Sigmund
Freud and Hypnosis
Sigmund Freud 's lectures at
Clark University occurred at almost exactly the
midpoint of his long and prolific career. By then
Sigmund Freud had already developed most of the truly
foundational ideas of psychoanalysis in a series of major
publications, which he attempted briefly to abstract in
his five lectures. Still, some important details and
elaborations of the basic theory remained to be worked
out, and Sigmund Freud devoted much of the rest of his
career to this project. This commentary will begin by
describing Sigmund Freud 's background and then
specifying the major works he had completed prior to the
lectures in 1909; it will conclude with a brief summary
of the major developments in his work and thought during
the remainder of his career.
Early Life
Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May
1856 in the town of Freiburg in the AustroHungarian
Empire (now called Prîbor and part of the Czech
Republic). In 1860 his father, a Jewish wool merchant of
modest means, moved the family to Vienna, where Sigmund
Freud remained until the final year of his long life
The family constellation was
unusual in that Sigmund Freud 's father was much older
than his mother, and in a previous marriage had had two
sons who were roughly the same age as Sigmund Freud 's
mother. One of these halfbrothers had a son -
Sigmund Freud 's nephew - who was older than Sigmund
Freud himself. Sigmund Freud was the first of his
mother's eight children, and so grew up as the oldest -
and most favored child within his immediate family
household. Some have speculated that this unusual
situation may have particularly sensitized Sigmund Freud
to family dynamics such as those he later emphasized in
formulating the Oedipus Complex.
Be that as it may, young Sigmund
Freud became a brilliant and ambitious student, standing
at or near the top of his class at school with particular
interests in history and literature. A chance hearing of
a lecture on nature during his final year of secondary
school turned his attention toward science, and led to
his almost impulsive enrollment in the University of
Vienna's medical school in 1873. There, after a brief but
intense involvement in the "act psychology" promoted by
his philosophy professor Franz Brentano (1838-1917), his
imagination was captured by the new, "mechanistic
physiology" promoted by his physiology teacher, Ernst
Brücke (1819-1892). According to this view, all
physiological processes, no matter how complex, had to be
accounted for "mechanistically" in terms of ordinary
physical and chemical laws. Sigmund Freud worked
enthusiastically and productively in Brücke's
laboratory for six years, publishing several papers on
neuroanatomy, and hoping eventually to pursue a career as
a research physiologist rather than as a practicing
physician. In the early 1880s, however, he reluctantly
concluded that an academic research career would not be
possible for an impecunious Jew in anti-Semitic Vienna.
He would have to practice medicine after all, and so he
went to the General Hospital for clinical training.
If in what follows I bring any
contribution to the history of the psychoanalytic
movement nobody must be surprised at the subjective
nature of this paper, nor at the role which falls to me
therein. For psychoanalysis is my creation; for ten years
I was the only one occupied with it, and all the
annoyance which this new subject caused among my
contemporaries has been hurled upon my head in the form
of criticism. Even today, when I am no longer the only
psychoanalyst, I feel myself justified in assuming that
none can know better than myself what psychoanalysis is,
wherein it differs from other methods of investigating
the psychic life, what its name should cover, or what
might better be designated as something else.
In the year 1909, when I was
first privileged to speak publicly on psychoanalysis in
an American University, fired by this momentous occasion
for my endeavors, I declared that it was not myself who
brought psychoanalysis into existence. I said that it was
Josef Breuer, who had merited this honor at a time when I
was a student and busy working for my examinations
(1880-1882).1 Since then, well-intentioned friends have
frequently repeated that I then expressed my gratitude
out of all due proportion
They considered that, as on
previous occasions, I should have dignified Breuer's
"cathartic procedure" as merely preliminary to
psychoanalysis, and should have claimed that
psychoanalysis itself only began with my rejection of the
hypnotic technique and my introduction of free
association. Now it is really a matter of indifference
whether the history of psychoanalysis be considered to
have started with the cathartic method or only with my
modification of 2 the same. I only enter into this
uninteresting question because some opponents of
psychoanalysis are wont to recall, now and then, that the
art of psychoanalysis did not originate with me at all,
but with Breuer. Naturally, this only happens to be the
case when their attitude permits them to find in
psychoanalysis something that is noteworthy; ion the
other hand when their repudiation of psychoanalysis is
unlimited, then psychoanalysis is always indisputably my
creation. I have never yet heard that Breuer's great part
in psychoanalysis has brought him an equal measure of
insult and reproach. As I have recognized long since that
it is the inevitable fate of psychoanalysis to arouse
opposition and to embitter people, I have come to the
conclusion that I must surely be the originator of all
that characterizes psychoanalysis. I add, with
satisfaction, that none of the attempts to belittle my
share in this much disdained psychoanalysis has ever come
from Breuer himself, or could boast of his
support.
The content of Breuer's
discovery has been so often presented that a detailed
discussion of it here may be omitted. Its fundamental
fact is that the symptoms of hysterical patients depend
upon impressive but forgotten scenes in their lives
(traumata)
The therapy founded thereon was
to cause the patients to recall and reproduce these
experiences under hypnosis and hypnotherapy (catharsis),
and the fragmentary theory, deduced from it was that
these symptoms corresponded to an abnormal use of
undischarged sums of excitement (conversion). In his
theoretical contribution to the "Studies of Hysteria"
Breuer, wherever obliged to mention conversion, has
always added my name in parenthesis, as though this first
attempt at a theoretical formulation was my mental
property. I think this allotment refers only to the
nomenclature, whilst the conception itself occurred to us
both at the same time.
It is also well known that
Breuer, after his first experience with it, allowed the
cathartic treatment to rest for a number of years and
only resumed it after I caused him to do so, on my return
from Charcot. He was then an internist and taken up with
a rather busy medical practice. I had become a physician
quite reluctantly 3 but had, at that time, received a
strong motive for desiring to help nervous patients or,
at least, to learn to understand something of their
conditions. I had placed reliance on physical therapy and
found myself helpless in the face of disappointments that
came to me with W. Erb's "Electrotherapy," so rich in
advice and indications. If I did not, at that time, pilot
myself independently to the opinion later announced by
Moebius, that the successes of electrotherapy in nervous
disorders are the results of suggestion, it was surely
only the absence of these successes that was to blame
The treatment by suggestion in
deep hypnosis and hypnotherapy seemed to offer me at that
time sufficient compensation for the lost electrical
therapy. I learned this treatment through the extremely
impressive demonstrations of Liébault and
Bernheim. But the investigation under hypnosis and
hypnotherapy with which I became acquainted through
Breuer, I found, owing to its automatic manner of working
and the simultaneous gratification of one's eagerness for
knowledge, much more attractive than the monotonous and
violent suggestive command which was devoid of every
possibility of inquiry.
As one of the latest
achievements of psychoanalysis, we have lately been
admonished to put the actual conflict and the cause of
the illness into the foreground of analysis. This is
exactly what Breuer and I did in the beginning of our
work with the cathartic method. We guided the patient's
attention directly to the traumatic scene during which
the symptom had arisen, tried to find therein the psychic
conflict and to free the repressed affect. We thus
discovered the procedure characteristic of the psychic
processes of the neuroses which I later named regression
The associations of the patients
went back from the scene to be explained, to earlier
experiences, and this forced the analysis which was to
correct the present to occupy itself with the past. This
regression led even further backwards: At first it went
quite regularly to the time of puberty. Later, however,
such failures as gaps in the understanding tempted the
analytic work further back into the years of childhood
which ;had, hitherto, been inaccessible to every sort of
investigation. This regressive direction became an
important characteristic of the 4 analysis. It was proved
that psychoanalysis could not clear up anything actual,
except by going back to something in the past. It even
proved that every pathological experience presupposes an
earlier one which, though not in itself pathological,
lent a pathological quality to the later occurrence. But
the temptation to stop short at the known actual cause
was so great that even in later analyses I yielded to it.
In the case of the patient called "Dora," carried out in
1899, the scene which caused the outbreak of the actual
illness was known to me. I tried uncounted times to
analyse this experience, but all that I could receive to
my direct demands was the same scanty and broken
description. Only after a long detour, which led through
the earliest childhood of the patient, a dream appeared
in the analysis of which the hitherto forgotten details
of the scene were remembered, and this made possible the
understanding and solution of the actual conflict. From
this one example it may be seen how misleading is the
above mentioned admonition and how much of a scientific
regression it is to follow the advice of neglecting the
regression in the analytic technique.
The first difference of opinion
between Breuer and myself came to light on a question of
the more intimate psychic mechanism of hysteria. He still
favored a physiological theory, so to speak, and wished
to explain the psychic splitting of consciousness of
hysterical subjects by means of the non-communication of
various psychic states (or states of consciousness, as we
then called them). He thus created the theory of the
"hypnoid states," the results of which were supposed to
bring the unassimilated foreign body into the "waking
consciousness." I had formulated this to myself less
scientifically. I suspected everywhere tendencies and
strivings analogous to those of everyday life and
conceived the psychic splitting itself as a result of a
repelling process, which I then called "defense" and
later "regression." I made a short-lived attempt to
reconcile both mechanisms, but as experience showed me
always the same and only one thing, my defense theory, I
soon became opposed to Breuer's theory of hypnoid states.
5
I am, however, quite certain
that this difference of opinion had nothing to do with
the parting of the ways which occurred soon afterward
between us
The latter had a deeper reason,
but it happened in such a manner that at first I did not
understand it, and only later did I learn to interpret
it, following many good indexes. It will be recalled that
Breuer had stated, concerning his first famous patient,
that the sexual element had been astonishingly
undeveloped in her and had never contributed anything to
her very marked morbid picture.[2 I have always
wondered why the critics of my theory of the sexual
etiology of the neuroses have not often opposed it with
this assertion of Breuer, and up to this day I do not
know whether in this reticence I am to see a proof of
their discretion, or of their lack of observation.
Whoever will reread the history of Breuer's patient in
the light of the experience gained in the last twenty
years, will have no difficulty in understanding the
symbolism of the snakes and of the arm. By taking into
account also the situation at the sick-bed of the father,
he will easily guess the actual meaning of that
symptom-formation, His opinion as to the part sexuality
played in the psychic life of that girl will then differ
greatly from that of her physician. To cure the patient
Breuer utilized the most intensive suggestive rapport
which may serve us as prototype of that which we call
"transference." Now I have strong grounds to suppose that
Breuer, after the disposal of the symptoms, must have
discovered the sexual motivity of this transference by
new signs, but that the general nature of this unexpected
phenomenon escaped him, so that here, as though hit by
"an untoward event," he broke off the investigation. I
did not obtain from him any direct information of this,
but at different times he has given me sufficient
connecting links to justify me in making this
combination. And then, as I stood more and more decidedly
for the significance of sexuality in the causation of the
neuroses, Breuer was the first to show me those reactions
of unwilling rejection, with which it was my lot to
become so familiar later on, but which I had then not yet
recognized as my unavoidable destiny. 6
The fact that a grossly sexual,
tender or inimical, transference occurs in every
treatment of a neurosis, although this was neither
desired nor induced by either party, has, for me, always
seemed to be the most unshakable proof that the forces of
the neuroses originate in the sexual life. This argument
has surely not been seriously enough considered, for if
it were, there would be no question as to where the
investigation would tend. For my own conviction, it has
remained decisive over and above the special results of
the work of the analysis.
Some comfort for the bad
reception which my theory of the sexual etiology of the
neuroses met with, even in the closer circle of my
friends--a negative space was soon formed about my person
-- I found in the thought that I had taken up the fight
for a new and original idea. One day, however, my
memories grouped themselves in such a way that this
satisfaction was disturbed, but in return I obtained an
excellent insight into the origin of our activities and
into the nature of our knowledge
The idea for which I was held
responsible had not at all originated with me. It had
come to me from three persons, whose opinions could count
upon my deepest respect; from Breuer himself, from
Charcot, and from Chrobak, the gynecologist of our
university, probably the most prominent of our Vienna
physicians. All three men had imparted to me an insight
which, strictly speaking, they had not themselves
possessed. Two of them denied their communication to me
when later I re mind and the subconcious mind ed them of
this: the third (Master Charcot) might also have done so,
had it been granted me to see him again. But these
identical communications, received without my grasping
them, had lain dormant within me, until one day they
awoke as an apparently original discovery.
There, Sigmund Freud 's prior
neurophysiological interests naturally led him to the
psychiatry clinic directed by the famous brain anatomist
Theodore Meynert (1833-1893). Under Meynert's direction,
Sigmund Freud became unusually adept at diagnosing
organic brain disorders, particularly the effects of
localized injuries. He now developed ambitions of
specializing in this field, and as Meynert's best student
he won a fellowship enabling him to travel to Paris and
study with the great French neurologist Jean Charcot
(1825-1893) for six months beginning in November of 1885.
Charcot had made his reputation by studying "orthodox"
neurological conditions such as polio and multiple
sclerosis, but when Sigmund Freud encountered him he
happened to be deep into the study of hysteria. As
Sigmund Freud relates in the first of his Clark lectures,
hysterical symptoms often resemble in some ways the
effects of localized brain injuries, but occur in the
absence of such injuries. Most physicians of the time
dismissed hysteria as malingering and did not take it
seriously, but Charcot believed it was a real condition
caused by generalized (as opposed to localized) weakness
of the nervous system, and closely related to the
susceptibility to hypnosis and hypnotherapy. As Sigmund
Freud suggests at the beginning of his second lecture,
Charcot's specific theory proved to be incorrect. But
with his great prestige he helped elevate the previously
"disreputable" subjects of hysteria and hypnosis and
hypnotherapy to scientific respectability, and introduced
Sigmund Freud to their serious and systematic study. This
proved crucial to Sigmund Freud after he returned to
Vienna and tried to establish himself in private
practice.
Studies on Hysteria
Given a choice, Sigmund Freud
would have specialized exclusively in "ordinary"
neurological diseases and brain injuries, and in fact he
wrote some very well received works on aphasia and
infantile cerebral palsy. He found he could not attract
enough patients of this type to make a living, however,
and somewhat reluctantly, began accepting patients with
hysterical symtoms. At first, his therapeutic
armamentarium for such cases was sparse, consisting
mainly of "hydrotherapy" (the prescription of warm or
cold baths) and "electrotherapy" (mild electrical
stimulations of the afflicted body parts). These worked
very imperfectly, and much more because of the power of
suggestion than any inherent physical effects. Then
Sigmund Freud tried direct hypnosis and hypnotherapy,
where patients were simply hypnotized and told that their
symptoms would disappear. This was an improvement, but
still far from perfect. Finally Sigmund Freud remembered
a case that had been described to him many years earlier,
before his fellowship with Charcot, by his older friend
Josef Breuer (1842-1925).
Breuer was a highly respected
Viennese physician who had supported Sigmund Freud
financially as well as morally when he was a struggling
medical student. Breuer sometimes had confided about his
own practice, including the case of Bertha Pappenheim
(18591936), a remarkable young woman with severe
hysterical symptoms. Breuer did not normally accept
hysterical patients, but the Pappenheims were family
friends and he agreed to do what he could for Bertha.
Over a period of several months, he and Bertha together
developed the basic, cathartic method of treatment that
Sigmund Freud sketched out in the first of his Clark
lectures. Under hypnosis and hypnotherapy, Bertha would
recall previously forgotten but emotionally charged
experiences related to the onset of her symptoms. Upon
remembering them and expressing the previously
pentup emotions associated with them - a process
Breuer and Sigmund Freud later called abreaction - the
symptoms disappeared
The treatment seemed effective,
and Pappenheim went on to have a distinguished career as
a social worker and activist for feminist causes. Towards
the end of the treatment, however, she had begun to
express a strong and irrational emotional attachment to
Breuer - a manifestation of what Sigmund Freud would
later call "transference." Breuer (and his wife) found
this very upsetting, and never again could he be
persuaded to treat a hysterical patient
The cathartic method was
forgotten and not used again until Sigmund Freud ,
launched upon his own practice several years later,
remembered being told about it and decided to try it out
for himself.
When he did so, he found it
better than anything else available, and treated a number
of patients with some success. In 1893 he persuaded the
reluctant Breuer to collaborate in writing a short,
"preliminary communication" describing the technique and
containing the famous summarizing statement that Sigmund
Freud repeated in the first Clark lecture: namely, that
"hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences." Two years
later the authors elaborated substantially on the
treatment method and its theory in a book entitled
Studies on Hysteria (Studien über Hysterie). This
contained five detailed case studies including that of
Bertha Pappenheim (disguised under the name, "Anna O."),
and four of Sigmund Freud 's early patients.
At the time Studies on Hysteria
was published, Sigmund Freud still confronted two
important problems - one practical and the other
theoretical
The practical issue arose
because not all hysterical patients could be hypnotized,
so a more widely applicable technique was necessary for
accessing their unconscious pathogenic ideas
The theoretical question was why
those ideas had become unconscious in the first place.
Sigmund Freud 's second lecture summarized his
interlinked efforts to solve those two problems - efforts
that he made without the collaboration of Breuer and that
are seen by many scholars as marking the real beginning
of Sigmund Freud ian "psychoanalysis." These efforts
culminated in the invention of free association: Patients
in the normal waking state (but still reclining with eyes
closed on the hypnotic subject's couch) were instructed
to let their mind and the subconscious mind s wander
freely to any and all thoughts aroused by their symptoms,
no matter how ridiculous seeming or anxiety arousing.
Although simple in principle, this procedure was
difficult in practice because the patients inevitably
experienced what Sigmund Freud called resistance - a
blocking, editing or censoring of their accounts that
could be overcome only with great persistence and
encouragement from the therapist. Sigmund Freud now
became convinced that pathogenic ideas became unconscious
because there was something fundamentally anxiety
arousing about them, so much so that they were actively
repressed from consciousness and the symptoms appeared in
their stead. Unconsciously, the patients seemed to have
made a decision that it was better to suffer the pain of
the symptom than that of thinking the thought
The symptom therefore
represented a defense against the conscious
acknowledgement of the thought.
At the same time he was
advancing his understanding of hysteria in these ways,
Sigmund Freud was also working energetically on an even
more ambitious theoretical project. He hoped to integrate
his new insights about hysteria with his earlier
knowledge of neurology, in constructing a comprehensive
theoretical model of the mind and the subconscious mind
The main result was 100 pages of
draft manuscript composed in late 1895, that Sigmund
Freud himself never published but that he sent to his
best friend and confidant Wilhelm Flies (1858-1928), a
physician in Berlin
The work, along with a treasure
trove of other draft manuscripts and letters sent to
Flies, came to light only after Sigmund Freud 's death.
Although the manuscript was untitled and privately
referred to by Sigmund Freud as his "Psychology for
Neurologists," his English translators called it the
Project for a Scientific Psychology. Employing the
mechanistic neurological terminology Sigmund Freud had
learned from Bruce and Meynert, this extraordinary work
presented his first systematic theory of how unconscious
and instinctually-driven processes presumably underlie
most psychological activity in general. Here Sigmund
Freud for the first time seriously considered the subject
of dreams. His neurologically oriented theory predicted
that dreams should show some structural properties
similar to hysterical symptoms, and also - momentously -
that they should often represent the symbolic
gratification of conflict laden wishes. Here was a
hypothesis that Sigmund Freud could put to a
psychological test by subjecting the content of dreams to
free association. When he did so dream analysis turned
out to be - as he put it in his third lecture - the via
regain ("royal road") to the unconscious.
Dream Interpretation and
Self-analysis
The first dream Sigmund Freud
analyzed by this new method was one of his own,
subsequently known as "The Dream of Irma's Injection." In
the dream, Sigmund Freud was at a gathering at which
"Irma," one of his own patients in real life, fell ill
after being given an injection of propel (a ridiculous
medical procedure) by one of his colleagues; then Sigmund
Freud vividly saw before him the formula for the
chemically related substance trimethylamin, printed in
heavy type. Like the content of so many dreams, this
experience was disjointed, somewhat bizarre, and made no
obvious sense. When Sigmund Freud free associated to this
directly experienced but nonsensical content of the
dream, however, a series of unsuspected ideas emerged
that did make sense. These included the recollection that
his best friend Fliess (not the doctor from the dream)
had been dangerously negligent in a real operation
Sigmund Freud had asked him to perform on Irma in real
life. Sigmund Freud also recalled a recent conversation
with Fleiss in which they had speculated about the role
of trimethylamin in the chemistry of the body's sexual
processes. These recollections in turn led to a whole
welter of conflict-laden thoughts and wishes regarding
both Fliess and Irma - feelings of resentment and anger
towards his best friend, and of a certain sexual
attraction between himself and his patient, for example.
Many of these thoughts were anxiety arousing and
difficult to accept, but Sigmund Freud felt forced to
acknowledge that they were true, that they made sense,
and that they therefore constituted the "real" motivation
and meaning of his dream.
Sigmund Freud soon became
convinced that virtually any dream could be interpreted
in much the same way, and moreover could be shown to have
some remarkable similarities to hysterical symptoms. When
the remembered dream experience, referred to by Sigmund
Freud as its manifest content, was subjected to free
association in the same way that hysterical patients'
symptoms were, a previously unconscious latent content
was revealed. This latent content seemed to stand in many
of the same relationships to the manifest content that
unconscious pathogenic ideas stood to hysterical
symptoms. In both instances the conscious products were
psychologically "safer" - i.e., less anxiety arousing -
than the original unconscious ideas that had to be
recovered through free association. Further, individual
symptoms and manifest dream images both seemed to
represent several different unconscious ideas at once;
e.g., a whole group of different pathogenic ideas often
underlay a single hysterical symptom, just as a large
number of complexly interrelated ideas had been
associated with Sigmund Freud 's brief dream sequence of
Irma's injection. Sigmund Freud called this phenomenon
over determination in the case of symptoms and
condensation in the dreams.
A fluent recalled of his own
dreams, Sigmund Freud now he became his own best subject
in psychoanalytical research. And after his father died
in 1896, he also literally became his own patient. Even
though the death had been expected for some time it
precipitated a severe personal crisis in which Sigmund
Freud felt as if he had been "torn up by the roots."
Attempting to cure himself by the method he had
previously developed for his patients, he began
systematically subjecting the manifest content of his
dreams to free association. This was the famous
self-analysis, regarded by many of Sigmund Freud 's
followers as his greatest and most heroic accomplishment.
Following as best as he could
his rule of allowing his associations to go where they
would without censorship, Sigmund Freud discerned within
himself a number of consciously very uncomfortable ideas
and memories. In particular, he detected a constellation
of attitudes and impulses dating from childhood, when -
he was forced to believe - he had wished for the
exclusive possession of his mother as a source of
sensual, "sexual" gratification, and for he removal or
"death" of his father, whom he perceived as the main
rival for that gratification
The words "sexual" and "death"
have been enclosed in quotation marks here because they
represent those concepts as understood by Sigmund Freud
as a young child, differing from his mature understanding
of the terms. But Sigmund Freud had no doubt that these
childhood attitudes were the genuine precursors and
originating points for the adult concepts. So here,
within himself, was the original evidence for the Oedipus
complex which he soon came to view as a nearly inevitable
consequence of any child's development, and which he
elaborated upon in his fourth lecture at Clark.
This self-knowledge helped
Sigmund Freud to solve a problem that had arisen in his
understanding and treatment of hysteria. Previously, he
had been increasingly impressed by the regularity with
which his patients' associations had led to "memories" of
a sexual nature, dating from childhood. Surprisingly
often, these remembered scenes entailed sexual abuse,
usually at the hands of a parent. Indeed, Sigmund Freud
in 1896 had published papers proclaiming a seduction
theory of hysteria: namely, that childhood sexual abuse
was a necessary precondition for the illness. Presumably
the experiences had not been perceived as "sexual" by the
immature children at the time of their occurrence, but
after the onset of puberty their memories became
disturbingly charged with new meaning and "sexualized
after the fact," causing them to be repressed from normal
consciousness. Thus they became pathogenic ideas.
This theory was not well
received, as one eminent Viennese physician called it "a
scientific fairy tale." And soon, Sigmund Freud himself
began to have doubts about it. He confessed to Fliess in
late 1897 that in too many cases the uncovering of these
"memories" failed to produce the expected symptom relief,
and that in too many cases contrary evidence suggested
they could not be literally true. Even in Sigmund Freud
's own family a sibling had developed hysterical
symptoms, and if his theory were correct it would point
to his own father as a child abuser. This just did not
ring true.
Sigmund Freud 's self-analysis
and postulation of the Oedipus complex pointed to a
possible resolution. His discovery of traces of childhood
sexuality in himself suggested that these might be
universal, and that the traditional definition of
"sexuality" should be revised. Instead of being a highly
specific, genitally and heterosexually oriented instinct
to copulate and reproduce, "sexuality" should be thought
of as a highly general drive for sensual gratification of
many different kinds, present in all individuals from
infancy onwards. Under this new conception, an infant is
born in a state of "polymorphous perversity," capable of
"sexual" gratification via various autoerotic and
non-reproductive activities such as those highlighted by
Sigmund Freud in his fourth lecture. By the time the
child reaches the age of five or six, many of these
pleasures arouse condemnation from parents and society,
and thus cause such severe anxiety that the urges for
them must be repressed into unconsciousness. They do not
disappear, however, but remain in the unconscious waiting
for opportunities to be expressed indirectly - not only
in dreams but also, in some cases, as hysterical
symptoms. Hysterical pathogenic ideas, like the
disturbing latent content of many dreams, could be
interpreted as disguised representations of childhood
wishes rather than actual experiences.
With his increasing sense of the
pervasiveness of unconscious motivation, and with free
association available as a technique for revealing it,
Sigmund Freud turned his attention to diverse phenomena
such as jokes and mistakes (or "slips"). As he argues in
the third lecture, these psychic creations apparently are
not random, but like symptoms or dreams they express by
allusion wishful ideas that are too dangerous or
embarrassing to be directly stated.
While treating his patients,
Sigmund Freud gradually came to place as much emphasis on
the analysis of their dreams as on their symptoms. Dreams
often provided more detailed and useful insight than
symptoms did into the patients' underlying personality
dynamics. And to his surprise, Sigmund Freud discovered
that frequently the latent content of his patients'
dreams entailed unconscious fantasies about himself, and
that those fantasies recreated many of the crucial
Oedipal and other conflict laden relationships the
patients had had with important figures in their lives.
Here was the phenomenon of transference, which Sigmund
Freud discussed in his fifth lecture (where the term was
translated as "transfer") as one of the most important
aspects of the relationship between patient and
psychoanalyst.
Sigmund Freud 's Major Works
In essence, Sigmund Freud 's
five lectures abstracted the contents of six important
longer works he had published prior to 1909. Studies on
Hysteria, published with Breuer in 1895, gave a complete
account of the two men's pioneering work on hysteria. A
detailed presentation of Sigmund Freud 's dream theory
appeared in The Interpretation of Dreams, a long book
published in late 1899 but dated 1900 by the publisher.
This contains many interpretations of Sigmund Freud 's
own dreams, and sheds incidental light on his
self-analysis. It closes with a theoretical chapter
drawing the implications of the dream theory for a
general model of the mind and the subconscious mind
which, although couched in completely psychological as
opposed to neurological terms, is clearly the successor
of the Project. Sigmund Freud himself always regarded
this as his single most important book. 1901 saw the
first publication of The Psychopathology of Everyday
Life, in which Sigmund Freud detailed the evidence in
favor of unconsciously motivated mistakes or " Sigmund
Freud ian slips." One of his most popular works, this
originally appeared as a long article in a medical
journal but was reprinted as a separate book in 1904, and
subsequently expanded and revised in nine further
editions over the next twenty years
The three other major
publications all appeared in 1905: Sigmund Freud 's
analysis of humor and wit in Jokes and their Relationship
to the Unconscious; his broadened and revolutionary
theory of the sexual drive in Three Essays on the Theory
of Sexuality; and his account of the case that first
showed him the importance of transference in a long paper
entitled "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria."
All six of the above works,
while necessarily more technical and detailed than the
lectures that summarized them, were nonetheless addressed
to a relatively broad audience of general physicians and
intelligent laypeople, and so were very readable. Many of
Sigmund Freud 's works that came after 1909 showed a
rather different quality, occasioned by the emerging
status of psychoanalysis as a movement. As was noted in
the Introduction, the Clark lectures represented a
watershed in Sigmund Freud 's career, marking the end of
his years of "splendid isolation" and the beginnings of
his leadership of an international organization. And even
though some of his early followers like Jung and Adler
soon broke with him to form rival psychodynamic schools
of their own, a much greater number became positively
attracted, joined the International Psycho-Analytical
Association and became self identified " Sigmund Freud
ians." Inevitably, this group of followers became the
intended audience for much of Sigmund Freud 's later
work. Now that he could take for granted his readers'
prior familiarity and basic sympathy with his views, his
writing inevitably became more specialized and technical
- and, it must be said, not nearly as enjoyable for the
ordinary reader. (Two notable exceptions to this,
intended as summaries of his theory for a general
audience, were Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
and An Outline of Psychoanalysis, published respectively
in 1916-17 and 1940.)
Among the more important of
Sigmund Freud 's technical writings were a series of
"Papers on Met psychology" from the mid-1910s, exploring
the fine points of repression and the unconscious. Other
works concerned the precise nature of the instinctual
drives. In the 1914 paper, "On Narcissism: An
Introduction," for example, Sigmund Freud postulated that
the sexual energy or libido could be directed not only
"outwards" towards external figures but also inwards
towards the self. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle
(1920), a controversial work that was not accepted by
some of his otherwise staunchest supporters, Sigmund
Freud posited an ultimately destructive "death instinct"
("Thanatos") in perpetual conflict with a sexually
oriented life instinct ("Eros").
In 1923, concern over some
technicalities in psychoanalytic terminology stimulated
Sigmund Freud to write The Ego and the Id. Previously he
had used the terms "unconscious" and "preconscious" both
as adjectives (e.g., to describe an "unconscious wish" or
a "preconscious memory") and as nouns (postulating "the
Unconscious" or "the Preconscious" as separate systems in
the psyche). But Sigmund Freud was troubled by the fact
that several of the important processes he had attributed
to the Preconscious system actually occurred
unconsciously, and that certain repressed components of
the Unconscious system were structured like preconscious
material. Thus he now renamed "the Unconscious" as the
id, and "the Preconscious" as the ego. Further, he had
become increasingly aware of situations when conflicts
between the instinctual drives and external reality are
further complicated by moral demands. For example,
sometimes one abstains from seeking a desired object, or
feels guilty at the very thought of doing so, simply out
of a feeling that it would be wrong. Sigmund Freud
reasoned that the source of this moral force in the
psyche was acquired rather than innate, since very young
children and some psychopathic adults lack it. It also
seemed to be based on some kind of unconscious
identification with authority figures from the developing
child's society, and to have a certain amount of
independent energy at its disposal to create feelings of
guilt. Accordingly, Sigmund Freud postulated the superego
as a separate entity in his new conception of the psyche,
the result of a childhood identification with the
same-sexed parent in the Oedipal relationship. Psychology
textbooks often begin their treatment of Sigmund Freud
and psychoanalysis by describing this famous
idegosuperego tracheotomy; seldom do they
acknowledge that this was actually a rather late
development in Sigmund Freud 's theory, and more a
response to technical details than to fundamental issues.
One of Sigmund Freud 's most
controversial papers, "Some Psychical Consequences of the
Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes" (1925),
hypothesized differences in the typical male and female
superego. Sigmund Freud argued that the discovery of
anatomical sex differences during childhood typically
leads to "penis envy" in the little girl, and "castration
anxiety" in the boy. Anxiety presumably constitutes a
stronger motive than envy does to repress Oedipal wishes
by identifying with the proscriptive aspects of the same
sexed parent; thus the boy develops a stronger superego,
and consequent moral sense, than the girl. Sigmund Freud
presented this view only tentatively, and it dealt with a
relatively technical detail of his theory. Like the death
instinct it was rejected by some of Sigmund Freud 's
closest followers, and he accepted their dissent with
equanimity. Personally, Sigmund Freud welcomed women as
professionals in the psychoanalytic movement, and was
relatively free of many of the typical male biases of his
time. Yet perhaps understandably, he acquired a public
reputation of being unfriendly to women following
publication of this paper.
Just prior to writing that
paper, Sigmund Freud had been diagnosed with mouth cancer
- a consequence of many years of heavy cigar smoking.
During the fourteen remaining years of his life he
underwent a long series of painful and disfiguring
operations. Although he confronted his situation
stoically, the tone of his writing became increasingly
philosophical and pessimistic
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
interpreted all religious beliefs as illusions or wishful
thinking based on childhood dependency, and Civilization
and its Discontents (1930) speculated that the
destructive aspects of Thanatos are likely to prevail in
the long run over the positive and creative urges of
Eros. And in a 1937 paper entitled "Analysis Terminable
and Interminable," Sigmund Freud concluded that no
individual can ever undergo a complete psychoanalysis -
that no matter how successfully "cured" one has been in
the past there is no guarantee that some new conflict may
arise and overwhelm the psyche's capacity for adaptive
compromise solutions.
In 1938, the Nazi occupation of
Vienna led Sigmund Freud and his immediate family to flee
to London for sanctuary. A year later at the age of 83,
and just before the horrors of World War II seemed to
justify his philosophical pessimism, he succumbed to his
long illness. Despite the controversy surrounding much of
his work, Sigmund Freud 's basic image of human beings as
creatures in conflict - with aspects of themselves as
well as with external circumstances - struck a responsive
chord. His fundamental concepts of repression and the
unconscious nature of much psychological activity have
become commonplace. In the words of the poet W. H. Auden,
by the end of his life Sigmund Freud had become not just
an important historical character, "but a whole climate
of opinion/ Under whom we conduct our differing lives."
I
One day, while I was a young
hospital doctor, I was accompanying Breuer on a walk
through the town when a man came up to him urgently
desiring to speak with him. I fell back and, when Breuer
was free again, he told me, in his kindly, teacher-like
manner, that this was the husband of a patient, who had
brought him some news about her
The wife, he added, behaved in
so conspicuous a manner 7 when in company, that she had
been turned over to him for treatment as a nervous case.
He ended with the remark -- "those are always secrets of
the alcove." Astonished, I asked his meaning and he
explained the expression to me ("secrets of the conjugal
bed"), without realizing how preposterous the matter
appeared to me.
A few years later, at one of
Charcot's evening receptions, I found myself near the
venerated teacher who was just relating to Brouardel a
very interesting history from the day's practice. I did
not hear the beginning clearly but gradually the story
obtained my attention. It was the case of a young married
couple from the far East
The wife was a great sufferer
and the husband was impotent, or exceedingly awkward. I
heard Charcot repeat: "Tâchez donc, je vous assure
vous y arriverez." Brouardel, who spoke less distinctly,
must have expressed his astonishment that symptoms as
those of the young wife should have appeared as a result
of such circumstances, for Charcot said suddenly and with
great vivacity And while saying that he crossed his hands
in his lap and jumped up and down several times, with the
vivacity peculiar to him. I know that for a moment I was
almost paralyzed with astonishment, and I said to myself:
"Yes, but if he knows this why does he never say so" But
the impression was soon forgotten; brain-anatomy and the
experimental production of hysterical paralysis absorbed
all my interests.
A year later when I had begun my
medical activities in Vienna as a private dozen in
nervous diseases I was as innocent and ignorant in all
that concerned the etiology of the neuroses as any
promising academician could be expected to be. One day I
received a friendly call from Chrobak, who asked me to
take a patient to whom he could not give sufficient time
in his new capacity as lecturer at the university. I
reached the patient before he did and learned that she
suffered from senseless attacks of anxiety, which could
only be alleviated by the most exact information as to
the whereabouts of her physician at any time in the day.
When Chrobak 8 appeared, he took me aside and disclosed
to me that the patient's anxiety was due to the fact that
though she had been married eighteen years, she was still
a virgo intacta, that her husband was utterly impotent.
In such cases the physician can only cover the domestic
mishap with his reputation and must bear it if people
shrug their shoulders and say of him: "He is not a good
doctor if in all these years, he has not been able to
cure her." He added: "The only prescription for such
troubles is the one well-known to us, but which we cannot
prescribe. It is:
Penis normalize
deism
Repeater !
I had never heard of such a
prescription and would like to have shaken my head at my
informant's cynicism.
I certainly have not uncovered
the illustrious origins of this vicious idea because I
would like to shove the responsibility for it on others.
I know well that it is one thing to express an idea once
or several times in the form of a rapid apercu, and quite
another to take it seriously and literally to lead it
through all opposing details and conquer for it a place
among accepted truths. It is the difference between a
light flirtation and a righteous marriage with all its
duties and difficulties. Epouser les idées de --
(to marry so and so's ideas,) is, at least in French, a
quite usual form of speech.
Other doctrines which were
contributed to the cathartic method through my efforts
thus transforming it into psychoanalysis, are the
following: The theories of repression and resistance, the
addition of the infantile sexuality, and the usage and
interpretation of dreams for the understanding of the
unconscious.
Concerning the theory of
repression, I was certain that I worked independently. I
knew of no influence that directed me in any way to it,
and I long considered this idea to be original, till O.
Rank showed us the place in Schopenhauer's "The World as
Will and Idea," where the philosopher is struggling for
an explanation for insanity.[3 9 What is there said
concerning the striving against the acceptance of a
painful piece of reality agrees so completely with the
content of my theory of repression that, once again, I
must be indebted to my not being well-read for the
possibility of making a discovery. To be sure, others
have read this passage and overlooked it, without making
this discovery and perhaps the same would have happened
to me, if, in former years, I had taken more pleasure in
reading philosophical authors. In later years I denied
myself the great pleasure of Nietzsche's works, with the
conscious motive of not wishing to be hindered in the
working out of my psychoanalytic impressions by any
preconceived ideas. Therefore, I had to he prepared --
and am so gladly -- to renounce all claim to priority in
those many cases in which the laborious psychoanalytic
investigation can only confirm the insights intuitively
won by the philosophers.
The theory of repression is the
main pillar upon which rests the edifice of
psychoanalysis. It is really the most essential part of
it, and is itself nothing other than the theoretical
expression of an experience which can be repeated at
pleasure whenever one analyzes a neurotic patient without
the aid of hypnosis and hypnotherapy. One is then
confronted with a resistance which opposes the analytic
work by causing a failure of memory in order to block it.
This resistance had to be covered by the use of hypnosis
and hypnotherapy; hence the history of psychoanalysis
proper only starts technically with the rejection of
hypnosis and hypnotherapy
The theoretical value of the
fact that this resistance is connected with an amnesia
leads unavoidably to that conception of the unconscious
psychic activities which is peculiar to psychoanalysis,
and distinguishes it markedly from the philosophical
speculations about the unconscious. It may, therefore, be
said that the psychoanalytic theory endeavors to explain
two experiences, which result in a striking and
unexpected manner during the attempt to trace back the
morbid symptoms of a neurotic to their source in his
life-history; viz., the facts of transference and of
resistance. Every investigation which recognizes these
two facts and makes them the starting points of its work
may call itself psychoanalysis, even if it lead to 10
other results than my own. But whoever takes up other
sides of the problem and deviates from these two
assumptions will hardly escape the charge of interfering
with the rights of ownership through attempted imitation,
if he insist upon calling himself a psychoanalyst.
I would very energetically
oppose any attempt to count the principles of repression
and resistance as mere assumptions instead of results of
psychoanalysis. Such assumptions of a general
psychological and biological nature exist, and it would
be quite to the point to deal with them in another place
The principle of repression,
however, is an acquisition of the psychoanalytic work,
won by legitimate means, as a theoretical extract from
very numerous experiences. Just such an acquisition, but
of much later days, is the theory of the infantile
sexuality, of which no count was taken during the first
years of tentative analytic investigation. At first it
was only noticed that the effect of actual impressions
had to be traced back to the past. However, " the seeker
often found more than he bargained for." He was tempted
always further back into this past and finally hoped to
be permitted to tarry in the period of puberty, the epoch
of the traditional awakening of the sexual impulses. His
hopes were in vain
The tracks led still further
back into childhood and into its earliest years. In the
process of this work it became almost fatal for this
young science. Under the influence of the traumatic
theory of hysteria, following Charcot, one was easily
inclined to regard as real and as of etiological
importance the accounts of patients who traced back their
symptoms to passive sexual occurrences in the first years
of childhood, that is to say, speaking plainly, to
seductions. When this etiology broke down through its own
unlikelihood, and through the contradiction of
well-established circumstances, there followed a period
of absolute helplessness
The analysis had led by the
correct path to such infantile sexual traumas, and yet
these were not true. Thus the basis of reality had been
lost. At that time I would gladly have let the whole
thing slide, as did my respected forerunner Breuer, when
he made his unwished-for discovery. Perhaps I persevered
only because I had no longer any choice of beginning
something else. Finally I reflected that, after 11 all,
no one has a right to despair if he has been disappointed
only in his expectations. He merely needs to review them.
If hysterics refer their symptoms to imaginary traumas,
then this new fact signifies that they create such scenes
in their phantasies, and hence psychic reality deserves
to be given a place next to actual reality. This was soon
followed by the conviction that these phantasies serve to
hide the autoerotic activities of the early years of
childhood, to idealize them and place them on a higher
level, and now the whole sexual life of the child made
its appearance behind these phantasies.
In this sexual activity of the
first years of childhood, the concomitant constitution
could finally attain its rights. Disposition and
experience here became associated into an inseparable
etiological unity, in that the disposition raised certain
impressions to inciting and fixed traumas, which
otherwise would have remained altogether banal and
ineffectual, whilst the experiences evoked factors from
the disposition which, without them, would have continued
to remain dormant, and, perhaps, undeveloped
The last word in the question of
traumatic etiology was later on said by Abraham, when he
drew attention to the fact that just the peculiar nature
of the child's sexual constitution enables it to provoke
sexual experiences of a peculiar kind, that is to say,
traumas.
My formulations concerning the
sexuality of the child were founded at first almost
exclusively on the results of the analyses of adults,
which led back into the past. I was lacking in
opportunity for direct observation of the child. It was,
therefore, an extraordinary triumph when, years later, my
discoveries were successfully confirmed for the greater
part by direct observation and analyses of children of
very early years, a triumph that appeared less and less
on reflecting that the discovery was of such a nature
that one really ought to be ashamed of having made it
The deeper one penetrated into
the observation of the child, the more self-evident this
fact seemed, and the more strange, too, became the
circumstances that such pains had been taken to overlook
it.
To be sure, so certain a
conviction of the existence and significance 12 of the
infantile sexuality can be obtained only, if one follows
the path of analysis, if one goes back from the symptoms
and peculiarities of neurotics to their uttermost
sources, the discovery of which explains what is
explainable in them, and permits of modifying what can be
changed. I understand that one can arrive at different
conclusions if, as was recently done by C. G. Jung, one
first forms for one's self a theoretical conception of
the nature of the sexual impulse and thereby tries to
understand the life of the child. Such a conception can
only be chosen arbitrarily or with regard to secondary
considerations, and is in danger of becoming inadequate
to the sphere in which it was to be utilized. Doubtless,
the analytic way also leads to certain final difficulties
and obscurities in regard to sexuality and its relation
to the whole life of the individual; but these cannot be
set aside by speculations, and must wait till solutions
will be found by means of other observations or of
observations in other spheres.
I shall briefly discuss the
history of dream-interpretation. This came to me as the
first-fruits of the technical innovation, after,
following a dim presentiment, I had decided to replace
hypnosis and hypnotherapy with free associations. It was
not the understanding of dreams towards which my
curiosity was originally directed. I do not know of any
influences which had guided my interest to this or
inspired me with any helpful expectations. Before the
cessation of my intercourse with Breuer I hardly had time
to tell him, in so many words, that I now knew how to
translate dreams. During the development of these
discoveries the symbolism of the language of dreams was
about the last thing which became known to me, since, for
the understanding of symbols, the associations of the
dreamer offer but little help. As I have held fast to the
habit of first studying things themselves, before looking
them up in books, I was able to ascertain for myself the
symbolism of dreams before I was directed to it by the
work of Sherner. Only later I came to value fully this
means of expression of dreams. This was partly due to the
influence of the works of Steckel, who was at first very
meritorious but who later became most perfunctory
The close connection between the
psychoanalytic 13 interpretation of dreams and the once
so highly esteemed art of dream interpretation of the
ancients only became clear to me many years afterwards
The most characteristic and
significant portion of my dream theory, namely, the
reduction of the dream distortion to an inner conflict,
to a sort of inner dishonesty, I found later in an author
to whom medicine but not philosophy is unknown. I refer
to the engineer J. Popper, who had published "Phantasies
of a Realist" under the name of Lynkeus.
The interpretation of dreams
became for me a solace and support in those difficult
first years of analysis, when I had to master at the same
time the technique, the clinic and the therapy of the
neuroses, when I stood entirely alone, and in the
confusion of problems and the accumulation of
difficulties I often feared to lose my orientation and my
confidence. It often took a long time before the proof of
my assumption, that a neurosis must become comprehensible
through analysis, was seen by the perplexed patient, but
the dreams, which might be regarded as analogous to the
symptoms, almost regularly confirmed this
assumption.
Only because of these successes
was I in condition to persevere. I have, therefore,
acquired the habit of measuring the grasp of a
psychological worker by his attitude to the problem of
dream interpretation, and I have noticed, with
satisfaction, that most of the opponents of
psychoanalysis avoided this field altogether, or if they
ventured into it, they behaved most awkwardly
The analysis of myself, the need
of which soon became apparent to me, I carried out by the
aid of a series of my own dreams which led me through all
the happenings of my childhood years. Even today I am of
the opinion that in the case of a prolific dreamer and a
person not too abnormal, this sort of analysis may be
sufficient.
By unfurling this developmental
history, I believe I have shown what psychoanalysis is,
better than I could have done by a systematic
presentation of the subject
The special nature of my
findings I did not then recognize. I sacrificed,
unhesitatingly, my budding popularity as a physician and
an extensive practice among nervous patients, because I
searched directly for the sexual origin of their 14
neuroses. In this way I gained a number of experiences
which definitely confirmed my conviction of the practical
significance of the sexual factor. Without any
apprehension, I appeared as speaker at the Vienna
Neurological Society, then under the presidency of
Krafft-Ebing, expecting to be compensated, by the
interest and recognition of my colleagues, for my own
voluntary sacrifices. I treated my discoveries as
indifferent contributions to science and hoped that
others would treat them in the same way. Only the silence
that followed my lectures, the space that formed about my
person, and the insinuations directed towards me caused
me to realize, gradually, that statements about the part
played by sexuality in the etiology of the neuroses
cannot hope to be treated like other communications. I
realized that from then on I would belong to those who,
according to Hebbel's expression, "have disturbed the
world's sleep," and that I could not count upon being
treated objectively and with toleration. But as my
conviction of the average correctness of my observations
and the conclusions grew greater and greater, and as my
faith in my own judgment was not small, any more than was
my moral courage, there could be no doubt as to the issue
of this situation. I decided to believe that it fell to
my lot to discover particularly significant associations,
and felt prepared to bear the fate which sometimes
accompanies such discoveries.
This fate I pictured to myself
in the following manner. I would probably succeed in
sustaining myself through the therapeutic successes of
the new treatment, but science would take no notice of me
in my lifetime. Some decades later, another would surely
stumble upon the same, now untimely things, compel their
recognition and thus bring me to honor as a necessarily
unfortunate forerunner. Meantime I arrayed myself as
comfortably as possible a la Robinson Crusoe upon my
lonely island. When I look back to those lonely years,
from the perplexities and vexatious ness of the present,
it seems to me it was a beautiful and heroic time
The "splendid isolation" did not
lack its privileges and charms. I did not need to read
any literature nor to listen to badly informed opponents.
I was subject to no influences, and no pressure was
brought to bear 15 on me. I learned to restrain
speculative tendencies and, following the unforgotten
advice of my master, Charcot, I looked at the same things
again and often until they began of themselves to tell me
something. My publications, for which I found shelter
despite some difficulty, could safely remain far behind
my state of knowledge. They could be delayed as long as I
pleased, as there was no doubtful "priority" to be
defended. "The Interpretation of Dreams," for example,
was completed in all essentials in the beginning of 1896,
but was written down only in 1899
The treatment of "Dora" was
finished at the end of 1899
The history of her illness was
completed in the next two weeks, but was only published
in 1905. Meantime my writings were not in the reviewed
professional literature of the day. If an exception was
made they were always treated with scornful or pitying
condescension. Sometimes a colleague would refer to me in
one of his publications in very short and unflattering
terms, such as "unbalanced," "extreme," or "very odd." It
happened once that an assistant at the clinic in Vienna
asked me for permission to attend one of my lecture
courses. He listened devoutly and said nothing, but after
the last lecture he offered to accompany me. During this
walk he disclosed to me that, with the knowledge of his
chief, he had written a book against my teachings, but he
expressed much regret that he had only come to know these
teachings better through my lectures. Had he known these
before, he would have written very differently. Indeed,
he had inquired at the clinic if he had not better first
read "The Interpretation of Dreams," but had been advised
against doing so, as it was not worth the trouble. As he
now understood it, he compared my system of instruction
with the Catholic Church. In the interests of his soul's
salvation I will assume that this remark contained a bit
of sincere recognition. But he ended by saying that it
was too late to alter anything in his book as it was
already printed. This particular colleague did not
consider it necessary later on to tell the world
something of the change in his opinions concerning my
psychoanalysis. On the contrary, as permanent reviewer of
a medical journal, he showed a preference to follow its
development with his hardly serious comments.
16
Whatever I possessed of personal
sensitiveness was blunted those years, to my advantage.
But I was saved from becoming embittered by a
circumstance that does not come to the assistance of all
lonely discoverers. Such a one usually frets himself to
find out the cause of the lack of sympathy or of the
rejection he receives from his contemporaries, and
perceives them as a painful contradiction against the
certainty of his own conviction. That did not trouble me,
for the psychoanalytic fundamental principles enabled me
to understand this attitude of my environment as a
necessary sequence. If it was true that the associations
discovered by me were kept from the knowledge of the
patient by inner affective resistances, then this
resistance must manifest itself also in normal persons as
soon as the repressed material is conveyed to them from
the outside. It was not strange that these latter knew
how to give intellectual reasons for their affective
rejections of my ideas. This happened just as often with
the patients, and the arguments advanced -- arguments are
as common as blackberries, to borrow from Falstaff's
speech -- were the same and not exactly brilliant
The only difference was that in
the case of patients one had the means of bringing
pressure to bear, in order to help them recognize and
overcome their resistances, but in the case of those
seemingly normal, such help had to be omitted. To force
these normal people to a cool and scientifically
objective examination of the subject was an unsolved
problem, the solution of which was best left to time. In
the history of science it has often been possible to
verify that the very assertion which, at first, called
forth only opposition, received recognition a little
later without necessity of bringing forward any new
proofs.
That I have not developed any
particular respect for the opinion of the world or any
desire for intellectual deference during those years,
when I alone represented psychoanalysis, will surprise no
one.
Beginning with the year 1902 a
number of young doctors crowded about me with the
expressed intention to learn psychoanalysis, to practice
it and to spread it
The impetus for this came from a
colleague who had himself experienced the beneficial
effects of the analytic therapy. We met on certain
evenings at my residence, and discussed subjects
according to certain rules
The visitors endeavored to
orient themselves in this strange and new realm of
investigation, and to interest others in the matter. One
day a young graduate I of the technical school found
admission to our circle by means of a manuscript which
showed extraordinary sense. We induced him to go through
college and enter the university, and then devote himself
to the non-medical application of psychoanalysis. Thus
the little society gained a zealous and reliable
secretary, and I acquired in Otto Rank a most faithful
helper and collaborator.
Soon the little circle expanded,
and in the course of the next few years changed a good
deal in its composition. On the whole, I could flatter
myself that in the wealth and variety of talent our
circle was hardly inferior to the staff of any clinical
teacher. From the very beginning it included those men
who later were to play a considerable, if not always a
delectable, part in the history of the psychoanalytic
movement. But these developments could not have been
guessed at that time. I was satisfied, and I believe I
did all I could, to convey to the others what I knew and
had experienced. There were only two inauspicious
circumstances which at least mentally estranged me from
this circle. I could not succeed in establishing among
the members that friendly relation which should obtain
among men doing the same difficult work, nor could I
crush out the quarrels about the priority of discoveries,
for which there were ample opportunities in those
conditions of working together
The difficulties of teaching the
practice of psychoanalysis, which are particularly great,
and are often to blame for the present rejection of
psychoanalysis, 18 already made themselves felt in this
Viennese private psychoanalytic society. I myself did not
dare to present an as yet incomplete technique, and a
theory still in the making, with that authority which
might have spared the others many a blind alley and many
a final tripping up
The self-dependence of mental
workers, their early independence of the teacher, is
always gratifying psychologically, but it can only result
in a scientific gain when during these labors certain,
not too frequently occurring, personal relations are also
fulfilled. Psychoanalysis particularly should have
required a long and severe discipline and training of
self-control. On account of the courage displayed in
devotion to so ridiculed and fruitless a subject, I was
inclined to tolerate among the members much to which
otherwise I would have objected. Besides, the circle
included not only physicians, but other cultured men who
had recognized something significant in psychoanalysis.
There were authors, artists, and so forth
The "Interpretation Of Dreams,"
the book on " Wit," and other writings, had already shown
that the principles of psychoanalysis cannot remain
limited to the medical field, but are capable of
application to various other mental sciences.
