A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
There is something else that makes the symptoms appear remarkable and
inexplicable as a means of libidinous satisfaction. They in no way
recall anything from which we normally are in the habit of expecting
satisfaction. They usually require no object, and thereby give up all
connection with external reality. We understand this to be a result of
turning away from fact and of returning to the predominance of
pleasurable gratification. But it is also a return to a sort of
amplified autoeroticism, such as was yielded the sex impulse in its
earliest satisfactions. In the place of a modification in the outside
world, we have a physical change, in other words, an internal reaction
in place of an external one, an adjustment instead of an activity.
Viewed from a phylogenetic standpoint, this expresses a very significant
regression. We will grasp this better when we consider it in connection
with a new factor which we are still to discover from the analytic
investigation of symptom development. Further, we recall that in symptom
formation the same processes of the unconscious have been at work as in
dream formation--elaboration and displacement. Similarly to the dream,
the symptom represents a fulfillment, a satisfaction after the manner of
the infantile; by the utmost elaboration this satisfaction can be
compressed into a single sensation or innervation, or by extreme
displacement it may be restricted to a tiny element of the entire
libidinous complex. It is no wonder that we often have difficulties in
recognizing in the symptom the libidinous satisfaction which we
anticipate and always find verified.
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