Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/109

 of the instinct for health, as soon as we can trace the meaning of these symptoms; by taking part in the regressive movement of the patient. Those unfamiliar with the essentials of psychoanalysis will have some difficulty in understanding how a therapeutic effect can come to pass when the physician takes part in the pernicious phantasies of the patient. Not only critics, but the patients also, doubt the therapeutic value of such a method, which concentrates attention upon phantasies which the patient rejects as worthless and reprehensible. The patients will often tell you that their former physicians forbade them to occupy themselves with their phantasies, and told them that they must only consider that it is well with them, when they are free, if but momentarily, from their awful torments. So, it seems strange enough that it should be of any use to them, when the treatment brings them back to the very thing from which they have tried constantly to escape. The following answer may be made: all depends upon the position which the patient takes up towards his own phantasies. These phantasies have been hitherto, for the patient, an absolutely passive and involuntary manifestation. As we say, he was lost in his dreams. The patient's so-called brooding is an involuntary kind of dreaming too. What psychoanalysis demands from a patient is only apparently the same. Only a man who has a very superficial knowledge of psychoanalysis can confuse this passive dreaming with the position taken up in analysis. What psychoanalysis asks from the patient is just the contrary of what the patient has always done. The patient can be compared to a person who, unintentionally, has fallen into the water and sunk, whilst psychoanalysis wants him to dive in, as it was no mere chance which led him to fall in at just that spot. There lies a sunken treasure, and only a diver can raise it.

The patient, judging his phantasies from the standpoint of his reason, regards them as valueless and senseless; but, in reality, the phantasies have their great influence on the patient because they are of great importance. They are old, sunken treasures, which can only be recovered by a diver, that is, the patients, contrary to their wont, must now pay an active attention to their inner life. Where they formerly dreamed, they must now think, consciously and intentionally. This new way of thinking about himself has about as much resemblance to the