Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/275

 employ and strengthen the favourable automatisms. He must learn to make his self-knowledge real, and of practical use, to control his soul’s workings so that a balance may be established between the spheres of emotion and reason. And what share in all this has the physician’s suggestion? I can scarcely believe that suggestion can be altogether avoided till the patient feels himself really free. Such freedom, it goes without saying, is the main thing to strive for, and it must be active. The sick man who simply obeys a suggestion, obeys it only just so long as the “transference to the doctor” remains potent.

But if he wishes to be able to adjust himself to all circumstances he must have fortified himself “from within.” He should no longer need the crutches of faith, but be capable of encountering all theoretical and practical problems squarely, and of solving them by himself. That is surely your view? Or have I not understood correctly?

I next ask, must not every single case be treated differently, of course within the limits of the psychoanalytic method. For if every case is a case by itself, it must indeed demand individual treatment.

“II n’y a pas de maladies, il n’y a que des malades,” said a French doctor whose name escapes me. But on broad lines, what course, from a technical point of view, does analysis take, and what deviations occur most frequently? That I would gladly learn from you. I take for granted that all “augurs’ tricks,” darkened rooms, masquerading, chloroform, are out of the question.

Psychoanalysis—purged so far as is humanly possible from suggestive influence—appears to have an essential difference from Dubois’ psychotherapy. With Dubois, from the beginning conversation about the past is forbidden, and “the moral reasons for recovery” placed in the forefront; whilst psychoanalysis uses the subconscious material from the patient’s past as well as present, for present self-understanding. Another difference lies in the conception of morality: morals are above all “relative.” But what essential forms shall they assume at those moments when one can hardly avoid