the other hand, if we analyze dreams that occurred before the treatment began, or if attention is paid to what the dreamer adds to the stimuli supplied to him during the treatment, or if we avoid giving him any such task, then we can convince ourselves how far the dream is from offering tentative solutions of the life-task. For the dream is only another form of thinking; the understanding of this form can never be gained from the content of its thoughts, only the consideration of the dream-work will lead to it.
The effective refutation of Jung's misconceptions of psychoanalysis and his deviations from it is not difficult. Any analysis carried out in accordance with the rules, especially any analysis of a child, strengthens the convictions on which the theory of psychoanalysis rests, and repudiates the new interpretations of Adler's and Jung's systems. Jung himself, before he became enlightened, carried out such an analysis of a child and published it.[1] It remains to be seen if he will undertake a new interpretation of this case with the help of another "uniform new tendency of the facts," to give Adler's expression used in this connection.
The opinion that the sexual representation of "higher" ideas in the dream and in the neurosis is nothing but an archaic manner of expression, is naturally irreconcilable with the fact that these sexual complexes prove to be in the neurosis the carriers of those quantities of libido which have been withdrawn from the real life. If it were only a question of sexual jargon, nothing could thereby be altered in the economy of the libido itself. Jung himself admits this in his "Darstellung der psychoanalytischen Theorie," and formulates, as a therapeutic task, that the libido investing the complexes should be withdrawn from them. But this can never be accomplished by rejecting the complexes and forcing them towards sublimation, but only by the most exhaustive occupation with them, and by making them fully conscious. The first bit of reality with which the patient has to deal is his malady itself. Any effort to spare him this task points to an incapacity of the physician to help
- ↑ Experiences Concerning the Psychic Life of the Child, translated by A. A. Brill, American Journal of Psychology, April, 1910.
