510

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

511

a permanent outlay. This action for the protection of the repres-
sion is that which we feel in the therapeutic activity as resistance,
and resistance presupposes what I have designated as counter-
fixation. Such counter-fixation is tangible in compulsion neurosis
and appears here as ego alteration, as reaction formation in the ego,
through strengthening of that situation which is the antithesis of
the repressing impulse direction (sympathy, conscientiousness,
purity). These reaction formations of the compulsive neurosis are
always exaggerations of normal character traits developed in the
period of latency. It is far more difficult to demonstrate counter-
investment in hysteria although according to theoretic expectation it
ought to be equally indispensable. Here likewise there is a certain
amount of ego alteration unmistakable, through reaction formation
in many relations so striking that they force themselves on the atten-
tion as the chief symptom of the condition. In such a fashion, for
example, is the ambivalence conflict of hysteria solved; the hate
toward a loved person is held down through an excess of tender-
ness for him and anxiety about him. One must, however, make
prominent a distinction against the compulsive neurosis where such
reaction formations do not show the general nature of character
traits but restrict themselves to quite special relations. The hysteri-
cal woman, for example, who treats with excessive tenderness the
children which fundamentally she hates does not on the whole become
more ready for love than other women nor more tender toward other
children. The reaction formation in hysteria holds tenaciously to
a definite object and does not elevate itself to a general disposition
of the ego. For the compulsive neurosis this generalization is char-
acteristic–the loosening of object relations and the displacement
of the choice of object.

Another kind of counter-investment seems more suitable to the
peculiarity of hysteria. The repressed prompting can become acti-
vated from two sides (newly invested), first, through a strengthening
of the impulse from its inner sources of excitation; second, from
without through perception of the object which the prompting
desires. Hysterical counter-investment is now by preference directed
outward and toward the dangerous perception and assumes the form
of a special vigilance which avoids situations through contraction
of the ego, in which the perception must appear and which makes
it able to draw the attention from this perception should the latter
come up. French authors (Laforgue) have recently designated
this performance of hysteria through the special term “scotomisa-
tion.” Still more striking than in hysteria is this technic of counter-
investment in the phobias, where the interest concentrates itself in

512

removing itself further and further from the possibility of the
dreaded perception. The contrast in the direction of the counter-
fixation between hysteria and the phobias on the one hand and com-
pulsion neurosis on the other seems significant even if it is not abso-
lute. The assumption lies near at hand that between the repression and
the internal counter-investment (ego alteration through reaction for-
mation), there exists an intimate connection. The repulse of the dan-
gerous perception is, moreover, a general task of the neuroses. Dif-
ferent commands and prohibitions are to serve the same intent. We
have already on one occasion made ourselves clear that the resist-
ance, which we have to overcome in the analysis, is furnished by
the ego which holds fast to its counter-investment. The ego finds it
difficult to apply its attention to perceptions and ideas, the avoidance
of which it has previously made a precept, or to recognize as its
own, strivings which form a complete antithesis to those believed
to be his own. Our struggle against the resistance in the analysis
is based on such a conception of the same. We make the resist-
ance conscious where—so often because of association with the
repressed content—it is unconscious; we oppose to it logical argu-
ments, when or after it has become conscious, and promise to the
ego advantages and bonuses if it renounces the resistance. Hence
there is nothing either to doubt or to justify in respect to the resist-
ance of the ego. On the other hand it must be asked whether this
alone covers the subject matter which is opposed to us in the
analysis. We have the experience that the ego always finds new
difficulties in making the repressions regressive, even after it has
conceived the purpose of giving up the resistance and has desig-
nated the phase of arduous effort—which follows such a praise-
worthy intention—as that of “working through.” It now lies at
hand to recognize the dynamic factor which makes such “working
through” necessary and intelligible. It can hardly be otherwise
than that after abolition of the ego resistance the power of the repeti-
tion compulsion, the attraction of the unconscious prototypes of the
repressed impulse process, is to be overcome and there is nothing
to say against it if one will designate this factor as the resistance of
the unconscious. We should not allow such corrections to vex us;
they are desired if they further our understanding a bit and there
is nothing to be deplored if in place of refuting they enrich what
has been said before, restricting perhaps a general consideration and
broadening a comprehension which is too narrow.
It is not to be assumed that through this correction we have gained
a complete summary of the kinds of resistance encountered in

513

analysis. We note rather that we have five kinds of resistance to
antagonize which proceed from all three sides, to wit, from the ego,
the super-ego and the It, the ego being the source of three of the
forms shown to differ in their dynamics. The first of these three
ego resistances is the repression resistance already treated, con-
cerning which there is but little to say that is new. From this is
distinguished the resistance of transference which is of like nature
but in an analysis causes other and far more important phenomena
for it succeeds in originating a relation to the analytical situation
or person of the analyst and with this a repression which is recalled
with difficulty becomes again freshly animated. Another ego resist-
ance although of quite different nature is that which proceeds from
the gain of the disease and is founded on the interrelation of the
symptoms in the ego. It corresponds to the striving against the
renunciation of a gratification or a relief. The fourth kind of
resistance—that of the It—we have made responsible just now for
the necessity of “working through.” The fifth resistance, that of the
super-ego, is the latest to be recognized; it is the most obscure but
is not always the weakest and seems to spring from the sense of
guilt or need of punishment; it opposes itself to every analytic effort
and later also to cure through analysis.

Fear from Transformation of the Libido

The notion of fear represented in this essay is removed a bit from
that which hitherto seemed justified. Formerly I regarded fear as
a general reaction of the ego under the conditions of displeasure
and sought on each occasion to justify its appearance economically.
I assumed, sustained by the investigation of the actual neuroses,
that the libido (sexual excitation) which was refused or not employed
by the ego, found a direct discharge in the form of fear. One can
not overlook the fact that these different determinations do not go
well together, at least do not necessarily follow from one another.
Moreover, there resulted the apparently intimate relation between
fear and libido, which again does not harmonize with the general
character of fear as an unpleasure reaction.

The objection to this comprehension proceeds from the tendency
to make the ego the sole abiding place of fear and was also one of
the consequences of the arrangement of the psychic apparatus sought
in “The Ego and It.” To the former comprehension it lay near at
hand to regard the libido of the repressed impulse as the source
of the fear; according to the later one the ego should be responsible
for this fear—either ego fear or impulse (It) fear. As the ego
works with desexualized energy, in the innovation the intimate con-
 

514

nection between fear and the libido is loosened. I hope to succeed
at least to make this contradiction clear, to draw the outlines of
uncertainty sharply.

Rank’s admonition that the fear affect, as I myself once main-
tained, is a consequence of the birth process and a repetition of the
situation then lived through, necessitates a new examination of the
fear problem. With his own comprehension of birth as a trauma,
of the fear condition as a discharge reaction, every renewed fear affect
as an attempt to react off the trauma completely, I cannot go further.
There results the compulsion to go back to it, from the fear reaction
to the danger situation. With the introduction of this factor new
viewpoints come up for consideration. Labor becomes a proto-
type for all later danger situations which result under the new con-
ditions of the altered form of existence and the progressive psychic
development. Its own significance, however, becomes contracted
upon this prototype relation. The fear felt at birth now becomes
the prototype of an affect condition which must share the fate
of other affects. It is reproduced, either automatically in situations
which were analogous to its original situations, as inappropriate
forms of reaction, after it had been appropriate in the first danger
situation. Or the ego obtains power over this affect and reproduces
it itself, serves itself with it as a warning of danger and as a means
of rousing the pleasure–pain mechanism. The biologic significance
of the fear affect came into its own, since fear is recognized as the
general reaction to the situation of danger. The rôle of the ego as the
seat of fear was confirmed, since the function was conceded to the
ego of reproducing the fear affect according to its requirements. To
fear were directed in later life two kinds of modes of origin; one
involuntary, automatic, always economically justified whenever a
danger analogous to birth had been produced; the other, produced
by the ego when such a situation only threatened, in order to further
its avoidance. In this second case the ego submitted to the fear like
an inoculation, in which through a weakened outbreak of disease one
escapes an unweakened one. The danger situation, as it were,
has an unmistakable tendency to restrict the painful experience to a
suggestion, a signal. How the different situations of danger develop
one after another and yet remain genetically combined has already
been set forth in detail. Perhaps we may succeed in penetrating a
little further into the comprehension of fear if we attack the problem
of the relations between neurotic fear and actual fear.

The formerly asserted direct transposition of the libido to fear has
now become less significant to our interest, if we take into con-
sideration that we have several kinds to distinguish between. The

515

fear which the ego provokes as a signal does not come into account,
and further, not in all of the danger situations which move the ego
to the introduction of a repression. The libidinous investment of the
repressed prompting experiences (as one sees most distinctly in
conversion hysteria) another application than transposition into and
discharge as fear. Nevertheless we shall in the further discussion
of the danger situation come upon that kind of fear development
which ought probably to be judged otherwise.

Repression and Defense

In connection with the discussions of the fear problem I have an
idea—or more modestly expressed a terminus—to take up which
served me exclusively at the beginning of my studies thirty years
ago and which afterwards I was compelled to abandon. I refer to
the process of defense.^* I replaced it later with that of repression,
the relationship between the two remaining undetermined. I now
think that we gain something by harking back to the old idea of
defense if at the same time one settles the issue that the general
designation for all the technics shall be defense, of which the ego
serves itself in conflicts which may lead to neurosis; while repres-
sion remains the name of a definite method of defense which must
first be better known to us as a result of the course of our investi-
gations.

A simple terminological innovation will also become justified, and
should be the expression of a new mode of consideration or an
amplification of our views. The resumption of the idea of defense,
and the contraction of the notion of repression bears reckoning of
only one fact long known to us but with a gain in importance through
certain new findings. Our first experiences with repression and
symptom formation were gained from hysteria; we saw that the per-
ception content of exciting experiences, the ideation content of patho-
genic thought formations were forgotten and their reproduction
excluded from memory, and have therefore recognized in this shut-
ting out from consciousness the chief character of hysterical re-
pression. Later we studied the compulsion neurosis and found that
in this affection the pathogenic event had had not been forgotten. It
remained conscious but was, however, isolated in a manner which as
yet could not be visualized; so that about the same result was pro-
duced as in hysteria. The difference, however, is large enough to
justify our opinion that the process, by means of which the compul-
sive neurosis removed an impulse claim, could not be the same as

^*See The Defense Neuroses, collected papers in German, Vol. I.

516

hysteria. Further investigations have taught us that in the compul-
sion neurosis under the influence of ego striving a regression of the
impulses to an earlier phase of libido was obtained, which did not
make repression superfluous but evidently acted in the same direction
as a repression. We have seen further that the counter-investment
which also is presumptive in hysteria, plays a particularly large rôle
in ego protection in compulsion neurosis as a reactive ego alteration.
Our attention is called to a procedure of “isolation” the technic
of which we cannot yet give, which procures a directly sympathetic
expression, and to another procedure which may be termed magical,
that of “undoing,” which without doubt is of a rebuffing tendency,
but has no longer any resemblance to the process of repression.
These experiences are reason enough to reinstate the old conception
of defense, which can comprehend all of these processes having a
common tendency—protection of the ego against impulse claims—
and to comprise repression as a special case of the same. The im-
portance of this nomenclature is heightened if one contemplates the
possibility that a deepening of our studies might yield an intimate
connection between special forms of defense and definite affections—
for example between repression and hysteria. Our anticipation is
directed further to the possibility of another significant dependence.
It can easily be that before the sharp sundering of the ego from the
It, before the completion of the super-ego the psychic apparatus used
another method of defense than after attaining these stages of
organization.

SUPPLEMENT TO FEAR

The fear affect shows certain traits the investigation of which
promises further enlightenment. Fear has an unmistakable relation
to expectation; one is afraid of something. There adheres to it a
character of indetermination and absence of an object. The correct
use of language itself changes the name to fright when an object
is present. Fear has further in addition to its relation to danger
another to neurosis, with the explanation of which we have expended
much effort. The question arises, why are not all fear reactions
neurotic, and why are so many recognized as normal? Finally the
difference between real and neurotic fear demands a basic critique.
Let us start with the last mentioned task. Our progress consisted
in the falling back of the fear reaction upon the danger situation. If
we suppose the same alteration to be present in the problem of real
fear the solution would be easy. Real danger is a danger which we
know, real fear is fear of such a known danger. Neurotic fear is
fear of danger of which we know nothing. Hence neurotic danger

517

must first be sought and analysis shows us it is an impulse danger.
As we bring into consciousness this danger which is unknown to the
ego the difference between real and neurotic fear is effaced and we
may treat the last like the first.

In real danger we develop two reactions: the affective, or fear
outburst, and the protective behavior. Presumably the same happens
in impulse danger. We see the suitable coöperation of both reactions
when one gives the signal for the institution of the other; but we
also see the unsuitable type of response, that of fear paralysis, in
which one gains ground at the expense of the other.

There are instances in which the characters of real and neurotic
fear are commingled. The danger is known and real but the fear
reaction is unnaturally great, greater than it should be in our judg-
ment and in this excess the neurotic element is betrayed. But these
instances for the most part contribute nothing new, and analysis
shows that the known real danger is connected with an unknown
impulsive danger.

We progress further when we refuse to be satisfied with referring
the fear to the danger. What is the nucleus, the significance of the
danger situation? Evidently the estimation of our strength in com-
parison with its size, the confession of our helplessness against it—
material helplessness against real danger, psychic helplessness in the
case of impulse danger. Our judgment here is guided by actual
experience and whether this errs in the estimate is immaterial for the
result. Suppose we term such an experienced situation of helpless-
ness a traumatic one; we then have good reason for separating the
traumatic situation from the danger situation.

It is now important to prove for ourselves if such a traumatic
situation is not merely waited for but is foreseen, expected. The
the condition for such expectation is contained in
situation in which the fear signal is given. For
that a situation of helplessness will result, or the
reminds me of a formerly experienced traumatic
experience. Hence I anticipate that this trauma will behave as if it
were already there as long as there is time to divert it. Fear is there-
fore on the one hand the expectation of a trauma, and on the other a
mitigated repetition of the same. Both characters which have struck
us in connection with fear have therefore a different origin. Their
relation to expectation belongs to the danger situation, their indefinite
character and absence of object to the traumatic situation of helpless-
ness, which is anticipated in the danger situation.

According to the development of the series, fear–danger–help-
lessness (trauma), we can sum up. The danger situation is a known,

518

recollected, expected situation of helplessness. Fear is the original
reaction to the helplessness in the trauma which is then later repro-
duced in the danger situation as a signal for help. The ego, which
has passively lived through the trauma, now repeats actively a weak-
ened reproduction of the same in order to be able to direct its course
actively. We know the child behaves thus in all painful impressions
since they are reproduced in play. In going over in this manner
from passive to active it seeks to master psychically its life impres-
sions. If this is to be the sense of a reacting off of the trauma, no one
could further object to it. The decisive point, however, is the first
displacement of the fear reaction from its origin in the situation of
helplessness upon its expectation, the danger situation. Then follow
the further displacements from the danger itself to the condition of
the danger, the loss of object and the modifications already mentioned.

The “spoiling” of the little child has the unwished for conse-
quence that the danger of the loss of the object—the object as protec-
tion against all the situations of helplessness—is increased toward all
other dangers. It favors the reserve in childhood, which is proper to
the physical and psychical helplessness.

Hitherto we have had no occasion to consider real fear otherwise
than neurotic fear. We know the difference—real fear threatens
from an external object, and neurotic fear from an impulse claim.
In as far as this last is something real, neurotic fear may be recog-
nized as founded on real fear. We have understood that the appear-
ance of a particularly intimate relationship between fear and neurosis
goes back to the fact that the ego, with the aid of the fear reaction of
the impulse danger, defends itself as in actual external danger; that
this direction of the defense activity runs into the neurosis because
of the imperfection of the psychic apparatus. We have also gained
the conviction that the impulse claim often becomes dangerous (in-
wardly) only because its gratification would bring about an external
danger, because the internal danger represents an external one.

On the other hand the external danger (real) must have found
an interiorization if it is to be significant for the ego; it must have
recognized its relation to an experienced situation of helplessness.^*
An instinctive perception of externally threatening danger seems not
to be given to mankind or at least only in a very modest degree.

^*It may occur often enough that in a danger situation which is rightly
recognized as such, a small amount of impulse fear is added to real fear.
The impulse claim, from the gratification of which the ego shrinks, would
then be of a masochistic nature, a destructive prompting directed against
oneself. Possibly this addition explains the reason why the fear reaction
is excessive, unsuitable and paralyzing. The height phobias (window,
steeple, precipice) may have this origin; their secret feminine significance
is related to masochism.

519

Little children incessantly do things which bring their lives in peril
and exactly for this reason cannot dispense with the protecting object.
In relation to the traumatic situation against which man is helpless,
external and internal danger, real danger and impulse claim, come
together. In one case the ego may experience a pain which will not
let up; in another case a stagnation of desire which can find no satis-
faction; the economic situation is the same in both cases and the
motor helplessness finds its expression in the psychic helplessness.

The enigmatic phobias of early childhood again deserve mention.

Some of these, as fear of being alone, of the dark and of strangers
we can understand as reactions to the danger of the loss of object.
For others, as fear of small animals, thunder, etc., the information
offers itself that they may be atrophied residues of a congenital prep-
aration for real dangers which is so distinctly developed in other
animals. Purposeful for mankind is only that portion of this archaic
inheritance as is related to loss of the object. If such child phobias
fix themselves, become strengthened and persist into late years of
life, analysis shows that the content has set itself in association with
impulse claims and is representative also of internal dangers.

ANXIETY, PAIN AND GRIEF

There is so little pertaining to the psychology of the feelings that
the ensuing halting observations should raise a claim for indulgence
in judgment. We must say that anxiety becomes a reaction to the
danger of loss of object. Now we already know one such reaction
on object loss which we call sorrow. But when does it come to one,
when to the other? For sorrow, with which we have already been
occupied (Grief and Melancholy in my Collected Papers), one trait
remains quite obscure, and that is its peculiarly painful quality. It
seems to us self evident that separation from an object is painful,
but the problem is complicated further. When does separation from
the object mean anxiety, when grief and when pain? We say at once
that there is no prospect at hand of replying to these questions. We
shall be content to find certain demarcations and certain hints.

Our starting point may again be the one situation which we believe
we understand, that of the nursling who in place of its mother sees a
stranger. It then shows anxiety which we have interpreted as due to
the danger of object loss. But it is doubtless more complicated and
merits a more thorough discussion. There is no doubt as to the anx-
iety of the nursling, but the facial expression and the reaction of
crying allow us to assume that it also feels pain. It seems as if certain
things coalesce which later become separate again. It cannot distin-
guish between the momentary absence and permanent loss. If the

520

mother once goes out of its sight its behavior is as if it would never
more behold her and not until after several consolatory experiences
does it learn that such a vanishing of the mother will be followed by
her reappearance. The mother ripens this experience, so important
for the child, when she plays the game of “peek-
aboo,” hiding her face
for a moment and then showing it again to the great joy of the child.
The child can then feel longing which is not accompanied by despair.
The situation in which it misses the mother is the consequence of
its misconception, it is no danger situation but a traumatic one, or
rather it is traumatic if at this moment it feels a need that the mother
should satisfy; it turns itself to danger situations when the need is not
actual. The first anxiety condition which the ego itself introduces is
therefore that of the loss of perception which is placed on a par with
that of the loss of the object. A loss of love does not yet come into
consideration. Later experience teaches that the object may remain
at hand yet become bad for the child, and now the
part of the object becomes a new and much more constant danger and
fear condition.
The traumatic situation of missing the mother yields in one decisive
point from the traumatic situation of birth. At that time there was
no object present that could be missed. Anxiety remained the sole
reaction which could occur. Since then repeated situations of grati-
fication have formed the object of the mother, so that now in case
of need it experiences an intense fixation which may be termed as
yearning. The reaction of pain is related to this innovation and
hence pain is the peculiar reaction to loss of the object as fear is to
danger which the loss brings with it, in further displacement of the
danger of loss of object itself. Nor do we know much of pain.
The only sure content is the fact that pain-at first and as a rule-
originates when a stimulus which attacks the periphery breaks
through the apparatus for protecting against stimuli and acts like
a continuous prompting against the otherwise efficacious muscle
actions which remain powerless to withdraw the irritant from the
irritated place. If the pain does not go forth from the surface but
from an internal organ the situation is not at all changed; it is only
that a bit of internal periphery replaces the external. The child has
obviously an opportunity to go through such experiences of pain
which are independent of its need experiences. This condition of
origin of pain seems, however, to possess but little similarity with
loss of the object and moreover the essential factor of peripheral
irritation in the yearning situation of the child is fully lost. Never-
theless it cannot be irrational that language has shaped the notion of

521

internal, psychic pain and placed the sensations of object loss quite
on a par with physical pain.

In physical suffering there arises a high fixation–which may be
termed narcistic–on the painful area which continues to increase
and acts, so to speak, as evacuating upon the ego. It is known that
in pain in the internal organs we acquire spatial and other ideas of
such portions of the body which are not otherwise represented in
conscious ideation. Further, the noteworthy fact that the most
intense physical pains cannot develop if the mind is diverted by
some other interest (we should not say that one remains unconscious
of the pain), finds its explanation in the concentration of the fixation
on the psychic representative of the painful area of the body. Now
the analogy in this point seems to lie in the fact that it permits the
transference of the painful sensation to the psychic province. The
intensive yearning fixation, steadily augmenting because uncontrol-
lable, of the missed (lost) object, forms the same economic condi-
tions as the pain-fixation of injured portions of the body and makes
it possible to look off from the peripheral conditionhood of bodily
pain. The transition from physical to psychical pain correspond to
the transformation of narcistic to object fixation. The object idea,
highly fixed from need, plays the rôle of the body region fixed by
growth stimulation. The continuity and uninhibitable character of
the fixation process brings about the same condition of psychic help-
lessness. If the then arising sensation of displeasure bears the char-
acter of pain which cannot be more approximately described than as
specific, instead of expressing itself in the reaction form of anxiety,
it lies at hand to make a factor responsible for it which otherwise
would play but a small rôle in explanation; this is the high level of
the fixation and combination relations upon which these processes
which lead to the sensation of displeasure perfect themselves.

We know still another emotional reaction to the loss of the object–
sorrow. Its explanation, however, is not difficult. Sorrow originates
under the influence of testing reality, which demands categorically
that man must separate himself from the object because it no longer
exists. This affect must now perform the labor of carrying out the
retreat from the object in all situations in which the object was the
subject of high fixation. The painful character of this separation
unites itself to the explanation just given through the unfulfillable
yearning fixation of the object during the reproduction of the situ-
ations in which the binding to the object is to be loosed.