THE PROLONGED INTERVIEW AND ITS OBJECTIFICATION
The empirical material assembled in this book has appeared in the
course of prolonged interviews with individuals under unusually
intimate conditions. This method of the prolonged interview has now
had a history of some thirty years in the form devised by Freud,
but so far there are very few efforts to objectify the events which
transpire there. Otto Rank has written a series of studies of the
“interview situation” which is the most important effort so far made to
characterize the distinctive features of the method. But the empirical
material which is so far reported does not rest upon the verbatim
recording of what happens, except in a few specimen instances of highly
pathological cases, and attempts are only now being made to record some
of the principal physiological changes in the subject.
It will be remembered that Freud learned to predict the future course
of reminiscence by watching word slips, random movements, and many
other acts which were formerly dismissed as chance occurrences. He also
found that he could abbreviate the laborious efforts of the patient
to recall the traumatic (the original) episode by proposing various
interpretations. It is at this point that the cautious physician
and psychologist have picked serious quarrels with psychoanalytical
findings. They allege that the patient produces the kind of material
which the analyst suggests is to be brought forth, and that the whole
process is one of putting a rabbit in the hat which you triumphantly
extricate later on. They have seized upon the schisms in the analytical
fold, and declare that you eventually dream about anima figures if you
are analyzed by Jung, that you relive birth traumas if you are analyzed
by Rank, and that you welter in a galaxy of anal, oral, and urethral
symbols if you are deeply analyzed by Freud. You talk about inferiority
feeling if you work with Adler, and about castrative anxiety if you
work with Freud.
One might suppose that after thirty years of labor there would be in
existence a body of documents which could be consulted by a group of
competent specialists who were trying to reconcile their differences
and doubts about what actually goes on in the analytical interview.[61]
At the present time the interview situation is poorly reflected in the
notes taken by the analyst at the expiration of each period (if and
when he takes them). Nobody knows what processes distort the reporting
practices of different listeners, and nobody knows the value of the
published scraps. Since one of the avowed purposes of therapeutic
analyses is to bring the person to stand on his own feet and to stop
leaning on others, or upon symptom indulgences, personal relations
are usually broken off at the end of the interview. This obviously
impedes the possibility of following up the subsequent history of
the personality, and of ascertaining the stability of the supposed
therapeutic results. The case-history documents available in good
institutions have the advantage of representing the combined product
of several people who are in touch with the subject, and who may be
supposed to operate as a check upon one another. But these documents
are usually short, and betray the psychopathological slant of the ones
chiefly responsible. And these documents are typically incomplete
in reporting the whole personality of the subject on account of the
clinician’s interest in the more circumscribed disease phenomena
displayed.
When John Brown reports an episode in which he was told that his nose
would be cut off if he didn’t quit handling himself, how do we know
what importance to assign to the alleged reminiscence? Are we to accept
this as a historical statement? Are we to construe it as a fabrication
which, however, shows what he wanted to have happen, or supposed would
happen, if he disobeyed orders? Are we to interpret it as a sign of his
fear of the interviewer, couched in the language of the past, because
this mode of exercising the imagination has been trained into him? Are
we to interpret this as a sign of his hatred of the interviewer, on the
theory that a self-punishing fantasy is a defense of the conscience
against a murderous impulse of the unadjusted portion of the self? Are
we to accept it as an effort to win the approval of the interviewer
by reporting the kinds of things which he has learned to suppose the
interviewer wants to hear, a supposition which is based upon a private
study of psychoanalytical literature? Are we to accept it as an
“original trauma” and to expect an immediate or eventual decrease in
the neurotic anxiety which the individual shows? Are we to look upon it
as a screen reminiscence for a genuinely traumatic episode in which the
threat was made, not against his nose, but against his penis? Or is it
a screen for a prohibited impulse which was once activated, and which
seized upon a past episode and gave it the significance of a threat?
These are a few of the specific questions which can be raised about
the proffered material, and the scientific problem is to devise more
convincing demonstrations of the available theories, or more conclusive
refutations, than we now have. What are some of the criteria of a
“traumatic episode”? If the reminiscence is accompanied by much affect
(excitement), there is a presumption of its authenticity. And how is
affect measured? We depend at the present time upon the observer’s
judgment of the variations in the voice, and shifts in posture, or
the twitches and jerks of the body. This can be augmented under
experimental conditions by taking a continuous record of variations in
blood pressure, respiration, galvanic reflex, etc.--all of which offer
some indication of excitement.[62] We are thus able to improve our
assessment of the possible significance of the reports, speculations,
and general fantasies of the subject. It may be that in due course
we shall be able to differentiate on a physical basis between
“suppressions” and “repressions,” and that we shall be able to follow
through the transformations from beginning to end of the interviewing
process.
Our judgment of the “traumatic episode” is also influenced by the
subject’s certainty. If the subject reports that he believes what
he remembers, this has some value in raising a presumption. This is
especially true if the subject has fought against the idea, but it has
spontaneously continued to appear and plague his associations. But a
reported sense of certainty is flimsy stuff, unless this certainty
survives for some time. We know that individuals try to escape from
anxiety feelings by a flight into explanations, and that they are
ready to volunteer or to accept all kinds of interpretations of their
behavior rather than to continue to endure anxiety. This is the
basis for the credulity of the neurotic, and explains why everything
from mysterious “glandular unbalances” to “astral perturbations” are
accepted from time to time as completely adequate explanations of
personal troubles. So the subject’s reported certainty must survive
even disparaging suggestions and prolonged self-scrutiny, and become
emancipated from affect, if it is to be taken very literally.
Another criterion is the consistency of the reported episode with all
the other relevant facts. There must be something wrong about the
report that K was brutally punished by his father at a time which was
some years after the parent’s death.[63]
The obstacles which lie in the path of a research program which calls
for objective records of as much as possible of what transpires in the
interview situation are not to be minimized. The bulk of a verbatim
report of an hour’s conversation per day over several months is
almost overwhelming. But historians are accustomed to plow through
whole libraries of pages about Napoleon or Bismarck, and from the
standpoint of a comprehensive theory of personality development any
personality is almost as good as any other, although high elaboration
and distinguished achievement are advantages.
There are some points in favor of applying this technique of
personality study to people who are normal, at least in the sense
that they are suspected of normality by themselves and others. There
is a moral to be learned from some of Freud’s early mistakes when he
assigned critical significance to certain childhood experiences which
later investigation showed were very common. The clinical caricature
is invaluable for the high relief in which certain tendencies of
the normal are revealed. Indeed, “normality” is more difficult to
understand than disease, from one point of view, since it involves a
complicated integration of many tendencies, a flexible capacity to
snap from one mood, preoccupation, and overt activity to another, as
the changing demands of reality require. Normality is complexity and
integration, and it ought to be approached as directly as possible as a
control on the pathological.
The main advantage which the normal subject hopes to glean from the
analytical interview is a judgment of the importance of this, in
comparison with other, psychological methods. Records being as they
are today, only one who has been through the mill can talk with
much assurance about what happens, and if he has a critical mind,
he isn’t too sure then. The analytical interview is a discipline in
self-scrutiny. The subject learns to exploit a new method of using the
mind, which he tries to cultivate and to correlate with the logical
methods to which he is partly accustomed in ordinary adult life. The
new technique of using the mind is the free-fantasy technique, whose
chief function is to produce new material for logical consideration.
The interview necessitates the reactivation of the individual’s
struggle with his antisocial impulses. This happens be the subject
sick or well, for every individual possesses more or less active and
powerful antisocial drives. Every personality displays some pathology
in the form of remainders of the Oedipus phase of growth. The socially
adjusted portion of the personality takes up the battle again against
the unsublimated drives, and a considerable amount of neurotic anxiety
is generated in the process. The problem is to encourage the subject
to face these unadjusted remnants frankly, to bring them to the full
focus of waking consciousness, and to discharge their bound energy.
This comes to pass in the roundabout way of recapturing the original
episodes in which the neurotic solution was invented. The work of
reminiscence is the preliminary to liberation and understanding.
The interview substitutes the talking-out for the acting-out of
personality drives. One learns to recover the critical points in
one’s past history by watching the present for clues to the full
meaning of the present situation, and this includes the inspection
of reminiscences. A reminiscence is always relevant to a present
situation, and serves the double rôle of annotating the present and
reporting the past. The interview experience is long and arduous, and
the subject learns very slowly to deal with himself as an object in
a world of objects, and to free his judgment more and more from the
distorting effects of primitive psychological structures.
The analytical situation is so arranged as to facilitate this process
of self-inspection. The provocations to act out rather than think out
are reduced by simplifying the sensory present. The subject lies in
a relaxed position, and is better able to observe those stiffenings
of the body, those variations in respiration, those oscillations of
visceral tension, those impulses to scratch and finger which escape
ordinary attention, but which are indicative of the meanings put in
the current situation. The sensory environment remains substantially
constant, and the interviewer handles the situation on a rather fixed
routine. The subject is temporarily encysted from the demands of
professional and conventional tasks, but the interviewer is present
to prevent the individual from dissipating his energy in musings which
are quickly forgotten. The interviewer is a prod to associate freely,
and a spur to the critical consideration of the material supplied by
the freely moving fancy. The necessity for verbalization brings the
acts of fantasy into clearer focus than usual, which is a necessary
preliminary to moments of sustained logical reflection. Since the
interviewer permits the subject to disregard the usual amenities of
society, and to let his fantasies fly for the sake of finding where
they land, regressive responses are permitted to appear. That is, the
individual is not required to adjust to a conventional world of adult
reality, but is permitted to reactivate earlier forms of dealing with
the world. In the world of adult reality, the multiple tendencies of
the individual are canalized into conventionally acceptable forms,
and the most maladapted drives may display themselves in unobtrusive
variations on the pattern. When conventional reality is no longer
present, and the individual is encouraged to watch his partly forming
responses, rather than to co-ordinate, condense, ignore, or suppress
them, these tendencies spread forth diffusely in imagination and
reminiscence. When this process continues far enough, the individual
achieves a high degree of insight into the genetic development of his
current preoccupations and traits.
Since the analytical process is a period of strain for the subject, it
may be wondered why it is bearable. Fortunately for the investigator,
there are many advantages to the participant which sustain and fortify
his conscious purpose to persevere until understanding has been
substantially deepened. The analyst treats every manifestation of the
personality, no matter how trivial, with respectful interest. This is
exaggerated unconsciously by the subject, who greatly overestimates
the personal affection which the interviewer has for him. Some of
the energy of the personality is always free to begin new object
attachments, and this energy is concentrated upon the interviewer.
The subject is permitted to talk at length about himself, and when
the interviewer listens attentively and patiently, the subject
identifies himself with the listener on the basis of a common attitude
of interest in a beloved object. The interviewer’s ascendancy in
technical knowledge (his authority) resembles the authority of the
adults who were once supposed to possess unlimited knowledge. The
day-by-day solicitude tends to reinstate the emotions of the early
family situation in which the child could play irresponsibly, under the
watchful, responsible care of the adult. The subject relaxes the effort
to keep bawdy, disloyal, mean, and revengeful thoughts from welling
into this mind. The frank expression of these thoughts in ordinary
social life would bring down punishment upon his head, or mark him
out as a victim of mental disorder. The subject is enabled to welter
in unsocial or antisocial ravings and imaginings, and the process of
developing these symptoms in the presence of another person becomes
an absorbing part of his daily, weekly, and monthly existence. The
subject intensifies his warm emotional interest in the one who exempts
him from society’s code of reticence. This is a mark of the analyst’s
tremendous power, and also of the analyst’s special interest in the
subject. The free-fantasy procedure even exempts the individual from
abiding by the ordinary forms of logic and grammar. He is also able to
enjoy the pleasure of impressing someone else with the brilliance of
his language. From time to time, new insight comes into old habits and
worries, and the zest of intellectual comprehension is added to the
other pleasures.
At first sight the teaching or research interview might seem to
sacrifice the most powerful motive upon which the interviewing
procedure has relied, namely, that of securing relief from disturbing
symptoms. The individual who is suffering from some crude pathological
disturbance, like a functional gastro-intestinal disorder,
psychological impotence, obsessive ideas and compulsions, comes to
the interviewer as a weak person seeking aid of a stronger. If he has
been shuttled from one internist to another perhaps receiving derisive
looks and contemptuous preachments, the objective interest with which
the psychotherapist treats his symptoms produces a keen conscious
and unconscious gratification. Even the symptoms are beloved parts
of the self, and like the ugly ducklings, they are sometimes treated
with special affection (Ferenczi). The hope of being relieved of the
annoying symptoms, which is consciously present in many pathological
cases, is supported on the unconscious level by an old infantile
attitude which expects the interviewer to work miracles. Even some of
the antisocial impulses of the personality may welcome the therapeutic
situation. These antisocial tendencies are themselves not entirely
gratified in the symptoms, for the nature of a symptom is a compromise
between these antisocial tendencies and the socialized impulses of the
self. Nunberg has pointed out that the unsocialized portions of the
personality may support the misguided hope that the outcome of therapy
will be the boundless and unlimited gratification of their demands.
There is also evidence of the existence of a compulsion to confess
(Reik) to antisocial tendencies, which are rejected by the socialized
self, and thus to gratify an unconscious need of punishment.
Now the sense of being sick and the desire to get well are not entirely
absent from any normal person. No one is entirely free from remnants
of his adjustive problems, and no one is entirely satisfied with
himself. At the beginning of the interview, this motive may appear in
consciousness as nothing more substantial than the innocuous belief
that any increase in self-knowledge will enable one to deal even more
satisfactorily with personal problems as they arise.
Among the other motives which play into the analytical situation,
and enable the subject to go through with it, may be mentioned a few
very primitive ones. Life has meant the blocking of many impulses by
authorities whose power cannot be successfully defied on the spot.
Hatreds can only express themselves under these conditions with some
prospects of success when they seek to overcome the superior by
trying to take his power into one’s own personality by copying him.
That is to say, the individual seeks to identify himself with the one
who possesses superior knowledge in the analytical situation, and by
becoming like him, to secure independence, and thus to annihilate
him as an intimidating and obstructive external object. There may be
a desire to secure a weapon by means of which other people may be
eviscerated, and deprived of their power to outstrip the individual.
On the conscious level, these motives are partly visible in excessive
aspirations for self-mastery and control. This taking-in and biting-off
of the analyst’s power is also rooted in some of the earliest reaction
patterns which the infant displays toward objects. The sheer pleasure
of talking, and giving and withholding information is also present.
As the subject withdraws attention from the original symptoms or
motives, concentrates on the game of dilating upon the past, and
indulges in prohibited delights, the analytical situation becomes an
orgy of illicit pleasure. Emotions are released from old channels and
find new objects of crystallization, especially in the person of the
analyst. The interviewer who permits this “transference” is now in a
position to aid the subject in coming to grips with the underlying
unsocialized impulses of the personality. The behavior of the subject
has by this time given a host of clues to the history of his emotional
growth. The analyst continues to stimulate the individual to scrutinize
his associations, to state honestly the wayward wishes flit across his
mind, or which lurk half-seen in the marginal recesses of attention.
Back and forth, bit by bit, there is reconstructed the subjective
history of a life. To put it metaphorically, old sores run anew,
smoldering embers of jealousy and lust flame once more, and ancient
wounds yawn again. Reminiscence reguilds the faded tapestries of the
past, and restores to the full glare of consciousness the cobwebs of
the mind which house the spiders of malevolence and lechery. Primitive
meanings, once appropriate to a situation, and later projected
unintentionally into the adult world, are recovered and criticized in
the light of their appropriateness to society. Regressive reliving,
which is powerfully supported by narcissism and the repetitive
compulsion, is observed and overcome.
It should not be supposed that the secrets of the mind are exposed for
the asking. The method of repression is a primitive means by which
the feeble, nascent self seeks protection from impulses which, if
tolerated, if not shut out with unreflecting violence, would overrun
it (Alexander). When the self becomes strong and stable, primitive
impulses can be permitted to develop farther in consciousness without
imminent danger that they will pass over into action by controlling
the motor apparatus. Now the critical, reflecting, deciding self must
not be crippled by an unduly strong conscience. The structure which
we know as the conscience is begun in early childhood, and is formed
by the incorporation into the self of the orders and commands which
are administered by authority. When the self is weak, as during these
formative years, the conscience relies on crude methods to protect its
hard-won ascendancy over the antisocial drives in the personality.
It visits penalties of anxiety upon the self whenever there are any
signs of leniency toward these impulses. The conscience keeps its
summary, sadistic quality long after, and neurotics are properly said
to suffer from an excess of conscience. Blind denial of the existence
of fundamental trends in the personality must be supplanted, and the
_obiter dicta_ of the conscience subjected to the criticism of the more
mature and experienced self. An obstacle to this procedure is furnished
by those energies of the personality which are specialized in resisting
the antisocial impulses which have been repressed and denied direct
and undisguised access to consciousness. Any lowering of resistance
subjects the individual to acute anxiety, as the conflict between the
socialized and the unsocialized drives is reinstated. All sorts of
subterfuges are hit upon to obviate the necessity for enduring this
anxiety and bringing the hidden into consciousness, where it can lose
its charge. The overcoming of this resistance to taking up the battle
again is a major process in the prolonged analysis.
The recapitulation of the drives which the individual has experienced
throughout his life is the process which lends unique value to the
psychoanalytic interview record. The literature of psychoanalysis
is full of sample fantasies which are assigned to places in the
hypothetical sequence of personality growth. Over twenty years ago
Freud wrote some preliminary remarks on character types, especially
stressing the rôle of certain excretory pleasures in the development of
some psychological structures. The sucking, biting and anal retention
interests of the infant and young child have been the subject of
theoretical treatment by several analysts, among whom Abraham is the
most important. Ferenczi has sketched a comprehensive theory of the
rise of genital interests on the part of the child, and this has been
amplified in various directions by Reich. The differences between male
and female development have been sketched by Sachs, Deutsch, and Horney.
It is not within the necessary limits of this discussion to go farther
into the nature of the hypotheses which have been proposed by these
various investigators. We will be able to formulate them more precisely
when we have succeeded in objectifying what happens in the course of
the interview, and this is to be achieved along the lines previously
sketched. Some day we can state hypotheses more definitely which can be
taken and tested by non-analytical methods. Some of these conceptions
can be confirmed or eliminated by the direct observation of children
of all age groups. It is quite possible, however, paradoxical though
it may sound, that the best way to study some phases of infancy and
childhood will be to study the adult. There is some reason to believe
that the superior expressive power of the adult, whether in words or
in drawing, may render explicit many states which are beyond the scope
of one who merely looks at movements. If we find that the subjective
reconstructions during the adult analysis check closely with the
results secured by modified analytical and behavioristic procedures
applied directly to older children, we will have more confidence
in the material which purports to relate to very early experience.
We may also test out as far as possible the “historicity” of the
reminiscences produced at different phases of the analysis. It should
be said in passing that the analysis of children requires important
revisions in the externals of the technique, as Anna Freud has shown.
I want to stop at this point to comment upon the significance of the
fact there should be such a thing as the psychoanalytic method of
dealing with the genesis of personality. How does it happen that at
the end of the nineteenth century there appeared in Western European
civilization this remarkably intricate procedure? Why do we regard it
as worth while to spend months or even years in constant introspection?
Viewed in the large, I suppose this is the most spectacular sign of the
value crisis in our civilization. Here is an effort to stimulate the
individual to the reconstruction of values, not on the basis of imposed
authority, but through prolonged scrutiny of the self as a process.
The processes of the human personality are subjected to the same
patient, arduous, and minute inspection which has proved so successful
when applied to the objects of the physical world by the naturalist,
astronomer, and microscopic specialist. The end result of a long and
successful analysis is an individual who is able to interpret his
relation to the world in terms of a few master-symbols. These symbols
take on meaning because they have been acquired in the course of a long
apprenticeship under the exacting eye of another. These symbols define
for the individual in comprehensive terms his relation to unfolding
reality. They permit in favorable instances added smoothness of
adjustment, and offer a means of relief from disproportionate feelings
of futility, despondency, persecution, and omniscience.
The appearance of a system of communicable master-symbols for the
definition of one’s relation to the universe is anything but a novel
phenomenon in the culture history of mankind. At one time a leading
question was, “What is God’s will for me?” The belief was that this
could be made manifest after the reading of Holy Writ, reverent
supplication, and sudden revelation. Our Western civilization has
sapped at the pillars of this structure of thinking. We are committed
to the persistent querying of the world of change, and the problem is
always “_How_ does it change?” How do the routines of the seeable,
smellable, touchable, audible, tasteable universe actually work? In
what characteristic order do the subjective events of the mind follow
one another? In what order do subjective and objective events occur?
And no matter how many intermediate links in the sequence have been
named there always remain new intermediate and new all-embracing frames
of reference to be identified and placed in orderly relationship.
Values are sought to be defined, not on the authority of another, but
in the act of scrutinizing processes. We place enormous value upon
the quest for sequences, and discover our new values in the act of
broadening or deepening our understanding of change. If you tell a
sophisticated carrier of Western culture that God reveals his wisdom
after the reading of a printed passage, he will be less impressed by
what is put in than by what is left out of the account. What relation
is there between what is read and what is decided? Can you set up
controlled repetitions for the sake of testing the predictive value
of these generalizations? Are there other words which can be read but
which will result in the same decisions when the reader has the same
pecuniary stake in acting a certain way? And so on and on.
It is worth noticing that the symbols supplied by analysis are not
“ought” words but “process” words. You are not told to die for your
country; you are told to face all the values which you can find in the
situation. This does not, however, eliminate the “arbitrary” character
of decisions actually reached. The decision comes with all the shock
of revelation, of inevitability, of unexpectedness; the individual may
only control decisions by rehearsing the pertinent values until he
finds himself in the clutches of a judgment. This willingness to accept
uncertainty, to scrutinize intermediate terms and pertinent values, is
an outcome of the analytical discipline.
Such a procedure grew up in a civilization whose values have been in
confusion since the medieval cosmology broke down. President Masaryk,
serious thinker and scholarly writer, began his sociological work with
a study of suicide, which he found to be a rough index of the value
strains in culture. When emotional bonds are forged with exponents of
life-patterns of different design, the mental stage is set for both
creative originality and destructive disintegration. The individual
must assume the load of working out his own scheme of values, and many
are disorganized in the attempt.
The validation of the prolonged interview as a contributor to our
dependable knowledge about life depends upon objectifying its
processes; the achievement of its implications for the reconstruction
of the hierarchy of individual values is an impressionistic and often
turbulent experience.[64]