Freud - Complete Works (563 page)

  
¹
[’If the little savage were left to
himself, preserving all his foolishness and adding to the small
sense of a child in the cradle the violent passions of a man of
thirty, he would strangle his father and lie with his
mother.’]

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3403

LECTURE XXII

SOME
THOUGHTS ON DEVELOPMENT AND REGRESSION - AETIOLOGY

LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN
, - You have heard that the libidinal function goes
through a lengthy development before it can, in what is described
as the normal manner, be enlisted in the service of reproduction. I
should now like to bring to your attention the significance of this
fact in the causation of the neuroses.

   We are, I think, in agreement
with the theories of general pathology in assuming that a
development of this kind involves two dangers - first, of
inhibition
, and secondly, of
regression
. That is to
say, in view of the general tendency of biological processes to
variation, it is bound to be the case that not every preparatory
phase will be passed through with equal success and completely
superseded: portions of the function will be permanently held back
at these early stages, and the total picture of development will be
qualified by some amount of developmental inhibition.

   Let us look for some analogies to
these processes in other fields of knowledge. When, as often
happened at early periods of human history, a whole people left
their place of domicile and sought a new one, we may be certain
that the whole of them did not arrive at the new location. Apart
from other losses, it must regularly have happened that small
groups or bands of the migrants halted on the way and settled at
these stopping places while the main body went further. Or, as you
know, to turn to a nearer comparison, in the highest mammals the
male sex-glands, which are originally situated deep in the
abdominal cavity, start upon a migration at a particular stage of
intra-uterine life, which brings them almost directly under the
skin of the pelvic extremity. As a consequence of this migration,
we find in a number of male individuals that one of these paired
organs has remained behind in the pelvic cavity, or that it has
become permanently lodged in what is known as the inguinal canal,
through which both organs must pass in the course of their
migration, or at least that this canal has remained open, though it
should normally close up after the sex-glands have completed their
change of situation. Or again, when as a young student I was
engaged under von Brücke’s direction on my first piece
of scientific work, I was concerned with the origin of the
posterior nerve-roots in the spinal cord of a small fish of very
archaic structure; I found that the nerve-fibres of these roots
have their origin in large cells in the posterior horn of the grey
matter, which is no longer the case in other vertebrates. But I
also discovered soon afterwards that nerve-cells of this kind are
present outside the grey matter the whole way to what is known as
the spinal ganglion of the posterior root; and from this I inferred
that the cells of these masses of ganglia had migrated from the
spinal cord along the roots of the nerves. This is also shown by
their evolutionary history. But in this small fish the whole path
of their migration was demonstrated by the cells that had remained
behind.

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   If you go into the matter more
closely, you will have no difficulty in detecting the weak points
in these comparisons. I will therefore declare without more ado
that I regard it as possible in the case of every particular sexual
trend that some portions of it have stayed behind at earlier stages
of its development, even though other portions may have reached
their final goal. You will recognize here that we are picturing
every such trend as a current which has been continuous since the
beginning of life but which we have divided up, to some extent
artificially, into separate successive advances. Your impression
that these ideas stand in need of greater clarification is
justified; but to attempt it would take us too far afield. Let me
further make it clear that we propose to describe the lagging
behind of a part trend at an earlier stage as a
fixation
- a
fixation, that is, of the instinct.

   The second danger in a
development by stages of this sort lies in the fact that the
portions which have proceeded further may also easily return
retrogressively to one of these earlier stages - what we describe
as a
regression
. The trend will find itself led into a
regression of this kind if the exercise of its function - that is,
the attainment of its aim of satisfaction - is met, in its later or
more highly developed form, by powerful external obstacles. It is
plausible to suppose that fixation and regression are not
independent of each other. The stronger the fixations on its path
of development, the more readily will the function evade external
difficulties by regressing to the fixations - the more incapable,
therefore, does the developed function turn out to be of resisting
external obstacles in its course. Consider that, if a people which
is in movement has left strong detachments behind at the
stopping-places on its migration, it is likely that the more
advanced parties will be inclined to retreat to these
stopping-places if they have been defeated or have come up against
a superior enemy. But they will also be in the greater danger of
being defeated the more of their number they have left behind on
their migration.

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   It is important for your
understanding of the neuroses that you should not leave this
relation between fixation and regression out of sight. This will
give you a firmer footing in facing the question of how the
neuroses are caused - the question of the aetiology of the neuroses
which we shall shortly have to meet.

   For the moment we will dwell a
little longer on regression. After what you have learnt of the
development of the libidinal function, you will be prepared to hear
that there are regressions of two sorts: a return to the objects
first cathected by the libido, which, as we know, are of an
incestuous nature, and a return of the sexual organization as a
whole to earlier stages. Both sorts are found in the transference
neuroses and play a great part in their mechanism. In particular, a
return to the first incestuous objects of the libido is a feature
that is found in neurotics with positively fatiguing regularity.
There is much more to be said about regressions of the libido
itself when we take into account as well another group of neuroses,
the narcissistic ones, which for the time being we do not intend to
do. These disorders give us access to other developmental processes
of the libidinal function which we have not yet mentioned, and show
us correspondingly new sorts of regression as well. But above all I
think I ought to warn you now not to confuse
regression
with
repression
and help you to form a clear idea of the
relations between the two processes. Repression, as you will
recall, is the process by which an act which is admissible to
consciousness, one, therefore, which belongs to the system
Pcs.
, is made unconscious - is pushed back, therefore, into
the system
Ucs.
And we equally speak of repression if the
unconscious mental act is altogether forbidden access to the
neighbouring preconscious system and is turned back at the
threshold by the censorship. Thus the concept of repression
involves no relation to sexuality: I must ask you to take special
note of that. It indicates a purely psychological process, which we
can characterize still better if we call it a
‘topographical’ one. By this we intend to say that it
is concerned with the psychical regions which we have assumed to
exist, or, if we drop this clumsy working hypothesis, with the
construction of the mental apparatus out of distinct psychical
systems.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   The comparison we have proposed
has drawn our attention for the first time to the fact that we have
not hitherto been using the word ‘regression’ in its
general sense but in a quite special one. If we give it its general
sense - of a return from a higher to a lower stage of development -
then repression too can be subsumed under the concept of
regression, for it too can be described as a return to an earlier
and deeper stage in the development of a psychical act. In the case
of repression, however, this retrogressive movement does not
concern us, since we also speak of repression, in the
dynamic
sense, when a psychical act is held back at the
lower, unconscious, stage. The fact is that repression is a
topographico-dynamic concept, while regression is a purely
descriptive one. What we have hitherto spoken of as regression,
however, and have related to fixation, has meant exclusively a
return of the libido to earlier stopping places in its development
- something, that is, entirely different in its nature from
repression and entirely independent of it. Nor can we call
regression of the libido a purely psychical process and we cannot
tell where we should localize it in the mental apparatus. And
though it is true that it exercises the most powerful influence on
mental life, yet the most prominent factor in it is the organic
one.

   Discussions like this, Gentlemen,
are bound to become some what arid. So let us turn to clinical
material in order to find applications of it that will be a little
more impressive. Hysteria and obsessional neurosis are, as you
know, the two chief representatives of the group of transference
neuroses. Now it is true that in hysteria there is a regression of
the libido to the primary incestuous sexual objects and that this
occurs quite regularly; but there is as good as no regression to an
earlier stage of the sexual organization. To offset this, the chief
part in the mechanism of hysteria is played by repression. If I
might venture to complete what we already know for certain about
this neurosis by making a construction, I might explain the
position thus. The unification of the component instincts under the
primacy of the genitals has been accomplished; but its results come
up against the resistance of the preconscious system which is
linked with consciousness. Thus the genital organization holds good
for the unconscious, but not in the same way for the preconscious;
and this rejection on the part of the preconscious brings about a
picture which has certain resemblances to the state of things
before genital primacy. But it is nevertheless something quite
different.

   Of the two kinds of regression of
the libido, that to an earlier phase of the sexual organization is
by far the more striking. Since this is absent in hysteria, and
since our whole view of the neuroses is still far too much under
the influence of the study of hysteria, which was chronologically
the first, the significance of libidinal regression also became
clear to us far later than that of repression. We must be prepared
to find that our views will be subjected to still further
extensions and revaluations when we are able to take into
consideration not only hysteria and obsessional neurosis but also
the other, narcissistic neuroses.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   In obsessional neurosis, on the
contrary, it is the regression of the libido to the preliminary
stage of the sadistic-anal organization that is the most striking
fact and the one which is decisive for what is manifested in
symptoms. The love-impulse is obliged, when this has happened, to
disguise itself as a sadistic impulse. The obsessional idea
‘I should like to kill you’, when it has been freed
from certain additions which are not a matter of chance but are
indispensable, means at bottom nothing other than ‘I should
like to enjoy you in love’. If you consider further that
there has been a simultaneous regression in regard to the object,
so that these impulses apply only to those who are nearest and
dearest to the patient, you can form some idea of the horror which
these obsessions arouse in him and at the same time of the alien
appearance which they present to his conscious perception. But
repression, too, plays a great part in the mechanism of these
neuroses, though in a cursory introduction like ours this is not
easily demonstrated. A regression of the libido without repression
would never produce a neurosis but would lead to a perversion. From
this you can see that repression is the process which is most
peculiar to neuroses and is most characteristic of them. Perhaps I
may have an opportunity later of telling you what we know of the
mechanism of the perversions, and you will see that in their case
too things are not so simple as we should be glad to make them
out.

   I think, Gentlemen, that you will
best come to terms with what you have just been told about fixation
and regression of the libido if you will regard it as a preparation
for research into the aetiology of the neuroses. Hitherto I have
only given you one piece of information about this: namely that
people fall ill of a neurosis if they are deprived of the
possibility of satisfying their libido - that they fall ill owing
to ‘frustration’, as I put it - and that their symptoms
are precisely a substitute for their frustrated satisfaction. This
is not supposed to mean, of course, that every frustration of a
libidinal satisfaction makes the person it affects neurotic, but
merely that the factor of frustration could be discerned in every
case of neurosis that has been examined. Thus the proposition is
not convertible. No doubt, too, you will have understood that this
assertion does not claim to reveal the whole secret of the
aetiology of neuroses but is only bringing into prominence one
important and indispensable determinant.