Confession and Psychoanalysis
Before we enter into a more detailed consideration of this practical part of psychoanalysis, I should like to mention a parallelism between the first part of psychoanalysis and a historical institution of our civilization. It is not difficult to guess this parallelism. We find it in the religious institution called confession. By nothing are people more cut off from fellowship with others than by a secret borne about within them. It is not that a secret actually cuts off a person from communicating with his fellows, yet somehow personal secrets which are zealously guarded do have this effect. “Sinful” deeds and thoughts, for instance, are the secrets which separate one person from another. Great relief is therefore gained by confessing them. This relief is due to the re-admission of the individual to the community. His loneliness, which was so difficult to bear, ceases. Herein lies the essential value of the confession. But this confession means at the same time, through the phenomenon of transference and its unconscious phantasies, that the individual becomes tied to his confessor. This was probably instinctively intended by the Church. The fact that perhaps the greater part of humanity wants to be guided, justifies the moral value attributed to this institution by the Church. The priest is furnished with all the attributes of paternal authority, and upon him rests the obligation to guide his congregation, just as a father guides his children. Thus the priest replaces the parents and to a certain extent frees his people from their infantile bonds. In so far as the priest is a highly moral personality, with a nobility of soul, and an adequate culture, this institution may be commended as a splendid instance of social control and education, which served humanity during the space of two thousand years. So long as the Christian Church of the Middle Ages was capable of being the guardian of culture and science, in which rôle her success was, in part, due to her wide toleration of the secular element, confession was an admirable method for the education of the people. But confession lost its greatest value, at least for the more educated, as soon as the Church was unable to maintain her leadership over the more emancipated portion of the community and became incapable, through her rigidity, of following the intellectual life of the nations.
The more highly educated men of to-day do not want to be guided by a belief or a rigid dogma; they want to understand. Therefore, they put aside everything that they do not understand, and the religious symbol is very little accessible for general understanding. The sacrificium intellectus is an act of violence, to which the moral conscience of the highly developed man is opposed. But in a large number of cases, transference to, and dependence upon the analyst could be considered as a sufficient end, with a definite therapeutic effect, if the analyst were in every respect a great personality, capable and competent to guide the patients given into his charge and to be a father of his people. But a modern, mentally-developed person desires to guide himself, and to stand on his own feet. He wants to take the helm in his own hands; the steering has too long been done by others. He wants to understand; in other words, he wants to be a grown-up person. It is much easier to be guided, but this no longer suits the well-educated of the present time, for they feel the necessity of the moral independence demanded by the spirit of our time. Modern humanity demands moral autonomy. Psychoanalysis has to allow this claim, and refuses to guide and to advise. The psychoanalytic physician knows his own shortcomings too well, and therefore cannot believe that he can be father and leader. His highest ambition must only consist in educating his patients to become independent personalities, and in freeing them from their unconscious dependency within infantile limitations. Psychoanalysis has therefore to analyze the transference, a task left untouched by the priest. In so doing, the unconscious dependence upon the physician is cut off, and the patient is put upon his own feet; this at least is the end at which the physician aims.