Page:Freud - The history of the psychoanalytic movement.djvu/61

 pushed back by Jung and replaced by the judgment of the essential facts from the study of the races. As the study of the early childhood of every man exposed one to the danger of striking against the original and undisguised meaning of these misinterpreted complexes, it was, therefore, thought best to make it a rule to tarry as little as possible at this past and to place the greatest emphasis on the return to the conflict. Here, moreover, the essential things are not at all the incidental and personal, but rather the general, that is to say, the "non-fulfilment of the life-task." Nevertheless, we know that the actual conflict of the neurotic becomes comprehensible and solvable only if it can be traced back into the patient's past history, only by following along the way that his libido took when his malady began.

How the New Zürich therapy has shaped itself under such tendencies I can convey by means of reports of a patient who was himself obliged to experience it.

"Not the slightest effort was made to consider the past or the transferences. Whenever I thought that the latter were touched, they were explained as a mere symbol of the libido. The moral instructions were very beautiful and I followed them faithfully, but I did not advance one step. This was more distressing to me than to the physician, but how could I help it?—Instead of freeing me analytically, each session made new and tremendous demands on me, on the fulfilment of which the overcoming of the neurosis was supposed to depend. Some of these demands were: inner concentration by means of introversion, religious meditation, living together with my wife in loving devotion, etc. It was almost beyond my power, since it really amounted to a radical transformation of the whole spiritual man. I left the analysis as a poor sinner with the strongest feelings of contrition and the very best resolutions, but at the same time with the deepest discouragement. All that this physician recommended any pastor would have advised, but where was I to get the strength?"

It is true that the patient had also heard that an analysis of the past and of the transference should precede the process. He, however, was told that he had enough of it. But as it had not helped