Drives, Affects, Behavior - Essays in Honor of Marie Bonaparte - Rudolph Maurice Loewenstein, Ed (New York International Universites Press, 1953)
Drives, Affects, Behavior - Essays in Honor of Marie Bonaparte - Rudolph Maurice Loewenstein, Ed (New York International Universites Press, 1953)
Drives, Affects, Behavior - Essays in Honor of Marie Bonaparte - Rudolph Maurice Loewenstein, Ed (New York International Universites Press, 1953)
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DRIVES, AFFECTS, BEHAVIOR
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EDITED BY
Rudolph M. Loewenstein, M.D.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Edward L. Bihring, M.D. Robert P. Knight, M.D.
Anna Freud Ernst Kris, Ph.D.
Heinz Hartmannj M.D. Daniel Lagache, M.D.
INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITIES PRESS, INC.
New York, N. Y.
Copyright, 1953, by International Universities Press, Inc.
Library
of
Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-11056
Printed in the United States of America
by Hallmark
-
Hubner Press, New York
^
ESSAYS IN HONOR OF MARIE BONAPARTE
CONTENTS
ERNEST JONES Preface 9
THEORY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
HEINZ HARTMANN, ERNST KRIS, RUDOLPH M. LOEWEN-
STEIN The Function of Theory in Psychoanalysis 13
EDITH JACOBSON The Affects and Their Pleasure-Unpleasure
Qualities in Relation to the Psychic Discharge Processes .... 38
MAX SCHUR The Ego in Anxiety 67
CHARLES ODIER Essay on Sublimation 104
DANIEL LAGACHE Behavior and Psychoanalytic Experience. . 120
REN A. SPITZ Aggression: Its Role in the Establishment of
Object Relations 126
RAYMOND DE SAUSSURE Biopsychological Speculations on
the Libido Theory 139
CLINICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT Depression and Aggression 153
DOROTHY BURLINGHAM Notes on Problems of Motor Re-
straint During Illness 169
PHYLLIS GREENACRE Penis Awe and Its Relation to Penis
Envy
176
BERTRAM D. LEWIN The Forgetting of Dreams 191
ROBERT P. KNIGHT "Borderline States" 203
FELIX DEUTSCH Instinctual Drives and Intersensory Percep-
tions During the Analytic Procedure
216
HENRI FLOURNOY An Analytic Session in a Case of Male
Homosexuality
229
MARC SCHLUMBERGER Paul
241
APPLIED PSYCHOANALYSIS
ANNA FREUD The Bearing of the Psychoanalytic Theory of
Instinctual Drives on Certain Aspects of Human Behavior. . 259
CRETE L. BIBRING On the "Passing of the Oedipus Complex"
in a Matriarchal Family Setting 278
K. R. EISSLER A Clinical Note on Moral Masochism: Ecker-
mann's Relationship to Goethe 285
PRINCE PETER OF GREECE AND DENMARK Melgarsh:
The Study of a Toda Polyandrous Family 327
GZA R6HEIM The Milky Way and the Esoteric Meaning of
Australian Initiation 370
HANS LAMPL The Influence of Biological and Psychological
Factors Upon the Development of the Latency Period 380
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MARIE BONAPARTE'S WRITINGS. ... 388
INDEX 395
PREFACE
This book is offered to one of the rarest of personalities both as a
mark of congratulation at an important moment of her life and also as
a token of admiration at her achievements. Marie Bonaparte embarked
on a scientific career with as severe social handicaps as the familiar
starving poet in an attic; that they were of an opposite form is irrelevant
for their effects. One would have to search far in history to find someone
who has succeeded in such circumstances; possibly her own great-grand-
father would be the nearest example. And she succeeded not by deserting
one world for another, but by shining in both. It was a triumph of sheer
personality.
Of the work this lady has accomplished one does not know which
aspect to admire more: its extraordinary volume, its quality of originality,
or its many-sidedness. Few in Anglo-Saxon countries know how many
books she has written, since so many of them have not yet been trans-
lated. Americans are probably most familiar with her stupendous work
on Edgar Allan Poe, one which will remain a permanent classic. But she
has ranged over vast fields, from the psychology of women to the psychol-
ogy of war rumors, from mythology to the theory of instincts. Nor has
she confined herself to technical studies, though few outside France are
acquainted with her contributions to poetry and literature. A wonderful
record of achievement.
This original investigator and composer has also a practical side
that has been of great value for the development of psychoanalysis. Her
pupils can testify to her skill as a training analyst, and at critical moments
she has played an essential part in holding together the French Society in
its various trials. As a member of the Council of the International Psycho-
Analytical Association for many years she has been unsparing in her
attention to its numerous problems, and her sage advice has always
proved sound and helpful. Of her unstinting personal help and generosity
it is not my place to speak, since unobtrusiveness has been of their nature.
But I will conclude with the salutation: Hail, Marie Bonaparte!
ERNEST
JONES
THEORY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
The papers published in this volume do not attempt to
present the psychoanalytic theory of human behavior in
a systematic fashion. What gives them unity, however, is
their place in the only existing coherent theory of human
behavior capable of encompassing the intricate develop-
mental relationship of the individual and his human
environment. The papers here assembled are contribu-
tions to important areas of psychoanalytic knowledge.
One such area is the function of theory in psychoanalysis.
As the core of psychoanalytic hypotheses, the theory of
instinctual drives and its connection to affects in general
and to anxiety in particular are discussed. Two papers
deal with little explored facets: sublimation of the drives
and their relation to values and problems of behavior.
Finally, in this section, there are two papers presenting
reformulations of the theory of the aggressive and libid-
inal drives.
11
THE FUNCTION OF THEORY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
HEINZ HARTMANN, M.D., ERNST KRIS, Ph.D., and
RUDOLPH M. LOEWENSTEIN, M.D.
New York
I. The Distrust of Theory
Apart from the peculiarities of the subject itself, specific historical
and social circumstances have left so deep an imprint on the develop-
ment of psychoanalysis that, without taking these factors into account,
no discussion of intradisciplinary problems can hope to be fruitful. The
attitude of psychoanalysts to psychoanalytic theory is only a case in point.
If one adopts a general level of discussion, few tend to object to the
idea that the function of theory in psychoanalysis is not different from
that of theory in any other science and that the same broad criteria apply
which regulate all theory in its relation to the data of observation. But
once we turn from such a general approach to concrete issues we are
likely to meet with negative attitudes of varying intensity. These nega-
tive attitudes may find expression in the form of disinterest which, in
some, seem to be related to the growing specialization within psychoan-
alysis. Some analysts' interest is mainly focused on clinical problems
^will
be considerably facilitated by the assumption that hereditary factors and
their maturation play their part in the formation of all organizations."
A third and the oldest instance of misapprehensions of the concept of
the ego concerns its relation to states of awareness. The attempt to limit
the ego to conscious functions is rare among analysts, but it occurs not
infrequently among authors who work at the periphery of psychoanalysis
proper. It is, for instance, the point of view implied in Bollard's and
Miller's
(3)
consistent attempt to translate some tenets of psychoanalytic
theory in terms of behavioristic learning theory. Though the distinction
between conscious and unconscious ego functions is in general accepted
by all analysts who use structural concepts, the theoretical basis of this
distinction has been neglected as far as preconscious mental activities are
concerned (Kris,
30). While the distinction between unconscious and pre-
conscious awareness is basic to many of the principles regulating psycho-
analytic therapy, the theoretical foundation upon which this distinction
rests found little attentionan omission which may well be due to the
fact that scarcely in any other area Freud has changed his view and the
meaning of his terminology so explicitly and so radically. The former
system PCS has become a "mental quality" and without specifying
hypotheses on the state of psychic energy utilized by the ego, no further
theoretical principles can be formulated.
In summarizing, we feel entitled to say that the complexity of
psychoanalytic theory fosters misunderstandings. These misunderstand-
ings are facilitated by the inclination to look upon Freud's work as a
collection of statements which can freely be combined or interchanged,
in complete disregard of the time at which they have been made. In some,
this tendency is rooted in the idea that Freud can never have been wrong,
even if he himself corrected "mistakes"; in others, it results from opposite,
manifestly ambivalent tendencies, transforming psychoanalytic theory
into a static system. At the one end of this continuum the danger is
stagnation; at the other, psychoanalytic theory is given the shape of a
bogey easily to be distorted.
III. The Disregard of the Systematic Aspects
In stressing the unique position of Freud's thought in the develop-
ment of psychoanalytic theory we may have fostered the much publicized
idea of a great investigator with two kinds of successors: devoted but
11
We do not here enter into the discussion of a further hypothesis which suggests
that it is advisable to assume that an undifferentiated phase of development precedes
that formation. See Hartmann (19) and Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein (24) .
THE FUNCTION OF THEORY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 27
Sterile followers and spirited dissenters. Even a cursory familiarity with
the history of psychoanalysis proves that this is a misleading cliche. The
followers of Freud were not insignificant bit-players. The subsequent
generation of Freud's collaborators were privileged to react to the chal-
lenge of his thought and to influence its further development. We do
not enter into the history of psychoanalysis and do not therefore enumer-
ate the points and phases of Freud's work in which he depended on the
contribution of others for stimulation.
These contributions did not only confirm or elaborate Freud's own
findings or suggestions but were interwoven with the process of growth
of psychoanalysis as a body of knowledge. The theory of narcissism, to
recall only the most familiar instances, was stimulated by the various
contributions of the Zurich group, and the study of mechanisms of de-
fense through child analysis. These and similar influences upon Freud's
work are part of the broad stream of development in psychoanalysis. It
has influenced technique and theory alike and initiated trends of work
in some of which Freud originally scarcely participated and which have
been carried further after his death.
The tacit coexistence of alternative views in analysis is not accidental.
It probably reflects the relation of psychoanalytic propositions to the pro-
cedure of validation. There are extremists who apparently doubt the pos-
sibility of any validation and tend implicitly to advocate agreement with
certain philosophical tenets or views generally fashionable as criterion
of truth in the humanities. Frequently this leads to the substitution of
general assumptions derived from the social sciences for the traditional
conceptional tools of psychoanalysis and thus to a reversal of the trend
which has given psychoanalysis its place in science. We here start from
the assumption that, while crucial experiments can only rarely be under-
taken, validation of propositions has been a decisive feature in the devel-
opment of psychoanalysis. It is not only part of its history but potentially,
though in a limited sense, part of the current work of every analyst or
group of analysts. Validation, in this sense, is a gradual and slow process
in which insight derived from many experiences is weighted; in which
many sources of evidence have to be taken into account, foremost among
them clinical experiences and the study of child development. Under
these conditions neatness in theorizing gains its great importance. It
becomes imperative at each step to be aware of the point at which a
modification of theoretical assumptions is required. But any such decision
can be meaningful only if one remains fully aware of how the various
parts of the theoretical system with which psychoanalysis operates hang
together.
We insist on the fact that the designation "psychoanalysis" refers
28 HARTMANN-KRIS-LOEWENSTEIN
to a set of propositions which is internally cohesive, elaborated in some
detail, and allowing for predictions of human behavior that no other
set of propositions in psychopathology has made possible. If we refer to
alternative views as not or less meaningful we often refer to the disregard
of the hierarchy of propositions and not merely to the contradictions to
some. While speaking of the cohesiveness of psychoanalytic propositions
we certainly do not imply any relation of psychoanalysis to what is often
called a "philosophical system." Freud has clearly and rightly insisted
on the differences. What we refer to is rather the interrelatedness or in-
tegration of its various parts in the sense of the systematic nature of
theory, as attempted and approximated in varying degrees in every field
of science. However, we do not want to discuss here the relative com-
pleteness or generality of this systematic aspect of analysis.
Neither do we propose to enter into a detailed analysis of actual
or potential merits or demerits of alternative views in psychoanalysis.
As we said, the characteristic of "dissent" is not only dependent on
the degree of agreement of the propositions with similar ones proposed
by Freud or other psychoanalysts, but also on the fact that the hierarchy
of psychoanalytic propositions is neglected and groups of propositions are
put together in an additive way, leading to an impoverishment of the
theoretical structure. In some cases, it is true, systematization was at-
tempted, but this was done in a way that has led into areas where valida-
tion is no longer only difficult but outright impossiblethe case of
Jungor the systematic cohesion was supplied by common-sense assump-
tions of the pre-Freudian psychologythe case of the later work of Otto
Rank.
Many dissenting views of psychoanalysts, we claim, tend to frag-
mentize psychoanalytic theory, to stress one set of propositions and to
neglect others.^^ Some stress only ego psychology at the expense of the id,
or vice versa; others emphasize either "environment" without regard
for other common human dispositions or experiences; they physiologize
at a point where physiology cannot help or disregard physiology in
neglecting maturation. But we do not advocate the moderate mixture.
We rather want to stress that in each of these instances a simplification
of theory is intended and brought about at the price of its usefulness.
We claim that in its simplified version, reduced to fewer factors, based
on fewer concepts, psychoanalytic theory is not improved but in danger
of becoming atrophied.
This is clear in many instances, when in one author's work one set
of concepts gains a private meaning and a highly personalized theory
12
For "theories by reduction," see Hartmann (21a)
.
THE FUNCTION OF THEORY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 29
emerges. The "private theories" frequently show the character of ener-
getic but tempestuous attempts, which in psychoanalytic therapy are
characterized as wild analysis. But quite possibly the wild theories may
prove much less dangerous than those which claim, as their greatest
distinction, "plausibility" instead of coherence and the possibility of
verification. These are naive theories, constructed in order to cope, as it
were, with an emergency; and some of the most meritorious analysts have
at times not been immune to this danger.
Reductions and abbreviations of psychoanalytic thinking play a con-
siderable part in many disciplines; anthropologists, social scientists in
general, aestheticians, social workers and physiciansall choose and se-
lect what they believe to help their special purpose. There is no need
to discuss these attempts, because they are clearly outside the range of our
consideration. From our point of view we hazard the prediction that the
chance of fruitful adaptation of psychoanalytic thinking to the require-
ments of a specific field of inquiry will be the greater, the more fully the
predictive potential of psychoanalytic propositions is used. Cleavages of
opinion in certain areas, e.g., in psychosomatic medicine, seem in fact
to bear out this point of view. Richer results are obtained by those who
use psychoanalytic propositions to the full extent as compared to those
who reduce psychological conflict to the unspecific and refer to "tension"
or "stress" as the only workable concept, instead of studying the specific
conditions under which anxiety occurs and the specific mechanisms used
in dealing with danger situations.
Instead of pointing to the various pitfalls with which theorizing in
this field is fraught, we turn to two examples which are, we believe, apt
to demonstrate the specific nature of controversies which in recent years
have been particularly important. One of the arguments is concerned with
the role of past experiences, i.e., the importance of genetic propositions;
the other concerns the role of instinctual drives in psychoanalytic theory.
The clearest theoretical formulation of the first argument has been
given by so keen a theoretician as the late Kurt Lewin
(34-37) who stressed
the idea that the past is at all times contained in the present, that the
organism as modified by its life experience is in the present field of forces
and that to predict its reaction to future influences acting upon it no
special recourse to its past is necessary.^^ We do not deny that Lewin's
position is highly suggestive as far as inanimate matter is concerned. It
is theory at its best. But we feel it contradicts tested experience in biology.
Experience shows that in order to predict the area of the cross section has
to be widened; instead of a small segment a deep one has to be investi-
13 For the following see Hartmann and Kris
(23)
.
30 HARTMANN-KRIS-LOEWENSTEIN
gated; to speak in terms of Kurt Lewin's graphic representation, the layer
of the field has to be a "thick" one. That much K. Lewin seems to have
accepted; but where he suggests that the present comprehends days or
weeks of past experience, we feel satisfied only if the consideration of the
whole course of life is taken into account.
The genetic propositions of psychoanalysis which establish how pres-
ent behavior is related to the individual past seem to us in essential areas
to facilitate meaningful predictions. We feel that the clinical material at
our disposal is in this respect unambiguous. The use of the case history
in current psychiatric practice, the way in which anamnestic data are
being utilized in all areas of behavior studies seems to leave no doubt that
we are faced with a widely accepted principle.
When analysts share the objections of those who tend to minimize
past experience and believe in the supreme importance of the present as
determinant of human reactions, normal or pathological, they either de
facto, if not explicitly, accept K. Lewin's point of view, or they are con-
cerned with a matter of emphasis. Their arguments assume that psycho-
analytic interpretations "jump" to the past without taking account of the
full implications and details of the conflict situation as it is determined
by the reality in which the patient lives. Those who attack Freudian
psychoanalysis as being "too genetic"as, e.g., Horney in her earlier
writingsfrequently impress us as fighting a caricatured version of psycho-
analysis. This is facilitated by their disregard for Freud's later writings
and much of what psychoanalytic ego psychology has achieved since the
late 1920's.
At this point the argument that psychoanalytic theory is too much
oriented toward the past tends to be fused with other arguments which
concern the role of instinctual drives in the development of personality.
However, the aversion toward the instinctual elements and aspects in
psychoanalytic psychology covers a wider field, is shared by advocates of
different viewpoints in psychology, and therefore requires a more de-
tailed discussion of the role of the concepts involved.
IV. Perspectives^*
The dissatisfaction with the psychoanalytic theory of instinctual
drives represents the dissatisfaction with psychoanalytic theory in gen-
eral. It stems from various sources and grows on a soil fertilized by several
misconceptions. They tend to arise particularly frequently since various
14
For the following see Hartmann
(20)
; for the problems connected with the
theory of aggressive drives Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein
(25) ; for those concerning the
history of the "instinct theory" see Bibring
(2)
.
THE FUNCTION OF THEORY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS 31
of Freud's subsequent formulations concerning this part of psychoanaly-
tic theory are treated as equivalent or compatible with each other, though
they obviously represent different stages in theory formation. Since not
all details of these contradictory formulations have been synchronized
by Freud himself, what appear to some as residual ambiguities in con-
ceptualization set the tune for the orchestration of discontent.
When at one point Freud compared the role of instinctual drives
in psychoanalytic theory to that of mythology in society, this metaphor
seems to suggest one line of associations to some opponents: they derive
from it the right to disregard every psychoanalytic statement on instinc-
tual drives as cumbersome and outdated. Freud was very well aware of
the incompleteness of the theory of instinctual drives. From the history of
psychoanalysis we know that originally the concept of libido was viewed
in physiological terms; in Freud's early theories it was supposed to estab-
lish the link to physiological processes, and the gradual detachment from
this expectation influenced the development of Freud's thought over
longer periods of time. However, the Freudian metaphor we mentioned
above tends to be taken as characteristic of the theory itself; and it is fre-
quently overlooked that in other contexts Freud has indicated precise and
comparatively detailed sets of definitions for the concept of instinctual
drive. He may have chosen the metaphor of mythology not only to indi-
cate a stage in the development of psychoanalysis as a science, but he may
also have wished to refer to certain of the properties which his theory
attributes to instinctual drives, e.g., to the pervasiveness of their influence
on human behavior. Moreover, we should also remind ourselves that what
was foremost in Freud's mind in using that comparison was his specula-
tion (here the term is appropriate) on the nature and number of instinc-
tual drives
and relief pleasure led me to the assumption that the psychic organiza-
tion may show a striving for cycles of pleasure alternating between excite-
ment and relief, which correspond to biological swings of tension around
a medium tension level. Should this hypothesis be valid, the pleasure
principle would not have the function to bring about a relief of tension.
The pleasure principle and, later on, its modification, the reality prin-
ciple, would only direct the course of the biological swings around a
middle axis of tensions; i.e., the modes of the discharge processes. Pleasure
qualities would be attached to the swings of the tension pendulum to
either side, as long as the corresponding psychophysiological discharge
processes can select certain preferred pathways and as the changes of
tension can take a definite coursedepending, so it seems, on certain
still unknown proportions between the amounts of excitation and the
speed and rhythm of discharge.
If we were to regard this as the function of the pleasure principle,
the constancy law might have to be redefined so as to be in harmony
with the pleasure principle.
This is also suggested by the consideration of the biological functions
of the psychic organization, functions that must be consistent with psycho-
economical laws. The essential biological laws that govern psychic life
are the function of a control and gratification of the psychic drives, the
function of adaptation and the function of self-preservation. A failure
of any of these functions certainly corresponds with disturbances in the
psychic economy.
However, an economical law aiming at the maintenance of a con-
stant level of tension would not be equal to such complex biological
functions. Thus we have to look for a different and broader character-
ization of the psychoeconomical laws. We must certainly recognize a
homeostatic law, in the sense of a tendency that manifests itself on both
the physiological and the psychological level, to maintain an equilibrium
and an even distribution of the energetic forces within the human or-
ganization. However, as Rapaport stressed in the discussion of this paper,
"tension" as such is inherent in the idea of a "psychic organization."
AFFECTS AND PSYCHIC DISCHARGE PROCESSES 59
Thus the functions of this law could not be to reduce or even to elimin-
ate tension, but to establish and maintain a constant axis of tension and
a certain margin for the biological vacillations around it; furthermore, to
enforce the return of the tension pendulum to this medium line and to
control the course of the swings of tension.
As pointed out above, it would be this last function only that would
be the task of the pleasure principle, which would thus be subordinate to
the superior, general homeostatic principles. Not the deviations from the
middle axis as such would represent disturbances of the psychic equi-
librium. Deviations from the preferred and biologically preconditioned
pleasurable course of the tension pendulum, the failure to maintain the
tension axis constant, or its rise or fall above or below a certain level,
a widening or narrowing of the margin for the swings of tensionany of
these factors would bring about an upset of the psychic economy.
10. Modification of the Affects Under the Influence of the
Reality Principle and of Structural Differentiation
The foregoing conclusions about the affects and their pleasure-
unpleasure qualities in relation to the discharge processes have been de-
rived only from the study of sexual excitement and orgasm; i.e., of a
libidinous, primar)'-process pleasure experience [group (la) of my classi-
fication]. We have not yet explored the nature and qualities of the affects
that develop in the course of structural differentiation and secondary-
process formation, under the influence of the reality principle.
I do not intend to discuss at length the modifications of emotions
during ego and superego formation. However, we must focus at least on
some essential aspects of affective development; in particular, on the
changes of the affect qualities arising with the integration of the so-called
"tension" affects into the psychic organization.
As an introduction we may first briefly discuss another issue that will
lead us right up to these problems. I mean the affects and affect qualities
attached to aggressive discharge, and the psychic laws controlling the
latter. In my discussion of the psychic laws I had disregarded Freud's
proposition of the death instinct and of the Nirvana principle. But we
cannot evade the question whether the aggressive drives are "beyond the
pleasure principle" and controlled by a "Nirvana principle," or whether
they obey the same laws as the libidinous drives.
A glance at the psychoanalytic literature discloses that most analysts,
though accepting the existence of two inherently different kinds of drives,
refuse to work with the death-instinct theory. The main reason for this
rejection may be that Freud's proposition of life and death instincts is
60 EDITH JACOBSON
founded on rather speculative assumptions foreign to his earlier con-
ceptions and definitions of the drives. In any event, valid arguments can
be raised in objection to the death-instinct theory.
Not only are aggression and its derivatives in the service of all pleas-
urable libidinous and ego functions; as Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein
have pointed out in their "Notes on the Theory of Aggression"
(21),
pure
aggressive release, too, undoubtedly can induce pleasure. But even though
the primary goal of aggression evidently is not the gain or pleasure, sheer
aggressive forces are normally mobilized and needed, in situations of
danger, in the service of self-preservation. These normal functions and
the vicissitudes of aggression can hardly be fully explained as the ex-
pression of a struggle of the death instincts with the life instincts. Norm-
ally the libidinous and aggressive drives appear to have complementary
functions in the service of life and to be equally ruled by the homeostatic
and pleasure-unpleasure principles. The dangerous effect of sheer, uncon-
trolled aggression on the outside world does not contradict this assump-
tion.
^^
Difficulties in our understanding arise in view of those masochistic
phenomena that reinforced Freud's conception.
The discussion of the reality principle and of its influence on the
discharge processes may help us to understand masochism from the view-
point of the homeostatic and pleasure principles without having to re-
sort to the assumption of a Nirvana principle.
In his paper "The Ego and the Affects"
(5)
and in The Psycho-
analytic Theory
of
Neurosis
(6),
Fenichel has beautifully described how
with the development of the ego, with the organization of ideational and
thought processes and the increasing neutralization of the drives, the
psychic organization gains an ever-increasing subtle power over the dis-
tribution and release of energetic forces and, consequently, over the
affective manifestations. As Freud already remarked in The Interpreta-
tion
of
Dreams, the binding of psychic energy in lasting object cathexes
by the ego probably leads, first of all, to a general rise of the level of
tension (the "tension axis"). Considering the threshold idea, we may
surmise that this corresponds to a rise of the thresholds above which
affective and motor discharge becomes imperative.
The effects of ego formation on the discharge processes and on affec-
tive development must be described from various angles.
As the greatest accomplishment of the ego with respect to the affects
15
From the standpoint of self-preservation the mastery of the aggressive forces and
of their emotional expression appears to be of even greater significance than the man-
agement of the libidinous drives because, in contrast to libido, uncontrolled aggression
may lead to realistic harm and result in self-destruction. This is why a reduction of
the libidinous forces, which are needed for the control of aggression, is bound to have
such fatal consequences.
AFFECTS AND PSYCHIC DISCHARGE PROCESSES 61
we usually regard the transition from affective to functional motor ac-
tivity, in so far as it leads to a general taming of the affects for the pur-
pose of adequate ego function.
But in "The Ego and the Affects" Fenichel, though focusing on the
taming of affects and on the affective defenses established by the ego,
does not fail to mention that this process does not normally reduce the
affects to mere signals or to safety valves for discharge, effective only in
case adequate motor function cannot take place. In fact, the development
of reasonable acting does not imply the elimination of emotional re-
sponses. But the child's biological dependency, the slow maturation of
his ego and the biphasic development of his sexuality, all of which either
preclude or limit adequate drive action and ego function, account for
and make indispensable the safety-valve function of the affects which is
of such special significance during childhood. They are also responsible
for the fact that in human beings emotional life maintains for ever an
independent existence of its own, not only along with but also apart
from reasonable thought and action. What turns us into human beings
is, indeed, the organization not only of our thought processes but also
of a wide range of feelings, of emotional attitudes and affective states
unknown to the animal.
Although the organization and differentiation of adult emotional
life is dependent on the taming process, the latter represents only one
aspect of affective development. The other aspect is the opening-up, by
the maturation of both the instinctual and the ego organization, of in-
numerable new channels for affective and motor discharge. These matura-
tion processes, which lead to the arising of affect components with new
qualities and to their merging with earlier infantile affect components
into new units, contribute at least as much as the taming power of ego
and superego to the constructive remodeling of the affects and affective
qualities, to the molding of complex affect patterns, of emotional dis-
positions and attitudes, and of enduring feeling states; in short, to the
enrichment as well as to the hierarchic and structural organization of
emotional life.
With these different influences in mind, we will now focus upon one
among other characteristic changes brought about by these developmental
processes: the arising of affects manifesting conspicuous tension qualities,
such as suggested to Brierley that all affects are tension phenomena. This
holds not only for unpleasurable affects, such as signal anxiety, disgust,
shame or guilt feelings, but also for many pleasurable compound affects
of the adult. As is well known, the small child is unable to bear tension,
but gradually learns not only to tolerate but even to enjoy tension.
The study of tension tolerance and of the adult tension affects pre-
62 EDITH JACOBSON
supposes first of all a clarification of what is meant by infantile tension
intolerance. My proposition, namely, that primary-process pleasure ex-
periences entail also pleasurable rises of tension, implies that certain
types of tension pleasure already play a part in the infantile psychic or-
ganization. Hence tension pleasure as such cannot be regarded as an
achievement of the ego. But normally the child learns in the course of
ego and superego formation to tolerate or enjoy even such rises of tension
as were formerly unbearable.
Our next question pertains to the nature of the either pleasurable
or unpleasurable tension affects that originate with the development of
the psychic systems. I do not believe that we can find any facts contra-
dictory to the assumption that these tension affects, too, are expressive
of discharge, although of discharge inhibited, slowed up, possibly incom-
plete and, in any event, modified by the ego, under the influence of the
reality principle. Evidently this interpolated system, in so far as it is
opposed to and interferes with direct discharge, prolongs and modifies
especially the course of the initial rises of tension during the discharge
process and thereby produces the characteristic tension qualities attached
to this type of aflJects.^*^
Regarding anxiety I believe indeed that its signs and symptoms,
whenever it is sufficiently developed, give direct evidence of the fact that
despite its tension quality it is also expressive of dischargea discharge
originally enforced by the psycho-organismic distress of the newborn and
serving the adjustment to his new existence, but later on fixated and
reduced to a signal effective in situations of outside and inside danger.
This discharge concept of anxiety makes it intelligible why anxiety can
be so easily libidinized, i.e., used directly as a concomitant outlet for
sexual energy, or in complex fusions with other affect components can
play such a role in many types of adult pleasure experiences, especially
in those we call "thrilling."
The molding, integration and internalization of the signal-anxiety
pattern, and the significant economic function that this affect acquires,
are a characteristic expression of the influence of the reality principle and
of ego formation on effective development in general.
The meaning of the reality principle for affective development can
best be understood by a reconsideration of the relations between the
pleasure principle and the homeostatic law. Whereas the latter, as we
said, aims in general to maintain the psychic equilibrium, according to
16
My remark on the incompleteness of discharge refers, in particular, to chronic or
lasting states of unpleasurable, anxious, or painful tension that may represent a
psychoeconomical condition characterized by repetitious, attenuated and insufficient,
unpleasurable discharges of small amounts of psychic energy.
AFFECTS AND PSYCHIC DISCHARGE PROCESSES 63
the conception presented above, the pleasure principle seeks to direct the
course of the vacillations around the medium level according to preferred
patterns. This makes it likely that in certain situations these two laws
could oppose each other. The pleasure principle might yield to economic
necessities, or it might also assert itself at the expense of the general
psychic equilibrium.
The first case we find, of course, whenever reality interferes with our
wish for pleasure. Unpleasurable or painful experiences will occur as
soon as the homeostatic law tries to enforce the re-establishment of the
psychic equilibrium by discharge processes that cannot proceed according
to the preferred, pleasurable patterns. But the constitution of the reality
principle in the psychic organization means more than that. It represents
a partial submission of the pleasure principle to other functions of the
homeostatic law, as reflected in the effort of the ego to accept, firmly
integrate and even internalize certain attenuated unpleasurable dis-
charges in the psychic organization for psychoeconomical reasons.
The anxiety signal, this special mode of attenuated unpleasurable
discharge that the ego induces in situations of danger, is only one out-
standing example of such temporary suspension of the pleasure principle
for superior economical purposes. In general the growing dominance of
the homeostatic principle over its sublaw, the pleasure principle, accom-
plishes with the molding and integration not only of signal anxiety, but
of many other unpleasurable tension affects with signal function, the
increasing tolerance for tensions and promotes, furthermore, the devel-
opment of compound pleasurable tension affects.
But the problem of adult tension tolerance and tension pleasure
leads us back once more to the other aspect of affective development,
upon which I wish to lay special emphasis. I refer to the fact that the
primitive psychic apparatus has as yet only a limited variety of psycho-
physiological pathways and hence of modes for pleasurable affective dis-
charge at its disposal. The infantile intolerance to tension is therefore
an expression also of the child's inability to discharge through the chan-
nels of mature ego functions and sublimations as well as of adult in-
stinctual activity. The child cannot bear tension for whose adequate and
pleasurable affective and motor discharge his psychic organization is not
yet equipped.
During the pregenital stageand in many children even up to
pubertythe instinctual organization may not yet be prepared, e.g., to
bring about fully pleasurable genital discharge. The pleasurable genital
discharge pattern has not yet been molded. Sexual overstimulation, and
in particular premature genital stimulation of the child, will thus arouse
anxietyindependent of concomitant sexual prohibitionsand may lead
64 EDITH JACOBSON
to what Greenacre
(19)
has frequently discussed in her papers: to an
overflow from the stimulated area to other erotogenic zones, resulting in
diffused discharge processes with corresponding affective experiences that
blend pleasurable and directly painful sensual and feeling qualities.
The premature encouragement or enforcement of ego functions and
sublimations in a child, beyond his stage of maturation, will have a simi-
lar effect.
To summarize: the success or failure of affective development, par-
ticularly of the development of normal tension tolerance and pleasurable
tension affects, depends on the optimal collaboration of three major in-
fluences:
(1)
of the reality principle (represented mainly by the parental
prohibitions and demands) that leads with the curbing of direct instinc-
tual discharge, with the postponement of action and the introduction of
attenuated, unpleasurable tension affects with signal function, to a tam-
ing of the affects and a certain reduction of pleasure for economical pur-
poses;
(2)
of the instinctual maturation that shapes new modes of direct
pleasurable discharge; and
(3)
of the maturation of the ego, in so far as
with the development of the autonomous ego functions it creates in-
numerable new channels for pleasurable, functional motor and affective
discharge.
Since the opening up of new pathways for pleasurable discharge
promotes the successful fusion of attenuated unpleasurable tension com-
ponents with pleasurable components into compound, pleasurable affects,
the maturation process works in many ways in favor of the pleasure
principle and gains back for the latter much of the territory lost through
the influence of the reality principle. Whereas the achievement of tension
tolerance and the introduction and internalization of tension affects of
the anxiety type point to the victory of the homeostatic over the pleasure
principle, the development of a multitude of compound tension-pleasure
experiences emphasizes the tendency of the pleasure principle to reassert
itself.
Probably the acceptance and integration of unpleasurable modes of
affective discharge to the extent that they acquire pleasure qualities is
connected with the factor of pleasurable "anticipation." The expectation
of future gratification appears to induce pleasurable affect components
which we are entitled to call signal affects too, though of the pleasurable
variety.
The discussion of the three major influences on affective develop-
ment, and especially on the development of tension tolerance and ten-
sion pleasure from the viewpoint of the psychic principles, brings us close
to the problem of masochistic phenomena and of neurotic emotional
behavior in general. Severe frustrations and prohibitions, especially when
combined with repeated experiences of premature sexual overstimulation,
AFFECTS AND PSYCHIC DISCHARGE PROCESSES 65
will tend to fixate and internalize anxious and painful affective discharge
and to fuse it with pleasurable modes of affective discharge. This will
result in the development of pathological emotional behavior patterns of
the masochistic variety.
In neurotic suffering the pleasure principle has lost most of its
power, even though its efforts to reassert itself must not be underrated.
But the outstanding examples of internalization of unpleasurable modes
of discharge for psychoeconomical reasons are masochistic states. Whereas
masochistic perversions represent an extreme pathological example of
fusions between unpleasurable and pleasurable afEect components, in con-
ditions of moral masochism and particularly in depressive affective states
the pleasure principle may become a complete victim of economical
necessities. This is why they appear to be "beyond the pleasure princi-
ple." In the case of depression, the homeostatic principle attempts to re-
establish a kind of psychic equilibrium; first, by an unpleasurable slow-
ing down and inhibition of all the psychic discharge processes and,
further on, by discharge in ways and modes that are painful and eventu-
ally may become dangerous also from the viewpoint of self-preservation.
In the light of this conception, self-destructive behavior and suicide
would not indicate that the aggressive drives are beyond the pleasure
principle and aim at the total elimination of tension. The explanation
would be that, first, the pleasure principle is sacrificed to the effort for a
restitution of the psychic equilibrium; and that eventually the homeo-
static principle, too, trying to enforce a lowering of the high tension level
at any cost, fails in the function of self-preservation and can only accom-
plish a total elimination of tension by self-destruction.
But there are also pathological conditions that show how the pleas-
ure principle can achieve a triumph over other functions of the homeo-
static principle. This may occur whenever pleasurable discharges are pur-
sued regardless of the general psychic economy, of the functions of adap-
tation and self-preservation, as can be observed in persons with perverse
and delinquent behavior who have not accepted the reality principle.
The most conspicuous examples, however, would be manic states where
bound-down energy, mainly aggressive, is continuously mobilized and
speedily discharged on the outside in processes that may induce a spuri-
ous, enduring, pleasurable affective condition, but at the expense of the
psychic economy which breaks down completely to the point of a general
energetic impoverishment of the psychic apparatus. The manic excite-
ment may thus result in a state of psychophysiological exhaustion no less
dangerous than suicidal impulses and actions, as a result of and despite
the fact that the pleasure principle is dominant and that aggression is
discharged not in the self but on the outside.
9. Freud, S. (1915)
10. Freud, S. (1915)
11. Freud, s. (1920)
12. Freud, s.
(1923)
13. Freud, s. (1924)
66 EDITH JACOBSON
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Brierley, M. Affects in Theory and Practice. Int.
J.
Psa., XVIII, 1937.
2. Cobb, S. Emotions and Clinical Medicine. New York: W. W. Norton, 1950.
3. Deutsch, H. Ueber Zufriedenheit, Gliick und Ekstase. Int. Ztsch.
f.
Psa., XIII, 1927.
4. Federn, P. Zur Unterscheidung des gesunden und krankhaften Narzissmus. Imago,
XXII, 1936.
5. Fenichel, O. The Ego and the Affects. Psa. Rev., XXVIII, 1941.
6. Fenichel, O. The Psychoanalytic Theory
of
Neurosis. New York: W. W. Norton,
1945.
7. Freud, S. (1900) The Interpretation of Dreams. In The Basic Writings
of
Sigmund
Freud. New York: Modern Library, 1938.
8. Freud, S. (1905)
Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. In Ibid.
Repression. Coll. Papers, IV. London: Hogarth Press, 1925.
The Unconscious. Ibid.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle. London: Hogarth Press, 1922.
The Ego and the Id. London: Hogarth Press, 1927.
Das okonomische Problem des Masochismus. Ges. Schriften, V.
Wien: Internationaler psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1924.
14. Freud, S. (1925)
A Note upon the Mystic Writing-Pad. Coll. Papers, V. London:
Hogarth Press, 1950.
15. Freud, S. (1926) The Problem
of
Anxiety. New York: W. W. Norton, 1936.
16. Glover, E. The Psycho-Analysis of Affects. Int.
J.
Psa., XX, 1939.
17. Glover, E. Psycho-Analysis: A Handbook. London: Staples Press, 1948.
18. Goldstein, K. On Emotions: Considerations from the Organismic Point of View.
/. Psychol, XXXI, 1951.
19. Gi-eenacre, P. Trauma, Growth and Personality. New York: W. W. Norton, 1952.
20. Hartmann, H. Grundlagen der Psychoanalyse. Leipzig, Thieme, 1927.
21. Hartmann, H., Kris, E., and Loewenstein, R. M. Notes on the Theory of Aggres-
sion. In The Psychoanalytic Study
of
the Child, III/IV. New York: International
Universities Press, 1949.
22.
Hinsie, L. E. and Shatzky,
J.
Psychiatric Dictionary. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1940.
23. Landauer, K. Affects, Passions and Temperament. Int.
J.
Psa., XIX, 1938.
24. MacCurdy,
J.
T. The Psychology
of
Emotion. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1925.
25. Nunberg, H. Allgemeine Neurosenlehre. Bern: Huber, 1932.
26. Rapaport, D. Emotions and Memory. New York: International Universities Press,
1950.
27. Reymert, M. L. (ed.) Feelings and Emotions: The Wittenberg Symposium. Dor-
chester, Mass.: Clark University Press, 1928.
28. Sperling, O. E. On the Mechanisms of Spacing and Crowding Emotions. In The
Yearbook
of
Psychoanalysis, VI. New York: International Universities Press, 1951.
THE EGO IN ANXIETY
MAX SCHUR, M.D.
New York
"Somewhere or other there is always anxiety hidden behind all symp-
toms," Freud said in Civilization and Its Discontents
(31)
and in his
Introductory Lectures
(26)
he said: "The problem of anxiety is a nodal
point .... a riddle of which the solution must cast a flood of light upon
our whole mental life." Whereas Freud never lost interest in the bio-
physiological aspect of anxiety, he eventually recognized that the vicissi-
tudes of anxiety and its place in normal and abnormal development must
of necessity be the main concern of psychoanalysis. This shift of focus
found its final formulation in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety
(30)
and in the Anxiety chapter of the New Introductory Lectures
(32).
The
link between the biological and the psychological concepts was estab-
lished by the application of the genetic principle to anxiety. This meant
the recognition of its phylogenetic origin in a biological response, of the
existence of this response in animals, and of its innate character in the
newborn. Freud's next step was to link this response with the concept of
a "situation," which always comprises the precipitating excitation and
the response of the total organism.
Traumatic Situation and Danger
Freud distinguishes between two situations one of which he calls
a traumatic situation, the other a danger situation. A situation is trau-
matic if the excitation reaches such proportions that the organism expe-
riences utter helplessness. A situation implies danger if a traumatic
situation may be anticipated. Using the genetic approach, Freud saw in
the birth act the prototype of a traumatic situation, and in the response
to it the prototype of anxiety. During birth the unavoidable asphyxia of
the newborn, caused by the interruption of the maternal blood supply^
1 I once characterized this situation bv the phrase "the newborn infant chokes to
life"
(68) .
67
68 MAX SCHUR
and the complete change of environment constitute overwhelming excita-
tion to the infant. We assume that Reizschutz, the protective barrier
against excessive excitation, is one of the primary functions of those parts
of the organism that have to preserve its existence. This function which
later is partly taken over by the ego can only poorly be executed by the
undifferentiated matrix of the ego (Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein,
40).
Even later in life, this protective barrier is not too effective against inner
excitation.
The birth act requires complete reorientation of homeostatic regula-
tions. The embarrassment is increased by the fact that the organism,
especially the central nervous system, has not reached full maturity
and has in addition had to take considerable punishment during the
birth act (Greenacre,
36).
The importance of the asphyxia of the newborn has its phylogenetic
counterpart in the fate of the lungfish, the first fish to survive the change
of its environment from the sea to the land (Smith, 73).
^
Any attack on the vexing problems of anxiety has to start from the
concept of a "situation," which always involves the sum total of a pre-
cipitating excitation and the response of the organism. The traumatic
character of the excitation depends on the aspect of threshholds. The
differentiation between precipitating excitation and response is simple in
the case of external excitation, e.g., that of pain inflicted on an infant,
or of a rattlesnake attacking an adult. Its application to internal excita-
tion is more intricate. We may analyze it at hand of the two examples of
traumatic situations discussed by Freud. The first is the birth situation in
which the precipitating excitation consists in the interruption of ma-
ternal blood supply and the sudden change of environment. The response
of the organism, which is looked upon as the prototype of the anxiety
reaction, involves the matrix of the ego, as yet undifferentiated.
Freud's second example is the situation of the hungry infant missing
the breast (Rapaport, 61).
Here the precipitating excitation consists in
a complex change of the inner biochemical environment to which the
infant reacts with all the signs which we later would consider character-
istic of anxiety and pain.
In the discussion of the second example of a traumatic situation
2 Considerable controversy in the discussion of anxiety can actually be reduced to
semantics. It has been questioned whether the term anxiety can be used in relation to
the birth act, or to any situation prior to ego development (Brenner, II; Spitz, 74).
Freud obviously uses the terras "traumatic situation" and "anxiety" in relation to the
birth act in a genetic sense. We may safely say: without knowing what the infant
experiences at birth, birth certainly is the prototype of a traumatic situation. We may
also say that the infant lives through other, similarly traumatic, situations which it will
only later be able to perceive as such. Thus in the genetic sense every traumatic situa-
tion has its memory trace and the reactions of the ego have their matrix.
THE EGO IN ANXIETY 69
Freud introduces a new concept by designating as danger increase in
tension resulting from nongratification of the child's needs. Freud's use
of the term "danger" in this context requires some clarification. Danger
implies anticipation of a traumatic situation. Applying the genetic ap-
proach, we may assume that anticipation of traumatic situations is part
of our biological endowment. It is therefore justified to speak of danger
with regard to an infant who is as yet unable to perceive danger as such.
Our homeostatic regulations are automatic responses to danger. Thus
when Freud speaks of the danger of increased tension due to lack of
gratification, we may express it in physiological terms as follows: An
impending disturbance of the homeostatic equilibrium which cannot be
overcome by automatic regulations is a situation in which such tension
arises. The prototype of such a situation is hunger.
Pre-Ego Responses
If in this sense the term danger is justified, the response of the infant
to the precipitating excitationhungernevertheless illustrates the
following point: During the first months of his life, the primitive organ-
ism of the infant reacts to danger as to a traumatic situation.
Hunger is obviously inner danger. Situations which in later life
represent outer danger cannot originally be perceived as coming from
the outside as long as the outside can be perceived through the medium
of the disturbed equilibrium only. Hence even disturbance of the equi-
librium through stimulation of the senses will originally be experienced
as inner danger.
At this level we may observe and have to consider the first two
differences in individual responses:
(a) The homeostatic pendulum swings differently with different in-
fants (e.g. fluctuations of blood-sugar, body temperature, pH, stability
of waterand metabolitemetabolism, etc.).
(b) Infants show considerable differences in their response to inner
and outer stimulation whereby the distinction between inner and outer
exists only in the observer.
How far such differences are genetically determined or brought
about by traumatic events either during pregnancy or birth is a fasci-
nating theoretical problem which cannot be discussed in this context
(Bender,
4; Bergman and Escalona,
7; Greenacre,
37). In any case all
these factors constitute "predisposition to anxiety" and we recognize here
a more scientific version of Adler's concept of organ inferiority.
The infant's reaction to these traumatic situations show several
characteristics: a tendency to diffuse discharge phenomena and lack of
70 MAX SCHUR
co-ordination in motor response. This type of response is due to the
intrinsic immaturity of the newborna factor which Freud had rec-
ognized as one of the causes of neurosis. Pawlow and Minkowsky among
others have studied these phenomena (Kubie, 47).
Pawlow showed that
in normal functioning cortical excitation and inhibition have to be
properly balanced. This is essential to the formation of both uncondi-
tioned and conditioned reflexes and to the phenomena of thought and
attention. Without the co-ordinated function of excitatory and inhibi-
tory processes only diffuse and random responses to incoming stimuli
can occur. The evolution of the central nervous system out of a primitive
foetal stage depends upon the gradual development of inhibitory proc-
esses which circumscribe, limit, and direct the excitatory processes.
Likewise full myelinization takes place during the first years of
life only. Babinski's reflex, e.g., is an indication of this type of imma-
turity. The immaturity of the infant is the basis of the startle state, a
concept recurring in a somewhat different formulation in the theories
of Magoun. It is fascinating to detect a similarity of those concepts with
Freud's formulations in his "Outline of a Psychology"
(22).
This type of responses seems to the observer out of line, "exagger-
ated." In fact, the response to a disturbance of the homeostatic equilib-
rium, whether coming from the inside or outside, may create a still more
profound disturbance of this equilibrium (Stern, 75, 76).
Maturation of Responses
From the undifferentiated state maturation proceeds in several direc-
tions. One, e.g., is the development of co-ordinated muscle function.
More important to us is the maturation of the mental apparatus (Freud,
23, 25, 29; Rapaport,
62).
Perception becomes the basis of reality testing while motility, at
first serving only the discharge of tension, becomes its tool. We see the
development of the functions of attention and judgment; we observe the
emergence of memory from an autonomous inborn apparatus to a con-
ceptual organization, the development of ideation and thought; there
ensues the beginning of delay, anticipation, the faculty to neutralize
energies, the faculty of abstraction.
Particular emphasis should be put on the development of the con-
cept of time. Realization of the concepts of past, present and future, but
especially differentiation between the past and the present, parallel the
faculty of limitation of a reaction to a present situation in contrast to
the tendency for repetition of past reactions of a more primitive char-
acter. It is not surprising that the concept of the future precedes the
THE EGO IN ANXIETY 71
differentiation of past and present by about six months (Ames, 3; Gesell,
34; Jersild, 43).
All these concepts constitute the emergence of secondary thought
processes as an essential part of ego development. There is a parallel of
development and mutual interdependence between secondary processes,
the maturation of the motor apparatus, the development of the central
nervous system and the stabilization of homeostatic processes. This results
in an increasing desomatization of reactions to certain excitations. The
development tends toward maximal use of integrated automatization of
muscle action, replacement of action by thought and reduction of vege-
tative discharge phenomena. The desirable result is mastery of excita-
tions with a minimum consumption of energy. This desomatization is an
essential part of our maturation. Any disturbance of this development
represents a danger to the economy of our existence.
However, vegetative somatic processes never come fully under the
sway of this maturational development. Homeostatic disturbance can be
avoided only indirectly by satisfaction of certain needs. This satisfaction
in turn is dependent on agreement between reality and inner needs as
well as on the equilibrium between the ego and the superego. Postpone-
ment and substitution of satisfaction will remain an area of strain from
the economic point of view. Innate or acquired tendency to homeostatic
disequilibrium, with somatic symptoms, intensifies this strain. The fact
that the motor system and perception are directed toward the environ-
ment and that thought processes are shaped in accordance with outer
perception explain both our better equipment to meet outer danger,
and our tendency to treat any danger as outer danger. Nevertheless, in
the final analysis, any danger remains the threat of intolerable inner
tension.
With maturation the concept of danger undergoes a series of
changes. The realization that an external object can initiate or end a
traumatic situation displaces the danger from the economic situation to
the condition which determines that situation. Then for the child it is
no longer hunger that constitutes danger but it is the absence of the
mother or, later, loss of love or the threat of punishment. Inner danger
has changed to outer danger.
The absence of the mother threatens hunger, and thus represents a
"danger of danger"
gain addi-
tional importance. I here refer to papers by Bender
(4),
Bergman and
Escalona
(7),
Greenacre (36, 37),
and Schur
(67).
I refer finally to Liddell's concept of vigilance
(49)
and Mahl's work
on the physiology of different types of anxiety in monkeys
(52).
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102 MAX SCHUR
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Harper & Brothers, 1943.
35. Goldstein, K. The Organism. New York: American Book, 1939.
36. Greenacre, P. The Biological Economy of Birth. In Trauma, Growth and Person-
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37. Greenacre, P. The Predisposition to Anxiety. In ibid.
38. Hartmann, H. Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation. In Organization and
Pathology
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Thought (D. Rapaport) . New York: Columbia University Press, 1951.
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of
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41. Hartmann, H., Kris, E., and Loewenstein, R. M. Notes on the Theory of Aggression.
In ibid., IIMV, 1949.
42. Hoch, P. H., Cattell,
J.
P., and Pennes, H. H. Effects of Mescaline and Lysergic
Acid (d-LSD-25). Am.
J. of
Psychiat., CVIII. 1952.
43. Jersild, A. T. Child Psychology. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950.
44. Kris, E. Danger and Morale. Am.
J.
Orthopsychiat., XIV, 1944.
45. Kris, E. On Preconscious Mental Processes. In Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art.
New York: International Universities Press, 1952.
46. Kris, E. Personal Communication.
47. Kubie, L. A Physiological Approach to the Concept of Anxiety. Psychosom. Med.,
Ill, 1941.
48. Kubie, L. A Critical Analysis of the Conception of a Repetition Compulsion. Int.
J.
Psa., XX. 1939.
49. Liddell, H. S. The Role of Vigilance in the Development of Animal Neurosis. In
Anxiety, edited by P. H. Hoch and
J.
Zubin. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1949.
50. Loewenstein, R. M. The Vital or Somatic Instincts. Int.
J.
Psa., XXI, 1940.
51. Loewenstein, R. M. On the Role of Language in the Psychoanalytic Therapy.
Read at the Annual Convention of the American Psychoanaltic Association, At-
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52. Mahl, G. F. Anxiety, HCL Secretion and Peptic Ulcer Etiology. Psychosom. Med.,
XII, 1950.
53. Margolin, S. The Behavior of the Stomach during Psychoanalysis. Read at the
New York Psychoanalytic Society,
Jan.,
1950.
54. Miller, N. E. Studies of Fear as an Acquirable Drive. /.
Exper. Psychol., XXXVIII,
1939.
55. Mittelman, B. and Wolff, H. G. Experimental Studies on Patients with Gastritis,
Duodenitis and Peptic Ulcer. Psychosom. Med., IV, 1942.
56. Mowrer, O. H. Pain, Punishment, Guilt and Anxiety. In Anxiety, edited by
P. H. Hoch and
J.
Zubin. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1950.
57. Nunberg, H. The Synthetic Function of the Ego. In Practice and Theory
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THE EGO IN ANXIETY 103
59. Oerlemans, A. C. Development
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Freud's Conception
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Anxiety. Amsterdam:
North Holland Publishing Co., 1949.
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1950.
61. Rapaport, D. The Conceptual Model of Psychoanalysis.
/. Personality, V, 1951.
62. Rapaport, D. Organization and Pathology
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Thought. New York: Columbia Uni-
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63. Rapaport, D. On the Psychoanalytic Theory of Affects. Read at the Annual Con-
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64. Sasz, T. S. Factors in the Pathogenesis of Peptic Ulcer. Psychosom. Med., XI, 1940.
65. Schilder, P. Psychology and Psychopathology of Time. In Mind, Perception and
Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.
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69. Schur, M. Chronic, Exudative, Discoid and Lichenoid Dermatitis (Sulzberger-
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70. Schwab, G. "Der Reiter und der Bodensee."
71. Selye, H. Stress. Montreal: Acta, Inc., 1950.
72. Shakespeare, W. Macbeth.
73. Smith, H. Kajnongo. New York: Viking Press, 1932.
74. Spitz, R. Anxiety in Infancy. Int.
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Psa., XXXI, 1950.
75. Stern, M. M. Anxiety, Trauma and Shock. Psa. Quart., XX, 1951.
76. Stern, M. M. Pavor Nocturnus. Int.
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Press. 1943.
ESSAY ON SUBLIMATION
CHARLES ODIER, M.D.^
In this jubilee book I should like to pay homage to an old and faith-
ful friend. All of us, and we are many, who had the privilege of knowing
her and of fighting for the "good cause" by her side and under her
guidance, have been impressed by the very special quality that radiates
from her forceful personality at all times; a sort of admirable unity and
integrity in the face of the most diverse and difficult problems. It is quite
evident that her integrity has transcended what I might call a purely
analytical sense and acquired deeper and wider human significance. It is
based on a very rare constellation of qualities: sincerity and candor,
courage, intellectual probity and generosity. A most happy constellation
as all will agree. Her qualities, allied with her strong intellectual powers
and undeniable literary talent, have enabled her in the course of her
development to deal successfully with some of the most traumatizing
experiences a young child can endure. I refer to the child Mimi.^
In making the above statement I am on delicate ground. Marie
Bonaparte's passion for truth would doubtless lead her to object that had
it not been for her analysis and the perceptive genius of Freud she would
never have been able to develop along the lines she did and emerge suc-
cessfully; that her neurosis would have blocked the sublimation of Mimi's
budding literary gifts and the flowering of her extraordinarily rich
imagination. This is probably true.
Nevertheless, in order to undertake a sublimation and then to bring
it to fruition and give it definite value (in this case scientific and literary
value) the ego must dispose of certain tools and special powers which are
its special property and which cannot possibly be created by the mechan-
ism of displacement of instinctual energies and of changing objects and
1 Translated by Vera Damman.
2 See Marie Bonaparte, Five Copy-Books, Written by a Little Girl Between the
Ages
of Seven and a Half and Ten; With Commentaries. London: Imago Publishing
Co., 1951. This is one of the most important and unique documents in the annals of
psychoanalysis.
104
ESSAY ON SUBLIMATION 105
aims which constitute a sublimation. In other words, there is no absolute
and constant correlation between the energies available to operate a sub-
limation on the one hand, and the actual results and qualitative value of
the sublimation on the other.
The qualities and talents of Marie Bonaparte mentioned above have
a twofold aspect. Not only are they the qualities which make up her
private personality, but because she has constantly used them in her
relations with her fellow men they have acquired a very real human and
social value, as all of us can testify who have felt their benefits. And since
these qualities have further been used to inspire and guide scientific re-
search it is evident that they have also acquired an extremely rich speci-
fic scientific value.
We know that Freud rendered an immense service to the Princess
of Greece in freeing her from the disturbances and conflicts engendered
by the ordeals of Mimi. We know too that Marie Bonaparte has herself
subsequently rendered this same service to many sick people with great
skill and kindness. But however much analysis of the dynamic mechanisms
of the instinctual drives might favor the subsequent development of a
sense of reciprocity, in my opinion it could not create it. Every analysis
is a two-way undertaking. In her quite special case, can the growth of a
sense ofor rather, need forreciprocity be entirely ascribed to her
strong identification with a benevolent teacher?
We have had many discussions with Marie Bonaparte on this im-
portant subject of the relation between instinctual functions and human
values. She has always maintained that it was indeed her double trans-
ference that was responsible for her having been able to "valorize"
scientific research, psychotherapy and creative writing.
In various passages in her "copy-books" Marie Bonaparte stresses
the efficacy and resolving action of little Mimi's oedipal transference to
her father, a studious and scholarly man with a passion for geography
and anthropology. It is as if this first transference to a prince devoted to
science was later reactivated, completed and, in a way, consecrated, in the
second transference to Freud, a prince of science. W^hat an enviable and
unique destiny! But was this convergence of drives and affects on men
of great worth at two different times in her life sufficient to make a prin-
cess of science out of her? Does not the question answer itself? It is true,
however, that anthropology may lead to psychoanalysis through the inter-
mediate stage of biology. And biology, it seems to me, has always been
Marie Bonaparte's major interest.
In other chapters she shows excessive though genuine modesty. She
feels that the determining factors in her scientific and literary vocation
can be traced back, on the one hand, to her exhibitionismin the anal
106
CHARLES ODIER
manner of producing and the genital form of creatingand, on the other,
to her obsession with sexual investigations, overstimulated by numerous
traumatic experiences.^
It is true that the texts referred to would lead us to believe that
these factors were the only ones in operation. It is quite evident that,
with the help of the transference, they were its source. But source and
cause are two different things. Furthermore, the concept of "causality" is
still somewhat speculative and open to question.^ I hope this passing
observation will not offend my friend, for although she has never made
a secret of her own position on metaphysics, declaring herself a convinced
adherent of determinism in general and of psychic determinism in par-
ticular, she has always respected the theories of others. . . . though with
a slight tinge of regret when they seemed to her scientifically erroneous
or neurotic.
In short, although Marie Bonaparte herself may think that the
many courageous interpretations she has put forward provide the whole
explanation of her development and career, in my opinion they do not.
They do not adequately account for her evident and personal transition
from the functional sphere of instinctual activity to the value-infused
sphere of her intellectual activity.
She once concluded one of our conversations with a striking meta-
phor. "The drives," she said, "are the pedestal, and the ego ideal is the
statue." To which I replied: "You are quite right to distinguish between
matter and form. Any workman can make a pedestal, but only an artist
can make a statue. The nature of marble is marmorean, the nature of a
statue is aesthetic. Thus the work of art acquires and possesses a value
that the pedestal can never have."
This is the place to quote the prophetic ending to the third copy-
book:
3 It is known that little Mimi, from the age of one to three years, was the an-
guished spectator of the frequent and complicated sexual relations between the head-
groom and the nurse to whose care she had been so imprudently confided. The trauma
had been completely repressed; they were discovered and reconstituted by Freud during
the course of analysis.
4 The authors of certain works in the field of psychosomatic medicine appear to
treat as identical the two concepts of organic or material causality and psychic causality.
In fact, their writings are based on the implied postulate of their being identical.
These two media, through which the mind of man seeks to explain things, are reduced
to the same principle. It seems to me that there is a misapprehension here. In physics
and chemistry and also in physiology the experimenter is within his rights to speak of
causation, on a macroscopic scale at any rate, to the extent to which he is able to prove
its existence and its exactness. But on the psychic level it is always risky to invoke this
principle, for here it is a question of rather complex connections which may be, but
not necessarily are, established between converging or clashing series of motivations.
Now there is nothing in common between indefinite numbers of motivations and one
specific constant material cause.
ESSAY ON SUBLIMATION 107
And here Mimi makes a promise which I have kept and which I
still find very moving on rereading it after so many years, so well
does it testify to the undeviating orientation of my psyche, so well
do I recognize myself in it: "The day I will not like anymore to write
nonsense" (and not before, notice, I will not be forced!) "I will con-
tinue to write (it) but serious things." And Marie Bonaparte adds:
"Surely it would be hard to find a more precocious affirmation of a
writer's vocation!" . . . "My third copy-book is finished. Now it is
enough. Goodbye Nonsy Book!" (very serious about it) "And then
I proudly sign my real high-sounding name: Marie Bonaparte."
Henceforward, Mimi, the bewildered little girl, deceived and fright-
ened by ignorant servants, has ceased to exist. In her place is the daughter
of her august father, the writer and scholar. She has finally succeeded in
surmounting the fears and doubts which ravaged her and immobilized
such a large part of her libido. This part she now fixes on her father as
she triumphantly assumes his famous name. This mechanism effectually
neutralizes her aggressivity and quells her resentment against the tyran-
nous and murderous man who in his role of husband had killed "Little
Mother," with the complicity, she imagined, of her terrible grandmother.
In actual fact "Little Mother"that is, her real motherhad died in
childbirth. These beliefs had grown out of her sadomasochistic fan-
tasies inspired by the sexual activities of the head-groom and the
Nanny.5 In this sense the child can be said to have resolved her oedipus
complex in so far as the positive component has gained ascendancy over
all the negative components. Such was the real birth of Marie Bonaparte
and of her vocation.
And so, through love and admiration, the way was opened to iden-
tification with her beloved and revered father, who happened to be a
scholar as well. For did he not shut himself up in his magnificent book-
lined study to write about mysterious and hence fascinating things?
One gets the feeling that Mimi longed to join him there more often and
have him explain these mysteries to her. She hears it said on all sides
that her father is taken up with "scientific studies," and for many years
the term will keep its magic po^ver for her. The original revolt is thus
followed by overvaluationone might almost say deificationof the
object; and revenge and death wishes inspired by retaliation are super-
5 In some of her other stories Mimi expresses through svmbol and metaphor her
feeling of having herself been her mother's "killer," through the fact of her birth.
Marie Bonaparte ascribes this feeling of guilt to the oedipus complex, although Mimi
had never known her mother and could not therefore have ever considered her as a
thwarting rival. Actually the real, living, rival, felt and feared as such, was the grand-
mother. She and her son formed a very closely knit couple, and it was hence impos-
sible for Mimi to dissociate them.
108 CHARLES ODIER
seded by a rather awed and reverent regard for intellectual values.^
In turn identification opened the way to sublimation, though it is
still far from explaining its fortunate consequences and ultimate success.
Henceforth the child Mimi was preparing for the future transference
of Marie Bonaparte to Freud. This second, decisive, transference was
already written in the lines of Mimi's destiny. It was to be an essential
factor in the identification of the Princess of Greece with a second father,
who also happened to be a scholar. But the prestige she accorded to the
second, spiritual father was intrinsically different from the fascination
Prince Roland had formerly held for his daughter. More and more
rational thinking had replaced the former magic thinking. Moreover,
Freud was to discover Mimi's most intimate secrets and decipher some
of her most impenetrable fantasies, whereas her father had had no inkling
of their existence.
The second father was a genius whose nature and type of intellect
were in admirable harmony with those of his pupil. What an impressive
historical phenomenon is this meeting of two superior people ideally
fitted for mutual understanding and respect! The strong bond between
them was formed of three great qualities: an exacting need for objectivity,
an aptitude for self-detachment and finally, generosity. A clear-sighted,
beneficial generosity; one of those rare instances when the interests of
the protege are put before those of the benefactor. One other important
element should be added to this list: a passion for psychology and its
application to biology and to the history of the human race. A sub-
limation is the offspring of an instinctual drive and an ideal. But its
development depends on the primacy of the ideal, we might even say
on its victory, over the instinctual drive.
Everythingtemperament, chief interests, tastesin fact the whole
personality, was in harmony between the doctor and his patient, the
teacher and his pupil. Marie Bonaparte came to Freud with a latent
vocation. It remained for him to release it and to bring it to fruition.
The remarkable harmony between their natures enables us better to
understand the success of the identification. It is nonetheless true that
it was made possible by the analysis. And this action of the Freudian
method should give moral and religious philosophers food for thought.
It was indispensable first of all to get the superego out of the way in
order to release the ego from the interdictions, arising out of guilt and
6 If this first identification does not seem to have been totally effective nor to have
borne fruits of value it is because it had to be freed from its impediments. Mimi had
formed a syncretic whole of the image of her father and the image of the head-groom,
and they had to be dissociated. This was to be Freud's task. In the depths of her imcon-
scious she still at that time regarded them both as dangerous males, cruel and sadistic
toward women.
ESSAY ON SUBLIMATION
109
fear, which still hampered the vocation. The vocation could only develop
in an atmosphere of security in which the intelligence could have free
rein. In other words, it was necessary to replace the superego by an ego
ideal. And the disciple formed and integrated her ego ideal in the image
of her teacher rather than in the image of her father, who was a famous
geographer but not much interested in psychology. At any rate, our col-
league's work is very clear proof that she was gifted for the psychological
sciences. Transference freed her nature, but her nature subsequently
dominated the transference.
Whereas dynamic and personal mechanisms may in themselves
account for the "how" of a sublimation, they do not explain the "why."
In this case the "why" is the quality and worth of Marie Bonaparte's
research and writings. She herself has given us a clear picture of how the
sublimation of her narcissistic needs and oedipal drives was effected and
through what channels they found new goals to which they became
definitely attached.
I was a melancholy, dreamy and rather neurotic child. I pre-
cociously enjoyed writing, as these copy-books testify, and, doubtless
by virtue of a primitive identification with his studious nature, I
owed to my father the taste for work which I was to retain through-
out my life. . . . To my father, who insisted on my learning foreign
languages early. ... I owed the ability to use English and German
as "secret" languages for these copy-books, in which to express the
primitive mysteries, emotions and memories of my life.'^
In her "fairy tales" and "fables" Mimi poured out her unconscious
in a wealth of symbols and magic. They have the marks of secondary
elaborations as in dreams. They also served to compensate the little girl
for the griefs and disappointments and the sense of moral isolation that
she must so often have felt in the blind and rigid protocol of her environ-
ment. But none of these factors was of a kind to determine the creative
and narrative talents of the precocious little novelist. (Surrealist poets
have been fascinated by the charm and piquancy that radiate from her
stories, by turn "pretty" or dramatic.) Mimi found consolation in telling
herself things she could not tell anybody else. Prototype of the private
diary!
The great majority of children are preoccupied with the problems
of sexuality and of how children are made
"Com-
ments on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Instinctual Drives" by Hart-
mann
(18),
and "Notes on the Theory of Aggression" by Hartmann,
Kris and Loewenstein
(19)
have been selected by us as the most exhaus-
tive and the most advanced presentations of the theory. The authors
examined the adaptive and the organizing aspects of the aggressive
drive. They discussed the psychological aspects of the manifestations of
both the aggressive and the libidinal drive and their vicissitudes. They
have expanded Freud's concepts by suggesting the existence of a neutrali-
zation of aggressive energy.
This approach resulted in several conclusions, one of which is that
while the internalization of libidinal energies leads to neurosis, the inter-
nalization, without neutralization, of aggressive energy in the ego must
lead to some kind of self-destruction
(19, p. 24).
The authors suggest
further that "internalized aggression plays a relevant role in the etiology
of illness"
(19, p. 22).
As for the constructive aspects of the drive, the authors find that "the
musculature and motility, apparatuses for the discharge of aggression,
contribute decisively to the differentiation between self and environment
and through action, to the differentiation of the environment itself"
(19,
p. 23). Objective danger situations require motor discharges (fight and/or
flight); the enforcement of passivity is made responsible for the prob-
ability of pathological disturbance.
The opportunity in the adult for the direct observation in relatively
pure form of the total inhibition of the discharge of aggression is rare
126
AGGRESSION AND OBJECT RELATIONS 127
in psychiatric experience; its best example is probably ofEered by the so-
called combat neurosis
(30).
Such observations can be made with much
greater facility and exactitude during the early development of the
personality, i.e., during infancy.
Given the parallel between similar findings of our own, as presented
in our past publications, and the propositions advanced by Hartmann,
Kris and Loewenstein, it appears desirable to complement the data de-
rived from psychoanalytic reconstruction, on which theoretical deductions
like those of the authors must of necessity be based, with the data of
experiments and direct observation.
We believe that an attempt to apply the significant propositions of
Hartmann, Kris, and Loewenstein's to our findings in infancy should
yield useful viewpoints for the clarification of the genetic picture of
the aggressive drive and important suggestions in regard to prophylaxis
and treatment of early psychiatric and psychosomatic manifestations.
We will begin with a fundamental question: psychoanalytic theory
assumes that the aggressive and the libidinal drives are primal ones. We
will ask whether they are already present at birth and, if so, whether
they are distinct from each other and capable of being differentiated.
Our observations and those of others indicate that at the outset the
infant is in the narcissistic stage,i during which the total energies at its
disposal are at the service of the vital processes. Actions and reactions
do not take place in response to outer stimulation, but by and large to
the afferent impulses generating in the interoceptor system. The young
organism is protected against outer stimuli by its high perceptive thresh-
old, by the stimulus barrier, which Freud considers the prototype of
repression. Perception is directed toward the organism's own processes;
it responds nearly exclusively to proprioceptive stimuli.
In the following few weeks, the development of the exteroceptive
organization is paralleled by the progressive appearance of conditioned
responses. This supplements the interoceptive behavior which persists.
It is only after about two months that a behavior going beyond this
elementary pattern becomes visible. An example will illustrate these
points. During the first few weeks of life the infant in the hunger situa-
tion will not react to the offer of food, for it does not perceive it. At this
stage, perception of the food object is predicated on the presence of a
proprioceptor stimulus, namely, the hunger sensation; without the pro-
prioceptor stimulus the exteroceptor perception is not possible. It is
only progressively that the infant in the course of the first three months
will develop to the point where it will recognize the signal of proffered
1 As formulated by Freud
(13, p. 74)
.
128 REN A. SPITZ
food outside the hunger situation
(9).
It should be added that even in
these circumstances the infant does not perceive in food an object, but a
signal, that is a part-object
(21, p. 283).
At this point (i.e., after about two months of life) we can begin to
distinguish manifestations of pleasure in the child from manifestations
of unpleasure, and frequently of rage. Phenomenologically we can speak
of observable manifestations of the libidinal drive on the one hand, and
of the aggressive drive on the other. Of course, before that, libidinization
of certain areas, of certain situations, of certain behavior patterns has
been proceeding in the oral, accoustic and optic sectors (also in regard
to thermal stimulation and the enjoyment of freedom of movement).
When we speak of a differentiation of the two drives, we are re-
ferring to their functional aspects.^ My concept of the differentiation of
drives is that of a developmental process, in the course of which the two
primal drives, libido and aggression, are functionally differentiated out
of the great energy reservoir of the narcissistic stage. The differentiated
drives are directed in the beginning toward what I have called the pre-
object
(32)
an object which is a precursor, not very firmly established
and not too clearly differentiated, of the libidinal object itself. The
integration and structuration of the ego, on the one hand, the emotional
expression of the drives in response to environmental influence on the
other, interrelate in the course of development. This is a circular inter-
relation (similar to, though not identical with, a feedback process), in
which the infant's actions and the emotional expressions of his drives
provoke responses from the environment. These responses then will shape
the infant's further development and responses.
Definite manifestations of the aggressive drive can be observed at
the time when the infant becomes capable of goal-directed actions, how-
ever primitive the action may be. Around three months, angry weeping
and screaming can be observed when the infant is deprived of its human
partner.^ Withdrawal of food provokes screaming, which is no longer
the expression of helpless discomfort but of specific resentment. The ag-
gressive drive finds its generalized discharge in the relatively meager
skeletal musculature of the infant. Specific aggressive acts, however, are
still absent.
It is in the period of the transition from what I have called "pre-
object relation"
(32)
to real object relations that aggression and aggressive
2 Differentiation of a drive should not be confused with "defusion." The latter is
a pathological process, the former a developmental process.
3 Any such dating of observed phenomena refers to statistical averages; actual
appearance of the phenomena can be delayed within a rather wide range of a month
or more.
AGGRESSION AND OBJECT RELATIONS 129
manifestations become specific. Like Hartmann, Kius and Loewenstein
(19)
we believe that the collaboration of the aggressive drive with the
libidinal drive is a prerequisite for the formation of object relations.
These authors have formulated in a more general manner that libido
and aggression are not distinguishable from each other in the stage pre-
ceding object relations. On the other hand, they state that, at an un-
specified age, aggression is directed at an object labeled "bad" (the non-
I), while at the same time libido is directed to an object labeled "good"
(the I). They obviously imply that at this age perception has already
been achieved and the percept differentiated into good and bad. Between
these two stages is situated what we have called the inception of object
relations, when the object is in the twilight area between conditioned
reflex and pre-object. At this stage the nascent object is the target of the
simultaneous manifestation of both drives, the aggressive and the libidinal
drive. It is the delimitation of the I from the non-I which marks the
emergence of an object (pre-object), it is with the help of this delimitation
that the aggressive drive is differentiated from the libidinal drive.
In the second half of the first year we see progressively destructive
activities appear. Hitting, biting, scratching, pulling, kicking, are used
in the manipulation of "things," be they inanimate or human. This
manipulation serves many purposes, primarily that of perceptive orienta-
tion and, of manipulative mastery; at the same time, it establishes relations,
earliest object relations, between the infant and the "thing" (and this
includes the libidinal object!) in question. These relations will be estab-
lished as a result of the "thing-reaction" (of the infant), as a result of the
attacks directed at the object. In this way, then, beginning with a distinc-
tion of self and non-self.^" a further distinction between the animate and
the inanimate, and finally a distinction between friend and stranger, be-
tween libidinal object and the object as conceived by academic psychology
will develop.^
Therefore we are of the opinion that a sublimation of the aggressive
drive necessarily must be preceded by the functioning of this drive; in
relation to pre-objects, "things" and persons, this implies object relations
of a preambivalent nature
(1, p. 450),
in the course of which the func-
3*
"Self" and "I" will be used interchangeably in this paper, because defining the
two would require a digression and is unnecessary in this context.
i
I have found it useful, in studying the genesis of the formation of first object
relations, to make a clear distinction between "things" and the libidinal object
(31, p.
108) . Thingsthat is, objects as conceived by academic psychologvcan be described
in terms of spatio-temporal co-ordinates; they remain identical with themselves. The
libidinal object, as defined by Freud, is described by its history. It does not remain
identical with itself, it is not described by spatio-temporal co-ordinates, but by the
drive structure directed toward it.
130 REN A. SPITZ
tions of the drives will be mastered and related by the infant to the
object it is exploring.
We consider, furthermore, that long before sublimation can begin,
the understanding of prohibitions and commands must be established.
Up to here we have followed the development of the aggressive drive
in the first year of life, but have only touched upon its modifications, of
which Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein mention four: displacement,
restriction of aim, sublimation, and influences of libido (of which fusion
is one).
The articles of Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein, basing themselves
on a hypothesis introduced by Freud, state that the formation of perma-
nent object relations is "dependent on the capacity of the individual to
bear frustration"
(19, p. 21),
a view with which I fully concur and which
I have frequently expressed. This capacity to bear frustration, or, as Freud
expressed it, "to enforce the postponement of satisfaction"
(14, p. 5)
is
more generally referred to as the reality principle. I postulate on the
grounds of my interpretation of experimental findings that the infant
must achieve the reality principle before any objective perception can
take place. This, by the way, is also in accordance with Freud's formula-
tions (10a,
pp.
533, 535) on the detour function of the two systems.^ For
example, only when the infant becomes able to postpone the gratification
of the hunger drive, communicated to it by the proprioceptor stimulus,
will it become free to direct its psychic energies to its environment and
perceive the environmental world, that is, the food object. This capacity
to tolerate frustration is slowly acquired and develops step by step to an
ever-increasing liberation of perceptive activity in the course of the first
six months of life. Exact experiments
(25, 9, 20, 29)
have shown the suc-
cessive steps in this environmental discrimination. Thus the postponement
of gratification of the drive leads to:
(1)
a cathexis of the percept;
(2)
a
confrontation of the percept with a memory trace;
(3)
"thought," that is
"
. . . . essentially an experimental way of acting, accompanied by dis-
placement of smaller quantities of cathexis together with less expenditure
(discharge) of them"
(12).
Perception and thought initiate the discharge of the drive into aim-
directed activity. Sensory organization, musculature and motility here
function as apparatuses for the discharge of aggression. Aim-directed ag-
gression is now placed in the service of acquiring mastery over objects
5 I do not share Hartmann's view that both "the turn towards the external world
and the compulsion to recognize it are still under the auspices of the pleasure prin-
ciple"
(17, p. 90). This view of Hartmann's is based on Freud's assumption that the
narcissistic stage is abandoned and object-libidinal cathexis formed for libido-economic
reasons.
AGGRESSION AND OBJECT RELATIONS 131
of the environment as well as for the acquisition of skills, among which
grasping is one of the first and locomotion the second.^ The function of
grasping in the discharge of aggression becomes clearly evident in the
second half of the first year.
By the time the baby is eight months old, it has acquired an orienta-
tion and co-ordination of the different parts of its body, thanks to the
body image formed with the help of the distribution of the aggressive
drive into the most varied systems. Around that time the aggressive drive
can be directed toward the objects with the help of the effectors. The
beginning of locomotion in the infant marks the conquest of space by the
child.
Developmentally this is preceded by the perceptual acquisition of an
orientation in space. Motility, of the upper limbs at least and frequently
also of the trunk, has been co-ordinated and has come under central
control. Psychologically, what I have called "crib space" is expanded into
the space surrounding the crib. It should be noted that this takes place
at an age when locomotion in the sense of walking has yet to be
achieved, and even directed crawling is often as yet not too successful.
Before this orientation in space the infant, though perfectly able to grasp
an object inside the crib, is unable to grasp an object held outside of it.
For the space of the infant at this stage is circumscribed by the limits of
the crib. And it is the breaking down of this barrier with the help of the
aggressive drive which represents the inception of the conquest of space
by the infant in its eighth month.
This age also marks the time when the infant differentiates "things"
from human beings, friends from strangers; it marks the inception of
full-fledged objectal relations.
It is at the inception of object relations that we will examine more
in detail the manifestation of aggression; for we believe that it is here
that we are able to see on the one hand phenomena of neutralization of
aggression, on the other hand a turning of the aggression toward the
self.
Such observations have been made by us in our studies of a nosol-
ogical picture which we have called "anaclitic depression"
(28).
In this disease the etiological factors are simple and well known.
Children who, during the first six months of their lives have been in good
relation with their mother, respond to the loss of their love object by a
progressive mourning reaction if no adequate substitute is provided. They
begin by showing greater restlessness, weepiness, clinging to chance visi-
tors. In the further progression of the disease, apathy sets in. The mani-
6 In a motion picture "Grasping"
(35),
and in an article "Purposive Grasping"
(34),
I have dealt with the steps invohed in the development of grasping.
132
REN A. SPITZ
festation of aggression common in the normal child after the eighth
month, such as hitting, biting, chewing, etc., is conspicuously absent in
the depressed children. How can this be fitted into the conceptual frame-
work of the theory of drives?
We believe that similarly to every other sector of the infant's develop-
ment, the development of the drives, both libidinal and aggressive, is
closely linked to the infant's relation to the (libidinal) object. As far as
the libidinal drive is concerned, we have shown this in our article on
autoerotism
(31).
It is equally so with regard to the development of the
aggressive drive.
It is the relationship with the love object which gives the infant the
opportunity to release its aggressive drives in all the activities provoked
in it by the actions of the object. That, after all, is well-known to nursing
mothers who suffer from the tendencies of their infants to bite the nipple.
It should be understood that we include in the manifestations of the
aggressive drive also those activities which are not experienced as hostil-
ity, for instance grasping, etc. When the object-formation period is
reached in the second half of the first year, all these manifestations be-
come more and more evident. At this early stage of infantile ambivalence,
no real difference is made by the infant between the satisfaction of one
drive or the other; they are manifested simultaneously, concomitantly,
and alternatively in response to one and the same object, the libidinal
object. If the infant is deprived of the libidinal object, both drives are
deprived of their target. This is what happened to the infants affected
with anaclitic depression.
Now the drives hang in mid-air, so to speak. If we follow the fate
of the aggressive drive, we find these infants slowly becoming self-destruc-
tive. It is in such cases that we have found the frequent manifestations
of head banging, well known also in animals.
Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein express doubt whether unpleasure
resulting from self-infliction of damage is already recognized as signals
warning of danger, in view of the incomplete awareness of the bodily
self and the incapacity to distinguish between self and external world.
We have a motion picture of an infant which, at eight months, after
prolonged separation from its mother, would violently hit the left side of
its face with its fist by the hour in a rhythm comparable to that of head
banging. This child directed its blows always at the same spot on the
left side of its face under certain specific circumstances which aroused
its resentment. The blows were well co-ordinated, and it is difficult to
assume that this child was not distinguishing the self from the outer
world, that it did not realize that the pain inflicted on its face originated
in its own action.
AGGRESSION AND OBJECT RELATIONS 133
Perhaps we may compromise in assuming a transitional stage in
which the infant has already delimited the self from the outer world
under routine conditions. However, when circumstances of suffering
arise, in which it cannot vent its aggression on the outer world, then the
boundaries again become fluid and the aggressive action is directed
against the only object available, i.e., its own body.
Similar assumptions have been made in the past by Pierce Clark
(7).
From all my observations on infants I am very much inclined to assume
that the deprived infants' aggression, which cannot be directed against
an outer world object, is returned against the self.
A counterpart of this phenomenon arises when the libidinal object,
that is, the mother, has returned to the child after a limited period of
depression. Then we have observed that all functions expand in an
exuberant fashion. That applies both to the libidinal drives and to the
aggression. Particularly the manifestations of the latter are conspicuous:
after coming out of the anaclitic depression the restored infant no longer
hits or scratches itself. It now begins to bite, to scratch, to kick others.
In other terms, as long as these infants were deprived of their libid-
inal object, they became increasingly unable to direct outward, not only
the libido, but also the aggression. Although one cannot observe phenom-
enologically what happens to the two drives during the period of de-
privation, one gets the impression that the aggressive drive is the carrier,
as it were, not only for itself, but also for the libidinal drive. If we as-
sume that in the normal child of that age (second half of first year) the
two drives are fused, we might postulate that in the deprived infant a
defusion of drives occurs.
How does this come about? When the separated infant cannot find
a target for the discharge of its drive, the infant first becomes weepy,
demanding and clinging to everybody who approaches it: it looks as
though attempts are made by these infants to regain the lost object with
the help of their aggressive drive. Later on visible manifestations of
the aggressive drive decrease; and after two months of uninterrupted
separation the first definite somatic symptoms are manifested by the in-
fant. These consist of sleeplessness, loss of appetite, loss of weight.
An attempt to explain the loss of appetite and the loss of weight has
to take as its starting point the libidinal stage at which the infant is at
this period. It is the oral stage; one of the attributes of the lost love object
is the gratification of the oral zone. The mother is the very source of
food, and, psychologically speaking, food itself. When the infant is de-
prived of this love object, the libidinal and the aggressive drives are
denied the opportunity for discharge. They are dammed up and turned
134 REN A. SPITZ
against the self. After a brief period of transition we can observe that the
infant withdraws and rejects everybody who lacks the attributes of the
love object. Similarly food alone lacks these attributes and will be re-
jected. Loss of appetite would then represent a behavior of withdrawal
and rejection; loss of weight its consequences. As in the withdrawal
behavior toward persons other than the love object, the libidinal and
aggressive drives normally acting in the intake of food are withdrawn
and dammed up. The dysfunction of food intake and utilization is the
result.
An explanation of the second disturbance, the insomnia in the in-
fantthe dysfunction of the sleep centerwill have to be made with
the help of extremely tentative hypotheses.
Let us begin by positing that it is perhaps not so much the act of
sleeping which is disturbed, but the process of jallmg asleep which is
obstructed and halted. The infant falls asleep when its needs are gratified;
at the breast, when its hunger is satiated. This is a picture of complete
narcissistic equilibrium, of the still undifferentiated unity of object and
subject.
It would seem to us that the infant's sleep disturbance, when sepa-
rated from its object, is a physiological manifestation of the disruption
of this narcissistic equilibrium. The healthy infant which is able to gratify
its libidinal and aggressive drives during its waking period and discharge
them in actions will, after this discharge, be able to return to the nar-
cissistic equilibrium of sleep. The infant which has been deprived of its
object will first attempt to use its drives to recreate in a hallucinatory
manner the object with a progressively increasing measure of frustration,
like in all hallucinatory processes. This continuous frustration will finally
end in the predominance of the disappointment and in an avoidance of
sleep and the concomitant attempts at hallucinatory gratification through
dreams.
These explanations, however, do not demarcate the manifestations
of the aggressive drive from those of the libidinal drive. The two were
fused and, therefore, difficult to distinguish. Some light is thrown on this
question by our observations on infants suffering from hospitalism: they
present a tangible demonstration of the defusion of the two drives. It
can be observed in the unchecked progression of deterioration in these
children who were subjected to long-term deprivation of emotional sup-
plies. The result is a progressive destruction of the infant itself, even-
tually leading to death.
The obverse of this defusion can be observed in anaclitic depression,
when the pathological process which follows deprivation is halted by the
return of the love object. Then we can witness the manifestations of a
AGGRESSION AND OBJECT RELATIONS 135
partial refusion of the drives in the rapidly returning activity of these
children, in their becoming gay, playful and aggressive.
In the first case, when the deprivation syndrome goes on unchecked
and the children are separated not for months but for years, those
children who survive offer pictures reminiscent of brain-damaged in-
dividuals, of severely retarded or downright imbecile children. In the
due course of events these will probably become either the inmates of
institutions or, under "favorable" conditions, they will offer, according
to the specific individual circumstances, the manifold problems of the
"asocial" (Aichhorn), of the "atypic development" (Rank and Putnam),
of the "schizophrenic" (Bender), of the "hyperthymic" (Bowlby), of the
"turbulent" (Wallon) childin one word, of the severely disturbed
problem child. Theoretically w'e may posit that in these children the
aggression has been turned against the self, resulting in the shockingly
high percentage of deaths; and becoming manifest, that is, turned to-
ward the outside world again, in the survi\ ing children. In these, however,
the aggression is mostly not directed at a specific object, libidinal or
otherwise. It is directed at everything and everybody and takes the form
of a generalized and mostly senseless, that is, "objectless," destructiveness.
In the second case, when the process of deprivation is interrupted
within a reasonable length of timethat is according to our experience
after not more than three to five months
by
the return of the love
object, the result is different. When the mother is returned to these in-
fants within this period, they become not only gay and lively, happy
with their mothers, with grownups, with other children, and active in
their games in general. They also become more aggressive against others,
for a while at least, than any normal infant of the same age. They may
become actively destructive of objects, clothes, bed clothes, toys, etc. But
this destructiveness does not compare with the contactless destructiveness
of the child who survives prolonged deprivation of emotional supplies.
It is also among these infants whose mothers have been returned
to them after several months of absence that we found the biting chil-
dren and those who tear out other children's hairnot their own.
We have a film (No. 264) which shows one such infant systematically
tearing a piece of skin off another child's instep, leaving a bleeding
lesion.
But what has happened to the two drives during the period of de-
privation? Why have they become defused, why does it appear as if the
aggressive drive had been subjected to a different fate from that of the
libidinal drive?
Our present state of knowledge does not permit us to formulate a
conclusive answer at this stage. Our own speculations have led us in the
136 RENfi A. SPITZ
direction of suggestions expressed by Freud in various forms throughout
his publications, beginning with the Three Essays on the Theory
of
Sexuality
(11),
regarding the affinity of the libidinal drive to the organ
systems. Elsewhere, particularly in the "Economic Problem of Masochism"
(16)
he has remarked on the musculature as the organ of discharge for
the aggressive drive. Organ systems are considerably slower in the func-
tion of discharge than the skeletal musculature. It is to be assumed that
they have the capacity of holding energy in a bound state. This is not
the case for the skeletal musculature which discharges energy rapidly,
completely, and in bursts of brief duration.
We might, then, speculate about the existence of an organic, a
physiological basis, which in the case of pathological processes of dis-
charge-inhibition would produce the defusion of the two drives. Once
the libidinal drive becomes separated from the aggressive drive, the
difference between the rhythm of discharge in the organs from that pre-
vailing in the skeletal musculature could lead to a different fate for each
of the drives. Perhaps some of the propositions of Cannon
(6)
might
find application in this context.
Any such statements can only indicate one of the possible directions
of our thinking. Much careful research will be needed before we will be
able to advance any less tentative statements.
Regarding the suggestions for prevention and treatment of early
psychiatric and psychosomatic manifestations of which we have spoken
in the beginning of our paper, we believe that they follow logically from
the preceding considerations. As published previously
(33),
prevention
can be achieved by avoiding at all costs any disturbance of the formation
of object relations during the critical period (beginning with the sixth
month of life). If the original libidinal object, the mother, has to be
separated from the child, an adequate and acceptable substitute has to
be provided.
As for the therapy of already damaged infants at this age level, the
discharge of aggression combined with the discharge of the libidinal drive
should be facilitated in every possible way.
This is not the place to go into the details of these procedures. We
will come back to this point in a more extensive publication which we are
preparing on the subject of the aggressive drive.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Abraham, K. Selected Papers on Psycho-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press, 1927,
pp.
450-473.
2. Aichhorn, A. Wayward Youth. New York: Viking Press, 1935.
3. Bender, L. Childhood Schizophrenia. Am.
J.
Orthopsychiat., XVII, 1947.
AGGRESSION AND OBJECT RELATIONS 137
4. Bowlby,
J.
Forty-four Juvenile Thieves: Their Character and Home Life. Int.
J.
Psa., XXV, 1944.
5. Buehler, Ch. The First Year
of Life. London: Kegan Paul, 1937.
6. Cannon, W. B. Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage. New York: Apple-
ton Century, 1934.
7. Clark, P. A Contribution to the Early Development of the Ego. Am.
J.
Psychiat.,
XI, 1932.
8. Ferenczi, S. Further Contributions to Theory and Technique
of
Psycho-Analysis.
London: Hogarth Press, 1926.
9. Frankl, L. and Rubinow, O. Die erste Dingauffassung beim Saugling. Ztschr.
f.
Psychol, CXXXIII, 1934.
10. Freud, A. Notes on Aggression. Bull. Menninger Clin., XIII, 1949, and in The
Yearbook
of
Psychoanalysis, VI. New York: International Universities Press, 1951.
10a. Freud, S. (1900)
The Interpretation of Dreams. The Basic Writings
of
Sigmund
Freud. New York: Modern Library, 1938,
pp.
533, 535.
11. Freud, S. (1905)
Three Essays on the Theory
of
Sexuality. London: Imago Pub-
lishing Co., 1949.
12. Freud, S. (1911)
Formulations Regarding the Two Principles of Mental Function-
ing. Coll. Papers, IV. London: Hogarth Press, 1925.
13. Freud, S. (1915) Instincts and Their Vicissitudes. Ibid.
14. Freud, S. (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. London: Hogarth Press, 1922.
15. Freud, S. (1923) The Ego ajul the Id. London: Hogarth Press, 1927.
16. Freud, S. (1924) The Economic Problem in Masochism. Coll. Papers, II. London:
Hogarth Press, 1924.
17. Hartmann, H. Ich-Psychologie und Anpassungsproblem. Int. Ztschr.
f.
Psa., XXIV,
1939. Translated in part in Organization and Pathology
of
Thought (Rapaport,
D.) . New York: Columbia University Press, 1951.
18. Hartmann, H. Comments on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Instinctual Drives. Psa.
Quart., XVII, 1948.
19. Hartmann, H., Kris, E., and Loewenstein, R. M. Notes on the Theory of Aggres-
sion. In The Psychoanalytic Study
of
the Child, III/IV. New York: International
Universities Press, 1949.
20. Kaila, E. Die Reaktion des Sauglings auf das menschliche Gesicht. Ann. Univer-
sitatis Aboensis, XVII, 1932.
21. Klein, M. A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States. In
Contributions to Psycho-Analysis 1921-1945. London: Hogarth Press, 1948.
22. Lacan,
J.
L'agressivite en psychanalyse. Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, Xll, 1948.
23. Lorenz, K. Der Kumpan in der Umwelt des \'ogels. /. /. OrnitJiologie, LXXXII,
1935.
24. Rank, B., Putnam, M. C, and Rochlin, G. The Significance of the "Emotional
Climate" in Early Feeding Difficulties. Psychosom. Med., X, 1948.
25. Ripin, R. and Hetzer, H. Friihestes Lernen des Sauglings in der Ernahrungs-
situation. Ztschr.
f.
Psychol., CXMII, 1930.
26. Spitz, R. A. Hospitalism: An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in
Early Childhood. In The Psychoanalytic Study
of
the Child, I. New York: Inter-
national Universities Press, 1945.
27. Spitz, R. A. Hospitalism: A Follow-up Report. Ibid., II, 1946.
28. Spitz, R. A. (with the assistance of \Volf, K.) Anaclitic Depression. Ibid., II, 1946.
29. Spitz, R. A. (with the assistance of Wolf, K.) The Smiling Response. Geiielic
Psychol. Mon., XXXIV, 1946.
30. Spitz, R. A. Profilaxis versus Tratamiento en las Neurosis Traumaticas. Revista
de Psicoanalisis, IV, 1946.
31. Spitz, R. A. (with Wolf, K.) Autoerotism. In The Psychoanalytic Study
of
the
Child, III/IV. New York: International Universities Press, 1949.
32. Spitz, R. A. Anxiety in Infancy. Int.
J.
Psa., XXXI, 1950.
138 REN A. SPITZ
33. Spitz, R. A. Psychiatric Therapy in Infancy. Am.
J.
Orthopsychiat., XX, 1950.
34. Spitz, R. A. Purposive Grasping. /. Personality, I, 1951.
35. Spitz, R. A. Grasping. A Motion picture. Copyright 1949, New York University
Film Library.
36. Wallon, H. L'enfant turbulent. Paris: Alcan, 1925.
37. Watson,
J.
B. Behaviorism. New York: W. W. Norton, 1924.
BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL SPECULATIONS ON THE
LIBIDO THEORY
RAYMOND DE SAUSSURE, M.D.
Geneva
At all events there is no way of working out this idea except by
combining facts with pure imagination many times in succes-
sion, and thereby departing far from observation. . . . One may
thereby have made a brilliant discovery or one may have gone
ignominiously astray.
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle,
p. 77.
We are indebted to Freud for having been the first to establish the
fact that the sexual instinct is composed of a great many partial tenden-
cies which slowly become structured one into another until puberty when
the supremacy of the genital zone forms the final arrangement of those
numerous drives. Freud did not hesitate to go back very far to biological
tendencies in order to find the bases of certain psychological tendencies
and with much ingenuity and intuition Marie Bonaparte has followed
him on this hazardous course, leaving a henceforth classical description of
the evolution of the female libido.^
We could pay no greater tribute to Marie Bonaparte than to con-
tinue research along those lines; moreover, we are happy here to acknowl-
edge that her works inspired most of the ideas that follow. I shall not
summarize Marie Bonaparte's ideas as I believe they are well known.
While they have interested me enormously I have been struck by the fact
that the Princess endows woman's sexual instinct chiefly with negative
qualities: passivity, masochism, giving up of the penis, etc. This does not
mean that the Princess has not observed or described other elements of
activity, such as the role of aggression which is left over from the active
phase of the oedipal, the libidinal investment of the clitoris and the con-
1 See particularly Marie Bonaparte
(1)
. "^Ve are indebted to Marie Bonaparte for
having laid stress on the narcissism of the cell as a precocious defense of the fear of
penetration. She has also emphasized vittelinism
(p. 163) as a prefunction of feminine
sexuality; the whole study of prefunctions is extremely fruitful from the point of view
of speculation.
139
140
RAYMOND DE SAUSSURE
cave erotism of the vagina. However, it seems to me that certain portions
of the libido theory would profit from being presented a little differently.
If we take as our point of departure Freud's ingenious idea that
sexuality is a compound of more primitive tendencies we would grant
that at first two functions are chiefly involved: sensibility and motility,
and that as the child develops these diffuse functions become organized
around certain centers and are hierarchically gradated under the supreme
pleasure of sexual release.
Musculature and Aggression
We are accustomed to consider the earliest aggressions as being mani-
fested by oral assault or anal retention. When the libido spreads to the
mucous erogenous zones aggression seems to invade the muscular system.
My first speculation would be to posit that the libido, that is, erotic
pleasure (having a beginning independent of the sexual function or that
of reproduction) is dependent on the sensorimotor system and aggression
on the motor nervous system.
Here I woud like to specify the kind of dependence that we mean:
it does not involve an equation: libido-sensory nervous system or aggres-
sion-motor nervous system.
The sensory nervous system is different from the libido and has
given rise to functions other than the libido. Similarly the sole origin of
the libido is not this nervous system, but it has other sources, such as
the glandular system, for instance. We simply mean to say that the sen-
sory nervous system is a prefunction of the libido.
Analogous statements apply to the relationship we establish between
the motor system and aggression.
Freud and classical psychoanalysis usually place musculature and the
mucosa in opposition to each other. This is correct in describing the
erogenous zones but behind them are the functional systems which are
the two nervous systems.
It is immediately observable that the motor nervous system inner-
vates a part of the mesoderm (the musculature) whereas the sensory
nervous system innervates a part of the ectoderm, the mucosa.
The whole nervous system results from an invagination of the ecto-
derm which corroborates our thesis defended later; namely, that there is
an increase in sensibility every time invagination occurs.
This first speculation permits us better to understand the relation-
ship, intuitively glimpsed but not completely explained, between aggres-
sion and activity. It also enables us to relate these two realms to the
problems of intrapsychic and perhaps even synaptic tensions and to
SPECULATIONS ON THE LIBIDO THEORY 141
draw more parallels between the development of the libido and of ag-
gression. There are also economic relationships which immediately arise
when the motor system does not discharge the tensions of the sensory
system in a normal way.
The two fundamental
by
which we mean the most primitive
properties of living beings are sensibility and motility. These are revealed
even in unicellular organisms. Gradually as this sensibility develops and
becomes specialized, the nervous system which serves as their intermediary
becomes organized and hierarchically gradated. Our two groups of in-
stincts would therefore correspond to the two most primitive functions
of living organisms.
Freud glimpsed the importance of skin erotism and its role in the
sexual act. However, he did not characterize it as a stage of libidinal
development nor pay as much attention to it as to the more specialized
erogenous zones.
It is probable, nevertheless, that skin erotism plays a considerable
role in the first months of life and is useful to the development of our
corporal scheme as well as to the narcissistic investment of our libido.
If we excite the skin of a newborn child we obtain diffuse contractions
not only of the striated musculature but also of the unstriated muscula-
ture. This shows the very great sensibility existing at this age. Our custom
of covering most of the surface of the skin of newborn infants may have
a series of consequences which it would be interesting to verify. I apolo-
gize for speaking hypothetically, but I have not had time to substantiate
these hypotheses which would require experiments lasting several months
or years.
The first consequence is that it inhibits part of this sensibility, but
perhaps augments the sensibility of the face (and consequently the mus-
culature of expression) and also that of the mouth, eyes and ears.
It would therefore result, first, in diminishino^ our aofaressive tendencies
(by diminishing the sensitive surface); second, in increasing our cultural
capacities by causing primarily the child's face and hands to enter in
contact with the external world; and third, in inhibiting part of our
cutaneous sensibility.
PSEUDOPODISM AND INVAGINATION
Even before the individual's nervous system is developed there are
two forms of activity which are already indicative of the two directions
later taken by the two sexes: I shall call them pseudopodism and invagi-
nation. Let us consider the amoeba, that unicellular ors^anism which
is used for so many demonstrations. Its protoplasm stretches out in
142 RAYMOND DE SAUSSURE
pseudopods to permit it to move and it becomes invaginated in order to
surround its food and progressively absorb it. In other unicellular organ-
isms invagination will, in the first stage, be used for separation, the
primitive method of reproduction.^ In more developed creatures all in-
vagination will be invested with mucosa and its entrance will be more
sensitive than the rest of the surface of the body. Therefore the orifices
of nose, mouth, anus and vagina represent so many stages of the libido.^
When Marie Bonaparte speaks of concave erotism, I think that this
pleasure can be sought very far back. When the living being invaginates
itself on a foreign body, the latter represents either a poison which must
be rejected or an aliment which must be absorbed. This role of selector
that invagination will assume obliges it to feel, and the organisms seem to
have concentrated all their efforts on increasing the acuteness of sensi-
bility of those temporary or permanent invaginations. Have not the first
organizations of the nervous system always been formed all along that
great bucco-anal invagination which also for a long time serves as the
exit for the genital secretions?
Active invagination on a body such as takes place to a certain extent
when the nursling sucks the breast is accompanied by great pleasure. It
seems to us that in the "absorption" of the penis by the vagina the
pleasure must be similar. That means that vaginal pleasure is not as
passive as it is described as being and that, as in all invagination, active
tension exists in order to succeed in feeling as much as possible. Without
having connected it with its cellular prototype or emphasized the hyper-
sensitivity of the invaginated mucosa, Marie Bonaparte had already
written
(1, p. 197): "An analyst has justly formulated the idea of the
woman's hollow penis. The vaginal woman, when in possession of the
penis of the man within her, seems to have in her more or less uncon-
scious imagination the image of her own vagina in its hollow form, a
mould, as it were, of the coveted penis. Those women, it might correctly
be said, have a concave mental image of pleasure which is absolutely
opposed to" (or absolutely superposed uponR. de S.) "the convex
image of pleasure which is that of clitoral women as it is of men."
If the very primitive tendencies of pseudopodism and motility, on
2 Freud
(6, p. 72) defends the idea that the Amphimixis could have been the
result of a fortuitous conjugation of two protozoa. This chance conjugation could have
happened as a result of the general tendency to absorb outside objects by invagination.
A reciprocal invagination may have contributed to the conjugation.
3 It is interesting to note that all the functions which enable us to make an
adaptation at a distance and which consequently give proof of a particular sensibility
are located at the bottom of an invagination: sight, hearing, smell. The vaginal spasms
which some women experience at sight of a man toward whom they feel strongly
attracted are also a form of adaptation at a distance.
SPECULATIONS ON THE LIBIDO THEORY 143
the one hand, and of invagination and active sensibility, on the other,
are the basis of certain characteristics of male or female sexuality in the
highest mammals, it is important to establish simultaneously that these
tendencies also serve other functions which developed along parallel lines
in the course of the evolution of living beings. That is one of the reasons
why the generic character of man (male or female) is so complicated to
establish, pseudopodism and invagination being but one of the many
factors that determine it.
If it is true that one of the effects of pseudopodism is man's mascu-
linity, male hormones ought to stimulate development of the musculature
(which is actually the case) whereas female hormones stimulate the sensi-
tivity of the mucosa. It is known that women whose ovaries have been
removed not only often become frigid but also frequently lose the taste
of food and that female hormones restore both sensibilities.
It would be interesting to study whether there exists in the brain of
woman a cortical zone of sensibility more extensive than that of man,
whereas her motor zone might be smaller than man's.
We should like to know whether, in the microtexture of the proto-
plasm of unicellular organisms, there might not be found a prototype of
the sensitive nerve cells which multiply around the vacuoles whereas at
the center of the pseudopods might be found the first organization of a
motor nervous system. The function of Golgi's corpuscles as well as that
of the mitochondria is little known and we would have the right to make
such hypotheses were it only to follow Lalande's
(9, p. 24)
precept:
"Nature does not answer him who does not know what to ask her."
It would be useful to have more facts concerning the physiological
processes of the orgasm and the physiological processes of pleasure in
general.
Our speculations at least have the advantage of revealing to us
certain gaps in the realm of facts. Science needs ideas as well as facts.
As Emile Callot
(2, p. 190)
says: "Knowledge which augments by simple
addition is not science, but all science progresses by integration, and this
integration is precisely the result of our work with the facts, that is to
say, the idea."
The functions of pseudopodism and motility, on the one hand, and
those of invagination and sensibility, on the other, are not necessarily
linked together. All invagination is capable of motility, even the amoeba
can empty its vacuoles and every pseudopod is generally supplied with
greater sensitivity at its extremity: for instance the penis, the sole of the
foot and the palm of the hand.
Having taken cognizance of the speculative interest there may be
in considering pseudopodism and motility as preconditions and pre-
144 RAYMOND DE SAUSSURE
functions of masculinity, whereas invagination and sensibility might be
the preconditions and prefunctions of femininity, and having emphasized
the relativity of these facts, let us try nevertheless to apply them to the
psychoanalytic theory of female sexuality.
Applications of the Theory of Pseudopodism and Invagination
TO the Libido Theory
Masculinity and Femininity
We should like to add a few remarks to the thoughts we have de-
veloped above.
Marie Bonaparte, partly adopting the ideas of Maraiion, the Spanish
physiologist, writes: "Thus the cloacal stage remains the substratum of
the feminine and, in the history of libidinal evolution, the feminine exists
before the masculine."
In embryology invagination also precedes pseudopodism. We see, for
instance, that the morula, the first step of the embryo, is transformed by
invagination, at an early stage, into a blastula. Only later is formed the
bodystalk, the first bud of the embryo, which soon will be invaginated
again (amniotic cavity and yolk sac).
Masculinity is active sexuality, femininity is reactive sexuality. The
amoeba puts forth psevidopods in order to make its way in life while
vacuolar invaginations, on the contrary, are reactions to the contact of
foreign bodies to be absorbed. It might also be possible to homologize
those two prefunctions with the two terms frequently used in the physiol-
ogy of perception: the effector and the receptor. All feminine psychology
is based on this receiving role which Marie Bonaparte has so well de-
scribed by the term "awaiting." She writes:
For the role of everything female, from ovule to mistress, is to
await. The vagina must await the advent of the penis in the same
passive, latent, sleepy way in which the ovule awaits the spermato-
zoon. It is the eternally feminine myth of the Sleeping Beauty carried
over to its biological prototype ....
[1, p. 46].
The centrifugal orientation of aggression as of the libido consti-
tutes a male attitude; the centripetal orientation of the libido as of
aggression a female quality. Did the male or female organs precede
the orientation or did the orientation, the tendency, create both the
function and the organs? Better to leave the question in abeyance
[1, p. 45].
If we accept the idea that masculinity selected the motor drives of
the individual and his potentialities for pseudopodism, we can say that
masculinity utilized pre-existing organs and functions for its own dispo-
SPECULATIONS ON THE LIBIDO THEORY 145
sition. So also femininity rests upon a progressive selection of invagina-
tion and sensibility.
It will at once be noticed that those characteristics cannot be given
in an absolute way. The sensitivity of the mucosa is useful to the male in
the genital reflex, and the female, particularly among the mammals, is
not motionless in the act of coitus. The very fact that the woman expe-
riences a need to contract herself on the foreign object leads her to
satisfy this need and to develop techniques of seduction in which she can
reveal herself to be very active. Moreover, the extremity of the pseudo-
pods is supplied with an invagination which often has mucosa; the gland
and foreskin furnish an example. R. Loewenstein
(10)
has emphasized
the passive role of the penis in the passive phallic phase.
When one reads Winifred Duncan's
(5)
curious book on the proto-
zoon one cannot help thinking that in this lower organism there is
already a certain intent, a choice which impels it to the most useful
action.
Invagination, from the very earliest stages, is probably accompanied
by a retreat, an effacement, a passivity, which will later yield the charac-
teristics of the female sex. Pseudopodism, on the contrary, is preparatory
to the qualities of initiative, aggression, nay even the spirit of adventure.
Feminine Masochism
Freud writes
(7, pp.
148-149):
The repression of their aggressiveness which is imposed upon
women by their constitution and by society favors the development
of strong masochistic impulses, which have the effect of binding
erotically the destructive tendencies which have been turned inwards.
Masochism is then, as they say, truly feminine. But when, as so often
happens, you meet with masochism in men, what else can you do but
say that these men display obvious feminine trends of character.
I started with this quotation of Freud because it shows masochism
as a reaction to aggression. Freud later changed his views on the subject
but I think that more could be said about the idea of invagination. When
the protozoa encircle the foreign body, the protoplasmic membrane has
to filter the substances which will be absorbed and a certain sensitivity
must develop at this place. Later, every time that an invaginated mvicosa
has to feel, it will intensify this sensation to a point which might hurt.
The envelopment of the foreign body has also destructive functions, so
that this primitive act is most likely sadomasochistic in nature. When
Helene Deutsch says that masochism is a normal erotic condition of
women, we think she is right. The vagina, like the primitive vacuole,
tries to contract itself on the inserted object in an effort to intensify
146 RAYMOND DE SAUSSURE
sensation and perhaps even to destroy the male organ. At this stage there
is also an attempt to assimilate by absorbing the sperm.
The intensification and diffusion of sensation to the point of faint-
ing is certainly a kind of pleasure which is united with suffering. One of
the techniques for augmenting pleasure is to concentrate upon it by
ceasing to move, but there are also more active techniques which multiply
the spasms upon the inserted object.
In the classic psychoanalytic theory the clitoris is primarily a substi-
tute for the penis. We do not deny that this element exists but we believe
it has been exaggerated. The clitoris actually has none of the attributes
which attract the young girl to the penis.
(1)
It is not independent of the
vulva and so cannot be exhibited.
(2)
It does not urinate and does not
afford play with the jet of urine.
(3)
It does not ejaculate and so does not
give a feeling of power. In this sense clitoral erotism is essentially passive
and does not satisfy any "pseudopodic" drive except by its partial erec-
tion. The clitoris submits, it does not act; in this sense it is more maso-
chistic than sadistic.
The difficulty in making the transition between clitoral erotism and
vaginal erotism seems to me to emanate from many causes. It is a general
biological law that sensation is at first diffuse and then becomes localized.
Cloacal sensibility becomes confined to these two poles, the anus and the
penis of the boy, the anus and clitoris of the girl. The vagina forms a
kind of secondary invagination which only discovers its sensibility and
biological use when it has an object to enfold, except in the case of pre-
phallic stimulation described by Phyllis Greenacre
(8).
Marie Bonaparte
(1, p. 29)
writes that in the young girl a regression
to cloacal organization succeeds phallic organization. We do not believe
that it is really a question of regression. Rather is it a question of becom-
ing aware of the erotism of invagination. One of the methods of exciting
the clitoris has been to insert it firmly within the vulva. An extension of
the need for insertion develops from the vulva to the vagina. Many girls
masturbate by inserting an object in the vulva in such a way as to excite
the clitoris simultaneously. Through these acts woman learns her true
erotic function which is to develop acute sensation around an external
object. Marie Bonaparte
(1, p. 29)
has rightly given us this concise for-
mula: "The cloacal stage remains the substratum of the feminine."
In my opinion the girl's discovery of the penis often induces clitoral
masturbation but this remains passive erotism. It is through identification
and magic thought that the girl is phallic. In this connection Phyllis
Greenacre
(8, p. 247)
rightly uses the term "hallucinated penis." Deper-
sonalization, autistic thought and fantasies exist rather than a masculine
erotism developed around the clitoris.
SPECULATIONS ON THE LIBIDO THEORY 147
Of course nothing is absolute and we do not deny that certain clin-
ical cases evince an active investment of the clitoris. Are these cases in
the majority?
In opposition to the mouth and anus, the vagina is closed for a long
time and can only perform its functions of absorption tardily. Its sensi-
bility is inhibited for a long time through lack of use. (An exception is
made of precocious cases of vaginal masturbation.)
Marie Bonaparte
(1, p. 10)
writes:
The most remarkable accomplishment of the female organism is
precisely to know how to divert that male force of clitoral libido and
the orgasm, its supreme expression, into strictly feminine channels
by transferring the erogenous seat of the clitoris "male symbol" to
the cloacal vagina.
Is it really a question of a transfer or of the development of a new
function? Moreover, is the passive pleasure of the clitoris so masculine?
Let us not forget that many women keep both orgasms, sometimes simul-
taneously, sometimes in succession, without being therefore masculine.
Similar remarks apply when Marie Bonaparte
(1, p. 216)
writes later:
Woman's situation is quite different. Her active libidinal dan,
conveyed by the clitoris, must be destroyed before she can acquire
her own proper erotic function. It is consequently this destruction
partly caused by the biological castration complex which initiates the
girl's passive complex, the latter being the psychic cause of speci-
fically feminine sexuality.
For reasons which we have just developed we do not believe that it
is necessary that the clitoral function be abolished in order that the
vaginal function may be brought into play. It seems to us, rather, that
clitoral sensibility extends to the vulva and from there to the vagina.
The woman, being unable to possess the penis or to substitute for it the
clitoris which is incapable of real penetration, turns her aggressivity
primitively directed against the male organ, back against herself; she
imagines herself to be penetrated, first as a punishment, then as a sort of
masochistic voluptuousness.
With regard to the young girl the end of the phallic phase is due to
the fact that the boundaries of the ego and the sense of reality become
more precise. She speculates less about her brother's penis. Then she
passes through a period when her syncretism diminishes; the differences
interest her as much as the similarities. Having definitively accepted the
fact that the clitoris is not a penis and lacks the penis's most attractive
attributes, she speculates about the advantage there might be in insert-
148 RAYMOND DE SAUSSURE
ing this penis into her own body. In doing this she is only following the
female's deep drive to invaginate herself around a foreign body, Marie
Bonaparte quite rightly states that it is primarily mentally that woman
prepares for her vaginal role
(1, p.
200). But at this time the unconscious
again finds not only the earlier cloacal sensations, but also a biological
memory of all the functions of invagination which make ready the con-
cave erotism of the vagina.
Speculation is also brought to bear upon the desire to have a child by
the woman's father and to keep it in the womb, which sharpens the sensi-
bility of the vagino-uterine canal
(3, p. 58). Helene Deutsch describes this
relationship between mother and child similarly to the way in which we
described the relationship between the invaginated mucosa and the for-
eign object. This is what she writes:
Here I think we have a fundamental difference between fem-
inine and masculine. In the woman's mental life there is something
which has nothing at all to do with the mere fact of whether she has
or has not actually given birth to a child. I refer to the psychic
representatives of motherhood which are here long before the neces-
sary physiological and anatomical conditions have developed in the
girl. For the tendency of which I am speaking the attaining of the
child is the main goal of existence, and in women the exchange of
racial aim for the individual one of gratification may take place
largely at the expense of the latter. No analytical observer can deny
that in the relation of mother to childbegun in pregnancy and
continued in parturition and lactationlibidinal forces come into
play which are very closely allied to those in the relation between
man and woman.
There is no doubt that Helene Deutsch alludes here to the feelings
which develop as consequences of the relationship between the enveloped
object and the erotism of the enveloping mucosa.
To clarify my thought, I wish to add that I do not deny the existence
of penis envy but I do deny that the clitoris systematically substitutes for
the penis, and that the clitoris takes an active role and, as in the boy,
elicits fantasies of penetration.
"^-.
Methodological Observations
We are well aware of having accumulated premature hypotheses and
conclusions by using the method of analogy.
Analogy [writes Callot
(2, p. 136)]
is a procedure which, judi-
ciously applied, is an excellent instrument for research. But one must
be careful not to make of it a method of demonstration or build a
SPECULATIONS ON THE LIBIDO THEORY 149
system upon it alone, especially when one subsequently tends to con-
sider that system as an expression of reality.
This could not be better said.
We know that the principle of analogy was considerably exploited by
Aristotle and his successors until Theophrastus (372-287 b.c), the founder
of botany, opposed it. In the sixteenth century Cesalpino again made use
of it.
Psychoanalysis has taught us that certain psychophysiological be-
havior patterns repeat themselves through development or regression.
Thus the adolescent who struggles against his masturbatory habits retains
his sperm in an anal way. Recently Phyllis Greenacre
(8)
has shown that
the child often constructs his images of respiratory phenomena in a way
which is analogous to that which he observed concerning his anal func-
tions. So also it is possible to surmise that anatomo-physiological struc-
tures repeat earlier constructions. Thus the erect penis borrows from the
pseudopodic role just as the female sexual functions repeat the invagina-
tion and sensibility of the amoeba.
Analogy is a method which is useful for asking questions which
patient research will resolve. In reading Winifred Duncan's fascinating
book, The Private Life
of
the Protozoa
(5),
we had hoped to find many
answers to our interrogations, but contemporary biologists are not yet
oriented toward these problems and we should like to ask them a few
questions:
1. From what point on, in the evolution of living beings, is there
an autonomous sympathetic nervous system governing the system of
invaginations?
2. Beginning with what creatures is it possible to find hyperesthesia
accompanying invagination?
3. Is it possible to find in unicellular organisms genes which corre-
spond to the functions of invagination or pseudopodism?
4. Is there, in the genes, a filiation proceeding from pseudopodism
to the male sexual organ and the same filiation between invagination and
the female sex?
5. Is there a relationship between the number of pseudopods and
the number of invaginations?
6. Can a relationship be observed between the development of the
male organs and the motor nervous system?
7. Is it possible to obser\e a relationship between the deAelopment of
the female sexual organs and the sensory nervous system?
8. In pathology, can a woman w'ho has acquired dual sensual pleas-
150
RAYMOND DE SAUSSURE
ure, both clitoral and vaginal, lose one of these through a lesion of the
medulla?
9. Is there information available concerning clitoral and vaginal
sensual pleasure in female apes?
10, Are there differences in the nerve ends of the clitoral and vaginal
nerves?
It would be possible to add many other questions which are also war-
ranted by the hypotheses we have formulated. In summarizing we can say
that the concept of prefunctions, at the present stage of our knowledge,
raises more questions than it resolves. Perhaps some day science will be
better able to describe to us the filiation of the functions derived from
pseudopodism and invagination. Meanwhile may the serious-minded
forgive us for having given free rein to our imagination!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Bonaparte, M. De la sexuality de la femme. Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, XIII,
1949.
2. Callot, E. La Renaissance des sciences de la vie au XVle si^cle. Paris: Presses Uni-
versitaires de France, 1951.
3. Deutsch, H. The Significance of Masochism in the Mental Life of Women. Int.
J.
Psa., XI. 1930.
4. Deutsch, H. The Psychology
of
Women. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1944.
5. Duncan, W. The Private Life of
the Protozoa. New York: Ronald Press, 1950.
6. Freud, S. (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. London: Hogarth Press, 1922.
7. Freud, S. (1932) New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1933.
8. Greenacre, P. Trauma, Growth and Personality. New York: W. W. Norton, 1952.
9. Lalande, Les theories de I'induction et de Vexperimentation. Paris: Boivin, 1929.
10. Loewenstein, R. M. Phallic Passivity in Men. Int.
J.
Psa., XVI, 1935.
CLINICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
The interdependence of clinical data and theory in psy-
choanalysis is unique in the history of psychopathology.
The psychoanalytic method and psychoanalytic hypo-
theses have been leading to the discovery of an unsus-
pected wealth of new clinical data, which in turn have
enriched our understanding of human nature in general.
The following papers explore the role of instinctual
drives in various clinical manifestations: in depression,
in somatic illness, in bodily behavior during analysis,
in early developmental processes. Some chapters deal with
technical problems in dream analysis and in special types
of cases.
DEPRESSION AND AGGRESSION
A Contribution to the Theory of the Instinctual Drives
JEANNE
LAMPL-DE GROOT, M.D.
Amsterdam
1. Differences in the Psychiatric and Psychoanalytical Approach
TO THE Phenomenon "Depression"
In psychiatry, the term "depression" is often used in a diagnostic
sense. A subdivision is made into different clinical pictures such as: re-
active depression, psychogenic depression, hysterical depression, endo-
genic depression, etc.
Some authors distinguish between endogenic depression and melan-
cholia, others seem to equalize both terms, but they all agree that endo-
genic (melancholic) depressions are constitutional diseases based on an
innate predisposition.
Reactive depressions, on the other hand, are considered as reactions
to external, traumatic events in otherwise almost normal individuals
whereas the term psychogenic or neurotic depression is used for depres-
sive disturbances developing in the course of life, on the basis of child-
hood neuroses.
From a descriptive point of view these differentiations are justifiable.
Many phenomenologists offer very fine and detailed pictures of the inner
experiences of depressed patients.
As far as the psychoanalyst is concerned, however, the phenomen-
ology is the starting point for his investigation. Some patients give as
colorful and detailed a description of their depressive states as many
phenomenologists have done in their writings. The analyst, however,
wants to know far more. He is interested in the structure and the genesis
of the psychic deviations from normal; he does not only search for the
immediate causes of the outbreak of the disease, but for the deeper causes
as well. It is common knowledge that psychic disorders invariably arise
from a conjunction of constitutional and developmental factors (Freud's
153
154 JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT
complemental series). As regards the field of the depressive states, this
implies that a fundamental separation of endogenic from exogenic de-
pressions is impossible. All depressive clinical pictures contain endogenic
and exogenic factors. Naturally, it is of practical, therapeutic importance
to know at which end of the complemental series the syndrome in a given
patient must be placed.
A psychotic patient presenting a grave melancholia with delusional
ideas, having hardly any affective contact with his environment, is not
amenable to psychotherapeutic nor to analytic therapy in this stage.
Yet Abraham
(1)
has pointed out already that, not infrequently, manic
depressive patients can be treated in the interval periods, sometimes even
successfully.
It is my experience that there are cases of "endogenic" depressions,
where analysis is possible and, though the technique has to be slightly
modified, rather significant results can be obtained. The periodical
cyclothymic variations of mood mostly continue to exist, but the ampli-
tude of the oscillations has decreased so much that they sometimes are
hardly any more perceptible for the environment. Such experiences urge
us to be very careful with our indications for shock therapy in depres-
sions, the more so as the damage done by shocks to the subtle psychic
functions can be very considerable.
The so-called reactive depressions may sometimes disappear spon-
taneously or with superficial therapeutic help. Whenever it is possible to
observe them analytically, it becomes clear over and over again that they
only arise in individuals who have already gone through inconspicuous
depressive changes of mood. The latter can be tracked down regularly
into early childhood. Many of the differences between mild and grave
depressive states, so great from the phenomenological viewpoint, prove
to be based, genetically, on economical, i.e., quantitative factors. The
active psychic mechanisms are the same, however.
2. Psychoanalytic Knowledge of Depressive States
Psychoanalysis does not look upon depression as a disease but as a
symptom formation that may occur in nearly all neuroses. Fenichel speaks
of "that most frequent and also most problematic mechanism of symptom
formation, depression"
(2).
And next: "To a slight degree, depression
occurs in nearly every neurosis (at least in the form of neurotic inferiority
feelings); of high degree it is the most terrible symptom in the tormenting
psychotic state of melancholia."
We know that depressions occur in combination with hysterical
symptoms, with compulsive-obsessional symptoms, with perversions, and
DEPRESSION AND AGGRESSION 155
also with all kinds of character deformities and developmental disturb-
ances. The depressive mood is the expression of an injury to the self-
esteem, ranging from slight inferiority feelings to a total loss of self-
esteem. The latter is often attended by feelings of depersonalization; the
patient has become estranged from his surroundings or from himself
(once a patient used the expression: "I suddenly perceive I have lost
myself").
Sometimes an intense anxiety is experienced, sometimes the latter
is suppressed, but during analysis it invariably manifests itself. This
anxiety signals the great danger of the "ego loss," of the impoverishment
in narcissistic libido cathexis, which is indispensable for a normal self-
esteem.
It is also well known that self-reproaches may alternate with blaming
others. The patient feels bad or guilty, the ego is no longer loved by the
superego, as Freud puts it.
The ego tries to reconcile the superego by means of self-accusations,
self-vexations, penances, etc., for the feeling of being loved again increases
self-esteem. The latter also applies to the surroundings. In every possible
manner, the patient demands that the persons in his environment supply
love, care, sympathy, help, etc., because he feels permanently wronged.
To quote Fenichel: "These patients are love-addicts."
In other words: the patient's affective relationship with the environ-
ment as well as the relationship with his own person is not at an adult
level; he does not love objects on the basis of their own merit; he has
regressed to an infantile stage of love life.
The classic work of Abraham's referred to above moreover presents
us, in a way still unsurpassed, with a picture of the regressive libidinal
processes to be observed in depressions as well as in manic-depressive
psychoses. The author found a combination with compulsion-neurotic
phenomena in the mild forms of depression as well as in the interval of
the manic-depressive psychosis. Therefore he was forced to accept a regres-
sion toward the anal phase. In the more severe and psychotic forms, how-
ever, the process of regression was found to have proceeded to the oral
phase. Abraham holds this deeper regression responsible for the psychotic
character of the disorder. In such cases, the representative of the object is
introjected (eaten, as it were), in consequence of which the relationship
with the environment gets lost. The more complete this process, the more
deeply psychotic the patient becomes.
Abraham also assumes that such regressions may occur under the
influence of traumatic events (e.g., the loss of beloved persons, etc.), in
those persons who are predisposed by a fixation at the pregenital devel-
opmental stages. Constitutional factors may play a role here, but also the
156 JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT
so-called "primal depression" of earliest childhood, which may arise from
a lack of gratification of the primitive bodily needs as well as from a
deprivation of love.
Abraham's subdivision of the three libidinal developmental phases
(each of them was divided into two subdivisions), explains some pecu-
liarities of the ambivalent afEective attitude of the depressive patient to-
ward the environment. However, a number of questions remained open
at that time, part of which can now be answered, in connection with the
increase of our knowledge about the development of the ego and the
development of the aggressive urges. Although Abraham's clinical ma-
terial presents an abundance of aggressive and destructive reactions, both
against others and against the own person, he only speaks of anal and
oral sadism (respectively, masochism), but no attempt is made to study
the specific role of aggression.
At the present time we consider the following points as two of the
most important problems of psychoanalysis:
(a) how have we to envisage the coexistence of erotic and aggressive
instinctual manifestations; and
(b) what is the mutual influence of ego and instinctual development.
Sub (a) I should like to recall to mind that no human relationship is
free from ambivalence. In the greatest happiness of two loving partners
a certain hostility, however deeply concealed it may be, is never entirely
absent. One often gains the impression that living out a certain amount
of aggression, provided that it is used in the right form and at the right
moment, may increase the feeling of felicity. It is common knowledge that
a wrong dosing or timing for one of the partners may disturb or destroy
the entire experience of love. The very fact that erotic and aggressive feel-
ings and urges are so closely interwoven, renders our study so much more
difficult.
Sub (b) I wish to recall to mind the fact that communications on
instinctual urges only reach us via the ego. What we actually observe are
instinctual derivatives (Triebabkommlinge) in which we must recognize,
by means of analysis, which portion was original instinctual urge and
which modification this urge has gone through because of the responses
of the ego. This is also valid when the whole of this conglomerate of
instinct-ego reaction has been repressed and, in the analytic work, has
only become conscious after a resistance has been overcome. Merely un-
controlled, instinctual impulsive actions, in which the ego has been taken
by surprise, provide us with a more direct picture of the instinctual event.
This can become abundantly plain in certain psychoses. In more or less
normal persons it is observed for instance in outbreaks of rage or under
the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants. The observation of very
DEPRESSION AND AGGRESSION 157
young children who have developed only very few ego functions is par-
ticularly instructive in this respect.
I am of the opinion that the study of the depressions may shed some
light on the two problems mentioned sub (a) and (b). Since analytic
treatment of depressive patients can only take place ^vith those patients
in whom part of the ego functions has remained intact or, at least, is
functioning to such an extent as to permit of co-operation of analyst and
patient, we always have to contend with the difficulties mentioned above.
Therefore we must be very cautious in our attempts at distinguishing
the shares of the erotic drives, the aggressive drives and the ego func-
tions in the psychic event. We are always dealing with a total personality.
Observations of young children, such as were made by Anna Freud in
the Hampstead Nurseries and such as are taking place in many American
institutions provide us with valuable, complementary data and correc-
tions.
3. The Role of Aggression and of Ego DevelopiMent in Depressions
I shall present a few examples from the abundance and variety of the
material gained from a deep personality analysis, in order to illustrate
the facets that are of significance to these two problems. The gloomy
mood of a depressive patient, which he often accounts for by declaring
himself to be so inferior, so bad, so stupid, so incompetent, figures promi-
nently among his complaints.
We already described that these complaints express an inner psychic
conflict: the ego feels itself to be so bad when confronted with a strict
superego which acts condemning and punishing. But there is more to it:
in every patient with strong inferiority feelings, analysis one day reveals
the existence of superiority feelings, fantasies of grandeur and omnipo-
tence.
The patient cannot love another human being on his own merit, be-
cause he is unable to give. He only wants the other to be his. In other
words, the object is, to the patient, a complement, an extension of his
own person. He can only love the other in the form of possessing him.
It is a craving for power, an enlargement of his own power through that
of another one's. In childhood, this wish for power is concerned with the
parents who, in the child's fantasy, are omnipotent. In a certain phase
of infantile development the feeling of omnipotence arises from an intro-
jection of the images of omnipotent parents. The fantasies of omnipo-
tence are well-known in the obsessive-compulsive neurotic who performs
"magic" in words, thoughts and compulsive acts. In magical thinking and
acting we recognize ego functions at a primitive level. However, these
158 JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT
processes are, at the same time, manifestations of a twofold instinctual
event. The need for love is satisfied through the union with the object,
but at the same time the process serves as a means of increasing power.
The existence of the object has become insignificant at the very moment
the craving for power predominates.
In some cases of depressions the fantasy of devouring the object
entirely (introjecting it) and destroying it gets the upper hand. Freud
described this phenomenon in grave melancholias at an early date al-
ready.
We are used to linking the feelings of omnipotence which have to
compensate for the experience of being powerless, so intolerable to many
sensitive children, to the anal and oral phases of libidinal development.
It is one of the earliest analytic discoveries that the young child's emo-
tional attachment to the mother in the periods of breast feeding and
bowel training is accompanied by a somatic sexual gratification and con-
sequently by a discharge of libidinal tension. It did not become clear
until much later, however, that the aggressive instinctual energy also may
find an outlet in the struggle for power, in processes of conquering the
object, wanting to possess it, keeping or destroying it.
4. The Interrelationship of Erotic and Aggressive Drives
Freud's original conception reads that, normally, we are dealing
with a blending, a fusion of erotic and aggressive drives, while in patho-
logic cases a defusion can take place. This applies to the aggression
turned against the outer world as well as to the aggression directed
against the own person.
When observing an uncontrolled outbreak of anger or a temper
tantrum in a child, we are struck by the enormous quantity of aggression
that can be discharged. It is quite probable, to be sure, that such an event
is accompanied by some discharge of libidinal energy. Freud pointed out,
at an early date, that every important somatic process, such as, e.g., pain,
may act as a sexual stimulus. However, in the outbursts of impotent rage,
the discharge of aggression is clearly predominating, in contradistinction
to, for instance, of what happens with a lust murderer, in whom sexual
and aggressive (destructive) drives are discharged with nearly equal in-
tensity. The latter also applies to the sadistic (and masochistic) masturba-
tion fantasies.
A patient suffering from depressive states, feelings of derealization
and inferiority, once depicted the great difference in subjective experi-
ence. In the course of some years' analysis, an abundance of sadomaso-
chistic fantasies had been worked through. The early infantile material
DEPRESSION AND AGGRESSION 159
next emerged in acting out. Desperation and impotent rage manifested
themselves in crying, yelling, trampling, kicking and beating on the
couch. In the subsequent discussions the patient was greatly impressed
by the intensity of his destructive urge. When I tried to find a connection
with his sadistic fantasies, in which he used to humiliate and beat his
objects, he replied: "That's something entirely different; with those fan-
tasies, long drawn out in bed at night, I had erections and sexual grati-
fication. What I experienced now was merely: 'wanting to smash, to
bite, to destroy.'
"
I gained the impression that the patient was right.
After all, the patient has not really destroyed something, neither my-
self, nor the furniture, nor some property of mine. What had put this de-
structive need in check prior to its realization?
In the analytic situation, the patient's ego has temporarily aban-
doned part of its functions, such as, for instance, self-control, but it was
still functioning to such an extent as to preserve part of the reality sense
and to leave part of the control of motility intact owing to which actual
destruction was given up. It goes without saying that this was due to a
conjunction of various motives, e.g., under the influence of a moral
agency, of guilt feelings and especially of anxiety.
We are interested, however, in the question as to what happened
here in the instinctual sphere.
(a) Has the discharge of the aggressive energy been simply inter-
rupted?
(b) Has a fusion with libido, modifying the destructive urge, come
into being?
(c) Did something happen to the aggressive instinctual drive itself,
i.e., has it become an aim-inhibited urge, has a sublimation taken place?
Inhibition of the discharge has undoubtedly taken place, as is shown
by direct observation. But surely more things have happened: as far as
the process of fusion with libido and of sublimation are concerned, the
subsequent course of the analysis will shed some light on that. We might
briefly describe this course as follows:
After an aggressive outburst, such as the one described above, we
see the patient regaining, more or less gradually, a positive attitude to-
ward the analyst. At first, this often occurs under the pressure of an
enormous fear of retaliation on the part of the analyst, a fear of losing
his love and appreciation. In this period of the analysis it is the analyst's,
often difficult, task to deprive the patient by a great deal of quietly await-
ing patience, understanding and invariable kindness, of the possibility to
rationalize his anxiety by an actual danger situation.
He learns to understand that the danger was real in his early child-
hood but has become superannuated now and, under various circum-
160 JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT
Stances, such as the analytic situation, does no longer exist in reality.
When the patient has repeatedly gained this experience we see after new
aggressive explosions the positive, libidinal attitude coming into existence
spontaneously, automatically as it were.
The more successfully the inner, instinctual conflict is solved, the
anxiety over the own aggressive and destructive urge is overcome, the
sooner the patient will be able to abandon his self-vexations, his raging
against himself, i.e., his depressive symptoms.
I wish to add here that, naturally, this healing process can be accom-
plished only in part of the cases. As I expounded above, it is self-evident
that one cannot embark upon an analysis in a grave melancholia, where
the representation of the object has been entirely, or almost entirely,
introjected, consequently, where the patient has turned nearly all aggres-
sion and destruction against his own person and where there hardly exists
an affective contact with the environment. In an interval, or with grave
depressions on a more or less obvious endogenic basis, it is sometimes
possible to realize the process described above, although the latter may
take many months and runs a monotonous course.
As I pointed out in the introduction, the result is often limited to a
reduction of the amplitude of the oscillations, which, however, may rep-
resent a very important improvement from the therapeutic viewpoint.
A practical difficulty may be sought in the fact thatas is generally
knownthe self-destructive tendency may become so strong, in grave de-
pressions, as to entail the danger of suicide. It is often very difficult, then,
to decide whether the patient must be hospitalized or whether one must
venture to continue the analysis. If the libidinal attachment to the analyst
is strong enough to carry the patient over all aggressive and self-destruc-
tive tendencies, one may book a success in return for one's pains. But
there are cases in which the analyst's courage, tact, and patience are of
no avail.
I revert to the cases in which the healing process described does
materialize. In addition to the aggressive discharges experienced by the
patient as destructive urge, other forms of aggression can be observed in
some cases. They are described by the patient as a wish to control, to get
hold of, to gain possession of. In fantasies the object (the analyst) is be-
littled and humiliated, it is true, but it is not destroyed. These presenta-
tions and experiences, too, are clearly distinguished by some patients,
from their sadistic and masturbatory fantasies.
The events taking place here during the analytic process remind us
in many respects of the observations of babies and toddlers by various
authors, e.g., Anna Freud in the Hampstead Nurseries.
Anna Freud
(3)
describes that the baby's first emotional contact
DEPRESSION AND AGGRESSION 161
presents the same characteristic quality of aggjessive insatiable greediness
he displays toward food. And afterward: "In the oral stage the infant
destroys what he appropriates (sucks the object dry, tries to take every-
thing into himself)." She depicts the toddlers' "peculiarly clinging, pos-
sessive, tormenting, exhausting kind of love which they have for their
mothers," etc. And, "We understand that on these pregenital stages it is
not hate but aggressive love which threatens to destroy its object." The
author describes, elsewhere
(4),
a form of "autoaggression" (head-knock-
ing) as "the aggressive equivalent of autoerotism" and later on "as one
of the rare representatives of pure destructive expression, where fusion of
the drives is incomplete or after defusion has taken place."
Thus, in order to explain the phenomenon of "aggressive love," Anna
Freud uses Sigm. Freud's theory of a fusion or mixture of the erotic with
the aggressive drives. It is certainly distinctly observable that the infant,
sucking, biting, laughing and whining, is developing an erotic attachment
to his mother's breast (and afterward to his mother). Tearing up and
smashing toys, attacks on pet animals are, at the same time, the child's
expressions of love just as the struggle for power and the toddler's wish
to domineer are in the anal phase.
But it remains an open question whether this coexistence of aggres-
sion and erotic play is a real fusion of the two drives and whether, e.g.,
the substitution of a striving for power, or an urge to dominate, is to be
solely attributed to an admixture with libido.
Another possibility urges itself upon us. Prior to going further into
this subject, I shall briefly discuss the libidinal development. We readily
follow Freud's conception that the sexual drives may have different aims.
However, we must clearly keep in mind what we must understand by this
concept. The general description given by Freud in "Instincts and Their
Vicissitudes"
(5)
runs as follows:
The aim of an instinct is in every instance satisfaction, which can
only be obtained by abolishing the condition of stimulation in the
source of the instinct. But although this remains invariably the final
goal of every instinct, there may yet be different ways leading to the
same goal, so that an instinct may be found to have various nearer
or intermediate aims, capable of combination or interchange
[p. 65].
The aim which each [of the sexual instincts] strives to attain is
"organ-pleasure"; only when the synthesis is complete do they enter
the service of the function of reproduction, becoming thereby gen-
erally recognizable as sexual instincts. At their first appearance they
support themselves upon the instincts of self-preservation
[pp.
68-69].
We can fully endorse the first sentence of this description. The aim
of a drive is gratification, relief of tension, or, in other words: the per-
162 JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT
sonality aims at a discharge of tension (energy). The question remains,
however, whether this discharge takes place at a body zone functioning
as a specific source for a given instinct. We would rather assume that
instinctual discharge takes place at different zones of the body, having
an exceptional significance in certain developmental phases in relation
to the body's needs, but not being necessarily the "source" of the instinc-
tual energy.
These zones vary according to the individual's maturation as well as
his development under the influence of the environment (i.e., the educa-
tor's attitude and demands).
We no longer speak, at present, of the instinct of self-preservation
but we regard the striving for self-preservation as an ego function. The
first, most elementary need is the intake of food. The first libidinal dis-
charge takes place at the mouth (the oral zone). Later on, it is the proc-
esses of digestion and excretion that are attended by sexual gratification
(anal phase). Ultimately, in adult sexual life, an ejaculation of sperma,
accompanied by an orgasm, provides a complete discharge of tension.
The "intermediary aims" are gratifications at the various erotogenous
zones (apart from mouth, anus and genital, the skin, the respiratory
organs, and other parts of the body may also act as such). Thus we speak
of organ-pleasure, which is probably comparable with the more or less
diffuse gratification the young child provides himself in masturbation and
is undoubtedly different from the orgasm attending the ejaculation of the
sexually mature male.
We shall now revert to our considerations of the aggressive drives.
As far as the latter are concerned, we also assume that the ultimate aim
is gratification, discharge
of
tension. Temper tantrums, etc., demonstrate
this ad oculos. It does not seem unlikely, however, that the aggressive
drives are not so rigid as Freud originally believed them to be, but that
they, too, can reach the ultimate aim (gratification) by "various ways."
A destructive or aggressive act can be directed against animate as well
as against inanimate objects. The discharge of aggressive energy observ-
able in an outburst of rage, might be compared with the sexual discharge
in a complete orgasm.^ It is my impression that "gaining possession of,"
conquering, mastering, getting hold of an object should be regarded as
variegated ways of discharge providing some kind of gratification. The
object (animate or inanimate) is not incorporated (i.e., destroyed), then,
but the object's survival is tolerated and sometimes guaranteed. Gaining
possession of the object serves the increase of the subject's own power.
The problem of the aims of aggression has already been touched
upon by Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein in
(6).
These authors write:
1 Vide also Brunswick
(9).
DEPRESSION AND AGGRESSION 163
What should we assume the aims of aggression to be? It has
been said that they consist in total destruction of objects, animate or
inanimate and that all attempts to be "satisfied with less," with battle
with or domination of the object, or with its disappearance imply
restrictions of the original aims. It seems that at the present stage in
the development of psychoanalytic hypotheses the question as to the
specific aims of the aggressive drive cannot be answered; nor is a
definite answer essential
[p.
18].
In my opinion, this formulation of the question is not the right one.
As I said before: the aim
of
a drive is gratification, discharge. (The
authors cited above assume, just as I do, that "aggressive discharge per se
may be experienced as pleasurable" and that the pleasure does not neces-
sarily arise from "narcissistic components.") The ways by which discharge
can be efjected may
differ, but no one is "superior" or "inferior" to
another. A given form of discharge is not a "restriction" of another form,
either. Nor does an aim inhibition of the drive take place. The different
modes of discharge are manifestations of the instinctual development.
The various ways of discharge can be used concurrently, e.g., an urge to
gain possession of the object can be accompanied by a destructive urge
and conversely. A specific mode can also be abandoned and replaced by
another one. This is, e.g., clearly to be observed in a child as a reaction
to the object's attitude. If, for instance, the mother resists the child's
striving for power, if the child feels disappointed or hurt in some fashion
or other, a tendency toward revenge will arise and provoke the destruc-
tive impulse.
-
The question as to whether the quality and intensity are the same
in the different forms of gratification should probably be answered in the
negative. But in this respect there is no fundamental difference from the
possibilities for sexual gratification.
The sexual gratification obtained at the oral or anal zones, or expe-
rienced by the little boy playing with his genital, certainly differs quan-
titatively, and probably also as regards intensity, from the orgastic
experience attendant upon the ejaculation of the adult male, as I pointed
out before.
We revert once more to the problem of the relation of libidinal and
aggressive energy to certain zones
of
the body. Observation, especially of
children, has taught that the sequence of oral, anal and phallic develop-
mental stages of the libido is not a constant one. For instance, genital
stimulation takes place in the infant (onanism of infancy), i.e., long
before the phallic phase. Oral and anal phases overlap. The anal stage in
2 I feel justified in concluding from a personal communication of Hartmann's that
the author, personally, is inclined to accept a diversity of aims (perhaps he also means
a diversity of modes of discharge?) of the aggressive drives.
164 JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT
particular is greatly subject to the influence of educational measures, etc.,
as regards its duration, form and significance. In this connection I refer
to a communication by Anna Freud in "Observations on Child Develop-
ment"
(4),
viz., that she was in a position to observe an extremely
intense penis envy in one-and-a-half to two-year-old girls, following a
particularly intimate bodily contact with little boys, such as permanently
occurs in nurseries.
According to many authors, the relation of the aggressive drives with
certain parts of the body would be such that these organs are not places
of stimulation, but serve as instruments of discharge of tension. Remark-
ably enough, one of the first organs to be used for the discharge of aggres-
sion is the mouth, the very organ where sexual stimulation and discharge
takes places. I do not venture to discard the possibility that the stimula-
tion of the mouth (lips and jaws) caused by sucking the breast might also
be able to serve as a stimulant for the aggression, which is discharged
then in "sucking out," biting, "swallowing up," and crying.
When the musculature develops further, it is especially the muscles of
arm and hand, in addition to the muscles of mouth and jaws, that become
instruments for the discharge of aggression.
It is likewise an open question whether muscular tension per se
might function as a stimulus for aggression (often in the form of an urge
to gain possession of the object.) The so-called Funktionslust, i.e., the
immense satisfaction a child may display when successfully utilizing
muscular functions he recently learned (e.g., walking) , certainly is an
expression of a saturated "possessive instinct" (power over his own body),
apart from the sexual gratification it may represent.
Although differences in the development of libido and aggression
cannot be discarded, we come to the conclusion that they are likely to be
smaller than they appeared at first.
5. Aggression, Ego Development and Object Attachments
We shall now turn to the following questions: Under which condi-
tions do the aggressive drives search for discharge in the one inode or in
the other, by this or by that way?
It has become clear from the above that this depends upon the stage
of maturation of the individual and of developmental factors, under the
influence of the environment. The development of aggression partly fol-
lows the libidinal development, partly the growth of the body, partly the
psychic and emotional maturation, and it is especially correlated with
the maturation of the ego.
In the process of growing the ego gains mastery over motility, i.e..
DEPRESSION AND AGGRESSION 165
the use of the muscular apparatus which is the instrument for the dis-
charge of aggression. In the oral developmental stage the object is cap-
tured and destroyed by "eating." It stands to reason that this does not
imply, as is sometimes said, that the infant sucks mother's breast "wish-
ing" or "intending" to destroy it. As long as the baby cannot distinguish
a world outside his own self he cannot have a "wish" regarding such a
world. He does not suck out of "love" nor out of "hate" or because of
his "wish to destroy." Sucking is a reflex movement stimulated by hunger.
But this activity apparently offers, at the same time, a possibility for
discharge of libidinal and aggressive instinctual tensions; therefore suck-
ing is continued even if the stimulus of hunger is no longer operating.
A need, a wish for gaining possession of the object (the mother's
breast) cannot arise until the child can distinguish an outside world
from his own self, i.e., after a certain degree of ego-development.
Only when the object is recognized as being a prerequisite for the
gratification of needs, does a libidinal attachment come into being. And
only when the child has learned that destruction of an object means loss
of what is indispensable (or beloved) , will he replace the destructive
urge by a striving to gain possession of the object, sparing its existence.
It is easy to observe this phenomenon in a toddler who smashes a
favorite toy with a blissful satisfaction, who is surprised, next, and un-
happy on perceiving that it does not function any more, is broken or
gone, and who ultimately learns to "possess" the beloved doll or animal
while leaving it intact.
We mentioned above that disappointments and injuries may pro-
voke again destructive impulses, e.g., in the form of a wish for revenge.
In other words, part of the development of ego-functions, e.g., the capa-
city to distinguish between outside and inside, acquiring reality sense
by means of experience, but also the magic form of thinking (the basis
for fantasies of omnipotence and grandeur) are preconditions for being
able to replace a certain mode of discharge of aggressive energy by an-
other one.
A second process, the development of a psychic object attachment
also plays an important role. The object being shown at first as some-
thing indispensable for the gratification of bodily needs becomes essen-
tial as a source of love later on. The feeling of being loved is a gratifica-
tion of the self-esteem which is so easily hurt in the child who feels
utterly powerless when confronted with demands of the environment as
well as in regard to his own wishes for power. The tragical conflict lies
in the fact that being hurt or disappointed is apt to mobilize a destructive
urge against the very person whom the cliild cannot do without as a love
object. It is self-evident that this person's attitude (at first the mother)
166
JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT
may exert a great influence on the intensity of this conflict. Since, how-
ever, in consequence of tlie peculiar complexity of man, his protracted
immaturity and dependence, a life without any frustration or feeling of
impotence is impossible, the conflict is fundamentally unavoidable.
Thus we see alterations taking place in the forms of discharge of
aggression actuated by maturation and ego development on the one hand
and consecutive upon the libidinal object attachment on the other hand.
We shall now revert to our earlier question. Could this not be simply
explained by the theory of the fusion of erotic with aggressive drives?
Clinical observation leads me to regard this event, at least partly, as a
developmental process of the aggression which runs its course along with
the libidinal development rather than as a fusion of aggression and
libido.
I return to our depressive patients and the distinction, described
already, in their experiencing sadomasochistic urges or fantasies and the
aggressive or destructive bursts of anger. The striking point is that a
clear-cut difference between the therapeutic possibilities in regard to in-
fluencing the two phenomena can be observed. In sadistic and masochistic
acts and fantasies a fusion of libido and aggression is unmistakable.
Hurting, humiliating or destroying in perversions or masturbatory fan-
tasies is gratification and vice versa.
We all know how difficult it is therapeutically to affect the sadistic
and masochistic perversions, as well as the morally masochistic attitude
toward life. There are depressions, however, that are comparatively easy
to cure and they are the very depressive states where there is less sadism
involved but where one is chiefly concerned with aggressive (destructive)
urges and with possessive tendencies. I have the impression that an inti-
mate fusion with libido under special circumstances can fixate the aggres-
sive drives in such a way as to render them invariable, whereas remark-
ably enough, an aggressive urge, operating more or less independently
of the libido can be liberated from repression and eventually integrated
into the personality. The nature of those special circumstances should
be further explored.
The question as to how integration may take place leads us to the
problem of sublimation, which we have avoided so far and on which I
will be brief.
Sublimation was described by Freud as an instinctual vicissitude of
the libido. More than once I have expressed the view, and I am in agree-
ment with many other authors, Hartmann, Kris and Lowenstein, that
aggression can be likewise sublimated.
^
Possessive urges, besides sexual curiosity, provide an important con-
3 Vide my papers
(7, 8) .
DEPRESSION AND AGGRESSION 167
tribution to exploring the world, acquiring knowledge, controlling nature,
creating social achievements, etc. Such activities may become constructive
for personality and fellow beings. Destructive tendencies, too, can be
used in a constructive form; I refer to the well-known example of the
surgeon who cuts up in order to cure; of the decomposition of substances
in the laboratories which can be used productively in chemistry and
engineering; of analyzing man and social conditions, etc., etc.
In the individual himself, part of the sublimated aggression, to-
gether with sublimated (or desexualized) libido is used for the struc-
tural differentiation of the psychic apparatus.
Hartmann prefers to speak of neutralized energy in this connection.
Does it make sense to distinguish between neutralized and sublimated
instinctual energy? Both expressions refer to aim-inhibited energy. How-
ever, to the term "sublimation" we attach the idea that the energy is
drained off in actions valued as being "socially higher." Thus, in dis-
tinguishing between both terms, we introduce the element of e\'aluation.
Experience has taught us how defective sublimations frequently are, both
in the individual and in the community.
We now return to the therapeutic possibilities with depressive pa-
tients. Apart from the observation that it is difficult to affect libidinally
fixated aggressive tendencies, we have to consider the greater or lesser
capacity for sublimation as playing a most important role in the thera-
peutic procedure, in addition to a number of other ego functions, which
I shall not discuss now.
Finally, however, I wish to stress the fact that the form of discharge
of aggression predominantly present in a certain patient may be of
importance. If the mode of destruction of the object is prevailing, i.e.,
if the instinctual regression to a very early stage has taken place; if, to
cite Abraham's words, the "primal depression" is localized in the earliest
part of childhood and caused or enhanced by traumatic events such as,
for instance, mother's death, or a particular lack of love on the mother's
part, while moreover the patient's possibility of sublimation is not very
greata grave melancholia is more apt to occur than in a patient in
whom other possibilities for discharge of aggression have already come
into force, in whom no malign fixation has arisen for libido fusion and
in whom there are ampler and more extensive possibilities for sublima-
tion.
I feel justified, however, in mentioning one other experience. Though
it is sometimes possible to cure a patient afflicted with a grave depression,
it is definitely not possible to do so when one does not succeed in uncov-
ering and bringing to consciousness the various ways used by his aggres-
sive urges in the course of his development. For only this process, if
168 JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT
successful, can offer the opportunity of effecting an afterdevelopment,
of sublimating and of integrating those urges into the whole of his
personality.
And only if this is done, can a harmonious interplay of sexuality,
aggression and ego achievements become possible. Such harmony seems
to be a precondition for a constructive attitude toward environment and
society as a whole.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Abraham, K. A Short Study of the Development of the Libido. In Selected Papers
on Psycho-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press, 1927.
2. Brunswick, R. M. The Pre-oedipal Phase of the Libido Development. Psa. Qiiart.,
IX, 1940.
3. Fenichel, O. The Psychoanalytic Theory
of
Neurosis. New York: W. W. Norton,
1945.
4. Freud, A. Aggression in Relation to Emotional Development: Normal and Patho-
logical. In The Psychoanalytic Study
of
the Child, III/IV. Ne\v York: International
Universities Press, 1949.
5. Freud, A. Observations on Child Development. Ibid., VI, 1951.
6. Freud, S. (1915) Instincts and Their Vicissitudes. In Coll. Papers, IV. London:
Hogarth Press, 1925.
7. Hartmann, H., Kris, ., and Loewenstein, R. M. Notes on the Theory of Aggression.
In The Psychoanalytic Study
of
the Child, III/IV. New York: International Uni-
versities Press, 1949.
8. Lampl-de Groot,
J.
Development of the Ego and Superego. Int.
J.
Psa., XXVIII,
1947.
9. Lampl-de Groot,
J.
Neurotics, Delinquents and Ideal-Formation. In Searchlights on
Delinquency, ed. K. R. Eissler. New York: International Universities Press, 1949.
NOTES ON PROBLEMS OF MOTOR RESTRAINT
DURING ILLNESS
DOROTHY BURLINGHAM
London
According to some of our theoretical assumptions expounded recently
in a paper by H. Hartmann, E. Kris and R. Loewenstein
(2)
the muscular
apparatus is more essential for the discharge of aggressive than of libid-
inal tension. In spite of this particularly close tie between aggression
and motility, it seems plausible that also on the libidinal side an essential
though less spectacular flow of discharge takes place constantly by way
of muscular movement, creating a similarly close link between libidinal
tensions and motility. Instances where muscular movement is particularly
prominent or particularly inhibited provide us with the opportunity to
test as well as to illustrate this theory.
Muscular Movement as General Discharge of Instlnctual Energy
The most impressive example of muscular movement used for the
discharge of instinctual energy is provided by the infant in his second
year, especially in the short period after independent movement has
been established and before verbal expression is achieved. During this
time when speech is not yet available for discharge, a variety of emotions,
libidinal as well as aggressive, are expressed in movements. Impatience, an-
ger, rage, as well as pleasurable anticipation, bursts of affection, jealousy,
feelings of frustrations each find their outlet in specific movements of
the head, the arms, hands, legs, in short the whole body.^ (See for instance
the characteristic bouncing up and down or beating movements with the
hands for pleasurable anticipation; kicking with the feet in rage.) Mus-
cular activities such as walking, crawling, running, jumping, climbing,
continually discharge the tensions created by the violent and urgent im-
pulses which dominate this stage. In frustration, and under the impact
of conflicting emotions, muscular activity becomes diffuse, spread over
1 See E. Kris
(3)
on facial expression as a reduction of body movement.
169
170 DOROTHY BURLINGHAM
the whole body, undirected and chaotic, i.e., it reaches its climax in the
so-called temper tantrum of the child.
On the other hand, in this period of life the infant indulges in more
motor activity than his ego can control and employ sensibly. Therefore
he lays himself open to continual thwarting of his movements by the
environment, for the sake of his own safety as well as for the safeguarding
of surrounding objects. Such bodily restraint, which blocks his main
avenue of expression, leaves large amounts of tension undischarged.
Infants are known to react to this state in two ways. Where restraint is
sudden and unexpected, they answer with a paroxysm of aggression with
increased attempts at motor discharge; where restraint is a chronic feature
in the child's life, i.e., where infants are never given sufficient scope for
moving, it is an observed fact that the restraint of muscular movement
has an adverse, inhibiting effect on the emotions which are prevented
from finding motor expression with the result that these children appear
duller and more apathetic (other circumstances remaining equal).
Child Patients under Motor Restraint
The same close connection between the mode and freedom of dis-
charge and the fate of the affects waiting for discharge seems to be ap-
parent in older children whose muscular movements are restrained for-
cibly for reasons of orthopedic treatment. T. Bergmann
(1)
in her paper
"Observations of Children's Reactions to Motor Restraint" describes
patients from two to sixteen years of age in the course of orthopedic
treatment as having two stages in their reaction to the enforced restric-
tions. In the first stage the children are immobilized in their plaster casts.
They are then found to be docile and apparently content, the abnor-
mality of their situation being expressed mainly by regressions to more
infantile modes of satisfactions and behavior. In the second stage the
children are relieved of their casts and permitted to begin moving about.
But this partial freedom of movement does not act as a relief for tensions.
On the contrary, the children are then especially difficult to handle, they
are overactive, hard to keep within bounds, easily fly into rages and
throw temper tantrums.
The same pattern of behavior is reported for example of a latency
child, a boy who came to analysis because of aggressive outbursts against
his parents and strangers and of destructiveness toward objects after he
had been in a plaster cast for many months. The mother reported that
during the period of enforced immobility the child had been gentle,
considerate and especially easy to handle, but that he had broken out in
wild uncontrolled behavior after the cast had been removed.
MOTOR RESTRAINT DURING ILLNESS 171
David M. Levy
(4)
and others have reported similar cases of enforced
restrictions with the same behavior patterns as aftereffect.
So far no explanation of this incongruity of behavior has been stated
explicitly, although the interpretation suggests itself easily that in the
second, uncontrolled period these children work off the emotions,
anxieties and frustrations which were dammed up in them during the
immobilized state. Still, this does not answer the question why other
modes of outlets such as speech were not used during immobilization, nor
why the children showed no manifest signs of rising tension in this phase.
This is where the analogy with infant behavior may be helpful. It seems
possible that the full restraint of mobility to which the child has to sub-
mit develops within his ego into a restraint of affect, i.e., a massive
repression of emotion which reduces manifest tension. This control of
emotion cannot be kept up except during complete immobilization. The
partial lifting of motor restrictions leads to a break-through of the re-
pressed feelings, makes tensions unbearable so that outlets in muscular
movement, aggressive speech and general uncontrolled behavior have to
be found.
Mechanical versus Voluntary Restraint
Another type of motor restraint can be studied in patients with heart
disease or tuberculosis on whom no mechanical restrictions are imposed
but who, on medical advice, have to immobilize themselves more or less
in bed in order to be cured. This means that their ego has to supply the
restraining action which, in the case of the aforementioned patients was
supplied by the apparatus (plaster cast) or by the environment. The
normal impulse to move, and to discharge tensions through the muscula-
ture, is opposed in their case by another impulse acting in the opposite
direction (the wish to be safe, to improve, to be cured) represented in the
mind by the fear of the consequences of movement. This creates a state
similar to that known from the dreams of inhibited movement, where a
wish to perform a certain movement is opposed by the counterwish not
to do so, a conflict which results in the dream in a feeling of complete
paralysis. Similar sensations of paralysis are reported by adult patients
under the conditions of complete bed rest.
In an article on tuberculosis, called "A Patient's Point of View" in
the Nursing Times of 22nd March 1952 there were included the following
remarks written by a patient under the heading, "Working off Emotion":
Quite often, in my own case, I found that while I was following
some quiet occupation such as reading, I would suddenly have a
feeling of being "bottled up" inside. Only by violent exercise such as
kicking and stretching was I able to overcome this feeling, which I
172
DOROTHY BURLINGHAM
can only describe as having a mental origin and a physical eflfect. It
was like being bound hand and foot and wanting desperately to
move. The phenomenon continued throughout the illness and was
present not only when lying still in bed, but on occasions when I was
writing or doing occupational therapy. This, I think, proves that lack
of exercise and lying still in bed are not the only factors that con-
tribute to this feeling. I believe this to have been a kind of stagnant
emotion which some light exercise would have relieved.
Another tuberculosis patient was greatly disturbed by states of bodily
sensations after several months of bed rest. She lay quietly in bed appar-
ently content and at peace when she would be overcome by unbearable
feelings of tension. She felt as if her arms and legs were actually engaged
in violent and uncontrollable muscular motions of beating, striking and
kicking. The sensations though felt as violent activity had, of course, no
reducing effect on the existing tension. These sensations went on for
hours and continued off and on for several days. They could be described
best as an imaginary temper tantrum. However, there were no accom-
panying emotions of annoyance, of anger and of rage toward anyone or
anything, merely a concentration of attention on the bodily feelings. No
thought content which could be brought to consciousness, except attempts
at interpretation such as: "This must mean that I am impatient, or tired
of lying in bed, or of being ill." These states recurred several times during
this period of illness and again to a much lesser degree several years later
during a relapse of the same disease after several months of complete rest.
That a busy and active person when forced to give up all normal
occupations, interests and physical activities becomes disturbed and irri-
tated, does not need explanation. The situation warrants emotional out-
breaks. What is astonishing with these two patients is that although they
are aware of tension and of the need to express violent emotions by
means of muscular activity, they remain in ignorance of the nature of
their emotions. The first patient merely feels "bottled up" inside, "bound
hand and foot" and "unable to move."^ In his interpretation of the state
he hints at a "mental origin" for his bodily feelings and expresses the
view that lack of exercise and lying in bed cannot be the only factors to
create so much stagnant emotion; but he never refers explicitly to the
general complex of annoyance, frustration, anxiety, fear of death, etc.,
which seem to be the inevitabe reactions to an illness of this kind.
The second patient does not answer to the identical feelings of ten-
sion by action, but by muscular sensations of movement only, the imagi-
nary movements increasing in violence since no release of tension is
achieved. In her case too none of the accompanying affects become con-
2 As in the inhibition dreams mentioned before.
MOTOR RESTRAINT DURING ILLNESS 173
scious. The strength of the counterimpulse (not to move, not to endanger
herself) can only be concluded from its inhibitory effect which reduces
outlet in motility to a mere imaginary activity.
The reactions of both patients may be compared with those of the
children in plaster casts, their changes of mood corresponding to the
presence or lifting of the mechanical restraint. So long as they achieve
immobility, they inhibit their emotions together with their actions; any
reappearing wishes to move coincide with returning waves of chaotic and
usually unrecognized emotions.
Regressions under Motor Restraint
Automatic Movements
Certain types of tics in animals as for instance the head-shaking of
chicks or the weavinsf of horses are considered a result of confinement to
O
limited quarters. With infants, the well-known rhythmical movements
such as rocking and head-knocking, which have a place among the auto-
erotic and autoaggressive activities of early life, are known to increase
where the children are confined too much to their prams or cribs. Ac-
cording to David M. Levy
(4),
tics are often found in hyperactive chil-
dren as a means to ward off forbidden motor impulses. This last observa-
tion would be valid for the state of the patient under the voluntary
restriction of bed rest who equally has to ward off his dangerous, and
therefore forbidden motor impulses. It would be worth while to observe
such patients for the emergence of "nondangerous" ticlike automatic
movements of those parts of the body which escape restriction, such as
the drumming of tunes, biting or pulling of lips or hair, etc. Compulsive
activities of this nature which are usually dismissed as expressions of mere
"boredom" may well be qualitatively reduced and displaced substitutes
for the normal ways of motor discharge of affect.
Passive Experiences
Another substitute for active muscular movement is provided by
the passive handling of the patient's body by others. This attention given
to the body by the mother or nurse gives rise to a variety of sensations,
exciting, pleasurable as well as painful ones. These pleasures revive the
experiences between mother and child in the earliest stages of life; while
they are regressively enjoyed by some child patients, they are violently
opposed by others. Adult patients under motor restriction, handled by
the nurse, equally find their childhood memories of pleasurable handling,
feeding, etc., revived. As adjusted personalities with well-stabilized de-
fense mechanisms they have less to fear from diis reactivation of former
174 DOROTHY BURLINGHAM
passive pleasures. Only where unconscious passive trends are kept under
precarious and labile ego control, the patients will feel threatened by
whatever bodily care is given and instead of accepting it as a substitute
pleasure and relief will develop violent, paranoid reactions against the
nursing personnel.
Vicarious Pleasure in the Movement
of
Others
Another substitute for the pleasure and relief offered by muscular
activity of the individual's own body is the pleasure in observing the
movement of others. Before they reach the stage of independent move-
ment, infants often spend their waking hours in watching and contem-
plating anything that moves, whether it is the changing facial expression
of the mother, the moving of a shadow, a leaf that falls or waves in a
breeze, that is, whatever passes in their line of vision. Anything that
catches the attention of the infant by its motion is a source of attraction
and produces a delighted concentration. This pleasure is not lost after
independent movement has been acquired. The child who has learned to
walk and will move about constantly in his second year of life, is equally
attracted by the toys which move, particularly wheels, carts, etc. In the
years to follow he is fascinated by the mechanical toys with independent
motion such as trains, engines, toy cars or their counterparts in the adult
world. (For the boy the mysterious independent movement of the mechan-
ical toy probably symbolizes the mysterious independent action of his
own genital.) From then onward interest in the watching of moving
objects outside seems to keep pace with the pleasure in muscular
movement.
In adult patients under voluntary restraint, the enjoyment of watching
moving objects reacquires many of the characteristics of the baby stage.
Following with the eyes the nurse who is occupied in the room, watching
the moving of a curtain, the swinging of a lamp, or of a spider web, the
swaying of trees outside the window, the watching of birds, or of fishes
in an aquarium, can be a pleasurable preoccupation over many hours and
days. For many patients this is the only welcome and relieving antidote
to the constant preoccupation and concentration with their own immobil-
ized and ill body.
There is, probably, no illness where revolt against (voluntary) motor
restraint plays a greater part or leads to more disastrous consequences
than tuberculosis. The conflicts between the fantastic, unrealistic wishes
and plans for activity that crop up in the patients' mind and their decision
to obey doctor's orders and lie still remind one of the continual struggles
of the two-year-old against all measures which restrict his freedom. As
MOTOR RESTRAINT DURING ILLNESS 175
the illness develops, and with it the fear of ever-increasing or renewed
restrictions, the state of mind of the patient resembles increasingly the
blind paroxysm of the toddler under the impact of frustration. It would
be interesting to know whether the so-called "elation" of the tuberculosis
patient, his dangerous periods of activity which sometimes prove fatal,
do not represent a similarly "blind" struggle, a denial of the worsening
disease and its requirements. The "last fling" of the tuberculosis patient
would then represent the immediate and impatient motor wish fulfill-
ment regardless of consequences which is well known to us as appropriate
to the instinctually stormy second year of life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bergmann, T. Observation of Children's Reaction to Motor Restraint. Men. Child,
IV, 1945.
Hartmann, H., Kris, E., and Loewenstein, R. M. Notes on the Theory of Aggression.
In The Psychoanalytic Study
of
the Child, III/IV. New York: International Univer-
sities Press, 1949.
Kris, E. Laughter as an Expressive Process: Contributions to the Psychoanalysis of
Expressive Behavior. In Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art. New York: Interna-
tional Universities Press, 1952.
Levy, D. M. On the Problem of Movement Restraint, Tics, Stereotyped Movements,
Hyperactivity. Am.
J.
Orthopsychiat., XIV, 1944.
PENIS AWE AND ITS RELATION TO PENIS ENVY
PHYLLIS GREENACRE,
M.D.i
New York
Envy is defined as the "chagrin or discontent at the excellence or
good fortune of another," or as "resentful begrudging." Freud
(1)
de-
scribed penis envy early (1904 in the Three Contributions to the Theory
of
Sex) as the feeling aroused in the little girl at awareness of her lack
of an organ comparable to the penis, this envy resulting often in the
wish that she were or might become a boy. The importance of penis envy
in the development of the girl's attitude toward her own body and its
functions is too well accepted in psychoanalytic investigations to need
much further discussion.
What will be presented here is concerned rather with a state of mind
and emotion which can better be described as penis awe than as penis
envy. Awe has been defined
(8)
as "solemn and reverential wonder, tinged
with latent fear, inspired by what is sublime and majestic in nature" or as
"dread mingled with veneration, as of the Divine Being." Envy and awe
differ greatly in the quality of the aggression aroused. In envy there is
more or less covetousness, a focused disappointment and resentment at
not having. In awe there is intense admiration, a feeling of strangeness,
with little sense of the possibility of possession, and sometimes an element
of fear. Certainly very strong aggressive feelings are aroused, but are
suspended and diffuse, and may be converted presently into worshipful
submission verging on the religious, or into states of considerable ex-
citement.
It seems likely that penis awe and penis en\j exist in varying rela-
tions to each other in very many girls and that the particular nature of
this interrelation is of considerable import in special attitudes of the
woman toward herself and toward her mate. This may not have been
sufficiently stressed in our psychoanalytic investigations. I shall attempt to
outline it even somewhat schematically.
1 From the New York Hospital and the Department of Psychiatry, Cornell Univer-
sity Medical College, New York.
176
PENIS AWE AND PENIS ENVY 177
Penis envy seems to appear in two distinct stages: envy by the girl
of the boy's possession of the special (one might say from the visual angle
of the little girl), the extra organ, and envy of its special functional
capacities, notably as an organ of urination and of masturbation.
In the older literature penis envy is regarded as being particularly
strong between the ages of three and five, with perhaps the peak of envy
during the phallic phase when the girl child is especially aware of the
relative inadequacy of her clitoral miniature compared to the greater
importance of the phallus. The observations of many later writers indi-
cate that the time of the first appearance of penis envy varies markedly
according to the special experiences and other developmental problems
of the individual child. It is undoubtedly true that it appears in a
definite form before the age of three, quite regularly I would say between
the ages of two and three. Awareness of the anatomical differences be-
tween the sexes may be spoken of clearly during the first half of the third
year, that is, soon after the second birthday, depending largely upon
opportunities for observation. That the appreciation of the difEerence is
not fully established is obvious from the behavior of little girls of this
age who are in contact with older brothers or other older boys, and who
quite commonly make hopeful attempts to urinate like the older child,
and seem bewildered at their own inability to accomplish this. The envy
of simple possession is also evident in the frequent theories of these little
ones that there hasn't been enough to go around and so they have been
made short, as it were. It has been my own observation that such aware-
ness of difference becomes painful and the subject of en\7, especially if
the child has already recently been subject to other narcissistic blows and
deprivations (such as illness, separation from the mother, loss of a play-
mate) and that a sense of being at a disadvantage with envy of the richer
boy emerges then in a sitviation of special vulnerability. We see then such
restitutive fantasies as the belief that a penis will grow later, or during
the night. It seems that these theories gain special reality fortification
from the concurrent experience of growing teeth and seeing vaguely the
replacement of fingernails. By three, however, the emphasis of envy of
special urinary functioning has usually become evident, dependent only
on the girl's experience of observing a contemporary boy.
Sometimes as early as this, but more commonly definitely with the
phallic phase and the sharp rise in clitoral sensitivity, penis envy gets a
considerable new increment. This is the penis envy which was most
written about in the older literature, the resentment of the girl concern-
ing the relative inadequacy of her organ as a source of erotic pleasure
compared with that of the boy. This is, I believe, frequently a second
peak of the experience of envy.
178 PHYLLIS GREENACRE
But now what of penis awe? This occurs as the result of the observa-
tion by the small girl of the penis of an adult man, either in its flaccid
state, or more especially in a state of erection or of becoming erect. The
effect depends on several factors: the child's developmental stage, the
frequency of the experience, and especially the relation to the man who
has been observed. It develops quite regularly according to my observa-
tion, under the following conditions:
(1)
Observation of the organ of the
father, especially in "progressive" households in which the parents are
wont frequently to disrobe or to go nude before the children. Under
these circumstances there may be a casual and episodic or an almost con-
stant observation of the organs of both sexes, by children of both sexes.
(2)
Primal scene experiences. These do not invariably entail observation
of the phallus, this depending on the location of the young observer.
The frequency of observation of the erected phallus is, however, appreci-
able. The whole scene is likely to be one of excitement, the child's
situation as a spectator has a special quality in that he or she is generally
not included in the party and may be definitely in fear of punishment for
intrusion. The position of passive frightened participation increases the
drama and the fascination; especially as the parents are seen further as
unnatural and strange.
(3)
Experiences of young children with exhibition-
ists. Here again is the sense of strong drama by passive participation in
a startling and impressive event, but without the general excitement of
the primal scene. Quite frequently the exhibitionist has been a stranger,
and sometimes there has been a definite preliminary seduction. Again a
state of fascination, sometimes with fear, ensues.
(4)
The chance observa-
tion of men or older boys urinating or masturbating. In both of these
situations the effect of the experience depends much upon the develop-
ment of the child, and the situation in which the event has occurred, as
well as the relation to the person observed, and the suddenness or fre-
quency of the experience.
First as to the timing of any experience of seeing the adult penis by
the girl child, in terms of her stage of development: the full effect of
the observation can be felt by the girl only after there is some sense of
separateness of the self, some definite appreciation of the own body
that is certainly not before the last half of the second year, when walking
and talking have become fairly well established, and a sense of space and
of time is developing. Under these circumstances, there is an appreciation
of difference in the body configuration and of enormous difference in
size. I believe that this may be somewhat sensed as early as two years,
but awareness becomes increasingly sharpened up to four and five years
of age when the increase in genital feelings of the little girl is a factor
increasing the focusing of interest and comparison. The situation is some-
PENIS AWE AND PENIS ENVY 179
what complicated by the presence of pubic hair in adults, which may
somewhat blur the clearest vision. It is extremely common for the girl
child of two to three years to observe the relaxed penis of the man as a
large stool, particularly if she is in a period of toilet interest focused on
feces, and control of bowel toilet functions is insecure or recently at-
tained. The darkness of the surrounding pubic hair then contributes to
this illusion. If, however, the little girl sees the adult penis when the man
is urinating, or especially when the organ is in a state of tumescence or
of becoming tumescent, then the effect is incomparably more dramatic
and the penis may be perceived as something of extraordinary fascination
and impressive awesomeness. Penis envy is not then established so much
as a state of penis awe, similar to and sometimes leading over to a condi-
tion of phallic fascination or worship which leaves a definite imprint on
the later sex life. Under some circumstances the experience is associated
with sensations of visual shock and headache which reappear in quite
a typical fashion whenever the memory is reactivated in later life or in
the course of analysis. In an earlier paper of my own, I described this
especial traumatic stimulation producing an effect of color or of light
which reappears in dreams and which may be related to the color shock
in the Rorschach test
(5).
In such cases of observation of the impressive erected adult penis,
the experience is not followed so much by a tendency to form an illusory
penis until and unless the girl child presently sees that a contemporary
boy possesses an organ like but not so grand as the man's. But where this
has not occurred or does not follow soon, the girl is impressed with the
difference and may feel herself not so much castrated as fatefully and
hopelessly different. There may not be so much guilt engendered as that
special type of fear compounded with admiration which is the essence of
awe, together with extreme feelings of inadequacy. All this is most
marked between three and five yearsbut the effect may be observed
quite definitely at much earlier stages also.
If, however, as not infrequently happens, the observation of the
adult penis occurs at a time or is soon followed by a time when there is
some awareness of coitus, especially when the child has already some
sense of sexual identity, the girl child may develop an active terror of
the organ on account of its size and the fear that to be penetrated by such
an organ would be to be split or torn apart by it. The illusory anticipa-
tory sensations arising from this are given special reality by comparison
or fusion with rectal sensations in children who have suffered severe
constipation or been given enemas. Such an extreme fear readily colors
and/or may be converted into a complementary fear of pregnancy and
of the baby having to tear its way out or be torn out. Under exactly these
180 PHYLLIS GREENACRE
conditions, the feeling of difference interplays with the fear of traumatic
birth and often produces theories of injuries before or at birth in the
child herself, naturally reinforced by any family accounts of a disturbed
pregnancy or labor.
For some years I have watched the interrelation of penis awe and
penis envy in my patients, and studied the genetic importance of this
interrelation in the psychosexual development of women. I have come to
the conclusion that the crucial effect is the timing, especially as to which
occurs first.
If penis awe is established early and decisively precedes the aware-
ness of the contemporary penis, then the awe remains the dominant and
demanding attitude toward the opposite sex, but may vary from a reli-
gious oversubmissiveness to the man, in which the selected partner must
seem to be especially godlike, to an attitude of terror and need for frank
masochistic humiliation. These attitudes may naturally be directed to the
total figure of the man, be reflected onto his character attributes, or may
be clearly focused upon the genital. The chosen man must be a spectac-
ularly big man in some respectsor present this illusionfor the rela-
tionship to be sustained at all. Penis envy of the more ordinary sort is
never felt, but is turned rather into contempt, disappointment or an
attitude of humor or ridicule toward the man who represents the brother
or the contemporarythe man who is an equal or only somewhat supe-
rior in his attainments. Naturally this pattern means also a great exag-
geration of the oedipal attachment with special complications if the
original submissive awe has been developed in relation to some man
other than the father and has been at variance with other paternal at-
tributes. In many such cases the aggression aroused may remain diffuse
and attempts at mastery result in attitudes of excessive spiritualization or
in demands for extraordinarily high ideals in the self or in the mate.
This seems particularly likely to be true if the traumatic situation pro-
ducing penis awe occurs or reoccurs at the phallic phase, when a sense
of time has become established. It is a period anyway of beginning ideal
formation. These illusory ideals or ambitions may conceivably take the
place of what otherwise would have been the basis for illusory penis
formation.
In some of these patients there is a strong body-phallus identification,
which occurs especially where the exciting experience of seeing the
erected adult penis has occurred rather early and under markedly arous-
ing circumstances, as with repeated primal scenes, or in a child with
rather poor early ego organization. There may then be not only a taking
in of the organ with the eyesa kind of visual/oral incorporationbut
a generalized skin, muscle and total body excitement as well, which so
PENIS AWE AND PENIS ENVY 181
floods the body that the resuking aggressive excitement, akhough in-
tense, is held in check, even to a numbing extent, somewhat comparable
to Lot's wife who turned to stone, on looking at the burning city. These
children are spell bound rather than predatory. Even repetitions of the
experience at a later time may not weaken the effect. The experience
transcends reality and this too contributes to the religious feeling and
to attempts at denial. Particularly if the organ is seen becoming tumes-
cent, as in situations where three- to four-year old girl children see a
grown man masturbate, the impression is of magic or of something super-
natural.2 Later on in life, the attitude of awe may be maintained as a
successful defense against the sadomasochistic content of the fantasy and
permit the woman to achieve satisfactory intercourse with a peculiarly
sharp quality of ecstasy.
If, however, the little girl is first initiated to the anatomical differ-
ences between the sexes by seeing the organs of a little boy and penis
envy is established before there is any experience of seeing the adult
penis, direct competitiveness with castrative desires may develop, along
the routes with which we are familiar, and become enormously reinforced
by later awareness of the adult penis. Especially is this true if there has
already been an attempt to meet the painfully aggressive competition
by the formation of an illusory penis. The focused aggression then remains
strong, and the girl is more likely to become a woman who is competitive
with all men in a particularly intense way.
It may be desirable here to consider some clinical illustrations. For
this purpose, dreams have been selected, presenting the statement of
awe in three different cases, and are presented in the setting of brief
clinical summaries. These patients had certain elements in the life
situation in common, in that all were only daughters, and in all the
fathers were men of conspicuous attainment in the community. All three
of these fathers had somewhat overly strong reverse oedipal attachments
to their daughters; this was clearly evident in that two of these fathers
remarried when their daughters were in adolescence and married young
women only slightly older than the daughters; the third varied this pat-
tern to the extent that he fell in love with a nineteen-year-old girl just
as his own daughter reached puberty, and went into a state of anxious
depression for which he sought treatment. Two of the patients had no
brothers, while the third was the only girl and fourth child among five
siblings. As might be anticipated, this last girl was the one who developed
the very strong penis envy early, whereas in the other two penis awe
seemed to be the earlier state. The term azve was derived from the
patients' own accounts, as will be noted in the statement of the dreams,
2 Cf. Tausk
(7)
.
182 PHYLLIS GREENACRE
This term was used spontaneously more frequently than any other in
the telling of the dreams. Another interesting characteristic was that the
dreams which conveyed the awe tended to be overly long and full, in a
way which suggested to me that the form of the dream was in itself
determined by the emotion which was being re-experienced. Such dreams
occurred recurrently during the analysis, the progress of which could
be somewhat gauged by the gradual shift in the dream content.
Case I. This patient was a woman who came into treatment because
of severe symptoms of premenstrual distress, consisting of sore throat, in-
somnia, hyperacuity of all the senses (vision, hearing and touch especially)
and vague depression. These occurred during the week before the men-
struation and were generally relieved when the period was well estab-
lished. Coming to this country from Germany at the outbreak of the war,
she had had a considerable struggle to establish herself, but then did
reasonably well. She had married before she left Germany and had
divorced her husband some months before she entered treatment. At the
time of commencing treatment, her former husband had married a
woman with whom the patient had had a close but rather peculiar friend-
ship. My patient was small, slight, and of feminine build. She had been
called "a little gypsy" in her childhood and now in her young woman-
hood there was a trace of this still in her appearance. She described her
friend on the other hand as tall, a columnar woman with scant breasts,
and with a deep throaty voice, exceedingly well dressed and cosmetically
perfect. My patient admired this woman's daring and flair rather than
really liked her. The patient's former husband was a brilliant but very
sober man whom she at first overestimated greatly, and when disillusion
set in, especially when he turned away from her when she was ill, she
withdrew from him in a gradual but decisive and unconsciously cruel
way. At the time of the beginning of her treatment she was involved in
two attachments, one to an older man whom she described, probably
correctly, as a genius. He was a picturesque and magical sort of man,
whom she saw only when he made periodic visits to the city where she
lived. Then she gave up work and other commitments and was com-
pletely at his beck and call. At other times he neglected her, for which
she bore him no grudge. The other man with whom she had a sustained
gentler relationship was a young artist, undoubtedly bisexual. It seemed
from the material of the analysis that the husband, the impressive woman
friend, and the Olympian lover were different versions of her glamorous
father; whereas the prototype of the artist was a boy cousin with whom
she had played somewhat in her childhood. Her husband and her father
had the same profession.
This patient had an extreme fear of childbirth. She had been preg-
nant three times but each time had had an abortion rationalized as neces-
sary because of the uncertainty of financial and living conditions. Besides
being the only child of a Jewish-Gentile marriage, she had heard much
of the dangers she had inflicted on her mother in getting herself born,
as the mother had moderately advanced tuberculosis, from which she
died when the child was eight. The father had remarried the following
PENIS AWE AND PENIS ENVY 183
year and had lost this wife from an acute illness after one year. During
her prepuberty and early adolescence she had been in an especially close
oedipal relationship to her father, and when, at fifteen, he married again
a girl four years older than herself there had been marked disturbances
of adolescent overactivity and a tendency to wildness.
She had early been cared for by her father with great intimacy, since
he attempted to be both father and mother to her; he had frequently
taken her into his bed as well as allowing free access to the bathroom
when he was there. This was the more impressive since she was always
kept at a distance by her mother out of fear of infection. She felt she
had been as familiar with her father's body as with her own from her
earliest memory. She had no brothers and sisters but played frequently
with two boy cousins of about her age, and was tenderly devoted to dogs.
At the time of the following dream she was in one of her states of
insomnia, with a terrible irritability to noise, to coughs on the street and
to spitting. She could not be reassured by her artist companion, who
generally held her like a child when she became upset. The dream was as
follows:
I was the leader in a family group arrived in a foreign town and
looking for a place to stay. I was the oldest of the group of children
and I led them through the woods, like a German woods. We were
nude or barefoot. The children were interchangeable with dogs.
Sometimes there were dogs and children. We encountered red squir-
rels or chipmunks. We would stop and look at them and try to pet
them. As we stood in a garden, one of the children made a sound.
I saw a huge bull following along, after some scent of his own. We
were afraid he would attack us. I said we must walk quietly so he
would not hear us; and I gestured to the others reassuringly. When
we got through a fence the danger was past and it became an adven-
ture. We ran to the house where the adults were assembled; and I
told the story in a dramatic way. I became aware that it was inap-
propriate that we were undressed. Some of the children would stay
there and some including me go elsewhere. I wanted to stay with
one of the boys. I felt I did not belong there. One man, who was
extremely large was sitting in a big arm chair. He was middle aged
and had a long beard. He was nude and I briefly noticed his genital.
I felt extremely pleased with myself and in an uplifted, even exalted
state.
The patient associated the trip into a foreign country with her various
travels, especially in going away to school, and being separated from her
father; then with a period at four when she and her mother had been in
the Swiss Alps. When her father came, wearing a beard, "but not so long
a one as the man in the dream," she had been frightened and did not at
first recognize him. (This together with the associated hypersensitivity
to sound and vision, probably constituted a revival of a primal scene
expectation with watchful wakefulness after the father's return.) The
bull had been particularly impressive, but now she recalled that as she
told of the story in the dream it took on the character of a story book
184 PHYLLIS GREENACRE
or a history-book presentation, something unreal, Hke drawings in a pre-
historic cave. On the other hand, there had been a trip in the Italian
Alps in her twenties with a comfortable boy friend, who had proved a
poor protector when they had come upon a bull; and again a time in
adolsecence when she had seen a cow brought out for a bull to mount
and she had watched this with fascinated tenacity and could hardly get
herself away. The children and animal play was associated with sex play
in a progressive school which she had attended and where one of the
boys had suggested their going off in the woods together; it associated
further with her boy cousins; and the wish to pet the little red squirrels
with a wish to touch the little boy's genitals. Then at the end of the
hour, the patient added: "The light shone from behind the bull and gave
me the sense of the silhouette and the bright light, like someone stand-
ing in front of a window. There was almost a religious quality." This is
the typical halo or aura effect which I have described elsewhere
(5).
In this single hour then we see the interplay of fright and fascina-
tion with the adult genital, which had been seen before in prehistoric
times; the question as to its reality or was it only a representation or a
fantasy; and the comforted but inspired feeling of reassurance in seeing
it on the godlike man with the beardall this in contrast to the gentle
little boys with their darting chipmunk attributes. The need to verify, to
repeat, and to look again is apparent not only in the dream, but in the
associations to it.
Case II. This patient came into analysis in her early twenties,
because she was involved in a hopeless love affair, was fascinated by the
man to the point of thraldom, but could see no future for the relation-
ship, which grew tempestuous and disturbing. The young man was ex-
tremely handsome, physically well built, bright and conceited. She had
interrupted her college work, gone on the stage where she attained a
precocious but unhappy success, and oscillated between being provocative
of and submissive to her lover's overbearing attitudes, and then escaping
from them to her own exhibitionistic triumphs. She was the only child
in a family where the father was a philosopher, the grandfather a religious
leader who became a great educator and the great uncle was a Supreme
Court judge. She felt that she was a very special person, both inferior
and superior
quite different from any one else. One saw at once from
her frail and elfin physique and the specially vivid character of her dress
that she was a story-book character; and fairly early in the analysis it
became clear that she had at certain periods regarded herself as a child of
no sex. Her fantasy was that she had not only injured her mother by
being born, but had herself been robbed of a penis at or before birth.
In her unconscious fantasies she thought both parents had penises and
that she alone was the different one.
The household was one of those more than progressive ones, in
which there was a really conscientious effort to behave as though unre-
pressed, to explain and demonstrate everything quite clearly to the little
girl and to include her in all activities possible. Both parents, actually
PENIS AWE AND PENIS ENVY 185
rather prudish people at heart, went around nude and the child was
given free run of the bathroom and of their bedroom. After she graduated
from sleeping in their room she was wont to get into bed with them on
Sunday mornings, when all three lolled together in a kind of communal
enjoyment of each other's bodies. On the other hand, she was put in a
nursery school even when she was scarcely two, and developed an intense
fear of separation from the parents. At home she was quite familiar with
her father's genitals and seemed early to confuse breasts and penis quite
satisfactorily. She was much impressed with the father's urinary prowess
and for some time repressed awareness of the difEerence in the mother's
functioning. In nursery school where she continued until five, she devel-
oped a theory that certain girls, especially the aggressive ones, had hidden
penises. Although there was indication of some early clitoral masturba-
tion, she seemed never to have fully associated the clitoris with the penis,
and the masturbation of choice was by pressing the thighs and rubbing
the feet against each other.
Although she gave indication of having seen her father's organ in
a state of tumescence on more than one occasion, still the greatest im-
pression seemed to be in the matter of urination. After nursery school
she attended a large private school of which her grandfather was the
founder. He was a very impressive man, a great orator, a rigid idealist
with stern principles. He was definitely the figure of God and her father
was the son of God. Then there was an uncle, a weak man, probably
homosexual, and undoubtedly genitally exhibitionistic. These three men,
grandfather, father and uncle, were the big-penis men, beside whom
little boys were trivia. From six to ten she spent much time at the sea-
shore.
She repeatedly said that in spite of the physical intimacy with her
father she could never attain a feeling of closeness. "There is too much
awe in my feeling for him" and again "The thing that frightens me is
my exaggerated and extreme love for him." Later on, she opened an
hour with the remark "I think the feeling of awe was connected with
the sea as a child." Subsequently she gave the following dream:
I was at the seashore with my parents, staying in a little cottage
near the road, with three couples who were friends of my parents.
Mother and I were going toward the cottage when we saw tremendous
waves coming in. Father had been at the beach. The waves were
towering and awe-inspiring. Then I was leaving with a group of
girls walking along the road looking for an engagement ring that be-
longed to Kitty who was one of them. I looked down at a rock and
saw a lot of diamonds. I did not want anyone else to get them; and
I picked up a few, then the ring. I tried the ring on and did not want
to give it back to Kitty. When I showed it to her, however, she said
it wasn't her ring. I said I would wear it until I got my own ring.
It was a little chipped. The stone was set unusually high and pro-
truded greatly which might account for the chipping.
I was in camp with adults and children, some were patients with
whom my mother does occupational therapy. A number of people
were on cots. I went to the bathroom. My mother came in and said
186 PHYLLIS GREENACRE
she might be pregnant; that she had bladder trouble and pregnancy
might be dangerous. I reassured her then I went back to find an
empty cot, folded the sheet over and crawled in comfortably.
Either you or I was going away. I wanted to go, but felt I
should continue with the analysis. I felt there was a lot to be done,
but that the main problems were my father and the baby, and maybe
the rest would fall into line. Still, I was not altogether convinced.
At the time of this dream the patient had long since broken with the
original lover and after several rather slight attachments, mostly with
older men, had for some time had a relationship with a man slightly
older with whom she felt happy and comfortable, but could never get
over the feeling that he was not suitable as he was not sufficiently dis-
tinguished.
In association with the dream she thought of her doctor aunt (com-
bined with the mother as therapist) and of an illness which she shared
with her niece. She associated illness with the dangers of being caught
in (masturbatory) fantasies which might deprive her of the pleasure
of reality. She thought of stones as being miniatures of the boulders on
which she played at the seashore. These were fantasy spots of childhood.
At eight she had a dream of a great big perfect rock on the shore and
this had so much reality that she had insisted on going to look for it.
Kitty, the daughter of a distinguished jurist, was now engaged to a man
whom people considered "just right" for her, a taciturn, but very very
special man of great distinction and promise. Even his taciturnity seemed
glamorous. She recalled sitting on the beach with her mother who talked
to her carefully about sex while her father and a philosophical colleague
strolled nude nearby. Then suddenly she added, "Of course the beach
meant looking at men and women naked. My father went out swimming
in deep rough water and mother and I dicln't. I really think the very
high waves represent my father's urination." "Abby and Bobby (two little
girls) in nursery school used to put penises on their dolls with safety pins
and pieces of cloth; but somehow I never could. I think the sea has
something to do with birth."
The patient's aggression showed chiefly at this time in a kind of rock-
like stubbornness. At one period there was unmovable insistence that
some doctor should be able to tell her the exact structural basis of certain
chronic allergic responses; that without this knowledge about the expecta-
tions of her body, she could not possibly plan her life. She was not gen-
erally an overtly jealous or envious girl, but very insistent that she was
both a special person and must have a very special and very outstanding
husband.
Case III. This patient was the one of the three who showed frank,
severe penis envy and castrative wishes. She was a girl with four brothers,
three of whom were older than she. With one brother, only fourteen
months older, she seemed to have made a basic primary identification,
regarding him clearly as a kind of twin. Since he had been a sickly pre-
mature baby who grew up to be a sensitive and chronically anxious boy
with many symptoms, she had been able to surpass him readily. Her father
PENIS AWE AND PENIS ENVY 187
was a man of God, a popular clergyman who became a liberal and rather
dramatic political speaker. The mother on the other hand was a pleasant
but unremarkable woman, chiefly concerned with domestic duties and
the care of her children. The father had soon neglected her and carried
on a series of love affairs with younger women, who were clearly sub-
stitutes for his precociously brilliant little daughter.
This child's greatest reaction was to the genitals of her brothers,
with whom she played, bathed, swam and generally competed. She had
undoubtedly formed an illusory penis, partly shifted to her head, as
the organ of great prowess
(5).
She was not without some indication of
penis awe, but it seemed secondary to the basic envy, and grew not only
from her estimate of her father's genital, of which she was quite aware in
snuggling up to him in bed, but the reaction had been sharply and
traumatically augmented by some spying incidents at four to five, when
she had watched a colored gardener masturbating in a garden tool shed.
This had had a real shock effect upon her, and was concealed behind a
screen memory of a fiery cross being burned on the lawn by the Klu Klux
Klan. Whenever the memory of this spying activity would almost break
through the patient would develop sudden sharp pain in the head and
remark, "Well, there goes my head."
In her early adolescence she had been fearful that she might be
neglected by the boys and not show off well before the other girls. With
characteristic charm and care, she had set out to attach the very blonde
boy who was the school's handsome athlete, who had then convoyed her
safely through the perils of high school social life. In college, she seemed
to outgrow him, but married him during her third year, under the im-
petus of the war and as a personal protection against homosexual tempta-
tions in a girls' college. Her father refused to recognize the marriage, and
within the next two years persuaded his wife to divorce him so that he
might himself marry a young singer just the age of his daughter.
At the time this young woman entered analysis, she and her hus-
band were living with her mother. She treated the husband distinctly
as a little brother and secretly scorned him for his compliance. She her-
self was an unusually bright and productive young woman and held a
responsible job. On the other hand, she dressed like Alice in Wonderland,
with hair hanging waist length, low-heeled slippers, and little girl dresses,
everything to emphasize her precocity. She referred to herself at certain
times as a sprite.
The following dream occurred after she had been many months in
analysis and had already gained some insight. It occurred after a day
when she had complained that "her head acted up" (feelings of painful
stimulation) when she listened to a friend talk of a secret extramarital
infatuation.
I had taken a statue of a knight in armor from a museum to study.
I went to take it back. A little boy was reading an inscription on the
pedestal where the knight belonged. I was glad to get it back there
just at the right time for the boy to see it. But the statue was floppy
and would not stand up properly. The little boy tried to help me.
Next I was a spy, with many people around. The leader of the peo-
188 PHYLLIS GREENACRE
pie was alert for spies, he had a photographic memory and was ex-
amining people for being spies by asking them about various cities.
He asked me about Chicago, and what I thought of it, stockyards and
all. A woman was fending off blows, by speaking against violence.
As she turned to go I noticed a scar on her face. I thought of this
mark of violence and of her aversion to violence.
From the associations it appeared that this dream presented rather defin-
itely the masculine (knight and boy) part of herself and her husband,
and the feminine aspects, scarred and castrated.
She began her associations by saying that her husband had a cold
and she had lost her temper with him because he wanted to be taken
care of, but that he had replied that she could always surpass him and
get a much worse cold in two or three days. "I think I get some feeling
how dare he want me to wait on him!" "I am not proud of it, but
that really is my feeling."
She thought the
floppy
knight was a sign of sickness, a man who was
sick and flopped. Armor was a name in her father's family and was her
youngest brother's name also. Her father was never sick much, except
certain impairment of vision in one eye, and the children had played
tricks by putting butter where he would not see it and so might put
his elbow in it. In her little girlhood she had dreamed of a Knight who
would take care of her; then she had met
Jim,
her husband, and he had
temporarily inherited knighthood. (Now she felt he was letting her down,
being sick and not strong sexually, but rather like a little boy.) At fifteen
she had once walked in the woods with
Jim
and come upon two men
fencing. They looked like Nazis and one had a duelling scar on his face.
She herself had fenced in college and had done quite well at it.
When her friend had been talkino; about her infatuation, and the
husband had walked in, she had been surprised at how adroitly and
naturally she had changed the subject without changing her voice. She
was able to deceive easily. She thought the photographic memory referred
to a memory which she did not want to recover. Her friend with the in-
fatuation had a photographic memory; but "I don't mind, I have ideas."
About Chicago, she said this was near the town where she had lived
until six (the place of the as yet unrevealed experience with the colored
gardener). She had been amused to think that Chicago, the hog-butchering
center of the world, should be selling horse meat. Perhaps Chicago repre-
sented a concealment of an experience in the nearby town where she
lived.
All through these associations her intense competitiveness with both
men and women was apparenther assurance that she could generally
"go each one one better." After I had interpreted certain aspects of this
to her, she suddenly remembered more of the dream.
In the museum, there were a number of knights in the room. Their
cod pieces stuck out too much, so I just took them off. They were
too suggestive.
In the first two patients the dreams indicate the diffusion of aggres-
sion, the wonderment, religious feeling, and question of reality so typical
PENIS AWE AND PENIS ENVY 189
of the awe-inducing experience; in contrast to this is the third, where
there is a rather hard practicaHty and sharply focused, competitive aggres-
sion and castrative wishes.
It is interesting that Freud, in the article on "The Taboo of Virgin-
ity"
(3)
touches somewhat on these same problems. He quotes Krafft-Ebing
who in 1892 used the expression "sexual thraldom" to describe a state
in which one person may develop an unusually high degree of dependence
on another even to the total loss of independent will and the heaviest
sacrifices of personal interest. Krafft-Ebing saw this as due to an "unusual
development of love and of weakness of character" in one partner with
unbounded egoism in the other. Krafft-Ebing was describing chiefly a
pathological state, but remarked that some degree of sexual thraldom
was necessary if any permanent marriage relationship was to be main-
tained. In his study of the primitive rites of defloration preceding mar-
riage, Freud pointed out that the defloration was done often by an older
man who then performed a ritualistic intercourse, and that this was essen-
tially a loosening of the oedipal tie and a partial separation of the hus-
band from the father; but that further the preliminary defloration might
save the young husband from the nuptial hostility due to the bride's
penis envy. He concludes his article with the remark "It is interesting
now to find that psychoanalysts come across women in whom the two
contrary attitudesthraldom and enmityboth come to expression and
remain in close association."
But are there any comparable effects in the case of boys? We do not
usually speak of penis envy in boys, yet the narcissistic interest of the boy
in the size of his organ is certainly related to the penis envy in the girl.
In the article already referred to on "Vision, Headache and the Halo"
(5),
I indicated that boys and girls both suffered shock if they experienced
actual observation of the birth of a child, and that this too aroused a
state of diffuse aggression even greater in the boy than in the girl, because
of the difference in the primary body image, i.e., the resulting biologically
determined differences in the castration complex. In any event, too, this
occurs only in states of general excitement, and the child of either sex
suffers from the overstimulation of such an experience to an extent which
is much greater than the most thrilling primal scene experience. This is
related to the situation of the development of the myth of the Medusa's
head. It is interesting that in his article on this subject Freud
(4)
calls
special attention to the turning-to-stone sensation on looking at the
Medusa's head, actually the bleeding female genital.
It is my intention now, ho^\ever, to consider only the effect on the
boy of awareness of the adult penis. In the famous case of Little Hans
(2)
Freud recounted the vicissitudes of one child under these circum-
190 PHYLLIS GREENACRE
Stances. In general, I would say the little boy does not suffer a state of
awe comparable to that of the little girl. His awareness of his own body
configuration robs the experience of its sharpest quality of strangeness
and unreality which are so necessary for the development of a state of
awe.^ That very sharp envy and competitiveness does develop is a matter
of general analytic experience. This may contribute to the small penis
complex, so often associated with a feminine-like overcompensatory in-
terest in dress, manners and all outer appearances.
I have also been especially impressed with the effect on young boys,
often the youngest child of the family, with brothers eight or ten years
older who exhibit their masturbatory and ejaculatory prowess in dramatic
seductiveness before the youngest one, who still has a small organ. It is
obvious that such experiences tend to increase the envy and develop an
attitude of discouragement which may reinforce a passive attitude, or
initiate an attempt to overcome this by an identification with the post-
puberty boy in a way which definitely increases the homosexual tendencies
of later life.
While it seems that the specific experiences are of fundamental im-
portance in focusing the reactions which have been described, still it is
necessary to emphasize that the severity of their effect depends very much
on the character of the narcissistic elements in the ego at the time. In
analyzing these patients, consequently, the work must be done with the
narcissistic defenses, and the recovery of the specific memories is chiefly
effective in the working-through process. There, it is essential.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Freud, S. (1905)
Three Contributions to the Theory
of
Sex. Fourth edition,
p.
54.
New York and Washington: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., 1930.
2. Freud, S. (1909)
The Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy. Collected Papers,
III, p.
149. London: Hogarth Press, 1934.
3. Freud, S. (1918) The Taboo of Virginity. Ibid., IV,
p. 217.
4. Freud, S. (1922)
Medusa's Head. Ibid., V,
p.
105. London: Hogarth Press, 1950.
5. Greenacre, P. Vision, Headache and the Halo. Chapter 6 in Trauma, Growth and
Personality. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1952.
6. Jacobson, E. The Child's Laughter. In The Psychoanalytic Study
of
the Child, II.
New York: International Universities Press, 1946.
7. Tausk, V. On the Origin of the "Influencing Machine" in Schizophrenia. In The
Psychoanalytic Reader, I (ed. R. Fliess) . New York: International Universities
Press, 1948.
8. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1936.
3 In Sweden, where adult men go in bathing nude, little boys wear bathing trunks.
This arrangement was explained by a Swedish lady as having arisen out of the need to
protect the boys from being ashamed of their small penises. (Personal communication
of Dr. Warner Muensterberger.)
THE FORGETTING OF DREAMS
BERTRAM D. LEWIN, M. D.
New York
The forgetting of dreams, Freud
(9)
tells us, is inexplicable until
we seek to explain it by the power of the dream censorship. All for-
getting of dreams or dream elements, all blurring of the picture, all of
the dreamer's doubts about the contents, are signs of resistance to the
dream or to dream elements. And during analysis, when a resistance is
overcome, it often happens that the forgotten dream or dream-part is
recalled. There are many motives for the forgetting of dreams during
analysis, since resistance may affect a large variety of ideas and impulses,
including many kinds of transference wishes. Thus, the forgetting of a
dream may be due to such ego attitudes as shame, hostility, spite, or
revenge; and the whole dream may be treated as if it were something
substantial, as an object for barter between the dreamer and the analyst,
or as a gift or coin that may be given or withheld or used for purchases.
On the whole, the remembering of a dream betokens less resistance, for
this promotes the analysis, but even the remembering of dreams can
exceptionally and paradoxically be perverted into a resistance, a fact first
pointed out by Eder
(4).
The patient may remember too much of a
dream or too many dreams and may thus sabotage an analytic hour,
filling it with a long exposition of elaborate unanalyzable material. My
interpretation of this resistant remembering
(19)
is that the patient is
acting out his sleep of the night before and is repeating it in the analytic
hour; in other words, the wish to sleep is the motive for an excessive and
futile remembering, a finding strikingly confirmed by a patient of Dr.
Jacob Arlow
(2).
Thus, the motives for forgetting a dream are the same as the motives
for repressing in generalnot different from the motives for forgetting a
name or a wordas Freud has explained in The Psychopathology
of
Everyday
Life
(10)
. I call your attention to the fact that the word for-
getting is a gerund, a verbal noun, and that it implies both action and
substance. When we spoke above of the motives for forgetting, we were
191
192 BERTRAM D. LEWIN
implying action and were thinking more of the verb to forget, the process
of forgetting as a movement or a dynamic fact. But we may stress the
substantival nature of the word, and thereby treat the forgetting statically
as a piece of the manifest dream itself, as the last piece in the dream text.
Then we can interpret a forgetting as if it were a symptom or any mani-
fest conscious content, and thus determine its latent meaning. Concretely
what I mean is this: if the dreamer associates to his forgetting a dream,
he will be led, as by any other free association, to the latent or uncon-
scious meaning of the forgetting. This is true whether the associations
are prompted by the analyst or if they spontaneously accompany the
dreamer's efforts to recall the dream. In the process, the dream will some-
times be remembered, but by no means always, for the resistant motives
may well maintain the upper hand.
Now a good many of the associations to anything that is forgotten
are of the sort we call regressive in the topographic sense. In a famous
example, Freud's attempt to recall the name of the artist Signorelli
(10)
,
we find an exact statement of how Freud introspectively experienced this
regressive process. For he tells us: "As long as the name of the painter
remained inaccessible to me, I had more than a clear visual memory of
the cycle of his frescoes, and the picture of himself in the corner; at
least it was more intensive than any of my other visual memory traces.
In another case, also reported in my essay of 1898, I had hopelessly for-
gotten the street name and address connected with a disagreeable visit
in a strange city, butas if to mock methe house number appeared
especially vivid, whereas the memory of numbers usually causes me the
greatest difficulty." The regression is from the later form of remembering,
that is, from verbal memory traces of the name Signorelli or the name of
the street to the associated visually remembered mental pictures. And the
regression of latent dream thoughts during dream formation follows this
same course as a rule: from verbal thoughts to visual images.
Since the forgotten dream is usually a picture to begin with and not
verbal predominantly, the question arises as to what regressive substitute
formation is to be expected, analogous to the visual pictures when a word
is forgotten. There should be memory traces older than the formed
pictures that are the substitutes for words. There should be regressive
substitutes for formed pictures, memory traces further back and nearer
the perception system (P) in Freud's scheme of the psychic apparatus.
To our introspective efforts, the results of forgetting a dream picture is
to wipe it out, to erase it or blur it and reduce it to an amorphous state.
Sometimes we catch this process in statu nascendi while a dream is going
on, or when the dreamer turns his attention to the dream after waking;
and I shall give later on an instance in which the forgetting is repre-
THE FORGETTING OF DREAMS 193
sented in the manifest dream itself and the dream picture is turned into
an amorphous one.
I was led to think about the special nature of dream forgetting by an
observation which I used to show what I meant by the dream screen
(18)
.
I had an opportunity, as it were, to watch a dream being forgotten. For,
while one of my patients was on the couch, ready to tell me her dream,
she "saw it" suddenly curve over backwards away from her and then
like a canvas or a carpet roll up and away into the distance. The process
of forgetting the dream was dramatized: the dream was like a painting,
which was then rolled up and rolled away from her. This was the final
element in her waking process and in her dream; it was a sort of hypno-
pompic phenomenon, and the action could be analyzed. For the patient,
it was a weaning experience. On going to sleep she had joined herself
in fantasy to the breast, in the manner described by Isakower
(12)
,
and
when she awoke she lost this breast.
In previous communications
(18, 19)
, I have given reasons for
assuming that the visual manifest dream picture is as if painted on or
projected like a motion picture onto a screen, and I tried to show why
this screen is the dream representative of the breastthe continuance in
sleep and dreaming of the baby's first background when it falls asleep.
In a recent criticism of the idea of the dream screen, Fliess
(8)
has
raised the question whether the dream screen has empirical existence or
whether it is a model, an explanatory construction. I believe that it ex-
ists; however, for my present purposes there is no need for a final answer
to this question.
Let us consider the manifest dream as a picture, as a "technicolor"
motion picture if necessary, projected onto the dream screen. The screen
would not show through from under a perfect or ideally remembered
dream picture. But when a dream is remembered only in part, blanks
(erasures, Freud calls them) may appear in the manifest picture; and
when the whole dream is forgotten, it is as if the picture was wiped off,
leaving a blankish, amorphous background. Now, properly considered
this background too is made up of memory traces. It is composed of the
very earliest ones laid down in infancy during nursing and dormescent
experiences. Perhaps the background is a reminiscence of the "primal
dream" of the smallest infant, before the various sensations have been
arranged and combined in significant and consistent, formed percep-
tions. When the process that leads from formed vision to amorphous
blur or to complete forgetting is gradual, or when it takes place in stages,
we may get a view of the details in the blanking-out or fading-out proced-
ure, as in the example mentioned above and as in some to follow. When
194 BERTRAM D. LEWIN
we do, we are in a position to analyze and interpret the latent meaning
of the manifest forgetting.
This picture of the dream as a painting or as a stage or moving pic-
ture performance is a simplification, but for me a useful one as a model
or diagram into which one can fit many details of clinical observation on
the forgetting and remembering of dreams. I am aware that it leaves
out the matter of nonvisual dreams and dream elements, with their at
present unsolved problems, such as the auditory phenomena for which
Isakower
(13)
has given us an explanation. Along with the visually blank
dreams, moreover, we find many nonvisual, so-called organic, qualities,
such as touch, taste, warmth, sexual excitement and the rest, as Rycroft has
confirmed. However, the breast experience too is not purely visual, but
tactile, gustatory and thermally exciting; and many other sensory quali-
ties may arise indirectly during nursing. With all these reservations and
conditions, there still remains the fact that the large majority of dreams
is visual, and that it is perfectly proper to investigate as a special problem
the forgetting of this prevalent form of the dream.
My general thesis is that the forgetting or remembering of dreams,
considered as if a dream element, or as I have phrased it, as the noun
part of the gerund, may be interpreted as an oral phenomenon by means
of the method of free association. Now, I should like to present examples
of this general thesis. The first example will explain what I mean by the
statement that dream-forgetting stands for weaning. It is the case of a
young woman, early in her analysis, who said that she had forgotten her
dream. Casually I asked her what occurred to her in connection with
forgetting it, and she replied, "I think of the dog I had when I was a
child, with a tennis ball in his mouth." This was a memory of some-
thing that had really occurred, and it turned out to be a screen memory,
for she went on to relate that she had never been breast-fed, and that this,
more than any other circumstance, had made her envious of her sister,
who had been. The association about the dog appeared to portray her
own intense need to sink her teeth into the breast and to cling to it
stubbornly, a wish that was evident enough in her life story and in her
subsequent analytic behavior.
Listening carefully, one hears many oral ideas arise spontaneously
after the statement, "I forgot my dream." Sometimes they appear to
portray a search, as if the dreamer were looking for it. Thus one patient
reported, "My dream slipped away from me while I was brushing my
teeth," and there are comparable oral hints in many other efforts to
find the dream. On another occasion the same patient said of a forgotten
dream, "It was uninteresting." Whereupon her stomach rumbled and
so to say began to associate for her, and she continued: She had dined
THE FORGETTING OF DREAMS 195
out with her husband and parents at a restaurant, and the slice of lamb
she had got was "uninteresting," whereas her husband and her father
had both commented on the excellence of their portion. Often the same
patient, having forgotten a dream and trying to recall it, would speak
of her lunch and of her lunching companion. In her particular case,
the motive for her resistant forgetting was usually a wish to avoid speak-
ing of her current unsatisfactory and uninteresting sexual life. But her
attempt to recall her dreams led invariably to thoughts of drinking,
eating, pleasant table companionship; there was an obvious desire to
think of the pleasures of the table rather than to recall the privations of
the bed. To give an example, one day trying to recall her dream, she
spoke of having had lunch with an aunt, then through some superficial
associations about her aunt's proposed vacation journey, she recalled that
she had had a dream of packing the night before. This led to her admis-
sion of having masturbated before going to sleep, and of an unsatisfactory
coitus before the masturbation.
That the forgotten dream is a concrete object, which has been as if
physically lost or misplaced, is implied in many remarks, as in those
above to the effect that it was brushed off the teeth or swallowed. One
of my friends, a colleague, tells me that when she tries to remember a
dream, she has the feeling of its being somewhere in her mouth or throat,
as if she were trying to find it there. Such spatial ideas are very common.
The lost dream is sometimes thought of as being somewhere in the body,
sometimes outside somewhere. One patient of mine began her analysis by
saying that she ought to pray to Saint Anthony, to help her find her lost
memories. And William
James has this charming description of looking
for a forgotten idea:
We make search in our memory for a forgotten idea, just as we rum-
mage our house for a lost object. In both cases we visit what seems to
us the probable neighborhood of that which we miss. We turn over
things under which, or within which, or alongside of which, it may
possibly be; and if it lies near them, it soon comes to view. But these
matters, in the case of a mental object are nothing but its associates
(14).
Since in this allegory the house we live in must be a symbol for our body,
there is an interesting hint here for the future study of where we think
memories go when they are forgotten. So far as my experience goes, the
forgotten dream seems to take one of two paths; either it goes inward,
that is, stomachward, or it goes away carried along by the illusively de-
parting breast.
Freud has remarked that a very small fragment of a dream will often
be sufficient to yield on association a large part, perhaps all, of the latent
196 BERTRAM D. LEWIN
dream thoughts. Sometimes the statement, "I forgot my dream," will serve
as such a fragment and lead to latent thoughts of great importance, even
though the dreamer may not recall the forgotten manifest dream text.
Thus the word uninteresting in the above example, which seemed to be
a comment on the dream text, was in fact such a fragment. The other
patient's initial association to her dog and the tennis ball was not a
fragment or a comment; it was an association, spontaneous and not im-
mediately comprehensible, captured in her effort to remember the dream.
It was a real screen memory, formed in the way described by Fenichel
(6)
after an "injunction to make a mental note." Her wish to remember
the dream re-enforced by my request, brought forth this screen memory,
which stood not only for the forgotten dream but also for the underlying
latent memories of oral sibling rivalry. Fenichel
(5)
has explained how
screen memories arise from a comparable conflict of a wish to remember
and a wish to forget, as compromises, a theorem which Greenacre
(11)
has developed and elaborated. It is interesting that Fenichel calls the
intense need to remember something, a hunger for screen events, ein
Deckerlehnishunger, a conception which Greenacre also finds useful. In
the effort to remember a dream and the immediate associations that ac-
company this effort, this is certainly a happy term, for the dreamer very
often turns to thoughts of food or oral satisfactions. I am indebted to Dr.
David Rubinfine
(22)
for the following interesting example. His patient
reported: "I had a long dream last night. I kept forgetting it, but then
I remembered a code word: Marzipan." The dream that followed con-
firmed the idea that the manifest subjective length of the dream indicated
the fulfillment of intense oral wishesthat it was so to say a long drink
or a long repast.
I present two contrasting examples: in one an external stimulus led
a young man to remember some of his forgotten dream, in the other the
external stimulus drove a remembered dream from a young woman's
mind. The stimulus for remembering was food. A conscientious patient
was sitting in the drug store across the street from my office, wondering
why he had forgotten his dream, when the soda-counter attendant came
in with a plate of chopped eggs. He thereupon remembered that he had
dreamed of steamed spaghetti. His associations led to food poisoning, due
to rat dirt, and to other negative oral topics. In contrast, the stimulus
that chased the other patient's dream away was a waker, a bell. She was
engaged in remembering her dream while she was still in bed, when her
telephone bell rang and she lost it completely. The bell reminded her of
the rising bell at school and the bugle at summer camp, which was a
signal to get up and put on her swimming suit. This was at an age when
she was comparing her growing breasts to those of other girls. The dream
THE FORGETTING OF DREAMS 197
text was not recalled.^ To make the meaning of these events clear, I
must explain that for both patients sleep was a highly libidinal matter,
unconsciously equated with being loved and fed. The man relied on
sedatives to secure a good night's sleep; the woman was "irritable" and
"not herself" till after breakfast. From this one may infer why the sight
of food induced the first patient to remember his dream, and why the
bell sent the other's dream to oblivion. The food, particularly drug-
store food with its pharmaco-toxicological connotations, suggested sleep,
or that food mixed with drugs or poison would put one to sleep. It put
the patient in the mood for dreaming again and probably too for freely
associating, which as Freud says, is "the psychic state that is in some
degree analogous, as regards the distribution of psychic energy (mobile
attention) , to the state of mind before falling asleepand also, of course,
to the hypnotic state"
(9, p. 110). The symbolic sleep-inducer led to a
partial recall of the dream.
The bell, on the other hand, was a waker and a symbol of school and
camp discipline. Its admonition: Sleep no more, was obeyed. The dream,
remnant and successor after waking of the oral satisfaction of sleep, was
hastily put aside. In my recent paper on "Phobic Symptoms and
Dream Interpretation"
(20),
I pointed out that in preoedipal psychology,
to sleep and to dream mean to repeat being at the breast, while to be
awakened means the disturbing of that situation, usually by the father,
though in the example just given evidently by the superego, which is a
possible confirmation of Isakower's views on the relation of superego and
auditory sphere. I should like to add here that not only are sleeping and
dreaming possible symbols for being nursed, but that to remember the
dream is a quasi prolongation of sleep and stands for sleep, while for-
getting the dream repeats and stands for waking up and is a step in the
weaning process.
The male patient just mentioned once forgot two dreams. The fact
that there were two reminded him of one of them; it was a dream of
watching a partly undressed woman in a window of the opposite house.
She had on her brassiere, and as a day residue he remarked that on the
evening before the dream, friends he had visited had shown him home
movies of a baby nursing at the breast. Another patient surprised me by
saying, "I can't remember my dream. No! Nol" I asked her why two such
emphatic "noes." "Oh," she said, "that's because I had two dreams."
Association through "double zero" led to her mother's double mastectomy.
Dr. Sylvan Keiser
(15)
wrote me about a patient who told him "I
1
To spell out the message of the rising bell, it said: Leave the mother (the bed) ;
establish your separateness by an ego boundary (clothes) ; be active (swim) , not orally
passive and quiet for you are too old (note your breasts) .
198 BERTRAM D. LEWIN
feel I had two dreams that I can't remember." Asked for associations to
that, she expanded: it was as if something were just beyond her reach,
as if she were reaching for food, just as in recurrent dreams of adolescence,
she seemed to run after a ball without reaching it. Then her associations
took up fellatio, her feeling that her mother loved her children only
when they were being nursed. Finally, the patient remarked that the two
dreams seemed extraordinary, since forgotten material followed the re-
moval of resistance, but that there was nothing else in the dreams except
that something was moving away.
The dream fragment, or dream token (to distinguish a "solid" form
of condensed dream residue), is often highly charged with transference
meaning. One of my patients said to her husband that she had no dream
for her analytic hour. He teased her, "Why don't you take him a chocolate
bar?" As a matter of fact, a patient of Dr. Charles Fisher, under very
interesting circumstances, did in fact bring him a chocolate Easter egg
about six inches longan anal gift-baby. Dr. Fisher was experimentally
testing what the effect would be on patients in analysis of a direct "sug-
gestion" to them that they bring in a dream. This patient brought the
gift, saying, "I couldn't bring you a dream, so I brought you an Easter
egg instead"
(7).
During analysis, we are reminded, dreams are often
dreamed and remembered as something
for the analyst. Yet as in the ex-
amples given, even in the choice of the gift which is substituted for the
dream and stands for it, an oral mechanism is to be divined. A gift of food
is a demand for a return gift in kind.
Among the "gifts" for the analyst that stand very directly for dreams,
Abraham
(1)
described a special variety, the dream which the patient
writes down or tries to write down or to record in order to bring it to
the analytic hour. Such dreams, as Freud, Abraham and others have
shown, are usually unanalyzable; the writing indicates great resistance
to the content. In a previous paper
(19)
, I pointed out that such a purely
transference interpretation as Abraham gavethat the written dream is
a gift to the analystsets limitations for any general theory of the im-
pulse to write down a dream. I thought that the writing showed a wish
to continue sleep, particularly where the aim was not accomplished and
produced only blank records or jumbled notations (Abraham) or even
simply a dream of having written down the dream (Meyer,
21). The
blank page, like the blank dictaphone record in one of Abraham's cases,
represented the blank dream screen and (more deeply) blank, undis-
turbed, infantile sleep; the recorded dream is the equivalent of a new
version of the dream, which, since it proves unanalyzable is equal to "no
dream at all" or only to the paper on which it is written. That is to say,
the paper itself is the main addition to the new manifest version, and it
THE FORGETTING OF DREAMS 199
Stands for the "background" of the dream, that is, the dream screen or the
breast, as an indicator of the wish for more, uninterrupted sleep. Further-
more, the written dream shows exquisitely the mechanism which Fenichel
predicated for screen-memory formations, in the other sense of "screen,"
a Deckerinnerung, for it is an evident compromise between the wish to
remember and the wish to forget.
The patients whose material I have been citing here have all at one
time or another had a desire, sometimes almost a compulsion, to write
down their dreams, and many of them have made waking notes. Since
I have discussed this impulse and its interpretation at some length in my
second paper on the dream, and there given several examples, I shall
present only one more example of dream notation, or rather of its mis-
carriage. A patient reacted to a long weekend's absence of the analyst by
producing a great many long dreams. This is a well-known reaction;
weekend dreams frequently try to make up for the frustrating absence.
But the interesting fact here is a slip which the patient made after tell-
ing me two long dreams and starting to tell me a third. She said, "I am
afraid I am forgetting some of the details. I had better look at some notes
I made." She took a scrap of paper from her purse; but the notes were
not on that paper. "Why!" she said in surprise, "This is a list of restau-
rants I made for my father."
Some patients become more or less obsessional about recalling their
dreams and feel guilt for not remembering them better. Their conflict
then may be portrayed in the manifest text of the dream. Thus, one
patient dreamed that he was trying to take a camera shot of a beautiful,
spired, cathedral, which stood on the crest of a hill, terraced ornately like
Mont Saint-Michel in the travel advertisements. The cathedral shone in
brilliant colors, but while he was aiminsr his camera, the scene darkened
and clouded up and the view was obscured behind a bank of clouds.
There was no more possibility of taking the picture and even less of any
color photography. Obviously the patient's wish to remember the dream,
which he really fulfilled, was indicated by his dream wish to take the
photograph. He had in fact shown me color photographs after he re-
turned from previous summer vacations. By his effort to record the scene
in all its colors on a film, he was complying with his analytic "duty" and
with his wish to show me the dreama procedure which brings to mind
dreams reported by Blitzsten and the Eisslers
(3)
, where the patient ex-
hibited her dreams to the analyst, at the same time repudiating any
responsibility for their contents. But my patient clouded up his dream
even while he was dreamins^ it, to indicate his counterwish; i.e., the wish
not to see it and not to be able to show it to me. In other words, the
"clouding up" was an unsuccessful attempt to "forget" the dream picture.
200 BERTRAM D. LEWIN
I shall not enumerate the topics that the patient wished to conceal and
to exhibit. Instead I shall turn to an interpretation of the cloud.
This cloud I take to be the dream screen, wandering around from
behind the view and then covering it. I should like, for general confirma-
tion, to refer to the papers of Rycroft
(23)
and Kepecs
(16).
In the latter's
case, the dream screen appeared as a hallucination, which came between
the patient's eyes and the world and obscured his vision. As always, I
consider that the dream screen is a symbol for the breast, and that in the
dream above the patient was finally seeing and showing nothing but the
breast. Due to the kindness of Dr. Kubie
(17)
, I am able to give an illus-
trative dream. This dream was recurrent and first dreamed early in child-
hood, now become less vivid and less compelling, a dream "hard to
describe, because," in the patient's words, "it was almost pure emotion."
He continues, "The contents of the dream were of something pure white,
like an endless wall that you don't see
produced
a similar influence upon visual acuity, i.e., a synesthesia, which suggests
that they have some properties in common. By and large, it seemed that
the faculty of perceiving bright and dark is a function common to the
fields of senses. However, "to us, alas, sight and sound, inner and outer,
mind and body, have fallen apart. What we knew as children, we must
now grope for."
Stimuli which excite the sensation of brightness not only affect all
sense organs in the same manner and are not only transmitted from the
sense organs to the muscles and from the muscles to the eyes, but such
stimuli induce a modification of the whole organism as a fundamental
1
See also H. Werner
(17).
INSTINCTUAL DRIVES AND INTERSENSORY PERCEPTIONS 221
biological process. There exist "intermodal" relations between the single
domains of all senses (Boernstein,
2).
This means that there exists a group-
ing and elaboration of various sensory impulses into a system of relation.
When one speaks of the body image, this always refers to its conceptual
components (Schilder, 15; Bender, 1; Reitman, 14). When primitive in-
stinctual drives become evident, the unity of the perceptual components
is dissolved and the emphasis shifts from one sense modality to another.
-
The breaking through of the unconscious leads over a threshold
lowered for specific sensory perceptions into the preconscious. There it is
arrested by the appearance of heightened stimuli from other sensory
perceptions antagonistic to it. All of these sensory stimuli are the abstract
precursors of recollections of objects with which they are connected.
These recollections remain repressed as long as the complexes of sensory
stimuli which belong to the object can be kept below the threshold. Those
observations made on associative processes in analysis correspond to the
results of psychological experiments on emotional selectivity in percep-
tion and reaction, by Bruner and Postman
(3),
who assumed that with
increase in the emotionality of stimuli perceptual defense and perceptual
sensitization occur, due to the lowering of thresholds for stimulus objects
of great personal relevance, or due to the presence of "dangerous" stim-
ulus objects.
It is interesting that after the week-end intervals in analysis, the
feelings of the analysand toward the analyst are very often transitorily
expressed in the beginning of the analytic hour through nonverbal per-
ceptual sensations due to the transference situation. The separation from
the analyst leads to an intensification of the ambivalent infantile feelings
toward the parental object image. The confrontation with the "danger-
ous" objectthe analyststirs up a primitive sensory reaction, which
will appear specifically in that sense organ which is associatively con-
nected with the "love-hate" object. It may be expressed in postural dis-
quietude, in hypersensitivity to noise, light, or smell, or in a combination
of these. Those intersensory perceptions as the preverbal expressions of
antagonizing instinctual impulses, are deeply rooted in the unconscious.
They have an established pattern and recur with regularity in specific
situations which the ego cannot master otherwise.
A medical student working through his infantile aggressive feelings
of hate toward his domineering mother, with whom he identified him-
self, opened the hour after some days of interruption of the analysis
2 That reminds one of the pictures of abstract painters like Adolph Gottlieb who
is concerned with \isual equivalents of other than visual sensations. In a picture
"Frozen Sounds" a row of stationary shapes seems to have stopped moving. Another
picture produces muscular sensations by visual means.
222 FELIX DEUTSCH
with long-lasting silence. From the preceding hours it was known how
guilt-ridden he felt in relation to her. He then remarked that he had sen-
sations of light spots and a premonition of unpleasant events. These
visual sensations made him think of punishment.
A memory of his fourth year enters his mind; he was sitting alone on
the porch, counting flickering spots of sunlight which came and went, and
anticipating punishment from his mother, as often as light spots appear,
for playing with matches. Ideas about matches lead to firewood; sticks of
firewood were used by mother for punishment when he did wrong. His
pleasure in lighting matches comes to his mind. He recollects his mother's
habit of smoking cigarettes and the fact that she did not let him do what
she did. He associates that cigarettes burn holes. Holes are dark. Mother
is dirty and sloppy. Then the light spots vanish.
He becomes distracted by the 7ioise of the radiator and by the rum-
hling of his stomach. He calls it gastric cramps. Revengeful wishes of his
childhood against his despotic mother appear, together with the desire
to get even with her. This reminds him that he becomes angry and tense
when his own children are noisy. The irritation against the rumbling
noises of his stomach increases. His hands, placed under his head, begin
to tingle. He associates dirt, dirty hands, his hand-washing compulsion
and his phobia of touching doorknobs.
The intersensory perceptions of this patient obviously revolve on
one hand around visual, auditory and skin sensations, and on the other
hand around the change within one sensory sphere between opposites
like light and dark, silence and noise. These abstract sense perceptions
reveal in the associative process the instinctual origin of these objecti-
fications.
Another session starts with a long silence followed by oversensitive-
ness to sounds and noises in and outside the room. He again refers to the
rumblings of his stomach during the last hour and remarks again that his
children are too noisy and that he becomes increasingly tense when he
has to control his need to punish them. His borborygmen may appear
also when he is disturbed by glaring light or feels unclean. He associates
to his light sensitivity that he has to sleep with the shades down, keeping
out any light rays. It is as if the "mother" stimulus should not disturb his
sleep, because it means punishment. But keeping out light leads to sensi-
tivity to noise with noisy bowel activity. It might even start when he
smokes. Sometimes smoking excites him sexually.
His associations turn to his father. From now on, the sensory sensa-
tions stop dining the hour. In the following days, abundant and pleasant
memories of his prepuberty, related to his father, break through. He re-
members many occasions of fishing trips with his father and his alliance
with him against his mother. He remarks dryly that his problems are
with women. To the interpretation that he apparently wanted father's
love, he reacts with uneasiness. Next day, he reports that as a result of
my remarks he had awakened that morning with a headache from "a hell
of a dream." He still has the migraine and sees flickering light spots. He
INSTINCTUAL DRIVES AND INTERSENSORY PERCEPTIONS 223
indicates that he understands their meaning as anticipation of punish-
ment by mother. He remains silent. After a while he tells the story of
an insane man who claimed that he could bring the sun to a standstill.
Then he remembers another dream: it is an eclipse of the sun and the
world is in darkness. The whole family is afraid. Now the sun shines
bright again. It is very hot and the leaves begin to grow. There is no
danger of famine any more.
He associates to darkness his fear of being alone in a dark room, and
that afterwards very often his ears and face begin to burn and become
red, as if he were blushi^ig. In the darkness he feels lonely and cold. But
the sun is unpredictable. The sun warms one up, but the sun can also
burn, can give too much light. His mother's smoking comes again to his
mind, and that cigarettes can buryi holes. Light spots appear again. To
his mother he associates the Catholic Church and remarks that the church
makes strangers out of people who should live together. To Catholic
Church he also associates birth control, and he indul2;es in new recrimi-
nations against his mother.
These observations suggest that the fusion between sensory percep-
tions and living objects occurs at an early period of life. This fusion
determines to a certain extent the sensitiveness to the threshold for sen-
sory stimuli.
Another male patient, v.ith latent passive-homosexual tendencies and
the personality pattern of a conversion hysteria, had the habit of drifting
off in the analytic session into a dreamy, fugue-like state which was
accompanied by visceral sensory sensations. Whenever repressed homo-
sexual wishes threatened to become conscious, he responded with muscle
movements. When they appeared he tried to control them, stretching his
body and wiggling his feet up and down, or only twitching his right
eyelid. AVhenever he did it, his verbal association emphasized his mas-
culine traits. At the same time, they intended to counteract unconscious
feminine wishes. They as a rule appeared as sensations in his throat, as if
he had caught a cold, or in the urge to move his bowels, or to pass urine.
Whenever the appearance
of
unconscious masculine sexual drives became
too threatening to the ego, the threshold
for
bodily sensatioris in the
organs which represented his passive identifications became lowered, and
vice versa. That seems to be a matter of psychic economy, or of offer and
demand continually expressedmore or less rudimentarilyin the shift
of perceptual expressions: averbally, preverbally, or co-verbally during
the associative process.
Once after a week-end interval of the analysis, he drew a "black
picture of himself," of his early childhood in relation to his younger
brother.
He remarks about a bad smell in the room and then remains silent
for some time. He sticks the tip of his little finger into his ear and clears
224
FELIX DEUTSCH
his throat loudly. Then he looks at some particles which he picked from
his ear, spits into a Kleenex and inspects it thoughtfully. Bowel troubles
of his little son and some anal sex play with his wife come to his mind.
Thereupon he recalls similar games with his brother. He mumbles that
he would like to break wind, holds his back, complains about blocked
nose and remarks with some surprise that he has recently been using a
very odorous lotion on his head. He thinks of ether narcosis and of strid-
ulous breathing, mentions the luheezing of his little son when he has a
cold. He remembers that his brother stopped breathing during the ether
narcosis when a circumcision was performed on him. That reminds him
that his brother almost died after a tonsillectomy. He is convinced that
the same would happen to him if he should ever have a tonsillectomy.
Finally, he associates that his wife almost bled to death during the
delivery.
Next morning he begins with the statement that he has to be on his
guard not to fall asleep. He states that after yesterday's session he had
difficulty focusing on objects. This blurred vision persisted for some
hours. During the rest of the day he was homesick for his mother, as he
says, and had a gnawing, empty feeling in his stomach. He thought of
paraplegic people. In the evening, following a strange impulse he paid
a visit to an older woman with whom he had an irrelevant chat. Although
he had been abstinent for some time, he could not resist again smoking
several cigarettes with great pleasure. At night when he came home, this
spell was over. He thought of the last analytic hour and behaved very
affectionately toward his wife. But he remained restless in bed, felt now
cold, now hot, and kept in close touch with her, as if he were afraid of
losing her. His mind wandered in this feverish state from one figure to
another. Only in the morning, when his wife had left with the children,
he recognized that he had been as if in a fog all the time.
This story may permit further conclusions concerning intersensory
reactions. If the elementary sensory reaction to light, sound, touch, etc.,
would remain abstract, they would follow exclusively the physiological
laws. In the course of the psychosomatic development, their perceptions
become objectified until certain sensory stimuli always evoke the whole
past history of a specific object relationship. Thus the objectification of
sensory perceptions are a kind of feedback for the regulation of bodily
functions.
A young male student in his early twenties, who was in treatment for
difficulties in his studies, due to obsessional personality trends, several
phobic features, latent homosexuality, blocked affects and strong intel-
lectual defenses, habitually fell into a state of reverie which was initiated
by yawning and followed by an aura-like loss of visual acuity whenever
he was threatened by the return of the repressed unconscious. When he
looked at a small, framed picture on the opposite wall, his vision became
blurred and he claimed that he was seeing double. In earlier hours he had
revealed that he had had a squint in his earliest childhood; he later lost
it, but had practiced it again, as far as he can recall, from his fifth year
INSTINCTUAL DRIVES AND INTERSENSORY PERCEPTIONS 225
whenever he anticipated and feared a scolding from his mother or nurse.
He always saw his mother, and equally grandmother, as forbidden fig-
ures, while his father was the complaisant, kind one, andas he remem-
beredit was his father who kissed him goodnight. It was the introjected
mother figure who made such high demands on him, from which he
shied away, afraid of not being able to live up to these demands.
This undermined his active impulses and drove him, on the one
hand, into passivity and feminine identifications, but created, on the
other hand, a painful envy and jealousy of male and female competitors.
A strong ambivalent feeling toward both sexes prevailed which made
many defensive mechanisms necessary. His identification with a weak
father figure received the finishing stroke when in his prepuberty his
father died of an intestinal ailment. He wavered between occasional
hyperactivity without real productivity, accumulating in an obsessional
manner as many data and facts as possible, but remaining static instead
of using the tools of his knowledge, and envying those who were able to
go ahead with much less justification than he. This feeling of inadequacy
became the leading feature in relation to both sexes.
His indecision where to turn was expressed during the analytical
process in transitory, abstract intersensory perceptions significant as de-
terminants for the appearance of one or the other cathected object in the
preconscious.
By and large, abstract visual sensations indicated the return to female
objects in general and mother images in particular, auditory and olfac-
tory sense perceptions were forerunners
of
bisexual images and passive
leanings to either
of
the sexes, while kinesthetic sensations led to objects
of
masculine identification.
The exchange and interchange of sensory perceptions due to the
need of wardins: off overwhelmins, instinctual drives of one kind, revealed
a patterned behavior which is encountered at least in rudimentar)' form
in every analysis. It represents the protective mechanism against anxiety.
In this case it took a specific form: once, after a week-end interval in
the analysis which dealt at that time with his strong passive feminine
tendencies, he felt that due to his "long" absence everything had been
blotted out.
He begins to yawn heartily and speaks of a raw feeling in his "lung"
which he thinks is due to too much smoking. After a silence he lifts his
left foot which he had rested on the right, and mentions a dull pain and
paresthesia in the right foot. The picture on the wall seems to shake. He
listens to the 7ioise of the radiator. After this disquietude of the inter-
sensory equilibrium, he talks expansively about his dissatisfaction with
his work and his low level of efficiency. He withdraws his left arm from
under his neck because of a feeling of numbness which spreads to his left
leg (long silence). He mentions a date over the weekend with a girl and
calls it unsatisfactory. The room here reminds him of a boxReich's
Orgone box comes to his mindhe calls it "orgasm" box. It occurs to him
226 FELIX DEUTSCH
that his younger sister told him over the phone about her being pregnant.
After a fleeting thought about a
rifle,
he recalls a story of his gov-
erness about the "diving rod man," who with his rod could keep away the
subterranean witches. He continues until the end of the session with a
report of his mother's reaction to his sister's pregnancy. In the hour on
the following day he struggles with a dream which dealt with a sickness
of his sister, which was hopeless as the doctor claims. In the dream there
appears also an older woman who was operated on but who recovered,
supposedly from tuberculosis of an inner organ.
He recognizes the birth fantasies of this dream and the fear of death
in childbirth. He recalls that his physician had once treated him for a
thrombosis of the dorsal vein of his penis, and that his mother and grand-
mother had also been under the care of this doctor. He recalls several
occasions when they were ill. After a long silence he fights off sleepiness.
His vision becomes blurred. The sunliglit on the wall blinds him. He
sees the picture in front of him double and it turns into a man, who
leans over a wooden table and vomits. He clearly hears the splashing noise
of the vomitus falling on the table. The pregnant woman turns into a
pregnant man. The visual sensations give way to auditive ones. A silence
follows, and he asks whether the humming noise he hears comes from
my desk lamp.
After this reverie of pregnancy fantasies the next hours yielded mem-
ories of his sister's birth, of his competition with her for their mother's
love and her competition with him in later years for masculine supre-
macy. He had shied away from athletic performances, afraid of being
hurt, particularly after he injured his finger in a ball game. He had
started to play tennis, but he lacked the feeling for
time
space
motion
and finally ended in golf, where the ball remains static before being hit.
He remained afraid "to catch the ball even before it was thrown," and
gave up before he dared to try it out, or as he called it, "I bury the child
before it is born." A visual reverie of a woman in black who looks at
him from a window is followed by another one in which the sunrays on
the wall of the room turn into a butcher shop, where only a bloody knife
on a shelf is clearly visible, but no meat. This leads to circumcision and
anal birth fantasies.
Olfactory and auditory sense perceptions take the lead in the follow-
ing days. He remembers his sexual excitement as a little boy when he
put his nose to the bathing suit of his governess. That reminds him of a
certain smell of the treatment room, of the odor of his sweaty feet, of that
of fresh bread and of a brewery which as a child he had visited with his
father, some time before he died of an intestinal ailment. That reminds
him of enemas. Thinking of it he becomes attracted by the humming
noise of the lamp in the room and of the clock on the desk, until earlier
memories of the kitchen odor at home, the school odor and the odor
of
gun-powder lead to masturbatory guilt feelings of his childhood. The
expression of them was preceded and then accompanied by kinesthetic
feelings of reduced gravity, lightheadedness, and sensations of being
pulled back and upward.
Tliroughout the analysis of this patient, passive oral and anal instinc-
INSTINCTUAL DRIVES AND INTERSENSORY PERCEPTIONS 227
tual urges lowered the threshold for olfactory and auditory stimuli and
led to sense perceptions in these spheres, before they became object-re-
lated. These objects were men or persons with masculine trends to whom
he was sexually attached. It was as if the ego during the analytic process
wanted to test its strength by exposing itself to these libidinized abstract
sensory stimuli before facing the cathected objects to whom they lead. It
suggests that they are used as warning signals like pre-epileptic aurae
which sometimes, though focally and not exclusively unconsciously deter-
mined, lead to those explosive asynchronous manifestations of behavior,
because they fire at an unprepared ego which is sensitized to the specific
sensation. Those familiar with the analysis of epileptics may confirm the
fact that the sensory aura either
of
an epileptic seizure or
of
a petit mal
is the abstract sensory perception
of
the tabooed object or objects of the
past. The traumatic effect of the repressed memories of the primal scene
often enough is expressed only in hypersensitivity toward auditory
stimuli. The sensitiveness to noise of war veterans which often is the
only rudimentary element of a never fully developed war neurosis, has
similar roots.
By and large, our concept of objects refers to the faculty of the ego
to manipulate sense perceptions in the earliest cognition of objects and
to form a sensory configuration which becomes specific for certain objects
like the parental figures. In the analytic process these representations of
the object world of the patient become destructuralized and derealized,
with the goal of synthesizing them again into a new form which the ego
can accept (Deutsch,
9).
The supply of pregenital demands in this new
form through the treatment can be brought into an agreement with the
genital demands and with reality. As a rule the ego trieswhen these
demands become too great and when it already has used up for its defense
too many organ systemsto re-establish its equilibrium by calling upon
those sensory organs which may sustain the homeostasis on a higher
level of development, or which may have served for the gratification of
polar demands. The ego rejects the offer by rendering the sense percep-
tions involved hyper- or hyposensitive, and hyper- or hypofunctioning
respectively.
The fluctuations of the threshold of sensory perceptions become
mitigated and stabilized during analytic treatment, their intermodal re-
lations readjusted, their repression lifted. The ego can then more equally
distribute them for new objectifications after they became freed from
their cathexis and from their inhibited use. A patient after treatment
should be able to say: Now I can hear, see, smell, feel and move as I
like.
228
FELIX DEUTSCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Bender, L. Psychoses Associated with Somatic Diseases That Distort the Body
Structure. Arch. Neurol. & Psychiat., XXXII, 1934.
2. Boernstein, W. On the Functional Relations of the Sense Organs to One Another
and to the Organism as a Whole.
J.
Gen. Psychol., XV, 1935.
3. Biuner,
J.
S. and Postman, L. Emotional Selectivity in Perception and Reaction.
J.
Personality, XVI, 1947.
4. Deutsch, F. The Production of Somatic Disease by Emotional Disturbance. Proc.
Assn.
f.
Research in Nerv. and Ment. Dis., XIX, 1939.
5. Deutsch, F. Psychosomatic Aspects of Dermatology. Nerv. Child, V, 1946.
6. Deutsch, F. The Psychosomatic Concept. Bull. Johns Hopkins Hosp., LXXX, 1947;
and Acta Medica Orientalia, VII, 1948.
7. Deutsch, F. Thus Speaks the Body. Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci., Ser. II, XII, 1949; and
Acta Medica Orientalia, IX, 1950; X, 1951.
8. Deutsch, F. Analytic Posturology. Psa. Quart., XXI, 1952.
9. Deutsch, F. Abstract Art and the Art of Interviewing. Atn. Imago, IX, 1952.
10. Freud, S. (1895) Das Erinnern und Urteilen. In "Entwurf einer Psychologie." Aus
den Anfdngen der Psychoanalyse. London: Imago Publishing Co., 1950.
11. Hendrick, I. Early Development of the Ego. Psa. Qiiart., XX, 1951.
12. Hornbostel, E. The Unity of the Senses. Psyche, VII, 1926/1927.
13. Mann, T. Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull. Amsterdam: Querido Verlag,
1948.
14. Reitman, F. Psychotic Art. New York: International Universities Press, 1951.
15. Schilder, P. The Image and Appearance
of
the Human Body. New York: Interna-
tional Universities Press, 1950.
16. Sherrington, C. Man on His Nature. Cambridge: University Press, 1951.
17. Werner, H. L'unit^ des sens. /. de Psychol., XXXI, 1934.
AN ANALYTIC SESSION
IN A CASE OF MALE HOMOSEXUALITY
HENRI FLOURNOY,
M.D.i
Geneva
I. Report of an Analytic Session
X, a bachelor aged thirty, is undergoing analysis for various neurotic
difficulties. He is physically normal and is successfully following a liberal
profession. But he has suffered since puberty from sexual instability,
oscillatino; between heterosexual and homosexual tendencies.
During the session of Thursday 15th , X reported the following
incidents which had occurred since the preceding session of Saturday
10th. On Sunday afternoon he had gone for a walk with his friend
Charles, a man younger than himself, with whom he had often practiced
manual masturbation on some pretext or another. But on this particular
day he forced himself to conform to a decision he had made to abstain
from any physical contact with his friend, and in spite of strong tempta-
tion, nothing sexual occurred between them.
On Sunday evening he happened to see a cafe waiter walking in the
street with his wife. He had noticed this waiter before because of his
aloof, haughty and dinstinguished bearing. During the night of Sunday
he had the following dream:
I saw the waiter stretched out on a divan, completely naked. I seized
his sexual organs with my hand and masturbated him actively until
he ejaculated. As this happened I had the impression that our two
bodies were mingled together and I woke up to find that I myself
had ejaculated.
The following night, between Monday and Tuesday, X had a dream
in two short episodes as follows:
(a) I was spending the evening at the house of a friend of my
own age. His father, Mr. R., gave me the same specially warm wel-
come that he does in real life and which I find very flattering. Then
I found myself sitting at a table with a charming unknown girl eat-
ing a "peche melba" while Mr. and Mrs. R. looked on.
1 Translated by \'era Damman.
229
2SQ HENRI FLOURNOY
(b) I was in the home of Mr. and Mrs. S. whose son is also one of
my friends and contemporaries. They too received me with great
kindness and I was very moved.
X noted that since Tuesdayand as a result of these dreams, as he
rightly thoughthe was freed from his homosexual desires and once
more turned quite naturally toward women.
Let us consider these incidents in their sequence. X, having repressed
his sexual desires toward his friend Charles, satisfied them with the waiter
in his dream of the following night, and in exactly the same manner as
he was accustomed to with Charles. Curiously, he had never before been
attracted by the waiter. The latter was a married man, much older than
himself, who had waited on him some weeks previously when he was in
the cafe with Charles. On that day the haughty waiter had evidently
looked at X in a severe and disapproving way, as if he suspected the
relations between the two friends.
When it is known that the waiter's characteristicsa distinsfuished
appearance, a cold and haughty manner, a severe and disapproving ex-
pressionare all equally typical of X's father, we realize that in his dream
the waiter is a father substitute. We also gain insight into the compen-
sating, reassuring dreams of the following night, both of which, as we
shall see, have the same purpose: to propitiate the father and obtain his
forgiveness.
To take first the role of Mr. and Mrs. R., X had actually been invited
to spend the evening of Saturday 10th at their house but was unable to
go. He had been disappointed, because Mr. X had always taken a most
friendly and fatherly interest in him. In the dream he finds himself with
this family he likes so well; Mr. and Mrs. R. welcome him most kindly;
then under their benevolent eye he shares with a young woman a delicious
and flavorsome dessert, a "peche melba"obviously a symbol of sexual
pleasure, as he said himself. Having tasted this dish, a fresh pardon is
needed. This time the role of benevolent and protective authority is
assumed by Mr. S., a distinguished public figure. Let us give his associa-
tions to this man.
He had recently seen Mr. S. mentioned in the newspapers and re-
called having been invited to his house several months before. During
the course of the evening Mr. S.'s son, a friend of his own age, made an
extremely witty rem.ark, a hon mot. X failed to get the point and felt
embarrassed in front of the other guests. Mr. S. noticed his embarrassment
and came to his rescue by saying, doubtless out of kindness, that he too
had missed the point. Thus it is quite clear that Mr. S., like Mr. R., is a
protective and benevolent father image, ready to forgive,
Oedipus complex and transference. The two-part dream with Mr. R.
and Mr. S. came as a sort of neutralizer of the dream of the preceding
night in which X had made a sexual attack on the waiter, also a father
substitute. Here the oedipus complex was expressed not only as an aggres-
sion against the father but also as a seizure of his virility and even of
total identification, since at the culminating point of the orgasm the
dreamer had felt as if his whole self was fused with his partner's.
What about the other component of the oedipus complex, the inces-
A CASE OF MALE HOMOSEXUALITY 231
tuous tendency? This had continuously, though obscurely at times,
revealed itself during a series of preceding sessions. He had just passed
through a period of several weeks of exclusi\e interest in his mother, an
impressionable, intuitive woman and an overfond mother. During this
period of maternal fixation X's natural inclinations toward women had
as usual completely disappeared. He recovered them quite spontaneously
on the Tuesday, after the liberating effect of the dreams in which he
placed himself under the benevolent protective authority of Mr. S. and
Mr. R., the fathers of his two friends. Stated in terms of the structure of
the psyche: the ego, having yielded to the instinctual drives of the id
could only regain its equilbrium by satisfying the demands of the super-
ego, after which normal, heterosexual tendencies again became dominant.
As a general rule X's tranference toward me was positive; but in
this particular session it suddenly assumed a negative form. After giving
his associations to the above incidents and making his own interpretations
of them without difficultyfor he had already made considerable progress
in his analysishe suddenly began to criticize me violently and with
strong sarcasm, because, as he said, I had not the slightest understanding
of the situation.
He accused me of never having recognized that his attachment to his
mother could provoke guilt feelings sufficiently strong to be the sole
cause of his desire to propitiate his father. He claimed that the dream in
two parts was merely a reaction against the long period of mother fixation
he had just passed through and that there was no need to bring in the
erotic dream with the waiter as a guilt factor, as I had so superficially
done.
In reality I had never denied that his mother fixation, entailing
unconscious incestuous fantasies, was a sufficient cause for ouilt feelin2;s.
But I did not think we could disregard the erotic dream when dealing
with the analytic material of this particular session. For it furnished the
essential link between Sunday, when he had successfully suppressed his
homosexual desires in conformance with his ideal, and the dream of
Monday night when he nevertheless felt the need to appease the severe
superego. (If we accept his theory, why would he feel such a need?) I
maintained that the dream was an important element in that it provided
the guilt motive in the sequence of events. X, however, denied its rele-
vance and took the occasion of this diflierence of opinion to attack me for
my lack of comprehension.
This sudden outburst of negative feelings could quite well be ex-
plained as a new method of defense; in his counterexplanation, X sought
to suppress the element which very clearly betrayed his homosexual
desires toward his father. Se\eral times already during the course of the
analysis his contradictory attitudes toward me (for or against homo-
sexuality) had been fairly transparent in his abrupt shifts in transference
feelings.
II. Psychoanalytic Commentary
Sometimes when traveling along a difficult, unknown path, the
traveler may come upon a piece of level open ground from which he gets
232
HENRI FLOURNOY
a clear view of the ground already covered. In the same way it sometimes
happens during the irregular, unpredictable course of an analysis that a
single session, such as the one I have described, may clarify a whole
series of significant data in an otherwise thoroughly confused situation.
The account of this session may serve as an introduction to the consid-
eration of the problem of masculine homosexuality in general.
Homosexuality is a morbid condition, the surface simplicity of which
cloaks a highly complex pathogenesis. The general problem has been
discussed from a psychoanalytic point of view in articles by Laforgue and
Allendy
(10),
de Saussure
(16),
Hesnard
(7, 8),
Marie Bonaparte
(1),
Vinchon and Nacht
(17),
Loewenstein
(12, 13),
to cite only those in the
French language.
It is certain that there is an organic hormonal factor involved, as
Freud has always acknowledged. This has been demonstrated by the
occasional sensational results obtained through surgery (Steinach grafts,
etc.) in cases of clinically recognized, overt homosexuality. But the organic
factor is much less important when the homosexual tendencies are to a
great extent latent, or when they become overt only under certain cir-
cumstances or in a transitory manner, as in the case of X. Here psycho-
analysis comes into its own. Not only does it help us to understand the
appearance of the inversion tendency and its development from the still
normal stages of infantile sexuality, but it also offers one of the most
effective methods of therapy in the personal and social conflicts that may
result from this deviation.
There are four detailed psychoanalytic studies of masculine homo-
sexuality, three of them describing cases that were cured. These studies
by Vinchon and Nacht
(17),
Nunberg
(14),
Wulff
(18)
and Lagache
(11)
are particularly instructive and offer viseful points of comparison with
our case.
Vinchon and Nacht
(17)
divide sexual inversion into three groups:
the first, homosexuality due to definite anatomic or glandular abnor-
mality; the two others, in which they classify the predominantly psycho-
logical cases, homosexuality as a perversion and homosexuality as a
neurosis.
The homosexual pervert has few or no other abnormalities. He lives
"comfortably settled in his vice," has no inner conflict over his state and
only suffers if external complications arise. He will never be cured for
the very good reason that he has no wish, and therefore makes no effort,
to be cured.
Not so the neurotic homosexual. His life is full of psychological
difficulties outwardly unrelated to his sexual disturbance. He is not
satisfied with his state. He desires to be cured and is willing to co-operate
A CASE OF MALE HOMOSEXUALITY 233
with the analyst. There is therefore ample justification for an attempt at
therapy, even though the patient may not entirely grasp the purpose of
it at first. The analysis will make clear to him the unconscious connec-
tions between his sexual abnormality and his mental life in general and
will enable him gradually to resolve the conflicts that beset him.
Vinchon and Nacht place their patient in this third group of homo-
sexual neurotics. After psychoanalytic treatment which lasted about a
year he was "practically cured." I would also place my patient in this
group, although I cannot make the same therapeutic claim since the re-
sults so far are not equivalent to a cure. However, among the clinical
symptoms which justify this classification and which permit of a favor-
able prognosis I would indicate the alternation of homosexual and
heterosexual activities, and the fact that the latter are gradually gaining
the ascendancy.
Basically, with patients of this type it is a question of herma-
phroditism (Krafft-Ebing). They are "bisexuals," who have drifted into
homosexuality because of certain psychological factors which are not
irreversible but can be readjusted through appropriate therapy. I agree
with Vinchon and Nacht and other psychoanalysts that this is a far
more typical picture among inverts than an exclusive drive toward the
same sex. The latter condition (a woman's soul in a man's body accord-
ing to the current, oversimplified, formula) is fortunately rare. It implies
extreme homosexuality
predominantly peda-
gogical and political interests in these particular caseswe must bear in
mind the deep instinctual connections (discovered by analysis of inverts
of the "active" type, to which Socrates and Plato certainly belonged) be-
tween the tendency to "love boys" and the desire to "dominate" them.
In my opinion this is also another instance of the primitive aggres-
siveness mentioned earlier. "What Socrates, the bourgeois, actually wants,"
writes Kelsen, "is to humiliate the young aristocrats gathered around him;
therefore he exalts humility into a virtue. His whole mentality, in so far
as we are able to reconstruct it from the works of Plato and Xenophon,
reveals this urge for power over men."
Undoubtedly his passion for power was given intellectual expression
only; however one of the chief aims of Socratic dialectics is to "confound
the opponent" (is this not also true of our less subtle twentieth century
political duels?). Plato is no longer regarded as a theoretical philospher
absorbed in pure science and meditation. "We now know," writes Kelsen,
"that Plato was far more of a politician than a theorist. Today he is
3 According to Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, quoted by Kelsen
(9)
, one of his works
may perhaps be a portrait of his mother.
A CASE OF MALE HOMOSEXUALITY 239
known as 'a leader of men/ an 'imperious character,' and valued chiefly
as an educator and an innovator."
After this disgression into the distant past, let us return in conclu-
sion to our contemporary case of psychopathology. A consideration of the
two famous inverts of ancient Greece has given us a clearer picture, as
through a magnifying glass, of the connection between their sexual
deviations and the channeling of their activity into social, pedagogical
and political fields. But it is also apparent that the moral and intellectual
grandeur of the two philosophers was not a derivative of their instincts
as such, but a function of their repression and sublimation. This is just
as true of our ordinary everyday cases notwithstanding their obvious
mediocrity in comparison with these famous examples from the past.
When describing the analytic session which served as a starting point
for this article, I referred to the sexual restrictions that X had imposed
on himself the evening before his erotic dream. This conscious repres-
sion, successful in spite of temptation, was instigated by the egothe
reasoning, reflecting, fully conscious ego, adjusted to the reality situa-
tion, and, moreover, acting in accordance with Socratic principles. But
during the erotic dream the homosexual drives took their revenge and
had free play. This involuntary relapse gave rise the following night to
another dream the signifinance of which was to propitiate the father and
obtain his forgiveness and to get rid of guilt feelings. Thanks to this
release our patient's normal, heterosexual drives were able to regain the
ascendancy. In this instance the control from which the guilt feelings
derived was not the ego but the superego.
The superego (or egoideal) acts unconsciously. It develops imper-
ceptibly from earliest childhood, through a progressive unreasoning as-
similation of the educational and moral influences of the environment. It
is a product first of the parental and family milieu, and later of the
social environment. The latter, external, factors had played an important
role in X's development. We have traced their influence on Socrates and
Plato also. Similarly, the sublimation of his sexual drives, although im-
perfect, played a major role in orienting him toward a social vocation
serving the public interest. It seemed to me of interest to make some
points of comparison between a fairly common observation from routine
practice and certain illustrious historical cases.
It is above all by his study of the instinctual drives, their dynamics
and possibilities of sublimation, and by his scientific analysis of dreams,
of the unconscious and of the superego, that Freud has contributed
something entirely original toward an understanding of the permanent
deeps of human nature.
240
HENRI FLOURNOY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Bonaparte, M. Introduction a la theorie ties instincts. Revue frangaise de psych-
analyse, VII: 217, 417, 611, 1934.
2. Bouvet, M. Importance de I'aspect homosexuel du transEert dans le traitement de
quatre cas de nevrose obsessionnelle masculine. Ibid., XII, 1948.
3. Freud, A. Some Clinical Remarks Concerning the Treatment of Cases of Male
Homosexuality. Int.
J.
Psa., XXX, 1949.
4. Freud, S. (1920) The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman.
Coll. Papers, II. London: Hogarth Press, 1924.
5. Freud, S. (1922)
Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealously, Paranoia and Homo-
sexuality. Ibid.
6. Gomperz, H. Psychologische Beobachtungen an griechischen Philosophen. Imago,
X, 1924.
7. Hesnard, A. Traite de sexologie normale et pathologiqiie. Paris: Payot, 1933.
8. Hesnard, A. Homosexualite et endocrines. Evolution psychiatrique, V, 1933.
9. Kelsen, H. Die platonische Liebe. Imago, XIX, 1933.
10. Laforgue, R. and Allendy, R. La psychanalyse et les nevroses. Paris: Payot, 1924.
11. Lagache, D. De I'homosexualit^ a la jalousie. Ibid., XIII, 1949.
12. Loewenstein, R. M. La psychanalyse des troubles de la puissance sexuelle. Ibid.,
VIH, 1935.
13. Loewenstein, R. M. Phallic Passivity in Men. Int.
J.
Psa., XVI, 1935.
14. Nunberg, H. Homosexuality, Magic and Aggression. In Practice and Theory
of
Psychoanalysis. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Monographs, 1948.
15. Rosenfeld, H. Remarks on the Relation of Male Homosexuality to Paranoia, Para-
noid Anxiety and Narcissism. Int.
J.
Psa., XXX, 1949.
16. Saussure, R. de, Les fixations homosexuelles chez les femmes nevrosees. Revue
frangaise de psychanalyse. III, 1929.
17. Vinchon,
J.
and Nacht, S. Considerations sur la cure psychanalytique d'une nevrose
homosexuelle. Ibid., IV, 1931.
18. Wulff, M. Ueber einen Fall von mannlicher Homosexualitat. Int. Ztschr.
f.
Psa u.
Imago, XXVI, 1941.
PAUL
iVlARC SCHLUMBERGER, M.U.
Paris
.... Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for
me:
Here he lies where he longs to be.
Home is the sailor, home from sea
And the hunter home from the hill.
R. L. Stevenson
For his own epitaph
At one time, while on the staff of a lively and psychoanalytically
minded school for "difficult children" and, although still medically un-
trained, I was entrusted with the care of Paul, a twenty-year-old epileptic,
the son of a parson. It was hoped that I would be able to help him
overcome his enuresis and his social maladjustment. It was just to be a
tentative investigation, not a regular analysis.
Paul had been in the school two and a half years and had already
received much understanding attention, but with little results, for he was
extremely diffident. I was told that there was a great deal of hate in him,
especially for women, that his enuresis probably meant a return to the
womb, and I was given the following case history written by his mother:^
Paul, a first child, born at 10:30 p.m., weight 8 lbs., which gradually
dwindled. Breast-fed for 6 weeks with great trouble for he could not suck.
Vomited constantly. Double hernia cured by belt. At 2 months, weight
6 lbs. At six weeks. Doctor considered case was grave. Nurse sent. Occa-
sional signs of improvement followed by relapse after relapse. Constant
vomiting. Last relapse when 9 months. Improvement. Nurse leaves Dec.
18th.
After a year old, scream paroxysms occurred, usually between 10
1 The italics are mine.
241
242
MARC SCHLUMBERGER
and 11 P.M. Sometimes when sitting in pram, would become very pale and
transparent looking, and then recover as quicklyabout a minute in all.
Gall-bladder attacks at intervals until about 7 years old; not frequent,
but always an extra one if his mother was indisposed.
At 2 years, left eye appeared to turn slightly outwards. Oculist con-
sulted annually till 8th year when glasses given for farsightedness.
From 2 to 3 years: showed signs of precocious memory. Never forgot
anything once told. Taught himself to read entirely by asking questions.
Once hearing rhymes and conversations, could repeat perfectly. Began to
roll in bed from side to side. It became a compulsion until he was 8 years
old when he ceased it after a desire for a typewriter which was promised
if he would refrain from rolling. He has never rolled since.
When 2
1/2
years, his sister was born. From 3 to 4 years, complained
constantly of "leg-ache."
5
1/4
years: showed signs of incontinence of urine and awkwardness
became apparent. Any change of address produced a wet bed the first
night.
At
61/4
years, without any warning, he visualized the whole calendar;
at any moment could instantly and unfailingly give the day of any given
date of the current year. Serious outbreaks of temper first developed dur-
ing a period of intensive air raids. Never showed the slightest sign of fear;
rather interested in them. These tempers have now taken the place of the
screamings; they grow in intensity, but diminish in frequency. Becomes
very annoyed when his sister is corrected.
7 years: begins to write stories; says wonderful prayers.
8
1/2
years: went to Egypt where his father had been alone for 4 years,
and to Jerusalem. No more leg-aches, no incontinence of urine; fewer
tempers; apparently more reasonable in everything,
101/2
years: returned home. 12 years: his brother is born.
13i/^ years: went to a prep school. Tried to run away before he had
been there three weeks. He alleged:
"/
want to see my parents." Was quite
satisfied for the next 18 months so long as his parents (at the headmaster's
request) visited him every two or three weeks. Kept entirely aloof. Began
incontinence
of
urine day and night, worse than at any other time, rarely
during holidays. Had him X-rayed; negative results.
Toward the end of his 15th year, very irritable and touchy. He
quickly answers back. He has always been able to control or "hold up"
one of his most violent tempers if there has been any reason to say, for
instance: "Wait now until these cyclists have passed, don't humiliate me
before them," he has waited most patiently, then continued the fray.
On December 18th, two months before his 16th birthday, he was
preparing his bath, and for some unaccountable reason, fell
into the very
hot water. His father heard the noise and found him unconscious in the
bath, half-dressed. Unconscious for about ten minutes. Badly scalded, but
he remembers nothing of the occurrence. While unconscious, was breath-
ing heavily, eyes wide open and looking frightened, body limp. Given
thyroid tablets.
The following year, while out at lunch with his aunt, suddenly fell
off his chair; 14 of an hour before he recovered normal speech. Doctor
writes: "This seems to be a case in which an attack of gastroenteritis in
PAUL
243
infancy led to a relative arrest of cerebral development and a late advent
of epileptic manifestations." Gardenal and pituitary tablets prescribed.
Between 1st and 2nd attack, has shown marked improvement; at
school, also he was a different boy; seemed brighter in every way.
Third attack when
16i^; while dressing, fell on the floor; his father
found him, speech thick, but quite conscious.
Fifteen minutes earlier, he ivas washing in the bathroom, but he had
quite forgotten it.
From
151/2
to
16i/^ years, no incontinence of urine and only occasion-
ally afterwards. He had about 8 more attacks, some of them very slight,
before he was sent, at 17i/2, to the School.
General disposition: he is sweet, loving, unselfish, and self-effacing,
always ready to make excuses for others.
I witnessed two of his attacks; the second took place a month or so
before we started our talks: he was lying on the floor, legs folded up,
arms alongside the body, shaken with spasmodical movements, eyes closed,
breathing heavily, his head knocking the ground. He calmed down rap-
idly and appeared relaxed; then he started pulling down his sweater as
far as he could, although it was hardly out of place, got up clumsily with
our help, pulled his clothes together as if wanting to correct their dis-
order, rubbed his hands energetically one against the other and passed
them over his hair and forehead as if to straighten things. He continued
this action of washing and combing until we had led him back to his bed,
on which he lay without saying a word.
These fits were not frequent, occurring once every month or so.
They seemed, though, to coincide with the moments when his typewriter
was out of order.
At the School he was incontinent day and night, but at home, accord-
ing to both him and his mother, incontinence practically never occurred.
I learned later that his testicles came down only after he was fourteen.
His mother, speaking of her feelings during pregnancy, said that she
had desired to keep away from everything base and impure and had
put away from her mind and surroundings everything that could defile
the ideal child she strove to bear. There were no such efforts for her
other two children, both normal, I hear, and charming.
All three children were born in "dry labor," but at Paul's birth
his mother suft'ered eighteen hours of agony because "there was no
fluid," whereas, for the others, she had only two hours' pain.
Paul is tall and heavy: he has a babyish face, high cheek bones, but
with a dark look. He will stand for hours in shorts in the Avinter, his
legs blue with cold, his shoulders hunched, his arms dangling. He cares
not at all how he is dressed (except after his fits). He seems even to ex-
hibit his untidiness and soiled clothes.
244
MARC SCHLUMBERGER
He is very polite and amiable, and anxious to use the right word.
He plays the piano, not well, but constantly, and spends a great deal of
his time writing novels on his typewriter.
His first sittingas the nine otherstook place in armchairs in front
of the fire. He started in silence by filling and lighting his pipe, clumsily
' \\
FIGURE 7House No. 3, the Pudharsh
Inhabitants: Pilkhlivowutn, Narshmali, Motsod, Izam and Kirsharsvvutn; the two first
of these sleep on the ertuikh, the older couple on the floor, the younger boy sleeps on
the ertuikh too, with his head toward the back of the arsh. Motsod is very often out,
either as priest-dairyman, when he sleeps in the tarvali, or to see friends in other
mads. Kirsharswutn often helps his father in the tarvali, when he also sleeps in the
dairy-temple.
astonishing, but I was made to understand that the latter were the com-
ing generation and should be made as comfortable as possible with their
common wife.
The finances of the Melgarsh family were equally unpredictable.
Thus apart from the revenue in kind which the buffaloes brought in,
and the capital invested in the houses and the dairy-temples, the men
received the following remunerations in cash from outside.
Pads: Rs.
46^ a month as gardener in the Botanical Gardens, Ootaca-
mund.
3 One U. S. dollar equals c. Rs. 5 (1952)
THE STUDY OF A TODA POLYANDROUS FAMILY 345
Mutnarsh: Rs. 36 as a gardener at the same place, and another Rs. 36
from the lease of the potato field which the government has
imposed on the mad, lease which has gone to a Badaga culti-
vator.
Munbokwutn: Rs. 12 a week as a casual laborer with various Badagas.
Singud: Rs. 36 a month as a forest guard of the Madras Forestry
Department.
Pilkhlivowutn: Rs. 36 as a gardener in the Botanical Gardens.
Porskwutn (Motsod's missing son): Rs. 60 a year, clothes and food
from a Badaga cultivator for whom he works and with whom
he lives.
Puvfkiaroz: Rs. 35 a month as a gardener in the Botanical Gardens.
With this money, each individual recipient kept the following mem-
bers of the family:
Pads: Silidz, Kupidz, Narjilkh and Kuddhue, when the latter is not
working elsewhere as a priest (in which case the mad where
he is employed feeds and clothes him).
Mutnarsh: Erzigwuf, Pershrorsh, Pengelam, Sodup, Sodam, Peterozn,
Karnoz and Nalsirwuf.
Munbokwutn: gives the money he makes to his father Pads.
Singud: Odzel, Singarsh and Amoniwuf.
Pilkhlivowutn: Motsod, Izam, Kirsharswutn and Narshmali.
Puvfkiaroz: Mutmali only.
The Melgarsh mad owned twenty-seven buffaloes and four calves
when I was with them. These were distributed as follows:
17 ordinary (Puttir) buffaloes and one baby calf;
10 sacred {Poshtir or Parshashir) buffaloes and three baby
calves.
These were owned in the following: manner:
1. Singarsh and Singud (in common; w^as also the case when they
each had a wife and is therefore not linked to their present
polyandrous marriage):
Six buffaloes and one calf
[2
poshtir, 2 puttir, two grown
puttir calves and one small puttir male {er) calf]
2. Purshwuo (absentee from Melgarsh, living at Karsh with his wife;
his buffaloes are, however, here):
Four buffaloes
(1
poshtir, one large poshtir er calf and 2
puttir)
3. Pads:
Fourteen buffaloes and two small calves
[7
puttir, 4 puttir
female (zV) calves, 1 poshtir ir calf, 2 poshtir er calves,
1 baby poshtir er calf, 1 baby poshtir ir calf]
346 PRINCE PETER OF GREECE AND DENMARK
4. Mutnarsh, Kuddhue and Munbokwutn (held in common):
Three buffaloes and one calf
(3
poshtir, 1 baby poshtir ir
calf)
Karnoz used to own eight buffaloes, but after two years of married
life to Nalsirwuf, he decided to get rid of most of them in favor of the
younger men. He thus kept only two (which are now at Kakhwurkh in
the care of relatives there) and gave the others as follows: three to his
sons (the ones shown above, and held jointly by them), two to Singarsh
and Singud, and the remaining one to his father-in-law, the father of
Nalsirwuf.
In acting thus, Karnoz was actually forestalling the disposal of his
property before his death, as is the practice with most Todas. Should a
man die without doing this, his wealth goes jointly to his sons. Should
he have no issue, it will be handed to his brothers or to the sons of the
latter. Girls can never inherit; all they can hope to get is a dowry from
their deceased parent's property, which the heirs should pay to them at
the time of their wedding. In the unusual case of a man having no
brothers and no nephews to whom the buffaloes devolve after his death,
the herd will be given to the pohn, one of the groups into which a Toda
mad is organized for the bearing of certain common expenses (such as
the reparation of the dairy-temple, for instance).
I had put up a tent in the immediate vicinity of Melgarsh mad, and
was thus able, by staying in it up to twenty-four hours on certain occa-
sions, to follow the everyday life of the family.
The habitual daily routine was really quite simple. The various mem-
bers of Melgarsh would sleep in their respective houses as described
above, and rise very early, with the sun, which in southern India is
already up at 4.30 A.M. Pads and Silidz would say their morning prayers
(as all other Todas; see Rivers,
13, p. 31),
attend to the calls of nature in
the bushes close by, and then prepare the morning food. There was very
little washing, the clothes which were taken off at night (underclothes
alone are worn then) being put on again. While Silidz was doing the
cooking, Pads would go out and lend a hand with the buffaloes, which
were taken out of the pen at this early hour and allowed to graze on
the ground in front of the houses. He was assisted in this by Munbokwutn,
Pershrorsh, Narjilkh, Singarsh, and sometimes Singud and Kuddhue.
The latter, usually tarvalikartmokh, would then milk the buffaloes at
8 A.M. before they left with the boys, Munbokwutn and Singarsh, for
higher grazing grounds, after the morning meal. Narjilkh would have
let the calves out earlier and would have helped to retain them at Mel-
garsh away from their mothers. The gardeners (Pads, Mutnarsh, Pil-
THE STUDY OF A TODA POLYANDROUS FAMILY 347
khlivowutn and Puvfkiaroz), once the meal was over, would put on some
dreadful rags which were considered by them to be European clothes, and
go off for their work in the Botanical Gardens. The women would stay
at home to tidy up the houses, broom them out, wash themselves (espe-
cially the young ones), pound rice in the kudi, and cook the evening
meal.
The meals consisted of either of the following foods: milk, butter-
milk, butter, ghee (clarified butter), millet, raghee (an Indian cereal),
rice, wheat flour in the form of unleavened bread, jaggery (unrefined cane
sugar), coffee, chillis, bamboo shoots and fruits from the woods, and
honey. No meat was eaten, as the Todas, like other Indians, are vege-
tarians.
In the afternoon, the gardeners would not return from their work
before 5 o'clock, while the women would sit about sewinsf and em-
broidering putkulis. The children would play, and those men who stayed
behind (like Motsod) would either sleep or receive visits from other mads.
After 5 P.M. the buffaloes were brought back, they would be milked
again by the tarvalikartmokh and then put away in the pen, while
Narjilkh would see to it that the calves were in for the night. Kuddhue
would churn the milk in the dairy-temple and the buttermilk and the
butter would be brought out by his attendants to be handed over to the
women at the precise spot (marked by an upright stone) beyond which
they are not allowed closer to the sacred precincts of the tarvali. The
evening meal would be partaken of, and everybody would go to bed
early, practically immediately after sunset
(7
P.M.).
When I only worked half a day with these people, I usually would
stay from 2 P.M. to 7 P.M., talking and watching what was going on.
This seemed to be the best time in which to get information from the
Todas.
IV. The Polyandrous Family Unit
Approximately two weeks after I had arrived in the Nilgiris, on the
18th May 1949, Erzigwuf gave birth to twins for the second time. It was
about 8 P.M. in the evening when she felt unmistakable pains. She im-
mediately got onto the kitten of the room she lives in and, assuming a
kneeling posture, called for Silidz, her mother-in-law, who came at once
to assist her. A first child, a boy, was born without difficulty, and the
pains continuing, half an hour later, a little girl also made her appear-
ance, who was taken out, like the first baby, from behind by Silidz. The
latter cut the cords with a pair of scissors, tied the remaining stumps
tightly with hair and smeared the wounds with an astringent root from
the marshes which the Todas call poli; she next went away from the arsh
348 PRINCE PETER OF GREECE AND DENMARK
and buried the cords and afterbirth in a hole which she made in the
ground. The newborn babies were washed in hot water and with soap
(bought in the bazar), and laid to rest with their mother who had by now
moved back to the ertiilkh where she was resting on her back. She did
not start to feed them before the next day.
When I saw her then, in the evening, she was sitting on the kitten,
naked to the waist, suckling one of the babies from her left breast. She
complained that she was not feeling too well, and that she really did not
have enough milk for twins a second time. The babies appeared well
enough, the one who was presented to me as the girl seeming better and
stronger than the other. Mutnarsh arrived soon after; he told me too
that twins again were an impossible burden for his wife and himself, that
Erzigwuf could not possibly feed them both, and ended up by asking
me for some brandy for the mother, which request I did not accede to,
as it is the Toda practice to distribute brandy to others at the occasion
of a birth and I suspected that that was the real motive of the demand.
Besides, prohibition exists in the State of Madras, and it is impossible to
obtain any brandy except for medical purposes, this even being tied up
with considerable formalities. The complaints about the difficulty of
feeding the twins made me suspect at once that, in accordance with Toda
practice, it was not proposed to let more than one of them live, and that
preferably the girl would be left to die. However, during the next days,
Erzigwuf looked much better (she went out for a walk round the house
on the 20th in the evening), and so did the children, and I began to lose
my suspicions.
I inquired who was the father, and was assured that it was Mutnarsh.
Kuddhue, since the first lot of twins were born, was not allowed near
Erzigwuf, she told me, as she had the dreadful impression that they might
be the result of his infirmities. Munbokwutn had only had fleeting inter-
course with her, and that after her return from Palani with Mutnarsh,
and after she knew herself to be expecting. The other children were not
jealous of the new babies, I was told, and from personal observation I
gathered that this was correct. Both Sodup and Sodam seemed to have as
much a share of their mother as before, both having been weaned from
her some two months earlier.
On the 24th May, the birth ceremony described by Rivers
(13, p.
324)
under the name of polk potha nit utpimi took place. Readers are re-
ferred to that author for details of the ritual, but it can roughly be said
that it is one in which the recently delivered mother is escorted to a
puzharsh or seclusion-hut where she will remain in impurity until a few
days before the next full moon (in Erzigwuf's case, she only remained
three days, as the new moon was just about due).
THE STUDY OF A TODA POLYANDROUS FAMILY 349
The ceremony took place in accordance with the prescribed rules,
and Erzigwuf was accompanied by Mutnarsh and Silidz. What was un-
usual, however, was that when the part in which water is drunk out of
bamboo tubes was reached, Sodup, who was standing with the rest of us
as a spectator (Munbokwutn, the youngest father, was also there), started
crying. He insisted that he be given some water to drink, w'hich was
done, although not strictly in accordance with custom. Sodam was also
given a little, as she too started to cry when she saw her little brother
getting what he wanted. But Sodup did not stop crying. He now com-
plained that they were taking his mother away, and that he would be left
without her. Sodam added her wails to his, and finally Erzigwuf took
them both along with her into the puzharsh, which was quite unorthodox.
So there did appear all the same to be a certain amount of jealousy in
the hearts of the two elder twins.
In the middle of the ceremony, Kuddhue turned up. He was, at the
time, functioning as the wnarsol of the Karsh mad and should strictly
have remained on the job. He had even come to Melgarsh by the quick-
est way, i.e., along the main road, which made him unclean and unable
to resume his work as a priest w-ithout a complicated ritual of purifica-
tion. But he preferred to be perol ("ordinary man," that is, unclean), he
said, than to miss the newborn twins, whom he had not seen yet. He
brought some sweets for Sodup and Sodam, but the latter were already
in the puzharsh and could therefore not be given them.
In order to obtain information about initial maternal care of children
and the early development and education of the latter, I was obliged to
question Erzigwoif and not only rely on observation (which I would have
preferred) as the time at my disposal did not allow for the longer method.
Thus, in answer to my questions, she told me that she had breast-fed
her children for the following lengths of time: Pershrorsh, one year and
a half; Narjilkh, three years; Pengelman, two years; Sodup and Sodam,
two and a half years. She had, she assured me, fed them this way even
after she was pregnant, the last set of twins until the seventh month. The
fact that the babes had teethed when they were seven months old, had not
kept her from continuing breast feeding; they had certainly bitten her,
but that was not much worse, she said, than their pulling and scratching
her breasts with their hands. Sodup had been especially bad in this re-
spect, tugging at her hair too, throwing stones and household articles at
her and, after he was a year old and could talk, saying aggressive and
sadistical things to her such as his desire to disembowel her. They be-
haved thus when she did not suckle them quickly enough but also, she
added, when sucklingit seemed to add to their enjoyment. The usual
350 PRINCE PETER OF GREECE AND DENMARK
way to wean Toda children was to smear the nipples with the plant
called poll, but it had not been necessary to do this with the twins as
they had given up of their own accord when the taste of Erzigwuf's milk
changed due to her advanced pregnancy."*
Small children suck their thumbs very early, Erzigwuf told me. As a
proof, she showed me one of the newborn twins, fast asleep in her lap
with its thumb in its mouth. For diapers, she used bits of cloth which
she regularly changed and washed. She said that she taught her children
to be clean after six months. Before that, she would take them out at
intervals and hold them in her hands, both boy and girl. Then, after,
she would teach them gradually to go out themselves, punishing them
by beating them on the buttocks with a stinging nettle called tworkh in
Toda when they misbehaved in the house, and rewarding them with
sweets when they were good and did as they were told. They learned
very quickly, I heard, in approximately one month.
Regarding genital developments Erzigwuf was very outspoken, and
I had no difficulty in getting information from her, even in the presence
of Narjilkh and Pengelam, who would listen with interest to the con-
versation through Kanvarsathi-Sunderdoss, my interpreter. She said that
masturbation started very earlyat about nine months. They play with
their genitals, both boys and girls, but the former more so, all the time;
when walking, suckling and lying down, as she put it. When they get
older, this little game is intensified, and after they have reached the age
of one she intervenes and tries to stop it. She did so, she said, and not
Mutnarsh who "lets the children do anything they want." Asked why
she did not allow them to carry on freely, she said, because if she did
not forbid them to do this they would (a) continue when adult, (b) spoil
their health by doing so. The method for combatting the "evil" is to
administer tioarkh on the genitals, as on the buttocks for insanitary lapses.
(Incidentally, Erzigwuf admitted that she also made use of these nettles
on the mouths of her children when they bit her, and on their fingers
when they pinched and pulled her hair). Masturbation, as a result, is
less intensive, but does all the same continue, she said, until the fourth
year. Then there is a period of calm (latency) until the twelfth year.
My interpreter here put in his own version. He said that Erzigwuf
4
Somewhat incredulous of these assertions, I questioned the local medical prac-
titioner of Ootacamund, Colonel D'Souza, Indian Medical Service (rtd.), about their
veracity, and he assured me that it was quite possible. He even said that his experience
was that this way of nursing children was common to "the whole of Asia," that it did
not tire the mother as after some time "it becomes mechanical"; Colonel D'Souza also
assured me that the contention often heard that suckling prevents conception was a
fallacy completely disproved by facts "at least in Asia." I am most indebted to Colonel
D'Souza for his information.
THE STUDY OF A TODA POLYANDROUS FAMILY 351
was not saying the truth, and that he had observed other things with his
own children. They carried on with masturbation until the ninth year
inclusive, and latency only lasted thus for three years. He also mentioned
that in his day the punishments employed were much more drastic. A
horrible one that he remembers consisted in having one's wrists tied be-
hind one's back, one's cloak fastened tight over arms and legs and to be
put, thus trussed up, at the entrance of the buffalo pen when the animals
either rushed out in the morning or in the evening. Kanvarsathi added
that Pangur, the adult son of the Teivilkh chieftain Pilliar of Kuur mad,
had never really given up masturbating because, in his opinion, he had
been too repressed in this activity as a child and had thus never grown
out of the habit. He was now a wanderer over the Nilgiri downs, with
no known feminine attachments.
Premarital relations between young people after puberty are not
discouraged with the Todas, provided they take place within the permis-
sible marital rules of the tribe, i.e., outside the polkhliol and modol, but
within the moiety. Thus, premarital relations with a matchuni are con-
sidered quite normal, and should a child result from them, there is no
harm done, as, officially, they are not premarital relations at all, but those
of a wedded couple, even if the marriage took place in very early child-
hood. Girls, as I have reported in earlier papers
(9-12),
must be deflowered
by a third party, usually by a Teivilkh in the case of Tardharsh girls,
before they have regular sexual intercourse. The reason given for this
being that, were this not done, the maternal uncle of the woman would
die. Should it, by some mishap, not have taken place, then the miin
(mother's brother) can still save himself from threatened doom by shaving
the girl's hair completely off.
I asked Erzigwuf if Pershrorsh, her eldest boy, who had attained the
age of puberty, had any relations with girls, and her answer was that he
probably had, as he was most of the time away from Melgarsh and she
could not get him to stay, although she had asked him to, since Mutnarsh
was very busy in the Botanical Gardens. Narjilkh, she said, was too young
for such things, and Pengelam too, although the latter, as a girl, would
be watched more as she grew older.
Three days after the family had entered the puzharsh, I went to see
them come out and return to the mad. I noticed that of the two newborn
twins the boy looked very sick, while the girl was strong and healthy. In
order to help keep the little one alive, and because Erzigwuf was still
complaining that she had insufficient milk for both, I went to the bazar
and bought her a tin of Glaxo and a bottle of Grip-ease. On the 30th
May, there was a definite change. The boy started looking well, while the
352 PRINCE PETER OF GREECE AND DENMARK
girl's health began to decline. Motsod had been to my bungalow early
that morning to ask me to come, as the little girl twin, he said, was
unwell. She certainly looked listless and weak, and I wondered how this
could have come so quickly about. I suspected she was not being fed
properly, and I imagined it was because the Todas had all the same
decided to let her die, in accordance with their ancient custom of female
infanticide and of doing away with one infant of a pair of twins.
I went to the local government hospital, and requested the assistance
of the Indian practitioner in charge, but he refused to come along, giving
as an excuse that he could not possibly create a precedent by attending
aboriginals at their homes. I tried to persuade Erzigwuf to travel to the
hospital in my car, but she refused, saying she was not well enough, and
that the baby besides was too sick to stand the trip. Karnoz put a word in
too, stating that Western medicine was no good in a case like this, and
that it was better for the child to stay at the mad. There was much wail-
ing and crying over the bad health of the child, however, and to anybody
unacquainted with Toda customs of infanticide, this behavior would
have appeared perfectly genuine.
On the morning of the 31st, Munbokwutn turned up at my bun-
galow at 7:30 a.m. with the news that the child had died. I went immedi-
ately to Melgarsh and found them all assembled in the front room of the
Warthuttiarsh (where all clan members must be brought, even from out-
lying mads, to die), wailing and lamenting loudly over the death of the
baby. Toda visitors started arriving to partake of the sorrow and one of
the first to crawl into the house on hands and knees, howling and sobbing
ritually, was Erzigwuf's father, Tinmarsh of Pan modol. It all appeared
perfectly real, and one nearly felt sorry for Mutnarsh, who was sitting
outside the arsh, crying his eyes out, while Sodup, either from fright or
by imitation, joined in heartily; Sodam, nearby, was quite indifferent as
was Munbokwutn, the youngest father, also. Only later, some four months
after, the Todas admitted to my wife that they had let the little girl die,
so that really all this exhibition of grief was purely conventional and if
not completely hypocritical, at least due to feelings of guilt or to the
depressing effect which inexorable customs may have on people of this
kind.
The funeral took place on
June
1st, and as is the Toda custom, the
little dead girl's body was first ceremoniously "married" to her matchuni,
a"1oby of the Pan modol, which made her one of that clan for the after-
world. She was consequently cremated at the Pan cremation ground,
with a further considerable display of grief and lamenting.
While having necessarily to question the Todas at times, principally
THE STUDY OF A TODA POLYANDROUS FAMILY 353
in order to obtain explanations of things which could not simply be
observed, but also in order to get as many results as possible within the
few months that I was in the Nilgiris, I all the same managed to do
quite a lot of pine observation of their everyday behavior, without dis-
turbing them too much by my alien presence. The very fact, however,
that one is there, upsets the family pattern of usual activities, and that is
a problem which I am sure other anthropologists have had to contend
with, but for which I, for my part at least, have found no really satisfac-
tory solution. Thus, for instance, the Melgarsh people very quickly dis-
covered that I was interested in the children. They consequently would
play them up for me as much as they could as soon as I arrived. Sodup,
who was really an exceptionally amusing and bright child, was specially
singled out for this, and greatly encouraged to be "funny" in my pres-
ence. I believe, nevertheless, that he would anyhow have been the darling
of Melgarsh, as many of his pranks, as far as he was concerned, were his
own genuine invention and were definitely not suggested by those around
him.
Some of the things he said and did were quite suggestive and of con-
siderable psychological interest. Thus one day (May 26, 1949),
he started
off to tell how his father (Mutnarsh) was wonderfully skilled in the art of
catching buffaloes by the horns (as is the practice at Toda funerals; see
Rivers,
13, p. 349). His mouth puckered up; his eyes flashing, and waving
a small cane in his hand, he went on to show how he, Sodup, treated the
calf which had been entrusted to his care. He said it drank too much milk
and that he had to beat it to keep it from doing so. Switching to another
subject, he told us how a rat had made a hole in the house in which he
lived and how he had watched it go through that hole. He came back
to the calf theme very soon after, and began illustrating the way he beat
the calf by running after the girls present: Pengelam, Mutmali and
Narshmali. Pretending to be very frightened, they ran away from him
with laughter and cries, which were intended, of course, to encourage
him even more. Sodam, his twin sister, looked on from her mother's side,
with great round, frightened eyes.
After the funeral of his ill-fated little sister, Sodup indulged in the
following antics. He began by telling us that the surviving baby cried
too much, and that it better beware, as the other one had been taken
away dead, by the neck
(?)
to a funeral. Switching without transition to
another subject, he said that his uncle Singarsh was too often in the
bazar and not enough at home; he threatened to tie him to the house
so that he be compelled to look more after the buffaloes. With gestures
and cries, still -wagging a stick in his hand, he showed how he ^vould lead
the buffaloes at the next summer migration to greener pastures. As an
354 PRINCE PETER OF GREECE AND DENMARK
Indian visitor turned up to have a look at the Todas, he exclaimed that
he v/as tired of visitors, and that they should not be allowed near the
mad. He pointed to my bungalow on the hill opposite, and said he
wanted to go there. Then, he picked up a bit of discarded tin foil and
ran about, throwing it into the air,
A few days later, I found him in the same boisterous mood. He
started pulling at the clothes of Singarsh and beating his legs, and when
tired of this victim, had the effrontery to do the same to Karnoz, which
was quite unusual. Nobody really minded, however, and there was much
laughter. He then set upon Kupidz, his grandmother, pulled her hair and
bit her, and even tried to undress her. He endeavored to throw stones at
the onlooking women, but was all the same stopped here. He picked up
the empty Glaxo tin, and loudly proclaimed that it was he who had
bought it for the new baby in the bazar.
One of the most difficult things to collect from the Todas were
dreams. They somehow sensed there was something intimate about these
and would not disclose them, although they were quite willing to speak
openly and publicly about sexual matters. During the whole time I was
in the Nilgiris in 1949, I was only able to get Motsod to give me one of
his dreams (an insignificant one; that he had found Rs. 10 in coins on the
ground and that one was the size of his palm; in association, he said
that he had changed Rs. 10 the day before in the bazar), and to obtain
another one from Sodup. This was to the effect that he dreamed that a
big bear had taken his mother away, and that he had mauled her badly
so that she was bleeding profusely from the left shoulder (Erzigwuf feeds
her children mainly from the left breast, because it is "more convenient,"
she says). He saw the bear carry off his mother past the Warthuttiarsh,
on the left side. He said that he was not sorry at all. (I noted that when
Sodup is "naughty," Erzigwuf threatens that he will be carried away by
a bear.)
One other day (August 14, 1949), Sodup astounded me during an
afternoon session by suddenly exclaiming to me in English: "Heyl you
bugger!" Asked where on earth he had learned this, Kanvarsathi said it
was from English soldiers on leave from Madras, but considering that we
were then in 1949, that the British left India in 1947 and that Sodup was
only two and a half years old, either he had a remarkably retentive mem-
ory, or Kanvarsathi's explanation was not correct. Anyhow, Sodup seemed
perfectly aware that this was a rude expression, not meant to please me.
The contrast between the twins was extremely marked, Sodam
hardly ever leaving her mother, and preferring to stay indoors. Erzigwuf
told me that she had always been difficult, sulking for hours when scolded,
whereas Sodup "forgets at once." It was obvious that exteriorized aggres-
THE STUDY OF A TODA POLYANDROUS FAMILY 855
sion was a very marked component of the little boy's character. In a film
which I made of the family, he can be seen threatening his father Mut-
narsh with a gesture of his uplifted hand.
The other children were also quite different. They were older of
course, but their mother said they had never been like Sodup. Pengelam
delighted in playing games such as paying a visit to my motor-caravan
(I had taken them one morning to see it and had sho\\'ed quite a lot of
Todas round it). Pengelam would put Sodup and Sodam in my tent
(somewhat against their will), pretended they were my wife and I inside
the caravan, and then she would impersonate Kanvarsathi, my interpreter,
showing the grownups about, and explaining the different items to them.
She would also often take Peterozn from her mother and carry him
around in her arms, singing delightedly to him in an enraptured voice.
Once, I saw her attempt to smoke the butt of a cigarette discarded by an
Indian visitor, and Munbokwutn, in one of his rare displays of authority,
took it forcibly away from her, and said angry words to her about it
(Todas do not usually smoke but take snuff instead).
In the Rorschach tests which I took of Pengelam, she showed more
fantasy than any of the other Melgarsh inhabitants. Thus for Card V,
she said the ink blot looked like a flying devil. She assured me she had
seen such a one when returning from the cinema three weeks before. It
was sitting on a tree and her mother told her it was a devil. Amoniwuf
said so too. It looked like an eagle, and she was very frightened, but Erzig-
wuf and Amoniwuf were not. What frightened her, she said, was the
knowledge that the devil could throw a stone at her. A month ago, one
such devil had thrown a stone at her as she was coming back from
attending the small calves, and she had been hit in the foot. Another
time, a similar devil threw a burning^ stick at her from a tree in the
Botanical Gardens, near the Mela;arsh mad. Her father Mutnarsh, she
said, was also frightened of devils many years back, although he is not so
any longer now. The devil usually smells at your feet to see if the person
is afraid; if it detects fright in this way, it will deliver a blo^v, but should
the person shoiv no fear, then it will not harm anyone.^
Narjilkh (of whom I made a film, toda boy) was a quiet, hard-
working lad. He did not express much and even -^vhen questioned an-
swered only with reluctance. He was learning to cook, and to milk the
buffaloes, as well as the ritual of the polkhthli, as some day he will have
to be tarvalikartmokh, wursol and even kaltmokh at the ti-mad. I usu-
ally found him cutting wood in the morning, logs that Mutnarsh had
5 The collection of Rorschach tests taken on all the members of the Melgarsh mad,
except the distant relatives, is with Professor Ralph Linton, Yale University, U.S.A.,
who very kindly sent me the cards and an instructions book with a request that I
make the tests.
356 PRINCE PETER OF GREECE AND DENMARK
brought in from the forest before going off to his work in the gardens.
Narjilkh's most usual companion was his youngest father Munbokwutn
for whom he seemed to have a kind of brotherly love. The tv/o of them
were always out together with the buffaloes, and apparently got on par-
ticularly well.
As for Pershrorsh, I did not have much opportunity to watch him, as
he was most of the time away. When he was at home, he struck me as
being the favorite of his mother, a quiet, silent boy of undoubted ability
as a herdsman, but who was also willing to help me for instance with
my car when I once got it stuck in the mud of a forest path near Mel-
garsh. He seemed quite intelligent, and as reported earlier, because he
was suspected already to have a girl friend, looked upon with a certain
amount of consideration by the rest of the family. It was while question-
ing Erzigwuf about him that I discovered about the Todas' mother-sibs,
the polkhliol, as she was obviously shocked at my suggestion that Mutmali
might be his girl friend. "No, no," she said emphatically, "that is impos-
sible! They belong to the same polkhliol!"
(12).
V. The Psychological Inductions
Both from the general knowledge of the Todas, which I acquired
mainly during my first stay with the tribe in 1939, and from my special
observations of the life of the single family Melgarsh in 1949, I have
distinctly gathered the impression that, fundamentally, the nature and
the structure of these people's psyche is very much the same as ours in
the West. I had set out, it will be recalled, with just the very purpose of
investigating if this was the case or not with human beings living in other
cultures than ours, and it can thus be said, for the Todas at least, that my
goal has been virtually attained.
With regard to the sexual drive, Emeneau has already recorded that
the Todas are "vigorously and adventurously sexual." As he has it:
"Ordinary marriage within the moiety and the freedom allowed in chang-
ing mates, and the to:tjfoj ('lover-mistress') institution providing for
sexual unions overstepping the boundary between the moieties give evi-
dence of a high degree of sexual activity." He goes on to note that "these
do not exhaust the possibilities" and that there "are many more irregular
liaisons, not provided by overt institutions, and indeed punishable by
fines if discovered"
(2, p. 173). This would strike even an untrained ob-
server, I think, as it is an outstanding characteristic of the Nilgiri tribe.
The Toda women, I was told by my interpreter, "think of nothing
else (than sexual intercourse), escaping whenever they can into the sholas
to copulate with men of their choice." The institution alluded to by
THE STUDY OF A TODA POLYANDROUS FAMILY
357
Rivers
(13, p. 103) in which the palol (high priest of a ti dairy) upon the
completion of eighteen years of service can enjoy any Thardharsh woman
to whom he, as a Teivilkh, has taken a fancy, turned out on investigation
to be quite something else. The Todas admitted to my wife and to me
that all palols had a regular Tardharsh mistress during the whole of
their term of office, she being rewarded for this prohibited union with
expensive presents acquired by her lover with the proceeds of the dairy
(11)-
Incidentally, the position in which these people usually have coitus,
is for the woman to lie on her back and for the man to lie on top of her,
between her open legs. Only the people of Malabar "do it the other way
round" I was told (not without some amused sarcasm), and I was also
assured that copulation should never take place on the ertiilkh. How this
is to be reconciled with the statement that in the case of Pilkhlivowutn,
Kirsharswutn and Narshmali, the young couple sleep on the ertiilkh
while Motsod and Izam do so on the floor, because "the coming genera-
tion should be made as comfortable as possible with their common wife"
(see above,
p. 344),
I do not know; it would be worth further investigating.
About aggression, I was told to begin with, that there was very little
of it among the Todas, that they quarreled and shouted at each other
assuredly very often, but that even the fighting with sticks was something
that did not happen frequently. It is true that the tribe is totally devoid
of arms, and that they do not seem even to have ever possessed any
a
rare occurrence with people anywhere in the world. Gradually, I discov-
ered, however, that this was what they would like outsiders to believe
about them and that, in reality, there was much jealousy, aggression and
hate between Toda and Toda, culminating very often in mysterious
murders and bloody feuds. What I have written about Karnoz earlier
(p.
331)
is a case in point, and I also came across other similar instances.
Thus, the notorious Teivilkh Kuriolv about whom Rivers wrote in
such eloquent terms
(13, pp.
551-
552),
after having rid himself of rivals
and wives alike through the usual Toda method of indirect poisoning
through the agency of the Kurumbas, was himself murdered in the same
way by his wife, he ending his life practically at the same time and in a
neighboring house at Kuur where his rival and victim Arjvur died from
the effects of poison which he had himself administered to him. Piliar
of Kuur poisoned Todhen of Aperagor mad when I was in the Nilgiris in
1949, because he had had a son by a woman whom Piliar had given up
because he believed her to be barren. The deed was committed by a
Kurumba in Pillar's pay who gave the poison with some milk to Todhen
at a funeral which I attended. I tried to get the ailing man to hospital
in Ootacamund in order to look better into his case as well as to try and
358 PRINCE PETER OF GREECE AND DENMARK
save him, but came up against the stubborn resistance of Piliar who stood
guard at the door of Todhen's house at Apergor, and assured me that
"Toda and Western medicine do not mix." Curiously too, the victim
himself agreed with his tormentor and refused to follow me. In such
cases, the man usually resigns himself to a death which he feels the gods
desire, but Todhen somehow recovered and did not die.
It is well known, of course, that the Todas practiced female infan-
ticide, although by methods which they have abandoned a long time ago.
From the case of the little girl twin to whose death I was a witness, it
can be gathered that the cruel custom has not been given up, although
the way of following it is no longer the same. I have also seen most dread-
ful quarrels between Todas, about the allocation of buffaloes, during my
stays in the Nilgiris, quarrels whose origin often go back to the childhood
of one of the contestants, the latter accusing the other party of having
stolen his rightful share when he was still too small to realize what it
meant, and when, his parents having died early, there was no one to
defend his interests. Such disputes often end too with the offended person
engaging Kurumbas to kill off his enemy. In fact, I now believe that very
few of the more influential Todas ever die a natural death, they being
done away with usually by poisoning, before old age takes the natural
toll of them.
From what I was able to gather from Erzigwuf and from Kanvar-
sathi, my interpreter, it appears that infantile development with the
Todas is in many ways identical with that of our children. Of course,
babies are suckled by their mothers much longer than in the West
History
When the undersigned, the petitioner Sri. Nashimikar (s/o) ponnal
residing at Minikmund went on his duty to Mysore Palace. One Sri.
Neshivikuttan (Toda) s/o Uthias of Kodathunnymund, Kodanad, of
Kotagiri, Coonoor Taluk, under the previous inducement of others made
my Mrs. Asthima (a newly married wife) convinced for their illegal
attempt and Sri. Uthias and others carried her away from Minikmund by
force at about 10 to 11 a.m. on
23-5-'49
to make her a new wife of Sri. U.
Neshavakuttan, that is accordinsr to our ancient customs of our com-
munity.
NOW MY dear wife IS IN THE HANDS OF NESHIVIKUTTAN s/o UTHIAS AND
SHE IS UNDER THEIR CUSTODY AT KODATHUNNIMUND AT KODANAD OF KOTA-
GIRI, COONOOR TALUK.
THE STUDY OF A TODA POLYANDROUS FAMILY 367
Request
I and other Toda youths being of honesty and civilized is now pray-
ing that no such steeling of girls or women may be made in all future in
this Governement, that is to say, to marry illegally the others either by
nature also by force.
Therefore no diversion of wives may be allowed in our hill-tribe
community. Also we pray that we may kindly be benefitted to give-up all
the past and to direct us to make a new life satisfied by the Governement
and the Almighty.
Activities
1. According to the resolutions passed by the Toda Well-fare Com-
mittee such illegal activities are being completely stoped.
2. The Toda Pnchayat Committee is also directed by the T. W.
Committee to make all arrangements regarding marriage legally.
On the contrary it seems the said Toda Well-fare Committee by receiving
bribes from the accused also from the opponent party. Therefore, I and
the others think that these are unlawful to court of law and to Court of
Almighty. Medicalmen (I heard it said) and others the population is
decreasing on account of these illegal, etc., procedure in this Com-
munities.
Prayer
Please, and do please in the name of almighty make immediate ar-
rangements to bring my wife mrs. asthiamma nashimikar of Minikmund
Now.
I humbly beg to remain.
Respected Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
(sgd. P. Nashimikar)
368 PRINCE PETER OF GREECE AND DENMARK
Appendix 3. Sketch of the Melgarsh Mad's disposition.
BOTANICAL GARDENS
,\re_r^ej}j29
Grounds
called a
buffalo
THE STORY OF A TODA POLYANDROUS FAMILY 569
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Cipriani, L. Estratto dalV Archivo per I'Antropologia e la Etnologia, LXVII.
Firenze: Stamperia Fratelli Parenti di G., 1937.
2. Emeneau, M. B. Language and Social Forms: A Study of Toda Kinship Terms and
Dual Descent. In Language, Culture and Personality. Menasha, Wis.: undated.
3. Emeneau, M. B. Toda Marriage Regulations and Taboos. A?n. Anthropol., XXXIX,
1937.
4. Emeneau, M. B. The Songs of the Todas. Proc. Am. Philosoph. Soc, LXXVII,
1937.
5. Emeneau, M. B. Toda Menstruation Practices. In A Volume
of
Eastern and Indian
Studies in Honour
of
F. ]V. Thomas, CLE. (Reprint, undated.)
6. Emeneau, M. B. Toda Garments and Embroidery. /. Am. Oriental Soc, LVII.
7. Emeneau, M. B. Personal Names of the Todas. Am. Anthropol., XL, 1938.
8. Emeneau, M. B. The Christian Todas. Proc. Am. Philosoph. Soc., LXXXI, 1939.
9. Greece, Prince Peter, Tibetan, Toda and Tiya Polyandry: A Report on Field In-
vestigations. Trayis. N. Y. Acad. Sci., Ser. II, X, 1948.
10. Greece, Prince Peter, Possible Sumerian Survivals in Toda Ritual. Bull. Madras
Government Museum, New Series, General Section, Vol. VI, No. 1, Madras, 1951.
11. Greece, Prince Peter, The Todas: Some Additions and Corrections to W. H. R.
Rivers' Book Observed in the Field. To be published by /
Indian Anthropol. Insti-
tute, Calcutta.
12. Greece, Prince Peter, The Mother-Sibs of the Todas of the Nilgiris. To be pub-
lished by Eastern Anthropol., Lucknow.
13. Rivers, W. H. R. The Todas. London: Macmillan, 1906. (See Appendix II for
extensive bibliography.)
THE MILKY WAY AND THE ESOTERIC MEANING
OF AUSTRALIAN INITIATION
GZA ROHEIM, PH.D.
New York
In his excellent study on ritual and myth in Arnhem Land Berndt
reports the following myth as the origin myth of the subincision (Kuna-
pipi) cermony among the Alawa tribe. This ritual is the real "big
mystery" of the initiation.
In the "Dreaming period" the Kadjari (mother imago, also called
Kunapipi) lived with her old blind husband and her sister's (daughter's)
son, a small boy.
She went out foraging for food and found some goannas (big lizards).
She killed them and brought them back to camp where she roasted them
in a hole. Then she took the cooked goannas out and handed the largest
one to the old man and the smaller one to the little boy. He began to cry
in anger, he did not want the small goannas, he wanted the big, fat one,
Berndt's informants told him that the goanna symbolizes the penis and
a little boy is given a small goanna because his penis is small and not
mature but the large goanna was given to the old man because his penis
was of adult size. The child wants a large adult penis to take the place
of the old man and have intercourse with the Kadjari. The Kadjari in-
sisted, "No, I can't let you have the big one, I have to take it to the
old man" (meaning that she would not let him have the large penis
and have intercourse with her). The small boy became very angry, he
seized the large goanna and threw it on a flat rock so that it split and
the meat was scattered.
"Ah, you bad boy," the classificatory^ grandmother scolded and hit
him. Then the Kadjari decided that she and the little boy were going up
into the sky. She began to climb a tree, but as she did this the boy, who
was following her, looked upwards and saw her vulva. "Ah," he thought
to himself, "that's a nice vulva, I want it." And in his excitement he
1
Classificatory means that all the women of the tribe who belong to a certain
group are called "grandmother."
S70
THE MILKY WAY AND AUSTRALIAN INITIATION 371
slipped down the tree trunk to the ground. (The Kadjari opened her legs
placing them on each side of the tree trunk as he climbed. This mention
of the boy's slipping down is another reference to the immaturity of his
penis, for it is inferred that his penis would slip out of a mature woman's
vagina during coitus.) Hearing her grandson fall she came down to pick
him up. "You give me coitus before we go home to the old man," he
cried out. "No," she said. "What am I going to do, granny," he said in a
childish sing-song manner. And as she was standing with legs apart ready
to climb the tree again the small boy thrust his head forward and grasped
the clitoris with his teeth.
"This small boy is biting my clitoris," she called out to her husband
and, "That is mine," to the little boy. The old man rushed up with an
axe and threw it at the boy. The boy turned into a rock. But then the old
man decided that the boy and the Kadjari were to go up into the sky
where they would form the constellation called komarindji (Seven Sisters,
Pleiades?) that rises in the morning.
"Every morning you see them coming up, the woman with the small
boy biting on her clitoris."
In memory of this incident subincision was introduced, the incised
penis signifying the split goanna after it had been thrown by the child
on the rock. In addition the incisure represents the Kadjari's (mother
imago) vulva. The child hanging on to the Kadjari's clitoris by its teeth
symbolizes a baby at childbirth attached to its mother by the umbilical
cord; while the husband when throwing the axe at the boy is Lightning
or the Rainbow Snake punishing him for violating the incest tabu
(2,
pp.
185-187).
I obtained fragments of the same myth from various tribes in Central
Australia.
While studying the sign language of the Pitjentara I was told that
the whole hand open, with the fingers shaking and showing how they
were sticking to the sky, means the Milky Way. The verbal equivalent is
Ngaltarara or Yakurura, i.e., boy with mother. This is all they tell the
women. It is a kangaroo boy with his mother. For the initiated they say,
"Wara-pulena-pulena. O! hurts, hurts!" A woman sat on the penis of a
boy before it was healed after circumcision. He shouted, "It hurts, hurts."
The same belief is connected wath a long myth told by Pukuti-wara.
It is a Pitjentara story but the belief is shared also by the Yumu much
further to the north.
Kangaroo ancestors came from a place called Murkanti (Bull-roarer).
They went to a place called Purkuntu-purkuntu (fire-rubbing), then to
a place called Wipu-wara (Penis/tail/long) but really Wipu-pungu (Tail
372
GZA R6HEIM
hits). The kangaroo tail hit the ground there.^ Then they came to a
place called Alarku (Open) and they opened their veins there and made
a
ngallunga. Then they went to a place called Wipin-palka (Tail long,
palka instead of wara). Then they came to a place called Pinpinka
(=tjalunka =resin). The willy-wagtail closed a rockhole with tjalunka
(resin). Then they went to a place called Kutuntari (Alone). There was a
Wintara (Mutamz small animal); there
perma-
nent union with the motherbut only in the sky. The way this aim is
achieved is interesting. He holds on to her clitoris with his teetha re-
markable combination of the genital and the oral. The natives explain
THE MILKY WAY AND AUSTRALIAN INITIATION 377
this as symbolizing a permanent union of the mother and the newborn
babyi.e., separation anxiety canceled.
Nowadays it is the fashion to explain everything in oral terms so
that psychoanalysis which once upon a time wore the proud mantle of
Mephistopheles, now looks more like a nursery rhyme. When I wrote
The Eternal Ones
of
the Dream I could show the separation symbolism
in the puberty ritual, whereas previously only castration symbolism had
been recognized. However, this presents a problem. An Australian child
is never weaned artificially, he sucks milk as long as he likes, from his
own or other mothers. He gets the nipple whenever he cries. If anyone is
brought up with a minimum of frustration, he certainly is. Then why
do we have all that separation symbolism?
It seems that what is older in time is not necessarily more dynamic
in its effects. The older generation represents the youths as mere infants
or just born (they are whistling in the dark) because young rivals will
endanger their supply of young women. However, that is not all either.
One thing that is seldom taken into consideration is that the oral and
the genital do not follow each other in neat succession. They overlap.
The boy does not hold on to his mother's nipple but to his mother's
clitoris.
Greenacre
(8)
observes that male babies frequently have an erection
immediately after birth. ^ Kinsey writes
(11, p. 177):
Orgasm has been observed in boys of every age from five months
to adolescence. Orgasm is in our records for a female babe of four
months. The orgasm in an infant or other young male is, except for
the lack of ejaculation, a striking duplicate of an orgasm in an older
adult. There are observations of 16 males up to 11 months of age
with such typical orgasm reached in seven cases.
On the other hand, I have shown that the universality of the oedipus
complex is demonstrated precisely by the fact that it evolves from the
dual-unity situation. Marriage rituals prove that the male is looking for
a mother and the Hungarian word "wife" originally means "dear mother"
(20, pp.
206-207).
Monogamy, based on a fusion of the maternal and sexual impulse is
regarded as the ideal goal by our society. Once more we are going against
nature. Levy
(12)
writes that the cleavage between sexual and maternal
behavior is sharply demarcated in animals. Briffault
(5, p. 187)
describes
the opposition between the maternal and the sexual instinct.
Man is attempting that which is biologically impossible. We wish to
be adult when we are infants and to be infants when we are adults. The
8 See also Ferenczi
(7, p. 250) . (The gonads are relatively well developed at the end
of the foetal period and tlie beginning of extrauterine life.)
378
GZA R6HEIM
constellation on the firmament in the Australian myth says: What you
desire can be achieved
partly
correctlyFreud's concurrence with the theory of acquired characters. I
said correctly in view of the fact that this phenomenon could as yet not
be proven experimentally. And I would add that nevertheless I cannot
agree with Jones's arguments because an essential part of our psycho-
analytic experience would without such an assumption have no founda-
tion whatsoever. Similar processes determine the inheritance of instinctive
knowledge in animals and that of the archaic psychic patterns in man.
Such phenomena need not forever be experienced anew in order to exert
their influence on men.
The theory of evolution received an important addition in de Vries'
theory of mutation. He assumed that in the course of the evolution of
new generations, variations arise spontaneously which are inheritable. He
382 HANS LAMPL
attributed no special role to the purposiveness of such changes, which he
studied mainly in plants. An example would be the variation in the
number of a tulip's petals which are then transmitted and, if cross-bred
often enough, finally result in a full-petalled tulip. In examining the
three theories of Darwin, Lamarck and de Vries, we can conclude that
most likely all three theories must be combined in order to explain the
coming into existence of new plants and animals in their phenotypes.
These theories have generally been used to explain the evolution of
somatic phenomena. In regard to psychic processes we assume a combina-
tion of anlage and development, the latter being determined by psychic
experiences.^ Indeed, in some cases one might go so far as to consider
the psychic development as the primary factor and to conceive of somatic
changes as a secondary consequence of the psychic changes.
One of the most noteworthy phenomena in the development of man,
and specific for him, is what we call the latency period. No other species
has evolved anything which could only remotely be compared with it.
Even the anthropoids, the closest relatives of men, show nothing that
would resemble a latency period. When Freud assumed years ago that the
refraining from "killing the father" was the most essential aspect in
creating what we call "man," we must admit that this theory was devel-
oped at a time when the importance of preoedipal phenomena was still
unknown. Today we are more inclined to believe that the formation of
the latency period was the most essential phenomenon in decisively deter-
mining the difference between man and animal.
The significance of this phenomenon has been independently em-
phasized by two authors. We know that Freud stressed the importance
of the latency period very early. However, it is less well known among
analysts that the Dutch anatomist Bolk conceived of the latency period
in a similar sense. He described it among many other phenomena char-
acteristic for men which in general he views as processes of retardation.
Max Levy-Suhl
(13)
and van der Sterren
(19)
have rendered us a great
service by first pointing to the correspondence of Freud's and Bolk's
views.^ Freud described this phenomenon from the psychological view-
point, drawing attention to the fact that in the somatic sciences similar
processes of noncontinuous developments could be observed. In this con-
nection Freud refers to Ferenczi's review
(5)
of Lipschiitz' work on the
puberty glands and their influence. In early childhood there is an endoc-
rine development which comes to a standstill and then is again revived
in puberty. Freud himself described the anatomical and physiological
bases of the latency period.*
2 Cf. H. G. van der Waals' paper on this topic
(20)
.
3 Cf. also Geza R6heim
(16, 17)
.
* See page 582 in "The Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex"
(7)
.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LATENCY PERIOD 585
Bolk
(1)
discusses this process in relation to his so-called theory of
retardation. He states that man in general must be regarded as a being
who, compared to his animal ancestors, has been inhibited in his develop-
ment. Bolk attributes this inhibition to certain endocrinological changes.
In describing the anatomy of the female genital apparatus, Bolk points
out that the ovaries gradually grow until the fourth year; he then notes
a standstill of growth until the fourteenth year. In this circumstance we
can see the anatomical evidence for parallel processes in the psychic
sphere. The correctness of Bolk's theoryi.e., that endocrinological
changes are involvedis further supported by observations of disturbed
endocrinological development. In investigating the cause of these dis-
turbances we frequently find that the inhibition normally occurring in
development has failed to take place. In such cases, the individual under-
goes a further development which apparently resembles that of his non-
retarded ancestors. As an illustration, Bolk
(1)
cites the endocrinologically
disturbed child who reaches sexual maturity already at the age of five.
This is precisely the age at which the nonretarded anthropoid apes nor-
mally reach sexual maturity. Bolk points to this change in the develop-
ment of the endocrine system without explaining its causes and sees in it
in our opinion correctlythe most essential condition for the coming
into beinsf of human individuals. The various theories of evolution deal
primarily with the origin of new physical forms, variations in breathing,
in the circulation of the blood, in the extremities, etc. Yet, could we not
assume that changes have also occurred in the psychic sphere and that,
as we see it with physical variations, they have proved to be useful and
therefore survived; that individuals in whom these changes appeared
were better suited for the struggle of existence than those in whom these
variations had not been formed?
What I have in mind is, for example, the first occurrence of an inhibi-
tion of instincts. The naturalist Lorenz
(14)
reports such inhibition of
instincts in birds. He describes how the insessores educate their young not
to dirty their nest with their excrements. The bird mother holds the
young outside the edge of the nest until it has dropped its fecalia. And
the mother bird continues this educational device until the young bird
has learned spontaneously to drop its excreta outside of the nest. I have
previously drawn attention to this analogy between the activities of birds
and the psychic mechanisms of humans
(12).
We can see here that already
in animals of a relatively low organization an instinct suppression arises
determined by actual necessity. The original tendency to dirty the nest
with excreta is suppressed so that a kind of cleanliness training takes
place.
Assuming that similar processes have taken place in man's ancestors,
we might further consider the possibility that such instinct inhibitions
384 HANS LAMPL
(viewed as variations or as acquired characters) occurred first and then,
secondarily, influenced the endocrine system. In other words, the psychic
change could be conceived as the cause of the secondary somatic change.
In the early stages of psychoanalysis such reasoning would have been
regarded as highly improbable, but in the course of time we have gradu-
ally learned to view psychic and somatic processes as principally in-
separable. Again and again we were forced to emphasize the mutual
interrelations of these two systems. If we stress here the impact of psychic
processes on somatic occurrences, let me remind you of the fact that
Thomas Mann has utilized precisely the same idea in his novel Die ver-
tauschten Kopje. Two men with different bodies and different minds
exchange their heads. The robust healthy man receives the head of the
sophisticated and faint-hearted one, whereas the highly sensitive and
educated weakling receives the head of the dull, robust person. After
some time has passed strange changes can be observed in the bodies of
these men. The strong body of the man who now carries the brainy head
becomes weak, and conversely, the weak and delicate body of the man
who now carries the crudely featured head adapts itself to this head. This
poetically elaborated fantasy expresses nothing but the idea that it is the
mind which decisively influences and directs the body and not the con-
verse, i.e., that the body fashions the mind.
But it is not only the poet who describes such strange occurrences.
After all, all of us have had such experiences in our psychoanalytic prac-
tice. Time and again we see female patients who at the age of twenty or
twenty-five make the impression both physically and psychologically of
being prepuberty children. I remember a girl who came for treatment at
the age of thirty-two and who had never menstruated. If we succeed in
removing the psychic inhibition in such a patient, we can within a very
short period observe her development into a mature woman. The
hormonal processes which had been at an almost complete standstill up
to that time rapidly begin to develop normally. Such was the case with
the above-mentioned patient who began to menstruate normally after
extensive analysis. We can observe similar occurrences in women who for
psychic reasons fail to get pregnant and in whom psychoanalysis some-
times succeeds in eliminating this disturbance. Such cases were described
by Helene Deutsch
(2).
According to our hypothesis, psychic inhibitions influence the en-
docrinological development. Yet, how do such psychic inhibitions arise,
or, in other words, what makes them useful? We assume that our original
ancestors were beings who lived under conditions extremely favorable for
their survival. A rich vegetation guaranteed sufficient food. Like their
close relatives, the anthropoid apes, they lived on plants and fruits
a
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LATENCY PERIOD 585
supposition which among other things is borne out by the human set of
teeth. They knew no want; conditions were paradise-hke. The fantasy of
returning to the maternal womb, as well as the idea that the origin of
man is placed in a paradisical landscape, may possibly constitute part of
our archaic heritage. It must have been a highly incisive event which
upset this paradisical state. After this catastrophe only those individuals
had a chance to survive whose intellectual development enabled them
to offset the impact of this catastrophe. Before this fateful event, life was
guaranteed by nature and the instinctive tendencies could freely be
indulged. The changed external conditions and the distress of life posed
different requirements. A "mind" had to arise which could master reality.
The foregoing description follows Ferenczi's ideas who believes that
in the psychic development of man external factors in the form of danger
must have played a decisive role. Without this external danger the psy-
chic system tends to be inert, attempting to remain in the state to which
it has become accustomed. In discussing this question, Ferenczi
(4)
con-
cludes that it must have been the need brought upon men by the glacial
period which effected the development of the latency period. Ferenczi
used this set of ideas again in his book Thalassa: A Theory
of
Genitality
(6)
and Freud later took it over in The Ego and the Id
(8).
We can still observe such processes today. Part of present-day man
has twice been overwhelmed by the dangers of world wars. Most of them
felt completely helpless in the face of the dangers to which they were
exposed already at the beginning of the war. Yet, in this case too, the
human mind countered with defensive measures through making dis-
coveries upon discoveries which it certainly would not have made with-
out this danger. Every advance in the direction of discoveries is answered
by an achievement that abolishes the effect of the first discovery. It is an
old saying that necessity makes for ingenuity.
What we could observe as a passing reaction of man during the war
must be considered as a permanent one resulting from the prolonged
impact of the glacial period.
Ferenczi describes this influence of the glacial period upon the evolu-
tion of man without paying special attention to the organic-physiological
processes which might have been operative. Bolk considers the changed
hormonal balance as the essential fact but does not take up the question
of what caused this change. I believe that due to the impact of the
catastrophe individuals with different mental make-up arose and that this
mental change influenced the hormonal processes. This theory does not
exclude the possibility that influences in the opposite direction may also
have occurred. We always find in such developments that besides succes-
sive alterations there also occur reciprocal actions in the inverse direction.
386 HANS LAMPL
After all, we principally assume a reciprocal influence of mental and
somatic processes. Schematically we might trace the course of evolution
through the following stages:
1. Uninhibited primitive man.
2. Glacial period.
3. Man who has evolved inhibitions of instinctual drives.
4. Hormonal changes.
5. Latency period and development of present-day type of man.
Hence, the decisive factor is the mental change which is of perma-
nent character and capable of being transmittedanalogous to the hered-
itary processes in organ development. Furthermore, these psychic changes
result in hormonal changes which are also inheritable. These hormonal
changes, too, remain in existence; however, through a sudden atavistic
transition, they can cause a break-through of the old unchanged hor-
monal pattern.
In concluding I wish to draw attention to the reports of two authors,
Malinowski
(15)
and Wilhelm Reich (16),^ who state that there are
tribes in which the latency period is missing and in which the sexual
restrictions are brought about exclusively by cultural conditions. These
suppositions are generally based on the fact that children are allowed to
masturbate freely, to engage in sexual play, and to attempt to imitate
adult intercourse. To my knowledge, no investigation has been made of
the genital apparatus (in Bolk's sense) of these children. It seems highly
improbable to me that the physical latencyi.e., the standstill in the de-
velopment of the genital apparatus after the fourth year of lifeshould
be missing. We would be justified to speak of the absence of a latency
period only after we have established the existence of a continuous devel-
opment of the genital organs from birth to sexual maturity. Without such
evidence we should, more cautiously, speak of differences in the intensity
of instinct inhibition. It goes without saying that such differences also
depend upon cultural factors.
REFERENCES
1. Bolk, L. Das Problem der Menschwerdung.
Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1926.
2. Deutsch, H. The Psychology
of
Women, Vol. II. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1945.
3. Devereux, G. Mohave Indian Autoerotic Behavior. Psa. Review, XXXVII, 1950.
4. Ferenczi, S. (1913) Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality. In Con-
tributions to Psychoanalysis. New York: William Badger, 1916.
5. Ferenczi, S. Review of Lipschiitz's "Die Pubertatsdriisen und ihre Wirkung fiir
Biologen und Arzte." Int. Ztschr.
f.
Psa., V, 1920.
5 Cf. also George Devereux
(3)
.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LATENCY PERIOD 387
6. Ferenczi, S. (1924)
Thalassa: A Theory
of
Genitality. New York: Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, Inc.. 1938.
7. Freud, S. (1905)
Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. In The Basic Writings
of
Sigmund Freud. New York: Modern Library, 1938.
8. Freud, S. (1923) The Ego and the Id. London: Hogarth Press, 1927.
9. Freud, S. (1924) An Autobiographical Study. New York: W. W. Norton S: Co., 1937.
10. Freud, S. (1938)
Moses and Monotheism. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1939.
11. Jones, E. Review of Freud's "Moses and Monotheism." Int.
J.
Psa., XXI, 1940.
.12. Lampl, H. Einige Analogien in der Verbal tungsweise von Vogeln und psychischen
Mechanisraen beim Menschen. Int. Ztschr.
f.
Psa. u. Imago, XXV, 1940.
13. Levy-Suhl, M. Ober die friihkindliche Sexualitat des Menschen im Vergleich mit
der Geschlechtsreife der Saugetiere. Imago, XIX, 1933.
14. Lorenz, K. Der Kumpan in der Umwelt des Vogels. /. /.
Omithologie, LXXXIII,
1935.
15. Malinowski, B. The Sexual Life of
Savages. London: Routledge, 1929.
16. Reich, W. Der Einbruch der Sexualmoral. Berlin: Sexpol Verlag, 1932.
17. Roheim, G. The Riddle
of
the Sphinx. London: Hogarth Press, 1934.
18. Roheim, G. Psychoanalysis and Anthropology. New York: International Univer-
sities Press, 1950.
19. Sterren, H. A. van der. De opvattingen van Bolk en Freud over de Menschwording.
Psychiatrische en Neurologische Bladen, XLV, 1941.
20. Waals, H.
J.
van der. Aanleg en Ontwikkeling. Mensch en Maatschappij, XIX,
1943.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF
MARIE BONAPARTE'S WRITINGS
Compiled by ANNE BERMAN
Paris
Key to Abbreviations
I.J.
International Journal
of
Psycho-Analysis
Im. Imago
IMP Imago Publishing Co., Ltd., London
lUP International Universities Press, Inc., New York
I.Z Internationale Zeitschrift fiir
Psychoanalyse
PUF Presses Universitaires de France, Paris
Q.
The Psychoanalytic Qiiarterly
R.F.P. Revue Frangaise de Psychanalyse
JR..P. Revista de Psicoanalisis
1920
Guerres Militaires et Guerres Sociales, Paris, Flammarion, 240
pp.
1921
Le Rayonnement d'une Gloire, in Le Matin, May 5.
1924
Le Printemps sur mon Jardin, Paris, Flammarion, 226
pp.
Considerations sur les Causes anatomiques de la Frigidity chez la Femme
(published under the pseudonym of A. E. Narjani), in Bruxelles
Medical,
42, 27, 4, 11
pp.
1927
Le Cas de Madame Lefebvre, R.F.P. 1:149-198.
Du Symbolisme des Trophies de Tete, R.F.P. 1:677-732.
388
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MARIE BONAPARTE'S WRITINGS 389
1928
L'Identification d'une Fille a sa Mere morte, R.F.P. 11:541-565.
Zur Symbolik der Kopftrophaen (Germ. transL), Im. XIV: 100-141.
1929
Die Identifizierung einer Tochter mit ihrer todten Mutter (Germ. transL),
7.Z. XV:48 1-500.
Un petit acces de Kleptomanie larvee, R.F.P. 111:478-481.
Der Fall Lefebvre (Germ. transL), Im. XV: 14-62.
Guerres Militaires et Guerres Sociales (Greek transl.), Manchester, N. H.,
131
pp.
1930
De la Prophylaxie infantile des N^vroses, R.F.P. IV:86-135.
Published in Introduction a la Theorie des Instincts.
Deuil, Necrophilie et Sadisme, R.F.P. IV:7 16-734.
Eine kleptomane Anwandlung (Germ. transL), I.Z. XVI:493-495,
1932
Le "Scarabee d'or" d'Edgar Foe, R.F.P. V: 275-293.
De I'Elaboration et de la Fonction de I'oeuvre litteraire, R.F.P. V: 649-683.
1933
Edgar Poe, Paris, Denoel ^c Steele, 2 vols. 922
pp.
Les deux Frigidites de la Femme, Bull, de la Soc. de Sexologie, I, 4.
Une Suggestion pour eviter de nouvelles catastrophes aeriennes, in Le
Matin, April 1.
Les bonnes Intentions de I'Administration pour les Forets de Paris, in
Le Matin, September 25.
L'Homme et son Dentiste, R.F.P. VI:84-88.
Des Autoerotismes agressifs par la Grille et par la Dent, R.F.P. VI: 192-
216.
De la Mort et des Fleurs, R.F.P. VI:218-222.
Der Mensch und sein Zahnarzt (Germ. transL), Im. XIX:468-472.
1934
Edgar Poe, eine psychoanalytische Studie (Germ. transL), Wien, Int. Psa.
Verlag, 3 vols., 350
pp.
420
pp.
396
pp.
La Pensee magique chez le Primitif, R.F.P. VII:3-18.
Introduction k la Theorie des Instincts, R.F.P. VII:218-271, 417-468,
611-654.
390 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MARIE BONAPARTE'S WRITINGS
Published also in De la Prophylaxie infantile des Nevroses.
Psychanalyse et Ethnographic, Essays Presented to C. G. Seligman, Lon-
don, Kegan Paul, 8
pp.
1935
Passivite, Masochisme et F^minite, R.F.P. VIII:208-216.
Passivitat, Masochismus und Weiblichkeit (Germ, transl.), I.Z. XXI:23-29.
Passivity, Masochism and Femininity (English transl.), /.
J.,
XVI: 325-333.
Psychologic de la Puberty, Bull, de la Societe de Sexologie, II, 2-4, 7
pp.
1936
Vues paleobiologiques et biopsychiques, R.F.P. IX.
La Portee de I'Oeuvre de Freud, R.P.F. IX.
Animaux amis, in Paris Soir, October 12.
1937
Topsy, Chow-Chow au Poil d'or, Paris, Dcnoel & Steele, 129
pp.
Palaobiologische und biopsychische Betrachtungen (Germ, transl.), Im.
XXIII: 134-141.
L'Idole moderne. La route nc pent pas cxiger le Sacrifice dcs Arbres, in
Paris Soir,
July
28.
1938
Some Palaeobiological and Biopsychical Reflections (English transl.), /./.
XIX:214-220.
Freud, I'Homme et I'Oeuvre, in Le Petit Parisien,
June 14.
Freud a Paris, in Marianne,
July 15.
Sigmund Freud, L'Instinct et la Raison, in L'Ordre,
July
19.
1939
La Mer et le Rivage, Paris, imprime pour I'auteur, 108
pp.
Cinq Cahiers, ler Vol. imprime pour I'auteur, 347
pp.
Topsy (Germ, transl. by Anna and Sigmund Freud), Amsterdam, Allert
de Langc, 191
pp.
Apology of Biography (first published in English), /./. XX:23 1-240.
La Mort de Freud, in Marianne, October 4,
1940
Topsy, the Story
of
a Golden-Haired Chow, London, Pushkin Press,
79
pp.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MARIE BONAPARTE'S WRITINGS 391
1944
Deuil, Necrophilie et Sadisme (Greek transl.), Athens, Korydalou.
1945
Notes on the Analytical Discovery of a Primal Scene, in The Psychoana-
lytic Study
of
the Child, 1:119-125, lUP.
1946
Mythes de Guerre, IMP, 180
pp.
Defense du Complexe d'Oedipe, conference faite le 16 mai, a I'lnstitut
d'Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques. 6
pp.
Identificacion de una Hija con su madre muerta (Span, transl.), R.P.
IV, 2.
1947
Myths
of
War (Engl, transl.), London, IMP, 161
pp.
The Legend of the Unfathomable Waters, The Yearbook
of
Psycho-
analysis, 111:281-290, lUP.
El Caso de Madame Lefevre (Span, transl.), R.P. V, 1.
1948
Cinq Cahiers, 2e vol. London, IMP, 481
pp.
De I'essentielle Ambivalence d'Eros, R.F.P. XII: 167-212.
Notes sur I'Excision, R.F.P. XII:213-231.
De I'Angoisse devant la SexuaHte, R.F.P. XII:475-480.
Saint Christophe, patron des Automobilistes, R.F.P. XII:48 1-504,
Notes on Excision (Engl, transl.), in Psychoanalysis and the Social Sci-
ences, 11:67-83, lUP.
La L^gende des Eaux sans fond (Greek transl.), Athens, latriki.
1949
De la Sexuality de la Femme, R.F.P., XIII: 1-52, 161-227, 322-341. Pub-
lished in book form in 1951.
The Life and Works
of
Edgar Allan Poe, London, IMP, 749
pp.
A Lion Hunter's Dreams,
Q.
XVI: 1-10.
1950
La Legende des Eaux sans fond, R.F.P. XIV: 164-173.
Psyche dans la Nature ou des Limites de la Psychogen^se, R.F.P. XIV:
174-181.
Les Reves d'un Chasseur de Lions, R.F.P. XIV:504-512.
Les glauques Aventures de Flyda des Mers, IMP, 106
pp.
392 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MARIE BONAPARTE'S WRITINGS
Les Glanes des Jours, IMP, 106
pp.
Monologues devant la Vie et la Mort, IMP, 114
pp.
Flyda
of
the Seas (Engl, transl.), IMP, 88
pp.
Five Copy Books, Vol. I, IMP, 284
pp.
1951
Cinq Cahiers, 3e & 4e vol. London, IMP, 402 and 409
pp.
De la Sexualite de la Femme, Paris, PUF, 148
pp.
Des Causes psychologiques de I'Antisemitisme, R.F.P. XV:479-491.
Some Pschoanalytic and Anthropological Insights Applied to Sociology,
in Psychoanalysis and Culture, lUP.
1952
Chronos, Eros, Thanatos, IMP, 153
pp.
Contents: L'Inconscient et le Temps
De I'essentielle ambivalence d'Eros
Reflexions biopsychiques sur le Sado-Masochisme
Introduction a la Theorie des Instincts, and Prophylaxie infantile des
Nevroses, PUF, 181
pp.
Psychanalyse et Biologic, PUF, 190
pp.
Psychanalyse et Anthropologic, PUF, 192
pp.
Quelques lueurs projetees par la Psychanalyse et I'Ethnographie sur la
Sociologie, R.F.P. XVI: 3 13-3 18.
Psychanalyse de I'Antisemitisme, in Evidences, XXV:5-10.
Masturbation and Death or a Compulsive Confession of Masturbation, in
The Psychoanalytic Study
of
the Child, VII: 170-172, lUP.
Five Copy Books, IMP, vol.
2, 396
pp.
Five Copy Books, IMP, vol.
3, 416
pp.
1953
Five Copy Books, IMP, vol. 4, 329
pp.
A la Memoire des Disparus, to be published for the Author, IMP,
1004
pp.
MARIE BONAPARTE'S TRANSLATIONS OF THE
WORKS OF FREUD
Un Souvenir d'Enfance de Leonard de Vinci, Paris, Gallimard, 1928,
214
pp.
Ma Vie et la Psychanalyse, Paris, Gallimard,
1930, 239
pp.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MARIE BONAPARTE'S WRITINGS 593
Le Mot d'Esprit et ses Rapports avec I'Inconscient (in collab. with Dr.
M. Nathan), Paris, Gallimard, 1930, 283
pp.
Delire et Rives dans un Ouvrage litteraire: "La Gradiva" de Jensen,
Paris, Gallimard, 1931, 219
pp.
L'Avenir d'une Illusion, Paris, Denoel & Steele, 1932, 196
pp.
Essais de Psychanalyse appliquee (in collab. with Mme. Edouard Marty),
Paris, Gallimard, 1933, 254
pp.
Cinq Psychanalyses (in collab. with Dr. R. M. Loewenstein), Paris, De-
noel & Steele, 1935, 478
pp.
Contribution k la Psychologie de la Vie amoureuse, R.F.P. IX: 2-21, 1936.
Metapsychologie (in collab. with Anne Berman), Paris, Gallimard, 1940,
222
pp.
AUTHORS' INDEX*
Abraham, K., 136, 154, 155-156, 167, 168,
198, 202
Adler, A., 69
Adrian, E. D., 17, 35
Aichhorn, A., 135, 136
Alexander, F., 81, 101
Allendv, R., 232, 240
Ames, L. S., 71, 101
Aristotle, 149
Arlow,
J.
A., 191, 202
Askwith, H., 320, 325
Bachofen,
J. J..
283, 284
Bender, L., 69, 79, 101, 135, 136, 221, 228
Berg, C, 100, 101
Bergler, E., 76, 101, 297, 325
Bergman, P., 69, 79, 101
Bergmann, T., 170, 175
Berman, A., 3SS-393
Bemdt, C. A., 375, 378, 379
Berndt, R. M., 370, 375. 378, 379
Bertram,
J.,
294. 297, 298, 299-310, 315,
319, 320, 321, 322, 323
Bettelheim, B.. 82, 99, 101
Bibring, E., 30, 35
Bibring, G. L., 278-2S4, 283
Bleuler, E., 205
Blitzsten, N. L., 199, 202
Boernstein. W.. 221. 228
Bolk, L., 382, 383. 386
Bonaparte. M., 9, 76, 97, 101, 104-110, 112,
114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 139, 142. 144.
146. 147. 148. 150. 232, 236, 240, 287,
318, 325, 388-393
Bornstein, B., 285, 291, 325
Boswell,
J.,
319-320
Bouvet, M., 240
Bowlby.
J.,
135, 137
Brenman, M., 77, 100, 101
Brenner, C, 68, 88, 89, 92, 94, 100, 101
Breuer,
J.,
18
Brierley, M., 38, 41, 42, 45, 48. 49-50. 53.
55, 61. 66
Briffault. R.. 377. 379
Bruner.
J.
S.. 221. 228
Brunswick, R. M., 162. 168. 288. 325
Buehler, C, 137
Bunyan,
J.,
245
Burlingham, D., 169-175, 273
Caesar. 236
Callot. E., 143, 148. 150
Cannon. W. B.. 80. 81. 101. 136, 137
Cattell.
J.
P., 89, 102
Cervantes, 313
Cesalpino, 149
Cipriani, L., 369
ClaparMe, 110
Clark, P. A.. 133. 137
Cobb. S., 38. 66
Curr. E. M.. 379
Darwin, C, 380. 382
Deutsch. F., 215, 216-228, 217, 227
Deutsch, H., 57, 66, 145, 148, 150, 205, 215,
287, 309, 321, 325, 384, 386
Devereux. G., 386
Dollard.
J..
26. 35
Dumas, A., 114
Duncan, W., 145, 149, 150
Eckermann,
J.
P., 285, 287-325
Eder. M. D., 191, 202
Eidelberg, L., 297, 325
Einstein, A., 16
Eissler, K. R., 199, 202, 2S5-326
Eissler, R. S., 199. 202
Elkin, A. P., 379
Emeneau, M. B.. 329, 359, 369
Erikson, E. H., 284
Escalona, S., 69, 79, 101
Ezriel, H., 37
Farrel, B. A., 57
Federn, P., 24. 35. 38. 43. 66
Fenichel. O., 38. 50. 60, 61. 66. 76, 89, 99.
101, 155, 168. 196, 199, 202, 205, 215.
284
Ferenczi, S., 83, 101, 137, 234, 291, 325,
377, 379, 382, 385, 386
Fisher, C, 198, 202
Fliess, R., 193, 202
Flournoy, H., 229-240
France, A., 124