Studies in Forensic Psychiatry by Bernard Glueck (best black authors txt) 📕

see, that consciousness is not the greater but only the lesser expression of the psyche. Consciousness only includes that of which we are aware, while outside of this somewhat restricted region there lies a much wider area in which lie the deeper motives for conduct and which not only operate to control conduct, but also dictates what may and what may not become conscious.” The foundation upon which the method evolved by the psychoanalytic school rests has been aptly summed up by Healy, namely, that for the explanation of all human behavior tendencies we must seek the mental and environmental experiences of early life. One of the chief aids in gaining that knowledge we have in the study of the dream and symbolic life of the individual. The reasons given for our necessarily limited discussion of the unconscious, are likewise true of the dream and symbolism. Both of these subjects would require for a proper elucidation considerably more space than this chapter affords.

Through the dream the unconscious betrays itself;—the dream represents the fulfillment of wishes and cravings which because of psychic and social censorship have become repressed into the unconscious. During sleep these barriers are in abeyance, and the unconscious psyche is given the opportunity for full play, albeit in a disguised and highly symbolic form. The proper interpretation of dreams presupposes a knowledge of the nature of symbolism in the life of man.

When we come now to a consideration of the facts brought to light through the psychoanalytic study of man we are confronted with a still greater difficulty of presentation. There is so much that is of vital importance in this new psychology that we hardly know where to begin. As I am addressing those who are primarily interested for the moment in criminology, I may do well to begin with the subject of psychic determinism. In contrast to the common sentiment of all people in favor of free will in mental processes, the facts elicited by psychoanalysis point to a strict determinism of every psychic process. Psychoanalytic investigations have shown that in mental phenomena there is nothing little, nothing arbitrary, nothing accidental. In his book on the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud[5] has thrown very convincing light on this subject. Certain apparently insignificant mistakes, such as forgetting, errors of speech, writing and action, etc., are regularly motivated and determined by motives unknown to consciousness. The reason that the motives for such unintentional acts are hidden in the unconscious and can only be revealed by psychoanalysis is to be sought in the fact that these phenomena go back to motives of which consciousness will know nothing, hence were crowded into the unconscious, without, however, having been deprived of every possibility of expressing themselves. Thus we see that no mental phenomenon, and by the same token no part of human behavior, happens fortuitously, but has its specific motive, to a very large extent, in the unconscious.

The question may suggest itself here “why this extensive participation of the unconscious in mental life”, which brings us to a discussion of the principles of resistance and repression.

In speaking of the “unconscious” I purposely left out from consideration the way in which the sum total of its content was separated from the conscious mental life of the individual, in order to bring it in alignment with the discussion of the principles of resistance and repression. The content of the unconscious, broadly speaking, is brought about through the activity of these two principles. If one endeavors to unearth by means of psychoanalysis the pathogenic unconscious mental impulses, or if one endeavors to bring to consciousness some instinctive biologic craving which may be responsible for the individual’s conscious behavior, one regularly encounters a very strong resistance on the part of the patient, a force is regularly betrayed whose object it seems to be to prevent them from becoming conscious and to compel them to remain in the unconscious. This is Freud’s conception of the principle of resistance and from its constant coming to the fore whenever an endeavor is made to penetrate into the unconscious, Freud deducts that the same forces which today oppose as resistance the becoming conscious of the unconscious purposely forgotten, must at one time have accomplished this forgetting and forced the offending pathogenic experience out of consciousness. This mechanism he terms repression. We spoke of an offending pathogenic experience, or in other words what has been termed a psychic trauma. But the same principle holds true of certain instincts which because of their peculiar nature become engaged in a kind of struggle for existence with the ethical, moral and esthetic attributes of the personality and are thrust out of the conscious mental structure as one might say by an act of the will.

We are especially concerned here with these inacceptable instincts, for the elucidation of which a brief review of Freud’s theories on sexual instinct is essential.

Thoroughgoing and painstaking dissection of the human soul, such as has been practiced by Freud for nearly a quarter of a century and by many followers of his theories in the past decade, revealed to him a number of unmistakable facts from the developmental history of the individual which forced him to postulate his very radical and revolutionary theories of the sexual instinct in man. Recent behavior studies in the higher anthropoids have likewise revealed very interesting facts concerning the sexual instinct of these animals. Freud was led to make certain assertions from his painfully acquired experience, such as the unfailing sexual agency in the causation of neurotic manifestations, and that his experience of many years has as yet shown no exception to this rule, which quite naturally provoked a good deal of bitter and fanatic criticism not only from lay people but from experienced physicians. The cause for this lies in the nature of the thing itself, that much tabooed subject of sexuality. Unfortunately, as Hitschmann[6] says, physicians in their personal relations to the sexual life have not been given any preference over the rest of the children of men and many of them stand under the ban of that combination of prudery and lust which governs the attitude of most cultivated people in sexual matters. Especially unsavory appears to most people Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality, a subject which has heretofore been looked upon chiefly from a moralistic standpoint, and was spoken of by others merely as odd or as a frightful example of precocious depravity. It is somewhat strange that of all the frightful depravities, if we wish to call it so—inherent in man, of the marked criminalistic components universally present in man which psychoanalytic studies have revealed—the sex depravity should have provoked the most fanatic attacks. Indeed to those who are accustomed to look at man with the psychoanalytic eye, Rochefoucauld’s incisive statement does not at all sound strange. He said, “I have never seen the soul of a bad man; but I had a glimpse at the soul of a good man; I was shocked.” I therefore crave the indulgence of those of you who are not familiar with psychoanalytic literature for what I am about to quote briefly from Freud’s theories on the sexual instinct in man.

Freud lays special stress upon infantile sexuality as it is manifested in the suckling and in the child. The infant brings with it into the world the germ of sexuality, which is, however, extremely difficult of comprehension since at this stage the sexual feelings are not directed towards other persons but are gratified on the child’s own body in a manner which Havelock Ellis has termed “autoerotic.” This autoerotic gratification is gained through erogenous zones, that is, certain areas of the body which are peculiarly sensitized to sexual excitations. Among these erogenous zones may be mentioned the mouth, lips, tongue, anal region, the neck of the bladder as well as various skin areas and sense organs. Already in 1879, Lindner, a Hungarian pediatrist, devoted a penetrating study to the sucking or pleasure-sucking of the child. Freud emphasizes that the suckling enjoys sexual pleasure, in the taking of nourishment, which it ever after seeks to procure by sucking independent of taking food. To many it may occasion surprise to learn that sucking is exhibited independently of its relation to the hunger instinct. It is, however, plain that the mouth is at first concerned only with the gratifying of the hunger instinct; later the desire for a repetition of pleasurable experience gained in this way is separated from the need of taking nourishment, thereby transforming this mucous surface into an erogenous zone. It is likewise difficult to conceive by the inexperienced in psychoanalysis, that the child derives pleasurable sensations from the anal zone. Because of the important rôle which anal eroticism plays in our case we might speak more fully of this form of autoeroticism. One not infrequently observes in little children that they refuse to empty the bowels when they are placed on the closet because they obtain pleasure from defecation, when the retained stool by its accumulation excites strong irritation of the mucosa. The importance which scatological rites and ceremonials, that is, certain peculiar niceties practiced in connection with the emptying of the bowels, play in the evolution of the race have been extensively discussed in literature. Havelock Ellis[7] says in this connection—“The most usual erotic symbolisms in childhood are those of the scatologic group, the significance of which has often been emphasized by Freud and his school. The channels of urination and defecation are so close to the sexual centers that the intimate connection between the two groups is easily understood. There is undoubtedly a connection between nocturnal enuresis and sexual activities, sometimes masturbation. Children not infrequently believe that the sexual acts of their elders have some connection with urination and defecation, and the mystery with which the excretory acts are surrounded, helps to support this theory. Up to puberty scatologic interests may be regarded as normal; at this age the child has still much in common with the primitive mind, which, as mythology and folklore show, attributes great importance to the excretory functions.”

Many of these ceremonials one regularly discovers in the analyses of neurotics. We shall not dwell further here upon the erogenous zones activity in the suckling, but emphasizing again its importance along with the importance of autoeroticism in the sexuality of the suckling will pass to the next phase of the psycho-sexual evolution of man—the latent period.

The germs of sexual excitement in the new-born develop for a time, then undergo a progressive suppression in a period of partial or complete sexual latency. During this period, which is normally interrupted at about the third or fourth year, as result of organic evolutionary processes and the indispensable help of education, those mental forces are formed which appear later as inhibitions to the sexual instinct and narrow its course like dams; mental forces such as disgust, the feeling of shame, the esthetic and moral standards of ideas. During this “latent period” a part of these sexual energies is separated from the sexual aim and applied to cultural and social ends, a process which Freud has designated by the name sublimation as important for culture, history and the individual.

Sublimation or the socialization of the sexuality therefore is the transformation and utilization of certain components of the sexual instinct for aims no longer sexual in nature. At the end of the latency period the child’s sexuality reappears, frequently but not necessarily induced prematurely by seduction. In addition to the autoerotic gratifications spoken of above, the child is now capable of