1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 35

investigation itself as well as the infant sex theories
created by it are of determinative significance in
the building of the child’s character, and in the
content of his later neuroses.

It is unavoidable and quite normal that the child
should make his parents the objects of his first object-
choice. But his libido must not remain fixed on these
first chosen objects, but must take them merely as a
prototype and transfer from these to other persons
in the time of definite object-choice. The breaking
loose of the child from his parents is thus a problem
impossible to escape if the social virtue of the young
individual is not to be impaired. During the time
that the repressive activity is making its choice
among the partial sexual impulses and later, when
the influence of the parents, which in the most
essential way has furnished the material for these
repressions, is lessened, great problems fall to the
work of education, which at present certainly does not
always solve them in the most intelligent and
economic way. . . .

Do not think that with these explanations of the
sexual life and the sexual development of the child
we have too far departed from psycho-analysis and
the cure of neurotic disturbances. If you like, you
may regard the psycho-analytic treatment only as
a continued education for the overcoming of child-
hood-remnants.

Fifth Lecture. . . . With the discovery of infantile
sexuality and the tracing back of the neurotic
symptoms to erotic impulse-components we have
arrived at several unexpected formula for expressing
the nature and tendencies of neurotic disease. We
see that the individual falls ill when in consequence
of outer hindrances or inner lack of adaptability the

36 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 1910

satisfaction of the erotic needs in the sphere of
reality is denied. We see that he then flees to sick-
ness, in order to find with its help a surrogate
satisfaction for that denied him. We recognize that
the symptoms of illness contain fractions of the
sexual activity of the individual, or his whole sexual
life, and we find in the turning away from reality
the chief tendency and also the chief injury of the
sickness. We may guess that the resistance of our
patients against the cure is not a simple one, but is
composed of many motives. Not only does the ego
of the patient strive against the giving up of the
repressions by which it has changed itself from its
original constitution into its present form, but also
the sexual impulses may not renounce their surrogate
satisfaction so long as it is not certain that they can
be offered anything better in the sphere of reality.

The flight from the unsatisfying reality into what
we call, on account of its biologically injurious
nature, disease, but which is never without an
individual gain in pleasure for the patient, takes
place over the path of regression, the return to earlier
phases of the sexual life, when satisfaction was not
lacking. This regression is seemingly a twofold one,
a temporal, in so far as the libido or erotic need falls
back to a temporally earlier stage of development,
and a formal, since the original and primitive psychic
means of expression are applied to the expression of
this need. Both sorts of regression focus in childhood
and have their common point in the production of
an infantile condition of sexual life.

The deeper you penetrate into the pathogenesis of
neurotic diseases, the more the connection of neuroses
with other products of human mentality, even the
most valuable, will be revealed to you. You will be

1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 37

reminded that we men, with the high claims of our
civilization and under the pressure of our repressions,
find reality generally quite unsatisfactory and so
keep up a life of fancy in which we love to compensate
for what is lacking in the sphere of reality by the
production of wish-fulfilments. In these phantasies
is often contained very much of the particular
constitutional essence of personality and of its
tendencies, repressed in real life. The energetic and
successful man is he who succeeds by dint of labour
in transforming his wish-fancies into reality. Where
this is not successful in consequence of the resistance
of the outer world and the weakness of the individual,
there begins the turning away from reality. The
individual takes refuge in his satisfying world of
fancy. Under certain favourable conditions it still
remains possible for him to find another connecting
link between these fancies and reality, instead of
permanently becoming a stranger to it through the
regression into the infantile. If the individual who is
displeased with reality is in possession of that
artistic talent which is still a psychological riddle, he
can transform his fancies into artistic creations. So
he escapes the fate of a neurosis and wins back his
connection with reality by this round-about way.
Where this opposition to the real world exists, but
this valuable talent fails or proves insufficient, it is
unavoidable that the libido, following the origin of
the fancies, succeeds by means of regression in
revivifying the infantile wishes and so producing a
neurosis. The neurosis takes, in our time, the place
of the cloister, in which were accustomed to take
refuge all those whom life had undeceived or who
felt themselves too weak for life. Let me give at this
point the main result at which we have arrived by

38 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 1910

the psycho-analytic investigation of neurotics,
namely, that neuroses have no peculiar psychic
content of their own, which is not also to be found in
healthy states; or, as C. G. Jung has expressed it,
neurotics fall ill of the same complexes with which
we sound people struggle. It depends on quantita-
tive relationships, on the relations of the forces
wrestling with each other, whether the struggle
leads to health, to a neurosis, or to compensatory
over-functioning. . . .

I have still withheld from you the most remarkable
experience which corroborates our assumptions of
the sexual impulse-forces of neurotics. Every time
that we treat a neurotic psycho-analytically, there
occurs in him the so-called phenomenon of trans-
Jerence, that is, he applies to the person of the
physician a great amount of tender emotion, often
mixed with enmity, which has no foundation in any
real relation, and must be derived in every respect
from the old wish-fancies of the patient which have
become unconscious. Every fragment of his emotive
life, which can no longer be called back into memory,
is accordingly lived over by the patient in his
relations to the physician, and only by such a living
of them over in the “ transference " is he convinced
of the existence and the power of these unconscious
sexual excitations. The symptoms, which to use a
simile from chemistry, are the precipitates of earlier
love experiences (in the widest sense), can only be
dissolved in the higher temperature of the experience
oftransference and transformed into other psychic pro-
ducts. The physician plays in this reaction,to use an
excellent expression of S. Ferenczi, the role of a catalytic
ferment, which temporarily attracts to itself the affect
which has become free in the course of the process.

1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 39

The study of transference can also give you the
key to the understanding of hypnotic suggestion,
which we at first used with our patients as a technical
means of investigation of the unconscious. Hypno-
sis showed itself at that time to be a therapeutic help,
but a hindrance to the scientific knowledge of the
real nature of the case, since it cleared away the
psychic resistances from a certain field, only to pile
them up in an unscalable wall at the boundaries of
this field. You must not think that the phenomenon
of transference, about which I can unfortunately
say only too little here, is created by the influence of
the psycho-analytic treatment. The transference
arises spontaneously in all human relations and in the
relations of the patient to the physician; it is every-
where the especial bearer of therapeutic influences,
and it works the stronger the less one knows of its
presence. Accordingly psycho-analysis does not
create it, it merely discloses it to consciousness, and
avails itself of it, in order to direct the psychic
processes to the wished-for goal. But I cannot leave
the theme of transference without stressing the fact
that this phenomenon is of decisive importance to
convince not only the patient, but also the physician.
I know that all my adherents were first convinced of
the correctness of my views through their experience
with transference, and I can very well conceive that
one may not win such a surety of judgment so long
as he makes no psycho-analysis, and so has not
himself observed the effects of transference. . . .

I am of the opinion that there are, on the intellec-
tual side, two hindrances to acknowledging the value
of the psycho-analytic viewpoint: first, the fact that
we are not accustomed to reckon with a strict
determination of mental life, which holds without

D

40 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 1910

exception, and second, the lack of knowledge of the
peculiarities through which unconscious mental
processes differ from those conscious ones with which
we are familiar. One of the most widespread
resistances against the work of psycho-analysis with
patients as with persons in health reduces to the
latter of the two factors. One is afraid of doing
harm by psycho-analysis, one is anxious about
calling up into consciousness the repressed sexual
impulses of the patient, as though there were danger
that they could overpower the higher ethical
strivings and rob him of his cultural acquisitions.
One can see that the patient has sore places in his
mental life, but one is afraid to touch them, lest his
sufferings be increased. We may use this analogy.
It is, of course, better not to touch diseased places
when one can only cause pain. But we know that
the surgeon does not refrain from the investigation
and reinvestigation of the seat of illness, if his invasion
has as its aim the restoration of lasting health.
Nobody thinks of blaming him for the unavoidable
difficulties of the investigation or the phenomena of
reaction from the operation, if these only accomplish
their purpose, and gain for the patient a final cure
by temporarily making his condition worse. The
case is similar in psycho-analysis; it can lay claim to
the same things as surgery; the increase of pain
which takes place in the patient during the treat-
ment is very much less than that which the surgeon
imposes upon him, and especially negligible in
comparison with the pains of serious illness. But the
consequence which is feared, that of a disturbance of
the cultural character by the impulse which has been
freed from repression, is wholly impossible. In
relation to this anxiety we must consider what our

1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 41

experiences have taught us with certainty, that the
somatic and mental power of a wish, if once its
represion has not succeeded, is incomparably
stronger when it is unconscious than when it is
conscious, so that by being made conscious it can
only be weakened. The unconscious wish cannot be
influenced, is free from all strivings in the contrary
direction, while the conscious is inhibited by those
wishes which are also conscious and which strive
against it. The work of psycho-analysis accordingly
presents a better substitute, in the service of the
highest and most valuable cultural strivings, for the
repression which has failed.

Now what is the fate of the wishes which have
become free by psycho-analysis, by what means
shall they be made harmless for the life of the
individual ? There are several ways. The general
consequence is, that the wish is consumed during the
work by the correct mental activity of those better
tendencies which are opposed to it. The repression
is supplanted by a condemnation carried through
with the best means at one’s disposal. This is possible,
since for the most part we have to abolish only the
effects of earlier developmental stages of the ego.
The individual for his part only repressed the useless
impulse, because at that time he was himself still
incompletely organized and weak; in his present
maturity and strength he can, perhaps, conquer
without injury to himself that which is inimical to
him. A second issue of the work of psycho-analysis
may be that the revealed unconscious impulses can
now arrive at those useful applications which, in the
case of undisturbed development, they would have
found earlier. The extirpation of the infantile wishes
is not at all the ideal aim of development. The

42 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 1910

neurotic has lost, by his repressions, many sources of
mental energy whose contributions would have been
very valuable for his character building and his
life activities. We know a far more purposive
process of development, the so-called sublimation, by
which the energy of infantile wish-excitations is not
secluded, but remains capable of application, while
for the particular excitations, instead of becoming
useless, a higher, eventually no longer sexual, goal is
set up. The components of the sexual instinct are
especially distinguished by such a capacity for the
sublimation and exchange of their sexual goal for one
more remote and socially more valuable. We probably
owe the highest achievements of our culture to energy
which has been liberated in this way. A repression
taking place at an early period precludes the subli-
mation of the repressed impulse; after the removal
of the repression the way to sublimation is again free.

We must not neglect, also, to glance at the third of
the possible issues. A certain part of the suppressed
libidinous excitation has a right to direct satisfaction
and ought to find it in life. The claims of our
civilization make life too hard for the greater part of
humanity, and so further the aversion to reality and
the origin of neuroses, without producing an excess
of cultural gain by this excess of sexual repression.
We ought not to go so far as fully to neglect the
original animal part of our nature, we ought not to
forget that the happiness of individuals cannot be
dispensed with as one of the aims of our culture.
The plasticity of the sexual-components, manifest in
their capacity for sublimation, may induce the
temptation to accomplish ever greater achievements
of culture by a more and more far-reaching sublima-
tion. But just as with our machines we expect to

1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 43

change only a certain fraction of the applied heat
into useful mechanical work, so we ought not to try
to separate the sexual impulse in its whole extent of
energy from its peculiar goal. It cannot be done,
and if the narrowing of sexuality is pushed too far it
will have all the evil effects of a robbery.

I do not know whether you will regard the exhorta-
tion with which I close as a presumptuous one. I
only venture the indirect presentation of my con-
viction, if I relate an old tale, whose application
you may make yourselves. German literature
knows a town called Schilda, to whose inhabitants
were attributed all sorts of clever pranks. The wise-
acres, so the story goes, had a horse, with whose
powers of work they were well satisfied, and against
whom they had only one grudge, that he consumed
so much expensive oats. They concluded that by
good management they would break him of this
bad habit, by cutting down his rations by several
stalks each day, until he had learned to do without
them altogether. Things went finely for a while,
the horse was weaned to one stalk a day, and on the
next day he would at last work without fodder.
On the morning of this day the malicious horse was
found dead; the citizens of Schilda could not
understand why he had died. We should be
inclined to believe that the horse had starved, and
that without a certain ration of oats no work could
be expected from an animal.