The neurosis is an unsuccessful attempt of the individual to solve in his
own bosom the sexual question which perplexes the whole of human society.
The neurosis is a disunity in one's inmost self. The cause of this inward
strife is because in most men the consciousness would gladly hold to its
moral ideal, but the subconsciousness strives toward its (in the present-day
meaning) immoral ideal. This the consciousness always wants to deny. These
are the sort of people who would like to be more respectable than they are
at bottom. But the conflict may be reversed; there are people who
apparently are very disreputable, and who do not take the slightest pains to
limit their sexual pleasures. But looked at from all sides this is only a
sinful attitude, adopted, God knows for what grounds, because in them, back
of this, there is a soul, which is kept just as much in the subconsciousness
as the immoral nature is kept in the subconscious of moral men. (It is best
for men to avoid extremes as far as possible, because extremes make us
suspect the contrary.)
This general explanation was necessary in order to explain to some extent
the conception of the erotic conflict in analytical psychology. It is the
turning-point of the entire conception of the neurosis.
After Breuer's discovery, putting into practice the "chimney sweeping" so
justly christened by his patient this method of treatment has evolved into
shorter psychoanalytical methods, which we will now discuss in succession in
their main points.
In his use of the primitive method, Freud depended upon the time saving of
hypnotism and upon the circumstance that many could not be brought into the
desired deep degree of provoked sleep. The aim of this operation was to call
up in the patient another state of consciousness, in which it would be
possible for him to remember facts which had given cause for the origin of
the phenomena, facts which thus far had remained hidden from the ordinary
daily consciousness. By questioning the patient when in this state, or by
spontaneous production of phantasies communicated by the patient while in
hypnosis, memories come to light and affects connected with them are relaxed
(these are abreagirt [rearranged], as the expression is) and the desired
cure is attained. This just-mentioned method (cathartic, cleansing) and
more especially the modified one, which aims especially at the promotion of
a spontaneous production of phantasies communicated by the patient while
under hypnotism, is still used in practice by some investigators. In what
follows we go still further back--Freud next sought for a method to render
hypnotism unnecessary. He discovered it by applying an artifice which he
had seen Bernheim use during a visit (1887) to the latter's clinic at Nancy.
Bernheim demonstrated upon a hypnotized patient how the amnesia of the
somnambulist is only an appearance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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