The point which seemed to me to indicate most strongly the idea of a breaking off on his part was that he said, if I understood him rightly, that he thought the significance of the whole conception of infantile sexual tendencies in Freud’s sense had been overrated; that all persons, sick or well, have about the same fantasies, and that for example, he did not any longer believe that the sensations which a nursing child has could be classified as sexual in any sense, but only as related to nutritional necessities. (Location 187)
Freud is convinced that I am thinking under the domination of a father complex against him and then all is complex-nonsense … . Against this insinuation I am completely helpless … . If Freud understands each attempt to think in a new way about the problems of psychoanalysis as a personal resistance, things become impossible. (Location 217)
On the whole, I have very much overestimated the danger from a distance. (Location 227)
would be a mistake to consider Jung’s theoretical differences with Freudian theory as leading to his break with Freud. Rather, the collapse of their personal relationship and the political alliance they had formed led to a situation where, in the public domain, theoretical differences were presented as rationalized justifications. Hence a concerted campaign of critical reviews against Jung’s works was orchestrated by Freud; Karl Abraham and Ernest Jones wrote strident condemnations of Jung’s New York lectures.41 (Location 229)
When, some ten years ago, it came home to me what a vast distance Freud had already travelled beyond the bounds of contemporary knowledge of psychopathological phenomena, especially the psychology of complex mental processes, I did not feel in a position to exercise any real criticism. I did not possess the courage of those pundits who, by reason of their ignorance and incompetence, consider themselves justified in making “critical” refutations. I thought one must first work modestly for years in this field before one might dare to criticize. (Location 375)
my criticism does not proceed from academic arguments, but from experiences which have forced themselves on me during ten years of serious work in this field. (Location 393)
Charcot knew, from his experience of the new technique of hypnotism, that hysterical symptoms can be produced and also be made to disappear by suggestion. He believed something of the kind could be observed in those increasingly common cases of hysteria caused by accidents. The traumatic shock would be comparable, in a sense, to the moment of hypnosis, since the emotion it produced would cause, temporarily, a complete paralysis of the will during which the trauma could become fixed as an auto-suggestion. (Location 445)
sugestión cita trauma psicoanálisis hipnosis etiología histeria
The new thing about this theory, apart from the truly admirable thoroughness of Freud’s analysis of hysterical symptoms, is the abandonment of the concept of auto-suggestion, which was the dynamic element in the original theory. It was replaced by a more detailed conception of the psychological and psychophysical effects produced by the shock. The shock or trauma causes an excitation which, under normal conditions, is got rid of by being expressed (“abreacted”). In hysteria, however, the trauma is incompletely abreacted, and this results in a “retention of the excitation,” or a “blocking of affect.” The energy of the excitation, always lying ready in potentia, is transmuted into the physical symptoms by the mechanism of conversion. According to this view, the task of therapy was to release the accumulated excitation, thereby discharging the repressed and converted affects from the symptoms. Hence it was aptly called the “cleansing” or “cathartic” method, and its aim was to “abreact” the blocked affects. (Location 456)
Although the trauma theory gave distinct prominence to the predisposition, even insisting that some past trauma is the conditio sine qua non of neurosis, Freud with his brilliant empiricism had already discovered, and described in the Breuer-Freud Studies, certain elements which bear more resemblance to an “environment theory” than to a “predisposition theory,” though their theoretical importance was not sufficiently appreciated at the time. Freud had synthesized these observations in a concept that was to lead far beyond the limits of the trauma theory. This concept he called “repression.” As you know, by “repression” we mean the mechanism by which a conscious content is displaced into a sphere outside consciousness. We call this sphere the unconscious, and we define it as the psychic element of which we are not conscious. The concept of repression is based on the repeated observation that neurotics seem to have the capacity for forgetting significant experiences or thoughts so thoroughly that one might easily believe they had never existed. Such observations are very common and are well known to anyone who enters at all deeply into the psychology of his patients. (Location 480)
it is possible to demonstrate this phenomenon experimentally, by the association test. Here we discover the remarkable fact that associations relating to feeling-toned complexes are much less easily remembered and are very frequently forgotten. (Location 494)
there are any number of cases where it is impossible to show, even with the most careful examination, the slightest trace of “putting aside” or of conscious repression, and where it seems as if the process of repression were more in the nature of a passive disappearance, or even as if the impressions were dragged beneath the surface by some force operating from below. (Location 504)
As I have indicated, the concept of repression contains an element which is in intrinsic contradiction with the trauma theory. We saw, for instance, in the case of Miss Lucy R., analysed by Freud,6 that the aetiologically significant factor was not to be found in the traumatic scenes but in the insufficient readiness of the patient to accept the insights that forced themselves upon her. And when we think of the later formulation in the Schriften zur Neurosenlehre,7 where Freud’s experience obliged him to recognize certain traumatic events in early childhood as the source of the neurosis, we get a forcible impression of the incongruity between the concept of repression and that of the trauma. The concept of repression contains the elements of an aetiological theory of environment, while the trauma concept is a theory of predisposition. (Location 512)
In his later investigations Freud came to the conclusion that no positive validity could be attributed to the traumatic experiences of later life, as their effects were conceivable only on the basis of a specific predisposition. It was evidently there that the riddle had to be solved. In pursuing the roots of hysterical symptoms, Freud found that the analytical work led back into childhood; the links reached backwards from the present into the distant past. The end of the chain threatened to get lost in the mists of earliest infancy. But it was just at that point that reminiscences appeared of certain sexual scenes—active (Location 520)
We are thus obliged to assume that many traumata in early infancy are of a purely fantastic nature, mere fantasies in fact, while others do have objective reality. (Location 547)
With this discovery, somewhat bewildering at first sight, the aetiological significance of the sexual trauma in childhood falls to the ground, as it now appears totally irrelevant whether the trauma really occurred or not. Experience shows us that fantasies can be just as traumatic in their effects as real traumata. (Location 548)
it is perfectly clear that the individual must meet the trauma with a quite definite inner predisposition in order to make it really effective. This inner predisposition is not to be understood as that obscure, hereditary disposition of which we know so little, but as a psychological development which reaches its climax, and becomes manifest, at the traumatic moment. (Location 554)
This anamnesis, whose continuation we shall find out later,9 shows very clearly the discrepancy between the so-called trauma and the part played by fantasy. In this case fantasy must predominate to a quite extraordinary degree in order to produce such a great effect from so insignificant a stimulus. (Location 581)
The question now arises: what are we to understand by this “predisposition,” through which an impression, insignificant in itself, can produce such a pathological effect? This is a question of fundamental importance, and, as we shall see later, it plays a very important role in the whole theory of neurosis. We have to understand why apparently irrelevant events of the past still have so much significance that they can interfere in a daemonic and capricious way with our reactions in actual (Location 592)
The early school of psychoanalysis, and its later disciples, did all they could to find in the special quality of those original traumatic experiences the reason for their later effectiveness. Freud went deepest: he was the first and only one to see that some kind of sexual element was mingled with the traumatic event, and that this admixture, of which the patient was generally unconscious, was chiefly responsible for the effect of the trauma. The unconsciousness of sexuality in childhood seemed to throw a significant light on the problem of the long-lasting constellation caused by the original traumatic experience. The real emotional significance of that experience remains hidden all along from the patient, so that, not reaching consciousness, the emotion never wears itself out, it is never used up. (Location 597)
Freud’s observation that the admixture of a sexual element in the trauma is a characteristic concomitant having a pathological effect led to the theory of the infantile sexual trauma. This hypothesis means that the pathogenic experience is a sexual one. (Location 610)
At first this hypothesis was countered by the widespread opinion that children have no sexuality at all in early life, thus making such an aetiology unthinkable. The modification of the trauma theory already discussed, that the trauma is generally not real at all but essentially just fantasy, does not make things any better. On the contrary, it obliges us to see in the pathogenic experience a positive sexual manifestation of infantile fantasy. It is no longer some brutal accidental impression coming from outside, but a sexual manifestation of unmistakable clearness actually created by the child. (Location 613)
The precocious manifestations of sexual fantasy, and their traumatic effect, now seemed to be the source of the neurosis. One was therefore obliged to attribute to children a much more developed sexuality than was admitted before. (Location 622)
Great was the astonishment, therefore, when Freud began to credit children not only with ordinary sexuality but even with a so-called “polymorphous-perverse” sexuality, and moreover on the basis of the most exhaustive investigations. People were far too ready with the facile assumption that all this had merely been suggested to the patients and was accordingly a highly debatable artificial product. (Location 625)
if these things do pertain to the concept of sexuality, then countless psychological phenomena must come into it too, for we know that an incredible number of purely psychological functions are connected with this sphere. I need only mention the extraordinary importance of fantasy in preparing and perfecting the sexual function. Thus we arrive at a highly biological conception of sexuality, which includes within it a series of psychological functions as well as a series of physiological phenomena. Availing ourselves of an old but practical classification, we might identify sexuality with the instinct for the preservation of the species, which in a certain sense may be contrasted with the instinct of self-preservation. (Location 689)
Looking at sexuality from this point of view, we shall no longer find it so astonishing that the roots of the preservation of the species, on which nature sets such store, go much deeper than the limited conception of sexuality would ever allow. Only the more or less grown-up cat catches mice, but even the very young kitten at least plays at catching them. The puppy’s playful attempts at copulation begin long before sexual maturity. We have a right to suppose that man is no exception to this rule. Even though we do not find such things on the surface in our well-brought-up children, observation of children of primitive peoples proves that they are no exceptions to the biological norm. It is really far more probable that the vital instinct for preservation of the species begins to unfold in early infancy than that it should descend at one fell swoop from heaven, fully-fledged, at puberty. Also, the organs of reproduction develop long before the slightest sign of their future function can be discerned. (Location 695)
Freud points to the unmistakable excitement and satisfaction of the infant while sucking, and he compares these emotional mechanisms with those of the sexual act. This comparison leads him to assume that the act of sucking has a sexual quality. Such an assumption would be justifiable only if it were proved that the tension of a physical need, and its release by gratification, is a sexual process. But the fact that sucking has this emotional mechanism proves just the contrary. Consequently we can only say that this emotional mechanism is found both in the nutritive function and in the sexual function. If Freud derives the sexual quality of the act of sucking from the analogy of the emotional mechanism, biological experience would also justify a terminology qualifying the sexual act as a function of nutrition. This is exceeding the bounds in both directions. What is quite evident is that the act of sucking cannot be qualified as sexual. (Location 722)
We know, however, of other functions at the infantile stage which apparently have nothing to do with the function of nutrition, such as sucking the finger and its numerous variants. Here is rather the place to ask whether such things belong to the sexual sphere. They do not serve nutrition, but produce pleasure. Of that there can be no doubt, but it nevertheless remains disputable whether the pleasure obtained by sucking should be called by analogy a sexual pleasure. It could equally well be called a nutritive pleasure. This latter qualification is the more apt in that the form of pleasure and the place where it is obtained belong entirely to the sphere of nutrition. (Location 729)
The conclusion that these infantile habits are the first stages of masturbation or of similar activities, and therefore have a distinctly sexual character, cannot be denied: it is perfectly legitimate. (Location 739)
The inference from masturbation that other infantile habits have a sexual character appears natural and understandable from this point of view, in so far as they are acts for obtaining pleasure from one’s own body. (Location 742)
Obtaining pleasure is by no means identical with sexuality. (Location 750)
If we take the attitude that the striving for pleasure is something sexual, we might just as well say, paradoxically, that hunger is a sexual striving, since it seeks pleasure by satisfaction. But if we juggle with concepts like that, we should have to allow our opponents to apply the terminology of hunger to sexuality. (Location 753)
Instead of the non-existent, localized sexual function there are a number of so-called bad habits, which from this point of view appear as perverse actions since they have close analogies with subsequent perversions. (Location 767)
As a result of this conception sexuality, ordinarily thought of as a unity, was decomposed into a plurality of separate drives; and since it was tacitly assumed that sexuality originates in the genitals, Freud arrived at the conception of “erogenous zones,” by which he meant the mouth, skin, anus, etc. (Location 769)
Crear nota sobre zonas erógenas: cuál es su explicación original Freudiana y cómo se siguieron pensando en el psicoanálisis.
sexualidad zonas erógenas psicoanálisis nota
just as the spasmogenic zone is the place where a spasm originates, the erogenous zone is the place from which comes an afflux of sexuality. (Location 773)
It was recognized more and more that perversions, for instance, exist at the expense of normal sexuality, and that increased application of one form of sexuality follows a decrease in the application of another form. (Location 786)
If we regard sexuality as consisting of a fixed heterosexual and a fixed homosexual component we shall never explain this case, since the assumption of fixed components precludes any kind of transformation. In order to do justice to it, we must assume a great mobility of the sexual components, which even goes so far that one component disappears almost completely while the other occupies the foreground. If nothing but a change of position took place, (Location 794)
According to my experience the apparent reason for this characteristic behaviour, of which we find so many examples in society today, is an invariable disturbance in the relationship with women, a special form of dependence on them. This would constitute the “plus” that is counterbalanced by the “minus” in the homosexual relationship. (Naturally this is not the real reason. The real reason is the infantile state of the man’s character.) (Location 808)
It was, therefore, urgently necessary to give an adequate explanation of such a change of scene. For this we need a dynamic hypothesis, since these permutations of sex can only be thought of as dynamic or energic processes. Without an alteration in the dynamic relationships, I cannot conceive how a mode of functioning can disappear like this. Freud’s theory took account of this necessity. His conception of components, of separate modes of functioning, began to be weakened, at first more in practice than in theory, and was eventually replaced by a conception of energy. The term chosen for this was libido. (Location 812)
The fact of the existence of sexual needs in human beings and animals is expressed in biology by the assumption of a “sexual instinct,” on the analogy of the instinct of nutrition, that is of hunger. Everyday language possesses no counterpart to the word “hunger,” but science makes use of the word “libido” for that purpose. (Location 819)
The concept of libido—whose sexual meaning in the Freudian sense we shall try to retain as long as possible—represents that dynamic factor which we were seeking in order to explain the shifting of the psychological scenery. This concept makes it much easier to formulate the phenomena in question. Instead of the incomprehensible exchanging of the homosexual component for the heterosexual component, we can now say that the libido was gradually withdrawn from its homosexual application and that it passed over in the same measure to a heterosexual application. In the process the homosexual component disappeared almost completely. It remained only an empty possibility, signifying nothing in itself. (Location 828)
This conceptual development is of the greatest importance; it accomplishes for psychology the same advance that the concept of energy introduced into physics. Just as the theory of the conservation of energy deprived the various forces of their elementary character and made them manifestations of a single energy, so the theory of libido deprives the sexual components of their elementary significance as psychic “faculties” and gives them a merely phenomenological value. (Location 838)
Here I cannot refrain from remarking that the analogy with the law of the conservation of energy is very close. In both cases one has to ask, when one sees that a quantum of energy has disappeared, where this energy has reemerged in the meantime? (Location 845)
Every time we come across a person who has a “bee in his bonnet,” or a morbid conviction, or some extreme attitude, we know that there is too much libido, and that the excess must have been taken from somewhere else where, consequently, there is too little. (Location 849)
Thus the symptoms of a neurosis must be regarded as exaggerated functions over-invested with libido.3 The energy used for this purpose has been taken from somewhere else, and it is the task of the psychoanalyst to discover the place it was taken from or where it was never applied. (Location 852)
Experience teaches us, we might say daily, that there are non-conscious psychic processes which perceptibly influence the libido economy. (Location 865)
we should also have to assume that everything that comes within the realm of the wider concept of sexuality discussed in the previous lecture is already present in miniature, including all those emotional manifestations of psychosexuality, such as need for affection, jealousy, and many other affective phenomena, and by no means least the neuroses of childhood. It (Location 889)
We must get accustomed to the idea that sexuality really exists, even before puberty, right back into early childhood, and we have no grounds for not calling the manifestations of this immature sexuality sexual. (Location 908)
For a long time now the need to give the concept of libido breathing-space and to remove it from the narrow confines of the sexual definition has forced itself on the psychoanalytical school. (Location 952)
I do not think I am going astray if I see the real value of the concept of libido not in its sexual definition but in its energic view, thanks to which we are in possession of an extremely valuable heuristic principle. (Location 955)
In my book Wandlungen and Symbole der Libido I tried to furnish proof of these transgressions and at the same time to show the need for a new conception of libido which took account only of the energic view. Freud himself was forced to admit that his original conception of libido might possibly be too narrow when he tried to apply the energic view consistently to a famous case of dementia praecox—the so-called Schreber case. (Location 964)
The dynamic explanation is simple: we say that libido has withdrawn more and more from the external world into the inner world of fantasy, and there had to create, as a substitute for the lost world, a so-called reality equivalent. This substitute is built up piece by piece, so to speak, and it is most interesting to see out of what psychological material this inner world is constructed. (Location 974)
We can hardly suppose that the normal “fonction du réel” (Janet) is maintained solely by erotic interest. The fact is that in very many cases reality disappears altogether, so that not a trace of psychological adaptation can be found in these patients. (In these states reality is replaced by complex contents.) We are therefore compelled to admit that not only the erotic interest, but all interest whatsoever, has got lost, and with it the whole adaptation to reality. (Location 988)
Abnormal displacements of libido, quite definitely sexual, do in fact play a great role in these illnesses. But although very characteristic repressions of sexual libido do take place in the neuroses, the loss of reality so typical of dementia praecox never occurs. In dementia praecox the loss of the reality function is so extreme that it must involve the loss of other instinctual forces whose sexual character must be denied absolutely, for no one is likely to maintain that reality is a function of sex. (Location 995)
Up to now we have spoken of libido as the instinct for propagation or for the preservation of the species, and have kept within the confines of a view which contrasts libido with hunger in the same way as the instinct for the preservation of the species is contrasted with the instinct for self-preservation. In nature, of course, this artificial distinction does not exist. There we see only a continuous life-urge, a will to live, which seeks to ensure the continuance of the whole species through the preservation of the individual. Thus far our conception of libido coincides with Schopenhauer’s Will, inasmuch as a movement perceived from the outside can only be grasped as the manifestation of an inner will or desire. Once we have arrived at the bold conjecture that the libido which was originally employed in the production of ova and spermatozoa is now firmly organized in the function of nest-building, for instance, and can no longer be employed otherwise, we are compelled to include every striving and every desire, as well as hunger, in this conception. There is no longer any justification for differentiating in principle between the desire to build nests and the desire to eat.9 (Location 1033)
I maintain that the libido with which we operate is not only not concrete or known, but is a complete X, a pure hypothesis, a model or counter, and is no more concretely conceivable than the energy known to the world of physics. (Location 1048)
Libido is intended simply as a name for the energy which manifests itself in the life-process and is perceived subjectively as conation and desire. (Location 1059)
In the sphere of sexuality the libido acquires a form whose tremendous importance gives us the justification for using the ambiguous term “libido” at all. Here it appears at first in the form of an undifferentiated, primary libido, as the energy of growth that causes cell-division, budding, etc. in individuals. (Location 1066)
This transfer of sexual libido from the sexual sphere to subsidiary functions is still taking place. (Malthusianism, for instance, is an artificial continuation of the natural tendency.) Wherever this operation occurs without detriment to the adaptation of the individual we call it “sublimation,” and “repression” when the attempt fails. (Location 1082)
In infants we find that libido as energy, as a vital activity, first manifests itself in the nutritional zone, where, in the act of sucking, food is taken in with a rhythmic movement and with every sign of satisfaction. With the growth of the individual and development of his organs the libido creates for itself new avenues of activity. The primary model of rhythmic movement, producing pleasure and satisfaction, is now transferred to the zone of the other functions, with sexuality as its ultimate goal. A considerable portion of the “alimentary libido” has to convert itself into “sexual libido.” This transition does not take place quite suddenly at puberty, but only very gradually during the course of childhood. The libido can free itself only with difficulty and quite slowly from the modality of the nutritive function in order to pass over into the sexual function. (Location 1094)
In this transitional stage there are, so far as I am able to judge, two distinct phases: the phase of sucking, and the phase of displaced rhythmic activity. Sucking belongs by its very nature to the sphere of the nutritive function, but outgrows it by ceasing to be a function of nutrition and becoming a rhythmic activity aiming at pleasure and satisfaction without intake of nourishment. At this point the hand comes in as an auxiliary organ. It appears even more clearly as an auxiliary organ in the phase of displaced rhythmic activity for pleasure, which then leaves the oral zone and turns to other regions. As a rule, it is the other body-openings that become the first objects of libidinal interest; then the skin, or special parts of it. The activities carried out in these places, taking the form of rubbing, boring, picking, pulling, and so forth, follow a certain rhythm and serve to produce pleasure. After lingering for a while at these stations, the libido continues its wanderings until it reaches the sexual zone, where it may provide occasion for the first attempts at masturbation. In (Location 1100)
When a chemical substance breaks up into its elements, these elements are, under those conditions, products of disintegration. But it is not permissible to describe all elements whatsoever as products of disintegration. Perversions are disturbed products of a developed sexuality. They are never the initial stages of sexuality, although there is an undoubted similarity between the initial stage and the product of disintegration. As sexuality develops, its infantile stages, which should no longer be regarded as “perverse” but as rudimentary and provisional, resolve themselves into normal sexuality. (Location 1116)
The basic conditioning factor in perversion, therefore, is an infantile, insufficiently developed state of sexuality. The expression “polymorphous-perverse” has been borrowed from the psychology of neurosis and projected backwards into the psychology of the child, where of course it is quite out of place. (Location 1123)
We followed the theory of neurosis up to the point where we ran up against Freud’s statement that the predisposition which makes traumatic experiences pathogenically effective is a sexual one. Helped by our reflections since then, we can now understand how that sexual predisposition is to be conceived: it is a retardation, a check in the process of freeing the libido from the activities of the presexual stage. The disturbance must be regarded in the first place as a temporary fixation: the libido lingers too long at certain stations in the course of its migration from the nutritive function to the sexual function. (Location 1148)
neurosis libido psicoanálisis sexualidad
Physical maturation heightens the discrepancy between the perseverating infantile activity and the demands of later years with their changed conditions of life. In this way the foundation is laid for a dissociation of the personality, and hence for a conflict, which is the real basis of a neurosis. The (Location 1158)
From this standpoint one could regard neurosis as a product of retarded affective development, (Location 1164)
Unfortunately the real state of affairs is much more complicated. (Location 1165)
The case was like so many other cases of hysteria for which no traumatic aetiology can be found; they are rooted instead in a peculiar, premature fantasy activity which permanently retains its infantile character. (Location 1189)
if the old trauma is not of aetiological significance, then the cause of the manifest neurosis is obviously to be sought in the retardation of affective development. (Location 1215)
This experience merely seems to be important without being so in reality, a formulation which is true of most other traumata. They merely seem to be important because they provide occasion for the manifestation of a condition that has long been abnormal. (Location 1218)
The abnormal condition, as we have already explained, consists in the anachronistic persistence of an infantile stage of libido development. The patients continue to hang on to forms of libido activity which they should have abandoned long ago. (Location 1220)
Excessive fantasy activity is always a sign of faulty application of libido to reality. Instead of being used for the best possible adaptation to the actual circumstances, it gets stuck in fantastic applications. We call this state one of partial introversion when libido is used for the maintenance of fantasies and illusions instead of being adapted to the actual conditions of life. (Location 1223)
Among the things that were of the utmost significance at the infantile period the most influential are the personalities of the parents. Even when the parents have long been dead and have lost, or should have lost, all significance, the situation of the patient having perhaps completely changed since then, they are still somehow present and as important as if they were still alive. The patient’s love, admiration, resistance, hatred, and rebelliousness still cling to their effigies, transfigured by affection or distorted by envy, and often bearing little resemblance to the erstwhile reality. It was this fact that compelled me to speak no longer of “father” and “mother” but to employ instead the term “imago,” because these fantasies are not concerned any more with the real father and mother but with subjective and often very much distorted images of them which lead a shadowy but nonetheless potent existence in the mind of the patient. (Location 1234)
It is scarcely necessary to give you examples of this phenomenon, for it is an everyday experience that our emotions never come up to the level of our insight. It is exactly the same with the neurotic, but greatly intensified. He may perhaps believe that, except for his neurosis, he is a normal person, fully adapted to the conditions of life. It never crosses his mind that he has still not given up certain infantile demands, that he still carries with him, in the background, expectations and illusions of which he has never made himself conscious. He indulges in all sorts of pet fantasies, of which he is seldom, if ever, so conscious that he knows that he has them. Very often they exist only as emotional expectations, hopes, prejudices, and so forth. In this case we call them unconscious fantasies. Sometimes they appear on the fringe of consciousness as fleeting thoughts, only to vanish again the next moment, so that the patient is unable to say whether he had such fantasies or not. It is only during psychoanalytic treatment that most patients learn to retain and observe these fugitive thoughts. Although most fantasies were once conscious, for a moment, as fleeting thoughts, it would not do to call them conscious, because most of the time they are practically unconscious. It is therefore right to call them unconscious fantasies. Of course there are also infantile fantasies which are perfectly conscious and can be reproduced at any time. (Location 1298)
The realm of unconscious infantile fantasies has become the real object of psychoanalytic research, for it seems to offer the key to the aetiology of neurosis. Here, quite otherwise than with the trauma theory, we are forced by all the reasons we have mentioned to assume that the roots of the psychological present are to be found in the family history of the patient. (Location 1321)
The more valuable and evidently more influential fantasies are not conscious, in the sense previously defined, and so have to be dug out by the psychoanalytic technique. (Location 1327)
We cannot possibly rest on the dogma that consciousness alone is the psyche, for we have daily proof that our consciousness is only a part of the psychic function. When the contents of our consciousness appear they are already in a highly complex state; the constellation of our thoughts from the material contained in our memory is a predominantly unconscious process. We are therefore obliged to assume, whether we like it or not, the existence of a non-conscious psychic sphere, even if only as a “negative borderline concept,” like Kant’s Ding an sich. Since we perceive effects whose origin cannot be found in consciousness, we are compelled to allow hypothetical contents to the sphere of the non-conscious, which means presupposing that the origin of those effects lies in the unconscious precisely because it is not conscious. (Location 1340)
For us the unconscious is not an entity in this sense but a mere term, about whose metaphysical essence we do not permit ourselves to form any idea. (Location 1355)
The reminiscences so gathered are called the “dream-material.” We treat this material in accordance with a generally accepted scientific principle. If you have any experimental material to work up, you compare its individual parts and classify them according to their similarities. You proceed in exactly the same way with dream-material; you look for the common features, whether of form or content. (Location 1423)
it will be clear to everyone that, apart from the manifest content of a poem, the poem itself is especially characteristic of the poet in regard to its form, content, and manner of origin. While the poet merely gave expression in his poem to the mood of the moment, the literary historian will see things in it and behind it which the poet would never have suspected. The analysis which the literary historian makes of the poet’s material is exactly comparable with the method of psychoanalysis, not excluding the mistakes that may creep in. (Location 1443)
psicoanálisis cita síntoma poesía sentido personalidad
The psychoanalytic method can be compared with historical analysis and synthesis in general. Suppose, for instance, we did not understand the meaning of the baptismal rite practised in our churches today. The priest tells us: baptism means the admission of the child into the Christian community. But this does not satisfy us. Why is the child sprinkled with water? In order to understand this ceremony, we must gather together from the whole history of ritual, that is, from mankind’s memories of the relevant traditions, a body of (Location 1447)
The analyst proceeds in the same way with a dream. He collects the historical parallels to every part of the dream, even the remotest, and tries to reconstruct the psychological history of the dream and its underlying meanings. Through this monographic elaboration we obtain, just as in the analysis of baptism, a profound insight into the marvellously delicate and meaningful network of unconscious determination—an insight that may legitimately be compared with the historical understanding of an act which we had hitherto regarded in a very superficial and one-sided way. (Location 1459)
The method I have described is the one I adopt and the one to which I hold myself scientifically responsible. To give advice about dreams and to make direct attempts at interpretation is, in my opinion, absolutely wrong and scientifically inadmissible. It is not a methodological but a quite arbitrary proceeding which defeats itself by the sterility of its results, like every false method. (Location 1471)
When someone knocks in a nail with a hammer in order to hang something up, we can understand every detail of the action; it is immediately evident. It is otherwise with the act of baptism, where every phase is problematic. We call these actions, whose meaning and purpose are not immediately evident, symbolic actions, or symbols. On the basis of this reasoning we call a dream symbolic, because it is a psychological product whose origin, meaning, and purpose are obscure, and is therefore one of the purest products of unconscious constellation. As Freud aptly says, the dream is the via regia to the unconscious. (Location 1475)
The diversity of the fantasy- material is indeed very great, but we do not find nearly so many individual peculiarities as in the conscious realm. We meet here with more typical material which is not infrequently repeated in similar form in different individuals. Constantly recurring in these fantasies are ideas which are variations of those found in religion and mythology. This fact is so striking that we may say we have discovered in these fantasies the forerunners of religious and mythological ideas. (Location 1528)
Oedipus is the exponent of an infantile conflict magnified to adult proportions. The term “Oedipus complex” naturally does not mean conceiving this conflict in its adult form, but rather on a reduced scale suitable to childhood. All it means, in effect, is that the childish demands for love are directed to mother and father, and to the extent that these demands have already attained a certain degree of intensity, so that the chosen object is jealously defended, we can speak of an “Oedipus complex.” (Location 1544)
The faint hints of this fantasy in the child’s consciousness can easily be overlooked; all parents are therefore convinced that their children have no Oedipus complex. Parents, like lovers, are mostly blind. (Location 1557)
Both these fantasy complexes become more pronounced with increasing maturity, and reach a new stage only in the postpubertal period, when the problem arises of detachment from the parents. This stage is characterized by the symbol we have already mentioned: the symbol of sacrifice. The more sexuality develops, the more it drives the individual away from his family and forces him to achieve independence. But the child has become closely attached to the family by his whole previous history, and especially to the parents, so that it is often only with the greatest difficulty that the growing individual can free himself inwardly from his infantile milieu. If he does not succeed in this, the Oedipus (or Electra) complex will precipitate a conflict, and then there is the possibility of neurotic disturbances. The libido, already sexually developed, pours into the Oedipal “mould” and gives rise to feelings and fantasies which prove beyond doubt the effectiveness of the complex, which till then had been unconscious and more or less inoperative. (Location 1584)
it is in the natural order of things that familiar objects lose their compelling charm and force the libido to seek new objects; and this acts as an important regulative factor which prevents parricide and incest. The continuous development of libido towards objects outside the family is perfectly normal and natural, and it is an abnormal and pathological phenomenon if the libido remains, as it were, glued to the family. Nevertheless, it is a phenomenon that can sometimes be observed in normal people. (Location 1599)
The fantasy of sacrifice means the giving up of infantile wishes. I have shown this in my book and at the same time have pointed out the parallels in the history of religion. It is not surprising that this problem plays an important role in religion, for religion is one of the greatest helps in the psychological process of adaptation. The chief obstacle to new modes of psychological adaptation is conservative adherence to the earlier attitude. But man cannot leave his previous personality and his previous objects of interest simply as they are, otherwise his libido would stagnate in the past, and this would be an impoverishment for him. Here religion is a great help because, by the bridge of the symbol, it leads his libido away from the infantile objects (parents) towards the symbolic representatives of the past, i.e., the gods, thus facilitating the transition from the infantile world to the adult world. In this way the libido is set free for social purposes. (Location 1605)