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= D.: Bahnung.–Es.: facilitación.–Fr.: frayage.–I.: facilitazione.–P.: facilitação.
Term used by Freud at a time when he was putting forward a neurological model of the functioning of the psychical apparatus (1895): the excitation, in passing from one neurone to another, runs into a certain resistance; where its passage results in a permanent reduction in this resistance, there is said to be facilitation; excitation will opt for a facilitated pathway in preference to one where no facilitation has occurred.
The notion of facilitation is central to the description of the ‘neuronal apparatus’ proposed by Freud in his ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’ (1950a [1895]). Jones points out that the idea played an important part in Exner's book published a year previously, Project for a Physiological Explanation for Psychical Phenomena (Entwurf au einer physiologischen Erklärung der psychischen Erscheinungen, 1894) 1. Though he had not abandoned it, Freud makes scant use of the concept in his metapsychological writings. It does recur, however, when he is brought once again–in Beyond the (1920g)–to use a physiological model 2.
= D.: Misserfolgsneurose.–Es.: neurosis de fracaso.–Fr.: névrose d'échec.–I.: neyrosi di scacco.–P.: neurose de fracasso.
Term introduced by René Laforgue which has a very wide application: it denotes the psychological structure of a whole variety of subjects, ranging from those patients who, in a general way, seem to be the artisans of their own misfortunes, to those who cannot bear to obtain the very thing that they had appeared to desire the most ardently.
When psycho-analysts speak of failure neurosis, it is failure as a consequence of neurotic maladjustment that they have in mind rather than failure as a precipitating cause of neurosis (where the disturbance is a reaction to actual failure).
The notion of failure neurosis is