Freud - Complete Works (814 page)

  
¹
‘. . . Every male
patient must attain a feeling of equality in relation to the
physician as a sign that he has overcome his fear of castration;
every female patient, if her neurosis is to be regarded as fully
disposed of, must have got rid of her masculinity complex and must
emotionally accept without a trace of resentment the implications
of her female role.’ (Ferenczi, 1928, 8.)

Analysis Terminable And Interminable

5046

   But we also learn from this that
it is not important in what form the resistance appears, whether as
a transference or not. The decisive thing remains that the
resistance prevents any change from taking place - that everything
stays as it was. We often have the impression that with the wish
for a penis and the masculine protest we have penetrated through
all the psychological strata and have reached bedrock, and that
thus our activities are at an end. This is probably true, since,
for the psychical field, the biological field does in fact play the
part of the underlying bedrock. The repudiation of femininity can
be nothing else than a biological fact, a part of the great riddle
of sex.¹ It would be hard to say whether and when we have
succeeded in mastering this factor in an analytic treatment. We can
only console ourselves with the certainty that we have given the
person analysed every possible encouragement to re-examine and
alter his attitude to it.

  
¹
We must not be misled by the term
‘masculine protest’ into supposing that what the man is
repudiating is his passive attitude - what might be called the
social aspect of femininity. Such a view is contradicted by an
observation that is easily verifiable - namely that such men often
display a masochistic attitude - a state that amounts to bondage -
towards women. What they reject is not passivity in general, but
passivity towards a male. In other words, the ‘masculine
protest’ is in fact nothing else than castration
anxiety.

5047

CONSTRUCTIONS IN ANALYSIS

(1937)

5048

Intentionally left blank

 
5049

CONSTRUCTIONS IN ANALYSIS

I

It has always seemed to me to be greatly to
the credit of a certain well-known man of science that he treated
psycho-analysis fairly at a time when most other people felt
themselves under no such obligation. On one occasion, nevertheless,
he gave expression to an opinion upon analytic technique which was
at once derogatory and unjust. He said that in giving
interpretations to a patient we treat him upon the famous principle
of ‘Heads I win, tails you lose’.¹ That is to say,
if the patient agrees with us, then the interpretation is right;
but if he contradicts us, that is only a sign of his resistance,
which again shows that we are right. In this way we are always in
the right against the poor helpless wretch whom we are analysing,
no matter how he may respond to what we put forward. Now, since it
is in fact true that a ‘No’ from one of our patients is
not as a rule enough to make us abandon an interpretation as
incorrect, a revelation such as this of the nature of our technique
has been most welcome to the opponents of analysis. It is therefore
worth while to give a detailed account of how we are accustomed to
arrive at an assessment of the ‘Yes’ or
‘No’ of our patients during analytic treatment - of
their expression of agreement or of denial. The practising analyst
will naturally learn nothing in the course of this apologia that he
does not know already.

  
¹
[In English in the original.]

Constructions In Analysis

5050

   It is familiar ground that the
work of analysis aims at inducing the patient to give up the
repressions (using the word in the widest sense) belonging to his
early development and to replace them by reactions of a sort that
would correspond to a psychically mature condition. With this
purpose in view he must be brought to recollect certain experiences
and the affective impulses called up by them which he has for the
time being forgotten. We know that his present symptoms and
inhibitions are the consequences of repressions of this kind: thus
that they are a substitute for these things that he has forgotten.
What sort of material does he put at our disposal which we can make
use of to put him on the way to recovering the lost memories? All
kinds of things. He gives us fragments of these memories in his
dreams, invaluable in themselves but seriously distorted as a rule
by all the factors concerned in the formation of dreams. Again, he
produces ideas, if he gives himself up to ‘free
association’, in which we can discover allusions to the
repressed experiences and derivatives of the suppressed affective
impulses as well as of the reactions against them. And, finally,
there are hints of repetitions of the affects belonging to the
repressed material to be found in actions performed by the patient,
some fairly important, some trivial, both inside and outside the
analytic situation. Our experience has shown that the relation of
transference, which becomes established towards the analyst, is
particularly calculated to favour the return of these emotional
connections. It is out of such raw material - if we may so describe
it - that we have to put together what we are in search of.

   What we are in search of is a
picture of the patient’s forgotten years that shall be alike
trustworthy and in all essential respects complete. But at this
point we are reminded that the work of analysis consists of two
quite different portions, that it is carried on in two separate
localities, that it involves two people, to each of whom a distinct
task is assigned. It may for a moment seem strange that such a
fundamental fact should not have been pointed out long ago; but it
will immediately be perceived that there was nothing being kept
back in this, that it is a fact which is universally known and, as
it were, self-evident and is merely being brought into relief here
and separately examined for a particular purpose. We all know that
the person who is being analysed has to be induced to remember
something that has been experienced by him and repressed; and the
dynamic determinants of this process are so interesting that the
other portion of the work, the task performed by the analyst, has
been pushed into the background. The analyst has neither
experienced nor repressed any of the material under consideration;
his task cannot be to remember anything. What then
is
his
task? His task is to make out what has been forgotten from the
traces which it has left behind or, more correctly, to
construct
it. The time and manner in which he conveys his
constructions to the person who is being analysed, as well as the
explanations with which he accompanies them, constitute the link
between the two portions of the work of analysis, between his own
part and that of the patient.

Constructions In Analysis

5051

   His work of construction, or, if
it is preferred, of reconstruction, resembles to a great extent an
archaeologist’s excavation of some dwelling-place that has
been destroyed and buried or of some ancient edifice. The two
processes are in fact identical, except that the analyst works
under better conditions and has more material at his command to
assist him, since what he is dealing with is not something
destroyed but something that is still alive - and perhaps for
another reason as well. But just as the archaeologist builds up the
walls of the building from the foundations that have remained
standing, determines the number and position of the columns from
depressions in the floor and reconstructs the mural decorations and
paintings from the remains found in the debris, so does the analyst
proceed when he draws his inferences from the fragments of
memories, from the associations and from the behaviour of the
subject of the analysis. Both of them have an undisputed right to
reconstruct by means of supplementing and combining the surviving
remains. Both of them, moreover, are subject to many of the same
difficulties and sources of error. One of the most ticklish
problems that confronts the archaeologist is notoriously the
determination of the relative age of his finds; and if an object
makes its appearance in some particular level, it often remains to
be decided whether it belongs to that level or whether it was
carried down to that level owing to some subsequent disturbance. It
is easy to imagine the corresponding doubts that arise in the case
of analytic constructions.

   The analyst, as we have said,
works under more favourable conditions than the archaeologist since
he has at his disposal material which can have no counterpart in
excavations, such as the repetitions of reactions dating from
infancy and all that is indicated by the transference in connection
with these repetitions. But in addition to this it must be borne in
mind that the excavator is dealing with destroyed objects of which
large and important portions have quite certainly been lost, by
mechanical violence, by fire and by plundering. No amount of effort
can result in their discovery and lead to their being united with
the surviving remains. The one and only course open is that of
reconstruction, which for this reason can often reach only a
certain degree of probability. But it is different with the
psychical object whose early history the analyst is seeking to
recover. Here we are regularly met by a situation which with the
archaeological object occurs only in such rare circumstances as
those of Pompeii or of the tomb of Tut’ankhamun. All of the
essentials are preserved; even things that seem completely
forgotten are present somehow and somewhere, and have merely been
buried and made inaccessible to the subject. Indeed, it may, as we
know, be doubted whether any psychical structure can really be the
victim of total destruction. It depends only upon analytic
technique whether we shall succeed in bringing what is concealed
completely to light. There are only two other facts that weigh
against the extraordinary advantage which is thus enjoyed by the
work of analysis: namely, that psychical objects are incomparably
more complicated than the excavator’s material ones and that
we have insufficient knowledge of what we may expect to find, since
their finer structure contains so much that is still mysterious.
But our comparison between the two forms of work can go no further
than this; for the main difference between them lies in the fact
that for the archaeologist the reconstruction is the aim and end of
his endeavours while for analysis the construction is only a
preliminary labour.

Constructions In Analysis

5052

II

   It is not, however, a preliminary
labour in the sense that the whole of it must be completed before
the next piece of work can be begun, as, for instance, is the case
with house-building, where all the walls must be erected and all
the windows inserted before the internal decoration of the rooms
can be taken in hand. Every analyst knows that things happen
differently in an analytic treatment and that there both kinds of
work are carried on side by side, the one kind being always a
little ahead and the other following upon it. The analyst finishes
a piece of construction and communicates it to the subject of the
analysis so that it may work upon him; he then constructs a further
piece out of the fresh material pouring in upon him, deals with it
in the same way and proceeds in this alternating fashion until the
end. If, in accounts of analytic technique, so little is said about
‘constructions’, that is because
‘interpretations’ and their effects are spoken of
instead. But I think that ‘construction’ is by far the
more appropriate description. ‘Interpretation’ applies
to something that one does to some single element of the material,
such as an association or a parapraxis. But it is a
‘construction’ when one lays before the subject of the
analysis a piece of his early history that he has forgotten, in
some such way as this: ‘Up to your
n
th year you
regarded yourself as the sole and unlimited possessor of your
mother; then came another baby and brought you grave
disillusionment. Your mother left you for some time, and even after
her reappearance she was never again devoted to you exclusively.
Your feelings towards your mother became ambivalent, your father
gained a new importance for you,’ . . . and so on.

Constructions In Analysis

5053

   In the present paper our
attention will be turned exclusively to this preliminary labour
performed by constructions. And here, at the very start, the
question arises of what guarantee we have while we are working on
these constructions that we are not making mistakes and risking the
success of the treatment by putting forward some construction that
is incorrect. It may seem that no general reply can in my event be
given to this question; but even before discussing it we may lend
our ear to some comforting information that is afforded by analytic
experience. For we learn from it that no damage is done if, for
once in a way, we make a mistake and offer the patient a wrong
construction as the probable historical truth. A waste of time is,
of course, involved, and anyone who does nothing but present the
patient with false combinations will neither create a very good
impression on him nor carry the treatment very far; but a single
mistake of the sort can do no harm. What in fact occurs in such an
event is rather that the patient remains as though he were
untouched by what has been said and reacts to it with neither a
‘Yes’ nor a ‘No’. This may possibly mean no
more than that his reaction is postponed; but if nothing further
develops we may conclude that we have made a mistake and we shall
admit as much to the patient at some suitable opportunity without
sacrificing any of our authority. Such an opportunity will arise
when some new material has come to light which allows us to make a
better construction and so to correct our error. In this way the
false construction drops out, as if it had never been made; and,
indeed, we often get an impression as though, to borrow the words
of Polonius, our bait of falsehood had taken a carp of truth. The
danger of our leading a patient astray by suggestion, by persuading
him to accept things which we ourselves believe but which he ought
not to, has certainly been enormously exaggerated. An analyst would
have had to behave very incorrectly before such a misfortune could
overtake him; above all, he would have to blame himself with not
allowing his patients to have their say. I can assert without
boasting that such an abuse of ‘suggestion’ has never
occurred in my practice.

Constructions In Analysis

5054

   It already follows from what has
been said that we are not at all inclined to neglect the
indications that can be inferred from the patient’s reaction
when we have offered him one of our constructions. The point must
be gone into in detail. It is true that we do not accept the
‘No’ of a person under analysis at its face value; but
neither do we allow his ‘Yes’ to pass. There is no
justification for accusing us of invariably twisting his remarks
into a confirmation. In reality things are not so simple and we do
not make it so easy for ourselves to come to a conclusion.

   A plain ‘Yes’ from a
patient is by no means unambiguous. It can indeed signify that he
recognizes the correctness of the construction that has been
presented to him; but it can also be meaningless, or can even
deserve to be described as ‘hypocritical’, since it may
be convenient for his resistance to make use of an assent in such
circumstances in order to prolong the concealment of a truth that
has not been discovered. The ‘Yes’ has no value unless
it is followed by indirect confirmations, unless the patient,
immediately after his ‘Yes’, produces new memories
which complete and extend the construction. Only in such an event
do we consider that the ‘Yes’ has dealt completely with
the subject under discussion.