The Undoing and Isolation Mechanisms in Compulsion Neurosis

During this conflict one may observe two symptom-forming activities of the ego which deserve particular interest because they are evidently substitutes for repression and therefore their technic and tendency can already be elucidated. Perhaps we should also understand this auxiliary and substitute technic as a proof that the carrying through of correct suppression will meet with difficulties. If we consider that in compulsive neuroses the ego is so much more the scene of symptom formation than in hysteria; that this ego holds fast tenaciously to its relationship to reality and consciousness and thereby summons all of its intellectual resources; and that the thought activity seems overfixed and erotised, such variations of suppression are perhaps brought nearer.

The two suggested technics are the undoing and the isolation. The former has a large field of application and extends far back. It is negative magic, so to speak; it does not will the consequences of an event (impression, experience) through motor symbolism but itself "blows this away." With the choice of this last expression it is indicated what rôle this technic plays not only in the neurosis, but also in magic actions, folk customs and religious ceremonials. In the compulsion neurosis one encounters the undoing first in the two-stage symptoms where the second action abolishes the first as if it had not happened, where in reality both stages occurred. The compulsive-neurotic ceremonial has its second root in the intention of the undoing. The first is the prevention, the foresight that something definite shall not happen, not repeat itself. This distinction is easy to grasp; the precautionary measures are rational, the abolitions through undoing are irrational, magical in nature. Naturally one must suppose that this second root is the older, originating in the animistic situation to the external world. Its shading into the normal finds the attempt at undoing in the resolution to treat an event as if it had not yet happened, but then one undertakes nothing against it or bothers either with the event or its consequences; while in the neurosis one even abolishes the past and seeks to repress motivistically. The same tendency may also give the explanation of the so frequent compulsion to repetition in the neurosis, in the execution of which many intentions are found together which reciprocally antagonize one another. What does not happen in this fashion, as it should have happened in accord with the wish, is made undone in another way through repetition, where all the motives appear to tarry in these repetitions. In the further course of the neurosis the tendency is often unveiled to make a traumatic experience undone, as a symptom-forming motive of the first rank. We receive so unexpected a glimpse into a new motor technic of defense, or as we might say with a little inexactness, of repression.

The other sort of new technic to be described is that of isolation which is peculiar to compulsive neuroses. It is likewise in relation to the motor sphere and consists as follows: after an unpleasant event and also after any personal activity significant in the sense of a neurosis, a pause is interpolated in which nothing is to happen, no perception made nor action carried out. This at first strange behavior soon betrays to us its relation to repression. We know that it is possible in hysteria to allow a traumatic impression to fall into amnesia. In compulsive neurosis this does not often succeed; the experience is not forgotten but is laid bare by its affect and its associative relations are repressed or interrupted; so that it stands as if isolated and is not reproduced in the course of thought activity. The effect of this isolation is the same as in repression with amnesia. This technic is therefore reproduced in the isolation of compulsive neurosis but is also strengthened motor wise in the magic intention. What is thus held apart is exactly that which associatively belongs to it, the motor isolation is to give a guarantee for the interruption of the connection in thought. A pretext for this procedure of the neurosis is given by the normal process of concentration. What seems significant to us as an impression, as a task, is not to be disturbed through the simultaneous claims of other thought achievements or activities. But even in the normal the concentration is applied not only to the indifferent and not pertinent but before all to hold aloof the unsuitable opposite. As the most disturbing is felt what had originally belonged to it but had been torn asunder in the development of progress---for example, the expressions of ambivalence of the father complex in the relationship to God or the promptings of the excretory organs in the excitement of love. Hence normally the ego has a great task of isolation to perform in the direction of the course of thought and we know that in the exercise of the analytic technic, we must educate the ego to renounce at times this otherwise justifiable function.

We have all had the experience that it is especially difficult for the compulsive neurotic to follow the psychoanalytic principle. Probably as a result of the high tension of the conflict between the super-ego and the It the ego is more watchful, more seriously aware of its isolations. During the labor of thinking it has too much to defend, the mixture of unconscious fancies, the expression of ambivalent strivings. It dare not let itself go, and it finds itself constantly in readiness to fight. It supports this compulsion to concentration and isolation through magical acts of isolation, which as symptoms become so striking and practically so significant, but are naturally worthless per se and have the character of ceremonials.

As, however, it seeks to hinder associations, combination in thought, it follows one of the oldest and most fundamental commands of compulsion neurosis, the tabu of contact. If one puts to himself the question why the avoidance of contact and infection plays so great a rôle in the neurosis and brings such complicated systems into content, one finds the answer that contact, bodily contact, is the nearest goal both as to aggressive and tender object fixation. The Eros wishes the contact, for it strives for union and abolition of the distance between the ego and the love object. But also destruction---which before the invention of weapons used at a distance could only come from near by---must presuppose bodily contact, the application of the hand. To touch a woman is in speech usage a euphemism for her utilization as a sex object. Not to touch the penis is the text of the prohibition against autoerotic satisfaction. As the compulsive neurosis at the beginning follows the erotic contact and then after regression the contact is masked as aggression, there is nothing else to be forbidden in so high a degree, nothing so suited to become the central point of a system of prohibition. Isolation is abolition of the possibility of contact, a thing to withdraw from every contact and if the neurotic isolates even an impression or an activity through a pause, he gives us to understand symbolically that he will not allow the thoughts of it to come into associative contact with other thoughts.

So far our investigations extend into the subject of symptom formation. It hardly repays us to resume them. They are poor in result and remain unfinished; they have in fact brought us little that we did not know before. Symptom formation in other affections besides phobias, conversion hysteria and compulsion neurosis for the sake of comparison, promises nothing---too little is known of them. Even from the comparison of these three neuroses there arises a difficult task which cannot be put off. In all three the destruction of the Oedipus complex is the exit; in all, we assume, castration fear is the motif of the ego striving. But only in the phobias does such fear come to the surface, is admitted. What becomes of the fear in the two other affections, how has the ego spared itself this fear? The problem becomes more difficult when we think of the above mentioned possibility that the fear emerges in the course of disturbed libido investment by a sort of agitation. Further, does it stand fast that castration fear is the sole motif of repression (or defense)? If one thinks of the neuroses of women, one must doubt it, for as surely the castration complex may be found in them, one can hardly speak of castration fear in the proper sense if castration is already completed.