Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on Metapsychology, Conflicts, Anxiety and Other Subjects

234 Pages·2014·5.92 MB·English

by  Humberto Nagera

BASIC PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPTS
Volume 4
BASIC PSYCHOANALYTIC
CONCEPTS ON
METAPSYCHOLOGY,
CONFLICTS, ANXIETY
AND OTHER SUBJECTS
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BASIC PSYCHOANALYTIC
CONCEPTS ON
METAPSYCHOLOGY,
CONFLICTS, ANXIETY
AND OTHER SUBJECTS
HUMBERTO NAGERA
and
A. COLONNA, E. DANSKY, E. FIRST,
A. GAVSHON, A. HOLDER, L. KEARNEY,
P. RADFORD
O Routledge
Taylor &. Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1970
This edition first published in 2014
by Routledge
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© 1970 George Allen & Unwin Ltd
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-138-02411-3 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76944-8 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-77709-5 (Volume 4)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76977-6 (Volume 4)
Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this
book but points out that some imperfections from the original may be
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Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and
would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to
trace.
BASIC
PSYCHOANALYTIC
CONCEPTS ON
METAPSYCHOLOGY
CONFLICTS
ANXIETY
and other subjects
by
HUMBERTO NAGERA
and
A. COLONNA, E. DANSKY, E. FIRST
A. GAVSHON, A. HOLDER, L. KEARNEY
P. RADFORD
London
GEORGE ALLEN AND UNWIN LTD
RUSKIN HOUSE MUSEUM STREET
FIRST PUBLISHED I97O
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights
are reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of
private study> research, criticism or review5 as permitted under
the Copyright Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means> electronic3 electrical, chemical, mechani­
cal optical, photocopying recording or otherwise, without the
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addressed to the publishers.
© George Allen & Unwin Ltd 1970
ISBN o 04 150030 x
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
in 11 on 12 pt. Plantin
BY W. & J. MACKAY AND CO. LTD
CHATHAM, KENT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND COPYRIGHT
NOTICES
The editor and publishers wish to thank the following publishers
for their kind permission to use the material noted:
The Hogarth Press and the London Institute of Psychoanalysis
for permission to quote from all volumes of the Standard
Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. for permission to quote from the
following publications of Freud:
Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious
Totem and Taboo
W. W. Norton for permission to quote from the following
publications of Freud:
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
Civilization and its Discontents
Totem and Taboo
Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious
A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis
The Claims of Psycho-Analysis to Scientific Interest
The Question of Lay Analysis
An Outline of Psycho-Analysis
The Ego and the Id
Analysis Terminable and Interminable
An Autobiographical Study
The Psycho-Analytic View of Psychogenic Disturbances of
Vision
Liveright for permission to quote from the following publica­
tions of Freud:
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
The Future of an Illusion
Dostoevsky and Parricide
7
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
International Universities Press for permission to quote from
the following publication of Freud:
On Psycho-Analysis
Encyclopaedia Britannica for permission to quote from the
following publication of Freud:
Psycho-Analysis
Thanks are due to the Sigmund Freud Copyrights for their per­
mission and generous co-operation.
8
FOREWORD TO
THE HAMPSTEAD CLINIC LIBRARY
The series of publications of which the present volume forms a
part, will be welcomed by all those readers who are concerned with
the history of psychoanalytic concepts and interested to follow
the vicissitudes of their fate through the theoretical, clinical and
technical writings of psychoanalytic authors. On the one hand,
these fates may strike us as being very different from each other.
On the other hand, it proves not too difficult to single out some
common trends and to explore the reasons for them.
There are some terms and concepts which served an important
function for psychoanalysis in its earliest years because of their
being simple and all-embracing such as for example the notion
of a ‘complex’. Even the lay public understood more or less easily
that what was meant thereby was any cluster of impulses, emotions,
thoughts, etc. which have their roots in the unconscious and,
exerting their influence from there, give rise to anxiety, defences
and symptom formation in the conscious mind. Accordingly, the
term was used widely as a form of psychological short-hand.
‘Father-Complex’, ‘Mother-Complex’, ‘Guilt-Complex’, ‘Infer­
iority-Complex’, etc. became familiar notions. Nevertheless, in due
course, added psychoanalytical findings about the child’s relation­
ship to his parents, about the early mother-infant tie and its con­
sequences about the complexities of lacking self-esteem and feelings
of insufficiency and inferiority demanded more precise concept­
ualization. The very omnibus nature of the term could not lead to
its, at least partial, abandonment. All that remained from it were the
terms ‘Oedipus-Complex’ to designate the experiences centred
around the triangular relationships of the phallic phase, and
‘Castration Complex’ for the anxieties, repressed wishes, etc.
concerning the loss or lack of the male sexual organ.
If, in the former instance, a general concept was split up to make
room for more specific meanings, in other instances concepts took
turns in the opposite direction. After starting out as concrete, well-
defined descriptions of circumscribed psychic events, they were
applied by many authors to an ever-widening circle of phenomena
until their connotation became increasingly vague and imprecise
and until finally special efforts had to be made to re-define them,
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