Nature and Classification of the So-Called Psychosomatic Phenomena

Not long ago, in a paper published in Psychiatry,1 Judah Marmor asserted—as an argument against Freud's instinct theory—that it can be proved that the goals and characteristics of a child's impulsive strivings are formed through the influence of experience stemming from environmental factors. That this fact would contradict Freud's theories is absurd. The demonstration of the ways in which experience forms desires and fears in a child's mind is the very essence of Freud's psychoanalytic method. The misunderstanding is based partly on a terminological error. Freud's concept of Trieb does not include the idea of absolute unchangeability and rigidity—otherwise he could not have examined the Triebschicksale2—but the English word 'instinct' does carry these implications. The error, of course, was not only one of mistranslation. So-called 'culturalism' generally misjudged Freud when it considered him solely 'biologically oriented'. Other authors of like bias, while correctly stressing the fact that social institutions shape the character structure of the people living under them, have given little or no consideration to the nature of the raw material out of which character structures are formed.3 This shaping is done through gratifications and frustrations of relatively uniform biological needs,