material in the id. One might suppose that it would be sufficient
to treat them like portions of the id and, by making them
conscious, bring them into connection with the rest of the ego. In
this way, we should suppose, one half of the task of analysis would
be accomplished; we should not reckon on meeting with a resistance
against the uncovering of resistances. But what happens is this.
During the work on the resistances the ego withdraws - with a
greater or less degree of seriousness - from the agreement on which
the analytic situation is founded. The ego ceases to support our
efforts at uncovering the id; it opposes them, disobeys the
fundamental rule of analysis, and allows no further derivatives of
the repressed to emerge. We cannot expect the patient to have a
strong conviction of the curative power of analysis. He may have
brought along with him a certain amount of confidence in his
analyst, which will be strengthened to an effective point by the
factors of the positive transference which will be aroused in him.
Under the influence of the unpleasurable impulses which he feels as
a result of the fresh activation of his defensive conflicts,
negative transferences may now gain the upper hand and completely
annul the analytic situation. The patient now regards the analyst
as no more than a stranger who is making disagreeable demands on
him, and he behaves towards him exactly like a child who does not
like the stranger and does not believe anything he says. If the
analyst tries to explain to the patient one of the distortions made
by him for the purposes of defence, and to correct it, he finds him
uncomprehending and inaccessible to sound arguments. Thus we see
that there is a resistance against the uncovering of resistances,
and the defensive mechanisms really do deserve the name which we
gave them originally, before they had been more closely examined.
They are resistances not only to the making conscious of contents
of the id, but also to the analysis as a whole, and thus to
recovery.

   The effect brought about in the
ego by the defences can rightly be described as an
‘alteration of the ego’ if by that we understand a
deviation from the fiction of a normal ego which would guarantee
unshakable loyalty to the work of analysis. It is easy, then, to
accept the fact, shown by daily experience, that the outcome of an
analytic treatment depends essentially on the strength and on the
depth of root of these resistances that bring about an alteration
of the ego. Once again we are confronted with the importance of the
quantitative factor, and once again we are reminded that analysis
can only draw upon definite and limited amounts of energy which
have to be measured against the hostile forces. And it seems as if
victory is in fact as a rule on the side of the big battalions.