Ego Psychology: Anna Freud Pt. 9

Death and Work

Soon after being in London, much of what Anna was working on was trying to setup her new nursery, help others trying to escape war persecution, and develop an orthodox Freudian line of theory while making her own imprint. Anna was squeezed between generations all needing her help. She once said “sometimes I seem to myself as though I were at least a thousand years old and already had several lifetimes behind me.” There are different versions of Sigmund Freud’s last days, battling cancer of the mouth, and they involve Max Schur providing the final morphine. “Sigmund Freud asked Max Schur on the twenty-first of September to relieve his pain with morphine. They had agreed in 1929, as Schur became his physician, that if a moment came when Freud felt himself to be suffering needlessly, in extremis, that Schur would administer morphine. When Freud said, Now it’s nothing but torture and makes no sense any more, Schur assured him that the promise was not forgotten. In his biography of Freud, Schur described their last conversation: ‘He sighed with relief, held my hand for a moment longer, and said: I thank you, and after a moment of hesitation he added: Tell Anna about this. What Schur did was to ask Anna Freud to agree to her father’s decision, which she did, reluctantly.”

Roy Lacoursiere did more research and found that the story was more legend and a composite production. “In spite of the claims of Ernest Jones to have been ‘truthful’ and of Max Schur to have achieved the ‘necessary objectivity’ in their respective biographies of Freud, they notably failed to do so in their accounts of Freud’s death. The existence of serious distortions is evidenced by the discrepancies between their statements about the time of Freud’s death. Currently available portions of the Freud Archives at the Library of Congress make it possible to present a more accurate picture. On the basis of further new documentation, this paper shows that Max Schur was not present at Freud’s death, as had been previously believed, and that the final injection that hastened Freud’s death was administered by Josephine Stross, a longtime friend of Anna Freud’s, whose presence at Freud’s deathbed has heretofore been overlooked.”

Dorothy was worried Anna would feel empty, but Anna replied that she was not so desperate. “‘I had thought it would, but can understand that your father filled your life with so much meaning that it cannot be empty now…’ Three days later, on the 26th of September, his body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. Harrods of Knightsbridge, on the instructions of his middle son Ernst, were the funeral directors. The eulogies, in accordance with Freud’s wishes, were given by Ernest Jones and Stefan Zweig. Freud’s ashes, together with those of his wife Martha, who died in 1951, are now inside a sealed South Italian Apulian bell krater of the 4th century BC in the Ernest George columbarium at the Crematorium. The krater, given to Freud in 1931 by Princess Marie Bonaparte, rests on a black granite plinth designed by his architect son, Ernst.”

Martha was more disconsolate when she wrote to an old friend who was living in New York. “Now we must continue to live without all of his goodness and wisdom, and you can judge what that means! Not even once may I beg, even if it could be granted to me, to be allowed to empower him with more than one human life span and the possibility that he continue to relive the misery of our everyday life. Perhaps missing him is all the greater because of this. And even if the children surround me with touching love, and from all over the world written proofs of loyalty and devotion fly to me, my life still has lost its sense and meaning!”

Only after five days, Anna resumed work, which was her form of therapy, to sublimate and go into Flow states. “There really is nothing else and the worst at such times of mourning is to be idle, which only means to be sad or worse. I remember times in the middle of work when for minutes at least I could really forget what had happened.” Dorothy Burlingham was going through her own mourning and ambivalence, but it was instead between her personal development with Anna and falling in love with another man, but Dorothy remained somewhat under Anna’s orbit even with this new man who was still in their analytical circle. “She thought, for a time, that she was in love with Walter Langer, an American clinical psychologist with a Harvard doctorate who had trained with Anna Freud in Vienna from 1936 to 1938, and then in London through 1938. He had earned the Freud family’s gratitude for his helpfulness during their migration and many Viennese owed him their safety because he had been so active in securing the American affidavits that made their emigrations possible. Langer was eight years Dorothy Burlingham’s junior, not in good health, because he had been gassed as a First World War infantryman, and without much in the way of prospects because, as a nonmedical analyst, he was barred entry to the New York Institute. Dorothy was not deterred, however, until Anna Freud wrote to suggest that she be careful. Langer himself had revealed to Dorothy that his repetitious pattern of loving women and then suffering a sudden change of heart was what had taken him into analysis; he kept his distance. She was the one who had wanted his attentions. ‘Was it really just to make this separation easier?’ she asked Anna Freud. ‘Was it to spoil something, to make complications? To produce again America versus Europe? Was it fantasy? Was it to take him away from Berta Bornstein?—but there was in reality no such relationship [with Bornstein].'”

Similar to many other analysands, Dorothy was dependent on Anna, but there was also the understanding of the value of career. For most people, and not just women, they feel diminished without the purpose of career. Anna was a partner but also like a boss that carried a certain fame and prestige. To lose that, one would fade away, but for some people fading away is exactly what they want. Instead for Dorothy her sense of certainty for her direction in life returned to career. “Anna Freud, for her part, felt an anxiety all too familiar: she did not want Dorothy to return because she felt sorry for her, or because she felt guilty about hurting her. Being treated as an inadequate littlest child or as a woman with no life of her own was not a condition Anna Freud wanted revived in any form; she wanted Dorothy to make her choice freely…When she was separated from Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham had identified with her—almost as though she had been mourning for Anna Freud rather than for Sigmund Freud. Like a mourner, she surmounted her loss with identification. What she chiefly identified with was Anna Freud’s detachment, her feeling of being a visitor in life; and this condition was very different from Dorothy’s previous dependence on people—particularly her children—for company and support…Writing as though she had lived through Anna Freud’s chapter on ‘altruistic surrender,’ Dorothy reflected: ‘It is so curious how different it makes the world if you lose the fear of death or do not hang onto life. One really only cares about the other [person]. I know life without you would be quite without sense—just to live out and nothing more—I am quite sure there would be no more development.’ Dorothy Burlingham became convinced that her own intellectual inhibitions, her insecurities, and her unresolved phobia about noise would paralyze her if she turned away from the central source of meaning in her life—Anna Freud.”

How to gain Flow in 7 steps: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html

Like Anna’s work on losing and being lost, she felt an ambivalence about being in London, but at the same time, the Vienna she once knew was also lost. Like many people, she was wrestling with how to understand the Holocaust, and the fear of losing Freud’s work was exacerbated by her knowledge of what Nazis were doing to psychoanalysis. She was also not accepting of how things were changing in American psychoanalysis and Theodor Reik’s work. “Anna Freud’s psychological understanding of the Nazis was always quite bound to her aunts’ fates. A friend once asked her if she could in any way comprehend how the Nazis could do something like send four helpless old women to their deaths, and she replied with the same terrifying view that Hannah Arendt summarized with the phrase ‘banality of evil’: ‘The Nazis wanted their apartments…’ As Anna Freud read more and heard more—particularly from Aichhorn—about what the Nazi occupation of Austria had been like she became even firmer in her resolve never to set foot in Austria—or in Germany—again. She supported the efforts Aichhorn and others made to restore psychoanalysis to the German-speaking countries, but she took no part in them herself. She had no affection for the German colleagues who—unlike the Viennese—had decided to keep psychoanalytic institutes open under Nazi auspices, but she also said that she could not realistically have asked that they ‘be heroes’ and sacrifice themselves or their private work to the Nazis…In the hiatus between the International Congress in 1938 and the one in 1949, the membership of the International dropped by sixty-four, and most of those people were Nazi victims.”

Anna made herself the center of her father’s work, and while she was somewhat open to new ideas, she was skeptical of many innovations, and steered towards the Ego Psychology path of the tripartite psyche and developmental stages that could advance or regress.

Emotional and Instinctual Development

In psychoanalysis, there are distinct childhood developmental stages and Anna Freud summarized their main characteristics. These more developed sketches continue on the important process of pattern recognition in psychology. Many people think they are alone, and are unique with their problems, but with enough case studies, individual patterns remain, but many patterns betray experiences that are not so unique. Mystery can be important as a way to generate wonder and desire in the world, but one doesn’t have to be afraid of discovery and the worry that it will all be mechanical and boring. The reality is that we don’t know why the universe exists, and does so in the way that it presents, so a sense of wonder will not disappear completely. This knowledge instead has a way to get people to accept their limitations, to put effort where limitations are only self-imposed, and to help people embrace their authentic emotions. As long as people have challenges related to their own personal development, it’s not likely that a limited lifespan will truly be bored with nothing left unfinished. No one will master everything before their body declines with age. With later theoreticians, like Jacques Lacan, this self-assessment can become more radical, but with Anna Freud, one can accept “this is how I feel, and I don’t have to reject or ignore this feeling. I am responsible as an adult for how I will act in a world with others who also have their own needs and boundaries. No matter how narcissistically people posture and ridicule, we are all in the same boat. There is a potential, but not an entitlement, for love and contribution. When there is loneliness we can choose to put love into our contributions and find meaning and purpose with others. When we pursue pleasure, we can do so with the knowledge of how it affects others and choose what is blameless.”

The Presocratics: Heraclitus: https://rumble.com/v1gst93-the-presocratics-heraclitus.html

The following categories are general and are meant to help the analyst and analysand to notice where our quick reactions are and which are the ones that repeat:

Oral Phase: “In childhood, other parts of the body yield pleasurable sensations of the kind which in adult years are provided by the stimulation of the genitals themselves. The first body zone to play this part in the child’s life is the oral zone. From the beginning of suckling the infant experiences a pleasant stimulation of the mucous membranes of the mouth through the milk flow and learns to reproduce this pleasure for himself, independent of the feeding process, through thumb sucking. (Many infants suck instead of the thumb other fingers, or part of the fist, or other parts of the body surface within reach of the mouth, or a corner of the pillow or blanket.) In the later stages of infancy, nearly all available objects are brought in contact with the mouth and, besides being tested and made familiar in this manner, provide pleasurable stimulation. The oral sensations of this kind form the child’s first experience in pleasure of a sexual nature. They were looked at with suspicion and opposed by the environment long before their sexual nature had been disclosed. Attempts to break the habit of thumb sucking met with a stubborn resistance on the part of the infant, which proves the strength of the [craving] drive behind this activity. The oral zone retains the ability to yield pleasure through the sucking period, and with some children very much longer.”

Anal Phase: “From approximately one and a half years onward the role of the mouth in producing excitation of a sexual nature (erotogenic zone) is taken over by the bodily zone around the rectum, following probably on the abundant stimulation and attention centered on this region during the lengthy process of toilet training. Simultaneously with the predominance of these sensations in the so-called anal phase, the child shows a marked interest in the whole process of elimination, a tendency to touch and smear with his own excrements, and a preference for play with substances which resemble the excrements either in color, consistency or smell. The child is as persistent in finding forms of ‘dirty’ play in the anal phase of his development as he was in pursuing thumb sucking in the oral phase.”

Phallic Phase: “Approximately between the age of three and four interest begins to be centered on the genital parts of the body. The organ which at this time yields the greatest amount of pleasurable stimuli is in boys the penis; in girls, correspondingly, the clitoris. In this phallic phase, pride in the showing off of the penis and of the feats it can perform (erection, urinary play) plays a large role in the boy; the envy of such performances, in the girl (penis envy). Sexual curiosity, i.e., interest in the difference between the sexes, in the nature of intimacy between the parents, and in the mystery of birth, reaches its peak in this phase, which lasts roughly from the age of three or four to the age of five or six years. The central activity of the phallic phase is, for both sexes, genital masturbation.”

Sexuality Pt 2: Infantile Sexuality – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtort-sexuality-pt-2-infantile-sexuality-sigmund-freud.html

Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 7: https://rumble.com/v4z6p3u-object-relations-melanie-klein-pt.-7.html

These erotogenic zones are areas of higher activity where pleasure of different kinds meet up with the option of overt sexual activity. There’s craving, tension, and a desire for release in the nervous system and the element of polymorphous perversity can enter in because these zones allow for choices on how to get pleasure. “The claim that these tendencies of childhood should be recognized as components of the sexual instinct is based on two facts: (1) that these pregenital activities are known to play a regular, though subsidiary role in adult sexuality either as an introduction to or accompaniment of the act of genital intercourse; (2) that in certain forms of sexual abnormality, the so-called perversions, any one of the infantile sexual strivings can replace the desire for genital intercourse and become the main expression of the adult’s sex life (fellatio, cunnilingus, coprophilia, scoptophilia, exhibitionism, etc.)…Looked at from the point of view of adult genitality, the child’s sex life is perverse (this may explain why observers were so reluctant to take notice of it); seen from a developmental point of view, the component instincts of infantile sexuality are normal.”

As well as the variety of pleasure that is possible in the erotogenic zones, there’s a lot of possibility for aggression. If the seeking of pleasure has to do with love, we need to protect, control, or fight for what we love, and so aggression follows love very closely. “In the oral phase, they appear as oral sadism and find their expression in the wish to destroy the object of the child’s liking by eating it (oral incorporation), the teeth being used as the weapon of aggression. In the anal phase, aggression plays an important role as anal sadism. Children of this age are normally aggressive, destructive, willful, overbearing, and possessive; hitting, kicking, scratching, and spitting are usual in their frequent states of anger and rage. In this phase, it is especially difficult to separate the manifestations of sex and aggression from each other, since the child’s whole attitude toward loved people or objects is normally inconsiderate, cruel, and tormenting. In the phallic phase, aggression appears in the more pleasing attitudes of manliness, protectiveness, recklessness in the face of danger, and competitiveness. When the aggressive urges of children are not in the normal way fused with sexual drives, they appear as a purely destructive force.”

The love and aggression can also be directed at oneself as well when one doesn’t trust oneself. Any bad habits associated can be viewed as a response to stress and a need for an outlet and that’s why they are so self-sufficient because the stress response and craving for an outlet is fast and reactive. “…The aggressive forces serve the purpose of self-preservation; when directed inward, they threaten the child’s own bodily or psychic health…The child satisfies a small mount of his sexual and aggressive needs on his own body, in the form of thumb sucking, anal pleasures, masturbation, and their derivatives (nail biting, nose picking, ear pulling, etc.) The frequent states of rocking and head knocking in early infancy are of the same order, the former satisfying a primitive desire for rhythmic body movement, the latter giving expression to self-aggression…These autoerotic activities constitute the so-called ‘bad habits’ of childhood, against which the environment used to wage a ceaseless war. They are backed by the full force of the instinctual tendencies for which they provide an outlet. The autoerotic activities are in themselves normal and regular occurrences. However, by the environment they are felt to be opposed to the efforts of early upbringing since, so far as they provide gratification, they make the child self-sufficient and therefore less amenable to outside influences.”

When these desires cannot find an outlet in normal relationships, these bad habits develop and one can see how addictiveness can enter into the picture very quickly where external object-love gets replaced by autoerotic concern. “…The overwhelmingly greater part of the sexual and aggressive desires is turned outward and looks to the environment for satisfaction. The people of the child’s environment to whom these strivings become attached, his love objects, are of the greatest importance for the normal balance of the child’s whole emotional and instinctual life. Children who are treated with indifference by the people to whom they turn their feelings (‘institutional’ children) or who change their environment repeatedly in their early years (evacuated, billeted children, boarded-out orphans, or otherwise homeless children), fail to form solid, lasting, and satisfactory relationships. As a result, their sexual strivings are turned back on themselves for satisfaction and their autoerotic activities increase greatly at the expense of their relations with the outer world. These children then become indrawn, self-centered, and difficult to manage.”

Object-love starts off based on survival needs, but quickly turns to emotional feeding through vicarious imitation. “This first ‘love’ of the infant is selfish and material. His life is governed by sensations of need and satisfaction, pleasure and discomfort. The mother, as an object, plays a part in this life so far as she brings satisfaction and removes discomfort. When the infant’s needs are fulfilled, i.e., when he feels warm, comfortable, with pleasant gastric sensations, he withdraws interest from the object world and falls asleep. When he is hungry, cold, and wet, or disturbed by intestinal sensations, he turns for help to the outside world. In this period the need for an object is inseparably bound up with the great body needs…From the fifth or sixth month onward the infant also begins to pay attention to the mother at times when he is not under the influence of bodily urges. He enjoys the mother’s company, likes to be fondled and played with, and dislikes to be left alone. He responds to the mother’s presence and even to her moods in various ways. The wish for affection from her becomes a need, comparable in strength to the need for bodily care and comfort.”

Once the attachment to the mother is solid, toddlers develop a lot of fright when the mother has to leave the vicinity to be involved in other important activities. This is partly because they have little understanding of the outside world and short disappearances can be jarring and dramatic, even if considered normal to an adult. “In the second year the relationship to the mother increases in force and intimacy. Many toddlers can hardly bear to be parted from their mothers, even for short periods; they react to every separation with a violence and depth of feeling as great as if the mother had gone forever. They are unable to play by themselves and cry helplessly or angrily whenever the mother leaves the room or the house. Falling asleep in the evening often becomes a difficulty for the same reason. Mothers are usually blamed for the behavior of their toddlers, the distress over parting from her being taken as a sign that the mother has ‘spoiled’ the child. It is nearer to the truth that the mothers themselves feel helpless when faced with these passionate outbreaks, the reason for which they do not understand, and by force of which they are tied to the house and to the child. Enforced separations of long duration (evacuation, hospitalization, illness of the mother, confinement of the mother) often act as traumatic shocks to the child, and sometimes result in complete estrangement from the mother. Although the toddler torments the mother and treats her in an exacting and inconsiderate way (owing to the anal-sadistic character of his wishes), the relationship between mother and child gradually becomes more of a give-and-take. Besides demanding satisfaction, the child begins to show love and affection on his part, to make small sacrifices for the mother, to share food with her, or to give her presents.”

Integration with the family is the first development to begin understanding the outside world and the duty to share time with mother with the father and other siblings. It’s a kind of weaning period where the child begins to enjoy interaction with people other than his or her mother. “With the growth of intelligence and of awareness of the persons and events in the environment, the child ceases sooner or later to live in emotional partnership with the mother alone and enters into the larger family group. Where elder brothers and sisters are present in the family, the child gradually adapts himself to the existence of rivals for the mother’s love. On the basis of their common relationship to the parents, he learns to share attention and material possessions with them and thereby makes the first important step toward development of a group spirit. Jealousy and envy of older brothers and sisters may be very strong. The feeling of being smaller and weaker may lead to a sense of helplessness and hopelessness in competition with them. But, on the whole, their older claims are recognized and the pleasure of being accepted by them and of being admitted to their companionship compensates the young child for having to give up the mother’s special care and attention which he has enjoyed during babyhood.”

Older children are also feeling the adjustment through jealousy as they had to give up a lot of attention from the parents, especially the mother, when the newborn needed the most attention and care. “The position is very different when there are younger brothers and sisters. The arrival of the next baby, who takes the toddler’s place with the mother, is bitterly resented. The older child reacts by feeling betrayed, pushed out, and deserted. He feels intense jealousy and hatred for the newcomer who has dispossessed him and wishes for the newcomer’s death or disappearance. He competes with the baby in every way, even to the extent of becoming wet and dirty again, of wanting to drink at the breast or from a bottle, or to sleep in a crib. His love for the mother turns to violent anger when she opposes all these wishes. It is by now generally recognized that this emotional upset can become the cause of various disturbances, such as difficulties in sleeping and eating, bed wetting, incontinence of feces, temper tantrums, and other behavior problems.”

Case Studies: ‘Little Hans’ – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu93b-case-studies-little-hans-sigmund-freud.html

The father is also competition for the mother’s attention, but he appears very powerful and is another source of knowledge about the outside world. His power is admired, but he appears to be an obstacle preventing gratification because of his disciplinary nature. “The relationship to the father is even more complex. Unlike the brothers and sisters, he is himself an important love object and, under normal family conditions, seems to the child to possess unlimited strength and power. He is therefore admired and feared by the child, as well as loved. But he is, at the same time, another rival for the mother’s love and in this role he is hated. This double relationship toward the father, which is already very marked in the second and third year, takes on further significance toward the fourth year, when the child enters into the phallic phase.”

In most instances, the boy and girl develop by imitating the same sex parent in competition to get attention of the opposite sex parent, though this clamor for attention is considered sexual, it of course doesn’t have to be so overt since healthy parents can easily refuse gratification. So many of the dark emotions are developing intensely with the same highs and lows as adults experience when dating and competing for a partner that is alluring and takes over consciousness. “So far, the emotional development of boys and girls has proceeded similarly; at this age they begin to develop along different lines. The boy identifies himself more and more with the father and imitates him in many ways. He changes at the same time in his behavior toward the mother; he ceases to be a dependent baby and turns into a young male, who acts protectingly and even condescendingly toward her, clamors for her admiration, performs all sorts of feats to impress her, and desires to possess her in place of the father. His sexual curiosity is directed toward her intimate life with the father in which he wishes to replace him. The girl, on the other hand, has grown out of her complete attachment to the mother. She begins instead to imitate her, she plays mother herself with her dolls or with her younger brothers and sisters. She, in turn, directs her love toward the father and wishes him to appreciate and accept her in her mother’s place…Both sexes in this manner have their first experience of being in love, with all the turmoil of feelings, hopes and wishes, disappointments and frustrations, joy and sorrow, anger, jealousy, and despondency which this state involves. Their love for the parent of the opposite sex creates, or in the case of the boy intensifies, the already existing rivalry with the parent of the same sex. The boy thus loves the mother, attaches his instinctual desires to her, and wishes for the death of the father who stands in his way; the girl loves the father and, in the service of the wish to have first place with him, fantasies doing away with the mother. It is this family constellation of the young child for which, in comparison with the Greek myth, the term oedipus complex has been introduced.” One could also see the Girardian origins of mimetic rivalry that has the same pattern of wanting to replace authority figures in intimate relationship rivalries, workplace rivalries, and also in politics. Many people have no problem replacing a rival, but they are hypocritically incensed when others do it to them.

Girardian Primer:

Totem and Taboo – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html

The Origin of Envy & Narcissism – René Girard: https://rumble.com/v1gsnwv-the-origin-of-envy-and-narcissism-ren-girard.html

Case Studies: Dora and Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu2dt-case-studies-dora-and-freud.html

Stalking: World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day: https://rumble.com/v1gvhk1-stalking-world-narcissistic-abuse-awareness-day.html

Love – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gv5pd-love-freud-and-beyond.html

Psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gvgq7-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud-and-beyond.html

Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v1gvuql-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-2.html

Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 7: https://rumble.com/v3ub2sa-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-7.html

Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 8: https://rumble.com/v50nczb-object-relations-melanie-klein-pt.-8.html

Naturally, with all these competing forces, different families will have different results, and of course there are modern understandings of genetics, so things like sexual orientation, physical characteristics, personal talents, and early diseases can vary, but conditioning with the environment also plays a role, which provides the complexity and array we see with different families. “(Though basically this pattern of the child’s emotional life can always be traced, deviations from the norm are frequent. Many families are incomplete, and single or widowed mothers have to take over the father’s role in addition to their own. Many fathers are weak and ineffective and badly suited to represent the male ideal for which the boy is searching. Owing to the bisexuality normally inherent in human nature, boys also display female and girls also male attitudes. Many boys, instead of molding themselves on their fathers, identify with and imitate their mothers and develop a feminine attitude toward the father. The same so-called ‘inverted’ oedipus complex occurs in girls; and for both sexes this leads to manifold abnormalities of psychological development.)”

From Primitive to Civilized

These early experiences provide ways of projecting beliefs about how the world works, which could be right or wrong, but divulge the worldview of the person projecting. Introjections make preferences after a lot of incorporation and sampling of what’s in the environment. These processes look for object-love in the outer world, especially in school, when seeking attention from parents becomes futile or boring. “When children finally recognize the futility of their oedipal wishes, their discouragement and distress are acute. Whatever the manner in which they overcome the frustration of their first object love, the experience leaves its mark on them. It forms a pattern which will be repeated over and over again in later experiences, and which serves to explain the origin of the numerous, otherwise mysterious, idiosyncrasies, peculiarities, and difficulties of adult love and sex life.”

Because desires are followed without any concern for long-term consequences, and because we are talking about developing children here, parents have the responsibility to mold children into adults who are capable of respecting the boundaries of others. In Anna’s time, institutions like education, and now nurseries, have taken over some of the parental role when children act out when away from their parents. Taking from Alice Balint, Anna viewed parenting as a civilizing process. Whether you refer in a secular way to the Oedipus Complex or religiously the Ten Commandments, the purpose of civilizing subjects is that it allows for boundaries, property ownership, safety and security so that cultural benefits are maximized as well as individual freedom. This is the best way to preserve modern developments and institutions to prevent a total regression to older systems and all the disadvantages they had. The pleasure principle has to give way to the reality principle if one is to experience any well-being and mental peace. Primitive modes are constantly in rumination and are prone to suffering. “The young child, under the influence of his instinctual wishes, is an uncivilized and primitive being. He is unclean and aggressive, selfish and inconsiderate, immodest and prying, insatiable and destructive. He has no powers of self-control and no experience of the outside world to guide his actions. The only directive force within him is an urge to search for pleasure and to avoid painful experiences. The task of shaping out of this raw material the future members of a civilized society lies above all with the parents. In former years, public education authorities did not assume responsibility for children under the age of five, i.e., at a time when the essential transformations of instinctual attitudes had already taken place. Since nursery schools have been officially recognized as the first stage in (public) education, this stage is now lowered to a period when the reign of infantile sexuality and infantile aggression is still in full swing. This creates for teachers problems of handling and guiding the child which formerly existed only within the family circle.”

Different families view different urges with different levels of tolerance, starting with complete license on the one extreme with a gradation of intolerance up to a total uncompromised intolerance for what they view as existential and a dire fork in the road for the child. Some mistakes can be learned from with little shame, but others, for example the torture of pets, physical violence towards other children, are viewed with complete contempt. Some families are very sheltering towards their kids, and others see some value in allowing children to explore the neighborhood. Violence and sexual abuse are examples of trauma that are lifelong in influence since intense experiences wire the brain more strongly, manifesting repetition compulsion, than less intense situations of alternating between winning and losing games. “From this point of view the oral attitudes of the infant are criticized as greediness, the anal wishes of the toddler as dirtiness, the aggressive and destructive urges as naughtiness, and exhibitionism as shamelessness. The degree of condemnation of the various expressions of [craving] and aggressive development varies with the conventions of the class to which the parents belong. In some layers of society, oral satisfactions are granted comparatively freely, while anal attitudes and aggression are severely restricted (lower middle class); in others, aggression and destructiveness are the main punishable crimes, while sexual curiosity is treated more leniently (upper middle class). To the young children of all classes, all moral standards of this kind are completely alien. The children themselves are concerned only with the tension which arises when instinctual urges remain unfulfilled. They experience this tension as painful and, to relieve or prevent it, attempt to satisfy each desire as soon as it makes itself felt. In their dealings with the instinctual urges, parents and children are therefore at cross-purposes. The parents are concerned with the future adaptation of the child to adult standards, the child only with relieving the tension of the moment. The child strives for indiscriminate and immediate wish fulfillment; the parents are set on limiting, suppressing, or at least severely rationing gratification of the childish wishes.”

Parents have a lot of power in these situations to do corporal punishment and to restrict access to rewards as a way to respond to these events. “In this struggle, which forms the nucleus of early upbringing, the child is normally the weaker partner. Since he is dependent on the parents for his material and emotional satisfactions, he cannot risk provoking their displeasure to any serious extent. Much as he fears the dissatisfaction which arises when instincts are thwarted, this fear is outweighed by two greater fears: to be punished by the parents or to lose their love. Owing to anxieties which lie latent in all children, the fear of punishment can assume fantastic forms. Where parents are merely moderately severe, the children may feel them selves threatened by cruel retributions of all kinds: to be sent away from home for having ‘accidents’; to have their thumbs cut off for sucking, or their penis for playing with it (castration fear); to see their hands become paralyzed for having touched the genitals, etc.”

Children undergo wild differences in their habits depending on how much or how little trauma they have experienced. Their self-esteem template for life is often laid down at this time as they compare themselves to other children and compare the success of their parents, or lack thereof, with the parents of other children. A lot of what constitutes self-esteem is the anticipation of rejection which is a lifelong worry. “It is usually overlooked that the fear of losing the affection of the loved parents also weighs heavily on the child’s mind. Although this threat is commonly used by humane parents who wish to avoid severe measures such as corporal punishment, it is nevertheless felt by the child as an acute danger and acts as an effective deterrent against wish fulfillment, equal to and with some children more compelling than the fear of punishment. Whether the parents adopt one measure or the other, the average child will, in the long run, not be able to withstand them. He will, to a varying degree, become obedient, i.e., give in to their prohibitions and restrictions.”

It’s up to the parents to also convince the child of the value of delayed gratification, which may appear in getting better grades at school, and many children dream of taking on different jobs and vocations. Sublimation allows them to become creative and find outlets in arts, crafts, hobbies, sports, and music. “The greatest help in this difficult period is the emotional attachment to the parents. In the course of the first years the child has to give up much direct satisfaction and to put up with indirect and sublimated gratifications. He will find it easier to do so if the loss in pleasure is made up for by the love, affection, and appreciation given by the parents.”

Repeatedly, Anna Freud, as well as other psychoanalysts, had to warn that psychoanalysis was not meant to be used as an indulgent method to enable all desires of the child. Even the analytical environment today allows only for the release of repressed desires in the form of communication and discovery, but not in the getting off the couch and acting out of those contents, and that includes in the daily life of the analysand, until at least the analysis has progressed far enough to provide clarity about one’s goals and intentions. And for those commentators who thought that the Freuds switched from believing that childhood sexual abuse was a common problem and that they denied it later on with the introduction of the Oedipus Complex, they are not the types that read with any nuance. The Freuds simply added the wish fantasies of children to what can be discovered in adult analysis, as can be seen readily by the rivalry content that regularly arises in free association. Sexual abuse of children at the time were called early seductions, and they pointed out the result being sexual precocity, where the obvious conclusion is that erotogenic zones and phases that get the most pleasure stimulation at this early age, as well as mode of getting the pleasure, like sexual orientation, leads to a template to repeat, which is what behavior psychology shows for any response to pleasure. The template becomes a mode of emotional regulation, meaning that as the child grows up they will have a desire to repeat the sexual skill and develop it as a preferred way to remove tension into release, because repeated positive stimulus makes it easier to repeat the action, like any habit. For example, in sexual orientation, there’s plenty of bisexuality possible in many people, and not everything can be explained purely by biology. Suggestibility and conditioning is a very real power, as can be seen by the fact that advertising works so well and so much money is put into advertising because it does entice people. Advertising is a form of grooming, and that’s why we can talk about acquired tastes and how we can get a taste for something, which is incorporation, leading to introjection, and repeated introjections lead to identities, because we like to label people based on the work they do and how they like to savor: production and consumption. It’s hard to biologically choose an object in an inborn way unless one is culturally shown HOW.

Ego Psychology: Anna Freud Pt. 5: https://rumble.com/v6pzkqo-ego-psychology-anna-freud-pt.-5.html

The goal in classical psychoanalysis is to get the child beyond the phallic stage towards object-love that leads to a new family where purposeful love continues. When children feel tension, which is inevitable in the adult work world and modern dating which is all full of endless criticism and belittling, the question is how is the person able to find release from all that objectifying and rejection? It’s usually where they’ve had pleasure in the past and they have developed enough skill to repeat. It also depends on how accessible rewards are in the environment. This can include healthy things, like hobbies, sports, and interests, which is sublimation into cultural creativity, but release can also be found in addictions, sexual offending, and sadistic violence. “A misunderstanding of these theories has led to the belief that the child can be spared these unhappinesses by unlimited license being given to the infantile impulses. In fact, it is neither right nor helpful to the child if this course is taken. The pregenital infantile sexual impulses are merely preliminary stages of the sexual instinct and, as such, are not meant to survive. Excessive satisfaction on either the oral, anal, or phallic levels attaches too much of the child’s [craving] to that particular form of gratification and may therefore either arrest progressive further development or encourage regressions to these early stages when difficulties arise in later life. Such fixations are seen to arise when children are sexually seduced early in life and thereby committed to some form of perverse (infantile) gratification. A child cannot safely indulge in unrestricted pregenital pleasures, just as he cannot fulfill in reality the fantasies of the oedipus complex…Toilet training, for example, will have less harmful consequences for the child’s psychological development (obstinacy, exaggerated disgust, obsessional attitudes) when it is performed in the course of two years instead of being completed earlier. Sexual curiosity should be permitted to survive until it can be directed into the channels of learning; aggression should be brought under control very gradually to leave sufficient energy available for sublimated active behavior, etc.”

Because humans have such a long developmental arc compared to animals, the latency period can be observed which coincides with important education milestones and ego development. “After reaching its climax approximately at the age of five, the child’s relationship to the parents lessens in strength and infantile sexuality comes to a standstill. Instead of developing further until sexual maturity is reached (as happens in the animal world), the [craving] urges diminish and fade into the background. It is difficult to say how much of this change is due to the efforts at repression which have taken place in the former phase and have driven the expressions of instinct underground, and how much to a biological decrease in [craving] which occurs regularly at this age and lasts until preadolescence. Observations show that sexual activities between five and ten years are more obvious where early upbringing has failed for some reason and control of instinctual life has not been achieved in the first phase. On the other hand, some lessening of [craving] strength in the later period can always be seen; this break in the course of sexual development is an important characteristic of the human race. Whatever the reasons are, the sexual instinct remains more or less latent in the second period of childhood. This leads to a comparative lack of emotional and instinctual content and consequently to certain significant changes in the child’s behavior, his anxieties, his object relationships, and in the contents of his mind…Behavior in the second period of childhood is as much determined by the reactions of the ego as behavior in the first five years was determined by the instincts. The reduction in the strength of the sexual wishes has relieved the child of some of his worst anxieties. Instead of having continually to look for satisfaction or to exercise control over dangerous wishes, his ego is left free to expand and develop, and to use his intelligence and available energy in new directions. The child can now concentrate on tasks which are set before him even where they do not serve the purpose of direct wish fulfillment but serve other interests. The work of the school-age child takes the place of the play of the nursery child.”

Similar to animals, the role of play enters into the picture to provide motivation and energy to take on projects with more zeal to make work appear more like a pastime. “Play is one of the most significant activities for the young child, as important for his instincts, emotions, and fantasies as it is for development of the senses and the intellect. As has been demonstrated by extensive psychological studies, the type and form of play which a child prefers at the various ages change, not merely according to the state of his mental development but according to the stage of the emotional problems for which play is an outlet. In the development from toddler to school-age child, the role of direct and immediate wish fulfillment changes gradually to indirect and sublimated wish fulfillment, until finally the child is able to pursue and enjoy occupations which are not in themselves pleasurable but indirectly serve a pleasurable purpose. (Examples are the lengthy and strenuous preparations for building a hut, making costumes and scenery for play-acting, manufacturing figures for a puppet theater, activities which progressive education uses as a transition from play to work.) The ability to enjoy playwork of this nature proves that the child’s ego is now free to act without regard for the immediate fulfillment of instinctual urges.”

Of course this can be a lifelong problem for many adults, but in ideal situations the adolescent is beginning to find what kind of interests they have, the kind of schools they want to go to, and what they really want to do with their lives. They become self-motivated. They have more control over their impulses so that parents resort to punishments less and less and schools reprimand less and less. A good portion of the teenager’s moral compass has been developed, but of course a moral compass can be fine-tuned for the rest of one’s life, especially if they become interested in subjects like ethics or philosophy. Most regular people just want to stay out of jail and not lose their marriages and livelihoods, let alone contemplate abstractions like the Golden Rule or the Categorical Imperative. “With the weakening of the passionate elements in the relationship to the parents, and with the growth of the child’s intelligence and sense of reality, father and mother become less exalted and less frightening figures. The schoolchild learns to compare his own parents with those of other children; he forms new relationships with other people who are in authority over him, for example, his teachers.”

Because parents are found to not be all powerful and are unable to provide unlimited resources, that they have bosses at work that provide those resources, there’s now a growing awareness of the complexity of the outer world and authority figures, like powerful celebrities, business magnates, and political figures, which become new figures to emulate. Political points of view as well as religious ones come to the forefront and children either adopt wholesale their parents’ beliefs or they rebel and try to cut their own path. “…Above all [the child] realizes that the parents themselves are not as all-mighty as they had seemed to the little child, but are themselves subject to and often helpless in the face of unavoidable necessities and higher authorities. The need for approval and affection from them has become less vital, their disapproval and criticism less upsetting. The anxieties which had gathered around the two big fears of the young child (fear of punishment, fear of loss of love) are thereby lessened, though in this case a new form of anxiety is substituted for them. During the long period of complete dependence on the parents the child has followed their commands and prohibitions and imitated many of their attitudes until part of his own self has molded itself on the pattern offered by the parents. This process of identification leads to the gradual building up of a new critical agency within the child which is above all concerned with moral and ethical attitudes, and exercises the function of the child’s conscience (superego). While the emotional relationship to the parents is still at its height, this conscience is constantly reinforced by their educational influence from without. After this period has passed, the superego detaches itself from their actual persons, gains independence, and rules the child from within, usually in very much the same manner in which the parents formerly ruled the child. When the child acts in accordance with the ideals laid down in the superego, he feels ‘pleased with himself,’ as he felt when approved of and praised by the parents. When the child disobeys the superego, he feels an inner criticism, or, as it is commonly called, a sense of guilt. The child learns to fear that feeling of guilt as much as he formerly feared criticism from the parents.”

If there have been difficulties growing up, it is already apparent in adolescence in how the environment can act on them more than they can push back. “Where children reach school age without this process of identification with the parental figures having taken place in them, they can be considered backward in their moral development. They lack guidance from within and are consequently on the level of infants where their social behavior is concerned. Reasons for the failure of development of a superego are disturbances in the parent-child relationship, absence of suitable love objects in early childhood, instability of emotional attachments.”

Many hobbies appear at this young age that are still an exploration period of time that may extend into adulthood, but they are based on how much pleasure they can provide for as long a period of time. When boredom sets in, new hobbies are taken on. Because therapy is not likely to be a part of the child’s life, these explorations can be a form of distraction when it comes to expressing and processing their traumas. “Through the outward direction of attention and sublimated interest, the readiness to receive instruction, the new ability to collect information from book reading and to concentrate on matters which are only indirectly of personal significance, the child of the latency period gains considerably in knowledge of the outside world. Some children of school age turn themselves into experts in special branches, as, for instance, geographical knowledge (through reading adventure stories or stamp collecting), mineralogy, botany, zoology (through collecting minerals, butterflies, botanical specimens, breeding pets), history. Others became expert mechanics, chemists, physicists, electricians, intent on making their own, often dangerous, experiments…On the other hand, this increase in objective knowledge is accompanied by a marked decrease in self-knowledge. The repressions which have set in earlier in life are strengthened to a point where the child’s self becomes more or less completely estranged from his instincts. The child cannot in reality live up to the ideal standards which he has set for himself. All he can do is to clear away from his consciousness the knowledge of the wishes, fantasies, and thoughts which produce feelings of guilt. What the latency child actually knows of his own still remaining sexuality and of his aggression is negligible…Since the whole past is filled with strivings and incidents which the child now criticizes as shameful and guilty, he also rejects the memories of the past from consciousness. This explains why the vivid and passionate experiences of the first years disappear from every child’s remembrance and leave a blank. Few individuals remember more of their early childhood than a few isolated pictures which in themselves seem unimportant and devoid of emotional significance (cover memories).”

Masturbation and fantasy begin to appear as a normal phase when other students and contemporaries start to appear from neutral to alluring, but of course this can escalate to sexual mania or be utterly repressed, depending on past traumas and parenting styles. Layers of influence lead to the different results for each child and there will be individual differences even if patterns seem common. “It is normal for the latency child to go through periods of varying length without any apparent sexual activity, and to have sudden eruptions of fantasies accompanied by masturbatory activity when sufficient [craving] has collected. Where early education has been severe and repressive, such eruptions are followed by acute feelings of guilt, anxiety, and depressed moods. Where these eruptions are entirely missing during the latency period, it is a sign that repression has done its work too well. In such cases it is difficult for the child to assume a normal attitude to sexuality in later life…The difficulties which arise before normal adult instinctual and emotional functioning is achieved are manifold.”

Children at this time before puberty are starting to move away from their parents, even though the family home is still something they are dependent on financially, but the suffocation of family life, the boredom and restrictions make the wider world a place to escape to for further development. “Hostile behavior toward the parents and the brothers and sisters of the opposite sex is explained by the necessity to ward off the sexual fantasies concerning them. Since their physical nearness accentuates the temptation and the ensuing struggle, family life at this period is extremely difficult to bear. The wish to isolate himself from the family, to enter group life, join group activities, etc., is therefore a healthy move on the part of the young boy and should be encouraged by the environment.”

Overlapping layers

As most psychoanalysts, Anna Freud had her own observations of childhood development and their stages, and of course they overlap and are layered up on each other. “The oral phase, for instance, persists for months after the anal-sadistic organization has come into being; anal-sadistic manifestations do not disappear with the beginning of the phallic phase. The latency period is usually in existence for one or two years before the tendencies of the first infantile period fade into the background. It would, for instance, be erroneous to conclude, from a persistence of oral or anal forms of autoerotic gratification into the fourth or fifth year, that the child has failed to reach the phallic level. It never happens that [craving] expresses itself wholly in the manifestations of the latest phase of development; some part of it invariably remains attached to earlier modes of expression. To insure normality it is sufficient if the major proportion of [craving] reaches the organization appropriate to the age of the child. The manifestations of this level then predominate over the earlier ones, though never as fully as the genital tendencies of adult sex life predominate over the pregenital tendencies.”

Detecting these phases in therapy is difficult and patients are rarely an open book. “There are more reliable data on which an opinion about the [craving] development of a child could, theoretically, be based: namely, the fantasies that accompany the child’s masturbatory activities. But practically this is of little help for the diagnosis. Such fantasies are always hidden, very frequently unconscious, and laid bare only in the course of an analysis, not in a consultation.” Daydreams may show what the craving is, depending on how little defenses there are, but one thing is for certain: “…an infantile neurosis interferes directly with the forward movement of [craving]..In the beginning stage of a neurotic conflict the [craving] flows backward (regression), and attaches itself once more to earlier [craving] wishes (fixation point), in order to avoid anxiety that has arisen on a higher level of sexual organization. The ego of the child thus finds itself confronted with primitive desires (oral, aggressive, anal), which it is not prepared to tolerate. It defends itself against the instinctual danger with the help of various mechanisms (repression, reaction formation, displacements, etc. ), but if such defense is unsuccessful, neurotic symptoms arise which represent the gratification of the wish, distorted in its form by the action of the repressive forces. While these symptoms persist, they are the central expression of the child’s [craving].”

Oral levels represent impatient attitudes looking for satisfaction, whereas Anal levels are focused on power and control. The phallic level is considered more adult and complicated, but they all find some form of pleasure to assert their manifestation. The development is hindered in that the pleasure of the stage is inhibited. If you can’t develop a craving at the higher level, there’s no automated habit that can compete with instances of older craving impulses. “From the developmental point of view it is immaterial whether such symptoms are a little more or a little less painful. What counts is that…instead of moving on toward more adult levels, it has been forced backward, and important gains have thereby been relinquished. Qualities and achievements that depend directly on the stage of [craving] development are lost. The child who regresses to the oral level, for instance, simultaneously reverts to the emotional attitudes connected with it: he becomes once more insatiable, exacting, impatient for wish fulfillment, ‘like a baby.’ Regression from the phallic to the anal-sadistic level destroys the so recently acquired attributes of generosity, manliness, and protectiveness, and substitutes for them the domineering possessiveness that belongs to the earlier [craving] level. But progress is made at the same time in other spheres that are not influenced directly by the neurosis. The child grows bigger and more intelligent, and his development becomes inharmonious since this growing body and mind are tied to an instinctual and emotional life that cannot keep pace with it. The need for treatment seems urgent at this stage, not because the neurosis itself is so severe, but because the presence of the neurosis hinders [craving] development.”

The libido, or craving, is liquid and moves when it’s squeezed and repressed in one area and a free pathway is available to expand. These movements can be complicated and create false signs of cures. “Neurotic suffering can be exchanged for ordinary suffering; for instance, the real loss of an object through death can take the place of the imagined loss of love from that object, and thus make a particular symptom unnecessary. A masochistic desire which at one time manifests itself in neurotic symptoms can at another time find satisfaction in organic illness. Inhibitions or obsessional restrictions that cripple a patient’s activity may be given up when he is, for instance, in prison or in a concentration camp, that is, when he lives under crippling and inhibiting circumstances. A neurosis can further be relieved through separation from the love object onto which it has transferred its central issues; but such relief will be temporary, and the neurosis will soon re-establish itself completely when a new transference has taken place. Happenings of this kind, though often described as spontaneous cures, are merely slight fluctuations within the neurotic arrangement itself.”

Stage	Erogenous Zone	Component Instincts	Adult Fixation Traits
Oral	Mouth	Sucking, swallowing, biting, spitting	Dependency, oral habits, sarcasm, impatience
Anal	Anus	Retention, expulsion	Control issues, obsessiveness, messiness, stinginess
Phallic	Genitals	Exhibitionism, Oedipal / Electra desires	Vanity, flirtatiousness, promiscuity, or alternatively, sexual repression and guilt

The difficulty is always the ego skill level. If it can’t deal with what is needed to move forward it will remain at the level it is at. The Id can increase it’s pressure to release on an object. The Ego can increase its skill towards the more complex adult territory. The Super-ego can become less severe as it monitors the reality principle in play with the Ego. The different stages are like platforms that can be returned to under stress when more skillful areas fail to gain results. The phallic level is when genitals are where the main pleasure is found. The oral and anal erotogenic zones can be overtly sexual, but they can often manifest in active or passive manifestations. Sometimes theoreticians put messiness on the side of oral, but really it’s about the skill level or the lack thereof. “The neurotic symptom, as a compromise between two opposing forces, can alter only when decisive changes take place, either in the instinctual tendencies or in the ego and superego of the individual…A component instinct that is charged with [craving] in one phase may be devoid of interest at another. The child need not remain hopelessly tied to any fixation point to which it has been led back through regression. If the fixation is not excessively strong, the [craving] has a good chance of freeing itself again, carried forward by the next wave of development. This possibility is greatest at times when the biological urges are of special strength, as they are at the onset of the phallic phase (four to five years) and of puberty.”

The Ego and the Id – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html

The strength of the pleasure and repetition of the reactions and behaviors lead to fixation that is either a priority, or is more in the background as more complex elements take the pole position. Typical healthy results are an absence of addiction or repression with socially acceptable roles that work harmoniously with the world. More skillful pleasures are a more enjoyable craving to develop because older forms of pleasure are more boring, unless one cannot yet enjoy a new skill. Repressions come from parents and culture, as well as addictions, so there’s a need for ego strength, or skills, to resist those pressures and live a balanced life. Strong habits weaken with mindfulness, letting go and abstinence, but they never go away completely from memory. They just have less ability to erupt and takeover motor control against boundaries and tactfulness. Before that mastery takes place, if it ever reaches complete mastery or not, there’s a lot of compartmentalization and hypocritical actions that show there’s more work to be done. “The faithful testing and the recording of outer reality reveal to the ego the existence of countless alarming possibilities; the outer world is shown to be full of frustrations, disappointments, threats. The testing of the child’s own inner reality reveals the existence of forbidden and dangerous tendencies which offend the child’s conception of himself and therefore cause anxiety. The sorting and interpretation of stimuli as they arrive lead to a sharp distinction between the child’s own self and the objects outside; before this faculty is developed, the infant has been able to feel himself at one with the world around, to ascribe anything pleasurable to himself, and anything disturbing to the ‘outsider.’ The development of the function of memory is equally disturbing, since it aims at retaining memory traces irrespective of their quality; the infant gives preference to pleasant memories and rejects painful ones. The synthetic function of the ego, which aims at unifying and centralizing all mental processes, is opposed to the free and easy manner in which the infant lives out his most divergent emotions and instinctual urges either simultaneously or alternately; as, for instance, loving his parents, and hating them; being a passive baby in need of comfort from his mother at one moment, only to confront her as an active lover and protector the next moment; destroying possessions, and then immediately afterward desiring and treasuring them passionately. Lastly, a strict ego control of motility permanently deprives the instinctual forces in the id of their former free expression.”

Instead of accepting animal nature, the mind goes into defenses, which are exhausting, while skills are left undeveloped. There is a risk in skill development in the painful attempts at trial and error, but unless you know personally the pleasure of a skill, how can you appreciate what’s available? “Strictly objective functioning of this nature heightens the feeling of tension and anxiety for the ego. On the one side, the [craving] in the id, represented by the component instincts of infantile sexuality, are felt to clamor for satisfaction. On the other side, the child is aware of the threat of punishment from the adults in the outside world, or of the loss of their love, should he indulge in forbidden sexual or aggressive wishes and actions. From the side of the superego, i.e., from within, the ego is flooded with feelings of guilt and self-criticism whenever it fails to live up to its own standards…The weak and immature ego of the child fails to stand up to the impact of these dangers. It consequently attempts to undo its own achievements as fast as they are made. It tries not to see outside reality as it is (denial); not to record and make conscious the representatives of the inner urges as they are sent up from the id (repression); it overlays unwelcome urges with their opposites (reaction formation); it substitutes for painful facts pleasurable fantasies (escape into fantasy life); it attributes to others the qualities it does not like to see in itself (projection); and it appropriates from others what seems welcome (introjection).”

For most children who naturally do not have adult skills, crude defenses are more likely to be developed in their place. Developing a learning mentality requires a lot of self-acceptance and integration of the good and bad self. By watching mistakes happen in real time, and just accepting that the skilled part of oneself as well as the part of the self that can be mistaken, as the same person, alleviates the exhausting defense of compartmentalization. “Another defense method for dealing with the negative side of the child’s ambivalence against the parents is the splitting of the personality, with the resulting damage to the synthetic function of the ego. For certain periods many children go so far as to invent special names for their ‘good’ and their ‘bad’ selves, though normally they retain the knowledge that both the good and the bad child are themselves, with a vague feeling of responsibility remaining for both. In an outstanding case of this kind, a girl of six referred to her bad side consistently as ‘the devil’ and had ceased to feel any conscious responsibility for the devil’s thoughts or actions…This may account for the fact that children of the hysterical type frequently possess a faulty and unreliable memory, with consequent difficulties in studying: damage to the function of memory has spread further than the emotionally dangerous memories with which the ego tried to interfere. Obsessional children usually have an excellent and undisturbed memory; but, owing to the excessive ego interference with the free expression of their anal-sadistic tendencies, they are estranged from their own emotions, and are considered cold and unresponsive, even when other than these primitive aggressive-sexual manifestations are concerned. Phobic children deal with their anxieties by withdrawal from their danger points. They tend to withdraw from many forms of activity altogether and give up motility, far beyond the original range of neurotic danger. As a consequence they frequently become altogether retiring and clumsy in their actions, with passionate and unpredictable outbreaks whenever the motility is governed by the id forces instead of the ego.”

Puberty

The final stage of puberty finds the subject trying to navigate so many of the influences internally and externally to integrate and reduce both internal and external conflict. As you would remember, these times were about trial and error in order to find yourself between opposites. “Adolescents are excessively egoistic, regarding themselves as the center of the universe and the sole object of interest, and yet at no time in later life are they capable of so much self-sacrifice and devotion. They form the most passionate love relations, only to break them off as abruptly as they began them. On the one hand, they throw themselves enthusiastically into the life of the community and, on the other, they have an overpowering longing for solitude. They oscillate between blind submission to some self-chosen leader and defiant rebellion against any and every authority. They are selfish and materially minded and at the same time full of lofty idealism. They are ascetic but will suddenly plunge into instinctual indulgence of the most primitive character. At times their behavior to other people is rough and inconsiderate, yet they themselves are extremely touchy. Their moods veer between light-hearted optimism and the blackest pessimism. Sometimes they will work with indefatigable enthusiasm and at other times they are sluggish and apathetic.”

As these experiments are underway, there are punishments awaiting, but also a hardening of the anticipation of punishment. There’s a desire to start avoiding consequences which leads to a redoubling of repression. “Objective anxiety is the anticipation of suffering which may be inflicted on the child as a punishment by outside agents, a kind of ‘fore-pain’ which governs the ego’s behavior, no matter whether the expected punishment always takes place or not.” There’s a honing between the internal and external conflict that forces a renegotiation, even if it’s haphazard and many mistakes are made. There might be desires to become religious and retire from life after experiencing shame. “Increased activity of fantasy, lapses into pregenital (i.e., perverse) sexual gratification, aggressive or criminal behavior signify partial successes of the id, while the occurrence of various forms of anxiety, the development of ascetic traits, and the accentuation of neurotic symptoms and inhibitions denote a more vigorous defense, i.e., the partial success of the ego…There is more [craving] at the id’s disposal and it [attaches] indiscriminately any id impulses which are at hand. Aggressive impulses are intensified to the point of complete unruliness, hunger becomes voracity, and the naughtiness of the latency period turns into the criminal behavior of adolescence. Oral and anal interests, long submerged, come to the surface again. Habits of cleanliness, laboriously acquired during the latency period, give place to pleasure in dirt and disorder, and instead of modesty and sympathy we find exhibitionistic tendencies, brutality and cruelty to animals. The reaction formations, which seemed to be firmly established in the structure of the ego, threaten to fall to pieces. At the same time, old tendencies which had disappeared come into consciousness. The oedipus wishes are fulfilled in the form of fantasies and daydreams, in which they have undergone but little distortion; in boys ideas of castration and in girls penis envy once more become the center of interest. There are very few new elements in the invading forces. Their onslaught merely brings once more to the surface the familiar content of the early infantile sexuality of little children.”

As the defense mechanisms are chosen and implemented against the instincts, so goes the results of repression. This can be cultural but there are patterns that lead, to what they called hysteria, obsession, or other disorders. “In neurosis we are accustomed to see that, whenever a particular gratification of instinct is repressed, some substitute is found for it. In hysteria this is done by conversion, i.e., the sexual excitation finds discharge in other bodily zones or processes, which have become sexualized. In obsessional neurosis there is a substitutive pleasure on the level to which regression has taken place, while in phobias there is at least some [sickness] gain. Or prohibited forms of gratification are exchanged for other modes of enjoyment, through a process of displacement and reaction formation, while we know that true neurotic symptoms such as hysterical attacks, tics, obsessional actions, the habit of brooding, etc., represent compromises in which the instinctual demands of the id are no less effectively fulfilled than the dictates of the ego and the superego. But in the repudiation of instinct characteristic of adolescence no loophole is left for such substitutive gratification: the mechanism seems to be a different one. Instead of compromise formations (corresponding to neurotic symptoms) and the usual processes of displacement, regression, and turning against the self we find almost invariably a swing-over from asceticism to instinctual excess, the adolescent suddenly indulging in everything which he had previously held to be prohibited and disregarding any sort of external restrictions. On account of their antisocial character these adolescent excesses are in themselves unwelcome manifestations; nevertheless, from the analytic standpoint they represent transitory spontaneous recovery from the condition of asceticism. Where no such recovery takes place and the ego in some inexplicable way is strong enough to carry through its repudiation of instinct without any deviation, the result is a paralysis of the subject’s vital activities—a kind of a catatonic condition, which can no longer be regarded as a normal phenomenon of puberty but must be recognized as a psychotic affection.”

Because at puberty there’s an increase in craving, there is an importance on the character of the super-ego and ego in that there has to be a balance between the pleasure principle and the reality principle so that gratification is taken seriously while at the same time it allows for boundaries for other people who are also looking for their own gratification. There’s a lot of indecision and ambivalence. “Any additional pressure of instinctual demands stiffens the resistance of the ego to the instinct in question and intensifies the symptoms, inhibitions, etc., based upon that resistance, while, if the instincts become less urgent, the ego becomes more yielding and more ready to permit gratification. This means that the absolute strength of the instincts during puberty (which in any case cannot be measured or estimated independently) affords no prognosis of the final issue of puberty. The factors by which this is determined are relative: first, the strength of the id impulses, which is conditioned by the physiological process at puberty; second, the ego’s tolerance or intolerance of instinct, which depends on the character formed during the latency period; third—and this is the qualitative factor which decides the quantitative conflict—the nature and efficacy of the defense mechanisms at the ego’s command, which vary with the constitution of the particular individual, i.e., his disposition to hysteria or to obsessional neurosis, and with the lines upon which he has developed.”

A lot of inner conflict becomes verbalized before, during and after puberty where the struggles are intellectualized. There’s an exploration on how the world should work and how things could be better, but there’s a big disconnect between abstract ideals and exploration compared to observed behavior. “There is a type of young person whose sudden spurt in intellectual development is no less noticeable and surprising than his rapid development in other directions. We know how often the whole interest of boys during the latency period is concentrated on things which have an actual, objective existence. Some boys love to read about discoveries and adventures or to study numbers and proportions or to devour descriptions of strange animals and objects, while others confine their attention to machinery, from the simplest to the most complicated form. The point which these two types usually have in common is that the object in which they are interested must be a concrete one, not the product of fantasy like the fairy tales and fables enjoyed in early childhood, but something which has an actual physical existence…When the prepubertal period begins, a tendency for the concrete interests of the latency period to give place to abstractions becomes more and more marked….[They] have an insatiable desire to think about abstract subjects, to turn them over in their minds, and to talk about them. Many of the friendships of youth are based on and maintained by this desire to meditate upon and discuss such subjects together. The range of these abstract interests and of the problems which these young people try to solve is very wide…We are surprised to discover that this fine intellectual performance makes little or no difference to his actual behavior. His empathy into the mental processes of other people does not prevent him from displaying the most outrageous lack of consideration toward those nearest to him. His lofty view of love and of the obligations of a lover does not mitigate the infidelity and callousness of which he is repeatedly guilty in his various love affairs. The fact that his understanding of and interest in the structure of society often far exceed those of later years does not assist him in the least to find his true place in social life, nor does the many-sidedness of his interests deter him from concentrating upon a single point—his preoccupation with his own personality…A closer examination shows that the subjects in which they are principally interested are the very same as have given rise to the conflicts between the different psychic institutions. Once more, the point at issue is how to relate the instinctual side of human nature to the rest of life, how to decide between putting sexual impulses into practice and renouncing them, between liberty and restraint, between revolt against and submission to authority.”

There’s also an entertainment value in intellectualization because one is entertaining different ideas, which is a form of sublimation. Value is found in that wisdom, but only when it’s acted upon. “We remember that in psychoanalytic metapsychology the association of affects and instinctual processes with word representations is stated to be the first and most important step in the direction of the mastery of instinct which has to be taken as the individual develops. Thinking is described in these writings as ‘an experimental kind of acting, accompanied by displacement of relatively small quantities of [attachment] together with less expenditure (discharge) of them.’ This intellectualization of instinctual life, the attempt to lay hold on the instinctual processes by connecting them with ideas which can be dealt with in consciousness, is one of the most general, earliest, and most necessary acquirements of the human ego. We regard it not as an activity of the ego but as one of its indispensable components.” For Anna Freud, thoughts of revolution and changing the world are projections about their own state and how one fits in the world. So many people are misfits and there’s a need to reorder society so they can slot themselves in a favorable position. Whether social conditions or working conditions improve, they can only do so with common sense and action. Action of course is best when people find places in the social structure where they can be paid for their action. “The intellectual work performed by the ego during the latency period and in adult life is incomparably more solid, more reliable, and, above all, much more closely connected with action.”

Social balancing act

What Ego-psychology looks for to provide a therapeutic result is to reduce internal and external conflict so that the patient can effectively reduce pain and increase pleasure in their lives. What instead happens before therapy is the environment is acting on the subject while they cope with different defenses in order to deal with internal challenges as well as external ones. The following would be a good description of rumination. “Repression gets rid of instinctual derivatives, just as external stimuli are abolished by denial. Reaction formation secures the ego against the return of repressed impulses from within, while by fantasies in which the real situation is reversed, denial is sustained against overthrow from without. Inhibition of instinctual impulses corresponds to the restrictions imposed on the ego to avoid [pain] from external sources. Intellectualization of the instinctual processes as a precaution against danger from within is analogous to the constant alertness of the ego to dangers from without. All the other defensive measures which, like reversal [activity turning into passivity] and turning against the subject [self-hatred], entail an alteration in the instinctual processes themselves, have their counterpart in the ego’s attempts to deal with the external danger by actively intervening to change the conditions of the world around it, [changing yourself, like the environment.]”

Ego Psychology: Anna Freud Pt. 4-2: https://rumble.com/v6m6epl-ego-psychology-anna-freud-pt.-4-2.html

These defenses of course didn’t start in adulthood. Many are maladaptive and energy draining simply because one is used to coping in this way from the outset. “The infantile ego experiences the onslaught of instinctual and external stimuli at the same time; if it wishes to preserve its existence it must defend itself on both sides simultaneously. In the struggle with the different kinds of stimuli which it has to master it probably adapts its weapons to the particular need, arming itself now against danger from within and now against danger from without.” The end result, as simplified, is aiming for a clear conscience when it comes to desire, by seeing the infantile origins and replacing archaic coping methods with more efficient ones that an adult can understand. Eventually the mind is able to find pleasure and purpose in consecutive activities that are precisely chosen so that emotional regulation predominates and lapses of impulse, as well as internal and external conflicts decrease. Before therapy, these defenses would be operating on automatic pilot, and pleasure instead would be used more as a distraction than directly solving the problem of The Reality Principle. “The existence of neurotic symptoms in itself indicates that the ego has been overpowered, and every return of repressed impulses, with its sequel in compromise formation, shows that some plan for defense has miscarried and the ego has suffered a defeat. But the ego is victorious when its defensive measures effect their purpose, i.e., when they enable it to restrict the development of anxiety and unpleasure and so to transform the instincts that, even in difficult circumstances, some measure of gratification is secured, thereby establishing the most harmonious relations possible between the id, the superego, and the forces of the outside world.” What is also unsaid, which could be inferred by terms “some measure,” is that the gratifications are strong enough to thread one goal to the next without large extended periods of time stuck in stress or ennui. If satisfactions are “good enough,” the subject may not notice or confront their weaknesses until their defenses become completely ineffective.

The Pleasure Principle – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gurqv-the-pleasure-principle-sigmund-freud.html

Antonyms to these defenses would aim at the way out of neurosis. Repression -> Permission, Denial -> Acceptance, Reaction formation -> Emotional Authenticity, Fantasies -> Problem solving, Inhibition -> Confidence, Restrictions -> Challenging those illogical restrictions, Intellectualization and Hyper-alertness -> Relaxed Action, Passivity -> Activity, Self-hatred -> Self-esteem. All these point to an acceptance of the animal body and dropping shame about desire in general, and the remaining shame is only there for desires that do hurt other people or oneself. Unless a person wants endless conflict, they have to suppress, to stay out of incarceration, or sublimate to develop a taste for desires that allow for social and cultural cohesion. While old desires that were tainted with conflict fade away with extinction, new desires that foster a clear conscience develop a new habitual preference for mental peace.

A simpler way of seeing this in any environment is to notice that, Self-esteem lives where preferences and attention intersect with what you can control, which dovetails with the Serenity Prayer. It feeds nicely into a learning mentality, because one cannot change the past, but if one focuses on what can be controlled next in the present moment, new development becomes possible.

O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other.

The Writings of Anna Freud, Indications for Child Analysis and other papers Vol 4: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780701203184/

The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence – Anna Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781855750388/

Anna Freud: A Biography – Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780300140231/

Sigmund Freud’s Collection: An Archeology of Mind – MUMA: https://web.archive.org/web/20140222133332/http://sydney.edu.au/museums/publications/catalogues/freud-catalogue.pdf

Lacoursiere, R. B. (2008) Freud’s Death: Historical Truth and Biographical Fictions. American Imago 65:107-128

The Language of Psychoanalysis by Jean Laplanche, Jean-Bertrand Pontalis: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780367328139/

Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/