The history of the psychoanalytic movementFreud, Sigmund
History
The history of the psychoanalytic movement
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis -- History
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.
A third contribution from the Swiss School, which is to be ascribed
probably entirely to Jung, I do not value as highly as do others who are
not in as close contact with it. I speak of the theory of the
_complexes_, which grew out of the “Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien”
(1906–1910). It itself has neither resulted in a psychological theory
nor has it added an unconstrained insertion to the context of the
psychoanalytic principles. On the other hand, the word “complex” has
gained for itself the right of citizenship in psychoanalysis, as being a
convenient and often an indispensable term for descriptive summaries of
psychologic facts. None other among the names and designations, newly
coined as a result of psychoanalytic needs, has attained such widespread
popularity; but no other term has been so misapplied to the detriment of
clear thinking. In psychoanalytic diction one often spoke of the “return
of the complex” when “the return of the repression” was intended to be
conveyed, or one became accustomed to say “I have a complex against
him,” when more correctly he should have said “a resistance.”
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