SAMIKSA VOLUME 3, NUMBER 4, 1949, pp 206-262.

. THE PESSIMO-OPTIMIST
EDMUND BERGLER, M. D.

Pessimism and optimism are established popular entities, time>and joke-honored^ Psychologically, the situation is more complicated. At least -descriptively, people know what is meant when the terms "pessimist" arid "bptimisi"^ respectively, are used. I would like to describe a specific type whom I propose to call "the pessimo-optimist." His "philosophy" is contained in one
sentence : "I'am always optimistic about myself, and always gloomy about the future of others." .

What is the genetic background of this strange personality ? Descriptively, the pessimo^optimist represents a bundle of contradictions. The combination of pleasure at your fenoNvman's misfortune ( "Schadenfreude" ) and optimistic self-confidence seemingly "don't mix." One could understand that the' aggression, mobilized against other people and materialized in the dreary prediction, satisfies the individual's malice ; what is missing is self-aggression as guilt; Or, one could suspect that previously endured unhappiness gives the pessimooptimist the feeling of subjective justification of being aggressive without guilt. Moreover, one could doubt whether the optimistic department of the pessimo-optimist is solid or built on quicksand. Finally, the question could be brought forward of whether or hot the gloomy prediction, pertaining to the other fellow, is merely a projection of the pessimO'bptimist's own inner gloom. According to the latter suspicion, the pessimo-optimist would represent a pessimist in disguise-. These and other speculations are possible and fruitless. Clinical experience gives us the following picture.
Amazingly enough, neither pessimism nor optimism has any direct connections with real life experiences. Both correspond to different elabord' tiohs of infantile megalomania.

Every child lives for some time on the basis of magic misconceptions of reality ( Freud, Ferenezi). Only gradually does the child accept reality as such; Henee a complicated process of adaptation i

208

PESSIMO-OPTIMIST

[SAMIKSA.

Vol. 3, No. 4]

EDMUND BERGLER, M. D.

209

necessary. Many children fail in exactly this task. Libidinous and aggressive frustrations are unavoidable ; the problem is how these are perceived and worked out. Sometimes small and unimportant refusals are taken as "terrible injustice," and ' sometimes objectively difficult parents don't induce a neurosis in the child. The idea of direct relation between childhood experiences and later developed personality structure, is taken too literally- Of course, childhood experiences are , decisive for the whole life but the formula must be expanded by formulating the term "childhood experiences." - It comprises decisively the child's notions and fantasies- If one says "childhood experiences as the child perceived them," one is nearer to clinical facts. l There are hundreds of. ways in which these conflicts work out. One of the remnants is the optimistic and pessimistic "Weltanschauung," the general outlook on life. Optimism reflects the shabby remnants of infantile megalomania ; a sustained inner slave revolt directed against the victorious "reality- principle," the latter rubbing into the child his dependence on others. -. Pessimism is a face-saving device of people who elaborated the collapse of infantile megalomania in a masochistic way. The original narcissism ( megalomania ) was crushed in that procedure ; here the shabby remnants are visible only in the satisfaction of having outwitted the reality principle and the inner conscience, by having changed punishment into pleasure of an unconscious variety. Normally, the conflict between punishing reality . and infantile insistence on megalomania, is solved by diplomatic adaptation to a stronger reality. The < masochistic child persists in its "naughtiness", as parents call the manifestations of infantile "stubbornness", stemming from the arsenal of childlike megalomania. Punishment, moral reproach, later guilt, are the results. The masochistic child is confronted with the fact of reconciling punishment (external, later internal) with its megalomaniacal pleasure fantasies. The child of the psychic masochistic variety solves that seemingly irreconcilable contradiction admirably: it "libidinizes" punishment. The only pleasure one can derive from displeasureis to make displeasure a pleasure. That's exactly what the psychic masochist does. By provoking punishment and enjoying it unconsciously megalomania is "maintained" in a caricature.2 Interesting is the fact that even the masochistic pessimist is incapable, of enduring his own self-constructed- misery without, safe-

guarding his defeats with a face-saving pessimistic prediction, ; On that remnant of megalomania, even he, the Hiob of all Hiobs, insists. Of course, other elements are involved. The old reproach of passivity, leveled by the inner conscience, has to be fought, too. This the pessimist does : by "active" anticipatory prediction, he defends himself against the passive wish to be overwhelmed. Only secondarily the fact that "by chance" the pessimist's predictions are always gloomy, is rationalized with "life experience." The gloomy prediction is an inner necessity, not the result of conscious deliberations. There are many connecting links between neurotic pessimism and optimism. For instance, optimism can be used ( by overlooking realityfactors ) for pessimistic, self-damaging purposes. Especially suspicious are habitual pessimists developing optimistic attitudes in a specific situation; they are unconsciously bargaining for a juicy defeat, seemingly to reduce the world which rejects their Cassandra-like warnings to absurdity. ; On the other hand, nobody denies that optimism has, more often than not, a propelling force, pessimism a retarding one. Mark Twain summed it up nicely : "All you need in.life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure." The new mixture of the "pessimo-optimist" is, if analyzed, recognizable as elaboration of an oral personality structure, as all pessimists ( in my opinion ) are.3 He dwells, as is typical in pessimists, upon pessimistic predictions, in a preventive manner. He thus pays dues to his narcissistic safeguards : nothing can surprise him. No other group of people uses the triumphant "I told youso," as frequently as "professional" pessimists. In his gloomy predictions concerning other people, he is the typical neurotic pessimist. Butand this little "but" makes a lot of differencehe knows ''somewhere" that his masochistically self-provoked defeats are some kind of a game. That, too, is a face-saving device: "not I'am the victim of masochism, I play games." The situation reminds one of an observation of the poet Hebbel, concerning dreams : 0 Denn Jeden Traham begleitet Ein heimliches Gefuhl, Dass alles nichts bedeutet Und sei es noch so schwul. The Stanza is not translated ; it means something like this : Every

210

THE PESSIMO-OPtlMiSf

Vol. 3, No. 4j

EDMUND BERGLER, M. D.

211

dream is accompanied by the subterranean feeling that all threatening goings-on mean nothing, even if it looks menacing enough. The alleged optimism of the "pessimo-optimist" has a complicated structure. First of all, it is not literally true : he, too, indulges, in .the typical preventive pessimism toward himself. He, too, unconsciously "enjoys" his self-created defeats and is furious with his enemies repressing his provocations which started the ball rolling. He is a typical adherent of the "mechanism of orality," as repeatedly described by me. First, these neurotics provoke a situation in which somebody administers to them the unconsciously desired and expected "kick in the jaw." Secondly, having repressed their own provocation, they see only the "meanness" of the refuser, and fight himseemingly in selfdefensewith righteous indignation. Thirdly, they revel in self-pity, unconsciously enjoying once more psychic masochism. In this triad, only the pseudo-aggression of Act Two, and the self-pity of Act Three, are conscious. The initial provocation ( Act One ), and the masochistic pleasure (part of Act Three ), are fully unconscious.4 That life-technique leads to "injustice collecting," hence to defeats and "bad experiences." Thus, the pessimist can always prove how right and correct his predictions are. We see that the "pessimo-optimist's" statement of his perpetual optimism has to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, he is justified in calling himself an optimist, though in a different sense. His optimism pertains to the fact that, despite all defeats, he continues to be convinced that one day he certainly will achieve success. He reminds one of certain toys so constructed that they always revert to the upright balance. Whereas the fully neurotic- pessimist frequently gives up the fight, the "pessimo-optimist" continues it. He is laborious, enduring, energetic. His "optimism" pertains partly to the game-quality qf his psychic masochism,5 partly to the next expectation of defeat. In his pessimism, so pronounced in expectation of doom for all his acquaintances, he partly projects his own pessimism, partly proves how "aggressive" he is. That pseudo-aggression is a part of his inner defense against the justified inner reproach pertaining- to, his

The borderline between clear-cut neurotic reactions and "normal" ones is slim. The whole distinction rests pn quantitative differences : one can define a normal person as one which isn't too neurotic. If we ask in what group the "pessimo-optimist" belongs, we solve the problem best by using the Solomonic judgment: to the halfEteurotics.
1. See "Thirty Some Years After Ferenczi's 2. 'Stages in the Development of the

Sense of Reality.' " The Psa. Rev., 1945. For problems of relation between psychic masochism and conscience, see The Battle of the Conscience. Washington Institute of Medicine, Washington D. C , 1943. 3. First stated in Chapter IV of Talleyrand-Napoleon-Stendhal-Grabbe.. Vienna, Int. Esa. Verlag, 1935. See also. "Zur Problematik des oralen Pessimisten" ( Problems of Qi'W Pessimists ) Imago, 1934. This paper contains also a cross-section of the literature on the topic of pessimism. ( Freud, Hitschmann, Abraham, Ferenczi, Winterstein, etc. ) 4. Described by the writer in a series of contributions. Summary in "Specific Types of Resistances in Orally Regressed Neurotics." The Psa. Rev., 1947/1. 5. Esychic masochism, here referred to, is by no means identical with perversion masochism which has a different structure.

Vol. 3, No. 4J

BELA MITTELMANN, M. t>.

213

SIMULTANEOUS TREATMENT OF BOTH PARENTS AND THEIR CHILD *

BEL A MLTTELMANN, M. D.

There will be shown in this presentation that (a) the simultaneous treatment of husband and wife and child by the same therapist is not only of advantage in some instances but may be indispensable for full therapeutic results ; (b) that any situation that is beyond the patient's resources to cope with ( his ego strength ) should be handled if possible directly or indirectly by the analyst; otherwise new insight and unconscious material remains inaccessible. The simultaneous treatment of members of the family furnishes material about such situations and enables the therapist to cope with them. (c) The patient.'s neurosis forms a complex complementary pattern with the members of society in his environment, particularly with members of his family. THE HUSBAND AND THE WIFE I will present to you the story of a wife, husband and a child, t The woman now is thirty-six, the man forty, and the child eight. The man and the woman have been married seventeen years now, and are compatible in their interests and activities. My story begins ten years ago, several years before their, treatment was started. The wife saw a child being run over by a trolley car and became so "hysterical" that people on the street thought it was her child who had been killed. Two nights later she had a nightmare in which she saw her husband with his genitals cut off. She 'became anxious and depressed and the family physician suggested that she have a child. During her pregnancy her depression and anxiety disappeared. At the age of one month the child developed eczema which lasted for a year. The mother, was quite upset by this, as well as by the child's later gastro-intestinal symptoms caused by allergy, vomiting and diarrhoea. The child turned out to be a feeding problem and when he was a year and a half old the mother developed obsessional thoughts of cutting her child's throat.
* Read before the Third Annual January Symposium of the Psychiatric Forum Group at New York, January 12, 1949. Some aspects of the analyses of these three patients have been presented in f previous communications. (2, 3, 4) '

About a year later, that is about five and a half years ago, she started analytic treatment. In addition to her obsessional thoughts, arousing profound guilt, she had another complaint, this one deeply injurious to her self-esteem, namely, frigidity, and she soon staked the success of the treatment on the cure of her frigidity. It took this woman six months finally to inform me that she thought her husband suffered from premature ejaculation, which assumption proved to be correct. He reached orgasm within half a minute after the beginning of intercourse. He also started . analytic treatment. After another few months the woman said, "How do you know that if my husband were adequately potent I wouldn't be sexually responsive, and I would not be free from all symptoms ?" On the basis of my knowledge of psychopathology I was convinced that she would not be well, but she chose this issue as the incontestable battleground for her resistance, and I agreed to stop her treatment till her husband's potency improved. . Within ten months his sexual performance improved so much that the wife had to agree that she ought to be able to reach orgasm. She was not, and she resumed treatment in a most disappointed mood; disappointed in spite of the fact that her husband's improvement gave tangible evidence what analysis can accomplish in correcting sexual difficulties. Now I will skip two and a half years of analysis. The wife has her first analytic hour after two months vacation. She relates that in the course of the summer her husband's potency declined again and the situation was pretty hopeless; if after two years of treatment his otency was still bad, how on earth could she ever achieve orgasm'. (She has had two very faint orgasms during vaginal intercourse before the vacation.) Later in the day the husband told me the same story, but he mentioned that they have had intercourse only three times in two months. I expressed surprise, reminding him that his usual frequency was three or four times a week. "Well, our son," at that time six years old, "was sleeping in the same room even on those three occasions and my wife1 was afraid he might observe us. She did not want it at all other times." I asked him3 what was wrong with daytime. "Well," he said, "I suggested it but my wife won't hear of having intercourse in daylight." Now here was this woman, who was staking her whole treatment on the correction of her vaginal frigidity, failing to mention that the child slept in the same room and that she refused 3 to have intercourse

TREATMENT F l o f M FA

AN fMEIR CHILD

Vol. 3, No. 4]

BELA MITTELMANN, M. D.

215

dating th'e day. Up to this point in her treatment I had titilMd crucial information obtained from her husband not diyectly but for the purpose of getting the same information from her through casual but skillful questions. (3) However, indirect questions in the next analytic hour did not lead heir to add the omitted information to the h'dpeless story of the summer. -I triers decided to confront her directly with the information, "which she then confirmed. I then pointed out to her that she had omitted the information because she had to put the blame oh her husband-, even at the cost of a hopeless outlook ; it meant catastrophic failure and humiliation to her to admit that she has any fundamental problems. From that point oh I started to use in the wife's treatment information gotten from the husband directly- The information was (Juke remarkable. She never prepared the vaginal di'aphragrri herself; it Was always tire husband who did it; Even this she would hot allow in advance. They would start the preliminaries and . she would get interested ; then the husband would go to the bathroom, applythe lubricant on the vaginal diaphragm &&& bring it to her. She would toot discuss with the husband anything sexual. She would get hurt and angry if he asked her whether she preferred anything in the preliminaries or whether she had "reached orgasm. None of this has she ever reported spontaneously in the analysis. In fact, she was reluctant to use the word "orgasm" even in the analytic hour. Not that she objected to the word. She would simply report that she had intercourse the previous night; I would ask he>w it went. She "would reply, "Well .....all right." I would say, "What do you mean 'all right' ?" She would reply, "I had a fair reaction," "What do you meatt you had a fair reaction 1" "Well; I reacted more or less adequately." "Do you mean you had an orgasm ?" "Yes, I had an Orgasm." "Why did you not tell me ?" "Because it was only 50%." The information obtained from the husband was now being consistently utilized in her treatment and her behaviour interpreted to her. The husband's analysis likewise needed supplementary information. During this period he would start'the hour in a slow, somewhat monotonous manner end would reply to the question whether he felt depressed in the affirmative. He was able to tell when he got depressed but was uncertain what he felt depressed about. I usually knew from the wife that intercourse had taken place at the time from which t-he h b n d dated his ^depressioni Then some such conversation would

take place in the hour : "Didn't you have intercourse at the time you say you got depressed ?" "Yes, I guess so." "Why didn't you mention it 1" "I guess I forgot." "What made you depressed 1" "Because my wife had no orgasm." This had two opposite meanings to him simultaneously ; one, that he was sexually inadequate, two, and this was accompanied by quickly repressed bitterness, that no matter how he performed there was no way of getting his wife's approval. The latter meaning confirmed his unconscious conviction of an unfriendly depriving fate, present since the age of five when his father died and his mother sent him to an orphan asylum. The fact was, of course, that his wife had reached a "50% or 70% orgasm" but would not talk about it to rier husband. In the past, if his depression lasted a while, his potency declined. This then confirmed the wife in her false conviction that her difficulty was to be blamed on him. The recovery of his potency in a week or two would not eradicate this effect and soon the wife's behaviour would lead to another temporary decline in his potency. This vicious circle was cut first, when the causes of the husband's depression were immediately recognized and analyzed and thus a decline in potency prevented ; second, when the wife was confronted with the nature and analysis of 'her behaviour and its effects on her husband. In four months time the wife had adequate orgasms during vaginal intercourse. THE CHILD Now I will move ahead one year and sketch in a part of the child's relationship with the parents, particularly with the mother. He is now seven and a half years old and has been suffering, among other symptoms, from nightmares since the age of three. For the last six months the nightmares have become more severe and have the usual content that he is being chased by a monster. When he is waked by them he goes to his parents' bed where he quiets down and then goes back to his own bed. In the course of the treatment he had a simple nightmare: he lost his bicycle. The fact was that he did not lose his bicycle but he did lose a book that he had borrowed from the school library. If we look further into the dream we have a beautiful illustration of condensation. The dream occurred, at the time when the family moved to a new place. He was worried that he would not have new friends, and used to go back to the old street, to play with his old

216. ,

TREATMENT OF BOTH PARENTS AND THEIR CHILD LSAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4J

BELA MITTELMANN, M. D.

217

friends. He "had his mother take his bicycle in the car to the old place so he could, ride the bicycle with the old friends, and his mother would drive over to bring him and his bicycle home hours later. He would get upset if the mother was reluctant to make the trip. The child himself had told me earlier in his treatment that his severer nightmares had started when he got a domineering, strict new teacher. We can now see a fusion of five anxieties in this simple dream : the child is afraid of failure and; disapproval in school ; he is afraid of abandonment by his mother ; he is afraid of abandonment by his friends ;very likely, the bicycle being a male symbol, he is afraid of not being a boy, and of being completely helpless and immobilized. It should be mentioned in connection with the latter point that when he .had infantile eczema, at periods his hands were tied to the sides of the bed to, prevent scratching. While enacting the bicycle dream in the subsequent session, the child played walking in his sleep, then his bicycle was stolen and then somebody knocked him on the head, somebody knocked somebody else on the head, and there was a general fight. Thus we may add to the previous list of fears that of counterattack for aggression. (4) . CIRCULAR REACTIONS BETWEEN BOTH PARENTS AND THE CHILD We can now establish one link, out of the many, between the behavior patterns of the mother and the child. The mother, in the attempt to remedy her deep feeling of being a failure in all significant aspects of life, had been perfectionistic since the age of five. One expression of this perfectionism was her inability in the course of her treatment to acknowledge problems without putting the blame on her husband. Of course her child became the target of her perfectionism in two ways : through the request that he be flawless according to her lights and through her hostility if he was not. The latter reaction was one of the determinants of her obsessional thoughts of cutting her child's throat. (Another determinant was her displaced hostility, including her castration wish toward her husband.) In response, the child himself became perfectionistic as well as hostile.^ The mother and father were fairly permissive in the home ; however, in school the child's hostility was thwarted and loomed helplessly dangerous ; hence resulted increasing anxiety and the nightmares. The child's drawings show his i n t e n t aggression and anxiety. They are crowded,

disorganized, at first glance hardly represent anything outside of a confusion of lines. The content is telling : The school is on fire ; there is a fight between gun-men ; there is a battle between Japanese and American planes. The child's symptoms made the mother feel all the more that she had failed in her maternal role, reinforcing her feeling of failure as a wife: this led to sexual disinterest and refusal which reinforced the husband's potency disturbance. This aroused the wife's hostility and castration wish because of the resultant frustration. This then was again displaced on to the child. This vicious circle was cut in the simultaneous treatment of the parents, particularly the mother, and the child. After I saw the child once I told the mother that her panicky anxieties about him were unfounded, that he had a moderate emotional disturbance which, of course, was curable. She replied, "Well then,, why don't I send him to camp for the summer?" This she did two months later. The child had an excellent time, and was one of the leaders in the group. When the child came back from camp, she said, "Well, why have I been so worried that he would not get along with other children?" These remarks illustrate the decrease in the anxiety of the mother. Her handling of the child improved remarkably. For example, if the child would become unruly, begin to complain of headache and would get fussy over his food, the mother, instead of scolding, would ask the child whether he was worried about his school work. It usually turned out that this was the case, and with attention to his schoolwork the essential behaviour difficulty would disappear. For the mother the concurrent treatment by the same therapist had the advantage that her anxiety reactions were resolved as soon as they arose and she could not misquote, as such anxious mothers often do, the child therapist to her own analyst. Further, she could utilize the information gained in the handling of the child. The third advantage was perhaps most impressive. I have mentioned that because of her fear of failure she did not approach any of her problems voluntarily but had to be forced up against them by the analyst, including his utilisation of the information gained from her husband. This was necessary not only in connection with her sexual problems but also her relationship with her friends, her mother, and her art work which she took up during her analysis. The one area in which she took initiative in the recognition, and correction of her emotional

2IS

TREATMENT OF BOTH PARENTS AND THE IR CHILD

[SAMIKSA Vol. 3, No. 4] BELA MITTELMANN, M. D. 219

problems was that of her relationship with her child as soon as his treatment started. Her handling of this field could then be utilized to convince her of and correct the reluctance with which she faced her problems in the other fields. For the child the advantages of concurrent treatment were : more complete information by the analyst of the events of the child's daily life because of his intimate knowledge of the mother, less exposure of the child to the mother's anxieties and aggression and better handling of the child by the mother's making use of knowledge imparted by the analyst. RESULT OF TREATMENTS Excellent therapeutic results were obtained in both parents and in the child. The mother lost her obsessional symptoms, has adequate vaginal orgastic responses, developed her art work successfully, treats her child well and became self-assertive with her mother and her friends. The husband developed adequate potency, lost his spells of depression and is self-assertive with his family, friends, and colleagues. The child lost his anxiety and is well adjusted in work and play situations. The results could not have been attained with the parents without their being treated simultaneously by the same analyst as both of them, largely unconsciously, excluded crucial information from the treatment. This excluded information could gradually be collected from the mate and utilized in the treatment. ' The simultaneous treatment of the child by the same therapist was not indispensable but was of advantage in the treatment of the child as well as of the parents. DISCUSSION In two previous communications (2, 3) the author has presented evidence that the patient's reactions form a complementary neurotic pattern with those individuals with whom he has intimate relationships, such as mates and siblings. In the present communication a similar problem between parents and child has been presented. This picture < can be extended to relationships with superiors, workers of equal rank and those under the patient's jurisdiction, and friends. An important difference, although only one of degree, between these latter situations and intra-family relations is that a greater mobility obtains .as a rule in the extra-family relationship. The patient can quit one job and look for another ; divorce entails a much more radical realignment. Further, the intimacy of the relationship in the intra-family set-up leads to more

intense expectations and the falling away of certain inhibitions. Therefore, they are apt to represent more intense and more complex complementary patterns. A general formulation is this : genetic as well as current patterns comprise attitudes (sentimental and erotic attachment, hostility, anxiety, esteem and guilt, striving for safety) toward parts and the whole of the self and -towards others. To a considerable extent these complex patterns are intrapsychically selfperpetuating in the form of constructive and vicious circles or combinations of both. These internal circles are completed by a complementary series of reactions, also self-perpetuating to a large extent, with family members, intimates and work mates. Personality as a whole as well as its neurotic aspects are an integrated system of such genetic and current internal and external complemero tary patterns. Many patients show a definite limitation in their ability to cope with certain aspects of internal or external problems in the course of their treatment. Such limitation of integrative and coping ability ( "ego strength" ) is generally assumed in adult psychotics and addicts and in children, and the treatment-is expected to succeed only if provisions are made to supplement the internal work with external measures, e.g., hospitalization of the psychotic, direct contact with the parents of the child. (1) In more limited areas many adult patients suffering from neuroses have similar limitations in coping strength. No one will doubt that vaginal frigidity cannot be cured if the patient's mate suffers from a serious potency disturbance. Likewise many analysts recognize the threapeutic limitations unless the mate's whole emotional life, apart from the patent sexual aspects, is remedied. There is more disagreement about the technical propriety of any guidance in the course ef psychoanalytic treatment of relatively helpless patients. In the opinion of some, such procedure interferes with the analytic process. My experience has been that any measure that is warranted by the limitations of the patient's coping ability not only does not interfere with analytic progress but is actually indispensable to it and leads to increased presentation of utilizable unconscious material. Concurrent analysis of family members by the same therapist proves to be such an indispensable measure if the respective patients cannot help . but keep out of their individual analyses crucial behavioral information*

220

TREATMENT OF BOTH PARENTS AND THEIR CHILD

[SAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4J

BELA MITTELMANN, M. D. SUMMARY

221

In the analyst's handling of concurrent analyses two points become of paramount importance. He must have a reliable enough memory so that he is never in doubt from which of the mates he received a piece of information. If he utilizes information obtained from the other mate he must be aware of it and usually must say so. Secondly, if . he becomes the target of the mates' rivalrous contentions and hears heated declarations of the unbearable behavior of the other mate, he must realize that there is ample time to isolate out and interpret each mate's complementary problem. One of the most useful slogans to tell the patient in such situations is "two wrongs do not make one right." .:

Some of the complexities of the effect of concurrent . treatment of family members on the patients' attitudes toward the analyst was discussed in a provious publication ( 2 , 3 ) . The following additions will Be made here. The patient takes the fact of the analyst's changing the patient's environment by treating the other member of the family as an extension of his own strength, particularly at points that such strengths are lacking. One could say that at those points the analyst becomes to the patient an extension of his own ego. In another way, the< patient considers the analyst on exactly these same points as an active helper, perhaps of magic power- There is a matter of similarity between these two coexisting attitudes and the child's attitude toward the benevolentparent. Both of these points would run the risk of permanently tying the patient to the therapist and strengthening his dependency and magic expectations. There are, however, two factors which invariably counteract this. One is the patient's realization that the external help appears .at points where it is indispensable. Thus, the patient obviously cannot cope with some of the neurotic bahavior of the mate, whereas the analyst can. The second point is that as soon as the situation changes and the patient still wants to follow the old mode of behavior the analyst can interpret very actively and thus exert pressure on th patient to move forward with his problems. Perhaps in this respect too there is a parallel between the analytic situation and the child''s relationship with the benevolent parent who is not unqualifiedly permissive all the time. Through this pressure, reality testing and clarification of remaining unconscious problems finally leads to adequate integratiqn and independence..

1. Concurrent treatment of family members ( of both mates or of parents and children ) by the same therapist is not only feasible in most instances but is frequently advantageous and at times indispensable for the best therapeutic results. The latter is the case if the respective patients cannot help but exclude from their treatment crucial behavioral information. 2. Close contact with some key members of the family, guidance and supportive procedures are considered routine in the analysis of adult psychotics and addicts, and of children. Often there are areas of .restriction of integrative and coping ability ( ego strength ) in adult patients suffering from neurosis, also. The application of external measures in such areas not only does not interfere with the analysis' but increases the flow of unconscious material. 3. The total personality as well as its neurotic aspects can be viewed as an integrated system of current and of genetic self-perpetuating circular patterns of intrapsychic and interpersonal strivings. 4- The patient evaluates the analyst's activity in changing the other member of the family, as well as his limited guidance, as an. extension of his own functioning self and as the support of a magic helper. The coexistence of these attitudes are paralleled by that of the child toward the benevolent parent. The magic dependence, however, is counteracted by the pressure toward change exerted on the patient by the analyst's interpretations if the patient wants to retain the old adaptation after favorable changes have occurred in the environment. This also parallels the attitudes of the child toward the benevolent parent who, however, is not unqualifiedly permissive. This pressure, together with reality testing ( the realisation that supplementary help was indispensable and the actual situation has changed j , eventually leads to adequate integration and independence. REFERENCES
1. Freud, Anna : Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis. New Y o r k : Nerv.

& ivlent. Dis. Publ. Co., 1928. 2. Mittelmann, Bela : Complementary Neurotic Reactions in Intimate Relationships. Psa. Quarc, XIII, 1944, 479491. 3. Mittelmann, Bela : 7he Concurrent Analysis of Married Couples. Psa. Quart, XVII,
4. 1943,182197 Mittelmann, Bela : Ego Functions and Dreams. ( I n press.)

Vol. 3, No.

G. BOSE

123

THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF THE OEDIPUS WISH *'

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

One of the earliest psychoanalytical findings was the discovery of the cedipus complex. The information that we harbour in our unconscious mind incestuous thoughts directed towards the mother came as a shock to many. It was difficult to believe that a mind could be so perverted as to look upon the purest human relationship in such a gross light. The knowledge that our affection towards the mother may have a sexual baekground need not have caused so much surprise. In mythology, folklore and literature of every country there are to be found storiea of such incestuous relationship. Then again the purest and noblest amongst us have sometimes open incest dreams. The ancient law givers recognised the necessity of provision for punishment for incest. In the Institutes of Manu there is a distinct injunction against a male's sitting on the same seat with his mother, daughter or sister unless a third party was present, for it is said that human passions and cravings are strong and may upset even the most cultured person, The best known story of mother incest conforming to the peculiarities of the unconscious mind is that of Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles. The unconscious incestuous desire has received the name of oedipus complex because of its similarity to the Oedipus situation in the drama. Laius, King of Thebes, prayed to the Delphian Apollo for a child. His prayer was heard but he was given to understand that his son would kill him to fulfil the curse of Pelops whose son he had kidnapped. Jacosta, queen of King of Laius gave birth to a son but Laius to save himself from his fate pierced and tied the child's feet and ordered his servant to expose the child in the desert. The servant however gave the child to a shepherd who gave it to King Polybus. Polybus named the child Oedipus, meaning swollen feet, and adopted him as his son. When Oedipus grew up he was curious to know his own origin and consulted
This article was originally read in a meeting of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society on Sept. 30, 1928- (Ref : International Journal of Psychoanalysis Vol. X, Oct. 1929, Part 4-)
c

the oracle which told him that he would kill his father and marry his own mother. To avoid such a fate Oedipus left the place of his adoption but he accidentally met Laius his own father and killed him in a quarrel. He then solved the riddle of the Sphinx and as a reward was declared King of Thebes and was given Jacosta his own widowed mother in marriageHe had two sons and two daughters by Jacosta, his unknown mother. A plague broke out in Thebes and the people consulted the oracle which told them that the plague would cease if Oedipus was driven out of the country. Oedipus became aware of his true relationship with Jacosta and Laius. Out of repentance he blinded himself and went into voluntary exile. In the story CEdipus killed his father. So also in the uncoscious mind there is a hostility against the father associated with the love for the mother. These two traits go together and form the cedipus complex. Besides this hostile attitude directed towards the father the cedipus situation invariably reveals jbtlieTtxaTts) which have not received sufficient attention from psycho-analysts. In the present article I shall try to show how very complicated the cedipus situation is and how many different traits are inseparably associated with it. Sometimes the one or the other trait comes out prominently in analysis and arrests our attention. Besides such prominent land marks in cedpus situation a careful observer will always discover other less prominent traits which are of equal importance in the ' make up of the cedipus fabric. The connections between the different traits gradually come into view as cases are analysed in large numbers. The theory of the genesis of the oedipus complex as described here has b^en built up on the foundation of actual analysis. My views differ somewhat and in some important points from the existing views on the subject. I have quoted very freely from Freud to show how most of the workers look upon the problem. A statement of Freud's views as presented here will enable anyone.to note the differences in my point of view. INFANTILE SEXUALITY. In his thres contributions to the Sexual Theory Freud drew attention to certain peculiarities in the development of the infantile libido. According to him sexual object-choice is established in early childhood so that all sexual trends become directed towards one single person in whom they try to seek fulfilment. The child libido therefore resembles the

224

THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF THE OEDIPUS WISH [SAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4]

G. BOSE

225

adult libido very closely. The only difference that Freud could notice was that in childhood the libido was more or less uniformly distributed over the different erogenous zones so that any special sexual significance of the genital organs was wanting. The primacy of the genital organ is "not effected in childhood. Later findings have compelled Freud to change this view. In an article entitled "The Infantile Genital Organization of the Libido" which appeared in the 1924 April number of "The International Journal of Psychoanalysis" Freud says "I am today no longer satisfied with the statement that the primacy of the genitals is not effected in the early period of childhood or only very imperfectly. The approximation of sexuality to that of the adult goes much farther and is not limited solely to the establishment of an object attachment. Even if perfect concentration of the component impulses under the primacy bf'the genitals is not attained, at any rate at the height of the development of childhood-sexuality the functioning of the genitals and the interest in them reaches predominant significance, which comes little short of that reached in maturity. The difference between these twothe 'infantile genital organization' and the 'final genital organization' of the adultconsitutes also the main characteristic of the infantile form, namely that for both sexes in childhood only one kind of genital organ comes into accountthe male. The primacy reached is not therefore a primacy of the genitals but of the phallus". Freud says "This finding is mainly based on the information obtained from males and represents the state of affairs in the male child. The corresponding processess in the little girl are not sufficiently known. The little boy at first believes that the girl is endowed with a penis like himself. The accidental sight of the genitalia of a little girl first gives the information to the boy that the girl is differently constituted. The boy tries to believe that the penis is there, that it is small and it will grow and so on. If at this period the boy has been admonished with threats of castration for improprieties in connection with his penis the absence in the little girl is thought to be the result of a castration and his own fears are aroused resulting in the development of what is called the castration complex. The castration threat becomes significant only when the primacy of the genital phase has been attained. The absence of the penis in girls causes a sexual depreciation in the eyes of the little boy and is one of the factors in the genesis of homosexualtiy. Since the castration can only pome as a punishment the little boy comes to think

that only wicked females lose their penis but respectable females such as the mother retain their penis intact. Later when the boy comes to learn that only women can bear children the mother is considered to have been deprived of her penis as a substitute for which she gets a child. A knowlege of the true state of things is acquired much later. FREUD ON THE PASSING OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX In'an article entitled "The passing of trie Oedipus Complex" which appeared in the 1924 October number of the International journal of Psychoanalysis Freud had discussed the factors which cause the disappearance of the Oedipus Complex. The Oedipus complex forms the central phenomenon of the sexual period in early childhood but later on repress sion sets in and causes its disappearance. This is followed by what is known as the latency period. Two theories have been put forward \o account for this repression. One is that it is brought about by the painful disappointment and lack of success of the wishes which go to form.the oedipus complex. The other view is that it is a pre-ordained decay in the natural course of mental development of the child. These two views are not incompatible with each other but there is the' necessity for investigating the exact mechanism by which this decay is brought about. The phallic primacy phase is contemporaneous with the Oedipus complex. The phallic phase does not uninterruptedly lead to adult development but becomes submerged during the latency period. According to Freud the phallic stage of the genital organisation succumbs to the threat of castration helped by other factors. The child has been already prepared for the loss of a valued part of the body by the withdrawal of the mother's breast and the evacuation of the bowels. The final blow comes when the child sees the female genital organ perhaps accidentally in a little girl. The loss of his own penis becomes a dangerous possibility and the castration threat becoms effective- The oedipus complex offers the child two possibilities of satisfaction, an active or a passive one. It can either put itself in its father's place and can have intercourse with the mother or it can put itself in the place of the mother. In the former case the father becomes a rival and the possibility of castration in his hands becomes acute and in the second case to play the part of the female a pre-requisite would be to give up the penis. So that in either case the boy comes tq lose his valuable

226

THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF THE CEDIPUS WISH

[SAMIKSA

V1. k, No, 4]

G. BOSE

227

organ- A conflict thus arises between the narcissistic interest in the penis and the libidinal cathexis of the parent-objects. The narcissistic wish triumphs over the other and the child's ego turns away from the oedipus complex. By a process of identification with the parents their authority is introjected into the child's ego and forms the nucleus of the super-ego which by imposing restrictions like the father keep theoedipus wishes in check. The oedipus sexual feeling is transformed and sublimated into affection. This process introduces the latency period. The result is the destruction and abrogation of the complex in the most successful cases. It is something more than repression. If the results are not so satisfactory then the oedipus complex persists unconsciously and expresses itself later on in some pathogenic effect. O a r knowledge of the oedipus complex in females is not very satisfactory. According to Freud the female also develops an oedipus complex and a super-ego and passes through the latency period. There is also in the female a phallic organisation and a castration complex although working in a different manner. She believes in the existence of phallus in the adult female and thinks she will acquire just as big an 'appendage when she grows up. When she comes to know of the castration threat she believes that her own phallus has been cut off. Since the. castration is an established fact in her case the dread of castration is powerless and thus the motive for the formation of the super-ego and the breaking up of the infantile sexual organisation loses its force. Educational influences and the threat of loss of love bring about the adult modification of sexuality in her case. Freud believes that the oedipus complex in girls is simpler than in the boy and seldom goes beyond the wish to take the mother's place. The girl finds in the child a compensation for the loss of the penis. She expects a child to be given to her by her father which hope is bound to remain unfulfilled. The comparative weakness of the sadistic element of the libido in the femalewhich is attributable according to Freud ro the absence of ' penismakes it possible for an easy sublimation of the sexual trends . into affectionate ones. Freud says "I have no doubt that the temporal and causal relations described between oedipus complex, sexual intimidation (the threat of castration), formation of the super-ego and advent of the latency period are of a typical kind ; but I do not maintain that this type is the only possible one. Variations in the sequence and the linking up of these

processes -must fee very significant in the development of the individual. Since the prafeJieation of Otto Rank's interesting study on the trauma <o birth the conclusion that the boy's oediptts complex succumbs to the dread of castration cannot be accepted without further discussion. It seems to me premature, however, to enter upon this discussion at A e preseat time." RETALIATION AND IDENTITY In connection with my theory of the opposite wish I have shown elsewhere that when a person is struck there rises in him a desire to stcifce the offender and unless there -is opportunity for the satisfaction of this desire a painful tension results. The desire for retaliation or revenge fallows the Mosaic Laweye for eye, tooth for tooth. According to my theory of the opposite wish in every instance the satisfaction whether voluntary or involuntary of any wish leads to the development of its opposite. In every individual there is the unconscious desire to be struck so that when this finds a sort of involuntary satisfaction by the assault, its opposite the desire to strike rises in consciousness and is felt as the desire for revenge. Whenever a particular set of circumstances acts ia such a way as to lead repeatedly t o the satisfaction of only one particular type of wish, a desire to behave in an opposite mantker gradually develops in consciousness and ultimately finds vent in action. M the opportunities for the satisfaction of the opposite wish are wanting thece is an accumulation of tension in the system. I n some cases fche opposite wish may not have a social sanction. 'Retaliation is not always a practical possibility in a civilized society. In such, cases tension may be relieved by symbolic actions or by day dreams or such other methods as lead to imaginary satisfaction of the jgishIf the individual had previous opportunities of satisfaction of such' wishes as are either akin to or identical with the forbidden wish a touch more sajasf aotory and permanent solution of the tension would be possible. Under these circumstances there may result an identiftcatioci with the agent which produced the provocation. The subject places himself in the situation of the offender and can sympathise with his motives and actions. Forgiveness, foibearance and resignation become possible and all tension is relieved. When the desire for revenge has been satisfied identification becomes easier. Revenge or retaliation leads to an identity of the action only of the offender and

228

THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF THE OEDIPUS WISH [SAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4]

G. BOSE

229

is a preliminary step to identification with the subject. Retaliation consists in.reversing the subject-object relationship the action femaining constant. Identification on the other hand is transferring the ego to the position of the object. Identity leads to the expansion of. the ego. The person who identifies himself with a.nother become.S;interiested in the different activities of the latter. For th,e convenience of description I shall describe the retaliation mechanism as the " indentity, of action" and true identification as "identity_of_ego", * . ' THE CEDIPUS TRIANGLE

The child receives certajn.,attentions from the mother that lead to the satisfaction of a definite type, of craving which I might designate as the child-mother craving. The desire to; be fed by the mother, to be. caressed by the. mother etc. belong to this, class. Continued and repeated satisfaction, of these cravings bring about a rise of the opposite class ojf hankering viz, the mother-child cravings which consist of desires to feed a child, to caress a child etc.- In the first place this leads to an idejxtitv_of_atio_n only and the child caresses the.mother in return for her affections, pretends-to feed her, to put her to sleep and to indulge in similar plays- When the channel for identification ..is. widened by such actions the child begins to place itself in the ;rpositiOn of the mother ( indjntity_of_ego ),and finds, pleasure jriplayjng the raotherjwith its _dolls. This is true both of the male and the female ; child...-. The identification of the child's ego with the mother leads . to an expansion of the... child's "self. The child begins to get interested f .in things; iti__ghich_ the 'EQ*hejrJ^hows_, her interests. . The father thus ; becomes a new centre of interests _and isjtpprehendecfe_fro.m the; stand.pO'i'nt i.of the mother. If the (ather be equally affectionate like the mother the child-father and father-child, relationships develop as in the case of the mother and the father's activities are copied by the child. -The beginning of identification with the mother results in ^the developrsgat of 3 new angle of vision and a new significance in the child-father .,and father-child relationships. The child looks upon the father frotti the standpoint of the mother i. e., it behaves like its father's wife. The development of this phase leads ultimately to an identification with the father via .the mother. At this stage the child takes up the .role of its father and looks upon its mother as its wife. Identity;, of action and identity, of ego make. it.possible, for the child

to appreciate the' threefold relationship bf child-mothet-fathet ftom three different angles. From its own standpoint it knows how a child feels towards its mother and father and how the two parents-feel differently towards himself. From the mother's angle it knows how a woman feels, towards her child .and .husband and vice versa. From its father's standpoint it knows ,hqw a man feels towards his wife and his son and vice versa.,, The whole situation may. be graphically represented by-a diagram. - . . ....,... If the identification ..works without any hitch a perfect understanding and sympathy with the.. parents develop; but this is seldom so, Many factors operate to prevent the identification mechanism ftom working smoothly and when, one-sided influences are at work repression comes into play with all its attendant consequences. The growing sexuality of the child invests the triple relationship with 3 sexual significance which is of the greatest importance to the life of the individual. The sexual colouring in the triple relationship appears very early in life and' when we remember that childhood sexuality before the advent of the latency period approaches the adult form very closely we need not wonder that very complicated sexual images and all possible sexual situations are brought, up in the child's mind. From the standpoint of the mother the child feels the desire to be its father's wife and - to* bear him a child. It acquires a femininity in' its character which manifests' itself in reactions with other people also. From standpoint of the father the child behaves like a dominating male and. wants to beget a child by its mother and so on. These .different standpoints' lead'to secondary reaction formations the import tance of which cannot be ovetstimated. The feminine attitude towards the father' leads to the; development of passive homo-sexuality and other-secondary phenomena. It will be noticed that some of these attitudes are mutually contradictory. For instance the mother and father attitudes cannot rise in consciousness simultaneously. Under normal conditions the satisfaction of one attitude leads to the satisfaction of its opposite by the mechanism of unconscious identity as I have ,-shown elsewhere. The female attitude requires for its . satisfaction the appreciation of male characteristics which means an unconscious identification with the male and vice versa. As already stated when the conditions are one sided repression and failure of the mechanism of identification occurs leading to an internal struggle between the. opposite

230

THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF THE CEDlPUS WISH

[SAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No.

G BOSE

231

types of wishes. It is only under these conditions that the oedipus complex makes its appearance. When the identification works wiAout a hitch there is perfect sympathy with all the three standpoints. It is my contention that the oedipus complex can only be adjusted tinder such favourable circumstances. In the course of psychoanalytic treatment one can see the struggle between such contradictory tendencies, sometimes the one and sometimes the other gaining prominence in consciousness. When one attitude is prominent there is intolerance for its opposite. As adjustment proceeds identification with the opposite phase becomes more and more effective and ultimately sympathy for both the opposite standpoints becomes possible. I shall indicate the course of such a struggle with its secondary reaction formations. OEDIPUS REACTIONS Let me begin with, the attitude of the child towards its mother. When the child's ego just begins to be differentiated from its environment passive experiences play the predominant role. Gradually as the ego develops the child feels that most of the significant impressions come from the mother. Repeated submission to such passive situations gives rise to active wishes of a similar nature in thechild's mind by what I have described before as the mechanism of "identity of* reaction". The child . acts like the mother with the mother as the object. If the mother's caresses have been very passionate the child reacts in similar manner with an additional sexual colouring as a result of sexual tendencies developing dn the child's mind. It is curious however that this primary phase of sexual attraction towards the mother is seldom unearthed during analysis. It does not seem to form an important component of the oedipus complex. It is quite possible that in certain types of cases this primary sexual phase maybe predominant but where this happens the typical osdipias hatred" is likely to be wanting 'because the father does not seem to come into the situation at all. Action-identity gradually leads to egoidentity and the child places itself in the situation of its mother. It plays with dolls imagining them to be children, looks upon its father as a husband and if the child happens to be an accidental witness of parental intercourse at this stage it places itself in imagination in the passive situation of the mother. A true feminine sexual attitude develops towards the father and this -may even culminate in a desire to have a child by

him. At this stage of sexual development the genitalia of the child are already rich in sensations and this coupled with the knowledge of the difference in sexual organisation in the male and the female makes the male child wish for a removal of its phallus. It may be mentioned that in Indian children a true knowledge of the male and female genitalia is present from a very early age. Castration wish is thus a natural outcome of the desire to be a woman. The child sometimes playfully asks its mother to dress it up as a grown up woman and it plays the role of a wife with other children or even with adults. This game which is called "bow bow khela" or "playing the wife" is extremely common both among boys and among girls at a certain age in this country. I recall to mind a curious case of a young boy who always dressed like a girl and to make the resemblance perfect used to tie a piece of string round his prepuce and draw the penis tightly over the scrotum fixing the free end of the string behind his back like the end of a T bandage. By this process the penis was kept covaredby the folds of the scrotum and the whole genitalia showed a remarkable resemblance to the female organ. The desire to be a woman or its T^i t _. regularly discernible in all is modification the . * .__ analyses. The ' castration dread] js_J_JateT_jpr_qduct_and__isi a defence against the" corresponding wish. As I have mentioned in my article on the genesisjof 'homosexuality, the castration threat_js_extremely common i'n Indian society but the castration complex as_describedjby European observers is seldom seen in Indian patients. In my European cases~~the caitrationcomplex has regularly come up during analysis but here also it has almost invariably been traced to the desire to be a woman. I shall indicate later on how the castration threat leads to the development of thefcastration cornpIexT] In the female child the whole psycho-sexual constitution is in favour of the feminine attitude towards the father so that this phase of sexual development is much more developed than in the male. This has an important bearing in the production of the (hysteria) as I I have indicated elsewhere. In the male besides castration there is another possibility of playing the female role. The anus which is also an important erogenous zone in the child may take the place of female genitals so that in the feminine sexual phase the child develops- passive homosexuality directed towards the father. The faeces at this phase stand as a symbol for the child- Infantile, theories af anal child-birth

232

THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF THE OEDIPUS WISH (SAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4] G. BOSE THE OEDIPUS WISH
233

help to strengthen this attitude- . In the feminine or passive homosexual role the child imagines suitable sexual situations with the father and interprets its father's behaviour in the light of its own attitude. Continuous imaginary indulgence in such passive wishes gives, rise to corresponding active desires by the mechanism of action-identity and the child assumes active male role towards the father-who is either imagined to be a woman or is made to play the passive homosexual part. The child may even go to the extent of imagining-his father ' without a penis and giving birth to a child. The action-identity phase gradually proceeds to ego-identity and the child's ego feels like its father's ego. The father's interests become the child's interests and the child imagines itself to be a grown up man like his father. The. mother becomes a new sexual object and is looke^_jipoji_Jrom_lhe standpoint of the father. I have called this phasej^the cedipus pointy v in my article on the genesis of homosexuality. The child wants to impregnate the mother and to give her a child of its own. He also, appreciates the father's attitude towards his son and plays the protector's role towards the younger brothers and other children and also towards the mother. The child is thus made to appreciate the "triple role of the child, the mother and the father. If : the develop-. ment proceeds as I have described above no hatred is developed towards the father and there is perfect sympathy "with aTHthe three^p^rsohs in. the child-mother-father grouping. The sexual trends tcfwards the ,parents are soon sublimated and turned to affection. There is no parental fixation of the libido and possibilities of normal sexual development remain unimpaired. For the realisation of this ideal state of things it is necessary that the parent's behaviour should be suchas : to make it possible for the. child to satisfy, at least in imagination, his opposite active and passive tendencies directed towards them- A certain amount of give and take policy on the part of the parents is a pre-requisite condition. BuJ__jinj[ortunately_the child is very often, submitted to one-sided influences only with the result that repression sets in at one phase or another of sexual_devglopment^ and the oedipus'; complex with its many-sided inhibitions develops. Analyses of cedipus. ' cases invariably bring to light all the different phases of the triple ; relationship that I have indicated before and-adjustment resulting in[ cure only takes place when there is sympathy for all the fhree actors 1 in the triangular alliance.

I shall now indicate h o w the oedipus disturbance arises- and describe the different manifestations that are traceable to it. Ir must be remembered that a particular pathological manifestation is very .often the result of over-determination and several different factors may be responsible for its genesis. Most of my information has been derived from analyses of adult subjects both male and female. I might mention that the findings were fully justified in a few cases of children that I had the opportunity of analysing. As I have mentioned before the primary phase of child-mother and mother-child relationships seldom comes up in analysis of oedipus cases; so I am not in a position to point out any disturbance arising out of this stage of development with any degree of confidence. The subsequent phases regularly come up during analysis. The feminine attitude p{ the child towards its father is poignant with the possibilities of^maladjustmeht. If there is fixation of libido_in_ this attitude the female becomes ij}gPgble_of joying any male except the father. Sometimes the choice of ths love-object is determined by some characteristic of the father present in the person who is taken for a husband, (fivstericat"; manifestations may often be traced to this factor.. In the male child fixation of the libidojin_the_ feminine attitude leads to the development of feminine traits and passive homosexuality. Abnormal shyness in the presence of superiors and want of self-assertion become marked characteristics. Diseases and neurotic symptoms symbolical of female coitus and child-birth are present, the father image or a father substituSe taking the active role. Castration ideas, menstruation dreams and impotency are frequent manifestations. Day dreams of sexual intercourse are indulged in, the subject identifying himself with the female character. Owing to the working of the repression there is always a struggle even in the imaginary satisfaction of these feminine cravings so that- some form of defence is always attempted. Various ^bd_omjnal symptoms interfering wit_h_the_free evacuation of the bowels may make their appearance. The phantasies of sexual agRresion.bx.ihe father who is a revered person are modified by the bringing in of the images of low !55i?^!!J!Bil^-g!!^^^^^^ role. When t h e , defence is pushed further the_pas^ive wishes_are transferred into ffe Fe^of^ssault^found to be sexual on analysis, fear of contamination bV low persons, fear of thieves who stand for father images may arise with
c

134

THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF THE OEDIPUS WISH

[SAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4]

G. BOSE

235

obsessionalintensity. The ^ast^tion_wish) becomes transformed., into the Castration dread^) the father or a feth^r__substitute playing the aggressive^rolel Trie castration threat becomes effective only at this phase. The snwIl_Benis_compJg also has a partial' determinant in the feminine attitude. The next phase of defence is,ushered in by the mechanism of identity of action coming into operation. It is to be remembered that identity of action is a preliminary step to the identity of ego which leads to a sympathetic understanding of the offending agent. The defence which is set up by the mechanism of action-identity is therefore at the same time a step towards a cure of the repression. In the action-identity phase the child tries to convert the father into a female himself playing the aggresive male role. In the child's imagination the father treated as a woman and is made to give birth to a child or he is compelled to play the passive homo-sexual role. The sadistic component of the libido now finds a vent for discharge and a Tiostile~attitude_ develops towards the father. The threat of castration is now directed._ against the father by thg_childjis retaliation. The oedipus hostility towards the father is directly traceable to this phase of the child's development. It is no mere rivalry for the possession of the mother but it has a distinct sexual colouring. The(ctive homosexuality) which in the first plaqp is directed towards the father may also be pointed towards other love objects of the same or lower age. The feminine role of the father has a very interesting significance. When the ego-identity with the father, which is the next sfage in development, is established cedipus love towards the mother develops and the father's feminine role is foisted off on the mother. The oedipus mother therefore is a combined image. She represents the father as well as the mother. If the libido is fixed in the action-identity phase of the mother-father relationship the male child turns homosexual. In the case of the female child homosexuality develops if the libido is fixed at the oedipus point. The first phase of homosexuality in the female is of the active type, whereas in the male it is of the passive type. I have discussed this in greater detail in my paper on the genesis of homosexuality. Jealousy towards the sexual partner is traceable to homosexuality and femininity in the male and masculinity in the female. The true oedipus point develops with the onset of ego-identity with the father and the mother is taken up as the sexual love object.

The desire to give her a child comes into existence. Anomalies of development of this phase result in the choice of elderly females as love objects by the male. The respectability of the mother image is sought to be neutralised by the substitution of the mother by the sister or women of lower social status and even ^prostitutes. There is impaired potency and obsessional fear of not being able to satisfy the woman in the sexual act. The small penis complex receives a further strengthening from this source, the child's own penis being considered too small for the mother. Action-identity in the fathermother situation leads to the adoption of the passive attitude in coitus. The subject prefers the sexual partner to play the active role. With the advent of ego-identity in the father-mother relationship sympathy for the woman from the standpoint of the man develops and the oedipus complex is adjusted. The oedipus wish thus does not succumb to the threat of castration but to the ability to put the ego in the position of the mother in the father-mother relationship and to the ability to defy the father and to castrate him i. e. to make him into a woman. In the cedipus story the hero finds a solution of his unfortunate situation by giving up his love object and blinding himselfi- e. by symbolical castration. He gives up the fight against the father image which persists inspite of his killing his father and transforms himself into a woman before him. The solution is not an ideal one and will not be workable in the present day society. The oedipus situation in the female presents certain special peculiarities which are worth considering. Amongst Indian women the desire to have a male child in preference to a female is almost universal. Tne social outlook is certainly a factor in fostering this attitude. It would seem however there is also a powerful unconscious determinant for this attitude. In the father-mother relationship the natural desire for . the child would be to have an issue of the same sex as itself. How is it then that the preference for a son is developed in the girl ? The clue is to be found in the attitude of some normal women who not only want a male child but a child who would resemble its father. The son therefore is a composite image of the child and the father. Under these cirumstances it would be natural to expect a sexual colouring in the love of the mother for the child. Many women would confess the experiencing of a distinct erotic type of pleasure in suckling their babies. In certain psychoneurotics this sexual element car> be easily detected

236

THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF THE OEDIPUS WISH

[SAMIKSA

Vol 3, No. 4}

G. BOSE

237

in. analysis.. An .elderly female patient suffering from : obsessional psychpneurosis developed a strong positive transference of a gross sexual type. The attitude she developed towards her- doctor was sometimes that of a mother towards her son and sometimes , that of the daughter towards .thg father. The doctor formed the composite image of the son, father and husband, This patient would be occasionally obsessed with the fear of harbouring sexual thoughts towardsher eldest son. - It is well-known that 4ome female hysterics spontaneously recover after the birth of a child, j My experience is that the cure is more, common with a baby boy than with a baby girl.. . . - . . In connection with the adjustment of the oedipus wish in males where impotency forms a symptom an interesting fact may be mentioned here. The return' of potency is always associated with the capacity of male exhibitionism, which was primarily wanting. Its mechanism has not, been satisfactorily worked out. . -. ADJUSTMENT OF THE OEDIPUS WISH. '.. I shall now point out in which respect my views' regarding the genesis and adjustment of oedipus complex differ from-those of Freud. In the first place, I do not believe that there is a complete dissolution of the Oedipus tendency.' Even in normal individuals the oedipus wish can : always be discerned by analysis, ^he only "difference which, such wish exhibits compared with that of the : abnormal person is that ,it has lost its pathogenicity-to- a very great extent,' so that the wish is satisfied in the normal reactions of life. I do not believe in the theory that lack of success or disappointment unaided by other factors can bring about a dissolution of a wish. As I have shown elsewhere a wish may disappear from consciousness under two conditions only. It can either be temporarily destroyed by satisfaction or it can be pushed into the unconscious by the -functioning of a wish of the opposite type. No amount of threat or disappointment is effective in destroying a wish ; the only effect of such influence is a postponement of the cherished desire ; the-motive force of the wish remains unimpaired. The oedipus wish succumbs neither to the threat of castration nor to the dictates of the super-ego. The castration trait is originally a wish and is traceable to the desire to be a woman. The threat becomes effective only when the' struggle' between the male and the female tendencies becomes prominent in the child's mind leading to a repression oft the feminine wish. The super-ego is no foreign

imposition on the child's mind; It is that part of the-child's personality which wants to play the role of' the father. The sense of guilt and the punishing conscience are all ultimately traceable to the opposition between the male and the female halves of the child's personality. I do not agree with Fr.md when : he says that the' oedipus wishes ultimately succumb to the authority of the super-ego.' Quite reverse is the case. The super-ego must be conquered and the ability to castrate the-father and make him into a woman is an essential requisite for the adjustment of the oedipus wish; The oedipus is resolved not by the threat of castration, but by the ability to castrate. Freud ha;s to assume the importance of educational factors in the solution of the oedipus '-conflict in the case of girl, because in her case the castration threat 'is ineffective ' and the motive for the formation of the super-ego correspondingly weaker. No such special mechanism-need be assumed according td my view in the case of the girl. Here also a perfect-and sympathetic understanding of the three points in the triangular alliance is the effective factor in the" adjustment "of the oedipus tendency.- I have already mentioned that in the case of Indian patients 1 the castration complex is never prominent, although the castration threat is, almost a daily admonition in the Indian homes. This will serve to support my contention that the castration threat is not the essential factor in oedipus : adjustment. Superficial analysis of European patients seems to show the importance of the castration complex ; but whenever the analysis is pushed deeper the desire to be a woman is found to be the central element of the castration situation. '" - '. " ILLUSTRATIVE POINTS FROM CASE HISTORIES '

Case 233 : A n elderly- Indian ; lady suffering from obsessional psychoneurosis develops a strong positive transference of a gross sexual type in the course of treatment. She becomes intensely jealous of another patient who she thinks is receiving the affections of the doctor,. She is tormented by the thought t h a t t h e doctor would never love her and all her love would go unreciprocated* Sometimes she thinks that the doctor.sexually loves the other patient and at other times she thinks it-to. be impossible. She dreams of her brother reporting to her that the doctor-is a;loose-character profligate.. The patient feels her own sexual love towards the doctor whom she looks upon Jpoth in the; position of.a: .son and. a. father. The patient has a dream of having;

Vol:3, No. 4] 23 THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF THE OEDIPUS WISH [SAMIKSA

G.: BOSE

259-

sexual intercourse with her own father who in the dre'am is lying in the same bed with her. Along with the transference . symptoms there is intense fear of infection by germs. Typhoid and cholera are the diseases she is most afraid of. The fear of keeping contaminated articles inside a box is even greater than the fear of contact with such articles and of taking contaminated food or water. Analysis reveals the fact that the germ stands for semen. She is afraid of abdominal disorders which represent pregnancy arid delivery There is difBculty in imagining the doctor who stands 'as a composite image for her father and spn in playing the male sexual role. Incomplete identity with the father in the mother-father situation is responsible for the symptoms. Directly this is adjusted the patient recognises without a struggle the possibility of the doctor being a sexually bad man. Her jealousy for the other patient disappears and the conscious wish to have from the doctor a child who will resemble him comes up in consciousness although the patient is past the child-bearing age. The sense of guilt and sin which has been present all along now disappears and the patient simply acknowledges the presence of the wishes as something which is only socially wrong. All struggle and unpleasantness in connection with the undesirable wishes come to an end. It is to be noticed that the patient always described the love of 'situation in a passive way at first e.g. "shf onght-to get the love of the doctor", "the other patient is being loved_by__the doctor" and so on. In the later phase of treatment when the identity with_the_ father imagejs established the patient said"the doctor does not love her", "the doctor loves the other patient" and so on. Case 261. :- Patient is a paraphrenic young Bangalee. Ideas of unchastity of his wife form one of the most prominent symptoms. The patient tries to assure himself of the falsity of such ideas but they come with overwhelming force. The very sight and even the suggestion of the name of certain persons who are supposed to have loved his wife upset him. Free-association on the very first day of analysis brings to light a female attitude which is seen later on to be associated with his father and certain other persons who are suspected in connection with his wife. Chief among such persons is a certain Mr. L a young man with revolutionary ideas.- Patient says that when he thinks of L it seems to him that his penis and testes vanish altogether anjdin their, place a female sexual organ appears. He further rerriem-

'e.quent associations bring to light a tussle between hisfmale and female 'attitudes and ideas of chili-birth came up in:his mffid. * At this stage the patient remembers thtft sometime ago'whenth'e disease was at'its height and he had hallucinations and illusions, iri passing stools he used to. hear; hallucinatory remarks1 from his guru- (religious preceptor a father substitute) io the effect "Have you given me; a "child ?" A jfew days, afterwards; atvother interesting incident is remembered. Once when he was being" troubled by * objectionable"thoughtsabout :wife the idea came into his head "why try tobalance these thoughts i on your wife; remember your preceptor's advice and balance them fon your own anus". He then' said to himself "Let me see the fun" and: introduced a fountain pen up his anus.:- There1 was no pleasure fbut curiously "enough the disturbing thoughts about his wife disappeared:, and he regained-his peace of mind. Next day's associations show a splitting up of the subject's ego into male and female halves the male half-- identifying itself with low class- rhenr Mahbmedan iroughs,' L and fatherthe female" half identifies itself with his -wife,;' a - low class.J woman . and"->a widowed character in a Bengali novel.- The same night the patient- dreams that he is a man while his1 father and, .brother are all converted into: women. Next day the patient brings i-up the idea that his father- harbours sexual thoughts towards his'wife. He: recalls to mind several'instances where lie felt sexual thoughts towards .hteawn motrie* aa&im&tber-in-l&w;- He eaxmdt lo6k"atitr!e'iT photographs in the presence of the father or father-in-law. Passive sexual thoughts of the type "mother is being enjoyed" come up in his mind. In having intercourse with his wife he binds a handkerchief over his eyes as it gives him the feeling of being a bride in veil (c. . Oedipus blinding himself) and thinks that his wife's organ is his mother's organ and his own penis his father's penis. Case 334. European maleyoung, unmarried. Suffers from periodic fits of intense depression. Patient's sexual potency is impaired and the patient looks down upon sexual love but has a strong hankering for love of the spiritual type. The patient is religiously inclined. Analysis reveals a strong resistance to normal sexual love and a flight to homosexuality and spirituality. Castration situations in the presence of the father comes, up early during analysis and this is coupled with an unconscious hatred for father. A male friend of the patient is seen to stand for mother also. Later on this friend is also

.240

THE GENESIS AND ADJUSTMENT OF OEDIPUS WISH

[SAMIKSA

found to be a father substitute. Much later another composite image comes up in the person 'of a governess /who because of her severity stands for the father and as female for the mother. Oedipus wishes are present with reference to this,, composite image. The oedipus mother is sometimes conceived of. as a willing partner in the sexual act and sometimes as a- harsh and forbidding mother. Hostile and friendly images of the father- come up both in active and passive homosexual situations. Incest fear is present and is traceable to the hostile father on the one hand and the unwilling mother on the other. When the adjustment comes both father and mother turn out to be friendly and willing and the; desire to have a child by the mother appears in the associations. Images of complete sexual intercourse which were impossible.to conjure up. before now become easy and ,the-patient has a phantasy of coitus with a: mother image who has an :frnpotent husband. Ideas of gross sexualjty and disrespect for father become prominent associated with the desire to have a child by the mother. Next comes up the idea of .forcing the .father to give birth to a c&l$ and" of "castrating the father. Sadism coupled with, exhibitionism are'the rvext to appear associated with the ideas of potency. Efforts to combine, spirituality with sexuality are present ..and a desire for unrestricted sexual life. Sympathy both for a strict father arid for a disobedient as well as an obedient son; develops. . .The flight from? 'sexuality is found to' be linjced to ithe-desire to,1be..a .woman, t - >

EXPRESSIONS OF SADISM AND MASOCHISM IN CHILDREN

H. P. MEHTA

In the very early days of psycho-analysis, Freud recognised sadism as a component of the sex instinct and of the libido. Hence sadism is qualified by a differentiation from pure hate or pure aggression in as much as it involves sexual gratification. The primary hate or rage must therefore be regarded as an instinctive response of the infant to the frustration of its wishes, particularly of its libidinal wishes. This primary reactive impulse commonly fuses with the sadistic component of the libido to make what we clinically term sadism.. But for the parposes of this paper, no distinction between sadism and pure aggression1 has been maintained, as in-the deepest layers of the mind if is'very difficult to determine what is libidinous and what is non-libidinous. As early as 1920, Freud had pointed out that the central factor responsible for converting sadism into masochism was guilt. But guilt does not explain the whole content of masochism; it is the incestuous -love which ushered by the phallic phase and mejt with repression that lends its peculiar character to masochism. Repression brings ' mahout regression with the result that genital love is debased to the anal level which is dominated by aggression. This, according to Freud, is the genesis of the libidinous investment of sadism, and hence the formula "My father, loves me" in his paper "A child is being beaten" changes into (1I am being beaten by my father".' Later analysts represented by Melanie Klein and Ernest Jones, who lay great stress on primal sadism, posit an earlier, origin of maso' chisni- According to them, the oedipus complex and the consequent super-ego are developed in pre-phaJlic phases dominated by aggression and hence masochism is brought about even before guilt is fully deve- > loped. This stage of guilt- Ernest Jones seeks to distinguish as the "pre-nefarious" stage guilt. , . One further characteristic of masochism pointed' out by Freud and early analysts is its "passivity". The reversal from sadism to masochism is .accompanied by corresponding reversal from activity

242

EXPRESSIONS OF SADISM AND MASOCHISM IN CHILDREN [SAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4]

H. P. MEHTA

243

to passivity. Hence arose the view that masochism is a form of sadism which has been turned inwards and directed against the selffrom the object to the egoby a process of regression. Freud and early analysts, however, do not mention that this passivity concerned in masochism is based on the early introjecting activity of the infant. The introjecting activity could be regarded as the most primaeval form of mental life and therefore may be said to commence right at birth or even in the pre-natal stage. It is this mental activity which gives rise to good and bad images and lies at the root of the mechanism of identification and projection. The infant's capacity fo intfoject arid identify itself with various objects is closely associated with masochism, particularly with the passivity in masochism. Hence Deutsche goes a step'further when she relates the function of reproduction involved in passivity with masochism. In her paper 01 Significance of masochism in mental life of woman" and in her latest book "The Psychology of Women" she'brings out, the important part played by masochism in the function of reproduction. She maintains that masochistic instincts have been employed for the purposes of race-preservation and that women would not have chosen to undergo all the social handicaps and to suffer an inferior position imposed by man all through the ages,' were it not for the fact that in the function of reprbduction they have found magnificent satisfaction for their several urges. ' *' ' ' This brings us to the question of pairi "and pleasure in masochism. The experience of masochism ih; the concibiisness is accompanied by pain. Pain in masochism seems to1 be the result of the struggle between the energies involved in the libidinous gratification and1 the energies involved in the repression of sadism1 which lurks behind it; Dr. Bose, too, regards this pain as a product of repression and as a primary trait of mental life. Criticizing the view that in masochism the subject willingly undergoes the unpleasantness of pain because of the pleasurable sexual excitation, he explains that the masochists do riot seek pain but in seeking masochism he seeks a situation which is painful to the average man on account of repression. According to him'the perfect masochist will get pleasure even in being cut up and the pleasure obtained is riot necessarily sexual in nature. ' ' Because of its close association with passivity, the ' libidinous gratification in-masochism is regarded . as identical b y some psycho-

analysts with the libidinous gratification in passive sexual desire. But Paul Federn makes a sharp distinction between masochism, the passive sexual component and female sexuality. He writes, "As long as one speaks of the pleasant sensations which belong to the passive role of act one speaks rightly of the passive component of sexuality, but as soon as one speaks off the sexual pleasure gotten from non-sexual suffering or endurance one speaks rightly of masochism". Whatever the distinction; it remains true that the pleasure obtained in passive sexual desire is economically connected with the pleasure obtained in masochism. Sadism and masochism provide the clearest example ojLjyjghgj that function in pairs in Dr. Bose's theory of the Opposite Wish. The mechanism of sadism and masochism is explained like the functioning of any other pair of opposite wish and thereby the_factor of guilt and such orher factors which are postulated to explain the change from sadism to masochism', are rendered unnecessary. Dr. Bose following Freud recognises four stages in the change from sadism to masochism. In the -first stage, the sadism of the infant makes efforts to gain control of its limbs, in the second, he endeavours to gain control Over other persons. In the third stage a primary form of masochism is effected when the sadism is diverted from the object to the self. In the fourth stage again an object is sought arid since the object now plays an active role, full masochism results. The reversal of the sadism to masochism is thus'3 completed. ,; I may'be allowed to .refer "to the one of the main forms of sublimation and that isthe development of intelligence arid learning. The early connection between .the epistemophilic impulse and sadism, and its importance for the whole mental development, has been explained by Malanie Klein in her "Psycho-analysis of Children". How the primal sadism derived from the ids is employed by the infant for the purposes of making effective contact with the object world and thus mastering its anxiety of the pre-phallic phases is clearly described in her account of the development of the ego- This aspect of sadism bears a special appeal to those psycho-analysts who concern themselves with the healthy upbringing of children. : The successful management of sadism is important not only for learning and intellectual contact with the objective -world, but also for the development of a healthy equipoise "in physical behaviour. Freud has shown that the instinct of destruction is changed into instinct of

244 EXPRESSION OF SADISM AND MASOCHISM IN CHILDREN [SAMJKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4]

H. P. MEHTA

243

mastery and this is effected by means of the organ of mobility,-the muscular system. As mentioned above, the first stage in the metamorphosis of sadism, according to Dr.: Bose, consists in the infant gaining control over his limbs- Helene Deutsche believes that the system remains attached to the subject's, own person in the earliest forms of masturbation, which has as yet no libidinal object and which is thereby intercalated between organic pleasure and motor discharge into the outside world. Hence aggressive and active children are noted to have a particularly strong urge to masturbation. The role of homosexuality in the development of sublimations of sadism cannot be overrated. It is homosexuality, both active and passive, which is responsible for preventing the whole chunck of sadism from inverting to the ego, thus enabling a large part of it to develop into, the highly useful forms' of sublimation such as educational achievements, proficiency in art and literature, altruism, social"work etc. The.,>ro,le5 of homosexuality in "culturising" sadism is very important in education, in the material presented in this paper, we observe chiefly the interplay-of sadism and masochism in the expressions of children. The children in .question are those'with whom I came in contact in my capacity as private tutor, or as a friend or as a relative. They all belong to the latency period, that is from the age of 5 to 10 or 11, during which period on account of- the effects of repression, their sadistic and masochistic impulses seek expression in indirect forms,, Hence the expressions usually take the form qf phantasies, stories composed by themselves, drawings, etc. I may be permitted to remark that such expressions are given out when a particular kind of situation, somewhat analogous to the analytical situation, is established between the teacher and the children. When the children find themselves free to express without the fear of getting a rebuff from their repression, not only give verbal and artistic expression to their unconscious impulses and phantasies but in some cases also work them out with the teacher on the basis of transference. The expressions appertain to the different phases of the psychosexual development, namely, phallic, urethral, anal, oral andnntrojective. Some of.them appertain to more.than one phase, and in> case of some, it is diflicult to say to which they appertain, the question of appertaining to a phase, however, is not so important in itself as, in its relation to the utilisation of symbols. The use of symbols and the. mode of practice.

of sadism "or masochism is very, interesting. Another interesting point of study is the adoption of'different identification roles by the child to achieve its various desires and to escape the guilt that arises in trying to gratify them. , I have found in my observation that masochism always follows sadism, but is never followed by sadism. The docile way in which masochism is introduced after an avalanche of sadism is highly interesting, and^t times amusing^ A typical example is provided by the following case :' (1) Boy B, age 8 years, while talking about the civic disturbances in Calcutta, asked me how many Hindus and Muslims there were in the city. I replied, "I do not know exactly, but I believe they are in the proportion of half and half. The total population of Calcutta is now. about 40 lacs and so 20 lacs are Hindus and 20 lacs are Muslin^. He asked, "If from 20 lacs of Muslims, I kill five thousand and { he mentioned some odd number ) how many remain.?" Ir2 order to save his phantasy from intellectual interference, I calculated and gave him the figure. He said-, "Then I will kill so many thousand more (he gave the actual number). Then tiow many will remain ?" I calculated and gave the answer. He indulged in a further mental slaughter and asked'me for the remainder. Then he began saying, "I will kill allall the Muslims so many Muslimsthousands and lacstill only one will remain." "What will y6u do with! one ?" was my queTy. His face somewhat long and his voice lowered, he replied, "Then that one Muslim will kill me". This reminds me of a story which I heard in my boyhood of a Parsi hunter, who had the reputation of shooting down 99 tigers but was himself devoured by the hundredth one. In the story of Pied Piper of Hamelin, we are told that the Piper led all the rats "of the city to detsruction by drowning in the river, except for one which managed to escape to the Rat-land. Masochism not only takes the form of self-punishment or selfmortification but also of the restoration of trie object which was previously the target of the subject's sadism. The restoration is achieved through the mechanisms of passivity and auto-erotic pleasures such as masturbation. This may be considered as a higher type of masochism as compared to the debased type involving the subject's self-

246 EXPRESSION OF SADISM AND MASOCHISM IN CHILDREN

(SAMIKSA Vol. 3, No'4] H. P. MEHTA

247

destruction. The following example illustrates this, higher type .of masochism:(2) Boy B, age 7 years, drew- three pictures concerning a motor-car accident. In the first, he drew a motor-car and a boy in front of it. When questioned w h o the boy was, he replied it was himself. In the second picture, he drew a car and three persons in front. On enquiry he; revealed that the shorter was his younger brother S, the tallest was Mr. Mehta referring to myself and the middle-sized person was himself. While drawing a line from the car to the person he proceeded, "the car strikes Mr. Mehta. Mr. Mehta is cut. Debbe and Chunna are alright (Mr. Mehta katgaya, Debbe or Chunna theek hai)." Debbe and Chunna refer to himself and his brother S. In the third picture he drew a house with himself and brother standing ,near the window. He said "Chunna and Debbe are looking out. Chunna is brushing his teeth. Oh,. Mr. Mehta has come. Mr. Mehta is alright now." Mr. Mehta was shown entering the house by. aline.,Here the interesting point is the brushing of teeth,by his brother. He.avoids the guiit that would arise from the masturbatory practice by showing it on to his brother. The libidinous pleasure vicariously obtained through his brother's masturbation enables him t to resusciate me and to admit me into the paradise of his mother's womb. Another instance of the role of passivity in sadism and masochism is provided by the following expression. The male child has diversified phantasies about his father's penis and reacts to it with different affects. It is nice and pleasant if it is given to him and not to his Brothers or'if it is converted in a baby for him. All the terror of the father's penis goes away when he receivesit. But the mere reception does not solve the problem. He has to fear his mother and when reality'dawns upon him, he gives up the rivalry with the mother. '"'('3)' The same boy B, while playing a game of sentence construction with the letters of the alphabet composed
'- :' " F a t h e r has a nice t h i n " ; and said " L i t t l e b a b y " ' ' : '

as he was in the habit of saying "Father has got a nice thing for me or father will give me a nice thing" but he did not accept my suggestion, scattered away the letters of the sentence and composed "Father has gone to market". : The male child often expresses his rivalry with his father or brothers on the basis of therelative sizes of their penes. For the female child, as fs well .known, the absence of penis causes great frustration and gives rise to what is known as masculine protest. The male child actually wishes that he should not fare badly in this competition and that their -father should not have a penis in any case bigger than his own. * (4) The boy B, one day. told me that he had given his very small pencil to his father. The pencil must be hardly two inches long. Somewhat' reproachingly, I told him, he should have giveji the big pencil which he was using, to his father. He shouted, "No, -father should have the small one, I will never give him the big'one". Brothers B. S. and D often faced up to me to compare the size of their pencils and even if one happened to have it bigger by a, tenth 6f'an inch he felt gratified. Giving a small pencil may also be looked upon as a form of castration. The boy asserts his superiority and achieves mastery by a sadistic performance of sex-ai2t. That is how sadism is turned into mastery. (5) Boy S, age 6 years, while conversing showed me two pencils one twice as big as the other. He asked, "Which is bigger"? I replied, "You tell me, which is bigger" ? He insisted, "You tell me". I answered pointing to the big one, "Decidedly this is bigger" "No" he sharply retorted, pointing to the small one, "this is bigger". I kept quiet. After a moment, he raised the small pencil so as to make it reach a slightly higher level than the bigger one and shouted with a cunning glee, "Now see, this is bigger". I asked, "How did it become bigger"? The reply came at once,"He (pointing to the small pencil)did 'gudhra' on this (pointing to the big pencil)". Saying this, he indulged in a hearty laughter. "Gudhra" is the general term he used for everything that had to do with sex. After a while, when I. was about to go, he climbed on the arm of a chair nearby and exclaimed, "I am bigger than you". I stood on toes and said, "Now I am bigger". He tried to stretch himself taller. Then he jumped on my lap while I was standing and talking to his aunt and shouted, in joy, "Now. I am bigger, I am bigger than - India, I

He proceeded and made "Father has nice thing." Still later he made ""Father has a nice thing in his bag"..: But while reading the sentence hermade a slip and said "Father has a nice thing in her bag".-' I suggested to him to make "Father has a nice thing for me"

248 EXPRESSION OF SADISM AND MASOCHISM IN CHILDREN [SAMIKSA am bigger than Asia". Just a few days ago he had learnt how big India was and that Asia was the biggest continent. (6)- The same idea of sadistic performance of sex act is conveyed in another expression of the same boy. While we were doing a lesson about the negroes, pointing to the picture I said, "the negroes are talking". His brother B asked, "what are they talking"? S replied, "they are talking 'gudhra'.'. After a moment or so, he looked at his brother B5 who was writing and said, "He is pressing hard". At first I could not understand him properly and asked him to repeat. He explained that his brother while writing pressed the pencil hard on the paper. I had instructed them not to press the pencil hard and to write with a light hand. In this case we can observe that sadism is expressed both in talking pnd writing ; the sadism of the oral stage evokes the sadism of the phallic stage. Castration, as is well known, is frequently employed in sadism. All desires of killing trace their root to the desire of castration. But the refined way in which it is expressed in children specially in girls, is interesting. (7) Girl K, age 6 years, once asked me, "Do you know what is the best way to kill a man" ? I said, "what is the best way ? what do you think"? She proceeded, "the best way is to take o^ his specs(g'iasses), run away with them, take them to the grass and hide them there. The man will comestart running for them. He will search and search till he gets so tired that he will die of thirst and hunger". Here besides the desire for castration, there is also the wish, for possessing and retaining the phallus within herself. During the last civic disturbances, I know of a case of a dead body being found near a tank in the city. The man was castrated and his penis was put in his mouth. Spectacles are a favourite symbol of the phallus with the children, both boys and girls. Everyone has observed how little.babies dart for spectacles on the face of strangers. (8) Boy M, age 10 years while admiring a very ordinary drawing of spectacles stressed, "Ye dekh dekh ke mera jee jalta hai". (My heart burns and aches when I look at them-) (9) A very interesting expression of oral sadism has been provided by girl K. She told me a story which she had made up: ''There was a naughty elf who used to change herself into a stick. One day he became a stick and went to a person's house ; and the person

Vol. 3, No. 4]

H. P. MEHTA

249

took the stick and went out. The stick changed itself into an elf. The man dropped the stick and ran away. The elf chased the man to try to eat him but he was sorry for he could not". It may be noted that creatures like elves, bad fairies, seven dwarfs and micky mouse are originally all bad images, products of the terrorised libido of the child. They have been rendered innocuous and made pleasure'able t@ the ego by a process of "humourisation" achieved by the same sort of mechanisms as are used in the production of wit and humour. In this story the girl starts with sadism with a bad image. This identification when no longer tolerable is given up and she seeks comfort in another identification as a phallus so as to seek her love union with the father. But on account of anxiety sadism again breaks out and she reverts to her original image. Masochistic note is sounded by her failure to eat up the man. This case illustrates the fluctuation between sadism and masochism. In this connection I may mention a story bearing on oral sadism which all the children to whom I narrated enjoyed very much. It is about a pan cake that escaped from the frying pan when seven little hungry boys were eager to eat it up. The pan cake dodged the boys, ran at its maximum speed, eluded in turn the duck, the goat, the fox and the wolf who all directed their oral desire on it. At last it met a clever pig who promised to take it across the river. The pig gave it a lift on his nose but in a very short while the pan cake was swallowed in. The pan cake, as has been pointed out by Jones is a symbol for the mother. The pig, the cat, and the rat, as is familiar to you, are among the favourite symbols with children. (10) A case of identification of the object of aggression with the instrument of aggression has been provided by the following instance : During the period of the civic disturbances in Calcutta, while > discussing the situation with the brothers B. S. and D (who belong to a Hindu family) all of a sudden they said that they had a Musalman in their house. Expressing my surprise, I said, "How is it possible ? This is a strictly Hindu locality and you cannot have a Mus'alman in your house". They reiterated, "Oh yes, we- have a big Musalman in our house". On my retorting that I d i d not beleve it, they said, "we have him and we will show you". They ran in and came out with a big crow-

Vol.3, No. 4]
250 EXPRESSIONS OF SADISM AND MASOCHISM IN CHILDREN [SAMIKSA

H. P. MEHTA

251

bar about five to six feet long made pointed at one end to serve as a spear as a weapon of defence. This identification of the destructive penis with the enemy shows how one's own sadism is. displaced on to the object world, by the mechanism of projection. Herein lies, it seems to me, a clue to the understanding of the hostile feelings directed to the members of the other group. Members of the hostile group are believed to possess dangerous phallus. This identification with the phallus leads to the identification with the whole person and thence with the whole group. The danger breeds a sense of "The ideas of untouchability directed to the foreign groups also arise in the same way, because their phalluses are considered to be so dirty and hence so dangerous that touch or sqcial intercourse with them becomes a taboo. F.oreignness which when accentuated turns into hatred and hostility". (ll) c The same idea of the association of the dangerous phallus with the enemy is implied in the following expression of Boy N, age 10 years. During a geography lesson, he asked me why in one atlas Burma was included in India and why in the other it was not included. I explained to him that in the year 1935 Burma was separated from India. I used the word "cut-off" while explaining. Somehow or the< other the phrase "cut-off" struck his castration phantasy and the idea 6f Burma being cut oft from India appealed to him very much. For several days afterwards, I should say weeks, he kept on expressing his sadistic glee at Burma being cut off. It was just like a foreign appendage cut off from the good mother. Along with his glee at the cutting off of Burma he also expressed his hatred for the British Government, for he was a thorough-going nationalist and his satisfaction at the events which indicated that the British-Government would soon relinquish their hold on India completed his phantasy. . . . . This expression shows how castration signifies victory over the , enemy. We have already noticed that in untouchability contact with the foreign group is avoided because of the dangerous phallus that the ' members of the group are believed to possess. We have the converse of this in the belief that the phallus which is highly eroticized or libidinized and stands for the mother as rallying focus of the group should not be allowed to go into the hands of the foreign group(J2); During tHe history lesson we happenedto talk about the

current political events in India and on my mentioning Pakistan, boy M asked what was meant by it. I supplied him with the necessary explanation. I told him which provinces are claimed for in Pakistan. When I included Bengal, he asked me whether Calcutta would also go into Pakistan.-, I had to say yes. He listened quietly. Then with very thoughtful and rather, anxious look he asked "Will Gangaji also go into Pakistan?". Hemeintthe river Hooghly. I said "Yes". He at once retorted, "Ye bat kabi nahi ho sakta. Gangaji kesa Musalman ka Jnath me ja sakata ?" (this is preposterous; how can river Ganges go into the hands of Musalmans ?") Sadism when not attended with guilt is not followed by masochism but by humourised sadism of a milder degree- This "humourising" consists in converting the dangerous objects into symbols like rat, mickey-mouse or elf. ( 13 ) Girl K, age 6 years, was giving her opinion about her tv^o elder sisters. For her elder sister F,"age 9 years, she gave vent to many of her grievances against her, but about the eldest sister A, ^age 15 years, she said, "Sometimes I like her. sometimes I don't. She is not very good but quite nice. When I don't like her, when I am angry on her she is in the river. When I like her she is just a mouse." Throwing in the river may be considered as a form of urethral aggression. ' The following expression provides a urethral phantasy . which may convey neither complete sadism or complete masochism. I shall quote in the words of Boy S, age 7 years. (14 ) "Three men were standing off for a swim and from those three men one was a babyand baby fell downand another man came to save the baby and he fell downand police man was standing on the' : road, and he came to save all of them and he fell downand then no-body can save anybody." The symbol of police man is often used by children as well as adults for masochistic purposes but in this example sadistic phatasy is so great that even the police-man is unabie to save the situation. Sadism, has been associated with activity and masochism with ^ passivity. But the observation of certain data leads me to think that aggression can also be passive. T refer to what is known as sadistic introjection. Such sadism is indicated in a violent enclosure of the object within the phallus. (15) Boy K. K , age 7 years, reported to me a story told by his own mother, of how Sadhus (the saintly hermits of

252

EXPRESSION OF SADISM AND MASOCHISM IN CHILDREN [SAMIKS.A

Vol. 3, No. 4]

H. P. MEHTA

253

India) kidnap little children. The Sadhus carry lemons with' them . and. invite the little boy to partake of one of them. When the boy would approach him to take the lemon, he would seize him and trap him in his basket. . Since this story was told to the boy by his mother, it expresses the: mother's own sadism taking this form of introjection. It may be mentioned that oral sadism is very much linked with sadistic introjection. We have humourous instances of how children are threatened with the punishment of being shut up in a dark room. In the ^incident of the Black Hole of Calcutta, if it be true, Siraj-ud-dowlah wanted to practice the same type of sadism. . The stories of elderly children particularly of girls on the threshold of puberty reveal a regular drama of sadism and masochism in which even the delusions of poisoning are brought in. (16) Here is a story by girl M, age 10 years, reproduced in her own words : "Cheng was a little Chinese girl. Her brother was .Choung. They were twins. Their mother was dead,and their father, had married again. And they had a very cruel step mother. So one day. Choung said to Cheng, 'Come we will go somewhere.' . So they walked along, dusty roads. Once or twice they stopped at a well to drink water and eat bread and butter, sandwiches, cakes and Chinese chop'Sticks.. Then they came to a cottage and an old woman came .out and invited them in. They went in and ate bread and butter and some porridge, and, milkand the old woman saw they were Chinese. And she found out they came to her house and took her wand, for indeed she was a , .wicked fairy. And she saw the star of -the wand . sticking out of his pocket. So she did notsay she wanted it, but gave them poison to drink and the little children that they were they drank it. And died. The old fairy then, threw them out. A.nd a beautiful fairy came and carried them to their Mother in the glorious world above." .. The story begins with clear sadism against mother and ends with a masochistic return to her. The dead mother or the. killed- mother returns in the form of the step, mother and then as the wicked fairy. Little girls and also boys with strong feminine desires have a great quarrel with their mother on the point of father's penis, which she- has= hidden in her body and which theymake supreme efforts to wrest from her. The sticking out'of thjS Star of the wand from the-pocket pf.

Choung was a great success but soon was followed by urethral masochism in the form of being poisoned. The expressions of sadism and masochism in children take such diverse forms and patterns as to preclude from drawing conclusions of a broad and general nature. Their correct interpretation depends upon the understanding of the symbols they use and the various identification roles which they play. Children do not give free-associative material in corroboration of their phantasies as do aduks in analysis, but their spontaneous expressions at tiroes lead us to the heart of the problem. Tbe various me'chanisms underlying sadism and masochism as described by psycho-analysts from Freud downwards are observed to operate, in the expressions reported in this paper. I would only like to stress the significance of passivity and introjection not only in masochism but also in sadism ; and conclude with the remark that both love and hate seek their highest expression in the petfect union of subject and object a union complete and thoroughmolecule to molecule and atom to atom. , .
Read before the Indian Psycho-analytical Society, December 12, 1946.

Vol. 3, No. 4J

MELITTA SCHMIDEBERG

255

'ERROR" AND "PROOF" IN ANALYTIC CONCLUSIONS

MELITTA SCHMIDEBERG

The world's original reception of psychoanalysis was'a hostile one. Thirty years ago analysts could be sure of meeting wiA adverse criticism : this situation prompted them to exercise great care in testing and presenting their material. As a result of this initial atmosphere the fundamental conceptions of analysis, the unconscious, the meaning of dreams and errors, infantile sexuality, repression, etc. were thoroughly examined and convincingly established. Gradually as the reaction of thte outside world became more friendly, analysts began to feel free to dispense with the tedious task of trying to persuade a sceptical public and instead devoted their energies to scientific research. However this improved situation led to a relaxation in the standards of presenting case material and to neglecting a necessary caution when putting forward new theoriesConclusions were often drawn from insufficient evidence and objections to these unproven assumptions were too readily dismissed as "resistance". * * In recent years a novel situation has arisen, characterised by serious disagreement among analysts themselves. 1 These differences of opinion should not be minimised or glossed over, but should encourage u* to reexamine our premises and methods of observation. If two analysts reach vastly different conclusions from similar clinical material, then surely the time has come to examine more closely fa) our methods of observation, (b) the methods used to draw conclusions from our material, (c) the terminology we employ. If this reexamination leads to a more searching scrutiny of our scientific premises and to the
(1). I have been stimulated to write this paper by the divergencies mentioned above but the implications are relevant for all trends in analytic circles, and divergencies are1 of course not restricted to England only. See for a brief survey of the various trends in the British Psychoanalytic Society : Glover : An Investigation of the Technique of Psycho-Analysis, 1940.

elimination of some sources of error in our observations and conclusions, then the present divergencies will have rendered a great service to the science of psychoanalysis. Analytic assumptions and discoveries vary considerably in their nature and so in the extent to which they are capable of proof. They may relate to : I. Tke cgnscious. contents of the mind, (thoughts, feelings, conduct, etc.) which have been overlooked by non-analytic observers, e- g. infantile sexuality or the child's feeling of hatred towards a younger baby. II. Unconscious contents of the mind. The unconscious comprises the id, the unconscious part of the ego and the unconscious patt of the super-ego. 1 The unconscious portions of the ego and of the super-ego contain repressed environmental experiences and influences, (identifications, etc.) as well as derivatives of the instinct {id). For the purposes of this discussion the unconscious contents of the mind may be ^subdivided into (a) experiences, attitudes, observations, identifications, etc. which have at one time or another been conscious, and have been repressed in the course of development. (b) Symbols. 0 (c) Primitive impulses, fantasies, and affects which are as a rule not accessible "to consciousness and which the patient is likely to repudiate when his attention is first called to them. We deduce their existence mainly from their derivatives as manifested in dreams, neurotic symptoms, daydreams, etc. (d) Defence mechanisms (repression, projection, etc.) which serve the purpose of keeping these primitive impulses away from consciousness and which as a rule are themselves unconscious.^ (III). Analytic theories. Some theories are built in the main on a direct foundation of clinical observations, with arguments and conclusions reduced to a minimum (e- g. the theory of infantile sexual development, or that of the mechanism of symptom formation); others (such as theory of instincts) involve a greater measure of abstract speculations ; others again (e. g. the concepts of mental energy, libido or the death instinct)
(1). Freud: The Ego and the Id.

(2). The analyst is concerned only with the unconscious in the dynamic sense, and not with phenomena ( such as reflex actions, automatic actions, etc. ) popularly called "unconscious", in the sense that the subject is not aware of them. .

256

"ERROR" AND. "PROOF" IN ANALYTIC CONCLUSIONS

[SAM1KSA

Vol. 3, No. 41

MELITTA SCHMIDEBERG

257

are mainly speculative and largely borrowed from other sciences or aspects of life. The farther a theory is removed from concrete empirical observations and the more it is based on hypothetical constructions, the more it is likely to be subject to error. On the other hand, if such a theory were ever refuted, this would scarcely affect the empirical observations which it is supposed to explain. Although we are in the habit of claiming that such abstract theories are fundamental and that they explain the clinical data (e. g. that the theory of instincts enables us to comprehend sexual development), yet actually they only constitute a superstructure which can be removed without greatly influencing our conception of the basic facts. Thus for instance if we abandoned the theory of a "death instinct" (as distinct from the clinical observations concerning the significance of aggression) or of a primary "repetition compulsion" it would hardly affect any other aspecf^ of analytic theory or practice. How can our assumptions" concerning conscious or unconscious material be proved ? ' I. The assumptions we make concerning conduct or manifestations of affect can easily be substantiated, at any rate in principle. Differences of opinion on such questions as to whether or not the infant displays anxiety or guilt at a very early ageas most English analysts assert should be easy to solve on purely empirical grounds. Any conclusion at which an analyst arrives on the basis of his "analytic material" concerning his patient's bahavjor can easily be confirmed or disproved by anybody sufficiently familiar with him. Admittedly it is often difficult to obtain satisfactory confirmation of the'patient's behavior or experiences in the distant past (his childhood) if he himself has forgotten such incidents and we cannot trace any witnesses, or if his or their evidence seems unreliable. However, if owing to practical difficulties we are unable to substantiate our "constructions" in an individual case, we are bound to obtain "extra analytic confirmation" (Walder) provided the behavior or experience which we assume is typical. Thus, for instance, Freud first discovered the existence of infantile masturbation, in the analysis of his adult patients, and it has since been corroborated by direct observations of children. . The analyst focusses attention on certain facts of bahavior, on aspects of childhood development, or on the symptomatology of the neuroses and preversions which have been overlooked by non-analytic

observers. Once these have been pointed out, they can easily be checked by any unbiassed person. We must insist however that such control observations should fulfil certain conditions. There are, for instance, psychologists who claim that they have not been able to observe any manifestation of sexuality in children ; but if we consider the atmosphere they create, we shall not be surprised. Nor can we expect an adult to confide to us his secret habits or difficulties unless and until we succeed in gaming his confidence. Thus, we can accept the results of extra-analytic observations purporting to confirm or disprove analytic findings only 1 if they have been made in a sufficient number of cases, and under conditions of confidence and freedom from direct or indirect forms of interference, removed from moral or theoretical bias, preferably by persons who have neither the ambition to educate or to reform. In theory it should be possible to observe, without calling analysis in aid, all the conscious thoughts*and feelings which the patient confides to the analyst, and in fact many such observations have been made by poets and writers. However, it is as a rule difficult to find, outside analysis that confident relation which alone enables people to express their secret thoughts and guilty feelings. Moreover, much that has become conscious in the course of analysis was earlier repressed, and may even be once more "forgotten". The task of the analyst is to counteract the power oAhe defence mechanisms by systematic and persistent' interpretations. Without these, much that has been or might become conscious, vanishes in the recesses of the mind. II. (a) Unconscious contents, which at some time in the past have been conscious fobservations, experiences, aspects of behavior) and havesiace been repressed, can readily be substantiated by "extra-analytic" observations, at any rate in principle. Cases in which repressed memories discovered during analysis (or hyponosis) are confirmed e g. by a diary kept by the patient's parents impressively demonstrate the correctness of our claims ; however, in practice such ideal proof is only rarely forthcoming. The existence of unconscious contents can also be demonstrated in hypnosis by suggesting to the patient that he should perform certain actions, then telling him to forget them, and at a later hypnotic session making him remember his forgotten conduct.
(1). These same safeguards must be applied in examining such questions e. g. the incidents of neurotic symptoms in early infancy, the nature and importance of oral manifestations, etc. . .

258

"ERROR" AND "PROOF" IN ANALYTIC CONCLUSIONS

[SAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4J

MELTTTA SCHMIDEBERG

259

(b) Symbolism can be studied in dreams, children's play, symptomformation, folklore, etc. and may also be demonstrated experimentally. Schrotter and RofFenstein 1 ordered patients to dream of specific sexual situations in a distorted form: The dreams which resulted contained symbolic representations of the sexual activities in question. Bettlheim arid Hartmatin2 made patients suffering from "Korsakoff's Disease" learn vulgar stories by heart. When the patients were asked to repeat the stories they produced a modified version, expressed in symbolic terms. (c) It is very much more difficult to prove or disprove assumptions concerning the id (with the exception of the repressed and of symbolism). As I have tried to show, onlv those contents which are capable of being expressed in words or conduct can be observed directly, and thus be confirmed by "extra-analytic" evidence. 3 Certain id impulses emerge to a varying extent in dreams, free associations, children'-'s play, psycholic delusions, folklore, etc. However partly because the id is not sufficiently organised, partly because the ego resists the passage of unconscious material into conciousness,most of its contents cannot become conscious without the help of interpretation. We regard the Oedipus complex, rightly I believe, as the best proved of all analytic findings, one which can be demonstrated in every individual case. Yet one should bear fn mind that it can never be observed directly or completely, otherwise there would . have been no need to discover it by laborious research work. What can be directly observed are certain isolated aspects or derivatives e. g. t the little boy's wish to be fondled by his mother or taken into her bed; his masturbation; his jealousy or hostility towards his rival. He may even go so far as to express death wishes against his father, but then either their seriousness is concealed, or else they are sanctioned by some act of injustice on the part of the father. Normally he remains unaware of the intensity of his hatred, or of its connection with his sexual feelings, or of his desire to have intercourse with his mother.
(1). Zentralblatt f. (2). Op. cit. Psychoanalyse. I I . 1912

Such confirmation may impress laymen who view analytic methods with suspicion. They possess comparatively little value for the analyst as they afford no indication whether the interpretation in question is relevant at the given moment and they rarely convince the patient unless they happen to hear particular problems which preoccupy him at the moment.

The greater part of the aggression and sexual desire is repressed or dealt with by projection, reaction formation, sublimation, isolation or displacement, etc. If this were not so, analysis would neither be needed nor possible. The Oedipus complex is, only partly conscious in the child, and even its most comprehensive example in literature is remarkably incomplete. According to Sopocles, it was fate, an unfortunate combination of circumstances, and not sexual desire, which caused Oedipussto slay his father and wed his mother. He committed these crimes in ignorance of the true situation, i. e. the element of the "Oedipus complex" connected with greatest guijt has been eliminated. What justification have we then for assuming the existence of the Oedipus complex in its complete form 1 (1) Comparative material; Invery individual certain aspects of the Oedipus complex become manifest, usually different ones. By collecting these open manifestations as revealed in neurotic and psychotic patients, in folklore, works of art and the behavior of children, we are able to piece together a fair^ com-ptete picture. (2) This 1 needs to be supplemented by preconscious -derivatives, expressed in free associations, dreams^ memories, play,-etc. - (e.g. the memory of how happy he was when as a boy his father was away because then he could sit in the armchair and be spoilt by mother.) (3) By distorted derivatives, that is to say, by instinctual manifestations distorted by the various defence mechanisms, such as projection, isolation, reaction formation, (e.g. a fear of being attacked by a fathersubstitute or undue worry of his father dying). (4) By the symbolic expression of Oedipus, wishesin dreams, symptoms, superstition, etc. However, none of these derivatives disclose their full meaning with .an interpretation ; they are therefore for the most part unconvincing outside analytical circles. (5) W e regard it as further proof of our assumption that interpretations of the Oedipus complex achieve therapeutic results and that the hypothesis provides a key to the understanding of otherwise inexplicable' phenomena e.g. dreams or symptoms. To sum up : Although "we can muster a rnumber of isolated manifestations of the Oedipus complex and a greater number of its direct preconscious or symbolic derivatives, these would seldom be quite convincing unless supplemented by the distorted derivatives. This condensation applies equally to manifestation of "pregenital" impulses. It is not enough to consideras Walder-does ithe more
(1), OPt.

260

"ERROR" AND "PROOF":'I:NLrANALYTIC CONCLUSIONS ; [SAMIKSA

Vol. 3, No. 4]

MELITTA SCHMIDEBERG

261

obvious oral impulses of the baby. These need'to be supplemented by .observations of oral fantasies and anxieties, distorted .derivatives as .manifested 'in play, dreams,sublimations, and neurotic symptoms ;-.;by .asserting their importance for later inhibitions, neuroses and character formation, and by evidence drawn from anthropological material. .Certain, aspects of every set of unconscious impulses or fantasies { ''complex" ) can be directly observed in certain individuals. This "applies even to such "deep" contents" as fanta4gs or; anxieties -concerning ' "introjected objects": 1 After all, our knowledge of the unconscious material, is derived from the collection of isolated open instinctual manifestations in numerous individuals, supplemented by what-we believe: to be distorted or negative derivatives of these impulses in these or other persons. . The fact that we can observe the tone or other-aspect of certain complexes in some people does not justify us, however, to expect to find every complex in all its aspects .manifest in evety individual* ' As I pointed out earlier, "resistance/' by which we mean the operation of the various mechanisms of defence (and perhaps an insufEcient organisation of the id), prevents the unconscious from becoming conscious beyond certain limits. The "free associations" of the patient will converge towards certain unconscious complexessome of them will be nearer to consciousness than othersbut will npt proceed"beyond a certain* point, unless his resistance is overcome by interpretations. The function of interpretation is to substitute the missing link in the patient's associations ; these are a sine qua non of analytic technique and provide
Walder (op. cit.) asks, why the open oral manifestations of babies vary in form and intensity. Such differences are, no doubt, determined to some extent by the environmental setting and also constitutionally. Apart from this, the intensity of any manifest impulse depends largely on whether it . has been increased regressively or by fixation, or whether on the contrary it has been decreased by "progressive" displacement, on the degree in which it has been repressed or dealt with by other defence mechanisms; on whether stimulation, frustration or gratification have accentuated or weakened it, etc. (1) Such ideas are often openly expressed by psychotics ,and sometimes also by others; They can occasionally be observed directly in dreams or in children's play, as well as in folklore. rhave collected some anthropologi. , ' cal material illustrating these contents in .my paper "On Psychotic Mechanisms in Cultural Development". Int. Journ. of P. A: 1930. Many other examples can be found in Frazer's "Thf G?? den Bough", etc. ^. . . . . . . . . . '
;

the chief means of approach to the unconscious. Nor would it be possible to reap the full benefit of behavioristic or anthropological researches, or assess their full ineatiiog without the help of interpretation. Thus, the touchstone of most analytic assumptions is the
corr_ectness\bf our:interpretatidns2::i::":. '...: ; ' .':.-' : . ; -

'

Analytic - material resembles a number of equations , with at le.ast two unknown factors. X' corresponds to the unconscious impulses and -lahtasffisrY:;ft#the;defence- mechanisms;v The: two are interdependent. We cannot-prove the existence of "unconscious contents without assu-ming'that-of defencemechanisms and -vice versa: The most convincing - examples of analytic interpretation" concern thoste symptoms , or manifestations which express only (or mainly) a single instinctual complex and a single defence mechanism. In the beginning of psychoanalysis, when ^interest was centred on hysteria, it was1 taken for granted that a cortect interpretation would account for all relevant problems and cause the symptom to disappear,it was like inserting the value of X solved the : the equation. Since then we have learned that most symptoms are determined by more than one factor (i. e. we are often in the difficult situation of having to solve an equation with more than one unknown factor and of ^.ot knowing even the number of such factors). Also immediate" therapeutic results are the rare exception and are open to the suspicion of having been achieved by inexact interpretation."!. Thus we arrive to the disappointing conclusion that we can never prove the correctness of an interpretation with absolute certainty. We can only make it more or less convincing, and it is often difficult to establish its falseness. ......... < ^ It is easier to substantiate certain unconscious contents in general than their activities in a certain individual at a given moment. We tend to believe that every type of impulse and- defence mechanism is present to some extent in the human mind. The relevant question is whether a specific process is operative, and to what degree at a given moment.
(1). Glover: .The,Therapeutic Effect of Inexact Interpretation. Int. Journ. of P. A. 1931. XII. ....;"

ABSTRACTS Some Mechanisms of ParanoiaNathaniel Thornton ( The Psycho-analytic Review, Vol. 35, N o . 3, 1948 )
The author discusses the different points of view o^ the aetiology of paranoia. He says that the Freudian concept of repressed homosexuality as a causative factor in paranoia has but a limited applicability. Schopenhauer tried to, explain psychosis in terms of the individual's effort to shut out from his consciousness some painful piece of reality. Bleuler once attempted to explain neurosis as representing ? a sort of escape or compensation for persons who had failed to make an adjustment or to realise their ambitions in a more normal and a more salutary path. The author argues that the above views might equally apply with regard to the aetiology of paranoia. By means of delusion formation the paranoiac spares himself the painful realisation of his failures or short-comings. He refers to Adler who tries to explain paranoia as the individual's attempt to keep out of consciousness a sense of inadequacy or inferiority. Freud states that the difference between a schizophrenic and a paranoiac is that the latter makes use of projection as an attempt at recovery, whereas the former utilizes a halucinatory mechanism for the same purpose. He also suggests that the prognosis in schizophrenia is on the whole more unfavourable than in paranoia. The author accepts Freud's first statement but points out that his other statement cannot be corroborated with recent findings specially with shock treatment which is. successfully employed in cases of schizophrenia but not so in cases of paranoia. The author says that in paranoia the precipitating cause is more potent than the predisposing cause. In the absence of the former e. g. disappointment, humiliation or other traumas, the latter would remain latent throughout the person's life. The author considers that paranoia is an affective type of disorder as stated by Freud and Bleuler and not a mental type as described by ordinary psychiatrists and text-book writers. A. Datta