The history of the psychoanalytic movementFreud, Sigmund
History
The history of the psychoanalytic movement
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis -- History
Hand in hand with its territorial expansion just described
psychoanalysis became enlarged with regard to its contents through its
encroaching upon fields of knowledge outside of the study of the
neuroses and psychiatry. I will not treat in detail the development of
this part of our branch of science since this was excellently done by
Rank and Sachs (in Löwenfeld’s “Grenzfragen”)[9] which presents
exhaustively just these achievements in the work of analysis. Besides,
here everything is in inchoate form, hardly worked out, mostly only
preliminary and sometimes only in the stage of an intention. Every
honest thinker will find herein no grounds for reproach. There is a
tremendous amount of problems for a small number of workers whose chief
activity lies elsewhere, who are obliged to attack the special problems
of the new science with only amateurish preparation. These workers
hailing from the psychoanalytic field make no secret of their
dilettantism, they only desire to be guides and temporary occupants of
the places of those specialists to whom they recommend the analytic
technique and principles until the latter are ready to take up this work
themselves. That the results aimed at are, even now, not at all
insignificant, is due partly to the fruitfulness of the psychoanalytic
method, and partly to the circumstance that already there are a few
investigators, who, without being physicians, have made the application
of psychoanalysis to the mental sciences their lifework.
Most of these psychoanalytic applications can be traced, as is easily
understood, to the impetus given by my early analytic works. The
analytic examinations of nervous patients and neurotic manifestations of
normal persons drove me to the assumption of psychological relationships
which, most certainly, could not be limited only to that field. Thus
analysis presented us not only with the explanation of pathological
occurrences, but also showed us their connection with normal psychic
life and uncovered undreamed-of relations between psychiatry and a
variety of other sciences dealing with activities of mind. Thus certain
typical dreams furnished the understanding of many myths and fairy
tales. Riklin and Abraham followed this hint and began those
investigations about myths which have found their completion in the
works of Rank on Mythology, works which do full justice to all the
requirements of the specialist. The prosecution of dream-symbology led
to the very heart of the problems of mythology, folk-lore (Jones,
Storfer) and of religious abstraction. At one of the psychoanalytic
congresses the audience was deeply impressed when a student of Jung
pointed out the similarity of the phantasy-formation of schizophrenics
with the cosmogonies of primitive times and peoples. In a later
elaboration, no longer free from objection yet very interesting, Jung
made use of mythological material in an attempt to harmonize the
neurotic with religious and mythological phantasies.
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