Freud - Complete Works (515 page)

   A friend has since called my
attention to the fact that the ‘criminal from a sense of
guilt’ was known to Nietzsche too. The pre-existence of the
feeling of guilt, and the utilization of a deed in order to
rationalize this feeling, glimmer before us in Zarathustra’s
sayings ‘On the Pale Criminal’. Let us leave it to
future research to decide how many criminals are to be reckoned
among these ‘pale’ ones.

3120

A MYTHOLOGICAL PARALLEL TO A VISUAL OBSESSION

(1916)

In a patient of about twenty-one years of age
the products of unconscious mental activity became conscious not
only in obsessive thoughts but also in obsessive images. The two
could accompany each other or appear independently. At one
particular time, whenever he saw his father entering the room,
there came into his mind in close connection an obsessive word and
an obsessive image. The word was ‘
Vaterarsch
’
[‘father-arse’]; the accompanying image represented his
father as the naked lower part of a body, provided with arms and
legs, but without the head or upper part. The genitals were not
indicated, and the facial features were painted on the abdomen.

   It will help to explain this more
than usually absurd symptom if I mention that the patient, who was
a man of fully developed intellect and high moral ideals,
manifested a very lively anal erotism in the most various ways
until after his tenth year. After this had been got over, his
sexual life was once again forced back to the preliminary anal
stage by his later struggle against genital erotism. He loved and
respected his father greatly, and also feared him not a little;
judged by his own high standards in regard to asceticism and the
suppression of the instincts, however, his father seemed to him a
person who stood for debauchery and the pursuit of enjoyment in
material things.

   ‘Father-arse’ was
soon explained as a jocular Teutonizing of the honorific title of
‘patriarch’. The obsessive image is an obvious
caricature. It recalls other representations which, with a
derogatory end in view, replace a whole person by one of his
organs, e.g. his genitals; it reminds us, too, of unconscious
phantasies which lead to the identification of the genitals with
the whole person, and also of joking figures of speech, such as
‘I am all ears’.

A Mythological Parallel To A Visual Obsession

3121

   The placing of the facial
features on the abdomen of the caricature struck me at first as
very strange. But I soon remembered having seen the same thing in
French caricatures.¹ Chance then brought to my notice an
antique representation, which tallied exactly with my
patient’s obsessive image.

   According to the Greek legend,
Demeter came to Eleusis in search of her daughter after she had
been abducted, and was given lodging by Dysaules and his wife
Baubo; but in her great sorrow she refused to touch food or drink.
Thereupon her hostess Baubo made her laugh by suddenly lifting up
her dress and exposing her body. A discussion of this anecdote,
which was probably intended to explain a magic ceremonial which was
no longer understood, is to be found in the fourth volume of
Salomon Reinach’s work,
Culte, Mythes, et Religions
,
1912. In the same passage the author mentions that during the
excavations at Priene in Asia Minor some terracottas were found
which represented Baubo. They show the body of a woman without a
head or chest and with a face drawn on the abdomen: the lifted
dress frames this face like a crown of hair (ibid., 117).

  
¹
Cf. ‘L’impudique Albion’,
a caricature of England drawn in 1901 by Jean Véber,
reproduced in Fuchs, 1908.

3122

A CONNECTION BETWEEN A SYMBOL AND A SYMPTOM

(1916)

Experience in the analysis of dreams has
sufficiently well established the hat as a symbol of the genital
organ, most frequently of the male organ. It cannot be said,
however, that the symbol is an intelligible one. In phantasies and
in numerous symptoms the head too appears as a symbol of the male
genitals, or, if one prefers to put it so, as something standing
for them. It will sometimes have been noticed that patients
suffering from obsessions express an amount of abhorrence of and
indignation against punishment by beheading far greater than they
do in the case of any other form of death; and in such cases the
analyst may be led to explain to them that they are treating being
beheaded as a substitute for being castrated. Instances have often
been analysed and published of dreams dreamt by young people or
reported as having occurred in youth, which concerned the subject
of castration, and in which a round ball was mentioned which could
only be interpreted as the head of the dreamer’s father. I
was recently able to solve a ceremonial performed by a woman
patient before going to sleep, in which she had to lay her small
top pillow diamond-wise on the other ones and to rest her head
exactly in the long diameter of the diamond-shape. The diamond had
the meaning that is familiar to us from drawings on walls
[
graffiti
]; the head was supposed to represent a male
organ.

   It may be that the symbolic
meaning of the hat is derived from that of the head, in so far as a
hat can be regarded as a prolonged, though detachable head. In this
connection I am reminded of a symptom by means of which obsessional
neurotics succeed in causing themselves continual torments. When
they are in the street they are constantly on the look-out to see
whether some acquaintance will greet them first by taking of his
hat, or whether he seems to be waiting for
their
salutation;
and they give up a number of their acquaintances after discovering
that they no longer greet them or do not return their own
salutation properly. There is no end to their difficulties in this
connection; they find them everywhere as their mood and fancy
dictate. It makes no difference to their behaviour when we tell
them, what they all know already, that a salutation by taking off
the hat has the meaning of an abasement before the person saluted -
that a Spanish grandee, for example, enjoyed the privilege of
remaining covered in the king’s presence - and that their own
sensitiveness on the subject of greeting therefore means that they
are unwilling to show themselves less important than the other
person thinks he is. The resistance of their sensitiveness to
explanations such as this suggests that a motive less familiar to
consciousness is at work; and the source of this excess of feeling
might easily be found in its relation to the castration
complex.

3123

LETTER TO DR. HERMINE VON HUG-HELLMUTH

(1919 [1915])

   The diary is a little gem. I
really believe it has never before been possible to obtain such a
clear and truthful view of the mental impulses that characterize
the development of a girl in our social and cultural stratum during
the years before puberty. We are shown how her feelings grow up out
of a childish egoism till they reach social maturity; we learn what
form is first assumed by her relations with her parents and with
her brothers and sisters and how they gradually gain in seriousness
and inward feeling; how friendships are made and broken; how her
affection feels its way towards her first objects; and, above all,
how the secret of sexual life begins to dawn on her indistinctly
and then takes complete possession of the child’s mind; how,
in the consciousness of her secret knowledge, she at first suffers
hurt, but little by little overcomes it. All of this is so
charmingly, so naturally, and so gravely expressed in these artless
notes that they cannot fail to arouse the greatest interest in
educators and psychologists . . . It is your duty, I
think, to publish the diary. My readers will be grateful to you for
it.

3124

INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

(1916-17)

3125

Intentionally left blank

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3126

PREFACE

What I am here offering the public as an
‘Introduction to Psycho-Analysis’ is not designed to
compete in any way with such general accounts of this field of
knowledge as are already in existence, e.g. those of Hitschmann
(1913), Pfister (1913), Kaplan (1914), Régis and Hesnard
(1914) and Meijer (1915). This volume is a faithful reproduction of
the lectures which I delivered during the two Winter Terms 1915/16
and 1916/17 before an audience of doctors and laymen of both
sexes.

   Any peculiarities of this book
which may strike its readers are accounted for by the conditions in
which it originated. It was not possible in my presentation to
preserve the unruffled calm of a scientific treatise. On the
contrary, the lecturer had to make it his business to prevent his
audience’s attention from lapsing during a session lasting
for almost two hours. The necessities of the moment often made it
impossible to avoid repetitions in treating some particular subject
- it might emerge once, for instance, in connection with
dream-interpretation and then again later on in connection with the
problems of the neuroses. As a result, too, of the way in which the
material was arranged, some important topics (the unconscious, for
instance) could not be exhaustively treated at a single point, but
had to be taken up repeatedly and then dropped again until a fresh
opportunity arose for adding some further information about it.

   Those who are familiar with
psycho-analytic literature will find little in this
‘Introduction’ that could not have been known to them
already from other much more detailed publications. Nevertheless,
the need for rounding-off and summarizing the subject-matter has
compelled the author at certain points (the aetiology of anxiety
and hysterical phantasies) to bring forward material that he has
hitherto held back.

FREUD

VIENNA
,
Spring
1917

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3127

PREFACE TO THE HEBREW TRANSLATION

These lectures were delivered in 1916 and
1917; they gave a fairly accurate account of the position of the
young science at that period and they contained more than their
title indicated. They provided not only an introduction to
psycho-analysis but covered the greater part of its subject-matter.
This is naturally no longer true. Advances have in the meantime
taken place in its theory and important additions have been made to
it, such as the division of the personality into an ego, a
super-ego and an id, a radical alteration in the theory of the
instincts, and discoveries concerning the origin of conscience and
the sense of guilt. These lectures have thus become to a large
extent incomplete; it is in fact only now that they have become
truly ‘introductory’. But in another sense, even to-day
they have not been superseded or become obsolete. What they contain
is still believed and taught, apart from a few modifications, in
psycho-analytic training schools.

   Readers of Hebrew and especially
young people eager for knowledge are presented in this volume with
psycho-analysis clothed in the ancient language which has been
awakened to a new life by the will of the Jewish people. The author
can well picture the problem which this has set its translator. Nor
need he suppress his doubt whether Moses and the Prophets would
have found these Hebrew lectures intelligible. But he begs their
descendants (among whom he himself is numbered), for whom this book
is designed, not to react too quickly to their first impulses of
criticism and dislike by rejecting it. Psycho-analysis brings
forward so much that is new, and among it so much that contradicts
traditional opinions and wounds deeply rooted feelings, that it is
bound at first to provoke denial. A reader who suspends his
judgement and allows psycho-analysis as a whole to make its
impression on him will perhaps become open to a conviction that
even this undesired novelty is worth knowing and is indispensable
for anyone who wishes to understand the mind and human life.

VIENNA
,
December
1930

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3128

PART
I

PARAPRAXES

(1916)

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3129

LECTURE I

INTRODUCTION

LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN
, - I cannot tell how much knowledge about
psycho-analysis each one of you has already acquired from what you
have read or from hearsay. But the wording of my prospectus -
‘Elementary Introduction to Psycho-Analysis’ - obliges
me to treat you as though you knew nothing and stood in need of
some preliminary information.

   I can, however, assume this much
- that you know that psycho-analysis is a procedure for the medical
treatment of neurotic patients. And here I can at once give you an
instance of how in this field a number of things take place in a
different way - often, indeed, in an opposite way - from what they
do elsewhere in medical practice. When elsewhere we introduce a
patient to a medical technique which is new to him, we usually
minimize its inconveniences and give him confident assurances of
the success of the treatment. I think we are justified in this,
since by doing so we are increasing the probability of success. But
when we take a neurotic patient into psycho-analytic treatment, we
act differently. We point out the difficulties of the method to
him, its long duration, the efforts and sacrifices it calls for;
and as regards its success, we tell him we cannot promise it with
certainty, that it depends on his own conduct, his understanding,
his adaptability and his perseverance. We have good reasons, of
course, for such apparently wrong-headed behaviour, as you will
perhaps come to appreciate later on.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3130

   Do not be annoyed, then, if I
begin by treating you in the same way as these neurotic patients. I
seriously advise you not to join my audience a second time. To
support this advice, I will explain to you how incomplete any
instruction in psycho-analysis must necessarily be and what
difficulties stand in the way of your forming a judgement of your
own upon it. I will show you how the whole trend of your previous
education and all your habits of thought are inevitably bound to
make you into opponents of psycho-analysis, and how much you would
have to overcome in yourselves in order to get the better of this
instinctive opposition. I cannot, of course, foretell how much
understanding of psycho-analysis you will obtain from the
information I give you, but I can promise you this: that by
listening to it you will not have learnt how to set about a
psycho-analytic investigation or how to carry a treatment through.
If, however, there should actually turn out to be one of you who
did not feel satisfied by a fleeting acquaintance with
psycho-analysis but was inclined to enter into a permanent
relationship to it, I should not merely dissuade him from doing so
but actively warn him against it. As things stand at present, such
a choice of profession would ruin any chance he might have of
success at a University, and, if he started in life as a practising
physician, he would find himself in a society which did not
understand his efforts, which regarded him with distrust and
hostility, and unleashed upon him all the evil spirits lurking
within it. And the phenomena accompanying the war that is now
raging in Europe will perhaps give you some notion of what legions
of these evil spirits there may be.

   Nevertheless, there are quite a
number of people for whom, in spite of these inconveniences,
something that promises to bring them a fresh piece of knowledge
still has its attraction. If a few of you should be of this sort
and in spite of my warnings appear here again for my next lecture,
you will be welcome. All of you, however, have a right to learn the
nature of the difficulties of psycho-analysis to which I have
alluded.

   I will begin with those connected
with instruction, with training in psycho-analysis. In medical
training you are accustomed to
see
things. You see an
anatomical preparation, the precipitate of a chemical reaction, the
shortening of a muscle as a result of the stimulation of its
nerves. Later on, patients are demonstrated before your senses -
the symptoms of their illness, the products of the pathological
process and even in many cases the agent of the disease in
isolation. In the surgical departments you are witnesses of the
active measures taken to bring help to patients, and you may
yourselves attempt to put them into effect. Even in psychiatry the
demonstration of patients with their altered facial expressions,
their mode of speech and their behaviour, affords you plenty of
observations which leave a deep impression on you. Thus a medical
teacher plays in the main the part of a leader and interpreter who
accompanies you through a museum, while you gain a direct contact
with the objects exhibited and feel yourselves convinced of the
existence of the new facts through your own perception.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3131

   In psycho-analysis, alas,
everything is different. Nothing takes place in a psycho-analytic
treatment but an interchange of words between the patient and the
analyst. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences and
present impressions, complains, confesses to his wishes and his
emotional impulses. The doctor listens, tries to direct the
patient’s processes of thought, exhorts, forces his attention
in certain directions, gives him explanations and observes the
reactions of understanding or rejection which he in this way
provokes in him. The uninstructed relatives of our patients, who
are only impressed by visible and tangible things - preferably by
actions of the sort that are to be witnessed at the cinema - never
fail to express their doubts whether ‘anything can be done
about the illness by mere talking’. That, of course, is both
a short-sighted and an inconsistent line of thought. These are the
same people who are so certain that patients are ‘simply
imagining’ their symptoms. Words were originally magic and to
this day words have retained much of their ancient magical power.
By words one person can make another blissfully happy or drive him
to despair, by words the teacher conveys his knowledge to his
pupils, by words the orator carries his audience with him and
determines their judgements and decisions. Words provoke affects
and are in general the means of mutual influence among men. Thus we
shall not depreciate the use of words in psychotherapy and we shall
be pleased if we can listen to the words that pass between the
analyst and his patient.

   But we cannot do that either. The
talk of which psycho-analytic treatment consists brooks no
listener; it cannot be demonstrated. A neurasthenic or hysterical
patient can of course, like any other, be introduced to students in
a psychiatric lecture. He will give an account of his complaints
and symptoms, but of nothing else. The information required by
analysis will be given by him only on condition of his having a
special emotional attachment to the doctor; he would become silent
as soon as he observed a single witness to whom he felt
indifferent. For this information concerns what is most intimate in
his mental life, everything that, as a socially independent person,
he must conceal from other people, and, beyond that, everything
that, as a homogeneous personality, he will not admit to
himself.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3132

   Thus you cannot be present as an
audience at a psycho-analytic treatment. You can only be told about
it; and, in the strictest sense of the word, it is only by hearsay
that you will get to know psycho-analysis. As a result of receiving
your instruction at second hand, as it were, you find yourselves
under quite unusual conditions for forming a judgement. That will
obviously depend for the most part on how much credence you can
give to your informant.

   Let us assume for a moment that
you were attending a lecture not on psychiatry but on history, and
that the lecturer was telling you of the life and military deeds of
Alexander the Great. What grounds would you have for believing in
the truth of what he reported? At a first glance the position would
seem to be even more unfavourable than in the case of
psycho-analysis, for the Professor of History no more took part in
Alexander’s campaigns than you did. The psycho-analyst does
at least report things in which he himself played a part. But in
due course we come to the things that confirm what the historian
has told you. He could refer you to the reports given by ancient
writers, who were either themselves contemporary with the events
under question or, at any rate, were comparatively close to them -
he could refer you, that is to say, to the works of Diodorus,
Plutarch, Arrian, and so on. He could put reproductions before, you
of coins and statues of the king which have survived and he could
hand round to you a photograph of the Pompeian mosaic of the battle
of Issus. Strictly speaking, however, all these documents only
prove that earlier generations already believed in
Alexander’s existence and in the reality of his deeds, and
your criticism might start afresh at that point. You would then
discover that not all that has been reported about Alexander
deserves credence or can be confirmed in its details; but
nevertheless I cannot think that you would leave the lecture-room
in doubts of the reality of Alexander the Great. Your decision
would be determined essentially by two considerations: first, that
the lecturer had no conceivable motive for assuring you of the
reality of something he himself did not think real, and secondly,
that all the available history books describe the events in
approximately similar terms. If you went on to examine the older
sources, you would take the same factors into account the possible
motives of the informants and the conformity of the witnesses to
one another. The outcome of your examination would undoubtedly be
reassuring in the case of Alexander, but would probably be
different where figures such as Moses or Nimrod were concerned.
Later opportunities will bring to light clearly enough what doubts
you may feel about the credibility of your psycho-analytic
informant.