VII
From Dr. Loÿ.
10th February, 1913.
You write that a solid knowledge of the psychoanalytic literature is necessary for initiation into psychoanalysis. I should agree, but with a certain reservation: the more one reads, the more one notices how many contradictions there are among the different writers, and less and less does one know—until one has had sufficient personal experience—to which view to give adherence, since quite frequently assertions are made without any proof. For example, I had thought (strengthened in the view by my own experience of suggestion-therapy) that the transference to the doctor might be an essential condition in the patient's cure. But you write: "We psychoanalysts do not build upon the patient's faith, rather do we have to deal with his criticism." And Stekel writes, on the other hand (Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, 3rd year, vol. IV., p. 176, "Ausgänge der psychoanalytischen Kuren"): "Love for the doctor can become a power essential to recovery. Neurotics never get well for love of themselves. They recover out of love for the doctor. They give him that pleasure." Here again, surely, stress is laid on the power of suggestion? And yet Stekel too thinks he is a psychoanalyst pure and simple. On the other hand, you say in your letter of Jan. 20th that "the doctor's personality is one of the main factors in the cure." Should not this expression be translated: "When the doctor inspires respect in the patient and is worthy of his love, the patient will gladly follow his example and endeavour to recover from his neurosis and fulfil his human duties in the widest sense"? I think one can only emerge from all this uncertainty by means of much personal experience, which will indicate also which way best suits one's own personality and brings the greatest therapeutic success. This is a further reason for undergoing analysis oneself, to recognise fully what one is. I was decidedly in agreement with your definition of psychoanalysis in its first (negative) portion: psychoanalysis is neither an anamnesis nor a method of examination after the fashion of a test for intelligence, nor yet a psychocatharsis. In your second (positive) part, however, your definition: "Psychoanalysis is a method of discovering the line of least resistance to the harmonious development of the whole personality," seems to me valid for the patient's inertia, but not for the releasing of the sublimated libido with a view to the new direction of life. You consider that the neurosis causes a lack of singleness of aim in life, because opposing tendencies hinder psychic adaptation. True, but will not this psychic adaptation eventuate quite differently according as the patient, when well, directs his life either to the avoidance of pain merely (line of least resistance) or to the achievement of the greatest pleasure?—In the first case he would be more passive, he would merely reconcile himself "to the emptiness of reality" (Stekel, loc. cit., p. 187). In the second he would be "filled with enthusiasm" for something or other or some person or other. But what will determine this choice of his as to whether he will be passive rather than active in his "second life"? In your view, will the determining factor manifest itself spontaneously in the course of the analysis, and must the doctor carefully avoid swaying the balance to one side or other by his influence? Or must he, if he does not renounce the right to canalise the patient's libido in some particular direction, renounce the right to be called a psychoanalyst, and is he to be regarded as "moderate" or altogether as "wild"?[181] (Cf. Furtmüller, "Wandlungen in der Freudschen Schule," Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, vols. IV., V., 3rd year, p. 191.) But I think you have already answered this question, since in your last letter you write: "Every interference on the part of the analyst is a gross mistake in technique. So-called chance is the law and the order of psychoanalysis." But, torn from its context, perhaps this does not quite give your whole meaning. With regard to detailed explanation of the psychoanalytic method before the beginning of the analysis, I think you agree with Freud and Stekel: give too little rather than too much. For the knowledge instilled into a patient remains more or less half-knowledge, and half-knowledge engenders "the desire to know better" (than the analyst), which only impedes progress. So, after brief explanation, first "let the patient talk," then and there point out connexions, then after the exhaustion of the conscious material, take dreams.
But there another difficulty confronts me which I have already pointed out in our talks: you find the patient adapting himself to the doctor's tone, language, jargon, whether from conscious imitation, transference, or even resistance, when he can fight the analyst with his own weapons; how then can you possibly prevent his beginning to produce all manner of phantasies as supposedly real traumata of early childhood, and dreams supposedly spontaneous which are in reality, though not designedly, directly or indirectly suggested? I then told you that Forel ("Der Hypnotismus") made his patients dream just what he wanted, and I have myself easily repeated the experiment. But if the analyst desires to suggest nothing, should he remain silent for the most part and let the patient speak—except that in interpreting dreams he may lay before the patient his own interpretation?