Psychiatry Interpersonal and Biological Processes ISSN: 0033-2747 (Print) 1943-281X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upsy20 The Germinal Cell of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Psychology and Therapy Paul Bergman To cite this article: Paul Bergman (1949) The Germinal Cell of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Psychology and Therapy, Psychiatry, 12:3, 265-278, DOI: 10.1080/00332747.1949.11022739 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1949.11022739 Published online: 11 Nov 2016. Submit your article to this journal View related articles Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=upsy20 Download by: [Australian Catholic University] Date: 25 August 2017, At: 06:11 The Germinal Cell of Freud's Psychoanalytic Psychology and Therapy Paul Bergman * Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 T HERE ARE MANY WAYS in which a student may try to assimilate and understand the work of a genius. He may acquaint himself with all the details of his work and allow the impressions to sink into his own mind. He then trusts that an unconscious process of selection and organization will take place, which will favor those elements which are objectively significant and can become meaningful to him subjectively. Or he may engage in the particular type of activity or follow the way of life that the great creative person traced and learn to understand by doing. Another way consists in attempting to find out whether there was an original experience, or observation, or concept, that sent the creative mind out on its way, illuminating, as it were, the world with the light gained at that one focal point. If there was an ex-. perience of this kind, the attempt to reconstruct the course of the genius may result in the student's arranging as logical steps and interrelationships what historically may have been a vaguely conscious, tortuous, and sometimes inconsistent process. The greatness of a speculative system be that a scientist is considered great only may consist precisely in its organic unity if his thinking shows that particular orand self-consistency, while at the same ganic unity and power which stem from time it embraces, reveals, or. _explains the passionate-and at least to some designificant aspects of the real world. In gree successful-pursuit of truth on one philosophy, for example, Plato's thinking single path. This is the way that the can be understood as developing from the genius of a Darwin, a Pasteur, an Eincore of the experience of bliss that the stein is perceived. I believe that Freud philosopher must have felt when conceiv- belongs to the same group. ing of a world of ideas as immovable and The germinal cell of Freud's system, more real than the changing world of as I see it, is an observation which Freud perception. Outstanding thinkers in the made repeatedly when he approached the earlier Christian tradition start with the zenith of his life. Before that time he had conviction of the sinfulness of human been a good research man, a successful nature and weave widespread nets of doctor, no doubt a most attractive and thought around and from this source. The cultured gentleman. But from the time germinal cell of Rousseau's thinking may that the germinal observation fell into have been the feeling of the goodness of his rich mind, where affinities of unusual nature and the depravity inflicted upon potential energy lay dormant, the system it by human institutions and civilization of psychoanalysis developed. in general. "As life closes, all a man has This germinal observation, I believe, at done seems like one cry or sentence," first consisted of several parts that can be wrote William James. 1 distinguished from each other, and that The thinking of great scientists seems in fact came to Freud at different times to grow from a similar focal point. It may but grew in his mind into a complex and powerful unity. First, Freud was im1 Quoted by F. O. Mathiessen in ,The James Family; pressed by the fact that gaps in a perNew York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1947; p. 133. • Ph.D. Univ. of Vienna 20; M.A. Univ. of Indiana 43; Senior Psychologist, Research Department, The MennInger Foundat10n, Topeka 43-. Diplorna~e American DOal:'<1 Of Examiners 1n prOfeSS10nai P$:\f¢,t).Ol()!tV'; Associate Member 'l'opeka Psyehoa~lytlc SOciety. J!'or blbl1ography, see lteference LIsts sect10n of this issue. [265 ] Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 266 son's (patient's) memory could be filled under certain conditions, particularly under hypnosis. Second, he became impressed by the fact that certain symptoms and tensions disappeared when these gaps of memory were filled. Finally, he observed that the previously lost memories very frequently contained scenes in which the patients had struggled intensely against their own sexual impulses. The germinal observation, as it built itself in Freud's mind into a nucleus of unforeseen energy and power of development, can be formulated thus: For a variety of reasons a person may experience intense conflict concerning a sexual impulse. The tension or displeasure at this moment may be so overwhelming that the person eliminates the experience from the context of his memory. The memory of the person in fact shows a gap--or a patently wrong substitute-for this point or period of time, which seems to protect the person from re-experiencing the intense (traumatic) conflict. Yet the organism from then on, or soon afterwards, shows serious signs of malfunctioning (symptoms). These symptoms can be dissolved when the patient can be made to remember what really happened and how he felt when it happened. The excluded and walled-off part of the patient's past is thus reintegrated. The current of life is freed of a more or less strangling obstacle. How should this observation be evaluated? Is it just a curious item that one would have to keep in mind when studying the more general problem of how people change-for the worse, and for the better~and would one likely find a great many other ways by which people change -for the worse, and for the better? Or did this observation contain an element basic to a great variety of changes in people that at first sight may look very different? Freud, possibly without ever allowing this question much weight, engaged himself for the second alternative. Two strong interests, waiting in his mind, took hold of the germinal observation. The foremost interest was the de::lire Lu au! ve at a hypothetIcal picture of PAUL BERGMAN the "mental apparatus," that is to say, of the scientific ideal of a machine model that would explain how the human mind dealt with incoming stimuli. The second, not quite as intensive an interest, was in relaton to therapy: how to help people in trouble, on condition that it could be done on the basis of correct understanding of the way their mental apparatus worked. To Freud it was, from this time on, out of the question to be concerned with the therapeutic possibilities to the exclusion of his understanding of the mental apparatus. That therapy to Freud was quite definitely of secondary importance can be seen from many a passage in his writings. Most clearly it is reflected in this one: "I have told you that psycho-analysis began as a therapeutic procedure, but it is not in that light that I wanted to recommend it to your interest, but because of the truths it contains, because of the information it gives us about that which is of the greatest importance to mankind, namely his own nature, and because of the connections it has shown to exist between the most various of his activities." 2 The germinal observation had shown how a human being, without being aware of it, can be under the influence of a part of his own past. A piece of the present could be understood if a piece of the past was elucidated. A young girl's hallucination of cigar smell could, for example, be traced to the repressed memory of a moment when the girl struggled against her own sexual wishes aroused by the kiss of a cigar-smoking man. ' Under the impression of such observations, Freud conceived the task of his psychology to be the genesis of all phenomena of the human mind. First, obviously, he attempted to understand in this way the abnormal phenomena. But, as he was unable to find a clear and convincing demarcation between normal and abnormal phenomena in the borderregion of psychopathology in which he worked, he saw the possibility that one set of laws might account for both nor~ Fl'('url, Ncw' rntronuctnry I,ccturell 011 J'llychoanalysis; New York, W. W. Norton Co., 1933; p. 214 f. Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY mal and abnormal phenomena. In a most fruitful step he turned to an application 'of the genetic principle to all phenomena .of the mind. ,How does love for the parents, or love in general, or any affect or attitude in general come about? He expected the answers to come from investigations of the antecedents of thephenomenon. His genetic psychology was meant to be at the same time a causal psychology. The germinal observation contains the past not only as predecessor of the present, but also as its cause. The two other directions in which functional relationships might be looked for, namely the present (the structure of the "psychological field" in a later terminology), and the future (a part of the "psychological field"-the purposes), are less clearly represented in the germinal observation. Freud's thinking, therefore, at first goes almost exclusively the way of causal laws in the form of A happened at this time because B happened in the past. He remained throughout his life more interestedin finding concrete examples of this kind of law than in any of the other types of psychological laws, be they structural, purposive, or stimUlus-response laws. The search for genetic, causal determination soon led Freud from the near past to the distant past. There are childhood memories that have the same convincing relationship to the particulars of a neurotic symptom as the kiss of the cigarsmoking man had to the subsequent olfactory hallucination in the case of the young woman patient. Sometimes a chain of memories seems to lead back from the present through various periods of life, finally losing itself in the dim and distant past of early childhood. Where the configuration. of these memories belonging to different ages has constant elements, Freud, following the model of, the germinal observation, takes the later ones to be shaped by the earlier ones, and tends to assume the earlier ones are less distorted representations of the same dynamic constellation. Childhood, and particularly early childhood, becomes therefore the period of primary interest. 267 In many cases investigated by Freud during the eaI'ly years of his system-building activities, childhood memories produced by patients had to be recognized as false and impossible because of external evidence or internal inconsistency. When Freud became aware of this fact; he thought for a while it closed the way of thinking 'which he had followed since making the germinal observation. "At that time I would gladly have given up the whole thing. . . . Perhaps I persevered only because I had no choice and could not then begin again at anything else." 8 But' then he decided that what he had uncovered was memory of fantasy. This was a significant extension of Freud's previous understanding of the germinal observation. There followed further extensions, even more bold and stunning than the first one. Certain elements in the adult patient's communications-certain fantasies, dreams, attitudes, segments of behaviorcould not be referred to an earlier memory, of consciously experienced fact or fantasy. Freud's new conception was that the "Unconscious"-a concept which began to be regarded as a definite topologically defined part of the "mental apparatus"-contained elements that were both determinable as to their content and dynamically' active, but had never been conscious to the individual. These elements could, for example, be "unconscious fantasies" assumed to be generated at all times that a' person lives and acts, without his being aware of more than the conscious "surface" of his psychic activities. Or they could be fantasies stemming from such an early time in the child's 'life that no conscious awareness can be assumed to have existed. 4 Or they could be mental contents stemming from a phylogenetic heritage, a racial unconscious.5 8 Freud, "On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement" in Collected Papers, vol 1, p. 299; London, Hogarth Press, 1924. • This mode of extension is not characteristic of Freud. himself, but of the school of British psychoanalysts who eonsider it a logical consequence of Freudian assumptions. Freud does not seem to have' clearly indicated where he would draw the limits of the applicabU1ty of his methodological tools. . • This mode of extension is less characteristic of Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 268 PAUL BERGMAN One might well pause at thiS point and impulses underground in many a sensiadmire the hardly surpassable boldness tive person. Second, the sexual element and originality of this kind of thinking. appeared where science which suffered a Freud had .just finished explaining the scotoma"':"'for after all science was also a reality of a present experience by the still function of the same civilization---did not dynamically active reality of a past expe- want to see it: namely, in childhood. One rience. He then proceeded to explain the after another of Freud's patients produced reality of a present experience by a con- memories that unquestionably showed struct which at no time had experiential that sexual perceptions and experiences reality. He then declared this construct~ had taken place long before adolescencethe Unconscious-to constitute the real the time when the official science of that psychic reality in relation to which the time allowed for such happenings. Next phenomena of conscious experience were there were memories in which different purely "surface" products of inner per- kinds of organ pleasure seemed to be ception, with little ability to inform us involved; there was pleasure to be sure, about psychic reality. This conscious ex- but not of the sexual organ. Freud, when perience was as little to be trusted as Par- faced with this situation, widened the menides or Plato had once trusted outer concept of sexuality-"libido"-to include perception, since they had doubted that a great variety of organ pleasures, outit could inform one about the reality of standingly, of course, pleasure of the oral the physical world. 6 and anal zone. 7 Thus memories that reI have so far followed the trends of called the pleasures one had found in thought by which Freud wove one aspect eating, elimination, fighting, biting, suckof the germinal observation, namely the ing, scratching, and many others,were past surviving and influencing the person by definition regarded as sexual. without his awareness, into a system of Similar memories were observed in psychology. Let us see now what he did which no pleasure was recalled. Freud with the fact that in his observation it assimilated this type of memory in the was sexual conflict that caused the dis- germinal observation in two different turbance. Here, for something like thirty ways: First, by assuming that the real years, Freud used his genius for generali- event back in the past had contained the zation to elaborate the doctrine of the pleasure element, but that repression sexual content of the unconscious. First, could hit only the affective aspect of a of course, quite a few of the uncovered total experience while leaving the mempathogenic memories of his hysteric pa- ory of the actual behavior and happentients of that time were obviously sexual. ings intact. Second, by assuming that Such memories, and such types of pa- the remembered event, though it may tients, appeared in later years with de- not have contained any pleasure element creasing frequency in the analysts' offices. at the time of its happening, points to an They were possibly products of a civiliza- event further back in the past that is tion and education that, through rigorous no longer remembered. The remembered condemnation of sexual impulses and event and the not-remembered Qne would through their consistent association with at best have everything in common exthe vile and contemptible, forced these cept the affective pleasure element, .assumed to have been present in the notremembered earlier event. At worst they Freud than of Jung. But Freud, while disapproving of the wide use of this method by Jung, clearly accepts its prinCiple and uses it with intense· subjective conviction, for example, in his last book on Moses and Monotheism (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1939). • "The unconscious Is the true psychic reality; in its inner nature it is just as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as Imperfectly communicated to us by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the reports of our sense-organs." Freud, The Interpretation. of Dreams; Nllw York, Mucmillan, 1039; p. 562. • It is noteworthy that Freud himself never came to include all organ pleasure in his concept of sexuality. Othel" psychoanalysts, however, have made this step that seems consistent with the progress of Freud's thinking. Thus, for example, E. H. Erikson includes all pleasure derived from use of the motor and sensory functions of the organism with sexuality in Freud's sense. "Problems of Infancy and Early Childhood" in CyeZopMUl of Medtctne: Surgery and SpecialtUe8; :Philadelphia, Davis, 1989. Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY would at least have in common a minimum of configuration of essential elements. This would be the case in the so-called "screen-memories" with their symbolic representation of the assumed dynamically affective unconscious background. I have mentioned pathological phenomena (symptoms) on the one hand, and normal phenomena (affects, attitudes) on the other as the material to which Freud applied his scheme of explanation. Though I do not intend to go into detail into the well-known border zone between these two fields, where Freud reaped some of his most important triumphs, I should like to discuss briefly two areas of minor abnormal functioning of the mental apparatus: the dreams and the parapraxes. The germinal cell of Freud's dream psychology was again closely akin to the scheme of the germinal observation: A dream represents usually a "wish" of sexual nature stemming from distant childhood and finding associative links with, and more or less distorted expression through, psychic material belonging to the dreamer's present or recent past"day-residues." That is to say, according to the Freudian scheme one may interpret a dream similar to the way one interprets a·neurotic symptom. There may be many layers that have to be gone through, but the task is not only solvable, but satisfactorily solved in principle, when the layer of unconscious, sexual, childhood wishes is reached. These three qualifications came to stand, for a certain period of Freud's thought, in such close association that it seems almost unnecessary to enumerate them separately. The unconscious at that time represented to Freud the dynamically, forever active, sexual tendencies of the distant past. Repressed sexual wishes of the immediate or near past, such as the germinal observation contained, were now reinterpreted as late consequences of primal repressions which must have taken place in the earliest years of life. Thus a conceptual scheme is ready which receives the endless variety of dream phenomena and reduces them step by step to u smull number of imltil'lr.t.l1al, 269 mostly sexual wishes, assumed to be inherent in the nature of childhood. Parapraxes, finally, in a rather close parallel to dreams and symptoms, are explained as effects of the unconscious upon the conscious mind. Insofar as the unconscious in Freud's concept preserves the tendencies of the past, one may say that in parapraxes emotional attitudes rooted in the past, incompatible with the present purposes of the person, can affect the present. They are, by the bright light of everyday life, momentary eruptions from the depths of the unconscious, making the person act differently from what he had intended, or preventing the act he had intended. Thus far I have described the original core of Freud's psychoanalytic psychology, as its creator developed it with a dogged logical persistence from the germinal observation. I will now briefly review the additions which Freud introduced in the course of the years. His own experience mainly, plus the criticism of a hostile world, forced him to add new factors to his system. It still represents a faSCinating spectacle to trace the steps by which Freud, while opening himself and his thinking to new observations, preserved the essential structure which he perceived to be contained in the germinal observation. He widened the system at two opposite sides, at the side of the repressed and at the side of the repressing forces. Let us examine first what Freud added to the side of the repressed forces. Freud had originally conceived of the repressed forces as consisting of sexual instincts in a narrow sense. Soon he gave a broader meaning to the word, including particularly "pregenital" sexuality. He again expanded the content of his libido concept, for the last time as far as he personally was concerned,S when he brought in the concept of "narcissism." He understood this concept as meaning all varieties of positive interests in all aspects of the own self, physical, mental, and social. In his unique way of, synthesizing, Freud evolved the concept of the Hnarcissistic" 8 I havfl mentioned above certain expansions ot the libido concept hy nthl;'r Pllycho:lnnlyst9. nef~l" lInca rUlll,III1!.!! 1. Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 270 libido to be the fountainhead of all libidinous development, which he assumed to proceed in a sequence of regular, predictable steps to the final level, "genital maturity." In this way, he conceived of the task of describing phenomena of an adult's life stream in terms of the place on the axis of libidinal development to which the relevant memories of the past seemed to refer. Suppose a person wanted to have a good library; this could be on the basis of a narcissistic, an oral, an anal, or a phallic interest; or it could be "overdetermined" by several of these instinctual sources. In cases in which the libido or parts of .it seemed· to be attached to any stage other than the one of final genita\ maturity. Freud considered that fixation at that stage, and/or regression from a later stage, had taken place. In the last period of his thinking Freud gave up the heroic attempt to which he had clung through several decades of his life. He no longer regarded all repression to be in the last analysis repression of sexual, libidinous content. The germinal observation somehow lost its sway over his mind. Powerful experiences from various sources finally burst· the magic ring. The change of social scene with the advent of the First World War may have been paramount among these experiences. However that may be, Freud now, for the :first time, after having time and again enlarged the concept of libido, decreased it by taking out what had been considered the libido's sadistic and masochistic tendencies. In his final instinct theory, he gave a distinct and equipotent dynamic place to aggression-or to the death instinct to be more exact. Yet, even after this change, the basiccontent quality associated with the germinal observation remained unaltered. It was no longer sex alone, but the duality of sex and aggression against which the human being had to defend himself. But the human being was still under the tragic fate that made him damage himself as a consequence of the necessity to struggle against the core of his own being, the wild instincts forever seething in that part of the personality that Freud came to PAUL BERGMAN call the "Id." There, as in the interior of a volcano, pressure might surpass counter-pressure, and result in destructive eruptions. Relatively the largest part of Freud's psychological thinking during the closing decades of his life was devoted to the repressing forces of man's personality, as seen from the vantage point of the germinal observation. For years he had been satisfied to reaffirm again and again in each individual instance the part of repression, while concentrating his interest on the repressed memories, affects, instincts. But in the last two decades of his life he began to be fascinated by the variety of defenses that he· now thought he was able to differentiate. Freud remained faithful to the structure of the germinal observation as he saw it. He held fast to the scheme of thought which explained a phenomenon under scrutiny as a product of historically determined vicissitude of instinct. But repression now appeared to him to be only one of possible vicissitudes of instinct, though some characteristics of repression went with a variety of other defenses like projection, turning against the self, and so on. He learned to distinguish modes of defense where repression in the original sense did not occur at all. The mechanism of isolation, for example, served the purpose of defepse without forcing the warded-off memory out of consciousness. Thus analysis of defenses, and of ego tendencies in general, gradually emerged into the foreground in Freud's later years. In the germinal observation the conflict had obviously been between the ego and the instinctual impulse. Closer scrutiny of the repressing part of the personality showed that another conflict was frequently involved, a conflict between the person's ego and his ethical standards and aspirations, represented by his conscience. This type of conflict was quite conscious in some cases; in other cases it seemed to be only marginally conscious; and in still others there was no trace of such conflict. With another of his bold strokes of genius, Freud conceived of the hypothesis that such conflict was ubiquitous, that its Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY minor role or relative absence in the consciousness of some people was due to essentially the same mechanisms of defense by which the "Ego" wards off consciQuS awareness of its struggle with the instincts. Thus Freud came to posit the "Super-Ego," with conscious and unconscious dynamic effects, as one of the constituent parts of the personality. But, characteristically, he was less concerned with the relationship of the superego to the cultural influences than with its relations to the environment at the time of early childhood. Cultural influences must necessarily, to a high degree, determine what a person considers as "oughts" and "ought nots." The adult figures of the child's environment embody and transmit culturally conditioned standards. But Freud's interest turned mainly towards the problem of how the conscious and unconscious parts of conscience, the superego, became historically determined by childhood experiences. Seen from the vantage point of the germinal observation the following becomes apparent: the prohibition of the sexual impulse as well as the impulse had a history, and according to Freud, the history of a person con-' tained the explanation of. both the impulse and the prohibition in their actual interaction, the earliest history standing higher in explanatory value. Freud finally completed his topology of the major dynamic centers of the mental apparatus when he added to the unconscious id (instinctual impulses) the unconscious superego (conscience impulses) and the unconscious ego. In one sense this seems to be an obvious deduction from the germinal observation, in which the ego of the patient did not know with what it was dealing or what means it was using for what reasons. However, it illustrates again Freud's consistency and boldness in theory formation. In his final formulation he ascribed to the unconscious ego (in anthropomorphic language) such qualities as one would assume to exist in a person (within the person) who would be subjected to pressures from the outcr world, supercgo and id, and would react to them in the way that the ego 271 does. And, again, the structure of the unconscious ego is explained mainly, by the history of the earliest pressures exerted upon what must be considered· a constitutionally predisposed stratum. In this last half of my paper I will attempt to show how Freud's ideas about therapy developed logically, in a consistent-if you want, stubbornly consistentway from the germinal observation. Anticipating the results of the search, I might say that Freud did not neglect the most remote possibility of putting to therapeutic use what seemed to him-at least in rudimentary form--contained in the germinal observation; but he refused with equal consistency and determination to assimilate any element into the theory of therapy that could not be fitted into it." The followi~g quotation may give the reader a feeling for Freud's reluctance to use therapeutic means outside of what he considered legitimate analysis (in my interpretation, the intellectual system built upon the germinal observation): Perhaps it [the outcome of treatment] may depend, too, on whether the personality of the analyst allows of the patient's putting him in the place of his ego·ideal, and this involves a temptation for the analyst to play the part of prophet, saviour, and redeemer to the patient. Since the rules of analysis are diametrically opposed to the physician's making use of his personality in any such manner, it must be honestly confessed that here we have another limitation to the effectiveness of analysis. . . .10 Let us once more recall the elements contained in the germinal observation: an event of the patient's life had been traumatic; although the memory contained no trace of the event, there was a pathological symptom; when memory was restored, the symptom disappeared. Originally Freud's therapy was exclusively directed towards recovery of memories. Thus it already appears in the 8 This discussion is only concerned with Freud's theory of therapy. It would be of extraordinary interest to discuss Freud's actual practice of ther· apy, but this would hardly be possible as very little material on what Freud actually did, felt, and spoke wit.h hiR pllt.ipnta I~ uvtliltlblc. 10 Freud, The Ego and the Jd; London, Hogarth PrallE, 1929i p. 72. 272 PAUL BERGMAN Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 paper that is generally felt to mark the threshold of psychoanalysis proper-the "preliminary communication" of 1893: 11 tances, any more than either hypnosis or urging alone could do it. Nor did the "technical artifices"-such as laying the hand on the patient's forehead-work too We found, at first to our greatest surprise, well. that the individual hysterical symptoms imAt the time of his contributions to the mediately disappeared without returning if we succeeded in thoroughly awakening' the Studies in Hysteria, Freud had already memories of the causal process with its ac- found that passive waiting for the pathocompanying affect, and if the patient circum- genic memories frequently did not yield stantiaily discussed the process in the most detailed manner and gave verbal expression the desired results, even when the patient cooperated to the' best of his capacto the afJect.12 ity. He therefore chose to let "directive" At that time Freud (and Breuer) techniques alternate with "nondirective" thought that a state of hypnosis was ones, as one would say in modern termineeded in order to reintegrate the dis- nology. Having come to regard the paoriented memories. 1s Yet two years later, tient's memories as stratified in layers of when Studies in Hysteria was published, different resistance potential.,...,.the pathoFreud had. already essentially given up genic nucleus carrying the highest potenhypnosis, having found this technique of tial, the most closely connected or assolimited use.14 He then resorted to forcibly ciated memories being next highest, and urging the patients to remember: so on-Freud proposed the division between directive and nondirective tech. . . and as this urging necessitated much exertion on my part, and showed me that I niques in the following way: had to overcome a resistance, I, therefore, . . . I could perhaps say that one should formulated the. whole state of affairs into himself undertake the opening of the inner the following theory: Through my psychic strata and the advancement in the radial work I had to overCome a psychic force in direction, while the patient should take care the patient which opposed the pathogenic of the peripheral extension.l1 idea from becoming conscious (remembered).lS "Radial direction" means direction of higher resistance, "peripheral extension" In addition to urging, Freud tempo- the addition of memory material of the rarily used various minor "technical arti- same potential of resistance, as it were. fices" as reinforcements of suggestion for It is the analyst then whom Freud the task of overcoming the patient's psy- believed must select, first, the weak points chic forces of "resistance," as he came to at which to depart from the material...;;.. name them.16 He soon chose "free associa- thoughts, feelings, memories-which the tion" as the technique he considered best patient offers, and who must point out suited to enable patients to relax the the gaps and flimsy constructions' in the vigilance of the resistances and to allow patient's explanations: for the emergence of the repressed memories. Yet it was clear that free associa- One, therefore, tells the patient, 'You are what you assert can have nothing tion alone could not overCOme the resis- mistaken, to do with the thing in question; here we will have to strike against something which 11 Breuer and Freud, "The Psychic Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena" In Studies in Hysteria; New will occur to you. . • . ' 18 York, Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph No. 61, 1947; chapter 1. . .. Reference footnote 11; pp. 3-4. ItaUcs in original text are sometimes omitted in quotations in this paper. lS"Our observations have often taught us that a memory which has hi.therto provoked attacks becomes incapable of it when it is brought to reaction and associative correction in a hypnotic state." Reference footnote 11: PP. 10-11. •• "I was, therefore, forced to dispense with hypnotism and yet obtain the pathogenic reminiscences." neferenee footnote 11; p. 200. 111 Reference footnote 11; p. 201. 10 Reference footnote 11; p. 202. Second, Freud, at least in later stages of the analysis, believed the analyst should suggest to the patient the direction in which to look for the pathogenic memories: In these later stages of the work it is of advantage if one can surmise the connection '7 Reference footnote 11; p. 221. lS Reference footnote 11; p. 222. GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY and tell it to the patient before it has been revealed to him. If the conjecture is correct, the course of the analysis is accelerated. . . .19 Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 Freud apparently considered this technical device very essential for psychoanalysis. He returns to its discussion many times in later years. Thus, for instance, with all desirable clarity, in a work written 10 years after the Studies in Hysteria, he states: 273 And 30 years after the Studies in Hysteria: You must know that the correct reconstruction of such forgotten experiences in childhood [in analysis] always results in a tremendous therapeutic effect, no matter whether such reconstructions may be objectively confirmed or not. 23 Finally, at the end of his life, more than forty years after the Studies in Hysteria, Freud wrote a paper especially for the In a psycho-analysis the physician always purpose of stressing this same point of gives his patient (sometimes to a greater and therapeutical technique which seemed to sometimes to a less extent) the conscious. him of paramount importance: anticipatory images by the help of which he is put in a position to recognize and to grasp the unconscious material. For there are some patients who need more of such assistance and some who need less; but there are none who get through without some of it. Slight disorders may perhaps be brought to an end by a person's unaided efforts, but never a neurosis. . . .20 The same note is struck again 15 years after the Studies in Hysteria: The treatment is made up of two parts, out of what the physician infers and tells the patient, and out of the patient's work of as· similation, of 'working through,' what he hears. The mechanism of our curative method is indeed quite easy to understand; we give the patient the conscious idea of what he may expect to find (bewusste Erwartungsvorstellung), and [through] the similarity of this with the repressed unconscious one leads him to come upon the latter himself.21 The point is again made in a work writ:. ten 25 years after the Studies in Hysteria: In quite a number of cases . . . the analysis divides itself into two clearly distinguishable stages: in the first, the physician procures from the patient the necessary information, makes him familiar with the premises and postulates. of psycho-analysis, and unfolds to him the reconstruction of the genesis of his disorder as deduced from the material brought up in the analysis. In the second stage the patient himself lays hold of the material put before him, works on it, recollects what he can of the apparently repressed memories, and behaves as if he were living the past over again.22 ,. Reference footnote 11; p. 223. .. Freud, "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy," in Collected Papers, vol. 3, p_ 246; London, Hogarth Press, 1924 . .. Freud, "The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy" in Collected Papers, vol. 2, p. 286. .. Freud, "The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman," in Collected Papers, vol. 2, p.208. 5 The analyst finishes a piece of construction and communicates it to the subject of the analysis so that it may work upon him; he then constructs a further piece out of the fresh material pouring in upon him, deals with it in the same way, and proceeds in this alternating fashion until the end . . . one lays before the subject of the analysis a piece of his early history that he has forgotten, in some such way as this: 'Up to your nth year you regarded yourself as the sole and unlimited possessor of your mother; then came . . .' and so on.24 Gradually, as Freud gained in experience, he became impressed with the possibilities of influencing the dynamiC interplay of forces in the patient from the side of the resistances as well as from the side of the unconscious material. [He found that it helped to] obtain his [the patient's] collaboration and cause him to view himself with the objective interest of the investigator. . . . [The analyst] does as well as he can as an explainer . . . as a teacher, as a representative of a freer and more superior philosophy of life, and as a confessor, who through the continuance of his sympathy and his respect imparts, so to say, absolution after the confession. One endeavors to do something humane for the patient as far as the range of one's own personality and the measure of sympathy which one can set apart for the case allows. 25 But: . . . one can hardly dispense with oneaffective factor, that is, the personal equation of the doctor, and in a number of cases this alone is enough to break the resistance. 26 .. Freud, The Problem of Lay Analyses; New York, Brentano's, 1927. .. Freud, "Constructions in Analysis," Int. J_ Psychoanalysis (1938) 19: p. 380 . •• Reference footnote 11; p. 213. .. Reference footnote 11; pp. 213-214. Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 274 The emotional attachment of the pa· tient to the physician, while it is the most powerful tool in overcoming the resis· tance, soon also proved in many cases to be a serious obstacle to the. task of remembering. For, more and more regu· larly, Freud found that the "painful ideas emerging from the content of the analysis would be transferred to the physician," 21 would be "deceptively" experienced as present, not as past, as associated with the physician's person, not with the person to whom they originally-in the traumatic scene of the past-referred. Freud originally regarded this transference as a disturbance in remembering. But after some time, when he became convinced that the pathogenic material of the earliest years of life could not be safely recovered as memories, he turned the table on the situation by the ingenious idea of moving the transference into the center of his therapeutic attention. What could not be remembered was, he felt, made accessible, since in all essentials the transference seemed to preserve the traits of the distant past. . . . here the patient remembers nothing of what is forgotten and repressed, but that he expresses it in action. He reproduces it not in his memory but in his behavior; he repeats it, without of course knowing that he is repeating it. . . . We soon perceive that the transference is itself only a bit of repetition, and that the repetition is the transference of the forgotten past not only on to the phYSiCian, but also on to all the other aspects of the current situation . . . while the patient lives it through as something real and actual, we have to accomplish the therapeutic task, which consists chiefly in translating it back again into terms of the past.ls ·Freud described this turnabout with all possible precision as a change of tactics, not as a change of goal: The tactics adopted by the physician are easily justified. For him recollection in the old style, reproduction in the mind, remains the goal of his endeavors, even when he knows that it is not to be obtained by the newer method. 29 "Reference footnote 11; p. 230. .. Freud, "Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psycho-Analysis" in Collected Papers, vol. 2, pp. 369 ff. .. Reference footnote 28; p. 373. PAUL BERGMAN In this same paper he also summarizes succinctly the means-ends relationships obtaining between transference, overcoming of resistances, and memories. From the repetition-reactions which are exhibited in the transference the familiar paths lead back to the awakening of the memories, which yield themselves' without difficulty after the resistances have been overcome. so To summarize the last part of the discussion one might say: Whether the patient actually remembers or whether he repeats old patterns of behavior and feeling-in his relationship to the analyst or to other persons of his contemporary life sphere--the task of the analyst, according to Freud, remains the same: he should help the repressed past to emerge into consciousness, either as memory or as construction of the past. In the latter case it is important that the patient accept the construction not only intellectually but also emotionally.31 Timing of the interpretations and constructions offered by the analyst therefore becomes of importance. . . • psycho-analysis . . . prescribes that two conditions are to be fulfilled before it is done. First, by preparatory work, the repressed material must have come very near to the patient's thoughts, and secondly, he must be sufficiently firmly attached by an affective relationship to the phYSician (transference) to make it impossible for him to take fresh flight again [that is, to repress again].82 In the course of his work Freud developed a variety of techniques that attempted to attack the pathological equilibrium of the patient not so much by calling forth the repressed past, but rather by weakening, devaluating, or destroying the opposing "resistances." The main instrument Freud now b&lieved should be used against the strength of the resistances was again interpretation; and, consistently enough, he con.. Reference footnote 28; p. 375. 81 Difficulties arise at this point because Freud offers no satisfactory operational definition of "emotional acceptance." The temptation Is here to judge by the therapeutic effect, and to neglect all testimony of the patient as to his "emotional acceptance" of a construction if he does not improve in his condition. .. Freud, "Observations on 'Wild~ Psycho-Analysis" in Collected Papers, vol. 2, p. 302 . GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY ceived of demonstration of the historical (childhood) pattern of the resistance as the main type of interpretation. Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 ••. our work is aimed directly at finding out and overcoming the 'resistances', and we can with justification rely on the complexes coming to light as soon as the resistances have been recognized and removed. . . . In male patients the most important resistances to the treatment seem to be derived from the father-complex and to express themselves in fear of the father, and in defiance and incredulity towards him.aa Freud, of course, did not believe that finding and naming the resistance did away with it. One must allow the patient time to get to know this resistance of which he is ignorant. to 'work thrOUgh' it, to overcome it, by continuing the work according to the analytic rule in defiance of it. Only when it has come to its height can one, with the patient's cooperation, discover the repressed instinctual trends which are feeding the resistance; and only by living them through in this way will the patient be convinced of their existence and their power.s, . In certain cases he considered it necessary to use special pressures to overcome the tenacity of the resistance-for instance, in cases of anxiety hysteria. • . . the analytic technique must undergo certain modifications according to the nature of the disease and the dominating instinctual trends in the patient. Our therapy was, in fact, first designed for conversion-hysteria; in 'anxiety-hysteria (phobias) we must alter our procedure to some extent. The fact is that these patients cannot bring out the material necessary for resolving the phobia so long as they feel protected by retaining their phobic condition',85 One can hardly ever master a phobia if one waits till the patient lets the analysis infiuence him to give it up . . . one succeeds only when one can induce them [the agoraphobic patients] . . . to go about alone and to struggle with their anxiety while they make the attempt. One first achieves, therefore, a considerable moderation of the phobia, and it is only when this has been attained by the physician's recommendation that the associations and memories come into the 88 Reference footnote 21; pp. 288-289. "Reference footnote 28; p.375. 85 Reference footnote 21; p 289. 275 patient's mind enabling the phobia to be solved.as . Freud considered a similar, but even stronger, active pressure against the dy~ namic force of the resistances to be necessary in cases of obsessiV'e and compulsive neurosis. In severe cases of obsessive acts a passive waiting attitude seems even less well adapted • . • in their analysis there is always the danger of a great deal coming to light without its effecting any change in them. I think there is little doubt that here the correct technique can only be to wait until the treatment itself has become a compulsion, and then with this counter-compulsion forcibly to suppress the compulsion of the disease.81 In his masterpiece of clinical discussion, the famous "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis," Freud described how he for the first time used another technique of pressure against resistance, obviously the most forcible type of pressure available to an analyst. Only one way was to be found of overcoming it [the patient's shrinking from an independent existence]. I was obliged to wait until his attachment to myself pad become strong enough to counter-balance this s~rinking, and then played off this one factor against the other. I determined ... that the treatment must be brought to an end at a particular fixed date, no matter how far it had advanced. . . . Under the inexorable pressure of this fixed limit his [the patient's] resistance and his fixation to the illness gave way. . ..88 In one of his last works Freud again discusses this technical device. Here the reader gets the impression that Freud felt rather ambivalent about setting a term.as At this point it remains for me to demonstrate how Freud, as he developed his system of dynamic psychology, described his therapy in terms of this system, that is, in dynamic terms, yet did not at any time give up the reference base of the germinal observation. 88 Freud, "Turnings in the Ways of PsychoAnalytic Therapy" in, Collected Papers, vol. 2, pp. 399-400. 8' Reference footnote 36; p. 400. 88 Freud, "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis" in Collected Papers, vol. 3, pp. 477-478. "" Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable," Internat. J. Psychoanalysis (1937) 18:, p. 375-. 276 PAUL BERGMAN Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 An early paper, written in 1904,made clear the equivalence between the earlier formulations in terms of memory and availability to consciousness, arid the later formulations, in terms of instincts and their reintegration into the total personality. . The task which the psycho-analytic method tries to perform may be formulated in different ways, which are, however, in their essence equivalent. It may, for instance, be stated thus: the task of the cure is to remove the amnesias. When all gaps in mem~ ory have been filled in, all the enigmatic products of mental life elucidated, the continuan~ and even the renewal of the morbid condition is impOSSible. Or the formula may be expressed in this fashion: all repressions are to be undone; the mental condition is then the same as if allamnesias are removed. Another formulation reaches further; the problem consists in making the unconscious accessible to consciousness, which is done by overcoming the resistances.40 A still more concise .formula, from a paper written in 1914, states it in these words: The aim of these different procedures [used by Freud in the course of developing the psychoanalytic technique] has of course remained the same throughout: descriptively, to recover the lost memories; dynamically, to conquer the resistances caused by repression.41 In the framework of Freud's dynamic psychology the repressed memories are now considered to be the hiding places of the withdrawn, regressed, or fixated libido. . The libido (entirely or in part) has found its way back into regression .and has reanimated the infantile imagos; and thither we pursue it in the arialytic treatment, aim. . ing always at unearthing it, making it accessible to consciousness and at last serviceable to reality. Wherever. in our analytic delving we come upon one of the hiding places of the withdrawn libido, there ensues a battle; all the forces which have brought about the regression of the libido will rise up as 'resistances' against our efforts in order to main· tain the new condition.'2 40 Freud, "Freud's Psycho-Analytic Method" in Collected. Pape7's, vol. 1, p. 269. 41Reference footnote 28; p. 367. .. Freud, "The Dynamics of the Transf~rence" CQ1!sotutZ PupunJ, yul. 2, J,lJ,l. 3111·318. in Similarly, the transference sttuation, previously described in terms of deceptive present mental content that has to be diagnosed as originating in the past and put into memory context, was now seen as the field of opposing dynamic forces; instincts that from the unconscious seek for discharge, the repressing forces, the analyst's demands for rational evaluation.4s Another dynamic evaluation of the transference stressed not its character as the thing to be analyzed-and iIi this way eventually yielding the pure metal of analytic therapy, namely the repressed memories-but its character as force that allies itself to the analyst's demands for rational evaluation and gives· power to the patient's own rational and realistic tendencies. One must asslime that Freud herewith meant certain aspects of positive transference. . . . the patient's intellectual interest and understanding . . . alone is hardly worth consideration by the side of the other forces engaged in the struggle, for it is always in danger of succumbing to the. clouding of reasoning power under the influence of reo sistances. Hence it follows that the new sources of strength for which the sufferer is indebted to the analyst resolve themselves into transference, mid instruction (by explanation). The patient only makes use of the instruction, however, in so far as he is induced to do so by the transference. 44 In Freud's mind-if I understand it rightly-the dynamic formulations never superseded his fundamental faith that the germinal observation contained the essential aspect of man's freeing himself from mental illness and disturbance. At the end of his long life and work he summed up his thinking on analytic therapy in the remarkable work on "Analysis Terminable and Interminable." At one point in this paper he asked the question whether one can ever "be certain that no further change would take place in him [the patient] if his analysis were continued." The initial part of Freud's answer is relevant: 48 Reference footnote 42; p. 322• .. :Reference footnote 28; p. 364465. Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 GERMINAL CELL OF FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY 277 The implication is that by means of analysis cussed exclusively upon therapeutic reSUlts it is possible to attain to absolute psychic· and who employ analytic methods but only normality and to be sure that it will be main- up to a certain point. An analysis oJ early tained, the supposition being that all the childhood such as we are conSidering Is patient's repressions have been lifted and tedious and laborious and makes demands both upon the physician· and upon the patient every gap in his memory filled. 411 which cannot always be met." Absolute psychic normality appears to Whether Freud held strictly to his be present when "every gap· in the memory has been filled." The further discus- theory of therapy in actual practice I do sion confirms the stress placed on re- not know. There is no doubt that many covery of memory as the specific factor of his closest collaborators and disciples, of analytic therapy. Through evaluation even while Freud was still alive, pracof other factors, like strength of instinct, ticed psychoanalysis with a marked inherited qualities of the ego, and so on, change of empha,sis as compared to Freud arrives at a pessimistic general Freud's theory of psychoanalytic therapy. outlook for analytic therapy, as it ca,n- Not only the remainder of the early abrenot deal with these factors. But traumatic action theory, but also the stress on genetical reconstruction and recovery of memories can be recovered. early memories took second place iri their There can be no doubt that, when the aeti- hands behind structural analysis, that is, ology of the neurosis is traumatic, analysis the attempt to acquaint the ego with the has a far better chance. Only when the traumatic factor predominates can we look for unconscious mechanisms and the unconthat most masterly achievement of psycho- scious contents active in current life situaanalysis, namely, such a reinforcement of the tions. This change of emphasis may posego that a correct adjustment takes the place sibly have become even more marked of that infantile solution of the patient's early since Freud's death. conflicts which proved so inadequate. 46 However that may be, from the point The therapy, then, that Freud worked of view of a general theory of psychoout, appears to be the logical extension therapy a reliable evaluation of the facts of the paramount impression that the contained in the germinal observation regerminal observation had, once and for mains of great interest. Questions arise all, made on his mind. Uncovering his- here in regard to Freud's interpretation tory, and particularly earliest history, of the germinal observation and in regard is its essence; recovery of memory, par- to the place that the kind of processes ticularly of earliest memory, is the most taking place in the germinal observation desired means and end. To Freud this may occupy in relation to other processes interest in the earliest phases of the pa- seemingly bringing about changes in hutient's development became the one fea- man beings. ture by which he wanted to distinguish In regard to the interpretation of the genuine psychoanalysis from. other psy- germinal observation, we should have chotherapies which used an alloy of ana- more secure knowledge of the factors that lytic and other methods, or used analytic make the disappearance of an event from methods to an insufficient degree. memory pathogenic. Is all such disappearance pathogenic, at least where strong In my own writings and in those of my followers more and more stress is laid upon emotions are involved, or can there be the necessity for carrying the analyses of indifferent or possibly even beneficial forneurotics back into the remotest period of getting of such events? Probably in his their childhood, the time at which sexual later years Freud would have accepted life reaches the climax of its early develop- such different possibilities, as he no doubt ment. . . . This requirement is not only of theoretical but also of practical importance, would have accepted the possibility of for it distinguishes our efforts from the work indifferent or even damaging effect of of those physicians whose interests are fo.. Reference footnote 39; p. 376. M Reference footnote 39; p. 377. ~ Freud, "Some Psychological Consequences of the AnatOmical Distinction Between the Sexes." Intemat• J. Psychoanalysts (1927) 8: p. 133. Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 06:11 25 August 2017 278 recovering emotionally highly cathected memories. Furthermore, still in regard to the interpretation of the germinal observation, one would like to know what part abreaction plays in it; what part possible restructuring of the patient's self as he permits himself to perceive a new aspect of himself; what part the participation of the therapist in the situation, particularly when he acts "as a teacher, as a representative of a freer and more superior philosophy of life, and as a confessor, who through the continuance of his sympathy and his respect imparts, so to say, absolution after the confession." 48 One may wonder, for instance, whether without the therapist's sympathetic attitude .. See the quotation as referenced in footnote 25. PAUL BERGMAN recovery of memories would have the same therapeutic effect; or what happens to the patient if no recovery of memories is attempted, yet the therapist offers his sympathetic attitude and "more superior . philosophy of life." By raising these questions, however, I have already overstepped the boundaries of this paper. A casual treatment at this time would be a great injustice to the importance of these questions for the general theory of psychotherapy, as well as for the general theory of personality. A more thorough discussion, on the other hand, might well wait for a different, possibly more systematic context. THE MENNINGER FOUNDATION TOPEKA, KANSAS