University of Virginia Library

President G. Stanley Hall, of Worcester, Mass., read a paper entitled, "The Application of Freudian Mechanisms to Other Emotions."[2]

DISCUSSION

DR. JOHN T. MAC CURDY, New York City: I have been so interested in the paper by Dr. Hall that I have been distinctly delighted by it and with your permission I will refer to a point in Dr. Putnam's paper directly pertinent to the issues raised by Dr. Hall. Dr. Putnam has spoken of the necessity for metaphysics by which I presume he means the necessity for formulation. Yesterday there was some antagonism in a discussion on formulation. We cannot avoid formulating. Our advance in knowledge is purely empiric unless it is directly dependent on formulation. We have not formulated enough. We have stuck too much to our empiric data, have not made the necessary deductions from it. What formulations there are have been based on therapeutic data and explain the productions of symptoms. No attention has been paid to the general psychoneurotic or psychotic Anlage. When this is done I am sure that it will be found that there are just such primordial reactions as President Hall has been talking about lying back of all the sexual impulses. Sexual reactions have in the course of development come to be the vehicle for more primitive ones. We know by observation that the infant demonstrates anger in a much greater degree, and long before he gives evidence of things sexual, in anything approaching the adult sense of that term. The temporary formulation of psychoanalysts who attempt to explain anger or temper by sadism are really ridiculous. President Hall rightly says that sadism must be explained by anger. That is one of the primitive emotions. Sex is merely a vehicle. The importance of this transference is that the sex emotions are peculiarly adapted to repression and when once unconscious, continue to operate all through the life of the individual. This is less likely to occur in the sudden reaction of anger, which is much more apt to be blown off at the time.

DR. SMITH ELY JELLIFFE, New York, N. Y: I cannot quote the line, but in Shaw's "Doctor's Dilemma," recently presented in New York, there is an exchange of words during which the heroine tells the surgeon that she is tempted to pass from loving him to hating him. He replied that one is surprised after all what an amazing little difference there is between the two different attitudes of mind. Dr. Jelliffe said he was quite in sympathy with what Dr. MacCurdy had been saying, with reference to the need for formulation: We all know how these formulations have grown and how they are utilized practically. For instance, we formulate an attitude towards space. We wish to handle space and say 3 ft. or 7 ft. in order to handle space relations. In other words, to handle space we utilize a formulation which we call a measure of space. In the same manner in order to handle time we make a hypothetical unit to be pragmatic. In handling the phenomena of electricity, we formulate other units. In my own mind there has grown up therefore the analogy that in order to handle psychological phenomenon we have formulated the Oedipus by hypothesis. This hypothesis I would define as the unconscious biological directing of the energy of the child towards the parent of the opposite sex and away from that of the same sex. This is the unconscious basis of what in consciousness we call love and hate. The boy is unconsciously directed away from the parent of the same sex. He develops according to the Oedipus hypothesis the desire to get away from the father or the father image. All other men are patterned after the father image and if this strong biological direction fails to take place, his interest not being directed in an opposite direction, he fails to mate and thus fails in his reproductive function. The reproductive function cannot go on without this biological thrust towards the proper object. By Narcissism is meant the formulation that a new development is taking place in the infantile Oedipus fantasy. The child cannot hold on to the mother image. He passes it to others nearer his own age. He does it first through his own identification with the female. His bisexuality permits this. Similarly the infantile father protest must be supplanted by an evolved brotherly love. The competition

with the father image must take a new form. It must be a mutual competition with mutual productivity. Any contact between man and man that does not ensue to the value of both in some degree, therefore, registers a failure to sublimate the unconscious gather hatred of the infantile stage of development. Sublimated hatred of the father image is brotherly love. Sublimated love of the mother image is taking one's place in the world as a father for the continuance of the race. In the unconscious the formula of direction against same sex and towards opposite sex, means therefore that in the unconscious love and hate are the same; one cannot give them these names however.

Thus I would enlarge the Oedipus formula and say that it is useful not only in understanding the neurotic, but it can be used to measure up all psychological situations.

DR. JAMES J. PUTNAM, Boston: I deeply appreciated and enjoyed what Dr. Hall said and I have no question whatever that we all who are so interested in psychological work profit by arguments of this sort being brought before our notice. I think it is an unfortunate thing that Adler, who was on that line and did such good work in it, coupled his statements with a sort of denunciation of Freud's views. It seems to me to have been entirely unnecessary. One of the remarkable stories of O. Henry, who was a keen observer of human nature, deals with a frontier army officer who exposed continually himself to danger, desiring to work out in an indirect way this feeling of conquering one person by another, only it was himself, his own cowardice, that he wished eventually to conquer. I would ask Dr. Hall if the notion of which Royce has made so much, namely, the social concept, is not one which perhaps would act as the common denominator in these cases. We cannot assert ourselves and get angry without virtually having reference to other persons, neither can we have sex feelings without such reference. It seems that the social instinct or imagination which is carried around by every individual and which determines his acts is as natural and as invariably present as the existence of a desire to live, not to speak of the desire to conquer.

DR. MORTON PRINCE, Boston: I feel extremely thankful

to Dr. Hall for his very interesting and satisfying presentation of the thesis which he has given us. I remember an old gentleman once saying to me, in speaking of another man with whom he had been conversing, "He is a very intelligent man. He thinks just as I do." So I think Dr. Hall is a very intelligent man; he thinks just as I do. I am entirely in accord with his views which he has so well expressed. What he has said is in principle the basis of the paper which I intended to present this morning but which, in view of the length of our programme, I have decided to withdraw.

The principle underlying the large number of concrete facts which he has given is that besides the sexual instinct there are a large number of other instincts—one of which is anger—which have a very important place and play important parts in personality. Some of these instincts play not only as important a part as the sexual instinct but even a more important part. And, as Dr. Hall has said, the Freudian mechanisms can be applied to them just as well and just as logically. If an analysis is fully carried out along the directions of these instincts we find, according to my observations, the same disturbances that we find from conflicts with the sexual instinct and effected by the same mechanisms. Amongst these instincts besides anger there is the parental instinct, containing, if we follow Mr. McDougall's terminology, tender feeling or love. At any rate love is an instinct entirely distinct from the sexual instinct. There are also the instinct of self-assertion and, fully as important as any, that of self-abasement. This last, according to my observations and interpretations plays a very important part in many cases of psycho-neurosis and leads through conflicts to the same disturbances of personality that one finds brought about by conflicts between the other instincts. That love may be something entirely separate and distinct from the sexual instinct is a view which is generally recognized and accepted by psychological writers but entirely ignored, as a rule, by Freudian writers. A criticism which I would make of the work of the Freudians is that while they recognize these instincts they do not give them their full value nor study them as completely and thoroughly—nor do they

carry their studies to the final logical conclusion—as they do with the sexual instinct. So far as they may do so they subordinate these instinctive emotions entirely to the sexual instinct so that these latter simply make use of them. When the psycho-neuroses are completely studied we will find the same repression of the various instinctive dispositions and impulses to which I have referred in the one case as in the other, and of ideas organized with these disposition. We find the same conflicts and resulting disturbances. The sexual instinct has no hegemony. To my mind each occupies precisely the same position and may play the same part in personality.

When you bear in mind that psychologically it is a fact, as I believe, that sentiments are formed by the organization of emotional instincts with ideas, with the memories of experiences, as Shand has pointed out, and when you remember that it is through the force of emotional instincts thus organized that an idea, i e., a sentiment, acquires its driving force which tends to carry the idea to fulfilment, and when you bear in mind that sentiments thus formed are derived from antecedent experiences sometimes dating back to childhood and sometimes persisting through life, we can understand how conflicts arise between antagonistic sentiments and the part which the different instincts, through the force of their impulses, play in these conflicts.

Furthermore when we bear in mind that sentiments thus originating and organized are conserved in the subconscious forming what I call the "setting" which gives idea meaning, the meaning being the most important component of any idea, and when we bear in mind that this subconscious setting is an integral part of the total mechanism of thought—each sentiment in the setting striving to carry itself to completion, and for this purpose repressing every conflicting sentiment—I think we find a satisfactory explanation of the disturbances due to conflict in the psycho-neuroses. Such a mechanism gives full value to any one and all of the emotional instincts without giving primacy to any one.

DR. WALTER B. SWIFT, Boston: In regard to the origin of emotions: I understood Dr. Hall to say that they were not instinct. Of late I have been observing two young

children develop certain emotions. The starting point of that development has seemed to be in the imitation of motions seen in others. It is plain to see that this is along the line of the James-Lange hypothesis. So that before these motions were seen there was no emotion in the child. If these motions were observed and imitated by the children then the emotions developed. I would, therefore, like to ask President Hall whether he would consider imitation of motion seen in another as the starting point of the development of emotion.

DR. TOM WILLIAMS, Washington, D. C.: The value of formulation we know. It has been well illustrated by Dr. Hall's paper that he has by definite concept followed out by investigation of this. The disadvantage of formulation is very well shown by over-formulation by the scholastics in the Middle Ages. I think Dr. Hall's wonderful contribution to our psychological researches should be kept in mind by those who have excessively formulated in a certain direction in order that some of us at least may apply to some of the other emotions what others have attempted concerning libido. Dr. Prince has long appealed for other methods than those which have been applied so exclusively to the sexuality. In reference to the manifestation of the anger trend, for instance, it may be not only a definitely conscious manifestation, but it may perhaps produce a crisis even in dream-thought. I am speaking of a case. A young boy at boarding school who was a musical genius had been very much bullied. He suffered a great deal from this, but did not retaliate until one night in the dormitory with eight boys while asleep, he being badgered by neighbors, got up while asleep and attacked these larger boys and discomfited them. It was the subject of conversation in the dormitory, whether he was really asleep or not. The boy became so terrible in his anger on future occasions and so successful as a fighter that his bullying thereafter ceased, and his status in the school thereafter was different. Whether this really occurred in a dream state or was mere simulation I cannot say.

DR. A. A. BRILL, New York City: I must say that the mechanisms described so interestingly by Pres. Hall are

found in our patients during analysis and I believe that almost all of them belong to the love and hate principles. This may not seem so on superficial examination, thus, I have on record nine cases of women who were suffering from various forms of psychoneurosis, one of whose symptoms was screaming. Every once in a while they had to scream. It was an obsessive screaming. Questioning elicited that the screaming always occurred when they were thinking of some terrible or painful thought. For instance, one woman went through fancies of killing her husband and when she came to the idea of shooting him, she began to scream. Here one might think that it was an ethical struggle which had nothing to do with sex, but if one considers that it was against her husband that her anger was directed, that she wished to kill him because he abused her and that there was another man in the case, it becomes quite clear that the anger had a sexual motive.

Concerning new formulations, I feel that there is nothing against promulgating new attitudes and theories, provided one has sufficient cause for doing so. Formulations based on insufficient data and hastily constructed are dangerous, to say the least. Prof. Freud is most careful in formulating new theories. He gathers his material for years before he puts it forth in the form of tentative theories and does not hesitate to modify them if occasion demands. Nor is it true that the Freudians ignore the work done by others. Freud and his followers give due credit to other observers, but as the Freudian mechanisms have opened up so many new fields for investigation, we naturally give most of our time to this work. That does not at all signify that we ignore everything else, as some believe. Freud himself continually urges that the psychoanalytic problems should be taken up by observers in other fields than medicine and I was, therefore, extremely pleased to hear Prof. Hall's formulations of anger. I do not believe, however, that his paper shows that we are overestimating the sexual impulse. Basically, all his mechanisms come under the heading of "Sex," as we understand it.

DR. L. E. EMERSON, Boston, Mass: I wish to express my delight in President Hall's paper. It seems to me what

he has done has been to show the breadth of the Freudian conception of sex. The word sex as the Freudians use it, includes all personal relations and even personality; and it is apparently in question only as to whether one is going to draw a line at one place and say everything on this side is sex and the other side personality, or whether one is going to enlarge the concept of sex to include personality. That as I understand it, is what Dr. White has also said. It seems to me the value of the sex conception lies in the fact that while it can be expanded, and is illimitable, at the same time it focuses, it does come to a point. Personalities as talked of ordinarily have no point, they are too vague. On the other hand, a man who has a mind no bigger than a pinhole is too circumscribed to be capable of understanding any very broad generalization. If one can grasp a conception that does have a center, even though no circumference, he has got hold of a very valuable generalization.

DR. E. E. SOUTHARD, Boston: Dr. Jelliffe has just brought into ridicule what he terms "pinhole psychiatry;" but as I remember it, there is a technical method in psychology whereby things may be more clearly visible through a pin-hole!

The valuable thing about President Hall's communication is that the fundamental distinction is brought out between two groups of workers in psychopathology. I should be inclined to divide the people in this room into what might be termed emotional monists and emotional pluralists. The Freudian theory is in general a theory of emotional monism and therefore fundamentally must satisfy a great many of the Hegelian tenets. Hence, perhaps Dr. Putnam's adherence to both Hegel and Freud. Now as I understand it, what Dr. Prince wants is an emotional pluralism such as might well be founded upon the data in MacDougall's "Social Psychology" and in Shand's work on "The Foundations of Character." This view of emotional pluralism is one which I should myself be compelled to hold. We must remember, however, that the work of Cannon on various types of emotion may possibly show that different emotions which look vastly unlike (e. g. fear and rage) may be in some sense equivalents. Fear may be equivalent to

rage much as different types of energy in the physical universe are equivalent to one another. The emotions may be interchangeable in some sense so that it might be possible that sex emotion and the emotion of fear are translatable. In this way there might be constructed a fundamental monism of emotion in the same sense that energetics is a science which unifies electricity, heat, magnetism, etc. It would not seem to me, however, appropriate to identify all kinds of emotion with the sexual.

PRESIDENT HALL: It would take an encylopedia and an omniscient mind. and many hours and days to exhaust such a topic as this. Dr. Southard has said some of the things I would have said. I supposed this society was primarily interested in pragmatic discussions. At any rate, I left the American Philosophical Society some years ago and entered this to get rid of metaphysics and arid abstractions. As to what Dr. Swift says, it seems to me imitation plays a great but is by no means the sole rôle. It is of course purely instinctive, and the social instinct comes in everywhere, so much so that discussion on almost any topic is liable to raise the question of the individual versus the social forces in the world. As to Dr. Jelliffe's opinion whether after all hate and love are at bottom the same, he perhaps bottoms on the recent discussions of what I might call the expanded theory of ambivalence, as represented by Weissfeld. But I do not interpret this to mean that there is any sense whatever that has any pragmatic value in the statement that love and hate are the same. If you assume this, one is dizzy and the world seems to spin around. Hegel showed a sense in which being and not being are the same but that is a most abstract and purely methodological statement. What in the world is more opposite than love and hate, from every practical and truly psychological point of view? We must not be credulous about the unconscious and ascribe to it absurdities, nor must we lose our orientation for surely up and down, right and left, light and dark, do differ. If the unconscious can be used to cause a darkness in which everything loses its identity and fuses into a general menstrum, as Hegel said all cows were black in the dark, it seems to me we can get nowhere. Ought we not to start by

admitting that there are certain immense differences in the emotions, whether conscious or unconscious, and that the tendency to find a common background or identify them is a matter largely of speculative interest?