Psycho-Analysis and the War NeurosesFreud, Sigmund
History
Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis; War neuroses
I do not know, ladies and gentlemen, whether you also have obtained
the impression from all these quotations and references (which are
only taken at random from the literature) that an advance, even though
one that is not admitted, has taken place in the attitude of leading
neurologists towards the teachings of psycho-analysis. Moreover, candid
recognition is not lacking; for example, the expression of Nonne, that
Freud’s experiences concerning the elaboration in the unconscious have
received interesting illuminations and corroborations through the
experiences of the war.
However, the same sentence of acknowledgement also contains a
nihilistic opinion of Nonne concerning psycho-analysis; he states
that Freud’s idea of the almost exclusively sexual foundation of
hysteria has been conclusively disproved during the war. We can no
longer leave this unanswered, which after all is only a partial
denial of psycho-analysis: also we can very easily give the answer.
The war neuroses, according to psycho-analysis, belong to a group of
neuroses in which not only is the genital sexuality affected, as in
ordinary hysteria, but also its precursor, the so-called narcissism,
self-love, just as in dementia praecox and paranoia. I grant that
the sexual foundation of these so-called narcissistic neuroses is
less easily apparent, particularly to those who equate sexuality and
genitality and have neglected to use the word “sexual” in the sense
of the old platonic Eros. Psycho-analysis, however, returns to this
extremely ancient standpoint when it treats all tender and sensual
relations of the man to his own or to the opposite sex, emotional
feelings towards friends, relatives and fellow-creatures generally,
even the affective behaviour towards one’s own ego and body, partly
under the rubric “erotism”, otherwise “sexuality”. It cannot be denied
that those to whom this idea is strange cannot so easily be convinced
of the correctness of Freud’s postulation of the sexual theory in a
narcissistic neurosis in particular, for example, in the traumatic
neurosis. We should like to advise them to examine themselves into the
usual (non-traumatic) hysteria and obsessional neuroses also, and to
keep strictly to the methods of free association, dream and symptom
interpretation proposed by Freud; then they will be much more easily
convinced of the correctness of the sexual theories of the neuroses,
and agreement about the sexual background of the war neuroses will
follow. At any rate the triumph concerning the overthrow of the sexual
theories is somewhat premature.
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