Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/224

210 material in order to find out whether you can confirm the following conection: The most important resistances to the treatment in male patients seem to emanate from the father complex, and are explained by the fear for the father, spite against, and dis-belief in the father.

Other new discoveries in the technique concern the person of the physician himself. Our attention has been called to the "counter-transference" which ensues in the unconscious feelings of the physician through the influence of the patient, and we advise that the physician should recognize and overcome this counter-transference in himself. Ever since a large number of persons practicing psychoanalysis have exchanged ideas concerning their experiences, we have noticed that every psychoanalyst can only go so far with his patients as his own complexes and inner resistances allow. We therefore demand that he should begin his activity with a self-analysis which he should steadily deepen as he gains experience from his patients. He who does not achieve such self-analysis should without further ado give up the idea that he has the ability to treat patients analytically.

We are also beginning to realize that the analytic technique has to be subjected to certain modifications which depend upon the form of the disease and upon the predominant impulse of the patient. We have started with the therapy of conversion-hysteria; but we must slightly modify our procedure in anxiety-hysteria (phobias). For these patients cannot produce the final material for the solution of the phobia as long as they feel themselves protected by keeping the phobic determination. Of course nothing is attained from the fact that from the beginning of the treatment they waive the protective measures and labor under the determination of the anxiety. One must therefore continue to bring them help by translating for them their unconscious until they can make up their minds to waive the protection of the phobia and expose themselves to a very moderate fear. Only after this has been accomplished does the material become accessible, the control of which leads to the solution of the phobia. Other modifications of the technique which are not yet ripe for judgment are required in the treatment of the compulsion neuroses. Many important as yet unexplained questions arise in this connection; namely, to what extent may some gratification be allowed the combated