Freud - Complete Works (415 page)

   ‘
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 overvaluation of
the ego
and may thus set beside the overvaluation of the
love-object with which we are already familiar.¹

   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.
²

   After this discussion of the
unexpectedly important part played by homosexual wishful phantasies
in paranoia, let us return to the two factors in which we expected
from the first to find the distinguishing marks of paranoia,
namely, the mechanism
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.

  
¹
Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality
. The same view and the same formulation will be found
in the papers by Abraham and Maeder to which I have already
referred.

  
²
From the
Ghazals
of Muhammad ibn
Muhammad (Jãlal al-Din)
Rumi
, translated by
Rückert.

                                               
[For when the flames of love arise,

                                               
Then Self, the gloomy tyrant, dies.]

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2434

   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 kind 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. 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 others) inside ourselves, this normal
proceeding, too, 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 up now turn to consider what ideas we can
collect on the subject of the mechanism of repression in paranoia.
I should like to say at once, in justification of this temporary
renunciation, that 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 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.

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2435

   (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 relation to later psychological structures like one
belonging to the system of the unconscious, like one that is
repressed. We have already shown 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-pressure’. It gives an impression of being an
essentially active process, while fixation appears in fact to be a
passive lagging behind. What undergo repression may either be the
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 which have 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 direction 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 failure of
repression, of
irruption
, of
return of the repressed
.
This irruption takes its start from the point of fixation, and it
implies a regression of the libidinal development to that
point.

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2436

   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 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 of
repression proper which predominates in paranoia.

   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’ (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 (71); and
during the last part of his stay in Flechsig’s clinic he
believed that that period had already elapsed. He himself was
‘the only real man left alive’, and the few human
shapes that he still saw - the doctor, the attendants, the other
patients - he explained as being ‘miracled up, cursorily
improvised men’. 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 (81); he himself existed
in a second, inferior shape, and in this second shape he one day
quietly passed away (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 of spirits’, was to act a leading
part, just as another seer was alleged to have done in the Lisbon
earthquake of 1755 (91). Or again, Flechsig was the culprit, since
through his magic arts he had sown fear and terror among men, had
wrecked the foundations of religion, and spread abroad general
nervous disorders and immorality, so that devastating pestilences
had descended upon mankind (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 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, and 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
admitted that his view was no longer tenable:
’. . . 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.’ (84-5.) 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.

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2437

   A world-catastrophe of this kind
is not infrequent during the agitated stage in other cases of
paranoia.¹ If we base ourselves on our theory of libidinal
cathexis, and if we follow the hint given by Schreber’s view
of other people as being ‘cursorily improvised men’, we
shall not find it difficult to explain these catastrophes.²
The patient has withdrawn from the people in his environment and
from the external world generally the libidinal cathexis which he
has hitherto directed on to them. Thus everything has become
indifferent and irrelevant to him, and has to be explained by means
of a secondary rationalization as being ‘miracled up,
cursorily improvised’. The end of the world is the projection
of this internal catastrophe; his subjective world has come to an
end since his withdrawal of his love from it.³

   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!
⁴

And the paranoic builds it 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 world of his delusions.
The
delusional formation, which we take to be the pathological product,
is in reality an attempt at recovery, a process of
reconstruction
. Such a reconstruction after the catastrophe is
successful to a greater or lesser extent, but never wholly so; in
Schreber’s words, there has been a ‘profound internal
change’ in the world. But the human subject has recaptured a
relation, and often a very intense one, to the people and things in
the world, even though the relation is a hostile one now, where
formerly it was hopefully affectionate. We may say, 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 to say that the perception which was
suppressed internally is 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.