International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis | Compulsion

Compulsion is a mental pressure of internal origin compelling the subject to think, act, or react in accordance with specific modalities that do not coincide with his habitual patterns of thought. Freud used the German term Zwang to describe this concept. In an article written in French in 1894 ("Obsessions et phobies"), Freud used an equivalent term, obsession. The word "compulsion," attested in French as early as 1298, is derived from the Latin compulsio and originally signified a "constraint, a legal summons, or formal notice to pay." "Constraint" is somewhat older (twelfth century) and has the same legal connotation found in the expression "physical constraint." As for the term "obsession," which appeared later, its origin is both religious (possession) and military (siege). All three terms were used in the early literature on psychoanalysis to take into account the corresponding complex phenomenon: compulsion emphasized the internal origins of the phenomenon, constraint its immediate effect, and obsession described one of the most symptomatic consequences in the subject's life.

For Freud the German term Zwang is one of a series of analogous terms like drive, urge, or thrust, used to signify that the mental forces governing the human mind must be treated in the same way as other natural forces, even though their origin and meaning are radically different. The word was used in medical research in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, and was first defined by Karl Friedrich Westphal in 1877. At the time the term corresponded to the way in which members of the Berlin Group (1840-1846), represented by Hermann von Helmholtz, approached the investigation of mental phenomena, first subjecting them to rigorous scientific observation, as they would any other phenomenon.

The term appeared in 1894 when Freud addressed what he referred to as the "psychoneuroses of defense" in a discussion of obsessional representations, to differentiate them from hysterical or phobic manifestations. Freud explains that the compulsive representation results from a "poor connection," whereby an affect arising from a repressed representation attaches itself to another representation (1894a). As in hysteria the repressed representation is of a sexual origin, but the compulsive representation is completely dissociated from it. In the Studies on Hysteria (1895d), Freud speaks of a "compulsion to associate." And on September 25, 1895, in his "Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1950a [1895]), he uses the term "compulsion" to refer to the impression produced by "hyperinvested representations" such as those that occur during hysteria, even referring to "hysterical obsession." The occurrence of these representations produces effects "that it is impossible to suppress or understand," the subject being completely aware of the strangeness of the situation. During this same period, he refers to compulsive affects (Zwangsaffekte). In a letter to Wilhelm Fliess dated December 6, 1896, the term "compulsion" characterizes the return of the memory of a satisfying sexual experience, regardless of the clinical presentation in question. Finally, it is compulsion that pushes all human beings toward incest (letter to Fliess dated October 15, 1897, and An Outline of Psychoanalysis, 1940a [1938]).

The concept followed two separate paths in its evolution. Faithful to his initial intentions, Freud pursued his investigation of compulsion in obsessional neurosis, especially in his analysis of the "Rat Man" (1909d). The most symptomatic compulsion of this patient was the "rat torture," together with its obvious connotation of anal sadism. But the analysis revealed many others, such as the compulsion to protect his lady friend, "which can signify nothing other than a reaction to the contrary, and therefore hostile, tendency." He also refers to "two-stage compulsive acts," where the first is cancelled by the second, and points out the ambivalence. This simultaneity of internal compulsion and the struggle against what it entails is characteristic of compulsive neurosis and is what causes the unrelenting and exhausting struggle; it is this that led Pierre Janet to speak of "psychasthenia."

Subsequently, Freud made compulsion a key element of his metapsychology. It refers to what is ineradicable and insurmountable in the drive, the thing that must always be confronted. If it weren't for the possibility of change, this would not be unlike the idea of some inevitable destiny or hopeless determinism. For Freud, compulsion has the following characteristics: its dystonic quality with respect to the behavior or customary activities of the subject, the conviction of a disastrous outcome if it is not obeyed, and the promise of actual relief if it is allowed to proceed unrestricted.

The notion of compulsion was adopted by Freud's early disciples, especially Alfred Adler, who saw in it a reaction to a feeling of inferiority (1907). Melanie Klein attributes it to the activity of partial primary objects, as do Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion. Jacques Lacan considered compulsion an "object-cause of desire," which he formulated in terms of an "object a." For Jean Laplanche compulsion is the effect of "messages of enigmatic origin." These are accompanied by the progressive objectification of the foundations of the compulsion, and an increasingly greater effort at translating them into objects or representations.

Concepts that are similar to compulsion in the Freudian lexicon include pressure (Drang), introduced by Freud in 1915 in the Metapsychology (1915c), which is the equivalent for each drive of what compulsion is in the totality of mental life. Similarly, an urge is the irrepressible fulfillment of an act during a moment of paroxysm, whereas the compulsion implies an internal obstacle to its fulfillment.

The Freudian idea of a constant and insistent force associated with certain thoughts is not without its drawbacks. It does reflect the speech of certain patients, especially during obsessional neurosis or cases of mental automatism (Gaëtan de Clérambault). But by emphasizing the element shared by all forms of internal compulsion, as Freud does in the Outline, the concept is sometimes used to justify exclusively medicinal or behaviorist approaches to treatment. The initial Freudian idea is, however, quite different. It attempts to reestablish the relational conditions that give rise to compulsion, to restore it to the internal setting in which it first took shape.

GÉRARD BONNET

See also: Bulimia; Change; Development of Psycho-Analysis; Dipsomania; Excitation; Negative transference; Negative, work of the; "Notes Upon a Case of Obsessinal Neurosis (Rat Man); Obsessional neurosis; Obsession; Pleasure/unpleasure principle; "Remembering Repeating and Working-Through"; Repetition compulsion; Resistance.