A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
In contrast to this, regression of libido in compulsion-neurosis turns
back most conspicuously to the earlier sadistico-anal organization,
which accordingly becomes the most significant factor expressed by the
symptoms. Under these conditions the love impulse must mask itself as a
sadistic impulse. The compulsion idea must therefore be reinterpreted.
Isolated from other superimposed factors, which though they are not
accidental are also indispensable, it no longer reads: "I want to murder
you"; rather it says "I want to enjoy you in love." Add to this, that
simultaneously regression of the object has also set in, so that this
impulse is invariably directed toward the nearest and dearest persons,
and you can imagine with what horror the patient thinks of these
compulsion ideas and how alien they appear to his conscious perception.
In the mechanism of these neuroses, suppression, too, assumes an
important part, which it is not easy to explain in a superficial
discussion of this sort. Regression of the libido without suppression
would never result in neurosis but would finally end in perversion. This
makes it obvious that suppression is the process most characteristic of
neurosis, and typifies it most perfectly. Perhaps I shall at some future
time have the opportunity of presenting to you our knowledge of the
mechanism of perversions and then you will see that here also things do
not work themselves out as simply as we should best like to construe
them.
You will most readily reconcile yourself with these elucidations of
fixation and regression, when you consider them as a preface to the
investigation of the etiology of neuroses. Towards this I have only
advanced a single fact: that people become neurotically ill when the
possibility of satisfying their libido is removed, ill with "denial," as
I expressed myself, and that their symptoms are the substitutes for the
denied gratification. Of course, that does not mean that every denial of
libidinous satisfaction makes every person neurotic, but merely that in
all cases known of neurosis, the factor of denial was traceable. The
syllogism therefore cannot be reversed. You also understand, I trust,
that this statement is not supposed to reveal the entire secret of the
etiology of neurosis, but only emphasizes an important and indispensable
condition.
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