a considerable advantage. But transference has the opposite effect; hence the whole advantage of the new acquisition is neutralized. The more the patient succeeds in regarding his doctor as he does any other individual, the more he is able to consider himself objectively, the greater becomes the advantage of transference. The less he is able to consider his doctor in this way, the more the physician is assimilated with the father, the less is the advantage of the transference and the greater will be its harm. The familial environment of the patient has only become increased by an additional personality assimilated to his parents. The patient himself is, as before, still in his childish surroundings, and therefore maintains his infantile attitude of mind. In this manner, all the advantages of transference can be lost.
There are patients who follow the analysis with the greatest interest without making the slightest improvement, remaining extraordinarily productive in phantasies, although the whole development of their neurosis, even to the smallest details, has been brought to light. A physician under the influence of the historical view might be thus easily thrown into confusion, and would have to ask himself: What is there in this case still to be analyzed? Those are just the cases of which I spoke before, where it is no longer a matter of the analysis of the historical material, but we have now to face a practical problem, the overcoming of the inadequate infantile attitude of mind. Of course, the historical analysis would show repeatedly that the patient had a childish attitude towards his physician, but it would not bring us any solution of the question how that attitude could be changed. To a certain extent, this serious disadvantage of transference is found in every case. Gradually it has been proved that this part of psychoanalysis is, considered from a scientific standpoint, extraordinarily interesting and of great value, but in its practical aspect, of less importance than that which has now to follow, namely, the analysis of the transference.
Confession and Psychoanalysis
Before we enter into a more detailed consideration of this practical part of psychoanalysis, I should like to mention a parallelism between the first part of psychoanalysis and a historical institution of our civilization. It is not difficult to guess
