Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 41 Perspectives on Development and Degeneration—Etiology (1)
Ladies and gentlemen, we have said before that the function of the libido must be developed in many ways before it can have a normal reproductive function.Now, I would like to point out here the importance of this fact in the origin of psychosis.

On the principles of general pathology, we may say that there are two dangers in this development: stagnation and regression.In other words, there is a tendency for variation in the original biological process, so it is not necessary to completely go through the process of generation, maturity and disappearance, one by one. In addition, there are several stalled developments.

We can also compare these processes with other facts.Suppose a people were to leave their homeland in search of a new territory, and it must be that not all of its members reached the new destination.Excluding those who died from other causes, a small number of these immigrants always stopped and settled on the way, and the rest moved on.Or, to take a more recent example, you should know that the seminal glands were originally located deep in the abdominal cavity, and that the seminal glands of higher mammals began to make a movement at a certain stage of embryonic development, and as a result they were transplanted into the pelvic cavity under the skin at the top.In some male animals, one or both of these organs stay in the pelvic cavity, or are permanently stuck in the only way-the groin duct, or the groin duct, which should be blocked after the seminal gland passes, is not. occlusion.When I was a student, I started to explore scientific research under the guidance of Professor Brück. The object I wanted to investigate was the origin of the dorsal nerve root of a very ancient fish spinal cord.The nerve fibers of these nerve roots arise from large cells in the dorsal horn of the gray body, which originally no longer occurs in other vertebrates.However, later I found similar nerve cells in the gray body of the spinal ganglion of the entire dorsal root, so I concluded that the movement route of the cells of this ganglion is from the spinal cord along the nerve root.From the point of view of evolution, we can know the fact that many of the nerve cells of this small fish stop halfway along the route they pass.But the flaws in this metaphor are immediately apparent upon closer study.We shall then have to say that each individual part of the sexual drive may remain in its infancy of development, while other parts may reach their destination at the same time.Each individual impulse is thus regarded as a stream, flowing continuously from the very beginning of life, and this flow can be conceived of as individual forward movements.If you feel that these concepts must be further explained, you are right.For now, let us call the arrest of some impulses at a relatively early stage "fixation of impulses."

There is a second danger to this staged development, that of what is called "regression."It is also easier to regress back to the earliest stages of development that have moved forward.A more developed function of instinct, if it encounters a strong external obstacle, it will not be able to achieve its goal, and there is only one option to turn back.We can also assume that attachment and degeneration are mutually causal; the more attachments a function has on the way of development, the easier it is to be blocked by external obstacles and retreat to the attachment point. Acquiring the function of development will become less and less able to resist the external difficulties encountered in the process of development.For example, if most people of a migrating nation stagnate halfway, the person who has gone the farthest will easily retreat if he encounters or is defeated by a strong enemy.And the greater the number of men who are stopped in their advance, the greater the danger of their defeat.

If you want to understand psychosis, you must keep this relationship of attachment and degeneration firmly in mind before you can go any further into the question of the origin or etiology of psychosis, which we will discuss shortly.

For now, we will only discuss the problem of degeneracy.With regard to the development of libido, I believe that after listening to it, you should infer that degeneration can be roughly divided into two types: one is the regression to the first object of libido, and we also know that this object often has a tendency to incest; Whole organizations regress to early stages of development.Both of these regressive effects are to be found in the symptoms of "transference psychosis," and both play an important role in them.The first regression, in particular, is a common phenomenon in psychotic patients.If another narcissistic psychosis was also discussed, we would have more to say about the degradation of the libido; but we cannot say any more here.These symptoms can give us conclusions about other developmental processes of the libidinal function, and can also show us new ways of degeneration that correspond to these processes.You should always remember that a psychic act which should have become conscious, i.e., which should have belonged to the preconscious system, has become subconscious because it has been repressed and has fallen into the subconscious system. This process is called repression.Another example is the subconscious psychological activities, which are shut out at the door of the conscious domain due to the inspection function, and cannot break into the preconscious system. This process is also called repression.Therefore, the concept of repression does not necessarily have to do with sex, and you have to pay special attention to this.Repression is a purely psychological journey, and it can also be said to be a very positional psychological journey.The so-called positionality refers to the spatial relationship in the mind in our hypothesis; or it refers to the structure of a mental function of several mental systems.

The metaphor mentioned above explains to us the narrow rather than the broad use of the word repression.If we adopt its broad usage to represent the course of a high-level development stage falling to a low-level development stage, then repression will also be a kind of degeneration; repression can be regarded as a kind of psychological behavior in the development process All phenomena of lower stages of regression to an earlier period.But the regressive aspect of repression is irrelevant, because if a psychic process stops before leaving the lower stages of the unconscious, we may also call it dynamic repression.Repression is thus a spatial, dynamic concept, whereas degeneration is a purely narrative concept.However, the regressive function we mentioned earlier, which is comparable to the obsessive function, refers specifically to a phenomenon in which the libidinal function returns to the place where development stops, that is, its nature is substantially different from or has nothing to do with the repressive function. .We must not call the degradation of the libido a purely psychic process, and at the same time do not understand what place the degradation occupies in the psychic mechanism; although the degradation has a strong influence on the psychic life, its organic factors are most notably.

This kind of discussion is most likely to make people feel boring, so we can use clinical examples to obtain a clearer impression.What you know about transference psychosis includes hysteria and obsessive-compulsive psychosis.In hysteria there is little or no regression of the libido to an earlier stage of sexual organization, although it often degenerates to the chief sexual object of relatives.Therefore, repression plays an important role in the mechanism of hysteria.If we supplement this knowledge of psychosis with reasoning, the situation can be described as follows: the partial impulses under the domination of the genital zone have united, but as a result of this union they encounter a preconscious reaction from the conscious System resistance.It is thus evident that the genital organization applies to the unconscious, but not to the foreconscious, whose rejection of the genital organization results in a state similar to that before the dominance of the genital area.But in reality it is not the same.The most surprising of these two regressions of libido are those of the type which regress to an earlier stage of the sexual organization.This regressive effect is not seen in hysteria, but our whole conception of psychosis is too much influenced by the current research on hysteria, so we admit that the regressive effect of libido is far more important than the repressive effect.In the future, if we discuss narcissistic psychosis, other psychosis and transference psychosis together, then our point of view may be further expanded and revised.

Furthermore, in obsessive-compulsive psychosis the regression of the libido to the previously abusive, anal stage is the most prominent factor and determines the manner in which the symptoms are manifested.At this point, the urges for anal love must be disguised as sadistic urges. The compulsive impulse "I will murder you" becomes "I will enjoy your love" after it has been stripped of some additional, inescapable element.If you think of this impulse and return to the original object, only the closest and dearest people can satisfy this impulse, you can imagine how frightened the patients of these obsessive ideas will be, and at the same time you should understand why these ideas are His consciousness and perception are beyond explanation.The degradation of libido, if not supplemented by repression, cannot necessarily cause psychosis, but can only produce a abnormal phenomenon.You also see from this that repression is the most important feature of psychosis.If the time is right, I will explain to you the principles of abnormal phenomena, so that you can understand that these phenomena are far more complicated than we can imagine in theory.

If you take the discussion of the persistent and regressive functions of the libido as a preliminary study of the etiology of psychosis, you will perhaps accept this explanation at once.What I have told you before on this subject is only a fragment of knowledge: people are prone to psychosis if they have no possibility to satisfy their libido, so we think that people suffer because they are frustrated by being "deprived". sick, and its symptoms are a substitute for lost satisfaction.Of course, this is not to say that all types of frustration of libido gratification will lead to psychosis, but that in all the psychosis studied, this frustration factor is obvious to all.So, of course, this cannot be said the other way around.You must also understand its meaning. It is not to unravel all the secrets of psychiatric etiology, but to emphasize one of the important indispensable conditions.

Now, we want to make a further discussion on this issue. I still don't know whether we should start from the nature of deprivation or start from the special character of the deprived.Deprivation itself does not contain all absolute pathogenic factors. If it is to cause disease, then what is deprived must be exactly what it is longing for and may be the only way to satisfy it.In other words, there are many ways in which one can endure the dissatisfaction of libido without becoming ill.We also know that many people can control their desires without causing harm; when they either cannot live happily, or endure unsatisfied desires, they do not suffer from disease.We must therefore conclude that there is an exceptionally wide scope for the flexibility of sexual impulses, if, of course, we may introduce the word "elasticity".This instinctive impulse will be replaced by another, and if this impulse cannot be actually satisfied, the other will often be adequately satisfied.Their relationship to each other is like a group of water pipes filled with liquid, interconnected into a network, and they are all dominated by sexual desire, which is of course difficult to imagine.However, the partial sexual instincts and the unified sexual impulse which contains them are interchangeable with each other, that is to say, each has an easily available object; The deprivation results in a powerful opposite effect.With regard to the processes of protection against disease, one has a special importance in the development of culture.Thanks to this process, the sexual drive is able to cast aside the previous goal of partial drive gratification, even sexual gratification, and replace it with a new purpose, which although related to the first one at the time of its occurrence. , but is no longer considered "sexual" and is called "social" in nature.This process is called sublimation, and it is through this process that we can elevate social goals above sexual or absolutely egoistic ones.Incidentally, sublimation is only a special instance of the relationship between sexual and other non-sexual drives, and we will return to this later.

You must now think that since there are so many ways of enduring sexual dissatisfaction, the deprivation of sexual satisfaction is a cause of insignificance.However, this is not the case, and its pathogenic ability still exists.There are many ways to eliminate sexual dissatisfaction, but they often feel inadequate.There is a limit to the extent to which ordinary people can tolerate dissatisfaction of libido.The flexibility and freedom of libido cannot be fully preserved by all of us; not to mention that many people have very little sublimation ability, even if they have sublimation, they can only vent part of their libido.With regard to these limitations, the flexibility of the libido is obviously of the utmost importance, since the number of objects and ends which a man can pursue is very limited.Don't forget that the incomplete development of the libido will make it cling to the early sexual organization and choose objects that are mostly unsatisfactory in reality. Obsession is the second powerful factor, which combines with sexual dissatisfaction to form the cause of psychosis.We generalize this as follows: In the origin of psychosis, libidinal attachment represents an inner cause, while sexual deprivation represents an external accidental factor.

I would like to take this opportunity to dissuade you from expressing your opinions in pointless debates.On scientific issues, people often only understand one side of the truth and regard it as the whole truth, and then doubt other parts of the truth in favor of this element of truth.Several parts of the psychoanalytic movement have been torn apart by this; some recognize ego urges while denying sexual urges;In addition, there is still a dilemma that has not been resolved: Does mental illness originate from the inside, or does it originate from the outside?In other words, is psychosis the inevitable result of the constitution of the body, or is it the product of "traumatic" experiences in one's life?If we narrow the scope, does psychosis come from the attachment of libido and sexual structure, or from the pressure of sexual deprivation?This question is very funny, just like the question of "whether a child is born from the father's reproductive movement or from the mother's pregnancy".You may think that these two conditions are indispensable.While psychotic conditions vary, they are also very similar.From the point of view of causes, psychosis can produce a series of cases in which there are two factors, the sexual structure and the event of experience, which we will call, if you like, libidinal attachment and sexual deprivation, If one of them prevails, the other takes the second place proportionally.At one end of these cases there are extreme cases which can be enumerated: those who, because of a development of the libido so abnormally different from the normal, are not immune to the disease, no matter what happens or experiences, or how pleasant life may be; and at the other end of the series , and there may be other extreme examples, that is, if life did not burden them in one way or another, they would not be sick.In the cases between the two, the tendentious factor is the ratio of the ebb and flow of the sexual structure and the traumatic experience of life.If they do not have this experience, then the constitution of sex is enough to cause disease; if the constitution of their libido is different, the accidents of life are not enough to make them psychotic.Throughout the series, I'm personally leaning toward the sexually constructed element, but it also depends on where you draw the line of neuroticism.

Now, I want to tell you that this series can be called "complementary series", and I will also inform you in advance that there will be such complementary series in other aspects.

(End of this chapter)