The Therapeutical Principles of Psychoanalysis
While the psychoanalyst, of course, knows of this therapeutic tendency
to extricate the patient from his unhealthy phantasies, he also knows
just how far this mere extricating of neurotic patients from their
phantasies goes. As physicians, we should never think of preferring a
difficult and complicated method, assailed by all authorities, to a
simple, clear and easy one without good reason. I am perfectly
well-acquainted with hypnotic suggestion, and with Dubois’ method of
persuasion, but I do not use these methods, on account of their relative
inadequacy. For the same reason, I do not use the direct “ré-éducation
de la volonté” as the psychoanalytic method gives me better results.
In applying psychoanalysis we must grant the regressive phantasies of
the patient, for psychoanalysis has a much broader outlook, as regards
the valuation of symptoms, than have the above psychotherapeutic
methods. These all emanate from the assertion that a neurosis is an
absolute morbid formation.
The reigning school of neurology has never thought of considering
neurosis as a healing process also, and of attributing to the neurotic
formations a quite special teleological meaning. Neurosis, like every
other disease, is a compromise between the morbid tendencies, and the
normal function. Modern medicine no longer considers fever as the
illness itself, but a purposeful reaction of the organism.
Psychoanalysis, likewise, no longer conceives a neurosis as eo ipso
morbid, but as also having a meaning and a purpose. From this there
follows the more reserved and expectant attitude of psychoanalysis
towards neurosis. Psychoanalysis does not judge the value of the
symptoms, but first tries to understand what tendencies lie beneath
these symptoms. If we were able to abolish a neurosis in the same way,
for instance, as a cancer is destroyed, then at the same time there
would be destroyed a great amount of available energy also. We save this
energy, that is, we make it serve the purposes of the instinct for
health, as soon as we can trace the meaning of these symptoms; by taking
part in the regressive movement of the patient. Those unfamiliar with
the essentials of psychoanalysis will have some difficulty in
understanding how a therapeutic effect can come to pass when the
physician takes part in the pernicious phantasies of the patient. Not
only critics, but the patients also, doubt the therapeutic value of such
a method, which concentrates attention upon phantasies which the patient
rejects as worthless and reprehensible. The patients will often tell you
that their former physicians forbade them to occupy themselves with
their phantasies, and told them that they must only consider that it is
well with them, when they are free, if but momentarily, from their awful
torments. So, it seems strange enough that it should be of any use to
them, when the treatment brings them back to the very thing from which
they have tried constantly to escape. The following answer may be made:
all depends upon the position which the patient takes up towards his own
phantasies. These phantasies have been hitherto, for the patient, an
absolutely passive and involuntary manifestation. As we say, he was lost
in his dreams. The patient’s so-called brooding is an involuntary kind
of dreaming too. What psychoanalysis demands from a patient is only
apparently the same. Only a man who has a very superficial knowledge of
psychoanalysis can confuse this passive dreaming with the position taken
up in analysis. What psychoanalysis asks from the patient is just the
contrary of what the patient has always done. The patient can be
compared to a person who, unintentionally, has fallen into the water and
sunk, whilst psychoanalysis wants him to dive in, as it was no mere
chance which led him to fall in at just that spot. There lies a sunken
treasure, and only a diver can raise it.
The patient, judging his phantasies from the standpoint of his reason,
regards them as valueless and senseless; but, in reality, the phantasies
have their great influence on the patient because they are of great
importance. They are old, sunken treasures, which can only be recovered
by a diver, that is, the patients, contrary to their wont, must now pay
an active attention to their inner life. Where they formerly dreamed,
they must now think, consciously and intentionally. This new way of
thinking about himself has about as much resemblance to the patient’s
former mental condition as a diver has to a drowning man. The earlier
joy in indulgence has now become a purpose and an aim—that is, has
become work. The patient, assisted by the physician, occupies himself
with his phantasies, not to lose himself therein, but to uproot them,
piece by piece, and to bring them into daylight. He thus reaches an
objective standpoint towards his inner life, and everything he formerly
loathed and feared is now considered consciously. This contains the
basis of the whole psychoanalytic therapy. In consequence of his
illness, the patient stood, partially or totally, outside of real life.
Consequently he neglected many of his life’s duties, either in regard to
social work or to the ordinary daily tasks. If he wishes to be well, he
must return to the fulfilment of his particular obligations. Let me say,
by way of caution, that we are not to understand by such “duties,” some
general ethical postulates, but duties towards himself. Nor does this
mean that they are eo ipso egoistic interests, since we are social
beings as well, a matter too easily forgotten by individualists. An
ordinary person will feel very much more comfortable sharing a common
virtue than possessing an individual vice, even if the latter is a very
seductive one. They must be already neurotic, or otherwise extraordinary
people who can be deluded by such particular interests. The neurotic
fled from his duties and his libido withdrew, at least partly, from the
tasks imposed by real life. In consequence, the libido became
introverted and directed towards an inner life. The libido followed the
path of regression: to a large extent phantasies replaced reality,
because the patient refused to overcome certain real difficulties.
Unconsciously the neurotic patient prefers—and very often consciously
too—his dreams and phantasies to reality. To bring him back to real life
and to the fulfilment of its necessary duties, the analysis proceeds
along the same false path of regression which has been taken by his
libido; so that the beginning of psychoanalysis looks as if it were
supporting the morbid tendencies of the patient. But psychoanalysis
follows these phantasies, these wrong paths, in order to restore the
libido, which is the valuable part of the phantasies, to the conscious
self and to the duties of the moment. This can only be done by bringing
the phantasies into the light of day, and along with them the libido
bound up with them. We might leave these unconscious phantasies to their
shadowy existence, if no libido were attached to them. It is unavoidable
that the patient, feeling himself at the beginning of analysis confirmed
in his regressive tendencies, leads his analytical interest, amid
increasing resistances, down to the depths of the shadowy world. We can
easily understand that any physician who is a normal person experiences
the greatest resistance towards the thoroughly morbid, regressive
tendency of the patient, since he feels quite certain that this tendency
is pathological. And this all the more because, as physician, he
believes he is right in refusing to give heed to his patient’s
phantasies. It is quite conceivable that the physician feels a repulsion
towards this tendency; it is undoubtedly repugnant to see how a person
is completely given up to such phantasies, finding only himself of any
importance and never ceasing to admire or despise himself. The esthetic
sense of normal people has, as a rule, little pleasure in neurotic
phantasies, even if it does not find them absolutely repulsive. The
psychoanalyst must put aside such esthetic judgment, just as every
physician must, who really tries to help his patients. He may not fear
any dirty work. Of course there are a great many patients physically
ill, who, without undergoing an exact examination or local treatment, do
recover by the use of general physical, dietetic, or suggestive means.
Severe cases can, however, only be helped by a more exact examination
and therapy, based on a profound knowledge of the illness. Our
psychotherapeutic methods hitherto have been like these general
measures. In slight cases they did no harm; on the contrary, they were
often of great service. But for a great many patients these measures
have proved inadequate. If they really can be helped, it will be by
psychoanalysis, which is not to say that psychoanalysis is a universal
panacea. Such a sneer proceeds only from ill-natured criticism. We know
very well that psychoanalysis fails in many cases. As everybody knows,
we shall never be able to cure all illnesses.
This “diving” work of analysis brings dirty matter piecemeal out of the
slime, which must then be cleansed before we can tell its value. The
dirty phantasies are valueless and are thrown aside, but the libido
actuating them is of value and this, after cleansing, becomes
serviceable again. To the psychoanalyst, as to every specialist, it will
sometimes seem that the phantasies have also a value of their own, and
not only by reason of the libido linked with them. But their value is
not, in the first instance, for the patient. For the physician, these
phantasies have a scientific value, just as if is of special interest to
the surgeon to know whether the pus contained staphylococci or
streptococci. To the patient it is all the same, and for him, it is
better that the doctor conceal his scientific interest, in order not to
tempt him to have greater pleasure than necessary in his phantasies. The
etiological importance which is attached to these phantasies,
incorrectly, to my mind, explains why so much room is given up in
psychoanalytic literature to the extensive discussion of the various
sexual phantasies. Once if is known that absolutely nothing is
impossible in the sphere of sexual phantasy, the former estimate of
these phantasies will disappear, and therewith the endeavor to discover
in them an etiological import. Nor will the most extended discussion of
these cases ever be able to exhaust this sphere.
Every case is theoretically inexhaustible. But in general the production
of phantasies ceases after a time. Naturally, we must not conclude from
this that the possibility of creating phantasies is exhausted, but the
cessation in their production only means that there is then no more
libido on the path of regression. The end of the regressive movement is
reached as soon as the libido takes hold of the present real duties of
life, and is used to solve those problems. But there are cases, and
these not a few, where the patient continues longer than usual to
produce endless phantastic manifestations, either from his own pleasure
in them or from certain false expectations on the part of the doctor.
Such a mistake is especially easy for beginners, since, blinded by the
present psychoanalytical discussion, they keep their interest fixed on
these phantasies, because they seem to possess etiological significance.
They are therefore constantly at pains to fish up phantasies of early
childhood, vainly hoping to find thus the solution of the neurotic
difficulties. They do not see that the solution lies in action, and in
the fulfilment of certain necessary duties of life. It will be objected
that the neurosis is entirely due to the incapacity of the patient to
carry out these very demands of life, and that therapy by the analysis
of the unconscious ought to enable him to do so, or at least, give him
means to do so. The objection put in this way is perfectly valid, but we
have to add that it is only so when the patient is really conscious of
the duties he has to fulfil, not only academically, in their general
theoretical outlines but in their most minute details. It is
characteristic for neurotic people to be wanting in this knowledge,
although, because of their intelligence, they are well aware of the
general duties of life, and struggle, perhaps only too hard, to fulfil
the prescriptions of current morality. But the much more important
duties which he ought to fulfil towards himself are to a great extent
unknown to the neurotic; sometimes even they are not known at all. It is
not enough, therefore, to follow the patient blindfold on the path of
regression, and to push him by an inopportune etiological interest back
into his infantile phantasies. I have often heard from patients, with
whom the psychoanalytic treatment has come to a standstill: “The doctor
believes I must have somewhere some infantile trauma, or an infantile
phantasy which I am still repressing.” Apart from the cases where this
supposition was really true, I have seen cases in which the stoppage was
caused by the fact that the libido, hauled up by the analysis, sank back
into the depths again for want of employment. This was due to the
physician’s attention being directed entirely to the infantile
phantasies, and his failing therefore to see what duties of the moment
the patient had to fulfil. The consequence was that the libido brought
forth by analysis always sank back again, as no opportunity for further
activity was found.
There are many patients who, on their own account, discover their
life-tasks and abandon the production of regressive phantasies pretty
soon, because they prefer to live in reality, rather than in their
phantasies. It is a pity that this cannot be said of all patients. A
good many of them forsake for a long time, or even forever, the
fulfilment of their life-tasks, and prefer their idle neurotic dreaming.
I must again emphasize that we do not understand by “dreaming” always a
conscious phenomenon.
In accordance with these facts and these views, the character of
psychoanalysis has changed during the course of time. If the first stage
of psychoanalysis was perhaps a kind of surgery, which would remove from
the mind of the patient the foreign body, the “blocked” affect, the
later form has been a kind of historical method, which tries to
investigate carefully the genesis of the neurosis, down to its smallest
details, and to reduce it to its earliest origins.
The Conception of Transference
This last method has unmistakably been due to strong scientific
interest, the traces of which are clearly seen in the delineations of
cases so far. Thanks to this, Freud was also able to discover wherein
lay the therapeutical effect of psychoanalysis. Whilst formerly this was
sought in the discharge of the traumatic affect, it was now seen that
the phantasies produced were especially associated with the personality
of the physician. Freud calls this process _transference_
(“Uebertragung”), owing to the fact that the images of the parents
(“imagines”) are henceforth transferred to the physician, along with the
infantile attitude of mind adopted towards the parents. The transference
does not arise solely in the intellectual sphere, but the libido bound
up with the phantasy is transferred, together with the phantasy itself,
to the personality of the physician, so that the physician replaces the
parents to a certain extent. All the apparently sexual phantasies which
have been connected with the parents are now connected with the
physician, and the less this is realized by the patient, the more he
will be unconsciously bound to his physician. This recognition is in
many ways of prime importance.
This process has an important biological value for the patient. The less
libido he gives to reality, the more exaggerated will be his phantasies,
and the more he will be cut off from the world. Typical of neurotic
people is their attitude of disharmony towards reality, that is, their
diminished capacity for adaptation. Through the transference to the
physician, a bridge is built, across which the patient can get away from
his family, into reality. In other words, he can emerge from his
infantile environment into the world of grown-up people, for here the
physician stands for a part of the extra-familial world. But on the
other hand, this transference is a powerful hindrance to the progress of
treatment, for the patient assimilates the personality of the physician
as if he did stand for father or mother, and not for a part of the
extra-familial world. If the patient could acquire the image of the
physician as a part of the non-infantile world, he would gain a
considerable advantage. But transference has the opposite effect; hence
the whole advantage of the new acquisition is neutralized. The more the
patient succeeds in regarding his doctor as he does any other
individual, the more he is able to consider himself objectively, the
greater becomes the advantage of transference. The less he is able to
consider his doctor in this way, the more the physician is assimilated
with the father, the less is the advantage of the transference and the
greater will be its harm. The familial environment of the patient has
only become increased by an additional personality assimilated to his
parents. The patient himself is, as before, still in his childish
surroundings, and therefore maintains his infantile attitude of mind. In
this manner, all the advantages of transference can be lost.
There are patients who follow the analysis with the greatest interest
without making the slightest improvement, remaining extraordinarily
productive in phantasies, although the whole development of their
neurosis, even to the smallest details, has been brought to light. A
physician under the influence of the historical view might be thus
easily thrown into confusion, and would have to ask himself: What is
there in this case still to be analyzed? Those are just the cases of
which I spoke before, where it is no longer a matter of the analysis of
the historical material, but we have now to face a practical problem,
the overcoming of the inadequate infantile attitude of mind. Of course,
the historical analysis would show repeatedly that the patient had a
childish attitude towards his physician, but it would not bring us any
solution of the question how that attitude could be changed. To a
certain extent, this serious disadvantage of transference is found in
every case. Gradually it has been proved that this part of
psychoanalysis is, considered from a scientific standpoint,
extraordinarily interesting and of great value, but in its practical
aspect, of less importance than that which has now to follow, namely,
the _analysis of the transference_.
Confession and Psychoanalysis
Before we enter into a more detailed consideration of this practical
part of psychoanalysis, I should like to mention a parallelism between
the first part of psychoanalysis and a historical institution of our
civilization. It is not difficult to guess this parallelism. We find it
in the religious institution called _confession_. By nothing are people
more cut off from fellowship with others than by a secret borne about
within them. It is not that a secret actually cuts off a person from
communicating with his fellows, yet somehow personal secrets which are
zealously guarded do have this effect. “Sinful” deeds and thoughts, for
instance, are the secrets which separate one person from another. Great
relief is therefore gained by confessing them. This relief is due to the
re-admission of the individual to the community. His loneliness, which
was so difficult to bear, ceases. Herein lies the essential value of the
confession. But this confession means at the same time, through the
phenomenon of transference and its unconscious phantasies, that the
individual becomes tied to his confessor. This was probably
instinctively intended by the Church. The fact that perhaps the greater
part of humanity wants to be guided, justifies the moral value
attributed to this institution by the Church. The priest is furnished
with all the attributes of paternal authority, and upon him rests the
obligation to guide his congregation, just as a father guides his
children. Thus the priest replaces the parents and to a certain extent
frees his people from their infantile bonds. In so far as the priest is
a highly moral personality, with a nobility of soul, and an adequate
culture, this institution may be commended as a splendid instance of
social control and education, which served humanity during the space of
two thousand years. So long as the Christian Church of the Middle Ages
was capable of being the guardian of culture and science, in which rôle
her success was, in part, due to her wide toleration of the secular
element, confession was an admirable method for the education of the
people. But confession lost its greatest value, at least for the more
educated, as soon as the Church was unable to maintain her leadership
over the more emancipated portion of the community and became incapable,
through her rigidity, of following the intellectual life of the nations.
The more highly educated men of to-day do not want to be guided by a
belief or a rigid dogma; they want to understand. Therefore, they put
aside everything that they do not understand, and the religious symbol
is very little accessible for general understanding. The sacrificium
intellectus is an act of violence, to which the moral conscience of the
highly developed man is opposed. But in a large number of cases,
transference to, and dependence upon the analyst could be considered as
a sufficient end, with a definite therapeutic effect, if the analyst
were in every respect a great personality, capable and competent to
guide the patients given into his charge and to be a father of his
people. But a modern, mentally-developed person desires to guide
himself, and to stand on his own feet. He wants to take the helm in his
own hands; the steering has too long been done by others. He wants to
understand; in other words, he wants to be a grown-up person. It is much
easier to be guided, but this no longer suits the well-educated of the
present time, for they feel the necessity of the moral independence
demanded by the spirit of our time. _Modern humanity demands moral
autonomy._ Psychoanalysis has to allow this claim, and refuses to guide
and to advise. The psychoanalytic physician knows his own shortcomings
too well, and therefore cannot believe that he can be father and leader.
His highest ambition must only consist in educating his patients to
become independent personalities, and in freeing them from their
unconscious dependency within infantile limitations. Psychoanalysis has
therefore to analyze the transference, a task left untouched by the
priest. In so doing, the unconscious dependence upon the physician is
cut off, and the patient is put upon his own feet; this at least is the
end at which the physician aims.
The Analysis of the Transference
We have already seen that the transference brings about difficulties,
because the personality of the physician is assimilated with the image
of the patient’s parents. The first part of the analysis, the
investigation of the patient’s complexes, is rather easy, chiefly
because a man is relieved by ridding himself of his secrets,
difficulties and pains. In the second place, he experiences a peculiar
satisfaction from at last finding some one who shows interest in all
those things to which nobody hitherto would listen. It is very agreeable
to find a person, who tries to understand him, and does not shrink back.
In the third place, the expressed intention of the physician, to
understand him and to follow him through all his erring ways,
pathetically affects the patient. The feeling of being understood is
especially sweet to the solitary souls who are forever longing for
“understanding.” In this they are insatiable. The beginning of the
analysis is for these reasons fairly easy and simple. The improvement so
easily gained, and the sometimes striking change in the patient’s
condition of health are a great temptation to the psychoanalytic
beginner to slip into a therapeutic optimism and an analytical
superficiality, neither of which would correspond to the seriousness and
the difficulties of the situation. The trumpeting of therapeutic
successes is nowhere more contemptible than in psychoanalysis, for no
one is better able to understand than a psychoanalyst how the so-called
result of the therapy depends on the coöperation of nature and the
patient himself. The psychoanalyst may rest content with possessing an
advanced scientific insight. The prevailing psychoanalytic literature
cannot be spared reproach that some of its works do give a false
impression as to its real nature. There are therapeutical publications
from which the uninitiated receive the impression that psychoanalysis is
more or less a clever trick, with astonishing effects. The first part of
analysis, where we try to understand, and which, as we have seen before,
offers much relief to the patient’s feelings, is responsible for these
illusions. These incidental benefits help the phenomenon of
transference. The patient has long felt the need of help to free him
from his inward isolation and his lack of self-understanding. So he
gives way to his transference, after first struggling against it. For a
neurotic person, the transference is an ideal situation. He himself
makes no effort, and nevertheless another person meets him halfway, with
an apparent affectionate understanding; does not even get annoyed or
leave off his patient endeavors, although he himself is sometimes
stubborn and makes childish resistances. By this means the strongest
resistances are melted away, for the interest of the physician meets the
need of a better adaptation to extra-familial reality. The patient
obtains, through the transference, not only his parents, who used to
bestow great attention upon him, but in addition he gets a relationship
outside the family, and thus fulfils a necessary duty of life. The
therapeutical success so often to be seen at the same time fortifies the
patient’s belief that this new-gained situation is an excellent one.
Here we can easily understand that the patient is not in the least
inclined to abandon this newly-found advantage. If it depended upon him,
he would be forever associated with his physician. In consequence, he
begins to produce all kinds of phantasies, in order to find possible
ways of maintaining the association with his physician. He makes the
greatest resistances towards his physician, when the latter tries to
dissolve the transference. At the same time, we must not forget that for
our patients the acquisition of a relationship outside the family is one
of the most important duties of life, and one, moreover, which up to
this moment they had failed or but very imperfectly succeeded in
accomplishing. I must oppose myself energetically to the view that we
always mean by this relationship outside the family, a sexual relation
in its popular sense. This is the misunderstanding fallen into by so
many neurotic people, who believe that a right attitude toward reality
is only to be found by way of concrete sexuality. There are even
physicians, not psychoanalysts, who are of the same conviction. But this
is the primitive adaptation which we find among uncivilized people under
primitive conditions. If we lend uncritical support to this tendency of
neurotic people to adapt themselves in an infantile way, we just
encourage them in the infantilism from which they are suffering. The
neurotic patient has to learn that higher adaptation which is demanded
by life from civilized and grown-up people. Whoever has a tendency to
sink lower, will proceed to do so; for this end he does not need
psychoanalysis. But we must be careful not to fall into the opposite
extreme and believe that we can create by analysis great personalities.
Psychoanalysis stands above traditional morality. It follows no
arbitrary moral standard. It is only a means to bring to light the
individual trends, and to develop and harmonize them as perfectly as
possible.
Analysis must be a biological method, that is, a method which tries to
connect the highest subjective well-being with the most valuable
biological activity. The best result for a person who passes through
analysis, is that he becomes at the end what he really is, in harmony
with himself, neither bad nor good, but an ordinary human being.
Psychoanalysis cannot be considered a method of education, if by
education is understood the possibility of shaping a tree to a highly
artificial form. But whoever has the higher conception of education will
most prize that educational method which can cultivate a tree so that it
shall fulfil to perfection its own natural conditions of growth. We
yield too much to the ridiculous fear that we are at bottom quite
impossible beings, and that if everyone were to appear as he really is a
dreadful social catastrophe would result. The individualistic thinkers
of our day insist on understanding by “people as they really are,” only
the discontented, anarchistic and egotistic element in humanity; they
quite forget that this same humanity has created those well-established
forms of our civilization which possess greater strength and solidity
than all the anarchistic under-currents.
When we try to dissolve the transference we have to fight against powers
which have not only neurotic value, but also universal normal
significance. When we try to bring the patient to the dissolution of his
transference, we are asking more from him than is generally asked of the
average man; we ask that he should subdue himself wholly. Only certain
religions have made such a claim on humanity, and it is this demand
which makes the second part of analysis so difficult.
The technique that we have to employ for the analysis of the
transference is exactly the same as that before described. Naturally the
problem as to what the patient must do with the libido which is now
withdrawn from the physician comes to the fore. Here again, there is
great danger for the beginner, as he will be inclined to suggest, or to
give suggestive advice. This would be extremely pleasant for the patient
in every respect, and therefore fatal.
The Problem of Self-Analysis
I think here is the place to say something about the indispensable
conditions of the psychology of the psychoanalyst himself.
Psychoanalysis is by no means an instrument applied to the patient only;
it is self-evident that it must be applied to the psychoanalyst first. I
believe that it is not only a moral, but a professional duty also, for
the physician to submit himself to the psychoanalytic process, in order
to clean his mind from his own unconscious interferences. Even if he is
entitled to trust to his own personal honesty, that will not suffice to
save him from the misleading influences of his own unconscious. _The
unconscious is unknown, even to the most frank and honest person._
Without analysis the physician will inevitably be blindfolded in all
those places where he meets his own complexes; this is a situation of
dangerous importance in the analysis of transference. Do not forget that
the complexes of a neurotic are only the complexes of all human beings,
the psychoanalyst included. Through the interference of your own hidden
wishes you will do the greatest harm to your patients. The psychoanalyst
must never forget that _the final aim of psychoanalysis is the personal
freedom and moral independence of the patient_.
The Analysis of Dreams
Here, as everywhere in analysis, we have to follow the patient along the
line of his own impulses, even if the path seems to be a wrong one.
Error is just as important a condition of mental progress as truth. In
this second step of analysis, with all its hidden precipices and
sand-banks, we owe a great deal to _dreams_. At the beginning of
analysis dreams chiefly helped in discovering phantasies; here they
guide us, in a most valuable way, to the application of the libido.
Freud’s work laid the foundation of an immense increase in our knowledge
in regard to the interpretation of the dream’s content, through its
historical material and its tendency to express wishes. He showed us how
dreams open the way to the acquisition of unconscious material. In
accordance with his genius for the purely historical method, he apprises
us chiefly of the analytical relations. Although this method is
incontestably of the greatest importance, we ought not to take up this
standpoint exclusively, as such an historical conception does not
sufficiently take account of the _teleological meaning of dreams_.
Conscious thinking would be quite insufficiently characterized, if we
considered it only from its historical determinants. For its complete
valuation, we have unquestionably to consider its teleological or
prospective meaning as well. If we pursued the history of the English
Parliament back to its first origin, we should certainly arrive at a
perfect understanding of its development, and the determination of its
present form. But we should know nothing about its prospective function,
that is, about the work which it has to accomplish now, and in the
future. The same thing is to be said about dreams. Their prospective
function has been valued only by superstitious peoples and times, but
probably there is much truth in their view. Not that we pretend that
dreams have any prophetic foreboding, but we suggest, that there might
be a possibility of discovering in their unconscious material those
future combinations which are subliminal just because they have not
reached the distinctiveness or the intensity which consciousness
requires. Here I am thinking of those indistinct presentments of the
future which we sometimes have, which are nothing else than subliminal
combinations, the objective value of which we are not able to
apperceive. The future tendencies of the patient are elaborated by this
indirect analysis, and, if this work is successful, the convalescent
passes out of treatment and out of his half-infantile state of
transference into life, which has been inwardly carefully prepared for,
which has been chosen by himself, and to which, after many
deliberations, he has at last made up his mind.