Freud - Complete Works (768 page)

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4745

   What further claims do you make
in the name of tolerance? That when someone has uttered an opinion
which we regard as completely false we should say to him:
‘Thank you very much for having given voice to this
contradiction. You are guarding us against the danger of
complacency and are giving us an opportunity of showing the
Americans that we are really as "broad-minded" as they
always wish. To be sure, we do not believe a word of what you are
saying, but that makes no difference. Probably you are just as
right as we are. After all, who can possibly know who is right? In
spite of our antagonism, pray allow us to represent your point of
view in our publications. We hope that you will be kind enough in
exchange to find a place for our views which you deny.’ In
the future, when the misuse of Einstein’s relativity has been
entirely achieved, this will obviously become the regular custom in
scientific affairs. For the moment, it is true, we have not gone
quite so far. We restrict ourselves, in the old fashion, to putting
forward only our own convictions, we expose ourselves to the risk
of error because it cannot be guarded against, and we reject what
is in contradiction to us. We have made plentiful use in
psycho-analysis of the right to change our opinions if we think we
have found something better.

   One of the first applications of
psycho-analysis was to teach us to understand the opposition
offered to us by our contemporaries because we practised
psycho-analysis. Other applications, of an objective nature, may
claim a more general interest. Our first purpose, of course, was to
understand the disorders of the human mind, because a remarkable
experience had shown that here understanding and cure almost
coincide, that a traversable road leads from the one to the other.
And for a long time it was our only purpose. Then, however, we
perceived the close relations, the internal identity indeed,
between pathological processes and what are known as normal ones.
Psycho-analysis became a depth-psychology; and, since nothing that
men make or do is understandable without the co-operation of
psychology, the applications of psycho-analysis to numerous fields
of knowledge, in particular to those of the mental sciences, came
about of their own accord, pushed their way to the front and called
for ventilation. These tasks unluckily came up against obstacles
which, rooted as they were in the circumstances, have not yet been
overcome even to-day. An application of this kind presupposes
specialized knowledge which an analyst does not possess, while
those who possess it, the specialists, know nothing of analysis and
perhaps want to know nothing. The result has been that analysts, as
amateurs with an equipment of greater or less adequacy, often
hastily scraped together, have made excursions into such fields of
knowledge as mythology, the history of civilization, ethnology, the
science of religion and so on. They were no better treated by the
experts resident in those fields than are trespassers in general:
their methods and their findings, in so far as they attracted
attention, were in the first instance rejected. But these
conditions are constantly improving, and in every region there is a
growing number of people who study psycho-analysis in order to make
use of it in their special subject, and in order, as colonists, to
replace the pioneers. Here we may expect a rich harvest of new
discoveries. Applications of analysis are always confirmations of
it as well. There, too, where scientific work is further removed
from practical activity, the inevitable differences of opinion will
no doubt take a less embittered form.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4746

   I feel a strong temptation to
conduct you through all the applications of psycho-analysis to the
mental sciences. They are things worth knowing by anyone with
intellectual interests; and not to hear about abnormality and
illness for a time would be a well-deserved relaxation. But I must
renounce the idea: it would once more carry us outside the
framework of these lectures and, I must honestly admit, I should
not be equal to the task. It is true that in a few of these regions
I myself took the first step; but to-day I no longer embrace the
whole field, and I should have to do a great deal of studying in
order to master what has been accomplished since my beginnings. Any
of you who are disappointed by my refusal may make up for it in the
pages of our periodical
Imago
, which is designed to cover
the non-medical applications of analysis.

   But there is one topic which I
cannot pass over so easily - not, however, because I understand
particularly much about it or have contributed very much to it.
Quite the contrary: I have scarcely concerned myself with it at
all. I must mention it because it is so exceedingly important, so
rich in hopes for the future, perhaps the most important of all the
activities of analysis. What I am thinking of is the application of
psycho-analysis to education, to the upbringing of the next
generation. I am glad that I am at least able to say that my
daughter, Anna Freud, has made this study her life-work and has in
that way compensated for my neglect.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4747

   The road that led to this
application is easily traced. When in the treatment of an adult
neurotic we followed up the determinants of his symptoms, we were
regularly led back to his early childhood. A knowledge of the later
aetiological factors was not sufficient either for understanding
the case or for producing a therapeutic effect. We were therefore
compelled to make ourselves acquainted with the psychical
peculiarities of childhood; we learnt a quantity of things which
could not have been learnt except through analysis, and we were
able to put right many opinions that were generally held about
childhood. We recognized that particular importance attached to the
first years of childhood - up to the age of five, perhaps - for
several reasons. Firstly, because those years include the early
efflorescence of sexuality which leaves behind it decisive
instigating factors for the sexual life of maturity. Secondly,
because the impressions of this period impinge upon an immature and
feeble ego, and act upon it like traumas. The ego cannot fend off
the emotional storms which they provoke in any way except by
repression and in this manner acquires in childhood all its
dispositions to later illnesses and functional disturbances. We
realized that the difficulty of childhood lies in the fact that in
a short span of time a child has to appropriate the results of a
cultural evolution which stretches over thousands of years,
including the acquisition of control over his instincts and
adaptation to society - or at least the first beginnings of these
two. He can only achieve a part of this modification through his
own development; much must be imposed on him by education. We are
not surprised that children often carry out this task very
imperfectly. During these early times many of them pass through
states that may be put on a par with neuroses - and this is
certainly so in the case of all those who produce manifest
illnesses later on. In some children the neurotic illness does not
wait till maturity but breaks out already in childhood and gives
parents and doctors plenty of trouble.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4748

   We had no misgivings over
applying analytic treatment to children who either exhibited
unambiguous neurotic symptoms or who were on the road to an
unfavourable development of character. The apprehension expressed
by opponents of analysis that the child would be injured by it
proved unfounded. What we gained from these undertakings was that
we were able to confirm on the living subject what we had inferred
(from historical documents, as it were) in the case of adults. But
the gain for the children was also very satisfactory. It turned out
that a child is a very favourable subject for analytic therapy; the
results are thorough and lasting. The technique of treatment worked
out for adults must, of course, be largely altered for children. A
child is psychologically a different object from an adult. As yet
he possesses no super-ego, the method of free association does not
carry far with him, transference (since the real parents are still
on the spot) plays a different part. The internal resistances
against which we struggle in adults are replaced for the most part
in children by external difficulties. If the parents make
themselves vehicles of the resistance, the aim of the analysis -
and even the analysis itself - is often imperilled. Hence it is
often necessary to combine with a child’s analysis a certain
amount of analytic influencing of his parents. On the other hand,
the inevitable deviations of analyses of children from those of
adults are diminished by the circumstance that some of our patients
have retained so many infantile character traits that the analyst
(once again adapting himself to his subject) cannot avoid making
use with them of certain of the techniques of child-analysis. It
has automatically happened that child-analysis has become the
domain of women analysts, and no doubt this will remain true.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4749

   The recognition that most of our
children pass through a neurotic phase in the course of their
development carries with it the germ of a hygienic challenge. The
question may be raised whether it would not be expedient to come to
a child’s help with an analysis even if he shows no signs of
a disturbance, as a measure for safeguarding his health, just as
to-day we inoculate healthy children against diphtheria without
waiting to see if they fall ill of it. The discussion of this
question has only an academic interest at present, but I may
venture to consider it here. The mere suggestion would seem to the
great bulk of our contemporaries to be a monstrous outrage, and in
view of the attitude towards analysis of most people in a parental
position any hope of putting through such an idea must be abandoned
for the time being. Prophylaxis such as this against neurotic
illness, which would probably be very effective, also presupposes a
quite other constitution of society. The watchword for the
application of psycho-analysis to education is to be found to-day
elsewhere. Let us make ourselves clear as to what the first task of
education is. The child must learn to control his instincts. It is
impossible to give him liberty to carry out all his impulses
without restriction. To do so would be a very instructive
experiment for child-psychologists; but life would be impossible
for the parents and the children themselves would suffer grave
damage, which would show itself partly at once and partly in later
years. Accordingly, education must inhibit, forbid and suppress,
and this it has abundantly seen to in all periods of history. But
we have learnt from analysis that precisely this suppression of
instincts involves the risk of neurotic illness. As you will
remember, we have examined in detail how this occurs. Thus
education has to find its way between the Scylla of
non-interference and the Charybdis of frustration. Unless this
problem is entirely insoluble, an optimum must be discovered which
will enable education to achieve the most and damage the least. It
will therefore be a matter of deciding how much to forbid, at what
times and by what means. And in addition we have to take into
account the fact that the objects of our educational influence have
very different innate constitutional dispositions, so that it is
quite impossible that the same educational procedure can be equally
good for all children. A moment’s reflection tells us that
hitherto education has fulfilled its task very badly and has done
children great damage. If it discovers the optimum and carries out
its task ideally, it can hope to wipe out one of the factors in the
aetiology of falling ill - the influence of the accidental traumas
of childhood. It cannot in any case get rid of the other factor -
the power of an insubordinate instinctual constitution. If now we
consider the difficult problems that confront the educator - how he
has to recognize the child’s constitutional individuality, to
infer from small indications what is going on in his immature mind,
to give him the right amount of love and yet to maintain an
effective degree of authority - we shall tell ourselves that the
only appropriate preparation for the profession of educator is a
thorough psycho-analytic training. It would be best that he should
have been analysed himself, for, when all is said and done, it is
impossible to assimilate analysis without experiencing it
personally. The analysis of teachers and educators seems to be a
more efficacious prophylactic measure than the analysis of children
themselves, and there are less difficulties in the way of putting
it into practice.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4750

   We may mention, though only as an
incidental consideration, an indirect way in which the upbringing
of children may be helped by analysis and which may with time
acquire a greater influence. Parents who have themselves
experienced an analysis and owe much to it, including an insight
into the faults of their own upbringing, will treat their children
with better understanding and will spare them much of what they
themselves were not spared.

   Parallel with the efforts of
analysts to influence education, other investigations are being
made into the origin and prevention of delinquency and crime. Here
again I am only opening the door for you and showing you the rooms
that lie beyond it, without leading you inside. I am certain that
if you remain loyal to your interest in psycho-analysis you will be
able to learn much that is new and valuable on these subjects. I
must not, however, leave the topic of education without referring
to one particular aspect of it. It has been said - and no doubt
justly - that every education has a partisan aim, that it
endeavours to bring the child into line with the established order
of society, without considering how valuable or how stable that
order may be in itself. If one is convinced of the defects in our
present social arrangements, education with a psycho-analytic
alignment cannot justifiably be put at their service as well: it
must be given another and higher aim, liberated from the prevailing
demands of society. In my opinion, however, this argument is out of
place here. Such a demand goes beyond the legitimate function of
analysis. In the same way, it is not the business of a doctor who
is called in to treat a case of pneumonia to concern himself with
whether the patient is an honest man or a suicide or a criminal,
whether he deserves to remain alive or whether one ought to wish
him to. This other aim which it is desired to give to education
will also be a partisan one, and it is not the affair of an analyst
to decide between the parties. I am leaving entirely on one side
the fact that psycho-analysis would be refused any influence on
education if it admitted to intentions inconsistent with the
established social order. Psycho-analytic education will be taking
an uninvited responsibility on itself if it proposes to mould its
pupils into rebels. It will have played its part if it sends them
away as healthy and efficient as possible. It itself contains
enough revolutionary factors to ensure that no one educated by it
will in later life take the side of reaction and suppression. It is
even my opinion that revolutionary children are not desirable from
any point of view.