/
SEX IN PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
RATIONAL SEX SERIES
SANE SEX LIFE AND SANE SEX LIVING,
by H. W. Long, M.D.
BI-SEXUAL LOVE, by Dr. William Stekel
SEX AND DREAMS, by Dr. William Stekel
THE HOMO-SEXUAL NEUROSIS, by Dr.
William Stekel
SEX AND THE SENSES, by James S. Van
Teslaar, M.D.
THE LAWS OF SEX, by Edith H. Hooker
MOTHERHOOD, by H. W. Long, M.D.
CHILDREN BY CHANCE OR BY CHOICE, by
William Hawley Smith
SEX IN PSYCHO-ANALYSIS, by S. Fe-
renczi, M.D.
HISTORY AND PRACTICE OF PSYCHANALY-
sis, by Paul Bjerre, M.D,
TEMPERAMENT AND SEX, by Walter
Heaton
SEX AND SOCIETY, by W. I. Thomas
RICHARD G. BADGER, PUBLISHER, BOSTON
SEX IN
PSYCHO ANALYSIS
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
S. FERENCZI
[BUDAPEST]
Medical Adviser to
The Hungarian Law Courts
Authorized Translation by
ERNEST JONES M.D.
BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS
LONDON: STANLEY PHILLIPS
COPYRIGHT, 1916. BT RICHARD G. BADGER
All Rights Reserved
Made in the United States of America
The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
DR. FERENCZI is known as one of the leading
exponents of psycho-analysis, and apart, of
course, from Professor Freud, has perhaps made
more original contributions than anyone else to that
subject. Before taking up the study of psycho-
analysis he had for many years been engaged on
neurological, psychiatrical and medico-legal work,
and had made a number of contributions particularly
on neurological and psychotherapeutic subjects.
His extensive personal experience with the methods
of hypnotism and suggestion gave him a specially
favourable opportunity to compare and contrast the
results thus obtained with those he was able later
to obtain by the use of the psycho-analytic method.
The greater part of his work has been published only
in Hungarian; from that which has appeared in
German I have selected for translation, with Dr.
Ferenczi's approval, some fifteen papers, which are
here reproduced in the order of their original appear-
ance. Of these only two, forming Chapters I and
III, were written from the point of view of popular
exposition ; the others are all of a more technical and
advanced nature, being addressed to an audience
5
6 Translator's Preface
already familiar with psycho-analytical principles.
While this fact increases their value for serious stu-
dents of the subject, there being little enough of
such literature in English, it exposes many of the
conclusions to ready misconception unless it be con-
stantly borne in mind that a considerable knowledge
of previous work is assumed throughout by the au-
thor. To those readers approaching the subject for
the first time the following books are recommended
as a preliminary study: Hitschmann, "Freud's
Theory of the Neuroses," Brill, "Psychanalysis,"
and the translator's "Papers on Psycho-Analysis. "
In the translation I have tried to render the au-
thor's thought and language as closely and accu-
rately as possible, judging this to be the chief desid-
eratum in dealing with a scientific work, even at the
cost of retaining some foreignness of style.
I am indebted to Miss Barbara Low for read-
ing through both the manuscript and the proofs.
Portland Court.
London, W.
CONTENTS
CHAI'TER PAQL
I. THE ANALYTIC INTERPRETATION AND TREATMENT OF
PSYCHOSEXUAL IMPOTENCE 11
II. INTBOJECTION AND TRANSFERENCE 35
I. INTROJECTION IN THE NEUROSES .... 35
II. THE PART PLAYED BY TRANSFERENCE IN
HYPNOTISM AND SUGGESTION .... 58
III. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DREAMS ... 94
IV. ON OBSCENE WORDS 132
V. ON THE PART PLAYED BY HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE
PATHOGENESIS OF PARANOIA . 154
VI. ON ONANISM 187
VII. TRANSITORY SYMPTOM-CONSTRUCTIONS DURING THE
ANALYSIS 193
VIII. STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSE OF
REALITY . . 213
IX. A LITTLE CHANTICLEER 240
X. SYMBOLISM 263
I. THE SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION OF THE
PLEASURE AND THE REALITY PRINCIPLES IN
THE CEoiPUS MYTH 253
II. ON EYE SYMBOLISM 270
III. THE ONTOGENESIS OF SYMBOLS .... 276
XI. SOME CLINICAL OBSERVATIONS ON PARANOIA AND
PARAPHRENIA 282
XII. THE NOSOLOGY OF MALE HOMOSEXUALITY (HOMO-
EROTISM) 296
XIII. THE ONTOGENESIS OF THE INTEREST IN MONEY . . 319
INDEX 333
S E X I N
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
CHAPTER I
THE ANALYTIC INTERPRETATION AND TREATMENT OF
PSYCHOSEXUAL IMPOTENCE 1
ONE of the few objective arguments brought
against the method of treatment of the psycho-
neuroses inaugurated by Freud is the criticism that
it effects only a symptomatic cure. It is said to
cause the pathological manifestations of hysteria
to disappear, but not the hysterical disposition it-
self. In regard to this Freud quite rightly directs
our attention to the fact that the same critics shew
much more indulgence towards other anti-hysterical
procedures, which cannot even effect a final cure of
one symptom. We may also bring forward against
the argument just mentioned the fact that the an-
alysis, penetrating into the depths of mental life (a
process which Freud tellingly compares with the ex-
cavating work of the archaeologist), not only effects
1 Published in the Psychiatrisch-Neurologische Wochenschrift,
1908, Jahrg. X.
11
18 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
a cure of the symptoms, but also results in such
fundamental change in the patient's character that
we no longer have any right to call him a sick man. 2
We are the less justified in doing so, in that after
the analysis is finished he is well armed also against
new psychical conflicts and shocks, pretty much as
well as the non-analysed "healthy persons," who as
we now know with certainty carry about with them
throughout life a multitude of repressed ideational
complexes that are at all times ready to increase
and exaggerate with their affect-value the patho-
genic action of psychical traumata.
Besides this, the burden of proof completely dis-
appears in the cases where our medical task is com-
prised in the curing of a single symptom. Among
these tasks the treatment of psychical impotence has
constantly been regarded as one of the most difficult.
So many of my patients came with this complaint,
and so great have I found the mental misery due to
this symptom, that I have been untiring in the ap-
plication of the most diverse medicinal 3 and sugges-
tive 4 methods of treatment. Now and then I have
had success with both of these, but neither of them
proved to be reliable. I count myself all the more
fortunate to be able now to report much more suc-
*Jung and Muthmann in their works come to the same con-
clusion.
* Ferenczl. Arzneimittelschatz des Neurologen. Gy6gyaszat,
1906.
4 Ferenczi. Ueber den Heilwert der Hypnose. Gyogyaszat,
1904.
Psycho sexual Impotence 13
cessful results, for which I have to thank Freud's
psycho-analytic method of treatment. 5
I will first relate, without any theoretical discus-
sion, the cases I have observed, and interpolate my
own remarks.
I was consulted by a workman, aged thirty-two,
whose apprehensive and almost abject appearance
allowed the "sexual neurasthenic" to be recognised
even at a distance. My first thought was that he was
being tormented by conscience-pangs due to mas-
turbation, but his complaint proved to be a much
more serious one. In spite of his age, and in spite
of innumerable attempts, he had never been able, so
he told me, properly to perform cohabitation; an
inadequate erection and ejaculatio praecox had al-
ways made the immissio impossible. He had sought
help from various physicians ; one of them ( a no-
torious newspaper-advertiser) spoke to him roughly,
saying "You have masturbated, that is why you
are impotent," and on this the patient, who in fact
had indulged in self-gratification from his fifteenth
to his eighteenth year, as the result of this consul-
tation went home convinced that the sexual capacity
was the well-deserved and irrevocable consequence
of the "sins of his youth." Nevertheless he made
5 Freud's works may be referred to in this connection, as well
as the following ones by two Vienna physicians: M. Steiner,
"Die funktionelle Impotenz des Mannes," Wiener med. Presse,
1907, Nr. 42 (also Die psychischen Storungen der mannlichen
Potenz, 1913, by the same author: Translator's Note), and W.
Stekel, Nervose Angstzustande, 1908.
14 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
further efforts to be cured, and went through among
others a long hydriatic and electrical treatment,
without success. The patient would already have
bowed to the inevitable, but that he had recently be-
come attached to a very suitable girl; the wish to
marry her was the motive of his present attempt to
be cured.
The case is a very everyday one, nor did the an-
amnesic exploration and the examination of the pa-
tient bring out anything special in addition. It
became evident that besides the impotence he suffered
from a neurotic symptom-complex: various paraes-
thesias, auditory hyperaesthesia, pronounced hypo-
chondria, disturbed sleep with unpleasant dreams;
altogether, therefore, an anxiety-neurosis in Freud's
sense, for which an adequate explanation was to be
found in the lack of sexual gratification and the fre-
quent frustrated excitations. The patient, although
the coitus-mechanism completely failed at just the
critical moment, indulged in phantasies, both when
awake and when half-asleep, the content of which
was entirely comprised of sexual situations, and
during these experienced the most intense erections.
This circumstance aroused in me tHe suspicion that
besides the nervous results of the abstinence he might
also be suffering from a psychoneurosis, and that the
cause of the impotence itself would have to be sought
in the inhibiting, interdicting power of an uncon-
scious psychical complex, which became operative
Psychosexual Impotence 15
just at the moment of the wished-for sexual union.
This pathological condition has, under the term
"psychical impotence," long been known to us, and
we have known that with it the inhibiting action
of morbid anxiety and fear makes impassable the
otherwise intact sexual reflex-arcs. It was formerly
believed, however, that such cases were fully ex-
plained by the "cowardice" of the patient or by the
conscious memory of a want of success sexually, and
our medical activity was confined to calming or en-
couraging the patient, with successful results in a
certain number of cases. With a knowledge of
Freud's psychology I could not remain content
with such superficial explanations ; I had to suppose
that not conscious fear, but unconscious mental
processes, having an absolutely definite content
and taking their origin in infantile memory-traces,
probably some childish sexual wish that in the course
of the individual cultural development had become
not only unobtainable, but even unthinkable, would
have to be made responsible for the symptom. I
received merely negative answers to the questions
put to him along these lines. Nothing special had
happened to him in a sexual connection ; his parents
and the family had always been very decent and re-
served in this respect, and as a child he had not
bothered himself in the least about "these matters ;"
he knew himself to be entirely free of homosexual
impulses ; the thought of the functioning of "erogen-
16 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
ous zones" (anal- and oral-erotism) filled him with
repugnance; the doings of exhibitionists, voyeurs,
sadists and masochists were almost quite unknown
to him. At the most he had, rather unwillingly, to
admit a somewhat excessive fondness for the female
foot and its covering, without being able to give any
information as to the source of this fetishistic par-
tiality. I allowed the patient, of course, to relate
exactly how he had gained his knowledge of sexual
matters, what his phantasies consisted of during the
period of self-gratification, and how the first at-
tempts at cohabitation, unsuccessful from the start,
had passed off. Still even this detailed anamnesis
did not elicit anything that I would have been able
to accept as an adequate explanation of the psycho-
sexual inhibition. We know, however, since Freud's
work that such an account of the illness does not re-
produce the real story of the individual's develop-
ment, even with complete honesty and a keen mem-
ory on the part of the person questioned ; so cleverly
can consciousness "overlook" and "forget" thoughts
and memories that have become disagreeable that
they can be withdrawn from the repression or made
conscious only by laborious analytic work. I did not
hesitate, therefore, to apply the analytic method.
In the analysis it soon turned out that the sus-
picion as to the presence of a psychoneurosis was
justified. With closer attention the neurotic nature
of the paraesthesias mentioned above was recognis-
Psycliosexual Impotence 17
able ("pains" and "crackling" in the tendons, "agi-
tation" in the abdominal and crural muscles, etc.),
but besides these there appeared a number of un-
doubtedly obsessive thoughts and feelings: he dared
not look people in the eyes ; he was a coward ; he felt
as if he had committed a crime ; he was always afraid
of getting laughed at.
Obsessive ideas and sensations of this kind are
typical of sexual impotence. The cowardice of the
sexually impotent person is explained by the radia-
tion over the whole individuality of the humiliating
consciousness of such an imperfection. Freud speaks
very appositely of the "prefigurativeness of sexu-
ality" for the rest of the psychical behaviour. The
degree of sureness in sexual efficiency becomes the
standard for the sureness in demeanour, in views, and
in conduct. The motiveless consciousness of guilt,
however, that seemed to play a not inconsiderable
part with our patient, made one suspect the presence
of deeper, suppressed, unconscious thought-pro-
cesses, which in a certain sense were really "sinful ;"
the analysis gradually yielded the psychical material
from which I was able to infer the nature of this
"sin."
It struck me above all that in his sexually coloured
dreams the patient occupied himself very frequently
with corpulent women whose faces he never saw, and
with whom he was unable to bring about sexual union
even in dreams ; on the contrary, instead of an emis-
18 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
sion occurring, as might have been expected, he would
be overtaken by acute dread and would wake up in
alarm with such thoughts as : "This is impossible !"
"This situation is unthinkable." After such anxiety-
dreams he would wake up exhausted, bathed in sweat,
with palpitation, and usually had "a bad day."
The fact that in the dream he never saw the face
of the sexual-object I had to interpret as a dream-
distortion (Freud); it serves the purpose here of
making the person towards whom the libidinous
dream-wish was directed unrecognisable in conscious-
ness. The starting up in alarm signified that it was
nevertheless beginning to dawn in his consciousness
how "unthinkable this situation was" with the woman
hinted at by the dream. The anxiety-attack is the
effective reaction of consciousness against wish-
fulfilment of the unconscious. 6
The unconscious interdiction of full sexual gratifi-
cation was so strict in the patient that even in day
dreams, when he indulged in his sexual phantasies,
he had in a terrified way to pull himself together
The Hungarian poet Ignotus seems to have surmised the
existence of the distortion and censuring of dreams, as is evi-
dent from the following fragment of verse:
"... A coward's dreams betray the man:
So harshly can Fate ply her flail,
That of safety he dare not even dream."
It had occurred to me long ago (see the article on "Love and
Science" in Gy6gy6szat, 1901) that for any useful writings on
individual-psychology we have to go not to scientific literature,
but to belles-lettres.
Psychosexual Impotence 19
and somehow divert his thoughts elsewhere in the
moment when he was about to imagine to himself
the act of cohabitation. 7
A certain active cruelty made its appearance sev-
eral times in his dreams ; for instance, he bit some-
one's finger off, or bit someone's face. It was not
hard to recognise the source of these cannibalistic
inclinations in the infantile hostility against a
brother, twenty years older, who in his time had
behaved much too strictly and not at all kindly
towards his little brothers. This propensity for
cruelty, by the way, also lurked in the waking state
behind the patient's "manifest" cowardice. Every
time it was discovered in how cowardly a manner he
had behaved in regard to this or that person (mostly
a superior) he would sink into phantasies that lasted
for several minutes, in which he depicted himself in
the greatest detail how he would conduct himself on
the next opportunity in a similar situation, what
bodily castigations and abusive language he would
1 Freud first called attention to the frequent occurrence of
anxious examination-dreams in those sexually impotent, and I
can fully confirm this observation. The dream phantasy of sit-
ting for an examination very often recurs with such people as
a "typical dream," and is constantly associated with the un-
pleasant feeling of not being ready, of making a fool of one-
self, etc. This feeling is a dream-displaced affect; it belongs
to the consciousness of the sexual incapacity. A synonym of
cohabitation that is commonly used in vulgar Hungarian ("to
shoot") is probably the reason why in the dreams of impotent
patients under my treatment situations so often recur in which
the chief part is played by the (mostly clumsy) use of weapons
(e. y. rusting of the rifle, missing the target, missing fire in
shooting, etc.).
80 Contributions to Psycho- Analyst*
serve out. 8 This is an expression of the esprit
d'escalier so frequent amongst psychoneurotics, or,
as Freud terms it, "subsequentness." These high-
flown plans, however, remain for the most part otiose
phantasy-pictures ; dread or fear always paralyses
the patient's hand and tongue again and again in
the critical moment. The analysis finds a determin-
ing factor of this kind of cowardice in the infantile
awe of the parents and older members of the family,
which at that time restrained the child's revolt
against their rebukes and bodily chastisements.
With the close physiological connection and the
ideational association that obtain between the sexual
function and the passage of urine I found it intelligi-
ble that the patient's inhibition also made its appear-
ance, as it soon turned out, in regard to micturition.
He was unable to discharge urine in the presence of
a second person. So long as he was quite alone in a
public urinal he urinated regularly, and with a good
stream ; at the moment when anyone entered the flow
was "as if cut off," and he became unable to press out
even a drop.
From this symptom, as also from his bashfulness
in regard to men, I inferred that with the patient, as
with most neurotics (Freud), the homosexual compo-
nent was present in a higher degree than usual. I
believed that the infantile source of this was to be
In Ibsen's "Pretenders" the figure of the Bishop Nicholas
excellently illustrates cowardice and concealed cruelty as the
result of sexual impotence.
Psychosexual Impotence 21
sought in his relation to a younger brother, with
whom he had slept in the same bed for years, and
with whom he had lived in an offensive and defensive
league against the elder brother who ill-treated them.
With the expression "usual amount of homosexu-
ality" I imply that my psycho-analyses, now quite
numerous, support the theory of psycho-bisexualityA
according to which there is retained from the original /
bisexual disposition of man not only anatomical, but \
also psychosexual rudiments, which under certain
circumstances may obtain the supremacy.
On the ground of other similar analyses I sus-
pected that the corpulent woman who recurred in the
dreams stood for some near relative of the patient,
the mother or a sister; he indignantly rejected this
imputation, however, and triumphantly told me that
he had only one corpulent sister, and it was just this
one that he couldn't bear ; he had always been sullen
and gruff towards her. When, however, one has ex-
perienced, as I have, how often a sympathy that is
burdensome to consciousness is hidden behind an ex-
aggerated harshness and ill-temper, one's suspicion
is not lulled by information such as this. 9
On one of the following da}'s the patient had a
peculiar hypnagogic hallucination, which with slight
modifications he had already noticed a few times be-
fore: in the act of going to sleep he had the feeling
as if his feet (which, though naked, appeared to him
"I hate because I cannot love." (Ibsen.)
22 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
to have shoes on) were rising in the air, while his
head sank deep down ; he awakened at once with an
intense feeling of dread. Having regard to the al-
ready mentioned foot- and shoe-fetishism I submit-
ted afresh to an exact analysis the patient's free
associations to this theme, with the result that the
following memory-images emerged, which he had long
forgotten, and which were most painful to him : The
corpulent sister, whom he "couldn't stand," and who
was ten years older than the patient, used to undo
and do up the shoes of her then three- or four-year-
old brother, and it also not infrequently happened
that she would let him ride on her naked leg (cov-
ered only by a short stocking), whereupon he used
to experience a voluptuous sensation in his member.
(Since this is obviously a "cover-memory" in Freud's
sense, more must have passed between them). When
he wanted to repeat this later on his sister, now four-
teen or fifteen years old, rebuffed him with the re-
proach that such conduct was improper and indecent.
I was now able to tell the patient of my assured
conviction that the psychological ground for his im-
potence was to be sought in the wish for the repetition
of those sexual acts, a wish incompatible with the
"cultivated sexual-morality" (V. Ehrenfels, Freud)
and hence repressed, but which lived on in the uncon-
scious. The patient, with whom the arguments only
half prevailed, adhered to his denial, but his resis-
tance did not last much longer. He came shortly
Psychosexual Impotence 23
after with the news that he had thought over what
I had said to him, and recollected how in his youth
(from the fifteenth to the eighteenth year) he would
select this infantile experience with his sister as the
object of his masturbation phantasies ; indeed, it was
the dread of his conscience after self-gratification of
this kind that had moved him to give up masturba-
tion altogether. Since that time the childhood story
had never occurred to his mind till now.
I induced the patient from the beginning to con-
tinue during the treatment his attempts at cohabita-
tion. After the dream-analysis related above he
came one day with the surprising news that on the
day before (for the first time in his life) he had suc-
ceeded in this ; the erection, the duration of the fric-
tion, and the orgasm had given him complete satis-
faction, and, with the avidity characteristic of neu-
rotics, he repeated the act twice again on the same
evening, each time with a different woman.
I continued with the treatment and began to re-
duce analytically the other symptoms of his neurosis,
but the patient, after he had achieved his chief aim
and convinced himself of the durability of the result,
lacked the necessary interest for the analysis, and so
I discharged him after treating him for two months.
This therapeutic success needs explaining. From
Freud's pioneering work on the evolution of sexual-
ity in the individual (Drei AWiandlimgen) we learnt
that the child receives his first sexual impressions
24 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
from the immediate environment, and that these im-
pressions determine the direction in the later choice
of the sexual-object. It may happen, however, that
as a result of constitutional causes or of external
favouring factors (e. g. spoiling) the incestuous
object-choice becomes fixed. Cultural morality,
gradually strengthened by example and education
defends itself energetically against the obtrusion of
the improper wishes, and repression of these comes
about. This defence to begin with succeeds com-
pletely ("Period of successful defence," Freud) as
also in our case , but the suppressed wishes may
again become active under the influence of the or-
ganic-sexual development in puberty, making neces-
sary another corresponding stage in repression. The
second repression signified for our patient the be-
ginning of the psychoneurosis, which manifested
itself in, amongst other ways, the psychosexual in-
hibition and the aversion to the sister. He was
incapable of performing the sexual act, since every
woman reminded him unconsciously of his sister ; and
he couldn't endure his sister because, without know-
ing it, he always saw in her not only the relative,
but also the woman. The antipathy was a good
means of protection against his becoming conscious
of a feeling-stream of the opposite kind.
Still the unconscious (in Freud's sense) is only
able to control the mental and bodily being of man
until the analysis reveals the content of the thought-
Psychosexual Impotence 25
processes hidden in it. Once the light of conscious-
ness has illuminated these mental processes there is
an end of the tyrannical power of the unconscious
complex. The repressed thoughts cease to be heaps
and collections of non-abreacted affects ; they be-
come links in the ideational chain of normal asso-
ciation. It was, therefore, in our case thanks to the
analysis, i. e. to a kind of "circumvention of the
censor" (Freud), that the affective energy of the
complex was no longer converted into a physical
compulsion- (inhibition-) symptom, but was disinte-
grated and led off by thought-activity, losing its in-
adequate 10 significance forever.
That incestuous fixation of the "sexual hunger" 11
is to be recognized not as an exceptional, but as a
relatively frequent cause of psychosexual impotence,
is shewn by the quite analogous psycho-analyses by
Steiner and Stekel. I am also able to bring forward
a second similar case. A psychoneurotic, twenty-
eight years old (who had been treated by me and
at that time was almost cured), was tormented by
anxious obsessions and obsessive acts, and suffered
besides from psycho-sexual inhibition, just like the
patient whose history was related above. This symp-
tom, however, ceased of itself in the sixth month of
the analysis after we managed to make conscious
infantile incest-thoughts that had been fixed on the
10 (This word is used in psychopathology to mean "dispropor-
tionate." Translator.)
u This word is used to translate the German "Libido."
86 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
person of the mother. When I mention that this
otherwise rather "over-moral" patient also indulged
in hostile phantasies against his father among his un-
conscious thought-processes, one will recognize in him
a typical personification of the Oedipus myth, the
general human significance of which has been re-
vealed by Freud's discoveries.
The libidinous thoughts repressed in childhood,
which condition psychical impotence, need not refer
to the nearest relatives; it is enough that the in-
fantile sexual-object has been a so-called "respected
person," demanding in one way or another high con-
sideration. As an example of this I may cite a
patient, aged forty-five, with whom both the torment-
ing "cardiac anxiety" (angina pectoris nervosa) and
the sexual weakness considerably improved after
he was able to give an account of repressed disre-
spectful phantasies, the object of which was his
dead foster-mother. In this case the incestuous fix-
ation (if this designation is permitted in regard to
people not related in blood) was furthered by the
circumstance that the foster-mother also had not re-
strained her child-love within the necessary limits;
she let the boy sleep in her bed till his tenth year,
and for a long time tolerated without contradicting
him his demonstrations of affection, which was al-
ready plainly tinged with erotism. Children are
often exposed to such dangers and temptations from
the side of their teachers and educators ; it is not
Psychosexual Impotence 87
rare for them to fall a victim to masked sexual acts
on the part of grown-up relatives, and not only
as might have been supposed in the slums, but also
among classes of society where the greatest possible
care is lavished on children. 12
The tragic part that the foster-mother had played
in the life of this patient was shewn by the fact that,
when he wanted to marry, a few years ago, the old
lady, then over seventy years old, committed suicide
in her despair ; she threw herself out of the window of
the second floor 13 just in the moment that her
adopted son left the front door. The patient be'
lieved that the motive for this deed was her dissatis-
faction with his choice. But his unconscious must
have interpreted the suicide more correctly, for about
this time appeared the cardiac pains, which one re-
gards as converted (projected into the corporeal
sphere) "heart-ache." The sexual weakness had ex-
isted with this patient since puberty, and he will
perhaps attain full sexual capacity only towards
the decline of masculine life.
Steiner distinguishes, besides the cases of func-
tional impotence that are determined by unconscious
complexes of infantile origin, two other kinds of
psychosexual inhibition; with one of these congeni-
tal sexual inferiority, with the other certain injuri-
12 See Freud's Kleine Schriften, S. 114, and also my article
"Sexual-Padagogik," Budapesti Orvosi Ujsdg, 1908.
18 [In America this would be called the fourth floor, in Eng-
land the third. Translator.]
28 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
ous influences acting after puberty, are to be re-
garded as the causative agents. The value of this
division is, in my opinion, more a practical than a
theoretical one. From the "congenital" cases we
have above all to exclude the cases of pseudo-
heredity, where neuropathic parents as a result of
their complaint treat the children wrongly, train
them badly, and may expose them to influences that
have as a result a subsequent sexual inhibition,
whereas without these influences even the person
afflicted through heredity would perhaps not have
become sexually impotent.
Freud compares the pathogenesis of the neuroses
with that of tuberculosis. The predisposition also
plays an important part with the latter, but the
real pathogenic agent is none the less only the Bacil-
lus Kochii, and if this could be kept at a distance
not a single soul would die of the predisposition
alone. Sexual influences of childhood play the same
part in the neuroses as bacteria do in infective dis-
eases. And though one must admit that where the
predisposition is very marked the ubiquitous, un-
avoidable impressions may suffice to determine a fu-
ture functional impotence, one has nevertheless to
be absolutely clear that these impressions, and not
the unsubstantial "predisposition," are the specific
cause (Freud) of the disorder. From this it also
follows that even with "congenital sexual inferiority"
Psychosexual Impotence 29
psycho-analysis is not quite without hopeful possi-
bilities.
The psychosexual impotence that is acquired after
puberty also differs, in my opinion, only apparently
from that constellated by unconscious complexes.
When anyone, after being able for a time properly
to perform the act of copulation, loses for a long
period his capacity under the impression of special
circumstances (e. g. fear of infection, of pregnancy,
of being detected, too great sexual excitement, etc.),
one may be confident that repressed infantile com-
plexes are present in him also, and that the exag-
geratedly long or intense, i. e. pathological, effect
of the present harmful agent is to be ascribed to the
affect that has been transferred from such complexes
to the current reaction. From a practical point of
view Steiner is entirely right when he brings this
group into special prominence, for the cases to be
reckoned here are often curable by simple tranquilli-
sation, suggestive measures, or a quite superficial
analysis (which may be equated to the old Breuer-
Freud "catharsis" or "abreaction"). Still, this kind
of cure has not the prophylactic value of the pene-
trating psycho-analysis, although one cannot gain-
say its advantage in being a much lesser burden to
the physician and the patient.
A superficial analysis of this kind restored his
potestas coewndi to one of my patients, a young man
30 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
who became impotent from hypochondria after ac-
quiring his first gonorrhoea, and also to a second one,
who was made impotent with his wife by the sight of
her menstrual blood. Simple encouragements and
suggestive tranquillisation had the same effect with
a thirty-six-year-old man who, although he had pre-
viously been fairly active sexually, became impotent
when he married and it was a question of marital
*'duty." In this case, however, I continued the an-
alysis after restoring the sexual function, and the
result of this was the discovery of the following
facts: The patient, the son of a cooper, had in his
fourth or fifth year masturbated the genital parts
otf a girl of the same age; in this he was encouraged
by an undoubtedly perverse assistant of his father's,
who then got the girl to manipulate the boy's prepuce
wtth a small wooden needle, such as is used for stop-
ping up casks with worm holes in them. In this way
the needle happened to bore into the prepuce, and
a medical man had to perform an operation to take
il away. With all this there was considerable fright,
dread, and shame. What depressed him still more,
however, was that his comrades somehow got wind
of the occurrence and teased him for years with the
nickname "needle-prick." He became taciturn and
sullen. About the time of puberty he was often
frightened that the scar in his prepuce, trivial as it
was, would diminish his capacity for the act, but
after a little wavering the first attempts succeeded
Psychosexual Impotence 31
fairly well. Still, the fear of being unable to meet
the higher sexual claims of married life entailed an
inordinate burden for his sexuality, already weak-
ened through an infantile complex, and after the
marriage he was reduced to impotence.
The case is instructive in several respects. It
shews that when potency returns after dispersing
the current anxious ideas, this does not mean that
this fear has been the exclusive cause of the inhibi-
tion ; it is much likelier that, in this case as in all
similar ones, the preconscious dread has only a
"transferred field of activity," while the original
source of the disorder is hidden in the unconscious.
The successful treatment by suggestion would then
have only "broken the point" off the symptom as
Freud says i. e. would have so far diminished the
total burthen of the neuropsychical apparatus that
the patient could then manage it alone.
The case also illustrates how, besides infantile in-
cestuous fixation, other experiences of early child-
hood connected with the affect of pronounced shame
may later determine a psychosexual inhibition.
One kind of shame deserves special mention on
account of its practical importance, that, namely,
which the child feels on being caught masturbating.
The feeling of shame on such an occasion .is often
still more strongly fixed through the child receiving
bodily punishment and having the fear of severe ill-
nesses implanted in him ; Freud has called our atten-
32 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
tion to the fact that the way in which the child is
weaned from onanism is a typical influence in the
later character- and neurosis-formation. It may be
asserted with confidence that the tactless behaviour
of parents, teachers, and physicians in this matter,
which is so important for the child, causes more mis-
chief than all the other noxious influences of civili-
sation that are so often blamed. The isolation of
children in their sexual exigencies, the resulting ex-
aggerated and false notions on everything that
physiologically or ideationally has to do with sex-
uality, the inordinate strictness in the punishment
of sexual habits of childhood, the systematic train-
ing of children to blind obedience and motiveless
respect for their parents: all these are components
of a method of education, unfortunately prevailing
to-day, that might also be called artificial breeding
of neuropaths and sexually impotent people.
I may sum up as follows my view on male psycho-
sexual impotence: 1. Male psychosexual impotence
is always a single manifestation of a psychoneurosis,
/and accords with Freud's conception of the genesis
/ of psychoneurotic symptoms. Thus it is always
the symbolic expression of repressed memory-traces
of infantile sexual experiences, of unconscious wishes
striving for the repetition of these, and of the mental
conflicts provoked in this way. These memory-
traces and wish-impulses in sexual impotence are
always of such a kind, or refer to such personalities,
Psycho sexual Impotence 33
as to be incompatible with the conscious thought of
adult civilised human beings. The sexual inhibition
is thus an interdiction on the part of the unconscious,
which really is directed against a certain variety of
sexual activity, but which, for the better assuring
of the repression, becomes extended to sexual gratifi-
cation altogether.
2. The sexual experiences of early childhood that
determine the later inhibition may be serious mental
traumata. When the neurotic predisposition is
marked however, unavoidable and apparently harm-
less childhood impressions may lead to the same
result.
3. Among the pathogenic causes of later psycho-
sexual impotence, incestuous fixation (Freud) and
sexual shame in childhood are of specially great
significance.
4. The inhibiting effect of the repressed complex
may manifest itself at once in the first attempts at
cohabitation, and become fixed. In slighter cases the
inhibition becomes of importance only later, in co-
habitation accompanied by apprehension or by spe-
cially strong sexual excitement. An analysis carried
to a sufficient depth, however, would probably be
able in all such cases to demonstrate beside (or,
more correctly, behind), the current noxious influ-
ence that is acting in a depressing way also repressed
infantile sexual memories and unconscious phantasies
related to these.
34 Contributions to Psyclw-Analyv*
5. Full comprehension of a case of psychosexunl
impotence is only thinkable with the help of Freud's
psycho-analysis. By means of this method cure of
the symptom and prophylaxis against its return is
often to be obtained even in severe and inveterate
cases. In mild cases suggestion or a superficial an-
alysis may be successful.
6. The psychoneurosis of which the sexual in-
hibition is a part manifestation is as a rule compli-
cated by symptoms of an "actual-neurosis" in
Freud's sense (neurasthenia, anxiety-neurosis).
(The following sentence may be added here, ex-
tracted from a short article written some years later
by Dr. Ferenczi ("Paraesthesias of the Genital Re-
gion in Impotency," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Psycho-
analyse, May 1913): "Apart from unconscious
(onanistic) incest-phantasies, fears of castration
are the most frequent cause of psychical impotence;
most often both are the cause (dread of castration
on account of incest-wishes)." Transl.).
CHAPTER II
INTROJECTION AND TRANSFERENCE 1
/. Introjection in the Neuroses
THE productivity of the neurosis (during a
course of psycho-analytic treatment) is far
from being extinguished, but exercises itself in the
creation of a peculiar sort of thought-formation,
mostly unconscious, to which the name 'transfer-
ences' may be given.
"These transferences are re-impressions and re-
productions of the emotions and phantasies that
have to be awakened and brought into consciousness
during the progress of the analysis, and are char-
acterised by the replacement of a former person by
the physician."
In these sentences Freud announced, in the mas-
terly description of a hysterical case, 2 one of his
most significant discoveries.
Whoever since then, following Freud's indications,
has tried to investigate psycho-analytically the men-
1 Published in the Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1909.
*"Bruchstiick einer Hysteric-analyse," in Sammlung Kleiner
Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Bd. II.
35
36 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
tal life of neurotics, must have become convinced of
the truth of this observation. The greatest difficul-
ties of such an analysis, indeed, proceed from the
remarkable peculiarity of neurotics that "in order
to avoid insight into their own unconscious, they
transfer to the physician treating them all their
affects (hate, love) that have been reinforced from
the unconscious." 3
When, however, one becomes more familiar with
the workings of the neurotic mind, one recognises
that the psychoneurotic's inclination to transference
expresses itself not only in the special case of a
psycho-analytic treatment, and not only in regard
to the physician, but that transference is a psychi-
cal mechanism that is characteristic of the neurosis
altogether, one that is evidenced in all situations of
life, and which underlies most of the pathological
manifestations.
With increasing experience one becomes convinced
that the apparently motiveless extravagance of af-
fect, the excessive hate, love and sympathy of neu-
rotics, are also nothing else than transferences, by
means of which long forgotten psychical experiences
are (in the unconscious phantasy) brought into con-
nection with the current occasion, and the current re-
action exaggerated by the affect of unconscious idea-
tional complexes. The tendency of hysterical pa-
* Ferenczi, "Ueber Aktual-und Psychoneurosen im Sinne
Freuds," Wiener klin. Rundschau, 1908, Nr. 48 to 51.
Introjection and Transference 37
tients to use exaggeration in the expression of their
emotions has long been known, and often ridiculed.
Freud has shewn us that it is rather we physicians
who deserve the ridicule, because failing to under-
stand the symbolism of hysterical symptoms the
language of hysteria, so to speak we have either
looked upon these symptoms as implying simulation,
or fancied we had settled them by the use of abstruse
physiological terms. It was Freud's psychological
conception of hysterical symptoms and character
traits that first really disclosed the neurotic mind.
Thus he found that the inclination of psychoneu-
rotics to imitation, and the "psychical infection" so
frequent among hysterics, are not simple automa-
tisms, but find their explanation in unconscious pre-
tensions and wishes, which the patient does not con-
fess even to himself, and which are incapable of
becoming conscious. The patient copies the symp-
toms or character traits of a person when "on the
basis of an identical aetiological claim" he identifies
himself in his unconscious with him. 4 The well-
known impressionability also of many neurotics, their
capacity to feel in the most intense way for the ex-
periences of others, to put themselves in the place
of a third person, finds its explanation in hysterical
identification ; and their impulsive philanthropic and
magnanimous deeds are only reactions to these un-
conscious instigations are therefore in the last
4 Freud. Die Traumdeutung, 2e Aufl., S. 107.
88 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
analysis egoistic actions governed by the "unpleas-
antness (Unlust) principle." The fact that every
sort of humanitarian or reform movement, the propa-
ganda of abstinence (vegetarianism, anti-alcoholism,
abolitionism), revolutionary organisations and sects,
conspiracies for or against the religious, political,
or moral order, teem with neuropaths is similarly to
be explained by the transference of interest from
censored egoistic (erotic or violent) tendencies of
the unconscious on to fields where they can work
themselves out without any self-reproach. The
daily occurrences of a simple civic life also, however,
offer neurotics the richest opportunity for the dis-
placement on to permissible fields of impulses that
are incapable of being conscious. An example of
this is the unconscious identification of grossly sexual
genital functions with those of the oral organs (eat-
ing, kissing), as was first established by Freud. In
a number of analyses I have been able to prove that
the partiality of hysterics for dainty feeding, their
inclination to eat indigestible material (chalk, unripe
fruit, etc.), their peculiar search for exotic dishes,
their preference or idiosyncrasy in regard to food
of a certain form or consistency, that all this was
concerned with the displacement of interest from
repressed erotic (genital or coprophilic) inclinations,
and was an indication of a lack of sexual satisfac-
tion. (The well-known manias of pregnant women
also, which, by the way, I have observed with non-
Introjection and Transference 39
pregnant women as well at the menstrual time, I
have many times been able to trace to insufficient
satisfactions, relative to the increased "sexual hun-
ger"). Otto Gross and Stekel found a similar cause
with hysterical kleptomania.
I am aware that in the examples brought forward
I have confounded the expressions Displacement and
Transference. Transference, however, is only a spe-
cial case of the neurotic's inclination to displace-
ment; in order to escape from complexes that are
unpleasant, and hence have become unconscious, he
is forced to meet the persons and things of the outer
world with exaggerated interest (love, hate, passion-
ate manias, idiosyncrasy) on the basis of the most
superficial "aetiological pretensions" and analogies.
A course of psycho-analytic treatment offers the
most favourable conditions for the occurrence of
such a transference. The impulses that have been
repressed, and are gradually becoming conscious,
first meet "m statu nescendi" the person of the phy-
sician, and seek to link their unsatisfied valencies to
his personality. If we pursued this comparison
taken from chemistry we might conceive of psycho-
analysis, so far as the transference is concerned, as
a kind of catalysis- The person of the physician has
here the effect of a catalytic ferment that tempo-
rarily attracts to itself the affects split off by the
dissection. In a technically correct psycho-analysis,
however, the bond thus formed is only a loose one,
40 Contribution* to Psycho- Analysis
the interest of the patient being led back as soon as
possible to its original, covered-over sources and
brought into permanent connection with them.
What slight and trivial motives suffice with neuro-
tics for the transference of affects is indicated in the
quoted work of Freud. We may add a few charac-
teristic examples. A hysterical patient with very
strong sexual repression betrayed first in a dream the
transference to the physician. (I, the physician, am
operating on her nose, and she is wearing a frisure
a la Cleo de Merode.) Whoever has already analy-
tically interpreted dreams will readily believe that in
this dream, as well also as in the unconscious waking
thought, I have taken the place of the rhinologist
who once made improper advances to the patient;
the frisure of the well-known demi-mondaine is too
plain a hint of this. Whenever the physician ap-
pears in the patient's dreams the analysis discovers
with certainty signs of transference. Stekel's book
on anxiety states 5 has many pretty examples of this.
The case just mentioned, however, is also typical
in another way. Patients very often use the oppor-
tunity to revive all the sexual excitations they have
previously noticed and repressed during medical ex-
aminations (in unconscious phantasies about un-
dressing and being percussed, palpated, and "ope-
rated on"), and to replace in the unconscious the
Stekel, Nervdse Angstzustande, 1908.
Introjection and Transference 41
previous physicians in question by the person of the
present one. One need only be a physician to become
the object of this kind of transference; the mystical
part played in the sexual phantasy of the child by
the doctor, who knows all forbidden things, who may
look at and touch everything that is concealed, is an
obvious determining factor in unconscious fancying,
and therefore also in the transference occurring in a
subsequent neurosis. 8
With the extraordinary significance that attaches
(according to Freud's conclusion which is confirmed
daily) to the repressed "Oedipus-complex" (hate and
love towards the parents) in every case of neurosis,
one is not surprised that the "paternal" air, the
friendly and indulgent manner, with which the physi-
cian has to meet the patient in psycho-analysis gets
so frequently used as a bridge to the transference
of conscious feelings of sympathy and unconscious
erotic phantasies, the original objects of which were
the parents. The physician is always one of the
"revenants" (Freud) in whom the neurotic patient
hopes to find again the vanished figures of childhood.
Nevertheless, one less friendly remark, reminding him
of a duty or of punctuality, or a tone that is only a
nuance sharper than usual, on the part of the an-
alysing physician is sufficient to make him incur all
'Compare the remark about the "doctor game"" in Freud's
article on "Infantile Sexualtheorien," Kleine Schriften, 2e
FoUre, S. 171.
42 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
the patient's hate and anger that is directed against
moralising persons who demand respect (parent,
husband).
The ascertaining of such transferences of positive
and negative effects is exceedingly important for the
analysis, for neurotics are mostly persons who believe
themselves incapable either of loving or of hating
( often denying to themselves even the most primitive
knowledge about sexuality) ; they are therefore
either anaesthetic or else good to a fault, and nothing
is more suited to shatter their erroneous belief in
their own lack of feeling and angelic goodness than
having their contrary feeling-currents detected and
exposed in flagranti. The transferences are still
more important as points of departure for the con-
tinuation of the analysis in the direction of the more
deeply repressed thought-complexes.
Ridiculously slight resemblances also: the colour
of the hair, facial traits, a gesture of the physician,
the way in which he holds a cigarette or a pen, the
identity or the similarity in sound of the Christian
name with that of some person who has been signifi-
cant to the patient; even such distant analogies as
these are sufficient to establish the transference.
The fact that a transference on the ground of such
petty analogies strikes us as ridiculous reminds me
that Freud in a category of wit shewed the "presen-
tation by means of a detail" to be the agent that
sets free the pleasure, . e. reinforces it from the un-
Introjection and Transference 48
conscious ; in all dreams also we find similar allusions
to things, persons, and events by the help of mini-
mal details. The poetical figure "pars pro toto" is
thus quite current in the language of the uncon-
scious.
The sex of the physician is in itself a much-used
bridge for the transference. Female patients very
often attach their unconscious heterosexual phan-
tasies to the fact that the physician is a man; this
gives them the possibility of reviving the repressed
complexes that are associated with the idea of mas-
culinity. Still the homosexual component that is
hidden in everyone sees to it that men also seek to
transfer to the physician their "sympathy" and
friendship or the contrary. It is enough, however,
that something in the physician seems to the patient
to be "feminine" for women to bring their homo-
sexual, and men their heterosexual interests, or their
aversion that is related to this, into connection with
the person of the physician.
In a number of cases I succeeded in demonstrating
that the relaxation of the ethical censor in the
physician's consulting room was partly determined
by the lessened feeling of responsibility on the pa-
tient's part. The consciousness that the physician
is responsible for everything that happens (in his
own room) favours the emergence of day-dreams,
first unconscious, later becoming conscious, which
very often have as their subject a violent sexual
44 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
assault on the part of the physician and then mostly
end with the exemplary punishment of such a vil-
lain (his being sentenced, publicly degraded through
newspaper articles, shot in a duel, etc.). It is just
in this sort of moral disguise that the repressed
wishes of people can become conscious. As another
motive lessening the feeling of responsibility I recog-
nised in a patient the idea that "the doctor can do
everything," by which she understood the operative
removal of any possible consequence of a liaison.
In the analysis the patients have to communicate
all these lewd plans, just as everything else that oc-
curs to them. In the non-analytic treatment of
neurotics all this remains unknown to the physician,
and as a result the phantasies sometimes attain an
almost hallucinatory character and may end in a
public or legal calumny.
The circumstance that other persons also are be-
ing treated psychotherapeutically allows the patients
to indulge without any, or with very little, self-
reproach the affects of jealousy, envy, hate, and
violence that are hidden in their unconscious. Nat-
urally the patient has then in the analysis to detach
these "inadequate," 7 feeling-impulses also from the
current inciting cause, and associate them with much
more significant personalities and situations. The
same holds good for the more or less conscious
thought-processes and 1 feeling-impulses that have
1 (I. e. disproportionate, misplaced, or inappropriate. Transl.)
Introjection and Transference 45
their starting-point in the financial contract between
the patient and physician. In this way many "mag-
nanimous," "generous" people have to see and admit
in the analysis that the feelings of avarice, of ruth-
less selfishness, and of ignoble covetousness are not
quite so foreign to them as they had previously liked
to believe. (Freud is accustomed to say, "People
treat money questions with the same mendacity as
they do sexual ones. In the analysis both have to
be discussed with the same frankness.") That the
money complex, transferred to the treatment, is often
only the cover for much more deeply hidden impulses
Freud has established in a masterly characterologi-
cal study ("Charakter und Analerotik").
When we bear in mind these different varieties of
the transference to the physician, we become de-
cidedly strengthened in our assumption that this is
only one manifestation, although in a practical way
the most important one, of the general neurotic
passion for transference. This passion, or mania, we
may regard as the most fundamental peculiarity of
the neuroses, and also that which goes most to ex-
plain their conversion and substitution symptoms.
All neurotics suffer from flight from their complexes;
they take flight into illness, as Freud says, from
the pleasure that has become disagreeable; that is
to say, they withdraw the "sexual hunger" from cer-
tain ideational complexes that were formerly charged
with pleasantness. When the withdrawal of "sexual
46 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
hunger" is less complete, the interest for what form-
erly was loved or hated disappears, being succeeded
by indifference; if the detachment of the "sexual
hunger" is more complete, then the censor does not
let pass even the slight degree of interest necessary
for the exercising of attention the complex becomes
"repressed," "forgotten," and incapable of being
conscious. It would seem, however, as though the
mind did not easily tolerate "sexual hunger" that
has been released from its complex, and is thus "free-
floating." In the anxiety neurosis, as Freud has
shewn, the deviation of the somatic sexual excitation
from the psychical field converts the pleasure into
anxiety. In the psychoneuroses we have to presup-
pose a similar alteration; here the deviation of the
psychosexual hunger from certain ideational com-
plexes causes a sort of lasting unrest, which the
patient tries to mitigate as much as possible. He
manages also to neutralise a greater or less part by
the way of conversion (hysteria) or of substitution
(obsessional neurosis).' It seems, however, as if this
bond were scarcely ever an absolute one, so that a
variable amount of free-floating and complex-escap-
ing excitation remains over, which seeks satisfaction
from external objects. The idea of this excitation
could be used to explain the neurotic passion for
transference, and be made responsible for the
"manias" of the neurotic. (In the petite hysterie
Intr ejection and Transference 47
these manias seem to constitute the essence of the
disease.)
To understand better the fundamental character
of neurotics one has to compare their behaviour with
that of patients suffering from dementia praecox
and paranoia. The dement completely detaches his
interest from the outer world and becomes auto-
erotic (Jung, 8 Abraham 9 ). The paranoiac, as
Freud has pointed out, would like to do the same,
but cannot, and so projects on to the outer world
the interest that has become a burden to him. The
neurosis stands in this respect in a diametrical con-
trast to paranoia. Whereas the paranoiac expels
from his ego the impulses that have become unpleas-
ant, the neurotic helps himself by taking into the
ego as large as possible a part of the outer world,
making it the object of unconscious phantasies.
This is a kind of diluting process, by means of which
he tries to mitigate the poignancy of free-floating,
unsatisfied, and unsatisfiable, unconscious wish-im-
pulses. One might give to this process, in contrast
to projection, the name of Intro jection.
The neurotic is constantly seeking for objects with
* Jung, Zur Psychologic der Dementia Praecox, 1907. ("Lack
of pleasant rapport in dementia praecox.")
Abraham, "Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der Hysteric
und der Dementia praecox," Zentralbl. f. Nervenheilk. u. Psych.,
1908. ("The contrast between dementia praecox and hysteria
lies in the auto-erotism of the former. Turning away of 'sex-
ual hunger' in the former, excessive investment of the object in
the latter.")
48 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
whom he can identify himself, to whom he can trans-
fer feelings, whom he can thus draw into his circle
of interest, i. e. introject. We see the paranoiac on
a similar search for objects who might be suitable
for the projection of "sexual hunger" that is creat-
ing unpleasant feeling. So finally there appear the
opposite characters of the large-hearted, impression-
able, excitable neurotic, easily flaming up with love
of all the world or provoked to hate of all the world,
and that of the narrow-souled, suspicious paranoiac,
who thinks he is being observed, persecuted, or loved
by the whole world. The psychoneurotic suffers
from a widening, the paranoic from a shrinking of
his ego.
When we revise the ontogenesis of the ego-con-
sciousness on the basis of the new knowledge, we come
to the conclusion that the paranoiac projection
and the neurotic introjection are merely extreme
cases of psychical processes the primary forms of
which are to be demonstrated in every normal being.
We may suppose that to the new-born child every-
thing perceived by the senses appears unitary, so to
speak monistic. Only later does he learn to distin-
guish from his ego the malicious things, forming
an outer world, that do not obey his will. That
would be the first projection process, the primordial
projection, and the later paranoiac probably makes
use of the path thus traced out, in order to expel
still more of his ego into the outer world.
Int rejection and Transference 49
A part of the outer world, however, greater or
less, is not so easily cast off from the ego, but
continually obtrudes itself again on the latter, chal-
lenging it, so to speak; "Fight with me or be my
friend" (Wagner, Gotterdammerung, Act I). If the
individual has unsettled affects at his disposal, and
these he soon has, he accepts this challenge by ex-
tending his "interest" from the ego on to the part of
the outer world. The first loving and hating is a
transference of auto-erotic pleasant and unpleasant
feelings on to the objects that evoke those feelings.
The first "object-love" and the first "object-hate"
are, so to speak, the primordial transferences, the
roots of every future introjection.
Freud's discoveries in the field of psychopathology
of everyday life convince us that the capacity for
projection and displacement is present also in normal
human beings, and often overshoots the mark. Fur-
ther, the way in which civilised man adjusts his ego
to the world, his philosophic and religious meta-
physics, is according to Freud only metapsychology,
for the most part a projection of feeling-impulses
into the outer world. Probably, however, besides
projection introjection is significant for man's view
of the world. The extensive part played in myth-
ology by the anthropomorphising of lifeless objects
seems to speak in favour of this idea. KleinpauPs
able work on the development of speech, 10 to the
10 Kleinpaul, Das Stromgebiet der Sprache, 1893.
50 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
psychological significance of which Abraham u has
called attention, shews convincingly how man suc-
ceeds in representing the whole audible and inaudible
environment by means of the ego, no form of projec-
tion and introjection remaining untried thereby.
The way in which in the formation of speech a series
of human sounds and noises gets identified with an
object on the ground of the most superficial acoustic
analogy, and of the slightest "aetiological claim,"
reminds one strongly of the neurotic transference-
bridges mentioned above.
The neurotic thus makes use of a path that is
much frequented by the normal as well when he seeks,
to mollify the free-floating affects by extension of
his circle of interest, i. e. by introjection, and when,
so as to be able to keep unconscious various affective
connections with certain objects that concern him
nearly, he lavishes his affects on all possible objects
that do not concern him.
In analysing a neurotic one often succeeds in
tracing out historically this extension of the circle
of interest. Thus I had a patient who was reminded
of sexual events of childhood by reading a novel and
thereupon produced a phobia of novels, which later
extended to books altogether, and finally to every-
thing in print. The flight from a tendency to mas-
turbate caused in one of my obsessional patients a
phobia of privies (where he used to indulge this
11 Abraham. Traum und Mythos, 1909.
Introjection and Transference 51
tendency) ; later there developed from this a claus-
trophobia, fear of being alone in any closed space.
I have been able to shew that psychical impotence
in very many cases is conditioned by the transfer-
ence to all women of the respect for the mother or
sister. 12 With a painter the pleasure in gazing at
objects, and with this the choice of his profession,
proved to be a "replacement" for objects that as a
child he might not look at.
In the association investigations carried out by
Jung 13 we can find the experimental confirmation
of this inclination of neurotics to introjection.
What is characteristic for the neurosis Jung desig-
nates as the relatively high number of "complex-
reactions" : the stimulus-words are interpreted by
the neurotic "in terms of his complex." The healthy
person responds quickly with an indifferent reaction-
word that is associated by either the content or the
sound. With the neurotic the unsatisfied affects
seize on the stimulus-word and seek to exploit it in
their own sense, for which the most indirect associa-
tion is good enough. Thus it is not that the stimu~
lus-words evoke the complicated reaction, but that
the stimulus-hungry affects of neurotics come to
meet them. Applying the newly coined word, one
may say that the neurotic "mtrojects" the stimulus-
words of the experiment.
"See Chapter I. (Impotence.)
13 Jung, Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien, 1906
52 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
The objection will be raised that extension of the
circle of interest, identifying of oneself with many
people indeed with the whole human race , and
sensitiveness for the stimuli of the outer world, are
attributes with which normal persons also, and espe-
cially the most distinguished representatives of the
race, are endowed ; that one cannot, therefore, desig-
nate introjection as the psychical mechanism that
is typical and characteristic of the neuroses.
Against this objection must be brought the knowl-
edge that the fundamental differences, assumed be-
fore Freud's time, between normal and psychoneuro
tic do not exist. Freud shewed us that "the neuroses
have no special psychical content that is peculiar
to them and occurs only in them," and according to
Jung's statement, neurotics suffer from complexes
with which we all fight. The difference between the
two is only quantitative and of practical import.
The healthy person transfers his affects and identi-
fies himself on the basis of "aetiological claims"
that have a much better motive than in the case of
the neurotic, and thus does not dissipate his psychi-
cal energies so foolishly as the latter does.
Another difference, to the cardinal importance of
which Freud has called attention, is that the healthy
person is conscious of the greater part of his intro-
jection, whereas with the neurotic this remains for
the most part repressed, finds expression in wncon-
gcious phantasies, and becomes manifest to the expert
Introjection and Transference 53
only indirectly, symbolically. It very often appears
in the form of "reaction-formations," as an exces-
sive accentuation in consciousness of a current of
feeling that is the opposite of the unconscious one.
The fact that the pre-Freudian literature con-
tained nothing of all these matters, of transferences
to the physician, of introjections fa ne les em-
pechait pas d'exister. With this remark I consider
answered also those critics who repudiate the posi-
tive results of psycho-analysis as not even worthy
of being re-examined, but who readily accept our
estimate, on which we insist, of the difficulties of this
method of investigation, and use it as a weapon
against the new movement. Thus I have come across
among others the curious objection that psycho-
analysis is dangerous because it brings about trans-
ferences to the physician, where significantly enough
there was never any talk of the negative transfer-
ences, 14 but always of the erotic ones.
If, however, transference is dangerous, then, to
be consistent, all neurologists, including the oppo-
nents of Freud, must give up having anything to
do with neurotics, for we get more and more con-
vinced that in the non-analytic and non-psycho-
therapeutic methods of treating the neuroses also
"The practical significance and the exceptional position of
the kind of introjections that have as their object the person
of the physician, and which are discovered in analysis, make it
desirable that the term "transferences" given to them by Freud
be retained. The designation "introjection" would be applic-
able for all other cases of the same psychical mechanism.
54 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
transference plays the greatest, and probably the
sole important part, only that in these methods of
treatment as Freud rightly points out merely the
positive feelings towards the physician come to ex-
pression, for when unfriendly transferences make
their appearance the patient leaves the "antipathetic
doctor." The positive transferences, however, are
overlooked by the physician, who surmises nothing,
and the curative effect is attributed to the physical
measures or to an obscurely conceived idea of
"suggestion."
The transference shews itself most clearly in treat-
ment by hypnotism and suggestion, as I shall try to
demonstrate in detail in the following chapter of this
work.
Since I have known something about transferences,
the behaviour of the hysteric who after the end of
a suggestion treatment asked for my photograph, in
order so she said to be reminded of my words by
looking at it, appears to me in its true light. She
simply wanted to have a memento of me, as I had
given so many pleasant quarters of an hour to her
conflict-tortured soul by stroking her forehead, by
friendly, gentle talk, and by letting her fancies have
free rein in a darkened room. Another patient, with
a washing mania, even confessed to me once that to
please a sympathetic doctor she could often suppress
her obsessive act.
Introjection and Transference 55
These are not exceptional cases, but are typical,
and they help to explain not only the hypnotism and
suggestion "cures" of psychoneurotics, but also all
the others by means of electrotherapy, mechano-
therapy, hydrotherapy and massage.
It is not intended to deny that more reasonable
conditions of living improve the nutrition and the
general sense of well-being, and in this way can to
isome extent help to subdue psychoneurotic symp-
toms, but the main curative agency with all these
methods of treatment is the unconscious transfer-
ence, in which the disguised satisfaction of libidinous
tendencies (in mechanotherapy the vibration, in
hydrotherapy and massage the rubbing of the skin)
certainly plays a part.
Freud summarises these considerations in the say-
ing that we may treat a neurotic any way we like,
he always treats himself psychotherapeutically, that
is to say, with transferences. What we describe as
introjections and other symptoms of the disease are
really in Freud's opinion, with which I fully agree
self-taught attempts on the patient's part to cure
himself. He lets the same mechanism function, how-
ever, when he meets a physician that wants to cure
him: he tries as a rule quite unconsciously to
"transfer," and when this is successful the improve-
ment of the condition is the result.
The plea may be raised that when the non-analytic
56 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
methods of treatment follow although uncon-
sciously the path automatically laid down by the
sick mind they are in the right. The transference
therapy would thus be, so to speak, a natural way
of healing, psycho-analysis on the other hand some-
thing artificial, imposed on nature. This objection
might be irrefutable. The patient does in fact
"heal" his mental conflicts through repression, dis-
placement, and transference of disagreeable com-
plexes ; unfortunately what is repressed compensates
itself by creating "costly replacement-formations"
(Freud), so that we have to regard neuroses as
"healing attempts that have miscarried" (Freud),
where really "medicina pejor morbo." It would be
very wrong to want to imitate Nature slavishly even
here, and to follow her along a road where in the
case in question she has shewn her incapacity.
Psycho-analysis wishes to individualise, while Nature
disdains this; analysis aims at making capable for
life and action persons who have been ruined by the
summary repression-procedure of that Nature who
does not concern herself with the weakly individual
being. It is not enough here to displace the re-
pressed complexes a little further by the help of
transference to the physician, to discharge a little
of their affective tension, and so to achieve a tem-
porary improvement. If one wants seriously to help
the patient one must lead him by means of analysis
to overcome opposing the unpleasantness-principle
Introjection and Transference 57
the resistances (Freud) that hinder him from gaz-
ing at his own naked mental physiognomy.
Present-day neurology, however, will not hear of
complexes, resistances, and introjections, and quite
unconsciously makes use of a psychotherapeuttic
measure that in many cases is really effective, namely
transference; it cures, so to speak, "unconsciously,"
and even designates as dangerous the really effective
principle of all methods of healing the psycho-
neuroses.
The critics who look on these transferences as
dangerous should condemn the non-analytic modes of
treatment more severely than the psycho-analytic
method, since the former really intensify the trans-
ferences, while the latter strives to uncover and to
resolve them as soon as possible.
I deny, however, that transference is harmful, and
surmise rather that at least in the pathology of
the neuroses the ancient belief, which strikes its
roots deep in the mind of the people, will be con-
firmed, that diseases are to be cured by "sympathy.'*
Those who scornfully reproach us with explaining
and wanting to cure "everything from one point"
are still far too much influenced by that ascetic-
religious view of life, with its depreciation of every-
thing sexual, which for nearly two thousand years
has prevented the attainment of insight into the
great significance that "sexual hunger" has for the
mental life of the normal and pathological.
68 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
II. The Part played by Transference in Hypnotism
and Suggestion.
The Paris neurological school (Charcot's school)
regarded stimuli acting peripherally and centrally
on the nervous system (optical fixation of objects,
stroking the skin of the head, etc.), as the main fac-
tors in hypnotic phenomena. The Nancy school
(Bernheim's school), on the contrary, sees in these
and similar stimuli only vehicles for the "administer-
ing" of ideas, and in hypnotism in particular the
vehicle for introducing the idea of going to sleep.
The successful administration of the sleep idea is
then supposed to be able to evoke a kind of "disso-
ciation condition of the brain" in which one is ac-
cessible with special ease to further suggestions,
. e. hypnosis. This was an enormous progress, the
first attempt at a purely psychological explanation,
freed from unjustifiable physiological phrases, of the
phenomena of hypnosis and suggestion, though even
this did not quite satisfy our causality criteria. It
was a priori unlikely that fixing the eye on a shining
object could be the main cause of such radical
changes in the mental life as those brought about by
hypnosis. It is not much more plausible, however,
to assume that an idea "administered" to a waking
person, the idea of sleeping, could cause such changes
without the indispensable assistance of much more
potent psychical forces. Everything speaks much
Introjection and Transference 59
more in favour of the view that in hypnotism and
suggestion the chief work is performed not by the
hypnotist and suggestor, but by the person himself,
who till now has been looked upon merely as the
"object" of the administering procedure. The exist-
ence of auto-suggestion and auto-hypnosis on the
one hand, and the limits of producible phenomena
residing in the individuality of the "medium" on the
other hand, are striking proofs of what a subordinate
part in the causality chain of these phenomena is
really played by the intrusion of the experimental-
ist. In spite of this knowledge, however, the condi-
tions of the intrapsychical elaboration of the sug-
gestion influence remained wrapped in obscurity.
It was the psycho-analytic investigation of ner-
vous patients by Freud's method that first yielded
glimpses into the mental processes that go on in
suggestion and hypnosis. Psycho-analysis allowed
us to establish with certainty the fact that the
hypnotist is relieved of the effort of evoking that
"dissociation condition" (which effort, by the way,
he would scarcely be equal to), for he finds dissocia-
tion ready, i. e. the existence of different layers of
the mind by the side of one another (Freud's "lo-
calities," "ways of working") also in persons who
are awake. Besides the certain establishment of this
fact, however, psycho-analysis gives previously un-
surmised information also about the content of the
ideational complexes and the direction of the affects
60 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
that go to make up the unconscious layer of the
mind which is operative during hypnosis and sugges-
tion. It has been found that in the "unconscious"
(in Freud's sense) all the impulses are pent up that
have been repressed in the course of the individual
cultural development, and that their unsatisfied,
stimulus-hungry affects are constantly ready to
"transfer" on to the persons and objects of the
outer world, to bring these unconsciously into con-
nection with the ego, to "introject." If we now im-
agine from this aspect the psychical state of a per-
son to whom something is to be suggested, we note
a displacement of the earlier point of view, a dis-
placement that is of cardinal importance. The
unconscious mental forces of the "medium" appear as
the real active agent, whereas the hypnotist, pre-
viously pictured as all-powerful, has to content him-
self with the part of an object used by the uncon-
scious of the apparently unresisting "medium" ac-
cording to the latter's individual and temporary
disposition.
Among the psychical complexes that, fixed in the
course of childhood, remain of extraordinarily high
significance for the whole fashioning of life later on,
the "parental complexes" rank foremost. Freud's
experience that these complexes furnish the basis for
the psychoneurotic symptoms of adults is confirmed
by all who have seriously occupied themselves with
these problems. My efforts to investigate analyti-
Int rejection and Transference 61
cally the causes of psychosexual impotence led to the
conclusion that this condition also is in a very large
number of cases due to "incestuous fixation" of "sex-
ual hunger" (Freud), t. e. to the formation of a too
firm though quite unconscious bond between sex-
ual wishes and the images of the nearest relatives,
especially the parents ; this confirms similar observa-
tions of Steiner and Stekel. We owe to Jung 15 and
Abraham 16 a considerable enrichment of our knowl-
edge concerning the lasting after-effect of parental
influences. The former has shewn that psycho-
neuroses mostly arise from a conflict between the
(unconscious) parental constellation and the striv-
ing towards personal independence, and the latter
has unmasked as a symptom of the same psychical
constellation the inclination to stay unmarried, or
to marry near relatives ; Sadger 17 also has rendered
service in making these connections clear.
As psycho-analysts see things, however, it may be
considered as settled that there are only quantitative
differences between "normal" and "psychoneurotic"
mental processes, and that the results of mental in-
vestigation of psychoneurotics are also applicable
to the psychology of the normal. It is thus a priori
15 Jung, "Die Bedeutung des Vaters fur das Schicksal des
einzelnen," Jahrb., Bd. 1.
18 Abraham, "Die Stellting der Verwandtenehen in der Psy-
chologic der Neurosen," Jahrb., Bd. 1.
17 Sadger, "Psychiatrisch-Neurologisches in psychoanalytischer
Beleuchtung," Zentralbl. f. das Gesamtgebiet d. Medizin, 1908,
Nr. 7 and 8.
62 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
likely that the suggestions which one person "gives'*
to another set into movement the same complexes as
those seen to be active in the neuroses. I have, how-
ever, to lay stress on the fact that in reality it was
not this a priori expectation, but actual experiences
in psycho-analysis that led me to preceive this.
Freud was the first to notice how in the analysis
one sometimes meets with great resistances that seem
to make the continuation of the work impossible, and
which in fact check it until one manages to make per-
fectly clear to the patient that this counter-striving
is a reaction to unconscious feelings of sympathy
which really refer to other persons, but which at the
moment have been brought into connection with the
personality of the analyst.
On other occasions one observes in the patient an
enthusiasm for the physician bordering on adoration,
and this like everything else has to be submitted
to analysis. It turns out here also that the physician
has served as a "cover-person" for the indulgence
of affects, mostly of a sexual nature, which really
refer to other personalities much more signifi-
cant to the patient. The analysis is very often,
however, disagreeably disturbed by motiveless hate,
fear and apprehension in regard to the physician,
which in the unconscious relate not to him, but to
persons of whom the patient is not at the time think-
ing. When now we go through with the patient the
list of personalities whom these positive and negative
Introjection and Transference 68
affects concern, we often come across in the first
place some who have played a part in the patient's
immediate past (e. g. husband or sweetheart), then
come undischarged affects from the period of youth
(friends, teachers, hero fancies), and finally we ar-
rive, mostly after the overcoming of great resis-
tances, at repressed thoughts of sexuality, violence,
and apprehension that relate to the nearest relatives,
especially the parents. It thus becomes manifest
that the child with its desire for love, and the dread
that goes with this, lives on literally in every human
being, and that all later loving, hating, and fearing
are only transferences, or, as Freud terms them,
"new editions" of currents of feeling that were ac-
quired in the earliest childhood (before the end of
the fourth year) and later repressed.
With this knowledge it was not making a too
venturesome step further to assume that the curious
authority with which we as hypnotists dispose of all
the psychical and nervous forces of the "medium" is
nothing else but the expression of repressed, infantile
impulses of the hypnotised person. I found this
explanation much more satisfying than the assump-
tion of a capacity on the part of an idea to provoke
dissociation, which would make one feel apprehensive
at one's resemblance to a god.
An obvious objection to these considerations would
be that it has long been known how greatly sympathy
and respect favour the bringing about of a suggesti-
64 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
ble state*, this fact could not escape the competent
observers and experimenters in this field. What has
not been known, however, and what could only be
known through the help of psycho-analysis, is first
that these unconscious affects play the chief part in
bringing about the action of suggestion and sec-
ondly that in the last analysis they are shewn to be
manifestations of libidinous impulses, which for the
most part are transferred from the ideational com-
plexes bearing on the relation between parent and
child to the relation between physician and patient.
That sympathy or antipathy between hypnotist
and medium greatly influences the success of the ex-
periment was also previously recognised. It was not
known, however, that the feelings of "sympathy"
and "antipathy" are highly complex psychical or-
ganisations capable of still further analysis, and of
dissection into their elements, by Freuds' method.
When this is done one finds in them the primary, un-
conscious, libidinous impulses as the substratum,
and over this an unconscious and preconscious
superstructure.
In the deepest layers of the mind the crude "un-
pleasantness-principle" still rules, as at the begin-
ning of psychical developments in other words, the
impulsion towards immediate motor satisfaction of
"sexual hunger;" this is, according to Freud, the
layer, or stage, of auto-erotism. This region in the
stratification of the adult mind can no longer as a
Intro jection and Transference 65
rule be directly reproduced, and has to be inferred
from its symptoms. What can be reproduced al-
ready belongs for the most part to the layer (or
stage) of "object-love" (Freud), and the first ob-
jects of love are the parents.
Everything pomts to the conclusion that an un-
conscious sexual element is at the basis of every
sympathetic emotion, and that when two people meet,
whether of the same or the opposite sex, the uncon-
scious always makes an effort towards transference.
("In the unconscious No does not exist." . . . "The
unconscious can do nothing except wish," Freud
writes.) When the unconscious succeeds in making
this transference acceptable to the conscious mind,
whether it is in a pure sexual (erotic) or in a subli-
mated form (respect, gratitude, friendship, aesthetic
admiration, etc.) a bond of "sympathy" is formed
between the two persons. When consciousness re-
fuses to accept the positive unconscious desire, then
we get, according to the degree of intensity in each
case, antipathy of various degrees up to loathing. 18
M That the feeling of antipathy, of disgust, is made up of
pleasantness and unpleasantness, of liking and disliking, I
found to be especially well illustrated in a case of paranoiac
delusion of jealousy occurring in a woman of the educated
classes; the case was also investigated by Professor Freud.
The original cause of her disorder was discovered to be in-
fantile homosexuality, which had been transferred from the
mother to nurses, later to young friends, and which had been
allowed to function extensively. The disappointments of mar-
ried life had as a result the flowing back of the "sexual hun-
ger" into "infantile channels," but in the meantime this kind
f sexual pleasure had become intolerable to her. She pro-
66 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
As a classical witness for the reality of the "sexual
attitude" towards all people I might cite Freud's pa-
tient Dora (in the Bruchstuck einer Hysterie-
analyse). In the course of the analysis, incomplete
as this was, it turned out that her sexuality had not
remained indifferent to a single person in her environ-
ment. The husband and wife of the family K, the
governess, the brother, the mother, the father: all
excited her "sexual hunger." With all this she was
consciously like most neurotics rather prudish
and negativistic than otherwise, and had no idea that
sexual wishes were concealed behind her gushing
friendships, her sympathies and antipathies.
Dora, however, is not exceptional, but typical. As
her analysed mind stands before us she gives a true
picture of the inner man in general, for if we go
deep enough into the mental life of any human being
(whether "normal" or neurotic) we can find again,
jected it, therefore, on to her husband (whom she had pre-
viously loved), and accused him of infidelity. Curiously enough
she suspected him only in regard to quite young females, twelve
or thirteen years old, or else elderly ugly ones, mostly servants,
whom she found "antipathetic" or even "repulsive." Wherever
she could admit her fondness to herself in a sublimated form
(aesthetic liking, friendship), . g. with pretty women of her
own class, she could feel keen sympathy, and she also ex-
pressed no delusions in regard to them. The fact that we find
a mixture of sweet and bitter "disgusting" probably has
similar psychological causes, just as also the idiosyncrasy to-
wards food and drink of a certain colour and consistence is a
reaction against infantile, repressed wish-impulses, mostly of a
coprophilic and urophilic nature. The impulse to spit or vomit
at the sight of "disgusting" things is only the reaction to the
unconscious desire to take these things into the mouth.
Introjection and Transference 67
apart from quantitative differences, the same phe-
nomena.
The capacity to be hypnotised and influenced by
suggestion depends on the possibility of transference
taking place, or, more openly expressed, on the posi-
tive, although unconscious, sexual attitude that the
person being hypnotised adopts in regard to the
hypnotist; the transference, however, like every "ob-
ject-love," has its deepest roots in the repressed
parental complexes. 19
Further circumstantial evidence for the correct-
ness of this conception is obtained when one takes
into consideration practical experience concerning
the conditions under which a person may be hypno-
tised or made to receive suggestions.
It is striking how greatly the percentage for suc-
cessful hypnosis differs with individual authors.
One achieves a positive success in only 50 per cent,
another in 80-90, or even 96 per cent of the cases.
According to the unanimous conviction of experi-
enced hypnotists, suitability for this profession pre-
supposes a number of external, and internal attri-
butes (really only external, for the "internal" ones
also must manifest themselves in movements of ex-
pression that can be noted from without and in the
nature and content of speech, all of which a the-
19 Being convinced of the correctness of Berheim's view, that
hypnosis is only a form of suggestion (suggested sleep), I at-
tach no importance to the sharp differentiation of the two
terms, and often use here the one for both.
68 Contribution* to Psycho- Analysis
atrical talent can imitate without having any feeling
of conviction). Hypnosis is facilitated by an im-
posing appearance on the part of the hypnotist;
one often thinks of an "imposing" man, further, as
having a long, and if possible black beard (Sven-
gali) ; a notable stature, thick eyebrows, a pene-
trating glance, and a stern expression of countenance
though one that arouses confidence can compen-
sate for the lack of these manly attributes. It is
generally recognised that a self-confident manner,
the reputation of previous successes, the high esteem
attaching to a celebrated man of science, help in
the successful effect of suggestion, even when em-
ployed also by his assistants. Such effect is also
promoted by the hypnotist being of a higher social
rank. During my military service I witnessed how
an infantryman instantaneously fell asleep at his
lieutenant's command; it was a "coup de foundre".
My first attempts at hypnotism, undertaken in my
student days with the apprentices in my father's
publishing business, succeeded without exception ;
later on I had nothing like such a high percentage
of successes, but then I had lost the absolute self-
confidence that only ignorance can give.
The commands in hypnosis must be given with
such decision and sureness that contradiction should
appear to the patient as quite impossible. The
"being-startled hypnosis" may count as a border-
land instance of this kind of hypnosis, where in ad-
Introjection and Transference 69
dition to a stern tone grimaces and clenched fists
may be of use. Being startled just as at the sight
of the Medusa head may be followed in a predis-
posed person by his being paralysed with fright, or
by catalepsy.
There is quite another method, however, for send-
ing someone to sleep, the requisites being: a dark-
ened room, absolute stillness, gentle, friendly ad-
dress in a monotonous, slightly melodic tone (on
which great stress is laid by those experienced in
the matter) ; light stroking of the hair, forehead,
and hands may serve as adjuvant measures.
In general, therefore, it may be said that there
are two ways and means at our disposal in hypno-
tising, or giving suggestion to, others, i. e., in com-
pelling them to (relatively) helpless obedience and
blind belief : dread and love. The professional hyp-
notists of the pre-scientific era of this therapeutic
method, the real inventors of the procedures, seem,
however, to have chosen instinctively with regard to
every detail, for their purpose of sending to sleep,
and rendering pliant, just those ways of frightening
and being tender, the efficacy of which has been
proved for thousands of years in the relations of
parent to child.
The hypnotist with the imposing exterior, who
works by frightening and startling, has certainly a
great similarity to the picture impressed on the child
of the stern, all-powerful father, to believe in, to
70 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
obey, to imitate whom, is the highest ambition of
every child. 20 And the gentle stroking hand, the
pleasant, monotonous words that talk one to sleep:
are they not a re-impression of scenes that may have
been enacted many hundred times at the child's bed
by the tender mother, singing lullabies or telling
fairy-tales ?
I lay no great stress on this distinction between
paternal and maternal hypnosis, for it happens
often enough that the father and mother change
their parts. I only call attention to the way in
which the situation during hypnosis tends to favour
a conscious and unconscious imaginary return to
childhood, and to awaken reminiscences, hidden
away in everyone, that date from the time of child-
like obedience.
The measures also for sending to sleep that are
said to work by means of external stimulation, e. g.,
holding up a shining object, laying a ticking watch
to the ear, are the same that first succeeded in fas-
tening the attention of the child in his cradle, and are
thus very effective means for awakening infantile
memories and feeling-impulses.
That customs and rituals preserved since child-
hood also play a large part in the usual sponta-
10 The giant motive that ever recurs in myths, sagas, and
fairy-tales, and the universal interest in these colossal figures,
has the same infantile roots, and is a symptom of the undying
father-complex. This respect for "giants" appears in Nietzsche
in a quite sublimated form as the demand for a "pathos of
distance."
Introjection and Transference 71
neous going to sleep, and that there are auto-sug-
gestive elements concerned in going to sleep, has
recently been admitted by many, some of whom are
hostile to psycho-analysis. All these considerations
force one to the supposition that a preliminary con-
dition of every successful suggestion (hypnosis) is
that the hypnotist shall figure as "grown up" to the
hypnotised subject; i. e. the former must be able to
arouse in the latter the same feelings of love or fear,
the same conviction of infallibility, as those with
which his parents inspired him as a child.
To avoid any misunderstanding it must be pointed
out with emphasis that not only is suggestibility
(i. e. receptivity for ideas, with the inclination to
blind belief and obedience,) here conceived as being
genectically connected with analogous psychical pe-
culiarities of childhood, but, further, it is our opinion
that in hypnosis and suggestion "the child that is
dormant in the unconscious of the adult" (Freud)
is, so to speak, re-awakened. The existence of this
second personality betrays itself not only in hyp-
nosis; it is manifested at night in all our dreams,
which as we know since Freud's work have always
to do with childhood reminiscences, and by day we
discover the infantile tendencies and modes of func-
tioning of our mind in certain "erroneous perform-
ances" 21 and in all expressions of wit. 22 In our
n Freud. Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens.
M Freud. Der Witz und seine Beziehungen zum Unbewus-
Sten.
72 Contributions to Psycho-Analyait
innermost soul we are still children, and we remain
so throughout life. Grattez VaduLte et vosu, y trour
verez Venfant.
Whoever wants properly to appreciate this way
of looking at things has, of course, fundamentally
to change his accustomed views about "forgetting."
Analytical experience convinces us more and more
that a forgetting, a disappearing without leaving a
trace, occurs as little in the mental life as does an
annihilation of energy or matter in the physical
world. Psychical processes seem to possess a very
great capacity for persistence and, even after being
forgotten for decades, can be revived as unchanged,
related complexes, or can be reconstructed from their
elements.
A favourable opportunity puts me in a position to
support, by psycho-analytical experiences with pa-
tients that I had previously hypnotised, the view
that unconditional subordination to an external will
is to be explained as simply the unconscious trans-
ference to the physician of affects (love, respect)
originating in childhood, and erotically tinged.
1. Five years ago I successfully hypnotised a
patient who had fallen ill with an anxiety-hysteria
after the proved infidelity of her fiance. About six
months ago, after the death of a nephew she had
been fond of, she came to me with a recurrence of
her suffering, and was submitted to psycho-analysis.
The characteristic signs of transference soon shewed
Introduction and Transference 78
themselves, and when I pointed them out to the
patient she supplemented my observations with the
confession that already on the previous occasion,
during the hypnotic treatment, she had indulged in
conscious erotic phantasies concerning the physician
and had followed my suggestions "out of love."
The analysis, therefore, discloses, as Freud says,
the transference that created the hypnosis. It thus
seems that I had formerly cured the patient in
hypnosis through offering her, in my friendliness,
sympathy and words of consolation, a replacement
for the unhappy love-affair that evoked her first
illness. The inclination to the faithless lover was
itself only a surrogate for the love of an elder sis-
ter, lost through the latter's marriage, with whom
she had lived in childhood in the closest intimacy,
indulging for years in mutual masturbation. Her
greatest grief, however, had been an early estrange-
ment from her mother, who before then used to
idolise and pamper her to an incredible extent, and
indeed all her later essays at loving seemed to have
been only surrogates of this first, infantile, but
thoroughly erotic inclination to the mother. After
the end of the hypnotic treatment her "sexual hun-
ger," in a way that was quite sublimated, but which
in the analysis proved to be erotic, seized on a
little eight-year-old nephew, whose sudden death
evoked the recurrence of the hysterical symptoms.
The hypnotic docility was here the result of the
74 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
transference, and the original love-object, never i\i\\y
replaced, was with my patient undoubtedly the
mother.
n. An official, aged twenty-eight, came to me for
the first time about two years ago with a severe
anxiety-hysteria. I was already occupied with
psycho-analysis, but for external reasons decided on
hypnotism, and achieved with simple talking
("mother-hypnosis") a splendid temporary improve-
ment in his emotional state. The patient soon re-
turned, however, with a recurrence of the anxiety,
and I repeated the hypnosis from time to time with
the same, but always only a passing, success. As I
finally decided on analysis I had the greatest diffi-
culties with the transference, certainly increased
through the hypnoses. These difficulties were only
resolved when it became evident that he had identified
me with his "dear mother," on the ground of super-
ficial analogies. As a child he had felt himself
drawn to the mother in an extraordinary degree, her
caresses were a necessity to him, and he also admit-
ted having experienced at that time great curiosity
concerning the sexual relations of the parents; he
was jealous of his father, fancied himself playing
the father's part, and so on. For a time the analysis
passed off quite smoothly, but when I once dismissed
a remark of his a little impatiently he got a severe
anxiety attack, and the course of the analysis began
to be disturbed. After we had finally talked over
Introjection and Transference 75
the incident that had excited him, the analysis went
deeper into the memories of similar occurrences, and
now after despatching friendships tinged with
homosexuality and masochism, and painful scenes
with teachers and seniors the father-complex ap-
peared. He saw in front of him in the flesh the
"frightful, grimacing, puckered countenance of his
wrathful father," and he trembled at it like an aspen
leaf. At the same time, however, a flood of memories
also came that shewed how fond he was of his father,
and how proud of the latter's strength and size.
These are only episodes in the analysis of a com-
plicated case, but they shew clearly that with the
hypnosis it was only his mother-complex, of which
he was then still unaware, that enabled me to in-
fluence his condition. In this case, however, I
should probably have been able to achieve just
the same success with the other method of sugges-
tion : intimidating, impressing, i. e. appealing to the
father-complex.
m. The third case that I can bring forward is
that of a tailor, aged twenty-six, who came for help
on account of epileptic attacks, which, however, I
considered were hysterical after hearing the descrip-
tion of them. His forlorn, submissive, and resigned
appearance absolutely cried out for suggestion, and
in fact he obeyed all my commands like a tractable
child; he developed anaesthesias, paralyses, etc.,
quite at my will. I did not omit to carry out an
76 Contributions to Psycho- Analyst
analysis of his condition, although an incomplete one.
In this I found that for years he had been somnambu
listic; he used to get up at night, sit at a sewing
machine, and work at an hallucinated material until
he was waked. This "impulsive" occupation dated
from the time when he was an apprentice to a strict
master-tailor, who often hit him, and whose high
demands he had tried to satisfy at any cost. This
was of course only a cover-memory for his respected
and feared father. His present attacks also began
with an impulse to occupation. He believed he heard
an inner voice saying "Get up," and then he would
sit up, take off his night-shirt, and make sewing
movements, which ended in general convulsions ; he
could not recall afterwards the motor phenomena,
knowing of them only from his wife. His father
had called him every morning with the cry "Get up,"
and the poor fellow seemed still to be always carry-
ing out commands that he had received as a child
from his father and as an apprentice from his chief.
Freud writes 23 "These subsequent effects of orders
and threats in childhood may be observed in cases
where the interval is as great or greater than here
(11/4 decades);" he terms this occurrence "subse-
quent obedience."
I surmise now that this kind of "subsequentness"
in the psychoneuroses in general has much in com-
mon with the post-hypnotic command- automatisms.
Freud. Jahrb. Bd., I., S. 23.
Intro jection cmd Transference 77
In both cases actions are performed the motives of
which cannot be explained, or only inadequately,
since the patient is following out with them either
(in the neurosis) a command repressed long ago
or (in the hypnosis) a suggestion concerning which
amnesia has been induced.
That children should willingly, and indeed cheer-
fully, obey their parents is really not at all obvious.
One might have expected that the demands made
by parents on the behaviour and conduct of children
would be felt to be an external compulsion, and as
something unpleasant. This is really the case in the
very first years of life, so long as the child knows
only auto-erotic satisfactions, but with the begin-
ning of "object-love" it becomes different. The
loved objects are introjected, taken into the ego.
The child loves his parents, that is to say, he iden-
tifies himself with them in thought. Usually one
identifies oneself as a child with the parent of the
same sex, and fancies oneself into all his situations.
Under such circumstances obedience is not unpleas-
ant; the expressions of the all-powerfulness of the
father even flatter the boy, who in his fancy em-
bodies in himself all the power of the father, and
only obeys himself, so to speak, when he bows to
his father's will. This willing obedience obviously
only goes to a certain limit, varying with the in-
dividual; if this is overstepped by the parents in
their demands, if the bitter pill of compulsion is not
78 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
sugared with love, a precocious severing of tne
'sexual hunger" from the parents results, and gen-
erally there is an important disturbance of psy-
chical development, as especially Jung has estab-
lished (in his work on the part played by the father).
In Mereschkovszky's charming book, "Peter der
Grosse und Alexei" (1905) the relationship is very
characteristically depicted between a cruel, tyran-
nical father, who regrets every impulse of sentiment,
and the son, helplessly submissive to him, who
through his father-complex, compounded of love and
hate, is incapable of energetic revolt. The poetic his-
torian makes the picture of the father appear very
often in the reveries of the Crown Prince. At one
time he sees himself as a little child, with his father
before his cot. "He stretches out his arms to his
father with a fond, sleepy smile, and cries out "Papa,
Papa, my darling.' Then he jumps up and flings
himself round his father's neck. Peter embraces
him so tightly as to hurt the child, presses him to
himself, kisses his face, his neck, his bare legs, and
his whole warm, sleepy body." The Czar, however,
had later used frightfully stern educational measures
when his son was growing up. His pedagogy cul-
minated in the following (historical) sentence: "Give
the boy no power when he is young; break his ribs
so long as he is growing; when you hit him with a
stick, he won't die, but will only get stronger."
And in spite of all this the Czarevitch's face
Intro jection and Transference 79
glowed with bashful joy when he "gazed at the fa-
miliar, horrible and dear face, with the full, almost
bloated cheeks, with the curled, pointed moustache
. . . with the cordial smile on the dainty, almost
womanly tender lips ; he looked into the large, dark,
clear eyes, which were as frightful as they were
gentle, and of which he had once dreamed as does a
youth in love of a beautiful woman's eyes; he took
in the odour known to him from childhood, a mixture
of strong tobacco, spirits, sweat, and another,
strong, but not unpleasant smell of the barracks,
one that pervaded his father's working-rooms and
office; he felt the touch, also known to him from
childhood, of the not very smoothly shaven chin
with the little cleft in the middle that formed such
a curious exception, almost comical, in the gloomy
countenance." Such descriptions of the father, or
similar ones, are in psycho-analysis typical. The
author wants to make us understand through this
characterisation of the bond between father and son
how it came about that the Crown Prince in his safe
Italian hiding-place gave up all resistance on getting
a letter from his father calling him back, and help-
lessly yielded himself to that cruel being (who then
whipped him to death with his own hands). The
Czarevitch's suggestibility is here quite correctly
ascribed to his strongly marked father-complex.
Mereschovszky seems likewise to have divined "trans-
ferences" when he writes: "He (the Czarevitch)
80 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
transferred on to the priestly father (the confessor
Jacob Ignatiew) all the love that he could not be-
stow on his actual father. It was a jealous, tender,
passionate friendship, as though between lovers."
The feeling of awe for the parents, and the tend-
ency to obey them, normally disappear as the child
grows up, but the need to be subject to someone re-
mains; only the part of the father is transferred
to teachers, superiors, impressive personalities ; the
submissive loyalty to rulers that is so wide-spread
is also a transference of this sort. In Alexei's case the
father-complex could not fade even when he grew
up, for his father really was the terrible and mighty
despot that in childhood we think our fathers to be.
That the union in the father's person of parental
power with the dignity attaching to a respected
position can fix immovably any incestuous inclination
I was able to observe with two female patients who
were pupils of their own father. Passionate trans-
ference in the one and neurotic negativism in the
other caused almost insuperable difficulties for the
psycho-analysis. The limitless obedience in the one
case and the defiant rejection of all medical efforts
in the other were both determined by the same
psychical complexes, by the fusion of the father and
teacher complexes.
These striking cases, as well as all the other ob-
servations brought forward above, confirm Freud's
view that the hypnotic credulity and pliancy take
Int rejection and Transference 81
their root in the masochistic component of the sexual
mstinct. 24 Masochism, however, is pleasurably obey-
ing, and this one learns in childhood from one's
parents.
In the case of the timid and obedient tailor we
saw how the parental commands go on acting long
after the years of childhood, in the manner of a
post-hypnotic suggestion. I have also been able
to demonstrate the neurotic analogy to the so-
called "dated suggestions" (suggestion a echeance)
in a case of morbid anxiety (the twenty-eight year
old official mentioned above). He got ill on a
quite trivial ground, and it was striking that he
had familiarised himself rather too readily with the
thought of retiring on his pension at such an early
age. The analysis brought out that he had entered
on this career exactly ten years before the illness,
and very unwillingly, for he considered himself to
have artistic gifts. At that time he had only yielded
to the pressure brought to bear by his father, mak-
ing up his mind, however, to get himself pensioned
under the pretext of illness the moment he had served
the time (ten years) that entitled him to a pension;
(the inclination to malingering dated from childhood,
when he had obtained in this way much tenderness
from his mother and some consideration from his
father). In the meantime, however, he completely
" Freud. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, S. 18.
Anm. 2.
82 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
forgot his resolve ; he got a rather better income, and,
although the conflict continued between his antipathy
toward his office work and his preference for his ar-
tistic activities which he had successfully pursued
in the meanwhile, the pusillanimity that had been
instilled into him prevented him from even thinking
of giving up a part of his income, a loss which his
retirement would have entailed. The plan resolved
on ten years ago seems to have lain dormant in his
unconscious throughout the whole time, to have
become mature after the given interval had elapsed,
and to have cooperated "auto-suggestively," so to
speak, as one of the evoking causes of his neurosis.
The fact, however, that the idea of dates and periods
of time was able to play such a significant part in
the life of this patient was at bottom a symptom of
unconscious phantasies connected with infantile pon-
derings on the menstruation and gravidity time
periods with his mother, and, amongst others, on the
idea of his own situation in the womb and at birth. 25
This case like all others confirms Jung's state-
ment that "the magic binding children to their par-
ents" is really "the sexuality on both sides."
"The unconscious birth-fancy was the final explanation of
the following lines that he wrote in his diary during an anxiety
attack, and which turned out to possess symbolic meaning:
"Hypochondria surrounds my soul like a fine mist, or rather
like a cobweb, just as a fungus covers a swamp. I have
the feeling as though I were sticking in a bog, as though I
had to stretch out my head so as to be able to breathe. I
want to tear the cobweb, to tear it. But no, I can't do it!
The web is fastened somewhere the props would have to be
Introjection and Transference 83
Such far-reaching points of agreement between
the mechanism of the psychoneuroses revealed analyt-
ically and the phenomena that can be produced by
means of hypnosis and suggestion absolutely compel
us to revise the judgment that has been passed in
scientific circles on Charcot's conception of hypnosis
as "artificial hysteria." Many scientists believe they
have already reduced this idea to absurdity in that
they are able to hypnotise ninety per cent of healthy
people, considering such an extension of the "hys-
teria" concept as unthinkable. Psycho-analysis has
led, nevertheless, to the discovery that healthy people
fight with the same complexes as those from which
the neurotic fall ill (Jung), that thus some hysterical
predisposition exists in every human being, which
can also manifest itself under unfavourable cir-
cumstances that inflict an undue burden on the mind.
The fact that so many normal people may be hypno-
tised can by no means be taken as an irrefragible
proof of the impossibility of Charcot's conception.
If, however, one is once free from this prejudice, and
compares the pathological manifestations of the
psychoneuroses with the phenomena of hypnosis and
suggestion, one becomes convinced that the hypnotist
can really shew nothing more, and nothing else, than
pulled out on which it hangs. If that can't be done, one
would have slowly to work one's way through the net in order
to get air. Man surely is not here to be veiled in such a cob-
web, suffocated, and robbed of the light of the sun." All these
feelings and thoughts were symbolic representations of phan-
tasies concerning intra-uterine and birth events.
84 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
that which the neurosis spontaneously produces : the
same psychical, the same paralysis and stimulation
phenomena. The impression of a far-reaching anal-
ogy between hypnosis and neurosis becomes strength-
ened to the point of a conviction of their inherent
sameness as soon as one reflects that in both states
unconscious ideational complexes determine the phe-
nomena, and that among these ideational complexes
in both cases the infantile and sexual, especially those
concerned with the parents, play the greatest part.
It will be the task of future investigations to see if
these points of agreement extend to the details as
well; our experience up to the present justifies the
expectation that this will be shewn to be the case.
The certainty of this expectation is essentially sup-
ported by the undeniable existence of the so-called
auto-hypnoses and auto-suggestion. These are states
in which unconscious ideas, without any intended
external influence, bring about all the neuro-pyschic
phenomena of deliberate suggestion and hypnosis.
It is perhaps not too daring to assume that a far-
reaching analogy must exist between the psychical
mechanism of these auto-suggestions and that of
psychoneurotic symptoms, which after all are the
realisations of unconscious ideas. This relationship,
however, must be assumed with just the same right
between neurosis and foreign suggestion, since ac-
cording to our conception there is no such thing as
a "hypnotising," a "giving of ideas" in the sense of
Int rejection and Transference 85
psychical incorporating of something quite foreign
from without, but only procedures that are able to
set going unconscious, pre-existing, auto-suggestive
mechanisms. The activity of the person suggesting
may then be very well compared with the action of
the evoking cause of a psychoneurosis. We do not,
of course, mean to deny that, in addition to this
extensive resemblance, there may also exist differ-
ences between being neurotic and being hypnotised;
to make these differences clear is indeed an important
task for the future. I only wanted here to point out
that the high percentage of normal people that may
be hypnotised can, according to the experience
gamed by psycho-analysis, be cited as an argument
rather for the universality of the predisposition to
suffer from a psychoneurosis than against the essen-
tial sameness of hypnosis and neurosis.
Even after this discussion, which must at first
produce a displeasing impression from its very nov-
elty, the statement will probably sound paradoxical,
that the resistance against being hypnotised or af-
fected by suggestion is a reaction to the same psy-
chical complexes that in other cases make trans-
ference, hypnosis, or suggestion possible; and yet
Freud divined this already in his first work on
psycho-analytic technique, 26 and was able to
strengthen it by means of examples.
* Freud, "Zur Psychotherapie der Hysteric," IV Abschnitt in
Breuer und Freud, Studien iiber Hysteric, 1895.
86 Contributions to Psycho-Analysit
According to Freud's conception, which later ex-
perience has confirmed in all respects, an inability to
be hypnotised signifies an unconscious refusal to be
hypnotised. The fact that many neurotics cannot
be hypnotised, or only with difficulty, is very often
due to their not really wanting to be cured. They
have, so to speak, come to terms with their suffer-
ing, since it yields them libidinous pleasure 27 , al-
though by a highly unpractical and costly route,
still without self-reproach, and frequently also
brings other considerable advantages (termed by
Freud "the secondary function of the neuroses").
The cause of a second kind of resistance lies in.
the relations between the hypnotist and the person
to be hypnotised, in the "antipathy" to the physi-
cian. It has already been pointed out that this
obstacle also is mostly created by the unconscious
infantile complexes.
It may be assumed with considerable probability
that the other resistances which can be demonstrated
in the psycho-analytic treatment of patients simi-
larly exert influence in attempts at hypnosis and
suggestion. There are some sympathies that are un-
endurable. The reason for hypnosis miscarrying is
in many cases, as Freud has shewn, the fear "of
getting too used to the physician's personality, of
losing one's independence in regard to him, or
"Freud, Kleine Schriften, Bd. II, 1909, S. 142: "The hys-
terical symptom serves sexual gratification and represents a
part of the person's sexual life."
Intro jection and Transference 87
even of becoming sexually dependent on him." That
with one patient an unrestrained inclination to trans-
ference comes to expression, in another a flight from
every idea of external influence, can ultimately, I
believe, be similarly traced to the parental complex,
and especially to the way in which the "sexual
hunger" became detached from the parents. 28
IV. Not long ago a patient aged thirty-three, the
wife of a land-proprietor, consulted me: her case
may serve to illustrate these resistances. Her hus-
band was several times awakened in the middle of
the night by her moaning, and saw her restlessly
turning about in every direction ; "she was making
sounds as if something that she was vainly trying
to swallow was sticking in her throat" ran the hus-
band's description. Finally, choking and straining
movements came on, at which the patient would wake
up, calmly going to sleep again soon after. The
patient was the absolute opposite of a "good me-
dium." She was one of those refractory persons
who are always lying in wait for inconsistencies in
the physician's remarks, who are very particular
about everything he does and says, and who alto-
gether behave in a very stubborn and almost nega-
tivistic manner. Sharpened by bad experiences with
** Infantile (incestuous) fixation and capacity for transfer-
ence seem in fact to be reciprocal quantities. Every psycho-
analyst can entirely confirm Jung's observations on this point, ,
but I believe that this sentence is also valid for the form of
affective transference that we call suggestion.
88 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
such patients, I did not even make any attempt at
hypnosis or suggestion, but immediately undertook
an analysis. To describe the winding ways by which
I arrived at the solution of her symptom-complex
would lead me too far from the subject. In the pres-
ent connection I will confine myself to the explana-
tion of her stubborn behaviour, which shewed
to me especially at the beginning of the analysis,
and long before that on the most trivial occasions
to her husband, with whom she often exchanged
not a word for days. Her illness came on after a
social gathering, at which she had interpreted as
insulting the behaviour of an older lady when the
latter wanted to reproach her with improperly tak-
ing the first place at the table. The appearance of
inadequacy in her feeling-reaction, however, disap-
peared as the analysis progressed. When she was
a young girl she had really improperly taken the
first place at table for a short time at home, after
her mother's death. The father had been left with
a number of children, and after the burial a touch-
ing scene took place between him and his daughter;
he promised never to marry again, at which she gave
her solemn word not to marry for ten years, and to
take her mother's place with the poor orphans. It
happened otherwise, however. Scarcely a year had
passed before her father began to insinuate that she
ought to get married. She guessed what that meant,
and obstinately kept every suitor at a distance.
Intro jection amd Transference 89
True enough, the father soon after took a young
wife, and a bitter fight began between the daughter,
who was displaced from every position, and her
step-mother ; in this fight the father openly took sides
against the daughter, and the only weapon against
them both that remained to her was stubbornness,
which she used to the best of her powers. Up to
this point the whole thing sounded like a touching
story of the wicked step-mother and the faithless
father; but soon came the turn of the "infantile"
and the "sexual." As sign of a beginning transfer-
ence I began to play a part in her dreams, and curi-
ously enough in the not very flattering figure of a
composite person put together of myself and a
horse. The association to "horse" led to disagree-
able topics ; she recollected being taken by her
nurse as a quite small child to a stud-farm in the
barracks, and seeing many horses there (also copu-
lation scenes between stallion and mare). She con-
fessed further that when she was a girl she had been
unusually interested in the size of the male genitals,
and that she had been disappointed at the relative
smallness of this organ in her husband, with whom
she remained frigid. Even as a girl she persuaded a
friend to agree that they would measure the dimen-
sions of their future husbands' genital organs and
tell each other. She kept her promise, but the friend
didn't.
The strange circumstance that in one dream the
90 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
horse appeared in a night-shirt led to the reproduc-
tion of much older childhood memories, among which,
as is often the case, the overhearing of sexual acts
between the parents, and especially the observation
of the father's micturition, were the most important.
She remembered now how often she used to fancy
herself in her mother's place, how fond she used to
be of playing father and mother with her dolls and
friends, on one occasion going through an imaginary
pregnancy with the help of a pillow stuffed under
her petticoats. It turned out finally that the patient
had even in childhood suffered for years from minor
anxiety-hysteria: often she was not able to go to
sleep till late at night from the fear that her stern
father might come to her and shoot her dead with
the revolver that he kept in his night-commode.
The choking and straining movements in her attacks
were signs of repression "from below upwards"
(Freud); for a long period she was (like Freud's
patient, Dora) passionately fond of sucking various
objects, a large number of perverse phantasies co-
operating with a strongly developed erogenous
mouth-zone.
This anamnesis, although only very imperfectly
reproduced, is instructive in two respects. In the
first place, it shews that here stubbornness, the re-
jection of any idea of being influenced, which stood
in the way of any attempt at treatment by sugges-
tion, turned out in the analysis to be resistance
Introjection and Transference 91
against the father. In the second place, the case
teaches one that this resistance was a derivative of
a strongly fixed parental complex, an Oedipus-com-
plex feminini generis, and that her parental com-
plexes were interspersed with infantile sexuality.
(The horse dreams of this patient also form a strik-
ing analogy with the phobia of horses in the five-
year-old "little Hans" [Jahrbuch I.] that Freud
was similarly able to trace to identification of the
father with a horse.)
What I desired to establish by the facts brought
forward is the view that the "medium" is really in
love with the hypnotist, and has brought his tend-
ency with her from the nursery. I will merely add
that the usual state of being in love may also evince
psychological phenomena that remind one of hyp-
nosis. A man blinded with the passion of love
almost helplessly does things suggested to him by
his sweetheart, even if they are crimes. In the cele-
brated Czynsky trial the most learned experts could
not decide whether the actions of the baroness con-
cerned were determined by her being in love or by
ideas "suggested" to her.
Most of the homosexuals who have told me their
story stated that they had been hypnotised, or at
least submitted to the influence of suggestion, by the
first man with whom they had had relations. In the
analysis of such a case it becomes evident, of course,
92 Contributions to Psycho- Analysts
that these phantasies of being hypnotised are only
apologetic attempts at projection.
I will content myself with these hints, and will not
continue the analogy between the state of being in
love and hypnosis, lest the incorrect impression be
aroused that it is here only a question of deductively
expatiating on a banal resemblance. That is not at
all the case. The basis on which this hypothesis is
built consists of laborious individual-psychological
investigations, such as we have been able to carry out
since Freud's work, and if they end in a common-
place, that is in no sense an argument against their
correctness.
An undeniable weakness of these considerations, it
is true, is that they are based on a relatively small
number of observed cases. It lies in the nature of
psycho-analytic work, however, that the observation
of large numbers and the statistical method are not
applicable.
Nevertheless I believe I have brought together,
through thorough investigation of the cases even
though these are not many , through the funda-
mental agreement in all the cases, and lastly through
the extent to which these observations fit in with
the rest of psycho-analytic knowledge, sufficient ma-
terial to support a conception of hypnosis and sug-
gestion that differs from the previous ones.
According to this conception, the application of
suggestion and hypnosis consists in the deliberate
Intro jection and Transference 93
establishment of conditions under which the tendency
to blind belief and uncritical obedience present in
everyone, but usually kept repressed by the censor
{remains of tlw mfantUe-erotic loving and fearing
of the parents), may unconsciously be transferred
to the person hypnotising or suggesting. 22
" (This chapter may be read in conjunction with that en-
titled "The Action of Suggestion in Psychotherapy" in the
Translator's "Papers on Psycho-Analysis.") :
CHAPTER III
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DREAMS *
A PHENOMENON not rare in the evolution of
science is that professional men of erudition,
with all the help at their disposal, with all the im-
plements of their knowledge and ability, combat
some principle of popular wisdom which is, on the
other hand, defended by the people with equal te-
nacity, and that finally science is forced to recognise
that in essentials the popular conception, and not
its own, is the correct one. It would be especially
worthy of investigation to discovery why it is that
science, on its gradually mounting path, progresses
in an irregular zigzag line, which at times comes close
to the popular view of the world, and at times quite
departs from it.
I mention this peculiar phenomenon for the reason
that the latest investigations of dreams, those re-
markable and bizarre manifestations of mental life,
'Delivered before the Konigliche Gesellschaft der Aerzte,
Budapest, Oct. 16, 1909; published in the Psychiatr.-Neurolog.
Wochenschr., Jahrg. XII. (A translation by Professor Chase
was also published in the Amer. Jour, of Psych., April, 1910,
and I am indebted to President Stanley Hall for permission to
reproduce the article in this series. Transl.)
94
Tlie Psychological Analysis of Dreams 95
have laid bare facts that compel us to abandon our
former views regarding the nature of dreams, and,
with certain limitations, to return to the popular
conceptions.
The people have never given up a belief in the
significance of dreams. The oldest writings that have
been preserved to us, hewn out in stone in praise of
the old Babylonian kings, as also the mythology
and history of the Hindoos, Chinese, Aztecs, Greeks,
Etruscans, Jews, and Christians, take the point of
view held to-day by the people, that dreams can be
interpreted. The interpretation of dreams was for
thousands of years a special science, a particular
cult, whose priests and priestesses often decided the
fate of countries and called forth revolutions that
changed the history of the world. This now anti-
quated science rested on the unshakable belief that
dreams, though in a concealed way and by obscure
analogies, were quite capable of being interpreted by
the initiate and revealed the future, and that by
these nocturnal phenomena the powers above desired
to prepare mortals for approaching events of im-
portance. In the lower ranks of the populace the
dream book, that curious survival of ancient Baby-
lonian astrology, still enjoys to-day great popu-
larity. Although the details of the dream-books
differ in the different countries, they have to be con-
sidered as products of the common folk-spirit.
On the other hand, we find on the part of the great
96 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
majority of recent psychologists an almost complete
contempt for the dream as a psychical function, and
consequently a denial that the dream-content has
any significance. Many of these investigators con-
sider dreams to be a senseless complex of hallucina-
tions, which blaze up in a lawless way in the brain
of the sleeper. According to the view of other
writers dreams are nothing but the psychical re-
action to the external (objective) or internal (sub-
jective) stimuli which the sensory end-organs of the
body receive during sleep an^ conduct to the centres.
There were only a few who held that the mind at
sleep was able to develop a complicated, significant
activity, or that the dream could be maintained to
have any sort of symbolic meaning. Even these
authors, however, failed to make comprehensible the
peculiarities of dreams without forcing their explana-
tions into the Procrustian bed of an artificial play-
ing with allegories.
Accordingly for centuries the army of supersti-
tious interpreters of dreams stood over against that
of the sceptics, until about ten years ago the Vien-
nese neurologist, Professor Freud, discovered facts
that make possible a unification of the two opposing
conceptions, and which on the one hand helped to
disclose the true nucleus in the age-old superstition,
and on the other hand fully satisfied the scientific
need for knowledge of the relations between cause
and effect.
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 97
I may state at this point that Freud's theory of
dreams and his method of interpretation approach
the popular conception only in so far as it attributes
sense and meaning to dreams. The newly discovered
facts in no way sustain the belief of those who would
ascribe dreams to interference on the part of higher
powers, and see prophecies in them. Freud's theory
regards dreams as mental products dependent on
endopsychic occurrences, and is not calculated to
strengthen the belief of those who consider the dream
to be a device of higher powers or a clairvoyance
of the sleeper.
It was psycho-analysis, a new method for investi-
gating and treating psychoneuroses, that made it
possible for Freud to recognise the true significance
of dreams. The method takes its point of departure
in the principle that the symptoms of these dis-
orders are only the sensory images of particular
thought-constellations, impregnated with feeling,
which were distasteful to consciousness and there-
fore repressed, but which still live on in the uncon-
scious; and in the fact that the surrogate-creations
for the repressed material vanish as soon as the un-
conscious thought can be brought to light, and made
conscious, by help of free association. In the course
of this analytic work the patients' dreams were re-
lated, and Freud made their content also an object
of psycho-analytic investigation. To his surprise
he not only found in dream analysis a great aid to
98 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
the treatment of neuroses, but he gained at the same
time as a by-product a new explanation of dreams
as a psychical function, more enlightening than any
of the previous explanations. In many chemical
processes materials are incidentally obtained by the
reduction of certain chemicals that perhaps have
long been thrown away as useless, but which after a
time have been shewn to be valuable materials, often
surpassing in value the principal products of the
manufacture. This was rather the case with the
explanation of dreams incidentally discovered by
Freud; it opens up such outlooks for the knowledge
of both the sound and the disordered mind that by
comparison its particular point of departure, the
treatment of certain phenomena of nervous disease,
seems a scientific question of second rank.
In the short time at my disposal I cannot repro-
duce exhaustively Freud's theory of dreams. I must
rather confine myself to the more essential explana-
tions and the most valuable facts of the new theory,
and to the verification by means of examples. Fur-
ther, I do not imagine that this lecture will convince
my hearers. According to my experience conviction
in matters of psycho-analysis is only to be gained
through oneself. So I shall not controvert here the
less important and quite superficial critics of Freud,
but will rather explain in brief the most essential
parts of the theory itself.
First a few words concerning the method. If we
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 99
desire to analyse a dream, we proceed exactly as in
the psychological investigation of psychoneurotic
symptoms. Behind each obsession, no matter how
illogical it may appear, are hidden coherent but un-
conscious thoughts, and to make these evident is the
problem of psycho-analysis. Freud has shewn that
the images and experiences of which the dream con-
sists are for the most part merely disguises, sym-
bolic allusions to suppressed trains of thought. Be-
hind the conscious dream-content is hidden a latent
dream-material, which, for its part, was aroused by
coherent, logical dream-thoughts. The interpreta-
tion of the dream is nothing else than the transla-
tion of the dream from its hieroglyphic-symbolic
speech into conceptual speech, the leading back of
the manifest dream-content to the logical dream-
thoughts through the clues of association provided
by the hidden dream-material. The means by which
this is done is the so-called free association. We
have the dream related to us, divide the given ma-
terial into several parts or sections, and ask the
dreamer to tell us all that occurs to him when he
directs his attention, not to the whole dream, but to
a definite part of it, to a particular event or word-
image occurring in it. This association, however,
must be wholly free ; consequently the one thing for-
bidden is the dominance of critical choice among the
irruptive ideas. Any half-way intelligent man can
be brought to express all the thoughts associated
100 Contributions to Psycho-Analysts
with the fragments of the dream, whether clever or
stupid, coherent or senseless, pleasant or unpleas-
ant, suppressing the shame perhaps bound up with
them. The other fragments of the dream are also
worked over in this way, and so we collect the latent
dream material, that is to say, all the thoughts and
memories of which the conscious dream-picture is to
be considered the condensation-product. It is an
error to think that the activity of association when
left free is devoid of any regulation by law. As soon
as we disregard in the analysis the conscious goal
idea of our thinking, the directive forces of the un-
conscious psychic activities, that is to say, the very
same mental forces that functioned in the creation
of the dream, prevail in the choice of associations.
We have long been familiar with the thought that
there is no chance in the physical world, no event
without sufficient cause; on the basis of psycho-
analytical experience we have to suppose just as
strict a determination of every mental activity,
however arbitrary it may appear. The fear is there-
fore unjustified that the activity of association when
freed from all restraint, as it is in such an analysis,
will give valueless results. The subject of the analy-
sis, who at first reproduces his apparently senseless
ideas with scornful scepticism, soon discovers, to his
surprise, that the train of associations, uninfluenced
by conscious aid, leads to the awakening of thoughts
and memories that had lorg been forgotten or re-
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 101
pressed on account of the pain they caused. Through
the emergence of these, however, the fragment taken
from the dream is made intelligible or capable of in-
terpretation. If we repeat this procedure with all
the parts of the dream, we see that the trains of
thought radiating from the different fragments con-
verge on to a very essential train of thought, which
had been stimulated on the day before the dream
night the dream thoughts themselves. Once these
are recognised, not only the single fragment, but also
the dream as a whole appears coherent and intelli-
gible. If, finally, we compare the point of departure
of the dream, the dream thoughts, with the content
of the naively related dream, we see that the dream
is nothing else than the concealed fulfilment of a
repressed wish.
This sentence contains the most essential results
of Freud's investigation of dreams. The idea that
dreams fulfil wishes that in the rude world of facts
have to remain unfulfilled seems to partake of the
language of abandoned popular science. "Dreams'*
are used metaphorically in most languages for
"wishes," and a Hungarian proverb says just this,
"swine dream of acorns, geese of maize" which can
only be regarded as an allusion to the similar di-
rection of human dreams.
Some of the dreams of adults and most of those
of children are purely wish-fulfilment dreams. The
child dreams of pleasurable experiences denied him
102 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
by day, of the toys that he envied his little com-
rades, of victorious struggles with those of his own
age, of his good mother or his friendly father. Very
often in his dream he seems "big," endowed with all
the freedom and power of his parents for which he
wishes so ardently by day. Wish dreams like these
also occur to adults. The difficult examination ( about
which we are so anxious) seems in dreams splendidly
passed; dear relatives awaken from their graves
and assure us they are not dead ; we appear to our-
selves rich, powerful, endowed with great oratorical
gifts ; the most beautiful of women solicit our favour,
and so on. For the most part we attain in dreams
just that which we painfully miss on waking.
The same tendency to wish-fulfilment dominates
not only in nocturnal, but also in day dreams, those
fancies in which we can catch ourselves at unoccupied
moments or during monotonous activity. Freud has
observed that women's fancies deal for the most part
with things directly or indirectly concerned with sex
life (of being loved, proposals, beautiful clothes),
those of men predominantly with power and esteem,
but also with sexual satisfaction. Fancies concern-
ing the means of escape from a real or imagined
danger and the annihilation of real or imagined ene-
mies are also very common. These simple wish-ful-
filment dreams and fancies have an obvious mean-
ing, and need no particular labour for their inter-
pretation.
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 108
But what is new, surprising, and incredible to
many in Freud's explanation of dreams is the asser-
tion that all dreams, even those which seem indiffer-
ent or even unpleasant, can be reduced to this basai
form, and that it can be shewn by analysis that they
fulfil wishes in a disguised way. In order to under-
stand this we have first to make ourselves familiar
with the mechanism of psychic activity in dreams.
The associative analysis of a dream is only the
reversal of the synthetic work performed at night
by the mind when it transforms the unwelcome
thought and the unpleasant sensation that disturb
sleep into wish-fulfilling dream-images. Critical
consideration convinces one that this work never
ceases during sleep, even when after waking we can-
not recall having dreamed at all. The traditional
idea that dreams disturb rest during sleep must be
abandoned on the ground of these newly won results ;
on the contrary, since they do not allow the unpleas-
ant, painful or burdensome thought that would dis-
turb sleep to become conscious with its true content,
but only in a changed form as the fulfilment of a
wish, we are compelled to recognise dreams as the
preservers of sleep.
The psychic factor watching over rest during
sleep, often with the assistance of the dream disguise
already mentioned, is the censor. This is the gate-
keeper at the threshold of consciousness, which we
see zealously at work during waking life also, es-
104 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
pecially in the psychoneuroses, and which for our
problem is to be considered as either repressing all
thought groupings that are in ethical or aesthetic
ways distasteful, or disguising them in the form of
apparently harmless symbols, symptomatic actions,
or symptomatic thoughts.
The function of the censorship is to secure repose
for consciousness, and to keep at a distance all psy-
chical productions that would cause pain or disturb
rest. And like the censor of political absolutism,
who sometimes works at night, the psychic censor-
ship is kept in activity during sleep, though its red
penciling is not so strongly in evidence as in waking
life. Probably the censor is led to relax its activity
by the idea that motor reactions are paralysed dur-
ing sleep, so that thoughts cannot be expressed in
deeds. Thus the fact may be explained that for the
most part the images and situations emerging as
wish-fulfilments in dreams are those which by day
we refuse to recognise as wishes.
We all shelter in our unconscious many wishes
repressed since childhood, which take the oppor-
tunity of exercising their psychic intensity as soon
as they perceive the relaxation of the censorship at
night.
It is not chance that among the wishes revealed
in dreams the greatest part is played by the strongly
repressed sexual excitations, and in particular those
of the most despised kind. It is a very great error to
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 105
believe that psycho-analysis deliberately places sex-
ual activity in the foreground. It cannot be denied
that whenever one attempts thoroughly to investi-
gate the basal facts of mental life one always strikes
against the sexual element. If, accordingly, we find
psycho-analysis objectionable for this reason, we are
really degrading the description of the unconscious
facts of human mentality by our attitude in regard-
ing them as obscene. The censorship of sexual mat-
ters is, as already said, much milder in dream life
than in waking hours, so that in dreams we experi-
ence and crave for sexual experiences without bounds,
even representing in our dreams experiences and acts
that remind one of the so-called perversions. As an
example of this I may avail myself of the dream of
a patient who was extraordinarily modest in waking
life. He saw himself enveloped in an antique pep-
lum, fastened in front with a safety-pin ; suddenly
the pin fell out, the white garment opened in front,
and his nakedness was admired by a great crowd of
men. Another patient, equally modest, told me this,
which is an exhibition dream with somewhat altered
circumstances : She was draped from top to toe in
a white garment, and bound to a pillar ; around her
stood foreign men, Turks or Arabs, who were hag-
gling over her. The scene strongly reminds one,
apart from her enveloping garment, of an Oriental
slave market ; and, indeed, analysis brought out that
this lady, now so modest, had read when a young
106 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
girl the tales of the Arabian Nights, and had seen
herself in fancy in many of the situations of the
highly coloured love scenes of the Orient. At that
time she imagined that slaves were exposed for sale
not clothed, but naked. At present she repudiates
the idea of nudity so strongly, even in dreams, that
the suppressed wishes bearing on this theme can be
manifested only when changed to their opposite.
A third dreamer only allowed herself so much free-
dom in this respect as to move about amongst the
other figures of her dream incompletely clad, in her
stockings or with bare feet ; and here analysis shewed
that as a child she had over a long period greatly en-
joyed removing her clothes and going about without
them, so that she was nicknamed "the naked Pancri"
(her name was Anna, in Hungarian Fauna). Such
exhibition dreams are so frequent that Freud was
able to put them in the class of his "typical" dreams,
which recur with most people from time to time and
have the same origin. They are based on the fact
that there lives on in all of us an undying longing
for the return of the paradise of childhood; this is
the "Golden Age" that poets and Utopians project
from the past into the future. It is a very common
means of dream disguise to circumvent the censorship
by presenting the wish not as such, but only in the
form of an allusion in the dream. It would not be
possible to understand, for example, why one of my
patients dreamed so often of sexual scenes with A
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 107
man by the name of Frater, who was quite indifferent
to her, if we had not learned that in her youth her
brother (/ rater) was her ideal and that in childhood
the affection of the pair had often assumed a purely
erotic form, manifesting itself by relations that she
now repressed as incestuous. This repression of for-
bidden things often enters into dreams, especially
with persons who in consequence of incomplete satis-
faction of their sexual hunger are inclined to the
development of morbid anxiety (Freud's anxiety
neurotics). Nocturnal anxiety can become so great
that the dreamer awakes with feelings of distress
(pavor noctumus). Anxiety, which has a physio-
logical basis, gives in such cases an opportunity for
the deeply repressed childish-perverse excitations to
involve themselves in the dream, in the form of cruel,
horrible scenes, which seem frightful to us, but which
in a certain depth of the unconscious satisfy wishes
that in the "prehistoric" ages of our own mental de-
velopment were actually recognised as desires.
The great part played in such dreams by cruelties
inflicted or endured must find its explanation in the
sadistic idea that children have of the sex-relation-
ship, as Freud has so prettily shewn in his "infantile
sexual theories." 2 All the cruel acts of such dreams
appear in analysis as sexual events transformed into
deeds of violence. Sexually unsatisfied women, for
* Freud. Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre.
2e Folge, 1909.
108 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
example, very commonly dream of thieves breaking
in, of attacks by robbers or wild beasts, not one of
the well-concealed incidents of the dream betraying
the fact that the outrages to which the dreamer is
subjected really symbolise sexual acts. An hysteric
of my observation once dreamed that she was
run down by a bull in front of which she held a
red garment. There was involved in this dream not
only the present wish to possess such a dress, but
also an unavowed sexual wish, the same one that also
caused the illness. The thought of the frightfully
enraged bull, which is a wide-spread symbol of mas-
culine strength, came to her especially through the
circumstance that a man with a so-called "bull neck"
had played a certain part in the development of her
sexual life.
Childhood memories make continual and always
significant contributions to the creation of dreams.
Freud has shewn not merely that even the earliest
age of childhood is not free from sexual excitations,
but rather that infantile sexuality, not yet restrained
by education, is expressly of a perverse character.
In infantile sexuality the oral and anal-urethral ero-
genous zones, the partial instincts of sexual curiosity
and of exhibitionism, as well as sadistic and maso-
chistic impulses, dominate the scene. When we con-
sider these facts we come to the conclusion that
Freud is in the right when he says that dreams ex-
press such impulses as wish-fulfilments, the fulfil-
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 109
ment of wishes from that part of our childhood that
seems long since outgrown.
There are, however, dreams of very unpleasant
content which strangely enough disturb our sleep
hardly at all, so that when we awaken we reproach
ourselves for experiencing such terrible events with
so little sympathy or feeling. This sort of dream
was observed, for instance, by one of Freud's pa-
tients who in a dream was present at the funeral of
a beloved nephew. An apparently unessential detail*
of the dream, a concert ticket, led to the explanation
of the occurrence. The lady in question meant to
attend a concert on the next night, where she ex-
pected to see again the man whom she had formerly
loved and had not yet forgotten, and whom she had
last met a long while before at the funeral of another
nephew. So the dream, in order to hasten the meet-
ing, sacrificed the other nephew. The censorship, ap-
parently knowing that a harmless wish, not one of
death, was to be fulfilled, let the funeral "pass"
without attaching to it any obvious emotional ex-
citation. This analysis may serve as an illustra-
tion of all those dreams that apparently contradict
Freud's wish theory, and which have to do with very
unwelcome matters or even with the non-fulfilment
of wishes. If we seek out the latent dream thoughts
concealed behind these dreams that are invested with
painful effects, it becomes clear to us that, as Fteud
himself expresses it, the non-fulfilment of a wish in
110 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
a dream always means the fulfilment of some other
wish.
When we consider the dream-material gained by
free association from the conscious dream elements,
it becomes clear that they more usually flow from
two opposite sources; from childhood memories on
the one hand, and from unnoticed experiences of the
"dream day," often quite indifferent, to which the
person had not reacted. Indeed, according to
Freud's expression, every well-articulated dream
stands as it were on two legs, and is shewn by analysis
to be over-determined, that is, to be the fulfilment
of both a present and a long suppressed wish.
As an example I may relate the dream of a patient
suffering from a nervous difficulty in urination. "A
polished floor, wet, as though a pool lay there. Two
chairs leaning against the wall. As I look around, I
note that the front legs of both chairs are missing,
as when one wants to play a practical joke on some
one and gets him to sit down on a broken chair, so
that he falls. One of my friends was also there with
her affianced."
Free association on the theme of the polished floor
gave the fact that on the day before her brother in
a rage had thrown a pitcher to the floor, which, with
the water spilled over it, looked like the floor in the
dream. She also recalled a similar floor from her
childhood; on this occasion her brother, then very
young, had made her laugh so hard that micturition
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 111
ensued. This part of the dream, which also proved
to be significant for the symptom-formation of the
neurosis, accordingly fulfilled infantile erotic wishes,
which could now in consequence of strong censorship
be presented only as allusions. The two broken chairs
leaning against the wall were shewn by analysis to
be a scenic presentation of the proverb "to fall to
the ground between two stools." The patient had
had two suitors, but the family constellation just
mentioned (the unconscious love for the brother)
prevented the marriage on both occasions. And al-
though her conscious ego, according to her repeated
testimony, had long been reconciled to the idea of
spinsterhood, she still seems in the depth of her soul
to have regarded with some envy the recent be-
trothal of one of her friends. The affianced pair
had in fact been calling on her the day before the
dream.
According to Freud's theory we may picture to
ourselves the origin of this dream in the following
way: The dream-work succeeded in uniting two ex-
periences of the day before, the breaking of the
pitcher and the visit of the bethrothed pair, with that
train of thought, always emotionally toned, which,
though already suppressed in childhood, was always
in a condition to lend its effective energy to any cur-
rent mental image that could be brought into even
a superficial connection with it. Freud compares a
dream to the promotion of a business undertaking.
112 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
in which the unconscious repressed complex fur-
nishes the capital, that is, the affective energy, while
the wishes play the part of promoters.
Another source of dreams is in the sensory and
sensorial nerve-stimulations to which the organism
is subjected during sleep. These may be: dermal
stimuli, the pressure of mattress and covering, cool-
ing of the skin ; acoustic or optical stimuli ; organic
sensation* hunger, thirst, an overloaded stomach,
an excited condition of the sexual parts, and so on.
Most psychologists and physiologists are inclined
to attribute too great significance to stimuli of this
sort; they think they have given a satisfactory ex-
planation of all dreams when they say that the dream
is nothing but the sum of the psychophysical reac-
tions set free by nerve stimuli of this character. On
the other hand, Freud rightly remarks that the
dream does not admit these bodily stimuli as such to
consciousness, but disguises and alters them in par-
ticular ways ; the motive and means of this disguise
are given, not through the external stimuli, but from
mental sources of energy. The nervous stimuli dur-
ing sleep offer, as it were, only the opportunity for
the unfolding of certain immanent tendencies of the
psychical life. Analysis shews that dreams caused
by nervous stimulation are also wish-fulfilments,
either open or concealed: the thirsty man drinks
large amounts of water in his dreams; the hungry
man satisfies himself; the sick man who is disturbed
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 113
by the ice-packing on his head throws it away, for
he thinks of himself in his dream as already well;
the painful throbbing of a boil on the perinaeum
leads to the dream idea of riding. So it is made
possible that the hunger, the thirst, the pressure on
the head, the painful inflammation, do not waken
the sleeper, but are transformed into wish-fulfilments
by the psychic forces.
The anxiety-dream known as "nightmare,"
brought on by an overloaded stomach, respiratory
or circulatory disturbances, or by intoxication, per-
mits of explanation in the same way ; the unpleasant
bodily sensations offer an opportunity for deeply
repressed wishes to fulfil themselves, wishes which
the censorship of civilisation will not allow to pass
and which can break through into consciousness only
in connection with feelings of anxiety and disgust.
In the process of analysis, as has already been
said, we retrace, only in the reverse direction, the
same path that the sleeping soul has travelled in the
formation of the dream. When we compare the mani-
fest dream, often very short, with the rich material
that is brought to light during the process of analy-
sis, and when we consider that in spite of this quan-
titative difference all the elements of the latent
dream-content are contained in some way in the por-
tion that is manifest to us, we must agree that Freud
is right in considering this dream-condensation as
the most laborious part of the dream-formation, I
Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
will try to shew this by means of an example. A
patient suffering from psychosexual impotence
brought to me on one occasion a dream composed of
two fragments. In the first one the only occurrence
was that instead of a Hungarian newspaper "Pesti
Hirlap," which came regularly to him, he received
the Vienna "Neue Freie Presse," to which as a mat-
ter of fact one of his colleagues had subscribed. The
second part of the dream dealt with a brunette whom
he ardently desired to marry. It turned out that in
the dream he acquired not the foreign newspaper
but, in the hidden sense of the dream, a foreign
woman to whom in fact a colleague had "subscribed."
This woman had long excited his interest, for it
seemed to him that just this person would be able to
get his sexuality, which was struggling with strong
inhibitions, to function. The thought associations
that came from this idea made it plain that he had
been deceived in his hopes of another woman, with
whom he had entered into the same relation. This
woman, being a Hungarian, had been concealed in the
dream behind the name of the paper "Pesti Hirlap."
Of late he had occupied himself in seeking free sexual
associations, which led to no obligations, instead
of a more stable relationship. When we know the
great freedom with which the dream avails itself
of symbols, we are not surprised to learn that my
patient also applied the word "Press" in a sexual
sense. The second part of the dream shews, as
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 116
though to confirm our interpretations, that the pa-
tient had often been obliged to think, not without
anxiety, that relations which lasted too long, like
that between him and his friend, could easily lead
to a mesalliance. One who does not know what
Freud has shewn in his monograph, 3 namely that the
psychic motive and means of presentation of wit are
almost exactly the same as those that come out in
dreams, might consider us guilty of a cheap joke in
saying that the dream succeeds in condensing in the
words "Neue Freie Presse" all the patient's thoughts
and wishes relating to the pleasures of which his ill-
ness had robbed him and the means of benefit that
he had in mind, namely, the stimulus of the new, and
the greater freedom for which he was striving. ( Nov-
elty and newspaper are expressed in Hungarian by
the same word "ujsag.")
Highly characteristic products of the dream-con-
densation are the composite formations of persons,
objects, and words. These "monstrosities of the
dream world" have largely contributed to the cir-
cumstance that dreams up to our day have been re-
garded as mental productions without value or
sense. But psycho-analysis convinces us that when
the dream links together or fuses two features or
concepts, it furnishes a product of the same work of
condensation to which the less obvious parts of the
* Freud. Der Wit* und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten.
1009.
116 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
dream owe their disguise. One of the rules of the
art of dream interpretation says that in cases of such
composite formations the dream material of the
single constituents must first be sought, and then
only can it be determined on what basis of a com-
mon element or similarity the welding together has
taken place. An example of this, which is of value
theoretically, I owe to one of my patients. The com-
posite picture that occurred in one of her dreams
was made up of the person of a physician and of a
horse, which in addition was attired in night cloth-
ing. Associations led from the horse into the pa-
tient's childhood. As a girl she had suffered for a
long time from a pronounced phobia of horses ; she
avoided them especially on account of their evident
and open satisfaction of their bodily needs. It also
occurred to her that as a child she had often been
taken by her nurse to the military quarters, where
she had had the opportunity of observing all these
things with a curiosity that was at that time still
unrestrained. The night-clothing reminded her of
her father, whom she had had the opportunity of
seeing, while she still slept in her parents' room, not
only in such costume, but in the act of satisfying his
bodily needs. (This case often occurs; parents for
the most part place no restraint on themselves be-
fore three-and four-year-old children, whose under-
standing and faculty of observation they materially
underestimate). The third constituent of the com-
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 117
posite picture, the physician, awakened in me the
suspicion, which proved to be well grounded, that the
patient had unconsciously transferred her sexual
curiosity from her father to the physician who was
treating her.
The constituent parts of a composite image often
have an unequal share in its formation ; perhaps only
a characteristic movement of one person is grafted
on to the second person. I once saw myself in a
dream rub my forehead with my hand just as my
honoured master, Professor Freud, does when he is
meditating over a difficult question. It does not re-
quire much art of interpretation to guess that this
confounding of teacher and pupil, particularly in,
meditation, can only be ascribed to envy and ambi-
tion, when at night the intellectual censorship was
relaxed. In my waking life I have to laugh at the
boldness of this identification, which makes me think
of the saying, "How he clears his throat, and how he
expectorates, that you have learned well from him."
As an example of a composite word I may mention
that in a dream a German-speaking patient thought
of a certain Metzler or Wetzler. No one of this
name, however, is known to the patient, but on the
day before the dream he was much occupied with the
approaching marriage of a friend, by the name of
Messer, who liked to tease (hetzen) the patient. The
associations from Messer shewed that as a small
child he had been very afraid of his grandfather,
118 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
who while whetting (wetzen) his pocket-knife (Tas-
chenmesser) had jokingly threatened to cut his penis
off, a threat that was not without influence on the
development of his sexuality. The names "Metzler-
Wetzler" are accordingly nothing but condensations
of the words, messer, lietzen and wetzen.
Dream condensation stands in close relation to the
work of displacement and transvaluation of the
dream. This consists essentially in the fact that the
psychical intensity of the dream-thoughts is shunted
over from the essentials to the accessories, so that
the thought-complex that is at the focus of interest
is represented in the conscious dream content either
not at all or by a weak allusion, while the maximum
of interest in the dream is turned to the more insig-
nificant constituents of the dream-thoughts. The
work of condensation and of displacement go hand
in hand. The dream renders harmless an important
thought, which would disturb the sleeper's rest, or be
censured on ethical grounds. It goes as it were be-
yond such a thought, by attaching memory-images
to its less essential parts until the condensed psy-
chical intensity of the former can distract the at-
tention from the thought of particular interest. As
an example of the displaced centre of the conscious
dream in comparison with the centre of the dream-
thoughts I may mention the already cited dream of
the aunt concerning the death of her beloved nephew.
The funeral, which actually was not essential, took
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 119
up the largest place in the dream, the personality
that was most significant for the dream-thoughts
was on the contrary present in the dream only
through a distant allusion.
I was once called upon to analyse the very short
dream of a woman ; in it she had wrung the neck of a
little, barking, white dog. She was very much aston-
ished that she, who "could not hurt a fly," could
dream such a cruel dream, and she did not remem-
ber having dreamt one like it before. She admitted
that, being very fond of cooking, she had many times
killed pigeons and fowls with her own hand. Then
it occurred to her that she had wrung the neck of
the little dog in the dream in exactly the same way
as she was accustomed to do with the pigeons in order
to cause them less pain. The thoughts and associa-
tions that followed had to do with pictures and
stories of executions, and especially with the thought
that the executioner, when he has fastened the cord
about the criminal's neck, arranges it so as to give
the neck a twist, and thus hasten death. Aslced
against whom she felt strong enmity at the present
time, she named a sister-in-law, and related at length
her bad qualities and malicious deeds, with which she
had disturbed the family harmony, before so beau-
tiful, after insinuating herself like a tame pigeon
into the favour of her subsequent husband. Not
long before a violent scene had taken place between
her and the patient, which ended by the latter shew-
120 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
ing her the door with the word : "Get out ; I cannot
endure a biting dog in my house." Now it was clear
whom the little white dog represented, and whose
neck she was wringing in the dream. The sister-in-
law is also a small person, with a remarkably white
complexion. This little analysis enables us to ob-
serve the dream in its displacing and thus disguising
activity. Without doubt the dream used the com-
parison with the biting dog, instead of the real ob-
ject of the execution fancy (the sister-in-law),
smuggling in a little white dog just as the angel
in the Biblical story gave Abraham at the last mo-
ment a ram to slaughter, when he was preparing to
slaughter his son. In order to accomplish this the
dream had to heap up memory-images of the killing
of animals until by means of their condensed psychi-
cal energy the image of the hated person paled,
and the scene of the manifest dream was shifted to
the animal kingdom. Memory-images of human exe-
cutions served as a connecting link for this displace-
ment.
This example gives me the opportunity to repeat
that, with few exceptions, the conscious dream-con-
tent is not the true reproduction of our dream-
thoughts, but only a displaced, wrongly accented
caricature, the original of which can be reconstructed
only by the help of psycho-analysis.
It is a noteworthy phenomenon of dream work that
the material of abstract thought, the concept, is
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 121
capable of being presented in the dream only to a
slight extent or not at all, that rather the dream as
it were dramatises thoughts only in optical or acous-
tic sense-images, changes them to scenes enacted on
a stage, and in this way brings them to presentation.
Freud strikingly characterises the difficulty imposed
on the dream by this necessity of working only with
concrete material when he says that the dream itself
has to turn the thoughts of a political editorial into
illustrations.
Dreams are given to using ambiguous words and
interpretations of all sorts of expressions in concrete
or metaphorical senses in order to make abstract
conceptions and thoughts capable of presentation
and so of inclusion in the dream.
The memory of every man at all educated contains
a large number of proverbs, quotations, figures of
speech, parables, fragments of verse, and so forth.
The content of these offers very suitable material,
ever present, that can be applied to the scenic presen-
tation of a thought or to an allusion to it. I will
try to make this clear by a series of examples. One
of my patients related to me the following dream:
"I go into a large park, walking on a long path.
I cannot see the end of the path or of the garden
hedge, but I think I will go on until I arrive at the
end." The park and hedge of the dream resem-
4 (This dream was in the Hungarian language, and the sense
of it depends on a play on words that is not translated by the
author. Transl.)
122 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
bled the garden of one of her aunts, with whom she
had passed many happy holidays in her youth. She
remembers in connection with this aunt that they
customarily shared the same room, but when her
uncle was at home the young guest was "put out"
into a neighbouring room. The girl at that time had
only a very fragmentary conception of sex matters,
and often tried by peeping through cracks in the
door and through the keyhole to find out what was
going on within. The wish to get to the end of the
hedge symbolised in this dream the wish to get to
the bottom of what was going on between the married
pair. This wish was further determined by an ex-
perience of the day before.
Another patient dreamed of the corridor of the
girls' boarding school in which she was educated.
She saw her own clothes-closet there, but could not
find the key, so that she was forced to break open the
door; but as she violently opened the door, it be-
came evident that there was nothing within. The
whole dream proved to be a symbolic masturbation-
phantasy, a memory from the time of puberty; the
female genitals were, as so often happens, presented
as a cupboard. But the supplement to the dream,
"there is nothing within" (es ist nichts darm) means
in Hungarian the same as "it is no matter" (es ist
nichts daran), and is a sort of exculpation or self-
consolation of this sufferer from a bad conscience.
Another girl, whose neurosis was brought on by
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams
the death of her brother, who, according to her
view, married too early and was not happy in his
marriage, dreamed continually of the dead man.
Once she saw him lying in his grave, but the head
was turned to one side in a peculiar manner, or the
skull had grown into a bough ; another time she saw
him, referring to his modest origin, "one fallen from
which he had to jump. All this symbolism was a
complaint against the wife and the father-in-law of
the dead man, who turned the boy's head when he
was almost a child, and in the end made him "jump
down" (a Hungarian idiom) and who nevertheless
did not consider him their equal, for they once called
him, referring to his modest origin, "one fallen from
a bough" (another Hungarian idiom.)
Very often falling from a great height pictures in
a concrete way the threat of ethical or material fall ;
with girls, sitting may mean spinsterhood (Sitzen-
bleiben) ; with men, a large basket may mean the fear
of an unsuccessful wooing (emen Korb erhalten). It
occurs still more commonly that the human body is
symbolised by a house, the windows and doors of
which represent the natural openings of the body.
My patient who suffered from sexual impotence
made use of a vulgar Hungarian expression for
coitus, namely the word for "to shoot," and very
often dreamed of shooting, missing fire, the rusting
of his fire-arms, and so on.
It would be an enticing problem to collect the
Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
fragments of dreams that can be explained symboli-
cally and to write a modern dream-book, in which
the explanation could be found for the separate
parts of dreams. This is not possible, however, for
although much typical material recurs in dreams and
in most cases can be correctly interpretated without
analysis, symbols may have different meanings with
different individuals, and even with the same indi-
vidual at different times. Accordingly, if we wish
to know in any particular case all the determinants
of a single dream fragment there is nothing for it
but laborious analysis, for which the investigating
power and the wit of the interpreter alone will not
suffice, the industrious co-operation of the dreamer
being indispensable.
Still greater difficulties than are created by the
presentation of abstract thoughts are met with when
the dream endeavours to present in a concrete way
the thought-relations of the individual dream-
thoughts. Freud rendered a valuable service by
succeeding in making it possible to discover the whole
of the concealed, formal peculiarities of the connec-
tions of the dream, with which it endeavours to pre-
sent logical relations. Logical relations between two
dream elements with respect to the dream-thoughts
that are concealed behind them are presented in the
simplest cases by temporal or spatial proximity, or
by a fusion of the features of the dream.
Dreams lack a means for presenting causal con-
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 125
nection, of the "either-or" relation of conditions,
and so on, so that all these relations are brought to
presentation in a very insufficient way by means of
a temporal sequence of the dream elements. From
this circumstance arise many embarrassments for the
dream interpreter, from which he can often be extri-
cated only by the communications of the dreamer.
Much, however, can be divined. For example, if one
dream picture changes to another, we can divine
behind this cause and effect; but this connection the
dream often presents by two completely separated
dreams, one signifying the cause, the other the effect.
Even the presentation of a simple negative the dream
can manage only with great difficulty, so that as
we know from Freud we can never tell in advance
whether the dream-thought is to be taken in a posi-
tive or a negative way. Considering the complexi-
ties of our mental organisation it may be seen only
too easily that affirmation and negation of the same
thoughts and feeling-complexes are to be met with
in the dream-thoughts side by side, or, rather, in
succession. It may be taken as an indication of
displeasure or scorn when anything in a dream is pre-
sented in a reversed form, or when the truth is pre-
sented very openly and in a striking way. The
feeling of inhibition, which is so common, signifies a
conflict of the will, the struggle of opposing motives.
In spite of the lack of all logical relations in the
translation of the dream-thoughts into the manifest
126 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
dream, the latter often seems to be possessed of sense
and to be correlated. When this is the case it may
result from one of two causes. We may on the one
hand have to do with a dream-phantasy, that is,
with the reproduction of fancies that have developed
in waking life, articles read in books or magazines,
fragments of novels, or bits of conversation spoken
or heard by the person himself. A deeper and more
general explanation for the apparently logical ar-
ticulation of many dreams, however, is the fact
that the rationalising tendency of mental activity,
which seeks to arrange senseless material into logical
trains of thought, does not rest at night. This last
activity of the dream Freud calls the secondary elab-
oration. It is due to this that the originally frag-
mentary parts of the dream are rounded into a
whole by supplementarily inserted connecting words
and other little connections.
x^ince the dream has fundamentally condensed,
displaced, disguised, and scenically presented a
dream-thought, robbed it of its logical connections,
and elaborated it in a secondary manner, the work
of interpretation is often very difficult. We are con-
fronted by the conscious dream-content as by a
hieroglyph or by a rebus that is very difficult of
solution ; the result is that the explanation of many
dreams needs, besides the rules of Freud's interpre-
tation, special capacity and inclination to occupy
oneself with the questions of mental life.
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams
Not less a riddle than the dream itself is its rapid
fading away after awakening. When we awake, the
dream-images so toilsomely built up at night collapse
like a house of cards. During sleep the mind is like
an air-tight room, into which neither light nor sound
can penetrate from without, but within whose own
walls the slightest sound, even the buzzing of a fly,
can be heard. But awakening is like opening the
door to the air of the bright morning; through the
doors of our senses press in the bustle and the im-
pulses of every-day life, and the daily cares, lately
soothed to sleep by wish-fancies, once more assert
their domination. The censor, too, wakens from its
slumber, and its first act is to declare the dream to
be foolishness, to explain it as senseless, to put it
as it were under guardianship. It is not always
satisfied with this measure, it reacts much more
strongly against the revolutionary dreams (and
there is not a single dream that cannot be shewn
by analysis to offend against some ethical or legal
canon). The stronger method consists in the con-
fiscation, the full suppression, of the dream-image.
Mental confiscation is commonly called "forgetting.'*
One wonderingly relates how distinctly one dreamed,
and yet when one woke all was confused and in a few
minutes it had all been forgotten. At other times
one can only say that the dream was beautiful, good,
bad, confused, stimulating, or stupid. Even in mak-
ing this judgment often a remnant of the dream-con-
128 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
tent will shew itself, the analysis of which may lead
to a later recovery of larger fragments of the dream.
Behind the additional fragments of the dream thus
brought to light one often finds the kernel of the
dream-thoughts.
It is an important consequence of Freud's theory
of dreams, that one is always dreaming, so long as
one sleeps. 5 That one remembers nothing of it is
no decisive objection against this consideration. My
patients, for example, who at the beginning of the
analysis declared that they usually had no dreams,
gradually accustomed themselves to remember all
their dreams by continual weakening of the internal
psychic resistance against the censorship. But if
in the course of the analysis one strikes a very re-
sistant, painfully toned complex, dreams apparently
cease naturally they are only forgotten, repressed,
because of their unpleasant content.
The obvious objection that these dream observa-
tions and analyses have for the most part been
carried out on neurotic and thus abnormal persons,
and that conclusions should not be drawn as to the
dreams of healthy people, does not need to be refuted
by the reply that mental health and psychoneuroses
differ in only a quantitative way; the answer can
(This remark is perhaps carelessly phrased. The author
probably means that unconscious psychic activity always goes
on during sleep, tending to lead to the formation of dreams,
not that we are always actually dreaming in the sense of con-
sciously experiencing fully formed dreams. TransL)
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 129
also be made that the analyses of people mentally
normal fully agree with the interpretations of dreams
of neurotics. The communication of the analysis
of one's own dreams, however, meets with almost in-
surmountable difficulties. Freud has not shrunk
from this sacrifice the exposure of intimate per-
sonal matters in his Traumdeutung, even though
regard for others make unavoidable gaps here and
there in his analysis. Similar considerations make
it necessary for me to explain the interpretation of
dreams not from my own dreams, but from those of
my patients. For the rest, the practice of self-
analysis is indispensable for anyone who desires to
penetrate into the unconscious processes of dream
life.
The neurotic persons whose dreams I have brought
forward here and there as examples also pave the
way for me to say a few words about the patho-
logical significance of dreams and their interpreta-
tion. We have seen how greatly the analysis of a
neurotic may be accelerated by a successful dream
analysis. The dream censorship, which is only half
awake, often allows thought-complexes to penetrate
to the dream consciousness that in waking life could
not be brought to consciousness by free association.
From the dream elements also lead out immediate
and shorter ways to the repressed pathogenic ma-
terial, becoming conscious of such complexes may be
regarded as a step towards the cure.
130 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
Then, too, the diagnostic significance of dreams
should not escape us, and in a time that is not too
distant there ought to arise besides the physiological,
also a pathological dream psychology, which should
treat systematically of dreams among hysterics, ob-
sessional patients, paranoiacs, dementia praecox pa-
tients, sufferers from neurasthenia, from the anxiety-
neurosis, alcoholism, epilepsy, paralysis, etc. Many
pathognostic peculiarities of dreams in these dis-
eased conditions are already recognisable to-day.
All these more practical and special questions have
been raised to importance by the unexpected theo-
retical consequences of this investigation of dreams.
Freud has succeeded in surprising a process on the
boundary line between the physiological and patho-
logical departments of mental life, in taking it in
the midst of its work, in flagranti, so to speak. In
this way he has brought us nearer to an understand-
ing of the mechanism of the manifestations of neu-
roses and insanity in waking life. And though it
was the study of psycho-neuroses that led Freud to
his investigation of dreams, the dream theory pays
back with interest all that it owes to pathology.
The case could not, indeed, be other than it is.
Waking life, dreams, neuroses, and psychoses are
only variations of the same psychic material with
different modes of functioning, and progressive in-
sight into one of these processes must necessarily
deepen and widen our knowledge of the others.
The Psychological Analysis of Dreams 131
Those who expect from the new dream theory any
sort of prophetic insight into the future will turn
back disillusioned. But those who value highly the
solution of psychological problems that have until
now been set aside as insoluble, the widening of the
psychological point of view apart from any imme-
diate practical consequences, and who are not kept
back from advance by hide-bound prejudices, will
perhaps supplement the presentation given here by a
thorough and serious study of Freud's Traumdev-
twng.
CHAPTER IV
ON OBSCENE WORDS l
Contribution to the Psychology of the Latent Period
IN all analyses one is sooner or later fa^ed with
the question whether one should mention in front
of the patient the popular (obscene) designations
of the sexual and excremental organs, functions,
and material, and get him to utter in an unvarnished,
unaltered way the obscene words, phrases, curses,
etc., that occur to his mind, or whether one can
rest content with allusions to them or with the use
of scientific language to denote such matters.
In one of his earlier works Freud called attention
to the possibility of finding ways and means to dis-
cuss with patients even the most proscribed sexual
activities (perversions) without wounding their mod-
esty, and for this purpose he recommended the use
of technical medical expressions.
At the beginning of a course of psycho-analytic
treatment one avoids unnecessarily provoking re-
sistance on the part of the patient, and in this way
1 Published in the Zentralbl. f. Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. 1,
1911.
132
On Obscene Words
setting up perhaps insurmountable obstacles to the
continuation of the analysis. One contents oneself,
therefore, at first with allusive references or with
serious scientific terms, and can very soon talk with
one's patient about the most delicate matters of
sexuality, as of the instincts in general, without ex-
citing any reaction of shame whatever. In a number
of cases, however, this does not suffice. The analysis
comes to a standstill, no thoughts occur to the pa-
tient, his behaviour shews signs of inhibition, indica-
tions of increased resistance manifest themselves, and
this resistance ceases only when the physician man-
ages to discover the ground for it in the fact that
proscribed words and phrases have occurred to him,
which he does not venture to utter aloud without the
analyst's express "permission."
An hysterical patient of twenty-three, for exam-
ple, who so far as consciousness was concerned was
intent on the greatest honesty, and who listened
without much prudishness to my explanations about
her sexuality (formulated in scientific language), in-
sisted that she had never heard or noticed anything
about sexual matters ; she still professed belief in the
"kissing-theory" of propagation (which, by the way,
is always a secondary one). In order to display
her assiduity, she bought a large work on embryol-
ogy and related to me, with naive interest and with-
out any inhibition, her recently acquired informa-
tion concerning spermatozoa and ova, male and fe-
184 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
male sexual organs and their union. On one occa-
sion she casually told me that ever since childhood
she had had the habit of shutting her eyes when at
stool. She could give no reason for this eccentricity.
Finally I helped her memory by asking if, by clos-
ing her eyes, she had not sought to shun the ob-
scene writings and drawing so frequent in closets.
I then had to direct attention to the obscene writ-
ings known to her, and this evoked in the patient,
who up till then had been so superior and imper-
turbable, an intense reaction of shame, which gave
me access to the deepest layers of her previously
latent store of memories. The repression, therefore,
evidently appertained to the wording itself of the
sexual thought-complexes, and could be reversed only
by uttering those "magic words."
A young homosexual, who without much ado made
use of even the vulgar designations for the sexual
parts and their functions, refused for two hours
long to utter aloud the commoner expression for the
word "flatus" which had occurred to him. He sought
to avoid it by all possible circumlocutions, foreign
words, euphemisms, etc. After the resistance against
the word was overcome, however, he was able to pene-
trate much deeper into the previously barren analy-
sis of his anal-erotism.
The hearing of an obscene word in the treatment
often produces in the patient the same agitation that
on some earlier occasion had been produced by ac-
On Obscene Words 135
cidentally overhearing a conversation between the
parents, in which some coarse (usually sexual) ex-
pression had slipped o^t. This agitation and shock,
which for a moment seriously threatens the child's
respect for his parents, and which in a neurotic may
remain "fixed" for life (although unconsciously),
happens as a rule in the years of puberty and is
really a "new edition" of the impressions made by
overhearing in infancy actual sexual performances.
The early confidence in parents and superior au-
thorities, however, which the latter have sought to
instil, but which has been nullified by awe, belongs
to the most significant complexes of the suppressed
psychical material, and if one does not shrink from
and, indeed, insists on getting the patient to
express the very wording of these thoughts (and,
if necessary, to utter it oneself), it often results in
unexpected disclosures and a gratifying progress in
the mental dissection, which had perhaps been for
some time at a standstill.
Apart from this practical importance, which, by
the way, is not to be underestimated, the behaviour
of the patient in this connection is also a matter of
more general interest. It gives us a psychological
problem.
How is it that it is so much harder to designate
the same thing with one term than with another?
That this is the case can be observed not only with
the patient, but also with oneself. Indeed, it was the
136 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
not inconsiderable inhibition which I noticed, to be-
gin with, on mentioning such words, and against
which I have even now occasionally to contend, that
led me to devote more attention to this question and
to investigate it by examining myself as well as my
patients. By both of these ways I came to the con-
clusion that the popular (obscene) designations for
sexuality and excretion, the only ones known to the
child, are in the most intimate manner associated
with the deeply repressed nuclear complex of the
neurotic as well as of the healthy. (Following
Freud, I call the Oedipus-complex the "nuclear com-
plex.)
The child's thoughts about the sexual aspects of
the parents, about the processes of birth and the
animal functions, in a word, the "infantile sexual
theories," are, as soon as they appear, clothed in
the popular terminology that is the only one accessi-
ble to the child. The moral censorship and the in-
cest-barrier, which later on covers over these theo-
ries, becomes exerted, therefore, on just this formu-
lation of the hypotheses.
This would suffice to make comprehensible, at least
in part, the resistance that is manifested against the
mentioning of, and listening to, such words. As,
however, this explanation did not quite satisfy me,
I looked for further causes of the special quality of
these word-ideas and reached a point of view that I
cannot, it is true, regard as certainly correct, but
On Obscene Words 137
which I wish to communicate here in order to prompt
&ther workers to bring forward a better explanation.
An obscene word has a peculiar power of compel-
ling the hearer to imagine the object it denotes, the
sexual organ or function, in substantial actuality.
That this is the case was clearly recognised and ex-
pressed by Freud in his discussion of the motives and
conditions of obscene jokes. He writes: 2 "Through
the mentioning of the obscene word the ribald jest
forces the assailed person to imagine the part of the
body or the function in question." I would supple-
ment this statement by calling special attention to
the fact that delicate allusions to sexual processes,
and scientific or foreign designations for them, do
not have this effect, or at least not to the same
extent as the words taken from the original, popu-
lar, erotic vocabulary of one's mother-tongue.
One may therefore infer that these words as such
possess the capacity of compelling the hearer to
revive memory pictures in a regressive and halluci-
natory manner. This inference, founded on self-ob-
servation, is confirmed by the statements of a con-
siderable number of normal as well as of neurotic
individuals. The causes of the phenomenon must be
sought for in the hearer himself, and we have to as-
sume that he harbours in his store of memories a
number of word-sound and writing images of erotic
Freud. Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten.
S. 80.
188 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
content that differ from other word-pictures in their
increased tendency to regression. On hearing or
seeing an obscene word this capacity of the mem-
ory-traces in question would then come into opera-
tion.
If, now, we subscribe to Freud's conception of the
ontogenetic development of the psychical mechan-
ism out of a motor-hallucinatory reaction centre to
an organ of thought (and his conception is the only
one that does justice to the results of psycho-analy-
sis and to our idea of the unconscious), we come
to the conclusion that obscene words have attributes
which all words must have possessed in some early
stage of psychical development.
Ever since Freud's work 3 we regard as the funda-
mental cause of every act of mental representation
the wish to put an end to an unpleasantness due to
privation, by means of repeating an experience of
gratification once enjoyed. If this need is not satis-
fied in reality, what happens in the first primitive
stage of mental development is that on the appear-
ance of the wish the perception of the previously ex-
perienced gratification becomes regressively engaged
(besetzt) and maintained in a hallucinatory way.
The idea is thus treated as equivalent to the reality
(perceptual identity, as Freud terms it). Only
gradually, sharpened by bitter experience of life,
Freud. Die Traumdeutung. [The view in question is ex-
pounded in an article in Child Study, April and May, 1916.
Transl.]
On Obscene Words 139
does the child learn to distinguish the wish-idea from
real gratification, and to make use of his motor pow-
ers only when he has convinced himself that he sees
in front of him real objects, and not illusions of his
phantasy. Abstract thought, thinking in words, de-
notes the culminating point of this development. In
this, as Freud has set forth in detail, finer accom-
plishments are rendered possible through the mem-
ory images being represented merely by certain
qualitative remains of these images, the speech-signs.
It may be added that the capacity of represent-
ing wishes by means of speech signs, so poor in qual-
ity, is not acquired all at once. Apart from the
fact that it takes some time to learn to speak,
it seems that speech-signs replacing images, i. e.,
words, retain for a considerable time a certain tend-
ency to regression, which we can picture to our-
selves in a gradually diminishing degree, until the
capacity is attained for "abstract" imagination and
thought that is almost completely free from hal-
lucinatory perceptual elements.
In this line of development there may be psychical
stages of which the characteristic is that the already
perfected capacity for the more economic form of
thought by means of speech-signs is accompanied
with a still existing, strong tendency to revive re-
gressively the image of the object. The assumption
that such stages occur is supported by the behaviour
of children at the time of their mental development.
140 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
Freud, on investigating the psychogenesis of the
pleasure afforded by wit, recognised the significance
of the child's play with words. "Children," he says,
"treat words as objects."
The distinction, not yet rigorously carried out,
between what is only imagined and what is real,
(. e. the tendency of the mind to relapse into the
primary, regressive mode of functioning), may also
make the special charcter of obscene words compre-
hensible, and justify the surmise that at a certain
stage of development this concreteness, and with it
probably a strong tendency to regression, applies
still to all words. On this, indeed, rests Freud's ex-
planation of dream images ; in sleep we fall back on
the original mode of mental functioning, and once
more regressively revive the perceptual system of
consciousness. In dreams we no longer think in
words, but hallucinate.
If we now assume that this development from
speech-signs, still endowed with many concrete ele-
ments, in the direction of the abstract has been sub-
ject to a disturbance, an interruption, in the case
of certain words, which results in a lagging of the
word-image on a lower level, then we have some
prospect of approaching an understanding of the
tendency to regression which is so marked when ob-
scene words are heard.
Not only the hearing of obscene words, however,
but also the utterance of them is endued with quali-
On Obscene Words 141
ties that are not found in the case of other words,
at least not in the same degree. Freud points out,
with truth, that whoever makes an obscene joke per-
petrates, in so doing, an attack (a sexual action)
on the object of the aggression, and evokes the same
phenomena of reaction as those which would have
resulted from the action itself. When uttering an
obscene word one has the feeling that it is almost
equivalent to a sexual aggression : "uncovering of the
individual who interests one personally." 4 The ut-
terance of an obscene joke, therefore, shews in a
higher degree what is scarcely indicated with most
words, namely, the original source of all speech in
pretermitted action. While other words, however,
contain the motor element of the word-image only
in the form of a reduced innervation impulse, the
so-called "mimicry of imagery," 5 on uttering an
obscene joke we still have the definite feeling of in-
itiating an act.
This marked investment of the vocal image of
obscene words with motor elements, as also the sen-
sorial and hallucinatory character of the heard ob-
scene joke, may be the result of a disturbance in de-
velopment. These vocal images may have remained
on a level of speech development where words are still
more markedly invested with motor elements. One
has here to ask oneself whether this speculation,
Freud. Der Witz. S. 80.
Ibid. S. 167.
142 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
which represents only one of the many possibilities,
is in any way supported by experience, and if so,
what could be the cause of this developmental error,
one which concerns a small group of words, and is
of general occurrence among civilised people.
Psycho-analysis of normal and neurotic persons,
and observation of children, if fearless investigation
is made of the fate that the terms for sexual and ex-
cremental organs and functions undergo in the
course of mental development, bring much confirma-
tion of the hypothesis brought forward here. In
the firrt place, confirmation is found throughout of
the almost self-evident assumption that the specially
strong aversion to repeating certain obscene words
is to be ascribed to strong feelings of unpleasantness
which have become attached to just those words
through inversion of affect in the course of child de-
velopment.
A young man, for example, who was on the whole
normal, although he was noted for a rather exag-
gerated strictness in morals and was unusually intol-
erant of obscene words, recollected during a dream
analysis that his mother caught him, when he was six
and a half years old, writing down on a piece of pa-
per a dictionary, so to speak, of all the obscene
expressions he knew. The humiliation of being thus
detected, especially by his mother, as well as the se-
vere punishment that followed, resulted in a lack
of interest in erotic matters for many years after
On Obscene Wordt 143
and in an inimical disposition even later towards the
contents of the erotic vocabulary.
The young homosexual who had displayed such
strong opposition to uttering the obscene word for
"flatus" developed in infancy an extraordinary love
of odour and coprophilia, and his over-lenient fa-
ther did not prevent him from indulging these incli-
nations even on his own body (the father's). The
association, inseparable from this time forward, of
the idea of defilement with that of the parents re-
sulted in an unusually strong repression of the pleas-
ure in dirt and smell; hence also the great unpleas-
antness in mentioning such matters. That it was
the obscene term for intestinal gas which was so
much more intolerable to him than any circumlocu-
tion had its reason in childhood experiences similar
to those of the "dictionary-writer" mentioned above.
The intimate connection between obscenity and the
parental complex was thus the strongest repressing
force in both cases. 6
In the case of the hysterical patient who used to
shut her eyes when in the closet this habit could be
traced back to the time of a confession at which she
was severely reprimanded by the priest for artlessly
mentioning the obscene term for the vagina.
Such rebukes, however, or similar ones, happen to
almost every child, with the possible exception of
The infantile interest for the sounds accompanying the
emission of intestinal gas was not without influence on his
choice of profession. He became a musician.
144 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
those belonging to the lowest classes. In the fourth
or fifth year of life, and considerably earlier with
precocious children (i. e., at a time when children
are restricting their "polymorphous-perverse" im-
pulses), a period is interpolated between the relin-
quishing of the infantile modes of gratification and
the beginning of the true latency period, one char-
acterised by the impulse to utter, write up, and listen
to obscene words.
This fact would without doubt be confirmed by a
questionnaire addressed to mothers and teachers,
still more certainly by one to servants, the real con-
fidants of children, and that this is true of children
not only in Europe, but also in such a prudish coun-
try as America, I recognised, when strolling with
Professor Freud in New York Central Park, from
the chalk drawings and inscriptions on a beautiful
marble flight of steps.
We may conceive this impulse to utter, draw,
write, hear, and read obscenities as being a prelimi-
nary stage in the inhibition of the infantile desires
for exposure and sexual visual curiosity. It is the
suppression of these sexual phantasies and actions,
manifested in the weakened form of speech, that real-
ly connotes the beginning of the latency period
proper, that period in which "the mental counter-
forces against infantile sexuality, namely, disgust,
shame, and morality, are formed," 7 and the child's
1 Freud. Kl. Schr., 2e Aufl., S. 39.
On Obscene Words 145
interest is turned in the direction of social activities
(desire for knowledge).
One is hardly likely to be wrong in surmising that
this suppression of obscene word-images occurs at a
time when speech, and especially the sexual vocabu-
lary, which is so strongly invested with affect, is still
characterised by a high degree of regressive tend-
ency and by a vivid "mimicry of imagery." It is,
therefore, no longer so improbable that the sup-
pressed verbal material must, in consequence of the
latency period (i. e. the deflection of attention),
remain at this more primitive developmental stage,
while the rest of the vocabulary gradually becomes,
for the greater part, divested of its hallucinatory
and motor character by progressive exercising and
training, and is rendered through this economy suit-
able for higher thought activities.
I know, however, from psycho-analysis of neuro-
ses that suppressed or repressed psychical material
becomes in fact through the blocking of association
a "foreign body" in the mental life, which is capable
of no organic growth and of no development, and
that the contents of these "complexes" do not par-
ticipate in the development and constitution of the
rest of the individual. I might bring forward here
a few surprising examples.
Apprehension about the smallness and consequent
incapacity of the copulatory organ or, as we psy-
cho-analysts are accustomed to say, "the complex
146 Contribution* to Psycho-Analysis
of the small penis" is especially common among
neurotics, and far from rare among the healthy. In
every case in which I have analysed this symptom
the explanation was as follows: All those who suf-
fered later in this way had in their earliest childhood
occupied themselves to an unusual degree with the
phantasy of coitus cum matre (or with a corre-
sponding older person) ; in doing so they had nat-
urally been distressed at the idea of the inadequacy
of their penis for this purpose. 8 The latency period
interrupted and suppressed this group of thoughts;
when, however, the sexual impulse unfolded itself
afresh in puberty, and interest was again directed
towards the copulatory organ, the old distress once
more emerged, even when the actual size of the or-
gan was normal or exceeded the average. While,
therefore, the penis developed in the normal way,
the idea of the penis remained at an infantile level.
The deflection of attention from the genital region
led the individual to take no note of the changes in
it.
I have similarly been able to observe among fe-
male patients a "complex of the vagina being too
small" (fear that it would be torn during sexual
intercourse), and have been able to explain it
through the idea of the relative size of the paternal
The condition for this apprehensive phantasy is the igno-
rance of the extensibility of the vagina; children only know
that coitus takes place in an opening through which they once
passed in toto at birth.
On Obscene Words 147
organ, an idea acquired in childhood and suppressed
in the latency period. Such women are then sex-
ually anaesthetic in consequence of the imaginary
smallness of the penis in their husbands.
As a third example of the effect of the latency pe-
riod in inhibiting development in an isolated manner
I may mention the "complex of the large breast":
The dissatisfaction that many men feel with the di-
mensions of most female breasts. With one patient,
whose sex hunger could be aroused only by quite
enormously developed female breasts, it was estab-
lished in the analysis that in his early childhood he
had taken an extraordinary interest in the suckling
of infants and had indulged in the secret wish that
he might share with them. In the latency period
these fancies disappeared from his consciousness,
but when he began once more to take an interest in
the opposite sex his wishes were constellated by the
complex of the large breast. The idea of the breast
had not developed in him during the intermediary
period, and the impression of size which the organ
must have made on the child, who was then so little,
had become fixed. Hence he desired only women
whose breasts corresponded with the old proportion
of his own smallness to the size of the woman. The
female breasts themselves had become relatively
smaller in the intermediary period, but the fixed idea
of them retained the old dimension.
These examples, which could easily be multiplied,
148 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
support the assumption that the latency period ac-
tually brings about an isolated inhibition in the de-
velopment of individual repressed complexes, and
this makes it seem likely that the same process hap-
pens in the development of verbal images that have
become latent. Apart from this inference from an-
alogy, however, I wish to mention the fact, which
has often been demonstrated from the side of ex-
perimental psychology, that young children are of
a pronouncedly "visual" and "motor" reaction type.
I surmise that the loss of this visual and motor char-
acter comes about not gradually, but in a series of
stages, and that the advent of the latency period
denotes one, and perhaps the most important one,
of these stages. 9
I can bring forward two further series of observations in
favour of the correctness of my supposition concerning the
influence of the latency period. In a number of cases I have
had the opportunity of investigating the cause of lack of
capacity for visual representation and the resulting incom-
petency for certain subjects of school study that demand a
capacity for spacial presentation (geometry, natural history).
It appeared that this incapacity, which was out of correspond-
ence with the other powers of comprehension, was not con-
ditioned by a congenital partial weakness, but came about only
after the repression of phantasies, mostly of an incestuous
nature, that had been over-exuberant. To secure (Adler) the
repression of certain phantasy-pictures all kind of conscious
fancying, even the imaginative representation of quite indif-
ferent objects, was instinctively avoided. (Dread of the im-
agination.)
Another neurotic symptom, which may be observed much
more frequently, is exaggerated calm and grave precision in
the carrying out of every action, of every movement, shewn also
in the whole attitude and in the dread of all hurry and haste.
It is usually accompanied with pronounced antipathy against
those people who "let themselves go" easily, who are immod-
On Obscene Words 149
Little can be said at present concerning the fate of
the repressed obscene verbal images during the lat-
ency period. From what I have gathered in self-
analysis and in the analyses of other normal people,
I think I am justified in inferring that the latency
of these images, especially with men, is normally not
an absolute one. The reversal of affect that occurs
sees to it, it is true, that attention is deflected so far
as possible from these verbal images that are in-
vested with unpleasantness, but a total forgetting, a
becoming unconscious of them, scarcely happens in
the normal. Everyday life, intercourse with the
lower classes and with servants, obscene inscriptions
on benches and in public urinals, see to it that this
latency gets broken through often enough and that
the memory of what has been put aside gets revived,
although the point of view is changed. Nevertheless
not much notice is paid to these memories for some
years, and when they once more make their appear-
ance at the time of puberty they are already in-
erate, hasty, lively, unthinking and frivolous. One might here
speak of phobia of movement. This symptom is a reaction-
formation against a strong, but suppressed, motor tendency
to aggression.
Both the dread of imagining and that of movement seem to
me to be exaggerations of the suppression of phantasy and
the inhibition of motility that comes to everybody in the la-
tency period, and which helps to purge the motor and hallucina-
tory elements even from the images that are capable of being
conscious. The images, however, that are incapable of being
conscious, the repressed or suppressed ones, and especially
the obscene verbal images, retain, as does all repressed ma-
terial, the characters of a more primitive type of imagination.
150 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
vested with the character of shamefulness, perhaps
also with that of foreignness (on account of their
plasticity and natural vividness), which they retain
throughout life.
Quite other is the historical development of these
verbal images among the perverse and neurotic.
Whoever has become perverse, through his sexual
constitution and experiences, will, as we might ex-
pect according to Freud's theory of sex, take pos-
session of this source of pleasure also, and become
cynical in his speech, or perhaps content himself
merely with reading coarse obscenities. There ex-
ists, indeed, a perversity of its own that consists in
the uttering aloud of obscene words; I know from
the analysis of several women that they have been
insulted in the street by well-dressed men, who whis-
pered obscene words to them in passing by, without
any other sexual advances being made ( such as offer-
ing to accompany, etc.). These are evidently mild
exhibitionists and voyeurs, who instead of actual
exposure content themselves with an act that has
been weakened into the form of speech, and who
in doing so select those words that (through their
being forbidden, as through their motor and plastic
attributes) are especially calculated to evoke the re-
action of shame. This perversity might be called
"coprophemia." 10
10 "Coprolalia," on the contrary, is the involuntary, obsessive
expelling of obscene words, as may happen, for instance, in
severe cases of tic convulsif.
On Obscene Words 151
The true neurotic turns his attention away from
obscene words, either completely or almost complete-
ly. Wherever possible he passes them by without
thinking of them, and when he cannot avoid them he
responds with an exaggerated reaction of shame and
disgust. The case mentioned above is rare, where
the words get totally forgotten. Only women shew
such a capacity for repression.
A very severe mental shock, however, can bring
about the re-appearance of these half-buried words
in the normal as well as in the neurotic. Then, just
as the Olympian gods and goddesses were degraded
to demons and witches after the great step in repres-
sion betokened by Christianity, so the words that
once denoted the most highly treasured objects of
infantile pleasure recur in the form of oaths and
curses, and, characteristically, associated very often
with the idea of the parents or the sacred beings and
gods that correspond to them (blasphemies). These
interjections that issue in vehement anger, which are
often softened down to jokes also, do not at all be-
long, as Kleinpaul rightly insists, to conceptual
speech ; they do not serve the needs of conscious com-
munication, but represent reactions to a stimulus
which are nearly related to gestures. It is none the
less remarkable, however, that a violent affect is
only with considerable difficulty saved from discharg-
ing itself along a motor path and is turned into an
oath; the affect involuntarily makes use of the ob-
152 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
scene words that are best suited to the purpose from
the strength of their affect and their motor force.
Quite tragical are the cases in which obscene
words abruptly burst forth into the virtuous con-
sciousness of a neurotic. Naturally this can hap-
pen only in the form of obsessive ideas, for they are
so completely foreign to the conscious emotional life
of the psycho-neurotic that he feels them to be mere-
ly absurd, senseless, pathological ideas, "foreign
bodies," and can in no way recognise them as a war-
rantable content of his vocabulary. If one were not
prepared by what has already been mentioned here,
one would be faced with an insoluble riddle in the
fact that obsessive ideas of obscene words, and es-
pecially of words denoting the most despised ex-
cretions and excretory organs in a coarse way, fre-
quently appear in men after the death of their fa-
ther, in men, in4eed, who adoringly loved and hon-
oured their father. Analysis then shews that on the
death, in addition to the frightful pain at the loss,
the unconscious triumph at being freed at last from
all constraint comes to expression, and the con-
tempt for the "tyrant" who has now become harm-
less displays itself in words that were most strictly
forbidden to the child. 11 I have observed a similar
case with a girl whose eldest sister became danger-
ously ill.
11 As associative links between the conceptions of death
and excrement one often finds the ideas concerning the de-
composition of the corpse.
On Obscene Words 153
An important support for my supposition that
obscene words remain "infantile" as the result of in-
hibited development, and on this account have an
abnormal motor and regressive character, would be
the ethnographic confirmation. Unfortunately I
have not sufficient experience on this point. What I
know of the life of the lower classes, and especially
of the gypsies, seems to indicate that among unculti-
vated people obscene words are perhaps more mark-
edly invested with pleasure, and do not differ so es-
sentially from the rest of the vocabulary, as com-
pared with the state of affairs among the culti-
vated.
Whether further observation will support or prove
incorrect the assumption of a specific infantile char-
acter of obscene verbal images, and of "primitive"
attributes resulting from a disturbance in develop-
ment, I think I can at least maintain after what
has been said that these highly affective images have
a significance in our mental life which has not up
to the present received corresponding attention.
CHAPTER V
ON THE PAET PLAYED BY HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE
PATHOGENESIS OF PARANOIA X
IN the summer of 1908 I had the opportunity of
opening up the problem of paranoia in the
course of conversation with Professor Freud, and we
arrived at certain tentative ideas, which for the main
part were developed by Professor Freud, while I con-
tributed to the final shaping of the train of thought
with detached suggestions and criticisms. We laid
down to begin with that the mechanism of projec-
tion, as explicated by Freud in the only case of
paranoia at that time analysed, is characteristic of
paranois in general. We assumed further that the
paranoiac mechanism stands midway between the
opposite mechanisms of neurosis and of dementia
praecox. The neurotic gets rid of the affects that
have become disagreeable to him by means of the
different forms of displacement (conversion, trans-
ference, substitution ) ; the patient suffering from de-
mentia praecox, on the other hand, detaches his in-
' Published in the Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Band III,
1912.
154
Homosexuality in Pathogenesis of Paranoia 155
tcrest from objects ~ and retracts it to his ego (au-
to-erotism, grandiose delusions).
The paranoiac also would make an attempt to
withdraw his participation (in external interests),
but it meets with only a limited success. Some of
the desires get happily retracted into the ego
grandiose delusions occur in every case of para-
noia but a greater part of the interest, varying in
amount, cannot disengage itself from its original ob-
ject, or else returns to it. This interest, however, has
become so incompatible with the ego that it gets ob-
jectified (with a reversal of affect, t. e. with a "neg-
ative sign in front") and thus cast out from the
ego. The tendency that has become intolerable, and
has been withdrawn from its object, in this way
returns from its love-object in the form of a per-
ception of its own negative. The feeling of love is
turned into the sensation of its opposite.
The expectation that further observation would
verify the correctness of these assumptions has been
fulfilled. The cases of paranoid dementia published
by Maeder in the last volume of the Jahrbuch con-
firm Freud's assumptions to a very considerable ex-
tent. Freud himself by further studies has been able
to confirm not only this leading formula of paranoia,
but also certain finer details that we presuppose in
Cp. Abraham, "Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der Hys-
teric und der Dementia praecox," Zentralbl. f. Nervenheilk. u.
Psych., Juli, 1908.
156 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
the psychical mechanism of the different kinds of
paranoia.
The aim of the present publication, however, is
not the opening up of the whole question of paranoia
(to which Professor Freud himself is devoting a
larger work 3 ), but only the communication of an
experiential fact which the analysis of several para-
noiacs has yielded, and which goes beyond the an-
ticipated ideas mentioned above.
It has become evident, namely, that t he paranoiac
mechanism is not set in action as a defence against
all possible attachments of the "sexual hunger,"
but, according to the observations made up to the
present, * directed only against the homosexual
choice of object.
Homosexuality played a strikingly great part in
the case of the paranoiac analysed long ago by
Freud, a part not adequately appreciated by him at
that time. 4 In Maeder's investigations into cases
Jahrb., Bd. III. Reprinted in Sammlung kl. Schr., 3e
Folge.
4 "When she was alone with the servant" she "had a sen-
sation in the lower part of the body, which made her think
that the maid then had an indecent thought." She had "hallu-
cinations of female nudities, especially of an exposed female
lap with hair, occasionally also of male genitals." "When-
ever she was in a woman's company she constantly got the
torturing sensations of seeing her indecently exposed, and
believed that in the same moment the woman had the same
sensation about her." "The first pictures of female laps came
a few seconds after she had in fact seen a number of un-
dressed women at the baths." "Everything became plain to
her as soon as her sister-in-law uttered something," etc.
(Freud, Sammlung kl. Schr., S. 124.)
Homosexriality in Pathogen-esis of Paranoia 157
of paranoid dementia also "undoubted homosexual
tendencies" 5 were discovered behind one patient's
delusions of persecution.
The observation of several cases, presently to be
related, seems to justify the surmise that in the
pathogenesis of paranoia, homosexuality plays not
a chance part, but the most important one, and that
paranoia is perhaps nothing else at all than dis-
guised homosexuality.
The first case occurred in the husband of my own
housekeeper, a well-built man of about thirty-eight,
whom I had occasion to observe exhaustively for sev-
eral months.
He and his wife (who could hardly be called
pretty), who had got married just before entering
my service, occupied a part of my flat consisting of
one room and the kitchen. 6 The husband worked
all day (he was an employee in the post-office),
came home punctually in the evening, and in the
first part of his time with me gave no grounds for
complaint. On the contrary, he impressed me by
his extraordinary diligence and his great politeness
to myself. He always found something in my rooms
to clean and embellish. I would come across him
"Jahrb., Bd. II, S. 237.
It is customary here in Budapest to get a reliable married
couple to look after one's residence.
158 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
late at night putting fresh polish on the doors or
floors, burnishing the top window-panes that could
hardly be reached, or arranging some ingenious nov-
elty in the bathroom. He was most desirous of giv-
ing me satisfaction, obeyed all my instructions with
military smartness and punctuality, but was ex-
tremely sensitive to any criticism on my part, for
which, it is true, he rarely gave any occasion.
One day the housekeeper sobbingly told me that
she lived very unhappily with her husband. He was
drinking a great deal latterly, came home late, and
constantly scolded and abused her without cause.
At first I did not want to interfere in this domestic
affair, but when I accidentally heard that he was
beating his wife (which fact the woman had con-
cealed from me for fear of losing her place), I spoke
to him seriously and insisted he should abstain from
alcohol and treat his wife well, all of which he tear-
fully promised me. When I offered to shake hands
with him I could not prevent his impetuously kiss-
ing my hand. I ascribed this at the time, however,
to his emotion and to my "paternal" attitude (al-
though I was younger than he).
After this scene peace prevailed in the house for a
time. A few weeks later, however, the same scenes
were repeated, and when I now looked at the man
more carefully I saw evident signs of chronic alco-
holism. On this I interrogated the woman and learnt
from her that she was constantly being accused by
Homosexuality m Pathogenesis of Paranoia 159
her husband of marital infidelity, without the slight-
est ground. The suspicion naturally occurred to me
at once that the husband was suffering from alco-
holic delusions of jealousy, the more so since I knew
the housekeeper to be a very respectable and modest
person. I managed once more to get the husband
to give up drinking, and to restore peace in the
house for a while.
The state of affairs, however, soon changed for the
worse. It became clear that we had to deal with a
case of alcoholic paranoia. The man neglected his
wife, and stayed in the public-house drinking till
midnight. On coming home he beat his wife, abused
her incessantly, and accused her of flirting with
every male patient who came to see me. I learnt
subsequently that he was even at this time jealous
also of me, but his wife, from a comprehensible anx-
iety, concealed this from me. I was naturally un-
able to keep the couple any longer, but I allowed the
woman, at her request, to retain her position until
the quarter was up.
It was now that I learnt all the details of these
domestic scenes. The husband, whom I called to
account, absolutely denied having beaten his wife,
although this had been confirmed by people who had
witnessed it. He maintained that his wife was a
lascivious woman, a sort of vampire that "sucked out
a man's force;" that he har 1 relations with her five
or six times every night, that this was never enough
160 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
for her, however, so that she committed adultery
with every possible man. During this explanation
the emotional scene described above was repeated;
he took possession again of my hand, and kissed it
amid tears. He said he had never known anyone
dearer or kinder than I.
As his case began to interest me from a psychia-
tric point of view also, I learnt from the woman
that the man had had sexual relations with her only
two or three times since they were married. Now
and then he would make preparations in this direc-
tion mostly a tergo and then push her away, de-
claring in abusive language ^that she was a whore,
and that she could do it with anyone she liked, but
not with him.
I began to play an increasingly important part
in his delusions. He wanted to force his wife, un-
der the threat of stabbing her, to confess she had
had sexual relations with me. Every morning when
I went out he burst into my bedroom, sniffed the
bed-clothes, and then beat his wife, asserting he had
recognised her odour in the bedding. He tore from
her a head-kerchief I had brought back for her from
a holiday, and stroked it several times a day; he
was not to be parted from a tobacco-pipe that I
had made him a present of. If I was in the water-
closet he listened all the time in the ante-room, then
related to his wife with obscene words what he had
heard, and asked her "if it pleased her." He then
Homosexuality m Pathogenesis of Paranoia 161
hurried into the closet immediately after me, to see
whether I had "properly rinsed everything away."
All this time he remained the most zealous servant
you could think of, and was exaggeratedly amiable
towards me. He turned to account my absence from
Budapest and without instructions repainted the
water-closet, even adorning the walls with coloured
sketches.
The fact that they had been discharged was kept
private from him for a time. When he heard of it he
became sad, abused and hit his wife, and threatened
that he would put her in the street and stab me,
"her darling." Even now he remained well-behaved
and devoted so far as I personally was concerned.
When I learned, however, that he was sleeping at
night with a well-ground kitchen knife at his side and
on one occasion seriously looked like forcing his way
into my bedroom, I felt I could not wait the two or
three days till their notice was up. The woman
notified the authorities, who took him to the insane
asylum after having him medically certified.
There is no doubt that this was a case of alcoholic
delusions of jealousy. The conspicuous feature of
homosexual transference to myself, however, allows
of the interpretation that this jealousy of men sig-
nified only the projection of his own erotic pleasure
in the male sex. Also, the disinclination for sexual
relations with his wife was probably not simply im-
potency, but was determined by his unconscious
162 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
homosexuality. The alcohol, which might well be
called a censure-poison, had evidently for the most
part (though not quite) robbed his homosexuality,
which had been spiritualised into friendliness, as-
siduity and complaisance, of its sublimations, and so
caused the crude homosexual erotism that thus came
to the surface intolerable as such to the conscious-
ness of a man of ethical high standing to be sim-
ply imputed to his wife. In my opinion the alcohol
played here only the part of an agent destroying
sublimation, through the effect of which the man's
true sexual constitution, namely the preference for
a member of the same sex, became evident.
It was only subsequently that I received a com-
plete confirmation of this. I learnt that he had been
married before, years ago. He lived only a short
time in peace with his first wife also, began to drink
soon after the wedding, and abused his wife, tor-
menting her with jealousy scenes, until she left him
and got a divorce.
In the interval between these two marriages he
was said to have been a temperate, reliable, and
steady man, and to have taken again to drink only
after the second marriage. Alcoholism was thus
not the deeper cause of the paranoia; it was rather
that in the insoluble conflict between his conscious
heterosexual and unconscious homosexual desires he
took to alcohol, which then by destroying the subli-
mations brought the homosexual erotism to the sur-
Homosexuality in Pathogenesis of Paranoia 163
face, his consciousness getting rid of this by way
of projection, of delusions of jealousy.
The destruction of the sublimation was not com-
plete. He was still able to let a part of his homo-
sexual tendency function in a spiritualised form, as
a faithful, compliant servant of his master, as *a
smart subordinate in his office, and as a competent
worker in both positions. Where the circumstances
made high claims on his capacity for sublimation,
however, for instance, in his occupation with the
bedroom and closet he was compelled to saddle his
wife with his desires, and by jealousy scenes to as-
sure himself that he was in love with her. The
boasting about his colossal potency in regard to
his wife was similarly a distortion of the facts that
served to calm his mind. 7
II
I shall cite as a second case that of a lady, still
young, who after living for years in moderate har-
* The one-sided agitation of temperance reformers tries to
veil the fact that in the large majority of cases alcoholism is
not the cause of neuroses, but a result of them, and a. ca-
lamitous one. Both individual and social alcoholism can be
cured only by the help of psycho-analysis, which discloses the
causes of the "flight into narcosis" and neutralises them. The
eradication of alcoholism only seemingly signifies an improve-
ment in hygiene. When alcohol is withdrawn, there remain at
the disposal of the psyche numerous other paths to the
"flight into disease." And when then psychoneurotics suffer
from anxiety-hysteria or dementia praecox instead of from
alcoholism, one regrets the enormous expenditure of energy
that has been applied against alcoholism, but in the wrong
place.
164 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
mony with her husband, and bearing him daughters,
began to suffer from delusions of jealousy not long
after giving birth to a son ; alcohol played no part
in her case. 8
She began to find everything in her husband sus-
picious. A cook and one chambermaid after another
were dismissed, and finally she got her way and had
only male servants in the house. Even that didn't
help. The man, who was everywhere regarded as a
model husband, and who assured me on his word of
honour that he had never been unfaithful to her,
could not go a step or write a line without being
watched, suspected, and even abused by his wife.
Curiously enough she was suspicious of her husband
only with either very young females, about twelve
or thirteen years old, or quite old, ugly ones, while
she was not jealous of society women, friends, or
good-class governesses, even when they were attrac-
tive or pretty.
Her conduct at home became more and more odd,
and her threats more dangerous, so that she had to
be taken to a sanatorium. (Before doing this I got
the patient to consult Professor Freud, who agreed
with my diagnosis and approved of psycho-analysis
being tried).
The patient was so remarkably distrustful and
perspicacious that it was not easy to establish a rap-
* I have briefly narrated the case in another connection :
see Chapter II.
Homosexuality m Pathogenesis of Parcmoia 165
port with her. I had to take the ground that I was
not quite convinced of her husband's innocence, and
in this way induced the otherwise inaccessible pa-
tient to part with the delusional ideas that she had
till then kept to herself.
Among these were pronounced delusions of gran-
deur and of connection. Between the lines of the
local newspaper were innumerable insinuations of
her supposed moral depravity, and of her ridiculous
position as a betrayed wife; the articles were writ-
ten by journalists at the orders of her enemies. Per-
sonalities of the highest standing (e. g, of the epis-
copal court) knew of these goings on, and the fact
that the royal manoeuvres took place every year just
in the neighbourhood of her home was not uncon-
nected with certain secret intentions of her enemies.
The enemies turned out in the course of further con-
versation to be the dismissed servants.
I then gradually learnt from her that it was
against her will, and only at her parents' wish, es-
pecially her father's, that she had looked favourably
on her husband's courtship. He seemed to her at
the time too common, too coarse. After the mar-
riage, however, she said she got used to him. A cu-
rious scene took place in the house after the birth
of the first daughter. The husband was supposed
to have been dissatisfied that she had not borne a
son, and she felt quite conscience-pricked about it
also; on this she began to doubt whether she had
166 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
done right to marry this man. At this time she
began to be jealous of an extra servant-girl, aged
thirteen and said to be very pretty. She was still
in bed after the confinement when she summoned the
little girl and made her kneel down and swear by her
father's life that the master had done nothing to
her. This oath calmed her at the time, and she
thought she might have made a mistake.
After a son was at last born, she felt she had ful-
filled her duty to her husband and was now free.
She began to behave discordantly. She became jeal-
ous of her husband again, and on the other hand
would behave towards men in a remarkable manner.
"Only with the eyes, however," she said, and if any-
one took the hints she gave, she always vigorously
rebuffed him.
This "harmless playfulness," on which her ene-
mies similarly put a false construction, soon dis-
appeared from view, however, behind the jealousy
scenes, which went from bad to worse.
In order to make her husband impotent as re-
gards other women, she got him to perform coitus
several times every night. Even so, when she left
the bedroom for a moment (to attend to bodily
needs) she locked the room behind her. She hurried
back at once, but if she found any disarrangement
of the bed-clothes she became suspicious that the
discharged cook, who might have got a key made,
had been with him in the interval.
Homosexuality in Pathogenesis of Paranoia 167
The patient, as we see, realised the sexual insa-
tiability that the alcoholic paranoiac mentioned
above had only invented and could not carry out.
(A woman can, to be sure, increase sexual rela-
tions at will, even without real pleasure, much more
easily than a man.) The sharp watching of the
state of the bed-clothes was also repeated here.
The patient's behaviour in the sanatorium was
full of contradictions. She coquetted with all the
men, but would not let any of them approach her.
On the other hand she made close friendships and en-
mities with all the female inhabitants of the house,
and her conversations with me turned for the most
part on these. She willingly took the luke-warm
baths prescribed for her, but used the opportunity
given by the bathing to collect detailed observations
on the shapes and figures of the other female pa-
tients. She described to me with every sign of dis-
gust and abhorrence the wrinkled abdomen of an
elderly patient who was very ill. As she narrated
her observations on prettier patients, however, the
lascivious expression of her face was unmistakable.
One day when she was alone with these younger ones
she got up a "calf exhibition;" she stated that she
won the first prize in the competition (narcissism).
I tried, with great circumspection, to learn some-
thing about the homosexual component of her sexual
development by asking her whether, like so many
young girls, she had been passionately fond of her
168 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
girl friends. She divined my intention immediately,
however, snubbed me severely, and maintained that
I wanted to talk her into all sorts of abominations.
I managed to calm her, whereupon she confessed to
me under a pledge of secrecy that when she was a
child she performed mutual masturbation for years
with a little girl, whom she had seduced. (The pa-
tient had only sisters, no brothers.) More than this,
indications of over-strong sexual fixations to the
mother and nurses could be inferred from the pa-
tient's communications, which were becoming more
and more scanty.
The comparative peacefulness of the patient was
for the first time seriously disturbed by her hus-
band's visit, and the delusions of jealousy flared up
anew. She accused her husband of having used her
absence to do all sorts of disgraceful things, and her
suspicion was particularly directed against the aged
house-porteress, who, as she had heard, had helped
in the house-cleaning. In sexual relations she be-
came more insatiable than ever. If her husband re-
fused this, she threatened to kill him, and on one
occasion actually threw a knife at him.
The slight traces of transference to the physi-
cian, which were present at the beginning, also gave
way in these stormy times to a more and more ve-
hement resistance, so that the prospects of the analy-
sis sank to nothing. We found ourselves compelled,
therefore, to provide for her in a more distant in-
Homo sexuality in Patho gene sis of Paranoia 169
stitution where she could be more strictly watched.
This case also of delusional jealousy only becomes
clear when we assume that it was a question of the
projection on to the husband of her pleasure in her
own sex. A girl who had grown up in almost ex-
clusively feminine surroundings, who as a child was
too strongly attached to the female nurses and ser-
vants and in addition to this had for years enjoyed
sexual relations with a girl comrade of her own
age, is suddenly forced into a marriage de conve-
nance with a "coarse man." She reconciles herself
to it, however, ana only once shews indignation
against an especially crude piece of unkindness on
her husband's part, by letting her desires turn to-
wards her childhood ideal (a little servant girl).
The attempt fails, she cannot endure the homosex-
uality any longer, and has to project it onto her
husband. That was the first, temporary attack of
jealousy. Penally, when she had done her "duty"
and borne her husband the son he demanded, she felt
herself free. The homosexuality that had been kept
in bounds until then takes stormy possession in a
crude erotic way of all the objects that offer no pos-
sibility for sublimation (quite young girls, old
women and servants), though all this erotism, with
the exception of the cases where she can hide it un-
der the mask of harmless play, is imputed to the hus-
band. In order to support herself in this lie, the
patient is compelled to shew increased coquetry to-
170 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
wards the male sex, to whom she had become pretty
indifferent, and indeed to demean herself like a
nymphomaniac.
Ill
One day I was asked by a lawyer to examine and
declare sane one of his clients, the recorder of the
town X, who was being unjustly persecuted by his
compatriots. Soon after the man in question an-
nounced himself. It made me suspicious to begin
with that he handed me a mass of newspaper cut-
tings, documents and pamphlets, numbered and
sorted in the most exemplary order, all of which
he had written himself. A glance at the papers con-
vinced me that he was a paranoiac with delusions
of persecution. I made an appointment to examine
him on the next day, but the perusing of his papers
alone shewed me the homosexual root of his par-
anoia.
His disputes had begun with his writing to a cap-
tain that his vis-a-vis, an officer of the . . . regi-
ment, "shaved himself at the window, partly in his
shirt, with a bare chest." "In the second place he
lets his gloves dry at the window on a line, as I have
seen done in small Italian villages." The patient
asked the captain "to effect a redress of this nui-
sance." He replied to the captain's disclaimer by
attacking him. Then followed a notification to the
Homosexuality in Pathogenesis of Paranoia 171
colonel, in which he begins to speak of the "drawers"
of the man opposite ; he complains again also of the
gloves. In printing of an enormous size he empha-
sises the fact that the matter would be indifferent to
him if it were not that he wanted to let his sister
occupy the rooms giving on to the street. "I be-
lieved I was fulfilling a chivalrous duty to the lady."
At the same time an extreme sensitiveness and every
sign of megalomania is noticeable in the papers. In
the later ones the drawers get mentioned oftener and
oftener. The expression "protection of ladies," un-
derlined, frequently appears.
In a subsequent application he adds that he had
forgotten to mention that the lieutenant was accus-
tomed to dress himself in the evening at the bright-
ly-lit window without pulling down the blinds.
"That would make no difference to me" (this in
small letters) : "In the name of a lady, however, I
must beg for protection against such a sight."
Then came memorials to the commander-in-chief,
to the ministry of war, to the cabinet, etc., and in all
of them the words in small print, "shirt, drawers,
naked chest," etc., and only these had been sub-
sequently underlined in red. (The patient was the
owner of a newspaper, and could get everything
printed according to his heart's desire.)
From a document of the commander-in-chief it
appeared that the patient's father and brother had
been insane and had ended in suicide. The father
Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
was, as the patient expressed it, a "country lawyer
and orator" (the patient was also a lawyer), the
brother was a lieutenant. It was further to be gath-
ered that the patient was a follower of Kneipp ; 9
indeed he appeared once at the Supreme Court of
Justice with bare feet in sandals, for which he was
reprimanded ( exhibitionism) .
Then he transferred the affair on to the code of
honour basis, 10 but always slipped out in the critical
moment, appealing to some paragraph or other in
the duelling code, of which he was complete master.
Here the half-deliberate exaggeration crept in that
he spoke as if his letter had been an insult to the
officer by a deed. In other places he said (in huge
print) that he had cited facts to the officer in the
most considerate way possible. He ascribes to the
military authorities the opinion of himself that he
was "an old woman, who has nothing else to do but
discover objects of her curiosity." He quoted in-
numerable examples of how officers abroad were
punished for insulting a girl in the street. He de-
manded protection for defenceless women in general
against brutal assaults, etc. In one of his applica-
tions he complained that the above-mentioned cap-
* (Kneipp was the founder of a pseudo-religious sect, one
of whose tenets was that the members should wear the same
foot-gear as that worn in the time of Christ. Transl.)
10 (This refers to the custom still prevailing in Hungary, and
elsewhere, of regarding certain matters as affairs of honour in-
volving the necessity of a duel if suitable satisfaction be not
provided. Transl.)
Homosexuality in Pathogenesis of Paranoia 178
tain had "angrily and ostentatiously turned his face
away from him."
The number of law-suits in which he was involved
increased like an avalanche. What annoyed him
most was that the military authorities ignored his
memorials. Civilians he dragged before the civil
courts ; soon he transferred the matter to the politi-
cal sphere, egged on in his newspaper the military
and municipal authorities against each other, and
exploited the "Pan-Germans" against the Hungarian
civil authorities. In a short time about a hundred
"comrades" came forward, who applauded him both
publicly and by letter.
Then followed a curious episode. One day he
complained to the new colonel that another officer
had called "For shame, you miserable Saxon !" after
his sister in the street. The sister was supposed to
confirm this in a letter, which was certainly written
by the patient himself.
He then turned to newspaper articles, in which he
set difficult riddles with "dangerous'* places indi-
cated with dots. He mentioned, for instance, a
French proverb that in German ran "das L. . . T.
. ". I had considerable trouble to discover that
this signified "Lacherliche totet." n
A NEW COMPLAINT AGAINST THE CAPTAIN (Nr I)
mentioned "grimaces, gestures, movements, challeng-
ing glances.'* He wouldn't have bothered about it,
11 "Ridicule kills."
174 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
but it concerned a lady. The officer was like a boy.
He and his sister would make the matter plain to him
regardless of everything. This was followed by new
attacks on honour with retreat of the patient, who
with legal niceties appealed to the duelling code.
Then follow threatening letters in which he, in his
sister's name, talks a lot about "self-help;" long
explanations ; a hundred quotations about duelling,
etc. : for instance, "Not bullets or swords is it that
kill, but the seconds." The words "man," "men,"
"manly," recur again and again. He writes hymns
of praise to himself, and gets fellow-citizens to sign
them. In one place he ironically states that perhaps
one would like him, in the service of love, "to kiss
the hands and feet of those gentlemen."
Now comes the fight with the municipal authori-
ties, to whom the military had applied. Forty-two
municipal councilmen demanded that he be punished.
He picked out one of these, named Dahinten, and
bitterly persecuted him in public. Encouraged by
the cries of approval and the backing up of a Vienna
yellow journal, he canvassed for the position of vice-
Lord Lieutenant of a county and blamed everyone
at the injustice of his not getting this.
Then he wanted to restore the good relations be-
tween the civil and military authorities, always un-
derlining these words.
Finally the matter reached a superior civil au-
thority, who got the patient's mental state examined
Homosexuality in Pathogenesis of Paranoia 175
into. He came to me in the hope I would declare
him to be sane.
Previous experiences with paranoiacs made it easy
for me to infer from these facts alone the extraordi-
narily important part played by homosexuality in
this case. The appearance of the delusion of perse-
cution, perhaps long hidden, was evoked by the sight
of a half-naked officer, whose shirt, drawers, and
gloves also seem to have made a great impression
on the patient. (Let me recall the part played by
the bed-clothes in the two cases mentioned above.)
No female person was ever accused or complained of,
he constantly fought and wrangled only with men,
for the most part officers or high dignitaries, supe-
riors. I interpret this as projection of his own
homosexual delight in those persons, the affect being
preceded by a negative sign. His desires, which
have been cast out from the ego, return to his con-
sciousness as the perception of the persecutory
tendency on the part of the objects that uncon-
sciously please him. He seeks until he has convinced
himself that he is hated. He can now indulge his
own homosexuality in the form of hate, and at the
same time hide from himself. The preference for
being persecuted by officers and officials was prob-
ably conditioned by the fact of his father having been
an official and his brother an officer; I surmise that
these were the original, infantile objects of his homo-
sexual phantasies,
176 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
The false, magnified potency of the alcoholic delu-
sional patient and the hypocritical nymphomania of
the jealous paranoiac correspond with the exagger-
ated chivalry here and with the delicate feeling that
he demands from men towards women. I have found
this with most manifest homosexual men. This high
esteem is one reason why homosexuals, like many
psychically impotent men, are unable to take a
woman as an object of love. Homosexuals esteem
women, but love men. Thus also our paranoiac, only
that his love has been transformed through reversal
of affect into persecutory delusion and hate.
The fact that he put his sister in the foreground
as the insulted person was probably also in part con-
ditioned by passive-homosexual phantasies in which
he identifies himself with this sister. His complaint
that he was regarded as an old woman, who was seek-
ing for the objects of her curiosity in nude officers
and their underlinen, speaks in favour of this view.
When, therefore, he continually complains of insults
on the part of the men who persecute him, he means
unconsciously sexual assaults of which he would like
to be the object himself.
It is neat to see in this case how the laboriously
built up social sublimations of homosexuality col-
lapse, probably under the pressure from the over-
growth of infantile phantasies, perhaps also as a
result of other exciting causes which are unknown to
me, and how the childish-perverse basis of these spir-
Homosexuality m Pathogenesis of Paranoia 177
itualisations (e. g. peeping mania, exhibitionism)
breaks through in the delusions.
As a control to my conception of this case I noted
the patient's reactions to a hundred stimulus-words
of Jung's scheme, and analysed the associations.
The instructive part of this analysis is that it yielded
meagre results. The paranoiac so thoroughly
gets rid of the affects disturbing him that he believes
they do not concern him, and that is why he relates
in his actions and speech everything that the hys-
teric from fear of his conscience represses deeply.
It is further striking, and evidently characteristic of
true paranoia, that of Jung's "complex-signs" dis-
turbed reproduction is hardly met with. The pa-
tient recalls excellently even the reactions to the
"critical" stimulus-words that touch the complexes.
Projection guards the paranoiac so well from affects
that he has no need of the hysterical amnesia. Near-
ness of a complex seems to betray itself here rather
through talkativeness and personal relation. The
reactions are in any case throughout egocentric.
Sound and rime reactions are very frequent, as are
witty ones. So much for the form. I shall narrate
here for the sake of example, some individual reac-
tions, together with the analysis relating to them.
S. W. 12 Cooking. R. cook. A. Cooking makes
women quarrelsome. A woman gets inflamed, heated,
at the fire. My mother was also heated. I wouldn't
11 S. W.=Stimulus-word. R.=Reaction. A.=Analysis,
178 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
let her cook to-day. A man can stand much more.
Goethe says, to be sure : "Seven men would not stand
what one woman can." My mother had six children.
A man "would be more suitable for bearing children.
(In this reaction we find the forbearance towards
women and the over-estimation of men, with a phan-
tasy: for a man to bear children.)
S. W. River. R. I should like to bathe in a
river. A. I am passionately fond of bathing; I
bathed in the river with my cousin every day until
October. He shot himself, on account of over-strain.
I avoid over-strain, and that's why I don't have
much to do with women. (Attempt to explain on
hygienic grounds his sexual avoidance of women.
The cousin was an officer.)
S. W. Salt. R. Reminds me of the salt of mar-
riage. A. I am an enemy of married life. In it
there is daily "friction." (He perhaps means also
the compulsion to coitus in marriage.)
S. W. Writing. R. I like the writing of the
Berlin artist who has died, the founder of the Kun-
stgewerbe . . . Eckmann was his name. A. Strik-
ing, enormously large handwriting like his pleases
me. Like that of my father's. Mine resembles my
father's, but it is not so pretty. My letters, how-
ever, are also large ones. (Esteem for his father
and his physical superiority expresses itself, as so
often, in the tendency to copy his handwriting.
Homosexuality m Pathogenesis of Paranoia 179
Pleasure in the size of the letters may also be taken
symbolically.)
S. W. Cork. R. "Brings out the popping effect
of champagne." A. Nature hasn't given women
any of this. Hence their fading. My father, how-
ever, was handsome even as an old man.
S. W. Hitting. R. That is what my opponents
deserve, to put it mildly. A. What I should best
like would be to turn a hose on them till they were
soaking. That would be fine. Fire-brigades inter-
ested me even in childhood. (Fire-hose is one of the
universal symbols for the male organ.)
S. W. Pure. R. To the pure all things are pure.
A. I was always a cleanly child, and was praised
for this by my uncle. My elder brother was dirty.
( Exaggerated or precocious intolerance for dirt and
disorder on a child's part is a symptom of homosex-
ual fixation Sadger).
IV
The fourth case I wish briefly to relate was not
one of pure paranoia, but one of dementia praecox
with marked paranoiac aspects.
It concerned a country teacher, still young, who
so his rather elderly-looking wife told me had
been tormented for about a year with thoughts of
suicide, believed himself to be persecuted and accused
by everyone, and brooded alone for hours at a time.
180 Contribution* to Psycho-Analysis
I found the patient, who was in bed, awake, but
with his head hidden away under the clothes. I had
hardly exchanged a few words with him when he
asked me if as a doctor I had to keep my patient's
secrets. After I affirmed this he told me, amidst
signs of intense dread, that he had three times per-
formed cunnilingus with his wife. He knew that
humanity had condemned him to death for this crime,
that his hands and feet would be chopped off, his
nose would decompose, and his eyes be plucked out.
He shewed me a defective place in the ceiling, which,
however, had been walled up, through which they
must have watched his crime. His greatest enemy,
the school-director, was informed of everything by
means of complicated mirrors and electro-magnetic
apparatus. Through his perverse deed he had be-
come a woman, for a man performed coitus with his
penis, not with his mouth. They would cut off his
penis and testicles, or else his whole "Kiirbiskopf"
(literally block-head, but kiirbis is also a vulgar
Hungarian expression for testicles).
I happened to touch my nose, and he said "Yes,
my nose is decomposing, you want to say." I said
on entering the room "Are you Herr Kugler?"
Coming back to this he explained : "The whole story
is told in my name; I am Die Kugel-er (= Kugl-
er), . e. a die-er t a mau-woman. 13 The d'or of the
" (Die and er are German for she and he respectively.
TransL)
Homosexuality in Pathogenesis of Paranoia 181
Christian name Sandor signified to him gold (French
or gold), . ., he was made sexless. 14 On one occa-
sion he wanted to jump out of the window, but the
word "Hunyad" occurred to him ("huny" is Hun-
garian for to shut, "ad" for to give) *. e. he is clos-
ing his eyes (he dies), so that his wife may give her-
self to another (sexually). So that no one should
think this of him he stayed alive. They might even
think when he was alive that he wanted to shut an
eye if his wife "gave" herself to another.
He was filled with a terrible sense of guilt cm ac-
count of his perverse act. Such perversity had al-
ways been foreign to him, and now also he abhors it.
His enemy must have caused it, perhaps through sug-
gestion.
On closely questioning him I learnt that he had
sacrificed himself for his director ("A handsome, im-
posing man") ; the latter was also very pleased with
him and often said, "I could do nothing without you ;
you are my right hand." (This reminds one of the
"better half.") For the past five years the direc-
tor had tormented him, disturbing him with docu-
ments when he was most deeply engrossed at his
work in explaining a poem to the class, etc.
At the question "Can you speak German" (tud
nemetiil in Hungarian) he dissected and translated
the word nemetiil (=German) into the syllables:
14 (Gold in German happens to be of the neuter gender.
Transl.)
182 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
nem = nimm (German for take)
et = und (German for and)
ill = sitz (German for seat) (ill is Hungarian
for to sit),
. e. I meant by my question that he should take his
penis in his hand, and, as a punishment for this, sit
(be imprisoned in a hole). By this he expressly
meant his own penis, which according to his enemies'
accusation he wanted to insert into another hole,
i. e. other strange women.
He swore that he adored his wife. His father had
been a poor man-servant (this was true) and very
stern with him. In student days he constantly sat at
home and read poetry aloud to his mother. His
mother had always been very kind to him.
We have here to do with a man who had happily
sublimated his homosexuality for a long time, but
who since the disappointment with the previously
adored director hated all men, and in order to find
reason for this hate had to explicate every expres-
sion, every gesture, every word, in terms of the wish
to be persecuted. He soon got to hate me also:
every one of my words and gestures he explained in a
hostile way, and dissected, translated, and distorted
every word until it was turned into a hostile insinua-
tion.
The patient's mother told me her son had always
been a good child. Instead of playing with other
children, he read aloud books, especially poetry, to
Homosexuality m Pathogenesis of Paranoia 183
his mother, and explained to her their contents. The
father was a simple workman, and was sometimes
rather harsh with the boy, whom he often annoyed
by disturbing the reading. 15
There is no doubt that the patient thought very
little of his father, to whom he was intellectually
superior, and longed for a more imposing one. This
he found later in the person of the school-director,
his superior, whom he served for years with tireless
zeal, but who did not satisfy the patient's expecta-
tions (doubtless too high). He wanted now to give
his love back to his wife, but in the meantime, how-
.ever, she had become for him a "neutral quantity."
The heterosexual exaggeration and the cunnilingus
might have veiled his eyes to the lack of desire for his
wife, but the longing for the male sex did not cease ;
it was only cast out from the ego-consciousness and
returned to this as a projection with a negative pre-
fix; he became a persecuted being.
* * * * *
In addition to those here narrated I have made an
"analytic anamnesis" with three other paranoiacs. 16
In each of these projected homosexual desires played
the most important part, but as I learnt nothing
"Hence the traumatic effect of the later disturbing of his
lecture by the director.
M One with delusions of jealousy and two querulants. One
of the latter, an engineer, introduced himself to me with the
complaint, "certain men in some unknown way sucked the
masculine power from his genitals."
184 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
essentially new from these cases I did not make any
exact notes of them.
The histories here published, however, justify the
surmise that with paranoia it is essentially a question
of the re-occupation of homosexual pleasurable ob-
jects with unsublimated "sexual hunger," against
which the ego defends itself by help of the projection
mechanism.
The establishment of this process would naturally
bring us face to face with a larger problem, that of
the "choice of neurosis" (Freud) ; with the question,
namely, what conditions have to be fulfilled for the
normal preponderance of heterosexuality, a homo-
sexual neurosis, or paranoia to proceed from the in-
fantile bisexuality, or ambisexuality. 17
" I suggest that the term ambisexuality be used in psychology
instead of the expression "bisexual predisposition." This would
connote that we understand by this predisposition, not the
presence of male and female material in the organism (Fliess),
nor of male and female sex hunger in the mind, but the child's
psychical capacity for bestowing his erotism, originally object-
less, on either the male or the female sex, or on both.
CHAPTER VI
ON ONANISM l
APART of the neurotic disturbances caused by
onanism is certainly of a purely psychical
nature and can be traced to the apprehension that,
in the earliest years of childhood (at the time of
infantile masturbation), had been brought into an
indissoluble associative connection with the idea of
self -gratification (fear of castration with boys, fear
of having the hands cut off with girls). A great
many cases of hysteria and obsessional neurosis
prove in the analysis to be the psychical result of
this infantile apprehension, which on the awaking
of object-love becomes accompanied with appre-
hension of incestuous onanistic phantasies. The
adult dread of masturbation is thus composed of
infantile (castration-) dread together with juvenile
(incest-) dread, and the symptoms resulting from
the conversion and substitution of this dread may
be removed by means of analysis.
I have no doubt, however, that onanism is also able
1 Contribution to the Symposium on Onanism held by the
Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society. Published in the Diskus-
sionen der Vereinigung, Heft II. 1912.
185
186 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
directly to evoke certain nervous and psychical dis-
turbances, although it cannot be pointed out too
often that this significance of onanisra is as a rule
much less than that of psychoneurotic symptoms
caused by rough frightening and repression.
In a series of cases in which the analysis had made
conscious the dread of castration- and incest-
thoughts, and had thereby removed psychoneurotic
symptoms, in which, however, abstinence from onan-
ism was not total even during and after the treat-
ment, the patients shewed on the day following mas-
turbation a typical disturbance in their psychical
and somatic condition which I will term One-Day-
Neurasthenia. The chief complaints of the patients
were: marked fatigability and leaden weight in the
legs, especially on getting up in the morning; in-
somnia or disturbed sleep ; over-sensitiveness to light
and sound stimuli (sometimes definite sensations of
pain in the eye and ear) ; gastric disturbances ;
paraesthesias in the lumbar region, and sensitive-
ness to pressure along the nerves. In the psychical
sphere: great emotional irritability; ill-humour and
fault-finding; incapacity or diminished capacity for
concentration (aprosexia). These disturbances
lasted the whole forenoon, gradually receded in the
early hours of the afternoon, and only towards eve-
ning was there complete restoration of the bodily
state, with calm in the sphere of the emotions and re-
covery of full intellectual capacity.
On Onanism 187
I wish expressly to remark that these symptoms
did not coincide with any relapse in, or worsening of,
the psychoneurotic symptoms, and that I did not
manage in a single case to reach these symptoms psy-
cho-analytically or to influence them in this way.
Honesty, therefore, demands that psychological
speculations should be disregarded here, and that the
symptoms described be recognised as physiological
results of onanism.
This observation supports, so I think, Freud's
views regarding the genesis of neurasthenia. The
masturbatory actual-neurosis may be conceived as a
becoming chronic, a summation, of the symptoms of
the onanistic one-day neurasthenias.
Many observations tell in favour of the conclu-
sion that masturbatory activity is really able to
bring about physiological effects that do not per-
tain to the normal act of coitus, and theoretical con-
siderations are not in disaccord with it.
There are men who have frequent sexual inter-
course with their wives, in spite of a diminution in
"sexual hunger," but who replace in their imagina-
tion the person of their wife by another, and, there-
fore, so to speak, perform onanism per vaginam.
When such men occasionally have sexual relations
with someone else who gives them complete satisfac-
tion, they remark a very great difference between
their state after the coitus that was helped by phan-
tasy and after the coitus that gave satisfaction in
188 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
itself. If the other person fulfilled the conditions of
their sexual hunger, they felt invigorated after the
act, enjoyed a short sleep, and on both the same and
the next day were unusually competent and efficient.
After the onanistic coitus, however, there surely
followed a one-day neurasthenia, with all the symp-
toms described above. Especially typical in such
cases was the occurrence, immediately after the in-
tercourse, of pain in the eyes when light fell on
them, weight in the legs, and apart from the psy-
chical irritability a pronounced hyperaesthesia of
the skin, especially sensitiveness to tickling. On the
ground of the accompanying feelings of heat and
pulsation I interpret the insomnia as the result of
vasomotor excitability.
Theoretical considerations also yield no sound ob-
jection to the supposition that normal coitus and
masturbation are processes that are to be estimated
differently not only psychologically, but also physio-
logically. Whether the onanism is performed by
rubbing with the hand or through friction of the
member against the vagina of a non-satisfying sex-
ual object two processes are essentially altered in
comparison with normal intercourse. With onanism
the normal fore-pleasure is absent, whereas the share
taken by the phantasy is enormously increased.
Now I do not believe that fore-pleasure is a purely
psychological process. When a satisfying sexual
object is gazed at, touched, kissed, embraced, the op-
On nanism 189
tic, tactile, oral, and muscular erogenous zones are
actively excited, and they automatically pass s>ver a
part of this excitation to the genital zone ; the proc-
ess takes place to begin with in the sense organs, or
sensorial centres, and the phantasy is only second-
arily drawn into sympathetic enjoyment. With
onanism, however, all the sense organs are silent, and
the conscious phantasy, together with the genital
stimulation, have to procure the whole sum of exci-
tation. The forcible retaining of a picture, often
imagined with hallucinatory sharpness, during a
sexual act that normally is almost unconscious is no
slight task ; it is certainly great enough to explain a
resulting fatigability of the attention.
The excitability of the sense organs after onanism
(and in neurasthenia) is not so easily explained. Too
little is known for this purpose of the nervous proc-
esses in normal coitus. Through the stimulation of
the erogenous zones in coitus a state of preparedness
of the genital organ is aroused in the first place; in
the friction that succeeds, the genito-spinal reflex
then plays the chief part ; it ends in a summation of
genital stimuli, and finally synchronously with
ejaculation in an explosive radiation of the excita-
tion over the whole body. I surmise that the sensual
pleasure, which, like all common feelings, cannot be
localised, arises through the genital stimulation
(when it has accumulated enough or reached a cer-
tain tension) explosively radiating beyond the spinal
190 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
centre into the whole sphere of feeling, thus into the
cutaneous and sensorial centres as well. If this is
the case, it is probably not a matter of indifference
whether the wave of lust finds a sphere of feeling
that is prepared by fore-pleasure, or one that is un-
excited and, so to speak, cold. It is therefore very
far from obvious that the nervous processes in coitus
and masturbation should be physiologically identical,
and indeed the considerations just mentioned even
give a hint of the direction in which one would have
to look for the causes of the vasomotor, sensory, sen-
sorial, and psychical over-stimulation that remains
after onanism. It is possible that the wave of lust
normally dies away altogether, but that with mas-
turbation a part of the excitation cannot reach a
proper level; this amount of excitation remaining
over would explain the one-day neurasthenia per-
haps neurasthenia altogether. 2
The discoveries of Fliess concerning the relations
between nose and genitalia should also not be forgot-
ten. The vasomotor over-excitation in masturbation
can cause chronic disturbances in the erectile tissue
of the nasal mucous membrane, which may then lead
to the most diverse forms of neuralgia and func-
tional disturbances. In some of my cases of mas-
* "One-Day Neurasthenia" sometimes happens even after quite
normal coitus, e. g. when as an exception the intercourse takes
place in the forenoon, when the sexual hunger is usually less.
The sexual hunger increases in the late hours of the afternoon,
a fact that certainly is not without bearing on the evening im-
provement in the neurasthenic's condition.
On Onanism 191
turbatory Neurasthenia the patient's condition per-
ceptibly improved after cauterisation of the genital
points in the nose. Extensive investigations will
have to be undertaken on this matter.
Whereas in the preceding remarks I wanted to
warn against regarding the results of masturbation
exclusively from the psychological point of view, I
fear that in the question of ejaculatio praecox it is
the opposite mistake that is made. To judge from
my experience, precocious emission of semen often
happens with people to whom coitus is for one reason
or another disagreeable, who thus have an interest
in finishing the business as quickly as possible. Now
we know that onanists warped by their phantasy
are only too soon dissatisfied with their sexual
object, and it is to be supposed that unconsciously
they would like to shorten the act. By these re-
marks I do not mean to say that local causes
(changes around the ductus ejaculatorii) are in no
case to be held responsible for the ejaculatio praecox.
I only wish to add a remark about the genesis
of the tooth-pulling symbolism of onanism in dreams
and neuroses. We all know that tooth-pulling in
dreams symbolises onanism. Freud and Rank have
shewn this with irrefragable examples and have also
drawn attention to colloquial German, which pro-
fesses the same symbolism. The same symbol, how-
ever, is very often met with among Hungarians who
certainly did not know of those German expressions,
192 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
and yet the Hungarian language has no similar syno-
nym for masturbation. On the other hand the sym-
bolic identification of tooth-pulling and castration
could in all the cases be made probable through
analysis. Dreams use tooth-pulling as a symbol for
castration, i. e. the punishment in the place of the
onanism.
In the formation of this symbol of onanism apart
from the external similarity of tooth and penis,
tooth-pulling and cutting off a penis a certain tem-
poral factor may not be without significance. Cas-
tration and tooth-pulling (falling out of the teeth)
are the first operative interventions with the possi-
bility of which the child is seriously threatened. It
is then not hard for the child to repress the more dis-
agreeable of the two interventions (castration) out
of the phantasy, and on the other hand to empha-
sise symbolically the tooth-pulling that resembles it.
This is probably the way in which sexual symbolism
altogether has come about.
There exists, by the way, even a tooth-neurosis of
its own (excessive dread of anything being done to
the teeth, e. g. by a dentist; continual boring and
probing into the cavities of hollow teeth; obsessions
concerned the teeth, etc.). In the analysis this neu-
rosis proves to be a derivative of onanism, or fear of
castration.
CHAPTER VII
TRANSITORY SYMPTOM-CONSTRUCTIONS DURING THE
ANALYSIS l
(Transitory Conversion, Substitution, Illusion, Hal-
lucination, "Character-Regression," and "Expres-
sion-Displacement"}
IT is in the transference that the physician, as well
as the patient, receives the really convincing im-
pressions as to the correctness of the analytical ex-
planation of symptoms. So long as the psychical
material afforded through free association is the
only proof that the patient has of the correctness of
the analytical explanations, they may seem to him
remarkable, surprising, even illuminating; he still
does not attain a conviction of their indubitable cor-
rectness, the feeling that they are the only explana-
tions possible, however honestly he may try to be-
come convinced, or even if he forces conviction on
himself with all his strength. It definitely looks as
if one could never reach any real convictions at all
1 Published in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, Jahrd. II,
1912.
193
194 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
through logical insight alone ; 2 one needs to have
lived through an affective experience, to have so to
speak felt it on one's own body, in order to gain
that degree of certain insight which deserves the
name of "conviction." The physician also who has
only learned analysis from books, without having
submitted his own mind to a thorough analysis and
gathered practical experience with patients, cannot
convince himself of the truth of its results; at the
most he gains a more or less high degree of confi-
dence, which may at times closely approach convic-
tion, but behind which there always still lurks a sup-
pressed doubt.
I wish here to bring forward a number of symp-
toms that I have seen arise with my patients during
the treatment and pass away through analysis, which
contributed in converting into certainty my impres-
sion of the truth of the Freudian mechanisms, and
aroused or strengthened the patients' confidence in
the matter.
Free association and the analytic scrutinising of
the incoming thoughts is not infrequently inter-
rupted in hysterics by the abrupt appearance of so-
matic phenomena of a sensory or motor nature. One
might at first sight be inclined to regard these con-
ditions as disagreeable disturbances of the analytic
work, and to treat them accordingly. If, however,
1 (The author is evidently speaking of psychological truths,
not of physical ones. Transl.)
Symptom-Constructions During Analysis 195
one takes really seriously the principle of everything
that happens being strictly determined, one has to
seek an explanation for these phenomena also. If
one makes up one's mind to do so, and thus submits
these symptoms also to analysis, it becomes plain
that they really are representations, in symptom
form, of unconscious feeling and thought-excitations
which the analysis has stirred up from their inactiv-
ity (state of rest, equilibrium) and brought near
to the threshold of consciousness, but which before
becoming quite conscious in the last moment, so to
speak have been forced back again on account of
their painful character (to consciousness), whereby
their sum of excitation, which can no longer be quite
suppressed, becomes transformed into the production
of somatic symptoms. A symptom that has been
brought about in this way does not only represent
a certain sum of excitation, but it proves to be
determined in a qualitative manner also. For if at-
tention be directed to the nature of the symptom, to
the kind of motor or sensory state of stimulation or
of paralysis, to the organ in which it occurs, to the
occurrences and thoughts that immediately preceded
the formation of the symptom, and an effort be made
to discover its meaning, this somatic symptom is
shewn to be a symbolic expression for an unconscious
thought- or emotion-excitation that has been stimu-
lated through the analysis. If one now translates
the symptom for the patient from symbolic to con-
196 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
ceptual language, it may happen, even when he had
no idea of this mechanism beforehand, that he at
once declares with great astonishment that the sen-
sory or motor state of stimulation or paralysis has
disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Obser-
vation of the patient shews unmistakably that the
symptom only ceases when the patient has recognised
our explanation to be the correct one, not when he
has merely understood it. In so doing the patient
very often betrays the fact of being "detected"
through smiling, laughing, blushing, or some other
sign of embarrassment; not infrequently he himself
confirms the correctness of our surmise or brings
at once memories of his past that strengthen our
supposition.
I had to interpret one of the dreams of an hys-
terical patient as a wish-phantasy; I told her that
this dream betrayed her dissatisfaction with her sit-
uation, her desire for a better educated and more
agreeable husband in a more distinguished position,
and especially the wish for more beautiful clothes.
At this moment the patient's attention was deflected
from the analysis by the sudden onset of toothache.
She begged me to give her something to ease the pain,
or at least to get her a glass of water. Instead of
doing so, I explained to the patient that by the
toothache she was perhaps only expressing in a meta-
phorical way the Hungarian saying "My tooth is
Symptom-Constructions During Analysis 197
aching for these good things." 3 I said this not at
all in a confident tone, nor had she any idea that
I expected the pain to cease after the communica-
tion. Yet, quite spontaneously and very astonished,
she declared that the toothache had suddenly ceased.
Subsequent questioning of the patient established
the fact that she had striven to blind herself to the
trying situation in which she found herself on marry-
ing beneath her station. The interpretation of the
dream disclosed her unfulfilled wishes in such a man-
ner that she could scarcely escape its truth. She
managed nevertheless in the last moment to let the
"unpleasantness-censor" prevail, to drive the recog-
nition of my interpretation into the sphere of bodily
feeling by means of the association-bridge "My
tooth aches for it," and thus to transform into
toothache the painful insight.
The unconscious utilisation of this current expres-
sion was perhaps the final, but not the only, condition
of the symptom-formation. Psychical space, just as
physical space, has several dimensions, so that the
site of a point in it can only be determined exactly
by means of several coordinate axes. Put into psy-
cho-analytical language, that is: every symptom is
over-determined. Ever since childhood the patient in
question had fought against an unusually strong
' (Compare the English expression: "My mouth waters for,
etc." Transl.)
198 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
inclination to masturbation, and with masturbators
the teeth have a special symbolic significance. 4 The
factor of bodily predisposition also has always to be
considered in cases of this sort.
On another occasion the same patient brought her
repressed infantile-erotic phantasies to expression
in the form of a declaration of love addressed to the
physician, and received by way of reply instead of
the hoped-for response an explanation of the trans-
ference character of this access of feeling. There-
upon she immediately felt a curious paraesthesia in
the mucous membrane of the tongue, crying out:
"My tongue suddenly feels as though it were scalded
(abgebriiht)" At first she rejected my explanation
that with the word "abgebruht" she was only ex-
love advances, but the sudden and startling disap-
pearance of the paraesthesia after my explanation
gave her food for thought, and she presently admit-
ted that I had been right in my surmise. In this
case also the preference for the tongue as the site of
symptom-formation was determined by several con-
ditions, the analysis of which made possible the pene-
tration into the deeper layers of the unconscious
complexes.
It is very common indeed for patients to express a
suddenly appearing mental suffering by transitory
cardiac pains, the feeling of bitterness by a bitter
feeling in the tongue, and care by a sudden sense of
4 (Se Ch. VI, p. 163. Transl.)
Symptom-Constructions During Analysis 199
pressure on the head. One neurotic used to utter his
aggressive intentions directed against me (more cor-
rectly: against his father) in the form of sensations
which he felt on those parts of the body where his
unconscious wanted to injure me: the feeling as
though he had suddenly received a blow on the head
turned out to be a murderous intention, a pricking
in the cardiac region to be one of stabbing. (Con-
sciously he is a masochist and his aggressive phanta-
sies can enter consciousness only in the form of the
self-borne talion punishment an eye for an eye: a
tooth for a tooth. ) Another patient regularly felt a
peculiar sense of giddiness as soon as we came to
talk about matters that severely tested his lack of
self-confidence. The analysis led to infantile experi-
ences in which, while at a considerable height, he felt
himself so helpless that he became giddy. The sud-
den appearance of heat or cold sensations may sig-
nify emotional stirrings (with a corresponding
name) in the patient or, conversely, may represent
the idea that the patient surmises the existence of
such feeling in the physician.
A "frightful sleepiness" overcame one patient
every time that she wanted to escape by a short cut
the analysis which was getting disagreeable to her.
Another one used this means to indicate her uncon-
scious erotic phantasies, which were associated with
this sleepy condition; she was one of those persons
who could endure sexual phantasies only when they
200 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
were without self-reproach, e. g. only in the form
of an imaginary rape.
These transitory conversions are also to be ob-
served, though much less often, in the sphere of mo-
tility. By this I do not mean the "symptomatic
actions" in the sense of Freud's Psychopathology of
Everyday Life, which are higher, combined and co-
ordinated actions, but isolated, and sometimes pain-
ful, spasms in individual muscles or suddenly appear-
ing states of weakness resembling paralysis.
A neurotic who wanted to remain homosexual, and
who sought by every possible means to escape from
the heterosexual erotism that was powerfully press-
ing forward, got a cramp in the left leg every time
in the analysis that he managed to suppress phan-
tasies which threatened to produce an erection. He
discovered for himself the symbolic identification
"Leg:=Penis, Cramp=Erection." Drawing in of
the belly-wall with or without the feeling of retrac-
tion of the penis occurred with one patient every
time that he took more liberties with the physician
than his infantile cowed unconscious would allow him.
Analysis shewed the cramp to be a defensive meas-
ure against the feared punishment castration. Not
infrequently a convulsive clenching of the fist is re-
vealed to be an inclination to assault, a contraction
of the masseters to be a refusal to speak or a desire
to bite.
Transitory states of weakness in the whole mus-
Symptom-Const ructions During Analysis 201
culature or in certain groups of muscles are some-
times to be explained as symptoms of moral weakness
or as a not wanting to carry out some action. The
conflict between two tendencies of equal strength can
express itself, as in dreams, in an inhibition of cer-
tain movements.
In the analysis of these passing conversion-symp-
toms one learns as a rule that something of the kind
has already happened before in the patient's life ; one
has then to search for the causes that evoked them
on the previous occasion. There occur, however, also
transitory symptoms that seem to the patient to be
.quite new, and which, according to him, have never
been experienced before the analysis ; even in such
cases it nevertheless remains for the most part unde-
cided whether they had not merely escaped the pa-
tient's introspection, which was less trained before
the analysis. A priori, however, one cannot dismiss
the possibility that the analysis, penetrating into the
disagreeable layers of the mind and disturbing its
apparent rest, can force the patient to make use of
quite new possibilities of symptom-formation. In
ordinary life or in a non-analytic treatment the
thought-connections would have come to a stop far
enough from the disagreeable areas.
Transitory obsessional phenomena may also occur
in the treatment. There is something similar to an
obsession in every association, however senseless, that
is a conscious substitute for an intelligent but re-
202 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
pressed idea ("Replacement-associations," according
to Freud). Apparently senseless ideas of a true
obsessional character are sometimes produced, how-
ever, which definitely obsess the patient's thinking
and yield only to an analytic explication. An obses-
sional patient, for instance, suddenly interrupted the
free association with the thought: He couldn't un-
derstand why the word "window" should mean just
a window; why the letters w-i-n-d-o-w, which after
all are only senseless sounds and tones, should sig-
nify a corporeal object. He could not be brought to
give any further free associations: the idea of the.
meaning of the word window so strongly dominated
him that he was unable to produce any new thought.
For a while I allowed myself to be deceived by the in-
telligent patient, took up his idea, and discussed the
theory of speech-formation. But I soon saw that
the patient was not interested in the explanation, the
idea remaining in its obsessional form. Then it oc-
curred to me that it might be a piece of resistance
and I wondered how it was to be resolved. I re-
flected on what had preceded this obsessional asso-
ciation in the analysis, and recalled that just be-
fore it occurred I had explained to the patient the
meaning of a symbol and that he had seemed to ac-
cept my explanation with an acquiescing "yes." I
now expressed my surmise that the patient had not
been able to agree with this explanation, but had
repressed his contradiction. The repressed incredu-
Symptom-Constructions During Analysis 203
lity then returned in the distorted guise of the
thought "why should the letters w-i-n-d-o-w signify
a window?" This should really run : "Why does the
symbol just explained signify just that object?"
With this explanation the interruption was removed.
Indirect contradiction, which here quite uncon-
sciously formed an obsession, evidently has its source
in similar conscious reactions of small children who
through their lack of courage and self-confidence are
compelled to adopt this mediate speech when they
want to contradict an adult. 5
Another obsessional patient let his incredulity be
recognised in a different way. He began not to un-
derstand any foreign words that I used, and then, as
I faithfully translated them for him for a while, he
maintained that he could not longer understand his
mother-tongue. He behaved absolutely like a de-
ment. I then explained to him that with this lack of
understanding he was unconsciously expressing his
disbelief. Really it was me (my remarks) that he
wanted to mock, but he repressed this inclination and
acted like an idiot, as if to say: If I were to accept
this nonsense, I would be a fool. From now on he
understood my explanations perfectly well. 6
6 1 said once to a boy, aged five, that he need not be afraid
of a lion, for the lion would run away if only he would look
him straight in the eyes. His next question was: "And a lamb
can sometimes eat up a wolf, can't it?" "You didn't believe
my story about the lion," said I. "No, not really but don't
be cross with me for it," answered the little diplomatist.
Analytical experience makes it highly probable that many
04 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
A third obsessional patient was curiously obsessed
by the Slavonic term for doctor ("Lekar"). The
obsessional impulse came from the German homonym
of the word (=licker), a term of abuse which the
patient, a man of high ethical principles, could bring
out only indirectly.
In rare and exceptional cases true hallucinations
are evoked in the analysis hour. (Much more often,
of course, come memories of especial clearness and
vividness in respect to which, however, the patient
can none the less still behave in an objective way,
*. e. he can correctly estimate their unreality.)
One of my patients shewed a special capacity for
hallucinations, constantly making use of them when
the analysis came upon certain things that were pain-
ful to her. On such occasions she would suddenly
drop the thread of the free associations and produce
instead pure hallucinations with a fearful content:
she sprang up, crouched in a corner of the room, and
with signs of acute dread made convulsive movements
of defence and protection, after which she soon got
calm again. When she came to herself she could
tell me exactly the content of the hallucinated proc-
esses, and it turned out that they were phantasies
intelligent children at the stage of repression marked by the
latency period, before they have gone through the "great in-
timidation," regard adults as dangerous fools, to whom one can-
not tell the truth without running the risk of being punished
for it, and whose inconsistencies and follies have therefore to
be taken into consideration. In this children are not so very
wrong.
Symptom-Constructions During Analysis 205
presented in a dramatic or symbolic form (fights with
wild animals, rape scenes, etc.), which were connected
with the associations immediately preceding the hal-
lucinations ; the analysis of them mostly brought to
light new memory material, affording her great re-
lief. The hallucinatory-symbolic representation was
thus merely the last means of escaping the conscious
recognition of certain pieces of insight. It could
also be neatly observed in this case how the associa-
tions gradually approached conscious knowledge,
and then suddenly glided away in almost the last
moment, allowing the excitement to regress on to
the sense area.
It is not rare for transitory illusionary deceptions
(especially of the sense of smell) to appear in the
analysis hour. In one case an illusionary "change in
the perceptual world" could be observed in the analy-
sis. I was just striving to make clear to a patient
her excessive ambition, arising from narcissistic fix-
ation, and said to her that she might be happier if
she could properly appreciate this, renounce a part
of the phantasies of self-importance, and be content
with smaller successes. In this moment she called
out, her face glowing: "It is wonderful, now I sud-
denly see everything, the room, the bookcase, so 'con-
cretely' clear in front of me; everything has bright
and natural colours and is so plastically arranged in
space." On further questioning I learnt that for
years she had not been able to see so "concretely,"
206 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
the outer world appearing to her dull, faded, and
flat. The explanation was as follows: As a spoilt
child she obtained the satisfaction of all her desires ;
since she had been grown up the perfidious world had
not been so considerate to her wish-fancies, where-
upon "she had not been pleased with the world ;" she
projected this feeling into the optical sphere by see-
ing the world since then changed in the way described.
The prospect of reaching new possibilities of happi-
ness through renouncing a part of the wish-fulfil-
ments was similarly projected into the optical
sphere, and expressed itself there as illumination and
more vivid reality of the perceptual world. These
variations in optical excitability may be conceived
as "autosymbolic phenomena" in Silberer's sense, as
symbolic self-perception of psychical processes of
the "functional category." In this case, by the way,
it would be more correct to speak of transitory dis-
appearance of a symptom than of transitory crea-
tion of one.
Transitory character-regressions during the treat-
ment I should call a pretty frequent occurrence, the
essence of which consists in certain character traits
temporarily losing their sublimations and suddenly
regressing on to the primitive, infantile level of in-
stinct life from which they had taken their origin.
It is not rare, for instance, with certain patients
for an acute need for passing water to develop in the
analysis hour. Many hold out until the end of the
Symptom-Constructions \Durmg Analysis 207
sitting, others suddenly get up and have to leave the
room sometimes with signs of anxiety in order to
attend to the need. In cases where the natural ex-
planation of the occurrence could be excluded (and
my communication concerns only such), I was able
to establish the following psychical origin of the ves-
ical excitation: It was always with very ambitious
and vain patients, who did not admit their vanity
to themselves, and who felt their ambitiousness
wounded in the most sensitive way by the psychical
material brought out in the analysis hour, also feel-
ing discouraged by the physician, without having
made this wounding of their ego completely con-
scious, or logically working it over and overcoming
it. With one of these patients the parallelism be-
tween the more or less wounding content of the an-
alytic conversation and the desire to micturate was
so noticeable that I could at will evoke the latter by
dwelling on a theme that was plainly disagreeable
to the patient. Analytic talking out on this theme
can reverse the "character-regression" or hinder its
reappearance.
An occurrence of this sort allows the process of
regression, established by Freud, to be observed as
it were in flagranti. It shews that a sublimated char-
acter trait can in the event of denial (of gratifica-
tion) assuming the corresponding sites of fixation
in the psychical development really fall back on
to the infantile level at which the satisfaction of
208 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
the not yet sublimated impulse met with no hin-
drance. The saying "on revient toujours a ses pre-
miers amours" finds here its psychological confirma-
tion ; the person who is disappointed in his ambition
reaches back towards the auto-erotic foundation of
this passion. 7
Temporary rectal troubles (diarrhoea, constipa-
tion) often reveal themselves in the analysis as re-
gressions of the anal character. One patient suffered
from acute diarrhoea towards the end of the month,
when she had to send to her parents means of support
that in her unconscious she only unwillingly parted
with. Another compensated himself for the physi-
cian's fees by producing large quantities of intesti-
nal gas.
When a patient feels himself unkindly treated by
the physician he takes to onanism, if there is a cor-
responding auto-erotic fixation. He brings in the
form of this transference the confession of his child-
hood masturbation. As a child he gave up self-grati-
fication only in exchange for object-love (love of the
parents). If he feels himself disappointed in this kind
of love he relapses. Even patients who cannot re-
member ever having masturbated may one day come
with a confession of dismay that they have suddenly
had to give in to an irresistible impulse to self-grati-
fication.
* (Ambitiousness is unconsciously associated with urethra!
erotism. Transl.)
Symptom-Constructions During Analysis 209
(These sudden regressions to anal, urethral, and
genital auto-erotism also explain why the disposition
of these erotisms to function in anxiety states \e. g.
dread of examinations] is so strong. The fact also
that in his fearful dread a man being hanged relaxes
both sphincters and ejaculates semen may be due,
apart from direct nervous stimulation, also to a
final convulsive regression to the pleasure sources of
life. I once saw a nephritic patient aged seventy,
who was tortured by acute headache and cutaneous
irritation, carrying out movements of onanism in
his despair.)
With male neurotics who feel themselves unkindly
treated by the physician homosexual obsessions may
appear, which often refer to the person of the latter.
This is a proof, which might almost be called ex-
perimental, that friendship is essentially sublimated
homosexuality, which in case of denial is apt to re-
gress on to its primitive level.
Expression displacements. I noticed with one pa-
tient that he yawned with striking frequency. I then
remarked that the yawning accompanied just those
analytic conversations whose content, since it was
important to him although disagreeable, would more
suitably have evoked interest than boredom. An-
other patient who came to treatment soon after this
brought me what I believe to be the solution of this
peculiar phenomenon. She also yawned often and at
inappropriate times, but in her case the yawning
210 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
was sometimes accompanied with a flow of tears.
That gave me the idea that these patients' yawning
might be a distorted sigh, and in both cases the
analysis confirmed my surmise. The censorship ef-
fected in both cases the repression of certain dis-
agreeable emotional states that were aroused through
the analysis (pain, grief), but it was unable to bring
about a complete suppression, only a displacement of
the movements of expression, one that was enough,
however, to conceal from consciousness the real char-
acter of the emotional state. On turning my atten-
tion, after these observations, to the movements of
expression with other patients as well, I found that
there are other forms of "expression displacements."
One patient, for instance, had to cough every time
he wanted to avoid saying something to me; the in-
tended, but suppressed, speech then came through
nevertheless in the form of a cough. We see that
the displacement from one emotional expression to
another takes place along the line of physiological
vicinity (yawning sighing; talking coughing). A
cough may also represent a consciously or uncon-
sciously intended, and then suppressed, laugh, in
which case the displaced expression of the emotional
state as with a pure hysterical symptom contains
also the punishment for the satisfaction of pleasure.
Neurotic women often cough when they are being
medically examined, e. g., auscultated ; this also I be-
lieve may be regarded as a displacement of the
Symptom-Constructions During Analysis 811
movements of laughter elicited by unconscious erotic
phantasies. After what has been said it will cause no
surprise if I add that in one case I was able to inter-
pret a temporary hiccough as representing a sob of
despair. These symptoms that only appear transi-
torily in the analysis also throw light on the chronic
hysterical symptoms of the same kind (spasms of
laughter and of crying). Really incredible but
none the less true is the occurrence of an "expres-
sion displacement" to which Professor Freud called
my attention. Many patients produce a rumbling in
the stomach when they have concealed some associa-
tions. The suppressed speech is turned into a ven-
triloquism ( Bauchreden) .
Besides the didactic value for physicians and pa-
tients, discussed at the beginning of the paper, these
"transitory symptom-formations" possess a certain
practical and theoretical significance. They offer us
points of attack for dealing with the patient's
strongest resistances, concealed as transferences, and
are thus of practical, technical value for the analy-
sis. And in giving us the opportunity to watch
symptoms of disease arise and disappear before our
eyes, they throw light on these processes in general.
They enable us to form theoretic conceptions of the
dynamics of disease, at least with many kinds of
disease.
We know from Freud that a neurotic disorder
comes about in three stages: the infantile fixation (a
Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
disturbance in the development of the sexual hun-
ger) constitutes the foundation of every neurosis;
the second stage is that of the repression, which re-
mains still without symptoms; the third that of the
outbreak of the disorder, the symptom-formation.
The experiences gathered here of "transitory
symptom-formations" make it probable that in the
great neuroses, as in these neuroses en miniature,
symptoms are formed only when repressed portions
of complexes threaten, for internal or external rea-
sons, to enter into associative connection with con-
sciousness, t. e. to become conscious, and when there-
by the equilibrium of a previous repression is dis-
turbed. The "unpleasantness" censorship watching
over the calm of consciousness then manages in the
last moment, so to speak, to deflect the excitation
from the progressive path, t. e. its path into con-
sciousness, and since the driving back into the old
repression situation does not succeed well to let a
part of the excitation and of the unconscious psy-
chical structures find at least a distorted expression
in symptoms.
CHAPTER VIII
STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSE OF
REALITY *
development of the mentai lorms of activ-
L ity in the individual consists, as Freud has
shewn, in the resolution of the originally prevailing
pleasure-principle, and the repression mechanism pe-
culiar to it, by the adjustment to reality, i. e. by the
testing of reality that is based on judgment. Thus
arises out of the "primary" psychical stage, such as
is displayed in the mental activities of primitive be-
ings (animals, savages, children), and in primitive
mental states (dreams, neurosis, phantasy), the sec-
ondary stage of the normal man in waking thought.
At the beginning of its development the new-born
babe seeks to attain a state of satisfaction merely
through insistent wishing (imagining), whereby it
simply ignores (represses) the unsatisfying reality,
picturing to itself as present, on the contrary, the
wished-for, but lacking, satisfaction ; it attempts,
therefore, to conceal without effort all its needs by
means of positive and negative hallucinations. "It
1 Published in the Internal. Zeitschr, f . arztl. Psychoanalyse,
1913.
213
21 4> Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
was only the non-appearance of the expected satis-
faction, the disappointment, that led to the abandon-
ment of this attempt at satisfaction by the halluci-
natory method. Instead, the psychical apparatus
had to decide to represent the actual circumstances
of the outer world to itself, and to strive to alter
reality. With this a new principle of mental activity
was initiated ; not what was pleasant was any longer
imagined, but what was real, even though it should
be unpleasant.'* 2
The significant essay in which Freud displayed to
us this fundamental fact of psychogenesis is confined
to the sharp differentiation between the pleasure and
the reality stages. Freud also concerns himself here,
it is true, with transitional states in which both prin-
ciples of mental functioning coexist (phantasy, art,
sexual life), but he leaves for the present unan-
swered the question whether the development of the
secondary form of mental activity from the pri-
mary takes place gradually or in a series of steps,
and whether such stages of development are to be
recognised, or their derivatives demonstrated, in the
mental life of the normal or abnormal.
An earlier work of Freud's, however, in which he
affords us deep insight into the mental life of ob-
sessional patients, 3 calls attention to a fact from
* Freud. "Fonnulierungen uber die zwei Prinzipien des psy-
chischen Geschehens." Jahrb. Bd. III. S. 1.
Freud. "Bemerkungen iiber eincn Fall von Zwangsneurose."
Jahrb. Bd. I. S. 411.
Stages In the Development of Sense of Reality 215
which as a starting point one may attempt to bridge
over the gap between the pleasure and the reality
stages of mental development.
Obsessional patients who have submitted them-
selves to a psycho-analysis so it runs in that work
admit to us that they cannot help being convinced
of the omnipotence of their thoughts, feelings, and
wishes, good and bad. However enlightened they may
be, however much their academic knowledge and their
reason may strive to the contrary, they have the feel-
ing that their wishes in some inexplicable way get
realised. Of the truth of this state of affairs any
analyst can convince himself as often as he likes.
He will learn that the weal and woe of other people,
indeed their life and death, seem to the obsessional
patient to depend on certain thought processes and
actions, in themselves harmless, on which he engages.
The patient has to think of certain magical formu-
las, or carry out a certain action ; otherwise a great
misfortune will befall this or that person (mostly a
near relative). This conviction, though felt to be
superstitious, is not shaken even by repeated ex-
periences to the contrary. 4
Leaving aside the fact that analysis reveals such
obsessive thoughts and actions to be the substitutes
of wish-impulses that are logically correct, but which
4 This article was finished before use could be made of
Freud's article on "Animismus, Magie und Allmacht der Ge-
danken" (Imago, Jahrg. II, Heft I), which deals with the
same topic from other points of view.
216 Contributions to Psyclw-Analysis
on account of their intolerableness have been re-
pressed, 5 and turning our attention exclusively to the
peculiar manifestation of this obsessional symptom,
we must admit that it constitutes a problem in itself.
Psycho-analytical experience has made it clear to
me that this symptom, the feeling of omnipotence, is
a projection of the observation that one has slavish-
ly to obey certain irresistible instincts. The obses-
sional neurosis constitutes a relapse of the mental
life to that stage of child-development characterised,
amongst other things, by there being as yet no inhib-
iting, postponing, reflecting thought-activity inter-
posed between wishing and acting, the wish-fulfilling
movement following spontaneously and unhesitating-
ly on the wishing an averting movement away from
something disagreeable, or an approach towards
something agreeable. 6
A part of the mental life, more or less removed
from consciousness, thus remains with the obsession-
al patient as the analysis shews on this childhood
level in consequence of an arrest in development (fix-
ation), and makes wishing equivalent to acting be-
Freud. Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre.
1906. S. 45 und 86.
It is well known that small children almost reflexly stretch
out their hands after every object that shines or in any other
way pleases them. They are to begin with also incapable of
foregoing any "naughtiness" that yields them any kind of
pleasure, whenever the stimulus causing this appears. A young
boy who had been forbidden to bore his finger into his nose
answered his mother, "I don't want to, but my hand does and
I can't prevent it."
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality 217
cause just on account of the repression, of the
distraction of attention this repressed portion of
the mental life was not able to learn the difference
between the two activities, while the ego itself, which
has developed free from repression and grown wise
through education and experience, can only laugh at
this equating of the two. Hence the inner discord-
ance of the obsessional patient, the inexplicable oc-
currence of enlightenment and superstition side by
side.
Not being quite satisfied with this explanation of
the feeling of omnipotence as an autosymbolic phe-
nomenon, 7 I put to myself the question: Whence
then does the child get the boldness to set thinking
and acting as equivalents? Whence comes the feel-
ing of obviousness with which it stretches out its
hand after all objects, after the lamp hanging above
him as after the shining moon, in the sure expecta-
tion of reaching it with this gesture and drawing
it into the domain of its power?
I then recalled that according to Freud's assump-
tion "a piece of the old grandiose delusion of child-
hood was honestly confessed" in the omnipotence
phantasy of the obsessional patient, and I tried to
trace out the origin and fate of this delusion. In
this way I hoped also to learn something new about
the development of the ego from the pleasure to
1 This is what Silberer terms the self-perceptions that are
symbolically represented.
fcl'8 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
the reality principle, since it seemed to me probable
that the replacement (to which we are compelled by
experience) of the childhood megalomania by the
recognition of the power of natural forces composes
the essential content of the development of the ego.
Freud declares an organisation that is a slave to
the pleasure principle, and which can neglect the
reality of the outer world, to be a fiction, one, how-
ever, which is almost realised in the young infant,
when one only takes into account the maternal care. 8
I might add that there is a stage in human develop-
ment that realises this ideal of a being subservient
only to pleasure, and that does so not only in imagi-
nation and approximately, but in actual fact and
completely.
I mean the period of human life passed in the
womb. In this state the human being lives as a para-
site of the mother's body. For the nascent being an
"outer world" exists only in a very restricted de-
gree; all its needs for protection, warmth, and
nourishment are assured by the mother. Indeed, it
does not even have the trouble of taking the oxy-
gen and nourishment that is brought to it, for it is
seen to that these materials, through suitable ar-
rangements, arrive directly into its blood-vessels. In
comparison with this an intestinal worm, for ex-
ample, has a good deal of work to perform, "tc
Jahrb. Bd. III. S. 2. Footnote. See also the controversy
between Bleuler and Freud on this question (Bleuler, "Das
autistische Denken." Jahrb. Bd. IV.).
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality 219
change the outer world," in order to maintain itself.
All care for the continuance of the foetus, however,
is transferred to the mother. If, therefore, the hu-
man being possesses a mental life when in the womb,
although only an unconscious one, and it would be
foolish to believe that the mind begins to function
only at the moment of birth he must get from his
existence the impression that he is in fact omnipo-
tent. For what is omnipotence? The feeling that
one has all that one wants, and that one has noth-
ing left to wish for. The foetus, however, could
maintain this of itself, for it always has what is
.necessary for the satisfaction of its instincts, 9 and
so has nothing to wish for; it is without wants.
The childhood megalomania of their own omnipo-
tence is thus at least no empty delusion; the child
and the obsessional patient demand nothing impos-
sible from reality when they are not to be dissuaded
from holding that their wishes must be fulfilled ; they
are only demanding the return of a state that once
existed, those "good old days" in which they were
all-powerful {Period of unconditional omnipotence).
With the same right by which we assume the
transference of memory traces of the race's history
' As a result of disturbances, such as through illness or in-
jury of the mother or of the umbilical cord, etc., necessity can
face a human being already in the mother's body, can rob him
of his omnipotence and compel him to the effort of "changing
the outer world," i. e. of performing work (an example being
the inspiration of amniotic fluid when in danger of suffoca-
tion.)
220 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
on to the individual, indeed with more justification
than this, we may assert that the traces of intra-
uterine psychical processes do not remain without in-
fluence on the shaping of the psychical material pro-
duced after birth. The behaviour of the child im-
mediately after birth speaks for this continuity of
the mental processes. 10
The new-born child does not accommodate himself
uniformly as regards all his needs to the new situa-
tion which is visibly disagreeable to him. Imme-
diately after the delivery he begins to breathe, so
as to restore the provision of oxygen that has been
interrupted by the tying of the umbilical vessels ; the
possession of a respiratory mechanism, formed al-
ready in intra-uterine life, at once enables him ac-
tively to remedy the oxygen privation. If, however,
one observes the remaining behaviour of the new-
born child one gets the impression that he is far
from pleased at the rude disturbance of the wish-less
tranquillity he had enjoyed in the womb, and indeed
that he longs to rega'm this situation. Nurses in-
stinctively recognise this wish of the child, and as
soon as lie has given vent to his discomfort by strug-
gling and crying they deliberately bring him into a
situation that resembles as closely as possible the
one he has just left. They lay him down by the
10 Freud has incidentally pointed out that the sensations of
the child during the birth act probably evoke the first anx-
iety affect of the new being, which remains prefigurative for
all later anxiety and anxiousness.
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality
warm body of the mother, or wrap him up in soft,
warm coverings, evidently so as to give him the il-
lusion of the mother's warm protection. They guard
his eye from light stimuli, and his ear from noise, and
give him the possibility of further enjoying the in-
tra-uterine absence of irritation, or, by rocking the
child and crooning to him monotonously rythmi-
cal lullabies, they reproduce the slight and monoto-
nously rhythmical stimuli that the child is not spared
even in utero (the swaying movements of the mother
when walking, the maternal heart-beats, the deadened
noise from without that manages to penetrate to the
interior of the body).
If we try, not only to feel ourselves into the soul
of the new-born babe (as the nurses do), but also
to think ourselves into it, we must say that the
helpless crying and struggling of the child is ap-
parently a very unsuitable reaction to the unpleas-
ant disturbance that the previous situation of being
satisfied has suddenty experienced as a result of
the birth. We may assume, supported by considera-
tions which Freud has expounded in the general part
of his Traumdeutung, 11 that the first consequence of
this disturbance is the hallucinatory re-occupation of
the satisfying situation that is missed, the untroubled
existence in the warm, tranquil body of the mother.
The first wish-impulse of the child, therefore, cannot
be any other than to regain this situation. Now the
"Freud. Die Traumdeutung. 3e Aufl., S. 376.
222 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
curious thing is that pre-supposing normal care
this hallucination is in fact realised. From the sub-
jective standpoint of the child the previously un-
conditional "omnipotence" has changed merely in
so far, that he needs only to seize the wish-aims in
a hallucinatory way (to imagine them) and to alter
nothing else in the outer world, in order (after sat-
isfying this single condition) really to attain the
wish-fulfilment. Since the child certainly has no
knowledge of the real concatenation of cause and
effect, or of the nurse's existence and activity, he
must feel himself in the possession of a magical ca-
pacity that can actually realise all his wishes by
simply imagining the satisfaction of them. (Period
of magical-hallucinatory omnipotence.)
That the nurse guesses the hallucinations of the
child aright is shewn by the effect of her actions. As
soon as the first nursing measures are carried out
the child calms itself and goes to sleep. The first
sleep, however, is nothing else than the successful re-
production of the womb situation {which shelters as
far as possible from external stimuli), probably with
the biological function that the processes of growth
and regeneration can concentrate all energy on
themselves, undisturbed by the performance of any
external work. Some considerations, which cannot
be presented in this connection, have convinced me
that also every later sleep is nothing else than a
periodically repeated regression to the stage of the
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality
magical-hallucinatory omnipotence, and through the
help of this to the absolute omnipotence of the womb
situation. According to Freud, one has to postulate
for each system subsisting by the pleasure-principle
arrangements by means of which it can withdraw
itself from the stimuli of reality. 12 Now it seems
to me that sleep and dreams are functions of such
arrangements, that is to say, remains of the hal-
lucinatory omnipotence of the small child that sur-
vive into adult life. The pathological counter-part
of this regression is the hallucinatory wish-fulfil-
ment in the psychoses.
Since the wish for the satisfying of instincts mani-
fests itself periodically, while the outer world pays
no attention to the occurrence of the occasion on
which the instinct is exerted, the hallucinatory rep-
resentation of the wish-fulfilment soon proves inade-
quate to bring about any longer a real wish-fulfil-
ment. A new condition is added to the fulfilment : the
child has to give certain signals thus performing a
motor exertion, although an inadequate one so that
the situation may be changed in the direction of his
disposition, and the "ideational identity" be followed
by the satisfying "perceptual identity." 13
The hallucinatory stage was already characterised
by the occurrence of uncoordinated motor discharges
(crying, struggling) on the occasion of disagreeable
u Freud. Jahrb., Bd. Ill, S. 3.
11 Freud. Die Traumdeutung. Loc. cit.
224 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
affects. These are now made use of by the child as
magic signals, at the dictation of which the satis-
faction promptly arrives (naturally with external
help, of which the child, however, has no idea). The
subjective feeling of the child at all this may be
compared to that of a real magician, who has only
to perform a given gesture to bring about in the
outer world according to his will the most compli-
cated occurrences. 14
We note how the omnipotence of human beings
gets to depend on more and more "conditions" with
the increase in the complexity of the wishes. These
efferent manifestations soon become insufficient to
bring about the situation of satisfaction. As the
wishes take more and more special forms with de-
14 When I search in pathology for an analogy to these dis-
charges I have always to think of genuine epilepsy, that most
problematical of the major neuroses. And although I fully ad-
mit that in the question of epilepsy the physiological is difficult
to separate from the psychological, I may call attention to the
fact that epileptics are known to be uncommonly "sensitive"
beings, behind whose submissiveness frightful rage and do-
mineeringness can appear on the least occasion. This char-
acteristic has up to the present usually been interpreted as a
secondary degeneration, as the consequence of repeated at-
tacks. One should, however, think of another possibility,
namely whether the epileptic attacks are not to be considered
as regressions to the infantile period of wish-fulfilment by
means of uncoordinated movements. Epileptics would then be
persons with whom the disagreeable affects get heaped up and
are periodically abreacted in paroxysms. If this explanation
proves to be useful we should have to localise the place of fix-
ation for a later affliction of epilepsy in this stage of unco-
ordinated wish-manifestations. The irrational stamping of the
feet, clenching of the fists, and grinding of the teeth, etc., that
are to be seen in outbursts of anger would be a milder form
of the same regression in otherwise healthy persons.
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality
velopment, they demand increasingly specialised sig-
nals. To begin with are such as, imitations of the
movement of sucking with the mouth when the infant
wants to be fed, and the characteristic expressions
by means of the voice and abdominal pressing when
it wants to be cleansed after excreting. The child
gradually learns also to stretch out its hand for the
objects that it wants. From this is developed later
a regular gesture-language : by suitable combinations
of gestures the child is able to express quite special
needs, which then are very often actually satisfied,
so that if only it keeps to the condition of the
expression of wishes by means of corresponding ges-
ture the child can still appear to itself as omnip-
otent: Period of omnipotence by the help of magic
gestures.
This period also has a representative in pathol-
ogy; the curious jump from the world of thought
into that of bodily processes, which Freud has dis-
covered hysterical conversion to be, 15 becomes more
intelligible to us when we view it as a regression to
the stage of gesture-magic. Psycho-analysis shews
us in fact that hysterical attacks present with the
help of gestures the repressed wishes of the patient as
fulfilled. In the mental life of the normal the count-
less number of superstitious gestures, or such as are
in some other way considered efficacious (gestures
of cursing, blessing, praying), is a remainder of that
" See Freud's works in the Studien iiher Hysteric, 1895.
226 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
developmental period of the sense of reality in which
one still felt mighty enough to be able to violate the
regular order 16 of the universe. Fortune-tellers,
soothsayers, and the magnetisers continually find
belief in the assertion of such complete power of their
gestures, and the Neapolitan also averts the evil eye
with a symbolic gesture.
With the increase in the extent and complexity of
the wants goes naturally an increase, not only of
the "conditions" that the individual has to submit to
if he wishes to see his wants satisfied, but also of
the number of cases in which his ever more audacious
wishes remain unfulfilled even when the once effica-
cious conditions are strictly observed. The out-
stretched hand must often be drawn back empty, the
longed-for object does not follow the magic gesture.
Indeed, an invincible hostile power may forcibly op-
pose itself to this gesture and compel the hand to
resume its former position. Till now the "all-pow-
erful" being has been able to feel himself one with the
world that obeyed him and followed his every nod,
but gradually there appears a painful discordance
in his experiences. He has to distinguish between
certain perfidious things, which do not obey his will,
as an outer world, and on the other side his ego ; i. e.
between the subjective psychical contents (feelings)
and the objectified ones (sensations). I once called
the first of these stages the Introjection Phase of the
16 This being of course quite unsuspected.
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality 227
pysche, since in it all experiences are still incorpo-
rated into the ego, and the later one the Projection
Phase. 11 One might also, following this terminol-
ogy, speak of the omnipotence stage as the introjec-
tion stage, the reality stage as the projection stage,
of the development of the ego.
Still even the objectifying of the outer world does
not at once destroy every tie between the ego and the
non-ego. The child learns, it is true, to be content
with having only a part of the world, the ego, at
his disposal, the outer world, however, often opposing
his wishes, but there still remains in this outer
world qualities that he has learned to know in him-
self, i. e. ego qualities. Everything points to the con-
clusion that the child passes through an animistic
period in the apprehension of reality, in which every
object appears to him to be endowed with life, and
in which he seeks to find again in every object his
own organs and their activities. 18
The derisive remark was once made against psy-
cho-analysis that, according to this doctrine, the
unconscious sees a penis in every convex object and
a vagina or anus in every concave one. I find that
this sentence well characterises the facts. The
child's mind (and the tendency of the unconscious
in adults that survives from it) is at first concerned
exclusively with his own body, and later on chiefly
17 Ch. II.
"On the subject of animism see also the essay "Ueber
Naturgefuhl" by Dr. Hanns Sachs (Imago, Jahrg. I.).
228 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
with the satisfying of his instincts, with the pleas-
urable satisfactions that sucking, eating, contact
with the genital regions, and the functions of excre-
tion procure for him ; what wonder, then, if also his
attention is arrested above all by those objects and
processes of the outer world that on the ground of
ever so distant a resemblance remind him of his dear-
est experiences.
Thus arise those intimate connections, which re-
main throughout life, between the human body and
the objective world that we call symbolic. On the
one hand the child in this stage sees in the world
nothing but images of his corporeality, on the other
he learns to represent by means of his body the
whole multif ariousness of the outer world. This ca-
pacity for symbolic representation is an important'
completion of the gesture-language; it enables the
child not only to signalise such wishes as immediately
concern his body, but also to express wishes that re-
late to the changing of the outer world, now recog-
nised as such. If the child is surrounded by loving
care, he need not even in this stage of his existence
give up the illusion of his omnipotence. He still
only needs to represent an object symbolically and
the thing, believed to be alive, often really "comes"
to him ; for the animistically thinking child must have
this impression at the satisfaction of his wishes.
From the uncertainty regarding the arrival of the
satisfaction it gradually dawns on him, to be sure,
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality 229
that there are also higher, "divine" powers (mother
or nurse), whose favour he must possess if the sat-
isfaction is to follow closely on the magic gestures.
Still this satisfaction also is not hard to obtain, es-
pecially with indulgent surroundings.
One of the bodily means that the child makes use
of for representing his wishes, and the objects he
wishes for, attains then an especial significance, one
that ranges beyond that of all other means of rep-
resentation speech, namely. Speech is originally 19
imitation, i. e. vocal representation, of sounds and
noises that are produced by things, or which can
be produced by their help ; the executive capacity of
the speech organs allows the reproduction of a much
greater multiplicity of objects and processes of the
outer world than was possible with the help of ges-
ture-language, and in a much simpler manner.
Speech symbolism thus gets substituted for gesture
symbolism : certain series of sounds are brought into
close associative connection with definite objects and
processes, and indeed gradually identified with these.
From this accrues the great progress : there is no
longer a necessity for the cumbrous figurative imagi-
nation and the still more cumbrous dramatic repre-
sentation ; the imagination and representation of the
series of sounds that we call words allow a far more
specialised and economic conception and expression
18 See Kleinpaul, Leben der Sprache (1893), and Sperber,
"Uber den Einfluss sexueller Momente auf Entstehung und
Entwicklung der Sprache," Imago, 1912.
230 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
of the wishes. At the same time conscious thinking
makes speech symbolism possible by becoming asso-
ciated to thought processes that are in themselves
unconscious, and lending them perceptual qualities. 20
Now conscious thought by means of speech signs
is the highest accomplishment of the psychical ap-
paratus, and alone makes adjustment to reality pos-
sible by retarding the reflex motor discharge and the
release from unpleasantness. In spite of this the
child knows how to preserve his feeling of omnipo-
tence even in this stage of his development, for his
wishes that can be set forth in thoughts are still so
few and comparatively uncomplicated that the at-
tentive entourage concerned with the child's welfare
easily manages to guess most of these thoughts. The
mimic expressions that continually accompany
thinking (peculiarly so with children) make this kind
of thought-reading especially easy for the adults;
and when the child actually formulates his wishes
in words the entourage, ever ready to help, hastens
to fulfil them as soon as possible. The child then
thinks himself in possession of magic capacities, is
thus in the period of magic thoughts and magic
words . 21
It is this stage of reality development to which
20 See Freud, Traumdeutung, III Aufl., S. 401 and Jahrb.,
Bd. Ill, S. I.
11 The psychological explanation of "magic" naturally does
not exclude the possibility of this belief containing also the
foreshadowing of physical facts (telepathy, etc.).
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality 281
the obsessional patients seem to regress when they
are not to be dissuaded from the feeling of the omnip-
otence of their thoughts and verbal formulas, and
when, as Freud has shewn, they set thinking in the
place of acting. In superstition, in magic, and in
religious cults this belief in the irresistible power of
certain prayer, cursing, or magical formulas, which
one has only to think inwardly or only to speak
aloud for them to work, plays an enormous part. 22
This almost incurable megalomania of mankind is
only apparently contravened by these neurotics with
whom behind the feverish search for success one at
once comes across a feeling of inferiority (Adler),
which is well known to the patients themselves. An
analysis that reaches to the depths reveals in all such
cases that these feelings of inferiority are in no sense
something final, an explanation of the neurosis, but
are themselves the reactions to an exaggerated feel-
ing of omnipotence, to which such patients have be-
come "fixed" in their early childhood, and which has
made it impossible for them to adjust themselves to
any subsequent renunciation. The manifest seeking
for greatness that these people have, however, is
only a "return of the repressed," a hopeless attempt
to reach once more, by means of changing the outer
world, the omnipotence that originally was enjoyed
without effort.
"This "omnipotence" ("Motor power") is highly characteris-
tic also of obscene words. See Chapter IV.
282 Contributions to Psycho- Analyst*
We can only repeat : All children live in the happy
delusion of omnipotence, which at some time or
other even if only in the womb they really par-
took of. It depends on their "Daimon" and their
"Tyche" whether they preserve the feelings of omnip-
otence also for later life, and become Optimists, or
whether they go to augment the number of Pessi-
mists, who never get reconciled to the renunciation
of their unconscious irrational wishes, who on the
slightest provocation feel themselves insulted or
slighted, and who regard themselves as step-children
of fate because they cannot remain her only or
favourite children.
Freud dates the end of the domination of the pleas-
ure-principle only from the complete psychical de-
tachment from the parents. It is also at this epoch,
which is extremely variable in individual cases, that
the feeling of omnipotence gives way to the full ap-
preciation of the force of circumstances. The sense
of reality attains its zenith in Science, while the il-
lusion of omnipotence here experiences its greatest
humiliation: the previous omnipotence here dissolves
into mere "conditions." (Conditionalism, determin-
ism.) Nevertheless, we possess in the doctrine of the
freedom of the will an optimistic philosophical dogma
that can still realise phantasies of omnipotence.
The recognition that our wishes and thoughts are
conditioned signifies the maximum of normal projec-
tion, . e. objectification. There is also, however, a
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality 233
psychical disorder, paranoia, which has the charac-
teristic, among others, that in it even the person's
own wishes and thoughts are expelled into the outer
world, are projected. 23 It seems natural to locate
the fixation point of this psychosis in the period of
the final renunciation of omnipotence, i. e. in the
projection phase of the sense of reality.
The stages in the development of the sense of
reality have here been presented up to now only in
terms of the egoistic, so-called "ego-instincts," which
serve the function of self-preservation; reality has,
as Freud has established, closer connections with the
. ego than with sexuality, on the one hand because the
latter is less dependent on the outer world (it can
for a long time satisfy itself auto-erotically), on the
other hand because it is suppressed during the la-
tency period and does not come at all into contact
with reality. Sexuality thus remains throughout
life more subjected to the pleasure-principle, whereas
the ego has immediately to experience the bitterest
disappointment after every disregarding of reality. 2 *
If we now consider the feeling of omnipotence in sex-
ual development that characterises the pleasure
stage, we have to observe that here the "period of
unconditional omnipotence" lasts until the giving up
"See Freud, "Die Abwehr-Neuropsychosen" (Kl. Schr. z.
Neurosenlehre, S. 45), "Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen tiber
einen autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia,"
Jahrb., Bd. Ill, and Chapter V of this book.
"Freud. Jahrb., Bd. Ill, S. 5.
234 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
of the auto-erotic kinds of satisfaction, a time when
the ego has already long adjusted itself to the in-
creasingly complicated conditions of reality, has
passed through the stages of magic gestures and
words, and has already almost attained the knowl-
edge of the omnipotence of natural forces. Auto-
erotism and narcissism are thus the omnipotence
stages of erotism, and, since narcissism never comes
to an end at all, but always remains by the side of
object-erotism, it can thus be said that in so far
as we confine ourselves to self-love in the matter of
love we can retain the illusion of omnipotence
throughout life. That the way to narcissism is at
the same time the constantly accessible way of re-
gression after every disappointment in an object of
love is too well known to need proof; auto-erotic
narcissistic regressions of pathological strength may
be suspected behind the symptoms of Paraphrenia
(Dementia praecox) and Hysteria, whereas the fix-
ation-points of the Obsessional Neurosis and of Par-
anoia should be found in the line of development of
"erotic reality" (the compulsion to find an object).
These relations, however, have not yet been ap-
propriately studied with all the neuroses, so that we
have to be content with Freud's general formulation
concerning the choice of neurosis, namely, that the
variety of the subsequent disorder is decided by
"which phase in the development of the ego and the
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality 235
sexual hunger is affected by the determining inhibi-
tion of development."
One may nevertheless venture to add to this sen-
tence a second one ; we suspect that the wish-con-
stituent of the neurosis, . e. the varieties and aims of
the erotism that the symptoms present as fulfilled,
depends on where the fixation-point is in the phase
of the development of the sexual hunger, while the
mechanism of the neuroses is probably decided by
what stage in the development of the ego the indi-
vidual is in at the time of the determining inhibition.
It is very well thinkable that with the regression of
the sexual hunger to earlier stages of development
the level of the reality-sense that was dominant at
the time of fixation also becomes renascent in the
mechanisms of the symptom-formation. Since, that
is to say, this earlier kind of "reality-testing" is in-
comprehensible to the present ego of the neurotic,
there is nothing to prevent its being placed at the dis-
posal of the repression, and used for the presentation
of censured feeling- and thought-complexes. Hysteria
and the obsessional neurosis, for example, would ac-
cording to this conception be characterised on the one
hand by a regression of the sexual hunger to earlier
stages of development (auto-erotism, Oedipusism),
and on the other hand in their mechanisms by a re-
lapse of the reality-sense to the stage of magic ges-
tures (conversion) or of magic thoughts (omnipo-
236 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
tence of thought). I repeat: It will need much
longer laborious work before the fixation-points of
all neuroses can be established with certainty. I
wish here only to point to one possibility of a so-
lution, one, it is true, that to me is plausible.
What we may conceive about the phylogenesis of
the reality-sense can at present be offered only as
a scientific prediction. It is to be assumed that we
shall some day succeed in bringing the individual
stages in the development of the ego, and the neu-
rotic regression-types of these, into a parallel with
the stages in the racial history of mankind, just
as, for instance, Freud found again in the mental
life of the savage the characters of the obsessional
neurosis. 25
In general the development of the reality-sense is
represented by a succession of repressions, to which
mankind was compelled, not through spontaneous
"strivings towards development," but through neces-
sity, through adjustment to a demanded renuncia-
tion. The first great repression is made necessary,
by the process of birth, which certainly comes about
without active cooperation, without any "intention"
on the part of the child. The foetus would much
rather remain undisturbed longer in the womb, but
it is cruelly turned out into the world, and it has to
forget (repress) the kinds of satisfaction it had got
* Freud. "Ueber einige Uebereinstimmungen im Seelenleben
der Wilden und der Neurotiker," Imago, Jahrg I, 1912.
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality 237
fond of, and adjust itself to new ones. The same
cruel game is repeated with every new stage of de-
velopment. 26
It is perhaps allowable to venture the surmise that
it was the geological changes in the surface of the
earth, with their catastrophic consequences for
primitive man, that compelled repression of favour-
ite habits and thus "development." Such catastro-
phes may have been the sites of repression in the
history of racial development, and the temporal lo-
calisation and intensity of such catastrophes may
have decided the character and the neuroses of the
race. According to a remark of Professor Freud's,
racial character is the precipitate of racial history.
Having ventured so far beyond the knowable, we
have no reason to shrink before the last analogy and
from bringing the great step in individual repres-
sion, the latency period, into connection with the last
and greatest catastrophe that smote our primitive
ancestors (at a time when there were certainly hu-
man beings on the earth), i. e. with the misery of the
glacial period, which we still faithfully recapitulate
in our individual life. 27
18 If this thought is logically pursued, one must make oneself
familiar with the idea of a tendency of preservation, or re-
gression-tendency, also dominating organic life, the tendency to
further development, adaptation, etc., depending only on ex-
ternal stimuli.
17 Cases where development precedes the real needs seem to
contradict the conception that only external compulsion, and
never spontaneous impulse, leads to the giving up of accus-
tomed mechanisms (development). An example for this would
288 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
The impetuous curiosity to know everything that
has just seduced me into enchanted vistas of the
past, and led me to bridge over the yet unknowable
by the help of analogies, brings me back to the
starting-point of these considerations: to the theme
of the acme and decline of the feeling of omnipotence.
Science has to repudiate this illusion, or at least al-
ways to know when she is entering the field of hy-
potheses and fancies. In fairy-tales, on the con-
trary, phantasies of omnipotence are and remain the
dominating ones. 28 Just where we have most humbly
to bow before the forces of Nature, the fairy-tale
comes to our aid with its typical motives. In reality
we are weak, hence the heroes of fairy-tales are
strong and unconquerable; in our activities and our
knowledge we are cramped and hindered by time and
space, hence in fairy-tales one is immortal, is in a
hundred places at the same time, sees into the future
and knows the past. The ponderousness, the solid-
ity, and the impenetrability of matter obstruct our
way every moment: in the fairy-tale, however, man
has wings, his eyes pierce the walls, his magic wand
be the development of the respiratory mechanism already in
utero. This happens, however, only in ontogenesis, and is here
to be regarded as a recapitulation of a compulsory process of
development in the history of the race. The playful practising
of animals (Gross) also are not the preliminary stages of a
future racial function, but repetitions of phylogenetically ac-
quired capacities. They thus allow of a purely historical-causal
explanation, and we are not compelled to regard them from the
point of view of finality.
* Cp. Riklin, Wunscherfullung und Symbolik im Marchen.
(Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, Heft 2.)
Stages in the Development of Sense of Reality 239
opens all doors. Reality is a hard fight for exist-
ence; in the fairy-tale the words "little table, be
spread" are sufficient. A man may live in perpetual
fear of attacks from dangerous beasts and fierce
foes; in the fairy-tale a magic cap enables every
transformation and makes us inaccessible. How
hard it is in reality to attain love that can fulfil
all our wishes ! In the fairy-tale the hero is irresist-
ible, or he bewitches with a magic gesture.
Thus the fairy-tale, through which grown-ups are
so fond of relating to their children their own un-
fulfilled and repressed wishes, really brings the for-
feited situation of omnipotence to a last, artistic
presentation.
CHAPTER IX
A LITTLE CHANT T CI,EER 1
A LADY a former patient of mine who had re-
tained her interest in psycho-analysis, called
my attention to the case of a little boy, which she
surmised would be of general interest.
The case was that of a five-year-old boy, Arpad
by name, who according to the unanimous reports of
all his relatives had developed up to the age of three
and a half in quite a regular way both mentally and
physically, and was said to have been a perfectly nor-
mal child; he spoke fluently and shewed considerable
intelligence.
All at once he became quite different. In the sum-
mer of 1910 the family went to an Austrian spa,
where they had also spent the previous summer, and
took rooms in the same house as in the year before.
Immediately after the arrival the child's demean-
our changed in a curious way. Hitherto he had
taken an interest in all the goings on, both indoors
and out of doors, that might attract the attention of
a child; from now on he was interested in only one
1 Published in the Internal. Zeitschr. f. arztl. Psychoanalyse,
1913.
240
A Little Chanticleer 241
thing, and that was the fowl-house in the courtyard
of the dwelling. Early in the morning he hastened
to the poultry, watched them with tireless interest,
imitated their sounds and movements, and cried
when he was forcibly removed from the fowl-run. But
even when he was away from it he did nothing else
but crow and cackle. He did this unintermittingly
for hours at a time, and answered to questions only
with these animal cries, so that his mother was se-
riously concerned lest her child would lose his power
of speech.
This peculiar behaviour of little Arpad lasted
throughout the whole duration of the summer stay.
When the family returned to Budapest he began once
more to speak in a human way, but his talk was al-
most exclusively of cocks, hens, and chickens, at the
most with geese and ducks besides. His usual game,
repeated endlessly every day, was as follows: He
crumpled up newspaper into the shape of cocks and
hens, and offered them for sale; then he would take
some object (generally a small flat brush), call it a
knife, carry his "fowl" to the sink (where the cook
really used to kill the poultry, and cut the throat
of his paper hen. He shewed how the fowl bled, and
with his voice and gestures gave an excellent imi-
tation of its death agony. Whenever fowls were of-
fered for sale in the courtyard little Arpad got rest-
less, ran in and out of the door, and gave no peace
until his mother bought some. He wanted to witness
242 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
their slaughter. Of live cocks, however, he was not
a little afraid.
The parents asked the child endless times why he
was so afraid of cocks, and Arpad always related the
same story: He had once gone out to the hen-coop,
had micturated into it, whereupon a fowl or capon
with yellow feathers (sometimes he said with brown)
came and bit his penis, and Ilona, the servant, had
dressed the wound. Then they cut the cock's throat,
so that he died.
Now, as a matter of fact, the parents remembered
this occurrence, which had happened in the first sum-
mer spent in the spa, when Arpad was only two and a
half years old. One day the mother had heard the
little one shrieking fearfully, and learnt from the
servant that he was frightened of a cock which had
snapped at his penis. Since Ilona was no longer in
the family's service it could not be ascertained
whether on that occasion Arpad had really been hurt
or (as the mother's memory went) had merely been
bandaged by Ilona to calm him.
The curious part of the matter was that the psychi-
cal after-effect of this experience had set in with the
child after a latent period of a whole year, on the
second visit to the summer residence, without any-
thing having happened in the meanwhile to which
the relatives could ascribe this sudden recurrence of
the fear of fowls and the interest in them. I did not,
however, let the negative nature of this evidence re-
A Little Chanticleer 243
strain me from putting a question to the child's en-
tourage, one sufficiently justified by psycho-analyti-
cal experience, namely, whether in the course of the
latent period the child had not been threatened as
so often happens with the cutting off of his penis on
account of voluptuous playing with his genitals.
The answer, given unwillingly, was to the effect that
at the present time, it was true, the boy was fond of
playing with his member, for which he often got pun-
ished, that it was also "not impossible" that some-
one might have "jokingly" threatened to cut it off,
further that Arpad had had this bad habit "for a
long time," but whether he already had it in the lat-
ent year was no longer known.
In what comes presently it will be seen that in fact
Arpad had not been spared this threat at a later
date, so that we are entitled to regard the assump-
tion as probable that it was the threat experienced
in between which had so greatly excited the child on
re-visiting the scene of the first terrifying expe-
rience, in which the well-being of his member had sim-
ilarly been endangered. A second possibility is of
course not to be excluded, namely, that the first
fright already had been exaggerated by a still earlier
threat of castration, and that the excitement on re-
visiting the hen-coop is to be ascribed to the increase
of "sexual hunger" that had come about in the mean-
time. Unfortunately it was no longer possible to
reconstruct these time relationships, and we have to
244 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
be content with the probability of the casual connec-
tion.
Personal investigation of the boy yielded nothing
striking or abnormal. Immediately on entering my
room his attention was attracted by a small bronze
mountain cock among the numerous other objects
lying about ; he brought it to me and asked "will you
give it to me?" I gave him some paper and a pencil
and he immediately drew a cock (not unskilfully).
Then I got him to tell me the story about the cock.
But he was already bored and wanted to get back to
his toys. Direct psycho-analytic investigation was
therefore impossible, and I had to confine myself to
getting the lady who was interested in the case and,
being a neighbour and friend of the family, could
watch him for hours at a time, to note down his cu-
rious remarks and gestures. I was able to establish
so much for myself, however, that Arpad was men-
tally very alert and also not untalented; his mental
interest and his talent were, it is true, peculiarly cen-
tered round the feathered folk of the fowl-run. He
clucked and crowed in a masterly way. Early in
the morning he woke the family a true Chanticleer
with a lusty crow. He was musical, but sang only
popular songs in which cock, fowl, or the like came,
being especially fond of the song:
"To Debreczen I must run,
There to buy a turkey-cock."
A Little Chanticleer 245
then the songs: "Chicken, chicken, come, come,
come," and
"Under the window are two chickens,
Two little cocks and a hen."
He could draw, as was remarked above, but he con-
fined himself exclusively to birds with a large beak,
drawing these with considerable skill. One thus sees
the directions in which he was seeking to sublimate
his pathologically strong interest in these creatures.
The parents had finally to put up with his hobbies,
seeing that their interdictions did no good, and
bought for him various toy birds made of unbreak-
able material with which he carried out all sorts of
fanciful games.
Arpad was in general a pleasant little fellow, but
very defiant whenever he was reprimanded or beaten.
He hardly ever cried, and never begged for forgive-
ness. Apart from these character traits, however,
there were no traces of true neurotic traits to be
recognised. He was easily frightened, dreamt a
great deal (of fowls, of course) and often slept
badly (Pavor noctumus).
Arpad's curious sayings and actions, which were
noted down by the lady observer, mostly display an
unusual pleasure in phantasies about the cruel tor-
turing of poultry. His typical game, imitating the
slaughter of fowls, I have already mentioned ; to this
246 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
should be added that even in his bird dreams it was
mostly "killed" cocks and hens that he saw. I will
here give a literal translation of some of his charac-
teristic sayings :
"I should like to have a live plucked cock," he
once said quite spontaneously. "He must have no
wings, no feathers, and no tail, only a comb, and he
must be able to walk like that."
He was playing in the kitchen with a fowl that had
just been slaughtered by the cook. All of a sudden
he went into the next room, fetched a curling-tongs
out of a drawer, and cried: "Now I will stick this
dead fowl's blind eyes." The slaughtering of poul-
try was quite a festival for him. He could dance
round the animals' bodies for hours at a time in a
state of intense excitement.
Someone, pointing to the slaughtered fowl, asked
him : "Would you like it to wake again ?" "The devil
I would; I would knock it down again at once my-
self."
He often played with potatoes or carrots (which
he said were fowls), slicing them into small pieces
with a knife. He could hardly be restrained from
throwing to the ground a vase that had fowls painted
on it.
The affects displayed in regard to fowls, however,
were by no means simply those of hate and cruelty,
but were plainly ambivalent. Very often he would
kiss and stroke the slaughtered animal, or he would
A Little Chanticleer 24*7
"feed" his wooden goose with maize, as he had seen
the cook do; in doing this he clucked and peeped
continuously. Once he threw his unbreakable doll
(a fowl) in the oven because he could not tear it,
but then pulled it out again at once, cleansed it and
caressed it. The animal figures in his picture book,
however, had a worse time of it; he tore them in
pieces, was then naturally unable to bring them back
to life, and got very upset.
If such symptoms were observed in an adult in-
sane patient, the psycho-analyst would not hesitate
to interpret the excessive love and hate concerning
poultry as a transference of unconscious affects that
really referred to human beings, probably near rel-
atives, but which were repressed and could only mani-
fest themselves in this displaced, distorted way. He
would further interpret the desire to pluck and blind
the animals as symbolising castration intentions, and
regard the whole syndrome as a reaction to the pa-
tient's fear of the idea of his own castration. The
ambivalent attitude would then arouse in the ana-
lyst the suspicion that mutually contradictory feel-
ings in the patient's mind were balancing each other,
and on the basis of numerous experiential facts he
would have to surmise that this ambivalence prob-
ably referred to the father, who although other-
wise honoured and loved had at the same time to
be also hated on account of the sexual restrictions
sternly imposed by him. In a word, the analytic in-
248 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
terpretation would run: The cock signified in the
syndrome the father. 2
In little Arpad's case we can spare ourselves the
trouble of making any interpretation. The work of
repression was not yet able entirely to conceal the
significance of his peculiarities; the original thing,
the repressed tendencies, could still be discerned in
his talk, and indeed it became evident at times with
a startling openness and crudity.
His cruelty was often displayed in regard to hu-
man beings also, and was strikingly often directed
against the genital region of adults. "I'll give you
one in the faeces, in your behind," he was fond of say-
ing to a boy somewhat older than himself. Once he
said, still more plainly, "I'll cut your middle out."
The idea of blinding occupied him pretty often. He
once asked his neighbour: "Can one make a person
blind with fire or with water?" (He was also highly
interested in the genitals of poultry. With every
fowl that was slaughtered they had to enlighten him
about the sex whether it was a cock, a hen, or a
capon.)
He ran to the bed of a grown-up girl and called
out: "I'll cut your head off, lay it on your belly,
1 In a very large number of analyses of dreams and neuroses
the figure of the father is discovered behind that of an animal.
See Freud, Schriften, etc. Ch. 1, and Internat. Zeitschr. f.
Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. I, Heft 2. Professor Freud tells me that
one of his next works in "Imago" will make use of this iden-
tity to explain totemism. (This has since appeared in book
form under the title "Totem und Tabu." Transl.)
A Little Chanticleer 249
and eat it up.'* Once he said quite suddenly: "I
should like to eat a potted mother (by analogy:
potted fowl) ; my mother must be put in a pot and
cooked, then there would be a potted mother and I
could eat her." (He grunted and danced the while).
"I would cut her head off and eat it this way" (mak-
ing movements as if eating something with a knife
and fork).
After cannibalistic desires of this sort he would
at once get an attack of remorse, in which he maso-
chistically yearned for cruel punishments. "I want
to be burnt," he would then call out : "Break off my
foot and put it in the fire." "I'll cut my head off. I
should like to cut my mouth up so that I didn't have
any."
There can be no doubt that by fowl, cock, chicken
he meant his own family, for he said once quite spon-
taneously: "My father is the cock!" On another
occasion: "Now I am small, now I am a chicken.
When I get bigger I shall be a fowl. When I am
bigger still I shall be a cock. When I am biggest of
all I shall be a coachman." (The coachman who
drove their carriage seemed to impress him even
more than did his father) .
After this independent and uninfluenced admission
of the boy we can better understand the enormous
excitement with which he was never tired of watch-
ing the goings on in the fowl-yard. He could con-
veniently observe in the hen-coop all the secrets of
250 Contributions to Psycho-Analyri*
his own family about which no information was
vouchsafed to him at home; the "helpful animals"
shewed him in an unconcealed way everything he
wanted to see, especially the continual sexual activ-
ity between cock and hen, the laying of eggs, and
the creeping out of the young brood. The dwelling
conditions at Arpad's are such that he had beyond
all question been an ear-witness to similar proceed-
ings (between the parents). The curiosity in this
way aroused he then had to satisfy by insatiable
gazing at animals.
We are also indebted to Arpad for the last confir-
mation of my assumption that the morbid dread of
cocks was ultimately to be traced to the threat of
castration for onanism.
One morning he asked the neighbour: "Tell me,
why do people die?" (Answer: Because they get old
and grow tired). "Hm! So my grandmother was
also old? No! She wasn't old, and yet she died.
Oh, when there's a God why does he always let me
fall down? And why does he make people have to
die ?" Then he began to get interested in angels and
souls, upon which he was given the explanation that
they are only fairy-tales. At this he got quite rigid
with fright and said : "No ! That's not true ! There
are angels. I have seen one who carries the dead
children to heaven." Then he asked, horrified:
"Why do children die?" "How long can one live?"
A Little Chanticleer 251
It was only with great difficulty that he calmed
down.
It turned out then that early on the same day the
chamber-maid had suddenly lifted his bed-clothes and
found him manipulating his penis, whereupon she
threatened to cut it off. The neighbour tried to quiet
him and told him that no harm would be done to
him ; every child did things of that sort. Upon which
Arpad cried out indignantly: "That's not true!
Not every child ! My papa has never done anything
like that."
Now we understand better his unquenchable rage
towards the cock who wanted to do with his member
what the grown-ups threatened to do, and his awe for
this sexual animal which dared to do everything that
filled him with terror; we also understand the cruel
punishments that he pronounced on himself (on ac-
count of the onanism and the sadistic phantasies).
To complete the picture, so to speak, he began
later on to occupy himself greatly with religious
thoughts. Old, bearded Jews filled him with great
respect, mixed with dread. He begged his mother
to invite these beggars into the house. When one
actually came, however, he would hide and watch
him from a respectable distance; as one of these
was going away the boy let his head hang down and
said, "Now I am a beggar-fowl." Old Jews inter-
ested him, so he said, because they come "from God"
(out of the temple).
252 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
In conclusion another utterance of Arpad's may be
given which shews that he had not watched the go-
ings on of the fowls so long for nothing. He told
his neighbour one day in all seriousness: "I shall
marry you and your sister and my three cousins and
the cook ; no, instead of the cook rather my mother."
He wanted, therefore, to be a real "cock of the roost."
CHAPTER X
SYMBOLISM
The Symbolic Representation of the Pleasures and
Reality Principles in the Oedipus Myth 1
SCHOPENHAUER writes : 2 "Every work has its
origin in a happy thought, and the latter gives
the joy of conception ; the birth, however, the carry-
ing out, is, in my own case at least, not without
pain; for then I stand before my own soul, like an
inexorable j udge before a prisoner lying on the rack,
and make it answer until there is nothing left to ask.
Almost all the errors and unutterable follies of which
doctrines and philosophies are so full seem to me to
spring from a lack of this probity. The truth was
not found, not because it was unsought, but because
the intention always was to find again instead some
preconceived opinion or other, or at least not to
wound some favourite idea, and with this aim in view
subterfuges had to be employed against both other
1 Published in Imago, 1912.
1 Letter to Goethe, dated November the llth, 1815.
253
Contributions to Psycho-Analyait
people and the thinker himself. It is the courage of
making a clean breast of it in face of every question
that makes the philosopher. He must be like Soph-
ocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concern-
ing his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable
enquiry, even when he divines that appalling horror
awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry in
our hearts the Jocasta, who begs Oedipus for God's
sake not to enquire further; and we give way to her,
and that is the reason why philosophy stands where
it does. 3 Just as Odin at the door of hell unceas-
ingly interrogates the old prophetess in her grave,
disregarding her opposition and refusals and prayers
to be left in peace, so must the philosopher interro-
gate himself without mercy. This philosophical
courage, however, which is the same thing as the sin-
cerity and probity of investigation that you attrib-
ute to me, does not arise from reflection, cannot
be wrung from resolutions, but is an inborn trend
of the mind."
The deep and compressed wisdom of these remarks
deserves to be discussed, and to be compared with
the results of psycho-analysis.
What Schopenhauer says about the psychical at-
titude requisite for scientific (philosophical) produc-
tion sounds like the application of Freud's formula
about the "principles of psychical happenings" 4 to
Not underlined in the original.
* Freud. Jahrb. d. Psychoanalyse, Bd. Ill, S. 1.
Symbolism 55
the theory of Science. Freud distinguishes two such
principles: the pleasure-principle, which in the case
of primitive beings (animals, children, savages), as
in that of the more primitive mental states (in
dreams, wit, phantasy, neurosis, psychosis) plays
the leading part and allows processes to come about
that only strive for the shortest way of gaining
pleasure, while the psychical activity of acts that
might create feelings of unpleasantness (Urdust) is
withdrawn (repression) ; then the reality-principle,
which presupposes a higher development and growth
of the psychical apparatus, and has as its charac-
teristic that "in place of the repression, which ex-
cluded a number of the incoming ideas as creative
of unpleasantness (Unlust), impartial judgment ap-
pears, which has to decide whether a given idea is
true or false, i. e. in harmony with reality or not,
and which decides by comparison with the memory-
traces of reality."
Only one kind of thought activity remains free
from the tests of reality, even after the inauguration
of the higher principle, and subject solely to the
(pleasure-principle, namely, phantasy, while it is
Science that is most successful in overcoming the
pleasure-principle. 5
Schopenhauer's opinion, quoted above, on the men-
tal disposition requisite for scientific activity would
therefore run somewhat as follows if converted into
8 Freud. Loc. cit., S. 4.
256 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
Freud's terminology: the thinker may (and should)
give his phantasy play, so as to be able to taste the
"joy of conception" new ideas are of course not to
be had in any other way 8 , but in order that these
phantastic notions may evolve into scientific ideas
they must first be submitted to a laborious testing
by reality.
Schopenhauer recognised with acute perception
that the greatest resistances raised against unprej-
udiced testing of reality, even in the case of a scien-
tist, are not of an intellectual, but of an affective na-
ture. Even the scientist has human failings and pas-
sions: vanity, jealousy, moral and religious bias tend-
ing to blind him to a truth that is disagreeable to
him ; and he is only too inclined to regard as true an
error that fits his personal system.
Psycho-analysis can only complement Schopen-
hauer's postulate in a single point. It has found that
the inner resistances may be fixed in the earliest child-
hood and may be completely unconscious; it there-
fore demands of every psychologist who enters on the
study of the human mind that he should thoroughly
investigate beforehand his own mental constitution
inborn and acquired down to the deepest layers
and with all the resources of the analytic technique.
Unconscious affects, however, may falsify the
truth not only in psychology, but also in all other
See on this point Robitschek, "Symbolisches Oenken in der
chemischen Forschung," Imago, Jahrg. I, Heft 1.
Symbolism 257
sciences, so we have to formulate Schopenhauer's
postulate as follows : Everyone who works in Science
should first submit himself to a methodical psycho-
analysis.
The advantages that would accrue to Science from
this deepened self-knowledge on the part of the scien-
tist are evident. An enormous amount of power for
work, which is now wasted on infantile controver-
sies and priority disputes, could be put at the dis-
posal of more serious aims. The danger of "project-
ing into Science as a generally valid theory peculiar-
ities of one's own personality" (Freud 7 ) would be
much less. The hostile manner also in which, even
nowadays, new unusual ideas or scientific proposi-
tions are received when put forward by unknown au-
thors, unsupported by any authoritative personality,
would give way to a more unprejudiced testing by
reality. I will go so far as to maintain that, if this
rule of self-analysis were observed, the development
of the various sciences, whidh today is an endless
series of energy-wasting revolutions and reactions,
would pursue a much smoother, yet a more profitable
and an accelerated course.
It cannot be regarded as chance that the Oedipus
myth immediately occurred to Schopenhauer when he
wished to illustrate by a simile the correct psychical
attitude of the scientist in mental production and the
T Freud. "Ratschlage, etc." Zentralbl. f. Psychoanalyse,
Jahrj?. II.
S58 Contributions to Psycho-Analyti*
inner resistances that arise against this correct way
of working. Had he been as we analysts are con-
vinced of the strict determination and determin-
ability of every psychical act, this thought would
surely have made him reflect. For us, who are the
fortunate possessors of the Freudian psychology
(which like a mental Dietrich provides a ready key
to so many locks that have till now been considered
impossible to open), it is not at all difficult to re-
trieve this piece of analysis. This idea that occurred
to Schopenhauer indicates his unconscious percep-
tion of the fact that of all inner resistances by far
the most significant is the resistance against the in-
fantile fixation on hostile tendencies against the fa-
ther and on incestuous ones towards the mother.
These tendencies, which through the civilised edu-
cation of the race and of the individual have become
intensely disagreeable, and have therefore been re-
pressed, draw with them into the repression a large
number of other ideas and tendencies associated with
these complexes, and exclude them from the free in-
terchange of thought, or at all events no longer allow
them to be treated with scientific objectivity.
The "Oedipus complex" is not only the nuclear
complex of the neuroses (Freud) ; the kind of atti- 1
tude adopted towards it also determines the most im-
portant character traits of the normal man, and in
part also the greater or lesser objectivity of the
scientist. A man of science who is prevented by the
Symbolism 259
incest barrier from admitting to himself nascent in-
clinations of love and disrespect towards blood-re-
lations will so as to assure the repression of these
inclinations also not want, nor be able, to test
in their reality with the impartiality demanded by
Science the actions, works, and thoughts of other
authorities as well as the paternal one.
To decipher the feeling and thought content that
lies behind the wording of the Oedipus myth was thus
beyond even the power of a Schopenhauer, otherwise
so discerning. He overlooked the fact as did the
whole civilised world until Freud that this myth is
a distorted wish phantasy, the projection of re-
pressed wish-excitations (father-hate, mother-love)
with an altered pleasure-prefix ( abhorrence, shudder-
ing awe) on to an external power, "fate." This re-
construction of the real meaning of the myth, its in^
terpretation as a "material phenomenon" ( Silberer) ,
was thus alien to the philosopher. While writing this
letter he was himself dominated so I believe by af-
fects that would have debarred this insight.
The actual occasion that led Schopenhauer to
chose this comparison of himself with Oedipus may be
divined from the other parts of the letter. The neg-
lected philosopher saw himself recognised for the
first time by a man of Goethe's greatness and stand-
ing. He answered him with expressions of gratitude
that we are not accustomed to from the proud, self-
confident Schopenhauer: "Your Excellency's kind
60 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
letter has given me great pleasure, because every-
thing coming from you is for me of inestimable value,
a sacred possession. Further, your letter contains
the praise of my work, and your approval outweighs
in my estimation that of any other."
That sounds absolutely like the enthusiastic grati-
tude of one man to an older respected one in whom
he hopes to find the long-sought protector, . e. to
find again the father. Besides God, King, and
national heroes, heroes of the spirit like Goethe are
also "revenants" of the father for countless men, who
transfer to them all the feelings of gratitude and re-
spect that they once shewed to their bodily father.
The subsequent quotation of the Oedipus myth, how-
ever, may well have been an unconscious reaction
against this perhaps rather extravagant expres-
sion of gratitude towards the father, a reaction that
allowed some display of the hostile tendencies that go
to make up the fundamentally ambivalent feeling-
attitude of a son towards his father. In favour of
this vie\7 speaks the fact that towards the end the let-
ter becomes more and more proud and self-confident.
Schopenhauer there asks Goethe to secure the publi-
cation of his chief work (Die Welt als Wille und Vor-
stellung), and now speaks to him as to an equal;
he lays a eulogising emphasis on the unusual value
of his book, the remarkable nature of its contents,
and the beauty of its style, closing with a few cool,
business-like lines, which might perhaps be called
Symbolism 261
brusque. "I will ask you please to give me a quite
decisive answer without delay, because in case you do
not accept my proposal I will commission someone
who is going to the Leipsic fair to seek a publisher
there for me."
Perhaps it was just the aid of the attention that
had been deviated from the concrete meaning that
enabled Schopenhauer to decipher in this letter the
"functional symbolism" (which for some time escaped
ever; psycho-analysts) of certain details of the Oedi-
pus myth.
Silberer gives the name of functional symbol-
phenomena to those pictures occurring in dreams,
phantasies, myths, etc., in which not the content of
thought and imagination, but the way of function-
ing of the mind (e. g. its ease, difficulty, inhibition,
etc) is indirectly represented. 8
If we allow Schopenhauer's comparison and trans-
late it into analytical-scientific language, we have to
say that the two chief personages of Sophocles' trag-
edy also symbolise the two principles of mental ac-
tivity. Oedipus, "who, seeking enlightenment concern-
ing his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable en-
quiry, even when he divines that appalling horror
awaits him in the answer," represents the reality-
principle in the human mind, which permits none of
the emerging ideas, even those that produce pain, to
*Cp. Silberer's throughout original and pregnant works on
symbolism, especially those in the Jahrb. d. Psychoanalyse, Bd.
1-111.
262 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
be repressed, but bids all to be equally tested as to
their intrinsic truth. Jocasta, "who begs Oedipus
for God's sake not to enquire further," is the per-
sonification of the pleasure-principle, which, regard-
less of objective truth, wants nothing else than to
spare the ego pain, to gain pleasure wherever pos-
sible, and, so as to reach this goal, bans to the un-
conscious whenever possible all ideas and thoughts
that threaten to set free pain.
Encouraged by Schopenhauer's interpretation and
its striking analytical confirmation, I venture to go
a step further and to raise the question whether it
is pure chance that in both the Oedipus myth and the
Edda Saga, also cited by our philosopher, the real-
ity-principle is represented by men (Oedipus, Odin)
and the pleasure-principle by women (Jocasta,
Erda). The psycho-analyst is not accustomed to
fly hastily to the idea of "accident," and would in-
cline rather to attribute to the Greek and Teutonic
peoples, as well as to Sophocles and Schopenhauer,
an unconscious knowledge of the bisexuality of every
human being. Schopenhauer actually says that most
human beings carry in them Oedipus and Jocasta.
In accord with this interpretation is the observation
of daily experience that in general in women the tend-
ency to repression the pleasure-principle, there-
fore prevails ; in men the capacity for objective
judgment and for tolerating painful insight the
reality-principle, therefore.
Symbolism 63
An eye made keen by individual-psychological ex-
perience will certainly be able to discover and solve
many more significant symbols in Sophocles' tragedy.
I will only point out two very striking ones, both of
the category of "somatic symbol-phenomena" (Sil-
berer), in which, therefore, bodily states are mir-
rored. To start with, there is the name of the tragic
hero Oedipus, which in Greek means "swell-foot."
This apparently senseless and odd denomination at
once loses this character when we know that in
dreams and jokes, as well as in the fetishistic wor-
ship of the foot or in the neurotic dread of this mem-
ber, it symbolises the male organ.
The fact that this member is described in the hero's
name as swollen is sufficiently explained by its erecti-
bility. It cannot surprise us, by the way, that the
myth completely identifies with a phallus the man
who achieved the monstrous feat of sexual inter-
course with the mother, a feat no doubt conceived as
superhuman.
The other somatic symbol-phenomenon is Oedipus'
self-blinding as a punishment for his unconscious
committed sins. It is true that the tragedian gives
the explanation for this punishment : "For why was I
to see, When to descry no sight on earth could have
a charm for me?" * he makes Oedipus (not quite un-
equivocally) cry out. But certain psycho-analytical
(I quote throughout from Sir George Young's translation
of the Oedipus Tyrannus. Transl.)
264 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
experiences, in which the eyes regularly have to be
interpreted as symbols of the genital organs, give me
the right to interpret the self-blinding as a displace-
ment of the really intended self-castration of Oedi-
pus, the talion punishment more comprehensible in
this connection. To the horrified question of the
Chorus, however;
Rash man, how could'st thou bear to outrage so
Thine eyes? What Power was it, what wrought on
thee?
the hero answers :
Apollo, Apollo fulfils,
O friends, my measure of ills
Fills my measure of woe.
In other words, it was the sun (Phoebus Apollo),
the most typical father-symbol; 10 the hero was no
longer to look him in the eyes, a consideration that
may have given a second determining factor for the
distortion of the castration punishment to blinding. 11
* Freud. "Nachtrag zur Analyse Schrebers," Jahrb. d. Psy-
choanalyse, Bd. III.
"These symbol interpretations will be at once evident to the
practised psycho-analyst, since he can find them confirmed in
his dream analyses countless times. While reading through this
article, however, I received from Dr. Otto Rank the informa-
tion that the correctness both of the interpretation of the
name Oedipus here attempted and that of the sexual-symbolic
explanation f self-binding could be determined with certainty
from comparative mythological studies. In his work that has
just appeared, "Das Inzest-motiv in Dichtung und Sage," these
interpretations are substantiated with a rich collection of facts,
which makes it pdssible for the non-analyst also to accept them.
Symbolism 265
If we have once assimilated these interpretations,
it must amaze us to see how the folk-soul should
have managed to fuse together in this myth the
knowledge (distorted, it is true) of the most signifi-
cant content, the nuclear complex of the unconscious
(. e. the parental complex), with the most general
and comprehensive formula of mental activity. Our
amazement gives way to understanding, however,
when we have learnt from Otto Rank's fundamental
mytho-psychological works to grasp the way in
which the creative folk-soul works. Rank shewed
in a beautiful example 12 that the individual poet
"by means of his own complex-tones succeeds in clari-
fying and emphasising certain attributes of a trans-
mitted material," but that the so-called folk -produc-
tions are also to be regarded as the work of numerous
or countless individuals, who originate, transmit,
and decorate the tradition. "Only in this case," he
says further, "the story goes through a series of sim-
ilarly disposed individual minds, each of which works
in the same direction, at the production of general
human motives and the polishing of many disturbing
accessory works."
After the double interpretation of the Oedipus
myth we may imagine the crystallising process of
our myth, described by Rank, somewhat as follows :
Significant but unconscious psychical dontents
"Rank. "Der Sinn dcr Griselda-Fabel," Imago. Jahrg. I,
Heft 1.
$66 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
(aggressive phantasies against the father, sexual
hunger for the mother with erection-tendencies, dread
lest the father would avenge the sinful intent with the
punishment of castration) procured, each for itself,
indirect symbolic representatives in the consciousness
of all men. Men with special creative capacities,
poets, give expression to these universal symbols. In
this way the mythical motives of exposure by the par-
ents, victory over the father, unconscious inter-
course with the mother, and self-blinding, might have
arisen in individuals independent of one another. In
the course of the passage of the myths through
countless poetic individual minds, one that Rank has
made probable, condensation of the separate motives
led secondarily to a greater unity, which then proved
to be durable and which was fashioned anew in much
the same form by all peoples and at all times. 13
It is probable, however, that in this, as also in
every other myth, and perhaps indeed with mental
productivity in general, parallel with the tendency to
give expression to psychical contents there is also an
unconscious aim at bringing to presentation the men-
tal ways of functioning that are operative in master-
ing these contents. 14 Only this latter fusion then
M See on this point Rank, Der Mythus von der Geburt des
Helden (Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, Heft V).
"Silberer, to whom we owe the formulation of the idea of
functional symbolism, cites a long series of myths and fairy-
tales that can be resolved into both material and functional
symbol-phenomena. ("Phantasie und Mythos," Jahrb. d. Psy-
choanalyse, Bd. II.)
Symbolism
267
yields the perfected myth, which without foregoing
any of its effect on men is transmitted unchanged
for hundreds of years. So was it with the Oedipus
myth, in which not only the most deeply repressed
feeling and thought complexes of mankind are rep-
resented in images, but also the play of the mental
forces that were operative in the attempt to master
these contents, differing according to sex and indi-
viduality.
For the correctness of this interpretation let some
passages from the tragedy itself bear witness :
Oedipus: And how can I help dreading
My mother's bed?
,/ocasta: But why should men be fearful,. .
O'er whom Fortune is mistress, and
fore-knowledge
Of nothing sure? Best take life eas-
%, 15
As a man may. For that maternal
wedding,
Have you no fear; for many men ere
now
Have dreamed as much ; but he who by
such dreams
Sets nothing, has the easiest life of it.
*****
11 The passages in Italics are not underlined in the original.
268 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
Jocasta (to OEDIPUS, who, enquiring after the
frightful truth* summons the only witness of the
crime) :
Why ask who 'twas he spoke of ?
Nay, never mind never remember it
'Twas idly spoken !
Oedipus: Nay, it cannot be
That having such a clue I should refuse
To solve the mystery of my parentage !
Jocasta: For heaven's sake, if you care for your
own life,
Don't seek it! I am sick, and that's
enough!
* * * * *
Jocasta: But I beseech you, hearken ! Do not do
it!
Oedipus: I will not hearken not to know the
whole.
Jocasta : I mean well ; and I tell you for the best !
Oedipus: What you call best is an old sore of
mine.
Jocasta: Wretch, what thou art O might' st thou
never know!
* * * *
Oedipus: Break out what will, I shall not hesi-
tate,
Low though it be, to trace the sourct
of me.
*****
Symbolism 269
Shepherd (who was ordered to kill the new-born
Oedipug, but who exposed him, to the open ) :
O, I am at the horror, now, to speak!
Oedipus: And I to hear. But I must hear no
less.
"The Jocasta in us," as Schopenhauer says, the
pleasure-principle, as we express it, wishes thus that
a man "should best take life easily, as a man may,"
that he "set no store by" (suppresses) the things
that disturb him, e. g. that with the most superficial
motivation he should refuse to accord any signifi-
cance to phantasies and dreams about the death of
his father and sexual intercourse with his mother,
pay no attention to disagreeable and dangerous talk,
not search after the origin of things, but above all
it warns a man against recognising who he is.
The reality-principle, however, the Oedipus in
the human soul, does not allow the seductions of
pleasure to keep him from penetrating into even a
bitter or a horrible truth, it estimates nothing so
lowly as to be not worth testing, it is not ashamed
to seek the true psychological nucleus of even super-
stitious prophecies and dreams, and learns to endure
the knowledge that in the inmost soul aggressive and
sexual instincts dwell that do not pause even at the
barriers erected by civilisation between the son and
his parents.
70 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
II
On Eye Symbolism
i
Relying on psycho-analytical experience, I have
tried to interpret Oedipus* self-blinding as a self-
castration. 17 I wish here to relate shortly the facts
on which I relied for the purpose of this interpreta-
tion.
1. A young lady suffered from a phobia of sharp
objects, especially needles. Her obsessive fear ran :
such an object might sometime put out her eyes.
Closer investigation of the case disclosed the fact
that the lady had for a number of years lived with
her friend in sexual intimacy, but had anxiously
guarded against permitting the intermissio penis,
which would have impaired her anatomical integrity
by rupturing the hymen. All sorts of accidents now
kept happening to her, most of which affected the
eye; most commonly unintentional self-inflicted in-
juries with needles. Interpretation : Substitution of
the genitals by the eyes, and representation of the
wishes and fears relating to the former by accidental
actions and phobias relating to the latter.
2. A myopic patient with conscious fears of in-
feriority and compensating grandiose phantasies
transferred all his hypochondriac and anxious feel-
14 Published in the Internal. Zeitschr. f. arztl. Psychoanalyse,
1913, as a contribution to the symposium on eye symbolism.
" See Chapter X, Section 1.
Symbolism 271
ings, and an exaggerated sense of shame, on to his
short-sightedness; these feelings, however, relate in
his unconscious to the genitals. When a small child
he had sexual "omnipotent phantasies" concerning
his mother and sister ; later on painful realisation of
his sexual inferiority ("small penis" complex, hypo-
chondria, "states of weakness"), which was com-
pensated for by excesseive onanism and sadistic acts
of coitus. With the help of the symbolic equating:
eye genital, he managed to represent by means of
the eye a great part of his sexual wishes and fears.
An incomplete analytic enlightenment reduced his
hypochondria very appreciably.
3. I had the opportunity of getting to know a
family whose members suffered without exception
from an exaggerated fear of injuries and diseases
of the eye. The mere mention of bad or injured eyes
made them get pale, and the sight of such things
could lead to fainting. In one member of the family
the psychical disturbances of potency could be rec-
ognised to be the manifestations of masochism which
had appeared as a reaction against sadistic desires;
the fear of eye injuries was the reaction to the sa-
distic wish to injure the eye, a displacement of the
sadistic coitus wish. It had been very easy for the
sadistic-masochistic components of the sexual in-
stinct to be transferred from the genital to another
organ susceptible to injury.
Another member of this family extended fear and
272 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
disgust for eyes on to corns as well ; in this not only
the external resemblance and the identity of the
name, 18 but a second symbolic equating (toe=penis)
played a part. This was evidently an attempt to
bring the symbol eye once more nearer to the real
thing (genital organ) with the help of a mediate
idea (corn).
4. A patient who was afraid of beetles when a
child developed at the time of puberty a dread of see-
ing himself in a mirror, especially of seeing his own
eyes and eyebrows. This dread turned out to be on
the one hand an auto-perception of his tendency to
repression (not wanting to look himself in the eye),
on the other hand a representation of the fear of
onanism. With the help of the idea of movability the
child succeeded in displacing his attention and affects
from the spontaneously movable (erectile) organ on
to the movable beetle. The beetle's vulnerability also,
the way in which even a child can so easily crush it
under foot, renders it a suitable object for taking the
place of the original object of attack, the sexual or-
gan. A further displacement then set the equally
movable and vulnerable eye in place of the beetle.
I might also mention that in Hungarian the pupil
is designated by a word meaning literally, "eye-
beetle."
5. In a whole series of anxiety dreams (mostly
u (Corns in German are called "Hiihneraugen," literally
"fowls' eyes." Transl.)
Symbolism 273
recollected from childhood) eyes figure that grow
alternately larger and smaller. From the total con-
text I have had to regard these eyes as symbols of
the male sexual organ in its changing size (erection).
The apparent change in size of the eyes on opening
and closing the lids is obviously used by the child to
represent genital processes that are accompanied by
changes in size. Children's dread, often excessive, of
their parents' eyes has also, in my opinion, a sexual-
symbolic root.
6. In another series of dreams, eyes (as paired
organs) represent the testicles. Since the face
(apart from the hands) is the only uncovered part
of the body, children have to satisfy all their curi-
osity relating to other parts of the body on the head
and face of their adult friends, especially the par-
ents. Each part of the face thus becomes the rep-
resentative of one or more genital areas. The face
is specially well adapted (nose in the middle be-
tween the eyes and eyebrows, with the mouth below)
for representation of the penis, testicles, pubic hair,
and anus.
I have no doubt that the sense of embarrassment
one experiences on being stared at, and which keeps
one from staring hard at others, finds its explana-
tion in the sexual-symbolic significance of the parts
of the face. This must also go to explain the marked
effect of the hypnotiser's eyes on his medium. I may
refer also to the sexual symbolism in ogling, in the
274 Contributions to Pgycho-4iia1if.<}i*
bashful drooping of the eyes, casting of the eyes on
someone, etc., further such expressions as "to cast
eyes at someone, to throw sheep's eyes," 9 etc.
7. Finally I may relate the case of an obsessional
patient who confirmed subsequently my interpreta-
tion of Oedipus' self-blinding. As a child he was
unusually spoilt, fixed on his parents, but very bash-
ful and modest. One day he learnt from other chil-
dren the real course of sexual relations between the
parents. At this he displayed intense anger at his
father, often with the conscious phantasy that he
was castrating him (the father), which was always
followed, however, by remorse and self-punishment.
Now one of these self-punishments was that he de-
stroyed the eyes in his own portrait. I was able to
explain to the patient that in doing so he was only
expiating in a disguised way the castration he had
wished to perform on his father, in accordance with
the Mosaic talion threat of punishment, "an eye for
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," which, by the way,
takes for example just the two castration symbols,
blinding and tooth-extraction. 20
In a work on the stages in the development of the
sense of reality 21 I have attempted to explain the
origin of symbolism from the impulse to represent in-
fantile wishes as being fulfilled, by means of the
w (Cp. the modern slang expression, "to make a glad eye."
Transl.)
" See my remarks on tooth-symbolism in Chapter VI.
"Chapter VIII.
Symbolism 275
child's own body. The symbolic identification of ex-
ternal objects with bodily organs makes it possible to
find again, on the one hand, all the wished-for ob-
jects of the world in the individual's body, on the
other hand, the treasured organs of the individual's
body in objects conceived in an animistic manner.
The tooth and eye symbolism would be examples of
the fact that bodily organs (principally the genital
ones) can be represented not only by objects of the
outer world, but also by other organs of the body.
In all probability this is even the more primary kind
of symbol-creation.
I imagine that this symbolic equating of genital
organs with other organs and with external objects
originally happens only in a playful way, out of ex-
uberance, so to speak. The equations thus arising,
however, are secondarily made to serve repression,
which seeks to weaken one member of the equation,
while it symbolically over-emphasises the other, more
harmless one by the amount of the repressed affect.
In this way the upper half of the body, as the more
harmless one, attains its sexual-symbolic significance,
and so comes about what Freud calls "Displacement
from below upwards." In this work of repression,
the eyes have proved to be specially adapted to re-
ceive the affects displaced from the genital region,
on account of their shape and changeable size, their
movability, their high value, and their sensitiveness.
It is to be supposed, however, that this displacement
276 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
would not have succeeded so well, had not the eye al-
ready had from the beginning that significant libidi-
nous value that Freud describes in his "Sexualtheo-
rie" as a special component of the sexual instinct
(the impulse of sexual visual curiosity).
Ill
The Ontogenesis of Symbols 22
Dr. Beaurain's remarks 23 about the ways in which
the child comes to form its first general concepts
can be fully confirmed by whoever has had the oppor-
tunity to watch the mental development of the child,
either directly, or else indirectly via parents whose
powers of observation had been psychologically
sharpened. There can be no doubt that the child
(like the unconscious) identifies two things on the
basis of the slightest resemblancej displaces affects
with ease from one to the other, and gives the same
name to both. Such a name is thus the highly con-
densed representative of a large number of funda-
mentally different individual things, which, however,
are in some way or other (even if ever so distantly)
similar and are for this reason identified. Advance
in the knowledge of reality (intelligence) then mani-
* Published in the Internal. Zeitschr. f. arztl. Psychoanalyse,
1913.
* Beaurain, "Ueber das Symbol und die psychischen Bedin-
gungen fur sein Entstehen beim Kinde," in the same number
of the Zeitschrift.
Symbolism 277
fests itself in the child in the progressive resolution
of such condensation-products into their elements, in
learning to distinguish from one another things that
are similar in one respect but otherwise different.
Many writers have already rightly grasped and de-
scribed this process ; Silberer's and Beaurain's com-
munications on the subject have brought further
confirmation and have deepened our insight into the
details of this development process in the mind.
All these authors see in the infantile inadequacy
of the capacity for making distinctions the chief
factor in the origination of the ontogenetic and phy-
Ipgenetic preliminary stages of the knowledge proc-
esses.
I should like here to raise an objection only
against designating all these preliminary stages in
knowledge with the word "Symbol;" similes, allego-
ries, metaphors, allusions, parables, emblems, and in-
direct representations of every sort might also in a
certain sense be conceived as products of this lack of
sharpness in distinction and definition, and yet they
are not in the psycho-analytical sense symbols.
Only such things (or ideas) are symbols in the sense
of psycho-analysis as are invested in consciousness
with a logically inexplicable and unfounded affect,
and of which it may be analytically established that
they owe this affective over-emphasis to unconscious
identification with another thing (or idea), to which
the surplus of affect really belongs. Not all similes,
278 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
therefore, are symbols, but only those in which the
one member of the equation is repressed into the un-
conscious. 24 Rank and Sachs conceive a symbol in
the same sense. 25 "We understand by this," they
say, "a special kind of indirect representation which
is distinguished by certain peculiarities from other
allied kinds, such as the simile, the metaphor, the
allegory, the allusion, and other forms of figurative
representation of thought-material (of the rebus va-
riety)," and "it is a substitutive, illustrative replace-
ment-expression for something hidden."
This being so, it is more prudent not to assume that
the conditions under which symbols arise are identi-
cal with those for analogy-formation in general, but
to presuppose for this specific kind of analogy-for-
mation specific conditions of origin, and to search for
these.
Now analytical experience shews us in fact that
although the condition of intellectual insufficiency
has to be fulfilled with the formation of real symbols
as well, the chief conditions for their production are
not of an intellectual, but of an affective nature. I
will demonstrate this with individual examples from
sexual symbolism.
So long as the necessities of life do not compel
*See on this matter my remarks in earlier articles, Ch. VI,
Ch. VIII, Ch. X, Sect. 2, and my review on Jung's Libido essay
in the Internat. Zeitschr. f. arztl. Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. I, S.
393.
38 Rank und Sachs. Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse flir
die Geisteswissenschaften. 1913. S. 11. et seq. . . .
Symbolism 279
them to adaptation and therewith to the knowledge
of reality, children concern themselves to begin with
only about the satisfaction of their instincts, i. e.
about the parts of the body where this satisfaction
takes place, about the objects suited to evoke this,
and about the actions that actually evoke the satis-
faction. Of the sexually excitable parts of the body
(erogenous zones), for instance, they are specially
interested in the mouth, the anus, and the genitals.
"What wonder, then, if also his attention is arrested
above all by those objects and processes of the outer
world that on the ground of ever so distant a re-
semblance remind him of his dearest experiences." 26
Thus comes about the "sexualisation of every-
thing." 2T In this stage small boys are prone to
apply the childish term for genitals to all long ob-
jects, they see an anus in every hole, urine in every
fluid, and faeces in every softish material.
A boy, aged about one and a half, said when he
was first shewn the Danube : "What a lot of spit !"
A two-year-old boy called everything that could
open, a door, including even his parents' legs, since
these can open and shut (be abducted and adducted).
Similar analogies are formed also within the sphere
of the bodily organs themselves: Penis and tooth,
anus and mouth, become equated. Perhaps the child
finds an equivalent in the upper part of the body
"Ch. VIII. P. 193.
9 (A well-known expression of the philologist Kleinpaul.
Transl.)
280 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
(especially on the head and face) for every affective-
ly important part of the lower half.
This equating, however, is not yet symbolism. Only
from the moment when as the result of cultural edu-
cation the one member of the equation (the more im-
portant one) is repressed, does the other previously
less important member attain affective over-signifi-
cance and become a symbol of the repressed one.
Originally penis and tree, penis and church-steeple,
were consciously equated; but only with the repres-
sion of the interest in the penis do the tree and
church-steeple become invested with inexplicable and
apparently ungrounded interest; they become penis
symbols.
In this way also eyes become symbols of the geni-
talia, with which they had previously been identified
on the ground of extrinsic resemblance. There
thus comes about a symbolic over-emphasis of the
upper half of the body in general, after interest in
the lower half has been repressed, and all genital
symbols that play such an extensive part in dreams
(necktie, snake, tooth-drawing, box, ladder, etc.)
must have originated ontogenetically in the same
way. I should not be surprised if in a dream of the
boy mentioned above a door re-appeared as a symbol
of the parental lap, and in a dream of the other
boy's the Danube as a symbol of bodily fluids.
I desired with these examples to point out the
overwhelming significance of affective factors in the
Symbolism 281
production of true symbols. It is they that have to
be taken into consideration in the first place when
one wishes to distinguish symbols from other psychi-
cal products (metaphors, similes, etc.), which are
also the result of condensation. One-sided consider-
ation of formal and rational conditions in the expla-
nation of psychical processes can easily lead one
astray.
For instance, one was formerly inclined to believe
that things are confounded because they are similar ;
nowadays we know that a thing is confounded with
another only because certain motives for this are
present; similarity merely provides the opportunity
for these motives to function. In the same way it
must be said that apperceptive insufficiency alone,
without consideration of the motives impelling to-
wards analogy-formation, do not adequately explain
the creation of symbols.
CHAPTER XI
SOME CLINICAL OBSERVATIONS ON PARANOIA AND
PARAPHRENIA J
(Contribution to the Psychology of "System-
Constmctions")
THE sister of a young artist called on me one
day and told me that her brother A., a very
talented man, had been behaving for some time in a
very peculiar manner. He had read a doctor's trea-
tise on the serum treatment of tuberculosis, 2 since
when he had been the whole time concerned only
about himself, had got his urine and sputum exam-
ined for abnormal constituents, and, although there
were none present, had undergone the serum treat-
ment with the doctor in question. It was soon plain
that it was not a question of a simple hypochondriac
moodiness with him. Not only the treatise, but also
1 Published in the Internal. Zeitschr. f. arztl. Psychoanalyse,
1914.
'This treatise, which traced almost all nervous and psychical
disturbances to tuberculosis, and advised a corresponding treat-
ment, gave my psychoneurotics plenty to do.
282
Observations on Paranoia and Paraphrenia 28S
the doctor's personality made an unusual impression
on him. When on one occasion the doctor treated
him in a rather off-hand way, he immersed himself in
making notes (which the sister gave me to read) of
endless worryings as to how this behaviour of the
doctor could be harmonised with the fact that he
was a real savant (which he did not venture to
doubt. ) It then turned out that his hypochondriacal
ideas were interwoven in a larger philosophical sys-
tem, built, so to speak, into the structure of the lat-
ter. For a long time the young man had been in-
terested in Ostwald's natural philosophy, and was
an eager follower of his ; the energetic main idea and
the marked emphasis laid on the economic principle
in Ostwald's proposals had made a specially deep
impression on him. The statement that one should
accomplish as much as possible with as little expendi-
ture of energy as possible he wanted to realise in
every respect in the practical affairs of his life, but
in doing so he went to extremes that struck even his
sister (who had a specially high estimation of her
brother's intelligence) as peculiar. So long as he
only prescribed (in writing) uncommonly exact ar-
rangements for the day, in which every bodily and
every kind of mental activity was allotted a definite
time, he might still have passed as a specially dutiful
pupil of his master, but later he began to exaggerate
the tendency to economy to such an extent as to drive
it unconsciously, of course to downright absurd-
284 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
ity. This became most evident when the amalgama-
tion with the hypochondriacal ideas came about. He
experienced paraesthesias in the most diverse organs,
among others in the legs ; he remarked that the lat-
ter ones disappeared when he lifted his leg. In order,
now, to deflect his attention (whose energy, accord-
ing to his convictions, he felt obliged to employ for
more valuable matters than the perception of bodily
states) from the sensations in the leg, his sister had
to hold his leg up in the air so that he could engross
himself in thought undisturbed, the most valuable ac-
complishment of which he was capable. The sister
often faithfully carried out this wish. Gradually he
came to see that he ought really not to perform any
work at all himself except thinking ; the carrying out
of his ideas in detail a subordinate task must be
left to people with feebler capacities. In this way
he finally became occupied only with the statement
of problems, and employed his whole time in reflect-
ing on ultimate scientific, psychological, and philo-
sophical questions. He directed those around him
to see to it, in ways exactly prescribed by him, that
he had absolute rest during his mental work. All
this still would not have caused his family any seri-
ous solicitude had he not given himself up to com-
plete inactivity, after having up till then conscien-
tiously carried out his projects. In his endeavour
to work "with the most favourable coefficients possi-
ble" he had thus brought himself to a point where he
Observations on Paranoia and Paraphrenia 285
neglected the tasks that lay nearest to hand (since
they could not be literally harmonised with the the-
ory of energetic economy) ; the precept of creating
in the most economic way possible thus served him,
and quite consistently, for the purpose of giving up
creating altogether. He lay inactive for hours in
certain artificially arranged positions. This latter
I had to regard as a variety of catatonic posture,
and the purely psychical symptoms as fragments of
hypochondriacal and megalomaniac ideas ; I gave the
patient's family to understand that I considered the
case to be one of paranoid paraphrenia (dementia
praecox), and that the young man needed for the
time being to be certified as insane. The family at
first refused to accept the diagnosis and the advice,
although I left open the possibility that it might
prove to be a slight and passing attack.
Soon after, the sister came again and told me that
the brother had begged her to sleep in his room, on
the ground that he felt better so, which was good for
his mental capacity ; the sister assented to his wishes.
For a few nights he did nothing but get her to hold
his leg up. Then he began to talk to her of erotic
longings and erections, which disturbed him in his
work. In between he spoke of his father, who, he
said, had treated him too strictly, and towards whom
he had until then felt coldly; only now had he dis-
covered in her, as in the father, their fondness for
him. Suddenly he said: It was against energetic
286 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
economy for him to satisfy his erotic needs with
strange women and for money; it would be simpler
and less trouble, not to mention without danger or
expense : in a word, more economical, if the sister, in
the interest of his psychical capacity and faithfully
following the "energetic imperative," gave herself to
him. After this occurrence (which, by the way, the
sister kept secret), and after the patient had threat-
ened to commit suicide, he was committed to an
asylum.
n
A very intelligent young man, B, who besides
punctiliously fulfilling his official duties achieved
quite remarkable poetic accomplishments, and whose
development I had watched for over fourteen years,
was always recognised by me to be one of those in-
sane persons, with delusions of grandeur and of per-
secution, who know how to keep their symptoms
within such bounds that they can still exist in society.
Since I liked his literary works and had several times
tried in vain, however to direct the interest of
some prominent people to him, he became very fond of
me. He called on me about once a month, told me
his troubles as to a father-confessor, and always
went away to some extent relieved. At his work his
colleagues and superiors so he told me placed him,
in the most painful situations. According to him,
he always did his duty, indeed, as a rule, more than
Observations on Paranoia and Paraph re nia 287
was asked of him, and still (or perhaps for that very
reason!) they were all hostile to him. They were
evidently envious of him on account of his superior
intelligence and his high connections. When asked
about the annoyances under which he had to suffer,
he could only give as examples some trivial jokes of
his colleagues and a degree of disdain on the chief's
part that did not go beyond what is common enough.
He took his revenge in making a special note of all
the pieces of carelessness, of slackness, and of rule-
breaking, also of supposed unfair advantages, with
which the other officials could be charged. From
time to time, when his pent-up discontent broke out
in open rebellion, he would rake up all these matters,
mostly quite things of the past, and bring them to
the knowledge of the director, with the result that
he himself always incurred unpleasantnesses and re-
proofs, but sometimes his colleagues and superiors
likewise. Finally he really managed to embroil him-
self with almost everybody, and so was spared the
trouble of having to construe his colleagues' hostility
out of trivial indications ; he got himself thoroughly
hated ; every department was glad to get rid of him,
and made use of every opportunity to get him trans-
ferred to another. After such transferences there
were also "transference-improvements." 3 With
1 (Versetzunysbvasuruugen: A term used in German psychia-
try to denote the improvements that often come about with
insane patients merely as the result of their being transferred
from one locality, or part of the asylum, to another. Transl.)
288 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
every new chief he expected that his virtues would
at last be recognised, and with each he believed that
he could remark unequivocal signs of special esteem
for his capacities and of great liking for him; but
soon enough it would turn out that the new chief was
no better than the previous ones. To be sure, these
previous ones had without doubt denounced him to
the new chief; the whole lot of them hung together,
etc. It went just as badly with him in his literary
activity. Those writers who were already recognised
constituted themselves so he told me into a com-
munity of mutual interests, a "maffia," which kept
back young talents. And yet, according to him, his
works were fit to stand beside the most renowned ones
in the literature of the world.
As regards sexuality his wants always seemed to be
slight. He had sometimes noticed that he was inex-
plicably fortunate with women, he pleased them all
without bothering himself much about them, he had
to take great care of himself in regard to them, etc.,
(*. e. in addition to the delusions of persecution and
grandeur he also produced those of erotomania).
From communications made from time to time, the
deeper layers also of his mental existence became
known to me. He lived in poor circumstances, a fact
that led to an early estrangement with his father,
whom to begin with he had tenderly loved; he then
transferred (in his phantasy) the father-part to an
uncle, who had had considerable success in literary
Observations on Paranoia and Paraphrenia 289
renown and in social rank, but he was soon obliged
to see that he had nothing to expect from this egoist,
so withdrew his love from him also and made as we
saw on the one hand vain attempts to find again the
lost father-imago in his superiors, while on the other
hand he withdrew his sexual hunger in a narcissistic
way on to himself, and took delight in his own dis-
tinguished attributes and achievements.
About the twelfth year of our acquaintanceship,
however, there came a break. In an over-intense in-
dignation at a supposed piece of bad treatment he at-
tacked his highest superior at the office (physically).
This led to a tedious and painful investigation, which
ended relatively favourably ; the patient was declared
to be "ill with his nerves" and was retired with a
pension. At about the same time as this perhaps
rather earlier, but especially after his dismissal from
his post he began to take an extensive interest in
psycho-analytical literature. 4 He read among other
things my essay on the connection between paranoia
and homosexuality. He put the question directly to
me, whether I considered him to be a paranoiac and
homosexual, and made very merry at the idea in a
patronising way. Still the idea seemed to have taken
root in him, and to have flourished alongside his pre-
vailing inactivity in other directions, for one day
he came to me, very excited and enthusiastic, saying
4 As it seemed to me to be quite without prospects I did not
want him to go through an analysis.
290 Contribution* to L'syclio- Analysis
that on thinking it over he had to agree with my
opinion ( !) ; he used really to suffer from delusions
of persecution ; it had come over him like an illumina-
tion that deep down inside he was a homosexual;
he recollected various incidents that directly con-
firmed this, in his opinion. Now, so he said, he was
able to explain the curious sensations half fearful,
half libidinous that he always experienced in the
presence of an older friend or patron; he also un-
derstood now why he had the tendency to come so
near to me physically that he could feel my breath
in his face. 5 He now knew, further, why he accused
certain patrons of having homosexual intentions in
regard to him; it was simply that the wish was
father to the thought.
I was very pleased at this turn, not only out of
consideration for the patient's welfare, but also be-
cause the case supported my secret hope that per-
haps after all the outlook for the treatment of para-
noia in general might not be quite so desperate as it
has seemed.
A few days later the patient came back again. He
was still excited, but no longer so euphoric. He was
very afraid, he told me; the homosexual phantasies
that swept over him were more and more intolerable ;
he saw large phalli in front of him, which disgusted
1 This peculiarity of his I had already noticed in fact and had
interpreted in the sense of transferred erotism; naturally I had
taken care not to call his attention to it nor to explain the
symptom to him.
Observations on Paranoia and Paraphrenia 291
him; he kept fancying paederastic situations with
other men (also with myself). I tried successfully
to calm him, telling him that it was only because
of their unaccustomed nature that these phantasies
had such an effect on him, and that later on he
would certainly not have so much to suffer from the
ideas.
Then for a few days I heard nothing of him, until
one of the members of his family called to tell me
that the patient, who for the past two or three days
had been inaccessible, had hallucinations, kept talk-
ing to himself, and had broken into his uncle's house
the day before, and then into a magnate's palace,
where he created a disturbance. Ejected from here,
he went home, and lay in bed refusing to speak a
word; every now and then, however, he was quite
clear and assured them that there was nothing wrong
with him and that he was not to be transported to
an asylum.
I visited the patient and found him in a deep cata-
tonic state (rigid posture, negativism, inaccessibil-
ity, hallucinations). When I came in he appeared to
recognise me and shook hands, but immediately after
he fell back into the catatonic stupor. It took weeks
before he gradually improved a little in the asylum
where he was confined, and months before he could be
discharged from there improved. When I saw him
again he did not have complete insight into his path-
ological state he objectified some of his feelings of
292 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
being aggrieved, and a part of the old paranoiac de-
lusional formation was again active; on the other
hand, he fled terrified from homosexual thoughts, de-
nied that he was suffering from a psychosis, and no
longer believed in the casual connection between his
psychical experiences and homosexuality. Naturally
I did not try to penetrate further into his mind, nor
to restore his previous convictions. From now on
the patient avoided me in a striking manner ; I gath-
ered later that he had to be confined again because
of a recurrence of his excitement, this time for a
somewhat shorter period.
What is common to the two cases here communi-
cated (apart from the latent homosexuality demon-
strable in every case of paranoia and paraphrenia, a
matter I do not propose to discuss in more detail at
this point) 6 is that they both throw an interesting
light on the part played in paranoia by the forma-
tion of delusional systems. The patient A. became ill
in adopting en bloc a ready-made philosophical sys-
tem (Ostwald's natural philosophy), instead of tak-
ing the trouble to construct a system of his own.
Philosophical systems that seek to explain rationally
the whole order of the world, leaving no room over
for irrationality (*. e. for what is not yet explica-
ble), have been, as is well-known, compared with the
The reader may be referred to Freud's work on the subject
("Ein autobiogr. beschr. Fall von Paranoia," Jahrb. d. Psycho-
analyse, Bd. Ill) and to my own, Chapter V of the present
book.
Observations on Paranoia and Paraphrenia 293
paranoiac delusional systems. At all events such
systems excellently meet the needs of paranoiacs,
whose symptoms spring from the impulse to explain
rationally by the external order of the world their
own irrational inner strivings. It may be very
clearly seen here also how the adopted system grad-
ually gets more and more made use of to rationalise
the patient's own purely egocentric, repressed wishes
(doing nothing, incestuous desires in regard to the
sister).
Case B. shews again how fateful it may be for the
paranoiac when the system that he has laboriously
built up, and which allows him to be still socially
active, is suddenly torn from him. B. succeeded in
projecting all his ethically incompatible longings on
to the environment in his office ; he became the victim
of a systematic persecution. Dismissed from his
post, he had, so to speak, been robbed of his system ;
by chance he came across the psycho-analytical lit-
erature just at this time of the loss of his system,
and this although he had previously heard some-
thing of it for the first time was able to appear evi-
dent to him. For a short while he seemed inclined
to exchange his persecution system for what in our
opinion would be correct insight into his true per-
sonality, and to make friends with his own repressed
complexes. But it soon became plain that this in-
sight was unendurable to him, so that since he had
no other suitable system at his disposal, and since
294 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
this made it possible for him to anchor at a second
neurotic point of fixation 7 he had to flee from the
turmoil of morbid dread into dementia. He recov-
ered from the paraphrenic attack only in so far as it
was possible for him to do away once more with the
psycho-analytical insight, and to reconstruct the
persecution system.
The close relations, such as these, between system-
formation and paranoia perhaps also explain the
fact that there is always a large crowd of psycho-
pathic hangers-on in the train of new scientific (e. g.
physical and philosophical) systems, discoveries, and
theories. In the therapeutic respect Case B. cau-
tions us to uphold Freud's pessimistic opinion as to
the psycho-analytic treatment of paranoia. 8
The peculiar catatonic posture of patient A. (ly-
ing with upraised leg) deserves, in my opinion, spe-
cial attention. The patient made the interpretation
of this symptom easy by transferring to the sister
the task of holding the leg, and by soon after ap-
proaching her with incestuous proposals. When we
take into consideration the long known symbolic iden-
tification of leg and penis, we may regard this cata-
1 (Referring to the fixation-point of paranoia at the nar-
cissistic-homosexual stage of infancy, that of paraphrenia [de-
mentia praecox] at the still earlier one of auto-erotism.
Transl.)
In contrast with Bjerre, who says he has cured a case of
paranoia by analysis (Jahrb. d. Psychoanalyse, Bd. II). This
case of Bjerre's was in my opinion, and Freud's, not a true
paranoia.
Observations on Paranoia and Paraphrenia 295
tonic posture as a means of expression (and at the
same time a defensive measure) of repressed erection-
tendencies. It is thinkable that the collection of sim-
ilar observations will explain in this sense catatonic
rigidity in general: In support of this idea I can
bring forward a third case.
Ill
A paraphrenic who had an uncommonly keen ca-
pacity for self-observation spontaneously explained
to me that with all his curious catatonic postures
and movements he was seeking to defend himself from
erotic sensations in the various parts of the body
concerned. The extreme bowing forwards of the
body that he kept up for minutes at a time served,
for instance, "to break the erection of the intestine."
CHAPTER XII
THE NOSOLOGY OF MALE HOMOSEXUALITY (HOMO-
EROTISM) l
WHAT we have learned about homosexuality
through psycho-analysis may be put to-
gether in a few sentences. The first and most impor-
tant step towards a deeper knowledge of this instinct-
aim was the supposition by Fliess and Freud 2 that
really every human being traverses a psychically bi-
sexual stage in his childhood. 3 The "homosexual
component" falls later a victim to repression; only
a minor part of this component gets rescued in a
sublimated form in the cultivated life of adults, in
playing, in readiness for social help, in friendship
leagues, in club life, etc., a part that is not to be
underestimated. Insufficiently repressed homosexu-
1 Delivered at the Third Congress of the Internat. Psycho-
Analytical Association at Weimar, October 1911; Published in
the Internat. Zeitschr. f. a'rztl. Psychoanalyse, 1914.
* Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie.
* On a previous occasion I proposed the use of the expression
"ambisexual" instead of that of "bisexual," it being thereby
expressed that the child in certain stage of development feels
amphi-erotically, t. e. can transfer his sexual hunger to man
and woman (father and mother) at the same time. In this
way the contrast between Freud's conception and Fliess' the-
ory of biological bisexuality would be clearly brought out.
296
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 297
ality can later, under certain circumstances, become
once more manifest, or express itself in neurotic
symptoms ; this is especially the case with paranoia,
concerning which the more recent investigations have
been able to establish that it is really to be conceived
as a disguised manifestation of the inclination to-
wards the person's own sex. 4
A newer point of view, which renders more easy the
understanding of homosexuality, we owe to Sadger
and Freud. Sadger discovered in the psycho-analy-
sis of several male homosexuals that intense hetero-
sexual inclinations had been displayed in their early
childhood ; indeed that their "Oedipus complex"
(love for the mother, attitude of hate towards the
father) had come to expression in a specially pro-
nounced manner. He considered that the homosex-
uality which later develops in them is really only an
attempt to restore the original relation to the
mother. In the homosexual pleasure-objects of his
desires the homosexual is unconsciously loving him-
self, while he himself (also unconsciously) is repre-
senting the feminine and effeminate part of the
mother.
This loving of oneself in the person of another hu-
man being Sadger called Narcissism. 5 Freud has
shewn us that narcissism possesses a much greater
and more general significance than had been thought,
4 Freud, Jahrb. d. Psychoanalyse, Bd. Ill; Ferenczi, Ch. V
of the present book.
* (Or, rather, borrowed the term from Naecke. Transl.)
298 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
and that every human being has to pass through a
narcissistic stage of development. After the stage
of "polymorphous-perverse" auto-erotism, and be-
fore the real choice of an external love-object takes
place, every human being adopts himself as an ob-
ject of love, in that he collects the previously autistic
erotisms together into a unity, the "darling ego."
Homosexuals are only more strongly fixed than other
people in this narcissistic stage; the genital organ
similar to their own remains throughout life an es-
sential condition for their love.
All these pieces of knowledge, however, important
as they are in themselves, give no explanation of the
peculiarities of the sexual constitution and the spe-
cial experiences that lie at the base of manifest
homosexuality.
I may say at once that, in spite of much puzzling
over them, I have not succeeded in solving these ques-
tions. The aim of this communication is nothing
more than to bring forward some facts of experience
and points of view that have spontaneously forced
themselves on me in the course of many years* psy-
cho-analytic observation of homosexuals, and which
may be capable of rendering easier the correct noso-
logical classification of homosexual clinical pictures.
It seemed to me from the beginning that the des-
ignation "homosexuality" was nowadays applied to
dissimilar and unrelated psychical abnormalities.
Sexual relations with members of a person's own
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 299
sex are only a symptom, and this symptom may be
the form in which the most diverse psychical disor-
ders and disturbances of development, as well as
normal life, appear. It was thus a priori improba-
ble that everything to which the name "homosexu-
ality" is now applied would in a simple way yield it-
self as a clinical unity. The two types of homosex-
uality, for example, distinguished as "active" and
"passive" have been up to the present conceived as
obviously two forms in which the same condition may
appear; in both cases one spoke of "inversion" of
the sexual instinct, of "contrary" sexual sensation,
of "perversion," and overlooked the possibility that
in this way one might be confounding two essentially
different morbid states merely because a striking
symptom is common to both. Yet even superficial
observation of these two kinds of homo-erotism 6
shews that they belong in the pure cases, at all
events, to quite different syndromes, and that the
"acting" and the "suffering" homo-erotics represent
fundamentally different types of men. Only the
passive homo-erotic deserves to be called "inverted,"
only in his case does one see real reversal of normal
psychical and perhaps also bodily characteris-
tics, only he is a true "intermediate stage." A man
The word comes from Karsch-Haack (Das gleichgeschlecht-
liche Leben der Naturvolker, 1911) and is in my opinion pre-
ferable to the ambiguous expression homosexuality, since it
makes prominent the psychical aspect of the impulse in con-
tradistinction to the biological- term "sexuality."
300 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
who in intercourse with men feels himself to be a
woman is inverted in respect to his own ego (homo-
erotism through subject-inversion, or, more shortly,
"subject-homo-erotism") ; he feels himself to be a
woman, and this not only in genital intercourse, but
in all relations of life.
It is quite otherwise with the true "active homo-
sexual." He feels himself a man in every respect, is
as a rule very energetic and active, and there is noth-
ing effeminate to be discovered in his bodily or men-
tal organisation. The object of his inclination alone
is exchanged, so that one might call him a homo-
erotic through exchange of the love-object, or, more
shortly, an object-homo-erotic.
A further striking difference between the "sub-
jective" and the "objective" homo-erotic consists in
the fact that the former (the invert) feels himself
attracted by more mature, powerful men, and is on
friendly terms, as a colleague, one might almost say,
with women ; the second type, on the contrary, is al-
most exclusively interested in young, delicate boys
with an effeminate appearance, but meets a woman
with pronounced antipathy, and not rarely with ha-
tred that is badly, or not at all, concealed. The
true invert is hardly ever impelled to seek medical
advice, he feels at complete ease in the passive role,
and has no other wish than that people should put
up with his peculiarity and not interfere with the
kind of satisfaction that suits him. Not having to
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 301
fight with any inner conflicts, he can sustain fortu-
nate love-relationships for years, and really fears
nothing except external danger and being shamed.
With all this his love is feminine to the finest de-
tails. He lacks the sexual overestimation, which ac-
cording to Freud characterises a man's love; he is
not very passionate, and, as a true Narcissus, chiefly
demands from his lover the recognition of his bodily
and other merits.
The object-homo-erotic, on the other hand, is un-
commonly tormented by the consciousness of his ab-
normality ; sexual intercourse never completely satis-
fies him, he is tortured by qualms of conscience, and
overestimates his sexual object to the uttermost.
That he is plagued with conflicts and never comes to
terms with his condition is shewn by his repeated at-
tempts to obtain medical help for his trouble. It is
true that he often changes his companions in love,
not from superficiality, however, as the invert does,
but in consequence of painful disappointments and
of the insatiable and unsuccessful pursuit of the love-
ideal ("formation of series," as Freud calls it).
It may happen that two homo-erotics of different
types unite to make a pair. The invert finds in the
object-homo-erotic a quite suitable lover, who adores
him, supports him in material affairs, and is impos-
ing and energetic; the man of the objective type, on
the other hand, may find pleasure in just the mixture
of masculine and feminine traits present in the in-
802 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
vert. (I also know active homo-erotics, by the way,
who exclusively desire non-inverted youths, and only
content themselves with inverts in the absence of the
former). 7
However simply these two character pictures of
homo-erotism lend themselves to distinction, they sig-
nify no more than a superficial description of syn-
dromes so long as they are not submitted to the re-
solving procedure of psycho-analysis, which alone
can render their mode of origin psychologically com-
prehensible.
Now I have had the opportunity of treating psy-
cho-analytically a number of male homo-erotics;
many for only a short period (a few weeks), others
for months, a whole year, and even longer. Rather
than narrate any anamneses in this summary, it
seems to me more instructive to condense my impres-
sions and experiences on homo-erotism into two psy-
cho-analytical Galton photographs. 8
I may at once forestall the final result of my in-
1 1 am conscious that, when I call inverts "female" and ob-
ject-homo-erotics "male," I am using terms the scope of which
is not sufficiently sharply defined. It may be just indicated
here that by maleness I understand activity (aggressivity) of
the sexual hunger, highly developed object-love with over-
estimation of the object, a polygamy that is in only apparent
contrast with the latter trait, and, as a distant derivative of
the activity, intellectual talent; by femaleness I understand
passivity (tendency to repression), narcissism and intuitiveness.
The psychical attributes of sex are, of course, mingled in every
individual although in unequal proportion. (Ambisexuality.)
1 A further motive for this is consideration for the patients'
anonymity, which it is especially important to preserve.
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 303
vestigations : Psycho-analysis shewed me that the
subject- and object-homo-erotism are really essen-
tially different conditions. The former is a true
"sexual intermediate stage" (in the sense of Magnus
Hirschfeld and his followers), thus a pure develop-
mental anomaly; object-homo-erotism, however, is a
neurosis, an obsessional neurosis.
In both types of amphi-erotism 9 the deepest lay-
ers of the mind and the oldest memory-traces still
bear testimony to the investment of both sexes, or
the relationship to both parents, with sexual hunger.
In the subsequent development, however, inversion
and object-homo-erotism diverge far from each
other.
We can dig down very deeply into the early his-
tory of the subject-homo-erotic and find already
everywhere signs of his inversion, namely, the abnor-
mal effeminate being. When merely a quite young
child he imagined himself in the situation of his
mother and not in that of his father ; he even brings
about an inverted Oedipus complex ; he wishes for his
mother's death so as to take her place with the fa-
ther and be able to enjoy all her rights; he longs for
her clothes, her jewelry, and of course also her
beauty and the tenderness shewn to her; he dreams
of begetting children, plays with dolls, and is fond of
' This word renders, I believe, the psychological character of
what is intended better than the term "ambisexuality," pre-
viously suggested by me.
304 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
dressing up as a girl. He is jealous of his mother,
claims for himself all his father's tenderness, where-
as his mother he rather admires as something envi-
ably beautiful. In many cases it is plainly to be
seen that the tendency to inversion, which is prob-
ably always constitutionally conditioned, is strength-
ened by external influences as well. "Only children"
who are spoilt, little favourites who grow up in an
exclusively feminine environment, boys who, because
they made their appearance in the place of the girl
that was longed for, are brought up in a girlish way,
can sooner become inverted, given the corresponding
predisposition in their sexual character. 10
On the other hand, the narcissistic nature of a boy
can provoke excessive indulgence on the parents'
part, and so lead to a vicious circle. Bodily attri-
butes also girlish figure and features, a wealth of
hair, and so on may contribute to the consumma-
tion of a boy being treated as a girl. In this way
the father's preference and its response may have
"Among boys who grow up without a father homo-erotics
are to be found relatively often. I imagine that the fixation
on the Imago of the father who was lost early or never known
results, at least in part, from the fact that under such cir-
cumstances the otherwise unavoidable conflict between father
and son is absent. ("A man always credits fate twice as
highly for something that is lacking as for something that he
really possesses; thus my mother's long accounts filled me with
more and more longing for my father, whom - I no longer
knew." G. Keller, "Der griine Heinrich," Cap. II.) In fam-
ilies where the father is alive, but is inferior or insignificant,
the son longs exceedingly for a "strong" man and remains in-
clined to inversion.
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 305
arisen altogether as a secondary process in relation
to the child's narcissism; I know cases in which a
narcissistic boy provoked the father's latent homo-
erotism in the form of excessive tenderness, the latter
then contributing not a little to the fixation of the
former's own inversion.
Nor can psycho-analysis tell us anything new con-
cerning the subsequent fate of these boys ; they stay
fixed in this early stage of development, and become
finally such personalities as we know well enough
from the autobiographies of urnings. I can here lay
stress on only a few points. Coprophilia and pleas-
ure in smell are deeply repressed with them, often to
the extent of aestheticism ; there is a fondness for
perfumes, and as a sublimation an enthusiasm for
art. Characteristic, further, is their idiosyncrasy
against blood and all bloody things. They are most-
ly very suggestible and can easily be hypnotised;
they are fond of imputing their first seduction to the
"suggestion" of a man who stared hard at them or
otherwise pursued them. Behind this suggestion
there lurks, of course, their own trauriatophilia.
Since analysis of inverts does not really elicit any
affects that might result in changing his previous
attitude towards the male sex, inversion (subject-
homo-erotism) is to be regarded as a condition in-
curable by analysis (or by any kind of psycho-
therapy at all). Psycho-analysis does not remain,
however, without any influence on the patient's beha-
306 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
viour; it removes any neurotic symptoms that may
accompany the inversion, especially the morbid anx-
iety, which is often by no means slight. The invert
acknowledges his homo-erotism more frankly after
the analysis than before. It must further be re-
marked that many inverts are by no means quite
insusceptible to the endearments of the female sex.
It is through intercourse with woman (t. e. their
like) that they dispose of what may be called the
homosexual component of their sexuality.
How differently does the picture of object-homo-
erotism present itself even after only a superficial
analysis. After the very shortest examination those
suffering from it prove to be typical obsessional pa-
tients. They swarm with obsessions, and with obses-
sional procedures and ceremonies to guard against
them. A more penetrating dissection finds behind
the compulsion the torturing doubt, as well as that
lack of balance in love and hate which Freud discov-
ered to be the basis of the obsessional mechanisms.
The psycho-analysis of such homo-erotics as only
feel abnormally in reference to their love-object, and
are otherwise of a purely masculine type, has shewn
me plainly that this kind of homo-erotism in all its
phenomena is itself nothing else than a series of ob-
sessive feelings and actions. Sexuality in general is
obsessive enough, but, according to my experience,
object-homo-erotism is a true neurotic compulsion,
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 307
with logically irreversible substitution of normal sex-
ual aims and actions by abnormal ones.
The average (analytically investigated) early his-
tory of homo-erotics of the masculine type is some-
what as follows:
They were all very precocious sexually, and het-
ero-sexually aggressive (thus confirming Sadger's
finding). Their Oedipus phantasies were always
"normal," culminating in sexual-sadistic plans of as-
sault on the mother (or her representative) and
cruel death-wishes against the disturbing father.
Further, they were all intellectually precocious, and
in their impulse for knowledge created a number of
infantile sexual theories ; this forms also the founda-
tion of their later obsessional thinking. Apart from
aggressivity and intellectuality their constitution is
characterised by unusually strong anal-erotism and,
coprophilia. 11 In the earliest childhood they had
been severely punished by one of the parents 12 for a
u The view defended in this essay, that object-homo-erotism
is an obsessional neurosis, was strengthened when Freud, in his
work on "Die Disposition zur Zwangsneurose," (this Zeit-
schrift, Jahrg. I, Heft 6) announced that the constitutional
basis of this neurosis is the fixation on a pregenital, sadistic-
anal-erotic stage in the development of the sexual hunger. It
was precisely sadism and anal-erotism that I found at the basis
also of object-homo-erotism, a fact that speaks decidedly in
favour of the inherent connection of these morbid states. See
also Ernest Jones, "Hass und Analerotik in der Zwangsneu-
rose," (this Zeitschrift, Jahrg. I, Heft 5).
11 It struck me how often it was the mother who administered
these reprovals to later homo-erotics, but I attached no special
significance to this circumstance until Professor Freud called
my attention to the importance of this very factor.
308 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
hetero-erotic delinquency (touching a girl indecent-
ly, infantile attempt at coitus), and on such an oc-
casion (which was often repeated) had to suppress
an outburst of intense rage. Following on this they
became especially docile in the latency period (which
set in early), avoided the society of girls and women
half obstinately, half anxiously, and consorted ex-
clusively with their friends. In one of my patients
there occurred several times "irruptions" of homo-
erotic affection in the latency period ; in another the
latency was disturbed through overhearing parental
intercourse, after which the previous good conduct
was interrupted by a transitory period of naughti-
ness (revenge phantasies). When the sexual hunger
increases at the time of puberty the homo-erotic's
inclinations again turn at first towards the opposite
sex, but the slightest reproval or warning on the
part of someone they respect is enough to re-awaken
the dread of women, whereupon there takes place,
either immediately or shortly after, a final flight
from the female to his own sex. One patient when
he was fifteen fell in love with an actress about
whose morality his mother passed some not quite
flattering remarks ; since then he has never ap-
proached a woman and feels himself impulsively
drawn to young men. In the case of another pa-
tient puberty set in with an absolute frenzy of het-
erosexuality ; he had to have sexual intercourse every
day for a year, and obtained the money for it, if
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 309
necessary, in dishonourable ways. When he made
the house servant pregnant, however, and was called
to account for it by his father and vilified by his
mother, he applied himself with the same ardour to
the cult of the male sex, from which no effort has
been able to wean him ever since.
In the transference-relation to the physician ob-
ject-homo-erotics recapitulate the genesis of their
trouble. If the transference is a positive one from
the beginning then unexpected "cures" come about
even after a short treatment; on the slightest con-
flict, however, the patient relapses into his homo-
erotism, and only now, on the setting in of resistance,
does the real analysis begin. If the transference is
negative from the outset, as it is especially apt to
be with patients who come to the treatment not on
their own accord, but at their parents' bidding, then
it takes a long time to reach any real analytic work,
the patient wasting the hour with boastful and scorn-
ful narrations of his homo-erotic adventures.
In the object-homo-erotic's unconscious phantasy
the physician can represent the place of man and
woman, father and mother, reversals 13 of the most
diverse kind playing a very important part in this.
11 The dreams of homo-erotics are very rich in reversals.
Whole series of dreams have often to be read backwards. The
symptomatic action of making a slip of the tongue or pen in
the use of the gender of articles is common. One patient even
made up a bisexual number: the number 101 signified, as the
context shewed, that for him "backwards and forwards were
the same."
810 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
It turns out that an object-homo-erotic knows how
to love the woman in a man; the posterior half of
man's body can signify for him the anterior half of
a woman's, the scapulae or nates assuming the sig-
nificance of the woman's breasts. It was these cases
that shewed me with especial plainness that this kind
of homo-erotism is only a substitution product of the
hetero-erotic sexual hunger. At the same time the
active homo-erotic satisfies in this way also his sadis-
tic and anal-erotic impulses ; this holds good not only
for the real paederasts, but also for the over-refined
boy lovers, those who anxiously shun all indecent
contact with boys; with the latter sadism and anal-
erotism are replaced by their reaction-formations.
In the light of psycho-analysis, therefore, the ac-
tive homo-erotic act appears on the one hand as sub-
sequent (false) obedience, which taking the paren-
tal interdiction literally really avoids intercourse
with women, but indulges the forbidden hetero-erotic
desires in unconscious phantasies ; on the other hand
the paederastic act serves the purpose of the original
Oedipus phantasy and denotes the injuring and sul-
lying of the man. 14
Considered from the intellectual aspect obsession-
al homo-erotism proves to be in the first place an
"One patient, whenever he felt himself insulted by a man,
especially by a superior, had at once to seek out a male prosti-
tute; only in this way was he able to save himself from an
outburst of rage. The supposed "love" for a man was here
essentially an act of violence and revenge.
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 311
over-correction of the doubt concerning the love to-
wards the man's own sex. The homo-erotic obses-
sional idea unites in a happy compromise the flight
from women, and their symbolic replacement, as well
as the hatred of men and the compensation of this.
Woman being apparently excluded from the love-life,
there no longer exists, so far as consciousness is con-
cerned, any further bone of contention between fa-
ther and son.
It is worth mentioning that most of the obsession-
al homo-erotics (as this type might also be called) I
have analysed make use of the intermediary stage
theory 15 of homosexual tendencies, which is now so
popular, to represent their condition as congenital,
and therefore not to be altered or influenced, or, to
use the expression from Schreber's "Denkwiirdigkei-
ten," "in harmony with the universe." They all re-
gard themselves as inverts, and are glad to have
found a scientific support for the justification of
their obsessional ideas and actions.
I have naturally also to say something here as to
my experience concerning the curability of this form
of homo-erotism. In the first place I observe that it
has not yet been possible (for me, at all events) to
cure completely a severe case of obsessional homo-
erotism. In a number of cases, however, I have been
able to record very far-reaching improvement, espe-
M (About equivalent to what we call the "third sex" theory
in English countries. Transl.)
Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
cially in the following directions: abatement of the
hostile attitude and feeling of repugnance towards
women; better control of the previously urgent im-
pulse for homo-erotic satisfaction, the direction of
the impulse being otherwise retained; awakening of
potency towards women, therefore a kind of amphi-
erotism, which took the place of the previously exclu-
sive homo-erotism, often alternating with the latter
in periodic waves. These experiences encourage me,
therefore, to expect that obsessional homo-erotism
will be just as curable by means of the psycho-ana-
lytic method as the other forms of obsessional neu-
rosis. In any case I imagine that the fundamental
reversion of an obsessional homo-erotism that has
been firmly rooted for a long time must need whole
years of analytic work. (In one very hopeful case I
was treating the cure had to be broken off for ex-
trinsic reasons after almost two years.) Only when
we have at our disposal cured cases, . e. cases an-
alysed to the end, will it be possible to pass a final
judgment on the conditions under which this neu-
rosis arises, and on the peculiarities of its disposi-
tional and accidental factors.
It is possible, indeed probable, that homo-erotism
is to be found not only in those here described, but
also in other syndromes; with the isolation of these
two types I certainly do not mean to exhaust all the
possibilities. In making the nosological distinction
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 313
of subject- from object-homo-erotism I only wanted
in the first place to direct attention to the confusion
of ideas that prevails even in the scientific literature
on the homosexuality problem. Psycho-analytic in-
vestigation shews further that nowadays the most
heterogeneous psychical states are treated alike un-
der the title "homosexuality;" on the one hand true
constitutional anomalies (inversion, subject-homo-
erotism), on the other hand psychoneurotic obses-
sional states (obsessional or object-homo-erotism).
The individual of the first kind feels himself to be a
woman with the wish to be loved by a man, the feel-
ing of the second is rather neurotic flight from
women than sympathy towards men.
In designating object-homo-erotism as a neurotic
symptom I come into opposition with Freud, who in
his "Sexualtheorie" describes homosexuality as a
perversion, neuroses on the contrary as the negative
of perversions. The contradiction, however, is only
apparent. "Perversions," i. e. tarrying at primitive
or preparatory sexual aims, can very well be placed
at the disposal of neurotic repression tendencies also,
a part of true (positive) perversion, neurotically
exaggerated, representing at the same time the nega-
tive of another perversion. 16 Now this is the case
with "object-homo-erotism.'* The homo-erotic com-
ponent, which is never absent even normally, gets
* (Abraham has shewn that the same is true of another per-
version: exhibitionism. Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse. 1914.
Transl.)
314 Contributions to Psycho-Analytii
here over-engaged with masses of affect, which in
the unconscious relate to another, repressed perver-
sion, namely, a hetero-erotism of such a strength as
to be incapable of becoming conscious.
I believe that of the two kinds of homo-erotism
here described the "objective'* one is the more fre-
quent and the more important socially; it makes a
large number of otherwise valuable men (psychoneu-
rotically disposed, it is true) impossible in society,
and excludes them from propagation. Further, the
constantly increasing number of object-homo-erotics
is a social phenomenon the importance of which is
not to be underestimated, and one that demands ex-
planation. As a provisional explanation I assume
that the extension of object-homo-erotism is an ab-
normal reaction to the disproportionately exagger-
ated repression of the homo-erotic instinct-compo-
nent by civilised man, i. e. a failure of this repres-
sion.
In the mental life of primitive peoples (as in that
of children) amphi-erotism plays a much greater
part than in that of civilised people. But even with
certain highly civilised races, e. g. the Greeks, it
used to be not merely a tolerated, but a recognised
kind of way for the satisfaction of desire; it is still
so in the Orient of today. In modern European re-
gions of culture, however, and in those attached to
them, not only is actual homo-erotism lacking, but
also the sublimation of it that appeared so obvious
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 815
to the people of antiquity, enthusiastic and devoted
friendship between men. It is in fact astounding to
what an extent present-day men have lost the ca-
pacity for mutual affection and amiability. Instead
there prevails among men decided asperity, resist-
ance, and love of disputation. Since it is unthink-
able that those tender affects which were so strongly
pronounced in childhood could have disappeared
without leaving a trace, one has to regard these
signs of resistance as reaction-formations, as defence
symptoms erected against affection for the same sex.
I would even go so far as to regard the barbarous
duels of the German students as similarly distorted
proofs of affection towards members of their own
sex. (Only slight traces still exist today in a posi-
tive direction; thus, in club and party life, in "hero
worship," in the preference of so many men for boy-
girls and for actresses in male parts, also in attacks
of cruder erotism in drunkenness, where the alcohol
reverses the sublimations.)
It looks, however, as if these rudiments of the love
for their own sex would not fully compensate the men
of today for losing the love of friends. A part of
the unsatisfied homo-erotism remains "free floating,"
and demands to be appeased ; since this is impossible
under the conditions of present-day civilisation, this
quantity of sexual hunger has to undergo a displace-
ment, namely, on to the feeling-relationship to the
opposite sex. I quite seriously believe that the men
316 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
of today are one and all obsessively heterosexual as
the result of this affective displacement ; in order to
free themselves from men, they become the slaves of
women. This may be the explanation of the "chiv-
alry" and the exaggerated, often visibly affected,
adoration of woman that has dominated the male
world since the middle ages ; it may also possibly be
the explanation of Don-Juanism, the obsessive and
yet never fully satisfied pursuit of continually new
heterosexual adventures. Even if Don Juan himself
would find this theory ridiculous, I should have to
declare him to be an obsessional invalid, who could
never find satisfaction in the endless series of women
(so faithfully drawn by Leporello in his book) be-
cause these women are really only substitutes for
repressed love-objects. 17
I do not wish to be misunderstood: I find it nat-
ural and founded in the psycho-physical organisa-
tion of the sexes that a man loves a woman incom-
parably better than his like, but it is unnatural that
a man should repel other men and have to adore
women with an obsessive exaggeration. What won-
der that so few women succeed in meeting these ex-
aggerated demands and in satisfying, as well as all
the other ones, also the man's homo-erotic needs by
being his "companion," without doubt one of the
commonest causes of domestic unhappiness.
"There also exists a Don-Juanism of unsatisfied hetero-
erotism.
The Nosology of Male Homosexuality 317
The exaggeration of hetero-erotism for the pur-
pose of repressing love towards the same sex invol-
untarily reminds one of an epigram of Lessing's
( Sinngedichte, Buch II, Nr C) :
"The unjust mob falsely imputed love of boys to the
righteous Turan.
To chastise the lies what else could he do but
sleep with his sister."
The reason why every kind of affection between
men is proscribed is not clear. It is thinkable that
the sense of cleanliness which has been so specially
reinforced in the past few centuries, . e. the repres-
sion of anal-erotism, has provided the strongest mo-
tive in this direction ; for homo-erotism, even the
most sublimated, stands in a more or less unconscious
associative connection with paederastia, i. e. an
anal-erotic activity.
The increasing number of obsessional homo-erotics
in modern society would then be the symptom of the
partial failure of repression and "return" of the
repressed material.
In a brief summary, therefore, the attempt to ex-
plain the prevalence of object-homo-erotism would
run somewhat as follows: The exaggerated repres-
sion of the homo-erotic instinct-component in pres-
ent-day society has resulted in general in a rather
obsessive reinforcement of hetero-erotism in men. If
now the hetero-erotism is also inhibited or strictly
318 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
restrained, as is necessarily the case during educa-
tion, the consequence may easily be in the first
place with those who are predisposed to it for in-
dividual reasons a reverse displacement of the com-
pulsion from hetero-erotism to homo-erotism, i. e.
the development of a homo-erotic obsessional neu-
rosis.
CHAPTER XIII
THE ONTOGENESIS OF THE INTEREST IN MONEY *
THE deeper psycho-analysis penetrates into the
knowledge of social-psychological productions
(myths, fairy-tales, folk-lore) the stronger becomes
the confirmation of the phylogenetic origin of sym-
bols, which stand out in the mental life of every indi-
vidual as a precipitate of the experiences of previous
generations. Analysis has still to perform the task
of separately investigating the phylogenesis and on-
togenesis of symbolism, and then establishing their
mutual relation. The classical formula of "Dai-
mon kai Tyche" in Freud's application (the co-
operation of heredity and experience in the genesis
of individual strivings) will finally become applied
also to the genesis of the psychical contents of these
strivings, and this also brings to the front the old
dispute about "congenital ideas," though now no
longer in the form of empty speculations. We may
already, however, anticipate to this extent, namely,
that for the production of a symbol individual expe-
riences are necessary as well as the congenital dispo-
1 Published in 'the Internat. Zeitschr. f. arztl. Psychoanalyse,
1914.
319
320 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
sition, these providing the real material for the con-
struction of the symbol, while the congenital basis
preceding experience has perhaps only the value of
an inherited, but not yet functioning mechanism.
I wish here to examine the question of whether, and
to what extent, individual experience favours the
transformation of anal-erotic interest into interest
in money.
Every psycho-analyst is familiar with the sym-
bolic meaning of money that was discovered by
Freud, "Wherever the archaic way of thinking has
prevailed or still prevails, in the old civilisations, in
myths, fairy-tales, superstition, in unconscious think-
ing, in dreams, and in neuroses, money has been
brought into the closest connection with filth."
As an individual-psychological phenomenon paral-
lel with this fact Freud asserts that an intimate as-
sociation exists between the strongly marked eroge-
nicity of the anal zone in childhood and the charac-
ter trait of miserliness that develops later. In the
case of persons who later on were especially tidy,
economical, and obstinate, one learns from the ana-
lytic investigation of their early childhood that they
were of that class of infants "who refuse to empty
the bowel because they obtain an accessory pleasure
from defaecation," who even in the later years of
childhood "enjoyed holding back the stools," and
who recall "having occupied themselves in their child-
hood in all sorts of unseemly ways with the evacu-
The Ontogenesis of the Interest in Money
ated material." "The most extensive connections
seem to be those existing between the apparently so
disparate complexes of defaecation and interest in
money." 2
Observation of the behaviour of children and an-
alytic investigation of neurotics allow us now to es-
tablish some single points on the line along which
the idea of the most valuable thing that a man pos-
sesses (money) is developed in the individual into a
symbol "of the most worthless thing, which a man
casts aside as dejecta." 3
Experience gathered from these two sources shews
that children originally devote their interest with-
out any inhibition to the process of defaecation, and
that it affords them pleasure to hold back their
stools. The excrementa thus held back are really the
first "savings" of the growing being, and as such
remain in a constant, unconscious inter-relationship
with every bodily activity or mental striving that has
anything to do with collecting, hoarding, and saving.
Faeces are also, however, one of the first toys of
the child. The purely auto-erotic satisfaction af-
forded to the child by the pressing and squeezing of
the faecal masses and the play of the sphincter mus-
cles soon becomes in part, at least transformed
into a sort of object-love, in that the interest gets
displaced from the neutral sensations of certain or-
1 Freud. "Charakter und Analerotik," in his Sammlung kl.
Schr. z. Neurosenlehre, Bd. II, S. 132 et seq.
Freud. Loc. citi
Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
gans on to the material itself that caused these feel-
ings. The faeces are thus "introjected," and in this
stage of development which is essentially character-
ised by sharpening of the sense of smell and an in-
creasingly adroit use of the hands, with at the same
time an inability to walk upright (creeping on all
fours) they count as a valuable toy, from which
the child is to be weaned only through deterrents
and threats of punishment.
The child's interest for dejecta experiences its first
distortion through the smell of faeces becoming dis-
agreeable, disgusting. This is probably related to
the beginning of the upright gait. 4 The other at-
tributes of this material moistness, discolouration,
stickiness, etc. do not for the time being offend his
sense of cleanliness. He still enjoys, therefore, play-
ing with and manipulating moist street-mud when-
ever he has the chance, liking to collect it together
into larger heaps. Such a heap of mud is already in
a sense a symbol, distinguished from the real thing
by its absence of smell. For the child, street-mud is,
so to speak, deodourised dejecta.
As the child's sense of cleanliness increases with
the help of paedagogic measures street-mud also
becomes objectionable to him. Substances which on
account of their stickiness, moistures, and colour are
apt to leave traces on the body and clothing become
4 Freud conceives of the repression of anal-erotism and of
the pleasure in smell together in the human race as a result
of the upright posture, the erection from the earth.
The Ontogenesis of the Interest m Money 323
despised and avoided as "dirty things." The symbol
of filth must therefore undergo a further distortion,
a dehydration. The child turns its interest to sand,
a substance which, while the colour of earth, is
cleaner and dry. The instinctive joy of children in
gathering up, massing together, and shaping sand is
subsequently rationalised and sanctioned by the
adults, whom it suits to see an otherwise unruly child
playing with sand for hours, and they declare this
playing to be "healthy," i. e. hygienic. 5 None the
less this play-sand also is nothing other than a cop-
ro-symbol deodourised and dehydrated filth.
Already in this stage of development, by the way,
there occurs a "return of the repressed.'* It gives
children endless pleasure to fill with water the holes
they dig in the sand, and so to bring the material of
their play nearer to the original watery stage. Boys
not infrequently employ their own urine for this irri-
gation, as though they wanted in this way to empha-
5 The habit of euphemistically disguising coprophilic tenden-
cies as "hygienic" is very widespread. The fairly harmless
behaviour of stool pedants is well-known, who devote to the
regulation of their bowel activities a considerable part of
the interest at their disposal; such persons, however, are rather
prone to fall into what has been called "stool-hypochondria."
A whole series of analyses, by the way, has convinced me that
in very many cases hypochondria is really a fermentation-
product of anal-erotism, a displacement of unsublimated co-
prophilic interests from their original objects on to other or-
gans and products of the body with an alteration of the
qualifying pleasure. The choice of the organ towards which
the hypochondria is directed is determined by special factors
(somatic disposition, pronounced erogenicity even in diseased
organs, etc.).
324 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
sise quite clearly the relationship of the two mate-
rials. Even the interest for the specific odour of ex-
crement does not cease at once, but is only displaced
on to other odours that in any way resemble this.
The children continue to shew a liking for the smell
of sticky materials with a characteristic odour, espe-
cially the strongly smelling degenerated product of
cast off epidermis cells which collects between the
toes, nasal secretion, ear-wax, and the dirt of the
nails, while many children do not content themselves
with the moulding and sniffing of these substances,
but also take them into the mouth. The passionate
enjoyment of children in moulding putty (colour,
consistency, smell), tar, and asphalt, is well known.
I knew a boy who had an intense passion for the
characteristic smell of rubber materials, and who
could sniff for hours at a piece of indiarubber.
The smell of stables and of illuminating gas great-
ly pleases children at this age indeed, at much older
ages even and it is not chance that popular belief
appreciates places having these smells as being
"healthy," even as being a cure for diseases. A spe-
cial sublimation path of anal-erotism branches off
from the smell of gas, asphalt, and turpentine: the
fondness for substances with an agreeable odour, for
perfumes, by means of which the development of a
reaction-formation representation through the op-
posite is concluded. People with whom this kind
of sublimation occurs often develop in other respects
The Ontogenesis of the Interest m Money 325
as well into aesthetes, and there can be no question
that aesthetics in general has its principal root in
repressed anal-erotism. 8 The aesthetic and playful
interest springing from this source not infrequently
has a share in the developing pleasure in painting
and sculpture. 7
Already in the mud and sand periods of copro-
philic interest it is striking how fond children are of
fabricating objects out of this material so far as
their primitive artistic skill allows or, more cor-
rectly, of imitating objects the possession of which
has a special value for them. They make out of them
different articles of diet, cakes, tarts, sweetmeats,
etc. The reinforcement of purely egoistic instincts
by coprophilia begins here.
Progress in the sense of cleanliness then gradually
makes even sand unacceptable to the child, and the
infantile stone age begins : the collecting of pebbles,
as prettily shaped and coloured as possible, in which
a higher stage in the development of replacement-
formation is attained. The attributes of evil odour,
moisture, and softness are represented by those of
absence of odour, dryness, and now also hardness.
We are reminded of the real origin of this hobby by
the circumstance that stones just as mud and sand
' (See on this matter a monograph of mine in the Jahrbuch,
Bd. VI. Transl.)
7 1 have already in another connection pointed out the prob-
able part played by the childish interest in flatus in later fond-
ness for music. See Ch. IV.
326 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
are gathered and collected from the earth. The
capitalistic significance of stones is already quite
considerable. (Children are "stone-rich" 15 in the
narrow sense of the word.)
After stones comes the turn of artificial products,
and with these the detachment of the interest from
the earth is complete. Glass marbles, buttons, 9 fruit
pips, are eagerly collected this time no longer only
for the sake of their intrinsic value, but as measures
of value, so to speak as primitive coins, converting
the previous barter exchange of children into an en-
thusiastic money exchange. The character of capi-
talism, however, not purely practical and utilitarian,
but libidinous and irrational, is betrayed in this
stage also: the child decidedly enjoys the collecting
in itself. 10
It only needs one more step for the identification
of faeces with gold to be complete. Soon even stones
begin to wound the child's feeling of cleanliness he
(A German idiom. Transl.)
Cp. L-pu Andreas-Salom6: "Vom friihen Gottesdienst." Im-
ago. II. 1913.
10 The German word "Besitz" (= possession) shews, by the
way, that man tries even in his speech to represent by the idea
of "sitting on it" that which is valuable to him, which belongs
to him. Rationalists evidently content themselves with the ex-
planation of this simile to the effect that the sitting on is
meant to express a concealing, protecting and guarding of the
valued object. The fact, however, that it is the buttocks and
not the hand which would be more natural with men that is
used to represent protection and defence speaks rather in
favour of the word "Besitz" being a copro-symbol. The final
decision on the point must be reserved for a philologist who has
had a psycho-analytic training.
The Ontogenesis of the Interest in Money 387
longs for something purer and this is offered to him
in the shining pieces of money, the high appreciation
of which is naturally also in part due to the respect
in which they are held by adults, as well as to the
seductive possibilities of obtaining through them
everything that the child's heart can desire. Orig-
inally, however, it is not these purely practical con-
siderations that are operative, enjoyment in the
playful collecting, heaping up, and gazing at the
shining metal pieces being the chief thing, so that
they are treasured even less for their economic value
than for their own sake as pleasure-giving objects.
The eye takes pleasure at the sight of their lustre
and colour, the ear at their metallic clink, the sense
of touch at play with the round smooth discs, only
the sense of smell comes away empty, and the sense
of taste also has to be satisfied with the weak, but
peculiar taste of the coins. With this the develop-
ment of the money symbol is in its main outlines
complete. Pleasure in the intestinal contents be-
comes enjoyment of money, which, however, after
what has been said is seen to be nothing other than
odourless, dehydrated filth that has been made to
shine. Pecwvia 'non olet.
In correspondence with the development of the or-
gan of thought that in the meanwhile has been pro-
ceeding in the direction of logicality, the adult's sym-
bolic interest in money gets extended not only to ob-
jects with similar physical attributes, but to all sorts
328 Contributions to Psycho-Analysis
of things that in any way signify value or possession
(paper money, shares, bankbook, etc.). But what-
ever form may be assumed by money, the enjoyment
at possessing it has its deepest and amplest source
in coprophilia. Every sociologist and national econ-
omist who examines the facts without prejudice has
to reckon with this irrational element. Social prob-
lems can be solved only by discovering the real psy-
chology of human beings; speculations about eco-
nomic conditions alone will never reach the goal.
A part of anal-erotism is not sublimated at all, but
remains in its original form. 11 Even the most culti-
vated normal being displays an interest in his evacu-
ation functions which stands in a curious contradic-
tion to the abhorrence and disgust that he manifests
when he sees or hears about anything of the kind
in regard to other people. Foreign people and races,
as is well known, cannot "riechen" 12 each other. In
u The sum of anal-erotism present in the constitution is thus
shared in adults among the most diverse psychical structures.
Out of it develop: 1. The anal character traits in Freud's
sense. 2. Contributions to aesthetics and to cultural inter-
ests. 3. To hypochondria. 4. The rest remains unsublimated.
From the different proportion of the sublimated and the origi-
nal parts, from the preference for this or that form of sub-
limation, the most variegated character types arise, which must
naturally have their special conditional factors. Anal char-
acteristics are specially suited for rapid characterological ori-
entation concerning an individual, indeed concerning whole
races. The anal character, with his cleanliness, love for order,
defiance, and miserliness, sharply deviates from the pronounced
anal-erotic, who is tolerant on the matter of dirt, extravagant,
and easy-going.
" (A German idiom, meaning "cannot stand." "Riechen"
literally means to smell. Transl.)
The Ontogenesis of the Interest in Money 829
addition to the retention of the original form, how-
ever, there also exists a "return" of what is actually
concealed behind the money symbol. The intestinal
disorders, first observed by Freud, that follow on a
wounding of the money complex are examples of
this. 13 A further instance is the curious fact, which
I have noticed in countless cases, that people are eco-
nomical as regards the changing of under-linen in a
way quite out of proportion to their standard of liv-
ing in other respects. Meanness finally, therefore,
makes use of the anal character in order to gain once
more a piece of anal-erotism (tolerance of dirt). The
following is a still more striking example : A patient
could not recall any kind of coprophilic manipula-
tions, but soon after related without being asked that
he took a special pleasure in brightly shining copper
coins, and had invented an original procedure for
making them shine ; he swallowed the piece of money,
and then searched his faeces until he found the piece
of money, which during its passage through the ali-
mentary canal had become beautifully shining. 14
Here the pleasure in the clean object became a cover
"See Chapter VII. P. 176. "Temporary rectal troubles,"
etc.
" The case reminds one of the coprophilic joke in which the
doctor who had succeeded in expelling by means of a purge
a piece of money that a child had swallowed was told he could
keep the money as his fee. As to the identification of money
and faeces see also the fairy-tale of "Eslein streck dich." The
word "Losung" (= deliverance) means proceeds of a sale (in
business), but in hunting speech it means the faeces of wild
animals.
330 Contributions to Psycho- Analysis
for satisfaction of the most primitive anal-erotism.
The curious thing is that the patient was able to de-
ceive himself as to the real significance of his trans-
parent behaviour.
Apart from striking examples of this sort, the
erotic enjoyment of heaping in and gathering up gold
and other money pieces, the pleasurable "wallowing
in money," can be observed countless times in daily
life. Many people are ready enough to sign docu-
ments that bind them to pay large sums, and can
easily expend large amounts in paper money, but are
striking tardy in giving out gold coins or even the
smallest copper coins. The coins seem to "stick" to
their fingers. (Cp. also the expression "current
capital," and the reverse of this, "argent sec," which
is used in the Pranche-Comte. ) 15
The ontogenetic path of development of interest in
money, as here sketched, while shewing individual
differences dependent on the conditions of life, is
nevertheless on the whole among civilised people to be
regarded as a psychical process which seeks realisa-
tion under the most diverse circumstances, in one way
or another. It thus seems natural to regard this de-
velopmental tendency as a racial attribute, and to
suppose that the biogenetic ground principle is also
valid for the formation of the money symbol. It is
to be expected that phylogenetic and historical conv
u (To be "4 sec" is French vernacular for "hard up.'
TransL)
The Ontogenesis of the Interest in Money 331
parison of the path of individual development here
described will shew a parallelism with the develop-
ment of the money symbol in the human race in gen-
eral. Perhaps the coloured stones of primitive men
which have been found in cave excavations will then
be capable of interpretation ; observations concern-
ing the anal-erotism of savages (the primitive men
of today, who in many cases still live in the stage of
barter exchange and of pebble or shell money) should
considerably further this investigation of the history
of civilisation.
After what has been communicated, however, it is
already not improbable that the capitalistic interest,
increasing in correlation with development, stands
not only at the disposal of practical, egoistic aims
of the reality-principle, therefore but also that the
delight in gold and in the possession of money repre-
sents the symbolic replacement of, and the reaction^
formation to, repressed anal-erotism, i. e., that it
also satisfies the pleasure-principle.
The capitalistic instinct thus contains, according
to our conception, an egoistic and an anal-erotic
component.
INDEX
Abraham, 47, 50, 61, 155, 313
Abreaction, 25, 29, 224
Abstinence, 14, 38, 186
Adler, 148, 231
Aetiological claims, 37, 39, 50,
52
Affect, 39, 50, 256, 272, 277,
305, 314, 315
Alcohol, 130, 158, 159, 161-164
Ambi-sexual, 184, 296, 302
Ambition, 59, 117, 207, 208
Ambivalency, 246, 247, 260
Amnesia, 77, 177
Amphi-erotism, 296, 303, 312,
314
Anaesthesia, 42, 75, 147
Anal, 208, 209, 320, 329
Anal-erotism, 16, 108, 134,
307, 310, 317, 320, 322,
324, 328-331
Andreas-Salome, 326
Animism, 227, 228, 275
Antipathy, 54, 64, 65, 82, 86
Anxiety, 30, 74, 82, 113, 115,
209, 220, 272, 306
Anxiety neurosis, 14, 34, 107,
130
Anxiety hysteria, 72, 74, 90,
163
Aprosexia, 186
Art, 116, 214
Association, 19, 20, 25, 44, 51,
98-100, 114, 116, 117, 119,
143, 145, 197, 202, 205,
211, 229, 317. See also:
Free Association.
Auto-erotism, 47, 49, 64, 77,
155, 208, 209, 233-236,
294, 298, 321.
Automatism, 37, 76
Auto-suggestion, 59, 71, 82-85
Autosymbolic phenomena, 217
Aversion, 43
Beaurain, 276
Bernheim, 58, 67
Bisexuality, 21, 184, 262, 296
Bjerre, 294
Bleuler, 218
Brev*r, 29
Castration, 34, 185, 186, 192,
200, 243, 247, 250, 264,
266, 270
Catalepsy, 69
Catalysis, 39
Catatonia, 285, 291, 94
Catharsis, 29
Censor, 93, 103-105, 109, 111,
113, 117, 127-129, 136, 210
Character, 37, 44, 47, 141, 145,
148, 150, 202, 206, 207,
237
Charcot, 58, 83
Childhood, 23, 26, 28, 31-33,
41, 50, 60, 63, 76, 79-81,
90, 104, 106-108, 110, 111,
147, 179, 185, 197, 208,
216-219, 231, 256, 273-275,
296, 297, 307, 315, 320
Childish memories: See In-
fantile memories.
Claustrophobia, 51
Cleanliness, 322, 325, 328
333
334
Index
Cohabitation: See Coitus.
Coitus, 13-16, 19, 23, 29, 89,
108, 135, 146, 158-161, 166,
168, 180, 187-191, 250, 263,
266, 269, 271, 274, 301, 308
Complexes, 12, 25, 29, 36, 39,
42, 43, 45, 51, 52, 56, 57,
59, 60, 62, 64, 67, 72, 80,
83, 86, 88, 91, 96, 112, 118,
125, 128, 129, 135, 143-148,
177, 198, 212, 235, 258,
265, 267, 271 ,293, 321,
329. See also: Father-
complex, mother-complex,
GEdipus-complex.
Compulsion, 25, 77, 237, 306,
318
Compulsion neurosis: See Ob-
sessional neurosis.
Condensation, 100, 113, 115,
118, 126, 266, 276
Congenital, 27, 28, 148, 319,
320
Conscience, 23, 122, 177, 301
Consciousness, 16-19, 21, 35,
43, 48, 53, 65, 66, 112,
113, 140, 147, 152, 175,
195, 199, 210, 212, 277,
301 311
Conversion, 154, 185, 200, 235
Coprolalia, 150
Coprophemia, 150
Coprophilia, 38, 66, 143, 150,
305, 307, 323, 325, 328,
329
Cover-memory, 22, 76
Cowardice, 15, 17, 19, 20, 200
Cruelty, 19, 78, 79, 107, 119,
245, 246, 248, 249, 307
Curiosity, 74, 116, 122, 144,
176, 250, 273, 275
Day dreams, 18, 43, 102
Defaecation, 320, 321
Delusions of grandeur: See
Grandiose delusions.
Delusions of persecution, 48,
157, 170, 175, 176, 179,
183, 286, 288, 290, 293, 294
Dementia praecox, 47, 130,
154, 163, 179, 234, 285, 294
Depression, 30
Determinism, 100, 195, 232,
258
Disgust, 65, 144, 151, 167
Displacement, 39, 49, 56, 60,
118, 120, 154, 202, 210,
211, 264, 271, 272- 275,
276, 316, 318, 323
Disposition, 209
Docility, 308
Dreams, 19, 21, 42, 71, 94-119,
121, 123-131, 191, 192,
196, 201, 213, 245, 246,
255, 261-264, 269, 272,
280, 320
Von Ehrenfels, 22
Ejaculatio praecox, 13, 191
Emotion, 35, 65, 74, 109, 186,
195
Environment, 24, 50, 66
Erection, 13, 14, 23, 200, 273,
285, 295
Erogenous zone, 15, 90, 108,
189, 279, 320
Erotomania, 288
Excitation, 104, 107-110, 188-
191, 195, 207
Exhibitionism, 16, 105, 106,
108, 167, 172, 177, 313
Expression displacement, 209-
212
Faeces, 321, 326, 329
Father-complex, 70, 75, 78-80
Ferenczi, 12, 34, 36, 164, 231,
233, 270, 274, 277, 278,
325, 328
Fetishism, 16, 22
Fixation, 25, 26, 31, 33, 58,
61, 87, 179, 205, 207, 208,
211, 216, 224, 234, 236,
258, 294, 304, 307
Flatus, 134, 143
Index
335
Fliess, 184, 190, 296
Fore-pleasure, 188, 190
Forgetting, 16, 72, 100, 127,
149
Free association, 22, 99, 110,
129, 193, 194, 202, 204
Freud, 11, 13-42, 45-47, 49,
52-57, 59-66, 71-73, 76, 80,
85, 86, 90-92, 96-99, 101-
103, 106-115, 117, 124, 125,
128-132, 136-141, 144, 150,
154-156, 184, 187, 191, 200,
202, 207, 211, 213-217,
220-225, 230-237, 248, 254-
257, 259, 264, 275, 276,
292, 294, 296, 297, 301,
306, 307, 313, 319-322, 329
Functional symbolism, 261, 266
Gesture, 42, 151, 217, 225,
226, 228, 229, 234, 235,
241
Grandiose delusions, 155, 165,
217, 270, 286, 288
Gross, Otto, 39
Hallucinations, 21, 44, 96, 137-
139, 141, 145, 149, 156,
189, 204, 205, 214, 221-
223, 291
Hate, 19, 21, 36, 39, 41, 42,
44, 48, 49, 63, 64, 78, 175,
182, 246, 247, 258-260, 287,
297, 306
Heredity, 28, 319
Hirschfield, 303
Homo-erotism, 253, 318
Homosexuality, 20, 43, 65, 75,
91, 134, 143, 156, 157, 161,
162, 167, 169, 170, 175,
176, 179, 182, 184, 200, 209,
289-292, 294, 296-300, 306,
311, 316
Hostility: See Hate.
Hyperaesthesia, 14, 188
Hypnagogic, 21
Hypnotism, 54, 55, 58-60, 63,
64, 67-77, 80, 83-88, 91,
92, 305
Hypochondria, 14, 30, 82, 270,
271, 282-285, 323, 328
Hysteria, 35, 36, 46, 54, 66,
73, 75, 83, 86, 108, 130,
133, 143, 177, 185, 194,
196, 210, 211, 234, 235
Ibsen, 20, 21
Ideational identity, 223
Identification, 37, 52, 74, 77,
117, 176, 191, 275-277,
280, 326
Idiosyncrasy, 38, 66
Ignotus, 18
Imitation, 225, 229, 241, 245
Impotence, 12, 13, 15, 22, 26,
27, 31-34, 51, 61, 114, 123,
161
Incest, 31, 33, 34, 61, 80, 87,
107, 136, 148, 185, 186,
259, 293, 294.
Infantile, 15, 19, 20, 23, 25-29,
31, 32, 65, 70, 71, 73, 82,
84, 86-89, 91, 93, 107, 108,
111, 136, 143-146, 151-153,
175, 176, 185, 199, 200,
206, 207, 211, 224, 257,
258, 274, 277, 305, 308,
325
Infantile memories, 33, 70, 84,
90, 101, 108, 110
Inferiority, 28, 146, 231
Inhibition, 33, 114, 125, 133,
136, 144, 147, 149, 201,
235, 261, 317
Interpretation, 88, 95-97, 99,
101, 102, 114-117, 121,
124-126, 129, 161, 197, 248,
259, 262-267, 270, 274, 294,
331
Intra-uterine, 83, 218-222, 232,
238
Index
Introjection, 47, 49-53, 55, 57,
226, 322
Inversion, 299-306, 311, 313
Jealousy, 44, 65, 74, 80, 159-
166, 168
Jokes, 115, 137, 141, 151. See
also: Wit.
Jones, Ernest, 93, 307, 325
Jung, 13, 47, 51, 52, 61, 78,
82, 83, 87, 177, 278
Kartch-Haack, 299
Keller, 304
Kleinpaul, 49, 151, 229
Kleptomania, 39
Latency period, 144-149, 233,
236
Latent dream content, 99, 100,
109, 113, 136
Lesring, 317
Maeder, 155, 156
Manifest dream content, 99,
113, 118, 120
Masochism, 16, 75, 81, 108, 271
Masturbation, 13, 23, 50, 73,
122, 168, 185, 186, 188,
192, 198, 208. See also:
Onanism.
Megalomania, 117, 219, 231,
285. See also: Omnipo-
tence.
Memories, 16, 75, 90, 100, 134,
137, 149, 196, 204, 242.
See also: Infantile mem-
ories.
Memory images, 22, 118, 120,
137, 139
Memory traces, 15, 32, 138,
219", 255, 303
Mental conflict, 32, 56. See
also: Psychical conflict.
Mereschkovszky, 78
Micturition: See Urine.
Miserliness, 320, 328
Money, 45, 319-321, 326, 331
Mother-complex, 75
Mouth-eroti jin : See Oral erot-
ism.
Muthmann. 12
Naecke, 297
Narcissism, 167, 205, 233, 234,
289, 297, 298, 301, 305.
See also: Megalomania.
Negativism, 80, 87, 291
Neurasthenia, 34, 130, 186-191
Neurosis, 23, 32, 35, 36, 41,
45-47, 51, 77, 82-85, 98,
111, 122, 130, 154, 184,
186, 192, 212, 213, 216,
231, 234, 235 255, 303, 307,
312, 313, 317, 318
Nietzsche, 70
Nuclear complex, 136, 258,
265
Nymphomania, 170
Obedience, 32, 71, 77, 80, 81, 93
Object-erotism, 234
Object-love, 49, 65, 67, 74, 77,
185, 208, 234, 298, 300,
302, 306, 315, 321
Obscene, 105, 132-138, 14O-145,
149-153, 160
Obsession, 25, 99, 192, 202,
203, 209, 215, 216, 306
Obsessional, 50, 130, 202, 215,
216, 231, 274, 306, 307,
310-317, 318
Obsessional neurosis, 46, 185,
218, 234, 235, 303, 306,
312, 318
Obsessive, 17, 25, 54, 150, 152,
271, 306, 316
Odour: See Smell.
CEdipus complex, 26, 41, 91,
136, 235, 258, 259, 297,
307, 310
Omnipotence, 77, 215-219, 228,
225, 227-235, 238, 231, 371.
See also: Megalomania.
Index
337
Onanism, 32, 185, 192, 208,
209, 250, 251, 271, 272.
See also: Masturbation.
Ontozenesis, 48, 138, 238, 276,
277, 319, 330
Oral erotism, 16, 108, 189
Over-determined, 197
Paederastia, 291, 310, 317
Paraesthesia, 14, 19, 34, 186,
198, 284
Paralysis, 75, 84, 130, 195,
196, 200
Paranoia, 47, 65, 130, 154-157,
159, 162, 167, 170, 175,
177, 179, 183, 184, 233,
234, 282, 285, 289-294, 297
Paraphrenia, 234, 282, 285,
292, 298. See also: De-
mentia praecox.
Parent, 40, 42, 60-65, 67, 69,
77, 81-84, 87, 91, 93, 102,
116, 135, 136, 143, 151,
265, 266, 273, 274, 276,
281, 307, 308, 310
Pathogenesis, 28, 129, 157
Pavor nocturnus, 107, 245
Perception, 138, 140, 175, 206,
217, 230, 256, 258, 272,
284
Perceptual identity, 138, 223
Persecution: See Delusions of
persecution.
Perseveration, 237
Perversions, 107, 108, 132, 144,
150, 178, 180, 181, 298,
299 313
Phantasy, 14, 16, 18-20, 23,
26, 33-36, 40, 41, 43, 44,
47, 52, 73, 82, 83, 90, 92,
118, 122, 144, 146, 148,
175-178, 185, 187-189, 191,
192, 196, 198-200, 204,
205, 211, 213, 217, 232,
238, 245, 251, 255, 256, 261,
266, 269-271. 274, 288, 291,
307-310
Phylogenesis, 236, 238, 277
Pleasure principle, 213, 218,
223, 232, 233, 255, 262,
269, 331
Preconscious, 31, 64
Predisposition, 28, 33, 85
Presentation, 42, 121, 124, 125,
131, 239
Projection, 48, 49, 92, 154, 175,
177, 183, 216, 227, 232,
233, 259
Prophylactic, 29, 34
Psychical conflict, 12, 96. See
also: Mental conflict.
Psychogenesis, 214
Psychoneurosis, 11, 14, 16, 20,
24, 32, 34, 46, 52, 54-57,
60, 61, 76, 83-85, 97, 99,
104, 128, 130, 152, 163,
186, 187, 282, 313
Psychopathology, 49, 200
Psycho-sexual, 16, 21, 24, 25,
27, 29, 31-34, 46, 61
Puberty, 24, 27-30, 122, 135,
146. 149, 272, 308
Rank, Otto, 191, 264-266, 278
Rationalism, 293, 323
Reaction-formation, 36, 51,
53, 66, 88, 148, 231, 247,
251, 310, 315, 324, 331
Reality principle, 218, 255,
261, 262, 269, 331
Reflex-arc, 15
Regression, 137, 140, 145, 153,
205-207, 209, 224, 225, 234-
237
Reminiscence, 70, 71. See also:
Memories.
Representation, 83, 138, 148,
195, 205, 213, 223, 228,
229, 262, 267, 276, 277
Repression, 16, 24, 33, 40, 56,
90, 100, 107, 134, 143, 148,
203, 204, 210-213, 217, 235-
237, 248, 255, 258, 259,
338
Index
262, 272, 275, 280, 296,
302, 313, 314, 317, 322.
Resistences, 57, 62, 63, 87, 133,
134, 256
Respect, 26, 63, 65, 72, 135
Reversals 309
Riklin, 238
Sachs, Hang, 227, 278
Sadger, 61, 179, 297, 307
Sadism, 16, 108, 307
Schopenhauer, 253, 262, 269
Sexual hunger, 25, 39, 45, 46,
48, 57, 61, 64, 66, 73, 78,
87, 156, 184, 187-190, 212,
235, 243, 266, 289, 296,
302, 303, 308, 315
Sexual intercourse: See Coitus.
Shame, 31, 100, 133, 134, 144,
151, 271
Silbertr, 207, 217, 261, 266,
277
Smell, 79, 143, 160, 205, 305,
322, 324, 325, 327
Somatic, 194, 195, 263
Somnambulism, 76
Sperber, 229
Steiner, 13, 25
Stekel, 13, 25, 39, 40
Stimulation, 84
Sublimation, 66, 70, 73, 162,
163, 169, 176, 182, 184,
206-209, 245, 305, 314, 315,
323, 324, 328
Subsequentness, 20, 76, 310
Substitution, 45, 46, 154, 185,
307 310
Suggestion, 31, 34, 54, 58-60,
62, 64, 67-69, 71, 75, 77,
81, 83-86, 88, 90-93, 154,
181, 305
Symbol, 53, 96, 99, 104, 108,
114, 124, 179, 192, 202,
264, 266, 272-278, 280, 281,
319, 321-323, 326, 327, 329,
330 331
Symbolism, 37, 108, 122-124,
191, 192, 229, 253, 381,
266, 270, 273-275, 278, 280,
319
Sympathy, 21, 43, 62, 65, 66,
73, 86
Symptom-complex, 14, 88
Symptom-formation, 111, 197,
198, 201, 211, 212, 235
Transference, 35-42, 45, 47,
49, 50, 51, 55, 58, 63, 65,
67, 72-74, 79, 80, 85, 87,
89, 154, 161, 168, 193, 198,
208, 211, 219, 247, 287,
309
Transference-improvement,
287
Trauma, 12, 33
Traumatophilia, 305
Typical dreams, 106
Unconscious, The, 18, 22, 31,
36, 37, 40-43, 53, 55, 58,
61, 62, 65, 71, 72, 82, 86,
97, 107, 129, 138, 227, 262,
265, 276, 278
Unconscious wishes, 17, 27,
32, 47, 65, 104, 232
Unpleasantness principle, 5(5,
64, 65, 255
Urethral, 108, 208, 209
Urine, 20, 110, 206, 207, 279,
323
Urning, 305
Voyeur, 16, 150
Wagner, 49
Wish-fulfilment, 18, 101-103,
108, 109, 112, 113, 206,
216, 222-224
Wit, 42, 71, 115, 124, 140, 255.
See also: Jokes.
Womb: See Tntra-uterine.
Word-association, 177
Yawning, 209, 210
Zone: See Erogenous zone.
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