Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [119]
When some event induces surplus excitation, as in an occurrence that makes us angry, we tend to discharge the anger one way or another in order to preserve our normal balance of excitation. How we do so is the outcome of primary-process thinking governed by—or sometimes breaking through—the constraints of secondary-process thinking. Breuer and Freud gave an example: “When Bismarck had to suppress his angry feelings in the King’s presence, he relieved himself afterward by smashing a valuable vase on the floor.”52
The principle of constancy is a basic tenet of Freud’s psychology; it is an essential part of his explanation both of the neuroses as well as certain other phenomena, most notably displacement. Since the total amount of psychic excitation remains constant, if it is diminished in one idea, it is increased in a related idea; it is “displaced.” As we know, Freud relied on this concept to account for neurotic symptoms and dreams, in both of which the energy of impermissible wishes is displaced onto permissible activities. Later, he would apply the concept to account for “sublimation”—constructive acts that use the energy of unfulfilled or repressed desires in positive ways. Hostile impulses, for example, can be redirected into competitive striving for success; the energy of self-love achieves satisfaction through love of another. Freud, always skilled at finding an appropriate quotation or literary example, here quoted a poem in which Heine imagines God explaining Creation:
Illness was no doubt the final cause
Of the whole urge to create;
By creating, I could recover;
By creating, I became healthy.53
Success
In 1900, despite the completion of his self-analysis, Freud, at forty-four, had reason to feel discouraged and depressed. He had had high hopes that The Interpretation of Dreams, which he considered his most important work, would be a major success. Later, he remarked, “Insight such as this falls to one’s lot but once in a lifetime.”54 Yet on publication, in November 1899, it received a few flattering but muddled reviews in Vienna and little notice elsewhere, and commercially was an abysmal failure, selling only 351 copies in six years.
Freud felt more ignored and isolated than ever. His practice, which he had hoped the book would increase, fluctuated erratically, and he continued to be plagued by the fear of poverty. His friendship with Breuer was long over and his intensely close and dependent reliance on Fliess as confidant, supporter, co-worker, and idol was crumbling. During his self-analysis Freud had scrutinized his near-worship of Fliess, finding in it neurotic tendencies and a disguised homoerotic component; as the analysis freed Freud from emotional dependence on Fliess, Fliess became testy and critical. At a congress in August 1900, they attacked each other’s ideas fiercely, and Fliess told Freud he doubted the value of Freud’s psychoanalytic researches. They never held another meeting, and the warmth disappeared from their correspondence. The friendship abruptly ended a few years later when Fliess accused Freud of divulging his unpublished theory of universal inherent bisexuality to the philosopher Otto Weininger (who then used it in print) without identifying it as Fliess’s idea.55
Freud must also have felt isolated in his private life. Although he had a solid relationship with Martha, the intensity and intimacy of the years before marriage were long since gone, and he never discussed his ideas with her. He and she had suspended conjugal relations when he was only thirty-seven in order to give her some relief from childbearing, and although they later resumed their