Sigmund Freud's final outline of psychoanalysis |
|
Freud was the creator of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis just means the analysis of mind , but is used to describe the specific method of analysing developed by Freud.
If Freud's ideas, outlined in this document, seem somewhat incredible, it is particularly important to look at how he came to believe them. They are not just ideas he liked the look of - but conclusions he believed he was driven to reach by the evidence of psychoanalysis. So the question you should ask is, what do I think of psychoanalysis as a scientific method?
| Freud's London home, at 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, is now a museum. There you can see the couch he used for his psychoanalytic discoveries. His patients were told to lie on it and he sat behind them, out of sight. They then had to say anything and everything that came into their minds. This "free-association" provided the empirical data that Freud analysed. |
click to visit the house where he lived. Can you find the couch? |
Freud only lived at Maresfield Gardens for a short while before his death, but it was here that he wrote the final summary of his life's work, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, which this document is based on.
In
an earlier work he tells us that psychoanalysis is much more than a method
of treating mental disorders.
[Square brackets indicate material that Andrew Roberts has added].
Sex and the human mind
Extracts from
An Outline of Psycho-analysis
by Sigmund Freud
| PREFACE | [Questions] |
(¶1) The teachings of psycho-analysis are based on an incalculable number of observations and experiences (*), and only someone who has repeated those observations on himself and on others is in a position to arrive at a judgment of his own upon it.
| PART ONE: THE MIND AND ITS WORKINGS | [Questions] |
CHAPTER 1: THE PSYCHICAL APPARATUS
[Mind and brain]
(¶1.1) Psycho-analysis makes a basic assumption, the discussion of
which is reserved to philosophical thought but the justification for which
lies in its results.
We know two kinds of things about what we call our
psyche
(or mental life):
|
firstly, its bodily organ and scene of action, the brain (or nervous system) |
and, on the other hand,
-
our acts of consciousness, which are immediate data and cannot be further
explained by any sort of description.
Everything that lies between is unknown to us, and the data do not include any direct relation between these two terminal points of our knowledge. If it existed, it would at the most afford an exact localisation of the processes of consciousness and would give us no help towards understanding them.
(¶1.2)... We assume that mental life is the function of an apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space and of being made up of several portions....We have arrived at our knowledge of this psychical apparatus by studying the individual development of human beings.
| [Id and Ego] | [Questions] |
(¶1.3) To the oldest of these psychical provinces or agencies we give the name of id. It contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth, that is laid down in the constitution - above all, therefore, the instincts, which originate from the somatic organisation and which find a first psychical expression here (in the id) in forms unknown to us...
(¶1.4) Under the influence of the real external world around us, one portion of the id has undergone a special development. From what was originally a cortical layer, equipped with the organs for receiving stimuli and with arrangements for acting as a protective shield against stimuli, a special organisation has arisen which henceforward acts as an intermediary between the id and the external world. To this region of our mind we have given the name of ego.
(¶1.5a) Here are the principal characteristics of the ego, In consequence of the pre-established connection between sense perception and muscular action, the ego has voluntary movement at its command. It has the task of self- preservation. As regards external events, it performs that task by becoming aware of stimuli, by storing up experiences about them (in the memory), by avoiding excessively strong stimuli (through flight), by dealing with moderate stimuli (through adaptation) and finally by learning to bring about expedient changes in the external world to its own advantage (through activity). As regards internal events, in relation to the id, it performs that task by gaining control over the demands of the instincts, by deciding whether they are to be allowed satisfaction, by postponing that satisfaction to times and circumstances favourable in the external world or by suppressing their excitations entirely.
(¶1.5b) It is guided in its activity by consideration of the tensions produced by stimuli, whether these tensions are present in it or introduced into it. The raising of these tensions is in general felt as unpleasure and their lowering as pleasure. It is probable, however, that what is felt as pleasure or unpleasure is not the absolute height of this tension but something in the rhythm of the changes in them. The ego strives after pleasure and seeks to avoid unpleasure. An increase in unpleasure that is expected and foreseen is met by a signal of anxiety; the occasion of such an increase, whether it threatens from without or within, is known as a danger.
(¶1.5c) From time to time the ego gives up its connection with the external world and withdraws into the state of sleep, in which it makes far-reaching changes in its organisation. It is to be inferred from the state of sleep that this organisation consists in a particular distribution of mental energy.
(¶1.6) The long period of childhood, during which the growing human being lives in dependence on his parents, leaves behind it as a precipitate the formation in his ego of a special agency in which this parental influence is prolonged. It has received the name of super-ego [see below]. In so far as this super-ego is differentiated from the ego or is opposed to it, it constitutes a third power which the ego must take into account.
(¶1.7a) An action by the ego is as it should be if it satisfies simultaneously the demands of the id, of the super- ego and of reality that is to say, if it is able to reconcile their demands with one another.
(¶1.7b) The details of the relation between the ego and the super-ego become completely intelligible when they are traced back to the child's attitude to its parents. This parental influence of course includes in its operation not only the personalities of the actual parents but also the family, racial and national traditions handed on through them, as well as the demands of the immediate social milieu which they represent. In the same way, the super-ego, in the course of an individual's development, receives contributions from later successors and substitutes of his parents, such as teachers and models in public life of admired social ideals.
(¶1.7c) It will be observed that, for all their fundamental difference, the id and the super-ego have one thing in common: they both represent the influences of the past - the id the influence of heredity, the super-ego the influence, essentially, of what is taken over from other people - whereas the ego is principally determined by the individual's own experience, that is by accidental and contemporary events.
CHAPTER 2: THE THEORY OF THE INSTINCTS
CHAPTER 3: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEXUAL FUNCTION
| Sex | [Questions] |
(¶3.1) According to the prevailing view human sexual life consists essentially in an endeavour to bring one's own genitals into contact with those of someone of the opposite sex. With this are associated, as accessory phenomena and introductory acts, kissing this extraneous body, looking at it and touching it. This endeavour is supposed to make its appearance at puberty - that is, at the age of sexual maturity - and to serve the purposes of reproduction. Nevertheless, certain facts have always been known which do not fit into the narrow framework of this view:
- It is a remarkable fact that there are people who are only attracted
by
individuals of their own sex and by their
genitals.
- It is equally remarkable that there are people whose desires behave
exactly like sexual ones but who at the same time entirely disregard the
sexual organs or their normal use; people of this kind are known as
'perverts'.
- And lastly it is a striking thing that some children (who are on that account regarded as degenerate) take a very early interest in their genitals and show signs of excitation in them.
(¶3.2) It may well be believed that psycho-analysis provoked
astonishment and
denials when, partly on the basis of these three neglected facts, it
contradicted all the popular opinions on sexuality. Its principal findings
are as follows:
b It is necessary to distinguish sharply between the concepts of
'sexual'
and
'genital'. The former is the wider concept and includes many
activities
that have nothing to do with the genitals.
c Sexual life includes the function of obtaining pleasure from zones of the
body - a function which is subsequently brought into the service of
reproduction. The two functions often fail to coincide completely.
Sex before and after latency
(¶3.3a)
The chief interest is naturally focused on [the assertion that sexual life
starts soon after birth]. It has been found that in early childhood there
are signs of bodily activity to which only an ancient prejudice could deny
the name of sexual and which are linked to
psychical
phenomena that we come
across later in adult
erotic life - such as fixation to particular objects,
jealousy, and so on. It is further found, however, that these phenomena
pass through a regular process of increase, reaching a climax towards the
end of the fifth year, after which there follows a lull. During this lull
progress is at a standstill and much is unlearnt and there is much
recession. After the end of this period of latency, as it is called, sexual
life advances once more with puberty; we might say that it has a second
efflorescence. And here we come upon the fact that the onset of sexual life
is diphasic, that it occurs in two waves...[The one before and the other
after the latency period]
(¶3.3b)
It is not a matter of indifference that the events of this early period,
except for a few residues, fall a victim to infantile amnesia. Our views on
the
aetiology of the
neuroses and our technique of analytic therapy are
derived from these conceptions...
Oral stage
(¶3.4) The first organ to emerge as an
erotogenic zone and to make
libidinal
demands on the mind is, from the time of birth onwards, the mouth. To begin
with, all
psychical
activity is concentrated on providing satisfaction
for the needs of that zone. Primarily, of course, this satisfaction serves
the purpose of self-preservation by means of nourishment; but physiology
should not be confused with psychology. The baby's obstinate persistence in
sucking gives evidence at an early stage of a need for satisfaction which,
though it originates from and is instigated by the taking of nourishment,
nevertheless strives to obtain pleasure independently of nourishment and
for that reason may and should be termed sexual.
Anal stage
(¶3.5) During this oral phase sadistic impulses already occur
sporadically along
with the appearance of the teeth. Their extent is far greater in the second
phase, which we describe as the sadistic-anal one, because satisfaction is
then sought in aggression and in the excretory function. Our justification
for including aggressive urges under the
libido
is based on the view that
sadism is an instinctual fusion of purely libidinal and purely destructive
urges,
Phallic stage
(¶3.6) The third phase is that known as the phallic one, which is, as
it were, a
forerunner of the final form taken by sexual life and already much
resembles it. It is to be noted that it is not the
genitals of both sexes
that play a part at this stage, but only the male ones (the phallus). The
female genitals long remain unknown.
[In a footnote Freud says that the
occurrence of early vaginal excitations is often asserted. But it is most
probable that what is in question are excitations in the clitoris - that
is, in an organ "analogous to the penis".]
(¶3.7) With the phallic phase and in the course of it the sexuality of
early
childhood reaches its height and approaches its dissolution. Thereafter
boys and girls have different histories. Both have begun to put their
intellectual activity at the service of sexual researches; both start off
from the premise of the universal presence of the penis. But now the paths
of the sexes diverge. The boy enters the Oedipus [see
below] phase; he
begins to manipulate his penis and simultaneously has phantasies of
carrying out some sort of activity with it in relation to his mother, till,
owing to the combined effect of a threat of castration and the sight of the
absence of a penis in females, he experiences the greatest
trauma of his
life and this introduces the period of latency with all its consequences.
The girl, after vainly attempting to do the same as the boy, comes to
recognize her lack of a penis or rather the inferiority of her clitoris,
with permanent effects on the development of her character; as a result of
this first disappointment in rivalry, she often begins by turning away
altogether from sexual life.
(¶3.8)
It would be a mistake to suppose that these three phases succeed one
another in a clear-cut fashion. One may appear in addition to another; they
may overlap one another, may be present alongside of one another. In the
early phases the different component instincts set about their pursuit of
pleasure independently of one another; in the phallic phase there are the
beginnings of an organisation which subordinates the other urges to the
primacy of the
genitals and signifies the start of a co-ordination of the
general urge towards pleasure into the sexual function. The complete
organisation is only achieved at puberty, in a fourth, genital phase.
(¶3.9)
This process is not always performed faultlessly. Inhibitions in its
development manifest themselves as the many sorts of disturbance in sexual
life. When this is so, we find fixations of the
libido
to conditions in
earlier phases, whose urge, which is independent of the normal sexual aim,
is described as perversion.
CHAPTER 4:
PSYCHICAL
QUALITIES
(¶4.4)
... Whereas the psychology of consciousness never went beyond the broken
sequences which were obviously dependent on something else, the other
view, that the psychical is unconscious in itself, enabled psychology to
take its place as a natural science like any other. The processes with
which it is concerned are in themselves
just as unknowable as those dealt
with by other sciences, by chemistry or physics, for example;
but it is
possible to establish the laws which they obey and to follow their mutual
relations and interdependencies unbroken over long stretches - in short, to
arrive at what is described as an 'understanding' of the field of natural
phenomena in question. This cannot be affected without framing fresh
hypotheses and creating fresh concepts; but these are not to be despised as
evidence of embarrassment on our part but deserve on the contrary to be
appreciated as an enrichment of science. They can lay claim to the same
value as approximations that belongs to the corresponding intellectual
scaffolding found in other natural sciences, and we look forward to their
being modified, corrected and more precisely determined as further
experience is accumulated and sifted. So too it will be entirely in
accordance with our expectations if the basic concepts and principles of
the new science (instinct, nervous energy, etc) remain for a time no less
indeterminate than those of the older sciences (force, mass, attraction,
etc.).
(¶4.5)
Every science is based on observations and experiences arrived at through
the medium of our
psychical apparatus. But since our science has as
its subject that apparatus itself, the analogy ends here. We make our
observations through the medium of the same
perceptual apparatus, precisely
with the help of the breaks in the sequence of 'psychical' events: we fill
in what is omitted by making plausible inferences and translating it into
conscious material. In this way we construct, as it were, a sequence of
conscious events complementary to the unconscious psychical processes. The
relative certainty of our psychical science is based on the binding force
of these inferences. Anyone who enters deeply into our work will find that
our technique holds its ground against any criticism.
(¶4.6)
... consciousness is in general a highly fugitive state. What is conscious
is conscious only for a moment... the conscious perception of our thought
processes... may persist for some time, but they may just as well pass in a
flash. Everything unconscious that... can thus easily exchange the
unconscious state for the conscious one, is... described as 'capable of
becoming conscious' or as preconscious...
(¶4.7) Thus, we have attributed three qualities to
psychical
processes: they are either conscious, preconscious or unconscious. The
division between the three classes of material which possess these
qualities is neither absolute nor permanent. What is pre-conscious becomes
conscious... without any assistance from us; what is unconscious can,
through our efforts, be made conscious, and in the process we may have a
feeling that we are often overcoming very strong resistance.
(¶4.11) The inside of the ego, which comprises above all the thought
processes, has the quality of being preconscious.
(¶4.12a) The sole prevailing quality in the id is that of being
unconscious. Id and unconscious are as intimately linked as ego and
preconscious...
(¶4.12b) If we look back at the develoment history of an individual
and of his
psychical apparatus, we
shall be able to perceive an important
distinction in the id. Originally... everything was id; the ego was
developed out of the id by the continual influence of the external world.
In the course of this slow develoment certain of the contents of the id
weer tranfromed into the preconscius state and so taken into the ego;
others of its contents remained in the id unchanged, as its scarcely
accessible nucleus. During this development, however, the young and feeble
ego put back into the unconscious state some of the material it had already
taken in, droped it, and behaved in the same way to some fresh impressions
which it might have taken in, so that these, having been rejected,
could leave a trace only in the id. In consideration of its origin we speak
of this latter portion if of the id as the repressed. It is of
little importance that we we are not always able to draw a sharp line
between these teo categories of contenst of the id. They coincide
approximately with the ditinction between waht was innately present
originally and waht was aquired in the course of the ego's development.
CHAPTER 5: DREAM INTERPRETATION AS AN ILLUSTRATION
An investigation of normal, stable states [of the mind], in which the
frontiers of the ego are safeguarded against the id by resistances...would
teach us little.
The only thing that can help us [to gain access to the unconscious id] are
are states of conflict and uproar when the contents of the unconscious id
have a prospect of forcing their way into the ego and inti consciousness
and the ego puts itself once more on the defensive against this invasion...
Now, our nightly sleep is precisely a state of this sort, and for that
reason
psychical
activity during sleep, which we perceive as dreams, is our
most favourable object of study.
PART TWO: THE PRACTICAL TASK
CHAPTER 6: THE TECHNIQUE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
CHAPTER 7: AN EXAMPLE OF PSYCHO-ANALYTIC WORK
a Sexual life does not begin only at puberty, but starts with plain
manifestations soon after birth.
| [Child abuse] | [Questions] |
(¶7.8) Analytic experience has convinced us of the complete truth of the assertion so often to be heard that the child is psychologically father to the adult and that the events of his first years are of paramount importance for his whole later life. It will thus be of special interest to us if there is something that may be described as the central experience of this period of childhood. Our attention is first attracted by the effects of certain influences which do not apply to all children, though they are common enough - such as the sexual abuse of children by adults, their seduction by other children (brothers or sisters) slightly their seniors, and, what we should not expect, their being deeply stirred by seeing or hearing at first hand sexual behaviour between adults (their parents) mostly at a time at which one would not have thought they could either be interested in or understand any such impressions, or be capable of remembering them later. It is easy to confirm the extent to which such experiences arouse a child's susceptibility and force his own sexual urges into certain channels from which they cannot afterwards depart. Since these impressions are subjected to repression either at once or as soon as they seek to return as memories, they constitute the determinant for the neurotic compulsion which will subsequently make it impossible for the ego to control the sexual function and will probably cause it to turn away from that function permanently. If this latter reaction occurs, the result will be a neurosis; if it is absent, a variety of perversions will develop, or the function, which is of immense importance not only for reproduction but also for the entire shaping of life, will become totally unmanageable.
Oedipus and Electra
(¶7.9)
However instructive cases of this kind may be, a still higher degree of
interest must attach to the influence of a situation which every child is
destined to pass through and which follows inevitably from the factor of
the prolonged period during which a child is cared for by other people and
lives with his parents. I am thinking of the Oedipus
complex, so named
because its essential substance is to be found in the Greek legend of
King Oedipus
... The Greek hero killed his father and took his mother to wife.
That he did so unwittingly, since he did not know them as his parents, is a
deviation from the analytic facts which we can easily understand and which,
indeed, we shall recognize as inevitable.
(¶7.10)
At this point we must give separate accounts of the development of
boys and girls (of males and females), for it is now that the difference
between the sexes finds psychological expression for the first time...
(¶7.11a)
A child's first
erotic object is the mother's breast that nourishes it;
love
has its origin in attachment to the satisfied need for nourishment.
There is no doubt that, to begin with, the child does not distinguish
between the breast and its own body; when the breast has to be separated
from the body and shifted to the 'outside' because the child so often finds
it absent, it carries with it as an 'object' a part of the original
narcissistic libidinal
cathexis.
(¶7.11b)
This first object is later completed into the person of the child's mother,
who not only nourishes it but also looks after it and thus arouses in it a
number of other physical sensations, pleasurable and unpleasurable. By her
care of the child's body she becomes its first seducer. In these two
relations lies the root of a mother's importance, unique, without parallel,
established unalterably for a whole lifetime as the first and strongest
love-object
and as the prototype of all later love-relations - for both
sexes.
(¶7.11c)
In all this the
phylogenetic
foundation
has so much the upper hand over
personal accidental experience that it makes no difference whether a child
has really sucked at the breast or has been brought up on the bottle and
never enjoyed the tenderness of a mother's care. In both cases the child's
development takes the same path; it may be that in the second case
its later longing grows all the greater. And for however long it is fed at
its mother's breast, it will always be left with a conviction after it has
been weaned that its feeding was too short and too little.
Little boys
(¶7.12)
This preface is not superfluous, for it can heighten our realisation of the
intensity of the
Oedipus
complex. When a boy (from the age of two or
three)
has entered the phallic phase of his libidinal development, is feeling
pleasurable sensations in his sexual organ and has learnt to procure these
at will by manual stimulation, he becomes his mother's lover. He wishes to
possess her physically in such ways as he has divined from his observations
and intuitions about sexual life, and he tries to seduce her by showing her
the male organ which he is proud to own. In a word, his early awakened
masculinity seeks to take his father's place with her; his father has
hitherto in any case been an envied model to the boy, owing to the physical
strength he perceives in him and the authority with which he finds him
clothed. His father now becomes a rival who stands in his way and whom he
would like to get rid of. If while his father is away he is allowed to
share his mother's bed and if when his father returns he is once more
banished from it, his satisfaction when his father disappears and his
disappointment when he emerges again are deeply felt experiences. This is
the subject of the
Oedipus
complex, which the Greek legend has
translated
from the world of a child's phantasy into pretended reality. Under the
conditions of our civilisation it is invariably doomed to a frightening
end.
Father will cut it off
(¶7.13a)
The boy's mother has understood quite well that his
sexual excitation relates to herself. Sooner or later she reflects that it
is not right to allow it to continue. She thinks she is doing the correct
thing in forbidding him to handle his
genital organ. Her prohibition has
little effect; at the most it brings about some modification in his method
of obtaining satisfaction. At last his mother adopts the severest measures;
she threatens to take away from him the thing he is defying her with.
Usually, in order to make the threat more frightening and more credible,
she delegates its execution to the boy's father, saying that she will tell
him and that he will cut the penis off.
(¶7.13b)
Strange to say, this threat operates only if another condition is fulfilled
before or afterwards. In itself it seems too inconceivable to the boy that
such a thing could happen. But if at the time of the threat he can
recall the appearance of
female genitals or if shortly afterwards he has a
sight of them - of genitals, that is to say, which really lack this
supremely valued part, then he takes what he has heard seriously and,
coming under the influence of the castration
complex, experiences the
severest trauma of his
young life.
Repression
(¶7.14)
The results of the threat of castration are multifarious and incalculable;
they affect the whole of a boy's relations with his father and mother and
subsequently with men and women in general.
As a rule the child's
masculinity is unable to stand up to this first shock. In order to preserve
his sexual organ he renounces the possession of his mother more or less
completely; his sexual life often remains permanently encumbered by the
prohibition. If a strong feminine component, as we call it, is present in
him, its strength is increased by this intimidation of his masculinity. He
falls into a passive attitude to his father, such as he attributes to his
mother. It is true that as a result of the threat he has given up
masturbation, but not the activities of his imagination accompanying it. On
the contrary, since these are now the only form of sexual satisfaction
remaining to him, he indulges in them more than before and in these
phantasies, though he still continues to identify himself with his father,
he also does so, simultaneously and perhaps predominantly, with his mother.
Derivatives and modified products of these early masturbatory phantasies
usually make their way into his later
ego
and play a part in the formation
of his character. Apart from this encouragement of his femininity, fear and
hatred of his father gain greatly in intensity. The boy's masculinity
withdraws, as it were, into a defiant attitude towards his father, which
will dominate his later behaviour in human society in a compulsive
fashion. A residue of his
erotic fixation to his mother is often left in
the form of an excessive dependence on her, and this persists as a kind of
bondage to women. He no longer ventures to
love
his mother, but he cannot
risk not being loved by her, for in that case he would be in danger of
being betrayed by her to his father and handed over to castration. The
whole experience, with all its antecedents and consequences, of which my
account has only been able to give a selection, is subjected to a highly
energetic repression, and, as is made possible by the laws operating in the
unconscious
id,
all the mutually contending emotional impulses and
reactions which are set going at that time are preserved in the unconscious
and ready to disturb the later development of the
ego
after puberty. When
the
somatic
process of sexual maturation puts fresh life into the old
libidinal fixations which had apparently been surmounted, sexual life will
turn out to be inhibited, without homogeneity and fallen apart into
mutually conflicting urges.
(¶7.15)
It is no doubt true that the impact of the threat of castration upon a
boy's budding sexual life does not always have these dreaded consequences.
It will depend once again on quantitative relations how much damage is done
and how much avoided. The whole occurrence, which may probably be regarded
as the central experience of the years of childhood, the greatest problem
of early life and the strongest source of later inadequacy, is so
completely forgotten that its reconstruction during the work of analysis is
met in adults by the most decided disbelief. Indeed, aversion to it is so
great that people try to silence any mention of the proscribed subject and
the most obvious reminders of it are overlooked by a strange intellectual
blindness...
(¶7.16)... more than a century before the emergence of psycho-analysis
the
French philosopher
Diderot bore witness to the importance of the
Oedipus
complex by expressing the difference between
the
primitive and civilised
worlds in this sentence:
I venture to say that if psycho-analysis could boast of no other
achievement than the discovery of the repressed Oedipus
complex, that alone
would give it a claim to be included among the precious new acquisitions of
mankind.
Diderot's original is:
Si le petit sauvage éte abanndonné
à lui-même; qu'il conservât toute son
imbécillité et
qu'il réunit au peu de raison de l'enfant au berceau, la violence
des passions de l'homme de trente ans, il tordrait le col à son
père, et coucherait avec sa mère.
The quote is from Le Neveau de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew) by Denis
Diderot, a satirical novel about society, written between 1761 and 1774.
Available in English and French at this external link
*************************************************************************
for Freud's discussion of society and
repression.
"if the little savage were left to himself, preserving all his
foolishness and adding to the small sense of a child in the cradle the
violent passions of a man of thirty, he would strangle his father and lie
with his mother".
| Little girls | [Questions] |
(¶7.17) The effects of the castration complex in little girls are more uniform and no less profound. A female child has, of course, no need to fear the loss of a penis; she must, however, react to the fact of not having received one. From the very first she envies boys its possession; her whole development may be said to take place under the colours of envy for the penis. She begins by making vain attempts to do the same as boys and later, with greater success, makes efforts to compensate for her defect - efforts which may lead in the end to a normal feminine attitude. If during the phallic phase she tries to get pleasure like a boy by the manual stimulation of her genitals, it often happens that she fails to obtain sufficient satisfaction and extends her judgment of inferiority from her stunted penis to her whole self. As a rule she soon gives up masturbating, since she has no wish to be reminded of the superiority of her brother or playmate, and turns away from sexuality altogether.
(¶7.18) If a little girl persists in her first wish - to grow into a boy - in extreme cases she will end as a manifest homosexual, and otherwise she will exhibit markedly masculine traits in the conduct of her later life, will choose a masculine vocation, and so on. The other path leads by way of abandoning the mother she has loved: the daughter, under the influence of her envy for the penis, cannot forgive her mother for having sent her into the world so insufficiently equipped. In her resentment over this she gives up her mother and puts someone else in her place as the object of her love - her father.
If one has lost a love-object, the most obvious reaction is to identify oneself with it, to replace it from within, as it were, by identification. This mechanism now comes to the little girl's help. Identification with her mother can take the place of attachment to her mother. [My emphasis, not Freud's]
The little daughter puts herself in her mother's place, as she has always done in her games; she tries to take her mother's place with her father, and begins to hate the mother she used to love, and from two motives: from jealousy as well as from mortification over the penis she has been denied.
Her new relation to her father may start by having as its content a wish to have his penis at her disposal, but it culminates in another wish - to have a baby from him as a gift. The wish for a baby has thus taken the place of the wish for a penis, or has at all events split off from it.
(¶7.19) It is an interesting thing that the relation between the Oedipus complex and the castration complex should take such a different shape - an opposite one, in fact- in the case of females as compared to that of males. In males, as we have seen, the threat of castration brings the Oedipus complex to an end; in females we find that, on the contrary, it is their lack of a penis that forces them into their Oedipus complex.
It does little harm to a woman if she remains in her feminine Oedipus attitude. (The term 'Electra complex' has been proposed for it) [By Jung] She will in that case choose her husband for his paternal characteristics and be ready to recognize his authority. Her longing to possess a penis, which is in fact unappeasable, may find satisfaction if she can succeed in completing her love for the organ by extending it to the bearer of the organ, just as happened earlier when she progressed from her mother's breast to her mother as a whole person.
(¶7.20)
If we ask an analyst what his experience has shown to be the mental
structures least accessible to influence in his patients, the answer will
be: in a woman her wish for a penis, in a man his feminine attitude towards
his own sex, a precondition of which would, of course, be the loss of his
penis.
PART THREE: THE THEORETICAL YIELD
CHAPTER 8: THE
PSYCHICAL APPARATUS
AND THE EXTERNAL WORLD
(¶8.10)
... the ego comes to grief over the task of mastering the excitations of
the early sexual period, at a time when its immaturity makes it incompetent
to do so. It is in this lagging of ego development behind libidinal
development that we see the essential precondition of
neurosis; and we
cannot escape the conclusion that neuroses could be avoided if the childish
ego were spared this task - if, that is to say, the child's sexual life
were allowed free play, as happens among many primitive peoples...
On the other hand, the realisation dawns on us that such an early attempt
at damming up sexual instinct, so decided a partisanship by the young ego
in favour of the external as opposed to the internal world, brought about
by the prohibition of infant sexuality, cannot be without its effect on the
individual's later readiness for culture. The instinctual demands forced
away from direct satisfaction are compelled to enter on new paths leading
to substitutive satisfaction...
... many of the highly valued assets of our civilisation were acquired at
the cost of sexuality and by restriction of sexual motive forces.
CHAPTER 9: THE INTERNAL WORLD
| Super-ego | [Questions] |
(¶9.2a) The picture of an ego which mediates between the id and the external world, which takes over the instinctual demands of the [id] in order to lead them to satisfaction, which derives perceptions from the [external world] and uses them as memories, which, intent on its self-preservation, puts itself in defence against excessively strong claims from both sides and which, at the same time, is guided in all its decisions by the injunctions of a modified pleasure principle - this picture in fact applies to the ego only up to the end of the first period of childhood, till about the age of five. At about that time an important change has taken place. A portion of the external world has, at least partially, been abandoned as an object and has instead, by identification, been taken into the ego and thus become an integral part of the internal world.
(¶9.2b) This new psychical agency continues to carry on the functions which have hitherto been performed by the people (the abandoned objects) in the external world: it observes the ego, gives it orders, judges it and threatens it with punishments, exactly like the parents whose place it has taken. We call this agency the super-ego and are aware of it in its judicial functions as our conscience. It is a remarkable thing that the super-ego often displays a severity for which no model has been provided by the real parents, and moreover that it calls the ego to account not only for its deeds but equally for its thoughts and unexecuted intentions, of which the super-ego seems to have knowledge. This reminds us that the hero of the Oedipus legend too felt guilty for his deeds and submitted himself to self-punishment, although the coercive power of the oracle should have acquitted him of guilt in our judgment and his own. The super-ego is in fact the heir to the Oedipus complex and is only established after that complex has been disposed of.
(¶9.2c) For that reason its excessive severity does not follow a real model but corresponds to the strength of the defence used against the temptation of the Oedipus complex. Some suspicion of this state of things lies, no doubt, at the bottom of the assertion made by philosophers and believers that the moral sense is not instilled into men by education or acquired by them in their social life but is implanted in them from a higher source.
(¶9.3) So long as the ego works in full harmony with the super-ego it is not easy to distinguish between their manifestations; but tensions and estrangements between them make themselves very plainly visible. The torments caused by the reproaches of conscience correspond precisely to a child's fear of loss of love, a fear the place of which has been taken by the moral agency. On the other hand, if the ego has successfully resisted a temptation to do something which would be objectionable to the super-ego, it feels raised in its self-esteem and strengthened in its pride, as though it had made some precious acquisition. In this way the super- ego continues to play the part of an external world for the ego, although it has become a portion of the internal world. Throughout later life it represents the influence of a person's childhood, of the care and education given him by his parents and of his dependence on them - a childhood which is prolonged so greatly in human beings by a family life in common. And in all this it is not only the personal qualities of these parents that is making itself felt, but also everything that had a determining effect on them themselves, the tastes and standards of the social class in which they lived and the innate dispositions and traditions of the race from which they sprang. Those who have a liking for generalisations and sharp distinctions may say that the external world, in which the individual finds himself exposed after being detached from his parents, represents the power of the present; that his id, with its inherited trends, represents the organic past; and that the super-ego, which comes to join them later, represents more than anything the cultural past, which a child has, as it were, to repeat as an after- experience during the few years of his early life. It is unlikely that such generalisations can be universally correct. Some portion of the cultural acquisitions have undoubtedly left a precipitate behind them in the id; much of what is contributed by the super-ego will awaken an echo in the id; not a few of the child's new experiences will be intensified because they are repetitions of some primaeval phylogenetic experience.
"What thou hast inherited from thy fathers,Thus the super-ego takes up a kind of intermediate position between the id and the external world; it unites in itself the influences of the present and the past. In the establishment of the super- ego we have before us, as it were, an example of the way in which the present is changed into the past....
acquire it to make it thine" [Goethe's Faust]
*************************************************************************
From Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
Which, word for word, is:
External link:
Wikipedia
*************************************************************************
This document was compiled by Andrew Roberts. He is entirely responsible
for any Freudian slips, unless they are likely to get him into trouble_In
which case, he blames his computer.
Booklist and references
Freud, S. 1926,
The Question of Lay Analysis. Reprinted in
two Penguin
paperbacks: Two Short Accounts of Psychoanalysis (quote on pages 167 to
168) and The Essentials of Psychoanalysis (quote on pages 63 to 64).
Freud, S. 1940, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Hogarth Press 1979
NOTES AND LIBELS
cortical Cortex is Latin for the bark of a tree. In
English, a cortex, or a cortical layer, is just an outer layer. The outer
layer of the brain (the convolutions you can see on
the drawing) is called the cerebral (brain) cortex. Freud
argues that the id (part of our mind) has an outer (cortical)
layer, from which the ego develops.
Physical is material - made of matter - like the body of which the
brain is part. Our physical apparatus would be all the bits and
pieces that
make
up the body working together. Somatic just means belonging to the
body (soma) as distinct from the mind.
But Freud is writing about a psychical
apparatus. Our psych is our mind (hence psychology - the study of
mind). Psychoanalysis is claiming to discover an apparatus (organisation,
structure) for this. So what is the mind? What does it look like? Freud
says we know its body organ (the brain), but we perceive it directly in
"acts of consciousness".
Psychoanalysis does not study the brain, it studies these "acts of
consciousness" - and from them it deduces that the mind has a structure
(psychical apparatus) which includes a large unconscious part. (see diagram)
the libelous bit:
To pose as "scientific" some social scientists wear white coats and others
create obscure terms for their concepts. Freud wrote in a down-to-earth
German that his English translators thought would be more impressive if
spiced up with a little Latin. This is how we got the words "id" "ego" and
"super-ego"
Freud wrote (1923) Das Ich und das Es, which is simply translated as
The I and the It. "How common!" his first translator (Joan Riviere)
thought, and retranslated it as The Ego and the Id.
Id is a newly created "Latin" word for what Freud called (in German)
das Es. In German, "das" is "the" and "es" is "it". Das Es is
the "it" about us - the part we try to control as distinct from the part of
us that tries to control. The simple "es" gets a capital letter when it
becomes "Das Es" - because it is now a noun instead of a pronoun.
In chapter two (The Theory of the Instincts), Freud says:
Eros is "the love instinct". The "total available energy of
Eros" he speaks
of as "libido".
Libido is a Latin word for desire, lust, passion or caprice. Freud
used the Latin (not a German) word. In English "libidinous" (lustful,
lecherous or lewd) had been in use for many centuries, but libido was
introduced by Brill's translation of Freud's Selected Papers on
Hysteria in 1909. The distinction "id, ego, superego" comes later, and
leaves us with the problem of relating "id" and "libido". On the basis of
what Freud says about
basic instincts, it would seem
id has two energies: libido and the death wish.
Ego is a newly created "Latin" word for what Freud called (in
German) das Ich. In German, "das" is "the" and "ich" is "I", or
"Ich" is self. You can say "ich bin" (I am) and you can talk about "sein
anderes Ich" (one's other self). So "Das Ich" is the "I" or "self" that
struggles to please, control and reconcile the other parts of our
personality. without getting us into too many problems with the external
world.
Super-ego is a newly created "Latin" word for what Freud called (in
German) über-ich, which can also be written ueber-ich.
In German, one of the meanings of "über" is "over". "Ich" is "I" or
"self", so the super-ego is the "over-I" or the "over-self".
Freud said: "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden" - "Where It was, shall I be".
Psychoanalysts seem to enjoy arguing about what this means.
phylogenetic Greek for genesis of the race. In biology it refers to
the way all members of a species develop through a succession of forms, as
distinct from the ontogenesis of the individual.
trauma Greek for wound. Used as a medical term for a (physical)
wound or injury. Freud applied it to a wound of the mind. The related word
traumatic has been used (since 1962) for events that cause such
psychic wounds.
genital and genitals
love
(Sigmund Freud in
An Autobiographical Study (1924/1925), quoted by
Anna Freud in The Essentials of Psychoanalysis p.272)
Electra was the sister of Orestes, who she incited to murder
Clytemnestra, their mother. (See
Bulfinch's Mythology)
Science When Freud says that the processes with
which psychoanalysis is concerned are
in themselves
just as unknowable as those dealt
with by other sciences, he is making the distinction that
Immanuel Kant made
between the
"thing in itself" (which is unknowable) and the appearances which we
experience. Kant argued that reason provides categories with which we
interpret empirical observation. Freud appears to be arguing that the
"fresh hypotheses" and
"fresh concepts" of
psychoanalysis are necessary hypotheses for interpreting the data. But, as
hypotheses, they may be modified,
corrected and made more precise with further experience and
analysis.
When Freud speaks of our perceptual
apparatus, he is using a concept from Kant. This is the idea
that our mind has a structure which arranges what we experience into an
order we can understand.
*************************************************************************
Faust, Act I, scene i,
"Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast
Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen."
"What you inherited from your fathers have,
Acquire it, so as it to possess"
You must earn again, to own it straight"
"forces which we assume to exist behind the tensions caused by the needs of
the id are called instincts... we have decided to assume the
existence of only two basic instincts, Eros and the destructive
instinct" [or the] "death instinct"
genitals generate - they are the body organs involved in sexual
intercourse: the male penis and the female vagina. So Freud
is saying that he disagrees with the idea that sexual life is
focused on sexual intercourse. He gives
sex a much
broader definition than
this.
Freud said he had extended the concept of
"sexuality" in
two ways:
Oedipus Rex: The story of King Oedipus, from the Greek play,
is
retold by Freud in Interpretation of Dreams (1924). The way the
Oedipus Complex breaks down with the formation of the super-ego is
explained in greater detail, by Freud, in
The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex (1924)
[Corrections to my very limited understanding of German, Latin, Greek
(and
English?) are more than welcome - as are complaints from translators of
Freud and men and women in white coats.]
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An alphabetical index follows the Headings list and a list of other works follows this.
The headings have been added to the original text by Andrew Roberts.
Sex and the human mind: Extracts from An Outline of Psycho-analysis by Sigmund Freud
Index
abandoned objects (people) par. 9.2
aggression: par.3.5 defiant attude to father: par.
7.14
anus: par.3.5
attachment of children to breast: par.
7.11a. Girls attachment to mother replaced
by identification: par.
7.18 (but see
par.
7.11b
authority: paragraphs 7.12 and
7.19
bottle feeding:
par. 7.11c
breasts: paragraphs 7.11a and
7.11c, and par.7.19
childhood:
civilisation: 1926 quote.
1940:
paragraphs
7.12,
paragraphs
7.16 and
paragraphs
8.10
conscience: paragraphs
9.2b (judicial aspect of
super-ego) and
9.3 (fearing loss of love)
conscious: par.1.1 and
unconscious: par. 7.14
conscious, preconscious,
unconscious
culture and sex
cultural past and superego
ego organisation a "particular
distribution of mental energy" (See also note on
libido energy.
envy: boys envy father's authority and strength: par. 7.12. girls envy boy his penis (pars 7.17 to 7.19), which leads to
accepting husband's authority: par 7.19
experience:
female genitals:
par.3.6,
par.7.17,
par.7.13b
feminine component in males
and masculine in females
fixation:
par.3.3a,
par.3.9,
par.7.14
hate: girl hates her mother: par.
7.18. (Compare with boys desire to
"get rid of" (par.7.12) or
kill (par.7.9) his father.
identification:
pars 7.14,
7.18,
and 9.2a.
inferioriy feelings: pars
3.7 and
7.17
latency period:
pars 3.3a and
pars 3.7
love: par.7.11a,
abandoning love: paragraphs 7.14, and 7.18, love loss: par.9.3
masturbation:
mouth:
par.
3.4
penis: self stimulation (masturbation):
par.7.12 and 7.13a,
par.7.14
penis envy:
paragraphs 7.17, 7.18 and
7.19
pervert:
par.3.1,
perversions: pars 3.9 and
7.8,
pleasure and unpleasure: par.1.5b
pleasurable and unpleasurable physical sensations aroused by mother's care:
par.7.11b
pleasure : paragraphs
3.2,
3.4,
3.8 and
7.17
pleasure principle (modified): par.
9.2a
preconscious, conscious, unconscious
puberty: defined in par.3.1.
See also paragraphs
3.2;
3.3a;
3.8 and
7.14.
repression and society: par
7.14;
satisfaction: pars:
1.5a;
3.4;
3.5;
7.12;
7.13a;
7.14;
7.17;
7.19;
8.10 and
9.2a
seduction: par.7.8,
par.7.11b and 7.12
self-criticism: par.
9.2ba
self-preservation: paragraphs
1.5a,
3.4 and
9.2a
sexual and genital:
par.3.2. See also
par.3.1.
sleep:
par. 1.5c
society, imagination and repression: par
7.14; Also see authority civilisation
culture;
social class, race and culture: par
9.3;
social models (teachers and
other social ideals as successors and substitutes for parents)
unconscious, preconscious, conscious
"Id and unconscious are as
intimately
liked as ego and preconscious"
Other works
1900: Interpretation of Dreams
1913: Totem and Taboo
1923: The Ego and
the
Id
1924:
The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex
1926:
The Question of Lay Analysis
1930: Civilisation
and its Discontents
1933:
The Dissection of the
Psychical Personality
1933:
Femininity
#######################
The brain is
physical (material). The person who drew
this picture had a dead
one to draw from.
The mind is not the same as the brain. It is
psychical, not physical.
What kind of research would you do to be able to make
a diagram of the mind, as Freud does?
object becomes person
early childhood: paragraphs 3.3a,
3.7 and
9.2a
influence of long childhood: paragraphs
1.6 and
9.3
central experience of childhood: paragraphs
7.8 and
7.15
analytic: pars 1,
7.8
7.20
personal: pars 1.5a,
1.7c,
3.7,
7.8,
7.11c,
7.12,
7.13b,
7.14,
7.15,
individuals compulsory after-exerience of cultural past
boys: par.7.12 and 7.13a,
par.7.14
girls: par.7.17,
see other extracts
see other extracts
click on the children to read Beautiful Baby -
an essay that could explain this to you!
