by Ruth Snowden
3 Moral anxiety This arises from the superego – it is the voice of the conscience, telling us when something is ‘improper’.
Anxiety from all three sources feels similar, and in fact anxiety can arise from a mixture of different sources at the same time. Anxiety is closely associated with feelings of guilt. It can also present itself in the form of phobias and hysteria. Hysterical anxiety can come as a very severe attack, which does not necessarily have an obvious source in the external world.
Anxiety…
Freud says that the most common cause of anxiety is sexual frustration. This begins in infancy, when the mother is not present, or when the infant sees an unfamiliar face. (Remember that Freud sees the mother as the sex object at this stage.) A particular source of anxiety is attached to each developmental stage. For example, at the phallic stage it is the fear of castration that causes anxiety and at the latency stage it is a developing fear of the superego. As the ego gets stronger and more clearly defined, the anxieties weaken, but traces of them usually remain. Neurotics remain infantile in their attitude to danger and consequently suffer a great deal from anxiety.
DEFENCE MECHANISMS
Defence mechanisms arise in order to protect the ego from too much anxiety. Without them, anxiety can become a threat to mental health. Defence mechanisms are used unconsciously and, within reason, they are healthy. However, they can easily become too forceful and damaging, requiring much mental effort to sustain them, and masking issues that really need to be addressed. In this case they become merely a strategy for hiding from anxiety.
REPRESSION
This is one of the most common defence mechanisms and it forms the basis for many of Freud’s theories. Undesirable information is stored away in the unconscious, so repression is really a form of forgetting. We may repress something so that we do not have to deal with painful feelings and memories. People can lose whole blocks of time in this way after a traumatic event and conscious efforts to recall events may have no effect. This can apply both to emotional traumas and traumas caused by external events such as war.
DENIAL
Denial is closely related to repression, but this time the person refuses to accept the reality of a situation. This is sometimes acceptable as a short-term defence, but becomes dangerous if the situation never gets properly dealt with. For example a person finds a suspicious lump somewhere on their body and, fearing it might be cancer, may forget all about it rather than go to the doctor.
DISPLACEMENT
This is another common defence mechanism that arises as a result of repression. Because a person cannot release a basic feeling such as anger, it builds up and is then directed towards another person, animal or object that has nothing to do with the original situation. For example, if a person has a bad day at work, rather than confront the boss they may come home and vent their frustration on the family.
PROJECTION
This is almost a combination of denial and displacement. It is once again a result of repression, whereby a person is unable to recognize the reality of his or her own behaviour. The result is that taboo urges or faults are projected outwards on to another person. For example, the bossiest member of the household covers this up by accusing one of the others of being bossy.
FANTASY
Most people indulge in a certain amount of fantasy and daydreaming in order to make life more bearable. This is perfectly normal and can actually be quite positive – for example, dreaming of that holiday in Spain might motivate you to work a little harder. It is harmful only when a person can no longer separate fantasy from reality. When this happens, a person may spend so much psychic energy on fantasy that they don’t get on with changing things that are blocking their progress in real life.
RATIONALIZATION
Here, a person finds an excuse for their behaviour that is more acceptable to the ego than the real reason. For example, the driver of a car might say: ‘I took the wrong turning there because I was so busy trying to avoid that wretched cyclist who was all over the road.’ This conveniently covers up the fact that actually they were not paying attention to where they were going in the first place. Rationalization allows people to avoid responsibility and guilt.
REGRESSION
Regression is another defence mechanism. Here, the person reverts back to an earlier behaviour or developmental stage that feels safe or comforting. We all tend to do it if we feel ill or upset. It is very common in children who want more attention, perhaps because of a new baby, or because their parents are getting divorced. Adults sometimes go into a severe regression after a ghastly trauma and may even curl up into a foetal position.
REACTION FORMATION
Sometimes a person feels an impulse and covers it up by displaying its exact opposite – for example by being pleasant and polite to somebody they actually want to be rude to. Reaction formation as a defence is quite common in teenagers and is often shown by an individual being hostile to somebody they are really attracted to. The problem arises when the latent urge remains dormant and unresolved and so may build up into a powerfully negative force.
TRANSFERENCE
Any of the defence mechanisms can actually be helpful and they all appear in the behaviour of normal, healthy people. Problems only arise when they are overdone and the person becomes blind to their true feelings and motives. The job of the psychoanalyst is to help people to unravel these. This can be a very painful process, but it is one that helps us towards a more balanced personality.
During the course of psychoanalytic treatment, some ‘transference’ may take place as the client develops emotional attitudes towards the analyst. This is quite normal: in fact, it is often part of the healing process. When this happens, the client may direct feelings of love or hostility towards the analyst. This can be helpful because it recreates the original problem in miniature. Freud called this a ‘transference neurosis’. The advantage is that unconscious feelings are now out in the open and can be examined and hopefully dealt with properly.
NARCISSISM
Freud found some patients who did not respond to psychoanalytic therapy at all. He used the myth of Narcissus to explain what was going on. Narcissus was a beautiful youth in ancient Greece who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool. He pined away and eventually died and was turned into a flower because he could never fully possess himself. Freud saw this story as a good way of illustrating the idea of an ego that has become totally self-absorbed and can no longer relate to the outside world. Such cases of psychosis are not treatable by psychoanalysis because the normal transference does not occur.
Narcissism is normal in infancy, when the infantile ego expects the outside world to be just the same as itself. It is also normal for some degree of self-love to appear within any adult relationship.
MOURNING AND MELANCHOLIA
In 1915 Freud wrote Mourning and Melancholia, which can be found in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Freud. We would now call melancholia severe depression. This often occurs after a traumatic life event, such as a bereavement or divorce, and it shows itself in many ways:
• The person blames him- or herself for what has happened and becomes self-destructive, even suicidal.
• He or she becomes very withdrawn from the world, as in narcissism, but this time the self is seen as being bad, unworthy, dirty, etc.
• Severe mourning can conceal repressed hatred for the lost person. The lost person may become identified with the person’s own ego, so that hate becomes self-hate and guilt. This process, where a person absorbs into the self the characteristics of another, is called ‘introjection’.
• The person may regress to an infantile state, where biting, sucking and excreting are dominant. They may be absorbed by images of excreta and filth.
• During this melancholic state, a person may not be able to express their mixed feelings of love and hate directly.
INSTINCTS
It is not always clear what Freud means when he talks ab
out ‘instincts’. In fact, he says that they are a very vague concept, ‘magnificent in their indefiniteness’. He complains that people are forever inventing new instincts in order to explain different aspects of behaviour such as love, hunger, aggression and so on. Freud turned to biology for help, trying as always to be scientific in his approach. This was not easy, because science concerns itself with external, observable reality, whereas Freud was grappling with the workings of the mind.
According to Freud, current biological thinking grouped instincts into two types, according to the aim of the behaviour involved. The first type was aimed at self-preservation, the second at preservation of the species. Freud carried this idea over into psychoanalysis and therefore classified instincts in two ways:
1 Ego instincts – concerned with the needs of the individual.
2 Sexual instincts – concerned with preserving the species.
Freud tried to clarify what he meant by an instinct by contrasting it with a stimulus. A stimulus, he said, arises from things going on outside the body. Instincts arise from within, so that they cannot be avoided by running away, as is the case with a stimulus.
EROS AND THANATOS
For a long time Freud was puzzled by the tendency for patients to go on repeating and reliving unpleasant experiences. He called this ‘repetition compulsion’. He found that it happens after a sudden and unexpected shock. Freud decided that the experience was repeated so that the normal anxiety that prepares us for danger could be built up and dealt with in retrospect. However, the repetition compulsion can sometimes totally take over. This phenomenon eventually led Freud to suggest that another instinct was at work – Thanatos, or the death instinct, taken from the Greek word for ‘death’.
The life instinct… and the death instinct
When Thanatos is directed towards the self it produces self-destructive behaviour, such as addictions, in which the person is ‘dicing with death’. Turned outwards, it results in aggressive behaviour. The opposite of Thanatos is Eros, the life instinct (from Eros, the Greek god of love). Eros is concerned with survival of the species and is responsible for sexual and reproductive behaviour.
Freud’s argument for the existence of Thanatos can be summarized as follows:
• All behaviour is aimed at reducing tension and achieving a previously existing state of stability.
• Since we were all originally made from inert matter, then perhaps we are really trying all the time to return to this state.
• So the aim of all life is death, a state where there are no tensions at all.
This seems like a very negative way of looking at things, but this perhaps arose partly because in the 1920s and 1930s Freud’s own life had become very difficult and full of pain.
SUMMARY
Today we have looked at Freud’s theories of psychosexual development. We have traced the stages of infantile sexuality and how the successful negotiation of these stages plays a crucial role in the shaping of the adult personality. While many subsequent psychoanalysts and psychologists have reassessed and challenged some of Freud’s theories and assumptions, the fundamental notion of a dynamic, active childhood sexuality and its importance in enabling human flourishing continue to be vital and illuminating.
Popular understanding of Freud’s ideas has often been reductive –’Everything we do and are is about sex’ might well sum it up – but what I hope this chapter has shown is that his thought was much more wide-ranging, nuanced and challenging than this quick-fire summary would suggest. As we have seen, Freud himself was prepared to see his ideas as an ongoing project, an open-ended investigation into the human psyche during which he was open to changing his mind, (occasionally) admitting his ignorance and offering up fresh interpretations.
FACT-CHECK (ANSWERS AT THE BACK)
1. Which of the following might indicate oral fixation?
a) Smoking
b) Drinking
c) Overeating
d) All of the above
2. What is the second stage in Freud’s account of infantile sexual development?
a) The phallic stage
b) The anal stage
c) The oral stage
d) The genital stage
3. The Oedipus complex occurs at roughly what age?
a) 1–2 years
b) 3–5 years
c) 4–7 years
d) Puberty
4. Oedipus was the son of…
a) Shepherds
b) Polybus and Merope
c) Laius and Jocasta
d) Cadmus and Harmonia
5. How might we best summarize the story of Oedipus?
a) He hated his father and killed him
b) He fell in love with his mother
c) He unknowingly killed his parents and blinded himself when he found out
d) He unknowingly killed his father and married his mother
6. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex occurs…
a) Only in some boys
b) In all young children
c) In all boys
d) None of the above
7. Which of the following does not usually apply to Freud’s conception of the genital phase?
a) Renewal of sexual interest
b) Resolution of the Oedipus complex
c) A period of anxiety and confusion
d) Attainment of a normal, socialized sexuality
8. Which of the following is the best definition of the id?
a) The self-censoring part of the psyche
b) The ordinary, everyday conscious self
c) The primitive, unconscious part of the psyche
d) The disruptive, selfish part of the personality
9. Which of the following are jobs of the superego?
a) It reprimands the ego
b) It acts as the conscience
c) It monitors the ego
d) It represents the ‘voice’ of tradition and society
10. Which of the following might be an example of displacement?
a) Accusing someone of being a liar when you have just told a lie
b) Dreaming about a foreign holiday
c) Curling up in a foetal position
d) Kicking an inanimate object in anger
Today we will look at how Freud used the prism of psychoanalysis to develop insights into the tensions between the individual and society as well as into the development of civilization as a whole. Freud said that civilization is necessary for the survival of the species, but it demands sacrifices from the individual because instinctual urges have to be suppressed in order for the person to conform to the rules. Living in society is therefore difficult and it is hard for people to be happy.
Living through World War I, Freud became disillusioned as he observed the gulf between what passed as acceptable behaviour for the state and for the individual. The state also demanded obedience, yet treated people like children by censoring the truth. Freud maintained that, deep down, human nature consists of instinctual impulses and therefore we cannot eradicate evil.
Freud saw art as the result of the sublimation of libidinous urges and likened the artist to a child at play, living in an escapist world. He was also dismissive of religious teachings, saying that they were merely created to help people cope with the tensions inherent in civilization.
CIVILIZATION
Freud saw civilization as representing the ways in which human life has raised itself above its animal origins. Civilization demands great sacrifices from the individual because he or she has to suppress their instinctual urges all the time in order to be able to conform. The purpose of human life is the pursuit of happiness, dominated by the pleasure principle. By happiness, Freud means the satisfaction of libidinous needs that often become dammed up. The ego has to find ways of controlling such urges, sublimating them so that society will approve of behaviour. Living in society is therefore difficult and it is hard for people to be happy.
The features of civilized living are se
en by Freud as beauty, order and cleanliness. Justice is the first requirement in maintaining these – the law must not be broken in favour of the individual. The two main reasons for living together in societies are:
1 the need to get together in order to share the workload
2 security within relationships – for example man and woman, parent and child.
In order to gain these advantages, people must curb their sexual and aggressive urges. Consequently, aggressive urges are turned inwards towards the self, causing a sense of guilt and a need for punishment. This is the essence of the Oedipus complex, whereby the instinctual urge is repressed for fear of action by external authority and gradually the internal sense of authority, the superego, takes over.
The conflicting needs of society versus the individual lead to a constant battle between ego and altruism. The essence of this battle is ‘Do I answer my own needs, or do I try to fit in with other people?’ Freud suggests that this battle is what causes neuroses and that it is possible that entire civilizations can develop a sort of mass neurosis and a communal superego. An obvious example would be the dictator leading the mass of followers. Freud became increasingly disillusioned with human nature and he felt that people constantly overvalued power, status and wealth. These ideas certainly have a prophetic ring to them in the modern world.