of the compulsion neurosis, may be universal reactions which
are forced upon the patient by the very nature of the abnormal
change. In short, we have no reason to be prematurely dis-
couraged ; we shall see what our further results will yield.
"We meet a very similar difficulty in the theory of dreams,
which in our previous discussion of the dream I could not go
into. The manifest content of dreams is most profuse and indi-
vidually varied, and I have shown very explicitly what analy-
sis may glean from this content. But side by side with these
dreams there are others which may also be termed "typical"
and which occur similarly in all people. These are dreams of
identical content which offer the same difficulties for their in-
terpretation as the typical symptom. They are the dreams of
falling, flying, floating, swimming, of being hemmed in, of naked-
ness, and various other anxiety dreams that yield first one and
then another interpretation for the different patients, without
resulting in an explanation of their monotonous and typical
The Meaning of the Symptoms 235
recurrence. In the matter of these dreams also, we see a f unda
mental groundwork enriched by individual additions. Probably
they as well can be fitted into the theory of dream life, built
up on tho basis of other dreams, not however by straining the
point, but by the gradual broadening of our views.
EIGHTEENTH LECTURE
GENERAL THEORY OP THE NEUROSES
Traumatic Fixation The Unconscious
I SAID last time that we would not continue our work from
the standpoint of our doubts, but on the basis of our results.
"We have not even touched upon two of the most interest'
ing conclusions, derived equally from the same two sample
analyses.
In the first place, both patients give us the impression of being
fixated upon some very definite part of their past; they are
unable to free themselves therefrom, and have therefore come
to be completely estranged both from the present and the future.
They are now isolated in their ailment, just as in earlier days
people withdrew into monasteries there to carry along the
burden of their unhappy fates. In the case of the first patient,
it is her marriage with her husband, really abandoned, that
has determined her lot. By means of her symptoms she con-
tinues to deal with her husband; we have learned to under-
stand those voices which plead his case, which excuse him, exalt
him, lament his loss. Although she is young and might be
coveted by other men, she has seized upon all manner of real
and imaginary (magic) precautions to safeguard her virtue
for him. She will not appear before strangers, she neglects
her personal appearance ; furthermore, she cannot bring herself
to get up readily from any chair on which she has been seated.
She refuses to give her signature, and finally, since she is
motivated by her desire not to let anyone have anything of
hers, she is unable to give presents.
In the case of the second patient, the young girl, it is an
erotic attachment for her father that had established itself
in the years prior to puberty, which plays the same role in her
life. She also has arrived at the conclusion that she may not
marry so long as she is sick. We may suspect she became ill
in order that she need not marry, and that she might stay with
her father.
236
Traumatic Fixation the Unconscious 237
It is impossible to evade the question of how, in what manner,
and driven by what motives, an individual may come by such a
remarkable and unprofitable attitude toward life. Granted
of course that this bearing is a general characteristic of neurosis,
and not a special peculiarity of these two cases, it is neverthe-
less a general trait in every neurosis of very great importance
in practice. Breuer's first hysterical patient was fixated in the
same manner upon the time when she nursed her very sick
father. In spite of her recuperation she has, in certain respects,
since that time, been done with life; although she remained
healthy and able, she did not enter on the normal life of women.
In every one of our patients we may see, by the use of analysis,
that in his disease-symptoms and their results he has gone back
again into a definite period of his past. In the majority of cases
he even chooses a very early phase of his life, sometime a child-
hood phase, indeed, laughable as it may appear, a phase of his
very suckling existence.
The closest analogies to these conditions of our neurotics are
furnished by the types of sickness which the war has just now
made so frequent the so-called traumatic neuroses. Even
before the war there were such cases after railroad collisions and
other frightful occurrences which endangered life. The trau-
matic neuroses are, fundamentally, not the same as the spontane-
ous neuroses which we have been analysing and treating ; more-
over, we have not yet succeeded in bringing them within our
hypotheses, and I hope to be able to make clear to you wherein
this limitation lies. Yet on one point we may emphasize the
existence of a complete agreement between the two forms. The
traumatic neuroses show clear indications that they are grounded
in a fixation upon the moment of the traumatic disaster. In
their dreams these patients regularly live over the traumatic
situation ; where there are attacks of an hysterical type, which
permit of an analysis, we learn that the attack approximates
a complete transposition into this situation. It is as if these
patients had not yet gotten through with the traumatic situation,
as if it were actually before them as a task which was not yet
mastered. "We take this view of the matter in all seriousness;
it shows the way to an economic view of psychic occurrences.
For the expression "traumatic" has no other than an economic
meaning, and the disturbance permanently attacks the manage-
238 Introduction to Psychoanalysis
ment of available energy. The traumatic experience is one
which, in a very short space of time, is able to increase the
strength of a given stimulus so enormously that its assimilation,
or rather its elaboration, can no longer be effected by normal
means.
This analogy tempts us to classify as traumatic those experi-
ences as well upon which our neurotics appear to be fixated.
Thus the possibility is held out to us of having found a simple
determining factor for the neurosis. It would then be com-
parable to a traumatic disease, and would arise from the inability
to meet an overpowering emotional experience. As a matter
of fact this reads like the first formula, by which Breuer and I,
in 1893-1895, accounted theoretically for our new observations.
A case such as that of our first patient, the young woman sepa-
rated from her husband, is very well explained by this con-
ception. She was not able to get over the unfeasibility of her
marriage, and has not been able to extricate herself from this
trauma. But our very next, that of the girl attached to her
father, shows us that the formula is not sufficiently compre-
hensive. On the one hand, such baby love of a little girl for her
father is so usual, and so often outlived that the designation
"traumatic" would carry no significance; on the other hand,
the history of the patient teaches us that this first erotic fixation
apparently passed by harmlessly at the time, and did not again
appear until many years later in the symptoms of the compulsion
neurosis. "We see complications before us, the existence of a
greater wealth of determining factors in the disease, but we also
suspect that the traumatic viewpoint will not have to be given
up as wrong ; rather it will have to subordinate itself when it is
fitted into a different context.
Here again we must leave the road we have been traveling.
For the time being, it leads us no further and we have many
other things to find out before we can go on again. But before
we leave this subject let us note that the fixation on some par-
ticular phase of the past has bearings which extend far beyond
the neurosis. Every neurosis contains such a fixation, but every
fixation does not lead to a neurosis, nor fall into the same class
with neuroses, nor even set the conditions for the development
of a neurosis. Mourning is a type of emotional fixation on a
theory of the past, which also brings with it the most complete
Traumatic Fixation the Unconscious 239
alienation from the present and the future. But mourning is
sharply distinguished from neuroses that may be designated as
pathological forms of mourning.
It also happens that men are brought to complete deadlock by
a traumatic experience that has so completely shaken the founda-
tions on which they have built their lives that they give up all
interest in the present and future, and become completely ab-
sorbed in their retrospections; but these unhappy persons are
not necessarily neurotic. "We must not overestimate this one
feature as a diagnostic for a neurosis, no matter how invariable
and potent it may be.
Now let us turn to the second conclusion of our analysis, which
however we will hardly need to limit subsequently. We have
spoken of the senseless compulsive activities of our first patient,
and what intimate memories she disclosed as belonging to them ;
later we also investigated the connection between experience
and symptom and thus discovered the purpose hidden behind
the compulsive activity. But we have entirely omitted one fac-
tor that deserves our whole attention. As long as the patient
kept repeating the compulsive activity she did not know that
it was in any way related with the experience in question.
The connection between the two was hidden from her, she truth-
fully answered that she did not know what compelled her to do
this. Once, suddenly, under the influence of the cure, she hit
upon the connection and was able to tell it to us. But still she
did not know of the end in the service of which she performed
the compulsive activities, the purpose to correct a painful part
of the past and to place the husband, still loved by her, upon
a higher level. It took quite a long time and a great deal of
trouble for her to grasp and admit to me that such a motive
alone could have been the motive force of the compulsive
activity.
The relation between the scene after the unhappy bridal night
and the tender motive of the patient yield what we have called
the meaning of the compulsive activity. But both the
"whence" and the "why" remained hidden from her as long
as she continued to carry out the compulsive act. Psycho-
logical processes had been going on within her for which the
compulsive act found an expression. She could, in a normal
frame of mind, observe their effect, but none of the psycho-
240 Introduction to Psychoanalysis
logical antecedents of her action had come to the knowledge of
her consciousness. She had acted in just the same manner as a
hypnotized person to whom Bernheim had given the injunction
that five minutes after his awakening in the ward he was to
open an umbrella, and he had carried out this order on awaken-
ing, but could give no motive for his so doing. "We have exactly
such facts in mind when we speak of the existence of unconscious
psychological processes. Let anyone in the world account for
these facts in a more correct scientific manner, and we will gladly
withdraw completely our assumption of unconscious psycho-
logical processes. Until then, however, we shall continue to use
this assumption, and when anyone wants to bring forward the
objection that the unconscious can have no reality for science
and is a mere makeshift, (une fa$on de parler), we must simply
shrug our shoulders and reject his incomprehensible statement
resignedly. A strange unreality which can call out such real
and palpable effects as a compulsion symptom !
In our second patient we meet with fundamentally the same
thing. She had created a decree which she must follow: the
pillow must not touch the head of the bed; yet she does not
know how it originated, what its meaning is, nor to what motive
it owes the source of its power. It is immaterial whether she looks
upon it with indifference or struggles against it, storms against
it, determines to overcome it. She must nevertheless follow it
and carry out its ordinance, though she asks herself, in vain,
why. One must admit that these symptoms of compulsion
neurosis offer the clearest evidence for a special sphere of psych-
logical activity, cut off from the rest. What else could be back
of these images and impulses, which appear from one knows not
where, which have such great resistance to all the influences of
an otherwise normal psychic life ; which give the patient himself
the impression that here are super-powerful guests from another
world, immortals mixing in the affairs of mortals. Neurotic
symptoms lead unmistakably to a conviction of the existence of
an unconscious psychology, and for that very reason clinical
psychiatry, which recognizes only a conscious psychology, has
no explanation other than that they are present as indications
of a particular kind of degeneration. To be sure, the compulsive
images and impulses are not themselves unconscious no more so
than the carrying out of the compulsive-acts escapes conscious
Traumatic Fixation the Unconscious 241
observation. They would not have been symptoms had they not
penetrated through into consciousness. But their psychological
antecedents as disclosed by the analysis, the associations into
which we place them by our interpretations, are unconscious, at
least until we have made them known to the patient during the
course of the analysis.
Consider now, in addition, that the facts established in our
two cases are confirmed in all the symptoms of all neurotic
diseases, that always and everywhere the meaning of the symp-
toms is unknown to the sufferer, that analysis shows without
fail that these symptoms are derivatives of unconscious experi-
ences which can, under various favorable conditions, become
conscious. You will understand then that in psychoanalysis
we cannot do without this unconscious psyche, and are accus-
tomed to deal with it as with something tangible. Perhaps
you will also be able to understand how those who know the
unconscious only as an idea, who have never analyzed, never
interpreted dreams, or never translated neurotic symptoms into
meaning and purpose, are most ill-suited to pass an opinion
on this subject. Let us express our point of view once more.
Our ability to give meaning to neurotic symptoms by means of
analytic interpretation is an irrefutable indication of the exist-
ence of unconscious psychological processes or, if you prefer,
an irrefutable proof of the necessity for their assumption.
But that is not all. Thanks to a second discovery of Breuer's,
for which he alone deserves credit and which appears to me to be
even more far-reaching, we are able to learn still more con-
cerning the relationship between the unconscious and the
neurotic symptom. Not alone is the meaning of the symptoms
invariably hidden in the unconscious ; but the very existence of
the symptom is conditioned by its relation to this unconscious.
You will soon understand me. With Breuer I maintain the
following: Every time we hit upon a symptom we may con-
clude that the patient cherishes definite unconscious experiences
which withhold the meaning of the symptoms. Vice versa, in
order that the symptoms may come into being, it is also essential
that this meaning be unconscious. Symptoms are not built up
out of conscious experiences ; as soon as the unconscious processes
in question become conscious, the symptom disappears. You
will at once recognize here the approach to our therapy, a way
242 Introduction to Psychoanalysis
to make symptoms disappear. It was by these means that
Breuer actually achieved the recovery of his patient, that is,
freed her of her symptoms; he found a technique for bringing
into her consciousness the unconscious experiences that carried
the meaning of her symptoms, and the symptoms disappeared.
This discovery of Breuer 's was not the result of a speculation,
but of a felicitous observation made possible by the cooperation
of the patient. You should therefore not trouble yourself to
find things you already know to which you can compare these
occurrences, rather you should recognize herein a new funda-
mental fact which in itself is capable of much wider application.
Toward this further end permit me to go over this ground
again in a different way.
The symptom develops as a substitution for something else
that has remained suppressed. Certain psychological experi-
ences should normally have become so far elaborated that con-
sciousness would have attained knowledge of them. This did
not take place, however, but out of these interrupted and dis-
turbed processes, imprisoned in the unconscious, the symptom
arose. That is to say, something in the nature of an interchange
had been effected; as often as therapeutic measures are suc-
cessful in again reversing this transposition, psychoanalytic
therapy solves the problem of the neurotic symptom.
Accordingly, Breuer 's discovery still remains the foundation
of psychoanalytic therapy. The assertion that the symptoms
disappear when one has made their unconscious connections
conscious, has been borne out by all subsequent research, al-
though the most extraordinary and unexpected complications
have been met with in its practical execution. Our therapy
does its work by means of changing the unconscious into the
conscious, and is effective only in so far as it has the opportunity
of bringing about this transformation.
Now we shall make a hasty digression so that you do not by
any chance imagine that this therapeutic work is too easy.
From all we have learned so far, the neurosis would appear as
the result of a sort of ignorance, the incognizance of psycho-
logical processes that we should know of. We would thus very
closely approximate the well-known Socratic teachings, accord-
ing to which evil itself is the result of ignorance. Now the
experienced physician will, as a rule, discover fairly readily
Traumatic Fixation the Unconscious 243
what psychic impulses in his several patients have remained
unconscious. Accordingly it would seem easy for him to cure
the patient by imparting this knowledge to him and freeing him
of his ignorance. At least the part played by the unconscious
meaning of the symptoms could easily be discovered in this
manner, and it would only be in dealing with the relationship
of the symptoms to the experiences of the patient that the phy-
sician would be handicapped. In the face of these experiences,
of course, he is the ignorant one of the two, for he did not go
through these experiences, and must wait until the patient re-
members them and tells them to him. But in many cases this
difficulty could be readily overcome. One can question the
relatives of the patient concerning these experiences, and they
will often be in a position to point out those that carry any
traumatic significance; they may even be able to inform the
analyst of experiences of which the patient knows nothing be-
cause they occurred in the very early years of his life. By a
combination of such means it would seem that the pathogenic
ignorance of the patient could be cleared up in a short time and
without much trouble.
If only that were all! We have made discoveries for which
we were at first unprepared. Knowing and knowing is not
always the same thing ; there are various kinds of knowing that
are psychologically by no means comparable. "II y a fagots et
fagots," 1 as Moliere says. The knowledge of the physician is not
the same as that of the patient and cannot bring about the same
results. The physician can gain no results by transferring
his knowledge to the patient in so many words. This is perhaps
putting it incorrectly, for though the transference does not re-
sult in dissolving the symptoms, it does set the analysis in
motion, and calls out an energetic denial, the first sign usually
that this has taken place. The patient has learned something
that he did not know up to that time, the meaning of his symp-
toms, and yet he knows it as little as before. So we discover
there is more than one kind of ignorance. It will require a
deepening of our psychological insight to make clear to us
wherein the difference lies. But our assertion nevertheless re-
mains true that the symptoms disappear with the knowledge
of their meaning. For there is only one limiting condition;
a Tliere are fagots and fagots.
244 Introduction to Psychoanalysis
the knowledge must be founded on an inner change in the patient
which can be attained only through psychic labors directed
toward a definite end. We have here been confronted by prob-
lems which will soon lead us to the elaboration of a dynamics
of symptom formation.
I must stop to ask you whether this is not all too vague and
too complicated? Do I not confuse you by so often retracting
my words and restricting them, spinning out trains of thought
and then rejecting them? I should be sorry if this were the
case. However, I strongly dislike simplification at the expense
of truth, and am not averse to having you receive the full im-
pression of how many-sided and complicated the subject is. I
also think that there is no harm done if I say more on every
point than you can at the moment make use of. I know that
every hearer and reader arranges what is offered him in his own
thoughts, shortens it, simplifies it and extracts what he wishes
to retain. Within a given measure it is true that the more we
begin with the more we have left. Let me hope that, despite all
the by-play, you have clearly grasped the essential parts of my
remarks, those about the meaning of symptoms, about the un-
conscious, and the relation between the two. You probably have
also understood that our further efforts are to take two direc-
tions: first, the clinical problem to discover how persons be-
come sick, how they later on accomplish a neurotic adaptation
toward life ; secondly, a problem of psychic dynamics, the evolu-
tion of the neurotic symptoms themselves from the prerequisites
of the neuroses. We will undoubtedly somewhere come on a
point of contact for these two problems.
I do not wish to go any further to-day, but since our time is not
yet up I intend to call your attention to another characteristic
of our two analyses, namely, the memory gaps or amnesias,
whose full appreciation will be possible later. You have heard
that it is possible to express the object of psychoanalytic treat-
ment in a formula: all pathogenic unconscious experience must
be transposed into consciousness. You will perhaps be surprised
to learn that this formula can be replaced by another: all the
memory gaps of the patient must be filled out, his amnesias
must be abolished. Practically this amounts to the same thing.
Therefore an important role in the development of his symp-
toms must be accredited to the amnesias of the neurotic. The
Traumatic Fixation the Unconscious 245
analysis of our first case, however, will hardly justify this
valuation of the amnesia. The patient has not forgotten the
scene from which the compulsion act derives on the contrary,
she remembers it vividly, nor is there any other forgotten factor
which comes into play in the development of these symptoms.
Less clear, but entirely analogous, is the situation in the case
of our second patient, the girl with the compulsive ritual. She,
too, has not really forgotten the behavior of her early years,
the fact that she insisted that the door between her bedroom and
that of her parents be kept open, and that she banished her
mother out of her place in her parents' bed. She recalls all this
very clearly, although hesitatingly and unwillingly. Only one
factor stands out strikingly in our first case, that though the
patient carries out her compulsive act innumerable times, she is
not once reminded of its similarity with the experience after
the bridal-night ; nor was this memory even suggested when by
direct questions she was asked to search for its motivation. The
same is true of the girl, for in her case not only her ritual, but
the situation which provoked it, is repeated identically night
after night. In neither case is there any actual amnesia, no
lapse of memory, but an association is broken off which should
have called out a reproduction, a revival in the memory. Such
a disturbance is enough to bring on a compulsion neurosis.
Hysteria, however, shows a different picture, for it is usually