Freud - Complete Works (605 page)

3641

‘A CHILD IS BEING BEATEN’

A
CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE ORIGIN OF SEXUAL PERVERSIONS

(1919)

3642

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3643

‘A CHILD IS BEING BEATEN’

A
CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE ORIGIN OF SEXUAL PERVERSIONS

I

It is surprising how often people who seek
analytic treatment for hysteria or an obsessional neurosis confess
to having indulged in the phantasy: ‘A child is being
beaten.’ Very probably there are still more frequent
instances of it among the far greater number of people who have not
been obliged to come to analysis by manifest illness.

   The phantasy has feelings of
pleasure attached to it, and on their account the patient has
reproduced it on innumerable occasions in the past or may even
still be doing so. At the climax of the imaginary situation there
is almost invariably a masturbatory satisfaction - carried out,
that is to say, on the genitals. At first this takes place
voluntarily, but later on it does so in spite of the
patient’s efforts, and with the characteristics of an
obsession.

   It is only with hesitation that
this phantasy is confessed to. Its first appearance is recollected
with uncertainty. The analytic treatment of the topic is met by
unmistakable resistance. Shame and a sense of guilt are perhaps
more strongly excited in this connection than when similar accounts
are given of memories of the beginning of sexual life. Eventually
it becomes possible to establish that the first phantasies of the
kind were entertained very early in life: certainly before school
age, and not later than in the fifth or sixth year. When the child
was at school and saw other children being beaten by the teacher,
then, if the phantasies had become dormant, this experience called
them up again, or, if they were still present, it reinforced them
and noticeably modified their content. From that time forward it
was ‘an indefinite number’ of children that were being
beaten. The influence of the school was so clear that the patients
concerned were at first tempted to trace back their
beating-phantasies exclusively to these impressions of school life,
which dated from later than their sixth year. But it was never
possible for them to maintain that position; the phantasies had
already been in existence before.

'A Child Is Being Beaten'

3644

   Though in the higher forms at
school the children were no longer beaten, the influence of such
occasions was replaced and more than replaced by the effects of
reading, of which the importance was soon to be felt. In my
patients’
milieu
it was almost always the same books
whose contents gave a new stimulus to the beating-phantasies: those
accessible to young people, such as what was known as the
‘
Bibliothèque rose
’,
Uncle Tom’s
Cabin
, etc. The child began to compete with these works of
fiction by producing his own phantasies and by constructing a
wealth of situations and institutions, in which children were
beaten, or were punished and disciplined in some other way, because
of their naughtiness and bad behaviour.

   This phantasy - ‘a child is
being beaten’ - was invariably cathected with a high degree
of pleasure and had its issue in an act of pleasurable auto-erotic
satisfaction. It might therefore be expected that the sight of
another child being beaten at school would also be a source of
similar enjoyment. But as a matter of fact this was never so. The
experience of real scenes of beating at school produced in the
child who witnessed them a peculiarly excited feeling which was
probably of a mixed character and in which repugnance had a large
share. In a few cases the real experience of the scenes of beating
was felt to be intolerable. Moreover, it was always a condition of
the more sophisticated phantasies of later years that the
punishment should do the children no serious injury.

   The question was bound to arise
of what relation there might be between the importance of the
beating-phantasies and the part that real corporal punishment might
have played in the child’s bringing up at home. It was
impossible, on account of the one-sidedness of the material, to
confirm the first suspicion that the relation was an inverse one.
The individuals from whom the data for these analyses were derived
were very seldom beaten in their childhood, or were at all events
not brought up by the help of the rod. Naturally, however, each of
these children was bound to have become aware at one time or
another of the superior physical strength of its parents or
educators; the fact that in every nursery the children themselves
at times come to blows requires no special emphasis.

'A Child Is Being Beaten'

3645

   As regards the early and simple
phantasies which could not be obviously traced to the influence of
school impressions or of scenes taken from books, further
information would have been welcome. Who was the child that was
being beaten? The one who was himself producing the phantasy or
another? Was it always the same child or as often as not a
different one? Who has it that was beating the child? A grown-up
person? And if so, who? Or did the child imagine that he himself
was beating another one? Nothing could be ascertained that threw
any light upon all these questions - only the hesitant reply:
‘I know nothing more about it: a child is being
beaten.’

   Enquiries as to the sex of the
child that was being beaten met with more success, but none the
less brought no enlightenment. Sometimes the answer was:
‘Always boys’, or ‘Only girls’; more often
it was: ‘I don’t know, or ‘It doesn’t
matter which’. But the point to which the questions were
directed, the discovery of some constant relation between the sex
of the child producing the phantasy and that of the child that was
being beaten, was never established. Now and again another
characteristic detail of the content of the phantasy came to light:
‘A small child is being beaten on its naked
bottom.’

   In these circumstances it was
impossible at first even to decide whether the pleasure attaching
to the beating-phantasy was to be described as sadistic or
masochistic.

II

   A phantasy of this kind, arising,
perhaps from accidental causes, in early childhood and retained for
the purpose of auto-erotic satisfaction, can, in the light of our
present knowledge, only be regarded as a primary trait of
perversion. One of the components of the sexual function has, it
seems, developed in advance of the rest, has made itself
prematurely independent, has undergone fixation and in consequence
been withdrawn from the later processes of development, and has in
this way given evidence of a peculiar and abnormal constitution in
the individual. We know that an infantile perversion of this sort
need not persist for a whole lifetime; later on it can be subjected
to repression, be replaced by a reaction-formation, or be
transformed by sublimation. (It is possible that sublimation arises
out of some special process which would be held back by
repression.) But if these processes do not take place, then the
perversion persists to maturity; and whenever we find a sexual
aberration in adults - perversion, fetishism, inversion - we are
justified in expecting that anamnestic investigation will reveal an
event such as I have suggested, leading to a fixation in childhood.
Indeed, long before the days of psycho-analysis, observers like
Binet were able to trace the strange sexual aberrations of maturity
back to similar impressions and to precisely the same period of
childhood, namely, the fifth or sixth year. But at this point the
enquiry was confronted with the limitations of our knowledge; for
the impressions that brought about the fixation were without any
traumatic force. They were for the most part commonplace and
unexciting to other people. It was impossible to say why the sexual
impulse had undergone fixation particularly upon them. It was
possible, however, to look for their significance in the fact that
they offered an occasion for fixation (even though it was an
accidental one) to precisely that component which was prematurely
developed and ready to press forward. We had in any case to be
prepared to come to a provisional end somewhere or other in tracing
back the train of causal connection; and the congenital
constitution seemed exactly to correspond with what was required
for a stopping-place of that kind.

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3646

   If the sexual component which has
broken loose prematurely is the sadistic one, then we may expect,
on the basis of knowledge derived from other sources, that its
subsequent repression will result in a disposition to an
obsessional neurosis. This expectation cannot be said to be
contradicted by the results of enquiry. The present short paper is
based on the exhaustive study of six cases (four female and two
male). Of these, two were cases of obsessional neurosis; one
extremely severe and incapacitating, the other of moderate severity
and quite well accessible to influence. There was also a third case
which at all events exhibited clearly marked individual traits of
obsessional neurosis. The fourth case, it must be admitted, was one
of straightforward hysteria, with pains and inhibitions; and the
fifth patient, who had come to be analysed merely on account of
indecisiveness in life, would not have been classified at all by
coarse clinical diagnosis, or would have been dismissed as
‘psychasthenic’. There is no need for feeling
disappointed over these statistics. In the first place, we know
that not every disposition is necessarily developed into a
disorder; in the second place, we ought to be content to explain
the facts before us, and ought as a rule to avoid the additional
task of making it clear why something has
not
taken
place.

   The present state of our
knowledge would allow us to make our way so far and no further
towards the comprehension of beating-phantasies. In the mind of the
analytic physician, it is true, there remains an uneasy suspicion
that this is not a final solution of the problem. He is obliged to
admit to himself that to a great extent these phantasies subsist
apart from the rest of the content of a neurosis, and find no
proper place in its structure. But impressions of this kind, as I
know from my own experience, are only too willingly put on one
side.

III

   Strictly considered - and why
should this question not be considered with all possible
strictness? - analytic work deserves to be recognized as genuine
psycho-analysis only when it has succeeded in removing the amnesia
which conceals from the adult his knowledge of his childhood from
its beginning (that is, from about the second to the fifth year).
This cannot be said among analysts too emphatically or repeated too
often. The motives for disregarding this reminder are, indeed,
intelligible. It would be desirable to obtain practical results in
a shorter period and with less trouble. But at the present time
theoretical knowledge is still far more important to all of us than
therapeutic success, and anyone who neglects childhood analysis is
bound to fall into the most disastrous errors. The emphasis which
is laid here upon the importance of the earliest experiences does
not imply any underestimation of the influence of later ones. But
the later impressions of life speak loudly enough through the mouth
of the patient, while it is the physician who has to raise his
voice on behalf of the claims of childhood.

'A Child Is Being Beaten'

3647

   It is in the years of childhood
between the ages of two and four or five that the congenital
libidinal factors are first awakened by actual experiences and
become attached to certain complexes. The beating-phantasies which
are now under discussion show themselves only towards the end of
this period or after its termination. So it may quite well be that
they have an earlier history, that they go through a process of
development, that they represent an end-product and not an initial
manifestation.

   This suspicion is confirmed by
analysis. A systematic application of it shows that
beating-phantasies have a historical development which is by no
means simple, and in the course of which they are changed in most
respects more than once as regards their relation to the author of
the phantasy, and as regards their object, their content and their
significance.

   In order to make it easier to
follow these transformations in beating-phantasies I shall now
venture to confine my descriptions to the female cases, which,
since they are four as against two, in any case constitute the
greater part of my material. Moreover, beating-phantasies in men
are connected with another subject, which I shall leave on one side
in this paper. In my description I shall be careful to avoid being
more schematic than is inevitable for the presentation of an
average case. If then on further observation a greater complexity
of circumstances should come to light, I shall nevertheless be sure
of having before us a typical occurrence, and one, moreover, that
is not of an uncommon kind.

   The first phase of
beating-phantasies among girls, then, must belong to a very early
period of childhood. Some features remain curiously indefinite, as
though they were a matter of indifference. The scanty information
given by the patients in their first statement, ‘a child is
being beaten’, seems to be justified in respect to this
phase. But another of their features can be established with
certainty, and to the same effect in every case. The child being
beaten is never the one producing the phantasy, but is invariably
another child, most often a brother or a sister if there is any.
Since this other child may be a boy or a girl, there is no constant
relation between the sex of the child producing the phantasy and
that of the child being beaten. The phantasy, then, is certainly
not masochistic. It would be tempting to call it sadistic, but one
cannot neglect the fact that the child producing the phantasy is
never doing the beating herself. The actual identity of the person
who does the beating remains obscure at first. Only this much can
be established: it is not a child but an adult. Later on this
indeterminate grown-up person becomes recognizable clearly and
unambiguously as the (girl’s)
father
.