 Chapter 4 of the Theory of Psychoanalysis by Carl Gustav Jung. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4, the ET, a logical significance of the infantile sexuality. Now that we have decided what is to be understood as infantile sexuality, we can follow up the discussion of the theory of the neuroses, which we began in the first lecture and then dropped. We followed the theory of the neuroses up to the point where we ran against Freud's statement that the tendency which brings a traumatic event to a pathological activity is a sexual one. From our foregoing considerations, we understand what is meant by a sexual tendency. It is a standing still, a retardation in that process whereby the libido frees itself from the manifestations of the pre-sexual stage. First of all, we must regard this disturbance as a fixation. The libido in its transition from the function of nutrition to the sexual function lingers unduly at certain stages. A disharmony is created since provisional and as it were, worn out activities persist at a period when they should have been overcome. This formula is applicable to all those infantile characteristics so prevalent among neurotic people that no attentive observer can have overlooked them. In dementia precox, it is so obtrusive that a symptom complex, hebraphrenia, derives its name therefrom. The matter is not ended however by saying that the libido lingers in the preliminary stages for while the libido thus lingers time does not stand still and the development of the individual is always proceeding apace. The physical maturation increases the contrast and the disharmony between the persistent infantile manifestations and the demands of the later age with its changed conditions of life. In this way the foundation is laid for the dissociation of the personality and thereby to that conflict which is the real basis of the neuroses. The more the libido is in arrears in practice the more intense will be the conflict. The traumatic or pathogenic moment is the one which serves best to make this conflict manifest. As Freud showed in his earlier works one can easily imagine a neurosis arising in this way. This conception fitted in rather well with the views of Genet who ascribe neuroses to a certain defect. From this point of view the neurosis could be regarded as a product of retardation in the development of affectivity and I can easily imagine that this conception must seem self-evident to everyone who is inclined to derive the neuroses more or less directly from heredity or congenital degeneration. The infantile sexual etiology criticized. Unfortunately the reality is much more complicated. Let me facilitate an insight into these complications by an example of a case of hysteria. It will I hope enable me to demonstrate the characteristic complication so important for the theory of neurosis. You will probably remember the case of the young lady with hysteria whom I mentioned at the beginning of my lectures. We noticed the remarkable fact that this patient was unaffected by situations which one might have expected to make a profound impression and yet showed an unexpected extreme pathological reaction to a quite everyday event. We took this occasion to express our doubt as to the etiological significance of the shock and to investigate the so-called predisposition which rendered the trauma effective. The result of that investigation led us to what has just been mentioned that it is by no means improbable that the origin of the neurosis is due to a retardation of the affective development. You will now ask me what is to be understood by the retardation of the affectivity of this hysteric. The patient lives in a world of fantasy which can only be regarded as infantile. It is unnecessary to give a description of these fantasies for you as neurologists or psychiatrists have the opportunity daily to listen to the childish prejudices, illusions and emotional pretensions to which neurotic people give way. The disinclination to phase stern reality is the distinguishing trait of these fantasies. Some lack of earnestness, some trifling which sometimes hides real difficulties in a lighthearted manner and others exaggerates trifles into great troubles. We recognize at once that inadequate psychic attitude towards reality which characterizes the child is wavering opinions and its deficient orientation in matters of the external world. With such an infantile mental disposition all kinds of desires, fantasies and illusions can grow luxuriously and this we have to regard as the critical causation. Through such fantasies people slip into an unreal attitude preeminently ill adapted to the world which is bound someday to lead to a catastrophe. When we trace back the infantile fantasy of the patient to her earliest childhood we find it is through many distinct outstanding scenes which might well serve to provide fresh food for this or that variation in fantasy but it would be vain to search for the so-called traumatic motive whence something abnormal might have sprung such an abnormal activity let us say as day dreaming itself. There are certainly to be found traumatic scenes although not in earliest childhood. The few scenes of earliest childhood which were remembered seem not to be traumatic being rather accidental events which pass by without leaving any effect on her fantasy worth mentioning. The earliest fantasies arose out of all sorts of vague and only partly understood impressions received from her parents. Many peculiar feelings centered around her father vacillating between anxiety, horror, aversion, disgust, love and enthusiasm. The case was like so many other cases of hysteria where no traumatic etiology can be found but which grows from the roots of a peculiar and premature activity of fantasy which maintains permanently the character of infantilism. You will object that in this case the scene with the shying horses represents the trauma. It is clearly the model of that night scene which happened 19 years later where the patient was incapable of avoiding the trotting horses that she wanted to plunge into the river has an analogy in the model scene where the horses in carriage fell into the river. Since the latter traumatic moment she suffered from hysterical fits. As I tried to show you we do not find any trace of this apparent etiology developed in the course of her fantasy life. It seems as if the danger of losing her life that first time when the horses shied passed without leaving any emotional trace. None of the events that occurred in the following years showed any trace of that fright. In parenthesis let me add that perhaps it never happened at all. It may have even been a mere fantasy for I have only the assertions of the patient. All of a sudden some 18 years later this event becomes of importance and is so to say reproduced and carried out in all its details. This assumption is extremely unlikely and becomes still more inconceivable if we also bear in mind that the story of the shying horses may not even be true. Be that as it may it is and remains almost unthinkable that an affect should remain buried for years and then suddenly explode. In other cases there is exactly the same state of affairs. I know for instance of a case in which the shock of an earthquake long recovered from suddenly came back as a lively fear of earthquakes. Although this reminiscence could not be explained by the external circumstances. The traumatic theory of false way. It is a very suspicious circumstance that these patients frequently show a pronounced tendency to account for their illnesses by some long past event ingeniously withdrawing the attention of the physician from the present moment towards some false track in the past. This false track was the first one pursued by the psychoanalytic theory to this false hypothesis we owe an insight into the understanding of the neurotic symptoms never before reached an insight we should not have gained if the investigation had not chosen this path really guided thither however by the misleading tendencies of the patient. I think that only a man who regards world happenings as a chain of more or less fortuitous contingencies and therefore believes that the guiding hand of the reason endowed pedagogue is permanently wanted can ever imagine that this path upon which the patient leads the physician has been a wrong one from which one ought to have warned men off with a sign board. Besides the deeper insight into psychological determination we owe to the so-called error the discovery of questions of immeasurable importance regarding the basis of psychic processes. It is for us to rejoice and be thankful that Freud had the courage to let himself be guided along this path. Not thus is the progress of science hindered but rather through blind adherence to a provisional formulation through the typical conservatism of authority the vanity of learned men their fear of making mistakes this lack of the martyr's courage is far more injurious to the credit and greatness of scientific knowledge than an honest error retardation of the emotional development but let us return to our own case the following question arises if the old trauma is not of etiological significance then the cause of the manifest neurosis is probably to be found in the retardation of the emotional development we must therefore disregard the patient's assertion that her hysterical crisis date from the fright from the shying horses although this right was in fact the beginning of her evident illness this event only seems to be important although it is not so in reality this same formula is valid for all the so-called shocks they only seem to be important because they are the starting point of the external expression of an abnormal condition as explained in detail this abnormal condition is an anachronistic continuation of an infantile stage of libido development these patients still retain forms of the libido which they ought to have renounced long ago it is impossible to give a list as it were of these forms for they are of an extraordinary variety the most common which is scarcely ever absent is the excessive activity of fantasies characterized by an unconcerned exaggeration of subjective wishes this exaggerated activity is always a sign of want of proper employment of the libido the libido sticks fast to its use in fantasies instead of being employed in a more rigorous adaptation to the real conditions of life introversion this state is called the state of introversion the libido is used for the cyclical inner world instead of being applied to the external world a regular attendant symptom of this retardation in the emotional development is the so-called parent complex if the libido is not used entirely for the adaptation to reality it is always more or less introverted the material content of the psychic world is composed of reminiscences giving it a vividness activity which in reality long since ceased to pertain there too the consequences that these patients still live more or less in a world which in truth belongs to the past they fight with difficulties which once played a part in their life but which ought to have been obliterated long ago they still grieve over matters or rather they are still concerned with matters which should have long ago lost their importance for them they divert themselves or distress themselves with images which were once normally of importance for them but are of no significance at their later age the complex of the parents amongst those influences most important during childhood the personalities of the parents play the most potent part even if the parents have long been dead and might and should have lost all real importance since the life conditions of the patients are perhaps totally changed yet these parents are still somehow present and as important as if they were still alive love and admiration resistance repugnance hate and revolt still cling to their figures transfigured by affection and very often bearing little resemblance to the past reality it was this fact which forced me to talk no longer a father and mother directly but to employ instead the term image imago of mother or a father for these fantasies no longer deal with the real father and the real mother but with the subjective and very often completely altered creations of the imagination which prolong and existence only in the patient's mind the complex of the parents images that is to say the sum of ideas connected with the parents provides an important field of employment for the introverted libido i must mention in passing that the complex hasn't itself but a shadowy existence in so far as it is not invested with libido following the usage that we arrived at in the diagnostic as a student the word complex is used for a system of ideas already invested with and actuated by libido this system exists as a mere possibility ready for application if not invested with libido either temporarily or permanently the nucleus complex at the time when the psychoanalytic theory was still under the dominance of the trauma conception and in conformity with that view inclined to look for the cause officians of the neurosis in the past the parent complex seemed to us to be the so-called root complex to employ Freud's term or nucleus complex kern complex the part which the parents played seemed to be so highly determining that we were inclined to attribute to them all later complications in the life of the patient some years ago i discussed this view in my article here also we were guided by the patient's tendency to revert to the past in accordance with the direction of his introverted libido now indeed it was no longer the external accidental event which caused the path of genic effect but a psychological effect which seemed to arise out of the individual's difficulties in adapting himself to the conditions of his familiar surroundings it was especially the disharmony between the parents on the one hand and between the child and the parents on the other which seemed favorable for creating currents in the child little compatible with his individual course of life in the article just alluded to i have described some instances taken from a wealth of material which show these characteristics very distinctly the influence of the parents does not come to an end alas with their neurotic descendants blame of the family circumstances or their false education as the basis of their illness but it extends even to certain actual events in the life and actions of the patient where such a determining influence could not have been expected the lively imitativeness which we find in savages as well as in children can produce in certain rather sensitive children a peculiar inner and unconscious identification with the parents that is to say such a similar mental attitude that affects in real life are sometimes produced which even in detail resemble the personal experiences of the parents for the empirical material here i must refer you to the literature i should like to remind you that one of my pupils doctor emma first produced valuable experimental proofs for the solution of this problem to which i've referred in my lecture at clark university in applying association experiments to whole families doctor first established the great resemblance of reaction type among all the members of one family these experiments show that there very often exists an unconscious parallelism of association between parents and children to be explained as an intense imitation or identification the results of these investigations show far reaching psychological tendencies in parallel directions which readily explained at times the astonishing conformity in their destinies our destinies are as a rule the result of our psychological tendencies these facts allow us to understand why not only the patient but even the theory which has been built on such investigations expresses the view that the neurosis is the result of the characteristic influence of the parents upon their children this view more over is supported by the experiences which lie at the basis of pedagogy namely the assumption of the plasticity of the child's mind which is freely compared with soft wax we know that the first impressions of childhood accompany us throughout life and that certain educational influences may restrain people undisturbed all their lives within certain limits it is no miracle indeed it is rather a frequent experience that under these circumstances a conflict has to break out between the personality which is formed by the educational and other influences of the infantile milieu and that one which can be described as the real individual line of life with this conflict all people must meet who are called upon to live an independent and productive life owing to the enormous influence of childhood on the later development of character you can perfectly understand why we are inclined to ascribe the cause of a neurosis directly to the influences of the infantile environment i have to confess that i have known cases in which any other explanations seem to be less reasonable there are indeed parents whose own contradictory neurotic behavior causes them to treat their children in such an unreasonable way that the latter's deterioration and illness would seem to be unavoidable hence it is almost a rule among nerve specialists to remove neurotic children whenever possible from the dangerous family atmosphere and to send them among more healthy influences where without any medical treatment they thrive much better than at home there are many neurotic patients who work clearly neurotic as children and who have never been free from illness for such cases the conception which has been sketched holds generally good this knowledge which seems to be provisionally definitive has been extended by the studies of Freud in the psychoanalytic school the relations between the patients and their parents have been studied in detail in as much as these relations were regarded as of etylia logical significance infantile mental attitude it was soon noticed that such patients lived still partly or wholly in their childhood world although quite unconscious themselves of this fact it is a difficult task for psychoanalysis so exactly to investigate the psychological mode of adaptation of the patients as to be capable of putting its finger on the infantile misunderstanding we find among neurotics many who have been spoiled as children these cases give the best and clearest example of the infantilism of their psychological mode of adaptation they start out in life expecting the same friendly reception tenderness and easy success obtained with no trouble to which they have been accustomed by their parents and their youth even very intelligent patients are not capable of seeing at once that they owe the complications of their life and their neurosis to the trail of their infantile emotional attitude the small world of the child the familiar surroundings these form the model of the big world the more intensely the family has stamped the child the more will it be inclined as an adult instinctively to see again in the great world its former small world of course this must not be taken as a conscious intellectual process on the contrary the patient feels and sees the difference between now and then and tries to adapt himself as well as he can perhaps he will even believe himself perfectly adapted for he grasped the situation intellectually but that does not prevent the emotional from being far behind the intellectual standpoint unconscious fantasy it is unnecessary to trouble you with instances of this phenomenon it is an everyday experience that our emotions are never at the level of our reasoning is exactly the same with such a patient only with greater intensity he may perhaps believe that say for his neurosis he is a normal person and hence adapted to the conditions of life he does not suspect that he has not relinquished certain childish pretensions that he still carries with him in the background expectations and illusions which he has never rendered conscious to himself he cultivates all sorts of favorite fantasies which seldom become conscious or at any rate not very often so that he himself does not know that he has them they very often exist only as emotional expectations hopes prejudices etc we call these fantasies unconscious fantasies sometimes they dip into the peripheral consciousness as quite fugitive thoughts which disappear again a moment later so that the patient is unable to say whether he had such fantasies or not it is only during the psychoanalytic treatment that most patients learn to observe and retain these fleeting thoughts although most of the fantasies once at least have been conscious in the form of fleeting thoughts and only afterwards became unconscious we have no right to call them on that account conscious as they are practically most of the time unconscious it is therefore right to designate them unconscious fantasies of course there are also infantile fantasies which are perfectly conscious and which can be reproduced at any time in the chapter four chapter five of the theory of psychoanalysis by Carl Gustav Jung this lever box recording is in the public domain chapter five the unconscious the sphere of the unconscious infantile fantasies has become the real object of psychoanalytic investigation as we have previously pointed out this domain seems to retain the key to the etiology of neurosis in contra distinction with the trauma theory we are forced by the reasons already adduced to seek in the family history for the basis of our present psychoanalytic attitude those fantasy systems which patients exhibit on mere questioning are for the most part composed and elaborated like a novel or a drama although they are greatly elaborated they are relatively of little value for the investigation of the unconscious just because they are conscious they have already deferred over much to the claims of etiquette and social morality hence they have been purged of all personally painful and ugly details and are presentable to society revealing very little the valuable and much more important fantasies are not conscious in the sense already defined but are to be discovered through the technique of psychoanalysis without wishing to enter fully into the question of technique i must hear meet an objection that is constantly heard it is that the so-called unconscious fantasies are only suggested to the patient and only exist in the minds of psychoanalysts this objection belongs to that common class which describes to them the crude mistakes of beginners i think only those without psychological experience and without historical psychological knowledge are capable of making such criticisms with a mere glimmering of mythological knowledge one cannot fail to notice the striking parallels between the unconscious fantasies discovered by the psychoanalytic school and mythological images the objection that our knowledge of mythology has been suggested to the patient is groundless for the psychoanalytic school first discovered the unconscious fantasies and only then became acquainted with mythology mythology itself is obviously something outside the path of the medical man insofar as these fantasies are unconscious the patient of course knows nothing about their existence and it would be absurd to make direct inquiries about them nevertheless it is often said both by patients and by so-called normal persons but if i had such fantasy surely i would know something about them but what is unconscious is in fact something which one does not know the opposition to is perfectly convinced that such things as unconscious fantasies could not exist this a priori judgment is galasticism and has no sensible grounds we cannot possibly rest on the dogma that consciousness only is mind when we can convince ourselves daily that our consciousness is only the stage when the contents of our consciousness appear they are already in a highly complex form the grouping of our thoughts from the elements supplied by our memory is almost entirely unconscious therefore we are obliged whether we like it or not to accept for the moment the conception of an unconscious psychic sphere even if only as a mere negative border conception just as const thing in itself as we perceive things which do not have their origin in consciousness we are obliged to give hypothetical contents to the sphere of the non-conscious we must suppose that the origin of certain effects lies in the unconscious just because they are not conscious the reproach of mysticism can scarcely be made against this conception of the unconscious we do not pretend that we know anything positive or can affirm anything about the psychic condition of the unconscious instead we have substituted symbols by following the way of designation and abstraction we apply in consciousness on the axiom prancipia pritairnessa sattatam known suant multiplacanda this kind of ideation is the only possible one hence we speak about the effects of the unconscious just as we do about the phenomena of the conscious many people have been shocked by Freud's statement the unconscious can only wish and this is regarded as an unheard of metaphysical assertion something like the principle of Hartman's philosophy of the unconscious which apparently administers a rebuff to the theory of cognition this indignation only arises from the fact that the critics unknown to themselves evidently start from a metaphysical conception of the unconscious as being an end per se and not evilly project on to us their inadequate conception of the unconscious for us the unconscious is no entity but a term about whose metaphysical entity we do not permit ourselves to form any idea here we contrast with those psychologists who sitting at their desks are as exactly informed about the localization of the mind in the brain as they are informed about the psychological correlation of the mental processes whence they are able to declare positively that beyond the consciousness there are but physiological processes of the cortex such naive tape must not be imputed to the psychoanalyst when Freud says we can only wish he describes in symbolic terms the effects of which the origin is not known from the standpoint of our conscious thinking these effects can only be considered as analogous to wishes the psychoanalytic school is moreover aware that the discussion as to whether wishing is a sound analogy can be reopened at any time anyone who has more information is welcome instead the opponents content themselves with denial of the phenomena or if certain phenomena are admitted they abstain from all theoretical speculation this last point is readily to be understood for it is not everyone's business to think theoretically even the man who has succeeded in freeing himself from the dogma of the identity of the conscious self and the psyche thus admitting the possible existence of psychic processes outside the conscious is not justified in disputing or maintaining psychic possibilities in the unconscious the objection is raised that the psychoanalytic school maintains certain views without sufficient grounds as if the literature did not contain abundant perhaps too abundant discussion of cases and more than enough arguments but they seem not to be sufficient for the opponents there must be a good deal of difference as to the meaning of the term sufficient in respect to the validity of the arguments the question is why does the psychoanalytic school apparently set less store on the proof of their formulas than the critics the reason is very simple an engineer who has built a bridge and has worked out its bearing capacity once no other proof for the success of its bearing power but the ordinary man who has no notion how a bridge is built or what is the strength of the material used will demand quite different proofs as to the bearing capacity of the bridge for he has no confidence in the business in the first place it is the critics complete ignorance of what is being done which provokes their demand in the second place there are the unanswerable theoretical misunderstandings impossible for us to know them all and understand them all just as we find again and again in our patients new and astonishing misunderstandings about the ways and the aim of the psychoanalytic method so are the critics inexhaustible in devising misunderstandings you can see in the discussion of our conception of the unconscious what kind of false philosophical assumptions can prevent the understanding of our terminology it is comprehensible that those who attribute to the unconscious involuntarily an absolute entity require quite different arguments beyond our power to give had we to prove immortality we should have to collect many more important arguments than if we had merely to demonstrate the existence of plasmodia in a malaria patient the metaphysical expectation still disturbs the scientific way of thinking so that problems of psychoanalysis cannot be considered in a simple way but i do not wish to be unjust to the critics and i will admit that the psychoanalytic school itself very often gives rise to misunderstandings although innocently enough one of the principle sources of these mistakes is the confusion in the theoretical sphere it is a pity but we have no presentable theory but you would understand this if you could see in a concrete case with what difficulties we have to deal in contradiction to the opinion of nearly all critics Freud is by no means a theorist he is an empiricist of which fact anyone can easily convince himself if he is willing to busy himself somewhat more deeply with Freud's works and if he tries to go into the cases as Freud has done unfortunately the critics are not willing as we have very often heard it is too disgusting and too repulsive to observe cases in the same way as Freud has done but who will learn the nature of Freud's method if he allows himself to be hindered by repulsion and disgust because they neglect to apply themselves to the point of view adopted by Freud perhaps as a necessary working hypothesis they come to the absurd supposition that Freud is a theorist they then readily agree that Freud's three contributions to the sexual theory is a priori invented by a merely speculative brain which afterwards suggests everything into the patient that is putting things upside down this gives the critics an easy task and this is just what they want to have they pay no attention to the observations of the psychoanalysts conscientiously set forth in their histories of diseases but only to the theory and to the formulation of technique the weak spot of psychoanalysis however is not found here as psychoanalysis is only empirical here you find but a large and insufficiently cultivated field in which the critics can exercise themselves to their full satisfaction there are many uncertainties and as many contradictions in the sphere of this theory we were conscious of this long before the first critic began to pay attention to our work end of chapter five chapter six of the theory of psychoanalysis by Carl Gustav Jung this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter six the dream after this digression we will return to the question of the unconscious fantasies which occupied us before as we have seen nobody can dispute their existence just as nobody can assert their existence and their qualities forthwith the question however is just this can effects be observed in that consciousness of unconscious origin which can be described in conscious symbolic signs or expressions can there be found in the conscious effects which correspond with this expectation the psychoanalytic school believes it has discovered such effects let me mention it once the principal phenomenon the dream of this it may be said that it appears in the consciousness as a complex factor unconsciously constructed out of its elements the origin of the images and certain reminiscences of the earlier or of the later past can be proved through the associations belonging to the single images of the dream we ask where did you see this or where did you hear that and through the usual way of associations come the reminiscences that certain parts of the dream have been consciously experienced some the day before some on former occasions so far there will be general agreement for these things are well known in so far the dream represents in general an incomprehensible composition of certain elements not at first conscious which are only recognized later on by their associations it is not that all parts of the dream are recognizable once its conscious character could be deduced on the contrary they are often and indeed mostly unrecognizable at first only subsequently does it occur to us that we have experienced in consciousness this or that part of the dream from this standpoint alone we might regard the dream as an effect of unconscious origin the method of dream analysis the technique for the exploration of the unconscious origin is the one i mentioned before used before Freud by every scientific man who attempted to arrive at a psychological understanding of dreams we try simply to remember where the parts of the dream arose the psychoanalytic technique for the interpretation of dreams is based on this very simple principle it is a fact that certain parts of the dream originate in daily life that is in events which on account of their slider importance would have fallen into oblivion and indeed were on the way to become definitely unconscious it is these parts of the dream that are the effect of unconscious images and representations people have been shocked by this expression also but we do not conceive these things so concretely not to say crudely as do the critics certainly this expression is nothing but a symbolism taken from conscious psychology we were never in any doubt as to that the expression is quite clear and answers very well as a symbol of an unknown psychic fact as we mentioned before we can conceive the unconscious only by analogy with the conscious we do not imagine that we understand the thing when we have discovered a beautiful and rather incomprehensible name the principle of the psychoanalytic technique is as you see extraordinarily simple the further procedure follows on in the same way if we occupy ourselves long with a dream a thing which apart from psycho analysis naturally never happens we are up to find still more reminiscences to the various different parts of the dream we are not however always successful in finding reminiscences to certain portions we have to put aside these dreams or parts of dreams whether we will or know the collected reminiscences are called the dream material we treat this material by universally valid scientific method if you ever have to work up experimental material you compare the individual units and classify them according to similarities you proceed exactly the same way with dream material you look for the common traits either of a formal or a substantial nature certain extremely common prejudices must be got rid of I've always noticed that the beginner is looking for one trait or another and tries to make his material conform to his expectation this condition I noticed especially among those colleagues who were formerly more or less passionate opponents of psychoanalysis their opposition being based on well-known prejudices and misunderstandings when I had the chance of analyzing them whereby they obtained at last a real insight into the method the first mistake generally made in their own psychoanalytic work was that they did violence to the material by their own preconceived opinion they gave vent to their former prejudice against psychoanalysis in their attitude towards the material which they could not estimate objectively but only according to their subjective fantasies if one would have the courage to sift dream material one must not recoil from any parallel the dream material generally consists of very heterogeneous associations out of which it is sometimes very difficult to deduce the tertium comparetionis I refrain from giving detailed examples as it is quite impossible to handle in a lecture the voluminous material of a dream I might call your attention to rank's article in the yahr bruch ein traum der sik seber du tet a dream interpreted by itself there you will see what an extensive material must be taken into consideration for comparison hence for the interpretation of the unconscious we proceed in the same way as is universal when a conclusion is to be drawn by classifying material the objection is very often heard why does the dream have an unconscious content at all in my view this objection is as unscientific as possible every actual psychological moment has a special history every sentence I pronounce has beside the intended meaning known to me another historical meaning and it is possible that its second meaning is entirely different from its conscious meaning I express myself on purpose somewhat paradoxically I do not mean that I could explain every individual sentence in its historical meaning this is a thing easier to do in larger and more detailed contributions it will be clear to everyone that a poem is apart from its manifest content especially characteristic of the poet in regard to its form its content and its matter of origin although the poet in his poem gave expression to the mood of a moment the literary historian will find things in it and behind it which the poet never foresaw the analysis which the literary historian draws from the poet's material is exactly the method of psychoanalysis the psychoanalytic method generally speaking can be compared with historical analysis and synthesis suppose for instance we did not understand the meaning of baptism as practiced in our churches today the priest tells us the baptism means the admission of the child into the christian community but this does not satisfy us why is the child sprinkled with water to understand this ceremony we must choose out of the history of rights those human traditions which pertain to this subject and thus we get material for comparison to be considered from different standpoints one the baptism means obviously an initiation ceremony consecration therefore all the traditions containing initiation rights have to be consulted do the baptism takes place with water this special form requires another series of traditions namely those rights where water is used three the person to be baptized is sprinkled with water here are to be consulted all those rights where the initiated is sprinkled or submerged etc four all the reminiscences of folklore the superstitious practices must be remembered which in any way run parallel with the symbolism of the baptismal act in this way we get a comparative scientific study of religion as regards baptism we accordingly discovered the different elements out of which the act of baptism has arisen we ascertain further its original meaning and we become at the same time acquainted with the rich world of myths that have contributed to the foundations of religions and thus we are unable to understand the manifold and profound meanings of baptism the analyst proceeds in the same way with a dream he collects the historical parallels to every part of the dream even the remotest and he tries to reconstruct the psychological history of the dream with its fundamental meaning exactly as in the analysis of the act of baptism thus through the monographic treatment of the dream we get a profound and beautiful insight into that mysterious fine and ingenious network of unconscious determination we get an insight which as i said before can only be compared with a historical understanding of any act which we had hitherto regarded in a superficial and one-sided way this digression on the psychoanalytic method has seemed to me to be unavoidable i was obliged to give you an account of the method and its position in methodology by reason of all the extensive misunderstandings which are constantly attempting to discredit it i do not doubt that there are superficial and improper interpretations of the method but an intelligent critic ought never to allow this to be a reproach to the method itself any more than a bad surgeon should be urged as an objection to the common validity of surgery i do not doubt that some inaccurate descriptions and conceptions of the psychoanalytic method have arisen on the part of the psychoanalytic school itself but this is due to the fact that because of their education in natural science it is difficult for medical men to attain a full grasp of historical or philological method although they instinctively handle it rightly the method i have described to you in this general way is the method that i adopt and for which i assume the scientific responsibility in my opinion it is absolutely reprehensible and unscientific to question about dreams or to try to interpret them directly this is not a methodological but an arbitrary proceeding which is its own punishment for it is an unproductive as every false method if i have made the attempt to demonstrate to you the principle of the psychoanalytic school by dream analysis it is because the dream is one of the clearest instances of those contents of the conscious whose basis eludes any plain and direct understanding when anyone knocks in a nail with a hammer to hang something up we can understand every detail of the action but it is otherwise with the act of baptism where every phase is problematic we call these actions of which the meaning and the aim is not directly evident symbolic actions or symbols on the basis of this reasoning we call a dream symbolic as a dream is a psychological formation of which the origin meaning and aim are obscure in as much as it represents one of the purest products of unconscious constellation as Freud strikingly says the dream is the we a ragia to the unconscious besides the dream we can note many effects of unconscious constellation we have in the association experiments a means for establishing exactly the influence of the unconscious we find those effects in the disturbances of the experiment which i have called the indicators of the complex the task which the association experiment gives to the person experimented upon is so extraordinarily easy and simple that even children can accomplish it without difficulty it is therefore very remarkable that so many disturbances of an intentional action should be noted in this experiment the only reasons or causes of these disturbances which can usually be shown are the partly conscious partly not conscious constellations caused by the so-called complexes in the greater number of these disturbances we can without difficulty establish the relation to images of emotional complexes we often need a psychoanalytic method to explain these relations that is we have to ask the person experimented upon or the patient what associations he can give to the disturbed reactions with us gain the historical matter which serves as a basis for our judgment the intelligent objection has already been made that the person experimented upon could say what he liked in other words any nonsense this objection is made i believe in the unconscious opposition that the historian who collects the matter for his monograph is an idiot incapable of distinguishing real parallels from apparent ones and true documents from crude falsifications the professional man has means at his disposal by which clumsy mistakes can be avoided with certainty and the slider ones very probably the mistrust of our opponents is here really delightful for anyone who understands psychoanalytic work it is a well-known fact that it is not so very difficult to see where there is coherence and where there is none moreover in the first place these fraudulent declarations are very significant of the person experimented upon and secondly in general rather easily to be recognized as fraudulent in association experiments we are able to recognize the very intense effects produced by the unconscious in what are called complex interventions these mistakes made in the association experiment are nothing but the prototypes of the mistakes made in everyday life which are for the greater part to be considered as interventions for he brought together such material in his book the psychopathology of everyday life these include the so-called symptomatic actions which from another point of view might equally as well be called symbolic actions and the real failures to carry out actions such as forgetting slips of the tongue etc all these phenomena are the effect of unconscious constellations and therefore so many entrance gates into the domain of the unconscious when such errors are cumulative they are designated as neurosis which from this aspect looks like a defective action and therefore the effect of unconscious constellations or complex interventions the association experiment is thus not directly a means to unlock the unconscious but rather a technique for obtaining a good selection of defective reactions which can then be used by psychoanalysis at least this is its most reliable form of application at the present time i may however mention that it is possible that it may furnish other especially valuable facts which would grant us some direct glimpses but i do not consider this problem sufficiently ripe to speak about investigations in this direction are going on i hope that through my explanation of our method you may have gained somewhat more confidence in its scientific character so that you will be by this time more inclined to agree that the fantasies which have been hitherto discovered by means of psychoanalytic work are not merely arbitrary suppositions and illusions of psychoanalysts perhaps you are even inclined to listen patiently to what those products of unconscious fantasies can tell us in chapter six chapter seven of the theory of psychoanalysis by Carl Gustav Jung this liberal box recording is in the public domain chapter seven the content of the unconscious the fantasies of adults are in so far as they are conscious of great diversity and strongly individual it is therefore nearly impossible to give a general description of them but it is very different when we enter by means of analysis into the world of his unconscious fantasies the diversities of the fantasies are indeed very great but we do not find those individual peculiarities which we find in the conscious self we meet here with more typical material which is not infrequently repeated in a similar form in different people constantly recurring for instance our ideas which are variations of the thoughts we encounter in religion and mythology this fact is so convincing that we say we have discovered in these fantasies the same mechanisms which once created mythological and religious ideas i should have to enter very much into detail in order to give you adequate examples i must refer you for these problems to my work van lungen und symbol de libido i will only mention that for instance the central symbol of christianity self-sacrifice plays an important part in the fantasies of the unconscious the viennese school describes this phenomenon by the ambiguous term castration complex this paradoxical use of the term follows from the particular attitude of this school toward the question of unconscious sexuality i've given special attention to the problem in the book i've just mentioned i must here restrict myself to this incidental reference and hasten to say something about the origin of the unconscious fantasy in the child's unconsciousness the fantasies are considerably simplified in relation to the proportions of the infantile surroundings thanks to the united efforts of the psychoanalytic school we discovered that the most frequent fantasy of childhood is the so-called edopus complex this designation also seems as paradoxical as possible we know that the tragic fate of edopus consisted in his loving his mother and slaying his father this conflict of later life seems to be far remote from the child's mind to the uninitiated it seems inconceivable that the child should have this conflict after careful reflection it will become clear that the tertium comparetionis consists just in this narrow limitation of the fate of edopus within the bounds of the family these limitations are very typical for the child for parents or never the boundary for the adult person to the same extent the edopus complex represents an infantile conflict but with the exaggeration of the adult the term edopus complex does not mean naturally that this conflict is considered as occurring in the adult form but in a corresponding form suitable to childhood the little son would like to have the mother all to himself and to be rid of the father as you know little children can sometimes force themselves between the parents in the most jealous way the wishes and aims get in the unconscious a more concrete and a more drastic form children are small primitive people and are therefore quickly ready to kill but as a child is in general harmless so his apparently dangerous wishes are as a rule also harmless i say as a rule as you know that children too sometimes give way to their impulses to murder and this not always in any indirect fashion but just as the child in general is incapable of making systematic projects as little dangerous are his intentions to murder the same holds good of an edopus view toward the mother the small traces of this fantasy in the conscious can easily be overlooked therefore nearly all parents are convinced that their children have no edopus complex parents as well as lovers are generally blind if i now say that the edopus complex is in the first place only a formula for the childish desire toward parents and for the conflict which this craving evokes this statement of the situation will be more readily accepted the history of the edopus fantasy is of special interest as it teaches us very much about the development of the unconscious fantasies naturally people think that the problem of edopus is the problem of the sun but this is astonishingly enough only an illusion under some circumstances the libido sexualist reaches that definite differentiation of puberty corresponding to the sex of the individual relatively late the libido sexualist has before this time an undifferentiated sexual character which can be also termed bisexual therefore it is not astonishing if little girls possess the edopus complex too as far as i can see the first love of the child belongs to the mother no matter which it's sex if the love for the mother at this stage is intense the father is jealously kept away as a rival of course for the child itself the mother has in this early stage of childhood no sexual significance of any importance the term edopus complex is in so far not really suitable at this stage the mother has still the significance of a protecting enveloping food providing being who on this account is a source of delight i do not identify as i explained before the feeling of delight a o ipso with sexuality in earliest childhood but a slight amount of sexuality is connected with this feeling of delight but nevertheless jealousy can play a great part in it as jealousy does not belong entirely to the sphere of sexuality the desire for food has much to do with the first impulses of jealousy certainly a relatively germinating eroticism is also connected with it this element gradually increases as the years go on so that the edopus complex soon assumes its classical form in the case of the son the conflict develops in a more masculine and therefore more typical form whilst in the daughter of the typical affection for the father develops with a correspondingly jealous attitude toward the mother we call this complex the electro complex as everybody knows electric revenge on her mother for the murder of her husband because that mother had robbed her of her father both fantasy complexes developed with growing age and reach a new stage after puberty when the emancipation from the parents is more or less attained the symbol of this time is the one already previously mentioned it is the symbol of self-sacrifice the more the sexuality develops the more the individual is forced to leave his family and to acquire independence and autonomy by its history the child is closely connected with his family and especially with its parents in consequence it is often with the greatest difficulty that the child is able to free itself from its infantile surroundings the edopus and the lecture complex give rise to a conflict if adults cannot succeed in spiritually freeing themselves hence arises the possibility of neurotic disturbance the libido which is already sexually developed takes possession of the form given by the complex and produces feelings and fantasies which unmistakably show the effective existence of the complex till then perfectly unconscious the next consequence is the formation of intense resistances against the immoral inner impulses which are derived from the now active complexes the conscious attitude arising out of this can be of different kinds either the consequences are direct and then we notice in the sun strong resistances against the father and a typical affectionate and dependent attitude toward the mother or the consequences are indirect that is to say compensated and we notice instead of the resistances toward the father a typical submissiveness here and an irritated antagonistic attitude toward the mother it is possible that direct and compensated consequences take place ultimately the same thing as to be said of the electro complex if the libido sexualists were to cleave fast to these particular forms of the conflict murder and incest would be the consequence of the edifice and electric conflicts these consequences are naturally not found among normal people and not even among a moral moral here implying the possession of a rationalized and codified moral system primitive persons or humanity would have become extinct long ago on the contrary it is in the natural order of things that what surrounds us daily and has surrounded us loses its compelling charm and thus forces the libido to search for new objects an important rule which prevents parasite and in breeding the further development of the libido toward objects outside the family is the absolutely normal and right way of proceeding and it is an abnormal and morbid phenomenon if the libido remains as it were glued to the family some indications of this phenomenon are nevertheless to be noticed in normal people a direct outcome of the infantile complex is the unconscious fantasy of self-sacrifice which occurs after puberty in the succeeding stage of development of this i gave a detailed example in my work avant lungan und symbola de libido the fantasy of self-sacrifice means sacrificing infantile wishes i've shown this in the work just mentioned and in the same place i have referred to the parallels in the history of religions the problems of the incest complex Freud has a special conception of the incest complex which has given rise to heated controversy he starts from the fact that the edipus complex is generally unconscious and conceives this as the result of a repression of a moral kind it is possible that i'm not expressing myself quite correctly when i give you Freud's view in these words at any rate according to him the edipus complex seems to be repressed but it seems to be removed into the unconscious by a reaction from the conscious tendencies it almost looks as if the edipus complex would develop into consciousness if the development of the child were to go on without restraint and if no cultural tendencies influenced it Freud calls this barrier which prevents the edipus complex from ripening the incest barrier he seems to believe so far as one can gather from his work that the incest barrier is the result of experience of the selective influence of reality in as much as the unconscious drives without restraint and in an immediate way for its own satisfaction without any consideration for others this conception is in harmony with the conception of schopenhauer who says of the blind world will that it is so egoistic that a man could slay his brother merely to grease his boots with his brother's fat Freud considers that the psychological incest barrier as postulated by him can be compared with the incest taboo which we find among inferior races he further believes that these prohibitions are a proof of the fact that men really desired incest for which reason laws were framed against it even in very primitive cultural stages he takes the tendency towards incest to be an absolute concrete sexual wish lacking only the quality of consciousness he calls this complex the root complex or nucleus of the neuroses and is inclined viewing this as the original one to reduce nearly the whole psychology of the neuroses as well as many other phenomena in the world of mind to this complex end of chapter seven chapter eight part one of the theory of psychoanalysis by Carl Gustav Jung this liberox recording is in the public domain chapter eight part one the etiology of the neuroses with this conception of freuds we have to return to the question of the etiology of the neuroses we have seen that the psychoanalytic theory began with a traumatic event in childhood which was only later on found to be a fantasy at least in many cases in consequence the theory became modified and tried to find in the development of abnormal fantasy the main etiological significance the investigation of the unconscious made by the collaboration of many workers carried on over a space of 10 years provided an extensive empirical material which demonstrated that the incest complex was the beginning of the morbid fantasies but it was no longer thought that the incest complex was a special complex of neurotic people it was demonstrated to be a constituent of a normal infantile psyche too we cannot tell by its mere existence if this complex will give rise to a neurosis or not to become pathogenic it must give rise to a conflict that is the complex which in itself is harmless has to become dynamic and thus give rise to a conflict herewith we come to a new and important question the whole etiological problem is altered if the infantile root complex is only a general form which is not pathogenic in itself and requires as we saw in our previous exposition to be subsequently set in action under these circumstances we dig in vain among the reminiscence as of earliest childhood as they give us only the general forms of the later conflicts but not the conflict itself i believe the best thing i can do is to describe the further development of the theory by demonstrating the case of that young lady whose story you have heard in part in one of the former lectures you will probably remember that the shying of the horses by means of the animistic explanation brought back the reminiscence of a comparable scene in childhood we here discussed the trauma theory we found that we had to look for the real pathological element in the exaggerated fantasy which took its origin in a certain retardation of the psychic sexual development we have now to apply our theoretical standpoint to the origin of this particular type of illness so that we may understand how just at that moment this event of her childhood which seemed to be of such potency could come to constellation the simplest way to come to an understanding of this important event would be by making an exact inquiry into the circumstances of the moment the first thing i did was to question the patient about the society in which she had been at that time and as to what was the farewell gathering to which she had been just before she had been at a farewell supper given in honor of her best friend who was going to a foreign health resort for a nervous illness we hear that this friend is happily married and is the mother of one child we have some right to doubt this assertion of her happiness if she were really happily married she probably would not be nervous and would not need a cure when i put my question differently i learned that my patient had been brought back into the host's house as soon as she was overtaken by her friends as this house was the nearest place to bring her to in safety in her exhausted condition she received his hospitality as the patient came to this part of her history she suddenly broke off was embarrassed fidgeted and tried to turn to another subject evidently we had now come upon some disagreeable reminiscences which suddenly presented themselves after the patient had overcome obstinate resistances it was admitted that something very remarkable had happened that night the host made her a passionate declaration of love thus giving rise to a situation that might well be considered difficult and painful considering the absence of the hostess ostensibly this declaration came like a flash of lightning from a clear sky a small dose of criticism applied to this assertion will teach us that these things never drop from the clouds but have always their previous history it was the work of the following weeks to dig out piecemeal a whole long love story i can thus roughly describe the picture i got at finally as a child the patient was thoroughly boyish loved only turbulent games for boys laughed at her own sex and flung aside all feminine ways and occupations after puberty the time when the sex question should have come nearer to her she began to shun all society she hated and despised as it were everything which could remind her even remotely of the biological destination of mankind and lived in a world of fantasies which had nothing in common with the rude reality so she escaped up to her 24th year all the little adventures hopes and expectations which ordinarily move a woman of this age in this respect women are very often remarkably insincere towards themselves and towards the physician but she became acquainted with two men who were destined to destroy the thorny hedge which had grown all around her mr a was the husband of her best friend at the time mr b was the bachelor friend of this family both were to her taste it seemed to her pretty soon that mr b was much more sympathetic to her and from this resulted a more intimate relationship between herself and him and the possibility of an engagement was discussed through her relations with mr b and through her friend she met mr a frequently in an inexplicable way his presence very often excited her and made her nervous just at this time our friend went to a big party all her friends were there she became lost and thought and played as in a dream with her ring which suddenly slipped from her hand and rolled under the table both men tried to find it and mr b managed to get it with an expressive smile he put the ring back on her finger and said you know what this means at that moment a strange and irresistible feeling came over her she tore the ring from her finger and threw it out of the open window evidently a painful moment ensued in she soon left the company feeling deeply depressed a short time later she found herself for her holidays accidentally in the same health resort where mr a and his wife were staying mrs a now became more and more nervous and as she felt ill had to stay frequently at home the patient often went out with mr a alone one day they were out in a small boat she was boisterously merry and suddenly fell overboard mr a saved her with great difficulty and lifted her half unconscious into the boat he then kissed her with this romantic event the bonds were woven fast to defend herself our patient tried energetically to get herself engaged to mr b and to imagine that she loved him of course this queer play did not escape the sharp eye of feminine jealousy mrs a her friend felt the secret was worried by it and her nervousness grew proportionately it became more and more necessary for her to go to a foreign health resort the farewell party was a dangerous opportunity the patient knew that her friend and rival was going off the same evening so mr a would be alone certainly she did not see this opportunity clearly as women have the notable capacity to think purely emotionally and not intellectually for this reason it seems to them as if they never thought about certain matters at all but as a matter of fact she had a queer feeling all the evening she felt extremely nervous and when mrs a had been accompanied to the station and had gone the hysterical attack occurred on her way back i asked her of what she had been thinking or what she felt at the actual moment when the trotting horses came along her answer was she had only a frightful feeling the feeling that something dreadful was very near to her which she could not escape as you know the consequence was that the exhausted patient was brought back into the house of the host mr a a simple human mind would understand the situation without difficulty and an initiated person would say well that is clear enough she only intended to return by one way or another to mr a's house but the psychologist would have approached this lament for his incorrect way of expressing himself and would tell him that the patient was not conscious of the motives of her behavior and that it was therefore not permissible to speak of the patient's intention to return to mr a's house there are of course learned psychologists who are capable of furnishing many theoretical reasons for disputing the meaning of this behavior they base their reasons on the dogma of the identity of consciousness and psyche the psychology inaugurated by Freud recognized long ago that it is impossible to estimate psychological actions as to their final meaning by conscious motives but that the objective standard of their psychological results has to be applied for their right evaluation nowadays they cannot be contested any longer that there are unconscious tendencies to which have a great influence on our modes of reaction and on the effects to which these in turn give rise what happened in mr a's house bears out this observation our patient made a sentimental scene and mr a was induced to answer it with a declaration of love looked at in the light of this last event the whole previous history seems to be very ingeniously directed towards just this end but throughout the conscience of the patient struggled consciously against it our theoretical profit from this story is the clear perception that an unconscious purpose or tendency has brought onto the stage the scene of the fright from the horses utilizing thus very possibly that infantile reminiscence where the shying horses galloped towards the catastrophe we're viewing the whole material the scene with the horses the starting point of the illness seems now to be the keystone of a planned edifice the fright and the apparent traumatic effect of the event in childhood are only brought on the stage in the peculiar way characteristic of hysteria but what is thus put on the stage has become almost a reality we know from hundreds of experiences that certain hysterical pains are only put on the stage in order to reap certain advantages from that sufferer's surroundings the patients not only believe that they suffer but their sufferings are from a psychological standpoint as real as those due to organic causes nevertheless they are but stage effects the regression of libido this utilization of reminiscences to put on the stage any illness or an apparent etiology is called a regression of the libido the libido goes back to reminiscences and makes them actual so that an apparent etiology is produced in this case by the old theory the fright from the horses would seem to be based on a former shock the resemblance between the two scenes is unmistakable and in both cases the patient's fright is absolutely real at any rate we have no reason to doubt her assertions in this respect as they are in full harmony with all other experiences the nervous asthma the hysterical anxiety the psychogenic depressions and exaltations the pains the convulsions they are all very real and that physician who has himself suffered from a psychogenic symptom knows that it feels absolutely real regressively relived reminiscences even if they were but fantasies are as real as remembrances of events that have once been real as the term regression of libido shows we understand by this retrograde mode of application of the libido a retreat of the libido two former stages in our example we are able to recognize clearly the way the process of regression is carried on at that farewell party which proved a good opportunity to be alone with the host the patient shrank from the idea of turning this opportunity to her advantage and yet was overpowered by her desires which she had never consciously realized up to that moment the libido was not used consciously for that definite purpose nor was this purpose ever acknowledged the libido had to carry it out through the unconscious and through the pretext of the fright caused by and apparently terrible danger her feeling at the moment when the horse's approach illustrates our formula most clearly she felt as if something inevitable had now to happen the process of regression has beautifully demonstrated in an illustration already used by Freud the libido can be compared with a stream which is damned up as soon as its course beats any impediment whencer rises and inundation if this stream has previously in its upper reaches excavated other channels then these channels will be filled up again by reason of the damming below to a certain extent they would appear to be real river beds filled with water as before but at the same time they only have a temporary existence it is not that the stream has permanently chosen the old channels but only for as long as the impediment endures in the mainstream the affluence do not always carry water because they were from the first as it were not independent streams but only former stages of development of the main river or passing possibilities to which an inundation has given the opportunity for fresh existence this illustration can directly be transferred to the development of the application of the libido the definite direction the main river is not yet found during the childish development of sexuality the libido goes instead into all possible bypass and only gradually does the definite form develop but the more the stream follows out its main channel the more the affluence will dry up and lose their importance leaving only traces of former activity similarly the importance of the childish precursors of sexuality disappears completely as a rule only leaving behind certain traces if in later life an impediment arises so that the damming of the libido reanimates the old bypass the condition thus excited is properly a new one and something abnormal the former condition of the child is normal usage of the libido whilst the return of the libido towards the childish past is something abnormal therefore in my opinion it is an erroneous terminology to call the infantile sexual manifestations perversions for it is not permissible to give normal manifestations pathological terms this erroneous usage seems to be responsible for the confusion of the scientific public the terms employed in erotic psychology have been misapplied here under the assumption that the abnormal bypass of the libido discovered in erotic people are the same phenomena as are to be found in children the infantile amnesia criticized the so-called amnesia of childhood which plays an important part in the three contributions is a similar illegitimate retrograde application from pathology amnesia is a pathological condition consisting in the repression of certain contents of their conscious this condition cannot possibly be the same as the anti-grade amnesia of children which consists in an incapacity for intentional reproduction a condition we find also among savages this in capacity for reproduction dates from birthing can be understood on obvious anatomical and biological grounds it would be a strange hypothesis where we willing to regard this totally different quality of early infantile consciousness as one to be attributed to repression in analogy with the condition in neurosis the amnesia of neurosis is punched out as it were from the continuity of memory but the remembrances of earlier childhood exist in separate islands in the continuity of the non-memory this condition is the opposite in every sense of the condition of neurosis so that the expression amnesia generally used for this condition is incorrect the amnesia of childhood is a conclusion a posterior eye from the psychology of neurosis just as is the polymorphic perverse disposition of the child the latent sexual period criticized this era in the theoretical conception is shown clearly in the so-called latent sexual period of childhood for it has remarked that the early infantile so-called sexual manifestations which are now called the phenomena of the pre-sexual stage vanished after a while and only reappear much later everything that for it has termed the suckling's masturbation that is to say all those sexual like actions of which we spoke before are said to return later as real onanism such a process of development would be biologically unique in conformity with this theory one would have to say for instance the winter plant forms a bud from which a blossom begins to unfold the blossom is taken back again before it is fully developed and is again hidden within the bud to reappear later on in the same form this impossible supposition is a consequence of the assertion that the early infantile activities of the pre-sexual stage are sexual phenomena and that those manifestations which resemble masturbation are genuinely acts of masturbation in this way for it had to assert that there is a disappearance of sexuality whereas he calls it a latent sexual period what he calls a disappearance of sexuality is nothing but the real beginning of sexuality everything preceding was but the fourth stage to which no real sexual character can be imputed in this way the impossible phenomenon of the latent period is very simply explained this theory of the latent sexual period is a striking instance of the incorrectness of the conception of the early infantile sexuality but there has been no error of observation on the contrary the hypothesis of the latent sexual period proves how exactly for it noticed the apparent recommencement of sexuality the error lies in the conception as we saw before the first mistake consists in a somewhat old-fashioned conception of the multiplicity of instincts if we accept the idea of two or more instincts existing side by side we must naturally conclude that if one instinct has not yet become manifest it is present in news in accordance with the theory of pre-formation in the physical sphere we should perhaps have to say that when a piece of iron passes from the condition of heat to the condition of light the light was already existent in news latent in the heat such assumptions are arbitrary projections of human ideas into transcendental regions contravening the prescription of the theory of cognition we have thus no right to speak about sexual instinct existing in news as we then give an arbitrary explanation of phenomena which can be explained otherwise and in a more adequate manner we can speak of the manifestations of a nutrition instinct of the manifestation of a sexual instinct etc but we have only the right to do so when the function has quite clearly reached the surface we only speak of light when the iron is visibly luminous but not when the iron is merely hot Freud as an observer sees clearly that the sexuality of neurotic people is not entirely comparable with infantile sexuality for there is a great difference for instance between the uncleanness of a child of two years old and the uncleanness of a catatonic patient of 40 the former is a psychological and normal phenomenon the latter is extraordinarily pathological Freud inserted a short passage in his three contributions saying that the infantile form of neurotic sexuality is either holy or at any rate partly due to a regression that is even in those cases where we might say these are still the same bypass we find that the function of the bypass is still increased by regression Freud thus recognizes that the infantile sexuality of neurotic people is for the greater part a regressive phenomenon that this must be so is also shown through the further insight obtained from the investigations of recent years that the observations concerning the psychology of the childhood of neurotic people hold equally good for normal people at any rate we can say that the history of the development of infantile sexuality in persons with neurosis differs but by hair's breadth from that of normal beings who have escaped the attention of the expert appraiser striking differences are exceptional further remarks on the etiology of neurosis the more we penetrate into the heart of infantile development the more we receive the impression that as little can be found there of etiological significance as in the infantile shock even with the acutus ferriting into history we shall never discover why people living on German soil had just such a fate and why the Gauls another the further we get away in analytical investigations from the epoch of the manifest neurosis the less can we expect to find the real motive of the neurosis since the dynamic disproportion grow fainter and fainter the further we go back into the past in constructing our theory so as to deduce the neurosis from causes in the distant past we are first and foremost obeying the impulse of our patients to withdraw themselves as far as possible from the critical present the pathogenic conflict exists only in the present moment it is just as if the nation wanted to regard its miserable political conditions at the actual moment as due to the past as if the Germany of the 19th century had attributed its political dismemberment and incapacity to its suppression by the Romans instead of having sought the actual sources ever difficulties in the present only in the actual present are the effective causes and only here are the possibilities of removing them the etiological significance of the actual present a greater part of the psychoanalytic school is under the spell of the conception that the conflicts of childhood are conditional sine qua non for the neuroses it is not only the theorist who studies the psychology of childhood from scientific interest but the practical man also who believes that he has to turn the history of infancy inside out to find there the dynamic source of the actual neurosis it were a fruitless enterprise if done under this presumption in the meantime the most important factor escapes the analyst namely the conflict in the claims of the present time in the case before us we should not understand any of the motives which produce the hysterical attacks if we look for them in earliest childhood it is the form alone which those reminiscences determined to a large extent but the dynamic originates from that present time the insight into the actual meaning of these motives is real understanding we can now understand why that moment was pathogenic as well as why it chose those particular symbols through the conception of regression the theory is freed from the narrow formula of the importance of the events in childhood and the actual conflict thus gets that significance which from an empirical standpoint belongs to it implicitly Freud himself introduced the conception of regression in his three contributions acknowledging rightly that our observations do not permit us to seek the cause of neurosis exclusively in the past if it is true then that reminiscent matter becomes active again as a rule by regression we have to consider the following question have perhaps the apparent defective results of reminiscences to be referred in general to a regression of the libido as i said before Freud suggested in his three contributions that the infantilism of neurotic sexuality was for the greater part due to the regression of the libido this statement deserves greater prominence than it there received Freud did give this prominence in his later works to a somewhat greater extent the recognition of the regression of the libido very largely reduces the etiological significance of the events of childhood it has already seemed to us rather astonishing that the edopus or the electro complex should have a determining value in regard to the onset of a neurosis since these complexes exist in everyone they exist even with those persons who have never known their own father and mother but have been educated by their step-parents i've analyzed cases of this kind and found that the incest complex was as well developed as in other patients it seems to us that this is good proof that the incest complex is much more purely regressive production of fantasies than a reality from this standpoint the events in childhood are only significant for the neuroses insofar as they are revived later through a regression of the libido that this must be true to a great extent is also shown by the fact that the infantile sexual shock never causes hysteria nor does the incest complex which is common to everyone the neurosis only begins as soon as the incest complex becomes actuated by regression so we come to the question why does the libido make a regression to answer it we must study carefully under what circumstances regression arises in treating this problem with my patients i generally give the following example while a mountain climber is attempting the ascent of a certain peak he has to meet with an insurmountable obstacle that i say some precipitous rocky wall which cannot be surmounted after having vainly sought for another path he will have to return and regretfully abandon the climbing of that peak he will say to himself it is not in my power to surmount this difficulty so i will climb another easier mountain in this case we find there is a normal utilization of the libido the man returns when he finds an insurmountable difficulty and uses his libido which could not attain its original aim for the ascent of another mountain now let us imagine that this rocky wall was not really unclimbable so far as his physique was concerned but that from mere nervousness he withdrew from this somewhat difficult enterprise in this case there are two possibilities one the man will be annoyed by his own cowardice and will wish to prove himself less timid on another occasion or perhaps will even admit that with his timidity he ought never to undertake such a difficult ascent at any rate he will acknowledge that he has not sufficient moral capacity for these difficulties he therefore uses that libido which did not attain its original aim for a useful self-criticism and for sketching a plan by which he may be able with due regard to his moral capacity to realize his wish to climb to the possibility is that the man does not realize his own cowardice and declares offhand that this mountain is physically unattainable although he is quite able to see that with sufficient courage the obstacle could have been overcome but he prefers to deceive himself thus the psychological situation which is of importance for our problem is created. End of chapter eight part one