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THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER 1

BY
FRANZ ALEXANDER
BERLIN

The tendency which psycho- analysis has been showing of late is that
of laying emphasis upon the patient's personality as a whole. This
newer orientation presents the fundamental condition for under-
standing or therapeuticall.y influencing that group of people whose
difficulties manifest themselves, not in the form of a circumscribed set
of symptoms, but in the form of a typical behaviour pattern which is
clearly a deviation from the normal, In contradistinction to true
neurotics who squander their energy in futile inactivity, these indivi-
duals live active and eventful lives; the essential characteristic of
neurosis, the autoplastic mode of instinct gratification, is often entirely
absent. Another feature of neurosis . which since Freud pointed it out
we have learned to regard as Inndamental, is substitutive gratification
in the form of a symptom of those impulses which are condemned by
the ego. This feature is totally absent in the group of individuals
under consideration, Instead they live out their impulses.. many of
their tendencies are "social and foreign to the ego, and yet they cannot
be considered true criminals. It is precisely because one part of such
an individual's personality continues to sit in judgement upon the
other.. the manifestations of which it is too weak to control, that his
total personality is easily differentiated from the more homogeneous,
unified and anti ";:]ClaI personality of the criminal. The singular and
only apparently irrational drive to self-destruction met with in such
people indicates rather definitely the existence of inner self-con-
demnation. Thus one characteristic of neurosis, the presence of a
mental conflict, or more explicitly, of an unconscious battle between
two conflicting parts ot the personality, is dearly discernible in this
group. We deal here with a definite characteristic which betrays the
splitting of the personality in two parts; one giving in to its impulses
and the other reacting upon it in a moral, even over-moral way, doing
this not only by means of restraining the ego, but also by means of
punishing it. It is this characteristic that justifies us in placing such
individuals in the class of pathological people.

1 Read 'Defore the Tenth International Psycho-Analvtic Conwell"! at

!!l'~sb:[1JcJ:, September, r~P7.
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THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER 293

We owe to psycho-analysis the fact that we are now able to approach
the crude asocial behaviour of these people without the usual evalua-
tive, i.e. condemnatory attitude, but with a sense of medical under-
standing to which we are accustomed in dealing with neurotic or
organic symptoms. Their conduct arises from unconscious motives
which are not directly accessible to their conscious personality. This
fact justifies the contention that in principle such an individual is
afllicted with his conduct in the same sense that the man who has a
neurotic or an organic complaint is affiicted with his symptoms. Ad-
monition, encouragement or punishment coming from the environment
is as useless as his own resolution, 'I am beginning a new life to-
morrow'; and his resolution is as useless as would be the attempt to
cure oneself of diabetes by one's own will-power. The impossibility of
overcoming the tendency to act out neurotic impulses by a conscious
effort of will, even when the tendency is condemned by the individual
himself, is the characteristic which it has in common with organic and
neurotic conditions. At any rate the path which leads from organic
symptoms to anti-social or even irrational attitudes to life is rather
long. This is easily explained, even though psycho-analysis and
medicine are not as yet unified into One whole. The scientific study of
such individuals is comparatively new even in psycho-analysis. It is
therefore not at all surprising that this type of people are not recognized
from the very beginning as pathological; depending on their respective
ages, they are turned over to the custody of the reformatory or the
judge rather than to that of the physician. We are still accustomed to
consider disease as something independent of the conscious will of the
individual, as a vis major which the sick person must endure. On the
other hand, we are also accustomed to hold the personality of the
individual accountable for all his apparently conscious acts, making
an exception only for those acts which are performed in a state of
clouded consciousness (as, for instance, in paragraph 5:1 of the German
Criminal Code). It is difficult to hold a man responsible for his gastric
ulcer; it is much easier, as the experience in the war showed us, to
hold him responsible for his hysterical symptom; and still easier to
blame a man for his irresponsibility, his gambling, and his incapacity
to engage in serious work. To have the right to consider such people
as pathological, we should have to extend and re-define considerably
our concept of disease. One might regret that in doing this one places
the organically sick in rather bad company.
From the structuraI-dynamic point of view, such an irrational style
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FRANZ ALEXANDER

of life, dominated as it is by unconscious motives, stands nearest to the

class of obsessional acts in which the underlying impulse no longer
appears in the form of wholly nonsensical symbolic operations, but
rather simulates rational acts. Thus it resembles kleptomanic be-
haviour, where the theft has a highly subjective and richly symbolic
meaning, and is not carried out for the rational purpose of mere
acquisition, as it appears to be. In the obsessionalneuroses an impulse
which is alien to the conscious personality appears to the conscious
like a foreign body; in such borderline cases as kleptomania the
impulse breaks through and finds expression in conduct. In the cases
with which we are dealing, the repressed tendencies are invariably
carried out, even though in the process of motor expression they appear
in a modified form. These tendencies stream into the ego, and per-
meate it much more thoroughly than the individual compulsive acts;
so they influence the total behaviour of the person. At times they
master the ego to such an extent that both a conscious conflict and any
insight into one's illness can be totally absent. Yet the never-failing
tendency to self-punishment comesout in such individuals so definitely
that the presence of an unconscious conflict and an unconscious
rejection of their drives becomes unmistakable. Those who fail to
show this unconscious moral reaction will not be spoken of here as
neurotics, but as criminals or some other social misfits.
The great medico-legal importance of the cases in question is at
once apparent. A large proportion of such individuals, neurotically
driven by unconscious motives, now to commit a transgression, then
to seek punishment, SOoner or later fall foul of the law. Their unmis-
takable differentiation from true criminals, with whom they are
almost invariably confused in current judicial practice, is one.of the
most important tasks of psycho-analysis, a task the practical fulfilment
of which will only become possible when psycho-analysis finds its way
into the mind of the court, instead of the conventional expert witness.
If neurotic criminals are to have the benefit of more enlightened
judicial understanding, the whole question of responsibility must be
reconsideredon the basis of an entirely new set of principles, for to this
day unconscious motives are beyond judicial cognizance. Only the
recognition of unconscious motives in a given crime will enable the
law to rid itself of its present-day spirit. Some modem trials are
reminiscent of the spirit of the witch-trials; this stands out with
particular clarity when a transgressor, driven by unconsciousimpulses.
is subjected by the judge and prosecuting attorney to the bombard-
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THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER

ment of a cross-examination which attempts to insinuate a host of

conscious motivations.
Some years ago I made an attempt to delimit nosologically this
group of pathological characters. Following Freud's terminology. who
described some typical cases in his' Some Character Types Met With
in Psycho-analytic Work: I proposed to designate them as neurotic
characters. This designation was intended to convey the idea that
the neurotic element manifested its presence in these individuals not
so much in the form of circumscribed symptoms as in the character,
that is to say, it permeates the patient's personality and thus influences
his total behaviour. The tragedies that lurk behind the theatrical
exaggerations of the hysteric, the wild excesses of brutality and
remorse which are related in the seemingly ridiculous symbolism of the
obsessional neurotic, and which read like the weirdest detective story
to him who can translate-all this is brought to dramatic expression
by the neurotic character in real Iife. Neurotic characters succeed in
actualizing their world of phantasy, despite the fact that most of them
by so doing bring disaster upon themselves.
In addition to the forensic significance of this group, I should like
to point out two further reasons which justify our return to the subject.
The first is the purely practical side, which concerns psycho-analytic
therapy, for a large proportion of our patients belong to this category.
The second reason which prompts my return to the subject is the
impression, which harmonizes entirely with that expressed by Glover
in his stimulating paper, 'Einige Problerne der psychoanalytischen
Charakterologie " that the nosological delimitation of these cases, in
spite of valuable contributions, has not yet been made with sufficient
clarity.
My statement about the high percentage of these individuals 1'lill
be amply substantiated when we come to the clinical description of
cases, and therefore I shall first devote a few words to the problem of
classification.
When I suggested the importance of distinguishing from the
symptom-neuroses those individuals whose lives, wheri viewed as a
whole, reveal a typical pattern which is determined by neurotic
motives, that is, by motives which are foreign to the ego and uncon-
scious, I did so under the influence of Freud's description of neurotic
Character-types, and of his masterly formulation in Beyond the Pleasure
Principle of the unconscious determination of neurotic careers, which
I had had opportunities to appreciate in the course of my clinical
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FRANZ ALEXANDER

practice. Valuable contributions to the subject have subsequently

appeared, such as Aichhorn's book Neglected Youth, which familiarizes
us with the social and psychologicalcircumstances out of which a large
proportion of such characters come. Abraham furnished us with an
exemplary delineation of the classical case of an impostor. Only
Reich, in his volume on Der triebhafte Charakter has made an attempt
to make a nosological demarcation. His starting-point, in agreement
with my own, is the very pertinent formulation of Freud's, that there
appears in these cases, in the place of autoplastic symptom-formation,
the alloplastic acting-out of neurotic impulses. Reich, however, takes
the concept of neurotic acting-out in another and far more general
sense than Freud gives to it in Beyondthe Pleasure Principle. What
we tend to find in Reich's case-histories are isolated and unsublimated
manifestations of instinct, such as extraordinary forms of masturbation.
But in my opinion these direct and unsublimated instinctual expressions
are precisely the ones which are the best calculated to prevent the
development of the dynamic pattern which is characteristic of the
neurotic character. Whenever tendencies which are incompatible with
reality are short-circuited into masturbation, or whenever a patient
can gratify his thirst for self-punishment by accentuating the maso-
chistic component in masturbation, which was true of one of Reich's
women patients, the enormous tension produced by these drives is
abolished, and their dynamic capacity to irradiate the whole life-
pattern is lost. The acting-out of neurotic impulses in such a form as
masturbation is far more autoplastic than the acting-out of neurotic
impulses in life; and in this respect it stands close to the neurotic
symptom, which it resemblesin that it is a private affair of the patient's
with which the people round about him may be wholly unconcerned.
The implicating of the environment in the gratification of neurotic
impulses, however, is an especially typical characteristic of the group
which I have in mind, as Glover was quite right in emphasizing.
Excessive masturbation is notoriously frequent among all pathological
individuals who are conspicuously indifferent to what goes on in the
outer world, a group of which the obsessional neurotic may be taken as
representative. Reich's case-histories show a congeries of neurotic
symptoms, psychotic symptoms and perversions, which, as he himself
says, is a grotesque symptomatology. Now the case-history of a
neurotic character reads like a novel with plenty of action, for the
most characteristic trait in the behaviour of such individuals is eventful
action. I am not disposed to question the fact that certain isolated
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THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER 297

expressions of unsublimated drives play a far more important rOle
with some neurotics than with others, and that it is perhaps possible
to classify certain cases from this point of view. However, the principle
which lends coherence to Reich's cases has not been made sufficiently
clear, though at any rate it applied to another type of individual than
Freud had in mind in Beyond thePleasure Principle. Reich's cases arc
of a different order than the • criminal from a sense of guilt " or the
person who is destined to collapse with success, or the group whose
clinical definition I am seeking to establish. If Glover detects contra-
dictions in our conceptions, I believe this is attributable to the fact
that Reich called his collection of quite distinctive cases the t impulse-
ridden characters', which was an expression I used as a synonym
for the neurotic character in my first formulation.
I shall attempt to sketch a unified clinical picture of this group,
holding fast to the main outlines and avoiding structural subtleties,
for the sake of bringing into the foreground certain clear principles
upon which definite diagnosis must depend. My theoretical discussion
will be confined to the major dynamic and structural relationships.
Who, then, are the neurotic characters? I refer to those cases of
neuroses without symptoms whose pathological nature the trained
psycho-analytic glance is readily able to detect, but for which there are
no places in accepted nosological categories. I do not refer to those
individuals whom we are accustomed to call obsessional neurotic
characters, but who on closer scrutiny so frequently turn out to be true
obsessional neurotics whose symptoms have been especially well dis-
guised and rationalized. Nor do I refer to those individuals whose
compulsive impulses are so adequately gratified in religious ceremony
or bureaucratic routine that they are not driven to invent their own
symptoms. Unquestionably these groups offer a transition to the one
with which I am concerned, but none of the classical cases is found
among them. Such neurotic types often succeed in isolating their
unacceptable impulses and their drive for self-punishment from the
general pattern of their lives, and in confining them to harmless
expression iIi a restricted sphere. I do refer to those individuals whose
lives are full of dramatic action, to whom something is always happen-
ing, as if they were literally driven by the demonic compulsion which
Freud once metaphorically imputed to them. These are the individuals
whose whole lives can be interpreted as clearly as an isolated neurotic
symptom, for every transformation and permutation remains the
unmistakable manifestation of the same unconscious conflict. Here
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2g8 FRANZ ALEXANDER

is where the adventurers belong whose manifold activities give

expression to an underlying revolt against public authority. They
always manage to be punished unjustifiably, from their highly sub-
jective point of view, by the father surrogate, the State, and thus to
put the State in the wrong.
A representative of this group, whose acquaintance lowe to Herr
Staub, his lawyer, by whom I was consulted in his preparation of the
defence, had no medical degree, but learned surgery so well that he was
made an assistant in a surgical clinic. He performed operations and
wrote scientific articles until he was exposed and indicted. No mere
symptom Can yield a scintilla of the satisfaction which this degree-less
though by no means ignorant physician experienced when, in the midst
of his legal difficulties,he was consulted by a loyal woman patient, who
even insisted that he should operate upon her. He experienced the
same glow of satisfaction when he was arrested for the theft of some
scientific book ind of a few microscope parts, all trifling objects which
he could easily have obtained legitimately. He had what he wanted.
He had stolen in the interest of scientific research, and he had been
arrested for it. He had triumphantly demonstrated to himself the
absurdity of a criminal code under which such a thing could happen.
But this triumph had not come to him so easily. Since his theft of the
books was discovered through what was obviously an intentional
clumsiness on his part, the police wanted to let him go. But he pro-
ceeded to confess the microscope theft, which had not been discovered
and about which no questions had been asked, so it was necessary to
hold him. In general, it is safe to say that this particular kind of a
neurotic delinquent has an easy time of it. The guardians of the law,
not excluding the medical experts, are only too easily taken in by their
provocative conduct, which, of course, originates in the unconscious.
Another impostor, who came out of the Jewish quarter of a great
metropolitan centre, seemed to have made it his goal in life to make
another authority, in this instance, the Church, ridiculous. He was
baptized and became a Catholic priest. and compromised himself, and,
of course, the Church, in an array of strange scandals. His favourite
amusement was to flout his priestly garb before new acquaintances in
a gambling hall or a questionable night-club, where he flagrantly mis-
conducted himself. Finally, after he had made himself absolutely
impossible in his own country and in his own denomination, he suc-
ceeded in obtaining a high ecclesiastical office abroad. Just how and
just when he will disgrace his calling this time only the future can tell.
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THE NEUROTIC CHARACI'ER

The obsessional neurotic who suffers from a repressed father-
hatred of the same intensity discharges his affect in phantasies or in
nonsensical compulsive ceremonies, but this priestly adventurer
succeeded in impressing his superiority upon one of the greatest powers .
in the world, the Catholic Church. But even his pleasure is not un-
alloyed. Every time he strikes out against authority. the blow recoils
upon his own head. He plays fast and loose with his own reputation,
which he never hesitates to sacrifice if only he can thereby injure the
father-imago.
In these anti-individualistic times, such modem Casanovas, who
dramatize themselves in the process of traducing State. Church and
constituted authority in any shape and form, are few and far between.
They are anachronisms to-day. They belong in the leaden chambers
of the Doge's palace rather than in the drab cells of a penitentiary.
Even as our prisons have grown prosaic, the neurotic character of our
modem adventurer has lost its colour. To-day he is a political
doctrinaire, safely regimented within a political party. Or more often
he appears in the business world as a captain of industry and an
unscrupulous profiteer who is remorselessly driven by the same self-
destructive impulse which moved his more heroic predecessors. The
alternating phases of rise and abrupt collapse, which characterize the
doings of these individuals in the financial world, reveal the aggressive
and self-destructive tendencies which run along together. I have had
occasion in the course of an analysis of a neurotic character extending
over some years to observe these unconsciouslydetermined oscillations.
which conformed to the manic-depressive mechanism. The patient's
cleverly-timed losses gave precisely the manic release which was
indispensable to his next successfulfiight.
More common and perhaps better known to the psycho-analyst are
those neurotic characters who, in contrast to the foregoing, act out
their neurotic impulses in their love relationships. I want, however, to
warn in advance against attempting to draw a sharpline of demarcation
between neurotic characters whose impulses are chiefly expressed in
social life and those whose main outlet is in love relationships. My
impression is that neurotic conduct in one sphere is usually associated
with disturbances in the other, although it is not to be denied that in
many cases the one or the other is more conspicuous. It is unnecessary
to depict the typical representative of this group in detail. The Don
Juan types who are in hot pursuit of eternally unattainable ideals are
as familiar to the psycho-analyst as are the slaves. tinged with maso-
20
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30 0 FRANZ ALEXANDER

chism, whose need for punishment is not confined to a definite maso-

chistic perversion, but is rather woven into the warp and woof of their
whole erotic life. Self-sacrifice on behalf of a woman whom they serve
with unswerving devotion is for them as much a prerequisite of love
and potency as are the more tangible forms of punishment for the true
masochists.
More complicated and perhaps more rare are the cases of those
who are attached to two women at the same time, and who find it
impossible to choose between them. I want to dilate a little on the
structure of such a case, for it shows with particular distinctness the
close connection between occupational and intimate life to which
allusion has been made.
In this man I found a splitting in the fundamental impulses, similar
to that which we see in the obsessional neuroses, in which passively
feminine demands were present alongside aggressively masculine drives.
The passive tendencies were sternly repressed, and instead of passive
homosexuality there appea.red, as a result of a well-known regressive
process, a pronounced oral fixation on the wife, who had to take over
the role of the mother completely. However, the oral fixation absorbed
the homosexual trends, As a reaction against the infantile-feminine
desires, one could see a tremendously exaggerated aggressive masculine
drive. This conflicting state pervaded his whole personality. Ener-
getic and ruthless in his professional life, always striving for indepen-
dence and a position of leadership, he was at the same time a lover of
nature, an amateur in music, with a sentimental penchant for beauty
and perfection of form. With almost clairvoyant power he represented
himself in a dream as a giant automobile of incalculable horse-power,
whose body, however, was a light French coach of the rococo period.
He vacillated continually between the two incompatible and reci-
procally influencing tendencies of his personality. The major problem
of his existence was to satisfy his passive desires without doing violence
to his ideal of masculinity. In business he was active, avid of responsi-
bility, and readily shouldered every difficulty; but in the atmosphere
of his home he leaned on his wife in a state of total childlike irresponsi-
bility. His philosophy ran like this: 'The demands that business
make on me are so heavy that I must have a perfectly indulgent wife '.
His wife was supposed to anticipate his wishes, and he regarded it as
the greatest insult when he had to express a desire in words. In
business, however, he carried a sportsmanlike share of the load. This
side of his nature was disclosed in a very simple dream. He waspushing
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THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER 3°1

a needle through a thick piece of pasteboard, and kept demanding netJJ
layers. He succeeded in penetrating very thick layers. This was what he
was actually like in business, and the dream shows as clearly as possible
that his business life was a sublimation of his aggressively tinged
sexual drives. Masculinity was a point of honour for him. Only when
he had indulged the masculine component of his nature sufficiently,
did it become permissible for him to live out the feminine-infantile
tendency. But the moment he had satisfied a feminine desire, he had
wounded his masculine narcissism, and was scourged into activity
once more. This equilibrium between activity in business and infantile-
feminine passivity in marriage was upset when he entered a concern
where, for the first time in his life, his soaring ambitions were checked.
The head of the enterprise, a very able man, knew how to keep him in
hand and tum his abilities to his own ends. For one who had struggled
his whole life against unconscious passive homosexuality, it was
unbearable to be subordinated to a leader. As the patient's active
sexual tendencies were no longer gratified on the sublimated level, they
broke through into the specifically sexual sphere. Thwarted by his
superior, he was obliged to give double proof of his capacity. He not
only committed adultery, but in taking the wife of another, he com-
mitted the <Edipus crime. From then on he was chained to both
women. To keep his mistress in spite of everybody became a point of
honour. The mistress became the object of his actively masculine
desires, and the wife was the object of his passive homosexuality. It
was impossible to dispense with either woman without losing his
equilibrium. Just as the equilibrium was formerly maintained between
his wife and his business, so now he distributed these two conflicting
tendencies between the two women.
We were successful in tracing this remarkable cleavage in his
personality back to his earliest childhood. At the age of four he was
already the same individual. Memories from the fourth year showed
that he still drank milk from a bottle and stubbornly refused to be
weaned from it. But-and he told me this recollection with the same
accentuated • but '-he was at the same time an unusually alert and
independent youngster who rode a bicycle out on the public highway
all by himself. At the age of four this individual who drank milk from
a bottle and rode a bicycle alone exhibits precisely the same anti-
thesis, and with exactly the same psychological interconnection, as he
showed as an adult who combined infantile dependence upon his wife
with unbridled impetuosity in business. It is not difficult to reconstruct
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3°2 FRANZ ALEXANDER

his childhood situation. The stubborn youngster who refuses to give

up his bottle is teased by everybody, including parents and elder
brothers, and twitted as a 'baby'. As a reaction to this he excels
every one in keenness and self-reliance, thus procuring for himself the
right to remain infantile in one particular, and to indulge his oral
craving to his heart's content. So in spite of this infantile retardation,
he was able to overcome his inferiority feelings, and to salve his
masculine narcissism. And this solution remained the prototype for
his whole life. The role of the bottle was later taken over by the wife,
whom he often really treated like an inanimate object made expressly
to minister to his whims; while his business and later his mistress were
the successors to the bicycle, by means of which he vindicated to him-
self and the world his claims to independence and masculinity.
Unfortunately, I cannot go into the interesting details of the deeper
analysis, which showed how the early childhood supervision of his
infantile masturbation favoured the oral fixation through the castration
fear which it aroused, and how this oral fixation came into collision
with the constitutionally strong masculine genitality, and laid the
foundation for a remarkable cleavage in character-formation.
In an obsessional neurotic these incompatible tendencies would
have produced a number of passive and active symptoms. In an
hysteric such passive-oral demands might have led to an array of
gastric symptoms covering pregnancy phantasies. Such symptoms
played a role, though a subordinate one, also in this case, and during
the treatment they assumed much larger proportions as the progress
of analytic insight substantially restricted the acting-out of neurotic
tendencies in the real world. This is not unlike the experience in a
case which I reported several years ago. In neither of these cases did
the conflictingtendencies lead to the formation of neurotic symptoms.
for they were able to come to full fruition in the principal spheres of
real life, in marriage and in business. In the present case the neurotic
splitting in the personality finds expression in the life pattern.
From all that has gone before, I believe that we have a working
conception of the cases which I call the ' neurotic characters'. If the
main outlines of the clinical picture are clear, I should like to make
more detailed theoretical distinctions between these cases and other
kinds of pathological material.
Our best starting-point is the theory of the neurotic symptom. At
the Salzburg Psycho-Analytical Congress I undertook to formulate
three universally valid characteristics of neurotic symptoms, which I
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THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER 3°3

still consider sound. The neurotic symptom is first, regressive in
nature; secondly, it is autoplastic, and thirdly, its latent content is
rejected by the ego. It is regressive because it is continually reaching
back for infantile objects and methods of instinctual gratification,
which is precisely why it is rejected by that portion of the ego which
has adapted itself to the demands of reality. This rejection expresses
itself in the disguise of the meaning of the drive, in the reactive appear-
ance of the need for self-punishment, which is an indispensable con-
dition of all neurotic gratification, and in the autoplastic type of
instinctual gratification. Gratification is itself restricted to the world
of phantasy or to an equivalent manifestation.
Regression to an earlier level of instinctual gratification appears
throughout the whole range of psycho-pathological phenomena, for
this is the only mode of expression for those impulses which are not
adapted to reality. Either one or both of the other two characteristics
of the neurotic symptom, autoplasticity and rejection by the ego, may
be absent in regressive behaviour. In such cases we are dealing with
different psycho-pathological expressions. If, for example, auto-
plasticity is absent, though the other two characteristics, rejection by
the ego and regression, are present, we are dealing with a neurotic
character. The regressive and rejected impulses are not gratified by
means of autoplastic symptom-formation, but by means of alloplastic
activity which influences the relation of the individual to the environ-
ment. Even in those cases where there is no conscious protest against
an impulse, its rejection by the ego is evidenced by the never-failing
reaction of a guilty conscience, and by the modified and relatively
milder form in which the unconscious goals are arrived at. So in the
place of hostility against the father, there may be bitter hatred of the
State. The self-injuringcomponentis indispensable to the gratification
of the fundamental impulsesof the neurotic character, just as the suffer-
ing is indispensable to the gratification of the impulses of the neurotic
who produces symptoms.
Let us consideranother possibility. The rejection by the egofailed;
autoplasticity and regression are present, however. We are then
dealing with a psychosis. In other words, the regressive tendencies
find undisguised expression. The defensiveapparatus of the ego, such
as disgust and sympathy, and the reality-testing are in abeyance. The
ego is helplessagainst the onslaught of impulses from the id, Only the
autoplasticity betrays the presence of a conflict. The incomprehensi-
bility of the symptoms is due to the particular depth of the regression
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FRANZ ALEXANDER
and not to concealment. We merely deal with a primitive language of
the instincts which the adult has long since unlearned. The auto-
plasticity is also a partial consequence ofdeep regression. The intra-
uterine wish is hardly susceptible of alloplastic reafization.
Finally, if autoplasticity and. rejection are absent, and only the
regressionremains, we nave pure criminality. The asocial tendencies.
which the neurotic represses and ccnflnes to substitutive gratification,
and which the neurotic character, at the cost-of .much self-inflicted
punishment, is able to liwout in radically modified form, are all given
free rein. by the .true qim.ina1 without the presence of inner conflict.
Of course there are many grades of criminality, and patricide is exceed-
ingly rare in our day. Most criminals find it necessary to content them-
selves with substitutive acts which they can perform without conflict.
This is a sign that in the modem world even criminality has become
domesticated.. As a matter of fact, I am convinced of the opinion that
on closer examination most of our criminals will tum out to be neurotic
characters, and that the notion of pure criminality must be looked upon
as a theoretical concept akin to the theory of a limit in mathematics.
On the basis of these considerations we shall distinguish four major
psycho-pathological groups: the neuroses, the neurotic characters, the
psychoses, and criminality. The dynamic and structural evaluation of
the perversions is not so simple. From one point of view they seem to
be partial psychoses in which the psychotic element is limited to the
sphere of unsublimated sexuality, manifesting itself in sexual aberration.
The regressiveimpulses are accepted by the ego, but they are expressed
solely in relation to the sexual object. On the other hand, these mani-
festations are more alloplastic than the psychoses, and the ego is
preserved intact; That is why masochists often stand rather close to
neurotic characters and sadists to criminals.
The problem of evaluating the perversions from the structural and
dynamic standpoint has convinced me of the unexpected fruitfulness
of some of the conceptions developed by Ferenczi in his theory of
genitality. Ferenczi sees in the physical manifestations of sexuality
a series of efforts to relieve unassimilated tensions of the most varied
character which have been diverted according to the conversion
principle of symptom-formation. In a case of masochistic perversion
previously reported," I was able to estcU>lish with almost experimental
certainty that the perversion grew out of the sexualization of the need

2 Psychoanalyse dey GesamtpersOnlichkeit.

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THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER 3°5

for punishment. which was itself rooted in the father-conflict. This
need for punishment, which means a certain amount of destructive
tendency directed against oneself, found ample sustenance, of course,
in the anal-erotic fixation and in the feminine component of the
bisexual organization. The decisive factor in the development of the
perversion, however, was the uncontrollable need for punishment
arising from the <Edipus conflict. If the self-destructive impulses are
not expressed in the cruder manifestations of sex, we have a moral
masochist, which is one type of neurotic character. I presume that in
sadism we are dealing with murder impulses against the parents which
are diverted toward the sexual object, and which find expression in a
form which is modified by the strength of the erotic component of the
object-relation. In borderline cases, where the strength of the erotic
element is small in comparison to the magnitude of the destructive
drive, we have the picture of murder with assault.
This assumption is strengthened by the common observation that
sexual sadists are often weak and inhibited natures, for their aggressive-
ness is wholly absorbed in sexuality. It is also true that masochists
who work off their sense of guilt in their sexual activities are un-
scrupulous egotists in everything else. Thus one may say for every
sadist there is an abortive criminal, and for every masochist an abortive
neurotic character.
It is evident that the perversions seem to have no definite place in
our classificatoryscheme. The reason is clear enough. The distinction
between neurosis, neurotic character, psychosisand criminality depends
upon the different ways in which desexualized impulses are gratified.
A varying quantity of desexualized impulsive energy is fundamental
to the neurotic symptom, the neurotic acting-out, the psychotic
symptom, and the criminal act. The essence of a perversion, however,
is the gratification of a frankly sexual tendency. Following Ferenczi,
we can look upon the perversions as the result of-successfully diverting
into explicitly sexual channels the tensions which would otherwise
overflow the ego, where they would have received expression in one
of the four pathological forms previously described. Thus the per-
versions can be said to be the non-desexualized antitheses of the four
categories. It quite often happens that one of the four classesis mixed
with a perversion, which means that while part of the total impulsive
tension is desexualized, another portion is diverted into sexual
expression. So it is not surprising to find that a perverse sexuality
often goes with an impulsive life in which the desexualizing processes
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306 FRANZ ALEXANDER

are disturbed. The lessthe impulsive tensions are diverted into sexual
forms of gratification, the more they will encumber the ego'and seek
newoutlets, and this meansthat they will produce neuroticsymptoms,
neurotic acting-out, or psychotic and criminal behaviour. This adds
little to Freud's formula that the neuroticsymptom is the reverse of a
perversion; it merely extends the application of this conception to
other psycho-pathological phenomena, in particular to neuroticacting-
out, as wellas to psychotic and criminal manifestations. I beg you to
regard this schematic arrangement as 'little more than a rough effort
at orientation in respect of the manifold perplexities of psycho-
pathological phenomena. This reservationshould be borne even more
distinctly in mind in considering the chart which I have drawn up to
furnish a visual perspective over the field.
CHART OF FUNDAMENTAL PSYCHO-PATHOLOGICAL REACTIONS
(THE DYNAMIC-STRUCTURAL POINT OF VIEW)

The arrow indicates the direction taken by the ego in its growing
incapacity to reject unconscious impulses.

Psychological manifestations Psychological manifestations

with conffict present. with con1lictabsent.

The ucs impulses The ucs impulses Failure of defence Failure of defence
are dispJa.ced and manifest them- with breaking with ego organi-
manifest ~em- selves by means down of the ego zation preserved.
selves auto- of neurotic acting- organization.
plastically. out.
Substitutive True, although Undisguised grati- Unmodified and
gratification. disguised. gratifi- ncation of id. unhibited gratifi-
cation. Mainly autoplastic cation.
manifestations.

Autoplasticity Alloplasticity Autoplasticity Alloplasticity

Neuroses. Neurotic PlIychoses. True
\ character.
(to drugs. etc.) ~
Addiction (1) 1' CrimiDality.

j
Partial failure of defence.
Repressed impnJaes are explessed ODly by means
of modified' forms of sexual expression. True
gratification.
PerveIsions.

I most admit that I am no friendof t!J.e use of chartsin psychology.

But on this particular occasion it is a valuable time-saver. Let it be
clearly understood that most cases will never fit neatly and completely
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THE NEURonc CHARACTER

into a single pigeon-hole. Neurosis minus neurotic acting-out, neurotic
characters minus symptoms, and both minus perversions are rarities.
How far there is such a thing as pure criminality, I have already con-
sidered questionable. Only the direction pointed out by the arrow is
definitely important. Starting from the classical neuroses and moving
in the direction of the psychoses and criminality, we can say with
perfect assurance that the successful defence of the personality against
tendencies which are incompatible with reality decreases.
Two principal groups emerge, on the one side the neuroses and the
neurotic characters, where active conflict is evident in repression and
in conscience reactions, and on the other side the psychoses and
criminality, where no sign of conflict is visible. To be sure, the conflict
is present in-the psychoses. but only before the illness has fully
developed. They resemble battles in which all the defending troops
have fought and fallen. In the p~ criminal the functions of the ego
and of all its institutions remain unimpaired, but in view of the absence
of a social reaction, the social elements are accepted without conflict.
Of course there are many equally justifiable standpoints from which
other perspectives may be obtained. On this occasion we have only
asked whether and in what measure the ego is successful in defending
itself againstthose impulses which are incompatible with reality, and
at the same time in providing for their gratification, .and we have not
considered either the depth of repression or the psychological content
of the various impulses. From the standpoint of content, criminality
and the psychoses would constitute two opposite poles. The regression
is the deepest in the psychoses, for it is a biological regression, while
the criminal is merely unsocial, and his instinctual life is on the plane
of normal adults, considered from the biological point of view, or at
least is perfectly capable of reaching' this level
Let us summarise the main points which have been made in dis-
cussing' the neurotic character. Its most essential characteristic is the
great expanding power of the tendencies which are alien to the ego.
They will not permit themselves to be confined, as in neurosis, to the
pmely subjective sphere of symptoms, but crash through into the
world of reality against the protest of the socially-adjusted portion of
the ego. The relative strength of the ego is obviously less than among
the neurotics, not on account of its absolute weakness, but on
aaounl of the treinentlous exPanding power of the fundamental impulses.
I believe that it is decisively significant whether or not the individual
is inclined toward the autoplastic gratification ofhisimpulses. Withont
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308 FRANZ ALEXANDER

an autoplastic disposition no neurosis is conceivable. Unquestionably

a specifically constitutional factor is primarily responsible for this
quality of the fundamental impulses. The expansive force of his
impulse-life brings the neurotic character closer to the healthy indi-
vidual than to the neurotic. He. really acts, and does not permit
society to coercehim into a phantasy world of symptoms. The healthy
individual would rather modify his impulses than renounce sub-
stantial ratifications in the world of reality, but the neurotic character
tries to hold on to his fundamental nature, and to carry on in spite of
it. Because a part of his own ego is hopelessly at variance with certain
of his impulses, he is bound to make war on himself.
The expansive living-out of impulses is the differential point which
delimits the neurotic character from the person suffering from a
neurosis, and brings him closer to the healthy person. We find this in
the therapeutic process,too. Here we find it unnecessary to compel the
patient to make the terrific step from introverted autoplasticity to
acting, a step which in cases of severe neurosis is frequently impossible.
The therapeutic goal in the case of neurotic characters is merely bring-
ing the individual's acts under the domination of his conscious person-
ality. That is why these cases present such satisfactory material for
analytical success once they come to the analyst. In their youth they
have no sense of personal difficulty. They present mostly the picture
of vigorous, joyful dare-devils who only after a series of bitter experi-
ences awaken to a sense of difficulty. That is why we see them come
to analysis only after they have reached mature age.
It is now entirely comprehensible why the neurotic character has
fired the literary imagination since time immemorial. Neurotic
characters are nearly all strong individualities who struggle in vain to
hold the anti-social tendencies of their nature in check. To put it
more sharply, they are individualists who are fettered by social senti-
ments. The eternal struggle between man and society is exemplified,
not in elusive intra-psychic processes, but in the visible drama of their
own lives. That is why they are born heroes who are predestined to
a tragic fate. Their fall is the victory of society, and the spectator who
has the same conflict within his breast-and who is without it ?-is
enabled to live out both the rebellious and the social tendencies of his
personality by sympathetically feeling himself into the lives of the
vanquished.
I might have brought out all that has gone before in a form much
less abstract and scientific, but much truer to the palpitating reality of
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THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER

life had I chosen one of the masters of world literature to portray the
neurotic character. I could very well have inscribed the name of one
of the four Brothers Karamazoff under each of the captions of the
chart. In that novel Dostoievsky did nothing less than exhaust the
whole field of psycho-pathology, for he assigned one of the four funda-
mental types of pathological reaction which we have been describing
to the (Edipus situation of each of the brothers.
That Dostoievsky was thoroughly aware of the universality of what
he had written is shown by the words which he spoke through the
mouth of the prosecuting attorney, who, alluding to the Karamazoff
family, said, 'Perhaps I am prone to exaggerate, but it seems to me
that some fundamental elements in our intellectuaIized society have
found expression in this family'. I might have entered under the first
heading in the chart the name of the neurotic AIjoscha, in the second
the neurotic character Dimitri, and in the third the psychotic Ivan,
and in the fourth Smerdiakov, whose criminal tendencies came out
during his epileptic twilight states. It is noteworthy that Dostoievsky
only permitted true criminality to occur under exceptional pathological
conditions.
For a thorough understanding of the neurotic character it would
be worth more to study Dimitri than the most interesting case-bistory.
Dimitri is not a neurotic character, but the neurotic character, in whom
every conceivable dichotomy, good and evil, sadism and masochism,
mawkish sentimentality and arrogant licentiousness, heroism and
pusillanimity find wildly unco-ordinated expression. Dimitri's con-
fession to his brother AIjoscha is a precious document for the com-
prehension of the splitting inherent in such a character: • No, man is
planned on too lavish a scale. I would cut him down. An offence to
the intellect may be a thing of beauty to the heart.••• It is horrible
to reflect that beauty is more than terrible; it is inexplicable. There
the devil wrestles with God, and the battlefield • • . is the human
heart ',
The fate of Dimitri is typical of that of the neurotic character. He
never committed parricide, though he tottered on, the brink of it. His
sense of guilt, which fed on his wishes and not on his deeds, brought
him under suspicion. Any judge who views the circumstantial evidence
exclusively on the basis of the psychology of the conscious mind would
believe him guilty. Only a psychology of the depths can rescue the
all-tao-numerous fellow-sufferers of Dimitri from miscarriages of
justice. Every problem connected with 'Neurosis, Psychosis, and tbe
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310 FRANZ ALEXANDER

Neurotic Character' is epitomized in the contrasting personalities of

the expansive Dimitri, of Ivan, who intellectualizes, rationalizes and
projects his problems on to the outer world, and of Aljoscha, who
sternly represses everything.
Had my principal interest been the inter-relationship of neurosis,
neurotic character and organic disorder, I might appropriately have
selected the incomparable figure of the Parisian art collector whom
Balzac immortalizes in his Cousin Pons. Cousin Pons is a neurotic
character of the kind we call an eccentric. This art collector and
gourmand, who completely disguised his sublimated anal erotism
and his unsublimated oral erotism, fell ill with melancholia when his
scruples suddenly put an end to his oral indulgence. Apart from col-
lecting, all that mattered in his life was the round of sumptuous and
exclusive dinners to which he was invited by his rich and snobbish
relatives, whose art advisor he was. Once he chanced to overhear the
servants call him an 'old plate-Iicker ', and suddenly seeing himself
as others saw him, his lethargic super-ego awoke and forbade any
further culinary indulgence. Presently old Cousin Pons could endure
it no longer, became melancholic, and on the basis of this melancholia
developed a gall-bladder complaint which brought on his death. This
is a case-history painted against the background of Parisian society.
Balzac's medical clairvoyance not only transcended the knowledge of
his own day but of our own. We are already in a position to recognize
the relationship between oral erotism and melancholia, and we suspect
(though the internist doesn't yet, or perhaps doesn't any longer suspect)
a relation. between melancholia and gall-bladder diseases. Balzac
delineates this connection with the naive assurance of the intuitive
genius in a case-history which, since it took into account the total
situation, is fundamentally more veracious than the most exact case-
history, with all the indices of all the body humours, which has ever
been put together in a medical clinic in a gall-bladder case.
In Balzac's novel a neurotic character falls victim to a narcissistic
neurosis, which leads to an organic disease when he undertakes to deny
himself. I could have set forth the connection between the neurotic
character and neurosis by examining in detail the sad story of Cousin
Pons, but such an undertaking would far exceed the space at my dis-
posal. The principal merit of science is brevity, even at the cost of
doing some violence to the facts.
Perhaps, as our psychological knowledge develops, we may advan-
tageously replace the story of Cousin Pons by a medical treatise with
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THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER 3I I

a title something like this: 'A Contribution to the Understanding of
the Inter-relationship of Oral-erotism, Melancholia, and Gall-bladder
diseases, with Observations on the Mutual Replaceability of Neuroses,
Neurotic Acting-out, and Organic Disorders'. To-day such a treatise
is not yet possible; medicine can still learn from Balzac.
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