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regular episodes of development although there is still too little
attention granted them. One misses the signs of childhood neurosis
not at all in an adult neurotic, while by no means do all of the chil-
dren who show them become neurotics later. Hence in the course of
ripening, fear conditions must be given up and danger situations
have lost their significance. Moreover, it happens that some of these
danger situations preserve themselves in later times so that their
fear condition is modified with time. In this way castration fear is
preserved under the mask of syphiliphobia after one has experienced
that castration is no longer the punishment for allowing full play to
sexual lusts although freedom of impulse threatens severe affections.
Other fear conditions are not especially doomed to perish but accom-
pany man through life, as fear of the super-ego. The neurotic is
differentiated from the normal by the fact that he immoderately
heightens the reaction to these dangers. Again, no sufficient protec-
tion is offered even to adulthood that the original traumatic situations
may not return; there should be a limit for every man beyond which
his psychic apparatus fails to master the disposal of the importunate
amounts of excitation.

These small corrections cannot possibly have the determination to
shake the fact that is here discussed, the fact that so many individ-
uals remain infantile in their behavior to danger and do not overcome
ancient fear conditions. To dispute this would be to deny the fact
of neurosis, for such persons are called neurotics. But how is this
possible? Why are not all neuroses episodes of development which
are concluded with the attainment of the next phase? Whence the
element of permanence in these reactions to danger? Whence the
advantage which the fear affect seems to enjoy over all other affects
that it alone calls forth reactions which separate themselves as abnor-
mal from the others and oppose themselves as unsuitable to the stream
of life? In other words we unexpectedly find ourselves once more
in the presence of the so often put vexed question, whence comes
the neurosis, what it its final, its special motif? After decades of
analytical investigation this problem looms before us, as unsolved
as in the beginning.

X

Fear is the reaction to danger. However, one can not reject the
idea that it is connected with the nature of danger if the fear affect
can force an exceptional situation in the psychic economy. But
dangers are in general human and the same for all individuals; what
we need and do not have at our disposal is a factor which makes
intelligible to us the selection of the individual who can subject the

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fear affect despite its strangeness to the normal psychic manage-
ment, or determines who must fail at this task. I see before me two
efforts to uncover such a factor; it is comprehensible that all such
efforts may expect a sympathetic reception for they promise redress
for a tormenting need. Both of these attempts supplement each other
because they attack the problem from opposite sides. The first was
undertaken more than ten years ago by Alfred Adler, who main-
tained–reduced to its inmost nucleus–that in those individuals who
are unable to master the task imposed by danger, their organ inferi-
ority makes the difficulties too great. If the maxim simplex
sigillum veri is true one must greet such a solution as a redemption.
But on the contrary the criticism of the past decade has proven con-
clusively the complete insufficiency of this explanation, which more-
over puts itself outside of the entire superstructure of facts uncov-
ered by psychoanalysis.

The second essay was undertaken in 1923 by Otto Rank in his
book “The Birth Trauma.” It would be unjust to place it on a
par with Adler’s effort save in the connection made above, for it
rests on the foundation of psychoanalysis and continues its course
of thought and should be recognized as a legitimate effort toward
the solution of the analytic problem. In the relation given between
the individual and danger, Rank diverts from the organ weakness
of the individual and towards the variable intensity of the danger.
Birth is the first danger situation and the economic disturbance pro-
duced by it is the prototype of the fear reaction. We have already
followed the line of development which unites this first danger situa-
tion and fear condition with all later ones and have seen that all
preserve something in common, for all in a certain sense indicate
separation from the mother–at first only in a biological respect,
later in the sense of the direct loss of the object, and finally in the
indirect loss of the same. The discovery of this great association
is the undisputed service of the Rank construction. Now the birth
situation concerns the individual with a difference in intensity; with
the severity of the trauma there is a variation in the violence of the
fear reaction and, according to Rank, the initial volume of the fear
development should determine whether the individual will or will not
acquire mastery–whether he is to become normal or neurotic. The
criticism of the whole Rank conception is not our task here–only
the test of its utility for the solution of our problem. The formula
of Rank’s that neurotics are those who cannot react off the over-
strong birth trauma is in theory vulnerable in a high degree. We
do not know just what is meant by the reacting off of a trauma. If
understood literally one comes to the untenable conclusion that the

507

neurotic is the nearer well the more frequently and intensely he
can reproduce the fear affect. Because of this contradiction with
reality I have in due course given up the theory of reacting off which
plays so great a rôle in catharsis. Emphasis of the variable strength
of the birth trauma leaves no room for justifiable etiological claim
of the hereditary constitution. This is, of course, an organic factor
which behaves toward the constitution as a contingency, and is itself
dependent on many influences which may be called contingent, as
from timely assistance in labor.

The Rank doctrine has left constitutional as well as phylogenetic
factors out of consideration altogether. If one will prepare space
for the significance of the constitution, perhaps through a modifica-
tion of the same, it would be much more to the point to know how
prolifically the individual reacts to the variable intensity of the birth
trauma. Thus one deprives the theory of its significance and
restricts the newly introduced factor to an accessory rôle. The
decision as to the fate of the neurosis lies, then, in another and again
an unknown territory.

The fact that mankind has the birth process in common with other
mammals and at the same time has the preference of a particular
disposition to neuroses over the other mammals will hardly attune
favorably with the Rank theory. The chief objection, however,
remains that it is in the air and does not rest on an assured founda-
tion. There have been no good studies as to whether severe and
protracted labor coincides unmistakably with the development of
neurosis and if children thus born show the phenomena of early
infantile fears longer or more strongly than others. If one could
show that precipitate labors which were easy for the mother might
possibly possess the significance of severe traumas for the child,
the demand would still remain that labors which lead to asphyxia
must allow the alleged consequences to be recognized with certainty.
It appears an advantage to the Rank etiology that it supplies a factor
which is accessible to testing with the material of experiment, but
as long as such a trial has never yet been actually undertaken it is
impossible to judge of the value.

On the other hand I cannot join in the opinion that the Rank
theory opposes the etiological significance of the sexual impulse hith-
erto recognized in psychoanalysis; for this refers only to the relation
of the individual to the danger situation and fortunately leaves open
the supposition that whoever cannot master the original dangers must
also fail in the later developing sexual situations and thereby be
forced into a neurosis.

I therefore do not believe that the Rank essay has brought to us

508

the answer to the question of the foundation of the neurosis and I
think it cannot yet be decided, no matter how great the contribution
to the subject it may comprise. If the investigations over the influ-
ence of severe labor on the disposition to neurosis fall out nega-
tive, this contribution must be valued but slightly. It is to be
lamented that the need for a tangible and uniform final cause of
nervousness still remains unsatisfied. The ideal case after which
the physician probably longs to-day should be the bacillus which can
be isolated and cultured pure and of which inoculation into a given
individual will cause the disease in question. Or, to be less fanci-
ful, the presentation of a chemical substance the exhibition of which
may both produce and abolish definite neuroses. But probability
speaks against such solutions of the problem.

Psychoanalysis leads to less simple and less satisfactory informa-
tion. I have here to repeat only what has long been known and
have nothing new to add. If the ego succeeds in protecting itself
against a dangerous impulse, for example, by the process of re-
pression, it has indeed inhibited and injured this portion of the It
but has at the same time given up a portion of its own independence
and renounced some of its own sovereignty. This follows from the
nature of repression which is an attempt at flight. The repressed
content is now “free as a bird,” excluded from the great organiza-
tion of the ego, subjected only to the laws that reign in the realm
of the unconscious. If the danger situation alters, so that the
ego has no motif to repel a new impulse analogous to the re-
pressed content, the consequences of the ego limitation are obvious.
The course of the more recent prompting completes itself under the
influence of automatism—I prefer to say of the compulsion to repeti-
tion—it wanders the same way as the former repressed content as
if the conquered danger situation still persisted. The fixing factor
of the repression is therefore the repetition compulsion of the
unconscious It which normally is abolished only by the freely mobile
function of the ego. Now it may at times succeed to the ego to
recapture the repression which it itself had arranged and to regain
its influence over the prompting and to direct the course of the new
prompting in the direction of the altered danger situation. The
fact is that this so often fails of success, that it cannot make its re-
pressions regressive. Quantitative relations may be authoritative
for the outcome of this combat and in many cases we gain the impres-
sion that the decision is compulsive; the regressive attraction of the
repressed instinct and the strength of repression are so great that
the more recent prompting can only follow the repetition com-
pulsion. In other cases we perceive the contribution of another play

509

of force; the attraction of the repressed prototype is fortified through
repulsion from the side of the actual difficulties which are opposed
by the different course of the more recent promptings.

That this is the origin of the investment of the repression and the
maintenance of the no longer actual danger situation, finds its proof
in the modest although theoretically hardly overestimable fact of
analytic therapy. If we furnish aid to the ego in the analysis which
will enable it to abolish its repressions it regains power over the
repressed It and can allow the impulses to run their course as if
the old danger situations no longer existed. What we thus attain
is in harmony with other powers of our medical performance. As a
rule our therapy must be satisfied with bringing about the good
result more rapidly, more trustworthy and with little outlay, which
under favorable conditions might have come about spontaneously.

The previous considerations teach us that there are quantitative
relations which are not directly visible, comprehended only through
inference, which decide whether the old danger situation is held fast,
whether the repressions of the ego are maintained, and whether or
not there is a continuation of the child neuroses. Of the factors which
take part in the causation of the neuroses, which have created the
conditions under which the psychic forces measure themselves with
another, there are three which become conspicuous for our com-
prehension—one biologic, one phylogenetic and one purely psycho-
logic. The first mentioned is the long drawn out helplessness of
the small human child. The intrauterine existence of man seems
relatively shorter than that of most of the animals and he is sent
into the world less apt. As a result the influence of the external
world is strengthened, the differentiation of the ego from the It is
precociously promoted, the dangers of the outer world are increased
in importance and the value of the object, which can alone protect
and replace the lost intrauterine life, is greatly
enhanced. This biologic factor prepares the first danger situation
and creates the need to be loved which will never more leave the
human subject.

The second, phylogenetic, factor is only inferred by us; a very
notable fact of libido development has forced us to assume it. We
find that the sexual life of mankind is not developed steadily from
beginning to maturity, as in most of the nearest related animals, but
that after an early bloom up to the fifth year it experiences an ener-
getic interruption, after which it again becomes prominent with
puberty and annexes itself to the infantile fractions. We think that
something important to the destiny of mankind must have happened
which this interruption of sexual development has left behind as a

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SIGMUND FREUD

historical precipitate. The pathogenic significance of this factor is
apparent from the fact that most of the impulse claims of this
infantile sexuality are treated by the ego as dangers and repulsed,
so that the later sexual stirrings of puberty, which should be normal
to the ego, are in danger of subjugation to the attraction of infantile
prototypes and follow these in repression. Here we abut against
the most direct etiology of the neuroses. It is noteworthy that the
early contact with the claims of sexuality works upon the ego in the
same manner as precocious contact with the external world.
The third or psychologic factor is to be found in the incomplete
ness of our psychic apparatus which is connected with its differentia-
tion into the ego and It, hence in the last analysis it goes back to the
influence of the external world. Through regard for the dangers
of reality the ego is forced to oppose itself against certain prompt-
ings of the It and to treat them as dangers. The ego, however, can-
not defend itself against inner promptings so efficaciously as against
a fragment of alien reality. Itself intimately connected with the
It, it can only defend itself against the danger of the impulse while
contracting its own organization and allows itself to fall into symp-
tom formation as a substitute for its injury of the impulse. If the
crowding of the repulsed impulse is then renewed there result for
the ego all of the difficulties which we know as the neurotic affection.
I must believe that our insight into the nature and causation of
the neuroses cannot go further at present.

XI
ADDENDA

In the course of these discussions various themes have been
– touched upon which it was necessary to pass over for the time being
and which should now be assembled in order to maintain attention
to the part of the book to which they have claim.

MODIFICATIONS OF VIEWS PREVIOUSLY EXPRESSED
Resistance and Counter-investment

It is an important bit of the theory of repression that it does not
present a solitary process but requires a persistent outlay. When
the latter fails the repressed impulse, which receives the con-
tinuous influx from its sources, will the next time strike out in the
same path from which it had been forced; the repression would
be carried to its termination or must be repeated indefinitely. Hence
there follows from the continuous nature of the prompting the
demand upon the ego in order to assure its defense reaction through