Freud - Complete Works (485 page)

   I considered it necessary to form
an official association because I feared the abuses to which
psycho-analysis would be subjected as soon as it became popular.
There should be some headquarters whose business it would be to
declare: ‘All this nonsense is nothing to do with analysis;
this is not psycho-analysis.’ At the sessions of the local
groups (which together would constitute the international
association) instruction should be given as to how psycho-analysis
was to be conducted and doctors should be trained, whose activities
would then receive a kind of guarantee. Moreover, it seemed to me
desirable, since official science had pronounced its solemn ban
upon psycho-analysis and had declared a boycott against doctors and
institutions practising it, that the adherents of psycho-analysis
should come together for friendly communication with one another
and mutual support.

  
¹
[Literally: ‘Cut it short! On the Day
of Judgement it is no more than a fart.’]

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2908

   This and nothing else was what I
hoped to achieve by founding the ‘International
Psycho-Analytical Association’. It was probably more than
could be attained. Just as my opponents were to discover that it
was not possible to stem the tide of the new movement, so I was to
find that it would not proceed in the direction I wished to mark
out for it. The proposals made by Ferenczi in Nuremburg were
adopted, it is true; Jung was elected President and made Riklin his
Secretary; the publication of a bulletin which should link the
Central Executive with the local groups was resolved upon. The
object of the Association was declared to be ‘to foster and
further the science of psycho-analysis founded by Freud, both as
pure psychology and in its application to medicine and the mental
sciences; and to promote mutual support among its members in all
endeavours to acquire and to spread psycho-analytic
knowledge’. The scheme was strongly opposed only by the
Vienna group. Adler, in great excitement, expressed the fear that
‘censorship and restrictions on scientific freedom’
were intended. Finally the Viennese gave in, after having secured
that the seat of the Association should be not Zurich, but the
place of residence of the President for the time being, who was to
be elected for two years.

   At this Congress three local
groups were constituted: one in Berlin, under the chairmanship of
Abraham; one in Zurich, whose head had become the President of the
whole Association; and one in Vienna, the direction of which I made
over to Adler. A fourth group, in Budapest, could not be formed
until later. Bleuler had not attended the Congress on account of
illness, and later he evinced hesitation about joining the
Association on general grounds; he let himself be persuaded to do
so, it is true, after a personal conversation with me, but resigned
again shortly afterwards as a result of disagreements in Zurich.
This severed the connection between the Zurich local group and the
Burghölzli institution.

   One outcome of the Nuremberg
Congress was the founding of the
Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse
[
Central Journal for Psycho-analysis
], for
which purpose Adler and Stekel joined forces. It was obviously
intended originally to represent the Opposition: it was meant to
win back for Vienna the hegemony threatened by the election of
Jung. But when the two founders of the journal, labouring under the
difficulties of finding a publisher, assured me of their peaceful
intentions and as a guarantee of their sincerity gave me a right of
veto, I accepted the direction of it and worked energetically for
the new organ; its first number appeared in September, 1910.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2909

   I will now continue the story of
the Psycho-Analytical Congresses. The third Congress took place in
September, 1911, at Weimar, and was even more successful than the
previous ones in its general atmosphere and scientific interest. J.
J. Putnam, who was present on this occasion, declared afterwards in
America how much pleasure it had given him and expressed his
respect for ‘the mental attitude’ of those who attended
it, quoting some words I was said to have used in reference to
them: ‘They have learnt to tolerate a bit of truth.’
(Putnam 1912.) It is a fact that no one who had attended scientific
congresses could have failed to carry away a favourable impression
of the Psycho-Analytical Association. I myself had conducted the
first two Congresses and I had allowed every speaker time for his
paper, leaving discussions to take place in private afterwards
among the members. Jung, as President, took over the direction at
Weimar and re-introduced formal discussions after each paper,
which, however, did not give rise to any difficulties as yet.

   A very different picture was
presented by the fourth Congress, held in Munich two years later,
in September, 1913. It is still fresh in the memory of all who were
present. It was conducted by Jung in a disagreeable and incorrect
manner; the speakers were restricted in time and the discussions
overwhelmed the papers. By a malicious stroke of chance it happened
that that evil genius, Hoche, had settled in the very building in
which the meetings were held. Hoche would have had no difficulty in
convincing himself of the nonsense which the analysts made of his
description of them as a fanatical sect blindly submissive to their
leader. The fatiguing and unedifying proceedings ended in the
re-election of Jung to the Presidency of the International
Psycho-Analytical Association, which he accepted, although
two-fifths of those present refused him their support. We dispersed
without any desire to meet again.

   At about the time of this
Congress the strength of the International Psycho-Analytical
Association was as follows. The local groups in Vienna, Berlin and
Zurich had been formed at the Congress in Nuremberg as early as
1910. In May, 1911, a group at Munich under the chairmanship of Dr.
L. Seif was added. In the same year the first American local group
was formed under the chairmanship of A. A. Brill, with the name
‘The New York Psychoanalytic Society’. At the Weimar
Congress the foundation of a second American group was authorized;
it came into existence during the following year under the name of
‘The American Psychoanalytic Association’, and included
members from Canada and the whole of America; Putnam was elected
President and Ernest Jones Secretary. Shortly before the Congress
in Munich in 1913, the Budapest local group was formed under the
chairmanship of Ferenczi. Soon after this the first English group
was formed by Ernest Jones, who had returned to London. The
membership of these local groups, of which there were now eight,
naturally affords no means of estimating the number of unorganized
students and adherents of psycho-analysis.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2910

   The development of the
periodicals devoted to psycho-analysis also deserves a brief
mention. The first of these was a series of monographs entitled
Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde
[‘Papers on
Applied Mental Science’] which have appeared irregularly
since 1907 and now number fifteen issues. (The publisher was to
begin with Heller in Vienna and later F. Deuticke.) They comprise
works by Freud (Nos. 1 and 7), Riklin, Jung, Abraham (Nos. 4 and
11), Rank (Nos. 5 and 13), Sadger, Pfister, Max Graf, Jones (Nos.
10 and 14), Storfer and von Hug-Hellmuth.¹ When the journal
Imago
(which will be referred to shortly) was founded, this
form of publication ceased to have quite the same value. After the
meeting at Salzburg in 1908, the
Jahrbuch für
psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen
[
Yearbook for Psycho-Analytic and Psychopathological
Researches
] was founded, which appeared for two years under
Jung’s editorship and has now re-emerged, under two new
editors and with a slight change in its title, as the
Jahrbuch
der Psychoanalyse
[
Yearbook of Psycho-Analysis
.] It is
no longer intended to be, as it has been in recent years, merely
repository for the publication of self-contained works. Instead it
will endeavour, through the activity of its editors, to fulfil the
aim of recording all the work done and all the advances made in the
sphere of psycho-analysis.²  The
Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse
, which, as I have already said, was started by
Adler and Stekel after the foundation of the International
Psycho-Analytical Association in Nuremberg in 1910, has, during its
short existence, had a stormy career. As early as in the tenth
number of the first volume an announcement appeared on the front
page that, on account of scientific differences of opinion with the
director, Dr. Alfred Adler had decided to withdraw voluntarily from
the editorship. After this Dr. Stekel remained the only editor
(from the summer of 1911). At the Weimar Congress the
Zentralblatt
was raised to the position of official organ of
the International Association and made available to all members in
return for an increase in the annual subscription. From the third
number of the second volume onwards (winter, 1912) Stekel became
solely responsible for its contents. His behaviour, of which it is
not easy to publish an account, had compelled me to resign the
direction and hurriedly to establish a new organ for
psycho-analysis - the
Internationale Zeitschrift für
ärztliche Psychoanalyse
[
International Journal for
Medical Psycho-Analysis
]. The combined efforts of almost all
our workers and of Hugo Heller, the new publisher, resulted in the
appearance of the first number in January, 1913, whereupon it took
the place of the
Zentralblatt
as official organ of the
International Psycho-Analytical Association.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1924:] Since then,
further works have appeared, by Sadger (Nos. 16 and 18) and
Kielholz (No. 17).

  
²
[
Footnote added
1924:] It ceased
publication at the beginning of the War.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2911

   Meanwhile, early in 1912, a new
periodical,
Imago
(published by Heller), designed
exclusively for the application of psycho-analysis to the mental
sciences, was founded by Dr. Hanns Sachs and Dr. Otto Rank.
Imago
is now in the middle of its third volume and is read
with interest by a continually increasing number of subscribers,
some of whom have little connection with medical
analysis.¹

   Apart from these four periodical
publications (
Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde
,
Jahrbuch
,
Zeitschrift
and
Imago
) other German
and foreign journals publish works which may claim a place in the
literature of psycho-analysis.
The Journal of Abnormal
Psychology
, directed by Morton Prince, usually contains so many
good analytic contributions that it must be regarded as the
principal representative of analytic literature in America. In the
winter of 1913, White and Jelliffe in New York started a new
periodical (
The Psychoanalytic Revue
) which is devoted
exclusively to psycho-analysis, no doubt bearing in mind the fact
that most medical men in America who are interested in analysis
find the German language a difficulty.²

   I must now mention two secessions
which have taken place among the adherents of psycho-analysis; the
first occurred between the founding of the Association in 1910 and
the Weimar Congress in 1911; the second took place after this and
became manifest at Munich in 1913. The disappointment that they
caused me might have been averted if I had paid more attention to
the reactions of patients under analytic treatment. I knew very
well of course that anyone may take to flight at his first approach
to the unwelcome truths of analysis; I had always myself maintained
that everyone’s understanding of it is limited by his own
repressions (or rather, by the resistances which sustain them) so
that he cannot go beyond a particular point in his relation to
analysis. But I had not expected that anyone who had reached a
certain depth in his understanding of analysis could renounce that
understanding and lose it. And yet daily experience with patients
had shown that total rejection of analytic knowledge may result
whenever a specially strong resistance arises at any depth in the
mind; one may have succeeded in laboriously bringing a patient to
grasp some parts of analytic knowledge and to handle them like
possessions of his own, and yet one may see him, under the
domination of the very next resistance, throw all he has learnt to
the winds and stand on the defensive as he did in the days when he
was a carefree beginner. I had to learn that the very same thing
can happen with psycho-analysts as with patients in analysis.

  
¹ [
Footnote added
1924:] The publication of these two
periodicals was transferred in 1919 to the Internationaler
Psychoanalytischer Verlag [the International Psycho-Analytical
Publishing House]. At the present time (1923) they are both in
their ninth volume. (Actually,
Internationale Zeitschrift
is
in the eleventh and
Imago
in the twelfth year of its
existence, but, in consequence of events during the war, Volume IV
of the
Zeitschrift
covered more than one year, i.e. the
years 1916-18, and Volume V of
Imago
the years 1917-18.)
With the beginning of Volume VI the word
‘
ärztliche
’ [‘medical’] was
dropped from the title of the
Internationale
Zeitschrift
.