“I think I know now what your intentions are:—You wish to show me just
what knowledge is necessary for the practice of psychoanalysis, so that
I may be able to judge whether physicians alone shall be permitted to
apply this method. Up to now, you have mainly discussed psychology, and
a little biology or sex science, without a decided medical slant.
However, I may not have heard everything yet.”
Certainly not. There are still a number of gaps to be filled. But may I
ask you a favor? Will you be good enough to describe to me how you
imagine psychoanalytical treatment is applied? Just pretend as if it
were up to you to analyse a patient.
“Well, I may make quite a mess of this! It is surely not my intention to
settle the argument between us, on the basis of such an experiment.
However, I shall do as you ask. After all, the responsibility falls upon
your shoulders.
“Now then: I assume that the patient comes to see me and embarks upon a
recital of his complaints. I promise him to cure, or at least improve,
his condition, provided that he will follow my instructions. Then, I
would ask him to tell me, in all frankness, what he knows, what ideas
enter his mind. I should also request him to make a clean breast of
everything, even though there may be things which he would hate to
mention. Am I adhering to your methods?”
You are! But, in addition you should have the patient tell you all his
thoughts, even if they seem unimportant to him or lacking in sense.
“Very well.—The patient, then, starts to relate his story and I listen.
And what next? Oh, yes, his information will make it possible for me to
conclude what impressions, experiences and desires he may have
repressed, because he came face to face with them at a time when his ‘I’
was still weak and too intimidated to face the dilemma squarely.
“After I have told that to the patient, he will reconstruct the old
situations and correct his reactions to them with my assistance. Thus,
the repressions, his ‘I’ had been forced to resort to, will disappear
and he is cured.—Is that correct?”
Very good, indeed.—I already foresee that more people are going to
reproach me for having trained a non-medical man to practise
psychoanalysis. I surely must admit that you digested what I told you.
“I have only repeated what you told me, like reciting something that has
been committed to memory.
“But I do not feel able to clearly visualize how I really would go about
it. I cannot understand why such an analysis should require an hour or
more a day, for a period of months. As a rule, the average human being
has not met with so many experiences. And as far as repressions during
childhood are concerned, I assume that these are probably identical in
all cases.”
There are many new experiences to make in the course of an analysis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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