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VI

During this struggle of the ego it is possible to observe two
symptom-producing activities on its part which are of particu-
lar interest because they are obvious surrogates for repression
and on this account serve admirably to illustrate the purpose
and technique of the latter. Perhaps also the fact that these
adjuvant and substitutive techniques come upon the scene may
be looked upon as proof that the accomplishing of repression
in the usual sense meets with difficulties. If we bear it in mind
that in compulsion neurosis the ego is the arena of symptom
formation to a much greater degree than in hysteria, that this
ego clings tenaciously to its contact with reality and its relation
to consciousness, and to this end summons all the intellectual
means at its command–nay, more than this, that thinking
appears to be hypercathected, erotized–if we bear these things
in mind, such variants of repression as we have just referred to
will perhaps seem less strange to us.

The two techniques I allude to are those of undoing and
isolation. The first of these has an extensive sphere of appli-
cation and reaches back to a very early period of development.
It is a kind of negative magic which by means of a motor
symbolism would “blow away”, as it were, not the consequences
of an event (an impression, an experience), but the event
itself. The choice of the expression I have used–“blow away”–
is a reference to the rôle which such a technique plays not alone
in neurosis but in magic, in folkways, and in religious cere-
monial. In compulsion neurosis the mechanism of “undoing”
is first and foremost encountered in the dichronous symptoms
in which the individual’s second act abrogates or nullifies the
first, in such manner that it is as though neither had taken
place, whereas in reality both have done so. Compulsive cere-
monials have the intention to “undo” as their second root,
their first being to prevent or to forestall some specific thing
happening or being repeated. The distinction is easy enough
to grasp; precautionary measures are of a rational character,
“voiding” or “cancelling” by means of “undoing” of an irra-

25

tional, magical nature. Naturally one must suppose that this
second root is the older, that it derives from the animistic
attitude to the environment. The effort at “undoing” finds
its reflection in the normal sphere in the resolve to treat an
occurrence as non arrivé; but in this case one does not take up
arms against it, one is simply not concerned about either the
occurrence or its consequences; whereas in neurosis the attempt
is made to abrogate the past itself, to repress it by motor means.
An effort of the same sort may provide the explanation of the
compulsion to repetition so frequently present in neurosis, a
repetition in the carrying out of which various mutually con-
tradictory purposes are commingled. What has not happened
in such a way as would have accorded with one’s desire is made,
through its repetition in some other way, not to have happened
at all–to which are superadded all the various motives which
may exist for lingering upon these repetitions. In the further
course of the neurosis the striving to “undo” a traumatic
experience is often revealed as a motive force of the first rank
in the creating of symptoms. Thus we obtain an unexpected
insight into a new and motor technique of defense, or, as we
may here say with less inexactitude, of repression.

The second of the new techniques to be described, one
peculiar to compulsion neurosis, is that of isolation. Its refer-
ence is likewise to the motor sphere; and it consists in the
interposition, after an unpleasant experience, as also after
some act of the subject’s own which is of significance in the
sense of his neurosis, of a refractory period in which nothing
more is allowed to happen, no perception registered, and no
action performed. This at first sight strange behavior soon
betrays its relation to repression. We know that in hysteria
it is possible for a traumatic impression to become subjected
to amnesia, but that in compulsion neurosis this is not often
achieved; the experience is not forgotten but it is stripped of
its affect and its associative connections are suppressed or inter-
rupted, so that it stands apart, as if isolated, and furthermore
fails to be reproduced in the course of one’s mental activity.
The effect of this isolation is the same, then, as in repression

26

with amnesia. The isolation phenomena of compulsion neu-
rosis thus reproduce this technique, but intensified by motor
means and with a magic intent. The very things which are
kept asunder in this way are precisely those which associatively
belong together; motor isolation is to furnish a guaranty of the
interruption of coherence in thinking. A pretext for the
employment of this method on the part of the neurosis is pro-
vided by the normal process of concentration. Impressions or
problems that seem important to us should not be disturbed by
simultaneous claims on our attention of other mental processes
or activities. But even in normal persons concentration is
utilized to keep at a distance not solely matters of indifference,
things that are irrelevant, but in particular things which run
inconveniently counter to the matter in hand. The things
which are felt to be most irreconcilable in this regard are those
which originally belonged together but which in the course of
development have been split asunder, such as for example the
manifestation in one’s relation to God of the original ambiva-
lence towards one’s father, or the activity of the excretory
organs as continuing to pervade erotic excitation. Thus the
ego has normally a not inconsiderable task to perform in direct-
ing the course that thinking pursues, and we know that in the
conduct of analysis we have to educate the ego to renounce for
the time being this otherwise wholly legitimate function.
We have all had experience of the fact that it is particularly
difficult for the compulsion neurotic to comply with the funda-
mental rule of analysis. Probably in consequence of the severe
tension existing between his superego and his id, his ego is
more vigilant, the isolations it effects more rigorous. It has
too much to fend off in the course of its thinking—the intrusion
of unconscious fantasies, the expression of ambivalent strivings.
It cannot relax, it finds itself in a perpetual state of prepared-
ness. This compulsion to concentration and isolation it then
sustains through those magical acts of isolation which become
so striking as symptoms and at the same time of so much signifi-
cance practically, yet which are of course useless in themselves
and partake of the character of a ritual.

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In its attempt to prevent associations from occurring, to
obstruct the forming of connections in thought, however, the
ego is complying with one of the oldest and most fundamental
commandments of the compulsion neurosis, the taboo on
touching. To the question why the avoidance of touching,
contact or contagion plays so large a rôle in the neurosis and
is made the content of so complicated a system, the answer is
that touching, physical contact, is the most immediate aim of
aggressive no less than of tender object cathexis. Eros desires
contact, for it strives for union, for the annihilation of spatial
boundaries between ego and loved object. But destruction,
too, which before the invention of long-range weapons could
be effected only through proximity, necessarily presupposes
physical contact, the use of the hands. To touch a woman has
become in ordinary parlance a euphemism for her use as a
sexual object. Not to touch the genital is the usual wording
of the prohibition against autoerotic gratification. Since the
compulsion neurosis sought to effect erotic contact at the begin-
ning, and then, subsequent to regression, the same contact dis-
guised as aggression, nothing was taboo to it in such intense
degree as this very contact, nothing was so fitted to become the
keystone of a system of prohibitions. Isolation, however, is
the abolishing of the possibility of touching, the means of with-
drawing a thing from every contact; and when the neurotic
isolates an impression or an action by means of an interval, he
symbolically gives us to understand that he does not want the
thought of the impression or the action in question to come
into associative contact with other thoughts.

Such is the extent of our researches into symptom formation.
It is scarcely worth while to summarize them; they remain
meager in result and incomplete, and have contributed little,
besides, that was not already known. To take up for con-
sideration symptom formation in disorders other than the
phobias, conversion hysteria and compulsion neurosis would be
futile; too little is known about it. But even grouping
together these three neuroses raises an extremely weighty ques-
tion, and one which can no longer be deferred. In all three

28

the destruction of the œdipus complex is the starting point; in
all three, we assume, castration anxiety is the motive force
behind the struggles of the ego. But it is only in the phobias
that such anxiety appears or is acknowledged. What has
become of it in the other two? How, in the other two, has the
ego preserved itself from anxiety? The problem becomes still
more acute when we recall the possibility previously mentioned
that anxiety arises, through a kind of fermentation, out of the
libidinal cathexis itself whose career has been interfered with;
and in addition, is it established that castration anxiety is the
only motive force behind repression (or defense)? When one
thinks of the neuroses of women, one must doubt this; for
certain though it is that the castration complex is demonstrable
in them, one can hardly speak of castration anxiety in the strict
sense where castration is already effected.¹⁾

Translated by HENRY ALDEN BUNKER

¹⁾See also New Introductory Lectures, page 121.—TR. NOTE.