Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/160

 152 REPORTS

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Brill, Secretary and Treasurer. Recommendations were made to Professor Freud concerning the appointment of associate editors to the Journal.

Meeting on February i6, ip2o. Dr. Stern read an abstract of Freud's "Jenseits des Lustprinzips".

After recapitulating the development of the theory of the pleasure-pain principle, Freud goes on to expound his conception of the mechanism of the traumatic and the war neuroses, and the dreams of patients suffering from them. Such dreams are to be explained, according to Freud, on some theory other than that of the wish-fulfilment. The absence of a mechanism for the discharge of affect is responsible for such dreams, and the repeated occurrence of such dreams is an attempt of the patient to elTect a discharge or release of affect. Patients are predisposed to traumatic or war neuroses when fright is not negatived by a pre-existing anxiety or fear; fright is an emotion resulting from an unexpected danger. A Wiederholungszwang (an impulse to repeat) Freud believes in certain instances to precede a wish, as a determinant for an act, as illustrated in the play of children, and in the phenomena of the transference during a psychoanalytic treatment; the Wiederholungs- zwang dominates the wish-fulfilment principle in such instances. Freud expounds this theory by means of further speculation con- cerning the function and development of consciousness, drawing an analogy from the functions of the outer layer of the protozoa. One function of the outer surface is to exclude the entrance of destructive stimuli; when destructive stimuli break through, as in shock, the pleasure-principle is abrogated, and the necessity arises for the disposal of the inrushing stimuli by means of the occupation energy (Besetsungsenergie), which converts the inrushing energy into static energy (a process that may be likened to chemo- taxis). A traumatic neurosis is due to a rupture or break in the defensive mechanism, with inability of the system to convert the inrushing energy into static (ruhende) energy. Preservation of the ego is now the object to be attained, and that is primary to the wish-fulfilment principle. The dreams would then be an attempt on the part of the ego to convert the free floating (freibewegende) energy into static (ruhende) energy, by having the necessary dread or anxiety in the dream. The Wiederholungszwang attempts to bind the free floating energy, which threatens the existence of the ego.