Freud - Complete Works (488 page)

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2924

   Just as Adler’s
investigation brought something new to psycho-analysis - a
contribution to the psychology of the ego - and then expected us to
pay too high a price for this gift by throwing over all the
fundamental theories of analysis, so in the same way Jung and his
followers paved the way for their fight against psycho-analysis by
presenting it with a new acquisition. They traced in detail (as
Pfister did before them) the way in which the material of sexual
ideas belonging to the family-complex and incestuous object-choice
is made use of in representing the highest ethical and religious
interests of man - that is, they have illuminated an important
instance of the sublimation of the erotic instinctual forces and of
their transformation into trends which can no longer be called
erotic. This was in complete harmony with all the expectations of
psycho-analysis, and would have agreed very well with the view that
in dreams and neurosis a regressive dissolution of this
sublimation, as of all others, becomes visible. But the world would
have risen in indignation and protested that ethics and religion
were being sexualized. Now I cannot refrain from thinking
teleologically for once and concluding that these discoverers were
not equal to meeting such a storm of indignation. Perhaps it even
began to rage in their own bosoms. The theological prehistory of so
many of the Swiss throws no less light on their attitude to
psycho-analysis than does Adler’s socialist prehistory on the
development of his psychology. One is reminded of Mark
Twain’s famous story of all the things that happened to his
watch and of his concluding words: ‘And he used to wonder
what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and
shoemakers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell
him.’

   Suppose - to make use of a simile
- that in a particular social group there lives a
parvenu
,
who boasts of being descended from a noble family living in another
place. It is pointed out to him, however, that his parents live
somewhere in the neighbourhood, and that they are quite humble
people. There is only one way of escape from his difficulty and he
seizes on it. He can no longer repudiate his parents, but he
asserts that they themselves are of noble lineage and have merely
come down in the world; and he procures a family-tree from some
obliging official source. It seems to me that the Swiss have been
obliged to behave in much the same way. If ethics and religion were
not allowed to be sexualized but had to be something
‘higher’ from the start, and if nevertheless the ideas
contained in them seemed undeniably to be descended from the
Oedipus and family-complex, there could be only one way out: it
must be that from the very first these complexes themselves do not
mean what they seem to be expressing, but bear the higher
‘anagogic’ meaning (as Silberer calls it) which made it
possible for them to be employed in the abstract trains of thought
of ethics and religious mysticism.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2925

   I am quite prepared to be told
again that I have misunderstood the substance and purpose of the
Neo-Zurich theory; but I must protest in advance against any
contradictions to my view of it that may be found in the
publications of that school being laid at my door instead of
theirs. I can find no other way of making the whole range of
Jung’s innovations intelligible to myself and of grasping all
their implications. All the changes that Jung has proposed to make
in psycho-analysis flow from his intention to eliminate what is
objectionable in the family-complexes, so as not to find it again
in religion and ethics. For sexual libido an abstract concept has
been substituted, of which one may safely say that it remains
mystifying and incomprehensible to wise men and fools alike. The
Oedipus complex has a merely ‘symbolic’ meaning: the
mother in it means the unattainable, which must be renounced in the
interests of civilization; the father who is killed in the Oedipus
myth is the ‘inner’ father, from whom one must set
oneself free in order to become independent. Other parts of the
material of sexual ideas will no doubt be subjected to similar
re-interpretations in the course of time. In the place of a
conflict between ego-dystonic erotic trends and the
self-preservative ones a conflict appears between the
‘life-task’ and ‘psychical inertia’; the
neurotic’s sense of guilt corresponds to his self-reproach
for not properly fulfilling his ‘life-task’. In this
way a new religio-ethical system has been created, which, just like
the Adlerian system, was bound to re-interpret, distort or jettison
the factual findings of analysis. The truth is that these people
have picked out a few cultural overtones from the symphony of life
and have once more failed to hear the mighty and primordial melody
of the instincts.

   In order to preserve this system
intact it was necessary to turn entirely away from observation and
from the technique of psycho-analysis. Occasionally enthusiasm for
the cause even permitted a disregard of scientific logic - as when
Jung finds that the Oedipus complex is not ‘specific’
enough for the aetiology of the neuroses, and proceeds to attribute
this specific quality to inertia, the most universal characteristic
of all matter, animate and inanimate! It is to be noted, by the
way, that the ‘Oedipus complex’ represents only a topic
with which the individual’s mental forces have to deal, and
is not itself a force, like ‘psychical inertia’. The
study of individual people had shown (and always will show) that
the sexual complexes in their original sense are alive in them. On
that account the investigation of individuals was pushed into the
background and replaced by conclusions based on evidence derived
from anthropological research. The greatest risk of coming up
against the original, undisguised meaning of these re-interpreted
complexes was to be met with in the early childhood of every
individual; consequently in therapy the injunction was laid down
that this past history should be dwelt on as little as possible and
the main emphasis put on reverting to the current conflict, in
which, moreover, the essential thing was on no account to be what
was accidental and personal, but what was general - in fact, the
non-fulfilment of the life-task. As we know, however, a
neurotic’s current conflict becomes comprehensible and admits
of solution only when it is traced back to his prehistory, when one
goes back along the path that his libido took when he fell ill.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2926

   The form taken by the Neo-Zurich
therapy under these influences can be conveyed in the words of a
patient who experienced it himself: ‘This time not a trace of
attention was given to the past or to the transference. Wherever I
thought I recognized the latter it was pronounced to be a pure
libidinal symbol. The moral instruction was very fine and I
followed it faithfully, but I did not advance a step. It was even
more annoying for me than for him, but how could I help it? . . .
Instead of freeing me by analysis, every day brought fresh
tremendous demands on me, which had to be fulfilled if the neurosis
was to be conquered - for instance, inward concentration by means
of introversion, religious meditation, resuming life with my wife
in loving devotion, etc. It was almost beyond one’s strength;
it was aiming at a radical transformation of one’s whole
inner nature. I left the analysis as a poor sinner with intense
feelings of contrition and the best resolutions, but at the same
time in utter discouragement. Any clergyman would have advised what
he recommended, but where was I to find the strength?’ The
patient, it is true, reported that he had heard that analysis of
the past and of the transference must be gone through first; but he
had been told that he had already had enough of it. Since this
first kind of analysis had not helped him more, the conclusion
seems to me justified that the patient had
not
had enough of
it. Certainly the subsequent treatment, which no longer had any
claim to be called psycho-analysis, did not improve matters. It is
remarkable that the members of the Zurich school should have made
the long journey round by way of Vienna in order to wind up at the
nearby city of Berne, where Dubois cures neuroses by ethical
encouragement in a more considerate manner.¹

   The total incompatibility of this
new movement with psycho-analysis shows itself too, of course, in
Jung’s treatment of repression, which is hardly mentioned
nowadays in his writings, in his misunderstanding of dreams, which,
like Adler, in complete disregard of dream-psychology, he confuses
with the latent dream-thoughts, and in his loss of all
understanding of the unconscious - in short, in all the points
which I should regard as the essence of psycho-analysis. When Jung
tells us that the incest-complex is merely ‘symbolic’,
that after all it has no ‘real’ existence, that after
all a savage feels no desire towards an old hag but prefers a young
and pretty woman, we are tempted to conclude that
‘symbolic’ and ‘without real existence’
simply mean something which, in virtue of its manifestations and
pathogenic effects, is described by psycho-analysis as
‘existing unconsciously’ - a description that disposes
of the apparent contradiction.

  
¹
I know the objections there are to making
use of a patient’s reports, and I will therefore expressly
state that my informant is a trustworthy person, very well capable
of forming a judgement. He gave me this information quite
spontaneously and I make use of his communication without asking
his consent, since I cannot allow that a psycho-analytic technique
has any right to claim the protection of medical
discretion.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2927

   If one bears in mind that dreams
are something different from the latent dream-thoughts which they
work over, there is nothing surprising in patients dreaming of
things with which their minds have been filled during the
treatment, whether it be the ‘life-task’, or
‘being on top’ or ‘underneath’. The dreams
of people being analysed can undoubtedly be directed, in the same
way as they are by stimuli produced for experimental purposes. One
can determine a part of the material which appears in a dream;
nothing in the essence or mechanism of dreams is altered by this.
Nor do I believe that ‘biographical’ dreams, as they
are called, occur outside analysis. If, on the other hand, one
analyses dreams which occurred before treatment, or if one
considers the dreamer’s own additions to what has been
suggested to him in the treatment, or if one avoids setting him any
such tasks, then one may convince oneself how far removed it is
from the purpose of a dream to produce attempted solutions of the
life-task. Dreams are only a form of thinking; one can never reach
an understanding of this form by reference to the content of the
thoughts; only an appreciation of the dream-work will lead to that
understanding.

   It is not difficult to find a
factual refutation of Jung’s misconceptions of
psycho-analysis and deviations from it. Every analysis conducted in
a proper manner, and in particular every analysis of a child,
strengthens the convictions upon which the theory of
psycho-analysis is founded, and rebuts the re-interpretations made
by both Jung’s and Adler’s systems. In the days before
his illumination, Jung himself carried out and published an
analysis of this kind of a child; it remains to be seen whether he
will undertake a new interpretation of its results with the help of
a different ‘one-sided arrangement of the facts’, to
use the expression employed by Adler in this connection.

   The view that the sexual
representation of ‘higher’ thoughts in dreams and
neurosis is nothing but an archaic mode of expression is of course
irreconcilable with the fact that in neurosis these sexual
complexes prove to be the bearers of the quantities of libido which
have been withdrawn from utilization in real life. If it was merely
a question of a sexual ‘jargon’, the economy of the
libido could not have been altered in any way by it. Jung admits
this himself in his
Darstellung der psychoanalytischen
Theorie
and formulates the task of therapy as the detaching of
libidinal cathexes from these complexes. This can never be
achieved, however, by directing the patient away from them and
urging him to sublimate, but only by exhaustive examination of them
and by making them fully and completely conscious. The first piece
of reality which the patient must deal with is his illness. Efforts
to spare him that task point to the physician’s incapacity to
help him to overcome his resistances, or else to the
physician’s dread of the results of the work.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2928

   It may be said lastly that by his
‘modification’ of psycho-analysis Jung has given us a
counterpart to the famous Lichtenberg knife. He has changed the
hilt, and he has put a new blade into it; yet because the same name
is engraved on it we are expected to regard the instrument as the
original one.

   I think I have made clear, on the
contrary, that the new teaching which aims at replacing
psycho-analysis signifies an abandonment of analysis and a
secession from it. Some people may be inclined to fear that this
secession is bound to have more momentous consequences for analysis
than would another, owing to its having been started by men who
have played so great a part in the movement and have done so much
to advance it. I do not share this apprehension.