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WorkSigmund Freud

Späte Schriften zur Ich-Psychologie

(lit.: Late Writings on Ego Psychology)

A wax writing-pad, a joke on the way to the gallows, and the question of how neurosis and psychosis each lose the world.

by Sigmund Freud30 passages held

  • German, the original language
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First published
(aged 68)
Original language
German

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Overview

This volume, put together for the site, gathers three short papers that Sigmund Freud wrote in the years after The Ego and the Id, each applying its new picture of the mind to a single question; each first appeared on its own. "The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis" (1924) corrects a formula he had recently offered, that neurosis obeys reality while psychosis abandons it. Every neurosis, he admits, also pulls a patient away from the world. The difference is what happens next: the neurotic avoids a piece of reality and refuses to know about it, while the psychotic disowns it and builds a new one, often from the store of fantasy that both draw on. "A Note upon the 'Mystic Writing-Pad'" (1925) starts from a small writing device then newly on sale, a slab of dark wax under a sheet of transparent celluloid and waxed paper. A stylus leaves dark writing; lift the sheet and the writing vanishes, though its grooves stay in the wax. Paper keeps everything but fills up, a slate takes anything but keeps nothing, and the mind, like the device, does both, receiving each new impression on a fresh surface while storing permanent traces below. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida later made the note the centre of his essay "Freud and the Scene of Writing". "Humour" (1927) returns to the subject of Freud's book on jokes. A condemned man led to the gallows on a Monday remarks that the week is starting well: in such humour, Freud suggests, the super-ego speaks kindly to a frightened ego, the way a parent tells a child that the dangerous world is only a game. Not everyone, he adds, has the gift.

Key concepts

What is the difference between repressing and disowning reality?

Repression, the neurotic way, pushes away the wish that a painful fact would excite, while the fact itself is acknowledged. Disowning, Freud's Verleugnung, the psychotic way, refuses the fact itself. Neurosis, in Freud's summary, does not deny reality but will not know about it; psychosis denies it and tries to replace it.

What is the world of fantasy in these papers?

It is a region of the mind that was set apart from the outside world when the reality principle took over, and spared its demands, like a nature reserve. The ego is loosely attached to it. Both neurosis and psychosis draw on it, as a storehouse of material and models, when they replace a piece of unbearable reality with something closer to their wishes.

What are the two systems the writing-pad stands for?

One is the system of perception and consciousness, which receives every new impression but keeps no permanent trace, so that it is always ready again. Behind it lie the memory systems, which hold lasting traces of what was perceived without being conscious of them. The celluloid sheet and the wax slab of the pad correspond to these two.

How does humour differ from a joke?

A joke, Freud sums up, is the contribution the unconscious makes to comedy; humour is the contribution of the super-ego. In a joke a thought is briefly handed over to the unconscious and comes back as a pun or a twist. In humour the super-ego shifts its weight and comforts the ego instead of judging it, and the pleasure is gentler and less intense.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Two Ways of Losing the World

Does a neurotic person stay in touch with reality while a psychotic one loses it? "The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis" corrects Freud's own neat formula.

Every neurosis, Freud concedes, also disturbs a person's relation to reality. The difference lies in what follows. A young woman in love with her brother-in-law forgets the thought she had at her sister's deathbed and represses the love; a psychotic would have denied the death itself. Neurosis avoids a piece of reality and lends another piece a secret meaning, much as children's play does. Psychosis disowns reality and builds a new one, drawing on the same reserve of fantasy that was set aside in childhood.

  • psychosis
  • neurosis
  • reality testing
  • reality
  • denial
  • adaptation
  • psychopathology
  • ego

Enter a dialogue

A Toy That Remembers

How can the mind take in endless new impressions and still keep the old ones? "A Note upon the 'Mystic Writing-Pad'" finds a model in a children's gadget.

Paper keeps writing but fills up; a slate can be wiped but keeps nothing. The writing-pad, a wax slab under a sheet of waxed paper and celluloid, does both: lift the sheet and the surface is clear, while the grooves remain in the wax beneath. Freud sees in it his old picture of the mind, a perceiving layer that keeps no traces over a deeper system that stores them. He adds a guess that our idea of time comes from perception working in rapid pulses.

  • memory
  • perception
  • consciousness
  • writing
  • technology
  • analogy
  • time
  • unconscious

Enter a dialogue

The Kindness of Humour

What is going on when someone jokes in the face of disaster? "Humour" returns to the jokes book with the new map of the mind in hand.

A man led to the gallows on a Monday says the week is starting well. Freud finds in such humour something grand: the self refuses to be hurt by reality and turns it into an occasion for pleasure. Unlike resignation, it is defiant. His explanation uses the super-ego, which here, unusually, comforts the frightened ego, the way a parent tells a child that the dangerous world is only a game. Not everyone, he adds, is capable of this rare and precious gift.

  • humor
  • comedy
  • superego
  • pleasure
  • pleasure principle
  • emotion
  • affect

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
30
distinct concepts
54
by passages held, corpus-wide
#729

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “psychosis” and “reality testing”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 12 pairings. 39 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
psychosisreality testing7
neurosispsychosis6
neurosisreality testing6
memoryperception5
analogymemory4
analogyperception4
egohumor4
egoneurosis2
egopsychosis2
egoreality testing1
memorypsychosis1
memoryreality testing1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1900 The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Traumdeutung)

    Begun from his own dreams in the 1890s and enlarged in edition after edition, this is where Freud sets out the method of interpretation that his later books apply to slips of the tongue, jokes and myths.

     DE
  2. 1901 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens)

    The dream book's method carried into waking life; its slips and forgettings became the opening part of the lectures Freud later gave to beginners in Vienna.

     DE
  3. 1905 Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten)

    Freud's only book-length study of comedy, and the one most built from borrowed material: puns, anecdotes and Jewish jokes, each taken apart in turn.

     DE
  4. 1907 Frühe Schriften zu Religion und Dichtung

    Two early excursions from the clinic, gathered here in one volume: the seed of Freud's later books on religion, and his short account of where a writer's stories come from.

     DE
  5. 1910 Zur Theorie des Unbewußten

    Four theoretical papers written between 1910 and 1915 and gathered here in one volume, on the road from the dream book to the metapsychological essays of 1915 — the last of the four is one of those essays.

     DE
  6. 1913 Spätere Schriften zu Dichtung und Mythos

    Two essays from 1913 and 1917, gathered here in one volume, that show Freud the reader of Shakespeare and Goethe: the dream-book method applied to a stage motif and to the first page of a famous autobiography.

     DE
  7. 1913 Totem and Taboo (Totem und Tabu)

    The first of Freud's books on society and religion, where he moves from the patient to the human species; Group Psychology, The Future of an Illusion and his last book, on Moses, all build on its story of the murdered father.

     DE
  8. 1914 On Narcissism: An Introduction (Zur Einführung des Narzißmus)

    A short essay written as Jung was breaking with Freud, and the hinge between his early theory of the drives and the later picture of ego and super-ego.

     DE
  9. 1915 Instincts and their Vicissitudes (Triebe und Triebschicksale)

    The paper that opens Freud's 1915 theoretical series by defining its basic term; the companion essays on repression and on the unconscious build on it.

     DE
  10. 1915 Schriften aus dem Weltkrieg

    Freud's direct responses to the First World War, gathered in one volume on this site: a long essay of 1915 on disillusionment and death, and a short one of 1916 on transience and mourning.

     DE
  11. 1915 The Unconscious (Das Unbewußte)

    Freud's fullest account of what he meant by the unconscious, written in wartime Vienna eight years before The Ego and the Id redrew his map of the mind.

     DE
  12. 1917 Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse)

    Freud's own introduction to his work, and the closest thing he wrote to a textbook: his books on dreams and on everyday slips retold for listeners, then carried on into a general theory of neurosis.

     DE
  13. 1919 The 'Uncanny' (Das Unheimliche)

    A rare venture by Freud into aesthetics, a field he says psychoanalysts seldom feel drawn to, written in 1919 beside the first draft of Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

     DE
  14. 1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Jenseits des Lustprinzips)

    The hinge of Freud's later work: the 1920 book that introduces the death drive, followed within three years by the new map of the mind in The Ego and the Id.

     DE
  15. 1921 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse)

    The bridge between Freud's speculations on prehistory and his new model of the mind: its chapter on a "grade in the ego" sets out the ego ideal that The Ego and the Id would rename two years later.

     DE
  16. 1923 The Ego and the Id (Das Ich und das Es)

    The book in which Freud's later model of the mind takes its final shape; the essays and books that follow it, on anxiety, religion and civilisation, all speak its language of ego, id and super-ego.

     DE
  17. 1924 Späte Schriften zur Ich-Psychologie you are here DE
  18. 1926 Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (Hemmung, Symptom und Angst)

    Written three years after The Ego and the Id, it rebuilds the theory of neurotic symptoms in that book's terms, starting from the difference between a symptom and an inhibition, a restriction the ego places on itself.

     DE
  19. 1927 The Future of an Illusion (Die Zukunft einer Illusion)

    Freud's most direct case against religion, written fourteen years after Totem and Taboo had traced it to the murdered father, and the opening of the late cultural writings that continue in Civilization and Its Discontents.

     DE
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