The Psychology of Study and Examinations

Since Freud has given us insight into the operations of the unconscious, we have learnt to appreciate the significance that the tendencies and institutions of civilisation have in the id, and we can see how the structure of all mental activities is built up in symbolic ideas and sublimations out of sexual instincts. Wherever such sublimations miscarry our mental activities must inevitably again succumb to sexualization; they then become associated with the sense of guilt which is thus restimulated and end in failure. I propose to illustrate this process from the analysis of a woman student who was inhibited in her studies; the conclusions resulting from this analysis will throw light on the psychology of examinations.

Freud showed us long ago in the case of certain individuals that examinations are associated with early infantile experiences and may become the instrument of punishment tendencies. In the Traumdeutung he says:

'These are ineradicable recollections of the punishments we suffered for naughtiness as children. As such they reassert themselves within us at the two crucial points of our studies, at the dies iroe, dies illa of the examinations. The examination dread of neurotics, too, is reinforced by this infantile fear. Once we have ceased to be students it is no longer the parents or tutors who serve to punish us; life's chain of causations eventually takes over our education, and now we dream of the Matric. or of our M.B. (and who, even among the best of us, has not trembled at the thought of them?) whenever we may expect a punishment to fall because we have not done something right, not carried it out thoroughly, or whenever we feel the load of a responsibility.'

This patient, a woman student twenty-three years old, was not troubled at all by fear of examinations; on the contrary she had been remarkably calm, almost indifferent, when she took her first M.B. Soon after, however, a severe inhibition against the work for a further examination broke out