The psychical disorders of male potency 20 страница

I have repeatedly acknowledged with gratitude the great services rendered by the Zurich School of Psychiatry in the spread of psycho-analysis, particularly by Bleuler and Jung, and I have no hesitation in doing so again, even in the greatly altered circumstances of the present. True, it was not the support of the Zurich School which first directed the attention of the scientific world to psycho-analysis at that time. What had happened was that the latency period had expired and everywhere psycho-analysis was becoming the object of ever-increasing interest. But in all other places this accession of interest at first produced nothing but a very emphatic repudiation, mostly a quite passionate one; whereas in Zurich, on the contrary, agreement on general lines was the dominant note. Moreover, nowhere else did such a compact little group of adherents exist, or could a public clinic be placed at the service of psycho-analytic researches, or was there a clinical teacher who included psycho-analytic theories as an integral part of his psychiatric course. The Zurich group thus became the nucleus of the small band who were fighting for the recognition of analysis. The only opportunity of learning the new art and working at it in practice lay there. Most of my followers and co-workers at the present time came to me by way of Zurich, even those who were geographically much nearer to Vienna than to Switzerland. In relation to Western Europe, which contains the great centres of our culture, the position of Vienna is an outlying one; and its prestige has for many years been affected by strong prejudices. Representatives of all the most important nations congregate in Switzerland, where intellectual activity is so lively; a focus of infection there was bound to be of great importance for the spread of the ‘psychical epidemic’, as Hoche of Freiburg has called it.

¹ [Footnote added 1924:] The subsequent founder of the ‘Psycho-Analytic Policlinic’ in Berlin.4

According to the evidence of a colleague who witnessed developments at the Burghölzli, it appears that psycho-analysis awakened interest there very early. In Jung’s work on occult phenomena, published in 1902, there was already an allusion to my book on dream-interpretation. From 1903 or 1904, says my informant, psycho-analysis was in the forefront of interest. After personal relations between Vienna and Zurich had been established, an informal society was also started, in the middle of 1907, in the Burghölzli, where the problems of psycho-analysis were discussed at regular meetings. In the alliance between the Vienna and Zurich schools the Swiss were by no means mere recipients. They had already produced very creditable scientific work, the results of which were of service to psycho-analysis. The association experiments started by the Wundt School had been interpreted by them in a psycho-analytic sense, and had proved applicable in unexpected ways. By this means it had become possible to arrive at rapid experimental confirmation of psycho-analytic observations and to demonstrate directly to students certain connections which an analyst would only have been able to tell them about. The first bridge linking up experimental psychology with psycho-analysis had been built.

In psycho-analytic treatment, association experiments enable a provisional, qualitative analysis of the case to be made, but they furnish no essential contribution to the technique and can be dispensed with in carrying out analyses. More important, however, was another achievement by the Zurich school, or its leaders, Bleuler and Jung. The former showed that light could be thrown on a large number of purely psychiatric cases by adducing the same processes as have been recognized through psycho-analysis to obtain in dreams and neuroses (Freudian mechanisms); and Jung successfully applied the analytic method of interpretation to the most alien and obscure phenomena of dementia praecox, so that their sources in the life-history and interests of the patient came clearly to light. After this it was impossible for psychiatrists to ignore psycho-analysis any longer. Bleuler’s great work on schizophrenia (1911), in which the psycho-analytic point of view was placed on an equal footing with the clinical systematic one, completed this success.

I will not omit to point out a divergence which was already at that time noticeable in the direction taken by the work of the two schools. As early as in 1897 I had published the analysis of a case of schizophrenia, which however was of a paranoid character, so that the solution of it could not take away from the impression made by Jung’s analyses. But to me the important point had been, not so much the possibility of interpreting the symptoms, as the psychical mechanism of the disease, and above all the agreement of this mechanism with that of hysteria, which had already been discovered. At that time no light had yet been thrown on the differences between the two mechanisms. For I was then already aiming at a libido theory of the neuroses, which was to explain all neurotic and psychotic phenomena as proceeding from abnormal vicissitudes of the libido, that is, as diversions from its normal employment. This point of view was missed by the Swiss investigators. As far as I know, even to-day Bleuler maintains the view that the various forms of dementia praecox have an organic causation; and at the Salzburg Congress in 1908 Jung, whose book on this disease had appeared in 1907, supported the toxic theory of its causation, which takes no account of the libido theory, although it is true that it does not rule it out. Later on (1912) he came to grief on this same point, by making too much of the material which he had previously refused to employ.

There is a third contribution made by the Swiss School, probably to be ascribed entirely to Jung, which I do not value so highly as others do whose concern with these matters is more remote. I refer to the theory of ‘complexes’ which grew out of the Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien [Studies in Word-Association] (1906). It has neither itself produced a psychological theory, not has it proved capable of easy incorporation into the context of psycho-analytic theory. The word ‘complex’, on the other hand, had become naturalized, so to speak, in psycho-analytic language; it is a convenient and often indispensable term for summing up a psychological state descriptively. None of the other terms coined by psycho-analysis for its own needs has achieved such widespread popularity or been so misapplied to the detriment of the construction of clearer concepts. Analysts began to speak among themselves of a ‘return of a complex’ where they meant a ‘return of the repressed’, or fell into the habit of saying ‘I have a complex against him’, where the only correct expression would have been ‘a resistance against him’.

6 In the years following 1907, when the schools of Vienna and Zurich were united, psycho-analysis made the extraordinary surge forward of which the momentum is felt even to-day; this is shown both by the spread of psycho-analytic literature and by the constant increase in the number of doctors who are practising or studying it, as well as by the frequency of the attacks made on it at Congresses and in learned societies. It has penetrated into the most distant lands and has everywhere not merely startled psychiatrists but commanded the attention of the educated public and of scientific workers in other fields. Havelock Ellis, who has followed its development with sympathy though without ever calling himself an adherent, wrote in 1911 in a report for the Australasian Medical Congress: ‘Freud’s psycho-analysis is now championed and carried out not only in Austria and in Switzerland, but in the United States, in England, in India, in Canada, and, I doubt not, in Australasia.’¹ A physician from Chile (probably a German) spoke at the International Congress at Buenos Aires in 1910 in support of the existence of infantile sexuality and commended highly the effects of psycho-analytic therapy on obsessional symptoms.² An English neurologist in Central India (Berkeley-Hill) informed me, through a distinguished colleague who was visiting Europe, that the analyses of Mohammedan Indians which he had carried out showed that the aetiology of their neuroses was no different from what we find in our European patients.

¹ Havelock Ellis, 1911.

² G. Greve, 1910.7

The introduction of psycho-analysis into North America was accompanied by very special marks of honour. In the autumn of 1909, Stanley Hall, the President of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, invited Jung and myself to take part in the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the foundation of the University by giving a number of lectures in German. To our great surprise, we found the members of that small but highly esteemed University for the study of education and philosophy so unprejudiced that they were acquainted with all the literature of psycho-analysis and had given it a place in their lectures to students. In prudish America it was possible, in academic circles at least, to discuss freely and scientifically everything that in ordinary life is regarded as objectionable. The five lectures which I improvised in Worcester appeared in an English translation in the American Journal of Psychology, and were shortly afterwards published in German under the title Über Psychoanalyse. Jung read a paper on diagnostic association experiments and another on conflicts in the mind of the child. We were rewarded with the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. During that week of celebrations at Worcester, psycho-analysis was represented by five men: besides Jung and myself, there were Ferenczi, who had joined me for the journey, Ernest Jones, then at the University of Toronto (Canada) and now in London, and A. A. Brill, who was already practising psycho-analysis in New York.

The most important personal relationship which arose from the meeting at Worcester was that with James J. Putnam, Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard University. Some years before, he had expressed an unfavourable opinion of psycho-analysis, but now he rapidly became reconciled to it and recommended it to his countrymen and his colleagues in a series of lectures which were as rich in content as they were brilliant in form. The esteem he enjoyed throughout America on account of his high moral character and unflinching love of truth was of great service to psycho-analysis and protected it against the denunciations which in all probability would otherwise quickly have overwhelmed it. Later on, yielding too much to the strong ethical and philosophical bent of his nature, Putnam made what seems to me an impossible demand - he expected psycho-analysis to place itself at the service of a particular moral-philosophical conception of the Universe - but he remains the chief pillar of the psycho-analytic movement in his native land.¹

¹ [Footnote added 1924:] See Putnam’s Addresses on Psycho-Analysis, 1921. Putnam died in 1918.8

For the further spread of this movement Brill and Jones deserve the greatest credit: in their writings they drew their countrymen’s attention with unremitting assiduity to the easily observable fundamental facts of everyday life, of dreams and neurosis. Brill has contributed still further to this effect by his medical practice and by his translations of my works, and Jones by his instructive lectures and by his skill in debate at congresses in America.¹ The absence of any deep-rooted scientific tradition in America and the much less stringent rule of official authority there have been of decided advantage to the impetus given by Stanley Hall. It was characteristic of that country that from the beginning professors and superintendents of mental hospitals showed as much interest in analysis as independent practitioners. But it is clear that precisely for this reason the ancient centres of culture, where the greatest resistance has been displayed, must be the scene of the decisive struggle over psycho-analysis.

Among European countries France has hitherto shown itself the least disposed to welcome psycho-analysis, although useful work in French by A. Maeder of Zurich has provided easy access to its theories. The first indications of sympathy came from the provinces: Morichau-Beauchant (Poitiers) was the first Frenchman to adhere publicly to psycho-analysis. Régis and Hesnard (Bordeaux) have recently attempted to disperse the prejudices of their countrymen against the new ideas by an exhaustive presentation, which, however, is not always understanding and takes special exception to symbolism. In Paris itself, a conviction still seems to reign (to which Janet himself gave eloquent expression at the Congress in London in 1913) that everything good in psycho-analysis is a repetition of Janet’s views with insignificant modifications, and that everything else in it is bad. At this Congress itself, indeed, Janet had to submit to a number of corrections by Ernest Jones, who was able to point out to him his insufficient knowledge of the subject. Even though we deny his claims, however, we cannot forget the value of his work on the psychology of the neuroses.

¹ The publications of both authors have appeared in collected volumes: Brill, 1912, and Ernest Jones, 1913.9

In Italy, after several promising starts, no real interest was forthcoming. To Holland analysis found early access through personal connections: Van Emden, Van Ophuijsen, Van Renterghem (Freud en zijn School) and the two Stärckes are actively occupied with it both in practice and theory.¹ In scientific circles in England interest in analysis has developed very slowly, but there is reason to expect that the sense for the practical and the passionate love of justice in the English will ensure it a brilliant future there.

In Sweden, P. Bjerre, who succeeded to Wetterstrand’s practice, gave up hypnotic suggestion, at least for the time, in favour of analytic treatment. R. Vogt (Christiania) had already shown an appreciation of psycho-analysis in his Psykiatriens grundtraek, published in 1907; so that the first text-book of psychiatry to refer to psycho-analysis was written in Norwegian. In Russia, psycho-analysis has become generally known and has spread widely; almost all my writings, as well as those of other adherents of analysis, have been translated into Russian. But a really penetrating comprehension of analytic theories has not yet been evinced in Russia; so that the contributions of Russian physicians are at present not very notable. The only trained analyst there is M. Wulff who practises in Odessa. It is principally due to L. Jekels that psycho-analysis has been introduced to Polish scientific and literary circles. Hungary, so near geographically to Austria, and so far from it scientifically, has produced only one collaborator, S. Ferenczi, but one that indeed outweighs a whole society.²

¹ The first official recognition of dream-interpretation and psycho-analysis in Europe was extended to them by the psychiatrist Jelgersma, Rector of the University of Leyden, in his rectorial address on February 9, 1914.

² (Footnote added 1923:) It is not my intention, of course, to bring this account, written in 1914, ‘up to date’ [in English in the original]. I will only add a few remarks to indicate how the picture has altered in the interval, which includes the World War. In Germany a gradual infiltration of analytic theories into clinical psychiatry is taking place, though this is not always admitted. The French translations of my works that have been appearing during the last few years have finally aroused a keen interest in psycho-analysis even in France, though for the moment this is more active in literary circles than in scientific ones. In Italy M. Levi Bianchini (of Nocera Superiore) and Edoardo Weiss (of Trieste) have come forward as translators and champions of psycho-analysis (cf. the Biblioteca Psicoanalitica Italiana). A collected edition of my works which is appearing in Madrid (translated by Lopez Ballesteros) is evidence of the lively interest taken in it in Spanish-speaking countries (Prof. H. Delgado in Lima). As regards England, the prophecy which I have made above seems to be in steady course of fulfilment; a special centre for the study of analysis has been formed at Calcutta in British India. In North America it is still true that the depth of understanding of analysis does not keep pace with its popularity. In Russia, since the Revolution, psycho-analytic work has begun afresh at several centres. In Poland the Polska Bibljoteka Psychoanalytyczna is now appearing. In Hungary a brilliant analytic school is flourishing under the leadership of Ferenczi. (Cf. the Festschrift issued in honour of his fiftieth birthday.) At the present time the Scandinavian countries are still the least receptive.

As regards the position of psycho-analysis in Germany, it can only be said that it forms the centre-point of scientific discussions and provokes the most emphatic expressions of disagreement both among doctors and laymen; these are not yet at an end, but are constantly flaring up again, sometimes with greater intensity. No official educational bodies there have up to now recognized psycho-analysis. Successful practitioners who employ it are few; only a few institutions, such as Binswanger’s in Kreuzlingen (on Swiss soil) and Marcinowski’s in Holstein, have opened their doors to it. One of the most prominent representatives of analysis, Karl Abraham, at one time an assistant of Bleuler’s, maintains himself in the critical atmosphere of Berlin. One might wonder that this state of things should have continued unaltered for several years if one did not know that the account I have given only represents external appearances. Too much significance should not be attributed to rejection by the official representatives of science and heads of institutions, and by the followers dependent on them. It is natural that its opponents should give loud expression to their views, while its intimidated adherents keep silence. Some of the latter, whose first contributions to analysis raised favourable expectations, have later withdrawn from the movement under the pressure of circumstances. The movement itself advances surely though silently; it is constantly gaining new adherents among psychiatrists and laymen, it brings in a growing stream of new readers for psycho-analytic literature and for that very reason drives its opponents to ever more violent defensive efforts. At least a dozen times in recent years, in reports of the proceedings of certain congresses and scientific bodies or in reviews of certain publications, I have read that now psycho-analysis is dead, defeated and disposed of once and for all. The best answer to all this would be in the terms of Mark Twain’s telegram to the newspaper which had falsely published news of his death: ‘Report of my death greatly exaggerated.’ After each of these obituaries psycho-analysis regularly gained new adherents and co-workers or acquired new channels of publicity. After all, being declared dead was an advance on being buried in silence.

1 Hand in hand with this expansion of psycho-analysis in space went an expansion in content; it extended from the field of the neuroses and psychiatry to other fields of knowledge. I shall not treat this aspect of the development of our discipline in much detail, since this has been done with great success by Rank and Sachs in a volume (one of Löwenfeld’s Grenzfragen) which deals exhaustively with precisely this side of analytic research. Moreover, this development is still in its infancy; it has been little worked at, consists mostly of tentative beginnings and in part of no more than plans. No reasonable person will see any grounds for reproach in this. An enormous mass of work confronts a small number of workers, most of whom have their main occupation elsewhere and can bring only the qualifications of an amateur to bear on the technical problems of these unfamiliar fields of science. These workers, who derive from psycho-analysis, make no secret of their amateurishness. Their aim is merely to act as sign-posts and stop-gaps for the specialists, and to put the analytic technique and principles at their disposal against a time when they in turn shall take up the work. That the results achieved are nevertheless not inconsiderable is due partly to the fruitfulness of the analytic method, and partly to the circumstance that there are already a few investigators who are not doctors, and have taken up the application of psycho-analysis to the mental sciences as their profession in life.

Most of these applications of analysis naturally go back to a hint in my earliest analytic writings. The analytic examination of neurotic people and the neurotic symptoms of normal people necessitated the assumption of psychological conditions which could not possibly be limited to the field in which they had been discovered. In this way analysis not only provided us with the explanation of pathological phenomena, but revealed their connection with normal mental life and disclosed unsuspected relationships between psychiatry and the most various other sciences dealing with activities of the mind. Certain typical dreams, for instance, yielded an explanation of some myths and fairy-tales. Riklin and Abraham followed this hint and initiated the researches into myths which have found their completion, in a manner complying with even expert standards, in Rank’s works on mythology. Further investigation into dream-symbolism led to the heart of the problems of mythology, folklore (Jones and Storfer) and the abstractions of religion. A deep impression was made on all hearers at one of the psycho-analytical Congresses when a follower of Jung’s demonstrated the correspondence between schizophrenic phantasies and the cosmogonies of primitive times and races. Mythological material later received further elaboration (which, though open to criticism, was none the less very interesting) at the hands of Jung, in works attempting to correlate the neuroses with religious and mythological phantasies.

Another path led from the investigation of dreams to the analysis of works of imagination and ultimately to the analysis of their creators - writers and artists themselves. At an early stage it was discovered that dreams invented by writers will often yield to analysis in the same way as genuine ones. (Cf. ‘Gradiva’.) The conception of unconscious mental activity made it possible to form a preliminary idea of the nature of imaginative creative writing; and the realization, gained in the study of neurotics, of the part played by the instinctual impulses enabled us to perceive the sources of artistic production and confronted us with two problems: how the artist reacts to this instigation and what means he employs to disguise his reactions.¹ Most analysts with general interests have contributed something to the solution of these problems, which are the most fascinating among the applications of psycho-analysis. Naturally, opposition was not lacking in this direction either on the part of people who knew nothing of analysis; it took the same form as it did in the original field of psycho-analytic research - the same misconceptions and vehement rejections. It was only to be expected from the beginning that, whatever the regions into which psycho-analysis might penetrate, it would inevitably experience the same struggles with those already in possession of the field. These attempted invasions, however, have not yet stirred up the attention in some quarters which awaits them in the future. Among the strictly scientific applications of analysis to literature, Rank’s exhaustive work on the theme of incest easily takes the first place. Its subject is bound to arouse the greatest unpopularity. Up to the present, little work based on psycho-analysis has been done in the sciences of language and history. I myself ventured the first approach to the problems of the psychology of religion by drawing a parallel between religious ritual and the ceremonials of neurotics (1907b). Dr. Pfister, a pastor in Zurich, has traced back the origin of religious fanaticism to perverse eroticism in his book on the piety of Count von Zinzendorf, as well as in other contributions. In the latest works of the Zurich school, however, we find analysis permeated with religious ideas rather than the opposite outcome that had been in view.

¹ Cf. Rank’s Die Künstler [The Artist], analyses of imaginative writers by Sadger, Reik, and others, my own small work on a childhood memory of Leonardo da Vinci’s, and Abraham’s analysis of Segantini.3

In the four essays with the title Totem and Taboo I have made an attempt to deal with the problems of social anthropology in the light of analysis; this line of investigation leads direct to the origins of the most important institutions of our civilization, of the structure of the state, of morality and religion, and, moreover, of the prohibition against incest and of conscience. It is no doubt too early to decide how far the conclusions thus reached will be able to withstand criticism.

The first example of an application of the analytic mode of thought to the problems of aesthetics was contained in my book on jokes. Everything beyond this is still awaiting workers, who may expect a particularly rich harvest in this field. We are entirely without the co-operation of specialists in all these branches of knowledge, and in order to attract them Hanns Sachs, in 1912, founded the periodical Imago which is edited by him and Rank. A beginning has been made by Hitschmann and von Winterstein in throwing psycho-analytic light on philosophical systems and personalities, and here there is much need both of extended and of deeper investigation.

The revolutionary discoveries of psycho-analysis in regard to the mental life of children - the part played in it by sexual impulses (von Hug-Hellmuth), and the fate of those components of sexuality which become unserviceable in the function of reproduction - were bound early to direct attention to education and to stimulate an attempt to bring analytic points of view into the foreground in that field of work. Recognition is due to Dr. Pfister for having, with sincere enthusiasm, initiated the application of psycho-analysis in this direction and brought it to the notice of ministers of religion and those concerned with education. (Cf. The Psycho-Analytic Method, 1913.) He has succeeded in gaining the sympathy and participation of a number of Swiss teachers in this. Other members of his profession are said to share his views but to have preferred nevertheless to remain cautiously in the background. In their retreat from psycho-analysis, a section of Vienna analysts seem to have arrived at a kind of combination of medicine and education.¹

¹ Adler and Furtmüller, Heilen und Bilden [Healing and Educating], 1914.4 With this incomplete outline I have attempted to give some idea of the still incalculable wealth of connections which have come to light between medical psycho-analysis and other fields of science. There is material here for a generation of investigators to work at, and I do not doubt that the work will be carried out as soon as the resistances against psycho-analysis are overcome on its original ground.¹

To write the story of these resistances would, I think, be both fruitless and inopportune at the present time. The story is not very creditable to the scientific men of our day. But I must add at once that it has never occurred to me to pour contempt upon the opponents of psycho-analysis merely because they were opponents - apart from the few unworthy individuals, the adventurers and profiteers, who are always to be found on both sides in time of war. I knew very well how to account for the behaviour of these opponents and, moreover, I had learnt that psycho-analysis brings out the worst in everyone. But I made up my mind not to answer my opponents and, so far as my influence went, to restrain others from polemics. Under the peculiar conditions of the controversy over psycho-analysis it seemed to me very doubtful whether either public or written discussion would avail anything; it was certain which way the majority at congresses and meetings would go, and my faith in the reasonableness and good behaviour of the gentlemen who opposed me was not at any time great. Experience shows that only very few people are capable of remaining polite, to say nothing of objective, in a scientific dispute, and the impression made on me by scientific squabbles has always been odious. Perhaps this attitude on my part has been misunderstood; perhaps I have been thought so good-natured or so easily intimidated that no further notice need be taken of me. This was a mistake; I can be as abusive and enraged as anyone; but I have not the art of expressing the underlying emotions in a form suitable for publication and I therefore prefer to abstain completely.

¹ See my two articles in Scienta (1913j).5

Perhaps in some respects it would have been better if I had given free rein to my own passions and to those of others round me. We have all heard of the interesting attempt to explain psycho-analysis as a product of the Vienna milieu. As recently as in 1913 Janet was not ashamed to use this argument, although he himself is no doubt proud of being a Parisian, and Paris can scarcely claim to be a city of stricter morals than Vienna. The suggestion is that psycho-analysis, and in particular its assertion that the neuroses are traceable to disturbances in sexual life, could only have originated in a town like Vienna - in an atmosphere of sensuality and immorality foreign to other cities - and that it is simply a reflection, a projection into theory, as it were, of these peculiar Viennese conditions. Now I am certainly no local patriot; but this theory about psycho-analysis always seems to me quite exceptionally senseless - so senseless, in fact, that I have sometimes been inclined to suppose that the reproach of being a citizen of Vienna is only a euphemistic substitute for another reproach which no one would care to put forward openly. If the premisses on which the argument rests were the opposite of what they are, then it might be worth giving it a hearing. If there were a town in which the inhabitants imposed exceptional restrictions on themselves as regards sexual satisfaction, and if at the same time they exhibited a marked tendency to severe neurotic disorders, that town might certainly give rise in an observer’s mind to the idea that the two circumstances had some connection with each other, and might suggest that one was contingent on the other. But neither of these assumptions is true of Vienna. The Viennese are no more abstinent and no more neurotic than the inhabitants of any other capital city. There is rather less embarrassment - less prudery - in regard to sexual relationships than in the cities of the West and North which are so proud of their chastity. These peculiar characteristics of Vienna would be more likely to mislead the observer on the causation of neurosis than to enlighten him on it.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23