Primary Love and Psychoanalytic Technique

Michael Balint

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429917516
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

One of the eternal problems of mankind is that of love and hate. Why and how does it happen that we love this one of our fellow-men, feel safe in his affection, expect satisfactions of our needs from him and are attracted to him, while we hate and avoid other? Ever since the publication of Freud's first works one of the main objects of psycho-analytic research has been the study of these powerful currents of the human mind. The author contributed several important papers on this subject, and Primary Love and Psychoanalytic Technique is a collection of his material from 1930 to 1952. The first half of this volume is a collection of all his papers on this topic. The first, "Psycho-Sexual Parallels to the Fundamental Law of Biogenetics", is an attempt to trace the development of the erotic instincts from their earliest biological beginnings in unicellular organisms to their highest manifestations in human beings. Other papers deal with the problems of "Genital Love". "Transference of Emotions", of "Love and Hate" and so on.

Part One

INSTINCTS AND OBJECT-RELATIONS

I

PSYCHOSEXUAL PARALLELS TO THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF BIOGENETICS¹(1930)

I. The Career of Eros

IN discussions about biology, and especially about the great variety of forms of life, it is often said (Freud also made the remark)² that biology is indeed a realm of unlimited possibilities. Is not the psychological meaning of such an exclamation one of astonishment that our boldest fantasies have not been able to conjure up anything not actually found in the living world? For a long time I made use of the recognition of this fact merely as a theme for conversation, and in the company of analysts often passed the time by quoting some type of animal that corresponded to every perverse activity, however absurd, to every myth or every infantile theory of sex.

I was finally startled by the exactitude of the parallel. If true, it must mean that the human mind knows all about phylogenesis, indeed that it knows nothing else but phylogenesis and cannot really produce anything that has never existed before. Perhaps this can be put the other way round: The human id contains potentially the entire phylogenesis, and the actual experience only releases the one or the other form of reaction.

A corresponding law exists in biology, although it is not of very long standing. It was first formulated by Haeckel and is often called the fundamental law of biogenetics. In order to make the similarity plain I will state it in a form somewhat different from the usual: ‘The fertilised human egg knows all about phylogenesis; it recapitulates it in its own development.’ Naturally this statement of Haeckel refers only to the body.

I now want to show that not only the body but also the mind recapitulates the development of the species. If this can be proved, the statement quoted at the beginning of this paper is no longer an enigma. Knowledge of phylogenesis can then be reduced to knowledge of one’s own genesis, which is something that need not astonish us. This idea, if not so explicitly stated, guided Ferenczi in the interpretation of the eternal fish symbol.¹

I can naturally give no general proof because we know too little about mental development, especially that of the higher systems of the mind. I will confine myself to psychosexuality. In the first place, this is perhaps the most primitive mental stratum and thus closest to biology. Secondly, it is a sphere that has been fairly thoroughly explored, both from the phenomenological and the genetic point of view. Furthermore, we psycho-analysts have what might be called some conqueror’s rights in this sphere, for it was here that our master, Freud, was the first and certainly a most successful explorer.

Since he opened the way with his Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex² we have learnt that the concept of sexuality embraces a great deal more than is usually understood from impressions gained from normal, adult sexuality. We know that sexuality goes through a long and complex process of evolution before arriving at the final, mature form which Freud called genitality. It is now possible to show the main landmarks along this path, the so-called stages in organisation, which are named after those regions of the body that play the principal part in the particular organisation. These, in their order of appearance, are: the oral, the anal and the genital zones, and thus the individual phases are called oral, anal and genital. But it has not yet been asked why human sexuality, without exception, organises itself at first around the mouth, then around the anus, before reaching the adult genital form.

The only man to have put this question and brought its solution considerably nearer was Abraham. In his essay ‘Origins and Growth of Object-love’¹ he pointed to a very remarkable correspondence between the sequence followed in embryogenesis and that of the development of psychosexuality. In embryogenesis the first organs to be formed are the primitive mouth and the primitive intestine. In many chordates, especially in the simplest, the primitive mouth moves away from the final oral region of the body to the opposite pole and becomes there the anus. At the same time the muscles appear, first of all the jaw-muscle system, and only far later the sexual glands. All this has long been known, but we have to thank Abraham for having pointed out that the principal sexual regions appear in exactly the same sequence. He propounded another ‘special law’ according to which the psychosexual development ‘lags a long way behind this somatic development, like a late version or repetition of the same processes.’² I consider that this ‘special law’ of Abraham, which I want here to emphasise as the principle of retardation, is one of the most important laws in the whole mental and bodily evolution of man. But I must postpone any detailed treatment of this subject to another occasion.

We know, then, that the development of the body and that of psychosexuality take the same path; we also know that while in the case of the body the development takes place in a matter of weeks, the mind requires years for it; what we do not yet know is why just this path—oral, anal, genital—is the one traversed both by body and mind. I would like now to show that in animals sexual behaviour has been observed that is immediately recognisable as equivalent to the stages in the organisation of sexuality already known to us, and that the three phases of the psychosexual development of man discovered by Freud correspond to a similar triple gradation in phylogenetic sexual evolution. Thus it becomes understandable why there are neither more nor less than three stages in human sexual organisation, a fact at which, curiously enough, no one hitherto seems to have wondered.

Since the discovery of cells, biologists divide the sexual functions into two large groups: fertilisation and mating. By ‘fertilisation’ is understood the union of two, generally sexually differentiated, cells, called gametes (this may be reduced to the union of two mere nuclei). Closely related to this process is a remarkable phenomenon, the nuclear reduction, which will be discussed later. To the group of functions called ‘mating’ belong all the processes necessary to union of the gametes, but which are not carried out by the gametes themselves.

Now, in the case of many unicellulars, among them the most simple, sexuality consists exclusively of fertilisation. The ways and means by which this is brought about in the different species is astonishingly multiform. What is important to our thesis is that all biologists have interpreted this process as a mutual devouring; and that, in all unicellular forms of life which take in solid food, the union takes place, without exception, in the place where nourishment is otherwise taken in; that is to say, where a cell mouth has already been formed, through this cell mouth. The original form of sexuality is, then, closely related to the intake of solid food. There are, from the first, two possible explanations: either the sexual development and that from liquid to solid food took place independently of each other, and only later did the cell-mouth region become the sexual one, or else the pleasure experienced by these organisms at sexual union matures in them the desire for the intake of solid particles. The disturbing presence in their own plasma of substances of a type foreign to their own released a sequence of defensive processes which, in successful cases, led to the assimilation of the particles and so converted the originally merely pleasurable act into a practical one.

Biological factual material does not point to one rather than the other of these two hypotheses. All that we can gather from it suggests, however, a very close relation between nourishment and sexuality.¹

We are very often faced with a similar antinomy in biology: Does sexuality attach itself to already existing somatic functions, or, vice versa, does sexuality determine the development of new somatic functions? It is interesting that this very question crops up at the very beginnings of human psychosexuality. With infants we are not in a position to decide how far sucking is to be ascribed to the sexual and how far to the feeding instinct.

In the protists we see still another type of sexual phenomena. The above-mentioned living beings propagate themselves by dividing for a time, until for some reason sexual union takes place. The so-called vegetative individuals in whom no sexual function is observable are exactly similar to the sexual ones; the individual is the gamete itself (isogamous example: Pyramidomonas, Dunaliella; anisogamous: Chlamydomonas braunii).¹ We can, however, observe in the case of the more highly developed protists that individuals produced through ordinary division never fertilise each other. Multiplication by division continues until one such ‘vegetative’ individual divides in a particular manner departing from the normal. The cells thus produced are as a rule easily distinguishable from the ‘vegetative’ ones; morphologically they may either be similar (isogamous: Stephanosphaera, Haematococcus, Gonium pectorale) or already show sexual differentiation (anisogamous: Fudorina elegans, Volvox). These are the gametes which perform the sexual union. The ‘vegetative’ cells, on the other hand, represent a completely new phenomenon, that is to say a new generation. To distinguish them from the gametes they are known as gametocytes. While they never fertilise each other, they have their own sexual functions, only of a different kind—the formation and evacuation of gametes. This function can easily be interpreted as an equivalent of anal satisfaction, i.e. the formation and evacuation of excrement.

The more simple multicellular protists (Eudorina, Pandorina, etc.) are actually several unicellulars grouped and existing together, all similar to each other and having the same functions. From the point of view of sexuality this means that they represent a colony of gametes or, respectively, gametocytes. It is different when we come to the next higher stage in this group (Volvox). Here it is only certain specific cells which can produce gametes while the remainder cannot do so. Here a third generation is superimposed on the gametes and gametocytes, which Meisenheimer calls the ‘gametocyte-carrier’. At first it is cut off from all sexual activity and, in contrast to the ‘germ cell’, is known as ‘soma’. While it is doubtful if the soma is asexual or bisexual, it is certain that no sexual function can be observed in it. It produces the gametocytes, then lets the completed gametes escape in some manner, mostly through a fissure, and is then finished with them.¹ For the time being, no sexual differentiation is to be found in it, and so it remains in the lowest category of multicellular animals such as sponges and coelenterates, and also many worms.

It looks as if the newly evolved soma had secured an advantage over Eros. In fact, it has remained independent of him for quite a long time, and developed itself into complex, highly efficient forms whose sexual activity is almost completely confined to the primitive evacuation of gametes. But untiring Eros refused to leave the soma for long with this advantage. Step by step he subdued it and pressed it into his service. The history of this eventful process, which runs a different course in animals and plants, could be called the career of Eros.¹

I can here do no more than follow this interesting path in merest outline and only point to its main landmarks. The two original forms of sexual function are at first, as we have seen, absolutely independent of each other; the gametes unite with each other while the gametocytes evacuate, and the two generations exert no influence on each other. Already in the lowest group, however, often before the formation of the third generation, exceptions arise which show tentative attempts at the great evolution which is to follow. This takes place in two ways. At first the sexual differentiation of the gametes is hereditarily established; that is to say it is made independent of environment. Then the gametocytes are gradually compelled to sexual differentiation. In the case of Chlorogonium euchlorum, to keep to the Volvocales, morphologically the gametes resemble each other, while physiologically they are already sexually differentiated, and it is the same with the gametocytes. Determination of sex takes place at the first division after fertilisation; of the four cells produced two are of one sex and two of the other. Similar conditions prevail in the colony-forming Gonium and Pandorina. In the case of Eudorina elegans, on the other hand, the gametes are also morphologically different, while the gametocytes are still similar, although physiologically strictly differentiated in sex. It is the same with the Pleodorina. The next step forward is taken by the Volvox. Here the gametocytes are also heteromorphous and easily recognisable as male antheridia or female oogonia. The already evolved soma is, on the contrary, still undifferentiated sexually.

The other evolutionary path is that in which the other generations, besides the gametes, are slowly drawn into the function of uniting; and so mating begins. Thus in the higher species of all groups the female gamete loses mobility and finally becomes a motionless egg. (Example: Chlamydomonas coccifera.) The egg is then no longer evacuated but remains in the oogonium until fertilisation (Eudorina elegans, etc.). In many types the oogon then helps with the fertilising. A famous case is that of the Coleochaeta. In the case of this Chlorophycea the oogon must open itself to the fertilising spermatozoa, and becomes after fertilisation the so-called ‘fruit’. With many fungi, such as Albugo Bliti, Pyronema, Mucor and so on, no more gametes whatsoever are formed; it is the four-celled gametocytes that perform the sexual union.¹

Actually, the same thing happens with the Ciliates, the most highly evolved animal protists. Here the inter-pairing individuals are gametocytes, while the gamete generation is atrophied, and is only represented by the two different kinds of nuclei, the stationary and the mobile nuclei (Paramecia). In another respect these forms are still primitive; the gametocyte, i.e. the individual, is not yet sexually differentiated. In the case of the other sessile family in the same group, the Vorticellides, this step has already been taken. With them the female gametocyte remains in her place while the male swims about until he meets and fertilises her. This process, that can already be called mating, has become the rule in the plant world. We know that the pollen is a perfectly homologous counterpart of the gametocyte generation;¹ it produces the fertilising male gametes on the stigma of the female blossom and—the similarity to the anal function is to be observed here—makes them reach the egg cells through a duct. With few exceptions the sexual functions in plants are not evolved beyond this, which means that their soma is not further eroticised.

It is different with animals.² Here the gametocytes never become independent, but are slowly drawn together to form an organ, the gonad, that is called, respectively, ovary or spermary. This organ, that from its inception plays an important part in the organisational plan of the animal body, is gradually being removed farther and farther from the surface, towards the interior. Parallel with this process goes the participation of the soma in the sexual function of the gametocytes. In the more primitive types, in which the gametocytes are still somewhere on the surface of the body, a rent in them can release the gametes (Sponges, Hydra, Hydromedusa, etc.). In the higher coelenterates the gonads empty themselves into the interior of the body (the gastro-vascular space) and then reach the external world through the mouth. As we see, the soma is not affected by any sexual functions in either of these groups (sponges and coelenterates). Asexual propagation is correspondingly common (gemmulae in sponges, buds in polyps). In the next higher evolved group, that of worms, the picture suddenly becomes v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PART ONE INSTINCTS AND OBJECT-RELATIONS
• PART TWO PROBLEMS OF TECHNIQUE
• Index