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psychoanalysis

literature
SIGMUND FREUD

A difficulty of psychoanalysis Best, OF

(ed.): The grotesque in poetry. Darmstadt 1980.
Chaitin, Gilbert D.: Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan, Cambridge
1996. Caruth, Cathy: Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and
History. Baltimore 1996. Derrida, J.: The Script and the Difference.
Frankfurt a. M. 1972. Hagestedt, J.: The decipherment of the
unconscious. To the Hermeneu
tik psychoanalytischer Textinterpretation. Frankfurt a. M. [u. a.)
1988. Hartman, Geoffrey H.: On Traumatic Knowledge and Literary
Studies. In: New Literary History 26 (1995) H. 3, S. 537-563.

Haselstein, U.: Deciphering hermeneutics. On the concept of

reading in the psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious Munich 1991.
Hiebel, H. H.: On the criticism of literary psychology . In: John K
Noyes [u. a.) (Ed.): Culture Language Power. Frankfurt a. M 2000.
pp. 41-67. Kuhns, R.: Psychoanalytic theory of art.
Frankfurt a. M.
1986. Lüdemann, Susanne: Myth and self-portrayal. To the poetics of

psychoanalysis. Freiburg i. Br. 1994. Matt, P. in.:

Literature and Psychoanalysis. Stuttgart 2001.

Pietzcker, C.: On the relationship between dreams and literary art
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plant. In: J. Cremerius (ed.): Psychoanalytic text interpretations .

Hamburg 1974. pp. 57-68. Pietzcker, C.: On the psychoanalysis
of literary form. la:
S. Goeppert (ed.): Perspectives on psychoanalytic literary
criticism. Freiburg i. Br. 1979. pp. 124-157. Schönau, W.:
Introduction to psychoanalytic literature . Stuttgart 1991. Urban,
B. (ed.): Psychoanalysis and Literary Studies. lyrics

to the history of their relationships. Tübingen 1973. Weber, S.:

Return to Freud. Jacques Lacan 's position on psychoanalysis.
Vienna 1990.

I want to say right at the outset that I do not mean an intellectual

difficulty , something that makes psychoanalysis inaccessible to
the understanding of the recipient (listener or reader) , but an
affective difficulty : something by which psychoanalysis alienates
the recipient 's feelings , so that he becomes less inclined to give
her interest or credit.
As one notices, both kinds of difficulties amount to the same
thing. If you ca n't muster enough sympathy for a thing , you wo
n't understand it that easily either .
Out of consideration for the reader, who I still imagine to be
completely uninvolved, I must go a little further . In psychoanalysis ,
out of a large number of individual observations and impressions ,
something like a theory has finally formed which is known under
the name of libido theory . As is well known , psychoanalysis
deals with enlightenment and elimination
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the so-called nervous disorders. A point of attack had to be found for this
problem , and it was decided to look for it in the instinctual life of the soul .
assumptions about the human
Instincts , then, became the basis of our conception of nervousness.

The psychology taught in our schools gives us very few satisfactory

answers when we ask it about the problems of mental life . _ In no area ,
however, are their information more meager than in that of instincts.

It is up to us how we want to create an initial orientation here . The popular

view separates hunger and love as representatives of the drives that the
individual strives to maintain and those that it strives to procreate

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ben. By agreeing with this separation , which is so obvious , we also in

psychoanalysis distinguish the instincts of self -preservation or the ego
from the sexual instincts and call the force with which the sexual instinct
appears in mental life libido — sexual desire— as something of hunger,
Will for power and the like in the case of the ego instincts .

On the basis of this assumption we make the first one in it

significant discovery. We learn that for the understanding of neurotic

illnesses the sexual instincts are of far greater importance, that the
neuroses are, so to speak , the
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specific disorders of sexual function . Whether a person develops

a neurosis at all depends on the quantity of the libido and the
possibility of satisfying it and dissipating it through satisfaction .
That the form of the disease is determined by the manner in
which the individual has traveled the path of development of the
sexual function , or , as we say, by the fixations which his libido
has experienced in the course of its development . And that in a
certain, not very simple technique of psychic influencing we have
a means of clearing up and reversing many groups of neuroses
at the same time . Our therapeutic efforts have had the greatest
success in a certain class of neuroses which arise from the
conflict between the ego instincts and the sexual instincts . In
human beings it happens that the demands of the sexual
instincts , which extend far beyond the individual being, appear
to the ego as a danger that threatens its self-preservation or its
self-respect . Then the ego defends itself , denies the desired
satisfaction to the sexual instincts, forces them to take those
detours of substitute satisfaction that manifest themselves as
nervous symptoms .

Psychoanalytic therapy then succeeds in subjecting the process

of repression to a revision and leading the conflict to a better
outcome that is compatible with health . Ignorant opponents then
accuse us of being one- sided in our estimation of the sexual
instincts : Man has other interests than the sexual ones . have
that
not for a moment forgotten or denied. Our
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One-sidedness is like that of the chemist who traces all constitutions back to the
power of chemical attraction . He therefore does not deny gravity , he leaves its
appreciation to the physicist.
During the therapeutic work we must concern ourselves with the distribution of the
patient 's libido , inquiring into which object representations his libido is bound and
freeing them to make them available to the ego . In doing so , we have come to
form a very strange picture of the initial, original distribution of the libido in man .
We had to assume that at the beginning of individual development all libido (all
erotic striving, all ability to love ) is linked to one 's own person , as we say, the
cigenc ego occupies. It was only later that , in connection with the satisfaction of
the great needs of life, did the libido flow from the ego to the external objects ,
which enabled us to recognize the libidinal instincts as such and to distinguish
them from the ego instincts . The libido can be detached from these objects and
withdrawn into the ego .

We call the state in which the ego retains the libido narcissism , in memory of the
Greek legend of the youth Narcissus, who remained in love with his own mirror .

So we ascribe to the individual a progress from

Narcissism to object love. But we do not believe that the whole of the ego 's libido
is ever transferred to the objects . A certain amount of libido always remains with
the ego, a certain amount of narcissism remains despite

164
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highly developed object love persist. The ego is a great reservoir from
which the libido intended for objects emanates and into which it flows
again from the objects . The object libido was first ego libido and can be
converted back into ego libido. It is for the full health of the person

essential that her libido does not lose full mobility.

To illustrate this relationship , let us think of a protoplasmic animal whose
viscous substance sends out pseudopodia (pseudopodia) , extensions
into which the bodily substance extends , but which can be drawn back in
at any time , so that the form of the protoplasmic clump is restored .

What I have tried to describe through these indications is the libido theory
of the neuroses, on which all our conceptions of the nature of these
pathological conditions and our therapeutic procedures against them are
based. It goes without saying that we also apply the assumptions of the
libido theory to normal behavior . We speak of the narcissism of the small
child and we attribute it to the overpowered

narcissism of primitive man, that he believes in the omnipotence of his

thoughts and therefore wants to influence the course of events in the outer
world through the technique of magic .
After this introduction , I would like to state that the general narcissism ,
the self- love of mankind, has hitherto had three serious ones
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has suffered insults from scientific research .

a) At the beginning of his research, man believed that his abode ,

the earth , was at rest in the center of the universe , while the
sun, moon and planets moved in circular orbits around the earth .
In doing so , he naively followed the impression of his senses,
for he did not feel any movement of the earth , and wherever he
could look freely around him , he found himself in the center of a
circle that encloses the outer world . The central position of the
earth, however , was to him a guarantee of her dominant role in
the universe and seemed to correspond well with his tendency
to feel himself master of this world .

For us , the destruction of this narcissistic illusion is linked to the

name and work of Nik. Copernicus in the sixteenth century. Long
before him the Pythagoreans had doubted the preferred position
of the earth, and Aristarchus of Samos had declared in the third
century BC that the earth was much smaller than and revolved
around the sun
move celestial bodies . So the great discovery of Copernicus
had already been made before him . But when it found general
recognition , human self-love had experienced its first,
cosmological , affront . b) In the course of his cultural
development , man threw himself up to be the lord over his
animal fellow creatures . But not satisfied with this dominance ,
he started a rift between her and
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to lay his being . He denied them reason and acquired an immortal soul ,
invoking a high divine lineage that allowed the bond of community with
the animal world to be broken . It is remarkable that this arrogance is still
far away from the small child as well as from primitive and primeval man .
It is the result of a later demanding development. The primitive did not
find it objectionable on the level of totemism to trace his lineage back to
an animal ancestor. The myth, which contains the residue of that old way
of thinking , allows the gods to assume animal forms, and the art of the
earliest times formed the gods with animal heads. The child feels no
difference between its own nature and that of the animal; it lets the
animals think and speak in fairy tales without astonishment ; it shifts an
affect of fear intended for the human father onto the dog or 166

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on the horse without intending to belittle the father . Only when it grows.
Darwin, his collaborators and predecessors, put an end to this arrogance
of man a little more than half a century ago. Man is nothing different and
nothing better than the animal axes , if he has alienated himself from the
animal to such an extent that he can insult man with the name of the
animal .

We all know that the research , he himself is from the animal series
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evolved , some species closer, others more distantly related.

His later acquisitions did not succeed in obliterating the evidence
of equality in his physique as in his psychic disposition . _ But
this is the second, the biological insult of human narcissism. c)
The third insult, which is of a psychological nature, is probably
the most sensitive .

Man, even if humiliated outside , feels sovereign in his own soul.

Somewhere in the core of his ego he has created a supervisory
body which monitors his cellular impulses and actions to ensure
that they agree with his requirements . If they do n't , they are
relentlessly inhibited and withdrawn . Its inner perception, its
consciousness, informs the ego of all significant processes in
the psyche , and the will , guided by this information , carries out
what the ego orders and changes from what can be done
independently . For this soul is nothing simple, but rather a
hierarchy of superior and inferior authorities, a tangle of impulses
which independently of one another urge to be carried out ,
corresponding to the multiplicity of drives and of relationships
with the outside world, many of them contradictory and mutually
incompatible . It is necessary for the function that the supreme
authority is above all aware of what is being prepared and that
its will can penetrate everywhere in order to exercise its
influence . But the I feels safe in both the

Completeness and reliability of the messages as well as the

accessibility of his orders.
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In certain diseases, especially in the neuroses we have studied,

things are different. The ego feels uneasy, encountering the
limits of its power in its own home , the soul.
Suddenly thoughts arise from which one does not know where
they come from ; nor can anything be done to drive them away .
These strange guests seem to be more powerful themselves
than those who are subject to the ego ; they resist all other
proven means of power of the will, remain undeterred by logical
refutation , untouched by counter -statements of reality. Or
impulses come that are like those of a stranger , so that the ego
denies them , but yet it must fear them and take precautions
against them . The ego tells itself this is a disease, a foreign
invasion , it tightens its vigilance , but it can not understand why
it feels so strangely paralyzed .

Psychiatry denies that such incidents have been invaded by evil,

alien spirits , but otherwise they only say with a shrug of the
shoulders : degeneration, hereditary disposition, constitutional
inferiority! Psychoanalysis undertakes to clear up these uncanny
cases of illness , it carries out careful and lengthy investigations ,
creates auxiliary concepts and scientific constructions and can
finally say to the ego : ' Nothing foreign has gotten into you ; a
part of your own soul life has escaped your knowledge and
control of your will . That 's why you 're so weak in defence ; you
fight with one part of your strength against the other part, you
cannot use yours as you would against an external enemy
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gather all your strength. And it 's not even the worst or least important part
of your mental powers that, in contrast to you , is 168

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stepped and become independent of you . The fault, I must say, is

yourselves . You have overestimated your powers if you thought you
could do what you liked with your sexual instincts and did n't have to pay
the slightest attention to their intentions . So they revolted and went their
own dark ways to escape oppression , created their rights in a way that
you can no longer agree with . _ How they managed to do that and which
paths they took , you did n't find out ; only the result of this work, the
symptom you perceive as suffering, has come to your knowledge . You
then do not recognize it as a descendant of your ci gene rejected instincts
and do not know that it is their substitute satisfaction .

“But the whole process is only made possible by the one circumstance
that you are also wrong on another important point . You trust that you will
experience everything that is going on in your soul if it is only important
enough , because your consciousness will then report it to you. And if you
of something in your
If you have not received a message in your soul , you confidently assume
that it is not contained in it. Yes, you go so far that you
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' You think mentally identical to conscious, i.e. H. known to you , in

spite of the most obvious evidence, that much more must be
constantly going on in your psychic life than can be known to your
conscious mind . Let yourself be instructed on this one point ! That
The soul in you does not coincide with what you are aware of ; it is
something else whether something is going on in your soul and
whether you experience it . Usually, I will admit, messaging to your
consciousness is sufficient for your needs .
You may lull yourself into the illusion that you are learning everything
that is more important . But in some cases, e.g. B. in that of such an
instinctual conflict, it fails and your will then goes no further than your
knowledge. In all cases , however, these messages are yours
Consciousness incomplete and often unreliable; it also happens
often enough that you only get news of the events when they have
already taken place and you can no longer change anything about
them. Even if you are not ill , who can measure everything that stirs
in your soul that you do not learn about or about which you are
misreported . You behave like an absolute ruler who is satisfied with
the information of his highest court offices and does not descend to
the people to hear their voice . Go into yourself, into your depths and
first get to know yourself , then you will understand why you must
become ill and perhaps avoid becoming ill . This is how psychoanalysis
wanted to teach the ego. But the two clarifications that the instinctual
life of sexuality in us cannot be fully tamed , and that the mental
processes are in themselves unconscious and only through an
incomplete and unreliable one
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Accessible to and subject to perception by the ego is tantamount to

asserting that the ego is not master in its own house. Together they
represent the third insult to self - love that I would like to kill
psychologically . No wonder , then, that the ego does not favor
psychoanalysis and stubbornly refuses to believe in it .

Very few people should have realized how serious a step the
acceptance of unconscious mental processes would mean for science
and life . But let us hasten to add that psychoanalysis was not the first
to take this step . Well -known philosophers are to be cited as
predecessors , above all the great thinker Schopenhauer, whose
unconscious will is to be equated with the psychic impulses of
psychoanalysis . Incidentally, the same thinker who, in words of
unforgettable emphasis, reminded people of the still underestimated
importance of their sexual desire

psychoanalysis
SIGMUND FREUD

Note on the "miracle block"

has warned . Psychoanalysis has only one advantage, that it does not
abstractly assert the two propositions that are so embarrassing to
narcissism , namely the psychological significance of sexuality and
the unawareness of mental life, but prove it with material that
concerns each individual personally and gives his or her opinion these
problems forced. But for that very reason it attracts the aversion and
resistance that the _ _
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still shyly avoiding the big names of the philosopher .

1. The cosmological insult: The first shock is the one with the name
Copernicus linked discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe (cf.
Copernican revolution).
2. The biological insult: The second insult lay in the discovery that man emerged
from the animal series ( Charles Darwin and other).
3. The psychological insult: The third insult is the one he developed
libido theory of the unconscious; a considerable part of psychic life eludes the knowledge
and control of the conscious will.