Chapter | Sigmund Freud 1 ‘THE THEORY OF DREAMS ‘The condition of repose without stimuli, which the state of sleep attempts to bring about, is threatened fiom three sides: in ¢ chante fashion by external stimuli during sleep, by interests of the day before which have not yet abated and, in an unavoidable manner, by the unsatisfied repressed impulses, which are ready to seize on any opportunity for expression. On teeount of the nightly reduction of the repressive forces, the risk is nun that the repose of sicep will be broken every time the ‘outer and inner disturbances manage to link up with one of the Cneanscious sources of energy. The dreagy-process allows the Yesult of such a combination to dischasge itself through the Channel of a harmless halhucinatory experience, and thes jnsures the continuity of sleep. There is no contradiction of this function in the fact that the, dream sometimes wakes the sleeper inva state of anxiety; itis rather a sign that the watcher regards the situation as being too dangerous, and no longer thinks he can cope with il, Quite often, indeed, while we are still asleep, Wwe are aware of the consforting thought, which is there to prevent out waking up: “ater all itis only a dream”. “The process of dream-work is something quite new and strange, the like of which has never before been known. Zt has fgiven us our first glimpse into those processes which go on in eee unconscious mental system, and shows us that they are Guile different from what we know about cus conscious thought, wd that to this latter they must necessarily appear faulty and| ae Background Prose Readings fous. The importance of this discovery is increased realise that the same mechanisms-we hardly dare call rought processes"-are at work in the formation of neurotic symptoms as have tumed the latent dream-thoughts into the manifest dream, Ju what follows I cannot avoid making my exposition a Schematic one. Supposing we have before us in given instance all the latent thoughts, more or less affectively toned, which have taken the place of the manifest dream afer a complete interpretation. We shall then notice a distinction among them, and this distinction will take us a long way. Almost all these Greamthoughts will be recognised or acknowledged by the dreamer; he will admit that he thought thus at one time or perhaps even repellent; it may be that ately repudiate it Now it becomes clear to us that the other thoughts are bits of his conscious, or, more correctly, of his pre-conscious thought: they might very well have been thought during waking life, and have probably formed themselves during the day, This jected thought, or, better, this one impulse, is a belongs to the unconscious of the dreamer, therefore disowned and repudiated by hi nightly relaxation of repression in order expression. In any case the expression enieebled, distorted and disguised; without erpretation we should never have discovered it. It is thanks ‘onnection with the other unobjectionable dream-thoughts Unconscious impulse has had the opportunity of ast the barvier of the censorship in an unostentatious on the other hand, the pre-conscious dream-thoughts owe to the same connection thei power of occupying the menial life, even during sleep. We can, indeed, have no doubt the unconscious impulse is the real creator of the Provides the psychic energy required for its formation, any other instinctual impulse it can do no other than is own satisfaction, and our experience in dream. Sigraund Freud 85 interpretation shows us, moreover, that this is the meaning of all dreaming. In every dream an instinctual wish is displayed as fulfilled, The nightly cutting off of mental life from reality, and the regression to primitive mechanisms which it makes possible, enable this desired instinctual satisfaction to be experienced in a hallucinatory fashion as actually happening, On account of the same process of regression ideas are turned into in the dream; the latent dream-thoughts are, dramatized and illustrated. From this piece of dream-work we obtain information about some of the most striking and peculiar characteristics of the dream, Let me repeat the stages of dream-formation. introduction: the wish to sleep, the voluntary withdrawal from the outside world. Two things follows from this: firstly, the for older and ive modes of activity to ‘manifest themselves, ie. regres secondly, the decrease of the repression-resistance which weighs on the unconscious. As a result of this latter feature an opportunity for dream: formation presents itself, which is seized upon by the factors which are the occasion of the dream; that is to say, the internal and external stimuli which are in on the other hand it allows to a repressed impulse the satisfaction which is possible in these circumstances in the form exercised by whal explain the process more simp! in that. But now T can proceed with the descriptic work. Let us go back once more to the latent dream-thoughts. Their dominating element is the repressed impulse, which has obtained some kind of expression, toned down and disguised86 Background Prose Readings though it may be, by associating itself with stimuli which happen to be there and by tacking itself on the residue of the day before. Just ike any other impulse this one presses forward toward satisfaction in action, but the path to motor discharge is closed to it on account physiological characteristics of the forced to travel in the retrograde content itself with an hallucinatory ream-thoughts are therefore tumed into a collection of sensory images and visual scenes. As they are (savelling in this direction something happens to them which seems (0 us new and bewildering. All the verbal apparatus by means of which the more subtle thought-relations are expressed, the conjunctions and prepositions, the variations of declension and conjugation, are lacking, because the means of portraying them are absent: just as in primitive, grammarless speech, only the raw material of thought can be expressed, and the abstract is merged again in the'concrete from which it sprang. What is left over may very well seem to lack coherence. It is as nmich the result of the archaic regression in the mental us as of the der the censorship that so much tse is made of the representation of certain objects and processes by means of symbols which have become strange to conscious thought. But of move farreaching import are the other alterations to which the elements comprising the dream- thoughts are subjected. Such of them as have any point of ‘contact are conde ies. When the thoughts are translated into pictus indubitably preferred which allows of this kind of telescoping, or condensation; it is at work which subjected the material to a or squeezing together. As a result of condensation one element in a manifest dream may correspond to a number of elements of the dream-thoughts; but conversely one of the elements. from among the dream-thoughts may be represented by a number of pictures in the dream. ‘Even more remarkable is the other process of displacement or tronsference of accent, which in conscious thinking figures only 4s an error in thought or as a method employed in jokes, For Sigmund Freud a7 the individual ideas which make up the dream-thoughts are not all of equal value; they have various degrees of affective- tone attached to them, and corresponding to these, they are judged as more or less important, and more ot less worthy of attention. In the dream-work these ideas are separated from their affects; the affects are treated separately, They may be reappears in the dream in the form of the sensuous vividness of the dream-pictures; but we notice that this accent, which should lie on important elements, has been transferred to unimportant ones, so that what seems to be pushed to the forefront in the dream, element in it, only plays a subsidiary thoughts, and conversely, what is important ie de thoughts obtains only incidental and rather indistinct representation in the dream, No other factor nthe dreamy wor lays such an important part in rendering the dream strange find unintligible to the dreamer, Displacement is the chief method employed in the process of dream-distorton, which the dream-thoughts have to undergo under the influence of the ‘censorship. After these operations on the dream-thoughits the dream is almost ready. There |, however, a_more or less non- constant factor, the so-called secondary elaboration, that makes lts appearance after the dream has come into consciousness as an object of perception. When the dream has come into consciousness, we treat it in exactly the same way that we treat serious misunderstandings. But this, as it were rationalizing activity, which at its best provides the dream with a smooth facade, such as cannot correspond to its teal content, may be altogether absent in some cases, or only operate in a very feeble way, in which case the dream displays to view all its gaps and inconsistencies. On the other hand, one must not forget that the88 Background Prose Readings does not always function with equal force; ts ils activity to certain pasts of the dream: unaltered. In this event one has the impression that one has carried out the most complicated and subtle intellectual day before the dream as with the dream-work, nor does it display any feature which is characteristic of dreams. It is perhaps not superfluous once more to emphasise the distinction which subsists among the dream-thoughts themselves, between the unconscious impulse and the residues of the preceding day. While the latter e force of the dream, always finds its outlet in a vwish-fulfilment Only two serious difficulties face the wish-fulfilment theory of dreams, the examination of which leads us far afield and for which we have found no completely satisfactory solution. The first difficulty is presented by the fact that people who have had severe shocks or who have gone through serious psychic traumas (such as were frequent during the war, and are also found to lie at the back of traumatic hysteria) are continually being put back into the traumatic situation in dreams. According to our acceptation of the m_ of dreams, this cought not to be the case. What conative impulse could possibly be satisfied by this reinstatement of a most painful traumatic experience? It is indeed hard to guess. We meet with the which shrouds the earliest years of childhood and to bring the expressions of infantile sexual life which are hidden behind it into conscious memory, Now these first sexual experiences of the child are bound up with painful impressions of anxiety, Sigmund Freud 89 prohibition, disappointment and punishment. One derstand why they have been repressed; but, ifs see why they should have such easy access to they should provide the pattern for so many dream- phantasies, and why dreams are full of reproductions of these infantile scenes and allusions to them. The pain that attaches to them, and the wish-fulfilling tendency of the dream-work would seem to be i ible. But perhaps in this case we exaggerate the difficulty. All the imperishable and unrealisable desires which provide the energy for the formation of dreams throughout one’s whole life are bound up with these same childish experiences, and one can well trust to their ability with their powerful upward thrust to force even material of a painful nature to the surface. And, on the other hand, in the manner in swhich this material is reproduced the efforts of the dream-work are unmistakable; it disowns pain by means of distortion and tums disappointment into fulfilment. In the case of the is quite different; here the dream ‘my opinion we ought not to shirk ‘eases the function of the dream fails. to the saying that the exception proves ; the validity of this phrase seems to me very dubious. But at any rate the exception does not do away with the rule. If for the purposes of investigation one from every other mental process a single psychic activit enabled to discover the laws which govern it if one then puts it ‘with other forces. We assert that the dream is a wish-fulfilment; in order (o take these last objections into account, you may say that the dream is an attempled wis Ihave an understanding for the dynamics of the mind you will not be saying anything different. Under certain conditions the end in a very incomplete way, of an unconscious fixation to the trauma seems to head the list of these abstacles to the dream- function. The sleeper has to dream, because the nightly20 Background Prose Readings relaxation of repression allows the upward thrust of the traumatic fixation to become active; but sometimes his dream- work, which endeavours to change the memory traces of the traumatic event into a wish-fulfilment, fails to operate I ‘THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX We speak of “love” when we lay the accent upon the mental side of the sexual impulses and disregard, or wish to forget for @ moment, the demands of the fundamental physical or “sensual” side of the impulses. At about the time when the mother becomes the love-object, the mental operation of repression has already begun in the child and has withdrawn from him the knowledge of some part of his sexual aims. Now with this choice of the mother as love-object is connected all that which, under the name of “dhe Oedipus complex,” has become of such great importance in the psycho-analytic explanation of the neuroses, and which has had a perhaps equally important share in causing the opposition against psycho-analysis. ‘You all know the Greek myth of King Oedipus, whose destiny it was to slay his father and to wed his mother, who did all in his power to avoid the fate prophesied by the oracle, and who in self-punishment blinded himself when he discovered that in ignorance he had committed both these crimes. I trust, that many of you have yourselves experienced the profound effect of the tragic drama fashioned by Sophocles from this story. The Attic poet's work portrays the gradual discovery of the deed of Oedipus, long since accomplished, and brings it slowly to light by skilfully prolonged enquiry, constantly fedl by ‘new evidence; it has thus a certain resemblance to the course of a psycho-analysis. In the dialogue the deluded mother-wife, Jocasta, resists the continuation of the enquity; she points out that many people in their dreams have mated with their mothers, but that dreams are of no account. To us dreams are of much account, especially people; Sigmund Freud 1 It is surprising that Sophocles’ tragedy does not call forth indignant remonstrance in its audience... For at bottom it is an immoral play; it sets aside the individual's responsibility to social In, and displays divine forces ordaining the crime and rendering powerless the moral instincts of the human being which would guard him against the crime, It would be easy to believe that an accusation against destiny and the gods was intended in the story of the rayth; in the hands of the critical Euripides, at variance with the gods, it would probably have become such an accusation. But with the reverent Sophocles there is no question of such an intention; the pious subtlety which declares it the highest morality to bow to the will of the gods, even when they ordain a crime, helps him out of the difficulty. I do not believe that this moral is one of the virtues of the drama, but neither does it detract from its effect; it leaves the hearer indifferent; he does nat react to this, but to the secret ‘meaning and content of the myth itself. He reacts as though by sel-analysis he had detected the Oedipus complex in himself, and had recognized the will of the gods and the oracle as glorified disguises of his own unconscious; as though he remembered in himself the wish to do away with his father and in his place to wed his mother, and must abhor the thought. ‘The poet’s words seem to him to mean: “In vain do you deny that you are accountable, in vain do you proclaim how you hhave striven against these evil designs. You are guilty, nevertheless; for you could not stifle them; they still survive unconsciously in you.” And psychological truth is contained in this; even though man has repressed his evil desires into his ‘Unconscious and would then gladly say to himself that he is no ‘There is n0 po: le doubt that one of the most important sources of the sense of guilt which so oft people is to be found in the Oedipus complex. More than this: in 1913, under the title of Totem und Tabs the earliest forms of religion and moralit torments neurotic *Background Prose Readings pevhaps the sense of guilt of mankind as a of religion and morality, igs of history through the Oedipus to tell you more of this, but I had difficult to leave this subject when once one and we must return to individu loes direct observation of chi latency period, show us th is the ultimate source was acquired in the beginnin complex. ¥ should much bike of object-choice before the the Oedipus complex? We wants his mother all to when the father goes away or is ings divecily in words and this may not seem much in of Oedipus, but itis enough in fact; the same, Obxervation is of rantened that the same child on other occa- lay great affection for the father; but bever, ambivalent—states of feeling, which to conflicts, can be tolerated alongside one for a long time, just as later on thoy dwell ly in the unconscious. One might try to boy's behaviour is due to egoistic motives ion of an erotic compl needs and consequently it is to trouble herself about no one is soon clear that in thi oistic interests only pri absent. He often expresses hit Promises his mother to marry her; comparison with the deeds sions at this period wall disp such contrasting~or, "together permanenth mother looks after all the chil the child’s interest that she else. This too is quite correct; bu in similar dependent situations, eg the occasion on which the erotie i boy shows the most open sexual impulses seize. When th 1 curiosity about his mother, night, insists on being in the room or even attempts physical acts of as the mother so often observed and laughingly re erotic nature of this attachment to her is established Sigmund Freud 93 eagerly vies with her in trouble for the boy without succeeding jn winning the same importance in his eyes as the mother. In short, the factor of sex preference is not to be eliminated from the situation by any criticisms. From the point of view of the boy’s egoistic interests it would merely be foolish if he did not Colerate two people in his service rather than only one of them. As you see, I have only described the relationship of a boy to his father and 3 things proceed in just the same way, with the necessary reversal, in litle girls. The loving devotion to the father, the need to do away with the superfluous mother and to take her place, the early display of coquetry and the arts of later womanhood, make up a particularly charming picture in a little girl and may eause us to forget its seriousness and the grave ences which may Tater result from this situation, Let us to add that frequently the parents themselves exert a Mluence upon the awakening of the Oedipus complex wing the sek aitraction where the father in an unmistakable manner prefers his litle daughter with marks of tenderness, and the mother, the son: but even this factor does not seriously impugn the spontaneous nature of the infantile Oedipus complex. When other children appear, the Oedipus complex expands and becomes a family complex. Reinforced anew by the injury resulting the egoistic interests, it actuates a fecling of aversion towards these new arrivals and an unhesitating wish to get rid of them again. These feelings of hatred are as a rule much more often openly expressed than those connected with the parental complex. If such a wish is fulGlled and after a short fime death removes the unwanted addition to the family, later analysis can show what « significant event this death is for the child, although it does not necessarily remain in memory. Forced into the second place by the birth of another child and ‘ime almost entirely parted from the mother, the very hard to forgive her for this exclusion of him; feelings which in adults we should describe as profound ferment aze roused in him, and often become the ground- work of a lasting estrangement, That sexual curiosity and all itsee 94 Background Prose Readings consequences is usually connected with these experiences has As these new brothers and sisters grow up the chi ide to them undergoes the most important.transformations. Aboy may. take his sister.as love object in place of his faithless mother; where there are several brothers to win the favour of a little sister hostile rivalry, of great importance in after life, shows itself already in the nursery. ‘A little girl takes an older brother as a substitute for the father who no longer treats her with the same tendemess as in her earliest years; or she takes a little sister as a substitute for the ‘child that she vainly wished for from her father. So much and a great deal more of ind is shown by direct observation of children, and by consideration of clear memories of childhood, uninfiuenced by any anelysis. Among other things you will infer from this that a child’s position in the sequence of brothers and sisters is of very great significance for the course of his later life, a factor to be considered in every biography. What is even more important, however, is that in the face of these enlightening considerations, so easily to be obtained, you will hardly recall without smiling the scientific theories accounting for the prohil st. What has not ‘been invented for this purpose! that sexual attrac: tion is diverted from the members of the opposite sex in one family owing to theit living together from early childhood; or that a biological tendency against in-breeding has a mental equivalent in the horror of incest! Whereby it is entirely over- Tooked that no such rigorous prohibitions in law and custom would be required if any trustworthy natural barriers against the temptation to incest existed. The opposite is the truth. The first choice of object in mankind is regularly an incestuous one, directed to the mother and sister of men, and the most stringent prohibitions are required to prevent this sustained infantile tendency from being carried into effect. In the savage and primitive peoples surviving today the incest prohibitions are a great deal stricter than with us; Theodor Reik has recently shown in a brilliant work that thi savage tes of Sigmund Freud 95 incestuous attachment to the mother and his reconcifiation with the father. Mythology will show you th abhorred by mon, is perniitted to their gods without a thought; and ftom ancient history you may leam that incestuous ‘marriage with a sister was prescribed as @ duty for kings (the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Incas of Peru); it was therefore in the nature of a privilege denied to the common herd. st, ostensibly so much are the two grt by totemism, the first social-religious institution of mankind. Now Jet us tur from the direct observation of children to the analytic investigation of adults who have become neurotic; what does analysis yield in further knowledge of the Oedipus complex? Well, ‘The complex is revealed jt as the myth relates ‘neurotics was himself an Oedipus or, what amounts to the same thing has become a Hamlet in his reaction to the complex. To be sure, the analytic picture of the Oedipus complex is an enlarged and accentuated edition of the infantile sketch; the hatred of the father and the death-wishes against him are no longer vague hints, the affection for the mother declares itself with the aim of possessing her as a woman. Are we really to accredit such grossness and intensity of the feelings to the tender age of childhood; or does the analysis deceive us by introducing another factor? It is not difficult to find one. Every time anyone describes anything past, even if he be a historian, wo have to take into account all that he unintentionally imports into that past period from present and intermediate times, thereby falsifying it. With the neurotic it is even doubtful whether this retroversion is altogether unintentional; we shall hhear later on that .¢ motives for it and we must explore ‘retrogressive phantasy-making” which past. We soon discover, too, that the ier has been strengthened by a number of motives arising in later periods and other relationship im life, ‘and that the sexual desires towards the mother have been96 Background Prove Readings moulded into forms which would have been as yet foreign to the child. But it would be a vain attempt if we endeavoured to ‘explain the whole of the Oedipus complex by “retrogressive phantasy-making," and by motives originating in later periods of life. The infantile nucleus, with more or less of the accretions to it, remains intact, as is confirmed by direct observation of children. The clinical fact which confronts us behind the form of the Oedipus complex as established by analysis now becomes of the greatest practical importance. We learn that at the time of puberty, when the sextial instinct first asserts its demands in full object-choice was but a feeble venture in play, as it were, but it laid down the direction for the object-choice of puberty. At this time a very intense flow of feeling towards the Oedipus complex or in reaction to it comes into force; since their mental antecedents have become intolerable, however, these feelings must remain for the most part outside consciousness. From the time of puberty onward the human individual must devote himself to the great task of freeing himself from the parents; and only after this detachment is accomplished can he cease to be a child and so become a member of the social community. For a son, the task consists in releasing his libidinal desires from his mother, in order to employ them in the quest of an external love-object in reality; and in reconci self with his father if he bas remained antagonistic to in freeing himself from his domination if, in the reaction to the infantile revolt, he has lapsed into subservience to him. These tasks are laid down for sit is noteworthy how seldom they ate carried that is, how seldom they are solved in a manmer psychologically as well as socially satisfactory. In neurotics, however, this detachment from the parents his father, and incapable of transferring sexual object. In the reversed relationship the daughter's fate may be the same. In this sense the Oedipus complex is Sigmund Fread 7 justifiably regarded as the kernel of the neuroses. You will imagine how incompletely I am sketching a large number of the connections bound up with the Oedipus complex which practically and theoretically are of great importance. I shat not go into the variations and possible inversions of it at all. Of its less immediate effects I should like to have influenced literary ing manner. Otto Rank has shown in a dramatists throughout the ages have drawn their material principally from the Oedipus and incest ‘complex and its variations and masked forms. It should also be remarked that long before the time of psycho-analysis the two criminal offences of Oedipus were recognized as the true expressions of unbridled instinct. Among the works of the Encyclopaedist Diderot you will find the famous dialogue, Le ‘Neveu de Rameau, which was translated into German by no less a person that Goethe. There you may read these remarkable words: Si le petit sauvage était abandonné a lui-méme, qu'il conserva toute son imbecillté 4 quill réunit au peu de raison de Venfant au berceaa la violence des passions de Phomme de trente ans, i tordrait le cou d som pre et coucherait avec sa mere. There is yet one thing more which T cannot pass over. The mother-wife of Oedipus taust not remind us of dreams in vain, remember the results of our dream-analyses, how dream-forming wishes proved perverse and or betrayed an unsuspected enmity to es? We then left the source of these strivings of feeling unexplained. Now you can answer this question yourselves. They are dispositions of the libido, and investments of objects by libido, belonging to early infancy and long since given up in conscious life, but which al night prove to be still present and in a certain sense capable of activity. But, since all men and not only neurotic persons have perverse, incestuous, and murderous dreams of his kind, we may infer that those who are normal {o-day have also made the passage through the perversions and the objectinvestments of the Cedipus complex; and that this is the path of normal98 Background Prose Readings development; only that neurotics show in a magnified and exaggerated form wl analyses of normal peop! ‘The development of civilization appears to us as a peculiar process which mankind undergoes, and in which several things strike us as familiar. We may characterize this proces reference to the changes which it brings about in the fa instinctual dispositions of human beings, to satisfy which is, after all, the economic task of out lives. A few of these instincts in such a manner that something appears in their the excretory function, its organs and products, the course of their growth inlo a group of traits which are familiar to us as parsimony, a sense of order and cleanliness qualities which, though valuable and welcome in themselves, may be intensified till they become markedly dominant and produce what is called the anal character. How this happens we do not know, but there is no doubt about the correct finding. Now we have seen that order and cleat ‘important requirements of civilization, although necessity is not very apparent, any more than their suitability as sources of enjoyment. At this point we cannot fail to be struck by the similarity between the process of civilization and the process coincides with that of the sdlimation {of instinctual aims0 with which we are familiar, but in some it can be differentiated from it, Sublimatio of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such as important part in civilized life. If one were to yield to a fir 99, to overlook the extent to which t, how ees This imp ; * dvilization is built up upon a renunciation of instin much it presupposes precisely the nom-satisfaction (by suppression, répression or some other means?} of powerful instincts. This “cultural frustration” dominates the large field of civilizations have to struggle. on our scientific work, and we shal] have much to explain here. ~The task seems an immense one, and it is natucal to feel diffidence in the face of it, But here are such conjectures as I have been able to make. . "After primal man had discovered that it lay in his own hands, literally, to iraprove his lot on earth by working, it cannot have been a matter of indifference to him whether another man worked with or against him. The other'man ac KEKE m1 ‘THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS conscious, unconscious, preconscious} tigation is provided by a fact anation or description-the if anyone speaks of ‘The starting point for this in thout parallel, which defies al f consciousnesy) Neve consciousness, we know immediately and from our own most personal experience what is meant by it Many people, both inside and outside the science of psychology, are satisfied with the assumption that consciousness alone is mental, and nothing then emains for psychology but to discriminate in the phenomenology of the mind between perceptions, feelings, intellective processes and volitions. (It is generally agreed, that these conscious processt jot form unbroken ‘h are complete in themseh that there is no’ alten to assuming that there are physical or somatic processes which accompany the mental ones and which must100 Background Prose Readings Admittedly be more complete than the mental series, since some a m have conscious processes parallel to them but others hhave not. It thus seems natural to lay the stress in psychology upon these somatic process, to see in them the true essence Sf what is mental and to try to arsive at some other assecament of the conscious process. The majority of philosophers, however, as wel “s many other people, dispute this position and declare w notion of a mental thing being uncomscious is self cee al thing being unconscious is self But itis precisely this that psychoanalysis fed to assert, 5 second findamental hypo! explains the Supposed ‘somatic accessory processes as being’ what. is essentially = and disregards for the moment the quality of consciousness, .) We are sox is conscious only for an confirm this, the contradict Explained by the fact that the stimuli of perception can persic for some time, a0 that in the couse of tthe pecomion ofa can be repeated. The whole postion can be eleaty scious perception of our intellective processes it it in these may persist, ut they may just as easily pass in a flashy erything unconscious that behaves in this way, exchange the unconscious condition for the eon therefore ewer descitbed as “capable of entering consciousness,” or as precosrous. Experience has tight os tee there ase hardly any mental processes, even of the met complicated kind, which cannot on occasion eet reconsciows although a a rule they press forward as we sony into consciousness. There are other mental processes ot meet material which bave no such easy access to constiouenere Int which must be inferred, discovered, and translated inne Sigmund Freud 10 the manner that has been described. It is for we reserve the name of the unconscious conscious fon such material Proper. ‘Thus We have attributed three qualities to mental processes: they are either conscious, préconscious, or unconscious. The division between the three classes of material which have these qualities is neither absolute nor permanent. What is preconscious becomes conscious, as we have seen, without any activity on our pact; what is unconscious can, as a result of our efforts, be made conscious, though in the process we may have jan impression that we are overcoming what are often very strong resistances. When we make an attempt of this kind upon get the ious filling up of the breaks in his perceptions-the consteuction which we that we have made question. All that his mind in two versions, first in the conscious reconstruction that he has just received and secondly in its original unconscious condition. ( [ID, EGO, SUPER-EGO) [The id is}... a chaos, a cauldron of seething excitement. We .ppose that it is somewhere in direct contact with somatic Processes, and takes over fom them instinctual needs and gives them mental expression, but we cannot say in what substratum this contact is made. These instincts fill it with energy; bt no organisation and d will, only an impulsion to o satisfaction for the instinctual needs, im accordance wit le. The laws of logic~above all, the law of not hold for processes in the 3. Contradictory. side by side without neutralizing each other or drawing apart; at most they combine in compromise formations under the overpowering economic pressure towards discharging: their energy. There is nothing in the id which can be compared to negation, and we are astonished to find in it an exception to the philosophers’ assertion that space and time are necessary forms of our mental woo the id there is nothing102 Background Prose Readings corresponding to the idea of time, no recognition of the passage of time, and {a thing which is very remarkable and awaits adequate attention in philosophic thought) no alteration of mental processes by the passage of time. Conative impulses which have never got beyond the id, and even impressions which have been pushed down into the id by repression, are virtually immortal and are preserved for whole decades as though they had only recently occurred))They can only be recognised as belonging to the past, ‘deprived of their significance, and robbed of their charge of energy, after they hhave been made conscious by the work of analysis, and no small part of the therapeutic effect of analytic treatment vests upon this fact, It is constantly being borne in upon me that we have made far too little use of our theory of the incubitabte fact that the repressed remains unaltered by the passage of time. This seems to offers us the possibility of an approach to some really profound truths, But Ifhave made no further progress here. "Kecray, the id knows no values, no good and evil, no morality. The economic, or, if you prefer, the quantitative factor, which isso closely bound up with the pleasure-principle, dominates all its processes. Instinctual cathexes. seeking discharge,—that, in our view, is all that the id containg It seems, indeed, as if the energy of these instinctual impulses is in a different condition in which it is found in the other regions of the mind. of being discharged, for otherwise we should not have those displacements and condensations, which are so characteristic of the id and which are so completely independent of the qualities ‘of what is cathected, .. . As regards a characterization of the ego, in so far as i distinguished from the id and the super-ego, better if we turn cur attention to the relation bet ‘most superficial portion of the mental apparatus; the Peptcs {perceptual-conscious) system. directes ie {while itis Finctioning, the phenomenon —————— Sigmund Freud 108 of consciousness. It is the sense-organ of the whole apparatus, rReEPLIVEMOTeaver, not any of excitations from without but also of such as proceed from the interior of the mig One on hardly go wrong in regarding the ego as a vihich ae been modified by its proximity to the extemal world and the influence that the later has had on it, and which serves, the purpose imuli and protecting the organism from them like the cortical layer with which a particle of living substance surrounds itself. This relation to the external world is decisive for the ego, The ogo has taken over the task of representing the external world for the id, and so of saving it; forthe ia, blindly svg to gray ie inant iw coveplete disregard of the superior strength of outside forces, could no otherwise escape “tas fie linet of th function, the ego has to observe the external world and preserve a true picture of it in the memory traces left by its perceptions, and, picture of the extemal world which is a contribution from which exerts undisputed sway over the processes substitutes for it the reality-pinciple, which pr ree pi ee) tat doo the ego by the perceptual system; indeed it can hardly be doubted that the mode in which this works is the source of the idea of time. What, howeyer, specially snacks the ego out in contedistnction te head iss hope we shall succeed. of the ego to its source. I t degree of organisaion which the ego needs for its highestfeelings of whe 0, inferoniy ond om, WH mane in by the super-egi It. In this way, , Boa 0, and rebuffed by Sigmund Freud 105 cope with its economic task of reducing the forces and influences which work in it and upon it to some kind of harmony; and we may well understand how it is that we 50 often cannot repress the ery: “Life is not easy.” When the ego is forced to acknowledge its weakness, it breaks out into anxiety: reality anxiety in face of the external world, normal anxiety in face of the superego, and ie anxiety in face of the strength of the passions in the id) Thave represented the structural relations within the mental personality, as I have explained them to you, in a simple diagram, which I here reproduce. ‘You will observe how the super-ego goes down into the id as the heir to the Oedipus complex it has, after all, intimate connections with the id. It lies further from the perceptual system than the ego. The id only deals with the external world through the medium of the ego, at least in this diagram. Tt is certainly still too early to say how far the drawing is correct; in fone respect I kno\ not. The space taken up by the unconscious id ought to be incomparably greater than that given to the ego or to the preconscious. You must, if you please, correct that in your imagination. And now, in concluding this certainly rather exhausting and ‘not very illuminating account, I must add a warning. ‘you think of this dividing up of the personality into ego, -ego and id, you nmust not imagine sharp dividing lines such as are artificially drawn in the field of political geography. We cannot do justice to the characteristics of the mind by means of linear contours, such as occur in a drawing or in a primitive painting, but we need rather the areas of colour shading off into ‘one another that to be found in modern pictures. After we have made our separations, we must allow whet we have separated to merge again) Do not judge tco harshly of a first attempt at picturing a thing so elusive as the human mind. It is very probable that the extent of these differentiations vaties very Seally from person to person; it is possible that their function’ itself may vary, and that they may at times undergo a process of involution. This seems to be particularly true of the most insecure106 Background Prose Readings and, from the phylogenetic point of view, the most recent of them, the differentiation between the ego and the super-ego. It is also incontestable that the same thing can come about as a result of mental disease. It ¢an easily be imagined, 100, that certain Practices of mystics may succeed in upsetting the normal relations between the different regions of the mind, so that, for example, the perceptual system becomes able to grasp relations jn the deeper layers of the ego and in the id which would ‘otherwise be inaccessible to it, Whether such a procedure can put ‘one in possession of ultimate truths, from which all good will flow, may be safely doubted. All the same, we must admit that the therapeutic efforts of psycho-analysis have chosen much the same method of approach. For their object is to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the super-ego, to widen its field of vision, and so to extend its organisation that it can take over new portions of the id. Where id was, there shall ego be. Itis reclamation work, like the draining of the Znyder Zee. Chapter 2 T.S. Eliot ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent I In English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we ‘occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence, We cannot refer to “the tradition” or to “a tradition”; at most, we employ pt in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, itis vaguely approbative, with the implication, as to the work approved, of some pleasing archeological reconstruction. You can hardly make the word agreeable to English ears without this its own creative, but its own critical turn of more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius. We know, or think we know, from the enormous mass of critical writing that has appeared in the French language the critical method or he the French: we only conclude (we are such unconscious than we, and sometimes even plume ourselves a litle with the fact, a8 if the French were the less spontaneous. Perhaps they ‘are; but we might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and