It is quite true that anyone who, owing to sexual noxae, has made himself disposed to neurasthenia, tolerates intellectual work and the psychical exigencies of life badly; but no one ever becomes neurotic through work or excitement alone.
It was not until later, when I was a newly-fledged map
of science and hard pressed by the exigencies of life and when I had to wait so long
before finding a post here, that I must sometimes have reflected that my father had
meant well in planning this marriage for me, to make good the loss in which the original
catastrophe had involved my whole existence.’
Then I am inclined to believe that the childhood scene we are
considering emerged at this time, when you were struggling
This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 1, Page 544314
for your daily bread—provided, that is, that you can confirm my
idea that it was during this same period that you first made the acquaintance of the
Alps.
Hypotheses, whose justification must be
looked for in other directions, tell us that at first the apparatus's efforts were
directed towards keeping itself so far as possible free from stimuli;1 consequently its first structure followed the plan of a reflex apparatus,
so that any sensory excitation impinging on it could be promptly discharged along a
motor path. But the exigencies of life interfere with this simple function, and it is to
them, too, that the apparatus owes the impetus to further development. The exigencies of
life confront it first in the form of the major somatic needs.
It seems to me to follow from a great deal of information I have received that children refuse to believe the stork theory and that from the time of this first deception and rebuff they nourish a distrust of adults and have a suspicion of there being something forbidden which is
This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 7, Page 175
[The part played in mental development by the ‘exigencies of life’ was discussed by Freud in Chapter VII (C) of The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed.
From, these contributions has grown civilization's common assets in material and ideal wealth
This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 7, Page 148186
Besides the exigencies of life, no doubt it has been family feelings, derived from erotism, that have induced the separate individuals to make this renunciation.
Society was now based on complicity in the common crime; religion was based on the sense of guilt and the remorse attaching to it; while morality was based partly on the exigencies of this society and partly on the penance demanded by the sense of guilt.
We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of
This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 11, Page 14
[The first section of Freud's paper on ‘The Unconscious’ (1915e), Standard Ed.
Side by side with the exigencies of life, love is the great educator; and it is by the love of those nearest him that the incomplete human being is induced to respect the decrees of necessity and to spare himself the punishment that follows any infringement of them.
It is faced, in short, by the eternal, primaeval exigencies of life, which are with us to this day.
It is, once again, frustration by reality, or, if we are to give it its true, grand name, the ‘exigencies of life’—Necessity ('Ανάγϰη [Ananke]).
[‘Reale Not’, i.e. the exigencies imposed by reality. For what follows, cf. paragraph (3) of ‘Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning’ (1911b), Standard Ed.
Both neurosis and psychosis are thus the expression of a rebellion on the part of the id against the external world, of its unwillingness—or, if one prefers, its incapacity—to adapt itself to the exigencies of reality, to Ανάγϰη [Necessity].
This domain has since been kept free from the demands of the exigencies of life, like a kind of ‘reservation’1 it is not inaccessible to the ego, but is only loosely attached to it.
Character-traits which critics of every epoch have brought up against women—that they show less sense of justice than men, that they are less
This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 14, Page 28257
ready to submit to the great exigencies of life, that they are more often influenced in their judgements by feelings of affection or hostility—all these would be amply accounted for by the modification in the formation of their super-ego which we have inferred above.
I cannot honestly see that any difficulties are created by patients' demands for ethical values; ethics are not based on an external world order but on the inescapable exigencies of human cohabitation. I do not believe that I behave as if there were ‘one life, one meaning in life,’ that was an excessively friendly thought on your part, and it always reminds me of the monk who insisted on regarding Nathan as a thoroughly good Christian.
We can only be satisfied, therefore, if we assert that the process of civilization is a modification which the vital process experiences under the influence of a task that is set it by Eros and instigated by Ananke—by the exigencies of reality; and that this task is one of uniting separate individuals into a community bound together by libidinal ties.
The hypothesis we have adopted of a psychical apparatus extended in space, expediently put together, developed by the exigencies of life, which gives rise to the phenomena of consciousness only at one particular point and under certain conditions—this hypothesis has put us in a position to establish psychology on foundations similar to those of any other science, such, for instance, as physics.
70
We have adopted the hypothesis of a mental apparatus, extended in space, appropriately constructed, developed by the exigencies of life, which gives rise to the phenomena of consciousness only at one particular point and under certain conditions.
In order to accomplish such an action (which deserves to be named ‘specific’2), an effort is required which is independent of endogenous Qή and in general greater, since the individual is being subjected to conditions which may be described as the exigencies of life.3 In consequence, the nervous system is obliged to abandon its original trend to inertia (that is, to bringing the level [of Qή] to zero).
4 All the functions of the nervous system can be comprised either under the aspect of the primary function or of the secondary one imposed by the exigencies of life.
[2] [b] Second Principal Theorem: The Neurone Theory
The idea of combining with this Qή theory the knowledge of the neurones arrived at by recent histology is the second pillar of this thesis.
Under the compulsion of the exigencies of life, the nervous system was obliged to lay up a store of Qή [p.
It was from this latter obligation, indeed, that, owing to the exigencies of life, a compulsion came about towards further biological development [p.