a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

ather acquired it at the time of regression. You will remember that we were
led to a similar alternative in the discussion of the Oedipus-complex.
A decision on this matter will hardly be difficult for us. The statement is
undoubtedly correct that the hold which the infantile experiences have on the
libido—with the pathogenic influences this involves—is greatly augmented by
the regression; still, to allow them to become definitive would nevertheless be
misleading. Other considerations must be taken into account as well. In the
first place, observation shows, in a way that leaves no room for doubt, that
infantile experiences have their particular significance which is evidenced
already during childhood. There are, furthermore, neuroses in children in
which the factor of displacement in time is necessarily greatly minimized or is
entirely lacking, since the illness follows as an immediate consequence of the
traumatic experience. The study of these infantile neuroses keeps us from
many dangerous misunderstandings of adult neuroses, just as the dreams of
children similarly serve as the key to the understanding of the dreams of
adults. As a matter of fact, the neuroses of children are very frequent, far
more frequent than is generally believed. They are often overlooked,
dismissed as signs of badness or naughtiness, and often suppressed by the
authority of the nursery; in retrospect, however, they may be easily
recognized later. They occur most frequently in the form of anxiety hysteria.
What this implies we shall learn upon another occasion. When a neurosis
breaks out in later life, analysis regularly shows that it is a direct continuation
of that infantile malady which had perhaps developed only obscurely and
incipiently. However, there are cases, as already stated, in which this childish
nervousness continues, without any interruption, as a lifelong affliction. We
have been able to analyze a very few examples of such neuroses during
childhood, while they were actually going on; much more often we had to be
satisfied with obtaining our insight into the childhood neurosis subsequently,
when the patient is already well along in life, under conditions in which we
are forced to work with certain corrections and under definite precautions.
Secondly, we must admit that the universal regression of the libido to the
period of childhood would be inexplicable if there were nothing there which
could exert an attraction for it. The fixation which we assume to exist towards
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