This enquiry started from Jacques Lacan’s examination in Seminar IV[i] of just what Freud meant by stages. It examines the references to Sigmund Freud as given by Laplanche & Pontalis (1967) & found since 2017. This material is also to be found in /Notes & References for Jacques Lacan’s Seminar IV, 21st November 1956 : 28th February 2017 : Julia Evans.
Note : The intention is to transfer all posts from www.LacanianWorks.net to this website, www.LacanianWorks.org. Should any still be in the queue, then go to https://web.archive.org and type in lacanianworks.net – go to the calendar and pick a date or go to https://oldweb.today or contact Julia Evans.
Jacques Lacan starts by commenting on Karl Abraham’s (1924)[ii] attempt to correlate libido with stages (Seminar IV 21st November 1956 p7) & goes on to contrast the Sacha Nacht collection[iii] with his own reading of Little Hans[iv].
Laplanche & Pontalis (1967)[v] comment on Sigmund Freud’s position as, ‘We must stress that Freud for his part never undertook the formulation of a holistic theory of stages which would be able to embrace not only the evolution of the libido but also that of the defences, of the ego, etc.; such a theory eventually comes to include the development of the whole of the personality in a single genetic sequence under the general heading of the notion of object-relations.’
So the following are a list of Sigmund Freud’s references in date order to stages with where known references to Jacques Lacan, Ernst Kris and Jean LaPlanche & Jean-Bertrand Pontalis.
Concluding remarks are quoted from The language of psychoanalysis : 1959 : Laplanche & Pontalis and Seminar IV 12th December 1956.
Note : the text ‘Seminar IV, 6th March 1957 – Reversing Sense : 1st March 2022 : Julia Evans’ also tangentially examines how Lacan uses the term ‘stage’. Available www.LacanianWorks.org /4 Jacques Lacan (November 1956) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /lacan (November 1956)
24th October 2017, updated 23rd January 2023
******************************
Index
References –
Mixing of libido & stages – quotes from:
Draft E How Anxiety Originates : 6th June 1894? : Sigmund Freud
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess of 1st March 1896 : known as Letter 42
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess: 30th May 1896 : Known as Letter 46
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess of 2nd November 1896 : known as Letter 50
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess of 14th November 1897 : known as Letter 75
Essay II Infantile Sexuality : from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality : 1905d : Sigmund Freud
Essay III Transformations of Puberty : Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality : Sigmund Freud
The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis : 1913 : Sigmund Freud
Is it physical? Quotes from
Introduction to ‘The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904′ : 1950 : Ernst Kris
Letter to Wilhelm Fliess of 21st September 1897 : known as Letter 69 : Sigmund Freud
Conclusion
The language of psychoanalysis : 1959 : Jean LaPlanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis
Seminar IV 12th December 1956
See www.LacanianWorks.org or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net for texts. The intention is to transfer all posts from www.LacanianWorks.net to this website, www.LacanianWorks.org. Should any still be in the queue, then go to https://web.archive.org and type in lacanianworks.net – go to the calendar and pick a date or go to https://oldweb.today or contact Julia Evans.
____________________________________________________
Mixing of libido & stages – some quotes:
– Draft E How Anxiety Originates : 6th June 1894? : Sigmund Freud
NOTE : It is mistaken to translate Angst as Anxiety. Anguish, as in the French l’angoisse, is nearer. However, the original German of this text has not been checked to find out if Sigmund Freud uses Angst or another term. Julia Evans
P81 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation :
If one accepts the theory so far, one has to insist that in anxiety neurosis there must be a deficit to be noted in sexual affect, in psychic libido, and this is confirmed by observation. If this connection is put before women patients, they are always indignant and declare that on the contrary they now have no desire whatever, and similar statements. Men often confirm the observation that since suffering from anxiety they have felt no sexual desire.
P81 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation : An alienation is artificially brought about between the physicosexual act and its psychic working over. If the endogenous tension then increases further on its own account, it cannot be worked over and generates anxiety. Here libido can be present, but not at the same time as anxiety [probably anguish from Angst]. Thus here psychic refusal is followed by psychic alienation; tension of endogenous origin is followed by induced tension.
P82 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation :
On the whole the agreement is not so bad. Where there is an abundant development of physical sexual tension, but this cannot be turned into affect by psychic working over – because of insufficient development of psychic sexuality or because of the attempted suppression of the latter (defense), or of its falling into decay, or because of habitual alienation between physical and psychic sexuality – the sexual tension is transformed into anxiety. Thus a part is played in this by the accumulation of physical tension and the prevention of discharge in the psychic direction.
But why does the transformation take place specifically into anxiety? Anxiety is the sensation of the accumulation of another endogenous stimulus, the stimulus to breathing, a stimulus incapable of being worked over psychically apart from this; anxiety might therefore be employed for accumulated physical tension in general. Furthermore, if the symptoms of anxiety neurosis are examined more closely, one finds in the neurosis disjointed pieces of a major anxiety attack: namely, mere dyspnea, mere palpitations, mere feeling of anxiety, and a combination of these. Looked at more precisely, these are the paths of innervation that the physical sexual tension, ordinarily traverses even when it is about to be worked over psychically. [The dyspnea and palpitations belong to coitus; and while ordinarily they are employed only as subsidiary paths of discharge here they serve, so to speak, as the only outlets for the excitation.] This is once again a kind of conversion in anxiety neurosis, just as occurs in hysteria (another instance of their similarity); but in hysteria it is psychic excitation that takes a wrong path exclusively into the somatic field, where as here it is a physical tension, which can not enter the psychic field and therefore remains on the physical path. The two are very often combined.
That is as far as I have got today. The gaps badly need filling. I think it is incomplete, I lack something; but I believe the foundation is right .
____________________________________
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess of 1st March 1896 : known as Letter 42
P174 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation : Thus, it occurs to me that the limits of repression in my theory of neuroses – that is to say, the time after which sexual experiences no longer have a posthumous but an actual effect – coincide with the second dentition. It is only now that I dare to understand my anxiety neurosis: the menstrual period as its physiological model; the anxiety neurosis itself as an intoxication, for which an organic process must furnish the physiological foundation. The unknown organ (the thyroid or whatever it may be) probably will not, I hope, remain unknown to you for long.
P175 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation : I was less angry about Breuer’s letter than I had expected to be. I could console myself with the thought that the colorblind turns so quickly into a judge of colors, and I at least could understand why he held a low opinion of the etiology of the n: because of my statement that trivial noxae may produce neurosis in persons who, it is true, never masturbated, but who nevertheless exhibit from the beginning a type of sexuality that has the same appearance as if they had acquired it through masturbation. In my mind I have always been uncertain whether one should assume that such cases are due to heredity or, instead, to childhood experiences. In any event, it is an obscure point in the theory, and the opponent rightly makes it into a weak point. The mere fact of this opposition -in an area where no theory can be completely fashioned all at once- shows how superficial are Breuer’s conversion and understanding in these matters. He is glad to be able to point to a gap, which is, after all, not identical with a contradiction and even less so with a refutation.
_____________________________
Footnote 2 p238 of Jean LaPlanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis : The language of psychoanalysis : 1967 : Trans. D. Nicholson-Smith, New York, Norton. :
Refers to Letter 46 (May 30, 1896) SE I p229-231
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess: 30th May 1896 : Known as Letter 46
P187-190 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation : As the fruit of some tormenting reflections, I send you the following solution to the etiology of the psychoneuroses, which still awaits confirmation from individual analyses.
Four periods of life are to be distinguished:
Ages
A and B (from about 8 to 10 and 13 to 17) are the transitional periods, during which repression for the most part occurs.
The arousal in a later epoch of a sexual memory from an earlier one produces a surplus of sexuality in the psyche, which operates as an inhibitor of thought and gives the memory and its consequences an obsessive character – uninhibitability.
The period Ia has the characteristic of being untranslated, so that the arousal of a Ia sexual scene leads, not to psychic consequences, but to realizations, that is, to a conversion. The surplus of sexuality impedes translation.
Surplus of sexuality alone is not enough to cause repression; the cooperation of defense is necessary; but without a surplus of sexuality defense does not produce a neurosis.
The individual neuroses have chronological requirements for their sexual scenes:
That is, the scenes for hysteria fall in the first period of childhood (up to 4 years), in which the mnemic residues are not translated into verbal images. It is a matter of indifference whether these Ia scenes are aroused during the period after the second dentition (8to 10) or in the stage of puberty. Hysteria always results and in the form of conversion, since the combined operation of defense and surplus of sexuality impedes translation.
The scenes of obsessional neurosis belong to epoch Ib. They are provided with a translation into words and when they are aroused in II or III, psychic obsessional symptoms are generated.
The scenes for paranoia fall in the period after the second dentition, in epoch II, and are aroused in III (maturity). In that case defense is manifested in disbelief. Thus the periods at which repression occurs are of no significance for the choice of neurosis; the periods at which the event occurs are decisive. The nature of the scene is of importance in so far as it is able to give rise to defense.
What happens if the scenes extend over several age periods? Then the earliest epoch is decisive- or combined forms appear, which it should be possible to demonstrate. Such a combination between paranoia and obsessional neurosis is for the most part impossible, because the repression of the Ib scene effected during II makes new sexual scenes impossible.
Hysteria is the only neurosis in which symptoms are perhaps possible without defense, for even so the characteristic of conversion would remain. (Pure somatic hysteria)
It will be seen that paranoia depends the least on infantile determinants. It is the neurosis of defense par excellence, independent even of morality and aversion to sexuality (which are what in A and B provide the motives for defense in obsessional neurosis and hysteria) and consequently accessible to the lower classes. It is an affection of maturity. If there are no scenes in Ia, Ib, or II, defense can have no pathological consequences (normal repression). The surplus of sexuality fulfills the preconditions for anxiety attacks during maturity. The memory traces are insufficient to take up the sexual quantity released, which should become libido.
The importance of intervals between sexual experiences is evident. A continuation of the scenes across a boundary between epochs may perhaps avoid the possibility of a repression, since in that case no surplus of sexuality arises between a scene and the next deeper memory of it.
[JE Note : Probably where the references to ‘reality’ come from in Seminar IV]
About consciousness [that is, being conscious], or rather becoming conscious, we must suppose three things:
(1) That with regard to memories, it consists for the most part in the verbal consciousness pertaining to them – that is, in access to the associated word presentations;
(2)That it is not attached exclusively and inseparably either to the so-called unconscious or to the so-called conscious realm, so that these names seem to call for rejection;
(3)That it is determined by a compromise between the different psychic powers which come into conflict with one another when repressions occur.
These powers must be closely studied and inferred from their results. They are (1) the inherent quantitative strength of a presentation and (2) a freely displaceable attention which is attracted according to certain rules and repelled in accordance with the rule of defense. Symptoms are almost all compromise formations. A fundamental distinction is to be made between uninhibited and thought-inhibited psychic processes. It is in the conflict between these two that symptoms arise as compromises through which the path to consciousness is opened. In neuroses each of these two processes is in itself rational (Footnote 1) (the uninhibited one is monoideistic, one-sided) ; the resultant compromise is irrational, analogous to an error in thought.
In every case quantitative conditions must be fulfilled, for otherwise the defense by the thought-inhibited process prevents the formation of the symptom.
One kind of psychic disturbance arises if the power of the uninhibited processes increases ; another if the force of the thought inhibition relaxes (Melancholia, exhaustion dreams as a prototype.)
An increase of the uninhibited processes to the point of being in sole possession of the path to verbal consciousness produces psychosis.
There is no question of a separation between the two processes, it is only motives of unpleasure that bar the various possible associative transitions between them.
With this, I shall probably bury the magic wand for this semester
_______________________________________
P238 of LaPlanche & Pontalis quotes Letter 50. (November 2, 1896) SE I p233 to 239
Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess of 2nd November 1896 : known as Letter 50
P202 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation : Recently I heard the first reaction to my incursion into psychiatry. From it I quote : “Gruesome, horrible, old wives’ psychiatry.” That was Rieger in Wurzburg. [3] I was highly amused. And, of all things, about paranoia, which has become so transparent!
Footnote 3 : 3. Conrad Rieger, “Über die Behandlung ‘Nervenkranker,’ ” in Schmidt’s Jahr – bucher der in – und auslandischen gesamten Medizin, 251 (1896): 173-178, 273- 276, says: “I cannot imagine that an experienced psychiatrist could read this essay without feeling total indignation. The reason for this indignation is that the author attributes the greatest importance to paranoid blather with sexual content [on the part of his patients] about purely chance happenings which, even if they were not based merely on imagination, are of no significance whatsoever. This kind of thing cannot possibly lead to anything but a simply dreadful ‘old wives’ psychiatry’” [my translation]. The lack of psychological perception in this passage takes one’s breath away, although it has been defended by Sulloway (1979, p.454). Rieger goes on to say that the best treatment for such patients is physical labor, for they are laboring under the “poison of laziness.”
______________________
From p237 of Jean LaPlanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis : The language of psychoanalysis : 1967 : Trans. D. Nicholson-Smith. New York: Norton. It was not long before the idea emerged of tying these successive periods to the dominance and the relinquishment of specific ‘sexual’ or ‘erotogenic zones’ (the anal region, the region of mouth and pharynx and-in the case of the girl -the clitoral region). Freud pursues this line of advance rather a long way witness his letter to Fliess dated November 14, 1897 Letter 75
See Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess of 14th November 1897 : known as Letter 75 (includes notes)
P280 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation : What, now, does normal repression furnish us with? Something which, free, can lead to anxiety; if psychically bound, to rejection – that is to say, the affective basis for a multitude of intellectual processes of development, such as morality, shame, and the like. Thus the whole of this arises at the expense of extinct (virtual) sexuality. From this we can see that, with the successive thrusts in development, the child is overlaid with morality, shame, and such things, and how the nonoccurrence of this extinction of the sexual zones can produce moral insanity [in English in the original] as a developmental inhibition. These thrusts of development probably have a different chronological arrangement in the male and female sexes. (Disgust appears earlier in little girls than in boys.) But the main distinction between the sexes emerges at the time of puberty, when girls are seized by a nonneurotic sexual repugnance and males by libido.
P278 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation : Letter 14th November 1897 Letter 75 to Fliess Letter from Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess of 14th November 1897 : known as Letter 75
Dear Wilhelm,
“It was on November 12, 1897 ; the sun was precisely in the eastern quarter, Mercury and Venus were in conjunction” – No, birth announcements no longer start like that. It was on November 12, a day dominated by a left-sided migraine, on the afternoon of which Martin sat down to write a new poem, [1] on the evening of which Oli lost his second tooth, [2] that, after the frightful labor pains of the last few weeks, I gave birth to a new piece of knowledge. Not entirely new, to tell the truth; it had repeatedly shown itself and withdrawn again [3] but this time it stayed and looked upon the light of day. Strangely enough, I have a presentiment of such events a good while beforehand. For instance, I wrote to you once in the summer that I was going to find the source of normal sexual repression (morality, shame, and so forth) and then for a long time failed to find it. Before the vacation trip I told you that the most important patient for me was myself ; and then, after I came back from vacation, my self-analysis, of which there was at the time no sign, suddenly started. A few weeks ago came my wish that repression might be replaced by my knowledge of the essential thing lying behind it; and that is what I am concerned with now. I have often had a suspicion that something organic plays a part in repression; I was able once before to tell you that it was a question of the abandonment of former sexual zones, and I was able to add that I had been pleased at coming across a similar idea in Moll. … Now, the zones which no longer produce a release of sexuality in normal and mature human beings must be the regions of the anus and of the mouth and throat. This is to be understood in two ways: first, that seeing and imagining these zones no longer produce an exciting effect, and second, that the internal sensations arising from them make no contribution to the libido, the way the sexual organs proper do. In animals these sexual zones continue in force in both respects; if this persists in human beings too, perversion results. We must assume that in infancy the release of sexuality is not yet so much localized as it is later, so that the zones which are later abandoned (and perhaps the whole surface of the body as well) also instigate something that is analogous to the later release of sexuality. The extinction of these initial sexual zones would have a counterpart in the atrophy of certain internal organs in the course of development. A release of sexuality (as you know, I have in mind a kind of secretion which is rightly felt as the internal state of the libido) comes about, then, not only (1) through a peripheral stimulus upon the sexual organs, or (2) through the internal excitations arising from those organs, but also (3) from ideas- that is, from memory traces – therefore also by the path of deferred action. … Thus, there exists a nonneurotic deferred action occurring normally, and this generates compulsion. (Our other memories operate ordinarily only because they have operated as experiences.) Deferred action of this kind occurs also in connection with a memory of excitations of the abandoned sexual zones. The outcome, however, is not a release of libido but of an unpleasure, an internal sensation analogous to disgust in the case of an object.
To put it crudely, the memory actually stinks just as in the present the object stinks; and in the same manner as we turn away our sense organ (the head and nose) in disgust, the preconscious and the sense of consciousness turn away from the memory. This is repression.
What, now, does normal repression furnish us with? Something which, free, can lead to anxiety; if psychically bound, to rejection – that is to say, the affective basis for a multitude of intellectual processes of development, such as morality, shame, and the like. Thus the whole of this arises at the expense of extinct (virtual) sexuality. From this we can see that, with the successive thrusts in development, the child is overlaid with piety, shame, and such things, and how the nonoccurrence of this extinction of the sexual zones can produce moral insanity [moral insanity in the original] as a developmental inhibition. These thrusts of development probably have a different chronological arrangement in the male and female sexes. (Disgust appears earlier in little girls than in boys.) But the main distinction between the sexes emerges at the time of puberty, girls are seized by a nonneurotic sexual repugnance and males by libido. …
… .Insofar as memory has lighted upon an experience connected with the genitals, what it produces by deferred action is libido. Insofar as it has lighted upon an experience connected with the anus, mouth, and so on, it produces deferred internal disgust, and the final outcome is consequently that a quota of libido is not able, as is ordinarily the case, to force its way through to action or to translation into psychic terms, but is obliged to proceed in a regressive direction (as happens in dreams). Libido and disgust would seem to be associatively linked. We owe it to the former that the memory cannot lead to general unpleasure and the like, but that it finds a psychic use; and we owe it to the latter that this use furnishes nothing but symptoms instead of aim-directed ideas. The psychological side of this would not be hard to grasp, the organic factor in it is whether abandonment of the sexual zones takes place according to the masculine or feminine type of development or whether it takes place at all.
It is probable, then, that the choice of neurosis – the decision whether hysteria or obsessional neurosis or paranoia emerges – depends on the nature of the thrust (that is to say, its chronological placing) which enables repression to occur; that is, which transforms a source of internal pleasure into one of internal disgust.
This is where I have got to so far – with all the inherent obscurities. I have resolved, then, henceforth to regard as separate factors what causes libido and what causes anxiety. I have also given up the idea of explaining libido as the masculine factor and repression as the feminine one. These are, in any case, important decisions. The obscurity lies mainly in the nature of the change by which the internal sensation of need becomes the sensation of disgust. I need not draw your attention to other obscure points. The main value of the synthesis lies in its linking the neurotic process and the normal one. There is now a crying need, therefore, for a prompt elucidation of common neurasthenic anxiety.
[JE notes : Analyst’s position] My self-analysis remains interrupted. I have realized why I can analyze myself only with the help of knowledge obtained objectively (like an outsider). True self-analysis is impossible; otherwise there would be no [neurotic] illness. Since I am still contending with some kind of puzzle in my patients, this is bound to hold me up in my self-analysis as well.
Footnotes
[1] I was not supposed to know this. It seems his poetic tonsils have been cut.
[2] The first one was in fact pulled out on the evening of November 9 by the nurse, it might perhaps have lasted till the 10th.
[3] Only tall fellows for sa Majesté le Roi de Prusse. [Freud is referring to the Potsdam guard under Friedrich Wilhelm I, which was recruited wholly from giants.]
p237 of Pontalis : It was not long before the idea emerged of tieing these successive periods to the dominance and the relinquishment of specific ‘sexual’ or ‘erotogenic zones’ (the anal region, the region of mouth and pharynx and-in the case of the girl -the clitoral region). Freud pursues this line of advance rather a long way witness his letter to Fliess dated November 14, 1897 Letter 75 (See Above) also masculine libido : the process of so-called normal repression is seen here as closely related to the relinquishing of one zone in favour of another, to the ‘decline’ of a particular zone.
Such conceptions are in many respects adumbrations of what is to become, in its more finished form, the theory of libidinal stages. But it is a striking fact that these ideas fade into the background with the first account that Freud gives of the evolution of sexuality, and they are taken up and clarified only at a later point. In the first edition of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905),
(JE notes that Jacques Lacan refers to this text in Seminar IV : 5th December 1956 See www.LacanianWorks.org /4 Jacques Lacan (Seminar IV – November 1956))
Three Essays on Sexuality
SE VII p123-245. Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (THREE ESSAYS ON SEXUALITY (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie))
Note added July 2019
Sigmund Freud also refers to pregenital organizations & phases in
Essay II Infantile Sexuality from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality : 1905 : SE VII p197, p116 – 118 pfl : James Strachey notes that this section which appeared in 1915, recognizes the oral organization for the first time. :
Section [6] THE PHASES OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEXUAL ORGANIZATION
The characteristics of infantile sexual life which we have hitherto emphasized are the facts that it is essentially auto-erotic (i.e. that it finds its object in the infant’s own body) and that its individual component instincts are upon the whole disconnected and independent of one another in their search for pleasure. The final outcome of sexual development lies in what is known as the normal sexual life of the adult, in which the pursuit of pleasure comes under the sway of the reproductive function and in which the component instincts, under the primacy of a single erotogenic zone, form a firm organization directed towards a sexual aim attached to some extraneous sexual object.
PREGENITAL ORGANIZATIONS
The study, with the help of psycho-analysis, of the inhibitions and disturbances of this process of development enables us to recognize abortive beginnings and preliminary stages of a firm organization of the component instincts such as this – preliminary stages which themselves constitute a sexual regime of a sort. These phases of sexual organization are normally passed through smoothly, without giving more than a hint of their existence. It is only in pathological cases that they become active and recognizable to superficial observation.
We shall give the name of ‘pregenital’ to organizations of sexual life in which the genital zones have not yet taken over their predominant part. We have hitherto identified two such organizations, which almost seem as though they were harking back to early animal forms of life.
The first of these is the oral or, as it might be called, cannibalistic pregenital sexual organization. Here sexual activity has not yet been separated from the ingestion of food; nor are opposite currents within the activity differentiated. The object of both activities is the same; the sexual aim consists in the incorporation of the object – the prototype of a process which, in the form of identification, is later to play such an important psychological part. A relic of this constructed phase of organization, which is forced upon our notice by pathology, may be seen in thumb-sucking, in which the sexual activity, detached from the nutritive activity, has substituted for the extraneous object one situated in the subject’s own body.¹
A second pregenital phase is that of the sadistic-anal organization. Here the opposition between two currents, which runs through all sexual life, is already developed: they cannot yet, however, be described as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, but only as ‘active’ and ‘passive’. The activity is put into operation by the instinct for mastery through the agency of the somatic musculature; the organ which, more than any other, represents the passive sexual aim is the erotogenic mucous membrane of the anus. Both of these currents have objects, which, however, are not identical. Alongside these, other component instincts operate in an auto-erotic manner. In this phase, therefore, sexual polarity and an extraneous object are already observable. But organization and subordination to the reproductive function are still absent.²
¹ [Footnote added 1920:] For remnants of this phase in adult neurotics, cf. Abraham (1916). [Added 1924:] In another, later work (1924) the same writer has divided both this oral phase, and also the later sadistic anal one, into two sub-divisions, which are characterized by differing attitudes towards the object.
² [Footnote added 1924:] Abraham, in the paper last quoted (1924), points out that the anus is developed from the embryonic blastopore – a fact which seems like a biological prototype of psychosexual development.
7 AMBIVALENCE
This form of sexual organization can persist throughout life and can permanently attract a large portion of sexual activity to itself. The predominance in it of sadism and the cloacal part played by the anal zone give it a quite peculiarly archaic colouring. It is further characterized by the fact that in it the opposing pairs of instincts are developed to an approximately equal extent, a state of affairs described by Bleuler’s happily chosen term ‘ambivalence’.
– Chemical Theory Section : Essay III Transformations of Puberty : Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality : 1905 : from James Strachey’s translation : (originally published in 1953 – 3 years before Seminar IV was given) : SE VII p123-245 : p137 of pfl Vol 7 On Sexuality : It must suffice us to hold firmly to what is essential in this view of the sexual processes: the assumption that substances of a peculiar kind arise from the sexual metabolism.
Footnote 1 : James Strachey : The whole of this paragraph as far as this point in its present form from 1920. In the first edition (1905) and the two subsequent ones the following passage appears in its place: ‘The truth is that we can give no information on the nature of sexual excitation, especially since (having found that the importance of the sex-glands in this respect has been over-estimated) we are in the dark as to the organ or organs to which sexuality is attached. After the surprising discoveries of the important part played by the thyroid gland in sexuality, it is reasonable to suspect that we are still ignorant of the essential factors of sexuality. Anyone who feels the need of a provisional hypothesis to fill this wide gap in our knowledge may well take as his starting-point the powerful substances which have been found to be present in the thyroid gland and may proceed along some such lines as the following. It may be supposed that, as a result of an appropriate stimulation of erotogenic zones, or in other circumstances that are accompanied by an onset of sexual excitation, some substance that is disseminated generally throughout the organism becomes decomposed and the products of its decomposition give rise to a specific stimulus which acts on the reproductive organs or upon a spinal centre related to them. (We are already familiar with the fact that other toxic substances, introduced into the body from outside, can bring about a similar transformation of a toxic condition into a stimulus acting on a particular organ.) The question of what interplay arises in the course of the sexual processes between the effects of purely toxic stimuli and of physiological ones cannot be treated, even hypothetically, in the present state of our knowledge. I may add that I attach no importance to this particular hypothesis and should be ready to abandon it at once in favour of another, provided that its fundamental nature remained unchanged – that is, the emphasis which it lays upon sexual chemistry.’
______________________________________________
p238 of Jean LaPlanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis : The language of psychoanalysis : 1967 : Trans. D. Nicholson-Smith, New York, Norton : It is interesting that when he does raise the problem – as, for example, in ‘The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis’ (1913) – the notion of the ego is not as yet restricted to the precise topographical sense that it is to have in The Ego and the Id (1923). He suggests that a chronological outstripping of libidinal development by ego development should be included in the disposition to obsessional neurosis’, but he points out that ‘the stages of development of the ego-instincts are at present very little known to us’ …
We must stress that Freud for his part never undertook the formulation of a holistic theory of stages which would be able to embrace not only the evolution of the libido but also that of the defences, of the ego, etc.; such a theory eventually comes to include the development of the whole of the personality in a single genetic sequence under the general heading of the notion of object relations.
The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis : 1913 : Sigmund Freud : SE XII p311-326 (G.W. VIII p451) SEXII p325 or p143 of pfl, Vol 10 : James Strachey’s translation
Freud : The second gap in our hypothesis is far more important. As we know, the developmental disposition to a neurosis is only complete if the phase of the development of the ego at which fixation occurs is taken into account as well as that of the libido. But our hypothesis has only related to the latter, and therefore does not include all the knowledge that we should demand. The stages of development of the ego-instincts are at present very little known to us; I know of only one attempt – the highly promising one made by Ferenczi (1913) – to approach these questions. I cannot tell if it may seem too rash if, on the basis of such indications as we possess, I suggest the possibility that a chronological outstripping of libidinal development by ego development should be included in the disposition to obsessional neurosis. A precocity of this kind would necessitate the choice of an object under the influence of the ego-instincts, at a time at which the sexual instincts had not yet assumed their final shape, and a fixation at the stage of the pregenital sexual organization would thus be left. If we consider that obsessional neurotics have to develop a super-morality in order to protect their object-love from the hostility lurking behind it, we shall be inclined to regard some degree of this precocity of ego development as typical of human nature and to derive the capacity for the origin of morality from the fact that in the order of development hate is the precursor of love. This is perhaps the meaning of an assertion by Stekel (1911a, 536), which at the time I found incomprehensible, to the effect that hate and not love is the primary emotional relation between men.
_____________
Is it physical?
p236 of Jean LaPlanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis : The language of psychoanalysis : 1967 : Trans. D. Nicholson-Smith, New York, Norton : Thus, around 1896-97, Freud’s correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess -who, as we know, had himself worked out a whole theory of periods (See Kris below) -contains an attempt to establish a series of periods in childhood and adolescence which can be tied down chronologically with varying degrees of precision; this attempt is closely bound up with the notion of deferred action, and with the theory of seduction which Freud worked out at this time.
Quote from Introduction to ‘The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904′ : 1950 : Ernst Kris – see www.LacanianWorks.org /5 Other Authors A-Z
P4-8 quoted by LaPlanche & Pontalis as describing how Wilhelm Fliess worked out a whole theory of periods or stages based on observable, physical phenomena.
P24 : The important discovery that the mechanism of anxiety neurosis lay “in the diversion of somatic sexual excitation from the psyche and the resultant abnormal utilization of that energy” was expressed by Freud in the formula: “Neurotic anxiety is transmuted sexual libido”. [Freud, Sigmund (1897b) ‘Abstracts of the Scientific Writings of Dr. Sigm. Freud 1877-1897′, SE III, pp. 227-43. : [p352] Quote from abstract XXXII ‘On the grounds for detaching a particular syndrome from neurasthenia under the description “anxiety neurosis”.’ : translated by James Strachey : An attempt to arrive at a theory of anxiety neurosis leads to a formula to the effect that its mechanism lies in the deflection of somatic sexual excitation from the psychical field and a consequent abnormal employment of that excitation. Neurotic anxiety is transformed sexual libido. ]
This idea was mentioned only briefly in the ‘Studies on Hysteria’, which were published later, but had important consequences for the history of psycho-analysis. Until the theory of anxiety was revised by the publication in 1926 of ‘Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety’, the “toxicological” theory, which regarded anxiety as the result of dammed-up libido, held the field. This revision simultaneously revived another important idea which Freud had had in the early nineties;[* below] the idea of putting the function of defence in the centre of the theory of the neurosis. After an interval of more than thirty years part of the psycho-analytic ego-psychology was based on this concept of defence.
* In “On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the Description ‘Anxiety Neurosis’ ” (1895b) Freud unquestionably pointed the way to this revision. “‘The psyche develops the affect of anxiety when it feels itself incapable of dealing (by an adequate reaction) with a task danger : approaching it externally”, he wrote. – Sigmund Freud : 1895 : Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the Description “Anxiety Neurosis’ ‘ ‘, S.E III p109.
P29 : Quote : ‘[Freud’s] observations of adult neurotics enabled him to reconstruct some of the normal stages in the child’s growth towards maturity’; ….
In the spring of 1897,in spite of accumulating insight into the nature of infantile wish-phantasies, Freud could not make up his mind to take the decisive step demanded by his observations and abandon the idea of the traumatic role of seduction in favour of insight into the normal and necessary conditions of childish development and childish phantasy life. He reports his new impressions in his letters, but does not mention the conflict between them and the seduction hypothesis until one day, in his letter of September 21st, 1897 (Letter 69 – See www.LacanianWorks.org /Letter to Wilhelm Fliess of 21st September 1897 : known as Letter 69 : Sigmund Freud ), he describes how he realized his error.
P264 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation of Letter of 21st September 1897 : ….And now I want to confide in you immediately the great secret that has been slowly dawning on me in the last few months. I no longer believe in my neurotica [theory of the neuroses]. This is probably not intelligible without an explanation; after all, you yourself found credible what I was able to tell you. So I will begin historically [and tell you] where the reasons for disbelief came from. The continual disappointment in my efforts to bring a single analysis to a real conclusion; the running away of people who for a period of time had been most gripped [by analysis]; the absence of the complete successes on which I had counted; the possibility of explaining to myself the partial successes in other ways, in the usual fashion-this was the first group. Then the surprise that in all cases, the father, not excluding my own, had to be accused of being perverse- the realization of the unexpected frequency of hysteria, with precisely the same conditions prevailing in each, whereas surely such widespread perversions against children are not very probable. The [incidence] of perversion would have to be immeasurably more frequent than the [resulting] hysteria because the illness, after all, occurs only where there has been an accumulation of events and there is a contributory factor that weakens the defense. Then, third, the certain insight that there are no indications of reality in the unconscious, so that one cannot distinguish between truth and fiction that has been cathected with affect. ….
P265 It seems once again arguable that only later experiences give the impetus to fantasies, which [then] hark back to childhood, …
P34 : In the summer and autumn of 1897 his self-analysis revealed the essential features of the Oedipus complex and enabled him to understand the nature of Hamlet’s inhibition. Insight into the role of the erotogenic zones in the development of the libido followed.
P42 : Quote : ‘In discussing developmental inhibitions which might be rooted in the disposition he referred to Fliess’s works. “Since the work of W. Fliess has revealed the biological importance of periodicity, it has become conceivable that developmental disturbances may be ascribed to modification in the duration of the various stages”, he wrote.
When Freud produced his own biological speculations in ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ he mentioned Fliess again. “According to the grandiose conception of Wilhelm Fliess”, he wrote, “all the vital phenomena exhibited by organisms-including, no doubt, their death-are linked with the conception of fixed periods, which express the dependence of two kinds of living substance (one male and the other female) upon the solar year. When we see, however, [p43] how easily and how extensively the influence of external forces is able to modify the date of the appearance of vital phenomena (especially in the plant world)-to precipitate them or hold them back-doubts must be cast upon the rigidity of Fliess’s formulas, or at least upon whether the laws laid down by him are the sole determining factors”. In other words the period theory occupied a place at the periphery of Freud’s interests; it did not contribute to the creation of psycho-analysis.’
Beyond the Pleasure Principle : 1920g : Sigmund Freud, SE XVIII p1-64, Available bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE)
______________________________________________________
Concluding texts
-p238 of Jean LaPlanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis : The language of psychoanalysis : 1967 : Trans. D. Nicholson-Smith. New York: Norton. :
Anna Freud too, in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, declines to set up a temporal scheme for the appearance of the various mechanisms of egodefence (7).
What overall view may be formed of these different approaches? The most thoroughgoing attempt to establish correlations between the different types of stages is still Abraham’s ‘Short Study of the Development of the Libido, Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders’ (1924) (See A Short Study of the Development of the Libido, Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders : 1924 : Karl Abraham ). Robert Fliess has completed the picture proposed by Abraham (See Fliess , R. ‘An Ontogenetic Table’, 1942, in The Psychoanalytic Reader (London: Hogarth Press, 1950), 254-55.).
We must stress that Freud for his part never undertook the formulation of a holistic theory of stages which would be able to embrace not only the evolution of the libido but also that of the defences, of the ego, etc.; such a theory eventually comes to include the development of the whole of the personality in a single genetic sequence under the general heading of the notion of objectrelations. In our view, Freud’s failure to reach such a position does not simply mean that he did not round out his thinking in this area; in fact the gap – and the possibility of a dialectic – between these different developmental sequences are in Freud’s eyes an essential factor in the determination of neurosis.
In this sense, even though the Freudian theory may have been one of the chief contributors in the history of psychology to the spread of the idea of stages, it would seem that in its fundamental inspiration it is at odds with the way this idea is used by genetic psychology, which postulates the existence, at each point in development, of an overall structure with an integrative function (‘Symposium de l’Association de Psychologie scientifique de langue francaise’, various authors, Geneva, 1955, in Le problème des stades en psychologie de l’enfant (Paris: P.U.F., 1956). ).
– [This conference is referenced in Seminar IV : 12th December 1956[i], www.LacanianWorks.org /4 Jacques Lacan (November 1956) See Endnote vi for quote]
[i] See www.LacanianWorks.org /4 Jacques Lacan (Seminar IV : Relation from Object [Relation d’objet] & Freudian Structures 1956-1957 : begins 21st November 1956 : Jacques Lacan). The Earl’s Court Collective’s, Alma Buholzer, Ganesh Anantharaman, Greg Hynds, Jesse Cohn, Julia Evans, translation is used throughout.
[ii] Seminar IV 21st November 1956 p7
To this end, it was thought possible – and one of the first to emphasise this, but not as soon as one might think, was [Karl] Abraham – to try to refocus everything that is introduced so far within the evolution of the subject in a way which is always seen by reconstructing in a retroactive way from a central experience: that of the conflicting tension between conscious and unconscious, of the conflicting tension created by this fundamental fact that what is sought by the drive [tendance] is obscure, that what consciousness recognises in it, first and foremost, is misrecognition, that it is not in the domain of consciousness that the subject recognises itself. There is something else beyond, and at the same time and for the same reason, this beyond poses the question of its structure, its principle and its meaning, which is fundamentally misunderstood by the subject, beyond the reach of its knowledge. This is set aside, even willingly, by some, especially celebrities, along with significant currents within analysis based on an object the end point of which is not our point of departure. We go backwards to understand how this endpoint is attained, an end point which incidentally is never observed, this ideal object which is literally unthinkable. Instead, it is conceived as a sort of focal point, a point of culmination for a whole series of experiments, elements, partial concepts of the object dating from a certain era, especially from the moment in 1924 when Abraham formulated it in his theory of the development of the libido and which for many anchors the very law of the analysis, of everything that happens therein.
See www.LacanianWorks.org /A Short Study of the Development of the Libido, Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders : 1924 : Karl Abraham
[iii] Jacques Lacan examines from the beginning of Bénassy’s text to the end of Third Period (p773). Evolution de la psychanalyse : 1956 : Maurice Bénassy, information from www.LacanianWorks.org /5 Authors A-Z (Bénassy). Published in La psychanalyse d’aujourd’hui, Work published under the direction of Sacha Nacht in collaboration with others ; P.U.F (1956). See www.LacanianWorks.org /5 Other Authors A-Z (Nacht Sacha) & Seminar IV (1956-1957)/4 Jacques Lacan)
[iv] From Seminar IV 21st November 1956 p7 : The coordinate system within which the entire analytic experience is situated is that of the point of completion of this fabled ideal object, final, perfect, adequate, of that which is proposed in the analysis as being what in itself marks the goal attained, the normalisation, so to speak – a term which itself already introduces a world of categories which are quite alien to this starting point of the analysis, the normalisation of the subject.
[v] p238 of Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis : The language of psychoanalysis : 1967 : Trans. D. Nicholson-Smith. New York: Norton. Copy available from Julia Evans
It is interesting that when he does raise the problem – as, for example, in ‘The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis’ (1913) – the notion of the ego is not as yet restricted to the precise topographical sense that it is to have in The Ego and the Id (1923). He suggests that ‘a chronological outstripping of libidinal development by ego development should be included in the disposition to obsessional neurosis’, but he points out that ‘the stages of development of the ego-instincts are at present very little known to us’
…
We must stress that Freud for his part never undertook the formulation of a holistic theory of stages which would be able to embrace not only the evolution of the libido but also that of the defences, of the ego, etc.; such a theory eventually comes to include the development of the whole of the personality in a single genetic sequence under the general heading of the notion of objectrelations.
– See The Ego & the Id (‘Das Ich und das Es’) : 1920 [1923] : Sigmund Freud, SE XIX p12-63, Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com / Freud/Philosophy (28. THE EGO AND THE ID (Das Ich und das Es))
[vi] Seminar IV 12th December 1956 : p5 of Alma Buholzer, Ganesh Anandtharaman, Greg Hynds, Jesse Cohn, Julia Evans, We can see that an article by Mr. Pasche and Mr. Renard reproduces a criticism which they brought to the Geneva conference concerning the Kleinian positions. It is extremely striking to see Melanie Klein reproached in this article for having a theory of development which in a sense, according to critics and authors, places everything inside the subject, in short, places the whole oedipal stage in a preformed state, the possible development already included in an instinctual given, which would be the output – according to these authors – of different elements, and already, in some sense, potentially articulated in the manner in which the authors ask us to make the comparison… and so it is, for some, that in the theory of biological development, the whole oak is already contained within the acorn, that nothing would come to a given subject in some way from the outside, and that it would be through his primitive drives, namely, aggressive drives, at the start… and the prevalence of aggressivity is manifest when we understand it in this – Melanie Klein’s – perspective… and then through the intermediary of the aftershocks of these aggressive drives, felt by the subject from the outside, namely the maternal eld, the progressive construction – something which, we are told, can only be taken as a sort of preformed oak – of the notion of the totality of the mother from which this so-called ‘depressive position’ is established, which can present itself in any experience.
All these criticisms must be taken in turn, to allow us to appreciate their exact value, and here I would simply like to point out to you what, paradoxically, these critiques as a whole result in. …. This world which we have but to remember, this world which is to establish itself according to a certain imaginary preparation, for which the subject already finds himself to be prepared [adéquat], is something which surely represents a contradictory critique, but we will have to see whether, when put to the test, it is not only against everything which Freud has written, but whether we cannot already sense that the authors are themselves much closer than they think to the position for which they reproach Melanie Klein, namely that it is they who indicate the existence, in the subject, in the state of a preformed oak tree, and ready to emerge at any given point, all the elements which will allow the subject to count himself in a series of [developmental] stages which cannot be called ideal except insofar as it is precisely the memories of the subject – and very precisely the phylogenetic memories – which will provide the model and standard of these stages.
…
And I believe that this is starting to show you the angle from which we can introduce something new into this confusion which remains at the level of the primordial mother-child relationship. I believe that this is in keeping with the fact that, not starting from a central notion, namely, frustration, which is [supposed to be] the true centre… it is not frustration from which we start, it is not about what [this relationship] should not be, it is a question of how the primitive relations of the child are put into place and situated.