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characteristically narcissistic over-estimation of their child's virtues and overlooking of his defects, in their desire to spare their child all the necessary hardships of life, in their ambition that the child should fulfil their own unsatisfied ideals, once more renew in this way their own long lost narcissism.

Freud then develops the theme of the evolution of narcissism in the individual, and the disturbances to which it is exposed in the course of growth. It rapidly gets restricted through the agency of many factors, among which that of the castration complex in boys, the envy of the penis in girls, often attains a pathogenic significance. It is probable that the ego-libido never becomes entirely transformed into object-love, but what does not become so transformed does not necessarily remain in its original state. Another important part becomes displaced in the interesting process which Freud calls the formation of an ego-ideal. This is largely built up from social and ethical ideas implanted by the parents and other educators, and the love which in infancy belonged to the real ego now gets transferred to the ideal one; the narcissistic origin of ideals explains much of their otherwise inexplicable strength and importance in life. The difference between the process of idealisation and that of sublimation seems to be somewhat as follows: in sublimation there is a deflection away from a sexual goal, which is by no means necessarily the case with idealisation, for a sexual object itself can be idealised. Sublimation is purely a matter of the object-libido, idealisation can concern either object-libido or ego-libido. Sublimation refers rather to a change in the impulse, idealisation in the view taken of a given object. The two processes are therefore not identical. For instance, idealisation usually calls for sublimation, but it does not follow that this will take place, for that depends on other factors: in neuroses it is common to find undue idealisation combined with defective power of sublimation, leading therefore to intense conflict between the ego and the libidinous impulses. Idealisation greatly favours repression, and represents the part of the ego opposed to repressed tendencies; sublimation represents one of the outlets for such tendencies.

Freud considers that there is a special faculty present in the ego the function of which is to assure the narcissistic satisfaction given by the ego-ideal, and he identifies it with the conscience. In a study of the delusion of observation he points out that here there occurs a dissociation of this faculty from the rest of the ego, when the patient hears the voice of conscience projected as an outer voice. He further identifies this watching conscience with his dream censorship, the existence of

which or rather the name for which-has been the matter of so much criticism in this country. In a similar connexion he makes a number of contributions to the subjects of self-confidence, the psychology of love, and the understanding of crowd psychology, which I have no space here to consider.

The application of the theory of narcissism to the subjects of dreams, sleep, and melancholia will be discussed presently, and I shall close this section by a few remarks on its relation to the problems of war shock. Basing myself on Freud's recent analysis of the nature of normal fear and its relation to neurotic anxiety, where he dissects it into the three components of anxious preparedness, suitable motor activities, and the state known as developed anxiety, I have sketched a theory of the fear which undoubtedly is behind most, or all, of the symptoms of war shock (20). My suggestion that this emanates from repressed ego-libido, so that war shock would rank as a narcissistic neurosis, has been independently confirmed by Abraham, Ferenczi, and Simmel (21), and has also been borne out by my experience in the two years that have elapsed since writing on the subject. This experience has also strengthened my suspicion, which I did not mention at the time, that repressed homosexuality plays a prominent, and perhaps essential, part in the aetiology of this neurosis. It is likely that the same holds good for all cases of traumatic neurosis, but our experience here is as yet too limited to make definite statements.

METAPSYCHOLOGY.

In the last couple of years Freud has made a number of tentative beginnings towards the investigation of a new branch of science to which he gives the name 'metapsychology' (22). He suggests this term to denote a psychology which will regard every mental process from three points of view; namely, the dynamic, the topographical, and the economical. Interest in these points of view does not indicate an altogether new tendency in his work, for there have been hints of them even from its first inception, though they have certainly been insufficiently appreciated by those who have concerned themselves with psycho-analysis. To take them in order: Freud has always been less interested in the mere interpretation of symptoms, dreams, slips of everyday life, and other material he has analysed, than in the dynamics of the mechanism producing these phenomena, thus differing from most of his readers and perhaps also of his followers. It may indeed be said that, although his interpretative work has perhaps been more sensational and has cer

tainly attracted more the attention of the casual reader, nevertheless, indispensable as this was, it is not really so important as his discoveries regarding the actual forces at work and their relation to one another. This dynamic conception, for example of the neuroses, represented a striking advance on the more static conceptions of Janet and Morton Prince. In speaking of Freud's topographical conception of the mind one refers to his endeavour to survey mental processes from the point of view of their psychical locality, to learn something about the spatial relationships of different mental functions. He holds that mental processes will possess certain characteristic attributes according to the region of the mind in which they are; the differences between consciousness, the preconscious, and the unconscious are the great exemplifications of this. By an economical point of view Freud means one in which the attempt is made to ascertain the laws covering the production, distribution, and consumption of definite quantities of psychical excitation or energy according to the economic principle of the greatest advantage with the least effort.

Freud has approached this subject in a series of five essays (22), and I shall select a few of the main points from them in order. He begins with an attempt to clarify our psychological conceptions of instinct, and, starting with the physiological conception of the nervous system as a reflex apparatus the function of which is to avoid stimuli or abolish their effects, he points out the differences between stimuli of instinctive origin and those emanating from without. Because the former cannot be dealt with by any form of motor flight, as the latter can, but only by complicated ways of altering the outer world so as to bring about suitable changes in the internal source of stimulation, known as satisfaction, he considers that it is the instincts, and not external stimulation, which are the true causes of progress and have led to the present complexity of the nervous system. As the mind seems to be regulated throughout by the pleasure-pain principle, he thinks that this must mirror the way in which stimuli are dealt with in general, and he correlates pleasure with a relief of excitation and pain with an increase of it. After a number of considerations on the nature and characteristics of instincts in general, and the fate they undergo in development, he illustrates his views by taking the example of the sexual instinct, the one which the nature of their material has compelled psycho-analysts to study most fully. The destiny of such an instinct would seem to lie in one of four possible directions: reversal into its opposite; turning against the subject; repression; and sublimation. It essentially depends on the instincts being

subjected to the influence of the three great polarities that govern mental life, namely, the biological one of activity-passivity, the real one of self-outer world, and the economical one of pleasure-pain. The interrelationships of these three polarities, which sometimes coincide with and sometimes cross one another, are distinctly complex, and are discussed by Freud at some length. For instance, the contrast of active and passive cannot be identified with subject and object (self and outer world); the subject is passive towards the object in so far as it receives stimuli from it, active when it reacts to these, and especially active towards the outer world when stimulated by an instinct. Again, subject and object can only be identified with pleasure and pain (or indifference) respectively in the beginning of life,-soon the subject is separated into a pleasurable part and a painful part which is projected into the outer world, while at the same time the outer world is divided into a pleasuregiving part which is incorporated (introjected) into the self and the opposite of this which remains distasteful or indifferent, the stage being thus attained which Freud refers to as that of the "purified pleasure-self."

The first two processes mentioned are dependent on the narcissistic organisation of the ego, and show traces of this in their development. The reversal into the opposite may occur in two quite distinct ways. There may be a change in the instinct from active to passive, such as from sadism into masochism, 'observationism into exhibitionism, loving into being loved, or there may take place a reversal of the content, of which the only example known is from love into hate. Freud analyses fully the genesis and relationship of love and hate, and shows that they are not simple opposites. He maintains that they arise from independent sources, that hate rather than love represents the earliest attitude towards the outer world, that hate stands throughout in the closest connexion with the instinct of self-preservation, and that the apparent transformation of love into hate sometimes seen is not so much what it appears to be as a regression to a sadistic pre-genital level in which the erotic relation to the object is still preserved. The turning against the subject is a change in the instinct which is curiously related to the one just considered. Freud illustrates it by tracing in detail the genesis of the two pairs, sadism-masochism and observationism-exhibitionism, and holds that the first mentioned of these in each pair is always the primary. He finds that, for instance with sadism, the active attitude is first manifested towards an object in the outer world, then turns against the subject (at which stage it remains in the obsessional neurosis, in the form of self-torture), and only then is changed to the passive one of

masochism by getting an object to play the active part; even here, however, the person probably obtains a double pleasure, on the one hand sexual excitement at suffering pain, and on the other sadistic enjoyment through unconscious identification of himself with the active object. In the next essay Freud discusses the third of the above-mentioned possibilities, namely, repression. Repression is something between flight and condemnation by judgement, its sole function being to avoid the pain that would be inflicted on the ego through the pleasurable satisfaction of one of its instinctive impulses. Its essence consists in the keeping from consciousness knowledge of the impulse. It is not the earliest form of defence mechanism against an impulse, being preceded by the two discussed above, the reversal of an impulse and its being re-directed against the subject. The repressions of later life are only possible in regard to derivatives or other connexions of the primordial repressions which take place in infancy. The representatives of an impulse in a state of repression undergo special changes and forms of growth. The state is maintained by a pressure steadily exerted from the direction of consciousness, but it is a mobile and variable one, depending on many factors. The derivative of a repressed complex, for example, finds its passage into consciousness easier the more distant is its association with the complex, the greater is the distortion it has undergone, the weaker is the energy with which it or its complex is charged, or if special technical devices are present, the best known of which are those of wit. The aim of repression may be said to have failed, even though the given idea is kept back in the unconscious, when the accompanying affect leads to distress (Unlust) in consciousness, usually in the form of morbid anxiety. Repression would seem to be always accompanied by the formation of substitutes, though the two processes only occasionally coincide in form, for instance in the reaction-formations characteristic of the first stage of the obsessional neurosis. The formation of symptoms is not an immediate result of repression, but is due to what Freud terms “the return of the repressed material," and of course only occurs when special conditions are fulfilled. He then illustrates his views by a comparison of the mechanisms in the different psychoneuroses. He remarks that in conversion-hysteria the repression more often succeeds in its aim of abolishing pain from consciousness than in anxiety-hysteria, referring to the familiar "belle indifférence des hystériques"; the success is of course not always complete, for many bodily symptoms are disagreeable, and further, the formation of so many substitutes can prove of serious disadvantage in life.

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