Freud - Complete Works (588 page)

3536

V

A FEW
DISCUSSIONS

The whale and the polar bear, it has been
said, cannot wage war on each other, for since each is confined to
his own element they cannot meet. It is just as impossible for me
to argue with workers in the field of psychology or of the neuroses
who do not recognize the postulates of psycho-analysis and who look
on its results as artefacts. But during the last few years there
has grown up another kind of opposition as well, among people who,
in their own opinion at all events, take their stand upon the
ground of analysis, who do not dispute its technique or results,
but who merely think themselves justified in drawing other
conclusions from the same material and in submitting it to other
interpretations.

   As a rule, however, theoretical
controversy is unfruitful. No sooner has one begun to depart from
the material on which one ought to be relying, than one runs the
risk of becoming intoxicated with one’s own assertions and,
in the end, of supporting opinions which any observation would have
contradicted. For this reason it seems to me to be incomparably
more useful to combat dissentient interpretations by testing them
upon particular cases and problems.

   I have remarked above (see
p. 3528
) that it will certainly be
considered improbable, firstly, that ‘a child at the tender
age of one and a half could be in a position to take in the
perceptions of such a complicated process and to preserve them so
accurately in his unconscious; secondly, that it is possible at the
age of four for a deferred revision of this material to penetrate
the understanding; and finally, that any procedure could succeed in
bringing into consciousness coherently and convincingly the details
of a scene of this kind which had been experienced and understood
in such circumstances’.

   The last question is purely one
of fact. Anyone who will take the trouble of pursuing an analysis
into these depths by means of the prescribed technique will
convince himself that it is decidedly possible. Anyone who neglects
this, and breaks off the analysis in some higher stratum, has
waived his right of forming a judgement on the matter. But the
interpretation of what is arrived at in depth-analysis is not
decided by this.

   The two other doubts are based on
a low estimate of the importance of early infantile impressions and
an unwillingness to ascribe such enduring effects to them. The
supporters of this view look for the causes of neuroses almost
exclusively in the grave conflicts of later life; they assume that
the importance of childhood is only held up before our eyes in
analysis on account of the inclination of neurotics for expressing
their present interests in reminiscences and symbols from the
remote past. Such an estimate of the importance of the infantile
factor would involve the disappearance of much that has formed part
of the most intimate characteristics of analysis, though also, no
doubt, of much that raises resistance to it and alienates the
confidence of the outsider.

From The History Of An Infantile Neurosis

3537

   The view, then, that we are
putting up for discussion is as follows. It maintains that scenes
from early infancy, such as are brought up by an exhaustive
analysis of neuroses (as, for instance, in the present case), are
not reproductions of real occurrences, to which it is possible to
ascribe an influence over the course of the patient’s later
life and over the formation of his symptoms. It considers them
rather as products of the imagination, which find their instigation
in mature life, which are intended to serve as some kind of
symbolic representation of real wishes and interests, and which owe
their origin to a regressive tendency, to a turning-away from the
tasks of the present. If that is so, we can of course spare
ourselves the necessity of attributing such a surprising amount to
the mental life and intellectual capacity of children of the
tenderest age.

   Besides the desire which we all
share for the rationalization and simplification of our difficult
problem, there are all sorts of facts that speak in favour of this
view. It is also possible to eliminate beforehand one objection to
it which may arise, particularly in the mind of a practising
analyst. It must be admitted that, if this view of these scenes
from infancy were the right one, the carrying-out of analysis would
not in the first instance be altered in any respect. If neurotics
are endowed with the evil characteristic of diverting their
interest from the present and of attaching it to these regressive
substitutes, the products of their imagination, then there is
absolutely nothing for it but to follow upon their tracks and bring
these unconscious productions into consciousness; for, leaving on
one side their lack of value from the point of view of reality,
they are of the utmost value from our point of view, since they are
for the moment the bearers and possessors of the interest which we
want to set free so as to be able to direct it on to the tasks of
the present. The analysis would have to run precisely the same
course as one which had a
naïf
faith in the truth of
the phantasies. The difference would only come at the end of the
analysis, after the phantasies had been laid bare. We should then
say to the patient: ‘Very well, then; your neurosis proceeded
as though
you had received these impressions and spun them
out in your childhood. You will see, of course, that that is out of
the question. They were products of your imagination which were
intended to divert you from the real tasks that lay before you. Let
us now enquire what these tasks were, and what lines of
communication ran between them and your phantasies.’ After
the infantile phantasies had been disposed of in this way, it would
be possible to begin a second portion of the treatment, which would
be concerned with the patient’s real life.

   Any shortening of this course,
any alteration, that is, in psycho-analytic treatment, as it has
hitherto been practised, would be technically inadmissible. Unless
these phantasies are made conscious to the patient to their fullest
extent, he cannot obtain command of the interest which is attached
to them. If his attention is diverted from them as soon as their
existence and their general outlines are divined, support is simply
being given to the work of repression, thanks to which they have
been put beyond the patient’s reach in spite of all his
pains. If he is given a premature sense of their unimportance, by
being informed, for instance, that it will only be a question of
phantasies, which, of course, have no real significance, his
co-operation will never be secured for the task of bringing them
into consciousness. A correct procedure, therefore, would make no
alteration in the technique of analysis, whatever estimate might be
formed of these scenes from infancy.

From The History Of An Infantile Neurosis

3538

   I have already mentioned that
there are a number of facts which can be brought up in support of
the view of these scenes being regressive phantasies. And above all
there is this one: so far as my experience hitherto goes, these
scenes from infancy are not reproduced during the treatment as
recollections, they are the products of construction. Many people
will certainly think that this single admission decides the whole
dispute.

   I am anxious not to be
misunderstood. Every analyst knows - and he has met with the
experience on countless occasions - that in the course of a
successful treatment the patient brings up a large number of
spontaneous recollections from his childhood, for the appearance of
which (a first appearance, perhaps) the physician feels himself
entirely blameless, since he has not made any attempt at a
construction which could have put any material of the sort into the
patient’s head. It does not necessarily follow that these
previously unconscious recollections are always true. They may be;
but they are often distorted from the truth, and interspersed with
imaginary elements, just like the so-called screen memories which
are preserved spontaneously. All that I mean to say is this:
scenes, like this one in my present patient’s case, which
date from such an early period and exhibit a similar content, and
which further lay claim to such an extraordinary significance for
the history of the case, are as a rule not reproduced as
recollections, but have to be divined - constructed - gradually and
laboriously from an aggregate of indications. Moreover, it would be
sufficient for the purposes of the argument if my admission that
scenes of this kind do not become conscious in the shape of
recollections applied only to cases of obsessional neurosis, or
even if I were to limit my assertion to the case which we are
studying here.

   I am not of opinion, however,
that such scenes must necessarily be phantasies because they do not
reappear in the shape of recollections. It seems to me absolutely
equivalent to a recollection, if the memories are replaced (as in
the present case) by dreams the analysis of which invariably leads
back to the same scene and which reproduce every portion of its
content in an inexhaustible variety of new shapes. Indeed, dreaming
is another kind of remembering, though one that is subject to the
conditions that rule at night and to the laws of dream-formation.
It is this recurrence in dreams that I regard as the explanation of
the fact that the patients themselves gradually acquire a profound
conviction of the reality of these primal scenes, a conviction
which is in no respect inferior to one based on
recollection.¹

  
¹
A passage in the first edition of my
Interpretation of Dreams
(1900
a
) will show at what an
early stage I was occupied with this problem. On
p. 670
of that work there is
an analysis of a remark occurring in a dream:
‘
That’s not obtainable any longer
.’ It is
explained that the phrase originated from myself. ‘A few days
earlier I had explained to the patient that the earliest
experiences of childhood were "
not obtainable any
longer
as such" but were replaced in analysis by
"transferences" and dreams.’

From The History Of An Infantile Neurosis

3539

   There is naturally no need for
those who take the opposite view to abandon as hopeless their fight
against such arguments. It is well known that dreams can be
guided.¹ And the sense of conviction felt by the person
analysed may be the result of suggestion, which is always having
new parts assigned to it in the play of forces involved in analytic
treatment. The old-fashioned psychotherapist, it might be
maintained, used to suggest to his patient that he was cured, that
he had overcome his inhibitions, and so on; while the
psycho-analyst, on this view, suggests to him that when he was a
child he had some experience or other, which he must now recollect
in order to be cured. This would be the difference between the
two.

   Let it be clearly understood that
this last attempt at an explanation on the part of those who take
the view opposed to mine results in the scenes from infancy being
disposed of far more fundamentally than was announced to begin
with. What was argued at first was that they were not realities but
phantasies. But what is argued now is evidently that they are
phantasies not of the patient but of the analyst himself, who
forces them upon the person under analysis on account of some
complexes of his own. An analyst, indeed, who hears this reproach,
will comfort himself by recalling how gradually the construction of
this phantasy which he is supposed to have originated came about,
and, when all is said and done, how independently of the
physician’s incentive many points in its development
proceeded; how, after a certain phase of the treatment, everything
seemed to converge upon it, and how later, in the synthesis, the
most various and remarkable results radiated out from it; how not
only the large problems but the smallest peculiarities in the
history of the case were cleared up by this single assumption. And
he will disclaim the possession of the amount of ingenuity
necessary for the concoction of an occurrence which can fulfil all
these demands. But even this plea will be without an effect on an
adversary who has not experienced the analysis himself. On the one
side there will be a charge of subtle self-deception, and on the
other of obtuseness of judgement; it will be impossible to arrive
at a decision.

  
¹
The
mechanism
of dreaming cannot be
influenced; but dream
material
is to some extent subject to
orders.

From The History Of An Infantile Neurosis

3540

   Let us turn to another factor
which supports this opposing view of these constructed scenes from
infancy. It is as follows: There can be no doubt of the real
existence of all the processes which have been brought forward in
order to explain these doubtful structures as phantasies, and their
importance must be recognized. The diversion of interest from the
tasks of real life,¹ the existence of phantasies in the
capacity of substitutes for unperformed actions, the regressive
tendency which is expressed in these productions - regressive in
more than one sense, in so far as there is involved simultaneously
a shrinking-back from life and a harking-back to the past - all
these things hold good, and are regularly confirmed by analysis.
One might think that they would also suffice to explain the
supposed reminiscences from early infancy which are under
discussion; and in accordance with the principle of economy in
science such an explanation would have the advantage over one which
is inadequate without the support of new and surprising
assumptions.