Freud - Complete Works (345 page)

1993

PROSPECTUS FOR
SCHRIFTEN ZUR ANGEWANDTEN SEELENKUNDE

(1907)

The
Schriften zur angewandten
Seelenkunde
, the first number of which is published herewith,
are aimed at that wider circle of educated people who without
actually being philosophers or medical men are nevertheless able to
appreciate the science of the human mind for its significance in
the understanding and deepening of our lives. The papers will
appear in no prescribed order, but will present in each instance a
single study, which will undertake the application of psychological
knowledge to subjects in art and literature, in the history of
civilizations and religions, and in analogous fields. These studies
will sometimes bear the character of exact investigations,
sometimes that of speculative efforts, attempting now to embrace a
larger problem, now to penetrate into a more restricted one; but in
every case they will be in the nature of original achievements and
will avoid resembling mere reviews or compilations.

   The Editor feels himself in duty
bound to vouch for the originality and general merit of the
articles appearing in this series. For the rest, he does not wish
either to interfere with the independence of his contributors or to
be held answerable for what they express. The fact that the first
numbers of the series take particular account of the theories which
he himself has advocated in the sphere of science should not
determine the view taken of this enterprise. On the contrary, the
series is open to the exponents of divergent opinions and hopes to
be able to give expression to the variety of points of view and
principles in contemporary science.

THE PUBLISHER
THE EDITOR

1994

PREFACE TO WILHELM STEKEL’S

NERVOUS ANXIETY-STATES AND THEIR TREATMENT

(1908)

My investigations into the aetiology and
psychical mechanism of neurotic illnesses, which I have pursued
since 1893, attracted little notice to begin with among my fellow
specialists. At length, however, those investigations have met with
recognition from a number of medical research workers and have also
drawn attention to the psycho-analytic methods of examination and
treatment to which I owe my findings. Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, who was
one of the first of the colleagues to whom I was able to impart a
knowledge of psycho-analysis, and who has himself become familiar
with its technique through many years of practice in it, has now
undertaken the task of working over one topic in the clinical
aspect of these neuroses on the basis of my views and of presenting
medical readers with the experiences he has obtained through the
psycho-analytic method. If I am glad to take the responsibility for
his work in the sense which I have just indicated, I think it is
only right to declare explicitly that my direct influence upon the
volume on nervous states of anxiety which lies before us has been a
very slight one. The observations and all the detailed opinions and
interpretations are the author’s own. My share has been
limited to proposing the use of the term ‘anxiety
hysteria’.

   I will add that Dr.
Stekel’s work is founded upon rich experience and is
calculated to stimulate other physicians into confirming by their
own efforts our views on the aetiology of these conditions. His
work reveals many unexpected glimpses of the realities of life,
which so often lie concealed behind neurotic symptoms; and it may
well convince our colleagues that the attitude they choose to adopt
to the hints and explanations given in these pages cannot be a
matter of indifference from the point of view either of their
understanding or of their therapeutic efficiency.

VIENNA
,
March
1908

1995

PREFACE TO SANDOR FERENCZI’S

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS: ESSAYS IN THE FIELD OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

(1910)

Psycho-analytic research into the neuroses
(the various forms of nervous illness with a mental causation) has
endeavoured to trace their connection with instinctual life and the
restrictions imposed on it by the claims of civilization, with the
activities of the normal individual in phantasies and dreams, and
with the creations of the popular mind in religion., myths and
fairy tales. The psycho-analytic treatment of neurotic patients,
based on this method of research, makes far higher demands on
doctor and patient than the methods hitherto in common use, which
operate through medicaments, diet, hydropathy and suggestion. But
it brings the patients so much more relief and permanent
strengthening in the face of life’s problems, that there is
no cause for surprise at the continual advances made by this
therapeutic method in spite of violent opposition.

   The author of the following
essays, who is a close acquaintance of mine, and who is familiar,
to an extent that few others are, with all the difficulties of
psycho-analytic problems, is the first Hungarian to undertake the
task of creating an interest in psycho-analysis among doctors and
men of education in his own country through writings composed in
their mother tongue. It is our cordial wish that this attempt of
his may succeed and may result in gaining for this new field of
work new workers from the body of his compatriots.

1996

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE
NEUE FREIE PRESSE

(1903-4)

I

REVIEW OF GEORG BIEDENKAPP’S
IM
KAMPFE GEGEN HIRNBACILLEN

Concealed behind this somewhat unpromising
title is the book of a brave man who succeeds in telling the reader
much that is worthy of consideration. The sub-title of the work
reveals more of its content: ‘A Philosophy of Small
Words’. The author is in fact fighting against those
‘little words and arrangements of words which exclude or
include too much’ and which reveal, in people who have the
habit of using them for preference, a tendency towards
‘exclusive or superlative judgements’. It is
self-evident - our author would contest even this phrase - that the
fight is not concerned with these harmless words but with the
tendency to become intoxicated by them and to forget, on account of
the exaggerated representation thus achieved, the necessary
limitations on our pronouncements and the inevitable relativity of
our judgements. It really serves as a useful warning if one is
shown how much that was described by people of an earlier
generation as ‘self-evident’ or as
‘nonsensical’ ranks with us to-day conversely as
nonsensical or self-evident; or if we observe, in a series of
well-chosen examples, to what a narrowing of their mental horizon
even important writers must plead guilty, as a result of their
misuse of superlatives. The exhortation to moderation in judgement
and expression actually serves our author only as a point of
departure for further discussions on other ‘errors of
thought’ of human beings - on the central delusion, faith, on
atheistic morality, and the like. In all these observations is
manifest the author’s honest endeavour to take seriously the
implications of the particular view of the world necessitated by
the discoveries of modern science, in particular of the theory of
evolution. A lot that is psychologically accurate is included, and
many truths of the kind that have often been said before but cannot
be often enough repeated. The author has set himself the thankless
task ‘of improving and converting people’ by means of
exerting a sober influence, without seeking to move them to
laughter by humour or sweep them along with him by passion. Let us
wish him all success.

Contributions To The Neue Freie Presse

1997

II

REVIEW OF JOHN BIGELOW’S
THE
MYSTERY OF SLEEP

Solving the mystery of sleep might well have
been reserved to science; the pious author, however, operates with
biblical arguments and teleological causes. For example: it would
be an idea unworthy of divine providence to suppose that it would
allow human beings to spend a full third of their life in spiritual
inactivity. Sleep is rather that state in which divine influence
penetrates most freely and most effectively into human mental life.
But in spite of all objections to the author’s way of
thinking we will not omit to emphasize the kernel of truth in his
assertion. Scientific studies of the state of mental life during
sleep, too, oblige us to relinquish as inadequate our previous
assumption that sleep reduces the play of mental activity to a
minimum. The important processes of unconscious mental and even
intellectual activity continue - as the elucidation of dreams given
by your reviewer demonstrates - even during profound sleep. This
unconscious mental activity deserves to be called
‘daemonic’ but scarcely divine.

Contributions To The Neue Freie Presse

1998

III

OBITUARY OF PROFESSOR S.
HAMMERSCHLAG

S. Hammerschlag, who relinquished his activity
as a Jewish religious teacher about thirty years ago, was one of
those personalities who possess the gift of leaving ineradicable
impressions on the development of their pupils. A spark from the
same fire which animated the spirit of the great Jewish seers and
prophets burned in him and was not extinguished until old age
weakened his powers. But the passionate side of his nature was
happily tempered by the ideal of humanism of our German classical
period which governed him, and his method of education was based on
the foundation of the philological and classical studies to which
he had devoted his own youth. Religious instruction served him as a
way of educating towards love of the humanities, and from the
material of Jewish history he was able to find means of tapping the
sources of enthusiasm hidden in the hearts of young people and of
making it flow out far beyond the limitations of nationalism or
dogma. Those of his pupils who were later allowed to seek him out
in his own home gained a paternally solicitous friend in him and
were able to perceive that sympathetic kindness was the fundamental
characteristic of his nature. Feelings of gratitude towards a
revered teacher - undiminished through the course of decades -
received most dignified expression over his grave from Dr.
Friedjung the historian.

1999

ANALYSIS OF A PHOBIA IN A FIVE-YEAR-OLD BOY

(1909)

2000

Intentionally left blank

2001

ANALYSIS OF A PHOBIA IN A FIVE-YEAR-OLD BOY

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 own
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.

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2002

   But the peculiar value of this
observation lies in the considerations which follow. When a
physician 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
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
(1905
d
), and I am aware that they seem as strange to an
outside reader as they seem incontrovertible 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 in children at first hand
and in all the freshness of life the sexual impulses and wishes
which we dig out so laboriously in adults 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 of 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 refrain from any attempt at spoiling the
naïveté
and directness of the nursery by making
any conventional emendations.

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2003

   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’.¹ Thus he once
asked his mother this question:

  
Hans
: ‘Mummy, 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 of the sexual
development of children in general. I once put forward the
view² that there was no need to be too much horrified at
finding in a woman the idea of sucking at a male organ. This
repellent impulse, 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, a cows udder 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 also impelled him to
touch
his member.
When he was three and a half his mother found him with his hand on
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?’

  
Hans
: ‘With my
bottom.’

  
¹
[‘
Wiwimacher
’ in the
original.]

  
²
See my ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a
Case of Hysteria’ (1905
e
).

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2004

   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
Interpretation of
Dreams
, and elsewhere, I have touched upon the part it
plays.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1923:] - Since this
was written, the study of the castration complex has been further
developed in contributions to the subject by Lou
Andreas-Salomé, 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 in 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 consequences 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 children construct
this danger for themselves 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.

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2005

   At about the same age (three and
a half), standing in front of the lions’ cage at
Schönbrunn, 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
inquisitive little human child. There can be no doubt about
Hans’s sexual curiosity; but it also roused the spirit of
enquiry 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): ‘Daddy, 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 borne in mind; it will become important
later on.

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2006

   But the great event of
Hans’s life was the birth of his little sister Hanna when he
was exactly three and a half.¹ 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 Mummy
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 baby’s delivery
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 bed-pan, 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 question that his first
doubts about the stork have taken root
.

   ‘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’s not got any teeth yet."² And in fact when he
saw her for the first time he was very much surprised that she was
unable to 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 baby sister!"

  
¹
April 1903 to October 1906.

  
²
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!’

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2007

   ‘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.¹

   ‘A little 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."²

  
¹
Another child, rather older than Hans,
welcomed his younger brother with the words: ‘The stork can
take him away again.’ Compare in this connection my remarks
in
The Interpretation of Dreams
on dreams of the death of
loved relatives.