continuing this way of life, because the short term gain of imagined love and protection is so valuable. Similarly an anal character for whom as an infant, defecation meant a loss of something important and deliberate retention for a time increased pleasure, might become a miser. It is interesting that colloquially we refer to money as filthy lucre.
Some aspects of the theory that can be more readily assessed by a layman include “slips of the tongue”, now popularly known as “Freudian slips”. People betray what they really wish to say by accidentally saying it. The psychoanalytic interpretation of this is that the unconscious material is finding expression because there is a momentary weakness in the repressing forces while words are being found to express an idea. Here are some examples:
Soon after world-war-two an Australian politician was advocating in parliament the adoption of a recently published book on civil defense in time of war. Such an ill-timed book would be hard to imagine and his audience was responding accordingly. There was a roar of laughter when he finished his speech by saying “This is a useless little book”.
Here is another example:
A distinguished scientist was addressing a convention and had indicated an irritation with the university Arts Faculty which, in stating it, he spoonerized.
And again:
Another Australian politician, interviewed on television near the end of an election campaign, was asked if he was bothered by the fact that political analysts were predicting he would lose. He replied vigorously “I’m an analyst not a fighter”. A few days later he suffered a convincing defeat in the election.
Charles Rycroft who wrote the book referred to above was disenchanted with, and departed from, the British Psycho-Analytical Society in 1978. In the chapter on slips of the tongue he claims that there is not always a need to invoke unconscious motivation, since the two conflicting alternatives such as “useless” and “useful” are both conscious and the speaker is simply making a verbal mistake. He seems to accept that unconscious motivation can at least sometimes be the cause. One cannot guess without knowing the speaker at the time, whether a repressed unconscious impulse has forced out an unwanted comment, but we can speculate.
In the first example it might have been that someone had put pressure on the politician to advocate the book against his inclination, and that he had repressed his painful feelings of weakness and resentment. The slip undermined the book and thereby relieved his pain (which presumably had been worse than the pain of being laughed at).
In the second example an anal aggressive impulse has apparently been expressed. As described above, Psychoanalysis claims that residuals of infantile oral and anal impulses can carry over into adult life. Ernest Jones reports that an early standard method of repelling the Devil was to bare the buttocks and fart at him, and he adds that no less a person than Martin Luther had recourse to this method on one occasion. Today in the USA baring the buttocks as a sign of disrespect is honored by naming it “mooning” and it is sometimes performed at public meetings and shown in comedy movies. It is likely that the scientist in the example had repressed an anal aggressive wish against the arts faculty which found some expression in farts aculty.
The third example suggests that the speaker was exhausted and despondent near the end of the election campaign and had repressed the thought that his fight had been in vain. He was relieved to say to everyone what really meant “I can’t fight any more, I expect to lose and I want a rest”. Of course his reply could belong to Rycroft’s category of verbal mistakes, but we cannot be sure without more knowledge of the politician’s mind at the time.
Another feature of psychoanalysis is the significance attributed to symbolism. Delighting in one’s sexuality is a socially disapproved pleasure that finds secret public expression in the erection of phallic memorials. If a golfer wishes to express his joy at having sunk a putt he is likely to bend his forearm upward with a jerk, fist clenched. Footballers often employ the same symbol after kicking a goal. It has become a general gesture of triumph.
In his later years Freud proposed a formal system of mental processes that would incorporate his earlier inspirations. He introduced the familiar concepts Id, Ego and Superego, the descriptions and functions of which were never made clear and were subject to endless speculation by himself and others. It is unlikely that there will be any useful development of these ideas in the future.
In contrast to this Jones 1942, proposed that the basic requirement of freedom from neurosis was the capacity to endure, to hold wishes in suspension without renouncing them or reacting to them in defensive ways. Following the earlier comments about therapeutic failure this could be a guide to possible therapeutic effectiveness.:– Find ways to encourage and elevate patients’ endurance of discomfort and thus lead them to rational behavior. The capacity to endure is probably largely inherited, which accords with what Eysenck and Prell 1951 concluded: “neurotic predisposition is to a large extent hereditarily determined”. Unfortunately this places a limit on the effectiveness of any therapeutic method. An analyst’s awareness of the psychoanalytic theory of pregenital fixations, repression, and the Oedipus Complex could still be helpful in understanding the patient’s mental state.
References
Eysenck
1990 The Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire. Scott-Townsend
1951 “The Inheritance of Neuroticism: An Experimental Study”
Journal of Mental Health vol. xcvii p.402
Freud S.
1950 “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” reprinted in The Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 18 (1937) and in Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers Vol 5. The Hogarth Press. London 1950.
Jones E.
1972 Sigmund Freud, Life and Work The Hogarth Press. London 1972-1974
1942 “The Concept of a Normal Mind”
Int. J. of Psychoanalysis 23,1-8 1942
Rycroft C.
1985 Psychoanalysis and Beyond Chatto and Windus. London.
About the Author
Cole’s first book, That's Funny: A Theory of Humor, was a result of research and pondering inspired by curiosity about why we find things funny and why we laugh. His second, Around the World for 900 Years: Watching History Happen, was inspired by what he saw as a need for an historical overview that meaningfully linked actions, places and times. Cole’s third book, Fear Psychology, advances a theory of human behaviour based on the concept that a primal fear of ‘not surviving’ exists within all humans.
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