Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/219

Rh motive, but the determination of this ignorance by inner resistances which first called forth this ignorance and still supports it. The task of the therapy lies in the combating of these resistances. To impart that which the patient does not know because he has repressed it is only one of the necessary preparations for the therapy. If the knowledge of the unconscious were as important to the patient as the inexperienced psychoanalyst believes the cure would be effected if the patient attended lectures or read books on the subject. But these measures have just as much influence on the symptoms of nervous complaints as the distribution of menus has on hunger during a famine. The comparison is useful even beyond its original application, as the imparting of the unconscious to the patient regularly has the result of sharpening his conflict and of exaggerating his complaints.

But as the psychoanalysis cannot dispense with such information it dictates that it should be imparted only after the two following conditions have been fulfilled. First, after the patient has through preparation, himself come into the surrounding of his repression; and secondly, after he has become so attached to the physician (transference) that his feeling toward the latter would make the newer flight impossible.

Only through the fulfillment of these conditions does it become possible to recognize and master the resistances which have led to repression and ignorance. Hence a psychoanalytical procedure assumes from the beginning a longer contact with the patient; and attempts to surprise the patient by brusquely imparting to him his secrets guessed by the physician during his first consultation hour are technical errors which usually avenge themselves by the doctor's incurring the cordial enmity of the patient which thus cuts off every future influence.

We shall leave out of consideration the fact that one sometimes advises wrongly and that one is never in a position to guess everything. By the aid of these unequivocal technical rules psychoanalysis replaces the demand of the vague "medical tact" in which one looks for a special endowment.

It is therefore not enough that the physician should know some of the results of psychoanalysis, but he must also be well versed in its technique if he wishes to guide his medical actions by psychoanalytic viewpoints. This technique can not yet be learned