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Title: Beyond the pleasure principle
Author: Sigmund Freud
Translator: C. J. M. Hubback
Release date: May 6, 2025 [eBook #76031]
Language: English
Original publication: London: The International Psycho-Analytical Press, 1922
Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE ***
THE INTERNATIONAL
PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL
LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST JONES
No. 4
BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
BY
SIGM. FREUD, M.D., LL.D.
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION
BY C. J. M. HUBBACK
[Illustration: [Logo]]
THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL PRESS
LONDON MCMXXII VIENNA
COPYRIGHT 1911
EDITORIAL PREFACE
I have revised this translation, so carefully made by Miss Hubback,
several times, but I feel that it calls for special indulgence on the
part of the reader. On account, doubtless, of the extreme complexity and
remarkable novelty of the ideas which Professor Freud here expounds,
comprising as they do his thoughts on the ultimate problems of life, the
style is one of exceptional difficulty. As it is more important to
render his ideas precisely than to clothe them in another garb, we
decided to adhere faithfully to the original even at the expense of some
uncouthness as regards the English.
The word _Unlust_, as in the phrase pleasure-pain principle, has been
translated as ‘pain’; pain without inverted commas signifies _Schmerz_
in the original. The word _Besetzung_ (literally: state of being
occupied), as in the expressions _Besetzungsenergie_ and
_Energiebesetzung_ has been rendered by the words ‘investment’ or
‘charge’, the latter being taken from the analogy of electricity. These
and other technical terms will be discussed in a Glossary which it is
intended to publish as a supplement to the _International Journal of
Psycho-Analysis_.
BEYOND THE
PLEASURE
PRINCIPLE
I
In the psycho-analytical theory of the mind we take it for granted
that the course of mental processes is automatically regulated by ‘the
pleasure-principle’: that is to say, we believe that any given process
originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon determines
for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides with a
relaxation of this tension, i. e. with avoidance of ‘pain’ or with
production of pleasure. When we consider the psychic processes under
observation in reference to such a sequence we are introducing into
our work the _economic_ point of view. In our opinion a presentation
which seeks to estimate, not only the _topographical_ and _dynamic_,
but also the economic element is the most complete that we can at
present imagine, and deserves to be distinguished by the term
_metapsychological_.
We are not interested in examining how far in our assertion of the
pleasure-principle we have approached to or adopted any given
philosophical system historically established. Our approach to such
speculative hypotheses is by way of our endeavour to describe and
account for the facts falling within our daily sphere of observation.
Priority and originality are not among the aims which psycho-analysis
sets itself, and the impressions on which the statement of this
principle is founded are of so unmistakable a kind that it is scarcely
possible to overlook them. On the other hand, we should willingly
acknowledge our indebtedness to any philosophical or psychological
theory that could tell us the meaning of these feelings of pleasure and
‘pain’ which affect us so powerfully. Unfortunately no theory of any
value is forthcoming. It is the obscurest and least penetrable region of
psychic life and, while it is impossible for us to avoid touching on it,
the most elastic hypothesis will be, to my mind, the best. We have
decided to consider pleasure and ‘pain’ in relation to the quantity of
excitation present in the psychic life—and not confined in any way—along
such lines that ‘pain’ corresponds with an increase and pleasure with a
decrease in this quantity. We do not thereby commit ourselves to a
simple relationship between the strength of the feelings and the changes
corresponding with them, least of all, judging from psycho-physiological
experiences, to any view of a direct proportion existing between them;
probably the amount of diminution or increase in a given time is the
decisive factor for feeling. Possibly there is room here for
experimental work, but it is inadvisable for us analysts to go further
into these problems until we can be guided by quite definite
observations.
We cannot however profess the like indifference when we find that an
investigator of such penetration as G. Th. Fechner has advocated a
conception of pleasure and ‘pain’ which in essentials coincides with
that forced upon us by psycho-analytic work. Fechner’s pronouncement is
to be found in his short work ‘Einige Ideen zur Schöpfungs- und
Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen’, 1873 (Section XI, Note p. 94)
and reads as follows: ‘In so far as conscious impulses always bear a
relation to pleasure or “pain”, pleasure or “pain” may be thought of in
psycho-physical relationship to conditions of stability and instability,
and upon this may be based the hypothesis I intend to develop elsewhere,
viz.: that every psycho-physical movement rising above the threshold of
consciousness is charged with pleasure in proportion as it
approximates—beyond a certain limit—to complete equilibrium, and with
“pain” in proportion as it departs from it beyond a certain limit; while
between the two limits which may be described as the qualitative
thresholds of “pain” or pleasure, there is a certain area of aesthetic
indifference.’
The facts that have led us to believe in the supremacy of the
pleasure-principle in psychic life also find expression in the
hypothesis that there is an attempt on the part of the psychic apparatus
to keep the quantity of excitation present as low as possible, or at
least constant. This is the same supposition only put into another form,
for, if the psychic apparatus operates in the direction of keeping down
the quantity of excitation, all that tends to increase it must be felt
to be contrary to function, that is to say painful. The
pleasure-principle is deduced from the principle of constancy; in
reality the principle of constancy was inferred from the facts that
necessitated our assumption of the pleasure-principle. On more detailed
discussion we shall find further that this tendency on the part of the
psychic apparatus postulated by us may be classified as a special case
of Fechner’s principle of the _tendency towards stability_ to which he
has related the pleasure-pain feelings.
In that event, however, it must be affirmed that it is not strictly
correct to speak of a supremacy of the pleasure-principle over the
course of psychic processes. If such existed, then the vast majority of
our psychic processes would necessarily be accompanied by pleasure or
would conduce to it, while the most ordinary experience emphatically
contradicts any such conclusion. One can only say that a strong tendency
towards the pleasure-principle exists in the psyche, to which, however,
certain other forces or conditions are opposed, so that the ultimate
issue cannot always be in accordance with the pleasure-tendency. Compare
the comment of Fechner in a similar connection.[1] ‘Therewithal it is to
be noted that the tendency towards the goal does not imply the
attainment of it and that in general the goal is only approximately
attainable....’ If we now address ourselves to the question of what
circumstances have the power to frustrate the successful carrying out of
the pleasure-principle we shall be treading on safer and better-known
ground, and we can draw in abundant measure on our analytical
experiences for the answer.
The first case of such a check on the pleasure-principle is perfectly
familiar to us in the regularity of its occurrence. We know that the
pleasure-principle is adjusted to a primary mode of operation on the
part of the psychic apparatus, and that for the preservation of the
organism amid the difficulties of the external world it is ab initio
useless and indeed extremely dangerous. Under the influence of the
instinct of the ego for self-preservation it is replaced by the
‘reality-principle’, which without giving up the intention of ultimately
attaining pleasure yet demands and enforces the postponement of
satisfaction, the renunciation of manifold possibilities of it, and the
temporary endurance of ‘pain’ on the long and circuitous road to
pleasure. The pleasure-principle however remains for a long time the
method of operation of the sex-impulses, which are not so easily
educable, and it happens over and over again that whether acting through
these impulses or operating in the ego itself it prevails over the
reality-principle to the detriment of the whole organism.
It is at the same time indubitable that the replacement of the
pleasure-principle by the reality-principle can account only for a small
part, and that not the most intense, of painful experiences. Another and
no less regular source of ‘pain’ proceeds from the conflicts and
dissociations in the psychic apparatus during the development of the ego
towards a more highly co-ordinated organisation. Nearly all the energy
with which the apparatus is charged comes from the inborn instincts, but
not all of these are allowed to develop to the same stage. On the way it
over and again happens that particular instincts, or portions of them,
prove irreconcilable in their aims or demands with others which can be
welded into the comprehensive unity of the ego. They are thereupon split
off from this unity by the process of repression, retained on lower
stages of psychic development, and for the time being cut off from all
possibility of gratification. If they then succeed, as so easily happens
with the repressed sex-impulses, in fighting their way through—along
circuitous routes—to a direct or a substitutive gratification, this
success, which might otherwise have brought pleasure, is experienced by
the ego as ‘pain’. In consequence of the old conflict which ended in
repression the pleasure-principle has been violated anew, just at the
moment when certain impulses were at work on the achievement of fresh
pleasure in pursuance of the principle. The details of the process by
which repression changes a possibility of pleasure into a source of
‘pain’ are not yet fully understood, or are not yet capable of clear
presentation, but it is certain that all neurotic ‘pain’ is of this
kind, is pleasure which cannot be experienced as such.
The two sources of ‘pain’ here indicated still do not nearly cover the
majority of our painful experiences, but as to the rest one may say with
a fair show of reason that their presence does not impugn the supremacy
of the pleasure-principle. Most of the ‘pain’ we experience is of a
perceptual order, perception either of the urge of unsatisfied instincts
or of something in the external world which may be painful in itself or
may arouse painful anticipations in the psychic apparatus and is
recognised by it as ‘danger’. The reaction to these claims of impulse
and these threats of danger, a reaction in which the real activity of
the psychic apparatus is manifested, may be guided correctly by the
pleasure-principle or by the reality-principle which modifies this. It
seems thus unnecessary to recognise a still more far-reaching limitation
of the pleasure-principle, and nevertheless it is precisely the
investigation of the psychic reaction to external danger that may supply
new material and new questions in regard to the problem here treated.
II
After severe shock of a mechanical nature, railway collision or other
accident in which danger to life is involved, a condition may arise
which has long been recognised and to which the name ‘traumatic
neurosis’ is attached. The terrible war that is just over has been
responsible for an immense number of such maladies and at least has put
an end to the inclination to explain them on the basis of organic injury
to the nervous system due to the operation of mechanical force.[2] The
clinical picture of traumatic neurosis approaches that of hysteria in
its wealth of similar motor symptoms, but usually surpasses it in its
strongly marked signs of subjective suffering—in this resembling rather
hypochondria or melancholia—and in the evidences of a far more
comprehensive general weakening and shattering of the mental functions.
Neither the war neuroses nor the traumatic neuroses of peace are as yet
fully understood. With the war neuroses some light was contributed, but
also on the other hand a certain confusion introduced, by the fact that
the same type of malady could occasionally occur without the
interposition of gross mechanical force. In the traumatic neuroses there
are two outstanding features which might serve as clues for further
reflection: first that the chief causal factor seemed to lie in the
element of surprise, in the fright; and secondly that an injury or wound
sustained at the same time generally tended to prevent the occurrence of
the neurosis. Fright, fear, apprehension are incorrectly used as
synonymous expressions: in their relation to danger they admit of quite
clear distinction. Apprehension (_Angst_) denotes a certain condition as
of expectation of danger and preparation for it, even though it be an
unknown one; fear (_Furcht_) requires a definite object of which one is
afraid; fright (_Schreck_) is the name of the condition to which one is
reduced if one encounters a danger without being prepared for it; it
lays stress on the element of surprise. In my opinion apprehension
cannot produce a traumatic neurosis; in apprehension there is something
which protects against fright and therefore against the fright-neurosis.
We shall return later to this dictum.
The study of dreams may be regarded as the most trustworthy approach to
the exploration of the deeper psychic processes. Now in the traumatic
neuroses the dream life has this peculiarity: it continually takes the
patient back to the situation of his disaster, from which he awakens in
renewed terror. This fact has caused less surprise than it merits. The
obtrusion on the patient over and again, even in sleep, of the
impression made by the traumatic experience is taken as being merely a
proof of its strength. The patient has so to speak undergone a psychical
fixation as to the trauma. Fixations of this kind on the experience
which has brought about the malady have long been known to us in
connection with hysteria. Breuer and Freud stated in 1893 that hysterics
suffer for the most part from reminiscences. In the war neuroses,
observers, such as Ferenczi and Simmel, have been able to explain a
number of motor symptoms as fixation on the factor of the trauma.
But I am not aware that the patients suffering from traumatic neuroses
are much occupied in waking life with the recollection of what happened
to them. They perhaps strive rather not to think of it. To regard it as
self-evident that the dream at night takes them back to the situation
which has caused the trouble is to misunderstand the nature of dreams.
It would be more in correspondence with that nature if the patient were
presented (in sleep) with images from the time of his normal health or
of his hoped-for recovery. If we are not to go thoroughly astray as to
the wish-fulfilment tendency of the dream in consequence of these dreams
of the shock neuroses, perhaps the expedient is left us of supposing
that in this condition the dream function suffers dislocation along with
the others and is diverted from its usual ends, or else we should have
to think of the enigmatic masochistic tendencies of the ego.
I propose now to leave the obscure and gloomy theme of the traumatic
neuroses and to study the way in which the psychic apparatus works in
one of its earliest normal activities. I refer to the play of children.
The different theories of child-play have recently been collated by S.
Pfeifer in _Imago_[3] and their analytical value estimated; I may here
refer the reader to this work. These theories endeavour to conjecture
the motives of children’s play, though without placing any special
stress on the ‘economic’ point of view, i. e. consideration of the
attainment of pleasure. Without the intention of making a comprehensive
study of these phenomena I availed myself of an opportunity which
offered of elucidating the first game invented by himself of a boy
eighteen months old. It was more than a casual observation, for I lived
for some weeks under the same roof as the child and his parents, and it
was a considerable time before the meaning of his puzzling and
continually repeated performance became clear to me.
The child was in no respect forward in his intellectual development; at
eighteen months he spoke only a few intelligible words, making besides
sundry significant sounds which were understood by those about him. But
he made himself understood by his parents and the maid-servant, and had
a good reputation for behaving ‘properly’. He did not disturb his
parents at night; he scrupulously obeyed orders about not touching
various objects and not going into certain rooms; and above all he never
cried when his mother went out and left him for hours together, although
the tie to his mother was a very close one: she had not only nourished
him herself, but had cared for him and brought him up without any
outside help. Occasionally, however, this well-behaved child evinced the
troublesome habit of flinging into the corner of the room or under the
bed all the little things he could lay his hands on, so that to gather
up his toys was often no light task. He accompanied this by an
expression of interest and gratification, emitting a loud long-drawn-out
‘o-o-o-oh’ which in the judgement of the mother (one that coincided with
my own) was not an interjection but meant ‘go away’ (_fort_). I saw at
last that this was a game, and that the child used all his toys only to
play ‘being gone’ (_fortsein_) with them. One day I made an observation
that confirmed my view. The child had a wooden reel with a piece of
string wound round it. It never occurred to him, for example, to drag
this after him on the floor and so play horse and cart with it, but he
kept throwing it with considerable skill, held by the string, over the
side of his little draped cot, so that the reel disappeared into it,
then said his significant ‘o-o-o-oh’ and drew the reel by the string out
of the cot again, greeting its reappearance with a joyful ‘_Da_’
(there). This was therefore the complete game, disappearance and return,
the first act being the only one generally observed by the onlookers,
and the one untiringly repeated by the child as a game for its own sake,
although the greater pleasure unquestionably attached to the second
act.[4]
The meaning of the game was then not far to seek. It was connected with
the child’s remarkable cultural achievement—the foregoing of the
satisfaction of an instinct—as the result of which he could let his
mother go away without making any fuss. He made it right with himself,
so to speak, by dramatising the same disappearance and return with the
objects he had at hand. It is of course of no importance for the
affective value of this game whether the child invented it himself or
adopted it from a suggestion from outside. Our interest will attach
itself to another point. The departure of the mother cannot possibly
have been pleasant for the child, nor merely a matter of indifference.
How then does it accord with the pleasure-principle that he repeats this
painful experience as a game? The answer will perhaps be forthcoming
that the departure must be played as the necessary prelude to the joyful
return, and that in this latter lay the true purpose of the game. As
against this, however, there is the observation that the first act, the
going away, was played by itself as a game and far more frequently than
the whole drama with its joyful conclusion.
The analysis of a single case of this kind yields no sure conclusion: on
impartial consideration one gains the impression that it is from another
motive that the child has turned the experience into a game. He was in
the first place passive, was overtaken by the experience, but now brings
himself in as playing an active part, by repeating the experience as a
game in spite of its unpleasing nature. This effort might be ascribed to
the impulse to obtain the mastery of a situation (the ‘power’ instinct),
which remains independent of any question of whether the recollection
was a pleasant one or not. But another interpretation may be attempted.
The flinging away of the object so that it is gone might be the
gratification of an impulse of revenge suppressed in real life but
directed against the mother for going away, and would then have the
defiant meaning: ‘Yes, you can go, I don’t want you, I am sending you
away myself.’ The same child a year later than my observations used to
throw on the floor a toy which displeased him, and to say ‘Go to the
war!’ He had been told that his absent father was at the war, and he did
not miss him at all, giving the clearest indications that he did not
wish to be disturbed in the sole possession of his mother.[5] It is
known of other children also that they can give vent to similar hostile
feelings by throwing objects away in place of people.[6] Thus one is
left in doubt whether the compulsion to work over in psychic life what
has made a deep impression, to make oneself fully master of it, can
express itself primarily and independently of the pleasure-principle. In
the case discussed here, however, the child might have repeated a
disagreeable impression in play only because with the repetition was
bound up a pleasure gain of a different kind but more direct.
Nor does the further pursuit of the question of play resolve our
hesitations between two conceptions. We see that children repeat in
their play everything that has made a great impression on them in actual
life, that they thereby abreact the strength of the impression and so to
speak make themselves masters of the situation. But on the other hand it
is clear enough that all their play is influenced by the dominant wish
of their time of life: viz. to be grown-up and to be able to do what
grown-up people do. It is also observable that the unpleasing character
of the experience does not always prevent its being utilised as a game.
If a doctor examines a child’s throat, or performs a small operation on
him, the alarming experience will quite certainly be made the subject of
the next game, but in this the pleasure gain from another source is not
to be overlooked. In passing from the passivity of experience to the
activity of play the child applies to his playfellow the unpleasant
occurrence that befell himself and so avenges himself on the person of
this proxy.
From this discussion it is at all events evident that it is unnecessary
to assume a particular imitation impulse as the motive of play. We may
add the reminder that the dramatic and imitative art of adults, which
differs from the behaviour of children in being directed towards the
spectator, does not however spare the latter the most painful
impressions, e. g. in tragedy, and yet can be felt by him as highly
enjoyable. This convinces us that even under the domination of the
pleasure-principle there are ways and means enough of making what is in
itself disagreeable the object of memory and of psychic pre-occupation.
A theory of aesthetics with an economic point of view should deal with
these cases and situations ending in final pleasure gain: for our
purposes they are of no help, since they presuppose the existence and
supremacy of the pleasure-principle and bear no witness to the operation
of tendencies beyond the pleasure-principle, that is to say, tendencies
which might be of earlier origin and independent of this.
III
Five-and-twenty years of intensive work have brought about a complete
change in the more immediate aims of psycho-analytic technique. At first
the endeavours of the analytic physician were confined to divining the
unconscious of which his patient was unaware, effecting a synthesis of
its various components and communicating it at the right time.
Psychoanalysis was above all an art of interpretation. Since the
therapeutic task was not thereby accomplished, the next aim was to
compel the patient to confirm the reconstruction through his own memory.
In this endeavour the chief emphasis was on the resistances of the
patient; the art now lay in unveiling these as soon as possible, in
calling the patient’s attention to them, and by human influence—here
came in suggestion acting as ‘transference’—teaching him to abandon the
resistances.
It then became increasingly clear, however, that the aim in view, the
bringing into consciousness of the unconscious, was not fully attainable
by this method either. The patient cannot recall all of what lies
repressed, perhaps not even the essential part of it, and so gains no
conviction that the conclusion presented to him is correct. He is
obliged rather to _repeat_ as a current experience what is repressed,
instead of, as the physician would prefer to see him do, _recollecting_
it as a fragment of the past.[7] This reproduction appearing with
unwelcome fidelity always contains a fragment of the infantile sex-life,
therefore of the Oedipus complex and its off-shoots, and is played
regularly in the sphere of transference, i. e. the relationship to the
physician. When this point in the treatment is reached, it may be said
that the earlier neurosis is now replaced by a fresh one, viz. the
transference-neurosis. The physician makes it his concern to limit the
scope of this transference-neurosis as much as he can, to force into
memory as much as possible, and to leave as little as possible to
repetition. The relation established between memory and reproduction is
different for every case. As a rule the physician cannot spare the
patient this phase of the cure; he must let him live through a certain
fragment of his forgotten life, and has to see to it that some measure
of ascendency remains, in the light of which the apparent reality is
always recognised as a reflection of a forgotten past. If this is
successfully accomplished then conviction on the part of the patient is
attained, and with it the therapeutic result that depends on it.
In order to render more comprehensible this ‘repetition-compulsion’
which appears in the psycho-analytic treatment of neurotics, we must
above all get entirely rid of the erroneous idea that in this struggle
with resistances we are concerned with any resistance on the part of the
unconscious. The unconscious, i. e. the ‘repressed’ material, offers no
resistance whatever to the curative efforts; indeed it has no other aim
than to force its way through the pressure weighing on it, either to
consciousness or to discharge by means of some real action. The
resistance in the treatment proceeds from the same higher levels and
systems in the psychic life that in their time brought about the
repression. But since the motives of the resistances, and indeed the
resistances themselves, are found in the process of the treatment to be
unconscious, we are well advised to amend an inadequacy in our mode of
expression. We escape ambiguity if we contrast not the conscious and the
unconscious, but the coherent ego and the repressed. Much in the ego is
certainly unconscious itself, just what may be called the kernel of the
ego; only a part of it comes under the category of preconscious. After
thus replacing a purely descriptive method of expression by a systematic
or dynamic one, we may say that the resistance on the part of the
analysed person proceeds from his ego, and then we at once see that the
‘repetition-compulsion’ must be ascribed to the repressed element in the
unconscious. It probably could not find expression till the work of the
treatment coming to meet it had loosened the repression.
There is no doubt that the resistance of the conscious and preconscious
ego subserves the pleasure-principle; it is trying to avoid the ‘pain’
that would be aroused by the release of the repressed material, and our
efforts are directed to effecting an entry for such painful feeling by
an appeal to the reality-principle. In what relation to the
pleasure-principle then does the repetition-compulsion stand, that which
expresses the force of what is repressed? It is plain that most of what
is revived by the repetition-compulsion cannot but bring discomfort to
the ego, for it promotes the bringing to light of the activities of
repressed impulses; but that is a discomfort we have already taken into
account and without subversion of the pleasure-principle, since it is
‘pain’ in respect of one system and at the same time satisfaction for
the other. The new and remarkable fact, however, that we have now to
describe is that the repetition-compulsion also revives experiences of
the past that contain no potentiality of pleasure, and which could at no
time have been satisfactions, even of impulses since repressed.
The efflorescence of infantile sex-life was, by reason of the
irreconcilability of its wishes with reality and the inadequacy of the
childhood stage of development reached, destined to pass away. It
perished in most painful circumstances and with feelings of a deeply
distressing nature. Loss and failure in the sphere of the affections
left behind on the ego-feeling marks of injury comparable to a
narcissistic scar, which, according to my experience and the exposition
given by Marcinowski,[8] yields the most important contribution to the
‘inferiority complex’ common among neurotics. The sex-quest to which the
physical development of the child set limits could be brought to no
satisfying conclusion; hence the plaint in later life: ‘I can’t do
anything, I am never successful.’ The bonds of tenderness linking the
child more especially to the parent of the opposite sex succumbed to
disappointment, to the vain expectation of satisfaction, and to the
jealousy aroused by the birth of a new child, unmistakable proof as it
is of the faithlessness of the loved parent; the child’s attempt,
undertaken with tragic seriousness, to produce another such child
himself met with humiliating failure; while the partial withdrawal of
the tenderness lavished on the little one, the more exacting demands of
discipline and education, severe words and an occasional punishment
finally revealed to him the whole extent of the disdain which is his
portion. Some few regularly recurring types are to be found, according
to the way in which the typical love of this period was brought to an
end.
All these undesired happenings and painful affective situations are
repeated by neurotics in the ‘transference’ stage and re-animated with
much ingenuity. They struggle to break off the unfinished treatment,
they know how to re-create the feeling of being disdained, how to force
the physician to adopt brusque speech and a chilling manner towards
them, they find suitable objects for their jealousy, they substitute for
the ardently desired child of early days the promise of some great gift
which becomes as little real as that was. Nothing of all this could ever
have afforded any pleasure; one would suppose it ought to bring somewhat
less ‘pain’ if revealed as memory rather than if lived through as a new
experience. It is a question naturally of the action of impulses that
should lead to satisfaction, but the experience that instead of this
they even then brought ‘pain’ has borne no result. The act is repeated
in spite of everything; a powerful compulsion insists on it.
That which psycho-analysis reveals in the transference phenomena with
neurotics can also be observed in the life of normal persons. It here
gives the impression of a pursuing fate, a daemonic trait in their
destiny, and psycho-analysis has from the outset regarded such a life
history as in a large measure self-imposed and determined by infantile
influences. The compulsion which thereby finds expression is in no way
different from the repetition-compulsion of neurotics, even though such
persons have never shown signs of a neurotic conflict resulting in
symptoms. Thus one knows people with whom every human relationship ends
in the same way: benefactors whose protégés, however different they may
otherwise have been, invariably after a time desert them in ill-will, so
that they are apparently condemned to drain to the dregs all the
bitterness of ingratitude; men with whom every friendship ends in the
friend’s treachery; others who indefinitely often in their lives invest
some other person with authority either in their own eyes or generally,
and themselves overthrow such authority after a given time, only to
replace it by a new one; lovers whose tender relationships with women
each and all run through the same phases and come to the same end, and
so on. We are less astonished at this ‘endless repetition of the same’
if there is involved a question of active behaviour on the part of the
person concerned, and if we detect in his character an unalterable trait
which must always manifest itself in the repetition of identical
experiences. Far more striking are those cases where the person seems to
be experiencing something passively, without exerting any influence of
his own, and yet always meets with the same fate over and over again.
One may recall, for example, the story of the woman who married three
men in succession, each of whom fell ill after a short time and whom she
had to nurse till their death.[9] Tasso gives a singularly affecting
poetical portrayal of such a trend of fate in the romantic epic:
‘Gerusalemme liberata.’ The hero, Tancred, has unwittingly slain
Clorinda, the maiden he loved, who fought with him disguised in the
armour of an enemy knight. After her burial he penetrates into the
mysterious enchanted wood, the bane of the army of the crusaders. Here
he hews down a tall tree with his sword, but from the gash in the trunk
blood streams forth and the voice of Clorinda whose soul is imprisoned
in the tree cries out to him in reproach that he has once more wrought a
baleful deed on his beloved.
In the light of such observations as these, drawn from the behaviour
during transference and from the fate of human beings, we may venture
to make the assumption that there really exists in psychic life a
repetition-compulsion, which goes beyond the pleasure-principle. We
shall now also feel disposed to relate to this compelling force the
dreams of shock-patients and the play-impulse in children. We must of
course remind ourselves that only in rare cases can we recognise the
workings of this repetition-compulsion in a pure form, without the
co-operation of other motives. As regards children’s play we have
already pointed out what other interpretations its origin permits. The
repetition-compulsion and direct pleasurable satisfaction of impulse
seem there to be inextricably intertwined. The transference phenomena
obviously subserve the purpose of the resistance made by the ego
persisting in its repression: the repetition-compulsion is, as it
were, called to the aid of the ego, which is resolved to hold fast to
the pleasure-principle. In what one might call the destiny compulsion
much appears capable of rational explanation, so that no need is felt
to establish a new and mysterious impulse. The least suspicious case
is perhaps that of the shock-dream, but on closer examination it must
be admitted that in the other examples too the state of affairs is not
completely explained by the operation of the motives known to us.
There remains enough over to justify the assumption of a
repetition-compulsion, and this seems to us more primitive, more
elementary, more instinctive than the pleasure-principle which is
displaced by it. But if there is such a repetition-compulsion in
psychic life, we should naturally like to know with what function it
corresponds, under what conditions it may appear, and in what relation
it stands to the pleasure-principle, to which we have heretofore
ascribed the domination over the course of the processes of excitation
in the psychic life.
IV
What follows now is speculation, speculation often far-fetched, which
each will according to his particular attitude acknowledge or neglect.
Or one may call it the exploitation of an idea out of curiosity to see
whither it will lead.
Psycho-analytic speculation starts from the impression gained on
investigating unconscious processes that consciousness cannot be the
most general characteristic of psychic processes, but merely a special
function of them. Metapsychologically expressed, it asserts that
consciousness is the functioning of a particular system which may be
called Bw. Since consciousness essentially yields perceptions of
excitations coming from without and feelings (_Empfindungen_) of
pleasure and ‘pain’ which can only be derived from within the psychic
apparatus, we may allot the system W-Bw.[10] (= perceptual
consciousness) a position in space. It must lie on the boundary between
outer and inner, must face towards the outer world, and must envelop the
other psychic systems. We then note that in this assumption we have
ventured nothing new, but are in agreement with the localising
tendencies of cerebral anatomy, which places the ‘seat’ of consciousness
in the cortical layer, the outermost enveloping layer of the central
organ. Cerebral anatomy does not need to wonder why—anatomically
speaking—consciousness should be accomodated on the surface of the
brain, instead of being safely lodged somewhere in the deepest recesses
of it. Perhaps we may carry matters a little further than this in our
deduction of such a position for our system W-Bw.
Consciousness is not the only peculiar feature that we ascribe to the
processes in this system. Our impressions gained by psycho-analytic
experience lead us to the supposition that all excitation processes in
the other systems leave in them permanent traces forming the foundations
of memory-records which have nothing to do with the question of becoming
conscious. They are often strongest and most enduring when the process
that left them behind never reached consciousness at all. But we find it
difficult to believe that such lasting traces of excitation are formed
also in the system W-Bw. itself. If they remained permanently in
consciousness they would very soon limit the fitness of the system for
registration of new excitations;[11] on the other hand, if they became
unconscious we should be confronted with the task of explaining the
existence of unconscious processes in a system whose functioning is
otherwise accompanied by the phenomenon of consciousness. We should, so
to speak, have gained nothing and altered nothing by our supposition
which relegates to a special system the process of becoming conscious.
Though this may not be an absolutely binding consideration, it may at
any rate lead us to conjecture that becoming conscious and leaving
behind a memory-trace are processes incompatible with each other in the
same system. We should thus be able to say: in the system Bw. the
process of excitation becomes conscious but it leaves behind no lasting
trace; all the traces of it on which memory relies would come about in
the next systems inwards from the propagation of the excitation on to
them. It is on these lines that the scheme is sketched which I inserted
into the speculative section of my ‘Traumdeutung’ in 1900. If one
reflects how little we know from other sources about the origin of
consciousness the pronouncement that _consciousness arises in the place
of the memory-trace_ must be conceded at least the importance of a
statement which is to some extent definite.
The system Bw. would thus be characterised by the peculiarity that the
excitation process does not leave in it, as it does in all other psychic
systems, a permanent alteration of its elements, but is as it were
discharged in the phenomenon of becoming conscious and vanishes. Such a
departure from the general rule requires an explanation on the ground of
a factor which comes into account in this one system only: this factor
which is absent from all other systems might well be the exposed
situation of the Bw. system—its immediate contact with the outer world.
Let us imagine the living organism in the simplest possible form as an
undifferentiated vesicle of sensitive substance: then its surface,
exposed as it is to the outer world, is by its very position
differentiated and serves as an organ for receiving stimuli. Embryology,
repeating as it does the history of evolution, does in fact show that
the central nervous system arises from the ectoderm; the grey cortex of
the brain remains a derivative of the primitive superficial layer and
may have inherited essential properties from this. It would then be
easily conceivable that, owing to the constant impact of external
stimuli on the superficies of the vesicle, its substance would undergo
lasting alteration to a certain depth, so that its excitation process
takes a different course from that taken in the deeper layers. Thus a
rind would be formed which would finally have been so burned through by
the effects of stimulation that it presents the most favourable
conditions for the reception of stimuli and is incapable of any further
modification. Applying this idea to the system Bw., this would mean that
its elements are not susceptible of any further lasting alteration from
the passage of the excitation, because they are already modified to the
uttermost in that respect. But they are then capable of giving rise to
consciousness. In what exactly these modifications of the substance and
of the excitation process in it consist many views may be held which as
yet cannot be tested. It may be assumed that the excitation has, in its
transmission from one element to another, to overcome a resistance, and
that this diminution of the resistance itself lays down the permanent
trace of the excitation (a path): in system Bw. there would no longer
exist any such resistance to transmission from one element to another.
We may associate with this conception Breuer’s distinction between
quiescent (bound) and free-moving ‘investment-energy’ in the elements of
the psychic systems;[12] the elements of the system Bw. would then
convey no ‘bound’ energy, only free energy capable of discharge. In my
opinion, however, it is better for the present to express oneself as to
these conditions in the least committal way. At any rate by these
speculations we should have brought the origin of consciousness into a
certain connection with the position of the system Bw. and with the
peculiarities of the excitation process to be ascribed to this.
We have more to say about the living vesicle with its receptive outer
layer. This morsel of living substance floats about in an outer world
which is charged with the most potent energies, and it would be
destroyed by the operation of the stimuli proceeding from this world if
it were not furnished with a protection against stimulation
(_Reizschutz_). It acquires this through its outermost layer—which gives
the structure that belongs to living matter—becoming in a measure
inorganic, and this now operates as a special integument or membrane
that keeps off the stimuli, i. e. makes it impossible for the energies
of the outer world to act with more than a fragment of their intensity
on the layers immediately below which have preserved their vitality.
These are now able under cover of the protecting layer to devote
themselves to the reception of those stimulus masses that have been let
through. But the outer layer has by its own death secured all the deeper
layers from a like fate—at least so long as no stimuli present
themselves of such a strength as to break through the protective
barrier. For the living organism protection against stimuli is almost a
more important task than reception of stimuli; the protective barrier is
equipped with its own store of energy and must above all endeavour to
protect the special forms of energy-transformations going on within
itself from the equalising and therefore destructive influence of the
enormous energies at work in the outer world. The reception of stimuli
serves above all the purpose of collecting information about the
direction and nature of the external stimuli, and for that it must
suffice to take little samples of the outer world, to taste it, so to
speak, in small quantities. In highly developed organisms the receptive
external layer of what was once a vesicle has long been withdrawn into
the depths of the body, but portions of it have been left on the surface
immediately beneath the common protective barrier. These portions form
the sense organs, which essentially comprise arrangements for the
reception of specific stimuli, but also possess special arrangements
adapted for a fresh protection against an overwhelming amount of
stimulus, and for warding off unsuitable kinds of stimuli. It is
characteristic of them that they assimilate only very small quantities
of the outer stimulus, and take in only samples of the outer world; one
might compare them to antennae which touch at the outer world and then
constantly withdraw from it again.
At this point I shall permit myself to touch cursorily upon a theme
which would deserve the most thorough treatment. The Kantian proposition
that time and space are necessary modes of thought may be submitted to
discussion to-day in the light of certain knowledge reached through
psycho-analysis. We have found by experience that unconscious mental
processes are in themselves ‘timeless’. That is to say to begin with:
they are not arranged chronologically, time alters nothing in them, nor
can the idea of time be applied to them. These are negative
characteristics, which can be made plain only by instituting a
comparison with conscious psychic processes. Our abstract conception of
time seems rather to be derived wholly from the mode of functioning of
the system W-Bw., and to correspond with a self-perception of it. In
this mode of functioning of the system another form of protection
against stimulation probably comes into play. I know that these
statements sound very obscure, but I must confine myself to these few
hints.
So far we have got to the point that the living vesicle is equipped with
a protection against stimuli from the outer world. Before that, we had
decided that the cortical layer next to it must be differentiated as the
organ for reception of external stimuli. But this sensitive layer (what
is later the system Bw.) also receives excitations from within: the
position of the system between outer and inner and the difference in the
conditions under which this receptivity operates on the two sides become
deciding factors for the functioning of the system and of the whole
psychic apparatus. Towards the outer world there is a barrier against
stimuli, and the mass of excitations coming up against it will take
effect only on a reduced scale; towards what is within no protection
against stimuli is possible, the excitations of the deeper layers pursue
their way direct and in undiminished mass into the system, while certain
characteristics of their course produce the series of pleasure-pain
feelings. Naturally the excitations coming from within will, in
conformity with their intensity and other qualitative characteristics
(or possibly their amplitude), be more proportionate to the mode of
operation of the system than the stimuli streaming in from the outer
world. Two things are, however, decisively determined by these
conditions: first the preponderance over all outer stimuli of the
pleasure and ‘pain’ feelings, which are an index for processes within
the mechanism; and secondly a shaping of behaviour towards such inner
excitations as bring with them an overplus of ‘pain’. There will be a
tendency to treat them as though they were acting not from within but
from without, in order for it to be possible to apply against them the
defensive measures of the barrier against stimuli (_Reizschutz_). This
is the origin of projection, for which so important a part is reserved
in the production of pathological states.
I have the impression that by these last considerations we have
approached nearer to a comprehension of the supremacy of the
pleasure-principle, but we have not attained to an explanation of those
cases which are opposed to it. Let us therefore go a step further. Such
external excitations as are strong enough to break through the barrier
against stimuli we call traumatic. In my opinion the concept of trauma
involves such a relationship to an otherwise efficacious barrier. An
occurrence such as an external trauma will undoubtedly provoke a very
extensive disturbance in the workings of the energy of the organism, and
will set in motion every kind of protective measure. But the
pleasure-principle is to begin with put out of action here. The flooding
of the psychic apparatus with large masses of stimuli can no longer be
prevented: on the contrary, another task presents itself—to bring the
stimulus under control, to ‘bind’ in the psyche the stimulus mass that
has broken its way in, so as to bring about a discharge of it.
Probably the specific discomfort of bodily pain is the result of some
local breaking through of the barrier against stimuli. From this point
in the periphery there stream to the central psychic apparatus continual
excitations such as would otherwise come only from within.[13] What are
we to expect as the reaction of the psychic life to this invasion? From
all sides the ‘charging energy’ is called on in order to create all
round the breach correspondingly high ‘charges’ of energy. An immense
‘counter-charge’ is set up, in favour of which all the other psychic
systems are impoverished, so that a wide-spread paralysis or diminution
of other psychic activity follows. We endeavour to learn from examples
such as these to base our metapsychological conjectures on such
prototypes. Thus from this behaviour we draw the conclusion that even a
highly charged system is able to receive new energy streaming in, to
convert it into a ‘quiescent charge’, thus to ‘bind’ it psychically. The
more intense is the intrinsic quiescent charge the greater is its
binding force: and conversely the lower the charge of the system the
less capable is it of receiving the energy that streams in, and so the
more violent are the consequences when the barrier against stimuli is
broken through. It is not a valid objection to this view that the
intensifying of the charges round the place of irruption could be much
more simply explained as the direct action of the oncoming mass of
excitation. If that were so, the psychic apparatus would merely undergo
an increase of its energy charges, and the paralysing character of pain,
with the impoverishment of all the other systems, would remain without
explanation. Nor do the very violent discharge effects of pain
invalidate our explanation, for they happen in a reflex manner, that is
to say, they follow without the interposition of the psychic apparatus.
The indefinite nature of all the discussions that we term
metapsychological naturally comes from the fact that we know nothing
about the nature of the excitation process in the elements of the
psychic systems and do not feel justified in making any assumption about
it. Thus we are all the time operating with a large X, which we carry
over into every new formula. That this process is accomplished with
energies which differ quantitatively is an easily admissible postulate,
that it also has more than one quality (e.g. in the direction of
amplitude) may be regarded as probable: the new consideration we have
brought in is Breuer’s proposition that we have to do with two ways in
which a system may be filled with energy, so that a distinction has to
be made between a ‘charging’ of the psychic systems (or its elements)
that is free-flowing and striving to be discharged and one that is
quiescent. Perhaps we may admit the conjecture that the binding of the
energy streaming into the psychic apparatus consists in a translating of
it from the free-flowing to the quiescent state.
I think one may venture (tentatively) to regard the ordinary traumatic
neurosis as the result of an extensive rupture of the barrier against
stimuli. In this way the old naïve doctrine of ‘shock’ would come into
its own again, apparently in opposition to a later and psychologically
more pretentious view which ascribes aetiological significance not to
the effect of the mechanical force, but to the fright and the menace to
life. But these opposing views are not irreconcilable, and the
psycho-analytic conception of the traumatic neurosis is far from being
identical with the crudest form of the ‘shock’ theory. While the latter
takes the essential nature of the shock as residing in the direct injury
to the molecular structure, or even to the histological structure, of
the nervous elements, we seek to understand the effect of the shock by
considering the breaking through of the barrier with which the psychic
organ is provided against stimuli, and from the tasks with which this is
thereby faced. Fright retains its meaning for us too. What conditions it
is the failure of the mechanism of apprehension to make the proper
preparation, including the over-charging of the systems first receiving
the stimulus. In consequence of this lower degree of charging these
systems are hardly in a position to bind the oncoming masses of
excitation, and the consequences of the breaking through of the
protective barrier appear all the more easily. We thus find that the
apprehensive preparation, together with the over-charging of the
receptive systems, represents the last line of defence against stimuli.
For a great number of traumata the difference between the unprepared
systems and those prepared by over-charging may turn the scale as to the
outcome: with a trauma beyond a certain strength such a difference may
no longer be of any importance. When the dreams of patients suffering
from traumatic neuroses so regularly take them back to the situation of
the disaster they do not thereby, it is true, serve the purpose of
wish-fulfilment, the hallucinatory conjuring up of which has, under the
domination of the pleasure-principle, become the function of dreams. But
we may assume that they thereby subserve another purpose, which must be
fulfilled before the pleasure-principle can begin its sway. These dreams
are attempts at restoring control of the stimuli by developing
apprehension, the pretermission of which caused the traumatic neurosis.
They thus afford us an insight into a function of the psychic apparatus,
which without contradicting the pleasure-principle is nevertheless
independent of it, and appears to be of earlier origin than the aim of
attaining pleasure and avoiding ‘pain’.
This is therefore the moment to concede for the first time an
exception to the principle that the dream is a wish-fulfilment.
Anxiety dreams are no such exception, as I have repeatedly and in
detail shown; nor are the ‘punishment dreams’, for they merely put in
the place of the interdicted wish-fulfilment the punishment
appropriate to it, and are thus the wish-fulfilment of the sense of
guilt reacting on the contemned impulse. But the dreams mentioned
above of patients suffering from traumatic neuroses do not permit of
classification under the category of wish-fulfilment, nor do the
dreams occurring during psycho-analysis that bring back the
recollection of the psychic traumata of childhood. They obey rather
the repetition-compulsion, which in analysis, it is true, is supported
by the (not unconscious) wish to conjure up again what has been
forgotten and repressed. Thus the function of the dream, viz. to do
away with the motives leading to interruption of sleep by presenting
wish-fulfilments of the disturbing excitations, would not be its
original one; the dream could secure control of this function only
after the whole psychic life had accepted the domination of the
pleasure-principle. If there is a ‘beyond the pleasure-principle’ it
is logical to admit a prehistoric past also for the wish-fulfilling
tendency of the dream, though to do so is no contradiction of its
later function. Now, when this tendency is once broken through, there
arises the further question: are such dreams, which in the interests
of the psychical binding of traumatic impressions follow the
repetition-compulsion, not possible apart from analysis? The answer is
certainly in the affirmative.
With regard to the war neuroses, so far as the term has any significance
apart from a reference to the occasion of the appearance of the illness,
I have explained elsewhere that they might very well be traumatic
neuroses which have arisen the more easily on account of an
ego-conflict.[14] The fact mentioned on page 9, viz. that a severe
injury inflicted at the same time by the trauma lessens the chance of a
neurosis arising, is no longer difficult to understand if two
circumstances emphasised by psycho-analytic research are borne in mind.
First that mechanical concussion must be recognised as one of the
sources of sexual excitation (cp. the remarks: ‘The effects of swinging
and railway travelling’ in Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 4.
Auflage 1920); and, secondly, that a painful and feverish illness exerts
for the time it lasts a powerful influence on the distribution of the
libido. Thus the mechanical force of the trauma would set free the quota
of sexual excitation which, in consequence of the lacking preparation by
apprehension, has a traumatic effect: but, on the other hand, the
contemporaneous bodily injury would bind the surplus excitation by the
putting in of a claim to a narcissistic over-charging of the injured
part (see ‘Zur Einführung des Narzissmus’, Sammlung kleiner Schriften
zur Neurosenlehre, IV. Folge, 1918). It is also known, though the idea
has not been sufficiently made use of in the Libido theory, that
disturbances in the distribution of the libido so severe as those of
melancholia may be removed for a time by an intercurrent organic
disease; in fact even the condition of a fully developed dementia
praecox is capable of a transitory improvement in these circumstances.
V
The fact that the sensitive cortical layer has no protective barrier
against excitations emanating from within will have one inevitable
consequence: viz. that these transmissions of stimuli acquire increased
economic significance and frequently give rise to economic disturbances
comparable to the traumatic neuroses. The most prolific sources of such
inner excitations are the so-called instincts of the organism, the
representatives of all forces arising within the body and transmitted to
the psychic apparatus—the most important and most obscure element in
psychological research.
Perhaps we shall not find it too rash an assumption that the excitations
proceeding from the instincts do not conform to the type of the ‘bound’
but of the free-moving nerve processes that are striving for discharge.
The most trustworthy knowledge we have of these processes comes from the
study of dreams. There we found that the processes in the unconscious
systems are fundamentally different from those in the (pre)conscious;
that in the unconscious ‘charges’ may easily be completely transferred,
displaced or condensed, while if this happened with preconscious
material only defective results would be obtained. This is the reason
for the well-known peculiarities of the manifest dream, after the
preconscious residues of the day before have undergone elaboration
according to the laws of the unconscious. I termed this kind of process
in the unconscious the psychic ‘primary process’ in contradistinction to
the secondary process valid in our normal waking life. Since the
excitations of instincts all affect the unconscious systems, it is
scarcely an innovation to say that they follow the lines of the primary
process, and little more so to identify the psychic primary process with
the freely mobile charge, the secondary process with changes in Breuer’s
bound or tonic charge.[15] It would then be the task of the higher
layers of the psychic apparatus to bind the instinct-excitation that
reaches the primary process. The failure to effect this binding would
evoke a disturbance analogous to the traumatic neuroses; it is only
after the binding had been successfully accomplished that the
pleasure-principle (and its modification the reality-principle) would
have an opportunity to assert its sway without hindrance. Till then, the
other task of the psychic apparatus would take precedence, viz. to
obtain control of or to bind the excitation, not in opposition to the
pleasure-principle but independently of it and in part without regard to
it.
The expressions of a repetition-compulsion which we have described,
both in the early activities of infantile psychic life and in the
experiences of psycho-analytic treatment, show in a high degree an
instinctive character, and, where they come into contrast with the
pleasure-principle, a daemonic character. In the play of children we
seem to arrive at the conclusion that the child repeats even the
unpleasant experiences because through his own activity he gains a far
more thorough mastery of the strong impression than was possible by
mere passive experience. Every fresh repetition seems to strengthen
this mastery for which the child strives; even with pleasurable
experiences the child cannot do enough in the way of repetition and
will inexorably insist on the identity of the impression. This
characteristic is destined later to disappear. A witticism heard for
the second time will almost fail of effect; a theatrical performance
will never make the same impression the second time that it did on the
first occasion; indeed it is hard to persuade the adult to read again
at all soon a book he has enjoyed. Novelty is always the necessary
condition of enjoyment. The child, however, never gets tired of
demanding from a grown-up the repetition of a game he has played with
him before or has shown him, till at last the grown-up refuses,
utterly worn out; similarly if he has been told a pretty story, he
wants always to hear the same story instead of a new one, insists
inexorably on exact repetition and corrects each deviation which the
narrator lets slip by mistake, which perhaps he even thought to gain
new merit by inserting. Here there is no contradiction of the
pleasure-principle: it is evident that the repetition, the rediscovery
of the identity, is itself a source of pleasure. In the case of a
patient in analysis, on the other hand, it is plain that the
compulsion to repeat in the transference the occurrences of his
infantile life disregards _in every way_ the pleasure-principle. The
patient behaves in this respect completely like a child, and thus
makes it clear to us that the repressed memory-traces of his primitive
experience are not present in a ‘bound’ form, are indeed, in a sense,
not capable of the secondary process. To this fact of their not being
bound they owe their power to weave a wish-phantasy that will be
represented in a dream, by adhering to the residues from waking
experiences. We frequently encounter the same repetition-compulsion as
a therapeutic obstacle, when at the end of the treatment we wish to
bring about complete detachment from the physician; and it may be
supposed that the vague dread with which those who are unfamiliar with
it view analysis, as though they feared to wake what they think is
better left to sleep, is at root a fear of the appearance of this
daemonic compulsion.
In what way is the instinctive connected with the compulsion to
repetition? At this point the idea is forced upon us that we have
stumbled on the trace of a general and hitherto not clearly
recognised—or at least not expressly emphasised—characteristic of
instinct, perhaps of all organic life. According to this, _an instinct
would be a tendency innate in living organic matter impelling it towards
the reinstatement of an earlier condition_, one which it had to abandon
under the influence of external disturbing forces—a kind of organic
elasticity, or, to put it another way, the manifestation of inertia in
organic life.[16]
This conception of instinct strikes us as strange, since we are
accustomed to see in instinct the factor urging towards change and
development, and now we find ourselves required to recognise in it the
very opposite, viz. the expression of the conservative nature of living
beings. On the other hand, we soon think of those examples in animal
life which appear to confirm the idea of instinct having been
historically conditioned. When certain fish undertake arduous journeys
at spawning-time, in order to deposit the spawn in certain definite
waters far removed from their usual habitats, according to the
interpretation of many biologists they are only seeking the earlier
homes of their kind, which in course of time they have exchanged for
others. The same is said to be true of the migratory flights of birds of
passage, but the search for further examples becomes superfluous when we
remember that in the phenomena of heredity and in the facts of
embryology we have the most imposing proofs of the organic compulsion to
repetition. We see that the germ cell of a living animal is obliged to
repeat in its development—although in a fleeting and curtailed
fashion—the structures of all the forms from which the animal is
descended, instead of hastening along the shortest path to its own final
shape. A mechanical explanation of this except in some trifling
particulars is impossible, and the historical explanation cannot be
disregarded. In the same way we find extending far upwards in the animal
kingdom a power of reproduction whereby a lost organ is replaced by the
growth of a new one exactly like it.
The obvious objection, that it may well be that besides the conservative
instincts compelling repetition there are others which press towards new
formation and progress, should certainly not be left unnoticed; it will
be considered at a later stage of our discussion. But we may first be
tempted to follow to its final consequences the hypothesis that all
instincts have as their aim the reinstatement of an earlier condition.
If what results gives an appearance of ‘profundity’ or bears a
resemblance to mysticism, still we know ourselves to be clear of the
reproach of having striven after anything of the sort. We are in search
of sober results of investigation or of reflections based upon it, and
the only character we wish for in these results is that of certainty.
If then all organic instincts are conservative, historically acquired,
and are directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of something
earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of organic development
to the credit of external, disturbing and distracting influences. The
rudimentary creature would from its very beginning not have wanted to
change, would, if circumstances had remained the same, have always
merely repeated the same course of existence. But in the last resort it
must have been the evolution of our earth, and its relation to the sun,
that has left its imprint on the development of organisms. The
conservative organic instincts have absorbed every one of these enforced
alterations in the course of life and have stored them for repetition;
they thus present the delusive appearance of forces striving after
change and progress, while they are merely endeavouring to reach an old
goal by ways both old and new. This final goal of all organic striving
can be stated too. It would be counter to the conservative nature of
instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached. It
must rather be an ancient starting point, which the living being left
long ago, and to which it harks back again by all the circuitous paths
of development. If we may assume as an experience admitting of no
exception that everything living dies from causes within itself, and
returns to the inorganic, we can only say ‘_The goal of all life is
death_’, and, casting back, ‘_The inanimate was there before the
animate_.’
At one time or another, by some operation of force which still
completely baffles conjecture, the properties of life were awakened in
lifeless matter. Perhaps the process was a prototype resembling that
other one which later in a certain stratum of living matter gave rise to
consciousness. The tension then aroused in the previously inanimate
matter strove to attain an equilibrium; the first instinct was present,
that to return to lifelessness. The living substance at that time had
death within easy reach; there was probably only a short course of life
to run, the direction of which was determined by the chemical structure
of the young organism. So through a long period of time the living
substance may have been constantly created anew, and easily
extinguished, until decisive external influences altered in such a way
as to compel the still surviving substance to ever greater deviations
from the original path of life, and to ever more complicated and
circuitous routes to the attainment of the goal of death. These
circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the conservative
instincts, would be neither more nor less than the phenomena of life as
we now know it. If the exclusively conservative nature of the instincts
is accepted as true, it is impossible to arrive at any other
suppositions with regard to the origin and goal of life.
If these conclusions sound strangely in our ears, equally so will those
we are led to make concerning the great groups of instincts which we
regard as lying behind the vital phenomena of organisms. The postulate
of the self-preservative instincts we ascribe to every living being
stands in remarkable contrast to the supposition that the whole life of
instinct serves the one end of bringing about death. The theoretic
significance of the instincts of self-preservation, power and
self-assertion, shrinks to nothing, seen in this light; they are
part-instincts designed to secure the path to death peculiar to the
organism and to ward off possibilities of return to the inorganic other
than the immanent ones, but the enigmatic struggle of the organism to
maintain itself in spite of all the world, a struggle that cannot be
brought into connection with anything else, disappears. It remains to be
added that the organism is resolved to die only in its own way; even
these watchmen of life were originally the myrmidons of death. Hence the
paradox comes about that the living organism resists with all its energy
influences (dangers) which could help it to reach its life-goal by a
short way (a short circuit, so to speak); but this is just the behaviour
that characterises a pure instinct as contrasted with an intelligent
striving.[17]
But we must bethink ourselves: this cannot be the whole truth. The
sexual instincts, for which the theory of the neuroses claims a position
apart, lead us to quite another point of view. Not all organisms have
yielded to the external compulsion driving them to an ever further
development. Many have succeeded in maintaining themselves on their low
level up to the present time: there are in existence to-day, if not all,
at all events many forms of life that must resemble the primitive stages
of the higher animals and plants. And, similarly, not all the elementary
organisms that make up the complicated body of a higher form of life
take part in the whole path of evolution to the natural end, i.e. death.
Some among them, the reproductive cells, probably retain the original
structure of the living substance and, after a given time, detach
themselves from the parent organism, charged as they are with all the
inherited and newly acquired instinctive dispositions. Possibly it is
just those two features that make their independent existence possible.
If brought under favourable conditions they begin to develop, that is,
to repeat the same cycle to which they owe their origin, the end being
that again one portion of the substance carries through its development
to a finish, while another part, as a new germinal core, again harks
back to the beginning of the development. Thus these reproductive cells
operate against the death of the living substance and are able to win
for it what must seem to us to be potential immortality, although
perhaps it only means a lengthening of the path to death. Of the highest
significance is the fact that the reproductive cell is fortified for
this function, or only becomes capable of it, by the mingling with
another like it and yet different from it.
There is a group of instincts that care for the destinies of these
elementary organisms which survive the individual being, that concern
themselves with the safe sheltering of these organisms as long as they
are defenceless against the stimuli of the outer world, and finally
bring about their conjunction with other reproductive cells. These are
collectively the sexual instincts. They are conservative in the same
sense as the others are, in that they reproduce earlier conditions of
the living substance, but they are so in a higher degree in that they
show themselves specially resistant to external influences; and they are
more conservative in a wider sense still, since they preserve life
itself for a longer time. They are the actual life-instincts; the fact
that they run counter to the trend of the other instincts which lead
towards death indicates a contradiction between them and the rest, one
which the theory of neuroses has recognised as full of significance.
There is as it were an oscillating rhythm in the life of organisms: the
one group of instincts presses forward to reach the final goal of life
as quickly as possible, the other flies back at a certain point on the
way only to traverse the same stretch once more from a given spot and
thus to prolong the duration of the journey. Although sexuality and the
distinction of the sexes certainly did not exist at the dawn of life,
nevertheless it remains possible that the instincts which are later
described as sexual were active from the very beginning and took up the
part of opposition to the rôle of the ‘ego-instincts’ then, and not only
at some later time.
Let us now retrace our steps for the first time, to ask whether all
these speculations are not after all without foundation. Are there
really, _apart from the sexual instincts_, no other instincts than those
which have as their object the reinstatement of an earlier condition,
none that strive towards a condition never yet attained? I am not aware
of any satisfactory example in the organic world running counter to the
characteristic I have suggested. The existence of a general impulse
towards higher development in the plant and animal world can certainly
not be established, though some such line of development is as a fact
unquestionable. But, on the one hand, it is often merely a question of
our own valuation when we pronounce one stage of development to be
higher than another, and, on the other hand, biology makes clear to us
that a higher development in one particular is often purchased with, or
balanced by, retrogression in another. Then there are plenty of animal
forms the youthful stages of which teach us that their development has
taken a retrograde character rather than otherwise. Higher development
and retrogression alike might well be the results of external forces
impelling towards adaptation, and the part played by the instincts might
be confined in both cases to retaining the enforced changes as sources
of pleasure.[18]
Many of us will also find it hard to abandon our belief that in man
himself there dwells an impulse towards perfection, which has brought
him to his present heights of intellectual prowess and ethical
sublimation, and from which it might be expected that his development
into superman will be ensured. But I do not believe in the existence of
such an inner impulse, and I see no way of preserving this pleasing
illusion. The development of man up to now does not seem to me to need
any explanation differing from that of animal development, and the
restless striving towards further perfection which may be observed in a
minority of human beings is easily explicable as the result of that
repression of instinct upon which what is most valuable in human culture
is built. The repressed instinct never ceases to strive after its
complete satisfaction which would consist in the repetition of a primary
experience of satisfaction: all substitution- or reaction-formations and
sublimations avail nothing towards relaxing the continual tension; and
out of the excess of the satisfaction demanded over that found is born
the driving momentum which allows of no abiding in any situation
presented to it, but in the poet’s words ‘urges ever forward, ever
unsubdued’ (Mephisto in ‘Faust’, Act 1. Faust’s study.). The path in the
other direction, back to complete satisfaction, is as a rule barred by
the resistances that maintain the repressions, and thus there remains
nothing for it but to proceed in the other, still unobstructed
direction, that of development, without, however, any prospect of being
able to bring the process to a conclusion or to attain the goal. What
occurs in the development of a neurotic phobia, which is really nothing
but an attempt at flight from the satisfaction of an instinct, gives us
the prototype for the origin of this ostensible ‘impulse towards
perfection’ which, however, we cannot possibly ascribe to all human
beings. The dynamic conditions are, it is true, quite generally present,
but the economic relations seem only in rare cases to favour the
phenomenon.
VI
Our discussion so far results in the establishing of a sharp antithesis
between the ‘ego-instincts’ and the sexual instincts, the former
impelling towards death and the latter towards the preservation of life,
a result which we ourselves must surely find in many respects far from
adequate. Further, only for the former can we properly claim the
conservative—or, better, regressive—character corresponding to a
repetition-compulsion. For according to our hypothesis the ego-instincts
spring from the vitalising of inanimate matter, and have as their aim
the reinstatement of lifelessness. As to the sexual instincts on the
other hand: it is obvious that they reproduce primitive states of the
living being, but the aim they strive for by every means is the union of
two germ cells which are specifically differentiated. If this union does
not take place, then the germ cell dies like all other elements of the
multicellular organism. Only on this condition can the sexual function
prolong life and lend it the semblance of immortality. Of what important
happening then in the process of development of the living substance is
sexual reproduction, or its forerunner, the copulation of two individual
protozoa, the repetition? That question we do not know how to answer,
and therefore we should feel relieved if the whole structure of our
arguments were to prove erroneous. The opposition of ego- (or death-)
instincts and sexual (life-) instincts would then disappear, and the
repetition-compulsion would thereupon also lose the significance we have
attributed to it.
Let us turn back therefore to one of the assumptions we interpolated, in
the expectation that it will permit of exact refutation. We built up
further conclusions on the basis of the assumption that all life must
die from internal causes. We made this assumption so light-heartedly
because it does not seem to us to be one. We are accustomed so to think,
and every poet encourages us in the idea. Perhaps we have resolved so to
think because there lies a certain consolation in this belief. If man
must himself die, after first losing his most beloved ones by death, he
would prefer that his life be forfeit to an inexorable law of nature,
the sublime Ἀνάγκη, than to a mere accident which perhaps could have
been in some way avoided. But perhaps this belief in the incidence of
death as the necessary consequence of an inner law of being is also only
one of those illusions that we have fashioned for ourselves ‘so as to
endure the burden of existence’. It is certainly not a primordial
belief: the idea of a ‘natural death’ is alien to primitive races; they
ascribe every death occurring among themselves to the influence of an
enemy or an evil spirit. So let us not neglect to turn to biological
science to test the belief.
If we do so, we may be astonished to find how little agreement exists
among biologists on the question of natural death, that indeed the very
conception of death altogether eludes them. The fact of a certain
average length of life, at least among the higher animals, is of course
an argument for death from inner causes, but the circumstance that
certain large animals and giant trees reach a very great age, one not to
be computed up to now, once more removes this impression. According to
the grandiose conception of W. Fliess all the vital phenomena—and
certainly also death—are linked with the accomplishment of certain
periods of time, among which there finds expression the dependence of
two living substances, one male and one female, upon the solar year. But
observations of how easily and extensively the influences of external
forces can alter vital manifestations, especially in the plant world, as
to their occurrence in time, can hasten or retard them, militate against
the rigidity of the formulae laid down by Fliess and leaves at least
doubtful the universality of the laws he sought to establish.
The treatment of these themes, death and the duration of life among
organisms, in the works of A. Weismann[19] possesses the greatest
interest for us. This investigator originated the distinction of living
substance into a mortal and an immortal half; the mortal is the body in
the narrower sense, the soma, which alone is subject to natural death;
while the germ cells are potentially immortal, in so far as they are
capable under certain favourable conditions of developing into a new
individual, or expressed otherwise, of surrounding themselves with a new
soma.[20]
What here arrests our attention is the unexpected analogy with our
conception developed along so different a line of thought. Weismann, who
is considering living substance morphologically, recognises in it a
constituent which is the prey of death, the soma, the body viewed apart
from sex or heredity elements, and, on the other hand, an immortal part,
the germ-plasm, which serves the purpose of preservation of the species,
of propagation. We have fixed our attention not on the living matter,
but on the forces active in it, and have been led to distinguish two
kinds of instincts: those the purpose of which is to guide life towards
death, and the others, the sexual instincts, which perpetually strive
for, and bring about, the renewal of life. This sounds like a dynamic
corollary to Weismann’s morphological theory.
This appearance of an important correspondence vanishes as soon as we
examine Weismann’s pronouncement on the problem of death. For Weismann
admits the differentiation between the mortal soma and the immortal
germ-plasm only in relation to multicellular organisms; with the
unicellular beings the individual and the reproductive cell are still
one and the same.[21] The unicellular he thus affirms to be potentially
immortal; death appears only among the metazoa, the multicellular. This
death of the higher organisms is, it is true, a natural one, a death
from inner causes, but it does not depend on an inherent quality of the
living substance,[22] is not to be conceived as an absolute necessity
based on the nature of life.[23] Death is rather a purposive
contrivance, a phenomenon of adaptation to the external conditions of
life, because after the differentiation of the corporeal cells into soma
and germ-plasm the indefinite prolongation of the life of the individual
would have become a quite inexpedient luxury. With the appearance of
this differentiation among multicellular organisms death became possible
and expedient. Since then the soma of the higher organisms dies after a
certain time from internal causes; the protozoa, however, remain
immortal. Propagation, on the other hand, was not first introduced with
death; it is on the contrary a primordial property of living matter like
growth, in which it originated, and life has gone on uninterruptedly
from its inception on the earth.[24]
It is easy to see that to concede natural death to the higher organisms
does not greatly help our case. If death is a late acquisition of life,
then death instincts traceable to the beginning of life on this planet
no longer come into question. Multicellular organisms may continue to
die from internal causes, whether defect of differentiation or
imperfections of their metabolism; it possesses no interest for the
inquiry on which we are engaged. Such a conception and derivation of
death certainly more nearly approaches the ordinary human view of it
than the unwonted assumption of ‘death-instincts’.
The discussion which has centred round Weismann’s assertations has in my
opinion had no decisive result in any direction.[25] Many writers have
reverted to the standpoint of Goette (1883) who saw in death the direct
consequence of propagation. Hartmann does not regard as the
characteristic of death the appearance of a ‘corpse’, a piece of living
substance which has ‘died off’, but defines it as the ‘definitive end of
individual development’. In this sense protozoa are also subject to
death; with them death invariably coincides with propagation, but it is,
so to speak, disguised by the latter, for the whole substance of the
parent organism may be absorbed directly into the new individuals.[26]
The interest of the inquiry was soon directed towards testing
experimentally the asserted immortality of living substance in
unicellular beings. An American, named Woodruff, instituted a culture of
a ciliated infusorium, a ‘slipper-animalcule’, which reproduces itself
by division into two individuals; each time he isolated one of the
products and put it into fresh water. He traced the propagation to the
3029th generation, when he discontinued the experiment. The last
descendant of the first slipper-animalcule was just as lively as its
original ancestor, without any sign of age or degeneration: if such
numbers are convincing, the immortality of protozoa seemed thus
experimentally demonstrable.[27]
Other investigators have arrived at other results. Maupas, Calkins,
etc., found, in contradiction to Woodruff, that even these infusoria
after a certain number of divisions become weaker, decrease in size,
lose a portion of their organisation, and finally die if they do not
encounter certain invigorating influences. According to this, protozoa
die after a phase of senile decay just like higher animals, in direct
contravention of what is maintained by Weismann, who recognises in death
a late acquisition of living organisms.
Taking the net result of these researches together, we note two facts
which seem to afford us a firm foothold. First: if the animalculae, at a
time when they as yet show no signs of age, have the opportunity of
mingling with each other, of ‘conjugating’—afterwards again
separating—then they remain exempt from age, they have been
‘rejuvenated’. This conjugation is doubtless the prototype of sexual
propagation of higher organisms: as yet it has nothing to do with
multiplication, it is confined to the mingling of the substances of both
individuals (Weismann’s Amphimixis). The invigorating influence of
conjugation can also be replaced, however, by certain modes of
stimulation, changes in the composition of the nutrient fluid, raising
of temperature, or shaking. The famous experiment of J. Loeb will be
recalled, who by the application of certain chemical stimuli to the ova
of sea-urchins brought about processes of division which usually take
place only after fertilisation.
Secondly: it is after all probable that the infusoria are brought to a
natural death through their own vital process, for the contradiction
between Woodruff’s findings and those of others arises from Woodruff
having placed each generation in fresh nutrient fluid. When he refrained
from doing so he observed, as did the other investigators, that the
generations showed signs of age. He concluded that the animalculae were
injured by the products of metabolism which they gave off into the
surrounding fluid, and was then able to prove convincingly that only the
products of _its own_ metabolism had this effect in bringing about the
death of the generation. For in a solution over-saturated with waste
products of a distantly related species the very same animalculae throve
excellently which when allowed to accumulate in their own nutrient fluid
inevitably perished. Thus, left to itself, the infusorium dies a natural
death from the imperfect disposal of its own metabolic products: perhaps
all higher animals die ultimately from the same inability.
At this point the doubt may then occur to us whether any good purpose
has been served in looking for the answer to the question as to natural
death in the study of the protozoa. The primitive organisation of these
forms of life may conceal from us important conditions which are present
in them too, but can be recognised only among the higher animals where
they have achieved for themselves a morphological expression. If we
abandon the morphological point of view for the dynamic, it may be a
matter of entire indifference to us whether the natural death of the
protozoa can be proved or not. With them the substance later recognised
as immortal has not yet separated itself in any way from the part
subject to death. The instinctive forces which endeavour to conduct life
to death might be active in them too from the beginning and yet their
effect might be so obscured by that of the forces tending to preserve
life that any direct evidence of their existence becomes hard to
establish. We have heard, it is true, that the observations of
biologists allow us to assume such death-ward tending inner processes
also among the protozoa. But even if the protozoa prove to be immortal
in Weismann’s sense, his assertion that death is a late acquisition
holds good only of the outward manifestations of death, and does not
invalidate any hypothesis as to such processes as impel towards death.
Our expectation that biology would entirely put out of court any
recognition of the death-instincts has not been fulfilled. It is open to
us to occupy ourselves further with this possibility, if we have other
reasons for doing so. The striking resemblance between Weismann’s
separation of soma and germ-plasm and our distinction between the death
and the life-instincts remains unshaken, moreover, and retains its
value.
Let us dwell for a moment on this exquisitely dualistic conception of
the instinctive life. According to E. Hering’s theory of the processes
in living matter there course through it uninterruptedly two kinds of
processes of opposite direction, one anabolic, assimilatory, the other
katabolic, disintegrating. Shall we venture to recognise in these two
directions of the vital processes the activity of our two instinctive
tendencies, the life-instincts and the death-instincts? And we cannot
disguise another fact from ourselves, that we have steered unawares into
the haven of Schopenhauer’s philosophy for whom death is the ‘real
result’ of life[28] and therefore in so far its aim, while the sexual
instinct is the incarnation of the will to live.
Let us boldly try to go a step further. According to general opinion the
union of numerous cells into one vital connection, the multicellularity
of organisms, has become a means to the prolongation of their span of
life. One cell helps to preserve the life of the others, and the
cell-community can go on living even if single cells have to perish. We
have already heard that also conjugation, the temporary mingling of two
unicellular entities, has a preservative and rejuvenating effect on
both. The attempt might consequently be made to transfer the Libido
theory yielded by psycho-analysis to the relationship of the cells to
one another and to imagine that it is the vital or sexual instincts
active in every cell that take the other cells for their ‘object’,
partially neutralise their death-instincts, i. e. the processes
stimulated by these, and so preserve those cells in life, while other
cells do the same for them, and still others sacrifice themselves in the
exercise of this libidinous function. The germ cells themselves would
behave in a completely ‘narcissistic’ fashion, as we are accustomed to
describe it in the theory of the neuroses when an individual
concentrates his libido on the ego, and gives out none of it for the
charging of objects. The germ cells need their libido—the activity of
their vital instincts—for themselves as a provision for their later
enormous constructive activity. Perhaps the cells of the malignant
growths that destroy the organism can also be considered to be
narcissistic in the same sense. Pathology is indeed prepared to regard
the kernels of them as congenital in origin and to ascribe embryonal
attributes to them. Thus the Libido of our sexual instincts would
coincide with the Eros of poets and philosophers, which holds together
all things living.
At this point opportunity offers of reviewing the gradual development of
our Libido theory. The analysis of the transference-neuroses forced on
our notice in the first place the opposition between ‘sexual instincts’
which are directed towards an object and other instincts which we only
imperfectly discerned and provisionally described as ‘ego-instincts’.
Among the latter those which subserve the self-preservation of the
individual had the first claim for recognition. What other distinctions
were to be made, it was impossible to say. No knowledge would have been
so important for the establishment of a sound psychology as some
approximate understanding of the common nature and possible differences
of the instincts. But in no department of psychology did one grope more
in the dark. Everyone posited as many instincts or ‘fundamental
instincts’ as he pleased, and contrived with them just as the ancient
Greek philosophers did with their four elements: earth, air, fire and
water. Psycho-Analysis, which could not dispense with some kind of
hypothesis as to the instincts, adhered to begin with to the popular
distinction, typically represented by the phrase ‘hunger and love’. It
was at least no new arbitrary creation. With this one adequately covered
a considerable distance in the analysis of the psychoneuroses. The
conception of ‘sexuality’—and therewith that of a sexual
instinct—certainly had to Be extended, till it included much that did
not come into the category of the function of propagation, and this led
to outcry enough in a severe and superior or merely hypocritical world.
The next step followed when Psycho-Analysis was able to feel its way a
little nearer to the psychological ego, which was at first known to us
only as a repressing, censoring agency, capable of constituting
defences and reaction-formations. Critical and other far-seeing minds
had indeed for a long time raised objections to the narrowing of the
libido concept down to the energy of the sexual instinct as directed
to the object. But they omitted to say whence they obtained this
fuller comprehension, and failed to deduce anything from it of value
for Psycho-Analysis. In the course of more deliberate advance it came
under psycho-analytic observation how regularly libido is withdrawn
from the object and directed towards the ego (introversion), and
through the study of the libido-development of the child in its
earliest phases it became clear that the ego is the true and original
reservoir of the libido, which is extended to the object only from
this. The ego took its place as one of the sexual objects and was
immediately recognised as the choicest among them. Where the libido
thus remained attached to the ego it was termed ‘narcissistic’.[29]
This narcissistic libido was naturally also the expression of the
energy of sexual instincts in the analytical sense which now had to be
identified with the ‘instincts of self-preservation’, the existence of
which was admitted from the first. Whereupon the original antithesis
between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts became inadequate.
A part of the ego-instincts was recognised as libidinous: in the ego
sexual instincts were found to be active—probably in addition to
others; nevertheless one is justified in saying that the old formula,
viz. that a psychoneurosis arises out of a conflict between the
ego-instincts and the sexual instincts, contained nothing that we
should have to reject to-day. Only, the difference of the two kinds of
instincts which was supposed originally to be in some kind of way
qualitative has now to be defined otherwise, namely on a topographical
basis. In particular the transference-neurosis, the real object of
psycho-analytic study, is still seen to be the result of a conflict
between the ego and libidinous investment of an object.
We are the more compelled now to accentuate the libidinous character of
the self-preservative instincts, since we are venturing on the further
step of recognising the sexual instinct as the Eros, the all-sustaining,
and of deriving the narcissistic libido of the ego from the sum of the
libido quantities that bring about the mutual adherence of the somatic
cells. But we now find ourselves suddenly confronted with this question:
If the self-preservative instincts are also of a libidinous kind, then
perhaps we have no other instincts at all than libidinous ones. There
are at least no others apparent. In that event we must admit the critics
to be in the right who from the first have suspected that
psycho-analysis makes sexuality the explanation of everything, or the
innovators like Jung who, quickly making up their mind, have used
‘libido’ as a synonym for ‘instinctive force’ in general. Is that not
so?
This result was at all events one not intended by us. On the contrary,
we took as our starting point a sharp distinction between the
ego-instincts (= death-instincts) and the sexual instincts (=
life-instincts). We were prepared indeed to reckon even the alleged
self-preservative instincts of the ego among death-instincts, a position
which we have since corrected and withdrawn from. Our standpoint was a
dualistic one from the beginning, and is so to-day more sharply than
before, since we no longer call the contrasting tendencies egoistic and
sexual instincts, but life-instincts and death-instincts. Jung’s libido
theory, on the other hand, is a monistic one; that he has applied the
term libido to his only instinctive energy was bound to create
confusion, but should not have any further effect on us. We suspect that
there are in the ego other instincts than those of self-preservation;
only we ought to be in a position to demonstrate them. Unfortunately so
little progress has been made in the analysis of the ego that this proof
becomes extraordinarily difficult of attainment. The libidinous
instincts of the ego may indeed be conjoined in a special way with other
ego-instincts of which we as yet know nothing. Before ever we had
clearly recognised narcissism, the conjecture was already present in the
minds of psychoanalysts that the ‘ego-instincts’ had drawn libidinous
components to themselves. But these are merely vague possibilities which
our opponents will hardly take into account. It remains an awkward fact
that analysis up to now has only put us in the position of demonstrating
libidinous impulses. The conclusion that therefore there are no others
is one to which we do not assent.
In the obscurity that at present shrouds the theory of instinct, we
shall certainly not do well to reject any idea that promises to throw
light. We have made the antithesis between the life and death-instincts
our point of departure. Object-love itself displays a second such
polarity, that of love (tenderness) and hate (aggression). What if we
could succeed in bringing these two polarities into relation with each
other, in tracing the one to the other! We have long recognised a
sadistic component of the sexual instinct:[30] it can, as we know,
attain independence, and as a perversion, dominate the whole sexual
trend of a person. In one of the organisations which I have termed
‘pregenital’ it appears as a dominating part-instinct. But how is one to
derive the sadistic impulse, which aims at the injury of the object,
from the life-sustaining Eros! Does not the assumption suggest itself
that this sadism is properly a death-instinct which is driven apart from
the ego by the influence of the narcissistic libido, so that it becomes
manifest only in reference to the object? It then enters the service of
the sexual function; at the oral stage of organisation of the libido,
amorous possession is still one and the same as annihilation of the
object; later the sadistic impulse separates itself, and at last at the
stage of the genital primacy it takes over with the aim of propagation
the function of so far overpowering the sex-object as the carrying out
of the sexual act demands. One might even say that the sadism expelled
from the ego has acted as guide to the libidinous components of the
sexual instinct; these later press on towards the object. Where the
original sadism experiences no abatement or fusion, the well-known
hate-love ambivalence of the love-life is set up.
If the above assumption is justifiable then we have met the challenge of
demonstrating an example of a death-instinct—though a displaced one.
This conception, however, is far from being evident, and creates a
frankly mystical impression. We incur the suspicion of having attempted
at all costs to find a way out of an _impasse_. We may appeal against
this verdict by saying that the assumption is no new one, that we have
once before made it when there was no question of an _impasse_. Clinical
observations forced upon us the view that the part-instinct of
masochism, the one complementary to sadism, is to be understood as a
recoil of the sadism on to the ego itself.[31] A turning of the instinct
from the object to the ego is, however, essentially the same as a
turning from the ego to the object, which is just now the new idea in
question. Masochism, the turning of the instinct against the self, would
then be in reality a return to an earlier phase of this, a regression.
The exposition I then gave of masochism needs correction in one respect
as being too exclusive: masochism may also be what I was there concerned
to deny, primary.[32]
Let us return, however, to the life-sustaining sexual instincts. We have
already learned from the investigation of the protozoa that the mingling
of two individuals without consequent partition, just as copulation
between two individuals which soon after separate, has a strengthening
and rejuvenating effect (v. s. Lipschütz). There is no sign of
degeneration in their descendents, and they also seem to have gained the
capacity for withstanding for a longer time the injurious results of
their own metabolism. I think that this one observation may be taken as
a prototype of the effect of sexual intercourse also. But in what way
does the blending of two slightly different cells bring about such a
renewal of life? The experiment which substitutes for conjugation among
protozoa the effect of chemical or even of mechanical stimuli[33] admits
of our giving a reply with certainty: it comes about by the introduction
of new stimulus masses. This is in close agreement with the hypothesis
that the life-process of an individual leads, from internal causes, to
the equalising of chemical tensions: i. e. to death, while union with an
individually different living substance increases these tensions—so to
speak, introduces new vital differentia, which then have to be again
lived out. For this difference between the two there must naturally be
one or more optima. Our recognition that the ruling tendency of psychic
life, perhaps of nerve life altogether, is the struggle for reduction,
keeping at a constant level, or removal of the inner stimulus tension
(the Nirvana-principle, as Barbara Low terms it)—a struggle which comes
to expression in the pleasure-principle—is indeed one of our strongest
motives for believing in the existence of death-instincts.
But the course of our argument is still disturbed by an uneasy feeling
that just in the case of the sexual instinct we are unable to
demonstrate that character of a repetition-compulsion which first put us
on the track of the death-instincts. It is true that the realm of
embryonic developmental processes offers an abundance of such repetition
phenomena—the two germ cells of sexual propagation and their life
history are themselves only repetitions of the beginning of organic
life: but the essential feature in the processes designed by the sexual
instinct is nevertheless the mingling of two cells. Only by this is the
immortality of the living substance among the higher forms of life
assured.
To put it in other words: we have to make enquiry into the origin of
sexual propagation and the source of the sexual instincts in general, a
task before which the lay mind quails and which even specialists have
not yet been able to solve. Let us, therefore, make a condensed
selection from all the conflicting accounts and opinions of whatever can
be brought into relation with our train of thought.
One view deprives the problem of propagation of its mysterious
attraction by representing it as part of the phenomenon of growth
(multiplication by division, germination, budding). The arising of
propagation by means of germ cells sexually differentiated might be
conceived, in accordance with the sober Darwinian mode of thought, as a
way of maintaining and utilising for further development the advantage
of the amphimixis which resulted in the first instance from the
fortuitous conjugation of two protozoa.[34] ‘Sex’ would not thus be of
very ancient origin and the extraordinarily powerful instincts which aim
at bringing about sexual union would thereby repeat something which once
chanced to happen and since became established as being advantageous.
The same question now recurs as arose in respect of death—namely,
whether the protozoa can be credited with anything beyond what they
exhibit, and whether we may assume that forces and processes which
become perceptible only in the case of the higher animals did first
arise in the more primitive. For our purpose the view of sexuality
mentioned above helps very little. The objection may be raised against
it that it presupposes the existence of life-instincts as already
operative in the simplest forms of life, for otherwise conjugation,
which works against the expiration of life and makes the task of dying
harder, would not have been retained and elaborated, but would have been
avoided. If, then, we are not to abandon the hypothesis of
death-instincts maintained, we must associate them with life-instincts
from the beginning. But we must admit that we are working here at an
equation with two unknown quantities. Anything else that science can
tell us of the origin of sexuality amounts to so little that this
problem may be likened to an obscurity into which not even the ray of an
hypothesis has penetrated. In quite another quarter, however, we
encounter such an hypothesis, but it is of so fantastic a kind—assuredly
a myth rather than a scientific explanation—that I should not venture to
bring it forward if it did not exactly fulfil the one condition for the
fulfilment of which we are labouring. That is to say, it derives an
instinct from the _necessity for the reinstatement of an earlier
situation_.
I refer, of course, to the theory that Plato in his Symposium puts into
the mouth of Aristophanes and which deals not only with the origin of
the sexual instinct but also with its most important variations in
relation to the object. ‘Human nature was once quite other than now.
Originally there were three sexes, three and not as to-day two: besides
the male and the female there existed a third sex which had an equal
share in the two first.... In these beings everything was double: thus,
they had four hands and four feet, two faces, two genital parts, and so
on. Then Zeus allowed himself to be persuaded to cut these beings in
two, as one divides pears to stew them.... When all nature was divided
in this way, to each human being came the longing for his own other
half, and the two halves embraced and entwined their bodies _and desired
to grow together again_.’[35]
Are we to follow the clue of the poet-philosopher and make the daring
assumption that living substance was at the time of its animation rent
into small particles, which since that time strive for reunion by means
of the sexual instincts? That these instincts—in which the chemical
affinity of inanimate matter is continued—passing through the realm of
the protozoa gradually overcome all hindrances set to their striving by
an environment charged with stimuli dangerous to life, and are impelled
by it to form a protecting covering layer? And that these dispersed
fragments of living substance thus achieve a multicellular organisation,
and finally transfer to the germ cells in a highly concentrated form the
instinct for reunion? I think this is the point at which to break off.
But not without a few words of critical reflection in conclusion. I
might be asked whether I am myself convinced of the views here set
forward, and if so how far. My answer would be that I am neither
convinced myself, nor am I seeking to arouse conviction in others.
More accurately: I do not know how far I believe in them. It seems to
me that the affective feature ‘conviction’ need not come into
consideration at all here. One may surely give oneself up to a line of
thought, and follow it up as far as it leads, simply out of scientific
curiosity, or—if you prefer—as advocatus diaboli, without, however,
making a pact with the devil about it. I am perfectly aware that the
third step in the theory of instinct which I am taking here cannot
claim the same certainty as the two former ones, viz. the extending of
the conception of sexuality and the establishing of narcissism. These
innovations were direct translations of observation into theory,
subject to no greater sources of error than is inevitable in anything
of the kind. The assertion of the regressive character of instinct
rests also, it is true, on observed material, namely on the facts of
the repetition-compulsion. But perhaps I have over-estimated their
significance. At all events there is no way of working out this idea
except by combining facts with pure imagination many times in
succession, and thereby departing far from observation. We know that
the final result becomes the more untrustworthy the oftener one does
this in the course of building up a theory, but the precise degree of
uncertainty is not ascertainable. One may thereby have made a
brilliant discovery or one may have gone ignominiously astray. In such
work I trust little to so-called intuition: what I have seen of it
seems to me to be the result of a certain impartiality of the
intellect—only that people unfortunately are seldom impartial where
they are concerned with the ultimate things, the great problems of
science and of life. My belief is that there everyone is under the
sway of preferences deeply rooted within, into the hands of which he
unwittingly plays as he pursues his speculation. Where there are such
good grounds for distrust, only a tepid feeling of indulgence is
possible towards the results of one’s own mental labours. But I hasten
to add that such self-criticism does not render obligatory any special
tolerance of divergent opinions. One may inexorably reject theories
that are contradicted by the very first steps in the analysis of
observation and yet at the same time be aware that those one holds
oneself have only a tentative validity. Were we to appraise our
speculations upon the life and death-instincts it would disturb us but
little that so many processes go on which are surprising and hard to
picture, such as one instinct being expelled by others, or turning
from the ego to an object, and so on. This comes only from our being
obliged to operate with scientific terms, i. e. with the metaphorical
expressions peculiar to psychology (or more correctly: psychology of
the deeper layers). Otherwise we should not be able to describe the
corresponding processes at all, nor in fact even to have remarked
them. The shortcomings of our description would probably disappear if
for the psychological terms we could substitute physiological or
chemical ones. These too only constitute a metaphorical language, but
one familiar to us for a much longer time and perhaps also simpler.
On the other hand we wish to make it quite clear that the uncertainty of
our speculation is enhanced in a high degree by the necessity of
borrowing from biological science. Biology is truly a realm of limitless
possibilities; we have the most surprising revelations to expect from
it, and cannot conjecture what answers it will offer in some decades to
the questions we have put to it. Perhaps they may be such as to
overthrow the whole artificial structure of hypotheses. If that is so,
someone may ask why does one undertake such work as the one set out in
this article, and why should it be communicated to the world? Well, I
cannot deny that some of the analogies, relations and connections
therein traced appeared to me worthy of consideration.[36]
VII
If this attempt to reinstate an earlier condition really is so universal
a characteristic of the instincts, we should not find it surprising that
so many processes in the psychic life are performed independently of the
pleasure-principle. This characteristic would communicate itself to
every part-instinct and would in that case concern a harking back to a
definite point on the path of development. But all that the
pleasure-principle has not yet acquired power over is not therefore
necessarily in opposition to it, and we have not yet solved the problem
of determining the relation of the instinctive repetition processes to
the domination of the pleasure-principle.
We have recognised that one of the earliest and most important functions
of the psychic apparatus is to ‘bind’ the instreaming instinctive
excitations, to substitute the ‘secondary process’ for the ‘primary
process’ dominating them, and to transform their freely mobile
energy-charge into a predominantly quiescent (tonic) charge. During this
transformation no attention can be paid to the development of ‘pain’,
but the pleasure-principle is not thereby annulled. On the contrary, the
transformation takes place in the service of the pleasure-principle; the
binding is an act of preparation, which introduces and secures its
sovereignty.
Let us distinguish function and tendency more sharply than we have
hitherto done. The pleasure-principle is then a tendency which subserves
a certain function—namely, that of rendering the psychic apparatus as a
whole free from any excitation, or to keep the amount of excitation
constant or as low as possible. We cannot yet decide with certainty for
either of these conceptions, but we note that the function so defined
would partake of the most universal tendency of all living matter—to
return to the peace of the inorganic world. We all know by experience
that the greatest pleasure it is possible for us to attain, that of the
sexual act, is bound up with the temporary quenching of a greatly
heightened state of excitation. The ‘binding’ of instinct-excitation,
however, would be a preparatory function, which would direct the
excitation towards its ultimate adjustment in the pleasure of discharge.
In the same connection, the question arises whether the sensations of
pleasure and ‘pain’ can emanate as well from the bound as from the
‘unbound’ excitation processes. It appears quite beyond doubt that the
‘unbound’, the primary, processes give rise to much more intense
sensations in both directions than the bound ones, those of the
‘secondary processes’. The primary processes are also the earlier in
point of time; at the beginning of mental life there are no others, and
we may conclude that if the pleasure-principle were not already in
action in respect to them, it would not establish itself in regard to
the later processes. We thus arrive at the result which at bottom is not
a simple one, that the search for pleasure manifests itself with far
greater intensity at the beginning of psychic life than later on, but
less unrestrictedly: it has to put up with repeated breaches. At a
maturer age the dominance of the pleasure-principle is very much more
assured, though this principle as little escapes limitations as all the
other instincts. In any case, whatever it is in the process of
excitation that engenders the sensations of pleasure and ‘pain’ must be
equally in existence when the secondary process is at work as with the
primary process.
This would seem to be the place to institute further studies. Our
consciousness conveys to us from within not only the sensations of
pleasure and ‘pain’, but also those of a peculiar tension, which again
may be either pleasurable or painful in itself. Now is it the ‘bound’
and ‘unbound’ energy processes that we have to distinguish from each
other by the help of these sensations, or is the sensation of tension to
be related to the absolute quantity, perhaps to the level of the charge,
while the pleasure-pain series refers to the changes in the quantity of
charge in the unit of time? We must also be struck with the fact that
the life-instincts have much more to do with our inner perception, since
they make their appearance as disturbers of the peace, and continually
bring along with them states of tension the resolution of which is
experienced as pleasure; while the death-instincts, on the other hand,
seem to fulfil their function unostentatiously. The pleasure-principle
seems directly to subserve the death-instincts; it keeps guard, of
course, also over the external stimuli, which are regarded as dangers by
both kinds of instincts, but in particular over the inner increases in
stimulation which have for their aim the complication of the task of
living. At this point innumerable other questions arise to which no
answer can yet be given. We must be patient and wait for other means and
opportunities for investigation. We must hold ourselves too in readiness
to abandon the path we have followed for a time, if it should seem to
lead to no good result. Only such ‘true believers’ as expect from
science a substitute for the creed they have relinquished will take it
amiss if the investigator develops his views further or even transforms
them.
For the rest we may find consolation in the words of a poet for the slow
rate of progress in scientific knowledge:
Whither we cannot fly, we must go limping.
· · · · ·
The Scripture saith that limping is no sin.[37]
INDEX
Acquired instinctive dispositions, 49.
Adaptation, 52.
Death a phenomenon of, 58.
Ambivalence, hate-love, 69.
Amphimixis, 60, 72.
Anabolic processes, 63.
Angst, 9.
Animalculae, 60, 61.
Anxiety dreams, 38.
Apprehension, 9, 37, 39.
_Aristophanes_, 74.
Barrier against stimuli, 33, 34, 36–7.
Binding, psychical, 30, 34–7, 39, 42, 44, 80–2.
_Breuer, J._, 10, 27, 30, 36, 42.
_Calkins_, 60.
Charge, 34–7, 80, 82.
Breuer’s bound or tonic, 42.
Counter-, 34.
Free-flowing, 36, 42, 80.
of object, 64.
Over-, 37, 39–40.
Quiescent, 35–6, 80.
Children, play of, 11, 16, 43.
Compulsion, 22, 49.
Daemonic, 44.
Destiny-, 24.
Repetition-. _See_ Repetition-compulsion.
to repeat, 44.
Conjugation, 60, 63, 71–3.
Conscious:
Becoming, 27, 28.
ego, 19–20.
impulses, 3.
psychic processes, 32.
The, 19.
Consciousness, 3, 17, 19, 26–9, 47, 82.
Origin of, 28, 30.
Perceptual, 26.
Seat of, 27.
Threshold of, 3.
Conservative:
instincts. _See under_ Instincts.
nature of living beings, 45.
Constancy, principle of, 4.
Daemonic:
character, 43.
compulsion, 44.
Danger, 7, 9, 49, 83.
Death, 47–50, 54–63, 71, 73.
consequence of propagation, 59.
from inner causes, 56, 58.
Goal of. _See under_ Goal.
Impulsion towards, 70.
instincts. _See under_ Instincts.
Natural, 55, 56, 58, 61–2.
of higher animals, 61.
phenomenon of adaptation, 58.
Destiny, 22.
-compulsion, 24.
_Deussen_, 75.
Development, 45, 47, 49–54, 59, 72, 80.
Impulse towards higher, 51.
Libido-, 66.
Organic, 46.
_Doflein, Franz_, 59.
Dreams, 9–10, 37–9, 41, 44.
Anxiety-, 38.
during psycho-analysis, 38.
Function of, 37–8.
in traumatic neuroses, 37–8.
-life, 9.
of shock-patients, 24.
Punishment, 38.
Wish-fulfilment tendency of, 10.
Dualistic standpoint of psycho-analysis, 67.
Dynamic, 1, 19, 53, 57, 62.
Economic, 1, 11, 16, 41, 53.
Ego, 5, 6, 19, 20, 24, 64, 66–70, 75, 78–9.
Analysis of, 68, 69.
Coherent, 19.
-conflict, 39.
Conscious, 19, 20.
-feeling, 20.
instinct. _See under_ Instinct.
Kernel of, 19.
Libidinous components of, 68.
Libido directed towards, 65–6.
Masochistic tendencies of, 10.
Preconscious, 19, 20.
Psychological, 65.
Embryology, 29, 45.
Energy, 5, 31, 36.
Binding of, 36.
Bound, 30, 82.
charges, 34, 35.
Charging, 34.
Free, 30.
Free-flowing, 36, 80.
Instinctive, 67.
Propagation of, 28.
-transformations, 31.
Unbound, 82.
Quiescent, 36, 80.
Eros, 64, 67, 69, 79.
Excitation, 29, 33, 34, 39, 41, 42, 81, 82.
Barrier against, 41.
Bound, 81.
Disturbing, 38.
External, 34.
from within, 32, 33.
Heightened state of, 81.
Inner, 4.
Instinct, 42, 81.
Instinctive, 80.
Mass of, 33, 35, 37.
Quantity of, 2, 3, 81.
Perceptions of, 26.
processes, 25, 27–30, 35.
Propagation of, 28.
Sexual, 39.
Traces of, 27, 30.
Traumatic, 34.
Unbound, 81.
Experiences:
Painful, 6, 13;
repeated as a game, 13, 15, 43.
Pleasurable, 43.
Primary e. of satisfaction, 53.
Repetition of identical, 22, 23.
Revival of past, 20.
Traumatic, 10.
Fate, 22, 23, 24.
Fear, 9.
_Fechner, G. Th._, 3, 4.
Feeling, 2.
Ego-, 20.
Hostile, 15.
of ‘pain’, 26, 33.
of pleasure, 26, 33.
Painful, 20.
Pleasure-pain, 4, 33.
_Ferenczi_, 10, 52.
Fixation, 20.
_Fliess, W._, 56.
Fright, 9, 36, 37.
-neurosis, 9.
Furcht, 9.
Game:
Child’s, 12.
Meaning of, 13.
Painful experience repeated as, 13, 15, 43.
Repetition of, 43.
Genital primacy, 69.
Germ cell, 45, 54, 56, 64, 72, 76.
Narcissistic behaviour of, 63.
Germ-plasm, 57, 58, 62.
Goal, 47, 53.
Life-, 49.
Tendency towards, 4.
of life, 47–9, 51.
of organic striving, 47.
_Goette_, 59.
_Gomperz, Prof. Hein._, 74.
_Hartmann, Max_, 59.
Hate, 68, 69.
Heredity, 45, 57.
_Hering, E._, 62.
‘Hunger and Love’, 65.
Imitation impulse, 16.
Immortality, 50, 54, 56–62, 72.
of protozoa, 60.
of unicellular beings, 59.
Impulse, 7, 14, 22, 51.
Conscious, 3.
Contemned, 38.
Imitation, 16.
Libidinous, 68.
of revenge, 14.
Play, 24.
Repressed, 20.
Sadistic, 69.
Stages of, 51.
towards higher development, 51.
towards perfection, 52–3.
Inertia, in organic life, 45.
Infantile:
influences, 22.
life, 44.
psychic life, 43.
sex-life, 18, 20.
Inferiority complex, 21.
Inheritance tendencies, 73.
Inherited instinctive dispositions, 49.
Instability, conditions of, 3.
Instinct, 5, 6, 41, 46, 48–53, 64–8, 70, 73–4, 77, 79–80, 82–3.
Aim of, 46.
compelling repetition, 46.
Conception of, 44–5.
Conservative, 46, 48;
c. ego-, 54;
c. organic, 47;
c. sexual, 50.
Death-, 54–5, 58–9, 62–3, 67–9, 71–3, 77, 79, 82–3.
Destruction-, 79.
Ego-, 51, 54–5, 64, 66–8, 79;
Libidinous nature of, 79.
Egoistic-, 79.
excitations, 42, 81.
First, 47.
Foregoing the satisfaction of, 13.
for reunion, 76.
Inborn, 5.
Libidinous, 67–8, 79.
Life-, 50–1, 54–5, 57, 62–3, 67–8, 73, 77, 79, 82.
Narcissistic, 79.
Nature of, 44.
Object-, 79.
of self-assertion, 48.
Part-, 48, 69, 70, 80.
Power-, 14, 48.
Regressive character of, 76.
Repression of, 52.
Self-preservative, 5, 48, 49, 64, 66, 67, 68, 79.
Sexual, 49–51, 54, 55, 57, 63–8, 70, 72, 78, 79;
libidinous, 79,
libidinous components of, 69,
origin of, 74.
Theory of, 68, 70, 76.
Two kinds of, 57.
Unsatisfied, 6.
Vital, 63, 64.
Introversion, 66.
Investment-energy, quiescent (bound) and free-moving, 30.
_See_ Charge.
Jealousy, 14, 21, 22.
_Jung, C. G._, 23, 67.
Katabolic processes, 63.
Libido, 64–7, 79.
concept, 65, 70, 79.
development, 66.
directed towards the ego, 65–6.
distribution, 39–40.
Narcissistic, 66–7, 69, 79.
Oral stages of, 69.
quantities, 67.
Reservoir of, 66.
theory, 40, 63, 64, 67.
Life, 47–8, 50, 55, 58, 62, 63.
Beginnings of, 79.
Dawn of, 51.
Forces tending to preserve, 62.
Goal of. _See under_ Goal.
-instincts. _See under_ Instincts.
Instinctive, 62.
Length of, 56.
Love-, 69.
Menace to, 36.
process, 71.
Prolongation of, 54, 58, 63, 73.
Properties of, 47.
Renewal of, 57, 71, 73.
Rhythm in, 50–1.
Stimuli dangerous to, 76.
_Lipschütz, Alex._, 59, 60, 71.
_Loeb, J._, 61.
Love, 21, 68, 69.
_Low, Barbara_, 71.
_Marcinowski_, 21.
Masochistic tendencies of the ego, 10.
Masochism, 70.
primary, 70.
_Maupas_, 60.
Mechanical:
concussion, 39.
force, 39.
shock, 8.
stimuli, 7.
Memory, 22, 28.
-records, 27.
-traces, 27–8;
repressed, 44.
Metabolism, 58, 61, 71.
Metapsychology, 1, 26, 35.
Metazoa, 57.
Multicellular organisms, 57–8, 63, 76.
Narcissism, 68, 76.
Narcissistic:
behaviour of germ cells, 63.
instincts, 79.
libido, 66, 67, 69, 79.
over-charging of the injured part, 39–40.
scar, 20.
Neuroses, 8–9, 18, 39.
Fright-, 9.
Shock, 10.
Theory of the, 49, 50, 64.
Nirvana-principle, 71.
Object, 63–6, 69, 70, 74, 78–9.
Annihilation of, 69.
Charging of, 64.
Injury of, 69.
-instinct, 79.
Libidinous investment of, 66.
-love, 68.
Sex-, 69.
Oedipus complex, 18.
Oral stage of libido, 69.
Organic:
compulsion to repetition, 45.
development, 47.
Pain, 35.
Bodily, 34.
‘Pain’, 1–3, 5–6, 20, 22, 26, 33, 38, 80–2.
Avoidance of, 1, 38.
feelings, 33.
Feelings (_Empfindungen_) of, 26.
Neurotic, 6.
Sensations of, 81.
Part-instinct, 48, 69, 70, 80.
Perfection, impulse towards, 52.
_Pfeifer, S._, 11.
Philosophy, 1, 2, 63, 65.
_Plato_, 74–5.
Play:
-impulse, 24.
of children, 11–16, 43.
Motive of, 16.
Pleasure, 1–6, 11, 15, 16, 22, 26, 33, 38, 52, 81.
Pleasure-pain, 4, 33, 82.
Pleasure-principle, 1–7, 13, 15–16, 20, 24–5, 34, 37–9, 42–4, 71, 80–3.
Beyond the, 16, 24, 38.
Dominance of, 82.
Frustration of, 4–6.
Replaced by reality-principle, 5.
Supremacy of, 3.
Tendencies beyond, 16.
Pleasure-tendency, 4.
Power-instinct, 14.
Preconscious, 19, 41.
ego, 19, 20.
material, 42.
residues, 42.
Pregenital organisation, 69.
Primary:
experience of satisfaction, 53.
Masochism, 70.
process, 80, 81.
Projection, 33.
Propagation, 57–9, 65, 69, 72.
and death, 59.
Death the consequence of, 59.
Function of, 79.
of energy, 28.
Sexual, 60, 72.
Protective barrier, 31, 37, 41, 76.
Protozoa, 55, 58–62, 70–1, 73, 76.
Immortality of, 60.
Psychic:
apparatus, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 26, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 42, 80, 81.
life, 2, 3, 15, 19, 24, 25, 34, 38, 71, 80, 82.
processes, 1, 4, 9, 26;
conscious, 32,
primary, 42,
secondary, 42.
systems, 27, 28, 30, 34, 35, 36.
Punishment dreams, 38.
_Pythagoras_, 75.
_Rank_, 70.
Reaction-formation, 53, 65.
Reality-principle, 5, 7, 20, 42.
Pleasure-principle replaced by, 5.
Regression, 46, 52, 70.
Regressive character of:
ego-instincts, 54.
instincts, 76.
Re-incarnation, 75.
Reinstatement of:
earlier condition, 44, 46, 51, 74, 80.
lifelessness, 54.
Rejuvenation, 60, 63, 71, 73.
Repetition, 18, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 52, 55, 72.
Endless r. of the same, 23.
Instincts compelling, 46.
of identical experiences, 22–3,
processes, 80.
Repetition-compulsion, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 38, 39, 42, 44, 55, 72, 76.
Organic, 45.
Repressed:
impulses, 20.
instinct, 52.
material, 19, 20.
memory-traces, 44.
sex-impulses, 6.
The, 19, 38.
Repressing agency, 65.
Repression, 6, 18, 19, 24, 53.
of instinct, 52.
Reproductive cells, 49, 50, 57.
Resistance, 17, 19, 20, 24, 30, 53.
Retrogression, 51–2.
Return to:
lifelessness, 47.
the inorganic, 48, 81.
_Rückert_, 83.
Sadism, 69, 70.
_Schopenhauer_, 63.
Secondary process, 44, 80, 81, 82.
Self-preservation:
Instinct of, 5, 48, 49, 64, 66, 68, 79.
Libidinous character of, 67.
Sex, 57, 73, 78.
distinction, 51.
impulses, 5;
repressed, 6.
-life, infantile, 18, 20.
-object, 69.
-quest, 21.
Sexuality, 51, 65, 57.
Conception of, 76.
Origin of, 73.
Shock, 36.
-dream, 24.
Dreams of s. patients, 24.
Mechanical, 8.
neuroses, 10.
theory, 36.
_Simmel_, 10.
_Spielrein, Sabina_, 70.
Stability:
Conditions of, 3.
Tendency towards, 4.
_Stärcke, A._, 70.
Stimulation, 83.
Protection against, 30, 32.
Stimuli, 29–34, 37, 41, 50, 52, 76, 83.
Barrier against, 33, 34, 36, 37.
Chemical, 71.
Control of, 37.
dangerous to life, 76.
Defence against, 37.
Mechanical, 71.
Protection against, 31, 33.
Reception of, 29, 31, 32.
Stimulus masses, 31, 34, 71.
Sublimation, 52, 53.
System:
Bw., 26, 28, 29.
W-Bw., 26, 27, 32.
_Tasso_, 23.
Tension, 82.
Unpleasant state of, 1.
Chemical, 71.
Relaxation of, 1, 53.
Trauma, 34, 37, 39.
External, 34.
Fixation on, 10.
Traumatic:
excitation, 34.
experiences, 10.
impressions, 39.
neurosis, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42;
dreams in, 37, 38.
neurosis of peace, 8.
Unconscious, 17, 19, 27.
charges, 41.
mental process ‘timeless’, 32.
processes, 26, 27.
resistances, 19.
Systems, 41–2.
The, 19, 42.
Unicellular beings, 57, 59, 63.
Immortality of, 59.
Upanishads, 75.
Vesicle, 29, 30, 31, 32.
War neuroses, 8, 9, 10, 39.
W-Bw., the system, 26–7, 32.
_Weismann, A._, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 73.
Wish-fulfilment, 37, 38.
tendency of dreams, 10;
prehistoric past of, 38.
_Woodruff_, 59, 60, 61.
_Ziegler, K._, 75.
-----
Footnote 1:
op. cit., p. 90.
Footnote 2:
Cp. Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses, by Ferenczi, Abraham, Simmel
and Ernest Jones; No. 2 of the International Psycho-Analytical
Library, 1921.
Footnote 3:
1919, Bd. V, S. 243.
Footnote 4:
This interpretation was fully established by a further observation.
One day when the mother had been out for some hours she was greeted on
her return by the information ‘Baby o-o-o-o’ which at first remained
unintelligible. It soon proved that during his long lonely hours he
had found a method of bringing about his own disappearance. He had
discovered his reflection in the long mirror which nearly reached to
the ground and had then crouched down in front of it, so that the
reflection was ‘_fort_’.
Footnote 5:
When the child was five and three-quarter years old his mother died.
Now, when she was really ‘gone’ (o-o-o), the boy showed no grief for
her. A second child had, it is true, been born in the meantime and had
aroused his strongest jealousy.
Footnote 6:
Cp. ‘Eine Kindheitserinnerung aus “Dichtung und Wahrheit”.’ _Imago_,
1917, Bd. V, S. 49.
Footnote 7:
See ‘Zur Technik der Psychoanalyse. II. Erinnern, Wiederholen und
Durcharbeiten.’ Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. IV.
Folge, 1918, S. 441.
Footnote 8:
Marcinowski: ‘Die erotischen Quellen der Minderwertigkeitsgefühle’,
_Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, 1918, IV.
Footnote 9:
Cp. the pertinent observations of C. G. Jung in his article ‘Die
Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen’. _Jahrbuch für
psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen_, 1901, Bd. I.
Footnote 10:
Thus named after the German words _Wahrnehmung_ (= perception) and
_Bewußtsein_ (= consciousness).
Footnote 11:
Here I follow throughout J. Breuer’s exposition in the theoretical
section of the ‘Studien über Hysterie’, 1895.
Footnote 12:
J. Breuer and S. Freud: Studien über Hysterie.
Footnote 13:
Cp. ‘Triebe und Triebschicksale’, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur
Neurosenlehre. IV. Folge, 1918.
Footnote 14:
Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses. Introduction. International
Psycho-Analytical Library. No. 2, 1921.
Footnote 15:
Cp. Section VII, ‘Psychology of the Dream-Processes’ in my
‘Traumdeutung’.
Footnote 16:
I have little doubt that similar conjectures about the nature of
instinct have been already repeatedly put forward.
Footnote 17:
Compare the subsequent criticism of this extreme view of the
self-preservative instincts.
Footnote 18:
By a different route Ferenczi has arrived at the possibility of this
conception. (‘Stages of Development in the Sense of Reality’. Ch. VIII
of his Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, 1916.) He writes: ‘By
following through this process of thought logically one is obliged to
gain familiarity with the idea of a tendency to persistence or
regression governing organic life also, while the tendency to progress
in development, adaptation, etc. is manifested only as against
external stimuli.’
Footnote 19:
Über die Dauer des Lebens, 1882; Über Leben und Tod, 2. Aufl., 1892;
Das Keimplasma, 1892, etc.
Footnote 20:
Über Leben und Tod, 2. Aufl., S. 20.
Footnote 21:
Über die Dauer des Lebens, S. 38.
Footnote 22:
Über Leben und Tod, 2. Aufl., S. 67.
Footnote 23:
Über die Dauer des Lebens, S. 33.
Footnote 24:
Über Leben und Tod. Conclusion.
Footnote 25:
Cp. Max Hartmann: Tod und Fortpflanzung, 1906; Alex. Lipschütz: ‘Warum
wir sterben’, _Kosmosbücher_, 1914; Franz Doflein: Das Problem des
Todes und der Unsterblichkeit bei den Pflanzen und Tieren, 1919.
Footnote 26:
Hartmann: loc. cit., S. 29.
Footnote 27:
For this and what follows see Lipschütz: Loc. cit., S. 26 and 52 ff.
Footnote 28:
‘Über die anscheinende Absichtlichkeit im Schicksale des Einzelnen’.
Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Auflage, Bd. IV, S. 268.
Footnote 29:
‘Zur Einführung des Narzissmus’, _Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse_, Bd. VI,
1914, and Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, IV. Folge,
1918.
Footnote 30:
Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, from the First Edition, 1905,
onwards.
Footnote 31:
See Sexualtheorie, 4. Aufl., 1920, and ‘Triebe und Triebschicksale’ in
Sammlung kleiner Schriften, IV. Folge.
Footnote 32:
A considerable part of this speculation has been anticipated in a work
which is full of valuable matter and ideas but is unfortunately not
entirely clear to me: (Sabina Spielrein: ‘Die Destruktion als Ursache
des Werdens’, _Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse_, IV, 1912). She designates
the sadistic component as ‘destructive’. In still another way A.
Stärcke (Inleiding by de vertaling von S. Freud, De sexuele
beschavingsmoral etc., 1914) has attempted to identify the libido
concept itself with the biological concept of an impulsion towards
death which is to be assumed on theoretical grounds (Cp. also Rank:
‘Der Künstler’). All these attempts, as the one in the text, indicate
how much the need is felt for a clarification in the theory of
instinct which we do not yet possess.
Footnote 33:
loc. cit.
Footnote 34:
Although Weismann (Das Keimplasma, 1892) denies even this advantage:
‘Fertilisation in no way signifies a rejuvenation or renewing of
life,—it is in no way necessary for the prolongation of life; it is
nothing but a device for making possible the blending of two different
inheritance tendencies.’ Still, he considers an increase of
variability in living organisms to be the result of such blending.
Footnote 35:
I am indebted to Prof. Heinrich Gomperz of Vienna for the following
indications as to the origin of the Platonic myth, which I repeat
partly in his own words: I should like to call attention to the fact
that essentially the same theory is also to be found in the
Upanishads. The Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad 1, 4, 3 (Deussen, 60
Upanishads des Veda, S. 393), where the creation of the world from the
Âtman (the self or ego) is described, has the following passage ‘Nor
did he (the Âtman, the self or ego) experience any joy, and for that
reason no one has joy when he is alone. So he longed for a partner. He
was as big as a woman and a man together when they embrace. He divided
himself into two parts, which made a husband and a wife. This body is
therefore one half of the self, according to Yajnavalkya. And for the
same reason this empty space here becomes filled by the woman.’
The Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad is the oldest of all the Upanishads, and
no expert authority would date it later than 800 B.C. In opposition to
the prevailing opinion I should not like definitely to deny the
possibility of Plato having been dependent, even though very
indirectly, on these Indian thoughts, for this possibility cannot be
absolutely put aside even for the doctrine of re-incarnation. A
dependence of this sort, first conveyed through Pythagoras, would
scarcely detract from the significance of the coincidence in thought,
for Plato would not have adopted any such story conveyed in some way
from Oriental traditions, let alone have given it such an important
place, had he not himself felt the truth contained in it to be
illuminating.
In an article by K. Ziegler (‘Menschen- und Weltwerden’, _Neue
Fahrbücher für das klassische Altertum_, 1913, Band XXXI), which
contains a systematic investigation of the thought in question, it is
traced back to Babylonian ideas.
Footnote 36:
I would here subjoin a few words to clarify our nomenclature, one
which has undergone a certain development in the course of our
discussion. What ‘sexual instincts’ are, we knew through their
relation to the sexes and to the function of propagation. We then
retained this term when the findings of psycho-analysis compelled us
to regard its relation to propagation as less close. With the
discovery of narcissistic libido, and the extension of the libido
concept to the individual cells, the sexual instinct became for us
transformed into the Eros that endeavours to impel the separate parts
of living matter to one another and to hold them together; what is
commonly called the sexual instinct appears as that part of the Eros
that is turned towards the object. Our speculation then supposes that
this Eros is at work from the beginnings of life, manifesting itself
as the ‘life-instinct’ in contradistinction to the ‘death-instinct’
which developed through the animation of the inorganic. It endeavours
to solve the riddle of life by the hypothesis of these two instincts
striving with each other from the very beginning. The transformation
which the concept of the ‘ego-instincts’ has undergone is perhaps
harder to review. Originally we applied this term to all those
instinct-directions—not better known to us—which can be distinguished
from the sexual instincts that have the object as their aim, thus
contrasting the ego-instincts with the sexual ones, the expression of
which is the libido. Later on we approached the analysis of the ego
and saw that a part also of the ‘ego-instincts’ is of a libidinous
nature, having taken its own self as an object. These narcissistic
instincts of self-preservation therefore had now to be reckoned to the
libidinous sexual instincts. The contrast between egoistic and sexual
instincts was now converted into one between egoistic and
object-instincts, both libidinous in nature. In its place, however,
arose a new contrast between libidinous (ego and object) instincts and
others whose existence can be determined in the ego and can perhaps be
detected in the destruction-instincts. Speculation transforms this
contrast into that of life-instincts (Eros) and death-instincts.
Footnote 37:
Rückert in the ‘Makamen des Hariri.’
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