A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
As to the neurotic symptoms, we already know that they are the result of
a conflict aroused by a new form of gratifying the libido. The two
forces that have contended against each other meet once more in the
symptom; they become reconciled through the compromise of a symptom
development. That is why the symptom is capable of such resistance; it
is sustained from both sides. We also know that one of the two partners
to the conflict is the unsatisfied libido, frustrated by reality, which
must now seek other means for its satisfaction. If reality remains
inflexible even where the libido is prepared to take another object in
place of the one denied it, the libido will then finally be compelled to
resort to regression and to seek gratification in one of the earlier
stages in its organizations already out-lived, or by means of one of the
objects given up in the past. Along the path of regression the libido is
enticed by fixations which it has left behind at these stages in its
development.
Here the development toward perversion branches off sharply from that of
the neuroses. If the regressions do not awaken the resistance of the
ego, then a neurosis does not follow and the libido arrives at some
actual, even if abnormal, satisfaction. The ego, however, controls not
alone consciousness, but also the approaches to motor innervation, and
hence the realization of psychic impulses. If the ego then does not
approve this regression, the conflict takes place. The libido is locked
out, as it were, and must seek refuge in some place where it can find an
outlet for its fund of energy, in accordance with the controlling
demands for pleasurable gratification. It must withdraw from the ego.
Such an evasion is offered by the fixations established in the course of
its evolution and now traversed regressively, against which the ego had,
at the time, protected itself by suppressions. The libido, streaming
back, occupies these suppressed positions and thus withdraws from before
the ego and its laws. At the same time, however, it throws off all the
influences acquired under its tutelage. The libido could be guided so
long as there was a possibility of its being satisfied; under the double
pressure of external and internal denial it becomes unruly and harks
back to former and more happy times. Such is its character,
fundamentally unchangeable. The ideas which the libido now takes over in
order to hold its energy belong to the system of the unconscious, and
are therefore subject to its peculiar processes, especially elaboration
and displacement. Conditions are set up here which are entirely
comparable to those of dream formation. Just as the latent dream, the
fulfillment of a wish-phantasy, is first built up in the
unconsciousness, but must then pass through conscious processes before,
censored and approved, it can enter into the compromise construction of
the manifest dream, so the ideas representing the libido in the
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