II. The Specific and The Work Choice Causing
Determinants: A Contribution to
the Szondi Thesis of Work Tropism
The elementary needs, which we
characterized in the preceding as general drive motives of work, have little
portion despite the absolute necessity for their satisfaction of the personality
figuration.
It stands differently with the large
group of psychogenetic needs, ethical attitudes and ego activities, which have
an importantly smaller vital-somatic anchorage, hence also is more accessible
for a personal modification.
For these drive and attitude areas it
is typical that the mental contents are not simply engines of the work but
always also drives to a certain work. They are responsible for the work
choice, as far as social conditions permit a free choice in general.
For the starting point of the
discussion of the unconscious determinants of the work and occupation choice we
take the concept of work tropism that in the psychoanalytical literature
was occasionally discussed but only by L. Szondi in this form was defined. A goal
of these remarks is a critical examination, processing and an advancement of
the connection, which psychoanalysis and fate analysis according to Szondi have
supplied so far.
1. Economical, Social and Constitutional Restrictions of
Work Tropic Occupation Choice; Derivation of the Forms of Work Tropism by an
Example
The thesis of work tropism1
states that the choice of the occupation or a work apart from other
determinations is decided also by the specific drive structure of humans. Work
tropism is according to Szondi only one special case of a general tropism,
which is to be already found according to him in the mutual attraction of
related gene factors. By genotropism, as Szondi designates this most general
attraction, he understands as “the power working by identical or related gene
existences in the gene existence of two persons, which draws these two to each
other.” 2 Concerning its origin, it is a gene-biological feature and
its operation extends however to the area of the mental, above all the drive-driven
mentality. One can therefore speak on firm grounds of the psychological level
of a “drive” tropism and eliminate the discussion of the genealogical anchorage
of the drives. For the occupation psychology in particular this procedure is
quite legitimate. We do not deny thereby the importance of genealogical
research.
Next to the tendency not to drag in
questions of the scientific basic research continuously into the problems of
its practice is still another existing basis to speak about in this chapter of
drive tropism: Work tropism is only one special case of this general tropism. A
drive structure can become apparent in a certain disease picture, in a
character trait, in the choice of an erotic partner, in the choice of the
vocational field and in the choice of the kind of disease. These phenomena go
back all together to a common origin, to a certain drive structure, which
produced the unconscious determinant and affinity phenomena. Character
characteristic, occupation choice, partner choice, etc. are attracted regarding
one or several of such determinants. The original genotropism too makes itself
noticeable with the occupation and work choice in two ways:
1.
An
environment is selected by the occupation by coworkers or clients, whose
members in higher degree are libido related and gene related.
2.
The
working process in a narrow area offers real or symbolic satisfaction
possibilities of unconsciously determining needs in a socially acceptable form.
Generally work tropism only then in
large extent will be effective, if the original form of the tropism -- the
libido tropic partner choice -- does not succeed or later fails (See Environmental
Analysis, Chapter II, Position of Work in Human Experience). The energetic
engagement of the occupation is different from person to person and varies also
with individual persons in the course of time.
The work tropic choice also becomes more
obscure than for example the libido tropic partner choice, because we are
always prepared in the vocational field to modify the drives by the social
conditions and do not deal any more with the drives themselves (See Environmental
Analysis, Chapter V, Subject of
the Work Situation). The expression “occupation drive,” which is
from time to time used, stems from an all too large simplification of the
facts. If in family trees the genealogical examined families of certain
occupations are numerous, as Szondi proved in his extensive investigation, then
beside the drive-conditioned
and with it the gene-conditioned choice of these occupations speaks also for
the stability of the economic system in whose division of labor this occupation
arises.
One could exclude the social
restrictions (missing possibility of learning the desired occupation or financing
of the training with the individual, or the occupation becoming extinct in the
society) in these investigations. So the frequency of the same occupation
carriers would be still greater in these family trees and the power of the
proofs stronger. One finds characteristically in these family trees only
occupations, which correspond to stable needs of the society and from that do
not become extinct like so many others, which came from temporary social needs.
Work tropic operation is often
difficult to prove. This thesis means only that an activity is selected due to
this affinity relationship. One may not draw from this conversely that the
conclusion that all occupation carriers of an occupation must have also
affinity drive structures. The occupation (now seen as an objective social
thing) offers generally the most diverse satisfaction possibilities for needs.
In other words: Most occupations participate in several drive circles; an
occupation can belong to several affinity systems.
Our Example 11 mentioned on page 69
shows that clearly: The goldsmith career aspirations show two determinants that,
by the way, quite rarely couple themselves: First, the need to shine, to play a
great lady, and to be occupied with shining things, and, furthermore however,
an anal pleasure in the valuables, gold, the glistening things, and possessions.
A bridge between these two motives for occupation choice is the formation of
the desire for a love replacement, based on the unconscious demand after love
in the displacement: After material payment has been substituted for the
missing love that the ego has spoiled.
Statistically exhibitable connections
between occupation and drive structure are also only with very pronounced drive
structures that are still close to the native ways of satisfaction, thus with criminals and the
perverse. 3 With nervous
persons, neurotics and psychotics the system of the determining factors in the
occupation choice becomes multilayered and complex in such a manner that only detailed
monographic studies are able to enlighten the career aspirations in each case.
The experimental drive diagnostic of Szondi 4 renders practical help
in the search for these drive motives. It must be considered however that the
work tropic condition of the occupation choice is only one factor (and not
always the most important and crucial). Unfortunately the test is often used in
a negligent way as the exclusive means for vocational guidance; thus, for the
occupation decision by the determination of the drive structure one judges the
occupation that can be used. This procedure results from an inadmissible
simplification of the problem and from a wrong interpretation of the work
tropic thesis.
The connections are precisely far
more complex than it first appears: There is a succession of factors, which
restrict the effect possibility of work tropism, and furthermore a group of
phenomena, which almost prevent its realization, because they are much stronger
in their penetration than the work tropic radiation. The occupation and still
more the work is a personality peripheral phenomenon, in which drive strivings
can satisfy themselves only by transformation and transposition on the level of
the reality principle. Differently said: The vocational work is one the strongest
forms of social formation and from there, to a large extent, subjected to
social processes, on the other hand, since the reality principle belongs to a
range of human experiences, which is dependant on the structure of the ego and
its relationship to the drives.
We begin with the social
restrictions: The work tropic satisfaction plays out only in a field decided
by cultural and economical conditions. A desire for a certain work (conscious
or unconscious) arises in general only if this work is known and is a component
of the work organization and division of labor of this group.
Primarily the career aspirations of
the structure of the society is determining here, and the dependence is the
greater, the more closed is the group. There is a whole succession of social
influences on the career aspirations, which can not be discussed here
extensively.
Social opinions about certain work
often act more urgently on the occupation choice more than the work tropic
affinity. There are always with certain young people even “fashionable
occupations,” which are hardly to be eliminated by factual examination. These
career aspirations are based on grafted inclinations, which occur only by the
suggestion of the environment and by the assumption of its opinions. A
collective, although hardly recognizable drive dependence, is present: Not only
an occupation or an activity becomes fashionable, but also the pertinent mental
attitude. If the individual person is seized by suggestion and carried by this
fashionable wave, then this choice can happen against his actual drive
structure.
Further, long continuing-to-become-outdated
and wrong prejudices known in detail can be lodged and prevent each independent
decision. The occupation can have so far changed its structure by the economic
shaping process that in the occupation those drive attitudes, which cause an
unconscious attraction, no longer can be lived out. This selected occupation is
probably still work tropic, but due to the wrong occupation knowledge, no work
tropic satisfaction can occur. The prejudice and the preconceived opinion, for
instance, of the family or a certain social class bring a material explanation
to the case and prevent the conversion to really another work tropic solution.
A further unresolved question
concerns the relationship of tradition and work tropism. Also the problem of
the reaction of the occupation environment to the working has so far hardly been
examined. Concerning test investigations of members belonging to health
professions, one does not know how one is to interpret the statistical results.
We mention here as an example the
results of Dreyer 5 of the completed investigations of mine
(underground) workers in the Ruhr district by means of the experimental drive
diagnostic according to Szondi. Dreyer found a quantity of a certain drive
reaction, the need to hide oneself (hy- reaction according to Szondi) with the good workers. This result is
to be interpreted here that these workers work therefore well, because they
have chosen the occupation (underground work = to hide oneself) work tropically
whereas the others did not select themselves? Our experiences would contradict
that, which we try to represent in the result: The work tropic choice can lead
in many cases also to vocational failure. This fact forces us, apart from other
bases, to a differentiation of work tropism.
Or, with this test result. is the
shaping operation of the occupation based on the individual drive structure?
Does each man work well underground, who has adapted best to these conditions
of work? Does one interpret this test method as not unique, but also through
the social conditions of adapted behaviors in this case? Also this
interpretation finds support in the peculiar fact that the test results of
criminal are probably determined by the environment (the prison) and falsified
to certain degrees (adaptation, detention depression etc.). If we determine a
meaning and an importance to early childhood traumatic experiences with the
environment for widerange meaning for drive development (quite rightfully), why
is then an activity for many years in an occupation, which forces a certain
mental attitude strongly, not also a shaping influence on the drive?
We do not dare now to make a decision
between these interpretation possibilities. In order to overcome these
difficulties, we support not a statistical investigation of these occupation
groups, where if necessary the secondary imprinting through the occupation were
therefore not comprehended, but on the analysis of the occupation choice motive
and inclinations. Into these areas we
are safe to find pure work tropic processes as raw material.
Conversely -- to go to the
internal ranges of the personality -- there are constitutional traits,
which limit the work tropic choice. This may sound amazing, and it requires
from this a closer explanation as to what is to be understood in this case by
constitution: We mean with it a certain hypo or hyper functioning of basic
factors of the personality, which are to a large extent independent of the
drive needs (independently in the sense of the reducibility to the drive systems).
We select here only a particularly frequent and instructive example: The mental
vitality.
The lack in mental vitality with
psychasthenia, as we with all caution will designate as this minus variant of
the energy,6 causes a smaller activity in contact with other
persons. Such people are afraid of their own weakness and, on the other hand,
of their environment, usually meaning that this becomes too powerful for them
and too great in its requirements in their situation. The weakness and the easy
fatigue as well as the meagerness of the feeling expressions (because little is
present in feelings) form the guidelines of orientation in the environment.
Out of this very short described
disposition one sees how the psychasthenia person limits himself willingly to
activities with small energy expenditure. They become people of habit and
pedants. Despite becoming easily fatigued they are however industrious with a
strong occupation urge; however, external influences decide easily the
direction of the activity. If this vital deficiency is very large, then
occupations are sought, which exhibit firmly outlined structure, painfully
exact limits, and not too many various tasks. Personal initiative, application
and expansion step into the background; indeed, they are carefully avoided and
often secondarily justified with a pseudo-morality and any expansion equated
with aggression is therefore rejected. Primarily a homogeneous and calm
environment is looked for, at which the waves of the life rush by. It is clear
that also neurotic factors can be a cause for this specific choice, which
resembles a self-isolation. An exact analysis shows however that the work tropism
still lets itself show the drive structure works in a minimum degree
nevertheless in its guiding. “Psychasthenic occupations” are then looked for
within that vocational field, which is decided by work tropic operation. A
frequent choice of the psychasthenic person comprehends the occupation of the
technical draftsman, in whom the isolatedness of the quiet drafting office lets
be joined to it the pedantry of the implementation and the reactive,
essentially however dependant, work completion according to exact regulations.
Paroxysmal natures select within the group of drafting occupation in preferred
industries, which are closely related to traffic, or they choose occupations of
the heating draftsman, foundation engineering draftsmen; members of the group
of paranoid drives are aggressively stigmatized and soon dream about a
draftsman place in a research department in the machine or electrical industry.
The preference for the building trade, which can be recognized again and again
with the psychasthenic person, is based not on a work tropism but on
completely different factor, i.e., a projection and a compensation mechanism.
In building, the steadiness and stability are symbolically established, which
these persons are lacking in their structure of personality.
We take as Example 4 a 17 year old boy, who shows clear psychasthenic
traits apart from a neurotic development. The diagnosis of the psychasthenia is
secured by Rorschach test findings as well as by a graphological analysis. The
question arises around the fact whether, despite difficulties in the middle
school, he should stay there further or should change to a practical
occupation.
The occupation advisor’s
investigation results in the following picture: A traumatized and deeply scared
boy, who strives not to conflict with anyone and not to fail in any regard,
and, generally speaking, is not stable and independent. How far his good-nature
and his decent behavior are genuine is decided with difficulty, because he has
much fearful caution behind his behavior. In work he is industrious but
confused and at the same time slipshod and pedantic like a small time shopkeeper
with also fuzzy thinking. Missing in him are courage, desire for undertakings
and free activity. A vitality weakness is united with a high degree of
sensitivity. He lets himself be
impressed immediately, feels quickly threatened from the environment, without
being able however to mobilize his powers against this threat. What is missing
in him is not will power but intensity and mental energy. He lives without
pleasure; there in a dull mood, without being impassive against the outside. His anxiety encourages it, not the
vital centrifugal force. The curiosity and the active observation in him that
could proceed and happen are rooted in anxiety and not in sharpness and
openness to life. This missing clarity of consciousness, this fear of failure,
the high degree of suggestibility and irresoluteness have actually something of
a sickness in it. Although many of these traits can be explained from the dispositional
manner of the psychasthenics, a suspicion remains that insists on a latent
psychosis. Already from preventive grounds it would be good for him if one
could induce in him a withdrawal from the school. Indeed in respect to the work, he burdens himself beyond his powers (and
that will be the case of a failure in the higher classes of school); then he probably
will have more difficult disturbances in his mental balance.
His
intelligence is formally intact, but he is missing insight into his higher
problems. He is a detailed observer, a collector of intellectual knowledge,
which from a lack of overview and synopsis, he does not succeed in bringing the
collecting into a clear order. Also when thinking, the thread of the
accompanying vitality soon runs out: He does not think about such situations to
the end. The associative wandering is stronger than his own ideas. Despite a correct
effort and a positive attitude for work demands, nothing sufficiently complete
comes out in achievement. In short: A boy, from his work techniques and
moderate intelligence and from a psychological hygienic basis, does not belong in
a middle school.
On the question of his occupation: Concrete career aspirations are not present
-- except a quite weak and shallow
inclination to technology, particularly with airplanes and cars and how one
must develop them nowadays -- in order to be an effective youth among his
comrades.
He would
prefer most of all to remain at school on two grounds: First, because he puts
each resolution aside and, secondly, because as a person whose fear led to an
adaptation at any price, he feels best in the school environment. He can
proceed positioned on the same rails through life even as the switches are
placed there for him. If one nevertheless looks for occupations, then two
determination circles result:
1.
“Psychasthenic
occupations.” This group of determinants is by far the
strongest. Thus occupations are to be considered that require no expansion, no
active intervention, and no above average activity and versatility, one in
which relatively continuous tasks always repeat themselves and where initiative
and independence are replaced by a firm structure by regulations and demands
and instead of creative work, pedantic diligence and a heightened feeling of obligation.
His imbedding into a system of order and constant operational sequence
decreases the fear of life’s more fully unknown situations. Conceivable are:
Occupations involving vehicles, accountants, archivist (while the remaining
commercial occupations are to be excluded) and the group of drafting
occupations, if his interests (however superficial) are in technical problems,
which includes mathematics and technical drawing.
2.
“Work tropic occupations” to be chosen from out of an affinity for certain determining root drive
striving. On the distinction of different work tropisms we will speak further
later.
We rely on
the analysis of 6 profiles of the experimental drive diagnostic:
The drive
dangers are localized 7 in the drive classes with greater latency
tension (here Phy-) and in the factors with quantity tension
(here h+!! , s+!! , p-!!).
We meet the same factors again as a
group of roots of the drive formula: h+, s+, hy-, p-. One would have thus in
accordance with the theory of work tropism an affinity of this drive structure
for the occupations of the Phy- Class, further to the occupations,
which can be assigned to the factors h, s and p, and to assume a guiding of the
occupation choice by these background needs, which cannot satisfy themselves
(symptom reactions are missing in these factors). However nothing is to be
discovered from a liking of occupations of an aggressive content from an exact
affinity analysis. To ascribe the work tropic operation now simply to the
theoretical complement reaction (the “background” in Szondi’s terminology)
would be wrong, because first of all there are no signs for occupations of a
masochistic character or for vocational situations in which he is the underling
(he has throughout the aspirations always to be “above,” in leading position
and to reject occupations of service) and secondly are the empirical complement
reactions in the normal profile (likewise s+ and never s 0) in the same
direction. If one dissociates oneself from being swayed by the technical
interpretation, then the absence of a work tropic attraction to the occupations
of aggression is easily evident (a certain affinity, but only a bow to
authoritarian positions is there as was already discussed). Three factors are
to be made responsible:
a) The strength of the defense
mechanisms is too great; a strong superego is at work, whose objection is totally
against the drive satisfaction:
With exception of profile 5 hy and k, the position-taking factors,
strictly speaking, are always both minus.
The compromise readiness of the
superego is small: A strict, unconscious moral system permits little drive
satisfaction. These moral barriers are supported by represssion mechanisms (k-)
and projections (p-). The internal equilibrium of healthy persons between drive
demands and the realm of the ideal values of the ego is disturbed; the drive repressing
factors are excessively strong; the superego becomes an omnipotent idol of the
prohibition, to which also a work tropic satisfaction falls victim. In other
words: The stronger the superego on all sides and the more quantitatively
stronger and generally forbidding its operation, all the smaller the
possibility of work tropic choice and satisfaction. Here first a good piece of
this unconscious moral prohibition system would have to be reduced before the
affinity for aggressive occupations could express itself again. In order to prevent
a misunderstanding, it is again stressed that this original form of work
tropism is surely present and can with increasing strength of the neurotization,
however, less and less realize itself and progressively becomes deformed.
However this thesis stands in contradiction with the general version of
genotropism, which is always to become apparent, when a gene cannot manifest
itself directly. It is as if it were the back door of the satisfaction.
On this it is surely false in work
tropism to see itself as an equivalent and likewise penetrating and always
executable form of the genotropism as is to be said in the partner choice.
Finally human work is a peripheral phenomenon of psychic happening and by no
means a human constituent like erotic relations. Already in the addition of
Szondi to his definition of work tropism: “… that the conductor through the
choice of the occupation bindings happens to such individuals who are the open
or latent bearers of the gene in question…” the work tropic form
subordinate itself clearly to the libido tropic form of genotropism and serves
only the implementation of partner relations on the detours over the
drive-distant field of human work.
Work as ego close phenomenon of human
life expressions and as an essential component of the reality principle,
nevertheless, is not identically to it and is subject, therefore, to the many
influences of the ego structure as of the drive structure. Conditions are in
such a manner complicated and multilayered and that must be discussed in another
place. As a consequence consider this application: The work tropic operation of
a need, contrary to the libido tropism, can be completely paralyzed by the ego structure. 8
The occupation and work choice is
directed in our case -- thus we conclude, before this excursion about the value
of work tropism was put forth -- not by the dangerously accumulated s + need
but was decided by the defense system of the ego. This form of affinity in a
work tropic manner between occupation and the specific form of the drive
defense mechanisms is discussed further down as Work Tropic Defense.
In action and truth are found many
inclination components in his career aspirations, which correspond to the
syndrome hy- k- p-, are:
The closing off, the retreat into the
quiet room or behind the drawing board, the “peace,” the stabilized situation,
schematizing all processes, the adaptation at any price out of fear, “will not
expose himself,” the fearful observance of regulations, this eternal separation
between “permitted” and “not permitted” of officials -- thus what becomes
sought for in the occupation is primarily the defense function, embodied
extensively and socially, and only secondarily and hardly more demonstrably generally
is the accepted libidinal drives.
b)
It
may appear strange when arranging things to find similar interests under a) the
occupation factors with the defense syndrome hy- k- p- (mostly with e 0) as they were called typical
for the psychasthenic occupation choices. No misunderstandings are present: the
constitutional psychasthenic is inclined to neurosis forms, whose appearance is
decided by the combination of repression and projective fear defenses.
Differentially and diagnostically this boy is constitutionally psychasthenic and
neurotic.
The mentioned inclination components
are doubly determined, therefore also particularly persistent and
therapeutically difficult to treat: The psychasthenia explains itself from the
lack of vitality and only from this; with the neurosis the rigid organization
of the defense mechanisms forms this specific occupation character, whereby the
choice of the neurosis form is decided by the lack of mental vitality.
We regard now the relationship of the
aggression drive to the psychasthenic: Psychasthenics are mostly aggressive
persons; the s +!! reaction fits quite well into the overall picture. The drive
weakness and the vital blasséness are made the constituents of the behavior. “I
am stopped now and have no power; the world must therefore take me into
consideration” is the motto. No conscious attitude needs to be present
concerning this drive weakness. The psychasthenic is therefore a drive
character with minus signs; the behavior is thus decided throughout from the
side of the drive. The aggressive behavior is recoined; the psychasthenic
becomes a tyrant from weakness. The environment is forced with all his cunning
to take him into consideration. He actually lives on the interest from the guily
feelings of other persons.
A mentally weak person cannot be
however expansive and still active. Therefore there is no affinity for the
group of aggressive occupations. A psychasthenic will never become a butcher or
still less an executioner, but soon an official who torments by his pedantry
the subordinates with fine needle pricks and takes advantage at home from the
compassion of his family.
The constitution is first stronger
with the occupation choice than with the tropic operation of the need. If a
need goes however into the course of the psychasthenic’s behavior, as in our
case the hy- need, then is promoted the connection of the constitution and the
drive goal “to pull himself back” and “to hide himself from the world” and the
“observation from the background.”
The same views can be employed to the
remaining factors of the drive danger. Since our goal is not a complete
analysis of the test profiles but the working out the fundamental principles,
we have selected only the accumulated aggression (s +!!) for illustration.
c)
The
affinity analysis brings interests to light that one can assign without difficulties
to the symptom factors e, d, m in the drive formula. The motives for occupation
choice rise thus from those needs, which became symptoms and in those the
possibility of a libido primary discharge is present. These are the factors:
e0 m0 d0
One can assign his passionate
interest in traffic, which shows up substantially in his leisure activities as
in all his affinity tests, to the factor reactions e 0 and m 0. The preference
of epileptic conductors for the traffic system has long been well-known. Traffic
is, in addition, a means of communication; one speaks of traffic facilities
that must be maintained. The joy in the change of places, which is typical in
the epileptic form of occupation choice, steps in his case into the background.
Because with travelling he would constantly encounter new things and to him
unknown situations, which as a psychasthenic he does not like. His ideal is
therefore an occupation with traffic problems without having to go out of the
circle of recognized things and tasks.
As occupation therefore as a station
official or civil servant of a transportation enterprise would have to be
selected, not however a conductor, a locomotive engineer or a pilot. The
question and suitability for the time being is not to be given any attention.
The factor d shows up in an expressed
joy in collecting. He is an enthusiastic philatelist. Also at school his
favorite subjects are appropriately geography, natural history and history. It
is sufficient there to have gained and to be presented as much knowledge as
possible.
In this affinity from symptom factors
(or vents, as one can designate them in a libido economic viewpoint) and career
aspirations is present a further form of work tropism, which is described more
further below as vent work tropism.
This form of defense mechanism comes
into force apparently if the defense system of the ego works uncompromisingly
and the repressed needs can not express themselves any more except in hidden
form. The libido flows back then and encourages older development stages, in
which other needs dominated, again encourages these, and has the possibility to
express themselves perhaps there. The “vents” are then in a drive area that is
not identical to the rejected needs any more. But an exact causal investigation
would be necessary in order to support these theoretical assumptions.
3. Summary: With exception of
the hy- need an original work tropic
operation is missing in our example.
The occupation choice is essentially
determined by the following three factors:
a) by the psychasthenic work character;
b) by the defense system and by the
specific kind of defense of the ego (work tropic defense);
c)
by
needs, which are determined by the regressive course and by the shifting
process of the libido to vents (vent work tropism).
The psychasthenic constitution can
promote the original work tropic operation (as in case of the hy- need) or restrain
it (as in case of s+!! need).
A particular strength of the ego,
and/or its defense function, is able to convert original work tropism into a
vent work tropism. The vent work tropism choice is inconsistent, because it
follows the frequent change of the vent.
If it would be successful to moderate
by therapeutic influence the excessive strength of the defense attitude, then
thereby the way to original work tropic choices would be opened and the vent
satisfactions would thereby became redundant.
Consequences for the Use of the
Experimental Drive Diagnostic
Concerning the Question of the Occupation Choice
As our example has explained, the
same work tropic factors do not always work, and that for their test
determination requires great difficulty. Three main groups were differentiated
for the time being for work tropisms, which can often be effective at the
same time and are responsible in this way for the variety of apparently
diverging career aspirations. There are the original work tropism, the defense
work tropism, and the vent work tropism.
According to our experience most
occupation choices have affinity to the specific defense mechanisms. Also
Szondi approximates this interpretation in his newest work about sublimation
when he divides the sublimation types in accordance with the ego forms. 9
Although up to certain degree a relation between drive danger and choice of the
defense mechanism regarding the drive danger exists; nevertheless, we believe
to have kept these two work tropic principles apart. The relation between drive
danger and defense mechanism is not also by any means so close, as in the
psychoanalytical literature has been sometimes assumed.
There are given factors, which affect
by promoting or restraining the realization of the work tropic choice, thus
economical-social conditions and the constitution types (however only the
extreme). Since neither the range of social fate and still that of the
constitutional hypo or hyper functions (for example the psychasthenia) can to
be decided with the Szondi Test, it is inadmissibe with this test alone
to solve the question of
the occupation choice.
It is valid now to describe the
different forms of work tropism more closely. For the time being must the
meaning of work tropism to be illustrated in an insertion.
2. Excursion
about
the
Meaning of Work Tropism
Work tropism is a secondary form of
the libido tropism.
Whether work tropic factors thus are to be involved with an occupation choice
or not depends primarily on the libido tropic situation. Exact knowledge of humans
in their erotic and social regards is an indispensable condition for the
application of work tropic principles in vocational guidance.
Two things must be considered:
1.
The meaning of the occupation in
human experience is the greater, the more the personality is neurotic. This in a double sense: The
work tropic determinations of the occupation choice increase, because only an
unsatisfied need works tropically. At the same time the neurotic has far more
work disturbances than normal persons. The tendency to work
difficulties increases thereby progressively and also more strongly than the
work tropic satisfaction. Therefore the more severe neurotics become often
completely incapable to work. The same is valid for asocial psychopaths and
psychotics.
2.
The
time of the occupation choice coincides mostly with puberty, in a development
phase, thus which expresses itself by a thrust-like increase of the libidinal
power. Since in puberty, however, the libido tropic satisfaction ways are only
tried out hesitating and gropingly, particularly in restrained youths, the work
tropic determination of the occupation choice can be particularly strong at
this time.
One can generally and completely
assume thus that in the time of puberty (also with normal persons) the work
tropic expression of the libido swells suddenly and in the adult it then drops
again appreciably. These developmental moderate fluctuations combine
themselves with different effectiveness in the different groups of diseases. The
strongest work tropic operation is to be found therefore in the time of puberty
with severe mentally disturbed persons.
The following table shows the
process of the work tropic operation, the work difficulties and the
reality-adequate behavior in the different fate forms of mental conflicts:
Axes:
Increasing Difficulty and Depth of the Conflict.
__ . __ . __
Work tropic effectiveness.
__ __ __ Work difficulties. (- - - - Process with sublimation)
____ Reality-adequate
behavior. (____ Process with sublimation)
(Reality principle)
[Triebschksal
der Normalität = Drive fate of normality; Nervosität = nervousness; asoziale
Psychopathien = asocial psychopathy]
We will now examine briefly the
relationships of A, B, C, D in graphic designated zones:
A. Zone of Normality, the Nervous
Characters, and the Less Severe Neurosis
The question of the differential
diagnosis between normality and neurosis is not to be dealt with here. The
transitions are flowing and normality is not to be equated with a sublimated
ideal form but to be understood as the most frequent drive fate in society (social
norm). In this area the work tropic operation of the drive structure rises with
increasing neurotization. However normal work difficulties are missing. The
less severe neurotic makes the integration more difficult in work, however, not
without any achievement. Work disturbances are more of a subjective nature. The
objective efficiency is not achieved or only the least harmed. Into this area is
the socialization possible by suitable occupation choice. Work tropism plays a
small role with the normal person: Without harming himself too strongly, the
normal person can easily become happy in the most diverse kind of work.
The work tropic part in the
motivation of the occupation choice is overlaid by other more strongly working
determinations (prestige, economic possibilities, source of earnings, etc.). The
ability for fitting into reality disappears, however, with the neurosis in
certain complex-conditioned sectors.
B.
Zone of the More Severe Neurosis
The work disturbances increase in
this zone so that the ability to work is always put more into question. The
curve approaches asymptomatically the complete inability to work. The
discrepancy between the desire to adjust and the inability for adaptation
continues to increase. The work, in still a larger degree the occupation as one
of the strongest social forms of connection, becomes filled with emotion. The
personal relevance becomes superior and unconscious tendencies seize the ego
activity and, under some conditions, paralyzes it completely.
Above all is the principle of one-sided
dominance of one of the work tropic forms, which is to save the disturbed
mental equilibrium by a false compensation maneuver.
The more severe neurotic -- if he or
she is in general still capable of work -- can only do that in a one-sided work
tropic area. Also the reality behavior changes. While with the less severe
neurosis the misjudging only arises in the individual and definite outlined
sectors of reality, with the more severe neurosis forms there becomes all the more
a constant and collective falsification of reality.
C.
Zone of the Asocial Psychopaths and
the Psychotics
These two disease forms may not be
summarized so easily. The autoplastic shaping reality is nevertheless more
important than in the neurosis; in psychotic phases this shaping of reality reaches
a maximum with both as the relations with reality is broken off completely.
Work disturbances are increased and, more or less consciously, work like any
social adaptation is refused or carried out only if it inserts itself freely
into the autistic obstruction. How does the work tropic work choice position
itself here? Since the psychotic, for example, is no more anxious to bring into
agreement his unconscious psychic reality -- his worldview-- with actuality on
the one hand and with the social structure on the other hand, the work tropic
choice drops there. The recourse to the native libido tropic relations and --
when they are no longer possible as such -- to appropriate fantasy surrogates
makes a mental shift. Energies to the work area are redundant. Always, however,
it is valid, as with the more severe neurosis, that a work therapy has the best
chances in one of the mental structure affinity work areas (work tropic). We
are from this of the opinion that a work tropic guided work therapy would
supply deep-striking results as far as the arbitrary “occupation therapy” operates.
D. Zone of Sublimation
In this zone the combination of small
work difficulties (from affective, unconscious disturbances) with a middle-sized
strength of the work tropic work choice (with a relative equilibrium of
original work tropism and defense work tropism) was regarded as basis for the
libido process of the socialization. We examine the relationship of
reality behavior, work tropism and work difficulties now in the comparison to
the socialization with the process of the sublimation. 10
According to our sketch (p. 32) the
sources of the neurosis and the sublimation are extraordinarily close (zone B
and zone D fall together). Sublimating persons stand closer to neurosis than to
normality. The neurosis gives also (like each problem) always a chance to get
ahead because it has a retrograde and a prior degree aspect. If a traumatic
working experience in one’s life course occurs and the flow of the libido is
interrupted, then a congestion develops. An obstacle cannot be overcome; a more
difficult situation can not be mastered. This libido affects congestion works
negatively only if the libido regresses and old experience forms are revived.
Then maturing is interrupted; a person lives but does not experience any more situations
and time adequately. He reacts like a child or in an immature and in an apparently
bold anticipation of the future tries to jump over this mature phase without further
ado. Thus the state of affairs are given for the neurosis. In sublimation,
there is a victory against the prior degree aspect of the libido congestion.
The libido does not flow back; it does not escapes from the influence of the
ego; rather the ego collects and organizes it, so that the situation can be
better mastered after a time of standing still. The same dilemma, which leads
with the neurosis to the regression, causes a phase of fruitful latency with
the sublimation. Together however with both, the neurosis and the sublimation,
is the experience of a conflict. The sublimated person always lives close to
affective conflicts. He is and remains a potential neurotic. Each sublimation
brings inevitably an increased mental endangerment with it. Therefore the
adjustment at higher spiritual and ethical values holds the danger from
emerging conflicts being weakened from the inside out. It is not harmless to
let flow one’s emotion into the area of the intelligence, and some sublimating
persons drop back again into neurotic gloominess or into spiritual derangement.
Sublimation differs in meaning in our
representation in two things from the neurosis: Momentary moving of the
location (the ego points) in the condition of congestion before an obstacle
leads not to a partial reality blindness and reality transformation (decreasing
curve [____] with the neurosis), but to the distance and to the clear
estimate of the situation and its own possibilities. The sublimated person
lives reality as normal persons do but comes into the danger of departing (high
curve [____]) from the average opinion of society.
The work disturbances disappear, but
sublimated persons are very susceptible, because unconscious emotion play out
more strongly in work. Dialectically speaking, the sublimating person is at the
same time able to work (curve [— — —] under the axis)and at the same time
disturbance (curve [— — —] higher than with the normal) as the normal person.
His work behavior is therefore significantly inconsistent and bends more to the
change. 11
The work tropic steering of the work
choice is equally strong with neurosis and sublimation. But the one-sided dominance
of a work tropic form disappears in sublimation. Original work tropism and
defense work tropism are in equilibrium; that is, the work is satisfying at the
same time as the ego defense mechanisms (with the superego requirements
standing behind it) and the affective needs.
3. The
Kinds of Work Tropisms
After this excursion over the meaning
of work tropism with different drive fates, we return again to the different kinds
of work tropism, as they
were differentiated in the course of the analysis of the Example 4 on page 21.
Four forms of work tropism are therefore to be kept apart:
a) Original Work Tropism
The work choice is with this form
drive-conditioned; it originates from mostly unconscious sources. The
particular strength of a drive need or the power and the repetition compulsion
of an affective situation decide the occupation choice. Work tropic operation
can proceed thereby with:
1.
A
simple, original need (for example aggression or strivings to show off), earlier if it is
hypertrophic or the satisfaction encounters particularly strong obstacles.
Example: Aggressively inclined persons become an executioner,
prisoner guard, wood cutter, excavator leader or dissection assistant in
anatomy.
In this simple form of the direct
satisfaction of a need, this kind of work tropism is found particularly in
normal persons.
2.
An
affective pattern,
which already is caused by a certain drive constellation; this affective
pattern seeks to realize itself in attitudes and passes into employer-employee
relationships, whose structures have an affinity to this pattern.
Examples: A man, who from an unresolved Oedipal situation must
always share the woman with other men, becomes the pimp of a prostitute, who at
the same time is his friend.
A young person with a defloration
mania, who is possessed by the idea to make girls women, wants to become a
gynecologist.
A mother-child relationship in the
sense of a dual-union relationship is set up again in occupations as the nurse
or kindergarten teacher with reverse designations.
It would be the direct realizations
of such affective patterns in the occupation to be distinguished from
compensating occupation situations. A direct realization would be present in
the first and second examples and a form of compensating reversal in the third.
In the affective pattern the portion
of personal experiences is larger, one can also only speak of causes of a
genotropism, because it is hardly to be accepted that such a behavior pattern
is inherited as a whole.
3. A complex-like mental form, which differs from the mere
affective pattern by the inability for direct realization. One can only speak
of a partial complex, if an affective pattern is rejected by the superego, and
consequently an expression of the complex is always accompanied by unconscious
guilt feelings. A complex is a mental conflict that has not been overcome (so
far identical to the affective pattern, but covered up against insight and
consciousness), which impairs from the unconscious the flow of the mental life.
It is -- in the actual words of Jung -- to speak of a personality part, which
has split itself off and became autonomous. It has the inclination to radiate
and to falsify the value attitudes and to color the judgments subjectively
without the subject suspecting thereby the connections of the motive.
In principle no difference
exists between the work tropic operation of an affective pattern and a complex.
But the examples typical for the case of the affective pattern for the work
tropic operation of a complex cannot be stated. The defloration mania mentioned
under 2 is not a complex but an affective pattern in the form of an
overpowering idea. It stands central in consciousness (he also in reality
always deflowers girls) and probably limits the range of the field of vision
but lights up a certain field with super sharpness. The smooth operational
sequence of mental happening is not disturbed, but is only steered to a
one-sided limited area. A frequent result from this is the higher priority of
the work tropic selected occupation. A complex, on the other hand, arises at
the most at the edge of consciousness and arouses the superego as soon as the
complex wants too much to press into consciousness. These factors intervene and
prevent the forbidden drive action. The
complex-like work tropism is hindered and also is the realization of the
complex wishes.
Example 5: A student selects pharmacy study with the rational
explanations of having an interest in chemistry and desiring to help people. He
wishes to deal with curing people. After a short duration of studying,
difficulties arise. He does not believe he has progressed, does not understand
the simplest things in the lectures, does not dare to take the examinations,
and begins himself appreciably more to stumble. In the worst despair -- at home
he does not dare to say anything, because the father, as owner of a pharmacist,
would like to see him as his successor -- he goes to a vocational adviser. The
investigation shows that he does not lack intelligence but that this occupation
study however is sabotaged by the unconscious. Behind the colorless and little
convincing rationalizations in his explanation of his occupation choice are
other motives, which form together a complex formation of unconscious desires
and fears.
We encounter in the unconscious an
unresolved Oedipal situation: Once the father was wished away, in order to be
able to put himself in his father’s place as the dearest one of the mother.
This death desire, as a dream analysis makes clear, has already adopted certain
forms of poison murder fantasies. Through his study he now comes into constant
dealings with poisons. The defense against the desire by the vocational
socialization (the poisons serve for healing and not for killing) does not
succeed. The superego is so strict that his unconscious morally forbids
completely the practice of this occupation to him. Furthermore the assumption
of the paternal pharmacy as a dethroning of the father would be the same within
the family. This desire he has in the unconscious naturally in the highest
degree, but this rivalry of archaic punishing principles following the superego
is not tolerated. Conscious to him are only the symptoms of this “unconscious
morality” (Odier); the insight into the true motive connections is not given.
The occupation is thus chosen here
from the work tropic operation of a complex (Odeipus complex). The same complex
causes indirectly the sabotaging of this vocational career. The following is
valid therefore: A complex-guided occupation choice sabotages and makes it impossible
eventually, contrary to the occupation choice due to an affective pattern that is
consciously enabled and can realize itself without objection of the superego.
Thus original work tropism is
descriptive in its three kinds of action. It exercises itself certainly rarely
in pure form and already within a short time it changes usually into a defense
work tropism, or then into a vent work tropism. First the original work tropism
corresponds to the structure of the superego, the latter contains a form of
substitute need satisfaction, which is tolerated, because it stands in a
greater mental distance from the core of the complex.
b) The Defense Work Tropism
With this kind of work tropism the
choice of the occupation takes place similar to the most common defense
attitude of the ego that is mobilized against
the rejected drive needs, affective patterns and complexes.
Naturally already each vocational
work actually works to consolidate itself; the facts alone that one is
integrated into a work situation, whether now voluntarily or under compulsion,
makes the satisfaction of a need a socially useful manipulation.
Thus however the demands of the
superego are not sufficiently completed, and nevertheless this by no means
always coincides with those for society. The superego contains requirements and
prohibitions, which originate from childhood and are indeed -- according to the
views of Szondi -- even taken from the ancestors.
Valid in the superego are the laws of
the heteronomy morality of childhood (Piaget). Social morality and superego
morality, as has been stated, are different things and do not stand always in
agreement. They fall in practice together in close and closed cultural forms
and diverge increasingly the more differentiated a society is developed. The
position of this superego is so strong in this second case that drive
tendencies cannot operate themselves work tropically any more. Occupations are
chosen, which have affinity to the defense mechanism.
A compulsive character, for example,
will choose an occupation that supports the compulsions -- as it were socially
embodied -- a work, which is exhausting in conscientiousness, accuracy and
strict rites of the discharge. This form of the work choice marks itself by the
preference of formal characteristics and the neglect of content structures. The funtional character of a work is sought. Occupations
such as geometrician, accountant, taxidermist, goldsmith, notary, statistician,
tax expert, lawyer, proofreader, philatelist, geologist have all the same
affinity for the compulsion structure of the choosing, even if so much
different in content. This affinity drowns out then all other reference motives
so much so that in extreme cases the person choosing feels equally strongly
attracted by all occupations.
The drive determination with this
constellation falls to less importance, because it can operate itself less; it
is, however, in reality very different with the aforementioned occupations. The
geologist and the lawyer have a relationship to paranoid inclinations, the
philatelist like the goldsmith belong to the affinity group of “anal”
occupations, the tax expert and tax adviser protects humans against
exploitation, the proofreader is a background aggressor, and the taxidermist is
a socialized necrophiliac. With the defense work tropism these drive
determinations are neglected.
At the same time we can note already
for later that the same occupation can belong to different affinity groups and
therefore can be sought for also from the most diverse mental motives. The list
of such affinity groups is a task of a psychological occupation science, to
which already certain beginnings are present. [trans.: Martin Achnich in his Der Berufsbildertest (Occupation Test)
manual normally lists at least two affinity groups for each occupation; also
see Arthur C. Johnston’s Szondi Test: Its
Interpretation and Graphological Indications (without graphology) on www.szondiforum.org for extracts from
Achnich’s manual.]
c) Vent Work Tropism
We likewise encountered this form of
work tropism in our analysis of the profile of a psychasthenic (Example 4, p . 21).
There was an affinity between the symptom factors in the Szondi test and the
career aspirations. The occupation determining factors were in this case needs
that were not in a degree rejected and that were in such a manner felt
dangerous as the root factors represented. The occurrence of “vents” in areas
of mental happening has already been long well-known. Already in the animal
realm one knows this feature under the name surprise movement (Tinbergen). 12
If the operation of an instinct with an animal discharge in a stimulus
condition were inhibited, then courses of motion and reflexes later arise,
which belong to another instinct.
If one provokes for example an ape in
a cage, then it can not let run free its defense instincts because of the bars. It is compelled to regard everything. It
can not also flee. After a short time of confusion, it begins to scratch itself
intensively: The scratching instinct was released. Certain fish react to
disturbances again differently, for example with swimming movements, which are
typical as a preliminary stage of mating or which are connected with the care of
the nest.
One of the most frequent processes
with humans is releasing reactive aggressions when malfunctioning.
We accept that a person has drives to
become unfaithful to his partner or perhaps the reverse. The superego reacts,
and unconscious guilt feelings, which refer to the partner cheated, are the
result. This condition can remain thereby, and then the guilt is accepted.
However if further adapted forms of these guilt feelings arise, then the
picture changes: If one is, for example, taciturn, sharp and unfriendly, then
one would be particularly friendly, and then one could interpret this as
a sign of the guilt. Since one at any price represses the guilt feeling, the
least minute signs of a confession are also uncomfortable. If this process
turns into a projective execution of the guilt (“You are guilty that our
relationship has broken up, not I”), then one’s own guilt is openly fought
in the other one. It would be surely wrong in this example to see the drive
danger in the aggression because confounded with it is a reactive happening
with an autonomous need.
This first group of vent work tropism
we can attribute to those mental powers, which we call reactions of the ego to
the unconscious guilt feeling: The aggressiveness from guilt and fear and,
conversely, the moral masochism, the self-degradation from unconscious need for
punishment. With many persons the motives originate from these sources for a
certain occupation choice.
Many compulsion neurotics, who suffer
from more severe guilt feelings, do not feel anywhere as well as in the
military. They are there quite efficient and charging people (often contrary to
masochistic, unfit-for-life behavior in everyday living). The joy in the
service by these compulsive persons is based on two work tropisms. The internal
compulsion is completed through the outside. The military culture and the many
rituals release people. The defense protection against the compulsion and the
military environment have an affinity to mental “areas.” We recognize easily a
work tropism operation, like those that under b) were described as a defense
work tropism. Beyond the compulsive moderate regulation of life, the military
service sanctions certain forms of aggression, because the charging nature
belongs to the cardinal virtues of the soldier. The guilt is with the enemy, no
longer with oneself; he therefore can be fought. A projective circle develops: The
opponent takes over the role of the superego. All his reactions have a mimosa-like
sensitivity. The reactive aggression to this vivid self-reproach becomes soon
provoking. The opponent must be made guilty, and one tries to move to attack
him, because an innocent opponent is not suitable any longer for the projection
of the unconscious guilt feeling. This circulus
vitiosus [a vicious circle] reminds us also of the politician. And indeed
high politics is a “drive vent” for many politicians.
Moral masochism shows itself in the so-called
“occupations of service.” The fundamental trait of these occupations is the
self-sacrificing devotion to other people, which can extend to glaring
self-degradation. This motive of sacrifice is found with nurses, with
housemaids, and even with certain forms of prostitution. This moral masochism
is not to be confounded with the sexual. It rises not from a libido need (this
can be however satisfied along with the moral one), but an unconscious need for
punishing, which directs persons in extreme cases into those peripheral
professions of the society, the caste of the consciously despised, however
unconsciously highly estimated, where degraded existences are practiced.
Open professional prostitution is
never free from these motives of moral self-destruction. Erotic masochists
selects however in original work tropic choice probably masochistic work
situations (for example psychologist, physician, nurse, social worker), but
only in such, which is first of all socially highly respectable and secondly
emerges under close examination as sadomasochistic relations.
The more moral a masochistic striving
is (the more strongly it is decided by an unconscious need for punishment
dependant on the superego), all the more strongly the inclination to socially
least respected occupations, all the more categorically each sadistic course is
switched off. The self-degradation occurs to excess in accordance with the heteronymous
law of punishment (Piaget: The highest and only conceivable punishment). 13
One sees that an original work tropic
choice can lead with an erotic masochism to the same occupation as a
secondarily work tropic choice of a moral masochist. Which of the two motivations
led to the occupation choice can only be decided by an exact analysis of the method
of working. As differential criterion it is considered that the moral masochism
is tougher than the erotic masochism and the moral sadism more decisive than
the erotic sadism. In erotic experience sadism and masochism belong together,
both are only extremes of the same need. A sadist becomes a masochist, if he
finds a still more sadistic partner. Potentially each erotic masochist or
sadist is inclined also to experiencing the opposite.
In the case of an original work
tropic satisfaction, from there are selected regularly sadomasochistic
occupations, occupations with a double relationship of the erotic orientation.
In an authoritarian structured
society faithful servants and lawyers of the respective authority become
aggressive from guilt feeling, and moral masochism turns up in situations and
occupations, despised by the authoritarian class, even when they are not
fought. Both are dictatorship-susceptible structures; that is, they can not
from internal obstacles oppose resistance to a dictatorial rape of a society,
because they are unconsciously inclined to radical realizations of sadistic or
masochistic principles.
This discussed group of phenomena is
very close to the defense work tropism, because moral sadism like moral
masochism is one of two ways of the relationship of the ego to the superego,
both are reactions to an unconscious guilt feeling, which is processed in a
narcissistic form. (In the moral masochism we see a negative narcissism; for
instance, the slogan: “Whom God loves, he punishes” can be put as the basis of
it.)
Despite this similarity, differences
clearly come to light. The unconscious guilt feeling is not by any means the
genuine problem. It is already a reaction to the stirring of a forbidden drive
striving, a feeling thus, which develops only during the rejection of drive
desires. The defense work tropism rises from the specific kind of drive
defense, the vent work tropism of the particular processing form of the
unconscious guilt feeling, which arises with the defense. A certain coupling of
defense work tropism and vent work tropism is however always present.
Moral sadism paired with the ego
defense mechanisms of inflation or projection, easily will lead to the
occupation of the psychologist; however if older and paroxysmal defense
mechanisms dominate, then this combination pushes work tropic operations to
occupations of a theologian (of that manner, who inquisitorially fights
everything and who does not agree with the letter of teachings). Certainly one
can state that with the example of the psychologists also, original work
tropism plays a role, in which in the therapeutic situation a dual relationship
is restored. This is without a doubt in many cases correct, but does not have
to be however always like that: The career aspirations to become a psychologist
can arise from each the work tropic form:
-
Original
work tropism: One wants to become a psychologist to be able to live again in a
dual union (in the psychotherapy transference).
-
Defense
work tropism: This occupation offers many possibilities of using projective
tendencies. One wants to check up, to recognize, and exactly to know the other
one, because one unconsciously feels persecuted by him. Or also inflative: One
is the all-knowing God in the areas of consulting practice.
-
Vent
work tropism: Moral masochism: One torments oneself for other people and
sacrifices oneself for “border existences.” Moral sadism: One “roots in the
unconscious,” “breaks the resistance of the patient,” and furthermore one
fights other opinions and trends with vehement inexorability.
Decisive is the relationship of the
portions of a, b and c. Each one-sided determination is crucial although one of
these forms leads to an appropriate way of the practice of the profession and
to a dominant affective tendency. The danger is then great that the occupation
ethos is decided unconsciously and that personal attitudes lacking maturity
creep in and form an incorrect occupation morality. Practice shows that these
unconscious motivations occur perhaps under certain conditions and can be
correctly judged and that justifiably then the person’s gift for this
occupation must be doubted.
However if humans succeed in making
all three concrete forms of work tropism in the same occupation, then that is
to put all three as the basis for an integration. Vent reactions become to a
large extent redundant, since the drive sphere is rightly satisfied. The ego strengthens
and becomes flexibe in its defense attitude, so that no more compulsion exists
to insert unwanted personal drive demands in defenses into the vocational
situation. The internal equilibrium between affective tendencies and ego
demands puts aside vent reactions and forms a basis for that form of the drive
fates, which one calls sublimation. But more on that in a later section.
We turn for the time being to some
further phenomena of vent work tropism, which are not clear or as clearly
definable as is the moral phenomena already described. It was already stressed
in the comment for our Example 4 on page 21 and following that in each case of
vent work tropism the symptoms (the vent reactions, as we also call them) are
the occupation-determining factors and not needs, affective patterns and
complexes of the drive region. In primary work tropism the drive need finds a
form of satisfaction in a psychic “success” field of this need and formally the
process of the satisfaction in the occupation remains the same as with the
native. It is shifted however increasingly symbolically and, depending upon
conditions, are present in the erotic experience field of persons. In principle
the drive goal and the formal operational sequence of the drive satisfaction directly
remain the same.
In vent work tropism this direct way
of the need satisfaction is no longer possible. The prohibition system of
superego pushes itself in between and stretches its long fingers into the
inside of the work area. Also with many people with a strong superego is shown an
allowance for a certain tolerance to permit a certain readiness and realization
in the vocational field in the form of a social compromise. However if the
entrance of affective stirrings is hermetically locked for direct satisfaction,
then there comes a succession of different kinds of symptom formations, which move
always more from direct realization. In cases of transition it is often
difficult to assign an occupation choice clearly to the original or vent work
tropism. The distinction of original conflict and secondary symptom is
relative; it comes into view, more from the observed happening. Our conception
of the mental disturbance is based on the two processes of displacement and
regression. In the regression earlier development stages of the libidos are
again occupied, and equally a spiral is compelled backwards after the neurotic
conflict. The symptoms designate the location of the libido with this
regression process. Could one regard from this that each vent work tropism is not
also an original? As we will see later, this objection is not sustainable. With
the vent it concerns are not around a satisfaction of an original need, but the
satisfaction of a deficient condition (for example an addiction) of this
primordial original. We differentiate between three important groups, which are
only represented for the time being in terms of catchwords:
A. Original Work Tropism:
Direct conversion and realization of
a drive desire in the work situation.
e.g., More aggressively -->
butchers (if an indigenous aggression need is assumed)
Homosexual --> barber or masseur
Transvestite --> ladies underwear
manufacturer
A phallic-narcissistic character --
> physician
Penis envy with a woman -- >
doctor
An oral character -- > cook,
cigarette goods dealer.
B.
Transition Group:
Reversal of the drive goal as the most
original form of defense, reversal into the opposite, and compensation in the
field of work, which avail themselves of the ambivalent structure of the
drives.
for example, “Cinderella” -->
mannequin, actress
Impotence in erotic area --> power
demonstration in the occupation
Passivity --> hyperactive
businessman, manager.
C.
Vent Work Tropism:
Discharge possibilities in other
drive demands, which are encouraged by libido displacements.
Occupations, which stand in close
relationship with symptoms of a mental illness.
Drive separation [Triebentmischung] according to Szondi
[Trans.: See L. Szondi, Die
Trieb-Entmischten, Publisher: Hans Huber,
for example, penis envy --> lack
of sexual inhibitions --> prostitution.
Homosexuality (passive) of a man --
> defenses by an oral addiction (for example, morphine) --> physician
-- > publican (alcohol).
Addendum to B: Since the ambitendency already
belongs to the structure of the drives, as for instance in the drive theory of
Szondi, then these examples can be counted as part of original work tropism.
However this hardly is more justified for the reversals of affective patterns
and complexes, if not exactly ambivalence constitutes the core of the complex.
We prefer to already rank this group of transition groups among vent work
tropisms. The essential difference is in splitting this ambitendency into
different experience factors.
An originally work tropic choice
would be present if an anal retentive character expresses itself in areas of
the erotic and at the same time makes an occupation choice in the same
direction. Such a constituted person could show himself, for example, in sexual
intercourse as impotent, because he holds back his semen, further takes on an
occupation, in which he must professionally hold back things or money or
possess these, as this is the case with a pawn broker owner, sometimes also the
case with a second-hand bookseller. To behave oneself as the same character in
the anal-wastefully vocational field, he throws money away freely and becomes a
large speculator; then a reversal is present, which is nevertheless quite
important. Because this reaction shows that in the sector of the anal in the
vocational field again primarily vegetative conditions prevail and that it is
not possible this person in the work to collect and restrain his energy.
Everything fades away between the fingers to be never seen again. He can not
let the energy play out in the erotic. In the occupation the operation of
superego is not excluded totally, because humans do not need to be completely
adrift -- however that form of discipline disappears, which the child in the
phase of the cleanliness normally acquires familiarization. If the aggression
is tied to the hidden defiance of the retention in sexual intercourse, then the
activity fritters away arbitrarily and wastefully in the occupation. The power
-- to describe it as analogous to the genital stage -- proves itself and to the
environment in a hyperactive fuss (if he does not already bring it into sexual intercourse
with prostitutes).
The divergence of the behavior in
erotic experiences and in the occupational work is already fathered from a rigid
superego structure, which blocks areas the way to its realization in the drive
desire and in the other areas and, however, is overactive in a form that does
not come clearly to illuminate one’s consciousness. These reversals encompass
many of the forms of compensations in occupation fields, about which will be
the discussion of the explanations of work disturbances.
Addendum to C: Still more valid is this
“suspending” superego with the forms of actual vent work tropism. The weakness
of the superego is limited however mostly to a narrow sector and emerges also
only at intervals. The more severe the conflict is, the stronger and more
totally the superego becomes active. In more severe forms of illnesses (as in
the psychoses and more severe addictions) a projection process is added: The
superego again becomes, as in the heterogeneous phase of moral development that
precedes the superego, identical with the society. The fight is not valid for
society and one’s own unconscious conscience. In a psychosis this form of vent
work tropism will hardly ever arise, because with total negation of the
superego also the way for direct need satisfaction becomes freed. As we already
mentioned, the work tropic choice becomes invalid with the negation of reality.
The occurrence of vent work tropism stands for satisfaction, which does
not always have to take place work tropically, and is in inverse proportional relation to the possibility of an
original libido tropism. Here again our basic principle must be mentioned
that occupation psychology can be only meaningful, if the entire human
experience is taken into consideration. In particular work tropism from the
libido economic point of view is only a secondary form of the libido tropism.
Whether it apears or not depends on the entire libido relations of the person
concerned.
Vent work tropism -- we see thus -- is a typical characteristic of neurosis.
Thus the frequent lability of the occupation choices of neurotics is
explainable. If the structure of the neurosis changes, new symptoms form with
or without therapeutic influence and without pressure from the environment,
then suddenly occupation inclinations have become groundless. The decrease of
inclinations is a feature that each psychotherapist can observe with his or her
patients.
Further: Vent work tropism
continues to increase also with the decrease of neurotic defense work tropism.
Both forms stand likewise in an inverse proportional relationship. The
neuroses with addicted or asocial symptoms, further also with those psychopathies
that we regard as hidden character neuroses, form the main area of the work
tropic secondary choice. The defense psychoneuroses (Brun) 14
are however the domain of defense work tropism, and original work tropism can
occur practically in all neurosis forms.
We consider the allocation to work
tropisms to the neurosis forms scientifically inadmissible, because often
combinations arise. On the other hand the quantitative relationship of the
three forms is distinguishable with each specific kind of neurosis.
The processes, which lead to the
symptom formation, can be described well under the aspects of drive separation
and regression as well as fixation readiness.
From the point of view of a dynamic
psychology the neurosis can be seen as drive separation. At this time the two
main groups of drives, the libido strivings and the aggressiveness, become
separated. In the normal drive life the aggression is in the object search on
the one hand and linked to self-preservation on the other hand. With the
neurotic the aggression is isolated, binds itself, for example, to asocial
defiance, instead of being converted into the fusion with libido drives in
healthy activity. The elimination and isolation of a drive component lead to
disturbances. The energetic tension in the instinct of self-preservation is
lowered, the occupation work input sinks, and one becomes used up. The power to
resist is missing and finally one crawls into the resentment against the evil
world. Also the love ability (the object search) is impaired. One finds with
such people a fearful crawling before the other sex and, at the same time,
however masochistic and sadistic fantasies. The isolation leads to a
disturbance of the mental equilibrium relationship. Each need is dependant on
the other; each pursues a piece far from their drive goal together. If this
synthesizing is waived, then insulating needs come to light and later also
different drive couplings, which were typical for childlike development phases.
The neurotic falls back into the “partial drive stage” (Freud).
Precondition of a mature, genuine
love relationship is, according to the insights of psychoanalysis, the union of
the partial drives under the primacy of genital love. The fusion of the sexual
components in genital sexuality is the conditio
the sine qua non [indispensible condition] of each form of love, who loves
the other one for his or her own personal sake and for a deep You relationship
such as Buber 15 has called it. If this partial drive (orality,
anality, voyeurism, exhibitionism, masochism, sadism, phallic narcissism) is
not alloyed, a certain need isolates itself and then in the unconscious it
becomes one the dominant factors of the functional behavior. The mutual control
waived, the braking needs, which with these isolated needs were united in the
sense of the totality of a drive goal and object, now pursue their own way to
satisfaction. If the insulating need is subject to the rejection by the
superego, then the uncontrolled craving becomes easily unchained. Each need can
be subject to this process. There are as many addictions as there are drive
needs. Addiction as a symptom unfolds from that need sector in which the
superego still permits discharge and where the subjective feeling of the safety
of the drive execution is still possible. We accept that for any reason from
experience persons would not find and satisfy tenderness and sensibility in an
object. The result is a double morality of the love life: Thus the tender
connection to the mother is often transferred to a worshipped Madonna, who is
not desired, and the sensuality is satisfied with a prostitute, whom one does
not love. This sensuality becomes easily a sexual addiction, because more again
and again love is sought, but this love is sought again and again with women who
can satisfy only sensuously. And the chronic object change leads to
disappointments. Inhibition of a need leads to isolation and to drive
separation. The remaining components, with which this need had merged, are
uninhibited, that is, potentially addicted; their goal is the direct and
immediate discharge of a tension state. The ego loses rule over the motor
execution, probably because it concentrates in a one-sided way on defenses of
the total need. The isolation as a need felt to be dangerous devours a large
part of the ego activity, which does not stand for order in other places and
therefore is made possible there an impulse break-through.
The drive tenets of Szondi has
probably developed this aspect of the neurosis tenets most fully, whereby
further different forms of the separation [Entmischung]
of the needs are differentiated. Szondi’s teaching states that in each age
group certain drive couplings decide the mental happening. The needs are as it
were time-oriented and unfold their effectiveness only in certain time phases.
In the first time after the birth the needs h and m, tenderness and clinging to
the mother dominate; aggression is added later, for example, so that the
oral-aggressive phase of psychoanalysis would correspond to a drive coupling of
the Szondian needs m and s. Then follows -- similar to the Freud stage of the
anal libido -- a coupling of the needs s and d (aggressiveness and anality,
first in form of separating out destruction and then in the meaning of
retention). In the phallic stage of the libido development is finally a
dominance of the hy need, the desire to look at and to show. Only in the
genital phase those need couplings are developed, which are characteristic of a
healthy drive life. The connection mentioned by us with the two aspect of the
neurosis theory: The regression to an earlier libido state has already been
clearly covered; certain drive mixtures corresponding to certain libido stages,
drive separation and libido regression designate a common process. If the step
to a complete drive mixture (genitalization in a Freudian sense) can not be
done, then old drive mixtures thrive, which satisfy themselves, while
conversely other needs are excluded from satisfaction. This revival of old
drive couplings leads to a certain neurosis form and shapes thereby also the
symptom picture.
We take addiction as Example 6: Each addiction is in its origin a surrogate for the lost
original union with the mother. It is a permanent prosthesis, an escape into
nirvana, because addicted people are unable to find a substitute object for the
lost or never-had mother. The person wants:
a)
to
be accepted as he or she is, and indeed
b)
from
a quite definite person.
The addicted bears no interruption of
the dual union, 16 since he or she also bears no interruption of
that craving. One is unable to separate oneself from this desired object.
Briefly: These people can not live alone. They are “acceptance neurotics” and were
never accepted from the mother to that degree as they wished. The results are:
1.
An
excessively increased perseverance tendency (one wants precisely to be accepted
just as one is without changing oneself for the sake of the other). The demand
for love is still completely narcissistic.
2.
There
-- as in the depression -- the acceptance by the lost mother is always sought,
and the addicted person is unable to find a substitute object with which the dual
union could be created again.
3.
They
are therefore lonely people. The isolation is still strengthened, because the
addicted person destroys himself or herself with time. Since the mother has not
accepted one, one does not want to accept oneself. The early time of separation
from the mother strengthens the inverted identification, which always begins
after the time of separation. Thus he or she remains magically connected with
the partner and participates with him or her. The reactive hate from the
malfunctioning of the not being accepted is directed with the identification
also against himself or herself. The importance of destruction in addictions was
particularly emphasized by v. Gebsattel. 17
4.
The
addicted feels internally empty, only half of a person (because he or she must
live in a dual union). A goal of the addictive behavior is the abolition of the
internal emptiness, which becomes intolerable, the alteration of reality, and
the escape into nirvana.
Manner and place of the addiction
very often are caused by personal experiences. The addiction uses different
drive regions in order to manifest itself. The selection of these drive
regions, in relation to which the watchfulness of superego is weak, happens now
according to the principle of regression and drive separation. This
interpretation of the symptom choice of the addiction reveals itself with the
experience that with the addicted one can retrace the addiction into childhood
where there are preliminary stages of the addiction, which adopt other forms in
the development stages of the libido. Whether now an oral or anal or genital
addiction is maintained by the adult depends on the specific libido
displacement. Whether artificial means for the satisfaction of the addiction
are used or not, they are ascribed must probably to personal experiences.
For each form of an addiction the
negation of the superego is characteristic in the mental field addicted from
the worsened need. One finds the vents, where the superego becomes as it were
“dethroned” and develops a subjectively felt safety zone of the drive life. It
is now plausible that in the course of the conflict of the superego for a
social anchorage and for a rationalization of the addicted behavior, one
searches for an environment, which supplies the means for the maintenance of
the illusions of reality. This is particularly valid for addiction forms that
are dependant on drugs. With latent and manifest addictions, a work is easily
selected, which has to do with drugs, like pharmacist, physician, publican,
brewery worker, bar person.
If a sexual lack of inhibitions
continues to remain as an addiction in the adult age, then this can lead easily
-- coupled with the need to secure one’s livelihood -- to prostitution. We call
occupation choices, which run according to this process represented by the
example of addiction, vent work tropism choices.
The difference between original and
vent work tropism is again discussed in this Example 7:
The penis envy of the woman, with
whose genesis we cannot deal here, which according to psychoanalytical
interpretation however is present with each small girl, can lead to completely
different results. If this envy is not too intensive and if it does not became
suppressed, then it may happen that essential parts are sublimated o,r at the
most, in certain peculiarities of the individual sexual life occur. If the
penis envy is however extraordinarily strong or becames suppressed in an early
stage, then it plays an important, often disastrous, role in the neurosis
formation or the character figuration of the woman. Abraham differentiates two
development types of penis envy with respect to character formation 18:
The wish fulfillment type and the revenge type. The first is present if a woman
strives to take a more masculine role (that is, in society to be regarded as
male) and by fantasies to have or to acquire a penis is fulfilled; to speak of
the latter type, if drives press forward, the most happy penis possession through
sexual revenge is practiced through castration. Such women imagines that sexual
intercourse for one or the other partner is humiliating. Their goal lies in
humiliating the man before they themselves are humiliated. Fenichel writes
about this 19:
The revenge may be perceived as a
masculine one ('I'll show you that I can be as masculine as you are') or as a
feminine one ('Because you have despised me, I'll make you admire what you have
despised'). Since the revenge impulses are directed against 'men' in general
rather than against a specific man, and since they can never be really
satisfied, aggressive components of this kind are often determinants of 'hyper-sexuality'
in women. Fantasies of being a prostitute are apt to express both ideas, being
humiliated and taking revenge for it.
We see that the two character types
of the penis envy deviate strongly from each other. The first type steps into
direct competition with the man; the second type dedicates herself to revenge.
The vocational fates also divide.
The wish fulfillment character will
choose an occupation, which is rated as “typically male” (for example a
university education). The missing penis is replaced by enormous knowledge,
with which one goes on the stage of a male faculty. The lady doctor holds a
privileged position inside this “more masculine” occupations: Apart from the
high social valuation, which this intellectual occupation enjoys, still
different powers work: A majority of the medical instruments are penis symbols.
One is here only reminded of the injection syringe, which takes nowadays such a
large role in unconscious mental happenings. It is therefore no coincidence
that medical instruments, which occur as interpretations in the Rorschach form
interpretation, are symbols of the phallic-narcissistic character formation
with all test subjects, not only with members of the occupations of medicine.
The type of wish fulfillment of the penis envy is inclined thus to an original
work tropism satisfaction.
The revenge type of penis envy leads
first to the symptom of sexual hyperactivity and – if the self-humiliating is
included -- to the sexual lack of inhibitions. There are also several cases
well known to us, with which the wish fulfillment character threatens to turn
occasionally into sexual lack of inhibitions. If the occupation of the lady
doctor is alone determined by the penis envy, the principle “functions”
outweighs the principle “values” in order to meet the beautiful distinction in
the occupation choice (Odier 20), then regularly a latent
inclination to the sexual lack of inhibitions is found in the erotic life of
these women.
This sexual lack of inhibitions is
however not realized vocationally, as with the revenge type often happens,
where the woman becomes the cocotte [cocotte = hen: old name for prostitute] or
prostitute. In this case we speak of vent work tropism and of an affinity
between occupation and mental symptom.
d) Integrated Work Tropism
It often happens that all three forms
of work tropism are effective at the same time, but in the form that three
apparently independent groups of career aspirations arise. The main interest of
the inclinations lies in that they appear at one time in one work tropic group
and at other times in another one. This variation between different career
aspirations, which can be clearly described as moderate inclination, is a
special form of the immature occupation choice, which one encounters during the
vocational guidance of neurotics from time to time. The result is an inability
to decide, which the advisor tries to get around by two or more kinds of
vocational activities. The mature inclination (that is, ability to train in
general vocational interests) is present in this case. Often these groups of
career aspirations change, disappear suddenly and plunge even then again when
the realization of a definite occupation is tried.
The variation between different
occupations naturally can have also different reasons; these are already
however to be considered then as actual work disturbances: Often an unconscious
rejection of parents or alignment with the father and the mother plays a role.
Or the swaying back and forth of occupations actually goes back to a
fluctuation between a more masculine and a more feminine attitude and is thus a
discharge of a sexual ambitendency.
The change of profession again, if
also not in all its forms, belongs already into the category of neurotic
disturbances. It is a form of the discontent, which is projected outward and is
always in vocational conditions, however not in personal sources of
displeasure.
We take the following as an example
of a three way work tropic fixation with the dividing of the career
aspirations:
Example 8: A 30 year old man consistently
refuses each work and adaptation. Already in the middle school he constantly
failed. He has not yet to this day been able to decide on an occupational
apprenticeship He tries different work, however without persisting long in any
one. The attempts fail again and again to bring a vocation in line for him. It
seems as if he could not bear freedom and responsibility. This attitude is from
an unconscious need to depreciate and to annoy his parents. The basic slogan of
his behavior says: “You have brought me into the world; therefore, you are
guilty for what I have became and you have to bear with me now even as I am.”
Not because of the defiance attitude and the self-sabotage, both having
unmistakably come to light, but because of the noteworthy constellation of his
career aspirations, which he sought already partly to realize, is this given
here as an example.
The conflict situation is multilayered.
There is present:
1. A disappointment in a friendship
relationship, which was unconsciously homosexual-colored;
2. Hate towards his mother, who is not
accepted, and who in his opinion gave more love to his brothers and sisters
than to him. In addition, this hate develops from the conflict of the
identification with his mother;
3. Orientation of the libido development
to his father.
We will for the sake of simplicity
seize only on point 1, that is, the work tropic fate of homosexuality:
A. Original Work Tropism. Career Aspirations:
a)
Teacher.
Leisure activities: Active leader in a youth movement. (Motive: To be together
with boys, however in addition in the background: To make these boys estranged
from their parents.)
b)
Trumpeter
in a jazz orchestra. The trumpet is a phallic instrument, the playing of it is
a proof that one controls the “masculine” instrument. This probably contains,
in addition, the desire to play with a penis where an original work tropic
relationship would lie. The attraction to the music on the whole rises naturally
from still further factors: He is gifted in music; furthermore, he grew up in a
familial music tradition. Music and singing (he sings quite willingly) are
further also oral arts. The affective privileged position of these two
interests might be connected with problem 2. 21
B. Defense Work Tropism. Career Aspirations:
a)
Theologian.
This occupation arises in most cases and quite definitely in our example from a
need to escape into vocational activity with illicit drive needs. Religion serves
the containment of drive impulses. Religion is also to a large extent carried
out with prohibitions, for which the theologian must provide validity.
(Naturally there are other sources for the religion other than those of
prohibitions, but in our example the occupation is chosen from the unconscious
morality of the superego, thus from the most subjective basis and not for the
sake of brotherly love.) If the occupation of ministers is selected in a
defense work tropic manner, then one can not speak of a pseudo morality. In his
position as a youth leader he mixes defense work tropism with original work
tropism (to deal with boys).
b)
Career
Officer. Although he is prepared for the difficulties of the practice of authority (his suitability as
an officer is questionable), he probably does not feel himself as well anywhere
as in the military environment. It is an idiosyncratic fact that asocial
characters maintain themselves relatively well and fit in well in a compulsive
environment. This is based on a not completely transparent relationship of
compulsion and asociality. 22 He succeeds in making
manifest the background compulsion structure, thus the first step is done for
socialization. In the wish to become a “career officer” is working
predominantly the work tropic attraction power of latent ego defense
possibilities (compulsion). In addition, in this career aspiration are still
(quantitatively weaker) traits of original work tropism. The military is
[relatively] a same sex environment.
C. Vent Work Tropism. Career Aspirations:
The leading symptoms are here the
reactive aggression (released by the homosexuals disillusionment in love and by
the break in the relationship with the mother) and the drive unconnectedness of
the childlike freedom urge.
Career aspirations:
a) The aggression tried to be realized
in occupations of a soldier, partly also in an older desire to race through the
streets as a driver.
b) The desire for freedom is in the
stress of becoming an artist, in particular, in his plan, to be a freelance
musician.
We could have drawn upon two further
conflict areas for the analysis of the motives for career aspiration, but then
the net of the unconscious determinations of these occupational groups would
have become denser and more confused. One thing is emphasized: One never
succeeds drawing sharp boundaries between the different forms of work tropism.
Our example shows the necessity of a flexible fixing of the boundaries and
careful emphasis of definitions in areas of mental facts.
One of these career aspirations is
decided from all three work tropic forms (for example the soldier career). With
some however one work tropic form is decidedly more weighty than the others.
Therefore it comes apparently to this division into contents of such opposite
career aspirations. One must, by the way, be on the guard against searching to
put the moderate experience connections for work tropisms secondary to theoretically
derived possibilities. An exact depth psychological analysis must clarify in
detail case conditions.
In this example are already
preliminary stages of the integrated work tropism. We speak of an integration
if the choice of an occupation will occur in such a way that in the work a
fusion of original and defense work tropisms occurs, and by this reconciliation
of drive and ego a vent work tropism choice become redundant. The powers of the
ego and the determining power of the drive needs are in equilibrium. Between their
demands develops a compromise, which becomes permanent because of the social
approval through the integration into an occupation. The coincidence of ego
goal and drive goal is not coincidental, but has been based on certain
conditions: The plasticity of the ego is now sufficiently autonomous, in order to
grant affective and drive energy to the functions of the ego and the plasticity
of the drives, which must be sufficiently elastic in order to be able to adapt
itself to the goals of the ego.
This plasticity is missing in the
neurotic who lives in the past, petrified, and by the repetition compulsion
grounded in mental behaviors, either to ego emphasis and intellectuality or to
affectivity and the drive. He or she lacks in principle this readiness for
internal compromise. Guilt toward this is the operation of the superego agency,
which intervenes itself into connections between unconscious functions and the
ego and which tears up the thread of the determinations and occasionally
interrupts into certain sectors or connects incorrectly into a system with apparent
and ostensible motives.
Each dominance of a mental function
connection disturbs the mental dialectic and makes impossible the unity of mental
acts. This one-sidedness leads to similar serious shifts in the satisfaction in
work tropic fields. The predominance of a work tropic manner in the career
aspirations and with the occupation choice has already been recognized as
characteristic of mental disturbances.
With integrated work tropism the
dynamics of unconscious functions (drive energy) are placed at the disposal of
the ego, but nevertheless even so the ego considers the desires of the drive
sphere and offers satisfaction possibilities to the drives on a higher level of
values. The ego keeps its ability to steer and to lead. It is autonomous, but
not in the sense of self isolation and breaking off of relations. True
sovereignty includes acceptance of affective contents; however, knowledge of
the connections between the ego and unconscious tendencies are also required.
The equilibrium, of which we spoke,
is full of tension. The mental equilibrium does not exclude tensions. The expression
compromise measure is more suitable
therefore for the facts. Since libido strivings in ego activity can be realized
in the form of connections -- which are permitted by the superego -- arise no
more, no more are necessary libido displacements, which are the creation of
vents by which mental energy can escape the watchful eye of the superego as by
a back door. Vent work tropism disappears and makes an integrated place, which
includes in itself original and defense work tropism in further flexible form.
3. Examples
of
Integrated
Work Tropic Choice
Example 9:
We spoke concerning original work
tropism that one could designate the occupation of a butcher as an original
form of satisfaction of aggression. With dentists and surgeons are now often
present integrated work tropic satisfaction forms of aggression. The dentist,
for example. works without a doubt with aggression; he bores and he extracts
and elicits pain. Also the physical contact is more aggressive. In contrast to
the butcher now there participates not an additional drive need (satisfying
hunger) but factors that we must assign to the attitude-taking areas. The
dentist repairs teeth, the surgeon organs; this brings thus something into
order, which before was functioning badly. In unconscious symbolism, the
skilled person in repairing the teeth can be seen also as a symbolic making up
for castration wishes, thus an action, which thoroughly originates from ethical
areas of conscious or unconscious moralities. The surgeon saves humans from
death, symbolically making a return from death wishes. The original need of the
aggression is used as an agent and energy dispenser in order to cancel
symbolically the aggression act. And is not inserted at the moment of the
reparation in the activity of repairing, the protection and the
reaction-formation, which psychoanalysis includes among the ego defense
mechanisms?
Example 10:
Rico originates from a sectarian
family with a most narrow field of vision. The father died early. The boy grew
up with his mother and three nagging and arguing but pious aunts. From this
woman circle (an incomplete family of an over-organized type 23 )
he was spoiled but on the other hand held to religiously quite strict standards.
After his schooling he landed by accident (because he received an offered
training position) in engraver instructions. Thus one cannot speak of a work
tropic choice. From the outset Rico was dissatisfied, without a deeper
inclination and without suitability. Besides this another educational doubtful
instructor suspended him because the youth could still scarcely even pass the
final apprenticeship examination. The boy was involved in a homosexual event,
was enticed, received pleasure and continued to be enticed. Furthermore he has
himself once seduced a weak-minded girl. At two places he was hounded, because
he already after a short time had girls in his room. So far these are the
facts.
Rico is a drive character, still very
infantile and sexually undifferentiated. Great importance is given to the
strong binding to the mother and to exclusive orientation to women for this
remaining back in his sexual development. The discrepancy between grafted
morality and internal confusion is large. Thus it is not surprising that Rico
cannot channel his drives. With these girl experiences only touching was involved
and “child’s play” and not an actual sexual intercourse, which was also not
located at the center of his desires during his infantile drive adjustment.
Between the drive conflict and his
learned occupation of engraver no connections are to be seen. The occupation
fulfills neither a defense function nor does it have a symptom character, nor
do we find an original satisfaction. Briefly: Each affinity and each affective
connection is missing. Rico selected -- after the disappointments of his
previous working life he has chosen instinctively work -- and therefore we
bring this example that is now conditioned to a high degree by work tropism: He
became packer and warehouse worker in a corset and brassiere factory. From this
job he obtains his maximum satisfactory; he feels happy for the first time in
his life and would not at any price change his job. The employer issues him his
first certificate for good conduct in his life. He behaves properly in relation
to the feminine employees. Misdemeanors of any kind have not occurred any
longer, since that he has held this job. It is extremely rare that
spontaneously occurs an integrated work tropic occupation solution. That this
happened with Rico speaks well for a good prognosis. In the dealings with
feminine attributes we find the original work tropic relationship with his
femininity (the central problem of his sexual poor development) however in the
manner of the dealings with these attributes lies an essential moment of
control of these drive needs, which differentiates the femininity from an only
socialized transvestite: He packs the things (which willingly he would like to
show as an exhibitionist); he keeps things in order as a warehouse worker.
Without losing ourselves in the symbolism of packing up, we can state
nevertheless that in this work is at hand a synthesis of original work tropic
strivings with a defense work tropism. 24
With work tropism the mental conflict
is carried as a whole into the occupation world, converted there to a task on a
more “neutral” level and leads gradually step by step to an objectification,
which retroactively accelerates now the self-healing.
The work thesis reads thusly: An
occupation is --- should it serve as a neurosis prophylaxis -- thus to be chosen
that simultaneously opens a channel for a drive need or an affect pattern
satisfaction in such a way that it, at the same time, opens and in a way
controls these needs with the specific defense mechanism that the ego is
inclined to use against the drive dangers.
Even if the integrated work tropism
serves as it were two masters, it does not lose by any means in strength,
because the relationship of the ego and unconscious functions does not resemble
a mutual paralysis but an increased tension, which with the coincidence of the
goals leads to uniform dynamic acts. The increased dependence on drive striving
however makes the person, in whom an integrated work tropism succeeds, have
many vulnerabilities. The synthesis is not final and absolutely permanent, and
it approaches an unstable equilibrium.
This instability has its positive
results. It makes the person sensitive to the play of the ego and unconscious
drives. To productive working belongs a “displacement” of the ego positions,
which however in the case of integrated work tropism do not lead to the loss of
the relationship with the unconscious mental systems and of the similar
misjudging of reality as in a neurosis.
The integrated work tropism arises
predominantly in the zone D of our schema on page 32, which is identical to the
zone of the neurosis; however, in two things it differs: First of all by the
promotion of the ability to work, which can on the contrary be also disturbed
again, however never continuously as with the neurotic; secondly by the capability
for high reality adjustment.
With the distinction of these four
stages we expanded significantly the concept of work tropism introduced by
Szondi. It includes now all manners of attractions (affinities), unmindful
about the question to what extent they are decided by heredity (in the sense of
Szondi’s genotropism) 25 and by personal experiences. The
boundaries between heredity and experience conditioned factors are so fluid
that it is impossible to separate a gene-conditioned work tropism from other
forms of unconscious determination of the choice of work.
e) Socialization, Reaction-Formation,
Sublimation
Still briefly to be raised is the
question, how these three psychoanalytical concepts are to be assigned to our analysis
of work tropisms.
The significance of work for the libido
economy was already recognized by Freud. He writes: “The possibility -- to
shift a strong measure of libido components (narcissistic, aggressive and even
erotic) into the occupation work and to link into human relations a value with
it (the work) -- that behind its indispensability to the statement and
justification of the existence in the society does not take second place.” 26
The connection of libido powers to
work can happen however in different ways:
A
socialization of a
drive is present if the original goal were not given up, but the drive is
content with the resistances because of that being the only approach to the
satisfaction. This goal shift takes place in an area, in which this approximate
satisfaction is approved. It is easily recognized that the socialization coincides
with the original and vent work tropic satisfaction of a drive need.
With the socialization, if the social
approval was waived (for example a butcher on ritual grounds was forbidden the
slaughtering), then the same activity became socially forbidden (the butcher
becomes a murderer).
In the reaction-formation the drive need keeps its original
goal, but each energetic expression becomes suppressed by the ego. The ego must
continuously maintain an opposite tendency (a preoccupation with opposites),
which turns against the satisfaction of the repressed drive. The ego in the
reaction-formation continuously is occupied with itself and the defense fight;
the ego resembles a watchful policeman. The reaction-formation coincides (in
accordance with the defense function of the work) with defense work tropism.
The achievement effect of a sublimation
can be the same as a reaction-formation. The difference between the two work
forms lies however in that the sublimated person can exploit his or her abilities
much more and more highly than the reaction type.
In case of the sublimation no change
of direction of the drive need takes place. The drive is not turned against
itself, but connects itself with the goals of the ego toward reality. Drive and
ego live in harmony; in the case of the reaction-formation in contrast the ego
appears to suppress and to oppress the drives. In sublimation the accent lies
on the effect of an
action; in the reaction-formation the action as such is the important thing and the effect more or less insignificant. Therefore
only sublimated person can really rest and suspend his or her work for a
considerable time interval after he or she has achieved a planned effect. Rest
is just as welcome to him or her as work. If a work is interrupted with the
type of the reaction-formation and then a gap in the defense structure, unrest
develops and finally anxiety is the result. Sublimated persons love the work
(precisely because the libido component also achieves its rights) and he wishes
to work. The reaction type however must work, and indeed continuously,
because nonstop he or she must be watchful of the opposite drive.
The sublimation causes an integration
of drive and the ego, the play of the two power poles are lived out on a
socially higher level, in such a way that the goals of both are to be
considered appropriate, and always both strivings flow into an activity in
relation to reality. A precondition of the sublimation is the integrated work
tropism, provided that the sublimation proceeds into the field of work. 27
Only sublimated persons are able in a
real sense to align themselves to foreign values and to serve them in the
outside world. The reaction type does this probably innumerable times, but puts
behind his value adjustment an unconscious illusory morality.
4. Consequences
a) To the Analysis of the Occupation Choice
Motives and the Career Aspirations
One of the first tasks for the counseling
of persons with work difficulties is the investigation of the motives that led
them into these occupations. 28 Mostly a whole number of such
motives can be determined: They stretch from the taking advantage of economic
conditioned changes and those that depend on social appreciations of certain activities
up to unconscious determinants of which we are particularly concerned in this
work. The sense of this investigation is the separation between
reality-adequate and unreal factors. By reality we mean it in a comprehensive
meaning in that it includes beside those areas of outside conditions but also
the “internal” personality structure. The gifts, which are vital possibilities
and intelligence, are likewise “real factors,” which a person must integrate
into his way of existence [Daseinsweise].
If he or she ignores them, then he or she will inevitably fail. Not each
unconscious determinant of the occupation choice must lead to a failure nor be
inadequate to reality. It can occur, for example, that an inadequate choice
regarding the “internal reality” can lead to success in “outer reality.”
Untalented persons have nowadays in many areas of social life more chances than
the talented, because they are more accepting of certain attitudes of society.
The fear of really independent minds in many places is very common. We do not
intend to discuss this sociological problem here.
Not all forms of the work tropic
occupation choice lead to satisfying occupation solutions that are free from
work difficulties. The limits extend approximately as follows:
The more complex-like the unconscious
motivation of an occupation choice is, the sooner all that leads to a failure
in the appropriate vocational career. The diffusion of the complex makes the selecting for all
objections against this motivation blind, not always in relation to the
self-knowledge, but always blind affectively. The operation of the complex is
twofold: On the one hand it forms one-sided motivations and, on the other hand,
makes the person unable to bring his or her career aspirations in agreement
with the real conditions of himself or herself and the economic situation. The
ego becomes in its judgment capability impaired, and it becomes partially blind
to reality. 29
And thirdly, then, could be attached
the unconscious guilt feelings, whose bearer is the superego that is awakened
and reacts later with sudden prohibitions in the form of unforeseen failures
and self-sabotage in the occupation work. In the Example 5, page 38, we have
pointed out that each complex-conditioned occupation choice is impeded with time
and is with weaker operation impaired. We name this process subjective work
disturbance (so long as those objectively required achievements do not become
impaired), and objective work disturbance, if the achievement sinks below the
requirements of the super-ordinate work entity. 30
Complex-conditioned dominance -- the
unilateral nature of a work tropism, as we likewise designated these facts --
leads one with consistent blindness into an economical or mentally untenable
situation. This dominance carries in itself from the outset the core of the
later failure. The so-called inclination choice can emerge most unpleasantly as
a choice made from blindness to reality.
The task of the vocational adviser
appropriately is to bring persons to approximate the work tropic choice to the
ideal of the integrated work tropism and to adapt it, at the same time, to the
real conditions. With neuroses the inability of the reality estimate grows so
much that only a psychoanalytical motive analysis can prevent bad results. The
complex tendency brings with it that the occupation is subject to increases of
the radianting out of this conflict. In other words: With increasing
neurotization the work becomes more personal; it attains a personal relevance.
The psychological diagnostic methods
offer here a field of possibilities not exhausted yet. Success here is deciding
the previous motives for occupation choice that then permits one to give a
prognosis about the vocational fate. We choose therefore from time to time also
diagnostic protocols in the examples.
Example 11. Career aspiration analysis by means
of the experimental drive diagnostic according to Szondi.
A 15 year old girl of modest to below
average intelligence, who already for a long time expresses the noteworthy wish
to be a goldsmith. There are no indications that point to her ever coming in
contact with a goldsmith. She came from a mentally heavily burdened family. The
father was a chronic alcoholic and committed suicide with gas. The mother let
the household over time go to ruin, while well under the operation of a
depression. Of four brothers and sisters the testee and a sister grew up
completely lacking discipline, since the mother was no longer able to exercise any
efforts of education. She is not a very active girl, who loves comfort and
beauty and who is withdrawn, inflexible and linguistically inhibited.
First a short differential-diagnostic
test interpretation:
The girl shows momentarily no serious
or noteworthy disturbance characteristics, but is certainly mentally endangered
in the future: Whether these drive dangers will manifest themselves is another
question. There are however signs there that a suitable educational achievement
as well as satisfying the dangerous strivings and at the same time inhibited
occupation choice could be maintained in the sphere of the normal.
These drive dangers are:
|
1. Lack of inhibitions, indeed different forms |
S 0 0 C 0 0/++ k +, -, 0 = weak ego brakes Middle: e0 hy± k0 p± (preliminary state) Symptom% high (49) |
|
She is a Cinderella, who waits for
release, whose love need would never be satisfied completely and who will see
the world glorified and a prince directly in all men from an exorbitant love
need and acceptance need. She looks for love and protection constantly and
both (as with the father) will never be found, because she will select
similar men according to the Oedipal pattern of the object choice of the
father. Furthermore is added a passive,
almost masochistic, readiness for devotion. Like her mother she is eternally
suffering. These conflicts lead to an unrestrained behavior, however, only if
no sufficient strong brake authority faces them, and that is here partially
the case with this weak position-taking ego: Her feeling behavior has been based
thus not on a strong ego but on repression and is an anal trait. She cannot
give and only with difficulty express her feelings. The behavior is a feeble
anal defiance. Here two foreign natures collide: Indeed
the retentive, reserved side and the exhibitionistic. This makes her behavior
obscure and gives a nuance of double splitting. These two personality parts
unite however in her career aspirations, as becomes explained further down. If in forms of lack of
inhibitions come into question at the earliest sexuality and, then, in
addition, the craving to play “a grand lady” and to steal as a love
replacement and as an unconscious revenge. A familiar imprinted suicide
endangerment continues to be present. On the Question of the Occupation: There is -- as already mentioned --
indications present for a socializing capability. Positive and negative
factors however hold themselves approximately in balance. A prognosis from
this is difficult to make. There are the following sign posts
for the vocational guidance: 1.
It depends in high degree on the environment. One must “accept” her
always. She must have the feeling of being accepted. If there is no
acceptance, a cog in a big machine that does not consider anybody, then she
will come soon to a steep course and will search for sexual attention. To
create a warm environment is, seen from an occupation adviser’s point of
view, here a central task. 2.
The occupation maturity is not there. She still stands on a level of
drive development that only permits childlike unreal decisions. 3.
On the motivation of the career aspirations: Thus her career
aspiration of being a goldsmith did not result from moderate and reasonable
considerations, but are purely affective conditioned. Seen from drive
psychological, this solution would be good, because the needs for validity
(hy) and the anality (Pe‑) are work tropically satisfied. With jewelry one
emphasizes oneself. Gold is wealth, ornament, radiant and shiny. Since she
does not dare herself to wear jewelry, nor believes herself to ever come to
circumstances for wearing it to become a gold-studded lady, she wants to
manufacture decorative purses. To be a model who
probably occasionally wears jewelry is not what she wants, because to wear
jewelry, particularly on loan, and to possess jewelry are two different
things. The modeling occupation would satisfy probably her drive for prestige
but not however the second determinant of the career aspirations: The anal
joy with gold. One remembers only that the most complete form of anal
collecting applies to the shining gold, where with orgiastic joy can be
rooted in the glistening possession. And the goldsmith is
finally a “partial” artist occupation. It actually carries still something of
the famous bohemian flavor, by which ego weak persons are attracted to so
very much. |
hy
± / full reaction Sch 0± / m+! m+! / Sch + 0 in complement
profile d+ with h+ m+ d+ s‑ s-/Sch 0± k+, -, 0 k+ 5 times 0 Class Pe- Sch + - =
Autistic defiant ego in profiles
2 and 3 S 0 0 as
vent Theoretic
und empiric complement p- d- m‑ S - - (10) with p+ In contrast, there is the class Pe- poor
socialization |
One sees that the drive dangers of
causative needs unite here in these career aspirations. Should one advice her to
learn this occupation?
Unfortunately she is too little
talented for it, intellectually, artistically and in skills. What is to be made
of it is neither clear nor understood. On this point the complexity of this
career aspiration reveals itself. This lets be valid nothing to object about
and means finally that if she already can not learn this occupation, does she
rather want something completely different?
This principle “either all or
nothing” is typical for the neurotic attitude and for an inability to make
compromises with reality. If she would select an occupation that would lie
nevertheless still in areas of the two work tropic strivings but would be
appropriate for her talent (some related occupations were suggested, like
gilder and the auxiliary occupations of embroidery and the fashion industry),
then that would equal a concession of her own inability. The self-worth feeling
was undermined. Therefore she rejects a work tropic solution, if this does not
correspond exactly to her desire conception. One sees also here its basis in
her mental attitude (“I want exactly what I wish myself down to the last detail)
that can prevent a suggested work tropic solution by the adviser. The career
aspirations continue to exist naturally. They are not corrected in reality but
are rejected from defiance against the environment.
b) Vocational Guidance on the Basis
of Work Tropic Criteria
I. The drive-conditioned interest of
a personality in a certain field of activity says still nothing about one’s
gifts [talents, aptitudes, abilities]. The depth psychological diagnostic often
makes errors in misjudging this fact. There are probably many types of talent
(we mention only the acting talent), which can only develop by a specific drive
structure.
One can hardly imagine obsessive [anankastischen] psychopaths as actors.
Because a great ability for fast identification as well as an exhibitionistic
component belong to the basic characteristics of good and bad actors rightfully
would have to be added. 31
But a gift must not be confounded
a)
with
a “promoting” drive structure, which unfolds the gift as agent,
b)
with
the additional adaptation of the drive structure to social conditions, since --
as we have seen -- the work has a reaction in the human personality that can
not be underestimated in which the person makes a selection of work positive
attitudes. This selection succeeds best with the person who shows the highest
degree of adaptation to the work structure and belongs thus to the best workers
of this occupation sector.
2.
The
vocational adviser driven by the theory of work tropism alone as a
prophylaxis does not want to make himself guilty for misjudging reality. The
work tropic factors are only then realizable and work themselves in the social arena
only then successfully, if they are confronted with the real factors of the
interior and outside world and adapt to them. A vocational guidance according
to work tropic principles leads to disaster, if not the gift, vitality, ability
to work, the conviction to work, and the economic possibilities are considered
correctly and appropriately. 32
3.
The
vocational guidance of normal persons can neglect the application of the work
tropic principles to a large extent in the sense of a consideration with the
occupation choice in accordance with the small effectiveness of these powers.
It behaves differently with mentally disturbed persons. The misdirection,
unfree and maladjusted erotic lives of the neurotics hindered by complexes (the
missing libido economy in the terminology of the psychoanalysis) is operating
so that the repressed drive desires begin to radiate into the occupation sphere
and operate there in the form of a strong work tropic attraction. Work tropic
manifesting of needs increases if the normal libido-tropic satisfaction does
not function any longer. Work tropism is a substitute libido tropism. The
increased mental meaning of the work expresses itself at two levels:
a)
in
the occupation choice, which is decided primarily by work tropisms,
b)
in
interference factors, which break into the work. They can express themselves in
work difficulties, which also arise in work tropic selected occupation and
furthermore in an inability to decide and release repeated and
contradicting-themselves inclinations and apparently unmotivated changes of
profession (often in the intention to go away from the work tropic solution).
If these interference factors are stronger
and further radiate in their operation, then its intervention is limited not only
to certain occupations, but they prevent working in general, indifferent as to
which form of work, be it now as inability to have in general inclinations or be
it in active or passive refusal to work or be it in that form of autistic
inability to adapt that would as always select occupations that cannot be
realized on economic grounds.
The net of the unconscious
motivations and the opposite relations of conscious argumentations and actually
realizing attitudes that must first completely be recognized before the
question is raised whether a psychological hygienic measure can be made with
the vocational guidance. A vocational guidance of a mentally disturbed person
can be only a comprehensive redevelopment of the entire life situation. The
occupation question does not let itself be separate any longer from the rest of
one’s life, a fact, by the way, that many neurotics can only accept with
difficulty. They love to uncover only a part of the path the adviser gives and to
choose again a different path in order never to become healthy in this way.
First all work difficulties of the
vocational problem are to be separated and analyzed. Then the question of work
tropism and its portion of the problem can be examined. The analysis of the motives for occupation
choice has already been covered under a). How now can the principle of work
tropism be used for prophylactic purposes? If we spoke so far more of the
negative side of the work tropic relationship (of “blind” reality-adequate work
tropism), then the therapeutic viewpoint aspect turns around: What can the work
tropism contribute to the mental reorganization or at least to the
stabilization of a worsening process?
The measures are different depending
upon the initial position.
A first group of cases covers those
who refuse work, those with immature inclinations, the psychotics and severely
work-disturbed and who through their constant failure to work are driven into
another kind of work, persons, thus, for whom from a work tropic relationship
nothing is to be seen. Those with immature inclination have not grown up in the
real world; the mentally ill ones fall out from work; the asocial brace
themselves with the work; and with the heavily work-disturbed the work tropic
inclination lies in the unconscious, and they do not find thus the path to
reality. With these persons the reference to work tropic inclination is at
first a theoretical task. Occupations and work situations are sought from the
adviser that correspond to the mental problem and that make thus the shift of
libido energies possible. According to experience these problem natures are to
be brought as early as possible into areas of work that has an affinity to their conflicts, because in such
a way the arranged work assimilates libido powers. The internal discussion,
which is usually exhausted in fruitlessness, is converted into a projection
into a reality reference and becomes a reality conflict, which the self-musing
withdraws energies. The internal conflict becomes a task, which is
socially tolerated and which is directly a useful solution of the task of the
occupation. It is valid with this selection of the principle, which was
discussed under the section on integrated work tropism: A work is to be
selected in such a way that a drive 
need satisfaction possibility opens,
but at the same time in a way that controls this need that corresponds to the
individual defense mechanism and that the ego uses in the neurosis against this
drive danger. The vocational situation must be be in affinity with the conflict situation of drive and ego, but
now so that in the work a synthesis of both occurs in order that the condition
of integration is reached, which was designated as a tense equilibrium. How
this condition of ideal work tropism is now to be achieved is discussed in the
following section about work therapy. It is not always possible to achieve this
goal of the complete conversion of the mental tension into work. In many cases
only original, vent or defense work tropisms that are realized and lead to a
socialization in which the existing mental conflict further remains. This
condition is well-known under the name “social healing.” These persons
subordinate themselves to the social standards of the working rules, however
more or less remain mentally disturbed and can easily backslide.
Many work tropisms are unconscious both
formally and in content. This costs much difficulty and then work to induce the
concerned party to an acceptance of an ever so ingeniously proposal devised
according to work tropic principles. Proposals are most capable of
consciousness are those which were determined according to vent work tropism
(symptom choice).
With a second group of consulting
cases are manifested in the occupation wish or already met in a one-sided work
tropism, which however are guided by the complex in the career aspirations and
make the ego blind to reality. Unconscious functions seize the work activity of
the ego. There develops a pseudo morality of the work, which soon counteracts a
true work capability. This condition may perhaps remain, existing in the sense
of an unstable equilibrium. Mostly however the wrong estimate of the conditions
and the lopsided worldview lead to a failure. The adviser must be able to
measure exactly the degree of this autoplastic reality transformation. This
happens only in the comparison with the social reality, in which the concerned
person has to live. There is not meaning in this simple reality. In certain social classes and in different
occupations and in groups and regions there are sufficient chances for a
pseudo-morality occupation solution. Nobody will delve into it, let alone
notice what are the unconscious motivations. Schizophrenic itinerate preachers
have found still their municipality and likewise dictators their following.
Also psychopathic poets and philosophers were never lacking readers. If the
autoplastic reality-transformation in society encounters no acknowledgment,
then certainly an examination of the muddled vocational situation becomes
urgent.
The excessive dominance of a certain
work tropic mechanism must be broken. A one-sided original work tropic solution
becomes more adapted to reality by the installation of defense work tropic
factors and a stubborn defense work tropic solution through the admission of
original flexible work tropisms, until the time that both the work tropic forms
can be integrated. We do not yet know today how far to assess the operation of
work tropic neurosis, psychosis and psychopath prophylaxis. The basis for this
lies in the meager and the completely lacking investigations that concern this
question. Once again from the psychological aspect another systematic
occupation science is missing. Valuable preliminary work has been achieved by
the academic career counseling office in
It is not sufficient to know only
about these affinity conditions of occupations and mental structures; it is
necessary to have fully researched also the occupations in all areas, if the
solution should at the same time in every respect be adequate to reality. Most
ideal work tropic solutions frequently cannot be realized, because a certain
occupation does not have needs for the young people. The often failed direct
work tropic solutions of more severe neurotics are hardly to be found in the
occupation world or are financially in such a manner badly positioned so that
they cannot be relevant from pecuniary considerations. The psychological analysis
must be completed by a knowledgeable and sociological occupation investigation.
A psychological adviser, in
particular a vocational adviser, who does not think sociologically and with
occupation knowledge, acts just as autistic unrealistically as the patient to
whom he gives advise, because he possibly does not worry about the feasibility
of his theoretically correct solution. He will not be even capable of making a
psychological investigation for the areas of the work or occupation choice
problem. Only a thorough occupation knowledge permits a recognizing of occupation
choice important factors, that is the mental contents, which for the work
experience and the work structure are of substantial importance.
Furthermore experimental
investigations are missing to us about the operation of certain kinds of work
on the mental life. In monographic investigations the importance of the
inclusion of work tropic factors has long been confirmed. The experimental
drive diagnostic of Szondi could be pulled out here as a control test. Against
the investigation of occupational groups solid objections exist, since
different work tropic groups are included. More useful to us would seem the
following procedure:
There are to be created in a work
laboratory drive affinity work possibilities for employment, which are to be
executed in a series according to the test subject. Before and after the work
begins, the affect situation of the test is recorded and after changes are
sought, which are to be attributed to this work. To state only one example: Is
the s factor in the Szondi test emptied, when someone never for a long time
chopped wood? Zu11iger 34 used this
prescription with aggressive children with good success. Such investigations
not only serve theoretical interest. As final goal a work laboratory is to be
created, in which the test subject can try work out so long as one finds work
that is aggreable. This method of the work choice exhibits similarities with
the play therapy with children. As the child analyst lets the child select a
play form in which he acts out his problem, thus should also the adult neurotic
or psychotic choose a work that has an affinity to his problem.
c) The Work-Tropic Guided Work
Therapy
“Under work therapy one understands
healing through work, or, somewhat more accurately described, application of
work as a means for the purpose of healing of an illness, suffering or a
disturbance.” 35 The work therapy used very often so far and valued
in psychiatry proceeded from the conviction that work (no matter whatever it
is) presents a stimulating value that arouses the activity of the patients and
is again capable to give to one’s life a meaning. In work groups furthermore he
or she is again incorporated into a social community. The person should learn
to do something without running away immediately, if it does not please him or
her any longer. Tense conditions must be borne, which become always more
unsolvable when discharged by outward projections and not through self-musing.
The activity simply has an important psychological hygienic task. One is quite
in agreement but must however expand this by an essential criterion: The final
goal is not only the occupation activity (as a means against the apathetic and parasitic
method of doing nothing), but also the ability for incorporation into society
and the readiness for adjustment to social conditions. If the work therapy is
to contribute something to this goal -- alone it will never be capable of
achieving this goal -- then it must be developed gradually and considered more
thoroughly. It has up to now been paid too little attention to be able to reach
what is to be selected for a work in order to achieve a maximum affective
participation. Here is a valid principle that a person, who is alienated from actual
reality -- we concern ourselves for the time being with psychotics -- earliest
respond to work that has an affinity to
their problem and in which thus work tropic relations can develop. A work
laboratory with different types of work, as this was suggested in b), would
have only the task of trying field work tropic accessibilities that can be
confirmed psycho-diagnostically. Mentally ill persons can behave themselves
like a child in his or her play room, since something is put into operation
there to excite them and to pass by other work thoughtlessly. The choice of the
work will be completely abandoned.
This first stage of the work therapy
resembles completely the play stage. It would be psychologically wrong to begin
a work therapy equally with the demand for productive work. Because in addition
persons in their illnesses are not yet capable of this. The work therapy has in
general at the time only a meaning if a certain reality testing is present.
This must first therapeutically be worked through. According to the deep
regression of the mentally ill persons on the level of magic experience in
which symbols become taken as reality and are accepted, the whole maturing
process is repeated. The steps would be the following:
1.
Psychotherapy
according to the method of “implementing the symbolic” of Madame Sechehaye. 36
2.
After
educating with the inclusion of play therapy (we are of the opinion that one
should let adults also play in certain phases of the psychoanalysis).
3.
First
stage of the work therapy: Playful trying out of work tropic possibilities for
employment.
Now if an inclination shows up to
implement a definite work more than others, then an original work tropic or a
vent work tropic relationship has been established. The reality reference and
the binding character of this work are however still extremely weak and
fragile. The work still follows the laws of the pleasure principle completely.
Gradually one must now try to
introduce the missing work tropic inclination to the work process. So far if a
defense work tropism is missing, then work factors must be turned on, and the
ego attitudes incorporated and the affective content of the work be curbed and
braked. Certain play and work rules are introduced, amended tasks set up,
and phases of operation modulated and
modified. First if the defense work tropic factors dominate (for example with a
rigidly catatonic attitude), then a small door must be opened for the
satisfaction of the drive needs. Briefly: The structure of the further work
stages must be completely individual. This relies on the exact knowledge of the
problem and the personality structure of this person.
In careful dosage the work type is
approximated ever more to the ideal condition of the integration of work
tropism and expands the way concomitantly for the acknowledgment of the reality
principle in the behavior of the ego.
With asocial neurotics and
psychopaths, the steps would be exactly the same as with the so-called
work-shy. The institute for education in a reformatory misses its operation
partially, because it wants to force on their locked up persons the same as full-fledged
work. How however are persons to be able to change their attitude to work, if
one holds only again the work ethic before their eyes for which he precisely
fought as allegedly the wrong ethic one’s whole life? A work education must
begin a work after education on the play stage and then return to the work
education. The work should be first only play, completely without obligation
and nothing else, as also the person in a psychoanalytical treatment is a child
and than child acts with the express permission that he may and shall be this. This
shows from the dark work ethic of the pedagogy of our time that this maxim of
psychotherapy probably is well established, however not in the work after
education. This eternal stress of the seriousness of the work proves that it is
in many places not possible for persons to recognize the playful,
desire-stressed side of work. Work without a play character is just as sick as a
playful lollygag without work with an adult. The work education today is based
still on this idea that the pupil must acquire himself a part of love by means
of stern work, instead of it being once given to him without him needing to pay
somewhat for it.
The lack of understanding in relation
to these problems goes in the economic life still more deeply. The average union
structure of our economics brings an increasing rigidity and regimentation of
the working life with it. This structure is not flexible enough in order to
give experiments a place. The general overestimation of the requirements demands
from a worker equally full compliance. The exaggeration of psycho-technological
suitability in selections, for example, led in certain enterprises to absurd
results. The people selected by strict selection for certain posts quit soon
after the expensive training, which they already knew, again, because the
position was below their intelligence and performance level. But many
candidates were rejected, who -- somewhat less intelligent -- would have become
faithful employees for the enterprise. With the same blindness one faces the
attempts of work tropic work solutions. Our rigid economic structure produces a
flotsam and jetsam of work-shy and work-disturbed people, who become subjects
then in last instance to the employment offices for continuing national
support. Whoever must advise work disturbed persons knows this chain of chronic
failure because it is always required by the economic life maximum output
without compromise, something these work-immature persons do not have. If one
tries a change of profession, then one meets still larger distrust, because a
change is foredoomed as being morally suspect. Guilt is the anal nature of the
economic life with its conception of loyalty and steadiness, which are
confounded with maturity and its fundamental dislike against exceptions and the
unusual. On these grounds at this time work tropic work therapy and the work
tropic vocational guidance are condemned in many cases to failure.
With neurotic persons finally the
work tropic guided occupation solution (according to the principle of
integrated work tropism) should be completed by a work analytic treatment. A
real synthesis is possible only if the play of the unconscious determinants is
constantly known. Each neurotic first tries to reshape the occupation autoplastically,
i.e., he tries to realize the old net of motivations again. An accompanying
analysis can point out these shifts and help the defended side to its rights.
