Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/112

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3S6 AUGUST STARCKE

The second purpose is, on the other hand, subordinated only to the pleasure-principle. It concerns the upholding by magic thoughts, words and gestures of ethical, aesthetic and logical illusions con- cerning the ego and the external world. Here science encounters the competition of art and religion. The high gratification which science is also able to afford is only born when it, like art and religion, uses the everyday case for the representation of the sublime. It is just at this moment that it misses its other material- social purpose. The investigator, however, then receives his reward. Society is not uniformly agreed as to the second purpose. So far as society is able to experience in itself the happiness of the investigator, this aim of science is also to be called social; other- wise society is soon ready to disqualify him under any available excuse.

The orientation ot psycho-analysis to these two purposes is different from that of the rest of psychiatry. The essential diifer- ence is a displacement in the direction of the reality-principle. ^ I have already enumerated the external symptoms of this. The two following characteristics which result from removal of the repression in the technique of research have a more intimate con- nection with this difference. Firstly, the tendency to return from the type to the isolated fact, in contrast to clinical psychiatry which exhausts itself in creating types. Secondly, the capacity of enduring unanswered questions and unsolved problems, in contrast to the compulsion in the non-analytical psychiatry to solve and to finish with problems, even if the solution be only illusory (e. g. the histology of the psychoses). In the endeavour to surrender this illusion of power we again recognise the same capacity to endure pain [Unlust) and delay gratification which we strive for in the patient by means of the treatment. It is true that the attain- ment of the original purpose is also delayed in the investigation of the brain, but a substitute is soon found and mastery obtained over this substitute, whereby the material-social purpose falls into the background, while the happiness of the investigator becomes correspondingly more pure.

The sacrifice that the investigator makes to society by psycho- analysis is twofold. The first has already been discussed. It con- cerns the limitation of the high gratification of the pure desire for

' See Binswanger's article in th& Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psycho- analyse, Bd. VII, S. 137.