(¶ 5.3)
The deeper you penetrate into the pathogenesis of neurotic diseases, the
more the connection of neuroses with other products of human mentality,
even the most valuable, will be revealed to you. You will be reminded that
we men, with the high claims of our civilization and under the pressure of
our repressions, find reality generally quite unsatisfactory and so keep up
a life of fancy in which we love to compensate for what is lacking in the
sphere of reality by the production of wish-fulfillments. In these
phantasies is often contained very much of the particular constitutional
essence of personality and of its tendencies, repressed in real life. The
energetic and successful man is he who succeeds by dint of labor in
transforming his wish fancies into reality. Where this is not successful in
consequence of the resistance of the outer world and the weakness of the
individual, there begins the turning away from reality. The individual
takes refuge in his satisfying world of fancy. Under certain favorable
conditions it still remains possible for him to find another connecting
link between these fancies and reality, instead of permanently becoming a
stranger to it through the regression into the infantile. If the individual
who is displeased with reality is in possession of that artistic talent
which is still a psychological riddle, be can transform his fancies into
artistic creations. So he escapes the fate of a neurosis and wins back his
connection with reality by this round-about way.
Compare, Rank, Otto: Der Künstler, Ansätze zu einer Sexual-
Psychologie. 56 p. Heller & Co., Wien, 1907.
Where this opposition
to the real world exists, but this valuable talent fails or proves
insufficient, it is unavoidable that the libido, following the origin of
the fancies, succeeds by means of regression in revivifying the infantile
wishes and so producing a neurosis. The neurosis takes, in our time, the
place of the cloister, in which were accustomed to take refuge all those
whom life had undeceived or who felt themselves too weak for life. Let me
give at this point the main result at which we have arrived by the
psychoanalytic investigation of neurotics, namely, that neuroses have no
peculiar psychic content of their own, which is not also to be found in
healthy states; or, as C. G. Jung has expressed it, neurotics fall ill of
the same complexes with which we sound, people struggle. It depends on
quantitative relationships, on the relations of the forces wrestling with
each other, whether the struggle leads to health, to a neurosis, or to
compensatory over-functioning (Ueberleistung).
(¶ 5.4)
Ladies and gentlemen, I have still withheld from you the most remarkable
experience which corroborates our assumptions of the sexual impulse-forces
of neurotics. Every time that we treat a neurotic psychoanalytically, there
occurs in him the so-called phenomenon of transfer (Uebertragung), that is,
he applies to the person of the physician a great amount of tender emotion,
often mixed with enmity, which has no foundation in any real relation, and
must be derived in every respect from the old wish-fancies of the patient
which have become
unconscious. Every fragment of his emotive life, which
can no longer be called back into memory, is accordingly lived over by the
patient in his relations to the physician, and only by such a living of
them over in the "transfer" is he convinced of the existence and the power
of these unconscious sexual excitations. The symptoms, which, to use a
simile from chemistry, are the precipitates of earlier love experiences (in
the widest sense), can only be dissolved in the higher temperature of the
experience of transfer and transformed into other psychic products. The
physician plays in this reaction, to use an excellent expression of S.
Ferenczi, the role of a catalytic ferment, which temporarily attracts
to itself the affect which has become free in the course of the process.
S. Ferenczi: Introduction und Uebertragung. Jahrbuch f. psychoanal. u.
psychopath. Forschungen, Bd. 1, H. 2., 1909.
(¶ 5.5)
The study of transfer can also give you the key to the understanding of
hypnotic suggestion, which we at first used with our patients as a
technical means of investigation of
the unconscious. Hypnosis showed itself
at that time to be a therapeutic help, but a hindrance to the scientific
knowledge of the real nature of the case, since it cleared away the psychic
resistances from a certain field, only to pile them up in an unscalable
wall at the boundaries of this field. You must not think that the
phenomenon of transfer, about which I can unfortunately say only too little
here, is created by the influence of the psychoanalytic treatment. The
transfer arises spontaneously in all human relations and in the relations
of the patient to the physician; it is everywhere the especial bearer of
therapeutic influences, and it works the stronger the less one knows of its
presence. Accordingly psychoanalysis does not create it, it merely
discloses it to consciousness, and avails itself of it, in order to direct
the psychic processes to the wished for goal. But I cannot leave the theme
of transfer without stressing the fact that this phenomenon is of decisive
importance to convince not only the patient, but also the physician. I know
that all my adherents were first convinced of the correctness of my views
through their experience with transfer, and I can very well conceive that
one may not win such a surety of judgment so long as he makes no
psychoanalysis, and so has not himself observed the effects of transfer.
(¶ 5.6)
Ladies and gentlemen, I am of the opinion that there are, on the
intellectual side, two hindrances to acknowledging the value of the
psychoanalytic view-point: first, the fact that we are not accustomed to
reckon with a strict determination of mental life, which holds without
exception, and second, the lack of knowledge of the peculiarities through
which
unconscious
mental processes differ from those conscious ones with
which we are familiar. One of the most widespread resistances against the
work of psychoanalysis with patients as with persons in health reduces to
the latter of the two moments. One is afraid of doing harm by
psychoanalysis, one is anxious about calling up into consciousness the
repressed sexual impulses of the patient, as though there were danger that
they could overpower the higher ethical strivings and rob him of his
cultural acquisitions. One can see that the patient has sore places in his
soul life, but one is afraid to touch them, lest his suffering be
increased. We may use this analogy. It is, of course, better not to touch
diseased places when one can only cause pain. But we know that the surgeon
does not refrain from the investigation and reinvestigation of the seat of
illness, if his invasion has as its aim the restoration of lasting health.
Nobody thinks of blaming him for the unavoidable difficulties of the
investigation or the phenomena of reaction from the operation, if these
only accomplish their purpose, and gain for the patient a final cure by
temporarily making his condition worse. The case is similar in
psychoanalysis; it can lay claim to the same things as surgery; the
increase of pain which takes place in the patient during the treatment is
very much less than that which the surgeon imposes upon him, and especially
negligible in comparison with the pains of serious illness. But the
consequence which is feared, that of a disturbance of the cultural
character by the impulse which has been freed from repression, is wholly
impossible. In relation to this anxiety we must consider what our
experiences have taught us with certainty, that the somatic and mental
power of a wish, if once its repression has not succeeded, is incomparably
stronger when it is
unconscious
than when it is conscious, so that by being
made conscious it can only be weakened. The unconscious wish cannot be
influenced, is free from all strivings in the contrary direction, while the
conscious is inhibited by those wishes which are also conscious and which
strive against it. The work of psychoanalysis accordingly presents a better
substitute, in the service of the highest and most valuable cultural
strivings, for the repression which has failed.
(¶ 5.7)
Now what is the fate of the wishes which have become free by
psychoanalysis, by what means shall they be made harmless for the life of
the individual? There are several ways. The general consequence is, that
the wish is consumed during the work by the correct mental activity of
those better tendencies which are opposed to it. The repression is
supplanted by a condemnation carried through with the best means at one's
disposal. This is possible, since for the most part we have to abolish only
the effects of earlier developmental stages of the ego. The individual for
his part only repressed the useless impulse, because at that time he was
himself still incompletely organized and weak; in his present maturity and
strength he can, perhaps, conquer without injury to himself that which is
inimical to him. A second issue of the work of psychoanalysis may be that
the revealed
unconscious
impulses can now arrive at those useful
applications which, in the case of undisturbed development, they would have
found earlier. The extirpation of the infantile wishes is not at all the
ideal aim of development. The neurotic has lost, by his repressions, many
sources of mental energy whose contingents would have been very valuable
for his character building and his life activities. We know a far more
purposive process of development, the so-called sublimation (Sublimirung),
by which the energy of infantile wish-excitations is not secluded, but
remains capable of application, while for the particular excitations,
instead of becoming useless, a higher, eventually no longer sexual, goal is
set up. The components of the sexual instinct are especially distinguished
by such a capacity for the sublimation and exchange of their sexual goal
for one more remote and socially more valuable. To the contributions of the
energy won in such a way for the functions of our mental life we probably
owe the highest cultural consequences. A repression taking place at an
early period excludes the sublimation of the repressed impulse; after the
removal of the repression the way to sublimation is again free.
(¶ 5.8)
We must not neglect, also, to glance at the third of the possible issues. A
certain part of the suppressed libidinous excitation has a right to direct
satisfaction and ought to find it in life. The claims of our civilization
make life too hard for the greater part of humanity, and so further the
aversion to reality and the origin of neuroses, without producing an excess
of cultural gain by this excess of sexual repression. We ought not to go so
far as to fully neglect the original animal part of our nature, we ought
not to forget that the happiness of individuals cannot be dispensed with as
one of the aims of our culture. The plasticity of the sexual-components,
manifest in their capacity for sublimation, may cause a great temptation to
accomplish greater culture-effects by a more and more far reaching
sublimation. But just as little as with our machines we expect to change
more than a certain fraction of the applied heat into useful mechanical
work, just as little ought we to strive to separate the sexual impulse in
its whole extent of energy from its peculiar goal. This cannot succeed, and
if the narrowing of sexuality is pushed too far it will have all the evil
effects of a robbery.
(¶ 5.9)
I do not know whether you will regard the exhortation with which I close as
a presumptuous one. I only venture the indirect presentation of my
conviction, if I relate an old tale, whose application you may make
yourselves. German literature knows a town called Schilda, to whose
inhabitants were attributed all sorts of clever pranks. The wiseacres, so
the story goes, had a horse, with whose powers of work they were well
satisfied, and against whom they had only one grudge, that he consumed so
much expensive oats. They concluded that by good management they would
break him of this bad habit, by cutting down his rations by several stalks
each day, until he had learned to do without them altogether. Things went
finely for a while, the horse was weaned to one stalk a day, and on the
next day he would at last work without fodder. On the morning of this day
the malicious horse was found dead; the citizens of Schilda could not
understand why he had died. We should be inclined to believe that the horse
had starved, and that without a certain ration of oats no work could be
expected from an animal.
(¶ 5.10)
I thank you for calling me here to speak, and for the attention which you
have given me.
Citation suggestion
Referencing
My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry:
Freud, S. 1909/1910. The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis
Lectures delivered at the Celebration of the Twentieth Anniversary of the
opening of Clark University, September 1909; translated from the German by
Harry W. Chase, Fellow in Psychology, Clark University, and revised by
Profesor Freud.
Paragraph numbers from http://studymore.org.uk/xfre1910.htm
With references in the
text to (Freud, S. 1909/1910 par. -)
ABC Referencing
includes general advice on referencing internet sources
Study
Link
Andrew Roberts' web Study Guide
Top
of
Page
Take a Break - Read a Poem
Click coloured words to go where you
want
Andrew Roberts likes to hear from users:
To contact him, please
use the Communication
Form