= D.: Bindung.–Es.: ligazón.–Fr: liaison,–I.: legame.–P.: ligação.
Term used by Freud in a very general way and on comparatively distinct levels (as much on the biological level as on that of the psychical apparatus) to denote an operation tending to restrict the free flow of excitations, to link ideas to one another and to constitute and maintain relatively stable forms.
Although the term ‘binding’ ought to be seen in connection with the contrast between free energy and bound energy*, its meaning is not exhausted by this purely economic connotation. Beyond its strictly technical use, the expression–which occurs at different points in Freud’s work–answers a permanent conceptual need.
Rather than enumerate its uses, we have chosen to outline its importance at three stages of Freud's metapsychology where it plays a cardinal role:
I. In the ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’ (1950a [1895]), Bindung denotes primarily the fact that the energy of the neuronal apparatus proceeds from the free to the bound state, or else that it is already in the bound state. For Freud, this binding implies the existence of a mass of neurones which are well connected and which have good facilitations between them–in other words, the ego: ‘…the ego itself is a mass like this of neurones which hold fast to their cathexis–are, that is, in a bound state; and this, surely, can only happen as a result of the effect they have on one another’ (la).
This bound mass itself exerts an inhibitory or binding effect on other processes. When Freud concerns himself, for example, with the fate of certain memories relating to painful experiences (Schmerzerlebnisse) which upon recollection ‘arouse affect and also unpleasure’, he describes them as ‘untamed’ (ungebändigf): ‘If a passage of thought comes up against a still untamed mnemic image of this kind, then its indications of quality, often of a sensory kind, are generated, with a feeling of unpleasure and an inclination to discharge, the combination of which characterizes a particular affect, and the passage of thought is interrupted.’ Before such a memory can be tamed, a ‘relation to the ego or to ego-cathexes’ must be established; ‘particularly large and repeated binding from the ego is required before this facilitation to unpleasure can be counterbalanced’ (lb).
Two ideas seem to need emphasis here:
a. The binding of energy presupposes the establishment of relations, of facilitations, with an already cathected system which forms a whole: in other words, ‘fresh neurones’ are drawn into the ego (lc).
b. Throughout the ‘Project’, Bindung has its opposite pole: Entbindung (literally, ‘unbinding’); this term denotes a trigger mechanism involving the sudden release of energy, such as that which occurs in muscles or glands, where the effect, measured quantitatively, far surpasses the quantity of energy that provokes it. The term is generally found in the composite forms: Untustent-bindung (release of unpleasure), Lustentbindung (release of pleasure), Sexualent-bindung (sexual release [of excitation]), Ajfektentbindung (release of affect) and, in other texts, Angstentbindung (release of anxiety). In all these cases what is referred to is a sudden emergence of a free energy tending irresistably towards discharge.
When we bring these terms together we are inevitably surprised by the economic approach that they imply: that the same term should be used to describe both the release of pleasure and the release of unpleasure would seem to run counter to the basic idea that pleasure and unpleasure are antagonistic processes affecting a single energy–involving the reduction of tension in the former case and the increase of it in the latter; it would be quite inconsistent with the Freudian thesis were we to suppose that pleasure and unpleasure correspond to qualitatively distinct forms of energy.
The Entbindung–Bindung opposition seems particularly useful for getting out of this difficulty. In its antagonism to the bound state of the ego, every release of primary–process energy–no matter whether it tends to increase or to diminish the absolute level of tension–poses a threat to the ego’s relatively constant level. We may suppose that it is the release of sexual excitation, in particular, which in Freud’s view checks the ego’s binding function in this way (see ‘Deferred Action’, ‘Seduction’).
II. With Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g) the problem of binding is not only brought to the forefront of Freud’s thought–it is also posed in a more complex fashion. It is apropos of the subject’s repetition of the trauma, taken as the model of the repetition of all unpleasurable experiences, that Freud has recourse once again to the notion of binding. He returns to the idea, present in his work from the ‘Project’ onwards, that it is an already heavily cathected system that is capable of psychically binding an influx of energy. But the case of the trauma, seen as an extensive breach of the ego’s boundaries, allows us to perceive this binding capacity at the very moment when it is threatened. As a result the binding process stands in an unusual relationship to the pleasure principle and the primary process. Whereas binding is usually looked upon as an influence exerted by the ego upon the primary process–namely, the introduction of the inhibition which characterizes the secondary process and the reality principle–Freud is led in this instance to ask himself whether in certain cases the very ‘dominance of the pleasure principle’ does not depend upon the prior accomplishment of ‘the task of mastering or binding excitations’, a task which ‘would have precedence–not, indeed, in opposition to the pleasure principle, but independently of it and to some extent in disregard of it’ (2).
Even if this binding process works ultimately for the benefit of the ego, Freud seems nevertheless to accord it an independent significance, in that he sees it as the basis of the repetition compulsion*, and in that he makes this compulsion, in the last reckoning, into the very mark of the instinctual as such. Thus the question remains open whether there exist two types of binding: one, long–recognised, which correlates with the notion of the ego, and another, closer to the laws governing unconscious desire and the organisation of phantasy–the laws, in others words, of the primary process–where the free energy itself, as identified by psycho-analysis, is not a massive discharge of excitation but rather an energy which flows along chains of ideas and implies associative ‘links’.
III. Lastly, in the framework of Freud’s final theory of instincts, binding becomes the major characteristic of the life as opposed to the death instincts: ‘The aim of [Eros] is to establish even greater unities and to preserve them thus–in short, to bind together; the aim of [the destructive instinct] is, on the contrary, to undo connections and so to destroy things’ (3).
In the ultimate formulation of the theory, the agency of the ego and the instinctual energy which this has at its command are essentially located on the side of the life instincts: this energy ‘would still retain the main purpose of Eros–that of uniting and binding–in so far as it helps towards establishing the unity, or tendency to unity, which is particularly characteristic of the ego’ (4).
* * *
In conclusion, it seems to us that the psycho-analytic problematic of binding can be approached from three semantic directions which are suggested by the word itself: the idea of a relation between several terms which are linked up, for example, by an associative chain (Verbindung); the idea of a whole in which a certain cohesion is maintained, a form demarcated by specific limits or boundaries; and the idea of a fixation in one place of a certain quantity of energy which can no longer flow freely.
(1) FREUD, S.: a) Anf., 447; S.E., I, 368. b) Anf. ,459; S.E., I, 380–81. c) Anf., 448; S.E., I, 369.
(2) FREUD, S., G.W., XIII, 36; S.E., XVIII, 34–35.
(3) FREUD, S. An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940a [1938]), G.W., XVII, 71; S.E., XXIII, 148.
(4) FREUD, S. The Ego and the Id (1923b), G.W., XIII, 274; S.E., XIX, 45.
= D.: Bisexualität.–Es.: bisexualidad.– Fr.: bisexualitc.– I.: bisessualita.–P.: bissexualidade.
Notion introduced into psycho-analysis by Freud, under the influence of Wilhelm Fliess, according to which every human being is endowed constitutionally with both masculine and feminine sexual dispositions; these can be identified in the conflicts which the subject experiences in assuming his own sex.
As far as the history of the psycho-analytic movement is concerned, the notion of bisexuality must without doubt be attributed to the influence of Wilhelm Fliess. It was to be encountered in the philosophical and psychiatric literature of the 1890's (la), but it was Fliess who advocated it to Freud, a fact to which their correspondence testifies (2).
The theory of bisexuality is based in the first instance on the data of anatomy and embryology (α): “… a certain degree of anatomical hermaphroditism occurs normally. In every normal male or female individual, traces are found of the apparatus of the opposite sex. […] These long-familiar facts of anatomy lead us to suppose that an originally bisexual physical disposition has, in the course of evolution, become modified into a unisexual one, leaving behind only a few traces of the sex that has become atrophied’ (1b).
Fliess attached considerable importance to those facts which point to a biological bisexuality. For him, bisexuality is a universal human phenomenon which is not restricted, for example, to the pathological case of homosexuality, and it has essential psychological consequences. Thus Fliess, interpreting the Freudian theory of repression, invokes the conflict which exists in every human individual between the masculine and feminine tendencies; Freud sums up Fliess’s interpretation in these terms: ‘The dominant sex of the person […] has repressed the mental representation of the subordinate sex into the unconscious’ (3a).
Freud never thoroughly defined his position with respect to the problem of bisexuality; in 1930 he himself admitted that ‘The theory of bisexuality is still surrounded by many obscurities and we cannot but feel it as a serious impediment in psycho-analysis that it has not yet found any link with the theory of the instincts’ (4). Although the psychological importance of bisexuality was never in doubt for him, Freud’s thinking about the problem includes a number of reservations and doubts which may be summarised as follows:
a. The concept of bisexuality presupposes a clear grasp of the antithesis between masculinity and femininity. As Freud remarked, however, these notions have different meanings for biology, psychology and sociology–meanings which are often confused and which do not allow us to establish any terminological correlations between these various levels (1c).
b. Freud criticises Fliess’s approach for sexualising the psychological mechanism of repression–‘to sexualise’ here meaning ‘to explain it on biological grounds’ (5a). Such an approach leads in fact to an a priori definition of the modality of the defensive conflict according to which the repressing force is on the side of the sex of the subject’s manifest sexual characteristics, and the repressed on the side of the opposite sex. To this contention Freud objects ‘that both in male and female individuals masculine as well as feminine instinctual impulses are found, and that each can equally well undergo repression and so become unconscious’ (3b),
It is true that in ‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable’ (1937c) Freud appears nonetheless to be following Fliess’s line when he admits that ‘it is the attitude proper to the opposite sex which has succumbed to repression’ (5b) (penis envy in women, the feminine attitude in men); this is a work, however, which emphasizes the importance of the castration complex*, and for this the biological data can provide no sufficient explanation.
c. It is clear that Freud’s acceptance of the idea of biological bisexuality created a major difficulty for him; the same goes for the notion of the primacy of the phallus* in women as well as in men–an idea which is maintained throughout his work with ever–increasing conviction.
(α) In the 1920 edition of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d), Freud further draws attention to physiological experiments on the hormonal determination of sexual characteristics.
(1) Cf. FREUD, S. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d):a) G.W., V, 42n; S.E., VII, 143n. b) G.W., V, 40; S.E., VII, 141. c) G.W., V, 121n; S.E., VII, 219n.
(2) FREUD. S. The Origins of psycho-analysis (1950a [1887–1902]), passim.
(3) FREUD, S. ‘ “A Child is Being Beaten”’ ’ (1919e): a) G.W., XII, 222; S.E., XVII, 200–201. b) G.W., XII, 224; S.E., XVII, 224.
(4) FREUD, S. Civilization and its Discontents (1930a), G.W., XIV, 466n;S.E., XXI, 106n
(5) FREUD, S. ‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable’ (1937c): a) G.W., XVI, 98; S.E., XXIII, 251. b) G.W., XVI, 98; S.E., XXIII, 251.
= D.: Grenzfall.–Es.: caso limítrofe.–Fr–.: cas-limite.–I.: caso limite.–P.: caso limitrofe.
Term most often used to designate psychopathological troubles lying on the frontier between neurosis and psychosis, particularly latent schizophrenias presenting an apparently neurotic set of symptoms.
This term has no strict nosographical definition. The variations in its use reflect the real uncertainty concerning the area to which it is applied. Different writers, according to their diverse approaches, have extended the category to psychopathic, perverted and delinquent personalities, and to severe cases of character neurosis. Current usage is apparently tending to reserve the term for cases of schizophrenia whose symptoms have a neurotic aspect.
The spread of psycho-analysis has had a good deal to do with the coming to prominence of the so-called borderline case. psycho-analysis investigation is indeed able to uncover the psychotic structure of cases that would formerly have been treated as neurotic disturbances. Theoretically speaking, it is generally felt that in such cases the neurotic symptoms carry out a defensive function against the outbreak of the psychosis.