Meetings of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

April 16, 1962. RECOMPENSES FOR LEARNING. Otto E. Sperling, M.D.

Learning of unpleasurable material without immediate reward is a difficult task for the ego, especially if it is aided only by precarious sublimations. In this paper only three kinds of learning are considered: learning in school, learning in psychoanalysis, and learning as a mechanism of war neurosis.

The ego can make the suffering more bearable by balancing it with some recompense. Beside the obvious recompenses, some subtler recompenses can be observed which are mostly of a sadistic or masochistic nature. The demand for proof, for instance, can be a disguise for sadistic tendencies. A typical sequence might run: effort (sacrifice, obedience)—suffering—self-pity—weakening of self-control—recompense—feeling of guilt—more effort. Recompense differs from the secondary gain in that it follows a socially acceptable effort of the ego while the secondary gain accompanies a symptom. The mother's tears, the father's despair, the community's expense for school buildings, and the teacher's efforts mobilize the student's feelings of guilt. Some students are willing to make the sacrifice of studying only if the teacher also is willing to make some sacrifice. On the other hand, it seems that knowledge is the more appreciated, the more difficult it is to acquire. Some students can acquire knowledge only if they add to the necessary suffering a further unnecessary sacrifice of sleep, social life, or regular meals, or if they arouse themselves from sleep in the early hours of the morning.

Parents can arouse anxiety in the child in order to facilitate the control of impulses. Freud showed that the ego can mobilize anxiety in order to facilitate self-control. The author postulates that not only can one person arouse a feeling of guilt in another, or seduce another to permit gratification of id derivatives, but that the ego can mobilize feelings of guilt or rewards by the superego on the one hand, and a brea