IN SEARCHING for the deeper meaning of any neurotic problem we can easily lose our bearings in a maze of intricacies. This is not unnatural, since we cannot hope to understand neurosis without facing its complexity. It is helpful, though, to stand aside from time to time in order to regain our perspective.
We have followed the development of the protective structure step by step. We have seen how one defense after another is built up until a comparatively static organization is established. And the element that impresses us most deeply in all this is the infinite labor that has gone into the process, a labor so tremendous that we are led again to wonder what it is that drives a person along so arduous a path and one so fraught with cost to himself. We ask ourselves what are the forces that make the structure so rigid and so difficult to change. Is the motive power of the whole process simply the fear of the disruptive potency of the basic conflict? An analogy may clear a way to the answer. Like any analogy it is not a precise parallel and so can only be applied in the broadest terms. Let us assume that a man with a shady past has found his way into a community by false pretense. He will, of course, live in dread of his former state’s being disclosed. In the course of time his situation advances; he makes friends, secures a job, founds a family. Cherishing his new position, he is beset with a new fear, the fear of losing these goods. His pride in his respectability alienates him from his unsavory past. He gives large sums to charity and even to his old associates in order to wipe out his old life. Meanwhile the changes that have been taking place in his personality proceed to involve him in new conflicts, with the result that in the end his having commenced his present life on false premises becomes merely an undercurrent in his disturbance.
So in the organization the neurotic has established, the basic conflict remains but is transmuted. Tempered in some respects, it is enhanced in others. Due, however, to the vicious circle inherent in the process, the ensuing conflicts become more urgent. What sharpens them most is the fact that every fresh defensive position further impairs his relations with himself and others— the soil, as we have seen, out of which conflicts grow. Moreover, as new elements, however wrapped in illusion—love or success, an achieved detachment or an established image—come to play an important part in his life, a fear of a different order is generated, the fear that something may jeopardize these treasures. And all the while, his increased alienation from himself deprives him more and more of the capacity to work on himself and so get rid of his difficulties. Inertia sets in, taking the place of a directed growth.
The protective structure, for all its rigidity, is highly brittle and itself gives rise to new fears. One of these is a fear that its equilibrium will be disturbed. While the structure lends a sense of balance, it is a balance that is easily upset. The person himself is not consciously aware of this threat, but he cannot help feeling it in a variety of ways. Experience has taught him that he can be thrown out of gear for no apparent reason, that he becomes infuriated, elated, depressed, fatigued, inhibited when he least anticipates or desires it. The sum total of such experiences gives him a feeling of uncertainty, a feeling that he cannot rely on himself. It is as if he were skating on thin ice. His imbalance may also be expressed in gait or posture, or in lack of skill in anything requiring physical balance.
The most concrete expression of this fear is a fear of insanity. When that is present in a marked degree it can be the paramount symptom that drives a person to seek psychiatric help. In such instances the fear is also determined by repressed impulses to do all sorts of “crazy” things, mostly of a destructive nature, without feeling responsible for them. The fear of insanity, however, is not to be construed as an indication that the person may actually go insane. Usually it is transitory and emerges only under conditions of acute distress. Its most poignant provocations are a sudden threat to the idealized image, or a mounting tension—most commonly due to unconscious rage—that puts excessive self-control in jeopardy. A woman, for example, who believed herself to be both even-tempered and courageous had an onset of panic when, in a difficult situation, she was struck with a feeling of helplessness, apprehension, and violent anger. Her idealized image, which had held her together as with a band of steel, suddenly burst and left her with a fear of going to pieces. We have already spoken of the panic that may seize a detached person when he is pulled from his shelter and brought into close proximity to others—when, for instance, he has to join the army or live with relatives. This terror, too, may be expressed as a fear of insanity; and in this instance psychotic episodes may actually occur. In analysis a like fear will emerge when a patient who has gone to great lengths to create an artificial harmony suddenly recognizes that he is divided.
That fear of insanity is most frequently precipitated by unconscious rage is demonstrated in analysis when, this fear having subsided, its residues take the form of an apprehension that one may insult, beat, or even kill people under conditions where self-control is impossible. The commission of an act of violence in sleep or under the influence of drink, anesthesia, or sexual excitement will then be feared. The rage itself may be conscious or it may appear in consciousness as an obsessive impulse toward violence, unconnected with any affect. On the other hand it may be entirely unconscious; in that case all the person feels are sudden spells of vague panic, accompanied perhaps by perspiration, dizziness, or a fear of fainting—signifying an underlying fear that the violent impulses might get out of control. Where the unconscious rage is externalized, the person may have a terror of thunderstorms, ghosts, burglars, snakes, and so on—that is, of any potentially destructive force outside himself.
But after all, fear of insanity is comparatively rare. It is simply the most conspicuous expression of the fear of losing equilibrium. Ordinarily that fear operates in more hidden ways. It appears then in vague, indefinite forms and can be precipitated by any change in life’s routine. Persons subject to it may feel profoundly disturbed at the prospect of making a journey or of moving or changing jobs or employing a new maid or whatever. Wherever possible they try to avoid such changes. Its threat to stability may be a factor in deterring patients from being analyzed, particularly if they have found a way of living that permits them to function fairly well. When they discuss the advisability of analysis they will be concerned about questions that at first glance seem reasonable enough: Will analysis up-root their marriage? Will it temporarily incapacitate them for work? Will it make them irritable? Will it interfere with their religion? As we shall see, such questions are in part determined by the patient’s hopelessness; he does not think it worth while to take any risks. But there is also a real apprehension behind his concern: he needs to be reassured that analysis will not upset his equilibrium. In such cases we can safely assume that the equilibrium is particularly shaky and that the analysis will be a difficult one.
Can the analyst give the patient the assurance he wants? No, he cannot. Every analysis is bound to create temporary upsets. What the analyst can do, however, is to go to the root of such questions, to explain to the patient what he really is afraid of, and tell him that while analysis will upset his present balance it will give him an opportunity to attain an equilibrium more solidly grounded.
Another fear born of the protective structure is a fear of exposure. Its source lies in the many pretenses that go into the development and maintenance of the structure itself. These will be described in connection with the impairment of moral integrity brought about by unresolved conflicts. For our present purpose we need only point out that a neurotic person wants to appear, both to himself and others, different from what he really is—more harmonious, more rational, more generous or powerful or ruthless. It would be hard to say whether he is more afraid of being exposed to himself of to others. Consciously, it is others he is most concerned about, and the more he externalizes his fear the more anxious he is that others should not find him out. He may say in that case that what he thinks of himself does not matter; his own discovery of his failings he can take in his stride, if only others can be kept in the dark. This is not so, but it is the way he feels consciously and indicates the degree to which externalization is present.
Fear of being exposed may either appear as a nebulous feeling that one is a bluff or may be attached to some particular quality only remotely associated with what one is really bothered about. A person may be afraid that he is not as intelligent, as competent, as well educated, as attractive as he is believed to be, so shifting the fear to qualities that do not reflect on his character. Thus a patient recalled that in his early adolescence he was haunted by the fear that his being at the head of his class was due entirely to bluffing. Each time he changed schools he was sure that this time he would be found out, and the fear persisted even when again he captured the top rank. His feeling puzzled him, but he was unable to put his finger on the cause of it. He could not gain an insight into his problem because he was on the wrong track: his fear of exposure did not at all concern his intelligence but had merely been shifted to that sphere. In reality it concerned his unconscious pretense of being a good fellow who did not care about grades, whereas the fact was that he was obsessed by a destructive need to triumph over others. This illustration leads to a pertinent generalization. Fear of being a bluff is always related to some objective factor, but it is usually not the one the person himself thinks it is. Symptomatically, its outstanding expression is blushing or a fear of blushing. Since it is an unconscious pretense that the patient fears will be disclosed, the analyst will make a serious mistake if, noting the patient’s fear of being found out, he searches for some experience that he thinks the latter is ashamed of and is hiding. But the patient may not be holding back anything of the sort. What happens then is that he becomes more and more fearful that there must be something particularly bad in him which he is unconsciously loath to reveal. Such a situation is conducive to self-condemnatory scrutiny but not to constructive work. He will perhaps go into further detail about sexual episodes or destructive impulses. But the fear of exposure will remain so long as the analyst fails to recognize that the patient is caught in a conflict and that he himself is working on only one aspect of it.
Fear of exposure can be provoked by any situation which—to the neurotic—means being put to a test. This would include starting a new job, making new friends, entering a new school, examinations, social gatherings, or any kind of performance that might make him conspicuous even if it is no more than taking part in a discussion. Frequently what is consciously conceived as a fear of failure actually has to do with exposure, and hence is not allayed by success. The person will merely feel that he “got by” this time, but what about the next? And if he should fail, he will only be the more convinced that he has always been a bluff and that this time he was caught. One consequence of such a feeling is shyness, particularly in any new situation. Another is wariness in the face of being liked or appreciated. The person will think, consciously or unconsciously: “They like me now, but if they really knew me they would feel otherwise.” Naturally this fear plays a role in analysis, whose explicit purpose is to “find out.”
Every new fear requires a new set of defenses. Those erected against fear of exposure fall into opposite categories and hinge on the whole character structure. On the one hand there is a tendency to avoid test situations of any kind; and if they cannot be avoided, to be reserved, self-controlled, and wear an impenetrable mask. On the other hand there is an unconscious attempt to become so perfect a bluff that exposure need not be feared. The latter attitude is not defensive alone: magnificent bluffing is also used by individuals of the aggressive type who live vicariously, as a means of impressing those whom they wish to exploit; any attempt to question them, then, will be met by a wily counter-attack. I refer here to openly sadistic persons. We shall see later how this trait fits in with the entire structure.
We shall understand the fear of exposure when we have answered two questions: What is a person afraid to disclose? and, What is it that he fears in case he should be exposed? The first we have already answered. In order to answer the second we must deal with still another fear emanating from the protective structure, the fear of disregard, humiliation, and ridicule. While the ricketiness of the structure is responsible for the fear of a disturbed equilibrium, and the unconscious fraudulence involved breeds fear of exposure, the fear of humiliation comes from an injured self-esteem. We have touched on this matter in other connections. Both the creation of an idealized image and the process of externalization are attempts at repairing damaged self-respect, but as we have seen, both only injure it still further.
If we take a bird’s-eye view of what happens to self-esteem in the course of a neurotic development, we come upon two pairs of seesaw processes. While the level of realistic self-esteem falls, up comes an unrealistic pride—pride in being so good, so aggressive, so unique, so omnipotent or omniscient. On the other seesaw we find a dwarfing of the neurotic’s actual self counterweighted by the raising of others to the stature of giants. Through the eclipse of large areas of the self by repression and inhibition as well as by idealization and externalization, the individual loses sight of himself; he feels, if he does not actually become, like a shadow without weight or substance. And meanwhile his need of others and his fear of them make them not only more formidable to him but more necessary. Hence his center of gravity comes to rest more in others than in himself and he concedes to them prerogatives that are rightly his own. Its effect is to give their evaluation of himself undue importance, while his own self-evaluation loses significance. This lends to the opinion of others an overwhelming power.
The above sets of processes taken together account for the neurotic’s extreme vulnerability to disregard, humiliation, and ridicule. And these processes are so much a part of every neurosis that hypersensitivity in this respect is most common. If we are cognizant of the manifold sources of the fear of disregard we can see that to remove or even diminish it is no simple task. It can recede only to the extent that the entire neurosis recedes.
In general, the consequence of this fear is to set the neurotic apart from others and make him hostile to them. But more important is its power to clip the wings of those afflicted with it to any strong degree. They do not dare to expert anything of others or to set high goals for themselves. They do not dare to approach people who seem superior to them in any way; they do not dare to express an opinion even though they may have a real contribution to make; they do not dare to exercise creative abilities even when they have them; they do not dare to make themselves attractive, to try to impress, to seek a better position, and so on and so on. When tempted to reach out in any of these directions the ghastly prospect of ridicule holds them back and they take refuge in reserve and dignity.
More imperceptible than the fears we have described is one that may be regarded as a condensation of all of them as well as of other fears that arise in a neurotic development. This is the fear of changing anything in oneself. Patients react to the idea of changing by adopting either of two extreme attitudes. They either leave the whole subject nebulous, feeling that a change will occur by some sort of miracle at some hazy future time, or they attempt to change too rapidly, with too little understanding. In the first instance they harbor a mental reservation that catching a glimpse of a problem or admitting a frailty should be enough; the idea that in order to fulfill themselves they must actually change their attitudes and drives comes as a shock to them and makes them uneasy. They cannot help seeing the validity of the proposition, but unconsciously they reject it all the same. The reverse position amounts to an unconscious pretense of changing. It is in part wishful thinking, growing out of the patient’s intolerance of any imperfection in himself; but it is also determined by his unconscious feeling of omnipotence—the mere wish to have a difficulty disappear should be enough to dispel it.
Behind the fear of changing are qualms about changing for the worse—that is, losing one’s idealized image, turning into the rejected self, becoming like everybody else, or being left by analysis an empty shell; terror of the unknown, of having to relinquish safety devices and satisfactions hitherto gained, particularly those of chasing after phantoms that promise solution; and finally a fear of being unable to change—a fear that will be better understood when we come to discuss the neurotic’s hopelessness.
All these fears spring from unresolved conflicts. But because we must expose ourselves to them if we want eventually to find integration, they also stand as a hindrance to our facing ourselves. They are the purgatory, as it were, through which we must wander before we can attain salvation.