[About Instincts] If we put
together what we have learned from our investigation of positive and negative perversions, it seems plausible to trace them back to a number of "component instincts", which, however, are not of a primary nature,
but are susceptible to further analysis. By an "instinct" is provisionally to be understood the psychical representative of an endosomatic, continuously flowing source of stimulation, as contrasted with a
"stimulus", which is set up by single excitations coming from without. The concept of instinct is thus one of those lying on the frontier between the mental and the physical. The simplest and likeliest assumption
as to the nature of instincts would seem to be that in itself an instinct is without quality, and, so far as mental life is concerned, is only to be regarded as a measure of the demand made upon the mind for work.
What distinguishes the instincts from one another and endows them with specific qualities is their relation to their somatic sources and to their aims. The source of an instinct is a process of excitation
occurring in an organ and the immediate aim of the instinct lies in the removal of this organic stimulus. (1) There is a further provisional assumption that we cannot escape in the theory of the
instincts. It is to the effect that excitations of two kinds arise from the somatic organs, based upon differences of a chemical nature. One of these kinds of excitation we describe as being specifically sexual,
and we speak of the organ concerned as the "erotogenic zone" of the sexual component instinct arising from it. (2) Notes: -- The sexual instinct -
or, more correctly, the sexual instincts, for analytic investigation teaches us that the sexual instinct is made up of many separate constituents or component instincts - is probably more strongly developed in man
than in most of the higher animals; it is certainly more constant, since it has almost entirely overcome the periodicity to which it is tied in animals. It places extraordinarily large amounts of force at the
disposal of civilized activity, and it does this in virtue of its especially marked characteristic of being able to displace its aim without materially diminishing in intensity. This capacity to exchange its
originally sexual aim for another one, which is no longer sexual but which is psychically related to the first aim, is called the capacity for sublimation. In contrast to this displaceability, in which its value
for civilization lies, the sexual instinct may also exhibit a particularly obstinate fixation which renders it unserviceable and which sometimes causes it to degenerate into what are described as abnormalities.
The original strength of the sexual instinct probably varies in each individual; certainly the proportion of it which is suitable for sublimation varies. It seems to us that it is the innate constitution of each
individual which decides in the first instance how large a part of his sexual instinct it will be possible to sublimate and make use of. In addition to this, the effects of experience and the intellectual
influences upon his mental apparatus succeed in bringing about the sublimation of a further portion of it. To extend this process of displacement indefinitely is, however, certainly not possible, any more than is
the case with the transformation of heat into mechanical energy in our machines. A certain amount of direct sexual satisfaction seems to be indispensable for most organizations, and a deficiency in this amount,
which varies from individual to individual, is visited by phenomena which, on account of their detrimental effects on functioning and their subjective quality of unpleasure, must be regarded as an illness.
Further prospects are opened up when we take into consideration the fact that in man the sexual instinct does not originally serve the purposes of reproduction at all, but has as its aim the gaining of particular
kinds of pleasure. It manifests itself in this way in human infancy, during which it attains its aim of gaining pleasure not only from the genitals but from other parts of the body (the erotogenic zones), and can
therefore disregard any objects other than these convenient ones. We call this stage the stage of auto-erotism, and the child's upbringing has, in our view, the task of restricting it, because to linger in it
would make the sexual instinct uncontrollable and unserviceable later on. The development of the sexual instinct then proceeds from auto-erotism to object-love and from the autonomy of the erotogenic zones to
their subordination under the primacy of the genitals, which are put at the service of reproduction. During this development a part of the sexual excitation which is provided by the subject's own body is inhibited
as being unserviceable for the reproductive function and in favourable cases is brought to sublimation. The forces that can be employed for cultural activities are thus to a great extent obtained through the
suppression of what are known as the perverse elements of sexual excitation. If this evolution of the sexual instinct is borne in mind, three stages of civilization can be distinguished: a first one, in which
the sexual instinct may be freely exercised without regard to the aims of reproduction; a second, in which all of the sexual instinct is suppressed except what serves the aims of reproduction; and a third, in
which only legitimate reproduction is allowed as a sexual aim. This third stage is reflected in our present-day 'civilized' sexual morality. (Sigmund Freud
- "Civilized" Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness, 1908.) Alfred Adler, in a suggestive paper,(1) has recently developed the view that anxiety arises from the suppression
of what he calls the "aggressive instinct", and by a very sweeping synthetic process he ascribes to that instinct the chief part in human events, "in real life and in the neuroses". As we have come to the
conclusion that in our present case of phobia the anxiety is to be explained as being due to the repression of Hans's aggressive propensities (the hostile ones against his father and the sadistic ones against his
mother), we seem to have produced a most striking piece of confirmation of Adler's view. I am nevertheless unable to assent to it, and indeed I regard it as a misleading generalization. I cannot bring myself to
assume the existence of a special aggressive instinct alongside of the familiar instincts of self-preservation and of sex, and on an equal footing with them.(2) It appears to me that Adler has mistakenly promoted
into a special and self-subsisting instinct what is in reality a universal and indispensable attribute of all instincts - their instinctual [triebhaft] and "pressing" character, what might be described as their
capacity for initiating movement. Nothing would then remain of the other instincts but their relation to an aim, for their relation to the means of reaching that aim would have been taken over from them by the
"aggressive instinct". In spite of all the uncertainty and obscurity of our theory of instincts I should prefer for the present to adhere to the usual view, which leaves each instinct its own power of becoming
aggressive; and I should be inclined to recognize the two instincts which became repressed in Hans as familiar components of the sexual libido. (From Sigmund Freud: Analysis of a Phobya in a Five-Years-Old Boy,
1909.) Notes: <= |
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