ONE OF THE DIFFICULTIES OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
by
SIGM. FREUD, M. D., LL.D, Vienna.

I may say at the outset that in my title, *One ot the Diffi-
culties of Psycho-Analysis", I refer not to an intellectual difficulty
that makes Psycho-Analysis hard to understand, but to an affective
one which estranges the feelings of those to whom it is introduced,
and makes them less inclined to accept or be interested in it. As
will be noticed, both difficulties come to the same thing, for it is
not so easy to understand a subject which one approaches with
insufficient sympathy.

As some of my readers may still be strangers to the subject,
it will be well for me to retrace some of the first steps. In Psycho-
Analysis, from a great number of individual observations and im-
pressions, something that may be called a theory has at last been
formed, known as the Libido Theory. Psycho-Analysis, as is well
known, occupies itself with the explanation and cure of what
are called nervous disorders. A. mode of approach to this problem
had to be found, and it was decided to seek for this in the life-
history of the instinctive tendencies of the mind. Propositions
concerning these tendencies became, therefore, the basis of our
conception of nervous disorder.

The psychology that is taught in the schools gives us little
satisfaction in answer to questions about the problems of feeling,
and its information is never more doleful than it is on this
question of the instincts.

It wasleft for usto discover astarting point. Hunger and love
are popularly distinguished as the representatives of the instincts
which ensure self-preservation and propagation respectively. In
acknowledging this obvious division, we distinguish in Psycho-
Analysis also between instincts of self-preservation or Ego-tenden-
cies on the one hand, and sexual impulses on the other. We call
the mental aspect of the sexual instinct Zibido (sexual hunger),
this being analogous to hunger, desire for power, etc., in the sphere
of the Ego-tendencies.

18 SIGM. FREUD

Starting on this basis, we then make our first significant dis-
covery. We find that for the understanding of neurotic disorders
we learn more from a study of the sexual impulses than from
that of any others; in fact, that neuroses are, so to speak, the
specific diseases of the sexual function. We learn that the quan-
tity of Libido and the possibility of satisfying it and of disposing
of it through satisfaction are the factors which decide whether
a person develops a neurosis or not: that, further, the form of
the disorder is determined by the particular path of development
which the sexual function of the individual patient has traversed,
or — as we put it — by the fixations his Zzbido has undergone
in the course of its development: that, lastly, we are able, by
means of a rather technical form of psychical manipulation, to
throw light on the nature of several groups of neuroses, and at
the same time to resolve them. The greatest success of our
therapeutic efforts has been with a certain class of neuroses that
arise from the conflict between the Ego-tendencies and the sexual
impulses. For, in mankind, it may happen that the demands of
the sexual impulses, which extend far beyond the individual, appear
to the Ego as dangers threatening its self-preservation or self-
respect. When that is so the Ego takes up the defensive, denies
the sexual impulses the wished-for satisfaction, and forces them
into those by-paths of a substitutive gratification which constitute
nervous symptoms.

The psycho-analytic method of treatment then manages to
revise the process of repression and to find a better solution of
the conflict, one compatible with health. Uninformed opponents
accuse us of being one-sided in our estimation of the sexual im-
pulses, and call our attention to the fact that there are other
interests in the human mind beside sexual ones. This, however,
we have not for a moment forgotten or denied. Our one-sidedness
is like that of the chemist who traces all compositions to the
force of chemical attraction: he does not thereby deny the force
of gravitation; he merely leaves the evaluation of it to the
physicist.

During therapeutic work we have to concern ourselves with
the distribution of the patient’s Libido; we try to discover to which
ideational objects his Libido has been attached, and to make it free
so as to place it at the disposal of the Ego. In this way it has
come about that we have formed a very curious picture of the

ONE OF THE DIFFICULTIES OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 19

original distribution of human Libido. We have had good grounds
for inferring that at the beginning of individual development all
Libido (all erotic impulses, the whole capacity for love) is attached
to one’s own person; as we say, it “engages” one’s own Ego. It
is only later that, in conjunction with the satisfaction of the main
natural functions, the Lzbido reaches out from the Ego to external
objects, and it is not till then that we are able to recognise the
libidinous impulses as such and to distinguish them from the Ego-
impulses. The Libido can be later released from its attachment to
these objects and again withdrawn into the Ego. The state in which the
Libido is bound up with the Ego we call Narcissism, after the Greek
myth of the young Narcissus who was in love with his own image.

We thus regard the course of individual development as an
advance from Narcissism to Object-love, but we do not believe
that the whole Libido ever passes over from the Ego to the objects
of the outer world. A certain amount of it always remains bound
to the Ego, so that Narcissism survives in a certain degree even
when Object-love is highly developed. The Ego is a great reservoir
out of which the Libido streams towards its destined objects and
into which it flows back again from those objects. The “Object-
Libido” was, to begin with, “Ego-Libido”, and may become so
again. For complete health it is essential that the Zibido should
retain its full mobility. In picturing this reciprocal relationship
(between love of others and self-love) we may think of an amoeba,
whose protoplasma sends out pseudopodia, projections into which
the substance of the body pours, but which can at any time be
again retracted so that the form of the protoplasmic mass is once
more restored.

What I have tried to indicate by the foregoing is the Libido
Theory of the neuroses, on which are founded all our conceptions
of the nature of these morbid states, together with our therapeutic
methods of dealing with them. We naturally regard the premises
of the Libido Theory as valid also for the normal. We speak of
the Narcissism of the infant, and it is to the excessive Narcissism
of primitive man that we ascribe his belief in the omnipotence of
his thoughts and therefore his attempts to influence the course of
events in the outer world by the apparatus of magic.

After this introduction I want to show how universal Narcissism,
mankind's self-love, has up to now been three times badly wounded
by the results of scientific research.

20 SIGM. FREUD

a) In his first thoughts about his dwelling place, the earth, man
believed that it was the stationary centre of the universe, with the
sun, moon, and planets circling around it. In doing so he naively
accepted the impressions of his sense perceptions, for he could
feel no movement of the earth, and wherever he looked he found
himself in the centre of a circle that encompassed the world of
his vision. He took the central position of the earth to be a visible
mark of its dominance in the universe, and this appeared to be
in good accord with his proclivity to feel himself lord of this world.

We connect the destruction of this narcissistic illusion with the
name and work of Copernicus in the sixteenth century. Long before
him the Pythagoreans had already questioned the privileged position
of the earth, and Aristarchos of Samos, in the third century BIC,
had stated that the earth was much smaller than the sun and
moved around it. Even the great discovery of Copernicus, therefore,
had already been made before. But when it achieved general recogni-
tion, human selflove suffered its first blow, the Cosmological one.

b) In the course of his cultural development man achieved a
dominating position over his animal fellow-creatures, but, not
content with this supremacy, he began to place a gulf between
their nature and his own. He denied to them all reasoning power,
arrogated to himself an immortal soul, and pretended to a divine
descent, which allowed him to sever all bonds of community with
the animal world. It is curious that this conceit is still as foreign
to the child as to the savage or to primitive man; it is the outcome
of a later pretentious development. The savage, on the level of
Totemism, has not found it repugnant to trace back his stock to
an animal ancestor. Myth, which contains the deposit of this old
mode of thought, gives the gods animal shape, and the art of the
earliest times pictures them with the heads of animals. The child
perceives no difference between his own nature and that of the
animals. He is not astonished at animals thinking and talking in
fairy tales. A feeling of fear that applies to his human father he
displaces on to a dog or a horse, without thereby intending to
depreciate his father. Only when he is grown-up has he become
so far estranged from animals that he can use their names to
insult people.

We all know that, only a little more than half a century ago,
the research of Charles Darwin, his collaborators and predecessors,
put an end to this presumption of mankind. Man is not different

ONE OF THE DIFFICULTIES OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 21

from, or better than, the animals; he is himself the outcome of
an animal series, related more closely to some, more distantly to
others. His later acquirements have not been able to efface the
evidences, in both his physical structure and his mental dispositions,
of his equality with them. This is the second, the Biological, blow
to human Narcissism.

c) The third blow, which is of a psychological nature, is the
most painful.

However humbled he may be externally, man feels himself to
be sovereign in his own soul. Somewhere in the heart of his Ego
he has set up an organ of observation which watches over his own
impulses and actions, to see whether they accord with his demands,
If they do not so accord they are inexorably restrained and
withdrawn. His inner perception, consciousness, gives the Ego news
of all important occurrences in the working of the mind, and the
Will, guided by these reports, carries out what the Ego directs,
modifies what is prone to accomplish itself independently. For this
soul is not a simple thing, being rather a hierarchy of superordinated
and subordinated agents, a labyrinth of impulses urging to action
independently of one another, corresponding with the multiplicity
of instincts and of relations to the outer world, many of the
impulses being opposites and incompatible with one another. For
satisfactory functioning it is requisite that the highest agent should
know all that is preparing, and that its Will can penetrate
everywhere to exert its influence. But the Ego feels itself certain
both of the completeness and trustworthiness of the reports and
of the capacity of his commands to reach their destination.

In certain disorders, in the very neuroses that have been
studied by us, it is otherwise. The Ego feels itselt uneasy; it comes
across limits to its power in its own house, the soul. Thoughts
suddenly emerge, the source of which one does not know, and one
can do nothing to drive them away. These foreign guests seem
to be even more powerful than those subordinated to the Ego;
they resist all the well-tried powers of the Will, remain unmoved
by logical refutation, untouched by the contradictions of reality.
Or there come impulses which are like those of a stranger, so
that the Ego disowns them; but it has to fear them and to take
precautions against them. The Ego says to itself: This is a disease,
a foreign invasion. It intensifies its watchfulness, but it cannot
understand why it feels so strangely paralysed.

22 SIGM. FREUD

Psychiatry denies, it is true, that such occurrences mean a
penetration of evil foreign spirits into the mind, but for the rest
it only says with a shrug: Degeneration, hereditary disposition,
constitutional inferiority! Psycho-analysis, on the other hand, under-
takes to throw light on these uncanny disturbances, engages in
careful and laborious investigations, devises auxiliary conceptions
and scientific constructions, and finally it can say to the Ego:
“Nothing foreign has entered into you; a part of your own mind
has withdrawn from your knowledge and from the command of
your Will. That is why you are so weak in defending yourself.
You are fighting with one part of your strength against the other
part, and cannot gather up your whole force as you would against
an outer enemy. And it is not even the worst or the less important
part of your mental forces that have become so opposed to you
and independent of you. The blame, I have to say, rests on you
yourself. You overestimated your strength when you thought that
you could do what you liked with your sexual impulses and that
you did not need to take the least notice of their aims. Then they
have rebelled and have gone their own dark ways to free them-
selves from oppression. They have claimed their rights in a manner
that you can no longer sanction. How they have brought this
about and along what paths they have gone you have not learned;
only the results of their work, the symptom that you feel as
suffering, has come to your knowledge. You do not recognise it
then as a product of your own banished impulses, and you do not
know that it is a substitutive gratification of them.

“The whole process, however, is only made possible through
one circumstance, namely that you are mistaken on another point.
You are assured that you learn of all that goes on in your mind,
if it is only important enough, because your consciousness then
reports it to you. And if no news has reached you about something
in your mind, you confidently assume that it cannot exist there.
Indeed, you regard “mental” as identical with “conscious”, i. e.
known to you, in spite of the most evident proofs that there must
constantly be much more going on in your mental life than can
be known to your consciousness. Come, let yourself be taught on
this one point. What is mental in you does not coincide with
what you are conscious of; whether something goes on in your
mind, and whether you hear of it, are two different things. Usually,
I will admit, the news service to your consciousness is enough for

ONE OF THE DIFFICULTIES OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 23

your needs, and you may nurse the illusion that you will learn
of all the more important things. But in some cases, for instance
in the case of such a conflict of impulses as I have mentioned,
the service fails, and your Will then does not reach further than
the extent of your knowledge. But the news received by your
consciousness is in all cases incomplete and often not to be relied
on; often enough, also, it happens that you get news of the events
only when they are over and when you can no longer alter them.
Even if you are not ill, who can estimate what is stirring in your
soul whereof you learn nothing, or are wrongly informed? You demean
yourself like an absolute ruler who contents himself with the infor=
mation given by his highest officials, and does not go down to the
people to hear their voice. Look into the depths of your own being
and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why
you had to fall ill, and perhaps you will avoid falling ill.”

Thus Psycho-Analysis has wanted to teach the Ego. But both
the explanations — that the life of the sexual impulses cannot be
wholly confined; that mental processes are in themselves unconscious
and can only reach the Ego and become subordinated to it through
incomplete and untrustworthy perception — amount to saying that
the Ego is not master in its own house. They represent jointly the
third injury suffered by mankind's self-love, which I should like to
call the Psychological one. No wonder, therefore, that the Ego does
not favour Psycho-Analysis, and obstinately refuses to believe in it.

Probably very few have realised with what momentous import
for Science and Life the recognition of unconscious mental processes
is fraught. It was not Psycho-Analysis however, let us hasten to
add, that was the first to make this step. Renowned philosophers
may be cited as predecessors, above all the great thinker Schopen-
hauer, whose unconscious “Will” may be equated with the “mental
impulses” of Psycho-Analysis. It was the same thinker, by the way,
who in words of unforgettable force reminded men of the
significance of their sexual straining, so invariably underestimated.
Only that Psycho-Analysis does not stay at abstractly affirming
the two theses so painful to Narcissism — the psychical significance
of sexuality and the unconsciousness of mental life — but rather
proves them by means of a material that touches every individual
personally and forces him to face these problems. And that is just
why it brings on itself the aversion and opposition which still spare
diffidently the names of the great philosophers.