Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/118

 372 AUGUST STARCKE

society. The psycho-analytic psychiatry which has developed from the Freudian 'behaviour '-psychology of the human being has further aims. It should not be forgotten that it has a double task. When the analyst teaches the individual to limit his libidinous ex- pressions to vi^hat is allowed by society, and to lead the infantile fixed libido again to civilised aims, and educates him to endure mental privation, he has then a second more comprehensive duty towards society, which, although dictated by the same healing endeavour, leads in an opposite direction. He must reconcile society with the libido, with death, in short with the unconscious.

This then will be the last and practically important consequence of the difference between the psychiatrist and analyst. The old- style psychiatrist is a servant of the censorship, an instrument of society, he treats the 'out-casts'. The analyst, who has here and there to some slight extent pushed aside the barrier of the cen- sorship in himself, should use society itself as an instrument for social progress, he must serve society without reference to the censorship.

The reality-principle protects against dangers of a direct kind which threaten from without, the pleasure-principle against the inner danger of overloading and against remoter biological dangers. To the neurotic the disadvantages of the pleasure-principle are made clear, to society the disadvantages of a too exclusive homage to the reality-principle must be brought forward. The normal being, of whom we know least of all, must be discovered and if necessary cured.

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN NEUROSES AND PSYCHOSES*

^ I THE UNCONSCIOUS CRITERION

In Grimm's fairy tale of the white snake the servant tastes a small portion from the king's secret dish, which contains a white snake, and then all of a sudden he can understand the language of birds.

' Including material presented in a paper read before the Sixth Inter- national Psycho-Analytical Congress, The Hague, September, 1920.