Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/119

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

to abandon this newly-found advantage. If it depended upon him, he would be forever associated with his physician. In consequence, he begins to produce all kinds of phantasies, in order to find possible ways of maintaining the association with his physician. He makes the greatest resistances towards his physician, when the latter tries to dissolve the transference. At the same time, we must not forget that for our patients the acquisition of a relationship outside the family is one of the most important duties of life, and one, moreover, which up to this moment they had failed or but very imperfectly succeeded in accomplishing. I must oppose myself energetically to the view that we always mean by this relationship outside the family, a sexual relation in its popular sense. This is the misunderstanding fallen into by so many neurotic people, who believe that a right attitude toward reality is only to be found by way of concrete sexuality. There are even physicians, not psychoanalysts, who are of the same conviction. But this is the primitive adaptation which we find among uncivilized people under primitive conditions. If we lend uncritical support to this tendency of neurotic people to adapt themselves in an infantile way, we just encourage them in the infantilism from which they are suffering. The neurotic patient has to learn that higher adaptation which is demanded by life from civilized and grown-up people. Whoever has a tendency to sink lower, will proceed to do so; for this end he does not need psychoanalysis. But we must be careful not to fall into the opposite extreme and believe that we can create by analysis great personalities. Psychoanalysis stands above traditional morality. It follows no arbitrary moral standard. It is only a means to bring to light the individual trends, and to develop and harmonize them as perfectly as possible.

Analysis must be a biological method, that is, a method which tries to connect the highest subjective well-being with the most valuable biological activity. The best result for a person who passes through analysis, is that he becomes at the end what he really is, in harmony with himself, neither bad nor good, but an ordinary human being. Psychoanalysis cannot be considered a method of education, if by education is understood the possibility of shaping a tree to a highly artificial form. But whoever has the higher conception of education will most prize that