Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of ViennaFreud, Sigmund
Science
Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of Vienna
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
where one of them predominates the other is proportionately less
pronounced. At one end of the series stand those extreme cases of whom
one can say: These people would have fallen ill whatever happened,
whatever they experienced, however merciful life had been to them,
because of their anomalous Libido-development. At the other end stand
cases which call forth the opposite verdict—they would undoubtedly have
escaped illness if life had not put such and such burdens upon them. In
the intermediate cases in the series, more or less of the disposing
factor (the sexual constitution) is combined with less or more of the
injurious impositions of life. Their sexual constitution would not have
brought about their neurosis if they had not gone through such and such
experiences, and life’s vicissitudes would not have worked traumatically
upon them if the Libido had been otherwise constituted. In this series I
can perhaps admit a certain preponderance in the effect of the
predisposing factor, but this admission again depends upon where you
draw the line in marking the boundaries of nervousness.
I shall now suggest to you that we should call series such as these
_complemental series_, and will inform you beforehand that we shall find
occasion to establish others of this kind.
The tenacity with which the Libido holds to particular channels and
particular objects, the ‘_adhesiveness_’ of the Libido, so to say, seems
to be an independent factor, varying in individuals, the determining
conditions of which are completely unknown to us, but the importance of
which in the ætiology of the neuroses we shall certainly no longer
underestimate. At the same time we should not overestimate the close
relation between the two things. A similar ‘adhesiveness’ of the Libido
occurs—from unknown causes—in normal people under numerous conditions,
and is found as a decisive factor in those persons who in a certain
sense are the extreme opposite of neurotics—namely, perverted persons.
It was known before the time of psycho-analysis that in the anamnesis of
such persons a very early impression, relating to an abnormal
instinct-tendency or object-choice, is frequently discovered, to which
the Libido of that person henceforth remains attached for life (Binet).
It is often hard to say what has enabled this impression to exert such
an intense power of attraction upon the Libido. I will describe a case
of this kind observed by myself. A man to whom the genitals and all the
other attractions in a woman now mean nothing can be roused to
irresistible sexual excitation only by a shoe-clad foot of a certain
shape; he can remember an event in his sixth year which determined this
fixation of Libido. He was sitting upon a stool by the side of his
governess who was to give him an English lesson. She was a plain,
elderly, shrivelled old maid, with watery blue eyes and a snub nose, and
on this day she had hurt her foot and had it therefore stretched out on
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