Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis

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.

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.

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^[48] 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.

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:

The hereditary sexual constitution provides a great variety of predispositions, according as this or that component-impulse, alone or in combination with others, is specially strongly accentuated. Together with the infantile experiences the sexual constitution forms another ‘complemental series,’ quite similar to that already described as being formed out of the predisposition and accidental experiences of an adult. In each series similar extreme cases are met with, and also similar degrees and relationships between the factors concerned. It would be appropriate at this point to consider whether the most striking of the two kinds of Libido-regression (that which reverts to earlier stages of sexual organization) is not predominantly conditioned by the hereditary constitutional factor; but the answer to this question is best postponed until a wider range of forms of neurotic disease can be considered.

Now let us devote attention to the fact that analytic investigation shows the Libido of neurotics to be attached to their infantile sexual experiences. In this light these experiences seem to be of enormous importance in the lives and illnesses of mankind. This importance remains undiminished in so far as the therapeutic work of analysis is concerned; but regarded from another point of view it is easy to see that there is a danger of a misunderstanding here, one which might delude us into regarding life too exclusively from the angle of the situation in neurotics. The importance of the infantile experiences is after all diminished by the reflection that the Libido reverts regressively to them after it has been driven from its later positions. This would lead us towards the opposite conclusion, that the Libido-experiences had no importance at the time of their occurrence, but only acquired it later by regression. You will remember that we discussed a similar alternative before, in dealing with the Oedipus complex.

To decide this point is again not difficult. The statement is undoubtedly correct that regression greatly augments the investment of the infantile experiences with Libido—and with that their pathogenic significance; but it would be misleading to allow this alone to become decisive. Other considerations must be taken into account as well. To begin with, observation shows in a manner excluding all doubt that infantile experiences have their own importance which is demonstrated already during childhood. There are, indeed, neuroses in children too; in their neuroses the factor of displacement backwards in time is necessarily much diminished, or quite absent, the outbreak of illness following immediately upon a traumatic experience. The study of infantile neuroses guards us from many risks of misunderstanding the neuroses of adults, just as children’s dreams gave us the key to comprehension of the dreams of adults. Neurosis in children is very common, far more common than is usually supposed. It is often overlooked, regarded as a manifestation of bad behaviour or naughtiness, and often subdued by the authorities in the nursery; but in retrospect it is always easily recognizable. It appears most often in the form of anxiety-hysteria; we shall learn what that means on another occasion. When a neurosis breaks out in later life analysis invariably reveals it to be a direct continuation of that infantile neurosis, which had perhaps been expressed in a veiled and incipient form only; as has been said, however, there are cases in which the childish nervousness is carried on into lifelong illness without a break. In a few instances we have been able to analyse a child actually in a condition of neurosis; far more often we have had to be satisfied with the retrospective insight into a childhood-neurosis that can be gained through someone who has fallen ill in mature years, a situation in which due corrections and precautions must not be neglected.

In the second place, it would certainly be inexplicable that the Libido should regress so regularly to the time of childhood if there had been nothing there which could exert an attraction upon it. The fixation upon certain stages of development, which we assume, only has meaning if we regard it as attaching to itself a definite amount of libidinal energy. Finally, I may point out that a complemental relationship exists here between the intensity and pathogenic importance of the infantile and of the later experiences, again a similar relationship to that found in the other two series we have already studied. There are cases in which the whole accent of causation falls on the sexual experiences in childhood; cases in which these impressions undoubtedly had a traumatic effect, nothing more than the average sexual constitution and its immaturity being required to supplement them. Then there are others in which all the accent lies on the later conflicts, and the analytic emphasis upon the childhood-impressions seems to be the effect of regression alone. There exist, therefore, the two extremes—‘inhibited development’ and ‘regression’—and between them every degree of combination of the two factors.

This state of things has a certain interest for those looking to pedagogy for the prevention of neuroses by early intervention in the matter of the child’s sexual development. As long as attention is directed mainly to the infantile sexual experiences one would think everything in the way of prophylaxis of later neurosis could be done by ensuring that this development should be retarded and the child secured against this kind of experience. But we know that the conditions causing neurosis are more complicated than this and that they cannot be influenced in a general way by attending to one factor only. Strict supervision in childhood loses value because it is helpless against the constitutional factor; more than this, it is less easy to carry out than specialists in education imagine; and it entails two new risks, which are not to be lightly disregarded. It may accomplish too much; in that it favours an exaggerated degree of sexual repression which is harmful in its effects, and it sends the child into life without power to resist the urgent demands of his sexuality that must be expected at puberty. It therefore remains most doubtful how far prophylaxis in childhood can go with advantage, and whether a changed attitude to actuality would not constitute a better point of departure for attempts to forestall the neuroses.

Let us return to consideration of the symptoms. They yield a satisfaction in place of one lacking in reality; they achieve this by means of a regression of the Libido to a previous time of life, with which regression is indissolubly connected, a reversion to earlier phases in the object-choice or in the organization. We learned some time ago that the neurotic is in some way tied to a period in his past life; we know now that this period in the past is one in which his Libido could attain satisfaction, one in which he was happy. He looks back on his life-story, seeking some such period, and goes on seeking it, even if he must go back to the time when he was a suckling infant to find it according to his recollection or his imagination of it under later influences. In some way the symptom reproduces that early infantile way of satisfaction, disguised though it is by the censorship implicit in the conflict, converted as it usually is into a sensation of suffering, and mingled with elements drawn from the experiences leading up to the outbreak of the illness. The kind of satisfaction which the symptom brings has much about it which estranges us, quite apart from the fact that the person concerned is unaware of the satisfaction and perceives this that we call satisfaction much more as suffering, and complains of it. This transformation belongs to the mental conflict, by the pressure of which the symptom had to be formed; what was at one time a satisfaction must to-day arouse resistance or horror in him. We are familiar with a simple but instructive instance of such a change of feeling: the same child that sucked milk with voracity from its mother’s breast often shows, some years later, a strong dislike of milk which can with difficulty be overcome by training; this dislike is intensified to the point of horror if the milk or any other kind of liquid containing it has a skin formed upon it. It is possible that this skin calls up reverberations of a memory of the mother’s breast, once so ardently desired; it is true that the traumatic experience of weaning has intervened meanwhile.

There is still something else which makes the symptoms seem remarkable and inexplicable as a means of libidinal satisfaction. They so entirely fail to remind us of all that we are accustomed normally to connect with satisfaction. They are mostly quite independent of an object and thus have given up a relation to external reality. We understand this as a consequence of the rejection of the reality-principle and the return to the pleasure-principle; it is also, however, a return to a kind of amplified auto-erotism, the kind which offered the sexual instinct its first gratifications. In the place of effecting a change in the outer world they set up a change in the body itself; that is, an internal action instead of an external one, an adaptation instead of an activity—from a phylogenetic point of view again a very significant regression. We shall understand this better when we consider it in connection with a new factor yet to be learnt from among those which analytic research has yielded in regard to symptom-formation. Further, we remember that in symptom-formation the same unconscious processes are at work as in dream-formation, namely, condensation and displacement. Like the dream, the symptom represents something as fulfilled, a satisfaction infantile in character; but by the utmost condensation this satisfaction can be compressed into a single sensation or innervation, or by farthest displacement can be whittled away to a tiny detail out of the entire libidinal complex. It is no wonder that we often find it difficult to recognize in the symptom the libidinal satisfaction which we suspect and can always verify in it.

I have indicated that we have still to learn of a new element; it is really something most surprising and bewildering. You know that from analysis of symptoms we arrive at a knowledge of the infantile experiences to which the Libido is fixated and out of which the symptoms are made up. Now the astonishing thing is that these scenes of infancy are not always true. Indeed, in the majority of cases they are untrue, and in some cases they are in direct opposition to historical truth. You will see that this discovery is more likely than any other to discredit either the analysis which leads to such results, or the patient, upon whose testimony the analysis and comprehension of the neuroses as a whole is built up. There is besides this still something utterly bewildering about it. If the infantile experiences brought to light by the analysis were in every case real we should have the feeling that we were on firm ground; if they were invariably falsified and found to be inventions and phantasies of the patient’s we should have to forsake this insecure foothold and save ourselves some other way. But it is neither one thing nor the other; for what we find is that the childhood-experiences reconstructed or recollected in analysis are on some occasions undeniably false, while others are just as certainly quite true, and that in most cases truth and falsehood are mixed up. So the symptoms are thus at one minute reproductions of experiences which actually took place and which one can credit with an influence on the fixation of the Libido; and at the next a reproduction of phantasies of the patient’s to which, of course, it is difficult to ascribe any ætiological significance. It is hard to find one’s way here. We may perhaps find our first clue in a discovery of a similar kind, namely, that the meagre childish recollections which people have always, long before analysis, consciously preserved can be falsified in the same way, or at least can contain a generous admixture of truth and falsehood; evidence of error in them is nearly always plainly visible, and so we have at least the reassurance that not the analysis, but the patient in some way, must bear the responsibility for this unexpected disappointment.

After a little reflection we can easily understand what it is that is so bewildering in this matter. It is the depreciation of reality, the neglect of the difference between reality and phantasy; we are tempted to be offended with the patient for taking up our time with invented stories. According to our way of thinking heaven and earth are not farther apart than fiction from reality, and we value the two quite differently. The patient himself, incidentally, takes the same attitude when he is thinking normally. When he brings forward the material that leads us to the wished-for situations (which underlie the symptoms and are formed upon the childhood-experiences), we are certainly in doubt at first whether we have to deal with reality or with phantasies. Decision on this point becomes possible later by means of certain indications, and we are then confronted with the task of making this result known to the patient. This is never accomplished without difficulty. If we tell him at the outset that he is now about to bring to light the phantasies in which he has shrouded the history of his childhood, just as every race weaves myths about its forgotten early history, we observe to our dissatisfaction that his interest in pursuing the subject further suddenly declines—he also wishes to find out facts and despises what is called “imagination.” But if we leave him to believe until this part of the work has been carried through that we are investigating the real events of his early years, we run the risk of being charged with the mistake later and of being laughed at for our apparent gullibility. It takes him a long time to understand the proposal that phantasy and reality are to be treated alike and that it is to begin with of no account whether the childhood-experiences under consideration belong to the one class or to the other. And yet this is obviously the only correct attitude towards these products of his mind. They have indeed also a kind of reality; it is a fact that the patient has created these phantasies, and for the neurosis this fact is hardly less important than the other—if he had really experienced what they contain. In contrast to material reality these phantasies possess psychical reality, and we gradually come to understand that in the world of neurosis PSYCHICAL REALITY is the determining factor.

Among the occurrences which continually recur in the story of a neurotic’s childhood, and seem hardly ever absent, are some of particular significance which I therefore consider worthy of special attention. As models of this type I will enumerate: observation of parental intercourse, seduction by an adult, and the threat of castration. It would be a great mistake to suppose that they never occur in reality; on the contrary, they are often confirmed beyond doubt by the testimony of older relatives. Thus, for example, it is not at all uncommon for a little boy, who is beginning to play with his penis and has not yet learnt that he must conceal such activities, to be threatened by parents or nurses that his member or his offending hand will be cut off. Parents will often admit the fact on being questioned, since they imagine that such intimidation was the right course to take; many people have a clear conscious recollection of this threat, especially if it took place in later childhood. If the mother or some other woman makes the threat she usually shifts the execution of it to someone else, indicating that the father or the doctor will perform the deed. In the famous Struwelpeter by the Frankfort physician for children, Hoffmann, which owes its popularity precisely to his understanding of the sexual and other complexes of children, you will find the castration idea modified and replaced by cutting off the thumbs as a punishment for stubborn sucking of them. It is, however, highly improbable that the threat of castration has been delivered as often as would appear from the analysis of a neurotic. We are content to understand that the child concocts a threat of this kind out of its knowledge that auto-erotic satisfactions are forbidden, on the basis of hints and allusions, and influenced by the impression received on discovering the female genital organ. Similarly, it is not at all impossible that a small child, credited as he is with no understanding and no memory, may be witness of the sexual act on the part of his parents or other adults in other families besides those of the proletariat; and there is reason to think that the child can subsequently understand the impression received and react to it. But when this act of intercourse is described with minute details which can hardly have been observed, or when it appears, as it most frequently does, to have been performed from behind, more ferarum, there can be little doubt that this phantasy has grown out of the observation of copulating animals (dogs) and that its motive force lies in the unsatisfied skoptophilia (gazing-impulse) of the child during puberty. The greatest feat achieved by this kind of phantasy is that of observing parental intercourse while still unborn in the mother’s womb.

The phantasy of seduction has special interest, because only too often it is no phantasy but a real remembrance; fortunately, however, it is still not as often real as it seemed at first from the results of analysis. Seduction by children of the same age or older is more frequent than by adults; and when girls who bring forward this event in the story of their childhood fairly regularly introduce the father as the seducer, neither the phantastic character of this accusation nor the motive actuating it can be doubted. When no seduction has occurred, the phantasy is usually employed to cover the childhood period of auto-erotic sexual activity; the child evades feelings of shame about onanism by retrospectively attributing in phantasy a desired object to the earliest period. Do not suppose, however, that sexual misuse of children by the nearest male relatives is entirely derived from the world of phantasy; most analysts will have treated cases in which such occurrences actually took place and could be established beyond doubt; only even then they belonged to later years of childhood and had been transposed to an earlier time.

All this seems to lead to but one impression, that childhood experiences of this kind are in some way necessarily required by the neurosis, that they belong to its unvarying inventory. If they can be found in real events, well and good; but if reality has not supplied them they will be evolved out of hints and elaborated by phantasy. The effect is the same, and even to-day we have not succeeded in tracing any variation in the results according as phantasy or reality plays the greater part in these experiences. Here again is one of those complemental series so often referred to already; it is certainly the strangest of all those we have encountered. Whence comes the necessity for these phantasies, and the material for them? There can be no doubt about the instinctive sources; but how is it to be explained that the same phantasies are always formed with the same content? I have an answer to this which I know will seem to you very daring. I believe that these primal phantasies (as I should like to name these, and certainly some others also) are a phylogenetic possession. In them the individual, wherever his own experience has become insufficient, stretches out beyond it to the experience of past ages. It seems to me quite possible that all that to-day is narrated in analysis in the form of phantasy, seduction in childhood, stimulation of sexual excitement upon observation of parental coitus, the threat of castration—or rather, castration itself—was in prehistoric periods of the human family a reality; and that the child in its phantasy simply fills out the gaps in its true individual experiences with true prehistoric experiences. We have again and again been led to suspect that more knowledge of the primordial forms of human development is stored up for us in the psychology of the neuroses than in any other field we may explore.

Now these things that we have been discussing require us to consider more closely the origin and meaning of that mental activity called “phantasy-making.” In general, as you know, it enjoys high esteem, although its place in mental life has not been clearly understood. I can tell you as much as this about it. You know that the Ego in man is gradually trained by the influence of external necessity to appreciate reality and to pursue the reality-principle, and that in so doing it must renounce temporarily or permanently various of the objects and aims—not only sexual—of its desire for pleasure. But renunciation of pleasure has always been very hard to man; he cannot accomplish it without some kind of compensation. Accordingly he has evolved for himself a mental activity in which all these relinquished sources of pleasure and abandoned paths of gratification are permitted to continue their existence, a form of existence in which they are free from the demands of reality and from what we call the exercise of ‘testing reality.’ Every longing is soon transformed into the idea of its fulfilment; there is no doubt that dwelling upon a wish-fulfilment in phantasy brings satisfaction, although the knowledge that it is not reality remains thereby unobscured. In phantasy, therefore, man can continue to enjoy a freedom from the grip of the external world, one which he has long relinquished in actuality. He has contrived to be alternately a pleasure-seeking animal and a reasonable being; for the meagre satisfaction that he can extract from reality leaves him starving. “There is no doing without accessory constructions,” said Fontane. The creation of the mental domain of phantasy has a complete counterpart in the establishment of “reservations” and “nature-parks” in places where the inroads of agriculture, traffic, or industry threaten to change the original face of the earth rapidly into something unrecognizable. The “reservation” is to maintain the old condition of things which has been regretfully sacrificed to necessity everywhere else; there everything may grow and spread as it pleases, including what is useless and even what is harmful. The mental realm of phantasy is also such a reservation reclaimed from the encroaches of the reality-principle.