Freud - Complete Works (486 page)

  
² [
Footnote added
1924:] In 1920 Ernest Jones undertook
the founding of
The International Journal of
Psycho-Analysis
, intended for readers in England and
America.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2912

   It is no easy or enviable task to
write the history of these two secessions, partly because I am
without any strong personal motive for doing so - I had not
expected gratitude nor am I revengeful to any effective degree -
and partly because I know that by doing so I shall lay myself open
to the invectives of my not too scrupulous opponents and offer the
enemies of analysis the spectacle they so heartily desire - of
‘the psycho-analysts tearing one another limb from
limb’. After exercising so much self-restraint in not coming
to blows with opponents outside of analysis, I now see myself
compelled to take up arms against its former followers or people
who still like to call themselves its followers. I have no choice
in the matter, however; only indolence or cowardice could lead one
to keep silence, and silence would cause more harm than a frank
revelation of the harms that already exist. Anyone who has followed
the growth of other scientific movements will know that the same
upheavals and dissensions commonly occur in them as well. It may be
that elsewhere they are more carefully concealed; but
psycho-analysis, which repudiates so many conventional ideals, is
more honest in these matters too.

   Another very severe drawback is
that I cannot entirely avoid throwing some analytic light on these
two opposition movements. Analysis is not suited, however, for
polemical use; it presupposes the consent of the person who is
being analysed and a situation in which there is a superior and a
subordinate. Anyone, therefore, who undertakes an analysis for
polemical purposes must expect the person analysed to use analysis
against him in turn, so that the discussion will reach a state
which entirely excludes the possibility of convincing any impartial
third person. I shall therefore restrict to a minimum my use of
analytic knowledge, and, with it, of indiscretion and
aggressiveness towards my opponents; and I may also point out that
I am not basing any scientific criticism on these grounds. I am not
concerned with the truth that may be contained in the theories
which I am rejecting, nor shall I attempt to refute them. I shall
leave that task to other qualified workers in the field of
psycho-analysis, and it has, indeed, already been partly
accomplished. I wish merely to show that these theories controvert
the fundamental principles of analysis (and on what points they
controvert them) and that for this reason they should not be known
by the name of analysis. So I shall avail myself of analysis only
in order to explain how these divergences from it could arise among
analysts. When I come to the points at which the divergences
occurred, I shall have, it is true, to defend the just rights of
psycho-analysis with some remarks of a purely critical nature.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2913

   The first task confronting
psycho-analysis was to explain the neuroses; it used the two facts
of resistance and transference as starting-points, and, taking into
consideration the third fact of amnesia, accounted for them with
its theories of repression, of the sexual motive forces in neurosis
and of the unconscious. Psycho-analysis has never claimed to
provide a complete theory of human mentality in general, but only
expected that what it offered should be applied to supplement and
correct the knowledge acquired by other means. Adler’s
theory, however, goes far beyond this point; it seeks at one stroke
to explain the behaviour and character of human beings as well as
their neurotic and psychotic illnesses. It is actually more suited
to any other field than that of neurosis, although for reasons
connected with the history of its development it still places this
in the foreground. For many years I had opportunities of studying
Dr. Adler and have never refused to recognize his unusual ability,
combined with a particularly speculative disposition. As an
instance of the ‘persecution’ to which he asserts he
has been subjected by me, I can point to the fact that after the
Association was founded I made over to him the leadership of the
Vienna group. It was not until urgent demands were put forward by
all the members of the society that I let myself be persuaded to
take the chair again at its scientific meetings. When I perceived
how little gift Adler had precisely for judging unconscious
material, my view changed to an expectation that he would succeed
in discovering the connections of psycho-analysis with psychology
and with the biological foundations of instinctual processes - an
expectation which was in some sense justified by the valuable work
he had done on ‘organ-inferiority’. And he did in fact
effect something of the kind; but his work conveys an impression
‘as if’ - to speak in his own ‘jargon’ - it
was intended to prove that psycho-analysis was wrong in everything
and that it had only attributed so much importance to sexual motive
forces because of its credulity in accepting the assertions of
neurotics. I may even speak publicly of the personal motive for his
work, since he himself announced it in the presence of a small
circle of members of the Vienna group: - ‘ Do you think it
gives me such great pleasure to stand in your shadow my whole life
long?’ To be sure, I see nothing reprehensible in a younger
man freely admitting his ambition, which one would in any case
guess was among the incentives for his work. But even though a man
is dominated by a motive of this kind he should know how to avoid
being what the English, with their fine social tact, call
‘unfair’ - which in German can only be expressed by a
much cruder word. How little Adler has succeeded in this is shown
by the profusion of petty outbursts of malice which disfigure his
writings and by the indications they contain of an uncontrolled
craving for priority. At the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society we
once actually heard him claim priority for the conception of the
‘unity of the neuroses’ and for the ‘dynamic
view’ of them. This came as a great surprise to me, for I had
always believed that these two principles were stated by me before
I ever made Adler’s acquaintance.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2914

   This striving of Adler’s
for a place in the sun has, however, had one result which is bound
to be beneficial to psycho-analysis. When, after irreconcilable
scientific disagreements had come to light, I was obliged to bring
about Adler’s resignation from the editorship of the
Zentralblatt
, he left the Vienna society as well, and
founded a new one, which at first adopted the tasteful name of
‘The Society for Free Psycho-Analysis’
[‘
Verein für freie Psychoanalyse
’]. But
outsiders who are unconnected with analysis are evidently as
unskilful in appreciating the differences between the views of two
psycho-analysts as we Europeans are in detecting the differences
between two Chinese faces. ‘Free’ psycho-analysis
remained in the shadow of ‘official’,
‘orthodox’ psycho-analysis and was treated merely as an
appendage to the latter. Then Adler took a step for which we are
thankful; he severed all connection with psycho-analysis, and gave
his theory the name of ‘Individual Psychology’. There
is room enough on God’s earth, and anyone who can has a
perfect right to potter about on it without being prevented; but it
is not a desirable thing for people who have ceased to understand
one another and have grown incompatible with one another to remain
under the same roof. Adler’s ‘Individual
Psychology’ is now one of the many schools of psychology
which are adverse to psycho-analysis and its further development is
no concern of ours.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2915

   The Adlerian theory was from the
very beginning a ‘system’ - which psycho-analysis was
careful to avoid becoming. It is also a remarkably good example of
‘secondary revision’, such as occurs, for instance, in
the process to which dream-material is submitted by the action of
waking thought. In Adler’s case the place of dream-material
is taken by the new material obtained through psycho-analytic
studies; this is then viewed purely from the standpoint of the ego,
reduced to the categories with which the ego is familiar,
translated, twisted and - exactly as happens in dream-formation -
is misunderstood. Moreover, the Adlerian theory is characterized
less by what it asserts than by what it denies, so that it consists
of three sorts of elements of quite dissimilar value: useful
contributions to the psychology of the ego, superfluous but
admissible translations of the analytic facts into the new
‘jargon’, and distortions and perversions of these
facts when they do not comply with the requirements of the ego.

   The elements of the first sort
have never been ignored by psycho-analysis, although they did not
deserve any special attention from it; it was more concerned to
show that every ego-trend contains libidinal components. The
Adlerian theory emphasises the counterpart to this, the egoistic
constituent in libidinal instinctual impulses. This would have been
an appreciable gain if Adler had not on every occasion used this
observation in order to deny the libidinal impulses in favour of
their egoistic instinctual components. His theory does what every
patient does and what our conscious thought in general does -
namely, makes use of a
rationalization
, as Jones has called
it, in order to conceal the unconscious motive. Adler is so
consistent in this that he positively considers that the strongest
motive force in the sexual act is the man’s intention of
showing himself master of the woman - of being ‘on
top’. I do not know if he has expressed these monstrous
notions in his writings.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2916

   Psycho-analysis recognized early
that every neurotic symptom owes its possibility of existence to a
compromise. Every symptom must therefore in some way comply with
the demands of the ego which manipulates the repression; it must
offer some advantage, it must admit of some useful application, or
it would meet with the same fate as the original instinctual
impulse itself which has been fended off. The term ‘gain from
illness’ has taken this into account; one is even justified
in differentiating the ‘primary’ gain to the ego, which
must be operative at the time of the generation of the symptom,
from a ‘secondary’ part, which supervenes in attachment
to other purposes of the ego, if the symptom is to persist. It has
also long been known that the withdrawal of this gain from illness,
or its disappearance in consequence of some change in real external
circumstances, constitutes one of the mechanisms of a cure of the
symptom. In the Adlerian doctrine the main emphasis falls on these
easily verifiable and clearly intelligible connections, while the
fact is altogether overlooked that on countless occasions the ego
is merely making a virtue of necessity in submitting, because of
its usefulness, to the very disagreeable symptom which is forced
upon it - for instance, in accepting anxiety as a means to
security. The ego is here playing the ludicrous part of the clown
in a circus who by his gestures tries to convince the audience that
every change in the circus ring is being carried out under his
orders. But only the youngest of the spectators are deceived by
him.

   Psycho-analysis is obliged to
give its backing to the second constituent of Adler’s theory
as it would to something of its own. And in fact it is nothing else
than psycho-analytic knowledge, which that author extracted from
sources open to everyone during ten years of work in common and
which he has now labelled as his own by a change in nomenclature. I
myself consider ‘safeguarding [
Sicherung
]’, for
instance, a better term than ‘protective measure
[
Schutzmassregel
]’ which is the one I employ; but I
cannot discover any difference in their meaning. Again, a host of
familiar features come to light in Adler’s propositions when
one restores the earlier ‘phantasied’ and
‘phantasy’ in place of ‘feigned
[
fingiert
]’, ‘fictive’ and
‘fiction’. The identity of these terms would be
insisted upon by psycho-analysis even if their author had not taken
part in our common work over a period of many years.

On The History Of The Psycho-Analytic Movement

2917

   The third part of the Adlerian
theory, the twisted interpretations and distortions of the
disagreeable facts of analysis, are what definitely separate
‘Individual Psychology’, as it is now to be called,
from psycho-analysis. As we know, the principle of Adler’s
system is that the individual’s aim of self-assertion, his
‘will to power’, is what, in the form of a
‘masculine protest’, plays a dominating part in the
conduct of life, in character-formation and in neurosis. This
‘masculine protest’, the Adlerian motive force, is
nothing else, however, but repression detached from its
psychological mechanism and, moreover, sexualized in addition -
which ill accords with the vaunted ejection of sexuality from its
place in mental life. The ‘masculine protest’
undoubtedly exists, but if it is made into the motive force of
mental life the observed facts are being treated like a
spring-board that is left behind after it has been used to jump off
from. Let us consider one of the fundamental situations in which
desire is felt in infancy: that of a child observing the sexual act
between adults. Analysis shows, in the case of people with whose
life-story the physician will later be concerned, that at such
moments two impulses take possession of the immature spectator. In
boys, one is the impulse to put himself in the place of the active
man, and the other, the opposing current, is the impulse to
identify himself with the passive woman. Between them these two
impulses exhaust the pleasurable possibilities of the situation.
The first alone can come under the head of the masculine protest,
if that concept is to retain any meaning at all. The second,
however, the further course of which Adler disregards or which he
knows nothing about, is the one that will become the more important
in the subsequent neurosis. Adler has so merged himself in the
jealous narrowness of the ego that he takes account only of those
instinctual impulses which are agreeable to the ego and are
encouraged by it; the situation in neurosis, in which the impulses
are
opposed
to the ego, is precisely the one that lies
beyond his horizon.