Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/276

 suggestion? You will say, the occasion must decide. Agreed, as regards older people, or adults, who have to live in an unenlightened milieu. But if one is dealing with children, the seed of the future, is it not a sacred duty to enlighten them as to the shaky foundations of the so-called “moral” conceptions of the past, which have only a dogmatic basis; is it not a duty to educate them into full freedom by courageously unveiling Truth? I ask this not so much with regard to the analysing doctor as to the teacher. May not the creation of free schools be looked for as one task for the psychoanalyst?

VI.

From Dr. Jung. 11th February, 1913.

The idea of the relativity of “Truth” has been current for ages, but whether true or not, it does not stand in the way of anything save the beliefs of dogma and authority.

You ask me, or indeed tell me—what psychoanalysis is. Before considering your views, permit me first to try and mark out the territory and definition of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is primarily just a method—but a method complying with all the rigorous demands insisted upon to-day by the conception “method.” Let it be made plain at once that psychoanalysis is not an anamnesis, as those who know everything without learning are pleased to believe. It is essentially a method for the exploration of the unconscious associations, into which no question of the conscious self enters. Again, it is not a kind of examination of the nature of an intelligence test, though this mistake is common in certain circles. It is no cathartic method, abreacting real and phantastic “traumata,” with or without hypnosis. Psychoanalysis is a method which makes possible the analytic reduction of the psychic content to its simplest expression, and the discovery of the line of least resistance in the development of a harmonious personality. In neurosis, straightforward direction of life’s energies is lacking, because opposing tendencies traverse and