NOTES ON RECENT PERIODICALS.

Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, Part 1, 1923.

Prof. Freud contributes notes on the theory and practice of dream-interpretation. He touches on the technical question of how to set about collecting the dreamer's free associations in analysing a dream. The various elements in the dream may be taken according to their actual sequence, or some striking feature may be picked out and the dreamer required to give his associations to it, or he may be questioned about the events of the previous day which occur to him in connection with the dream, or, if he has some acquaintance with the technique, he may begin his associations at any point he likes.

The degree of resistance encountered in analysing a dream is of great importance. When the resistance is very strong, the analyst has to content himself with suggesting some symbolic interpretations. When it is less, the associations usually diverge widely from the manifest elements, only to converge again on the latent thoughts.

Freud distinguishes between dreams from above and dreams from below. The latter are due to the force of a repressed wish which seeks to break through from the Unconscious; the former, though reinforced by unconscious material, are rather of the nature of waking thoughts or purposes. In the latter case analysis generally aims at bringing the latent thoughts into line with those of waking life without paying attention to the unconscious factor.

In some analyses there is at times a curious cleavage between waking and dream thoughts, so that the dreams form a kind of continued story analogous to the workings of phantasy.

In interpreting dreams it must be remembered that they have first of all to be translated and judgment must be suspended till this is done. It is, says Freud, like reading a chapter of Livy: we must first find out what he relates, before we consider whether the narrative is historical or legendary. The analyst is warned against a "too great respect for the 'mysterious Unconscious,' for the dream is a thought like any other, but reinforced from the Unconscious and subject to the dream-work which, as we know, includes distortion and secondary elaboration.

Freud mentions the so-called 'recovery dream,' which may indicate a hopeful adjustment on the part of the patient, but may be simply a convenience dream' expressing his desire to escape the painful analytic work.

When a conflict between ambivalent feelings is going on in the patient's mind, it is rash to jump to a conclusion from a single dream, or the dreams of a single night, as to the victory of one feeling or the other. Only by taking into consideration the whole situation, including the waking thoughts, can we guess how the battle is going.

Freud discusses the question: how far are dreams influenced by the 'suggestion' of the physician? This is a point frequently raised by sceptics in order to cast doubt on the results of analysis. As regards the manifest content it is obvious that, since the treatment belongs to the impressions of waking life and since these give rise to dreams, the dream is influenced by the analytic treatment. The latent thoughts also are susceptible to influence in so far as they consist of preconscious material which may contain the patient's reaction to the analyst's suggestions. The mechanism of dream-formation is however inaccessible to external influence and with regard to the unconscious wishes (which combine with the preconscious thoughts in the latent content) analytic experience shows that they cannot be suggested by the analyst. It may happen that in an analysis dreams which have reference to past situations in the dreamer's life appear only after certain analytic constructions have been put upon his symptoms and associations. Such dreams seem to confirm these constructions, but it is objected that, even when the patient believes that he is recalling actual experiences, he may be mistaken and they may have been suggested to him. It is

true that recollections carrying conviction are generally lacking, for that which is repressed comes only gradually into consciousness and moreover we may be dealing not with actual facts but with unconscious phantasies. Yet Freud's experience has led him to believe that these 'confirmatory' dreams are not produced simply by suggestions made in the analysis. The analysis is like a picture puzzle in which different pieces have to be fitted together and both patient and analyst have to wait and see how the constructions or recollections, taken together, yield the solution of the whole complicated problem. Moreover, patients may recollect dreams dating from before the analysis which lead to the same results as the dreams during treatment. It is however likely that repressed material comes to light more plainly in dreams in the course of analysis. In order to explain this we must look for some unconscious force which serves the purpose of the treatment. This force Freud believes to belong to the parent complex: the patient's docile attitude towards the parents is repeated in the transference. Freud has never disputed the part played in the transference by 'suggestion' in this sense and it in no way invalidates his conclusions.

Dreams which occur in traumatic neuroses and repeat the traumatic situation are probably the only exception to the rule that the dream is a wish-fulfilment. 'Punishment' dreams seem to be an exception but a closer scrutiny shows that they are a reaction against the latent thoughts and are due to an intervention of the censorship. This is really an extension of the familiar process by which a single element in the latent thoughts is represented in the manifest content by its exact opposite.

In his final note Freud touches on the fact that the ego can appear in more than one figure in a dream. This is due to the secondary elaboration and is an attempt to represent the many sides of the dreamer's personality. Freud does not, however, believe that every person in the dream represents some aspect of the ego.

In a paper on "The genesis of the castration complex in women," Frau Dr Horney, writing from her own experience in the analysis of women patients in whose neuroses this complex was prominent, seeks to penetrate to its true origin. Much has already been written upon the forms in which the castration complex manifests itself in women and it has been traced to the little girl's envy of the penis. Dr Horney thinks that, though this explanation may seem obvious to male narcissism, it is unsatisfactory both from the point of view of female narcissism and of biological thought that half the members of the human race should be dissatisfied with their sex. She admits that the forms in which the complex manifests itself are largely conditioned by the envy of the penis, but she does not see in it the alpha and omega of the complex. In the first part of the paper she discusses the reasons for such envy and shows that the little girl is in reality at a disadvantage with the boy in the gratification of certain instinct-components of great significance in the pregenital phase of the libido. That is to say, the little girl's envy of the penis is connected with the desire to urinate 'like a man' and that she is debarred from gratifying her urethral erotism, her active and passive observation impulses and her wish to manipulate her genital organs, in ways which are open to the boy.

Dr Horney then passes to the second part of her paper and tries to penetrate beyond the envy of the penis to a deeper motivation of the castration complex. The results of her analysis of certain female patients have led her to conclude that the question of the pathogenic effect of the penis-envy complex is intimately bound up with the Oedipus complex.

The little girl passes from her auto-erotic narcissistic desires by taking the father as her love-object and identifying herself with the mother. The desire for the penis is then transformed into the womanly desire for the man ( = the father) and for the child (from the father). In the cases Dr Horney has in mind the attachment to the father was so intense that the incestuous phantasy had all the force of reality. The inevitable disappointment left deep traces in the neurosis, amongst them a disturbance in the sense of reality resulting in doubts (e.g. of the reality of other love-relations). Moreover, feelings of guilt proved to be really reproaches against the father, turned against the subject, as well as being due to hostile impulses against the mother. The desire for the child was of the greatest significance and was related to the penis-envy complex in two ways: (a) the maternal instinct received unconscious reinforcement from the auto-erotic desire for the penis; and (b) after the disappointment with the

father there was regression to the old desire which in its turn was reinforced by the womanly wish for the child.

The father was then abandoned as love-object and, in accordance with the Freudian mechanism, the object-relation gave place regressively to identification.

In this identification with the father, accompanied by regression to a pregenital phase, Dr Horney sees one root of the castration complex in women.

Now Freud has shown that identification with the father is a basis of manifest homosexuality in women. In the cases under discussion Dr Horney concludes that the love-relation was not wholly repressed nor the identification complete. The patients did, however, without exception, show a tendency to homosexuality.

The second root of the female castration complex the writer holds to be the phantasy of having been castrated through the love-relation to the father. The patients felt that they were not normal, or had sustained some injury, in the genital region. Their phantasy of intercourse with the father caused them to attribute to him this injury. Here we have an intimate connection between castration-phantasy and repressed womanliness, a connection which seems to account more satisfactorily than does the simple penis-envy for revengeful feelings against men. Freud has shown how defloration may arouse such feelings. It would appear that in the act of defloration the unconscious sees the repetition of the phantasied intercourse with the father and the affects which belong to the latter situation are repeated.

Moreover, feelings of guilt attach themselves more easily to the idea of castration through an incestuous act with the father than to the envy of the penis.

Dr Horney concludes that just as the male neurotic whose fear of castration conceals the desire to be castrated (to lay aside the masculine rôle) identifies himself with the mother, so the female neurotic, who suffers from the castration-complex has identified herself with the father.

In the introduction to his article on "Anal Character" (Ergänzungen zur Lehre vom Analcharakter) Dr Karl Abraham refers to the work of Freud, Ferenczi, Jones and Sadger on the subject of anal erotism. In Freud's view the obsessional neurosis originates in a regression of libido to a pregenital phase of organisation in which the anal and the sadistic component instincts are prominent. Abraham hopes at some later date to throw light on the problem of the connection between sadism and anal erotism. In this paper he deals not so much with the symptoms which originate in repressed anal erotism as with certain typical ‘anal' character-traits. Freud, in his first description, specified three such traits: self-will, a tendency to economy and a love of order, qualities which in their exaggerated forms appear as obstinacy, miserliness and pedantry.

Abraham describes some of the ways in which these characteristics manifest themselves in neurotic persons and relates them to infantile tendencies and experiences connected with the function of excretion. When a child is trained to habits of cleanliness, compelled, that is, to renounce his gratification in the products of excretion and his self-will with regard to the process, his narcissism sustains a blow but in general he is able to conform to the training through object-love, his desire to please his mother or nurse. If this training is forced upon him too early, the libido may undergo narcissistic fixation and the capacity for object-love suffers. This is the explanation of a type of character in which, underlying a marked outward docility and correctness, there are rebellious impulses and obstinacy. The conscious resignation and selfsacrifice of such persons conflicts with unconscious impulses of revenge.

It must be remembered that the infantile narcissistic feelings are clearly bound up with the excretory function. Abraham states that, just as the child in one stage believes in the omnipotence of his wishes, so at a still earlier stage he sees in his excretions the expression of his omnipotence. Hence the significance of the early training in cleanliness for his psycho-sexual development. In certain patients nervous constipation is accompanied by feelings of impotence. Here the libido has been displaced from the genital to the anal zone. Closely connected with this primitive feeling of omnipotence is the pride characteristic of certain neurotics in their own supposedly unique powers and possessions.

Self-will which has its origin in anal erotism may appear as a dislike of any kind of interference, an unwillingness to conform to the systems of others, combined with a strong desire to make rules and systems for oneself, or as a reluctance to yield to

the requests of others, a tendency to dole out necessary payments in small instalments, etc. (cf. the behaviour of the child who resists defecation). Such obstinacy may, however, develop into the useful quality of perseverance,

The writer passes to the discussion of the opposite type which, he says, has received much less attention. Persons of this type lack all initiative and demand that their difficulties shall be smoothed from their path. When undergoing analytic treatment they wish the analyst to do all the work for them; the obstinate patient, on the other hand, wants to go his own way and refuses to give his free associations. Abraham's experience has led him to believe that the patients thus lacking in initiative resisted defecation in childhood and were then helped over the difficulty by means of medicines and enemas.

Where there is regression in males from the genital to the anal-sadistic phase there is invariably a diminution of productive activity in every sense, not merely in that of physical reproduction. Moreover, the sadistic component which, properly sublimated, plays so valuable a part in the man's attitude to his love-objects and the interests of life, is as it were paralysed by the ambivalent conflict in his instinctive life. The result may be an excess of complaisance which is a reaction to hostile impulses and must not be confounded with true object-love.

Another characteristic of diminished productive activity is procrastination, sometimes combined with the tendency to break off every undertaking as soon as it is begun, and sometimes with an inability to leave off when once a beginning is made. Abraham draws the parallel to the infantile pleasure in retention on the one hand and in excretion on the other.

In proportion as productive activity is diminished the interest in having is increased. This is seen in the attitude towards money, an attitude which may easily pass into avarice. This aspect of the ‘anal' character may manifest itself in many ways: sometimes in a passion for collecting, or for hoarding rubbish or in a horror of wasting time. Or there may be the opposite trait of prodigality in expenditure, which is equivalent to a pouring-out of dammed-up libido. In jealousy, too, there is an anal as well as a sadistic root, but Abraham believes that these are secondary and that the primary root may be found in the earlier, oral, phase of the libido development.

Another anal' characteristic is a love of order and cleanliness, of exactitude and symmetry. In some neurotics a surface cleanliness is combined with concealed untidiness or dirt. Abraham says that to the Unconscious of these persons an untidy drawer represents the intestine packed with faeces, an allusion he has frequently met with in the analysis of dreams.

He has noticed certain facial peculiarities which he believes to be typical in some cases of the 'anal' character. It is, he says, as though these people were continually smelling something and he traces this peculiarity to the primitive coprophiliac pleasure in smelling.

In conclusion Abraham states his conviction that a thorough investigation of the pregenital phases of libido development is necessary for the understanding of the manic-depressive states.

Amongst the shorter communications is a paper by Dr Stefan Hollós on traces of psychoanalytic thought in psychiatry previous to the work of Freud. He quotes from various writings, nearly all of the 19th century, in which certain psychoanalytic doctrines are as it were foreshadowed. The connection between insanity and sexual love was, he says, early recognised and the ideas of repressed gratification leading to mental pain (anxiety), of infantile curiosity returning later in obsessional questionings, of the analogy between neurotics and primitive people all these are touched upon by different writers. It is in a work of Ludwig Meyer in 1889 (Über Inventionspsychosen) that there is the fullest approach to the analytic mode of thought, when he writes about phobias, symbolic actions, perversions and unconscious impulses which force their way into consciousness.

Dr Emil Simonson contributes a paper on Schleich's psychophysics and Freud's Metapsychology, and there are various short communications from analytic practice. Several of these have to do with the eye as a genital symbol and blindness as standing for castration.

The journal contains many reviews of German and English psychoanalytic works. CECIL BAINES.

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY W. LEWIS AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS