Freud - Complete Works (813 page)

   The two fundamental principles of
Empedocles -
φιλία
and
υεΐκος
- are, both in name and function, the same as our two primal
instincts,
Eros
and
destructiveness
, the first of
which endeavours to combine what exists into ever greater unities,
while the second endeavours to dissolve those combinations and to
destroy the structures to which they have given rise. We shall not
be surprised, however, to find that, on its re-emergence after two
and a half millennia, this theory has been altered in some of its
features. Apart from the restriction to the biophysical field which
is imposed on us, we no longer have as our basic substances the
four elements of Empedocles; what is living has been sharply
differentiated from what is inanimate, and we no longer think of
the mingling and separation of particles of substance, but of the
soldering together and defusion of instinctual components.
Moreover, we have provided some sort of biological basis for the
principle of ‘strife’ by tracing back our instinct of
destruction to the death instinct, to the urge of what is living to
return to an inanimate state. This is not to deny that an analogous
instinct already existed earlier, nor, of course, to assert that an
instinct of this sort only came into existence with the emergence
of life. And no one can foresee in what guise the nucleus of truth
contained in the theory of Empedocles will present itself to later
understanding.

  
¹
Capelle (1935), 186.

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5041

VII

   In 1927, Ferenczi read an
instructive paper on the problem of the termination of analyses. It
ends with a comforting assurance that ‘analysis is not an
endless process, but one which can be brought to a natural end with
sufficient skill and patience on the analyst’s part’.
The paper as a whole, however, seems to me to be in the nature of a
warning not to aim at shortening analysis but at deepening it.
Ferenczi makes the further important point that success depends
very largely on the analyst’s having learnt sufficiently from
his own ‘errors and mistakes’ and having got the better
of ‘the weak points in his own personality’. This
provides an important supplement to our theme. Among the factors
which influence the prospects of analytic treatment and add to its
difficulties in the same manner as the resistances, must be
reckoned not only the nature of the patient’s ego but the
individuality of the analyst.

   It cannot be disputed that
analysts in their own personalities have not invariably come up to
the standard of psychical normality to which they wish to educate
their patients. Opponents of analysis often point to this fact with
scorn and use it as an argument to show the uselessness of analytic
exertions. We might reject this criticism as making unjustifiable
demands. Analysts are people who have learned to practise a
particular art; alongside of this, they may be allowed to be human
beings like anyone else. After all, nobody maintains that a
physician is incapable of treating internal diseases if his own
internal organs are not sound; on the contrary, it may be argued
that there are certain advantages in a man who is himself
threatened with tuberculosis specializing in the treatment of
persons suffering from that disease. But the cases are not on all
fours. So long as he is capable of practising at all, a doctor
suffering from disease of the lungs or heart is not handicapped
either in diagnosing or treating internal complaints; whereas the
special conditions of analytic work do actually cause the
analyst’s own defects to interfere with his making a correct
assessment of the state of things in his patient and reacting to
them in a useful way. It is therefore reasonable to expect of an
analyst, as a part of his qualifications, a considerable degree of
mental normality and correctness. In addition, he must possess some
kind of superiority, so that in certain analytic situations he can
act as a model for his patient and in others as a teacher. And
finally we must not forget that the analytic relationship is based
on a love of truth - that is, on a recognition of reality - and
that it precludes any kind of sham or deceit.

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5042

   Here let us pause for a moment to
assure the analyst that he has our sincere sympathy in the very
exacting demands he has to fulfil in carrying out his activities.
It almost looks as if analysis were the third of those
‘impossible’ professions in which one can be sure
beforehand of achieving unsatisfying results. The other two, which
have been known much longer, are education and government.
Obviously we cannot demand that the prospective analyst should be a
perfect being before he takes up analysis, in other words that only
persons of such high and rare perfection should enter the
profession. But where and how is the poor wretch to acquire the
ideal qualifications which he will need in his profession? The
answer is, in an analysis of himself, with which his preparation
for his future activity begins. For practical reasons this analysis
can only be short and incomplete. Its main object is to enable his
teacher to make a judgement as to whether the candidate can be
accepted for further training. It has accomplished its purpose if
it gives the learner a firm conviction of the existence of the
unconscious, if it enables him, when repressed material emerges, to
perceive in himself things which would otherwise be incredible to
him, and if it shows him a first sample of the technique which has
proved to be the only effective one in analytic work. This alone
would not suffice for his instruction; but we reckon on the stimuli
that he has received in his own analysis not ceasing when it ends
and on the processes of remodelling the ego continuing
spontaneously in the analysed subject and making use of all
subsequent experiences in this newly-acquired sense. This does in
fact happen, and in so far as it happens it makes the analysed
subject qualified to be an analyst himself.

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5043

   Unfortunately something else
happens as well. In trying to describe this, one can only rely on
impressions. Hostility on the one side and partisanship on the
other create an atmosphere which is not favourable to objective
investigation. It seems that a number of analysts learn to make use
of defensive mechanisms which allow them to divert the implications
and demands of analysis from themselves (probably by directing them
on to other people), so that they themselves remain as they are and
are able to withdraw from the critical and corrective influence of
analysis. Such an event may justify the words of the writer who
warns us that when a man is endowed with power it is hard for him
not to misuse it.¹ Sometimes, when we try to understand this,
we are driven into drawing a disagreeable analogy with the effect
of X-rays on people who handle them without taking special
precautions. It would not be surprising if the effect of a constant
preoccupation with all the repressed material which struggles for
freedom in the human mind were to stir up in the analyst as well
all the instinctual demands which he is otherwise able to keep
under suppression. These, too, are ‘dangers of
analysis’, though they threaten, not the passive but the
active partner in the analytic situation; and we ought not to
neglect to meet them. There can be no doubt how this is to be done.
Every analyst should periodically - at intervals of five years or
so - submit himself to analysis once more, without feeling ashamed
of taking this step. This would mean, then, that not only the
therapeutic analysis of patients but his own analysis would change
from a terminable into an interminable task.

   At this point, however, we must
guard against a misconception. I am not intending to assert that
analysis is altogether an endless business. Whatever one’s
theoretical attitude to the question may be, the termination of an
analysis is, I think a practical matter. Every experienced analyst
will be able to recall a number of cases in which he has bidden his
patient a permanent farewell
rebus bene gestis
². In
cases of what is known as character-analysis there is a far smaller
discrepancy between theory and practice. Here it is not easy to
foresee a natural end, even if one avoids any exaggerated
expectations and sets the analysis no excessive tasks. Our aim will
not be to rub off every peculiarity of human character for the sake
of a schematic ‘normality’, nor yet to demand that the
person who has been ‘thoroughly analysed’ shall feel no
passions and develop no internal conflicts. The business of the
analysis is to secure the best possible psychological conditions
for the functions of the ego; with that it has discharged its
task.

  
¹ Anatole France,
La révolte des
anges
.

  
²
[‘Things having gone
well.’]

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5044

VIII

   Both in therapeutic and in
character-analyses we notice that two themes come into especial
prominence and give the analyst an unusual amount of trouble. It
soon becomes evident that a general principle is at work here. The
two themes are tied to the distinction between the sexes; one is as
characteristic of males as the other is of females. In spite of the
dissimilarity of their content, there is an obvious correspondence
between them. Something which both sexes have in common has been
forced, by the difference between the sexes, into different forms
of expression.

   The two corresponding themes are
in the female,
an envy for the penis
- a positive striving
to possess a male genital - and, in the male, a struggle against
his passive or feminine attitude to another male. What is common to
the two themes was singled out at an early date by psycho-analytic
nomenclature as an attitude towards the castration complex.
Subsequently Alfred Adler brought the term ‘masculine
protest’ into current use. It fits the case of males
perfectly; but I think that, from the start, ‘repudiation of
femininity’ would have been the correct description of this
remarkable feature in the psychical life of human beings.

   In trying to introduce this
factor into the structure of our theory, we must not overlook the
fact that it cannot, by its very nature, occupy the same position
in both sexes. In males the striving to be masculine is completely
ego-syntonic from the first; the passive attitude, since it
presupposes an acceptance of castration, is energetically
repressed, and often its presence is only indicated by excessive
overcompensations. In females, too, the striving to be masculine is
ego-syntonic at a certain period - namely in the phallic phase,
before the development to femininity has set in. But it then
succumbs to the momentous process of repression whose outcome, as
has so often been shown, determines the fortunes of a woman’s
femininity. A great deal depends on whether a sufficient amount of
her masculinity complex escapes repression and exercises a
permanent influence on her character. Normally, large portions of
the complex are transformed and contribute to the construction of
her femininity: the appeased wish for a penis is destined to be
converted into a wish for a baby and for a husband, who possesses a
penis. It is strange, however, how often we find that the wish for
masculinity has been retained in the unconscious and, from out of
its state of repression, exercises a disturbing influence.

   As will be seen from what I have
said, in both cases it is the attitude proper to the opposite sex
which has succumbed to repression. I have already stated
elsewhere¹ that it was Wilhelm Fliess who called my attention
to this point. Fliess was inclined to regard the antithesis between
the sexes as the true cause and primal motive force of repression.
I am only repeating what I said then in disagreeing with his view,
when I decline to sexualize repression in this way - that is, to
explain it on biological grounds instead of on purely psychological
ones.

  
¹
‘"A Child is being
Beaten"’ (1919
e
).

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5045

   The paramount importance of these
two themes - in females the wish for a penis and in males the
struggle against passivity - did not escape Ferenczi’s
notice. In the paper read by him in 1927 he made it a requirement
that in every successful analysis those two complexes must have
been mastered.¹ I should like to add that, speaking from my
own experience, I think that in this Ferenczi was asking a very
great deal. At no other point in one’s analytic work does one
suffer more from an oppressive feeling that all one’s
repeated efforts have been in vain, and from a suspicion that one
has been ‘preaching to the winds’, than when one is
trying to persuade a woman to abandon her wish for a penis on the
ground of its being unrealizable or when one is seeking to convince
a man that a passive attitude to men does not always signify
castration and that it is indispensable in many relationships in
life. The rebellious overcompensation of the male produces one of
the strongest transference-resistances. He refuses to subject
himself to a father-substitute, or to feel indebted to him for
anything, and consequently he refuses to accept his recovery from
the doctor. No analogous transference can arise from the
female’s wish for a penis, but it is the source of outbreaks
of severe depression in her, owing to an internal conviction that
the analysis will be of no use and that nothing can be done to help
her. And we can only agree that she is right, when we learn that
her strongest motive in coming for treatment was the hope that,
after all, she might still obtain a male organ, the lack of which
was so painful to her.