The opposition to this method makes use of arguments which chiefly (as we
will observe, from personal motives) originate in the still strongly
scholastic bent, which the learned thought of the present-day exhibits. And
dream-analysis is precisely what inexorably lays bare the lying morals and
the hypocritical pose of men, and now for once makes them see the reverse
side of their character. Is it to be wondered at that many therefore feel
as if some one were stepping on their toes?
Dream-analysis always makes me think of the striking statue of worldly
pleasure which stands before the cathedral at Basel. The front presents an
archaic sweet smile, but the back is covered with toads and snakes.
Dream-analysis reverses things and allows the back side to be seen. That
this correct picture of reality possesses an ethical value is what no one
can contradict. It is a painful but very useful operation, which demands a
great deal from the physician as well as from the patient. Psychoanalysis
seen from the standpoint of therapeutic technic consists chiefly of numerous
analyses of dreams; these in the course of treatment, little by little,
bring what is evil out of the subconsciousness to the light and submit it to
the disinfecting light of day, and thereby find again many valuable and
pretendedly lost portions of the past. It represents a cathartic of especial
worth, which has a similarity to the Socratic "maieutike," the "obstetric."
From this state of affairs one can only expect that psychoanalysis for many
people who have taken a certain pose, in which they firmly believe, is a
real torture, because according to the ancient mystic saying: "Give what you
have, then shall you receive!" They must of their own free will offer as a
price their beloved illusions if they wish to allow something deeper, more
beautiful and more vast to enrich them. Only through the mystery of
self-sacrifice does the self succeed in finding itself again renewed.
There are proverbs of very old origin which through the psychoanalytical
treatment again come to light. It is surely very remarkable that at the
height to which our present-day culture has attained this particular kind of
psychic education seems necessary, an education which may be compared in
more than one respect with the technic of Socrates, although psychoanalysis
goes much deeper.
We always discover in the patient a conflict which at a certain point is
connected with the great social problems, and when the analysis has
penetrated to that point, the seemingly individual conflict of the patient
is disclosed as the conflict, common to his environment and his time.
Thus the neurosis is really nothing but an individual (unsuccessful to be
sure) attempt to solve a common problem It must be so, because a common
problem, a "Question" which plunges the sick man into misery is--I can't
help it--"the sexual question," more properly termed the question of the
present-day sexual moral.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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