Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis · Sigmund Freud
TWENTIETH LECTURE THE SEXUAL LIFE OF MAN
You will imagine how incompletely I am sketching a large number of the connections bound up with the Oedipus complex which practically and theoretically are of great importance. I shall not go into the variations and possible inversions of it at all. Of its less immediate effects I should like to allude to one only, which proves it to have influenced literary production in a far-reaching manner. Otto Rank has shown in a very valuable work that dramatists throughout the ages have drawn their material principally from the Oedipus and incest complex and its variations and masked forms. It should also be remarked that long before the time of psycho-analysis the two criminal offences of Oedipus were recognized as the true expressions of unbridled instinct. Among the works of the Encyclopædist Diderot you will find the famous dialogue, _Le neveu de Rameau_, which was translated into German by no less a person than Goethe. There you may read these remarkable words: _Si le petit sauvage était abandonné à lui-même, qu’il conserva toute son imbecillité et qu’il réunit au peu de raison de l’enfant au berceau la violence des passions de l’homme de trente ans, il tordrait le cou à son père et coucherait avec sa mère_.
There is yet one thing more which I cannot pass over. The mother-wife of Oedipus must not remind us of dreams in vain. Do you still remember the results of our dream-analyses, how so often the dream-forming wishes proved perverse and incestuous in their nature, or betrayed an unsuspected enmity to near and beloved relatives? We then left the source of these evil strivings of feeling unexplained. Now you can answer this question yourselves. They are dispositions of the Libido, and investments of objects by Libido, belonging to early infancy and long since given up in conscious life, but which at night prove to be still present and in a certain sense capable of activity. But, since all men and not only neurotic persons have perverse, incestuous, and murderous dreams of this kind, we may infer that those who are normal to-day have also made the passage through the perversions and the object-investments of the Oedipus complex; and that this is the path of normal development; only that neurotics show in a magnified and exaggerated form what we also find revealed in the dream-analyses of normal people. And this is one of the reasons why we chose the study of dreams to lead up to that of neurotic symptoms. TWENTY-SECOND LECTURE ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT AND REGRESSION. ÆTIOLOGY As we have heard, the Libido-function goes through an extensive development before it can enter the service of reproduction in the way that is called normal. Now I wish to show you the significance of this fact for the causation of the neuroses.
I think that it will be in agreement with the doctrines of general pathology to assume that such a development involves two dangers; first, that of _inhibition_, and secondly, that of _regression_. That is to say, owing to the general tendency to variation in biological processes it must necessarily happen that not all these preparatory phases will be passed through and completely outgrown with the same degree of success; some parts of the function will be permanently arrested at these early stages, with the result that with the general development there goes a certain amount of inhibited development. Let us seek analogies to these processes in other fields. When a whole people leaves its dwellings in order to seek a new country, as often happened in earlier periods of human history, their entire number certainly did not reach the new destination. Apart from losses due to other causes, it must invariably have happened that small groups or bands of the migrating people halted on the way, and settled down in these stopping-places, while the main body went further. Or, to take a nearer comparison, you know that in the higher mammals the seminal glands, which are originally located deep in the abdominal cavity, begin a movement at a certain period of intra-uterine development which brings them almost under the skin of the pelvic extremity. In a number of males it is found that one of this pair of organs has remained in the pelvic cavity, or else that it has taken up a permanent position in the inguinal canal which both of them had to pass through on the journey, or at least that this canal has not closed as it normally should after the passage of the seminal glands through it.
When as a young student I was doing my first piece of scientific research under v. Brücke, I was working on the origin of the dorsal nerve-roots in the spinal cord of a small fish, still very archaic in form. I found that the nerve-fibres of these roots grew out of large cells in the posterior horn of the grey matter, a condition which is no longer found in other vertebrates. But soon after I discovered that similar nerve-cells were to be found outside the grey matter along the whole length to the so-called spinal ganglion of the posterior roots, from which I concluded that the cells of this ganglion had moved out of the spinal cord along the nerve-roots. Evolutionary development shows this too; in this little fish, however, the whole route of this passage was marked by cells arrested on the way. Closer consideration will soon show you the weak points of these comparisons. Therefore let me simply say that we consider it possible that single portions of every separate sexual impulse may remain in an early stage of development, although at the same time other portions of it may have reached their final goal. You will see from this that we conceive each such impulse as a current continuously flowing from the beginning of life, and that we have divided its flow to some extent artificially into separate successive forward movements. Your impression that these conceptions require further elucidation is correct, but the attempt would lead us too far afield. We will, however, decide at this point to call this _arrest_ in a component-impulse at an early stage a FIXATION (of the impulse).
The second danger in a development by stages such as this we call REGRESSION; it also happens that those portions which have proceeded further may easily revert in a backward direction to these earlier stages. The impulse will find occasion to _regress_ in this way when the exercise of its function in a later and more developed form meets with powerful external obstacles, which thus prevent it from attaining the goal of satisfaction. It is a short step to assume that fixation and regression are not independent of each other; the stronger the fixations in the path of development the more easily will the function yield before the external obstacles, by regressing on to those fixations; that is, the less capable of resistance against the external difficulties in its path will the developed function be. If you think of a migrating people who have left large numbers at the stopping-places on their way, you will see that the foremost will naturally fall back upon these positions when they are defeated or when they meet with an enemy too strong for them. And again, the more of their number they leave behind in their progress, the sooner will they be in danger of defeat. It is important for comprehension of the neuroses that you should keep in mind this relation between fixation and regression. You will thus acquire a secure foothold from which to investigate the causation of the neuroses—their ætiology—which we shall soon consider.
For the present we will keep to the question of regression. After what you have heard about the development of the Libido you may anticipate two kinds of regression; a return to the first objects invested with Libido, which we know to be incestuous in character, and a return of the whole sexual organization to earlier stages. Both kinds occur in the transference neuroses, and play a great part in their mechanism. In particular, the return to the first incestuous objects of the Libido is a feature found with quite fatiguing regularity in neurotics. There is much more to be said about the regressions of Libido if another group of neuroses, called the narcissistic, is taken into account; but this is not our intention at the moment. These affections yield conclusions about other developmental processes of the Libido-function, not yet mentioned, and also show us new types of regression corresponding with them. I think, however, that I had better warn you now above all not to confound _Regression_ with _Repression_ and that I must assist you to clear your minds about the relation between the two processes. _Repression_, as you will remember, is the process by which a mental act capable of becoming conscious (that is, one which belongs to the preconscious system) is made unconscious and forced back into the unconscious system. And we also call it _repression_ when the unconscious mental act is not permitted to enter the adjacent preconscious system at all, but is turned back upon the threshold by the censorship. There is therefore no connection with sexuality in the concept ‘_repression_’; please mark this very carefully. It denotes a purely psychological process; and would be even better described as _topographical_, by which we mean that it has to do with the spatial relationships we assume within the mind, or, if we again abandon these crude aids to the formulation of theory, with the structure of the mental apparatus out of separate psychical systems.
The comparisons just now instituted showed us that hitherto we have not been using the word ‘_regression_’ in its general sense but in a quite specific one. If you give it its general sense, that of a reversion from a higher to a lower stage of development in general, then repression also ranges itself under regression; for repression can also be described as reversion to an earlier and lower stage in the development of a mental act. Only, in repression this retrogressive direction is not a point of any moment to us; for we also call it repression in a dynamic sense when a mental process is arrested before it leaves the lower stage of the Unconscious. Repression is thus a topographic-dynamic conception, while regression is a purely descriptive one. But what we have hitherto called ‘_regression_’ and considered in its relation to fixation signified exclusively the return of _the Libido_ to its former halting-places in development, that is, something which is essentially quite different from repression and quite independent of it. Nor can we call regression of the Libido a purely psychical process; neither do we know where to localize it in the mental apparatus; for though it may exert the most powerful influence upon mental life, the organic factor in it is nevertheless the most prominent.
Discussions of this sort tend to be rather dry; therefore let us turn to clinical illustrations of them in order to get a more vivid impression of them. You know that the group of the transference neuroses consists principally of hysteria and the obsessional neurosis. Now in hysteria, a regression of the Libido to the primary incestuous sexual objects is without doubt quite regular, but there is little or no regression to an earlier stage of sexual organization. Consequently the principal part in the mechanism of hysteria is played by repression. If I may be allowed to supplement by a construction the certain knowledge of this neurosis acquired up to the present I might describe the situation as follows: The fusion of the component-impulses under the primacy of the genital zone has been accomplished; but the results of this union meet with resistance from the direction of the preconscious system with which consciousness is connected. The genital organization therefore holds good for the Unconscious, but not also for the preconscious, and this rejection on the part of the preconscious results in a picture which has a certain likeness to the state prior to the primacy of the genital zone. It is nevertheless actually quite different. Of the two kinds of regression of the Libido, that on to an earlier phase of sexual organization is much the more striking. Since it is absent in hysteria and our whole conception of the neuroses is still far too much dominated by the study of hysteria which came first in point of time, the significance of Libido-regression was recognized much later than that of repression. We may be sure that our points of view will undergo still further extensions and alterations when we include consideration of still other neuroses (the narcissistic) in addition to hysteria and the obsessional neurosis.
In the obsessional neurosis, on the other hand, regression of the Libido to the antecedent stage of the sadistic-anal organization is the most conspicuous factor and determines the form taken by the symptoms. The impulse to love must then mask itself under the sadistic impulse. The obsessive thought, “I should like to murder you,” means (when it has been detached from certain superimposed elements that are not, however, accidental but indispensable to it) nothing else but “I should like to enjoy love of you.” When you consider in addition that regression to the primary objects has also set in at the same time, so that this impulse concerns only the nearest and most beloved persons, you can gain some idea of the horror roused in the patient by these obsessive ideas and at the same time how unaccountable they appear to his conscious perception. But repression also has its share, a great one, in the mechanism of this neurosis, and one which is not easy to expound in a rapid survey such as this. Regression of Libido without repression would never give rise to a neurosis, but would result in a perversion. You will see from this that repression is the process which distinguishes the neuroses particularly and by which they are best characterized. Perhaps, however, I may have an opportunity at some time of expounding to you what we know of the mechanism of the perversions, and you will then see that there again nothing proceeds so simply as we should like to imagine in our constructions.
I think that you will be soonest reconciled to this exposition of fixation and regression of the Libido if you will regard it as preparatory to a study of the _ætiology_ of the neuroses. So far I have only given you one piece of information on this subject, namely, that people fall ill of a neurosis when the possibility of satisfaction for the Libido is removed from them—they fall ill in consequence of a ‘privation,’ as I called it, therefore—and that their symptoms are actually substitutes for the missing satisfaction. This of course does not mean that every privation in regard to libidinal satisfaction makes everyone who meets with it neurotic, but merely that in all cases of neurosis investigated the factor of privation was demonstrable. The statement therefore cannot be reversed. You will no doubt have understood that this statement was not intended to reveal the whole secret of the ætiology of the neuroses, but that it merely emphasized an important and indispensable condition.
Now in order to consider this proposition further we do not know whether to begin upon the nature of the privation or the particular character of the person affected by it. The privation is very rarely a comprehensive and absolute one; in order to have a pathogenic effect it would probably have to strike at the only form of satisfaction which that person desires, the only form of which he is capable. In general, there are very many ways by which it is possible to endure lack of libidinal satisfaction without falling ill. Above all we know of people who are able to take such abstinence upon themselves without injury; they are then not happy, they suffer from unsatisfied longing, but they do not become ill. We therefore have to conclude that the sexual impulse-excitations are exceptionally ‘plastic,’ if I may use the word. One of them can step in in place of another; if satisfaction of one is denied in reality, satisfaction of another can offer full recompense. They are related to one another like a network of communicating canals filled with fluid, and this in spite of their subordination to the genital primacy, a condition which is not at all easily reduced to an image.
Further, the component-instincts of sexuality, as well as the united sexual impulse which comprises them, show a great capacity to change their object, to exchange it for another—i.e. for one more easily attainable; this capacity for displacement and readiness to accept surrogates must produce a powerful counter-effect to the effect of a privation. One amongst these processes serving as protection against illness arising from want has reached a particular significance in the development of culture. It consists in the abandonment, on the part of the sexual impulse, of an aim previously found either in the gratification of a component-impulse or in the gratification incidental to reproduction, and the adoption of a new aim—which new aim, though genetically related to the first, can no longer be regarded as sexual, but must be called social in character. We call this process SUBLIMATION, by which we subscribe to the general standard which estimates social aims above sexual (ultimately selfish) aims. Incidentally, sublimation is merely a special case of the connections existing between sexual impulses and other, asexual ones. We shall have occasion to discuss this again in another context.
Your impression now will be that we have reduced want of satisfaction to a factor of negligible proportions by the recognition of so many means of enduring it. But no; this is not so: it retains its pathogenic power. The means of dealing with it are not always sufficient. The measure of unsatisfied Libido that the average human being can take upon himself is limited. The plasticity and free mobility of the Libido is not by any means retained to the full in all of us; and sublimation can never discharge more than a certain proportion of Libido, apart from the fact that many people possess the capacity for sublimation only in a slight degree. The most important of these limitations is clearly that referring to the mobility of the Libido, since it confines the individual to the attaining of aims and objects which are very few in number. Just remember that incomplete development of the Libido leaves behind it very extensive (and sometimes also numerous) Libido-fixations upon earlier phases of organization and types of object-choice, mostly incapable of satisfaction in reality; you will then recognize fixation of Libido as the second powerful factor working together with privation in the causation of illness. We may condense this schematically and say that Libido-fixation represents the internal, predisposing factor, while privation represents the external, accidental factor, in the ætiology of the neuroses.
I will take this opportunity to warn you against taking sides in a quite superfluous dispute. It is a popular habit in scientific matters to seize upon one side of the truth and set it up as the whole truth, and then in favour of that element of truth to dispute all the rest which is equally true. More than one faction has already split off in this way from the psycho-analytic movement; one of them recognizes only the egoistic impulses and denies the sexual; another perceives only the influence of real tasks in life but overlooks that of the individual’s past life, and so on. Now here is occasion for another of these antitheses and moot-points: Are the neuroses exogenous or endogenous diseases—the inevitable result of a certain type of constitution or the product of certain injurious (traumatic) events in the person’s life? In particular, are they brought about by the fixation of Libido and the rest of the sexual constitution, or by the pressure of privation? This dilemma seems to me about as sensible as another I could point to: Is the child created by the father’s act of generation or by the conception in the mother? You will properly reply: Both conditions are alike indispensable.
The conditions underlying the neuroses are very similar, if not exactly the same. From the point of view of causation, cases of neurotic illness fall into a _series_, within which the two factors—sexual constitution and events experienced, or, if you wish, fixation of Libido and privation—are represented in such a way that where one of them predominates the other is proportionately less pronounced. At one end of the series stand those extreme cases of whom one can say: These people would have fallen ill whatever happened, whatever they experienced, however merciful life had been to them, because of their anomalous Libido-development. At the other end stand cases which call forth the opposite verdict—they would undoubtedly have escaped illness if life had not put such and such burdens upon them. In the intermediate cases in the series, more or less of the disposing factor (the sexual constitution) is combined with less or more of the injurious impositions of life. Their sexual constitution would not have brought about their neurosis if they had not gone through such and such experiences, and life’s vicissitudes would not have worked traumatically upon them if the Libido had been otherwise constituted. In this series I can perhaps admit a certain preponderance in the effect of the predisposing factor, but this admission again depends upon where you draw the line in marking the boundaries of nervousness.
I shall now suggest to you that we should call series such as these _complemental series_, and will inform you beforehand that we shall find occasion to establish others of this kind. The tenacity with which the Libido holds to particular channels and particular objects, the ‘_adhesiveness_’ of the Libido, so to say, seems to be an independent factor, varying in individuals, the determining conditions of which are completely unknown to us, but the importance of which in the ætiology of the neuroses we shall certainly no longer underestimate. At the same time we should not overestimate the close relation between the two things. A similar ‘adhesiveness’ of the Libido occurs—from unknown causes—in normal people under numerous conditions, and is found as a decisive factor in those persons who in a certain sense are the extreme opposite of neurotics—namely, perverted persons. It was known before the time of psycho-analysis that in the anamnesis of such persons a very early impression, relating to an abnormal instinct-tendency or object-choice, is frequently discovered, to which the Libido of that person henceforth remains attached for life (Binet). It is often hard to say what has enabled this impression to exert such an intense power of attraction upon the Libido. I will describe a case of this kind observed by myself.
A man to whom the genitals and all the other attractions in a woman now mean nothing can be roused to irresistible sexual excitation only by a shoe-clad foot of a certain shape; he can remember an event in his sixth year which determined this fixation of Libido. He was sitting upon a stool by the side of his governess who was to give him an English lesson. She was a plain, elderly, shrivelled old maid, with watery blue eyes and a snub nose, and on this day she had hurt her foot and had it therefore stretched out on a cushion in a velvet slipper, with the leg itself most decorously concealed. Later on, after a timid attempt at normal sexual activity during puberty, a thin sinewy foot like that of the governess became his only sexual object; and if still other features in the person reminded him of the type of woman represented by the English governess the man was helplessly attracted. This fixation of the Libido, however, rendered him not neurotic but perverse; he became, as we say, a foot-fetichist. So you see that although an excessive and, in addition, premature fixation of Libido is an indispensable condition in the causation of neurosis, the extent of its influence far exceeds the boundaries of the neuroses. This condition by itself is also as little decisive as the privation mentioned previously.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.