Freud - Complete Works (609 page)

'A Child Is Being Beaten'

3661

   The theory of the masculine
protest seems to maintain its ground very much better on being
tested in regard to the beating-phantasies. In the case of both
boys and girls the beating phantasy corresponds with a feminine
attitude - one, that is, in which the individual is lingering on
the ‘feminine line’ - and both sexes hasten to get free
from this attitude by repressing the phantasy. Nevertheless, it
seems to be only with the girl that the masculine protest is
attended with complete success, and in that instance, indeed, an
ideal example is to be found of the operation of the masculine
protest. With the boy the result is not entirely satisfactory; the
feminine line is not given up, and the boy is certainly not
‘on top’ in his conscious masochistic phantasy. It
would therefore agree with the expectations derived from the theory
if we were to recognize that this phantasy was a symptom which had
come into existence through the failure of the masculine protest.
It is a disturbing fact, to be sure, that the girl’s
phantasy, which owes its origin to the forces of repression, also
has the value and meaning of a symptom. In this instance, where the
masculine protest has completely achieved its object, surely the
determining condition for the formation of a symptom must be
absent.

   Before we are led by this
difficulty to a suspicion that the whole conception of the
masculine protest is inadequate to meet the problem of neuroses and
perversions, and that its application to them is unfruitful, we
will for a moment leave the passive beating-phantasies and turn our
attention to other instinctual manifestations of infantile sexual
life - manifestations which have equally undergone repression. No
one can doubt that there are also wishes and phantasies which keep
to the masculine line from their very nature, and which are the
expression of masculine instinctual impulses - sadistic tendencies,
for instance, or a boy’s lustful feelings towards his mother
arising out of the normal Oedipus complex. It is no less certain
that these impulses, too, are overtaken by repression. If the
masculine protest is to be taken as having satisfactorily explained
the repression of passive phantasies (which later become
masochistic), then it becomes for that very reason totally
inapplicable to the opposite case of active phantasies. That is to
say, the doctrine of the masculine protest is altogether
incompatible with the fact of repression. Unless we are prepared to
throw away all that has been acquired in psychology since
Breuer’s first cathartic treatment and through its agency, we
cannot expect that the principle of the masculine protest will
acquire any significance in the elucidation of the neuroses and
perversions.

'A Child Is Being Beaten'

3662

   The theory of psycho-analysis (a
theory based on observation) holds firmly to the view that the
motive forces of repression must not be sexualized. Man’s
archaic heritage forms the nucleus of the unconscious mind; and
whatever part of that heritage has to be left behind in the advance
to later phases of development, because it is unserviceable or
incompatible with what is new and harmful to it, falls a victim to
the process of repression. This selection is made more successfully
with one group of instincts than with the other. In virtue of
special circumstances which have often been pointed out already,
the latter group, that of the sexual instincts, are able to defeat
the intentions of repression, and to enforce their representation
by substitutive formations of a disturbing kind. For this reason
infantile sexuality, which is held under repression, acts as the
chief motive force in the formation of symptoms; and the essential
part of its content, the Oedipus complex, is the nuclear complex of
neuroses. I hope that in this paper I have raised an expectation
that the sexual aberrations of childhood, as well as those of
mature life, are ramifications of the same complex.

3663

INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE WAR NEUROSES

(1919)

3664

Intentionally left blank

3665

INTRODUCTION TO
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND THE WAR NEUROSES

This small book on the war neuroses - the
opening volume of our
Internationale Psychoanalytische
Bibliothek
- deals with a subject which until recently enjoyed
the advantage of being in the greatest degree topical. When it came
up for discussion at the Fifth Psycho-Analytical Congress, which
was held in Budapest in September, 1918, official representatives
from the highest quarters of the Central European Powers were
present as observers at the papers and other proceedings. The
hopeful result of this first contact was that the establishment of
psycho-analytic Centres was promised, at which analytically trained
physicians would have leisure and opportunity for studying the
nature of these puzzling disorders and the therapeutic effect
exercised on them by psycho-analysis. Before these proposals could
be put into effect, the war came to an end, the state organizations
collapsed and interest in the war neuroses gave place to other
concerns. It is, however, a significant fact that, when war
conditions ceased to operate, the greater number of the neurotic
disturbances brought about by the war simultaneously vanished. The
opportunity for a thorough investigation of these affections was
thus unluckily lost - though, we must add, the early recurrence of
such an opportunity is not a thing to be desired.

   But this episode, though it is
now closed, was not without an important influence on the spread of
psycho-analysis. Medical men who had hitherto held back from any
approach to psycho-analytic theories were brought into closer
contact with them when, in the course of their duties as army
doctors, they were obliged to deal with war neuroses. The reader
will be able to gather from Ferenczi’s paper with what
hesitations and under what disguises these closer contacts were
made. Some of the factors which psycho-analysis had recognized and
described long before as being at work in peace-time neuroses - the
psychogenic origin of the symptoms, the importance of
unconscious
instinctual impulses, the part played in dealing
with mental conflicts by the primary gain from being ill
(‘the flight into illness’) - were observed to be
present equally in the war neuroses and were accepted almost
universally. Simmel’s studies show, too, what successes could
be achieved by treating war neurotics by the method of catharsis,
which, as we know, was the first step towards the psycho-analytic
technique.

Introduction To Psycho-Analysis And The War Neuroses

3666

   There is, however, no need to
consider that these approaches to psycho-analysis imply any
reconciliation or any appeasement of opposition. Suppose someone
has hitherto rejected the whole of a complex of interdependent
propositions, but now suddenly finds himself in a position to
convince himself of the truth of one portion of the whole. It might
be thought that he will begin to hesitate about his opposition in
general and permit himself some degree of deferent expectation that
the other portion, about which he has had no personal experience
and can consequently form no judgement of his own, may also turn
out to be true. This other portion of psycho-analytic theory, with
which the study of the war neuroses did not come into contact, is
to the effect that the motive forces which are expressed in the
formation of symptoms are sexual and that neuroses arise from a
conflict between the ego and the sexual instincts which it
repudiates. (‘Sexuality’ in this context is to be
understood in the extended sense in which it is used in
psycho-analysis and is not to be confused with the narrower concept
of ‘genitality’.) Now it is quite true, as Ernest Jones
remarks in his contribution to this volume, that this portion of
the theory has not yet been proved to apply to the war neuroses.
The work that might prove it has not yet been taken in hand. It may
be that the war neuroses are altogether unsuitable material for the
purpose. But the opponents of psycho-analysis, whose dislike of
sexuality is evidently stronger than their logic, have been in a
hurry to proclaim that the investigation of the war neuroses has
finally disproved this portion of psycho-analytic theory. They have
been guilty here of a slight confusion. If the investigation of the
war neuroses (and a very superficial one at that) has
not
shown
that the sexual theory of the neuroses is
correct
,
that is something very different from its
showing
that that
theory is
incorrect
. With the help of an impartial attitude
and a little good will, it should not be hard to find the way to a
further clarification of the subject.

Introduction To Psycho-Analysis And The War Neuroses

3667

   The war neuroses, in so far as
they are distinguished from the ordinary neuroses of peace-time by
special characteristics, are to be regarded as traumatic neuroses
whose occurrence has been made possible or has been promoted by a
conflict in the ego. Abraham’s paper affords good evidence
for this conflict, which has also been recognized by the English
and American writers quoted by Jones. The conflict is between the
soldier’s old peaceful ego and his new warlike one, and it
becomes acute as soon as the peace-ego realizes what danger it runs
of losing its life owing to the rashness of its newly formed,
parasitic double. It would be equally true to say that the old ego
is protecting itself from a mortal danger by taking flight into a
traumatic neurosis or to say that it is defending itself against
the new ego which it sees is threatening its life. Thus the
precondition of the war neuroses, the soil that nourishes them,
would seem to be a national army; there would be no possibility of
their arising in an army of professional soldiers or
mercenaries.

   Apart from this, the war neuroses
are only traumatic neuroses, which, as we know, occur in peace-time
too after frightening experiences or severe accidents, without any
reference to a conflict in the ego.

   The theory of the sexual
aetiology of the neuroses, or, as we prefer to say, the libido
theory of the neuroses, was originally put forward only in relation
to the transference neuroses of peace-time and is easy to
demonstrate in their case by the use of the technique of analysis.
But its application to the other disorders which we later grouped
together as the narcissistic neuroses already met with
difficulties. An ordinary dementia praecox, a paranoia or a
melancholia are essentially quite unsuitable material for
demonstrating the validity of the libido theory or for serving as a
first introduction to an understanding of it; and it is for that
reason that psychiatrists, who neglect the transference neuroses,
are unable to come to terms with it. But the traumatic neuroses of
peace-time have always been regarded as the most refractory
material of all in this respect; so that the emergence of the war
neuroses could not introduce any new factor into the situation that
already existed.

   It only became possible to extend
the libido theory to the narcissistic neuroses after the concept of
a ‘narcissistic libido’ had been put forward and
applied - a concept, that is, of an amount of sexual energy
attached to the ego itself and finding satisfaction in the ego just
as satisfaction is usually found only in objects. This entirely
legitimate development of the concept of sexuality promises to
accomplish as much for the severer neuroses and for the psychoses
as can be expected of a theory which is feeling its way forwards on
an empirical basis. The traumatic neuroses of peace will also fit
into the scheme as soon as a successful outcome has been reached of
our investigations into the relations which undoubtedly exist
between fright, anxiety and narcissistic libido.

Introduction To Psycho-Analysis And The War Neuroses

3668

   The traumatic neuroses and war
neuroses may proclaim too loudly the effects of mortal danger and
may be silent or speak only in muted tones of the effects of
frustration in love. But, on the other hand, the ordinary
transference neuroses of peace-time set no aetiological store by
the factor of mortal danger which, in the former class of neuroses,
plays so mighty a part. It is even held that the peace-time
neuroses are promoted by indulgence, good living and inactivity -
which would afford an interesting contrast to the living-conditions
under which the war neuroses develop. If they were to follow the
example of their opponents, psycho-analysts, finding that their
patients had fallen ill owing to frustration in love (owing to the
claims of the libido being unsatisfied) would have to maintain that
there can be no such things as danger-neuroses or that the
disorders that appear after frightening experiences are not
neuroses. They have, of course, no notion of maintaining any such
thing. On the contrary, a convenient possibility occurs to them of
bringing the two apparently divergent sets of facts together under
a single hypothesis. In traumatic and war neuroses the human ego is
defending itself from a danger which threatens it from without or
which is embodied in a shape assumed by the ego itself. In the
transference neuroses of peace the enemy from which the ego is
defending itself is actually the libido, whose demands seem to it
to be menacing. In both cases the ego is afraid of being damaged -
in the latter case by the libido and in the former by external
violence. It might, indeed, be said that in the case of the war
neuroses, in contrast to the pure traumatic neuroses and in
approximation to the transference neuroses, what is feared is
nevertheless an internal enemy. The theoretical difficulties
standing in the way of a unifying hypothesis of this kind do not
seem insuperable: after all, we have a perfect right to describe
repression, which lies at the basis of every neurosis, as a
reaction to a trauma - as an elementary traumatic neurosis.

Introduction To Psycho-Analysis And The War Neuroses

3669

APPENDIX

MEMORANDUM ON THE ELECTRICAL TREATMENT OF
WAR NEUROTICS

(1955
[1920])

   There were plenty of patients
even in peace-time who, after traumas (that is, after frightening
and dangerous experiences such as railway accidents, etc.)
exhibited severe disturbances in their mental life and in their
nervous activity, without physicians having reached an agreed
judgement on these states. Some supposed that with such patients it
was a question of severe injuries to the nervous system, similar to
the haemorrhages and inflammations occurring in non-traumatic
illnesses. And when anatomical examination failed to establish such
processes, they nevertheless maintained their belief that finer
changes in the tissues were the cause of the symptoms observed.
They therefore classed these traumatic cases among the organic
diseases. Other physicians maintained from the first that these
states could only be regarded as functional disturbances, and that
the nervous system remained anatomically intact. But medical
opinion had long found difficulty in explaining how such severe
disturbances of function could occur without any gross injury to
the organ.

   The war that has recently ended
produced and brought under observation an immense number of these
traumatic cases. In the result, the controversy was decided in
favour of the functional view. The great majority of physicians no
longer believe that the so-called ‘war neurotics’ are
ill as a result of tangible organic injuries to the nervous system,
and the more clear-sighted among them have already decided, instead
of using the indefinite description of a ‘functional
change’, to introduce the unambiguous term ‘mental
change’.

   Although the war neuroses
manifested themselves for the most part as motor disturbances -
tremors and paralyses - and although it was plausible to suppose
that such a gross impact as that produced by the concussion due to
the explosion of a shell near by or to being buried by a fall of
earth would lead to gross mechanical effects, observations were
nevertheless made which left no doubt as to the psychical nature of
the causation of these so-called war neuroses. How could this be
disputed when the same symptoms appeared behind the Front as well,
far from the horrors of war, or immediately after a return from
leave? The physicians were therefore led to regard war neurotics in
a similar light to the nervous subjects of peace-time.

   What is known as the
psycho-analytic school of psychiatry, which was brought into being
by me, had taught for the last twenty-five years that the neuroses
of peace could be traced back to disturbances of emotional life.
This explanation was now applied quite generally to war neurotics.
We had further asserted that neurotic patients suffered from mental
conflicts and that the wishes and inclinations which were expressed
in the symptoms were unknown to the patients themselves - were,
that is to say, unconscious. It was therefore easy to infer that
the immediate cause of all war neuroses was an unconscious
inclination in the soldier to withdraw from the demands, dangerous
or outrageous to his feelings, made upon him by active service.
Fear of losing his own life, opposition to the command to kill
other people, rebellion against the ruthless suppression of his own
personality by his superiors - these were the most important
affective sources on which the inclination to escape from war was
nourished.