Primal scene

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Primal scene is a Freudian psychoanalysis term used to describe the small child's observation of parental sexual intercourse , whereby this experience can be real or even fantasized.

Freud used the term for the first time in 1897 in a letter to Wilhelm Fließ , where he still generally referred to traumatizing experiences that were "scenic" , which were repressed and caused the neuroses . The term does not appear in the dream interpretation of 1900, but Freud speaks here of the fact that the perception of adult sexual intercourse triggers fear in children and cannot be mastered by them. In the Three Essays on Sexual Theory of 1905, he explains that the child understands intercourse as sadistic abuse.

While Freud had unquestionably treated these experiences as real up until then, in a report of a case of paranoia from 1915 that contradicts psychoanalytic theory, he assumed a fantasy :

"The observation of the love affairs of the parents is a seldom missed piece from the treasure trove of unconscious phantasies, which can be found in all neurotics, probably in all human children, through analysis."

Nevertheless, Freud never moved away from the fact that the experience could still be real. Finally, in From the story of an infantile neurosis (written 1914, published 1918), his famous case history of the “Wolf Man”, he reconstructs his patient's memory of an observation of parental coitus at the age of 11/2 years and uses the term in this context “Primordial scene” in the usual meaning since then. In this text he also works out the child's understanding of the observed intercourse as “aggression of the father in a sadomasochistic relationship” ( J. Laplanche / JB. Pontalis ).

Freud was convinced of the pathogenic effect of the primal scene, an assessment that has now been put into perspective. The American analyst Aaron H. Esman takes a particularly extreme position , for whom the primal scene can be a tender act of love if the parents treat each other and the child lovingly. Such an understanding has repeatedly been criticized (see G. Dahl).

Undoubtedly, the behavior of the parents for the primal scene and the fantasies of important and sadistic view held that Freud is inevitable, then all the more dangerous the content of Urszenen- fantasies determine if the parents also behave openly aggressive towards each other during the day . Irrespective of this, however, the destructive and frightening fantasies about the love life of the parents, from which the child is excluded, are ubiquitous, as Phyllis Greenacre has shown. They arise in the child - whether it is experiencing the real primal scene or whether it is merely forming an idea of ​​the united parents - at every psychosexual stage of development whose content they represent.

Not the love affair of the parents alone, but the often terrifying archaic images associated with it are responsible for conflictual, often traumatic and not infrequently pathogenetic experiences that can decisively shape the Oedipus complex and the development in adolescence ( Vera King ). Primal scene fantasies seem to emerge above all when suddenly being alone has to be managed. A “traffic” of the others is then fantasized from which one is excluded and which can evoke aggressive reactions - or, if the aggression is projected onto the others , fear of one's own threat.

In the more recent psychoanalytic theory, e.g. For example, with Donald Winnicott , it is therefore seen as an important step in spiritual maturation when the being together of others is endured as something good and does not have to be attacked - this also makes it possible to be alone.

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  1. ^ Freud, letters to Wilhelm Fliess. 1887-1904 , ed. by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, German by Michael Schröter, Frankfurt 1985, p. 253 (letter of May 2, 1897).
  2. ↑ Freud, Collected Works, Vol. II-III, p. 591.
  3. ↑ Freud, Collected Works, Vol. V, p. 97.
  4. ^ Freud, Collected Works, Vol. X, p. 242.
  5. ↑ Freud, Collected Works, Vol. XII, p. 65.
  6. ^ Esman, AH: The primal scene. A review and a reconsideration , in: Psa. Stud. Child , 28, 1973, 49-81.
  7. ^ Dahl, Gerhard: Notes on critical examinations of the primal scene concept , in: Journ. American psya. Ass. , 30, 1982, 3-19.
  8. ↑ Greenacre, Phyllis: The primal scene and the sense of reality , in: Psa.Quart. , 42, 1973, 10-41.
  9. ↑ King, Vera: The primal scene of psychoanalysis . Verlag Internationale Psychoanalyse , Stuttgart, 1995.
  10. ↑ Donald W. Winnicott : On the Ability to Be Alone , in: Psyche No. 12, 1958, pp. 344-352.

literature

  • Dahl, Gerhard: On the pathogenetic significance and structure of the primal scene , in: Jahrb. D. Psya. , 12, 1981, pp. 96-116.
  • Jean Laplanche / Jean-Bertrand Pontalis : The Vocabulary of Psychoanalysis , Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp 1973, ISBN 3-518-27607-7 , pp. 576-578.
  • Christian Maier: Urszene , in: Wolfgang Mertens / Bruno Waldvogel (eds.): Handbuch psychoanalytischer Grundbegriffe , Stuttgart 2002, pp. 775-777.