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.
