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Title: Collected papers, Volume III
Author: Sigmund Freud
Editor: Ernest Jones
Translator: Alix Strachey
James Strachey
Release date: November 1, 2026 [eBook #79893]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Hogarth Press, 1925
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79893
Credits: Stephen M. Kraus at https://readfreud.org/ (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLLECTED PAPERS, VOLUME III ***
THE INTERNATIONAL {1}
PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL
LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST JONES
No. 9
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL LIBRARY {3}
No. 9.
COLLECTED PAPERS
VOL. III
BY
SIGM. FREUD, M.D., LL.D.
*
CASE HISTORIES
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY
ALIX AND JAMES STRACHEY
PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF AT THE
HOGARTH PRESS, 52 TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.
AND THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
MCMXXV
----------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT 1925 {4}
Printed in Great Britain by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
COLLECTED PAPERS {5}
VOL. III
CASE HISTORIES
----------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSLATORS’ NOTE {7}
The translations in this volume are based upon the revised text
prepared by the author for the German Collected Edition of his works
(now in course of publication by the Internationaler
Psychoanalytischer Verlag in Vienna), of which the present five papers
constitute the eighth volume. A comparison with earlier German
editions will reveal some trifling corrections in the text and a few
additional footnotes. To avoid burdening the footnotes with
unnecessary details, we have added at the end of the book a list
giving bibliographical particulars of the works referred to in it
(other than those actually translated in the present volumes).
We owe our thanks to Fräulein Anna Freud and to the General Editor
(Dr. Ernest Jones) for reading through the whole of our manuscript and
making many important corrections and suggestions. We have also had
the advantage of being able to refer a large number of doubtful points
to Professor Freud’s own decision.
A. S.
J. S.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS OF VOLUME III {9}
PAGE
TRANSLATORS’ NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
I. FRAGMENT OF AN ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA (1905)
Prefatory Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
I. The Clinical Picture . . . . . . . . . . . 22
II. The First Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
III. The Second Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
IV. Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
II. ANALYSIS OF A PHOBIA IN A FIVE-YEAR-OLD BOY (1909)
I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
II. Case History and Analysis . . . . . . . . . 165
III. Epicrisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
III. NOTES UPON A CASE OF OBSESSIONAL NEUROSIS (1909)
I. Extracts from the Case History . . . . . . . . 296
(a) The Beginning of the Treatment . . . . . . 297
(b) Infantile Sexuality . . . . . . . . . . 298
(c) The Great Obsessive Fear . . . . . . . . 303
(d) Initiation into the Nature of the Treatment . . 312
(e) Some Obsessional Ideas and their Explanation . 324
(f) The Exciting Cause of the Illness . . . . . 333
(g) The Father Complex and the Solution of the Rat
Idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
II. Theoretical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
(a) Some General Characteristics of Obsessional
Formations . . . . . . . . . . . 357
(b) Some Psychological Peculiarities of Obsessional
Neurotics: their Attitude towards Reality,
Superstition and Death . . . . . . . 365
(c) The Instinctual Life of Obsessional Neurotics,
and the Origins of Compulsion and Doubt . . 372
IV. PSYCHO-ANALYTIC NOTES UPON AN AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT OF
A CASE OF PARANOIA (DEMENTIA PARANOIDES) (1911)
I. Case History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
II. Attempts at Interpretation . . . . . . . . . 417
III. On the Mechanism of Paranoia . . . . . . . . 444
Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
V. FROM THE HISTORY OF AN INFANTILE NEUROSIS (1918)
I. Introductory Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . 473
II. Survey of the Patient’s Environment and of
the History of the Case . . . . . . . . . 480
III. The Seduction and its Immediate Consequences . . . 486
IV. The Dream and the Primal Scene . . . . . . . . 498
V. A few Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
VI. The Obsessional Neurosis . . . . . . . . . . 535
VII. Anal Erotism and the Castration Complex . . . . . 548
VIII. Fresh Material from the Primal Period—Solution . . 568
IX. Recapitulations and Problems . . . . . . . . 585
LIST OF BOOKS AND PAPERS REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT . . . . . . 606
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I {11}
FRAGMENT OF AN ANALYSIS
OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA
(1905)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
FRAGMENT OF AN ANALYSIS {13}
OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA[1]
PREFATORY REMARKS
In 1895 and 1896 I put forward certain views upon the pathogenesis of
hysterical symptoms and upon the mental processes occurring in
hysteria. Since that time several years have passed. In now proposing,
therefore, to substantiate those views by giving a detailed report of
the history of a case and its treatment, I cannot avoid making a few
introductory remarks, for the purpose partly of justifying from
various points of view the step I am taking, and partly of diminishing
the expectations to which it will give rise.
Certainly it was awkward that I was obliged to publish the results of
my inquiries without there being any possibility of other specialists
testing and checking them, particularly as those results were of a
surprising and by no means gratifying character. But it will be
scarcely less awkward now that I am beginning to bring forward some of
the material upon which my conclusions were based and make it
accessible to the judgement of the world. I shall not escape blame by
this means. Only, whereas before I was accused of giving no
information about my patients, now I shall be accused of giving
information about my patients which ought not to be given. I can only
hope that in both cases the critics will be the same, and that they
will merely have shifted the pretext for their reproaches; {14} if
so, I can resign in advance any possibility of ever removing their
objections.
Even if I ignore the ill-will of narrow-minded critics such as these,
the presentation of my case histories remains a problem which is hard
for me to solve. The difficulties are partly of a technical kind, but
are partly due to the nature of the circumstances themselves. If it is
true that the causes of hysterical disorders are to be found in the
intimacies of the patients’ psycho-sexual life, and that hysterical
symptoms are the expression of their most secret and repressed wishes,
then the complete exposition of a case of hysteria is bound to involve
the revelation of those intimacies and the betrayal of those
secrets. It is certain that the patients would never have spoken if it
had occurred to them that their admissions might possibly be put to
scientific uses; and it is equally certain that to ask them themselves
for leave to publish their case would be quite unavailing. In such
circumstances persons of delicacy, as well as those who were merely
timid, would give first place to the duty of medical discretion and
would declare with regret that the matter was one upon which they
could offer science no enlightenment. But in my opinion the physician
has taken upon himself duties not only towards the individual patient
but towards science as well; and his duties towards science mean
ultimately nothing else than his duties towards the many other
patients who are suffering or will some day suffer from the same
disorder. Thus it becomes the physician’s duty to publish what he
believes he knows of the causes and structure of hysteria, and it
becomes a disgraceful piece of cowardice on his part to neglect doing
so, as long as he can avoid causing direct personal injury to the
single patient concerned. I think I have taken every precaution to
prevent my patient from suffering any such injury. I have picked out a
person the scenes of whose life were laid not in Vienna but in a
remote provincial town, and whose personal {15} circumstances must
therefore be practically unknown in Vienna. I have from the very
beginning kept the fact of her being under my treatment such a careful
secret that only one other physician---and one in whose discretion I
have complete confidence---can be aware that the girl was a patient of
mine. I have waited for four whole years since the end of the
treatment and have postponed publication till hearing that a change
has taken place in the patient’s life of such a character as allows me
to suppose that her own interest in the occurrences and psychological
events which are to be related here may now have grown faint. Needless
to say, I have allowed no name to stand which could put a non-medical
reader upon the scent; and the publication of the case in a purely
scientific and technical periodical should, further, afford a
guarantee against unauthorized readers of this sort. I naturally
cannot prevent the patient herself from being pained if her own case
history should accidentally fall into her hands. But she will learn
nothing from it that she does not already know; and she may ask
herself who besides her could discover from it that she is the subject
of this paper.
I am aware that---in this town, at least---there are many physicians
who (revolting though it may seem) choose to read a case history of
this kind not as a contribution to the psychopathology of neuroses,
but as a _roman à clef_ designed for their private delectation. I can
assure readers of this species that every case history which I may
have occasion to publish in the future will be secured against their
perspicacity by similar guarantees of secrecy, even though this
resolution is bound to put quite extraordinary restrictions upon my
choice of material.
Now in this case history---the only one which I have hitherto
succeeded in forcing through the limitations imposed by medical
discretion and unfavourable circumstances---sexual questions will be
discussed with all possible frankness, the organs and functions of
{16} sexual life will be called by their proper names, and the
pure-minded reader can convince himself from my description that I
have not hesitated to converse upon such subjects in such language
even with a young woman. Am I, then, to defend myself upon this score
as well? I will simply claim for myself the rights of the
gynaecologist---or rather much more modest ones---and add that it
would be the mark of a singular and perverse prurience to suppose that
conversations of this kind are a good means of exciting or of
gratifying sexual desires. For the rest, I feel inclined to express my
opinion on this subject in a few borrowed words:
‘It is deplorable to have to make room for protestations and
declarations of this sort in a scientific work; but let no one
reproach me on this account but rather accuse the spirit of the age,
owing to which we have reached a happy state of things in which no
serious book can any longer be sure of its existence.’[2]
I will now describe the way in which I have overcome the technical
difficulties of drawing up the report of this case history. The
difficulties are very considerable when the physician has to conduct
six or eight psychotherapeutic treatments of the sort in a day, and
cannot make notes during the actual sitting with the patient for fear
of shaking the patient’s confidence and of disturbing his own view of
the material under observation. Indeed, I have not yet succeeded in
solving the problem of how to record for publication the history of a
treatment of long duration. As regards the present case, two
circumstances have come to my assistance. In the first place the
treatment did not last for more than three months; and in the second
place the material which elucidated the case was grouped around two
dreams (one related in the middle of the treatment and one at the
end). The wording of these dreams was recorded immediately after the
sitting, and they thus afforded a secure point {17} of attachment for
the chain of interpretations and recollections which proceeded from
them. The case history itself was only committed to writing from
memory, after the treatment was at an end, but while my recollection
of the case was still fresh and was heightened by my interest in its
publication. Thus the record is not absolutely --- phonographically
--- exact, but it can claim to possess a high degree of
trustworthiness. Nothing of any importance has been altered in it
except in several places the order in which the explanations are
given; and this has been done for the sake of presenting the case in a
more connected form.
I next proceed to mention more particularly what is to be found in
this paper and what is not to be found in it. The title of the work
was originally ‘Dreams and Hysteria’, for it seemed to me peculiarly
well-adapted for showing how dream-interpretation is woven into the
history of a treatment and how it can become the means of filling in
amnesias and elucidating symptoms. It was not without good reasons
that in the year 1900 I gave precedence to a laborious and thorough
study of dreams[3] over the publications upon the psychology of
neuroses which I had in view. And incidentally I was able to judge
from its reception with what an inadequate degree of comprehension
such efforts are met by other specialists at the present time. In this
instance there was no validity in the objection that the material upon
which I had based my assertions had been withheld and that it was
therefore impossible to become convinced of their truth by testing and
checking them. For every one can submit his own dreams to analytic
examination, and the technique of interpreting dreams may be easily
learnt from the instructions and examples which I have given. I must
once more insist, just as I did at that time, that a thorough
investigation of the problems of dreams is an indispensable
pre-requisite {18} for any comprehension of the mental processes in
hysteria and the other psychoneuroses, and that no one who wishes to
shirk that preparatory labour has the smallest prospect of advancing
even a few steps into this region of knowledge. Since, therefore, this
case history presupposes a knowledge of the interpretation of dreams,
it will seem highly unsatisfactory to any reader to whom this
presupposition does not apply. Such a reader will find only
bewilderment in these pages instead of the enlightenment he is in
search of, and he will certainly be inclined to project the cause of
his bewilderment on to the author and to pronounce his views
fantastic. But in reality this bewildering character attaches to the
phenomena of the neurosis itself; its presence there is only concealed
by the physician’s familiarity with the facts, and it comes to light
again with every attempt at explaining them. It could only be
completely banished if we could succeed in tracing back every single
element of a neurosis to factors with which we were already
familiar. But everything tends to show that, on the contrary, we shall
be driven by the study of neuroses to assume the existence of many new
things which will later on gradually become the subject of more
certain knowledge. What is new has always aroused bewilderment and
resistance.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to suppose that dreams and their
interpretation occupy such a prominent position in all psycho-analyses
as they do in this example.
While the case history before us seems particularly favoured as
regards the utilization of dreams, in other respects it has turned out
poorer than I could have wished. But its shortcomings are connected
with the very circumstances which have made its publication
possible. As I have already said, I should not have known how to deal
with the material involved in the history of a treatment which had
lasted, perhaps, for a whole year. The present history, which covers
only {19} three months, could be recollected and reviewed; but its
results remain incomplete in more than one respect. The treatment was
not carried through to its appointed end, but was broken off at the
patient’s own wish when it had reached a certain point. At that time
some of the problems of the case had not even been attacked and others
had only been imperfectly elucidated; whereas, if the work had been
continued, we should no doubt have obtained the fullest possible
enlightenment upon every particular of the case. In the following
pages, therefore, I can present only a fragment of an analysis.
Readers who are familiar with the technique of analysis as it was
expounded in the _Studien über Hysterie_ will perhaps be surprised
that it should not have been possible in three months to find a
complete solution at least for those of the symptoms which were taken
in hand. This will become intelligible when I explain that since the
date of the _Studien_ psycho-analytic technique has been completely
revolutionized. At that time the work of analysis started out from the
symptoms, and aimed at clearing them up one after the other. Since
then I have abandoned that technique, because I found it totally
inadequate for dealing with the finer structure of a neurosis. I now
let the patient himself choose the subject of the day’s work, and in
that way I start out from whatever surface his unconscious happens to
be presenting to his notice at the moment. But on this plan everything
that has to do with the clearing-up of a particular symptom emerges
piecemeal, woven into various contexts, and distributed over widely
separated periods of time. In spite of this apparent disadvantage, the
new technique is far superior to the old, and indeed there can be no
doubt that it is the only possible one.
In the face of the incompleteness of my analytic results, I had no
choice but to follow the example of those discoverers whose good
fortune it is to bring to the light of day after their long burial the
priceless {20} though mutilated relics of antiquity. I have restored
what is missing, taking the best models known to me from other
analyses; but like a conscientious archaeologist I have not omitted to
mention in each case where the authentic parts end and my
constructions begin.
There is another kind of incompleteness which I myself have
intentionally introduced. I have as a rule not reproduced the process
of interpretation to which the patient’s associations and
communications had to be subjected, but only the results of that
process. Apart from the dreams, therefore, the technique of the
analytic work has been revealed in only a very few places. My object
in this case history was to demonstrate the intimate structure of a
neurotic disorder and the determination of its symptoms; and it would
have led to nothing but hopeless confusion if I had tried to complete
the other task at the same time. Before the technical rules, most of
which have been arrived at empirically, could be properly laid down,
it would be necessary to collect material from the histories of a
large number of treatments. Nevertheless, the degree of shortening
produced by the omission of the technique is not to be exaggerated in
this particular case. Precisely that portion of the technical work
which is the most difficult never came into question with this
patient; for the factor of ‘transference’, which is discussed at the
end of the case history, did not succeed in developing during the
short treatment.
For a third kind of incompleteness in this report neither the patient
nor the author is responsible. It is, on the contrary, obvious that a
single case history, even if it were complete and open to no doubt,
cannot provide an answer to all the questions arising out of the
problem of hysteria. It cannot give an insight into all the types of
this disorder, into all the forms of internal structure of the
neurosis, into all the possible kinds of relation between the mental
and the {21} somatic which are to be found in hysteria. It is not
fair to expect from a single case more than it can offer. And any one
who has hitherto been unwilling to believe that a psycho-sexual
aetiology holds good generally and without exception for hysteria is
scarcely likely to be convinced of the fact by taking stock of a
single case history. He would do better to suspend his judgement until
his own work has earned him the right to be convinced.[4]
I {22}
THE CLINICAL PICTURE
In my _Traumdeutung_, published in 1900, I showed that dreams in
general can be interpreted, and that after the work of interpretation
has been completed they can be replaced by perfectly correctly
constructed thoughts which find a recognizable position in the texture
of the mind. I wish to give an example in the following pages of the
only practical application of which the art of interpreting dreams
seems to admit. I have already mentioned in my book[5] how it was that
I came upon the problem of dreams. The problem crossed my path as I
was endeavouring to cure psychoneuroses by means of a particular
psychotherapeutic method. For besides the other events of their mental
life, my patients told me their dreams, and these dreams seemed to
require insertion in the long thread of connections which spun itself
out between a symptom of the disease and a pathogenic idea. At that
time I learnt how to translate the language of dreams into the forms
of expression of our own thought-language, which can be understood
without further help. And I may add that this knowledge is essential
for the psycho-analyst; for the dream is one of the roads along which
consciousness can be reached by the mental material which, on account
of the opposition aroused by its content, has been cut off from
consciousness and repressed, and has thus become pathogenic. The
dream, in short, is one of the _détours by which repression can be
evaded_; it is one of the principal means employed by what is known as
the indirect method of representation in the mind. The {23} following
fragment from the history of the treatment of a hysterical girl is
intended to show the way in which the interpretation of dreams plays a
part in the work of analysis. It will at the same time give me a first
opportunity of publishing at sufficient length to prevent further
misunderstanding some of my views upon the mental processes of
hysteria and upon its organic determinants. I need no longer apologize
on the score of length, since it is now agreed that the exacting
demands which hysteria makes upon physician and investigator can be
met only by the most sympathetic spirit of inquiry and not by an
attitude of superiority and contempt. For,
‘Nicht Kunst und Wissenschaft allein,
Geduld will bei dem Werke sein!’[6]
-----------------------------
If I were to begin by giving a full and consistent case history, it
would place the reader in a very different situation from that of the
medical observer. The reports of the patient’s relatives---in the
present case I was given one by the eighteen-year-old girl’s
father---usually give a very indistinct picture of the course of the
illness. I begin the treatment, indeed, by asking the patient to give
me the whole story of his life and illness, but even so the
information I receive is never enough to let me see my way about the
case. This first account may be compared to an unnavigable river whose
stream is at one moment choked by masses of rock and at another
divided and lost among shallows and sandbanks. I cannot help wondering
how it is that the authorities can produce such smooth and exact
histories in cases of hysteria. As a matter of fact the patients are
incapable of giving such reports about themselves. They can, indeed,
give the physician {24} plenty of coherent information about this or
that period of their lives; but it is sure to be followed by another
period in which their communications run dry, leaving gaps unfilled,
and riddles unanswered; and then again will come yet another period
which will remain totally obscure and unilluminated by even a single
piece of serviceable information. The connections---even the
ostensible ones---are for the most part incoherent, and the sequence
of different events is uncertain. Even during the course of their
story patients will repeatedly correct a particular or a date, and
then perhaps, after wavering for some time, return to their first
version. The patients’ inability to give an ordered history of their
life in so far as it coincides with the history of their illness is
not merely characteristic of the neurosis.[7] It also possesses great
theoretical significance. For this inability has the following
grounds. In the first place, patients consciously and intentionally
keep back part of what they ought to tell---things that are perfectly
well known to them---because they have not got over their feelings of
timidity and shame (or discretion, where what they say concerns other
people); this is the share taken by conscious disingenuousness. In the
second place, part of the anamnestic knowledge, which the patients
have at their disposal at other times, disappears while they are
actually telling their story, but without their making any deliberate
reservations: the share taken by unconscious disingenuousness. In the
third place, there are invariably true amnesias---gaps in the memory
into which not only old recollections but even quite recent ones have
fallen---and paramnesias, {25} formed secondarily so as to fill in
those gaps.[8] When the events themselves have been kept in mind, the
purpose underlying the amnesias can be fulfilled just as surely by
destroying a connection, and a connection is most surely broken by
altering the chronological order of events. This last function always
proves to be the most vulnerable element in the stores of memory and
the one which is most easily subject to repression. We meet with many
recollections that are in what might be described as the first stage
of repression, and these we find surrounded with doubts. At a later
period the doubts would be replaced by a loss or a falsification of
memory.[9]
That this state of affairs should exist in regard to the memories
relating to the history of the illness is _a necessary correlate of
the symptoms and one which is theoretically requisite_. In the further
course of the treatment the patient supplies the facts which, though
he had known them all along, had been kept back by him or had not
occurred to his mind. The paramnesias prove untenable, and the gaps in
his memory are filled in. It is only towards the end of the treatment
that we have before us an intelligible, consistent, and unbroken case
history. Whereas the practical aim of the treatment is to remove all
possible symptoms and to replace them by conscious thoughts, we may
regard it as a second and theoretical aim to repair all the damages to
the patient’s memory. These two aims are coincident. When one is
reached, so is the other; and the same path leads to them both.
It follows from the nature of the facts which form the material of
psycho-analysis that we are obliged to pay as much attention in our
case histories to the purely {26} human and social circumstances of
our patients as to the somatic data and the symptoms of the
disorder. Above all, our interest will be directed towards their
family circumstances---and not only, as will be seen later, for the
purpose of inquiring into their heredity.
The family circle of the eighteen-year-old girl who is the subject of
this paper included, besides herself, her two parents and a brother
who was one and a half years her senior. Her father was the dominating
figure in this circle, owing to his intelligence and his character as
much as to the circumstances of his life. It was those circumstances
which provided the framework for the history of the patient’s
childhood and illness. At the time at which I began the girl’s
treatment her father was in the late forties, a man of rather unusual
activity and talents, a large manufacturer in very comfortable
circumstances. His daughter was most tenderly attached to him, and for
that reason her critical powers, which developed early, took all the
more offence at many of his actions and peculiarities.
Her affection for him was still further increased by the many severe
illnesses which he had been through since her sixth year. At that time
he had fallen ill with tuberculosis and the family had consequently
moved to a small town in a good climate, situated in one of our
southern provinces. There his lung trouble rapidly improved; but, on
account of the precautions which were still considered necessary, both
parents and children continued for the next ten years or so to reside
chiefly in this spot, which I shall call B⸺. When her father’s health
was good, he used at times to be away, on visits to his
factories. During the hottest part of the summer the family used to
move to a health-resort in the hills.
When the girl was about ten years old, her father had to go through a
course of treatment in a darkened room on account of a detached
retina. As a result of this misfortune his vision was permanently
impaired. His gravest illness occurred some two years later. It took
the form of a confusional attack, followed by {27} symptoms of
paralysis and slight mental disturbances. A friend of his (who plays a
part in the story with which we shall be concerned later on) persuaded
him, while his condition had scarcely improved, to travel to Vienna
with his physician and come to me for advice. I hesitated for some
time as to whether I ought not to regard the case as one of
tabo-paralysis, but I finally decided upon a diagnosis of a diffuse
vascular affection; and since the patient admitted having had a
specific infection before his marriage, I prescribed an energetic
course of anti-luetic treatment, as a result of which all the
remaining disturbances passed off. It is no doubt owing to this
fortunate intervention of mine that four years later he brought his
daughter, who had meanwhile grown unmistakably neurotic, and
introduced her to me, and that after another two years he handed her
over to me for psychotherapeutic treatment.
I had in the meantime also made the acquaintance in Vienna of a sister
of his, who was a little older than himself. She gave clear evidence
of a severe form of psychoneurosis without any characteristically
hysterical symptoms. After a life which had been weighed down by an
unhappy marriage, she died of a marasmus which made rapid advances and
the symptoms of which were, as a matter of fact, never fully cleared
up. An elder brother of the girl’s father, whom I once happened to
meet, was a hypochondriacal bachelor.
The sympathies of the girl herself, who, as I have said, became my
patient at the age of eighteen, had always been with the father’s side
of the family, and ever since she had fallen ill she had taken as her
model the aunt who has just been mentioned. There could be no doubt,
too, that it was from her father’s family that she had derived not
only her natural gifts and her intellectual precocity but also the
predisposition to her illness. I never made her mother’s
acquaintance. From the accounts given me by the girl and her father I
was led to imagine her as an uncultivated woman and above all as a
foolish one, who had concentrated all {28} her interests upon
domestic affairs, especially since her husband’s illness and the
estrangement to which it led. She presented the picture, in fact, of
what might be called the ‘housewife’s psychosis’. She had no
understanding for her children’s more active interests, and was
occupied all day long in cleaning the house with its furniture and
utensils and in keeping them clean---to such an extent as to make it
almost impossible to use or enjoy them. This condition, traces of
which are to be found often enough in normal housewives, inevitably
reminds one of forms of obsessional washing and other kinds of
obsessional cleanliness. But such women (and this applied to the
patient’s mother) are entirely without insight into their illness, so
that one essential characteristic of an ‘obsessional neurosis’ is
lacking. The relations between the girl and her mother had been
unfriendly for years. The daughter looked down on her mother and used
to criticize her mercilessly, and she had withdrawn completely from
her influence.[10]
{29}
During the girl’s earlier years, her only brother (her elder brother
by a year and a half) had been the model which her ambitions had
striven to follow. But in the last few years the relations between the
brother and sister had grown more distant. The young man used to try
so far as he could to keep out of the family disputes; but when he was
obliged to take sides he would support his mother. So that the usual
sexual attraction had drawn together the father and daughter on the
one side and the mother and son on the other.
The patient, to whom I shall in future give the name of Dora, had even
at the age of eight begun to develop neurotic symptoms. She became
subject at that time to chronic dyspnoea with occasional accesses
during which the symptom was very much aggravated. The first onset
occurred after a short expedition in the mountains and was accordingly
put down to over-exertion. In the course of six months, during which
she was made to rest and was carefully looked after, this condition
gradually passed off. The family doctor seems to have had not a
moment’s hesitation in diagnosing the disorder as purely nervous and
in excluding any organic cause for the dyspnoea; but he evidently
considered this diagnosis compatible with the aetiology of
over-exertion.[11]
The little girl went through the usual infectious diseases of
childhood without suffering any permanent damage. As she herself told
me---and her words were intended to convey a deeper meaning---her
brother was as a rule the first to start the illness and used to have
it very slightly, and she would then follow suit with a severe form of
it. When she was about twelve she began to suffer from hemicranial
headaches in the nature of a migraine, and from attacks of nervous
coughing. At first these two symptoms always appeared {30} together,
but they became separated later on and ran different courses. The
migraine grew rarer, and by the time she was sixteen she had quite got
over it. But attacks of _tussis nervosa_, which had no doubt been
started by a common catarrh, continued to occur over the whole
period. When, at the age of eighteen, she came to me for treatment,
she was again coughing in a characteristic manner. The number of these
attacks could not be determined; but they lasted from three to five
weeks, and on one occasion for several months. The most troublesome
symptom during the first half of an attack of this kind, at all events
in the last few years, used to be a complete loss of voice. The
diagnosis that this was once more a nervous complaint had been
established long since; but the various methods of treatment which are
usual, including hydrotherapy and the local application of
electricity, had produced no result. It was in such circumstances as
these that the child had developed into a mature young woman of very
independent judgement, who had grown accustomed to laugh at the
efforts of doctors, and in the end to renounce their help
entirely. Moreover, she had always been against calling in medical
advice, though she had no personal objection to her family
doctor. Every proposal to consult a new physician aroused her
resistance, and it was only her father’s authority which induced her
to come to me at all.
I first saw her when she was sixteen, in the early summer. She was
suffering from a cough and from hoarseness, and even at that time I
proposed giving her psychological treatment. My proposal was not
adopted, since the attack in question, like the others, passed off
spontaneously, though it had lasted unusually long. During the winter
of the next year she came and stayed in Vienna with her uncle and his
daughters after the death of the aunt of whom she had been so
fond. There she fell ill of a feverish disorder which was diagnosed at
the time as appendicitis.[12] In the {31} following autumn, since her
father’s health seemed to justify the step, the family left the
health-resort of B⸺ for good and all. They first moved to the town
where her father’s factory was situated, and then, scarcely a year
later, settled permanently in Vienna.
Dora was by that time in the first bloom of youth---a girl of
intelligent and engaging looks. But she was a source of heavy trials
for her parents. Low spirits and an alteration in her character had
now become the main features of her illness. She was clearly satisfied
neither with herself nor with her family; her attitude towards her
father was unfriendly, and she was on very bad terms with her mother,
who was bent upon drawing her into taking a share in the work of the
house. She tried to avoid social intercourse, and employed
herself---so far as she was allowed to by the fatigue and lack of
concentration of which she complained---with attending lectures for
women and with carrying on more or less serious studies. One day her
parents were thrown into a state of great alarm by finding upon the
girl’s writing-desk, or inside it, a letter in which she took leave of
them because, as she said, she could no longer endure her life.[13]
Her father, indeed, being a man of some perspicacity, guessed that the
girl had no serious suicidal intentions. But he was none the less very
much shaken; and when one day, after a slight passage of words between
him and his daughter, she had a first attack of loss of
consciousness[14]---an event which was subsequently covered by an
{32} amnesia---it was determined, in spite of her reluctance, that
she should come to me for treatment.
No doubt this case history, as I have so far outlined it, does not
upon the whole seem worth recording. It is merely a case of ‘_petite
hystérie_’ with the commonest of all somatic and mental symptoms:
dyspnoea, _tussis nervosa_, aphonia, and possibly migraines, together
with depression, hysterical unsociability, and a _taedium vitae_ which
was probably not entirely genuine. More interesting cases of hysteria
have no doubt been published, and they have very often been more
carefully described; for nothing will be found in the following pages
on the subject of stigmata of cutaneous sensibility, limitation of the
visual field, or similar matters. I may venture to remark, however,
that all such collections of the strange and wonderful phenomena of
hysteria have but slightly advanced our knowledge of a disease which
still remains as great a puzzle as ever. What is wanted is precisely
an elucidation of the commonest cases and of their most frequent and
typical symptoms. I should have been very well satisfied if the
circumstances had allowed me to give a complete elucidation of this
case of _petite hystérie_. And my experiences with other patients
leave me no doubt that my analytic method would have enabled me to do
so.
In 1896, shortly after the appearance of my _Studien über Hysterie_
(written in conjunction with Dr. J. Breuer), I asked an eminent
fellow-specialist for his opinion upon the psychological theory of
hysteria put forward in that work. He bluntly replied that he
considered it an unjustifiable generalization of conclusions which
might hold good for a few cases. Since then I have seen an abundance
of cases of hysteria, and I have been occupied with each case for a
number of days, weeks, or years. In not a single one of them have I
failed to discover the psychological determinants which were
postulated in the _Studien_, namely, a psychic trauma, a conflict of
affects, and---an additional factor {33} which I brought forward in
later publications---a disturbance in the sphere of sexuality. It is
of course not to be expected that the patient will come to meet the
physician half-way with material which has become pathogenic for the
very reason of its efforts to lie concealed; nor must the inquirer
rest content with the first ‘No’ that crosses his path.[15]
In Dora’s case, thanks to her father’s shrewdness, which I have
remarked upon more than once already, there was no need for me to look
about for the points of contact between the circumstances of the
patient’s life and her illness, at all events in its most recent
form. Her father told me that he and his family while they were at B⸺
had formed an intimate friendship with a married couple who had been
settled there for several years. Frau K. had nursed him during his
long illness, and had in that way, he said, earned a title to his
undying gratitude. Herr K. had always been most kind to Dora. He had
gone walks with her when he was there, and had made her small
presents; but no one had thought any harm of that. Dora had taken the
greatest care of the K.’s two little children, and been almost a
mother to them. When Dora and her {34} father had come to see me two
years before in the summer, they had been just on their way to stop
with Herr and Frau K., who were spending the summer on one of our
lakes in the Alps. Dora was to have spent several weeks at the K.’s,
while her father had intended to return after a few days. During that
time Herr K. had been living there as well. As her father was
preparing for his departure the girl had suddenly declared with the
greatest determination that she was going with him, and she had in
fact put her decision into effect. It was not until some days later
that she had thrown any light upon her strange behaviour. She had then
told her mother---intending that what she said should be passed on to
her father---that Herr K. had had the audacity to make her a proposal
while they were on a walk after a trip upon the lake. Herr K. had been
called to account by her father and uncle on the next occasion of
their meeting, but he had denied in the most emphatic terms having on
his side made any advances which could have been open to such a
construction. He had then proceeded to throw suspicion upon the girl,
saying that he had heard from Frau K. that she took no interest in
anything but sexual matters, and that she used to read Mantegazza’s
_Physiology of Love_ and books of that sort in their house on the
lake. It was most likely, he had added, that she had been over-excited
by such reading and had merely ‘fancied’ the whole scene she had
described.
‘I have no doubt’, continued her father, ‘that this incident is
responsible for Dora’s depression and irritability and suicidal
ideas. She keeps pressing me to break off relations with Herr K. and
more particularly with Frau K., whom she used positively to worship
formerly. But that I cannot do. For, to begin with, I myself believe
that Dora’s tale of the man’s immoral suggestions is a phantasy that
has forced its way into her mind; and besides, I am bound to Frau
K. by ties of honourable friendship and I do not wish to cause her
pain. The poor woman is most unhappy with her {35} husband, of whom,
by the by, I have no very high opinion. She herself has suffered a
great deal with her nerves, and I am her only support. With my state
of health I need scarcely assure you that there is nothing wrong in
our relations. We are just two poor wretches who give one another what
comfort we can by an exchange of friendly sympathy. You know already
that I get nothing out of my own wife. But Dora, who inherits my
obstinacy, cannot be moved from her hatred of the K.’s. She had her
last attack after a conversation in which she had again pressed me to
break with them. Please try and bring her to reason.’
Her father’s words did not always quite tally with this pronouncement;
for on other occasions he tried to put the chief blame for Dora’s
impossible behaviour upon her mother---whose peculiarities made the
house unbearable for every one. But I had resolved from the first to
suspend my judgement of the true state of affairs till I had heard the
other side as well.
The experience with Herr K.---his making love to her and the insult to
her honour which was involved---seems to provide in Dora’s case the
psychic trauma which Breuer and I declared long ago to be the
indispensable prerequisite for the production of a hysterical
disorder. But this new case also presents all the difficulties which
have since led me to go beyond that theory,[16] besides an additional
difficulty of a special kind. For, as so often happens in histories of
cases of {36} hysteria, the trauma that we know of as having occurred
in the patient’s past life is insufficient to explain or to determine
the particular character of the symptoms; we should understand just as
much or just as little of the whole business if the result of the
trauma had been symptoms quite other than _tussis nervosa_, aphonia,
depression, and _taedium vitae_. But there is the further
consideration that some of these symptoms (the cough and the loss of
voice) had been produced by the patient years before the time of the
trauma, and that their earliest appearances belong to her childhood,
since they occurred in her eighth year. If, therefore, the trauma
theory is not to be abandoned, we must go back to her childhood and
look about there for any influences or impressions which might have
had an effect analogous to that of a trauma. Moreover, it deserves to
be remarked that in the investigation even of cases in which the first
symptoms had not already set in in childhood I have been driven to
trace back the patients’ life history to their earliest years.[17]
When the first difficulties of the treatment had been overcome, Dora
told me of an earlier episode with Herr K., which was even better
calculated to act as a sexual trauma. She was fourteen years old at
the time. Herr K. had made an arrangement with her and his wife that
they should meet him one afternoon at his place of business in the
principal square of B⸺ so as to have a view of a church festival. He
persuaded his wife, however, to stay at home, and sent away his
clerks, so that he was alone when the girl arrived. When the time for
the procession approached, he asked the girl to wait for him at the
door which opened upon the staircase leading to the upper story, while
he pulled down the outside shutters. He then came back, and, instead
of going out by the open door, suddenly clasped the girl to him and
pressed a kiss upon her lips. This was surely just the situation to
call up a distinct {37} feeling of sexual excitement in a girl of
fourteen who had never before been approached. But Dora had at that
moment a violent feeling of disgust, tore herself free from the man,
and hurried past him to the staircase and from there to the street
door. She nevertheless continued to meet Herr K. Neither of them ever
mentioned the little scene; and according to her account Dora kept it
a secret till her confession during the treatment. For some time
afterwards, however, she avoided being alone with Herr K. The K.’s had
just made plans for an expedition which was to last for some days and
on which Dora was to have accompanied them. After the scene of the
kiss she refused to join the party, without giving any reason.
In this scene---second in order of mention, but first in order of
time---the behaviour of this child of fourteen was already entirely
and completely hysterical. I should without question consider a person
hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings
that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable; and I should do
so whether or no the person were capable of producing somatic
symptoms. The elucidation of the mechanism of this _reversal of
affect_ is one of the most important and at the same time one of the
most difficult problems in the psychology of the neuroses. In my own
judgement I am still some way from having achieved this end; and I may
add that within the limits of the present paper I shall be able to
bring forward only a part of such knowledge as I do possess.
In order to particularize Dora’s case it is not enough merely to draw
attention to the reversal of affect; there has also been a
_displacement_ of sensation. Instead of the genital sensation which
would certainly have been felt by a healthy girl in such
circumstances,[18] Dora was overcome by the unpleasurable feeling
which is proper to the tract of mucous membrane at the entrance to
{38} the alimentary canal---that is by disgust. The stimulation of
her lips by the kiss was no doubt of importance in localizing the
feeling at that particular place; but I think I can also recognize
another factor in operation.[19]
The disgust which Dora felt on that occasion did not become a
permanent symptom, and even at the time of the treatment it was only,
as it were, potentially present. She was a poor eater and confessed to
some disinclination for food. On the other hand, the scene had left
another consequence behind it in the shape of a sensory hallucination
which occurred from time to time and even made its appearance while
she was telling me her story. She declared that she could still feel
upon the upper part of her body the pressure of Herr K.’s embrace. In
accordance with certain rules of symptom-formation which I have come
to know, and at the same time taking into account certain other of the
patient’s peculiarities, which were otherwise inexplicable,---such as
her unwillingness to walk past any man whom she saw engaged in eager
or affectionate conversation with a lady,---I have formed in my own
mind the following reconstruction of the scene. I believe that during
the man’s passionate embrace she felt not merely his kiss upon her
lips but also the pressure of his erect member against her body. This
perception was revolting to her; it was dismissed from her memory,
repressed, and replaced by the innocent sensation of pressure upon her
thorax, which in turn derived an excessive intensity from its
repressed source. Once more, therefore, we find a displacement from
the lower part of the body to the upper.[20] On the other hand, {39}
the obsession which she exhibited in her behaviour was formed as
though it were derived from the undistorted recollection of the
scene. She did not like walking past any man who she thought was in a
state of sexual excitement, because she wanted to avoid seeing for a
second time the somatic sign which accompanies it.
It is worth remarking that we have here three symptoms---the disgust,
the sensation of pressure on the upper part of the body, and the
avoidance of men engaged in affectionate conversation---all of them
derived from a single experience, and that it is only by taking into
account the interrelation of these three phenomena that we can
understand the way in which the formation of the symptoms came
about. The disgust is the symptom of repression in the erotogenic oral
zone, which, as we shall hear, had been overindulged in Dora’s infancy
by the habit of sucking for pleasure. The pressure of the erect member
probably led to an analogous change in the corresponding female organ,
the clitoris; and the excitation of this second erotogenic zone was
referred by a process of displacement to the simultaneous pressure
against the thorax and became fixed there. Her avoidance of men who
might possibly be in a state of sexual excitement follows the
mechanism of a phobia, its purpose being to safeguard her against any
revival of the repressed perception.
In order to show that such a supplement to the story was possible, I
questioned the patient very cautiously as to whether she knew anything
of the physical signs of excitement in a man’s body. Her answer, as
touching the present, was ‘Yes’, but as touching the time of the
episode, ‘I think not’. From {40} the very beginning I took the
greatest pains with this patient not to introduce her to any fresh
facts in the region of sexual knowledge; and I did this, not from any
conscientious motives, but because I was anxious to subject my
assumptions to a rigorous test in this case. Accordingly, I did not
call a thing by its name until her allusions to it had become so
unambiguous that there seemed very slight risk in translating them
into direct speech. Her answer was always prompt and frank: she knew
about it already. But the question of _where_ her knowledge came from
was a riddle which her memories were unable to solve. She had
forgotten the source of all her information upon this subject.[21]
If I may suppose that the scene of the kiss took place in this way, I
can arrive at the following derivation for the feelings of
disgust.[22] Such feelings seem originally to be a reaction to the
smell (and afterwards also to the sight) of excrement. But the
genitals can act as a reminder of the excremental functions; and this
applies especially to the male member, for that organ performs the
function of micturition as well as the sexual function. Indeed, the
function of micturition is the earlier known of the two, and the only
one known during the pre-sexual period. Thus it happens that disgust
becomes one of the means of affective expression in the sphere of
sexual life. The Early Christian Father’s ‘_inter urinas et faeces
nascimur_’ clings to sexual life and cannot be detached from it in
spite of every effort at idealization. I should like, however,
expressly to emphasize my opinion that the problem is not solved by
the mere pointing out of this path of association. The fact that this
association _can_ be called up does not show that it actually _will_
be called up. And indeed in normal circumstances it will not be. A
knowledge of the paths does not render less {41} necessary a
knowledge of the forces which travel along them.[23]
I did not find it easy, however, to direct the patient’s attention to
her relations with Herr K. She declared that she had done with
him. The uppermost layer of all her associations during the sittings,
and everything of which she was easily conscious and of which she
remembered having been conscious the day before was always connected
with her father. It was quite true that she could not forgive her
father for continuing his relations with Herr K. and more particularly
with Frau K. But she viewed those relations in a very different light
from that in which her father wished them to appear. In her mind there
was no doubt that what bound her father to this young and beautiful
woman was a common love-affair. Nothing that could help to confirm
this view had escaped her perception, which in this connection was
pitilessly sharp; _here there were no gaps to be found in her
memory_. Their acquaintance with the K.’s had begun before her
father’s serious illness; but it had not become intimate until the
young woman had officially taken on the position of nurse during that
illness, while Dora’s mother had kept away from the sick-room. During
the first summer holidays after his recovery things had happened which
must have opened every one’s eyes to the true character of this
‘friendship’. The two families had taken a suite of rooms in common at
the hotel. One day Frau K. had announced that she could not keep the
bedroom which she had up till then shared with one of her children. A
few days later Dora’s father had given up his bedroom, and they had
both {42} moved into new rooms---the end rooms, which were only
separated by the passage, while the rooms they had given up had not
offered any such security against interruption. Later on, whenever she
had reproached her father about Frau K., he had been in the habit of
saying that he could not understand her hostility and that, on the
contrary, his children had every reason for being grateful to Frau
K. Her mother, whom she had asked for an explanation of this
mysterious remark, had told her that her father had been so unhappy at
that time that he had made up his mind to go into the wood and kill
himself, and that Frau K., suspecting as much, had gone after him and
had persuaded him by her entreaties to preserve his life for the sake
of his family. Of course, Dora went on, she herself did not believe
this story; no doubt the two of them had been seen together in the
wood, and her father had thereupon invented this fairy tale of his
suicide so as to account for their rendezvous.[24]
When they had returned to B⸺, her father had visited Frau K. every day
at definite hours, while her husband was at his business. Everybody
had talked about it and had questioned her about it pointedly. Herr
K. himself had often complained bitterly to her mother, though he had
spared her herself any allusions to the subject---which she seemed to
attribute to the delicacy of his feelings. When they had all gone for
walks together, her father and Frau K. had always known how to manage
things so as to be alone with each other. There could be no doubt that
she had taken money from him, for she spent more than she could
possibly have afforded out of her own purse or her husband’s. Dora
added that her father had begun to make handsome presents to Frau K.,
and in order to make these less conspicuous had at the same time
become especially liberal towards her mother and {43} herself. And,
while previously Frau K. had been an invalid and had even been obliged
to spend months in a sanatorium for nervous disorders because she had
been unable to walk, she had now become a healthy and lively woman.
Even after they had left B⸺ for the manufacturing town, these
relations, already of many years’ standing, had been continued. From
time to time her father used to declare that he could not endure the
rawness of the climate, and that he must do something for himself; he
would begin to cough and complain, until suddenly he would start off
to B⸺, and from there write the most cheerful letters home. All these
illnesses had only been pretexts for seeing his friend again. Then one
day it had been decided that they were to move to Vienna, and Dora
began to suspect a hidden connection. And sure enough, they had
scarcely been three weeks in Vienna when she heard that the K.’s had
moved there as well. They were in Vienna, so she told me, at that very
moment, and she frequently met her father with Frau K. in the
street. She also met Herr K. very often, and he always used to turn
round and look after her; and once when he had met her out by herself
he had followed her for a long way, so as to make sure where she was
going and whether she might not have a rendezvous.
On one occasion during the course of the treatment her father again
felt worse, and went off to B⸺ for several weeks; and the
sharp-sighted Dora had soon unearthed the fact that Frau K. had
started off to the same place on a visit to her relatives there. It
was at this time that Dora’s criticisms of her father were the most
frequent: he was insincere, he had a strain of falseness in his
character, he only thought of his own enjoyment, and he had a gift for
seeing things in the light which suited him best.
I could not in general dispute Dora’s characterization of her father;
and there was one particular respect in which it was easy to see that
her reproaches were {44} justified. When she was feeling embittered
she used to be overcome by the idea that she had been handed over to
Herr K. as the price of his tolerating the relations between her
father and his wife; and her rage at her father’s making such a use of
her was visible behind her affection for him. At other times she was
quite well aware that she had been guilty of exaggeration in talking
like this. The two men had of course never made a formal agreement in
which she was treated as an object for barter; her father in
particular would have been horrified at any such suggestion. But he
was one of those men who know how to evade a dilemma by falsifying
their judgement upon one of the conflicting alternatives. If it had
been pointed out to him that there might be danger for a growing girl
in the constant and uncontrolled companionship of a man who had no
satisfaction from his own wife, he would have been certain to answer
that he could rely upon his daughter, that a man like K. could never
be dangerous to her, and that his friend was himself incapable of such
intentions, or that Dora was still a child and was treated as a child
by K. But as a matter of fact things were in a position in which each
of the two men avoided drawing any conclusions from the other’s
behaviour which would have been awkward for his own plans. It was
possible for Herr K. to send Dora flowers every day for a whole year
while he was in the neighbourhood, to take every opportunity of giving
her valuable presents, and to spend all his spare time in her company,
without her parents noticing anything in his behaviour that was
characteristic of love-making.
When the patient brings forward a sound and incontestable train of
argument during psycho-analytic treatment, the physician is liable to
feel a moment’s embarrassment, and the patient may take advantage of
it by asking: ‘This is all perfectly correct and true, isn’t it? What
do you want to change in it now that I’ve told it you?’ But it soon
becomes evident that the patient uses thoughts of this kind, which the
{45} analysis cannot attack, for the purpose of cloaking others which
are anxious to escape from criticism and from consciousness. A string
of reproaches against other people leads one to suspect the existence
of a string of self-reproaches with the same content. All that need be
done is to turn back each single reproach on to the speaker
himself. There is something undeniably automatic about this method of
defending oneself against a self-reproach by making the same reproach
against some one else. A model of it is to be found in the _tu quoque_
arguments of children; if one of them is accused of being a liar, he
will reply without an instant’s hesitation: ‘You’re another’. A
grown-up person who wanted to throw back abuse would look for some
really exposed spot in his antagonist and would not lay the chief
stress upon the same content being repeated. In paranoia the
projection of a reproach on to another person without any alteration
in its content and therefore without any consideration for reality
becomes manifest as the process of delusion-formation.
Dora’s reproaches against her father also had a ‘lining’ or ‘backing’
of self-reproaches with a corresponding content in every case, as I
shall show in detail. She was right in thinking that her father did
not wish to look too closely into Herr K.’s behaviour to his daughter,
for fear of being disturbed in his own love-affair with Frau K. But
Dora herself had done precisely the same thing. She had made herself
an accomplice in the affair, and had dismissed from her mind every
sign which tended to show its true character. It was not until after
her adventure by the lake that her eyes were opened and that she began
to apply such a severe standard to her father. During all the previous
years she had given every possible assistance to her father’s
relations with Frau K. She would never go to see her if she thought
her father was there; but, knowing that in that case the children
would have been sent out, she would turn her steps in a direction
where she would be sure to meet them, and would go for a walk with
{46} them. There had been some one in the house who had been anxious
at an early stage to open her eyes to the nature of her father’s
relations with Frau K., and to induce her to take sides against
her. This was her last governess, an unmarried woman, no longer young,
who was well-read and of advanced views.[25] The teacher and her pupil
were for a while upon excellent terms, until suddenly Dora became
hostile to her and insisted upon her dismissal. So long as the
governess had any influence she used it for stirring up feeling
against Frau K. She explained to Dora’s mother that it was
incompatible with her dignity to tolerate such an intimacy between her
husband and another woman; and she drew Dora’s attention to all the
striking features of their relations. But her efforts were vain. Dora
remained devoted to Frau K. and would hear of nothing that might make
her think ill of her relations with her father. On the other hand she
very easily fathomed the motives by which her governess was
actuated. She might be blind in one direction, but she was
sharp-sighted enough in the other. She saw that the governess was in
love with her father. When he was there, she seemed to be quite
another person: at such times she could be amusing and obliging. While
the family were living in the manufacturing town and Frau K. was not
on the horizon, her hostility was directed against Dora’s mother, who
was then her more immediate rival. Up to this point Dora bore her no
ill-will. She did not become angry until she observed that she herself
was a subject of complete indifference to the governess, whose
pretended affection for her was really meant for her father. While her
father was away from the manufacturing town the governess had no time
to spare for her, would not go {47} for walks with her, and took no
interest in her studies. No sooner had her father returned from B⸺
than she was once more ready with every sort of service and
assistance. Thereupon Dora dropped her.
The poor woman had thrown a most unwelcome light upon a part of Dora’s
own behaviour. What the governess had from time to time been to Dora,
Dora had been to Herr K.’s children. She had been a mother to them,
she had taught them, she had gone for walks with them, she had offered
them a complete substitute for the slight interest which their own
mother showed in them. Herr K. and his wife had often talked of
getting a divorce; but it never took place, because Herr K., who was
an affectionate father, would not give up either of the two
children. A common interest in the children had from the first been a
bond between Herr K. and Dora. Her preoccupation with his children was
evidently a cloak for something else that Dora was anxious to hide
from herself and from other people.
The same inference was to be drawn both from her behaviour towards the
children, regarded in the light of the governess’s behaviour towards
herself, and from her silent acquiescence in her father’s relations
with Frau K.---namely, that she had all these years been in love with
Herr K. When I informed her of this conclusion she did not assent to
it. It is true that she at once told me that other people besides (one
of her cousins, for instance---a girl who had stopped with them for
some time at B⸺) had said to her: ‘Why, you’re simply wild about that
man!’ But she herself could not be got to recollect any feelings of
the kind. Later on, when the quantity of material that had come up had
made it difficult for her to persist in her denial, she admitted that
she might have been in love with Herr K. at B⸺, but declared that
since the scene by the lake it had all been over.[26] In any case it
was quite certain that the reproaches which she made against her {48}
father of having been deaf to the most imperative calls of duty and of
having seen things in the light which was most convenient from the
point of view of his own passions---these reproaches recoiled upon her
own head.[27] Her other reproach against her father was that his
ill-health was only a pretext and that he exploited it for his own
purposes. This reproach, too, concealed a whole section of her own
secret history. One day she complained of a professedly new symptom,
which consisted of piercing gastric pains. ‘Whom are you copying now?’
I asked her, and found I had hit the mark. The day before she had
visited her cousins, the daughters of the aunt who had died. The
younger one had become engaged, and this had given occasion to the
elder one for falling ill with gastric pains, and she was to be sent
off to Semmering.[28] Dora thought it was all just envy on the part of
the elder sister; she always got ill when she wanted something, and
what she wanted now was to be away from home so as not to have to look
on at her sister’s happiness.[29] But Dora’s own gastric pains
proclaimed the fact that she identified herself with her cousin, who,
according to her, was a malingerer. Her grounds for this
identification were either that she too envied the luckier girl her
love, or that she saw her own story reflected in that of the elder
sister, who had recently had a love-affair which had ended
unhappily.[30] But she had also learned from observing Frau K. what
useful things illnesses could become. Herr K. spent part of the year
in travelling. Whenever he came back, he used to find his wife in bad
health, although, as {49} Dora knew, she had been quite well only the
day before. Dora realized that the presence of the husband had the
effect of making his wife ill, and that she was glad to be ill so as
to be able to escape the conjugal duties which she so much
detested. At this point in the discussion Dora suddenly brought in an
allusion to her own alternations between good and bad health during
the first years of her girlhood at B⸺; and I was thus driven to
suspect that her states of health were to be regarded as depending
upon something else, in the same way as Frau K.’s. (It is a rule of
psycho-analytic technique that an internal connection which is still
undisclosed will announce its presence by means of a contiguity---a
temporal proximity---of associations; just as in writing, if ‘a’ and
‘b’ are put side by side, it means that the syllable ‘ab’ is to be
formed out of them.) Dora had had a very large number of attacks of
coughing accompanied by loss of voice. Could it be that the presence
or absence of the man she loved had had an influence upon the
appearance and disappearance of the symptoms of her illness? If this
were so, it must be possible to discover some coincidence or other
which would betray the fact. I asked her what the average length of
these attacks had been. ‘From three to six weeks, perhaps.’ How long
had Herr K.’s absences lasted? ‘Three to six weeks, too’, she was
obliged to admit. Her illness was therefore a demonstration of her
love for K., just as his wife’s was a demonstration of her dislike. It
was only necessary to suppose that she had behaved in the opposite way
from Frau K., and had been ill when he was absent and well when he had
come back. And this really seemed to have been so, at least during the
first period of the attacks. Later on it no doubt became necessary to
obscure the coincidence between her attacks of illness and the absence
of the man she secretly loved, lest its regularity should betray her
secret. The length of the attacks would then remain as a trace of
their original significance.
{50}
I remembered that long before, while I was working at Charcot’s
clinic, I had seen and heard how in cases of hysterical mutism writing
operated vicariously in the place of speech. Such patients were able
to write more fluently, quicker, and better than others did or than
they themselves had done previously. The same thing had happened with
Dora. In the first days of her attacks of aphonia ‘writing had always
come specially easy to her’. No psychological elucidation was really
required for this peculiarity, which was the expression of a
physiological substitutive function enforced by necessity; it was
noticeable, however, that such an elucidation was easily to be
found. Herr K. used to write to her at length while he was travelling
and to send her picture post-cards. It used to happen that she alone
was informed as to the date of his return, and that his arrival took
his wife by surprise. Moreover, that a person will correspond with an
absent friend whom he cannot talk to is scarcely less obvious than
that if he has lost his voice he will try to make himself understood
in writing. Dora’s aphonia, then, allowed of the following symbolic
interpretation. When the person she loved was away she gave up
speaking; speech had lost its value since she could not speak to
_him_. On the other hand, writing gained in importance, as being the
only means of communication with the absent person.
Am I now going on to assert that in every instance in which there are
periodical attacks of aphonia we are to diagnose the existence of a
loved person who is at times away from the patient? Nothing could be
further from my intention. The determination of Dora’s symptoms is far
too specific for it to be possible to expect a frequent recurrence of
the same accidental aetiology. But, if so, what is the value of our
elucidation of the aphonia in the present case? Have we not merely
allowed ourselves to become the victims of a _jeu d’esprit_? I think
not. In this connection we must recall the question which has so often
been raised {51} whether the symptoms of hysteria are of psychical or
of somatic origin, or whether, if the former is granted, they are
necessarily all of them psychically determined. Like so many other
questions to which we find investigators returning again and again
without success, this question is not adequately framed. The
alternatives stated in it do not cover the real essence of the
matter. As far as I can see, every hysterical symptom involves the
participation of both sides. It cannot occur without the presence of a
certain degree of _somatic compliance_ offered by some normal or
pathological process in or connected with one of the bodily
organs. And it cannot occur more than once---and the capacity for
repeating itself is one of the characteristics of a hysterical
symptom---unless it has a psychical significance, a _meaning_. The
hysterical symptom does not carry this meaning with it, but the
meaning is lent to it, welded on to it, as it were; and in every
instance the meaning can be a different one, according to the nature
of the suppressed thoughts which are struggling for
expression. However, there are a number of factors at work which tend
to make less arbitrary the relations between the unconscious thoughts
and the somatic processes which are at their disposal as a means of
expression, and which tend to make those relations approximate to a
few typical forms. For therapeutic purposes the most important
determinants are those given by the contingent psychical material; the
clearing-up of the symptoms is achieved by looking for their psychical
significance. When everything that can be got rid of by
psycho-analysis has been cleared away, we are in a position to form
all kinds of conjectures, which probably meet the facts, as regards
the somatic basis of the symptoms---a basis which is as a rule
constitutional and organic. Thus in Dora’s case we shall not content
ourselves with a psycho-analytic interpretation of her attacks of
coughing and aphonia; but we shall also indicate the organic factor
which was the source of the ‘somatic compliance’ that enabled {52}
her to express her love for a man who was periodically absent. And if
the connection between the symptomatic expression and the unconscious
mental content should strike us as being in this case a clever _tour
de force_, we shall be glad to hear that it succeeds in creating the
same impression in every other case and in every other instance.
I am prepared to be told at this point that there is no very great
advantage in having been taught by psycho-analysis that the clue to
the problem of hysteria is to be found not in ‘a peculiar instability
of the molecules of the nerves’ or in a liability to ‘hypnoid
states’---but in a ‘somatic compliance’. But in reply to the objection
I may remark that this new view has not only to some extent pushed the
problem further back, but has also to some extent diminished it. We
have no longer to deal with the whole problem, but only with the
portion of it involving that particular characteristic of hysteria
_which differentiates it_ from other psychoneuroses. The mental events
in all psychoneuroses proceed for a considerable distance along the
same lines before any question arises of the ‘somatic compliance’
which may afford the unconscious mental processes a physical
outlet. When this factor is not forthcoming, something other than a
hysterical symptom will arise out of the total situation; yet it will
still be something of an allied nature, a phobia, perhaps, or an
obsession---in short, a mental symptom.
I now return to the reproach of malingering which Dora brought against
her father. It soon became evident that this reproach corresponded to
self-reproaches not only concerning her earlier states of ill-health
but also concerning the present time. At such a moment the physician
is usually faced by the task of guessing and filling in what the
analysis offers him in the shape only of hints and allusions. I was
obliged to point out to the patient that her present ill-health was
just as much actuated by motives and {53} was just as tendentious as
had been Frau K.’s illness, which she had understood so well. There
could be no doubt, I said, that she had an object in view which she
hoped to gain by her illness. That object could be none other than to
detach her father from Frau K. She had been unable to achieve this by
prayers or arguments; perhaps she hoped to succeed by frightening her
father (there was her farewell letter), or by awakening his pity
(there were her fainting-fits); or if all this was in vain, at least
she would be taking her revenge on him. She knew very well, I went on,
how much he was attached to her, and that tears used to come into his
eyes whenever he was asked after his daughter’s health. I felt quite
convinced that she would recover at once if only her father were to
tell her that he had sacrificed Frau K. for the sake of her
health. But, I added, I hoped he would not let himself be persuaded to
do this, for then she would have learned what a powerful weapon she
had in her hands, and she would certainly not fail on every future
occasion to make use once more of her liability to ill-health. Yet if
her father refused to give way to her, I was quite sure she would not
let herself be deprived of her illness so easily.
I will pass over the details which showed how entirely correct all of
this was, and I will instead add a few general remarks upon the part
played in hysteria by the _motives of illness_. A _motive_ for being
ill is sharply to be distinguished as a concept from a _liability_ to
being ill,---from the material out of which symptoms are formed. The
motives have no share in the formation of symptoms, and indeed are not
present at the beginning of the illness. They only appear secondarily
to it; but it is not until they have appeared that the disease is
fully constituted.[31] Their presence {54} can be reckoned upon in
every case in which there is real suffering and which is of fairly
long standing. A symptom comes into the patient’s mental life at first
as an unwelcome guest; it has everything against it; and that is why
it may vanish so easily, apparently of its own accord, under the
influence of time. To begin with, there is no use to which it can be
put in the domestic economy of the mind; but very often it succeeds in
finding one secondarily. Some psychical current or other finds it
convenient to make use of it, and in that way the symptom manages to
obtain a _secondary function_ and remains, as it were, anchored fast
in the patient’s mental life. And so it happens that any one who tries
to make him well is to his astonishment brought up against a powerful
resistance, which teaches him that the patient’s intention of getting
rid of his complaint is not so entirely and completely serious as it
seemed.[32] Let us imagine a workman, a bricklayer, let us say, who
has fallen off a house and been crippled, and now earns his livelihood
by begging at the street-corner. Let us then suppose that a
miracle-worker comes along and promises him to make his crooked leg
straight and capable of walking. It would be unwise, I think, to look
forward {55} to seeing an expression of peculiar bliss upon the man’s
features. No doubt at the time of the accident he felt he was
extremely unlucky, when he realized that he would never be able to do
any more work and would have to starve or live upon charity. But since
then the very thing which in the first instance threw him out of
employment has become his source of income: he lives by his
disablement. If that is taken from him he may become totally
helpless. He has in the meantime forgotten his trade and lost his
habits of industry; he has grown accustomed to idleness, and perhaps
to drink as well.
The motives for being ill often begin to be active even in
childhood. A child in its greed for love does not enjoy having to
share the affection of its parents with its brothers and sisters; and
it notices that the whole of their affection is lavished upon it once
more whenever it arouses their anxiety by falling ill. It has now
discovered a means of enticing out its parents’ love, and will make
use of that means as soon as it has the necessary psychical material
at its disposal for producing an illness. When such a child has grown
up to be a woman she may find all the demands she used to make in her
childhood countered owing to her marriage with an inconsiderate
husband, who may subjugate her will, mercilessly exploit her capacity
for work, and lavish neither his affection nor his money upon her. In
that case ill-health will be her one weapon for maintaining her
position. It will procure her the care she longs for; it will force
her husband to make pecuniary sacrifices for her and to show her
consideration, as he would never have done while she was well; and it
will compel him to treat her with solicitude if she recovers, for
otherwise a relapse will threaten. Her state of ill-health will have
every appearance of being objective and involuntary---the very doctor
who treats her will bear witness to the fact; and for that reason she
will not need to feel any conscious self-reproaches at making such
successful {56} use of a means which she had found effective in her
years of childhood.
And yet illnesses of this kind are the result of intention. They are
as a rule levelled at a particular person, and consequently vanish
with that person’s departure. The crudest and most commonplace views
upon the character of hysterical disorders---such as are to be heard
from uneducated relatives or nurses---are in a certain sense right. It
is true that the paralysed and bed-ridden woman would spring to her
feet if a fire were to break out in her room, and that the spoiled
wife would forget all her sufferings if her child were to fall
dangerously ill or if some catastrophe were to threaten the family
circumstances. People who speak of the patients in this way are right
except upon a single point: they overlook the psychological
distinction between what is conscious and what is unconscious. This
may be permissible where children are concerned, but with adults it is
no longer possible. That is why all these asseverations that it is
‘only a question of willing’ and all the encouragements and abuse that
are addressed to the patient are of no avail. An attempt must first be
made by the roundabout methods of analysis to convince the patient
herself of the existence in her of an intention to be ill.
It is in combating the motives of illness that the weak point in every
kind of therapeutic treatment of hysteria lies. This is quite
generally true, and it applies equally to psycho-analysis. Destiny has
an easier time of it in this respect: it need not concern itself
either with the patient’s constitution or with his pathogenic
material; it has only to take away a motive for being ill, and the
patient is temporarily or perhaps even permanently freed from his
illness. How many fewer miraculous cures and spontaneous
disappearances of symptoms should we physicians have to register in
cases of hysteria, if we were more often given a sight of the human
interests which the patient keeps hidden from us! In one case, some
stated period of time {57} has elapsed; in a second, consideration
for some other person has ceased to operate; in a third, the situation
has been fundamentally changed by some external event---and the whole
disorder, which up till then had shown the greatest obstinacy,
vanishes at a single blow, apparently of its own accord, but really
because it has been deprived of its most powerful motive, one of the
uses to which it has been put in the patient’s life.
Motives that support the patient in being ill are probably to be found
in all fully developed cases. But there are cases in which the motives
are purely internal---such as desire for self-punishment, that is,
penitence and remorse. It will be found much easier to solve the
therapeutical problem in such cases than in those in which the illness
is related to the attainment of some external aim. In Dora’s case that
aim was clearly to touch her father’s heart and to detach him from
Frau K.
None of her father’s actions seemed to have embittered her so much as
his readiness to consider the scene by the lake as a product of her
imagination. She was almost beside herself at the idea of its being
supposed that she had merely fancied something on that occasion. For a
long time I was in perplexity as to what the self-reproach could be
which lay behind her passionate repudiation of this explanation of the
episode. It was justifiable to suspect that there was something
concealed, for a reproach which misses the mark gives no lasting
offence. On the other hand, I came to the conclusion that Dora’s story
must correspond to the facts in every respect. No sooner had she
grasped Herr K.’s intention than, without letting him finish what he
had to say, she had given him a slap in the face and hurried away. Her
behaviour must have seemed as incomprehensible to the man after she
had left him as to us, for he must long before have gathered from
innumerable small signs that he was secure of the girl’s
affections. In our discussion of Dora’s second dream we shall come
upon {58} the solution of this riddle as well as upon the
self-reproach which we have hitherto failed to discover.
As she kept on repeating her complaints against her father with a
wearisome monotony, and as at the same time her cough continued, I was
led to think that this symptom might have some meaning in connection
with her father. And apart from this, the explanation of the symptom
which I had hitherto obtained was far from fulfilling the requirements
which I am accustomed to make of such explanations. According to a
rule which I had found confirmed over and over again by experience,
though I had not yet ventured to erect it into a general principle, a
symptom signifies the representation---the realization---of a phantasy
with a sexual content, that is to say, it signifies a sexual
situation. It would be better to say that at least _one_ of the
meanings of a symptom is the representation of a sexual phantasy, but
that no such limitation is imposed upon the content of its other
meanings. Any one who takes up psycho-analytic work will quickly
discover that a symptom has more than one meaning and serves to
represent several unconscious mental processes simultaneously. And I
should like to add that in my estimation a single unconscious mental
process or phantasy will scarcely ever suffice for the production of a
symptom.
An opportunity very soon occurred for interpreting Dora’s nervous
cough in this way by means of an imagined sexual situation. She had
once again been insisting that Frau K. only loved her father because
he was ‘_ein vermögender Mann_’ [‘a man of means’]. Certain details of
the way in which she expressed herself (which I pass over here, like
most other purely technical parts of the analysis) led me to see that
behind this phrase its opposite lay concealed, namely, that her father
was ‘_ein unvermögender Mann_’ [‘a man without means’].[33] This could
only be meant in a {59} sexual sense---that her father, as a man, was
without means, was impotent. Dora confirmed this interpretation from
her conscious knowledge; whereupon I pointed out the contradiction she
was involved in if on the one hand she continued to insist that her
father’s relation with Frau K. was a common love-affair, and on the
other hand maintained that her father was impotent, or in other words
incapable of carrying on an affair of such a kind. Her answer showed
that she had no need to admit the contradiction. She knew very well,
she said, that there was more than one way of obtaining sexual
gratification. (The source of this piece of knowledge, however, was
once more untraceable.) I questioned her further, whether she referred
to the use of organs other than the genitals for the purpose of sexual
intercourse, and she replied in the affirmative. I could then go on to
say that in that case she must be thinking of precisely those parts of
the body which in her case were in a state of irritation,---the throat
and the oral cavity. To be sure, she would not hear of going so far as
this in recognizing her own thoughts; and indeed, if the occurrence of
the symptom was to be made possible at all, it was essential that she
should not be completely clear on the subject. But the conclusion was
inevitable that with her spasmodic cough, which, as is usual, was
referred for its exciting cause to a tickling in her throat, she
pictured to herself a scene of sexual gratification _per os_ between
the two people whose love-affair occupied her mind so incessantly. A
very short time after she had tacitly accepted this explanation her
cough vanished---which fitted in very well with my view; but I do not
wish to lay too much stress upon this development, since her cough had
so often before spontaneously disappeared.
This short piece of the analysis may perhaps have excited in the
medical reader---apart from the scepticism to which he is
entitled---feelings of astonishment and horror; and I am prepared at
this point to look {60} into these two reactions so as to discover
whether they are justifiable. The astonishment is probably caused by
my daring to talk about such delicate and unpleasant subjects to a
young girl---or, for that matter, to any woman who is still sexually
active. The horror is aroused, no doubt, by the possibility that an
inexperienced girl could know about practices of such a kind and could
occupy her imagination with them. I would advise recourse to
moderation and reasonableness upon both points. There is no cause for
indignation either in the one case or in the other. It is possible for
a man to talk to girls and women upon sexual matters of every kind
without doing them harm and without bringing suspicion upon himself,
so long as, in the first place, he adopts a particular way of doing
it, and, in the second place, can make them feel convinced that it is
unavoidable. A gynaecologist, after all, under the same conditions,
does not hesitate to make them submit to uncovering every possible
part of their body. The best way of speaking about such things is to
be dry and direct; and that is at the same time the method furthest
removed from the prurience with which the same subjects are handled in
‘society’, and to which girls and women alike are so thoroughly
accustomed. I call bodily organs and processes by their technical
names, and I tell these to the patient if they---the names, I
mean---happen to be unknown to her. _J’appelle un chat un chat_. I
have certainly heard of some persons---doctors and laymen---who are
scandalized by a therapeutic method in which conversations of this
sort occur, and who appear to envy either me or my patients the
titillation which, according to their notions, such a method must
afford. But I am too well acquainted with the respectability of these
gentry to excite myself over them. I shall avoid the temptation of
writing a satire upon them. But there is one thing that I will
mention: often, after I have for some time treated a patient who had
not at first found it easy to be open about sexual matters, I have had
the {61} satisfaction of hearing her exclaim: ‘Why, after all, your
treatment is far more respectable than Mr. X.’s conversation!’
No one can undertake the treatment of a case of hysteria until he is
convinced of the impossibility of avoiding the mention of sexual
subjects, or unless he is prepared to allow himself to be convinced by
experience. The right attitude is: ‘_pour faire une omelette il faut
casser des œufs_’. The patients themselves are easy to convince; and
there are only too many opportunities of doing so in the course of the
treatment. There is no necessity for feeling any compunction at
discussing the facts of normal or abnormal sexual life with them. With
the exercise of a little caution all that is done is to translate into
conscious ideas what was already known in the unconscious; and, after
all, the whole effectiveness of the treatment is based upon our
knowledge that the affect attached to an unconscious idea operates
more strongly and, since it cannot be inhibited, more injuriously than
the affect attached to a conscious one. There is never any danger of
corrupting an inexperienced girl. For where there is no knowledge of
sexual processes even in the unconscious, no hysterical symptom will
arise; and where hysteria is found there can no longer be any question
of ‘innocence of mind’ in the sense in which parents and educators use
the phrase. With children of ten, of twelve, or of fourteen, with boys
and girls alike, I have satisfied myself that the truth of this
statement can invariably be relied upon.
As regards the second kind of emotional reaction, which is not
directed against me this time, but against my patient---supposing that
my view of her is correct---and which regards the perverse nature of
her phantasies as horrible, I should like to say emphatically that a
medical man has no business to indulge in such passionate
condemnation. I may also remark in passing that it seems to me
superfluous for a physician who is writing upon the aberrations of the
sexual instincts to seize {62} every opportunity of inserting into
the text expressions of his personal repugnance at such revolting
things. We are faced by a fact; and it is to be hoped that we shall
grow accustomed to it, when we have put our own tastes on one side. We
must learn to speak without indignation of what we call the sexual
perversions---instances in which the sexual function has transgressed
its limits in respect either to the part of the body concerned or to
the sexual object chosen. The uncertainty in regard to the boundaries
of what is to be called normal sexual life, when we take different
races and different epochs into account, should in itself be enough to
cool the zealot’s ardour. We surely ought not to forget that the
perversion which is the most repellent to us, the sensual love of a
man for a man, was not only tolerated by a people so far our superiors
in cultivation as were the Greeks, but was actually entrusted by them
with important social functions. Each one of us in his own sexual life
transgresses to a slight extent---now in this direction, now in
that---the narrow lines imposed upon him as the standard of
normality. The perversions are neither bestial nor degenerate in the
emotional sense of the word. They are a development of germs all of
which are contained in the undifferentiated sexual predisposition of
the child, and which, by being suppressed or by being diverted to
higher, asexual aims---by being _sublimated_---are destined to provide
the energy for a great number of our cultural achievements. When,
therefore, any one has _become_ a gross and manifest pervert, it would
be more correct to say that he has _remained_ one, for he exhibits a
certain stage of _inhibited development_. All psychoneurotics are
persons with strongly marked perverse tendencies, which have been
repressed in the course of their development and have become
unconscious. Consequently their unconscious phantasies show precisely
the same content as the documentarily recorded actions of
perverts---even though they have not read v. Krafft-Ebing’s {63}
_Psychopathia Sexualis_, to which simple-minded people attribute such
a large share of the responsibility for the production of perverse
tendencies. Psychoneuroses are, so to speak, the _negative_ of
perversions. In neurotics their sexual constitution, under which the
effects of heredity are included, operates in combination with any
accidental influences in their life which may disturb the development
of normal sexuality. A stream of water which meets with an obstacle in
the river-bed is dammed up and flows back into old channels which had
formerly seemed fated to run dry. The motive forces leading to the
formation of hysterical symptoms draw their strength not only from
repressed normal sexuality but also from unconscious perverse
activities.[34]
The less repellent of the so-called sexual perversions are very widely
diffused among the whole population, as every one knows except medical
writers upon the subject. Or, I should rather say, they know it too;
only they take care to forget it at the moment when they take up their
pens to write about it. So it is not to be wondered at that this
hysterical girl of nineteen, who had heard of the occurrence of such a
method of sexual intercourse (sucking at the male organ), should have
developed an unconscious phantasy of this sort and should have given
it expression by an irritation in her throat and by coughing. Nor
would it have been very extraordinary if she had arrived at such a
phantasy even without having had any enlightenment from external
sources---an occurrence which I have quite certainly observed in other
patients. For in her case a noteworthy fact afforded the necessary
somatic prerequisite for this independent creation of a phantasy which
would coincide with the practices of perverts. She remembered very
well that in her childhood she had been a ‘suck-a-thumbs’. Her father,
too, {64} recollected breaking her of the habit after it had
persisted into her fourth or fifth year. Dora herself had a clear
picture of a scene from her early childhood in which she was sitting
on the floor in a corner sucking her left thumb and at the same time
tugging with her right hand at the lobe of her brother’s ear as he sat
quietly beside her. Here we have an instance of the complete form of
self-gratification by sucking, such as it has also been described to
me by other patients, who had subsequently become anaesthetic and
hysterical. One of these patients gave me a piece of information which
sheds a clear light upon the origin of this curious habit. This young
woman had never broken herself of the habit of sucking. She retained a
memory of her childhood, dating back, according to her, to the first
half of her second year, in which she saw herself sucking at her
nurse’s breast and at the same time pulling rhythmically at the lobe
of her nurse’s ear. No one will feel inclined to dispute, I think,
that the mucous membrane of the lips and mouth is to be regarded as a
primary _erotogenic zone_, since it preserves this earlier
significance in the act of kissing, which is looked upon as normal. An
intense activity of this erotogenic zone at an early age thus
determines the subsequent presence of a somatic compliance on the part
of the tract of mucous membrane which begins at the lips. Thus, at a
time when the true sexual object, that is, the male organ, has already
become known, circumstances may arise which once more increase the
excitation of the oral zone, whose erotogenic character has, as we
have seen, been retained. It then needs very little creative power to
substitute the sexual object of the moment (the penis) for the
original object (the nipple) or for the finger which did duty for it
later on, and to place the current sexual object in the situation in
which gratification was originally obtained. So we see that this
excessively repulsive and perverted phantasy of sucking at a penis has
the most innocent origin. It is a new version of {65} what may be
described as a prehistoric impression of sucking at the mother’s or
nurse’s breast---an impression which has usually been revived by
contact with children who are being nursed. In most instances the
udder of a cow has aptly played the part of an image intermediate
between a nipple and a penis.
The interpretation we have just been discussing of Dora’s throat
symptoms may also give rise to a further remark. It may be asked how
this sexual situation imagined by her can be compatible with our other
explanation of the symptoms. That explanation, it will be remembered,
was to the effect that the coming and going of the symptoms reflected
the presence and absence of the man she was in love with, and, as
regards his wife’s behaviour, expressed the following thought: ‘If _I_
were his wife, I should love him in quite a different way; I should be
ill (from longing, let us say) when he was away, and well (from joy)
when he was home again’. To this objection I must reply that my
experience in the clearing-up of hysterical symptoms has shown that it
is not necessary for the various meanings of a symptom to be
compatible with one another, that is, to fit together into a connected
whole. It is enough that the unity should be constituted by the
subject-matter which has given rise to all the various phantasies. In
the present case, moreover, compatibility even of the first kind is
not out of the question. One of the two meanings is related more to
the cough, and the other to the aphonia and the periodicity of the
disorder. A closer analysis would probably have disclosed a far
greater number of mental elements in relation to the details of the
illness. We have already learnt that a single symptom corresponds
quite regularly to several meanings _simultaneously_. We may now add
that it can express several meanings _in succession_. In the course of
years a symptom can change its meaning or its chief meaning, or the
leading rôle can pass from one meaning to another. It is as though
there were a conservative {66} trait in the character of the neurosis
which ensures that a symptom that has once been formed shall if
possible be retained, even though the unconscious thought to which it
gave expression has lost its meaning. But there is no difficulty in
explaining this tendency towards the retention of a symptom upon a
mechanical basis. The production of a symptom of this kind is so
difficult, the translation of a purely psychical excitation into
physical terms---the process which I have called
_conversion_---depends on the concurrence of so many favourable
conditions, the somatic compliance necessary for conversion is so
seldom forthcoming, that an impulsion towards the discharge of an
unconscious excitation will so far as possible make use of any channel
for discharge which may already be in existence. It appears to be far
more difficult to create a fresh conversion than to form paths of
association between a new thought which is in need of discharge and
the old one which is no longer in need of it. The current flows along
these paths from the new source of excitation to the old point of
discharge---pouring into the symptom, in the words of the Gospel, like
new wine into an old bottle. These remarks would make it seem that the
somatic side of a hysterical symptom is the more stable of the two and
the harder to replace, while the psychical side is a variable element
for which a substitute can more easily be found. Yet we should not try
to infer anything from this comparison as regards the relative
importance of the two elements. From the point of view of mental
therapeutics the mental side must always be the more significant.
Dora’s incessant repetition of the same thoughts about her father’s
relations with Frau K. made it possible to derive still further
important material from the analysis.
A train of thought such as this may be described as exaggerated, or
better _re-inforced_, or ‘supervalent’, in Wernicke’s sense of the
word. It shows its pathological character, in spite of its apparently
reasonable {67} content, by the single peculiarity that no amount of
conscious and voluntary effort of thought on the patient’s part is
able to dissipate or remove it. A normal train of thought, however
intense it may be, can eventually be disposed of. Dora felt quite
rightly that her thoughts about her father required to be judged in a
special way. ‘I can think of nothing else’, she complained again and
again. ‘I know my brother says we children have no right to criticize
this behaviour of father’s. He declares that we ought not to trouble
ourselves about it, and ought even to be glad, perhaps, that he has
found a woman he can love, since mother understands him so little. I
can quite see that, and I should like to think the same as my brother,
but I can’t. I can’t forgive him for it.’[35]
Now what is one to do in the face of a supervalent thought like this,
after one has heard what its conscious grounds are and listened to the
ineffectual protests made against it? Reflection will suggest that
_this exaggerated train of thought must owe its reinforcement to the
unconscious_. It cannot be resolved by any effort of thought, either
because it itself reaches with its root down into unconscious,
repressed material, or because another unconscious thought lies
concealed behind it. In the latter case, the concealed thought is
usually the direct contrary of the supervalent one. Contrary thoughts
are always closely connected with each other and are often paired off
in such a way that _the one thought is exaggeratedly conscious while
its counterpart is repressed and unconscious_. This relation between
the two thoughts is an effect of the process of repression. For
repression is often achieved by means of an excessive reinforcement of
the thought contrary to the one which is to be repressed. This process
I call _reactive_ reinforcement, and the thought {68} which asserts
itself exaggeratedly in consciousness and (in the same way as a
prejudice) cannot be removed I call a _reactive thought_. The two
thoughts then act towards each other much like the two needles of an
astatic galvanometer. The reactive thought keeps the objectionable one
under repression by means of a certain surplusage of intensity; but
for that reason it itself is ‘damped’ and proof against conscious
efforts of thought. So that the way to deprive the exaggerated thought
of its reinforcement is by bringing its repressed contrary into
consciousness.
We must also be prepared to meet with instances in which the
supervalency of a thought is due not to the presence of one only of
these two causes but to a concurrence of both of them. Other
complications, too, may arise, but they can easily be fitted into the
general scheme.
Let us now apply our theory to the instance provided by Dora’s
case. We will begin with the first hypothesis, namely, that her
preoccupation with her father’s relations to Frau K. owed its
obsessive character to the fact that its root was unknown to her and
lay in the unconscious. It is not difficult to divine the nature of
that root from her circumstances and her conduct. Her behaviour
obviously went far beyond what would have been appropriate to filial
concern. She felt and acted more like a jealous wife---in a way which
would have been comprehensible in her mother. By her ultimatum to her
father (‘either her or me’), by the scenes she used to make, by the
suicidal intentions she allowed to transpire,---by all this she was
clearly putting herself in her mother’s place. If we have rightly
guessed the nature of the imaginary sexual situation which underlay
her cough, in that phantasy she must have been putting herself in Frau
K.’s place. She was therefore identifying herself both with the woman
her father had once loved and with the woman he loved now. The
inference is obvious that her affection for her father was a much
stronger one than {69} she knew or than she would have cared to
admit: in fact, that she was in love with him.
I have learnt to look upon unconscious love relations like this (which
may be recognized by their abnormal consequences)---between a father
and a daughter, or between a mother and a son---as a revival of germs
of feeling in infancy. I have shown at length elsewhere[36] at what an
early age sexual attraction makes itself felt between parents and
children, and I have explained that the myth of Oedipus is probably to
be regarded as a poetical rendering of what is typical in these
relations. Distinct traces are probably to be found in most people of
an early partiality of this kind---on the part of a daughter for her
father, or on the part of a son for his mother; but it must be assumed
to be more intense from the very first in the case of those children
whose constitution marks them down for a neurosis, who develop
prematurely and have a craving for love. At this point certain other
influences, which need not be discussed here, come into play, and lead
to a fixation of this rudimentary feeling of love or to a
reinforcement of it; so that it turns into something (either while the
child is still young or not until it has reached the age of puberty)
which must be put on a par with a sexual inclination and which, like
the latter, has the forces of the libido at its command.[37] The
external circumstances of our patient were by no means unfavourable to
such an assumption. The nature of her disposition had always drawn her
towards her father, and his numerous illnesses were bound to have
increased her affection for him. In many of these illnesses he would
allow no one but her to discharge the lighter duties of nursing. He
had been so proud of the early growth of her intelligence that he had
made her his confidante while she was still a child. It was really she
and not {70} her mother whom Frau K.’s appearance had driven out of
more than one position.
When I told Dora that I could not avoid supposing that her affection
for her father must at a very early moment have amounted to her being
completely in love with him, she of course gave me her usual reply: ‘I
don’t remember that’. But she immediately went on to tell me something
analogous about a seven-year-old girl who was her cousin (on her
mother’s side) and in whom she often thought she saw a kind of
reflection of her own childhood. This little girl had (not for the
first time) been the witness of a heated dispute between her parents,
and, when Dora happened to come in on a visit soon afterwards,
whispered in her ear: ‘You can’t think how I hate that person!’
(pointing to her mother), ‘and when she’s dead I shall marry papa’. I
am in the habit of regarding associations such as this, which bring
forward something that agrees with the content of an assertion of
mine, as a confirmation from the unconscious of what I have said. No
other kind of ‘Yes’ can be extracted from the unconscious; there is no
such thing at all as an unconscious ‘No’.[38]
For years on end she had given no expression to this passion for her
father. On the contrary, she had for a long time been on the closest
terms with the woman who had supplanted her with her father, and she
had actually, as we know from her self-reproaches, facilitated this
woman’s relations with her father. Her own love for her father had
therefore been recently revived; and, if so, the question arises to
what end this had happened. Clearly as a reactive symptom, so as to
suppress something else---something, that is, that still exercised
power in the unconscious. Considering how things stood, I could not
help supposing in the {71} first instance that what was suppressed
was her love of Herr K. I could not avoid the assumption that she was
still in love with him, but that, for unknown reasons, since the scene
by the lake her love had aroused in her violent feelings of
opposition, and that the girl had brought forward and reinforced her
old affection for her father in order to avoid any further necessity
for paying conscious attention to the love which she had felt in the
first years of her girlhood and which had now become painful to
her. In this way I gained an insight into a conflict which was well
calculated to unhinge the girl’s mind. On the one hand she was filled
with regret at having rejected the man’s proposal, and with longing
for his company and all the little signs of his affection; while on
the other hand these feelings of tenderness and longing were combated
by powerful forces, amongst which her pride was one of the most
obvious. Thus she had succeeded in persuading herself that she had
done with Herr K.---that was the advantage she derived from this
typical process of repression; and yet she was obliged to summon up
her infantile affection for her father and to exaggerate it, in order
to protect herself against the feelings of love which were constantly
pressing forward into consciousness. The further fact that she was
almost incessantly a prey to the most embittered jealousy seemed to
admit of still another determination.[39]
My expectations were by no means disappointed when this explanation of
mine was met by Dora with a most emphatic negative. The ‘No’ uttered
by a patient after a repressed thought has been presented to his
conscious perception for the first time does no more than register the
existence of a repression and its severity; it acts, as it were, as a
gauge of the repression’s strength. If this ‘No’, instead of being
regarded as the expression of an impartial judgement (of which,
indeed, the patient is incapable), is ignored, and if work is
continued, the first evidence soon begins to {72} appear that in such
a case ‘No’ signifies the desired ‘Yes’. Dora admitted that she found
it impossible to be as angry with Herr K. as he had deserved. She told
me that one day she had met Herr K. in the street while she was
walking with a cousin of hers who did not know him. The other girl had
exclaimed all at once: ‘Why, Dora, what’s wrong with you? You’ve gone
as white as a sheet!’ She herself had felt nothing of this change of
colour; but I explained to her that the expression of emotion and the
play of features obey the unconscious rather than the conscious, and
are a means of betraying the former.[40] Another time Dora came to me
in the worst of tempers after having been uniformly cheerful for
several days. She could give no explanation of this. She felt so
contrary to-day, she said; it was her uncle’s birthday, and she could
not bring herself to congratulate him, she did not know why. My powers
of interpretation had run dry that day; I let her go on talking, and
she suddenly recollected that it was Herr K.’s birthday too---a fact
which I did not neglect to use against her. And it was then no longer
hard to explain why the handsome presents she had had on her own
birthday a few days before had given her no pleasure. One gift was
missing, and that was Herr K.’s, the gift which had plainly once been
the most prized of all.
Nevertheless Dora persisted in denying my contention for some time
longer, until, towards the end of the analysis, the conclusive proof
of its correctness came to light.
I must now turn to consider a further complication, to which I should
certainly give no space if I were a man of letters engaged upon the
creation of a mental {73} state like this for a short story, instead
of being a medical man engaged upon its dissection. The element to
which I must now allude can only serve to obscure and efface the
outlines of the fine poetic conflict which we have been able to
ascribe to Dora. This element would rightly fall a sacrifice to the
censorship of a writer, for he, after all, simplifies and abstracts
when he appears in the character of a psychologist. But in the world
of reality, which I am trying to depict here, a complication of
motives, an accumulation and conjunction of mental activities---in a
word, over-determination---is the rule. For behind Dora’s supervalent
train of thought which was concerned with her father’s relations with
Frau K. there lay concealed a feeling of jealousy which had that lady
as its _object_---a feeling, that is, which could only be based upon
an affection on Dora’s part for one of her own sex. It has long been
known and often been pointed out that at the age of puberty boys and
girls show clear signs, even in normal cases, of the existence of an
affection for people of their own sex. A romantic and sentimental
friendship with one of her school-friends, accompanied by vows,
kisses, promises of eternal correspondence, and all the sensibility of
jealousy, is the common precursor of a girl’s first serious passion
for a man. Thenceforward, in favourable circumstances, the homosexual
current of feeling often runs completely dry. But if a girl is not
happy in her love for a man, the current is often set flowing again by
the libido in later years and is increased up to a greater or lesser
degree of intensity. If this much can be established without
difficulty of healthy persons, and if we take into account what has
already been said upon the fuller development in neurotics of the
normal germs of perversion, we shall expect to find in these latter
too a fairly strong homosexual predisposition. It must, indeed, be so;
for I have never yet come through a single psycho-analysis of a man or
a woman without having to take into account a very considerable
current of homosexuality. When, in a {74} hysterical woman or girl,
the sexual libido which is directed towards men has been energetically
suppressed, it will regularly be found that the libido which is
directed towards women has become vicariously reinforced and even to
some extent conscious.
I shall not in this place go any further into this important subject,
which is especially indispensable to an understanding of hysteria in
men, because Dora’s analysis came to an end before it could throw any
light upon this side of her mental life. But I should like to recall
the governess, whom I have already mentioned, and with whom Dora had
at first enjoyed the closest interchange of thought, until she
discovered that she was being admired and fondly treated not for her
own sake but for her father’s; whereupon she had obliged the governess
to leave. She used also to dwell with noticeable frequency and a
peculiar emphasis upon the story of another estrangement which
appeared inexplicable even to herself. She had always been on
particularly good terms with the younger of her two cousins---the girl
who had later on become engaged---and had shared all sorts of secrets
with her. When, for the first time after Dora had broken off her stay
by the lake, her father was going back to B⸺, she had naturally
refused to go with him. This cousin had then been asked to travel with
him instead, and she had accepted the invitation. From that time
forward Dora had felt a coldness towards her, and she herself was
surprised to find how indifferent she had become, although, as she
admitted, she had very little ground for complaint against her. These
instances of sensitiveness led me to inquire what her relations with
Frau K. had been up till the time of the breach. I then found that the
young woman and the scarcely grown girl had lived for years on a
footing of the closest intimacy. When Dora stayed with the K.’s she
used to share a bedroom with Frau K., and the husband used to be
quartered elsewhere. She had been the wife’s confidante and {75}
adviser in all the difficulties of her married life. There was nothing
they had not talked about. Medea had been quite content that Creusa
should make friends with her two children; and she certainly did
nothing to interfere with the relations between the girl and the
children’s father. How Dora managed to fall in love with the man about
whom her beloved friend had so many bad things to say is an
interesting psychological problem. We shall not be far from solving it
when we realize that thoughts in the unconscious live very comfortably
side by side, and even contraries get on together without disputes---a
state of things which persists often enough even in the conscious.
When Dora talked about Frau K., she used to praise her ‘adorable white
body’ in accents more appropriate to a lover than to a defeated
rival. Another time she told me, more in sorrow than in anger, that
she was convinced the presents her father had brought her had been
chosen by Frau K., for she recognized her taste. Another time, again,
she pointed out that, evidently through the agency of Frau K., she had
been given a present of some jewellery which was exactly like some
that she had seen in Frau K.’s possession and had wished for aloud at
the time. Indeed, I can say in general that I never heard her speak a
harsh or angry word against the lady, although from the point of view
of her supervalent thought she should have regarded her as the prime
author of her misfortunes. She seemed to behave inconsequently; but
her apparent inconsequence was precisely the manifestation of a
complicating current of feeling. For how had this woman to whom Dora
was so enthusiastically devoted behaved to her? After Dora had brought
forward her accusation against Herr K., and her father had written to
him demanding an explanation, Herr K. had replied in the first
instance by protesting sentiments of the highest esteem for her and by
proposing that he should come to the manufacturing town to clear up
every misunderstanding. {76} A few weeks later, when her father spoke
to him at B⸺, there was no longer any question of esteem. On the
contrary, Herr K. spoke of her with disparagement, and produced as his
trump card the reflection that no girl who read such books and was
interested in such things could have any title to a man’s
respect. Frau K., therefore, had betrayed her and had calumniated her;
for it had only been with her that she had read Mantegazza and
discussed forbidden topics. It was a repetition of what had happened
with the governess: Frau K. had not loved her for her own sake but on
account of her father. Frau K. had sacrificed her without a moment’s
hesitation so that her relations with her father might not be
disturbed. This mortification touched her, perhaps, more nearly and
had a greater pathogenic effect than the other one, which she tried to
use as a screen for it,---the fact that she had been sacrificed by her
father. Did not the obstinacy with which she retained the particular
amnesia concerning the sources of her forbidden knowledge point
directly to the great emotional importance for her of the accusation
against her upon that score, and consequently to her betrayal by her
friend?
I believe, therefore, that I am not mistaken in supposing that Dora’s
supervalent train of thought, which was concerned with her father’s
relations with Frau K., was designed not only for the purpose of
suppressing her love for Herr K., which had once been conscious, but
also to conceal her love for Frau K., which was in a deeper sense
unconscious. The train of thought was directly contrary to the latter
current of feeling. She told herself incessantly that her father had
sacrificed her to this woman, and made noisy demonstrations to show
that she grudged her the possession of her father; and in this way she
concealed from herself the contrary fact, which was that she grudged
her father Frau K.’s love, and had not forgiven the woman she loved
for the disillusionment she had {77} been caused by her betrayal. The
jealous emotions of a woman were linked in the unconscious with a
jealousy such as might have been felt by a man. These masculine or,
more properly speaking, _gynaecophilic_ currents of feeling are to be
regarded as typical of the unconscious erotic life of hysterical
girls.
II {78}
THE FIRST DREAM
Just at a moment when there was a prospect that the material that was
coming up for analysis would throw light upon an obscure point in
Dora’s childhood, she reported that a few nights earlier she had once
again had a dream which she had already dreamt in exactly the same way
on many previous occasions. A periodically recurrent dream was by its
very nature particularly well calculated to arouse my curiosity; and
in any case it was justifiable in the interests of the treatment to
consider the way in which the dream worked into the analysis as a
whole. I therefore determined to make an especially careful
investigation of it.
Here is the dream as related by Dora: ‘_A house was on fire.[41] My
father was standing beside my bed and woke me up. I dressed myself
quickly. Mother wanted to stop and save her jewel-case; but Father
said: “I refuse to let myself and my two children be burnt for the
sake of your jewel-case.” We hurried downstairs, and as soon as I was
outside I woke up._’
As the dream was a recurrent one, I naturally asked her when she had
first dreamt it. She told me she did not know. But she remembered
having had the dream three nights in succession at L⸺ (the place on
the lake where the scene with Herr K. had taken place), and it had now
come back again a few nights earlier, here in Vienna.[42] My
expectations from the clearing-up of the dream were naturally
heightened {79} when I heard of its connection with the events at
L⸺. But I wanted to discover first what had been the exciting cause of
its recent recurrence, and I therefore asked Dora to take the dream
bit by bit and tell me what occurred to her in connection with it. She
had already had some training in dream interpretation from having
previously analysed a few minor specimens.
‘Something occurs to me,’ she said, ‘but it cannot belong to the
dream, for it is quite recent, whereas I have certainly had the dream
before.’
‘That makes no difference,’ I replied. ‘Start away! It will simply
turn out to be the most recent thing that fits in with the dream.’
‘Very well, then. Father has been having a dispute with Mother in the
last few days, because she locks the dining-room door at night. My
brother’s room, you see, has no separate entrance, but can only be
reached through the dining-room. Father does not want my brother to be
locked in like that at night. He says it will not do: something might
happen in the night so that it might be necessary to leave the room.’
‘And that made you think of the risk of fire?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now, I should like you to pay close attention to the exact words you
used. We may have to make use of them. You said that “_something might
happen in the night so that it might be necessary to leave the
room_.”’[43]
But Dora had now discovered the connecting link between the recent
exciting cause of the dream and the original one, for she continued:
{80}
‘When we arrived at L⸺ that time, Father and I, he openly said he was
afraid of fire. We arrived in a violent thunderstorm, and saw the
small wooden house without any lightning-conductor. So his anxiety was
quite natural.’
What I now had to do was to establish the relation between the events
at L⸺ and the recurrent dreams which she had had there. I therefore
said: ‘Did you have the dream during your first nights at L⸺ or during
your last ones? in other words, before or after the scene in the wood
by the lake of which we have heard so much?’ (I must explain that I
knew that the scene had not occurred on the very first day, and that
she had remained at L⸺ for a few days after it without giving any hint
of the incident.)
Her first reply was that she did not know, but after a while she
added: ‘Yes. I think it was after the scene.’
So now I knew that the dream was a reaction to that experience. But
why had it recurred there three times? I continued my questions: ‘How
long did you stop on at L⸺ after the scene?’
‘Four days more. On the fifth I went away with Father.’
‘Now I am certain that the dream was an immediate effect of your
experience with Herr K. It was at L⸺ that you dreamed it for the first
time, and not before. You have only introduced this uncertainty in
your memory so as to obliterate the connection in your mind.[44] But
the figures do not quite fit in to my satisfaction yet. If you stayed
at L⸺ for four nights longer, the dream might have occurred four times
over. Perhaps this was so?’
She no longer disputed my contention; but instead of answering my
question she proceeded[45]: ‘In the {81} afternoon after our trip on
the lake, from which we (Herr K. and I) returned at midday, I had gone
to lie down as usual on the sofa in the bedroom to have a short
sleep. I suddenly awoke and saw Herr K. standing beside me...’
‘In fact, just as you saw your father standing beside your bed in the
dream?’
‘Yes. I asked him sharply what it was he wanted there. By way of reply
he said he was not going to be prevented from coming into his own
bedroom when he wanted; besides, there was something he wanted to
fetch. This episode put me on my guard, and I asked Frau K. whether
there was not a key to the bedroom door. The next morning (on the
second day) I locked myself in while I was dressing. In the afternoon,
when I wanted to lock myself in so as to lie down again on the sofa,
the key was gone. I am convinced that Herr K. had removed it.’
‘Then here we have the theme of locking or not locking a room which
appeared in the first association to the dream and also happened to
occur in the exciting cause of the recent recurrence of the dream.[46]
I wonder whether the phrase “_I dressed myself quickly_” may not also
belong to this context?’
‘It was then that I made up my mind not to stay with Herr K. without
Father. On the subsequent mornings I could not help feeling afraid
that Herr K. would surprise me while I was dressing: _so I always
dressed myself very quickly_. You see, Father lived at the hotel, and
Frau K. used always to go out early so as to go on expeditions with
him. But Herr K. did not annoy me again.’
‘I understand. On the afternoon of the second {82} day after the
scene in the wood you resolved to escape from his persecution, and
during the second, third, and fourth nights you had time to repeat
that resolution in your sleep. (You already knew on the second
afternoon---before the dream, therefore---that you would not have the
key on the following---the third---morning to lock yourself in with
while you were dressing; and you could then form the design of
dressing as quickly as possible.) But your dream recurred each night,
for the very reason that it corresponded to a resolution. A resolution
remains in existence until it has been carried out. You said to
yourself, as it were: “I shall have no rest and I can get no quiet
sleep until I am out of this house.” In your account of the dream you
turned it the other way and said: “_As soon as I was outside I woke
up_.”’
At this point I shall interrupt my report of the analysis in order to
compare this small piece of dream interpretation with the general
statements I have made upon the mechanism of the formation of
dreams. I argued in my book[47] that every dream is a wish which is
represented as fulfilled, that the representation acts as a disguise
if the wish is a repressed one, belonging to the unconscious, and that
except in the case of children’s dreams only an unconscious wish or
one which reaches down into the unconscious has the force necessary
for the formation of a dream. I fancy my theory would have been more
certain of general acceptance if I had contented myself with
maintaining that every dream had a meaning, which could be discovered
by means of a certain process of interpretation; and that when the
interpretation had been completed the dream could be replaced by
thoughts which would fall into place at an easily recognizable point
in the waking mental life of the dreamer. I might then have {83} gone
on to say that the meaning of a dream turned out to be of as many
different sorts as the processes of waking thought; that in one case
it would be a fulfilled wish, in another a realized fear, or again a
reflection persisting on into sleep, or a resolution (as in the
instance of Dora’s dream), or a piece of creative thought during
sleep, and so on. Such a theory would no doubt have proved attractive
from its very simplicity, and it might have been supported by a great
many examples of dreams that had been satisfactorily interpreted, as
for instance by the one which has been analysed in these pages.
But instead of this I formulated a generalization according to which
the meaning of dreams is limited to a single form, to the
representation of wishes, and by so doing I aroused a universal
inclination to dissent. I must, however, observe that I did not
consider it either my right or my duty to simplify a psychological
process so as to make it more acceptable to my readers, when my
researches had shown me that it presented a complication which could
not be reduced to uniformity until the inquiry had been carried into
another field. It is therefore of special importance to me to show
that apparent exceptions---such as this dream of Dora’s, which has
shown itself in the first instance to be the continuation into sleep
of a resolution formed during the day---nevertheless lend fresh
support to the rule which is in dispute.
Much of the dream, however, still remained to be interpreted, and I
proceeded with my questions: ‘What is this about the jewel-case that
your mother wanted to save?’
‘Mother is very fond of jewellery and had had a lot given her by
Father.’
‘And you?’
‘I used to be very fond of jewellery too, once; {84} but I have not
worn any since my illness.---Once, four years ago’ (a year before the
dream), ‘Father and Mother had a great dispute about a piece of
jewellery. Mother wanted to be given a particular thing---pearl drops
to wear in her ears. But Father does not like that kind of thing, and
he brought her a bracelet instead of the drops. She was furious, and
told him that as he had spent so much money on a present she did not
like he had better just give it to some one else.’
‘I dare say you thought to yourself you would accept it with
pleasure.’
‘I don’t know.[48] I don’t in the least know how Mother comes into the
dream; she was not with us at L⸺ at the time.’[49]
‘I will explain that to you later. Does nothing else occur to you in
connection with the jewel-case? So far you have only talked about
jewellery and have said nothing about a case.’
‘Yes, Herr K. had made me a present of an expensive jewel-case a
little time before.’
‘Then a return-present would have been very appropriate. Perhaps you
do not know that “jewel-case” [“_Schmuckkästchen_”] is a favourite
expression for the same thing that you alluded to not long ago by
means of the reticule you were wearing[50]---for the female genitals,
I mean.’
‘I knew you would say that.’[51]
‘That is to say, you knew that it _was_ so.---The meaning of the dream
is now becoming even clearer. You said to yourself: “This man is
persecuting me; {85} he wants to force his way into my room. My
‘jewel-case’ is in danger, and if anything happens it will be Father’s
fault.” For that reason in the dream you chose a situation which
expresses the opposite---a danger from which your father is saving
you. In this part of the dream everything is turned into its opposite;
you will soon discover why. As you say, the mystery turns upon your
mother. You ask how she comes into the dream? She is, as you know,
your former rival in your father’s affections. In the incident of the
bracelet, you would have been glad to accept what your mother had
rejected. Now let us just put “give” instead of “accept” and
“withhold” instead of “reject”. Then it means that you were ready to
give your father what your mother withheld from him; and the thing in
question was connected with jewellery.[52] Now bring your mind back to
the jewel-case which Herr K. gave you. You have there the
starting-point for a parallel line of thoughts, in which Herr K. is to
be put in the place of your father just as he was in the matter of
standing beside your bed. He gave you a jewel-case; so you are to give
him your jewel-case. That was why I spoke just now of a
“return-present”. In this line of thoughts your mother must be
replaced by Frau K. (You will not deny that she, at any rate, was
present at the time.) So you are ready to give Herr K. what his wife
withholds from him. That is the thought which has had to be repressed
with so much energy, and which has made it necessary for every one of
its elements to be turned into its opposite. The dream confirms once
more what I had already told you before you dreamed it---that you are
summoning up your old love for your father in order to protect
yourself against your love for Herr K. But what do all these efforts
show? Not only that you are afraid of Herr K., but that you are still
more afraid of yourself, and of the temptation you feel to yield to
{86} him. In short, these efforts prove once more how deeply you
loved him.’[53]
Naturally Dora would not follow me in this part of the
interpretation. I myself, however, had been able to arrive at a
further step in the interpretation, which seemed to me indispensable
both for the anamnesis of the case and for the theory of dreams. I
promised to communicate this to Dora at the next sitting.
The fact was that I could not forget the hint which seemed to be
conveyed by the ambiguous words already noticed---_that it might be
necessary to leave the room; that an accident might happen in the
night_. Added to this was the fact that the elucidation of the dream
seemed to me incomplete so long as a particular requirement remained
unsatisfied; for, though I do not wish to insist that this requirement
is a universal one, I have a predilection for discovering a means of
satisfying it. A regularly formed dream stands, as it were, upon two
legs, one of which is in contact with the main and current exciting
cause, and the other with some momentous occurrence in the years of
childhood. The dream sets up a connection between those two
factors---the event during childhood and the event of the present
day---and it endeavours to re-shape the present upon the model of the
remote past. For the wish which creates the dream always springs from
the period of childhood; and it is continually trying to summon
childhood back into reality and to correct the present day by the
measure of childhood. I believed that I could already clearly detect
the elements of Dora’s dream, which could be pieced together into an
allusion to an event in childhood.
{87}
I opened the discussion of the subject with a little experiment, which
was, as usual, successful. There happened to be a large match-stand on
the table. I asked Dora to look round and see whether she noticed
anything special on the table, something that was not there as a
rule. She noticed nothing. I then asked her if she knew why children
were forbidden to play with matches.
‘Yes; on account of the risk of fire. My uncle’s children are very
fond of playing with matches.’
‘Not only on that account. They are warned not to “play with fire”,
and a particular belief is associated with the warning.’
She knew nothing about it.---‘Very well, then; the fear is that if
they do they will wet their bed. The antithesis of “water” and “fire”
must be at the bottom of this. Perhaps it is believed that they will
dream of fire and then try and put it out with water. I cannot say
exactly. But I notice that the antithesis of water and fire has been
extremely useful to you in the dream. Your mother wanted to save the
jewel-case so that it should not be _burnt_; while in the
dream-thoughts it is a question of the “jewel-case” not being
_wetted_. But fire is not only used as the contrary of water, it also
serves directly to represent love (as in the phrase “to be _consumed_
with love”). So that from “fire” one set of rails runs by way of this
symbolic meaning to thoughts of love; while the other set runs by way
of the contrary “water”, and, after sending off a branch line which
provides another connection with “love” (for love also makes things
wet), leads in a different direction. And what direction can that be?
Think of the expressions you used: that _an accident might happen in
the night_, and that _it might be necessary to leave the room_. Surely
the allusion must be to a physical exigency? And if you transpose the
accident into childhood what can it be but bed-wetting? But what is
usually done to prevent children from wetting their bed? Are they not
woken up in the {88} night out of their sleep, _exactly as your
father woke you up in the dream_? This, then, must be the actual
occurrence which enabled you to substitute your father for Herr K.,
who really woke you up out of your sleep. I am accordingly driven to
conclude that you were addicted to bed-wetting up to a later age than
is usual with children. The same must also have been true of your
brother; for your father said: “_I refuse to let my two children go to
destruction_...” Your brother has no other sort of connection with the
real situation at the K.’s; he had not gone with you to L⸺. And now,
what have your recollections to say to this?’
‘I know nothing about myself,’ was her reply, ‘but my brother used to
wet his bed up till his sixth or seventh year; and it used sometimes
to happen to him in the daytime too.’
I was on the point of remarking to her how much easier it is to
remember things of that kind about one’s brother than about oneself,
when she continued the train of recollections which had been revived:
‘Yes. I used to do it too, for some time, but not until my seventh or
eighth year. It must have been serious, because I remember now that
the doctor was called in. It lasted till a short time before my
nervous asthma.’
‘And what did the doctor say to it?’
‘He explained it as nervous weakness; it would soon pass off, he
thought; and he prescribed a tonic.’[54]
The interpretation of the dream now seemed to me to be complete.[55]
But Dora brought me an addendum to the dream on the very next day. She
had forgotten to relate, she said, that each time after waking up she
had smelt smoke. Smoke, of course, fitted in well with {89} fire, but
it also showed that the dream had a special relation to myself; for
when she used to assert that there was nothing concealed behind this
or that, I would often say by way of rejoinder: ‘There can be no smoke
without fire!’ Dora objected, however, to such a purely personal
interpretation, saying that Herr K. and her father were passionate
smokers---as I am too, for the matter of that. She herself had smoked
during her stay by the lake, and Herr K. had rolled a cigarette for
her before he began his unlucky proposal. She thought, too, that she
clearly remembered noticing the smell of smoke on the three occasions
of the dream’s occurrence at L⸺, and not for the first time at its
recent reappearance. As she would give me no further information, it
was left to me to determine how this addendum was to be introduced
into the texture of the dream-thoughts. One thing which I had to go
upon was the fact that the smell of smoke had only come up as an
addendum to the dream, and must therefore have had to overcome a
particularly strong effort on the part of repression. Accordingly it
was probably related to the thoughts which were the most obscurely
presented and the most successfully repressed in the dream, to the
thoughts, that is, concerned with the temptation to show herself
willing to yield to the man. If that were so, the addendum to the
dream could scarcely mean anything else than the longing for a kiss,
which, with a smoker, would necessarily smell of smoke. But a kiss had
passed between Herr K. and Dora some two years earlier, and it would
certainly have been repeated more than once if she had given way to
him. So the thoughts of temptation seemed in this way to have harked
back to the earlier scene, and to have revived the memory of the kiss
against whose seductive influence the little ‘suck-a-thumbs’ had
defended herself at the time by the feeling of disgust. Taking into
consideration, finally, the indications which seemed to point to there
having been a transference on to me---since I am a smoker too---I
{90} came to the conclusion that the idea had probably occurred to
her one day during a sitting that she would like to have a kiss from
me. This would have been the exciting cause which led her to repeat
the warning dream and to form her resolution of stopping the
treatment. Everything fits together very satisfactorily upon this
view; but owing to the characteristics of ‘transference’ its validity
is not susceptible of definite proof.
I might at this point hesitate whether I should first consider the
light thrown by this dream upon the history of the case, or whether I
should rather begin by dealing with the objection to my theory of
dreams which may be based upon it. I shall take the former course.
The significance of bed-wetting in the early history of neurotics is
worth going into thoroughly. For the sake of clearness I will confine
myself to remarking that Dora’s case of bed-wetting was not the usual
one. The disorder was not simply that the habit had persisted beyond
what is considered the normal period, but, according to her explicit
account, it had begun by disappearing and had then returned at a
relatively late age---after her sixth year. Bed-wetting of this kind
has, to the best of my knowledge, no more likely cause than
masturbation, a habit whose importance in the aetiology of bed-wetting
in general is still insufficiently appreciated. In my experience, the
children concerned have themselves at one time been very well aware of
this connection, and all its psychological consequences follow from it
as though they had never forgotten it. Now, at the time when Dora
reported the dream, we were engaged upon a line of inquiry which led
straight towards an admission that she had masturbated in childhood. A
short while before, she had raised the question of why it was
precisely _she_ that had fallen ill, and, before I could answer, had
put the blame on her father. The justification for this was
forthcoming not out of her unconscious thoughts but from her conscious
{91} knowledge. It turned out, to my astonishment, that the girl knew
what the nature of her father’s illness had been. After his return
from consulting me she had overheard a conversation in which the name
of the disease had been mentioned. At a still earlier period---at the
time of the detached retina---an oculist who was called in must have
hinted at a luetic aetiology; for the inquisitive and anxious girl
overheard an old aunt of hers saying to her mother: ‘He was ill before
his marriage, you know’, and adding something which she could not
understand, but which she subsequently connected in her mind with
improper subjects.
Her father, then, had fallen ill through leading a loose life, and she
assumed that he had handed on his bad health to her by heredity. I was
careful not to tell her that, as I have already mentioned (see p. 28),
I was of opinion, too, that the offspring of luetics were very
specially predisposed to severe neuro-psychoses. The line of thought
in which she brought this accusation against her father was continued
in her unconscious material. For several days on end she identified
herself with her mother by means of slight symptoms and peculiarities
of manner, which gave her an opportunity for some really remarkable
achievements in the direction of intolerable behaviour. She then
allowed it to transpire that she was thinking of a stay she had made
at Franzensbad, which she had visited with her mother---I forget in
what year. Her mother was suffering from abdominal pains and from a
discharge (a catarrh) which necessitated a cure at Franzensbad. It was
Dora’s view---and here again she was probably right---that this
illness was due to her father, who had thus handed on his venereal
disease to her mother. It was quite natural that in drawing this
conclusion she should, like the majority of laymen, have confused
gonorrhoea and syphilis---what is contagious and what is
hereditary. The persistence with which she held to this identification
with her mother forced me almost to ask her whether she too was {92}
suffering from a venereal disease; and I then learnt that she was
afflicted with a catarrh (leucorrhoea) whose beginning, she said, she
could not remember.
I then understood that behind the train of thought in which she
brought these open accusations against her father there lay concealed
as usual a self-accusation. I met her half-way by assuring her that in
my view the occurrence of leucorrhoea in young girls pointed primarily
to masturbation, and I considered that all the other causes which were
commonly assigned to that complaint were put in the background by
masturbation.[56] I added that she was now on the way to finding an
answer to her own question of why it was precisely _she_ that had
fallen ill---by confessing that she had masturbated, probably in
childhood. Dora denied flatly that she could remember any such
thing. But a few days later she did something which I could not help
regarding as a further step towards the confession. For on that day
she wore at her waist---a thing she never did on any other occasion
before or after---a small reticule of a shape which had just come into
fashion; and, as she lay on the sofa and talked, she kept playing with
it---opening it, putting a finger into it, shutting it again, and so
on. I looked on for some time, and then explained to her the nature of
a _symptomatic act_.[57] I give the name of symptomatic acts to those
acts which people perform, as we say, automatically, unconsciously,
without attending to them, or as if in a moment of distraction. They
are actions to which people would like to deny any significance, and
which, if questioned about them, they would explain as being
indifferent and accidental. Closer observation, however, will show
that these actions, about which consciousness knows nothing or wishes
to know nothing, in fact give expression to {93} unconscious thoughts
and impulses, and are therefore most valuable and instructive as being
manifestations of the unconscious which have been able to come to the
surface. There are two sorts of conscious attitudes possible towards
these symptomatic acts. If we can ascribe inconspicuous motives to
them we recognize their existence; but if no such pretext can be found
for conscious use we usually fail altogether to notice that we have
performed them. Dora found no difficulty in producing a motive: ‘Why
should I not wear a reticule like this, as it is now the fashion to
do?’ But a justification of this kind does not dismiss the possibility
of the action in question having an unconscious origin. Though on the
other hand the existence of such an origin and the meaning attributed
to the act cannot be conclusively established. We must content
ourselves with recording the fact that such a meaning fits in quite
extraordinarily well with the situation as a whole and with the order
of the day as laid down by the unconscious.
On some other occasion I will publish a collection of these
symptomatic acts as they are to be observed in the healthy and in
neurotics. They are sometimes very easy to interpret. Dora’s reticule,
which came apart at the top in the usual way, was nothing but a
representation of the genitals, and her playing with it, her opening
it and putting her finger in it, was an entirely unembarrassed yet
unmistakable pantomimic announcement of what she would like to do with
them---namely, to masturbate. A very entertaining episode of a similar
kind occurred to me a short time ago. In the middle of a sitting the
patient---a lady who was no longer young---brought out a small ivory
box, ostensibly in order to refresh herself with a sweet. She made
some efforts to open it, and then handed it to me so that I might
convince myself how hard it was to open. I expressed my suspicion that
the box must mean something special, for this was the very first time
I had seen it, although its owner had been coming to me {94} for more
than a year. To this the lady eagerly replied: ‘I always have this box
about me; I take it with me wherever I go’. She did not calm down
until I had pointed out to her with a laugh how well her words were
adapted to quite another meaning. The box---_Dose_, _πύξις_---like the
reticule and the jewel-case, was once again only a substitute for the
shell of Venus, for the female genitals.
There is a great deal of symbolism of this kind in life, but as a rule
we pass it by without heeding it. When I set myself the task of
bringing to light what human beings keep hidden within them, not by
the compelling power of hypnosis, but by observing what they say and
what they show, I thought the task was a harder one than it really
is. He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that
no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with
his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. And thus the
task of making conscious the most hidden recesses of the mind is one
which it is quite possible to accomplish.
Dora’s symptomatic act with the reticule did not immediately precede
the dream. She started the sitting which brought us the narrative of
the dream with another symptomatic act. As I came into the room in
which she was waiting she hurriedly concealed a letter which she was
reading. I naturally asked her whom the letter was from, and at first
she refused to tell me. Something then came out which was a matter of
complete indifference and had no relation to the treatment. It was a
letter from her grandmother, in which she begged Dora to write to her
more often. I believe that Dora only wanted to play ‘secrets’ with me,
and to hint that she was on the point of allowing her secret to be
torn from her by the physician. I was then in a position to explain
her antipathy to every new physician. She was afraid lest he might
arrive at the foundation of her illness, either by examining her and
discovering her catarrh, or by {95} questioning her and eliciting the
fact of her addiction to bed-wetting---lest he might guess, in short,
that she had masturbated. And afterwards she would speak very
contemptuously of the physicians whose perspicacity she had evidently
over-estimated beforehand.
The reproaches against her father for having made her ill, together
with the self-reproach underlying them, the leucorrhoea, the playing
with the reticule, the bed-wetting after her sixth year, the secret
which she would not allow the physicians to tear from her---the
circumstantial evidence of her having masturbated in childhood seems
to me complete and without a flaw. In the present case I had begun to
suspect the masturbation when she had told me of her cousin’s gastric
pains (see p. 48), and had then identified herself with her by
complaining for days together of similar painful sensations. It is
well known that gastric pains occur especially often in those who
masturbate. According to a personal communication made to me by
W. Fliess, it is precisely gastralgias of this character which can be
interpreted by an application of cocaine to the ‘gastric spot’
discovered by him in the nose, and which can be cured by the
cauterization of the same spot. In confirmation of my suspicion Dora
gave me two facts from her conscious knowledge: she herself had
frequently suffered from gastric pains, and she had good reasons for
believing that her cousin was a masturbator. It is a very common thing
for patients to recognize in other people a connection which, on
account of their emotional resistances, they cannot perceive in
themselves. And, indeed, Dora no longer denied my supposition,
although she still remembered nothing. Even the date which she
assigned to the bed-wetting, when she said that it lasted ‘till a
short time before the appearance of the nervous asthma’, appears to me
to be of clinical significance. Hysterical symptoms hardly ever appear
so long as children are masturbating, but only afterwards, when a
period of {96} abstinence has set in;[58] they form a substitute for
masturbatory satisfaction, the desire for which continues to persist
in the unconscious until another and more normal kind of satisfaction
appears---where that is still attainable. For upon whether it is still
attainable or not depends the possibility of a hysteria being cured by
marriage and normal sexual intercourse. But if the satisfaction
afforded in marriage is again removed---as it may be owing to _coitus
interruptus_, psychological estrangement, or other causes---then the
libido flows back again into its old channel and manifests itself once
more in hysterical symptoms.
I should like to be able to add some definite information as to when
and under what particular influence Dora gave up masturbating; but
owing to the incompleteness of the analysis I have only fragmentary
material to present. We have heard that the bed-wetting lasted until
shortly before she first fell ill with dyspnoea. Now the only light
she was able to throw upon this first attack was that at the time of
its occurrence her father was away from home for the first time since
his health had improved. In this small recollection there must be a
trace of an allusion to the aetiology of the dyspnoea. Dora’s
symptomatic acts and certain other signs gave me good reasons for
supposing that the child, whose bedroom had been next door to her
parents’, had overheard her father in his wife’s room at night and had
heard him (for he was always short of breath) breathing hard during
their coitus. Children, in such circumstances, divine something sexual
in the uncanny sounds that reach their ears. Indeed, the movements
expressive of sexual excitement lie within them ready to hand, as
innate pieces of mechanism. I maintained years ago that the dyspnoea
and palpitations that occur in hysteria and anxiety-neurosis are only
detached {97} fragments of the act of copulation; and in many cases,
as in Dora’s, I have been able to trace back the symptom of dyspnoea
or nervous asthma to the same exciting cause---to the patient’s having
overheard sexual intercourse taking place between adults. The
sympathetic excitement which may be supposed to have occurred in Dora
on such an occasion may very easily have made the child’s sexuality
veer round and have replaced her inclination to masturbation by an
inclination to morbid anxiety. A little while later, when her father
was away and the child, devotedly in love with him, was wishing him
back, she must have reproduced in the form of an attack of asthma the
impression she had received. She had preserved in her memory the event
which had occasioned the first onset of the symptom, and we can
conjecture from it the nature of the train of thought, charged with
anxiety, which had accompanied the attack. The first attack had come
on after she had over-exerted herself on an expedition in the
mountains, so that she had probably been really a little out of
breath. To this was added the thought that her father was forbidden to
climb mountains and was not allowed to over-exert himself, because he
suffered from shortness of breath; then came the recollection of how
much he had exerted himself with her mother that night, and the
question whether it might not have done him harm; next came concern
whether she might not have over-exerted herself in masturbating---an
act which, like the other, led to a sexual orgasm accompanied by
slight dyspnoea---and finally came a return of the dyspnoea in an
intensified form as a symptom. Part of this material I was able to
obtain directly from the analysis, but the rest required
supplementing. And, indeed, the method by which the occurrence of
masturbation in Dora’s case has been verified has shown us that
material belonging to a single subject can only be collected piece by
piece at various times and in different connections.[59]
{98}
There now arise a whole series of questions of the greatest importance
concerning the aetiology of hysteria: is Dora’s case to be regarded as
aetiologically typical? does it represent the only type of causation?
and so on. Nevertheless, I am sure that I am taking the right course
in postponing my answer to such questions until a considerable number
of other cases have been similarly analysed and published. Moreover, I
should have to begin by criticizing the way in which the questions are
framed. Instead of answering ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the question whether the
aetiology of this case is to be looked for in masturbation during
childhood, I should first have to discuss the concept of aetiology as
applied to the psychoneuroses. It would then become evident that the
standpoint from which I should be able to answer the question would be
very widely removed from the standpoint from which it was put. Let it
suffice if we can reach the conviction that in this case the
occurrence of masturbation in childhood is established, and that its
occurrence {99} cannot be an accidental element nor an immaterial one
in the conformation of the clinical picture.[60]
A consideration of the significance of the leucorrhoea to which Dora
admitted promises to give us a still better understanding of her
symptoms. She had learnt to call her affection a ‘catarrh’ at the time
when her mother had had to visit Franzensbad on account of a similar
complaint; and the word ‘catarrh’ acted once again as a ‘switch-word’,
and enabled the whole set of thoughts upon her father’s responsibility
for her illness to manifest themselves in the symptom of the
cough. The cough, which no doubt originated in the first instance from
a slight actual catarrh, was, moreover, an imitation of her father
(whose lungs were affected), and could serve as an expression of her
sympathy and concern for him. But besides this, it proclaimed aloud,
as it were, something of which she may then have been still
unconscious: ‘I am my father’s daughter. I have a catarrh, just as he
has. He has made me ill, just as he has made Mother ill. It is from
him that I have got my evil passions, which are punished by
illness.’[61]
{100}
We will now attempt to put together the various determinants that we
have found for Dora’s attacks of coughing and hoarseness. In the
lowest stratum we must assume the presence of a real and organically
determined irritation of the throat---which acted like the grain of
sand around which an oyster forms its pearl. This irritation was
susceptible to fixation, because it concerned a part of the body which
in Dora had to a high degree retained its significance as an
erotogenic zone. And the irritation was consequently well fitted to
give expression to excited states of the libido. It was brought to
fixation by what was probably its first psychological wrapping---her
sympathetic imitation of her father---and by her subsequent
self-reproaches on account of her ‘catarrh’. The same group of
symptoms, moreover, showed itself capable of representing her
relations with Herr K.; it could express her regret at his absence and
her wish to make him a better wife. After a part of her libido had
once more turned towards her father, the symptom obtained what was
perhaps its last meaning; it came to represent sexual intercourse with
her father by means of Dora’s identifying herself with Frau K. I can
guarantee that this series is by no means complete. Unfortunately, an
incomplete analysis cannot enable us to follow the temporal sequence
of the changes in a symptom’s meaning, or to display clearly the
succession and coexistence of its various meanings. It may
legitimately be expected of a complete analysis that it should fulfil
these demands.
I must now proceed to touch upon some further relations existing
between Dora’s genital catarrh and her hysterical symptoms. At a time
when any psychological elucidation of hysteria was still very remote,
I {101} used to hear experienced fellow-doctors who were my seniors
maintain that in the case of hysterical patients suffering from
leucorrhoea any increase in the catarrh was regularly followed by an
intensification of the hysterical troubles, and especially of anorexia
and vomiting. No one was very clear about the nature of the
connection, but I fancy the general inclination was towards the
opinion held by gynaecologists. According to their hypothesis, as is
well known, disorders of the genitals exercise upon the nervous
functions a direct and far-reaching influence in the nature of an
organic disturbance---though a therapeutic test of this theory is apt
to leave one in the lurch. In the light of our present knowledge we
cannot exclude the possibility of the existence of a direct organic
influence of this sort; but it is at all events easier to determine
its psychological wrappings. The pride taken by women in the
appearance of their genitals is quite a special feature of their
vanity; and disorders of the genitals which they think calculated to
inspire feelings of repugnance or even disgust have an incredible
power of humiliating them, of lowering their self-esteem, and of
making them irritable, sensitive, and distrustful. An abnormal
secretion of the mucous membrane of the vagina is looked upon as a
source of disgust.
It will be remembered that Dora had a lively feeling of disgust after
being kissed by Herr K., and that we saw grounds for completing her
story of the scene of the kiss by supposing that, while she was being
embraced, she noticed the pressure of the man’s erect member against
her body. We now learn further that the same governess whom Dora cast
off on account of her faithlessness had, from her own experience of
life, propounded to Dora the view that all men were frivolous and
untrustworthy. To Dora that must mean that all men were like her
father. But she thought her father suffered from venereal
disease---for had he not handed it on to her and her mother? {102} She
might therefore have imagined to herself that all men suffered from
venereal disease, and naturally her conception of venereal disease was
modelled upon her one experience of it---a personal one at that. To
suffer from venereal disease, therefore, meant for her to be afflicted
with a disgusting discharge. So may we not have here a further motive
for the disgust she felt at the moment of the embrace? Thus the
disgust which was transferred on to the contact of the man would be a
feeling which had been projected according to the primitive mechanism
I have already mentioned (see p. 45), and would be related ultimately
to her own leucorrhoea.
I suspect that we are here concerned with unconscious processes of
thought which are twined around a pre-existing structure of organic
connections, much as festoons of flowers are twined around a wire; so
that on another occasion one might find other lines of thought
inserted between the same points of departure and termination. Yet a
knowledge of the thought-connections which have been effective in the
individual case is of a value which cannot be exaggerated for clearing
up the symptoms. It is only because the analysis was prematurely
broken off that we have been obliged in Dora’s case to resort to
framing conjectures and filling in deficiencies. What I have brought
forward for filling up the gaps is invariably supported by other cases
which have been more thoroughly analysed.
The dream from the analysis of which we have derived this information
corresponded, as we have seen, to a resolution which Dora carried with
her into her sleep. It was therefore repeated each night until the
resolution had been carried out; and it reappeared years later when an
occasion arose for forming an analogous resolution. The resolution
might have been {103} consciously expressed in some such words as
these: ‘I must fly from this house, for I see that my virginity is
threatened here; I shall go away with my father, and I shall take
precautions not to be surprised while I am dressing in the morning.’
These thoughts are clearly expressed in the dream; they form part of a
mental current which has achieved consciousness and a dominating
position in waking life. Behind them can be discerned obscure traces
of a train of thought which forms part of a contrary current and has
consequently been suppressed. This other train of thought culminated
in the temptation to yield to the man, out of gratitude for the love
and tenderness he had shown her during the last few years, and it may
perhaps have revived the memory of the only kiss she had so far had
from him. But according to the theory which I developed in my
_Traumdeutung_ such elements as these are not enough for the formation
of a dream. On that theory a dream is not a resolution represented as
having been carried out, but a wish represented as having been
fulfilled, and, moreover, in most cases a wish dating from
childhood. It is our business now to discover whether this principle
may not be contradicted by the present dream.
The dream does in fact contain infantile material, though it is
impossible at a first glance to discover any connection between that
material and Dora’s resolution to fly from Herr K.’s house and the
temptation of his presence. Why should a recollection have emerged of
her bed-wetting when she was a child and of the trouble her father
used to take to teach the child clean habits? We may answer this by
saying that it was only by the help of this train of thought that it
was possible to suppress the other thoughts which were so intensely
occupied with the temptation to yield, or that it was possible to
secure the domination of the resolution which had been formed to
combat those other thoughts. The child decided to fly _with_ her
father; in reality she fled _to_ her father because {104} she was
afraid of the man who was pursuing her; she summoned up an infantile
affection for her father so that it might protect her against her
present affection for a stranger. Her father was himself partly
responsible for her present danger, for he had handed her over to this
strange man in the interests of his own love-affair. And how much
better it had been when that same father of hers had loved no one more
than her, and had exerted all his strength to save her from the
dangers that had then threatened her. The infantile, and now
unconscious, wish to put her father in the strange man’s place had the
potency necessary for the formation of a dream. If there had been a
past situation similar to a present one, and differing from it only in
being concerned with one instead of with the other of the two persons
mentioned in the wish, that situation would become the main one in the
dream. But there _had_ been such a situation. Her father had once
stood beside her bed, just as Herr K. had the day before, and had
woken her up, with a kiss perhaps, as Herr K. may have intended to
do. Thus her resolution to fly from the house was not in itself
capable of producing a dream; but it became so by being associated
with another resolution which was founded upon infantile wishes. The
wish to replace Herr K. by her father provided the necessary motive
power for the dream. Let me recall the interpretation I was led to
adopt of Dora’s intensified train of thought about her father’s
relations with Frau K. My interpretation was that she had at that
point summoned up an infantile affection for her father so as to be
able to keep her repressed love for Herr K. in its state of
repression. This same sudden revulsion in the patient’s mental life
was reflected in the dream.
I have made one or two observations in my _Traumdeutung_[62] upon the
relation between the waking thoughts (day’s residues) which are
continued into {105} sleep and the unconscious wish which forms the
dream. I will quote them here as they stand, for I have nothing to add
to them, and the analysis of this dream of Dora’s proves afresh that
the facts are as I have supposed.
‘I admit that there is a whole class of dreams the _instigation_ to
which comes mainly or even exclusively from the residues of waking
life; and I think that even my wish to become---at length and at
last---a Professor Extraordinarius[63] might have allowed me a quiet
night’s sleep, if the concern I had felt during the day about my
friend’s health had not continued to be active. But the concern by
itself would not have produced a dream; the _motive power_ required
for a dream had to be contributed by a wish; and it lay with the
concern to provide itself with a wish which would act as the motive
power for the dream. To use a simile: it is quite possible for a
thought from waking life to play the part of an _entrepreneur_ for a
dream. But the _entrepreneur_, who, as they say, has an idea and
thirsts to put it into effect, can nevertheless do nothing without
capital. He needs a capitalist to meet the expenses; and this
capitalist, who can supply the psychological outlay for the dream, is
invariably and inevitably, whatever the thought from waking life may
be, _a wish from the unconscious_.’
Any one who has learnt to appreciate the delicacy of the fabric of
structures such as dreams will not be surprised to find that Dora’s
wish that her father might take the place of the man who was her
tempter called up in her memory not merely a casual collection of
material from her childhood, but precisely such material as was most
intimately bound up with the suppression of her temptation. For if
Dora felt unable to yield to her love for the man, if in the end she
repressed that love instead of surrendering to it, there was no factor
upon which her decision depended more directly than upon her premature
sexual enjoyment {106} and its consequences---her bed-wetting, her
catarrh, and her disgust. An early history of this kind can afford a
basis for two kinds of behaviour in response to the demands of love in
maturity---which of the two will depend upon the summation of
constitutional determinants in the individual. He will either exhibit
an abandonment to sexuality which is entirely without resistances and
borders upon perversity; or there will be a reaction---he will
repudiate sexuality, and will at the same time fall ill of a
neurosis. In the case of our present patient, her constitution and the
high level of her intellectual and moral education decided in favour
of the latter course.
I should like, further, to draw special attention to the fact that the
analysis of this dream has given us access to certain details of the
pathogenically operative events which had otherwise been inaccessible
to memory, or at all events to reproduction. The recollection of the
bed-wetting in childhood had, as we have seen, already been
repressed. And Dora had never mentioned the details of her persecution
by Herr K.; they had never occurred to her mind.
----------
I add a few remarks which may help towards the synthesis of this
dream. The dream-work began on the afternoon of the second day after
the scene in the wood, after Dora had noticed that she was no longer
able to lock the door of her room. She then said to herself: ‘I am
threatened by a serious danger here,’ and formed her resolution not to
stop on in the house alone but to go off with her father. This
resolution became capable of forming a dream, because it succeeded in
finding a continuation in the unconscious. What corresponded to it
there was her summoning up her infantile love for her father as a
protection against the present temptation. The change which thus took
place in her became fixed and brought her into the {107} attitude
shown by her supervalent train of thought---jealousy of Frau K. on her
father’s account, as though she herself were in love with him. There
was a conflict within her between a temptation to yield to the man’s
proposal and a composite force rebelling against that feeling. This
latter force was made up of motives of respectability and good sense,
of hostile feelings caused by the governess’s disclosures (jealousy
and wounded pride, as we shall see later), and of a neurotic element,
namely, the tendency to a repudiation of sexuality which was already
present in her and was based upon the story of her childhood. Her love
for her father, which she summoned up to protect her against the
temptation, had its origin in this same story of her childhood.
Her resolution of flying to her father, which, as we have seen,
reached down into the unconscious, was transformed by the dream into a
situation which presented as fulfilled the wish that her father should
save her from the danger. In this process it was necessary to put on
one side a certain thought which stood in the way; for it was her
father himself who had brought her into the danger. The hostile
feeling against her father (her desire for revenge), which was here
suppressed, was, as we shall discover, one of the motive forces of the
second dream.
According to the conditions of dream formation the imagined situation
must be chosen so as to reproduce a situation in infancy. A special
triumph is achieved if a recent situation, perhaps even the very
situation which is the exciting cause of the dream, can be transformed
into an infantile one. This has actually been achieved in the present
case, by a purely chance disposition of the material. Just as Herr
K. had stood beside her sofa and woken her up, so her father had often
done in her childhood. The whole trend of her thoughts could be most
aptly symbolized by her substitution of her father for Herr K. in that
situation.
But the reason for which her father used to wake {108} her up long ago
had been to prevent her from making her bed wet.
This ‘wet’ had a decisive influence upon the further content of the
dream; though it was represented in it only by a distant allusion and
by its opposite.
The opposite of ‘wet’ and ‘water’ can easily be ‘fire’ and
‘burning’. The chance that, when they arrived at the place, her father
had expressed his anxiety at the risk of fire, helped to decide that
the danger from which her father was to rescue her should be a
fire. The situation chosen for the dream-picture was based upon this
chance, and upon the opposition to ‘wet’: ‘There was a fire. Her
father was standing beside her bed to wake her.’ Her father’s chance
utterance would, no doubt, not have obtained such an important
position in the dream if it had not fitted in so excellently with the
dominating current of feeling, which was determined to regard him at
any cost as a protector and saviour. ‘He foresaw the danger from the
very moment of our arrival! He was in the right!’ (As a matter of
fact, it was he who had brought the girl into danger.)
In consequence of certain connections which can easily be made from
it, the word ‘wet’ served in the dream-thoughts as a point of junction
between several groups of ideas. ‘Wet’ was connected not only with the
bed-wetting, but also with the group of ideas relating to sexual
temptation which lay suppressed behind the content of the dream. Dora
knew that there was a kind of getting wet involved in sexual
intercourse, and that during the act of copulation the man presented
the woman with something liquid _in the form of drops_. She also knew
that the danger lay precisely in that, and that it was her business to
protect her genitals from being moistened.
‘Wet’ and ‘drops’ at the same time opened the way to the other group
of associations---the group relating to the disgusting catarrh, which
in her later {109} years had no doubt possessed the same mortifying
significance for her as the bed-wetting had in her childhood. ‘Wet’ in
this connection had the same meaning as ‘dirtied’. Her genitals, which
ought to have been kept clean, had really been dirtied already by the
catarrh---and this applied to her mother no less than to herself (see
p. 91). She seemed to understand that her mother’s mania for
cleanliness was a reaction against this dirtying.
The two groups of ideas met in this one thought: ‘Mother got both
things from father: the sexual wetness and the dirtying discharge.’
Dora’s jealousy of her mother was inseparable from the group of
thoughts relating to her infantile love for her father which she
summoned up for her protection. But this material was not yet capable
of representation. If, however, a recollection could be found which
was equally closely connected with both the groups related to the word
‘wet’, but which avoided any offensiveness, then such a recollection
would be able to take over the representation in the dream of the
material in question.
A recollection of this sort was furnished by the episode of the
‘drops’---the jewellery [‘_Schmuck_’] that Dora’s mother wanted to
have. In appearance the connection between this reminiscence and the
two groups of thoughts relating to sexual wetness and to being dirtied
was a purely external and superficial one, of a verbal character. For
‘drops’ was used ambiguously as a ‘switch-word’, while ‘jewellery’
[‘_Schmuck_’] was taken as an equivalent to ‘clean’, and thus as a
rather forced contrary of ‘dirtied’.[64] But in reality the most
substantial connections can be shown to have existed between the
things denoted themselves. The recollection originated from the {110}
material connected with Dora’s jealousy of her mother, which, though
its roots were infantile, had persisted far beyond that period. By
means of these two word-bridges it was possible to transfer on to the
single reminiscence of the ‘jewel-drops’ the whole of the significance
attaching to the ideas of her parents’ sexual intercourse, and of her
mother’s gonorrhoea and tormenting passion for cleanliness.
But a still further displacement had to be effected before this
material appeared in the dream. Though ‘drops’ is nearer to the
original ‘wet’, it was the more distant ‘jewellery’ that found a place
in the dream. When, therefore, this element had been inserted into the
dream situation which had already been determined, the account might
have run: ‘Mother wanted to stop and save her jewellery’. But a
subsequent influence now made itself felt, and led to the further
alteration of ‘jewellery’ into ‘jewel-case’. This influence came from
elements in the underlying group relating to the temptation offered by
Herr K. Herr K. had never given her jewellery, but he had given her a
‘case’ for it, which represented for Dora all the marks of preference
and all the tenderness for which she felt she ought now to have been
grateful. And the composite word thus formed, ‘jewel-case’, had beyond
this a special claim to be used as a representative element in the
dream. Is not ‘jewel-case’ [‘_Schmuckkästchen_’] a term commonly used
to describe female genitals that are immaculate and intact? And is it
not, on the other hand, an innocent word? Is it not, in short,
admirably calculated both to betray and to conceal the sexual thoughts
that lie behind the dream?
‘Mother’s jewel-case’ was therefore introduced in two places in the
dream; and this element replaced all mention of Dora’s infantile
jealousy, of the drops (that is, of the sexual wetness), of being
dirtied by the discharge, and, on the other hand, of her present
thoughts connected with the temptation---the thoughts which were
urging her to reciprocate the man’s love, {111} and which depicted the
sexual situation (alike desirable and menacing) that lay before
her. The element of ‘jewel-case’ was more than any other a product of
condensation and displacement, and a compromise between contrary
mental currents. The multiplicity of its origin---both from infantile
and contemporary sources---is no doubt pointed to by its double
appearance in the content of the dream.
The dream was a reaction to a fresh experience of an exciting nature;
and this experience must inevitably have revived the memory of the
only previous experience which was at all analogous to it. The latter
was the scene of the kiss in Herr K.’s place of business, when she had
been seized with disgust. But this same scene was associatively
accessible from other directions too, namely, from the group of
thoughts relating to the catarrh (see p. 100), and from her present
temptation. The scene therefore brought to the dream a contribution of
its own, which had to be made to fit in with the dream situation that
had already been determined: ‘There was a fire’... no doubt the kiss
smelt of smoke; so she smelt smoke in the dream, and the smell
persisted till after she was awake.
By inadvertence, I unfortunately left a gap in the analysis of the
dream. Dora’s father was made to say, ‘I refuse to let my two children
go to destruction...’ (‘as a result of masturbation’ should no doubt
be added from the dream-thoughts). Such speeches in dreams are
regularly constructed out of pieces of actual speeches which have
either been made or heard. I ought to have made inquiries as to the
actual source of this speech. The results of my inquiry would have
shown that the structure of the dream was more complicated, but would
at the same time have made it easier to penetrate.
Are we to suppose that when this dream occurred at L⸺ it had precisely
the same content as when it recurred during the treatment? It does not
seem necessary to do so. Experience shows that people {112} often
assert that they have had the same dream, when as a matter of fact the
separate appearances of the recurrent dream have differed from one
another in numerous details and in other respects that were of no
small importance. Thus one of my patients told me that she had had her
favourite dream again the night before, and that it always recurred in
the same form: she had dreamed of swimming in the blue sea, of
joyfully parting the waves, and so on. On closer investigation it
turned out that upon a common background now one detail and now
another was brought out; on one occasion, even, she was swimming in a
frozen sea and was surrounded by icebergs. This patient had other
dreams, which turned out to be closely connected with the recurrent
one, though even she made no attempt to claim that they were identical
with it. Once, for instance, she was looking at a view (based on a
photograph, but life-size) which showed the Upper Town and the Lower
Town in Heligoland simultaneously; on the sea was a ship, in which
were two people whom she had known in her youth, and so on.
What is certain is that in Dora’s case the dream which occurred during
the treatment had gained a new significance connected with the present
time, though perhaps its manifest content had not changed. The
dream-thoughts behind it included a reference to my treatment, and it
corresponded to a renewal of the old resolution to withdraw from a
danger. If her memory was not deceiving her when she declared that
even at L⸺ she had noticed the smoke after she woke up, it must be
acknowledged that she had brought my proverb, ‘There can be no smoke
without fire’, very ingeniously into the completed form of the dream,
in which it seemed to serve as an over-determination of the last
element. It was undeniably a mere matter of chance that the most
recent exciting cause---her mother’s locking the dining-room door so
that her brother was shut into his bedroom---had provided a {113}
connection with her persecution by Herr K. at L⸺, where her resolution
had been formed when she found she could not lock her bedroom door. It
is possible that her brother did not appear in the dream on the
earlier occasions, so that the words ‘my two children’ did not form
part of its content until after the occurrence of its latest exciting
cause.
III {114}
THE SECOND DREAM
A few weeks after the first dream the second occurred, and when it had
been dealt with the analysis was broken off. It cannot be made as
completely intelligible as the first, but it afforded a desirable
confirmation of an assumption which had become necessary about the
patient’s mental state, it filled up a gap in her memory, and it made
it possible to obtain a deep insight into the origin of another of her
symptoms.
Dora described the dream as follows: ‘_I was walking about in a town
which I did not know. I saw streets and squares which were strange to
me._[65] _Then I came into a house where I lived, went to my room, and
found a letter from Mother lying there. She wrote saying that as I had
left home without my parents’ knowledge she had not wished to write to
me to say that Father was ill. “Now he is dead, and if you like_[66]
_you can come.” I then went to the station_ [“_Bahnhof_”] _and asked
about a hundred times: “Where is the station?” I always got the
answer: “Five minutes.” I then saw a thick wood before me which I went
into, and there I asked a man whom I met. He said to me: “Two and a
half hours more.”_[67] _He offered to accompany me. But I refused and
went alone. I saw the station in front of me and could not reach
it. At the same time I had the usual feeling of anxiety that one has
in dreams when one cannot move forward. Then I was at home. I must
have been {115} travelling in the meantime, but I know nothing about
that. I walked into the porter’s lodge, and inquired for our flat. The
maidservant opened the door to me and replied that Mother and the
others were already at the cemetery_ [“_Friedhof_”].’[68]
It was not without some difficulty that the interpretation of this
dream proceeded. In consequence of the peculiar circumstances in which
the analysis was broken off---circumstances connected with the content
of the dream---the whole of it was not cleared up. And for this
reason, too, I am not equally certain at every point of the order in
which my conclusions were reached. I will begin by mentioning the
subject-matter with which the current analysis was dealing at the time
when the dream intervened. For some time Dora herself had been raising
a number of questions about the connection between some of her actions
and the motives which presumably underlay them. One of these questions
was: ‘Why did I say nothing about the scene by the lake for some days
after it had happened?’ Her second question was: ‘Why did I then
suddenly tell my parents about it?’ Moreover, her having felt so
deeply injured by Herr K.’s proposal seemed to me in general to need
explanation, especially as I was beginning to realize that Herr
K. himself had not regarded his proposal to Dora as a mere frivolous
attempt at seduction. I looked upon her having told her parents of the
episode as an action which she had taken when she was already under
the influence of a morbid craving for revenge. A normal girl, I am
inclined to think, will deal with a situation of this kind by
herself. I shall thus present the material produced during the
analysis of this dream in the somewhat haphazard order in which it
recurs to my mind.
_She was wandering about alone in a strange town, and {116} saw
streets and squares_. Dora assured me that it was certainly not
B------, which I had first hit upon, but a town in which she had never
been. It was natural to suggest that she might have seen some pictures
or photographs and have taken the dream-pictures from them. After this
remark of mine came the addendum about the monument in one of the
squares and immediately afterwards her recognition of its source. At
Christmas she had been sent an album from a German health-resort,
containing views of the town; and the very day before the dream she
had looked this out to show it to some relatives who were stopping
with them. It had been put in a box for keeping pictures in, and she
could not lay her hands on it at once. She had therefore said to her
mother: ‘_Where is the box?_’[69] One of the pictures was of a square
with a monument in it. The present had been sent to her by a young
engineer, with whom she had once had a passing acquaintance in the
manufacturing town. The young man had accepted a post in Germany, so
as to become sooner self-supporting; and he took every opportunity of
reminding Dora of his existence. It was easy to guess that he intended
to come forward as a suitor one day, when his position had
improved. But that would take time, and it meant waiting.
The wandering about in a strange town was over-determined. It led back
to one of the exciting causes from the day before. A young cousin of
Dora’s had come to stay with them for the holidays, and Dora had had
to show him round Vienna. This cause was, it is true, a matter of
complete indifference to her. But her cousin’s visit reminded her of
her own first brief visit to Dresden. On that occasion she had been a
stranger and had wandered about, not failing, of course, to visit the
famous picture gallery. Another cousin of hers, who was with them and
knew Dresden, {117} had wanted to act as a guide and take her round
the gallery. _But she declined, and went alone_, and stopped in front
of the pictures that appealed to her. She remained _two hours_ in
front of the Sistine Madonna, rapt in silent admiration. When I asked
her what had pleased her so much about the picture she could find no
clear answer to make. At last she said: ‘The Madonna’.
There could be no doubt that these associations really belonged to the
material concerned in forming the dream. They contained portions which
reappeared in the dream unchanged (‘she declined, and went alone’ and
‘two hours’). I may remark at once that ‘pictures’ was a point of
junction in the network of her dream-thoughts (the pictures in the
album, the pictures at Dresden). I should also like to single out,
with a view to subsequent investigation, the theme of the ‘Madonna’,
of the virgin mother. But what was most evident was that in this first
part of the dream she was identifying herself with a young man. This
young man was wandering about in a strange place, he was striving to
reach a goal, but he was being kept back, he needed patience and must
wait. If in all this she had been thinking of the engineer, it would
have been appropriate for the goal to have been the possession of a
woman, of herself. But instead of this it was---a
station. Nevertheless, the relation of the question in the dream to
the question which had actually been put allows us to substitute
‘_box_’ for ‘station’.[70] A box and a woman: the notions begin to
agree better.
_She asked quite a hundred times_... This led to another exciting
cause of the dream, and this time to one that was less indifferent. On
the previous evening they had had company, and afterwards her father
had asked her to fetch him the brandy: he could not get to sleep
unless he had taken some brandy. She had asked her mother for the key
of the sideboard; but {118} the latter had been deep in conversation,
and had not answered her, until Dora had exclaimed with the
exaggeration of impatience: ‘I’ve asked you _a hundred times_ already
where the key is.’ As a matter of fact, she had of course only
repeated the question about _five times_.[71]
‘Where is the _key_?’ seems to me to be the masculine counterpart to
the question ‘Where is the _box_?’[72] They are therefore questions
referring to---the genitals.
Dora went on to say that during this same family gathering some one
had toasted her father and had expressed the hope that he might
continue to enjoy the best of health for many years to come, etc. At
this a strange quiver had passed over her father’s tired face, and she
had understood what thoughts he was having to keep down. Poor sick
man! Who could tell what span of life was still to be his?
This brings us to the _contents of the letter_ in the dream. Her
father was dead, and she had left home by her own choice. In
connection with this letter I at once reminded Dora of the farewell
letter which she had written to her parents or had at least composed
for their benefit. This letter had been intended to give her father a
fright, so that he should give up Frau K.; or at any rate to take
revenge on him if he could not be induced to do that. We are here
concerned with the subject of her death and of her father’s
death. (Cf. ‘cemetery’ later on in the dream.) Shall we be going
astray if we suppose that the situation which formed the façade of the
dream was a phantasy of revenge directed against her father? The
feelings of pity for him which she remembered from the day before
would be quite in keeping with this. According to the phantasy she had
left home and gone among {119} strangers, and her father’s heart had
broken with grief and with longing for her. Then she would be
revenged. She understood very clearly what it was that her father
needed when he could not get to sleep without a drink of brandy.[73]
We will make a note of Dora’s _craving for revenge_ as a new element
to be taken into account in any subsequent synthesis of her
dream-thoughts.
But the contents of the letter must be capable of further
determination. What was the source of the words ‘if you like’? It was
at this point that the addendum of there having been a question-mark
after the word ‘like’ occurred to Dora, and she then recognized these
words as a quotation out of the letter from Frau K. which had
contained the invitation to L⸺, the place by the lake. In that letter
there had been a question-mark placed, in a most unusual fashion, in
the very middle of a sentence, after the intercalated words ‘if you
would like to come’.
So here we were back again at the scene by the lake and at the
problems connected with it. I asked Dora to describe the scene to me
in detail. At first she produced little that was new. Herr K.’s
exordium had been somewhat serious; but she had not let him finish
what he had to say. No sooner had she grasped the purport of his words
than she had slapped him in the face and hurried away. I inquired what
his actual words had been. Dora could only remember one of his pleas:
‘You know I get nothing out of my wife.’[74] In order to avoid meeting
him again she had wanted to get back to L⸺ on foot, by walking round
the lake, and _she had asked a man whom she met how far it was_. On
his replying that it was ‘_Two and a half hours_’, she had given up
her intention and had after {120} all gone back to the ship, which
left soon afterwards. Herr K. had been there too, and had come up to
her and begged her to forgive him and not to mention the incident. But
she had made no reply.---Yes. The _wood_ in the dream had been just
like the wood by the shore of the lake, the wood in which the scene
she had just described once more had taken place. But she had seen
precisely the same thick wood the day before, in a picture at the
Secessionist exhibition. In the background of the picture there were
_nymphs_.[75]
At this point a certain suspicion of mine became a certainty. The use
of ‘_Bahnhof_’ [‘station’; literally, ‘railway-court’][76] and
‘_Friedhof_’ [‘cemetery’; literally, ‘peace-court’] to represent the
female genitals was striking enough in itself, but it also served to
direct my awakened curiosity to the similarly formed ‘_Vorhof_’
[‘vestibulum’; literally, ‘fore-court’]---an anatomical term for a
particular region of the female genitals. This might have been no more
than a misleading joke. But now, with the addition of ‘nymphs’ visible
in the background of a ‘thick wood’, no further doubts could be
entertained. Here was a symbolic geography of sex! ‘Nymphae’,[77] as
is known to physicians though not to laymen (and even by the former
the term is not very commonly used), is the name given to the labia
minora, which lie in the background of the ‘thick wood’ of the pubic
hair. But any one who employed such technical names as ‘vestibulum’
and ‘nymphae’ must have derived his knowledge from books, and not from
popular ones either, but from anatomical text-books or from an {121}
encyclopaedia---the common refuge of youth when it is devoured by
sexual curiosity. If this interpretation were correct, therefore,
there lay concealed behind the first situation in the dream a phantasy
of defloration, the phantasy of a man seeking to force an entrance
into the female genitals.[78]
I informed Dora of the conclusions I had reached. The impression made
upon her must have been forcible, for there immediately appeared a
piece of the dream which had been forgotten: ‘_she went calmly to her
room, and began reading a big book that lay on her
writing-table_’.[79] The emphasis here was upon the two details
‘calmly’ and ‘big’ in connection with ‘book’. I asked whether the book
was in encyclopaedia _format_, and she said it was. Now children never
read about forbidden subjects in an encyclopaedia _calmly_. They do it
in fear and trembling, with an uneasy look over their shoulder to see
if some one may not be coming. Parents are very much in the way while
reading of this kind is going on. But this uncomfortable situation had
been radically improved, thanks to the dream’s power of fulfilling
wishes. Dora’s father was dead, and the others had already gone to the
cemetery. She might calmly read whatever she chose. Did not this {122}
mean that one of her motives for revenge was a revolt against her
parents’ constraint? If her father was dead she could read or love as
she pleased.
At first she would not remember ever having read anything in an
encyclopaedia; but she then admitted that a recollection of an
occasion of the kind did occur to her, though it was of an innocent
enough nature. At the time when the aunt she was so fond of had been
so seriously ill and it had already been settled that Dora was to go
to Vienna, a _letter_ had come from another uncle, to say that they
could not go to Vienna, as a boy of his, a cousin of Dora’s therefore,
had fallen dangerously ill with appendicitis. Dora had thereupon
looked up in the encyclopaedia to see what the symptoms of
appendicitis were. From what she had then read she still recollected
the characteristic localization of the abdominal pain.
I then remembered that shortly after her aunt’s death Dora had had an
attack of what had been alleged to be appendicitis. Up till then I had
not ventured to count that illness among her hysterical
productions. She told me that during the first few days she had had
high fever and had felt the pain in her abdomen that she had read
about in the encyclopaedia. She had been given cold fomentations but
had not been able to bear them. On the second day her period had set
in, accompanied by violent pains. (Since her health had been bad, the
periods had been very irregular.) At that time she used to suffer
continually from constipation.
It was not really possible to regard this state as a purely hysterical
one. Although hysterical fever does undoubtedly occur, yet it seemed
too arbitrary to put down the fever accompanying this questionable
illness to hysteria instead of to some organic cause operative at the
time. I was on the point of abandoning the track, when she herself
helped me along it by producing her last addendum to the dream: ‘_she
saw herself particularly distinctly going up the stairs_.’
{123}
I naturally required a special determinant for this. Dora objected
that she would anyhow have had to go upstairs if she had wanted to get
to her flat, which was on an upper floor. It was easy to brush aside
this objection (which was probably not very seriously intended) by
pointing out that if she had been able to travel in her dream from the
unknown town to Vienna without making a railway journey she ought also
to have been able to leave out a flight of stairs. She then proceeded
to relate that after the appendicitis she had not been able to walk
properly and had dragged her right foot. This state of things had
continued for a long time, and on that account she had been
particularly glad to avoid stairs. Even now her foot sometimes
dragged. The doctors whom she had consulted at her father’s desire had
been very much astonished at this most unusual after-effect of an
appendicitis, especially as the abdominal pains had not recurred and
did not in any way accompany the dragging of the foot.[80]
Here, then, we have a true hysterical symptom. The fever may have been
organically determined---perhaps by one of those very frequent attacks
of influenza that are not localized in any particular part of the
body. Nevertheless it was now established that the neurosis had seized
upon this chance event and made use of it for an utterance of its
own. Dora had therefore given herself an illness which she had read up
about in the encyclopaedia, and she had punished herself for dipping
into its pages. But she was forced to recognize that the punishment
could not possibly apply to her reading the innocent article in
question. {124} It must have been inflicted as the result of a process
of displacement, after another occasion of more guilty reading had
become associated with this one; and the guilty occasion must lie
concealed in her memory behind the contemporaneous innocent one.[81]
It might still be possible, perhaps, to discover the nature of the
subjects she had read about on that other occasion.
What, then, was the meaning of this condition, of this attempted
simulation of a perityphlitis? The remainder of the disorder, the
dragging of one leg, was entirely out of keeping with
perityphlitis. It must, no doubt, fit in better with the secret and
possibly sexual meaning of the clinical picture; and if it were
elucidated might in its turn throw light upon the meaning which we
were in search of. I looked about for a means of approaching the
puzzle. Periods of time had been mentioned in the dream; and time is
assuredly never a matter of indifference in any biological event. I
therefore asked Dora when this attack of appendicitis had taken place;
whether it had been before or after the scene by the lake. Every
difficulty was resolved at a single blow by her prompt reply: ‘Nine
months later.’ The period of time is sufficiently characteristic. Her
supposed attack of appendicitis had thus enabled the patient with the
modest means at her disposal (the pains and the menstrual flow) to
realize a phantasy of _childbirth_.[82] Dora was naturally aware of
the significance of this period of time, and could not dispute the
probability of her having, on the occasion under discussion, read up
in the encyclopaedia about pregnancy and childbirth. But what was all
this about her dragging her leg? I could now hazard a guess. That is
how people walk when they have {125} twisted a foot. So she had made a
‘false step’: which was true indeed if she could give birth to a child
nine months after the scene by the lake. But there was still another
requirement upon the fulfilment of which I had to insist. I am
convinced that a symptom of this kind can only arise where it has an
_infantile_ prototype. All my experience hitherto has led me to hold
firmly to the view that recollections derived from the impressions of
later years do not possess sufficient force to enable them to
establish themselves as symptoms. I scarcely dared hope that Dora
would provide me with the material that I wanted from her childhood,
for the fact is that I am not yet in a position to assert the general
validity of this rule, much as I should like to be able to do so. But
in this case there came an immediate confirmation of it. Yes, said
Dora, once when she was a child she had twisted the same foot; she had
slipped on one of the steps as she was going _downstairs_. The
foot---and it was actually the same one that she afterwards
dragged---had swelled up and had to be bandaged and she had had to lie
up for some weeks. This had been a short time before the attack of
nervous asthma in her eighth year.
The next thing to do was to turn to account our knowledge of the
existence of this phantasy: ‘If it is true that you were delivered of
a child nine months after the scene by the lake, and that you are
going about to this very day carrying the consequences of your false
step with you, then it follows that in your unconscious you must have
regretted the upshot of the scene. In your unconscious thoughts, that
is to say, you have made an emendation in it. The assumption that
underlies your phantasy of childbirth is that on that occasion
something took place,[83] that on that occasion you experienced and
went through everything that {126} you were in fact obliged to pick up
later on from the encyclopaedia. So you see that your love for Herr
K. did not come to an end with the scene, but that (as I maintained)
it has persisted down to the present day---though it is true that you
are unconscious of it.’---And Dora disputed the fact no longer.[84]
The labour of elucidating the second dream had so {127} far occupied
two hours. At the end of the second sitting, when I expressed my
satisfaction at the result, Dora replied in a depreciatory tone: ‘Why,
has anything so very remarkable come out?’ These words prepared me for
the advent of fresh revelations.
She opened the third sitting with these words: ‘Do you know that I am
here for the last time to-day?’ --- ‘How can I know, as you have said
nothing to me about it?’ --- ‘Yes. I made up my mind to put up with it
till the New Year.[85] But I shall wait no longer than that to be
cured.’ --- ‘You know that you are free to stop the treatment at any
time. But for to-day we will go on with our work. When did you come to
this decision?’ --- ‘A fortnight ago, I think.’ --- ‘That sounds just
like a maidservant or a governess---a fortnight’s warning.’ --- ‘There
was a governess who gave warning with the K.’s, when I was on my visit
to them that time at L⸺, by the lake.’ --- ‘Really? You have never
told me about her. Tell me.’
‘Well, there was a young girl in the house, who was the children’s
governess; and she behaved in the most extraordinary way to Herr
K. She never said good morning to him, never answered his remarks,
never handed him anything at table when he asked for it, and in short
treated him like thin air. For that matter he was hardly any politer
to her. A day or two before the scene by the lake, the girl took me
aside and said she had something to tell me. She then told me that
Herr K. had made advances to her at a time when his wife was away for
several weeks; he had made violent love to her and had implored her to
yield to his entreaties, saying that he got nothing from his wife, and
so on.’ --- ‘Why, those are the very words he used afterwards, when he
made his proposal to you and you gave him the slap in his face.’ ---
‘Yes. She had given way to him, but after a little while he had ceased
to care for her, and since then she hated him.’ --- ‘And this
governess had given warning?’ --- ‘No. {128} She meant to give
warning. She told me that as soon as she felt she was thrown over she
had told her parents what had happened. They were respectable people
living in Germany somewhere. Her parents said that she must leave the
house instantly; and, as she failed to do so, they wrote to her saying
that they would have nothing more to do with her, and that she was
never to come home again.’ --- ‘And why had she not gone away?’ ---
‘She said she meant to wait a little longer, to see if there might not
be some change in Herr K. She could not bear living like that any
more, she said, and if she saw no change she should give warning and
go away.’ --- ‘And what became of the girl?’ --- ‘I only know that she
went away.’ --- ‘And she did not have a child as a result of the
adventure?’ --- ‘No.’
Here, therefore (and quite in accordance with the rules), was a piece
of material information coming to light in the middle of the analysis
and helping to solve problems which had previously been raised. I was
able to say to Dora: ‘Now I know your motive for the slap in the face
with which you answered Herr K.’s proposal. It was not that you were
offended at his suggestions; you were actuated by jealousy and
revenge. At the time when the governess was telling you her story you
were still able to make use of your gift for putting on one side
everything that is not agreeable to your feelings. But at the moment
when Herr K. used the words “I get nothing out of my wife”---which
were the same words he had used to the governess---fresh emotions were
aroused in you and tipped the balance. “Does he dare”, you said to
yourself, “to treat me like a governess, like a servant?” Wounded
pride added to jealousy and to the conscious motives of common
sense---it was too much.[86] To {129} prove to you how deeply
impressed you were by the governess’s story, let me draw your
attention to the repeated occasions upon which you have identified
yourself with her both in your dream and in your conduct. You told
your parents what happened---a fact which we have hitherto been unable
to account for---just as the governess wrote and told _her_
parents. You give me a fortnight’s warning, just like a governess. The
letter in the dream which gave you leave to go home is the counterpart
of the governess’s letter from her parents forbidding her to do so.’
‘Then why did I not tell my parents at once?’
‘How much time did you allow to elapse?’
‘The scene took place on the last day of June; I told my mother about
it on July 14th.’
‘Again a fortnight, then---the time characteristic for a person in
service. Now I can answer your question. You understood the poor girl
very well. She did not want to go away at once, because she still had
hopes, because she expected that Herr K.’s affections would return to
her again. So that must have been your motive too. You waited for that
length of time so as to see whether he would repeat his proposals; if
he had, you would have concluded that he was in earnest, and did not
mean to play with you as he had done with the governess.’
‘A few days after I had left he sent me a picture post-card.’[87]
‘Yes, but when after that nothing more came, you gave free rein to
your feelings of revenge. I can even imagine that at that time you
were still able to find room for a subsidiary intention, and thought
that your accusation might be a means of inducing him to travel to the
place where you were living.’ --- ‘As he actually offered to do at
first,’ Dora threw in. --- ‘In that way your longing for him would
have been appeased’ --- here she nodded assent, a thing which I had
not expected --- {130} ‘and he might have made you the amends you
desired.’
‘What amends?’
‘The fact is, I am beginning to suspect that you took the affair with
Herr K. much more seriously than you have been willing to admit so
far. Had not the K.’s often talked of getting a divorce?’
‘Yes, certainly. At first she did not want to, on account of the
children. And now she wants to, but he no longer does.’
‘May you not have thought that he wanted to get divorced from his wife
so as to marry you? And that now he no longer wants to because he has
no one to replace her? It is true that two years ago you were very
young. But you told me yourself that your mother was engaged at
seventeen and then waited two years for her husband. A daughter
usually takes her mother’s love-story as her model. So you too wanted
to wait for him, and you took it that he was only waiting till you
were grown up enough to be his wife.[88] I imagine that this was a
perfectly serious plan for the future in your eyes. You have not even
got the right to assert that it was out of the question for Herr K. to
have had any such intention; you have told me enough about him that
points directly towards his having such an intention.[89] Nor does his
behaviour at L⸺ contradict this view. After all, you did not let him
finish his speech and do not know what he meant to say to
you. Incidentally, the scheme would by no means have been so
impracticable. Your father’s relations with Frau K.---and it was
probably only for this reason that you lent them your support for so
long---made it certain that her consent to a divorce could {131} be
obtained; and you can get anything you like out of your
father. Indeed, if your temptation at L⸺ had had a different upshot,
this would have been the only possible solution for all the parties
concerned. And I think that is why you regretted the actual event so
deeply and emended it in the phantasy which made its appearance in the
shape of the appendicitis. So it must have been a bitter piece of
disillusionment for you when the effect of your charges against Herr
K. was not that he renewed his proposals but that he replied instead
with denials and slanders. You will agree that nothing makes you so
angry as having it thought that you merely fancied the scene by the
lake. I know now---and this is what you do not want to be reminded
of---that you _did_ fancy that Herr K.’s proposals were serious, and
that he would not leave off until you had married him.’
Dora had listened to me without any of her usual contradictions. She
seemed to be moved; she said good-bye to me very warmly, with the
heartiest wishes for the New Year, and---came no more. Her father, who
called on me two or three times afterwards, assured me that she would
come back again, and said it was easy to see that she was eager for
the treatment to continue. But it must be confessed that Dora’s father
was never entirely straightforward. He had given his support to the
treatment so long as he could hope that I should ‘talk’ Dora out of
her belief that there was something more than a friendship between him
and Frau K. His interest faded when he observed that it was not my
intention to bring about that result. I knew Dora would not come back
again. Her breaking off so unexpectedly, just when my hopes of a
successful termination of the treatment were at their highest, and her
thus bringing those hopes to nothing---this was an unmistakable act of
vengeance on her part. Her purpose of self-injury also profited by
this action. No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those
half-tamed demons that inhabit the {132} human breast, and seeks to
wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle
unscathed. Might I perhaps have kept the girl under my treatment if I
myself had acted a part, if I had exaggerated the importance to me of
her staying on, and had shown a warm personal interest in her---a
course which, even after allowing for my position as her physician,
would have been tantamount to providing her with a substitute for the
affection she longed for? I do not know. Since in every case a part of
the factors that are encountered under the form of resistance remains
unknown, I have always avoided acting a part, and have contented
myself with practising the humbler arts of psychology. In spite of
every theoretical interest and of every endeavour to be of assistance
as a physician, I keep the fact in mind that there must be some limits
set to the extent to which psychological influence may be used, and I
respect as one of these limits the patient’s own will and
understanding.
Nor do I know whether Herr K. would have done any better if it had
been revealed to him that the slap Dora gave him by no means signified
a final ‘No’ on her part, but that it expressed the jealousy which had
lately been roused in her, while her strongest feelings were still on
his side. If he had disregarded that first ‘No’, and had continued to
press his suit with a passion which left room for no doubts, the
result might very well have been a triumph of the girl’s affection for
him over all her internal difficulties. But I think she might just as
well have been merely provoked into satisfying her craving for revenge
upon him all the more thoroughly. It is never possible to calculate
towards which side the decision will incline in such a conflict of
motives: whether towards the removal of the repression or towards its
reinforcement. Incapacity for meeting a _real_ erotic demand is one of
the most essential features of a neurosis. Neurotics are dominated by
the opposition between reality and phantasy. If what they long for the
most intensely {133} in their phantasies is presented to them in
reality, they none the less flee from it; and they abandon themselves
to their phantasies the most readily where they need no longer fear to
see them realized. Nevertheless, the barrier erected by repression can
fall before the onslaught of a violent emotional excitement produced
by a real cause; it is possible for a neurosis to be overcome by
reality. But we have no general means of calculating through what
person or what event such a cure can be effected.[90]
IV {134}
POSTSCRIPT
It is true that I have introduced this paper as a fragment of an
analysis; but the reader will have discovered that it is incomplete to
a far greater degree than its title might have led him to expect. It
is therefore only proper that I should attempt to give a reason for
the omissions---which are by no means accidental.
A number of the results of the analysis have been omitted, because at
the time when work was broken off they had either not been established
with sufficient certainty or they required further study before any
general statement could be made about them. At other points, where it
seemed to be permissible, I have indicated the direction along which
some particular solution would probably have been found to lie. I have
in this paper entirely left out of account the technique, which does
not at all follow as a matter of course, but by whose means alone the
pure metal of valuable unconscious thoughts can be extracted from the
raw material of the patient’s associations. This brings with it the
disadvantage of the reader being given no opportunity of testing the
correctness of my procedure in the course of this exposition of the
case. I found it quite impracticable, however, to deal simultaneously
with the technique of analysis and with the internal structure of a
case of hysteria: I could scarcely have accomplished such a task, and
if I had, the result would have been almost unreadable. The technique
of analysis demands an entirely separate exposition, which would have
to be illustrated by numerous examples chosen from a very great
variety of cases {135} and which would not have to take the results
obtained in each particular case into account. Nor have I attempted in
this paper to substantiate the psychological postulates which will be
seen to underlie my descriptions of mental phenomena. A cursory
attempt to do so would have effected nothing; an exhaustive one would
have been a volume in itself. I can only assure the reader that I
approached the study of the phenomena revealed by observation of the
psycho-neuroses without being pledged to any particular psychological
system, and that I then proceeded to adjust my views until they seemed
adapted for giving an account of the collection of facts which had
been observed. I take no pride in having avoided speculation; the
material for my hypotheses was collected by the most extensive and
laborious series of observations. The decidedness of my attitude on
the subject of the unconscious is perhaps specially likely to cause
offence, for I handle unconscious ideas, unconscious trains of
thought, and unconscious emotional tendencies as though they were no
less valid and unimpeachable psychological data than conscious
ones. But of this I am certain---that any one who sets out to
investigate the same region of phenomena and employs the same method
will find himself compelled to take up the same position, however much
philosophers may expostulate.
Some of my medical colleagues have looked upon my theory of hysteria
as a purely psychological one, and have for that reason pronounced it
_ipso facto_ incapable of solving a pathological problem. They will no
doubt discover from this paper that their objection was based upon
their having unjustifiably transferred what is a characteristic of the
technique on to the theory itself. It is the therapeutic technique
alone that is purely psychological; the theory does not by any means
fail to point out that neuroses have an organic basis---though it is
true that it does not look for that basis in any
pathological-anatomical {136} changes, and provisionally substitutes
the conception of organic functions for the chemical changes which we
should expect to find but which we are at present unable to
apprehend. No one, probably, will be inclined to deny the sexual
function the character of an organic factor, and it is the sexual
function that I look upon as the foundation of hysteria and of the
psychoneuroses in general. No theory of sexual life will, I suspect,
be able to avoid assuming the existence of some definite sexual
substances having an excitant action. Indeed, of all the clinical
pictures which we meet with in clinical medicine, it is the phenomena
of intoxication and abstinence in connection with the use of certain
chronic poisons that most closely resemble the genuine psychoneuroses.
But, once again, in the present paper I have not gone fully into all
that might be said to-day about ‘somatic compliance’, about the
infantile germs of perversion, about the erotogenic zones, and about
our predisposition towards bisexuality; I have merely drawn attention
to the points at which the analysis comes into contact with these
organic bases of the symptoms. More than this could not be done with a
single case. And I had the same reasons that I have already mentioned
for wishing to avoid a cursory discussion of these factors. There is a
rich opportunity here for further works, based upon the study of a
large number of analyses.
Nevertheless, in publishing this paper, incomplete though it is, I had
two objects in view. In the first place, I wished to supplement my
book on the interpretation of dreams by showing how an art, which
would otherwise be useless, can be turned to account for the discovery
of the hidden and repressed parts of mental life. (Incidentally, in
the process of analysing the two dreams dealt with in the paper, the
technique of dream interpretation, which is similar to that of
psycho-analysis, has come under consideration.) In the second place, I
wished to stimulate interest in a {137} whole group of phenomena of
which science is still in complete ignorance to-day because they can
only be brought to light by the use of this particular method. No one,
I believe, can have had any true conception of the complexity of the
psychological events in a case of hysteria---the juxtaposition of the
most dissimilar tendencies, the mutual dependence of contrary ideas,
the repressions and displacements, and so on. The emphasis laid by
Janet upon the ‘_idée fixe_’ which becomes transformed into a symptom
amounts to no more than an extremely meagre attempt at
schematization. Moreover, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion
that, when the ideas attaching to certain excitations are incapable of
becoming conscious, those excitations must act upon one another
differently, run a different course, and manifest themselves
differently from those other excitations which we describe as ‘normal’
and which have ideas attaching to them of which we become
conscious. When once things have been made clear up to this point, no
obstacle can remain in the way of an understanding of a therapeutic
method which removes neurotic symptoms by transforming ideas of the
former kind into normal ones.
I was further anxious to show that sexuality does not simply
intervene, like a _deus ex machina_, on one single occasion, at some
point in the working of the processes which characterize hysteria, but
that it provides the motive power for every single symptom, and for
every single manifestation of a symptom. The symptoms of the disease
are nothing else than _the patient’s sexual activity_. A single case
can never be capable of proving a theorem so general as this one; but
I can only repeat over and over again---for I never find it
otherwise---that sexuality is the key to the problem of the
psychoneuroses and of the neuroses in general. No one who disdains the
key will ever be able to unlock the door. I still await news of the
investigations which are to make it possible to contradict this
theorem or to limit its scope. What I {138} have hitherto heard
against it have been expressions of personal dislike or disbelief. To
these it is enough to reply in the words of Charcot: ‘Ça n’empêche pas
d’exister’.
Nor is the case of whose history and treatment I have published a
fragment in these pages well calculated to put the value of
psycho-analytic therapy in its true light. Not only the briefness of
the treatment (which hardly lasted three months), but another factor
inherent in the nature of the case, prevented an improvement from
being effected such as is attainable in other instances, where the
improvement will be admitted by the patient and his relatives and will
approximate more or less closely to a complete recovery. Satisfactory
results of this kind are reached when the symptoms are maintained
solely by the internal conflict between the tendencies concerned with
sexuality. In such cases the patient’s condition will be seen
improving in proportion as he is helped towards a solution of his
mental problems by the translation of pathogenic into normal
material. The course of events is very different when the symptoms
have become enlisted in the service of external motives, as had
happened with Dora during the last two years. It is surprising, and
might easily be misleading, to find that the patient’s condition shows
no noticeable alteration even though considerable progress has been
made with the work of analysis. But in reality things are not as bad
as they seem. It is true that the symptoms do not disappear while the
work is proceeding; but they disappear a little while later, when the
relations between patient and physician have been dissolved. The
postponement of recovery or improvement is really only caused by the
physician’s own person.
I must go back a little, in order to make the matter intelligible. It
may be safely said that during psycho-analytic treatment the formation
of new symptoms is invariably stopped. But the productive powers of
the neurosis are by no means extinguished; they are {139} occupied in
the creation of a special class of mental structures, for the most
part unconscious, to which the name of ‘_transferences_’ may be given.
What are transferences? They are new editions or facsimiles of the
tendencies and phantasies which are aroused and made conscious during
the progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiarity, which is
characteristic for their species, that they replace some earlier
person by the person of the physician. To put it another way: a whole
series of psychological experiences are revived, not as belonging to
the past, but as applying to the person of the physician at the
present moment. Some of these transferences have a content which
differs from that of their model in no respect whatever except for the
substitution. These, then---to keep to the same metaphor---are merely
new impressions or reprints. Others are more ingeniously constructed;
their content has been subjected to a moderating influence---to
_sublimation_, as I call it---and they may even become conscious, by
cleverly taking advantage of some real peculiarity in the physician’s
person or circumstances and attaching themselves to that. These, then,
will no longer be new impressions, but revised editions.
If the theory of analytic technique is gone into, it becomes evident
that transference is an inevitable necessity. Practical experience, at
all events, shows conclusively that there is no means of avoiding it,
and that this latest creation of the disease must be combated like all
the earlier ones. This happens, however, to be by far the hardest part
of the whole task. It is easy to learn how to interpret dreams, to
extract from the patient’s associations his unconscious thoughts and
memories, and to practise similar explanatory arts: for these the
patient himself will always provide the text. Transference is the one
thing the presence of which has to be detected almost without
assistance and with only the slightest clues to go upon, while at the
same time the risk of making arbitrary inferences has to be {140}
avoided. Nevertheless, transference cannot be evaded, since use is
made of it in setting up all the obstacles that make the material
inaccessible to treatment, and since it is only after the transference
has been resolved that a patient arrives at a sense of conviction of
the validity of the connections which have been constructed during the
analysis.
Some people may feel inclined to look upon it as a serious objection
to a method which is in any case troublesome enough that it itself
should multiply the labours of the physician by creating a new species
of pathological mental products. They may even be tempted to infer
from the existence of transferences that the patient will be injured
by analytic treatment. Both these suppositions would be mistaken. The
physician’s labours are not multiplied by transference; it need make
no difference to him whether he has to overcome any particular
tendency of the patient’s in connection with himself or with some one
else. Nor does the treatment force upon the patient, in the shape of
transference, any new task which he would not otherwise have
performed. It is true that neuroses may be cured in institutions from
which psycho-analytic treatment is excluded, that hysteria may be said
to be cured not by the method but by the physician, and that there is
usually a sort of blind dependence and a permanent bond between a
patient and the physician who has removed his symptoms by hypnotic
suggestion; but the scientific explanation of all these facts is to be
found in the existence of ‘transferences’ such as are regularly
directed by patients on to their physicians. Psycho-analytic treatment
does not create transferences, it merely brings them to light, like so
many other hidden psychical factors. The only difference is
this---that spontaneously a patient will only call up affectionate and
friendly transferences to help towards his recovery; if they cannot be
called up, he feels the physician is ‘antipathetic’ to him, and breaks
away from him as fast {141} as possible and without having been
influenced by him. In psycho-analysis, on the other hand, since the
play of motives is different, all the patient’s tendencies, including
hostile ones, are aroused; they are then turned to account for the
purposes of the analysis by being made conscious, and in this way the
transference is constantly being destroyed. Transference, which seems
ordained to be the greatest obstacle to psycho-analysis, becomes its
most powerful ally, if its presence can be detected each time and
explained to the patient.[91]
I have been obliged to speak of transference, for it is only by means
of this factor that I can elucidate the peculiarities of Dora’s
analysis. Its great merit, namely, the unusual clarity which makes it
seem so suitable as a first introductory publication, is closely bound
up with its great defect, which led to its being broken off
prematurely. I did not succeed in mastering the transference in good
time. Owing to the readiness with which Dora put one part of the
pathogenic material at my disposal during the treatment, I neglected
the precaution of looking out for the first signs of transference,
which was being prepared in connection with another part of the same
material---a part of which I was in ignorance. At the beginning it was
clear that I was replacing her father in her imagination, which was
not unlikely, in view of the difference between our ages. She was even
constantly comparing me with him consciously, and kept anxiously
trying to make sure whether I was being quite straightforward with
her, for her father ‘always preferred secrecy and roundabout
ways’. But when the first dream came, in which she gave herself the
warning that she had better leave my treatment just as she had
formerly left Herr K.’s house, I ought to have listened to the warning
myself. ‘Now,’ I ought to have said to her, {142} ‘it is from Herr
K. that you have made a transference on to me. Have you noticed
anything that leads you to suspect me of evil intentions similar
(whether openly or in some sublimated form) to Herr K.’s? Or have you
been struck by anything about me or got to know anything about me
which has caught your fancy, as happened previously with Herr K.?’ Her
attention would then have been turned to some detail in our relations,
or in my person or circumstances, behind which there lay concealed
something analogous but immeasurably more important concerning Herr
K. And when this transference had been cleared up, the analysis would
have obtained access to new memories, dealing, probably, with actual
events. But I was deaf to this first note of warning, thinking I had
ample time before me, since no further stages of transference
developed and the material for the analysis had not yet run dry. In
this way the transference took me unawares, and, because of the
unknown quantity in me which reminded Dora of Herr K., she took her
revenge on me as she wanted to take her revenge on him, and deserted
me as she believed herself to have been deceived and deserted by
him. Thus she _acted_ an essential part of her recollections and
phantasies instead of reproducing it in the treatment. What this
unknown quantity was I naturally cannot tell. I suspect that it had to
do with money, or with jealousy of another patient who had kept up
relations with my family after her recovery. When it is possible to
work transferences into the analysis at an early stage, the course of
the analysis is retarded and obscured, but its existence is better
guaranteed against sudden and overwhelming resistances.
In Dora’s second dream there are several clear allusions to
transference. At the time she was telling me the dream I was still
unaware (and did not learn until two days later) that we had only _two
hours_ more work before us. This was the same length of time which she
had spent in front of the Sistine Madonna, {143} and which (by making
a correction and putting ‘two hours’ instead of ‘two and a half
hours’) she had taken as the length of the walk which she had not made
around the lake. The striving and waiting in the dream, which related
to the young man in Germany, and had their origin in her waiting till
Herr K. could marry her, had been expressed in the transference a few
days before. The treatment, she had thought, was too long for her; she
would never have the patience to wait so long. And yet in the first
few weeks she had had discernment enough to listen without making any
such objections when I informed her that her complete recovery would
require perhaps a year. Her refusing in the dream to be accompanied,
and preferring to go alone, also originated from her visit to the
gallery at Dresden, and I was myself to experience them on the
appointed day. What they meant was, no doubt: ‘Men are all so
detestable that I would rather not marry. This is my revenge.’[92]
If cruel impulses and revengeful motives, which have already been used
in the patient’s ordinary life for maintaining her symptoms, become
transferred on to the physician during treatment, before he has had
time {144} to detach them from himself by tracing them back to their
sources, then it is not to be wondered at if the patient’s condition
is unaffected by his therapeutic efforts. For how could the patient
take a more effective revenge than by demonstrating upon her own
person the helplessness and incapacity of the physician? Nevertheless,
I am not inclined to put too low a value upon the therapeutic results
even of such a fragmentary treatment as Dora’s.
It was not until fifteen months after the case was over and this paper
drafted that I had news of my patient’s condition and the effects of
my treatment. On a date which is not a matter of complete
indifference, on the first of April (times and dates, as we know, were
never without significance for her), Dora came to see me again: to
finish her story and to ask for help once more. One glance at her
face, however, was enough to tell me that she was not in earnest over
her request. For four or five weeks after stopping the treatment she
had been ‘all in a muddle’, as she said. A great improvement had then
set in; her attacks had become less frequent and her spirits had
risen. In the May of that year one of the K.’s two children (it had
always been delicate) had died. She took the opportunity of their loss
to pay them a visit of condolence, and they received her as though
nothing had happened in the last three years. She made it up with
them, she took her revenge on them, and she brought her own business
to a satisfactory conclusion. To the wife she said: ‘I know you have
an affair with my father’; and the other did not deny it. From the
husband she drew an admission of the scene by the lake which he had
disputed, and brought the news of her vindication home to her
father. Since then she had not resumed her relations with the family.
After this she had gone on quite well till the middle {145} of
October, when she had had another attack of aphonia which had lasted
for six weeks. I was surprised at this news, and, on my asking her
whether there had been any exciting cause, she told me that the attack
had followed upon a violent fright. She had seen some one run over by
a cart. Finally she came out with the fact that the accident had
occurred to no less a person than Herr K. himself. She had come across
him in the street one day; they had met in a place where there was a
great deal of traffic; he had stopped in front of her as though in
bewilderment, and in his abstraction he had allowed himself to be
knocked down by a cart.[93] She had been able to convince herself,
however, that he escaped without serious injury. She still felt some
slight emotion if she heard any one speak of her father’s affair with
Frau K., but otherwise she had no further concern with the matter. She
was absorbed in her work, and had no thoughts of marrying.
She went on to tell me that she had come for help on account of a
right-sided facial neuralgia, from which she was now suffering day and
night. ‘How long has it been going on?’ ‘Exactly a fortnight.’[94] I
could not help smiling; for I was able to show her that exactly a
fortnight earlier she had read a piece of news that concerned me in
the newspaper. (This was in 1902.) And this she confirmed.
Her alleged facial neuralgia was thus a self-punishment---remorse at
having once given Herr K. a box on the ear, and at having transferred
her feelings of revenge on to me. I do not know what kind of help she
wanted from me, but I promised to forgive her for having deprived me
of the satisfaction of affording her a far more radical cure for her
troubles.
Years have again gone by since her visit. In the meantime the girl has
married, and indeed---unless all {146} the signs mislead me---she has
married the young man who came into her associations at the beginning
of the analysis of the second dream. Just as the first dream
represented her turning away from the man she loved to her
father---that is to say, her flight from life into disease---so the
second dream announced that she was about to tear herself free from
her father and had been reclaimed once more by the realities of life.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
II {147}
ANALYSIS OF A PHOBIA IN A
FIVE-YEAR-OLD BOY
(1909)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ANALYSIS OF A PHOBIA IN A {149}
FIVE-YEAR-OLD BOY[95]
I
INTRODUCTION
In the following pages I propose to describe the course of the illness
and recovery of a very youthful patient. The case history is not,
strictly speaking, derived from my observation. It is true that I laid
down the general lines of the treatment, and that on one single
occasion, when I had a conversation with the boy, I took a direct
share in it; but the treatment itself was carried out by the child’s
father, and it is to him that I owe my sincerest thanks for allowing
me to publish his notes upon the case. But his services go further
than this. No one else, in my opinion, could possibly have prevailed
on the child to make any such avowals; the special knowledge by means
of which he was able to interpret the remarks made by his
five-year-old son was indispensable, and without it the technical
difficulties in the way of conducting a psycho-analysis upon so young
a child would have been insuperable. It was only because the authority
of a father and of a physician were united in a single person, and
because in him both affectionate care and scientific interest were
combined, that it was possible in this one instance to apply the
method to a use to which it would not otherwise have lent itself.
But the peculiar value of this observation lies in the considerations
which follow. When a physician {150} treats an adult neurotic by
psycho-analysis, the process he goes through of uncovering the
psychical formations, layer by layer, eventually enables him to frame
certain hypotheses as to the patient’s infantile sexuality; and it is
in the components of the latter that he believes he has discovered the
motive forces of all the neurotic symptoms of later life. I have set
out these hypotheses in my _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_
(published in 1905), and I am aware that they seem as strange to an
outside reader as they seem inevitable to a psycho-analyst. But even a
psycho-analyst may confess to the wish for a more direct and less
roundabout proof of these fundamental theorems. Surely there must be a
possibility of observing upon the child at first hand and in all the
freshness of life the sexual impulses and conative tendencies which we
dig out so laboriously in the adult from among their own
débris---especially as it is also our belief that they are the common
property of all men, a part of the human constitution, and merely
exaggerated or distorted in the case of neurotics.
With this end in view I have for many years been urging my pupils and
my friends to collect observations on the sexual life of
children---the existence of which has as a rule been cleverly
overlooked or deliberately denied. Among the material which came into
my possession as a result of these requests, the reports which I
received at regular intervals about little Hans soon began to take a
prominent place. His parents were both among my closest adherents, and
they had agreed that in bringing up their first child they would use
no more coercion than might be absolutely necessary for maintaining
good behaviour. And, as the child developed into a cheerful,
good-natured, and lively little boy, the experiment of letting him
grow up and express himself without being intimidated went on
satisfactorily. I shall now proceed to reproduce his father’s records
of little Hans just as I received them; and I shall of course {151}
refrain from any attempt at spoiling the _naïveté_ and directness of
the nursery by making any conventional emendations.
The first reports of Hans date from a period when he was not quite
three years old. At that time, by means of various remarks and
questions, he was showing a quite peculiarly lively interest in that
portion of his body which he used to describe as his ‘widdler’.[96]
Thus he once asked his mother this question:
_Hans_: ‘Mamma, have you got a widdler too?’
_Mother_: ‘Of course. Why?’
_Hans_: ‘I was only just thinking.’
At the same age he went into a cow-shed once and saw a cow being
milked. ‘Oh, look!’ he said, ‘there’s milk coming out of its widdler!’
Even these first observations begin to rouse an expectation that much,
if not most, of what little Hans shows us will turn out to be typical
for the sexual development of children in general. I once put forward
the view[97] that there was no need to be too much horrified at
finding in a woman the idea of sucking at the male organ. This
repulsive propensity, I argued, had a most innocent origin, since it
was derived from sucking at the mother’s breast; and in this
connection, I went on, the udder of a cow plays an apt part as an
intermediate image, being in its nature a mamma and in its shape and
position a penis. Little Hans’s discovery confirms the latter part of
my contention.
Meanwhile his interest in widdlers was by no means a purely
theoretical one; as might have been expected, it impelled him to touch
his member. When he was three and a half his mother found him with his
hand to his penis. She threatened him in these words: ‘If you do that,
I shall send for Dr. A. to cut off your widdler. And then what’ll you
widdle with?’
{152}
_Hans_: ‘With my bottom.’
He made this reply without having any sense of guilt as yet. But this
was the occasion of his acquiring the ‘castration complex’, the
presence of which we are so often obliged to infer in analysing
neurotics, though they one and all struggle violently against
recognizing it. There is much of importance to be said upon the
significance of this element in the life of a child. The ‘castration
complex’ has left marked traces behind it in myths (and not only in
Greek myths); in a passage in my _Traumdeutung_,[98] and elsewhere, I
have touched upon the part it plays.[99]
At about the same age (three and a half), standing in front of the
lions’ cage at Schönbrunn,[100] little Hans called out in a joyful and
excited voice: ‘I saw the lion’s widdler’.
Animals owe a good deal of their importance in myths and fairy tales
to the openness with which they display their genitals and their
sexual functions to the {153} inquisitive little human child. There
can be no doubt as to the existence of Hans’s sexual curiosity; but it
roused the spirit of inquiry in him and enabled him to arrive at
genuine abstract knowledge.
When he was at the station once (at three and three-quarters) he saw
some water being let out of an engine. ‘Oh, look,’ he said, ‘the
engine’s widdling. Where’s it got its widdler?’
After a little he added in reflective tones: ‘A dog and a horse have
widdlers; a table and a chair haven’t.’ He had thus got hold of an
essential characteristic for differentiating between animate and
inanimate objects.
Thirst for knowledge seems to be inseparable from sexual
curiosity. Hans’s curiosity was particularly directed towards his
parents.
_Hans_ (aged three and three-quarters): ‘Papa, have you got a widdler
too?’
_Father_: ‘Yes, of course.’
_Hans_: ‘But I’ve never seen it when you were undressing.’
Another time he was looking on intently while his mother undressed
before going to bed. ‘What are you staring like that for?’ she asked.
_Hans_: ‘I was only looking to see if you’d got a widdler too.’
_Mother_: ‘Of course. Didn’t you know that?’
_Hans_: ‘No. I thought you were so big you’d have a widdler like a
horse.’
This expectation of little Hans’s deserves to be noted; it will become
important later on.
But the great event of Hans’s life was the birth of his little sister
Hanna when he was exactly three and a half.[101] His behaviour on that
occasion was noted down by his father on the spot: ‘At five in the
morning’, he writes, ‘labour began, and Hans’s bed was moved into the
next room. He woke up there at seven, and hearing his mother groaning,
asked: “Why’s {154} mamma coughing?” Then, after a pause, “The stork’s
coming to-day for certain.”
‘Naturally he has often been told during the last few days that the
stork is going to bring a little girl or a little boy; and he quite
rightly connected the unusual sounds of groaning with the stork’s
arrival.
‘Later on he was taken into the kitchen. He saw the doctor’s bag in
the front hall and asked: “What’s that?” “A bag,” was the reply. Upon
which he declared with conviction: “The stork’s coming to-day.” After
the delivery of the child the midwife came into the kitchen and Hans
heard her ordering some tea to be made. At this he said: “I know!
Mummy’s to have some tea because she’s coughing.” He was then called
into the bedroom. He did not look at his mother, however, but at the
basins and other vessels, filled with blood and water, that were still
standing about the room. Pointing to the blood-stained bedpan, he
observed in a surprised voice: “But blood doesn’t come out of _my_
widdler.”
‘Everything he says shows that he connects what is strange in the
situation with the arrival of the stork. He meets everything he sees
with a very suspicious and intent look, and _there can be no doubt
that his first suspicions about the stork have made their appearance_.
‘Hans is very jealous of the new arrival, and whenever any one praises
her, says she is a lovely baby, and so on, he at once declares
scornfully: “But she hasn’t got any teeth yet.”[102] And in fact when
he saw her for the first time he was very much surprised that she
could not speak, and decided that this was because she had no
teeth. During the first few days he was naturally put very much in the
background. He was suddenly taken ill with a sore throat. In his fever
he was heard saying: “But I don’t want a little sister!”
{155}
‘Some six months later he had got over his jealousy, and his brotherly
affection for the baby was only equalled by his sense of his own
superiority over her.[103]
‘A week later Hans was watching his seven-day-old sister being given a
bath. “But her widdler’s still quite small,” he remarked; and then
added, as though by way of consolation: “When she grows up it’ll get
bigger all right.”[104]
‘At the same age (when he was three and three-quarters) Hans produced
his first account of a dream: {156} “To-day when I was asleep I
thought I was at Gmunden[105] with Mariedl.”
‘Mariedl was the thirteen-year-old daughter of our landlord and used
often to play with him.’
As Hans’s father was telling his mother the dream in his presence, he
corrected him, saying: ‘Not with Mariedl, but quite alone with
Mariedl.’
In this connection we learn: ‘In the summer of 1906 Hans was at
Gmunden, and used to run about all day long with our landlord’s
children. When we left Gmunden we thought he would be very much upset
by having to come away and move into town. To our surprise this was
not so. He seemed glad at the change, and for several weeks he talked
very little about Gmunden. It was not until after some weeks had
passed that there began to emerge reminiscences---often vividly
coloured---of the time he had spent at Gmunden. During the last four
weeks or so he has been working these reminiscences up into
phantasies. He imagines that he is playing with the other children,
with Berta, Olga, and Fritzl; he talks to them as though they were
really with him, and he is capable of amusing himself in this way for
hours at a time. Now that he has got a sister and is obviously taken
up with the problem of the origin of children, he always calls Berta
and Olga “his children”; and once he added: “my children Berta and
Olga were brought by the stork too.” The dream, occurring now, after
six months’ absence from Gmunden, is evidently to be read as an
expression of a longing to go back there.’
Thus far his father. I will anticipate what is to come by adding that
when Hans made this last remark about his children having been brought
by the stork, he was contradicting aloud a doubt that was lurking
within him.
[Illustration: Fig. 1. --- see images/fig1.png]
His father luckily made a note of many things {157} which turned out
later on to be of unexpected value. ‘I drew a giraffe for Hans, who
has been to Schönbrunn several times lately. He said to me: “Draw its
widdler too.” “Draw it yourself”, I answered; whereupon he added this
line to my picture (see Fig. 1). He began by drawing a short stroke,
and then added a bit on to it, remarking: “Its widdler’s longer.”
‘Hans and I walked past a horse that was urinating, and he said: “The
horse has got its widdler underneath like me.”
‘He was watching his three-months-old sister being given a bath, and
said in pitying tones: “She _has_ got a tiny little widdler.”
‘He was given a doll to play with and undressed it. He examined it
carefully and said: “Her widdler’s ever so tiny.”’
As we already know, this formula made it possible for him to go on
believing in his discovery (see p. 155).
Every investigator runs the risk of falling into an occasional
error. It is some consolation for him if, like little Hans in the next
example, he does not err alone but can quote a common usage of
language in his support. For Hans saw a monkey in his picture-book one
day, and pointing to its up-curled tail, said: ‘Daddy, look at its
widdler!’
His interest in widdlers led him to invent a special game of his
own. ‘Leading out of the front hall there is a lavatory and also a
dark storeroom for keeping wood in. For some time past Hans has been
going into this wood-cupboard and saying: “I’m going to my W.C.” I
once looked in to see what he was doing in the dark storeroom. He
showed me his parts and said: “I’m widdling.” That is to say, he has
been “playing” at W.C. That it is in the nature of a game is shown not
merely by the fact that he was only pretending {158} to widdle, but
also by the fact that he does not go into the W.C., which would after
all be far simpler, but prefers the wood-cupboard and calls it “his
W.C.”’
We should be doing Hans an injustice if we were to trace only the
auto-erotic features of his sexual life. His father has detailed
information to give us on the subject of his love relationships with
other children. From these we can discern the existence of an
‘object-choice’ just as in the case of an adult; and also, it must be
confessed, a very striking degree of inconstancy and a disposition to
polygamy.
‘In the winter (at the age of three and three-quarters) I took Hans to
the Skating Rink and introduced him to my friend N.’s two little
daughters, who were about ten years old. Hans sat down beside them,
while they, in the consciousness of their mature age, looked down on
the little urchin with a good deal of contempt; he gazed at them with
admiration, though this proceeding made no great impression on
them. In spite of this Hans always spoke of them afterwards as “my
little girls”. “Where are my little girls? When are my little girls
coming?” And for some weeks he kept tormenting me with the question:
“When am I going to the Rink again to see my little girls?”’
A five-year-old boy cousin came to visit Hans, who had by then reached
the age of four. Hans was constantly putting his arms round him, and
once, as he was giving him one of these tender embraces, said: ‘I _am_
so fond of you.’
This is the first trace of homosexuality that we have come across in
him, but it will not be the last. Little Hans seems to be a positive
paragon of all the vices.
‘When Hans was four years old we moved into a new flat. A door led out
of the kitchen on to a balcony, from which one could see into a flat
on the opposite side of the courtyard. In this flat Hans discovered a
little girl of about seven or eight. He would sit on the step leading
on to the balcony so as {159} to admire her, and would stop there for
hours on end. At four o’clock in the afternoon in particular, when the
little girl came home from school, he was not to be kept in the room,
and nothing could induce him to abandon his post of observation. Once,
when the little girl failed to make her appearance at the window at
her usual hour, Hans grew quite restless, and kept pestering the
servants with questions---“When’s the little girl coming? Where’s the
little girl?” and so on. When she did appear at last, he was quite
blissful and never took his eyes off the flat opposite. The violence
with which this “long-range love”[106] came over him is to be
explained by his having no playfellows of either sex. Spending a great
deal of time with other children clearly enters into a child’s normal
development.
‘Hans obtained some companionship of this kind when, shortly
afterwards (he was by then four and a half), we moved to Gmunden for
the summer holidays. In our house there his playmates were our
landlord’s children: Franzl (about twelve years old), Fritzl (eight),
Olga (seven), and Berta (five). Besides these there were the
neighbour’s children, Anna (ten), and two other little girls of nine
and seven whose names I have forgotten. Hans’s favourite was Fritzl;
he often hugged him and made protestations of his love. Once when he
was asked: “Which of the girls are you fondest of?” he answered:
“Fritzl!” At the same time he treated the girls in a most aggressive,
masculine and arrogant way, embracing them and kissing them
heartily---a process to which Berta in particular offered no
objection. When Berta was coming out of the room one evening he put
his arm round her neck and said in the fondest tones: “Berta, {160}
you _are_ a dear!” This, by the way, did not prevent his kissing the
others as well and assuring them of his love. He was fond, too, of the
fourteen-year-old Mariedl---another of our landlord’s daughters---who
used to play with him. One evening as he was being put to bed he said:
“I want Mariedl to sleep with me.” On being told that would not do, he
said: “Then she shall sleep with Mummy or with Daddy.” He was told
that would not do either, but that Mariedl must sleep with her own
father and mother. Upon which the following dialogue took place:
‘_Hans_: “Oh, then I’ll just go downstairs and sleep with Mariedl.”
‘_Mother_: “You really want to go away from Mummy and sleep
downstairs?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh, I’ll come up again in the morning to have breakfast and
do number one.”
‘_Mother_: “Well, if you really want to go away from Daddy and Mummy,
then take your coat and knickers and---good-bye!”
‘Hans did in fact take his clothes and go towards the staircase, to go
and sleep with Mariedl, but, it need hardly be said, he was fetched
back.’
‘(Behind his wish, “I want Mariedl to sleep with us,” there lay
another one: “I want Mariedl” (with whom he liked to be so much) “to
become one of our family.” But Hans’s father and mother were in the
habit of taking him into their bed, though only occasionally, and
there can be no doubt that lying beside them had aroused erotic
feelings in him; so that his wish to sleep with Mariedl had an erotic
sense as well. Lying in bed with his father or mother was a source of
erotic feelings in Hans just as it is in every other child.)’
In spite of his accesses of homosexuality, little Hans bore himself
like a true man in the face of his mother’s challenge.
‘In the next instance, too, Hans said to his mother: “I say, I
_should_ so like to sleep with the little girl.” {161} This episode
has given us a great deal of entertainment, for Hans has really
behaved like a grown-up person in love. For the last few days a pretty
little girl of about eight has been coming to the restaurant where we
have lunch. Of course Hans fell in love with her on the spot. He keeps
constantly turning round in his chair to take furtive looks at her;
when he has finished eating he stations himself in her vicinity so as
to flirt with her, but if he finds he is being observed, he blushes
scarlet. If his glances are returned by the little girl, he at once
looks shamefacedly the other way. His behaviour is naturally a great
joy to every one lunching at the restaurant. Every day as he is taken
there he says: “Do you think the little girl will be there to-day?”
And when at last she appears, he goes quite red, just as a grown-up
person would in such a case. One day he came to me with a beaming face
and whispered in my ear: “Daddy, I know where the little girl lives. I
saw her going up the steps in such-and-such a place.” Whereas he
treats the little girls at home aggressively, in this other affair he
appears in the part of a platonic and languishing admirer. Perhaps
this has to do with the little girls at home being village children,
while the other is a young lady of refinement. As I have already
mentioned, he once said he would like to sleep with her.
‘Not wanting Hans to be left in the overwrought state to which he had
been brought by his passion for the little girl, I managed to make
them acquainted, and invited the little girl to come and see him in
the garden after he had finished his afternoon sleep. Hans was so much
excited at the prospect of the little girl coming, that for the first
time he could not get off to sleep in the afternoon, but tossed about
restlessly on his bed. When his mother asked, “Why aren’t you asleep?
Are you thinking about the little girl?” he said “Yes” with a happy
look. And when he came home from the restaurant he said to every one
in the house: “I say, my little girl’s coming to see me {162} to-day.”
The fourteen-year-old Mariedl reported that he had repeatedly kept
asking her: “I say, do you think she’ll be nice to me? Do you think
she’ll kiss me if I kiss her?” and so on.
‘But in the afternoon it rained, so that the visit did not come off,
and Hans consoled himself with Berta and Olga.’
Other observations, also made at the time of the summer holidays,
suggest that all sorts of new developments were going on in the little
boy.
‘Hans, four and a quarter. This morning Hans was given his usual daily
bath by his mother and afterwards dried and powdered. As his mother
was powdering round his penis and taking care not to touch it, Hans
said: “Why don’t you put your finger there?”
‘_Mother_: “Because that’d be piggish.”
‘_Hans_: “What’s that? Piggish? Why?”
‘_Mother_: “Because it’s not proper.”
‘_Hans_ (laughing): “But it’s great fun.”’[107]
At about the same period Hans had a dream which was in striking
contrast with the boldness he had shown towards his mother. It was the
first dream of his that was made unrecognizable by distortion. His
father’s penetration, however, succeeded in clearing it up.
‘Hans, four and a quarter. _Dream_. This morning Hans woke up and
said: “I say, last night I thought: _Some one said: ‘Who wants to come
to me?’ Then some one said: ‘I do.’ Then he had to make him widdle._”
‘Further questions made it clear that there was no visual content
whatever in this dream, and that it was of the purely auditory
type. During the last few {163} days Hans has been playing parlour
games and forfeits with our landlord’s children, amongst whom are his
friends Olga (aged seven) and Berta (aged five). (The game of forfeits
is played in this way: _A_: “Whose is this forfeit in my hand?” _B_:
“Mine.” Then it is decided what _B_ must do.) The dream is modelled
upon this game; only Hans wishes that the person to whom the forfeit
belonged shall be condemned, not to give the usual kiss or be given
the usual box on the ear, but to widdle, or rather to make some one
else widdle.
‘I got him to tell me the dream again. He told it in the same words,
except that instead of “then some one said” this time he said “then
she said”. This “she” is obviously Berta or Olga, one of the girls he
had been playing with. Translated, the dream runs as follows: “I was
playing forfeits with the little girls. I asked: ‘Who wants to come to
me?’ She (Berta or Olga) replied: ‘I do.’ Then she had to make me
widdle.” (That is, she had to assist him in urinating, which is
evidently agreeable for Hans.)
‘It is clear that being made to widdle---having his knickers
unbuttoned and his penis taken out---is a pleasurable process for
Hans. On walks it is mostly his father who assists Hans in this way;
and this gives the child an opportunity for the fixation of homosexual
inclinations upon him.
‘Two days ago, as I have already reported, while his mother was
washing and powdering his genital region, he asked her: “Why don’t you
put your finger there?” Yesterday, when I was helping Hans to do
number one, he asked me for the first time to take him to the back of
the house so that no one should see him. He added: “Last year when I
widdled, Berta and Olga watched me.” This meant, I think, that last
year he had enjoyed being watched by the girls, but that this was no
longer so. His exhibitionism has now succumbed to repression. The fact
that the wish that Berta and Olga should watch him widdling (or make
him widdle) is now repressed in {164} real life is the explanation of
its appearance in the dream, where it was prettily disguised under the
game of forfeits.---I have repeatedly observed since then that he does
not like to be seen widdling.’
I will only add that this dream obeys the rule I have given in
_Traumdeutung_[108] to the effect that speeches occurring in dreams
are derived from speeches heard or spoken by the dreamer during the
preceding days.
Hans’s father has noted down one other observation, dating from the
period immediately after their return to Vienna: ‘Hans (aged four and
a half) was again watching his little sister being given her bath,
when he began laughing. On being asked why he was laughing, he
replied: “I’m laughing at Hanna’s widdler.” “Why?” “Because her
widdler’s so lovely.”
‘Of course his answer was a disingenuous one. In reality her widdler
had seemed to him funny. Moreover, this is the first time he has
recognized in this way the distinction between male and female
genitals instead of denying it.’
II {165}
CASE HISTORY AND ANALYSIS
‘My dear Professor, I am sending you a little more about Hans---but
this time, I am sorry to say, material for a case history. As you will
see, during the last few days he has developed a nervous disorder,
which has made my wife and me most uneasy, because we have not been
able to find any means of dissipating it. I shall venture to call upon
you to-morrow, ... but in the meantime... I enclose a written record
of the material available.
‘No doubt the ground was prepared by sexual over-excitation due to his
mother’s tenderness; but I am not able to specify the actual exciting
cause. He is afraid _that a horse will bite him in the street_, and
this fear seems somehow to be connected with his having been
frightened by a large penis. As you know from a former report, he had
noticed at a very early age what large penises horses have, and at
that time he inferred that as his mother was so large she must have a
widdler like a horse.
‘I cannot see what to make of it. Has he seen an exhibitionist
somewhere? Or is the whole thing simply connected with his mother? It
is not very pleasant for us that he should begin setting us problems
so early. Apart from his being afraid of going into the street and
from his being depressed in the evening, he is in other respects the
same Hans, as bright and cheerful as ever.’
We will not follow Hans’s father either in his easily comprehensible
anxieties or in his first attempts at finding an explanation; we will
begin by examining the material before us. It is not in the least our
{166} business to ‘understand’ a case at once; this is only possible
at a later stage, when we have received enough impressions of it. For
the present we will suspend our judgement and give our impartial
attention to everything that there is to observe.
The earliest accounts, dating from the first days in January of the
present year (1908), run as follows:
‘Hans (aged four and three-quarters) woke up one morning in
tears. Asked why he was crying, he said to his mother: “When I was
asleep I thought you were gone and I had no Mummy to coax with.”[109]
‘An anxiety dream, therefore.
‘I had already noticed something similar at Gmunden in the
summer. When he was in bed in the evening he was usually in a very
sentimental state. Once he made a remark to this effect: “Suppose I
was to have no Mummy”, or “Suppose you were to go away”, or something
of the sort; I cannot remember the exact words. Unfortunately, when he
got into an elegiac mood of that kind, his mother used always to take
him into bed with her.
‘On about January 5th he came into his mother’s bed in the morning,
and said: “Do you know what Aunt M. said? She said: ‘He _has_ got a
dear little thingummy.’”[110] (Aunt M. was stopping with us four weeks
ago. Once while she was watching my wife giving the boy a bath she did
in fact say these words to her in a low voice. Hans had overheard them
and was now trying to put them to his own uses.)
‘On January 7th he went to the Stadtpark[111] with his nursemaid as
usual. In the street he began to cry and asked to be taken home,
saying that he wanted to “coax” with his Mummy. At home he was asked
why he had refused to go any farther and had cried, {167} but he would
not say. Till the evening he was cheerful, as usual. But in the
evening he grew visibly frightened; he cried and could not be
separated from his mother, and wanted to “coax” with her again. Then
he grew cheerful again, and slept well.
‘On January 8th my wife decided to go out with him herself, so as to
see what was wrong with him. They went to Schönbrunn, where he always
likes going. Again he began to cry, did not want to start, and was
frightened. In the end he did go; but was visibly frightened in the
street. On the way back from Schönbrunn he said to his mother, after
much internal struggling: “_I was afraid a horse would bite me_.” (He
had, in fact, become uneasy at Schönbrunn when he saw a horse.) In the
evening he seems to have had another attack similar to that of the
previous evening, and to have wanted to be “coaxed” with. He was
calmed down. He said, crying: “I know I shall have to go for a walk
again to-morrow.” And later: “The horse’ll come into the room.”
‘On the same day his mother asked: “Do you put your hand to your
widdler?” and he answered: “Yes. Every evening, when I’m in bed.” The
next day, January 9th, he was warned, before his afternoon sleep, not
to put his hand to his widdler. When he woke up he was asked about it,
and said he had put it there for a short while all the same.’
Here, then, we have the beginning of Hans’s morbid anxiety as well as
of his phobia. As we see, there is good reason for keeping the two
separate. Moreover, the material seems to be amply sufficient for
giving us our bearings; and no moment of time is so favourable for the
understanding of a case as its initial stage, such as we have here,
though unluckily that stage is as a rule neglected or passed over in
silence. The disorder set in with thoughts that were at the same time
fearful and sentimental, and then followed an anxiety dream on the
subject of losing his mother and so not being able to coax with her
any more. His affection for his {168} mother must therefore have
become enormously intensified. This was the fundamental phenomenon in
his condition. In support of this, we may recall his two attempts at
seducing his mother, the first of which dated back to the summer,
while the second (a simple commendation of his penis) occurred
immediately before the outbreak of his street-phobia. It was this
increased affection for his mother which turned suddenly into
anxiety---which, as we should say, succumbed to repression. We do not
yet know from what quarter the impetus towards repression may have
come. Perhaps it was merely the result of the intensity of the child’s
emotions, which had become greater than it could control; or perhaps
other forces which we have not yet recognized were also at work. This
we shall learn as we go on. Hans’s anxiety, which thus corresponded to
a repressed erotic longing, was, like every infantile anxiety, without
an object to begin with: it was still anxiety and not yet fear. The
child cannot tell what it is afraid of; and when Hans, on the first
walk with the nursemaid, would not say what he was afraid of, it was
simply that he himself did not yet know. He said all that he knew,
which was that in the street he missed his mother, whom he could coax
with, and that he did not want to be away from her. In saying this he
quite straightforwardly confessed the primary meaning of his dislike
of streets.
Then again, there were the states into which he fell on two
consecutive evenings before going to sleep, and which were
characterized by anxiety mingled with clear traces of
tenderness. These states show that at the beginning of his illness
there was as yet no phobia whatever present, whether of streets or of
walking or even of horses. If there had been, his evening states would
be inexplicable; for who bothers at bedtime about streets and walking?
On the other hand it becomes quite clear why he was so fearful in the
evening, if we suppose that at bedtime he was overwhelmed by an
intensification of his libido---for {169} its object was his mother,
and its aim may perhaps have been to sleep with her. He had besides
learnt from his experience that _at Gmunden_ his mother could be
prevailed upon, when he got into such moods, to take him into her bed,
and he wanted to gain the same ends here in Vienna. Nor must we forget
that for part of the time at Gmunden he had been alone with his
mother, as his father had not been able to spend the whole of the
holidays there; and further, that in the country his affections had
been divided among a number of playmates and friends of both sexes,
while in Vienna he had none, so that his libido was in a position to
return undivided to his mother.
His morbid anxiety, then, corresponded to repressed longing. But it
was not the same thing as the longing: the repression must be taken
into account too. Longing can be completely transformed into
satisfaction if it is presented with the object longed for. Therapy of
that kind is no longer effective in dealing with anxiety. The anxiety
remains even when the longing can be satisfied. It can no longer be
completely retransformed into libido; there is something that keeps
the libido back under repression.[112] This was shown to be so in the
case of Hans on the occasion of his next walk, when his mother went
with him. He was with his mother, and yet he still suffered from
anxiety---that is to say, from an unsatisfied longing for her. It is
true that the anxiety was less; for he did allow himself to be induced
to go for the walk, whereas he had obliged the nursemaid to turn
back. Nor is a street quite the right place for ‘coaxing’, or whatever
else this young lover may have wanted. But his anxiety had stood the
test; and the next thing for it to do was to find an object. It was on
this walk that he first expressed a fear that a horse would bite
him. {170} Where did the material for this phobia come from? Probably
from the complexes, as yet unknown to us, which had contributed to the
repression and were keeping under repression his libidinal feelings
towards his mother. That is an unsolved problem, and we shall now have
to follow the development of the case in order to arrive at its
solution. Hans’s father has already given us certain clues, probably
trustworthy ones, such as that Hans had always observed horses with
interest on account of their large widdlers, that he had supposed that
his mother must have a widdler like a horse, and so on. We might thus
be led to think that the horse was merely a substitute for his
mother. But if so, what would be the meaning of his being afraid in
the evening that a horse would come into the room? A small boy’s
foolish fears, it will be said. But a neurosis never says foolish
things, any more than a dream. When we cannot understand something, we
always fall back on abuse. An excellent way of making a task lighter.
There is another point in regard to which we must avoid giving way to
this temptation. Hans admitted that every night before going to sleep
he amused himself with playing with his penis. ‘Ah!’ the family doctor
will be inclined to say, ‘now we have it. The child masturbated: hence
its pathological anxiety.’ But gently. That the child was getting
pleasure for itself by masturbating does not by any means explain its
anxiety; on the contrary, it makes it more problematical than
ever. States of anxiety are not produced by masturbation or by getting
satisfaction in any shape. Moreover, we may presume that Hans, who was
now four and three-quarters, had been indulging in this pleasure every
evening for at least a year (see p. 151). And we shall find that at
this moment he was actually engaged in a struggle to break himself of
the habit---a state of things which fits in much better with
repression and anxiety-formation.
We must say a word, too, on behalf of Hans’s {171} excellent and
devoted mother. His father accuses her, not without some show of
justice, of being responsible for the outbreak of the child’s
neurosis, on account of her excessive display of affection for him and
her too frequent readiness to take him into her bed. We might as
easily blame her for having precipitated the process of repression by
her energetic rejection of his advances (‘that’d be piggish’). But she
had a predestined part to play, and her position was a hard one.
I arranged with Hans’s father that he should tell the boy that all
this business about horses was a piece of nonsense and nothing
more. The truth was, his father was to say, that he was very fond of
his mother and wanted to be taken into her bed. The reason he was
afraid of horses now was that he had taken so much interest in their
widdlers. He himself had noticed that it was not right to be so very
much preoccupied with widdlers, even with his own, and he was quite
right in thinking this. I further suggested to his father that he
should begin giving Hans some enlightenment in the matter of sex
knowledge. The child’s past behaviour justified us in assuming that
his libido was attached to a wish to see his mother’s widdler; so I
proposed to his father that he should take away this aim from Hans by
informing him that his mother and all other female beings (as he could
see from Hanna) had no widdler at all. This last piece of
enlightenment was to be given him on a suitable occasion when it had
been led up to by some question or some chance remark on Hans’s part.
-----------------------------
The next batch of news about Hans covers the period from March 1st to
March 17th. The interval of more than a month will be accounted for
directly.
‘After Hans had been enlightened,[113] there followed {172} a fairly
quiet period, during which he could be induced without any particular
difficulty to go for his daily walk in the Stadtpark. His fear of
horses became transformed more and more into an obsession for looking
at them. He said: “I have to look at horses, and then I’m frightened.”
‘After an attack of influenza, which kept him in bed for two weeks,
his phobia increased again so much that he could not be induced to go
out, or at most on to the balcony. Every Sunday he went with me to
Lainz,[114] because on that day there is not much traffic in the
streets, and it is only a short way to the station. On that occasion
in Lainz he refused to go for a walk outside the garden because there
was a carriage standing in front of it. After another week which he
has had to spend indoors because he has had his tonsils cut, the
phobia has grown very much worse again. He goes out on to the balcony,
it is true, but not for a walk. As soon as he gets to the street door
he hurriedly turns round.
‘On Sunday, March 1st, the following conversation took place on the
way to the station. I was once more trying to explain to him that
horses do not bite. _He_: “But white horses bite. There’s a white
horse at Gmunden that bites. If you hold your finger to it it bites.”
(I was struck by his saying “finger” instead of “hand”.) He then told
me the following story, which I give here in a connected form: “When
Lizzi had to go away, there was a cart with a white horse in front of
her house, to take her luggage to the station.” (Lizzi, he tells me,
was a little girl who lived in a neighbouring house.) “Her father was
standing near the horse, and the horse turned its head round (to touch
him), and he said to Lizzi: ‘_Don’t put your finger to the white horse
or it’ll bite you_.’” Upon this I said: “I say, it strikes me that it
isn’t a horse you mean, but a widdler, that one mustn’t put one’s hand
to.”
{173}
‘_He_: “But a widdler doesn’t bite.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps it does, though.” He then went on eagerly to try and
prove to me that it really was a white horse.[115]
‘On March 2nd, as he again showed signs of being afraid, I said to
him: “Do you know what? This nonsense of yours” (that is how he speaks
of his phobia) “will get better if you go for more walks. It’s so bad
now because you haven’t been able to go out because you were ill.”
‘_He_: “Oh no, it’s so bad because I still put my hand to my widdler
every night.”’
Doctor and patient, father and son, were therefore at one in ascribing
the chief share in the pathogenesis of Hans’s present condition to his
habit of onanism. Signs were not wanting, however, of the presence of
other significant factors.
‘On March 3rd we got in a new maid, whom he is particularly pleased
with. She lets him ride on her back while she cleans the floor, and so
he always calls her “my horse”, and holds on to her dress with cries
of “Gee-up”. On about March 10th he said to this new nursemaid: “If
you do such-and-such a thing you’ll have to undress altogether, and
take off your chemise even.”’ (He meant this as a punishment, but it
is easy to recognize the wish behind it.)
‘_She_: “And what’d be the harm? I’d just say to myself I haven’t got
any money to spend on clothes.”
‘_He_: “Why, it’d be shameful. People’d see your widdler.”’
Here we have the same curiosity again, but directed on to a new
object, and (appropriately to a time of repression) cloaked under a
moralizing purpose.
‘On March 13th in the morning I said to Hans: “You know, if you don’t
put your hand to your {174} widdler any more, this nonsense of
yours’ll soon get better.”
‘_Hans_: “But I don’t put my hand to my widdler any more.”
‘_I_: “But you still want to.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, I do. But wanting’s not doing, and doing’s not
wanting.” (!!)
‘_I_: “Well, but to prevent your wanting to, this evening you’re going
to have a sack to sleep in.”
‘After this we went out in front of the house. Hans was still afraid,
but his spirits were visibly raised by the prospect of having his
struggles made easier for him, and he said: “Oh, if I have a sack to
sleep in my nonsense’ll have gone to-morrow.” And, in fact, he was
_much_ less afraid of horses, and was fairly calm when vehicles drove
past.
‘Hans had promised to go with me to Lainz the next Sunday, March
15th. He resisted at first, but finally went with me all the same. He
obviously felt all right in the street, as there was not much traffic,
and said: “How sensible! God’s done away with horses now.” On the way
I explained to him that his sister has not got a widdler like
him. Little girls and women, I said, have no widdlers: Mummy has none,
Anna has none, and so on.
‘_Hans_: “Have you got a widdler?”
‘_I_: “Of course. Why, what do you suppose?”
‘_Hans_ (after a pause): “But how do little girls widdle, if they have
no widdlers?”
‘_I_: “They don’t have widdlers like yours. Haven’t you noticed
already, when Hanna was being given her bath?”
‘All day long he was in very high spirits, went tobogganing, and so
on. It was only towards evening that he became depressed again and
seemed to be afraid of horses.
‘That evening the nervous attack and the need for being coaxed with
was less pronounced than on former days. Next day his mother took him
with her into {175} town and he was very much frightened in the
streets. The day after, he stopped at home and was very cheerful. Next
morning he woke up in a fright at about six o’clock. When he was asked
what was the matter he said: “I put my finger to my widdler just a
very little. I saw Mummy quite naked in her chemise, and she let me
see her widdler. I showed Grete,[116] my Grete, what Mamma was doing,
and showed her my widdler. Then I took my hand away from my widdler
quick.” When I objected that he could only mean “in her chemise” _or_
“quite naked”, Hans said: “She was in her chemise, but the chemise was
so short that I saw her widdler.”
This was none of it a dream, but an onanistic phantasy, which was,
however, equivalent to a dream. What he made his mother do was
evidently intended as a piece of self-justification: ‘If Mummy shows
her widdler, I may too.’
We can gather two things from this phantasy: first, that his mother’s
reproof had exercised a powerful effect upon him at the time it was
made, and secondly, that the enlightenment he had been given to the
effect that women have no widdlers was not accepted by him at
first. He regretted that it should be so, and stuck to his former view
in his phantasy. He may also perhaps have had his reasons for refusing
to believe his father at first.
-----------------------------
_Weekly Report from Hans’s Father_: ‘My dear Professor, I enclose the
continuation of Hans’s story---quite an interesting instalment. I
shall perhaps take the liberty of calling upon you during your
consulting hours on Monday and if possible of bringing Hans with
me---assuming that he will come. I said to him to-day: “Will you come
with me on Monday to see {176} the Professor, who can take away your
nonsense for you?”
‘_He_: “No.”
‘_I_: “But he’s got a very pretty little girl.”---Upon which he
willingly and gladly consented.
‘Sunday, March 22nd. With a view to extending the Sunday programme, I
proposed to Hans that we should go first to Schönbrunn, and only go on
from there to Lainz at midday. He had, therefore, to make his way not
only from our house to the Hauptzollamt station on the Stadtbahn,[117]
but also from the Hietzing station to Schönbrunn, and again from there
to the Hietzing steam tramway station. And he managed all this,
looking hurriedly away whenever any horses came along, for he was
evidently feeling nervous. In looking away he was following a piece of
advice given him by his mother.
‘At Schönbrunn he showed signs of fear at animals which on other
occasions he had looked at without any alarm. Thus he absolutely
refused to go into the house in which the _giraffe_ is kept, nor would
he visit the elephant, which used formerly to amuse him a great
deal. He was afraid of all the large animals, whereas he was very much
entertained by the small ones. Among the birds, he was also afraid of
the pelican this time---which had never happened before---evidently
because of its size again.
‘I therefore said to him: “Do you know why you’re afraid of big
animals? Big animals have big widdlers, and you’re really afraid of
big widdlers.”
‘_Hans_: “But I’ve never seen the big animals’ widdlers yet.”[118]
‘_I_: “But you _have_ seen a horse’s, and a horse is a big animal.”
{177}
‘_Hans_: “Oh, a horse’s often. Once at Gmunden when the cart was
standing at the door, and once in front of the Head Customs House.”
‘_I_: “When you were small, you most likely went into a stable at
Gmunden...”
‘_Hans_ (interrupting): “Yes, I went into the stable every day at
Gmunden when the horses had come home.”
‘_I_: “...and you were most likely frightened when you saw the horse’s
big widdler one time. But there’s no need for you to be frightened of
it. Big animals have big widdlers, and little animals have little
widdlers.”
‘_Hans_: “And every one has a widdler. And my widdler will get bigger
as I get bigger, because it does grow on to me.”
‘Here the talk came to an end. During the next few days it seemed as
though his fears had again somewhat increased. He hardly ventured out
of the front door, to which he was taken after luncheon.’
Hans’s last words of comfort throw a light upon the situation and
allow us to make some small corrections in his father’s assertions. It
is true that he was afraid of big animals because he was obliged to
think of their big widdlers; but it cannot really be said that he was
afraid of big widdlers themselves. Formerly the idea of them had been
decidedly pleasurable to him, and he used to make every effort to get
a glimpse of one. Since that time this enjoyment had been spoiled for
him, owing to the general reversal of pleasure into pain which had
come over the whole of his sexual inquiries---in a way which has not
yet been explained---and also owing to something which is clearer to
us, namely, to certain experiences and reflections which had led to
painful conclusions. We may conclude from his self-consolatory words
(‘my widdler will get bigger as I get bigger’) that during his
observations he had constantly been making comparisons, and that he
had remained extremely dissatisfied with the size of his {178} own
widdler. Big animals reminded him of this defect, and were for that
reason disagreeable to him. But since the whole train of thought was
probably incapable of becoming clearly conscious, this painful
feeling, too, was turned into morbid anxiety, so that his present
anxiety was erected both upon his former pleasure and his present
pain. When once a state of anxiety establishes itself, the anxiety
swallows up all other feelings; with the progress of repression, and
the more those ideas which are charged with affect and which have been
conscious move down into the unconscious, all affects are capable of
being changed into anxiety.
Hans’s singular remark, ‘because it does grow on to me’, makes it
possible to guess many things in connection with his consolatory
speech which he could not express in words and did not express during
the course of the analysis. I shall bridge the gap for a little
distance by means of my experiences in the analyses of grown-up
people; but I hope the interpolation will not be considered arbitrary
or capricious. ‘It does grow on to me’: if the motives of the thought
were solace and defiance, we are reminded of his mother’s old threat
that she should have his widdler cut off if he went on playing with
it. At the time it was made, when he was three and a half, this threat
had no effect. He calmly replied that then he should widdle with his
bottom. It would be the most completely typical procedure if the
threat of castration were to have a _deferred_ effect, and if he were
now, a year and a quarter later, oppressed by the fear of having to
lose this precious piece of his ego. In other cases of illness we can
observe a similar deferred operation of commands and threats made in
childhood, where the interval covers as many decades or more. I even
know cases in which a ‘deferred obedience’ on the part of the
repression has had a principal share in determining the symptoms of
the disease.
The piece of enlightenment which Hans had been {179} given a short
time before to the effect that women really do not possess a widdler
was bound to have had a shattering effect upon his self-confidence and
to have aroused his castration complex. For this reason he resisted
the information, and for this reason it had no therapeutic
results. Could it be that living beings really did exist which did not
possess widdlers? If so, it would no longer be so incredible that they
could take his own widdler away, and, as it were, make him into a
woman![119]
-----------------------------
‘During the night of 27th-28th Hans surprised us by getting out of bed
while it was quite dark and coming into our bed. His room is separated
from our bedroom by another small room. We asked him why: whether he
had been afraid, perhaps. “No,” he said; “I’ll tell you to-morrow.” He
went to sleep in our bed and was then carried back to his own.
‘Next day I questioned him closely to discover why he had come in to
us during the night; and after some reluctance the following dialogue
took place, which I immediately took down in shorthand:
‘_He_: “_In the night there was a big giraffe in the room and a
crumpled one; and the big one called out because I took the crumpled
one away from it. Then it stopped calling out; and then I sat down on
the top of the crumpled one._”
{180}
‘_I_ (puzzled): “What? A crumpled giraffe? How was that?”
‘_He_: “Yes.” (He quickly fetched a piece of paper, crumpled it up,
and said:) “It was crumpled like that.”
‘_I_: “And you sat down on the top of the crumpled giraffe? How?”
‘He again showed me, by sitting down on the ground.
‘_I_: “Why did you come into our room?”
‘_He_: “I don’t know myself.”
‘_I_: “Were you afraid?”
‘_He_: “No. Of course not.”
‘_I_: “Did you dream about the giraffe?”
‘_He_: “No. I didn’t dream. I thought it. I thought it all. I’d woken
up earlier.”
‘_I_: “What can it mean: a crumpled giraffe? You know you can’t squash
a giraffe together like a piece of paper.”
‘_He_: “Of course I know. I just thought it. Of course there aren’t
any really and truly.[120] The crumpled one was all lying on the
floor, and I took it away---took hold of it with my hands.”
‘_I_: “What? Can you take hold of a big giraffe like that with your
hands?”
‘_He_: “I took hold of the crumpled one with my hand.”
‘_I_: “Where was the big one in the meantime?”
‘_He_: “The big one just stood farther off.”
‘_I_: “What did you do with the crumpled one?”
‘_He_: “I held it in my hand for a bit, till the big one had stopped
calling out. And when the big one had stopped calling out, I sat down
on top of it.”
‘_I_: “Why did the big one call out?”
‘_He_: “Because I’d taken away the little one from it.” (He noticed
that I was taking everything down, and asked:) “Why are you writing
that down?”
{181}
‘_I_: “Because I shall send it to a Professor, who can take away your
‘nonsense’ for you.”
‘_He_: “Oho! So you’ve written down as well that Mummy took off her
chemise, and you’ll give that to the Professor too.”
‘_I_: “Yes. But he won’t understand how you can think that a giraffe
can be crumpled up.”
‘_He_: “Just tell him I don’t know myself, and then he won’t ask. But
if he asks what the crumpled giraffe is, then he can write to us, and
we can write back, or let’s write at once that I don’t know myself.”
‘_I_: “But why did you come in in the night?”
‘_He_: “I don’t know.”
‘_I_: “Just tell me quickly what you’re thinking of.” }
}
‘_He_ (jokingly): “Of raspberry syrup.” } His
} wishes.
‘_I_: “What else?” }
}
‘_He_: “A gun for shooting people dead with.”[121] }
‘_I_: “You’re sure you didn’t dream it?”
‘_He_: “Quite sure; no, I’m quite certain of it.”
‘He proceeded: “Mummy begged me so long to tell her why I came in in
the night. But I didn’t want to say, because I felt ashamed with Mummy
at first.”
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_He_: “I didn’t know.”
‘My wife had in fact examined him all the morning, till he had told
her the giraffe story.’
That same day his father discovered the solution of the giraffe
phantasy.
‘The big giraffe is myself, or rather my big penis (the long neck),
and the crumpled giraffe is my wife, or rather her genital organ. It
is therefore the result of the enlightenment he has had.
‘Giraffe: see the expedition to Schönbrunn. Moreover, {182} he has a
picture of a giraffe and an elephant hanging over his bed.
‘The whole thing is a reproduction of a scene which has been gone
through almost every morning for the last few days. Hans always comes
in to us in the early morning, and my wife cannot resist taking him
into bed with her for a few minutes. Thereupon I always begin to warn
her not to take him in bed with her (“the big one called out because
I’d taken the crumpled one away from it”); and she answers now and
then, rather irritated, no doubt, that it’s all nonsense, that one
minute is after all of no importance, and so on. Then Hans stays with
her a little while. (“Then the big giraffe stopped calling out; and
then I sat down on top of the crumpled one.”)
‘Thus the solution of this matrimonial scene transposed into giraffe
life is this: he was seized in the night with a longing for his
mother, for her caresses, for her genital organ, and came into our
bedroom for that reason. The whole thing is a continuation of his fear
of horses.’
I have only this to add to his father’s penetrating
interpretation. The ‘_sitting_ down on top of’ was probably Hans’s
representation of taking _possession_.[122] But the whole thing was a
phantasy of defiance connected with his satisfaction at the triumph
over his father’s resistance. ‘Call out as much as you like! but Mummy
takes me into bed all the same, and Mummy belongs to me!’ It is
therefore justifiable, as his father suspected, to divine behind the
phantasy a fear that his mother did not like him, because his widdler
was not comparable to his father’s.
Next morning his father was able to get his interpretation confirmed.
‘On Sunday, March 29th, I went with Hans to Lainz. I jokingly took
leave of my wife at the door {183} with the words: “Good-bye, big
giraffe!” “Why giraffe?” asked Hans. “Mummy’s the big giraffe,” I
replied; to which Hans rejoined: “Oh yes! And Hanna’s the crumpled
giraffe, isn’t she?”
‘In the train I explained the giraffe phantasy to him, upon which he
said: “Yes, that’s right.” And when I said to him that I was the big
giraffe, and that its long neck had reminded him of a widdler, he
said: “Mummy has a neck like a giraffe, too. I saw, when she was
washing her white neck.”[123]
‘On Monday, March 30th, in the morning, Hans came to me and said: “I
say! I thought two things this morning!” “What was the first?” “I was
with you at Schönbrunn where the sheep are; and then we crawled
through under the ropes, and then we told the policeman at the end of
the garden, and he grabbed hold of us.” He had forgotten the second
thing.
‘I add the following remark upon this. When we wanted to visit the
sheep on Sunday, we found that a space in the gardens was shut off by
a rope, so that we were unable to get to them. Hans was very much
astonished that the space should be shut off only with a rope, which
it would be quite easy to slip under. I told him that respectable
people didn’t crawl under the rope. He said it would be quite easy;
whereupon I replied that a policeman might come along and take one
off. There is a life-guardsman on duty at the entrance of Schönbrunn;
and I once told Hans that he arrested naughty children.
‘After we returned from our visit to you, which took place the same
day, Hans confessed to yet another little bit of craving to do
something forbidden: “I say, I thought something this morning again.”
“What?” “I went with you in the train, and we smashed a window, and
the policeman took us off with him.”’
{184}
A most suitable continuation of the giraffe phantasy. He had a
suspicion that to take possession of his mother was forbidden; he had
come up against the incest-barrier. But he regarded it as forbidden in
itself. His father was with him each time in the forbidden exploits
which he carried out in his imagination, and was locked up with
him. His father, he thought, also did that enigmatic forbidden
something with his mother which he replaced by an act of violence such
as smashing a window-pane or forcing a way into an enclosed space.
That afternoon the father and son visited me during my consulting
hours. I already knew the queer little chap, and with all his
self-assurance he was yet so amiable that I had always been glad to
see him. I do not know whether he remembered me, but he behaved
irreproachably and like a perfectly reasonable member of human
society. The consultation was a short one. His father opened it by
remarking that, in spite of all the pieces of enlightenment we had
given Hans, his fear of horses had not yet diminished. We were also
forced to confess that the connections between the horses he was
afraid of and the affectionate feelings towards his mother which had
been revealed were by no means abundant. Certain details which I now
learnt---to the effect that he was particularly bothered by what
horses wear in front of their eyes and by the black round their
mouths---were certainly not to be explained from what we knew. But as
I saw the two of them sitting in front of me and at the same time
heard Hans’s description of his anxiety-horses, a further piece of the
solution shot through my mind, and a piece which I could well
understand might escape his father. I asked Hans jokingly whether his
horses wore eyeglasses, to which he replied that they did not. I then
asked him whether his father wore eyeglasses, to which, against all
the evidence, he once more said no. Finally I asked him whether by
‘the black round the mouth’ he meant a moustache; and I then disclosed
{185} to him that he was afraid of his father, precisely because he
was so fond of his mother. It must be, I told him, that he thought his
father was angry with him on that account; but this was not so, his
father was fond of him in spite of it, and he might admit everything
to him without any fear. Long before he was in the world, I went on, I
had known that a little Hans would come who would be so fond of his
mother that he would be bound to feel afraid of his father because of
it; and I had told his father this. ‘But why do you think I’m angry
with you?’ his father interrupted me at this point; ‘have I ever
scolded you or hit you?’ Hans corrected him: ‘Oh yes! You have hit
me.’ ‘That’s not true. When was it, anyhow?’ ‘This morning,’ answered
the little boy; and his father recollected that Hans had quite
unexpectedly butted his head into his stomach, so that he had given
him as it were a reflex blow with his hand. It was remarkable that he
had not brought this detail into connection with the neurosis; but he
now recognized it as an expression of the little boy’s hostile
disposition towards him, and perhaps also as a manifestation of a need
for getting punished for it.[124]
‘Does the Professor talk to God,’ Hans asked his father on the way
home, ‘as he can tell all that beforehand?’ I should be
extraordinarily proud of this recognition out of the mouth of a child,
if I had not myself provoked it by my joking boastfulness. From the
date of this consultation I received almost daily reports of the
alterations in the little patient’s condition. It was not to be
expected that he should be freed from his anxiety at a single blow by
the information I gave him; but it became apparent that a possibility
had now been offered him of bringing forward his unconscious
productions and of unfolding his phobia. From that time forward he
carried out a {186} programme which I was able to announce to his
father in advance.
‘April 2nd. The _first real improvement_ is to be noted. While
formerly he could never be induced to go out of the street-door for
very long, and always ran back into the house with every sign of
fright if horses came along, this time he stayed in front of the
street-door for an hour---even while carts were driving past, which
happens fairly often in our street. Every now and then he ran into the
house when he saw a cart approaching in the distance, but he turned
round at once as though he were changing his mind. In any case there
is only a trace of the anxiety left, and the progress since his
enlightenment is unmistakable.
‘In the evening he said: “We get as far as the street-door now, so
we’ll go into the Stadtpark too.”
‘On April 3rd, in the morning he came into bed with me, whereas for
the last few days he had not been coming any more and had even seemed
to be proud of not doing so. “And why have you come to-day?” I asked.
‘_Hans_: “When I’m not frightened I shan’t come any more.”
‘_I_: “So you come in to me because you’re frightened?”
‘_Hans_: “When I’m not with you I’m frightened; when I’m not in bed
with you, then I’m frightened. When I’m not frightened any more I
shan’t come any more.”
‘_I_: “So you’re fond of me and you feel anxious when you’re in your
bed in the morning? and that’s why you come in to me?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes. Why did you tell me I’m fond of _Mummy_ and that’s why
I’m frightened, when I’m fond of _you_?”’
Here the little boy was displaying a really unusual degree of
clarity. He was bringing to notice the fact that his love for his
father was wrestling with his hostility towards him in his capacity of
rival with his {187} mother; and he was reproaching his father with
not having yet drawn his attention to this interplay of forces, which
was bound to end in anxiety. His father did not entirely understand
him as yet, for during this conversation he only succeeded in
convincing himself of the little boy’s hostility towards him, the
existence of which I had asserted during our consultation. The
following dialogue, which I nevertheless give without alteration, is
really of more importance in connection with the progress of the
father’s enlightenment than with the little patient.
‘Unfortunately I did not immediately grasp the meaning of this
reproach. Because Hans is fond of his mother he evidently wants to get
me out of the way, and he would then be in his father’s place. This
suppressed hostile wish is turned into anxiety _about_ his father, and
he comes in to me in the morning to see if I have gone
away. Unfortunately at the moment I did not understand this, and said
to him:
‘“When you’re alone, you’re just anxious for me and come in to me.”
‘_Hans_: “When you’re away, I’m afraid you’re not coming home.”
‘_I_: “And have I ever threatened you that I shan’t come home?”
‘_Hans_: “Not you, but Mummy. Mummy’s told me she won’t come back.”
(He had probably been naughty, and she had threatened to go away.)
‘_I_: “She said that because you were naughty.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “So you’re afraid I’m going away because you were naughty;
that’s why you come in to me.”
‘When I got up from table after breakfast Hans said: “Daddy, don’t
trot away from me!” I was struck by his saying “trot” instead of
“run”, and replied: “Oho! So you’re afraid of the horse trotting away
from you.” Upon which he laughed.’
We know that this part of Hans’s morbid anxiety had two constituents:
there was fear _of_ his father and {188} fear _for_ his father. The
former was derived from his hostility towards his father, and the
latter from the conflict between his affection, which was exaggerated
at this point by way of compensation, and his hostility.
His father proceeds: ‘This is no doubt the beginning of an important
phase. His motive for at the most just venturing outside the house but
not going away from it, and for turning round at the first attack of
anxiety when he is half-way, is his fear of not finding his parents at
home because they have gone away. He sticks to the house from love of
his mother, and he is afraid of my going away because of the hostile
wishes that he nourishes against me---for then _he_ would be the
father.
‘In the summer I used to be constantly leaving Gmunden for Vienna on
business, and he was then the father. You will remember that his fear
of horses is connected with the episode at Gmunden when a horse was to
take Lizzi’s luggage to the station. The repressed wish that I should
drive to the station, for then he would be alone with his mother (the
wish that “the horse should drive off”), is turned into fear of the
horse’s driving off; and in fact nothing throws him into greater alarm
than when a cart drives off from the courtyard of the Head Customs
House (which is just opposite our flat) and the horses start moving.
‘This new phase (hostile sentiments towards his father) could only
come out after he knew that I was not angry because he was so fond of
his mother.
‘In the afternoon I went out in front of the street-door with him
again; he again went out in front of the house, and stayed there even
when carts went past. In the case of a few carts only he was afraid,
and ran into the entrance-hall. He also said to me in explanation:
“Not all white horses bite.” That is to say: owing to the analysis
some white horses have already been recognized as “Daddy”, and they no
longer bite; but there are others still left over which do bite.
‘The position of our street-door is as follows: {189} Opposite it is
the warehouse of the Office for the Taxation of Food-Stuffs, with a
loading dock at which carts are driving up all day long to fetch away
boxes, packing-cases, etc. This courtyard is cut off from the street
by railings; and the entrance gates to the courtyard are opposite our
house (Fig. 2).
[Illustration: Fig. 2. --- see images/fig2.png]
I have noticed for some days that Hans is specially frightened when
carts drive into or out of the yard, a process which involves their
taking a corner. I asked at the time why he was so much afraid, and he
replied: “_I’m afraid the horses will fall down when the cart turns_
(A).” He is equally frightened when carts standing at the loading dock
start moving in order to drive off (B). Further (C), he is more
frightened of large dray-horses than of small horses, and of rough
farm-horses than of smart horses (such as those in a carriage and
pair). He is also more frightened when a vehicle drives past quickly
(D) than when the horses trot up slowly. These differentiations have,
of course, only come to light clearly during the last few days.’
I should be inclined to say that, in consequence of the analysis, not
only the patient but his phobia too had plucked up courage and was
venturing to show itself.
‘On April 5th Hans came in to our bedroom again, and was sent back to
his own bed. I said to him: “As long as you come into our room in the
{190} mornings, your fear of horses won’t get better.” He was defiant,
however, and replied: “I shall come in all the same, even if I _am_
afraid.” So he will not let himself be forbidden to visit his mother.
‘After breakfast we were to go downstairs. Hans was delighted, and
planned that, instead of stopping in front of the street-door as
usual, he should go across the street into the yard, where he had
often enough seen street-boys playing. I told him I should be pleased
if he were to go across, and took the opportunity of asking him why he
is so much afraid when the loaded carts at the loading dock start
moving (B).
‘_Hans_: “I’m afraid of standing by the cart and the cart driving off
quick, and of my standing on it and wanting to get on to the board
(the loading dock), and my driving off in the cart.”
‘_I_: “And if the cart stands still? Aren’t you afraid then? Why not?”
‘_Hans_: “If the cart stands still, then I can get on to the cart
quick and get on to the board.”
‘(Hans was planning, therefore, to climb over a cart on to the loading
dock, and is afraid of the cart driving away while he is on it.)
[Illustration: Fig. 3. --- see images/fig3.png]
‘_I_: “Perhaps you’re afraid you won’t come home any more if you drive
away in the cart?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh no! I can always come back to Mamma, in the cart or in a
cab. I can tell him the number of the house too.”
‘_I_: “Then why _are_ you afraid?”
{191}
‘_Hans_: “I don’t know. But the Professor’ll know. D’you think he’ll
know?”
‘_I_: “And why do you want to get over on to the board?”
‘_Hans_: “Because I’ve never been up there, and I should so much like
to be there; and d’you know why I should like to go there? Because I
should like to load and unload the packages, and I should like to
climb about on the packages there. I should so like to climb about
there. D’you know who I learnt the climbing about from? Some boys
climbed on the packages, and I saw them, and I want to do it too.”
‘His wish was not fulfilled. For when Hans ventured once more in front
of the street-door, the few steps across the street and into the
courtyard awoke too great resistances in him, because carts were
constantly driving into the yard.’
The Professor only knows that the game which Hans intended to play
with the loaded carts must have stood in the relation of a symbolic
substitute to some other wish as to which he had so far uttered no
word. But, if it did not seem too daring, this wish might already,
even at this stage, be constructed.
‘In the afternoon we again went out in front of the street-door, and
when I returned I asked Hans:
‘“Which horses are you actually most afraid of?”
‘_Hans_: “All of them.”
‘_I_: “That’s not true.”
‘_Hans_: “I’m most afraid of horses with a thing on their mouths.”
‘_I_: “What do you mean? The piece of iron they have in their mouths?”
‘_Hans_: “No. They have something black on their mouths.” (He covered
his mouth with his hand.)
‘_I_: “What? A moustache, perhaps?”
‘_Hans_ (laughing): “Oh no!”
‘_I_: “Have they all got it?”
‘_Hans_: “No, only a few of them.”
{192}
‘_I_: “What is it that they’ve got on their mouths?”
‘_Hans_: “A black thing.” (I think in reality it must be the thick
piece of harness that dray-horses wear over their noses.)
[Illustration: Fig. 4. --- see images/fig4.png]
‘“And I’m most afraid of furniture-vans, too.”
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_Hans_: “I think when furniture-horses are dragging a heavy van
they’ll fall down.”
‘_I_: “So you’re not afraid with a small cart?”
‘_Hans_: “No. I’m not afraid with a small cart or with a post-office
van. I’m most afraid too when a bus comes along.”
‘_I_: “Why? Because it’s so big?”
‘_Hans_: “No. Because once a horse in a bus fell down.”
‘_I_: “When?”
‘_Hans_: “Once when I went out with Mummy in spite of my ‘nonsense’,
when I bought the waistcoat.” (This was subsequently confirmed by his
mother.)
‘_I_: “What did you think when the horse fell down?”
‘_Hans_: “Now it’ll always be like this. All horses in buses’ll fall
down.”
‘_I_: “In all buses?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes. And in furniture-vans too. Not often in
furniture-vans.”
‘_I_: “You had your nonsense already at that time?”
‘_Hans_: “No. I only got it then. When the horse in the bus fell down,
it gave me such a fright, really! That was when I got the nonsense.”
‘_I_: “But the nonsense was that you thought a horse would bite
you. And now you say you were afraid a horse would fall down.”
{193}
‘_Hans_: “Fall down and bite.”[125]
‘_I_: “Why did it give you such a fright?”
‘_Hans_: “Because the horse went like this with its feet.” (He lay
down on the ground and showed me how it kicked about.) “It gave me a
fright _because it made a row with its feet_.”
‘_I_: “Where did you go with Mummy that day?”
‘_Hans_: “First to the Skating Rink, then to a _café_, then to buy a
waistcoat, then to the pastry-cook’s with Mummy, and then home in the
evening; we went back through the Stadtpark.” (All of this was
confirmed by my wife, as well as the fact that the anxiety broke out
immediately afterwards.)
‘_I_: “Was the horse dead when it fell down?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes!”
‘_I_: “How do you know that?”
‘_Hans_: “Because I saw it.” (He laughed.) “No, it wasn’t a bit dead.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps you thought it was dead?”
‘_Hans_: “No. Certainly not. I only said it as a joke.” (His
expression at the moment, however, had been serious.)
‘As he was tired, I let him run off. He only told me besides this that
he had first been afraid of bus-horses, then of all others, and only
in the end of furniture-van horses.
‘On the way back from Lainz there were a few more questions:
‘_I_: “When the bus-horse fell down, what colour was it? White, red,
brown, grey?”
‘_Hans_: “Black. Both horses were black.”
‘_I_: “Was it big or little?”
‘_Hans_: “Big.”
‘_I_: “Fat or thin?”
‘_Hans_: “Fat. Very big and fat.”
{194}
‘_I_: “When the horse fell down, did you think of your daddy?”
‘_Hans_: “Perhaps. Yes. It’s possible.”’
His father’s investigations may have been without success at many
points; but it does no harm to make acquaintance at close quarters
with a phobia of this sort---which one is apt to name after its new
objects. In this way we get to see how diffuse it really is. It goes
on to horses and on to carts, on to the fact that horses fall down and
that they bite, on to horses of a particular character, on to carts
that are heavily loaded. We may at once explain that all of these
characteristics are derived from the circumstance that the anxiety had
originally no reference at all to horses but was transposed on to them
secondarily and had now become fixed upon those elements of the
horse-complex which showed themselves well adapted for certain
transferences. We must specially acknowledge one most important result
of the boy’s examination by his father. We have learned the immediate
exciting cause after which the phobia broke out. This was when the boy
saw a big heavy horse fall down; and one at least of the
interpretations of this impression seems to be that emphasized by his
father, namely, that Hans at that moment perceived a wish that his
father might in the same way fall down---and be dead. His serious
expression as he was telling the story no doubt referred to this
unconscious meaning. May there not have been yet another meaning
concealed behind all this? And what can have been the significance of
the making a row with its legs?
-----------------------------
‘For some time Hans has been playing horses in the room; he trots
about, falls down, kicks about with his feet, and neighs. Once he tied
a small bag on like a nose-bag. He has repeatedly run up to me and
bitten me.’
{195}
In this way he was accepting the last interpretations more decidedly
than he could in words, but naturally with a change of parts, for the
game was in the service of a wish-phantasy. Thus he was the horse, he
bit his father, and in this way he was identifying himself with his
father.
‘I have noticed for the last two days that Hans has been defying me in
the most decided manner, not impudently, but in the highest
spirits. Is it because he is no longer afraid of me---the horse?
‘April 6th. Went out with Hans in front of the house in the
afternoon. At every horse that passed I asked him if he saw the “black
on its mouth”; he said “no” every time. I asked him what the black
really looked like; he said it was black iron. My first idea, that he
meant the thick leather straps that are part of the harness of
dray-horses, is therefore unconfirmed. I asked him if the “black”
reminded him of a moustache, and he said: “Only by its colour.” So I
do not yet know what it really is.
‘The fear has diminished; this time he ventured as far as the
next-door house, but turned round quickly when he heard the sound of
horses’ hoofs in the distance. When a cart drew up at our door and
came to a stop, he became frightened and ran into the house, because
the horse began pawing with its foot. I asked him why he was afraid,
and whether perhaps he was nervous because the horse had done like
this (and I stamped with my foot). He said: “Don’t make such a row
with your feet!” Compare his remark upon the fallen bus-horse.
‘He was particularly terrified by a furniture-van passing by. At that
he ran right inside the house. “Doesn’t a furniture-van like that,” I
asked him unconcernedly, “really look like a bus?” He said nothing. I
repeated the question, and he then said: “Why, of course! Otherwise I
shouldn’t be so afraid of a furniture-van.”
‘April 7th. I asked again to-day what the “black {196} on the horses’
mouths” looked like. Hans said: “Like a muzzle.” The curious thing is
that for the last three days not a single horse has passed on which he
could point out this “muzzle”. I myself have seen no such horse on any
of my walks, although Hans asseverates that such horses do exist. I
suspect that some sort of horses’ bridle---the thick piece of harness
round their mouths, perhaps---really reminded him of a moustache, and
that after I alluded to this this fear disappeared as well.
‘Hans’s improvement is constant. The radius of his circle of activity
with the street-door as its centre is ever wider. He has even
accomplished the feat, which has hitherto been impossible for him, of
running across to the pavement opposite. All the fear that remains is
connected with the bus scene, the meaning of which is not yet clear to
me.
‘April 9th. This morning Hans came in to me while I was washing and
bare to the waist.
‘_Hans_: “Daddy, you _are_ lovely! You’re so white.”
‘_I_: “Yes. Like a white horse.”
‘_Hans_: “The only black thing’s your moustache.” (Continuing) “Or
perhaps it’s a black muzzle?”
‘I told him then that I had been to see the Professor the evening
before, and said: “There’s one thing he wants to know.” “I _am_
curious,” remarked Hans.
‘I told him I knew on what occasions it was that he made a row with
his feet. “Oh, yes!” he interrupted me, “when I’m cross, or when I
have to do ‘lumf’ and would rather play.” (He has a habit, it is true,
of making a row with his feet, _i.e._ of stamping, when he is
angry.---“Doing lumf” means doing number two. When Hans was small he
said one day when he got off the chamber: “Look at the lumf [German:
‘_lumpf_’].” He meant “stocking” [German: “_strumpf_”], with reference
to its shape and colour. This designation has been preserved to this
day.---In very early days, when he had to be put on the chamber, {197}
and refused to leave off playing, he used to stamp his feet in a rage,
and kick about, and sometimes throw himself on the ground.)
‘“And you kick about with your feet as well, when you have to widdle
and don’t want to go, because you’d rather go on playing.”
‘_He_: “Oh, I must widdle.” And he went out of the room---by way of
confirmation, no doubt.’
In the course of his visit his father had asked me what Hans could
have been reminded of by the fallen horse kicking about with its
feet. I had suggested that that may have been his own reaction when he
retained his urine. Hans now confirmed this by means of the
re-emergence during the conversation of a desire to urinate; and he
added some other significations of the making a row with the feet.
‘We then went out in front of the street-door. When a coal-cart came
along, he said to me: “Daddy, I’m very much afraid of coal-carts,
too.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps that’s because they’re as big as buses, too.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes; and because they’re so heavily loaded, and the horses
have so much to drag and might easily fall down. If a cart’s empty,
I’m not afraid.” It is a fact, as I have already remarked, that only
heavy vehicles throw him into a state of anxiety.’
Nevertheless, the situation was decidedly obscure. The analysis was
making little progress; and I am afraid the reader will soon begin to
find this description of it tedious. Every analysis, however, has dark
periods of this kind. But Hans was now on the point of leading us into
an unexpected region.
-----------------------------
‘I came home and was speaking to my wife, who had made various
purchases which she was showing me. Among them was a pair of yellow
ladies’ drawers. Hans exclaimed “Ugh!” two or three times, threw {198}
himself on the ground, and spat. My wife said he had done this two or
three times already when he had seen the drawers.
‘“Why do you say ‘Ugh’?” I asked.
‘_Hans_: “Because of the drawers.”
‘_I_: “Why? Because of their colour? Because they’re yellow, and
remind you of lumf or widdle?”
‘_Hans_: “Lumf isn’t yellow. It’s white or black.”---Immediately
afterwards: “I say, is it easy to do lumf if you eat cheese?” (I had
once told him so, when he asked me why I ate cheese.)
‘_I_: “Yes.”
‘_Hans_: “That’s why you go straight off every morning and do lumf? I
should so much like to eat cheese with my bread-and-butter.”
‘He had already asked me yesterday as he was jumping about in the
street: “I say, it’s true, isn’t it, if you jump about a lot you can
do lumf easily?”---There has been trouble with his stools from the
very first; and aperients and enemas have frequently been
necessary. At one time his habitual constipation was so great that my
wife called in Dr. L. He was of opinion that Hans was overfed, which
was in fact the case, and recommended a more moderate diet---and the
condition was at once brought to an end. Recently the constipation has
again made its appearance more frequently.
‘After luncheon I said to him: “We’ll write to the Professor again,”
and he dictated to me: “When I saw the yellow drawers I said ‘Ugh!
that makes me spit!’ and threw myself down and shut my eyes and didn’t
look.”
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_Hans_: “Because I saw the yellow drawers; and I did the same sort of
thing with the black drawers too.[126] The black ones are the same
sort of drawers, only they were black.” (Interrupting himself) “I say,
I _am_ {199} glad. I’m always so glad when I can write to the
Professor.”
‘_I_: “Why did you say ‘Ugh’? Were you disgusted?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, because I saw that. I thought I should have to do
lumf.”
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_Hans_: “I don’t know.”
‘_I_: “When did you see the black drawers?”
‘_Hans_: “Once, when Anna (our maid) had been here a long time---with
Mamma---she brought them home just after she’d bought them.” (This
statement was confirmed by my wife.)
‘_I_: “Were you disgusted then, too?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “Have you seen Mummy in drawers like that?”
‘_Hans_: “No.”
‘_I_: “When she was dressing?”
‘_Hans_: “When she bought the yellow ones I’d seen them once before
already.” (This is contradicted. He saw the yellow ones for the first
time when his mother bought them.) “She’s got the black ones on to-day
too” (correct), “because I saw her take them off in the morning.”
‘_I_: “What? She took off the black drawers in the morning?”
‘_Hans_: “In the morning when she went out she took off the black
drawers, and when she came back she put the black ones on again.”
‘I asked my wife about this, as it seemed to me absurd. She said it
was entirely untrue. Of course she had not changed her drawers when
she went out.
‘I at once asked Hans about it: “You told me that Mummy had put on
some black drawers, and that when she went out she took them off, and
that when she came back she put them on again. But Mummy says it’s not
true.”
{200}
‘_Hans_: “I think perhaps I may have forgotten she didn’t take them
off.” (Impatiently) “Oh, do let me alone.”’
I have a few comments to make at this point on the business of the
drawers. It was obviously mere hypocrisy on Hans’s part to pretend to
be so glad of the opportunity of giving an account of the affair. In
the end he threw the mask aside and was rude to his father. It was a
question of things which had once afforded him _a great deal of
pleasure_, but of which, now that repression had set in, he was very
much ashamed, and at which he professed to be disgusted. He told some
downright lies so as to disguise the circumstances in which he had
seen his mother change her drawers. In reality, the putting on and
taking off of her drawers belonged to the ‘lumf’ context. His father
was perfectly aware of what it was all about and of what Hans was
trying to conceal.
‘I asked my wife whether Hans was often with her when she went to the
W.C. “Yes,” she said, “often. He goes on pestering me till I let
him. Children are all like that.”’
Nevertheless, it is worth bearing carefully in mind the desire, which
Hans had already repressed, for seeing his mother doing lumf.
‘We went out in front of the house. He was in very good spirits and
was prancing about all the time like a horse. So I said: “Now, who is
it that’s the bus-horse? Me, you, or Mummy?”
‘_Hans_ (promptly): “I am; I’m a young horse.”
‘During the period when his anxiety was at its height, and he was
frightened at seeing horses frisking, he asked me why they did it; and
to reassure him I said: “Those are young horses, you see, and they
frisk about like little boys. You frisk about too, and you’re a little
boy.” Since then, whenever he has seen horses frisking, he has said:
“That’s right; those are young horses!”
‘As we were going upstairs I asked him almost {201} without thinking:
“Used you to play at horses with the children at Gmunden?”
‘_He_: “Yes.” (Thoughtfully) “I think that was how I got the
nonsense.”
‘_I_: “Who was the horse?”
‘_He_: “I was; and Berta was the coachman.”
‘_I_: “Did you fall down by any chance, when you were a horse?”
‘_Hans_: “No. When Berta said ‘Gee-up’, I ran ever so quick; I just
raced along.”[127]
‘_I_: “You never played at buses?”
‘_Hans_: “No. At ordinary carts, and horses without carts. When a
horse has a cart, it can go without a cart just as well, and the cart
can stay at home.”
‘_I_: “Used you often to play at horses?”
‘_Hans_: “Very often. Fritzl[128] was the horse once, too, and Franzl
the coachman; and Fritzl ran ever so fast and all at once he hit his
foot on a stone and bled.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps he fell down?”
‘_Hans_: “No. He put his foot in some water and then wrapped it
up.”[129]
‘_I_: “Were you often the horse?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh, yes.”
‘_I_: “And that was how you got the nonsense?”
‘_Hans_: “Because they kept on saying ‘’cos of the horse,’ ‘’cos of
the horse’” (he put a stress on the ‘’cos’); “so perhaps I got the
nonsense because they talked like that; ‘’cos of the horse.’”’[130]
{202}
For a while Hans’s father pursued his inquiry fruitlessly along other
paths.
‘_I_: “Did they tell you anything about horses?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “What?”
‘_Hans_: “I’ve forgotten.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps they told you about their widdlers?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh, no.”
‘_I_: “Were you frightened of horses already then?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh, no. I wasn’t frightened at all.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps Berta told you that horses⸺”
‘_Hans_ (interrupting): “⸺widdle? No.”
‘On April 10th I took up our conversation of the day before, and tried
to discover what his “’cos of the horse” meant. Hans could not
remember; he only knew that some children had stood outside the front
door one morning and had said, “’cos of the horse, ’cos of the horse!”
He had been there himself. When I pressed him more closely, he
declared that they had not said “’cos of the horse” at all, but that
he had remembered wrong.
‘_I_: “But you and the others were often in the stables. You must
surely have talked about horses there.”---“We didn’t.”---“What did you
talk about?”---“Nothing.”---“Such a lot of children, and nothing to
talk about?”---“We did talk about something, but not about
horses.”---“Well, what was it?”---“I don’t remember any more.”
‘I allowed the matter to drop, as the resistances were evidently too
great,[131] and went on to the following question: “Did you like
playing with Berta?”
‘_He_: “Yes, very much; but not with Olga. {203} D’you know what Olga
did? I was given a paper ball once by Grete up there at Gmunden, and
Olga tore it all to pieces. Berta would never have torn my ball. I
liked playing with Berta very much.”
‘_I_: “Did you see what Berta’s widdler looked like?”
‘_He_: “No, but I saw the horses’; because I was always in the
stables, and so I saw the horses’ widdlers.”
‘_I_: “And so you were curious and wanted to know what Berta’s and
Mummy’s widdlers looked like?”
‘_He_: “Yes.”
‘I reminded him of how he had once complained to me that the little
girls always wanted to look on while he was widdling.
‘_He_: “Berta always looked on at me too” (he spoke with great
satisfaction and not at all resentfully); “often she did. I used to
widdle in the little garden where the radishes were, and she stood
outside the front door and looked on at me.”
‘_I_: “And when she widdled, did you look on?”
‘_He_: “She used to go to the W.C.”
‘_I_: “And you were curious?”
‘_He_: “I was inside the W.C. when she was in it.”
‘(This was a fact. The servants told us about it once, and I recollect
that we forbade Hans to do it.)
‘_I_: “Did you tell her you wanted to go in?”
‘_He_: “I went in alone and because Berta let me. There’s nothing
shameful in that.”
‘_I_: “And you’d have liked to see her widdler?”
‘_He_: “Yes, but I didn’t see it.”
‘I then reminded him of the dream about playing forfeits that he had
had at Gmunden, and said: “When you were at Gmunden did you want Berta
to make you widdle?”
‘_He_: “I never said so to her.”
‘_I_: “Why didn’t you ever say so to her?”
‘_He_: “Because I didn’t think of it.” (Interrupting {204} himself)
“If I write everything to the Professor, my nonsense’ll soon be over,
won’t it?”
‘_I_: “Why did you want Berta to make you widdle?”
‘_He_: “I don’t know. Because she looked on at me.”
‘_I_: “Did you think to yourself she should put her hand to your
widdler?”
‘_He_: “Yes.” (Changing the subject) “It was such fun at Gmunden. In
the little garden where the radishes were there was a little
sand-heap, and I used to play there with my spade.”
‘(This was the garden where he used always to widdle.)
‘_I_: “Did you put your hand to your widdler at Gmunden, when you were
in bed?”
‘_He_: “No. Not then; I slept so well at Gmunden that I never thought
of it at all. The only times I did it was at ⸻ Street[132] and now.”
‘_I_: “But Berta never put her hand to your widdler?”
‘_He_: “She never did, no; because I never told her to.”
‘_I_: “Well, and when was it you wanted her to?”
‘_He_: “Oh, at Gmunden once.”
‘_I_: “Only once?”
‘_He_: “Well, now and then.”
‘_I_: “She used always to look on at you when you widdled; perhaps she
was curious to know how you did it?”
‘_He_: “Perhaps she was curious to know what my widdler looked like.”
‘_I_: “But you were curious too. Only about Berta?”
‘_He_: “About Berta, and about Olga.”
‘_I_: “About who else?”
‘_He_: “About no one else.”
{205}
‘_I_: “You know that’s not true. About Mummy too.”
‘_He_: “Oh, yes, about Mummy.”
‘_I_: “But now you’re not curious any more. You know what Hanna’s
widdler looks like, don’t you?”
‘_He_: “It’ll grow, though, won’t it?”[133]
‘_I_: “Yes, of course. But when it’s grown it won’t look like yours.”
‘_He_: “I know that. It’ll be the same” (_sc._ as it now is) “only
bigger.”
‘_I_: “When we were at Gmunden, were you curious when your Mamma
undressed?”
‘_He_: “Yes. And then when Hanna was in her bath I saw her widdler.”
‘_I_: “And Mummy’s too?”
‘_He_: “No.”
‘_I_: “You were disgusted when you saw Mummy’s drawers?”
‘_He_: “Only when I saw the black ones---when she bought them---then I
spat. But I don’t spit when she puts her drawers on or takes them
off. _I spit because the black drawers are black like a lumf and the
yellow ones like widdle, and then I think I’ve got to widdle_. When
Mummy has her drawers on I don’t see them; she’s got her clothes on
over them.”
‘_I_: “And when she takes off her clothes?”
‘_He_: “I don’t spit then either. But when her drawers are new they
look like a lumf. When they’re old, the colour goes away and they get
dirty. When you buy them they’re quite clean, but at home they’ve been
made dirty. When they’re bought they’re new, and when they’re not
bought they’re old.”
‘_I_: “Then you aren’t disgusted by old ones?”
‘_He_: “When they’re old they’re much blacker than a lumf, aren’t
they? They’re just a bit blacker.”[134]
{206}
‘_I_: “Have you often been into the W.C. with Mummy?”
‘_He_: “Very often.”
‘_I_: “And were you disgusted?”
‘_He_: “Yes... No.”
‘_I_: “You like being there when Mummy widdles or does lumf?”
‘_He_: “Yes, very much.”
‘_I_: “Why do you like it so much?”
‘_He_: “I don’t know.”
‘_I_: “Because you think you’ll see her widdler.”
‘_He_: “Yes, I do think that.”
‘_I_: “But why won’t you ever go into the W.C. at Lainz?”
‘(At Lainz he always begs me not to take him into the W.C.; he was
frightened once by the noise of the flush.)
‘_He_: “Perhaps it’s because it makes a row when you pull the plug.”
‘_I_: “And then you’re afraid.”
‘_He_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “And what about our W.C. here?”
‘_He_: “Here I’m not. At Lainz it gives me a fright when you pull the
plug. And when I’m inside and the water rushes down, then it gives me
a fright too.”
‘And, “just to show me that he wasn’t frightened in our flat,” he made
me go into the W.C. and set the flush in motion. He then explained to
me:
‘“First there’s a loud row, and then a loose one.” (This is when the
water comes down.) “When there’s a loud row I’d rather stay inside,
and when there’s a soft one I’d rather go out.”
‘_I_: “Because you’re afraid?”
‘_He_: “Because if there’s a loud row I always so {207} much like to
see it”---(correcting himself) “to hear it; so I’d rather stay inside
and hear it properly.”
‘_I_: “What does a loud row remind you of?”
‘_He_: “That I’ve got to do lumf in the W.C.” (The same thing, that
is, that the black drawers reminded him of.)
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_He_: “I don’t know. A loud row sounds as though you were doing
lumf. A big row reminds me of lumf, and a little one of widdle.”
(Cf. the black and the yellow drawers.)
‘_I_: “I say, wasn’t the bus-horse the same colour as a lumf?”
(According to his account it had been black.)
‘_He_ (very much struck): “Yes.”’
At this point I must put in a few words. Hans’s father was asking too
many questions, and was pressing the inquiry along his own lines
instead of allowing the little boy to express his thoughts. For this
reason the analysis began to be obscure and uncertain. Hans went his
own way and would produce nothing if attempts were made to draw him
off it. For the moment his interest was evidently centred upon lumf
and widdle, but we cannot tell why. Just as little satisfactory light
was thrown upon the business of the row as upon that of the yellow and
black drawers. I suspect that the boy’s sharp ears had clearly
detected the difference between the sounds made by a man urinating and
a woman. The analysis succeeded in forcing the material somewhat
artificially into an expression of the distinction between the two
different calls of nature. I can only advise those of my readers who
have not as yet themselves conducted an analysis not to try to
understand everything at once, but to give a kind of unbiassed
attention to every point that arises and to await further
developments.
-----------------------------
{208}
‘April 11th. This morning Hans came into our room again and was sent
away, as he always has been for the last few days.
‘Later on, he began: “Daddy, I thought something: _I was in the
bath_,[135] _and then the plumber came and unscrewed it_.[136] _Then
he took a big borer and stuck it into my stomach_.”’
Hans’s father translated this phantasy as follows: ‘“I was in bed with
Mamma. Then Papa came and drove me away. With his big penis he pushed
me out of my place by Mamma.”’
Let us suspend our judgement for the present.
‘He went on to relate a second idea that he had had: “We were
travelling in the train to Gmunden. In the station we put on our
clothes; but we couldn’t get it done in time, and the train carried us
on.”
‘Later on, I asked: “Have you ever seen a horse doing lumf?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, very often.”
‘_I_: “Does it make a loud row when it does lumf?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “What does the row remind you of?”
‘_Hans_: “Like when lumf falls into the chamber.”
‘The bus-horse that falls down and makes a row with its feet is no
doubt---a lumf falling and making a noise. His fear of defaecation and
his fear of heavily loaded carts is equivalent to the fear of a
heavily loaded stomach.’
In this roundabout way Hans’s father was beginning to get a glimmering
of the true state of affairs.
-----------------------------
‘April 11th. At luncheon Hans said: “If only we had a bath at Gmunden,
so that I didn’t have to go to the public baths!” It is a fact that at
Gmunden he was always taken to the neighbouring public baths {209} to
be given his warm bath---a proceeding against which he used to protest
with passionate tears. And in Vienna, too, he always screams if he is
made to sit or lie in the big bath. He must be given his bath kneeling
or standing.’
Hans was now beginning to bring fuel to the analysis in the shape of
spontaneous utterances of his own. This remark of his established the
connection between his two last phantasies---that of the plumber who
unscrewed the bath and that of the unsuccessful journey to
Gmunden. His father had correctly inferred from the latter that Hans
had some aversion to Gmunden. This, by the way, is another good
reminder of the fact that what emerges from the unconscious is to be
understood in the light not of what goes before but of what comes
after.
‘I asked him whether he was afraid, and if so of what.
‘_Hans_: “Because of falling in.”
‘_I_: “But why were you never afraid when you had your bath in the
little bath?”
‘_Hans_: “Why, I sat in that one. I couldn’t lie down in it, it was
too small.”
‘_I_: “When you went in a boat at Gmunden weren’t you afraid of
falling into the water?”
‘_Hans_: “No, because I held on, so I couldn’t fall in. It’s only in
the big bath that I’m afraid of falling in.”
‘_I_: “But Mamma baths you in it. Are you afraid of Mummy dropping you
in the water?”
‘_Hans_: “I’m afraid of her letting go and my head going in.”
‘_I_: “But you know Mummy’s fond of you and won’t let go of you.”
‘_Hans_: “I only just thought it.”
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_Hans_: “I don’t know at all.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps it was because you’d been naughty and thought she
didn’t love you any more?”
{210}
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “When you were watching Mummy giving Hanna her bath, perhaps you
wished she would let go of her so that Hanna should fall in?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”’
Hans’s father, we cannot help thinking, had made a very good guess.
-----------------------------
‘April 12th. As we were coming back from Lainz in a second-class
carriage, Hans looked at the black leather upholstery of the seats,
and said: “Ugh! that makes me spit! Black drawers and black horses
make me spit too, because I have to do lumf.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps you saw something of Mummy’s that was black, and it
frightened you?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “Well, what was it?”
‘_Hans_: “I don’t know. A black blouse or black stockings.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps it was black hair near her widdler, when you were
curious and looked.”
‘_Hans_ (defending himself): “But I didn’t see her widdler.”
‘Another time, he was once more frightened at a cart driving out of
the yard gates opposite. “Don’t the gates look like a behind?” I
asked.
‘_He_: “And the horses are the lumfs!” Since then, whenever he sees a
cart driving out, he says: “Look, there’s a ‘lumfy’ coming!” This form
of the word (“lumfy”) is quite a new one to him; it sounds like a term
of endearment. My sister-in-law always calls her child “Wumfy”.
‘On April 13th he saw a piece of liver in the soup and exclaimed:
“Ugh! A lumf!” Meat croquettes, too, he eats with evident reluctance,
because their form and colour remind him of lumf.
‘In the evening my wife told me that Hans had {211} been put out on
the balcony and had said: “I thought to myself Hanna was on the
balcony and fell down off it.” I had once or twice told him to be
careful that Hanna did not get too near the balustrade when she was
out on the balcony; for the railing was designed in the most
unpractical way (by a Secessionist craftsman) and had big gaps in it
which I had to have filled in with wire netting. Hans’s repressed wish
was very transparent. His mother asked him if he would rather Hanna
were not there, to which he said “Yes”.
‘April 14th. The theme of Hanna is uppermost. As you may remember from
earlier records, Hans felt a strong aversion to the new-born baby that
robbed him of a part of his parents’ love. This dislike has not
entirely disappeared and is only partly over-compensated by an
exaggerated affection.[137] He has already several times expressed a
wish that the stork should bring no more babies and that we should pay
him money not to bring any more _out of the big box_ where babies
are. (Compare his fear of furniture-vans. Does not a bus look like a
big box?) Hanna screams such a lot, he says, and that’s a nuisance to
him.
‘Once he suddenly said: “Can you remember when Hanna came? She lay
beside Mummy in bed, so nice and good.” (His praise rang suspiciously
hollow.)
‘And then as regards downstairs, outside the house. There is again
great progress to be reported. Even drays cause him less alarm. Once
he called out, almost with joy: “Here comes a horse with something
black on its mouth!” And I was at last able to establish the fact that
it was a horse with a leather muzzle. But Hans was not in the least
afraid of this horse.
‘Once he knocked on the pavement with his stick and said: “I say, is
there a man underneath?---some one buried?---or is that only in the
cemetery?” So {212} he is occupied not only with the riddle of life
but with the riddle of death.
‘When we got indoors again I saw a box standing in the front hall, and
Hans said: “Hanna travelled with us to Gmunden in a box like
that. Whenever we travelled to Gmunden she travelled with us in the
box. You don’t believe me again? Really, Daddy. Do believe me. We got
a big box and it was full of babies; they sat in the bath.” (A small
bath had been packed inside the box.) “I put them in it. Really and
truly. I can remember quite well.”[138]
‘_I_: “What can you remember?”
‘_Hans_: “That Hanna travelled in the box; because I haven’t forgotten
about it. My word of honour!”
‘_I_: “But last year Hanna travelled with us in the railway carriage.”
‘_Hans_: “_But before that she always travelled with us in the box_.”
‘_I_: “Didn’t Mummy have the box?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes. Mummy had it.”
‘_I_: “Where?”
‘_Hans_: “At home in the attic.”
‘_I_: “Perhaps she carried it about with her?”[139]
‘_Hans_: “No. And when we travel to Gmunden this time Hanna’ll travel
in the box again.”
‘_I_: “And how did she get out of the box, then?”
‘_Hans_: “She was taken out.”
‘_I_: “By Mummy?”
‘_Hans_: “Mummy and me. Then we got into the carriage, and Hanna rode
on the horse, and the coachman said ‘Gee-up’. The coachman sat up in
front. {213} Were you there too? Mummy knows all about it. Mummy
doesn’t know; she’s forgotten about it already, but don’t tell her
anything!”
‘I made him repeat the whole of this.
‘_Hans_: “Then Hanna got out.”
‘_I_: “Why, she couldn’t walk at all then.”
‘_Hans_: “Well then, we lifted her down.”
‘_I_: “But how could she have sat on the horse? She couldn’t sit up at
all last year.”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes, she sat up all right, and called out ‘Gee-up’, and
whipped with her whip---‘Gee-up! Gee-up!’---the whip I used to
have. The horse hadn’t any stirrups, but Hanna rode it. I’m not
joking, you know, Daddy.”’
What can be the meaning of the boy’s obstinate persistence in all this
nonsense? Oh no, it was no nonsense: it was parody, it was Hans’s
revenge upon his father. It was as much as to say: ‘_If you really
expect me to believe that the stork brought Hanna in October, when
even in the summer, while we were travelling to Gmunden, I’d noticed
how big mother’s stomach was,---then I expect you to believe my
lies_.’ What can be the meaning of the assertion that even the
previous summer Hanna had travelled with them to Gmunden ‘in the box’,
except that he knew about his mother’s pregnancy? His holding out the
prospect of a repetition of this journey in the box in each successive
year exemplifies a common way in which unconscious thoughts from the
past emerge into consciousness; or it may have special reasons and
express his dread of seeing a similar pregnancy repeated on their next
summer holiday. We now see, moreover, what the circumstances were that
had made him take a dislike to the journey to Gmunden, as his second
phantasy had indicated.
‘Later on, I asked him how Hanna had actually come into his mother’s
bed after she was born.’
This gave Hans a chance of letting himself go and fairly ‘stuffing’
his father.
{214}
‘_Hans_: “Hanna just came. Frau Kraus” (the midwife) “put her in the
bed. She couldn’t walk, of course. But the stork carried her in his
beak. Of course she couldn’t walk.” (He went on without a pause.) “The
stork came up the stairs up to the landing, and then he knocked and
everybody was asleep, and he had the right key and unlocked the door
and put Hanna in _your_[140] bed, and Mummy was asleep---no, the stork
put her in _her_ bed. It was the middle of the night, and then the
stork put her in the bed very quietly, he didn’t trample about at all,
and then he took his hat and went away again. No, he hadn’t got a
hat.”
‘_I_: “Who took his hat? The doctor, perhaps?”
‘_Hans_: “Then the stork went away; he went home, and then he rang at
the door, and every one in the house stopped sleeping. But don’t tell
this to Mummy or Tini” (the cook). “It’s a secret.”
‘_I_: “Are you fond of Hanna?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes, very fond.”
‘_I_: “Would you rather that Hanna weren’t alive or that she were?”
‘_Hans_: “I’d rather she weren’t alive.”
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_Hans_: “At any rate she wouldn’t scream so, and I can’t bear her
screaming.”
‘_I_: “Why, you scream yourself.”
‘_Hans_: “But Hanna screams too.”
‘_I_: “Why can’t you bear it?”
‘_Hans_: “Because she screams so loud.”
‘_I_: “Why, she doesn’t scream at all.”
‘_Hans_: “When she’s whacked on her bare bottom, then she screams.”
‘_I_: “Have you ever whacked her?”
‘_Hans_: “When Mummy whacks her on her bottom, then she screams.”
‘_I_: “And you don’t like that?”
{215}
‘_Hans_: “No... Why? Because she makes such a row with her screaming.”
‘_I_: “If you’d rather she weren’t alive, you can’t be fond of her at
all.”
‘_Hans_ (assenting): “H’m, well.”
‘_I_: “That was why you thought when Mummy was giving her her bath, if
only she’d let go, Hanna would fall into the water...”
‘_Hans_ (taking me up) “...and die.”
‘_I_: “And then you’d be alone with Mummy. A good boy doesn’t wish
that sort of thing, though.”
‘_Hans_: “_But he may think it_.”
‘_I_: “But that isn’t good.”
‘_Hans_: “_If he thinks it, it is good all the same, because you can
write it to the Professor_.”[141]
‘Later on I said to him: “You know, when Hanna gets bigger and can
talk, you’ll be fonder of her.”
‘_Hans_: “Oh no. I _am_ fond of her. In the autumn, when she’s big, I
shall go with her to the Stadtpark quite alone, and explain everything
to her.”
‘As I was beginning to give him some further enlightenment, he
interrupted me, probably with the intention of explaining to me that
it was not so wicked of him to wish that Hanna was dead.
‘_Hans_: “You know, all the same, she’d been alive a long time even
before she was here. When she was with the stork she was alive too.”
‘_I_: “No. Perhaps she wasn’t with the stork after all.”
‘_Hans_: “Who brought her, then? The stork had got her.”
‘_I_: “Where did he bring her from, then?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh---from him.”
‘_I_: “Where had he got her, then?”
‘_Hans_: “In the box; in the _stork-box_.”
‘_I_: “Well, and what does the box look like?”
{216}
‘_Hans_: “Red. Painted red.” (Blood?)
‘_I_: “Who told you that?”
‘_Hans_: “Mummy... I thought it to myself... it’s in the book.”
‘_I_: “In what book?”
‘_Hans_: “In the picture-book.” (I made him fetch his first
picture-book. In it was a picture of a stork’s nest with storks, on a
red chimney. This was the box. Curiously enough, on the same page
there was also a picture of a horse being shod.[142] Hans had
transferred the babies into the box, as they were not to be seen in
the nest.)
‘_I_: “And what did the stork do with her?”
‘_Hans_: “Then the stork brought Hanna here. In his beak. You know,
the stork that’s at Schönbrunn, and that bit the umbrella.” (A
reminiscence of an episode at Schönbrunn.)
‘_I_: “Did you see how the stork brought Hanna?”
‘_Hans_: “Why, I was still asleep, you know. A stork can never bring a
little girl or a little boy in the morning.”
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_Hans_: “He can’t. A stork can’t do it. Do you know why? So that
people shan’t see. And then, all at once, in the morning, there’s a
little girl there.”[143]
‘_I_: “But, all the same, you were curious at the time to know how the
stork did it?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes.”
‘_I_: “What did Hanna look like when she came?”
‘_Hans_ (hypocritically): “All white and lovely. So pretty.”
{217}
‘_I_: “But when you saw her the first time you didn’t like her.”
‘_Hans_: “Oh, I did; very much!”
‘_I_: “You were surprised that she was so small, though.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “How small was she?”
‘_Hans_: “Like a baby stork.”
‘_I_: “Like what else? Like a lumf, perhaps?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh no. A lumf’s much bigger... a bit smaller than Hanna,
really.”’
I had predicted to his father that it would be possible to trace back
Hans’s phobia to thoughts and wishes occasioned by the birth of his
baby sister. But I had omitted to point out that according to the
sexual theory of children a baby is a ‘lumf’, so that Hans’s path
would lie through the excremental complex. It was owing to this
neglect on my part that the progress of the case became temporarily
obscured. Now that the matter had been cleared up, Hans’s father
attempted to examine the boy a second time upon this important point.
The next day, ‘I got Hans to repeat what he had told me yesterday. He
said: “Hanna travelled to Gmunden in the big box, and Mummy travelled
in the railway carriage, and Hanna travelled in the luggage train with
the box; and then when we got to Gmunden Mummy and I lifted Hanna out
and put her on the horse. The coachman sat up in front, and Hanna had
the old whip” (the whip he had last year) “and whipped the horse and
kept on saying ‘Gee-up’, and it was such fun, and the coachman whipped
too.---The coachman didn’t whip at all, because Hanna had the
whip.---The coachman had the reins---Hanna had the reins too.” (On
each occasion we drove in a carriage from the station to the
house. Hans was here trying to reconcile fact and fancy.) “At Gmunden
we lifted Hanna down from the horse, and she walked up the steps by
herself.” (Last year, when Hanna {218} was at Gmunden, she was eight
months old. The year before that---and Hans’s phantasy evidently
relates to that time---his mother had been five months gone with child
when we arrived at Gmunden.)
‘_I_: “_Last_ year Hanna was there.”
‘_Hans_: “Last year she drove in the carriage; but the year before
that, when she was living with us...”
‘_I_: “Was she with us already then?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes. You were always there; you used always to go in the
boat with me, and Anna was our servant.”
‘_I_: “But that wasn’t last year. Hanna wasn’t alive then.”
‘_Hans_: “_Yes, she was alive then_. Even while she was still
travelling in the box she could run about and she could say ‘Anna’.”
(She has only been able to do so for the last four months.)
‘_I_: “But she wasn’t with us at all then.”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes, she was; she was with the stork.”
‘_I_: “How old is she, then?”
‘_Hans_: “She’ll be two years old in the autumn. Hanna _was_ there,
you know she was.”
‘_I_: “And when was she with the stork in the stork-box?”
‘_Hans_: “A long time before she travelled in the box, a very long
time.”
‘_I_: “How long has Hanna been able to walk, then? When she was at
Gmunden she couldn’t walk yet.”
‘_Hans_: “Not last year; but else she could.”
‘_I_: “But Hanna’s only been at Gmunden once.”
‘_Hans_: “No. She’s been twice. Yes, that’s it. I can remember quite
well. Ask Mummy, she’ll tell you soon enough.”
‘_I_: “It’s not true, all the same.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, it _is_ true. _When she was at Gmunden the first time
she could walk and ride, and later on she had to be carried_.---No. It
was only later on that she rode, and last year she had to be carried.”
{219}
‘_I_: “But it’s only quite a short time that she’s been walking. At
Gmunden she couldn’t walk.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes. Just you write it down. I can remember quite
well.---Why are you laughing?”
‘_I_: “Because you’re a fraud; because you know quite well that
Hanna’s only been at Gmunden once.”
‘_Hans_: “No, that isn’t true. The first time she rode on the
horse... and the second time...” (He showed signs of evident
uncertainty.)
‘_I_: “Perhaps the horse was Mummy?”
‘_Hans_: “No, a real horse in a fly.”
‘_I_: “But we used always to have a carriage with two horses.”
‘_Hans_: “Well, then, it was a carriage and pair.”
‘_I_: “What did Hanna eat inside the box?”
‘_Hans_: “They put in bread-and-butter for her, and herring, and
radishes” (the sort of things we used to have for supper at Gmunden),
“and as Hanna went along she buttered her bread-and-butter and ate
fifty meals.”
‘_I_: “Didn’t Hanna scream?”
‘_Hans_: “No.”
‘_I_: “What did she do, then?”
‘_Hans_: “Sat quite still inside.”
‘_I_: “Didn’t she push about?”
‘_Hans_: “No, she kept on eating all the time and didn’t stir
once. She drank up two big mugs of coffee---by the morning it was all
gone, and she left the bits behind in the box, the leaves of the two
radishes and a knife for cutting the radishes. She gobbled everything
up like a hare: one minute and it was all finished. It _was_ a
joke. Hanna and I really travelled together in the box; I slept the
whole night in the box.” (We did in fact, two years ago, make the
journey to Gmunden by night.) “And Mummy travelled in the railway
carriage. And we kept on eating all the time when we were driving in
the carriage, too; it _was_ ripping.---She didn’t ride on a horse at
all...” (he now became undecided, for he knew that we had {220} driven
with two horses) “...she sat in the carriage. Yes, that’s how it was,
but Hanna and I drove quite by ourselves ... Mummy rode on the horse,
and Karoline” (our maid last year) “on the other ... I say, what I’m
telling you isn’t a bit true.”
‘_I_: “What isn’t true?”
‘_Hans_: “None of it is. I say, let’s put Hanna and me in the box[144]
and I’ll widdle into the box. I’ll just widdle into my knickers; I
don’t care a bit; there’s nothing at all shameful in it. I say, that
isn’t a joke, you know; but it’s great fun, though.”
‘Then he told me the story of how the stork came---the same story as
yesterday, except that he left out the part about the stork taking his
hat when he went away.
‘_I_: “Where did the stork keep his latch-key?”
‘_Hans_: “In his pocket.”
‘_I_: “And where’s the stork’s pocket?”
‘_Hans_: “In his beak.”
‘_I_: “It’s in his beak! I’ve never seen a stork yet with a key in his
beak.”
‘_Hans_: “How else could he have got in? How did the stork come in at
the door, then? No, it isn’t true; I just made a mistake. The stork
rang at the front door and some one let him in.”
‘_I_: “And how did he ring?”
‘_Hans_: “He rang the bell.”
‘_I_: “How did he do that?”
‘_Hans_: “He took his beak and pressed on it with his beak.”
‘_I_: “And did he shut the door again?”
‘_Hans_: “No, a maid shut it. She was up already, you see, and opened
the door for him and shut it.”
‘_I_: “Where does the stork live?”
‘_Hans_: “Where? In the box where he keeps the little girls. At
Schönbrunn, perhaps.”
‘_I_: “I’ve never seen a box at Schönbrunn.”
{221}
‘_Hans_: “It must be farther off, then.---Do you know how the stork
opens the box? He takes his beak---the box has got a key, too---he
takes his beak, lifts up one” (_i.e._ one-half of the beak) “and
unlocks it like this.” (He demonstrated the process on the lock of the
writing-table.) “This is a handle too.”
‘_I_: “Isn’t a little girl like that too heavy for him?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh no.”
‘_I_: “I say, doesn’t a bus look like a stork-box?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “And a furniture-waggon?”
‘_Hans_: “And a scallywaggon” (“scallywag”---a term of abuse for
naughty children) “too.”
-----------------------------
‘April 17th. Yesterday Hans carried out his long premeditated scheme
of going across into the courtyard opposite. He would not do it
to-day, as there was a cart standing at the loading dock exactly
opposite the entrance gates. “When a cart stands there,” he said to
me, “I’m afraid I shall tease the horses and they’ll fall down and
make a row with their feet.”
‘_I_: “How does one tease horses?”
‘_Hans_: “When you’re cross with them you tease them, and when you
shout ‘Gee-up’.”[145]
‘_I_: “Have you ever teased horses?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, quite often. I’m _afraid_ I shall do it, but I don’t
_really_.”
‘_I_: “Did you ever tease horses at Gmunden?”
‘_Hans_: “No.”
‘_I_: “But you like teasing them?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes, very much.”
‘_I_: “Would you like to whip them?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “Would you like to beat the horses as Mummy beats Hanna? You
like that too, you know.”
{222}
‘_Hans_: “It doesn’t do the horses any harm when they’re beaten.” (I
said this to him once to mitigate his fear of seeing horses whipped.)
“Once I really did it. Once I had the whip and whipped the horse, and
it fell down and made a row with its feet.”
‘_I_: “When?”
‘_Hans_: “At Gmunden.”
‘_I_: “A real horse? Harnessed to a cart?”
‘_Hans_: “It wasn’t in the cart.”
‘_I_: “Where was it, then?”
‘_Hans_: “I just held it so that it shouldn’t run away.” (Of course
all this sounded most improbable.)
‘_I_: “Where was that?”
‘_Hans_: “Near the trough.”
‘_I_: “Who let you? Had the coachman left the horse standing there?”
‘_Hans_: “It was just a horse from the stables.”
‘_I_: “How did it get to the trough?”
‘_Hans_: “I took it there.”
‘_I_: “Where from? Out of the stables?”
‘_Hans_: “I took it out because I wanted to beat it.”
‘_I_: “Was there no one in the stables?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes, Loisl.” (The coachman at Gmunden.)
‘_I_: “Did he let you?”
‘_Hans_: “I talked nicely to him, and he said I might do it.”
‘_I_: “What did you say to him?”
‘_Hans_: “Could I take the horse and whip it and shout at it. And he
said ‘Yes’.”
‘_I_: “Did you whip it a lot?”
‘_Hans_: “_What I’ve told you isn’t the least true_.”
‘_I_: “How much of it’s true?”
‘_Hans_: “None of it’s true; I only told it you for fun.”
‘_I_: “You never took a horse out of the stables?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh no.”
‘_I_: “But you wanted to.”
{223}
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes, wanted to. I’ve thought it to myself.”
‘_I_: “At Gmunden?”
‘_Hans_: “No, only here. I thought it in the morning when I was quite
undressed; no, in the morning in bed.”
‘_I_: “Why did you never tell me about it?”
‘_Hans_: “I didn’t think of it.”
‘_I_: “You thought it to yourself because you saw it in the street.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “Which would you really like to beat? Mummy, Hanna, or me?”
‘_Hans_: “Mummy.”
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_Hans_: “I should just like to beat her.”
‘_I_: “When did you ever see any one beating their Mummy?”
‘_Hans_: “I’ve never seen any one do it, never in all my life.”
‘_I_: “And yet you’d just like to do it. How would you like to set
about it?”
‘_Hans_: “With a carpet-beater.” (His mother often threatens to beat
him with the carpet-beater.)
‘I was obliged to break off the conversation for to-day.
‘In the street Hans explained to me that buses, furniture-vans, and
coal-carts were stork-box carts.’
That is to say, pregnant women. Hans’s access of sadism immediately
before cannot be unconnected with the present theme.
-----------------------------
‘April 21st. This morning Hans said that he had thought as follows:
“There was a train at Lainz and I travelled with my Lainz Grandmamma
to the Hauptzollamt station. You hadn’t got down from the bridge yet,
and the second train was already at {224} St. Veit.[146] When you came
down, the train was there already, and we got in.”
‘(Hans was at Lainz yesterday. In order to get on to the departure
platform one has to cross a bridge. From the platform one can see
along the line as far as St. Veit station. The whole thing is a trifle
obscure. Hans’s original thought had no doubt been that he had gone
off by the first train, which I had missed, and that then a second
train had come in from Unter St. Veit and that I had gone after him in
it. But he had distorted a part of this runaway phantasy, so that he
said finally: “Both of us only got away by the second train.”
‘This phantasy is related to the last one, which was not interpreted,
and according to which we took too long to put on our clothes in the
station at Gmunden, so that the train carried us on.)
‘Afternoon, in front of the house. Hans suddenly ran indoors as a
carriage with two horses came along. I could see nothing unusual about
it, and asked him what was wrong. “The horses are so proud,” he said,
“that I’m afraid they’ll fall down.” (The coachman was reining the
horses in tight, so that they were trotting with short steps and
holding their heads high. In fact their action _was_ “proud”.)
‘I asked him who it really was that was so proud.
‘_He_: “You are, when I come into bed with Mummy.”
‘_I_: “So you want me to fall down?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes. You’ve got to be naked” (meaning “barefoot”, as Fritzl
had been) “and knock up against a stone, and blood must flow, and then
I’ll be able to be alone with Mummy for a little bit at all
events. When you come up into our flat I’ll be able to run away quick
so that you don’t see.”
‘_I_: “Can you remember who it was that knocked up against the stone?”
{225}
‘_He_: “Yes, Fritzl.”
‘_I_: “When Fritzl fell down, what did you think?”[147]
‘_He_: “That you should hit the stone and tumble down.”
‘_I_: “So you’d like to go to Mummy?”
‘_He_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “What do I really scold you for?”
‘_He_: “I don’t know.” (!!)
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_He_: “Because you’re cross.”
‘_I_: “But that’s not true.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, it _is_ true. You’re cross. I know you are. It must be
true.”
‘Evidently, therefore, my explanation that only _little_ boys come
into bed with their Mummies and that _big_ ones sleep in their own
beds had not impressed him very much.
‘I suspect that his desire to “tease” the horse, _i.e._ to beat it and
shout at it, does not apply to his mother, as he pretended, but to
me. No doubt he only put her forward because he was unwilling to admit
the alternative to me. For the last few days he has been particularly
affectionate to me.’
Speaking with the air of superiority which is so easily acquired after
the event, we may correct Hans’s father, and explain that the boy’s
wish to ‘tease’ the horse had two constituents; it was compounded of
an obscure sadistic desire for his mother and of a clear impulse for
revenge against his father. The latter could not be reproduced until
the former’s turn had come to emerge in connection with the pregnancy
complex. In the process of the formation of a phobia from the
unconscious thoughts underlying it condensation takes place; and for
that reason the course of the analysis can never follow that of the
development of the neurosis.
{226}
‘April 22nd. This morning Hans again thought something to himself: “A
street-boy was riding on a truck, and the guard came and undressed the
boy quite naked and made him stand there till next morning, and in the
morning the boy gave the guard 50,000 florins so that he could go on
riding on the truck.”
‘(The Nordbahn[148] runs past opposite our house. In a siding there
stood a trolley on which Hans once saw a street-boy riding. He wanted
to do so too; but I told him it was not allowed, and that if he did
the guard would be after him. A second element in this phantasy is
Hans’s repressed wish to be naked.)’
It has been noticeable for some time that Hans’s imagination was being
coloured by images derived from traffic,[149] and was advancing
systematically from horses, which draw vehicles, to railways. In the
same way a railway-phobia eventually becomes associated with every
street-phobia.
‘At lunch-time I was told that Hans _had been playing all the morning
with an india-rubber doll which he called Grete_. _He had pushed a
small penknife in through the opening to which the little tin squeaker
had originally been attached, and had then torn the doll’s legs apart
so as to let the knife drop out_. _He had said to the nurse-maid,
pointing between the doll’s legs: “Look, there’s its widdler!”_
‘_I_: “What was it you were playing at with your doll to-day?”
‘_Hans_: “I tore its legs apart. Do you know why? Because there was a
knife inside it belonging to Mummy. I put it in at the place where its
head squeaks, and then I tore apart its legs and it came out there.”
‘_I_: “Why did you tear its legs apart? So that you could see its
widdler?”
{227}
‘_He_: “Its widdler was there before; I could have seen it anyhow.”
‘_I_: “What did you put the knife in for?”
‘_He_: “I don’t know.”
‘_I_: “Well, what does the knife look like?”
‘He brought it to me.
‘_I_: “Did you think it was a baby, perhaps?”
‘_He_: “No, I didn’t think anything at all; but I believe the stork
got a baby once---or some one.”
‘_I_: “When?”
‘_He_: “Once. I heard so---or didn’t I hear it at all?---or did I say
it wrong?”
‘_I_: “What does ‘say it wrong’ mean?”
‘_He_: “That it’s not true.”
‘_I_: “Everything one says is a bit true.”
‘_He_: “Well, yes, a little bit.”
‘_I_ (after changing the subject): “How do you think chickens are
born?”
‘_He_: “The stork just makes them grow; the stork makes chickens
grow---no, God does.”
‘I explained to him that chickens lay eggs, and that out of the eggs
there come other chickens.
‘Hans laughed.
‘_I_: “Why do you laugh?”
‘_He_: “Because I like what you’ve told me.”
‘He said he had seen it happen already.
‘_I_: “Where?”
‘_Hans_: “You did it.”
‘_I_: “Where did I lay an egg?”
‘_Hans_: “At Gmunden; you laid an egg in the grass, and all at once a
chicken came hopping out. You laid an egg once; I know you did, I know
it for certain. Because Mummy said so.”
‘_I_: “I’ll ask Mummy if that’s true.”
‘_Hans_: “It isn’t true a bit. But _I_ once laid an egg, and a chicken
came hopping out.”
‘_I_: “Where?”
‘_Hans_: “At Gmunden I lay down in the grass---no, I knelt down---and
the children didn’t look on at {228} me, and all at once in the
morning I said: ‘Look for it, children; I laid an egg yesterday.’ And
all at once they looked, and all at once they saw an egg, and out of
it there came a little Hans. Well, what are you laughing for? Mummy
didn’t know about it, and Karoline didn’t know, because no one was
looking on, and all at once I laid an egg, and all at once it was
there. Really and truly. Daddy, when does a chicken grow out of an
egg? When it’s left alone? Must it be eaten?”
‘I explained the matter to him.
‘_Hans_: “All right, let’s leave it with the hen; then a chicken’ll
grow. Let’s pack it up in the box and let’s take it to Gmunden.”’
As his parents still hesitated to give him the information which was
already long overdue, little Hans had by a bold stroke taken the
conduct of the analysis into his own hands. By means of a brilliant
symptomatic act, ‘_Look!_’ he had said to them, ‘_this is how I
imagine that a birth takes place_.’ What he had told the maid-servant
about the meaning of his game with the doll had been insincere; to his
father he explicitly denied that he had only wanted to see its
widdler. After his father had told him, as a kind of payment on
account, how chickens come out of eggs, Hans gave a combined
expression to his dissatisfaction, his mistrust, and his superior
knowledge in a charming piece of persiflage, which culminated with his
last words in an unmistakable allusion to his sister’s birth.
‘_I_: “What were you playing at with your doll?”
‘_Hans_: “I said ‘Grete’ to her.”
‘_I_: “Why?”
‘_Hans_: “Because I said ‘Grete’ to her.”
‘_I_: “How did you play?”
‘_Hans_: “I just looked after her like a real baby.”
‘_I_: “Would you like to have a little girl?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes. Why not? I should like to have one, but Mummy
mustn’t have one; I don’t like that.”
{229}
‘(He has often expressed this view before. He is afraid of losing
still more of his position if a third child arrives.)
‘_I_: “But only women have children.”
‘_Hans_: “I’m going to have a little girl.”
‘_I_: “Where will you get her, then?”
‘_Hans_: “Why, from the stork. _He takes the little girl out_, and all
at once the little girl lays an egg, and out of the egg there comes
another Hanna---another Hanna. Out of Hanna there comes another
Hanna. No, _one_ Hanna comes out.”
‘_I_: “You’d like to have a little girl.”
‘_Hans_: “_Yes, next year I’m going to have one_, and she’ll be called
Hanna too.”
‘_I_: “But why isn’t Mummy to have a little girl?”
‘_Hans_: “Because _I_ want to have a little girl for once.”
‘_I_: “But you can’t have a little girl.”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes, boys have girls and girls have boys.”[150]
‘_I_: “Boys don’t have children. Only women, only Mummies have
children.”
‘_Hans_: “But why shouldn’t I?”
‘_I_: “Because God’s arranged it like that.”
‘_Hans_: “But why don’t _you_ have one? Oh yes, you’ll have one all
right. Just you wait.”
‘_I_: “I shall have to wait some time.”
‘_Hans_: “But I belong to you.”
‘_I_: “But Mummy brought you into the world. So you belong to Mummy
and me.”
‘_Hans_: “Does Hanna belong to me or to Mummy?”
‘_I_: “To Mummy.”
‘_Hans_: “No, to me. _Why not to me and Mummy?_”
‘_I_: “Hanna belongs to me, Mummy, and you.”
‘_Hans_: “There you are, you see.”’
{230}
So long as the child is in ignorance of the female genitals, there is
naturally a vital gap in his comprehension of sexual matters.
-----------------------------
‘On April 24th my wife and I enlightened Hans up to a certain point:
we told him that children grow inside their Mummy, and are then
brought into the world by being pressed out of her like a “lumf”, and
that this involves a great deal of pain.
‘In the afternoon we went out in front of the house. There was a
visible improvement in his state. He ran after carts, and the only
thing that betrayed a remaining trace of his anxiety was the fact that
he did not venture away from the neighbourhood of the street-door and
could not be induced to go for any considerable walk.
‘On April 25th Hans butted me in the stomach with his head, as he has
already done once before. I asked him if he was a goat.
‘“Yes,” he said, “a ram.” I inquired where he had seen a ram.
‘_He_: “At Gmunden: Fritzl had one.” (Fritzl had a real lamb to play
with.)
‘_I_: “You must tell me about the lamb. What did it do?”
‘_Hans_: “You know, Fräulein Mizzi” (a school-mistress who lived in
the house) “used always to put Hanna on the lamb, but it couldn’t
stand up then and it couldn’t butt. If you went up to it it used to
butt, because it had horns. Fritzl used to lead it on a string and tie
it to a tree. He always tied it to a tree.”
‘_I_: “Did the lamb butt you?”
‘_Hans_: “It jumped up at me; Fritzl took me up to it once... I went
up to it once and didn’t know, and all at once it jumped up at me. It
was such fun---I wasn’t frightened.”
‘This was certainly untrue.
‘_I_: “Are you fond of Daddy?”
{231}
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes.”
‘_I_: “Or perhaps not.”
‘Hans was playing with a little toy horse. At that moment the horse
fell down, and Hans shouted out: “The horse has fallen down! Look what
a row it’s making!”
‘_I_: “You’re a little vexed with Daddy because Mummy’s fond of him.”
‘_Hans_: “No.”
‘_I_: “Then why do you always cry whenever Mummy gives me a kiss? It’s
because you’re jealous.”
‘_Hans_: “Jealous, yes.”
‘_I_: “You’d like to be Daddy yourself.”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes.”
‘_I_: “What would you like to do if you were Daddy?”
‘_Hans_: “And you were Hans? I’d like to take you to Lainz every
Sunday---no, every week-day too. If I were Daddy I’d be ever so nice
and good.”
‘_I_: “But what would you like to do with Mummy?”
‘_Hans_: “Take her to Lainz, too.”
‘_I_: “And what besides?”
‘_Hans_: “Nothing.”
‘_I_: “Then why were you jealous?”
‘_Hans_: “I don’t know.”
‘_I_: “Were you jealous at Gmunden, too?”
‘_Hans_: “Not at Gmunden.” (This is not true.) “At Gmunden I had my
own things. I had a garden at Gmunden and children too.”
‘_I_: “Can you remember how the cow got a calf?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes. It came in a cart.” (No doubt he had been told this
at Gmunden; another sally against the stork theory.) “And another cow
pressed it out of its behind.” (This was already the fruit of his
enlightenment, which he was trying to bring into harmony with the cart
theory.)
‘_I_: “It isn’t true that it came in a cart; it came out of the cow in
the cow-shed.”
{232}
‘Hans disputed this, saying that he had seen the cart in the
morning. I pointed out to him that he had probably been told this
about the calf having come in a cart. In the end he admitted this, and
said: “Most likely Berta told me, or not---or perhaps it was the
landlord. He was there and it was at night, so it _is_ true after all,
what I’ve been telling you---or it seems to me nobody told me; I
thought it to myself in the night.”
‘Unless I am mistaken, the calf was taken away in a cart; hence the
confusion.
‘_I_: “Why didn’t you think it was the stork that brought it?”
‘_Hans_: “I didn’t want to think that.”
‘_I_: “But you thought the stork brought Hanna?”
‘_Hans_: “In the morning” (of the confinement) “I thought so.---I say,
Daddy, was Herr Reisenbichler” (our landlord) “there when the calf
came out of the cow?”[151]
‘_I_: “I don’t know. Do you think he was?”
‘_Hans_: “I think so... Daddy, have you noticed now and then that
horses have something black on their mouths?”
‘_I_: “I’ve noticed it now and then in the street at Gmunden.”[152]
‘_I_: “Did you often get into bed with Mummy at Gmunden?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “And you used to think to yourself you were Daddy?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “And then you felt afraid of Daddy?”
‘_Hans_: “_You know everything; I didn’t know anything_.”
{233}
‘_I_: “When Fritzl fell down you thought: ‘If only Daddy would fall
down like that!’ And when the lamb butted you you thought: ‘If only it
would butt Daddy!’ Can you remember the funeral at Gmunden?” (The
first funeral that Hans had seen. He often recalls it, and it is no
doubt a screen-memory.)
‘_Hans_: “Yes. What about it?”
‘_I_: “You thought then that if only Daddy were to die you’d be
Daddy.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “What carts are you still afraid of?”
‘_Hans_: “All of them.”
‘_I_: “You know that’s not true.”
‘_Hans_: “I’m not afraid of carriages and pair or cabs with one
horse. I’m afraid of buses and luggage-carts, but only when they’re
loaded up, not when they’re empty. When there’s one horse and the
cart’s loaded full up, then I’m afraid; but when there are two horses
and it’s loaded full up, then I’m not afraid.”
‘_I_: “Are you afraid of buses because there are so many people
inside?”
‘_Hans_: “Because there’s so much luggage on the top.”
‘_I_: “When Mummy was having Hanna, was she loaded full up too?”
‘_Hans_: “Mummy’ll be loaded full up again when she has another one,
when another one begins to grow, when another one’s inside her.”
‘_I_: “And you’d like that?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “You said you didn’t want Mummy to have another baby.”
‘_Hans_: “Well, then she won’t be loaded up again. Mummy said if Mummy
didn’t want one, God didn’t want one either. If Mummy doesn’t want one
she won’t have one.” (Hans naturally asked yesterday if there were any
more babies inside Mummy. I told him not, and said that if God did not
wish it none would grow inside her.)
{234}
‘_Hans_: “But Mummy told me if _she_ didn’t want it no more’d grow,
and you say if _God_ doesn’t want it.”
‘So I told him it was as I had said, upon which he observed: “You were
there, though, weren’t you? You know better, for certain.” He then
proceeded to cross-question his mother, and she reconciled the two
statements by declaring that if she didn’t want it God didn’t want it
either.[153]
‘_I_: “It seems to me that, all the same, you do wish Mummy would have
a baby.”
‘_Hans_: “But I don’t want it to happen.”
‘_I_: “But you wish for it?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes, _wish_.”
‘_I_: “Do you know why you wish for it? It’s because you’d like to be
Daddy.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes... How does it work?”
‘_I_: “How does what work?”
‘_Hans_: “You say Daddies don’t have babies; so how does it work, my
wanting to be Daddy?”
‘_I_: “You’d like to be Daddy and married to Mummy; you’d like to be
as big as me and have a moustache; and you’d like Mummy to have a
baby.”
‘_Hans_: “And, Daddy, when I’m married I’ll only have one if I want
to, when I’m married to Mummy, and if I don’t want a baby, God won’t
want it either, when I’m married.”
‘_I_: “Would you like to be married to Mummy?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh yes.”’
It is easy to see that Hans’s enjoyment of his phantasy was interfered
with by his uncertainty as to the part played by fathers and by his
doubts as to whether the begetting of children would be under his
control.
-----------------------------
‘On the evening of the same day, as Hans was being put to bed, he said
to me: “I say, d’you know {235} what I’m going to do now? Now I’m
going to talk to Grete till ten o’clock; she’s in bed with me. My
children are always in bed with me. Can you tell me why that is?”---As
he was very sleepy already, I promised him that we should write it
down next day, and he went to sleep.
‘I have already noticed in earlier records that since Hans’s return
from Gmunden he has constantly been having phantasies about “his
children”, has carried on conversations with them, and so on.[154]
‘So on April 26th I asked him why he was always thinking of his
children.
‘_Hans_: “Why? _Because I should so like to have children; but I don’t
ever want it; I shouldn’t like to have them_.”[155]
‘_I_: “Have you always imagined that Berta and Olga and the rest were
your children?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes. Franzl, and Fritzl, and Paul too” (his playmates at
Lainz), “and Lodi.” This is an invented girl’s name, that of his
favourite child, whom he speaks of most often.---I may here emphasize
the fact that the figure of Lodi is not an invention of the last few
days, but existed before the date of his receiving the latest piece of
enlightenment (April 24th).
‘_I_: “Who is Lodi? Is she at Gmunden?”
‘_Hans_: “No.”
‘_I_: “Is there a Lodi?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, I know her.”
‘_I_: “Who is she, then?”
‘_Hans_: “The one I’ve got here.”
‘_I_: “What does she look like?”
{236}
‘_Hans_: “Look like? Black eyes, black hair... I met her once with
Mariedl” (at Gmunden) “as I was going into the town.”
‘When I went into the matter it turned out that this was an
invention.[156]
‘_I_: “So you thought you were their Mummy?”
‘_Hans_: “And so I was their Mummy.”
‘_I_: “What did you do with your children?”
‘_Hans_: “I had them to sleep with me, the girls and the boys.”
‘_I_: “Every day?”
‘_Hans_: “Why, of course.”
‘_I_: “Did you talk to them?”
‘_Hans_: “When I couldn’t get all the children into the bed, I put
some of the children on the sofa, and some in the pram, and if there
were still some left over I took them up to the attic and put them in
the box, and if there were any more I put them in the other box.”
‘_I_: “So the stork-baby-boxes were in the attic?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “When did you get your children? Was Hanna alive already?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, she had been a long time.”
‘_I_: “But who did you think you’d got the children from?”
‘_Hans_: “_Why, from me_.”[157]
‘_I_: “But at that time you hadn’t any idea that children came from
some one.”
‘_Hans_: “I thought the stork had brought them.” (Clearly a lie and an
evasion.)[158]
‘_I_: “You had Grete in bed with you yesterday, but you know quite
well that boys can’t have children.”
{237}
‘_Hans_: “Well, yes. But I believe they can, all the same.”
‘_I_: “How did you hit upon the name Lodi? No girl’s called
that. Lotti, perhaps?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh no, Lodi. I don’t know; but it’s a beautiful name, all
the same.”
‘_I_ (jokingly): “Perhaps you mean a Schokolodi?”[159]
‘_Hans_ (promptly): “No, a Saffalodi,[160] ...because I like eating
sausages so much, and salami[161] too.”
‘_I_: “I say, doesn’t a Saffalodi look like a lumf?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “Well, what does a lumf look like?”
‘_Hans_: “Black. You know” (pointing at my eyebrows and moustache),
“like this and like this.”
‘_I_: “And what else? Round like a Saffaladi?”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “When you sat on the chamber and a lumf came, did you think to
yourself you were having a baby?”
‘_Hans_ (laughing): “Yes. Even at ⸻ Street, and here as well.”
‘_I_: “You know when the bus-horses fell down? The bus looked like a
baby-box, and when the black horse fell down it was just like...”
‘_Hans_ (taking me up): “...like having a baby.”
‘_I_: “And what did you think when it made a row with its feet?”
‘_Hans_: “Oh, when I don’t want to sit on the chamber and would rather
play, then I make a row like this with my feet.” (He stamped his
feet.)
‘This was why he was so much interested in the question whether people
_liked_ or _did not like_ having children.
‘All day long to-day Hans has been playing at {238} loading and
unloading packing-cases; he said he wished he could have a toy waggon
and boxes of that kind to play with. What used most to interest him in
the courtyard of the Customs House opposite was the loading and
unloading of the carts. And he used to be frightened most when a cart
had been loaded up and was on the point of driving off. “The horses’ll
fall down,”[162] he used to say. He used to call the doors of the Head
Customs House shed “holes” (thus, the first hole, second hole, third
hole, etc.). But now, instead of “hole”, he says “behind-hole”.
‘The anxiety has almost completely disappeared, except that he likes
to remain in the neighbourhood of the house, so as to have a line of
retreat in case he is frightened. But he never takes flight into the
house now, but stops in the street all the time. As we know, his
illness began with his turning back in tears while he was out for a
walk; and when he was obliged to go for a second walk he only went as
far as the Hauptzollamt station on the Stadtbahn, from which our house
can still be seen. At the time of my wife’s confinement he was of
course kept away from her; and his present anxiety, which prevents him
from leaving the neighbourhood of the house, is in reality the longing
for her which he felt then.
-----------------------------
‘April 30th. Seeing Hans playing with his imaginary children again,
“Hullo,” I said to him, “are your children still alive? You know quite
well a boy can’t have any children.”
‘_Hans_: “I know. I was their Mummy before, _now I’m their Daddy_.”
‘_I_: “And who’s the children’s Mummy?”
‘_Hans_: “Why, Mummy, and you’re their _Grandaddy_.”
{239}
‘_I_: “So then you’d like to be as big as me, and be married to Mummy,
and then you’d like her to have children.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, that’s what I’d like, and then my Lainz Grandmamma” (my
mother) “will be their Grannie.”’
Things were moving towards a satisfactory conclusion. The little
Oedipus had found a happier solution than that prescribed by
destiny. Instead of putting his father out of the way, he had granted
him the same happiness that he desired himself: he made him a
grandfather and let him too marry his own mother.
-----------------------------
‘On May 1st Hans came to me at lunch-time and said: “D’you know what?
Let’s write something down for the Professor.”
‘_I_: “Well, and what shall it be?”
‘_Hans_: “This morning I was in the W.C. with all my children. First I
did lumf and widdled, and they looked on. Then I put them on the seat
and they widdled and did lumf, and I wiped their behinds with
paper. D’you know why? Because I’d so much like to have children; then
I’d do everything for them---take them to the W.C., clean their
behinds, and do everything one does with children.”’
After the admission afforded by this phantasy, it will scarcely be
possible to dispute the fact that in Hans’s mind there was pleasure
attached to the excremental functions.
‘In the afternoon he ventured into the Stadtpark for the first
time. As it is the First of May, no doubt there was less traffic than
usual, but still quite enough to have frightened him up to now. He was
very proud of his achievement, and after tea I was obliged to go with
him to the Stadtpark once again. On the way we met a bus; Hans pointed
it out to me, saying: {240} “Look! a stork-box cart!” If he goes with
me to the Stadtpark again to-morrow, as we have planned, we shall
really be able to regard his illness as cured.
‘On May 2nd Hans came to me in the morning. “I say,” he said, “I
thought something to-day.” At first he had forgotten it; but later on
he related what follows, though with signs of considerable resistance:
“_The plumber came; and first he took away my behind with a pair of
pincers, and then gave me another, and then the same with my
widdler_. He said: ‘Let me see your behind!’ and I had to turn round,
and he took it away; and then he said: ‘Let me see your widdler!’”’
Hans’s father grasped the nature of this wish-phantasy, and did not
hesitate a moment as to the only interpretation it could bear.
‘_I_: “He gave you a _bigger_ widdler and a _bigger_ behind.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes.”
‘_I_: “Like Daddy’s; because you’d like to be Daddy.”
‘_Hans_: “Yes, and I’d like to have a moustache like yours and hairs
like yours.” (He pointed to the hairs on my chest.)
‘In the light of this, we may review the interpretation of Hans’s
earlier phantasy to the effect that the plumber had come and unscrewed
the bath and had stuck a borer into his stomach. The big bath meant a
“behind”, the borer or screwdriver was (as was explained at the time)
a widdler.[163] The two phantasies are identical. Moreover, a new
light is thrown upon Hans’s fear of the big bath. (This, by the way,
has {241} already diminished.) He dislikes his “behind” being too
small for the big bath.’
In the course of the next few days Hans’s mother wrote to me several
times to express her joy at the little boy’s recovery.
-----------------------------
A week later came a postscript from Hans’s father.
‘My dear Professor, I should like to make the following additions to
Hans’s case history:
‘(1) The remission after he had been given his first piece of
enlightenment was not so complete as I may have represented it. It is
true that Hans went for walks; but only under compulsion and in a
state of great anxiety. Once he went with me as far as the
Hauptzollamt station, from which our house can still be seen, but
could not be induced to go any farther.
‘(2) As regards “raspberry syrup” and “a gun for shooting with”. Hans
is given raspberry syrup when he is constipated. He also frequently
confuses the words “shooting” and “shitting”.[164]
‘(3) Hans was about four years old when he was moved out of our
bedroom into a room of his own.
‘(4) A trace of his disorder still persists, though it is no longer in
the shape of fear but only in that of the normal instinct for asking
questions. The questions are mostly concerned with what things are
made of (trams, machines, etc.), who makes things, etc. Most of his
questions are characterized by the fact that Hans asks them although
he has already answered them himself. He only wants to make sure. Once
when he had tired me out with his questions and I had said to him: “Do
you think I can answer every question you ask?” he replied: “Well, I
thought as you knew that about the horse you’d know this too.”
‘(5) Hans only refers to his illness now as a matter of past
history---“at the time when I had my nonsense”.
{242}
‘(6) An unsolved residue remains behind; for Hans keeps cudgelling his
brains to discover what a father has to do with his child, since it is
the mother who brings it into the world. This can be seen from his
questions, as, for instance: “I belong to _you_, too, don’t I?”
(meaning, not only to his mother). It is not clear to him in what way
he belongs to me. On the other hand, I have no direct evidence of his
having, as you suppose, overheard his parents in the act of coitus.
‘(7) In presenting the case one ought perhaps to insist upon the
violence of his anxiety. Otherwise it might be said that the boy would
have gone out for walks soon enough if he had been given a sound
thrashing.’
In conclusion let me add these words. With Hans’s last phantasy the
anxiety which arose from his castration complex was also overcome, and
his painful expectations were given a happier turn. Yes, the Doctor
(the plumber) _did_ come, he _did_ take away his penis,---but only to
give him a bigger one in exchange for it. For the rest, our young
investigator has merely come somewhat early upon the discovery that
all knowledge is patchwork, and that each step forward leaves an
unsolved residue behind.
III {243}
EPICRISIS
I shall now proceed to examine this observation of the development and
resolution of a phobia in a boy under five years of age, and I shall
have to do so from three points of view. In the first place I shall
consider how far it supports the assertions which I put forward in my
_Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_ (published in 1905). Secondly, I
shall consider to what extent it can contribute towards our
understanding of this very frequent form of disorder. And thirdly, I
shall consider whether it can be made to shed any light upon the
mental life of children or to afford any criticism of our educational
aims.
(I)
My impression is that the picture of a child’s sexual life presented
in this observation of little Hans agrees very well with the account I
gave of it (basing my views upon psycho-analytic examinations of
adults) in my _Sexualtheorie_. But before going into the details of
this agreement I must deal with two objections which will be raised
against my making use of the present analysis for this purpose. The
first objection is to the effect that Hans was not a normal child, but
(as events---the illness itself, in fact---showed) had a
predisposition to neurosis, and was a little ‘degenerate’; it would be
illegitimate, therefore, to apply to other, normal children
conclusions which might perhaps be true of him. I shall postpone
consideration of this objection, since it only limits {244} the value
of the observation, and does not completely nullify it. According to
the second and more uncompromising objection, an analysis of a child
conducted by its father, who went to work instilled with _my_
theoretical views and infected with _my_ prejudices, must be entirely
devoid of any objective worth. A child, it will be said, is
necessarily highly suggestible, and in regard to no one, perhaps, more
than to its own father; it will allow anything to be forced upon it,
out of gratitude to its father for taking so much notice of it; none
of its assertions can have any evidential value, and everything it
produces in the way of associations, phantasies, and dreams will
naturally take the direction into which they are being urged by every
possible means. Once more, in short, the whole thing is simply
‘suggestion’---the only difference being that in the case of a child
it can be unmasked much more easily than in that of an adult.
A singular thing. I can remember, when I first began to meddle in the
conflict of scientific opinions twenty-two years ago, with what
derision the older generation of neurologists and psychiatrists of
those days received assertions about suggestion and its effects. Since
then the situation has fundamentally changed. The former aversion has
been converted into an only too ready acceptance; and this has
happened not only as a consequence of the impression which the work of
Liébault and Bernheim and their pupils could not fail to create in the
course of these two decades, but also because it has since been
discovered how great an economy of thought can be effected by the use
of the catchword ‘suggestion’. Nobody knows and nobody cares what
suggestion is, where it comes from, or when it arises,---it is enough
that everything awkward in the region of psychology can be labelled
‘suggestion’. I do not share the view which is at present fashionable
that assertions made by children are invariably arbitrary and
untrustworthy. The arbitrary has no existence in mental life. The
{245} untrustworthiness of the assertions of children is due to the
predominance of their imagination, just as the untrustworthiness of
the assertions of grown-up people is due to the predominance of their
prejudices. For the rest, even children do not lie without a reason,
and on the whole they are more inclined to a love of truth than are
their elders. If we were to reject little Hans’s statements root and
branch we should certainly be doing him a grave injustice. On the
contrary, we can quite clearly distinguish from one another the
occasions on which he was falsifying the facts or keeping them back
under the compelling force of a resistance, the occasions on which,
being undecided himself, he agreed with his father (so that what he
said must not be taken as evidence), and the occasions on which, freed
from every pressure, he burst into a flood of information about what
was really going on inside him and about things which until then no
one but he himself had known. Statements made by adults offer no
greater certainty. It is a regrettable fact that no account of a
psycho-analysis can reproduce the impressions received by the analyst
as he conducts it, and that a final sense of conviction can never be
obtained from reading about it but only from directly experiencing
it. But this disability attaches in an equal degree to analyses made
upon adults.
Little Hans is described by his parents as a cheerful, straightforward
child, and so he should have been, considering the education given him
by his parents, which consisted essentially in the omission of our
usual educational sins. So long as he was able to carry on his
researches in a state of happy _naïveté_, without a suspicion of the
conflicts which were soon to arise out of them, he kept nothing back;
and the observations made during the period before the phobia admit of
no doubt or demur. It was with the outbreak of the illness and during
the analysis that discrepancies began to make their appearance between
what he said and what he thought; and this was partly because
unconscious {246} material, which he was unable to master all at once,
was forcing itself upon him, and partly because the content of his
thoughts provoked reservations on account of his relation to his
parents. It is my unbiassed opinion that these difficulties, too,
turned out no greater than in many analyses made upon adults.
It is true that during the analysis Hans had to be told many things
that he could not say himself, that he had to be presented with
thoughts which he had so far shown no signs of possessing, and that
his attention had to be turned in the direction from which his father
was expecting something to come. This detracts from the evidential
value of the analysis; but the procedure is the same in every
case. For a psycho-analysis is not an impartial scientific
investigation, but a therapeutic measure. Its essence is not to prove
anything, but merely to alter something. In a psycho-analysis the
physician always gives his patient (sometimes to a greater and
sometimes to a less extent) the conscious anticipatory images by the
help of which he is put in a position to recognize and to grasp the
unconscious material. For there are some patients who need more of
such assistance and some who need less; but there are none who get
through without some of it. Slight disorders may perhaps be brought to
an end by a person’s unaided efforts, but never a neurosis---a thing
which has set itself up against the ego as an element foreign to
it. To get the better of such an element another person must be
brought in, and in so far as that other person can be of assistance
the neurosis will be curable. If it is in the very nature of any
neurosis to turn away from the ‘other person’---and this seems to be
one of the characteristics of the states grouped together under the
name of dementia praecox---then for that very reason such a state will
be incurable by any efforts of ours. Admittedly, then, a child, on
account of the small development of its intellectual systems, requires
especially energetic assistance. But, after all, the information which
the physician gives his {247} patient is itself derived in its turn
from analytical experience; and indeed it is sufficiently convincing
if, at the cost of this intervention by the physician, we are enabled
to discover the structure of the pathogenic material and
simultaneously to dissipate it.
And yet, even during the analysis, the small patient gave evidence of
enough independence to acquit him upon the charge of
‘suggestion’. Like all other children, he applied his childish sexual
theories to the material before him without having received any
encouragement to do so. These theories are extremely remote from the
adult mind. Indeed, in this instance I actually omitted to warn Hans’s
father that the boy would be bound to approach the subject of
childbirth by way of the excretory complex. This negligence on my
part, though it led to an obscure phase in the analysis, was
nevertheless the means of producing a good piece of evidence of the
genuineness and independence of Hans’s mental processes. He suddenly
became occupied with ‘lumf’, without his father, who is supposed to
have been practising suggestion upon him, having the least idea how he
had arrived at that subject or what was going to come of it. Nor can
his father be saddled with any responsibility for the production of
the two plumber phantasies, which arose out of Hans’s early acquired
‘castration complex’. And I must here confess that, out of theoretical
interest, I entirely concealed from Hans’s father my expectation that
there would turn out to be some such connection, so as not to
interfere with the value of a piece of evidence such as does not often
come within one’s grasp.
If I went more deeply into the details of the analysis I could produce
plenty more evidence of Hans’s independence of ‘suggestion’; but I
shall break off the discussion of the first objection at this point. I
am aware that even with this analysis I shall not succeed in
convincing any one who will not let himself be convinced, and I shall
proceed with my discussion of the case for the benefit of those
readers who are already {248} convinced of the objective reality of
unconscious pathogenic material. And I do this with the agreeable
assurance that the number of such readers is steadily increasing.
-----------------------------
The first trait in little Hans which can be regarded as part of his
sexual life was a quite peculiarly lively interest in his
‘widdler’---an organ deriving its name from that one of its two
functions which, scarcely the less important of the two, is not to be
eluded in the nursery. This interest aroused in him the spirit of
inquiry, and he thus discovered that the presence or absence of a
widdler made it possible to differentiate between animate and
inanimate objects. He assumed that all animate objects were like
himself, and possessed this important bodily organ; he observed that
it was present in the larger animals, suspected that this was so too
in both his parents, and was not deterred by the evidence of his own
eyes from authenticating the fact in his new-born sister. One might
almost say that it would have been too shattering a blow to his
‘_Weltanschauung_’ if he had had to make up his mind to forgo the
presence of this organ in a being similar to him; it would have been
as though it were being torn away from himself. It was probably on
this account that a threat of his mother’s, which was concerned
precisely with the loss of his widdler, was hastily dismissed from his
thoughts and only succeeded in making its effects apparent at a later
period. The reason for his mother’s intervention had been that he used
to like giving himself feelings of pleasure by touching his member:
the little boy had begun to practise the commonest---and most
normal---form of auto-erotic sexual activity.
The pleasure which a person takes in his own sexual organ may become
associated with scoptophilia (or sexual pleasure in looking) in its
active and passive {249} forms, in a manner which has been very aptly
described by Alfred Adler as ‘confluence of instincts’.[165] So little
Hans began to try to get a sight of other people’s widdlers; his
sexual curiosity developed, and at the same time he liked to exhibit
his own widdler. One of his dreams, dating from the beginning of his
repression period, expressed a wish that one of his little girl
friends should assist him in widdling, that is, that she should share
the spectacle. The dream shows, therefore, that up till then this wish
had subsisted unrepressed, and later information confirmed the fact
that he had been in the habit of gratifying it. The active side of his
sexual scoptophilia soon became associated in him with a definite
motive. He repeatedly expressed both to his father and his mother his
regret that he had never yet seen their widdlers; and it was probably
the need _for making a comparison_ which impelled him to do this. The
ego is always the standard by which one measures the outer world; one
learns to understand it by means of a constant comparison with
oneself. Hans had observed that large animals had widdlers that were
correspondingly larger than his; he consequently suspected that the
same was true of his parents, and was anxious to make sure of
this. His mother, he thought, must certainly have a widdler ‘like a
horse’. He was then prepared with the comforting reflection that his
widdler would grow with him. It was as though the child’s wish to be
bigger had been concentrated on his genitals.
Thus in little Hans’s sexual constitution the genital zone was from
the outset the one among his erotogenic zones which afforded him the
most intense pleasure. The only other similar pleasure of which he
gave evidence was excremental pleasure, the pleasure attached to the
orifices through which urination and evacuation of the bowels are
effected. In his final phantasy of bliss, with which his illness was
overcome, he imagined he had children, whom he took to the {250} W.C.,
whom he made to widdle, whose behinds he wiped, for whom, in short, he
did ‘everything one can do with children’; it therefore seems
impossible to avoid the assumption that during the period when he
himself had been looked after as an infant these same performances had
been the source of pleasurable sensations for him. He had obtained
this pleasure from his erotogenic zones with the help of the person
who had looked after him---his mother, in fact; and thus the pleasure
already pointed the way to object-choice. But it is just possible that
at a still earlier date he had been in the habit of giving himself
this pleasure auto-erotically---that he had been one of those children
who like retaining their excreta till they can derive a voluptuous
sensation from their evacuation. I say no more than that it is
possible, because the matter was not cleared up in the analysis; the
‘making a row with the legs’ (kicking about), of which he was so much
frightened later on, points in that direction. But in any case these
sources of pleasure had no particularly striking importance with Hans,
as they so often have with other children. He early became clean in
his habits, and neither bed-wetting nor diurnal incontinence played
any part during his first years; no trace was observed in him of any
inclination to play with his excrement, a propensity which is so
revolting in adults, and which commonly makes its reappearance at the
termination of processes of mental involution.
At this juncture it is as well to emphasize at once the fact that
during his phobia there was an unmistakable repression of these two
well-developed components of his sexual activity. He was ashamed of
urinating before other people, accused himself of putting his finger
to his widdler, made efforts to give up masturbating, and showed
disgust at ‘lumf’ and ‘widdle’ and everything that reminded him of
them. In his phantasy of looking after his children he did away again
with this latter repression.
A sexual constitution like that of little Hans does {251} not appear
to carry with it a predisposition to the development either of
perversions or of their negative (we will limit ourselves to a
consideration of hysteria). As far as my experience goes (and there is
still a real need for speaking with caution on this point) the innate
constitution of hysterics---that this is also true of perverts is
almost self-evident---is marked by the genital zone being relatively
less prominent than the other erotogenic zones. But we must expressly
except from this rule one particular ‘aberration’ of sexual life. In
those who later become homosexuals we meet with the same predominance
in infancy of the genital zone (and especially of the penis) as in
normal persons.[166] Indeed it is the high esteem felt by the
homosexual for the male organ which decides his fate. In his childhood
he chooses women as his sexual object, so long as he assumes that they
too possess what in his eyes is an indispensable part of the body;
when he becomes convinced that women have deceived him in this
particular, they cease to be acceptable to him as a sexual object. He
cannot forgo a penis in any one who is to attract him to sexual
intercourse; and if circumstances are favourable he will fix his
libido upon the ‘woman with a penis’, a youth of feminine
appearance. Homosexuals, then, are persons who, owing to the
erotogenic importance of their own genitals, cannot do without a
similar feature in their sexual object. In the course of their
development from auto-erotism to object-love, they have remained at a
point of fixation between the two.
There is absolutely no justification for distinguishing a special
homosexual instinct. What constitutes a homosexual is a peculiarity
not in his instinctual life but in his object-choice. Let me recall
what I have said in my _Sexualtheorie_ to the effect that we have
mistakenly imagined the union between instinct {252} and object in
sexual life as being more intimate than it really is. A homosexual may
have normal instincts, but he is unable to disengage them from a class
of objects defined by a particular determinant. And in his childhood,
since at that period it is taken for granted that this determinant is
of universal application, he is able to behave like little Hans, who
showed his affection to little boys and girls indiscriminately, and
once described his friend Fritzl as ‘the girl he was fondest of’. Hans
was a homosexual (as all children may very well be), quite
consistently with the fact, which must always be kept in mind, that he
was _acquainted with only one kind of genital organ_---a genital organ
like his own.[167]
In his subsequent development, however, it was not to homosexuality
that our young libertine proceeded, but to an energetic masculinity
with traits of polygamy; he knew how to vary his behaviour, too, with
his varying feminine objects---audaciously aggressive in one case,
languishing and bashful in another. His affection had moved from his
mother on to other objects of love, but at a time when there was a
scarcity in these it returned to her, only to break down in a
neurosis. It was not until this happened that it became evident to
what a pitch of intensity his love for his mother had developed and
through what vicissitudes it had passed. The sexual aim which he
pursued with his girl playmates, of sleeping with them, had originated
in relation to his mother. It was expressed in words which might be
retained in maturity, though they would then bear a richer
connotation.[168] The boy had found his way to object-love {253} in
the usual manner from having been looked after when he was an infant;
and a new pleasure had now become the most important for him---that of
sleeping beside his mother. We should like to emphasize the importance
of pleasure derived from cutaneous contact as a component in this new
aim of Hans’s, which, according to the nomenclature (artificial to our
mind) of Moll, would have to be described as a satisfaction of the
instinct of contrectation.
In his attitude towards his father and mother Hans confirms in the
most concrete and uncompromising manner what I have said in my
_Traumdeutung_ and in my _Sexualtheorie_ with regard to the sexual
relations of a child to its parents. Hans was really a little Oedipus
who wanted to have his father ‘out of the way’, to get rid of him, so
that he might be alone with his handsome mother and sleep with
her. This wish had originated during his summer holidays, when the
alternating presence and absence of his father had drawn Hans’s
attention to the condition upon which depended the intimacy with his
mother which he longed for. At that time the form taken by the wish
had been merely that his father should ‘go away’; and at a later stage
it became possible for his fear of being bitten by a white horse to
attach itself directly on to this form of the wish, owing to a chance
impression which he received at the moment of some one else’s
departure. But subsequently (probably not until they had moved back to
Vienna, where his father’s absences were no longer to be reckoned on)
the wish had taken the form that his father should be permanently
away---that he should be ‘dead’. The fear which sprang from this
death-wish against his father, and which may thus be said to have had
a normal motive, formed the chief obstacle to the analysis until it
was removed during the conversation in my consulting-room.[169]
{254}
But Hans was not by any means a young blackguard; he was not even one
of those children in whom at his age the propensity towards cruelty
and violence which is part of human nature still has free play. On the
contrary, he had an unusually kind-hearted and affectionate
disposition; his father reported that the transformation of aggressive
tendencies into feelings of pity took place in him at a very early
age. Long before the phobia he had become uneasy on seeing the horses
in a merry-go-round being beaten; and he was never unmoved if any one
wept in his presence. At one stage in the analysis a piece of
_suppressed_ sadism made its appearance in a certain context:[170] but
it was suppressed sadism, and we shall presently have to discover from
the context what it stood for and what it was meant to replace. And
Hans deeply loved the father against whom he cherished these
death-wishes; and while his intellect demurred to such a
contradiction,[171] he could not help demonstrating the fact of its
existence, by hitting his father and immediately afterwards kissing
the place he had hit. We ourselves, too, must guard against making a
difficulty of such a contradiction. The emotional life of man is in
general made up of pairs of contraries such as these.[172] Indeed, if
it were not so, repressions and neuroses would perhaps never come
about. In the adult these pairs of contrary emotions do not as a rule
become simultaneously conscious except at the climaxes of passionate
love; at other times they usually go on suppressing each other until
one of them succeeds in keeping the other {255} altogether out of
sight. But in children they can exist peaceably side by side for quite
a considerable time.
The most important influence upon the course of Hans’s psycho-sexual
development was the birth of a baby sister when he was three and a
half years old. That event accentuated his relations to his parents
and gave him some insoluble problems to think about; and later, as he
watched the way in which the infant was looked after, the
memory-traces of his own earliest experiences of pleasure were revived
in him. This influence, too, is a typical one: in an unexpectedly
large number of life-histories, normal as well as pathological, we
find ourselves obliged to take as our starting-point an outburst of
sexual pleasure and sexual curiosity connected, like this one, with
the birth of the next child. Hans’s behaviour towards the new arrival
was just what I have described in _Traumdeutung_.[173] In his fever a
few days later he betrayed how little he liked the addition to the
family. Affection for his sister might come later,[174] but his first
attitude was hostility. From that time forward fear that yet another
baby might arrive found a place among his conscious thoughts. In the
neurosis, his hostility, already suppressed, was represented by a
special fear---a fear of the bath. In the analysis he gave undisguised
expression to his death-wish against his sister, and was not content
with allusions which required supplementing by his father. His inner
conscience did not consider this wish so wicked as the analogous one
against his father; but it is clear that in his unconscious he treated
both persons in the same way, because they both took his mummy away
from him, and interfered with his being alone with her.
Moreover, this event and the feelings that were revived by it gave a
new direction to his wishes. In his triumphant final phantasy he
summed up all of his {256} erotic wishes, both those derived from his
auto-erotic phase and those connected with his object-love. In that
phantasy he was married to his handsome mother and had innumerable
children whom he could look after in his own way.
(II)
One day while Hans was in the street he was seized with an attack of
morbid anxiety. He could not yet say what it was he was afraid of; but
at the very beginning of this anxiety-state he betrayed to his father
his motive for being ill, the advantage he derived from it (the
paranosic gain). He wanted to stay with his mother and to coax with
her; his recollection that he had also been separated from her at the
time of the baby’s birth may also, as his father suggests, have
contributed to his longing. It soon became evident that his anxiety
was no longer reconvertible into longing; he was afraid even when his
mother went with him. In the meantime indications appeared of what it
was to which his libido (now changed into anxiety) had become
attached. He gave expression to an entirely specific fear that a white
horse would bite him.
Disorders of this kind are called ‘phobias’, and we might classify
Hans’s case as an agoraphobia if it were not for the fact that it is a
characteristic of that complaint that the locomotion of which the
patient is otherwise incapable can always be easily performed when he
is accompanied by some specially selected person---in the last resort,
by the physician. Hans’s phobia did not fulfil this condition; it soon
ceased having any relation to the question of locomotion and became
more and more clearly concentrated upon horses. In the early days of
his illness, when the anxiety was at its highest pitch, he expressed a
fear that ‘the horse’ll come into the room’, and it was this {257}
that helped me so much towards understanding his condition.
In the classificatory system of the neuroses no definite position has
hitherto been assigned to ‘phobias’. It seems certain that they should
only be regarded as syndromes which may form part of various neuroses
and that we need not rank them as an independent disease entity. For
phobias of the kind to which little Hans’s belongs, and which are in
fact the most common, the name of ‘anxiety-hysteria’ seems to me not
inappropriate; I suggested the term to Dr. W. Stekel when he was
undertaking a description of neurotic anxiety-states,[175] and I hope
it will come into general use. It finds its justification in the
similarity between the psychological structure of these phobias and
that of hysteria---a similarity which is complete except upon a single
point. That point, however, is a decisive one and well adapted for
purposes of differentiation. For in anxiety-hysteria the libido which
has been liberated from the pathogenic material by repression is not
_converted_ (that is, diverted from the mental sphere into a somatic
innervation), but is set free in the shape of _anxiety_. In the
clinical cases that we meet with, this ‘anxiety-hysteria’ may be
combined with ‘conversion-hysteria’ in any proportion. There exist
cases of pure conversion-hysteria without any trace of anxiety, just
as there are cases of simple anxiety-hysteria, which exhibit feelings
of anxiety and phobias, but have no admixture of conversion. The case
of little Hans is one of the latter sort.
Anxiety-hysterias are the most common of all psychoneurotic
disorders. But, above all, they are those which make their appearance
earliest in life; they are _par excellence_ the neuroses of
childhood. When a mother uses such phrases as that her child’s
‘nerves’ are in a bad state, we can be certain that in nine cases out
of ten the child is suffering from some kind of {258} morbid anxiety
or from many kinds at once. Unfortunately the finer mechanism of these
highly significant disorders has not yet been sufficiently studied. It
has not yet been established whether anxiety-hysteria is determined,
in contradistinction to conversion-hysteria and other neuroses, solely
by constitutional factors or by accidental experiences, or by what
combination of the two.[176] It seems to me that of all neurotic
disorders it is the least dependent upon a special constitutional
predisposition and that it is consequently the most easily acquired at
any time of life.
One essential characteristic of anxiety-hysterias is very easily
pointed out. An anxiety-hysteria tends to develop more and more into a
‘phobia’. In the end the patient may have got rid of all his anxiety,
but only at the price of subjecting himself to all kinds of
inhibitions and restrictions. From the outset in anxiety-hysteria
there is a constant effort of mind at work with the object of
psychically binding the anxiety that has become liberated; but this
work can neither effect a retransformation of the anxiety into libido,
nor can it find a point of attachment in the same complexes which were
the source of the libido. Nothing is left for it but to cut off access
to every possible occasion that might lead to the development of
anxiety, by erecting mental barriers in the nature of precautions,
inhibitions, or prohibitions; and it is these defensive structures
that appear to us in the form of phobias and that constitute to our
eyes the essence of the disease.
The treatment of anxiety-hysteria may be said hitherto to have been a
purely negative one. Experience has shown that it is impossible to
effect the cure {259} of a phobia (and even in certain circumstances
dangerous to attempt to do so) by violent means, that is, by first
depriving the patient of his defences and then putting him in a
situation in which he cannot escape the liberation of his anxiety. The
result is that nothing can be done but to leave the patient to look
for protection wherever he thinks he may find it; and he is merely
regarded with a not very helpful contempt, on account of his
‘incomprehensible cowardice’.
Little Hans’s parents were determined from the very beginning of his
illness that he was neither to be laughed at nor bullied, but that
access must be obtained to his repressed wishes by means of
psycho-analysis. The extraordinary pains taken by Hans’s father were
rewarded by success, and his reports will give us an opportunity of
penetrating into the fabric of this type of phobia and of following
the course of its analysis.
-----------------------------
I think it is not unlikely that the extensive and detailed character
of the analysis may have made it somewhat obscure to the reader. I
shall therefore begin by giving a brief résumé of it, in which I shall
omit all distracting side-issues and shall draw attention to the
results as they came to light one after the other.
The first thing we learn is that the outbreak of the anxiety-state was
by no means so sudden as appeared at first sight. A few days earlier
the child had woken from an anxiety-dream to the effect that his
mother had gone away, and that now he had no mother to coax with. This
dream alone points to the presence of a repressive process of ominous
intensity. We cannot explain it, as we can so many other
anxiety-dreams, by supposing that the child had in his dream felt
anxiety arising from some somatic cause and had made use of the
anxiety for the purpose of fulfilling an unconscious wish which would
otherwise have been {260} deeply repressed.[177] We must regard it
rather as a genuine punishment and repression dream, and, moreover, as
a dream which failed in its function, since the child woke from his
sleep in a state of anxiety. We can easily reconstruct what actually
occurred in the unconscious. The child dreamed of exchanging
endearments with his mother and of sleeping with her; but all the
pleasure was transformed into anxiety, and all the ideational content
into its opposite. Repression had defeated the purpose of the
dream-mechanism.
But the beginnings of this psychological situation go back further
still. During the preceding summer Hans had had similar moods of
mingled longing and apprehension, in which he had said similar things;
and at that time they had secured him the advantage of being taken by
his mother into her bed. We may assume that since then Hans had been
in a state of intensified sexual excitement, the object of which was
his mother. The intensity of this excitement was shown by his two
attempts at seducing his mother (the second of which occurred just
before the outbreak of his anxiety); and he found an incidental
channel of discharge for it by masturbating every evening and in that
way obtaining gratification. Whether the sudden exchange of this
excitement into anxiety took place spontaneously, or as a result of
his mother’s rejection of his advances, or owing to the accidental
revival of earlier impressions by the ‘exciting cause’ of his illness
(about which we shall hear presently)---this we cannot decide; and,
indeed, it is a matter of indifference, for these three alternative
possibilities cannot be regarded as mutually incompatible. The fact
remains that his sexual excitement suddenly changed into anxiety.
We have already described the child’s behaviour at the beginning of
his anxiety, as well as the first content which he assigned to it,
namely, that a _horse_ would {261} bite him. It was at this point that
the first piece of therapy was interposed. His parents represented to
him that his anxiety was the result of masturbation, and encouraged
him to break himself of the habit. I took care that when they spoke to
him great stress was laid upon his affection for his mother, for that
was what he was trying to replace by his fear of horses. This first
intervention brought a slight improvement, but the ground was soon
lost again during a period of physical illness. Hans’s condition
remained unchanged. Soon afterwards he traced back his fear of being
bitten by a horse to an impression he had received at Gmunden. A
father had addressed his child on her departure with these words of
warning: ‘Don’t put your finger to the horse; if you do, it’ll bite
you.’ The words, ‘don’t put your finger to’, which Hans used in
reporting this warning, resembled the form of words in which the
warning against onanism had been framed. It seemed at first,
therefore, as though Hans’s parents were right in supposing that what
he was frightened of was his own onanistic indulgence. But the whole
nexus remained loose, and it seemed to be merely by chance that horses
had become his bugbear.
I had expressed a suspicion that Hans’s repressed wish might now be
that he wanted at all costs to see his mother’s widdler. As his
behaviour to a new maid fitted in with this hypothesis, his father
gave him his first piece of enlightenment, namely, that women have no
widdlers. He reacted to this first effort at helping him by producing
a phantasy that he had seen his mother showing her widdler.[178] This
phantasy, and a remark made by him in conversation, to the effect that
his widdler did grow on to him, allow us our first glimpse into the
patient’s unconscious mental processes. The fact was that the threat
of castration made to him by his mother some fifteen months earlier
was now having a deferred effect upon him. For his phantasy {262} that
his mother was doing the same as he had done (the familiar _tu quoque_
repartee of inculpated children) was intended to serve as a piece of
self-justification; it was a protective or defensive phantasy. At the
same time we must remark that it was Hans’s parents who had extracted
from the pathogenic material operating in him the particular theme of
his interest in widdlers. Hans followed their lead in this matter, but
he had not yet taken any line of his own in the analysis. And no
therapeutic success was to be observed. The analysis had passed far
away from the subject of horses; and the information that women have
no widdlers was calculated, if anything, to increase his concern for
the preservation of his own.
Therapeutic success, however, is not our primary aim; we endeavour
rather to enable the patient to obtain a conscious grasp of his
unconscious wishes. And this we can achieve by working upon the basis
of the hints he throws out, and so, with the help of our
interpretative technique, presenting the unconscious complex to his
consciousness _in our own words_. There will be a certain degree of
similarity between that which he hears from us and that which he is
looking for, and which, in spite of all resistances, is trying to
force its way through to consciousness; and it is this similarity that
will enable him to discover the unconscious material. The physician is
a step in front of him in knowledge; and the patient follows along his
own road, until the two meet at the appointed goal. Beginners in
psycho-analysis are apt to assimilate these two events, and to suppose
that the moment at which one of the patient’s unconscious complexes
has become known to them is also the moment at which the patient
himself recognizes it. They are expecting too much when they think
that they will cure the patient by informing him of this piece of
knowledge; for he can do no more with the information than make use of
it to help himself in discovering the unconscious complex _where it is
anchored_ in his unconscious. A first success {263} of this sort had
now been achieved with Hans. Having partly mastered his castration
complex, he was now able to communicate his wishes in regard to his
mother. He did so, in what was still a distorted form, by means of the
_phantasy of the two giraffes_, one of which was calling out in vain
because Hans had taken possession of the other. He represented the
‘taking possession of’ pictorially as ‘sitting down on’. His father
recognized the phantasy as a reproduction of a bedroom scene which
used to take place in the morning between the boy and his parents; and
he quickly stripped the underlying wish of the disguise which it still
wore. The boy’s father and mother were the two giraffes. The reason
for the choice of a giraffe-phantasy for the purposes of disguise was
fully explained by a visit that the boy had paid to those same large
beasts at Schönbrunn a few days earlier, by the giraffe-drawing,
belonging to an earlier period, which had been preserved by his
father, and also, perhaps, by an unconscious comparison based upon the
giraffe’s long, stiff neck.[179] It may be remarked that the giraffe,
as being a large animal and interesting on account of its widdler, was
a possible competitor with the horse for the rôle of bugbear;
moreover, the fact that both his father and his mother appeared as
giraffes offered a hint which had not yet been followed up, as regards
the interpretation of the anxiety-horses.
Immediately after the giraffe story Hans produced two minor
phantasies: one of his forcing his way into a forbidden space at
Schönbrunn, and the other of his smashing a railway-carriage window on
the Stadtbahn. In each case the punishable nature of the action was
emphasized, and in each his father appeared as an
accomplice. Unluckily his father failed to interpret either of these
phantasies, so that Hans himself gained nothing from telling them. In
an analysis, however, a thing which has not been understood inevitably
{264} reappears; like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until the
mystery has been solved and the spell broken.
There are no difficulties in the way of our understanding these two
criminal phantasies. They belonged to Hans’s complex of taking
possession of his mother. Some kind of vague notion was struggling in
the child’s mind of something that he might do with his mother by
means of which his taking possession of her would be consummated; for
this elusive thought he found certain pictorial representations, which
had in common the qualities of being violent and forbidden, and the
content of which strikes us as fitting in most remarkably well with
the hidden truth. We can only say that they were symbolic phantasies
of coitus, and it was no irrelevant detail that his father was
represented as sharing in his actions: ‘I should like’, he seems to
have been saying, ‘to be doing something with my mother, something
forbidden; I do not know what it is, but I do know that you are doing
it too.’
The giraffe phantasy strengthened a conviction which had already begun
to form in my mind when Hans expressed his fear that ‘the horse’ll
come into the room’; and I thought the right moment had now arrived
for informing him that he was afraid of his father because he himself
nourished jealous and hostile wishes against him---for it was
essential to postulate this much with regard to his unconscious
impulses. In telling him this, I had partly interpreted his fear of
horses for him: the horse must be his father---whom he had good
internal reasons for fearing. Certain details of which Hans had shown
he was afraid, the black on horses’ mouths and the things in front of
their eyes (the moustaches and eyeglasses which are the privilege of a
grown-up man), seemed to me to have been directly transposed from his
father on to the horses.
By enlightening Hans on this subject I had cleared away his most
powerful resistance against allowing his unconscious thoughts to be
made conscious; for his {265} father was himself acting as his
physician. The worst of the attack was now over; there was a plentiful
flow of material; the little patient summoned up courage to describe
the details of his phobia, and soon began to take an active share in
the conduct of the analysis.[180]
It was only then that we learnt what the objects and impressions were
of which Hans was afraid. He was not only afraid of horses biting
him---he was soon silent upon that point---but also of carts, of
furniture-vans, and of buses (their common quality being, as presently
became clear, that they were all heavily loaded), of horses that
started moving, of horses that looked big and heavy, and of horses
that drove quickly. The meaning of these specifications was explained
by Hans himself: he was afraid of horses _falling down_, and
consequently incorporated in his phobia everything that seemed likely
to facilitate their falling down.
It not at all infrequently happens that it is only after doing a
certain amount of psycho-analytic work with a patient that an analyst
can succeed in learning the actual content of a phobia, the precise
form of words of an obsessional impulse, and so on. Repression has not
only descended upon the unconscious complexes, but it is continually
attacking their derivatives as well, and even prevents the patient
from becoming aware of the products of the disease itself. The analyst
thus finds himself in the position, curious for a doctor, of coming to
the help of a disease, and of procuring it its due of attention. But
only those who entirely misunderstand the nature of psycho-analysis
will lay stress upon this phase of the work and suppose that on its
account harm is likely to be done by analysis. The fact is that you
must catch your thief {266} before you can hang him, and that it
requires some expenditure of labour to get securely hold of the
pathological structures at the destruction of which the treatment is
aimed.
I have already remarked in the course of my running commentary upon
the case history that it is most instructive to plunge in this way
into the details of a phobia, and thus arrive at a conviction of the
secondary nature of the relation between the anxiety and its
objects. It is this that accounts for phobias being at once so
curiously diffuse and so strictly conditioned. Hans evidently
collected the material for the particular disguises adopted by his
fear from the impressions to which he was all day long exposed owing
to the Head Customs House being situated on the opposite side of the
street. In this connection, too, he showed signs of an
impulse---though it was now inhibited by his anxiety---to play with
the loads on the carts, with the packages, casks and boxes, like the
street-boys.
It was at this stage of the analysis that he recalled the event,
insignificant in itself, which immediately preceded the outbreak of
the illness and may no doubt be regarded as the exciting cause of the
outbreak. He went for a walk with his mother, and saw a bus-horse fall
down and kick about with its feet. This made a great impression on
him. He was terrified, and thought the horse was dead; and from that
time on he thought that all horses would fall down. His father pointed
out to him that when he saw the horse fall down he must have thought
of him, his father, and have wished that he might fall down in the
same way and be dead. Hans did not dispute this interpretation; and a
little while later he played a game consisting of biting his father,
and so showed that he accepted the theory of his having identified his
father with the horse he was afraid of. From that time forward his
behaviour to his father was unconstrained and fearless, and in fact a
trifle overbearing. Nevertheless his fear of horses {267} persisted;
nor was it yet clear through what chain of associations the horse’s
falling down had stirred up his unconscious wishes.
Let us summarize the results that had so far been reached. Behind the
fear to which Hans first gave expression, the fear of a horse biting
him, we had discovered a more deeply seated fear, the fear of horses
falling down; and both kinds of horses, the biting horse and the
falling horse, had been shown to represent his father, who was going
to punish him for the evil wishes he was nourishing against
him. Meanwhile the analysis had moved away from the subject of his
mother.
Quite unexpectedly, and certainly without any prompting from his
father, Hans now began to be occupied with the ‘lumf’ complex, and to
show disgust at things that reminded him of evacuating his bowels. His
father, who was reluctant to go with him along that line, pushed on
with the analysis through thick and thin in the direction in which he
wanted to go. He elicited from Hans the recollection of an event at
Gmunden, the impression of which lay concealed behind that of the
falling bus-horse. While they were playing at horses, Fritzl, the
playmate of whom he was so fond, but at the same time, perhaps, his
rival with his many girl friends, had hit his foot against a stone and
had fallen down, and his foot had bled. Seeing the bus-horse fall had
reminded him of this accident. It deserves to be noticed that Hans,
who was at the moment concerned with other things, began by denying
that Fritzl had fallen down (though this was the event which formed
the connection between the two scenes) and only admitted it at a later
stage of the analysis. It is especially interesting, however, to
observe the way in which the transformation of Hans’s libido into
anxiety was projected on to the principal object of his phobia, on to
horses. Horses interested him the most of all the large animals;
playing at horses was his favourite game with the other
children. {268} I had a suspicion---and this was confirmed by Hans’s
father when I asked him---that the first person who had served Hans as
a horse must have been his father; and it was this that had enabled
him to regard Fritzl as a substitute for his father when the accident
happened at Gmunden. When repression had set in and brought a
revulsion of feeling along with it, horses, which had till then been
associated with so much pleasure, were necessarily turned into objects
of fear.
But, as we have already said, it was owing to the intervention of
Hans’s father that this last important discovery was made of the way
in which the exciting cause of the illness had operated. Hans himself
was occupied with his lumf interests, and thither at last we must
follow him. We learn that formerly Hans had been in the habit of
insisting upon accompanying his mother to the W.C., and that he had
revived this custom with his friend Berta at a time when she was
filling his mother’s place, until the fact became known and he was
forbidden to do so. Pleasure taken in looking on while some one one
loves performs the natural functions is once more a ‘confluence of
instincts’, a phenomenon of which we have already noticed an instance
in Hans. In the end his father went into the lumf symbolism, and
recognized that there was an analogy between a heavily loaded cart and
a body loaded with faeces, between the way in which a cart drives out
through a gateway and the way in which faeces leave the body, and so
on.
By this time, however, the position occupied by Hans in the analysis
had become very different from what it had been at an earlier
stage. Previously, his father had been able to tell him in advance
what was coming, while Hans had merely followed his lead and come
trotting after; but now it was Hans who was forging ahead, so rapidly
and steadily that his father found it difficult to keep up with
him. Without any warning, as it were, Hans produced a new phantasy:
the plumber unscrewed the bath in which Hans was, {269} and then stuck
him in the stomach with his big borer. Henceforward the material
brought up in the analysis far outstripped our powers of understanding
it. It was not until later that it was possible to guess that this was
a remoulding of a _phantasy of procreation_, distorted by anxiety. The
big bath of water, in which Hans imagined himself, was his mother’s
womb; the ‘borer’, which his father had from the first recognized as a
penis, owed its mention to its connection with ‘being born’. The
interpretation that we are obliged to give to the phantasy will of
course sound very curious: ‘With your big penis you “bored” me’
(_i.e._ ‘gave birth to me’) ‘and put me in my mother’s womb’. For the
moment, however, the phantasy eluded interpretation, and merely served
Hans as a point of connection from which to continue giving his
information.
Hans showed fear of being given his bath in the big bath; and this
fear was once more a composite one. One part of it escaped us as yet,
but the other part could at once be elucidated in connection with his
baby sister having her bath. Hans confessed to having wished that his
mother might drop the child while it was being given its bath, so that
it should die. His own anxiety while he was having his bath was a fear
of retribution for this evil wish and of being punished by the same
thing happening to him. Hans now left the subject of lumf and passed
on directly to that of his baby sister. We may well imagine what this
juxtaposition signified: nothing less, in fact, than that little Hanna
was a lumf herself---that all babies were lumfs and were born like
lumfs. We can now understand that all furniture-vans and drays and
buses were only stork-box carts, and were only of interest to Hans as
being symbolic representations of pregnancy; and that when a heavy or
heavily loaded horse fell down he can have seen in it only one
thing---a childbirth, a delivery [‘_ein Niederkommen_’].[181] Thus the
{270} falling horse was not only his dying father but also his mother
in childbirth.
And at this point Hans gave us a surprise, for which we were not in
the very least prepared. He had noticed his mother’s pregnancy, which
had ended with the birth of his little sister when he was three and a
half years old, and had, at any rate after the confinement, pieced the
facts of the case together---without telling any one, it is true, and
perhaps without being able to tell any one. All that could be seen at
the time was that immediately after the delivery he had taken up an
extremely sceptical attitude towards everything that might be supposed
to point to the presence of the stork. _But that---in complete
contradiction to his official speeches---he knew in his unconscious
where the baby came from and where it had been before_, is proved
beyond a shadow of doubt by the present analysis; indeed, this is
perhaps its most unassailable feature.
The most cogent evidence of this is furnished by the phantasy (which
he persisted in with so much obstinacy, and embellished with such a
wealth of detail) of how Hanna had been with them at Gmunden the
summer before her birth, of how she had travelled there with them, and
of how she had been able to do far more then than she had a year
later, after she had been born. The effrontery with which Hans related
this phantasy and the countless extravagant lies with which he
interwove it were anything but meaningless. All of this was intended
as a revenge upon his father, against whom he harboured a grudge for
having misled him with the stork fable. It was just as though he had
meant to say: ‘If you really thought I was as stupid as all that, and
expected me to believe that the stork brought Hanna, then in return I
expect you to accept my inventions as the truth.’ This act of revenge
on the part of our young inquirer upon his father was succeeded by the
clearly correlated phantasy of teasing and beating horses. This
phantasy, again, had two {271} constituents. On the one hand, it was
based upon the teasing to which he had submitted his father just
before; and, on the other hand, it reproduced the obscure sadistic
desires directed towards his mother, which had already found
expression (though they had not at first been understood) in his
phantasies of doing something forbidden. Hans even confessed
consciously to a desire to beat his mother.
There are not many more mysteries ahead of us now. An obscure phantasy
of missing a train seems to have been a forerunner of the later notion
of handing over Hans’s father to his grandmother at Lainz, for the
phantasy dealt with a visit to Lainz, and his grandmother appeared in
it. Another phantasy, in which a boy gave the guard 50,000 florins to
let him ride on the truck, almost sounds like a plan of buying his
mother from his father, part of whose power, of course, lay in his
wealth. At about this time, too, he confessed, with a degree of
openness which he had never before reached, that he wished to get rid
of his father, and that the reason he wished it was that his father
interfered with his own intimacy with his mother. We must not be
surprised to find the same wishes constantly reappearing in the course
of the analysis. The monotony only arises because the process of
interpretation has been completed. For Hans they were not mere
repetitions, but steps in a progressive development from timid hinting
to fully conscious, undistorted perspicuity.
What remains are just such confirmations on Hans’s part of analytical
conclusions which our interpretations had already established. In an
entirely unequivocal symptomatic act, which he disguised slightly from
the maid but not at all from his father, he showed how he imagined a
birth took place; but if we look into it more closely we can see that
he showed something else, that he was hinting at something which was
not alluded to again in the analysis. He pushed a small penknife which
belonged to his mother in through a {272} round hole in an
india-rubber doll, and then let it drop out again by tearing apart the
doll’s legs. The enlightenment which he received from his parents soon
afterwards, to the effect that children do in fact grow inside their
mother’s body and are pushed out of it like a lumf, came too late; it
could tell him nothing new. Another symptomatic act, happening as
though by accident, involved a confession that he had wished his
father dead; for, just at the moment his father was talking of this
death-wish, Hans let a horse that he was playing with fall
down---knocked it over in fact. Further, he confirmed in so many words
the hypothesis that heavily loaded carts represented his mother’s
pregnancy to him, and the horse’s falling down was like having a
baby. The most delightful piece of confirmation in this connection was
his proving that, in his view, children were ‘lumfs’ by inventing the
name of ‘Lodi’ for his favourite child. There was some delay in
reporting this fact, for it then appeared that he had been playing
with this sausage child of his for a long time past.[182]
We have already considered Hans’s two concluding phantasies, with
which his recovery was rounded off. One of them, that of the plumber
giving him a new and, as his father guessed, a bigger widdler, was not
merely a repetition of the earlier phantasy concerning the plumber and
the bath. The new one was a triumphant wish-phantasy, and with it he
overcame his fear of castration. His other phantasy, which confessed
to the wish to be married to his mother and to have many children by
her, did not merely exhaust the content of the unconscious complexes
which had been stirred up by the sight of the falling horse and which
{273} had generated his anxiety. It also corrected that portion of
those thoughts which was entirely unacceptable; for, instead of
killing his father, it made him innocuous by promoting him to a
marriage with Hans’s grandmother. With this phantasy both the illness
and the analysis came to an appropriate end.
-----------------------------
While the analysis of a case is in progress it is impossible to obtain
any clear impression of the structure and development of the
neurosis. That is the business of a synthetic process which must be
performed subsequently. In attempting to carry out such a synthesis of
little Hans’s phobia we shall take as our basis the account of his
mental constitution, of his governing sexual wishes, and of his
experiences up to the time of his sister’s birth, which we have given
in an earlier part of this paper.
The arrival of his sister brought into Hans’s life many new elements,
which from that time on gave him no rest. In the first place he was
obliged to submit to a certain degree of privation: to begin with, a
temporary separation from his mother, and later a permanent diminution
in the amount of care and attention which he had received from her and
which thenceforward he had to grow accustomed to sharing with his
sister. In the second place, he experienced a revival of the pleasures
he had enjoyed when he was looked after as an infant; for they were
called up by all that he saw his mother doing for the baby. As a
result of these two influences his erotic needs became intensified,
while at the same time they began to obtain insufficient
satisfaction. He made up for the loss which his sister’s arrival had
entailed on him by imagining that he had children of his own; and so
long as he was at Gmunden---on his second visit there---and could
really play with these children he found a sufficient outlet for his
affections. But after {274} his return to Vienna he was once more
alone, and set all his hopes upon his mother. He had meanwhile
suffered another privation, having been exiled from his mother’s
bedroom at the age of four. His intensified erotic excitability now
found expression in phantasies, by which in his loneliness he conjured
up his playmates of the past summer, and in regular auto-erotic
satisfaction obtained by a masturbatory stimulation of his genitals.
But in the third place his sister’s birth stimulated him to an effort
of thought which, on the one hand, it was impossible to bring to a
conclusion, and which, on the other hand, involved him in emotional
conflicts. He was faced with the great riddle of where babies come
from, which is perhaps the first problem to engage a child’s mental
powers, and of which the riddle of the Theban Sphinx is probably no
more than a distorted version. He rejected the proffered solution of
the stork having brought Hanna. For he had noticed that months before
the baby’s birth his mother’s body had grown big, that then she had
gone to bed, and had groaned while the birth was taking place, and
that when she got up she was thin again. He therefore inferred that
Hanna had been inside his mother’s body, and had then come out like a
‘lumf’. He was able to imagine the act of giving birth as a
pleasurable one by relating it to his own first feelings of pleasure
in passing stool; and he was thus able to find a double motive for
wishing to have children of his own: the pleasure of giving birth to
them and the pleasure (the compensatory pleasure, as it were) of
looking after them. There was nothing in all of this that could have
led him into doubts or conflicts.
But there was something else, which could not fail to make him
uneasy. His father must have had something to do with little Hanna’s
_birth_, for he had declared that Hanna and Hans himself were his
children. Yet it was certainly not his father who had brought them
into the world, but his mother. This father of his {275} came between
him and his mother. When he was there Hans could not sleep with his
mother, and when his mother wanted to take Hans into bed with her, his
father used to call out. Hans had learnt from experience how well off
he could be in his father’s absence, and it was only justifiable that
he should wish to get rid of him. And then Hans’s hostility had
received a fresh reinforcement. His father had told him the lie about
the stork and so made it impossible for him to ask for enlightenment
upon these things. He not only prevented his being in bed with his
mother, but also kept from him the knowledge he was thirsting for. He
was putting Hans at a disadvantage in both directions, and was
obviously doing so for his own benefit.
But this father, whom he could not help hating as a rival, was the
same father whom he had always loved and was bound to go on loving,
who had been his model, had been his first playmate, and had looked
after him from his earliest infancy: and this it was that gave rise to
the first conflict. Nor could this conflict find an immediate
solution. For Hans’s nature had so developed that for the moment his
love could not but keep the upper hand and suppress his hate---though
it could not kill it, for his hate was perpetually kept alive by his
love for his mother.
But his father not only knew where children came from, he actually
performed it---the thing that Hans could only obscurely divine. The
widdler must have something to do with it, for his own grew excited
whenever he thought of these things---and it must be a big widdler
too, bigger than Hans’s own. If he listened to these premonitory
sensations he could only suppose that it was a question of some act of
violence performed upon his mother, of smashing something, of making
an opening into something, of forcing a way into an enclosed
space---such were the impulses that he felt stirring within him. But
although the sensations in his penis had put him on the road to
postulating a vagina, yet he could not solve the problem, for within
{276} his experience no such thing existed as his widdler required. On
the contrary, his conviction that his mother possessed a penis just as
he did stood in the way of any solution. His attempt at discovering
what it was that had to be done with his mother in order that she
might have children sank down into his unconscious; and his two active
impulses---the hostile one against his father and the sadistic-tender
one towards his mother---could be put to no use, the first because of
the love that existed side by side with the hatred, and the second
because of the perplexity in which his infantile sexual theories left
him.
This is how, basing my conclusions upon the results of the analysis, I
am obliged to reconstruct the unconscious complexes and wishes, the
repression and reawakening of which produced little Hans’s phobia. I
am aware that in so doing I am attributing a great deal to the mental
capacity of a child between four and five years of age; but I have let
myself be guided by what we have recently learned, and I do not
consider myself bound by the prejudices of our ignorance. It might
perhaps have been possible to make use of Hans’s fear of the ‘making a
row with the legs’ for filling up a few more gaps in our adjudication
upon the evidence. Hans, it is true, declared that it reminded him of
his kicking about with his legs when he was compelled to leave off
playing so as to do lumf; so that this element of the neurosis becomes
connected with the problem whether his mother liked having children or
was compelled to have them. But I have an impression that this is not
the whole explanation of the ‘making a row with the legs’. Hans’s
father was unable to confirm my suspicion that there was some
recollection stirring in the child’s mind of having observed a scene
of sexual intercourse between his parents in their bedroom. So let us
be content with what we have discovered.
It is hard to say what the influence was which, in the situation we
have just sketched, led to the sudden {277} change in Hans and to the
transformation of his libidinal longing into anxiety---to say from
which side it was that repression set in. The question could probably
only be decided by making a comparison between this analysis and a
number of similar ones. Whether the scales were turned by the child’s
_intellectual_ inability to solve the difficult problem of the
begetting of children and to cope with the aggressive impulses that
were liberated by his approaching its solution, or whether the effect
was produced by a _somatic_ incapacity, a constitutional intolerance
of the masturbatory gratification in which he regularly indulged
(whether, that is, the mere persistence of sexual excitement at such a
high pitch of intensity was bound to bring about a revulsion)---this
question must be left open until fresh experience can come to our
assistance.
Chronological considerations make it impossible for us to attach any
great importance to the actual exciting cause of the outbreak of
Hans’s illness, for he had shown signs of apprehensiveness long before
he saw the bus-horse fall down in the street.
Nevertheless, the neurosis attached itself directly on to this chance
event and preserved a trace of it in the circumstance of the horse
being exalted into the object of the anxiety. In itself the impression
of the accident which he happened to witness carried no ‘traumatic
force’; it acquired its great effectiveness only from the fact that
horses had formerly been of importance to him as objects of his
predilection and interest, from the fact that he associated the event
in his mind with an earlier event at Gmunden which had more claim to
be regarded as traumatic, namely, with Fritzl’s falling down while he
was playing at horses, and lastly from the fact that there was an easy
path of association from Fritzl to his father. Indeed, even these
connections would probably not have been sufficient if it had not been
that, thanks to the pliability and ambiguity of associative chains,
the same event showed itself capable of stirring the second {278} of
the complexes that lurked in Hans’s unconscious, the complex of his
pregnant mother’s confinement. From that moment the way was clear for
the return of the repressed; and it returned, in such a manner that
_the pathogenic material was remodelled and transposed on to the
horse-complex, while the accompanying affects were uniformly turned
into anxiety_.
It deserves to be noticed that the ideational content of Hans’s phobia
as it then stood had to be submitted to one further process of
distortion and substitution before his consciousness took cognizance
of it. Hans’s first formulation of his anxiety was: ‘the horse will
bite me’; and this was derived from another episode at Gmunden, which
was on the one hand related to his hostile wishes against his father
and on the other hand was reminiscent of the warning he had been given
against onanism. Some distracting influence, emanating from his
parents perhaps, had made itself felt. I am not certain whether the
reports upon Hans were at that time drawn up with sufficient care to
enable us to decide whether he expressed his anxiety in this form
_before_ or not until _after_ his mother had taken him to task on the
subject of masturbating. I should be inclined to suspect that it was
not until afterwards, though this would contradict the account given
in the case history. At any rate, it is evident that at every point
Hans’s hostile complex against his father screened his lustful one
about his mother, just as it was the first to be disclosed and dealt
with in the analysis.
In other cases of this kind there would be a great deal more to be
said upon the structure, the development, and the diffusion of the
neurosis. But the history of little Hans’s attack was very short;
almost as soon as it had begun, its place was taken by the history of
its treatment. And although during the treatment the phobia appeared
to develop further and to extend over new objects and to lay down new
conditions, his father, since he was himself treating the case,
naturally had sufficient penetration to see that it {279} was merely a
question of the emergence of material that was already in existence,
and not of fresh productions for which the treatment might be held
responsible. In the treatment of other cases it would not always be
possible to count upon so much penetration.
Before I can regard this synthesis as completed I must turn to yet
another aspect of the case, which will take us into the very heart of
the difficulties that lie in the way of our understanding of neurotic
states. We have seen how our little patient was overtaken by a great
wave of repression and that it caught precisely those of his sexual
components that were dominant.[183] He gave up onanism, and turned
away in disgust from everything that reminded him of excrement and of
looking on at other people performing their natural functions. But
these were not the components which were stirred up by the exciting
cause of the illness (his seeing the horse falling down) or which
provided the material for the symptoms, that is, the content of the
phobia.
This allows us, therefore, to make a radical distinction. We shall
probably come to understand the case more deeply if we turn to those
other components which _do_ fulfil the two conditions that have just
been mentioned. These were tendencies in Hans which had already been
suppressed and which, so far as we can tell, had never been able to
find uninhibited expression: hostile and jealous feelings against his
father, and sadistic impulses (premonitions, as it were, of
copulation) towards his mother. These early suppressions may perhaps
have gone to form the predisposition for his subsequent illness. These
aggressive propensities of Hans’s found no outlet, and as soon as
there came a time of privation and of intensified sexual excitement,
{280} they tried to break their way out with reinforced strength. It
was then that the battle which we call his ‘phobia’ burst out. During
the course of it a part of the repressed ideas, in a distorted form
and transformed on to another complex, forced their way into
consciousness as the content of the phobia. But it was a decidedly
paltry success. Victory lay with the forces of repression; _and they
made use of the opportunity to extend their dominion over components
other than those that had rebelled_. This last circumstance, however,
does not in the least alter the fact that the essence of Hans’s
illness was entirely dependent upon the nature of the instinctual
components that had to be repulsed. The content of his phobia was such
as to impose a very great measure of restriction upon his freedom of
movement, and that was its purpose. It was therefore a powerful
reaction against the obscure impulses to movement which were
especially directed against his mother. For Hans horses had always
typified pleasure in movement (‘I’m a young horse’, he had said as he
jumped about); but since this pleasure in movement included the
impulse to copulate, the neurosis imposed a restriction on it and
exalted the horse into an emblem of terror. Thus it would seem as
though all that the repressed instincts got from the neurosis was the
honour of providing pretexts for the appearance of the anxiety in
consciousness. But however clear may have been the victory in Hans’s
phobia of the forces that were opposed to sexuality, nevertheless,
since such an illness is in its very nature a compromise, this cannot
have been all that the repressed instincts obtained. After all, Hans’s
phobia of horses was an obstacle to his going into the street, and
could serve as a means of allowing him to stay at home with his
beloved mother. In this way, therefore, his affection for his mother
triumphantly achieved its aim. In consequence of his phobia, the lover
clung to the object of his love---though, to be sure, steps had been
taken to make him innocuous. {281} The true character of a neurotic
disorder is exhibited in this twofold result.
Alfred Adler, in a suggestive paper,[184] has recently developed the
view that anxiety arises from the suppression of what he calls the
‘aggressive instinct’, and by a very sweeping synthetic process he
ascribes to that instinct the chief part in human events, ‘in real
life and in the neuroses’. As we have come to the conclusion that in
our present case of phobia the anxiety is to be explained as being due
to the repression of Hans’s aggressive propensities (the hostile ones
against his father and the sadistic ones against his mother), we seem
to have produced a most striking piece of confirmation of Adler’s
view. I am nevertheless unable to assent to it, and indeed I regard it
as a misleading generalization. I cannot bring myself to assume the
existence of a special aggressive instinct alongside of the familiar
instincts of self-preservation and of sex, and on an equal footing
with them.[185] It appears to me that Adler has mistakenly
hypostatized into a special instinct what is in reality a universal
and indispensable attribute of all instincts and impulses---their
‘impulsive’ and dynamic character, what might be described as their
capacity for initiating motion. Nothing would then remain of the other
instincts but their relation to an aim, for their relation to the
means of reaching that aim would have been taken over from them by the
‘aggressive instinct’. In spite of all the {282} uncertainty and
obscurity of our theory of instincts I should prefer for the present
to adhere to the usual view, which leaves each instinct its own power
of becoming aggressive; and I should be inclined to recognize the two
instincts which became repressed in Hans as familiar components of the
sexual libido.
(III)
I shall now proceed to what I hope will be a brief discussion of how
far little Hans’s phobia offers any contribution of general importance
to our views upon the life and education of children. But before doing
so I must return to the objection which has so long been held over,
and according to which Hans was a neurotic, a ‘degenerate’ with a bad
heredity, and not a normal child, knowledge about whom could be
applied to other children. I have for some time been thinking with
pain of the way in which the adherents of ‘the normal person’ will
fall upon poor little Hans as soon as they are told that he can in
fact be shown to have had a hereditary taint. His handsome mother fell
ill with a neurosis as a result of a conflict during her girlhood. I
was able to be of assistance to her at the time, and this had in fact
been the beginning of my connection with Hans’s parents. It is only
with the greatest diffidence that I venture to bring forward one or
two considerations in his favour.
In the first place Hans was not what one would understand, strictly
speaking, by a degenerate child, condemned by his heredity to be a
neurotic. On the contrary, he was well formed physically, and was a
cheerful, amiable, active-minded young fellow who might give pleasure
to more people than his own father. There can be no question, of
course, as to his sexual precocity; but on that point there is very
little material upon which a fair comparison can be based. I gather,
for instance, from a piece of collective {283} research conducted in
America, that it is by no means such a rare thing to find
object-choice and feelings of love in boys at a similarly early age;
and the same may be learnt from studying the records of the childhood
of men who have later come to be recognized as ‘great’. I should
therefore be inclined to believe that sexual precocity is a correlate
of intellectual precocity, which is seldom absent, and that it is
therefore to be met with in gifted children more often than might be
expected.
Furthermore, let me say in Hans’s favour (and I frankly admit my
partisan attitude) that he is not the only child who has been
overtaken by a phobia at some time or other in his childhood. Troubles
of that kind are well known to be quite extraordinarily frequent, even
in children the strictness of whose up-bringing has left nothing to be
desired. In later life these children either become neurotic or remain
healthy. Their phobias are shouted down in the nursery because they
are inaccessible to treatment and are decidedly inconvenient. In the
course of months or years they diminish, and the child seems to
recover; but no one can tell what psychological changes are
necessitated by such a recovery, or what alterations in character are
involved in it. When, however, an adult neurotic patient comes to us
for psycho-analytic treatment (and let us assume that his illness has
only become manifest after he has reached maturity), we find regularly
that his neurosis is connected on to an infantile anxiety such as we
have been discussing, and is in fact a continuation of it; so that, as
it were, a continuous and undisturbed thread of mental activity,
taking its start from the conflicts of his childhood, has been spun
through his life---irrespective of whether the first symptom of those
conflicts has persisted or has retreated under the pressure of
circumstances. I think, therefore, that Hans’s illness may perhaps
have been no more serious than that of many other children who are not
branded {284} as ‘degenerates’; but since he was brought up without
being intimidated, and with as much consideration and as little
coercion as possible, his anxiety dared to show itself more
boldly. With him there was no place for such motives as a bad
conscience or a fear of punishment, which with other children must no
doubt contribute to making the anxiety less. It seems to me that we
concentrate too much upon symptoms and concern ourselves too little
with their causes. In bringing up children we aim only at being left
in peace and having no difficulties, in short, at training up a model
child, and we pay very little attention to whether such a course of
development is for the child’s good as well. I can therefore well
imagine that it may have been to Hans’s advantage to have produced
this phobia; for it directed his parents’ attention to the unavoidable
difficulties by which a child is confronted when in the course of his
cultural training he is called upon to overcome the innate instinctual
components of his mind, and his trouble brought his father to his
assistance. It may be that Hans now enjoys an advantage over other
children, in that he no longer carries within him that seed in the
shape of repressed complexes which must always be of some significance
for a child’s later life, and which undoubtedly brings with it a
certain degree of deformity of character if not a predisposition to a
subsequent neurosis. I am inclined to think that this is so, but I do
not know if many others will share my opinion; nor do I know whether
experience will prove me right.
But I must now inquire what harm was done to Hans by dragging to light
in him complexes such as are not only repressed by children but
dreaded by their parents. Did the little boy proceed to take some
serious action as regards what he wanted from his mother? or did his
evil intentions against his father give place to evil deeds? Such
misgivings will no doubt have occurred to many doctors, who
misunderstand the nature of psycho-analysis and think that wicked
{285} instincts are strengthened by being made conscious. Wise men
like these are being no more than consistent when they implore us for
heaven’s sake not to meddle with the evil things that lurk behind a
neurosis. In so doing they forget, it is true, that they are
physicians, and their words bear a fatal resemblance to Dogberry’s,
when he advised the watch to avoid all contact with any thieves they
might happen to meet: ‘for such kind of men, the less you meddle or
make with them, why, the more is for your honesty.’[186]
On the contrary, the only results of the analysis were that Hans
recovered, that he ceased to be afraid of horses, and that he got on
to rather familiar terms with his father, as the latter reported with
some amusement. But whatever his father may have lost in the boy’s
respect he won back in his confidence: ‘I thought’, said Hans, ‘you
knew everything, as you knew that about the horse’. For analysis does
not undo the _effects_ of repression. The instincts which were
formerly suppressed remain suppressed; but the same effect is produced
in a different way. Analysis replaces the process of repression, which
is an automatic and excessive one, by a temperate and purposeful
control on the part of the highest mental faculties. In a word,
_analysis replaces repression by condemnation_. This seems to bring us
the long-looked-for evidence that consciousness has a biological
function, and that with its entrance upon the scene an important
advantage is secured.[187]
{286}
If matters had lain entirely in my hands, I should have ventured to
give the child the one remaining piece of enlightenment which his
parents withheld from him. I should have confirmed his instinctive
premonitions, by telling him of the existence of the vagina and of
copulation; thus I should have still further diminished his unsolved
residue, and put an end to his stream of questions. I am convinced
that this new piece of enlightenment would have made him lose neither
his love for his mother nor his own childish nature, and that he would
have understood that his preoccupation with these important, these
momentous things must rest for the present---until his wish to be big
had been fulfilled. But the pedagogic experiment was not carried so
far.
That no sharp line can be drawn between ‘neurotic’ and ‘normal’
people---whether children or adults,---that our conception of
‘disease’ is a purely practical one and a matter of degree, that
predisposition and the eventualities of life must combine before the
requisite degree can be reached, and that consequently a number of
individuals are constantly passing from the class of healthy people
into that of neurotic patients, while a far smaller number also make
the journey in the opposite direction,---all of these are things which
have been said so often and have met with so much agreement that I am
certainly not alone in maintaining their truth. It is, to say the
least of it, extremely probable that a child’s education can exercise
a powerful influence for good or for evil upon that predisposition
which we have just mentioned as being one of the factors in the
occurrence of ‘disease’; but what that education is to aim at and at
what point it is to be brought to bear seem at present to be very
doubtful questions. Hitherto education has only set {287} itself the
task of controlling, or, it would often be more proper to say, of
suppressing, the instincts. The results have been by no means
gratifying, and where the process has succeeded it has only been to
the advantage of a small number of favoured individuals who have not
been required to suppress their instincts. Nor has any one inquired by
what means and at what cost the suppression of the inconvenient
instincts has been achieved. Supposing now that we substitute another
task for this one, and aim instead at making the individual capable of
becoming a civilized and useful member of society with the least
possible sacrifice of his own activity; in that case the information
gained by psycho-analysis, upon the origin of pathogenic complexes and
upon the nucleus of every nervous affection, can claim with justice
that it deserves to be regarded by educators as an invaluable guide in
their conduct towards children. What practical conclusions may follow
from this, and how far experience may justify the application of those
conclusions within our present social system, are matters which I
leave to the examination and decision of others.
I cannot take leave of our small patient’s phobia without giving
expression to a notion which has made its analysis, leading as it did
to a recovery, seem of especial value to me. Strictly speaking, I
learnt nothing new from this analysis, nothing that I had not already
been able to discover (though often less distinctly and more
indirectly) from other patients analysed at a more advanced age. But
the neuroses of these other patients could in every instance be traced
back to the same infantile complexes that were revealed behind Hans’s
phobia. I am therefore tempted to claim for this neurosis of childhood
the significance of being a type and a model, and to suppose that the
multiplicity of the phenomena of repression exhibited by neuroses and
the abundance of their pathogenic material do not prevent their being
derived from a very limited number of processes concerned with
identical ideational complexes.
POSTSCRIPT (1922)[188] {288}
A few months ago---in the spring of 1922---a young man introduced
himself to me and informed me that he was the ‘little Hans’ whose
infantile neurosis had been the subject of the paper which I published
in 1909. I was very glad to see him again, for about two years after
the end of his analysis I had lost sight of him and had heard nothing
of him for more than ten years. The publication of this first analysis
of a child had caused a great stir and even greater indignation, and a
most evil future had been foretold for the poor little boy, because he
had been ‘robbed of his innocence’ at such a tender age and had been
made the victim of a psycho-analysis.
But none of these apprehensions had come true. Little Hans was now a
strapping youth of nineteen. He declared that he was perfectly well,
and suffered from no troubles or inhibitions. Not only had he come
through his puberty without any damage, but his emotional life had
successfully undergone one of the severest of ordeals. His parents had
been divorced and each of them had married again. In consequence of
this he lived by himself; but he was on good terms with both of his
parents, and only regretted that as a result of the breaking-up of the
family he had been separated from the younger sister he was so fond
of.
One piece of information given me by little Hans struck me as
particularly remarkable; nor do I venture to give any explanation of
it. When he read his case history, he told me, the whole of it came to
him as something unknown; he did not recognize himself; he could
remember nothing; and it was only when he {289} came upon the journey
to Gmunden that there dawned on him a kind of glimmering recollection
that it might have been he himself that it happened to. So the
analysis had not preserved the events from amnesia, but had been
overtaken by amnesia itself. Any one who is familiar with
psycho-analysis may occasionally experience something similar in
sleep. He will be woken up by a dream, and will decide to analyse it
then and there; he will then go to sleep again feeling quite satisfied
with the result of his efforts; and next morning dream and analysis
will alike be forgotten.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
III {291}
NOTES UPON A CASE
OF OBSESSIONAL NEUROSIS
(1909)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES UPON A CASE {293}
OF OBSESSIONAL NEUROSIS[189]
The matter contained in the following pages will be of two kinds. In
the first place I shall give some fragmentary extracts from the
history of a case of obsessional neurosis. This case, judged by its
length, the injuriousness of its effects, and the patient’s own view
of it, deserves to be classed as a fairly severe one; the treatment,
which lasted for about a year, led to the complete restoration of the
patient’s personality, and to the removal of his inhibitions. In the
second place, starting out from this case, and also taking other cases
into account which I have previously analysed, I shall make some
disconnected statements of an aphoristic character upon the genesis
and finer psychological mechanism of obsessional processes, and I
shall thus hope to develop my first observations on the subject,
published in 1896.[190]
A programme of this kind seems to me to require some
justification. For it might otherwise be thought that I regard this
method of making a communication as perfectly correct and as one to be
imitated; whereas in reality I am only accommodating myself to
obstacles, some external and others inherent in the subject, and I
should gladly have communicated more if it had been right or possible
for me to do so. I cannot give a complete history of the treatment,
because that would {294} involve my entering in detail into the
circumstances of my patient’s life. The importunate interest of a
capital city, focussed with particular attention upon my medical
activities, forbids my giving a faithful picture of the case. On the
other hand I have come more and more to regard the distortions usually
resorted to in such circumstances as useless and objectionable. If the
distortions are slight, they fail in their object of protecting the
patient from indiscreet curiosity; while if they go beyond this they
require too great a sacrifice, for they destroy the intelligibility of
the material, which depends for its coherence precisely upon the small
details of real life. And from this latter circumstance follows the
paradoxical truth that it is far easier to divulge the patient’s most
intimate secrets than the most innocent and trivial facts about him,
for, whereas the former would not throw any light on his identity, the
latter, by which he is generally recognized, would make it obvious to
every one.
Such is my excuse for having curtailed so drastically the history of
this case and of its treatment. And I can offer still more cogent
reasons for having confined myself to the statement only of some
disconnected results of the psycho-analytic investigation of
obsessional neuroses. I must confess that I have not yet succeeded in
completely penetrating the complicated texture of a _severe_ case of
obsessional neurosis, and that, if I were to reproduce the analysis,
it would be impossible for me to make the structure, such as by the
help of analysis we know or suspect it to be, visible to others
through the mass of therapeutic work superimposed upon it. What adds
so greatly to the difficulty of doing this is the patients’
resistances and the forms in which they are expressed. But even apart
from this it must be admitted that an obsessional neurosis is in
itself not an easy thing to understand---much less so than a case of
hysteria. As a matter of fact we should have expected to find the
contrary. {295} The language of an obsessional neurosis---the means by
which it expresses its secret thoughts---is, as it were, only a
dialect of the language of hysteria; but it is a dialect in which we
ought to be able to find our way about more easily, since it is more
nearly related to the forms of expression adopted by our conscious
thought than is the language of hysteria. Above all, it does not
involve the leap from a mental process to a somatic
innervation---hysterical conversion---which can never be fully
comprehensible to us.
Perhaps it is only because we are less familiar with obsessional
neuroses that we do not find these expectations confirmed by the
facts. Persons suffering from a severe degree of obsessional neurosis
present themselves far less frequently for analytic treatment than
hysterical patients. They dissimulate their condition in daily life,
too, as long as they possibly can, and often call in a physician only
when their complaint has reached such an advanced stage as, had they
been suffering, for instance, from tuberculosis of the lungs, would
have led to their being refused admission to a sanatorium. I make this
comparison, moreover, because, as with the chronic infectious disease
which I have just mentioned, we can point to a number of brilliant
therapeutic successes in severe no less than in light cases of
obsessional neurosis, where these have been taken in hand at an early
stage.
In these circumstances there is no alternative but to report the facts
in the imperfect and incomplete fashion in which they are known and in
which it is legitimate to communicate them. The crumbs of knowledge
offered in these pages, though they have been laboriously enough
collected, may not in themselves prove very satisfying; but they may
serve as a starting-point for the work of other investigators, and
common endeavour may bring the success which is perhaps beyond the
reach of individual effort.
I {296}
EXTRACTS FROM THE CASE HISTORY
A youngish man of university education introduced himself to me with
the statement that he had suffered from obsessions ever since his
childhood, but with particular intensity for the last four years. The
chief features of his disorder were _fears_ that something might
happen to two people of whom he was very fond---his father and a lady
whom he admired. Besides this he was aware of _compulsive
impulses_---such as an impulse, for instance, to cut his throat with a
razor; and further he produced _prohibitions_, sometimes in connection
with quite unimportant things. He had wasted years, he told me, in
fighting against these ideas of his, and in this way had lost much
ground in the course of his life. He had tried various treatments, but
none had been of any use to him except a course of hydrotherapy at a
sanatorium near ⸻; and this, he thought, had probably only been
because he had made an acquaintance there which had led to regular
sexual intercourse. Here he had no opportunities of the sort, and he
seldom had intercourse and only at irregular intervals. He felt
disgust at prostitutes. Altogether, he said, his sexual life had been
stunted; onanism had played only a small part in it, in his sixteenth
or seventeenth year. His potency was normal; he had first performed
coitus at the age of twenty-six.
He gave me the impression of being a clear-headed and shrewd
person. When I asked him what it was that made him lay such stress
upon telling me about his sexual life, he replied that that was what
he knew about my theories. Actually, however, he had read {297} none
of my writings, except that a short time before he had been turning
over the pages of one of my books and had come across the explanation
of some curious verbal associations[191] which had so much reminded
him of some of his own ‘efforts of thought’ in connection with his
ideas that he had decided to put himself in my hands.
(_a_) The Beginning of the Treatment
The next day I made him pledge himself to submit to the one and only
condition of the treatment---namely, to say everything that came into
his head, even if it was _unpleasant_ to him, or seemed _unimportant_
or _irrelevant_ or _senseless_. I then gave him leave to start his
communications with any subject he pleased, and he began as
follows:[192]
He had a friend, he told me, of whom he had an extraordinarily high
opinion. He used always to go to him when he was tormented by some
criminal impulse, and ask him whether he despised him as a
criminal. His friend used then to give him moral support by assuring
him that he was a man of irreproachable conduct, and had probably been
in the habit, from his youth onwards, of taking a dark view of his own
life. At an earlier date, he went on, another person had exercised a
similar influence over him. This was a nineteen-year-old student (he
himself had been fourteen or fifteen at the time) who had taken a
liking to him, and had raised his self-esteem to an extraordinary
degree, so that he appeared to {298} himself to be a genius. This
student had subsequently become his tutor, and had suddenly altered
his behaviour and begun treating him as though he were an idiot. At
length he had noticed that the student was interested in one of his
sisters, and had realized that he had only taken him up in order to
gain admission into the house. This had been the first great blow of
his life.
He then proceeded without any apparent transition:
(_b_) Infantile Sexuality
‘My sexual life began very early. I can remember a scene out of my
fourth or fifth year. (From my sixth year onwards I can remember
everything.) This scene came into my head quite distinctly, years
later. We had a very pretty young governess called Fräulein
Peter.[193] One evening she was lying on the sofa lightly dressed, and
reading. I was lying beside her, and begged her to let me creep under
her skirt. She told me I might, so long as I said nothing to any one
about it. She had very little on, and I fingered her genitals and the
lower part of her body, which struck me as very queer. After this I
was left with a burning and tormenting curiosity to see the female
body. I can still remember the intense excitement with which I waited
at the Baths (which I was still allowed to go to {299} with the
governess and my sisters) for the governess to undress and get into
the water. I can remember more things from my sixth year onwards. At
that time we had another governess, who was also young and
good-looking. She had abscesses on her buttocks which she was in the
habit of expressing at night. I used to wait eagerly for that moment,
to appease my curiosity. It was just the same at the Baths---though
Fräulein Lina was more reserved than her predecessor.’ (In reply to a
question which I threw in, ‘As a rule,’ the patient told me, ‘I did
not sleep in her room, but mostly with my parents.’) ‘I remember a
scene which must have taken place when I was seven years old.[194] We
were sitting together one evening---the governess, the cook, another
servant-girl, myself and my brother, who was eighteen months younger
than me. The young women were talking, and I suddenly became aware of
Fräulein Lina saying: “It could be done with the little one; but Paul”
(that was I) “is too clumsy, he would be sure to miss it.” I did not
understand clearly what was meant, but I felt the slight and began to
cry. Lina comforted me, and told me how a girl, who had done something
of the kind with a little boy she was in charge of, had been put in
prison for several months. I do not believe she actually did anything
wrong with me, but I took a great many liberties with her. When I got
into her bed I used to uncover her and touch her, and she made no
objections. She was not very intelligent, and clearly had very strong
sexual cravings. At twenty-three she had already had a child. She
afterwards married its father, so that to-day she is a Frau
Hofrat.[195] Even now I often see her in the street.
‘When I was six years old I already suffered from erections, and I
know that once I went to my mother {300} to complain about them. I
know too that in doing so I had some misgivings to get over, for I had
a feeling that there was some connection between this subject and my
ideas and inquisitiveness, and at that time I used to have a morbid
idea _that my parents knew my thoughts; I explained this to myself by
supposing that I had spoken them out loud, without having heard myself
do it_. I look on this as the beginning of my illness. There were
certain people, girls, who pleased me very much, and I had a very
strong wish _to see them naked_. But in wishing this I had _an uncanny
feeling, as though something must happen if I thought such things, and
as though I must do all sorts of things to prevent it_.’
(In reply to a question he gave an example of these fears: ‘For
instance, _that my father might die_.’) ‘Thoughts about my father’s
death occupied my mind from a very early age and for a long period of
time, and greatly depressed me.’
At this point I learnt with astonishment that the patient’s father,
with whom his obsessional fears were still occupied at that actual
time, had died several years previously.
The events in his sixth or seventh year which the patient described in
the first hour of his treatment were not merely, as he supposed, the
beginning of his illness, but were already the illness itself. It was
a complete obsessional neurosis, wanting in no essential element, at
once the nucleus and the prototype of the later disorder,---an
elementary organism, as it were, the study of which could alone enable
us to obtain a grasp of the complicated organization of his subsequent
illness. The child, as we have seen, was under the domination of a
component of the sexual instinct, scoptophilia (the instinct of
looking), as a result of which there was a constant recurrence in him
of a very intense wish connected with persons of the female sex who
pleased him---the wish, that is, to see them naked. This wish
corresponds to the later obsessional or {301} compulsive idea; and if
the quality of compulsion was not yet present in it, this was because
the ego had not yet placed itself in complete opposition to it and did
not yet regard it as something foreign to itself. Nevertheless,
opposition to this wish from some source or other was already in
activity, for its occurrence was regularly accompanied by a painful
affect.[196] A conflict was evidently in progress in the mind of this
young libertine. Side by side with the obsessive wish, and intimately
associated with it, was an obsessive fear: every time he had a wish of
this kind he could not help fearing that something dreadful would
happen. This something dreadful was already clothed in a
characteristic indeterminateness which was thenceforward to be an
invariable feature of every manifestation of the neurosis. But in a
child it is not hard to discover what it is that is veiled behind an
indeterminateness of this kind. If the patient can once be induced to
give a particular instance in place of the vague generalities which
characterize an obsessional neurosis, it may be confidently assumed
that the instance is the original and actual thing which has tried to
hide itself behind the generalization. Our present patient’s obsessive
fear, therefore, when restored to its original meaning, would run as
follows: ‘If I have this wish to see a woman naked, my father will
have to die.’ The painful affect was distinctly coloured with a tinge
of uncanniness and superstition, and was already beginning to give
rise to impulses to do something to ward off the impending evil. These
impulses were subsequently to develop into the _protective measures_
which the patient adopted.
We find, therefore: an erotic instinct and a revolt against it; a wish
which has not yet become compulsive and, struggling against it, a fear
which is already compulsive; a painful affect and an impulsion towards
the performance of defensive acts. The {302} inventory of the neurosis
has reached its full muster. Indeed, something more is present,
namely, a kind of _delusional formation_ or _delirium_[197] with the
strange content that his parents knew his thoughts because he spoke
them out loud without his hearing himself do it. We shall not go far
astray if we suppose that in making this attempt at an explanation the
child had some inkling of those remarkable mental processes which we
describe as unconscious and which we cannot dispense with if we are to
throw any scientific light upon this obscure subject. ‘I speak my
thoughts out loud, without hearing them’ sounds like a projection into
the outer world of our own hypothesis that he had thoughts without
knowing anything about them; it sounds like an endopsychic perception
of the repressed.
For the situation is clear. This elementary neurosis of childhood
already involved a problem and an apparent absurdity, like any
complicated neurosis of maturity. What can have been the meaning of
the child’s idea that if he had this lascivious wish his father would
have to die? Was it sheer nonsense? Or are there means of
understanding the words and of looking upon them as a necessary
consequence of earlier events and premises?
If we apply knowledge gained elsewhere to this case of childhood
neurosis, we shall not be able to avoid the suspicion that in this
instance as in others, that is to say, before the child had reached
his sixth year, there had been conflicts and repressions, which had
themselves been overtaken by amnesia, but had left behind them as a
residuum the particular content of this obsessive fear. Later on we
shall learn how far it is possible for us to rediscover those
forgotten experiences or to reconstruct them with some degree of
certainty. In the meantime stress may be laid on the fact, which is
probably more than a mere coincidence, {303} that the patient’s
infantile amnesia ended precisely with his sixth year.
To find a chronic obsessional neurosis beginning like this in early
childhood, with lascivious wishes of this sort connected with uncanny
apprehensions and an inclination to the performance of defensive acts,
is no new thing to me. I have come across it in a number of other
cases. It is absolutely typical, although probably not the only
possible type. Before proceeding to the events of the second sitting,
I should like to add one more word on the subject of the patient’s
early sexual experiences. It will hardly be disputed that they may be
described as having been considerable both in themselves and in their
consequences. But it has been the same with the other cases of
obsessional neurosis that I have had the opportunity of
analysing. Such cases, unlike those of hysteria, invariably possess
the characteristic of premature sexual activity. Obsessional neuroses
make it much more obvious than hysterias that the factors which go to
form a psychoneurosis are to be found in the patient’s infantile
sexual life and not in his present one. The current sexual life of an
obsessional neurotic may often appear perfectly normal to a
superficial observer; indeed, it frequently offers to the eye far
fewer pathogenic elements and abnormalities than in the instance we
are now considering.
(_c_) The Great Obsessive Fear
‘I think I shall begin to-day with the experience which was the direct
occasion of my coming to you. It was in August during the manœuvres at
⸻. I had been suffering before, and tormenting myself with all kinds
of obsessional thoughts, but they had quickly passed off during the
manœuvres. I was keen to show the regular officers that people like me
had not only learnt a good deal but could stand a good deal too. {304}
One day we started from ⸻ on a short march. During a halt I lost my
pince-nez, and, although I could easily have found them, I did not
want to delay our start, so I gave them up. But I wired to my
opticians in Vienna to send me another pair by the next post. During
that same halt I sat between two officers, one of whom, a captain with
a Czech name, was to be of no small importance to me. I had a kind of
dread of him, _for he was obviously fond of cruelty_. I do not say he
was a bad man, but at the officers’ mess he had repeatedly defended
the introduction of corporal punishment, so that I had been obliged to
disagree with him very sharply. Well, during this halt we got into
conversation, and the captain told me he had read of a specially
horrible punishment used in the East...’
Here the patient broke off, got up from the sofa, and begged me to
spare him the recital of the details. I assured him that I myself had
no taste whatever for cruelty, and certainly had no desire to torment
him, but that naturally I could not grant him something which was
beyond my power. He might just as well ask me to give him the
moon. The overcoming of resistances was a law of the treatment, and on
no consideration could it be dispensed with. (I had explained the idea
of ‘resistance’ to him at the beginning of the hour, when he told me
there was much in himself which he would have to overcome if he was to
relate this experience of his.) I went on to say that I would do all I
could, nevertheless, to guess the full meaning of any hints he gave
me. Was he perhaps thinking of impalement? --- ‘No, not that; ...the
criminal was tied up...’ ---he expressed himself so indistinctly that
I could not immediately guess in what position--- ‘...a pot was turned
upside down on his buttocks... some _rats_ were put into it... and
they...’ ---he had again got up, and was showing every sign of horror
and resistance--- ‘..._bored their way in_...’ ---Into his anus, I
helped him out.
{305}
At all the more important moments while he was telling his story his
face took on a very strange, composite expression. I could only
interpret it as one of _horror at pleasure of his own of which he
himself was unaware_. He proceeded with the greatest difficulty: ‘At
that moment the idea flashed through my mind _that this was happening
to a person who was very dear to me_.’[198] In answer to a direct
question he said that it was not he himself who was carrying out the
punishment, but that it was being carried out as it were
impersonally. After a little prompting I learnt that the person to
whom this ‘idea’ of his related was the lady whom he admired.
He broke off his story in order to assure me that these thoughts were
entirely foreign and repugnant to him, and to tell me that everything
which had followed in their train had passed through his mind with the
most extraordinary rapidity. Simultaneously with the idea there always
appeared a ‘sanction’, that is to say, the defensive measure which he
was obliged to adopt in order to prevent the phantasy from being
fulfilled. When the captain had spoken of this ghastly punishment, he
went on, and these ideas had come into his head, by employing his
usual formulas (a ‘But’ accompanied by a gesture of repudiation, and
the phrase ‘Whatever are you thinking of?’) he had just succeeded in
warding off _both_ of them.
This ‘both’ took me aback, and it has no doubt also mystified the
reader. For so far we have heard only of one idea---of the rat
punishment being carried out upon the lady. He was now obliged to
admit that a second idea had occurred to him simultaneously, namely,
the idea of the punishment also being applied to his father. As his
father had died many years previously, this obsessive fear was much
more nonsensical even than the first, and accordingly it had {306}
attempted to escape being confessed to for a little while longer.
That evening, he continued, the same captain had handed him a packet
that had arrived by the post and had said: ‘Lieutenant A.[199] has
paid the charges[200] for you. You must pay him back.’ The packet had
contained the pince-nez that he had wired for. At that instant,
however, a ‘sanction’ had taken shape in his mind, namely, _that he
was not to pay back the money_ or it would happen---(that is, the
phantasy about the rats would come true as regards his father and the
lady). And immediately, in accordance with a type of procedure with
which he was familiar, to combat this sanction there had arisen a
command in the shape of a vow: ‘_You must pay back the 3.80
crowns[201] to Lieutenant A._’ He had said these words to himself
almost half aloud.
Two days later the manœuvres had come to an end. He had spent the
whole of the intervening time in efforts at repaying Lieutenant A. the
small amount in question; but a succession of difficulties of an
apparently _external_ nature had arisen to prevent it. First he had
tried to effect the payment through another officer who had been going
to the post office. But he had been much relieved when this officer
brought him back the money, saying that he had not met Lieutenant
A. there, for this method of fulfilling his vow had not satisfied him,
as it did not correspond with the wording, which ran: ‘_You_ must pay
back the money to Lieutenant A.’ Finally, he had met Lieutenant A.,
the person he was looking for; but he had refused to accept the money,
declaring that he had not paid anything for him, and had nothing
whatever to do with the post, which was the business of Lieutenant
B. This had thrown my patient into great perplexity, {307} for it
meant that he was unable to keep his vow, since it had been based upon
false premises. He had excogitated a very curious means of getting out
of his difficulty, namely, that he should go to the post office with
both the men, A. and B., that A. should give the young lady there the
3.80 crowns, that the young lady should give them to B., and that then
he himself should pay back the 3.80 crowns to A. according to the
wording of his vow.
It would not surprise me to hear that at this point the reader had
ceased to be able to follow. For even the detailed account which the
patient gave me of the external events of these days and of his
reactions to them was full of self-contradictions and sounded
hopelessly confused. It was only when he told the story for the third
time that I could get him to realize its obscurities and could lay
bare the errors of memory and the displacements in which he had become
involved. I shall spare myself the trouble of reproducing these
details, the essentials of which we shall easily be able to pick up
later on, and I will only add that at the end of this second sitting
the patient behaved as though he were dazed and bewildered. He
repeatedly addressed me as ‘Captain’, probably because at the
beginning of the hour I had told him that I myself was not fond of
cruelty like Captain M., and that I had no intention of tormenting him
unnecessarily.
The only other piece of information that I obtained from him during
this hour was that from the very first, on all the previous occasions
on which he had had a fear that something would happen to people he
loved no less than on the present one, he had referred the punishments
not only to our present life but also to eternity---to the next
world. Up to his fourteenth or fifteenth year he had been devoutly
religious, but from that time on he had gradually developed into the
free-thinker that he was to-day. He reconciled the contradiction
between his beliefs and his obsessions by saying to himself: ‘What do
you know about the {308} next world? Nothing _can_ be known about
it. You’re not risking anything---so do it.’ This form of argument
seemed unobjectionable to a man who was in other respects particularly
clear-headed, and in this way he exploited the uncertainty of reason
in the face of these questions to the benefit of the religious
attitude which he had outgrown.
At the third sitting he completed his very characteristic story of his
efforts at fulfilling his obsessional vow. That evening the last
gathering of officers had taken place before the end of the
manœuvres. It had fallen to him to reply to the toast of ‘The
Gentlemen of the Reserve’. He had spoken well, but as if he were in a
dream, for at the back of his mind he was being incessantly tormented
by his vow. He had spent a terrible night. Arguments and
counter-arguments had struggled with one another. The chief argument,
of course, had been that the premise upon which his vow had been
based---that Lieutenant A. had paid the money for him---had proved to
be false. However, he had consoled himself with the thought that the
business was not yet finished, as A. would be riding with him next
morning part of the way to the railway station at P⸺, so that he would
still have time to ask him the necessary favour. As a matter of fact
he had not done this, and had allowed A. to go off without him; but he
had given instructions to his orderly to let A. know that he intended
to pay him a visit that afternoon. He himself had reached the station
at half-past nine in the morning. He had deposited his luggage there
and had seen to various things he had to do in the small town, with
the intention of afterwards paying his visit to A. The village in
which A. was stationed was about an hour’s drive from the town of
P⸺. The railway journey to the place where the post office was would
take three hours. He had calculated, therefore, that the execution of
his complicated plan would just leave him time to catch the evening
train from P⸺ to Vienna. The ideas {309} that were struggling within
him had been, on the one hand, that he was simply being cowardly and
was obviously only trying to save himself the unpleasantness of asking
A. to make the sacrifice in question and of cutting a foolish figure
before him, and that that was why he was disregarding his vow; and, on
the other hand, that it would, on the contrary, be cowardly of him to
fulfil his vow, since he only wanted to do so in order to be left in
peace by his obsessions. When in the course of his deliberations, the
patient added, he found the arguments so evenly balanced as these, it
was his custom to allow his actions to be decided by chance events as
though by the hand of God. When, therefore, a porter at the station
had addressed him with the words, ‘Ten o’clock train, sir?’ he had
answered ‘Yes’, and in fact had gone off by the ten o’clock train. In
this way he had produced a _fait accompli_ and felt greatly
relieved. He had proceeded to book a seat for luncheon in the
restaurant car. At the first station they had stopped at it had
suddenly struck him that he still had time to get out, wait for the
next down train, travel back in it to P⸺, drive to the place where
Lieutenant A. was quartered, from there make the three hours’ train
journey with him to the post office, and so forth. It had only been
the consideration that he had booked his seat for luncheon with the
steward of the restaurant car that had prevented his carrying out this
design. He had not abandoned it, however; he had only put off getting
out until a later stop. In this way he had struggled through from
station to station, till he had reached one at which it had seemed to
him impossible to get out because he had relatives living there. He
had then determined to travel through to Vienna, to look up his friend
there and lay the whole matter before him, and then, after his friend
had made his decision, to catch the night train back to P⸺. When I
expressed a doubt whether this would have been feasible, he assured me
that he would have had half {310} an hour to spare between the arrival
of the one train and the departure of the other. When he had arrived
in Vienna, however, he had failed to find his friend at the restaurant
at which he had counted on meeting him, and had not reached his
friend’s house till eleven o’clock at night. He told him the whole
story that very night. His friend had held up his hands in amazement
to think that he could still be in doubt whether he was suffering from
an obsession, and had calmed him down for the night, so that he had
slept excellently. Next morning they had gone together to the post
office, to dispatch the 3.80 crowns to ⸻, the post office at which the
packet containing the pince-nez had arrived.
It was this last statement which provided me with a starting-point
from which I could begin straightening out the various distortions
involved in his story. After his friend had brought him to his senses
he had dispatched the small sum of money in question neither to
Lieutenant A. nor to Lieutenant B., but direct to the post office. He
must therefore have known that he owed the amount of the charges due
upon the packet _to no one but the official at the post office_, and
he must have known this before he started on his journey. It turned
out that in fact he had known it before the captain made his request
and before he himself made his vow; for he now remembered that a few
hours _before_ meeting the cruel captain he had had occasion to
introduce himself to another captain, who had told him how matters
actually stood. This officer, on hearing his name, had told him that
he had been at the post office a short time before, and that the young
lady there had asked him whether he knew a Lieutenant H. (the patient,
in fact), for whom a packet had arrived, to be paid for on
delivery. The officer had replied that he did not, but the young lady
had been of opinion that she could trust the unknown lieutenant and
had said that in the meantime she would pay the charges herself. It
had been in this way that the patient had {311} come into possession
of the pince-nez he had ordered. The cruel captain had made a mistake
when, as he handed him over the packet, he had asked him to pay back
the 3.80 crowns to A., and the patient must have known it was a
mistake. In spite of this he had made a vow founded upon this mistake,
a vow that was bound to be a torment to him. In so doing he had
suppressed to himself, just as in telling the story he had suppressed
to me, the episode of the other captain and the existence of the
trusting young lady at the post office. I must admit that when this
correction has been made his behaviour becomes even more senseless and
unintelligible than before.
After he had left his friend and returned to his family his doubts had
overtaken him afresh. His friend’s arguments, he saw, had been no
different from his own, and he was under no delusion that his
temporary relief was attributable to anything more than his friend’s
personal influence. His determination to consult a doctor was woven
into his delirium[202] in the following ingenious manner. He thought
he would get a doctor to give him a certificate to the effect that it
was necessary for him, in order to recover his health, to perform some
such action as he had planned in connection with Lieutenant A.; and
the lieutenant would no doubt let himself be persuaded by the
certificate into accepting the 3.80 crowns from him. The chance that
one of my books happened to fall into his hands just at that moment
directed his choice to me. There was no question of getting a
certificate from me, however; all that he asked of me was, very
reasonably, to be freed of his obsessions. Many months later, when his
resistance was at its height, he once more felt a temptation to travel
to P⸺ after all, to look up Lieutenant A. and to go through the farce
of returning him the money.
{312}
(_d_) Initiation into the Nature of the Treatment
The reader must not expect to hear at once what light I have to throw
upon the patient’s strange and senseless obsessions about the
rats. The true technique of psycho-analysis requires the physician to
suppress his curiosity and leaves the patient complete freedom in
choosing the order in which topics shall succeed each other during the
treatment. At the fourth sitting, accordingly, I received the patient
with the question: ‘And how do you intend to proceed to-day?’
‘I have decided to tell you something which I consider most important
and which has tormented me from the very first.’ He then told me at
great length the story of the last illness of his father, who had died
of emphysema nine years previously. One evening, thinking that the
condition was one which would come to a crisis, he had asked the
doctor when the danger could be regarded as over. ‘The evening of the
day after to-morrow’, had been the reply. It had never entered his
head that his father might not survive that limit. At half-past eleven
at night he had lain down for an hour’s rest. He had woken up at one
o’clock, and had been told by a medical friend that his father had
died. He had reproached himself with not having been present at his
death; and the reproach had been intensified when the nurse told him
that his father had spoken his name once during the last days, and had
said to her as she came up to the bed: ‘Is that Paul?’ He had thought
he noticed that his mother and sisters had been inclined to reproach
themselves in a similar way; but they had never spoken about it. At
first, however, the reproach had not tormented him. For a long time he
had not realized the fact of his father’s death. It had constantly
happened that, when he heard a good joke, he would say to himself: ‘I
must tell Father that.’ His imagination, too, had been occupied with
his father, so that often, when there was a knock at the door, he
{313} would think: ‘Here comes Father’, and when he walked into a room
he would expect to find his father in it. And although he had never
forgotten that his father was dead, the prospect of seeing a ghostly
apparition of this kind had had no terrors for him; on the contrary,
he had greatly desired it. It had not been until eighteen months later
that the recollection of his neglect had recurred to him and begun to
torment him terribly, so that he had come to treat himself as a
criminal. The occasion of this happening had been the death of an aunt
by marriage and of a visit of condolence that he had paid at her
house. From that time forward he had extended the structure of his
obsessional thoughts so as to include the next world. The immediate
consequence of this development had been that he became seriously
incapacitated from working.[203] He told me that the only thing that
had kept him going at that time had been the consolation given him by
his friend, who had always brushed his self-reproaches aside on the
ground that they were grossly exaggerated. Hearing this, I took the
opportunity of giving him a first glance at the underlying principles
of psycho-analytic therapy. When there is a _mésalliance_, I began,
between an affect and its ideational content (in this instance,
between the intensity of the self-reproach and the occasion for it), a
layman will say that the affect is too great for the occasion---that
it is exaggerated---and that consequently the inference following from
the self-reproach (the inference, that is, that the patient is a
criminal) is false. On the contrary, the physician says: ‘No. The
affect is justified. The sense of guilt cannot in itself be further
criticized. But it belongs to another {314} content, which is unknown
(_unconscious_), and which requires to be looked for. The known
ideational content has only got into its actual position owing to a
mistaken association. We are not used to feeling strong affects
without their having any ideational content, and therefore, if the
content is missing, we seize as a substitute upon another content
which is in some way or other suitable, much as our police, when they
cannot catch the right murderer, arrest a wrong one instead. Moreover,
this fact of there being a mistaken association is the only way of
accounting for the powerlessness of logical processes in combating the
tormenting idea.’ I concluded by admitting that this new way of
looking at the matter gave immediate rise to some hard problems; for
how could he admit that his self-reproach of being a criminal towards
his father was justified, when he must know that as a matter of fact
he had never committed any crime against him?
At the next sitting the patient showed great interest in what I had
said, but ventured, so he told me, to bring forward a few
doubts.---How, he asked, could the information that the self-reproach,
the sense of guilt, was justified have a therapeutic effect?---I
explained that it was not the information that had this effect, but
the discovery of the unknown content to which the self-reproach was
really attached.---Yes, he said, that was the precise point to which
his question had been directed.---I then made some short observations
upon _the psychological differences between the conscious and the
unconscious_, and upon the fact that everything conscious was subject
to a process of wearing-away, while what was unconscious was
relatively unchangeable; and I illustrated my remarks by pointing to
the antiques standing about in my room. They were, in fact, I said,
only objects found in a tomb, and their burial had been their
preservation: the destruction of Pompeii was only beginning now that
it had been dug up.---Was there any guarantee, he next inquired, of
what one’s attitude would be towards what {315} was discovered? One
man, he thought, would no doubt behave in such a way as to get the
better of his self-reproach, but another would not.---No, I said, it
followed from the nature of the circumstances that in every case the
affect would for the most part be overcome during the progress of the
work itself. Every effort was made to preserve Pompeii, whereas people
were anxious to be rid of tormenting ideas like his.---He had said to
himself, he went on, that a self-reproach could only arise from a
breach of a person’s own inner moral principles and not from that of
any external ones.---I agreed, and said that the man who merely breaks
an external law often regards himself as a hero.---Such an occurrence,
he continued, was thus only possible where a _disintegration of the
personality_ was already present. Was there a possibility of his
effecting a reintegration of his personality? If this could be done,
he thought he would be able to make a success of his life, perhaps a
better one than most people.---I replied that I was in complete
agreement with this notion of a splitting of his personality. He had
only to assimilate this new contrast, between a moral self and an evil
one, with the contrast I had already mentioned, between the conscious
and the unconscious. The moral self was the conscious, the evil self
was the unconscious.[204]---He then said that, though he considered
himself a moral person, he could quite definitely remember having done
things in his _childhood_ which came from his other self.---I remarked
that here he had incidentally hit upon one of the chief
characteristics of the unconscious, namely, its relation to the
_infantile_. The unconscious, I explained, _was_ the infantile; it was
that part of the self which had become separated off from it in
infancy, which had not shared the later stages of its development, and
which had in consequence become _repressed_. It was the derivatives of
this repressed unconscious that were responsible for {316} the
involuntary thoughts which constituted his illness. He might now, I
added, discover yet another characteristic of the unconscious; it was
a discovery which I should be glad to let him make for himself.---He
found nothing more to say in this immediate connection, but instead he
expressed a doubt whether it was possible to undo modifications of
such long standing. What, in particular, could be done against his
idea about the next world, for it could not be refuted by logic?---I
told him I did not dispute the gravity of his case nor the
significance of his pathological constructions; but at the same time
his youth was very much in his favour as well as the intactness of his
personality. In this connection I said a word or two upon the good
opinion I had formed of him, and this gave him visible pleasure.
At the next sitting he began by saying that he must tell me an event
in his childhood. From the age of seven, as he had already told me, he
had had a fear that his parents guessed his thoughts, and this fear
had in fact persisted all through his life. When he was twelve years
old he had been in love with a little girl, the sister of a friend of
his. (In answer to a question he said that his love had not been
sensual; he had not wanted to see her naked for she was too small.)
But she had not shown him as much affection as he had desired. And
thereupon the idea had come to him that she would be kind to him if
some misfortune were to befall him; and as an instance of such a
misfortune his father’s death had forced itself upon his mind. He had
at once rejected the idea with energy. And even now he could not admit
the possibility that what had arisen in this way could have been a
‘wish’; it had clearly been no more than a ‘connection of
thought’.[205]---By way of objection I asked him why, if it had not
been a wish, he had repudiated it.---Merely, he replied, on account of
the {317} content of the idea, the notion that his father might
die.---I remarked that he was treating the phrase as though it were
one that involved _lèse-majesté_; it was well known, of course, that
it was equally punishable to say ‘The Emperor is an ass’ or to
disguise the forbidden words by saying ‘If any one says, etc., ...then
he will have me to reckon with.’ I added that I could easily insert
the idea which he had so energetically repudiated into a context which
would exclude the possibility of any such repudiation: for instance,
‘If my father dies, I shall kill myself upon his grave.’---He was
shaken, but did not abandon his objection. I therefore broke off the
argument with the remark that I felt sure this had not been the first
occurrence of his idea of his father’s dying; it had evidently
originated at an earlier date, and some day we should have to trace
back its history.---He then proceeded to tell me that a precisely
similar thought had flashed through his mind a second time, six months
before his father’s death. At that time[206] he had already been in
love with his lady, but financial obstacles made it impossible to
think of an alliance with her. The idea had then occurred to him that
_his father’s death might make him rich enough to marry her_. In
defending himself against this idea he had gone to the length of
wishing that his father might leave him nothing at all, so that he
might have no compensation for his terrible loss. The same idea,
though in a much milder form, had come to him for a third time, on the
day before his father’s death. He had then thought: ‘Now I may be
going to lose what I love most’; and then had come the contradiction:
‘No, there is some one else whose loss would be even more painful to
you.’[207] These thoughts surprised him very much, for he was quite
certain that his father’s death could never have been an object of his
desire but only of his fear.---After his forcible {318} enunciation of
these words I thought it advisable to bring a fresh piece of theory to
his notice. According to psycho-analytical theory, I told him, every
fear corresponded to a former wish which was now repressed; we were
therefore obliged to believe the exact contrary of what he had
asserted. This would also fit in with another theoretical requirement,
namely, that the unconscious must be the precise contrary of the
conscious.---He was much agitated at this and very incredulous. He
wondered how he could possibly have had such a wish, considering that
he loved his father more than any one else in the world; there could
be no doubt that he would have renounced all his own prospects of
happiness if by so doing he could have saved his father’s life.---I
answered that it was precisely such intense love as his that was the
condition of the repressed hatred. In the case of people to whom he
felt indifferent he would certainly have no difficulty in maintaining
side by side inclinations to a moderate liking and to an equally
moderate dislike: supposing, for instance, that he were an official,
he might think that his chief was agreeable as a superior, but at the
same time pettifogging as a lawyer and inhuman as a judge. Shakespeare
makes Brutus speak in a similar way of Julius Caesar: ‘As Caesar loved
me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was
valiant, I honour him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him.’ But these
words already strike us as rather strange, and for the very reason
that we had imagined Brutus’s feeling for Caesar as something
deeper. In the case of some one who was closer to him, of his wife for
instance, he would wish his feelings to be unmixed, and consequently,
as was only human, he would overlook her faults, since they might make
him dislike her---he would ignore them as though he were blind to
them. So it was precisely the intensity of his love that would not
allow his hatred---though to give it such a name was to caricature the
feeling---to remain conscious. To be sure, the hatred must have a
source, and to {319} discover that source was certainly a problem; his
own statements pointed to the time when he was afraid that his parents
guessed his thoughts. On the other hand, too, it might be asked why
this intense love of his had not succeeded in extinguishing his
hatred, as usually happened where there were two opposing impulses. We
could only presume that the hatred must flow from some source, must be
connected with some particular cause, which made it indestructible. On
the one hand, then, some connection of this sort must be keeping his
hatred for his father alive, while on the other hand, his intense love
prevented it from becoming conscious. Therefore nothing remained for
it but to exist in the unconscious, though it was able from time to
time to flash out for a moment into consciousness.
He admitted that all of this sounded quite plausible, but he was
naturally not in the very least convinced by it.[208] He would venture
to ask, he said, how it was that an idea of this kind could have
remissions, how it could appear for a moment when he was twelve years
old, and again when he was twenty, and then once more two years later,
this time for good. He could not believe that his hostility had been
extinguished in the intervals, and yet during them there had been no
sign of self-reproaches.---To this I replied that whenever any one
asked a question like that, he was already prepared with an answer; he
needed only to be encouraged to go on talking.---He then proceeded,
somewhat disconnectedly as it seemed, to say that he had been his
father’s best friend, and that his father had been his. Except on a
few subjects, upon which fathers and sons usually hold aloof from one
another---{320}(What could he mean by that?)---there had been a
greater intimacy between them than there now was between him and his
best friend. As regards the lady on whose account he had slighted his
father in that idea of his, it was true that he had loved her very
much, but he had never felt really sensual wishes towards her, such as
he had constantly had in his childhood. Altogether, in his childhood
his sensual impulses had been much stronger than during his
puberty.---At this I told him I thought he had now produced the answer
we were waiting for, and had at the same time discovered the third
great characteristic of the unconscious. The source from which his
hostility to his father derived its indestructibility was evidently
something in the nature of _sensual desires_, and in that connection
he must have felt his father as in some way or other an
_interference_. A conflict of this kind, I added, between sensuality
and childish love was entirely typical. The remissions he had spoken
of had occurred because the premature explosion of his sensual
feelings had had as its immediate consequence a considerable
diminution of their violence. It was not until he was once more seized
with intense erotic desires that his hostility reappeared again owing
to the revival of the old situation. I then got him to agree that I
had not led him on to the subject either of childhood or of sex, but
that he had raised them both of his own free will.---He then went on
to ask why he had not simply come to a decision, at the time he was in
love with the lady, that his father’s interference with that love
could not for a moment weigh against his love of his father.---I
replied that it was scarcely possible to destroy a person _in
absentia_. Such a decision would only have been possible if the wish
that he took objection to had made its first appearance on that
occasion; whereas, as a matter of fact, it was _a long-repressed
wish_, towards which he could not behave otherwise than he had
formerly done, and which was consequently immune from
destruction. {321} This wish (to get rid of his father as being an
interference) must have originated at a time when circumstances had
been very different---at a time, perhaps, when he had not loved his
father more than the person whom he desired sensually, or when he was
incapable of making a clear decision. It must have been in his very
early childhood, therefore, before he had reached the age of six, and
before the date at which his memory became continuous; and things must
have remained in the same state ever since.---With this piece of
construction our discussion was broken off for the time being.
At the next sitting, which was the seventh, he took up the same
subject once more. He could not believe, he said, that he had ever
entertained such a wish against his father. He remembered a story of
Sudermann’s, he went on, that had made a deep impression upon him. In
this story there was a woman who, as she sat by her sister’s sick-bed,
felt a wish that her sister should die so that she herself might marry
her husband. The woman thereupon committed suicide, thinking she was
not fit to live after being guilty of such baseness. He could
understand this, he said, and it would be only right if his thoughts
were the death of him, for he deserved nothing less.[209]---I remarked
that it was well known to us that patients derived a certain
satisfaction from their sufferings, so that in reality they all
resisted their own recovery to some extent. He must never lose sight
of the fact that a treatment like ours proceeded to the accompaniment
of a _constant resistance_; I should be repeatedly reminding him of
this fact.
He then went on to say that he would like to speak of a criminal act,
in the author of which he did not {322} recognize himself, though he
quite clearly recollected doing it. He quoted a saying of
Nietzsche’s:[210] ‘“I did this,” says my Memory. “I cannot have done
this,” says my Pride and remains inexorable. In the end---Memory
yields.’ ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘my memory has _not_ yielded on this
point.’ --- ‘That is because you derive pleasure from your reproaches
as being a means of self-punishment.’ --- ‘My younger brother---I am
really very fond of him now, and he is causing me a great deal of
worry just at present, for he wants to make what I consider a
preposterous match; I have thought before now of going and killing the
person so as to prevent his marrying her---well, my younger brother
and I used to fight a lot when we were children. We were very fond of
one another at the same time, and were inseparable; but I was plainly
filled with jealousy, as he was the stronger and better-looking of the
two and consequently the favourite.’ --- ‘Yes. You have already given
me a description of a scene of jealousy in connection with Fräulein
Lina.’ --- ‘Very well then, on some such occasion (it was certainly
before I was eight years old, for I was not going to school yet, which
I began to do when I was eight)---on some such occasion, this is what
I did. We both had toy guns of the usual make. I loaded mine with the
ramrod and told him that if he looked up the barrel he would see
something. Then, while he was looking in, I pulled the trigger. He was
hit on the forehead and not hurt; but I had meant to hurt him very
much indeed. Afterwards I was quite beside myself, and threw myself on
the ground and asked myself how ever I could have done such a
thing. But I _did_ do it.’---I took the opportunity of urging my
case. If he had preserved the recollection of an action so foreign to
him as this, he could not, I maintained, deny the possibility of
something similar, which he had now forgotten entirely, having
happened at a still earlier age in relation to his father.---He then
told me he was {323} aware of having felt other vindictive impulses,
this time towards the lady he admired so much, of whose character he
painted a glowing picture. It might be true, he said, that she could
not love easily; but she was reserving her whole self for the one man
to whom she would some day belong. She did not love him. When he had
become certain of that, a conscious phantasy had taken shape in his
mind of how he should grow very rich and marry some one else, and
should then take her to call on the lady in order to hurt her
feelings. But at that point the phantasy had broken down, for he had
been obliged to own to himself that the other woman, his wife, was
completely indifferent to him; then his thoughts had become confused,
till finally it had been clearly borne in upon him that this other
woman would have to die. In this phantasy, just as in his attempt upon
his brother, he recognized the quality of _cowardice_ which was so
particularly horrible to him.[211]---In the further course of our
conversation I pointed out to him that he ought logically to consider
himself as in no way responsible for any of these traits in his
character; for all of these reprehensible impulses originated from his
infancy, and were only derivatives of his infantile character
surviving in his unconscious; and he must know that moral
responsibility could not be applied to children. It was only by a
process of development, I added, that a man, with his moral
responsibility, grew up out of the sum of his infantile
predispositions.[212] He expressed a doubt, however, whether all his
evil impulses had originated from that source. But I promised to prove
it to him in the course of the treatment.
He went on to adduce the fact of his illness having become so
enormously intensified since his father’s death; and I said I agreed
with him in so far as I {324} regarded his sorrow at his father’s
death as the chief source of the _intensity_ of his illness. His
sorrow had found, as it were, a pathological expression in his
illness. Whereas, I told him, a normal period of mourning would last
from one to two years, a pathological one like his would last
indefinitely.
This is as much of the present case history as I am able to report in
a detailed and consecutive manner. It coincides roughly with the
expository portion of the treatment; this lasted in all for more than
eleven months.
(_e_) Some Obsessional Ideas and their Explanation
Obsessional ideas, as is well known, have an appearance of being
either without motive or without meaning, just as dreams do. The first
problem is how to give them a sense and a status in the mental life of
the individual, so as to make them comprehensible and even
obvious. The problem of translating them may seem insoluble; but we
must never let ourselves be misled by that illusion. The wildest and
most eccentric obsessional or compulsive ideas can be cleared up if
they are investigated deeply enough. The solution is effected by
bringing the obsessional ideas into temporal relationship with the
patient’s experiences, that is to say, by inquiring when a particular
obsessional idea made its first appearance and in what external
circumstances it is apt to recur. When, as so often happens, an
obsessional idea has not succeeded in establishing itself permanently,
the task of clearing it up is correspondingly simplified. We can
easily convince ourselves that, when once the interconnections between
an obsessional idea and the patient’s experiences have been
discovered, there will be no difficulty in obtaining access to
whatever else may be puzzling or worth knowing in the pathological
structure we are dealing with---its meaning, the mechanism of its
origin, and its {325} derivation from the preponderant motive forces
of the patient’s mind.
As a particularly clear example I will begin with one of the _suicidal
impulses_ which appeared so frequently in our patient. This instance
almost analysed itself in the telling. He had once, he told me, lost
some weeks of study owing to his lady’s absence: she had gone away to
nurse her grandmother, who was seriously ill. Just as he was in the
middle of a very hard piece of work the idea had occurred to him: ‘If
you received a command to take your examination this term at the first
possible opportunity, you might manage to obey it. But if you were
commanded to cut your throat with a razor, what then?’ He had at once
become aware that this command had already been given, and was
hurrying to the cupboard to fetch his razor when he thought: ‘No, it’s
not so simple as that. You must[213] go and kill the old woman.’ Upon
that, he had fallen to the ground, beside himself with horror.
In this instance the connection between the compulsive idea and the
patient’s life is contained in the opening words of his story. His
lady was absent, while he was working very hard for an examination so
as to bring the possibility of an alliance with her nearer. While he
was working he was overcome by a longing for his absent lady, and he
thought of the cause of her absence. And now there came over him
something which, if he had been a normal man, would probably have been
some kind of feeling of annoyance against her grandmother: ‘Why must
the old woman get ill just at the very moment when I’m longing for
_her_ so frightfully?’ We must suppose that something similar but far
more intense passed through our patient’s mind---an unconscious fit of
rage which could combine with his longing and find expression in the
exclamation: ‘Oh, I should like to go and kill {326} that old woman
for robbing me of my love!’ Thereupon followed the command: ‘Kill
yourself, as a punishment for these savage and murderous passions!’
The whole process then passed into the obsessional patient’s
consciousness accompanied by the most violent affect and _in a reverse
order_---the punitive command coming first, and the mention of the
guilty outburst afterwards. I cannot think that this attempt at an
explanation will seem forced or that it involves many hypothetical
elements.
Another impulse, which might be described as indirectly suicidal and
which was of longer duration, was not so easily explicable. For its
relation to the patient’s experiences succeeded in concealing itself
behind one of those purely external associations which are so
repellent to our consciousness. One day while he was away on his
summer holidays the idea suddenly occurred to him that he was too fat
[German ‘_dick_’] and that he must _make himself thinner_. So he began
getting up from table before the pudding came round and tearing along
the road without a hat in the blazing heat of an August sun. Then he
would dash up a mountain at the double, till, dripping with
perspiration, he was forced to come to a stop. On one occasion his
suicidal intentions actually emerged without any disguise from behind
this mania for getting thinner: as he was standing on the edge of a
steep precipice he suddenly received a command to jump over, which
would have been certain death. Our patient could think of no
explanation of this senseless obsessional behaviour until it suddenly
occurred to him that at that time his lady had also been stopping at
the same resort; but she had been in the company of an English cousin,
who was very attentive to her and of whom the patient had been very
jealous. This cousin’s name was Richard, and, according to the usual
practice in England, he was known as _Dick_. Our patient, then, had
wanted to kill this Dick; he had been far more jealous of him and
enraged with him than he could {327} admit to himself, and that was
why he had imposed on himself this course of banting by way of a
punishment. This obsessional impulse may seem very different from the
directly suicidal command which was discussed above, but they have
nevertheless one important feature in common. For they both arose as
reactions to a tremendous feeling of rage, which was inaccessible to
the patient’s consciousness and was directed against some one who had
cropped up as an interference with the course of his love.[214]
Some other of the patient’s obsessions, however, though they too were
centred upon his lady, exhibited a different mechanism and owed their
origin to a different instinct. Besides his banting mania he produced
a whole series of other obsessional activities at the period during
which the lady was stopping at his summer resort; and, in part at
least, these directly related to her. One day, when he was out with
her in a boat and there was a stiff breeze blowing, he was obliged to
make her put on his cap, because a command had been formulated in his
mind that _nothing must happen to her_.[215] This was a kind of
_obsession for protecting_, and it bore other fruit besides
this. Another time, as they were sitting together during a
thunderstorm, he was obsessed, he could not tell why, with the
necessity _for counting_ up to forty or fifty between each flash of
lightning and its accompanying thunder-clap. On the day of her
departure he knocked his foot against a stone lying in the road, and
was _obliged_ to put it out of the way by the side of the road,
because the idea {328} struck him that her carriage would be driving
along the same road in a few hours’ time and might come to grief
against this stone. But a few minutes later it occurred to him that
this was absurd, and he was _obliged_ to go back and replace the stone
in its original position in the middle of the road. After her
departure he became a prey to an _obsession for understanding_, which
made him a curse to all his companions. He forced himself to
understand the precise meaning of every syllable that was addressed to
him, as though he might otherwise be missing some priceless
treasure. Accordingly he kept asking: ‘What was it you said just
then?’ And after it had been repeated to him he could not help
thinking it had sounded different the first time, so he remained
dissatisfied.
All of these products of his illness depended upon a certain
circumstance which at that time dominated his relations to his
lady. When he had been taking leave of her in Vienna before the summer
holidays, she had said something which he had construed into a desire
on her part to disown him before the rest of the company; and this had
made him very unhappy. During her stay at the holiday resort there had
been an opportunity for discussing the question, and the lady had been
able to prove to him that these words of hers which he had
misunderstood had on the contrary been intended to save him from being
laughed at. This made him very happy again. The clearest allusion to
this incident was contained in the obsession for understanding. It was
constructed as though he were saying to himself: ‘After such an
experience you must never misunderstand any one again, if you want to
spare yourself unnecessary pain.’ This resolution was not merely a
generalization from a single occasion, but it was also
displaced---perhaps on account of the lady’s absence---from a single
highly valued individual on to all the remaining inferior ones. And
the obsession cannot have arisen solely from his satisfaction at the
explanation she had given him; it must have {329} expressed something
else besides, for it ended in an unsatisfying doubt as to whether what
he had heard had been correctly repeated.
The other compulsive commands that have been mentioned put us upon the
track of this other element. His obsession for protecting can only
have been a reaction---as an expression of remorse and penitence---to
a contrary, that is a hostile, impulse which he must have felt towards
his lady before they had their _éclaircissement_. His obsession for
counting during the thunderstorm can be interpreted, with the help of
some material which he produced, as having been a defensive measure
against fears that some one was in danger of death. The analysis of
the obsessions which we first considered has already warned us to
regard our patient’s hostile impulses as particularly violent and as
being in the nature of senseless rage; and now we find that even after
their reconciliation his rage against the lady continued to play a
part in the formation of his obsessions. His doubting mania as to
whether he had heard correctly was an expression of the doubt still
lurking in his mind as to whether he had really understood his lady
correctly this time and as to whether he had been justified in taking
her words as a proof of her affection for him. The doubt implied in
his obsession for understanding was a doubt of her love. A battle
between love and hate was raging in the lover’s breast, and the object
of both these feelings was one and the same person. The battle was
represented in a plastic form by his compulsive and symbolic act of
removing the stone from the road along which she was to drive, and
then of undoing this deed of love by replacing the stone where it had
lain, so that her carriage might come to grief against it and she
herself be hurt. We shall not be forming a correct judgement of this
second part of the compulsive act if we take it at its face value as
having merely been a critical repudiation of a pathological
action. The fact that it was accompanied by a sense of compulsion
betrays it {330} as having itself been a part of the pathological
action, though a part which was determined by a motive contrary to
that which produced the first part.
Compulsive acts like this, in two successive stages, of which the
second neutralizes the first, are a typical occurrence in obsessional
neuroses. The patient’s consciousness naturally misunderstands them
and puts forward a set of secondary motives to account for
them---_rationalizes_ them, in short.[216] But their true significance
lies in their being a representation of a conflict between two
opposing impulses of approximately equal strength: and hitherto I have
invariably found that this opposition has been one between love and
hate. Compulsive acts of this sort are theoretically of special
interest, for they show us a new type of symptom-formation. What
regularly occurs in hysteria is that a compromise is arrived at which
enables both the opposing tendencies to find expression
simultaneously---which kills two birds with one stone;[217] whereas
here each of the two opposing tendencies finds satisfaction singly,
first one and then the other, though naturally an attempt is made to
establish some sort of logical connection (often in defiance of all
logic) between the antagonists.[218]
The conflict between love and hatred showed itself in our patient by
other signs as well. At the time of {331} the revival of his piety he
used to make up prayers for himself, which took up more and more time
and eventually lasted for an hour and a half. The reason for this was
that he found, like an inverted Balaam, that something always inserted
itself into his pious phrases and turned them into their opposite. For
instance, if he said, ‘May God protect him’, an evil spirit would
hurriedly insinuate a ‘not’.[219] On one such occasion the idea
occurred to him of cursing instead, for in that case, he thought, the
contrary words would be sure to creep in. His original intention,
which had been repressed by his praying, was forcing its way through
in this last idea of his. In the end he found his way out of his
embarrassment by giving up the prayers and replacing them by a short
formula concocted out of the initial letters or syllables of various
prayers. He then recited this formula so quickly that nothing could
slip into it.
He once brought me a dream which represented the same conflict in
relation to his transference on to the physician. He dreamed that my
mother was dead; he was anxious to offer me his condolences, but was
afraid that in doing so he might break into _an impertinent laugh_, as
he had repeatedly done on similar occasions in the past. He preferred,
therefore, to leave a card on me with ‘p.c.’ written on it; but as he
was writing them the letters turned into ‘p.f.’[220]
The mutual antagonism between his feelings for his lady was too marked
to have escaped his conscious perception entirely, although we may
conclude from the obsessions in which it was manifested that he did
not rightly appreciate the depth of his negative impulses. The lady
had refused his first proposal, ten years earlier. Since then he had
to his own knowledge {332} passed through alternating periods, in
which he either believed that he loved her intensely, or felt
indifferent to her. Whenever in the course of the treatment he was
faced by the necessity of taking some step which would bring him
nearer the successful end of his courtship, his resistance usually
began by taking the form of a conviction that after all he did not
very much care for her---though this resistance, it is true, used soon
to break down. Once when she was lying seriously ill in bed and he was
most deeply concerned about her, there crossed his mind as he looked
at her a wish that she might lie like that for ever. He explained this
idea by an ingenious piece of sophistry: maintaining that he had only
wished her to be permanently ill so that he might be relieved of his
intolerable fear that she would have a repeated succession of
attacks![221] Now and then he used to occupy his imagination with
day-dreams, which he himself recognized as ‘phantasies of revenge’ and
felt ashamed of. Believing, for instance, that the lady set great
store by the social standing of a suitor, he made up a phantasy in
which she was married to a man of that kind, who was in some
government office. He himself then entered the same department, and
rose much more rapidly than her husband, who eventually became his
subordinate. One day, his phantasy proceeded, this man committed some
act of dishonesty. The lady threw herself at his feet and implored him
to save her husband. He promised to do so; but at the same time
informed her that it had only been for love of her that he had entered
the service, because he had foreseen that such a moment would occur;
and now that her husband was saved, his own mission was fulfilled and
he would resign his post.
He produced other phantasies in which he did the lady some great
service without her knowing that it {333} was he who was doing it. In
these he only recognized his affection, without sufficiently
appreciating the origin and aim of his magnanimity, which was designed
to repress his thirst for revenge, after the manner of Dumas’ Count of
Monte-Cristo. Moreover he admitted that occasionally he was overcome
by quite distinct impulses to do some mischief to the lady he
admired. These impulses were mostly in abeyance when she was there,
and only appeared in her absence.
(_f_) The Exciting Cause of the Illness
One day the patient mentioned quite casually an event which I could
not fail to recognize as the exciting cause of his illness, or at
least as the immediate occasion of the attack which had begun some six
years previously and had persisted to that day. He himself had no
notion that he had brought forward anything of importance; he could
not remember that he had ever attached any importance to the event;
and moreover he had never forgotten it. Such an attitude on his part
calls for some theoretical consideration.
In hysteria it is the rule that the exciting causes of the illness are
overtaken by amnesia no less than the infantile experiences by whose
help the exciting causes are able to transform their affective energy
into symptoms. And where the amnesia cannot be complete, it
nevertheless subjects the recent traumatic exciting cause to a process
of erosion and robs it at least of its most important components. In
this amnesia we see the evidence of the repression which has taken
place. The case is different in obsessional neuroses. The infantile
preconditions of the neurosis may be overtaken by amnesia, though this
is often an incomplete one; but the immediate occasions of the illness
are, on the contrary, retained in the memory. Repression makes use of
another, and in reality a simpler, mechanism. The trauma, instead of
being {334} forgotten, is deprived of its affective cathexis;[222] so
that what remains in consciousness is nothing but its ideational
content, which is perfectly colourless and is judged to be
unimportant. The distinction between what occurs in hysteria and in an
obsessional neurosis lies in the psychological processes which we can
reconstruct behind the phenomena; the _result_ is almost always the
same, for the colourless mnemonic content is rarely reproduced and
plays no part in the patient’s mental activity. In order to
differentiate between the two kinds of repression we have on the
surface nothing to rely upon but the patient’s assurance that he has a
feeling in the one case of having always known the thing and in the
other of having long ago forgotten it.[223]
For this reason it not uncommonly happens that obsessional neurotics,
who are troubled with self-reproaches but have connected their affects
with the wrong causes, will also tell the physician the true causes,
without any suspicion that their self-reproaches have simply become
detached from them. In relating such an incident they will sometimes
add with astonishment or even with an air of pride: ‘But I think
nothing of that.’ This happened in the first case of obsessional
neurosis which gave me an insight many years ago into the nature of
the malady. The patient, who was a government official, was troubled
by innumerable scruples. He was the man whose compulsive act in
connection with the branch in the park at Schönbrunn I have already
described. I was struck by the fact that the florin notes with which
he paid his consultation {335} fees were invariably clean and
smooth. (This was before we had a silver coinage in Austria.) I once
remarked to him that one could always tell a government official by
the brand-new florins that he drew from the State treasury, and he
then informed me that his florins were by no means new, but that he
had them ironed out at home. It was a matter of conscience with him,
he explained, not to hand any one dirty paper florins; for they
harboured all sorts of dangerous bacteria and might do some harm to
the recipient. At that time I already had a vague suspicion of the
connection between neuroses and sexual life, so on another occasion I
ventured to ask the patient how he stood in regard to that
matter. ‘Oh, that’s quite all right,’ he answered airily, ‘I’m not at
all badly off in that respect. I play the part of a dear old uncle in
a number of respectable families, and now and then I make use of my
position to invite some young girl to go out with me for a day’s
excursion in the country. Then I arrange that we shall miss the train
home and be obliged to spend the night out of town. I always engage
two rooms---I do things most handsomely; but when the girl has gone to
bed I go in to her and masturbate her with my fingers.’---‘But aren’t
you afraid of doing her some harm, fiddling about in her genitals with
your dirty hand?’---At this he flared up: ‘Harm? Why, what harm should
it do her? It hasn’t done a single one of them any harm yet, and
they’ve all of them enjoyed it. Some of them are married now, and it
hasn’t done them any harm at all.’---He took my remonstrance in very
bad part, and never appeared again. But I could only account for the
contrast between his fastidiousness with the paper florins and his
unscrupulousness in abusing the girls entrusted to him by supposing
that the self-reproachful affect had become _displaced_. The aim of
this displacement was obvious enough: if his self-reproaches had been
allowed to remain where they belonged he would have had to abandon a
form of sexual gratification to which {336} he was probably impelled
by some powerful infantile determinants. The displacement therefore
ensured his deriving a considerable advantage from his illness
[_paranosic gain_].
But I must now return to a more detailed examination of the exciting
cause of our patient’s illness. His mother had been brought up in a
wealthy family with which she was distantly connected. This family
carried on a large industrial concern. His father, at the time of his
marriage, had been taken into the business, and had thus by his
marriage made himself a fairly comfortable position. The patient had
learnt from some chaff exchanged between his parents (whose marriage
was an extremely happy one) that his father, some time before making
his mother’s acquaintance, had made advances to a pretty but penniless
girl of humble birth. So much by way of introduction. After his
father’s death the patient’s mother told him one day that she had been
discussing his future with her rich relations, and that one of her
cousins had declared himself ready to let him marry one of his
daughters when his education was completed; a business connection with
the firm would offer him a brilliant opening in his profession. This
family plan stirred up in him a conflict as to whether he should
remain faithful to the lady he loved in spite of her poverty, or
whether he should follow in his father’s footsteps and marry the
lovely, rich, and well-connected girl who had been assigned to
him. And he resolved this conflict, which was in fact one between his
love and the persisting influence of his father’s wishes, by falling
ill; or, to put it more correctly, by falling ill he avoided the task
of resolving it in real life.[224]
The proof that this view was correct lies in the fact that the chief
result of his illness was an obstinate incapacity for work, which
allowed him to postpone {337} the completion of his education for
years. But the results of such an illness are never unintentional;
what appears to be the consequence of the illness is in reality the
cause or motive of falling ill.
As was to be expected, the patient did not, to begin with, accept my
elucidation of the matter. He could not imagine, he said, that the
plan of marriage could have had any such effects: it had not made the
slightest impression on him at the time. But in the further course of
treatment he was forcibly brought to believe in the truth of my
suspicion, and in a most singular manner. With the help of a
transference phantasy, he experienced, as though it were new and
belonged to the present, the very episode from the past which he had
forgotten, or which had only passed through his mind
unconsciously. There came an obscure and difficult period in the
treatment; eventually it turned out that he had once met a young girl
on the stairs in my house and had on the spot promoted her into being
my daughter. She had pleased him, and he pictured to himself that the
only reason I was so kind and incredibly patient with him was that I
wanted to have him for a son-in-law. At the same time he raised the
wealth and position of my family to a level which agreed with the
model he had in mind. But his undying love for his lady fought against
the temptation. After we had gone through a series of the severest
resistances and bitterest vituperations on his part, he could no
longer remain blind to the overwhelming effect of the perfect analogy
between the transference phantasy and the actual state of affairs in
the past. I will repeat one of the dreams which he had at this period,
so as to give an example of his manner of treating the subject. He
dreamed that _he saw my daughter in front of him with two patches of
dung instead of eyes_. No one who understands the language of dreams
will find much difficulty in translating this one: it declared that
_he was marrying my daughter not for her ‘beaux yeux’ but for her
money_.
{338}
(_g_) The Father Complex and the Solution of the Rat Idea
From the exciting cause of the patient’s illness in his adult years
there was a thread leading back to his childhood. He had found himself
in a situation similar to that in which, as he knew or suspected, his
father had been before _his_ marriage; and he had thus been able to
identify himself with his father. But his dead father was involved in
his recent attack in yet another way. The conflict at the root of his
illness was in essentials a struggle between the persisting influence
of his father’s wishes and his own amatory predilections. If we take
into consideration what the patient reported in the course of the
first hours of his treatment, we shall not be able to avoid a
suspicion that this struggle was a very ancient one and had arisen as
far back as in his childhood.
By all accounts our patient’s father was a most excellent man. Before
his marriage he had been a non-commissioned officer, and, as relics of
that period of his life, he had retained a straightforward soldierly
manner and a _penchant_ for using downright language. Apart from those
virtues which are celebrated upon every tombstone, he was
distinguished by a hearty sense of humour and a kindly tolerance
towards his fellow-men. That he could be hasty and violent was
certainly not inconsistent with his other qualities, but was rather a
necessary complement to them; but it occasionally brought down the
most severe castigations upon the children, while they were young and
naughty. When they grew up, however, he differed from other fathers in
not attempting to exalt himself into a sacrosanct authority, but in
sharing with them a knowledge of the little failures and misfortunes
of his life with good-natured candour. His son was certainly not
exaggerating when he declared that they had lived together like the
best of friends, except upon a single point (see p. 320). And it must
no doubt have been in {339} connection with that very point that
thoughts about his father’s death had occupied his mind when he was a
small boy with unusual and undue intensity (see p. 300), and that
those thoughts made their appearance in the wording of the obsessional
ideas of his childhood; and it can only have been in that same
connection that he was able to wish for his father’s death, in order
that a certain little girl’s sympathy might be aroused and that she
might become kinder towards him (see p. 316).
There can be no question that there was something in the sphere of
sexuality that stood between the father and son, and that the father
had come into some sort of opposition to the son’s prematurely
developed erotic life. Several years after his father’s death, the
first time he experienced the pleasurable sensations of copulation, an
idea sprang into his mind: ‘This is glorious! One might murder one’s
father for this!’ This was at once an echo and an elucidation of the
obsessional ideas of his childhood. Moreover, his father, shortly
before his death, had directly opposed what later became our patient’s
dominating passion. He had noticed that his son was always in the
lady’s company, and had advised him to keep away from her, saying that
it was imprudent of him and that he would only make a fool of himself.
To this unimpeachable body of evidence we shall be able to add fresh
material, if we turn to the history of the onanistic side of our
patient’s sexual activities. There is a conflict between the opinions
of doctors and patients on this subject which has not hitherto been
properly appreciated. The patients are unanimous in their belief that
onanism, by which they mean masturbation during puberty, is the root
and origin of all their troubles. The doctors are, upon the whole,
unable to decide what line to take; but, influenced by the knowledge
that not only neurotics but most normal persons pass through a period
of onanism during their puberty, the majority of them are inclined to
dismiss the patients’ assertions as gross exaggerations. {340} In my
opinion the patients are once again nearer to a correct view than the
doctors; for the patients have some glimmering notion of the truth,
while the doctors are in danger of overlooking an essential point. The
thesis propounded by the patients certainly does not correspond to the
facts in the sense in which they themselves construe it, namely, that
onanism during puberty (which may almost be described as a typical
occurrence) is responsible for all neurotic disturbances. Their thesis
requires interpretation. The onanism of puberty is in fact no more
than a revival of the onanism of infancy, a subject which has hitherto
invariably been neglected. Infantile onanism reaches a kind of climax,
as a rule, between the ages of three and four or five; and it is the
clearest expression of a child’s sexual constitution, in which the
aetiology of subsequent neuroses must be sought. In this disguised
way, therefore, the patients are putting the blame for their illnesses
upon their infantile sexuality; and they are perfectly right in doing
so. On the other hand, the problem of onanism becomes insoluble if we
attempt to treat it as a clinical unit, and forget that it can
represent the discharge of every variety of sexual component and of
every sort of phantasy to which such components can give rise. The
injurious effects of onanism are only in a very small degree
autonomous---that is to say, determined by its own nature. They are in
substance merely part and parcel of the pathogenic significance of the
sexual life as a whole. The fact that so many people can tolerate
onanism---that is, a certain amount of it---without injury merely
shows that their sexual constitution and the course of development of
their sexual life have been such as to allow them to exercise the
sexual function within the limits of what is culturally
permissible;[225] whereas other people, because their sexual
constitution has been less favourable or their development has been
disturbed, fall ill as a result of {341} their sexuality,---they
cannot, that is, achieve the necessary suppression or sublimation of
their sexual components without having recourse to inhibitions or
substitute-formations.
Our present patient’s behaviour in the matter of onanism was most
remarkable. He did not indulge in it during puberty to any extent
worth mentioning, and therefore, according to one set of views, he
might have expected to be exempt from neurosis. On the other hand, an
impulsion towards onanistic practices came over him in his
twenty-first year, _shortly after his father’s death_. He felt very
much ashamed of himself each time he gave way to this kind of
gratification, and soon foreswore the habit. From that time onwards it
reappeared only upon rare and extraordinary occasions. It was
provoked, he told me, when he experienced especially fine moments, or
when he read especially fine passages. It occurred once, for instance,
on a lovely summer’s afternoon when, in the middle of Vienna, he heard
a postilion blowing his horn in the most wonderful way, until a
policeman stopped him, because blowing horns is not allowed in the
centre of the town. And another time it happened, when he read in
_Dichtung und Wahrheit_ how the young Goethe had freed himself in a
burst of tenderness from the effects of a curse which a jealous
mistress had pronounced upon the next woman who should kiss his lips
after her; he had long, almost superstitiously, suffered the curse to
hold him back, but now he broke his bonds and kissed his love joyfully
again and again.
It seemed to the patient not a little strange that he should be
impelled to masturbate precisely upon such beautiful and uplifting
occasions as these. But I could not help pointing out that these two
occasions had something in common---a prohibition, and the defiance of
a command.
We must also consider in the same connection his curious behaviour at
a time when he was working for an examination and toying with his
favourite phantasy {342} that his father was still alive and might at
any moment reappear. He used to arrange that his working hours should
be as late as possible in the night. Between twelve and one o’clock at
night he would interrupt his work, and open the front door of the flat
as though his father were standing outside it; then, coming back into
the hall, he would take out his penis and look at it in the
looking-glass. This crazy conduct becomes intelligible if we suppose
that he was acting as though he expected a visit from his father at
the hour when ghosts are abroad. He had on the whole been idle at his
work during his father’s lifetime, and this had often been a cause of
annoyance to his father. And now that he was returning as a ghost, he
was to be delighted at finding his son hard at work. But it was
impossible that his father should be delighted at the other part of
his behaviour; in this therefore he must be defying him. Thus, in a
single unintelligible obsessional act, he gave expression to the two
sides of his relation with his father, just as he did subsequently
with regard to his lady by means of his obsessional act with the
stone.
Starting from these indications and from other data of a similar kind,
I ventured to put forward a construction to the effect that when he
was a child of under six he had been guilty of some sexual
misdemeanour connected with onanism and had been soundly castigated
for it by his father. This punishment, according to my hypothesis,
had, it was true, put an end to his onanism, but on the other hand it
had left behind it an ineradicable grudge against his father and had
established him for all time in his rôle of an interferer with the
patient’s sexual enjoyment.[226] To my great astonishment the patient
then informed me that his mother had repeatedly described to him an
occurrence of this kind which dated from his earliest childhood and
had evidently escaped being forgotten by her on account of its
remarkable consequences. He himself, {343} however, had no
recollection of it whatever. The tale was as follows. When he was very
small---it became possible to establish the date more exactly owing to
its having coincided with the fatal illness of an elder sister---he
had done something naughty, for which his father had given him a
beating. The little boy had flown into a terrible rage and had hurled
abuse at his father even while he was under his blows. But as he knew
no bad language, he had called him all the names of common objects
that he could think of, and had screamed: ‘You lamp! You towel! You
plate!’ and so on. His father, shaken by such an outburst of elemental
fury, had stopped beating him, and had declared: ‘The child will be
either a great man or a great criminal!’[227] The patient believed
that the scene made a permanent impression upon himself as well as
upon his father. His father, he said, never beat him again; and he
also attributed to this experience a part of the change which came
over his own character. From that time forward he was a coward---out
of fear of the violence of his own rage. His whole life long,
moreover, he was terribly afraid of blows, and used to creep away and
hide, filled with terror and indignation, when one of his brothers or
sisters was beaten.
The patient subsequently questioned his mother again. She confirmed
the story, adding that at the time he had been between three and four
years old and that he had been given the punishment because he had
_bitten_ some one. She could remember no further details, except for a
very uncertain idea that the person the little boy had hurt might have
been his nurse. In her account there was no suggestion of his misdeed
having been of a sexual nature.[228]
{344}
A discussion of this childhood scene will be found in a footnote, and
here I will only remark that its {345} emergence shook the patient for
the first time in his refusal to believe that at some prehistoric
period in his childhood he had been seized with fury (which had
subsequently become latent) against the father whom he loved so
much. I must confess that I had expected it to have a greater effect,
for the incident had been described to him so often---even by his
father himself---that there could be no doubt of its objective
reality. But, with that capacity for being illogical which never fails
to bewilder one in such highly intelligent people as obsessional
neurotics, he kept urging against the evidential value of the story
the fact that he himself could not remember the scene. And so it was
only along the painful road of transference that he was able to reach
a conviction that his relation to his father really necessitated the
postulation of this unconscious complement. Things soon reached a
point at which, in his dreams, his waking phantasies, and his
associations, {346} he began heaping the grossest and filthiest abuse
upon me and my family, though in his deliberate actions he never
treated me with anything but the greatest respect. His demeanour as he
repeated these insults to me was that of a man in despair. ‘How can a
gentleman like you, sir,’ he used to ask, ‘let yourself be abused in
this way by a low, good-for-nothing wretch like me? You ought to turn
me out: that’s all I deserve.’ While he talked like this, he would get
up from the sofa and roam about the room,---a habit which he explained
at first as being due to delicacy of feeling: he could not bring
himself, he said, to utter such horrible things while he was lying
there so comfortably. But soon he himself found a more cogent
explanation, namely, that he was avoiding my proximity for fear of my
giving him a beating. If he stayed on the sofa he behaved like some
one in desperate terror trying to save himself from castigations of
boundless dimensions; he would bury his head in his hands, cover his
face with his arm, jump up suddenly and rush away, his features
distorted with pain, and so on. He recalled that his father had had a
passionate temper, and sometimes in his violence had not known where
to stop. Thus, little by little, in this school of suffering, the
patient won the sense of conviction which he had lacked---though to
any disinterested mind the truth would have been almost
self-evident. And now the path was clear to the solution of his rat
idea. The treatment had reached its turning-point, and a quantity of
material information which had hitherto been withheld became
available, and so made possible a reconstruction of the whole
concatenation of events.
In my description I shall, as I have already said, content myself with
the briefest possible summary of the circumstances. Obviously the
first problem to be solved was why the two speeches of the Czech
captain---his rat story, and his request to the patient that he should
pay back the money to Lieutenant A.---should {347} have had such an
agitating effect on him and should have provoked such violently
pathological reactions. The presumption was that it was a question of
‘complexive sensitiveness’, and that the speeches had jarred upon
certain hyperaesthetic spots in his unconscious. And so it proved to
be. As always happened with the patient in connection with military
matters, he had been in a state of unconscious identification with his
father, who had seen many years’ service and had been full of stories
of his soldiering days. Now it happened by chance---for chance may
play a part in the formation of a symptom, just as the wording may
help in the making of a joke---that one of his father’s little
adventures had an important element in common with the captain’s
request. His father, in his capacity as non-commissioned officer, had
control over a small sum of money and had on one occasion lost it at
cards. (Thus he had been a ‘_Spielratte_’[229]). He would have found
himself in a serious position if one of his comrades had not advanced
him the amount. After he had left the army and become well-off, he had
tried to find this friend in need so as to pay him back the money, but
had not managed to trace him. The patient was uncertain whether he had
ever succeeded in returning the money. The recollection of this sin of
his father’s youth was painful to him, for, in spite of appearances,
his unconscious was filled with hostile strictures upon his father’s
character. The captain’s words, ‘You must pay back the 3.80 crowns to
Lieutenant A.’, had sounded to his ears like an allusion to this
unpaid debt of his father’s.
But the information that the young lady at the post office at Z⸺ had
herself paid the charges due upon the packet, with a complimentary
remark about himself,[230] had intensified his identification with his
{348} father in quite another direction. At this stage in the analysis
he brought out some new information, to the effect that the landlord
of the inn at the little place where the post office was had had a
pretty daughter. She had been decidedly encouraging to the smart young
officer, so that he had thought of returning there after the manœuvres
were over and of trying his luck with her. Now, however, she had a
rival in the shape of the young lady at the post office. Like his
father in the tale of his marriage, he could afford now to hesitate
upon which of the two he should bestow his favours when he had
finished his military service. We can see at once that his singular
indecision whether he should travel to Vienna or go back to the place
where the post office was, and the constant temptation he felt to turn
back while he was on the journey (see p. 309), were not so senseless
as they seemed to us at first. To his conscious mind, the attraction
exercised upon him by Z⸺, the place where the post office was, was
explained by the necessity for seeing Lieutenant A. and fulfilling the
vow with his assistance. But in reality what was attracting him was
the young lady at the post office, and the lieutenant was merely a
good substitute for her, since he lived at the same place and had
himself been in charge of the military postal service. And when
subsequently he heard that it was not Lieutenant A. but another
officer, B., who had been on duty at the post office that day, he drew
him into his combination as well; and he was then able to reproduce in
his deliria[231] in connection with the two officers the hesitation he
felt between the two girls who were so kindly disposed towards
him.[232]
{349}
[Illustration: Fig. 5. --- see images/fig5.png]
In elucidating the effects produced by the captain’s rat story we must
follow the course of the analysis more closely. The patient began by
producing an enormous mass of associative material, which at first,
however, threw no light upon the circumstances in which the formation
of his obsession had taken place. The idea of the punishment carried
out by means of rats had acted as a stimulus to a number of his
instincts and had called up a whole quantity of recollections; so
that, in the short interval between the captain’s story and his
request to him to pay back the money, rats had acquired a series of
symbolical meanings, to which, during the period which followed, fresh
ones were continually being added. I must confess that I {350} can
only give a very incomplete account of the whole business. What the
rat punishment stirred up more than anything else was his _anal
erotism_, which had played an important part in his childhood and had
been kept in activity for many years by a constant irritation due to
worms. In this way rats came to have the meaning of ‘_money_’.[233]
The patient gave an indication of this connection by reacting to the
word ‘_Ratten_’ [‘rats’] with the association ‘_Raten_’
[‘instalments’]. In his obsessional deliria he had coined himself a
regular rat currency. When, for instance, in reply to a question, I
told him the amount of my fee for an hour’s treatment, he said to
himself (as I learned six months later), ‘So many florins, so many
rats’. Little by little he translated into this language the whole
complex of money interests which centred round his father’s legacy to
him; that is to say, all his ideas connected with that subject were,
by way of the verbal bridge ‘_Raten---Ratten_’, carried over into his
obsessional life and became subjected to his unconscious. Moreover,
the captain’s request to him to pay back the charges due upon the
packet served to strengthen the money significance of rats, by way of
another verbal bridge ‘_Spielratte_’, which led back to his father’s
gambling debt.
But the patient was also familiar with the fact that rats are carriers
of dangerous infectious diseases; he could therefore employ them as
symbols of his dread (justifiable enough in the army) of _syphilitic
infection_. This dread concealed all sorts of doubts as to the kind of
life his father had led during his term of military service. Again, in
another sense, the _penis_ itself is a carrier of syphilitic
infection; and in this way he could consider the rat as a male organ
of sex. It had a further title to be so regarded; for a penis
(especially a child’s penis) can easily be compared to a _worm_, and
the captain’s story had been about rats burrowing in {351} some one’s
anus, just as the large round-worms had in his when he was a
child. Thus the penis significance of rats was based, once more, upon
anal erotism. And apart from this, the rat is a dirty animal, feeding
upon excrement and living in sewers.[234] It is perhaps unnecessary to
point out how great an extension of the rat delirium became possible
owing to this new meaning. For instance, ‘So many rats, so many
florins’, could serve as an excellent characterization of a certain
female profession which he particularly detested. On the other hand,
it is certainly not a matter of indifference that the substitution of
a penis for a rat in the captain’s story resulted in a situation of
intercourse _per anum_, which could not fail to be especially
revolting to him when brought into connection with his father and the
woman he loved. And when we consider that the same situation was
reproduced in the compulsive threat which had formed in his mind after
the captain had made his request, we shall be forcibly reminded of
certain curses in use among the Southern Slavs.[235] Moreover, all of
this material, and more besides, was woven into the fabric of the rat
discussions behind the screen-association ‘_heiraten_’ [‘to marry’].
The story of the rat punishment, as was shown by the patient’s own
account of the matter and by his facial expression as he repeated the
story to me, had fanned into a flame all of his prematurely suppressed
impulses of cruelty, egoistic and sexual alike. Yet, in spite of all
this wealth of material, no light was thrown upon the meaning of his
obsessional idea until one day the Rat-Wife in Ibsen’s _Little Eyolf_
came up in the analysis, and it became impossible to escape the
inference that in many of the shapes assumed by his obsessional
deliria rats had another meaning still---namely, {352} that of
_children_.[236] Inquiry into the origin of this new meaning at once
brought me up against some of the earliest and most important
roots. Once when the patient was visiting his father’s grave he had
seen a big beast, which he had taken to be a rat, gliding along over
the grave.[237] He assumed that it had actually come out of his
father’s grave, and had just been having a meal off his corpse. The
notion of a rat is inseparably bound up with the fact that it has
sharp teeth with which it gnaws and bites.[238] But rats cannot be
sharp-toothed, greedy and dirty with impunity: they are cruelly
persecuted and mercilessly put to death by man, as the patient had
often observed with horror. He had often pitied the poor
creatures. But he himself had been just such a nasty, dirty little
wretch, who was apt to bite people when he was in a rage, and had been
fearfully punished for doing so (see p. 343). He could truly be said
to find ‘a living likeness of himself’ in the rat.[239] It was almost
as {353} though Fate, when the captain told him his story, had been
putting him through an association test: she had called out a ‘complex
stimulus-word’, and he had reacted to it with his obsessional idea.
According, then, to his earliest and most momentous experiences, rats
were children. And at this point he brought out a piece of information
which he had kept away from its context long enough, but which now
fully explained the interest he was bound to feel in children. The
lady, whose admirer he had been for so many years, but whom he had
nevertheless not been able to make up his mind to marry, was condemned
to childlessness by reason of a gynaecological operation which had
involved the removal of both ovaries. This indeed---for he was
extraordinarily fond of children---had been the chief reason for his
hesitation.
It was only then that it became possible to understand the
inexplicable process by which his obsessional idea had been
formed. With the assistance of our knowledge of infantile sexual
theories and of symbolism (as learnt from the interpretation of
dreams) the whole thing could be translated and given a meaning. When,
during the afternoon halt (upon which he had lost his pince-nez), the
captain had told him about the rat punishment, the patient had only
been struck at first by the combined cruelty and lasciviousness of the
situation depicted. But immediately afterwards a connection had been
set up with the scene from his childhood in which he himself had
bitten some one. The captain---a man who could defend such
punishments---had been substituted by him for his father, and had thus
drawn down upon himself a part of the reviving exasperation which had
burst out, upon the original occasion, against his cruel father. The
idea which came into his consciousness for a moment, to the effect
that something of the sort might happen to some one he was fond of, is
probably to be translated into a wish such as ‘You ought to have the
same thing done to you!’ aimed at the teller of the story, but {354}
through him at his father. A day and a half later,[240] when the
captain had handed him the packet upon which the charges were due and
had requested him to pay back the 3.80 crowns to Lieutenant A., he had
already been aware that his ‘cruel superior’ was making a mistake, and
that the only person he owed anything to was the young lady at the
post office. It might easily, therefore, have occurred to him to think
of some derisive reply, such as, ‘Will I, though?’ or ‘Pay your
grandmother!’ or ‘Yes! You bet I’ll pay him back the money!’---answers
which would have been subject to no compulsive force. But instead, out
of the stirrings of his father-complex and out of his memory of the
scene from his childhood, there formed in his mind some such answer
as: ‘Yes! I’ll pay back the money to A. when my father or the lady
have children!’ or ‘As sure as my father or the lady can have
children, I’ll pay him back the money!’ In short, a derisive
asseveration coupled with an absurd condition which could never be
fulfilled.[241]
But now the crime had been committed; he had insulted the two persons
who were dearest to him---his father and his lady. The deed had called
for punishment, and the penalty had consisted in his binding himself
by a vow which it was impossible for him to fulfil and which entailed
literal obedience to his superior’s ill-founded request. The vow ran
as follows: ‘_Now you must really pay back the money to A._’ In his
convulsive obedience he had repressed his better knowledge that the
captain’s request had been based upon erroneous premises: ‘Yes, you
must pay back {355} the money to A., as your father’s surrogate has
required. Your father cannot be mistaken.’ So too the king cannot be
mistaken; if he addresses one of his subjects by a title which is not
his, the subject bears that title ever afterwards.
Only vague intelligence of these events reached the patient’s
consciousness. But his revolt against the captain’s order and the
sudden transformation of that revolt into its opposite were both
represented there. First had come the idea that he was _not_ to pay
back the money, or it (that is, the rat punishment) would happen; and
then had come the transformation of this idea into a vow to the
opposite effect, as a punishment for his revolt.
Let us, further, picture to ourselves the general conditions under
which the formation of the patient’s great obsessional idea
occurred. His libido had been increased by a long period of abstinence
coupled with the friendly welcome which a young officer can always
reckon upon receiving when he goes among women. Moreover, at the time
when he had started for the manœuvres, there had been a certain
coolness between himself and his lady. This intensification of his
libido had inclined him to a renewal of his ancient struggle against
his father’s authority, and he had dared to think of having sexual
intercourse with other women. His loyalty to his father’s memory had
grown weaker, his doubts as to his lady’s merits had increased; and in
that frame of mind he let himself be dragged into insulting the two of
them, and had then punished himself for it. In doing so he had copied
an old model. And when at the end of the manœuvres he had hesitated so
long whether he should travel to Vienna or whether he should stop and
fulfil his vow, he had represented in a single picture the two
conflicts by which he had from the very first been torn---whether or
no he should remain obedient to his father and whether or no he should
remain faithful to his beloved.[242]
{356}
I may add a word upon _the interpretation of the ‘sanction’_ which, it
will be remembered, was to the effect that ‘otherwise the rat
punishment will be carried out on both of them’. It was based upon the
influence of two infantile sexual theories, which I have discussed
elsewhere.[243] The first of these theories is that babies come out of
the anus; and the second, which follows logically from the first, is
that men can have babies just as well as women. According to the
technical rules for interpreting dreams, the notion of coming out of
the rectum can be represented by the opposite notion of creeping into
the rectum (as in the rat punishment), and _vice versa_.
We should not be justified in expecting such severe obsessional ideas
as were present in this case to be cleared up in any simpler manner or
by any other means. When we reached the solution that has been
described above, the patient’s rat delirium disappeared.
II {357}
THEORETICAL
(_a_) Some General Characteristics of Obsessional
Formations[244]
In the year 1896 I defined obsessional or compulsive ideas as
‘reproaches re-emerging in a transmuted form from under
repression---reproaches which invariably relate to a sexual deed
performed with pleasure in childhood’.[245] This definition now seems
to me to be open to criticism upon formal grounds, though its
component elements are unobjectionable. It was aiming too much at
unification, and took as its model the practice of obsessional
neurotics themselves, when, with their characteristic liking for
indeterminateness, they heap together under the name of ‘obsessional
ideas’ the most heterogeneous psychological formations.[246] In point
of fact, it would be more correct to speak of ‘obsessive thinking’,
and to make it clear that obsessional structures can correspond to
every sort of mental act. They can be distinctively classed {358} as
wishes, temptations, impulses, reflections, doubts, commands, or
prohibitions. Patients endeavour in general to tone down such
distinctions and to regard what remains of these mental acts after
they have been deprived of their affective index simply as
‘obsessional ideas’. Our present patient gave an example of this type
of behaviour in one of his first sittings, when he attempted to reduce
a wish to the level of a mere ‘connection of thought’ (see p. 316).
It must be confessed, moreover, that even the phenomenology of
obsessional thinking has not yet had sufficient attention paid to
it. During the secondary defensive struggle, which the patient carries
on against the ‘obsessional ideas’ that have forced their way into his
consciousness, psychological formations make their appearance which
deserve to be given a special name. (Such, for example, were the
sequences of thoughts that occupied our patient’s mind on his journey
back from the manœuvres.) They are not purely reasonable
considerations which arise in opposition to the obsessional thoughts,
but, as it were, hybrids between the two species of thinking; they
accept certain of the premises of the obsession they are combating,
and thus, while using the weapons of reason, are established upon a
basis of pathological thought. I think such formations as these
deserve to be given the name of ‘_deliria_’. To make the distinction
clear, I will give an instance, which should be inserted into its
proper context in the patient’s case history. I have already described
the crazy conduct to which he gave way at one time when he was
preparing for an examination---how, after working till far into the
night, he used to go and open the front door to his father’s ghost,
and then look at his genitals in the looking-glass (see p. 342). He
tried to bring himself to his senses by asking himself what his father
would say to it all if he were really still alive. But the argument
had no effect so long as it was put forward in this rational
shape. The {359} spectre was not laid until he had transformed the
same idea into a ‘delirious’ threat to the effect that if he ever went
through this nonsense again some evil would befall his father in the
next world.
The distinction between a primary and a secondary defensive struggle
is no doubt well founded, but we find its value unexpectedly
diminished when we discover that _the patients themselves do not know
the wording of their own obsessional ideas_. This may sound
paradoxical, but it is perfectly good sense. During the progress of a
psycho-analysis it is not only the patient who plucks up courage, but
his disease as well; it grows bold enough to speak more plainly than
before. To drop the metaphor, what happens is that the patient, who
has hitherto turned his eyes away in terror from his own pathological
productions, begins to attend to them and obtains a clearer and more
detailed view of them.[247]
There are, besides, two particular ways in which a more precise
knowledge of obsessional formations can be gained. In the first place,
experience shows that an obsessional command (or whatever it may be),
which in waking life is known only in a truncated and distorted form,
like a mutilated telegraph message, may have its actual text brought
to light in a dream. Such texts appear in dreams in the shape of
speeches, and are thus an exception to the rule that speeches in
dreams are derived from speeches in real life.[248] Secondly, in the
course of the analytic examination of a case history, one becomes
convinced that if a number of obsessions succeed one another they are
often---even though their wording is not identical---ultimately one
and the same. The obsession may have been successfully shaken off on
its first appearance, but it comes back a second time in a distorted
form and without {360} being recognized, and may then perhaps be able
to hold its own in the defensive struggle more effectively, precisely
because of its distortion. But the original form is the correct one,
and it often displays its meaning quite openly. When we have at great
pains elucidated an unintelligible obsessional idea, it often happens
that the patient informs us that just such a notion, wish, or
temptation as the one we have constructed did in fact make its
appearance on one occasion before the obsessional idea had arisen, but
that it did not persist. It would unfortunately involve us in too
lengthy a digression if we were to give instances of this from the
history of our present patient.
What is officially described as an ‘obsessional idea’ exhibits,
therefore, in its distortion from its original wording, traces of the
primary defensive struggle. Its distortion enables it to persist,
since conscious thought is thus compelled to misapprehend it, just as
though it were a dream; for dreams also are a product of compromise
and distortion, and are also misapprehended by waking thought.
This misapprehension on the part of consciousness can be seen at work
not only in reference to the obsessional ideas themselves, but also in
reference to the products of the secondary defensive struggle, such,
for instance, as the protective formulas. I can produce two good
examples of this. Our patient used to employ as a defensive formula a
rapidly pronounced ‘_aber_’ [‘but’] accompanied by a gesture of
repudiation. He told me on one occasion that this formula had become
altered recently; he now no longer said ‘_áber_’ but ‘_abér_’. When he
was asked to give the reason for this new departure, he declared that
the mute ‘_e_’ of the second syllable gave him no sense of security
against the intrusion, which he so much dreaded, of some foreign and
contradictory element, and that he had therefore decided to accent the
‘_e_’. This explanation (an excellent sample of the obsessional
neurotic style) was, however, clearly inadequate; the most {361} that
it could claim to be was a rationalization. The truth was that
‘_abér_’ was an approximation towards the similar-sounding ‘_Abwéhr_’
[‘defence’], a term which he had learnt in the course of our
theoretical discussions of psycho-analysis. He had thus put the
treatment to an illegitimate and ‘delirious’ use in order to
strengthen a defensive formula. Another time he told me about his
principal magic word, which was an apotropaic against every evil; he
had put it together out of the initial letters of the most powerfully
beneficent of his prayers and had clapped on an ‘amen’ at the end of
it. I cannot reproduce the word itself, for reasons which will become
apparent immediately. For, when he told it me, I could not help
noticing that the word was in fact an anagram upon the name of his
lady. Her name contained an ‘s’, and this he had put last, that is,
immediately before the ‘amen’ at the end. We may say, therefore, that
by this process he had brought his ‘_Samen_’ [‘semen’] into contact
with the woman he loved; in imagination, that is to say, he had
masturbated with her. He himself, however, had never noticed this very
obvious connection; his defensive forces had allowed themselves to be
fooled by the repressed ones. This is also a good example of the rule
that in time the thing which is meant to be warded off invariably
finds its way into the very means which is being used for warding it
off.
I have already asserted that obsessional thoughts have undergone a
distortion similar to that undergone by dream thoughts before they
become the manifest content of a dream. The technique of this
distortion may therefore be of interest to us, and there should be
nothing to prevent our exhibiting its various modes by means of a
series of obsessions which have been translated and made clear. But
here again the conditions governing the publication of this case make
it impossible for me to give more than a few specimens. Not all of the
patient’s obsessions were so complicated in their structure and so
difficult to solve as the great {362} rat idea. In some of the others
a very simple technique was employed---namely, that of distortion by
omission or ellipsis. This technique is pre-eminently applicable to
jokes, but in our present case it also did useful work as a means of
protecting things from being understood.
For instance, one of the patient’s oldest and favourite obsessions
(which corresponded to an admonition or warning) ran as follows: ‘_If
I marry the lady, some misfortune will befall my father_ (in the next
world).’ If we insert the intermediate steps, which had been skipped
but were known to us from the analysis, we get the following train of
thought: ‘If my father were alive, he would be as furious over my
design of marrying the lady as he was in the scene in my childhood; so
that I should fly into a rage with him once more and wish him every
possible evil; and thanks to the omnipotence of my wishes[249] these
evils would be bound to come upon him.’
Here is another instance in which a solution can be reached by filling
out an ellipsis. It is once more in the nature of a warning or an
ascetic prohibition. The patient had a charming little niece of whom
he was very fond. One day this idea came into his head: ‘_If you
indulge in a coitus, something will happen to Ella_’ (_i.e._ she will
die). When the omissions have been made good, we have: ‘Every time you
copulate, even with a stranger, you will not be able to avoid the
reflection that in your married life sexual intercourse can never
bring you a child (on account of the lady’s sterility). This will
grieve you so much that you will become envious of your sister on
account of little Ella, and you will grudge her the child. These
envious impulses will inevitably lead to the child’s death.’[250]
{363}
The technique of distortion by ellipsis seems to be typical of
obsessional neuroses; I have come across it in the obsessional
thoughts of other patients as well. One example, a particularly
transparent one, is of especial interest on account of a certain
structural similarity with the rat idea. It was a case of doubting,
and occurred in a lady who suffered principally from obsessional
acts. This lady was going for a walk with her husband in Nuremberg,
and made him take her into a shop, where she purchased various objects
for her child and amongst them a comb. Her husband, finding that the
shopping was too long a business for his taste, said that he had
noticed some coins in an old curiosity shop on the way which he was
anxious to secure, adding that after he had made his purchase he would
come and fetch her in the shop in which they at present were. But he
stayed away, as she thought, far too long. When he came back she
accordingly asked him where he had been. ‘Why,’ he replied, ‘at the
old curiosity shop I told you about.’ At the same instant she was
seized by a tormenting doubt whether she had not as a matter of fact
always possessed the comb which she had just bought for her child. She
was naturally quite unable to discover the simple mental link that was
involved. There is nothing for it but to regard the doubt as having
become displaced, and to reconstruct the complete chain of unconscious
thoughts as follows: ‘If it is true that you were only at the old
curiosity shop, if I am really to believe that, then I may just as
well believe that this comb that I bought a moment ago has been in my
possession for years.’ Here, therefore, the lady was drawing a
derisive and ironical parallel, just as when {364} our patient
thought: ‘Oh yes, as sure as those two’ (his father and the lady)
‘will have children, I shall pay back the money to A.’ In the lady’s
case the doubt was dependent upon her unconscious jealousy, which led
her to suppose that her husband had spent the interval of his absence
in paying a visit of gallantry.
I shall not in the present paper attempt any discussion of the
psychological significance of obsessional thinking. Such a discussion
would be of extraordinary value in its results, and would do more to
clarify our ideas upon the nature of the conscious and the unconscious
than any study of hysteria or the phenomena of hypnosis. It would be a
most desirable thing if the philosophers and psychologists who develop
brilliant theoretical views on the unconscious upon a basis of hearsay
knowledge or from their own conventional definitions would first
submit to the convincing impressions which may be gained from a
first-hand study of the phenomena of obsessional thinking. We might
almost go to the length of requiring it of them, if the task were not
so far more laborious than the methods of work to which they are
accustomed. I will only add here that in obsessional neuroses the
unconscious mental processes occasionally break through into
consciousness in their pure and undistorted form, that such incursions
may take place at every possible stage of the unconscious process of
thought, and that at the moment of the incursion the obsessional ideas
can, for the most part, be recognized as formations of very long
standing. This accounts for the striking circumstance that, when the
analyst tries, with the patient’s help, to discover the date of the
first occurrence of an obsessional idea, the patient is obliged to
place it further and further back as the analysis proceeds, and is
constantly finding fresh ‘first’ occasions for the appearance of the
obsession.
{365}
(_b_) Some Psychological Peculiarities of
Obsessional Neurotics: their Attitude towards
Reality, Superstition and Death
In this section I intend to deal with a few mental characteristics of
obsessional neurotics which, though they do not seem important in
themselves, nevertheless lie upon the road to a comprehension of more
important things. They were strongly marked in our present patient;
but I know that they are not attributable to his individual character,
but to his disorder, and that they are to be met with quite typically
in other obsessional patients.
Our patient was to a high degree superstitious, and this although he
was a highly educated and enlightened man of considerable acumen, and
although he was able at times to assure me that he did not believe a
word of all this rubbish. Thus he was at once superstitious and not
superstitious; and there was a clear distinction between his attitude
and the superstition of uneducated people who feel themselves at one
with their belief. He seemed to understand that his superstition was
dependent upon his obsessional thinking, although at times he gave way
to it completely. The meaning of this inconsistent and vacillating
behaviour can be most easily grasped if it is regarded in the light of
a hypothesis which I shall now proceed to mention. I did not hesitate
to assume that the truth was not that the patient still had an open
mind upon this subject, but that he had two separate and contradictory
convictions upon it. His oscillation between these two views quite
obviously depended upon his momentary attitude towards his obsessional
disorder. As soon as he had got the better of one of these obsessions,
he used to smile in a superior way at his own credulity, and no events
occurred that were calculated to shake his firmness; but the moment he
came under the sway of another obsession which had not been cleared
up--- {366} or, what amounts to the same thing, of a resistance---the
strangest coincidences would happen to support him in his credulous
belief.
His superstition was nevertheless that of an educated man, and he
avoided such vulgar prejudices as being afraid of Friday or of the
number thirteen, and so on. But he believed in premonitions and in
prophetic dreams; he would constantly meet the very person of whom,
for some inexplicable reason, he had just been thinking; or he would
receive a letter from some one who had suddenly come into his mind
after being forgotten for many years. At the same time he was honest
enough---or rather, he was loyal enough to his official
conviction---not to have forgotten instances in which the strangest
forebodings had come to nothing. On one occasion, for instance, when
he went away for his summer holidays, he had felt morally certain that
he would never return to Vienna alive. He also admitted that the great
majority of his premonitions related to things which had no special
personal importance to him, and that, when he met an acquaintance of
whom, until a few moments previously, he had not thought for a very
long time, nothing further took place between himself and the
miraculous apparition. And he naturally could not deny that all the
important events of his life had occurred without his having had any
premonition of them, and that, for instance, his father’s death had
taken him entirely by surprise. But arguments such as these had no
effect upon the discrepancy in his convictions. They merely served to
prove the obsessional nature of his superstitions, and that could
already be inferred from the way in which they came and went with the
increase and decrease of his resistance.
I was not in a position, of course, to give a rational explanation of
all the miraculous stories of his remoter past. But as regards the
similar things that happened during the time of his treatment, I was
able to prove to him that he himself invariably had a hand in the
{367} manufacture of these miracles, and I was able to point out to
him the methods that he employed. He worked by means of indirect
vision and reading, forgetting, and, above all, errors of memory. In
the end he used himself to help me in discovering the little
sleight-of-hand tricks by which these wonders were performed. I may
mention one interesting infantile root of his belief that forebodings
and premonitions came true. It was brought to light by his
recollection that very often, when a date was being fixed for
something, his mother used to say: ‘I sha’n’t be able to on
such-and-such a day. I shall have to stop in bed then.’ And in fact
when the day in question arrived she had invariably stayed in bed!
There can be no doubt that the patient felt a need for finding
experiences of this kind to act as props for his superstition, and
that it was for that reason that he occupied himself so much with the
inexplicable coincidences of everyday life with which we are all
familiar, and helped out their shortcomings with unconscious activity
of his own. I have come across a similar need in many other
obsessional patients and have suspected its presence in many more
besides. It seems to me easily explicable in view of the psychological
characteristics of the obsessional neurosis. In this disorder, as I
have already explained (see p. 333), repression is effected not by
means of amnesia but by a severance of causal connections brought
about by a withdrawal of affect. These repressed connections appear to
persist in some kind of shadowy form (which I have elsewhere compared
to an entoptic perception),[251] and they are thus transferred, by a
process of projection, into the external world, where they bear
witness to what has been effaced from consciousness.
Another mental need, which is also shared by obsessional neurotics and
which is in some respects related to the one just mentioned, is the
need for _uncertainty_ in their life, or for _doubt_. An inquiry into
{368} this characteristic leads deep into the investigation of
instinct. The creation of uncertainty is one of the methods employed
by the neurosis for drawing the patient away from _reality_ and
isolating him from the world---which is among the objects of every
psycho-neurotic disorder. Again, it is only too obvious what efforts
are made by the patients themselves in order to be able to avoid
certainty and remain in doubt. Some of them, indeed, give a vivid
expression to this tendency in a dislike of---clocks and watches (for
they at least make the time of day certain), and in the unconscious
artifices which they employ in order to render these doubt-removing
instruments innocuous. Our present patient had developed a peculiar
talent for avoiding a knowledge of any facts which would have helped
him in deciding his conflict. Thus he was in ignorance upon those
matters relating to his lady which were the most relevant to the
question of his marriage: he was ostensibly unable to say who had
operated upon her and whether the operation had been unilateral or
bilateral. He had to be forced into remembering what he had forgotten
and into finding out what he had overlooked.
The predilection felt by obsessional neurotics for uncertainty and
doubt leads them to turn their thoughts by preference to those
subjects upon which all mankind are uncertain and upon which our
knowledge and judgements must necessarily remain open to doubt. The
chief subjects of this kind are paternity, length of life, life after
death, and memory---in the last of which we are all in the habit of
believing, without having the slightest guarantee of its
trustworthiness.[252]
{369}
In obsessional neuroses the uncertainty of memory is used to the
fullest extent as a help in the formation of symptoms; and we shall
learn directly the part played in the actual content of the patients’
thoughts by the questions of length of life and life after death. But
as an appropriate transition I will first consider one particular
superstitious trait in our patient to which I have already alluded
(see p. 362) and which will no doubt have puzzled more than one of my
readers.
I refer to the _omnipotence_ which he ascribed to his thoughts and
feelings, and to his wishes, whether good or evil. It is, I must
admit, decidedly tempting to declare that this idea was a delusion and
that it oversteps the limits of obsessional neurosis. I have, however,
come across the same conviction in another obsessional patient; and he
was long ago restored to health and is leading a normal life. Indeed,
all obsessional neurotics behave as though they shared this
conviction. It will be our business to throw some light upon these
patients’ over-estimation of their powers. Assuming, without more ado,
that this belief is a frank acknowledgement of a relic of the old
megalomania of infancy, we will proceed to ask the patient for the
grounds of his conviction. In reply, he adduces two experiences. When
he returned for a second visit to the hydropathic establishment at
which his disorder had been relieved for the first and only time, he
asked to be given his old room, for its position had facilitated his
relations with one of the nurses. He was told that the room was
already taken and that it was occupied by an old professor. This piece
of news considerably diminished his prospects of successful treatment,
and he reacted to it with the unamiable thought: ‘I wish he may be
struck dead for it!’ A fortnight later he was woken up from his {370}
sleep by the disturbing idea of a corpse; and in the morning he heard
that the professor had really had a stroke, and that he had been
carried up into his room at about the time he himself had woken
up. The second experience related to an unmarried woman, no longer
young, though with a great desire to be loved, who had paid him a
great deal of attention and had once asked him point-blank whether he
could not love her. He had given her an evasive answer. A few days
afterwards he heard that she had thrown herself out of window. He then
began to reproach himself, and said to himself that it would have been
in his power to save her life by giving her his love. In this way he
became convinced of the omnipotence of his love and of his
hatred. Without denying the omnipotence of love we may point out that
both of these instances were concerned with death, and we may adopt
the obvious explanation that, like other obsessional neurotics, our
patient was compelled to overestimate the effects of his hostile
feelings upon the external world, because a large part of their
internal, mental effects escaped his conscious knowledge. His
love---or rather his hatred---was in truth overpowering; it was
precisely they that created the obsessional thoughts, of which he
could not understand the origin and against which he strove in vain to
defend himself.[253]
Our patient had a quite peculiar attitude towards the question of
death. He showed the deepest sympathy whenever any one died, and
religiously attended the funeral; so that among his brothers and
sisters he earned the nickname of ‘bird of ill omen’.[254] In his
imagination, too, he was constantly making away with people so as to
show his heartfelt sympathy for their bereaved relatives. The death of
an elder sister, which took place when he was between three and {371}
four years old, played a great part in his phantasies, and was brought
into intimate connection with his childish misdemeanours during the
same period. We know, moreover, at what an early age thoughts about
his father’s death had occupied his mind, and we may regard his
illness itself as a reaction to that event, for which he had felt an
obsessional wish fifteen years earlier. The strange extension of his
obsessional fears to the ‘next world’ was nothing else than a
compensation for these death-wishes which he had felt against his
father. It was introduced eighteen months after his father had died,
at a time when there had been a revival of his sorrow at the loss, and
it was designed---in defiance of reality, and in deference to the wish
which had previously been showing itself in phantasies of every
kind---to undo the fact of his father’s death. We have had occasion in
several places (see pp. 358 and 362) to translate the phrase ‘in the
next world’ by the words ‘if my father were still alive’.
But the behaviour of other obsessional neurotics does not differ
greatly from that of our present patient, even though it has not been
their fate to come face to face with the phenomenon of death at such
an early age. Their thoughts are unceasingly occupied with other
people’s length of life and possibility of death; their superstitious
propensities have, to begin with, had no other content and have
perhaps no other source whatever. But these neurotics need the help of
the possibility of death chiefly in order that it may act as a
solution of conflicts they have left unsolved. Their essential
characteristic is that they are incapable of coming to a decision,
especially in matters of love; they endeavour to postpone every
decision, and, in their doubt which person they shall decide for or
what measures they shall take against a person, they are obliged to
choose as their model the old German courts of justice, in which the
suits were usually brought to an end, before judgement had been given,
by the death of the parties to the dispute. Thus in every conflict
{372} which enters their lives they are on the look out for the death
of some one who is of importance to them, usually of some one they
love---such as one of their parents, or a rival, or one of the objects
of their love between which their inclinations are wavering. But at
this point our discussion of the death-complex in obsessional neuroses
touches upon the problem of the instinctual life of obsessional
neurotics. And to this problem we must now turn.
(_c_) The Instinctual Life of Obsessional
Neurotics, and the Origins of
Compulsion and Doubt
If we wish to obtain a grasp of the psychical forces whose interplay
built up this neurosis, we must turn back to what we have learnt from
the patient on the subject of the exciting causes of his falling ill
as a grown-up man and as a child. He fell ill when he was in his
twenties on being faced with a temptation to marry another woman
instead of the one whom he had loved so long; and he avoided a
decision of this conflict by postponing all the necessary preliminary
actions. The means for doing this was given him by his neurosis. His
hesitation between the lady he loved and the other girl can be reduced
to a conflict between his father’s influence and his love for his
lady, or, in other words, to a conflicting choice between his father
and his sexual object, such as had already subsisted (judging from his
recollections and obsessional ideas) in his remote childhood. All
through his life, moreover, he was unmistakably victim to a conflict
between love and hatred, in regard both to his lady and to his
father. His phantasies of revenge and such obsessional phenomena as
his obsession for understanding and his exploit with the stone in the
road bore witness to his discordant feelings; and they were to a
certain degree comprehensible and normal, for the lady by her original
refusal and subsequently by her {373} coolness had given him some
excuse for hostility. But his relations with his father were dominated
by a similar discordance of feeling, as we have seen from our
translation of his obsessional thoughts; and his father too must have
given him an excuse for hostility in his childhood, as indeed we have
been able to establish almost beyond question. His attitude towards
the lady---a compound of tenderness and hostility---came to a great
extent within the scope of his conscious knowledge; at most he
deceived himself over the degree and strength of his negative
feelings. But his hostility towards his father, on the contrary,
though he had once been acutely conscious of it, had long since
vanished from his ken, and it was only in the teeth of the most
violent resistance that it could be brought back into his
consciousness. We may regard the repression of his infantile hatred of
his father as the event which brought his whole subsequent career
under the dominion of the neurosis.
The conflicts of feeling in our patient which we have here enumerated
separately were not independent of each other, but were bound together
in pairs. His hatred of his lady was inevitably coupled with his
attachment to his father, and inversely his hatred of his father with
his attachment to his lady. But the two conflicts of feeling which
result from this simplification---namely, the opposition between his
relation to his father and to his lady, and the contradiction between
his love and his hatred within each of these relations---had no
connection whatever with each other, either in their content or in
their origin. The first of these two conflicts corresponds to the
normal vacillation between male and female which characterizes every
one’s choice of a love-object. It is first brought to the child’s
notice by the time-honoured question: ‘Which do you love most, Papa or
Mamma?’ and it accompanies him through his whole life, whatever may be
the relative intensity of his feelings to the two sexes or whatever
may be the sexual aim upon which {374} he finally becomes fixed. But
normally this opposition soon loses the character of a hard-and-fast
contradiction, of an inexorable ‘either’---‘or’. Room is found for
satisfying the unequal demands of both sides, although even in a
normal person the higher estimation of one sex is always thrown into
relief by a depreciation of the other.
The other conflict, that between love and hatred, strikes us more
strangely. We know that incipient love is often perceived as hatred,
and that love, if it is denied satisfaction, may easily be partly
converted into hatred, and poets tell us that in the more tempestuous
stages of love the two opposed feelings may subsist side by side for a
while as though in rivalry with each other. But the chronic
coexistence of love and hatred, both directed towards the same person
and both of the highest degree of intensity, cannot fail to astonish
us. We should have expected that the passionate love would long ago
have conquered the hatred or been devoured by it. And in fact such a
protracted survival of two opposites is only possible under quite
peculiar psychological conditions and with the co-operation of the
state of affairs in the unconscious. The love has not succeeded in
extinguishing the hatred but only in driving it down into the
unconscious; and in the unconscious the hatred, safe from the danger
of being destroyed by the operations of consciousness, is able to
persist and even to grow. In such circumstances the conscious love
attains as a rule, by way of reaction, an especially high degree of
intensity, so as to be strong enough for the perpetual task of keeping
its opponent under repression. The necessary condition for the
occurrence of such a strange state of affairs in a person’s erotic
life appears to be that at a very early age, somewhere in the
prehistoric period of his infancy, the two opposites should have been
split apart and one of them, usually the hatred, have been
repressed.[255]
{375}
If we consider a number of analyses of obsessional neurotics we shall
find it impossible to escape the impression that a relation between
love and hatred such as we have found in our present patient is among
the most frequent, the most marked, and probably, therefore, the most
important characteristics of the obsessional neurosis. But however
tempting it may be to bring the problem of the ‘choice of neurosis’
into relation with the instinctual life, there are reasons enough for
avoiding such a course. For we must remember that in every neurosis we
come upon the same suppressed instincts behind the symptoms. After
all, hatred, kept suppressed in the unconscious by love, plays a great
part in the pathogenesis of hysteria and paranoia. We know too little
of the nature of love to be able to arrive at any definite conclusion
here; and, in particular, the relation between the _negative_
factor[256] in love and the sadistic components of the libido remains
completely obscure. What follows is therefore to be regarded as no
more than a provisional explanation. We may suppose, then, that in the
cases of unconscious hatred with which we are concerned the sadistic
components of love have, from constitutional causes, been
exceptionally strongly developed, and have consequently undergone a
premature and all too thorough suppression, and that the neurotic
phenomena we have observed arise on the one hand from conscious
feelings of affection which have become exaggerated as a reaction, and
on the other hand from sadism persisting in the unconscious in the
form of hatred.
But in whatever way this remarkable relation of love and hatred is to
be explained, its occurrence is established beyond any possibility of
doubt by the {376} observations made in the present case; and it is
gratifying to find how easily we can now follow the puzzling processes
of an obsessional neurosis by bringing them into relation with this
one factor. If an intense love is opposed by an almost equally
powerful hatred, and is at the same time inseparably bound up with it,
the immediate consequence is certain to be a partial paralysis of the
will and an incapacity for coming to a decision upon any of those
actions for which love ought to provide the motive power. But this
indecision will not confine itself for long to a single group of
actions. For, in the first place, what actions of a lover are not
brought into relation with his one principal motive? And secondly, a
man’s attitude in sexual things has the force of a model to which the
rest of his reactions tend to conform. And thirdly, it is an inherent
characteristic in the psychology of an obsessional neurotic to make
the fullest possible use of the mechanism of _displacement_. So the
paralysis of his powers of decision gradually extends itself over the
entire field of the patient’s behaviour.
And here we have the domination of _compulsion_ and _doubt_ such as we
meet with in the mental life of obsessional neurotics. The doubt
corresponds to the patient’s internal perception of his own
indecision, which, in consequence of the inhibition of his love by his
hatred, takes possession of him in the face of every intended
action. The doubt is in reality a doubt of his own love---which ought
to be the most certain thing in his whole mind; and it becomes
diffused over everything else, and is especially apt to become
displaced on to what is most insignificant and trivial.[257] A man who
doubts his own love may, or rather _must_, doubt every lesser
thing.[258]
{377}
It is this same doubt that leads the patient to uncertainty about his
protective measures, and to his continual repetition of them in order
to banish that uncertainty; and it is this doubt, too, that eventually
brings it about that the patient’s protective acts themselves become
as impossible to carry out as his original inhibited decision in
connection with his love. At the beginning of my investigations I was
led to assume another and more general origin for the uncertainty of
obsessional neurotics and one which seemed to be nearer the
normal. If, for instance, while I am writing a letter some one
interrupts me with questions, I afterwards feel a quite justifiable
uncertainty as to what I may not have written under the influence of
the disturbance, and, to make sure, I am obliged to read the letter
over after I have finished it. In the same way I might suppose that
the uncertainty of obsessional neurotics, when they are praying, for
instance, is due to unconscious phantasies constantly mingling with
their prayers and disturbing them. This hypothesis is correct, but it
may be easily reconciled with our earlier statement. It is true that
the patient’s uncertainty whether he has carried through a protective
measure is due to the disturbing effect of unconscious phantasies; but
the content of these phantasies is precisely the contrary
impulse---which it was the very aim of the prayer to ward off. This
became clearly evident in our patient on one occasion, for the
disturbing element did not remain unconscious but made its appearance
openly. The words he wanted to use in his prayer were, ‘_May God
protect her_’, but a hostile ‘_not_’ suddenly darted out of his
unconscious and inserted itself into the sentence; and he understood
that this was an attempt at a curse (see p. 331). If the ‘not’ had
remained mute, he would have found himself in a state of uncertainty,
and would have kept on prolonging his prayers indefinitely. But since
it became articulate he eventually gave up praying. Before doing so,
however, he, like other obsessional {378} patients, tried every kind
of method for preventing the opposite feeling from insinuating
itself. He shortened his prayers, for instance, or said them more
rapidly. And similarly other patients will endeavour to ‘_isolate_’
all such protective acts from other things. But none of these
technical procedures are of any avail in the long run. If the impulse
of love achieves any success by displacing itself on to some trivial
act, the impulse of hostility will very soon follow it on to its new
ground and once more proceed to undo all that it has done.
And when the obsessional patient lays his finger on the weak spot in
the security of our mental life---on the untrustworthiness of our
memory---the discovery enables him to extend his doubt over
everything, even over actions which have already been performed and
which have so far had no connection with the love-hatred complex, and
over the entire past. I may recall the instance of the woman who had
just bought a comb for her little daughter in a shop, and, becoming
suspicious of her husband, began to doubt whether she had not as a
matter of fact been in possession of the comb for a long time. Was not
this woman saying point-blank: ‘If I can doubt your love’ (and this
was only a projection of her doubt of her own love for him), ‘then I
can doubt this too, then I can doubt everything’---thus revealing to
us the hidden meaning of neurotic doubt?
The _compulsion_ on the other hand is an attempt at a compensation for
the doubt and at a correction of the intolerable conditions of
inhibition to which the doubt bears witness. If the patient, by the
help of displacement, succeeds at last in bringing one of his
inhibited intentions to a decision, then the intention _must_ be
carried out. It is true that this intention is not his original one,
but the energy dammed up in the latter cannot let slip the opportunity
of finding an outlet for its discharge in the substitutive act. Thus
this energy makes itself felt now in commands and {379} now in
prohibitions, according as the affectionate impulse or the hostile one
snatches control of the pathway leading to discharge. If it happens
that a compulsive command cannot be obeyed, the tension becomes
intolerable and is perceived by the patient in the form of extreme
anxiety. But the pathway leading to a substitutive act, even where the
displacement has been on to a triviality, is so hotly contested, that
such an act can as a rule be carried out only in the shape of a
protective measure intimately associated with the very impulse which
it is designed to ward off.
Furthermore, by a sort of _regression_, preparatory acts become
substituted for the final decision, thinking replaces acting, and,
instead of the substitutive act, some thought preliminary to it
asserts itself with all the force of compulsion. According as this
regression from acting to thinking is more or less marked, a case of
obsessional neurosis will exhibit the characteristics of obsessive
thinking (that is, of obsessional ideas) or of obsessive acting in the
narrower sense of the word. True obsessional acts such as these,
however, are only made possible because they constitute a kind of
reconciliation, in the shape of a compromise formation, between the
two antagonistic impulses. For obsessional acts tend to approximate
more and more---and the longer the disorder lasts the more evident
does this become---to infantile sexual acts of an onanistic
character. Thus in this form of the neurosis acts of love are carried
out in spite of everything, but only by the aid of a new kind of
regression; for such acts no longer relate to another person, the
object of love and hatred, but are auto-erotic acts such as occur in
infancy.
The first kind of regression, that from acting to thinking, is
facilitated by another factor concerned in the production of the
neurosis. The histories of obsessional patients almost invariably
reveal an early development and premature repression of the sexual
instinct of looking and knowing (the scoptophilic and {380}
epistemophilic instinct); and, as we know, a part of the infantile
sexual activity of our present patient was governed by that
instinct.[259]
We have already mentioned the important part played by the sadistic
instinctual components in the genesis of obsessional neuroses. Where
the epistemophilic instinct is a preponderating feature in the
constitution of an obsessional patient, brooding becomes the principal
symptom of the neurosis. The thought process itself becomes
sexualized, for the sexual pleasure which is normally attached to the
content of thought becomes shifted on to the act of thinking itself,
and the gratification derived from reaching the conclusion of a line
of thought is experienced as a _sexual_ gratification. In the various
forms of obsessional neurosis in which the epistemophilic instinct
plays a part, its relation to thought processes makes it particularly
well adapted to attract the energy which is vainly endeavouring to
make its way forward into action, and divert it into the sphere of
thought, where there is a possibility of its obtaining pleasurable
gratification of another sort. In this way, with the help of the
epistemophilic instinct, the substitutive act may in its turn be
replaced by preparatory acts of thought. But procrastination in action
is soon replaced by dilatoriness in thought, and eventually the whole
process, together with all its peculiarities, is transferred into the
new sphere, just as in America an entire house will sometimes be moved
from one site to another.
I may now venture, upon the basis of the preceding discussion, to
determine the psychological characteristic, so long sought after,
which lends to the products of an obsessional neurosis their
‘obsessive’ or compulsive quality. A thought process is obsessive or
compulsive when, in consequence of an inhibition (due to a conflict of
opposing impulses) at the motor end of the psychical system, it is
undertaken with an expenditure of energy {381} which (as regards both
quality and quantity) is normally reserved for actions alone; or, in
other words, _an obsessive or compulsive thought is one whose function
it is to represent an act regressively_. No one, I think, will
question my assumption that processes of thought are ordinarily
conducted (on grounds of economy) with smaller displacements of
energy, probably at a higher level, than are acts intended to
discharge an affect or to modify the external world.
The obsessive thought which has forced its way into consciousness with
such excessive violence has next to be secured against the efforts
made by conscious thought to resolve it. As we already know, this
protection is afforded by the _distortion_ which the obsessive thought
has undergone before becoming conscious. But this is not the only
means employed. In addition, each separate obsessional idea is almost
invariably removed from the situation in which it originated and in
which, in spite of its distortion, it would be most easily
comprehensible. With this end in view, in the first place _an interval
of time is inserted_ between the pathogenic situation and the
obsession that arises from it, so as to lead astray any conscious
investigation of its causal connections; and in the second place the
content of the obsession is taken out of its particular setting by
being _generalized_. Our patient’s ‘obsession for understanding’ is an
example of this (see p. 328). But perhaps a better one is afforded by
another patient. This was a woman who prohibited herself from wearing
any sort of personal adornment, though the exciting cause of the
prohibition related only to one particular piece of jewellery: she had
envied her mother the possession of it and had had hopes that one day
she would inherit it. Finally, if we care to distinguish verbal
distortion from distortion of content, there is yet another means by
which the obsession is protected against conscious attempts at
solution. And that is the choice of an indefinite or ambiguous
wording. After being misunderstood, the wording may find its {382} way
into the patient’s ‘deliria’, and whatever further processes of
development or substitution his obsession undergoes will then be based
upon the misunderstanding and not upon the proper sense of the
text. Observation will show, however, that the deliria constantly tend
to form new connections with that part of the matter and wording of
the obsession which is not present in consciousness.
I should like to go back once more to the instinctual life of
obsessional neurotics and add one more remark upon it. It turned out
that our patient, besides all his other characteristics, was a
_renifleur_ (or osphresiolagniac). By his own account, when he was a
child he had recognized every one by their smell, like a dog; and even
when he was grown up he was more susceptible to sensations of smell
than most people.[260] I have met with the same characteristic in
other neurotics, both in hysterical and in obsessional patients, and I
have come to recognize that a tendency to osphresiolagnia, which has
become extinct since childhood, may play a part in the genesis of
neurosis.[261] And here I should like to raise the general question
whether the atrophy of the sense of smell (which was an inevitable
result of man’s assumption of an erect posture) and the consequent
organic repression of his osphresiolagnia may not have had a
considerable share in the origin of his susceptibility to nervous
disease. This would afford us some explanation of why, with the
advance of civilization, it is precisely the sexual life that must
fall a victim to repression. For we have long known the intimate
connection in the animal organization between the sexual instinct and
the function of the olfactory organ.
In bringing this paper to a close I may express a hope that, though my
communication is incomplete in every sense, it may at least stimulate
other workers {383} to throw more light upon the obsessional neurosis
by a deeper investigation of the subject. What is characteristic of
this neurosis---what differentiates it from hysteria---is not, in my
opinion, to be found in instinctual life but in psychological
relations. I cannot take leave of my patient without putting on paper
my impression that he had, as it were, disintegrated into three
personalities: into one unconscious personality, that is to say, and
into two preconscious ones between which his consciousness could
oscillate. His unconscious comprised those of his impulses which had
been suppressed at an early age and which might be described as
passionate and evil impulses. In his normal state he was kind,
cheerful, and sensible---an enlightened and superior kind of person,
while in his third psychological organization he paid homage to
superstition and asceticism. Thus he was able to have two different
creeds and two different outlooks upon life. This second preconscious
personality comprised chiefly the reaction-formations against his
repressed wishes, and it was easy to foresee that it would have
swallowed up the normal personality if the illness had lasted much
longer. I have at present an opportunity of studying a lady suffering
severely from obsessional acts. She has become similarly disintegrated
into an easy-going and lively personality and into an exceedingly
gloomy and ascetic one. She puts forward the first of them as her
official ego, while in fact she is dominated by the second. Both of
these psychical organizations have access to her consciousness, but
behind her ascetic personality may be discerned the unconscious part
of her being---quite unknown to her and composed of ancient and
long-repressed conative impulses.[262]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
IV {385}
PSYCHO-ANALYTIC NOTES UPON
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
OF A CASE OF PARANOIA
(DEMENTIA PARANOIDES)
(1911)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PSYCHO-ANALYTIC NOTES UPON {387}
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
OF A CASE OF PARANOIA
(DEMENTIA PARANOIDES)[263]
The analytic investigation of paranoia presents difficulties of a
peculiar nature to physicians who, like myself, are not attached to
public institutions. We cannot accept patients suffering from this
complaint, or, at all events, we cannot keep them for long, since we
cannot offer treatment unless there is some prospect of therapeutic
success. It is only in exceptional circumstances, therefore, that I
succeed in getting more than a superficial view of the structure of
paranoia---when, for instance, the diagnosis (which is not always an
easy matter) is uncertain enough to justify an attempt at influencing
the patient, or when, in spite of an assured diagnosis, I yield to the
entreaties of the patient’s relatives and undertake to treat him for a
time. Apart from this, of course, I see plenty of cases of paranoia
and of dementia praecox, and I learn as much about them as other
psychiatrists do about their cases; but that is not enough, as a rule,
to lead to any analytic conclusions.
The psycho-analytic investigation of paranoia would be altogether
impossible if the patients themselves did not possess the peculiarity
of betraying (in a distorted form, it is true) precisely those things
which other neurotics keep hidden as a secret. Since paranoiacs cannot
be compelled to overcome their internal resistances, and since in any
case they only say what they {388} choose to say, it follows that this
is precisely a disorder in which a written report or a printed case
history can take the place of personal acquaintance with the
patient. For this reason I think it is legitimate to base analytic
interpretations upon the case history of a patient suffering from
paranoia (or, more precisely, from dementia paranoides) whom I have
never seen, but who has written his own case history and brought it
before the public in print.
I refer to Dr. jur. Daniel Paul Schreber, formerly Senatspräsident in
Dresden,[264] whose book, _Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken_
[_Memoirs of a Neurotic_], was published in 1903, and, if I am not
mistaken, aroused considerable interest among psychiatrists. It is
possible that Dr. Schreber may still be living to-day and that he may
have dissociated himself so far from the delusional system which he
put forward in 1903 as to be pained by these notes upon his book. In
so far, however, as he still retains his identity with his former
personality, I can rely upon the arguments with which he himself---‘a
man of superior mental gifts and endowed with an unusual keenness
alike of intellect and of observation’[265]---countered the efforts
that were made to restrain him from publishing his memoirs: ‘I have
been at no pains’, he writes, ‘to close my eyes to the difficulties
that would appear to lie in the path of publication, and in particular
to the problem of paying due regard to the susceptibilities of certain
persons still living. On the other hand, I am of opinion that it might
well be to the advantage both of science and of the recognition of
religious truths if, during my lifetime, qualified authorities were
enabled to undertake some examination of my body and to hold some
inquiry into my personal experiences. To this consideration all
feelings of a personal character must {389} yield’.[266] He declares
in another passage that he has decided to keep to his intention of
publishing the book, even if the consequence were to be that his
physician, Geheimrat Dr. Flechsig of Leipsic, brought an action
against him. He urges upon Dr. Flechsig, however, the same
considerations that I am now urging upon him. ‘I trust’, he says,
‘that even in the case of Geheimrat Prof. Dr. Flechsig any personal
susceptibilities that he may feel will be outweighed by a scientific
interest in the subject-matter of my memoirs’ (p. 446).
Though all the passages from the _Denkwürdigkeiten_ upon which my
interpretations are based will be quoted verbatim in the following
pages, I would ask my readers to make themselves acquainted with the
book by reading it through at least once beforehand.
I {390}
CASE HISTORY
‘I have suffered twice from nervous disorders,’ writes Dr. Schreber,
‘and each time as a result of mental overstrain. This was due on the
first occasion to my standing as a candidate for election to the
Reichstag while I was Landgerichtsdirektor[267] at Chemnitz, and on
the second occasion to the very heavy burden of work that fell upon my
shoulders when I entered on my new duties as Senatspräsident in the
Oberlandesgericht in Dresden’ (p. 34).
Dr. Schreber’s first illness began in the autumn of 1884, and by the
end of 1885 he had completely recovered. During this period he spent
six months in Flechsig’s clinic, and the latter, in a formal report
which he drew up at a later date, described the disorder as an attack
of severe hypochondria (p. 379). Dr. Schreber assures us that this
illness ran its course ‘without the occurrence of any incidents
bordering upon the sphere of the supernatural’ (p. 35).
Neither the patient’s own account, nor the reports of the physicians
which are reprinted at the end of his book, tell us enough about his
previous history or his personal circumstances. They do not even give
the patient’s age at the time of his illness, though the high judicial
position which he had attained before his second illness establishes
some sort of lower limit. We learn that Dr. Schreber had been married
long before the time of his ‘hypochondria’. ‘The gratitude of my
wife’, he writes, ‘was perhaps even more heartfelt; for she revered
Professor Flechsig as the man who had restored her husband to her, and
hence {391} it was that for years she kept his portrait standing upon
her writing-table’ (p. 36). And in the same place: ‘After my recovery
from my first illness I spent eight years with my wife---years, upon
the whole, of great happiness, rich in outward honours, and only
clouded from time to time by the oft-repeated disappointment of our
hope that we might be blessed with children’.
In June 1893 he was notified of his prospective appointment as
Senatspräsident, and he took up his duties on the first of October of
the same year. Between these two dates[268] he had some dreams, though
it was not until later that he came to attach any importance to
them. He dreamed two or three times that his old nervous disorder had
come back; and this made him as miserable in the dream as the
discovery that it was only a dream made him happy when he woke up. One
morning, moreover, while he was in a state between sleeping and
waking, the idea occurred to him ‘that after all it really must be
very nice to be a woman submitting to the act of copulation’
(p. 36). This idea was one which he would have rejected with the
greatest indignation if he had been fully conscious.
The second illness set in at the end of October 1893 with a torturing
bout of sleeplessness. This forced him to return to Prof. Flechsig’s
clinic, where, however, his condition grew rapidly worse. The further
course of the illness is described in a report drawn up subsequently
by the director of the Sonnenstein Sanatorium: ‘At the commencement of
his residence there[269] he was chiefly troubled by hypochondriacal
ideas, complained that he had softening of the brain, that he would
soon be dead, etc. But ideas of persecution were already finding their
way into the clinical picture, based upon sensorial illusions which,
however, seemed only to appear sporadically at first, while
simultaneously {392} a high degree of hyperaesthesia was
observable---great sensitiveness to light and noise. Later, the visual
and auditory illusions became much more frequent, and, in conjunction
with coenaesthesic disturbances, dominated the whole of his feeling
and thought. He believed that he was dead and decomposing, that he was
suffering from the plague; he asserted that his body was being handled
in all kinds of revolting ways; and, as he himself declares to this
day, he went through worse horrors than any one could have imagined,
and all on behalf of a sacred cause. The patient was so much occupied
with these pathological phenomena that he was inaccessible to any
other impression and would sit perfectly rigid and motionless for
hours (hallucinatory stupor). On the other hand, they tortured him to
such a degree that he longed for death. He made repeated attempts at
drowning himself in his bath, and asked to be given the “cyanide of
potassium that was intended for him”. His delusional ideas gradually
assumed a mystical and religious character; he was in direct
communication with God, he was the plaything of devils, he saw
“miraculous apparitions”, he heard “holy music”, and in the end he
even came to believe that he was living in another world’ (p. 380).
It may be added that there were certain people by whom he thought he
was being persecuted and injured, and upon whom he poured abuse. The
most prominent of these was his former physician, Flechsig, whom he
called a ‘soul-murderer’; and he used to call out over and over again:
‘_Little_ Flechsig!’ putting a sharp stress upon the first word
(p. 383). He was moved from Leipsic, and, after a short interval spent
in another institution, was brought in June 1894 to the Sonnenstein
Sanatorium, near Pirna, where he remained until his disorder assumed
its final shape. In the course of the next few years the clinical
picture altered in a manner which can best be described in the words
of Dr. Weber, the director of the sanatorium.
‘I need not enter any further into the details of the {393} course of
the disease. I must, however, draw attention to the manner in which,
as time went on, the paranoic clinical picture that we have before us
to-day developed more and more clearly (one might almost say
crystallized out) from the initial acute psychosis, which had directly
involved the patient’s entire mental life and deserved the name of
“hallucinatory insanity”’ (p. 385). The fact was that, on the one
hand, he had developed an ingenious delusional structure, in which we
have every reason to be interested, while, on the other hand, his
personality had been reconstructed and now showed itself, except for a
few isolated disturbances, capable of meeting the demands of everyday
life.
Dr. Weber, in the report drawn up by him in 1899, makes the following
remarks: ‘It thus appears that at the present time, apart from certain
psycho-motor symptoms which cannot fail to strike even the most
superficial observer as being obviously pathological, Herr
Senatspräsident Dr. Schreber shows no signs of confusion or of
psychical inhibition, nor is his intelligence noticeably impaired. His
mind is collected, his memory is excellent, he has at his disposal a
very considerable store of knowledge (not merely upon legal questions,
but in many other fields), and he is able to reproduce it in a
connected train of thought. He takes an interest in following events
in the world of politics, of science, and of art, and is constantly
occupied with such matters... and an observer who was uninstructed
upon his general condition would scarcely notice anything peculiar in
this direction. In spite of all this, however, the patient is full of
ideas of pathological origin, which have formed themselves into a
complete system; they are now more or less fixed, and seem to be
inaccessible to correction by means of any objective valuation of the
actual external facts’ (p. 386).
Thus the patient’s condition had undergone a great change, and he now
considered himself capable of carrying on an independent existence. He
accordingly {394} took the necessary steps with a view to regaining
control over his own affairs and to securing his discharge from the
sanatorium. Dr. Weber set himself to prevent the fulfilment of these
intentions and drew up reports in a contrary sense. Nevertheless, in
his report dated 1900, he felt obliged to give this appreciative
account of the patient’s character and conduct: ‘Since for the last
nine months Herr Präsident Schreber has taken his meals daily at my
family board, I have had the most ample opportunities of conversing
with him upon every imaginable topic. Whatever the subject was that
came up for discussion (apart, of course, from his delusional ideas),
whether it concerned events in the field of administration and law, or
of politics, or of art, or of literature, or of social life---in
short, whatever the topic, Dr. Schreber gave evidence of a lively
interest, a well-informed mind, a good memory, and a sound judgement;
his ethical outlook, moreover, was one which it was impossible not to
endorse. So, too, in his lighter talk with the ladies of the party, he
was both courteous and affable, and if he touched upon matters in a
more humorous vein he invariably displayed tact and decorum. Never
once, during these innocent talks round the dining-table, did he
introduce subjects which should more properly have been raised at a
medical consultation’ (p. 397). Indeed, on one occasion during this
period, when a business question arose which involved the interests of
his whole family, he entered into it in a manner which showed both his
technical knowledge and his common sense (pp. 401 and 510).
In the numerous applications to the courts, by which Dr. Schreber
endeavoured to regain his liberty, he did not in the least disavow his
delusion or make any secret of his intention of publishing the
_Denkwürdigkeiten_. On the contrary, he dwelt upon the importance of
his ideas to religious thought, and upon their invulnerability to the
attacks of modern science; but at the same time he laid stress upon
the absolute harmlessness {395} of the actions which, as he was aware,
his delusions obliged him to perform (p. 430). Such, indeed, were his
acumen and the cogency of his logic that finally, and in spite of his
being an acknowledged paranoiac, his efforts were crowned with
success. In July 1902 Dr. Schreber’s civil rights were restored, and
in the following year his _Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken_ were
issued, though in a censored form and with many valuable portions
omitted.
In the judgement that gave Dr. Schreber back his liberty will be found
a few sentences which summarize his delusional system: ‘He believed
that he had a mission to redeem the world and to restore it to its
lost state of bliss. This, however, he could only bring about if he
were first transformed from a man into a woman’ (p. 475).
For a more detailed account of his delusions as they appeared in their
final shape we may turn to the report drawn up in 1899 by Dr. Weber,
the physician in charge of the sanatorium: ‘The culminating point of
the patient’s delusional system is his belief that he has a mission to
redeem the world, and to restore mankind to their lost state of
bliss. He was called to this task, so he asserts, by direct
inspiration from God, just as we are taught that the Prophets were;
for nerves in a condition of great excitement, as his were for a long
time, have precisely the property of exerting an attraction upon
God---though this is touching upon matters which human speech is
scarcely, if at all, capable of expressing, since they lie entirely
outside the scope of human experience and, indeed, have been revealed
to him alone. The most essential feature of his mission of redemption
is that it must be preceded by his _transformation into a woman_. It
is not to be supposed that he _wishes_ to be transformed into a woman;
it is rather a question of a “must” based upon the order of things,
which there is no possibility of his evading, much as he would
personally prefer to remain in his own honourable and masculine
station in {396} life. But neither he nor the rest of mankind can win
back their immortality except by his being transformed into a woman (a
process which may occupy many years or even decades) by means of
divine miracles. He himself, of this he is convinced, is the only
object upon which divine miracles are worked, and he is thus the most
remarkable man who has ever lived upon earth. Every hour and every
minute for years he has experienced these miracles in his body, and he
has had them confirmed by the voices that have conversed with
him. During the first years of his illness certain of his bodily
organs suffered such destructive injuries as would inevitably have led
to the death of any other man: he lived for a long time without a
stomach, without intestines, almost without lungs, with a torn
oesophagus, without a bladder, and with shattered ribs, he used
sometimes to swallow part of his own larynx with his food, etc. But
divine miracles (“rays”) always restored what had been destroyed, and
therefore, as long as he remains a man, he is not in any way
mortal. These alarming phenomena have ceased long ago, and his
“femaleness” has become prominent instead. This involves a process of
development which will probably require decades, if not centuries, for
its completion, and it is unlikely that any one now living will
survive to see the end of it. He has a feeling that great numbers of
“female nerves” have already passed over into his body, and out of
them a new race of men will proceed, through a process of direct
impregnation by God. Not until then, it seems, will he be able to die
a natural death, and, like the rest of mankind, have regained a state
of bliss. In the meantime not only the sun, but trees and birds, which
are in the nature of “bemiracled relics of former human souls”, speak
to him in human accents, and miraculous things happen everywhere
around him’ (p. 386).
The interest felt by the practical psychiatrist in such delusional
formations as these is, as a rule, exhausted when once he has
ascertained the character of the {397} products of the delusion and
has formed an estimate of their influence upon the patient’s general
behaviour: in his case astonishment is not the birth of
comprehension. The psycho-analyst, in the light of his knowledge of
the psychoneuroses, approaches the subject with a suspicion that even
mental structures so extraordinary as these and so remote from our
common modes of thought are nevertheless derived from the most general
and comprehensible of human impulses; and he would be glad to discover
the motives of such a transformation as well as the manner in which it
has been accomplished. With this aim in view, he will be eager to go
more deeply into the details of the delusion and into the history of
its development.
(_a_) The medical report laid stress upon two points as being of chief
importance: the patient’s _assumption of the rôle of Redeemer_, and
_his transformation into a woman_. The Redeemer delusion is a phantasy
that is familiar to us through the frequency with which it forms the
nucleus of religious paranoia. The additional factor, which makes the
redemption dependent upon the patient’s being previously transformed
into a woman, is unusual and in itself bewildering, since it shows
such a wide divergence from the historical myth which the patient’s
phantasy is setting out to reproduce. It is natural to follow the
medical report in assuming that the motive force of this delusional
complex was the patient’s ambition to play the part of Redeemer, and
that his _emasculation_ was only entitled to be regarded as a means
for achieving that end. Although this may be true of his delusion in
its final form, a study of the _Denkwürdigkeiten_ compels us to take a
very different view of the matter. For we learn that the idea of being
transformed into a woman (that is, of being emasculated) was the
primary delusion, that he began by regarding that act as a piece of
persecution and a serious injury, and that it only became related to
his playing the part of Redeemer in a secondary way. There can be no
doubt, moreover, {398} that originally he believed that the
emasculation was to be effected for the purpose of sexual abuse and
not so as to serve some higher design. To express the matter in more
formal language, a sexual delusion of persecution was later on
converted, in the patient’s mind, into a religious delusion of
grandeur. The part of persecutor was at first assigned to
Prof. Flechsig, the physician in whose charge he was; subsequently,
however, the place was occupied by God himself.
I will quote the relevant passages from the _Denkwürdigkeiten_ in
full: ‘In this way a conspiracy against me was brought to a head (in
about March or April 1894). Its object was to contrive that, when once
my nervous complaint had been recognized as incurable or assumed to be
so, I should be handed over to a certain person in a particular
manner. Thus my soul was to be delivered up to him, but my
body---owing to a misapprehension of what I have described above as a
purpose underlying the order of things---was to be transformed into a
female body, and as such surrendered to the person in question[270]
with a view to sexual abuse, and was then simply to be “left where it
was”---that is to say, no doubt, abandoned to corruption’ (p. 56).
‘It was, moreover, perfectly natural that from the human standpoint
(which was the one by which at that time I was still chiefly governed)
I should regard Professor Flechsig or his soul as my only true
enemy---at a later date there was also the von W. soul, about which I
shall have more to say presently---and that I should look upon God
Almighty as my ally. I merely fancied that he was in great straits as
regards Professor Flechsig, and consequently felt myself bound to
support him by every conceivable means, even to the length of
sacrificing myself. It was not until very much later that the idea
forced itself upon my mind {399} that God himself had played the part
of accomplice, if not of instigator, in the plot whereby my soul was
to be murdered and my body used like a strumpet. I may say, in fact,
that this idea has in part become clearly conscious to me only in the
course of my writing the present work’ (p. 59).
‘Every attempt at murdering my soul, or at emasculating me for
purposes _contrary to the order of things_³⁴ (that is, for the
gratification of the sexual appetites of a human individual), or later
at destroying my understanding---every such attempt has come to
nothing. From this apparently unequal struggle between one weak man
and God himself, I have emerged triumphant---though not without
undergoing much bitter suffering and privation---because the order of
things stands upon my side’ (p. 61).
In footnote ³⁴, referring to the above passage, the author foreshadows
the subsequent transformation in his delusion of emasculation and in
his relation to God: ‘I shall show later on that emasculation for
quite another purpose---a purpose _in consonance with the order of
things_---is within the bounds of possibility, and, indeed, that it
may quite probably afford a solution of the conflict.’
These statements are of decisive importance in determining the view we
are to take of the delusion of emasculation and in thus giving us a
general understanding of the case. It may be added that the ‘voices’
which the patient heard never treated his transformation into a woman
as anything but a sexual disgrace, which gave them an excuse for
jeering at him. ‘Rays of God[271] not infrequently thought themselves
entitled to mock at me by calling me “Miss[272] Schreber”, in allusion
to the emasculation which, it was alleged, I was about to undergo’
(p. 127). Or they would say: ‘So _this_ sets up to have been a
Senatspräsident, this {400} person who lets himself be f⸺d!’[273]
(p. 177). Or again: ‘Don’t you feel ashamed in front of your wife?’
(p. 177).
That the emasculation phantasy was of a primary nature and originally
independent of the Redeemer idea becomes still more probable when we
recollect the ‘idea’ which, as I mentioned on an earlier page,
occurred to him while he was half-asleep, to the effect that it must
be nice to be a woman submitting to the act of copulation
(p. 36). This phantasy appeared during the incubation period of his
illness, and before he had begun to feel the effects of being
overworked in Dresden.
Schreber himself gives the month of November 1895 as the date at which
the connection was established between the emasculation phantasy and
the Redeemer idea and the way thus paved for his becoming reconciled
to the former. ‘Now, however,’ he writes, ‘I became clearly aware that
the order of things imperatively demanded my emasculation, whether I
personally liked it or no, and that no _reasonable_ course lay open to
me but to reconcile myself to the thought of being transformed into a
woman. The further consequence of my emasculation could, of course,
only be my impregnation by divine rays to the end that a new race of
men might be created’ (p. 177).
The idea of being transformed into a woman was the salient feature and
the earliest germ of his delusional system. It also proved to be the
one part of it that survived his recovery and was afterwards able to
retain a place in his practical life. ‘The _only thing_ which could
appear unreasonable in the eyes of other people is the fact, already
touched upon in the expert’s report, that I am sometimes to be found,
standing before the mirror or elsewhere, with the upper portion of my
body partly bared, and wearing sundry feminine {401} adornments, such
as ribbons, trumpery necklaces, and the like. This only occurs, I may
add, when I am _by myself_, and never, at least so far as I am able to
avoid it, in the presence of other people’ (p. 429). The Herr
Senatspräsident confesses to this frivolity at a date (July 1901) at
which he was already in a position to express very aptly the
completeness of his recovery in the region of practical life: ‘I have
now long been aware that the persons I see about me are not “cursory
contraptions” but real people, and that I must therefore behave
towards them as a reasonable man is used to behave towards his
fellows’ (p. 409). In contrast to the way in which he put his
emasculation phantasy into action, the patient never took any steps
towards inducing people to recognize his mission as Redeemer, beyond
the publication of his _Denkwürdigkeiten_.
(_b_) The attitude of our patient towards _God_ is so singular and so
full of internal contradictions that it requires more than a little
faith to persist in the belief that there is nevertheless ‘method’ in
his ‘madness’. With the help of what Dr. Schreber tells us in the
_Denkwürdigkeiten_, we must now endeavour to arrive at a more exact
view of his theologico-psychological system, and we must expound his
opinions concerning _nerves_, _the state of bliss_, _the divine
hierarchy_, and _the attributes of God_, as they occur in his
delusional system. At every point in his theory we shall be struck by
the astonishing mixture of the platitudinous and the clever, of what
has been borrowed and what is original.
The human soul is comprised in the _nerves_ of the body. These are to
be conceived of as structures of extraordinary fineness, comparable to
the finest thread. Some of these nerves are designed only for the
reception of sensory impressions, while others (_the nerves of
understanding_) carry out all the functions of the mind; and in this
connection it is to be noticed that _each single nerve of
understanding represents a person’s entire mental individuality_, and
that the presence of a greater or lesser number of nerves of
understanding has no {402} influence except upon the length of time
during which the mind can retain its impressions.[274]
Whereas men consist of bodies and nerves, God is from his very nature
nothing but nerve. But the nerves of God are not, as is the case with
human bodies, present in limited numbers, but are infinite or
eternal. They possess all the properties of human nerves to an
enormously intensified degree. In their creative capacity, that is
their power of turning themselves into every imaginable object in the
created world, they are known as _rays_. There is an intimate relation
between God and the starry heaven and the sun.[275]
When the work of creation was finished, God withdrew to an immense
distance (pp. 11 and 252) and, in general, resigned the world to its
own laws. He limited his activities to drawing up to himself the souls
of the dead. It was only in exceptional instances that he would enter
into relations with particular, highly gifted persons,[276] or would
intervene by means of a miracle in the destinies of the world. God
does not have any regular intercourse with human souls, according to
the order of things, until after death.[277] When a man dies, his
spiritual parts (that is, his nerves) undergo a process of
purification before being finally reunited with {403} God himself as
‘fore-courts of Heaven’. Thus it comes about that everything moves in
an eternal round, which lies at the basis of the order of things
(p. 19). In creating anything, God is parting with a portion of
himself, or is clothing a portion of his nerves in a new shape. The
apparent loss which he thus sustains is made good when, after hundreds
and thousands of years, the nerves of dead men, that have entered the
state of bliss, once more accrue to him as ‘fore-courts of Heaven’.
Souls that have passed through the process of purification enter into
the enjoyment of a _state of bliss_.[278] In the meantime they have
lost some of their individual consciousness, and have become fused
together with other souls into higher unities. Important souls, such
as those of men like Goethe, Bismarck, etc., may have to retain their
sense of identity for hundreds of years to come, before they too can
become resolved into higher soul-complexes, such as ‘Jehovah rays’ in
the case of ancient Jewry, or ‘Zoroaster rays’ in the case of ancient
Persia. In the course of their purification souls learn the language
which is spoken by God himself, the so-called ‘root-language’. This is
‘a vigorous though somewhat antiquated German, which is especially
characterized by its great wealth of euphemisms’[279] (p. 13).
God himself is not a simple entity. ‘Above the “fore-courts of Heaven”
floated God himself, who, in contradistinction to these “anterior
realms of God”, was also described as the “posterior realms of
God”. The posterior realms of God were, and still are, divided in a
strange manner into two parts, so that a lower God (Ahriman) was
differentiated from an upper God (Ormuzd)’ (p. 19). As regards the
significance of this {404} division Schreber can tell us no more than
that the lower God was more especially attached to the peoples of a
dark race (the Semites) and the upper God to those of a fair race (the
Aryans); nor would it be reasonable, in such sublime matters, to
expect human knowledge to carry us further. Nevertheless, we are also
told that ‘in spite of the fact that in certain respects God Almighty
forms a unity, the lower and the upper God must be regarded as
separate beings, each of which possesses its own particular egoism and
its own particular instinct of self-preservation, _even in relation to
the other_, and each of which in turn is therefore constantly
endeavouring to thrust the other forward’ (p. 140). Moreover, the two
divine beings behaved in quite different ways towards the unlucky
Schreber during the acute stage of his illness.[280]
In the days before his illness Senatspräsident Schreber had been a
doubter in religious matters (pp. 29 and 64); he had never been able
to persuade himself into a firm belief in the existence of a personal
God. Indeed, he adduces this fact about his earlier life as an
argument in favour of the objective reality of his delusions.[281] But
any one who reads the account which follows of the characteristics of
Schreber’s God will have to allow that the transformation effected by
the paranoic disorder was no very fundamental one, and that in the
Redeemer of to-day much remains of the doubter of yesterday.
For there is a flaw in the order of things, as a result of which the
existence of God himself seems to be {405} endangered. Owing to
circumstances which are incapable of further explanation, the nerves
of _living_ men, especially when in a condition of _intense
excitement_, may exercise such a powerful attraction upon the nerves
of God that he cannot get free from them again, and thus his own
existence may be threatened (p. 11). This exceedingly rare occurrence
took place in Schreber’s case and involved him in the greatest
sufferings. The instinct of self-preservation was aroused in God
(p. 30), and it then became evident that God was far removed from the
perfection ascribed to him by religions. Through the whole of
Schreber’s book there runs the bitter complaint that God, being only
accustomed to intercourse with the dead, _does not understand living
men_.
‘In this connection, however, _a fundamental misunderstanding_
prevails, which has since run through my whole life like a scarlet
thread. It is based precisely upon the fact that, _in accordance with
the order of things, God was not really acquainted with living men_
and did not need to be; consonantly with the order of things, he
needed only to have intercourse with corpses’ (p. 55).---‘This state
of things... I am convinced, is once more to be ascribed to the fact
that God was, if I may so express it, quite incapable of dealing with
living men, and was only accustomed to intercourse with corpses, or at
most with men as they lay asleep (that is, in their dreams)’
(p. 141).---‘I myself feel inclined to exclaim: “_Incredibile
scriptu!_” Yet it is all literally true, however difficult it may be
for other people to grasp the idea of God’s complete inability to
judge living men correctly, and however long I myself took to accustom
myself to this idea after my innumerable observations upon the
subject’ (p. 246).
It was solely as a result of God’s misunderstanding of living men that
it was possible for him himself to become the instigator of the plot
against Schreber, to take him for a dement, and to subject him to such
exhausting ordeals (p. 264). To avoid being set down as a dement, he
submitted himself to an extremely {406} burdensome system of ‘enforced
thinking’. For ‘every time that my intellectual activities ceased, God
jumped to the conclusion that my mental faculties were extinct and
that the destruction of my understanding (the dementia), for which he
was hoping, had actually set in, and that a withdrawal had now become
possible’ (p. 206).
The behaviour of God in the matter of the ‘call to sh⸺’ (the need
for evacuating the bowels) rouses him to a specially high pitch of
indignation. The passage is so characteristic that I will quote it in
full. But to make it clear I must first explain that both the miracles
and the voices proceed from God, that is, from the divine rays.
‘Although it will necessitate my touching upon an unsavoury subject, I
must devote a few more words to the question that I have just quoted
(“Why don’t you sh⸺?”) on account of the typical character of the
whole business. The need for evacuation, like all else that has to do
with my body, is evoked miraculously. It is brought about by my faeces
being forced forward (and sometimes back again) in my intestines; and
if, owing to there having already been an evacuation, enough material
is not present, then such small remains as there may still be of the
contents of my intestines are smeared over my anal orifice. This
occurrence is a miracle performed by the upper God, and it is repeated
several dozens of times at the least every day. It is associated with
an idea which is utterly incomprehensible to human beings and can only
be accounted for by God’s complete ignorance of man as a living
organism. According to this idea “sh⸺ing” is in a certain sense the
final act; that is to say, when once the call to sh⸺ has been
miracled up, the aim of destroying my understanding is achieved and a
final withdrawal of the rays become possible. To get to the bottom of
the origin of this idea, we must suppose, as it seems to me, that
there is a misapprehension in connection with the symbolic meaning of
the act of {407} evacuation, a notion, in fact, that any one who has
been in such a relation as I have with divine rays is to some extent
entitled to sh⸺ upon the whole world.
‘But now what follows reveals the full perfidy[282] of the policy that
has been pursued towards me. Almost every time the need for evacuation
was miracled up in me, some other person in my vicinity was sent (by
having his nerves stimulated for that purpose) to the lavatory, in
order to prevent my evacuating. This is a phenomenon which I have
observed for years and upon such countless occasions---thousands of
them---and with such regularity, as to exclude any possibility of its
being attributable to chance. And thereupon comes the question: “Why
don’t you sh⸺?” to which this brilliant repartee is made on my
behalf: “Because I’m so stupid or something”. The pen well-nigh
shrinks from recording so monumental a piece of absurdity as that God,
blinded by his ignorance of human nature, can positively go to such
lengths as to suppose that there can exist a man too stupid to do what
every animal can do---too stupid to be able to sh⸺. When, upon the
occasion of such a call, I actually succeed in evacuating---and as a
rule, since I nearly always find the lavatory engaged, I use a pail
for the purpose---the process is always accompanied by the generation
of an exceedingly strong feeling of spiritual voluptuousness. For the
relief from the pressure caused by the presence of the faeces in the
intestines produces a sense of intense well-being in the nerves of
voluptuousness; and the same is equally true of making water. For this
reason, even down to the present day, while I am passing stool or
making water, all the rays are invariably and without exception
united; and for this same reason, too, whenever I address myself to
these natural functions, an attempt is invariably made, though as a
rule in vain, to miracle {408} back again the call to pass stool and
to make water’[283] (p. 225).
Furthermore, this singular God of Schreber’s is incapable of learning
anything by experience: ‘Owing to some quality or other inherent in
his nature, it seems to be impossible for God to derive any lessons
for the future from the experience thus gained’ (p. 186). He can
therefore go on repeating the same tormenting ordeals and miracles and
voices, without alteration, year after year, until he inevitably
becomes a laughing-stock to the victim of his persecutions.
‘The consequence is that, now that the miracles have to a great extent
lost the power which they formerly possessed of producing terrifying
effects, God strikes me above all, in almost everything that he does
in relation to me, as being ridiculous or childish. As regards my own
behaviour, this often results in my being obliged in self-defence to
assume the part of a scoffer at God, and even, on occasion, to mock at
him aloud’[284] (p. 333).
This critical and rebellious attitude towards God is, however, opposed
in Schreber’s mind by an energetic counter-current, which finds
expression in many places: ‘But here again I must most emphatically
declare that this is nothing more than an episode, which will, I hope,
terminate at the latest with my decease, and that the right of
scoffing at God belongs in consequence to me alone and not to other
men. For them he remains the almighty creator of Heaven and earth, the
first author of all things, and the rock of their salvation, to
whom---notwithstanding that a few of the conventional religious ideas
may require revision---worship and the deepest reverence are due’
(p. 333).
{409}
Repeated attempts are therefore made to find a justification for God’s
behaviour to the patient. In these attempts, which display as much
ingenuity as every other theodicy, the explanation is based now upon
the general nature of souls, and now upon the necessity for
self-preservation which was forced upon God, and upon the misleading
influence of the Flechsig soul (pp. 60 _et seq._ and 160). In general,
however, the illness is looked upon as a struggle between the man
Schreber and God, in which victory lies with the man, weak though he
is, because the order of things is on his side (p. 61).
The medical reports might easily lead us to suppose that Schreber
exhibited the everyday form of Redeemer phantasy, in which the patient
believes he is the son of God, destined to save the world from its
misery or from the destruction that is threatening it, and so on. It
is for this reason that I have been careful to present in detail the
peculiarities of Schreber’s relations with God. The significance of
these relations for the rest of mankind is only rarely alluded to in
the _Denkwürdigkeiten_ and not until the last phase of his delusional
formation. It consists essentially in the fact that no one who dies
can enter the state of bliss so long as the greater part of the rays
of God are absorbed in Schreber owing to his powers of attraction
(p. 32). It is only at a very late stage, too, that his identification
with Jesus Christ makes an undisguised appearance (pp. 338 and 431).
No attempt at explaining Schreber’s case will have any chance of being
correct which does not take into account these peculiarities in his
conception of God, this mixture of reverence and rebelliousness in his
attitude towards him.
I will now turn to another subject, which is closely related to God,
namely, the _state of bliss_. This is also spoken of by Schreber as
‘the life in the next world’ to which the human soul is raised after
death by the process of purification. He describes it as a state of
{410} uninterrupted enjoyment, associated with the contemplation of
God. This is not very original, but on the other hand it is surprising
to learn that Schreber makes a distinction between a male and a female
state of bliss.[285] ‘The male state of bliss was superior to the
female, which seems to have consisted chiefly in an uninterrupted
feeling of voluptuousness’ (p. 18). In other passages this coincidence
between the state of bliss and voluptuousness is expressed in plainer
language and without reference to sex-distinction; whereas that
element of the state of bliss which consists in the contemplation of
God is not further discussed. Thus, for instance: ‘...with the nature
of the nerves of God, in virtue of which the state of bliss... is
accompanied by a very intense sensation of voluptuousness, even though
it does not consist exclusively of it’ (p. 51). And again:
‘Voluptuousness may be regarded as a fragment of the state of bliss
given in advance, as it were, to men and other living creatures’
(p. 281). So that the state of heavenly bliss is to be understood as
being in its essence an intensified continuation of sensual pleasure
upon earth!
It must not be supposed that this view of the state of bliss was an
element in Schreber’s delusion that originated in the first stages of
his illness and was later eliminated as being incompatible with the
rest. So late as in the Statement of his Case, drawn up by the patient
for the Appeal Court in July 1901, he emphasizes as one of his
greatest discoveries the fact ‘that voluptuousness stands in a close
relationship (not hitherto perceptible to the rest of mankind) to
{411} the state of bliss enjoyed by departed spirits’[286] (p. 442).
We shall find, indeed, that this ‘close relationship’ is the rock upon
which the patient builds his hopes of an eventual reconciliation with
God and of his sufferings being brought to an end. The rays of God
abandon their hostility as soon as they are certain that in becoming
absorbed into his body they will experience spiritual voluptuousness
(p. 133); God himself demands that he shall be able to find
voluptuousness in him (p. 283), and threatens him with the withdrawal
of his rays if he neglects to cultivate voluptuousness and cannot
offer God what he demands (p. 320).
This surprising sexualization of the state of heavenly bliss suggests
the possibility that Schreber’s concept of the state of bliss[287] is
derived from a condensation of the two principal meanings of the
German word ‘_selig_’ [‘blest’], namely, ‘dead’ and ‘sensually
happy’.[288] But this instance of sexualization will also give us
occasion to examine the patient’s general attitude to the erotic side
of life and to questions of sexual indulgence. For we psycho-analysts
have hitherto supported the view that the roots of every nervous and
mental disorder are chiefly to be found in the patient’s sexual life;
but whereas some of us have done so merely upon empirical grounds,
others have been influenced in addition by theoretical considerations.
The samples of Schreber’s delusions that have already been given
enable us without more ado to {412} dismiss the suspicion that it
might precisely be this paranoid disorder which would turn out to be
the ‘negative case’ which has so long been sought for---a case in
which sexuality plays only a very minor part. Schreber speaks again
and again as though he himself shared our prejudices. He is constantly
talking in the same breath of ‘neurotic states’ and sexual lapses, as
though the two things were inseparable.[289]
Before his illness Senatspräsident Schreber had been a man of strict
morals: ‘Few people’, he declares, and I see no reason to doubt his
assertion, ‘can have been brought up upon such strict moral principles
as I was, and few people, all through their lives, can have exercised
(especially in sexual matters) a self-restraint conforming so closely
to those principles as I may say of myself that I have done’
(p. 281). After the severe mental struggle, of which the phenomena of
his illness were the outward signs, his attitude towards the erotic
side of life had altered. He had come to see that the cultivation of
voluptuousness was incumbent upon him as a duty, and that it was only
by discharging it that he could end the grave conflict which had
broken out within him---or, as he thought, regarding
him. Voluptuousness, so the voices assured him, had become
‘God-fearing’ (p. 285), and he could only regret that he was not able
to devote himself to its cultivation the whole day long[290] (p. 285).
{413}
Such, then, was the result of the changes produced in Schreber by his
illness, as we find them expressed in the two main features of his
delusion. Before it he had been inclined to sexual asceticism and had
been a doubter in regard to God; while after it he was a believer in
God and a devotee to sensual pleasure. But just as his re-conquered
belief in God was of a peculiar kind, so too the sexual enjoyment
which he had won for himself was of a most unusual character. It was
not the sexual liberty of a man, but the sexual feelings of a
woman. He took up a feminine attitude towards God; he felt that he was
God’s wife.[291]
No other part of his delusion is treated by the patient so
exhaustively, one might almost say so insistently, as his alleged
transformation into a woman. The nerves absorbed by him have, so he
says, assumed in his body the character of female nerves of
voluptuousness, and have given to his body a more or less female
stamp, and more particularly to his skin a softness peculiar to the
female sex (p. 87). If he presses lightly with his fingers upon any
part of his body, he can feel these nerves, under the surface of the
skin, as a tissue of a thread-like or stringy texture; they are
especially present in the region of the chest, where, in a woman, her
breasts would be. ‘By applying pressure to this tissue, I am able to
evoke a sensation of voluptuousness such as women experience, and
especially if I think of something feminine at the same time’
(p. 277). He knows with certainty that this tissue was originally
nothing else than nerves of God, which could hardly {414} have lost
the character of nerves merely through having passed over into his
body (p. 279). By means of what he calls ‘drawing’ (that is, by
calling up visual images) he is able to give both himself and the rays
an impression that his body is fitted out with female breasts and
genitals: ‘It has become so much a habit with me to draw female
buttocks on to my body---_honi soit qui mal y pense_---that I do it
almost involuntarily every time I stoop’ (p. 233). He is ‘bold enough
to assert that any one who should happen to see me before the mirror
with the upper portion of my torso bared---especially if the illusion
were assisted by my wearing a little feminine finery---would receive
an unmistakable impression of a _female bust_’ (p. 280). He calls for
a medical examination, in order to establish the fact that his whole
body has nerves of voluptuousness dispersed over it from head to foot,
a state of things which is only to be found, in his opinion, in the
female body, whereas, in the male, to the best of his knowledge,
nerves of voluptuousness exist only in the sexual organs and their
immediate vicinity (p. 274). The spiritual voluptuousness which has
been developed owing to this accumulation of nerves in his body is so
intense that it only requires a slight effort of his imagination
(especially when he is lying in bed) to procure him a feeling of
sensual well-being that affords a tolerably distinct foretaste of the
sexual pleasure enjoyed by a woman during copulation (p. 269).
If we now recall the dream which the patient had during the incubation
period of his illness, before he had moved to Dresden, it will become
clear beyond a doubt that his delusion of being transformed into a
woman was nothing else than a realization of that dream. At that time
he had rebelled against the dream with masculine indignation, and in
the same way he began by striving against its fulfilment in his
illness and looked upon his transformation into a woman as a disgrace
with which he was threatened from a hostile source. But there came a
time (it was in November {415} 1895) when he began to reconcile
himself to the transformation and bring it into harmony with the
higher purposes of God: ‘Since then, and with a full consciousness of
what I did, I have inscribed upon my banner the cultivation of
femaleness’ (pp. 177 and 178).
He then arrived at the firm conviction that it was God himself who,
for his own satisfaction, was demanding femaleness from him.
‘No sooner, however (if I may so express it), am I alone with God than
it becomes a necessity for me to employ every imaginable device and to
summon up the whole of my mental faculties, and especially my
imagination, in order to bring it about that the divine rays may have
the impression as continuously as possible (or, since this is beyond
mortal power, at least at certain times of day) that I am a woman
luxuriating in voluptuous sensations’ (p. 281).
‘On the other hand, God demands a _constant state of enjoyment_, such
as would be in keeping with the conditions of existence imposed upon
souls by the order of things; and it is my duty to provide him with
this... in the shape of the greatest possible output of spiritual
voluptuousness. And if, in this process, a little sensual pleasure
falls to my share, I feel justified in accepting it as some slight
compensation for the inordinate measure of suffering and privation
that has been mine for so many past years...’ (p. 283).
‘... I think I may even venture to advance the view, based upon
impressions I have received, that God would never take any steps
towards effecting a withdrawal---the first result of which is
invariably to alter my physical condition markedly for the worse---but
would quietly and permanently yield to my powers of attraction, if it
were possible for me _always_ to be playing the part of a woman lying
in my own amorous embraces, _always_ to be casting my looks upon
female forms, _always_ to be gazing at pictures of women, and so on’
(p. 24).
{416}
In Schreber’s system the two principal elements of his delusion (his
transformation into a woman and his favoured relation to God) are
united in his assumption of a feminine attitude towards God. It will
be a necessary part of our task to show that there is an essential
_genetic_ relation between these two elements. Or else our attempts at
elucidating Schreber’s delusions will leave us in the absurd position
described in Kant’s famous simile in the _Critique of Pure
Reason_:---we shall be like a man holding a sieve under a he-goat
while some one else milks it.
II {417}
ATTEMPTS AT INTERPRETATION
The problem now lies before us of endeavouring to penetrate the
meaning of this history of a case of paranoia and to lay bare in it
the familiar complexes and motive forces of mental life; and it is a
task which might be approached from two different angles. We might
start either from the patient’s own delusional utterances or from the
exciting causes of his illness.
The former method cannot fail to seem enticing since the brilliant
example given us by Jung in his interpretation of a case of dementia
praecox which was far severer than this one and which exhibited
symptoms far more remote from the normal.[292] The high level of our
present patient’s intelligence, too, and his communicativeness, would
seem likely to facilitate the accomplishment of our task, if we
approached it along these lines. By no means infrequently he himself
presses the key into our hands, by adding a gloss to some delusional
proposition in an apparently incidental manner, or by making a
quotation or producing an example in connection with it, or even by
expressly denying some parallel to it that has arisen in his own
mind. For when this happens, we have only to follow our usual
psycho-analytic technique (to strip his sentence of its negative form,
to take his example as being the actual thing, or his quotation or
gloss as being the original source) and we find ourselves in
possession of what we are looking for---a translation of the paranoic
mode of expression into the normal one. It is perhaps worth giving a
more detailed illustration {418} of the correctness of this
procedure. Schreber complains of the nuisance created by the so-called
‘miracled birds’ or ‘talking birds’, to which he ascribes a number of
very remarkable qualities (pp. 208-214). It is his belief that they
are composed of relics of former ‘fore-courts of Heaven’, that is, of
human souls once in a state of bliss, and that they are charged with
ptomaine[293] poison and let loose upon him. They have been brought to
the condition of repeating ‘meaningless phrases that they have learnt
by heart’ and that have been ‘crammed into them’. Each time that they
have discharged their load of ptomaine poison on to him---that is,
each time that they have ‘reeled off the phrases with which they have
been crammed, as it were’---they become to some extent absorbed into
his soul, with the words ‘What a deuced fellow!’ or ‘Deuce take it!’
which are the only words they are still capable of using to express a
genuine feeling. They cannot understand the meaning of the words they
speak, but they are by nature susceptible to similarity of sounds,
though the similarity need not necessarily be a complete one. Thus it
is immaterial to them whether one says:
‘_Santiago_’ or ‘_Karthago_’,
‘_Chinesentum_’ or ‘_Jesum Christum_’,
‘_Abendrot_’ or ‘_Atemnot_’,
‘_Ariman_’ or ‘_Ackermann_’, etc.[294] (p. 210).
As we read this description, the idea forces itself upon us that what
it really refers to must be young girls. In a carping mood people
often compare them to geese, ungallantly accuse them of having ‘the
brains of a bird’, declare that they can say nothing but phrases
learnt by rote, and that they betray their lack of education by
confusing foreign words that sound alike. The {419} phrase ‘What a
deuced fellow!’ which is the only thing that they are serious about,
would in that case be an allusion to the triumph of the young man who
has succeeded in impressing them. And, sure enough, a few pages later
we come upon a passage in which Schreber confirms this interpretation:
‘For purposes of distinction, I have as a joke given girls’ names to a
great number of the remaining bird-souls; since by their
inquisitiveness, their voluptuous bent, etc., they one and all most
readily suggest a comparison with little girls. Some of these girls’
names have since been adopted by the rays of God and have been
retained as a designation of the bird-souls in question’
(p. 214). This easy method of interpreting the ‘miracled birds’ gives
us a hint which may help us towards understanding the enigmatic
‘fore-courts of Heaven’.
I am quite aware that a psycho-analyst needs no small amount of tact
and restraint whenever in the course of his work he goes beyond the
standard lines of interpretation, and that his listeners or readers
will only follow him as far as their own familiarity with analytic
technique will allow them. He has every reason, therefore, to guard
against the risk that an increased display of acumen on his part may
be accompanied by a diminution in the certainty and trustworthiness of
his results. It is thus only natural that one analyst will tend too
much in the direction of caution and another too much in the direction
of boldness. It will not be possible to define the proper limits of
justifiable interpretation until many experiments have been made and
until the subject has become more familiar. In working upon the case
of Schreber I have had a policy of restraint forced upon me by the
circumstance that the opposition to his publishing the
_Denkwürdigkeiten_ was so far effective as to withhold a considerable
portion of the material from our knowledge, the portion, too, which
would in all probability have thrown the most important light upon the
case.[295] Thus, {420} for instance, the third chapter of the book
opens with this promising announcement: ‘I shall now proceed to
describe certain events which occurred to _other members of my family_
and which may conceivably have been connected with the soul-murder
which I have postulated. There is at any rate something more or less
problematical about all of them, something not easily explicable upon
the lines of ordinary human experience’ (p. 33). But the next
sentence, which is also the last of the chapter, is as follows: ‘The
remainder of this chapter has been withheld from print as being
unsuitable for publication’. I shall therefore have to be satisfied if
I can succeed in tracing back at any rate the nucleus of the
delusional structure with some degree of certainty to familiar human
motives.
With this object in view I shall now mention a further element in the
case history to which sufficient weight is not given in the reports,
although the patient himself has done all he can to put it in the
foreground. I refer to Schreber’s relations to his first physician,
Geheimrat Prof. Flechsig of Leipsic.
As we already know, Schreber’s case at first took the form of
delusions of persecution, and did not begin to lose it until the
turning-point of his illness (the time of his ‘reconciliation’). From
that time onwards the persecutions became less and less intolerable,
and the disgraceful purpose which at first underlay his threatened
emasculation began to be superseded by a purpose in consonance with
the order of things. But the first {421} author of all these acts of
persecution was Flechsig, and he remains their instigator throughout
the whole course of the illness.[296]
Of the actual nature of Flechsig’s enormity and of the motives with
which he perpetrated it the patient speaks indefinitely and
unintelligibly. Such characteristic vagueness and obscurity, if it is
legitimate to judge paranoia upon the model of a far more familiar
mental phenomenon---the dream---, may be regarded as signs of an
especially intense activity on the part of the forces engaged upon the
construction of the delusion. Flechsig, according to the patient,
committed, or attempted to commit, ‘soul-murder’ upon him---an act
which may perhaps be compared with the efforts made by the devil or by
demons to gain possession of a soul, and which may have had its
prototype in events which occurred between members of the Flechsig and
Schreber families long since deceased (pp. 22 _et seq._). We should be
glad to learn more of the meaning of this ‘soul-murder’, but at this
point our sources relapse once more into a tendentious silence: ‘As to
what constitutes the true essence of soul-murder, and as to its
technique, if I may so describe it, I am able to say nothing beyond
what has already been indicated. There is only this, perhaps, to be
added... (The passage which follows is unsuitable for publication)’
(p. 28). As a result of this omission we are left in the dark on the
question of what is meant by ‘soul-murder’. We shall refer later on to
the only hint upon the subject which has evaded censorship.
However this may be, a further development of {422} Schreber’s
delusions soon took place, which affected his relations to God without
altering his relations to Flechsig. Hitherto he had regarded Flechsig
(or rather his soul) as his only true enemy and had looked upon God
Almighty as his ally; but now he could not avoid the thought that God
himself had played the part of accomplice, if not of instigator, in
the plot against him (p. 59). Flechsig, however, remained the first
seducer, to whose influence God had yielded (p. 60). He had succeeded
in making his way up to Heaven with his whole soul or a part of it and
in becoming a ‘captain of rays’, without dying or undergoing any
preliminary purification (p. 56).[297] The Flechsig soul continued to
play this rôle even after the patient had been moved from the Leipsic
clinic to Dr. Pierson’s sanatorium. The effect of the new environment
was shown by the emergence of another soul, known as the von W. soul,
which was that of the chief attendant, whom the patient recognized as
a person who had formerly lived in the same block of flats as
himself.[298] The Flechsig soul then introduced the system of
‘soul-division’, which assumed very considerable proportions. At one
time there were as many as forty to sixty sub-divisions of the
Flechsig soul; two of its larger divisions were known as the ‘upper
Flechsig’ and the ‘middle Flechsig’ (p. 111). The von W. soul behaved
in just the same fashion. It was sometimes most entertaining to notice
the way in which these two souls, in spite of {423} their alliance,
carried on a feud with one another, the aristocratic pride of the one
pitted against the professorial vanity of the other (p. 113). During
his first weeks at Sonnenstein (to which he was finally moved in the
summer of 1894) the soul of his new physician, Dr. Weber, came into
play; and shortly afterwards the revulsion took place in the
development of his delusions which we have come to know as his
‘reconciliation’.
During the later part of his stay at Sonnenstein, when God had begun
to appreciate him better, a raid was made upon the souls, which had
become multiplied into a nuisance. As a result of this, the Flechsig
soul survived in only one or two shapes, and the von W. soul in only a
single one. The latter soon disappeared altogether. The divisions of
the Flechsig soul, which slowly lost both their intelligence and their
power, then came to be described as the ‘posterior Flechsig’ and the
‘Ah well! Party’. That the Flechsig soul retained its importance to
the last, is made clear by Schreber’s preface, his ‘Open Letter to
Herr Geheimrat Prof. Dr. Flechsig’.
In this remarkable document Schreber expresses his firm conviction
that the physician who influenced him must have had the same visions
and have received the same disclosures upon supernatural things as he
himself. He protests on the very first page that the author of the
_Denkwürdigkeiten_ has not the remotest intention of making an attack
upon the physician’s honour, and the same point is earnestly and
emphatically repeated in the patient’s Statements of his Case
(pp. 343, 445). It is evident that he is endeavouring to distinguish
the ‘soul Flechsig’ from the living man of the same name, the real
Flechsig from the Flechsig of his delusions.[299]
The study of a number of cases of delusions of {424} persecution have
led me as well as other investigators to the view that the relation
between the patient and his persecutor can be reduced to quite a
simple formula.[300] It appears that the person to whom the delusion
ascribes so much power and influence, in whose hands all the threads
of the conspiracy converge, is either, if he is definitely named,
identical with some one who played an equally important part in the
patient’s emotional life before his illness, or else is easily
recognizable as a substitute for him. The intensity of the emotion is
projected outwards in the shape of external power, while its quality
is changed into the opposite. The person who is now hated and feared
as a persecutor was at one time loved and honoured. The main purpose
of the persecution constructed by the patient’s delusion is to serve
as a justification for the change in his emotional attitude.
Bearing this point of view in mind, let us now examine the relations
which had formerly existed between Schreber and his physician and
persecutor, Flechsig. We have already heard that, in the years 1884
and 1885, Schreber suffered from a first attack of nervous disorder,
which ran its course ‘without the occurrence of any incidents
bordering upon the sphere of the supernatural’ (p. 35). While he was
in this condition, which was described as ‘hypochondria’ and seems not
to have overstepped the limits of a neurosis, Flechsig acted as his
physician. At that time Schreber spent six months in the University
Clinic at Leipsic. We learn that after his discovery he had grateful
feelings towards his physician. ‘The main thing was that, after a
fairly long period of convalescence which I spent in travelling, I was
finally cured; and it was therefore impossible that I should feel
anything at that time but the liveliest gratitude towards
Prof. Flechsig. {425} I gave a marked expression to this feeling both
in a personal visit which I subsequently paid him and in what I deemed
to be an appropriate honorarium’ (p. 35). It is true that Schreber’s
encomium in the _Denkwürdigkeiten_ upon this first treatment of
Flechsig’s is not entirely without reservations; but that can easily
be understood if we consider that his attitude had in the meantime
been reversed. The passage immediately following the one that has just
been quoted bears witness to the original cordiality of his feelings
towards the physician who had treated him so successfully: ‘The
gratitude of my wife was perhaps even more heartfelt; for she revered
Professor Flechsig as the man who had restored her husband to her, and
hence it was that for years she kept his portrait standing upon her
writing-table’ (p. 36).
Since we cannot obtain any insight into the causes of the first
illness (a knowledge of which is no doubt indispensable for properly
elucidating the second and severer illness) we must now plunge at
random into an unknown concatenation of circumstances. During the
incubation period of his illness, as we are aware, (that is, between
June 1893, when he was appointed to his new post, and the following
October, when he took up his duties) he repeatedly dreamed that his
old nervous disorder had returned. Once, moreover, when he was
half-asleep, he had a feeling that after all it must be nice to be a
woman submitting to the act of copulation. The dreams and the phantasy
are reported by Schreber in immediate succession; and if we also bring
together their subject-matter, we shall be able to infer that, at the
same time as his recollection of his illness, a recollection of his
physician was also aroused in his mind, and that the feminine attitude
which he assumed in the phantasy was primarily directed towards the
physician. Or it may be that the dream of his illness having returned
simply expressed some such longing as: ‘I wish I could see Flechsig
again!’ Our ignorance of the mental content of the first illness bars
{426} our way in this direction. Perhaps that illness had left behind
in him a feeling of affectionate dependence upon his physician, which
had now, for some unknown reason, become intensified to the pitch of
an erotic desire. This feminine phantasy, which was still kept apart
from his personality, was met at once by an indignant repudiation---a
true ‘masculine protest’, to use Adler’s expression, but in a sense
different from his.[301] But in the grave psychosis which broke out
soon afterwards the feminine phantasy carried everything before it;
and it only requires a slight correction of the characteristic
paranoic indefiniteness of Schreber’s mode of expression to enable us
to divine the fact that the patient was in fear of sexual abuse at the
hands of his physician himself. The exciting cause of his illness,
then, was an outburst of homosexual libido; the object of this libido
was probably from the very first his physician, Flechsig; and his
struggles against this libidinal impulse produced the conflict which
gave rise to the pathological phenomena.
I will pause here for a moment to meet a storm of remonstrances and
objections. Any one acquainted with the present state of psychiatry
must be prepared to face the worst.
‘Is it not an act of irresponsible levity, an indiscretion and a
calumny to charge a man of such high ethical standing as the former
Senatspräsident Schreber with homosexuality?’ ---No. The patient has
himself informed the world at large of his phantasy of being
transformed into a woman, and he has allowed all personal
considerations to be outweighed by interests of a higher nature. Thus
he has himself given us the right to occupy ourselves with his
phantasy, and by translating it into the technical terminology of
medicine we have not made the slightest addition to its content. {427}
--- ‘But he was not in his right mind when he did it. His delusion
that he was being transformed into a woman was a pathological idea.’
---We have not forgotten that. Indeed our only concern is with the
meaning and origin of this pathological idea. We will appeal to the
distinction he himself draws between the man Flechsig and the
‘Flechsig soul’. We are not making reproaches of any kind against
him---whether for having had homosexual impulses or for having
endeavoured to suppress them. Psychiatrists should take a lesson from
this patient, when they see him trying, in spite of his delusions, not
to confuse the world of the unconscious with the world of reality.
‘But it is nowhere expressly stated that the transformation into a
woman which he so much dreaded was to be carried out for the benefit
of Flechsig.’---That is true; and it is not difficult to understand
why, in preparing his memoirs for publication, since he was anxious
not to insult the ‘man Flechsig’, he should have avoided so gross an
accusation. His consideration for other people’s feelings did not,
however, lead him to tone down his language sufficiently to conceal
the true meaning of his accusation. Indeed, it may be maintained that
after all it is expressed openly in such a passage as the following:
‘In this way a conspiracy against me was brought to a head (in about
March or April 1894). Its object was to contrive that, when once my
nervous complaint had been recognized as incurable or assumed to be
so, _I should be handed over to a certain person in a particular
manner_. Thus, my soul was to be delivered up to him, but my
body... was to be transformed into a female body, and _as such
surrendered to the person in question_ with a view to sexual
abuse...’[302] (p. 56). It is unnecessary to remark that no other
individual is ever named in the book who could be put in Flechsig’s
place. Towards the end of Schreber’s stay in the clinic at Leipsic, a
fear occurred to his mind that he ‘was to be thrown to {428} the
attendants’ for the purpose of sexual abuse (p. 98). Any remaining
doubts that we have upon the nature of the part originally attributed
to the physician are dispelled when, in the later stages of his
delusion, we find Schreber outspokenly admitting his feminine attitude
towards God. The other accusation against Flechsig resounds noisily
through the book. Flechsig, he says, tried to commit soul-murder upon
him. As we already know, the patient was himself not clear upon the
actual nature of that crime, but it was connected with matters of such
a delicate character as to preclude their publication (as we see from
the suppressed third chapter). From this point a single thread takes
us a little way further. Schreber illustrates the nature of
soul-murder by referring to the legends embodied in Goethe’s _Faust_,
Byron’s _Manfred_, Weber’s _Freischütz_, etc. (p. 22), and one of
these instances is further cited in another passage. In discussing the
division of God into two persons, Schreber identifies his ‘lower God’
and ‘upper God’ with Ahriman and Ormuzd respectively (p. 19); and a
little later a casual footnote occurs: ‘Moreover, the name of Ahriman
also appears in connection with a soul-murder in, for example, Lord
Byron’s _Manfred_’ (p. 20). In the play which is thus referred to
there is scarcely anything comparable to the bartering of Faust’s
soul, and I have searched it in vain for the expression
‘soul-murder’. But the essence and the secret of the whole work lies
in---an incestuous relation between a brother and a sister. And here
our thread breaks off short.[303]
{429}
At a later stage in this paper I intend to return to a discussion of
some further objections; but in the meantime I shall consider myself
justified in maintaining the view that the basis of Schreber’s illness
was an outburst of homosexual feeling. This hypothesis harmonizes with
a noteworthy detail of the case history, which remains otherwise
inexplicable. While his wife was taking a short holiday on account of
her own health, the patient had a fresh ‘nervous collapse’ which
exercised a decisive effect upon the course of his illness. Up till
then she had spent several hours with him every day and had taken her
mid-day meal with him. But when she returned after an absence of four
days, she found him most sadly altered: so much so, indeed, that he
himself no longer wished to see her. ‘What especially determined my
mental break-down was a particular night, during which I had a quite
extraordinary number of emissions---quite half a dozen, all in that
one night’ (p. 44). It is easy to understand that the mere presence of
his wife must have acted as a protection against the attractive power
of the men about him; and if we are prepared to admit that an emission
cannot occur in an adult without some mental concomitant, we shall be
able to supplement the patient’s emissions that night by assuming that
they were accompanied by homosexual phantasies which remained
unconscious.
The question of why this outburst of homosexual libido overtook the
patient precisely at this period (that is, between the dates of his
appointment and of his move to Dresden) cannot be answered in the
absence of more precise knowledge of the story of his life. Generally
speaking, every human being oscillates all through his life between
heterosexual and homosexual {430} feelings, and any frustration or
disappointment in the one direction is apt to drive him over into the
other. We know nothing of these factors in Schreber’s case, but we
must not omit to draw attention to a somatic factor which may very
well have been relevant. At the time of this illness Dr. Schreber was
fifty-one years of age, and he had therefore reached a time of life
which is of critical importance in sexual development. It is a period
at which in women the sexual function, after a phase of intensified
activity, enters upon a process of far-reaching involution; nor do men
appear to be exempt from its influence, for men as well as women are
subject to a ‘climacteric’ and to the special susceptibility to
disease which goes along with it.[304]
I can well imagine what a dubious hypothesis it must appear to be that
a man’s friendly feeling towards his physician can suddenly break out
in an intensified form after a lapse of eight years[305] and become
the occasion of such a severe mental disorder. But I do not think we
should be justified in dismissing such a hypothesis merely on account
of its inherent improbability, if it recommends itself to us upon
other grounds; we ought rather to inquire how far we shall be helped
by adopting it and following it up. For the improbability may be of a
passing kind and may be due to the fact that the doubtful hypothesis
has not as yet been brought into relation with any other pieces of
knowledge and that it is the first hypothesis with which the problem
has been approached. But for the benefit of those who are unable to
hold their judgement in suspense and who regard our hypothesis as
altogether untenable, it is easy to suggest a possibility which would
rob it of its bewildering character. The patient’s friendly feeling
{431} towards his physician may very well have been due to a process
of ‘transference’, by means of which an emotional cathexis[306] became
transposed from some person who was important to him on to the
physician who was in reality indifferent to him; so that the physician
will have been chosen as a deputy or surrogate for some one much
closer to the patient. To put the matter in a more concrete form: the
patient having been reminded by the physician of his brother or of his
father, having rediscovered them in him, there will be nothing to
wonder at if, in certain circumstances, a longing for the surrogate
figure reappears in him and operates with a violence that is only to
be explained in the light of its origin and primary significance.
With a view to following up this attempt at an explanation, I
naturally thought it worth while discovering whether the patient’s
father was still alive at the time of his illness, whether he had had
a brother, and if so whether he was then living or among the
‘blest’. I was delighted, therefore, when, after a prolonged search
through the pages of the _Denkwürdigkeiten_, I came at last upon a
passage in which the patient sets these doubts at rest: ‘The memory of
my father and my brother... is as sacred to me as...’
etc. (p. 442). So that both of them were dead at the time of his
second illness (and, it may be, at the time of his first illness as
well).
We shall therefore raise no further objections to the hypothesis that
the exciting cause of the illness was the appearance in him of a
feminine (that is, a passive homosexual) wish-phantasy, which took as
its object the figure of his physician. An intense resistance to this
phantasy arose on the part of Schreber’s personality, and the ensuing
defensive struggle, which might perhaps just as well have assumed some
other shape, took on, for reasons unknown to us, that of a delusion of
persecution. The person he longed for now became his persecutor, and
the content of his wish-phantasy {432} became the content of his
persecution. It is to be presumed that the same schematic outline may
turn out to be applicable to other cases of delusions of
persecution. What distinguishes Schreber’s case from others, however,
is its further development and the transformation it underwent in the
course of it.
One such change was the replacement of Flechsig by the superior figure
of God. This seems at first as though it were a sign of aggravation of
the conflict, an intensification of the unbearable persecution, but it
soon becomes evident that it was preparing the way for the second
change and, with it, the solution of the conflict. It was impossible
for Schreber to become reconciled to playing the part of a female
prostitute towards his physician; but the task of providing God
himself with the voluptuous sensations that he required called up no
such resistance on the part of his ego. Emasculation was now no longer
a disgrace; it became ‘consonant with the order of things’, it took
its place in a great cosmic chain of events, and was instrumental in
the re-creation of humanity after its extinction. ‘A new race of men,
born from the spirit of Schreber,’ would, so he thought, revere as
their ancestor this man who believed himself the victim of
persecution. By this means an outlet was provided which would satisfy
both of the contending forces. His ego found compensation in his
megalomania, while his feminine wish-phantasy gained its ascendancy
and became acceptable. The struggle and the illness could cease. The
patient’s sense of reality, however, which had in the meantime become
stronger, compelled him to postpone the solution from the present to
the remote future, and to content himself with what might be described
as an asymptotic wish-fulfilment.[307] Some time or other, he
anticipated, his transformation into a woman would {433} come about;
until then the personality of Dr. Schreber would remain
indestructible.
In textbooks of psychiatry we frequently come across statements to the
effect that megalomania is developed out of delusions of
persecution. The process is supposed to be as follows. The patient is
primarily the victim of a delusion that he is being persecuted by the
most powerful influences. He then feels the need of accounting to
himself for this persecution, and in that way hits upon the idea that
he himself is a very exalted personage and worthy of such
attentions. The development of megalomania is thus attributed by the
textbooks to a process which (borrowing a useful word from Ernest
Jones) we may describe as ‘rationalization’. But to ascribe such
important affective consequences to a rationalization is, as it seems
to us, an entirely unpsychological proceeding; and we would
consequently draw a sharp distinction between our opinion and the one
which we have just quoted. We are making no claim, for the moment, to
knowing the origin of the megalomania.
Turning once more to the case of Schreber, we are bound to admit that
any attempt at throwing light upon the transformation in his delusion
brings us up against extraordinary difficulties. In what manner and by
what means was the ascent from Flechsig to God brought about? From
what source did he derive the megalomania which so fortunately enabled
him to become reconciled to his persecution, or, in analytical
phraseology, to accept the wish-phantasy which had had to be
repressed? The _Denkwürdigkeiten_ give us a first clue; for they show
us that in the patient’s mind ‘Flechsig’ and ‘God’ were ideas
belonging to the same class. In one of his phantasies he overheard a
conversation between Flechsig and his wife, in which the former
asserted that he was ‘God Flechsig’, so that his wife thought he had
gone mad (p. 82). But there is another feature in the development of
Schreber’s delusions which claims our attention. If we take a {434}
survey of the delusions as a whole we see that the persecutor is
divided into Flechsig and God; in just the same way Flechsig himself
subsequently splits up into two personalities, the ‘upper’ and the
‘middle’ Flechsig, and God into the ‘lower’ and the ‘upper’ God. In
the later stages of the illness the decomposition of Flechsig goes
further still (p. 193). A process of decomposition of this kind is
very characteristic of paranoia. Paranoia decomposes just as hysteria
condenses. Or rather, paranoia resolves once more into their elements
the products of the condensations and identifications which are
effected in the unconscious. The constant repetition of the
decomposing process in Schreber’s case would, according to Jung, be an
expression of the importance which the person in question possessed
for him.[308] All of this dividing up of Flechsig and God into a
number of persons would have the same meaning as the splitting of the
persecutor into Flechsig and God. They would all be duplications of
one and the same important relationship.[309] But the interpretation
of all these details may also be assisted, if we bear in mind the
decomposition of the persecutor into Flechsig and God and the
explanation we have already given of this decomposition as being a
paranoid reaction to a previously established identification of the
two figures or to the fact of their belonging to the same class. If
the persecutor Flechsig was originally a person whom Schreber loved,
then God must also simply be the reappearance of some one else whom he
loved, and probably of some one of greater importance.
{435}
If we pursue this train of thought, which seems to be a legitimate
one, we shall be driven to the conclusion that this other person must
have been his father; in which case it will become all the clearer
that Flechsig must have stood for his brother---who, let us hope, may
have been older than himself.[310] The feminine phantasy, which
aroused such violent opposition in the patient, thus had its root in a
longing, intensified to an erotic pitch, for his father and
brother. This feeling, so far as it referred to his brother, passed,
by a process of transference, on to his physician Flechsig; and when
it was carried back on to his father a settlement of the conflict was
reached.
We shall not feel that we have been justified in thus introducing
Schreber’s father into his delusions, until the new hypothesis has
shown itself of some use to us in understanding the case and in
elucidating details of the delusions which are as yet
unintelligible. It will be recalled that Schreber’s God and his
relations to him exhibited the most curious features: how they showed
the strangest mixture of blasphemous criticism and mutinous
insubordination on the one hand and of reverent devotion on the
other. God, according to him, had succumbed to the misleading
influence of Flechsig; he was incapable of learning anything by
experience, and did not understand living men because he only knew how
to deal with corpses; and he manifested his power in a succession of
miracles which, striking though they might be, were none the less
futile and silly.
Now the father of Senatspräsident Dr. Schreber was no insignificant
person. He was the Dr. Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber whose memory is
kept green to this day by the numerous Schreber Associations which
flourish especially in Saxony; and, moreover, he was a
_physician_. His activities in favour of promoting the harmonious
upbringing of the young, of securing {436} co-ordination between
education in the home and in the school, of introducing physical
culture and manual work with a view to raising the standards of
hygiene---all of these activities exerted a lasting influence upon his
contemporaries.[311] His great reputation as the founder of
therapeutic gymnastics in Germany is still shown by the wide
circulation of his _Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik_ [_Medical Indoor
Gymnastics_] in medical circles and the numerous editions through
which it has passed.
Such a father as this was by no means unsuitable for transfiguration
into a God in the affectionate memory of the son from whom he had been
so early separated by death. We ourselves cannot help feeling that
there is an impassable gulf between the personality of God and that of
any human being, however eminent he may be. But we must remember that
this has not always been so. The gods of the nations of antiquity
stood in a closer human relationship to them. The Romans used to deify
their dead emperors as a matter of routine; and Vespasian, a sensible
and competent man, exclaimed when he was first taken ill: ‘Alas!
Methinks I am about to become a God!’[312]
We are perfectly familiar with the infantile attitude of boys towards
their father; it is composed of the same mixture of reverent
submission and mutinous insubordination that we have found in
Schreber’s relation with his God, and is the unmistakable prototype of
that relation, which is faithfully copied from it. But the
circumstance that Schreber’s father was a physician, and a most
eminent physician, and one who was no {437} doubt highly respected by
his patients, is what explains the most striking characteristics of
his God and those upon which he dwells in such a critical
fashion. Could more bitter scorn be shown for a physician such as this
than by declaring that he understands nothing about living men and
only knows how to deal with corpses? No doubt it is an attribute of
God to perform miracles; but a physician performs miracles too,
effects miraculous cures---or so his enthusiastic clients proclaim. So
that when we see that these very miracles (the material for which was
provided by the patient’s hypochondria) turn out to be incredible,
absurd, and to some extent positively silly, we are reminded of the
assertion in my _Traumdeutung_ that absurdity in dreams expresses
scorn and derision.[313] Evidently, therefore, it is used for the same
purposes in paranoia. As regards some of the other reproaches which he
levelled against God, such, for instance, as that he learned nothing
by experience, it is natural to suppose that they are examples of the
same mechanism as the _tu quoque_ argument so often used by
children,[314] who, when they receive a reproof, are inclined to fling
it back unchanged upon the person who originated it. Similarly, the
voices give us grounds for suspecting that the accusation of
soul-murder brought against Flechsig was in the first instance a
self-accusation.[315]
Emboldened by the discovery that his father’s profession helps to
explain the peculiarities of Schreber’s God, we shall now venture upon
an interpretation which may throw some light upon the remarkable
structure of that Being. The heavenly world consisted, as we know, of
the ‘anterior realms of God’, which were also called the ‘fore-courts
of Heaven’ and {438} which contained the souls of the dead, and of the
‘lower’ and the ‘upper’ God, who together constituted the ‘posterior
realms of God’ (p. 19). Although we must be prepared to find that
there is a condensation here which we shall not be able to resolve, it
is nevertheless worth while referring to a clue that is already in our
hands. If the ‘miracled’ birds, which have been shown to be girls,
were originally fore-courts of Heaven, may it not be that the
_anterior_ realms of God and the fore-courts[316] of Heaven are to be
regarded as a symbol of what is female, and the _posterior_ realms of
God as a symbol of what is male? If we knew for certain that
Schreber’s dead brother was older than himself, we might suppose that
the decomposition of God into the lower and the upper God gave
expression to the patient’s recollection that after his father’s early
death his elder brother had stepped into his place.
In this connection, finally, I should like to draw attention to the
subject of the _sun_, which, through its ‘rays’, came to have so much
importance in the manifestation of his delusions. Schreber has a quite
peculiar relation to the sun. It speaks to him in human language, and
thus reveals itself to him as a living being, or as the organ of a yet
higher being lying behind it (p. 9). We learn from a medical report
that at one time he ‘used to shout threats and abuse at it and
positively bellow at it’[317] (p. 382), and used to call out to it
that it must crawl away from him and hide. He himself tells us that
the sun turns pale before him.[318] The manner in which it is bound up
with his fate is shown by the important alterations it undergoes as
{439} soon as changes begin to occur in him, as, for instance, during
his first weeks at Sonnenstein (p. 135). Schreber makes it easy for us
to interpret this solar myth of his. He identifies the sun directly
with God, sometimes with the lower God (Ahriman),[319] and sometimes
with the upper.[320] It is therefore no more than consistent of him to
treat it in the same way as he treats God himself.
The sun, therefore, is nothing but another sublimated symbol for the
father; and in pointing this out I must disclaim all responsibility
for the monotony of the solutions provided by psycho-analysis. In this
instance symbolism overrides grammatical gender---at least so far as
German goes, for in most other languages the sun is masculine. The
other parent is represented in this picture by the complementary
conception which is found everywhere, of ‘Mother Earth’. We frequently
come upon confirmations of this assertion during the process of
psycho-analysing the pathogenic phantasies of neurotics. I can make no
more than the barest allusion to the light which all of this throws
upon the origin of cosmic myths. One of my patients, who had lost his
father at a very early age, was always seeking to rediscover him in
what was grand and sublime in Nature. Since I have known this it has
seemed to me probable that Nietzsche’s hymn ‘Vor Sonnenaufgang’
[‘Before Sunrise’] is an expression of the same longing.[321] Another
patient, who became neurotic after his father’s death, was seized with
his first attack of anxiety and giddiness while the sun shone upon him
as he was working in the garden with a spade. He spontaneously put
forward as an interpretation that he had become frightened because his
father had looked at him while he was at work upon his mother with a
sharp {440} instrument. When I ventured upon a mild remonstrance he
gave an air of greater plausibility to his view by telling me that
even in his father’s lifetime he had compared him with the sun, though
then it had been in a satirical sense. Whenever he had been asked
where his father was going to spend the summer he had replied in these
sonorous words from the ‘Prologue in Heaven’:
‘Und seine vorgeschrieb’ne Reise
Vollendet er mit Donnergang.’[322]
His father, acting upon medical advice, had been in the habit of
paying an annual visit to Marienbad. This patient’s infantile attitude
towards his father took effect in two successive phases. As long as
his father was alive it showed itself in unmitigated rebelliousness
and open discord, but immediately after his death it took the form of
a neurosis based upon abject submission to him and deferred obedience.
Thus in the case of Schreber we find ourselves once again upon the
familiar ground of the father-complex.[323] Just as to the patient his
struggle with Flechsig becomes revealed as a conflict with God, so we
must construe the latter as an infantile conflict with the father whom
he loved; the details of that conflict (of which we know nothing) are
what determined the content of his delusions. None of the material
which in other cases of the sort is brought to light by analysis is
absent in the present one: every element is indicated in one way or
another. In infantile experiences such as this the father appears as
an interferer with the gratification which the child is trying to
obtain; this is usually of an auto-erotic character, though at a later
date it is often replaced in phantasy by some other gratification of a
less inglorious kind.[324] In the final stage of {441} Schreber’s
delusion a glorious victory was scored by the infantile sexual
tendencies; for voluptuousness became God-fearing, and God himself
(his father) never tired of demanding it from him. His father’s most
dreaded threat, castration, actually provided the material for his
wish-phantasy (at first resisted but later accepted) of being
transformed into a woman. His allusion to an offence underlying the
substitute-formation of ‘soul-murder’ could not be more
transparent. The chief attendant was discovered to be identical with
his neighbour von W., who, according to the voices, had falsely
accused him of onanism (p. 108). The voices said, as though giving
grounds for the threat of castration: ‘For you are to be _represented_
as being given over to voluptuous excesses’[325] (p. 127). Finally, we
come to the enforced thinking (p. 47) to which the patient submitted
himself because he supposed that God would believe he had become a
dement and would withdraw from him if he ceased thinking for a
moment. This is a reaction (with which we are also familiar in other
connections) to the threat or fear of losing one’s reason[326] as a
result of indulging in sexual practices and especially in
onanism. Considering the enormous number of delusional ideas of a
hypochondriacal nature[327] which the patient developed, no great
importance should perhaps be attached to the fact that some of them
coincide word for word with the hypochondriacal fears of
onanists.[328]
{442}
Any one who was more daring than I am in making interpretations, or
who was in touch with Schreber’s family and consequently better
acquainted with the society in which he moved and the small events of
his life, would find it an easy matter to trace back innumerable
details of his delusions to their sources and so discover their
meaning, and this in spite of the censorship to which the
_Denkwürdigkeiten_ have been subjected. But as it is we must
necessarily content ourselves with this shadowy sketch of the
infantile material which was used by the paranoic disorder in
portraying the current conflict.
Perhaps I may be allowed to add a few words with a view to
establishing the causes of that conflict. It broke out in relation to
the feminine wish-phantasy; and, as we know, when a wish-phantasy
makes its appearance, our business is to bring it into connection with
some _frustration_, some privation in real life. Now Schreber admits
having suffered a privation of this kind. His marriage, which he
describes as being in other respects a happy one, brought him no
children; and in particular it brought him no son to console him for
the loss of his father and brother---to drain off his unsatisfied
homosexual affections.[329] His family line threatened to die out, and
it seems that he felt no little pride in his birth and lineage. ‘Both
the Flechsigs and the Schrebers were members of “the highest
aristocracy of Heaven”, as the phrase went. The {443} Schrebers in
particular bore the title of “Margraves of Tuscany and Tasmania”; for
souls, urged by some sort of personal vanity, have a custom of
adorning themselves with somewhat high-sounding titles borrowed from
this world’[330] (p. 24). The great Napoleon obtained a divorce from
Josephine (though only after severe internal struggles) because she
could not propagate the dynasty.[331] Dr. Schreber may have formed a
phantasy that if he had been a woman he would have managed the
business of having children more successfully; and he may thus have
found his way back into the feminine attitude towards his father which
he had exhibited in the earliest years of his childhood. If that were
so, then his delusion that as a result of his emasculation the world
was to be peopled with ‘a new race of men, born from the spirit of
Schreber’ (p. 288)---a delusion the realization of which he was
continually postponing to a more and more remote future---would be
designed to offer him an escape from his childlessness. If the ‘little
men’ whom Schreber himself finds so puzzling were children, then we
should have no difficulty in understanding why they were collected in
such great numbers upon his head (p. 158): they were in truth the
‘children of his spirit.’[332]
III {444}
ON THE MECHANISM OF PARANOIA
We have hitherto been dealing with the father complex, which was the
dominant element in Schreber’s case and with the wish-phantasy round
which the illness centred. But in all of this there is nothing
characteristic of the form of disease known as paranoia, nothing that
might not be found (and that has not in fact been found) in other
kinds of neuroses. The distinctive character of paranoia (or of
dementia paranoides) must be sought for elsewhere, namely, in the
particular form assumed by the symptoms; and we shall expect to find
that this is determined, not by the nature of the complexes
themselves, but by the mechanism by which the symptoms are formed or
by which repression is brought about. We should be inclined to say
that what was characteristically paranoic about the illness was the
fact that the patient, as a means of warding off a homosexual
wish-phantasy, reacted precisely with delusions of persecution of this
kind.
These considerations therefore lend an added weight to the
circumstance that we are in point of fact driven by experience to
attribute to the homosexual wish-phantasy an intimate (perhaps an
invariable) relation to this particular form of disease. Distrusting
my own experience on the subject, I have during the last few years
joined with my friends C. G. Jung of Zurich and S. Ferenczi of
Budapest in investigating upon this single point a number of cases of
paranoid disorder which have come under observation. The patients
whose histories provided the material for this inquiry {445} included
both men and women, and varied in race, occupation, and social
standing. Yet we were astonished to find that in all of these cases a
defence against a homosexual wish was clearly recognizable at the very
centre of the conflict which underlay the disease, and that it was in
an attempt to master an unconsciously reinforced current of
homosexuality that they had all of them come to grief.[333] This was
certainly not what we had expected. Paranoia is a disorder in which a
sexual aetiology is by no means obvious; on the contrary, the
strikingly prominent features in the causation of paranoia, especially
among males, are social humiliations and slights. But if we go into
the matter only a little more deeply, we shall be able to see that the
really operative factor in these social injuries lies in the part
played in them by the homosexual components of affective life. So long
as the individual is functioning normally and it is consequently
impossible to see into the depths of his mental life, there is
justification for doubting whether his emotional relations to his
neighbours in society have anything to do with sexuality, either
actually or genetically. But the development of delusions never fails
to unmask these relations and to trace back the social feelings to
their roots in a purely sensual erotic wish. So long as he was
healthy, even Dr. Schreber, whose delusions culminated in a
wish-phantasy of an unmistakably homosexual nature, had, by all
accounts, shown no signs of homosexuality in the ordinary sense of the
word.
I shall now endeavour (and I think the attempt is neither unnecessary
nor unjustifiable) to show that the knowledge of psychological
processes which, thanks to psycho-analysis, we now possess already
enables us to understand the part played by a homosexual wish in {446}
the development of paranoia. Recent investigations[334] have directed
our attention to a stage in the development of the libido which it
passes through on the way from auto-erotism to object-love.[335] This
stage has been given the name of narcissism.[336] Its nature is as
follows. There comes a time in the development of the individual at
which he unifies his sexual instincts (which have hitherto been
engaged in auto-erotic activities) in order to obtain a love-object;
and he begins by taking himself, his own body, as his love-object, and
only subsequently proceeds from this to the choice of some person
other than himself as his object. This half-way phase between
auto-erotism and object-love may perhaps be indispensable to the
normal course of life; but it appears that many people linger
unusually long in this condition, and that many of its features are
carried over by them into the later stages of their development. The
point of central interest in the self which is thus chosen as a
love-object may already be the genitals. The line of development then
leads on to the choice of an outer object with similar genitals---that
is, to homosexual object-choice---and thence to
heterosexuality. Persons who are manifest homosexuals in later life
have, it may be presumed, never emancipated themselves from the
binding condition that the object of their choice must possess
genitals like their own; and in this connection the infantile sexual
theories which attribute the same kind of genitals to both sexes exert
a considerable influence.
After the stage of heterosexual object-choice has been reached, the
homosexual tendencies are not, as might be supposed, done away with or
brought to a stop; they are merely deflected from their sexual aim
{447} and applied to fresh uses. They now combine with portions of the
ego-instincts and, as ‘anaclitic’ components,[337] help to constitute
the social instincts, thus contributing an erotic factor to friendship
and comradeship, to _esprit de corps_ and to the love of mankind in
general. How large a contribution is in fact derived from erotic
sources (though with the sexual aim inhibited) could scarcely be
guessed from the normal social relations of mankind. But it is not
irrelevant to note that it is precisely manifest homosexuals, and
among them again precisely those that struggle against an indulgence
in sensual acts, who distinguish themselves by taking a particularly
active share in the general interests of humanity---interests which
have themselves sprung from a sublimation of erotic instincts.
In my _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_ I have expressed the
opinion that each stage in the development of psycho-sexuality affords
a possibility for the occurrence of a ‘fixation’ and thus for the
laying down of a disposition to illness in later life. Persons who
have not freed themselves completely from the stage of narcissism,
who, that is to say, have at that point a fixation which may operate
as a disposing factor for a later illness, are exposed to the danger
that some unusually intense wave of libido, finding no other outlet,
may lead to a sexualization of their social instincts and so undo the
work of sublimation which they had achieved in the course of their
development. This result may be produced by anything that causes the
libido to flow backwards (_i.e._ that causes a ‘regression’): whether,
on the one hand, for instance, the libido becomes collaterally
reinforced owing to some disappointment over a woman, or is directly
dammed up owing to a mishap in social relations with other men---both
of these would be instances of ‘frustration’; or whether, on the other
hand, there is a general intensification of the libido, so that it
becomes too {448} powerful to find an outlet along the channels which
are already open to it, and consequently bursts through its banks at
the weakest spot. Since our analyses show that paranoiacs _endeavour
to protect themselves against any such sexualization of their social
instinctual cathexes_, we are driven to suppose that the weak spot in
their development is to be looked for somewhere between the stages of
auto-erotism, narcissism and homosexuality, and that their disposition
to illness (which may perhaps be susceptible of more precise
definition) must be located in that region. A similar disposition
would have to be assigned to patients suffering from Kraepelin’s
dementia praecox or (as Bleuler has named it) _schizophrenia_; and we
shall hope later on to find clues which will enable us to trace back
the differences between the two disorders (as regards both the form
they take and the course they run) to corresponding differences in the
patients’ dispositional fixations.
We consider, then, that what lies at the core of the conflict in cases
of paranoia among males is a homosexual wish-phantasy of _loving a
man_. But we have not in the least forgotten that the confirmation of
such an important hypothesis can only follow upon the investigation of
a large number of instances of every variety of paranoic disorder. We
must therefore be prepared, if need be, to limit our assertion to a
single type of paranoia. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable fact that
the familiar principal forms of paranoia can all be represented as
contradictions of the single proposition: ‘_I_ (a man) _love him_ (a
man)’, and indeed that they exhaust all the possible ways in which
such contradictions could be formulated.
The proposition ‘I (a man) love him’ is contradicted by:
(_a_) Delusions of persecution; for it loudly asserts: ‘I do not
_love_ him---I _hate_ him.’
This contradiction, which could be expressed in no other way in the
unconscious,[338] cannot, however, become {449} conscious to a
paranoiac in this form. The mechanism of symptom-formation in paranoia
requires that internal perceptions, or feelings, shall be replaced by
external perceptions. Consequently the proposition ‘I hate him’
becomes transformed by _projection_ into another one: ‘_He hates_
(persecutes) _me_, which will justify me in hating him’. And thus the
unconscious feeling, which is in fact the motive force, makes its
appearance as though it were the consequence of an external
perception:
‘I do not _love_ him---I _hate_ him, because *he persecutes me*.’
Observation leaves room for no doubt that the persecutor is some one
who was once loved.
(_b_) Another element is chosen for contradiction in _erotomania_,
which remains totally unintelligible on any other view:
‘I do not love _him_---I love _her_.’
And in obedience to the same need for projection, the proposition is
transformed into: ‘I notice that _she_ loves me’.
‘I do not love _him_---I love _her_, because *she loves me*.’
Many cases of erotomania might give an impression that they could be
satisfactorily explained as being exaggerated or distorted
heterosexual fixations, if our attention were not attracted by the
circumstance that these infatuations invariably begin, not with any
internal perception of loving, but with an external perception of
being loved. But in this form of paranoia the intermediate proposition
‘I love _her_’ can also become conscious, because the contradiction
between it and the original proposition is not such a diametrical one
as that between love and hate: it is, after all, possible to love both
_her_ and _him_. It can thus come about that the proposition which has
been substituted by projection (‘_she loves me_’) may make way again
for the ‘root-language’ proposition ‘I love _her_’.
(_c_) The third way in which the original proposition can be
contradicted leads us to delusions of jealousy, {450} which we can
study in the characteristic forms in which they appear in each sex.
(_α_) Let us first consider alcoholic delusions of jealousy. The part
played by alcohol in this disorder is thoroughly intelligible. We know
that drink removes inhibitions and undoes the work of sublimation. It
is not infrequently disappointment over a woman that drives a man to
drink---which means, as a rule, that he resorts to the public-house
and to the company of men, who afford him the emotional satisfaction
which he has failed to get from his wife at home. If now these men
become the objects of a strong libidinal cathexis in his unconscious,
he will ward it off with the third kind of contradiction:
‘It is not _I_ who love the man---_she_ loves him’, and he suspects
the woman in relation to all the men whom he himself is tempted to
love.
Distortion by means of projection is necessarily absent in this
instance, since, with the change of the subject who loves, the whole
process is anyhow thrown outside the ego. The fact that the woman
loves the men is a matter of external perception to him; whereas the
facts that he himself does not love but hates, or that he himself
loves not this but that person, are matters of internal perception.
(_β_) Delusions of jealousy in women are exactly analogous.
‘It is not _I_ who love the women---but _he_ loves them.’ The jealous
woman suspects her husband in relation to all the women by whom she is
herself attracted owing to her homosexuality and the dispositional
effect of her excessive narcissism. The influence of the time of life
at which her fixation occurred is clearly shown by the selection of
the love-objects which she imputes to her husband; they are often old
and quite inappropriate for a real love relation---revivals of the
nurses and servants and girl friends of her childhood, or actually of
sisters who were her rivals.
{451}
Now it might be supposed that a proposition consisting of three terms,
such as ‘_I love him_’, could only be contradicted in three different
ways. The delusion of jealousy contradicts the subject, delusions of
persecution contradict the verb, and erotomania contradicts the
object. But in fact a fourth kind of contradiction is possible,
namely, one which rejects the proposition as a whole:
‘_I do not love at all---I do not love any one_.’ And since, after
all, one’s libido must go somewhere, this proposition seems to be the
psychological equivalent of the proposition: ‘I love only myself’. So
that this kind of contradiction would give us megalomania, which we
may regard as a _sexual over-estimation of the ego_ and may thus set
beside the over-estimation of the love-object with which we are
already familiar.[339]
It is of some importance in connection with other parts of the theory
of paranoia to notice that we can detect an element of megalomania in
most other forms of paranoic disorder. We are justified in assuming
that megalomania is essentially of an infantile nature and that, as
development proceeds, it is sacrificed to social
considerations. Similarly, an individual’s megalomania is never so
vehemently suppressed as when he is in the grip of an overpowering
love:
‘Denn wo die Lieb’ erwachet, stirbt
das Ich, der finstere Despot.’[340]
After this discussion of the unexpectedly important part played by
homosexual wish-phantasies in paranoia, let us return to the two
factors in which, from the nature of things, we originally expected to
find the distinguishing marks of paranoia, namely, the mechanism {452}
_by which the symptoms are formed_ and the mechanism _by which
repression is brought about_.
We certainly have no right to begin by assuming that these two
mechanisms are identical, and that symptom-formation follows the same
path as repression, each proceeding along it, perhaps, in an opposite
direction. Nor does there seem to be any great probability that such
an identity exists. Nevertheless, we shall refrain from expressing any
opinion on the subject until we have completed our investigation.
The most striking characteristic of symptom-formation in paranoia is
the process which deserves the name of _projection_. An internal
perception is suppressed, and, instead, its content, after undergoing
a certain degree of distortion, enters consciousness in the form of an
external perception. In delusions of persecution the distortion
consists in a transformation of affect; what should have been felt
internally as love is perceived externally as hate. We should feel
tempted to regard this remarkable process as the most important
element in paranoia and as being absolutely pathognomonic for it, if
we were not opportunely reminded of two things. For, in the first
place, projection does not play the same part in all forms of
paranoia; and, in the second place, it makes its appearance not only
in paranoia but under other psychological conditions as well, and in
fact it has a regular share assigned to it in our attitude towards the
external world. For when we refer the causes of certain sensations to
the external world, instead of looking for them (as we do in the case
of the others) inside ourselves, this normal proceeding also deserves
to be called projection. Having thus been made aware that more general
psychological problems are involved in the question of the nature of
projection, let us make up our minds to postpone the investigation of
it (and with it that of the mechanism of paranoic symptom-formation in
general) until some other occasion; and let us now turn to consider
what ideas we can collect on the subject of the mechanism {453} of
repression in paranoia. I should like to say at once, however, that
this temporary renunciation will turn out to be well justified; for we
shall find that the manner in which the process of repression occurs
is far more intimately connected with the developmental history of the
libido and with the disposition to which it gives rise than is the
manner in which the symptoms are formed.
In psycho-analysis we have been accustomed to look upon pathological
phenomena as being derived in a general way from repression. If we
examine what is spoken of as ‘repression’ more closely, we shall find
reason to split the process up into three phases which are easily
distinguishable from one another conceptually.
(1) The first phase consists in _fixation_, which is the precursor and
necessary condition of every ‘repression’. Fixation can be described
in this way. One instinct or instinctual component fails to accompany
the rest along the anticipated normal path of development, and, in
consequence of this inhibition in its development, it is left behind
at a more infantile stage. The libidinal current in question then
behaves in regard to later psychological structures as though it
belonged to the system of the unconscious, as though it were
repressed. We have already pointed out that these instinctual
fixations constitute the basis for the disposition to subsequent
illness, and we may now add that they constitute above all the basis
for the determination of the outcome of the third phase of repression.
(2) The second phase of repression is that of repression proper---the
phase to which most attention has hitherto been given. It emanates
from the more highly developed systems of the ego---systems which are
capable of being conscious---and may in fact be described as a process
of ‘after-expulsion’. It gives an impression of being an essentially
active process, while fixation appears rather to be a passive lagging
behind. What undergo repression may either be the {454} psychical
derivatives of the original lagging instincts, when these have become
reinforced and so come into conflict with the ego (or ego-syntonic
instincts), or they may be psychical trends which have for other
reasons aroused strong aversion. But this aversion would not in itself
lead to repression, unless some connection had been established
between the unwelcome trends about to be repressed and those which
have been repressed already. Where this is so, the repulsion exercised
by the conscious system and the attraction exercised by the
unconscious one tend in the same sense, namely, towards bringing about
repression. The two possibilities which are here treated separately
may in practice, perhaps, be less sharply differentiated, and the
distinction between them may merely depend upon the greater or lesser
degree in which the primarily repressed instincts contribute to the
result.
(3) The third phase, and the most important as regards pathological
phenomena, is that of miscarriage of repression, of _irruption_, of
_return of the repressed_. This irruption takes its start from the
point of fixation, and it involves a regression of the libidinal
development to that point.
We have already alluded to the multiplicity of the possible points of
fixation; there are, in fact, as many as there are stages in the
development of the libido. We must be prepared to find a similar
multiplicity of the mechanisms of repression proper and of the
mechanisms of irruption (or of symptom-formation), and we may already
begin to suspect that it will not be possible to trace back all of
these multiplicities to the developmental history of the libido alone.
It is easy to see that this discussion is beginning to trench upon the
problem of ‘choice of neurosis’, which, however, cannot be taken in
hand until preliminary work of another kind has been accomplished. Let
us bear in mind for the present that we have already dealt with
fixation, and that we have postponed the subject {455} of
symptom-formation; and let us restrict ourselves to the question of
whether the analysis of Schreber’s case throws any light upon the
mechanism employed in paranoia for the purpose of repression proper.
At the climax of his illness, under the influence of visions which
were ‘partly of a terrifying character, but partly, too, of an
indescribable grandeur’ (p. 73), Schreber became convinced of the
imminence of a great catastrophe, of the end of the world. Voices told
him that the work of the past 14,000 years had now come to nothing,
and that the earth’s allotted span was only 212 years more (p. 71);
and during the last part of his stay in Prof. Flechsig’s sanatorium he
believed that that period had already elapsed. He himself was ‘the
only real man still surviving’, and the few human shapes that he still
saw---the physician, the attendants, the other patients---he explained
as being ‘men miracled up, cursory contraptions’. Occasionally the
converse current of feeling also made itself apparent; a newspaper was
put into his hands in which there was a report of his own death
(p. 81), he himself existed in a second, inferior shape, and in this
second shape he one day quietly passed away (p. 73). But the form of
his delusion in which his ego was retained and the world sacrificed
proved itself by far the more powerful. He had various theories of the
cause of the catastrophe. At one time he had in mind a process of
glaciation owing to the withdrawal of the sun; at another it was to be
destruction by an earthquake, in the occurrence of which he, in his
capacity of ‘seer’, was to act a leading part, just as another seer
was alleged to have done in the earthquake of Lisbon in 1755
(p. 91). Or again, Flechsig was the culprit, since he had sown fear
and terror among men, had wrecked the foundations of religion, and
spread abroad neurotic states and general immorality, so that
devastating pestilences had descended upon mankind (p. 91). In any
case the end of the world was the consequence of the conflict which
had broken out between him and Flechsig, or, according {456} to the
aetiology adopted in the second phase of his delusion, of the
indissoluble bond which had been formed between him and God; it was,
in fact, the inevitable result of his illness. Years afterwards, when
Dr. Schreber had returned to human society, he could find no trace in
the books, the musical scores, or the other articles of daily use,
which fell into his hands once more, of anything to bear out his
theory that there had been a gap of vast duration in the history of
mankind; he was therefore forced to admit that his view was untenable:
‘...I can no longer avoid recognizing that, _externally considered_,
everything is as it used to be. _Whether, nevertheless, there may not
have been a profound internal change_ is a question to which I shall
recur later’ (p. 85). He could not bring himself to doubt that during
his illness the world had come to an end and that, in spite of
everything, the one that he now saw before him was a different one.
Ideas of this kind about a world-catastrophe are not infrequently
reported as occurring during the agitated stage in other cases of
paranoia.[341] If we take our stand upon the theory of libidinal
cathexis, and if we follow the hint given by Schreber’s view of other
people as being ‘cursory contraptions’, we shall not find it difficult
to explain these catastrophes.[342] The patient has withdrawn from the
persons in his environment and from the external world generally the
libidinal cathexis which he has hitherto directed on to them. Thus all
things have become indifferent and irrelevant to him, and have to be
explained by means of a secondary rationalization as being ‘miracled
up, cursory contraptions’. The end of the world is the projection of
this {457} internal catastrophe; for his subjective world has come to
an end since he has withdrawn his love from it.[343]
After Faust has uttered the curses which free him from the world, the
Chorus of Spirits sings:
‘Weh! Weh!
Du hast sie zerstört,
die schöne Welt,
mit mächtiger Faust!
sie stürzt, sie zerfällt!
Ein Halbgott hat sie zerschlagen!
. . . .
Mächtiger
der Erdensöhne,
Prächtiger
baue sie wieder,
in deinem Busen baue sie auf!’[344]
And the paranoiac builds it up again, not more splendid, it is true,
but at least so that he can once more live in it. He builds it up by
the work of his delusions. _The delusion-formation, which we take to
be a pathological product, is in reality an attempt at recovery, a
process of reconstruction_. Such a reconstruction after the
catastrophe is more or less successful, but never wholly so; in
Schreber’s words, there has been a ‘profound internal change’ in the
world. But the man has recaptured a relation, and often a very intense
one, to the people and things in the world, although the relation may
be a hostile one now, where formerly {458} it was sympathetic and
affectionate. We may conclude, then, that the process of repression
proper consists in a detachment of the libido from people---and
things---that were previously loved. It happens silently; we receive
no intelligence of it, but can only infer it from subsequent
events. What forces itself so noisily upon our attention is the
process of recovery, which undoes the work of repression and brings
back the libido again on to the people it had abandoned. In paranoia
this process is carried out by the method of projection. It was
incorrect of us to say that the perception which was suppressed
internally was projected outwards; the truth is rather, as we now see,
that what was abolished internally returns from without. The thorough
examination of the process of projection which we have postponed to
another occasion will clear up our remaining doubts on this subject.
In the meantime, however, it is a source of some satisfaction to find
that our newly acquired knowledge involves us in a number of further
discussions.
(1) Our first reflection will tell us that this detachment of the
libido cannot occur in paranoia only; nor, on the other hand, where it
does occur elsewhere, can it have such disastrous consequences. It is
quite possible that a detachment of the libido is the essential and
regular mechanism of every repression. We can have no positive
knowledge on that point until the other disorders that are based upon
repression have been similarly examined. But it is certain that in
normal mental life (and not only in periods of mourning) we are
constantly detaching our libido in this way from people or from other
objects without falling ill. When Faust freed himself from the world
by uttering his curses, the result was not a paranoia or any other
neurosis but simply a particular frame of mind. The detachment of the
libido, therefore, cannot in itself be the pathogenic factor in
paranoia; there must be some special characteristic which
distinguishes a paranoic detachment of the libido from other
kinds. And it is not difficult {459} to suggest what that
characteristic may be. What use is made of the libido after it has
been set free by the process of detachment? A normal person will at
once begin looking about for a substitute for the lost attachment; and
until that substitute has been found the liberated libido will be kept
in suspension within his mind, and will there give rise to tensions
and colour all his moods. In hysteria the liberated libido becomes
transformed into somatic innervations or into anxiety. But in paranoia
the clinical evidence goes to show that the libido, after it has been
withdrawn from the object, is put to a special use. It will be
remembered that the majority of cases of paranoia exhibit traces of
megalomania, and that megalomania can by itself constitute a
paranoia. From this it may be concluded that in paranoia the liberated
libido becomes fixed on to the ego, and is used for the aggrandizement
of the ego. A return is thus made to the stage of narcissism (familiar
to us in the development of the libido), in which a person’s only
sexual object is his own ego. On the basis of this clinical evidence
we can suppose that paranoiacs are endowed with a _fixation at the
stage of narcissism_, and we can assert that the amount of
_regression_ characteristic of paranoia is indicated by the length of
_the step back from sublimated homosexuality to narcissism_.
(2) An equally obvious objection can be based upon Schreber’s case
history, as well as upon many others. For it can be urged that the
delusions of persecution (which were directed against Flechsig)
unquestionably made their appearance at an earlier date than the
phantasy of the end of the world; so that what is supposed to have
been a return of the repressed actually preceded the repression
itself---which is patent nonsense. In order to meet this objection we
must leave the high ground of generalization and descend to the
detailed consideration of actual circumstances---which are undoubtedly
very much more complicated. We must admit the possibility that a
detachment of the {460} libido such as we are discussing might just as
easily be a partial one, a drawing back from some single complex, as a
general one. A partial detachment should be by far the commoner of the
two, and should precede a general one, since to begin with it is only
for a partial detachment that the influences of life provide a
motive. The process may stop at the stage of a partial detachment or
it may spread to a general one, which will loudly proclaim its
presence by means of the symptoms of megalomania. Thus, in spite of
the objection raised above, the detachment of the libido from the
figure of Flechsig may have been the primary process in the case of
Schreber; it was immediately followed by the appearance of the
delusion, which brought back the libido on to Flechsig again (though
with a negative sign to mark the fact that repression had taken place)
and thus annulled the work of repression. And now the battle of
repression broke out anew, but this time with more powerful
weapons. In proportion as the object of contention became the most
important thing in the external world, trying on the one hand to draw
the whole of the libido on to itself, and on the other hand mobilizing
all the resistances against itself, so the struggle raging around this
single object became more and more comparable to a general engagement;
till at length a victory for the forces of repression could find
expression in a conviction that the world had come to an end and that
the self alone survived. If we review the ingenious constructions
which were raised by Schreber’s delusion in the domain of
religion---the hierarchy of God, the qualified souls, the fore-courts
of Heaven, the lower and the upper God---we can gauge in retrospect
the wealth of sublimations which were brought down in ruin by the
catastrophe of the general detachment of his libido.
(3) A third consideration which arises from the views that have been
developed in these pages is as follows. Are we to suppose that a
general detachment of the libido from the external world would be an
{461} effective enough agent to account for the idea of the ‘end of
the world’? Or would not the egoistic cathexes which still remained in
existence have been sufficient to maintain _rapport_ with the external
world? To meet this difficulty we should either have to assume that
what we call libidinal cathexis (that is, interest emanating from
erotic sources) coincides with interest in general, or we should have
to consider the possibility that a very widespread disturbance in the
distribution of the libido may bring about a corresponding disturbance
in the egoistic cathexes. But these are problems with which we are
still quite unaccustomed to deal, and before which we stand
helpless. It would be otherwise if we could start out from some
well-grounded theory of instincts; but in fact we have nothing of the
kind at our disposal. We regard instinct as being a term situated on
the frontier-line between the somatic and the mental, and consider it
as denoting the mental representative of organic forces. Further, we
accept the popular distinction between egoistic instincts and a sexual
instinct; for such a distinction seems to agree with the biological
conception that the individual has a double orientation, aiming on the
one hand at self-preservation and on the other at the preservation of
the species. But beyond this are only hypotheses, which we have taken
up---and are quite ready to drop again---in order to help us to find
our bearings in the chaos of the obscurer processes of the mind. What
we expect from psycho-analytic investigations of pathological mental
processes is precisely that they shall drive us to some conclusions on
questions involving the theory of instincts. These investigations,
however, are in their infancy and are only being carried out by
isolated workers, so that the hopes we place in them must still remain
unfulfilled. We can no more dismiss the possibility that disturbances
of the libido may react upon the egoistic cathexes than we can
overlook the converse possibility---namely, that a secondary or
induced disturbance of the libidinal {462} processes may result from
abnormal changes in the ego. Indeed, it is probable that processes of
this kind constitute the distinctive characteristic of psychoses. How
much of all this may apply to paranoia it is impossible at present to
say. There is one consideration, however, on which I should like to
lay stress. It cannot be asserted that a paranoiac, even at the height
of the repressive process, withdraws his interest from the external
world so completely as must be considered to occur in certain other
kinds of hallucinatory psychosis (such as Meynert’s amentia). The
paranoiac perceives the external world and takes into account any
alterations that may happen in it, and the effect it makes upon him
stimulates him to invent explanatory theories (such as Schreber’s
description of men as ‘cursory contraptions’). It therefore appears to
me far more probable that the paranoiac’s altered relation to the
world is to be explained entirely or in the main by the loss of his
libidinal interest.
(4) It is impossible to avoid asking (in view of the close connection
between the two disorders) how far this conception of paranoia will
affect our conception of dementia praecox. I am of opinion that
Kraepelin was entirely justified in taking the step of separating off
a large part of what had hitherto been called paranoia and merging it,
together with catatonia and certain other varieties of disease, into a
new clinical unit---though ‘dementia praecox’ was a particularly
unhappy name to choose for it. The designation chosen by Bleuler for
the same group of varieties---‘schizophrenia’---is also open to the
objection that the name appears appropriate only so long as we forget
its literal meaning. For otherwise it prejudices the issue, since the
name connotes a theoretically postulated characteristic of the
disease---a characteristic, moreover, which does not belong
exclusively to it, and which, in the light of other considerations,
cannot be regarded as the essential one. However, it is not on the
whole of very great importance what names we give to clinical {463}
pictures. What seems to me more essential is that paranoia should be
maintained as an independent clinical type, however frequently the
picture it presents may be complicated by the presence of
schizophrenic features. For, from the standpoint of the libido theory,
while it would resemble dementia praecox in so far as the repression
proper would in both disorders have the same principal
feature---detachment of the libido, together with its regression on to
the ego---it would be distinguished from dementia praecox by having
its dispositional point of fixation differently located and by having
a different mechanism for the return of the repressed (that is, for
the formation of symptoms). It would seem to me the most convenient
plan to give dementia praecox the name of _paraphrenia_. This term has
no special connotation, and it would serve to indicate a relationship
with paranoia (a name which may be regarded as fixed) and would
further recall hebephrenia, an entity which is now merged in dementia
praecox. It is true that the name has already been proposed for other
purposes; but this need not concern us, since the alternative
applications have not passed into general use.
Abraham has very convincingly shown[345] that the turning away of the
libido from the external world is a particularly clearly-marked
feature in dementia praecox. It is from this feature that we infer the
fact that the repression is effected by means of detachment of the
libido. Here we may regard the phase of agitated hallucinations as a
struggle between repression and an attempt at recovery (an endeavour
to bring the libido back again on to its objects). Jung, with
extraordinary analytic acumen, has perceived that the ‘flight of
ideas’ and motor stereotypies occurring in this disorder are the
relics of former object-cathexes, clung to with convulsive
energy. This attempt at recovery (which observers mistake for the
disease itself) does not, as in paranoia, make use of projection, but
employs a {464} hallucinatory (hysterical) mechanism. This is one of
the great distinctions between dementia praecox and paranoia; and
light can be thrown upon its genesis from another quarter. The second
distinction is shown by the issue of the disease in those cases where
the process has become sufficiently general. The prognosis is on the
whole more unfavourable than in paranoia; the victory lies with the
forces of repression and not, as in the former, with those of
reconstruction. Regression travels back not merely to the stage of
narcissism (manifesting itself in the shape of megalomania) but to a
complete abandonment of object-love and to a restoration of infantile
auto-erotism. The dispositional point of fixation must therefore be
situated further back than in paranoia, and must lie somewhere at the
beginning of the course of development from auto-erotism to
object-love. Moreover, it is not at all likely that homosexual
impulses, which are so frequently (perhaps invariably) to be found in
paranoia, play an equally important part in the aetiology of that far
more comprehensive disorder, dementia praecox.
Our hypotheses as to the dispositional fixations in paranoia and
paraphrenia make it easy to see that a case may begin with paranoic
symptoms and may yet develop into a dementia praecox, and that
paranoid and schizophrenic phenomena may be combined in any
proportion. And we can understand how a clinical picture such as
Schreber’s can come about, and merit the name of a paranoid dementia,
from the fact that in its production of a wish-phantasy and of
hallucinations it shows paraphrenic traits, while in its exciting
cause, in its use of the mechanism of projection, and in its final
issue it exhibits a paranoid character. For it is possible for several
fixations to be left behind in the course of development, and each of
these in succession may allow an irruption of the ousted
libido---beginning, presumably, with the later acquired fixations, and
then, as the illness develops, affecting the original ones that lie
nearer the starting-point. We should be glad to {465} know to what
conditions the relatively favourable issue of the present case is due;
for we cannot willingly attribute the whole responsibility for the
outcome to anything so casual as the ‘improvement due to change of
residence’,[346] which set in after the patient’s removal from
Prof. Flechsig’s sanatorium. But our insufficient acquaintance with
the intimate circumstances of the history of the case makes it
impossible to give an answer to this interesting question. It may be
suspected, however, that what enabled Schreber to reconcile himself to
his homosexual phantasy, and so made it possible for his illness to
terminate in something approximating to a recovery, may have been the
fact that his father-complex was in the main positively toned and that
in real life the later years of his relationship with an excellent
father had probably been unclouded.
Since I neither fear the criticism of others nor shrink from
criticizing myself, I have no motive for avoiding the mention of a
similarity which may possibly damage our libido theory in the
estimation of many of my readers. Schreber’s ‘rays of God’, which are
made up of a condensation of the sun’s rays, of nerve-fibres, and of
spermatozoa, are in reality nothing else than a concrete
representation and external projection of libidinal cathexes; and they
thus lend his delusions a striking similarity with our theory. His
belief that the world must come to an end because his ego was
attracting all the rays to itself, his anxious concern at a later
period, during the process of reconstruction, lest God should sever
his ray-connection with him,---these and many other details of
Schreber’s delusional formation sound almost like endopsychic
perceptions of the processes whose existence I have assumed in these
pages as the basis of our explanation of paranoia. I can nevertheless
call a friend and fellow-specialist to witness that I had developed my
theory of paranoia before I became acquainted with the contents of
Schreber’s book. It remains for the future to decide {466} whether
there is more delusion in my theory than I should like to admit, or
whether there is more truth in Schreber’s delusion than other people
are as yet prepared to believe.
Lastly, I cannot conclude the present work, which is once again only a
fragment of a larger whole, without foreshadowing the two chief theses
towards the establishment of which the libido theory of the neuroses
and psychoses is advancing, namely, that the neuroses arise in the
main from a conflict between the ego and the sexual instinct, and that
the forms which the neuroses assume bear the imprint of the course of
development followed by the libido---and by the ego.
{467}
POSTSCRIPT[347]
In dealing with the case history of Senatspräsident Schreber I
purposely restricted myself to a minimum of interpretation; and I feel
confident that every reader with a knowledge of psycho-analysis will
have learned from the material which I presented more than was
explicitly stated by me, and that he will have found no difficulty in
drawing the threads closer and in reaching conclusions at which I no
more than hinted. By a happy chance the same issue of this periodical
as that in which my own paper appeared showed that the attention of
some other contributors had been directed to Schreber’s autobiography,
and made it easy to guess how much more material remains to be
gathered from the symbolic content of the phantasies and delusions of
this gifted paranoiac.[348]
Since I published my work upon Schreber, a chance acquisition of
knowledge has put me in a position to appreciate one of his delusional
beliefs more adequately, and to recognize its wealth of associations
with _mythology_. I mentioned on p. 438 the patient’s peculiar
relation to the sun, and I felt obliged to explain the sun as a
sublimated ‘father-symbol’. The sun used to speak to him in human
language and thus revealed itself to him as a living being. Schreber
was in the habit of abusing it and shouting threats at it; he
declares, moreover, that when he stood facing it and spoke aloud its
rays would turn pale before him. After his ‘recovery’ he boasts that
he can gaze at it without any difficulty and without being more than
{468} slightly dazzled by it, a thing which had naturally been
impossible for him formerly.[349]
It is out of this delusional privilege of being able to gaze at the
sun without being dazzled that the mythological interest arises. We
read in Reinach[350] that the natural historians of antiquity
attributed this power only to the eagle, who, as a dweller in the
highest regions of the air, was brought into especially intimate
relation with the heavens, with the sun, and with lightning.[351] We
learn from the same sources, moreover, that the eagle puts his young
to a test before recognizing them as his legitimate offspring. Unless
they can succeed in looking into the sun without blinking, they are
cast out from the eyrie.
There can be no doubt about the meaning of this animal myth. It is
certain that what is here ascribed to animals is nothing more than a
hallowed custom among men. The procedure gone through by the eagle
with his young is an _ordeal_, a test of lineage, such as is reported
of the most various races of antiquity. Thus the Celts living upon the
banks of the Rhine used to entrust their new-born babies to the waters
of the river, in order to ascertain whether they were truly of their
own blood. The clan of Psylli, who inhabited what is now Tripoli,
boasted that they were descended from snakes, and used to expose their
infants to contact with them; those who were true-born children of the
clan were either not bitten or recovered rapidly from the effects of
the bite.[352] The assumption underlying these trials leads us deep
into the _totemistic_ habits of thought of primitive peoples. The
totem---an animal, or a natural force animistically conceived, to
which the tribe traces back its origin---spares the members of the
{469} tribe as its own children, just as it itself is honoured by them
as their ancestor and, if need be, spared by them. We have here
arrived at the consideration of matters which, as it seems to me, may
make it possible to arrive at a psycho-analytic explanation of the
origins of religion.
The eagle, then, who makes his young look into the sun and requires of
them that they shall not be dazzled by its light, is behaving as
though he were himself a descendant of the sun and were submitting his
children to a test of their ancestry. And when Schreber boasts that he
can look into the sun without being punished and without being
dazzled, he has rediscovered the mythological method of expressing his
filial relation to the sun, and has confirmed us once again in our
view that the sun is a symbol of the father. It will be remembered
that during his illness Schreber gave free expression to his family
pride,[353] and that we discovered in the fact of his childlessness a
human motive for his illness having been brought on by a feminine
wish-phantasy. Thus the connection between his delusional privilege
and the basis of his illness becomes evident.
This short postscript to my analysis of a paranoid patient may serve
to show that Jung had excellent grounds for his assertion that the
mythopoeic forces of mankind are not extinct, but that to this very
day they give rise in the neuroses to the same psychological products
as in the remotest past ages. I should like to take up a suggestion
that I myself made some time ago,[354] and add that the same holds
good of the forces that work for the formation of religions. And I am
of opinion that the time will soon be ripe for us to make an extension
of a principle of which the truth has long been recognized by
psycho-analysts, and to complete what has hitherto had only an
individual and {470} ontogenetic application by the addition of its
anthropological and phylogenetically conceived counterpart. ‘In dreams
and in neuroses,’ so our principle has run, ‘we come once more upon
the _child_ and the peculiarities which characterize his modes of
thought and his emotional life.’ ‘And we come upon the _savage_ too,’
thus we may complete our proposition, ‘upon the _primitive_ man, as he
stands revealed to us in the light of the researches of archaeology
and of ethnology.’
----------------------------------------------------------------------
V {471}
FROM THE HISTORY
OF AN INFANTILE NEUROSIS
(1918)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM THE HISTORY {473}
OF AN INFANTILE NEUROSIS[355]
I
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
The case upon which I propose to report in the following pages (once
again only in a fragmentary manner) is characterized by a number of
peculiarities which require to be emphasized before I proceed to a
description of the facts themselves. It is concerned with a young man
whose health had broken down in his eighteenth year after a
gonorrhoeal infection, and who was entirely incapacitated and
completely dependent upon other people when he began his
psycho-analytic treatment several years later. He had lived an
approximately normal life during the ten {474} years of his boyhood
that preceded the date of his illness, and got through his studies at
his secondary school without much trouble. But his earlier years were
dominated by a severe neurotic disturbance, which began immediately
before his fourth birthday in the shape of anxiety-hysteria (animal
phobia), then changed into an obsessional neurosis with a religious
content, and lasted with its offshoots as far as into his tenth year.
Only this infantile neurosis will be the subject of my
communication. In spite of the patient’s direct request, I have
abstained from writing a complete history of his illness, of his
treatment, and of his recovery, because I recognized that such a task
was technically impracticable and socially impermissible. This at the
same time removes the possibility of demonstrating the connection
between his illness in infancy and his later and permanent one. As
regards the latter I can only say that on account of it the patient
spent a long time in German sanatoriums, and was at that period
classified in the most authoritative quarters as a case of
‘manic-depressive insanity’. This diagnosis was certainly applicable
to the patient’s father, whose life, with its wealth of activity and
interests, was disturbed by repeated attacks of severe depression. But
in the son, I was never able, during an observation which lasted
several years, to detect any changes of mood which were
disproportionate to the apparent psychological situation either in
their intensity or in the circumstances of their appearance. I have
formed the opinion that this case, like many others which clinical
psychiatry has labelled with the most multifarious and shifting
diagnoses, is to be regarded as a condition following upon an
obsessional neurosis which has come to an end spontaneously, but has
left a defect behind it after recovery.
My description will therefore deal with an infantile neurosis which
was analysed not while it actually existed, but only fifteen years
after its termination. {475} This state of things has its advantages
as well as its disadvantages in comparison with the alternative. An
analysis which is conducted upon a neurotic child itself must, as a
matter of course, appear to be more trustworthy, but it cannot be very
rich in material; too many words and thoughts have to be lent to the
child, and even so the deepest strata may turn out to be impenetrable
to consciousness. An analysis of a childhood disorder through the
medium of recollection in an intellectually mature adult is free from
these limitations; but it necessitates our taking into account the
distortion and refurbishing to which a person’s own past is subjected
when it is looked back upon from a later period. The first alternative
perhaps gives the more convincing results; the second is by far the
more instructive.
In any case it may be maintained that analyses of children’s neuroses
can claim to possess a specially high theoretical interest. They
afford us, roughly speaking, as much help towards a proper
understanding of the neuroses of adults as do children’s dreams in
respect to the dreams of adults. Not, indeed, that they are more
perspicuous or poorer in elements; in fact, the difficulty of feeling
one’s way into the mental life of a child makes them a particularly
difficult piece of work for the physician. But nevertheless, so many
of the later deposits are wanting in them that the essence of the
neurosis springs to the eyes with unmistakable distinctness. In the
present phase of the battle which is raging round psycho-analysis the
resistance to its findings has, as we know, taken on a new
form. People were content formerly to dispute the reality of the facts
which are asserted by analysis; and for this purpose the best
technique seemed to be to avoid examining them. That procedure appears
to be slowly exhausting itself; and people are now adopting another
plan---of recognizing the facts, but of eliminating, by means of
twisted interpretations, the consequences that follow from them, so
that the critics are defended against the {476} objectionable
novelties as efficiently as ever. The study of children’s neuroses
exposes the complete inadequacy of these shallow or high-handed
attempts at re-interpretation. It shows the predominant part that is
played in the formation of neuroses by those libidinal motive forces
which are so eagerly disavowed, and reveals the absence of any
aspirations towards remote cultural aims, of which the child still
knows nothing, and which cannot therefore be of any significance for
him.
Another characteristic which makes the present analysis noteworthy is
connected with the severity of the illness and the duration of the
treatment. Analyses which lead to a favourable conclusion in a short
time are of value in ministering to the therapeutist’s
self-sufficiency and substantiate the medical importance of
psycho-analysis; but they remain for the most part insignificant as
regards the advancement of scientific knowledge. Nothing new is learnt
from them. In fact they only succeed so quickly because everything
that was necessary for their accomplishment was already
known. Something new can only be gained from analyses that present
special difficulties, and to the overcoming of these a great deal of
time has to be devoted. Only in such cases do we succeed in descending
into the deepest and most primitive strata of mental development and
in gaining from there solutions for the problems of the later
formations. And we feel afterwards that, strictly speaking, only an
analysis which has penetrated so far deserves the name. Naturally a
single case does not give us all the information that we should like
to have. Or, to put it more correctly, it might teach us everything,
if we were only in a position to make everything out, and if we were
not compelled by the inexperience of our own perception to content
ourselves with a little.
As regards these fertile difficulties the case I am about to discuss
left nothing to be desired. The first years of the treatment produced
scarcely any change. {477} Owing to a fortunate concatenation, all of
the external circumstances nevertheless combined to make it possible
to proceed with the therapeutic experiment. I can easily believe that
in less favourable circumstances the treatment would have been given
up after a short time. Of the physician’s point of view I can only
declare that in a case of this kind he must behave as ‘timelessly’ as
the unconscious itself, if he wishes to learn anything or to achieve
anything. And in the end he will succeed in doing so, if he has the
strength to renounce any short-sighted therapeutical ambition. It is
not to be expected that the amount of patience, adaptability, insight,
and confidence demanded of the patient and his relatives will be
forthcoming in many other cases. But the analyst has a right to feel
that the results which he has attained from such lengthy work in one
case will help substantially to reduce the length of the treatment in
a subsequent case of equal severity, and that by submitting on a
single occasion to the timelessness of the unconscious he will be
brought nearer to vanquishing it in the end.
The patient with whom I am here concerned remained for a long time
unassailably intrenched behind an attitude of obliging apathy. He
listened, understood, and remained unapproachable. His unimpeachable
intelligence was, as it were, cut off from the instinctual forces
which governed his behaviour in the few relations of life that
remained to him. It required a long education to induce him to take an
independent share in the work; and when as a result of this exertion
he began for the first time to feel relief, he immediately knocked off
the work in order to avoid any further changes, and in order to remain
comfortably in the situation which had been thus established. His
shrinking from an independent existence was so great as to outweigh
all the vexations of his illness. Only one way was to be found of
overcoming it. I was obliged to wait until his attachment to myself
had become strong enough to counterbalance this shrinking, {478} and
then played off this one factor against the other. I determined---but
not until trustworthy signs had led me to judge that the right moment
had come---that the treatment must be brought to an end at a
particular fixed date, no matter how far it had advanced. I was
resolved to keep to the date; and eventually the patient came to see
that I was in earnest. Under the inexorable pressure of this fixed
limit his resistance and his fixation to the illness gave way, and now
in a disproportionately short time the analysis produced all the
material which made it possible to clear up his inhibitions and remove
his symptoms. All the information, too, which enabled me to understand
his infantile neurosis is derived from this last period of the work,
during which resistance temporarily disappeared and the patient gave
an impression of lucidity which is usually attainable only in
hypnosis.
Thus the course of this treatment illustrates a maxim whose truth has
long been appreciated in the technique of analysis. The length of the
road over which an analysis must travel with the patient, and the
quantity of material which must be mastered on the way, are of no
importance in comparison with the resistance which is met with in the
course of the work, and are only of importance at all in so far as
they are necessarily proportional to the resistance. The situation is
the same as when to-day an enemy army needs weeks and months to make
its way across a stretch of country which in times of peace was
traversed by an express train in a few hours and which only a short
time before had been passed over by the defending army in a few days.
A third peculiarity of the analysis which is to be described in these
pages has only increased my difficulty in deciding to make a report
upon it. On the whole its results have coincided in the most
satisfactory manner with our previous knowledge, or have been easily
embodied into it. Many details, however, seemed to me myself to be so
extraordinary and {479} incredible that I felt some hesitation in
asking other people to believe in them. I requested the patient to
make the strictest criticism of his recollections, but he found
nothing improbable in his statements and adhered closely to
them. Readers may at all events rest assured that I myself am only
reporting what I came upon as an independent experience, uninfluenced
by my expectation. So that there was nothing left for me but to
remember the wise saying that there are more things in heaven and
earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. Any one who could succeed
in eliminating his pre-existing convictions even more thoroughly could
no doubt discover even more such things.
II {480}
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PATIENT’S
ENVIRONMENT AND OF THE HISTORY OF
THE CASE
I am unable to give either a purely historical or a purely thematic
account of my patient’s story; I can write a consecutive history
neither of the treatment nor of the disease, but I shall find myself
obliged to combine the two methods of presentation. It is well known
that no means has been found of in any way introducing into the
reproduction of an analysis the sense of conviction which results from
the analysis itself. Exhaustive verbatim reports of the proceedings
during the hours of analysis would certainly be of no help at all; and
in any case the technique of the treatment makes it impossible to draw
them up. So analyses such as this are not published in order to
produce conviction in the minds of those whose attitude has hitherto
been recusant and sceptical. The intention is only to bring forward
some new facts for investigators who have already been convinced by
their own clinical experiences.
I shall begin, then, by giving a picture of the child’s world, and by
telling as much of the story of his childhood as could be learnt
without any exertion; it was not, indeed, for several years that the
story became any less incomplete and obscure.
His parents had been married young, and were still leading a happy
married life, upon which their ill-health was soon to throw the first
shadows. His mother began to suffer from abdominal disorders, and his
father from his first attacks of depression, which led to his absence
from home. Naturally the patient {481} only came to understand his
father’s illness very much later on, but he was aware of his mother’s
weak health even in his early childhood. As a consequence of it she
had relatively little to do with the children. One day, not later than
his fourth year, while his mother was seeing off the doctor to the
station and he himself was walking beside her, holding her hand, he
overheard her lamenting her condition. Her words made a deep
impression upon him, and later on he applied them to himself. He was
not the only child; he had a sister, about two years his elder,
lively, gifted, and precociously naughty, who was to play an important
part in his life.
As far back as he could remember he was looked after by a nurse, an
uneducated old woman of peasant birth, with an untiring affection for
him. He served her as a substitute for a son of her own who had died
young. The family lived on a country estate, from which they used to
move to another for the summer. The two estates were not far from a
large town. There was a break in his childhood when his parents sold
the estates and moved into the town. Near relatives used often to pay
them long visits upon one estate or the other---brothers of his
father, sisters of his mother and their children, his grandparents on
his mother’s side. During the summer his parents used to be away for a
few weeks. In a screen-memory he saw himself with his nurse looking
after the carriage which was driving off with his father, mother, and
sister, and then going peaceably back into the house. He must have
been very small at that time.[356] Next summer his sister was left at
home, and an English governess was engaged, who became responsible for
the supervision of the children.
In his later years he was told many stories about his childhood.[357]
He knew a great deal himself, but it {482} was naturally disconnected
both as regards date and subject-matter. One of these traditions,
which was repeated over and over again in front of him on the occasion
of his later illness, introduces us to the problem with whose solution
we shall be occupied. He seems at first to have been a very
good-natured, tractable, and even quiet child, so that they used to
say of him that he ought to have been the girl and his elder sister
the boy. But once, when his parents came back from their summer
holiday, they found him transformed. He had become discontented,
irritable, and violent, took offence at every possible occasion, and
then flew into a rage and screamed like a savage; so that, when this
state of things continued, his parents expressed their misgivings as
to whether it would be possible to send him to school later on. This
happened during the summer while the English governess was with
them. She turned out to be an eccentric and quarrelsome person, and,
moreover, to be addicted to drink. The boy’s mother was therefore
inclined to ascribe the alteration in his character to the influence
of this Englishwoman, and assumed that she had irritated him by her
treatment. His sharp-sighted grandmother, who had spent the summer
with the children, was of opinion that the boy’s irritability had been
provoked by the dissensions between the Englishwoman and the
nurse. The Englishwoman had repeatedly called the nurse a witch, and
had obliged her to leave the room; the little boy had openly taken the
side of his beloved ‘Nanya’ and let the governess see his
hatred. However it may have been, the Englishwoman was sent away soon
after the parents’ return, without there {483} being any consequent
change in the child’s unbearable behaviour.
The patient had preserved his memory of this naughty period. According
to his belief he made the first of his scenes one Christmas, when he
was not given a double quantity of presents---which were his due,
because Christmas Day was at the same time his birthday. He did not
spare even his beloved Nanya with his importunities and sensibilities,
and even tormented her more remorselessly perhaps than any one. But
the phase which brought with it his change in character was
inextricably connected in his memory with many other strange and
pathological phenomena which he was unable to arrange in a temporal
sequence. He threw all the incidents that I am now about to relate
(which cannot possibly have been contemporaneous, and which are full
of internal contradictions) into one and the same period of time, to
which he gave the name ‘still upon the first estate’. He thought they
must have left that estate by the time he was five years old. He could
recollect, then, how he had suffered from a fear, which his sister
exploited for the purpose of tormenting him. There was a particular
picture-book, in which a wolf was represented, standing upright and
striding along. Whenever he caught sight of this picture he began to
scream like a lunatic that he was afraid of the wolf coming and eating
him up. His sister, however, always succeeded in arranging so that he
was obliged to see this picture, and was delighted at his
terror. Meanwhile he was also frightened at other animals as well, big
and little. Once he was running after a beautiful big butterfly, with
striped yellow wings which ended in points, in the hope of catching
it. (It was no doubt a ‘swallow-tail’.) He was suddenly seized with a
terrible fear of the creature, and, screaming, gave up the chase. He
also felt fear and loathing of beetles and caterpillars. Yet he could
also remember that at this very time he used to torment beetles and
cut caterpillars to pieces. Horses, too, {484} gave him an uncanny
feeling. If a horse was beaten he began to scream, and he was once
obliged to leave a circus on that account. On other occasions he
himself enjoyed beating horses. Whether these contradictory sorts of
attitudes towards animals were really in operation simultaneously, or
whether they did not more probably replace one another, but if so in
what order and when---to all these questions his memory could offer no
decisive reply. He was also unable to say whether his naughty period
was replaced by a phase of illness or whether it persisted right
through the latter. But, in any case, the statements of his that
follow justified the assumption that during these years of his
childhood he went through an easily recognizable attack of obsessional
neurosis. He related how during a long period he was very
pious. Before he went to sleep he was obliged to pray for a long time
and to make an endless series of signs of the cross. In the evening,
too, he used to make the round of all the holy pictures that hung in
the room, taking a chair with him, upon which he climbed, and used to
kiss each one of them devoutly. There was another fact that was
utterly inconsistent with this pious ceremonial---but perhaps it was,
nevertheless, quite consistent with it---for he recollected some
blasphemous thoughts which used to come into his head like an
inspiration from the devil. He was obliged to think ‘God---swine’ or
‘God---shit’. Once while he was on a journey to a health-resort in
Germany he was tormented by the obsession of having to think of the
Holy Trinity whenever he saw three heaps of horse-dung or other
excrement lying in the road. At that time he used to carry out another
peculiar ceremonial when he saw people that he felt sorry for, such as
beggars, cripples, or very old men. He had to breathe out noisily, so
as not to become like them; and under certain other conditions he had
to draw in his breath vigorously. I naturally assumed that these
obvious symptoms of an obsessional neurosis belonged to a somewhat
later time and stage {485} of development than the signs of anxiety
and the cruel treatment of animals.
The patient’s maturer years were marked by a very unsatisfactory
relation to his father, who, after repeated attacks of depression, was
no longer able to conceal the pathological features of his
character. In the earliest years of the patient’s childhood this
relation had been a very affectionate one, and the recollection of it
had remained in his memory. His father was very fond of him, and liked
playing with him. From an early age he was proud of his father, and
was always declaring that he would like to be a gentleman like
him. His Nanya told him that his sister was his mother’s child, but
that he was his father’s---which had very much pleased him. Towards
the end of his childhood there was an estrangement between him and his
father. His father had an unmistakable preference for his sister, and
he felt very much slighted by this. Later on fear of his father became
the dominating factor.
All of the phenomena which the patient associated with the phase of
his life that began with his naughtiness disappeared in about his
eighth year. They did not disappear at a single blow, and made
occasional reappearances, but finally gave way, in the patient’s
opinion, before the influence of the masters and tutors, who then took
the place of the women who had hitherto looked after him. Here, then,
in the briefest outline, are the riddles for which the analysis had to
find a solution. What was the origin of the sudden change in the boy’s
character? What was the significance of his phobia and of his
perversities? How did he arrive at his obsessive piety? And how are
all these phenomena inter-related? I will once more recall the fact
that our therapeutic work was concerned with a subsequent and recent
neurotic illness, and that light could only be thrown upon these
earlier problems when the course of the analysis led away for a time
from the present, and forced us to make a _détour_ through the
prehistoric period of childhood.
III {486}
THE SEDUCTION AND ITS IMMEDIATE
CONSEQUENCES
It is easy to understand that the first suspicion fell upon the
English governess, for the change in the boy made its appearance while
she was there. Two screen-memories had persisted, which were
incomprehensible in themselves, and which related to her. Once, as she
was walking on in front, she had said to the people coming behind her:
‘Do look at my little tail!’ Another time, on a drive, her hat flew
away, to the two children’s great satisfaction. This pointed to the
castration complex, and might permit of a construction being made to
the effect that a threat uttered by her against the boy had been
largely responsible for originating his abnormal conduct. There is no
danger at all in communicating constructions of this kind to the
person under analysis; they never do any damage to the analysis if
they are mistaken; but at the same time they are not put forward
unless there is some prospect of reaching a nearer approximation to
the truth by means of them. The first effect of this supposition was
the appearance of some dreams, which it was not possible to interpret
completely, but all of which seemed to centre around the same
material. As far as they could be understood, they were concerned with
aggressive actions on the boy’s part against his sister or against the
governess and with energetic reproofs and punishments on account of
them. It was as though... after her bath... he had tried... to strip
his sister... to tear off her coverings... or veils---and so on. But
it was not possible to get at the content with certainty from the
interpretation; {487} and since these dreams gave an impression of
always working over the same material in various different ways, the
correct reading of these ostensible reminiscences became assured. It
could only be a question of phantasies, which the dreamer had made on
the subject of his childhood at some time or other, probably at the
age of puberty, and which had now come to the surface again in this
unrecognizable form.
The explanation came at a single blow, when the patient suddenly
called to mind the fact that, when he was still very small, ‘upon the
first estate’, his sister had seduced him into sexual practices. First
came a recollection that in the water-closet, which the children used
frequently to visit together, she had made this proposal: ‘Let’s show
one another our bottoms’, and had proceeded from words to
deeds. Subsequently the more essential part of the seduction came to
light, with full particulars as to time and locality. It was in
spring, at a time when his father was away; the children were in one
room playing on the floor, while their mother was working in the
next. His sister had taken hold of his member and played with it, at
the same time telling him incomprehensible stories about his Nanya, as
though by way of explanation. His Nanya, she said, used to do the same
thing with all kinds of people---for instance, with the gardener: she
used to stand him on his head, and then take hold of his genitals.
Here, then, was the explanation of the phantasies whose existence had
already been divined. They were meant to efface the memory of an event
which later on seemed offensive to the patient’s masculine
self-esteem, and they reached this end by putting an imaginary and
desirable converse in the place of the historical truth. According to
these phantasies it was not he who had played the passive part towards
his sister, but, on the contrary, he had been aggressive, had tried to
see his sister stripped, had been rejected and punished, and had for
that reason got into the rage which the {488} family tradition talked
of so much. It was also appropriate to weave the governess into this
imaginative composition, since the chief responsibility for his fits
of rage had been ascribed to her by his mother and grandmother. These
phantasies, therefore, corresponded exactly to the legends by means of
which a nation that has become great and proud tries to conceal the
insignificance and failure of its beginnings.
The governess can actually have had only a very remote share in the
seduction and its consequences. The scenes with his sister took place
in the early part of the same year in which, at the height of the
summer, the Englishwoman arrived to take the place of his absent
parents. The boy’s hostility to the governess came about, rather, in
another way. By abusing the nurse and slandering her as a witch, she
was in his eyes following in the footsteps of his sister, who had
first told him such monstrous stories about the nurse; and in this way
she enabled him to express openly against herself the aversion which,
as we shall hear, he had developed against his sister as a result of
his seduction.
But his seduction by his sister was certainly not a phantasy. Its
credibility was increased by some information which had never been
forgotten and which dated from a later part of his life, when he was
grown up. A cousin who was more than ten years his elder told him in a
conversation about his sister that he very well remembered what a
forward and sensual little thing she had been: once, when she was a
child of four or five, she had sat on his lap and opened his trousers
to take hold of his member.
I should like at this point to break off the story of my patient’s
childhood and say something of this sister, of her development and
later fortunes, and of the influence she had upon him. She was two
years older than he was, and had always remained ahead of him. As a
child she was boyish and unmanageable, but she then entered upon a
brilliant intellectual {489} development and distinguished herself by
her acute and realistic powers of mind; she inclined in her studies to
the natural sciences, but also produced imaginative writings of which
her father had a high opinion. She was mentally far superior to her
numerous early admirers, and used to make jokes at their expense. In
her early twenties, however, she began to be depressed, complained
that she was not good-looking enough, and withdrew from all
society. She was sent to travel in the company of an acquaintance, an
elderly lady, and after her return told a number of most improbable
stories of how she had been ill-treated by her companion, but remained
with her affections obviously fixed upon her alleged tormentor. While
she was on a second journey, soon afterwards, she poisoned herself and
died far away from her home. Her disorder is probably to be regarded
as the beginning of a dementia praecox. She was one of the proofs of
the conspicuously neuropathic heredity in her family, but by no means
the only one. An uncle, her father’s brother, died after long years of
life as an eccentric, with indications pointing to the presence of a
severe obsessional neurosis; while a good number of collateral
relatives were and are afflicted with less serious nervous complaints.
Leaving the seduction on one side for the moment---during his
childhood our patient found in his sister an inconvenient competitor
for the good opinion of his parents, and he felt very much oppressed
by her merciless display of superiority. Later on he especially envied
her the respect which his father showed for her mental capacity and
intellectual achievements, while he, intellectually inhibited as he
was since his obsessional neurosis, had to be content with a lower
estimation. From his fourteenth year onwards the relations between the
brother and sister began to improve; a similar disposition of mind and
a common opposition to their parents brought them so close together
that they got on with each other like the best of friends. During the
tempestuous sexual excite{490}ment of his puberty he ventured upon an
attempt at an intimate physical approach. She rejected him with equal
decision and dexterity, and he at once turned away from her to a
little peasant girl who was a servant in the house and had the same
name as his sister. In doing so he was taking a step which had a
determinant influence upon his heterosexual object-choice, for all the
girls with whom he subsequently fell in love---often with the clearest
indications of compulsion---were also servants, whose education and
intelligence were necessarily far inferior to his own. If all of these
objects of his love were substitutes for the figure of the sister whom
he had to forgo, then it could not be denied that an intention of
debasing his sister and of putting an end to her intellectual
superiority, which he had formerly found so oppressive, had obtained
the decisive control over his object-choice.
The sexual conduct of men, as well as everything else, has been
subordinated by Alfred Adler to motive forces of this kind, which
spring from the will to power, from the individual’s self-assertive
instinct. Without ever denying the importance of these motives of
power and prerogative, I have never been convinced that they play the
dominating and exclusive part that has been ascribed to them. If I had
not pursued my patient’s analysis to the end, I should have been
obliged, on account of my observation of this case, to correct my
preconceived opinion in a direction favourable to Adler. The
conclusion of the analysis unexpectedly brought up new material which,
on the contrary, showed that these motives of power (in this case the
intention to debase) had determined the object-choice only in the
sense of serving as a contributory cause and as a rationalization,
whereas the true underlying determination enabled me to maintain my
former convictions.[358]
When the news of his sister’s death arrived, so the patient told me,
he felt hardly a trace of grief. He had to force himself to show signs
of sorrow, and was {491} able quite coolly to rejoice at having now
become the sole heir to the property. He had already been suffering
from his recent illness for several years when this occurred. But I
must confess that this one piece of information made me for a long
time uncertain in my diagnostic judgement of the case. It was to be
assumed, no doubt, that his grief over the loss of the most dearly
loved member of his family would meet with an inhibition in its
expression, as a result of the continued operation of his jealousy of
her and as a result of the interference of his incestuous love for her
which had now become unconscious. But I could not do without some
substitute for the missing outburst of grief. And this was at last
found in another expression of feeling which had remained inexplicable
to the patient. A few months after his sister’s death he himself made
a journey in the neighbourhood in which she had died. There he sought
out the burial-place of a great poet, who was at that time his ideal,
and shed bitter tears upon his grave. This reaction seemed strange to
him himself, for he knew that more than two generations had passed by
since the death of the poet he admired. He only understood it when he
remembered that his father had been in the habit of comparing his dead
sister’s works with the great poet’s. He gave me another indication of
the correct way of interpreting the homage which he ostensibly paid to
the poet, by a mistake in his story which I was able to detect at this
point. He had repeatedly specified before that his sister had shot
herself; but he was now obliged to make a correction and say that she
had taken poison. The poet, however, had been shot in a duel.
I now return to the brother’s story, but from this point I must
proceed for a little upon thematic lines. The boy’s age at the time at
which his sister began her seductions turned out to be three and a
quarter years. It happened, as has been mentioned, in the spring of
the same year in whose summer the English governess arrived, and in
whose autumn his parents, {492} on their return, found him so
fundamentally altered. It is very natural, then, to connect this
transformation with the awakening of his sexual activity that had
meanwhile taken place.
How did the boy react to the allurements of his elder sister? By a
refusal, is the answer, but by a refusal which applied to the person
and not to the thing. His sister was not agreeable to him as a sexual
object, probably because his relation to her had already been
determined in a hostile direction owing to their rivalry for their
parents’ love. He held aloof from her, and, moreover, her
solicitations soon ceased. But he tried to win, instead of her,
another person of whom he was fonder; and the information which his
sister herself had given him, and in which she had claimed his Nanya
as a model, directed his choice in that direction. He therefore began
to play with his member in his Nanya’s presence, and this, like so
many other instances in which children do not conceal their onanism,
must be regarded as an attempt at seduction. His Nanya disillusioned
him; she made a serious face, and explained that that wasn’t good:
children who did that, she added, got a ‘wound’ in the place.
The effect of this intelligence, which amounted to a threat, is to be
traced in various directions. His dependence upon his Nanya was
diminished in consequence. He might well have been angry with her; and
later on, when his fits of rage set in, it became clear that he really
was embittered against her. But it was characteristic of him that
every position of the libido which he found himself obliged to abandon
was at first obstinately defended by him against the new
development. When the governess came upon the scene and abused his
Nanya, drove her out of the room, and tried to destroy her authority,
he, on the contrary, exaggerated his love for the victim of these
attacks and assumed a brusque and defiant attitude towards the
aggressive governess. Nevertheless, in secret he began to look about
for another sexual object. His {493} seduction had given him the
passive sexual aim of being touched on the genitals; we shall
presently hear in connection with whom it was that he tried to achieve
this aim, and what paths led him to this choice.
It agrees entirely with our anticipations when we learn that, after
his first genital excitations, his sexual inquiries began, and that he
soon came upon the problem of castration. At this time he succeeded in
observing two girls---his sister and a friend of hers---while they
were micturating. His acumen might well have enabled him to gather the
true facts from this spectacle, but he behaved as we know other male
children behave in these circumstances. He rejected the idea that he
saw before him a confirmation of the wound with which his Nanya had
threatened him, and he explained to himself that this was the girls’
‘front bottom’. The theme of castration was not settled by this
decision; he found new allusions to it in everything that he
heard. Once when the children were given some coloured sugar-sticks,
the governess, who was inclined to disordered fancies, pronounced that
they were pieces of chopped-up snakes. He remembered afterwards that
his father had once met a snake while he was walking along a footpath,
and had beaten it to pieces with his stick. He heard the story (out of
_Reynard the Fox_) read aloud, of how the wolf wanted to go fishing in
the winter, and used his tail as a bait, and how in that way his tail
was broken off in the ice. He learned the different names by which
horses are distinguished, according to the intactness of their
sex. Thus he was occupied with thoughts about castration, but as yet
he had no belief in it and no dread of it. Other sexual problems arose
for him out of the fairy tales with which he became familiar at this
time. In ‘Little Red Riding-Hood’ and ‘The Seven Little Goats’ the
children were taken out of the wolf’s body. Was the wolf a female
creature, then, or could men have children in their bodies as well? At
this time the {494} question was not yet settled. Moreover, at the
time of these inquiries he had as yet no fear of wolves.
One of the patient’s pieces of information will make it easier for us
to understand the alteration in his character which appeared during
his parents’ absence as a somewhat indirect consequence of his
seduction. He said that he gave up onanism very soon after his Nanya’s
refusal and threat. _His sexual life, therefore, which was beginning
to come under the sway of the genital zone, gave way before an
external obstacle, and was thrown back by its influence into an
earlier phase of pre-genital organization_. As a result of the
suppression of his onanism, the boy’s sexual life took on a
sadistic-anal character. He became irritable and a tormentor, and
gratified himself in this way at the expense of animals and men. His
principal object was his beloved Nanya, and he knew how to cause her
enough pain to make her burst into tears. In this way he revenged
himself on her for the refusal he had met with, and at the same time
gratified his sexual lust in the form which corresponded to his
present regressive phase. He began to be cruel to small animals, to
catch flies and pull out their wings, to crush beetles underfoot; in
his imagination he liked beating large animals (horses) as well. All
of these, then, were active and sadistic proceedings; we shall discuss
his anal impulses at this period in a later connection.
It is a most important fact that some contemporary phantasies of quite
another kind came up as well in the patient’s memory. The content of
these was of boys being chastised and beaten, and especially being
beaten on the penis. And from other phantasies, which represented the
heir to the throne being shut up in a narrow room and beaten, it was
easy to guess for whom it was that the anonymous figures served as
whipping-boys. The heir to the throne was evidently he himself; his
sadism had therefore turned round in phantasy against himself, and had
been converted into masochism. The detail of the sexual member itself
{495} receiving the beating justified the conclusion that a sense of
guilt, which related to his onanism, was already concerned in this
transformation.
No doubt was left in the analysis that these passive trends had made
their appearance at the same time as the active-sadistic ones, or very
soon after them.[359] This is in accordance with the unusually clear,
intense, and constant _ambivalence_ of the patient, which was shown
here for the first time in the even development of both members of the
pairs of contrary component instincts. Such behaviour was also
characteristic of his later life, and so was this further trait: no
position of the libido which had once been established was ever
completely replaced by a later one. It was rather left in existence
side by side with all the others, and this allowed him to maintain an
incessant vacillation which proved to be incompatible with the
acquisition of a fixed character.
The boy’s masochistic trends lead on to another point, which I have so
far avoided mentioning, because it can only be confirmed by means of
the analysis of the subsequent phase of his development. I have
already mentioned that after his refusal by his Nanya his libidinal
expectation detached itself from her and began to contemplate another
person as a sexual object. This person was his father, at that time
away from home. He was no doubt led to this choice by a number of
convergent factors, including such fortuitous ones as the recollection
of the snake being cut to pieces; but above all he was in this way
able to renew his first and most primitive object-choice, which, in
conformity with a small child’s narcissism, had taken place along the
path of identification. We have heard already that his father had been
his admired model, and that when he was asked what he wanted to be he
used to reply: a gentleman like his father. This object of {496}
identification of his active current became the sexual object of a
passive current in his present anal-sadistic phase. It looks as though
his seduction by his sister had forced him into a passive rôle, and
had given him a passive sexual aim. Under the persisting influence of
this experience he pursued a path from his sister by way of his Nanya
to his father---from a passive attitude towards women to the same
attitude towards men---and had, nevertheless, by this means found a
link with his earlier and spontaneous phase of development. His father
was now his object once more; in conformity with his higher stage of
development, identification was replaced by object-choice; while the
transformation of his active attitude into a passive one was the
consequence and the record of the seduction which had occurred
meanwhile. It would naturally not have been so easy to achieve an
active attitude in the sadistic phase towards his all-powerful
father. When his father came home in the late summer or autumn his
fits of rage and scenes of fury were put to a new use. They had served
for active-sadistic ends in relation to his Nanya; in relation to his
father their purpose was masochistic. By bringing his naughtiness
forward he was trying to force punishments and beatings out of his
father, and in that way to obtain from him the masochistic sexual
satisfaction that he desired. His screaming fits were therefore simply
attempts at seduction. In accordance, moreover, with the motives which
underlie masochism, this beating would also have satisfied his sense
of guilt. He had preserved a memory of how, during one of these scenes
of naughtiness, he had redoubled his screams as soon as his father
came towards him. His father did not beat him, however, but tried to
pacify him by playing ball in front of him with the pillows of his
cot.
I do not know how often parents and educators, faced with inexplicable
naughtiness on the part of a child, might not have occasion to bear
this typical state of affairs in mind. A child that behaves in this
{497} unmanageable way is making a confession and trying to provoke
punishment. It hopes for a beating as a simultaneous means of setting
its sense of guilt at rest and of satisfying its masochistic sexual
trend.
For the further explanation of the case we have to thank a
recollection which came up with the greatest distinctness to the
effect that none of the patient’s symptoms of anxiety were added to
the indications of an alteration in his character until after the
occurrence of a certain event. Previously, it seems, there was no
anxiety, while directly after the event the anxiety expressed itself
in the most tormenting shape. The date of this transformation can be
stated with certainty; it was immediately before his fourth
birthday. Taking this as a fixed point, we are able to divide the
period of his childhood with which we are concerned into two phases: a
first phase of naughtiness and perversity from his seduction at the
age of three and a quarter up to his fourth birthday, and a longer
subsequent phase in which the signs of neurosis predominated. But the
event which makes this division possible was not an external trauma,
but a dream, from which he awoke in a state of anxiety.
IV {498}
THE DREAM AND THE PRIMAL SCENE
I have already published this dream elsewhere,[360] on account of the
quantity of material in it which is derived from fairy tales; and I
will begin by repeating what I wrote on that occasion: ‘“_I dreamt
that it was night and that I was lying in my bed._ (_My bed stood with
its foot towards the window; in front of the window there was a row of
old walnut trees. I know it was winter when I had the dream, and
night-time._) _Suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and I was
terrified to see that some white wolves were sitting on the big walnut
tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of them. The
wolves were quite white, and looked more like foxes or sheep-dogs, for
they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like
dogs when they are attending to something. In great terror, evidently
of being eaten up by the wolves, I screamed_ and woke up. My nurse
hurried to my bed, to see what had happened to me. It took quite a
long while before I was convinced that it had only been a dream; I had
had such a clear and life-like picture of the window opening and the
wolves sitting on the tree. At last I grew quieter, felt as though I
had escaped from some danger, and went to sleep again.
‘“The only piece of action in the dream was the opening of the window;
for the wolves sat quite still and without any movement on the
branches of the tree, to the right and left of the trunk, and looked
at me. It seemed as though they had riveted their whole attention upon
me.---I think this was my first {499} anxiety dream. I was three,
four, or at most five years old at the time. From then until my
eleventh or twelfth year I was always afraid of seeing something
terrible in my dreams.”
[Illustration: Fig. 6. --- see images/fig6.png]
‘He added a drawing of the tree with the wolves, which confirmed his
description (Fig. 6). The analysis of the dream brought the following
material to light.
‘He had always connected this dream with the recollection that during
these years of his childhood he was most tremendously afraid of the
picture of a wolf in a book of fairy tales. His elder sister, who was
very much his superior, used to tease him by holding up this
particular picture in front of him on some excuse or other, so that he
was terrified and began to scream. In this picture the wolf was
standing upright, striding out with one foot, with its claws stretched
out and its ears pricked. He thought this picture must {500} have been
an illustration to the story of “Little Red Riding-Hood”.
‘Why were the wolves white? This made him think of the sheep, large
flocks of which were kept in the neighbourhood of the estate. His
father occasionally took him with him to visit these flocks, and every
time this happened he felt very proud and blissful. Later
on---according to inquiries that were made it may easily have been
shortly before the time of the dream---an epidemic broke out among the
sheep. His father sent for a follower of Pasteur’s, who inoculated the
animals, but after the inoculation even more of them died than before.
‘How did the wolves come to be on the tree? This reminded him of a
story that he had heard his grandfather tell. He could not remember
whether it was before or after the dream, but its subject is a
decisive argument in favour of the former view. The story ran as
follows. A tailor was sitting at work in his room, when the window
opened and a wolf leapt in. The tailor hit after him with his
yard---no (he corrected himself), caught him by his tail and pulled it
off, so that the wolf ran away in terror. Some time later the tailor
went into the forest, and suddenly saw a pack of wolves coming towards
him; so he climbed up a tree to escape from them. At first the wolves
were in perplexity; but the maimed one, which was among them and
wanted to revenge himself upon the tailor, proposed that they should
climb one upon another till the last one could reach him. He
himself---he was a vigorous old fellow---would be the base of the
pyramid. The wolves did as he suggested, but the tailor had recognized
the visitor whom he had punished, and suddenly called out as he had
before: “Catch the grey one by his tail!” The tailless wolf, terrified
by the recollection, ran away, and all the others tumbled down.
‘In this story the tree appears, upon which the wolves were sitting in
the dream. But it also contains {501} an unmistakable allusion to the
castration complex. The _old_ wolf was docked of his tail by the
tailor. The fox-tails of the wolves in the dream were probably
compensations for this taillessness.
‘Why were there six or seven wolves? There seemed to be no answer to
this question, until I raised a doubt whether the picture that had
frightened him could be connected with the story of “Little Red
Riding-Hood”. This fairy tale only offers an opportunity for two
illustrations---Little Red Riding-Hood’s meeting with the wolf in the
wood, and the scene in which the wolf lies in bed in the grandmother’s
nightcap. There must therefore be some other fairy tale behind his
recollection of the picture. He soon discovered that it could only be
the story of “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats”. Here the number
seven occurs, and also the number six, for the wolf only ate up six of
the little goats, while the seventh hid itself in the clock-case. The
white, too, comes into this story, for the wolf had his paw made white
at the baker’s after the little goats had recognized him on his first
visit by his grey paw. Moreover, the two fairy tales have much in
common. In both there is the eating up, the cutting open of the belly,
the taking out of the people who have been eaten and their replacement
by heavy stones, and finally in both of them the wicked wolf
perishes. Besides all this, in the story of the little goats the tree
appears. The wolf lay down under a tree after his meal and snored.
‘I shall have, for a special reason, to deal with this dream again
elsewhere, and interpret it and consider its significance in greater
detail. For it is the earliest anxiety dream that the dreamer
remembered from his childhood, and its content, taken in connection
with other dreams that followed it soon afterwards and with certain
events in his earliest years, is of quite peculiar interest. We must
confine ourselves here to the relation of the dream to the two fairy
tales which have so much in common with each other, “Little Red
Riding-Hood” {502} and “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats”. The
effect produced by these stories was shown in the little dreamer by a
regular animal phobia. This phobia was only distinguished from other
similar cases by the fact that the anxiety-animal was not an object
easily accessible to observation (such as a horse or a dog), but was
known to him only from stories and picture-books.
‘I shall discuss on another occasion the explanation of these animal
phobias and the significance attaching to them. I will only remark in
anticipation that this explanation is in complete harmony with the
principal characteristic shown by the neurosis from which the present
dreamer suffered in the later part of his life. His fear of his father
was the strongest motive for his falling ill, and his ambivalent
attitude towards every father-surrogate was the dominating feature of
his life as well as of his behaviour during the treatment.
‘If in my patient’s case the wolf was merely a first father-surrogate,
the question arises whether the hidden content in the fairy tales of
the wolf that ate up the little goats and of “Little Red Riding-Hood”
may not simply be infantile fear of the father.[361] Moreover, my
patient’s father had the characteristic, shown by so many people in
relation to their children, of indulging in “_affectionate abuse_”;
and it is possible that during the patient’s earlier years his father
(though he grew severe later on) may more than once, as he caressed
the little boy or played with him, have threatened in fun to “gobble
him up”. One of my patients told me that her two children could never
get to be fond of their grandfather, because in the course of his
affectionate romping with them he used to frighten them by saying he
would cut open their tummies.’
Leaving on one side everything in this quotation that anticipates the
dream’s remoter implications, let {503} us return to its immediate
interpretation. I may remark that this interpretation was a task that
dragged on over several years. The patient related the dream at a very
early stage of the analysis and very soon came to share my conviction
that the causes of his infantile neurosis lay concealed behind it. In
the course of the treatment we often came back to the dream, but it
was only during the last months of the analysis that it became
possible to understand it completely, and only then thanks to
spontaneous work on the patient’s part. He had always emphasized the
fact that two factors in the dream had made the greatest impression
upon him: first, the perfect stillness and immobility of the wolves,
and secondly, the strained attention with which they all looked at
him. The lasting sense of reality, too, which the dream left behind
it, seemed to him to deserve notice.
Let us take this last remark as a starting-point. We know from our
experience in interpreting dreams, that this sense of reality carries
a particular significance along with it. It assures us that some part
of the latent material of the dream is claiming in the dreamer’s
memory to possess the quality of reality, that is, that the dream
relates to an occurrence that really took place and was not merely
imagined. It can naturally only be a question of the reality of
something unknown; for instance, the conviction that his grandfather
really told him the story of the tailor and the wolf, or that the
stories of ‘Little Red Riding-Hood’ and of ‘The Seven Little Goats’
were really read aloud to him, would not be of a nature to be replaced
by this sense of reality that outlasted the dream. The dream seemed to
point to an occurrence the reality of which was in this way emphasized
as being in marked contrast to the unreality of the fairy tales.
If we were led to assume that behind the content of the dream there
lay some such unknown scene---one, that is, which had already been
forgotten at the time of the dream---then it must have taken place
very {504} early. The dreamer, it will be recalled, said: ‘I was
three, four, or at most five years old at the time I had the dream.’
And we can add: ‘And I was reminded by the dream of something that
must have belonged to an even earlier period.’
The parts of the manifest content of the dream which were emphasized
by the dreamer, the factors of attentive looking and of
motionlessness, must lead to the content of this scene. We must
naturally expect to find that this material reproduces the unknown
material of the scene in some distorted form, perhaps even distorted
into its opposite.
There were several conclusions, too, to be drawn from the raw material
which had been produced by the patient’s first analysis of the dream,
and these had to be fitted into the collocation of which we were in
search. Behind the mention of the sheep-breeding, evidence was to be
expected of his sexual inquiries, his interest in which he was able to
gratify during his visits with his father; but there must also have
been allusions to a fear of death, since the greater part of the sheep
had died of the epidemic. The most obtrusive thing in the dream, the
wolves on the tree, led straight to his grandfather’s story; and what
was fascinating about this story and capable of provoking the dream
can scarcely have been anything but its connection with the theme of
castration.
We also concluded from the first incomplete analysis of the dream that
the wolf may have been a father-surrogate; so that, in that case, this
first anxiety-dream would have brought to light the fear of his father
which from that time forward was to dominate his life. This
conclusion, indeed, was in itself not yet binding. But if we put
together as the result of the provisional analysis what can be derived
from the material produced by the dreamer, we then find before us for
reconstruction some such fragments as these:
_A real occurrence_ --- _dating from a very early period_ --- {505}
_looking_ --- _immobility_ --- _sexual problems_ --- _castration_ ---
_his father_ --- _something terrible_.
One day the patient began to proceed with the interpretation of the
dream. He thought that the part of the dream which said that ‘suddenly
the window opened of its own accord’ was not completely explained by
its connection with the window at which the tailor was sitting and
through which the wolf came into the room. ‘It must mean: “My eyes
suddenly open.” I am asleep, therefore, and suddenly wake up, and as I
wake I see something: the tree with the wolves.’ No objection could be
made to this; but the point could be developed further. He had woken
up and had seen something. The attentive looking, which in the dream
is ascribed to the wolves, should rather be shifted on to him. At a
decisive point, therefore, a transposition has taken place; and
moreover this is indicated by another transposition in the manifest
content of the dream. For the fact that the wolves were sitting on the
tree was also a transposition, since in his grandfather’s story they
were underneath, and were unable to climb on to the tree.
What, then, if the other factor emphasized by the dreamer were also
distorted by means of a transposition or reversal? In that case
instead of immobility (the wolves sat there motionless; they looked at
him, but did not move) the meaning would have to be: the most violent
motion. That is to say, he suddenly woke up, and saw in front of him a
scene of violent movement at which he looked with strained
attention. In the one case the distortion would consist in an
interchange of subject and object, of activity and passivity: being
looked at instead of looking. In the other case it would consist in a
transformation into the opposite: rest instead of motion.
On another occasion an association which suddenly occurred to him
carried us another step forward in our understanding of the dream:
‘The tree was a Christmas-tree.’ He now knew that he had dreamed the
{506} dream shortly before Christmas and in expectation of it. Since
Christmas Day was also his birthday, it now became possible to
establish with certainty the date of the dream and of the
transformation which proceeded from it. It was immediately before his
fourth birthday. He had gone to sleep, then, in tense expectation of
the day which ought to bring him a double quantity of presents. We
know that in such circumstances a child may easily anticipate the
fulfilment of his wishes. So it was already Christmas in his dream;
the content of the dream showed him his Christmas box, the presents
which were to be his were hanging on the tree. But instead of presents
they had turned into---wolves, and the dream ended by his being
overcome by fear of being eaten by the wolf (probably his father), and
by his flying for refuge to his nurse. Our knowledge of his sexual
development before the dream makes it possible for us to fill in the
gaps in the dream and to explain the transformation of his
satisfaction into anxiety. Of the wishes concerned in the formation of
the dream the most powerful must have been the wish for the sexual
satisfaction which he was at that time longing to obtain from his
father. The strength of this wish made it possible to revive the
long-forgotten traces in his memory of a scene which was able to show
him what sexual satisfaction from his father was like; and the result
was terror, horror of the fulfilment of the wish, the repression of
the impulse which had manifested itself by means of the wish, and
consequently a flight from his father to his less dangerous nurse.
The importance of this Christmas Day as a turning-point had been
preserved in his supposed recollection of having had his first fit of
rage because he was dissatisfied with his Christmas presents. The
recollection combined elements of truth and of falsehood. It could not
be entirely right, since according to the repeated declarations of his
parents his naughtiness had already begun on their return in the
autumn and it was not a {507} fact that they had come on only at
Christmas. But he had preserved the essential connection between his
unsatisfied love, his rage, and Christmas.
But what picture can the nightly workings of his sexual desire have
conjured up that could frighten him away so violently from the
fulfilment for which he longed? The material of the analysis shows
that there is one condition which this picture must satisfy. It must
have been calculated to create a conviction of the reality of the
existence of castration. Fear of castration could then become the
motive power for the transformation of the affect.
I have now reached the point at which I must abandon the support I
have hitherto had from the course of the analysis. I am afraid it will
also be the point at which the reader’s belief will abandon me.
What sprang into activity that night out of the chaos of the dreamer’s
unconscious memory-traces was the picture of a coitus between his
parents, a coitus in circumstances which were not entirely usual and
were especially favourable for observation. It gradually became
possible to find satisfactory answers to all the questions that arose
in connection with this scene; for in the course of the treatment the
first dream returned in innumerable variations and new editions, the
analysis of which produced the information that was required. Thus in
the first place the child’s age at the date of the observation was
established as being about one and a half years.[362] He was suffering
at the time from malaria, an attack of which used to come on every day
at a particular hour.[363] From his tenth year onwards he was from
time to time subject to moods of depression, which used to come on in
the afternoon and reached their height at about five o’clock. This
symptom still existed at the time of the analytic {508} treatment. The
recurring fits of depression took the place of the earlier attacks of
fever or languor; five o’clock was either the time of the highest
fever or of the observation of the coitus, unless the two times
coincided.[364] Probably for the very reason of this illness, he was
in his parents’ bedroom. The illness, the occurrence of which is also
corroborated by direct tradition, makes it reasonable to refer the
event to the summer, and, since the child was born on Christmas Day,
to assume that his age was _n_ + 1½ years. He had been sleeping in his
cot, then, in his parents’ bedroom, and woke up, perhaps because of
his rising fever, in the afternoon, possibly at five o’clock, the hour
which was later marked out by depression. It harmonizes with our
assumption that it was a hot summer’s day, if we suppose that his
parents had retired, half undressed,[365] for an afternoon
_siesta_. When he woke up, he witnessed a coitus _a tergo_, three
times repeated;[366] he was able to see his mother’s genitals as well
as his father’s member; and he understood the process as well as its
significance.[367] Lastly he interrupted his parents’ intercourse in a
manner which will be discussed later.
There is at bottom nothing extraordinary, nothing to give the
impression of being the product of an extravagant imagination, in the
fact that a young couple who had only been married a few years should
have ended a _siesta_ on a hot summer’s afternoon with a love-scene,
and should have disregarded the presence {509} of their little boy of
one and a half, asleep in his cot. On the contrary, such an event
would, I think, be something entirely commonplace and _banal_; and
even the position in which we have inferred that the coitus took place
cannot in the least alter this judgement---especially as the evidence
does not require that the coitus should have been performed from
behind each time. A single time would have been enough to give the
spectator an opportunity for making observations which would have been
rendered difficult or impossible by any other attitude of the
lovers. The content of the scene cannot therefore in itself be an
argument against its credibility. Doubts as to its probability will
turn upon three minor points: whether a child at the tender age of one
and a half could be in a position to take in the perceptions of such a
complicated process and to preserve them so accurately in its
unconscious; secondly, whether it could be possible for a deferred
elaboration of the impressions thus received to force its way into
comprehension at the age of four; and finally, whether any procedure
could have succeeded in bringing into consciousness coherently and
convincingly the details of a scene of this kind which had been
experienced and understood in such circumstances.[368]
Later on I shall carefully examine these and other doubts; but I can
assure the reader that I am no less critically inclined than he
towards an acceptance of this observation of the child’s, and I will
only ask him to join me in adopting a _provisional_ belief in the
reality of the scene. We will first proceed with the study of {510}
the relations between this ‘_primal scene_’ and the patient’s dream,
his symptoms, and the history of his life; and we will trace
separately the effects that followed from the essential content of the
scene and from one of its visual impressions.
By the latter I mean the attitudes which he saw his parents
adopt---the man upright, and the woman bent down like an animal. We
have already heard that during his anxiety period his sister used to
terrify him with a picture from the fairy-book, in which the wolf was
shown standing upright, with one foot forward, with its claws
stretched out and its ears pricked. He devoted himself with tireless
perseverance during the treatment to the task of hunting in the
second-hand bookshops till he had found the illustrated fairy-book of
his childhood, and had recognized his bogy in an illustration to the
story of ‘The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats’. He thought that the
attitude of the wolf in this picture might have reminded him of that
of his father during the constructed primal scene. At all events the
picture became the point of departure for further manifestations of
anxiety. Once when he was in his seventh or eighth year he was
informed that next day a new tutor was coming for him. That night he
dreamt of this tutor in the shape of a lion that came towards his bed
roaring loudly and in the attitude of the wolf in the picture; and
once again he awoke in a state of anxiety. The wolf phobia had been
overcome by that time, so he was free to choose himself a new
anxiety-animal, and in this late dream he was recognizing the tutor as
a father-surrogate. In the later years of his childhood each of his
tutors and masters played the part of his father, and was endowed with
his father’s influence both for good and for evil.
While he was at his secondary school the Fates provided him with a
remarkable opportunity of reviving his wolf phobia, and of using the
relation which lay behind it as an occasion for severe
inhibitions. The master who taught his form Latin was called
Wolf. {511} From the very first he felt cowed by him, and he was once
taken severely to task by him for having made a stupid mistake in a
piece of Latin translation. From that time on he could not get free
from a paralysing fear of this master, and it was soon extended to
other masters besides. But the occasion on which he made his blunder
in the translation was also to the purpose. He had to translate the
Latin word ‘_filius_’, and he did it with the French word ‘_fils_’
instead of with the corresponding word from his own language. The
wolf, in fact, was still his father.[369]
The first ‘transitory symptom’[370] which the patient produced during
the treatment went back once more to the wolf phobia and to the fairy
tale of ‘The Seven Little Goats’. In the room in which the first
sittings were held there was a large grandfather clock opposite the
patient, who lay upon a sofa facing away from me. I was struck by the
fact that from time to time he turned his face towards me, looked at
me in a very friendly way as though to propitiate me, and then turned
his look away from me to the clock. I thought at the time that he was
in this way showing his eagerness for the end of the hour. A long time
afterwards the patient reminded me of this piece of dumb show, and
gave me an explanation of it; for he recalled that the youngest of the
seven little goats hid himself in the case of the grandfather clock
while his six brothers were eaten up by the wolf. So what he had meant
{512} was: ‘Be kind to me! Must I be frightened of you? Are you going
to eat me up? Shall I hide myself from you in the clock-case like the
youngest little goat?’
The wolf that he was afraid of was undoubtedly his father; but his
fear of the wolf was conditional upon the creature being in an upright
attitude. His recollection asserted most definitely that he had not
been terrified by pictures of wolves going on all fours or, as in the
story of ‘Little Red Riding-Hood’, lying in bed. The attitude which,
according to our construction of the primal scene, he had seen the
woman assume, was of no less significance; though in this case the
significance was limited to the sexual sphere. The most striking
phenomenon of his erotic life after maturity was his liability to
compulsive attacks of falling physically in love which came on and
disappeared again in the most puzzling succession. These attacks
released a tremendous energy in him even at times when he was
otherwise inhibited, and they were quite beyond his control. I must
for a specially important reason postpone a full consideration of this
compulsive love; but I may mention here that it depended upon a
definite condition, which was concealed from his consciousness, and
was discovered only during the treatment. It was necessary that the
woman should have assumed the attitude which we have ascribed to his
mother in the primal scene. From his puberty he had felt large and
conspicuous buttocks as the most powerful attraction in a woman; to
copulate except from behind gave him scarcely any enjoyment. At this
point a criticism may justly be raised: it may be objected that a
sexual preference of this kind for the hind parts of the body is a
general characteristic of people who are inclined to an obsessional
neurosis, and that its presence does not justify us in referring it
back to a special impression in childhood. It is part of the fabric of
the anal-erotic disposition and is one of the archaic traits which
distinguish that constitution. Indeed, copulation from behind---_more
ferarum_---may, {513} after all, be regarded as phylogenetically the
older form. We shall return to this point too in a later discussion,
when we have brought forward the supplementary material which showed
the basis of the unconscious condition upon which his falling in love
depended.
Let us now proceed with our discussion of the relations between his
dream and the primal scene. We should so far have expected the dream
to present the child (who was rejoicing at Christmas in the prospect
of the fulfilment of his wishes) with this picture of sexual
satisfaction afforded through his father’s agency, just as he had seen
it in the primal scene, as a model of the satisfaction that he himself
was longing to obtain from his father. Instead of this picture,
however, there appeared the material of the story which he had been
told by his grandfather shortly before: the tree, the wolves, and the
taillessness (in the over-compensated form of the bushy tails of the
alleged wolves). At this point some connection is missing, some
associative bridge to lead from the content of the primal scene to
that of the wolf story. This connection is provided once again by the
attitudes and only by the attitudes. In his grandfather’s story the
tailless wolf asked the others _to climb upon him_. It was this detail
that called up the recollection of the picture of the primal scene;
and it was in this way that it became possible for the material of the
primal scene to be represented by that of the wolf story, and at the
same time for the _two_ parents to be replaced, as was desirable, by
_several_ wolves. The content of the dream met with a further
transformation, and the material of the wolf story was made to fit in
with the content of the fairy tale of ‘The Seven Little Goats’, by
borrowing from it the number seven.[371]
The steps in the transformation of the material, {514} ‘primal
scene---wolf story---fairy tale of “The Seven Little Goats”’, are a
reflection of the progress of the dreamer’s thoughts during the
construction of the dream, ‘longing for sexual satisfaction from his
father---realization that castration is a necessary condition of
it---fear of his father’. It is only at this point, I think, that we
can regard the anxiety dream of this four-year-old boy as being
exhaustively explained.[372]
{515}
After what has already been said I need only deal {516} shortly with
the pathogenic effect of the primal scene and the alteration which its
revival produced in his sexual development. We will only trace that
one of its effects to which the dream gave expression. Later on we
shall have to make it clear that it was not only a single sexual
current that started from the primal scene but a whole series of them,
that his sexual life was positively splintered up by it. We shall
further bear in mind that the activation of this scene (I purposely
avoid the word ‘recollection’) had the same effect as though it were a
recent experience. The effects of the scene were deferred, but
meanwhile it had lost none of its freshness in the interval between
the ages of one and a half and four years. We shall perhaps find in
what follows reason to suppose that it produced certain effects even
at the time of its perception, that is, from the age of one and a half
onwards.
When the patient entered more deeply into the situation of the primal
scene, he brought to light the following pieces of
self-observation. He seems to have assumed to begin with that the
event of which he was a witness was an act of violence, but the
expression of enjoyment which he saw upon his mother’s face did not
fit in with this; he was obliged to recognize that what he was faced
by was a process of gratification.[373] {517} What was essentially new
for him in his observation of his parents’ intercourse was the
conviction of the reality of castration---a possibility with which his
thoughts had already been occupied previously. (The sight of the two
girls micturating, his Nanya’s threat, the governess’s interpretation
of the sugar-sticks, the recollection of his father having beaten a
snake to pieces.) For now he saw with his own eyes the wound of which
his Nanya had spoken, and understood that its presence was a necessary
condition of intercourse with his father. He could no longer confound
it with the bottom, as he had in his observation of the little
girls.[374]
The dream ended in a state of anxiety, from which he did not recover
until he had his Nanya with him. He fled, therefore, from his father
to her. His anxiety was a repudiation of the wish for sexual
satisfaction from his father---the trend which had put the dream into
his head. The form taken by the anxiety, the fear of ‘being eaten by
the wolf’, was only the (as we shall hear, regressive) transposition
of the wish to be copulated with by his father, that is, to be given
sexual satisfaction in the same way as his mother. His last sexual
aim, the passive attitude towards his father, succumbed to repression,
and fear of his father appeared in its place in the shape of the wolf
phobia.
And the driving force of this repression? The circumstances of the
case show that it can only have been his narcissistic genital libido,
which, in the form of concern for his male organ, was fighting against
a satisfaction whose attainment seemed to involve the renunciation of
that organ. And it was from his {518} threatened narcissism that he
derived the masculinity with which he defended himself against his
passive attitude towards his father.
We now observe that at this point in our narrative we must make an
alteration in our terminology. During the dream he had reached a new
phase in his sexual organization. Up to then the sexual opposites had
been for him _active_ and _passive_. Since his seduction his sexual
aim had been a passive one, of being touched on the genitals; it was
then transformed, by regression to the earlier stage of sadistic-anal
organization, into the masochistic aim of being beaten or punished. It
was a matter of indifference to him whether he reached this aim with a
man or with a woman. He had wandered, without considering the
difference of sex, from his Nanya to his father; he had longed to have
his member touched by his Nanya, and had tried to provoke a beating
from his father. In the process of this change his genitals were left
out of account; though the connection which had been concealed by the
regression was still expressed in his phantasy of being beaten on the
penis. The activation of the primal scene in the dream now brought him
back to the genital organization. He discovered the vagina and the
biological significance of masculine and feminine. He understood now
that active was the same as masculine, while passive was the same as
feminine. His passive sexual aim should now have been transformed into
a feminine one, and have expressed itself as ‘being copulated with by
his father’ instead of ‘being beaten by him on the genitals or on the
bottom’. This feminine aim, however, underwent repression and was
obliged to let itself be replaced by fear of the wolf.
We must here break off the discussion of his sexual development until
new light is thrown from the later stages of his history upon these
earlier ones. For the proper appreciation of the wolf phobia we will
only add that both his father and mother became wolves. His mother
took the part of the castrated wolf, who let {519} the others climb
upon it; his father took the part of the wolf that climbed. But his
fear, as we have heard him assure us, related only to the standing
wolf, that is, to his father. It must further strike us that the fear
with which the dream ended had a model in his grandfather’s story. For
in this the castrated wolf, who had let the others climb upon it, was
seized with fear as soon as he was reminded of the fact of his
taillessness. It seems, therefore, as though he had identified himself
with his castrated mother during the dream, and was now fighting
against that fact. ‘If you want to be sexually satisfied by Father’,
we may perhaps represent him as saying to himself, ‘you must allow
yourself to be castrated like Mother; but I won’t have that.’ In
short, a clear protest on the part of his masculinity! Let us,
however, clearly understand that the sexual development of the case
that we are now examining has a great disadvantage from the point of
view of research, for it was by no means undisturbed. It was first
decisively influenced by the seduction, and was then diverted by the
scene of observation of the coitus, which in its deferred action
operated like a second seduction.
V {520}
A FEW DISCUSSIONS
The whale and the polar bear, it has been said, cannot wage war upon
each other, for since each is confined to his own element they cannot
come together. It is just as impossible for me to argue with workers
in the field of psychology or of the neuroses who do not recognize the
postulates of psycho-analysis and who look upon its results as
artefacts. But during the last few years there has also grown up
another kind of opposition, among people who, in their own opinion at
all events, take their stand upon the ground of analysis, who do not
dispute its technique or results, but who merely think themselves
justified in drawing other conclusions from the same material and in
submitting it to other interpretations.
As a rule, however, theoretical controversy is unfruitful. No sooner
has one begun to depart from the material upon which one ought to be
relying, than one runs the risk of becoming intoxicated with one’s own
assertions and, in the end, of representing opinions which any
observation would have contradicted. For this reason it seems to me to
be incomparably more useful to combat dissentient interpretations by
testing them upon particular cases and problems.
I have remarked above (see p. 509) that it will certainly be
considered improbable that ‘a child at the tender age of one and a
half could be in a position to take in the perceptions of such a
complicated process and to preserve them so accurately in its
unconscious; secondly, that it could be possible for a deferred
elaboration of this material to force its way into comprehension at
the age of four; and finally, that any {521} procedure could have
succeeded in bringing into consciousness coherently and convincingly
the details of a scene of this kind which had been experienced and
understood in such circumstances’.
The last question is purely one of fact. Any one who will take the
trouble of pursuing an analysis into these depths by means of the
prescribed technique will convince himself that it is decidedly
possible. Any one who neglects this, and breaks off the analysis in
some higher stratum, has waived his right of forming a judgement on
the matter. But the interpretation of what is arrived at in
depth-analysis is not decided by this.
The two other doubts are based upon a low estimate of the importance
of early infantile impressions and an unwillingness to ascribe such
enduring effects to them. The supporters of this view look for the
causes of neuroses almost exclusively in the grave conflicts of later
life; they assume that the importance of childhood is only held up
before our eyes in analysis on account of the inclination of neurotics
for expressing their present interests in reminiscences and symbols
from the remote past. Such an estimate of the importance of the
infantile factor would involve the disappearance of much that has
formed part of the most intimate characteristics of analysis, though
also, no doubt, of much that raises resistance to it and alienates the
confidence of the outsider.
This, then, is the interpretation that we are bringing forward for
discussion. It maintains that scenes from early infancy, such as are
brought up by an exhaustive analysis of neuroses (as, for instance, in
the present case), are not reproductions of real occurrences, to which
it is possible to ascribe an influence over the course of the
patient’s later life and over the formation of his symptoms. It
considers them rather as products of the imagination, which find their
instigation in mature life, which are intended to serve as some kind
of symbolic representation of real wishes and interests, {522} and
which owe their origin to a regressive tendency, to an aversion from
the problems of the present. If that is so, we can of course spare
ourselves the necessity of making such bewildering demands upon the
mental life and intellectual capacity of children of the tenderest
age.
Besides the desire which we all share for the rationalization and
simplification of our difficult problem, there are all sorts of facts
that speak in favour of this interpretation. It is also possible to
eliminate beforehand one objection to it which may arise, particularly
in the mind of a practical analyst. It must be admitted that, if this
interpretation of these scenes from infancy were the right one, the
practice of analysis would not in the first instance be altered in any
respect. If neurotics are endowed with the evil characteristic of
diverting their interest from the present and of attaching it to these
regressive substitutes, the products of their imagination, then there
is absolutely nothing for it but to follow upon their tracks and bring
these unconscious productions into consciousness; for, if we disregard
their objective unimportance, they are of the utmost importance from
our point of view, since they are for the moment the bearers and
possessors of the interest which we want to set free so as to be able
to direct it on to the problems of the present. The analysis would
have to run precisely the same course as one which had a _naïf_ faith
in the truth of the phantasies. The difference would only come at the
end of the analysis, after the phantasies had been laid bare. We
should then say to the patient: ‘Very well, then; your neurosis
proceeded _as though_ you had received these impressions and spun them
out in your childhood. You will see, of course, that that is out of
the question. They were products of your imagination, and were
intended to divert you from the real problems that lay before you. Let
us now inquire what these problems were, and what lines of
communication ran between them and your phantasies.’ {523} After the
infantile phantasies had been disposed of in this way, it would be
possible to begin a second portion of the treatment, which would be
concerned with the patient’s real life.
Any shortening of this course, any alteration, that is, in
psycho-analytic treatment as it has hitherto been practised, would be
technically inadmissible. Unless the patient is made conscious of
these phantasies to their fullest extent, he cannot obtain command of
the interest which is attached to them. If his attention is diverted
from them as soon as their existence and their general outlines are
divined, support is simply being given to the work of repression,
thanks to which they have been put beyond the patient’s reach in spite
of all his pains. If he is given a premature sense of their
unimportance, by being informed, for instance, that it will only be a
question of phantasies, which, of course, have no real significance,
his co-operation will never be secured for the task of bringing them
into consciousness. A correct procedure, therefore, would make no
alteration in the technique of analysis, whatever estimate might be
formed of these scenes from infancy.
I have already mentioned that there are a number of facts which can be
brought up in support of the interpretation of these scenes as being
regressive phantasies. And above all there is this one: so far as my
experience hitherto goes, these scenes from infancy are not reproduced
during the treatment as recollections, they are the products of
construction. Many people will certainly think that this single
admission decides the whole dispute.
I am anxious not to be misunderstood. Every analyst knows---and he has
met with the experience on countless occasions---that in the course of
a successful treatment the patient brings up a large number of
spontaneous recollections from his childhood, for the appearance of
which (a first appearance, perhaps) the physician feels himself
entirely blameless, since he has {524} not made any attempt at a
construction which could have put any material of the sort into the
patient’s head. It does not necessarily follow that these previously
unconscious recollections are always true. They may be; but they are
often distorted from the truth, and interspersed with imaginary
elements, just like the so-called screen-memories which are
spontaneously preserved. All that I mean to say is this: scenes, like
this one in my present patient’s case, which date from such an early
period and exhibit such a content, and which further lay claim to such
an extraordinary significance for the history of the case, are as a
rule not reproduced as recollections, but have to be
divined---constructed---gradually and laboriously from an aggregate of
indications. Moreover, it would be sufficient for the purposes of the
argument if my admission that scenes of this kind do not become
conscious in the shape of recollections applied only to cases of
obsessional neurosis, or even if I were to limit my assertion to the
case which we are studying here.
I am not of opinion, however, that such scenes must necessarily be
phantasies because they do not reappear in the shape of
recollections. It seems to me absolutely equivalent to a recollection
if the memories are replaced (as in the present case) by dreams, the
analysis of which invariably leads back to the same scene, and which
reproduce every portion of its content in an indefatigable variety of
new shapes. Indeed, dreaming is another kind of remembering, though
one that is subject to the conditions that rule at night and to the
laws of dream formation. It is this recurrence in dreams that I regard
as the explanation of the fact that the patients themselves gradually
acquire a profound conviction of the reality of these primal scenes, a
conviction which is in no respect inferior to one based upon
recollection.[375]
{525}
There is naturally no need for those who take the opposite view to
abandon as hopeless their fight against such arguments. It is well
known that dreams can be guided.[376] And the sense of conviction felt
by the person analysed may be the result of suggestion, which is
always having new parts assigned to it in the play of forces involved
in analytic treatment. The old-fashioned psycho-therapeutist, it might
be maintained, used to suggest to his patient that he was cured, that
he had overcome his inhibitions, and so on; while the psycho-analyst,
on this view, suggests to him that when he was a child he had some
experience or other, which he must now recollect in order to be
cured. This would be the difference between the two.
Let it be clearly understood that this last attempt at an explanation
on the part of those who take the opposite view results in the scenes
from infancy being disposed of far more fundamentally than was given
out beforehand. What was argued at first was that they were not
realities but phantasies. But what is argued now is evidently that
they are phantasies not of the patient but of the analyst himself, who
forces them upon the person under analysis on account of some
complexes of his own. An analyst, indeed, who hears this reproach,
will comfort himself by recalling how gradually the construction of
this phantasy which he is supposed to have originated came about, and,
when all is said and done, how independently of the physician’s
incentive many points in its development proceeded; how, after a
certain phase of the treatment, everything seemed to converge upon it,
and how later, in the synthesis, the most various and remarkable
results radiated out from it; how not only the large problems but the
smallest peculiarities in the history of the case were cleared up by
this single assumption. {526} And he will disclaim the possession of
the amount of ingenuity necessary for the concoction of an occurrence
which can fulfil all these demands. But even this plea will be without
an effect upon an adversary who has not experienced the analysis
himself. On the one side there will be a charge of refined
self-deception, and on the other of obtuseness of judgement; it will
be impossible to arrive at a decision.
Let us turn to another factor which supports the adverse
interpretation of these constructed scenes from infancy. It is as
follows: all the processes which have been brought forward in order to
explain these dubious formations as phantasies really exist, and their
importance must be recognized. The diversion of interest from the
problems of real life,[377] the existence of phantasies in the
capacity of substitute-formations for unperformed actions, the
regressive tendency which is expressed in these
productions---regressive in more than one sense, in so far as there is
involved simultaneously a shrinking-back from life and a harking-back
to the past---all of this holds good, and is regularly confirmed by
analysis. One would have thought that it would also suffice to explain
the supposed reminiscences from early infancy which are under
discussion; and in accordance with the economical principles of
science such an explanation would have the advantage over another
which is inadequate without the support of new and surprising
assumptions.
I may here venture to point out that the repudiations which are to be
found in the psycho-analytical literature of to-day are usually
arrived at upon the principle of _pars pro toto_. From a highly
composite unity one part of the operative factors is singled out and
proclaimed as the truth; and for the sake of this one part, the other
part, as well as the whole, is repudiated. If we look a little closer,
to see which group of factors it is that has been given the
preference, we {527} shall find that it is the one that contains what
is already known from other sources or what can be most easily related
to it. Thus, with Jung, what is selected is actuality and regression,
and with Adler, egoistic motives. What is left over, however, and
rejected as false, is precisely what is new in psycho-analysis and
peculiar to it. This is the easiest method by which to repel the
revolutionary and embarrassing advance of psycho-analysis.
It is worth while remarking that none of the factors which are adduced
by the adverse interpreters for their explanation of scenes from
infancy required to wait for recognition until Jung brought them
forward as novelties. The notion of a current conflict, of a turning
away from reality, of a substitutive satisfaction obtained in
phantasy, of a regression to material from the past---all of this
(used, moreover, in the same connection, though perhaps with a
slightly different terminology) had for years formed an integral part
of my own theory. It was not the whole of it, however. It was only
that part of the causation of neurosis-formation which, starting from
reality, operates in a regressive direction. Side by side with this I
left room for another influence which, starting from the impressions
of childhood, operates in a forward direction, which points out a path
for the libido that is shrinking back from life, and which makes it
possible to understand the otherwise inexplicable regression to
childhood. Thus according to my interpretation the two factors operate
together in the formation of symptoms, but an earlier co-operation
seems to me to be of equal importance. I am of opinion that _the
influence of childhood makes itself felt even in the situation at the
beginning of the formation of a neurosis, since it plays a decisive
part in determining whether and at what point the individual shall
fail to master the real problems of life_.
What is in dispute, therefore, is the significance of the infantile
factor. The problem is to find a case which can establish that
significance beyond any doubt. {528} Such, however, is the case which
is being dealt with so exhaustively in these pages and which is
distinguished by the characteristic that the neurosis in later life
was preceded by a neurosis in early childhood. It is for that very
reason, indeed, that I have chosen this case to report upon. In case
any one should feel inclined to reject it because the animal phobia
strikes him as not sufficiently serious to be recognized as an
independent neurosis, I may mention that the phobia was succeeded
without any interval by an obsessional ceremonial, and by obsessional
acts and thoughts, which will be discussed in the following sections
of this paper.
The occurrence of a neurotic disorder in the fourth and fifth years of
childhood proves, first and foremost, that infantile experiences are
by themselves in a position to produce a neurosis, without there being
any need for the addition of a flight from some problem which has to
be met in real life. It may be objected that even a child is
constantly being confronted with problems, which it would perhaps be
glad to evade. That is so; but the life of a child under school age is
easily observable, and we can examine it to see whether any ‘problems’
are to be found in it capable of determining the causation of a
neurosis. But we discover nothing but instinctual trends which the
child cannot satisfy and which it is not old enough to master, and the
sources from which these trends arise.
As was to be expected, the enormous shortening of the interval between
the outbreak of the neurosis and the date of the childhood experiences
which are under discussion reduces to the narrowest limits the
regressive part of the causation, while it brings into full view the
portion of it which operates in a forward direction, the influence of
earlier impressions. The present case history will, I hope, give a
clear picture of this position of things. But there are other reasons
why neuroses of childhood give a decisive answer to the question of
the nature of primal scenes---the earliest experiences of childhood
that are brought to light in analysis.
{529}
Let us assume as an uncontradicted premise that a primal scene of this
kind has been correctly evolved technically, that it is indispensable
to a comprehensive solution of all the conundrums that are set us by
the symptoms of the infantile disorder, that all the consequences
radiate out from it, just as all the threads of the analysis have led
up to it. Then, in view of its content, it is impossible that it can
be anything else than the reproduction of a reality experienced by the
child. For a child, like an adult, can produce phantasies only from
material which has been acquired from some source or other; and with
children some of the means of acquiring it (by reading, for instance)
are cut off, while the space of time at their disposal for acquiring
it is short and can easily be searched with a view to the discovery of
any such sources.
In the present case the content of the primal scene is a picture of
sexual intercourse between the boy’s parents in an attitude especially
favourable for certain observations. Now it would be no evidence
whatever of the reality of such a scene if we were to find it in a
patient whose symptoms (the effects of the scene, that is) had
appeared at some time or other in the later part of his life. A person
in such a position might have acquired the impressions, the ideas, and
the knowledge on a great number of different occasions in the course
of the long interval; he might then have transformed them into an
imaginary picture, have projected them back into his childhood, and
have attached them to his parents. If, however, the effects of a scene
of this sort appear in the child’s fourth or fifth year, then he must
have witnessed the scene at an even earlier age. But in that case we
are still faced with all the bewildering consequences which have
arisen from the analysis of this infantile neurosis. Some people may
thus feel inclined to assume that the patient not only unconsciously
imagined the primal scene, but also concocted the alteration in his
character, his fear of the wolf, and his religious obsession; but
{530} such an expedient would be contradicted by his otherwise sober
nature and by the direct tradition in his family. It must therefore be
left at this---I can see no other possibility---: either the analysis
based upon the neurosis in his childhood is all a piece of nonsense
from start to finish, or everything took place just as I have
described it above.
At an earlier stage in the discussion we were brought up against an
ambiguity in regard to the patient’s predilection for female nates and
for coitus in the attitude in which they are especially prominent. It
seemed necessary to trace this predilection back to the coitus which
he had observed between his parents, while at the same time a
preference of this kind is a general characteristic of archaic
constitutions which are predisposed to an obsessional neurosis. But
there is an easy way out of the difficulty in the solution of the
contradiction as an over-determination. The person who was the subject
of his observation of this position during coitus was, after all, his
father in the flesh, and it may also have been from him that he had
inherited this constitutional predilection. Neither his father’s
subsequent illness nor his family history contradicts this; as has
been mentioned already, a brother of his father’s died in a condition
which must be regarded as the outcome of a severe obsessional
disorder.
In this connection we may recall that, at the time of his seduction as
a boy of three and a quarter, his sister had uttered a remarkable
calumny against his good old nurse, to the effect that she stood all
kinds of people on their heads and then took hold of them by their
genitals (see p. 487). We cannot fail to be struck by the idea that
perhaps the sister, at a similar tender age, also witnessed the same
scene as was observed by her brother later on, and that it was this
that had suggested to her her notion about ‘standing people on their
heads’ during the sexual act. This hypothesis would also give us a
hint of the reason for her own sexual precocity.
{531}
[Originally[378] I had no intention of pursuing the discussion of the
reality of ‘primal scenes’ any further in this place. Since, however,
I have meanwhile had occasion in my _Introductory Lectures on
Psycho-Analysis_ to treat the subject on more general lines and with
no polemical aim in view, it would be misleading if I omitted to apply
the considerations which determined my other discussion of the matter
to the case that is now before us. I therefore proceed as follows by
way of supplement and rectification.---There remains the possibility
of yet another interpretation of the primal scene underlying the
dream,---of an interpretation, moreover, which obviates to a large
extent the decision that has been arrived at above and relieves us of
many of our difficulties. But the theory which seeks to reduce scenes
from infancy to the level of regressive symbols will gain nothing even
by this modification; and indeed that theory seems to me to be finally
disposed of by this (as it would be by any other) analysis of an
infantile neurosis.
I am of opinion, that is to say, that the state of affairs can also be
explained in the following manner. It is true that we cannot dispense
with the assumption that the child observed a coitus, the sight of
which gave him a conviction that castration might be more than an
empty threat. Moreover, the significance which he subsequently came to
attach to the attitudes of men and women, in connection with the
development of anxiety on the one hand, and as a condition upon which
his falling in love depended on the other hand, leaves us no choice
but to conclude that it must have been a coitus _a tergo_, _more
ferarum_. But there is another factor which is not so irreplaceable
and which may be dropped. Perhaps what the child observed was not a
coitus between his parents but an animal coitus, which he then
displaced on to his parents, as though he had inferred that his
parents did things in the same way.
Colour is lent to this interpretation above all by the {532} fact that
the wolves of the dream were actually sheep-dogs and, moreover, appear
as such in the drawing. Shortly before the dream the boy was
repeatedly taken to visit the flocks of sheep, and there he might see
just such large white dogs and probably also observe them
copulating. I should also like to bring into this connection the
number three, which the dreamer introduced without adducing any
further motive, and I would suggest that he had kept in his memory the
fact that he had made three such observations with the
sheep-dogs. What supervened during the expectant excitement of the
night of his dream was the transference on to his parents of his
recently acquired memory-picture, with _all_ its details, and it was
only thus that the powerful emotional effects which followed were made
possible. He now arrived at a deferred understanding of the
impressions which he may have received a few weeks or months
earlier---a process such as all of us perhaps have been through in our
own experiences. The transference from the copulating dogs on to his
parents was accomplished not by means of his making an inference
accompanied by words but by his searching out in his memory a real
scene in which his parents had been together and which could be
coalesced with the situation of the coitus. All of the details of the
scene which were established in the analysis of the dream may have
been accurately reproduced. It was really on a summer’s afternoon
while the child was suffering from malaria, the parents were both
present, dressed in white, when the child woke up from its sleep,
but---the scene was innocent. The rest had been added by the
inquisitive child’s subsequent wish, based upon his experiences with
the dogs, to witness his parents as well in their love-making; and the
scene which was thus imagined now produced all the effects that we
have catalogued, just as though it had been entirely real and not
fused together out of two components, the one earlier and indifferent,
the other later and profoundly impressive.{533}
It is at once obvious how greatly the demands upon our credulity are
reduced. We need no longer suppose that the parents performed a coitus
in the presence of their child (a very young one, it is true)---which
was a disagreeable idea for many of us. The period of time during
which the effects were deferred is very greatly diminished; it now
covers only a few months of the child’s fourth year and does not
stretch back at all into the first dark years of childhood. There
remains scarcely anything strange in the child’s conduct in making the
transference from the dogs on to his parents and in being afraid of
the wolf instead of his father. He was in that phase of the
development of his attitude towards the world which I have described
in _Totem und Tabu_ as the return of totemism. The theory which
endeavours to explain the primal scenes found in neuroses as
retrospective phantasies of a later date seems to obtain powerful
support from the present observation, in spite of our patient being of
the tender age of four years. Young though he was, he was yet able to
succeed in replacing an impression of his fourth year by an imaginary
trauma at the age of one and a half. This regression, however, seems
neither mysterious nor tendentious. The scene which was to be made up
had to fulfil certain conditions which, in consequence of the
circumstances of the dreamer’s life, could only be found in precisely
this early period; such, for instance, was the condition that he
should be in bed in his parents’ bedroom.
But something that I am able to adduce from the analytic findings in
other cases will seem to most readers to be the decisive factor in
favour of the correctness of the interpretation here proposed. Scenes
of observing sexual intercourse between parents at a very early age
(whether they be real memories or phantasies) are as a matter of fact
by no means rarities in the analyses of neurotic mortals. Possibly
they are no less frequent among those who are not neurotics. Possibly
they are part of the regular store in the---conscious or unconscious
{534}---treasury of their memories. But as often as I have been able
by means of analysis to bring out a scene of this sort, it has shown
the same peculiarity which startled us with our present patient too:
it has related to coitus _a tergo_, which alone offers the spectator a
possibility of inspecting the genitals. There is surely no need any
longer to doubt that what we are dealing with is only a phantasy,
which is invariably aroused, perhaps, by an observation of the sexual
intercourse of animals. And yet more: I have hinted that my
description of the ‘primal scene’ has remained incomplete because I
have reserved for a later moment my account of the way in which the
child interrupted his parents’ intercourse. I must now add that this
method of interruption is also the same in every case.
I can well believe that I have now laid myself open to grave
aspersions on the part of the readers of this case history. If these
arguments in favour of such an interpretation of the ‘primal scene’
were at my disposal, how could I possibly have taken it upon myself to
begin by advocating one which seemed so absurd? Or have I made these
new observations, which have obliged me to alter my original
interpretation, in the interval between the first draft of the case
history and this addition, and am I for some reason or other unwilling
to admit the fact? I will admit something else instead: I intend on
this occasion to close the discussion of the reality of the primal
scene with a _non liquet_. This case history is not yet at an end; in
its further course a factor will emerge which will shake the certainty
which we seem at present to enjoy. Nothing, I think, will then be left
but to refer my readers to the passages in my _Introductory Lectures_
in which I have treated the problem of primal phantasies or primal
scenes.]
VI {535}
THE OBSESSIONAL NEUROSIS
Now for the third time the patient came under a new influence that
gave a decisive turn to his development. When he was four and a half
years old, and as his state of irritability and apprehensiveness had
still not improved, his mother determined to make him acquainted with
the Bible story in the hope of distracting and elevating
him. Moreover, she succeeded; his initiation into religion brought the
previous phase to an end, but at the same time it led to the anxiety
symptoms being replaced by obsessional symptoms. Up to then he had not
been able to get to sleep easily because he had been afraid of having
bad dreams like the one he had had that night before Christmas; now he
was obliged before he went to bed to kiss all of the holy pictures in
the room, to recite prayers, and to make innumerable signs of the
cross upon himself and upon his bed.
His childhood now falls clearly into the following epochs: first, the
earliest period up to the seduction when he was three and a quarter
years old, during which the primal scene took place; secondly, the
period of the alteration in his character up to the anxiety dream
(four years old); thirdly, the period of the animal phobia up to his
initiation into religion (four and a half years old); and from then
onwards the period of the obsessional neurosis up to a time later than
his tenth year. That there should be an instantaneous and clear-cut
displacement of one phase by the next was not in the nature of things
or of our patient; on the contrary, the preservation of all that had
gone before and the coexistence of the most {536} different sorts of
currents were characteristic of him. His naughtiness did not disappear
when the anxiety set in, and persisted with slowly diminishing force
during the period of piety. But there was no longer any question of a
wolf phobia during this last phase. The obsessional neurosis ran its
course discontinuously; the first attack was the longest and most
intense, and others came on when he was eight and ten, following each
time upon exciting causes which stood in a clear relationship to the
content of the neurosis. His mother told him the sacred story herself,
and besides this made his Nanya read aloud to him about it out of a
book which was adorned with illustrations. The chief emphasis in the
narrative was naturally laid upon the story of the Passion. His Nanya,
who was very pious and superstitious, added her own commentary upon
it, but was also obliged to listen to all the little critic’s
objections and doubts. If the battles which now began to convulse his
mind finally ended in a victory for faith, his Nanya’s influence was
not without its share in this result.
What he related to me as his recollection of his reactions to this
initiation was met by me at first with complete disbelief. It was
impossible, I thought, that these could have been the thoughts of a
child of four and a half or five; he had probably referred back to
this remote past the thoughts which had arisen from the reflections of
a grown man of thirty.[379] But the patient would not hear of this
correction; I could not succeed, as in so many other differences of
opinion between us, in convincing him; and in the end the
correspondence between the thoughts which he had {537} recollected and
the symptoms of which he gave particulars, as well as the way in which
the thoughts fitted into his sexual development, compelled me on the
contrary to come to believe him. And I then said to myself that this
very criticism of the doctrines of religion, which I was unwilling to
ascribe to the child, was only effected by an infinitesimal minority
of adults.
I shall now bring forward the material of his recollections, and not
until afterwards try to find some path that may lead to an explanation
of them.
The impression which he received from the sacred story was, to begin
with, as he reported, by no means an agreeable one. He set his face,
in the first place, against the feature of suffering in the figure of
Christ, and then against his story as a whole. He turned his critical
dissatisfaction against God the Father. If he were almighty, then it
was his fault that men were wicked and tormented others and were sent
to Hell for it. He ought to have made them good; he was responsible
himself for all wickedness and all torments. He took objection to the
command that we should turn the other cheek if our right cheek is
smitten, and to the fact that Christ had wished on the Mount of Olives
that the cup might be taken away from him, as well as to the fact that
no miracle had taken place to prove that he was the Son of God. Thus
his acuteness was on the alert, and was able to search out with
remorseless severity the weak points of the sacred poem.
But to this rationalistic criticism there were very soon added
ruminations and doubts, which betray to us that hidden impulses were
also at work. One of the first questions which he addressed to his
Nanya was whether Christ had had a behind too. His Nanya informed him
that he had been a god and also a man. As a man he had had and done
all the same things as other men. Now this did not satisfy him at all,
but he succeeded in finding his own consolation by saying to himself
that the behind is really only a continuation of the legs. But hardly
had he pacified his dread of {538} having to humiliate the sacred
figure, when it flared up again as the further question arose whether
Christ used to shit too. He did not venture to put this question to
his pious Nanya, but he himself found a way out, and she could not
have shown him a better. Since Christ had made wine out of nothing, he
could also have made food into nothing and in this way have avoided
defaecating.
We shall be in a better position to understand these ruminations if we
return to a piece of his sexual development which we have already
mentioned. We know that, after his refusal by his Nanya and the
consequent suppression of the beginnings of genital activity, his
sexual life developed in the direction of sadism and masochism. He
tormented and ill-treated small animals, imagined himself beating
horses, and on the other hand imagined the heir to the throne being
beaten.[380] In his sadism he maintained his ancient identification
with his father; but in his masochism he chose him as a sexual
object. He was deep in a phase of the pre-genital organization which I
regard as the predisposition to obsessional neurosis. Through the
operation of the dream, which brought him under the influence of the
primal scene, he might have made the advance to the genital
organization, and have transformed his masochism towards his father
into a feminine attitude towards him---into homosexuality. But the
dream did not bring about this advance; it ended in a state of
anxiety. His relation to his father might have proceeded from the
sexual aim of being beaten by him to the next aim, namely, that of
being copulated with by him like a woman; but in fact, owing to the
opposition of his narcissistic masculinity, this relation was thrown
back to an even more primitive stage. It was displaced on to a
father-surrogate, in the shape of fear of being eaten by the wolf, and
was so split off; but this by no means disposed of it. On the
contrary, we can only do justice to the apparent {539} complexity of
the state of affairs by bearing firmly in mind the coexistence of the
three sexual trends which were directed by the boy towards his
father. From the time of the dream onwards, in his unconscious he was
homosexual, and in his neurosis he was at the level of cannibalism;
while the earlier masochistic attitude remained the dominant one. All
three currents had passive sexual aims; there was the same object, and
the same sexual impulse, but they had become split up at three
different levels.
His knowledge of the sacred story now gave him a chance of sublimating
his predominant masochistic attitude towards his father. He became
Christ---which was made specially easy for him on account of their
having the same birthday. Thus he became something great and also (a
fact upon which enough stress was not laid for the moment) a man. We
catch a glimpse of his repressed homosexual attitude in his doubting
whether Christ could have a behind, for these ruminations can have had
no other meaning but the question whether he himself could be used by
his father like a woman---like his mother in the primal scene. When we
come to the solution of the other obsessional ideas, we shall find
this interpretation confirmed. His reflection that it was insulting to
bring the sacred figure into relation with such insinuations
corresponded with the repression of his passive homosexuality. It will
be noticed that he was endeavouring to keep his new sublimation free
from the admixture which it derived from sources in the repressed. But
he was unsuccessful.
We do not as yet understand why he also rebelled against the passive
character of Christ and against his ill-treatment by his Father, and
in this way began also to renounce his previous masochistic ideal,
even in its sublimation. We may assume that this second conflict was
especially favourable to the emergence of the humiliating obsessional
thoughts from the first conflict (between the dominant masochistic and
the repressed {540} homosexual currents), for it is only natural that
in a mental conflict all the currents upon one side or the other
should combine with one another, even though they have the most
diverse origins. We must await some fresh information which will tell
us the motive of this rebelling and at the same time of the criticisms
which he levelled at religion.
His sexual inquiries also gained something out of the information he
was given upon the sacred story. So far he had had no reason for
supposing that children only came from women. On the contrary, his
Nanya had given him to believe that he was his father’s child, while
his sister was his mother’s; and this closer connection with his
father had been very precious to him. He now heard that Mary was
called the Mother of God. So all children came from women, and what
his Nanya had said to him was no longer tenable. Moreover, as a result
of what he was told, he was bewildered as to who Christ’s father
really was. He was inclined to think it was Joseph, as he heard that
he and Mary had always lived together, but his Nanya said that Joseph
was only _like_ his father and that his real father was God. He could
make nothing of that. He only understood this much: if the question
was one that could be argued about at all, then the relation between
father and son could not be such an intimate one as he had always
imagined it to be.
The boy had some kind of inkling of the ambivalent feelings towards
the father which are an underlying factor in all religions, and
attacked his religion on account of the slackening which it implied in
the relation between son and father. Naturally his opposition soon
ceased to take the form of doubting the truth of the doctrine, and
turned instead directly against the figure of God. God had treated his
son harshly and cruelly, but he was no better towards men; he had
sacrificed his own son and had ordered Abraham to do the same. He
began to fear God.
If he was Christ, then his father was God. But {541} the God which
religion forced upon him was not a true substitute for the father whom
he had loved and whom he did not want to have stolen from him. His
love for this father of his gave him his critical acuteness. He
resisted God in order to be able to cling to his father; and in doing
this he was really upholding the old father against the new. He was
faced by a trying part of the process of detaching himself from his
father.
His old love for his father, which had been manifest in his earliest
period, was therefore the source of his energy in struggling against
God and of his acuteness in criticizing religion. But on the other
hand this hostility to the new God was not an original reaction
either; it had its prototype in a hostile impulse against his father,
which had come into existence under the influence of the
anxiety-dream, and it was at bottom only a revival of that
impulse. The two opposing currents of feeling, which were to rule the
whole of his later life, met here in the ambivalent struggle over the
question of religion. It followed, moreover, that what this struggle
produced in the shape of symptoms, the blasphemous ideas, the
obsession which came over him of thinking ‘God---shit’, ‘God---swine’,
were genuine compromise-products, as we shall see from the analysis of
these ideas in connection with his anal-erotism.
Some other obsessional symptoms of a less typical sort pointed with
equal certainty to his father, but at the same time showed the
connection between the obsessional neurosis and the earlier
occurrences.
A part of the pious ritual by means of which he eventually atoned for
his blasphemies was the command to breathe in a ceremonious manner
under certain conditions. Each time he made the sign of the cross he
was obliged to breathe in deeply or to exhale forcibly. In his native
tongue ‘breath’ is the same word as ‘spirit’, so that here the Holy
Ghost came in. He was obliged to breathe in the Holy Spirit, or to
breathe out the evil spirits which he had heard and {542} read
about.[381] He ascribed too to these evil spirits the blasphemous
thoughts for which he had to inflict such heavy penance upon
himself. He was, however, also obliged to exhale when he saw beggars,
or cripples, or ugly, old, or wretched-looking people; but he could
think of no way of connecting this obsession with the spirits. The
only account he could give to himself was that he did it so as not to
become like them.
Eventually, in connection with a dream, the analysis elicited the
information that the breathing out at the sight of pitiable-looking
people had begun only after his sixth year and was related to his
father. He had not seen his father for many months, when one day his
mother said she was going to take the children with her to the town
and show them something that would very much please them. She then
took them to a sanatorium, where they saw their father again; he
looked ill, and the boy felt very sorry for him. His father was thus
the prototype of all the cripples, beggars, and poor people in whose
presence he was obliged to breathe out; just as a father is the
prototype of the bogies that people see in anxiety-states, and of the
caricatures that are drawn to bring derision upon some one. We shall
learn elsewhere that this attitude of pity was derived from a
particular detail of the primal scene, a detail which only became
operative in the obsessional neurosis at this late moment.
Thus his determination (which was the motive of his breathing out in
the presence of cripples) not to become like them was his old
identification with his father transformed into the negative. But in
so doing he was also copying his father in the positive sense, for the
heavy breathing was an imitation of the noise which he had heard
coming from his father during the coitus.[382] He had derived the Holy
Ghost from this {543} manifestation of male sensual
excitement. Repression had turned this breathing into an evil spirit,
which had another genealogy as well: namely, the malaria from which he
had been suffering at the time of the primal scene.
His repudiation of these evil spirits corresponded to an unmistakable
strain of asceticism in him which also found expression in other
reactions. When he heard that Christ had once cast out some evil
spirits into a herd of swine which then rushed down a precipice, he
thought of how his sister in the earliest years of her childhood,
before he could remember, had rolled down on to the beach from the
cliff-path above the harbour. She too was an evil spirit and a
swine. It was a short road from here to ‘God---swine’. His father
himself had shown that he was no less of a slave to sensuality. When
he was told the story of the first of mankind he was struck by the
similarity of his lot to Adam’s. In conversation with his Nanya he
professed hypocritical surprise that Adam should have allowed himself
to be dragged into misfortune by a woman, and promised her that he
would never marry. A hostility towards women, due to his seduction by
his sister, found strong expression at this time. And it was destined
to disturb him often enough in his later erotic life. His sister came
to be the permanent embodiment for him of temptation and sin. After he
had been to confession he seemed to himself pure and free from
sin. But then it appeared to him as though his sister were lying in
wait to drag him again into sin, and in a moment he had provoked a
quarrel with her which made him sinful once more. Thus he was obliged
to keep on reproducing the fact of his seduction over and over
again. Moreover, he had never given away his blasphemous thoughts at
confession, in spite of their being such a weight on his mind.
We have been led unawares into a consideration of the symptoms of the
later years of the obsessional neurosis; and we shall therefore pass
over the events {544} of the intervening period and shall proceed to
describe its termination. We already know that, apart from its
permanent strength, it underwent occasional intensifications:
once---though the episode must for the present remain obscure to
us---at the time of the death of a boy living in the same street with
whom he was able to identify himself. When he was ten years old he had
a German tutor, who very soon obtained a great influence over him. It
is most instructive to observe that the whole of his strict piety
dwindled away, never to be revived, after he had noticed and had
learnt from enlightening conversations with his tutor that this
father-surrogate attached no importance to piety and set no store by
the truth of religion. His piety sank away with his dependence upon
his father, who was now replaced by a new and more sociable
father. This did not take place, however, without one last flicker of
the obsessional neurosis; and from this he particularly remembered the
obsession of having to think of the Holy Trinity whenever he saw three
heaps of dung lying together in the road. In fact he never gave way to
a new instigation without making one last attempt at clinging to what
had lost its value for him. When his tutor discouraged him from his
cruelties to small animals he also put an end to those misdeeds, but
not until he had again cut up caterpillars for a last time to his
thorough satisfaction. Once more he behaved in just the same way
during the analytic treatment, for he showed a habit of producing a
transitory ‘negative reaction’; every time something had been
conclusively cleared up he attempted to contradict the effect for a
short while by an aggravation of the symptom which had been cleared
up. It is quite the rule, as we know, for children to treat
prohibitions in the same kind of way. When they have been rebuked for
something (for instance, because they are making an unbearable din),
they repeat it once more after the prohibition before stopping it. In
this way they gain the point of {545} apparently stopping of their own
accord and of disobeying the prohibition.
Under the German tutor’s influence there arose a new and better
sublimation of the patient’s sadism, which, with the approach of
puberty, had then gained the upper hand over his masochism. He
developed an enthusiasm for military affairs, for uniforms, arms, and
horses, and used them as food for continual day-dreams. Thus, under a
man’s influence, he had got free from his passive attitudes, and found
himself for the time being on fairly normal lines. It was as an
after-effect of his affection for the tutor, who left him soon
afterwards, that in his later life he preferred German things (as, for
instance, physicians, sanatoriums, women) to those belonging to his
native country (representing his father)---a fact which was
incidentally of great advantage to the transference during the
treatment.
There was another dream, which belongs to the period before his
emancipation by the tutor, and which I mention because it was
forgotten until its appearance during the treatment. He saw himself
riding on a horse and pursued by a gigantic caterpillar. He recognized
in this dream an allusion to an earlier one from the period before the
tutor, which we had interpreted long before. In this earlier dream he
saw the Devil dressed in black and in the upright attitude with which
the wolf and the lion had terrified him so much in their day. He was
pointing with his outstretched finger at a gigantic snail. The patient
had soon guessed that this Devil was the Demon out of a well-known
poem, and that the dream itself was a version of a very popular
picture representing the Demon in a love-scene with a girl. The snail
was in the woman’s place, as being a perfect female sexual
symbol. Guided by the Demon’s pointing gesture, we were soon able to
give as the dream’s meaning that the patient was longing for some one
who should give him the last pieces of information that were still
missing {546} upon the riddle of sexual intercourse, just as his
father had given him the first in the primal scene long before.
In connection with the later dream, in which the female symbol was
replaced by the male one, he remembered a particular event which had
occurred a short time before the dream. Riding on the estate one day,
he passed a peasant who was lying asleep with his little boy beside
him. The latter woke his father and said something to him, whereupon
the father began to abuse the rider and to pursue him till he rode off
hastily. There was also a second recollection, that on the same estate
there were trees that were quite white, spun all over by
caterpillars. We can see that he took flight from the realization of
the phantasy of the son lying with his father, and that he brought in
the white trees in order to make an allusion to the anxiety-dream of
the white wolves on the walnut tree. It was thus a direct outbreak of
dread of the feminine attitude towards men against which he had at
first protected himself by his religious sublimation and was soon to
protect himself still more effectively by the military one.
It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that after the
obsessional symptoms had been removed no permanent effects of the
obsessional neurosis remained behind. The process had led to a victory
for the faith of piety over the rebelliousness of critical research,
and had presupposed the repression of the homosexual attitude. Lasting
disadvantages resulted from both these factors. His intellectual
activity remained seriously impaired after this first great defeat. He
developed no zeal for learning, he showed no more of the acuteness
with which at the tender age of five he had criticized and dissected
the doctrines of religion. The repression of his over-powerful
homosexuality, which was accomplished during the anxiety-dream,
reserved that important impulse for the unconscious, kept it directed
towards its original aim, and withdrew it from all the sublimations to
which it is susceptible {547} in other circumstances. For this reason
the patient was without all those social interests which give a
content to life. It was only when, during the analytic treatment, it
became possible to liberate his shackled homosexuality that this state
of affairs showed any improvement; and it was a most remarkable
experience to see how (without any direct advice from the physician)
each piece of the homosexual libido which was set free sought out some
application in life and some attachment to the great common concerns
of mankind.
VII {548}
ANAL EROTISM AND THE CASTRATION
COMPLEX
I must beg the reader to bear in mind that I obtained this history of
an infantile neurosis as a by-product, so to speak, during the
analysis of an illness in mature years. I was therefore obliged to put
it together from even smaller fragments than are usually at one’s
disposal for purposes of synthesis. This task, which is not difficult
in other respects, finds a natural limit when it is a question of
forcing a structure which is itself in many dimensions on to the
two-dimensional descriptive plane. I must therefore content myself
with bringing forward fragmentary portions, which the reader can then
put together into a living whole. The obsessional neurosis that has
been described grew up, as has been repeatedly emphasized, upon the
basis of a sadistic-anal constitution. But we have hitherto discussed
only one of the two chief factors---the patient’s sadism and its
transformations. Everything that concerns his anal erotism has
intentionally been left on one side so that it might be brought
together and discussed at this later stage.
Analysts have long been agreed that the multifarious instinctual
trends which are comprised under the name of anal erotism play an
extraordinarily important part, which it would be quite impossible to
overestimate, in building up sexual life and mental activity in
general. It is equally agreed that one of the most important
manifestations of the transformed erotism derived from this source is
to be found in the treatment of money; for in the course of life this
precious material attracts on to itself the psychical {549} interest
which was originally proper to faeces, the product of the anal
zone. We have accustomed ourselves to trace back interest in money, in
so far as it is of a libidinal and not of a rational character, to
excremental pleasure, and to require a normal man to keep his
relations to money entirely free from libidinal influences and to
regulate them according to the demands of reality.
In our patient, at the time of his later illness, these relations were
disturbed to a particularly severe degree, and this fact was not the
least considerable element in his lack of independence and his
incapacity for dealing with life. He had become very rich through
legacies from his father and uncle; it was obvious that he attached
great importance to being taken for rich, and he was liable to feel
very much hurt if he was undervalued in this respect. But he had no
idea how much he possessed, what his expenditure was, or what balance
was left over. It was hard to say whether he ought to be called a
miser or a spendthrift. He behaved now in this way and now in that,
but never in a way that seemed to show any consistent intention. Some
striking traits, which I shall further discuss below, might have led
one to regard him as a hardened plutocrat, who considered his wealth
as his greatest personal advantage, and who would never for a moment
allow emotional interests to weigh against pecuniary ones. Yet he did
not value other people by their wealth, and, on the contrary, showed
himself upon many occasions unassuming, helpful, and
charitable. Money, in fact, had been withdrawn from his conscious
control, and meant for him something quite different.
I have already mentioned (on p. 491) that I viewed with grave
suspicion the way in which he consoled himself for the loss of his
sister, who had become his closest companion during her latter years,
with the reflection that now he would not have to share his parents’
inheritance with her. But what was perhaps {550} even more striking
was the calmness with which he was able to relate this, as though he
had no comprehension of the coarseness of feeling to which he was thus
confessing. It is true that analysis rehabilitated him by showing that
his grief for his sister had merely undergone a displacement; but only
then did it become quite inexplicable why he should have tried to find
a substitute for his sister in an increase of wealth.
He himself was puzzled by his behaviour in another connection. After
his father’s death the property that was left was divided between him
and his mother. His mother administered it, and, as he himself
admitted, met his pecuniary claims irreproachably and liberally. Yet
every discussion of money matters that took place between them used to
end with the most violent reproaches on his side, to the effect that
she did not love him, that she was trying to economize at his expense,
and that she would probably rather see him dead so as to have sole
control over the money. His mother used then to protest her
disinterestedness with tears, and he would thereupon grow ashamed of
himself and declare with justice that he thought nothing of the sort
of her; but he was sure to repeat the same scene at the first
opportunity.
Many incidents, of which I will relate two, show that, for a long time
before the analysis, faeces had had the significance of money for
him. At a time when his bowel as yet played no part in his complaint,
he once paid a visit to a poor cousin of his in a large town. As he
left him he reproached himself for not giving this relative financial
support, and immediately afterwards had what was ‘perhaps the most
urgent need for relieving his bowels that he had experienced in his
life’. Two years later he really settled an annuity upon this
cousin. Here is the other case. At the age of eighteen, while he was
preparing for his leaving-examination at school, he visited a friend
and came to an agreement with him upon a plan which seemed advisable
on account of the dread which they {551} shared of failing in the
examination.[383] It had been decided to corrupt the school servant,
and the patient’s share of the sum to be provided was naturally the
largest. On the way home he thought to himself that he should be glad
to give even more if only he could succeed in getting through, if only
he could be sure that nothing would happen to him in the
examination---and an accident of another sort really did happen to
him[384] before he reached his own front door.
We shall be prepared to hear that during his later illness he suffered
from disturbances of his intestinal function which were very
obstinate, though various circumstances caused them to fluctuate in
intensity. When he came under my treatment he had become accustomed to
enemas, which were given him by an attendant; spontaneous evacuations
did not occur for months at a time, unless a sudden excitement from
some definite direction intervened, as a result of which normal
activity of the bowels might set in for a few days. His principal
subject of complaint was that for him the world was hidden in a veil,
or that he was cut off from the world by a veil. This veil was torn
only at one moment---when, after an enema, the contents of the bowel
left the intestinal canal; and he then felt well and normal
again.[385]
The colleague to whom I referred the patient for a report upon his
intestinal condition was perspicacious enough to explain it as being a
functional one, or even psychically determined, and to abstain from
any active medicinal treatment. Moreover, neither this nor dieting
were of any use. During the years of analytic {552} treatment there
was no spontaneous motion---apart from the sudden influences that I
have mentioned. The patient allowed himself to be convinced that if
the intractable organ received more intensive treatment things would
only be made worse, and contented himself with bringing on an
evacuation once or twice a week by means of an enema or a purgative.
In discussing these intestinal troubles I have given more space to the
patient’s later illness than has been my plan elsewhere in this work,
which is concerned with his infantile neurosis. I have done so for two
reasons: first, because the intestinal symptoms were in point of fact
carried forward from the infantile neurosis into the later one with
little alteration, and secondly, because they played a principal part
in the conclusion of the treatment.
We know how important doubt is to the physician who is analysing an
obsessional neurosis. It is the patient’s strongest weapon, the
favourite expedient of his resistance. This same doubt enabled our
patient to lie entrenched behind a respectful indifference and to
allow the efforts of the treatment to slip past him for years
together. Nothing changed, and there was no way of convincing him. At
last I recognized the importance of the intestinal trouble for my
purposes; it represented the small trait of hysteria which is
regularly to be found at the root of an obsessional neurosis. I
promised the patient a complete recovery of his intestinal activity,
and by means of this promise made his incredulity manifest. I then had
the satisfaction of seeing his doubt dwindle away, as in the course of
the work his bowel began, like a hysterically affected organ, to ‘join
in the conversation’, and in a few weeks time recovered its normal
functions after their long impairment.
I now turn back to the patient’s childhood---to a time at which it was
impossible that faeces could have had the significance of money for
him.
Intestinal disorders set in very early with him, and {553} especially
in the form which is the most frequent and, among children, the most
normal---namely, incontinence. We shall certainly be right, however,
in rejecting a pathological explanation of these earliest occurrences,
and in regarding them only as evidence of the patient’s intention not
to let himself be disturbed or checked in the pleasure attached to the
function of evacuation. He found a great deal of enjoyment (such as
would tally with the natural coarseness of many classes of society,
though not of his) in anal jokes and exhibitions, and this enjoyment
had been retained by him until after the beginning of his later
illness.
During the time of the English governess it repeatedly happened that
he and his Nanya had to share that obnoxious lady’s bedroom. His Nanya
noticed with comprehension the fact that precisely on those nights he
made a mess in his bed, though otherwise this had ceased to happen a
long time before. He was not in the least ashamed of it; it was an
expression of defiance against the governess.
A year later (when he was four and a half), during the anxiety period,
he happened to make a mess in his knickerbockers in the daytime. He
was terribly ashamed of himself, and as he was being cleaned he moaned
that he could not go on living like that. So that in the meantime
something had changed; and by following up his lament we came upon the
traces of this something. It turned out that the words ‘he could not
go on living like that’ were repeated from some one else. His mother
had once[386] taken him with her when she was walking down to the
station with the doctor who had come to visit her. During this walk
she had lamented over her pains and haemorrhages and had broken out in
the same words, ‘I cannot go on living like this’, without imagining
that the child whose hand she was holding would keep them in his {554}
memory. Thus his lament (which, moreover, he was to repeat on
innumerable occasions during his later illness) had the significance
of---an identification with his mother.
There soon appeared in his recollection what was evidently, in respect
both of its date and of its content, a missing middle term between
these two events. It once happened at the beginning of his anxiety
period that his apprehensive mother gave orders that precautions were
to be taken to protect the children from dysentery, which had made its
appearance in the neighbourhood of the estate. He made inquiries as to
what that might be; and after hearing that when you have dysentery you
find blood in your stool he became very nervous and declared that
there was blood in his own stool; he was afraid he would die of
dysentery, but allowed himself to be convinced by an examination that
he had made a mistake and had no need to be frightened. We can see
that in this dread he was trying to put into effect an identification
with his mother, whose haemorrhages he had heard about in the
conversation with her doctor. In his later attempt at identification
(when he was four and a half) he had dropped any mention of the blood;
he no longer understood himself, for he imagined that he was ashamed
of himself and was not aware that he was being shaken by a dread of
death, though this was unmistakably revealed in his lament.
At that time his mother, suffering as she was from an abdominal
affection, was in general nervous, both about herself and the
children; it is most probable that his own nervousness, besides its
other motives, was based upon an identification with his mother.
Now what can have been the meaning of this identification with his
mother?
Between the impudent use he made of his incontinence when he was three
and a half, and the horror with which he viewed it when he was four
and a half, {555} there lies the dream with which his anxiety period
began---the dream which gave him a deferred comprehension of the scene
he had experienced when he was one and a half (see p. 517), and an
explanation of the part played by women in the sexual act. It is only
another step to connect the change in his attitude towards defaecation
with this same great revulsion. Dysentery was evidently his name for
the illness which he had heard his mother lamenting about, and which
it was impossible to go on living with; he did not regard his mother’s
disease as being abdominal but as being intestinal. Under the
influence of the primal scene he came to the conclusion that his
mother had been made ill by what his father had done to her;[387] and
his dread of having blood in his stool, of being as ill as his mother,
was his repudiation of being identified with his mother in this sexual
scene---the same repudiation with which he awoke from the dream. But
the dread was also a proof that in his later elaboration of the primal
scene he had put himself in his mother’s place and had envied her this
relation with his father. The organ by which his identification with
women and his passive homosexual attitude to men was able to express
itself was the anal zone. The disorders in the function of this zone
had acquired the significance of feminine impulses of tenderness, and
they retained it during the later illness as well.
At this point we must consider an objection, the discussion of which
may contribute much to the elucidation of the apparent confusion of
the circumstances. We have been driven to assume that during the
process of the dream he understood that women are castrated, that
instead of a male organ they have a wound which serves for sexual
intercourse, and that castration is the necessary condition of
femininity; we have been driven to assume that the threat of this loss
induced him to repress his feminine attitude towards men, and that he
awoke from his homosexual sentimentalizing {556} in dread. Now how can
this comprehension of sexual intercourse, this recognition of the
vagina, be brought into harmony with the selection of the bowel for
the purpose of identification with women? Are not the intestinal
symptoms based upon what is probably an older notion, and one which in
any case completely contradicts the dread of castration---the notion,
namely, that sexual intercourse takes place at the anus?
To be sure, this contradiction is present; and the two views are
entirely inconsistent with each other. The only question is whether
they need be consistent. Our bewilderment arises only because we are
always inclined to treat unconscious mental processes like conscious
ones and to forget the profound differences between the two psychical
systems.
When his Christmas dream, with its excitement and expectancy, conjured
up before him the picture of the sexual intercourse of his parents as
it had once been observed (or constructed) by him, there can be no
doubt that the first view of it to come up was the old one, according
to which the part of the female body which received the male organ was
the anus. And, indeed, what else could he have supposed when at the
age of one and a half he was a spectator of the scene?[388] But now
came a new event, now that he was four years old. What he had learnt
in the meantime, the allusions which he had heard to castration, awoke
and cast a doubt upon the ‘cloacal theory’; they suggested to him a
recognition of the difference between the sexes and of the sexual part
played by women. In this contingency he behaved as children in general
behave when they are given an unwished-for piece of
information---whether sexual or of any other kind. He rejected what
was new (in our case from motives connected with his fear of
castration) and clung fast to what was old. He decided in favour of
the intestine and against the vagina in the same way as he later on
{557} took his father’s side against God, and in both cases his
motives were similar. He rejected the new information and clung to the
old theory; it fell to the latter to provide the material for his
identification with women, which made its appearance later as a dread
of death in connection with the bowels, and for his first religious
scruples, about whether Christ had had a behind, and so on. It is not
as though his new insight remained without any effect; quite the
reverse. It developed an extraordinarily powerful effect, for it
became a motive for maintaining the whole process of the dream in
repression and for excluding it from later conscious elaboration. But
with that its effect was exhausted; it had no influence upon the
decision of the sexual problem. That it should have been possible from
that time onwards for a fear of castration to exist side by side with
an identification with women by means of the bowel admittedly involved
a contradiction. But it was only a logical contradiction---which is
not saying much. On the contrary, the whole process is characteristic
of the way in which the unconscious works. A repression is something
very different from a condemning judgement.
When we were studying the genesis of the wolf phobia, we followed the
effect of his new insight into the sexual act; but now that we are
investigating the disturbances of the intestinal function, we find
ourselves working on the basis of the old cloacal theory. The two
points of view remained separated from each other by a stage of
repression. His feminine attitude towards men, which had been
repudiated by means of the act of repression, drew itself back, as it
were, into the intestinal symptoms, and expressed itself in the
attacks of diarrhoea, constipation, and intestinal pain, which were so
frequent during the patient’s childhood. His later sexual phantasies,
which were based upon a correct sexual knowledge, were thus able to
express themselves regressively as intestinal troubles. But we cannot
understand them until we have explained the {558} modifications which
take place in the significance of faeces from the first years of
childhood onward.[389]
I have already hinted at an earlier point in my story that one portion
of the content of the primal scene has been kept back. I am now in a
position to produce this missing portion. The child finally
interrupted his parents’ intercourse by passing a stool, which gave
him an excuse for screaming. All the considerations which I have
raised above in discussing the rest of the content of the same scene
apply equally to the criticism of this additional piece. The patient
accepted this concluding act when I had constructed it, and appeared
to confirm it by producing ‘transitory symptoms’. A further additional
piece which I had proposed, to the effect that his father was annoyed
at the interruption and gave vent to his ill-humour by scolding him,
had to be dropped. The material of the analysis did not react to it.
The additional detail which I have now brought forward cannot of
course be put on a level with the rest of the content of the
scene. Here it is not a question of an impression from outside, which
must be expected to re-emerge in a number of later indications, but of
a reaction on the part of the child himself. It would make no
difference to the story as a whole if this demonstration had not
occurred, or if it had been taken from a later period and inserted
into the course of the scene. But there can be no question of how we
are to regard it. It is the sign of an excitement of the anal zone (in
the widest sense of the words). In other similar cases an observation
like this of sexual intercourse has ended with a discharge of urine; a
grown-up man in the same circumstances would feel an erection. The
fact that our little boy passed a stool as a sign of his sexual
excitement is to be regarded as a characteristic of his congenital
sexual constitution. He at once assumed a passive attitude; and showed
more {559} inclination towards a subsequent identification with women
than with men.
At the same time, like every other child, he was making use of the
content of the intestines in one of its earliest and most primitive
meanings. Faeces are the child’s first _gift_, the first sacrifice of
his affection, a portion of his own body which he is ready to part
with, but only for the sake of some one he loves.[390] To use faeces
as an expression of defiance, as our patient did against the governess
when he was three and a half, is merely to turn this earlier ‘gift’
meaning into the negative. The ‘_grumus merdae_’ left behind by
criminals upon the scene of their misdeeds seems to have both these
meanings: contumacy, and a regressive expression of amends. It is
always possible, when a higher stage has been reached, for use still
to be made of the lower one in its negative and debased sense. The
contrariety is a manifestation of repression.[391]
At a later stage of sexual development faeces take on the meaning of a
_child_. For children, like faeces, are born through the anus. The
‘gift’ meaning of faeces readily admits of this transformation. It is
a common usage to speak of a child as a ‘gift’. The more frequent
expression is that the woman has ‘presented’ the man with a child; but
in the usage of the unconscious equal attention is justly paid to the
{560} other aspect of the relation, namely, to the woman having
‘received’[392] the child as a gift from the man.
The ‘_money_’ meaning of faeces branches off from the ‘gift’ meaning
in another direction.
The deeper meaning of our patient’s early screen-memory, to the effect
that he had his first fit of rage because he was not given enough
presents one Christmas, is now revealed to us. What he was feeling the
want of was sexual satisfaction, which he had taken as being anal. His
sexual inquiries discovered definitely during the course of the dream
what they had been prepared for finding before the dream, namely, that
the sexual act solved the problem of the origin of babies. Even before
the dream he had disliked babies. Once, when he had come upon a small
unfledged bird that had fallen out of its nest, he had taken it for a
human baby and been horrified at it. The analysis showed that all
small animals, such as caterpillars and insects, that he had been so
enraged with, had had the meaning of babies to him.[393] His position
in regard to his elder sister had given him every opportunity for
reflecting upon the relation between elder and younger children. His
Nanya had once told him that his mother was so fond of him because he
was the youngest, and this gave him good grounds for wishing that no
younger child might come after him. His dread of this youngest child
was revived under the influence of the dream, for it brought up before
him his parents’ intercourse.
To the sexual currents that are already known to us we must therefore
add a further one, which, like the rest, started from the primal scene
reproduced in the dream. In his identification with women (that is,
with his mother) he was ready to present his father with a child, and
was jealous of his mother, who had already done so and would perhaps
do so again.
In a roundabout way, then, through their common {561} relation to the
‘gift’ meaning of faeces, money can come to have the meaning ‘child’,
and can thus become the means of expressing feminine (homosexual)
satisfaction. This was what occurred with our patient when---he and
his sister were staying at a German sanatorium at the time---he saw
his father give his sister two large bank-notes. In imagination he had
always had suspicions of his father’s relations with his sister; and
at this his jealousy awoke. He rushed at his sister as soon as they
were alone, and demanded a share of the money with so much vehemence
and such reproaches that his sister, in tears, threw him the whole of
it. What had excited him was not merely the actual money, but rather
the child---anal sexual satisfaction from his father. And he was able
to console himself with this when, in his father’s lifetime, his
sister died. The revolting thought which occurred to him when he heard
the news of her death in fact meant no more than this: ‘Now I am the
only child. Now Father will have to love me only.’ But though this
reflection was in itself perfectly capable of becoming conscious, yet
its homosexual background was so intolerable that it was possible for
its disguise in the shape of the most sordid avarice to come as a
great relief.
Similarly, too, when after his father’s death he reproached his mother
so unjustifiably with wanting to cheat him out of the money and of
being fonder of the money than of him. His old jealousy of her for
having loved another child besides him, the possibility of her having
wanted another child after him, drove him into making charges which he
himself knew were unwarranted.
This analysis of the meaning of faeces makes it clear that the
obsessive thoughts which obliged him to connect God with faeces had a
further significance beyond the disparagement which he saw in them
himself. They were in fact true compromise-products, in which a part
was played no less by a tender current of devotion than by a hostile
current of abuse. ‘God---shit’ {562} was probably an abbreviation for
an offering that one occasionally hears mentioned in its unabbreviated
form. ‘Shitting to God’ [‘_auf Gott scheissen_’], or ‘shitting
something to God’ [‘_Gott etwas scheissen_’], also means presenting
him with a child or getting him to present one with a child. The old
‘gift’ meaning in its negative and debased form and the ‘child’
meaning that was later developed from it are combined with each other
in the obsessional phrase. In the latter of these meanings a feminine
tenderness finds expression: a readiness to give up one’s masculinity
if in exchange for it one can be loved like a woman. Here, then, we
have precisely the same impulse towards God which was expressed in
unambiguous words in the delusional system of the paranoic
Senatspräsident Schreber.[394]
When later on I come to describing the final clearing up of my
patient’s symptoms, the way in which the intestinal disorder had put
itself at the service of the homosexual current and had given
expression to his feminine attitude towards his father will once again
become evident. Meanwhile we shall mention a further meaning of
faeces, which will lead us on to a discussion of the castration
complex.
Since the column of faeces stimulates the erotogenic mucous membrane
of the intestine, it plays the part of an active organ in regard to
it; it behaves just as the penis does to the vaginal mucous membrane,
and acts as it were as its precursor during the cloacal epoch. The
handing over of faeces for the sake of (out of love for) some one else
becomes a prototype of castration; it is the first occasion upon which
an individual gives up a piece of his own body[395] in order to gain
the favour of some other person whom he loves. So that a person’s love
of his own penis, which is in other respects narcissistic, is not
without an element of anal erotism. ‘Faeces’, ‘child’, and ‘penis’
thus {563} form a unity, an unconscious concept (_sit venia
verbo_)---the concept, namely, of a little thing that can become
separated from one’s body. Along these paths of association the
libidinal cathexis[396] may become displaced or intensified in ways
which are pathologically important and which are revealed by analysis.
We are already acquainted with the attitude which our patient first
adopted to the problem of castration. He rejected castration, and held
to his theory of intercourse by the anus. When I speak of his having
rejected it, the first meaning of the phrase is that he would have
nothing to do with it, in the sense of having repressed it. This
really involved no judgement upon the question of its existence, but
it was just as though it did not exist. Such an attitude, however,
could not have been his final one, even at the time of his infantile
neurosis. We find good subsequent evidence of his having recognized
castration as a fact. In this connection, once again, he behaved in
the manner which was so characteristic of him, but which makes it so
difficult to give a clear account of his mental processes or to feel
one’s way into them. First he resisted and then he yielded; but the
one reaction was not supplanted by the other. In the end there were to
be found in him two contrary currents side by side, of which one
abominated the idea of castration, while the other was prepared to
accept it and console itself with femininity as a compensation. But
beyond any doubt a third current, the oldest and deepest, which did
not as yet even raise the question of the reality of castration, was
still capable of coming into activity. I have elsewhere[397] reported
a hallucination which this same patient had at the age of five and
upon which I need only add a brief commentary here.
‘“When I was five years old I was playing in the garden near my nurse,
and was carving with my pocket-knife {564} in the bark of one of the
walnut trees that also come into my dream.[398] Suddenly, to my
unspeakable terror, I noticed that I had cut through the little finger
of my (right or left?) hand, so that it was only hanging on by its
skin. I felt no pain, but great fear. I did not venture to say
anything to my nurse, who was only a few paces distant, but I sank
down on the nearest seat and sat there incapable of casting another
glance at my finger. At last I grew calm, took a look at the finger,
and saw that it was entirely uninjured.”’
After he had received his instruction in the Bible story at the age of
four and a half he began, as we know, to make the intense effort of
thought which ended in his obsessional piety. We may therefore assume
that this hallucination belongs to the period in which he brought
himself to recognize the reality of castration, and it is perhaps to
be regarded as actually marking this step. Even the small correction
made by the patient is not without interest. If he had a hallucination
of the same dreadful experience which Tasso, in his _Gerusalemme
Liberata_, tells of his hero Tancred, we shall perhaps be justified in
reaching the interpretation that the tree meant a woman to my little
patient as well. Here, then, he was playing the part of his father,
and was connecting his mother’s familiar haemorrhages with the
castration of women, which he now recognized,---with the ‘wound’.
His hallucination of the severed finger was instigated, as he reported
later on, by the story that a female relation of his had been born
with six toes and that the extra one had immediately afterwards been
chopped off with an axe. Women, then, had no penis because it was
taken away from them at birth. In this manner he came, at the period
of the obsessional {565} neurosis, to accept what he had already
learned during the dream but had at the time rejected by means of
repression. He must also have become acquainted, during the readings
and discussions of the sacred story, with the ritual circumcision of
Christ and of the Jews in general.
There is no doubt whatever that at this time his father was turning
into the terrifying figure that threatened him with castration. The
cruel God with whom he was then struggling---who made men sinful, only
to punish them afterwards, who sacrificed his own son and the sons of
men---this God threw back his character on to the patient’s father,
though, on the other hand, the boy was at the same time trying to
defend his father against the God. At this point the boy had to fit
himself into a phylogenetic schema, and he did so, although his
personal experiences may not have agreed with it. The threats or hints
of castration which he had come across had, on the contrary, emanated
from women,[399] but this could not hold up the final result for
long. In spite of everything it was his father from whom in the end he
came to fear castration. In this respect heredity triumphed over
accidental experience; in man’s prehistory it was unquestionably the
father who practised castration as a punishment and who later softened
it down into circumcision. The further the patient went in repressing
sensuality during the course of the development of the obsessional
neurosis,[400] the more natural it must have become to him to
attribute these evil intentions to his father, who was the true
representative of sensual activity.
His identification of his father with the castrator[401] {566} became
important as being the source of an intense unconscious hostility
towards him (which reached the extent of a death-wish) and of a sense
of guilt which reacted against it. Up to this point, however, he was
behaving normally---that is to say, like every neurotic who is
possessed by a positive Oedipus complex. But the astonishing thing was
that even against this there was a counter-current working in him,
which, on the contrary, regarded his father as the person castrated
and as calling, therefore, for his sympathy.
When I analysed his ceremonial of breathing out whenever he saw
cripples, beggars, and such people, I was able to show that that
symptom could also be traced back to his father, whom he had felt
sorry for when he visited him as a patient in the sanatorium. The
analysis made it possible to follow this thread even further back. At
a very early period, probably before his seduction (at the age of
three and a quarter), there had been upon the estate an old
day-labourer whose business it was to carry the water into the
house. He could not speak, ostensibly because his tongue had been cut
out. (He was probably a deaf mute.) The little boy was very fond of
him and pitied him deeply. When he died, he looked for him in the
sky.[402] Here, then, was the first of the cripples for whom he had
felt sympathy, and, as was shown by the context and the point at which
the episode came out in the analysis, an undoubted father-surrogate.
In the analysis this man was associated with the recollection of other
servants whom the patient had liked and of whom he emphasized the fact
that they had been either sickly or Jews (which implied
circumcision). The footman, too, who had helped to clean {567} him
after his accident when he was four and a half, had been a Jew and a
consumptive and had been an object of his compassion. All of these
figures belong to the period before his visit to his father at the
sanatorium, that is, before the formation of the symptom; the latter
must therefore rather have been intended to ward off (by means of the
breathing out) any identification with the object of the patient’s
pity. Then suddenly, in connection with a dream, the analysis plunged
back into the prehistoric period, and led him to assert that during
the coitus in the primal scene he had observed the penis disappear,
that he had felt sympathy with his father on that account, and had
rejoiced at the reappearance of what he thought had been lost. So here
was a fresh emotional trend, starting once again from the primal
scene. Moreover, the narcissistic origin of sympathy (which is
confirmed by the word itself) is here quite unmistakably revealed.
VIII {568}
FRESH MATERIAL FROM THE PRIMAL PERIOD
---SOLUTION
It happens in many analyses that as one approaches their end new
recollections emerge which have hitherto been kept carefully
concealed. Or it may be that on one occasion some unpretentious remark
is thrown out in an indifferent tone of voice as though it were
superfluous; that then, on another occasion, something further is
added, which begins to make the physician prick his ears; and that at
last he comes to recognize this despised fragment of a memory as the
key to the weightiest secrets that the patient’s neurosis has
screened.
Early in the analysis my patient had told me of a memory of the period
in which his naughtiness had been in the habit of suddenly turning
into anxiety. He was chasing a beautiful big butterfly with yellow
stripes and large wings which ended in pointed projections---a
swallow-tail, in fact. Suddenly, when the butterfly had settled on a
flower, he was seized with a dreadful fear of the creature, and ran
away screaming.
This memory recurred occasionally during the analysis, and required an
explanation; but for a long time none was to be found. Nevertheless it
was to be assumed as a matter of course that a detail like this had
not kept its place in his recollection on its own account, but that it
was a screen-memory, representing something of more importance with
which it was in some way connected. One day he told me that in his
language a butterfly was called ‘_babushka_’, ‘granny’. He added that
in general butterflies had seemed to him like women and girls, and
beetles and caterpillars {569} like boys. So there could be little
doubt that in this anxiety scene a recollection of some female person
had been aroused. I will not conceal the fact that at that time I put
forward the possibility that the yellow stripes on the butterfly had
reminded him of similar stripes upon a piece of clothing worn by some
woman. I only mention this as an illustration to show how inadequate
the physician’s constructive efforts usually are for clearing up
questions that arise, and how unjust it is to attribute the results of
analysis to the physician’s imagination and suggestion.
Many months later, in quite another connection, the patient remarked
that the opening and shutting of the butterfly’s wings while it was
settled on the flower had given him an uncanny feeling. It had looked,
so he said, like a woman opening her legs, and the legs then made the
shape of a Roman V, which, as we know, was the hour at which, in his
boyhood, and even up to the time of the treatment, he used to fall
into a depressed state of mind.
This was an association which I could never have arrived at myself,
and which gained importance from a consideration of the thoroughly
infantile nature of the train of association which it revealed. The
attention of children, as I have often noticed, is attracted far more
readily by movements than by forms at rest; and they frequently base
associations upon a similarity of movement which is overlooked or
neglected by adults.
After this the little problem was once more left untouched for a long
time; but I may mention the facile suspicion that the points or
stick-like projections of the butterfly’s wings might have had the
meaning of genital symbols.
One day there emerged, timidly and indistinctly, a kind of
recollection that at a very early age, even before the time of the
nurse, he must have had a nursery-maid who was very fond of him. Her
name had been the same as his mother’s. He had no doubt {570} returned
her affection. It was, in fact, a first love that had faded into
oblivion. But we agreed that something must have occurred at that time
that became of importance later on.
Then on another occasion he emended this recollection. She could not
have had the same name as his mother; that had been a mistake on his
part, and it showed, of course, that in his memory she had become
fused with his mother. Her real name, he went on, had occurred to him
in a roundabout way. He had suddenly thought of a store-room, on the
first estate, in which fruit was kept after it had been picked, and of
a particular sort of pear with a most delicious taste---a big pear
with yellow stripes on its skin. The word for ‘pear’ in his language
was ‘_grusha_’, and that had also been the name of the nursery-maid.
It thus became clear that behind the screen-memory of the hunted
butterfly the memory of the nursery-maid lay concealed. But the yellow
stripes were not upon her dress, but upon the pear whose name was the
same as hers. What, however, was the origin of the anxiety which had
arisen when the memory of her had been activated? The obvious answer
to this might have been the crude hypothesis that it had been this
girl whom, when he was a small child, he had first seen making the
movements with her legs which he had fixed in his mind with the Roman
V,---movements which allow access to the genitals. We spared ourselves
such theorizing as this and waited for more material.
Very soon after this there came the recollection of a scene,
incomplete, but, so far as it was preserved, definite. Grusha was
kneeling on the floor, and beside her a pail and a short broom made of
a bundle of twigs; he was also there, and she was teazing him or
scolding him.
The missing elements could easily be supplied from other
directions. During the first months of the treatment he had told me of
how he had suddenly fallen in {571} love in a compulsive manner with a
peasant girl from whom he had contracted the exciting cause of his
later illness (at the age of eighteen). When he told me this he had
displayed a most extraordinary unwillingness to give me the girl’s
name. It was an entirely isolated instance of resistance, for apart
from it he obeyed the fundamental rule of analysis unreservedly. He
asserted, however, that the reason for his being so much ashamed of
mentioning the name was that it was a purely peasant name and that no
girl of gentle birth could possibly be called by it. When eventually
the name was produced, it turned out to be Matrona, which has a
motherly ring about it. The shame was evidently displaced. He was not
ashamed of the fact that these love-affairs were invariably concerned
with girls of the humblest origin; he was ashamed only of the name. If
it should turn out that the affair with Matrona had something in
common with the Grusha scene, then the shame would have to be
transferred back to that early episode.
He had told me another time that when he heard the story of John Huss
he had been greatly moved, and that his attention had been held by the
bundles of firewood that were dragged up when he was burnt at the
stake. Now his sympathy for Huss created a perfectly definite
suspicion in my mind, for I have often come upon this sympathy in
youthful patients and I have always been able to explain it in the
same way. One such patient even went so far as to produce a dramatized
version of Huss’s career; he began to write his play on the day upon
which he lost the object with whom he was secretly in love. Huss
perished by fire, and (like others who possess the same qualification)
he becomes the hero of people who have at one time suffered from
enuresis. My patient himself connected the bundles of firewood used
for the execution of Huss with the nursery-maid’s broom or bundle of
twigs.
This material fitted together spontaneously and served to fill in the
gaps in the patient’s memory of {572} the scene with Grusha. When he
saw the girl scrubbing the floor he had urinated in the room and she
had rejoined, no doubt jokingly, with a threat of castration.[403]
I do not know if my readers will have already guessed why it is that I
have given such a detailed account of this episode from the patient’s
early childhood.[404] It provides an important link between the primal
scene and the later love-compulsion which came to be of such decisive
significance in his subsequent career, and it further shows us a
condition upon which his falling in love depended and which elucidates
that compulsion.
When he saw the girl upon the floor engaged in scrubbing it, and
kneeling down, with her buttocks projecting and her back horizontal,
he was faced once again with the attitude which his mother had assumed
in the coitus scene. She became his mother to him; he was seized with
sexual excitement owing to the activation of this picture;[405] and,
like his father (whose action he can only have regarded at the time as
urination), he behaved in a masculine way towards her. His urinating
on the floor was in reality an attempt at a seduction, and the girl
replied to it with a threat of castration, just as though she had
understood what he meant.
The compulsion, which took its origin from the primal scene, was
transferred on to the scene with Grusha and was carried forward by
it. But the condition upon which his falling in love depended {573}
underwent a change which showed the influence of the second scene: it
was transferred from the woman’s attitude to the occupation upon which
she was engaged while in that attitude. This was clear, for instance,
in the episode of Matrona. He was walking through the village which
formed part of the (second) estate, when he saw a peasant girl
kneeling by the pond and employed in washing clothes in it. He fell in
love with the girl instantly and with irresistible violence, although
he had not yet been able to get even a glimpse of her face. By her
posture and occupation she had taken the place of Grusha for him. We
can now see how it was that the shame which properly related to the
content of the scene with Grusha could become attached to the name of
Matrona.
Another attack of falling in love, dating from a few years earlier,
shows even more clearly the compelling influence of the Grusha
scene. A young peasant girl, who was a servant in the house, had long
attracted him, but he succeeded in keeping himself from approaching
her. One day, when he came upon her in a room by herself, he was
overwhelmed by his love. He found her kneeling on the floor and
engaged in scrubbing it, with a pail and a broom beside her---in fact,
exactly as he had seen the girl in his childhood.
Even his final object-choice, which played such an important part in
his life, is shown by its details (though they cannot be adduced here)
to have been dependent upon the same condition and to have been an
offshoot of the compulsion which, starting from the primal scene and
going on to the scene with Grusha, had dominated his love-choice. I
have remarked on an earlier page that I recognize in the patient an
endeavour to debase his love-object. This is to be explained as a
reaction against pressure from the sister who was so much his
superior. But I promised at the same time (see p. 490) to show that
this self-assertive motive was not the only determinant, but that it
concealed another and deeper one based upon purely {574} erotic
motives. These were brought to light by the patient’s memory of the
nursery-maid scrubbing the floor---physically debased too, by the
by. All his later love-objects were surrogates for this one person,
who through the accident of her attitude had herself become his first
mother-surrogate. The patient’s first association in connection with
the problem of his fear of the butterfly can now easily be explained
retrospectively as a distant allusion to the primal scene (the hour of
five). He confirmed the connection between the Grusha scene and the
threat of castration by a particularly ingenious dream, which he
himself succeeded in deciphering. ‘I had a dream,’ he said, ‘of a man
tearing off the wings of an _Espe_.’ --- ‘_Espe_?’ I asked; ‘what do
you mean by that?’ --- ‘You know; that insect with yellow stripes on
its body, that stings.’ ---I could now put him right: ‘So what you
mean is a _Wespe_ [wasp].’ --- ‘Is it called a _Wespe_? I really
thought it was called an _Espe_.’ (Like so many other people, he used
his difficulties with a foreign language as a screen for symptomatic
acts.) ‘But _Espe_, why, that’s myself: S. P.’ (which were his
initials). The _Espe_ was of course a mutilated _Wespe_. The dream
said clearly that he was avenging himself on Grusha for her threat of
castration.
The action of the two-and-a-half-year-old boy in the scene with Grusha
is the earliest effect of the primal scene which has come to our
knowledge. It represents him as copying his father, and shows us a
tendency towards development in a direction which would later deserve
the name of masculine. His seduction drove him into passivity---for
which, in any case, the way was prepared by his behaviour when he was
a witness of his parents’ intercourse.
I must here turn for a moment to the history of the treatment. When
once the Grusha scene had been assimilated---the first experience that
he could really remember, and one which he had remembered without any
conjectures or intervention on my part---the problem {575} of the
treatment had every appearance of having been solved. From that time
forward there were no more resistances; all that remained to be done
was to collect and to co-ordinate. The old trauma theory, which was
after all built up upon impressions gained from psycho-analytic
practice, had suddenly come to the front once more. Out of critical
interest I made one more attempt to force upon the patient another
view of his story, which might commend itself more to sober common
sense. It was true that there could be no doubt about the scene with
Grusha, but, I suggested, in itself that scene meant nothing; it had
been emphasized _ex post facto_ by a regression from the circumstances
of his object-choice, which, as a result of his intention to debase,
had been diverted from his sister on to servant girls. On the other
hand, his observation of coitus, I argued, was a phantasy of his later
years; its historical nucleus may perhaps have been an observation or
an experience by the patient of the administration of an innocent
enema. Some of my readers will possibly be inclined to think that with
such hypotheses as these I was for the first time beginning to
approach an understanding of the case; but the patient looked at me
uncomprehendingly and a little contemptuously when I put this view
before him, and he never reacted to it again. I have already stated my
own arguments against any such rationalization at their proper point
in the discussion.
[Thus[406] the Grusha scene, by explaining the conditions governing
the patient’s object-choice---conditions which were of decisive
importance in his life---prevents our over-estimating the significance
of his intention to debase women. But it does more than this. It
affords me a justification for having refused on an earlier page (see
p. 534) to adopt unhesitatingly, as the only tenable explanation, the
view that the primal scene was derived from an observation made upon
animals shortly before the dream. The Grusha {576} scene emerged in
the patient’s memory spontaneously and through no effort of mine. His
fear of the yellow-striped butterfly, which went back to that scene,
proved that it had had a significant content, or that it had been
possible to attach this significance to its content subsequently. By
means of the accompanying associations and the inferences that
followed from them, it was possible with certainty to supply this
significant element which was lacking in the patient’s memory. It then
appeared that his fear of the butterfly was in every respect analogous
to his fear of the wolf; in both cases it was a fear of castration,
which was, to begin with, referred to the person who had first uttered
the threat of castration, but was then transposed on to another person
to whom it was bound to become attached in accordance with
phylogenetic precedent. The scene with Grusha had occurred when the
patient was two and a half, but the anxiety-episode with the yellow
butterfly was certainly subsequent to the anxiety-dream. It was easy
to understand how the patient’s later comprehension of the possibility
of castration had retrospectively brought out the anxiety in the scene
with Grusha. But that scene in itself contained nothing objectionable
or improbable; on the contrary, it consisted entirely of commonplace
details which gave no grounds for scepticism. There was nothing in it
which could lead one to attribute its origin to the child’s
imagination; such a supposition, indeed, seemed scarcely possible.
The question now arises whether we are justified in regarding the fact
that the boy urinated, while he stood looking at the girl on her knees
scrubbing the floor, as a proof of sexual excitement on his part. If
so, the excitement would be evidence of the influence of an earlier
impression, which might equally have been the actual occurrence of the
primal scene or an observation made upon animals before the age of two
and a half. Or are we to conclude that the situation as regards Grusha
was entirely innocent, that the child’s emptying {577} his bladder was
purely accidental, and that it was not until later that the whole
scene became sexualized in his memory, after he had come to recognize
the importance of similar situations?
On these issues I can venture upon no decision. I must confess,
however, that I regard it as greatly to the credit of psycho-analysis
that it should even have reached the stage of raising such questions
as these. Nevertheless, I cannot deny that the scene with Grusha, the
part it played in the analysis, and the effects that followed from it
in the patient’s life can be most naturally and completely explained
if we consider that the primal scene, which may in other cases be a
phantasy, was a reality in the present one. After all, there is
nothing impossible about it; and the hypothesis of its reality is
entirely compatible with the instigating action of the observations
upon animals which are suggested by the sheep-dogs in the
dream-picture.
I will now turn from this unsatisfactory conclusion to a consideration
of the problem which I have attempted in my _Introductory Lectures on
Psycho-Analysis_. I should myself be glad to know whether the primal
scene in my present patient’s case was a phantasy or a real
experience; but, taking other similar cases into account, I must admit
that the answer to this question is not in reality a matter of very
great importance. These scenes of observing parental intercourse, of
being seduced in childhood, and of being threatened with castration
are unquestionably an inherited endowment, a phylogenetic inheritance,
but they may just as easily be acquired by personal experience. With
my patient, his seduction by his elder sister was an indisputable
reality; why should not the same have been true of his observation of
his parents’ intercourse?
All that we find in the prehistory of neuroses is that a child catches
hold of this phylogenetic experience where his own experience fails
him. He fills in the gaps in individual truth with prehistoric truth;
he {578} replaces occurrences in his own life by occurrences in the
life of his ancestors. I fully agree with Jung[407] in recognizing the
existence of this phylogenetic inheritance; but I regard it as a
methodological error to seize upon a phylogenetic explanation before
the ontogenetic possibilities have been exhausted. I cannot see any
reason for obstinately disputing the importance of infantile
prehistory while at the same time freely acknowledging the importance
of ancestral prehistory. Nor can I overlook the fact that phylogenetic
motives and productions themselves stand in need of elucidation, and
that in quite a number of instances this is afforded by factors in the
childhood of the individual. And, finally, I cannot feel surprised
that what was originally produced by certain circumstances in
prehistoric times and was then transmitted in the shape of a
predisposition to its re-acquirement should, since the same
circumstances persist, emerge once more as a concrete event in the
experience of the individual.]
Room must also be found in the interval between the primal scene and
the seduction (from the age of one and a half to the age of three and
a quarter) for the dumb water-carrier. He served the patient as a
father-surrogate just as Grusha served him as a mother-surrogate. I do
not think there is any justification for regarding this as an example
of the intention to debase, even though it is true that both parents
have come to be represented by servants. A child pays no regard to
social distinctions, which have little meaning for it as yet; and it
classes people of inferior rank with its parents if they love it as
its parents do. Nor is the intention to debase any more responsible
for the substitution of animals for a child’s parents, for children
are very far indeed from taking a disparaging view of animals. Uncles
and aunts are used as parent-surrogates without any regard to the
question of debasing, {579} and this was in fact done by our present
patient, as many of his recollections showed.
There also belongs in this period a phase, which was obscurely
remembered, in which he would not eat anything except sweet things,
until alarm was felt on the score of his health. He was told about one
of his uncles who had refused to eat in the same way and had wasted
away to death while he was still young. He was also informed that when
he himself was three months old he had been so seriously ill (with
pneumonia?) that his winding-sheet had been got ready for him. In this
way they succeeded in alarming him, so that he began eating again; and
in the later years of his childhood he used actually to overdo this
duty, as though to guard himself against the threat of death. The fear
of death, which was evoked at that time for his own protection, made
its reappearance later when his mother warned him of the danger of
dysentery; later still, it brought on an attack of his obsessional
neurosis (see p. 544). We shall attempt further on to go into its
origins and meanings.
I am inclined to the opinion that this disturbance of appetite should
be regarded as the very first of the patient’s neurotic illnesses. If
so, the disturbance of appetite, the wolf phobia, and the obsessional
piety would constitute the complete series of infantile disorders
which laid down the predisposition for his neurotic collapse after he
had passed the age of puberty. It will be objected that few children
escape such disorders as a temporary loss of appetite or an animal
phobia. But this argument is exactly what I should wish for. I am
ready to assert that every neurosis in an adult is built upon a
neurosis which has occurred in his childhood but has not invariably
been severe enough to strike the eye and be recognized as such. This
objection only serves to emphasize the theoretical importance of the
part which infantile neuroses must play in our view of those later
disorders which we treat as neuroses and endeavour to attribute
entirely to the {580} effects of adult life. If our present patient
had not suffered from obsessional piety in addition to his disturbance
of appetite and his animal phobia, his story would not have been
noticeably different from that of other children, and we should have
been the poorer by the loss of precious material which may guard us
against certain plausible errors.
The analysis would be unsatisfactory if it failed to explain the
phrase used by the patient for summing up the troubles of which he
complained. The world, he said, was hidden from him by a veil; and our
psycho-analytic training forbids our assuming that these words can
have been without significance or have been chosen at haphazard. The
veil was torn, strange to say, in one situation only; and that was at
the moment when, as a result of an enema, he passed a motion through
his anus. He then felt well again, and for a very short while he saw
the world clearly. The interpretation of this ‘veil’ progressed with
as much difficulty as we met with in clearing up his fear of the
butterfly. Nor did he keep to the veil. It evaporated into a sense of
twilight, into ‘_ténèbres_’, and into other impalpable things.
It was not until just before taking leave of the treatment that he
remembered having been told that he was born with a caul.[408] He had
for that reason always looked on himself as a special child of fortune
whom no ill could befall. He did not lose that conviction until he was
forced to realize that his gonorrhoeal infection constituted a serious
injury to his body. The blow to his narcissism was too much for him
and he collapsed. It may be said that in so doing he was repeating a
mechanism that he had already brought into play once before. For his
wolf phobia had broken out when he found himself faced by the fact
that such a thing as castration was possible; and he clearly classed
his gonorrhoea as castration.
Thus the caul was the veil which hid him from the {581} world and hid
the world from him. The complaint that he made was in reality a
fulfilled wish-phantasy: it exhibited him as back once more in the
womb, and was, in fact, a wish-phantasy of flight from the world. It
can be translated as follows: ‘Life makes me so unhappy! I must get
back into the womb!’
But what can have been the meaning of the fact that this veil, which
was now symbolic but had once been real, was torn at the moment at
which he evacuated his bowels after an enema, and that under this
condition his illness left him? The context enables us to reply. If
this birth-veil was torn, then he saw the world and was re-born. The
stool was the child, as which he was born a second time, to a happier
life. Here, then, we have the phantasy of re-birth, to which Jung has
recently drawn attention and to which he has assigned such a
dominating position in the imaginative life of neurotics.
This would be very agreeable, if it were all. But certain details of
the situation, and a due regard for the connection between it and this
particular patient’s life-history, compel us to pursue the
interpretation further. The necessary condition of his re-birth was
that he should have an enema administered to him by a man. (It was not
until later on that he was driven by necessity to take this man’s
place himself.) This can only have meant that he had identified
himself with his mother, that the man was acting as his father, and
that the enema was repeating the act of copulation, as the fruit of
which the excrement-baby (which was once again himself) would be
born. The phantasy of re-birth was therefore bound up closely with the
necessary condition of sexual satisfaction from a man. So that the
translation now runs to this effect: only on condition that he took
the woman’s place and substituted himself for his mother, and thus let
himself be sexually satisfied by his father and bore him a
child---only on that condition would his illness leave him. Here,
therefore, the phantasy of re-birth was simply a mutilated and
censored version of the homosexual wish-phantasy.
{582}
If we look into the matter more closely we cannot help remarking that
in this condition which he laid down for his recovery the patient was
simply repeating the state of affairs at the time of the so-called
primal scene. At that moment he had wanted to substitute himself for
his mother; and, as we assumed long ago, it was he himself who, in the
scene in question, had produced the excrement-baby. He still remained
fixed as though by a spell to the scene which had such a decisive
effect upon his sexual life, and the return of which during the night
of the dream brought the onset of his illness. The tearing of the veil
was analogous to the opening of his eyes and to the opening of the
window. The primal scene had become transformed into the necessary
condition for his recovery.
It is easy to make a unified statement of what was expressed on the
one hand by the complaint he made and on the other hand by the single
exceptional condition under which the complaint no longer held good,
and thus to make clear the whole meaning that underlay the two
factors. He wished he could be back in the womb, not simply in order
that he might then be re-born, but in order that he might be copulated
with there by his father, might obtain sexual satisfaction from him,
and might bear him a child.
The wish to be born of his father (as he had at first believed was the
case), the wish to be sexually satisfied by him, the wish to present
him with a child---and all of this at the price of his own
masculinity, and expressed in the language of anal erotism---these
wishes complete the circle of his fixation upon his father: in them
homosexuality has found its furthest and most intimate
expression.[409]
This instance, I think, throws light upon the meaning and origin of
the womb-phantasy as well as {583} that of re-birth. The former, the
womb-phantasy, is frequently derived (as it was in the present case)
from an attachment to the father. There is a wish to be inside the
mother’s womb in order to replace her during coitus---in order to take
her place in regard to the father. The phantasy of re-birth, on the
other hand, is in all probability regularly a softened substitute (a
euphemism, one might say) for the phantasy of incestuous intercourse
with the mother; to make use of Silberer’s expression, it is an
_anagogic_ abbreviation of it. There is a wish to be back in a
situation in which one was in the mother’s genitals; and in this
connection the man is identifying himself with his own penis and is
using it to represent himself. Thus the two phantasies are revealed as
one another’s counterparts: they give expression, according as the
subject’s attitude is feminine or masculine, to his wish for sexual
intercourse with his father or with his mother. We cannot dismiss the
possibility that in the complaint made by our present patient and in
the necessary condition laid down for his recovery the two phantasies,
that is to say the two incestuous wishes, were united.
I will make a final attempt at re-interpreting the last findings of
this analysis in accordance with the scheme of my opponents. The
patient lamented his flight from the world in a typical womb-phantasy
and viewed his recovery as a typically conceived re-birth. In
accordance with the predominant side of his disposition, he expressed
the latter in anal symptoms. He next concocted, upon the model of his
anal phantasy of re-birth, a childhood scene which repeated his wishes
in an archaic-symbolic medium of expression. His symptoms were then
strung together as though they had been derived from a primal scene of
this kind. He was driven to embark upon this long backward course
either because he had come up against some problem in life which he
was too lazy to solve, or because he had every reason to be aware of
his own inferiority and thought he could best protect himself {584}
from being slighted by elaborating such arrangements as these.
All this would be very nice and pretty, if only the unlucky wretch had
not had a dream when he was no more than four years old, which brought
the beginning of his neurosis, which was instigated by his
grandfather’s story of the tailor and the wolf, and the interpretation
of which necessitates the assumption of this primal scene. But all the
alleviations which the theories of Jung and Adler seek to afford us
come to grief, alas, upon such paltry but unimpeachable facts as
these. As things stand, it seems to me that the phantasy of re-birth
was a derivative of the primal scene rather than that the primal scene
was, on the contrary, a reflection of the phantasy of re-birth. And we
may perhaps even suppose that the patient, at a time only four years
after his birth, may still have been too young to be already wishing
to be born again. But no, I must take this last argument back; for my
own observations show that we have rated the powers of children too
low and that there is no knowing what they cannot be given credit
for.[410]
IX {585}
RECAPITULATIONS AND PROBLEMS
I do not know if the reader of this report of an analysis will have
succeeded in forming a clear picture of the origin and development of
the patient’s illness. I fear that, on the contrary, this will not
have been the case. But though on other occasions I have said very
little on behalf of my powers in the art of exposition, I should like
in the present instance to plead mitigating circumstances. The
description of such early phases and of such deep strata of mental
life has been a problem which has never before been attacked; and it
is better to solve that problem badly than to take flight before
it---a proceeding which would moreover (or so we are told) involve the
coward in risks of a particular kind. I prefer, therefore, to put a
bold face on it and show that I have not allowed myself to be held
back by a sense of my own inferiority.
The case itself was not a particularly favourable one. The advantage
of having a wealth of information about the patient’s childhood (an
advantage which was made possible by the fact that the child could be
studied through the medium of the adult) had to be purchased at the
expense of the analysis being most terribly disjointed and of the
exposition showing corresponding gaps. Personal peculiarities in the
patient and a national character that was foreign to ours made the
task of feeling one’s way into his mind a laborious one. The contrast
between the patient’s agreeable and affable personality, his acute
intelligence and his nice-mindedness on the one hand, and his
completely unbridled instinctual life on the other, necessitated an
excessively long process of preparatory education, and {586} this made
a general perspective more difficult. But the patient himself has no
responsibility for that feature of the case which put the severest
obstacles in the way of any description of it. In the psychology of
adults we have fortunately reached the point of being able to divide
mental processes into conscious and unconscious and of being able to
give a clearly worded description of both. With children this
distinction leaves us almost completely in the lurch. It is often
embarrassing to decide what one would choose to call conscious and
what unconscious. Processes which have become the dominant ones, and
which from their subsequent behaviour must be equated with conscious
ones, have nevertheless not been conscious in the child. It is easy to
understand why. In children the conscious has not yet acquired all its
characteristics; it is still in process of development, and it does
not as yet fully possess the capacity for transposing itself into
verbal images. We are constantly guilty of making a confusion between
the phenomenon of emergence as a perception in consciousness and the
fact of belonging to a hypothetical psychical system to which we ought
to assign some conventional name, but which we in fact also call
‘consciousness’ (the system Cs.). This confusion does no harm when we
are giving a psychological description of an adult, but it is
misleading when we are dealing with that of a young child. Nor should
we be much assisted here if we introduced the ‘preconscious’, for a
child’s preconscious may, in just the same way, fail to coincide with
an adult’s. We must be content, therefore, with having clearly
recognized the obscurity.
It is obvious that a case such as that which is described in these
pages might be made an excuse for dragging into the discussion every
one of the findings and problems of psycho-analysis. But this would be
an endless and unjustifiable labour. It must be recognized that
everything cannot be learnt from a single case and that everything
cannot be decided by it; we must content ourselves with exploiting
whatever it may {587} happen to show most clearly. There are in any
case narrow limits to what a psycho-analysis is called upon to
explain. For, while it is its business to explain the striking
symptom-formations by revealing their origin, the psychical mechanisms
and instinctual processes to which one is led by that means do not
require to be explained but merely to be described. In order to derive
fresh generalizations from what has thus been established with regard
to the mechanisms and instincts, it would be essential to have at
one’s disposal numerous cases as thoroughly and deeply analysed as the
present one. But they are not easily to be had, and each one of them
requires years of labour. So that advances in these spheres of
knowledge must necessarily be slow. There is no doubt a great
temptation to content oneself with ‘scratching’ the mental surface of
a number of people and of replacing what is left undone by
speculation---the latter being put under the patronage of some school
or other of philosophy. Practical requirements may also be adduced in
favour of this procedure; but no substitute can satisfy the
requirements of science.
I shall now attempt to sketch out a synthetic survey of my patient’s
sexual development, beginning from its earliest indications. The first
that we hear of it is in the disturbance of his appetite; for, taking
other observations into account, I am inclined, though with due
reservations, to regard this as a result of some process in the sphere
of sexuality. I have been driven to regard as the earliest
recognizable sexual organization the so-called ‘cannibalistic’ or
‘oral’ phase, during which the original attachment of sexual
excitation to the nutritional instinct still dominates the scene. It
is not to be expected that we should come upon direct manifestations
of this phase, but only upon indications of it where disturbances have
been set up. Impairment of the nutritional instinct (though this can
of course have other causes) draws our attention to a failure on the
part of the organism to master its sexual excitation. In this phase
the sexual aim could only {588} be cannibalism---eating; it makes its
appearance with our present patient by means of regression from a
higher stage, in the form of fear of ‘being eaten by the wolf’. We
were, indeed, obliged to translate this into a fear of being copulated
with by his father. It is well known that there is a neurosis which
occurs at a much later age, in girls at the time of puberty or soon
afterwards, and which expresses aversion to sexuality by means of
anorexia. This neurosis will have to be brought into relation with the
oral phase of sexual life. The erotic aim of the oral organization
further makes its appearance at the height of a lover’s paroxysm (in
such phrases as ‘I could devour you with love’) and in affectionate
intercourse with children, when the grown-up person is pretending to
be a child himself. I have elsewhere given voice to a suspicion that
the father of our present patient used himself to indulge in
‘affectionate abuse’, and may have played at wolf or dog with the
little boy and have threatened as a joke to gobble him up (see
p. 502). The patient confirmed this suspicion by his curious behaviour
in the transference. Whenever he shrank back on to the transference
from the difficulties of the treatment, he used to threaten me with
eating me up and later with all kinds of other ill-treatment---all of
which was merely an expression of affection.
Permanent marks have been left by this oral phase of sexuality upon
the usages of language. People commonly speak, for instance, of an
‘appetizing’ love-object, and describe persons they are fond of as
‘sweet’. It will be remembered, too, that our little patient would
only eat sweet things. In dreams sweet things and sweetmeats stand
regularly for caresses or sexual gratifications.
It appears, moreover, that there is an anxiety belonging to this phase
(only, of course, where some disturbance has arisen) which manifests
itself as a fear of death and may be attached to anything that is
pointed out to the child as being suitable for the {589} purpose. With
our patient it was employed to induce him to overcome his loss of
appetite and indeed to overcompensate for it. A way will be pointed in
the direction of the possible origin of this disturbance of his
appetite, if we bear in mind (basing ourselves upon the hypothesis
that we have so often discussed) that his observation of coitus at the
age of one and a half, which produced so many deferred effects,
certainly occurred before the time of these difficulties in his
eating. So we may perhaps suppose that it accelerated the processes of
sexual maturing and consequently did in fact also produce direct
effects, though these were insignificant-looking.
I am of course aware that it is possible to explain the symptoms of
this period (the wolf-anxiety and the disturbance of appetite) in
another and simpler manner, without any reference to sexuality or to a
pregenital stage of its organization. Those who like to neglect the
indications of neurosis and the interconnections between events will
prefer this other explanation, and I shall not be able to prevent
their doing so. It is hard to discover any cogent evidence in regard
to these beginnings of sexual life except by such roundabout paths as
I have indicated.
In the scene with Grusha (at the age of two and a half) we see the
little boy at the beginning of a development which, except perhaps for
its prematureness, deserves to be considered normal; thus we find in
it identification with his father, and urethral erotism representing
masculinity. It was also completely under the sway of the primal
scene. We have hitherto regarded his identification with his father as
being narcissistic; but if we take the content of the primal scene
into account we cannot deny that it had already reached the stage of
genital organization. His male genital organ had begun to play its
part and it continued to do so under the influence of his seduction by
his sister.
But his seduction gives the impression not merely {590} of having
encouraged his sexual development but of having, to an even greater
extent, disturbed and diverted it. It offered him a passive sexual
aim, which was ultimately incompatible with the action of his male
genital organ. At the first external obstacle, the threat of
castration from his Nanya (at the age of three and a half), his
genital organization, half-hearted as it still was, broke down and
regressed to the stage which had preceded it, namely to that of the
sadistic-anal organization, which he might otherwise have passed
through, perhaps, with as slight indications as other children.
The sadistic-anal organization can easily be regarded as a
continuation and development of the oral one. The violent muscular
activity, directed upon the object, by which it is characterized, is
to be explained as an action preparatory to eating. The eating then
ceases to be a sexual aim, and the preparatory action becomes a
sufficient aim in itself. The essential novelty, as compared with the
previous stage, is that the receptive passive function becomes
disengaged from the oral zone and attached to the anal zone. In this
connection we can hardly fail to think of biological parallels or of
the theory that the pregenital organizations in man should be regarded
as vestiges of conditions which have been permanently retained in
several classes of animals. The building up of the instinct of inquiry
out of its various components is another characteristic feature of
this stage of development.
The boy’s anal erotism was not particularly noticeable. Under the
influence of his sadism the affectionate significance of faeces gave
place to an offensive one. A sense of guilt, the presence of which
points to developmental processes in spheres other than the sexual
one, played a part in the transformation of his sadism into masochism.
His seduction continued to make its influence felt, by maintaining the
passivity of his sexual aim. It transformed his sadism to a great
extent into its {591} passive counterpart, masochism. But it is
questionable whether the seduction can be made entirely responsible
for this characteristic of passivity, for the child’s reaction to his
observation of coitus at the age of one and a half was already
preponderantly a passive one. His sympathetic sexual excitement
expressed itself by his passing a stool, though it is true that in
this behaviour an active element is also to be distinguished. Side by
side with the masochism which dominated his sexual tendencies and also
found expression in phantasies, his sadism, too, persisted and was
directed against small animals. His sexual inquiries had set in from
the time of the seduction and had been concerned, in essence, with two
problems: the origin of children and the possibility of losing the
genitals. These inquiries wove themselves into the manifestations of
his instinctual activities, and directed his sadistic propensities on
to small animals as being representatives of small children.
We have now carried our account down to about the time of the boy’s
fourth birthday, and it was at that point that the dream brought into
deferred operation his observation of coitus at the age of one and a
half. The processes which now ensued can neither be completely grasped
nor adequately described. The activation of the picture, which, thanks
to the advance in his intellectual development, he was now able to
understand, operated like a fresh event, but also like a new trauma,
like an interference from outside analogous to the seduction. The
genital organization which had been broken off was re-established at a
single blow; but the advance that was achieved in the dream could not
be maintained. On the contrary, there came about, by means of a
process that can only be likened to a repression, a repudiation of the
new element and its replacement by a phobia.
Thus the sadistic-anal organization continued to exist during the
phase of the animal phobia which now set in, only it suffered an
admixture of anxiety-phenomena. {592} The child persisted in his
sadistic as well as in his masochistic activities, but he reacted with
anxiety to a portion of them; the conversion of his sadism into its
opposite probably made further progress.
The analysis of the anxiety-dream shows us that the repression was
connected with his recognition of the existence of castration. The new
element was rejected because its acceptance would have cost him his
penis. Closer consideration leads us to some such conclusion as the
following. What was repressed was the homosexual attitude understood
in the genital sense, an attitude which had been formed under the
influence of this recognition of castration. But that attitude was
retained as regards the unconscious and constituted into a dissociated
and deeper stratum. The motive force of the repression seems to have
been the narcissistic masculinity which attached to the boy’s
genitals, and which had come into a long-prepared conflict with the
passivity of his homosexual sexual aim. The repression was thus a
result of his masculinity.
One might be tempted at this point to introduce a slight alteration
into psycho-analytical theory. It would seem palpably obvious that the
repression and the formation of the neurosis must have originated out
of the conflict between masculine and feminine tendencies, that is out
of bisexuality. This view of the situation, however, is incomplete. Of
the two conflicting sexual impulses one was ego-syntonic, while the
other offended the boy’s narcissistic interest and for that reason
underwent repression. So that in this case, no less than in others, it
was the ego that put the repression into operation, for the benefit of
one of the sexual tendencies. In other cases there is no such conflict
between masculinity and femininity; there is only a single sexual
tendency present, which seeks for admission, but offends against
certain forces of the ego and is consequently expelled. Conflicts
between sexuality and the moral ego-tendencies are indeed far more
common than such as take place within the sphere of sexuality, {593}
though a moral conflict of the former kind is lacking in our present
case. To assert that bisexuality is the motive force leading to
repression is to make an insufficiently wide generalization; whereas
if we assert the same of the conflict between the ego and the sexual
tendencies (that is, the libido) we shall have covered all possible
cases.
The theory of the ‘masculine protest’, as it has been developed by
Adler, is faced by the difficulty that repression by no means always
takes the side of masculinity against femininity; there are quite
large classes of cases in which it is masculinity that has to submit
to repression by the ego.
Moreover, a juster appreciation of the process of repression in our
present case would lead us to deny that narcissistic masculinity was
the sole motive force. The homosexual attitude which came into being
during the dream was of such overwhelming intensity that the little
boy’s ego found itself unable to cope with it and so defended itself
against it by the process of repression. The narcissistic masculinity
which attached to his genitals, being opposed to the homosexual
attitude, was drawn in, in order to assist the ego in carrying out the
task. Merely to avoid misunderstandings, I will add that all
narcissistic impulses operate from the ego and have their permanent
seat in the ego, and that repressions are directed against libidinal
object-cathexes.
Let us now leave the process of repression, though we have perhaps not
succeeded in dealing with it exhaustively, and let us turn to the
boy’s state when he awoke from the dream. If it had really been his
masculinity that had triumphed over his homosexuality (or femininity)
during the dream-process, then we should necessarily find that the
dominant tendency was an active sexual tendency of a character already
explicitly masculine. But there is no question of this having
happened. The essentials of the sexual organization had not been
changed; the sadistic-anal phase persisted, and remained the dominant
one. The {594} triumph of his masculinity was shown only in this: that
thenceforward he reacted with anxiety to the passive sexual aims of
the dominant organization---aims which were masochistic but not
feminine. We are not confronted by a triumphant masculine sexual
tendency, but only by a passive one and a struggle against it.
I can well imagine the difficulties that the reader must find in the
sharp distinction (unfamiliar but essential) which I have drawn
between ‘active’ and ‘masculine’ and between ‘passive’ and
‘feminine’. I shall therefore not hesitate to repeat myself. The state
of affairs, then, after the dream, may be described as follows. The
sexual tendencies had been split up; in the unconscious the stage of
the genital organization had been reached, and a very intense
homosexuality set up; on the top of this (virtually in the conscious)
there persisted the earlier sadistic and predominantly masochistic
sexual current; the ego had upon the whole changed its attitude
towards sexuality, for it now repudiated sexuality and rejected the
dominant masochistic aims with anxiety, just as it had reacted to the
deeper homosexual aims with the formation of a phobia. Thus the result
of the dream was not so much the triumph of a masculine current, as a
reaction against a feminine and passive one. It would be very forced
to ascribe the quality of masculinity to this reaction. The truth is
that the ego has no sexual currents, but only an interest in its own
self-protection and in the preservation of its narcissism.
Let us now consider the phobia. It came into existence on the level of
the genital organization, and shows us the relatively simple mechanism
of an anxiety-hysteria. The ego, by developing anxiety, was protecting
itself against what it regarded as an overwhelming danger, namely,
homosexual gratification. But the process of repression left behind it
a trace which cannot be overlooked. The object to which the dangerous
sexual aim had been attached had to have {595} its place taken in
consciousness by another one. What became conscious was fear not of
the _father_ but of the _wolf_. Nor did the process stop at the
formation of a phobia with a single content. A considerable time
afterwards the wolf was replaced by the lion. Simultaneously with
sadistic impulses against small animals there was a phobia directed
towards them, in their capacity of representatives of the boy’s
rivals, the possible small children. The origin of the butterfly
phobia is of especial interest. It was like a repetition of the
mechanism that produced the wolf phobia in the dream. Owing to a
chance stimulus an old experience, the scene with Grusha, was
activated; her threat of castration thus produced deferred effects,
though at the time it was uttered it had made no impression.[411]
It may truly be said that the anxiety that was concerned in the
formation of these phobias was a fear of castration. This statement
involves no contradiction of the view that the anxiety originated from
the repression of homosexual libido. Both modes of {596} expression
refer to the same process: namely, the withdrawal of libido by the ego
from the homosexual conative tendency, the libido having then become
converted into free anxiety and subsequently bound in phobias. The
first method of statement merely mentions in addition the motive power
by which the ego was actuated.
If we look into the matter more closely we shall see that our
patient’s first illness (leaving the disturbance of appetite out of
account) is not exhausted when we have extracted the phobia from
it. It must be regarded as a true hysteria showing not merely
anxiety-symptoms but also conversion-phenomena. A portion of the
homosexual impulse was retained by the organ concerned in it; from
that time forward, and equally during his adult life, his bowel
behaved like a hysterically affected organ. The unconscious repressed
homosexuality withdrew into his bowel. It was precisely this trait of
hysteria which was of such great service in helping to clear up his
later illness.
We must now summon up our courage to attack the still more complicated
structure of the obsessional neurosis. Let us once more bear the
situation in mind: a dominant masochistic sexual current and a
repressed homosexual one, and an ego deep in hysterical repudiation of
them. What processes transformed this condition into one of
obsessional neurosis?
The transformation did not occur spontaneously, through internal
development, but through an outside influence. Its visible effect was
that the patient’s relation to his father, which stood in the
foreground, and which had so far found expression in the wolf phobia,
was now manifested in obsessional piety. I cannot refrain from
pointing out that the course of events in this part of the patient’s
history affords an unmistakable confirmation of an assertion which I
made in _Totem und Tabu_ upon the relation of the totem animal to the
deity.[412] I there decided in favour {597} of the view that the idea
of God was not a development from the totem, but replaced it after
arising independently from a root common to both ideas. The totem, I
maintained, was the first father-surrogate, and God was a later one,
in which the father had regained his human form. And we find the same
thing with our patient. In his wolf phobia he had gone through the
stage of the totemistic father-surrogate; but that stage was now
broken off, and, as a result of new relations between him and his
father, was replaced by a phase of religious piety.
The influence that provoked this transformation was the acquaintance
which he obtained through his mother’s agency with the doctrines of
religion and with the Bible story. This educational measure had the
desired effect. The sadistic-masochistic sexual organization came
slowly to an end, the wolf phobia quickly vanished, and, instead of
sexuality being repudiated with anxiety, a higher method of
suppressing it made its appearance. Piety became the dominant force in
the child’s life. These victories, however, were not won without
struggles, of which his blasphemous thoughts were an indication, and
of which the establishment of an obsessive exaggeration of religious
ceremonial was the result.
Apart from these pathological phenomena, it may be said that in the
present case religion achieved all the aims for the sake of which it
is included in the education of the individual. It put a restraint
upon his sexual tendencies by affording them a sublimation and a safe
mooring; it lowered the importance of his family relationships, and
thus protected him from the threat of isolation by giving him access
to the great community of mankind. The untamed and fear-ridden child
became social, well-behaved, and amenable to education.
The chief motive force of the influence which religion had upon him
was his identification with the figure of Christ, which came
particularly easily to him {598} owing to the accident of the date of
his birth. Along this path his extravagant love of his father, which
had made the repression necessary, found its way at length to an ideal
sublimation. As Christ, he could love his father, who was now called
God, with a fervour which had sought in vain to discharge itself so
long as his father had been a mortal. The means by which he could bear
witness to this love were laid down by religion, and they were not
haunted by that sense of guilt from which his individual feelings of
love could not set themselves free. In this way it was still possible
for him to drain off his deepest sexual current, which had already
been precipitated in the form of unconscious homosexuality; and at the
same time his more superficial masochistic tendency found an
incomparable sublimation, without much renunciation, in the story of
the Passion of Christ, who, at the behest of his divine Father and for
his honour, had let himself be ill-treated and sacrificed. So it was
that religion did its work for the hard-pressed child---by the
combination which it afforded the believer of satisfaction, of
sublimation, of diversion from sensual processes to purely spiritual
ones, and of access to social relationships.
The opposition which he at first offered to religion had three
different points of origin. To begin with, there was, in general, his
characteristic (which we have seen exemplified already) of fending off
all novelties. Any position of the libido which he had once taken up
was obstinately defended by him from fear of what he would lose by
giving it up and from distrust of the probability of a complete
substitute being afforded by the new position that was in view. This
is an important and fundamental psychological peculiarity, which I
described in my _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_ as capacity for
‘fixation’. Under the name of psychical ‘inertia’ Jung has attempted
to erect it into the principal cause of all the failures of
neurotics. I think he is wrong in this; for this factor has a far more
{599} general application and plays an important part in the lives of
the non-neurotic as well. Instability and inertness of the libidinal
cathexes (as well as of other kinds of energic cathexes) are special
characteristics which attach to many normal persons and by no means to
all neurotics, and which have hitherto not been brought into relation
with other qualities. They are, as it were, like prime numbers, not
further divisible. We only know one thing about them, and that is that
mobility of the mental cathexes is a quality which shows striking
diminution with the advance of age. This has given us one of the
indications of the limits within which psycho-analytic treatment is
effective. There are some people, however, who retain this mental
plasticity far beyond the usual age-limit, and others who lose it very
prematurely. If the latter are neurotics, we make the unwelcome
discovery that it is impossible to undo developments in them which, in
apparently similar circumstances, have been easily dealt with in other
people. So that in considering the conversion of psychical energy no
less than of physical, we must make use of the concept of an
_entropy_, which opposes the undoing of what has already occurred.
A second point of attack was afforded by the circumstance that
religious doctrine is itself based upon a by no means unambiguous
relation to God the Father, and in fact bears the stamp of the
ambivalent attitude which presided over its origin. The patient’s own
ambivalence, which he possessed in a high degree of development,
helped him to detect the same quality in religion, and he associated
with it those acute powers of criticism whose presence could not fail
to astonish us in a child of four and a half. But there was a third
factor at work, which was certainly the most important of all, and to
the operation of which we must ascribe the pathological products of
his struggle against religion. The truth was that the mental current
which impelled him to turn to men as sexual objects and which should
have been sublimated by religion was no longer free; {600} a portion
of it was cut off by repression and so withdrawn from the possibility
of sublimation and attached to its original sexual aim. In virtue of
this state of things, the repressed portion kept struggling to forge
its way through to the sublimated portion or to drag down the latter
to itself. The first ruminations which he wove round the figure of
Christ already involved the question whether that sublime son could
also fulfil the sexual relationship to his father which the patient
had retained in his unconscious. The only result of his attempts at
repudiating this tendency was the production of apparently blasphemous
obsessive thoughts, in which his physical affection for God asserted
itself in the form of disparagement. A violent defensive struggle
against these compromise-formations then inevitably led to an
obsessive exaggeration of all the activities which are prescribed for
giving expression to piety and a pure love of God. Religion won in the
end, but its instinctual foundations proved themselves to be
incomparably stronger than the durability of the products of their
sublimation. As soon as the course of events presented him with a new
father-surrogate, who threw his weight into the scale against
religion, it was dropped and replaced by something else. Let us
further bear in mind, as an interesting complication, that his piety
originated under the influence of women (his mother and his nurse),
while it was a masculine influence that set him free from it.
The origin of this obsessional neurosis upon the basis of the
sadistic-anal organization confirms on the whole what I have said
elsewhere upon the predisposition to obsessional neurosis.[413] The
previous existence, however, of a severe hysteria in the present case
makes it more obscure in this respect. I will conclude my survey of
the patient’s sexual development by giving some brief glimpses of its
later vicissitudes. During the years of puberty a markedly sensual,
masculine {601} current, with a sexual aim suitable to the genital
organization, made its appearance in him; it must be regarded as
normal, and its history occupied the period up to the time of his
later illness. It was connected directly with the Grusha scene, from
which it borrowed its characteristic feature---a compulsive falling in
love that came on and passed off by sudden fits. This current had to
struggle against the inhibitions that were derived from his infantile
neurosis. There had been a violent revulsion in the direction of
women, and he had thus won his way to complete masculinity. From that
time forward he retained women as his sexual object; but he did not
enjoy this possession, for a powerful, and now entirely unconscious,
inclination towards men, in which were united all the forces of the
earlier phases of his development, was constantly drawing him away
from his female objects and compelling him in the intervals to
exaggerate his dependence upon women. He kept complaining during the
treatment that he could not bear having to do with women, and all our
labours were directed towards disclosing to him his unconscious
relation to men. The whole situation might be summarized in the shape
of a formula. His childhood had been marked by a wavering between
activity and passivity, his puberty by a struggle for masculinity, and
the period after he had fallen ill by a fight for the object of his
masculine desires. The exciting cause of his illness was not one of
the types of neurotic nosogenesis which I have been able to put
together as special cases of ‘frustration’,[414] and it thus draws
attention to a gap in that classification. He broke down after an
organic affection of the genitals had revived his fear of castration,
shattered his narcissism, and compelled him to abandon his hope of
being personally favoured by destiny. He fell ill, therefore, as the
result of a narcissistic ‘frustration’. This excessive strength of his
narcissism was in complete harmony with the other indications of an
{602} inhibited sexual development: with the fact that so few of his
psychical tendencies were concentrated in his heterosexual
object-choice, in spite of all its energy, and that his homosexual
attitude, standing so much nearer to narcissism, persisted in him as
an unconscious force with such very great tenacity. Naturally, where
disturbances like these are present, psycho-analytic treatment cannot
bring about any instantaneous revolution or put matters upon a level
with a normal development; it can only get rid of the obstacles and
clear the path, so that the influences of life may be able to further
development along better lines.
I shall now bring together some peculiarities of the patient’s
mentality which were revealed by the psycho-analytic treatment but
were not further elucidated and were accordingly not susceptible to
direct influence. Such were his tenacity of fixation, which has
already been discussed, his extraordinary propensity to ambivalence,
and (as a third trait in a constitution which deserves the name of
archaic) his power of maintaining simultaneously the most various and
contradictory libidinal cathexes, all of them capable of functioning
side by side. His constant wavering between these (a characteristic
which for a long time seemed to block the way to recovery and progress
in the treatment) dominated the clinical picture during his adult
illness, which I have scarcely been able to touch upon in these
pages. This was undoubtedly a trait belonging to the general character
of the unconscious, which in his case had persisted into processes
that had become conscious. But it showed itself only in the products
of affective impulses; in the region of pure logic he betrayed, on the
contrary, a peculiar skill in unearthing contradictions and
inconsistencies. So it was that his mental life impressed one in much
the same way as the religion of ancient Egypt, which is so
unintelligible to us because it preserves the earlier stages of its
development side by side with the end-products, retains the most
ancient {603} gods and their significations along with the most modern
ones, and thus, as it were, spreads out upon a two-dimensional surface
what other instances of evolution show us in the solid.
I have now come to the end of what I had to say upon this case. There
remain two problems, of the many that it raises, which seem to me to
deserve special emphasis. The first relates to the phylogenetically
inherited schemata, which, like the categories of philosophy, are
concerned with the business of ‘placing’ the impressions derived from
actual experience. I am inclined to take the view that they are
precipitates from the history of human civilization. The Oedipus
complex, which comprises a child’s relation to its parents, is one of
them---is, in fact, the best known member of the class. Wherever
experiences fail to fit in with the hereditary schema, they become
remodelled in the imagination---a process which might very profitably
be followed out in detail. It is precisely such cases that are
calculated to convince us of the independent existence of the
schema. We are often able to see the schema triumphing over the
experience of the individual; as when in our present case the boy’s
father became the castrator and the menace to his infantile sexuality
in spite of what was in other respects an inverted Oedipus complex. A
similar process is at work where a nurse comes to play the mother’s
part or where the two become fused together. The contradictions
between experience and the schema seem to introduce an abundance of
material into the conflicts of childhood.
The second problem is not far removed from the first, but it is
incomparably more important. If one considers the behaviour of the
four-year-old child towards the re-activated primal scene,[415] or
even if one {604} thinks of the far simpler reactions of the
one-and-a-half-year-old child when the scene was actually experienced,
it is hard to dismiss the view that some sort of hardly definable
knowledge, something, as it were, preparatory to an understanding, was
at work in the child at the time.[416] What this may have consisted in
we can form no conception; we have nothing at our disposal but the
single analogy---and it is an excellent one---of the far-reaching
_instinctive_ knowledge of animals.
If human beings too possessed an instinctive endowment such as this,
it would not be surprising that it should be very particularly
concerned with the processes of sexual life, even though it could not
be by any means confined to them. This instinctive factor would then
be the nucleus of the unconscious, a primitive kind of mental
activity, which would later be dethroned and overlaid by human reason,
when that faculty came to be acquired, but which in some people,
perhaps in every one, would retain the power of drawing down to it the
higher mental processes. Repression would be the return to this
instinctive stage, and man would thus be paying for his great new
acquisition with his liability to neurosis, and would be bearing
witness by the possibility of the neuroses to the existence of those
earlier, instinct-like, preliminary stages. But the significance of
the traumas of early childhood would lie in the fact that to this
unconscious they would contribute material which would save it from
being worn away by the subsequent course of development.
I am aware that expression has been given in many quarters to thoughts
like these, which emphasize the hereditary, phylogenetically acquired
factor in mental life. In fact, I am of opinion that people have been
far too ready to find room for them and ascribe importance to them in
psycho-analysis. I consider that {605} they are only admissible when
psycho-analysis strictly observes the correct order of precedence,
and, after forcing its way through the strata of what has been
acquired by the individual, comes at last upon traces of what has been
inherited.[417]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF BOOKS AND PAPERS REFERRED {606}
TO IN THE TEXT
- Abraham, Karl,
- ‘Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der Hysterie und der Dementia
praecox.’ First published in _Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde
und Psychiatrie_, Neue Folge, Bd. 19, 1908; reprinted in
Abraham, _Klinische Beiträge zur Psychoanalyse_, Vienna, 1921.
- _Traum und Mythus_, Vienna, 1908.
- Adler, Alfred,
- ‘Der Aggressionsbetrieb im Leben und in der Neurose.’
_Fortschritte der Medizin_, 1908.
- ‘Der psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose.’
_Fortschritte der Medizin_, 1910.
- Bloch, Iwan,
- _Beiträge zur Ätiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, 1902 and
1903.
- Breuer, Jos., and Freud, Sigm.,
- _Studien über Hysterie_, Vienna, 1895; Fourth Edition, 1922.
- Ferenczi, S.,
- ‘Transitory Symptom-Formations during Analysis.’ (Chapter
vii. of Ferenczi, _Contributions to Psycho-Analysis_, Boston,
1916.) Translated by Ernest Jones from ‘Über passagère
Symptombildungen während der Analyse’, _Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse_, Bd. II., 1912.
- Freud, Sigm.,
- _Beyond the Pleasure Principle_, London, 1922. Translated by
C. J. M. Hubback from _Jenseits des Lustprinzips_, Vienna, 1920;
Third Edition, 1923.
- _Das Ich und das Es_, Vienna, 1923.
- _Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten_, Vienna, 1905;
Fourth Edition, 1925.
- _Die Traumdeutung_, Vienna, 1900; Seventh Edition, 1922.
- _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_, Vienna, 1905; Sixth
Edition, 1925.
- _Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci_, Vienna, 1910;
Third Edition, 1923.
- _Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis_,
London, 1922. Translated by Joan Riviere from _Vorlesungen zur
Einführung in die Psychoanalyse_, Vienna, 1917-18; Fourth
Edition, 1923.
- _Totem und Tabu_, Vienna, 1913; Third Edition, 1922.
- _Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens_. First published in
_Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie_, Bd. X., 1901;
reprinted in book form, Berlin, 1904; Tenth Edition, Vienna,
1924.
{607}
- Hall, Stanley,
- ‘A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear’, _American Journal of
Psychology_, vol. xxv., 1914.
- Jones, Ernest,
- ‘Rationalization in Every-day Life’, _Journal of Abnormal
Psychology_, vol. iii., 1908; reprinted in Jones, _Papers on
Psycho-Analysis_, London, 1913; Third Edition, 1923.
- Jung, C. G.,
- _Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse_, Zurich, 1917.
- ‘Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie des Gerüchtes’, _Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse_, Bd. I., 1911.
- _Über die Psychologie der Dementia praecox_, Halle, 1907.
- ‘Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido’, _Jahrbuch für
psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen_,
Bd. III., 1912.
- Loewenfeld, L.,
- _Die psychischen Zwangserscheinungen_, Wiesbaden, 1904.
- Maeder, A.,
- ‘Psychologische Untersuchungen an Dementia praecox-Kranken’,
_Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische
Forschungen_, Bd. II., 1910.
- Rank, Otto,
- _Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden_, Vienna, 1909; Second
Edition, 1922.
- ‘Völkerpsychologische Parallelen zu den infantilen
Sexualtheorien’, _Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse_, Bd. II.,
1912.
- Reinach, Salomon,
- _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, Paris, 1905-8.
- Riklin, F.,
- ‘Über Versetzungsbesserungen’, _Psychiatrisch-neurologische
Wochenschrift_, 1905.
- Sadger, I.,
- ‘Ein Fall von multipler Perversion mit hysterischen Absenzen’,
_Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische
Forschungen_, Bd. II., 1910.
- Schmidt, Richard,
- _Beiträge zur indischen Erotik_, Leipzig, 1902.
- Schreber, Daniel Paul,
- _Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken_, Leipzig, 1903.
- Spielrein, S.,
- ‘Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenie
(Dementia praecox)’, _Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen_, Bd. III., 1912.
- Stekel, W.,
- _Nervöse Angstzustände und ihre Behandlung_, Vienna, 1908.
- Weininger, Otto,
- _Geschlecht und Charakter_, Vienna, 1903.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
[1]: [First published in _Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und
Neurologie_, Bd. xxviii., Heft 4, 1905. Reprinted in Freud,
_Sammlung kleiner Schriften_, ii., 1909.]
[2]: Schmidt, _Beiträge zur indischen Erotik_, 1902. (Preface.)
[3]: _Die Traumdeutung_, 1900.
[4]: (_Additional Note_, 1923).---The treatment described in this
paper was broken off on December 31st, 1899. My account of it was
written during the two weeks immediately following, but was not
published until 1905. It is not to be expected that after more
than twenty years of uninterrupted work I should see nothing to
alter in my view of such a case and in my presentment of it; but
it would obviously be absurd to bring the case history ‘up to
date’ by means of emendations and additions. In all essentials,
therefore, I have left it as it was, and in the text I have merely
corrected a few oversights and inaccuracies to which my excellent
English translators, Mr. and Mrs. James Strachey, have directed my
attention. Such critical remarks as I have thought it permissible
to add I have incorporated in these additional notes: so that the
reader will be justified in assuming that I still hold to the
opinions expressed in the text unless he finds them contradicted
in the footnotes. The problem of medical discretion which I have
discussed in this preface does not touch the remaining case
histories contained in this volume; for three of them were
published with the express assent of the patients (or rather, as
regards little Hans, with that of his father), while in the fourth
case (that of Schreber) the subject of the analysis was not
actually a person but a book produced by him. In Dora’s case the
secret was kept until this year. I had long been out of touch with
her, but a short while ago I heard that she had recently fallen
ill again from other causes, and had confided to her physician
that she had been analysed by me when she was a girl. This
disclosure made it easy for my well-informed colleague to
recognize her as the Dora of 1899. No fair judge of analytic
therapy will make it a reproach that the three months’ treatment
she received at that time effected no more than the relief of her
current conflict and was unable to give her protection against
subsequent illnesses.
[5]: _Die Traumdeutung_ (1900), Seventh Edition, 1922, p. 70.
[6]: [‘Science will not suffice, nor Art, But Patience, too, must play
her part.’ *Goethe*, _Faust_, Part I.]
[7]: Another physician once sent his sister to me for
psychotherapeutic treatment, telling me that she had for years
been treated without success for hysteria (pains and defective
gait). The short account which he gave me seemed quite consistent
with the diagnosis. In my first hour with the patient I got her to
tell me her history herself. When the story came out perfectly
clearly and connectedly in spite of the remarkable events it dealt
with, I told myself that the case could not be one of hysteria,
and immediately instituted a careful physical examination. This
led to the diagnosis of a fairly advanced stage of tabes, which
was later on treated with Hg injections (Ol. cinereum) by
Professor Lang with markedly beneficial results.
[8]: Amnesias and paramnesias stand in a complementary relation to
each other. When there are large gaps in the memory there will be
few mistakes in it. And conversely, the latter can at a first
glance completely conceal the presence of amnesias.
[9]: If a patient exhibits doubts in the course of his narrative, an
empirical rule teaches us to disregard such expressions of his
judgement entirely. If the narrative wavers between two versions,
we should incline to regard the first one as correct and the
second as a product of repression.
[10]: I do not, it is true, adopt the position that heredity is the
only aetiological factor in hysteria. But, on the other hand---and
I say this with particular reference to some of my earlier
publications (‘Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses’ (1896),
*Collected Papers*, vol. i.), in which I combated that view---I do
not wish to give an impression of underestimating the importance
of heredity in the aetiology of hysteria or of asserting that it
can be dispensed with. In the case of the present patient the
information I have given about her father and his brother and
sister indicates a sufficiently heavy taint; and, indeed, if the
view is taken that pathological conditions such as her mother’s
must also imply a hereditary predisposition, the patient’s
heredity may be regarded as a convergent one. To my mind, however,
there is another factor which is of more significance in the
girl’s hereditary or, properly speaking, constitutional
predisposition. I have mentioned that her father had contracted
syphilis before his marriage. Now a _strikingly high_ percentage
of the patients whom I have treated psycho-analytically come of
fathers who have suffered from tabes or general paralysis. In
consequence of the novelty of my therapeutic method, I see only
the _severest_ cases, which have already been under treatment for
years without any success. In accordance with the Erb-Fournier
theory, tabes or general paralysis in the male parent may be
regarded as evidence of an earlier luetic infection; and indeed I
was able to obtain direct confirmation of such an infection in a
number of cases. In the most recent discussion upon the offspring
of syphilitic parents (Thirteenth International Medical Congress,
held in Paris, August 2nd to 9th, 1900: papers by Finger,
Tarnowsky, Jullien, etc.), I find no mention of the conclusion to
which I have been driven by my experience as a
neuro-pathologist---namely, that syphilis in the male parent is a
very relevant factor in the aetiology of the neuropathic
constitution of children.
[11]: The probable exciting cause of this first illness will be
discussed later on.
[12]: On this point see the analysis of the second dream.
[13]: As I have already explained, the treatment of the case, and
consequently my insight into the complex of events composing it,
remained fragmentary. There are therefore many questions to which
I have no solution to offer, or in which I can only rely upon
hints and conjectures. This affair of the letter came up in the
course of one of our sittings, and the girl showed signs of
astonishment. ‘How on earth’, she asked, ‘did they find the
letter? It was shut up in my desk.’ But since she knew that her
parents had read this draft of a farewell letter, I conclude that
she had herself arranged for it to fall into their hands.
[14]: The attack was, I believe, accompanied by convulsions and
delirious states. But since this event was not reached by the
analysis either, I have no trustworthy recollections on the
subject to fall back upon.
[15]: Here is an instance of this. Another physician in Vienna, whose
conviction of the unimportance of sexual factors in hysteria has
probably been very much strengthened by such experiences as this,
was consulted in the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who suffered
from dangerous hysterical vomiting. He made up his mind to ask her
the painful question whether by any chance she had ever had a
love-affair with a man. ‘No!’ answered the child, no doubt with
well-affected astonishment; and then repeated to her mother in her
irreverent way: ‘Only fancy! the old stupid asked me if I was in
love!’ She afterwards came to me for treatment, and
proved---though not during our very first conversation, to be
sure---to have been a masturbator for many years, with a
considerable leucorrhoeal discharge (which had a close bearing
upon her vomiting). She had finally broken herself of the habit,
but was tormented in her abstinence by the most acute sense of
guilt, so that she looked upon every misfortune that befell her
family as a divine punishment for her transgression. Besides this,
she was under the influence of the romance of an unmarried aunt,
whose pregnancy (a second determinant for her vomiting) was
supposed to have been happily hidden from her. The girl was looked
upon as a ‘mere child,’ but she turned out to be initiated into
all the essentials of sexual relations.
[16]: I have gone beyond that theory, but I have not abandoned it;
that is to say, I do not to-day consider the theory incorrect, but
incomplete. All that I have abandoned is the emphasis laid upon
the so-called ‘hypnoid state,’ which was supposed to be occasioned
in the patient by the trauma, and to be the foundation for all the
psychologically abnormal events which followed. If, where a piece
of joint work is in question, it is legitimate to make a
subsequent division of property, I should like to take this
opportunity of stating that the hypothesis of ‘hypnoid
states’---which many reviewers were inclined to regard as the
central portion of our work---sprang entirely from the initiative
of Breuer. I regard the use of such a term as superfluous and
misleading, because it interrupts the continuity of the problem as
to the nature of the psychological process accompanying the
formation of hysterical symptoms.
[17]: Cf. my paper, ‘The Aetiology of Hysteria’ (1896), *Collected
Papers*, vol. i.
[18]: Our appreciation of these circumstances will be facilitated when
more light has been thrown upon them.
[19]: The causes of Dora’s disgust at the kiss were certainly not
adventitious, for in that case she could not have failed to
remember and mention them. I happen to know Herr K., for he was
the same person who had visited me with the patient’s father, and
he was still quite young and of prepossessing appearance.
[20]: The occurrence of displacements of this kind has not been
assumed for the purpose of this single explanation; the assumption
has proved indispensable for the explanation of a large class of
symptoms. Since treating Dora I have come across another instance
of an embrace (this time without a kiss) causing a fright. It was
a case of a young woman who had previously been devotedly fond of
the man she was engaged to, but had suddenly begun to feel a
coldness towards him, accompanied by severe depression, and on
that account came to me for treatment. There was no difficulty in
tracing the fright back to an erection on the man’s part, which
she had perceived but had dismissed from her consciousness.
[21]: Compare the second dream.
[22]: Here, as in all similar cases, the reader must be prepared to be
met not by one but by several causes---by _over-determination_.
[23]: All these discussions contain much that is typical and valid for
hysteria in general. The subject of erection solves some of the
most interesting hysterical symptoms. The attention that women pay
to the outlines of men’s genitals as seen through their clothing
becomes, when it has been repressed, a source of the very frequent
cases of avoiding company and of dreading society.---It is
scarcely possible to exaggerate the pathogenic significance of the
comprehensive tie uniting the sexual and the excremental, a tie
which is at the basis of a very large number of hysterical
phobias.
[24]: This is the point of connection with her own pretence at
suicide, which may thus be regarded as the expression of a longing
for a love of the same kind.
[25]: This governess used to read every sort of book on sexual life
and similar subjects, and talked to the girl about them, at the
same time asking her quite frankly not to mention their
conversations to her parents, as one could never tell what line
they might take about them. For some time I looked upon this woman
as the source of all Dora’s secret knowledge, and perhaps I was
not entirely wrong in this.
[26]: Compare the second dream.
[27]: The question then arises: If Dora loved Herr K., what was the
reason for her refusing him in the scene by the lake? Or at any
rate, why did her refusal take such a brutal form, as though she
were embittered against him? And how could a girl who was in love
feel insulted by a proposal which was made in a manner neither
tactless nor offensive?
[28]: [A fashionable health resort in the mountains, about fifty miles
south of Vienna.---_Trans._]
[29]: An event of everyday occurrence between sisters.
[30]: I shall discuss later on what further conclusion I drew from
these gastric pains.
[31]: (_Additional Note_, 1923).---This is not quite right. The
statement that the motives of illness are not present at the
beginning of the illness, but only appear secondarily to it,
cannot be maintained. In the very next paragraph motives for being
ill are mentioned which were in existence before the outbreak of
illness, and were partly responsible for that outbreak. I
subsequently found a better way of meeting the facts, by
introducing a distinction between the _primary_ advantage derived
from the illness (the _paranosic_ gain) and the _secondary_ one
(the _epinosic_ gain). The motive for being ill is, of course,
invariably the gaining of some advantage. What follows in the
later sentences of this paragraph applies to the epinosic
gain. But in every neurotic illness a paranosic gain is also to be
discerned. In the first place, falling ill involves a saving of
psychical effort; it emerges as being economically the most
convenient solution when there is a mental conflict (we speak of a
‘flight into illness’), even though in most cases the
ineffectiveness of such an escape becomes manifest at a later
stage. This element in the paranosic gain may be described as the
_internal_ or psychological one, and it is, so to say, a constant
one. But beyond this, external factors (such as in the instance
given above of the situation of a woman subjugated by her husband)
may contribute motives for falling ill; and these will constitute
the _external_ element in the paranosic gain.
[32]: A man of letters, who, by the way, is also a physician---Arthur
Schnitzler---has expressed this piece of knowledge very correctly
in his _Paracelsus_.
[33]: [‘_Unvermögend_’ means literally ‘unable’, and is commonly used
in the sense of both ‘not rich’ and ‘impotent’.---_Trans._]
[34]: These remarks upon the sexual perversions had been written some
years before the appearance of Bloch’s excellent book (_Beiträge
zur Ätiologie der Psychopathia sexualis_, 1902 and 1903). See also
my _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_, published this year
(1905).
[35]: A supervalent thought of this kind is often the only symptom,
beyond deep depression, of a pathological condition which is
usually described as ‘melancholia’, but which can be cleared up by
psycho-analysis like a hysteria.
[36]: In my _Traumdeutung_ (1900), Seventh Edition, p. 181, and in the
Third of my _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_ (1905).
[37]: The decisive factor in this connection is no doubt the early
appearance of true genital sensations, either spontaneously or as
a result of seduction or masturbation.
[38]: (_Additional Note_, 1923).---There is another very remarkable
and entirely trustworthy form of confirmation from the
unconscious, which I had not recognized at the time this was
written: namely, an exclamation on the part of the patient of ‘I
didn’t think that’, or ‘I didn’t think of that’. This can be
translated point-blank into: ‘Yes, I was unconscious of that’.
[39]: We shall come upon this later on.
[40]: Compare the lines:
‘Ruhig mag ich euch erscheinen,
Ruhig gehen sehn.’
[‘Quiet can I watch thy coming,
Quiet watch thee go.’
*Schiller*, ‘Ritter Toggenburg.’]
[41]: In answer to an inquiry Dora told me that there had never really
been a fire at their house.
[42]: The content of the dream makes it possible to establish that it
in fact occurred _for the first time_ at L⸻.
[43]: I laid stress upon these words because they took me aback. They
seemed to have an ambiguous ring about them. Are not certain
physical exigencies referred to in the same words? Now, in a line
of associations ambiguous words (or, as we may call them,
‘switch-words’) act like points at a junction. If the points are
switched across from the position in which they appear to lie in
the dream, then we find ourselves upon another set of rails; and
along this second track run the thoughts which we are in search of
and which still lie concealed behind the dream.
[44]: Compare what was said on p. 25 on the subject of doubt
accompanying a recollection.
[45]: This was because a fresh piece of material had to emerge from
her memory before the question I had put could be answered.
[46]: I suspected, though I did not as yet say so to Dora, that she
had seized upon this element on account of a symbolic meaning
which it possessed. ‘_Zimmer_’ [‘room’] in dreams stands very
frequently for ‘_Frauenzimmer_’ [a slightly derogatory word for
‘woman’; literally, ‘women’s apartments’]. The question whether a
woman is ‘open’ or ‘shut’ can naturally not be a matter of
indifference. It is well known, too, what sort of ‘key’ effects
the opening in such a case.
[47]: _Die Traumdeutung_, 1900.
[48]: The regular formula with which she confessed to anything that
had been repressed.
[49]: This remark gave evidence of a complete misunderstanding of the
rules of dream interpretation, though on other occasions Dora was
perfectly familiar with them. This fact, coupled with the
hesitancy and meagreness of her associations with the jewel-case,
showed me that we were here dealing with material which had been
very intensely repressed.
[50]: This reference to the reticule will be explained further on.
[51]: A very common way of putting aside a piece of knowledge that
emerges from the repressed.
[52]: We shall be able later on to interpret even the drops in a way
which will fit in with the context.
[53]: I added: ‘Moreover, the re-appearance of the dream in the last
few days forces me to the conclusion that you consider that the
same situation has arisen once again, and that you have decided to
give up the treatment---to which, after all, it is only your
father who makes you come.’ The sequel showed how correct my guess
had been. At this point my interpretation touches for a moment
upon the subject of ‘transference’---a theme which is of the
highest practical and theoretical importance, but into which I
shall not have much further opportunity of entering in the present
paper.
[54]: This physician was the only one in whom she showed any
confidence, because this episode showed her that he had not
penetrated her secret. She felt afraid of any other physician
about whom she had not yet been able to form a judgement; and we
can now see that the motive of her fear was the possibility that
he might guess her secret.
[55]: The essence of the dream might perhaps be translated into words
such as these: ‘The temptation is so strong. Dear Father, protect
me again as you used to in my childhood, and prevent my bed from
being wetted!’
[56]: (_Additional Note_, 1923).---This is an extreme view which I
should no longer maintain to-day.
[57]: See my paper upon the psycho-pathology of everyday life in the
_Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie_, 1901 (published in
book form in 1904).
[58]: This is also true in principle of adults; but in their case a
relative abstinence, a diminution in the amount of masturbation,
is a sufficient cause, so that, if the libido is very strong,
hysteria and masturbation may be simultaneously present.
[59]: The proof of infantile masturbation in other cases is
established in a precisely similar way. The evidence for it is
mostly of a similar nature: indications of the presence of
leucorrhoea, bed-wetting, hand-ceremonials (obsessional washing),
and such things. It is always possible to discover with certainty
from the nature of the symptoms of the case whether the habit was
discovered by the person in charge of the child or not, or whether
this sexual activity was brought to an end by long efforts on the
child’s part to break itself of the habit, or by a sudden
change. In Dora’s case the masturbation had remained undiscovered,
and had come to an end at a single blow (cf. her secret, her fear
of doctors, and the replacement by dyspnoea). The patients, it is
true, invariably dispute the conclusiveness of circumstantial
evidence such as this, and they do so even when they have retained
a conscious recollection of the catarrh or of their mother’s
warning (_e.g._ ‘That makes people stupid; it’s dangerous’). But
some time later the memory, which has been so long repressed, of
this piece of infantile sexual life emerges with certainty, and it
does so in every instance. I am reminded of the case of a patient
of mine suffering from obsessions, which are direct derivatives of
infantile masturbation. Her peculiarities, such as
self-prohibitions and self-punishments, the feeling that if she
has done this she must not do that, the idea that she must not be
interrupted, the introduction of pauses between one procedure
(with her hands) and the next, her hand-washing, etc.---all of
these turned out to be unaltered fragments of her nurse’s efforts
to break her of the habit. The only thing which had remained
permanently in her memory were the words of warning: ‘Ugh! That’s
dangerous!’ Compare also in this connection my _Drei Abhandlungen
zur Sexualtheorie_, 1905.
[60]: Dora’s brother must have been concerned in some way with her
having acquired the habit of masturbation; for in this connection
she told me, with all the emphasis which betrays the presence of a
‘screen-memory’, that her brother used regularly to pass on all
his infectious illnesses to her, and that while he used to have
them lightly she used, on the contrary, to have them severely. In
the dream her brother as well as she was saved from ‘destruction’;
he, too, had been subject to bed-wetting, but had got over the
habit before his sister. Her declaration that she had been able to
keep abreast with her brother up to the time of her first illness,
but that after that she had fallen behind him in her studies, was
in a certain sense also a ‘screen-memory’. It was as though she
had been a boy up till that moment, and had then become girlish
for the first time. She had in truth been a wild creature; but
after the ‘asthma’ she became quiet and well-behaved. That illness
formed the boundary between two phases of her sexual life, of
which the first was masculine in character, and the second
feminine.
[61]: This word (‘catarrh’) played the same part with the
twelve-year-old girl whose case history I have compressed into a
few lines on p. 33. I had established the child in a pension with
an intelligent lady, who took charge of her for me. The lady
reported that the little girl could not bear her to be in the room
while she was going to bed, and that when she was in bed she had a
marked cough, of which there was no trace in the daytime. When the
girl was questioned about these symptoms, the only thing that
occurred to her was that her grandmother coughed in the same way,
and that she was said to have a catarrh. It was clear from this
that the child herself had a catarrh, and that she did not want to
be observed while she performed her evening ablutions. This
catarrh, which, thanks to its name, had been _displaced from below
upwards_, even exhibited an unusual degree of intensity.
[62]: Seventh Edition, p. 416.
[63]: This refers to the analysis of a dream quoted in the book as an
example.
[64]: [The German word ‘_Schmuck_’ has a much wider meaning than the
English ‘jewellery’, though that is the sense in which it occurs
in the compound ‘_Schmuckkästchen_’, ‘jewel-case’. As a
substantive, ‘_Schmuck_’ denotes ‘finery’ of all kinds, not only
personal adornments, but embellishments of objects and decorations
in general. As an adjective, it can mean ‘smart’, ‘tidy’, or
‘neat’.---_Trans._]
[65]: To this she subsequently made an important addendum: ‘_I saw a
monument in one of the squares_.’
[66]: To this came the addendum: ‘_There was a question-mark after
this word, thus: “like?”._’
[67]: In repeating the dream she said: ‘_Two hours_.’
[68]: In the next sitting Dora brought me two addenda to this: ‘_I saw
myself particularly distinctly going up the stairs_,’ and ‘_After
she had answered I went to my room, but not the least sadly, and
began reading a big book that lay on my writing-table_.’
[69]: In the dream she said: ‘_Where is the station?_’ The resemblance
between the two questions led me to make an inference which I
shall go into presently.
[70]: [‘_Schachtel_’, the word which was used for ‘box’ by Dora in her
question, is a depreciatory term for ‘woman’.---_Trans._]
[71]: In the dream the number five occurs in the mention of the period
of ‘five minutes’. In my book on the interpretation of dreams I
have given several examples of the way in which numbers occurring
in the dream-thoughts are treated by the dream. We frequently find
them torn out of their true context and inserted into a new one.
[72]: See the first dream, p. 81.
[73]: There can be no doubt that sexual satisfaction is the best
soporific, just as sleeplessness is almost always the consequence
of lack of satisfaction. Her father could not sleep because he was
debarred from sexual intercourse with the woman he loved. (Compare
in this connection the phrase discussed below: ‘I get nothing out
of my wife.’)
[74]: These words will enable us to solve one of our problems.
[75]: Here for the third time we come upon ‘picture’ (views of towns,
the Dresden gallery), but in a much more significant
connection. Because of what appears in the picture (the wood, the
nymphs), the ‘_Bild_’ [‘picture’] is turned into a ‘_Weibsbild_’
[literally, ‘picture of a woman’ ---a derogatory expression for
‘woman’].
[76]: Moreover, a ‘station’ is used for purposes of ‘_Verkehr_’
[‘traffic’, ‘intercourse’, ‘sexual intercourse’]: this affords the
psychological wrapping in many cases of railway phobia.
[77]: [In German the same word, ‘_Nymphen_’, represents both ‘nymphs’
and ‘nymphae’.---_Trans._]
[78]: The phantasy of defloration formed the second component of the
situation. The emphasis upon the difficulty of getting forward and
the anxiety felt in the dream indicated the stress which the
dreamer was so ready to lay upon her virginity---a point alluded
to in another place by means of the Sistine Madonna. These sexual
thoughts gave an unconscious ground-colouring to the wishes (which
were perhaps merely kept secret) concerned with the suitor who was
waiting for her in Germany. We have already recognized the
phantasy of revenge as the first component of the same situation
in the dream. The two components do not coincide completely, but
only in part. We shall subsequently come upon the traces of a
third and still more important train of thought.
[79]: On another occasion, instead of ‘calmly’ she said ‘not the least
sadly’. (See footnote, p. 115.)---I can quote this dream as fresh
evidence for the correctness of an assertion which I made in my
_Traumdeutung_ (Seventh Edition, pp. 387 ff.) to the effect that
those pieces of a dream which are at first forgotten and are only
subsequently remembered are invariably the most important from the
point of view of understanding the dream. In the same place I went
on to the conclusion that the forgetting of dreams must also be
explained as an effect of endopsychic resistance.
[80]: We must assume the existence of some somatic connection between
the painful abdominal sensations known as ‘ovarian neuralgia’ and
locomotor disturbances in the leg on the same side; and we must
suppose that in Dora’s case the somatic connection had been given
an interpretation of a particularly specialized sort, that is to
say, that it had been overlaid with and brought into the service
of a particular psychological meaning. The reader is referred to
my analogous remarks in connection with the analysis of Dora’s
symptom of coughing and with the relation between catarrh and
anorexia.
[81]: This is quite a typical example of the way in which symptoms
arise from exciting causes which appear to be entirely unconnected
with sexuality.
[82]: I have already indicated that the majority of hysterical
symptoms, when they have attained their full pitch of development,
represent an imagined situation of sexual life---such as a scene
of sexual intercourse, pregnancy, childbirth, confinement, etc.
[83]: The phantasy of defloration is thus found to have an application
to Herr K., and we begin to see why this part of the dream
contained material taken from the scene by the lake---the refusal,
two and a half hours, the wood, the invitation to L⸻.
[84]: I may here add a few supplementary interpretations to those that
have already been given: The ‘_Madonna_’ was obviously Dora
herself; in the first place because of the ‘adorer’ who had sent
her the pictures, in the second place because she had won Herr
K.’s love chiefly by the motherliness she had shown towards his
children, and lastly because she had had a child though she was
still a girl (this being a direct allusion to the phantasy of
childbirth). Moreover, the notion of the ‘Madonna’ is a favourite
counter-idea in the mind of girls who feel themselves oppressed by
imputations of sexual guilt,---which was the case with Dora. A
first suspicion of this connection came to me while I was working
as a physician at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University. I
there came across a case of confusional insanity with
hallucinations, in which the attack, which ran a rapid course,
turned out to be a reaction to a reproach made against the patient
by her _fiancé_.---If the analysis had been continued, Dora’s
maternal longing for a child would probably have been revealed as
an obscure though powerful motive in her behaviour.---The numerous
questions which she had been raising latterly seem to have been
belated derivatives of questions inspired by the sexual curiosity
which she had tried to gratify with the encyclopaedia. The
subjects which she read up in it were presumably pregnancy,
childbirth, virginity, and so on.---In reproducing the dream Dora
had forgotten one of the questions which need to be inserted into
the course of the second situation in the dream. This question
could only be: ‘Does Herr ⸻ live here?’ or ‘Where does Herr ⸻
live?’ There must have been some reason for her having forgotten
this apparently innocent question, especially as she need not have
brought it into the dream at all. This reason, it seems to me, lay
in her surname itself, which also denoted an object and in fact
more than one kind of object, and which could therefore be
regarded as an ‘ambiguous’ word. Unluckily I cannot give the name
and show how well designed it was to indicate something
‘ambiguous’ and ‘improper’. This interpretation was supported by
the discovery of a similar play upon words in another part of the
dream, where the material was derived from Dora’s recollections of
her aunt’s death (‘they have already gone to the cemetery’) and
where there was similarly a play upon her aunt’s name. These
improper words seemed to point to a second and _oral_ source of
information, since the encyclopaedia would not cover them. I
should not have been surprised to hear that this source had been
Frau K. herself, Dora’s calumniator. In that case she would have
been the one person whom Dora generously spared, while she pursued
the others with an almost malignant vindictiveness. Behind the
almost limitless series of displacements which were thus brought
to light, it was possible to divine the operation of a single
simple factor---Dora’s deep-rooted homosexual love for Frau K.
[85]: It was December 31st.
[86]: It is not a matter of indifference, perhaps, that Dora may have
heard her father make the same complaint about his wife, just as I
myself did from his own lips. She was perfectly well aware of its
meaning.
[87]: Here is the point of contact with the engineer, who was
concealed behind the figure of Dora herself in the first situation
in the dream.
[88]: The theme of waiting till the goal is reached occurs in the
content of the first situation in the dream. I recognize in this
phantasy of waiting for a fiancée a portion of the third component
of that situation. I have already alluded to the existence of this
third component.
[89]: In particular there was a speech which he had made in presenting
Dora with a letter-case for Christmas in the last year in which
they lived together at B⸻.
[90]: I will add a few remarks upon the structure of this dream,
though it is not possible to understand it thoroughly enough to
allow of a synthesis being attempted. A prominent piece of the
dream is to be seen in the phantasy of revenge against her father,
which stands out like a façade in front of the rest. (She had gone
away from home by her own choice; her father was ill, and then
dead... Then she went home; all the others were already at the
cemetery. She went to her room, not the least sadly, and calmly
began reading the encyclopaedia.) This part of the material also
contained two allusions to her other act of revenge, which she had
actually carried out, when she let her parents discover a farewell
letter from her. (The letter---from her mother, in the dream---and
the mention of the funeral of the aunt who had always been her
model.)---Behind this phantasy lie concealed her thoughts of
revenge against Herr K., for which she found an outlet in her
behaviour to me. (The maidservant, the invitation, the wood, the
two and a half hours---all these came from material connected with
the events at L⸻.) Her recollection of the governess and of the
latter’s exchange of letters with her parents, is related, no less
than her farewell letter, to the letter in the dream allowing her
to come home. Her refusal to let herself be accompanied and her
decision to go alone may perhaps be translated into these words:
‘Since you have treated me like a maidservant, I shall take no
more notice of you, I shall go my own way by myself, and not
marry.’---Screened by these thoughts of revenge, glimpses can be
caught in other places of material derived from tender phantasies
based upon the love for Herr K. which still persisted
unconsciously in Dora. (‘I would have waited for you till I could
be your wife’---defloration---childbirth.)---Finally, we can see
the action of the fourth and most deeply buried group of
thoughts---those relating to her love for Frau K.---in the fact
that the phantasy of defloration is represented from the man’s
point of view (her identification of herself with her admirer who
lived abroad) and in the fact that in two places there are the
clearest allusions to ambiguous speeches (‘Does Herr ⸻ live
here?’) and to that source of her sexual knowledge which had not
been oral (the encyclopaedia).---Cruel and sadistic tendencies
find satisfaction in this dream.
[91]: (_Additional Note_, 1923.)---A continuation of these remarks
upon transference is contained in my technical essay upon
‘transference-love’. (*Collected Papers*, vol. ii.)
[92]: The longer the interval of time that separates me from the end
of this analysis, the more probable it seems to me that the fault
in my technique lay in this omission: I failed to discover in time
and to inform the patient that her homosexual (gynaecophilic) love
for Frau K. was the strongest unconscious current in her mental
life. I ought to have guessed that the main source of her
knowledge of sexual matters could have been no one but Frau
K.---the very person who later on charged her with being
interested in those same subjects. Her knowing all about such
things and, at the same time, her always pretending not to know
where her knowledge came from was really too remarkable. I ought
to have attacked this riddle and looked for the motive of such an
extraordinary piece of repression. If I had done this, the second
dream would have given me my answer. The remorseless craving for
revenge expressed in that dream was suited as nothing else was to
conceal the current of feeling that ran contrary to it---the
magnanimity with which she forgave the treachery of the friend she
loved and concealed from every one the fact that it was this
friend who had herself revealed to her the knowledge which had
later been the ground of the accusations against her. Before I had
learnt the importance of the homosexual current of feeling in
psychoneurotics, I was often brought to a standstill in the
treatment of my cases or found myself in complete perplexity.
[93]: We have here an interesting contribution to the problem of
indirect attempts at suicide, which I have discussed in my
_Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens_.
[94]: For the significance of this period of time and its relation to
the theme of revenge, see the analysis of the second dream.
[95]: [First published in _Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen_, Bd. i., 1909. Reprinted in
Freud, _Sammlung kleiner Schriften_, ii., 1913.]
[96]: [‘_Wiwimacher_’ in the original.---_Trans._]
[97]: ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’ (1905). (See
p. 64 of this volume.)
[98]: Seventh Edition, p. 456.
[99]: (_Additional Note_, 1923.)---Since this was written, the study
of the castration complex has been further developed in
contributions to the subject by Lou Andreas, A. Stärcke,
F. Alexander, and others. It has been urged that every time his
mother’s breast is withdrawn from a baby he is bound to feel it as
castration (that is to say, as the loss of what he regards as an
important part of his own body); that, further, he cannot fail to
be similarly affected by the regular loss of his faeces; and,
finally, that the act of birth itself (consisting as it does of
the separation of the child from his mother, with whom he has
hitherto been united) is the prototype of all castration. While
recognizing all of these roots of the complex, I have nevertheless
put forward the view that the term ‘castration complex’ ought to
be confined to those excitations and effects which are bound up
with the loss of the penis. Any one who, in analysing adults, has
become convinced of the invariable presence of the castration
complex, will of course find difficulty in ascribing its origin to
a chance threat---of a kind which is not, after all, of such
universal occurrence; he will be driven to assume that the child
constructs this danger for itself out of the slightest hints,
which will never be wanting. This circumstance is also the motive,
indeed, that has stimulated the search for those deeper roots of
the complex which are universally forthcoming. But this makes it
all the more valuable that in the case of little Hans the threat
of castration is reported by his parents themselves, and moreover
at a date before there was any question of his phobia.
[100]: [The imperial palace on the outskirts of Vienna. There is a
zoological collection in the park.---_Trans._]
[101]: April 1903 to October 1906.
[102]: This again is a typical mode of behaviour. Another little boy,
only two years his sister’s senior, used to parry similar remarks
with an angry cry of ‘Too ’ickle! too ’ickle!’
[103]: Another child, rather older than Hans, welcomed his younger
brother with the words: ‘The stork must take him away again.’ Compare
with this my remarks in _Traumdeutung_ upon the dreams of the death of
dear relatives (Seventh Edition, pp. 171 ff.).
[104]: Two other boys were reported to me as having made the same
judgement, expressed in identical words and followed by the same
anticipation, when they were allowed to satisfy their curiosity
and look at their baby sister’s body for the first time. One might
well feel horrified at such signs of the premature ruin of a
child’s intellect. Why did not these young inquirers state what
they really saw, namely, that there was no widdler there? In
little Hans’s case, at all events, we can account completely for
the faulty perception. We are aware that by a process of careful
induction he had arrived at the general proposition that every
animate object, in contradistinction to inanimate ones, possesses
a widdler. His mother had confirmed him in this conviction by
giving him corroborative information in regard to persons
inaccessible to his own observation. He was now utterly incapable
of surrendering what he had achieved merely on the strength of
this single observation made upon his little sister. He therefore
made a judgement that in that instance also there was a widdler
present, only that it was still very small, but that it would grow
till it was as big as a horse’s.
We can go a step further in vindicating little Hans’s honour. As a
matter of fact, he behaved no worse than a philosopher of the
school of Wundt. In the view of that school, consciousness is the
invariable characteristic of what is mental, just as in the view
of little Hans a widdler is the indispensable criterion of what is
animate. If now the philosopher comes across mental processes, the
existence of which has to be inferred, but about which there is
not a trace of consciousness to be detected---for the subject, in
fact, knows nothing of them, although it is impossible to avoid
inferring their existence---then, instead of saying that they are
_un_conscious mental processes, he calls them
_semi_-conscious. The widdler is still very small! And in this
comparison the advantage is in favour of little Hans. For, as is
so often the case with the sexual inquiries of children, behind
the mistake a piece of genuine knowledge lies concealed. Little
girls do possess a small widdler, which we call a clitoris, though
it does not grow any larger but remains permanently
stunted. (Compare my short paper on ‘The Sexual Theories of
Children’ (1908), *Collected Papers*, vol. ii.)
[105]: [A summer resort on one of the Austrian lakes.---Mariedl,
Franzl, Fritzl, and similar forms are the characteristically
Austrian affectionate diminutives of Marie, Franz, Fritz,
etc.---_Trans._]
[106]:
‘Und die Liebe per Distanz,
Kurzgesagt, missfällt mir ganz.’
*Wilhelm Busch.*
[‘Long-range love, I must admit,
Does not suit my taste a bit.’]
[107]: Another mother, a neurotic, who would not believe in infantile
masturbation, told me of a similar attempt at seduction on the
part of her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter. She had had a pair
of drawers made for the little girl, and was trying them on her to
see whether they were not too tight for walking. To do this she
passed her hand upwards along the inner surface of the child’s
thigh. Suddenly the little girl shut her legs together on her
mother’s hand, saying: ‘Oh, Mummy, _do_ leave your hand there. It
feels so lovely.’
[108]: Seventh Edition, pp. 283 _et seq._
[109]: ‘Hans’s expression for “to caress”.’
[110]: Meaning his penis. It is one of the commonest
things---psycho-analyses are full of such incidents---for
children’s genitals to be caressed, not only in word but in deed,
by fond relations, including even parents themselves.
[111]: [Public gardens near the centre of Vienna.---_Trans._]
[112]: To speak quite frankly, this is actually the criterion
according to which we decide whether such feelings of mingled
apprehension and longing are normal or not: we begin to call them
‘pathological anxiety’ from the moment at which they can no longer
be relieved by the attainment of the object longed for.
[113]: As to the meaning of his anxiety; not yet as to women having no
widdlers.
[114]: A suburb of Vienna [not far from Schönbrunn] where Hans’s
grandparents lived.
[115]: Hans’s father had no reason to doubt that it was a real event
that the boy was describing.---I may also mention that the
sensations of itching in the glans penis, which lead children to
touch their genitals, are usually described by them in the phrase
‘Es beisst mich’ [‘I’m itching’, literally ‘it bites me’].
[116]: ‘Grete is one of the little girls at Gmunden about whom Hans is
having phantasies just now; he talks and plays with her.’
[117]: [The Head Customs House station on the Vienna local and
suburban railway. Hietzing is a suburb which adjoins the palace of
Schönbrunn.---_Trans._]
[118]: This was untrue. See his exclamation in front of the lions’
cage on p. 152. It was probably the beginning of amnesia resulting
from repression.
[119]: I cannot so far interrupt the discussion as to demonstrate the
typical character of the unconscious train of thought which I
think there is here reason for attributing to little Hans. The
castration complex is the deepest unconscious root of
anti-semitism; for even in the nursery little boys hear that a Jew
has something cut off his penis---a piece of his penis, they
think---and this gives them a right to despise Jews. And there is
no stronger unconscious root for the sense of superiority over
women. Weininger (the young philosopher who, highly gifted but
sexually deranged, committed suicide after producing his
remarkable book, _Geschlecht und Charakter_), in a chapter that
has attracted much attention, treated Jews and women with equal
hostility and overwhelmed them with the same insults. Being a
neurotic, Weininger was completely under the sway of his infantile
complexes; and from that standpoint what is common to Jews and
women is their relation to the castration complex.
[120]: In his own language Hans was saying quite definitely that it
was a phantasy.
[121]: At this point his father in his perplexity was trying to
practise the classical technique of psycho-analysis. This did not
lead to much; but the result, such as it was, can be given a
meaning in the light of later disclosures.
[122]: [The German word for ‘possession’ (‘_Besitz_’) shows its
etymological connection with the phrase used by little Hans
(‘_sich draufsetzen_’) more obviously than the
English.---_Trans._]
[123]: Hans only confirmed the interpretation of the two giraffes as
his father and mother, and not the sexual symbolism, according to
which the giraffe itself represented the penis. This symbolism was
probably correct, but we really cannot ask more of Hans.
[124]: Later on the boy repeated his reaction towards his father in a
clearer and more complete manner, by first hitting his father on
the hand and then affectionately kissing the same hand.
[125]: Hans was right, however improbable this collocation may
sound. The train of thought, as we shall see, was that the horse
(his father) would bite him because of his wish that it (his
father) should fall down.
[126]: ‘For the last few weeks my wife has possessed a pair of black
bloomers for wearing on cycling tours.’
[127]: ‘Hans had a set of toy harness with bells.’
[128]: Another of the landlord’s children, as we are already aware.
[129]: See below. His father was quite right in suspecting that Fritzl
fell down.
[130]: I may explain that Hans was not maintaining that he had got the
nonsense _at that time_ but _in that connection_. Indeed, it must
have been so, for theoretical considerations require that what is
to-day the object of a phobia must at one time in the past have
been the source of a high degree of pleasure. I may at the same
time complete what the child was unable to express, and add that
the little word ‘_wegen_’ [‘because of’, ‘’cos of’] was the means
of enabling the phobia to extend from horses on to ‘_Wagen_’
[‘vehicles’] or, as Hans was accustomed to pronounce the word and
hear it pronounced, ‘_Wägen_’ [pronounced exactly like
‘_wegen_’]. It must never be forgotten how much more concretely
children treat words than grown-up people do, and consequently how
much more significant for them are similarities of sound in words.
[131]: In point of fact there was nothing more to be got out of it
than Hans’s verbal association, and this had escaped his
father. Here is a good instance of conditions under which an
analyst’s efforts are wasted.
[132]: The flat they were in before the move.
[133]: Hans wishes to be assured that his own widdler will grow.
[134]: Our young man was here wrestling with a subject of which he was
not equal to giving a clear exposition; so that there is some
difficulty in understanding him. He may perhaps have meant that
the drawers only recalled his feelings of disgust when he saw them
on their own account; as soon as his mother had them on, he ceased
to connect them with lumf or widdle, and they then interested him
in a different way.
[135]: ‘Hans’s mother gives him his bath.’
[136]: ‘To take it away to be repaired.’
[137]: The ‘Hanna’ theme immediately succeeded the ‘lumf’ theme, and
the explanation of this at length begins to dawn upon us: Hanna
was a lumf herself---babies were lumfs.
[138]: Hans was now going off into a phantasy. We see that a box and a
bath have the same meaning for him, that they both represent the
space which contains the babies. Let us bear in mind Hans’s
repeated assurances on this point.
[139]: The box was of course the womb. Hans’s father was trying to let
him know that he understood this. And the same is true of the
caskets in which so many of the heroes of mythology were exposed,
from the time of King Sargon of Agade onwards.---(_Additional
Note_, 1923.) Cf. Rank’s study, _Der Mythus von der Geburt des
Helden_, 1909.
[140]: Ironical, of course. Like his subsequent request that none of
the secret should be betrayed to his mother.
[141]: Well done, little Hans! I could wish for no better
understanding of psycho-analysis from any grown-up.
[142]: [In view of what follows presently it may be worth remarking
that the German word for ‘shod’ (‘_beschlagen_’) differs in only a
single letter from that for ‘beaten’ (‘_geschlagen_’).---_Trans._]
[143]: There is no need to find fault with Hans’s inconsistencies. In
the previous conversation his disbelief in the stork had emerged
from his unconscious and had been coupled with the exasperation he
felt against his father for making so many mysteries. But he had
now become calmer and was answering his father’s questions with
official thoughts in which he had worked out glosses upon the many
difficulties involved in the stork hypothesis.
[144]: ‘The box standing in the front hall which we had taken as
luggage to Gmunden.’
[145]: ‘Hans has often been very much terrified when drivers beat
their horses and shout “Gee-up”.’
[146]: [Unter St. Veit is the next station to Lainz in the direction
away from Vienna.---_Trans._]
[147]: ‘So that in fact Fritzl did fall down---which he at one time
denied.’
[148]: [Northern Railway.]
[149]: [Cf. footnote 76, p. 120.---_Trans._]
[150]: Here is another bit of infantile sexual theory with an
unsuspected meaning.
[151]: Hans, having good reason to mistrust information given him by
grown-up people, was considering whether the landlord might not be
more trustworthy than his father.
[152]: The connection of thought is as follows. For a long time his
father had refused to believe what he said about there being
something black on horses’ mouths, but finally it had been
verified.
[153]: Ce que femme veut Dieu veut. But Hans, with his usual acumen,
had once more put his finger upon a most serious problem.
[154]: There is no necessity on this account to assume in Hans the
presence of a feminine strain of desire for having children. It
was with his mother that Hans had had his most blissful
experiences as a child, and he was now repeating them, and himself
playing the active part, which was thus necessarily that of
mother.
[155]: This startling contradiction was one between phantasy and
reality, between wishing and having. Hans knew that in reality he
was a child and that the other children would only be in his way;
but in phantasy he was a mother and wanted children with whom he
could repeat the endearments that he had himself experienced.
[156]: It is possible, however, that Hans had exalted into his ideal
some one whom he had met casually at Gmunden. The colour of this
ideal’s eyes and hair, by the way, was copied from his mother.
[157]: Hans could not help answering from the auto-erotic point of
view.
[158]: They were the children of his phantasy, that is to say, of his
onanism.
[159]: [‘_Schokolade_’ is the German for ‘chocolate’.---_Trans._]
[160]: ‘“Saffaladi” means “_Zervelatwurst_” [“saveloy”, a kind of
sausage]. My wife is fond of relating how her aunt always calls it
“Soffilodi.” Hans may have heard this.’
[161]: [Another kind of sausage.---_Trans._]
[162]: Do we not use the word ‘_niederkommen_’ [literally, ‘to come
down’] when a woman is delivered?
[163]: We may perhaps add that the word ‘borer’ was not chosen without
regard for its connection with the words ‘born’ and ‘birth’. If
so, the child could have made no distinction between ‘bored’ and
‘born’. I accept this suggestion, which comes from an experienced
fellow-worker, but I am not in a position to say whether we have
before us here a deep and universal connection between the two
ideas or merely the employment of a verbal coincidence peculiar to
German [and English]. Prometheus (Pramantha), the creator of man,
is also etymologically ‘the borer’. (Cf. Abraham, _Traum und
Mythus_, 1908.)
[164]: [In German ‘_schiessen_’ and ‘_scheissen_’.---_Trans._]
[165]: ‘Der Aggressionsbetrieb im Leben und in der Neurose’ (1908).
[166]: As my expectations led me to suppose, and as Sadger’s
observations have shown, all homosexuals pass through an
amphigenic phase in childhood.
[167]: (_Additional Note_, 1923.)---I have subsequently (1923) drawn
attention to the fact that the period of sexual development which
our little patient was passing through is universally
characterized by acquaintance with only _one_ sort of genital
organ, namely, the male one. In contrast to the later period of
maturity, this period is marked not by a genital primacy but by a
primacy of the phallus.
[168]: [The German ‘_bei jemandem schlafen_’, literally ‘to sleep with
some one’, is used (like the English ‘to lie with’) in the sense
of ‘to copulate with’.---_Trans._]
[169]: It is quite certain that Hans’s two associations, ‘raspberry
syrup’ and ‘a gun for shooting people dead with’, must have had
more than one set of determinants. They probably had just as much
to do with his hatred of his father as with his constipation
complex. His father, who himself guessed the latter connection,
also suggested that ‘raspberry syrup’ might be related to ‘blood’.
[170]: His wanting to beat and tease horses.
[171]: See the critical question he addressed to his father (p. 186).
[172]:
‘Das macht, ich bin kein ausgeklügelt Buch.
Ich bin ein Mensch mit seinem Widerspruch.’
*C. F. Meyer*, ‘Huttens letzte Tage.’
[‘In fact, I am no clever work of fiction;
I am a man, with all his contradiction.’]
[173]: Seventh Edition, p. 174.
[174]: Compare his plans of what he would do when his sister was old
enough to speak (p. 215).
[175]: _Nervöse Angstzustände und ihre Behandlung_, 1908.
[176]: (_Additional Note_, 1923.)---The question which is raised here
has not been pursued further. But there is no reason to suppose
that anxiety-hysteria is an exception to the rule that both
predisposition and experience must co-operate in the aetiology of
a neurosis. Rank’s view of the effects of the trauma of birth
seems to throw special light upon the predisposition to
anxiety-hysteria which is so strong in childhood.
[177]: See my _Traumdeutung_ (1900), Seventh Edition, p. 433.
[178]: The context enables us to add: ‘and touching it’
(p. 175). After all, he himself could not show his widdler without
touching it.
[179]: Hans’s admiration of his father’s neck later on would fit in
with this.
[180]: Even in analyses in which the physician and the patient are
strangers, the fear of the father plays one of the most important
parts as a resistance against the reproduction of the unconscious
pathogenic material.
[181]: [See footnote, p. 238.]
[182]: I remember a set of drawings by T. T. Heine in a number of
_Simplicissimus_, in which that brilliant illustrator depicted the
fate of the pork-butcher’s child, who fell into the sausage
machine, and then, in the shape of a small sausage, was mourned
over by his parents, received the Church’s blessing, and flew up
to Heaven. The artist’s idea seems a puzzling one at first, but
the Lodi episode in this analysis enables us to trace it back to
its infantile root.
[183]: Hans’s father even observed that simultaneously with this
repression a certain amount of sublimation set in. From the time
of the beginning of his anxiety Hans began to show an increased
interest in music and to develop his inherited musical gift.
[184]: ‘Der Aggressionsbetrieb im Leben und in der Neurose’
(1908). This is the same paper from which I have borrowed the term
‘confluence of instincts’.
[185]: (_Additional Note_, 1923.)---The above passage was written at a
time when Adler seemed still to be taking his stand upon the
ground of psycho-analysis, and before he had put forward the
masculine protest and disavowed repression. Since then I have
myself been obliged to assert the existence of an ‘aggressive
instinct’, but it is different from Adler’s. I prefer to call it
the ‘destructive’ or ‘death instinct’. See _Beyond the Pleasure
Principle_ (1920), and _Das Ich und das Es_ (1923). Its opposition
to the libidinal instincts finds an expression in the familiar
polarity of love and hate. My disagreement with Adler’s view,
which results in a general characteristic of all instincts being
encroached upon for the benefit of a single one of them, remains
unaltered.
[186]: At this point I cannot keep back an astonished question. Where
do my opponents obtain their knowledge, which they produce with so
much confidence, on the question whether the repressed sexual
instincts play a part, and if so what part, in the aetiology of
the neuroses, if they shut their patients’ mouths as soon as they
begin to talk about their complexes or their derivatives? For the
only alternative source of knowledge remaining open to them are my
own papers and those of my adherents.
[187]: (_Additional Note_, 1923).---I am here using the word
‘consciousness’ in a sense which I have since avoided, namely, to
describe our normal processes of thought---such, that is, as are
capable of entering consciousness. We know that thought processes
of this kind may also take place _preconsciously_; and it is wiser
to regard their actual ‘consciousness’ from a purely
phenomenological standpoint. By this I do not, of course, mean to
contradict the expectation that consciousness in this more limited
sense of the word must also fulfil some biological function.
[188]: [First published in _Internationale Zeitschrift für
Psychoanalyse_, Bd. viii., 1922.]
[189]: [First published in _Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen_, Bd. i., 1909. Reprinted in
Freud, _Sammlung kleiner Schriften_, iii., 1913.]
[190]: ‘Further Remarks on the Defence Neuro-Psychoses’ (II. ‘The
Nature and Mechanism of the Obsessional Neurosis’) (1896),
*Collected Papers*, vol. i.
[191]: _Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens_, 1904.
[192]: What follows is based upon notes made on the evening of the day
of treatment, and adheres as closely as possible to my
recollection of the patient’s words.---I feel obliged to offer a
warning against the practice of noting down what the patient says
during the actual time of treatment. The consequent withdrawal of
the physician’s attention does the patient more harm than can be
made up for by any increase in accuracy that may be achieved in
the reproduction of his case history.
[193]: Dr. Alfred Adler, who was formerly an analyst, once drew
attention in a privately delivered paper to the peculiar
importance which attaches to the _very first_ communications made
by patients. Here is an instance of this. The patient’s opening
words laid stress upon the influence exercised over him by men,
that is to say, upon the part played in his life by homosexual
object-choice; but immediately afterwards they touched upon a
second _motif_, which was to become of great importance later on,
namely, the conflict between man and woman and the opposition of
their interests. Even the fact that he remembered his first pretty
governess by her surname, which happened to be a man’s Christian
name, must be taken into account in this connection. In
middle-class circles in Vienna it is more usual to call a
governess by her Christian name, and it is by that name that she
is more commonly remembered.
[194]: The patient subsequently admitted that this scene probably
occurred one or two years later.
[195]: [The Austrian title of ‘_Hofrat_’ is awarded to prominent
physicians, lawyers, university professors, civil servants,
etc. It is perhaps equivalent to a knighthood in modern
England.---_Trans._]
[196]: Yet attempts have been made to explain obsessions without
taking affectivity into account!
[197]: [‘Delirium’ is here used in a technical sense which is
explained below on p. 358.---_Trans._]
[198]: He said ‘idea’---the stronger and more significant term ‘wish’,
or rather ‘fear’, having evidently been censored. Unfortunately I
am not able to reproduce the peculiar indeterminateness of all his
remarks.
[199]: The names are of little consequence here.
[200]: [The charges in question were for the cost of the new
pince-nez. In Austria a system of ‘payment on delivery’ operates
through the post office.---_Trans._]
[201]: [At that time equal to about 3s. 2d.---_Trans._]
[202]: [See below, p. 358.]
[203]: A more detailed description of the event, which the patient
gave me later on, made it possible to understand the effect that
it produced on him. His uncle, lamenting the loss of his wife, had
exclaimed: ‘Other men allow themselves every possible indulgence,
but I lived for this woman alone!’ The patient had assumed that
his uncle was alluding to his father and was casting doubts upon
his conjugal fidelity; and although his uncle had denied this
construction of his words most positively, it was no longer
possible to counteract their effect.
[204]: All of this is of course only true in the roughest way, but it
serves as a first introduction to the subject.
[205]: Obsessional neurotics are not the only people who are satisfied
with euphemisms of this kind.
[206]: That is, ten years ago.
[207]: There is here an unmistakable indication of an opposition
between the two objects of his love, his father and the ‘lady’.
[208]: It is never the aim of discussions like this to create
conviction. They are only intended to bring the repressed
complexes into consciousness, to set the conflict going in the
field of conscious mental activity, and to facilitate the
emergence of fresh material from the unconscious. A sense of
conviction is only attained after the patient has himself worked
over the reclaimed material, and so long as he is not fully
convinced the material must be considered as unexhausted.
[209]: This sense of guilt involves the most glaring contradiction of
his opening denial that he had ever entertained such an evil wish
against his father. This is a common type of reaction to repressed
material which has become conscious: the ‘No’ with which the fact
is first denied is immediately followed by a confirmation of it,
though, to begin with, only an indirect one.
[210]: _Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, iv. 68.
[211]: This quality of his will find an explanation later on.
[212]: I only produced these arguments so as once more to demonstrate
to myself their inefficacy. I cannot understand how other
psychotherapists can assert that they successfully combat neuroses
with such weapons as these.
[213]: The sense requires that the word ‘first’ should be interpolated
here.
[214]: Names and words are not nearly so frequently or so recklessly
employed in obsessional neuroses as in hysteria for the purpose of
establishing a connection between unconscious thoughts (whether
they are impulses or phantasies) and symptoms. I happen, however,
to recollect another instance in which the very same name,
Richard, was similarly used by a patient whom I analysed a long
time since. After a quarrel with his brother he began brooding
over the best means of getting rid of his fortune, and declaring
that he did not want to have anything more to do with money, and
so on. His brother was called Richard, and ‘_richard_’ is the
French for ‘a rich man’.
[215]: The words ‘for which he might be to blame’ must be added to
complete the sense.
[216]: Cf. Ernest Jones, ‘Rationalization in Every-day Life’ (1908).
[217]: Cf. ‘Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality’
(1908), *Collected Papers*, vol. ii.
[218]: Another obsessional patient once told me the following
story. He was walking one day in the park at Schönbrunn [see
footnote, p. 152] when he kicked his foot against a branch that
was lying on the ground. He picked it up and flung it into the
hedge that bordered the path. On his way home he was suddenly
seized with uneasiness that the branch in its new position might
perhaps be projecting a little from the hedge and might cause an
injury to some one passing by the same place after him. He was
obliged to jump off his tram, hurry back to the park, find the
place again, and put the branch back in its former
position---although any one else but the patient would have seen
that, on the contrary, it was bound to be more dangerous to
passers-by in its original position than where he had put it in
the hedge. The second and hostile act, which he carried out under
compulsion, had clothed itself to his conscious view with the
motives that really belonged to the first and philanthropic one.
[219]: Compare the similar mechanism in the familiar case of
sacrilegious thoughts entering the minds of devout persons.
[220]: [The customary abbreviations for ‘_pour condoler_’ and ‘_pour
féliciter_’ respectively.] This dream provides the explanation of
the compulsive laughter which so often occurs on mournful
occasions and which is regarded as such an unaccountable
phenomenon.
[221]: It cannot be doubted that another contributory motive to this
compulsive idea was a wish to know that she was powerless against
his designs.
[222]: [German ‘_Besetzung_’, used on the analogy of an electric
charge.---_Trans._]
[223]: It must therefore be admitted that in an obsessional neurosis
there are two kinds of knowledge, and it is just as reasonable to
hold that the patient ‘knows’ his traumas as that he does _not_
‘know’ them. For he knows them in that he has not forgotten them,
and he does not know them in that he is unaware of their
significance. It is often the same in ordinary life. The waiters
who used to serve Schopenhauer at his regular restaurant ‘knew’
him in a certain sense, at a time when, apart from that, he was
not known either in Frankfort or outside it; but they did not
‘know’ him in the sense in which we speak to-day of ‘knowing’
Schopenhauer.
[224]: It is worth emphasizing that his flight into disease was made
possible by his identifying himself with his father. The
identification enabled his affects to regress on to the residues
of his childhood.
[225]: Cf. Freud, _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_, 1905.
[226]: Compare my suspicions to a similar effect in one of the first
sittings (p. 302).
[227]: These alternatives did not exhaust the possibilities. His
father had overlooked the commonest outcome of such premature
passions---a neurosis.
[228]: In psycho-analyses we frequently come across occurrences of
this kind, dating back to the earliest years of the patient’s
childhood, in which his infantile sexual activity appears to reach
its climax and often comes to a catastrophic end owing to some
misfortune or punishment. Such occurrences are apt to appear in a
shadowy way in dreams. Often they will become so clear that the
analyst thinks he has a firm hold of them, and will nevertheless
evade any final elucidation; and unless he proceeds with the
greatest skill and caution he may be compelled to leave it
undecided whether the scene in question actually took place or
not. It will help to put us upon the right track in interpreting
it, if we recognize that more than one version of the scene (each
often differing greatly from the other) may be detected in the
patient’s unconscious phantasies. If we do not wish to go astray
in our judgement of their historical reality, we must above all
bear in mind that people’s ‘childhood memories’ are only
consolidated at a later period, usually at the age of puberty; and
that this involves a complicated process of remodelling, analogous
in every way to the process by which a nation constructs legends
about its early history. It at once becomes evident that in his
phantasies about his infancy the individual as he grows up
_endeavours to efface the recollection of his auto-erotic
activities_; and this he does by exalting their memory-traces to
the level of object-love, just as a real historian will view the
past in the light of the present. This explains why these
phantasies abound in seductions and assaults, where the facts will
have been confined to auto-erotic activities and the caresses or
punishments that stimulated them. Furthermore, it becomes clear
that in constructing phantasies about his childhood the individual
_sexualizes his memories_; that is, he brings commonplace
experiences into relation with his sexual activity, and extends
his sexual interest to them---though in doing this he is probably
following upon the traces of a really existing connection. No one
who remembers my ‘Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy’
[Paper II. in this volume] will need to be told that it is not my
intention in these remarks to detract from the importance which I
have hitherto attached to infantile sexuality by reducing it to
nothing more than sexual interest at the age of puberty. I merely
wish to give some technical advice that may help to clear up a
class of phantasy which is calculated to falsify the picture of
infantile sexual activity.
It is seldom that we are in the fortunate position of being able,
as in the present instance, to establish the facts upon which
these tales of the individual’s prehistoric past are based, by
recourse to the unimpeachable testimony of a grown-up person. Even
so, the statement made by our patient’s mother leaves the way open
to various possibilities. That she did not proclaim the sexual
character of the offence for which the child was punished may have
been due to the activity of her own censorship; for with all
parents it is precisely this sexual element in their children’s
past that their own censorship is most anxious to eliminate. But
it is just as possible that the child was reproved by his nurse or
by his mother herself for some commonplace piece of naughtiness of
a non-sexual nature, and that his reaction was so violent that he
was castigated by his father. In phantasies of this kind nurses
and servants are regularly replaced by the superior figure of the
mother. A deeper interpretation of the patient’s dreams in
relation to this episode revealed the clearest traces of the
presence in his mind of an imaginative production of a positively
epic character. In this his sexual desires for his mother and
sister and his sister’s premature death were linked up with the
young hero’s chastisement at his father’s hands. It was impossible
to unravel this tissue of phantasy thread by thread; the
therapeutic success of the treatment was precisely what stood in
the way of this. The patient recovered, and his ordinary life
began to assert its claims: there were many tasks before him,
which he had already neglected far too long, and which were
incompatible with a continuation of the treatment. I am not to be
blamed, therefore, for this gap in the analysis. The scientific
results of psycho-analysis are at present only a by-product of its
therapeutic aims, and for that reason it is often just in those
cases where treatment fails that most discoveries are made.
The content of the sexual life of infancy consists in auto-erotic
activity on the part of the dominant sexual components, in traces
of object-love, and in the formation of that complex which
deserves to be called _the nuclear complex of the neuroses_. It is
the complex which comprises the child’s earliest impulses, alike
tender and hostile, towards its parents and brothers and sisters,
after its curiosity has been awakened---usually by the arrival of
a new baby brother or sister. The uniformity of the content of the
sexual life of children, together with the unvarying character of
the modifying tendencies which are later brought to bear upon it,
will easily account for the constant sameness which as a rule
characterizes the phantasies that are constructed around the
period of childhood, irrespective of how greatly or how little
real experiences have contributed towards them. It is entirely
characteristic of the nuclear complex of infancy that the child’s
father should be assigned the part of a sexual opponent and of an
interferer with auto-erotic sexual activities; and real events are
usually to a large extent responsible for bringing this about.
[229]: [Literally, ‘play-rat’. Colloquial German for
‘gambler’.---_Trans._]
[230]: It must not be forgotten that he had learnt this _before_ the
captain, owing to a misapprehension, requested him to pay back the
money to Lieutenant A. This circumstance was the vital point of
the story, and by suppressing it the patient reduced himself to a
state of the most hopeless muddle and for some time prevented me
from getting any idea of the meaning of it all.
[231]: [See below, p. 358.]
[232]: (_Additional Note_, 1923).---My patient did his very best to
throw confusion over the little episode of the repayment of the
charges for his pince-nez, so that perhaps my own account of it
may also have failed to clear it up entirely. I therefore
reproduce here a little map (Fig. 5), by means of which Mr. and
Mrs. Strachey have endeavoured to make the situation at the end of
the manoeuvres plainer. My translators have justly observed that
the patient’s behaviour remains unintelligible so long as a
further circumstance is not expressly stated, namely, that
Lieutenant A. had formerly lived at the place Z⸻ where the post
office was situated and had been in charge of the military post
office there, but that during the last few days he had handed over
this billet to Lieutenant B. and had been transferred to another
village. The ‘cruel’ captain had been in ignorance of this
transfer, and this was the explanation of his mistake in supposing
that the charges had to be paid back to Lieutenant A.
[233]: See ‘Character and Anal Erotism’ (1908), Freud, *Collected
Papers*, vol. ii.
[234]: If the reader feels tempted to shake his head at the
possibility of such leaps of imagination in the neurotic mind, I
may remind him that artists have sometimes indulged in similar
freaks of fancy. Such, for instance, are Le Poitevin’s _Diableries
érotiques_.
[235]: The exact terms of these curses will be found in the periodical
_Anthropophyteia_, edited by F. S. Krauss.
[236]: Ibsen’s Rat-Wife must certainly be derived from the legendary
Pied Piper of Hamelin, who first enticed away the rats into the
water, and then, by the same means, lured the children out of the
town, never to return. So too, Little Eyolf threw himself into the
water under the spell of the Rat-Wife. In legends generally the
rat appears not so much as a disgusting creature but as something
uncanny---as a chthonic animal, one might almost say; and it is
used to represent the souls of the dead.
[237]: It was no doubt a weasel, of which there are great numbers in
the Zentralfriedhof [the principal cemetery] in Vienna.
[238]: Compare the words of Mephistopheles [when he wishes to make his
way through a door that is guarded by a magic pentagram]:
‘Doch dieser Schwelle Zauber zu zerspalten
Bedarf ich eines Rattenzahns
. . . . . . . .
Noch einen Biss, so ist’s geschehn!’
[‘But to break through the magic of this threshold
I need a rat’s tooth. (_He conjures up a rat._)
. . . . . . .
Another bite, and it is done!’
*Goethe*, _Faust_, Part I.]
[239]:
‘Er sieht in der geschwollnen Ratte
Sein ganz natürlich Ebenbild.’
[‘For in the bloated rat he sees
A living likeness of himself.’
_Faust_, Part I., Scene in Auerbach’s Cellar.]
[240]: Not that evening, as he first told me. It is quite impossible
that the pince-nez he had ordered can have arrived the same
day. The patient shortened the interval of time retrospectively,
because it was the period during which the decisive mental
connections had been set up, and during which the repressed
episode had taken place---the episode of his interview with the
officer who told him of the friendly conduct of the young lady at
the post office.
[241]: Thus absurdity signifies derision in the language of
obsessional thought, just as it does in dreams. See Freud, _Die
Traumdeutung_ (1900), Seventh Edition, p. 295.
[242]: It is perhaps not uninteresting to observe that once again
obedience to his father coincided with abandoning the lady. If he
had stopped and paid back the money to A., he would have made
atonement to his father, and at the same time he would have
deserted his lady in favour of some one else more attractive. In
this conflict the lady had been victorious---with the assistance,
to be sure, of the patient’s own normal good sense.
[243]: ‘On the Sexual Theories of Children’ (1908), *Collected
Papers*, vol. ii.
[244]: Several of the points dealt with in this and the following
section have already been mentioned in the literature of
obsessional neuroses, as may be gathered from Löwenfeld’s
exhaustive study, _Die psychischen Zwangserscheinungen_, 1904,
which is the standard work upon this form of disease.
[245]: ‘Further Remarks on the Defence Neuro-Psychoses’ (1896),
*Collected Papers*, vol. i., p. 162.
[246]: This fault in my definition is to some extent corrected in the
paper itself. The following passage will be found on p. 163: ‘The
reanimated memories and the self-reproach which is built up on
them, however, never appear in consciousness unchanged. The
obsessional idea and the obsessive affects which appear in
consciousness and take the place of the pathogenic memory in
conscious life are _compromise-formations_ between the repressed
and the repressing ideas.’ In the definition, that is to say,
especial stress is to be laid upon the words ‘in a transmuted
form’.
[247]: Many patients carry the diversion of their attention to such
lengths that they are totally unable to give the content of an
obsessional idea or to describe an obsessional act though they
have performed it over and over again.
[248]: Cf. Freud, _Die Traumdeutung_ (1900), Seventh Edition, p. 283.
[249]: This omnipotence is discussed further on.
[250]: An example from another of my works, _Der Witz_ (1905), Fourth
Edition, p. 63, will recall to the reader the manner in which this
elliptical technique is employed in making jokes: ‘There is a
witty and pugnacious journalist in Vienna, whose biting invective
has repeatedly led to his being physically maltreated by the
subjects of his attacks. On one occasion, when a fresh misdeed on
the part of one of his habitual opponents was being discussed,
somebody exclaimed: “If X. hears of this, he’ll get his ears boxed
again.” ... The apparent absurdity of this remark disappears if
between the two clauses we insert the words: “he’ll write such a
scathing article upon the man, that, etc.”’---This elliptical
joke, we may note, is similar in its content, as well as in its
form, to the first example quoted in the text.
[251]: _Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens_ (1905), Tenth Edition,
p. 287.
[252]: As Lichtenberg says, ‘An astronomer knows whether the moon is
inhabited or not with about as much certainty as he knows who was
his father, but not with so much certainty as he knows who was his
mother’. A great advance was made in civilization when men decided
to put their inferences upon a level with the testimony of their
senses and to make the step from matriarchy to patriarchy.---The
prehistoric figures which show a smaller person sitting upon the
head of a larger one are representations of patrilineal descent;
Athena had no mother, but sprang from the head of Zeus. A witness
who testifies to something before a court of law is still called
‘_Zeuge_’ [literally, ‘begetter’] in German, after the part played
by the male in the act of procreation; so too in hieroglyphics a
‘witness’ is represented pictorially by the male genitals.
[253]: (_Additional Note_, 1923.)---The omnipotence of thoughts, or,
more accurately speaking, of wishes, has since been recognized as
an essential element in the mental life of primitive people. (See
_Totem und Tabu_.)
[254]: [In the original ‘_Leichenvogel_’, literally
‘corpse-bird’.---_Trans._]
[255]: Compare the discussion on this point during one of the first
sittings (p. 318.)---(_Additional Note_, 1923). Bleuler
subsequently introduced the appropriate term ‘ambivalence’ to
describe this emotional constellation. See also a further
development of this line of thought in my paper ‘The
Predisposition to Obsessional Neurosis’ (1913), *Collected
Papers*, vol. ii.
[256]: Alcibiades says of Socrates in the _Symposium_: ‘Many a time
have I wished that he were dead, and yet I know that I should be
much more sorry than glad if he were to die: so that I am at my
wits’ end’ [Jowett’s Translation].
[257]: Compare the use of ‘representation by a triviality’ as a
technique in making jokes. Freud, _Der Witz_ (1905), Fourth
Edition, p. 65.
[258]: So in the love-verses addressed by Hamlet to Ophelia:
‘Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.’
[259]: The very high average of intellectual capacity among
obsessional patients is probably also connected with this fact.
[260]: I may add that in his childhood he had been subject to strong
coprophilic propensities. In this connection his anal erotism has
already been noticed (see p. 350).
[261]: For instance, in certain forms of fetishism.
[262]: (_Additional Note_, 1923.)---The patient’s mental health was
restored to him by the analysis which I have reported upon in
these pages. Like so many other young men of value and promise, he
perished in the Great War.
[263]: [First published in _Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen_, Bd. iii., 1911. Reprinted in
Freud, _Sammlung kleiner Schriften_, iii., 1913.]
[264]: [A Senatspräsident in an Oberlandesgericht is the Judge
presiding over a Division of an Appeal Court.---_Trans._]
[265]: This piece of self-portraiture, which is very far from being
unjustified, will be found on p. 35 of his book.
[266]: Preface, p. iii. [All page references in this paper relate,
unless the contrary is stated, to Schreber’s
_Denkwürdigkeiten_.---_Trans._]
[267]: [Judge presiding over an inferior Court.---_Trans._]
[268]: And therefore before he could have been affected by the
overwork caused by his new post, which he himself blames for his
illness.
[269]: In Prof. Flechsig’s clinic at Leipsic.
[270]: It appears from the context in this and other passages that
‘the person in question’, who was to practise this abuse, was none
other than Flechsig. (See below.)
[271]: The ‘rays of God’, as we shall see, are identical with the
voices which talked the ‘root-language’.
[272]: [In English in the original.---_Trans._]
[273]: The omission is copied from the _Denkwürdigkeiten_, like every
other peculiarity in their author’s style. I myself should have
found no reason for being so shame-faced over a serious matter.
[274]: The words in which Schreber states this theory are italicized
by him, and he adds a footnote, in which he insists that it can be
used as an explanation of heredity: ‘The male semen’, he declares,
‘contains a nerve belonging to the father, and it unites with a
nerve taken from the mother to form a new entity’ (p. 7). Here,
therefore, we find a quality properly belonging to the
spermatozoon transferred on to the nerves, which makes it probable
that Schreber’s ‘nerves’ are derived from the sphere of ideas
connected with sexuality. It not infrequently happens in the
_Denkwürdigkeiten_ that an incidental note upon some piece of
delusional theory gives us the desired indication of the genesis
of the delusion and so of its meaning.
[275]: In this connection see my discussion below upon the
significance of the sun.---The comparison between (or rather the
condensation of) nerves and rays may well have been based upon the
linear extension which they have in common.---The ray-nerves, by
the way, are no less creative than the spermatozoon-nerves.
[276]: In the root-language (see below) this is described as ‘forming
a nerve-connection with them’.
[277]: We shall find later that certain criticisms against God are
based on this fact.
[278]: This consists essentially in feelings of voluptuousness (see
below).
[279]: On one single occasion during his illness the patient was
vouchsafed the privilege of seeing, with his spiritual eyes, God
Almighty clear and undisguised before him. On that occasion God
uttered what was a very current word in the root-language, and a
forcible though not an amiable one---the word ‘Scoundrel!’
(p. 136).
[280]: A footnote upon p. 20 leads us to suppose that a passage in
Byron’s _Manfred_ may have determined Schreber’s choice of the
names of Persian divinities. We shall later come upon further
evidence of the influence of this poem upon his mind.
[281]: ‘That it was simply a matter of illusions seems to me to be _in
my case_, from the very nature of things, psychologically
unthinkable. For illusions of holding intercourse with God or with
departed souls can properly only arise in the minds of persons
who, before falling into their condition of pathological nervous
excitement, already have a firm belief in God and in the
immortality of the soul. _This was not by any means so, however,
in my case, as has been explained at the beginning of this
chapter_’ (p. 79).
[282]: In a footnote at this point the author endeavours to mitigate
the harshness of the word ‘perfidy’ by a reference to one of his
arguments in justification of God. These will be discussed
presently.
[283]: This confession to a pleasure in the excretory processes, which
we have learnt to recognize as one of the auto-erotic components
of infantile sexuality, may be compared with the remarks made by
little Hans in my ‘Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old
Boy’. (See p. 239 of this volume.)
[284]: Even in the root-language it occasionally happened that God was
not the abuser but the abused. For instance: ‘Deuce take it! What
a thing to have to say---that God lets himself be f⸻d!’ (p. 194).
[285]: For surely the expectation that in the next world we shall at
last be free from differences of sex is in complete harmony with the
view that the future life is a wish-fulfilment.
‘Und jene himmlischen Gestalten
sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib.’
*Goethe*, _Wilhelm Meister_.
[‘And those calm shining sons of morn
They ask not who is maid or boy.’
(Carlyle’s Translation.)]
[286]: The possibility of this discovery of Schreber’s having a deeper
meaning is discussed below.
[287]: [‘_Seligkeit_’ in the original; literally,
‘blessedness’.---_Trans._]
[288]: Extreme instances of the two uses of the word are to be found
in the phrase ‘_mein seliger Vater_’ [‘my late father’] and in
these lines from the German text of the duet in _Don Giovanni_:
‘Ja, dein zu sein auf ewig,
wie selig werd’ ich sein’.
[‘Ah, to be thine for ever---
What rapture that would be!’]
But the fact that the same word should be used in our language in
two such different situations cannot be without significance.
[289]: ‘When moral corruption (“voluptuous excesses”) or perhaps
neurotic states had taken a strong enough hold upon the whole
population of a terrestrial body,’ then, thinks Schreber, bearing
in mind the Biblical stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Deluge,
etc., the world in question might come to a catastrophic end
(p. 52). --- ‘...sowed fear and terror among men, wrecked the
foundations of religion, and spread abroad neurotic states and
general immorality, so that devastating pestilences have descended
upon mankind’ (p. 91). --- ‘Thus it seems probable that by a
“Prince of Hell” the souls meant the mysterious force that was
able to develop in a sense hostile to God as a result of moral
depravity among men or of a general state of nervous
super-excitement following upon over-civilization’ (p. 163).
[290]: The following passage shows how this fitted into his delusion:
‘_This attraction, however, lost its terrors for the nerves in
question, if, and in so far as, upon entering my body, they
encountered a feeling of spiritual voluptuousness_ in which they
themselves shared. For, if this happened, they found an equivalent
or approximately equivalent substitute in my body for the state of
heavenly bliss which they had lost, and which itself consisted in
a kind of voluptuous enjoyment’ (p. 179).
[291]: ‘Something occurred in my own body similar to the conception of
Jesus Christ in an immaculate virgin, that is, in a woman who had
never had intercourse with a man. On two separate occasions (both
while I was in Professor Flechsig’s sanatorium) I have possessed
female genitals, though somewhat imperfectly developed ones, and
have felt a stirring in my body, such as would arise from the
quickening of a human embryo. Nerves of God corresponding to male
semen had, by a divine miracle, been projected into my body, and
impregnation had thus taken place.’ (Footnote to p. 4 of the
Introduction.)
[292]: Jung, _Über die Psychologie der Dementia praecox_, 1907.
[293]: [German ‘_Leichengift_’, literally ‘corpse poison’.---_Trans._]
[294]: [‘Santiago’ or ‘Carthage’,
‘Chinese-dom’ or ‘Jesus Christ’,
‘Sunset’ or ‘Breathlessness’,
‘Ahriman’ or ‘Farmer’.---_Trans._]
[295]: ‘When we survey the contents of this document’, writes
Dr. Weber in his report, ‘and consider the mass of indiscretions
in regard to himself and other persons which it contains, when we
observe the unblushing manner in which he describes situations and
events which are of the most delicate nature and indeed, in an
aesthetic sense, utterly impossible, when we reflect upon his use
of strong language of the most offensive kind, and so forth, we
shall find it quite impossible to understand how a man,
distinguished apart from this by his tact and refinement, could
contemplate taking a step so compromising to himself in the public
eye, unless we bear in mind the fact that...’
etc. etc. (p. 402). Surely the last qualities that we have a right
to demand from a case history which sets out to give a picture of
deranged humanity and of its struggles to rehabilitate itself are
‘discretion’ and ‘aesthetic’ charm.
[296]: Thus Schreber writes as follows in the Open Letter to
Prof. Flechsig with which he prefaces his volume: ‘Even now the
voices that talk with me call out your name to me hundreds of
times each day. They name you in certain constantly recurring
connections, and especially as being the first author of the
injuries I have suffered. And yet the personal relations which
existed between us for a time, have, so far as I am concerned,
long since faded into the background; so that I myself could have
little enough reason to be for ever recalling you to my mind, and
still less for doing so with any feelings of resentment’
(p. viii.).
[297]: According to another and very significant version, which,
however, was soon rejected, Prof. Flechsig had shot himself,
either at Weissenburg in Alsace or in a police cell at
Leipsic. The patient saw his funeral go past, though not in the
direction that was to be expected, in view of the relative
positions of the University Clinic and the cemetery. On other
occasions Flechsig appeared to him in the company of a policeman,
or in conversation with his (Flechsig’s) wife. Schreber was
present at this conversation by the method of ‘nerve-connection’,
and in the course of it Prof. Flechsig called himself ‘God
Flechsig’ to his wife, so that she was half inclined to think he
had gone mad (p. 82).
[298]: The voices informed him that in the course of an official
inquiry this von W. had made some untrue statements about him,
either deliberately or out of carelessness, and in particular had
accused him of onanism. As a punishment for this he was now
obliged to wait upon the patient (p. 108).
[299]: ‘I am accordingly obliged _to admit as a possibility_ that
everything in the first chapters of my _Denkwürdigkeiten_ which is
connected with the name of Flechsig may only refer to the soul
Flechsig as distinguished from the living man. For that his soul
has a separate existence is a certain fact, though it cannot be
explained upon any natural basis’ (p. 342).
[300]: Cf. Abraham, ‘Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der Hysterie und
der Dementia praecox’, 1908. In the course of this paper its
author, referring to a correspondence between us, scrupulously
attributes to myself an influence upon the development of his
views.
[301]: Adler, ‘Der psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der
Neurose’, 1910. According to Adler the masculine protest has a
share in the production of the symptom, whereas in the present
instance the patient’s self is protesting against a symptom that
is already fully fledged.
[302]: The italics in this passage are mine.
[303]: By way of substantiating the above assertion I will quote a
passage from the last scene of the play, in which Manfred says to
the demon who has come to fetch him away:
‘... my past power
Was purchased by no compact with thy crew.’
There is thus a direct contradiction of a soul having been
bartered. This mistake on Schreber’s part was probably not without
its purpose.---It is tempting, by the way, to connect the plot of
_Manfred_ with the incestuous relations which have repeatedly been
asserted to exist between the poet and his half-sister. And it is
not a little striking that the action of Byron’s other play, his
celebrated _Cain_, should be laid in the primal family, where no
objections could exist to incest between brother and
sister.---Finally, we cannot leave the subject of soul-murder
without quoting one more passage from the _Denkwürdigkeiten_: ‘in
this connection Flechsig used formerly to be named as the first
author of the soul-murder, whereas for some time past the facts
have been deliberately inverted and an attempt has been made to
“represent” me as being the perpetrator of the soul-murder...’
(p. 23).
[304]: I owe my knowledge of Schreber’s age at the time of his illness
to some information which was kindly given me by one of his
relatives, through the agency of Dr. Stegmann of Dresden. Apart
from this one fact, however, I have made use of no material in
this paper that is not derived from the actual text of the
_Denkwürdigkeiten_.
[305]: This was the length of the interval between Schreber’s first
and second illnesses.
[306]: [See footnote 222, p. 334.]
[307]: ‘It is only’, he writes towards the end of the book, ‘as
possibilities which must be taken into account, that I mention
that my emasculation may even yet be accomplished and may result
in a new generation issuing from my womb by divine impregnation’
(p. 293).
[308]: Jung, ‘Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie des Gerüchtes’, 1910. Jung
is probably right when he goes on to say that this decomposition
follows the general lines taken by schizophrenia in that it uses a
process of analysis in order to produce a watering-down effect,
and is thus designed to prevent the occurrence of unduly powerful
impressions. When, however, one of his patients said to him: ‘Oh,
are you Dr. J. too? There was some one here this morning who said
he was Dr. J.’, we must interpret it as being an admission to this
effect: ‘You remind me now of a different member of the class of
my transferences from the one you reminded me of when you visited
me last.’
[309]: Otto Rank has found the same process at work in myth-formations
(Rank, _Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden_, 1909).
[310]: No information upon this point is to be found in the
_Denkwürdigkeiten_.
[311]: I have to thank my colleague Dr. Stegmann of Dresden for his
kindness in letting me see a copy of a journal entitled _Der
Freund der Schreber-Vereine_ [_The Friend of the Schreber
Associations_]. This number (Vol. ii. No. 10) celebrates the
centenary of Dr. Schreber’s birth, and some biographical data are
contained in it. Dr. Schreber senior was born in 1808 and died in
1861, at the age of only fifty-three. From the source which I have
already mentioned I know that our patient was at that time
nineteen years old.
[312]: Suetonius, _Lives of the Caesars_, book viii. chapter
xxiii. This practice of deification began with Julius
Caesar. Augustus styled himself ‘_Divi filius_’ in his
inscriptions.
[313]: _Traumdeutung_ (1900), Seventh Edition, p. 295.
[314]: It looks remarkably like a _revanche_ of this sort when we find
the patient writing out the following memorandum one day on the
subject of God: ‘_All attempts at exercising an educative
influence upon him must be abandoned as hopeless_’ (p. 188).
[315]: ‘Whereas for some time past the facts have been deliberately
inverted and an attempt has been made to “represent” me as being
the perpetrator of the soul murder...’ etc. (p. 23).
[316]: [The German word ‘_Vorhof_’ besides having the literal meaning
of ‘fore-court’, is used in anatomy as a synonym for the
‘vestibulum’, a region of the female genitals.---_Trans._]
[317]: ‘The sun is a whore’, he used to exclaim (p. 384).
[318]: ‘To some extent, moreover, even to this day the sun presents a
different picture to my eyes from what it did before my
illness. When I stand facing it and speak aloud its rays turn pale
before me. I can gaze at it without any difficulty and without
being more than slightly dazzled by it; whereas in my healthy days
it would have been as impossible for me as for any one else to
gaze at it for minutes at a time’ (p. 139, footnote).
[319]: ‘Since July 1894 the voices that talk to me have identified him
[Ahriman] directly with the sun’ (p. 88).
[320]: ‘On the following day... I saw the upper God (Ormuzd), and this
time not with my spiritual eyes but with my bodily ones. It was
the sun, but not the sun in its ordinary aspect, as it is known to
all men; it was...’ etc. (p. 137).
[321]: _Also Sprach Zarathustra_, Part III. Nietzsche too only knew
his father as a child.
[322]: [Literally: ‘And with a tread of thunder he accomplishes his
prescribed journey.’ Goethe, _Faust_, Part I.---_Trans._]
[323]: In the same way, Schreber’s ‘feminine wish-phantasy’ is simply
one of the typical forms taken by the infantile nuclear complex.
[324]: See some remarks on this subject in my analysis of the ‘Rat
Man’ (p. 344 of this volume).
[325]: The systems of ‘representing’ and of ‘noting down’ (p. 126),
taken in conjunction with the ‘qualified souls’, point back to
experiences in the patient’s school days.
[326]: ‘This was the end in view, as was quite frankly admitted at an
earlier date in the phrase “We want to destroy your reason”, which
I have heard proceeding from the upper God upon countless
occasions’ (p. 206).
[327]: I must not omit to remark at this point that I shall not
consider any theory of paranoia trustworthy unless it also covers
the _hypochondriacal_ symptoms by which that disorder is almost
invariably accompanied. It seems to me that hypochondria stands in
the same relation to paranoia as anxiety neurosis does to
hysteria.
[328]: ‘For this reason attempts were made to pump out my spinal
cord. This was done by means of so-called “little men” who were
placed in my feet. I shall have more to say presently on the
subject of these “little men”, who showed some resemblance to the
phenomena of the same name which I have already discussed in
Chapter VI. There used always as a rule to be two of them---a
“little Flechsig” and a “little von W.”---and I used to hear their
voices in my feet’ (p. 154). Von W. was the man who was supposed
to have accused Schreber of onanism. The ‘little men’ are
described by Schreber himself as being among the most remarkable
and, in some respects, the most puzzling phenomena of his illness
(p. 157). It looks as though they were the product of a
condensation of children and---spermatozoa.
[329]: ‘After my recovery from my first illness I spent eight years
with my wife---years, upon the whole, of great happiness, rich in
outward honours, and only clouded from time to time by the
oft-repeated disappointment of our hope that we might be blessed
with children’ (p. 36).
[330]: He goes on from this remark (which shows, by the way, that even
in his delusions he preserved the good-natured irony of his saner
days) to trace back through former centuries the relations between
the Flechsig and Schreber families. In just the same way a young
man who is newly engaged, and cannot understand how he can have
lived so many years without knowing the girl he is now in love
with, will insist that he really made her acquaintance at some
former time.
[331]: In this connection it is worth mentioning a protest entered by
the patient against some statements made in the medical report: ‘I
have never trifled with the idea of obtaining a _divorce_, nor
have I displayed any indifference to the maintenance of our
marriage tie, such as might be inferred from the expression used
in the report to the effect that “I am always ready with the
rejoinder that my wife can get a divorce if she likes”’ (p. 436).
[332]: Compare what I have said upon the method of representing
patrilineal descent and upon the birth of Athena in my analysis of
the ‘Rat Man’ (p. 368 of this volume).
[333]: Further confirmation is afforded by A. Maeder’s analysis of a
paranoid patient J. B. (‘Psychologische Untersuchungen an Dementia
praecox-Kranken’, 1910). The present paper, I regret to say, was
completed before I had an opportunity of reading Maeder’s work.
[334]: I. Sadger, ‘Ein Fall von multipler Perversion mit hysterischen
Absenzen’, 1910. Freud, _Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da
Vinci_, 1910.
[335]: Freud, _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_, Second Edition,
1910.
[336]: [In the original this sentence reads: ‘This stage has been
described as “_Narzissismus_”; I prefer to give it the name of
“_Narzissmus_”, which may not be so correct, but is shorter and
less cacophonous.’---_Trans._]
[337]: [That is, as libidinal components ‘leaning up against’ or
supporting themselves upon the ego-instincts.---_Trans._]
[338]: Or in the ‘root-language’, as Schreber would say.
[339]: _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_ (1905), Sixth Edition,
1925, p. 23. The same view and the same formulation will be found
in the papers by Abraham and Maeder to which I have already
referred.
[340]: Jelaleddin Rumi, translated by Rückert.
[‘For when the flames of Love arise,
Then Self, the gloomy tyrant, dies.’]
[341]: An ‘end of the world’ based upon other motives is to be found
at the climax of a lovers’ ecstasy (cf. Wagner’s _Tristan und
Isolde_); in this case it is not the ego but the single
love-object which absorbs all the cathexes directed upon the
external world.
[342]: Cf. Abraham, ‘Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der Hysterie und
der Dementia praecox,’ 1908, and Jung, _Über die Psychologie der
Dementia Praecox_, 1907. Abraham’s short paper contains almost all
the essential views put forward in the present study of the case
of Schreber.
[343]: He has perhaps withdrawn from it not only his libidinal
cathexis, but his interest in general---that is the cathexes that
proceed from his ego as well. This question is discussed below.
[344]: [Literally:
‘Woe! Woe!
Thou hast destroyed it,
The beautiful world,
With mighty fist!
It tumbles, it falls in pieces!
A demigod has shattered it!
. . . .
Mighty
Among the sons of earth,
More splendid
Build it again,
Build it up in thy bosom!’
*Goethe*, _Faust_, Part I.]
[345]: In the paper already quoted.
[346]: Cf. Riklin, ‘Über Versetzungsbesserungen’, 1905.
[347]: [First published in the second half of the same volume of the
_Jahrbuch_ as that in which the main part of the paper
appeared.---_Trans._]
[348]: Cf. Jung, ‘Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido’ (1911), pp. 164
and 207; and Spielrein, ‘Über den psychischen Inhalt eines Falles
von Schizophrenie (Dementia Praecox)’ (1911), p. 350.
[349]: See the footnote to p. 139 of Schreber’s book.
[350]: _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, 1908, tome iii. p. 80. (Quoting
Keller, _Tiere des Altertums_.)
[351]: Images of eagles were set up at the highest points of temples,
so as to serve as ‘magical’ lightning-conductors. (Cf. Reinach,
_loc. cit._)
[352]: For list of references see Reinach, _op. cit._, tome
iii. p. 80, and tome i. p. 74.
[353]: ‘The Schrebers are members of the highest aristocracy of
Heaven’ (p. 24).---‘Aristocracy’ [‘_Adel_’] forms a connection
with ‘eagle’ [‘_Adler_’, lit. ‘noble bird’].
[354]: ‘Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices’ (1907). (*Collected
Papers*, vol. ii.)
[355]: [First published in _Sammlung kleiner Schriften_, iv., 1918;
omitted from subsequent editions of _Sammlung_, iv., and included
in _Sammlung_, v., 1922.] This case history was written down
shortly after the termination of the treatment, in the winter of
1914-15. At that time I was still freshly under the impression of
the twisted re-interpretations which C. G. Jung and Alfred Adler
were endeavouring to give to the findings of psycho-analysis. This
paper is therefore connected with my essay ‘On the History of the
Psycho-Analytic Movement’ which was published in the _Jahrbuch der
Psychoanalyse_ in 1914. [*Collected Papers*, vol. i.] It
supplements the polemic contained in that essay, which is in its
essence of a personal character, by an objective estimation of the
analytical material. It was originally intended for the next
volume of the _Jahrbuch_, the appearance of which was, however,
postponed indefinitely owing to the obstacles raised by the Great
War. I therefore decided to add it to the present collection of
papers, which was being issued by a new publisher. Meanwhile I had
been obliged to deal in my _Introductory Lectures on
Psycho-Analysis_ (which I delivered in 1916 and 1917) with many
points which should have been raised for the first time in this
paper. No alterations of any importance have been made in the text
of the first draft; additions are indicated by means of square
brackets. [There are only two such additional passages, occurring
on pp. 531 and 575. Elsewhere in this paper, as in the rest of the
volume, square brackets indicate additions by the translators.]
[356]: Two and a half years old. It was possible later on to determine
almost all the dates with certainty.
[357]: Information of this kind may, as a rule, be employed as
absolutely authentic material. It may seem tempting to take the
easy course of filling up the gaps in a patient’s memory by making
inquiries from the older members of his family; but I cannot
advise too strongly against such a technique. Any stories that may
be told by relatives in reply to inquiries and requests are at the
mercy of every critical misgiving that can come into play. One
invariably regrets having made oneself dependent upon such
information; at the same time confidence in the analysis is shaken
and a court of appeal is set up over it. Whatever can be
remembered at all will anyhow come to light in the further course
of analysis.
[358]: See below, p. 573.
[359]: By passive trends I mean trends that have a passive sexual aim;
but in saying this I have in mind a transformation not of the
instinct but only of its aim.
[360]: ‘The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales’ (1913),
*Collected Papers*, vol. iv.
[361]: Compare the similarity between these two fairy tales and the
myth of Cronos, which was pointed out by Rank in his paper,
‘Völkerpsychologische Parallelen zu den infantilen Sexualtheorien’
(1912).
[362]: The age of six months came under consideration as a far less
probable, and indeed scarcely tenable, alternative.
[363]: Compare the subsequent metamorphoses of this factor during the
obsessional neurosis. In the patient’s dreams during the treatment
it was replaced by a violent wind. (‘_Aria_’ = ‘air’.)
[364]: We may remark in this connection that the patient drew only
_five_ wolves in his illustration to the dream, although the text
mentioned six or seven.
[365]: In white underclothes: the _white_ wolves.
[366]: Why three times? He suddenly one day produced the statement
that I had discovered this detail by interpretation. This was not
the case. It was a spontaneous association, exempt from further
criticism; in his usual way he pressed it off on to me, and by
this projection tried to make it seem more trustworthy.
[367]: I mean that he understood it at the time of the dream when he
was four years old, not at the time of the observation. He
received the impressions when he was one and a half; his
understanding of them was deferred, but became possible at the
time of the dream owing to his development, his sexual
excitations, and his sexual inquiries.
[368]: The first of these difficulties cannot be reduced by assuming
that the child at the time of its observation was after all
probably a year older, that is to say two and a half, an age at
which it may perhaps have been perfectly capable of talking. All
the minor details of my patient’s case almost excluded the
possibility of shifting the date in this way. Moreover, the fact
should be taken into account that these scenes of observing a
parental coitus are by no means rarely brought to light in
analysis. The condition of their occurrence, however, is precisely
that it should be in the earliest period of childhood. The older
the child is, the more carefully, with parents above a certain
social level, will the child be deprived of the opportunity for
this kind of observation.
[369]: After this reprimand from the schoolmaster-wolf he learnt that
it was the general opinion of his companions that, in order to be
pacified, the master---expected some money from him. We shall
return to this later.---I can see that it would greatly facilitate
a rationalistic view of such a history of a child’s development as
this if it could be supposed that his whole fear of the wolf had
really originated from the Latin master of that name, that it had
been projected back into his childhood, and, supported by the
illustration to the fairy tale, had caused the phantasy of the
primal scene. But this is untenable; the temporal priority of the
wolf phobia and its reference to the period of his childhood spent
upon the first estate is far too securely attested. And his dream
at the age of four?
[370]: Ferenczi, ‘Transitory Symptom-Formations during Analysis’
(1912).
[371]: It says ‘six or seven’ in the dream. Six is the number of the
children that were eaten; the seventh escaped into the
clock-case. It is always a strict law of dream interpretation that
an explanation must be found for every detail.
[372]: Now that we have succeeded in making a synthesis of the dream,
I will try to give a comprehensive account of the relations
between the manifest content of the dream and the latent dream
thoughts.
_It was night, I was lying in my bed_. The latter is the beginning
of the reproduction of the primal scene. ‘It was night’ is a
distortion of ‘I had been asleep’. The remark, ‘I know it was
winter when I had the dream, and night-time’, refers to the
patient’s recollection of the dream and is not part of its
content. It is correct, for it was one of the nights before his
birthday, that is, Christmas Day.
_Suddenly the window opened of its own accord_. That is to be
translated: ‘Suddenly I woke up of my own accord’, a recollection
of the primal scene. The influence of the wolf story, in which the
wolf leapt in through the window, is making itself felt as a
modifying factor, and transforms a direct expression into a
plastic one. At the same time the introduction of the window
serves the purpose of providing a contemporary reference for the
subsequent content of the dream. On Christmas Eve the door opens
suddenly and one sees before one the tree with the presents. Here
therefore the influence of the actual expectation of Christmas
(which comprises the wish for sexual satisfaction) is making
itself felt.
_The big walnut tree_. The representative of the Christmas tree,
and therefore belonging to the current situation. But also the
tree out of the wolf story, upon which the tailor took refuge from
pursuit, and under which the wolves were on the watch. Moreover,
as I have often been able to satisfy myself, a high tree is a
symbol of observing, of scoptophilia. A person sitting on a tree
can see everything that is going on below him and cannot himself
be seen. Compare Boccaccio’s well-known story, and similar
_facetiae_.
_The wolves_. Their number: _six or seven_. In the wolf story
there was a pack, and no number was given. The fixing of the
number shows the influence of the fairy tale of ‘The Seven Little
Goats’, six of whom were eaten up. The fact that the number two in
the primal scene is replaced by a larger number, which would be
absurd in the primal scene, is welcomed by the resistance as a
means of distortion. In the illustration to the dream the dreamer
brings forward the number five, which is probably meant to correct
the statement ‘It was night’.
_They were sitting on the tree_. In the first place they replace
the Christmas presents hanging on the tree. But they are also
transposed on to the tree because that can mean that they are
looking. In his grandfather’s story they were posted underneath
the tree. Their relation to the tree has therefore been reversed
in the dream; and from this it may be concluded that there are
further reversals of the latent material to be found in the
content of the dream.
_They were looking at him with strained attention_. This feature
comes entirely from the primal scene, and has got into the dream
at the price of being twisted completely round.
_They were quite white_. This feature is unessential in itself,
but is strongly emphasized in the dreamer’s narrative. It owes its
intensity to a copious fusion of elements from all the strata of
the material, and it combines unimportant details from the other
sources of the dream with a fragment of the primal scene which is
more significant. This last part of its determination goes back to
the white of his parents’ bedclothes and underclothes, and to this
is added the white of the flocks of sheep, and of the sheep-dogs,
as an allusion to his sexual inquiries among animals, and the
white in the fairy tale of ‘The Seven Little Goats’, in which the
mother is recognized by the white of her hand. Later on we shall
see that the white clothes are also an allusion to death.
_They sat there motionless_. This contradicts the most striking
feature of the observed scene, namely, its agitated movement,
which, in virtue of the attitudes to which it led, constitutes the
connection between the primal scene and the wolf story.
_They had tails like foxes_. This must be the contradiction of a
conclusion which was derived from the action of the primal scene
upon the wolf story, and which must be recognized as the most
important result of the dreamer’s sexual inquiries: ‘So there
really is such a thing as castration’. The terror with which this
conclusion is received finally breaks out in the dream and brings
it to an end.
_The fear of being eaten up by the wolves_. It seemed to the
dreamer as though the motive force of this fear was not derived
from the content of the dream. He said he need not have been
afraid, for the wolves looked more like foxes or dogs, and they
did not rush at him as though to bite him, but were very still and
not at all terrible. We observe that the dream-work tries for some
time to make the painful content harmless by transforming it into
its opposite. (‘They aren’t moving, and, only look, they have the
loveliest tails!’) Until at last this expedient fails, and the
fear breaks out. It expresses itself by the help of the fairy
tale, in which the goat-children are eaten up by the
wolf-father. This part of the fairy tale may perhaps have acted as
a reminder of threats made by the child’s father in fun when he
was playing with him; so that the fear of being eaten up by the
wolf may be a reminiscence as well as a substitute by
displacement.
The wishes which act as motive forces in this dream are obvious;
first there are the superficial wishes of the day, that Christmas
with its presents may already be here (a dream of impatience), and
accompanying these is the deeper wish, now permanently present,
for sexual satisfaction from the dreamer’s father. This is
immediately replaced by the wish to see once more what was then so
fascinating. The mental process then continues its course from the
fulfilment of this last wish by the conjuring up of the primal
scene to what has now become inevitable---the repudiation of the
wish and its repression.
The diffuseness and elaboration of this commentary have been
forced upon me by the effort to present the reader with some sort
of equivalent for the convincing power of an analysis carried
through by oneself; perhaps they may also serve to discourage him
from asking for the publication of analyses which have stretched
over several years.
[373]: The easiest way of meeting the patient’s statement is perhaps
to assume that the object of his observation was in the first
instance a coitus in the normal attitude, which cannot fail to
produce the impression of being a sadistic act. Only after this,
we may suppose, was the attitude altered, so that he had an
opportunity for making other observations and judgements. This
hypothesis, however, was not confirmed with certainty, and
moreover does not seem to me indispensable. We must not forget the
actual situation which lies behind the abbreviated description
given in the text: the patient under analysis, at an age of over
twenty-five years, was lending words to the impressions and
impulses of his fourth year which he would never have found at
that time. If we fail to notice this, it may easily seem comic and
incredible that a child of four should be capable of such
technical judgements and learned notions. This is simply another
instance of _deferred action_. At the age of one and a half the
child receives an impression to which he is unable to react
adequately; he is only able to understand it and to be moved by it
when the impression is revived in him at the age of four; and only
twenty years later, during the analysis, is he able to grasp with
his conscious mental processes what was then going on in him. The
patient justifiably disregards the three periods of time, and puts
his present ego into the situation which is so long past. And in
this we follow him, since with correct self-observation and
interpretation the effect must be the same as though the distance
between the second and third periods of time could be
neglected. Moreover, we have no other means of describing the
events of the second period.
[374]: We shall learn later on, when we come to trace out his
anal-erotism, how he further dealt with this portion of the
problem.
[375]: A passage from the first edition of my _Traumdeutung_ (1900)
will show at what an early stage I was occupied with this
problem. On p. 126 of that work there is an analysis of a remark
occurring in a dream: ‘_that is no longer obtainable_’. It is
explained that the phrase originated from myself; a few days
before, I had explained to the patient ‘that the earliest
experiences of childhood are _no longer obtainable_ as such, but
are replaced in analysis by “transferences” and dreams’.
[376]: The mechanism of dreaming cannot be influenced; but dream
material is to some extent subject to orders.
[377]: I have good reasons for preferring to say ‘the diversion of the
_libido_ from current _conflicts_’.
[378]: [Author’s square bracket. See end of footnote, p. 473.]
[379]: I also repeatedly attempted to throw the patient’s whole story
forward by one year at all events, and in that way to refer the
seduction to an age of four and a quarter, the dream to his fifth
birthday, etc. As regards the intervals between the events there
was no possibility of gaining anything. But the patient remained
obdurate on the point, though he did not succeed entirely in
removing my doubts. A postponement like this for one year would
obviously be of no importance as regards the impression made by
the story and as regards the discussions and implications attached
to it.
[380]: Especially upon the penis (see p. 494).
[381]: This symptom, as we shall hear, had developed after he had
reached his sixth year and could already read.
[382]: Assuming the reality of the primal scene.
[383]: [The German word ‘_Durchfall_’ means literally ‘falling
through’; it is used in the sense of ‘failing’, as in an
examination, and also of ‘diarrhoea’.] The patient informed me
that his native tongue has no parallel to the familiar German use
of ‘_Durchfall_’ as a description for disturbances of the bowels.
[384]: This expression has the same meaning in the patient’s native
tongue as in German. [The German idiom refers euphemistically to
the excretory processes. Compare the analysis of Dora, p. 79 of
this volume.]
[385]: The effect was the same whether he had the enema given him by
some one else or whether he managed it himself.
[386]: When this happened was not exactly fixed; but in any case
before the anxiety-dream when he was four, and probably before his
parents’ absence from home.
[387]: A conclusion which was probably not far from the truth.
[388]: Or so long as he did not understand the copulation of the dogs.
[389]: Cf. ‘On the Transformation of Instincts with Special Reference
to Anal Erotism’ (1917), *Collected Papers*, vol. ii.
[390]: I believe there can be no difficulty in substantiating the
statement that infants only soil with their excrement people whom
they know and are fond of; they do not consider strangers worthy
of this distinction. In my _Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_ I
mentioned the very first purpose to which faeces are put---namely,
the auto-erotic stimulation of the intestinal mucous membrane. We
now reach a further stage, at which a decisive part in the process
of defaecation is played by the child’s attitude to some object to
whom it thus shows itself obedient or agreeable. This relation is
one that persists; for even older children will only allow
themselves to be assisted in defaecating and urinating by
particular privileged persons, though in this connection the
prospect of other forms of gratification is also involved.
[391]: In the unconscious, as we are aware, ‘No’ does not exist, and
there is no distinction between contraries. Negation is only
introduced by the process of repression.
[392]: [The word ‘_empfangen_’ in the German means both ‘received’ and
‘conceived’.---_Trans._]
[393]: Just as vermin often stand for babies in dreams and phobias.
[394]: See the fourth paper in this volume.
[395]: It is as such that faeces are invariably treated by children.
[396]: [See footnote 222, p. 334.]
[397]: ‘_Fausse Reconnaissance_ (“_Déjà Raconté_”) in Psycho-Analytic
Treatment’ (1913), *Collected Papers*, vol. ii.
[398]: ‘Cf. “The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales”
(1913), *Collected Papers*, vol. iv. In telling the story again on
a later occasion he made the following correction: “I don’t
believe I was cutting the tree. That was a confusion with another
recollection, which must also have been hallucinatorily falsified,
of having made a cut upon a tree with my knife and of _blood_
having come out of the tree.”’
[399]: We already know this as regards his Nanya, and we shall hear of
it again as coming from another woman.
[400]: For evidence of this see p. 543.
[401]: Among the most tormenting, though at the same time the most
grotesque, symptoms of his later illness was his relation to every
tailor from whom he ordered a suit of clothes: his deference and
timidity in the presence of this high functionary, his attempts to
get into his good books by giving him extravagant tips, and his
despair over the results of the work however it might in fact have
turned out. [The German word for ‘tailor’ is ‘_Schneider_’, from
the verb ‘_schneiden_’ (‘to cut’), a compound of which,
‘_beschneiden_’, means ‘to circumcise’.---_Trans._]
[402]: In this connection I may mention some dreams which he had,
later than the anxiety-dream, but while he was still upon the
first estate. These dreams represented the coitus scene as an
event taking place between heavenly bodies.
[403]: It is very remarkable that the reaction of shame should be so
intimately connected with involuntary emptying of the bladder
(whether in the daytime or at night) and not equally so, as one
would have expected, with incontinence of the bowels. Experience
leaves no room for doubt upon the point. The regular relation that
is found to exist between incontinence of the bladder and fire
also provides food for reflection. It is possible that these
reactions and relations represent precipitates from the history of
human civilization derived from a lower stratum than anything that
is preserved for us in the traces surviving in myths or folk-lore.
[404]: It may be assigned to a time at which he was about two and a
half: between his supposed observation of coitus and his
seduction.
[405]: This was _before_ the dream.
[406]: [Author’s square bracket. See end of footnote, p. 473.]
[407]: _Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse_, 1917. This was
published too late for it to have influenced my _Introductory
Lectures_.
[408]: [The German ‘_Glückshaube_’, like the corresponding Scots
expression ‘sely how’, means literally ‘lucky hood’.---_Trans._]
[409]: A possible subsidiary explanation, namely that the veil
represented the hymen which is torn at the moment of intercourse
with a man, does not harmonize completely with the necessary
condition of his recovery. Moreover it has no bearing upon the
life of the patient, for whom virginity carried no significance.
[410]: I admit that this is the most ticklish question in the whole
domain of psycho-analysis. I did not require the contributions of
Adler or Jung to induce me to consider the matter with a critical
eye, and to bear in mind the possibility that what analysis puts
forward as being forgotten experiences of childhood (and of an
improbably early childhood) may on the contrary be based upon
phantasies brought about upon occasions occurring late in
life. According to this view, wherever we seemed in analyses to
see traces of the after-effects of an infantile impression of the
kind in question, we should rather have to assume that we were
faced by the manifestation of some constitutional factor or of
some predisposition that had been phylogenetically maintained. On
the contrary, no doubt has troubled me more; no other uncertainty
has been more decisive in holding me back from publishing my
conclusions. I was the first---a point to which none of my
opponents have referred---to recognize both the part played by
phantasies in symptom-formation and also the ‘phantasying back’ of
late impressions into childhood and their sexualization after the
event. (See _Traumdeutung_, First Edition, 1900, p. 49, and ‘Notes
upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis’, 1908 [p. 344 of this
volume].) If, in spite of this, I have held to the more difficult
and more improbable view, it has been as a result of arguments
such as are forced upon the investigator by the case described in
these pages or by any other infantile neurosis. These arguments I
once again lay before my readers for their decision.
[411]: The Grusha scene was, as I have said, a spontaneous product of
the patient’s memory, and no construction or stimulation on the
part of the physician played any part in evoking it. The gaps in
it were filled up by the analysis in a fashion which must be
regarded as unexceptionable, if any value at all is attached to
the analytic method of work. The only possible rationalistic
explanation of the phobia would be the following. There is nothing
extraordinary, it might be said, in a child that was inclined to
be nervous having had an anxiety attack in connection with a
yellow-striped butterfly, probably as a result of some inherited
tendency to anxiety. (See Stanley Hall, ‘A Synthetic Genetic Study
of Fear’, 1914.) In ignorance of the true causation of his fear,
this explanation would proceed, the patient looked about for
something in his childhood on to which he could connect it; he
made use of the chance similarity of names and the recurrence of
the stripes as a ground for the construction of an imaginary
adventure with the nursery-maid whom he still remembered. When,
however, we observe that the trivial details of this event (which,
according to this view, was in itself an innocent one)---the
scrubbing, the pail and the broom---had enough power over the
patient’s later life to determine his object-choice permanently
and compulsively, then the butterfly phobia seems to have acquired
an inexplicable importance. The state of things upon this
hypothesis is thus seen to be at least as remarkable as upon mine,
and any advantage that might be claimed for a rationalistic
reading of the scene has melted away. The Grusha scene is of
particular value to us, since in relation to it we can prepare our
judgement upon the less certain primal scene.
[412]: _Totem und Tabu_ (1913), Third Edition, 1922, p. 137.
[413]: ‘The Predisposition to Obsessional Neurosis’ (1913),
*Collected Papers*, vol. ii.
[414]: ‘Types of Neurotic Nosogenesis’ (1912), *Collected Papers*,
vol. ii.
[415]: I may disregard the fact that it was not possible to put this
behaviour into words until twenty years afterwards; for all the
effects that we traced back to the scene had already been
manifested in the form of symptoms, obsessions, etc., in the
patient’s childhood and long before the analysis. It is also a
matter of indifference in this connection whether we choose to
regard it as a primal scene or as a primal phantasy.
[416]: I must once more emphasize the fact that these reflections
would be vain if the dream and the neurosis had not themselves
occurred in infancy.
[417]: (_Additional Note_, 1923).---I will once more set out here the
chronology of the events mentioned in this case history.
_Born_ on Christmas Day.
1½ _years old_: Malaria. Observation of his parents’ coitus or of
the interview between them into which he later introduced his
coitus phantasy.
_Just before_ 2½: Scene with Grusha.
2½: Screen memory of his parents’ departure with his sister. This
showed him alone with his Nanya and so disowned Grusha and his
sister.
_Before_ 3¼: His mother’s laments to the doctor.
3¼: Beginning of his seduction by his sister. Soon afterwards the
threat of castration from his Nanya.
3½: The English governess. Beginning of the change in his
character.
4: The wolf dream. Origin of the phobia.
4½: Influence of the Bible story. Appearance of the obsessional
symptoms.
_Just before_ 5: Hallucination of the loss of his finger.
5: Departure from the first estate.
_After_ 6: Visit to his sick father.
8: } Final outbreaks of the
10: } obsessional neurosis.
It will have been easy to guess from my account that the patient
was a Russian. I parted from him, regarding him as cured, a few
weeks before the unexpected outbreak of the Great War; and I did
not see him again until the shifting chances of the war had given
the Central European Powers access to South Russia. He then came
to Vienna and reported that immediately after the end of the
treatment he had been seized with a longing to tear himself free
from my influence. After a few months’ work a piece of the
transference which had not hitherto been overcome was successfully
dealt with. Since then the patient has felt normal and has behaved
unexceptionably, in spite of the war having robbed him of his
home, his possessions, and all his family relationships. It may be
that his very misery, by gratifying his sense of guilt,
contributed to the consolidation of his recovery.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
The following typo in the original text has been corrected.
p. 55
- the the very doctor who treats her
+ the very doctor who treats her
The following changes were made to the text on account of the
renumbering of footnotes.
p. 226 (footnote 2 [=149])
- [Cf. footnote 2, p. 120.
+ [Cf. footnote 76, p. 120.
p. 431 (footnote 1 [=306])
- [See footnote 1, p. 334.]
+ [See footnote 222, p. 334.]
p. 563 (footnote 1 [=396])
- [See footnote 1, p. 334.]
+ [See footnote 222, p. 334.]
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