The history of the psychoanalytic movement · Sigmund Freud
II
In my four essays on “Totem and Taboo”[12] I made the attempt to discuss the problems of race psychology by means of analysis. This should lead us directly to the origins of the most important institutions of our civilization, such as state regulations, morality, religion, as well as to the origins of the interdiction of incest and of conscience. To what extent the relations thus obtained will be proof to criticism cannot be determined today. My book on Wit[13] furnished the first examples of the application of analytic thinking to esthetic themes. Everything else is still waiting for workers, who can expect a rich harvest in this very field. We are lacking here in workers from these respective specialties and in order to attract such, Hanns Sachs founded in 1912, the journal Imago, edited by himself and Rank. Hitschmann and v. Winterstein made a beginning with the psychoanalytic elucidation of philosophical systems and personalities. The continuation and deeper treatment of the same is much to be desired. The revolutionary findings of psychoanalysis concerning the psychic life of the child, the part played therein by sexual impulses (v. Hug-Helmuth) and the fate of such participation of sexuality which becomes useless for the purpose of propagation, naturally drew attention to pedagogics, and instigated the effort to push the analytical viewpoint into the foreground of this sphere. Recognition is due to the Rev. Pfister for having begun this application of analysis with honest enthusiasm, and for having brought it to the notice of ministers and educators.[14] He succeeded in winning over a number of Swiss pedagogues as sympathizers in this work. It is said that some preferred to remain circumspectly in the background. A portion of the Vienna analysts seem to have landed in their retreat from psychoanalysis on a sort of medical pedagogy. (Adler and Furtmüller, “Heilen and Bilden,” 1913.)
I have attempted in these incomplete suggestions to indicate the, as yet, hardly visible wealth of associations which have sprung up between medical psychoanalysis and other fields of science. There is material for the work of a whole generation of investigators and I doubt not that this work will be done when once the resistance to psychoanalysis as such has been overcome.[15] To write the history of the resistances, I consider, at present, both fruitless and inopportune. It would not be very glorious for the scientific men of our day. But I will add at once that it has never occurred to me to rail against the opponents of psychoanalysis merely because they were opponents, not counting a few unworthy individuals, fortune hunters and plunderers such as in time of war are always found on both sides. For I knew how to account for the behavior of these opponents and had besides discovered that psychoanalysis brings to light the worst in every man. But I decided not to answer my opponents and, so far as I had influence, to keep others from polemics. The value of public or literary discussions seemed to me very doubtful under the particular conditions in which the fight over psychoanalysis took place. The value of majorities at congresses or society meetings was certainly doubtful, and my confidence in the honesty and distinction of my opponents was always slight. Observation shows that only very few persons are capable of remaining polite, not to speak of objective, in any scientific dispute, and the impression gained from a scientific quarrel was always a horror to me. Perhaps this attitude of mine has been misunderstood, perhaps I have been considered as good-natured or so intimidated that it was supposed no further consideration need be shown me.
This is a mistake. I can revile and rave as well as any other, but I am not able to render into literary form the expressions of the underlying affects and therefore I prefer to abstain entirely. Perhaps in many respects it might have been better had I permitted free vent to my own passions and to those about me. We have all heard the interesting attempt at an explanation of the origin of psychoanalysis from its Viennese milieu. Janet did not scorn to make use of it as late as 1913, although, no doubt, he is proud of being a Parisian. This _aperçu_ says that psychoanalysis, especially the assertion that the neuroses can be traced back to disturbances in the sexual life, could only have originated in a city like Vienna, in an atmosphere of sensuality and immorality not to be found in other cities, and that it thus represents only a reflection, the theoretical projection as it were, of these particular Viennese conditions. Well, I certainly am no local patriot, but this theory has always seemed to be especially nonsensical, so nonsensical that sometimes I was inclined to assume that the reproaching of the Vienna spirit was only a euphemistic substitution for another one which one did not care to bring up publicly. If the assumptions had been of the opposite kind, we might be inclined to listen. But even if we assume that there might be a city whose inhabitants have imposed upon themselves special sexual restrictions and at the same time show a peculiar tendency to severe neurotic maladies, then such a town might well furnish the soil on which some observer might get the idea of connecting these two facts and of deducting the one from the other. But neither assumption fits Vienna. The Viennese are neither more abstemious nor yet more nervous than dwellers in any other metropolis. Sex matters are a little freer, prudishness is less than in the cities of western and northern Europe that are so proud of their chastity. Our supposed observer would, more likely, be led astray by the particular conditions prevailing in Vienna than be enlightened as to the cause of the neuroses.
But Vienna has done everything possible to deny her share in the origin of psychoanalysis. Nowhere else is the inimical indifference of the learned and cultured circles so clearly evident to the psychoanalyst. Perhaps I am somewhat to blame for this by my policy of avoiding widespread publicity. If I had caused psychoanalysis to occupy the medical societies of Vienna with noisy sessions, with an unloading of all passions, wherein all reproaches and invectives carried on the tongue or in the mind would have been expressed, then perhaps the ban against psychoanalysis might, by now, have been removed and its standing no longer might have been that of a stranger in its native city. As it is, the poet may be right when he makes Wallenstein say: “Yet this the Viennese will not forgive me, That I did them out of a spectacle.”
The task to which I am unequal, namely, that of reproaching the opponents “suaviter in modo” for their injustice and arbitrariness, was taken up by Bleuler in 1911 and carried out in most honorable fashion in his work, “Freud’s Psychoanalysis: a Defense and a Criticism.” It would be so entirely natural for me to praise this work, critical in two directions, that I hasten to tell what there is in it I object to. This work appears to me to be still very partisan, too lenient to the mistakes of our opponents, and altogether too severe to the shortcomings of our followers. This characterization of it may explain why the opinion of a psychiatrist of such high standing, of such indubitable ability and independence, has not had greater influence on his colleagues. The author of “Affectivity” (1906) must not be surprised if the influence of a work is not determined by the value of its argument but by the tone of its affect. Another part of this influence—the one on the followers of psychoanalysis—Bleuler himself destroyed later on by bringing into prominence in 1913, in his “Criticism of the Freudian School,” the obverse side of his attitude to psychoanalysis.
Therein he takes away so much from the structure of the psychoanalytic principles that our opponents may well be satisfied with the assistance of this defender. It was not new arguments or better observations that served Bleuler as a guidance for these verdicts, but only the reference to his own knowledge, the inadequacy of which the author no longer admits as in his earlier writings. Here an almost irreparable loss seemed to threaten psychoanalysis. However, in his last utterance (“Die Kritiken der Schizophrenie,” 1914) on the occasion of the attacks made upon him owing to his introduction of psychoanalysis into his book on “Schizophrenie,” Bleuler rises to what he himself terms a “haughty presumption:” “But now I will assume a haughty presumption, I consider that the many psychologies to date have contributed mighty little to the explanation of the connection between psychogenetic symptoms and diseases, but that the deeper psychology (tiefen psychologie) furnishes us a part of the psychology still to be created, which the physician needs in order to understand his patients and to heal them rationally; and I even believe that in my ‘Schizophrenie’ I have taken a very small step towards this.” The first two assertions are surely correct, the latter may be an error. Since by the “deeper psychology” psychoanalysis alone is to be understood, we may, for the present, remain satisfied with this admission.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.