Anxiety and Instinctual Life
In James Strachey, from the single edition
102
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Freud says he will recapitulate what he said in lecture 25, from the Introductory Lectures.
Anxiety, thus, is an affective state, or a “combination of certain feelings in the
pleasure/unpleasure series.”
Indeed, he goes on about these feelings
…with the corresponding innervation of discharge and perception of them, but
probably also the precipitation of a particularly important event, incorporated by
inheritance, something that may be likened to an individually acquired hysterical
attack
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Freud says “an event of this kind…is the process of birth.”
Note: Indeed, there is a lot here. Freud says anxiety is a combination of feelings, brought up by
events, but then seems to say that these feelings are but remnants of the anxiety of birth.
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Freud says, long ago, he held to the distinction of “realistic” or “neurotic” anxiety
Realistic “is a reaction…to danger.”
Neurotic, it seemed, was enigmatic and appeared pointless.
About realistic anxiety, Freud says, two reactions.
o Generation of anxiety “is limited to a signal, in which case the remainder of
anxiety can adapt itself.”
o Generation of anxiety is total, such that “the affective state becomes paralyzed.”
103
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About neurotic anxiety, Freud says we “observe it under three conditions.”
o Freely floating apprehensiveness, “ready to attach itself temporarily” to any
danger, “in the form of expectant anxiety.”
o Firmly attached to certain ideas, as in phobias
o Accompanying symptoms “or emerges independently as an attack or more
persistent state.”
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Freud says that, long ago, he found that anxiety concerns “libidinal economics,” that it is
“caused by unconsummated excitation.”
Indeed, he says
I even thought I was justified in saying that this unsatisfied libido was directly
changed into anxiety.
Note: Indeed, Freud says his evidence was cases of when a child loves his mother then loses
affection, then neurotic anxiety. Of course, he changes his view here.
104
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Freud says what is responsible for anxiety in hysteria “is the process of repression.”
Indeed, we can give “a more complete account” if
…we separate to the idea that has to be repressed from what happens to the quota
of libido attaching to it
Note: Of course, this is a key distinction: content verses libido. In “Repression,” the distinction
is content verses affect. I assume these are the same.
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Importantly, then
…it is the idea that is subject to repression and may be distorted to the point of being
unrecognizable, but its quota of affect is regularly transformed into anxiety.
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Freud says the affect may be love or aggression, but still transformed, though.
The libido has become “unemployable.”
Note: To what extend does Freud really change this picture?
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Next, Freud addresses anxiety and the formation of symptoms.
In fact, the two “represent and replace each other.”
Note: Freud gives examples of an agoraphobic and obsessional person (obsessed with washing).
To reconstruct said symptoms, he says
Agoraphobic
1. Attack of anxiety in street, then repetition in street
2. Inhibition to go out, which is also the symptom, which is a “restriction on the
egos functioning.”
3. By means of this, he spares himself further anxiety.
Concerning the obsessional person, he says “we see the opposite when we interfere with the
formation of symptoms.”
Obsessional
1. When we prevent said cleaning, he “falls into a state of anxiety.”
2. The symptom had itself protected him from this.
3. Yet now we have produced it.
105
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Freud thinks this shows something important.
…the generation of anxiety of the earlier and the formation of symptoms is the
later, as though symptoms are created in order to avoid the outbreak of the
anxiety state.
Note: Of course, this is what he says in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety.
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Moreover, “what the person is afraid of evidently is his own libido.”
Yet, this is all neurotic anxiety.
o The threat is “internal.”
o And it is “not consciously recognized.”
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As Freud says, in neurotic anxiety, we transform the internal threat to an external one,
thereby hoping to gain more control.
Note: But clearly, this does not work.
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Freud now admits that in his earlier discussion of anxiety, the part of his theory “did not
fit together.”
o
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Anxiety is “an affective state…a reproduction of an old event…of danger.”
Yet, it is now “a signal of new danger.”
It arises from frustrated libido, when ideas are repressed.
But it is then unemployable.
It is “replaced by the formation of a symptom…psychically bound.
But Freud says something is missing.
106
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The new topology of id, ego, and superego changes things.
Freud says that
…with the thesis that the ego is the sole seat of anxiety...alone can produce and feel
anxiety… we have a new stable position.
107
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In cases where wishful impulses arise from the Oedipus complex, “we should have
expected to find that…
…it was a libidinal cathexis of the boys mother as object, which, as a result of
repression, was transformed into anxiety…which now emerged, expressed in
symptomatic terms…attached to a substitute for his father.
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But the opposite was found
It was not the repression that created the anxiety; the anxiety was there earlier; it was
the anxiety that made the repression.
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And this was “anxiety in the face of a threatening external danger.”
However, Freud then says
…the boy felt anxiety in the face of a demand by his libido- at being in love with
his mother; so that, it was…neurotic anxiety. But this being in love only appeared
to him as an internal danger, which he must avoid by renouncing the object
because it conjured up external circumstances of danger.
Note: Indeed, this is a big change, or so it seems. But it also seems to be only a matter of what
prompted what.
108
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Freud says this danger was “the punishment of being castrated.”
In fact, he says “we must hold fast to that fear of castration is one of the commonest and
strongest motives for repression and thus for the formation of neuroses.”
109
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Of course, as Freud admits, “fear of castration is not the only motive for repression.”
In women, this fear is replaced by “the fear of loss of love.”
If a mother is present and has withdrawn her love from her child, it is no longer
sure of the satisfaction of its needs and is thereby exposed to the most distressing
feelings of tension.
Note: But then, one wonders why, if this explanation works here, why not for both sexes?
110
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Freud disagrees with Rank that birth is a prototype for all later anxiety.
Indeed, he says, every stage of development has its own kind of anxiety, as such.
o Early years: helplessness
o First few years: loss of object and love
o Phallic stage: castration
o Latency and beyond: fear of the superego
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As time goes on, due to “strengthening of the ego,” old dangers disappear, and new ones
appear.
Yet, of course, neurotics do not overcome certain stages.
And, normal people never overcome fear of loss of love, or the superego.
Therefore, there is much overlap.
111
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Freud summarizes the new findings.
o Anxiety makes repression, not the other way around.
o The instinctual circumstance that is feared “goes back ultimately to an external
situation of danger.”
Freud then summarizes how anxiety works.
1. The ego perceives an instinctual demand “would conjure up the well-remembered
situation of danger.”
2. The instinct, thus, must be stopped or “made powerless.”
3. However, in repression, the impulse “still belongs to the id,” and is active.
4. When this occurs, ego “helps itself to a technique which is at bottom with ordinary
thinking.”
a. Experimental action
b. Moves small amounts of energy
5. The ego “permits it to bring about the reproduction of the unpleasurable feelings at
the beginning of feared situation of danger.”
6. Now, the pleasure/unpleasure principle is brought into operation and “carries out the
repression.”
112
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Freud notes that “I have tried to translate our normal thinking into…a process that his
neither conscious nor preconscious.”
Indeed, “it cannot be done any other way.”
Also, who does the repression?
The ego does.
It makes use of an experimental cathexis and starts up the pleasure/unpleasure
automatism by means of a signal of anxiety.
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Different possible outcomes are
o Ego withdraws entirely from the excitation.
o Ego uses an anticathexis, and “combines with this energy to form a symptom.”
o Ego uses an anticathexis, yet this causes a reaction formation, which is a
“permanent alteration of it.”
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Of course, these are possible alone or in combination.
113
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As Freud says, the more the ego “can reduce the anxiety to a signal”
…so much the more does the ego expend on actions of defense which amount to
the psychical binding of the repressed impulse.
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Freud, briefly, takes a detour, and makes some comments on character.
Character is to be “ascribed entirely to the ego.”
But, it is incorporates the superego, which “incorporates abandoned object cathexes.”
Moreover, character is the anticathexis and reaction formations.
Note: Freud also speaks of character in “Character and Anal Erotism.”
114-115
 Freud now discusses the id.
 After repression, what happens to the energy, the libido?
 Previously, he said, it is “transformed into anxiety.”
 Now he says “the modest reply” is that lots of things happen.
 Freud says “the pleasure/unpleasure principle” has an “unrestricted dominance” in the id.
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In some cases, the repressed instinctual impulse may retain its libidinal cathexis, and
may persist in the id unchanged.
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However,
In other cases, what seems to happen is that the impulse is totally destroyed, while the
libido is permanently diverted.
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And lastly, it can happen that
In many cases, instead of the customary results of repression, degradation I the libido
takes place- a regression of the libido to an earlier stage.
116
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Freud addresses the ego.
Just as he said in The Ego and the Id, “the ego is weak.”
Indeed, the ego is but an offshoot of the id, but “is better organized,” and it is “turned
towards reality.”
Given this, the ego can “influence…the processes in the id.”
Freud says
I believe the ego can bring its influence to bear by putting into action the almost
omnipotent pleasure/unpleasure principle by means of anxiety
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Yet, by repression, it also shows its weakness.
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However, Freud reminds us that “neurotic anxiety,” is changed. Now it “is realistic
anxiety,” or “fear of external situation of danger.”
So what is feared?
Freud says it “plainly not damage to the subject,” objectively speaking.
117-118
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Freud says that
What is feared, what is the object of the anxiety, is invariable the emergence of a
traumatic moment, which cannot be dealt with by the usual rules of the pleasure
principle.
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But why cannot such moments be dealt with?
As Freud says, “the solution” is that
…in all this it is a question of relative quantities. It is only the magnitude of the sum
of excitation that turns an impression into a traumatic moment, paralyzes the function
of the pleasure principle, and gives the situation of danger its significance.
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Yet, why do traumatic moments only come up when we fear external situations?
Why do not traumatic moments just arise?
Freud says that, originally, when the id makes its libidinal demands, and before we know
of any external situations of danger, they do.
Anxiety “is constructed afresh.”
Note: Freud, here, says that such anxiety is still constructed “on the model of birth.” Therefore,
there is still an external situation of danger.
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Still, Freud officially changes his mind, and says that
We shall no longer maintain that it is the libido itself that is turned into anxiety in
such cases.
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Anxiety, then, comes from
o The threat of the return of a traumatic moment, as in later cases.
o Or, the traumatic moment itself, as in birth.
Note: Freud ends his discussion of anxiety, finally. Anxiety is not caused by libido, but is
caused by a threat of a traumatic moment, or such a moment directly.
119
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Freud says, concerning the instincts, “…we are struggling laboriously.”
And, he even calls it “our mythology.”
In our work we cannot for a moment disregard them, but can never be sure we are
seeing them clearly.
119
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Freud says he is beholden to and “unshakable biological fact.”
Indeed, there are intentions of
…self-preservation and preservation of the species, which seem independent of each
other,” and which have no common origin…and which seem to conflict in animal
life.
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And from this come the “ego instincts” and “sexual instincts.”
The ego, he says, came to be known as “a restricting repressing power,” and sex is the
repressed.
120
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Instincts, then, are distinguished from stimuli in that they “arise from a source of
stimulation within the body.”
And they are “constant force that the subject cannot avoid by flight.”
o Source is the state of excitation within the body.
o Aim is “the removal of that excitation,” or satisfaction.
o Object is that which the instinct fixes upon, its psychical representative.
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Yet, as Freud says
…on its path from its source to its aim the instinct becomes operative
psychically… as a certain quota of energy which presses in a particular direction.
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This expenditure of energy can serve an “active or passive aim.”
Freud says there can be vicissitudes.
o Instinctual impulses “from one source can attach themselves to another.”
o Also, “one instinctual satisfaction can replace another.”
o Instinctual relation to its object, also, is “easily loosened.”
121
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Freud defines sublimation.
…a certain kind of modification of aim and object in which our social valuation
must be taken into account.
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Moreover, instincts can be “inhibited in their aim.”
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Inhibited in their aim instincts create lasting object cathexes, such as “tenderness…which
originates in a sexual need but renounces its satisfaction.”
Freud lastly distinguishes the “plasticity” of sexual instincts, from ego ones.
As he says, sexual instincts are notable since “one satisfaction can replace another,” and
their “readiness for being deferred.”
Some ego instincts, like “hunger and thirst,” are not like this.
In particular, this is “based on the peculiar characteristics of the sources of those
instincts.”
123
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Freud summarized his developmental phases.
o The oral, where the erotogenic source is the mouth.
o Anal or sadistic stage, which is linked to “the appearance of the teeth…control of
the muscular apparatus, and of the sphincter muscles.”
o Lastly, the phallic (and genital) phases, where sexual organs of both sexes become
important.
124
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Freud says there is much that is new.
In fact, “we have learned much…about early organization of the libido.”
Two phases of the oral stage.
o Mothers breast, no ambivalence.
o Biting, sadistic, “manifests ambivalence.”
Two phases of the anal stage.
o Destroying
o Possessing
In this phase, “considerations for the object” makes its appearance, as a precursor to later
erotic cathexes.
Freud insists that the value of these new findings is that they can show developmental
points where neuroses start.
Freud says that previously, the stages seemed separate, now
…our attention now is directed to the facts that show us how much of each earlier
phase persists alongside of behind the later configuration and obtains a permanent
representation in the libidinal economy.
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And, studies show that regression is frequent to earlier stages, and that these are
characteristic of certain kinds of illness.
127
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Freud says that three character traits, “orderliness, parsimoniousness, and obstinacy” are
the product of anal erotism.
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Therefore, he says “we speak of an anal character.”
Freud says that “natural we expect other character traits… will turn out to be precipitates
or reaction formations related to pregenital libidinal structures.”
128
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Long ago, “the opposition of ego-instincts and sexual instincts” was paramount.
Now, given narcissism, “the ego has taken itself as object.
As Freud says,
…we came to understand the ego is always the great reservoir of libido, from which
libidinal cathexes go out and into which they return again
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Therefore, “ego libido is changed into object libido,” and back again.
In this case, Freud says that
But in that case they could not be different in their nature, and it could have no sense
to distinguish the energy of the one from the energy of the other.
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However, true so far as it goes, this is famously an interim position.
129
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Freud says that “our position is that there are two different classes of instincts.”
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o Sexual instincts, “understood in the widest sense as Eros.”
o Aggressive instincts, “whose aim is destruction.”
Yet, why wait so long to come to the death instinct?
Freud says
…to include it in the human constitution seems sacrilegious; it contradicts too many
religious presumptions and social conventions…
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Typically, we think that if man “shows himself to be brutal, violent, or cruel, these are
only passing disturbances in his emotional life.”
Rather, as Freud says, this is an illusion, and we are not good.
…history…justifies a judgment that belief in the goodness of mankind is one of those
evil illusions by which mankind expect their lives to be beautified and made easier
but in reality they only cause damage.
130
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However, Freud says, history is not important here.
Instead, studies in sadism and masochism have led to his postulation of the aggressive
instinct
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Freud says “a certain admixture” of sexual and aggressiveness is normal.
However, as he says, “in sadism and in masochism we have two excellent examples of a
mixture of the two classes of instinct.”
Every instinctual impulse is a “fusion” of these two classes of instinct.
131
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Freud says that masochism, though, seems odd.
But not so.
Indeed, “a certain amount of destructiveness remains in the interior.”
But as he says, “aggressiveness may not be able to find satisfaction in the external world
because it comes up against real obstacles.”
And, when this happens, we seek to destroy that interior.
Indeed, as he says
It really seems it is necessary for us to destroy some other thing or person in order
to not destroy ourselves.
As Freud says, this is a “sad disclosure for the moralist.”