Freud - Complete Works (617 page)

3709

JAMES J. PUTNAM

(1919)

   Among the first pieces of news to
reach us after the raising of the barrier separating us from the
Anglo-Saxon countries comes the painful report of the death of
Putnam, the President of the great pan-American psycho-analytic
group. He lived to be over seventy-two years old, remained
intellectually active to the end, and died peacefully of
heart-failure during his sleep in November 1918. Putnam, who was
until a few years ago Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard
University, was the great support of psycho-analysis in America.
His numerous theoretical works (a few of which made their first
appearance in the
Internationale Zeitschrift
) have, by their
clarity and wealth of ideas, and by the decisively favourable line
they took, contributed immensely towards creating the high esteem
which psycho-analysis now enjoys in America both in psychiatric
teaching and in public opinion. His example may have been no less
effective. He was universally respected for his unimpeachable
character, and it was recognized that he was influenced only by the
highest ethical considerations. His closer personal acquaintances
could not escape the conclusion that he was one of those happily
compensated people of the obsessional type for whom what is noble
is second nature and for whom any concession to unworthiness has
become an impossibility.

   J. J. Putnam’s personal
appearance was made familiar to European analysts through the part
he took in the Weimar Congress of 1911. The editor of the
Zeitschrift
hopes to include in its next issue a portrait of
our honoured friend and a detailed appreciation of his scientific
achievements.

  
[Freud also translated one of Putnam’s papers (1910)
anonymously and added the following footnote to the translation
(
Zbl. Psychoan
.,
1
(1911), 137): ‘This lecture
delivered by the Professor of Neurology at Boston University is
offered to our readers as an offset to the many unjust and
uncomprehending attacks that are levelled against psycho-analysis,
in place of counter-criticisms which might easily lead to
embittered feelings. J. Putnam is not only one of the most eminent
neurologists in America but also a man everywhere greatly respected
for his unimpeachable character and high moral standards. Although
he has left his youth far behind him, he took his open stand last
year in the front rank of the champions of
psycho-analysis.’]

3710

VICTOR TAUSK

(1919)

Among the sacrifices, fortunately few in
number, claimed by the war from the ranks of psycho-analysis, we
must count Dr. Victor Tausk. This rarely-gifted man, a Vienna
specialist in nervous diseases, took his own life before peace was
signed.

   Dr. Tausk, who was only in his
forty-second year, had for more than ten years been one of the
closer circle of Freud’s followers. Originally a lawyer by
profession, he had for some considerable time been acting as a
magistrate in Bosnia when, under the stress of severe personal
troubles, he abandoned his career and turned to journalism, for
which he was peculiarly suited by his wide general education. After
working for some time as a journalist in Berlin, he came to Vienna
in the same capacity. Here he became acquainted with
psycho-analysis and soon decided to devote himself to it entirely.
Although he was to longer a young man and was the father of a
family, he was not deterred by the great difficulties and
sacrifices involved in yet another change in profession, and one
which must necessitate an interruption of several years before he
could once more earn his living. For he embarked on the tedious
study of medicine only as a means to enable him to carry on a
psycho-analytic practice.

   Shortly before the outbreak of
the World War, Tausk had obtained his second doctor’s degree
and set up in Vienna as a nerve-specialist. Here, after a
relatively short time, he had begun building up a considerable
practice and had achieved some excellent results. These activities
promised the rising young doctor full satisfaction as well as a
means of support; but he was all at once violently torn from them
by the war. He was called up immediately for active service and
soon promoted to senior rank. He carried out his medical duties
with devotion in the various theatres of war in the North and in
the Balkans (finally in Belgrade), and received official
commendation. It is also greatly to his honour that during the war
he threw himself wholeheartedly, and with complete disregard of the
consequences, into exposing the numerous abuses which so many
doctors unfortunately tolerated in silence or for which they even
shared the responsibility.

Victor Tausk

3711

   The stresses of many years’
service in the field could not fail to exercise a severely damaging
psychological effect on so intensely conscientious a man. At the
last Psycho-Analytical Congress, which we held in Budapest in
September 1918 and which brought analysts together once more after
many years of separation, Dr. Tausk, who had long been suffering
from physical ill-health, was already showing signs of unusual
nervous irritability. When, soon afterwards, in the late autumn of
last year, he came to the end of his military service and returned
to Vienna, he was faced for the third time, in his state of mental
exhaustion, with the hard task of building up a new existence -
this time under the most unfavourable internal and external
conditions. In addition to this, Dr. Tausk, who has left two
grown-up sons to whom he was a devoted father, was on the brink of
contracting a new marriage. He was no longer able to cope with the
many demands imposed on him in his ailing state by harsh reality.
On the morning of July 3rd he put an end to his life.

   Dr. Tausk had been a member of
the Vienna Psycho Analytical Society since the autumn of 1909. He
was well known to the readers of this journal from his numerous
contributions, which were distinguished by sharp observation, sound
judgement and a particular clearness of expression. These writings
exhibit plainly the philosophical training which the author was
able so happily to combine with the exact methods of science. His
strong need to establish things on a philosophical foundation and
to achieve epistemological clarity compelled him to formulate, and
seek as well to master, the whole profundity and comprehensive
meaning of the very difficult problems involved. Perhaps he
sometimes went too far in this direction, in his impetuous urge for
investigation. Perhaps the time was not yet ripe for laying such
general foundations as these for the young science of
psycho-analysis. The psycho-analytic consideration of philosophical
problems, for which Tausk showed special aptitude, promises to
become more and more fruitful. One of his last works, on the
psycho-analysis of the function of judgement, which was delivered
at the Budapest Congress and has not yet been published, gives
evidence of this direction taken by his interest.

Victor Tausk

3712

   In addition to his gift for
philosophy and attraction towards it, Tausk possessed a quite
exceptional medico-psychological capacity and produced some
excellent work in that field too. His clinical activities, to which
we owe valuable researches into various psychoses (e.g. melancholia
and schizophrenia) justified the fairest hopes and gave him the
prospective appointment to a University Lectureship for which he
had applied.

   Psycho-analysis was particularly
indebted to Dr. Tausk, who was a brilliant speaker, for the courses
of lectures which he gave over a period of many years to large
audiences of both sexes and in which he introduced them to the
principles and problems of psycho-analysis. His audiences were able
to admire the clarity and didactic skill of his lectures no less
than the profundity with which he handled individual topics.

   All those who knew him well
valued his straightforward character, his honesty towards himself
and towards others and the superiority of a nature which was
distinguished by a striving for nobility and perfection. His
passionate temperament found expression in sharp, and sometimes too
sharp, criticisms, which however were combined with a brilliant
gift for exposition. These personal qualities exercised a great
attraction on many people, and some, too, may have been repelled by
them. No one, however, could escape the impression that here was a
man of importance.

   How much psycho-analysis meant
for him, even up to his last moments, is shown by letters which he
left behind, in which he expressed his unreserved belief in it and
his hope that it will find recognition at a not too distant date.
There is no doubt that this man, of whom our science and his
friends in Vienna have been prematurely robbed, has contributed to
that aim. He is sure of an honourable memory in the history of
psycho-analysis and its earliest struggles.

3713

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

(1920)

3714

Intentionally left blank

3715

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

I

In the theory of psycho-analysis we have no
hesitation in assuming that the course taken by mental events is
automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that
is to say, that the course of those events is invariably set in
motion by an unpleasurable tension, and that it takes a direction
such that its final outcome coincides with a lowering of that
tension - that is, with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production
of pleasure. In taking that course into account in our
consideration of the mental processes which are the subject of our
study, we are introducing an ‘economic’ point of view
into our work; and if,in describing those processes, we try to
estimate this ‘economic’ factor in addition to the
‘topographical’ and ‘dynamic’ ones, we
shall, I think, be giving the most complete description of them of
which we can at present conceive, and one which deserves to be
distinguished by the term ‘metapsychological’.

   It is of no concern to us in this
connection to enquire how far, with this hypothesis of the pleasure
principle, we have approached or adopted any particular,
historically established, philosophical system. We have arrived at
these speculative assumptions in an attempt to describe and to
account for the facts of daily observation in our field of study.
Priority and originality are not among the aims that
psycho-analytic work sets itself; and the impressions that underlie
the hypothesis of the pleasure principle are so obvious that they
can scarcely be overlooked. On the other hand we would readily
express our gratitude to any philosophical or psychological theory
which was able to inform us of the meaning of the feelings of
pleasure and unpleasure which act so imperatively upon us. But on
this point we are, alas, offered nothing to our purpose. This is
the most obscure and inaccessible region of the mind, and, since we
cannot avoid contact with it, the least rigid hypothesis, it seems
to me, will be the best. We have decided to relate pleasure and
unpleasure to the quantity of excitation that is present in the
mind but is not in any way ‘bound’; and to relate them
in such a manner that unpleasure corresponds to an
increase
in the quantity of excitation and pleasure to a
diminution
.
What we are implying by this is not a simple relation between the
strength of the feelings of pleasure and unpleasure and the
corresponding modifications in the quantity of excitation; least of
all - in view of all we have been taught by psycho-physiology - are
we suggesting any directly proportional ratio: the factor that
determines the feeling is probably the amount of increase or
diminution in the quantity of excitation
in a given period of
time
. Experiment might possibly play a part here; but it is not
advisable for us analysts to go into the problem further so long as
our way is not pointed by quite definite observations

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3716

   We cannot, however, remain
indifferent to the discovery that an investigator of such
penetration as G. T. Fechner held a view on the subject of pleasure
and unpleasure which coincides in all essentials with the one that
has been forced upon us by psycho-analytic work. Fechner’s
statement is to be found contained in a small work,
Einige Ideen
zur Schöpfungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen
,
1873 (Part XI, Supplement, 94), and reads as follows: ‘In so
far as conscious impulses always have some relation to pleasure or
unpleasure, pleasure and unpleasure too can be regarded as having a
psycho-physical relation to conditions of stability and
instability. This provides a basis for a hypothesis into which I
propose to enter in greater detail elsewhere. According to this
hypothesis, every psycho-physical motion rising above the threshold
of consciousness is attended by pleasure in proportion as, beyond a
certain limit, it approximates to complete stability, and is
attended by unpleasure in proportion as, beyond a certain limit, it
deviates from complete stability; while between the two limits,
which may be described as qualitative thresholds of pleasure and
unpleasure, there is a certain margin of aesthetic indifference. .
. .’

   The facts which have caused us to
believe in the dominance of the pleasure principle in mental life
also find expression in the hypothesis that the mental apparatus
endeavours to keep the quantity of excitation present in it as low
as possible or at least to keep it constant. This latter hypothesis
is only another way of stating the pleasure principle; for if the
work of the mental apparatus is directed towards keeping the
quantity of excitation low, then anything that is calculated to
increase that quantity is bound to be felt as adverse to the
functioning of the apparatus, that is as unpleasurable. The
pleasure principle follows from the principle of constancy:
actually the latter principle was inferred from the facts which
forced us to adopt the pleasure principle. Moreover, a more
detailed discussion will show that the tendency which we thus
attribute to the mental apparatus is subsumed as a special case
under Fechner’s principle of the ‘tendency towards
stability’, to which he has brought the feelings of pleasure
and unpleasure into relation.

   It must be pointed out, however,
that strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of
the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes. If such
a dominance existed, the immense majority of our mental processes
would have to be accompanied by pleasure or to lead to pleasure,
whereas universal experience completely contradicts any such
conclusion. The most that can be said, therefore, is that there
exists in the mind a strong
tendency
towards the pleasure
principle, but that that tendency is opposed by certain other
forces or circumstances, so that the final outcome cannot always be
in harmony with the tendency towards pleasure. We may compare what
Fechner (1873, 90) remarks on a similar point: ‘Since however
a tendency towards an aim does not imply that the aim is attained,
and since in general the aim is attainable only by approximations.
. . .’

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3717

   If we turn now to the question of
what circumstances are able to prevent the pleasure principle from
being carried into effect, we find ourselves once more on secure
and well-trodden ground and, in framing our answer, we have at our
disposal a rich fund of analytic experience.

   The first example of the pleasure
principle being inhibited in this way is a familiar one which
occurs with regularity. We know that the pleasure principle is
proper to a
primary
method of working on the part of the
mental apparatus, but that, from the point of view of the
self-preservation of the organism among the difficulties of the
external world, it is from the very outset inefficient and even
highly dangerous. Under the influence of the ego’s instincts
of self-preservation, the pleasure principle is replaced by the
reality principle
. This latter principle does not abandon
the intention of ultimately obtaining pleasure, but it nevertheless
demands and carries into effect the postponement of satisfaction,
the abandonment of a number of possibilities of gaining
satisfaction and the temporary toleration of unpleasure as a step
on the long indirect road to pleasure. The pleasure principle long
persists, however, as the method of working employed by the sexual
instincts, which are so hard to ‘educate’, and,
starting from those instincts, or in the ego itself, it often
succeeds in overcoming the reality principle, to the detriment of
the organism as a whole.

   There can be no doubt, however,
that the replacement of the pleasure principle by the reality
principle can only be made responsible for a small number, and by
no means the most intense, of unpleasurable experiences. Another
occasion of the release of unpleasure, which occurs with no less
regularity, is to be found in the conflicts and dissensions that
take place in the mental apparatus while the ego is passing through
its development into more highly composite organizations. Almost
all the energy with which the apparatus is filled arises from its
innate instinctual impulses. But these are not all allowed to reach
the same phases of development. In the course of things it happens
again and again that individual instincts or parts of instincts
turn out to be incompatible in their aims or demands with the
remaining ones, which are able to combine into the inclusive unity
of the ego. The former are then split off from this unity by the
process of repression, held back at lower levels of psychical
development and cut off, to begin with, from the possibility of
satisfaction. If they succeed subsequently, as can so easily happen
with repressed sexual instincts, in struggling through, by
roundabout paths, to a direct or to a substitutive satisfaction,
that event, which would in other cases have been an opportunity for
pleasure, is felt by the ego as unpleasure. As a consequence of the
old conflict which ended in repression, a new breach has occurred
in the pleasure principle at the very time when certain instincts
were endeavouring, in accordance with the principle, to obtain
fresh pleasure. The details of the process by which repression
turns a possibility of pleasure into a source of unpleasure are not
yet clearly understood or cannot be clearly represented; but there
is no doubt that all neurotic unpleasure is of that kind-pleasure
that cannot be felt as such.¹

   The two sources of unpleasure
which I have just indicated are very far from covering the majority
of our unpleasurable experiences. But as regards the remainder it
can be asserted with some show of justification that their presence
does not contradict the dominance of the pleasure principle. Most
of the unpleasure that we experience is
perceptual
unpleasure. It may be perception of pressure by unsatisfied
instincts; or it may be external perception which is either
distressing in itself or which excites unpleasurable expectations
in the mental apparatus - that is, which is recognized by it as a
‘danger’. The reaction to these instinctual demands, a
reaction which constitutes the proper activity of the mental
apparatus, can then be directed in a correct manner by the pleasure
principle or the reality principle by which the former is modified.
This does not seem to necessitate any far-reaching limitation of
the pleasure principle. Nevertheless the investigation of the
mental reaction to external danger is precisely in a position to
produce new material and raise fresh questions bearing upon our
present problem.

  
¹
No doubt the essential point is that
pleasure and unpleasure, being conscious feelings, are attached to
the ego

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3718

II

   A condition has long been known
and described which occurs after severe mechanical concussions,
railway disasters and other accidents involving a risk to life; it
has been given the name of ‘traumatic neurosis’. The
terrible war which has just ended gave rise to a great number of
illnesses of this kind, but it at least put an end to the
temptation to attribute the cause of the disorder to organic
lesions of the nervous system brought about by mechanical
force.¹ The symptomatic picture presented by traumatic
neurosis approaches that of hysteria in the wealth of its similar
motor symptoms, but surpasses it as a rule in its strongly marked
signs of subjective ailment (in which it resembles hypochondria or
melancholia) as well as in the evidence it gives of a far more
comprehensive general enfeeblement and disturbance of the mental
capacities. No complete explanation has yet been reached either of
war neuroses or of the traumatic neuroses of peace. In the case of
the war neuroses, the fact that the same symptoms sometimes came
about without the intervention of any gross mechanical force seemed
at once enlightening and bewildering. In the case of the ordinary
traumatic neuroses two characteristics emerge prominently: first,
that the chief weight in their causation seems to rest upon the
factor of surprise, of fright; and secondly, that a wound or injury
inflicted simultaneously works as a rule
against
the
development of a neurosis. ‘Fright’, ‘fear’
and ‘anxiety’ are improperly used as synonymous
expressions; they are in fact capable of clear distinction in their
relation to danger. ‘Anxiety’ describes a particular
state of expecting the danger or preparing for it, even though it
may be an unknown one. ‘Fear’ requires a definite
object of which to be afraid. ‘Fright’, however, is the
name we give to the state a person gets into when he has run into
danger without being prepared for it; it emphasizes the factor of
surprise. I do not believe anxiety itself can produce a traumatic
neurosis. There is something about anxiety that protects its
subject against fright and so against fright-neuroses. We shall
return to this point later.¹

  
¹
Cf. the discussion on the psycho-analysis
of war neuroses by Freud, Ferenczi, Abraham, Simmel and
Jones (1919).

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3719

  
The study of dreams may
be considered the most trustworthy method of investigating deep
mental processes. Now dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have
the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the
situation of his accident, a situation from which he wakes up in
another fright. This astonishes people far too little. They think
the fact that the traumatic experience is constantly forcing itself
upon the patient even in his sleep is a proof of the strength of
that experience: the patient is, as one might say, fixated to his
trauma. Fixations to the experience which started the illness have
long been familiar to us in hysteria. Breuer and Freud declared in
1893 that ‘hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences’.
In the war neuroses, too, observers like Ferenczi and Simmel have
been able to explain certain motor symptoms by fixation to the
moment at which the trauma occurred.