Psycho-analysis: Essays in the field of psycho-analysis

PREFACE TO SANDOR FERENCZI’S

NERVOUS ANXIETY-STATES AND THEIR TREATMENT

PREFACE TO WILHELM STEKEL’S

(1908)

My investigations into the aetiology and psychical mechanism of neurotic illnesses, which I have pursued since 1893, attracted little notice to begin with among my fellow specialists. At length, however, those investigations have met with recognition from a number of medical research workers and have also drawn attention to the psycho-analytic methods of examination and treatment to which I owe my findings. Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, who was one of the first of the colleagues to whom I was able to impart a knowledge of psycho-analysis, and who has himself become familiar with its technique through many years of practice in it, has now undertaken the task of working over one topic in the clinical aspect of these neuroses on the basis of my views and of presenting medical readers with the experiences he has obtained through the psycho-analytic method. If I am glad to take the responsibility for his work in the sense which I have just indicated, I think it is only right to declare explicitly that my direct influence upon the volume on nervous states of anxiety which lies before us has been a very slight one. The observations and all the detailed opinions and interpretations are the author’s own. My share has been limited to proposing the use of the term ‘anxiety hysteria’.

I will add that Dr. Stekel’s work is founded upon rich experience and is calculated to stimulate other physicians into confirming by their own efforts our views on the aetiology of these conditions. His work reveals many unexpected glimpses of the realities of life, which so often lie concealed behind neurotic symptoms; and it may well convince our colleagues that the attitude they choose to adopt to the hints and explanations given in these pages cannot be a matter of indifference from the point of view either of their understanding or of their therapeutic efficiency.

VIENNA, March 19085

(1910)

Psycho-analytic research into the neuroses (the various forms of nervous illness with a mental causation) has endeavoured to trace their connection with instinctual life and the restrictions imposed on it by the claims of civilization, with the activities of the normal individual in phantasies and dreams, and with the creations of the popular mind in religion., myths and fairy tales. The psycho-analytic treatment of neurotic patients, based on this method of research, makes far higher demands on doctor and patient than the methods hitherto in common use, which operate through medicaments, diet, hydropathy and suggestion. But it brings the patients so much more relief and permanent strengthening in the face of life’s problems, that there is no cause for surprise at the continual advances made by this therapeutic method in spite of violent opposition.

The author of the following essays, who is a close acquaintance of mine, and who is familiar, to an extent that few others are, with all the difficulties of psycho-analytic problems, is the first Hungarian to undertake the task of creating an interest in psycho-analysis among doctors and men of education in his own country through writings composed in their mother tongue. It is our cordial wish that this attempt of his may succeed and may result in gaining for this new field of work new workers from the body of his compatriots.

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