Resistance, as the fundamental fact of schizophrenic dissociation, thus becomes something which, in contra-distinction to ambivalency, is not eo ipso identical with the concept of the state of feeling, but is a secondary and supplementary one, with its own special and quasi independent psychological development; and this is identical with the necessary previous history of the complex in every case. It follows that the theory of negativism coincides with the theory of the complex, as the complex is the cause of the resistance.
Bleuler summarises the causes of negativism as follows:
(a) The autistic retirement of the patient into his own phantasies.
(b) The existence of a life-wound (complex) which must be protected from injury.
(c) The misconception of the environment and of its meaning.
(d) The directly hostile relation to environment.
(e) The pathological irritability of schizophrenics.
(f) The "press of ideas," and other aggravations of action and thought.
(g) Sexuality with its ambivalency on the emotional plane is often one of the roots of negative reaction.
(a) Autistic withdrawal into one's own phantasies[170] is what I formerly designated as the obvious overgrowth of the phantasies of the complex. The strengthening of the complex is coincident with the increase of the resistance.
(b) The life-wound (Lebenswund) is the complex which, as a matter of course, is present in every case of schizophrenia, and of necessity always carries with it the phenomena of autism or auto-erotism (introversion), for complexes and involuntary egocentricity are inseparable reciprocities. Points (a) and (b) are therefore identical. (Cf. "Psychology of Dementia Præcox," chapters ii. and iii.)
(c) It is proved that the misconception of environment is an assimilation of the complex.
(d) The hostile relation to environment is the maximum of resistance as psychoanalysis clearly shows. (d) goes with (a).
(e) "Irritability" proves itself psychoanalytically to be one of the commonest results of the complex. I designated it complex-sensibility. Its generalised form (if one may use such an expression) manifests itself as a damming up of the affect (= damming of the libido), consequent on increased resistance. So-called neurasthenia is a classical example of this.
(f) Under the term "press of ideas," and similar intellectual troubles, may be classified the "want of clearness and logic of the schizophrenic thinking," which Bleuler considers a predisposing cause. I have, as I may presume is known, expressed myself with much reserve on what he regards as the premeditation of the schizophrenic adjustment. Further and wider experience has taught me that the laws of the Freudian psychology of dreams and the theory of the neuroses must be turned towards the obscurities of schizophrenic thinking. The painfulness of the elaborated complex necessitates a censorship of its expression.[171] This principle has to be applied to schizophrenic disturbance in thinking; and until it has been proved that this principle is not applicable to schizophrenia, there is no justification for setting up a new principle; i.e. to postulate that schizophrenic disturbance of ideas is something primary. Investigations of hypnagogic activity, as well as association reactions in states of concentrated attention, give psychical results which up to now are indistinguishable from the mental conditions in schizophrenia. For example excessive relaxation of attention suffices to conjure up images as like as two peas to the phantasies and expressions of schizophrenia. It will be remembered that I have attributed the notorious disturbances of attention in schizophrenia to the special character of the complex; an idea which my experience since 1906 have further confirmed. There are good reasons for believing specific schizophrenic thought-disturbance to be the result of a complex.