Contribution to the Problem of Psycho-Pathological Stratification1

The psycho-analytic method of therapy consists essentially in bringing the patient to abandon his pathological defence mechanisms and work through his old-new conflicts in a different form, more adapted to inner and outer reality. The defence mechanisms in their turn determine the psycho-pathological stratification, since the rejected situations are covered by others, whereby stratification becomes an important problem of psycho-analytic theory and technique. Owing to its complexity, we are usually content to find one or another rule or regularity in this regard. The present paper deals with such a regularity, i.e. a certain succession and connexion of psychological situations which appear from a depth-psychological point of view as stratification. This seems to recur in every case, playing a central part in the structure of personality and of neurosis.

A brief consideration of instincts, which are the deepest determinants of this stratification, may serve as an introduction. The existence of instincts is inferred from observation, and different kinds of instincts are accepted according to the various points of view. The existence of an aim of the instinct implies that the latter may be satisfied or frustrated. Frustration leads, for instance in the case of the alimentary instinct, to hunger. However, if we adhere more precisely to the facts, things take on a somewhat different appearance. The first phenomenon in the succession of the biopsychological events in question is not the drive but the lack. The search after the elimination of this lack is the second step. To put it paradoxically, we might say that frustration comes before the instinct, that hunger comes before the impulse to eat. It is senseless to express it in this way, for the terms themselves come from a certain theory, namely that hunger is the expression of the frustration of the alimentary instinct. But the observation that first is the lack and then the impulse to overco