Here another aspect manifests itself which cannot be interfered with,
without causing damage. If the representatives of the different sciences
should really take up the study of psychoanalysis, to apply it in their
own spheres of interest, it would not suffice for them to merely avail
themselves of such results as have been recorded in psychoanalytical
literature. They will have to come to an understanding of psychoanalysis
in the only way possible, that is, by submitting themselves to analysis.
Thus, to the neurotics in need of analysis, a second class of persons
would be added: those who undergo analysis for intellectual reasons and
who would welcome that intensification of their efficiency which would
result incidentally from analysis. To undertake these analyses, a number
of analysts would be necessary for whom medical knowledge would be of
specially limited importance. However, these instructor-analysts—as they
ought to be called—are in need of an especially thorough training, which
they can only obtain if they are given opportunities to study
interesting and convincing cases. Inasmuch as healthy persons do not
feel the necessity and curiosity to be analysed, neurotics would have to
be the objects of study for the instructor-analysts. Their study would
be guided by expert analysts, with a special eye to their future,
non-medical work. Of course, all this necessitates a certain amount of
freedom of action, and would not brook petty interference.
Perhaps you do not believe in these strictly theoretical endeavors of
psychoanalysis, and are not ready to admit their importance, in
connection with the practical side of the problem of lay-analyses. In
that case, let me remind you that there is another field for the
application of psychoanalysis, outside the hunting ground of the
“quack”—a field which physicians will hardly claim as their own. I
allude to the application of psychoanalysis to pedagogy.
As soon as a child manifests the first signs of an undesirable
development, by being moody, stubborn and inattentive, neither the child
specialist nor the school physician will be able to do anything for him;
not even when a child shows such clear signs of nervous disturbances as
timidity, lack of appetite, vomiting, and sleeplessness. A treatment
which combines analytical influence with pedagogic measures and is
applied by persons who are not above delving into the child’s own world
and who understand how to penetrate the soul life of the child, will
succeed not only in dissolving nervous disturbances, but also in
reversing incipient traits of character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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