Edmund Bergler - Divorce Won't Help

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CO:-fter intercourse) depressed, moody, headachy, sleepless, was accepted as an argument. S Some women are capable of achieving org:a.sm though they are highly neurotic: they suffer from a "character neurosis," which manifests itself in personality difficulties. If a woman chooses, three times in succession, neurotic men who are partly impotent and who ill-treat he.--che orgasm she experienees is far from bring a certi6cate of psychic health. Or, if a woman unconaciously adheru to the "condition of the forbidden"-that is, i, frigid under marital 2 [

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grotesque situation, if one considers the fact that all these frigid women constantly complain about their husbands' neglect. What are they complaining about? Obviously they are using sex as a handy intramarital weapon with which to win some other point. The majority of women are skeptical about the ability of men to be tender in love. They simplify the problem by conceding to man only the drive of sex, pure and simple. Hence, lessening or cessation of intercourse is for women a sure sign that "He doesn't love me any more." They reach that conclusion with amazing regularity, regardless of the degree of their intelligence, education, and social background. Women do not acknowledge the influence of neurotic factors in that respect; nothing can convince them on that point. Amusingly, the famous feminine intuition does not work here. Since the majority of women are frigid in varying degrees, and have witnessed so frequently their husband's orgasm while they themselves have remained cold or have had to play the comedy of pretended enjoyment (it is rather fantastic how frequently women resort to that comedy with success), they cannot imagine that their husbands renounce the pleasure for any other reason than lack of love. Immediately they suspect conditions though she experiences orgasm in a clandestine relation, neither is that orgasm a proof of psychic health. To express it paradoxically: Orgasm and orgasm are not the same thing. Naive overvaluation of orgasm as the yardstick of health leads clinically to wrong conclusions.

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that another woman is involved; their husbands' neurotic tendencies are never taken into account. What they consider their husbands' "malicious neglect" mobilizes in them a series of neurotic fears and reproaches. The result is aggressive nagging, complaining, and neurotic unhappiness. Obviously, there are many occasions in marriage on which man and wife do not see eye to eye. In such conflicts, it is advantageous to the woman to have an irrefutable argument ready. Thus the sexual inadequacy of her husband becomes a powerful feminine weapon, and his inner guilt (the poor man has no inkling of the psychological facts of waning sexual power) is willfully kept alive. It would, however, be wrong to assume that the process of keeping the husband's guilt alive is exclusively a conscious feminine trick. The moment the pretense that the marriage is completely happy is shattered by the husband's abstinence, neurotic reaction regularly sets in. First comes the demanding-complaining attitude, then the "hoarding" period of sex. The husband's abstinence mobilizes the "in justice-collector" in the woman's unconscious. In other words, latent neurotic tendencies become activated. Since every human being harbors some psychic-masochistic tendencies, the raw material for that conflict is always at hand. In relatively good marriages, the narcissistic basis of the choice of the partner guarantees its continuation. There is

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mutual understanding, and many common bonds are established: children, interests, hobbies. The decisive element remains, however, the projected Ego-Ideal; husband and wife have each acquired a chronic admirer and living alibi. Even diminution of sex is forgiven. In such marriages, in any case, sexual desire never wanes to the extent that it does in neurotic marriages, because for normal people sex does not have the connotation of the forbidden.

CHAPTER

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Wolves and Frigid Women NEUROTIC woman once complained: "Men are impossible. They look you over as if you were a head of cattle, undress you with their dirty looks like a prostitute, and if you pass that examination they just want to go to bed with you. No tenderness, no pretense of interest-I mean personal interest in you as a human being-just impersonal, dirty sex." A neurotic man complained : "Women are impossible. They force a man who just wants to proposition them for a pleasant bed party to all the silly hypocrisies of romantic love, tenderness, personal interest, and what not. And the upshot? After much time wasted in the game of seduction, they are frigid in bed, or insatiable, for the same reason." What is wrong with these two people? The woman did not say anything about trying to avoid these "impossible" men. On the contrary, she admitted that she constantly started affairs with these neurotic women chasers, whom today's slang calls "wolves." Her description of them, however, [ 85 ]

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corresponded to observable facts. The wolf separates completely the tender and the sensual components of love. He claims that he does not believe in tender love; actually, he is completely incapable of it. The result is that for him the whole problem of love reduces itself to release of sexual tension. Even that desire is mostly fake, since his potency is frequently poor, his orgasmic capacity even worse. His only pleasurable gain is that he thus "proves" that he is a "he-man." Since his inner conscience is more than skeptical of this claim, the alibi has to be repeated all too frequently. These weak men-all wolves are inwardly inflated, neurotic sissies=-become pathologically cynical, substituting in love quantity for quality. Their happy hunting grounds are the typically frigid women who are on the eternal search for the imaginary men who can satisfy them. A comparison of the two statements quoted above shows a remarkable difference: The lady appeared to be holding onto the ideal of "real" love, while the gentleman had abandoned it cynically. One's first impression is that the man had more precisely appraised his neurotic limitations than had the woman. That impression is erroneous. The amount of selfdeception varies, the variation having some connection with the senseless yardsticks and values accepted in the neurotic environment. The "man about town" in wolf's clothing has an aura of smartness, the promiscuous woman the connotation [ 86 ]

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of-tramp. Consequently, the man could afford to speak more frankly than could the woman. The frigid woman-inside and outside of marriage-is attracted to the wolf type of neurotic for both conscious and unconscious reasons. The conscious reason is based 011 a mistaken premise. Since she does not know that a neurosis in herself makes her constant hunt for the imaginary satisfier pointless, she clings tenaciously to the idea that her problem is only to find the "right" man and that the process of elimination, coupled with persistency, will lead sooner or later to satisfactory results. Since the wolf has an air of great sexual experience, the frigid woman believes that he, a connoisseur, can evoke feelings in her where the amateur failed and was helpless. But her search brings her nothing but a venereal disease, damage to her reputation, and constant dissatisfaction. The sober fact is that frigidity accounts for ninetenths of all cases of female marital infidelity.

The unconscious reason the frigid woman is attached to the wolf is deeply masochistic. That type of woman wants to be disappointed and rejected. Therefore she seeks out men who have a reputation of being the kind that "no woman can hold for good." She bargains unconsciously for the disappointment, and gets it with the greatest of regularity. I once analyzed a woman in her forties, for hypochondriacal complaints. Asked about her sex life, she acted sur[ 87 ]

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prised and informed me that all men were impotent. In answer to my objection that her statement constituted "a slight exaggeration," she produced her diaries, kept during the last quarter of a century. She had every lover catalogued and described in terse and pungent terms. She had reached a figure high in the sixties. I asked her whether she could concede at least one exception, proving the rule of her (unconsciously deliberate) choice. "Glad to oblige you, doc, nothing doing. They all were impotent." We finally found one lone exception: She left that man after the first night "because he was so brutal." What is the unconscious structure of the neurotic male popularly called wolf? The wolf is (contradictory as it may sound) an Impotent man w/lo conceals tho: bitter fact from 1111nsoiland others by constaruly exchanging women, \Vere he to stay for any length of time with 011e woman, he, the great seducer, would be proven impotent. In an unconscious preventive action, therefore, he does not allow the situation to arise; he is "through" with each woman before his fiasco becomes apparent. But his "disgust" with her is simply an unconscious acknowledgment of the potency-disturbance around the corner. If we analyze this type of neurotic, we find usually an unconsciously passive-feminine man with an inflated pseudo-

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aggressive defense mechanism. Even jf the negative Oedipus complex had not been discovered by Freud forty years ago, every beginner in the art of psychoanalysis could find that inner constellation in wolves. The negative Oedipus complex in a man denotes unconscious identification with the mother, the wish to be passively overwhelmed sexually by the father. This wish produces a severe veto from the Superego, making it necessary to establish a defense. The frantic defense mechanism set up is a contemptuous and pseudoaggressive attitude toward women. That defense, however, is built on shaky grounds; hence it works only for a short while and has to be re-established time and time again. The result is visible in the man's constant need to increase his scalp collection of ((seduced" women. The wolf's internal bogeyman, impotence, follows him like his shadow; the passivefeminine wishes, kept in repression, are constantly ready to break loose and engulf the caricature of the super-he-man. The alleged seducer is in danger of being seduced by his own inner femininity. The wolf type of neurotic has great similarity to the man whom the wolf disparages most: Caspar Milquetoast. Milquetoast is also a passive-feminine man, the wolf's brother under the skin. Milquetoast, however, is incapable of building up the wolf's inflated defense. He typically marries a shrew or a gold digger who mistreats him. Milquetoast pro-

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tests, "suffers," but clings to his tormentor, precisely because she satisfies his wish to be passively overwhelmed. Outwardly, the wolf and Milquetoast are opposites. Still, they are carved [rom the same wood. If a wolf's defense collapses because of the progress of his neurosis or under the prodding of external events, such as financial disaster, the inner weakling cernes to the fore. There is no more pitiful spectacle than a "fallen" wolf. The wolf type of neurotic constantly assures people that he has found the real formula for enjoyment of life. But if you see the wolf stripped of his "conqueror pretenses," you are confronted with a depressed neurotic. The wolf knows that, unconsciously. Positive proof of this is to be found in his choice of women. He seeks always the easy prey: the dissatisfied, frigid woman. With her he can maintain the illusion of conquest. Actually, of course, he does not conquer her; she simply uses him for one of her endless experiments in finding the "cure" for her frigidity. I once saw such a man who had become deeply depressed when a frigid woman told him contemptuously after an unsuccessful affair : «You couldn't satisfy me any more than your predecessors did. You're a sexual washout." Another neurotic of this type entered treatment, saying, "Once in my life I made the mistake of attaching myself to a 'lady,' surrounded with the aura of sexual correctness and [ 90

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unapproachability, She rejected me with contempt. This awakened the hunter instinct in me and I pursued her relentlessly. Her 'no' made me sick, that's all." A third man consulted me "for information about frigidity." He had read some of my publications on frigidity, believed that he could "use that information" in his seducing techniques, and wanted to hear more about it "directly from the horse's mouth." It turned out that he, too, had been deeply hurt by the wife of "his best friend," who resisted him. Said the man cynically: "I believe you have something I can use. Previously, I always operated on the basis that a woman who didn't want to go to bed with me was just silly and deprived herself of pleasure for moral reasons. Now, I tell them that their neurosis and frigidity are to blame and offer myself as antidote." "Don't you see that your so-called conquests are poor victories, capitalizing on the hope of these neurotic women of Ending the nonexistent antidote for frigidity?" "Who cares for their motives? Do you believe Casanova was so choosy?" "He wasn't. If you read his memoirs, you'll find out that poor chambermaids and neurotic, dissatisfied women constitute the bulk of his Leporello list." ceDoyou want to tell me that I'm neurotic?" "Precisely. Look what the refusal of your cfriend's' wife

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did to you. It shattered your fantasy of invincibility. Can you deny that you are depressed out of proportion to the ratio of your so-called 'successes' with women?" "I just picked the wrong woman. I have to be more careful in choosing." "What you don't see is that the progress of your neurosis made you make what you call a mistake." "Everybody makes mistakes." ccYour mistake was a neurotic necessity." "You are wrong there." "There are two possibilities: Either you continue your easy 'conquests' of frigid women who take you for a sucker's rl'de. . . ."

"How can you say that? I'm conquering them." "That's what you believe. They hope to use you as an aphrodisiac but discard yo« as bad medicine:"

"No man can make a neurotic woman have sexual enjoyment. $0 much I've learned from you." "That's correct. Your so-called conquests are only the attempts of frigid women to find a cure for their frigidity. They allow you the illusion of conquering them, although really they are trying to use you for their own purpose. You act the part of the cheated cheater." The man was indignant. "Nonsense. I don't agree with you." "Why should you?" I asked him. "Your whole fake, he-

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man philosophy would crumble the moment you accepted that statement." "Let's not argue about that. What was the second possibility you started to point out before I interrupted you?" «The second possibility is even less engaging. After some time your compensatory potency will weaken and you will not even be able to keep your illusions of easy conquest." It is perhaps superfluous to state that the man did not believe me at the time. Three years later he entered treatment because of potency-disturbance. His neurosis had caught up with him, manifesting itself in a symptom and not only in his personality as it had before. His potency-disturbance was quickly solved, but he could be convinced only with great difficulty that his whole approach to women had been neurotic. Only the fact that his first refusal to be analyzed had had «disastrous effects," as he expressed it, convinced him that continuation of treatment was necessary. He was fully cured, and is now happily married. Wolves and frigid women are complementary neurotics. Both need each other as unconscious alibis, and as a source of disappointment. It is not by chance that they meet and meet again, though consciously they claim that they hate each other. The tragicomedy of errors continues out of inner necessity. A sad story? The conscious reverberations of neurosis are always sad.

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CHAPTER

VIII

Patterns in Neurotic Marriages EUROTICS are unconscious repetition-machines. The end result of the infantile conflict is codified, stenciled, and set. Nothing but death or a psychiatric-psychoanalytic cure can change that pattern. That pattern, of course, is unconscious. And unconscious means just one thing-unconscious. That is a less redundant statement than one might suppose, since people constantly try to bargain with the meaning of the term. "If it's in me, I would have some inkling of its existence," people argue. One cannot argue with an unconscious mechanism. The end result of the infantile conflict is established, at the latest, at the end of the fifth year of life. Hard as it may be to accept the fact, the psychic elasticity of the human being is exhausted at that age. Our intellectual knowledge increases, we get smarter, the sum total of our recollections is augmented-but emotionally our fate was decided prior to these achievements. Oscar Wilde remarked ironically: "Experience is the name

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everyone gives to his mistakes." The "mistakes" of neurotics, if emotionally conditioned, are made and fixed before they can correct them. They can only go on repeating them. Let's pick at random three neurotic marriages and see what the six participants repeated. Mrs. J. consulted me in great excitement and started her lament with the outburst: "I hope I won't faint, I'm so emotionally charged. High voltage, you know. You want to know what this is all about. It's my husband. He's just impossible. He started a relation with my best friend, imagine that." "How long have you been married?" "Ten years." "What other complaints do you have against him?" "He's just impossible. Do you want me to be more precise? He drinks, doesn't make a decent living, is frequently away -on business, he claims-how do I know? It's true that he's a consulting engineer. At home he is impatient with me. If I'm distant and hurt, he complains that I'm a block of ice. If I'm loving, he complains that I'm insatiable. We quarrel constantly." ccHow did you find out about his affair with your friend?" "Everybody knew about it. I was a laughingstock." "How do you account for the fact that your best friend started an affair with the husband of her best friend? What kind of friendship is that?"

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"Wait till you see him; nobody can resist him. He is just too charming." "What is his force?" "Just charm, you know. He has an ingratiating way with women." "How did you react to the disclosure of his relation to the other woman?" "I was hurt but I didn't accuse her. I know his ways. He accused me afterward of being responsible for the whole thing. Imagine that." "How?" "He told me that I acted the procurer. She was constantly around. He even had the audacity to claim that he believed I wanted him to sleep with her." "What gave him that idea?" "You know how men are. They pick every harmless detail, turn it around, and make a case against you." "Specifically?" "Specifically, he claimed that he had the feeling that I left them alone so much that he couldn't help but feel that I wanted him to tryout my friend." "Did you leave them alone?" "Well, yes. I never dreamt that that would develop." "Weren't you jealous?" "Before it happened. Not afterward." [ 96 ]

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"Why did you bring them together?"

"She was just around." ((I still don't understand your husband's line of defense." "He claims that I was talking so much about the girl, and about him to the girl, that the only way to get rid of her was to sleep with her." "How would that cure her?" ((He claims that sex is always a disappointment for a woman." ((Your husband claims that he started an affair with your so-called best friend to do you a favor?" "That's what it practically amounts to. Silly, isn't it?" ((What happened later?" ((I was furious with him. I even wanted a divorce, but I loved him so much. It's a shame, isn't it?" ((Are you sexually happy in your marriage?" "He claims that I'm difficult to satisfy. All men are weaklings, you know." ((Did you blame him?" "Of course. He says I'm insatiable. The typical excuse." "Who is neurotic in your opinion, you or he?" "He is. Definitely." This was her side of the preliminary story. The husband's side was different: "To tell you the truth, my wife is half crazy. I mean it. [ 97 ]

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She is frigid and therefore insatiable. She makes me feel like a heel, but 1 can assure you 1 am more than normal in that respect." "What about being unreliable?" "I am-but only with her. She brings out the worst in me. It's some kind of revenge.'" "What about your affair with your wife's best friend?" "That's a fantastic story. My wife directly pushed me into that escapade. For months she acted like a publicity agent; she praised the girl's charms to me, and my alleged superman qualities to the girl. She instilled in me the idea of trying it out. Well, I'm only human and was sexually completely dissatisfied. Afterward she played the aggrieved party, made terrible scenes. What seems suspicious to me is the fact that she wasn't jealous of the girl at all; she just accused me. Thinking back, 1 have the impression that she wanted the triangle. Don't ask me why-I don't know." "Do you want to continue your marriage?" "I'm completely mixed up. In spite of all our conflicts, 1 believe 1 still love my wife. If she doesn't act crazy, for a change, she is charming and we get along." "Your wife claims that you quarrel constantly." "Nonsense. She just picks out these situations, magnifies them, and acts like a martyr. The next moment all her unhappiness is forgotten and we like each other once more."

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"Was the affair with the girl a singular occurrence or a typical one?" "Well-well-we aren't saints, are we?" "That means, despite your promiscuity you still want to stay with your wife?" "To tell you the truth, the two sides of my life aren't connected. I am attached to my wife, although she is sexually impossible. Logicaliy, I don't understand myself. I have the reputation of being a good lover. She, however, always gives me the feeling of being a washout. Stili, I always come back for more punishment." "Do you consider it good marital policy to start an affair under the nose of your wife, and, to complicate matters, with her best friend and confidante?" "It happened only once, and after nine years of marriage. Previously I kept these two sides of my life separate." "Do you consider your wife or yourself in need of treatment?" "Definitely, my wife." Although husband and wife each considered himself an innocent victim of the other's "craziness," analysis disclosed, of course, that both were neurotic. Mrs. J.'s conflict centered around an older sister, who had brought her up after her mother's early death. The sister had been more beautiful, had had more admirers, and had even gone as far as to snatch

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her young sister's boy friends away from her "just for fun and malice," as Mrs. J. exclaimed. Analysis proved that Mrs. J. was unconsciously deeply attached to that rather aggressive sister. Unconsciously, strong homosexual tendencies were present. That queer relationship was shifted later in life to her friend. Mr. J. was (without understanding why) on the right track in suspecting that his wife "directly wanted" him to start an affair with her friend. His mistake ill evaluation was that he accused his wife of consciously wanting the affair. He was wrong: she wanted it, but unconsciously. She was, since she was unaware of her neurotic attachment, justified in claiming that he maligned her with that accusation. What was the reason Mrs. J. unconsciously "pushed" her husband into that affair? There exists a mechanism which Freud called "the man as bridge to the woman." Mrs. J. lived out her unconscious homosexuality by "sharing" her husband; through him she was brought together sexually with her friend. Consciously, , of course, she wanted her husband for herself. That explains, however, why she indirectly acted as a procurer and why she was not jealous of the girl. The second reason was even more complex: She was not only homosexually but deeply masochistically attached to her sister. All this she consciously rejeered, unconsciously, however, she desired her sister's aggression and malice. In the [ 100 ]

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unconscious identification of sister and friend, she re-created once more an "injustice-situation," masochistically so dear to her; once more, her sister, through projection on her friend, "snatched" a man away-this time, even her husband! In another layer of her personality, she repeated actively what she had experienced passively; in her relations with her husband, she was nagging, aggressive, demanding. She thus acted unconsciously the aggressive sister, reducing her husband to her own role in her relation with her sister. Her frigidity resulted in sexual insatiability. By choosing an "unreliable" husband, she carried out in the financial sphere also the old game of injustice. Mr. J.'s attitude toward his wife was characterized by the fact that (as he claimed) she "brought out the worst in him." He believed that these traits represented his revenge for her frigidity and nagging. Still, despite all conflicts, he had remained united with his wife for many years and desired the continuation of the marriage. Consciously, his wife's attitude especially the fact that he, the great sexual hero, could not satisfy her-made him unhappy. Still, he "always came back for more punishment." Her rejection of him was obviously a necessary part of his neurotic game: the repetition of the childhood pattern in which the little boy faces the hopelessness of conquering the adult female. His masochistic wish was countered by a feeling of guilt; to allay the

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guilt a pseudoaggressive defense mechanism was installed, visible as his unreliability, refusal of adequate financial support, infidelity, etc. And since every neurosis increases with age, both Mr. and Mrs. J. played, as time passed, for higher stakes-Mrs. J. by constructing her husband's affair with her best friend, Mr. J. by starting, with silly rationalizations, an affair in his own house. Both partners misused the marital scene for neurotic repetitions of unconscious wishes and defenses. They were, finally, both analyzed and remained united on a different basis. Mr. K., a man of forty, entered analysis because he felt depressed and generally dissatisfied. Despite external success, he was jumpy and constantly irritable, sometimes brutal to his associates. Asked about his marriage, he disclosed that his wife was completely uninterested in sex, which depressed him deeply. "I've known her since we were eight; we were playmates from early childhood. She always dominated the situation, pushed me into a corner. At her instigation, we eloped at the age of fifteen. The marriage was annulled by her parents. But we remarried at twenty. She is the soul of my business: I'm excluded and have only the right to contribute a few ideas. I am in reality a prince consort, though not many people know about it." [ 102 ]

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"How did you take your wife's sexual indifference?" "Mournfully. I started to chase other women, just to prove to myself that I wasn't such a nonentity in that respect. My wife is reducing me to nothingness. Yes, 'reducing to nothingness'-that's the right expression." "What are the mental capacities of your wife?" "She is smart, though uneducated. What good does my college education do? She always proves to me how ignorant I am. She can't argue logically, but she just knows everything, or so she thinks. I must admit, though, that in business she is as sharp as a whip. I utter an idea in my aphoristic way, she picks it up and makes a success of it." "Does she give you credit for the initial idea?" "Only when she can prove them flops or inconsistent. An idea must be developed-that's what she's good at. She herself, however, has no originality." "You work well together-a good team?" "If you look at the bank account, yes." "Do you love your wife?" "Certainly. Otherwise I would not have spent thirty-two of my forty years with her. Even as children we were inseparable." "And she?" "The same-I guess." "Meaning whltt?" [ 103 ]

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"Well, twice she has attached herself to elderly men and believed she was in love with them. Later, she discovered that these men were just after her money." "How did you behave during these interludes?" "I suffered like a dog-e-what a stupid expression, by the way. I believe dogs suffer less than human beings. Anyway, 1 told her that I wanted her happiness and was ready to step aside, if she asked me to." "What was your wife's reaction?" «She turned the tables and proved with her typical domestic lack of sound logic that I didn't love her. Had I refused her a divorce, she would have accused me of (ruining her life.' How can one satisfy a woman?" "Who is sick, in your opinion?" "I'm just a fool, I guess. She, however, is definitely sick with her theory that sex is unimportant." A discussion with Mrs. K. confirmed substantially her husband's statements. "Is it true that you reject sex?"

«Yes." "Why?" "It seems unimportant, and is disagreeable to me." "What about your husband?" "I'm a good wife. I do my duty." [ 104 ]

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"Don't you think that your attitude is insufficient to guarantee sexual enjoyment?" "I cannot help it if he is childish enough to want these stupid acrobatics." "Are you conscious of the fact that your opinion on sex is in itself a symptom of your neurosis?" "Nonsense. He is sick and dissatisfied." "Are you happy?" "I have my conflicts, too, but I don't run around like a chicken with its head cut off." "What about your attachments to the other two men?" "Transitory spells." "Couldn't have been so transitory if you seriously thought of divorcing your husband." "Everybody makes mistakes. I corrected them before ruining my life." "Don't you think that your attitude toward sex is ruining your marriage?" "No. Adult people have other interests." "Do you consider sex a puerile folly?" "Exactly." "What's your suggestion?" "Treat my husband if you believe that you can straighten him out. He is sick." "What about you?" [ 105 ]

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"Nothing's wrong with me." "Sure of that?" "Positive." Mr. K.'s analysis disclosed that he was deeply attached to his mother, a domineering matriarch of the old school. The fact is to be noted that he "passed the whip" to his future wife at the age of eight! Ever since that time she had regulated life in the same way as his mother: "The little boy doesn't know what's good for him." Mrs. K. had an unusual contempt for boys, and later, for men in general. The only two things which she could not change about her husband were the biological fact of his manhood, and the acquired fact of his college education. She used in both instances the method of consistent depreciation; she constantly quoted Tolstoy's "Live chastely, all sexuality is the naughtiness of big children." With vehemence she tried to instill in her husband the idea that "being grown up" and renunciation of sex were identical. If he objected meekly, she treated him contemptuously-Has if I soiled my pants." All these conscious complaints did not contradict Mr. K.'s unconscious wish to be treated exactly that way. Consciousness and unconsciousness are not identical; Mr. K. discovered this the hard way. Mr. K. changed considerably in analysis. This change had a peculiar effect on Mrs. K. The moment her husband no [ 106 ]

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longer acted like Milquetoast, but spoke up and refused to accept with reverence her nonsensical ways, Mrs. K.-the woman who prided herself on being "never, but never" depressed-became the victim of a deep depression. She even consented to enter psychoanalytic treatment. Her analysis showed that all her ideas on the "infantilism of sex" were results of repression. She was attached to her uncle, her father's brother, to whom she shifted her original wishes concerning her father. This was visible in the fact that twice during her marriage she became interested in elderly men, to the point of wanting to divorce her husband. She was a bitter, disappointed neurotic who, unable to achieve her childhood wish to be a boy herself (a universal desire of little girls), spent her life in proving defensively that men were incompetent idiots, whom she castrated at every turn of the way. Both marriage partners lived out their respective neuroses, using each other for the repetition of bygone wishes and defenses. That marriage has been repaired, as is evident from the fact that it was continued, after analysis, on a happier basis. Mrs. L., a petite and pretty woman of thirty, consulted me because of her "tragic marital entanglement." After saying this, she cried bitterly for a few minutes, then told her story: [ 107

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"I am the clinging-vine type, one of those women who always find a man to look after them. I seem to provoke in men the protective instinct. Everybody treats me like a little doll, breakable and to be handled with care. I'm terribly tired of that role and the eternal baby act." "Why do you act that way?" "I don't. Without being conscious of it, I always find men who fall for it. Here my tragedy starts. I am inwardly strong and want a strong man. What I get is just the opposite: a chronic protector who looks for the parasitic baby." "Are you so innocent of the impression you make on men?" "I don't fool myself any longer. I know that I provoked and fostered that impression. I just got tired of it. I'm like an actress who once had success with a specifie act; later producers always assign her that same kind of part." "Did you try it the other way around?" "I did. I'm not gifted. I just attract only that type of man." "Is your husband that type too?" "Of course. I am the baby for him. His solicitude makes me sick. All my male friends are of the same kind. They constantly offer me a better and bigger dollhouse." "Do you live in one?" "In a pent-dollhouse." "Can you imagine life without luxury?" [ 108 ]

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"Why do you jump from one extreme to the other?" "If I understand you correctly, you want the penthouse but dislike the type of man who protectively puts it at your disposal. " "You are brutal." "Playing the hurt child?" "There you are. I'm incorrigible." After shedding a few miniature tears, Mrs. L. continued: ((My dollhouse is dull. I tried an affair with a primitive, rather uncouth brute. I was magically attracted and at the same time hopelessly repelled. Sexually, I was happy; but his mental cruelty revolted me. I reverted to my dollhouse life and am dissatisfied once more." "How much does your husband know?" "He knows nothing. My depressed moods he considers a baby's whims, to be combatted with more presents and more consideration." "You resent that?" "I hate it. If the man would beat me, humiliate me, stamp on me-well, it's hopeless. I'm obviously incapable of evoking any other feelings in him but the consideration he'd give a puppy." "Did you ever try to explain your conflict to your husband?" • "Why should I cut the branch on which I sit?" [ 109

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"What do you actually want?" "I want you to change my inner attitude of acting the baby, needing help, protection, and consideration. I know that I must be in some way responsible for the attitude which men take in my presence. I hate myself for giving that impression." "Did you consult me with your husband's consent?" "Oh, yes. He inquired about you. He wants to see you." Mr. L. described in touching tones the baby he called his wife. "She needs protection twenty-four hours a day. I give it to her, and she is happy. Like all little children, she has whims. She calls it general nervousness and wishes to be treated. I have no objections." Mr. L. refused to discuss his own problems, claiming that there was nothing to divulge. His repeated motto was simply, "Make my little doll more happy." Mrs. L.'s analysis disclosed that her whole life in infancy had been devoted to collecting injustices. Occasions were provided by practically all the members of her family, especially her mother and brother. Her brother had been actively brutal. Her father was distant and uninterested in her-an indirect form of aggression which she also made use of in order to feel victimized. Mrs. L.'s childhood had been filled with "suffering" and the pious, conscious wish: "I want to be loved, pampered, taken care of." She developed [ rIO ]

PATTERNS IN NEUROTIC MARRIAGES

exactly that attitude, the attitude of one who yearns to be taken care of, which she deplored as "boring." She was on the right track though; that attitude was only her defense. Inwardly, she was masochistic and wanted to be neglected and mistreated; therefore boredom resulted when her conscious wishes were fulfilled. She actually despised men who took her clinging-baby attitude seriously. What she really wanted was clear from her attachment to her "brutal" lover, although she could not stand him either because his behavior reminded her too much of her real repressed wishes. She escaped into the rationalization that all men were weaklings; she was on the lookout for a "strong" man. What she actually wanted from him was never clear to her, for her repressed psychic masochism was fully unconscious. It was quite interesting to observe how Mr. L.'s balance in this neurotic marriage became disturbed as his doll changed gradually into a human being. The culmination of this protracted conflict was rather extraordinary: for the first time in her marriage, Mrs. L. bought her husband a present. The harmless birthday present was first furiously rejected; then followed a period of irritation, and finally depression. Mrs. L. convinced her husband that he should enter analysis. Mr. L.'s analysis showed that his protective attitude toward his doll-wife was a rather new acquisition. He had married her really on the rebound. He had first been [ II I ]

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"desperately in love" with a cousin of his, a wealthy girl who did not take the poor relative seriously, and married (for money) an elderly manufacturer. He had "suffered hell" and never understood how masochistic his relationship really was. "A furious determination came over me to prove to her what a mistake she had made in the evaluation of my possibilities," he told me. CCI was successful and amassed a good-sized fortune, For years I was depressed and gloomy -until I met my wife. In relation to her, I became a different person. Fulfilling my little doli's wishes became my greatest pleasure, ... " \Vhat had happened was that a familiar psychical shift had occurred, The irrational conflict centering around his wife was simply a continuation of his old masochistic attachment to his cousin. He merely expressed it differently. In his relationship with his cold cousin, he was unconsciously submissively masochistic, and she w'as the aggressor. In his marriage, he was the active benefactor, making his "doll" the beneficiary. A certain amount of the original conflict was smuggled in, however, for his wife inwardly resented his attitude, could not be satisfied at all, and tortured rum with her unhappiness. But he was so busily engaged in acting his defense that he completely overlooked the "doll's" dissatisfaction. His masochistic attachment to both women could be traced [ 112 ]

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to a cold and matriarchal aunt (his mother's sister), his main educator. She was bitter because his father would not marry her. She took out her disappointment on the child, who, misunderstanding the situation, believed that she rejected him personally. Since his mother had died at his birth and the aunt had taken the mother's place, he was constantly confronted with a "cold" woman. The man's behavior in pampering his doll-wife was complicated in that he was also acting out unconsciously a "magic gesture." He was unconsciously dramatizing his own official wish to be loved and pampered, the formula being: I shall show you by my behavior that I really wanted to be treated kindly. Behind that act lay a deep masochism. To my surprise, it was possible to repair this marriage too, although seemingly irreconcilable conflicts were involved. One could bring an interesting argument against the thesis that in neurotic marriage two neurotics unconsciously look for their complementary neurosis: planned marriages, as occur in some parts of the world. Here there would be less chance of a neurotic finding a fellow neurotic. Since we are concerned with modern America, where marriage is considered "a private affair," a planned marriage is difficult to imagine except as a remnant of the patriarchal family. Hence, sons or daughters who allow themselves to be pushed into a planned [ 113 ]

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marriage are ipso facto neurotics, quite as much as those who of their own accord marry for money or social position. Certain things are just not for sale-marriage and sex life among them. A person who believes that he can outsmart others by making marriage a business only outsmarts himself and ends up in neurotic unhappiness. The question is frequently asked: What do people quarrel about in marriage? The expected answer is as naive as the question and is obviously a simplification. It is as if a person were to say: Name all the cities of over ten thousand inhabitants in the whole world. Even a trained geographer with a photographic memory would be stunned by the enormity of the material. In Unhappy Marriage and Divorce I attempted a classification of neurotic marriages and arrived at fourteen types: Those involving marital infidelity-a neurotic problem Jealous marriages-the result of an early infantile conflict Those marked by the compulsive tendency to abandon the marrrage partner Those in which sexuality is disastrously associated with the forbidden Those in which the marriage partner is used as an unconscious alibi Those marked by a neurotic dread of marriage and flight into divorce [ 114 ]

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Those marked by a lack of affection and tenderness (mental cruelty) Those in which the choice of love-object is based on a caricature of one's own traits Those in which another man or woman is constantly played off against the marriage partner Those in which the marriage partner is used as a target of aggression Those featuring the "savior" complex as the motive for both marriage and divorce Neurotic marriages of ambition MisaUiances and marriages for spite Those in which psychic masochism is the propelling factor

Without going into clinical details, it is apparent that the common denominator of all neurotic conflicts in marriage is this: The neurotic leaves his or her early childhood with a set neurotic pattern which tends to repeat itself endlessly. Without the slightest awareness of this and with the best and most sincere intentions on the part of his conscious personality, the neurotic chooses someone for his conscious ((pursuit of happiness." That innocent victim is used unconsciously for the repetition of the infantile conflict-whatever the contents of that specific conflict may be. The same holds true for the person he chooses. Each partner is used as a movie screen on which the unconscious pattern of the other is reeled off. The resultant conflicts are thus impersonal, though both mates take it (since they are ignorant of their respective parts [ I 15

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in that tragedy of unconscious repetitiveness) very personally. In neurotic marriages, two neurotics look for and meet each other halfway. Their neurotic patterns are synchronizedunconsciously.

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CHAPTER

IX

The Illusory BasIs of Divorce IVORCE

is based on a series of illusions and

fallacies. Illusion No. I is the belief that the next marriage will be more successful. This belief arises from the fact that the neurotic divorcee, unaware that the failure of her marriage was inevitable, considers it to have been due simply to a mistake, to be corrected the next time. The illusion is maintained with amazing tenacity. The real reason for the failure of the marriage-the neurosis which created the failure and which will continue to create new failures-is never taken into account. "My marriages are trial balloons-if they don't fly, I take a trip to Reno," claimed a lady patient, four times divorced. "You must be an admirer of the scenery in Nevada," was my reply. "Why-what do you mean?" "Otherwise you could save yourself the trouble of the trip. With your attitude, your marriages cannot work out." [ 117 ]

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The lady was skeptical. She assured me that one day her "trial balloon" would have the duration of ((something permanent." Hope springs eternal-especially in neurotics. Another patient (this poor woman could boast of only two divorce decrees) informed me that she had decided to divorce her third husband. "He is the same washout my other husbands were. My present husband .... " "Did you say present husband or current husband?" I asked. The patient was flattered and amused. ((I must remember that one! Look up in Webster whether the word can be used with that connotation .... " Thus changing the ironic tragedy of her so-called marriages into a linguistic probJem, she proceeded to explain that her husband was "a weakling, a sissy and a Milquet oas.t . . ." ((Current" husbands, exchangeable and interchangeable every few months or years, are part of the necessary paraphernalia of pseudo marriages, I explained to my patient. ''V,'hat's that-a pseudo marriage?" asked the perpetualmotion-divorcee. "You go through the motions of marriage." ((You mean a mechanical doll? I object!" "Not exactly a mechanical doll, but a living, unconscious repeating-machine. " [ I 18

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If one listens to neurotic divorcees, one cannot miss their point: All of them firmly believe that their alleged mistake consisted in choosing the wrong man. They do not realize that their "wrong" choice was dictated by inner forces. They are convinced that by changing husbands everything can be corrected. Happy marriages cannot be secured by changing husbands. Since the neurotic is unconsciously always on the lookout for his complementary neurotic type, the chances of finding conscious bappiness in the next marriage are exactly zero. These are the clinical facts. But since divorcees have no idea of the dreary facts, they cling to the illusion that it is simply a question of "selecting the right man." Although the divorcee's senseless hunt for the compatible mate who will guarantee happiness and contentment is doomed to failure, the fantasy is universal. And since the small voice of psychoanalytic science is (so far) incapable of outshouting the millions of illusionists, the present state of affairs will not be changed in our times. To quote a discussion with a cynical patient, Mr. M.: "I understand now why the second, third, etc., marriage is only a repetition of the first fiasco. Since you yourself admit that making people understand these facts is a task for generations, why disturb the illusionists in their pursuit of unobtainable goals?" [ 119 ]

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"Science is always miles ahead of current prejudices," I pointed out. "Furthermore, we have something constructive to offer, at least for individual cases: psychiatric help. That alone justifies the statement that the accepted way out is

futile." "I'm not so sure. How many people can afford long and costly treatment?" "I am convinced that psychiatric marital clinics will be a part of every hospital in the country, perhaps even in less than fifty or a hundred years." ''Very consoling." "Irony is cheap. Do you have a better suggestion?" "Kill off all the psychoanalystsand preserve the illusions." "I will submit your proposal to the next international psychoanalytic convention," I told him. The patient's irony was rather bitter-he was a socially minded person. Science has no inherent reformative tendencies: It can discover facts, and it tries to explain these facts. The next step is up to the reformers. I have yet to encounter the first millionaire to donate a million dollars toward the endowment of a psychiatric marital clinic. The chances of repairing neurotic marriages through psychiatric-psychoanalytic treatment are favorable. However, it can be accomplished, in general, only if both participants of the marriage are treated. The reason is obvious: both mates [ 120 ]

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were chosen unconsciously because they possessed identical, or complementary, neurotic traits. With some exceptions, the removal of one neurosis is not sufficient. The reason for optimism about marriages thus repaired is also based on the fact, borne out by clinical experience, that even the most neurotic person has a normal corner in his Ego. The mate was chosen, first, because he answered unconscious, neurotic needs, but secondly, because he corresponded in some slight degree, at least, to the inwardly desired type. Much depends upon the quantitative distribution of the neurotic and normal elements of the personality. Only in the rarest cases is there nothing but a great emptiness left after the neurotic traits have been removed. These marriages are beyond repair. But it is never, of course, possible to be completely sure until after treatment. Illusion No.2 is the belief that tty 01f, can beat the marital game with cU1~ningand smartness." There are neurotic women who cloak their inability to love with the mink coat of "unsentimental knowledge of how things really are." Romantic nonsense is good for children, they aver; they, however, know what it is all about and make their marital decisions on the basis of clever calculations. Here are a few statements from such women, all of whom presented themselves as candidates for divorce. (I) "You ask why I married my husband? To be frank, [ 121 )

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I married him on the rebound. I was in love, or so I fancied, with a married man who did not divorce his wife. He treated me with cruelty-mental cruelty, if you know what I mean -and I was very unhappy." "Why did you attach yourself to a hopeless affair?" "Childish optimism, I guess." «Psychic masochism, I guess." «I doubt it. I wanted. . . .J)

"Who are Cyou'? Conscious or unconscious department?" CCIwasn't so smart at the time. Consciously I loved the man and wanted to marry him." "That requires amplification. Unconsciously you wanted the fiasco." "Whatever it was, I was deeply hurt by his refusal to divorce his wife." "Did you have any reason to assume that the man had any intention at all of marrying you?" "Nothing but my hope. I knew his wife; she was a woman who knew all the ropes." "One argument more for the hopelessness of the situation. Are you sure that you weren't in love with the hopeless situation ?" «I won't argue with you any more. The end effect, though, speaks for your assumption. When I confronted the man with an ultimatum, he was indignant and told me bluntly [ 122 ]

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that he wasn't responsible for any 'fancy ideas,' as he called it, brutally. He claimed that he had never led me to believe that he would divorce his wife. He was just scared of her." "Did his excuse correspond to the facts?" "You know what men are like. It's true that nothing explicit was said. I just assumed .... " "And after this unconsciously self-constructed disappointment you married on the rebound?" She replied in great excitement, "What else can a girl do? Wait for the next disappointment? Live in a one-room apartment with kitchenette? Do you believe it's very pleasant to be always on the outside?" "Your emotionalism is rather an indication of a guilty conscience. Why do you defend yourself? I consider a marriage of convenience a neurotic sytnptom and not, as you assume, moral turpitude." ''Very kind of you." "Irony does not solve problems. Did your scheme work out?" "Financially and socially, yes. Emotionally, no. I'm still the same fool I was. Once more I'm in love with a married man who refuses to divorce his wife." "Aren't you afraid that your present husband will get wise to you? How important for you is the social and financial position you achieved through marriage to your husband?" [ 1'23

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"Very important. That's exactly why I consulted you. I'm on the verge of jeopardizing my marriage. I'm making mistakes, I'm not cautious enough." "Why do you specialize in 'hopelessly married' and, therefore, unavailable men? For the second time you are, as you call it, making the same 'mistake.' " The lady retired behind her handkerchief, shedding a few pro [orma tears, without endangering her elaborate make-up. "I'm not quite certain what you want from me. Are you giving me the ridiculous task of 'improving' a marriage of convenience, or do you want me to eliminate your tendency to fall in love with unattainable men? Are you conscious of the fact that analysis could endanger your businesslike marriage?" "Don't exaggerate. I want to get rid of my chronic tendency of falling in love with married men. If what you suspect is correct, namely that I don't love these men (it happened four times and not, as I told you, twice) but am attracted by the situation of the unobtainable) then that 'tendency' as you call it cold-bloodedly, is dangerous." "Dangerous-for what?" "For my marriage of convenience, as you put it. Dangerous for my social and financial status." Treatment solved her tendency to attach herself to "hope[ 124

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lessly married" men. However, she interrupted treatment shortly afterward with the strange claim that she couldn't "afford to become emotionally normal since that would endanger my marriage." Gold-digging at its best! (2.) "I married, believe it or not because of 'statistical fears.' I coined that phrase, and I hope you appreciate it. It means (fe.arsbased on statistics.' They pound in you so constantly-in all magazines, I mean-the bad statistical chances for finding a husband in the thirties, that I just got panicky. Nobody wants the stigma 'old maid.' How am I responsible for the stupidity of the 'cultural' environment which glorifies the married woman and maligns the unmarried one?" "Were you ever in love?" "That's the strange thing: I wasn't. I lived till I was twenty-nine with myoId invalid father-he was crippled with rheumatism-and devoted a great deal of time to him. I know it sounds suspicious, but I wasn't such a saint. I was attached for years to an elderly man, a severe hypochondriac. I guess he needed and tolerated me because I knew so much about nursing-my father's illness forced my interest in that direction." "Did you love that man?" "I doubt it. My first point has always been: Are you needed? I am a sucker for people who conform to that condition. I went as far as to sleep with him because he believed [ 125

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that sex was good for his fight against his diversified hypochondriacal symptoms. As it turned out later, it did not help at ali, he just started to worry about the results of being weakened by sex. That made his weak potency even worse, and he finally became impotent. This was all right with me; sex for me was sacrifice. I had the medicine to dispense, it seemed cruel to withhold it. So it was administered; the 'medicine bottle' didn't feel much, only slight disgust. For the last few years there was no sex. Then my father died. At that time I was twenty-nine. I mourned deeply, and a strange change came over me. Without being able to explain why, I gave up my friend. It was as if I were through with nursing in any form. I started to review my life and found it empty. I took courses, trying to occupy myself (my father left me a considerable income) but all this didn't help. I was once reading in a magazine a statistical study on the probability of finding mates for girls of my age; the statistical outlook appeared gloomy. I didn't take it seriously, but later the thought preyed on my mind. Finally, I got panicky, and decided to marry. The question was, whom to marry. I came to the conclusion that love was something I'd never knowwhy, I don't know. I was tired of sickbeds, complaints, and all that. I decided intellectually that a very healthy specimen was in order. Frantically, I looked around and, three years ago, married an athlete. That means, by profession my hus[ 126 ]

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band is a lawyer, but his real hobby is fencing. He devotes most of his time to that sport, and neglects his practice. That's unimportant. More important is the fact that we are sexually incompatible. My husband wants sex continuously, seems to have a compulsion about it. He found out that I don't feel that way, and since then hell has been loose. He constantly . gets mood" comp 1ains, y. . . . "Is he on the way to becoming a hypochondriac, too?" "That's what frightens me, I foresee that after some time, I shall once again be--a nurse. It's really fantastic. I did everything possible to run away from that, and now I'm confronted once more with the same situation. I tried all devious ways to come out of it. I tried to pretend that I enjoy sex; it didn't work either. I'm such a bad actress, or my husband knows too much about real sexual enjoyment in a woman. He makes what I call (complaining scenes.' My behavior makes him sick, so he claims. I suggested divorce to avoid making him sick, but he doesn't want that either. . . ." This patient was cured; her husband entered analysis with a colleague. The prospects that the marriage will continue are favorable. (3) "I married my husband because I wanted to be taken care of in a legal way. No fooling about that; I'm not pretending. Facts are facts. The marriage of my parents was bad; quarrels and scenes were the order of the day. I just [ 127

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wanted to leave. I thought: What have I to offer? My beauty was the only asset. Well, I thought, if there are customers for that in socially accepted form, O.K. So I married my husband, who loves me very much. I am just friendly-indifferent. That life becameboring, and I tried a boy friend. The effect was the same-the initial thrill of the danger wore off. Result: more boredom. Perhaps I wasn't so smart after all. I had it so nicely figured out. I am depressed. What do you think is eating me?" "A neurosis," I said, flatly. But the lady was not of that opinion, and acted accordingly. (4) "I married my husband to escape my greatest fears: loneliness and financial insecurity. I thought that even an unhappy marriage could never fail to protect me against loneliness. What a fool I was! I found out soon enough that loneliness doesn't mean just to be alone. If I'm with my husband, I feel more lonely than in an empty apartment." "And financial security? Does that at least compensate?" CCYes and no. Of course, I like to be taken care of. But it has only negative advantages-so to speak. If I think of earning my living once more, I shudder." "Don't you think that every woman should have a profession-which she mustn't use during the fat years-for exactly that emergency?" [ 128 ]

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"Theoretically, I agree with you. But practically. . . " "You seem to be caught in the old dilemma of wanting to have your cake and eat it too." "I think you're right. How often haven't I told myself, 'you can't have it both ways.' That doesn't help. I'm desperately lonely. I sell myself in marriage. I'm dissatisfied )) despite 'social position' and a mink coat. "And still you love your mink coat?" "What woman wouldn't?" This patient refused to' enter treatment; she was obviously afraid of losing her gold-digger complex. One and a half years later, to my surprise, she came back. She was a widow -her husband had died of a heart attack, leaving her his money. Now she was afraid to make a second "mistake." She was helped to a considerable degree by analysis; more could not, in her case, be achieved. I have been repeatedly reprimanded for neglecting in Unhappy Marriage and Divorce to consider the social factors influencing both states. I do not deny the importance of the social factors in marriage and divorce; but I am of the opinion that the psychoanalyst's business is to describe the psychiatric-psychoanalytic facts. Nobody wishes to put the sociologist out of business. Nevertheless, I consider social factors in marriage only of sur[ 129

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face value for the stability of marriage. They cloud the issue; they seem to dominate the scene, but they are only the palimpsest covering the decisive psychological facts. It is interesting to observe that financial security and social advantages are frequently strong enough to hold a woman in a marriage of convenience, but not strong enough to guarantee her some kind of emotional satisfaction and inner balance. Even the seemingly cold-blooded type of neurotic woman, capable of that rather debatable deal, is in the end the "cheated cheater." Neurosis cannot be beaten by cunning and smartness. The truth of this statement is evidenced also in the neurotic attitudes of such people as the woman who was afraid that her "lack of caution" would endanger her conscious scheme of money-marriage. These women remind one in some respects of card-sharpers who, in certain situations, revert to pathologic gambling themselves-and lose like the "suckers" they otherwise exploit. The study of social factors in marriage is, without knowledge of psychiatric factors, a useless undertaking. It neglects essential and basic psychologic phenomena and accepts as allimportant what are only the surface reverberations. For example, a woman already quoted answered my question: "How important for you is the social and financial position achieved through marriage to your husband?" with an emphatic "Very important." Still, it would be naive to [ 130 ]

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believe that the unconscious reason behind that "Very important" was the same as the consciously known and emphasized reason. That is exactly the error so frequently encountered in the evaluation of social factors in marriage. The future in that science belongs to the psychoanalytically trained sociolo~st. Another example: A woman with money and social background marries a man without either, and is rejected by her social set. Her ensuing social dilemma can be viewed, if one chooses to be naive, in splendid socially conditioned isolation. But, an analysis could prove that the woman in question used the social setting for her unconscious purposes, being unconsciously well aware of the consequences. Not less naive is the assumption that social factors, present in a particular society, of themselves force specific women to specific actions. Analysis of women tending to prostitution proves that conclusively. They claim that life left them "no other choice." Nevertheless, the decision to work as a filing clerk, unskilled worker, or domestic help, or as a prostitute, has very definite unconscious reasons. This also applies, mutatis mutandis, to a marriage of convenience. The social setting is identical for the woman who marries "for love" and the woman who marries "for money." Unconscious factors determine the choice. The admirer of money or the overvaluator of that commodity will be surprised that genitalia

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are not for sale, for normal people. Only a specific group of neurotics acts and thinks as if they were. Important as social factors are, applied with strict consistency to marriage, they explain exactly nothing. They correspond to the person's rationalizations. The sociologist who is taken in by them can be compared to a not-too-smart detective who falls for the clues planted by a clever criminal. As far as marriage is concerned, the sociologist and analyst view the same facts from different angles. The point is not to create an artificial barrier, but to co-ordinate experiences. However, it is improbable that this can be done as long as sociologists confuse the surface with what lies beneath the surface. Illusion No. 3 is the belief that marriage confronts one exclusively with reality factors.

If one listens to neurotic women in their pre- or postdivorce state, one gets the impression that "poor little me" was thrown into a conflict not of her making and one which arose without her participation. All this is a convenient though unconsciously determined blind. Psychologically, the situation is different: unconsciousiy these women chose their husbands for the purpose of reeling off an old repressed infantile pattern. The ensuing conflict was then unconsciously speeded up by neurotic collaboration. There are no innocent victims in the marital graveyard.

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This fact, stressed so frequently in this volume, can also be proven clinically from an unexpected angle: The reaction of women to their husband's request for divorce. Here are a few examples of what I mean:' Mrs. N., a woman of forty, had been married for thirteen years when her husband confronted her with the fact that he had decided to break up their marriage because he felt unhappy at home and was in love with another girl. He was ready to make all reasonable financial arrangements for her and their twelve-year-old son, understood the objective tragedy of the situation, but was, as he stated, driven by forces "beyond his control." Mrs. N. was at first ccparalyzed with fear and shock"; then gave \vay to convulsive weeping. Despite all this emotionalism, her decision was precise and clear cut: CCI shall never give you a divorce." Her husband left home, only to come back after eight months because of his inability to change his wife's decision. After his return he behaved like a prisoner; he refused to talk to his wife, spent his evenings reading, and discontinued sexual relations. What was the unconscious reason for Mrs. N.'s attitude? It was obvious from the start that a powerful unconscious mechanism was at work, since she was ready to sacrifice everything to outward appearances-her pride, her self-esteem, These examples were first published in Marriage and Fatnily Living, 1946, Fall issue, under the title "Six. Types of Neurotic Reaction to a Husband's Request for Divorce." 1

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even the very contents of marriage-anything to keep the "prisoner" whom she called her husband. Mrs. N. came from a family in which the father was always considered a "weak personality." Asked what that meant, precisely, she revealed after long hesitation that he was a gambler, not too reliable about supporting his family. At first she stubbornly denied but later reluctantly admitted that there were "some rumors» about other women, too. In any case, Mrs. N. triumphantly stated, the marriage survived all these conflicts since it was never dissolved. She was strongly attached to her father, and had been his favorite child. One could reconstruct the unconscious feeling of the child as follows: At the peak of the Oedipus complex, she wanted her father for herself, alleviating her unconscious feeling of guilt concerning her mother with the excuse "Father wants to leave mother anyhow." Her inner feeling of guilt continued, however, and as the next inner defense she constructed another alibi: that she wanted her father to stay with her mother. As a part of this alibi she developed a reactive attachment to her mother. Thirty-five years later her husband's demand for a divorce set in motion her old feeling of guilt: "You wanted father to leave mother; now your own husband wants to leave you for another woman." In irrationally refusing the divorce, Mrs. N. unconsciously fought the old inner guilt conflict stemming

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from her childhood, her unconscious argument being CCIwant my parents to remain united!" Her refusal to grant a divorce was therefore not only a rational fight for her husband but a rebuff to the old reproach of her Superego. Her willingness to accept the empty shell of a marriage without meaning was also a repetition of the infantile pattern, since it was the very fact that the marriage of her parents was empty that gave her as a child the ability to endure the parental marriage. In other words, an old defense was activated, bolstered by self-punishment: "Your own marriage is just an empty shell, too!" Mrs. N. finally consented to divorce. She went through that trying period relatively well; her deep masochism, however, could only be diminished. The time element interfered; she was called away by the illness of her mother who was living in one of the American possessions. I doubt whether even with years of treatment a real cure could have been accomplished. There are limits beyond which-because of the quantity of self-damaging tendencies-therapy cannot reach. Mrs. o. married at the age of forty, after many adventures on the way, a man who called himself a "bom bachelor." He was cold, detached, witty and charming "in a distant sort of way," but ((unreliable." "Accidentally," Mrs. O. had found recent love letters from other women and her husband's replies. Severe conflicts followed. Mr. [ 135 ]

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saying that he, being a born bachelor anyway, didn't believe in monogamy, and that he had warned her beforehand that he wasn't "material for marriage," and had married against his will. He demanded a divorce. Mrs. O. refused and started hysterical quarrels. During these "attacks," as she described them, she was completely irrational, constantly attacking and reproaching her husband "because of his coldness." Mrs. O. came from a family who believed that cold and detached behavior was the best educational medium. Her mother pronounced the theory; her father followed it, though reluctantly. The child became outwardly as cold as was required of her, but full of hatred for everybody. This hatred prompted many of her sexual adventures later in life, as a slap in the face of her puritanical family. However, her aggression was on only a superficial level, for by indulging in these same adventures she spoiled every possibility she had of happiness in life. This deep masochistic pattern prompted her to marry Mr. 0., who, as a husband, was (as she correctly stated) an "impossible" person. What she did not see was that she had chosen this "cold" man not despite but unconsciously because of his detachment and inability to love. In her rows with her husband, Mrs. O. repeated, without suspecting it, her whole child-mother relationship. Her cold husband, upon whom she projected the role of the mother,

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used mental cruelty upon the victimized child. On the other hand, her husband complained that she herself was "cold and cruel" when reproaching him-unless they were quarreling. There the roles were unconsciously reversed. Mrs. O. went even further in her quarrels: she changed the jnfantile situation by dramatizing two unconscious thoughts. The first unconscious thought was: "1 cannot stand your coldness, Mother; even your hatred and anger would be more pleasant." Her husband's despair, which finally succeeded his usual coldness, made that corrected inner repetition possible. Second, in her quarrels she acted the part of the angry and complaining mother, thereby nullifying her mother's real coldness. Mrs. O.'s refusal to grant a divorce was based on irrational factors--on a repetition of conflicts which had no connection whatever with Mr. O. Mr. and Mrs. O. were both analyzed for a short time. The last 1 heard from Mrs. O. was a telephone call (they live in a foreign country) informing me that the marriage had worked out, though the husband was rather reticent in sex. This, obviously, was his last-ditch defense. Mrs. P. married at the age of eighteen a young man of twenty, and lived with him for a few years without too great conflict. She was at times rather "nagging," as her husband later stated, in her attempts to remodel him according to her [ 137 ]

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wishes. She liked company; he, on the other hand, found her acquaintances and friends "a bunch of jerks" and was not too careful about concealing his opinion. Their next set of conflicts centered around his predilection for studying and reading in general. He held a well-paid position, but tried to improve his prospects by earning an academic degree. Mrs. P., on the other hand, failed to see the point at all, and cornplained about the waste of time and money spent studying. Her husband's neurosis pushed him into a senseless extra marital relation, though he claimed that sex in his marriage was satisfactory. He started an affair with a promiscuous girl in his office, with the result that at home he became "moody and withdrawn." Unconsciously he was asking for trouble and a denouement, but he had a hard time making his wife suspicious. She attributed his depressed attitude to his worries over his studies. Obviously, in an unconscious effort to hasten the conflict, he started to neglect his wife and later became impotent with her. Mrs. P., still not suspicious, "made a big scene." "You don't love me any more." So her husband confessed his infidelity. Mrs. P. told him that she would never consent to a divorce, declared very reasonably that he was acting neurotically, and insisted that he consult a psychiatrist. He refused, and Mrs. P., in revenge, immediately started a sexual affair with one of her friends. She did not conceal it at all; on the contrary, she even told her husband all the [ r 38 ]

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details. Her husband rernained "sullen, unhappy, and impotent," to quote her. Her revengeful attitude resulted, first, in Mr. P.'s becoming impotent even with his mistress and later in giving her up. "I feel like a complete washout and don't care for anything," was his own resume of the situation. From early childhood, Mrs. P. had been in competition with boys. She openly resented the fact that "we live in a man's world," as she put it. She even acquired a critical outlook on men in general, mercilessly making fun of man's weaknesses and braggadocio. Though she denied it at first, she was frigid and achieved sexual satisfaction only through preliminary acts (clitoridean masturbation). Her analysis revealed a typical hysteric neurosis: She had never overcome her hatred for and envy of boys, who had something that was denied her. Her neurotic penis envy and unconscious masculine identification were never inwardly resolved; hence her frigidity. Her infidelity was based, not on simple revenge ("I want to get even with my husband"), but on neurotic competition stemming from childhood. She unconJciot~Jly misused her marital difficulties for infantile revenge-on the fact that she was a girl! She mistook her husband's infidelity for the simple exercise of a masculine prerogative, and combatted it by exercising it, too. Of course, unconscious self-damaging tendencies were also involved.

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Mr. and Mrs. P. were both analyzed, and remained united. The success has held for many years. Recently I received an amusing letter from Mrs. P., informing me that "the job done on us was so good that you cheated yourself out of treating my adolescent children; both are developing beautifully. No psychiatrist will get any fee for treating them." Mrs. Q., a woman of forty-two, found out through an anonymous letter that her husband was having several relations with a widow. She engaged a detective and collected evidence for weeks, meanwhile concealing her knowledge and actions from her husband. She considered her marriage of eighteen years "neither good nor bad." She had become skeptical during the last years of whether her marriage "still made sense" to her. Confronted with the fact of her husband's infidelity, she said, ((A cold fury and determination took possession of me; it was as if a new content in life opened up. The same weakling of a husband whom I had wanted for years to throw out suddenly became important. More precisely, I felt that I couldn't bear giving him to another woman, though the 'gift' would be a poor one, as I had to admit ironically to myself. A strange pleasure crept into my boring life. For instance, I observed my husband in his silly attempts to conceal his coming home late with the excuse of business conferences. After having collected the material, 1 presented the dossier to him. My husband col[ 140 ]

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lapsed, didn't say a word, left home 'for a businesstrip,' and wrote me a Jetter asking for a divorce. I didn't answer, and after his return I told him that he could have a separation but never a divorce. I warned him that if he continued to see the widow I would sue him for divorce and name her as corespondent. This was six weeks ago. We still live under the same roof. He is depressed, and we are hardly on speaking terms." What was the reason for Mrs. O.'s decision? She was not too clear on that score. She admitted that she was not interested in her husband at the time she was informed of his extra marital affair; she was not indignant morally; she was financially independent. And still she felt that she could never "give" her husband to this "harlot," as she called her competitor. The very husband whom she herself had shelved as a sexual being for years became for her part of an oversexed fantasy involving another woman, She spent hours torturing herself with jealousy, imagining their relationsa trend foreign to her previously. Mrs. O.'s analysis revealed typical unconscious homosexual tendencies. Consciously she was jealous; behind the scenes (unconsciously) she was deeply attached to the image of a woman. She used her husband, again to quote Freud, as a "bridge to the woman." In other words, she identified unconsciously with the man, her repressed real grievance [ 141 ]

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being that the other woman loved her husband rather thau herself. The objection that she didn't even know the "real" woman, her husband's friend, is irrelevant, since the whole problem had nothing whatever to do with reality; the "real" situation was used as a screen upon which to project an infantile conflict. Jealousy represented the defense against her wish, providing her with an alibi: "I don't want the woman; I want my husband." In her early childhood, Mrs. Q. had been deeply attached to her sister. Her sister, three years her senior, paid very little attention to her and was inclined to ridicule her. During the period of puberty, her sister (like Mrs. J.'s) took pleasure in stealing the boy whom Mrs. Q. liked, "just for the fun of it." Decades later, Mr. Q.'s infidelity activated all the jealousy, attachment, and reactive fury that she had originally felt for her sister. The unconscious situation was that just as her sister had appropriated the boy she loved, so now her husband was appropriated by the woman she loved, so ((just for the fun of it" she now refused the divorce, not seeing that in the end she damaged herself, also, since she, too, could not remarry. Mrs. Q. solved her conflict partially; she consented to divorce, but declared that she was too old for longer treatment. [ 142 ]

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Viewed logically, the problem of refusal of divorce in hopeless marriages is replete with paradox. But the mystery is resolved if we take the unconscious factors into consideration. To complicate matters, the actions of neurotic women are not less irrational when they do consent immediately to the demand for a divorce. These women feel emotionally that they should refuse the divorce, and give their consent on the basis of "logical reasoning." Here are two examples of this type of reaction. Mrs. R., aged twenty-five, entered psychoanalysis in a dangerously suicidal state. Her husband had told her a few months before that he had decided to divorce her. His reason was that she was "unsatisfactory in bed" and "indifferent, if not nagging, during the daytime." Mrs. R.'s reaction was first fury and then deep depression. All this happened, she claimed, during the five minutes immediately following the announcement. Afterward she consented immediately "against my feelings" to his demand for a divorce. Her husband took financial advantage of the situation; their settlement was very unsatisfactory for his wife. "After my husband left, a strange change came over me. I started to think, and came to the conclusion that his reproaches were unjustified. The beginning of our marriage was sexually unsatisfactory because of his inexperience; later it was unsatisfactory because-of his weak potency. We didn't get along too [ 143 ]

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well, because he ran around with a guilty conscience, because of his poor sexual qualities, and started quarrels over nothing. I could understand that he was shifting the blame onto me. All this became clear to me-his neurosis, his guilt. Butand here I was helpless-I became attached to him more and more. It was as if the very fact that my husband rejected me served as a chain attaching me to him. I started to follow him, to arrange 'chance' meetings-well, I was like a dog following his master though the master kicked him out into the cold." During these months Mrs. R. seriously tried to commit suicide twice, and was rescued and sent into psychoanalytic treatment. Mrs. R. was, she said, "disgusted" with her humility toward her former husband. She saw through his neurosis (correctly, as it happened). And still she used him as the means of feeling mistreated. \Vhat was she repeating without knowing it? The answer is to be found in her childhood situation. Her father was a drunkard who, during his sprees, "beat hell" out of his children. The patient and her sister were forced to bring in a bamboo stick, kiss it, and say, "Please, Father, punish us as we deserve." This went on until her father died of a heart attack. Mrs. R. was at that time nine years old. Interestingly enough, her conscious feeling for her father was hatred, and she did not develop any masochistic perversion. All her enjoyment of his sadism-it took [ 144 )

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a long time in analysis to make her remember a "queer feeling of excitement" while these tortures were going on-was shifted to the unconscious. She became unconsciously an exquisite psychic masochist. Years later, her husband's leaving her revived the old masochistic pattern of her childhood, and she projected it upon him. The question remains of how she could have used her weakling of a husband, whose neurosis she nearly understood, for the sadistic father of her recollection. The answer was that in leaving her, her husband acted unjustly. And injustice was the keynote of her father's beatings. Thus the gulf was breached. This explains also why Mrs. R consented so readily to a divorce. She did so only because she didn't feel guilty, as she had not felt guilty when her father punished her "unjustly." Mrs. R. was treated and cured. She remarried and has children, and looks at her past (to quote her) "with great surprise. " Mrs. S., a woman of thirty, had been married for eight years to a man fifteen years her senior. Her husband was a cold and reticent person, the personification of a kill-joy. She, on the other hand, was buoyant, full of life and fun. None of their acquaintances could understand their choice of each other. Nevertheless, she loved her husband and claimed that she was "perfectly happy." One day Mr. S. told her that he

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had decided to divorce her because he wanted to marry a friend of his sister, an elderly woman who had just lost her husband. He gave no further explanation and her consent was taken for granted. Mrs. S. left for Reno without further complaint or delay. "If you ask me how I reacted to my husband's decision, my answer is that I was surprised that it came so late. I'd always felt that my great happiness with him wouldn't last forever. I was speechless when he announced his intention, and felt as if someone had hit me over the head with a sledge hammer. I felt emotionally like refusing, but my common sense told me that every hope was gone. I recovered and told myself: 'Be a good sport; if this is the way he wants it, nothing can be done about it.' " A few days of depression followed. Then she became gay once more, slightly manic, and started sexual relations with different men. One acquaintance in Reno admonished her: "Take it easy! Don't overdo! We all go through such periods. There's no reason to throw yourself away on every bum that comes along." Her promiscuity was accompanied by frigidity; her gaiety was artificial. When her friend told her that she just wanted to prove to herself that she was not so worthless as her husband made her out to be by sending her away, she was surprised. She didn't feel that way about it at

all.

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After her return from Reno, her promiscuity continued and one affair followed another, all with the same result. One day an old family friend forced her to see me. Mrs. S. had no objection to treatment, though she confessed that she didn't understand what one could do for a "completely normal" person. Analysis showed a strong Oedipal attachment to her father, who was a gay and friendly person, unlike her gloomy and unfriendly husband. There was apparently no connecting link between the two. The truth was that her early Oedipal wishes were counteracted by a severe sense of inner guilt. To appease this guilt she allowed herself the father-image only on condition that she change it into an image of opposite character (gay, friendly, kind father-gloomy, unfriendly, unkind husband). In this way she also paid her inner debt to her conscience in the form of suffering. This compromise lasted for years, until her husband "threw her out," as she put it. Then a strange masochistic tendency came to the fore, of course covered up with pseudo aggression. That is, under the guise of hitting back at the father-image, in reality she damaged herself. "If Father doesn't want me, I'll make him sorry; I shall become a prostitute in revenge." This was the unconscious reasoning behind her short-lived affairs. Mrs. S., after a very long treatment, was cured and is now happily married to a man of her own age. The amount of [ 147 ]

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self-damaging tendencies was so great that for long periods I her prognosis looked more than doubtful. Her case shows I that it is not always possible to predict the outcome precisely .. In this one-sided selection of neurotic patterns, six types of feminine reactions toward the husband's demand for divorce have been isolated. Study of them leads to the conclusion that there are casest in which, quite apart from practical considerations, the woman intellectually understands that she is fighting a losing battle in refusing divorce and yet is emozionally incapable of giving her consent. There are also women who feel emotionally that they should refuse the divorce but still give consent on the basis of "logical reasoning." All six types described reacted to a real situation by reviving unconscious, repressed, infantile patterns, which only psychoanalysis can solve. Of course, one could ask ironically: "How should a woman normally behave if her husband asks for a divorce?" There is no answer to this question, since divorce is in general a neurotic procedure of neurotic people. In the great majority of cases, people arrive at the point of divorce not by chance but because they have unconsciously provoked the situation, even if only by their choice of a neurotic partner, although this is usually only the initial provocation. Freud's statement that every person harbors in his unconscious an apparatus j

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enabling him to understand the unconscious of another peron still holds true. There is less chance in the choice of mariage partners than is generally assumed. It cannot be too often emphasized that two neurotics unconsciously seek and find each other. Outward appearances are often deceptive, since the neurosis of one marriage partner may at a specific time be more advanced than that of the other. In such a case, it appears to the untrained observer that one partner is normal and the other neurotic. Illusion NO.4 is the belief that CCI don't need a husband anyway." The statement, "I'm better off without a husband," is a theme song of marriage-weary women. What they are doing IS whistling in the dark to conceal a lurking fear, and sometimes they are fooled by their own whistling. For fear it is. The wish to be alone is never an original wish. Such a wish simply does not exist. What is clinically observable is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge defeat sustained in the battle of marriage. The defeat is denied by the compensatory claim that nothing was lost. The grapes which ere just too high. . . . The emotions pushing a person into marriage are beyond rational control. They are deeply ingrained from the first iYearsof life. The explanation is simple. The wish to supplant the parent of the same sex and replace him in the relation[ 149 ]

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ship with the parent of the opposite sex is a universal human phenomenon, though on the unconscious level. Anyone who believes that he can altogether escape that wish in childhood is simply deluding himself. The decision to marry was implanted in you long before you could read, write, and think clearly. Illusion NO.5 is the belief that children will adapt them-. selves to the new situation. A woman patient, fighting desperately against her husband's desire for a divorce, exclaimed during one of their heated discussions: "Imagine that your child has broken his arms and both legs on a voyage, and is suspended in a surgical position in bed in a ship's cabin; then ask yourself how great are his chances of survival if the ship sinks. Would your child have an equal chance as compared with a good swimmer? If you can face your conscience with an answer in the affirmative, then get a divorce, regardless of your children." Did the woman exaggerate in her simile? Is her argument faulty or clinically provable? What are the facts? There is no doubt that the divorce of their parents invariably presents consequences of the most serious nature for the children. However, the assumption that divorce automatically produces neurosis in the child is unjustified. An UJlhappy marriage is no less dangerous to the child psychologically. And, to make things even more complicated, a happy [ ISO ]

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marriage is no guarantee, either, against the development of neurosis in the children. How can we explain this bundle of contradictions? Childhood is a period of complicated inner conflicts for every child, quite regardless of whether his environment is favorable or unfavorable. The myth of the invariably happy childhood is-a myth, based on the fallacious notion "small child, small conflict." Every childhood is filled with inner emotional conflicts. These conflicts center, first, around the universal childhood fantasy of omnipotence. Every child has a complete misconception of reality. He considers himself omnipotent, and reality destroys this illusion only gradually. Consequently, even small disappointments (small as seen through the eyes of adults) are magni tied all out of proportion by the child. The problem of securing his parents' exclusive love and attention is a case in point. For the parent it is quite logical that their emotional expenditures are bound to have limits. It is not at all logical from the child's point of view. Megalomania follows the child like a shadow. The persistence of that fantasy explains why all the emotional wishes pertaining to the pre-Oedipal and Oedipal situations are such a tragedy for him. These wishes are doomed to be renounced and repressed, but the process is painful and protracted. Thus the child suffers a double frustration. At this point, the danger to the child from a bad marriage

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or divorce enters the picture; likewise the advantages to the child of a happy marriage become apparent, and we can see why it is that normal and happily married people are more apt to rear normal children. There are a number of factors involved in this.

(I) The child of a happy marriage finds out sooner or later that the wall confronting him-the wall of his parents' love for each other-is impenetrable. He sees no opening, no hope of being able to creep in and replace his rival (the father in the boy's case, the mother in the girl's). They seem to be established in their places for good. Accordingly, realizing that his desires are hopeless, the child accepts the inevitable and projects his wishes elsewhere, or modifies them. In short, he accepts reality. But in an unhappy marriage, the conflict between the parents offers the child some hope that he will be able to displace and supplant his rival, the parent of the same sex. Divorce, especially, opens up a danger point, since one of the parents disappears from the infantile stage, and the forbidden wishes then seem to have a chance for fulfillment. One great danger here is that the child may develop a fixation, with an increase of conflict. Since in the rnajority of cases the children of divorced parents remain with the mother, this means, for the boy, an even stronger Oedipal attachment; for the girl, a deeper Oedipal antagonism. This [ 15Z ]

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can develop not only during the Oedipal period (two and a half to five) but also during puberty, when there is a revival of these unconscious wishes. Moreover, I have received the impression in a number of cases where the pre-Oedipal attachment to the mother hung in the balance-that is, where it might have been overcome or might not-that it was revived by the divorce, and the child relapsed into the oral (pre-Oedipal) stage. In other words, for the girl, divorce is the danger point of unconscious homosexuality; for the boy, of hysteric mother-attachment. It is impossible to know whether the same development would not have taken place had there been no divorce, but I am inclined to believe that the divorce was the decisive factor. The statement that if the father is off the scene, the girl's antagonism toward the mother deepens and that this can lead to homosexuality, may seem contradictory to those unfamiliar with the unconscious reasons for female homosexuality. The popular conception of Lesbianism assumes that the basis of the perversion is love of one woman for another. Clinical experience shows that it has quite a different basis, that Lesbianism is an unconscious three-layer structure: (1) deep masochistic attachment to the mother; (2) warded off with compensatory hatred; (3) finally counteracted by compensatory love. In cases of parental divorce, an additional factor enters the picture. The girl holds her mother respon-

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sible for the loss of her father. This increases her hatred for her mother. The hatred had originally quite different reasons; it was part of the unsolved pre-Oedipal and Oedipal conflicts. The old conflict is now reinforced by the new grievance: "Mother has deprived me of my father." Accompanying the neurotically inflated hatred is a deep unconscious feeling of guilt because of that hatred, which leads in turn to compensatory love. It is a kind of chain reaction which can, under unfavorable circumstance, lead to Lesbianism. (2) In a harmonious marriage, not only are such dangers avoided, but also the child is actively equipped to overcome them. Happy parents are more likely to give their child real, tender love than are neurotic parents. And it is precisely this tender parental love that helps the child to endure the inevitable blows to his megalomania and the necessary denial of his libidinous wishes. The parents' tender love offers the child's mortified narcissism a way out, the unexpressed formula being: "Give up certain (impossible' wishes and you can still be loved by your parents." To express it differently: Tender parental love helps the child to accept the reality principle, which 1S one of the prerequisites of normalcy. (3) A happy marriage avoids the situation with which the child is confronted when his parents separate. In the latter situation, the child, in his megalomania, behaves as if his father or mother left because they did not love him, or [ [5+ ]

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because of his misdeeds. Guilt, stemming from other sources, is thus activated and the reality of the parent's departure is taken by the child as proof positive of his inner guilt and that he is unloved because of some fault of his OWn. (4) Every child sees reality through the spectacles of his misconceptions. The greater the discrepancy between fantasy and reality, the more difficult it is for him to maintain the fantasy. Obviously, then, in a home where the parents are happily married, the child can give up his misconceptions more easily than in a home where the marriage is unhappy and where reality, therefore, fosters his projections. In an unhappy marriage, the child simply uses the raw material at hand. He "takes sides" with one parent or the other not only as a result of their quarrels, into which he is directly or indirectly drawn, but also because he projects his own emotional conflicts onto the situation, although actually they have nothing to do with it. Let us take a boy of four or five, at the high point in his Oedipal conflict, who witnesses a violent quarrel between his parents; mother reproaches father. The boy, quite apart from the actual quarrel, at this time is filled with the unconscious wish to supplant his father in his mother's love, and to take his place. Feeling guilty about this wish, the child uses the quarrel as one more argument to diminish his sense of guilt: ccpather is bad to Mother. I would act differently." The result is a still stronger fixation [ r 55 ]

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on an irrational libidinous wish, which cannot be fulfilled anyway. Thus reality reinforces an already existing neurotic fixation. Facts are stubborn things, even when unacknowledged by parents. But the facts are that the child must psychologically digest and overcome the pre-Oedipal and Oedipal libidinous and aggressive attachments. If reality gives him an excuse for not solving the problem, he may well use it. I say «may" because not all children do use it. The marriage of his parents inevitably leaves its mark on the child, although the results may be visible only decades later. By way of illustration, one can point to the behavior of neurotic women in a particular situation of conflict-s-when confronted with their husbands' demand for divorce. We have already looked at some examples of this. To sum up, there is obviously a great deal of truth in the general assumption that happy marriages produce happy children and unhappy marriages unhappy, neurotic children. However, one cannot always be certain that this will be the case. Even the happiest marriage does not insure that the children will be normal, or automatically immune to the development of neurosis. It is up to the parents to do the best they can-the rest is out of their hands. It is out of their hands because reality is only one of the factors determining the development of a neurosis. [ 156 ]

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The statement that a neurotic child can develop in a happy family life, and that a normal child may develop in spite of an unhappy family life, sounds unreasonable and is contrary to popular belief. But popular belief rests on the simple fallacy that the child perceives reality as it is. As has been pointed out, nothing of this kind happens. The child sees reality through the spectacles of his projections and misconceptions. English analysts especially have stressed the fact that the child uses the mechanism of projection extensively. When his aggression toward his mother or later his father becomes too great for the accompanying guilt, he shifts his aggression; he is not angry with Mother, or Father, but Mother, or Father, is "cruel" and "mean." The result, if the process becomes neurotically stabilized, is that the child creates the image of "bad" parents, though in reality they were sacrificing and kind. The point is that neurosis and health are the result not of reality as adults see it but as the child conceives it. One should never lose sight of the fact that neurosis elaborates unconsciously on the child's fantasies, and not upon realities. Were this not the case, children brought up in the same environment would of necessity develop in exactly the same way. But as a matter of fact, one child of a family may develop into a mentally healthy specimen, and another in the same family into a neurotic, even though the parents love [ 157

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them both equally, play no favorites, and their marriage does not change. Time and again, during nearly twenty years of analytic practice, I have been confronted with the following tragic situation: The necessity of discussing with their parents some young man or woman's need for psychoanalytic treatment. The poor parents were invariably on the defensive, behaving as if they were being accused of having brought their children up badly. There would be an audible sigh of relief when they were assured that neurosis has no direct connection with good or bad «education." Like many others, they were the victims of an unfortunate misconception; because psychoanalysis has proved that unconscious elaboration of early experiences and fantasies is one of the bases of neurosis, people have jumped to the conclusion that education (used in its broadest sense) is per se responsible for all the good or all the damage done. To exaggerate deliberately, the best possible education in childhood will not automatically guarantee psychic health; similarly, the most stupid handling of children will not automatically produce neurosis. Parents tend to overestimate their influence in both cases-good and bad. The fact is, however, that they are not quite so powerful. How then shall ,ve explain the fact that even the most harmonious marriages can produce children who become [ 158 ]

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neurotic? First of all, parents are constantly confronted with the child's megalomania, as expressed in his wish for their exclusive love. Out of necessity, the parents can give only a limited amount of time to their children-they have lives of their own as well. The child, therefore, is faced with refusal. The same holds true in connection with necessary educational restrictions, such as the forbidding of cruelty to siblings and animals, the destruction of objects, etc. No mother or father can handle children with leniency only. They can, it is true, sugar-coat these necessary restrictions by employing kindness and persuasion. What can they do, however, when despite these methods the child still feels that only ((injustice" has been meted out to him? What can they do when the child indulges in merciless provocations? A point, often unconsciously provoked by the child himself, is bound to come when the need for firmness is inescapable. Here is where the roads part. The one child takes it in his stride; the other cannot, and instead builds up the fantasy of a cruel and unjust mother or father, against whom he is CCjustified"in using any means at his disposal, from stubbornness to hypocrisy. Unfortunately, the outlet most commonly sought is the one called masochization. The child misuses the actual situation to provoke "injustices," in order to enjoy them as an inward form of self-flagellation. Neurosis, the illness of the unconscious, is never a direct

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photographic copy of external experiences. It petrifies the child's unconscious fantasies and leads to a series of repetitions in later life. The blame is typically shifted on the parents. Every neurotic blames his family, whether the blame is expressed or unexpressed. Every neurotic drags out his family skeleton, such as «Father was cruel" or "Mother was distant and cold, she preferred my brother" or «My sister hated me" or "Our neighbor's brother seduced me!' Even assuming that all these observations are correctly registered (they are frequently distorted to an amazing degree), they explain precisely nothing. Without taking into account the part played by the unconscious Ego, the process of environmental influence is unintelligible. Assuming, for instance, that the mother in a specific case was really hostile to the boy, why should that child not create later in life a situation in which a woman loves him dearly? That is the decisive point: a normal person, confronted with such a childhood experience, will unconsciously look for a correction of childhood disappointments and choose a kind and loving wife. A neurotic person, confronted with the same experience, will elaborate on the conflict masochistically and look unconsciously for a perpetuation of the painful situation; he will choose a shrew. What determines, basically, whether the child will use or misuse the real situation? The answer lies in the strength or [ 160 ]

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weakness of the child's Ego. And here we are confronted once more with the mysterious factor in the child's development. A strong Ego is one which is less prone to direct aggression against itself when this aggression is connected with inner guilt. The quantity of aggression that each child has at its disposal is different but there is always aggression present. Every «offense" directed against his megalomania provokes his anger and fury. In restricting the child's aggression, the parent employs not only educational penalties but moral suasion as well. "How can you do this to your mother (father) !" Thus the child learns that aggression against his parents, both in thought and deed, is not only unrewarding but is morally wrong besides. As a result, the child cannot show aggression toward his parents without experiencing a sense of inner guilt. In more or less normal circumstances, the child with a sufficiently strong Ego either curbs his aggression or redirects it into more profitable channels. Under neurotic conditions the sense of guilt is inwardly accepted and "sexualized." This fantastic process-making pleasure out of pain-is called "psychic masochism." And psychic masochism is one of the bases of every neurosis. Taking all these emotional difficulties into consideration, we can understand the advantages of a normal home life. In the midst of the child's emotional instability, there is at least one fixed point: home. If the parents break up that home, [ 161 ]

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the child is thrown into an additional. psychic turmoil. The divorce of the parents is not the direct cause of the conflict; but it adds a new difficulty for a child already emotionally upset. Parents are usually ignorant of these dangers and are aware only of "perfectly happy children." One of the difficulties of judging future neurotic behavior from the reactions of the child is that there is no direct congruity between them. There are "difficult children" who later develop normally. On the other hand, there are children completely inconspicuous in their attitude who, when grown up, show severe neurosis. Divorced parents, observing the child who gives the impression of being "perfectly happy," frequently fool themselves to alleviate their own guilty conscience. Children feel this selfish unconcern of the parents, and their emotional instability increases. In general, one can say that divorce carries grave dangers for the child, and the assumption that children will automatically adapt themselves to the "new situation" is a dangerous illusion. Frequently the gift of divorce, which parents present to themselves, is complemented by the Trojan horse of unhappiness, involuntarily presented to the innocent children. It is quite conceivable that couples of future generations will decide to have children only after a Few years of marriage, when they are already reasonably sure [ 162

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that their marriage is a stable one. It will be-in some distant future-a commonplace that having children involves the voluntarily accepted obligation on the part of two people to make their marriage a stable one. By "stable" is meant, first, that there will be no divorce, and second, that the conflicts of the parents themselves will not reach such proportions as to endanger the psychic health of the children. There is much truth in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's stanza (in "The Cry of the Children"); The child's sob in the silence curses deeper Than the strong man in his wrath.

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CHAPTER

X

Defense in Depth in Marital Conflicts HE unconscious is a stern taskmaster: it insists on its own rules with uncompromising consistency. In matters of marriage, "mistakes" and "oversights" are out of the question. We sometimes find examples of apparently contradictory behavior, but when viewed through the analytic microscope, the contradictions are seen not to be real. What seem to be contradictions are the result of a lack of understanding on the part of an untrained observer, or of a more than usually complicated defense mechanism. Basically our understanding is furthered by taking into account the following simple but impressive fact. The end result of the infantile conflict is finally petrified at the age of five. What happens later represents endless repetitions of the same conflict. But the defenses against that inner conflict vary, since every defense mechanism wears out olld 1nust be replaced. Hence the specter of "contradictions."

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DEFENSE IN DEPTH In marital conflicts, these pseudo contradictions are apparent in cases in which only the surface reverberations are taken into account. That is exactly what the untrained observer does. He then blames the other person's "inconsistencies" rather than his own misunderstanding. Here are a few clinical examples. Mr. T. consulted me. The telephone call from a general practitioner who referred him described him as a man who wanted to straighten out his marital conflict. The man was impotent with his wife and fully potent with other women. His sexual "lack of interest" in his wife dated back "at least fourteen years." A successful manufacturer, aged forty-three, he gave at first glance the impression of being a typical be-man. He spoke about his "difficulties" with his wife without emotion, 'Slightly regretfully; otherwise he was very sure of himself. However, it became clear that he was not really interested in re-establishing his marriage, since he was (he believed) in love with another woman and "nearly determined" to get a divorce. "What do you mean by 'nearly determined'?" I wanted to know. "Well, it's not easy to break up a home after sixteen years." "How about admitting that you are not clear yourself what to do?" [ 165 ]

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"Don't misunderstand me. I consult you only because my wife asked me to see a psychiatrist before taking the decisive step." "You mean a last charitable act?" "Something like that." "Why do you deceive yourself about your motives? Were you really determined to divorce her, you would not have accepted her proposal." "Do you think so?" "More important, what do you think?" ((I don't know. I don't deny that this whole divorce makes me jumpy." "Is this the first time that you've found yourself in such a conflict?" He looked at me suspiciously and asked:·"Did my wife telephone you?" "Never heard from her." "That's strange. Why did you ask me that?" '