Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/113

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PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PSYCHIATRY 367

world-creating knowledge, for this is the happiness of the investig- ator. He must not surrender himself to the intoxication of creat- ion, but as soon as possible get ready for further advance. The edifice of hypotheses and the world illusion that arises from it are to serve as working theories and not for. aesthetic enjoyment. Self-criticism compels us to recognise that there is still much im- j'p" provement needed in this direction. The writer at least knows how


 * far he is removed from complying with his own claims.

The second is a more secondary one. It concerns the over- P^. coming of the counter-transference. The old (laboratory) psychiatry

solves this counter-transference according to the mechanism of the obsessional neurosis; it either keeps out of the way of the patient or approaches him only through the intervention of a host of apparatus of all kinds, which besides their alleged practical significance have also symbolic meanings that make them suited to give the repressed and suppressed tendencies a discharge by '■ something resembling a short circuit, which means useless waste of energy during the work. The analyst renounces this gratifica- tion; he endeavours to direct the forces, which finally drive him ^ijM' also to the work, as directly as possible to the cultural aim, that

r.Hhi' : of .education.

1^ -, Reading psycho-analytical literature also demands extra work.

kiM% In the usual psychiatry only the assimilation of the new material

p|:5;' ■ _ is of moment. In psycho-analysis we have in addition to consider

S'^-j^i the change necessary for the understanding of one's own psyche,

namely, the mobilisation of fixed quantities. This absolute need for the overcoming of resistances is in all probability the reason for the remark often heard that psycho-analytic works are of such !;> .. ' bad style, vague or unintelligible. In view of all these sacrifices the

question may be asked, how is it that anyone ever becomes an analyst? The answer must be that necessity, the most powerful factor of civilisation, has furnished the motive. ;.!/■> nriHm(h^Ti,v, ^,1-,!, The principal demand for. the psychiatric investigation of the '. mental patient was to establish, to register, and to measure by every means all the phenomena and spontaneous expressions of the mental patient, and further to initiate methodical investigations in which both stimulus and effect are strictly determined (Sommer).
 * , irThis technique becomes sterile through the fact that the in-

vestigator does not know his 'personal errors', and therefore can- not take into account the deviations arising from them. The

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