Part 26

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.

So the problem of the causation of the neuroses seems to become more complicated. In fact, psycho-analytic investigation acquaints us with yet a new factor, not considered in our ætiological series, and best observed in someone whose previous good health is suddenly disturbed by falling ill of a neurosis. In these people signs of contradictory and opposed wishes, or, as we say, of mental conflict, are regularly found. One side of the personality stands for certain wishes, while another part struggles against them and fends them off. There is no neurosis without such a CONFLICT. There might seem to be nothing very special in this; you know that mental life in all of us is perpetually engaged with conflicts that have to be decided. Therefore it would seem that special conditions must be fulfilled before such a conflict can become pathogenic; we may ask what these conditions are, what forces in the mind take part in these pathogenic conflicts, and what relation conflict bears to the other causative factors.

I hope to be able to give you answers to these questions which will be satisfactory although perhaps schematically condensed. Conflict is produced by privation, in that the Libido which lacks satisfaction is urged to seek other paths and other objects. A condition of it then is that these other paths and objects arouse disfavour in one side of the personality, so that a veto ensues, which at first makes the new way of satisfaction impossible. This is the point of departure for the formation of symptoms, which we shall follow up later. The rejected libidinal longings manage to pursue their course by circuitous paths, though not indeed without paying toll to the prohibition in the form of certain disguises and modifications. The circuitous paths are the ways of symptom-formation; the symptoms are the new or substitutive satisfactions necessitated by the fact of the privation.

The significance of the mental conflict can be defined in another way, thus: in order to become pathogenic external privation must be supplemented by internal privation. When this is so, the external and the internal privation relate of course to different paths and different objects; external privation removes one possibility of satisfaction, internal privation tries to exclude another possibility, and it is this second possibility which becomes the debatable ground of the conflict. I choose this form of presentation because it contains a certain implication; it implies that the internal impediment arose originally, in primitive phases of human development, out of real external obstacles.

But what are these forces out of which the prohibition against the libidinal longings proceeds, the other parties in the pathogenic conflict? Speaking very broadly, we may say that they are the non-sexual instincts. We include them all under the name ‘Ego-instincts’; analysis of the transference neuroses offers no adequate opportunity for further investigation of them; at most we learn something of them from the resistances opposed to the analysis. The pathogenic conflict is, therefore, one between the Ego-instincts and the sexual instincts. In a whole series of cases it looks as though there might also be conflict between various purely sexual impulses; at bottom, however, this is the same thing, because of the two sexual impulses engaged in a conflict one will always be found ‘consistent with the Ego’ (ichgerecht) while the other calls forth a protest from the Ego. It remains, therefore, a conflict between Ego and sexuality.

Over and over again when psycho-analysis has regarded something happening in the mind as an expression of the sexual instincts indignant protests have been raised to the effect that other instincts and other interests exist in mental life besides the sexual, that one should not derive “everything” from sexuality, and so on. Well, it is a real pleasure for once to be in agreement with one’s opponents. Psycho-analysis has never forgotten that non-sexual instincts also exist; it has been built upon a sharp distinction between sexual instincts and Ego-instincts; and in the face of all opposition it has insisted, not that they arise from sexuality, but that the neuroses owe their origin to a conflict between Ego and sexuality. It has no conceivable motive in denying the existence or the significance of the Ego-instincts while it investigates the part played by sexual instincts in disease and in life generally. Only, psycho-analysis has been destined to concern itself first and foremost with the sexual instincts, because in the transference neuroses these are the most accessible to investigation, and because it was obliged to study what others had neglected.

It is not any more accurate to say that psycho-analysis has not occupied itself at all with the non-sexual side of the personality. The very distinction between the Ego and sexuality has shown us with particular clearness that the Ego-instincts also undergo an important development which is neither entirely independent of the development of the Libido nor without influence upon the latter. We certainly understand the development of the Ego much less well than the development of the Libido, because it is only by the study of the narcissistic neuroses that we have just reached some hope of insight into the structure of the Ego. Nevertheless, we have already a notable attempt on the part of Ferenczi to reconstruct theoretically the developmental stages of the Ego; and there are at least two points at which we have a secure foothold from which to examine this development further. We are not at all disposed to think that the libidinal interests of a human being are from the outset in opposition to the interests of self-preservation; the Ego is rather impelled at every stage to attempt to remain in harmony with the corresponding stage of sexual organization and to accommodate itself to that. The succession of the separate phases in the development of the Libido probably follows a prescribed course; it is undeniable, however, that this course may be influenced from the direction of the Ego. A certain parallelism, a definite correspondence between the phases in the two developments (of the Ego and of the Libido) may also be assumed; indeed, a disturbance in this correspondence may become a pathogenic factor. More important to us is the question how the Ego behaves when the Libido has undergone a powerful fixation at an earlier point in its development. The Ego may countenance the fixation and will then be perverse to that extent, or, what is the same thing, infantile; it may, however, hold itself averse from this attachment of Libido, the result of which is that where the Libido undergoes a fixation there the Ego institutes an act of repression.

In this way we arrive at the conclusion that the third factor in the ætiology of the neuroses, the susceptibility to conflict, is as much connected with the development of the Ego as with the development of the Libido; our insight into the causation of the neuroses is thus enlarged. First, there is the most general condition of privation, then the fixation of Libido (forcing it into particular channels), and thirdly, the susceptibility to conflict produced by the development of the Ego having repudiated libidinal excitations of that particular kind. The thing is therefore not so very obscure and intricate—as you probably thought it during the course of my exposition. To be sure, though, after all, we have not done with it yet; there is still something new to add and something we already know to dissect further.

In order to demonstrate the effect of the development of the Ego upon the tendency to conflict and therewith upon the causation of the neurosis, I will quote an example which, although entirely imaginary, is not at all improbable in any respect. I will give it the title of Nestroy’s farce: On the Ground-Floor and in the Mansion. Suppose that a caretaker is living on the ground-floor of a house, while the owner, a rich and well-connected man, lives above. They both have children, and we will assume that the owner’s little girl is permitted to play freely without supervision with the child of lower social standing. It may then very easily happen that their games become “naughty,” that is, take on a sexual character: that they play “father and mother,” watch each other in the performance of intimate acts, and stimulate each other’s genital parts. The caretaker’s daughter may have played the temptress in this, since in spite of her five or six years she has been able to learn a great deal about sexual matters. These occurrences, even though they are only kept up for a short period, will be enough to rouse certain sexual excitations in both children which will come to expression in the practice of masturbation for a few years, after the games have been discontinued. There is common ground so far, but the final result will be very different in the two children. The caretaker’s daughter will continue masturbation, perhaps up to the onset of menstruation, and then give it up without difficulty; a few years later will find a lover, perhaps bear a child; choose this or that path in life, perhaps become a popular actress and end as an aristocrat. Probably her career will turn out less brilliantly, but in any case she will be unharmed by the premature sexual activity, free from neurosis, and able to live her life. Very different is the result in the other child. She will very soon, while yet a child, acquire a sense of having done wrong; after a fairly short time she will give up the masturbatory satisfaction, though perhaps only with a tremendous struggle, but will nevertheless retain an inner feeling of subdued depression. When later on as a young girl she comes to learn something of sexual intercourse, she will turn from it with inexplicable horror and wish to remain ignorant. Probably she will then again suffer a fresh irresistible impulse to masturbation about which she will not dare to unburden herself to anyone. When the time comes for a man to choose her as a wife the neurosis will break out and cheat her out of marriage and the joy of life. If analysis makes it possible to obtain an insight into this neurosis, it will be found that this well-broughtup, intelligent and idealistic girl has completely repressed her sexual desires; but that they are, unconsciously, attached to the few little experiences she had with the childish play-mate.

The differences which ensue in these two destinies in spite of the common experiences undergone, arise because in one girl the Ego has sustained a development absent in the other. To the caretaker’s daughter sexual activity seemed as natural and harmless in later years as in childhood. The gentleman’s daughter had been “well-brought-up” and had adopted the standards of her education. Thus stimulated, her Ego had formed ideals of womanly purity and absence of desire that were incompatible with sexual acts; her intellectual training had caused her to depreciate the feminine rôle for which she is intended. This higher moral and intellectual development in her Ego has brought her into conflict with the claims of her sexuality.

I will explore one more aspect of the development of the Libido to-day, both because it leads out upon certain wide prospects, and also because it is well-suited to justify the sharp, and not immediately obvious, line of demarcation we are wont to draw between Ego-instincts and sexual instincts. In considering the two developments undergone by the Ego and by the Libido we must emphasize an aspect which hitherto has received little attention. Both of them are at bottom inheritances, abbreviated repetitions of the evolution undergone by the whole human race through long-drawn-out periods and from prehistoric ages. In the development of the Libido this phylogenetic origin is readily apparent, I should suppose. Think how in one class of animals the genital apparatus is in closest relation with the mouth, in another it is indistinguishable from the excretory mechanism, in another it is part of the organs of motility; you will find a delightful description of these facts in W. Bölsche’s valuable book. One sees in animals all the various perversions, ingrained, so to speak, in the form taken by their sexual organizations. Now the phylogenetic aspect is to some extent obscured in man by the circumstance that what is fundamentally inherited is nevertheless individually acquired anew, probably because the same conditions that originally induced its acquisition still prevail and exert their influence upon each individual. I would say, where they originally created a new response they now stimulate a predisposition. Apart from this, it is unquestionable that the course of the prescribed development in each individual can be disturbed and altered by current impressions from without. But the power which has enforced this development upon mankind, and still to-day maintains its pressure in the same course, is known to us; it is, again, the privation exacted by reality; or, if we give it its great real name, it is Necessity, the struggle for life, ’ANATKH. Necessity has been a severe task-mistress, and she has taught us a great deal. Neurotics are those of her children upon whom this severity has had evil effects, but that risk is inevitable in any education. Incidentally, this view of the struggle for existence as the motive force in evolution need not detract from the significance of “inner evolutionary tendencies,” if such are found to exist.

Now it is very noteworthy that sexual instincts and self-preservative instincts do not behave alike when confronted with the necessity of real life. The self-preservative instincts and all that hangs together with them are more easily moulded; they learn early to conform to necessity and to adapt their development according to the mandates of reality. This is comprehensible, for they cannot obtain the objects they require by any other means, and without these objects the individual must perish. The sexual instincts are less easily moulded; for in the beginning they do not know any lack of objects. Since they are connected parasitically, as it were, with the other physical functions and at the same time can be auto-erotically gratified on their own body, they are at first isolated from the educative influence of real necessity; and in most people they retain throughout life, in some respect or other, this character of obstinacy and inaccessibility to influence which we call “unreasonableness.” Moreover, the educability of a young person as a rule comes to an end when sexual desire breaks out in its final strength. Educators know this and act accordingly; but perhaps they will yet allow themselves to be influenced by the results of psycho-analysis so that they will transfer the main emphasis in education to the earliest years of childhood, from the suckling period onward. The little human being is frequently a finished product in his fourth or fifth year, and only gradually reveals in later years what lies buried in him.

To appreciate the full significance of this difference between the two groups of instincts we must digress some distance, and include one of those aspects which deserve to be called economic; we enter here upon one of the most important, but unfortunately one of the most obscure, territories of psycho-analysis. We may put the question whether a main purpose is discernible in the operation of the mental apparatus; and our first approach to an answer is that this purpose is directed to the attainment of pleasure. It seems that our entire psychical activity is bent upon procuring pleasure and avoiding pain, that it is automatically regulated by the PLEASURE-PRINCIPLE. Now of all things in the world we should like to know what are the conditions giving rise to pleasure and pain, but that is just where we fall short. We may only venture to say that pleasure is in some way connected with lessening, lowering, or extinguishing the amount of stimulation present in the mental apparatus; and that pain involves a heightening of the latter. Consideration of the most intense pleasure of which man is capable, the pleasure in the performance of the sexual act, leaves little doubt upon this point. Since pleasurable processes of this kind are bound up with the distribution of quantities of mental excitation and energy, we term considerations of this kind economic ones. It appears that we can describe the tasks and performances of the mental apparatus in another way and more generally than by emphasizing the attainment of pleasure. We can say that the mental apparatus serves the purpose of mastering and discharging the masses of supervening stimuli, the quantities of energy. It is quite plain that the sexual instincts pursue the aim of gratification from the beginning to the end of their development; throughout they keep up this primary function without alteration. At first the other group, the Ego-instincts, do the same; but under the influence of necessity, their mistress, they soon learn to replace the pleasure-principle by a modification of it. The task of avoiding pain becomes for them almost equal in importance to that of gaining pleasure; the Ego learns that it must inevitably go without immediate satisfaction, postpone gratification, learn to endure a degree of pain, and altogether renounce certain sources of pleasure. Thus trained, the Ego becomes “reasonable,” is no longer controlled by the pleasure-principle, but follows the REALITY-PRINCIPLE, which at bottom also seeks pleasure—although a delayed and diminished pleasure, one which is assured by its realization of fact, its relation to reality.

The transition from the pleasure-principle to the reality-principle is one of the most important advances in the development of the Ego. We already know that the sexual instincts follow late and unwillingly through this stage; presently we shall learn what the consequences are to man that his sexuality is satisfied with such a slight hold upon external reality. And now in conclusion one more observation relevant in this connection. If the Ego in mankind has its evolution like the Libido, you will not be surprised to hear that there exist ‘Ego-regressions’ too, and will wish to know the part this reversion of the Ego to earlier stages in development can play in neurotic disease.

TWENTY-THIRD LECTURE THE PATHS OF SYMPTOM-FORMATION

In the eyes of the general public the symptoms are the essence of a disease, and to them a cure means the removal of the symptoms. In medicine, however, we find it important to differentiate between symptoms and disease, and state that the disappearance of the symptoms is by no means the same as the cure of the disease. The only tangible element of the disease that remains after the removal of the symptoms, however, is the capacity to form new symptoms. Therefore for the moment let us adopt the lay point of view and regard a knowledge of the foundation of the symptoms as equivalent to understanding the disease.

The symptoms—of course we are here dealing with mental (or psychogenic) symptoms, and mental disease—are activities which are detrimental, or at least useless, to life as a whole; the person concerned frequently complains of them as obnoxious to him or they involve distress and suffering for him. The principal injury they inflict lies in the expense of mental energy they entail and, besides this, in the energy needed to combat them. Where the symptoms are extensively developed, these two kinds of effort may exact such a price that the person suffers a very serious impoverishment in available mental energy, which consequently disables him for all the important tasks of life. This result depends principally upon the amount of energy taken up in this way, therefore you will see that “illness” is essentially a practical conception. But if you look at the matter from a theoretical point of view and ignore this question of degree you can very well say that we are all ill, i.e. neurotic; for the conditions required for symptom-formation are demonstrable also in normal persons.

Of neurotic symptoms we already know that they are the result of a conflict arising when a new form of satisfaction of Libido is sought. The two powers which have entered into opposition meet together again in the symptom and become reconciled by means of the compromise contained in symptom-formation. That is why the symptom is capable of such resistance; it is sustained from both sides. We also know that one of the two partners to the conflict is the unsatisfied Libido, frustrated by reality and now forced to seek other paths to satisfaction. If reality remains inexorable, even when the Libido is prepared to take another object in place of that denied, the Libido will then finally be compelled to resort to regression, and to seek satisfaction in one of the organizations it had already surmounted or in one of the objects it had relinquished earlier. The Libido is drawn into the path of regression by the fixations it has left behind it at these places in its development.

Now the path of perversion branches off sharply from that of neurosis. If these regressions do not call forth a prohibition on the part of the Ego, no neurosis results; the Libido succeeds in obtaining a real, although not a normal, satisfaction. But if the Ego, which controls not merely consciousness but also the approaches to motor innervation and hence the realization in actuality of mental impulses, is not in agreement with these regressions, conflict ensues. The Libido is turned off, blocked, as it were, and must seek an escape by which it can find an outlet for its ‘charge of energy’ in conformity with the demands of the pleasure-principle: it must elude, eschew the Ego. The fixations upon the path of development now regressively traversed—fixations against which the Ego had previously guarded itself by repressions—offer just such an escape. In streaming backward and re-‘investing’ these repressed ‘positions,’ the Libido withdraws itself from the Ego and its laws; but it also abandons all the training acquired under the influence of the Ego. It was docile as long as satisfaction was in sight; under the double pressure of external and internal privation it becomes intractable and harks back to former happier days. That is its essential unchangeable character. The ideas to which the Libido now transfers its ‘charge of energy’ belong to the unconscious system and are subject to the special processes characteristic of that system—namely, condensation and displacement. Conditions are thus set up which correspond exactly with those of dream-formation. Just as the latent dream, first formed in the Unconscious out of the thoughts proper, and constituting the fulfilment of an unconscious wish-phantasy, meets with some (pre)conscious activity which exerts a censorship upon it and permits, according to its verdict, the formation of a compromise in the manifest dream, so the ideas to which the Libido is attached (‘libido-representatives’) in the Unconscious have still to contend with the power of the preconscious Ego. The opposition that has arisen against it in the Ego follows it as a ‘countercharge’ and forces it to adopt a form of expression by which the opposing forces also can at the same time express themselves. In this way the symptom then comes into being, as a derivative, distorted in manifold ways, of the unconscious libidinal wish-fulfilment, as a cleverly chosen ambiguity with two completely contradictory significations. In this last point alone is there a difference between dream-formation and symptom-formation; for the preconscious purpose in dream-formation is merely to preserve sleep and to allow nothing that would disturb it to penetrate consciousness; it does not insist upon confronting the unconscious wish-impulse with a sharp prohibiting “No, on the contrary.” It can be more tolerant because a sleeping person is in a less dangerous position; the condition of sleep is enough in itself to prevent the wish from being realized in actuality.

You see that this escape of the Libido under the conditions of conflict is rendered possible by the existence of fixations. The regressive investment (with Libido) of these fixations leads to a circumventing of the repressions and to a discharge—or a satisfaction—of the Libido, in which the conditions of a compromise have nevertheless to be maintained. By this détour through the Unconscious and the old fixations the Libido finally succeeds in attaining to a real satisfaction, though the satisfaction is certainly of an exceedingly restricted kind and hardly recognizable as such. Let me add two remarks on this outcome. First, will you notice how closely connected the Libido and the Unconscious, on the one hand, and the Ego, consciousness, and reality, on the other, show themselves to be, although there were no such connections between them originally; and secondly, let me tell you that all I have said and have still to say on this point concerns the neurosis of hysteria only.

Where does the Libido find the fixations it needs in order to break through the repressions? In the activities and experiences of infantile sexuality, in the component-tendencies and the objects of childhood which have been relinquished and abandoned. It is to them, therefore, that the Libido turns back. The significance of childhood is a double one; on the one hand the congenitally-determined instinct-dispositions are first shown at that time, and secondly, other instincts are then first awakened and activated by external influences and accidental events experienced. In my opinion we are quite justified in laying down this dichotomy. That the innate predisposition comes to expression will certainly not be disputed; but analytic observation even requires us to assume that purely accidental experiences in childhood are capable of inducing fixations of Libido. Nor do I see any theoretical difficulty in this. Constitutional predispositions are undoubtedly the after-effects of the experiences of an earlier ancestry; they also have been at one time acquired; without such acquired characters there would be no heredity. And is it conceivable that the acquisition of characters which will be transmitted further should suddenly cease in the generation which is being observed to-day? The importance of the infantile experiences should not, however, be entirely overlooked, as so often happens, in favour of ancestral experiences or of experiences in adult life; but on the contrary they should be particularly appreciated. They are all the more pregnant with consequences because they occur at a time of uncompleted development, and for this very reason are likely to have a traumatic effect. The work done by Roux and others on the mechanism of development has shown that a needle pricked into an embryonic cell-mass undergoing division results in serious disturbances of the development; the same injury to a larva or a full-grown animal would be innocuous.

The Libido-fixation of an adult, which we have referred to as representing the constitutional factor in the ætiology of the neuroses, may therefore now be divided into two further elements: the inherited predisposition and the predisposition acquired in early childhood. Since a schematic mode of presentation is always acceptable to a student, let us formulate these relations as follows: