NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE MONOGRAPH SERIES NO. 25
THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT
BY
PROF. DR. SIGMUND FREUD, LL.D.
OF VIENNA
AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY
A. A. BRILL, PH.B., M.D.
LECTURER IN PSYCHOANALYSIS AND ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
FORMER CHIEF OF CLINIC OF PSYCHIATRY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
THE NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
PUBLISHING COMPANY
1917
NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
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Copyright, 1917, by
NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE PUBLISHING COMPANY
PRESS OF
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_Fluctuat nec mergitur_
From the Coat of Arms of the City of Paris
I
If in what follows I bring any contribution to the history of the
psychoanalytic movement nobody must be surprised at the subjective
nature of this paper, nor at the rôle which falls to me therein. For
psychoanalysis is my creation; for ten years I was the only one occupied
with it, and all the annoyance which this new subject caused among my
contemporaries has been hurled upon my head in the form of criticism.
Even today, when I am no longer the only psychoanalyst, I feel myself
justified in assuming that none can know better than myself what
psychoanalysis is, wherein it differs from other methods of
investigating the psychic life, what its name should cover, or what
might better be designated as something else.
In the year 1909, when I was first privileged to speak publicly on
psychoanalysis in an American University, fired by this momentous
occasion for my endeavors, I declared that it was not myself who brought
psychoanalysis into existence. I said that it was Josef Breuer, who had
merited this honor at a time when I was a student and busy working for
my examinations (1880–1882).[1] Since then, well-intentioned friends
have frequently repeated that I then expressed my gratitude out of all
due proportion. They considered that, as on previous occasions, I should
have dignified Breuer’s “cathartic procedure” as merely preliminary to
psychoanalysis, and should have claimed that psychoanalysis itself only
began with my rejection of the hypnotic technique and my introduction of
free association. Now it is really a matter of indifference whether the
history of psychoanalysis be considered to have started with the
cathartic method or only with my modification of the same. I only enter
into this uninteresting question because some opponents of
psychoanalysis are wont to recall, now and then, that the art of
psychoanalysis did not originate with me at all, but with Breuer.
Naturally, this only happens to be the case when their attitude permits
them to find in psychoanalysis something that is noteworthy; on the
other hand when their repudiation of psychoanalysis is unlimited, then
psychoanalysis is always indisputably my creation. I have never yet
heard that Breuer’s great part in psychoanalysis has brought him an
equal measure of insult and reproach. As I have recognized long since
that it is the inevitable fate of psychoanalysis to arouse opposition
and to embitter people, I have come to the conclusion that I must surely
be the originator of all that characterizes psychoanalysis. I add, with
satisfaction, that none of the attempts to belittle my share in this
much disdained psychoanalysis has ever come from Breuer himself, or
could boast of his support.
The content of Breuer’s discovery has been so often presented that a
detailed discussion of it here may be omitted. Its fundamental fact is
that the symptoms of hysterical patients depend upon impressive but
forgotten scenes in their lives (traumata). The therapy founded thereon
was to cause the patients to recall and reproduce these experiences
under hypnosis (catharsis), and the fragmentary theory, deduced from it
was that these symptoms corresponded to an abnormal use of undischarged
sums of excitement (conversion). In his theoretical contribution to the
“Studies of Hysteria” Breuer, wherever obliged to mention _conversion_,
has always added my name in parenthesis, as though this first attempt at
a theoretical formulation was my mental property. I think this allotment
refers only to the nomenclature, whilst the conception itself occurred
to us both at the same time.
It is also well known that Breuer, after his first experience with it,
allowed the cathartic treatment to rest for a number of years and only
resumed it after I caused him to do so, on my return from Charcot. He
was then an internist and taken up with a rather busy medical practice.
I had become a physician quite reluctantly but had, at that time,
received a strong motive for desiring to help nervous patients or, at
least, to learn to understand something of their conditions. I had
placed reliance on physical therapy and found myself helpless in the
face of disappointments that came to me with W. Erb’s “Electrotherapy,”
so rich in advice and indications. If I did not, at that time, pilot
myself independently to the opinion later announced by Moebius, that the
successes of electrotherapy in nervous disorders are the results of
suggestion, it was surely only the absence of these successes that was
to blame. The treatment by _suggestion_ in deep hypnosis seemed to offer
me at that time sufficient compensation for the lost electrical therapy.
I learned this treatment through the extremely impressive demonstrations
of Liébault and Bernheim. But the investigation under hypnosis with
which I became acquainted through Breuer, I found, owing to its
automatic manner of working and the simultaneous gratification of one’s
eagerness for knowledge, much more attractive than the monotonous and
violent suggestive command which was devoid of every possibility of
inquiry.
As one of the latest achievements of psychoanalysis, we have lately been
admonished to put the actual conflict and the cause of the illness into
the foreground of analysis. This is exactly what Breuer and I did in the
beginning of our work with the cathartic method. We guided the patient’s
attention directly to the traumatic scene during which the symptom had
arisen, tried to find therein the psychic conflict and to free the
repressed affect. We thus discovered the procedure characteristic of the
psychic processes of the neuroses which I later named _regression_. The
associations of the patients went back from the scene to be explained,
to earlier experiences, and this forced the analysis which was to
correct the present to occupy itself with the past. This regression led
even further backwards. At first it went quite regularly to the time of
puberty. Later, however, such failures as gaps in the understanding
tempted the analytic work further back into the years of childhood which
had, hitherto, been inaccessible to every sort of investigation. This
regressive direction became an important characteristic of the analysis.
It was proved that psychoanalysis could not clear up anything actual,
except by going back to something in the past. It even proved that every
pathological experience presupposes an earlier one which, though not in
itself pathological, lent a pathological quality to the later
occurrence. But the temptation to stop short at the known actual cause
was so great that even in later analyses I yielded to it. In the case of
the patient called “Dora,” carried out in 1899, the scene which caused
the outbreak of the actual illness was known to me. I tried uncounted
times to analyse this experience, but all that I could receive to my
direct demands was the same scanty and broken description. Only after a
long detour, which led through the earliest childhood of the patient, a
dream appeared in the analysis of which the hitherto forgotten details
of the scene were remembered, and this made possible the understanding
and solution of the actual conflict.
From this one example it may be seen how misleading is the above
mentioned admonition and how much of a scientific regression it is to
follow the advice of neglecting the regression in the analytic
technique.
The first difference of opinion between Breuer and myself came to light
on a question of the more intimate psychic mechanism of hysteria. He
still favored a physiological theory, so to speak, and wished to explain
the psychic splitting of consciousness of hysterical subjects by means
of the non-communication of various psychic states (or states of
consciousness, as we then called them). He thus created the theory of
the “hypnoid states,” the results of which were supposed to bring the
unassimilated foreign body into the “waking consciousness.” I had
formulated this to myself less scientifically. I suspected everywhere
tendencies and strivings analogous to those of everyday life and
conceived the psychic splitting itself as a result of a repelling
process, which I then called “defense” and later “regression.” I made a
short-lived attempt to reconcile both mechanisms, but as experience
showed me always the same and only one thing, my defense theory, I soon
became opposed to Breuer’s theory of hypnoid states.
I am, however, quite certain that this difference of opinion had nothing
to do with the parting of the ways which occurred soon afterward between
us. The latter had a deeper reason, but it happened in such a manner
that at first I did not understand it, and only later did I learn to
interpret it, following many good indexes. It will be recalled that
Breuer had stated, concerning his first famous patient, that the sexual
element had been astonishingly undeveloped in her and had never
contributed anything to her very marked morbid picture.[2] I have always
wondered why the critics of my theory of the sexual etiology of the
neuroses have not often opposed it with this assertion of Breuer, and up
to this day I do not know whether in this reticence I am to see a proof
of their discretion, or of their lack of observation. Whoever will
reread the history of Breuer’s patient in the light of the experience
gained in the last twenty years, will have no difficulty in
understanding the symbolism of the snakes and of the arm. By taking into
account also the situation at the sick-bed of the father, he will easily
guess the actual meaning of that symptom-formation. His opinion as to
the part sexuality played in the psychic life of that girl will then
differ greatly from that of her physician. To cure the patient Breuer
utilized the most intensive suggestive _rapport_ which may serve us as
prototype of that which we call “transference.” Now I have strong
grounds to suppose that Breuer, after the disposal of the symptoms, must
have discovered the sexual motivity of this transference by new signs,
but that the general nature of this unexpected phenomenon escaped him,
so that here, as though hit by “an untoward event,” he broke off the
investigation. I did not obtain from him any direct information of this,
but at different times he has given me sufficient connecting links to
justify me in making this combination. And then, as I stood more and
more decidedly for the significance of sexuality in the causation of the
neuroses, Breuer was the first to show me those reactions of unwilling
rejection, with which it was my lot to become so familiar later on, but
which I had then not yet recognized as my unavoidable destiny.
The fact that a grossly sexual, tender or inimical, transference occurs
in every treatment of a neurosis, although this was neither desired nor
induced by either party, has, for me, always seemed to be the most
unshakable proof that the forces of the neuroses originate in the sexual
life. This argument has surely not been seriously enough considered, for
if it were, there would be no question as to where the investigation
would tend. For my own conviction, it has remained decisive over and
above the special results of the work of the analysis.
Some comfort for the bad reception which my theory of the sexual
etiology of the neuroses met with, even in the closer circle of my
friends—a negative space was soon formed about my person—I found in the
thought that I had taken up the fight for a new and original idea. One
day, however, my memories grouped themselves in such a way that this
satisfaction was disturbed, but in return I obtained an excellent
insight into the origin of our activities and into the nature of our
knowledge. The idea for which I was held responsible had not at all
originated with me. It had come to me from three persons, whose opinions
could count upon my deepest respect; from Breuer himself, from Charcot,
and from Chrobak, the gynecologist of our university, probably the most
prominent of our Vienna physicians. All three men had imparted to me an
insight which, strictly speaking, they had not themselves possessed. Two
of them denied their communication to me when later I reminded them of
this: the third (Master Charcot) might also have done so, had it been
granted me to see him again. But these identical communications,
received without my grasping them, had lain dormant within me, until one
day they awoke as an apparently original discovery.
One day, while I was a young hospital doctor, I was accompanying Breuer
on a walk through the town when a man came up to him urgently desiring
to speak with him. I fell back and, when Breuer was free again, he told
me, in his kindly, teacher-like manner, that this was the husband of a
patient, who had brought him some news about her. The wife, he added,
behaved in so conspicuous a manner when in company, that she had been
turned over to him for treatment as a nervous case. He ended with the
remark—“those are always secrets of the alcove.” Astonished, I asked his
meaning and he explained the expression to me (“secrets of the conjugal
bed”), without realizing how preposterous the matter appeared to me.
A few years later, at one of Charcot’s evening receptions, I found
myself near the venerated teacher who was just relating to Brouardel a
very interesting history from the day’s practice. I did not hear the
beginning clearly but gradually the story obtained my attention. It was
the case of a young married couple from the far East. The wife was a
great sufferer and the husband was impotent, or exceedingly awkward. I
heard Charcot repeat: “Tâchez donc, je vous assure vous y arriverez.”
Brouardel, who spoke less distinctly, must have expressed his
astonishment that symptoms as those of the young wife should have
appeared as a result of such circumstances, for Charcot said suddenly
and with great vivacity: “Mais, dans des cas pareils c’est toujours la
chose génital, toujours—toujours—toujours.” And while saying that he
crossed his hands in his lap and jumped up and down several times, with
the vivacity peculiar to him. I know that for a moment I was almost
paralyzed with astonishment, and I said to myself: “Yes, but if he knows
this why does he never say so?” But the impression was soon forgotten;
brain-anatomy and the experimental production of hysterical paralysis
absorbed all my interests.
A year later when I had begun my medical activities in Vienna as a
private _dozent_ in nervous diseases I was as innocent and ignorant in
all that concerned the etiology of the neuroses as any promising
academician could be expected to be. One day I received a friendly call
from Chrobak, who asked me to take a patient to whom he could not give
sufficient time in his new capacity as lecturer at the university. I
reached the patient before he did and learned that she suffered from
senseless attacks of anxiety, which could only be alleviated by the most
exact information as to the whereabouts of her physician at any time in
the day. When Chrobak appeared, he took me aside and disclosed to me
that the patient’s anxiety was due to the fact that though she had been
married eighteen years, she was still a _virgo intacta_, that her
husband was utterly impotent. In such cases the physician can only cover
the domestic mishap with his reputation and must bear it if people shrug
their shoulders and say of him: “He is not a good doctor if in all these
years, he has not been able to cure her.” He added: “The only
prescription for such troubles is the one well known to us, but which we
cannot prescribe. It is:
Penis normalis
dosim
Repetatur!”
I had never heard of such a prescription and would like to have shaken
my head at my informant’s cynicism.
I certainly have not uncovered the illustrious origins of this vicious
idea because I would like to shove the responsibility for it on others.
I know well that it is one thing to express an idea once or several
times in the form of a rapid _aperçu_, and quite another to take it
seriously and literally to lead it through all opposing details and
conquer for it a place among accepted truths. It is the difference
between a light flirtation and a righteous marriage with all its duties
and difficulties. Epouser les idées de—(to marry so and so’s ideas,) is,
at least in French, a quite usual form of speech.
Other doctrines which were contributed to the cathartic method through
my efforts thus transforming it into psychoanalysis, are the following:
The theories of repression and resistance, the addition of the infantile
sexuality, and the usage and interpretation of dreams for the
understanding of the unconscious.
Concerning the theory of repression, I was certain that I worked
independently. I knew of no influence that directed me in any way to it,
and I long considered this idea to be original, till O. Rank showed us
the place in Schopenhauer’s “The World as Will and Idea,” where the
philosopher is struggling for an explanation for insanity.[3] What is
there said concerning the striving against the acceptance of a painful
piece of reality agrees so completely with the content of my theory of
repression that, once again, I must be indebted to my not being
well-read for the possibility of making a discovery. To be sure, others
have read this passage and overlooked it, without making this discovery
and perhaps the same would have happened to me, if, in former years, I
had taken more pleasure in reading philosophical authors. In later years
I denied myself the great pleasure of Nietzsche’s works, with the
conscious motive of not wishing to be hindered in the working out of my
psychoanalytic impressions by any preconceived ideas. Therefore, I had
to be prepared—and am so gladly—to renounce all claim to priority in
those many cases in which the laborious psychoanalytic investigation can
only confirm the insights intuitively won by the philosophers.
The theory of repression is the main pillar upon which rests the edifice
of psychoanalysis. It is really the most essential part of it, and is
itself nothing other than the theoretical expression of an experience
which can be repeated at pleasure whenever one analyzes a neurotic
patient without the aid of hypnosis. One is then confronted with a
resistance which opposes the analytic work by causing a failure of
memory in order to block it. This resistance had to be covered by the
use of hypnosis; hence the history of psychoanalysis proper only starts
technically with the rejection of hypnosis. The theoretical value of the
fact that this resistance is connected with an amnesia leads unavoidably
to that conception of the unconscious psychic activities which is
peculiar to psychoanalysis, and distinguishes it markedly from the
philosophical speculations about the unconscious. It may, therefore, be
said that the psychoanalytic theory endeavors to explain two
experiences, which result in a striking and unexpected manner during the
attempt to trace back the morbid symptoms of a neurotic to their source
in his life-history; viz., the facts of transference and of resistance.
Every investigation which recognizes these two facts and makes them the
starting points of its work may call itself psychoanalysis, even if it
lead to other results than my own. But whoever takes up other sides of
the problem and deviates from these two assumptions will hardly escape
the charge of interfering with the rights of ownership through attempted
imitation, if he insist upon calling himself a psychoanalyst.
I would very energetically oppose any attempt to count the principles of
repression and resistance as mere assumptions instead of results of
psychoanalysis. Such assumptions of a general psychological and
biological nature exist, and it would be quite to the point to deal with
them in another place. The principle of repression, however, is an
acquisition of the psychoanalytic work, won by legitimate means, as a
theoretical extract from very numerous experiences. Just such an
acquisition, but of much later days, is the theory of the infantile
sexuality, of which no count was taken during the first years of
tentative analytic investigation. At first it was only noticed that the
effect of actual impressions had to be traced back to the past. However,
“the seeker often found more than he bargained for.” He was tempted
always further back into this past and finally hoped to be permitted to
tarry in the period of puberty, the epoch of the traditional awakening
of the sexual impulses. His hopes were in vain. The tracks led still
further back into childhood and into its earliest years. In the process
of this work it became almost fatal for this young science. Under the
influence of the traumatic theory of hysteria, following Charcot, one
was easily inclined to regard as real and as of etiological importance
the accounts of patients who traced back their symptoms to passive
sexual occurrences in the first years of childhood, that is to say,
speaking plainly, to seductions. When this etiology broke down through
its own unlikelihood, and through the contradiction of well-established
circumstances, there followed a period of absolute helplessness. The
analysis had led by the correct path to such infantile sexual traumas,
and yet these were not true. Thus the basis of reality had been lost. At
that time I would gladly have let the whole thing slide, as did my
respected forerunner Breuer, when he made his unwished-for discovery.
Perhaps I persevered only because I had no longer any choice of
beginning something else. Finally I reflected that, after all, no one
has a right to despair if he has been disappointed only in his
expectations. He merely needs to review them. If hysterics refer their
symptoms to imaginary traumas, then this new fact signifies that they
create such scenes in their phantasies, and hence psychic reality
deserves to be given a place next to actual reality. This was soon
followed by the conviction that these phantasies serve to hide the
autoerotic activities of the early years of childhood, to idealize them
and place them on a higher level, and now the whole sexual life of the
child made its appearance behind these phantasies.
In this sexual activity of the first years of childhood, the concomitant
constitution could finally attain its rights. Disposition and experience
here became associated into an inseparable etiological unity, in that
the disposition raised certain impressions to inciting and fixed
traumas, which otherwise would have remained altogether banal and
ineffectual, whilst the experiences evoked factors from the disposition
which, without them, would have continued to remain dormant, and,
perhaps, undeveloped. The last word in the question of traumatic
etiology was later on said by Abraham, when he drew attention to the
fact that just the peculiar nature of the child’s sexual constitution
enables it to provoke sexual experiences of a peculiar kind, that is to
say, traumas.
My formulations concerning the sexuality of the child were founded at
first almost exclusively on the results of the analyses of adults, which
led back into the past. I was lacking in opportunity for direct
observation of the child. It was, therefore, an extraordinary triumph
when, years later, my discoveries were successfully confirmed for the
greater part by direct observation and analyses of children of very
early years, a triumph that appeared less and less on reflecting that
the discovery was of such a nature that one really ought to be ashamed
of having made it. The deeper one penetrated into the observation of the
child, the more self-evident this fact seemed, and the more strange,
too, became the circumstances that such pains had been taken to overlook
it.
To be sure, so certain a conviction of the existence and significance of
the infantile sexuality can be obtained only, if one follows the path of
analysis, if one goes back from the symptoms and peculiarities of
neurotics to their uttermost sources, the discovery of which explains
what is explainable in them, and permits of modifying what can be
changed. I understand that one can arrive at different conclusions if,
as was recently done by C. G. Jung, one first forms for one’s self a
theoretical conception of the nature of the sexual impulse and thereby
tries to understand the life of the child. Such a conception can only be
chosen arbitrarily or with regard to secondary considerations, and is in
danger of becoming inadequate to the sphere in which it was to be
utilized. Doubtless, the analytic way also leads to certain final
difficulties and obscurities in regard to sexuality and its relation to
the whole life of the individual; but these cannot be set aside by
speculations, and must wait till solutions will be found by means of
other observations or of observations in other spheres.
I shall briefly discuss the history of dream interpretation. This came
to me as the first-fruits of the technical innovation, after, following
a dim presentiment, I had decided to replace hypnosis with free
associations. It was not the understanding of dreams towards which my
curiosity was originally directed. I do not know of any influences which
had guided my interest to this or inspired me with any helpful
expectations. Before the cessation of my intercourse with Breuer I
hardly had time to tell him, in so many words, that I now knew how to
translate dreams. During the development of these discoveries the
symbolism of the language of dreams was about the last thing which
became known to me, since, for the understanding of symbols, the
associations of the dreamer offer but little help. As I have held fast
to the habit of first studying things themselves, before looking them up
in books, I was able to ascertain for myself the symbolism of dreams
before I was directed to it by the work of Sherner. Only later I came to
value fully this means of expression of dreams. This was partly due to
the influence of the works of Stekel, who was at first very meritorious
but who later became most perfunctory. The close connection between the
psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams and the once so highly esteemed
art of dream interpretation of the ancients only became clear to me many
years afterwards. The most characteristic and significant portion of my
dream theory, namely, the reduction of the dream distortion to an inner
conflict, to a sort of inner dishonesty, I found later in an author to
whom medicine but not philosophy is unknown. I refer to the engineer J.
Popper, who had published “Phantasies of a Realist” under the name of
Lynkeus.
The interpretation of dreams became for me a solace and support in those
difficult first years of analysis, when I had to master at the same time
the technique, the clinic and the therapy of the neuroses, when I stood
entirely alone, and in the confusion of problems and the accumulation of
difficulties I often feared to lose my orientation and my confidence. It
often took a long time before the proof of my assumption, that a
neurosis must become comprehensible through analysis, was seen by the
perplexed patient, but the dreams, which might be regarded as analogous
to the symptoms, almost regularly confirmed this assumption.
Only because of these successes was I in condition to persevere. I have,
therefore, acquired the habit of measuring the grasp of a psychological
worker by his attitude to the problem of dream interpretation, and I
have noticed, with satisfaction, that most of the opponents of
psychoanalysis avoided this field altogether, or if they ventured into
it, they behaved most awkwardly. The analysis of myself, the need of
which soon became apparent to me, I carried out by the aid of a series
of my own dreams which led me through all the happenings of my childhood
years. Even today I am of the opinion that in the case of a prolific
dreamer and a person not too abnormal, this sort of analysis may be
sufficient.
By unfurling this developmental history, I believe I have shown what
psychoanalysis is, better than I could have done by a systematic
presentation of the subject. The special nature of my findings I did not
then recognize. I sacrificed, unhesitatingly, my budding popularity as a
physician and an extensive practice among nervous patients, because I
searched directly for the sexual origin of their neuroses. In this way I
gained a number of experiences which definitely confirmed my conviction
of the practical significance of the sexual factor. Without any
apprehension, I appeared as speaker at the Vienna Neurological Society,
then under the presidency of Krafft-Ebing, expecting to be compensated,
by the interest and recognition of my colleagues, for my own voluntary
sacrifices. I treated my discoveries as indifferent contributions to
science and hoped that others would treat them in the same way. Only the
silence that followed my lectures, the space that formed about my
person, and the insinuations directed towards me caused me to realize,
gradually, that statements about the part played by sexuality in the
etiology of the neuroses cannot hope to be treated like other
communications. I realized that from then on I would belong to those
who, according to Hebbel’s expression, “have disturbed the world’s
sleep,” and that I could not count upon being treated objectively and
with toleration. But as my conviction of the average correctness of my
observations and the conclusions grew greater and greater, and as my
faith in my own judgment was not small, any more than was my moral
courage, there could be no doubt as to the issue of this situation. I
decided to believe that it fell to my lot to discover particularly
significant associations, and felt prepared to bear the fate which
sometimes accompanies such discoveries.
This fate I pictured to myself in the following manner. I would probably
succeed in sustaining myself through the therapeutic successes of the
new treatment, but science would take no notice of me in my lifetime.
Some decades later, another would surely stumble upon the same, now
untimely things, compel their recognition and thus bring me to honor as
a necessarily unfortunate forerunner. Meantime I arrayed myself as
comfortably as possible à la Robinson Crusoe upon my lonely island. When
I look back to those lonely years, from the perplexities and
vexatiousness of the present, it seems to me it was a beautiful and
heroic time. The “splendid isolation” did not lack its privileges and
charms. I did not need to read any literature nor to listen to badly
informed opponents. I was subject to no influences, and no pressure was
brought to bear on me. I learned to restrain speculative tendencies and,
following the unforgotten advice of my master, Charcot, I looked at the
same things again and often until they began of themselves to tell me
something. My publications, for which I found shelter despite some
difficulty, could safely remain far behind my state of knowledge. They
could be delayed as long as I pleased, as there was no doubtful
“priority” to be defended. “The Interpretation of Dreams,” for example,
was completed in all essentials in the beginning of 1896, but was
written down only in 1899. The treatment of “Dora” was finished at the
end of 1899. The history of her illness was completed in the next two
weeks, but was only published in 1905. Meantime my writings were not in
the reviewed professional literature of the day. If an exception was
made they were always treated with scornful or pitying condescension.
Sometimes a colleague would refer to me in one of his publications in
very short and unflattering terms, such as “unbalanced,” “extreme,” or
“very odd.” It happened once that an assistant at the clinic in Vienna
asked me for permission to attend one of my lecture courses. He listened
devoutly and said nothing, but after the last lecture he offered to
accompany me. During this walk he disclosed to me that, with the
knowledge of his chief, he had written a book against my teachings, but
he expressed much regret that he had only come to know these teachings
better through my lectures. Had he known these before, he would have
written very differently. Indeed, he had inquired at the clinic if he
had not better first read “The Interpretation of Dreams,” but had been
advised against doing so, as it was not worth the trouble. As he now
understood it, he compared my system of instruction with the Catholic
Church. In the interests of his soul’s salvation I will assume that this
remark contained a bit of sincere recognition. But he ended by saying
that it was too late to alter anything in his book as it was already
printed. This particular colleague did not consider it necessary later
on to tell the world something of the change in his opinions concerning
my psychoanalysis. On the contrary, as permanent reviewer of a medical
journal, he showed a preference to follow its development with his
hardly serious comments.
Whatever I possessed of personal sensitiveness was blunted in those
years, to my advantage. But I was saved from becoming embittered by a
circumstance that does not come to the assistance of all lonely
discoverers. Such a one usually frets himself to find out the cause of
the lack of sympathy or of the rejection he receives from his
contemporaries, and perceives them as a painful contradiction against
the certainty of his own conviction. That did not trouble me, for the
psychoanalytic fundamental principles enabled me to understand this
attitude of my environment as a necessary sequence. If it was true that
the associations discovered by me were kept from the knowledge of the
patient by inner affective resistances, then this resistance must
manifest itself also in normal persons as soon as the repressed material
is conveyed to them from the outside. It was not strange that these
latter knew how to give intellectual reasons for their affective
rejections of my ideas. This happened just as often with the patients,
and the arguments advanced—arguments are as common as blackberries, to
borrow from Falstaff’s speech—were the same and not exactly brilliant.
The only difference was that in the case of patients one had the means
of bringing pressure to bear, in order to help them recognize and
overcome their resistances, but in the case of those seemingly normal,
such help had to be omitted. To force these normal people to a cool and
scientifically objective examination of the subject was an unsolved
problem, the solution of which was best left to time. In the history of
science it has often been possible to verify that the very assertion
which, at first, called forth only opposition, received recognition a
little later without the necessity of bringing forward any new proofs.
That I have not developed any particular respect for the opinion of the
world or any desire for intellectual deference during those years, when
I alone represented psychoanalysis, will surprise no one.
II
Beginning with the year 1902 a number of young doctors crowded about me
with the expressed intention to learn psychoanalysis, to practice it and
to spread it. The impetus for this came from a colleague who had himself
experienced the beneficial effects of the analytic therapy. We met on
certain evenings at my residence, and discussed subjects according to
certain rules. The visitors endeavored to orient themselves in this
strange and new realm of investigation, and to interest others in the
matter. One day a young graduate of the technical school found admission
to our circle by means of a manuscript which showed extraordinary sense.
We induced him to go through college and enter the university, and then
devote himself to the non-medical application of psychoanalysis. Thus
the little society gained a zealous and reliable secretary, and I
acquired in Otto Rank a most faithful helper and collaborator.
Soon the little circle expanded, and in the course of the next few years
changed a good deal in its composition. On the whole, I could flatter
myself that in the wealth and variety of talent our circle was hardly
inferior to the staff of any clinical teacher. From the very beginning
it included those men who later were to play a considerable, if not
always a delectable, part in the history of the psychoanalytic movement.
But these developments could not have been guessed at that time. I was
satisfied, and I believe I did all I could, to convey to the others what
I knew and had experienced. There were only two inauspicious
circumstances which at least mentally estranged me from this circle. I
could not succeed in establishing among the members that friendly
relation which should obtain among men doing the same difficult work,
nor could I crush out the quarrels about the priority of discoveries,
for which there were ample opportunities in those conditions of working
together. The difficulties of teaching the practise of psychoanalysis,
which are particularly great, and are often to blame for the present
rejection of psychoanalysis, already made themselves felt in this
Viennese private psychoanalytic society. I myself did not dare to
present an as yet incomplete technique, and a theory still in the
making, with that authority which might have spared the others many a
blind alley and many a final tripping up. The self-dependence of mental
workers, their early independence of the teacher, is always gratifying
psychologically, but it can only result in a scientific gain when during
these labors certain, not too frequently occurring, personal relations
are also fulfilled. Psychoanalysis particularly should have required a
long and severe discipline and training of self-control. On account of
the courage displayed in devotion to so ridiculed and fruitless a
subject, I was inclined to tolerate among the members much to which
otherwise I would have objected. Besides, the circle included not only
physicians, but other cultured men who had recognized something
significant in psychoanalysis. There were authors, artists, and so
forth. The “Interpretation of Dreams,” the book on “Wit,” and other
writings, had already shown that the principles of psychoanalysis cannot
remain limited to the medical field, but are capable of application to
various other mental sciences.
In 1907 the situation suddenly altered and quite contrary to all
expectations; it became evident that psychoanalysis had unobtrusively
awakened some interest and gained some friends, that there were even
some scientific workers who were prepared to admit their allegiance. A
communication from Bleuler had already acquainted me with the fact that
my works were studied and applied in Burghölzli.[4] In January, 1907,
the first man attached to the Zürich Clinic, Dr. Eitingon, visited me at
Vienna. Other visitors soon followed, thus causing a lively exchange of
ideas. Finally, by invitation of C. G. Jung, then still an assistant
physician at Burghölzli, the first meeting took place at Salzburg, in
the spring of 1908, where the friends of psychoanalysis from Vienna,
Zürich, and other places met together. The result of this first
psychoanalytic congress, was the founding of a periodical, which began
to appear in 1909, under the name of “Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und
Psychopathologische Forschungen,” published by Bleuler and Freud, and
edited by Jung. An intimate comradeship in the work done at Vienna and
Zürich found its expression in this publication.
I have repeatedly and gratefully acknowledged the efforts of the Zürich
Psychiatric School in the spreading of psychoanalysis, especially those
of Bleuler and Jung, and I do not hesitate to do the same today, even
under such changed circumstances. It was certainly not the partisanship
of the Zürich School which at that time first directed the attention of
the scientific world to the subject of psychoanalysis. This latency
period had just come to an end, and psychoanalysis everywhere became the
object of constantly increasing interest. But whilst in all the other
places this manifestation of interest resulted first in nothing but a
violent and emphatic repudiation of the subject, in Zürich, on the
contrary, the main feeling of the situation was that of agreement. In no
other place was so compact a little gathering of adherents to be found,
nowhere also was it possible to place a public clinic at the service of
psychoanalytic investigation, or to find a clinical teacher who regarded
the principles of psychoanalysis as an integral part of the teaching of
psychiatry. The Zürich doctors became, as it were, the nucleus of the
little band which was fighting for the recognition of psychoanalysis.
Only in Zürich was there a possible opportunity to learn the new art and
to apply it in practice. Most of my present-day followers and co-workers
came to me via Zürich, even those who might have found, geographically
speaking, a shorter road to Vienna than to Switzerland. Vienna lies in
an eccentric position from western Europe, which houses the great
centers of our culture. For many years it has been much affected by
weighty prejudices. The representatives of the most prominent nations
stream into Switzerland, which is so mentally active, and an infective
lesion in this place was sure to become very important for the
dissemination of the “psychic epidemic,” as Hoche of Freiburg called it.
According to the testimony of a colleague who was an eyewitness of the
developments at Burghölzli, it may be asserted that psychoanalysis
awakened an interest there very early. Already in Jung’s work on occult
phenomena, published in 1902, there was an allusion to dream
interpretation. Ever since 1903 or 1904, according to my informer,
psychoanalysis came into prominence. After the establishment of personal
relations between Vienna and Zürich, a society was also founded in
Burghölzli in 1907 which discussed the problems of psychoanalysis at
regular meetings. In the bond that united the Vienna and Zürich schools,
the Swiss were by no means the merely recipient part. They had
themselves already performed respectable scientific work, the results of
which were of much use to psychoanalysis. The association-experiment,
started by the Wundt School, had been interpreted by them in the
psychoanalytic sense and had proved itself of unexpected usefulness.
Thus it had become possible to get rapid experimental confirmation of
psychoanalytic facts, and to demonstrate experimentally to beginners
certain relationships which the analyst could only have talked about
otherwise. The first bridge leading from experimental psychology to
psychoanalysis had thus been constructed.
In psychoanalytic treatment, however, the association-experiment enables
one to make only a preliminary, qualitative analysis of the case, it
offers no essential contribution to the technique, and is really not
indispensable in the work of analysis. Of more importance, however, was
another discovery of the Zürich School, or rather, of its two leaders,
Bleuler and Jung. The former pointed out that a great many purely
psychiatric cases can be explained by the same psychoanalytic process as
those used in dreams and in the neuroses (Freudsche Mechanismen). Jung
employed with success the analytic method of interpretation in the
strangest and most obscure phenomena of dementia præcox, the origin of
which appeared quite clear when correlated with the life and interests
of the patient. From that time on it became impossible for the
psychiatrists to ignore psychoanalysis. Bleuler’s great work on
Schizophrenie (1911), in which the psychoanalytic points of view are
placed on an equal footing with the clinical-systematic ones, brought
this success to completion.
I must not omit to point out a divergence which was then already
distinctly noticeable in the working tendencies of the two schools.
Already in 1897 I had published the analysis of a case of schizophrenia,
which showed, however, paranoid trends, so that its solution could not
have anticipated the impression of Jung’s analyses. But to me the
important element had not been the interpretation of the symptoms, but
rather the psychic mechanisms of the disease, and above all, the
agreement of this mechanism with the one already known in hysteria. No
light had been thrown at that time on the difference between these two
maladies. I was then already working toward a theory of the libido in
the neuroses which was to explain all neurotic as well as psychotic
appearances on the basis of abnormal drifts of the libido. The Swiss
investigators lacked this point of view. So far as I know Bleuler, even
today, adheres to an organic causation for the forms of Dementia Præcox,
and Jung, whose book on this malady appeared in 1907, upheld the toxic
theory of the same at the Congress at Salzburg in 1908, which though not
excluding it, goes far beyond the libido theory. On this same point he
came to grief later (1912), in that he now used too much of the stuff
which previously he refused to employ at all.