VIII The forces of materialism found one ef their most protent weapons in the so-called discoveries of -Sigmund Freud (1859-1939).

Sigmund Freud was originally a physician who, during the early phase of his practice in Vienna, became · increasingly preoccupied with the study of nervous and mental_ diseases. By the time his theories. had began to take shape in the early part of ·the twentieth century. they had revolutionized the accepted standards of sexual behavior and methods

of child-rearing.

Freudian dogma

also became the dominant theme of modern art and literature. Students of religion, history, sociology, anthropology

and biology were no less strongly influenced.

By the end of World War 1, Freud’s ideas had gained

~normous

popularity both in Europe and America. As a result, promiscuity combined with a morbid fascination with perversions were not only tolerated but encourged by social custom and the mass-media. As commercial exploitation of the female body became big-business, immodest fashions_ in women’s clothing were accepted by the public. Modesty, chastity marital .fidelity and filial piety ceased

to

be even considered as virtues.

When anyone dared criticize his dogmas, Freud · argued that they must be true because they were the result of objective scientific research. Yet he

himself admits that he derived many of his conclusions from ancient Greek mythology.

· · It is extremely doubtful if the so-called discoveries of Sigmund Freud have cootri· buted anything constructive towards the alleviation or reduction of human suffering. On the contrary, there

is every evidence that nervous and mental diseases have assumed in America and Europe such epidemic propor· tions uncireamt of before his theories were formulated.

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO

PSYCHOANALYSIS\ There are two tenets of psychoanalysis which offend the whole world and excite its resentment ; the one conflicts with intellectual. the other with moral and aesthetic prejudices. Let us not underestimate these prejudices ; they are powerful things, resi~ues of valuable, even necessary stages in human evolution. They are maintained by emotional forces and the fight against them is a hard one.

The first of these displeasing propositions of psychoanalysis is that mental processes a.re essentially unconscious and that those ·which are conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of the whole psychic entity. Now I must ask you to remember that, on the contrary, we are accustomed to identify the mental with the conscious.

Consciousness

appears to us as positively the characteristic that defines life and we regard psychology as the study of the content of consciousness. This even appears so evident that any contradiction of it seems obvious nonsense to us, and yet it is impossible for psychoanalysis to avoid this contradiction, or to accept the identity between the· conscious and the psychic. The psychoanalytical definition of the mind is that it comprises processes

of the nature of feeling, thinking and wishing, and it maintains that there are such things as unconscious

• Sigmund Freud, E11gli.eh t.raualaLion by Joan Riviere, Waabington Ll1juare l’ress Inc,, Ne” Yori.., 1960,

148

thinking and wiconscious wishing. B’ut in doing so, psychoanalysis has forfeited at the outset the sympathy of the sober and scientifically mind~d and incurred the suspicion of boing a fantastic cult occupied with dark and unfathomable mysteries. It seems like an empty wrangle over words to argue whether mental life is to be regarded as co-extensive with consciousness or whether it may be said to stretch beyond this limit, and yet I can assure you that the acceptance of unconscious mental processes represents a decisive step towards a new orientation

in science.

As little can you suspect how close is the connection between this first bold step on the part of psychoanalysis and the second to which I am

now coming.

For this next proposition which we put forward as one of the discoveries of psychoanalysis consists in the assertion that impulses which can only be described as sexual, in both the narrower and the wider sense, play a large pa.rt, never before sufficiently appreciated, in the causation of nervous and mental disorders. Nay, more, that these sexual impulses have contributed ·invaluably to the highest cultural, artistic and social achieve· ments of the human mind.

In my opinion, it is the aversion from this conclusion of psychoanalytic investigation that is the most significant source of the opposition it ha.a

encountered.

Are you curious to know how we ourselves account for this ? W c believe that civilization has been .built up, under _the pressure oi the t>truggle for e:u:>teuce, by sacrifico in gratification

149

of the primitive impulses, and that it is to a. greB.t extent, for ever being rP.created, as each individual, successively joining the community, repeats th~ sacrifice of his instinctive pleasures for the common good. The sexual are among the most impor.tant of the instinctive forces thus utilized : ~hey are in this way sublimated, that is to say, their energy is turned aside from its sexual goal and diverted to other ends, no longer sexual and socially more valuable. But the structure thus built up is insecure for the sexual impulses are controlled

with

difficulty ; in each individual who takes up his part in the work of civilization, there. is a danger that a rebellion of the sexual impulses may occur, against this diversion q~ their energy. Society can conceive of no more powerful menace to its culture than would arise from the liberation of the sexual impulses and a return of them to their original goal. For this reason the revelations of psychoanalysis are not tolerated by it, and it would greatly prefer to brand them as aesthetically offensive, morally reprehensible or dangerous. But

since such objections are not valid arguments

against conclusions which claim to represent the objective results of sci~~tific investigations, ~the opposition must be translated into intellectual ··- terms before it can be expressed. It is a characteristic of huma.n nature to be inclined to regard anything which is disagreeable as untrue, and th~n

without much difficulty to find a1·guments again~t

it. Thus society pronounces the unacceptable to

be untrue, disputes t he result of µsyc;hoana.lysis UiO

with Jo~ir.a.1 and concr~t~ arguments a.rising however, from dubious sources and clingR to them with all the strength of prejudic~ .a~ain. t every at.tf’mpt l\t refutation.

That children should have no sexual life,· exua.l excitement, needs and gratification of any sort but that they suddely acquire these things in the years between twelve and fourteen, would be apart from observation biologically just 1ts improbable, indeed nonsensical, as to suppose that they are born without genital organs which first begin to sprout at the age of puberty. What actual1y does awake in them at this period is the reproductive function, which then makes use for its own purposes the material lying to hand in body and mind. You are making the mistakes of confounding sexuality and ,reproduction with each other and thus you obstruct your own way to the comprehension of sexuality, the perversions and the neuroses. Strange to say, its origin lies in the fact that you yourselves have all been children and as children were subject to the influences of education. For it is indeed one of the most important social tasks of education to restrain, confine, and subjec~ an individual to control (i

[^0] teelf

identical with the ~mands of society) the sexuaT instinct when it breaks · forth in the form of the reproductive function. In its own interests, accord· ingly, soci~ty would postpone the child’s full deve· lopment until it has attained a certain stage to intellectu.al .maturity, since educability practically ceases w1~ the full onset of the exual instinct .

• “t

Without this, the instinct would break all bounds

151

and the laboriously erer·t P.d stru\<·turP. of dvili:r.atio1 wonJd hP SWP.pt away. Nor is thP. task of restrainint it evn nn eaAy onP; s[^11] cres~ in thi~ direction iR oftet

poor nnd

ometimes only too great. Basically

society’s motive

is economic ; since it has not means enough to support life for its members without work on their part, it must see to it that the number of these members is restrirted and

their t>nergit-s \<lire \<•te\<l away from sexual activities

on to their work, the e, ternal primordial struggle for existence therefore persisting to the present

day.

Experience must have taught educators that the task of moulding the sexual will of the next generation can only be carried out by beginning to

impose their influence very early and intervening

in the sexual life of children before puberty instead of waiting until the storm burst1:1.

Consequently, almost all infantile sexual activities are forbidden

‘or made disagreeable to the child. The little child is · supposed to be pure innoc.ent; he who says

otherwise shall be condemned as a hated blasp· hemer against humanity’s tenderest and most sacred feeling!.

The children alone take no part in this conven.

tion ; they assert their animal nature naively enough and demonstrate persistently ~hat they have yet to learn their “purity.” Strange to say, those who deny sexuality in children are the last to relax edu·cative measures against it ; they foJlow up with the greatest severity every manifestation of which they deny.

152

I will now tell you the most cl\<>nrly recognisable of the child’s sexual activities. It will be. expedient if I first introduced to you the term libido. In every way analogus to hunger, libido is the force by meo.ns of which the instinct, in this case the sexual instinct, as with hunger, the nutritional instinct, achieves satisfaction.

‘The infant’s

first sexual

excitations appear in connection with the other functions important for life. If the infant could express itself, it wou]d undoubtedly acknowledge that the act of sucking at its mother’s breast is far and away the most important thing in life. I would not be wrong in this, for by thi act, it gratifies at the same moment the two greatest needs in life. Thus we learn from psychoanalysis how sucking for nourishment becomes the point of departure from which the whole sexual life develops. Then the enquiring child approaches some knowledge of the facts about sex, unless m~led by his ignorance; he overlooks them until he receives an imperfect and discrediting account of them, usually in the period before puberty which not infrequently affects hiIIl traumatically.

In this connection, it will be instructive to com· pare a child’s atti~ude towards his brothers and sisters with his attitude towards his parents. There is probably no nursery without violent conflicts· between the inhabitants actuated by rivalry for the love of the parents, competition

shared by

them all, even for the actual space in the room they occupy. Such hostility is directed against older as well as younger brothers and sisters, I think it was

George Bernarrl Shaw (an English playwright) who said : “Tf there is anyone whom a young English lady hn,tes more than her brother, tt is her elder sister.” Now th ere is

omething in this dictum

which jars upon us ;·it is enough to bring ourselves to understand hatred and rivalry between brothers and sisters, hut how can feelings of hate force themselves into the relation between mother and daughter, parents and chilclren ?

Yet everyday observation may show us how frequently the sentiments entertained toward each other by parent and grown-up children fall short of the ideal set up by society and how much hostility lies smouldering, ready to burst into flame if not stifled by considerations of filial or

parental duty nnd · by other tender impulses. The motives for this hostility are

well known and we recognize a tendency for those

of the same sex to become alienated, daughter from mother and father from son.

I refer to that rivalry of affections in which sexual elements are plainly emphasized. The son, when quite a little chi ld~ already begins to develop a peculiar t enderness towards his mother whom he

looks upon as his own property, regarding his father

in the light of a rival who disputes the sole posses-

sion of his ; similarly the little daugh tor secs in her mother someone who disturbs her tender relation

to her father and occupies a place which she feels

she herself could very welJ fill.

Observation shows

us how far bad. these. cntimenls elate ; sentiments

which describe

by tho term OedivusOom1Jlex because in tho Greek myth, the two extreme forms

154

of the wishes arising frnm th\<’ sit nation of t.he son: the wish 1.(1 kill 1he fat.l1f’l’ !Uhl ma.r1·y lh\<’ mother-

n.re reali?.ed in an only ~ li~htly m’>\<lified form. Moreover

the

parents

ihemsf’lVNi frf’quently

stimulate the children lo react with an Oedipus Oomplex for parents are often guided in their prefer· Pnces by the differPncP in i:lex of th Pir \<’hildren so that thP

fathP.l’ fnvourR t.lw d1rnghtPr nn\<l lhr

moth\<’r the son ; or els\<’ w1wn

(·onju ~a. I love ha8

grown \<’Old, the chil\<l m ny h\<’ tak\<’n nH a R1tb8tit.11tr for the love-object which has ceased to attract.

Amongst those forbidden wishes special promi· nence must be given to the incestuous d esires. i.e. those dfrect.ed towards intercourse with parents or brothers aJld sisters. You know in what abhorrence society holds, or at Jen.st prof Psses to hold, such intercourse, a.nd what emphnsis is laid upon the l>rohibitions of it. The most preposterous attempts have been made to account for this horror of incest. Some people have assumed that it is a. provision of nature for the preservation of the species manifesting itself in the mind by these prohibitions because in-breeding would result in racial degeneration; others asserted that propinquity from early child· hood has deflected the sexual desires from the persons concerned. In both these cases, however, the avoidance of incest would have been autom· atical~y secured and ·we should be at a loss to underata.nd the necessity for stern prohibitions which would seem rather to point to a strong desire. Psychoanalytic investigations have shown beyond the possibility of doubt that an incestuous love·

155

choice is in fact the first and the regular one, and that is only later that any opposiLion ii:; manifested towards it, the causes of which arf’ to hf’ sought in the psychology of the individual.

What in adult Ji ff’ are ·termed “perversi~ns” depart from the normal in the following respects: 1) in a disregard for the barriers of species (the gulf between man and beast ; 2) in the insensibility to harriers imposed by disgmit (faeces, urine etc.) ; 3) in the transgression of the incest barrier (the prohibition of seeking sexual gratification with close blood-relatives) ; 4) in homosexuality and, 5) in the transference of the pa.rt played by genital organs to other organs and different parts of the body. AIJ these barriers are not in existence from the outset, but are only gradually built up in the course of development and education. The little child is free from them ; he does not perceive any immense gulf between man and beast, the arrogance with which man separates himself from the other animals only dawns in him at a later period. He shows at the beginning of life, no disgust for excrement but only learns this feeling slowly under the influence of educ~tion ; he attaches no particular importance to the difference between the sexes. In fact he thinks that both have the same formation of the genital organs ; he directs his earliest desires and his curiosity to those nearest to him or to those for other reasons are especialJy beloved, his parents, brothers and sisters or nurses ; and .finally we see in

him a characteristic whfoh manifests itself again

Jater at the height of some love relationship,

106

namely, he \<1oeR not look for grn.tifira.tion in the sexual organs only hut \<li:;\<·overs that many other parts of tho body possess the same sort of. ensibility and can yield ama1og11s pleasurable sensations, playing thereby l h e part of genita l organs. The cbi1d may be said thl’n to be

polymorphously perverse.

Tho crudest f’OUCCptions 0 r the pathogenic pro· I

cess which is \<lemon. trn.lNl by tho r\<’Histanres we call

repres~ion is the one we shall find most convenient, a spatial one. The unconscious. system may there· fore be compared to a large ante-room in which the various mental excitations are crowding upon one another like individual beings.

Adjoining this is &

second, smaller apartment, a sort of reception roolll in which the consciousness resides.

But on the threshold betwen the two there stands a personage with the office of door-keeper who examines the various mental

excitations, censors them and denies them admittance to the reception room where he disapproves of them. Now this metaphor may be employed

lo widen our terminology. The .excitations of the unconscious in the ante-chamber are not visible to consciousness which is of course in the other room, so to begin with, they remain unconscious. When they have pre~sed forward to the threshold and been turned back by the door· keeper they are incapable of becoming conscious and we ca.11 them represRed.

The door-keeper between unconscious and the preconscious is nothing else than the censorship to which we found in the form of the manifest dream

157

subjected. Tho residue of tho clay’s experience ; which we·found to be stimuli exciting the dream,

was preconscious

materi~J at night that during sleep had been influenced by the unconscious and repressed wishes and excitations ; and had thus by association with them been able to form the latent dream by means of their energy. Neither is drea~ing a pathological phenomenon ; every . healthy person ·may dream while asleep. Every inference concerning tho constitution of the mental appartatus ·which comprises an understanding of both dreams and neurotic symptoms has an irrefutable claim to he regarded as applying also to normal men.tal

life.

In every one of our patients we learn through analysis that the symptoms and their effects have sent the sufferer back into some past period of his life. . In the majority of cases it is actually a very· early phase of the life history which has thus been selected, a period in childhood, even absurd as it m~y sound, the period of existence as a suckling infant. Consider now in addition that the facts established are confirmed in every symptom· of every neurotic disease ; that al ways and everywhere is known to the sufferer and that analysis invariably shows that those symptoms are derived· from the meaning of the symptom unconscious ment.al

processes which can, however under various unfavourable conditions, become conscious.

Neurotic symptoms t.hen, just like errors and dreams, havo their moaning and like these, are

related to t.he life of t.he persou rn whom they

158

appear. This is an important matter which: I should like to demonstrate to you.

A well-grown clever girl of 19, the only child of her parents, superior to them in education and intellectual activity, was a wild, high-spirited child but of late years had become very nervous without any apparent

She was very irritable,

~a.use.

particularly with her mother, was discontented and depressed, inclined to indecision and doubt, finally confessing that she could no longer walk alono through squares and wide streets. We will not go very closely into her complicated condition which requires at least two diagnoses : agrophobia and obsessional neurosis, but will turn our attention to the ritual elaborated by this girl prior to going to bed which caused her parents great distress. As a motive of her nightly precautions, our patient declares that she must have silence at night and must exclude all possibility of noise .. She does two things for this . purpose ; she stops the large clock in her room and removes all the other clocks out of the room including the tiny wrist watch on her bed . table. Flower pots and vases are placed carefully together on the writing table, so that they cannot fall down and so disturb her sleep. She knows that these precautions have only an illusory justification in the demand for quiet ; the ticking of the little watch could not be heard a.nu every one knows that the regular ticking of a pendulum clook never disturbs sleep but. is more likely to induce it. She also admits that her fear that the flower pots and vases if lcH iu thcil’

l’lu.cc~ migL t, f c.till dowu of

159

themselves and break is utterly improbable. For some other practices in her ritual this insistence upon silence as a motive is dropped ; indeed by insisting that the door between her bedroom and that of her parents shall remain half-open (a condi~ tion which she ensures oy placing various objects· in the doorway) she seems on the contrary to open the way to sources of noise.

The most important obRerva.nces.a.re concerned with the bed itself, however. The bolst~r at the head of the bed must not touch the ba’Ck of the wooden bedstead. The pillow must Jio across the bolster exactly in a diagonal position and in no other. She then places her head exactly in the middle of this diamond, lengthways. The eiderdown must be shaken before she puts it · over her, so that all the feathers sink to the footend ; she never fails, however to press this out and redistribute them all over again. Do not suppose that all this is carried out with perfect smoothness. Bverything is accompanied by the anxiety that it has not been done properly ; it must be tested anrl repeated; she doubts first one and then another of the precautions and the result is that one or two. hours elapse before the girl herself oan sleep, or Jets the intimidated pa.rents sleep.

The patient gradually learnt to understand that tihe banished clocks and watches from her room at night because they were symbols of the female organs. Now thiR ·patient’s special fear was that the ticking of the clocks would disturb her during aleep. The ticking of a dock is comparable to the throbbiug uf Lho clitoris in be.xuaJ oxcitation. This

IHO sensation· which wa.s \<listr(•s:in!.!; tn liN ha\<l nclually on several occassions wakcnc1l h1..•r I rom slerp and now her fear of an crcclion of the c.:litol’is expressed itself in th e imposition of a rule to removo a.11 clocks and watches far awn.y from her during the night. Flower pots ancl vasrs are, like a ll rocepta· cles, also symbols of lhe female genitals.

Precau·

tions to . prevent them from falling and breaking during the night are therefore not lacking in meaning. We know the very widespread custom of breaking a vessel or a plate on th occasion of e. betrothal ; everyone present possesses himself of a fragment in symbolic acceptance of tho fnct that he m ay no longer put forward any claims to the bride; presumably a

custom which arose with

monogamy.

‘fhc patient also contributed a. re· collection and several associations to this part of her ritual. Once as a child she fallen while carrying ~ glass or porcelain ‘ essol and had cut her finger which had bled badly. As she grow up and learned the facts about iniorcour ·o, she dcvolopcd the apprehension that on her wedding night she would not bleed and so would prove not to be a virgin. H er precaution against the vases breaking signified a rejection of the whole oomplox conc~rnod with virginity and with the question of bleeding during the first act of intercourse ; rejection of the anxiety both that she would bleed or that she would not bleed.

Those precautions

w.ere in fact

only

remotely connected with the prevention of noiso.

One day she confessed the central idea of her ritual when she suddenly unuerstoo\<l her i·ulo not to

161

let the bolster touch the back of the bed. The bolster had always seemed a woman to her, she said, and the upright back of the bedstead a man. She wished therefore, by a magic: cel’emony, as it were, to keep man and woman apart ; that i8 to say, tu separate the parents and prevent intercourse from occurring. She had simulated fear, or had exploited 11. tendency to fear, so that the door between her bedroom and that of her parents should. not be clo1:1ed. ln this way she managed to make it possible for her to overhear her parents, a proceeding which at one timo had eamwtl h er munth1:1 of 1:1lee1>lei:,1:1nel::ls. If the bolster was a woman, then the shaking of the eiderdown till all the feathers were at the bottom making a proturberance there, also had a meaning. It meant impregnating a woman. She did not neglect, though, to obliterate the pregnancy again, for she had for years been terrified that intercourse between her parents might result iu another child and present her a rival. On the other hand, if the large bolster meant tlw mother then

the small pillow coul\<l 011Jy rcprc::;c11t th\<’ daughter.

Why had this pillow to Le placed dia111011d-wise upon the bolster and lier head l>e laitl exa.d.ly in its middle lengthwa.ye ? She was t’\<tsi ly n·11timkd that a tliamond is repeatedly used iu drawiugs on walls

to sign~fy the open female organs.

‘J’hr part of the wan (the father) she had thus played hen;elf aud rt:placed the malt}

organ Ly her own head. (S.Ymbolism of beheading for castration.)

HorriLl~ thoughts, you will i:,ay, to run iu the t11iud of “”

virgiu girl. 1 admil tbaL hut \<lo 11ut

162

forget I have not invented these ideas- only exposed them.

It would be possible to obtain much more out of the analysis of this ritual by bringing it into its place in connection with the patient’s other symp· toms. But that is not our purpose at the moment. You must be content with a reference to an erotic attaohment to the father, originating very early in chlldho.od which had enslaved this girl. It was perhaps for this reason that she was so unfriendly towards her mother. She has also herself perceived that she cannot marry a~ long as she is so ill. May we suspect that she became so ill in order to be unable to marry and so to remain with her father? The more insight we gain into the meaning and purpose of neurotic symptoms, the less suprieing

will · his seem.

163 “Since according to Freud. man is vicious by nature, being swayed by an unlimited and passionate deaire, he ie compelled to deny that our high activitiee like a.rt, science, religion or philosophy have any intrinsic worth or merit of their own. Io his book, Civilization and its Discontents, he has tried to show that these activities a.re attempts of man to compensate for his unsatisfied sexual desires. They are no more than a useful sop for salving his wounded instincts. They have their root in the flvil nature of man which is unable to exprea1 itself in an undisguised from.

Conscience is the reeult of in~tinctual renunciations. Its verdict is based on the nature of instincts which society feels to be most dangeroue to it. Religion is nothing more than a desire for a heavenly father necessitated when the earthly father fails us in youth. Ethics and morality are barriers imposed .by eociety to bold in check the undesirable instincts. Reasoning of all kinda ie merely rationalizing and a compensation for the instinct that are denied expression. We prove things to be true when we want them to be true. Art is needed to create illueions and to protect man against the unbearable reality of things. Art is a mild narcotic, a temporary refuge from tho hardships of life.

Intellectual activity is aldo a compensation for thwarted instinctive desires.

Our views on abstract questions, on right and wrong are determined by the instinctive desitlls whose substitute gratification is being sought. The evil impulses of man, according to l\<’reud, create a big necessity for him to delude himself by means of the so.called higher activities that they are being satisfied without 11atisfying them

actually in order to be able to pacify an oppressive society\ :’,

The higher activities of man are not really higher but totalJy• unreal and illusory substitutes for our real desires.

Thus according to Freud, man can do .nothini during his life but choose one of the folJowing three alternatives.

1. “To give full expression to the shameful urge of his nature and become as wicked and licentious as he desires. Of course the society will idiot disgrace, degradation and 164 censure upon him but Jet him try not to mind these tbingi if he can.

“To repress his sexual desires in order to be able to plea.so his society a.nd thereLy expose himself to tho danger of suffering from nervousneas, hyateria, ousessions, worries, neurosis and madnesa.

“To renounce his instinctive desires and try to deoeive 3.

himself by such substitute activities ae a.rt, religion, soience and morality which he must remember, are no more than illusions devoid of any merit or worth of their own.

“Obviously Freud portrays a very miseriA.ble picture of

He depicts him as an intellectual beast the human being.

doomed to diagrace, misery or madness if he does not deceive himself by using all his intellectual powers that the desires of his intractable evil nature are being satisfied.

“Freud ha.a given an unjustifiably wide meaning to the word sexuality. The ordinary man has from the beginning of recorded history a.lwa.ya assumed on the grounds of experience that the sex instinct first manifests itself in adolescence. Bui according to Freud, the urge of the unconscious mind is [^1] permanent. nature and in order to give the sex instinct the status of a permanent urge which remains active from the first day of life to the la.st, Freud has tried to prove ita activity from the earliest infancy by suggesting that suoh simple activities of the baby as swallowing, excreting, sucking the nipple or the thumb are sexual in character. He bolda that tho child’s love for his parents is due to a sexual urge. Freud a11igns a sexual origin not only to all mental and nervous disorders and dreams but also to normal mental prooeHes that ha.vu apparently nothiug to do with sex.

“Nervous Jisurders are ca.used uy ti.ta oua~ruoLion of th•

urge of consciousness and not by the repreaaion of the urge of sex which in its unmixed form ia no more than a. biologioal function ae eiwple and ha.rmless as in the lower animals. We &l’b Wli6rable wl.te11bvc:.r vur desire for wi id[^66]1 oauuut. Wida fuU 165 erprrssioo. What causes the worry or the nervous trouble ia that t.ho whole of the lo’\”e of Rolf is not. being ntiliscrl hy the idol\I 1rn\<l a portion of it is hoing attrnote\<l Ly oafl of tlie instinclual desiroe making whnt is ren.lly one dettire iuto &.wo confiictin~ desiros pulling tho i;elf in opposite direct.ions. So.x instinct is only one of the many otbor instincts which como into a C’f111h with the impulse for t.he ideal. The conflict mu.y be causerl equally by othflr impulses when they a.re oompet.ing with the irleo.l and rlividing a portion of the self’s love. The Rhell11ho1•k ra.seR in tho first and second world wars were due to the instinct of self-preservation vying with the ideal or the love of duty. Tho conflict can be Ulade impossible by increa1ing our love for the ideal whatever the ideal may be.

“A patriotic soldier risks his life in the battle field because he is convinced that it is hie duty to do so. Duty is the call of the ideal and his ideal ie hie country. Ho desires to perform hie duty because he loves his ideal. It depends on the strength of his love how far he will go in risking hie life o.nd performing his duty. If Ids attraction for tho ideal is very groat, the desire to defend hie country will be strong enough to oust all

other desires, including hie desire to proserve hie life. If on

the other band, his attraction for the ideal of patriotism is weak, some of the urge of the self will find expression in the love of life and there will be a conflict between two desires, the one for the ideal goading him to lay down his life in defence of hie country and the other for the preservation of life itself, goading him to run away. The oonfiict will reach its climax when the shell bursts near the soldier resulting in what is known as ehellehock. The soldier has no faith in the ideal because the ideal has no permanent value for him. He thinks, for example, that all will end with hie death and he will not be rewarded for losing his life. In such a case, his ideal is imperfect and lacks the qualities of Beauty one of which ie pormo.nence so that the soldier is unable to be deceived by it. 1’he Right Ideal , since it contains all the qualities that we tlesire, (that being precisely the reason why it is the Right Ideal) II capable of attracting ua in Inch a way that no 166 inatinotive desire is able to complete with it and make’

mental conflict poe1ible. If on the other hand, the eoldi~’•

attraction to the ideal of hi• country is very great, he will readily lay down his life for it and will fight willingly while the shells are breaking all around him. He will not 1uffer from shellshock because his urge for Beauty is being aati1fied com· pletely by a single ideal throughout. In such a case, although his ideal i1 imperfect, yet in his error, he inve1ta it with all the qualities of the Perfect Ideal. He is mistaken. He may be deceiving himself, for example by the belief that ~e will become immortal by sacrificing his life for ~

[^1] country or that he wants nothing besides the good of~· countrymen which will be permanently achieved by fighting to the death.

“Let us take another example in which the sex impulle ii inTolved:

“Supposing an orderly and law-abiding man falls in loT• with the wife of his neighbour. The approval of society ia the ideal of his life and he loves this ideal and hence all hia actiOlll

are dictated by it. If his attraction for the ideal ia atronJ

enough, it will succeed in curbing aU other desirea, which come into a clash with it, including his love for the woman. If hil love for the ideal is not sufficiently strong, a portion of the urge of consciousness will find expression in the sexual impul[^19] towards the woman.

What was really one desire for the RigM Ideal will be thus split up into two desires; opposite and conflicting in their nature, one for the approval of hia society and the other for the woman’s love. The result will be a mental conflict and a diseociation of the mind manifesting itself in [^1] nervous disorder. The trouble is caused by the fact that the ~ man lacks sufficient faith in his ideal. He fears hia ideal on account of his long attachment to it and yet thinks that it ~I be unable to reward him sufficiently for the sacrifice of bi• [^1] sexual impulse. The psychoanalysist and the patient are both to be excused if they think that the nervous trouble is caused by the repression of the sexual impulse because the apparent circumstances e.rc :;.:ch, thr. rec.I ~uee -.:f th .. trnnhle is that hi• 167 ideal is incapable of giving tho fullest expression to hie urge for Beauty. He cannot love hie ideal aa much as hie nature wants him to love it. He will be cured if we manage to increa88 hi1 Jove for the existing ideal, that is, hi~ regard for the approval of the society or if he ca.n no longer be deceived by his ideal and considers it very low in the scale of Beauty, by making him feel the perfection of [^11]higher, more beautiful and more attractive ideal which requires good intentions towards one’s neighbours and which is capable ol monopolizing the whole of’his love, say the Jove of the Creator. The ideal which is capable of absorbing the whole of our love permanently without deceiving us is the ‘l’rue Religion and the love of that. Faith alone can make nervous diseases impossible.

“The payohoacalyi1t may tell the man to give up his repressions a.nd have an affair with the woman. But this will be a most dangerous advice and a very harmful method of

treatment. It can only make him worse. The psychoanalyist

will diminish the patient’s love for his ideal, of society’s approval and reduoe its beauty in his eyes so that for a short time the whole af his urge will be his sexual impulse and the woman will become his sole ideal. In this wa.y the conflict will temporarily disappear but since tho woman cannot fill the place of the ideal in his heart permanently, the man will be as a. matter of fact preparing himself for much greater. trouble. When his sex impulse is satisfied, it will lose its charm a.nd the man will find that it is unable to satisfy the whole of his urge of self for moral perfection. Ho will therefore return for the full satisfaction of this urge t-0 find it wounded and violated.

This wm make the man extremely diSS&tiafied with himself an\<l

therefore utterly miserable. Tho resulting contlfot may be serious enough to drive the man to commit suicide.

The desire to be moral is not the result of mere social pressure to conform but is caused by our ‘innate urge for perfection. The complete expression of this urge can cure a. eurosis.

We are afraid of the society because we identify ~·)auty with the approval of the society and we cannot get rul of this f Par unless we see a greater beautv and thus form 168 a greater attachment olsewhorc. The mmrotio person suffers not. because he i11

11111tble to recouoile himself to society and its standardd bnt bocanse he is unable to re\<’oncila himself t.ll

A 1·eflJ>Pctablo mnn couuot in\<lulgt:t jn 11e:111al laxity bims~lf.

because he co.uuot IJo happy hy l>rt>oking loose from th6 standn.rcls imposed by the 1>boiety when the approval of this sociflt.y 1mtisfies his ideals.

LiLcrtiniam starves the dtieire for beauty instead of so.tisfying it.

“The fundamental cause of a. 11ervoua trouble is the choice of Lhe lote of a wrong ideal. The cure achieved through psyoh’oanaJysis is also u It i mat ely due to the patient having

changed his ideal. It is clo.imed that the mere recall of the

repressed desire ~ffcl!ts tho cure. The patient forgets tho painful experience becauf!e he wants to ignore it on account of its painfulness with tho result that a portion of the enorgyof Jove in the unconscious is Jocked up in the thwarted aud forgotten impulse. It is not available for a new ideal although the patient would very much like to Jove a new ideal in order to start life afresh and give up everything that has caused the trouble. As soon as the forgotton \<’Xperience is recalled, the patient knows what was wrong with him. He is immediately in a position to compare his old idea.I with the new one which he now desires to love and to gi ve up the old ideal as unsati•· factory and troublesome with the result that the locked up energy is at once liberated and made available for the new ideal.

The wholeness of tho mind is restored.

What we need for the prevention of future nervous troubles is to have an ideal which we can love completely and continuously and which we never must change.

“It is well known that in mo.ny cases a patient is m11~[^8] worse by psychoanalysis.

The reason is that paychoanaJys1s can .•moceed only if the patient’s idea.I hll.8 changed between tho

first attack of illness and the end of its treatment. If during

this period , the patient cannot be made free ·from the iropuJses co.using the trouble or which is the same thing, if bis ideal ~aru1ot ~e altered or ~u.ised higher, bringing the complex to light 1s certo.m to make him worse.

This fact supports thl” vieW 169 th”t f,hl) rMI 0/\1186 of the !”ure- does not lio HO much is the \<liM\<:ove1y of lhti couttict ~sin the changing or 1.h” raisinp, of thu ideal. What payohoanalyRis rloe~ is to help a qui\<’k journt1y hnokwnr\<h to reveal tho HOllr\<’O O[ lhe conflic•L O.Htf [^1]f’ po111\if.le Lil put tha Self on n new road again lint JTHA8NOMl/JANSOh’ MAKINO8URE’l’HATTIIENEWROA])UJIONENBY THEM18THEOORREOTONE.

It, cannot prev~nt future errors and therefore future attackR of nervouR diE1eaaes. • d~sinteymtion of Jfenlalillnenisonlyanothertermf or the lheliumanperaonality.

How does implicit faith in lRlam integrate the mind and thus result in a. well.l,a.lanco\<l, wholesome person 1

Wholehearted acceptance of the doctrine of Tauhid or the Unity of God makes the believer broa.dmindod and sympathetic to all his fellow beings made by the same Croat or, producoR an unsurpassed dignity and self-respect, makes him indifferent and independent and fearless of a.JI powers other than t hose of Ooll, at the same time gonaratin~ in him humility l\nd modesty. The believer in Ta1,hirl is a. righteous man because he is convinced that unless he acts justly, he cannot succeed. The believer does not J espair ‘ and lose hope regardless of adversity. His faith that God is the Master of all the universe whose powers and mercy a.re infinite, ~ives him immense consolation in trouble so that he navel’ yields to pessimism and despondancy. Suicide is unthinkable. ‘l’he true believer will persevere to the end with patience a.ud implicit trust [^10] God. Faith in Islam fills the believer with unrivalled courage. Since he is convinced that his life and property belong exclusively to God, he is ready to sacrifice them at a.ny momeut for His pleasure. Since God alone can bestow life or death, no man or animal has the power to inflict any ha.rm upon him unless it litl God’s will.

The true believer is convinced beyond doubt that Cod has set tho span of his lift. in u.d ~·ance. so that all the forces of the world combine\<l a.rtl powerleRs to take away