Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 40 Development of libido and sexual organization (2)
Today, we can go further to discuss the other side of the development of libido, that is, the relationship between the partial impulse of sex and the object; but we can only dabble in this part of development, so as to allow more time to study the results caused by it. .All part of some sexual instincts have an object at the beginning and remain unchanged for a long time, such as the impulse to dominate, peeping desire and curiosity; some are related to a special erogenous zone of the body and only rely on it at the beginning For functions other than sexuality there is an object, and the object is relinquished when one leaves these functions.For example, the first mouth of sexual instinct, the first object is the mother's breast, sucking the breast can meet the nutritional needs of the baby.This element of sexual love can also be satisfied when sucking for nutrition, but when it sucks for sucking, it becomes independent, abandoning the human object other than the body and replacing it with a part of itself.The oral drive thus becomes its own enjoyment, in the same way that the anal and other erogenous drives begin as masturbation.To put it simply, the subsequent development includes two purposes: first, to abandon self-eroticism, and then replace the entire self-object with an object outside the body; second, to combine the different objects of the various parts of the impulse to form a single object.Of course this can be done, as long as the single object is complete and has a body like the person itself; Finish.

The pursuit process of the object is also relatively complicated, and no one has fully understood it so far.For our purposes, we place special emphasis on the fact that, before the latent period of childhood, if a certain stage of this process has been reached, the object chosen is the same as the oral pleasure impulse, the first chosen for sucking nourishment. The object is consistent; or the object is the mother.Therefore, the mother is called the first object of love.The love we are talking about here focuses on the spiritual level of the sexual impulse, leaving aside the material or sexual level of the impulse for the time being.It is presumably that, with the mother as the object of love, the child is already under the influence of repression and forgets a certain part of his sexual purpose.This choice of the mother as an object of love, which we call the "Oedipus complex," has come to occupy a very important place in psychoanalytic explanations, and perhaps an equally important factor against psychoanalysis.

Here I can tell you a story about the war in Europe.On the German front in Poland, a doctor who relied on psychoanalysis, often having unexpected effects on his patients, attracted special attention from his colleagues.When he was asked, he admitted that he had used psychoanalytic methods, and agreed to pass on this knowledge to his colleagues without hesitation. Therefore, his colleagues in the barracks and senior officers gathered every night to listen to him lecture on the theory of psychoanalysis. .It started off very well, but when he was talking about the Oedipus complex, a senior officer stood up and retorted that it couldn't be true, and the speaker told these things to the warriors and fathers who died for their country people, can't help being too obscene.So he banned his speech.As a result, the analyst was transferred to another area on the front line.It would seem to me a very unfortunate phenomenon if the German army were to succeed with such a scientific organization.Science in Germany would not prosper under such an organization.

So what is the meaning of this monstrous Oedipus complex?I am afraid you are impatient to find out.In fact, we can know its meaning by looking at its name. You have all heard the story of Oedipus King in Greek mythology.It was destined that he would kill his father and marry his mother, so he tried his best to resist the fate predicted by the gods. When he knew that he had committed these two major crimes without knowing it, he deeply repented and committed suicide. Blind in both eyes.The dramatist Sophocles made the story into a tragedy, and I am sure many of you have been moved by it.In his script, after Oedipus commits these two major crimes, the truth is gradually revealed after a long period of ingenious questioning and new evidence is continuously discovered; the process of this kind of questioning is slightly similar to psychoanalysis.His mother, Jocasta, who was tempted to marry her, was rather dismissive of the continued questioning during the conversation, saying that many people have married their mother in their dreams, but the dream is irrelevant.But in my opinion, dreams are very important, especially the typical dreams that many people have.We believe that the dreams Jocasta tells are closely related to the frightening stories in mythology.

It is almost astonishing, however, that the tragedy of Sophocles was not condemned by the crowd, though if they did so they would have more justification than the dull soldiers.After all, this is an immoral drama, which writes about the inviolability of divine power, and despite the resistance of moral instincts, it does not help in the end, and the result is that the individual is not responsible for the laws of society.Perhaps we can believe that the author uses this myth to express the accusation against fate and the resentment against the gods. In Euripides against the gods, there may be such an indictment.However, Sophocles, known for his piety, would never have this intention; he believed that God predestined our fate, and even if it is a crime, we must obey his will before we can be called a noble character; With such religious considerations, he solved the difficult problems in the play.Of course I don't believe that this morality is one of the play's strengths—and even so, it doesn't lessen the script's impact.What audiences react to is the hidden meaning and content of the myth itself.Their reaction is as if the self-analyst had discovered an Oedipus complex within himself, aware of the divine and prophetic will as a sublime disguise of his own subconscious, as if he had recalled his own desire to cast out his father and marry his mother, and at the same time Hate the thought.In his view, Sophocles seemed to be saying: "Even if you deny ever having such thoughts, or how you yourself have resisted such evil thoughts, the result is useless. However, you are still guilty because you There is absolutely no way to eliminate these evil thoughts, they will remain in your subconscious forever." This is indeed a truth of psychology, although a person suppresses evil thoughts into his subconscious mind, he feels relieved that he no longer has such evil thoughts , yet he cannot see the basis of this evil, and therefore cannot help feeling guilty.

There is no doubt that the Oedipus complex is one of the important reasons why psychopaths often harbor a sense of guilt.In addition, I wrote a book in 1913 called "Totem and Taboo", which is about a study of the most primitive religion and morality.I then suspected that the whole human sense of guilt, which is the cause of the whole religion and morality, might have its source in the Oedipus complex.I would have liked to say more about this point, but it is best to leave it at that; it is difficult to let go of the subject once it has been raised, and we must return to Individual Psychology.

What would be the manifestation of the Oedipus complex if we were to observe directly the child's choice of object before the sexual latency?It is not difficult to find that the child wants to have the mother alone and not the father.Seeing my parents hugging makes me feel uneasy, and seeing my father leave makes me feel happy.He often speaks out his emotions, saying that he wants to marry his mother; of course, these things do not seem to be comparable to the Oedipus complex, but the facts are enough to be compared, and the central idea of ​​the two is the same.Sometimes the same child expresses liking for his father, which often confuses us; but such opposite or polarized emotions, which may cause conflict in adults, can go hand in hand with children for a long time, unlike later ones. The same is true of states that remain permanently in the subconscious mind.You may protest that the behavior of a child is also governed by ego motives, which is not enough evidence for the Oedipus complex; the mother's care of the child must not be distracted by other things for the child's happiness.This is true, but in this and other similar situations the interest of the ego affords only a considerable opportunity for the impulse to love.Children openly express sexual curiosity towards their mothers, such as sleeping with their mothers at night, insisting on going indoors to watch their mothers changing clothes, and even showing a behavior of seducing their mothers. up.Another point we cannot ignore is that the needs of mothers to take care of girls are not different from those of boys, but it produces two results; fathers also take care of boys with meticulous care, which is not inferior to their mothers, but they cannot get children. Pay equal attention to the mother.On the whole, no matter how judged, it is not enough to eliminate the sexual component contained in this situation.Even from the perspective of the child's self-interest, wouldn't it be too stupid if he only allowed one person to take care of him instead of two?
We have only described the relationship between boys and their parents here, and the reverse is true for girls.Girls are often obsessed with their father and want to take the place of their mother, and sometimes imitate the adult's coquettishness. At that time, we only think that she is cute, so that we ignore the serious consequences that this situation can have.Parental affections are also sex-selective in their children, so they often arouse Oedipus complexes in children, for example, fathers dote on daughters and mothers dot on sons; The spontaneity of the complex is significantly affected.When the newborn is born, the Oedipus complex expands into a family complex.When a child's self-interest is hindered, he will have a sense of disgust towards the newborn, and he will have a great desire to go after it.On the whole, these feelings of resentment manifest themselves more openly than those associated with the parents.If this desire is fulfilled, the newborn baby dies shortly thereafter, and this departure is also a major event for the child, which need not remain in memory through subsequent psychoanalysis.If the mother gives birth to another child, and he becomes secondary and begins to separate himself from the mother, he will find it difficult to forgive her; then feelings of hatred in the eyes of adults will arise in him, and Will be the source of eternal separation.When a younger brother or sister grows up a little, there is a very important change in his attitude towards them.A boy may regard his sister as an object of love in place of an "unfaithful" mother; if several older brothers compete for the love of a younger sister, hostility will play a major role later in life, as is often the case in In the nursery.When the father no longer loves the girl as tenderly as before, the girl also replaces him with her elder brother; or regards her younger sister as a substitute for the child she wishes to live with her father.

Now, all this becomes apparent if we make direct observation of the child and discuss what he clearly remembers, without the influence of psychoanalysis.Besides this, you may think that the order in which a child ranks among his brothers and sisters is also important for his later life, and must be taken into account in any biography.More important, however, is that this insight is readily available.After reading it, if you think of the theory of kinship forbidden by science, you will laugh out loud.In order to explain this incident, all kinds of solutions are used.It is said that members of the opposite sex in the same family have become a habit of living together since they were young, so there is no sexual temptation between the opposite sex; emotion of fear.As everyone knows, if people really have a natural barrier against the temptation of incest, then there is no need for laws and customs to impose severe penalties for it.The truth is always on the opposite side.The first choice of human beings for sexual objects is often relatives, for example, mother or sister, and the most severe punishment is necessary to prevent this childish tendency from becoming a reality.For peoples who still live in savagery and primitiveness, the prohibition of incest is far stricter than ours; Reich has recently shown in his writings that savages use puberty as a symbol of "rebirth", and the rituals performed at puberty express The child has lost its infatuation with its mother and regained its affection for its father.

We know from mythology that people were deeply terrified of incest by close relatives, but unthinkingly allowed their gods such a right.After reading the general history of ancient times, you can understand that the incestuous marriage of brothers and sisters is a sacred obligation of emperors, for example, the kings of Egypt and Peru, etc., ordinary people do not enjoy this privilege.

Marrying his mother and killing his father are the two sins of Oedipus.The first social and religious system of mankind is the totem system, and the totem system is deeply abstained from these two sins.Let us now pass from the direct observation of children to the analytical study of psychotic patients.How will the results of this analysis contribute to the knowledge of the Oedipus complex?We can answer right away.The complex which we have discovered by analysis corresponds exactly to the complex in the myth, and all these patients are Oedipus, or, in responding to this complex, they all become Hamlet.After analysis, it is found that the Oedipus complex of adults is more significant and stronger than that of infants. They no longer complain about their father's complaints but want their father to die. obvious.Are childhood emotions really so intense?Or did we inadvertently intrude into a new element during our analysis and deceive us?This element is not difficult to find.No matter when, where, and whoever wants to describe an event in the past, even if he is a historian, he will inevitably mix the past period with modern and recent colors unintentionally, so the past event will inevitably be lost. the truth.It is doubtful, too, that the explanation of the past by the present is all unintentional for the psychotic; in the future we will know the motives for this, and the whole problem of "retrospective fantasies" must be studied.We can also see at once the intensification of motives for resentment against the father originating in other relations; the erotic desire for the mother is also in ways undreamed of by the child.But it would be in vain if we tried to explain the whole Oedipus complex in terms of "retrospective phantasies" and the motives aroused thereafter.In spite of later additions to this complex, its foundation in childhood remains the same, as can be confirmed by direct observation of children.

Therefore, the clinical experience gained from the analysis of the Oedipus complex becomes very important in practice.We have seen that at puberty the sexual instinct begins to seek gratification with all its might, and it once again finds its libido in the relatives.The infant's object choice may seem child's play, but it sets the direction for the adolescent's object choice.Adolescence brings about an outpouring of intense emotions, reflecting the Oedipus complex; but since consciousness has come under strict guard, a large part of these emotions has to linger outside consciousness.From adolescence a man must try his best to break free from the shackles of his parents, and when he has achieved something, he becomes a member of society rather than a child.For a boy, this work means that his sexual desire no longer targets his mother, but seeks another real object of love from the outside world; if he is still hostile to his father, he must try to reconcile; , he has to strive to get rid of his father's control, and no one can escape this process; however, very few can get a satisfactory solution psychologically and socially; this is a very noteworthy thing.In the case of the psychotic, this escape completely fails, the son is a lifelong submissive to the father, unable to direct his libido towards a new sexual object.Relatively speaking, girls are the same.In this sense, the Oedipus complex can indeed be regarded as the main cause of psychosis.

You should know about the Oedipus complex, and there are many facts, both practical and theoretical, which I can only partially record.And its other variants will be omitted.Here I want to point out only one indirect result of it, which has had a profound effect on the creation of literature.Ranke has said in one of his very valuable books that the dramatists of each age have largely taken their material from the Oedipus and the incest complex and its variants.It is also worth mentioning that, long before the birth of psychoanalysis, the two vices of Oedipus were regarded as genuine manifestations of uncontrollable human instincts.In the works of Diderot, the author of the Encyclopedia, there was a famous dialogue "Lamore's nephew". You should pay special attention to the following sentences: If this wild boy goes his own way, he will keep all his weaknesses and be in the child's eyes. In addition to the reason that he lacked at the time, he added the passion of a 30-year-old adult, and he would inevitably strangle his father's neck and sleep with his mother.

There is one more thing I would like to express here briefly.The Oedipus complex can be used in practical dream analysis.Do you remember the results of the analysis of dreams, that dream wishes are often perverted and incestuous, or express unexpected hatred for relatives?We did not explain the source of this evil thought there.Now you should understand that they are the tendencies of the libido, or the "investment" of the libido in its object. Although it has an earlier origin and has long been abandoned in life, it still remains when night comes. Appears and possesses certain mobility.Such perverted, incestuous, and even murderous dreams are not only shared by mentally ill patients, but also by normal people.Therefore, we can also infer that normal people have also experienced this abnormal phenomenon, as well as the Oedipus complex; the difference is that the emotions discovered by the analysis of dreams in normal people are intensified in psychopaths.This is one of the reasons why we use dreams as clues in psychiatric research.

(End of this chapter)