Hum 3306: History of Ideas

Prof. B. Harvey

 

Watson in our Ideas book provides a scathing critique and dismissal of Freud.  As you read the Watson critique, do you feel it is entirely legitimate (for example: Watson undercuts Freud for not being the first to "discover" the unconscious, and yet later chastises him for his lack of scientific clinical evidence--so is Watson saying there "is" an unconscious which to some extent determines our manifest behavior or not?)?

 

I'm assuming you've been introduced to basic Freud in high-school or college Psychology 101 courses.

 

 

--Hysterical symptoms in turn-of-the century women (19^th-20^th centuries)--paralyzed arms or muteness for no obvious physical reasons--led him to posit the possibility of manifest physical symptoms and latent, repressed psychological causes/traumas.

 

--Envision infants as blobs of delight, enwrapped by libidinal satisfaction (the pleasure of being tickled and stroked, etc.).  Freud calls this "polymorphous perversity".  As the infant grows, pleasure becomes focused more on the mouth (orality) and excreting.  Eventually, sexuality gets reduced to genital pleasure.

 

--The infant does not distinguish itself from mommy's body--it has no sense of identity ("I"-ness).  But when mommy disappears, the infant develops a sense of "I" versus "not-I,"  both physically and psychically.

 

--The separation/return of mommy also bifurcates the mind into a id/pleasure/libidinal zone versus ego zone that has to learn to accommodate itself to frustration (mommy's breast is gone).  Thus emerges the id/ego structure.

 

--Freud's notion of libidinal energy is one of a closed economy (like plumbing).  If libido/desire cannot be expressed and satisfied because of social taboos (some foods you can't eat; you can't always exercise your lust), it becomes repressed and seeks release elsewhere, for instance, creative energy or our satisfaction in beauty or our seemingly non-erotic affections (Freud calls this "sublimation").

 

--Although we may not want to embrace Freud's ideas about the development of the oral stage or anal stage, or fixations on either (because mommy's breast disappears prematurely; or pleasure in excreting is discouraged), such is interesting to speculate about: the oral fixation = desire to engulf/absorb = male desire for visual stimulation/pornography; anal fixation leads to neat-freaks, pleasure in tight control/order.

 

--Towards the end of his career, Freud says in addition to libidinal instinct, there is the death instinct: aggression and the desire to just become nothing (rather than exerting energy, either in motor force or psychically, one wants to lapse into pure stillness, as it were).

 

--When eros and aggression instinct fuse together and go outward = sadism.

 

--When eros and aggression goes outward, but curl back = masochism.

 

--But the latter also carves out the super-ego.  Super-ego is not rational: when you feel “guilt” (hit myself) it is irrational.

 

--If you don’t believe in aggression/death instinct: why do you destroy ants when young, why burst little plastic bubbles?  How do you explain your guilt, in which you mentally "hit" yourself?

 

--If you don’t believe in unconscious: why hyper-repugnance over excrement or seeing parents naked (of course not all cultures do have this repugnance … so peculiarly Western; or Western peculiarly neurotic!!!).

 

--The unconscious DOES likely exist in some form as demonstrable by your capacity, for instance, to make puns and jokes.  

 

--A pun is often based on the sudden collision of two separate linguistic codes or items; those good at making puns do not struggle to think them up ... they just "pop out." 

 

--Example: think of former President Clinton and all the designations for presidential space... office, white house, Lincoln bedroom, committee room, oval office (your mind goes thru the "rolodex" of terms).  Now think of Monica ... and, suddenly, "Oral Office" pops out from the punster rather than "Oval Office."  The punster, to make the spontaneous fusion of Oral/Office/Oval ... had to be subconsciously processing all the words for "office" and all the words for unseemly sexual behavior simultaneously, until the two subconscious files clicked together to produce the pun.

 

--Dreams also evidence: things you do during the day become lodged in the mind because of associations not known at the time.  Example: I see a tree with lush fruit when thinking of my mother's recent death.  I don't, at the time, take note consciously of the tree, but in that night's dream I envision a tree that is simultaneously my mother (in dreams, images can be fused together in a way the daytime mind would find categorically impossible).  In my dream, I want to swing from my mother/the tree.

 

--As Watson emphasizes, a lot of Freud’s thinking is now considered scientifically bogus (Oedipal patterns and so on; feminists have in particular trashed Freud for his emphasis on the penis or its absence--i.e.. females being defined in terms of what they're "missing"). 

 

 

 

--Maybe there is no unconscious, if you tend to explicate our behavior via physiological brain design/chemistry:

 

--Maybe we just have a higher language/culture brain structure enwrapped around a lower mammal brain, in turn wrapped around a lizard-like purely appetitive (instinctual brain).  This would make sense, from a Darwinian perspective, that we have vestiges of brain structures from much lower animals.  The higher language/culture brain functions would constrict the instinctual impulses of the, as it were, reptilian brain.

 

--Given the seeming absurdity of some of Freud's dogmatic assertion of some psychoanalytic family dynamic patterns, above especially makes sense.

 

--After all, you say, "I’m NOT turned on by my mother! Gross!"  I have no infant/young child incestuous desires for mother!!!

 

--And, I and my adult partner do not suffer the dilemma of debasement, we do not fixate on a "Madonna/whore" split in terms of eros and affection!

 

--BUT... BUT... BUT, the Freudian retorts:

 

--What do you make of the fact that Western attitudes, in general, towards sex and sex organs exhibit embarrassment (the Bible story of the Fall, in which Adam and Eve, post-lapsarian, discover shame)?  And that many Polynesian and other traditional/tribal cultures are not chagrined by body sex organs?

 

--Freud mistakenly thought we all have a similar unconscious.  To dismiss his Eurocentric, normative bias, though, is less to critique Freud's dogmatism than to recognize that primary appetitive/erotic desires are indeed shaped by culture and its constraints.

 

--Not all cultures see sexual body parts as non-attractive or "dirty."

 

--But.... but... you say: I don't feel this way about erotically charged body parts.  Freud is just speaking about perversions!!!

 

--BUT: actually, Freud believes we all exhibit perversions in a sense (the baby starts off in a state of  "polymorphous perversity") and that some "perversions" simplty are, or are not, socially acceptable.

 

--Maybe "you" do not harbor "dirty" thoughts about sex (the stereotypical Madonna/Whore split).

 

--BUT how do you explain the recurrent "dirty" topics in Junk Mail advertisements? Or the appeal of the leather/plastic wardrobe of the heroine in "The Matrix" etc.?

 

 

[This is a difficult, provocative, and disturbing essay.  You will not understand all of it, if you have not read Freud before, and because of the subject matter, we will collectively take appropriate caution in discussing it in class.  I will not (in terms of the final exam) expect you to be able to repeat the intricacies of Freud's speculations about sexuality/objects of sexual attraction; what I what you to absorb is the overall notion that our sexual desires are complex and based, according to Freud, on childhood developments that as adults we do not usually have conscious access to.  A crude example would be males who have an oral fixation--which would include the absorption/"engulfment" of pornographic images--because of their infantile pleasure or denial of pleasure of sucking on mommy's breast! –Prof. Harvey]

IF the practicing psychoanalyst asks himself on account of what disorder people most often come to him for help, he is bound to reply—disregarding the many forms of anxiety—that it is psychical impotence. This singular disturbance affects men of strongly libidinous natures, and manifests itself in a refusal by the executive organs of sexuality to carry out the sexual act, although before and after they may show themselves to be intact and capable of performing the act, and although a strong psychical inclination to carry it out is present. The first clue to understanding this condition is obtained by the sufferer himself on making the discovery that a failure of this kind only arises when the attempt is made with certain individuals; whereas with others there is never any question of such a failure. He now becomes aware that it is some feature of the sexual object which gives rise to the inhibition of his male potency, and sometimes he reports that he has a feeling of an obstacle inside him, the sensation of a counter-will which successfully interferes with his conscious intention....

Psycho-analytic studies of psychical impotence have already been carried out and published by several writers.  Every analyst can confirm the explanations provided by them from his own clinical experience. It is in fact a question of the inhibitory influence of certain psychical complexes which are withdrawn from the subject's knowledge. An incestuous fixation on mother or sister, which has never been surmounted, plays a prominent part in this pathogenic material and is its most universal content. In addition there is the influence to be considered of accidental distressing impressions connected with infantile sexual activity, and also those factors which in a general way reduce the libido that is to be directed on to the female sexual object.

When striking cases of psychical impotence are exhaustively investigated by means of psychoanalysis, the following information is obtained about the psychosexual processes at work in them. Here again—as very probably in all neurotic disturbances—the foundation of the disorder is provided by an inhibition in the developmental history of the libido before it assumes the form which we take to be its normal termination. Two currents whose union is necessary to ensure a completely normal attitude in love have, in the cases we are considering, failed to combine. These two may be distinguished as the affectionate and the sensual current.

The affectionate current is the older of the two. It springs from the earliest years of childhood; it is formed on the basis of the interests of the self-preservative instinct and is directed to the members of the family and those who look after the child. From the very beginning it carries along with it contributions from the sexual instincts—components of erotic interest—which can already be seen more or less clearly even in childhood and in any event are uncovered in neurotics by psychoanalysis later on. It corresponds to the child's primary object-choice....

These affectionate fixations of the child persist throughout childhood, and continually carry along with them erotism, which is consequently diverted from its sexual aims. Then at the age of puberty they are joined by the powerful 'sensual' current which no longer mistakes its aims. It never fails, apparently, to follow the earlier paths and to cathect the objects of the primary infantile choice with quotas of libido that are now far stronger. Here, however, it runs up against the obstacles that have been erected in the meantime by the barrier against incest; consequently it will make efforts to pass on from these objects which are unsuitable in reality, and find a way as soon as possible to other, extraneous objects with which a real sexual life may be carried on. These new objects will still be chosen on the model (imago) of the infantile ones, but in the course of time they will attract to themselves the affection that was tied to the earlier ones. A man shall leave his father and his mother —according to the biblical command--and shall cleave unto his wife; affection and sensuality are then united. The greatest intensity of sensual passion will bring with it the highest psychical valuation of the object—this being the normal overvaluation of the sexual object on the part of a man.

[Freud in the next section, skipped here, discusses various components of male psychological impotence.]

.... We have reduced psychical impotence to the failure of the affectionate and the sensual currents in love to combine, and this developmental inhibition has in turn been explained as being due to the influences of strong childhood fixations and of later frustration in reality through the intervention of the barrier against incest.... There are only a very few educated people in whom the two currents of affection and sensuality have become properly fused; the man almost always feels his respect for the woman acting as a restriction on his sexual activity, and only develops full potency when he is with a debased sexual object; and this in its turn is partly caused by the entrance of perverse components into his sexual aims, which he does not venture to satisfy with a woman he respects. He is assured of complete sexual pleasure only when he can devote himself unreservedly to obtaining satisfaction, which with his well-brought-up wife, for instance, he does not dare to do. This is the source of his need for a debased sexual object, a woman who is ethically inferior, to whom he need attribute no aesthetic scruples, who does not know him in his other social relations and cannot judge him in them. It is to such a woman that he prefers to devote his sexual potency, even when the whole of his affection belongs to a woman of a higher kind. It is possible, too, that the tendency so often observed in men of the highest classes of society to choose a woman of a lower class as a permanent mistress or even as a wife is nothing but a consequence of their need for a debased sexual object, to whom, psychologically, the possibility of complete satisfaction is linked.

I do not hesitate to make the two factors at work in psychical impotence in the strict sense—the factors of intense incestuous fixation in childhood and the frustration by reality in adolescence—responsible, too, for this extremely common characteristic of the love of civilized men. It sounds not only disagreeable but also paradoxical, yet it must nevertheless be said that anyone who is to be really free and happy in love must have surmounted his respect for women and have come to terms with the idea of incest with his mother or sister. Anyone who subjects himself to a serious self-examination on the subject of this requirement will be sure to find that he regards the sexual act basically as something degrading, which defiles and pollutes not only the body. The origin of this low opinion, which he will certainly not willingly acknowledge, must be looked for in the period of his youth in which the sensual current in him was already strongly developed but its satisfaction with an object outside the family was almost as completely prohibited as it was with an incestuous one.

In our civilized world women are under the influence of a similar after-effect of their upbringing, and, in addition, of their reaction to men's behavior. It is naturally just as unfavorable for a woman if a man approaches her without his full potency as it is if his initial overvaluation of her when he is in love gives place to undervaluation after he has possessed her. In the case of women there is little sign of a need to debase their sexual object. This is no doubt connected with the absence in them as a rule of anything similar to the sexual overvaluation found in men. But their long holding back from sexuality and the lingering of their sensuality in phantasy has another important consequence for them. They are subsequently often unable to undo the connection between sensual activity and the prohibition, and prove to be psychically impotent, that is, frigid, when such activity is at last allowed them. This is the origin of the endeavour made by many women to keep even legitimate relations secret for a while; and of the capacity of other women for normal sensation as soon as the condition of prohibition is reestablished by a secret love affair: unfaithful to their husband, they are able to keep a second order of faith with their lover.

The condition of forbiddenness in the erotic life of women is, I think, comparable to the need on the part of men to debase their sexual object. Both are consequences of the long period of delay, which is demanded by education for cultural reasons, between sexual maturity and sexual activity. Both aim at abolishing the psychical impotence that results from the failure of affectionate and sensual impulses to coalesce. That the effect of the same causes should be so different in men and in women may perhaps be traced to another difference in the behavior of the two sexes. Civilized women do not usually transgress the prohibition on sexual activity in the period during which they have to wait, and thus they acquire the intimate connection between prohibition and sexuality. Men usually break through this prohibition if they can satisfy the condition of debasing the object, and so they carry on this condition into their love in later life.

In view of the strenuous efforts being made in the civilized world today to reform sexual life, it will not be superfluous to give a reminder that psycho-analytic research is as remote from tendentiousness as any other kind of research. It has no other end in view than to throw light on things by tracing what is manifest back to what is hidden. It is quite satisfied if reforms make use of its findings to replace what is injurious by some thing more advantageous; but it cannot predict whether other institutions may not result in other, and perhaps graver, sacrifices.

The fact that the curb put upon love by civilization involves a universal tendency to debase sexual objects will perhaps lead us to turn our attention from the object to the instincts them selves. The damage caused by the initial frustration of sexual pleasure is seen in the fact that the freedom later given to that pleasure in marriage does not bring full satisfaction. But at the same time, if sexual freedom is unrestricted from the outset the result is no better. It can easily be shown that the psychical value of erotic needs is reduced as soon as their satisfaction be comes easy. An obstacle is required in order to heighten libido; and where natural resistances to satisfaction have not been sufficient men have at all times erected conventional ones so as to be able to enjoy love. This is true both of individuals and of nations. In times in which there were no difficulties standing in the way of sexual satisfaction, such as perhaps during the decline of the ancient civilizations, love became worthless and life empty, and strong reaction-formations were required to re store indispensable affective values. In this connection it may be claimed that the ascetic current in Christianity created psychical values for love which pagan antiquity was never able to confer on it. This current assumed its greatest importance with the ascetic monks, whose lives were almost entirely occupied with the struggle against libidinal temptation.

One's first inclination is no doubt to trace back the difficulties revealed here to universal characteristics of our organic instincts. It is no doubt also true in general that the psychical importance of an instinct rises in proportion to its frustration. Suppose a number of totally different human beings were all equally exposed to hunger. As their imperative need for food mounted, all the individual differences would disappear and in their place one would see the uniform manifestations of the one unappeased instinct. But is it also true that with the satisfaction of an instinct its psychical value always falls just as sharply? Consider, for example, the relation of a drinker to wine. Is it not true that wine always provides the drinker with the same toxic satisfaction, which in poetry has so often been compared to erotic satisfaction—a comparison acceptable from the scientific point of view as well? Has one ever heard of the drinker being obliged constantly to change his drink because he soon grows tired of keeping to the same one? On the contrary, habit constantly tightens the bond between a man and the kind of wine he drinks. Does one ever hear of a drinker who needs to go to a country where wine is dearer or drinking is prohibited, so that by introducing obstacles he can reinforce the dwindling satisfaction that he obtains? Not at all. If we listen to what our great alcoholics, such as Bocklin,' say about their relation to wine, it sounds like the most perfect harmony, a model of a happy marriage. Why is the relation of the lover to his sexual object so very different?

It is my belief that, however strange it may sound, we must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction. If we consider the long and difficult develop mental history of the instinct, two factors immediately spring to mind which might be made responsible for this difficulty. Firstly, as a result of the diphasic onset of object-choice, and the interposition of the barrier against incest, the final object of the sexual instinct is never any longer the original object but only a surrogate for it. Psycho-analysis has shown us that when the original object of a wishful impulse has been lost as a result of repression, it is frequently represented by an endless series of substitutive objects none of which, however, brings full satisfaction. This may explain the inconstancy in object-choice, the 'craving for stimulation' 1 which is so often a feature of the love of adults.

Secondly, we know that the sexual instinct is originally divided into a great number of components—or rather, it develops out of them—some of which cannot be taken up into the instinct in its later form, but have at an earlier stage to be suppressed or put to other uses. These are above all the coprophilic instinctual components, which have proved incompatible with our aesthetic standards of culture, probably since, as a result of our adopting an erect gait, we raised our organ of smell from the ground. The same is true of a large portion of the sadistic urges which are a part of erotic life. But all such developmental processes affect only the upper layers of the complex structure. The fundamental processes which produce erotic excitation remain unaltered. The excremental is all too intimately and inseparably bound up with the sexual; the position of the genitals—inter urinas et faeces—remains the decisive and unchangeable factor. One might say here, varying a well-known saying of the great Napoleon: 'Anatomy is des tiny.' The genitals themselves have not taken part in the development of the human body in the direction of beauty: they have remained animal, and thus love, too, has remained in essence just as animal as it ever was. The instincts of love are hard to educate; education of them achieves now too much, now too little. What civilization aims at making out of them seems unattainable except at the price of a sensible loss of pleasure; the persistence of the impulses that could not be made use of can be detected in sexual activity in the form of non-satisfaction.

Thus we may perhaps be forced to become reconciled to the idea that it is quite impossible to adjust the claims of the sexual instinct to the demands of civilization; that in consequence of its cultural development renunciation and suffering, as well as the danger of extinction in the remotest future, cannot be avoided by the human race. This gloomy prognosis rests, it is true, on the single conjecture that the non-satisfaction that goes with civilization is the necessary consequence of certain peculiarities which the sexual instinct has assumed under the pressure of culture. The very incapacity of the sexual instinct to yield complete satisfaction as soon as it submits to the first demands of civilization becomes the source, however, of the noblest cultural achievements which are brought into being by ever more extensive sublimation of its instinctual components. For what motive would men have for putting sexual instinctual forces to other uses if, by any distribution of those forces, they could obtain fully satisfying pleasure? They would never abandon that pleasure and they would never make any further progress. It seems, therefore, that the irreconcilable difference between the demands of the two instincts—the sexual and the egoistic—has made men capable of ever higher achievements, though subject, it is true, to a constant danger, to which, in the form of neurosis, the weaker are succumbing to-day.

It is not the aim of science either to frighten or to console. But I myself am quite ready to admit that such far-reaching conclusions as those I have drawn should be built on a broader foundation, and that perhaps developments in other directions may enable mankind to correct the results of the developments I have here been considering in isolation.