"The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sigmund Freud)

Nor will I consider the interesting information that the sense of inferiority goes back to infantile feelings. It shows us in what disguise the doctrine of infantilism, so much emphasized in psychoanalysis, returns in Adler's Individual Psychology. On the other THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com 30 hand, I am obliged to emphasize how all psychological acquisitions of psychoanalysis have been disregarded by Adler. In his book "The Nervous Character," the unconscious still appears as a psychological peculiarity, but without any relation to his system. Later, he declared, quite logically, that it was a matter of indifference to him whether any conception be conscious or unconscious. For the principle of repressions, Adler never evinced any understanding. While reviewing a lecture before the Vienna Society in 1911, he [p. 48] said: "On the strength of a case I wish to point out that the patient had never repressed his libido, against which he continually tried to secure himself."[18] Soon thereafter at a discussion in Vienna Adler said: "If you ask whence comes the repression, you are told: from culture. But if you ask whence comes culture, the reply is: from the repression. So you see it is only a question of a play on words." A small fragment of the sagacity used by Adler to defend his "nervous character" might have sufficed to show him the way out of this pettifogging argument. There is nothing mysterious about it, except that culture depends upon the acts of repression of former generations, and that each new generation is required to retain this culture by carrying out the same repressions. I have heard of a child that considered itself fooled and began to cry, because to the question: "Where do eggs come from?" it received the answer, "Eggs come from hens," and to the further question: "Where do the hens come from?" the information was "From the eggs," and yet this was not a play upon words. The child had been told what was true.

Just as deplorable and devoid of substance is all that Adler has said about the dream -- that shibboleth of psychoanalysis. At first he considered the dream as a turning from the masculine to the feminine line, which simply means translating the theory of wishfulfillment in dreams into the language of the "masculine protest." Later he found that the essence of the dream lies in the fact that it enables man to realize unconsciously what is denied him consciously. Adler should also be credited with the priority of confounding the dream with the latent dream-thoughts, on the cognition of which rests his idea of "prospective tendency." Maeder followed him in this, later on. In doing so he readily overlooks the fact that every interpretation of the dream which really tells nothing comprehensible in its manifest appearance rests upon the same dream-interpretation, whose assumptions and conclusions he is disputing. Concerning resistance Adler asserts that it serves to strengthen the patient against the physician. This is certainly correct. It means as much [p. 49] as saying that it serves the resistance. But whence this resistance originates, and how it happens that its phenomena serve the patient's interest, these questions, as if of no interest for the ego, are not further discussed by Adler. The detailed mechanisms of symptoms and phenomena, the motivation of the variety of diseases and morbid manifestations, find no consideration at all with Adler, since everything is equally subservient to the "masculine protest," to the self-assertion, and to the exaltation of the personality. The system is finished, at the expense of an extraordinary labor of new interpretation, yet it has not contributed a single new observation. I believe that I have succeeded in showing that his system has nothing whatever in common with psychoanalysis.

The picture which one derives from Adler's system is founded entirely upon the impulse of aggression. It has no place at all for love. One might wonder that such a cheerless aspect of life should have received any notice whatever; but we must not forget that THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com 31 humanity, oppressed by its sexual needs, is prepared to accept anything, if only the "overcoming of sexuality" is held out as bait.

The secession of Adler's faction was finished before the Congress at Weimar which took place in 1911, while the one of the Swiss School began after this date. Strangely enough, the first indications of it were found in some remarks by Riklin in popular articles printed in Swiss literature, from which the general public learned, even before Riklin's closest colleagues, that psychoanalysis had succeeded in overcoming some regretable mistakes which discredited it. In 1912 Jung boasted, in a letter to me from America, that his modifications of psychoanalysis had overcome the resistances to it in many persons, who hitherto wanted to know nothing about it. I replied that this was nothing to boast about, that the more he sacrificed of the hard-won truths of psychoanalysis, the less resistances he would encounter. This modification for the introduction of which the Swiss are so proud, again was nothing more or less than the theoretical suppression of the sexual factor. I admit that from the very beginning I have regarded this "progress " as a too-farreaching adaptation to the demands of actuality. [p. 50] These two retrogressive movements, tending away from psychoanalysis, which I will now compare, also resemble each other in the fact that they are seeking to obtain a favorable opinion by means of certain lofty points of view, as sub specie цternitatis. In the case of Adler, this rЇle is played by the relativity of all knowledge, and by the rights of the personality to construe artificially any piece of knowledge to suit the individual; while Jung insists on the cultural historical rights of youth to throw off any fetters that tyrannical old age with ossified views would forge for it. These arguments require some repudiation. The relativity of all our knowledge is a consideration which maybe used as an argument against any other science besides psychoanalysis. This idea originates from well-known reactionary streams of the present day inimical to science, and wishes to give the appearance of a superiority to which we are not entitled. Not one of us can guess what may be the ultimate judgment of mankind about our theoretical efforts. There are examples to show that what was rejected by the next three generations was corrected by the fourth and its recognition thus brought about. There is nothing else for the individual to do than to defend, with all his strength, his conviction based on experience after he has carefully listened to his own criticisms and has given some attention to the criticisms of his opponents. Let him be content to conduct his affair honestly and not assume the office of judge, which is reserved for a remote future. To accentuate personal arbitrariness in scientific matters is bad; it evidently wishes to deny to psychoanalysis the value of a science, which, to be sure, Adler has already depreciated by the aforementioned remark.

Any one who highly regards scientific thinking will rather seek for means and methods by which to restrict, if possible, the factor of personal and artificial arbitrariness wherever it still plays too large a part. Besides one must remember that all agitation in defending is out of place. Adler does not take these arguments seriously. They are only for use against his opponents, but they respect his own theories. They have not prevented Adler's adherents from celebrating him as the Messiah, for whose appearance waiting humanity had been prepared [p. 51] by so many forerunners. The Messiah is surely no longer anything relative.

THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com 32 Jung's argument ad captandam benevolentiam rests on the all-too-optimistic assumption that the progress of humanity, of civilization, and of knowledge has always continued in an unbroken line, as if there had never been any epigones, reactions, and restorations after every revolution, as if there had never been races who, because of a retrogression, had to renounce the gain of former generations. The approach to the standpoint of the masses, the giving up of an innovation that has proved unpopular, all these make it altogether unlikely that Jung's correction of psychoanalysis could lay claim to being a liberating act of youth. Finally it is no: the years of the doer that decide it, but the character of the deed.

Of the two movements we have here considered, that headed by Adler is undoubtedly the more important. Though radically false, it is, nevertheless, characterized by consistency and coherence and it is still founded on the theory of the impulse. On the other hand, Jung's modification has lessened the connection between the phenomena and the impulses: besides, as its critics (Abraham, Ferenczi, Jones) have already pointed out, it is so unintelligible, muddled, and confused, that it is not easy to take any attitude towards it.

Wherever one touches it, one must be prepared to be told that one has misunderstood it, and it is impossible to know how one can arrive at a correct understanding of it. It represents itself in a peculiarly vacillating manner, since at one time it calls itself "a quite tame deviation, not worthy of the row which has arisen about it" (Jung), yet, at another time, it calls itself a new salvation with which a new epoch shall begin for psychoanalysis, in fact, a new aspect of the universe for everything else.

When one thinks of the disagreements between the individual private and public expressions of Jung's utterances one is obliged to ask to what extent this is due to his own lack of clearness and lack of sincerity. Yet, it must be admitted that the representatives of the new theory find themselves in a difficult position. They are now disputing things which they themselves formerly defended and what [p. 52] is more, this dispute is not based on new observations which might have taught them something fresh, but rather on a different interpretation which causes them to see things in a different light from that in which they saw them before. It is for this reason that they will not give up their connection with psychoanalysis as the representatives of which they first became known in the world. They prefer to proclaim that psychoanalysis has changed. At the Congress of M№nich I was obliged to clear up this confusion and did so by declaring that I could not recognize the innovation of the Swiss School as a legitimate continuation and further development of the Psychoanalysis which had originated with me. Outside critics (like Furtm№ller) had already recognized this state of affairs and Abraham says, quite rightly, that Jung is in full retreat away from psychoanalysis. I am naturally entirely willing to admit that any one has the right to think and to write what he wishes, but he has not the right to make it out to be something different from what it really is.

Just as Adler's researches brought something new into psychoanalysis, a piece of the egopsychology, and paid only too dearly for this gift by repudiating all the fundamental analytic principles, in the same way Jung and his adherents have based their fight against psychoanalysis upon a new contribution to the same. They have traced in detail (what Pfister did before them) how the material of the sexual ideas originating in the family complex and in the incestuous object selection can be used to represent the highest ethical THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com 33 and religious interests of mankind, that is, they have explained a remarkable case of sublimation of the erotic impelling forces and the transformation of the same into strivings that can no longer be called erotic. All this harmonized very well with the assumptions of psychoanalysis, and would have agreed very well with the conception that in the dream and in the neurosis one sees the regressive elucidations of these and all other sublimations. But the world would have exclaimed that ethics and religion had been sexualized. I cannot help assuming "finally" that the investigators found themselves quite unequal to the storm they had to face. [p. 53] Perhaps the storm began to rage in their own bosoms. The previous theological history of so many of the Swiss workers is as important in their attitude to psychoanalysis as is the socialistic record of Adler for the development of his "psychology." One is reminded of Mark Twain's famous story about the fate of his watch and to the speculative remark with which he closed it: "And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him."

I will encroach upon the realm of parables and will assume that in a certain society there lived a parvenu who boasted of descent from a very noble family not locally known. But it so happened that it was proved to him that his parents were living somewhere in the neighborhood and were very simple people, indeed. Only one way out remained to him and he seized upon it. He could no longer deny his parents, but he asserted that they were very aristocratic by origin but much come down in the world, and secured for them at some obliging office a document showing their descent. It seems to me that the Swiss workers had been obliged to act in a similar manner. If ethics and religion could not be sexualized, but must be regarded as something "higher" from the very beginning, and as their origin from the family and Oedipus complexes seemed undeniable, then there was only one way out; namely, that these complexes themselves, from the beginning, could not have the significance which they appeared to express, but must have that higher "anagogic" sense (to use Silberer's nomenclature) with which they adapt themselves for proper use in the abstract streams of thought of ethics and religious mysticism.

I am quite prepared to be told once more that I have misunderstood the contents and object of the theory of the New-Z№rich School, but here wish to protest against being held responsible for those contradictions to my theories that have arisen as a result of the publications of this school The burden of responsibility rests on them, not on me. In no other way can I make comprehensible to myself the ensemble of Jung's innovations or grasp them in their associations. All the changes which Jung has perpetrated upon [p. 54] psychoanalysis originated in the intention of setting aside all that is objectionable in the family complexes, in order that these objectionable features may not be found again in religion and ethics. The sexual libido was replaced by an abstract idea, of which it may be said that it remained equally mysterious and incomprehensible alike to fools and to the wise. The Oedipus-complex, we are told, has only a "symbolical" sense, the mother therein representing the unattainable which must be renounced in the interests of cultural development. The father who is killed in the Oedipus myth represents the "inner" father from w hose influence we must free ourselves in order to become independent. No doubt other portions of the material of sexual conceptions will, in time, receive similarly new interpretations. In place of the conflict between erotic strivings adverse to the ego and the self-assertion, we are given the conflict between the "life-task" and the "psychic- THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com 34 laziness.'' The neurotic guilty conscience corresponds with the reproach of not having put to good account one's life-task. Thus a new religio-ethical system was founded which, exactly like Adler's, was obliged to give new interpretations, to distort or set aside the actual results of analysis. As a matter of fact they have caught a few cultural higher notes from the symphony of the world's by-gones, but once again have failed to hear the powerful melody of the impulses.

In order to hold this system together it was necessary to draw away entirely from the observations and technique of psychoanalysis. Now and then the enthusiasm for the higher cause even permits a total disregard for scientific logic, as for instance, when Jung maintains that the Oedipus complex is not "specific" enough for the etiology of the neuroses, and ascribed this specificity to laziness, that is, to the most universal quality of animate and inanimate bodies! Moreover, it is to be remarked that the "Oedipus complex"

only represents a capacity on which the psychic forces of the individual measure themselves, and is not in itself a force, like the "psychic laziness." The study of the individual man has shown and always will show that the sexual complexes are alive in him in their original sense. That is why the study of the individual was [p. 55] pushed back by Jung and replaced by the judgment of the essential facts from the study of the races. As the study of the early childhood of every man exposed one to the danger of striking against the original and undisguised meaning of these misinterpreted complexes, it was, therefore, thought best to make it a rule to tarry as little as possible at this past and to place the greatest emphasis on the return to the conflict. Here, moreover, the essential things are not at all the incidental and personal, but rather the general, that is to say, the "non-fulfilment of the life-task." Nevertheless, we know that the actual conflict of the neurotic becomes comprehensible and solvable only if it can be traced back into the patient's past history, only by following along the way that his libido took when his malady began.

How the New Z№rich therapy has shaped itself under such tendencies I can convey by means of reports of a patient who was himself obliged to experience it.

"Not the slightest effort was made to consider the past or the transferences. Whenever I thought that the latter were touched, they were explained as a mere symbol of the libido.

The moral instructions were very beautiful and I followed them faithfully, but I did not advance one step. This was more distressing to me than to the physician, but how could I help it? -- Instead of freeing me analytically, each session made new and tremendous demands on me, on the fulfilment of which the overcoming of the neurosis was supposed to depend. Some of these demands were: inner concentration by means of introversion, religious meditation, living together with my wife in loving devotion, etc. It was almost beyond my power, since it really amounted to a radical transformation of the whole spiritual man. I left the analysis as a poor sinner with the strongest feelings of contrition and the very best resolutions, but at the same time with the deepest discouragement. All that this physician recommended any pastor would have advised, but where was I to get the strength?"

It is true that the patient had also heard that an analysis of the past and of the transference should precede the process. He, however, was told that he had enough of it. But as it had not helped [p. 56] him, it seems to me that it is just to conclude that the patient had not THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com 35 had enough of this first sort of analysis. Not in any case has the superimposed treatment which no longer has the slightest claim to call itself psychoanalysis, helped. It is a matter of wonder that the men of Z№rich had need to make the long detour via Vienna to reach Bern, so close to them, where Dubois cures neuroses by ethical encouragement in the most indulgent fashion.[19] The utter disagreement of this new movement with psychoanalysis naturally shows itself also in its attitude towards repression, which is hardly mentioned any more in the writings of Jung; in the utter misconstruction of the dream which Adler, ignoring the dream-psychology, confuses with the latent dream-thoughts, and also in the lack of understanding of the unconscious. In fact this disagreement can be seen in all the essential points of psychoanalysis. When Jung tells us that the incest-complex is only "symbolic," that it has "no real existence," that the savage feels no desire towards the old hag but prefers a young and pretty woman, then one is tempted to assume in order to dispose of apparent contradiction that "symbolic" and "no real existence" only signify what is designated as "existing unconsciously."

If one maintains that the dream is something different from the latent dream-thoughts, which it elaborates, one will not wonder that the patients dream of those things with which their mind has been filled during the treatment, whether it be the "life-task" or being "above" or "below." Certainly the dreams of those analyzed are guidable in a similar manner as dreams can be influenced by the application of experimental stimuli.

One may determine a part of the material that occurs in the dream, but this changes nothing in the nature and mechanism of the dream. Nor do I believe that the so-called "biographical" dream occurs outside of the analysis. On [p. 57] the other hand, if we analyze dreams that occurred before the treatment began, or if attention is paid to what the dreamer adds to the stimuli supplied to him during the treatment, or if we avoid giving him any such task, then we can convince ourselves how far the dream is from offering tentative solutions of the life-task. For the dream is only another form of thinking; the understanding of this form can never be gained from the content of its thoughts, only the consideration of the dream-work will lead to it.

The effective refutation of Jung's misconceptions of psychoanalysis and his deviations from it is not difficult. Any analysis carried out in accordance with the rules, especially any analysis of a child, strengthens the convictions on which the theory of psychoanalysis rests, and repudiates the new interpretations of Adler's and Jung's systems. Jung himself, before he became enlightened, carried out such an analysis of a child and published it.[20] It remains to be seen if he will undertake a new interpretation of this case with the help of another "uniform new tendency of the facts," to give Adler's expression used in this connection.

The opinion that the sexual representation of "higher" ideas in the dream and in the neurosis is nothing but an archaic manner of expression, is naturally irreconcilable with the fact that these sexual complexes prove to be in the neurosis the carriers of those quantities of libido which have been withdrawn from the real life. If it were only a question of sexual jargon, nothing could thereby be altered in the economy of the libido itself. Jung himself admits this in his "Darstellung der psychoanalytischen Theorie," and formulates, as a therapeutic task, that the libido investing the complexes should be THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com 36 withdrawn from them. But this can never be accomplished by rejecting the complexes and forcing them towards sublimation, but only by the most exhaustive occupation with them, and by making them fully conscious. The first bit of reality with which the patient has to deal is his malady itself. Any effort to spare him this task points to an incapacity of the physician to help [p. 58] him in overcoming his resistances, or to a fear on the part of the physician as to the results of this work.

I would like to say in conclusion that Jung, by his "modifications" has furnished psychoanalysis with a counterpart to the famous knife of Lichtenberg He has changed the hilt, has inserted into it a new blade, and because the same trademark is engraved on it he requires of us that we regard the instrument as the former one.

On the contrary, I believe I have shown that the new theory which desires to substitute psychoanalysis signifies an abandonment of analysis and a secession from it. Some may be inclined to fear that this defection may be more unfortunate for the fate of psychoanalysis than any other because it emanates from persons who once played so great a part in the psychoanalytic movement and did so much to further it. I do not share this apprehension.

Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea. They become powerless when they oppose it. Psychoanalysis will be able to bear this loss and will gain new adherents for those lost.