Freud - Complete Works (616 page)

   Concerning the factors of
silence, solitude and darkness, we can only say that they are
actually elements in the production of the infantile anxiety from
which the majority of human beings have never become quite free.
This problem has been discussed from a psycho-analytic point of
view elsewhere.

3701

PREFACE TO REIK’S
RITUAL: PSYCHO-ANALYTIC STUDIES

(1919)

3702

Intentionally left blank

3703

PREFACE TO REIK’S
RITUAL: PSYCHO-ANALYTIC STUDIES

Psycho-analysis was born out of medical
necessity. It sprang from the need for bringing help to neurotic
patients, who had found no relief through rest-cures, through the
arts of hydropathy or through electricity. A most remarkable
observation made by Josef Breuer had excited a hope that the more
one understood of the hitherto unexplored origin of their symptoms
the more extensive would be the help one could afford them. Thus it
came about that psycho-analysis, being originally a purely medical
technique, was from the first directed towards research, towards
the discovery of causal chains at once far-reaching and
recondite.

   Its further course led it away
from the study of the somatic determinants of nervous disease to an
extent that was bewildering to physicians. Instead, it was brought
into contact with the mental substance of human lives - the lives
not only of the sick, but of the healthy, the normal and the
supernormal. It had to deal with emotions and passions, and most of
all with those which the poets never tire of depicting and
celebrating - the emotions of love. It learnt to recognize the
power of memories, the unsuspected importance of the years of
childhood in shaping the adult, and the strength of wishes, which
falsify human judgements and lay down fixed lines for human
endeavour.

   For a time psycho-analysis seemed
fated to merge into psychology without being able to show why the
psychology of the sick differed from that of the normal. In the
course of its advance, however, it came up against the problem of
dreams, which are abnormal products of the mind created by normal
men under regularly recurrent physiological conditions. When
psycho-analysis had solved the problem of dreams, it had discovered
in
unconscious
psychical processes the common ground in
which the highest and the lowest of mental impulses have their
roots and from which spring the most normal as well as the most
morbid and erratic of mental productions. The new picture of the
workings of the mind began to grow ever clearer and more complete.
It was a picture of obscure instinctual forces organic in origin,
striving towards inborn aims, and, above them, of an agency
comprising more highly organized mental structures - acquisitions
of human evolution made under the impact of human history -, an
agency which has taken over portions of the instinctual impulses,
has developed them further or has even directed them towards higher
aims, but which in any case binds them firmly and manipulates their
energy to suit its own purposes. This higher organization, however,
which is known to us as the ego, has rejected another portion of
these same elementary instinctual impulses as being unserviceable
because they cannot be fitted into the organic unity of the
individual or because they rebel against the individual’s
cultural aims. The ego is not in a position to exterminate these
unsubdued mental powers, but it turns its back on them, lets them
remain at the lowest psychological level, defends itself from their
demands by the energetic erection of protective and antithetical
barriers or seeks to come to terms with them by means of
substitutive satisfactions. These instincts which have fallen
victim to repression - untamed and indestructible, yet inhibited
from any kind of activity - together with their primitive mental
representatives, constitute the mental underworld, the nucleus of
the true unconscious, and are at every moment ready to assert their
demands and, by hook or by crook, to force their way forward to
satisfaction. To this is due the instability of the proud
superstructure of the mind, the emergence at night of the
proscribed and repressed material in the form of dreams, and the
tendency to fall ill with neuroses and psychoses as soon as the
balance of power between the ego and the repressed shifts to the
disadvantage of the ego.

Preface To Reik's Ritual: Psycho-Analytic Studies

3704

   A little reflection was bound to
show that it would be impossible to restrict to the provinces of
dreams and nervous disorders a view such as this of the life of the
human mind. If that view has hit upon a truth, it must apply
equally to
normal
mental events, and even the highest
achievements of the human spirit must bear a demonstrable relation
to the factors found in pathology - to repression, to the efforts
at mastering the unconscious and to the possibilities of satisfying
the primitive instincts. There was thus an irresistible temptation
and, indeed, a scientific duty, to apply the research methods of
psycho-analysis, in regions far remote from its native soil, to the
various mental sciences. And indeed psycho-analytic work upon
patients itself pointed persistently in the direction of this new
task, for it was obvious that the forms assumed by the different
neuroses echoed the most highly admired productions of our culture.
Thus hysterics are undoubtedly imaginative artists, even if they
express their phantasies
mimetically
in the main and without
considering their intelligibility to other people; the ceremonials
and prohibitions of obsessional neurotics drive us to suppose that
they have created a private religion of their own; and the
delusions of paranoics have an unpalatable external similarity and
internal kinship to the systems of our philosophers. It is
impossible to escape the conclusion that these patients are, in an
asocial
fashion, making the very attempts at solving their
conflicts and appeasing their pressing needs which, when those
attempts are carried out in a fashion that is acceptable to the
majority, are known as poetry, religion and philosophy.

   In 1913 Otto Rank and Hanns
Sachs, in an extremely interesting work, brought together the
results which had been achieved up to that time in the application
of psycho-analysis to the mental sciences. The most easily
accessible branches of those sciences seem to be mythology and the
history of literature and religion. No final formula has yet been
found enabling us to give an appropriate place to myths in this
connection. Otto Rank, in a large volume on the incest complex
(1912), has produced evidence of the surprising fact that the
choice of subject matter, especially for dramatic works, is
principally determined by the ambit of what psycho-analysis has
termed the ‘Oedipus complex’. By working it over with
the greatest variety of modifications, distortions and disguises,
the dramatist seeks to deal with his own most personal relations to
this emotional theme. It is in attempting to master the Oedipus
complex - that is to say, a person’s emotional attitude
towards his family, or in a narrower sense towards his father and
mother - that individual neurotics come to grief, and for this
reason that complex habitually forms the nucleus of their neuroses.
It does not owe its importance to any unintelligible conjunction;
the emphasis laid upon the relation of children to their parents is
an expression of the biological facts that the young of the human
race pass through a long period of dependence and are slow in
reaching maturity, as well as that their capacity for love
undergoes a complicated course of development. Consequently, the
overcoming of the Oedipus complex coincides with the most efficient
way of mastering the archaic, animal heritage of humanity. It is
true that that heritage comprises all the forces that are required
for the subsequent cultural development of the individual, but they
must first be sorted out and worked over. This archaic heirloom is
not fit to be used for the purposes of civilized social life in the
form in which it is inherited by the individual.

Preface To Reik's Ritual: Psycho-Analytic Studies

3705

   To find the starting-point for
the psycho-analytic view of religious life we must go a step
further. What is to-day the heritage of the individual was once a
new acquisition and has been handed on from one to another of a
long series of generations. Thus the Oedipus complex too may have
had stages of development, and the study of prehistory may enable
us to trace them out. Investigation suggests that life in the human
family took a quite different form in those remote days from that
with which we are now familiar. And this idea is supported by
findings based on observations of contemporary primitive races. If
the prehistoric and ethnological material on this subject is worked
over psycho-analytically, we arrive at an unexpectedly precise
result: namely that God the Father once walked upon earth in bodily
form and exercised his sovereignty as chieftain of the primal human
horde until his sons united to slay him. It emerges further that
this crime of liberation and the reactions to it had as their
result the appearance of the first social ties, the basic moral
restrictions and the oldest form of religion, totemism. But the
later religions too have the same content, and on the one hand they
are concerned with obliterating the traces of that crime or with
expiating it by bringing forward other solutions of the struggle
between the father and sons, while on the other hand they cannot
avoid repeating once more the elimination of the father.
Incidentally, an echo of this monstrous event, which overshadowed
the whole course of human development, is also to be found in
myths.

   This hypothesis, which is founded
on the observations of Robertson Smith and was developed by me in
Totem and Taboo
, has been taken by Theodor Reik as the basis
of his studies on the problems of the psychology of religion, of
which this is the first volume. In accordance with psycho-analytic
technique these studies start out from hitherto unexplained details
of religious life, and by means of their elucidation gain access to
the fundamental postulates and ultimate aims of religions; moreover
they keep steadily in view the relation between prehistoric man and
contemporary primitive societies as well as the connection between
the products of civilization and the substitutive structures of
neurotics. In conclusion, I would draw attention to the
author’s own introduction and express my belief that his work
will recommend itself to the notice of specialists in the branch of
knowledge with which it deals.

3706

A NOTE ON PSYCHO-ANALYTIC PUBLICATIONS AND PRIZES

(1919)

In the Autumn of 1918 a member of the Budapest
Psycho-Analytical Society informed me that a Fund had been set
aside for cultural purposes from the profits made by industrial
undertakings during the war. The decision as to its use lay jointly
with himself and the Chief Burgermaster of the city of Budapest,
Dr. Stephan Bárczy. They had agreed to devote the
considerable sum of money concerned to the purposes of the
psycho-analytic movement and to hand over its administration to me.
I accepted this commission, and I now fulfil my duty of offering
public thanks to the Chief Burgermaster (who soon afterwards
received the Psycho-Analytical Congress in Budapest with so much
honour) as well as to the anonymous member who has performed such a
high service to the cause of psycho-analysis.

   The Fund thus placed at my
disposal, which was given my name, was allotted by me to the
foundation of an international psycho-analytic publishing business.
I considered that in the present circumstances this was our most
important need.

   Unlike many other scientific
undertakings, our two periodical publications, the
Internationale Zeitschrift für ärztliche
Psychoanalyse
and
Imago
, did not come to an end during
the war. We succeeded in keeping them in existence, but in
consequence of the increasing difficulties, closing of frontiers
and rise in prices which accompanied the war, it became necessary
to reduce them considerably in size and to allow undesirably long
intervals to elapse between the publication of successive issues.
Of the four editors of the two journals (Ferenczi, Jones, Rank and
Sachs) one, being a subject of an enemy State, was cut off from us;
two others had joined the forces and were fully engaged in their
military duties; only Dr. Sachs was left at work, and he
self-sacrificingly assumed the whole burden. A few of the local
psycho-analytical societies found it necessary to suspend their
meetings entirely; the number of contributors shrank, as did that
of the subscribers. It was easy to foresee that the
publisher’s natural dissatisfaction would soon put in
question the continuance of the journals to which we attached so
much importance. Yet numerous indications, which reached us even
from the front-line trenches, pointed to the fact that contemporary
interest in psycho-analysis had not diminished. I think I was
justified in my intention to put an end to these difficulties and
dangers by the foundation of an international psycho-analytic
publishing business. This publishing house is already in existence
to-day, as a limited liability company; it is under the direction
of Dr. Otto Rank, who has been for so many years secretary of the
Vienna Society and co-editor of the two psycho-analytic journals,
and who has returned after many years’ absence on active
service to his earlier work in the service of psycho-analysis.

A Note On Psycho-Analytic Publications And Prizes

3707

   The new publishing house,
supported by the funds of the Budapest endowment, has assumed the
task of ensuring the regular appearance and reliable distribution
of the two journals. As soon as the difficulties of external
circumstances permit, it is intended that they shall be restored to
their former dimensions, and that these dimensions may if necessary
be increased, without any extra charge to the subscribers. But in
addition to this, and without waiting for an improvement, the
publishing house will proceed to print books and pamphlets dealing
with the field of medical and applied psycho-analysis; and since it
is not a profit-making concern, it will be able to pay better heed
to the interests of authors than is usually done by commercial
publishers.

   Simultaneously with the
establishment of the psycho-analytic publishing house it was
decided to award annual prizes out of the interest on the Budapest
endowment, to two outstanding pieces of work, one each in the field
of medical and of applied psycho-analysis. These prizes - to the
amount of 1,000 Austrian
Kronen
- are intended to be
awarded, not to authors, but to individual works, so that there
will be a possibility of the same author winning a prize
repeatedly. The decision on the question of which among the
writings published during a particular period are to receive prizes
has not been transferred to a committee but will be kept in the
hands of a single person, the Administrator of the fund for the
time being; otherwise, if a committee of adjudicators were to be
formed of the most experienced and discerning analysts, their own
writings would have to be excluded from consideration, and the
scheme might easily fail in its intention of distinguishing
exemplary achievements in psycho-analytic literature. If the
adjudicator finds himself hesitating between two works of almost
equal value, he will be empowered to divide the prize between them,
without the award of a half-prize implying any less appreciation of
the work in question.

   It is intended that these prizes
shall in general be awarded every year and that the choice should
lie between the whole of the psycho-analytically important
literature published during that period, irrespectively of whether
the author of the work in question is a Member of the International
Psycho-Analytical Association.

   The first prizes have already
been awarded and relate to papers published during the period of
the war, from 1914 to 1918. The prize for medical psycho-analysis
has been divided between Karl Abraham’s paper ‘The
First Pregenital Stage of the Libido’ (1916) and Ernst
Simmel’s pamphlet
Kriegsneurosen und psychisches
Trauma
(1918). The prize for applied psycho-analysis has been
awarded to Theodor Reik’s paper ‘Die
Pubertätsriten der Wilden’ (1915).

FREUD.  
 

A Note On Psycho-Analytic Publications And Prizes

3708

[Two further announcements on the same subject
appeared subsequently: ‘Preiszuteilungen’ (
Int. Z.
Psychoanal.
,
7
, 381 [1921]), and
‘Preisausschreibung’ (ibid.,
8
, 527
[1922]).]

‘AWARD OF PRIZES

   ‘A recent gift made by Dr.
Max Eitingon, the director of the Berlin Clinic, has made it
possible for me to revive the award of prizes (first made in 1919)
for psycho-analytic writings of peculiar merit. The prize for
medical
psycho-analysis has been awarded to A. Stärcke
(of Den Dolder, Holland) for his two publications "Der
Kastrationskomplex" and "Psychoanalyse und
Psychiatrie" (both of them Congress papers), of which the
first appeared in the current volume of this periodical and the
second as a supplementary issue. The prize for
applied
psycho-analysis has gone to Dr. G. Róheim (of Budapest) for
his paper "Das Selbst" and his Congress paper on
Australian Totemism. The amount of each prize was one thousand
marks.

FREUD
.’   

‘PRIZE OFFER

   ‘At the Seventh
International Psycho-Analytical Congress, in Berlin, I laid down as
the subject for a prize: "The Relation between Analytic
Technique and Analytic Theory." The questions to be discussed
are how far the technique has influenced the theory and how far
they assist or hinder each other at the present time.

   ‘Works dealing with this
subject should be sent to me at the address given below before May
1, 1923. They should be legibly typewritten. They should have a
motto attached and should be accompanied by a sealed envelope
enclosing the author’s name. They must be written either in
German or English. In judging the works submitted I shall have the
assistance of Dr. K. Abraham and Dr. M. Eitingon.

   ‘The prize amounts to
20,000 marks at the value current at the time of the Congress.

   ‘Berggasse 19, Vienna
IX.

FREUD
.’