The Principle of Multiple Function: Observations on Over-Determination

The immediate occasion for the observations which follow is the new framing of the theory of anxiety which Freud has given in his book, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety.1 Formerly it was assumed that anxiety originated in the id as a direct result of excessive, unrelieved tension and that during this process the ego was somehow overtaken as a defenseless victim. This Freud now modifies by stating that in a situation of danger, that is, in a threat of oncoming excessive, unrelieved tension, the ego may anticipate the latter in the form of anxiety, and that this anticipation then becomes the immediate signal which tends to induce the organism to adjust itself so as to avoid the danger—for example, flight, or any other appropriate protective measure—and thereby anxiety fulfils a biological function. This conception was naturally not intended to upset or displace the older theory, nor did Freud intend to say that anxiety could be caused first in this and then in that manner. The conception is, rather, that both manifestations—anxiety overpowering the ego and anxiety as a signal through the ego serving a biological function—constitute two sides of one phenomenon. In other words, Freud describes the phenomenon both from the angle of the id and from that of the ego. This two-sided consideration gives rise to the presumption that the same method might be adopted and fundamentally applied to all psychic phenomena, and that a double or generally speaking multiple conception of each psychic action would not only be admissible but altogether necessary in the light of psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis includes in the id everything by which man appears to be impelled to function, all the inner tendencies which influence him, each vis a tergo. The ego, on the other hand, represents the considered direction of man, all purposeful