Freud - Complete Works (484 page)
The first example of an
application of the analytic mode of thought to the problems of
aesthetics was contained in my book on jokes. Everything beyond
this is still awaiting workers, who may expect a particularly rich
harvest in this field. We are entirely without the co-operation of
specialists in all these branches of knowledge, and in order to
attract them Hanns Sachs, in 1912, founded the periodical
Imago
which is edited by him and Rank. A beginning has been
made by Hitschmann and von Winterstein in throwing psycho-analytic
light on philosophical systems and personalities, and here there is
much need both of extended and of deeper investigation.
The revolutionary discoveries of
psycho-analysis in regard to the mental life of children - the part
played in it by sexual impulses (von Hug-Hellmuth), and the fate of
those components of sexuality which become unserviceable in the
function of reproduction - were bound early to direct attention to
education and to stimulate an attempt to bring analytic points of
view into the foreground in that field of work. Recognition is due
to Dr. Pfister for having, with sincere enthusiasm, initiated the
application of psycho-analysis in this direction and brought it to
the notice of ministers of religion and those concerned with
education. (Cf.
The Psycho-Analytic Method
, 1913.) He has
succeeded in gaining the sympathy and participation of a number of
Swiss teachers in this. Other members of his profession are said to
share his views but to have preferred nevertheless to remain
cautiously in the background. In their retreat from
psycho-analysis, a section of Vienna analysts seem to have arrived
at a kind of combination of medicine and education.¹
¹
Adler and Furtmüller,
Heilen und
Bilden
[
Healing and Educating
], 1914.
On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement
2904
With this incomplete outline I
have attempted to give some idea of the still incalculable wealth
of connections which have come to light between medical
psycho-analysis and other fields of science. There is material here
for a generation of investigators to work at, and I do not doubt
that the work will be carried out as soon as the resistances
against psycho-analysis are overcome on its original
ground.¹
To write the story of these
resistances would, I think, be both fruitless and inopportune at
the present time. The story is not very creditable to the
scientific men of our day. But I must add at once that it has never
occurred to me to pour contempt upon the opponents of
psycho-analysis merely because they were opponents - apart from the
few unworthy individuals, the adventurers and profiteers, who are
always to be found on both sides in time of war. I knew very well
how to account for the behaviour of these opponents and, moreover,
I had learnt that psycho-analysis brings out the worst in everyone.
But I made up my mind not to answer my opponents and, so far as my
influence went, to restrain others from polemics. Under the
peculiar conditions of the controversy over psycho-analysis it
seemed to me very doubtful whether either public or written
discussion would avail anything; it was certain which way the
majority at congresses and meetings would go, and my faith in the
reasonableness and good behaviour of the gentlemen who opposed me
was not at any time great. Experience shows that only very few
people are capable of remaining polite, to say nothing of
objective, in a scientific dispute, and the impression made on me
by scientific squabbles has always been odious. Perhaps this
attitude on my part has been misunderstood; perhaps I have been
thought so good-natured or so easily intimidated that no further
notice need be taken of me. This was a mistake; I can be as abusive
and enraged as anyone; but I have not the art of expressing the
underlying emotions in a form suitable for publication and I
therefore prefer to abstain completely.
¹
See my two articles in
Scienta
(1913
j
).
On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement
2905
Perhaps in some respects it would
have been better if I had given free rein to my own passions and to
those of others round me. We have all heard of the interesting
attempt to explain psycho-analysis as a product of the Vienna
milieu. As recently as in 1913 Janet was not ashamed to use this
argument, although he himself is no doubt proud of being a
Parisian, and Paris can scarcely claim to be a city of stricter
morals than Vienna. The suggestion is that psycho-analysis, and in
particular its assertion that the neuroses are traceable to
disturbances in sexual life, could only have originated in a town
like Vienna - in an atmosphere of sensuality and immorality foreign
to other cities - and that it is simply a reflection, a projection
into theory, as it were, of these peculiar Viennese conditions. Now
I am certainly no local patriot; but this theory about
psycho-analysis always seems to me quite exceptionally senseless -
so senseless, in fact, that I have sometimes been inclined to
suppose that the reproach of being a citizen of Vienna is only a
euphemistic substitute for another reproach which no one would care
to put forward openly. If the premisses on which the argument rests
were the opposite of what they are, then it might be worth giving
it a hearing. If there were a town in which the inhabitants imposed
exceptional restrictions on themselves as regards sexual
satisfaction, and if at the same time they exhibited a marked
tendency to severe neurotic disorders, that town might certainly
give rise in an observer’s mind to the idea that the two
circumstances had some connection with each other, and might
suggest that one was contingent on the other. But neither of these
assumptions is true of Vienna. The Viennese are no more abstinent
and no more neurotic than the inhabitants of any other capital
city. There is rather less embarrassment - less prudery - in regard
to sexual relationships than in the cities of the West and North
which are so proud of their chastity. These peculiar
characteristics of Vienna would be more likely to mislead the
observer on the causation of neurosis than to enlighten him on
it.
Vienna has done everything
possible, however, to deny her share in the origin of
psycho-analysis. In no other place is the hostile indifference of
the learned and educated section of the population so evident to
the analyst as in Vienna.
It may be that my policy of
avoiding wide publicity is to some extent responsible for this. If
I had encouraged or allowed the medical societies of Vienna to
occupy themselves with psycho-analysis in stormy debates which
would have discharged all the passions and brought into the open
all the reproaches and invectives that were on its opponents’
tongues or in their hearts - then, perhaps, the ban on
psycho-analysis would have been overcome by now and it would no
longer be a stranger in its native city. As it is, the poet may be
right when he makes his Wallenstein say:
Doch das vergeben mir die Wiener nicht,
dass ich um ein Spektakel sie betrog.¹
¹
[Literally: ‘But what the Viennese
will not forgive me is having cheated them out of a
spectacle.’]
On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement
2906
The task to which I was not equal
- that of demonstrating to the opponents of psycho-analysis
suaviter in modo
their injustice and arbitrariness - was
undertaken and carried out most creditably by Bleuler in a paper
written in 1910, ‘Freud’s Psycho-Analysis: A Defence
and Some Critical Remarks’. It would seem so natural for me
to praise this work (which offers criticisms in both directions)
that I will hasten to say what I take exception to in it. It seems
to me still to display partiality, to be too lenient to the faults
of the opponents of psycho-analysis and too severe on the
shortcomings of its adherents. this trait in it may possibly
explain why the opinion of a psychiatrist of such high repute, such
undoubted ability and independence, failed to carry more weight
with his colleagues. The author of
Affectivity
(1906) ought
not to be surprised if the influence of a work is determined not by
the strength of its arguments but by its affective tone. Another
part of its influence - its influence on the followers of
psycho-analysis - was destroyed later by Bleuler himself, when in
1913 he showed the reverse side of his attitude to psycho-analysis
in his ‘Criticism of the Freudian Theory’. In that
paper he subtracts so much from the structure of psycho-analytic
theory that our opponents may well be glad of the help given them
by this champion of psycho-analysis. These adverse judgements of
Bleuler’s, however, are not based on new arguments or better
observations. They rely simply on the state of his own knowledge,
the inadequacy of which he no longer himself admits, as he did in
his earlier works. It seemed therefore that an almost irreparable
loss threatened psycho-analysis here. But in his last publication,
‘Criticisms of my
Schizophrenia
’ (1914), Bleuler
rallies his forces in the face of the attacks made on him for
having introduced psycho-analysis into his book on schizophrenia,
and makes what he himself calls a ‘presumptuous claim’.
‘But now I will make a presumptuous claim: I consider that up
to the present the various schools of psychology have contributed
extremely little towards explaining the nature of psychogenic
symptoms and diseases, but that depth-psychology offers something
towards a psychology which still awaits creation and which
physicians are in need of in order to understand their patients and
to cure them rationally; and I even believe that in my
Schizophrenia
I have taken a very short step towards that
understanding. The first two assertions are certainly correct; the
last may be an error.’
Since by
‘depth-psychology’ he means nothing else but
psycho-analysis, we may for the present be content with this
acknowledgement.
On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement
2907
III
Mach es kurz!
Am Jüngsten Tag ist’s nur ein Furz!
¹
GOETHE
Two years after the first private
Congress of psycho-analysts the second took place, this time at
Nuremberg, in March, 1910. In the interval between them, influenced
partly by the favourable reception in America, by the increasing
hostility in German-speaking countries, and by the unforeseen
acquisition of support from Zurich, I had conceived a project which
with the help of my friend Ferenczi I carried out at this second
Congress. What I had in mind was to organize the psycho-analytic
movement, to transfer its centre to Zurich and to give it a chief
who would look after its future career. As this scheme has met with
much opposition among the adherents of psycho-analysis, I will set
out my reasons for it in some detail. I hope that these will
justify me, even though it turns out that what I did was in fact
not very wise.
I judged that the new
movement’s association with Vienna was no recommendation but
rather a handicap to it. A place in the heart of Europe like
Zurich, where an academic teacher had opened the doors of his
institution to psycho-analysis, seemed to me much more promising. I
also took it that a second handicap lay in my own person, opinion
about which was too much confused by the liking or hatred of the
different sides: I was either compared to Columbus, Darwin and
Kepler, or abused as a general paralytic. I wished, therefore, to
withdraw into the background both myself and the city where
psycho-analysis first saw the light. Moreover, I was no longer
young; I saw that there was a long road ahead, and I felt oppressed
by the thought that the duty of being a leader should fall to me so
late in life. Yet I felt that there must be someone at the head. I
knew only too well the pitfalls that lay in wait for anyone who
became engaged in analysis, and hoped that many of them might be
avoided if an authority could be set up who would be prepared to
instruct and admonish. This position had at first been occupied by
myself, owing to my fifteen years’ start in experience which
nothing could counterbalance. I felt the need of transferring this
authority to a younger man, who would then as a matter of course
take my place after my death. This man could only be C. G. Jung,
since Bleuler was my contemporary in age; in favour of Jung were
his exceptional talents, the contributions he had already made to
psycho-analysis, his independent position and the impression of
assured energy which his personality conveyed. In addition to this,
he seemed ready to enter into a friendly relationship with me and
for my sake to give up certain racial prejudices which he had
previously permitted himself. I had no inkling at that time that in
spite of all these advantages the choice was a most unfortunate
one, that I had lighted upon a person who was incapable of
tolerating the authority of another, but who was still less capable
of wielding it himself, and whose energies were relentlessly
devoted to the furtherance of his own interests.