Freud: Therapy & Technique

by Sigmund Freud

"It is not easy to play upon the instrument of the soul."Uncovering a neurotic's most intimate, fiercely guarded secrets is a vital, and immensely difficult, task of psychoanalysis. Freud, early in his career, used hypnosis to penetrate the minds of his patients; eventually he discovered the famous, more effective techniques of "dream interpretation" and "free association." In this volume he describes three methods and all the details of analytic treatment, from the position of the patient on the much-joked-about couch to the proper moral attitude of the doctor, who "must also have overcome in his own mind that mixture of lewdness and prudery with which, unfortunately, so many people habitually consider sexual problems." The terms which have come to have special "Freudian" meanings - such as complex, repression, resistance, transference, and unconscious - are carefully explained. And, as is Freud's custom, every essay is enriched with examples from his personal research, the dreams and activities of his patients, and events in his own life.

Genres: Psychology

286 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1963

About the author

Dr. Sigismund Freud, M.D. (University of Vienna)—later changed to Sigmund—was a neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human personality. He is regarded as one of the most influential—and controversial—minds of the 20th century.

In 1873, Freud began to study medicine at the University of Vienna. After graduating, he worked at the Vienna General Hospital. He collaborated with Josef Breuer in treating hysteria by the recall of painful experiences under hypnosis. In 1885, Freud went to Paris as a student of the neurologist Jean Charcot. On his return to Vienna the following year, Freud set up in private practice, specialising in nervous and brain disorders. The same year he married Martha Bernays, with whom he had six children.

Freud developed the theory that humans have an unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them. In 1897, he began an intensive analysis of himself. In 1900, his major work The Interpretation of Dreams was published in which Freud analysed dreams in terms of unconscious desires and experiences.

In 1902, Freud was appointed Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Vienna, a post he held until 1938. Although the medical establishment disagreed with many of his theories, a group of pupils and followers began to gather around Freud. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytic Association was founded with Carl Jung, a close associate of Freud's, as the president. Jung later broke with Freud and developed his own theories.

After World War One, Freud spent less time in clinical observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to history, art, literature and anthropology. In 1923, he published The Ego and the Id, which suggested a new structural model of the mind, divided into the 'id, the 'ego' and the 'superego'.

In 1933, the Nazis publicly burnt a number of Freud's books. In 1938, shortly after the Nazis annexed Austria, Freud left Vienna for London with his wife and daughter Anna.

Freud had been diagnosed with cancer of the jaw in 1923, and underwent more than 30 operations. He died of cancer on 23 September 1939.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sigmund Freud: Therapy and Technique

A COLLECTION OF FREUD’S ESSAYS ON PSYCHOTHERAPY AND HIS TECHNIQUES/METHODS

The Introduction to this 1963 collection of essays by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) explains, “Freud never wrote a systematic treatise on his therapeutic techniques. The papers collected here represent the best writing he did on the subject... remarks on therapy and technique are scattered throughout his writings, and it is quite impossible to claim that this selection is exhaustive...”

In an 1888 essay on ‘Hypnotism and Suggestion,’ Freud wrote, “This [essay]… discusses another question, which at the present time divides the supporters of hypnotism into two opposing camps… The principal subject of this dispute is ‘major hypnotism’ … described by Charcot in the case of hypnotized hysterics… It is easy to see the further implications of this view and what a convenient explanation it promises of the symptomatology of hysteria in general… I am convinced that this view will be most welcome to those who feel an inclination … to overlook the fact that hysterical phenomena are governed by laws… Nevertheless there is no difficulty in proving piece by piece the objectivity of the symptomatology of hysteria.” (Pg. 30-32)

In an 1893 essay on a successful case of hypnosis, he reports, “I shall now … consider what may have been the psychical mechanism of the disorder of my patient’s which was thus removed by suggestion… There are certain ideas which have an effect of expectancy attached to them. They are of two kinds: ideas of my doing this or that---what we call INTENTIONS---and ideas of this or that happening to me---EXPECTATIONS proper… In neuroses… great attention is paid to antithetic ideas against intentions… When this intensification of antithetic ideas relates to EXPECTATIONS, it gives rise to the disturbances … the antithetic idea establishes itself … as a ‘counter-will,’ while the patient is aware with astonishment of having a will which is resolute but powerless… I therefore consider that I am justified in describing my patient as a [‘hysteria of occasion’] to produce a complex of symptoms with a mechanism so supremely characteristic of hysteria.” (Pg. 47-49)

In a 1904 essay on Psychotherapy, he observes, “I had published, in 1895, in collaboration with Dr. Joseph Breuer, the ‘Studies in Hysteria’ in which … an attempt was made to introduce a novel theory for the neuroses. Fortunately… the efforts of our ‘Studies’ have been successful; the ideas expressed in them concerning the action of psychical trauma through retention of affect... are today generally known and understood… I cannot say the same of the therapautic method which was introduced to our colleagues at the same time as our theory; it is still struggling for recognition.” (Pg. 63-64)

Later, he acknowledges, “I have been able to … test my therapeutic method only on severe, nay, the severest cases… I have scarcely been able to bring together sufficient material to enable me to say how my method would work with those cases of lighter, episodically appearing invalidism which we see recover under all kinds of influences and even spontaneously. Psychoanalytic therapy was created through and for the treatment of patients permanently unfitted for life, and its great triumph has been that by its measures a satisfactorily large number of these have been rendered permanently fit for existence. In the face of such an achievement all the effort [expended] seems trivial.” (Pg. 69-70)

In a 1910 essay, he states, “I will say a few words about one of the symbols that has lately been recognized… a psychologist whose views are not too distant from ours had remarked … that we undoubtedly overestimate the hidden sexual significance of dreams; his most frequent dream was of going upstairs, and there could certainly be nothing sexual about that… we began to study the incidence of stairs, steps and ladders in dreams, and soon could establish the fact that stairs and such things are certainly a symbol of coitus. The underlying element which the two things have in common is … one climbs… in rhythmic movements, accompanied by increasing breathlessness, and in a few rapid leaps can be down below again.” (Pg. 79)

In a 1910 essay on ‘Wild’ psychoanalysis, he acknowledges, “It is true that psychoanalysis puts forward lack of sexual satisfaction as the cause of nervous disorders. But does it not also go much further than this?… nervous symptoms arise from a conflict of two forces---on the one hand the libido… and on the other, a too severe aversion from sexuality or a repression… No one who remembers this second factor … can ever believe that sexual satisfaction by itself constitutes a remedy of general reliability for the sufferings of neurotics.” (Pg. 92)

In a 1912 essay on transference, he asserts, “Transference in analysis thus always seems at first to be only the strongest weapon of the resistance, and we are entitled to draw the inference that the intensity and duration of the transference are an effect and expression of the resistance. The mechanism of the transference is indeed explained by the state of readiness in which the libido that has remained accumulated about the infantile imagos exists, but the part played by it in the process of cure is only intelligible in light of its relation to the resistance… the transference to the physician is only suited for resistance insofar as it consists in NEGATIVE feeling or in the repressed EROTIC elements of positive feeling.” (Pg. 111-112)

In a 1912 essay on the Psychoanalytic method, he asks, “To what extent should the intellectual cooperation of the patient be called for in the treatment?… One must especially insist upon the following of the rule most rigidly with those patients whose habitual maneuver it is to shirk analysis by sheering off into the intellectual, and who speculate much and often with great wisdom over their condition, thereby sparing themselves from taking steps to overcome it.” (Pg. 125)

In a 1913 essay on psychoanalysis, he admits, “psychoanalysis is always a matter of long periods of time, of six months or a year, or more---a longer time than the patient expects. It is therefore a duty to explain this fact to the patient before he fully resolves upon the treatment. I find it to be … more honorable… to draw his attention … from the very beginning, to the difficulties and sacrifices involved by analytic treatment… I do not bind patients to continue the treatment for a specific length of time; I permit each to break off whenever he likes; though I do not conceal from him that … a treatment broken off after only a small amount of work… may easily … leave him in an unsatisfactory condition.” (Pg. 141-142) He continues, “When is the time to unfold to him the hidden meaning of his thoughts and associations[?]… The answer … can only be: Not until a dependable transference, a well-developed RAPPORT, is established in the patient.” (Pg. 152)

In a 1915 essay on psychoanalytical technique, he recounts, “Among the situations to which the transference gives rise… [one which] occurs so often and is so important in reality… is that in which a woman or girl patient shows by unmistakable allusions or openly avows that she has fallen in love, like any other mortal woman, with the physician who is analyzing her.” (Pg. 167)

He continues, “The analytic psychotherapist thus has a threefold battle to wage---in his own mind against the forces which would draw him down below the level of analysis; outside analysis against the opponents who dispute the importance he attaches to the sexual instinctive forces and hinder him… and in the analysis against his patients… [who] disclose the over-estimation of sexual life which has them in thrall, and who try to make him captive in the net of their socially ungovernable passions.” (Pg. 179)

In a 1923 essay on dream interpretation, he explains, “In interpreting a dream during an analysis a choice lies open to one between several technical procedures. One can (a) proceed chronologically and get the dreamer to bring up his associations to the elements of the dream in the order in which those elements occurred … Or one can (b) start the work of interpretation from some one particular element of the dream… Or one can (c) begin by entirely disregarding the manifest content and instead ask the dreamer what events of the previous day are associated in his mind with the dream he has just described. Finally one can (d) if the dreamer is already familiar with the technique of interpretation … leave it to him to describe with which associations to the dream he shall begin.” (Pg. 205-206)

In a 1925 essay on dream interpretation, he points out, “our interest in … these MANIFESTLY immoral dreams is greatly reduced when we find from analysis that the majority of dreams… are revealed… as the fulfillments of immoral---egostic, sadistic, perverse or incestuous---wishful impulses. As in the world of waking life, these masked criminals are far commoner than those with their visors raised. The straightforward dream of sexual relations with one’s mother---which Jocasta alludes to in the ‘Oedipus Rex,’ is a rarity in comparison with all the multiplicity of dreams which psychoanalysis must interpret in the same sense.” (Pg. 223-224)

In his famous essay, ‘Analysis: Terminable and Interminable,’ he reports, “I have employed the method of fixing a date for the termination of analysis … There can be only one verdict about the value of this blackmailing device. The measure is effective, provided that one hits the right time at which to employ it. But it cannot be held to guarantee perfect accomplishment of the task of psychoanalysis… while the force of the threat will have the effect of bringing part of the material to light, another part will be held back…” (Pg. 236)

Later, he adds, “In females… a great deal depends on whether a sufficient amount of her masculinity-complex escapes repression and exercises a lasting influence on her character. Normally… the unsatisfied wish for a penis should be converted into the wish for a child and for a man, who possesses a penis. Very often indeed, however, we find that the wish for masculinity persists in the unconscious and, in its repressed states, exercises a disturbing influence.” (Pg. 269)

This interesting and well-chosen collection will be of keen interest to those studying Freud.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the essays collected in this volume were assigned by Ann Ulanov for her Seminar on Freud and Jung taught during the first semester of 1975/76 at Union Theological Seminary in New York. As usual, I read the whole of it.

[Stefan Boublil · Rating 4 out of 5]

sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...