Part 8 (1/2)
[34] The Psychoa.n.a.lytic Review and the International Journal of Psychoa.n.a.lysis.
A Searching Question. We find, then, that when we ask, ”What makes people nervous?” we are really asking: ”What is man like, inside and out, up and down? What makes him think, feel, and act as he does every hour of every day?” We are asking for the source of human motives, the science of human behavior, the charting of the human mind. It is hard to-day to understand how so much reproach and ridicule could have been aroused by the statement that the ultimate cause of nervousness is a disturbance of the s.e.x-life. There has already been a change in the public att.i.tude toward things s.e.xual.
Training-courses for mothers and teachers, elementary teaching in the schools, lectures and magazine articles have done much to show the fallacy of our old hypersensitive att.i.tude. Since the war, some of us know, too, with what success the army has used the Freudian principles in treating war-neurosis, which was mistakenly called sh.e.l.l-shock by the first observers. We know, too, more about the const.i.tution of man's mind than the public knew ten years ago. When we remember the insistent character of the instincts and the repressive method used by society in restraining the most obstreperous impulse, when we remember the pain of such conflict and the depressing physical effects of painful emotions, we cannot wonder that this most sharply repressed instinct should cause mental and physical trouble.
What about Sublimation? On the other hand, it has been stated in Chapter IV that although this universal urge cannot be repressed, it can be sublimated or diverted to useful ends which bring happiness, not disaster, to the individual. We have a right, then, to ask why this happy issue is not always attained, why sublimation ever fails. If a psycho-neurosis is caused by a failure of an insistent instinct to find adequate expression, by a blocking of the libido or the love-force, what are the conditions which bring about this blocking? The s.e.x-instinct of every respectable person is subject to restraint. Some people are able to adjust themselves; why not all? The question, ”What makes people nervous?” then turns out to mean: What keeps people from a satisfactory outlet for their love-instincts? What is it that holds them back from satisfaction in direct expression, and prevents indirect outlet in sublimation? Whatever does this must be the real cause of ”nerves.”
The Causes of ”Nerves”
Plural, not Singular. The first thing to learn about the cause is that it is not a cause at all, but several causes. We are so well made that it takes a combination of circ.u.mstances to upset our equilibrium. In other words, a neurosis must be ”over-determined.” Heredity, faulty education, emotional shock, physical fatigue, have each at various times been blamed for a breakdown. As a matter of fact, it seems to take a number of ingredients to make a neurosis,-a little unstable inheritance plus a considerable amount of faulty upbringing, plus a later series of emotional experiences bearing just the right relations.h.i.+p to the earlier factors. Heredity, childhood reactions, and later experiences, are the three legs on which a neurosis usually stands. An occasional breakdown seems to stand on the single leg of childhood experiences but in the majority of cases each of the three factors contributes its quota to the final disaster.
Born or Made? It used to be thought that neurotics, like poets, were born, not made. Heredity was considered wholly responsible, and there seemed very little to do about it. But to-day the emphasis on heredity is steadily giving way to stress on early environment. There are, no doubt, such factors as a certain innate sensitiveness, a natural suggestibility, an intensity of emotion, a little tendency to nervous instability, which predispose a person to nerves, but unless the inborn tendency is reinforced by the reactions and training of early childhood, it is likely to die a natural death.
Childhood Experiences
Early Reactions. Freud found that a neurotic is made before he is six years old. When by repeated explorations into the minds of his patients, he made this important discovery, he at first believed that the disturbing factor was always some single emotional experience or shock in childhood,-usually of a s.e.xual nature. But Freud and later investigators have since found that the trouble is not so often a single experience as a long series of exaggerated emotional reactions, a too intense emotional life, a precocity in feeling tending toward fixation of childhood habits, which are thus carried over into adult life.
Fixation of Habits. Fixation is the word that expresses all this,-fixation of childish habits. A neurotic is a person who made such strong habits in childhood that he cannot abandon them in maturity. He is too much ruled by the past. His unconscious emotional thought-habits are the complexes which were made in childhood and therefore lack the power of adaptation to mature life.
We saw in Chapter IV that Nature takes great pains to develop in the child the psychic and physical trends which he will need later on in his mature love-life, and that this training is accomplished in a number of well-defined periods which lead from one to the other. If, however, the child reacts too intensely, lingers too long in any one of these phases, he lays for himself action lines of least resistance which he may never leave or to which he may return during the strain and stress of adult life.
In either case, the neurotic is a grown-up child. He may be a very learned, very charming person, but he is nevertheless dragging behind him a part of his childhood which he should have outgrown long ago. Part of him is suffering from an arrest of development,-not a leg or an arm but an impulse.
Precocious Emotions. The habits which tend to become fixed too soon seem to be of four kinds; the habit of loving, the habit of rebelling, the habit of repressing normal instincts, and the habit of dreaming. In each case it is the excess of feeling which causes the trouble,-too much love, too much hate, too much disgust, or too much pleasure in imagination. Exaggeration is always a danger-signal. An overdeveloped child is likely to be an underdeveloped man. Especially in the emotions is precocity to be deplored. A premature alphabet or multiplication table is not nearly so serious as premature intensity of feeling, nor so likely to lead later to trouble. Of course fixation in these emotional habits does not always lead to a serious breakdown. If the fixation is not too extreme, and if later events do not happen to accentuate the trouble, the arrest of development may merely show itself in certain weaknesses of character or in isolated symptoms without developing a real neurosis.
Let us examine each of these arrested habits and the excess emotion which sets the mold before it is ready for maturity.
Too Much Self-Love. In the chapter on the reproductive instinct, we found that the natural way to learn to love is by successively loving oneself, one's parents and family, one's fellows, and one's mate. If the love-force gets too much pleasure in any one of these phases, it finds it hard to give up its old love and to pa.s.s on to the next phase. Thus some children take too much pleasure in their own bodies or, a little later, in their own personalities. If they are too much interested in their own physical sensations and the pleasure they get by stimulating certain zones of the body, then in later life they cannot free themselves from the desire for this kind of satisfaction. Try as they may, they cannot be satisfied with normal adult relations, but sink back into some form of so-called s.e.x-perversion.
Perhaps it is another phase of self-love which holds the child too much. If, like Narcissus, he becomes too fond of looking at himself, is too eager to show off, too desirous of winning praise, then forever after he is likely to be self-conscious, self-centered, thinking always of the impression he is making, unable ever to be at leisure from himself. He is fixed in the Narcissistic stage of his life, and is unadapted to the world of social relations.
Too Much Family-love. We have already spoken of the danger of fixation in the second period, that of object-love-the period of family relations.h.i.+ps. The danger is here again one of degree and may be avoided by a little knowledge and self-control on the part of the parents. The little girl who is permitted to lavish too much love on her father, who does not see anybody else, who cannot learn to like the boys is a misfit. The wise mother will see that her love for her boy does not express itself too much by means of hugs and kisses. The mother who shows very plainly that she loves her little boy better than she loves her husband and the mother who boasts that her adolescent boy tells her all his secrets and takes her out in preference to any girl-that deluded mother is trying to take something that is not hers, and is thereby courting trouble. When her son grows up, he may not know why, but no girl will suit him, and he will either remain a bachelor or marry some older woman who reminds him subconsciously of his mother. His love-requirements will be too strict; he will be forever trying either in phantasy or in real life to duplicate his earlier love-experiences. This, of course, cannot satisfy the demands of a mature man. He will be torn between conflicting desires, unhappy without knowing why, unable either to remain a child or to become a man, and impelled to gain self-expression in indirect and unsatisfactory ways.
Since it is not possible in this s.p.a.ce to recite specific cases which show how often a nervous trouble points back to the father-mother complex, [35] it may help to cite the opinions of a few of our best authorities. Freud says of the family complex, ”This is the root complex of the neurosis.” Jelliffe: ”It is the foot-rule of measurement of success in life”: by which he means that just so far as we are able at the right time to free ourselves from dependence on parents are we able to adjust ourselves to the world at large. Pfister: ”The att.i.tude toward parents very often determines for a life-time the att.i.tude toward people in general and toward life itself.” Hinkle: ”The entire direction of lives is determined by parental relations.h.i.+ps.”
[35] This is technically known as the Oedipus Complex.
Too Much Hate. Besides loving too hard, there is the danger of hating too hard. If it sounds strange to talk of the hatreds of childhood, we must remember that we are thinking of real life as it is when the conventions of adult life are removed and the subconscious gives up its secrets.
Several references have been made to the jealousy of the small child when he has to share his love with the parent of the same s.e.x. For every little boy the father gets in the way. For every little girl the mother gets in the way. At one time or other there is likely to be a period when this is resented with all the violence of a child's emotions. It is likely to be very soon repressed and succeeded by a real affection which lasts through life. But underneath, unmodified by time, there may exist simultaneously the old childish image and the old unconscious reaction to it, unconscious but still active in indirect ways.
Jealousy is very often united with the natural rebellion of a child against authority. The rebellion may, of course, be directed against either parent who is final in authority in the home. In most cases this is the father. As the impulse of self-a.s.sertion is usually stronger in boys than in girls, and as the boy's impulse in this direction is reinforced by any existing jealousy toward his father, we find a strong spirit of rebellion more often playing a subconscious part in the life of men than of women. The novelist's favorite theme of the conflict between the young man and ”the old man” represents the conscious, unrepressed complex. More often, however, there is true affection for the father, while the rebellion which really belongs to the childish father-image is displaced or transferred to other symbols of authority,-the state, the law, the king, the school, the teacher, the church, or perhaps to religion and authority in general. Anarchists and atheists naturally rationalize their reasons for dissent, but, for all that, they are not so much intellectual pioneers as rebellious little boys who have forgotten to grow up.
Liking to be ”Bossed.” There is a worse danger, however, than too much rebellion, and that is too little rebellion. Sometimes this yielding spirit is the result of an overdose of negative self-feeling and an under-dose of positive self-feeling; but sometimes it is over-compensation for the repressed spirit of rebellion which the child considers wicked. Consciously he becomes over-meek, because he has to summon all his powers to fight his subconscious insurrection. Whether he be meek by nature or by training, he is likely to be a failure. Everybody knows that the child who is too good never amounts to anything. He who has never disobeyed is a weakling. Naturally resenting all authority, the normal individual, if he be well trained, soon learns that some authority is necessary. He rebels, but he learns to acquiesce, to a certain degree. If he acquiesces too easily, represses too severely his rebellious spirit, swings to the other extreme of wanting to be ”bossed,” he is very likely to end as a nervous invalid, unfitted for the battles of life. The neurotic in the majority of cases likes authority, clings to it too long, wants the teacher to tell him what to do, wants the doctor to order him around, is generally over-conscientious, and afraid he will offend the ”boss” or some one else who reminds him of the father-image. All this carries a warning to parents who cannot manage their children without dominating their lives, even when the domination is a kindly one. Perhaps the modern child is in more danger of being spoiled than bullied, but a.n.a.lysis of nervous patients shows that both kinds of danger still exist.
Too Much Disgust. The third form of excessive emotion is disgust. The love-force, besides being blocked by a fixation of childish love and of childish reactions toward authority, is very often kept from free mature self-expression by a perpetuation of a childish reaction against s.e.x. We hardly need dwell longer on the folly of teaching children to be ashamed of so inevitable a part of their own nature. Disgust is a very strong emotion, and when it is turned against a part of ourselves, united with that other strong impulse of self-regard and incorporated into the conscience, it makes a Chinese wall of exclusion against the baffled, misunderstood reproductive instinct, which is thrust aside as alien.
Restraint versus Denial. Repression is not merely restraint. It is restraint plus denial. To the clamoring instinct we say not merely, ”No, you may not,” but ”No, you are not. You do not exist. Nothing like you could belong to me.” The woman with nausea (Chapter V) did not say to herself: ”You are a normal, healthy woman, possessed of a normal woman's desires. But wait a while until the proper time comes.” Controlled by an immature feeling of disgust, she had said: ”I never thought it. It cannot be.”
The difference is just this. When an ungratifiable desire is honestly faced and squarely answered, it is modified by other desires, chooses another way of discharge, and ceases to be desire. When a desire is repressed, it is still desire, unsatisfied, insistent, unmodifiable by mature points of view, untouched by time, automatic, and capable of almost any subterfuge in order to get satisfaction. A repressed desire is buried, shut away from the disintegrating effects of sunlight and air. While the rest of the personality is constantly changing under the influence of new ideas, the buried complex lives on in its immaturity, absolutely untouched by time.