Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/144

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never previously played such an important part. Now they become apparently of much importance and seemed to be the very reason why the libido regressed to them. It might be said that the child, in consequence of its essentially phantasy-building nature, saw her father too much in her teacher, and thus developed incestuous resistances towards the latter. As I have already stated, I hold that it is simpler and more probable to accept the view that, during a certain period, it was convenient for her to see the teacher as the father. As she preferred to follow the hidden presentiments of puberty rather than her duties towards the school and her teacher, she allowed her libido to fall on the little boy, from whom, as we saw, she awaited some mysterious advantages. Even if analysis had demonstrated it as a fact that she had had incestuous resistances against her teacher on account of the transference of the father-image, those resistances would only have been secondary phantasies, that had become inflated. At any rate, indolence would still have been the primum movens. In the analysis she learned about the two ways of life, the way of phantasy, of regression, and the way of reality, wherein lay her present child's duties. In her the two were dissociated, and consequently she was at strife with herself. As the analysis was adapted to the regressive tendency of the libido, the existence of an extreme sexual curiosity, connected with certain very definite problems, was discovered. The libido, imprisoned in this phantastical labyrinth, was brought back into useful application by means of the psychological explanation of the incorrect infantile phantasies. The child thus got an insight into her own attitude towards reality with all its possibilities. The result was that she was able to take an objective-critical attitude towards her immature puberty-desires, and was able to give up these and all other impossibilities in favor of the use of her libido in possible directions, in her work and in obtaining the good-will of her teacher. In this case, analysis brought great peace of mind, as well as a pronounced intellectual improvement. After a short time her teacher himself stated that the little girl was one of the best pupils in her class.

I hope that by the exposition of this brief instance of the course of an analysis, I have succeeded in giving you an insight not only into the concrete procedure of treatment, and into the