Psycho-Analysis and the War NeurosesFreud, Sigmund
History
Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis; War neuroses
I have come to the end of my remarks, and hope that I have proved that
the combined psycho-analytical method gives us to-day a true medical
treatment for war neurotics. Those doctors who have devised a system
of tortures, such as hunger cures, dark rooms, prohibition of letters,
painful electric currents, etc. in order to extort from the patients
the abandonment of their neurotic symptoms, unconsciously recognise the
Freudian theory by the inversion of its fundamental principles. They
make a torture of the treatment in order to force the neurotic “to flee
into health”. The doctor schooled in psycho-analysis does not need to
hound in the opposite direction his patients who have been driven into
illness. He releases him from the fetters of his unconscious mind and
thus is in the position to guide the neurotic into health and save him.
III.
WAR SHOCK AND FREUD’S THEORY OF THE NEUROSES[7]
By
DR. ERNEST JONES, London.
A matter that used to hamper the opponents of psycho-analysis to
some extent was that there was no alternative theory of the neuroses
seriously tenable. It was clearly impossible to explain all neurotic
manifestations by the catch-word use of the two terms “heredity” and
“suggestion”, for our conceptions of heredity, however important
in this connection they may well become in the future when more is
known of the subject, are at present too vague to explain any complex
psychological phenomena, and the idea of suggestion merely introduces
yet another problem without solving any of the old ones.
The experience of neurotic affections engendered by the war, however,
has enabled the critics of psycho-analysis to put forward the view
that the factors invoked by Freud in explanation of these affections
need not be present, and therefore cannot be regarded as essential,
in the way maintained by him, whereas, on the other hand, a different
set of factors is undeniably present and operative; not only so, but
these latter factors are held to be all-sufficing, so that it is not
necessary to search for any others in the ætiology of the conditions in
question. Some opponents of psycho-analysis, particularly those more
concerned with combating an unwelcome theory than with ascertaining
truth, have even maintained that the experience of the war has proved
_all_ Freud’s views to be utterly untenable and false.
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