Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis · Sigmund Freud
EIGHTEENTH LECTURE FIXATION UPON TRAUMATA: THE UNCONSCIOUS
These derangements in the capacity to recall memories are, as I have said, characteristic of hysteria, in which disease it also happens even that states occur as symptoms (the hysterical attacks) without necessarily leaving a trace of recollection behind them. Since it is otherwise in the obsessional neurosis, you may infer that these amnesias are part of the psychological character of the hysterical change and are not a universal trait of neurosis in general. The importance of this difference will be diminished by the following consideration. Two things are combined to constitute the meaning of a symptom; its _whence_ and its _whither_ or _why_; that is, the impressions and experiences from which it sprang, and the purpose which it serves. The _whence_ of a symptom is resolved into impressions which have been received from without, which were necessarily at one time conscious, and which may have become unconscious by being forgotten since that time. The _why_ of the symptom, its tendency, is however always an endo-psychic process, which may possibly have been conscious at first, but just as possibly may never have been conscious and may have remained in the Unconscious from its inception. Therefore it is not very important whether the amnesia has also infringed upon the _whence_, the impressions upon which the symptom is supported, as happens in hysteria; the _whither_, the tendency of the symptom, which may have been unconscious from the beginning, is what maintains the symptom’s dependence upon the Unconscious, in the obsessional neurosis no less strictly than in hysteria.
By thus emphasizing the unconscious in mental life we have called forth all the malevolence in humanity in opposition to psycho-analysis. Do not be astonished at this and do not suppose that this opposition relates to the obvious difficulty of conceiving the Unconscious or to the relative inaccessibility of the evidence which supports its existence. I believe it has a deeper source. Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naïve self-love. The first was when it realized that our earth was not the centre of the universe, but only a tiny speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly conceivable; this is associated in our minds with the name of Copernicus, although Alexandrian doctrines taught something very similar. The second was when biological research robbed man of his peculiar privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him to a descent from the animal world, implying an ineradicable animal nature in him: this transvaluation has been accomplished in our own time upon the instigation of Charles Darwin, Wallace, and their predecessors, and not without the most violent opposition from their contemporaries. But man’s craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter blow from present-day psychological research which is endeavouring to prove to the “ego” of each one of us that he is not even master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind. We psycho-analysts were neither the first nor the only ones to propose to mankind that they should look inward; but it appears to be our lot to advocate it most insistently and to support it by empirical evidence which touches every man closely. This is the kernel of the universal revolt against our science, of the total disregard of academic courtesy in dispute, and the liberation of opposition from all the constraints of impartial logic. And besides this, we have been compelled to disturb the peace of the world in yet another way, as you will soon hear.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.