427

that early contact with the demands of sexuality has the same
effect upon the ego as premature contact with the environment.
The third or psychological factor is to be found in an imper-
fection of our psychic apparatus which is connected with its
differentiation into ego and id and hence which is traceable
also, in the last analysis, to the influence of the environment.
By reason of the dangers which reality offers, the ego is com-
pelled to adopt an attitude of defense towards certain instinc-
tual impulses in the id, to treat them as dangers. But the ego
cannot protect itself against internal instinctual dangers so
effectively as against a piece of reality which is strange to it.
Itself intimately connected with the id, the ego is able to stave
off an instinctual danger only by putting restrictions upon its
own organization and by tolerating symptom formation as a
substitute for its crippling of the instinct. If then the press
of the repudiated instinct is renewed, there result for the ego
all the difficulties which we know as neurotic suffering.

Further than this, I must believe, our insight into the nature
and causation of neurosis has not at the present time progressed.

XI

ADDENDA

In the course of the foregoing remarks a number of topics were
touched upon which had to be dismissed prematurely, but
which shall now be brought together in order that they may
receive the share of attention which is their due.

A. Certain Modifications of Views Previously Held

(a) Resistance and Anticathexis

It is an important element of the theory of repression that
this process is not one which takes place on a single occasion
but is one demanding a continuous expenditure of effort.
Should this effort be intermitted, the repressed impulse, which
receives a continuous influx from its sources of origin, would
thereupon strike out upon the same path off which it had

428

been forced, and the repression would have failed of its pur-
pose or would have to be repeated an indefinite number of
times. Thus from the uninterrupted character of the instinc-
tual impulse there arises the demand on the ego to insure its
defense by an unremitting expenditure of effort. This action
for the protection of the repression is what we experience, in
the course of our therapeutic efforts, as resistance. Resistance
presupposes what I have termed anticathexis. Such an anti-
cathexis is evident in compulsion neurosis. It there makes its
appearance as an alteration of the ego, as a reaction formation
in the ego, through an intensification of the attitude which is
the antithesis of the instinctual tendency to be repressed (pity,
conscientiousness, cleanliness). These reaction formations in
compulsion neurosis are all of them exaggerations of normal
character traits developed during the latency period. It is
much more difficult to demonstrate anticathexis in hysteria,
where, theoretically, it is just as indispensable. In hysteria,
too, a certain amount of ego-alteration through reaction forma-
tion is evident, in many circumstances becoming so striking
that it claims attention as the cardinal symptom in the clinical
syndrome. In this manner, for example, the ambivalency
conflict in hysteria is resolved; hate for a loved person is kept
submerged by an excess of tenderness towards him and of
anxious concern about him. As a point of difference from
compulsion neurosis, however, one must emphasize the fact
that such reaction formations do not manifest the general
nature of character traits but are confined to quite specific
situations. The hysterical woman, for example, who treats
with excessive tenderness the children whom she really hates,
does not on that account become more disposed to love in
general than other women, not even more tender towards
other children. The reaction formation of hysteria adheres
tenaciously to a specific object and is not elevated to the status
of a general disposition of the ego. Of compulsion neurosis
it is precisely this universalization, the looseness of object
relationships, the displaceability marking object choice, which
are characteristic.

429

Another type of anticathexis seems more consonant with the
specific nature of hysteria. The repressed instinctual impulse
may be activated (re-
cathected) from two directions: from
within, through an increase in strength of the instinct in ques-
tion, an increase derived from its internal sources of excitation;
or from without, through the perception of an object desired
by the instinct. Now the hysterical type of anticathexis is pre-
dominantly directed outwards, against the dangerous percep-
tion; it takes the form of a special watchfulness which, through
restrictions imposed upon the ego, avoids situations in which
such a perception would inevitably occur, and which effects the
withdrawal of attention from the perception if this has actually
occurred. Certain French writers (for example, Laforgue)
have recently designated this process observed in hysteria by
the special term “scotomization”. Even more strikingly than
in hysteria is this technique of anticathexis displayed in the
phobias, the interest of which is concentrated upon effecting a
further and further removal of the possibility of experiencing
the dreaded perception. The contrast in the direction of the
anticathexis as between hysteria and phobia on the one hand
and compulsion neurosis on the other appears to be of impor-
tance, even though this antithesis is not an absolute one. It
leads us to suppose that a rather intimate connection exists
between repression and external anticathexis, as well as
between repression and internal anticathexis (ego-alteration
through reaction formation). Defense against dangerous per-
ceptions is, moreover, a general task of neurosis. The various
commands and prohibitions of compulsion neurosis presum-
ably serve the same purpose.

We have already made it clear that the resistance which we
have to overcome in analysis is produced by the ego, which
clings tenaciously to its anticathexis. The ego finds it diffi-
cult to turn its attention to perceptions and ideas the avoidance
of which it had until then made a rule, or to acknowledge as
belonging to it impulses which constitute the most complete
antithesis to those familiar to it as its own. Our combatting
of resistance in the analysis is based upon this conception of it..

430

We make the resistance conscious where, as so often, in conse-
quence of its connection with the repressed, it is unconscious;
we oppose logical arguments to it when or after it has become
conscious, promising the ego advantages and rewards if it
renounces the resistance. As regards the resistance of the ego
there is therefore nothing to call into question or to correct.
On the other hand, the question is whether resistance alone
covers the situation that confronts us in analysis. We experi-
ence the fact that the ego still finds it difficult to nullify its
repressions even after it has resolved to give up its resistances,
and we have designated the phase of strenuous effort which
follows upon this laudable resolution as the period of “working
through”. Now it is easy to recognize the dynamic factor
which makes this working through necessary and intelligible.
It can but be that after the cessation of the ego-resistance there
is still the power of the repetition compulsion, the attraction
exerted by its unconscious prototypes upon the repressed
instinctual process, to be overcome; nor is it in any way incon-
sistent with this to designate this factor as the resistance of the
unconscious. Let us not grudge the effort necessary for such
emendations; they are desirable if they enhance our under-
standing a little, and no discredit if they do not negate our
previous conceptions but enrich them, perhaps make a gen-
erality more specific or broaden a conception which was too
narrow.

It must not be supposed that through the foregoing emenda-
tion we have achieved a complete perspective regarding the
kinds of resistance which confront us in analysis. When we go
more deeply into the matter, we note, rather, that we have five
varieties of resistance to contend with, which derive from
three sources, namely, from the ego, from the id, and from
the superego–whereby the ego turns out to be the source of
three forms of resistance differing from one another in their
dynamics. The first of these three ego-resistances is the
repression resistance just dealt with, about which there is least
that is new to be said. From this form there is to be distin-
guished the transference resistance, which is of the same char-

431

acter but which makes itself evident in the analysis in other
and far more definite ways, since it has succeeded in creating
a relationship to the analytic situation or to the person of the
analyst and in reviving thereby, as if in the flesh, so to speak,
a repression which should be merely recalled. That resistance
is also an ego-
resistance, although of quite a different nature,
which emanates from the gain of illness and is based upon the
inclusion of the symptom in the ego. It corresponds to oppo-
sition to the renunciation of a gratification or a mode of relief.
The fourth variety of resistance–that of the id–we have just
now made responsible for the necessity of working through.
The fifth type of resistance, that of the superego, the last recog-
nized and the most obscure, but not always the weakest, seems
to derive from the sense of guilt or need of punishment; it
resists any success and hence also recovery through the analysis.

(b) Anxiety from Transformation of Libido

The conception of anxiety set forth in the present essay differs
somewhat from that which previously seemed to me to be
legitimate. Formerly I considered anxiety a general reaction
on the part of the ego under conditions of unpleasure. I tried
to explain its appearance on economic grounds exclusively,
and, relying upon the results of investigation of the “actual”
neuroses, I assumed that libido (sexual excitation) rejected by
the ego or not utilized by it found direct discharge in the form
of anxiety. But the fact cannot be overlooked that these
various definitions do not accord very well with one another,
or at least they do not follow necessarily from one another.
Moreover, the appearance was given of an especially intimate
relationship between anxiety and libido which again did not
harmonize with the general character of anxiety as a reaction
of unpleasure.

The objection to this conception arose out of the effort to
make the ego the sole site of anxiety, and was thus one of the
results of the articulation of the psychic apparatus attempted
in The Ego and the Id. It was natural, in the earlier concep-
tion, to consider the libido of the repressed instinctual impulse

432

the source of anxiety; according to the newer one, the ego,
rather, was held responsible for this anxiety. We have, there-
fore, ego-anxiety or instinctual (id-) anxiety. Since the ego
works with desexualized energy, the intimate connection
between anxiety and libido was also loosened in the new
version. I hope I have succeeded in at least clarifying the
contradiction and in clearly demarcating the boundary lines
of uncertainty.

Rank’s reminder that the affect of anxiety is, as I myself at
first maintained, a result of the birth process and a repetition
of the situation lived through at that time necessitated a
reëxamination of the problem of anxiety. With his concep-
tion of birth as a trauma, of the anxiety state as a reaction of
discharge thereof, and of every fresh occurrence of anxiety as
an attempt to “abreact” the trauma more and more com-
pletely, I was unable to get further. There resulted the neces-
sity of going back from the anxiety reaction to the danger
situation behind it. With the introduction of this factor new
points of view were presented for consideration. Birth became
the prototype of all later danger situations which arose under
the new conditions imposed by an altered form of existence
and by the advance of psychic development. But its own sig-
nificance was limited to this prototypic relationship to danger.
The anxiety felt in the process of birth now became the proto-
type of an affective state which was obliged to share the fate
of other affects. It was reproduced either automatically in
situations which were analogous to that of its origin and as an
inexpedient type of reaction, after having been an appropriate
one in the initial situation of danger; or else the ego acquired
control over this affect and reproduced it itself, making use of
it as a warning of danger and as a means of rousing into action
the pleasure-pain mechanism. The biological significance of
anxiety was validated by the recognizing of anxiety as the
universal reaction to the situation of danger; the rôle of the
ego as the site of anxiety was confirmed by the granting to the
ego of the function of producing anxiety according to its
needs. To anxiety in later life were thus attributed two

433

modes of origin: the one involuntary, automatic, economically
justified whenever there arose a situation of danger analogous
to birth; the other, produced by the ego when such a situation
merely threatened, in order to procure its avoidance. In this
second case the ego submitted to anxiety as to a vaccination,
so to speak, in order to escape a virulent attack by means of an
attenuated case of the disease. In its unmistakable effort to
limit the painful experience to an intimation, a signal, the ego
acted as if it had vividly pictured the danger situation. How
the various danger situations develop in succession and yet
remain genetically linked with one another has already been
set forth in detail. Perhaps we shall succeed in penetrating a
little further into the understanding of anxiety if we attack
the problem of the relation between neurotic anxiety and true
anxiety.

The direct transforming of libido into anxiety previously
assumed has now become of less interest to us. If we do take
it into consideration, we have several possibilities to differ-
entiate. In the case of anxiety which the ego instigates as a
signal, this transformation does not enter in, and thus plays
no part in any of the danger situations which impel the ego
to initiate a repression. The libidinal cathexis of the repressed
instinctual impulse is put to another use, as is most clearly
observable in conversion hysteria, than that of transformation
into and discharge as anxiety. On the other hand, in our
further discussion of the danger situation we shall encounter
an instance of anxiety development which is probably to be
regarded otherwise.

(c) Repression and Defense

In connection with the discussion of the problem of anxiety
I resurrected a concept—or, more modestly expressed, a term—
of which I made use exclusively when I first began my studies
thirty years ago but which I later dropped; I mean that of the
process of defense.¹⁾ I substituted for it, later on, that of
repression, but the relation between the two remained indefi-
nite.

¹⁾See: The Defense Neuro-psychoses, in Collected Papers I.

434

nite. I now think that it confers a distinct disadvantage to
readopt the old concept of defense if in doing so it is laid down
that this shall be the general designation for all the techniques
of which the ego makes use in the conflicts which potentially
lead to neurosis, while repression is the term reserved for one
particular method of defense, one which because of the direc-
tion that our investigations took was the first with which we
became acquainted.

Even a purely terminological innovation is justifiable if it
is expressive of a new way of looking at the matter or of an
extension of our insight. Now the readopting of the concept
of defense and the restricting of that of repression takes into
consideration a fact which has long been known but which has
acquired additional significance through certain recent find-
ings. We first met with repression and symptom formation in
hysteria; we saw that the perceptual content of excitant experi-
ences, the ideational content of pathogenic complexes, are
forgotten and excluded from reproduction in memory, and we
accordingly recognized in their withholding from conscious-
ness a cardinal characteristic of hysterical repression. Later
we studied compulsion neurosis and found that in this disorder
the pathogenic incidents are not forgotten. They remain
conscious, but they become, in some manner which we still
do not understand, “isolated”, so that approximately the same
result is attained as through hysterical amnesia. But the dif-
ference is great enough to justify our belief that the process
by means of which the compulsion neurosis takes care of an
instinctual demand could not be the same as in hysteria.
Further investigation has shown us that in compulsion neurosis
there is brought about, under the influence of the ego’s oppo-
sition, a regression of the instinctual impulses to an earlier
libidinal phase such as does not, it is true, make repression
superfluous, but evidently operates to the same effect as repres-
sion. We have furthermore seen that the anticathexis which
we assumed to be present in the case also of hysteria plays in
compulsion neurosis, in the form of reactive ego-alteration, a
particularly large rôle in the protection of the ego; we have

435

become cognizant of a process of “isolation”, of the technique
of which we can still give no account, which creates for itself
a direct symptomatic expression, and likewise of what might be
termed the magical procedure of “undoing”, of the apotropaic
trend of which there can be no doubt, but which has no fur-
ther similarity to the process of “repression”. These phe-
nomena are sufficient reason for reintroducing the old concept
of defense, which is able to embrace all these processes of simi-
lar purpose—namely, protection of the ego against instinctual
demands—and for subsuming repression under this rubric as
a special case thereof. The importance of such a nomen-
clature is increased if one considers the possibility that a deeper
insight might reveal a close affinity between particular forms of
defense and certain specific disorders, as for example between
repression and hysteria. Our expectation even extends to the
possibility of another important interrelationship. It may
easily be that the psychic apparatus utilizes other methods of
defense prior to the clear-cut differentiation of ego and id,
prior to the erecting of a superego, than it does after these
stages of organization have been attained.

B. Supplementary Remarks on Anxiety

There are certain characteristics possessed by the affect of
anxiety, the investigation of which gives promise of further
enlightenment. Anxiety is undeniably related to expectation;
one feels anxiety lest something occur.¹ It is endowed with a
certain character of indefiniteness and objectlessness; correct
usage even changes its name when it has found an object, and
in that case speaks instead of dread. Anxiety has, moreover,
in addition to its relation to danger, a relation to neurosis, over
the clarification of which we have expended much labor. For
there arises the question why it is that not all anxiety reactions
are neurotic, why we recognize so many of them as normal; and
finally, the distinction between true anxiety (Realangst) and
neurotic anxiety needs to be properly evaluated.

¹That is, the German usage is: Angst vor etwas—literally, anxiety before
something, instead of of something.—TR. NOTE.

436

Let us start with the latter task. The progress we have
made has consisted in tracing a backward path from the reac-
tion of anxiety to the situation of danger. If we apply the
same process to the problem of true anxiety, its solution
becomes simple. A true danger is a danger which we know,
a true anxiety the anxiety in regard to such a known danger.
Neurotic anxiety is anxiety in regard to a danger which we do
not know. The neurotic danger must first be sought, there-
fore: analysis has taught us that it is an instinctual danger.
By bringing into consciousness this danger of which the ego is
unaware, we obliterate the distinction between true and neu-
rotic anxiety and are able to treat the latter as we would the
former.

In the case of a true danger we develop two reactions: an
affective one, the outbreak of anxiety, and action looking to
protection from the danger. Presumably the same thing hap-
pens in the case of instinctual danger. We are acquainted
with the instance of the purposeful coöperation of the two
reactions, wherein one of them gives the signal for the initi-
ation of the other, but we know also of a useless and inex-
pedient form, namely, paralysis through fear, in which the one
is promulgated at the expense of the other.

There are cases in which the attributes of true and of
neurotic anxiety are intermingled. The danger is known and
of the real type, but the anxiety in regard to it is dispropor-
tionately great, greater than in our judgment it ought to be.
It is by this excess that the neurotic element stands revealed.
But these cases contribute nothing which is new in principle.
Analysis shows that involved with the known reality danger is
an unrecognized instinctual danger.

It would be better not to be satisfied even with reducing
anxiety to danger. What is the kernel, what is the true sig-
nificance, of the danger situation? Evidently it is the estima-
tion of our strength in comparison with its magnitude, the
admission of our helplessness in the face of it–of material help-
lessness in the case of a true danger, of psychic helplessness in
that of instinctual danger. Our judgment in this regard will
be guided by actual experience; whether one is mistaken in

437

one’s evaluation makes no difference to the result. Let us call
our experience in a situation of helplessness of this kind a
traumatic situation; we then have a sufficient basis for distin-
guishing the traumatic from the danger situation.

Now it is an important advance in self-protection when this
traumatic situation of helplessness is not merely awaited but is
foreseen, anticipated. Let us call the situation in which
resides the cause of this anticipation the danger situation; it
is in this latter that the signal of anxiety is given. What this
means is: I anticipate that a situation of helplessness will come
about, or the present situation reminds me of one of the
traumatic experiences which I have previously undergone.
Hence I will anticipate this trauma; I will act as if it were
already present as long as there is still time to avert it.
Anxiety, therefore, is the expectation of the trauma, on the
one hand, and on the other, an attenuated repetition of it.
The two characteristics which have struck us with regard to
anxiety have therefore a different origin: its relation to expec-
tation pertains to the danger situation, its indefiniteness and
objectlessness to the traumatic situation of helplessness which
is anticipated in the danger situation.

Having developed this series: anxiety–danger–helplessness
(trauma), we may summarize the matter as follows: The danger
situation is the recognized, remembered and anticipated situ-
ation of helplessness. Anxiety is the original reaction to help-
lessness in the traumatic situation, which is later reproduced
as a call for help in the danger situation. The ego, which has
experienced the trauma passively, now actively repeats an
attenuated reproduction of it with the idea of taking into its
own hands the directing of its course. We know that the child
behaves in such a manner towards all impressions which he
finds painful, by reproducing them in play; through this
method of transition from passivity to activity the child
attempts to cope psychically with its impressions and experi-
ences. If this is what is meant by “abreacting a trauma”, no
objection can be taken to it. But the crux of the matter is the
initial displacement of the anxiety reaction from its origin in
the situation of helplessness to the anticipation of the latter, the

438

danger situation. There then ensue the further displacements
from the danger itself to that which occasions the danger,
namely, object loss and the modifications thereof already
mentioned.

“Spoiling” young children has the undesirable result that
the danger of object loss–the object being the protection
against all situations of helplessness–is overemphasized in com-
parison with all other dangers. It therefore encourages per-
sistence in that childhood state of which both motor and
psychic helplessness is characteristic.

We have so far had no occasion to regard true anxiety dif-
ferently from neurotic anxiety. We know the difference
between them; a real danger is one which threatens from some
external object, neurotic danger from an instinctual demand.
In so far as this instinctual demand is a piece of reality, neu-
rotic anxiety as well may be considered as founded on reality.
We have understood that the seemingly extremely intimate
relation between anxiety and neurosis derives from the fact
that the ego protects itself against an instinctual danger in the
same manner as against an external reality danger, but that in
consequence of an imperfection of the psychic apparatus this
defensive activity eventuates in neurosis. We have become
convinced also that instinctual demands often become an
(internal) danger only because of the fact that their gratifi-
cation would bring about an external danger–because, there-
fore, this internal danger represents an external one.

On the other hand, the external (reality) danger must have
undergone internalization if it is to become significant for the
ego; its relation to a situation of helplessness which has been
lived through must be recognized.¹ An instinctive recognition

¹It may also be quite often the case that in a danger situation which is
correctly assessed as such, a modicum of instinctual anxiety is superadded to the
reality anxiety. The instinctual demand from the gratification of which the
ego shrinks back would then be the masochistic one, the destructive impulse
turned against the subject’s own person. Perhaps this superadded element
explains the case of the anxiety reaction becoming excessive and inexpedient,
paralyzing. The fear of high places might have this origin; its hidden feminine
significance is suggestive of masochism.

439

of dangers threatening from without does not seem to have
been among Nature’s gifts to man, save to a very moderate
degree. Small children are always doing things which endan-
ger their lives, and for that reason alone cannot do without
the protecting object. In relation to the traumatic situation
against which one is helpless, external and internal danger,
reality danger and instinctual demand, coincide. Whether in
the one case the ego experience a grief which will not be
assuaged, or in the other a pent-up need incapable of gratifi-
cation, the economic situation is in both cases the same, and
motor helplessness finds expression in psychic helplessness.

The enigmatic phobias of early childhood deserve mention
once again at this point. Certain of them—the fear of being
alone, of the dark, of strangers—we can understand as reactions
to the danger of object loss; with regard to others—fear of small
animals, thunderstorms, etc.—there is the possibility that they
represent the atrophied remnants of an innate preparedness
against reality dangers such as is so well developed in other
animals. It is the part of this archaic heritage having to do
with object loss which alone has utility for man. If such
childhood phobias become fixed, grow more intense, and per-
sist into a later period of life, analysis demonstrates that their
content has become connected with instinctual demands, has
become the representative of internal dangers also.

C. Anxiety, Grief and Mourning

So little is known of the psychology of the emotions that the
diffident remarks which follow may bespeak critical indulgence.
It is at the point immediately to be referred to that the prob-
lem confronts us. We were forced to the conclusion that
anxiety is the reaction to the danger of object loss. Now we
already know of a reaction to object loss—namely, mourning.
Therefore the question is, when do we have the one, when the
other? With regard to mourning, with which we have dealt
on a previous occasion,¹ one of its characteristics remained com-
pletely obscure, its especial painfulness. That separation from

¹ See: Mourning and Melancholia, in Collected Papers, IV.

440

the object is painful seems sufficiently self-evident. But the
problem is more complicated, thus: When does separation from
the object give rise to anxiety, when to mourning, and when
merely perhaps to grief?

Let us say at once that there is no prospect of supplying
an answer to these questions. We shall resign ourselves to
marking out certain boundary lines and discovering a few
suggestions.

Our point of departure shall once again be the one situation
which we believe we understand, that of the infant who sees
a strange person in place of his mother. He then manifests
the anxiety which we have interpreted as due to the danger of
object loss. But the situation is more complicated than this
and merits a more detailed discussion. As to the infant’s
anxiety there is, to be sure, no doubt, but his facial expression
and the fact of his crying lead one to suppose that in addition
he feels pain. It seems as though in him something were fused
together which later will be separated. He is not yet able to
distinguish temporary absence from permanent loss; when he
fails to see his mother on a given occasion, he behaves as
though he would never see her again, and it requires repeated
consoling experiences before he learns that such a disappear-
ance on his mother’s part is usually followed by her reappear-
ance. The mother promotes this knowledge, so important to
him, by playing with him the familiar game of covering her
face and then to his joy revealing it again. Thus he is enabled,
as it were, to experience longing without an accompaniment
of despair.

The situation in which he misses his mother is not, owing to
his miscomprehension, a danger situation for him but a
traumatic one, or, more correctly, it is a traumatic one if he
experiences at that juncture a need which his mother ought to
gratify; it changes into a danger situation when this need is
not immediate. The initial cause of anxiety, which the ego
itself introduces, is therefore loss of perception of the object,
which becomes equated with loss of the object. Loss of love
does not yet enter into the situation. Later on, experience
teaches that the object may continue to be present but may

441

have become angry with the child, and now loss of love on the
part of the object becomes a new and far more enduring danger
and occasion for anxiety.

The traumatic situation of missing the mother differs in one
crucial respect from the traumatic situation of birth. On that
occasion there was no object present who could be missed.
Anxiety was still the only reaction which took place. Subse-
quent thereto, repeated situations in which gratification was
experienced have created out of the mother the object who is
the recipient, when a need arises, of an intense cathexis, a
cathexis which we may call “longingful”. It is to this innova-
tion that the reaction of grief is referable. Grief is therefore
the reaction specific to object loss, anxiety to the danger which
this object loss entails, or, by a further displacement, to the
danger of object loss itself.

Of pain, likewise, we know very little. Its only certain
meaning derives from the fact that pain—primarily and as a
rule—occurs if a stimulus impinging on the periphery breaks
through the defenses that oppose stimuli of excessive strength
and hence acts like a continuous instinctual stimulus against
which otherwise efficacious muscular activity such as serves to
remove the stimulated region from the stimulus remains
powerless. If the pain does not originate from a point on the
skin but from an internal organ, this does not alter the situ-
ation in any way; it is only that a bit of the internal periphery
has replaced the external. The child has obviously occasion
to experience pain of this kind which is independent of his
experiencing of needs. This mode of origin of pain seems to
have very little in common with the loss of an object, however,
and further, the factor of peripheral stimulation, essential in
the case of pain, is entirely lacking in the child’s situation of
longing. And it certainly cannot be without significance that
language has created the concept of inward, of psychic, pain,
and has equated the sensations attendant upon object loss with
physical pain.¹

¹That is, by using the same word (Schmerz) for both—as English, too, uses
pain, at least as a verb and in the adjectival form, to refer also to psychic
pain.—TR. NOTE.

442

In the case of physical pain there arises an intense cathexis,
which may be termed narcissistic, of the painful region of the
body–a cathexis which increases progressively and which acts
upon the ego in a so to speak evacuative manner. It is a
familiar fact that when we feel pain in the internal organs we
experience spatial and other impressions of these organs which
otherwise would not be registered in consciousness at all.
Furthermore, the remarkable fact that the most intense physi-
cal pain fails of its full effect (here one may not say, “remains
unconscious”) when we are distracted by some different interest
is to be explained on the ground of the concentration of the
cathexis upon the psychic representative of the painful body
area. Now it is in this point that the analogy seems to
consist which has allowed the transference of the sensation
of pain to the mental sphere. The intense and, owing to
its unappeasability, ever increasing longingful cathexis of the
missed (lost) object creates the same economic conditions as
the painful cathexis of the injured body area, and makes
it possible to disregard the peripheral determination of
the physical pain. The transition from physical pain to
psychic corresponds to the change from narcissistic to object
cathexis. The idea of the object, highly cathected out of
need, plays the rôle of the body area cathected by increased
stimulation. The continuous and uninhibitable character of
the cathected process brings about the same state of psychic
helplessness. If the unpleasurable sensation which then arises
bears the specific stamp, not necessitating more exact descrip-
tion, of pain, instead of being expressed in the form of anxiety,
the obvious thing is to hold responsible for this a factor which
has heretofore been made far too little use of in our efforts at
explanation–namely, the high level of cathexis and libido-
binding at which these processes resulting in sensations of
unpleasure take place.

We know of still another emotional reaction to object loss–
namely, mourning. Its elucidation, however, does not involve
any additional difficulties. Mourning originates under the
influence of reality testing, which demands categorically that

443

one must part from the object because the object no longer
exists. Now it is the task of mourning to carry out this retreat
from the object in all the situations in which the object was
the recipient of an intense cathexis. The painful character of
this separation accords with the explanation just given–that is,
it is explained by the intense and unrealizable longingful
cathexis of the object during the reproduction of the situations
in which the tie to the object has to be dissolved.

Translated by HENRY ALDEN BUNKER