Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 48 Anxiety (2)
As far as I know, even doctors who have traditionally opposed psychoanalysis have admitted that sexual abstinence is closely related to anxiety.However, they still try to distort this relationship, thinking that those people are inherently timid and cautious, and they are inevitably cautious in their sex lives.In women, however, we find categorically contrary evidence, whose sexual function is essentially passive, whose conduct is entirely determined by the actions of the man.If a woman likes sex more and has the ability to satisfy, then she is more likely to show anxiety about men's weak or unsatisfactory coitus; The situation is the same, but there will be no serious consequences.

Today, general doctors are enthusiastically advocating the restraint or restraint of sexual desire. However, if the libido cannot be satisfied, it requires venting on the one hand, but cannot be transferred and sublimated on the other, so the so-called abstinence can only become an anxiety-causing conditions of.As for whether it is pathogenic, it is often only a matter of quantity and composition.Leaving aside disease, we can see that abstinence, anxiety, and cowardice often go hand in hand when we look at the formation of character. Fearless and adventurous spirits, on the contrary, often have a relationship with the freedom and tolerance of sexual needs. joint connection.Although these relationships are influenced by many aspects of culture, for ordinary people, we cannot deny that there is a strong connection between anxiety and abstinence.

Much evidence points to an innate relationship between libido and anxiety, which cannot be detailed here.For example, during puberty or menopause, the forces of libido become exceptionally strong and must have a major impact on anxiety.In many states of excitement a mixture of sexual excitement and anxiety is found, and libidinal excitement is eventually replaced by anxiety.What it accepts, therefore, is usually of a double nature: first, that the increased libido has no chance of fulfillment;We do not yet know how anxiety arises from libido; we can only say that when libido disappears, anxiety arises.

Second, we can find the second clue through the analysis of psycho-psychosis, especially hysteria.You should know that anxiety is often a symptom of hysteria, and vague anxiety can exist for a long time or manifest itself during attacks.The patient cannot say what he is afraid of; therefore, he uses disguise to associate himself with the most frightful objects, such as death, madness, and catastrophe.If we analyze the situation in which anxiety or the symptoms accompanying anxiety occur, it is not difficult for us to find out which normal psychological process is blocked and finally replaced by anxiety.In other words, we can imagine the process of the subconscious mind breaking free from repression and swaggering into consciousness.In the course of this process, a particular emotion should have arisen, and now, strangely, whatever it was that accompanied the psychic journey into consciousness would be replaced by anxiety.If we have a hysterical anxiety before us, the unconscious equivalent can be an emotion of a similar nature, such as worry, shame, and bewilderment; or it can be an "active" cause. Desire excitement, but also a rebellious, aggressive emotion, such as anger.Anxiety thus becomes almost a universal currency, the exchange of all emotions, while its considerable conceptual content is controlled by repression.

Third, some patients whose symptoms seem to avoid anxiety because of the adoption of compulsive behavior can provide us with a third clue.If we forbid them from doing these compulsive actions such as washing hands or other rituals, or if they voluntarily cancel an act, then they will inevitably be oppressed with extreme fear and forced to do these actions.We understand that patients' anxiety is hidden behind compulsive behavior, and they do it simply to escape an emotion of fear.We therefore also find approximately the same relationship, that as a result of repression, either a pure anxiety or a mixed anxiety can be produced, or a disorder without anxiety.In the abstract, it can thus be argued that the purpose of symptom formation is simply to avoid the development of anxiety.In the question of psychosis, then, the place of anxiety is clearly very important.

Careful observations of anxiety psychoses lead us to the following conclusion: libido is sufficient to cause anxiety after it has lost its normal use, and in reality this process is based on bodily processes.From the analysis of hysteria and obsessive-compulsive psychosis, another conclusion can be drawn: the cause of anxiety is also the loss of normal use of libido caused by psychological resistance.So much is known about the origin of psychotic anxiety.While still ambiguous, there is currently no good way to increase our knowledge in this area.Our second step, to learn how psychotic anxieties relate to real anxieties, seems even more elusive.Some people may think that these two things are incomparable, but the emotion of pathological anxiety is indeed indistinguishable from the emotion of normal anxiety.

The relationship we want to obtain can be explained by the comparison between ego and libido.We already know that the development of anxiety is the ego's reaction to danger and preparation for escape; now, let us reason further, if the ego, in psychotic anxiety, also tries to escape the demands of libido and uses Deal with internal dangers in the same way that you deal with external dangers.In this way, the hypothesis of "if you worry, you must fear it" is confirmed.However, the metaphor does not stop there.Just as the momentary tension of the muscles in flight from external dangers results in a firm footing and a considerable defense, so now that the development of psychotic anxiety leads to the eventual formation of symptoms, anxiety has a stable basis.

So far, if there is something difficult to understand, it will naturally be different.It turns out that the purpose of anxiety is to make the self escape from libido, which means that the origin of anxiety is within libido. It is too obscure, but we must keep in mind that someone’s libido is originally a part of his body. Of course, it cannot be regarded as something outside the body.This is the problem of the "dynamics of the situation" in the development of anxiety, which has not yet been explained: for example, which psychic capacities are depleted?Or what kind of system does this mental ability belong to?At present, we cannot answer the above question; however, I have found two other clues; therefore, we will introduce direct observation and analytical research to help our inference.Today, the origin of anxiety is first found in child psychology, and then the origin of psychotic anxiety attached to phobias is discussed.

In child psychology, anxiety is a very common phenomenon, and it is difficult for us to presume whether it belongs to real or psychotic anxiety.The distinction between these two anxieties was indeed problematic when we studied the attitudes of children.On the one hand, it is not surprising that children develop fear of strangers, novel objects and situations.Just think about their weakness and ignorance, it is not difficult to understand.We think, therefore, that children have a strong disposition to real anxiety; and it is only because of practical requirements that this disposition is supposed to be hereditary.Children are like reenacting the behavior of prehistoric or modern primitive people, who are ignorant and helpless, and have a feeling of fear for the new and even many familiar things, but these things are no longer scary to us. up.It is also in line with our expectations to assume that childhood phobias can be viewed, at least in part, as relics of early human development.

With regard to other aspects, we must not overlook two things: first, children's anxieties vary;Vacuum anxiety, when excessive, is thus a sign of psychotic tendencies.Moreover, anxiety is more primitive than nervousness; we therefore conclude that the fear of libidinal powers experienced by the child and later as an adult is due to his fear of everything.Therefore, the hypothesis that anxiety originates from libido cannot be established; and from our investigation of real anxiety conditions, logically, it follows naturally that the consciousness of one's own helplessness is what Adler called The "inferiority complex", if it still exists in adulthood, has been transformed into the root cause of mental illness.

The simplicity and intelligibility of this conclusion oblige us to pay attention, and our conception by which nervousness is studied is shaken.This feeling of inferiority, with its tendency towards anxiety and symptom formation, does seem to persist into adulthood, but it is inevitable that we will have to pay more attention to the "normal" results in particular cases.But what can we gain from careful observation and analysis of children's anxiety?Children are initially afraid of meeting strangers. This situation is very important because it involves the people in the situation, and then they will pay attention to the objects in the situation.However, children fear strangers not because they harbor evil intentions, but because they compare their weakness to their strength and feel that they are a danger to their survival, safety, and happiness.This theory that advocates children's suspicion of external forces is actually a relatively shallow theory.In fact, the child's frightened withdrawal from strangers is due to habit, and he hopes for a dear and familiar face, mainly the mother.Now that he had been disappointed, it turned into horror in an instant. His libido was neither consumed nor stored for a long time, so he became terrified and vented.This situation is the archetype of childhood anxiety, which reproduces the condition of the original anxiety of separation from the mother at birth.

Darkness and solitary situations frighten the child at the earliest; the former is often present throughout life; the desire not to leave the mother or nurse is involved in both.Once, I heard a child who was afraid of the dark cry out: "Mother, talk to me, I'm afraid!" "But what's the use? You can't see me." The child replied: "If someone Speak, and the room will be brighter." And so the hope felt in the darkness turns into a fear of the dark.We are far from realizing that psychotic anxiety is a real anxiety, and that it is a special kind; Anxiety is the same, that is, it is caused by the venting of the hindered libido.There seems to be a great lack of authentic "real anxiety" in children at birth.Those situations that later turned into fear, such as climbing heights, crossing narrow bridges over water, taking trains or ships, etc., children do not feel afraid at all, because they know little about them, and the less fear they have.We certainly hope that he will inherit these life-preserving instincts; you know, because children do not see danger, they always overestimate their own abilities, and act without fear.They run by the river, sit on windowsills, play with scissors, play with fire, in a word, do enough to cause bodily harm and frighten the caretakers.We naturally cannot allow them to learn through painful experience, so we have to rely on education to make them cause real anxiety.

If some children are easily educated and trained to be anxious, and to sense danger from things they are not warned about, we may guess from this that there is a greater amount of libidinal needs in their endowment, otherwise they would also have Spoiled by the gratification of libido.No wonder that the neurotics of adults belong to this category as children; a man who cannot tolerate a massive and prolonged repression of his libido is prone to psychosis.It can be seen from this that the physical factor plays a certain role here, and we have never denied this.What we object to is that, judging from all the consistent results of observation and analysis, physical factors have no effect, or only play an insignificant role, but some scholars believe that this factor is very important and exclude other aspects. factor.

We shall now summarize the conclusions we have obtained from observing the anxiety psychology of children as follows: Children's fears are initially independent of real anxieties, that is, fears of real danger, but are closely connected with all psychotic anxieties of adults.This fear, which all stems from a blocked libido, seems to be the same as the anxiety of psychosis; once the child has lost the object of love, he uses this fear to replace the external object or situation.

You will now be pleased to hear that the conclusions drawn from our analysis of phobias have not exceeded our expectations.As is the case with children's anxieties, so it is with phobias; the result is that the libido, if not vented, is constantly transformed into a quasi-real anxiety, which replaces the libido with insignificant external dangers. substitute.The coincidence of these two anxieties is not surprising; the child's fear is on the one hand the prototype and at the same time the precursor of the fear which is later manifested in the symptoms of anxiety hysteria.The fears in each hysterical syndrome, although having different content and names, can be traced back to and inherited from the child's fears; the difference lies in their mechanism of action.For adults, even if libido cannot be vented, it will not turn into anxiety.They already know how to preserve or divert libido.If, however, his libido attaches itself to a repressed psychic impulse, then all the similarities with the child follow, since he has withdrawn to the child's fears, and his libido will therefore be prone to turned into anxiety.You will recall that we briefly described repression, but at that time we were concerned with the fate of the repressed idea, since it is easily recognizable and easily narrated, while the fate of the emotion attached to it should be However, it has been neglected in the past, and we now understand that whatever the nature of the emotion in its normal state, its immediate fate would be to transform into anxiety.This change of mood is another, more important consequence of repression.This is not so easy to show, because we do not yet think of the existence of emotions in the subconscious mind, as we have previously claimed the existence of subconscious ideas.Whether a concept is subconscious or conscious, it will remain unchanged; we must also say what is equivalent to the subconscious concept, which needs to be thoroughly understood and investigated later. Now, of course, we cannot lie about what is equivalent to the subconscious. It is not convenient to discuss it here.However, we still have to retain the impression we have acquired that the development of anxiety is closely connected with the unconscious system.

We have said that libido is transformed into anxiety when it is repressed, or it seeks outlet in the form of anxiety. This is the most direct fate of libido; The only final destiny.There is also a course of psychosis whose aim is to restrain the development of anxiety, and which is accomplished in various ways.For example, for phobias alone, the course of psychosis can be divided into two stages: the first stage, when the repression is completed, and the libido is transformed into anxiety. At this time, the anxiety is mostly directed at external dangers; A barrier of defense to avoid exposure to external dangers.Since the ego knows the danger of libido, it uses repression as a tool to escape from the oppression of libido; phobia is like a castle, and the terrible libido is like danger from outside, so the castle is used to resist these dangers .There are still deficiencies in the defense system of phobias. Although the castle can resist external enemies, the danger from the inside is unavoidable. Projecting the danger from the libido to the outside will naturally never be effective.Other psychoses, therefore, will employ other defenses against the possibility of anxiety developing; and this is a most interesting part of the psychology of psychosis.Unfortunately, discussing this issue at this time will inevitably digress and require a special knowledge base.Therefore, we will now only give a brief overview.I said before that the ego puts a counter-offensive bulwark over the repression.This barrier must be preserved in order for repression to continue.The task of counter-offensive is to use various countermeasures to prevent anxiety from developing after the depressive effect.

Let's go back to the question of phobias.Now, I want you to understand that it is never enough to dissect the content of a phobia, study its origin, and ignore anything but the object or situation that provokes it.The content of the phobia is as important as the manifest content of the dream and is only a riddle.We must admit that no matter how the content of various phobias changes, there are still many that are particularly suitable to be the object of fear due to the genetic relationship of the species, as Hall once said.However, the objects of these fears have no relation to the danger itself other than a symbolic relationship to it.

So, with regard to the question of anxiety, we firmly believe that it occupies a central place in the psychology of psychiatry.We also feel deeply that the development of anxiety is closely related to the fate of libido and the unconscious system.But there is still a fact: that is, "true anxiety" should be regarded as a self-preserving expression of the self instinct.Although this fact cannot be denied, it cannot be fully included in our theoretical system, which is a flaw in the theory.

(End of this chapter)