I have taken but little direct part in certain other applications of
psychoanalysis, though they are none the less of general interest. It is
only a step from the phantasies of individual neurotics to the
imaginative creations of groups and peoples as we find them in myths,
legends and fairy tales. Mythology became the special province of Otto
Rank; the interpretation of myths, the tracing of them back to the
familiar unconscious complexes of infancy, the replacing of astral
explanations by a discovery of human motives, all of this is to a large
extent due to his analytic efforts. The subject of symbolism has also
found many students among my followers. Symbolism has brought
psychoanalysis many enemies; many enquirers with unduly prosaic minds
have never been able to forgive it the recognition of symbolism, which
followed from the interpretation of dreams. But analysis is guiltless of
the discovery of symbolism, for it had long been known in other regions
of thought (such as folk-lore, legends and myths) and plays even a
larger part in them than in the “language of dreams.”
I myself have contributed nothing to the application of analysis to
education. It was natural, however, that the analytic discoveries as to
the sexual life and mental development of children should attract the
attention of educators and make them see their problems in a new light.
Dr. Oskar Pfister, a protestant pastor at Zurich, led the way as a
tireless pioneer along these lines, nor did he find the practice of
analysis incompatible with the retention of his religion, though it is
true that this was of a sublimated kind. Among the many others who
worked alongside of him, I may mention Frau Dr. Hug-Hellmuth and Dr. S.
Bernfeld, both of Vienna. The application of analysis to the
prophylactic education of healthy children and to the correcting of
those who, though not actually neurotic, have deviated from the normal
course of development, has led to one consequence which is of practical
importance. It is no longer possible to restrict the practice of
psychoanalysis to physicians and to exclude laymen from it. In fact, a
physician who has not been through a special training is, in spite of
his diploma, a layman in analysis, and a non-physician who has been
suitably trained can, with occasional reference to a physician, even
carry out the analytic treatment of neuroses.
By a process of development against which it would have been useless to
struggle, the word “psychoanalysis” has itself become ambiguous. While
it was originally the name of a particular therapeutic method, it has
now also become the name of a science—the science of unconscious mental
processes. By itself this science is seldom able to deal with a problem
completely, but it seems destined to give important contributory help in
a large number of regions of knowledge. The sphere of application of
psychoanalysis extends as far as that of psychology, to which it forms a
complement of the greatest moment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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