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.
The Analysis of the Transference
We have already seen that the transference brings about difficulties, because the personality of the physician is assimilated with the image of the patient’s parents. The first part of the analysis, the investigation of the patient’s complexes, is rather easy, chiefly because a man is relieved by ridding himself of his secrets, difficulties and pains. In the second place, he experiences a peculiar satisfaction from at last finding some one who shows interest in all those things to which nobody hitherto would listen. It is very agreeable to find a person, who tries to understand him, and does not shrink back. In the third place, the expressed intention of the physician, to understand him and to follow him through all his erring ways, pathetically affects the patient. The feeling of being understood is especially sweet to the solitary souls who are forever longing for “understanding.” In this they are insatiable. The beginning of the analysis is for these reasons fairly easy and simple. The improvement so easily gained, and the sometimes striking change in the patient’s condition of health are a great temptation to the psychoanalytic beginner to slip into a therapeutic optimism and an analytical superficiality, neither of which would correspond to the seriousness and the difficulties of the situation. The trumpeting of therapeutic successes is nowhere more contemptible than in psychoanalysis, for no one is better able to understand than a psychoanalyst how the so-called result of the therapy depends on the coöperation of nature and the patient himself. The psychoanalyst may rest content with possessing an advanced scientific insight. The prevailing psychoanalytic literature cannot be spared reproach that some of its works do give a false impression as to its real nature. There are therapeutical publications from which the uninitiated receive the impression that psychoanalysis is more or less a clever trick, with astonishing effects. The first part of analysis, where we try to understand, and which, as we have seen before, offers much relief to the patient’s feelings, is responsible for these illusions. These incidental benefits help the phenomenon of transference. The patient has long felt the need of help to free him from his inward isolation and his lack of self-understanding. So he gives way to his transference, after first struggling against it. For a neurotic person, the transference is an ideal situation. He himself makes no effort, and nevertheless another person meets him halfway, with an apparent affectionate understanding; does not even get annoyed or leave off his patient endeavors, although he himself is sometimes stubborn and makes childish resistances. By this means the strongest resistances are melted away, for the interest of the physician meets the need of a better adaptation to extra-familial reality. The patient obtains, through the transference, not only his parents, who used to bestow great attention upon him, but in addition he gets a relationship outside the family, and thus fulfils a necessary duty of life. The therapeutical success so often to be seen at the same time fortifies the patient’s belief that this new-gained situation is an excellent one. Here we can easily understand that the patient is not in the least inclined to abandon this newly-found advantage. If it depended upon him, he would be forever associated with his physician. In consequence, he begins to produce all kinds of phantasies, in order to find possible ways of maintaining the association with his physician. He makes the greatest resistances towards his physician, when the latter tries to dissolve the transference. At the same time, we must not forget that for our patients the acquisition of a relationship outside the family is one of the most important duties of life, and one, moreover, which up to this moment they had failed or but very imperfectly succeeded in accomplishing. I must oppose myself energetically to the view that we always mean by this relationship outside the family, a sexual relation in its popular sense. This is the misunderstanding fallen into by so many neurotic people, who believe that a right attitude toward reality is only to be found by way of concrete sexuality. There are even physicians, not psychoanalysts, who are of the same conviction. But this is the primitive adaptation which we find among uncivilized people under primitive conditions. If we lend uncritical support to this tendency of neurotic people to adapt themselves in an infantile way, we just encourage them in the infantilism from which they are suffering. The neurotic patient has to learn that higher adaptation which is demanded by life from civilized and grown-up people. Whoever has a tendency to sink lower, will proceed to do so; for this end he does not need psychoanalysis. But we must be careful not to fall into the opposite extreme and believe that we can create by analysis great personalities. Psychoanalysis stands above traditional morality. It follows no arbitrary moral standard. It is only a means to bring to light the individual trends, and to develop and harmonize them as perfectly as possible.
Analysis must be a biological method, that is, a method which tries to connect the highest subjective well-being with the most valuable biological activity. The best result for a person who passes through analysis, is that he becomes at the end what he really is, in harmony with himself, neither bad nor good, but an ordinary human being. Psychoanalysis cannot be considered a method of education, if by education is understood the possibility of shaping a tree to a highly artificial form. But whoever has the higher conception of education will most prize that educational method which can cultivate a tree so that it shall fulfil to perfection its own natural conditions of growth. We yield too much to the ridiculous fear that we are at bottom quite impossible beings, and that if everyone were to appear as he really is a dreadful social catastrophe would result. The individualistic thinkers of our day insist on understanding by “people as they really are,” only the discontented, anarchistic and egotistic element in humanity; they quite forget that this same humanity has created those well-established forms of our civilization which possess greater strength and solidity than all the anarchistic under-currents.
When we try to dissolve the transference we have to fight against powers which have not only neurotic value, but also universal normal significance. When we try to bring the patient to the dissolution of his transference, we are asking more from him than is generally asked of the average man; we ask that he should subdue himself wholly. Only certain religions have made such a claim on humanity, and it is this demand which makes the second part of analysis so difficult.
The technique that we have to employ for the analysis of the transference is exactly the same as that before described. Naturally the problem as to what the patient must do with the libido which is now withdrawn from the physician comes to the fore. Here again, there is great danger for the beginner, as he will be inclined to suggest, or to give suggestive advice. This would be extremely pleasant for the patient in every respect, and therefore fatal.
The Problem of Self-Analysis
I think here is the place to say something about the indispensable conditions of the psychology of the psychoanalyst himself. Psychoanalysis is by no means an instrument applied to the patient only; it is self-evident that it must be applied to the psychoanalyst first. I believe that it is not only a moral, but a professional duty also, for the physician to submit himself to the psychoanalytic process, in order to clean his mind from his own unconscious interferences. Even if he is entitled to trust to his own personal honesty, that will not suffice to save him from the misleading influences of his own unconscious. The unconscious is unknown, even to the most frank and honest person. Without analysis the physician will inevitably be blindfolded in all those places where he meets his own complexes; this is a situation of dangerous importance in the analysis of transference. Do not forget that the complexes of a neurotic are only the complexes of all human beings, the psychoanalyst included. Through the interference of your own hidden wishes you will do the greatest harm to your patients. The psychoanalyst must never forget that the final aim of psychoanalysis is the personal freedom and moral independence of the patient.