Page:Freud - The history of the psychoanalytic movement.djvu/41

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT
35

guide and admonish. Such authority naturally devolved upon me in view of the indisputable advantage of fifteen years experience. It was now my desire to transfer this authority to a younger man who would, quite naturally, take my place on my death. I felt that this person could be only C. G. Jung, for Bleuler was of my own age. In favor of Jung was his conspicuous talents, the contributions he had already made to analysis, his independent position, and the impression of energy which his personality always made. He also seemed prepared to enter into friendly relations with me, and to give up, for my sake, certain race-prejudices which he had so far permitted himself to indulge. I had no notion then that in spite of the advantages enumerated, this was a very unfortunate choice; that it concerned a person who, incapable of tolerating the authority of another, was still less fitted to be himself an authority, one whose energy was devoted to the unscrupulous pursuit of his own interests.

The formation of an official organization I considered necessary because I feared the abuses to which psychoanalysis would be subjected, once it should achieve popularity. I felt that there should be a place that could give the dictum: "With all this nonsense, analysis has nothing to do; this is not psychoanalysis." It was decided that at the meeting of the local groups which together formed the international organization, instruction should be given how psychoanalysis should be practised, that physicians should be trained there and that the local society should, in a way, stand sponsor for them. It also appeared to me desirable that the adherents of psychoanalysis should meet for friendly intercourse and mutual support, inasmuch as official science had pronounced its great ban and boycott against physicians and institutions practising psychoanalysis.

This and nothing else I wished to attain by the founding of the "International Psychoanalytic Association." Perhaps it was more than could possibly be attained. Just as my opponents learned that it was not possible to stem the new movement, so I had to learn, by experience, that it would not permit itself to be led along the particular path which I had laid out for it. The motion made by