Outwitting Our Nerves: A Primer of PsychotherapyJackson, Josephine A. (Josephine Agnes)
Science
Outwitting Our Nerves: A Primer of Psychotherapy
Jackson, Josephine A. (Josephine Agnes)
Nervous system -- Diseases; Psychoanalysis; Therapeutics, Suggestive
2 Infantile mental life is of tremendous importance in the direction
of adult processes.
3 Much of what is called forgetting is rather a repression into the
subconscious, of impulses which were painful to the personality as a
whole.
4 Mental processes are dynamic, insisting on discharge, either in
reality or in phantasy.
5 An emotion may become detached from the idea to which it belongs and
be displaced on other ideas.
6 Sex-interests dominate much of the mental life where their influence
is unrecognized. The disturbance in a psycho-neurosis is always in
this domain of sex-life. "In a normal sexual life, no neurosis." If a
shock is the precipitating cause of the trouble, it is only because
the ground was already prepared by the sex-disturbance.
Freud was perhaps unfortunate in his choice of the word "sex," which
has so many evil connotations; but as he found no other word to cover
the field, he chose the old one and stretched its meaning to include
all the psychic and physical phenomena which spring directly and
indirectly from the great processes of reproduction and parental care,
and which ultimately include all and more than our word "love."[33]
[Footnote 33: Freud and his followers have always said that they saw
no theoretical reason why any other repressed instinct should not form
the basis of a neurosis, but that, as a matter of fact, they never had
found this to be the case, probably because no other instinct comes
into such bitter and persistent conflict with the dictates of society.
Now, however, the Great War seems to have changed conditions. Under
the strain and danger of life at the front there has developed a kind
of nervous breakdown called shellshock or war-neurosis, which seems in
some cases to be based not on the repression of the instinct of
race-preservation but on the unusual necessity for repression of the
instinct of self-preservation. Army surgeons report that wounded men
almost never suffer from shell-shock. The wound is enough to secure
the unconsciously desired removal to the rear. But in the absence of
wounds, a desire for safety may at the same time be so intense and so
severely repressed that it seizes upon the neurosis as the only
possible means of escape from the unbearable situation. In time of
peace, however, the instinct of reproduction seems to be the only
impulse which is severely enough repressed to be responsible for a
nervous breakdown.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account