Addenda
In the course of these discussions various themes have been touched upon which it was necessary to pass over for the time being and which should now be assembled in order to maintain attention to the part of the book to which they have claim.
Modifications of Views Previously Expressed
_Resistance and Counter-investment_
It is an important bit of the theory of repression that it does not present a solitary process but requires a persistent outlay. When the latter fails the repressed impulse, which receives the continuous influx from its sources, will the next time strike out in the same path from which it had been forced; the repression would be carried to its termination or must be repeated indefinitely. Hence there follows from the continuous nature of the prompting the demand upon the ego in order to assure its defense reaction through a permanent outlay. This action for the protection of the repression is that which we feel in the therapeutic activity as resistance, and resistance presupposes what I have designated as counter-fixation. Such counter-fixation is tangible in compulsion neurosis and appears here as ego alteration, as reaction formation in the ego, through strengthening of that situation which is the antithesis of the repressing impulse direction (sympathy, conscientiousness, purity). These reaction formations of the compulsive neurosis are always exaggerations of normal character traits developed in the period of latency. It is far more difficult to demonstrate counter-investment in hysteria although according to theoretic expectation it ought to be equally indispensable. Here likewise there is a certain amount of ego alteration unmistakable, through reaction formation, in many relations so striking that they force themselves on the attention as the chief symptom of the condition. In such a fashion, for example, is the ambivalence conflict of hysteria solved; the hate toward a loved person is held down through an excess of tenderness for him and anxiety about him. One must, however, make prominent a distinction against the compulsive neurosis where such reaction formations do not show the general nature of character traits but restrict themselves to quite special relations. The hysterical woman, for example, who treats with excessive tenderness the children which fundamentally she hates does not on the whole become more ready for love than other women nor more tender toward other children. The reaction formation in hysteria holds tenaciously to a definite object and does not elevate itself to a general disposition of the ego. For the compulsive neurosis this generalization is characteristic---the loosening of object relations and the displacement of the choice of object.
Another kind of counter-investment seems more suitable to the peculiarity of hysteria. The repressed prompting can become activated from two sides (newly invested), first, through a strengthening of the impulse from its inner sources of excitation; second, from without through perception of the object which the prompting desires. Hysterical counter-investment is now by preference directed outward and toward the dangerous perception and assumes the form of a special vigilance which avoids situations through contraction of the ego, in which the perception must appear and which makes it able to draw the attention from this perception should the latter come up. French authors (Laforgue) have recently designated this performance of hysteria through the special term "scotomisation." Still more striking than in hysteria is this technic of counter-investment in the phobias, where the interest concentrates itself in removing itself further and further from the possibility of the dreaded perception. The contrast in the direction of the counter-fixation between hysteria and the phobias on the one hand and compulsion neurosis on the other seems significant even if it is not absolute. The assumption lies near at hand that between the repression and the external counter-investment, as between the regression and the internal counter-investment (ego alteration through reaction formation), there exists an intimate connection. The repulse of the dangerous perception is, moreover, a general task of the neuroses. Different commands and prohibitions are to serve the same intent. We have already on one occasion made ourselves clear that the resistance, which we have to overcome in the analysis, is furnished by the ego which holds fast to its counter-investment. The ego finds it difficult to apply its attention to perceptions and ideas, the avoidance of which it has previously made a precept, or to recognize as its own, strivings which form a complete antithesis to those believed to be his own. Our struggle against the resistance in the analysis is based on such a conception of the same. We make the resistance conscious where---so often because of association with the repressed content---it is unconscious; we oppose to it logical arguments, when or after it has become conscious, and promise to the ego advantages and bonuses if it renounces the resistance. Hence there is nothing either to doubt or to justify in respect to the resistance of the ego. On the other hand it must be asked whether this alone covers the subject matter which is opposed to us in the analysis. We have the experience that the ego always finds new difficulties in making the repressions regressive, even after it has conceived the purpose of giving up the resistance and has designated the phase of arduous effort---which follows such a praise-worthy intention---as that of "working through." It now lies at hand to recognize the dynamic factor which makes such "working through" necessary and intelligible. It can hardly be otherwise than that after abolition of the ego resistance the power of the repetition compulsion, the attraction of the unconscious prototypes of the repressed impulse process, is to be overcome and there is nothing to say against it if one will designate this factor as the resistance of the unconscious. We should not allow such corrections to vex us; they are desired if they further our understanding a bit and there is nothing to be deplored if in place of refuting they enrich what has been said before, restricting perhaps a general consideration and broadening a comprehension which is too narrow.
It is not to be assumed that through this correction we have gained a complete summary of the kinds of resistance encountered in analysis. We note rather that we have five kinds of resistance to antagonize which proceed from all three sides, to wit, from the ego, the super-ego and the It, the ego being the source of three of the forms shown to differ in their dynamics. The first of these three ego resistances is the repression resistance already treated, concerning which there is but little to say that is new. From this is distinguished the resistance of transference which is of like nature but in an analysis causes other and far more important phenomena, for it succeeds in originating a relation to the analytical situation or person of the analyst and with this a repression which is recalled with difficulty becomes again freshly animated. Another ego resistance although of quite different nature is that which proceeds from the gain of the disease and is founded on the interrelation of the symptoms in the ego. It corresponds to the striving against the renunciation of a gratification or a relief. The fourth kind of resistance---that of the It---we have made responsible just now for the necessity of "working through." The fifth resistance, that of the super-ego, is the latest to be recognized; it is the most obscure but is not always the weakest and seems to spring from the sense of guilt or need of punishment; it opposes itself to every analytic effort and later also to cure through analysis.
_Fear from Transformation of the Libido_
The notion of fear represented in this essay is removed a bit from that which hitherto seemed justified. Formerly I regarded fear as a general reaction of the ego under the conditions of unpleasure and sought on each occasion to justify its appearance economically. I assumed, sustained by the investigation of the actual neuroses, that the libido (sexual excitation) which was refused or not employed by the ego, found a direct discharge in the form of fear. One cannot overlook the fact that these different determinations do not go well together, at least do not necessarily follow from one another. Moreover, there resulted the apparently intimate relation between fear and libido, which again does not harmonize with the general character of fear as an unpleasure reaction.
The objection to this comprehension proceeds from the tendency to make the ego the sole abiding place of fear and was also one of the consequences of the arrangement of the psychic apparatus sought in "The Ego and It." To the former comprehension it lay near at hand to regard the libido of the repressed impulse as the source of the fear; according to the later one the ego should be responsible for this fear---either ego fear or impulse (It) fear. As the ego works with desexualized energy, in the innovation the intimate connection between fear and the libido is loosened. I hope to succeed at least to make this contradiction clear, to draw the outlines of uncertainty sharply.
Rank's admonition that the fear affect, as I myself once maintained, is a consequence of the birth process and a repetition of the situation then lived through, necessitates a new examination of the fear problem. With his own comprehension of birth as a trauma, of the fear condition as a discharge reaction, every renewed fear affect as an attempt to react off the trauma completely, I cannot go further. There results the compulsion to go back to it, from the fear reaction to the danger situation. With the introduction of this factor new viewpoints come up for consideration. Labor becomes a prototype for all later danger situations which result under the new conditions of the altered form of existence and the progressive psychic development. Its own significance, however, becomes contracted upon this prototype relation. The fear felt at birth now becomes the prototype of an affect condition which must share the fate of other affects. It is reproduced, either automatically in situations which were analogous to its original situations, as inappropriate forms of reaction, after it had been appropriate in the first danger situation. Or the ego obtains power over this affect and reproduces it itself, serves itself with it as a warning of danger and as a means of rousing the pleasure-pain mechanism. The biologic significance of the fear affect came into its own, since fear is recognized as the general reaction to the situation of danger. The rôle of the ego as the seat of fear was confirmed, since the function was conceded to the ego of reproducing the fear affect according to its requirements. To fear were directed in later life two kinds of modes of origin; one involuntary, automatic, always economically justified whenever a danger analogous to birth had been produced; the other, produced by the ego when such a situation only threatened, in order to further its avoidance. In this second case the ego submitted to the fear like an inoculation, in which through a weakened outbreak of disease one escapes an unweakened one. The danger situation, as it were, has an unmistakable tendency to restrict the painful experience to a suggestion, a signal. How the different situations of danger develop one after another and yet remain genetically combined has already been set forth in detail. Perhaps we may succeed in penetrating a little further into the comprehension of fear if we attack the problem of the relations between neurotic fear and actual fear.
The formerly asserted direct transposition of the libido to fear has now become less significant to our interest, if we take into consideration that we have several kinds to distinguish between. The fear which the ego provokes as a signal does not come into account, and further, not in all of the danger situations which move the ego to the introduction of a repression. The libidinous investment of the repressed prompting experiences (as one sees most distinctly in conversion hysteria) another application than transposition into and discharge as fear. Nevertheless we shall in the further discussion of the danger situation come upon that kind of fear development which ought probably to be judged otherwise.
_Repression and Defense_
In connection with the discussions of the fear problem I have an idea---or more modestly expressed a terminus---to take up which served me exclusively at the beginning of my studies thirty years ago and which afterwards I was compelled to abandon. I refer to the process of defense.[7] I replaced it later with that of repression, the relationship between the two remaining undetermined. I now think that we gain something by harking back to the old idea of defense if at the same time one settles the issue that the general designation for all the technics shall be _defense_, of which the ego serves itself in conflicts which may lead to neurosis; while _repression_ remains the name of a definite method of defense which must first be better known to us as a result of the course of our investigations.
A simple terminological innovation will also become justified, and should be the expression of a new mode of consideration or an amplification of our views. The resumption of the idea of defense, and the contraction of the notion of repression bears reckoning of only one fact long known to us but with a gain in importance through certain new findings. Our first experiences with repression and symptom formation were gained from hysteria; we saw that the perception content of exciting experiences, the ideation content of pathogenic thought formations were forgotten and their reproduction excluded from memory, and have therefore recognized in this shutting out from consciousness the chief character of hysterical repression. Later we studied the compulsion neurosis and found that in this affection the pathogenic event had not been forgotten. It remained conscious but was, however, isolated in a manner which as yet could not be visualized; so that about the same result was produced as in hysteria. The difference, however, is large enough to justify our opinion that the process, by means of which the compulsive neurosis removed an impulse claim, could not be the same as hysteria. Further investigations have taught us that in the compulsion neurosis under the influence of ego striving a regression of the impulses to an earlier phase of libido was obtained, which did not make repression superfluous but evidently acted in the same direction as a repression. We have seen further that the counter-investment which also is presumptive in hysteria, plays a particularly large rôle in ego protection in compulsion neurosis as a reactive ego alteration.
Our attention is called to a procedure of "isolation" the technic of which we cannot yet give, which procures a directly sympathetic expression, and to another procedure which may be termed magical, that of "undoing," which without doubt is of a rebuffing tendency, but has no longer any resemblance to the process of repression. These experiences are reason enough to reinstate the old conception of defense, which can comprehend all of these processes having a common tendency---protection of the ego against impulse claims---and to comprise repression as a special case of the same. The importance of this nomenclature is heightened if one contemplates the possibility that a deepening of our studies might yield an intimate connection between special forms of defense and definite affections---for example between repression and hysteria. Our anticipation is directed further to the possibility of another significant dependence. It can easily be that before the sharp sundering of the ego from the It, before the completion of the super-ego the psychic apparatus used another method of defense than after attaining these stages of organization.
Supplement to Fear
The fear affect shows certain traits the investigation of which promises further enlightenment. Fear has an unmistakable relation to expectation; one is afraid of something. There adheres to it a character of indetermination and absence of an object. The correct use of language itself changes the name to fright when an object is present. Fear has further in addition to its relation to danger another to neurosis, with the explanation of which we have expended much effort. The question arises, why are not all fear reactions neurotic, and why are so many recognized as normal? Finally the difference between real and neurotic fear demands a basic critique. Let us start with the last mentioned task. Our progress consisted in the falling back of the fear reaction upon the danger situation. If we suppose the same alteration to be present in the problem of real fear the solution would be easy. Real danger is a danger which we know, real fear is fear of such a known danger. Neurotic fear is fear of danger of which we know nothing. Hence neurotic danger must first be sought and analysis shows us it is an impulse danger. As we bring into consciousness this danger which is unknown to the ego the difference between real and neurotic fear is effaced and we may treat the last like the first.
In real danger we develop two reactions: the affective, or fear outburst, and the protective behavior. Presumably the same happens in impulse danger. We see the suitable coöperation of both reactions when one gives the signal for the institution of the other; but we also see the unsuitable type of response, that of fear paralysis, in which one gains ground at the expense of the other.
There are instances in which the characters of real and neurotic fear are commingled. The danger is known and real but the fear reaction is unnaturally great, greater than it should be in our judgment and in this excess the neurotic element is betrayed. But these instances for the most part contribute nothing new, and analysis shows that the known real danger is connected with an unknown impulsive danger.
We progress further when we refuse to be satisfied with referring the fear to the danger. What is the nucleus, the significance of the danger situation? Evidently the estimation of our strength in comparison with its size, the confession of our helplessness against it---material helplessness against real danger, psychic helplessness in the case of impulse danger. Our judgment here is guided by actual experience and whether this errs in the estimate is immaterial for the result. Suppose we term such an experienced situation of helplessness a traumatic one; we then have good reason for separating the traumatic situation from the danger situation.
It is now important to prove for ourselves if such a traumatic situation is not merely waited for but is foreseen, expected. The situation in which the condition for such expectation is contained is called the danger situation in which the fear signal is given. For example, I expect that a situation of helplessness will result, or the present situation reminds me of a formerly experienced traumatic experience. Hence I anticipate that this trauma will behave as if it were already there as long as there is time to divert it. Fear is therefore on the one hand the expectation of a trauma, and on the other a mitigated repetition of the same. Both characters which have struck us in connection with fear have therefore a different origin. Their relation to expectation belongs to the danger situation, their indefinite character and absence of object to the traumatic situation of helplessness, which is anticipated in the danger situation.
According to the development of the series, fear---danger---helplessness (trauma), we can sum up. The danger situation is a known, recollected, expected situation of helplessness. Fear is the original reaction to the helplessness in the trauma which is then later reproduced in the danger situation as a signal for help. The ego, which has passively lived through the trauma, now repeats actively a weakened reproduction of the same in order to be able to direct its course actively. We know the child behaves thus in all painful impressions since they are reproduced in play. In going over in this manner from passive to active it seeks to master psychically its life impressions. If this is to be the sense of a reacting off of the trauma, no one could further object to it. The decisive point, however, is the first displacement of the fear reaction from its origin in the situation of helplessness upon its expectation, the danger situation. Then follow the further displacements from the danger itself to the condition of the danger, the loss of object and the modifications already mentioned.
The "spoiling" of the little child has the unwished for consequence that the danger of the loss of the object---the object as protection against all the situations of helplessness---is increased toward all other dangers. It favors the reserve in childhood, which is proper to the physical and psychical helplessness.
Hitherto we have had no occasion to consider real fear otherwise than neurotic fear. We know the difference---real fear threatens from an external object, and neurotic fear from an impulse claim. In as far as this last is something real, neurotic fear may be recognized as founded on real fear. We have understood that the appearance of a particularly intimate relationship between fear and neurosis goes back to the fact that the ego, with the aid of the fear reaction of the impulse danger, defends itself as in actual external danger; that this direction of the defense activity runs into the neurosis because of the imperfection of the psychic apparatus. We have also gained the conviction that the impulse claim often becomes dangerous (inwardly) only because its gratification would bring about an external danger, because the internal danger represents an external one.
On the other hand the external danger (real) must have found an interiorization if it is to be significant for the ego; it must have recognized its relation to an experienced situation of helplessness.[8] An instinctive perception of externally threatening danger seems not to be given to mankind or at least only in a very modest degree. Little children incessantly do things which bring their lives in peril and exactly for this reason cannot dispense with the protecting object. In relation to the traumatic situation against which man is helpless, external and internal danger, real danger and impulse claim, come together. In one case the ego may experience a pain which will not let up; in another case a stagnation of desire which can find no satisfaction; the economic situation is the same in both cases and the motor helplessness finds its expression in the psychic helplessness.
The enigmatic phobias of early childhood again deserve mention. Some of these, as fear of being alone, of the dark and of strangers we can understand as reactions to the danger of the loss of object. For others, as fear of small animals, thunder, etc., the information offers itself that they may be atrophied residues of a congenital preparation for real dangers which is so distinctly developed in other animals. Purposeful for mankind is only that portion of this archaic inheritance as is related to loss of the object. If such child phobias fix themselves, become strengthened and persist into late years of life, analysis shows that the content has set itself in association with impulse claims and is representative also of internal dangers.
Anxiety, Pain and Grief
There is so little pertaining to the psychology of the feelings that the ensuing halting observations should raise a claim for indulgence in judgment. We must say that anxiety becomes a reaction to the danger of loss of object. Now we already know one such reaction on object loss which we call sorrow. But when does it come to one, when to the other? For sorrow, with which we have already been occupied (Grief and Melancholy in my Collected Papers), one trait remains quite obscure, and that is its peculiarly painful quality. It seems to us self evident that separation from an object is painful, but the problem is complicated further. When does separation from the object mean anxiety, when grief and when pain? We say at once that there is no prospect at hand of replying to these questions. We shall be content to find certain demarcations and certain hints.
Our starting point may again be the one situation which we believe we understand, that of the nursling who in place of its mother sees a stranger. It then shows anxiety which we have interpreted as due to the danger of object loss. But it is doubtless more complicated and merits a more thorough discussion. There is no doubt as to the anxiety of the nursling, but the facial expression and the reaction of crying allow us to assume that it also feels pain. It seems as if certain things coalesce which later become separate again. It cannot distinguish between the momentary absence and permanent loss. If the mother once goes out of its sight its behavior is as if it would never more behold her and not until after several consolatory experiences does it learn that such a vanishing of the mother will be followed by her reappearance. The mother ripens this experience, so important for the child, when she plays the game of "peek-aboo," hiding her face for a moment and then showing it again to the great joy of the child. The child can then feel longing which is not accompanied by despair.
The situation in which it misses the mother is the consequence of its misconception, it is no danger situation but a traumatic one, or rather it is traumatic if at this moment it feels a need that the mother should satisfy; it turns itself to danger situations when the need is not actual. The first anxiety condition which the ego itself introduces is therefore that of the loss of perception which is placed on a par with that of the loss of the object. A loss of love does not yet come into consideration. Later experience teaches that the object may remain at hand yet become bad for the child, and now the loss of love on the part of the object becomes a new and much more constant danger and fear condition.
The traumatic situation of missing the mother yields in one decisive point from the traumatic situation of birth. At that time there was no object present that could be missed. Anxiety remained the sole reaction which could occur. Since then repeated situations of gratification have formed the object of the mother, so that now in case of need it experiences an intense fixation which may be termed as yearning. The reaction of pain is related to this innovation and hence pain is the peculiar reaction to loss of the object as fear is to danger which the loss brings with it, in further displacement of the danger of loss of object itself. Nor do we know much of pain. The only sure content is the fact that pain---at first and as a rule---originates when a stimulus which attacks the periphery breaks through the apparatus for protecting against stimuli and acts like a continuous prompting against the otherwise efficacious muscle actions which remain powerless to withdraw the irritant from the irritated place. If the pain does not go forth from the surface but from an internal organ the situation is not at all changed; it is only that a bit of internal periphery replaces the external. The child has obviously an opportunity to go through such experiences of pain which are independent of its need experiences. This condition of origin of pain seems, however, to possess but little similarity with loss of the object and moreover the essential factor of peripheral irritation in the yearning situation of the child is fully lost. Nevertheless it cannot be irrational that language has shaped the notion of internal, psychic pain and placed the sensations of object loss quite on a par with physical pain.
In physical suffering there arises a high fixation---which may be termed narcistic---on the painful area which continues to increase and acts, so to speak, as evacuating upon the ego. It is known that in pain in the internal organs we acquire spatial and other ideas of such portions of the body which are not otherwise represented in conscious ideation. Further, the noteworthy fact that the most intense physical pains cannot develop if the mind is diverted by some other interest (we should not say that one remains unconscious of the pain), finds its explanation in the concentration of the fixation on the psychic representative of the painful area of the body. Now the analogy in this point seems to lie in the fact that it permits the transference of the painful sensation to the psychic province. The intensive yearning fixation, steadily augmenting because uncontrollable, of the missed (lost) object, forms the same economic conditions as the pain-fixation of injured portions of the body and makes it possible to look off from the peripheral conditionhood of bodily pain. The transition from physical to psychical pain correspond to the transformation of narcistic to object fixation: The object idea, highly fixed from need, plays the rôle of the body region fixed by growth stimulation. The continuity and uninhibitable character of the fixation process brings about the same condition of psychic helplessness. If the then arising sensation of unpleasure bears the character of pain which cannot be more approximately described than as specific, instead of expressing itself in the reaction form of anxiety, it lies at hand to make a factor responsible for it which otherwise would play but a small rôle in explanation; this is the high level of the fixation and combination relations upon which these processes which lead to the sensation of unpleasure perfect themselves.
We know still another emotional reaction to the loss of the object---sorrow. Its explanation, however, is not difficult. Sorrow originates under the influence of testing reality, which demands categorically that man must separate himself from the object because it no longer exists. This affect must now perform the labor of carrying out the retreat from the object in all situations in which the object was the subject of high fixation. The painful character of this separation unites itself to the explanation just given through the unfulfillable yearning fixation of the object during the reproduction of the situations in which the binding to the object is to be loosed.
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NOTES
[1]: Contrary to ordinary usage the German word _angst_ in this book is in many instances rendered _fear_ in place of _anxiety_, the last being the equivalent given in psychoanalytic glossaries. The reader can himself substitute the word _anxiety_ for _fear_ whenever the latter occurs in the text. The reason for preferring _fear_ to _anxiety_ is that the latter is too mild a term, suggesting little more than worry or solicitude to the casual reader. The German word _angst_ has no exact equivalent in English, for it can denote any affective state between anxiety and the most extreme terror, as in the term _todeasangst_ for _mortal fear_. That the affective state implied is fear is shown in several ways, as the Greek phobia, which connotes fear, is equivalent in sense and is rendered by _angstzustand_ or fear state. The word _anxiety_ would not serve as an equivalent for _phobia_, which may indicate a condition of extreme fear. It has been suggested that the German word _angst_ be left untranslated in the English text, much as the word _anlage_ is left untranslated as having no exact English equivalent. This idea meets with our approval but until this is done we prefer to make use of _fear_ as well as _anxiety_. The idea of rendering _angst_ as fear _or_ anxiety at the option of the translator, according to the context, has been tested but is not entirely satisfactory. [L. P. C.]
[2]: See History of an Infantile Neurosis (Vol. VIII of Collected Papers in German).
[3]: See Disposition to Compulsive Neurosis, Collected Papers in German, Vol. V.
[4]: Compare Reik, Impulse to Confess and Punishment Need, 1925.
[5]: Otto Rank. Birth Trauma and Its Importance for Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Bibliothek, XV, 1921.
[6]: Since the distinction between the ego and It our interest in the problems of suppression must experience a new animation. Hitherto we had been satisfied to take into account the aspects of the process applied to the ego, the shutting off from consciousness and from motility and the substitute (symptom) formation. For the suppressed prompting itself we assumed it to remain indefinitely long and unchanged in the unconscious. Now our interest became directed to the fate of the repressed and we had the foreboding that such an unchanged and inalterable continuity is not self-evident and perhaps not even customary. The original prompting is in any case inhibited through the repression and diverted from its aim. But does the portion in the unconscious remain intact and does it show itself resistant towards the changing and depreciating influences of life? Do the old wishes, which analysis showed formerly to exist, persist? The answer seems near at hand and to be trustworthy. The repressed old wishes must persist in the unconscious, for we find their derivatives, the symptoms, still active. But such an answer is not sufficient; it allows no decision to be made between the two possibilities, whether the old wish merely acts through its derivatives to which all its energy of fixation has been transferred or whether in addition the wish itself persists as such. If it had been its fate to be exhausted in the fixation of its derivatives, there remains a third possibility that in the course of the neurosis it is reanimated by regression, however unseasonable this may seem at present. One does not need to regard these speculations as idle; much of the phenomena of the morbid as well as the normal in the psychic life seems to demand such questioning. In my studies of the decline of the Oedipus complex I have called attention to the difference between the bare repression and the actual elevation of an old wish.
[7]: See The Defense Neuroses, collected papers in German, Vol. I.
[8]: It may occur often enough that in a danger situation which is rightly recognized as such, a small amount of impulse fear is added to real fear. The impulse claim, from the gratification of which the ego shrinks, would then be of a masochistic nature, a destructive prompting directed against oneself. Possibly this addition explains the reason why the fear reaction is excessive, unsuitable and paralyzing. The height phobias (window, steeple, precipice) may have this origin; their secret feminine significance is related to masochism.