Sigmund
Freud & Jung History
part 2
At this congress three
local groups were constituted: one in Berlin
under the chairmanship of Abraham, one in
Zürich, whose chairman became the president
of the central association, and one in Vienna,
the chairmanship of which I relinquished to
Adler. A fourth group, in Budapest, could not be
formed until later. On account of illness
Bleuler had been absent from the congress. Later
be evinced considerable hesitation about
entering the association and although he let
himself be persuaded to do so by my personal
representations, he resigned a short time
afterwards owing to disagreements at
Zürich. This severed the connection between
the Zürich group and the Burghölzli
institution.
Another result of the
Nuremberg Congress was the founding of the
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, which
caused a reconciliation between Adler and
Stekel. It had originally been intended as an
opposing tendency and was to win back for Vienna
the hegemony threatened by the election of Jung.
But when the two founders of the journal, under
pressure of the difficulty of finding a
publisher, assured me of their friendly
intentions and as guarantee of their attitude
gave me the right to veto, I accepted the
editorship and worked vigorously for this new
organ, the first number of which appeared in
September, 1910.
I will not continue the
history of the Psychoanalytic Congress
The third one took
place at Weimar, September, 1911, and even
surpassed the previous ones in spirit and
scientific interest. J. J. Putnam, who was
present at this meeting, later expressed in
America his satisfaction and his respect for the
"mental attitude" of those present and quoted
words which I was supposed to have used in
reference to the latter: "They have learned to
endure a bit of truth." As a matter of fact any
one who has attended scientific congresses must
have received a lasting impression in favor of
the Psychoanalytic Association. I myself had
presided over two former congresses. I thought
it best to give every lecturer ample time for
his paper and left the discussions of these
lectures to take place later as a sort of
private exchange of ideas. Jung, who presided
over the Weimar meeting, reëstablished the
discussions after each lecture, which had not,
however, proved disturbing at that
time.
Two years later, in
September, 1913, quite another picture was
presented by the congress at Munich which is
still vividly recalled by those who were
present. It was presided over by Jung in an
unamiable and incorrect fashion: the lecturers
were limited as to time, and the discussion
dwarfed the lectures.
Through a malicious
mood of chance the evil genius of Hoche had
taken up his residence in the same house in
which the analysts held their meetings. Hoche
could easily have convinced himself that his
characterization of these psychoanalysts, as a
sect, blindly and meekly following their leader,
was true ad absurdum
The fatiguing and
unedifying proceedings ended in the
reëlection of Jung as president of the
International Psychoanalytic Association, which
fact Jung accepted, although two fifths of those
present refused him their support. We took leave
from one another without feeling the need to
meet again!
About the time of this
third Congress the condition of the
International Psychoanalytic Association was as
follows: The local groups at Vienna, Berlin, and
Zurich had constituted themselves already at the
congress at Nuremberg in 1910. In May, 1911, a
group, under the chairmanship of Dr. L. Seif,
was added at Munich. In the same year the first
American local group was formed under the
chairmanship of A. A. Brill under the name of
"The New York Psychoanalytic Society."
At the Weimar Congress,
the founding of a second American group was
authorized. This came into existence during the
next year as "The American Psychoanalytic
Association." It included members from Canada
and all America; Putnam was elected president,
and Ernest Jones was made secretary. Just before
the congress at Münich in 1913, a local
group was founded at Budapest under the
leadership of S. Ferenczi. Soon afterwards
Jones, who settled in London, founded the first
English group
The number of members
of the eight groups then in existence could not,
of course, furnish any standard for the
computation of the non-organized students and
adherents of psychoanalysis.
The development of the
periodical literature of psychoanalysis is also
worthy of a brief mention
The first periodical
publications serving the interests of analysis
were the Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunden
which have appeared irregularly since 1907 and
have reached the fifteenth volume. They
published writings by Sigmund Freud , Riklin,
Jung, Abraham, Rank, Sadger, Pfister, M. Graf,
Jones, Storfer and Hug-Hellmuth
The founding of the
Imago, to be mentioned later, has somewhat
lowered the value of this form of publication.
After the meeting at Salzburg, 1908 the Jahrbuch
für psychoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen was founded,
which appeared under Jung's editorship for five
years, and it has now reappeared under new
editorship and under the slightly changed title
of Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse. It no longer
wishes to be as in former years, merely an
archive for collecting works of psychoanalytic
merit, but it wishes to justify its editorial
task by taking due notice of all occurrences and
all endeavors in the field of
psychoanalysis.
As mentioned before Das
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse started by
Adler and Stekel after the founding of the
"International Association" (Nuremberg, 1910)
went through in a short time a very varied
career. Already in the tenth issue of the first
volume there was an announcement that in view of
scientific difference of opinion with 39the
editors, Dr. Adler had decided voluntarily to
withdraw his collaboration. This placed the
entire editorship in the hands of Dr. Stekel
(summer of 1911). At the Weimar congress the
Zentralblatt was raised to the official organ of
the "International Association" and by raising
the annual dues it was made accessible to all
members.
Beginning with the
third number of the second year (winter 1912)
Stekel alone became responsible for the contents
of the journal. His behavior, which is difficult
to explain in public, forced me to sever all my
connections with this journal and to give
psychoanalysis in all haste a new organ, the
International Journal for Medical Psychoanalysis
(Internationale Zeitschrift für
Ärztliche Psychoanalyse). With the help of
almost all my collaborators and the new
publisher, H. Heller, the first number of this
new journal was able to appear in January, 1933,
to take the place of the Zentralblatt as the
official organ of the "International
Psychoanalytic Association."
Meanwhile Dr. Hanns
Sachs and Dr. Otto Rank founded early in 1912 a
new journal, Imago (published by Heller), whose
only aim is the application of psychoanalysis to
mental sciences. Imago has now reached the
middle of its third year, and enjoys the
increasing interest of readers who are not
medically interested in
psychoanalysis.
Apart from these four
periodical publications (Schriften z. Angew.
Seelenkunde, Jahrbuch, Intern. Zeitschrift, and
Imago) other German and foreign journals have
contributed works that can claim a place in
psychoanalytic literature
The Journal of Abnormal
self hypnosis, published by Morton Prince, as a
rule, contains many good analytical
contributions. In the winter of 1913 Dr. White
and Dr. Jelliffe started a journal exclusively
devoted to psychoanalysis, THE PSYCHOANALYTIC
REVIEW, which takes into account the fact that
most physicians in America interested in
psychoanalysis do not master the German
language.
I am now obliged to
speak of two secessions which have taken place
among the followers of psychoanalysis
The first of these took
place in the interval between the founding of
the association 40 in 1910 and the congress at
Weimar, 1911, the second took place after this,
and came to light in Münich in 1913·
The disappointment which they caused me might
have been avoided if more attention had been
paid to the mechanisms of those who undergo
analytical treatment. I was well aware that any
one might take flight on first approach to the
unlovely truths of analysis; I myself had always
asserted that any one's understanding may be
suspended by one's own repressions (through the
resistances which sustain them) so that in his
relation to psychoanalysis he cannot get beyond
a certain point. But I had not expected that any
one who had mastered analysis to a certain depth
could renounce this understanding and lose it.
And yet daily experience with patients had shown
that the total rejection of all knowledge gained
through analysis may be brought about by any
deeper stratum of particularly strong
resistance.
Even if we succeed
through laborious work in causing such a patient
to grasp parts of analytic knowledge and handle
these as his own possessions, it may well happen
that under the domination of the next resistance
he will throw to the winds all he has learned
and will defend himself as in his first days of
treatment. I had to learn that this can happen
among psychoanalysts just as among patients
during treatment.
It is no enviable task
to write the history of these two secessions,
partly because I am not impelled to it by strong
personal motives -- I had not expected gratitude
nor am I to any active degree revengeful -- and
partly because I know that I hereby lay myself
open to the invectives of opponents manifesting
but little consideration, and at the same time I
regale the enemies of psychoanalysis with the
long wished-for spectacle of seeing the
psychoanalysts tearing each other to
pieces.
I had to exercise much
control to keep myself from fighting with the
opponents of psychoanalysis, and now I feel
constrained to take up the fight with former
followers or such as still wish to be called so.
I have no choice; to keep silent would be
comfortable or cowardly, but it would hurt the
subject more than the frank uncovering of the
existing evils. Any one who has followed the
growth of scientific movements will know that
quite similar disturbances 41 and dissensions
took place in all of them. It may be that
elsewhere they are more carefully concealed.
However, psychoanalysis, which denies many
conventional ideals, is also more honest in
these things.
Another very palpable
inconvenience lies in the fact that I cannot
altogether avoid going into an analytic
elucidation. Analysis is not, however, suitable
for polemical use; it always presupposes the
consent of the one analyzed and the situation of
a superior and subordinate. Therefore he who
wishes to use analysis with polemic intent must
offer no objection if the person so analyzed
will, in his turn, use analysis against him, and
if the discussion merges into a state in which
the awakening of a conviction in an impartial
third party is entirely excluded. I shall,
therefore, make here the smallest possible use
of analysis, thereby limiting my indiscretion
and aggression against my opponents, and I will
also add that I base no scientific criticism on
this means. I have nothing to do with the
possible substance of truths in the theories to
be rejected nor am I seeking to refute the same.
This task may be left to other able workers in
the field of psychoanalysis, and some of it has
already been done. I only desire to show that
these theories deny the basic principles of
analysis -- I will show in what points -- and
for this reason should not be known under this
name. I shall, therefore, use analysis only to
make clear how these deviations from analysis
could take place among analysts. At the parting
places I am, of course, obliged to defend the
just rights of psychoanalysis with purely
critical remarks.
Psychoanalysis has
found as its first task the explanation of the
neuroses; it has taken the two facts of
resistance and transference as starting points,
and by bearing in mind and the subconscious mind
the third fact of amnesia in the theories of
repression, it has given justification to the
sexual motive forces of the neuroses and of the
unconscious. Psychoanalysis has never claimed to
give a perfect theory of the human psychic life,
but has only demanded that its discoveries
should be used for the completion and correction
of knowledge we have gained elsewhere. But
Alfred Adler's theory goes far beyond this goal.
It pretends to explain with one stroke the
behavior and character 42 of men as well as
their neurotic and psychotic maladies. As a
matter of fact, Adler's theory is more adequate
to any other field than to that of the neuroses,
which he still puts in the first place because
of the history of its origin. I had the
opportunity of studying Dr. Adler many years and
have never denied him the testimonial of having
a superior mind and the subconscious mind ,
especially endowed speculatively. As proof of
the "persecution" which he claims to have
suffered at my hands, I can only say that after
the formation of the Association I handed over
to him the leadership of the Vienna group. It
was only after urgent requests from all the
members of the society that I could be prevailed
upon to resume the presidency at the scientific
proceedings. When I had recognized Dr. Adler's
slight talent for the estimation of the
unconscious material, I expected that he would
know how to discover the connections between
psychoanalysis and self hypnosis and the
biological bases of the impulses, a discovery to
which he was entitled, in a certain sense,
through his valuable studies about the
inferiority of organs. He really did bring out
some thing, but his work makes the impression as
if -- to speak in his own jargon -- it were
intended to prove that psychoanalysis was wrong
in everything and that the significance of the
sexual impelling forces could only be due to
gullibility about the assertions of neurotics.
Of the personal motive of his work I may also
speak publicly, since he himself revealed it in
the presence of a small circle of members of the
Vienna group. "Do you believe," he remarked,
"that it is such a great pleasure for me to
stand in your shadow my whole life?" To be sure
I see nothing objectionable in the fact that a
younger man should frankly admit an ambition
which one might, in any case, suspect as one of
the incentives of his work. But even under the
domination of such a motive a man should know
how to avoid being "unfair" as designated by the
English with their fine social tact. We Germans
have only a much coarser word at our disposal to
convey this idea. How little Adler has succeeded
in not being unfair is shown by the great number
of mean outbursts of anger which distort his
writings, and by the feeling of an ungovernable
mania for priority which pervades 43 his work.
At the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society we once
heard him claim for himself the priority for the
viewpoints of the "unity of the neuroses" and
the "dynamic conception" of the same. This was a
great surprise for me as I had always believed
that I had represented these two principles
before I had ever known Adler.
This striving of Adler
for a place in the sun has brought about,
however, one result, which must be considered
beneficial to psychoanalysis. When I was obliged
to bring about Adler's resignation from the
editorial staff of the Zentralblatt, after the
appearance of his irreconcilable scientific
antagonisms, Adler also left the Vienna group
and founded a new society to which he first gave
the tasteful name "Society for Free
Psychoanalysis." But the outside public,
unacquainted with analysis, is evidently as
little skilled in recognizing the difference
between the views of two psychoanalysts, as are
Europeans in recognizing the tints between two
Chinese faces
The "free"
psychoanalysis remained in the shadow of the
"official" and "orthodox" one, and was treated
only as an appendage of the latter. Then Adler
took the step for which we are thankful. He
severed all connection with psychoanalysis and
named his teachings "The Individual self
hypnosis." There is much space on God's earth,
and any one who can is surely justified in
tumbling about upon it uninhibited; but it is
not desirable to continue living under one roof
when people no longer understand one another and
no longer get on together. Adler's "Individual
self hypnosis " is now one of the many
psychological movements opposed to
psychoanalysis, and its further development lies
outside our interests.
Adler's theory was,
from the very beginning, a "system," which
psychoanalysis was careful not to become. It is
also an excellent example of a "secondary
elaboration" as seen, for example, in the
process which the waking thought produces in
dream material.
In this case instead of
dream material there is the material newly 44
acquired from the viewpoint of the ego and
brought under the familiar categories of the
same. It is then translated, changed, and as
thoroughly misunderstood as happens in the case
of dream-formation. Adler's theory is thus
characterized less by what it asserts than by
what it denies. It consequently consists of
three elements of quite dissimilar value; first,
good contributions to the self hypnosis of the
ego, which are superfluous but admissible;
secondly, translations of analytical facts into
the new jargon, and, thirdly, distortions and
perversions of these facts when they do not fit
into the ego presuppositions
The elements of the
first kind have never been ignored by
psychoanalysis, although it owed no special
attention to them. Psychoanalysis had a greater
interest in showing that all ego strivings are
mixed with libidinous components. Adler's theory
emphasizes the counterpart to it; namely, that
all libidinous feeling contains an admixture of
egotism. This would have been a palpable gain if
Adler had not made use of this assertion to
deny, every time, the libidinous feelings in
favor of the impelling ego components. His
theory thus does exactly what all patients do,
and what our conscious thinking always does, it
rationalizes, as Jones would say, in order to
conceal the unconscious motives. Adler is so
consistent in this, that he considers the object
of evincing domination over the woman, to be on
the top, as the mainspring of the sexual act. I
do not know if he has upheld this monstrous idea
in his writings.
Psychoanalysis early
recognized that every neurotic symptom owes the
possibility of its existence to some compromise.
It must, therefore, also put to some good
account the demands of the ego which manages the
repression, it must offer it some advantages by
finding for it some useful employment, otherwise
it would suffer the same fate as the originally
defended impulses
The term "morbid gain"
expresses this state of affairs. One might even
have been justified in differentiating the
primary gain for the ego which must have been
active at the origin, from a "secondary" gain
which appears in connection with other
intentions of the ego, when the symptom is about
to assert itself. It has also long been known to
analysis that the withdrawal of this morbid
gain, or the cessation of the same 45 in
consequence of some real change, is one of the
mechanisms in the cure of the symptom. On these
relationships which can be verified and
understood without difficulty, Adler's theory
puts the greatest emphasis. It entirely
overlooks the fact that innumerable times the
ego makes a virtue out of necessity in
submitting to the most undesired symptom forced
upon it, because of the use it can make of it,
e.g., when the ego accepts anxiety as a means of
security. Here the ego plays the absurd part of
the Pierot in the circus, who, through his
gestures, wishes to convey to the spectators the
impression that all changes in the menage are
taking place at his command. But only the
youngest among the spectators believe
him.
For the second part of
Adler's theory psychoanalysis must stand
security as for its own possessions. For it is
nothing but psychoanalytic knowledge which the
author had from all the sources opened to him
during ten years of our joint work, but which he
later marked as his own after changing the
nomenclature. For instance, I myself consider
"security" a better word than "protective
measure," which I used; but cannot find in it
any new meaning. Similarly one will find in
Adler's statements a great many long-known
features if one will replace the expressions
"feigned" (fingiert) fictive and fiction, by the
original words "to fancy" and "phantasy." This
identity would be emphasized by psychoanalysis,
even if the author had not for many years
participated in our common work.
The third part of
Adler's theory, which consists in giving new
interpretations to, and in distorting the
disagreeable facts of psychoanalysis, contains
that which definitely severs the actual
"Individual self hypnosis" from psychoanalysis.
As is known the principle of Adler's system
states that it is the object of the
self-assertion of the individual, his "will to
power" in the form of the "masculine protest,"
to manifest itself domineeringly in the conduct
of life, in character formation and in the
neurosis. This "masculine protest," the Adlerism
motor, is nothing else, however, than the
repression set free from its psychological
mechanism, and what is more, it is sexualized
and thus hardly in keeping with the vaunted
expulsion of sexuality from its place in the
psychic life
The "masculine protest"
certainly exists, but in constituting it as the
motor of the psychic life, observation has only
played the part of the springboard which one
leaves in order to uplift one's self. Let us
consider one of the most fundamental situations
of the infantile desire; namely, the observation
of the sexual act between adults by the child.
When the life-history of such persons is later
subjected to analysis by a physician, it is
found that at this moment the minor spectator
was seized by two feelings; one, in the case of
a boy, to put himself in the place of the active
man, and the other, the opposing feeling, to
identify himself with the suffering woman. Both
strivings conjointly exhaust the pleasure that
might have resulted from this situation. Only
the first feeling can come under the head of the
"masculine protest" if this idea is to retain
any meaning at all
The second feeling,
whose fate Adler either ignores or does not
know, is really the one which assumes greater
significance in the later neurosis. Adler has
placed himself so entirely into the jealous
confinement of the ego, that he only accounts
for such emotional feelings as are agreeable to
the ego and furthered by it; but the case of the
neurosis, which opposes these strivings, lies
beyond his horizon.
Adler's most serious
deviations from the reality of observation and
his deepest confusion of ideas have arisen in
his attempt to correlate the basic principle of
his theory with the psychic life of the child,
an attempt which has become inevitable in
psychoanalysis
The biological, social,
and physiological meaning of "masculine" and "
feminine" have here become mixed into a hopeless
composition. It is quite impossible, and it can
easily be disproved by observation, that the
masculine or feminine child builds its plan of
life on any original undervaluation of the
feminine sex; nor is it conceivable that a child
can take as the guiding line the wish: "I will
be a real man." In the beginning no child has
even an inkling of the significance of the
difference in sex, more likely it starts with
the assumption that both sexes possess the same
(male) genital. It does not begin its sexual
investigation with the problem of sex
differentiation and is far from entertaining the
social undervaluation of the woman. There are
women in whose neurosis the wish to be a man
never played any part. So far as the "masculine
protest" is concerned, it can easily be traced
back to a disturbance of the original narcissism
caused by the threat of castration; that is, to
the first hindrance of sexual activity. All
dispute as to the psychogenesis of the neuroses
must ultimately be decided in the sphere of the
childhood neuroses
The careful analysis of
a neurosis of the early years of childhood puts
an end to all mistakes in regard to the etiology
of the neuroses, and all doubts as to the part
played by the sexual impulses. That is why Adler
in his criticism of Jung's "Conflicts of the
Child's mind and the subconscious mind " was
obliged to resort to the imputation that the
material of the case surely must have followed a
uniform new tendency " from the
father."
I will not linger any
longer over the biological side of Adler's
theory, and will not examine whether the
palpable inferiority of organs or the subjective
feeling of the same (one often cannot tell
which) can possibly be the basis of Adler's
system. Only permit me to remark that this would
make the neurosis a by-product of the general
stunting, while observation teaches that an
excessively large number of hideous, misshapen,
crippled, and wretched creatures have failed to
react to their deficiencies by developing a
neurosis. Nor will I consider the interesting
information that the sense of inferiority goes
back to infantile feelings. It shows us in what
disguise the doctrine of infantilism, so much
emphasized in psychoanalysis, returns in Adler's
Individual self hypnosis. On the other hand, I
am obliged to emphasize how all psychological
acquisitions of psychoanalysis have been
disregarded by Adler. In his book "The Nervous
Character," the unconscious still appears as a
psychological peculiarity, but without any
relation to his system. Later, he declared,
quite logically, that it was a matter of
indifference to him whether any conception be
conscious or unconscious. For the principle of
repressions, Adler never evinced any
understanding. While reviewing a lecture before
the Vienna Society in 1911, he said: "On the
strength of a case I wish to point out that the
patient had never repressed his libido, against
which he continually tried to secure
himself."[18 Soon thereafter at a discussion
in Vienna Adler said: "If you ask whence comes
the repression, you are told: from culture. But
if you ask whence comes culture, the reply is:
from the repression. So you see it is only a
question of a play on words." A small fragment
of the sagacity used by Adler to defend his
"nervous character" might have sufficed to show
him the way out of this pettifogging argument.
There is nothing mysterious about it, except
that culture depends upon the acts of repression
of former generations, and that each new
generation is required to retain this culture by
carrying out the same repressions. I have heard
of a child that considered itself fooled and
began to cry, because to the question: "Where do
eggs come from?" it received the answer, "Eggs
come from hens," and to the further question:
"Where do the hens come from?" the information
was "From the eggs," and yet this was not a play
upon words
The child had been told
what was true.
Just as deplorable and
devoid of substance is all that Adler has said
about the dream -- that shibboleth of
psychoanalysis. At first he considered the dream
as a turning from the masculine to the feminine
line, which simply means translating the theory
of wish-fulfillment in dreams into the language
of the "masculine protest." Later he found that
the essence of the dream lies in the fact that
it enables man to realize unconsciously what is
denied him consciously. Adler should also be
credited with the priority of confounding the
dream with the latent dream-thoughts, on the
cognition of which rests his idea of
"prospective tendency." Maeder followed him in
this, later on. In doing so he readily overlooks
the fact that every interpretation of the dream
which really tells nothing comprehensible in its
manifest appearance rests upon the same
dream-interpretation, whose assumptions and
conclusions he is disputing. Concerning
resistance Adler asserts that it serves to
strengthen the patient against the physician.
This is certainly correct. It means as much as
saying that it serves the resistance. But whence
this resistance originates, and how it happens
that its phenomena serve the patient's interest,
these questions, as if of no interest for the
ego, are not further discussed by Adler
The detailed mechanisms
of symptoms and phenomena, the motivation of the
variety of diseases and morbid manifestations,
find no consideration at all with Adler, since
everything is equally subservient to the
"masculine protest," to the self-assertion, and
to the exaltation of the personality
The system is finished,
at the expense of an extraordinary labor of new
interpretation, yet it has not contributed a
single new observation. I believe that I have
succeeded in showing that his system has nothing
whatever in common with
psychoanalysis.
The picture which one
derives from Adler's system is founded entirely
upon the impulse of aggression. It has no place
at all for love. One might wonder that such a
cheerless aspect of life should have received
any notice whatever; but we must not forget that
humanity, oppressed by its sexual needs, is
prepared to accept anything, if only the
"overcoming of sexuality" is held out as bait.
The secession of
Adler's faction was finished before the Congress
at Weimar which took place in 1911, while the
one of the Swiss School began after this date.
Strangely enough, the first indications of it
were found in some remarks by Riklin in popular
articles printed in Swiss literature, from which
the general public learned, even before Riklin's
closest colleagues, that psychoanalysis had
succeeded in overcoming some regretable mistakes
which discredited it. In 1912 Jung boasted, in a
letter to me from America, that his
modifications of psychoanalysis had overcome the
resistances to it in many persons, who hitherto
wanted to know nothing about it. I replied that
this was nothing to boast about, that the more
he sacrificed of the hard-won truths of
psychoanalysis, the less resistances he would
encounter. This modification for the
introduction of which the Swiss are so proud,
again was nothing more or less than the
theoretical suppression of the sexual factor. I
admit that from the very beginning I have
regarded this "progress " as a too-far-reaching
adaptation to the demands of actuality.
50
These two retrogressive
movements, tending away from psychoanalysis,
which I will now compare, also resemble each
other in the fact that they are seeking to
obtain a favorable opinion by means of certain
lofty points of view, as sub specie
æternitatis. In the case of Adler, this
rôle is played by the relativity of all
knowledge, and by the rights of the personality
to construe artificially any piece of knowledge
to suit the individual; while Jung insists on
the cultural historical rights of youth to throw
off any fetters that tyrannical old age with
ossified views would forge for it. These
arguments require some repudiation
The relativity of all
our knowledge is a consideration which maybe
used as an argument against any other science
besides psychoanalysis. This idea originates
from well-known reactionary streams of the
present day inimical to science, and wishes to
give the appearance of a superiority to which we
are not entitled. Not one of us can guess what
may be the ultimate judgment of mankind about
our theoretical efforts. There are examples to
show that what was rejected by the next three
generations was corrected by the fourth and its
recognition thus brought about. There is nothing
else for the individual to do than to defend,
with all his strength, his conviction based on
experience after he has carefully listened to
his own criticisms and has given some attention
to the criticisms of his opponents. Let him be
content to conduct his affair honestly and not
assume the office of judge, which is reserved
for a remote future. To accentuate personal
arbitrariness in scientific matters is bad; it
evidently wishes to deny to psychoanalysis the
value of a science, which, to be sure, Adler has
already depreciated by the aforementioned
remark. Any one who highly regards scientific
thinking will rather seek for means and methods
by which to restrict, if possible, the factor of
personal and artificial arbitrariness wherever
it still plays too large a part. Besides one
must remember that all agitation in defending is
out of place. Adler does not take these
arguments seriously. They are only for use
against his opponents, but they respect his own
theories. They have not prevented Adler's
adherents from celebrating him as the Messiah,
for whose appearance waiting humanity had been
prepared by so many forerunners
The Messiah is surely
no longer anything relative.
Jung's argument ad
captandam benevolentiam rests on the
all-too-optimistic assumption that the progress
of humanity, of civilization, and of knowledge
has always continued in an unbroken line, as if
there had never been any epigones, reactions,
and restorations after every revolution, as if
there had never been races who, because of a
retrogression, had to renounce the gain of
former generations
The approach to the
standpoint of the masses, the giving up of an
innovation that has proved unpopular, all these
make it altogether unlikely that Jung's
correction of psychoanalysis could lay claim to
being a liberating act of youth. Finally it is
no: the years of the doer that decide it, but
the character of the deed.
Of the two movements we
have here considered, that headed by Adler is
undoubtedly the more important. Though radically
false, it is, nevertheless, characterized by
consistency and coherence and it is still
founded on the theory of the impulse. On the
other hand, Jung's modification has lessened the
connection between the phenomena and the
impulses: besides, as its critics (Abraham,
Ferenczi, Jones) have already pointed out, it is
so unintelligible, muddled, and confused, that
it is not easy to take any attitude towards it.
Wherever one touches it, one must be prepared to
be told that one has misunderstood it, and it is
impossible to know how one can arrive at a
correct understanding of it. It represents
itself in a peculiarly vacillating manner, since
at one time it calls itself "a quite tame
deviation, not worthy of the row which has
arisen about it" (Jung), yet, at another time,
it calls itself a new salvation with which a new
epoch shall begin for psychoanalysis, in fact, a
new aspect of the universe for everything
else.
When one thinks of the
disagreements between the individual private and
public expressions of Jung's utterances one is
obliged to ask to what extent this is due to his
own lack of clearness and lack of sincerity.
Yet, it must be admitted that the
representatives of the new theory find
themselves in a difficult position. They are now
disputing things which they themselves formerly
defended and what 52 is more, this dispute is
not based on new observations which might have
taught them something fresh, but rather on a
different interpretation which causes them to
see things in a different light from that in
which they saw them before. It is for this
reason that they will not give up their
connection with psychoanalysis as the
representatives of which they first became known
in the world. They prefer to proclaim that
psychoanalysis has changed. At the Congress of
Münich I was obliged to clear up this
confusion and did so by declaring that I could
not recognize the innovation of the Swiss School
as a legitimate continuation and further
development of the Psychoanalysis which had
originated with me. Outside critics (like
Furtmüller) had already recognized this
state of affairs and Abraham says, quite
rightly, that Jung is in full retreat away from
psychoanalysis. I am naturally entirely willing
to admit that any one has the right to think and
to write what he wishes, but he has not the
right to make it out to be something different
from what it really is.
Just as Adler's
researches brought something new into
psychoanalysis, a piece of the ego-self
hypnosis, and paid only too dearly for this gift
by repudiating all the fundamental analytic
principles, in the same way Jung and his
adherents have based their fight against
psychoanalysis upon a new contribution to the
same. They have traced in detail (what Pfister
did before them) how the material of the sexual
ideas originating in the family complex and in
the incestuous object selection can be used to
represent the highest ethical and religious
interests of mankind, that is, they have
explained a remarkable case of sublimation of
the erotic impelling forces and the
transformation of the same into strivings that
can no longer be called erotic. All this
harmonized very well with the assumptions of
psychoanalysis, and would have agreed very well
with the conception that in the dream and in the
neurosis one sees the regressive elucidations of
these and all other sublimations. But the world
would have exclaimed that ethics and religion
had been sexualized. I cannot help assuming
"finally" that the investigators found
themselves quite unequal to the storm they had
to face. Perhaps the storm began to rage in
their own bosoms
The previous
theological history of so many of the Swiss
workers is as important in their attitude to
psychoanalysis as is the socialistic record of
Adler for the development of his "self
hypnosis." One is re mind and the subconscious
mind ed of Mark Twain's famous story about the
fate of his watch and to the speculative remark
with which he closed it: "And he used to wonder
what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and
gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and blacksmiths; but
nobody could ever tell him."
I will encroach upon
the realm of parables and will assume that in a
certain society there lived a parvenu who
boasted of descent from a very noble family not
locally known. But it so happened that it was
proved to him that his parents were living
somewhere in the neighborhood and were very
simple people, indeed. Only one way out remained
to him and he seized upon it. He could no longer
deny his parents, but he asserted that they were
very aristocratic by origin but much come down
in the world, and secured for them at some
obliging office a document showing their
descent. It seems to me that the Swiss workers
had been obliged to act in a similar manner. If
ethics and religion could not be sexualized, but
must be regarded as something "higher" from the
very beginning, and as their origin from the
family and Oedipus complexes seemed undeniable,
then there was only one way out; namely, that
these complexes themselves, from the beginning,
could not have the significance which they
appeared to express, but must have that higher
"anagogic" sense (to use Silberer's
nomenclature) with which they adapt themselves
for proper use in the abstract streams of
thought of ethics and religious
mysticism.
I am quite prepared to
be told once more that I have misunderstood the
contents and object of the theory of the
New-Zürich School, but here wish to protest
against being held responsible for those
contradictions to my theories that have arisen
as a result of the publications of this school
The burden of responsibility rests on them, not
on me. In no other way can I make comprehensible
to myself the ensemble of Jung's innovations or
grasp them in their associations. All the
changes which Jung has perpetrated upon
psychoanalysis originated in the intention of
setting aside all that is objectionable in the
family complexes, in order that these
objectionable features may not be found again in
religion and ethics
The sexual libido was
replaced by an abstract idea, of which it may be
said that it remained equally mysterious and
incomprehensible alike to fools and to the wise
The Oedipus-complex, we
are told, has only a "symbolical" sense, the
mother therein representing the unattainable
which must be renounced in the interests of
cultural development
The father who is
killed in the Oedipus myth represents the
"inner" father from w hose influence we must
free ourselves in order to become independent.
No doubt other portions of the material of
sexual conceptions will, in time, receive
similarly new interpretations. In place of the
conflict between erotic strivings adverse to the
ego and the self-assertion, we are given the
conflict between the "life-task" and the
"psychic-laziness.'' The neurotic guilty
conscience corresponds with the reproach of not
having put to good account one's life-task. Thus
a new religio-ethical system was founded which,
exactly like Adler's, was obliged to give new
interpretations, to distort or set aside the
actual results of analysis. As a matter of fact
they have caught a few cultural higher notes
from the symphony of the world's by-gones, but
once again have failed to hear the powerful
melody of the impulses.
In order to hold this
system together it was necessary to draw away
entirely from the observations and technique of
psychoanalysis. Now and then the enthusiasm for
the higher cause even permits a total disregard
for scientific logic, as for instance, when Jung
maintains that the Oedipus complex is not
"specific" enough for the etiology of the
neuroses, and ascribed this specificity to
laziness, that is, to the most universal quality
of animate and inanimate bodies! Moreover, it is
to be remarked that the "Oedipus complex" only
represents a capacity on which the psychic
forces of the individual measure themselves, and
is not in itself a force, like the "psychic
laziness." The study of the individual man has
shown and always will show that the sexual
complexes are alive in him in their original
sense. That is why the study of the individual
was 55 pushed back by Jung and replaced by the
judgment of the essential facts from the study
of the races. As the study of the early
childhood of every man exposed one to the danger
of striking against the original and undisguised
meaning of these misinterpreted complexes, it
was, therefore, thought best to make it a rule
to tarry as little as possible at this past and
to place the greatest emphasis on the return to
the conflict. Here, moreover, the essential
things are not at all the incidental and
personal, but rather the general, that is to
say, the "non-fulfilment of the life-task."
Nevertheless, we know that the actual conflict
of the neurotic becomes comprehensible and
solvable only if it can be traced back into the
patient's past history, only by following along
the way that his libido took when his malady
began.
"Not the slightest
effort was made to consider the past or the
transferences. Whenever I thought that the
latter were touched, they were explained as a
mere symbol of the libido
The moral instructions
were very beautiful and I followed them
faithfully, but I did not advance one step. This
was more distressing to me than to the
physician, but how could I help it? -- Instead
of freeing me analytically, each session made
new and tremendous demands on me, on the
fulfilment of which the overcoming of the
neurosis was supposed to depend. Some of these
demands were: inner concentration by means of
introversion, religious meditation, living
together with my wife in loving devotion, etc.
It was almost beyond my power, since it really
amounted to a radical transformation of the
whole spiritual man. I left the analysis as a
poor sinner with the strongest feelings of
contrition and the very best resolutions, but at
the same time with the deepest discouragement.
All that this physician recommended any pastor
would have advised, but where was I to get the
strength?"
How the New Zürich
therapy has shaped itself under such tendencies
I can convey by means of reports of a patient
who was himself obliged to experience
it.
It is true that the
patient had also heard that an analysis of the
past and of the transference should precede the
process. He, however, was told that he had
enough of it. But as it had not helped him, it
seems to me that it is just to conclude that the
patient had not had enough of this first sort of
analysis. Not in any case has the superimposed
treatment which no longer has the slightest
claim to call itself psychoanalysis, helped. It
is a matter of wonder that the men of
Zürich had need to make the long detour via
Vienna to reach Bern, so close to them, where
Dubois cures neuroses by ethical encouragement
in the most indulgent fashion.
If one maintains that
the dream is something different from the latent
dream-thoughts, which it elaborates, one will
not wonder that the patients dream of those
things with which their mind and the
subconscious mind has been filled during the
treatment, whether it be the "life-task" or
being "above" or "below." Certainly the dreams
of those analyzed are guidable in a similar
manner as dreams can be influenced by the
application of experimental stimuli. One may
determine a part of the material that occurs in
the dream, but this changes nothing in the
nature and mechanism of the dream. Nor do I
believe that the so-called "biographical" dream
occurs outside of the analysis. On the other
hand, if we analyze dreams that occurred before
the treatment began, or if attention is paid to
what the dreamer adds to the stimuli supplied to
him during the treatment, or if we avoid giving
him any such task, then we can convince
ourselves how far the dream is from offering
tentative solutions of the life-task. For the
dream is only another form of thinking; the
understanding of this form can never be gained
from the content of its thoughts, only the
consideration of the dream-work will lead to
it.
The utter disagreement
of this new movement with psychoanalysis
naturally shows itself also in its attitude
towards repression, which is hardly mentioned
any more in the writings of Jung; in the utter
misconstruction of the dream which Adler,
ignoring the dream-self hypnosis, confuses with
the latent dream-thoughts, and also in the lack
of understanding of the unconscious. In fact
this disagreement can be seen in all the
essential points of psychoanalysis. When Jung
tells us that the incest-complex is only
"symbolic," that it has "no real existence,"
that the savage feels no desire towards the old
hag but prefers a young and pretty woman, then
one is tempted to assume in order to dispose of
apparent contradiction that "symbolic" and "no
real existence" only signify what is designated
as "existing unconsciously."
The effective
refutation of Jung's misconceptions of
psychoanalysis and his deviations from it is not
difficult. Any analysis carried out in
accordance with the rules, especially any
analysis of a child, strengthens the convictions
on which the theory of psychoanalysis rests, and
repudiates the new interpretations of Adler's
and Jung's systems. Jung himself, before he
became enlightened, carried out such an analysis
of a child and published it. It remains to be
seen if he will undertake a new interpretation
of this case with the help of another "uniform
new tendency of the facts," to give Adler's
expression used in this connection.
I would like to say in
conclusion that Jung, by his "modifications" has
furnished psychoanalysis with a counterpart to
the famous knife of Lichtenberg He has changed
the hilt, has inserted into it a new blade, and
because the same trademark is engraved on it he
requires of us that we regard the instrument as
the former one.
The opinion that the
sexual representation of "higher" ideas in the
dream and in the neurosis is nothing but an
archaic manner of expression, is naturally
irreconcilable with the fact that these sexual
complexes prove to be in the neurosis the
carriers of those quantities of libido which
have been withdrawn from the real life. If it
were only a question of sexual jargon, nothing
could thereby be altered in the economy of the
libido itself. Jung himself admits this in his
"Darstellung der psychoanalytischen Theorie,"
and formulates, as a therapeutic task, that the
libido investing the complexes should be
withdrawn from them. But this can never be
accomplished by rejecting the complexes and
forcing them towards sublimation, but only by
the most exhaustive occupation with them, and by
making them fully conscious
The first bit of
reality with which the patient has to deal is
his malady itself. Any effort to spare him this
task points to an incapacity of the physician to
help him in overcoming his resistances, or to a
fear on the part of the physician as to the
results of this work.
On the contrary, I
believe I have shown that the new theory which
desires to substitute psychoanalysis signifies
an abandonment of analysis and a secession from
it. Some may be inclined to fear that this
defection may be more unfortunate for the fate
of psychoanalysis than any other because it
emanates from persons who once played so great a
part in the psychoanalytic movement and did so
much to further it. I do not share this
apprehension.
I can only conclude
with the wish that the fates may prepare easy
ascension for those who found their sojourn in
the underworld of psychoanalysis uncomfortable.
May it be vouchsafed to the others to bring to a
happy conclusion their works in the
deep.
Men are strong so long
as they represent a strong idea. They become
powerless when they oppose it. Psychoanalysis
will be able to bear this loss and will gain new
adherents for those lost.
