A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
Let us return to the consideration of the symptoms. They serve as
substitutes for the gratification which has been forborne, by a
regression of the libido to earlier days, with a return to former
development phases in their choice of object and in their organization.
We learned some time ago that the neurotic is held fast somewhere in his
past; we now know that it is a period of his past in which his libido
did not miss the satisfaction which made him happy. He looks for such a
time in his life until he has found it, even though he must hark back to
his suckling days as he retains them in his memory or as he reconstructs
them in the light of later influences. The symptom in some way again
yields the old infantile form of satisfaction, distorted by the
censoring work of the conflict. As a rule it is converted into a
sensation of suffering and fused with other causal elements of the
disease. The form of gratification which the symptom yields has much
about it that alienates one's sympathy. In this we omit to take into
account, however, the fact that the patients do not recognize the
gratification as such and experience the apparent satisfaction rather as
suffering, and complain of it. This transformation is part of the
psychic conflict under the pressure of which the symptom must be
developed. What was at one time a satisfaction for the individual must
now awaken his antipathy or disgust. We know a simple but instructive
example for such a change of feeling. The same child that sucked the
milk with such voracity from its mother's breast is apt to show a strong
antipathy for milk a few years later, which is often difficult to
overcome. This antipathy increases to the point of disgust when the
milk, or any substituted drink, has a little skin over it. It is rather
hard to throw out the suggestion that this skin calls up the memory of
the mother's breast, which was once so intensely coveted. In the
meantime, to be sure, the traumatic experience of weaning has
intervened.
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