W. H. R. Rivers

Instinct and the Unconscious W. H. R. Rivers

INSTINCT AND THE UNCONSCIOUS- A CONTRIBUTION TO A BIOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE PSYCHO-NEUROSES by W. H. R. RIVERS. Originally published in 1920. PREFACE: THIS book has two parts. The first gives the substance of lectures delivered in the Psychological Laboratory at Cambridge in the summer of 1919, and repeated in the spring of the present year at the Phipps Clinic of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, under the direction of Professor Adolf Meyer. The second part consists of appendices in which are republished occasional papers written as the result of clinical experience gained during the war. A few alterations have been made in these, chiefly in order to bring the terminology into line with that adopted in the body of the book, and in the second Appendix the original paper has been amplified. A few of the opinions expressed in these appendices differ in some respects from those of the lectures, but have been left as originally stated because they present alternative points of view which may possibly be nearer the truth than those adopted as the result of later deliberation. The general aim of the book is to put into a biological setting the system of psycho-therapy which came to be generally adopted in Great Britain in the treatment of the psycho-neuroses of war. This system was developed in the main at the Maghull Military Hospital under the direction of Dr. R. G. Rows, to whom I owe my introduction to this branch of medicine and my thanks for much help and guidance when serving under him as medical officer. ... W. H. R. RIVERS 1920. Contents include: PREFACE V I. INTRODUCTION ....... 1 II. THE UNCONSCIOUS ...... 7 III. SUPPRESSION . N 17 IV. SUPPRESSION AND INHIBITION .... 22 V. THE CONTENT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS ... 34 VI. THE NATURE OF INSTINCT .... 40 VII. THE DANGER-INSTINCTS ..... 52 VIII. SUPPRESSION AND THE ALL-OR-NONE PRINCIPLE . 61 IX. INSTINCT AND SUPPRESSION .... 66 X. DISSOCIATION 71 si. THE COMPLEX 85 XII. SUGGESTION 90 XIII. HYPNOTISM 101 XIV. SLEEP . 110 XV. THE PSYCHO-NEUROSES ..... 119 XVI. HYSTERIA OR SUBSTITUTION-NEUROSIS . . 127 XVII. OTHER MODES OF SOLUTION . . . .189 XVIII. REGRESSION ....... 148 XIX. SUBLIMATION 156 vii viii CONTENTS APPENDIX PAGE i. FREUDS PSYCHOLOGY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS . 159 II. A CASE OF CLAUSTROPHOBIA .... 170 III. THE REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE . . 185 IV. WAR-NEUROSIS AND MILITARY TRAINING . . 205 Y. FREUDS CONCEPTION OF THE CENSORSHIP . 228 vi. WIND-UP . . . . . ...