opponents “suaviter in modo” for their injustice and arbitrariness, was
taken up by Bleuler in 1911 and carried out in most honorable fashion in
his work, “Freud’s Psychoanalysis: a Defense and a Criticism.” It would
be so entirely natural for me to praise this work, critical in two
directions, that I hasten to tell what there is in it I object to. This
work appears to me to be still very partisan, too lenient to the
mistakes of our opponents, and altogether too severe to the shortcomings
of our followers. This characterization of it may explain why the
opinion of a psychiatrist of such high standing, of such indubitable
ability and independence, has not had greater influence on his
colleagues. The author of “Affectivity” (1906) must not be surprised if
the influence of a work is not determined by the value of its argument
but by the tone of its affect. Another part of this influence—the one on
the followers of psychoanalysis—Bleuler himself destroyed later on by
bringing into prominence in 1913, in his “Criticism of the Freudian
School,” the obverse side of his attitude to psychoanalysis. Therein he
takes away so much from the structure of the psychoanalytic principles
that our opponents may well be satisfied with the assistance of this
defender. It was not new arguments or better observations that served
Bleuler as a guidance for these verdicts, but only the reference to his
own knowledge, the inadequacy of which the author no longer admits as in
his earlier writings. Here an almost irreparable loss seemed to threaten
psychoanalysis. However, in his last utterance (“Die Kritiken der
Schizophrenie,” 1914) on the occasion of the attacks made upon him owing
to his introduction of psychoanalysis into his book on “Schizophrenie,”
Bleuler rises to what he himself terms a “haughty presumption:” “But now
I will assume a haughty presumption, I consider that the many
psychologies to date have contributed mighty little to the explanation
of the connection between psychogenetic symptoms and diseases, but that
the deeper psychology (tiefen psychologie) furnishes us a part of the
psychology still to be created, which the physician needs in order to
understand his patients and to heal them rationally; and I even believe
that in my ‘Schizophrenie’ I have taken a very small step towards this.”
The first two assertions are surely correct, the latter may be an error.
Since by the “deeper psychology” psychoanalysis alone is to be
understood, we may, for the present, remain satisfied with this
admission.
III
“Cut it short!
On doomsday ’twon’t be worth a farthing!”
_Goethe._
Two years after the first congress the second private congress of
psychoanalysts took place at Nuremberg, March, 1910. During the
interval, whilst I was still under the impression of the favorable
reception in America, the growing hostility in Germany and the
unexpected support through the acquisition of the Zürich School, I had
conceived a project which I was able to carry out, at this second
congress, with the help of my friend S. Ferenczi. I had in mind to
organize the psychoanalytic movement, to transfer its center to Zürich,
and place it under a head who would take care of its future. As this
found much opposition among the adherents of psychoanalysis, I will
explain my motives more fully. Thus I hope to justify myself, even if it
turns out that my action was not a very wise one.
I judged that the association with Vienna was no recommendation, but
rather an obstacle for the new movement. A place like Zürich, in the
heart of Europe, where an academic teacher had opened his institution to
psychoanalysis, seemed to me much more promising. Moreover, I assumed
that my own person was a second obstacle. The estimate put upon my
personality was utterly confused by the favor or dislike from different
factions. I was either compared to Darwin and Kepler or reviled as a
paralytic. I, therefore, desired to push into the background not only
the city whence psychoanalysis emanated, but also my own personality.
Furthermore, I was no longer young, I saw a long road before me and I
felt oppressed by the idea that it had fallen to my lot to become a
leader in my advanced age. Yet I felt that there must be a leader. I
knew only too well what mistakes lay in wait for him who would undertake
the practice of psychoanalysis, and hoped that many of these might be
avoided if we had an authority who was prepared to guide and admonish.
Such authority naturally devolved upon me in view of the indisputable
advantage of fifteen years’ experience. It was now my desire to transfer
this authority to a younger man who would, quite naturally, take my
place on my death. I felt that this person could be only C. G. Jung, for
Bleuler was of my own age. In favor of Jung was his conspicuous talents,
the contributions he had already made to analysis, his independent
position, and the impression of energy which his personality always
made. He also seemed prepared to enter into friendly relations with me,
and to give up, for my sake, certain race-prejudices which he had so far
permitted himself to indulge. I had no notion then that in spite of the
advantages enumerated, this was a very unfortunate choice; that it
concerned a person who, incapable of tolerating the authority of
another, was still less fitted to be himself an authority, one whose
energy was devoted to the unscrupulous pursuit of his own interests.
The formation of an official organization I considered necessary because
I feared the abuses to which psychoanalysis would be subjected, once it
should achieve popularity. I felt that there should be a place that
could give the dictum: “With all this nonsense, analysis has nothing to
do; this is not psychoanalysis.” It was decided that at the meeting of
the local groups which together formed the international organization,
instruction should be given how psychoanalysis should be practised, that
physicians should be trained there and that the local society should, in
a way, stand sponsor for them. It also appeared to me desirable that the
adherents of psychoanalysis should meet for friendly intercourse and
mutual support, inasmuch as official science had pronounced its great
ban and boycott against physicians and institutions practising
psychoanalysis.
This and nothing else I wished to attain by the founding of the
“International Psychoanalytic Association.” Perhaps it was more than
could possibly be attained. Just as my opponents learned that it was not
possible to stem the new movement, so I had to learn, by experience,
that it would not permit itself to be led along the particular path
which I had laid out for it. The motion made by Ferenczi at Nuremberg
was seconded. Jung was elected president, and Riklin was chosen as
secretary. It was also decided to publish a corresponding journal
through which the central association was “to foster and further the
science of psychoanalysis as founded by Freud both as pure psychology,
as well as in its application to medicine and the mental sciences, and
to promote assistance among the members in all their efforts to acquire
and to spread psychoanalytic knowledge.” The members of the Vienna group
alone firmly opposed the project with passionate excitement. Adler
expressed his fear that “a censorship and limitation of scientific
freedom” was intended. The Viennese finally gave in, after having gained
their point that Zürich should not be raised to the center of the
association, but that the center should be the home city of the
president, who was to be elected for two years.
At this congress three local groups were constituted: one in Berlin
under the chairmanship of Abraham, one in Zürich, whose chairman became
the president of the central association, and one in Vienna, the
chairmanship of which I relinquished to Adler. A fourth group, in
Budapest, could not be formed until later. On account of illness Bleuler
had been absent from the congress. Later he evinced considerable
hesitation about entering the association and although he let himself be
persuaded to do so by my personal representations, he resigned a short
time afterwards owing to disagreements at Zürich. This severed the
connection between the Zürich group and the Burghölzli institution.
Another result of the Nuremberg Congress was the founding of the
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, which caused a reconciliation between
Adler and Stekel. It had originally been intended as an opposing
tendency and was to win back for Vienna the hegemony threatened by the
election of Jung. But when the two founders of the journal, under
pressure of the difficulty of finding a publisher, assured me of their
friendly intentions and as guarantee of their attitude gave me the right
to veto, I accepted the editorship and worked vigorously for this new
organ, the first number of which appeared in September, 1910.
I will not continue the history of the Psychoanalytic Congress. The
third one took place at Weimar, September, 1911, and even surpassed the
previous ones in spirit and scientific interest. J. J. Putnam, who was
present at this meeting, later expressed in America his satisfaction and
his respect for the “mental attitude” of those present and quoted words
which I was supposed to have used in reference to the latter: “They have
learned to endure a bit of truth.” As a matter of fact any one who has
attended scientific congresses must have received a lasting impression
in favor of the Psychoanalytic Association. I myself had presided over
two former congresses. I thought it best to give every lecturer ample
time for his paper and left the discussions of these lectures to take
place later as a sort of private exchange of ideas. Jung, who presided
over the Weimar meeting, reëstablished the discussions after each
lecture, which had not, however, proved disturbing at that time.
Two years later, in September, 1913, quite another picture was presented
by the congress at Münich which is still vividly recalled by those who
were present. It was presided over by Jung in an unamiable and incorrect
fashion: the lecturers were limited as to time, and the discussion
dwarfed the lectures. Through a malicious mood of chance the evil genius
of Hoche had taken up his residence in the same house in which the
analysts held their meetings. Hoche could easily have convinced himself
that his characterization of these psychoanalysts, as a sect, blindly
and meekly following their leader, was true _ad absurdum_. The fatiguing
and unedifying proceedings ended in the reëlection of Jung as president
of the International Psychoanalytic Association, which fact Jung
accepted, although two fifths of those present refused him their
support. We took leave from one another without feeling the need to meet
again!
About the time of this third Congress the condition of the International
Psychoanalytic Association was as follows: The local groups at Vienna,
Berlin, and Zürich had constituted themselves already at the congress at
Nuremberg in 1910. In May, 1911, a group, under the chairmanship of Dr.
L. Seif, was added at Münich. In the same year the first American local
group was formed under the chairmanship of A. A. Brill under the name of
“The New York Psychoanalytic Society.” At the Weimar Congress, the
founding of a second American group was authorized. This came into
existence during the next year as “The American Psychoanalytic
Association.” It included members from Canada and all America; Putnam
was elected president, and Ernest Jones was made secretary. Just before
the congress at Münich in 1913, a local group was founded at Budapest
under the leadership of S. Ferenczi. Soon afterwards Jones, who settled
in London, founded the first English group. The number of members of the
eight groups then in existence could not, of course, furnish any
standard for the computation of the non-organized students and adherents
of psychoanalysis.
The development of the periodical literature of psychoanalysis is also
worthy of a brief mention. The first periodical publications serving the
interests of analysis were the Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunden
which have appeared irregularly since 1907 and have reached the
fifteenth volume.[16] They published writings by Freud, Riklin, Jung,
Abraham, Rank, Sadger, Pfister, M. Graf, Jones, Storfer and
Hug-Hellmuth. The founding of the Imago, to be mentioned later, has
somewhat lowered the value of this form of publication. After the
meeting at Salzburg, 1908, the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen was founded, which appeared under Jung’s
editorship for five years, and it has now reappeared under new
editorship and under the slightly changed title of Jahrbuch der
Psychoanalyse. It no longer wishes to be as in former years, merely an
archive for collecting works of psychoanalytic merit, but it wishes to
justify its editorial task by taking due notice of all occurrences and
all endeavors in the field of psychoanalysis. As mentioned before Das
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse started by Adler and Stekel after the
founding of the “International Association” (Nuremberg, 1910) went
through in a short time a very varied career. Already in the tenth issue
of the first volume there was an announcement that in view of scientific
difference of opinion with the editors, Dr. Adler had decided
voluntarily to withdraw his collaboration. This placed the entire
editorship in the hands of Dr. Stekel (summer of 1911). At the Weimar
congress the Zentralblatt was raised to the official organ of the
“International Association” and by raising the annual dues it was made
accessible to all members. Beginning with the third number of the second
year (winter 1912) Stekel alone became responsible for the contents of
the journal. His behavior, which is difficult to explain in public,
forced me to sever all my connections with this journal and to give
psychoanalysis in all haste a new organ, the International Journal for
Medical Psychoanalysis (Internationale Zeitschrift für Ärztliche
Psychoanalyse). With the help of almost all my collaborators and the new
publisher, H. Heller, the first number of this new journal was able to
appear in January, 1913, to take the place of the Zentralblatt as the
official organ of the “International Psychoanalytic Association.”
Meanwhile Dr. Hanns Sachs and Dr. Otto Rank founded early in 1912 a new
journal, Imago (published by Heller), whose only aim is the application
of psychoanalysis to mental sciences. Imago has now reached the middle
of its third year, and enjoys the increasing interest of readers who are
not medically interested in psychoanalysis.
Apart from these four periodical publications (Schriften z. Angew.
Seelenkunde, Jahrbuch, Intern. Zeitschrift, and Imago) other German and
foreign journals have contributed works that can claim a place in
psychoanalytic literature. The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, published
by Morton Prince, as a rule, contains many good analytical
contributions. In the winter of 1913 Dr. White and Dr. Jelliffe started
a journal exclusively devoted to psychoanalysis, THE PSYCHOANALYTIC
REVIEW, which takes into account the fact that most physicians in
America interested in psychoanalysis do not master the German language.
I am now obliged to speak of two secessions which have taken place among
the followers of psychoanalysis. The first of these took place in the
interval between the founding of the association in 1910 and the
congress at Weimar, 1911, the second took place after this, and came to
light in Münich in 1913. The disappointment which they caused me might
have been avoided if more attention had been paid to the mechanisms of
those who undergo analytical treatment. I was well aware that any one
might take flight on first approach to the unlovely truths of analysis;
I myself had always asserted that any one’s understanding may be
suspended by one’s own repressions (through the resistances which
sustain them) so that in his relation to psychoanalysis he cannot get
beyond a certain point. But I had not expected that any one who had
mastered analysis to a certain depth could renounce this understanding
and lose it. And yet daily experience with patients had shown that the
total rejection of all knowledge gained through analysis may be brought
about by any deeper stratum of particularly strong resistance. Even if
we succeed through laborious work in causing such a patient to grasp
parts of analytic knowledge and handle these as his own possessions, it
may well happen that under the domination of the next resistance he will
throw to the winds all he has learned and will defend himself as in his
first days of treatment. I had to learn that this can happen among
psychoanalysts just as among patients during treatment.
It is no enviable task to write the history of these two secessions,
partly because I am not impelled to it by strong personal motives—I had
not expected gratitude nor am I to any active degree revengeful—and
partly because I know that I hereby lay myself open to the invectives of
opponents manifesting but little consideration, and at the same time I
regale the enemies of psychoanalysis with the long wished-for spectacle
of seeing the psychoanalysts tearing each other to pieces. I had to
exercise much control to keep myself from fighting with the opponents of
psychoanalysis, and now I feel constrained to take up the fight with
former followers or such as still wish to be called so. I have no
choice; to keep silent would be comfortable or cowardly, but it would
hurt the subject more than the frank uncovering of the existing evils.
Any one who has followed the growth of scientific movements will know
that quite similar disturbances and dissensions took place in all of
them. It may be that elsewhere they are more carefully concealed.
However, psychoanalysis, which denies many conventional ideals, is also
more honest in these things.
Another very palpable inconvenience lies in the fact that I cannot
altogether avoid going into an analytic elucidation. Analysis is not,
however, suitable for polemical use; it always presupposes the consent
of the one analyzed and the situation of a superior and subordinate.
Therefore he who wishes to use analysis with polemic intent must offer
no objection if the person so analyzed will, in his turn, use analysis
against him, and if the discussion merges into a state in which the
awakening of a conviction in an impartial third party is entirely
excluded. I shall, therefore, make here the smallest possible use of
analysis, thereby limiting my indiscretion and aggression against my
opponents, and I will also add that I base no scientific criticism on
this means. I have nothing to do with the possible substance of truths
in the theories to be rejected nor am I seeking to refute the same. This
task may be left to other able workers in the field of psychoanalysis,
and some of it has already been done. I only desire to show that these
theories deny the basic principles of analysis—I will show in what
points—and for this reason should not be known under this name. I shall,
therefore, use analysis only to make clear, how these deviations from
analysis could take place among analysts. At the parting places I am, of
course, obliged to defend the just rights of psychoanalysis with purely
critical remarks.
Psychoanalysis has found as its first task the explanation of the
neuroses; it has taken the two facts of resistance and transference as
starting points, and by bearing in mind the third fact of amnesia in the
theories of repression, it has given justification to the sexual motive
forces of the neuroses and of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis has never
claimed to give a perfect theory of the human psychic life, but has only
demanded that its discoveries should be used for the completion and
correction of knowledge we have gained elsewhere. But Alfred Adler’s
theory goes far beyond this goal. It pretends to explain with one stroke
the behavior and character of men as well as their neurotic and
psychotic maladies. As a matter of fact, Adler’s theory is more adequate
to any other field than to that of the neuroses, which he still puts in
the first place because of the history of its origin. I had the
opportunity of studying Dr. Adler many years and have never denied him
the testimonial of having a superior mind, especially endowed
speculatively. As proof of the “persecution” which he claims to have
suffered at my hands, I can only say that after the formation of the
Association I handed over to him the leadership of the Vienna group. It
was only after urgent requests from all the members of the society that
I could be prevailed upon to resume the presidency at the scientific
proceedings. When I had recognized Dr. Adler’s slight talent for the
estimation of the unconscious material, I expected that he would know
how to discover the connections between psychoanalysis and psychology
and the biological bases of the impulses, a discovery to which he was
entitled, in a certain sense, through his valuable studies about the
inferiority of organs. He really did bring out some thing, but his work
makes the impression as if—to speak in his own jargon—it were intended
to prove that psychoanalysis was wrong in everything and that the
significance of the sexual impelling forces could only be due to
gullibility about the assertions of neurotics. Of the personal motive of
his work I may also speak publicly, since he himself revealed it in the
presence of a small circle of members of the Vienna group. “Do you
believe,” he remarked, “that it is such a great pleasure for me to stand
in your shadow my whole life?” To be sure I see nothing objectionable in
the fact that a younger man should frankly admit an ambition which one
might, in any case, suspect as one of the incentives of his work. But
even under the domination of such a motive a man should know how to
avoid being “unfair” as designated by the English with their fine social
tact. We Germans have only a much coarser word at our disposal to convey
this idea. How little Adler has succeeded in not being unfair is shown
by the great number of mean outbursts of anger which distort his
writings, and by the feeling of an ungovernable mania for priority which
pervades his work. At the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society we once heard
him claim for himself the priority for the viewpoints of the “unity of
the neuroses” and the “dynamic conception” of the same. This was a great
surprise for me as I had always believed that I had represented these
two principles before I had ever known Adler.[17]
This striving of Adler for a place in the sun has brought about,
however, one result, which must be considered beneficial to
psychoanalysis. When I was obliged to bring about Adler’s resignation
from the editorial staff of the Zentralblatt, after the appearance of
his irreconcilable scientific antagonisms, Adler also left the Vienna
group and founded a new society to which he first gave the tasteful name
“Society for Free Psychoanalysis.” But the outside public, unacquainted
with analysis, is evidently as little skilled in recognizing the
difference between the views of two psychoanalysts, as are Europeans in
recognizing the tints between two Chinese faces. The “free”
psychoanalysis remained in the shadow of the “official” and “orthodox”
one, and was treated only as an appendage of the latter. Then Adler took
the step for which we are thankful. He severed all connection with
psychoanalysis and named his teachings “The Individual Psychology.”
There is much space on God’s earth, and any one who can is surely
justified in tumbling about upon it uninhibited; but it is not desirable
to continue living under one roof when people no longer understand one
another and no longer get on together. Adler’s “Individual Psychology”
is now one of the many psychological movements opposed to
psychoanalysis, and its further development lies outside our interests.